44

"Each village sees these exams in a different way," the Raikage said to the assembled genin in the training ground. It wasn't the one Naruto had fought the man in, but was near it and had a much larger observation area straddling two different combat areas. Plus a hastily-assembled medical tent. "I like to tell it like it is. What you're participating in is a proxy for war and wartime promotions, and in many cases serves to help advertise a village's strengths. Despite that, the bulk of chunin are promoted outside of the exam cycle in field promotions, many without having entered the exams at all. You've all shown significant promise in making it this far, and shouldn't be discouraged if you're forced out in the preliminary matches about to be held. But now you are competing as individuals, and with an even number of teams there will be no free passes."

There were nods, and then the proctor stepped forward. A kunoichi named Ai, and she looked over the group. "Unfortunately, we need to whittle you all down significantly, so we're running a two-stage single-elimination set of matches. I've got the computer-generated bracket here, which would normally have been revealed in random order. We can't do that out here, but we're still not warning anyone who their matches are with. I will tell you that in the first round there are equal numbers of Kumo and non-Kumo participants, so everyone not from Kumo is fighting someone from Kumo. The second round is already determined based on the winners of the first round and Kumo participants have a chance of running into each other there, but thanks to equal numbers of teams making it through from Kiri and Konoha there's no risk of them fighting someone from their own village. Kumo participants aren't at risk of going up against their teammates."

Some shuffling was needed to get everyone into the observation area before two pairs were called down to fight, and Sasuke was in one of the first two against a Kumo shinobi named Jokuro. There was no banter to speak of before his opponent had quickly run through some hand seals to launch a lightning technique. In response, Sasuke had dodged to the side, producing a spatula that he coated in wind chakra to bat the edge of the technique away, and then sent a packet of flour across the arena. Jokuro had stepped forward and batted the packet away instead of letting it hit the ground at his feet, only to realize that it was just flour.

"You're trying to blind me with flour?" Jokuro said, sounding insulted.

"Not at all," Sasuke replied with a grin, sending two more packets of flour at his opponent's feet. Those hit and started making a cloud of flour, followed by three more packets. "Did you know that the right mix of air and flour is explosive, and the slightest spark of fire or lightning can set it off?"

That elicited a number of widened eyes, both from his opponent and those focusing on this battle, followed by a scowl and a water technique that caused a small rainshower over the pair of genin. This knocked the flour out of the air, though it was running over Jokuro's skin a bit. "Fat chance of that no..."

The Kumo genin fell over at that point, and Sasuke scoffed. "Flour also hides certain drugs quite nicely, of course."

A quick clean-up happened, because nobody wanted to leave the drugged flour there, and then a match between Kumo and Kiri shinobi occurred. Neither really stood out, though it took longer, ending at about the same time the first match on the other side between a different pair of Kumo and Kiri shinobi did. Each village had won one of the matches, and then Sakura was called down to one side while Shino was called down to the other.

"How many people does your village have with animal features?" a Kumo shinobi named Kuhi asked Sakura with a scowl.

"More than we'd like in some ways," Sakura answered. "Every genin here with them was exposed through accidents, and in my case it included a bunch of academy students that needed immediate medic-nin intervention."

"...and now I feel like an asshole for bringing it up, but don't think that I'm going to go easy on you because of it."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Kuhi apparently decided that banter-time was over and rushed across to strike at Sakura. Her response was to dodge his fist and strike his chest with a medical-chakra coated palm, causing him to stumble as he clutched at where she'd hit. A moment later he fell over, and she placed her hand on his chest and restarted his heart. He remained unconscious and was dragged off by the medic-nin.

"I'm glad that wouldn't work on me," Sasuke commented.

"Yeah," Naruto said with a nod. "Passive resistance would've stopped that if he'd had maybe ten percent more chakra."

"She and Karin both worked hard to get that down correctly though."

"I'm aware."

Unfortunately for Konoha, Shino's fight was similarly short in the opposite direction. His opponent's lightning was excellent at killing insects and he didn't seem to have the ability to coat them in insulating wind chakra. Ami and Rio were both called down next, neither putting up a particularly impressive showing against their opponents before being defeated. Ami had lasted longer due to higher chakra reserves though, even if she didn't have a good solution to her opponent's sword.

While another match between Kiri and Kumo was happening on the side Rio had been on, Kiba got called down to the side that Ami had just vacated. To the surprise of anyone familiar with the Inuzuka, he had Akamaru stay in the observation area. His opponent Ubume had immediately pulled out a tanto, which Kiba responded to by pulling out a pair of tongs.

"...tongs?" Ubume asked.

"I just need to block your tanto long enough to knock you out," Kiba replied.

"As if you're going to be able to handle that while using tongs."

To Ubume's surprise, Kiba's tongs had trivially stopped the tanto, even with wind chakra flowing through the blade. They'd even lit the tanto on fire, causing mild panic because having your blade explode in flames when you aren't expecting it to isn't good for staying calm or for the blade itself. More amusingly, it appeared that all of this was a ruse and had nothing to do with Kiba's actual plan.

That was revealed more by virtue of Ubume just falling over unconscious a moment later, because Kiba had popped a capsule to release a gaseous version of the other half of the binary knockout drug and then used slight wind manipulation to keep it out of his face and direct it into his opponent's.

Ino got called down next, and the kunoichi named Sugaba that she was up against scowled. "You better not think that you can knock me out as easily as your teammates knocked their opponents out."

"I don't see why not," Ino replied with a smirk. "I mean, everyone who made it through the caves was stupid enough to buy food from us over the past day or two and as far as I know nobody bothered checking for two-component drugs. Surely you all knew that there'd preliminary fights to whittle us down?"

Sugaba's eyes went wide at that, but Ino lashed out with ramen noodles being used like ninja wire. Wet ramen noodles that easily wrapped around her opponent's arm, but were quickly cut with a kunai. Ino then backed off instead of pressing the attack, causing Sugaba to frown.

Two seconds later she fainted, the exposed skin being enough for the second half of the knockout drug to affect her.

"I love chakra-active knockout drugs," Ino commented. "They're so fast when one component has already spread through someone's system."

Splitting focus between matches for a bit didn't reveal a whole lot. Choji's bullet tank technique had proven to not be useful in the partially-uncontained fighting areas and he'd been taken down by a lightning technique while trying to turn, Shikamaru had spent five minutes getting into his opponent's head before suddenly engaging in taijutsu for the knockout, and Sachi had put a kunai through her opponent's leg for her win.

"So you're a fox," Seruta, Karin's opponent, commented to start the next match Naruto felt a desire to actually focus on.

"Yes," Karin replied. "And you're an asshole."

"I think you'll find that I'm a bit more resilient than most."

"That wasn't a comment on your skills, but your inability to recognize when flirting isn't appreciated. You've been annoying kunoichi since the first stage."

"Not my fault that you're all uptight."

"Oh, the problem isn't us, but I've got the perfect technique to get that stick out of your ass."

Seruta snorted, pulling a katana off of his back. "Sorry, not planning on losing."

Karin simply seemed to stomp her foot, but an unseen paperwork clone was using an underground movement technique to get into position. "A Thousand Years of Death, Uzumaki style."

Three chakra chains spiraling around each other like a drill shot up from the ground and struck Seruta's buttocks, launching him into the air. He screamed, and Naruto had to catch the katana to stop it from striking one of the already-defeated Kumo shinobi watching their teammate fight on the other side in the back.

"You might have overdone it," Ai commented as Seruta fell down outside of the fighting area. "And now we have to send someone down there to fetch him."

Karin shrugged. "I warned him that I was going to get the stick out of his ass."

"I don't think he expected you to make a literal attempt."

"Sucks to be him."

Checking on Seruta had taken a couple of minutes, and the last match of the first round was starting just as the asshole was being dragged into the medical tent. Tenten had come up last, and her opponent had immediately pulled out a pair of swords. She met this with a basic wooden staff instead of a blade of her own, which took Naruto by surprise. Her opponent was obviously dismissive of the staff, darting in and moving to force her to block or dodge two slashes from different angles in a way that the staff shouldn't be able to do much about.

The staff became far more interesting when spinning it caused both swords to stick to it. Apparently Tenten had been working on her magnet release, and her opponent hadn't been expecting it. Both swords came out of their hands, were flung off to the side away from the audience with carefully-timed releasing of the chakra flow along the staff, and then the staff came down on top of the shinobi's head. That wasn't enough to knock him out though, as he'd seen it coming in time to roll with it. She followed him though, suddenly holding a tanto in her hand and pinning him with the blade at his neck.

She was even nice enough to get his swords for him from where they'd landed.

A small selection of food was made available as the second-round bracket was properly updated and parceled out between the jounin running the two fighting areas. An announcement was also made that all drugs had been cleared out of systems in the checkups after the first round of matches, but Ino's revelation had been made after the medic-nin had brought it up themselves. In fact, she'd known about the discovery by the medic-nin and had likely made a point of bringing it up due to knowing it wasn't going to continue to be useful.

"So," Naruto said as their genin snacked on their own food instead of taking anything from Kumo. "All three of you are against Kumo shinobi, and can't rely on knockout drugs."

"We were hoping it would only be a single elimination round when we came up with the plan," Ino admitted. "But it does mean that we basically haven't shown any real skills, so we're still unknowns."

"At least we don't have to go up against anyone else from Konoha," Kiba added. "They'd have a better idea of what we might be capable of."

"Which means that we're likely to be embarrassing Kumo by having the third stage be more than half Konoha participants," Hinata said. "The host country not having the bulk of participants in the finals is almost as bad as having only the host country in the finals."

There was a pause as the genin processes that, and Sasuke frowned. "So...you're obviously weaker than expected if home field advantage isn't enough to get your genin into the finals, but only having your genin in the finals means you probably cheated to ensure that nobody else could make it that far?"

"Good job," Naruto said. "That's pretty much correct, though admittedly some of the embarrassment is likely to be offset by Uzushiogakure obviously having shaken up the balance between the larger nations through removal of the tailed beasts. Add in things like the beast-man formula and there's an expectation that Konoha is going to be doing better in shows of strength for another six to eighteen months."

"The jounin from the other visiting villages were grumbling about it," Hinata added. "Though I think most of the Kumo shinobi talking about it were more focused on being happy that they'd flipped to being allied with Konoha just in time to not be on the wrong side of things."

Hiruzen watched as Shisui opened the envelope and extracted the pictures within, eyes widening as he realized what they were.

"Where did you get these?" Shisui asked as he stared at the pictures. It was somewhat obvious that he'd not seen the reaction shots of finding the test mission reports and scrolls in his desk yet.

"Naruto," Tsunade responded, Hiruzen and Hiashi nodding their agreement. She obviously found the whole thing simultaneously hilarious and horrifying at different points, possibly depending on which side of things she was focusing on at the time.

"...where did he get them?"

"My understanding is that he had a clone waiting to see reactions," Hiashi stated, letting no trace of emotion slip into his voice.

Some of the things going through the fifth Hokage's head were obvious as he processed that. But young Naruto's personal views of what was and wasn't secure were...warped, when compared to what most people thought. Unfortunately for most people, the one that was able to prove that they could trivially slip through the existing security was likely the one with the better view of the effectiveness of that security.

It was one thing to claim that security measures couldn't stop you, something that many shinobi and non-shinobi claimed over the years. Naruto didn't do that. He just pretended that the measures didn't exist and lightly chided you for thinking they'd stop him afterwards. Which went along nicely with all the other ways he ignored what should and shouldn't be possible, directly and with the help of the imprints of his parents and three of the tailed beasts in his magic book.

"I feel that the only reason Naruto hasn't read every record in the village is out of respect," Hiruzen noted. "He did, after all, copy basically everything he could find in Kiri and Kumo, including every technique scroll he could locate."

"Which was surprisingly little for Kiri," Shisui grumbled. "But he does seem to be quite a bit less likely to snoop in the private records here."

"Everyone he's corrupted towards his way of thinking is similarly reserved in their snooping, minus their own clan records. I can only assume that Kiba is the only one that was spotted looking through more advanced techniques than they were supposed to have access to, anyway."

"And unless he was being incredibly obvious and stupid about it or touching the most dangerous stuff he'd not have been told he was spotted."

"That is a bit of a tradition, yes. Still, as much as I still personally have reservations about early promotions, I'm thinking that age is the only reason they're being held back and that the current team of five could do a lot of very useful things without the restrictions of including genin."

"The two are special jounin at a minimum from a medic-nin standpoint alone," Tsunade offered. "With their genin having easily reached field medic status. As I understand it, their combat demonstration during their chunin exams basically pushed them to special jounin or better from a heavy combat point of view, they're out-infiltrating Anbu infiltration specialists, and have proven that they've got leadership skills."

Shisui nodded. "They're also impossible to test properly."

"To put it in a different light," Hiashi said. "They are the only reason the hospital archives are in order, and if they're promoted to jounin then they'd be officially cleared to take the standing mission to clean up the jounin archives."

"...even they couldn't manage that. I've seen even evaluating that mess break elite jounin and drive them to suicide, let alone trying to fix it."

Hiruzen's only hope for the jounin archives had been that some disaster would obliterate them and they'd have to start over fresh, not allowing them to get anywhere near as bad as they currently were in the process. But Naruto's killing intent took the form of paperwork...

"You look annoyed," Hinata commented.

"I think someone who should know better is doubting my skills," Naruto replied. "...or perhaps threatening to burn down the jounin or Anbu archives back in Konoha before I get a chance to sort them and look for things that people might've buried in them."

"You've heard my father and grandfather complaining about both before. Most people that've seen them think that they'd be impossible to sort out."

"...maybe I should just slip in and fix them before someone gets jumpy with fire techniques, even if I'm not supposed to have access."

Hinata just gave him a look, as though not believing that it would be that easy. Then again, she had seen the archives from the outside, and the horrible mess they were in, on top of the stories they'd heard. He wasn't sure if she'd noticed the seals involved though. It was too bad that nobody had figured out an automatic sorting and filing seal array, but even Shukaku and the Tome flinched at that idea for physical records. To understand context you'd probably need an actual mind in the array, and that wasn't safe.

Musing on the subject was interrupted by the second round of matches beginning. Sakura was up first out of those they cared about, against a Kumo kunoichi named Saki. This wasn't going to be a trivial 'slip in and induce a heart attack, then heal it' match like her first one either.

There was no banter, and the two got into the fight basically immediately. Sakura had produced a short tanto to block her opponent's longer sword with, but otherwise seemed to be aiming to deal with this using her fists. This included the beginnings of Tsunade's famous strength-boosting trick, making cracking the ground with pure power possible. Not to the same level as those who'd perfected the ability, but far more power than you wanted to actually hit you anyway.

Healing was definitely running in Sakura's favor as well. She didn't even need to focus on anything but the deepest cuts, with grazing hits sealing themselves up as you watched and the slight poison on Saki's blade not able to get purchase before it was neutralized. Sakura might not have noticed the poison with how ineffective it was proving to be, and after fifteen minutes she was able to take advantage of a slip-up by Saki to land a solid punch.

Saki was unconscious when she landed on the opposite side of the other fighting area. Luckily another Kumo kunoichi, Mio, had already won against her Kiri opponent there.

Next up were Ino and Kiba at the same time, which was annoying, up against Ren and Rin from Kumo. They appeared to be brothers, and had similar fighting styles. No kenjutsu, plenty of lightning techniques. Little to no idea how to handle opponents using Knight Armor and wind techniques to completely neutralize lightning. Kiba's tongs had made a repeat appearance alongside metal trays as larger bludgeoning weapons and Ino had repeated her wet ramen noodle as ninja wire trick to direct lightning around her and back at her opponent.

Tenten was next, against Aina from Kiri, while another Kumo vs Kiri match happened on the other side. An important detail about Aina was that she had an obvious bloodline involving her eyes, but it wasn't one of the major dojutsu. Her eyes went pitch black when she used it, but it was hard to tell what was happening when she had it active.

Whatever it was, it didn't seem to have any effect on Tenten, who continued on as though her opponent wasn't actually attempting anything. Dodging was attempted on Aina's part, but it was almost like her dojutsu was attempting to predict Tenten and failing to do so correctly. Dodging into the strike instead of away from it and being knocked out almost immediately with a sizable injury due to the mistake. The match on the other side took three times as long, the Kumo shinobi named Kei taking the win with a lightning technique channeled down his opponent's sword.

Shikamaru looked to be gearing up for a longer match of out-thinking his opponent, who was more ready for a sudden taijutsu interjection. Naruto kept a little focus on that, but paid more attention to the other side. First Sachi was up against a Yuko from Kiri, and apparently Haku hadn't been the last ice release user as Yuko had resorted to revealing it to avoid being skewered by high-velocity kunai. Maybe Haku had been the last Yuki, but not the last ice release user. Mild coating of the ground, using ice release chakra to maintain footing despite the slick surface, was enough to get the upper hand and knock Sachi out. Then Karin was up against Akio from Kumo...who surrendered immediately citing not having any idea how to defend against the attack used on Karin's previous opponent.

Karin was obviously both pleased by that since she hadn't needed to reveal any additional skills and annoyed that she hadn't gotten to show off.

A Kumo vs Kumo match then started up, and Naruto focused more on Shikamaru's ongoing match. He'd gotten his opponent into an obvious bind with a combination of shadow manipulation, traps, and genjutsu. Naruto could see three easy ways out, but two required skills most people didn't have and the last required equipment most people wouldn't be carrying. It also looked like Shikamaru wanted to give up and be done with things, but also didn't dare do so and thus have his entire team eliminated.

Threatening to have his opponent cut his own throat was enough to get a win.

That allowed a Kiri vs Kumo match to start, and it wasn't long before both matches ended. Hashige from Kiri and L from Kumo had won their matches and moved on. All that was left was the final match with Sasuke...and a Kumo opponent that wasn't present. One of the Kumo jounin appeared a couple minutes later, just as Ai was getting frustrated, and then there was a sigh.

"Sasuke Uchiha gets a pass as his opponent poisoned themself while preparing a sword with a stronger than usual poison in an attempt to overcome the beast-man formula's demonstrated healing factor. Please take this as a warning to not use poisons you don't know how to use properly."

A bag was brought out with twelve tokens in it, and each of the twelve genin making it to the finals took a token from it. The numbers from this were written down, and then copies of a tournament bracket were hand-written right there. Each genin participating got one, plus each sensei for those genin. The number of genin meant that there were four free passes from the first round of matches...and they'd gone to Tenten, Ino, Sasuke, and Karin. Sakura, Kiba, and Shikamaru were spread into different matches in the first round as well. In the second round Sakura had a chance of fighting Ino, Kiba had a chance of fighting Sasuke, and Shikamaru had a chance of fighting Karin.

"So," Naruto said. "We've got one team returning to Konoha, two full teams of genin making it to the finals, and one team with a single genin in the finals."

Kurenai-sensei didn't seem disappointed that her team was the only one without a genin in the finals, even if Sachie obviously didn't like that she'd been knocked out in the second round of the preliminaries. Shino was obviously far more annoyed with how many of his insects had been killed and Choji had just shrugged and admitted that he was more team-oriented than for solo combat without things that the exams didn't justify using.

"Kumo doesn't allow visitors to use their training grounds for the month," Tekuno noted. "So I'd like to take my team out in the morning to find a nearby place to camp and train."

"That was my hope as well," Yugao added. "Unless our leader here disagrees?"

"Our genin asked to stay in the village," Naruto commented, getting looks from the three jounin. Not mentioned was that Ino wanted to see if they could use paperwork clones and summoning to make it appear that they weren't training at all while actually training back in Konoha...and working on their infiltration skills by not being spotted by others in Konoha. "But I have no problem with your two teams finding camping areas. I've even got a couple of suggestions from scouting the area which I doubt would've been found by most people."

"I hope you know what you're doing with letting them make that call," Kurenai-sensei said, but she seemed to have developed a smirk. Of course, she had experience with the Team Yurei style of infiltration. "But if that's what they want then I see no reason not to take advantage of Kumo's hospitality. I'll obviously be taking my team back to Konoha and delivering all the initial reports, and I'm sure that word of the plans for the Hokage's arrival will be sent along in a couple of weeks."

"I'll be on the lookout for it." Naruto then turned to the other two jounin. "Do you have enough supplies for a month's training?"

"...only about two weeks if we aren't hunting," Tekuno admitted.

"About the same here," Yugao added.

"See me before you depart in the morning and I'll have seals with another couple weeks of supplies ready for you."

"...how much do you carry with you normally?" Tekuno asked.

"Probably at least six months of supplies at any time," Kurenai-sensei answered. "And that's what he seemed to have when only expecting to be gone for a couple of weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if he carted along enough supplies for a couple of years on this trip."

"I just keep adding to my reserve supplies," Naruto admitted. "Though I had to stop adding to my kunai, shuriken, and senbon seals after the Anbu commander checked purchase records and realized that I probably have more than the village stockpiles do."

"Between you and Tenten you could trivially outfit an army," Yugao said, shaking her head. "I don't know why you bother though."

"Having enough to outfit clones with real equipment can be useful if you don't want things vanishing when the clones dispel. That's particularly important if you're leaving things as signs or intend for a kunai to hold something open or closed, and I can create a lot of clones."

For some reason the three jounin all shuddered at that thought, but he wasn't really sure why.

"So how are we handling things?" Tenten asked once they'd settled into a well-hidden but very usable campsite. She suspected that Naruto had less 'found' it and more 'made' it, using wood release and other tricks to create a perfect little area for them, right down to natural-looking but perfectly-placed roots in several places and access to water that was protected and clean in all defiance of the location.

It was also obvious that Yugao-sensei and Karin had similar feelings about it, but that Sakura wasn't familiar enough with Naruto to have picked up on the full implications while also knowing that this wasn't just a 'found' campsite.

"There are two basic thoughts for training in the month before the finals," Yugao-sensei said. "Some genin work solo, others get help from their sensei. A good sensei lets the genin make that call, as well as whether to train individually or together in a situation where there are multiple in the finals. Team Tekuno doesn't have that problem, and Team Yurei...is going for something subtler or sneakier, I suspect, instead of actually not training for the month."

"We aren't exactly suited to the same training routines," Sakura pointed out. "Three very different styles and we've not really been a team long enough to synergize in any useful ways, so we're probably best off training individually to see what surprises we can have for each other if we do make it through to facing each other. I personally suspect that I won't make it past Ino though."

Karin flinched at that. "Yeah...Sasuke is probably going to be tough for me, even with my chakra advantage. He's spent a lot more time training for combat instead of for support."

"That's what I think my problem is going to be with Ino, on top of knowing that she's gotten her chakra up much further than I have."

"I think I'm in agreement with us each needing to work on our individual skills," Tenten said. "But perhaps a four-day rotation of Yugao-sensei assisting each of us individually followed by a team training day would be a better choice than running off on our own every day?"

Karin and Sakura nodded their agreement, and Yugao-sensei seemed pleased. "That works for me, though I do know how to make shadow clones and can handle two or three without issue. Doing that would allow me to help all three of you at the same time each day."

"And we can all make them too at this point. You might need a handful for each of us to work with our selection of clones."

"...I admittedly hadn't considered that aspect."