Naruto : Chapter 68

Naruto walked through the village his last purchase safely stored in his hip pouch. He had bought a week's supply of energy bars at Jakonato's.

It was better to have some nutritious food in reserve in case you couldn't hunt or cook safely. And the Forest of Death was merciless as he knew from pilfering the dead genin that had been in previous tests.

When he walked back towards his home, he was passed by the Hokage's grandson Konohamaru and his two friends Moegi and Udon.

He knew them briefly as he had met Konohamaru once when he had tried to 'defeat his grandfather to become Hokage'.

Naïve, but Naruto could understand that the boy wanted to be seen for himself. What he didn't like was that the brat was spoiled to think that nobody would hurt him just because he was the Hokage's grandson.

Suddenly he heard a pained cry and decided to better look what was up. So close to the start of the chunin exams he didn't want to risk any problems because a brat couldn't keep his mouth shut and that cry had sounded like Konohamaru.

When he rounded the corner, he saw that he had been right. Konohamaru was held up by his shirt by a black-clad Suna ninja. Considering the bandaged bundle on his back and his attire Naruto suspected that he was a puppeteer, one of the famous abilities Suna taught to his ninjas.

The blond girl with the four ponytails had a war fan on her back and probably used wind style jutsus with it. That could be dangerous if she was good at using it.

"That hurt you brat." The boy in black said.

"Let me down, don't you know who I am?" Konohamaru shouted.

"I don't care, but I think you need to learn a lesson in manners." The boy said.

"Kankuro let him down, we don't want problems." The girl said.

Naruto noticed that she was quite pretty. He guessed that she was a few years older than him.

"The brat is asking for it, Temari." The now identified Kankuro replied.

Naruto of course knew their names. Temari and Kankuro were children of the Yondaime Kazekage. That meant that Gaara, their youngest brother who was the jinchuriki of Shukaku, was probably also here. Interesting. He decided to get Konohamaru bailed out.

"Please let the brat down, we don't want to provoke an incident before the chunin exams start; right?" He spoke up addressing Kankuro.

The two Suna genin looked at him. Naruto noticed a small blush on Temari's face and he smiled winningly at her, intensifying the blush.

"I don't really know what happened, but he is only a child, so you shouldn't get worked up over whatever mishap he was involved in." Naruto said walking up to them calmly.

"The brat ran into me not looking where he went and then had the gall to demand that I apologized to him." Kankuro stated.

Naruto just shook his head.

"I see. I apologize for his bad manners and I will make sure to bring it up with his grandfather, the Sandaime Hokage. And you can be sure that I will make sure that you get punished for this, Konohamaru.

You should be ashamed to make such a bad impression on the children of the Yondaime Kazekage. By the way, you can come out of the tree. I doubt you will get a good show now." Naruto called out.

The others looked up to the tree and saw a red-haired boy hanging upside down on a tree branch. He raised an eyebrow and then used a sand body flicker to appear next to the group.

"You are good." The boy commented. "Kankuro, let the boy go, we will leave this matter to Konoha to resolve. It's not worth our time to deal with snot nosed brats."

"I am not a brat." Konohamaru protested only to get bunked over the head by Naruto.

"You are a brat. Now apologize to Kankuro for running into him while not looking where you ran. Geez, the old man really needs to talk to Ebisu again about filling your head with nonsense.

If you ever really want to become Hokage, you need to stop thinking you are the top of the world. Only hard work will bring you where you want to be." Naruto stated.

Konohamaru looked completely caught off guard that somebody really told him off for his behaviour.

"I would like to know your name. I am Gaara Sabaku." Gaara addressed Naruto. "You seem really well-informed."

"My name is Naruto Namikaze. I assume you are their younger brother, the third child of the Yondaime Kazekage." Naruto replied.

"Namikaze?" Temari gasped. "Like the Yondaime Hokage?"

"He was my father." Naruto confirmed. There was no need to keep his identity a secret anymore. It would come out tomorrow anyway.

"Are you taking the chunin exams as well?" Gaara wanted to know.

"Yes. My sensei nominated my team." Naruto confirmed.

"I look forward to facing you. If you are anywhere as good as your father was you will be a worthy opponent, Naruto." Gaara said.

"I look forward to seeing your strength too, Gaara. I will take my leave; I need to get the brat back to his grandfather. Kankuro, Temari, nice to meet you." Naruto gave both a nod and then turned around and gathered the children and went away.

...

It was nine thirty and team seven stood outside of the academy building. Their strategy was to not give too much away about their abilities, but also not shrinking away from a conflict if provoked. Though they would avoid unnecessary fights. Intimidation worked mostly much better than wasting energy before a test.

They walked up two floors and found a big group of people trying to get past two other genins that seemed to block the room, trying to keep the competition out.

Naruto signalled the others quickly to ignore the whole thing and walked on.

"Why would they put such a stupid genjutsu on the door?" Sasuke asked. "It was too easy to spot."

"Yeah, I mean, everybody with a bit of common sense should know that room 301 was on the third floor, not the second." Sakura agreed.

"I guess it is the first obstacle in the exams. Noticing the genjutsu. After all, if a ninja can't spot something as obvious as that he doesn't deserve to become chunin." Naruto stated and got nods from his teammates.

They proceeded to the real room 301 and opened the doors. They noticed that a lot of genin had already found their way here and were now trying to intimidate the opposition.

Not that it would work on team seven. The killing intent of the other participants was pathetic compared to what they had dealt with in their training.

...

Over the next half hour more and more teams trickled into the room. Kiba caused a little commotion greeting teams seven and ten loudly. Naruto could only shake his head.

Kurenai still didn't manage to calm the boy down. He had thought that after the 'wake-up call mission' that he had performed against the other rookies they would work more on their flaws.

Okay, perhaps it was just Kiba. He could sense that Shikamaru was much more serious than before and was observing the competition. Seemingly he had realised what being unprepared and not thinking about every little clue could cost you.

Shino also was aware of his surroundings and Hinata seemed to have grown more confident and determined again. She had got away lightly during the mission and had even managed to escape a trap.

Though he had to admit she looked good in tight clothes. Though no spandex like the ones he had put into all the wardrobes in the Hyuga compound that day to force her to wear it to the meeting.

That the other Hyugas had to run around in them before they could get new clothes was only an added bonus. It had improved their security measures next to the ones that the Hokage had ordered all clans to set up. Naruto had to grin about that.

He liked being allowed to prank some stuck-up people to point out flaws in their security measures. While everything going on in the village had been kept a close secret, the clans didn't like to have flaws pointed out. It damaged their standing.

Concerning Kiba's behaviour, well, at least he wasn't an easy target to take out. An older genin called Kabuto came up and told them to be quieter.

He then offered, as a veteran of the exams, to give them a little head up with his ninja info cards which reacted to only his chakra. Naruto's eyes narrowed. Nobody would willingly give up valuable information in a test that was meant to be a competition among all the teams taking the test.

Sharing with your teammates, okay, that was normal, but with people he didn't ever meet before, even if they were from the same village? He would have to keep an eye on this Kabuto Yakushi.

He knew that he was on the list of suspected spies based on some irregularities in their files. Danzo had said that Kabuto had been recruited by ROOT when he had been younger.

But there were some holes in his reports. Those could have been caused by Kabuto simply having to be careful while being deep cover but it could also mean that somebody else had got to him and turned him into a traitor.

Ino took the chance as did Kiba to get more information. Thankfully nobody asked about his information. It would be nice to keep a little surprise for later. He only interfered when the team from Oto attacked Kabuto.

No matter how suspicious the guy was, for now he was a Konoha shinobi and that counted higher than shinobi from other villages.

So three quick senbons later the Oto Shinobi experienced the same feeling that Sakura and Ino had had the day the genin teams had been announced. Five minutes of being paralyzed.

"I don't know what your sensei taught you, but it is unwise to attack a ninja from another village before the real test for your promotion has even started. Especially when there are many more ninjas from the village of the ninja you attacked. That doesn't show chunin qualities in my eyes." Naruto stated calmly.

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