Disclaimer: Naruto and all the characters in this story are owned by Masashi Kishimoto.

Author's Note: I'm back! Sorry for the almost three-month break between chapters. I got caught up with moving to a new residence, holiday celebrations, a Harry Potter crossover-reading binge, and an annoying bit of writer's block. But I finally got the next chapter out!

Chapter 8: Better, Part II

"Perhaps it would be best," said Homura, "if Koharu and I take care of spreading the rumors. Your ROOT ninja are… not the most adept at social skills."

"Indeed," agreed Koharu, "Not that they aren't excellent ninja, Danzo, but they do come across as rather robotic. If we want this to seem like a grassroots motion, we cannot risk suspicion."

Danzo narrowed his eye. "I suppose that would be best," said he, "although I was hoping to avoid forcing you to go on an active mission at your advanced age."

"Bah," said Koharu. "My bones may be old, but I'll be on my deathbed before I cannot perform a simple Henge."

"Very well," said Danzo, "You have one month. We'll execute the final phase of the plan on August 2nd at the Council meeting for the Chūnin promotions. By that time, we need all the council members on our side."

Koharu and Homura left the meeting room and made their way out of the underground hideout.

Danzo snapped his fingers. A ROOT ninja Shunshined in front of him and knelt.

"Sir."

"In one month's time we will add a Jinchūriki to the ranks. Prepare a holding cell and chakra-resistant restraints. We will need to alter our standard conditioning regime to control the beast sealed in the boy. Take every precaution, we do not want it getting free."

"Yes sir."

"Dismissed."

– CS –

In Tsunade's learned opinion, the best ramen in the world could be found in the Land of Vegetables. Interestingly enough, most people seemed to expect the Land of Noodles to have good ramen, but the truth was, noodles could be transported practically anywhere without losing their quality, while vegetables couldn't. And the country Tsunade and Shizune were visiting now, as its name implied, grew the best vegetables in the world.

Which is why the two of them, along with Tauntaun, were sitting in a small restaurant in the Land of Vegetables, having dinner.

"I'll have a stir-fry, please," ordered Shizune.

"One chicken-and-shrimp ramen, please," ordered Tsunade. The waitress made a note and left to pass their orders to the kitchen.

Shizune smiled. "Ramen, huh? If Naruto could see you now..."

"Shut up," said Tsunade, scanning the room. "If you talk about him, he might appear. You know he always shows up when we're eating, drinking, or gambling."

"Who always shows up when you're eating, drinking, or gambling, Auntie Tsunade?" asked Naruto. "And did I hear the word 'ramen'?"

Tsunade blinked, surprised despite herself. "Naruto, how did you find us this time?"

"Oh, it's simple!" said Naruto, grinning smugly. "You were thinking of ramen, which naturally led to thinking of your favorite nephew, and I could feel the love from all the way over in Konoha, so I came!"

"See, Shizune? Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Well, Naruto, are you going to introduce your friend?"

"Oh right, sorry. Aunt Tsunade, Shizune, this is Karin Uzumaki. Karin, this is Tsunade Senju and Shizune Kato. And that's Tauntaun."

"Tsunade of the Sannin is your aunt?!" squeaked Karin.

"Uh, yeah, and apparently she's your aunt too. Or cousin or something like that. Auntie, don't you have some sort of DNA or chakra test to find out how closely we're related?"

Tsunade got the message; Naruto wanted her to confirm that Karin was actually an Uzumaki. "Hmph," she said. "Something like that. Now have a seat, brats. Karin, what's your favorite type of ramen?"

Shizune and Naruto looked at each other and smirked. "Nice to see you're finally embracing the Uzumaki blood, Auntie," said Naruto.

"Don't be like that," said Tsunade. "Naruto, I don't know if you've ever been here before, but the Land of Vegetables has the best ramen in the entire world. So I make an exception whenever I come here."

"What? No way. Ichiraku's has the best ramen in the world."

"Kid, I've had Ichiraku's. It's not bad, but the stuff they make here is on another level."

"W-wait," interjected Karin. "The Land of Vegetables? Isn't that on the other side of the Land of Water?"

"Yup!" said Naruto. "Welcome to the Land of Veggies!"

"But we were just in Konoha!"

"Yup! And now we're here!"

"But… how?"

"It's one of the mysteries of the universe. We were there, and now we're here, but no time has passed between. It is not for us to know, nor is it for us to ask, how this has come to pass. For us, only to give thanks and praise the ramen," said Naruto devoutly.

"Now you're just being ridiculous," said Karin.

"Anyway," said Naruto, turning to Tsunade and forcibly changing the subject. "I was hoping you could keep Karin with you until the end of the Chūnin exams. She was… unwillingly conscripted by Kusagakure and, while Shika and I managed to fake her death, it's best if we keep her away from Grass ninja for awhile."

"And what do I get out of this, brat?"

"Um… she has the Uzumaki healing chakra?"

It was Tsunade's turn to gape. "Damn, kid. Alright. Karin, you've got one month to show me that you're apprentice material. Now, what's your favorite kind of ramen?"

– CS –

Anko arrived on the top floor of the Forest of Death's central tower with a leaf Shunshin.

"Lord Hokage," she addressed the village leader, dropping a hogtied Kabuto like a sack of rice, "I have urgent news."

– CS –

On the second day of the Chūnin exams, Naruto was summoned to the hideout by his spy clone.

"Report," said Naruto, once again seated in a meditative position on his couch.

"We have multiple important and urgent alerts," said the spy clone, covered in black cloth with only his eyes showing. "First, Anko Mitarashi, the Second Phase proctor, reported to the Hokage that she discovered Orochimaru, the traitor Sannin, in the Forest of Death yesterday. She captured Kabuto Yakushi, who appears to be working for Orochimaru, when Orochimaru fled and used Kabuto as a distraction for Anko. She proceeded to do a field interrogation of Kabuto and discovered that Oto, under Orochimaru, intends to invade Konoha with the assistance of Suna. Suna's motives are unclear, Kabuto did not know how Orochimaru convinced them to join. The plan was to attack during the final phase of the Chūnin Exams, using Gaara Sabaku's bijuu, the One-Tailed Raccoon-Dog, to sow chaos and trigger the invasion. We'll have to take into account the fact that Orochimaru may alter his plans due to Kabuto's capture.

"On a related note, if you steal Anko's dango again, don't get caught.

"Next alert. The Hokage assigned a Chūnin to go undercover and get himself hired at the Whirlwind Postal office. Whirlwind will need to turn him away with a suitable excuse.

"Final alert. Koharu, Homura, and Danzo had a rather interesting meeting yesterday. As expected, Danzo received the report from that drone you noticed tailing you during the Tanzaku Gai mission with Konoha Team 7. In addition, we've got some information his spies picked up, and his plans concerning yourself. Probably best if you just review the memories yourself."

Naruto closed his eyes, nodded, and the clone dispelled in a puff of smoke. It was twenty minutes before he opened his eyes and called out, "Training! Apprentices! Whirlwind!"

"You called, boss?" The head training clone appeared in Naruto's office.

"Yo," The delivery-man clone appeared.

"What's up?" The head apprentice clone appeared.

"New memories and orders," said Naruto. He created a normal shadow clone, which dispelled immediately. While the three were processing the memories, Naruto re-created the spy clone and created another clone, this one wearing his orange jumpsuit. Then Naruto said:

"Begin Project Whirlpool."

– CS –

Gaara was bored. It was the third day of the Chūnin exams and he was stuck in a tower. Baki-sensei said he wasn't allowed to kill anyone, so he sat in his team's assigned room, making a miniature sand-sculpture of the village of Suna. Then he created a miniature Godzilla and had it smash through the miniature Suna until all that remained was miniature sand-dunes. For the fifth time that morning. Then Gaara sent all of the sand back to his gourd and started creating another miniature sand-sculpture of Suna. Yes, Gaara was very bored.

"Hey Gaara. Whatcha doin'?" asked a cheerful voice from the doorway of Gaara's room.

Gaara did not answer. Was his activity not obvious?

"Whoa," said Naruto. "Is that Suna?"

Gaara looked up at Naruto and nodded.

"That's pretty cool!" said Naruto. He watched as Gaara finished putting details on the Kazekage tower. "What about the people?"

Gaara gave Naruto a blank look. Then he started creating motionless people-figures standing about the streets and on top of buildings.

"Can you make them move?" asked Naruto.

Gaara shook his head. "Not enough control."

"Hm," grunted Naruto. "Here, why don't you let me make the people."

Curious, Gaara sucked the people-figures back into his gourd. Naruto made a cross-shaped hand seal, concentrated and said, "Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Suddenly, the entire miniature village was populated by miniature Naruto clones in orange jumpsuits. Each of them transformed into random civilians.

"Hey Gaara, what does the Kazekage look like?"

Gaara used the Henge to transform into the Kazekage, complete with the robes and hat. Naruto created another Shadow clone standing on top of the Kage tower, looking just like Gaara's Henge.

Gaara smirked, waved his hand, and created a sand Godzilla.

– CS –

"Kankuro, do you hear that?" asked Temari.

Kankuro went silent. They heard screaming. And maniacal laughter.

"That's coming from our room!" said Temari.

Kankuro paused, trying to hide his fear. "Gaara's in there."

"C'mon, let's go!" Temari exclaimed, darting down the hallway.

The two older Sabaku siblings burst into the room to see Gaara and that weird blond kid, Uzumaki, sitting cross-legged on the floor around a miniature sand model of Suna, about two meters wide. A sand Godzilla, about the size of a house-cat, was rampaging through the city. Miniature civilians were screaming and running around stupidly with their hands in the air. Once in awhile, mini-Godzilla would grab mini-people and gobble them up, resulting in more screaming from the mini-people, and maniacal laughter and giggling from Gaara and Naruto.

Temari and Kankuro stood and gaped.

The mini-Kazekage raised his hands, shouting indistinctly, and Gaara directed a mini-blast of sand from around the Kage tower to form into spikes and shoot themselves at Godzilla. Godzilla just batted them aside, and made as if to roar while Gaara himself produced the sound effects. Then the reptilian monster charged, smashing through buildings, and caught the mini-Kazekage in his teeth, chomping down and causing him to turn into smoke.

Gaara snickered and wiggled his fingers, causing Godzilla to turn to the crowd in the streets.

"Let's make this a little more interesting," said Naruto. "You, you, you, you, and you are now ninjas," he commanded, pointing out various mini-people. His Shadow Clones transformed themselves into the tan uniforms of Suna's Chūnin and Jōnin, leaped onto roofs, and started shooting fireballs at the monster.

Unfortunately, this only contributed to the destruction of the miniature Suna, because when the fireballs converged on Godzilla, they created a miniature explosion that knocked down a fifth of the town nearby.

"Oops," snickered Naruto, "Too much chakra."

"RAAHHH," roared Godzilla, charging at the ninja.

"Raahhh," shouted the mini-ninja, leaping at Godzilla with swords and kunai.

Temari and Kankuro stood and watched, wide-eyed. But they had small smiles on their faces as they watched their little brother having fun with his new friend. Even if it was a rather weird game.

– CS –

Sasuke was not bored. He was actually quite busy, sitting on his bed in Team 7's assigned room and brooding. He was very good at brooding. All he had to do was sit there with a scowl on his face and imagine all the painful ways he wanted to kill his older brother, but couldn't yet, because he wasn't strong enough. Somehow he was unconsciously exuding chakra and producing a dark and depressing aura around his person.

Sakura, for some reason, thought this was sexy. She was sitting on her bed across from Sasuke's, with her hands clasped together and stars in her eyes.

"Squeeee! Oh Sasuke..." squealed Sakura. Correction: Sakura thought it was damn sexy. On a completely unrelated note, Sakura was a fan of movies with sparkly vampires.

THUNK. Orochimaru Shunshined into the room and knocked Sakura out with a single punch. She crashed onto the bed, out cold.

"Ku-ku-ku-ku… Little Sasuke," crooned Orochimaru. He was even more delighted than Sakura to see Sasuke's dark and depressing aura. For a different reasons, of course. He wasn't into little boys – he was just happy to find that his target had psychological issues to exploit.

"I heard that you managed to get your team past the second phase of the exam in, what was it, forty seconds? Impressive, most impressive."

This stranger had a really weird laugh, decided Sasuke. But he straightened proudly when he heard that the man credited him with getting his team through the Forest of Death. "What of it? And who are you?" asked Sasuke.

"Ku-ku-ku. It means that I have decided to give you a gift. My name is Orochimaru. When you want power, you will seek me out!"

It happened in an instant. Orochimaru released his killing intent, causing Sasuke to freeze. The snakelike man made a hand sign, stretched his neck and bit Sasuke on the junction between his neck and his left shoulder.

Then Orochimaru let out more creepy laugh and vanished like dust in the wind.

– CS –

Naruto was heading back to his team's room when he felt it – a massive burst of killing intent and an absolutely vile, corrupted chakra source.

Shit, cursed Naruto mentally, that's coming from our room! He quickly dashed out the window and ran up the wall two stories to his team's room. He heard a creepy laugh… and the vile chakra presence was suppressed before vanishing entirely.

Sending a pair of shadow clones to check the situation, Naruto received the all-clear via a clone popping and entered the room through the window. Inside, Sasuke was writhing in pain and Sakura was lying awkwardly on her bed, knocked out.

"Sasuke! What happened?" asked Naruto.

Sasuke groaned and passed out. Naruto checked him over and quickly saw the bite marks and curse seal on Sasuke's neck.

That's Orochimaru's work, concluded Naruto, not saying it out loud in case anyone was within hearing. It matches the curse seals we've seen on some of the Oto ninja after we finally managed to infiltrate. And that corrupted chakra must have been his.

"Boss," said Naruto's remaining clone, "Sakura's just knocked out. Possible concussion, bruising, no other damage."

"OK, go and take her to the infirmary here in the tower," ordered Naruto. He immediately created another shadow clone and sent it to find Kakashi.

– CS –

Kakashi arrived in Team 7's room while Naruto and four shadow clones were preparing an Evil Sealing Method ritual, drawing seals all over Sasuke's upper torso in Naruto's blood.

"Naruto?"

"Good, Kakashi-sensei, you're here. Long story short: Orochimaru, cursed seal, Sasuke. The seal is currently unstable, so I can't remove it until it stabilizes. From what I can detect, it's remotely linked to Orochimaru's chakra, so even after it stabilizes, I can only remove it after Orochimaru is dead and has no more influence on the curse seal. I'm using the Evil Sealing Method to seal it while it's still weak enough to do so, cutting it off from Sasuke's chakra system and forcibly stabilizing it. This will allow me to seal it completely, where it would only be partially sealed if I let it do whatever it's trying to do."

"That sounds… sound," said Kakashi. "Need help? I know the Evil Sealing Method."

"You do? You can check my work then," said Naruto. "I'm confident I got this right, but two heads is better than one."

A couple minutes later and a confirmation from Kakashi, Naruto charged the seal with chakra and said, "Evil Sealing!" The lines of script he had drawn crawled up Sasuke's body and formed an intricate design surrounding Orochimaru's cursed seal.

"Phew," said Naruto, wiping the sweat off his forehead and sitting down. "Now we just need to wait until Sasuke wakes up."

– CS –

Sakura woke up slowly. She eventually opened her eyes and took in her surroundings.

"Kakashi-sensei? Why am I in the infirmary?"

"You took a nasty blow to the head. It's a good thing medic-ninja know how to heal concussions almost instantly, or you'd be out of commission for a few days. Do you remember what happened?"

"Uh..." Sakura thought back, "well, I was… Sasuke…" she sighed.

"So you were distracted and you were knocked out before you noticed anything."

"Uh… yes, I guess. Sorry, Kakashi-sensei. Oh, Sasuke… is Sasuke okay? He was in the room with me when I was attacked."

"Sasuke's fine," said Kakashi, not wanting to deal with a Sakura hovering over Sasuke's bed. Which he had purposely had placed in a different room to avoid just that.

Sasuke must have confronted and taken out my attacker! Oooh, Sasuke, so brave!

Kakashi decided to ignore the blissful expression on Sakura's face.

– CS –

Sasuke woke up and immediately made a low groan. Seriously, he hurt all over. He tried to think of what had caused this pain. That man – Orochimaru? – had said he was… giving Sasuke a gift of power? That was totally out of the blue. Wait, no. He was an Uchiha, so receiving gifts of power totally out of the blue should be normal.

"Ah, Sasuke, good, you're awake." Kakashi's voice interrupted his thoughts. "See if you can drink this. It should help with the soreness."

Sasuke managed to open his eyes and comply.

"Do you remember what happened?" asked Kakashi.

Sasuke closed his eyes in thought. Power… Itachi…

"No," said he.

"Ah, that's too bad," said Kakashi. "We were hoping you could give us a clue about Orochimaru's motives."

"We?" asked Sasuke.

"Yo," said Naruto, announcing his presence from his position out of Sasuke's sight. "The only thing we know is that Orochimaru appeared, knocked out Sakura, and gave you a curse seal. Near as I can tell, the curse seal actually contains a piece of his soul, so to speak, and its main purpose was to give him some sort of control over your mind. Revolting, right? Fortunately, we were able to seal it and contain it before it finished setting in, so to speak, which means it basically has no effect on you whatsoever, except for that cute little tattoo on your neck."

Sasuke raised his hand and covered the left side of his neck, to see if he could feel anything there.

"Don't worry," said Naruto, "We'll eventually be able to remove it completely. We just have to kill Orochimaru first. And you'll be back to normal in a day or two."

He's hiding something, thought Naruto. Meh, at least now he has all the information. If he wants to do something stupid, it's not my concern.

– CS –

Homura Mitokado was 68 years old. He was pretty spry for an old man, which made sense, considering that he was once on the same team as the Third Hokage.

He was not, however, spry enough to hang upside-down from a rope hanging from a skylight, accurately throw a kunai at an alarm system from 12 meters away, cut open four steel bolts with a hacksaw in one hand, steal the largest diamond in Konoha from its display case, then nimbly flip over and climb up the rope hand-over-hand. All without the use of chakra, because the gray-haired individual doing so was suppressing his chakra to avoid detection.

Which was strange, given the lack of other appropriate security measures. Such as covering his head, because all he wore was a mask that covered the lower half of his face. Or looking for hidden security cameras. Or wiping the fingerprints off the kunai he threw at the alarm system.

So when, the next morning, the horrified private collector who owned the diamond reported the crime, it was a matter of mere hours before the ninja police, with the assistance of an Inuzuka, tracked down the diamond to a box buried under a bush in Homura's yard.

When the police asked Homura, "Where were you last night between 9:35 pm and 10:00 pm?", Homura said, "I was at Kusunoki's Bar," before he shut his mouth and refused to answer more.

When the police went to Kusunoki's Bar, none of the employees or the regulars could confirm Homura's presence. When the police asked about any generally remarkable activity last night, the only thing they came up with was a new rumor that had been spread, saying that the demon brat was planning to betray the village.

Fortunately for Homura, he was far more spry politically than he was physically, so he managed to get off more or less scot-free. He had to trade in a lot of favors, though.

However, the police, being ninja, looked underneath the underneath and concluded that Homura's under-the-table method of getting his charges dropped was proof that he was guilty. Unable to take him to a court of law, they took him to the court of public opinion.

Many, many boxes of donuts were consumed in the ensuing discussions. They may have been ninja, but they were still police.

– CS –

Six teams had passed the Second Phase of the Chūnin Exam: four from Konoha, one from Suna, and one from Oto. Kabuto's teammates were rather puzzled about his disappearance, but assumed that he had gotten lost, killed, or eaten.

All eighteen Chūnin hopefuls lined up in ranks in the central hall of the Forest of Death tower, listening as the proctor, Hayate Gekko, explained the preliminaries as the Hokage, the other proctors, and the Jōnin sensei looked on.

"For the matchups, we have procured a computer which will use a random number generator to select two participants to fight each other. The names will be displayed on the large screen on the wall behind me.

"Does anyone wish to withdraw? Anyone feel unable to continue?"

No one withdrew.

"Very well then. Let us begin the preliminaries! Participants, please move up to the balconies."

Hayate signaled to the hidden computer-ninja. Yes, they had actual, real-life computer-ninja. Konoha was proud to say they had the fastest hunt-and-peck typists in the entire world.

"First match, Sasuke Uchiha vs. Kiba Inuzuka!"

Kiba tried trash-talking Sasuke. This unfortunately, lost him the psychological battle, because Sasuke simply stuck his nose in the air and refused to respond.

"Begin!" shouted the proctor.

"Beast Human Clone!" shouted Kiba, using the Inuzuka clan jutsu to turn himself and Akamaru into two identical copies of a feral Kiba, one of them crouched on the other's back.

Off to the side, Orochimaru, disguised as the Oto team's Jōnin-sensei, watched eagerly. An Inuzuka. This will not be a challenge for Sasuke. Still, I'm eager to see how quickly Sasuke ends the fight.

Then Sasuke activated his Sharingan.

He had only one tomoe in each eye. Orochimaru choked on his spit.

"Hn," said Sasuke, "You can't fool me. With the power of the mighty Sharingan, I can tell that the one on top is the dog."

Orochimaru almost scoffed out loud. Seriously?! Anyone could tell that they hadn't switched places! Had he been badly fooled about Sasuke's skills?

"Fang Over Fang!" shouted Kiba, bringing out the big guns because he knew he would need it against the Rookie of the Year.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" shouted Sasuke. He hit Akamaru, knocking the small dog out of his transformation and leaving him singed and in pain. With his Sharingan, it was easy to see where Kiba's Fang Over Fang attack was going and dodge him.

"Nooo! Akamaru! I'll get you for that, you bastard! Fang Over Fang!"

Sasuke used a Kawarimi to switch with Akamaru. Kiba smashed into his own partner, injuring Akamaru further.

It was official. Sasuke was evil.

"Proctor, I give up. Akamaru needs a medic!"

And… Orochimaru was happy again. Sasuke was evil. He could work with that.

"Winner by forfeit: Sasuke Uchiha. Medics!"

After the medics had taken Akamaru away, Hayate signaled for the next matchup to be made.

The screen said: Shikamaru Nara vs. Dosu Kinuta.

Shikamaru yawned. "This is going to be sooo troublesome."

Dosu was a rather large fourteen-year-old with most of his head wrapped in bandages, except for one eye. He had a bundle of fur attached to his back, and stood hunched over. He made his way into the arena without saying anything.

"Begin!" shouted Hayate once the two were facing each other.

Dosu and Shikamaru both immediately jumped back. Shikamaru threw a kunai experimentally at his opponent. Dosu blocked it with his right arm, producing a clanging sound.

The two stared at each other for a minute.

"Waiting for me to make the first move?" asked Dosu, rhetorically. "Very well, I shall oblige."

He rushed at Shikamaru, uncovering a metal gauntlet on his right arm with multiple holes in it. Suddenly he stopped and jumped back, as Shikamaru's shadow stretched out towards him.

"I don't know what that does," said Dosu, "but I don't think I want to find out."

Shikamaru's shadow stopped and retreated at about halfway across the room.

"Hmm," said Shikamaru. "Based on the fact that you rushed at me before trying to use your gauntlet, and the fact that you didn't use it after jumping back, your attack has a limited effective range. I'm guessing some kind of… sound based attack?"

Dosu didn't react. Shikamaru began circling the room. Dosu also began circling in the same direction as Shikamaru.

Suddenly, Dosu raised his arm and let loose a blast of sound in Shikamaru's direction.

Shikamaru dodged before the sound blast left Dosu's gauntlet. It was obvious he had expected the attack.

"So you know how sound works," said Dosu. "You expected me to try to amplify my attack using the walls in the corner of the room, but you knew that the amplification would be limited to that area."

Shikamaru sighed. "This is so troublesome. You can't get close to me, I can't get close to you, and both of us have limited-range attacks. I have a proposal. How about we stop fighting and decide this with a game of shogi?"

Dosu appeared to consider this idea.

Hayate, the proctor, interrupted. "Do that and I'll disqualify you both. We don't have time to watch a shogi match." Damn Naras.

"What a drag," said Shikamaru. He pulled out a kunai and lazily chucked it at Dosu, who, like before, deflected it with his gauntlet.

Dosu returned the favor by throwing a spread of three kunai at Shikamaru, who dodged.

Shikamaru pulled out four kunai and threw them all at Dosu. One of them had a paper tag attached to the handle.

Dosu, seeing the tag and not wanting to be anywhere near an explosion, unleashed a sound blast at the spread of kunai before it reached him.

SPLAT. A huge blob of grayish goo exploded and splattered Dosu, clogging up the holes on his gauntlet. Sound waves can disrupt and destroy things, but they don't exert actual force, so they can't stop a large flying mass from following its natural trajectory.

Shikamaru dashed forward and used his Shadow Imitation jutsu.

"Ack! Pffth! What IS this stuff?!"

"It's sticky... grayish... goo," deadpanned Shikamaru. "Don't worry, it won't melt you. You have other problems."

He backed away quickly, forcing Dosu to imitate him, until the Oto ninja slammed his head into the wall, knocking himself out.

"Winner by knockout, Shikamaru Nara," said Hayate. "And I'm not cleaning that up."

When Shikamaru got up to the balcony where his team was watching, Ino confronted him with a 'that was revolting' expression on her face.

"Where did you get that.. goo, Shikamaru?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "Naruto makes sure his friends always have lots of prank supplies."

"Naruto, where did you get that goo?"

"Oh," said Naruto, "it turns out if you collect hundreds of thousands of boogers, and you keep them all together, they start breeding. Why, you want one?" Naruto pulled out a paper sealing tag and waved it in Ino's direction.

Sakura took a swing at Naruto, who dodged and grinned.

"Next match!"

Temari Sabaku vs. Hinata Hyuga was displayed on the screen.

Temari won the match almost immediately, blasting Hinata with a strong gust of wind and knocking her out against the wall immediately. It was a poor matchup for Hinata: without the Kaiten or any other defensive jutsu, she was unable to protect herself against wide-range long-distance attacks. A fireball, she could dodge. A powerful gust of wind that spread itself when it hit the floor, not so much.

"Well, that was fast," said Hayate dryly. "Next match."

The match board lit up: Naruto Uzumaki vs. Naruto Uzumaki.

As the proctor, and everybody else in the room, blinked at the screen, an orange-clad Naruto made a shadow clone, jumped down into the arena, and yelled, "Wooo-hooo! Let's do this!"

"Start the match!" shouted the shadow clone. "I'mma beat the crap outta you!"

"Oh no you won't!" shouted Naruto, pointing his finger at his clone. "I'm stronger, faster, and better-looking than you!"

"Better-looking? You're delusional, shrimp!"

"HEY! Who are you calling a shrimp, shrimp?!"

"Alright, enough!" interrupted Hayate. "Uzumaki, get back on the balcony. I'm gonna see what's going on and then we're going to redo the matchup."

Naruto and his clone groaned and climbed back up to the balcony. "But I wanted to fight me."

A few minutes later, Hayate was back. "Sorry for the interruption, folks. The computer-ninja tells me that when he programmed the random match generator, he forgot to make sure no one was matched up with themselves. But he wants me to remind everyone that even if he sucks as a programmer, he's still the fastest hunt-and-peck typist in the entire world. Okay, next match!"

Tenten Higurashi vs. Ino Yamanaka

Tenten rolled her eyes when she got to the arena. "Oh great. A fangirl. This'll be easy."

"Yeah? So what? Just because I love Sasuke doesn't mean I can't beat you!"

"Begin!"

Tenten opened by pelting Ino with kunai and shuriken. Ino tried dodging and deflecting, but Tenten was able to accurately aim ahead of where Ino was moving, and the barrage was just too much. Ino went down with shuriken in her arms and side and kunai in one of her shoulders and each of her legs.

Tenten dashed at her and held a tanto to Ino's neck. "Surrender," she demanded.

Ino gave up. And quickly fainted.

"Next match!" said Hayate after sending Ino off to the infirmary and Tenten back to the balcony.

Sakura Haruno vs. Rock Lee

Naruto immediately started snickering.

"Oh, Sakura," said Lee, "I do not know if I can bring myself to fight against someone as beautiful as you!"

"SHUT UP, IDIOT! I only love Sasuke!"

"But… you promised that you would go on a date with me!"

"WHAT?! I NEVER PROMISED THAT!"

"Indeed, you did! You said you would go on a date with the winner of the most youthful fight between Sasuke and I, and I won!"

"It's true!" shouted Naruto from the balcony. "You did!"

Several others who had seen the fight before the first part of the exam nodded in agreement.

"Well I don't care! I'm not going on a date with you!" declared Sakura.

"But… but… to break a promise is most un-youthful!"

"GAH! Cut it out with the youth already! Proctor, start the fight!"

"But… Sakura…"

Finally, Guy came to the rescue. "Lee, my precious student!" he said, wrapping an arm around Lee's shoulders in a manly hug. "Here is what you must do. You must show her the power of YOUTH! You must battle against Sakura and prove your YOUTH to her until she falls into your arms! And if she still rejects you, then you must let her go! For sometimes you will meet people who are unable to appreciate the beauty and power of YOUTH! And you must not let that bring you down, for if you do, then you will not be able to continue growing and getting stronger and becoming ever more YOUTHFUL!"

"GUY-SENSEI! THANK YOU!" shouted Lee, hugging his teacher. "I shall do as you say and show Sakura the power of YOUTH!"

Up in the balcony, Naruto, standing next to Kakashi, remarked, "You know, if you translate that from youth-speak, that's actually some pretty damn good advice."

"That's Guy for you," said Kakashi. "Don't tell him I said this, but there's a reason I don't always ignore his 'eternal rival' challenges."

"[cough, cough], enough!" interrupted Hayate, before this could turn into a full-blown hugging scene with sunset and waves. "Let's get to the fight already! Guy, get out of the arena. Fighters, are you ready?"

Guy withdrew, and Lee and Sakura nodded.

"Begin!"

"YOSH!" shouted Lee, "Sakura! Behold the power of YOUTH!"

He turned into a green blur, beat the crap out of Sakura, and caught her in his arms when she fell unconscious.

"Winner by knockout, Rock Lee," said Hayate, bored. "Next match."

Shino Aburame vs. Kankuro Sabaku

This match was over very quickly. Neither fighter said anything. Shino sent a cloud of his kikaichu bugs at Kankuro, who quickly lost control of his puppet and came crashing out of the backpack where he was hiding. He was forced to concede due to chakra exhaustion.

Gaara Sabaku vs. Zaku Abumi

Gaara was leaking his bijuu's killing intent and demonic chakra.

"I give up," said Zaku, before entering the arena.

The next match was: Naruto Uzumaki vs. Neji Hyuga

"You should give up now, like Zaku did," said Neji as he walked down the balcony stairs. "You cannot win. You are a failure, a dead-last, and you cannot win against a genius like me."

"No way!" said Naruto, still wearing his I'm-stupid-and-I-wear-an-orange-jumpsuit act. "I've been training for this! I'm gonna beat you so bad you'll be seeing frogs dancing behind your eyelids for the next month!"

"Frogs… what? Never mind. It is your fate to lose. The weak always lose to the strong. You should not delude yourself into thinking that just because you have done a little training, you can beat a prodigy."

"Proctor, please start the match." said Naruto, standing across from Neji.

Up in the balcony, Kakashi opened his Sharingan. He didn't want to miss anything.

"Begin!"

Neji dashed towards Naruto.

Naruto just stood there, hands at his sides, not taking any stance, staring at Neji.

Neji closed with Naruto. "You are within my range of d-URK!"

One second, Naruto's hands were at his side. An instant later, Naruto was pulling his fingers away from the pressure points in Neji's neck, where he had disrupted the blood flow to Neji's brain. Neji fell to the ground, unconscious.

"Well that was anti-climactic," said Hayate. "Winner by knockout, Naruto Uzumaki."

"I'll never understand," said Naruto, walking back to the balcony, "why the Hyuga pause to say 'you are within my range of divination' before they start their Eight Trigrams moves. 'You are within my range of divination'," he said, testing the words out, "'You-are-within-my-range-of-divination. Youarewithinmyrangeofdivination.' No matter how fast you say it, it still takes a minimum of about one and a half seconds to say that. It's a Taijutsu move, it's not like a Ninjutsu where saying the name helps with concentration. Why the heck would you give an enemy one and a half seconds when you could just start attacking right away?"

"Final match," announced Hayate, "Choji Akimichi vs. Kin Tsuchi."

Kin attempted to use her senbon-and-bell sound-based Genjutsu on Choji. Unfortunately for her, she was only able to throw one handful of senbon before Choji used his Human Bullet Tank jutsu, which blocked the senbon rather than dodging them, leaving her without bells in the proper place for the Genjutsu. Without a chance to use Genjutsu, and without having a powerful enough technique or weapon to stop the Akimichi's signature jutsu, it was only a matter of time before Kin was flattened.

"Well," said Hayate, "will the winners please come down to the arena?"

The winners were:

- Sasuke, having beat Kiba
- Shikamaru, having beat Dosu
- Temari, having beat Hinata
- Tenten, having beat Ino
- Lee, having beat Sakura
- Shino, having beat Kankuro
- Gaara, having scared Zaku into submission
- Naruto, having beat Neji
- Choji, having beat Kin

"Okay. To avoid the risk of our computer-ninja messing up again, we'll do this the old way. Everyone pick a paper, which will determine your position in the bracket."

Once the matchings for the Final Phase were determined, the bracket was:

Quarterfinals:

1. Tenten vs. Shino
2. Choji vs. Shikamaru
3. Naruto vs. Temari
4. Lee vs. Sasuke
5. Gaara vs. Winner of match 1.

This would leave four people to move on to the next round.

Semifinals:

6. Winner of match 2 vs. Winner of match 3.
7. Winner of match 4 vs. Winner of match 5.

Round 3:

8. Winner of match 6 vs. Winner of match 7.

The remaining Chūnin hopefuls had one month to train and prepare for their fights.

– CS –

After the preliminaries, Naruto remembered one of the most useful chapters of his father's book when it came to fighting.

How to be a Ninja
by Minato Namikaze

Chapter 7: Chakra Makes Everything Better

So you've practiced your chakra control until you're past Jōnin level. You've expanded your chakra pool to ridiculous levels. You know some Ninjutsu, and perhaps some Genjutsu, and you can use them awesomely well, but you know that there's more being a ninja than spamming jutsu. It's finally time for you to start enhancing your body with chakra!

Most Taijutsu experts in our world like to exercise… and practice… and exercise… and practice. What they don't do is read chakra theory, and actually connect it to their field of expertise. All that exercise and practice? It actually does three things. First, with the appropriate amount of exercise and nutrition, it makes you stronger. Second, the practice improves your nervous system's reflexes and skills. And third, the item that everyone forgets or doesn't understand: it causes you to instinctively and sub-consciously enhance your muscles and senses with chakra.

The key word there is sub-conscious. What I did, and what I want you to do, is use your now excellent chakra control to consciously enhance your body and senses with chakra. With careful experimentation, you can spend mere months and reach a level of chakra-enhanced strength, speed and reflexes that the average Taijutsu practitioner would take years to reach. It takes additional practice to take this intentional chakra enhancement to a level where it becomes a muscle-memory, so to speak, and you can use it subconsciously. But it's a hell of a lot faster than just exercising until your body does it automatically.

Section (a): Muscles

First thing you should practice with is your muscles. Start by internally channeling a small amount of chakra to your biceps, about enough to stick to a tree. Make sure you are keeping that chakra internal: drop a leaf on your arm and check to see if it sticks. If it sticks, you're leaking chakra. If it acts normal and drops off, you're not wasting anything.

Now focus the purpose of that chakra on strengthening the muscle. Make sure you stretch the chakra to include the tendons at either end of the muscle: you don't want to tear them. Finally, start lifting weights!

You'll have to play around with small, incremental amounts of chakra to figure out how much you can channel into each muscle. After each experiment, you need to drain your muscles of all extra chakra, leaving them with just the amount that's normally flowing through your blood. Clench your muscles a couple of times to make sure they're not sore or hurting – if there's any pain, you've either used too much chakra and you need to back off, or you've failed to properly enhance a part, like the tendons connecting the muscle to the bone, and you have (hopefully minor) tearing. In either case, rest those muscles for couple of days and let them heal. Both cases are actually what happens when someone opens the Eight Inner Gates without having a body prepared to handle that much chakra: the entire body is over-filled with chakra, and you get burns and tearing due to lack of control.

This is why we start with muscles. If you started with, say, your eyes, you could accidentally blind yourself permanently. It's much easier for a muscle to heal, or if necessary repair it using medical ninjutsu, than to fix an eye. Or worse yet, your brain. (Yes, you can enhance your brain with chakra. Later!)

Note that chakra enhancement does not negate the need for physical strength. The weaker you are, the more chakra you need to lift a boulder above your head. Physical strength is multiplicative when it comes to chakra enhancement, not additive. So if, without chakra, you can lift 30 pounds in each hand, a certain amount of chakra will double that strength to 60 pounds. If, without chakra, you can lift 100 pounds, a certain amount of chakra will double it so you can lift 200 pounds. There's a limit to how much chakra you can add to your muscles before your muscle tissue starts getting burns, so you do need to strengthen yourself physically. Fortunately, if you consciously avoid using chakra when you exercise, your rate of physical improvement is faster as well.

Section (b): Sensory Organs

Once you have a good deal of practice enhancing your muscles, start enhancing your sensory organs. Channel a tiny (very tiny, start with barely enough to stick a leaf to your skin) bit of chakra to the sensory membrane of your nose, the taste buds on your tongue, and to your eardrum and the bones in your ear. You'll want to practice this in a clean, quiet area where there are no offensive smells or noises, and you'll want to wait a few hours after brushing your teeth (trust me, the magnified taste of toothpaste can be overwhelming).

Once you've mastered taste, hearing and smell, move on to your eyes. You'll need to be very, very careful with your eyes, you'll want to try one eye at a time, and you'll want to know everything about ocular anatomy before you start. The eye is a very complex organ. With chakra manipulation, you can consciously change the size of your pupils, the shape of the lens, even the sensitivity of the retina. You can even get your eyes to zoom in and use telescopic vision. You can even speed up the "framerate" of your eyes by enhancing both the retina and the optic nerve… which brings us to the next section.

Section (c): Nerves & Brain

For this, you'll need high medic-nin levels of chakra control. You'll be using chakra on tiny, narrow groups of cells, sometimes even single cells, distinguishing them from the surrounding tissue. Which is exactly what high-level medics need to do when treating their patients. Only difference is they are doing cellular manipulation with a chakra transformation, while you're not. On the other hand, you're doing it without hand seals and you'll eventually practice until you can do it in high-stress situations while you're distracted.

When you enhance your sensory organs, some applications require you to enhance the nerves connecting that organ to the brain. You can learn to do this with a great deal of careful self-reflective meditation as well as a detailed knowledge of anatomy.

Finally, the brain. Be careful. Be very, very careful. I have only experimented with enhancing the muscular control and sensory perception areas of the brain. I theorize that the Yamanaka clan has a bloodline that involves automatically enhancing and altering certain areas of the brain, but I don't know which ones and I don't know what the alterations are. You don't want to accidentally enhance your nightmares, or Kami forbid, mess with your libido. Puberty was bad enough. And stay away from the pleasure centers… I theorize that enhancing your pleasure centers will cause you to want to add more chakra to those pleasure centers, triggering a horrible feedback loop which will end in burning out the pleasure centers of your brain, which could end up with you feeling miserable for the rest of your life.

It's okay to poke around your brain during meditation with extremely small amounts of chakra just to figure out which parts of the brain do what. But keep it WAY below the range where major enhancement occurs, and do experimentation using tiny controlled bursts, not in any kind of prolonged enhancement.

Interesting point: your experience with manipulating chakra in your brain will make it very, very easy to sense when someone else's chakra is influencing your nervous system: in other words, you can detect mind- and sense-affecting Genjutsu instantly. Breaking it is as easy as cutting off the external chakra flow using your own and removing the foreign chakra from your system.

Section (d): Imitating Dojutsu (Eye-type Bloodline Limits)

Now this is ridiculously fun. I believe that, with sufficient chakra control and manipulation (read: totally insane, probably unprecedented control), you can actually imitate most Kekkei Genkai.

Example: the Sharingan, which I've actually imitated in experimental conditions. The Sharingan, like most Dojutsu, projects a field of chakra that pervades the environment and sends feedback to the user's eyes, thus allowing it to receive more information than it can get from just light photons. Thus allowing the user to 'see' chakra.

This ability to 'see' chakra allows users to see the chakra of a Genjutsu and automatically counter it by blocking the foreign chakra from entering their body.

In addition, the ability to 'see' chakra allows the Sharingan to see how the chakra of Ninjutsu techniques is molded outside the body, which is part of the 'copying' ability of the Sharingan. The other part of the 'copying' ability of the Sharingan is the fact that it enhances the optical nerves, vision centers of the brain, and memory centers of the brain, allowing the user to perceive everything in slow-motion and memorize it easily.

While the projected chakra field is not as powerful in perceptive ability as the Byakugan's, the Sharingan allows the user to actually manipulate that chakra field and perform Genjutsu. The easiest way for a Sharingan user to do this is to make eye contact with a target and push some of that chakra into the target's brain through their eyes. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for a Sharingan to do Genjutsu without eye contact, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the Sharingan already 'knows' how to send chakra to the brain through the optic nerves.

I believe the fabled Mangekyo Sharingan (which I've never actually seen in action) involves actually channeling powerful Ninjutsu through the eyes. Either that, or it's a myth and Madara Uchiha, the only known person who is said to have activated it, was fooling everyone and could really perform Ninjutsu seal-lessly… and he only did that with his own jutsu creations… and only the S-ranked ones… yeah, those last two last items make it kind of unlikely.

Anyway, like I said, I was able to imitate the basic Sharingan while sitting still and focusing really hard. This is one of the secrets to my most famous technique: the Hiraishin. While using the Hiraishin, I would enhance my retinas, optic nerves, and the vision centers of my brain, increasing just my perception speed. This, combined with enhancing most of my muscles, bones and other organs in order to keep them intact, has the effect of making the rest of the world seem to run in slow motion, and, unlike the average Uchiha who simply uses the Sharingan, allows me to actually act at the speed of my perception.

– CS –

The day after the Preliminaries, Naruto was walking down the street in the middle of Konoha.

As he passed Ichiraku's, he heard a voice.

"Brother, those are some groooovy threads," said the voice.

Naruto turned to see who spoke. Someone dropped a camouflage jutsu. There, sitting atop a huge rainbow-colored toad which, sitting down, was as tall as Naruto himself, was a man. A man with shoulder-length white hair, wearing bell-bottomed jeans patterned with daisies, a large tie-dyed T-shirt and a tan leather vest. He wore sunglasses, had a peace-sign necklace, wore a brightly-colored necktie as a headband, and had a flower painted on each cheek.

"Why thank you," said Naruto. "Not everybody appreciates the awesomeness of orange. I'm Naruto Uzumaki. It's nice to meet you!"

"Fab, a cool head," said the man. "I guess I oughtta introduce myself. I am the Eternal Hippie and Kami's Gift to Womankind, Jiraya the Toad Sage!"

– CS –

Author's Note: HAHA! I guess I got bored of all the fanfics that use a totally canon portrayal of Jiraya's character. All of the best pervert jokes and scenes about the Canon Jiraya have already been made… most of them actually in canon. So I changed things up a bit. He's still a pervert, but now he's a hippie too!

I actually did use a random number generator for the Prelims matchups. I think I picked four of them for plot purposes (or for laughs, like Lee vs. Sakura), but the rest are random. And the Final Phase matchups are totally random.