Chapter 179

KABUTO

Under the forest's shade of the early morning sun, walking away from the tall tower at the center of Training Ground 44 where the preliminary matches will take place, a distracted Kabuto couldn't keep his highly efficient mind from replay his exchange with Naruto-kun. So focused on his disturbing recollection, the silver-haired 'genin' felt more comfortable walking than traveling through the trees.

"You're quitting!?" Naruto asked, despite the three-man lines of genin around them.

"Sadly, I'm out of chakra, Naruto-kun," Kabuto regretfully said, ignoring the attention the blond headache tends to draw with his loud voice.

"And?" the blond immediately questioned. Kabuto could easily sense Naruto-kun's urgency as if trying to reconcile two conflicting halves of himself. Whatever the talk Haku had with the boy, Kabuto's instincts tell him that Naruto is trying to reach out despite his clear reservations. "Your hands and feet work," Naruto continued. "And you still have weapons. You can still fight."

Smiling his perfected smile, Kabuto maintains, "from a logical standpoint, it's best if I don't risk my safety for false validation."

When Naruto-kun seems disappointed, Kabuto felt he was finally starting to make some progress with the blond headache. If he was ever going to secure a place for Haku in Sound, Naruto-kun would either need to be with them or dead… whether Orochimaru-sama approves Haku-kun or not.

'No,' he mentally assured himself. 'I'll make Orochimaru-sama see Haku's value.'

Thoughts of picturesque brunette always lead to a chaotic mind for Kabuto, and though he won't admit to himself that anything is wrong, when Naruto says, "I don't know what Haku sees in you," Kabuto felt the first painful stabs of a deeper meaning behind the very beautiful boy. In a balanced world, Haku should not affect him so, and yet Kabuto's priorities felt incredibly conflicted by the mere thought of him.

'All I needs is Orochimaru-sama,' his stubborn mind repeats.

Naruto adds wind to fire when he continued. "Whatever he sees, I doubt it's this gutless stranger in front of me." Though his teammate Haruno-chan admonishes him for being rude, Naruto adds the final cutting word. "You want to know why I don't trust you around Haku? It's because I can't see you. I don't know what you stand for. You could betray Haku just as easily as you could care about him and I won't ever let you hurt my friend."

Traveling over the grass, a subtle snap unlike grass bringing his attentive eyes down to a beautiful flower he's stepped on and Kabuto's deviant mind repeats Naruto-kun's cutting words without his consent.

By the time he exits Death Forest all he wonders over and over is, 'who am I? Does Haku know? Does Orochimaru-sama know?'

With a superior like Orochimaru-sama, Kabuto can feel how these dangerous thoughts raise his anxiety level, and more than anything, he needs to stop it. Orochimaru-sama is counting on him and everything needs to go according to his plans, but deep deep down, he can feel his need for Haku to endure the devastation that's to come.

TEMARI

"This exam is a replacement for war," Hiruzen continues to announce to the remaining seven teams for the Chūnin exam. "The strength of a country is the strength of its village, the strength of a village is the strength of its shinobi, and a shinobi's true strength is born only through life-risking battle. That is the true meaning behind taking the exams together."

"I don't care about the true meaning of this exam," Gaara calmly states, though Temari can feel the underlying blood-lust in his voice. "Hurry up and tell us what this life-risking battle entails."

"Hello everyone," a sickly proctor steps forward. With dark bags under his eyes and a persistent cough, he informs everyone, "I'm Gekkō Hayate, your proctor for the preliminary test to decide who among you will advance to the third test."

Subtly observing the remaining genin with an analytical eye, only one shinobi decided to quit and the loud blond seemed to take real offense to it, going so far as to call the silver-haired boy with glasses a coward. Temari didn't understand the situation but she was simply happy the blond disappeared for the past four days and she didn't have to engage in ridiculously flirtatious conversation with the loud-mouth.

"There are basically no rules," Hayate tells the genin after some coughing. "No matter what, the fight continues until one of you admits defeat, is knocked out, or dies. Now, if there are no-" The sickly proctor pauses to cough for a few moments, making many worry about his health. "If there are no questions, the first match will be…"

As the electronic score-board continuously beeps with every name change, Temari had a funny wish for that blond to match up with Gaara. She found it funny he would finally get his wish to meet her youngest brother, only to finally see how utterly outmatched he is… 'as they all are against him,' she thinks.

THE PRELIM'S

Blond brows raise and Naruto's countenance is completely taken by the first match up. His baby-blue eyes widen at the names and his mouth absentmindedly comments, "well that's definitely different…"

On the large screen high on the wall for all to read, Uchiha Sasuke vs Uzumaki Naruto is displayed. As Sound's Jōnin-sensei grins wickedly, Sasuke focuses his confident onyx-eyes on his blond teammate, grateful for the match-up, but also, optimistically invigorated in a way Naruto hasn't seen before, like when a far-fetched plan works out perfectly.

For Naruto's part, he had expected to fight Kiba, as Naru-nii had, however, he's fully aware that his past decisions and their resulting outcomes have already diverged from his future counterpart's experiences. It's why Naruto thought he might fight Gaara, Rock Lee, or maybe Neji. Clearly, Naruto has changed too much for things to go precisely as Naru-nii had told him, which means, moving forward, he'll always need to be ready for the unexpected.

'And now I have to fight Sasuke,' Naruto thinks, wondering how different this fight might be from the fight Naru-nii and future Sasuke had at the Valley of the End.

Recalling their month-long story session, Naru-nii had explained, 'I let my selfishness get the better of me.'

At the time, Naruto was laying on Kurenai's couch, waiting on dinner as his headache subsided when he thought back, 'what do you mean?'

'At first, I truly didn't think he'd ever abandon his friends, his teammates, his village,' Naru-nii softly voices, as if vividly recalling the very moment. 'But Sasuke was serious—dead serious—and it wasn't until he plunged his hand through my chest that I realized I'm going to have to fight him for real.'

'…He tried to kill you,' Naruto couldn't help but ask, dumbfounded to learn Sasuke would fall so far as to try and kill him.

'Yeah, and can you believe I still wanted to bring him back,' Naru-nii presses. 'I never gave up hope he could return, but instead of just summoning Gamabunta to help me stop him, like I could've done, I selfishly wanted to fight him, match him, beat him.'

'To prove that you matter,' Naruto asks in the affirmative, thinking of his dwindling rivalry with the raven-haired genius.