Capítulo 6: Chapter Six
Pre-Chapter AN: Hey, thanks for reading this. It's literally my favourite thing to write these days. Enjoy the chapter, and let me know how it sticks if you enjoy it. If you're feeling a bit impatient, the next three chapters are up on pat-re-on- same username as up here and link in my profile.
XXXXXX
The Genin Exhibitions were the talk of the town for the month until the day they arrived. Everything in Konoha was turned up to eleven as. Everyone tried to put their best foot forward to prepare for the visiting villages. Even my Hyuga cousins had not been left out of the excitement. Visiting the compound to pick up a scroll on tenets control showed me that they were already working on painting the entire thing again. Insane. Especially considering they did a repaint every two years, and the last hadn't even been up to a year ago. It went to show just how seriously everyone was taking this.
I couldn't judge them. Was I not much the same? My ninjutsu and taijutsu were polished to perfection. The seals I'd held off on implementing into my arrows until I was more than good enough to do them myself were completed post-haste. They were unable to do everything I wanted, but they could do enough. The major remaining project was a seal for the bow itself. A seal that would turn it from an exceptionally well-crafted bow to a ninja weapon on the level of the Swords of the Mist, or even the Raijin no ken. Speaking of the Raijin no ken, Uncle had even been kind enough to allow me to study the weapon. A marked change after months of holding back and insisting that if I wanted to build anything similar, I should design the matrix on my own. It was clear that the pressure of the exhibition was getting to even him, at the very least it was making him much more helpful than usual.
On the other hand, Hatake Sakumo seemed to have decided that he didn't give a rat's arse about what was coming or when he was coming. He'd done his duty of notifying us that it was happening and that we'd automatically been registered by the Hokage's own recommendation, and went back to business as usual. We'd already taken our mission for the month, so that meant we spent our time training now. "Sensei, can you help me with this?" I heard Uzume's voice from the other end of the clearing and chuckled.
She'd caught the bug like nothing else. All her training was geared to winning the Exhibition in whatever way she could. Already bored with my last, I leaned away from the scroll I was bent over and turned my attention to her. Her fist crackled with lightning-natured chakra as she attempted to channel it into her Gunbai, of all things, but the wood just seemed to accept the chakra and do nothing with it. Chakra flow. Interesting technique. I'd dabbled with it a bit for my arrows after remembering what Killer Bee could do with a pencil and lightning release in the anime. Unfortunately, it seemed that either wind release worked differently, or there was something I was missing. The chakra flowing into the arrows cut out almost immediately I fired them from my bow. Good for an initial boost in speed, but nothing more.
It was the whole reason I wanted to study the Raijin No Ken. Maybe if I could channel lightning natured chakra instead, then it would work better. So far, there had been no luck with deciphering my Uncle's sealing technique, but I had hope that it would come together sooner rather than later. On the other end of the clearing, Toshiro balanced upside down on the stream with a single finger as he sought to sharpen his chakra control to a knife's edge. It would improve his genjutsu definitely, but I wasn't sure that was the best use of his time.
To be completely honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of genjutsu as an art. Sure, it was powerful now, but I knew what was coming. Otsutsuki did not fall for genjutsu. That was why every spare minute not shoved into fuinjutsu practice was spent working on my taijutsu. I had to make sure it was the one skill I never neglected. But that was beside the point, I turned to the clone beside me and noted that he was weaving seals almost nonstop. That was another thing that came with the upcoming exhibition. The shadow clone jutsu. I was already using it as a training aide, and it had doubled the speed at which I could work on certain skills. One clone worked on ninjutsu in the training ground. Another clone worked on fuinjutsu with Grandmother back at home, and I spent all my time either doing physical training and taijutsu or trying to puzzle out new jutsu in my mind. The former was because it was the only thing I couldn't get a clone to do for me, and the latter because it was one aspect of ninja training that I legitimately enjoyed.
Presently, the scroll on chakra control through every tenketsu was proving to be less helpful than expected. That was generous. It was mostly useless to me. It wasn't the fault of anyone in particular, however. Who could have foreseen someone born with one of the Hyuga kekkei genkai but not the other? Definitely not the author of this particular scroll. He placed a lot of emphasis on using the byakugan to monitor the flow of chakra through the tenketsu. The Byakugan that I didn't quite have. Fun times were ahead of me. Especially since I couldn't see any other way to figure out Kakuzu's Doton: Domu before the exams.
"Maybe focus on something else for the moment and come back with a fresh head." A voice said from my side, leaning over the scroll. I hastily snapped it shut and turned to the intruder with a scowl. My eyes met my sensei's and I just sighed before standing up. He was right. I'd gain nothing from banging my head against the problem over and over again.
"Taijutsu spar?" I asked him, trying to work out some of my frustrations, and he answered with a snap kick to my head that I barely moved out of the way of.
XXXXXX
Perhaps this had been a better idea than he'd given the Higher-ups credit for. A massive stadium on the outskirts of the village. He would probably throw up if he got to see the bill that this thing had taken. But each seat had sold for tens of thousands of yen. Each seat was filled now. Tickets had sold so quickly that civilians who wanted to attend had been forced to buy them for even higher prices from resellers. Scalpers, Shorirama, referred to them as. Of course, he had a name for them. He was one of them. His student had made about five hundred thousand yen from 'scalping'. Of course, the Hokage had made him return the money once he found out about it. Word on the street was that his Killing Intent could have been felt for miles beyond the Senju Compound when he found out. But that only went to show how much demand had existed for something like this.
Genin from all five of the major villages and several minor ones stood in the middle of the field, being stared at and pointed out by the spectators. As a Jounin-sensei, he'd received a free ticket to sit among the spectators, and here he could get a real pulse for what was being felt. Firstly, the more physically distinctive a shinobi was, the more attention they received. That meant that most of the attention was going to Konoha genin. Even from the merchants that hailed from other villages. But for every rule, there was an exception. Shorirama with his dark hair and eyes drew more attention than any other. Perhaps it was the choice of outfit.
He'd almost facepalmed once he first saw it. The boy had a death wish, and he seemed intent on committing suicide by enemy shinobi. There was no chance that his chosen armour had been coincidental. Old-fashioned Senju armour from the warring states period in the same blood-red his Grandfather had favoured. It looked comical on his Twelve year old frame, but it was clear that he would grow into it in time. The giant scroll on his back did even more to highlight just where he had taken his inspiration from. His face was sharper, more noble in appearance, and his body was more lithe, but for all anyone could see at first glance, he was Hashirama writ small. And almost as if not to be outdone, his teammate had decided to don a similar outfit. The Gunbai strapped to her back did her no favours in denying the resemblance.
Stood next to each other as they were, he'd heard more than one foreign shinobi whisper, 'Hashirama and Madara' on catching sight of the both of them. The fact that the duo had never fought in the First Great Shinobi War had done little to lessen their foreign renown. And now, for better or for worse, his students were going to be regarded as the second coming of Konoha's legendary founding duo.
"Ladies and Gentlemen in Attendance." A voice rang across the arena. A familiar voice. Jiraiya, he placed it, once he had a look at the Commentator's box. Jiraiya stood there with his customary wide smile, next to a wizened old man. The armour he wore marked him as a Samurai of Tetsu no Kuni. He could see the strategy. Jiraiya was there to provide commentary biased towards Konoha, while the Samurai offered a neutral counterpoint. It was clearly an overture to keep the guests from taking offence. The Hokage had truly thought of everything. And Sakumo knew that even with the Samurai being a counterparty, the civilians would still be more swayed by Jiraiya's words. His boisterous voice and charming tone had that ability.
"Welcome to the First-Ever Great Genin Exhibition. We have Shinobi from all the best villages, and even Iwa here with us" The last part of the sentence received jeers from one section of the crowd, but they all took it with good humour as intended. Sakumo's eyes searched through the genin, counting the numbers that came from each village with a discerning eye.
"Three tasks. With each task taking place in this very arena….."
"Each task will be a surprise for our dear lovely genin taking part in this exhibition, so you can be sure to see the adaptability and genius of our genuine n full display." He said, getting murmurs from the crowd as they anxiously waited for the commencement of the tasks. The murmurs turned into gasps of surprise as two massive screens were unveiled at each end of the arena.
"Konoha's sealing corps has crafted a device to ensure that you get to view every second of action from the comfort of your seats without straining your necks. Through groundbreaking algorithms and self matrixes that hurt my head to think of, these screens are going to use small receptors following each team to ensure that we get to see what they're all up to". His words excited the civilians, but the shinobi began to whisper quietly. Sakumo resisted the urge to smile. Whatever plans the foreigners had were going to be thoroughly derailed by the fact that they'd have eyes on their genin for every step of the process. His fear that this would be used as an opportunity to kill off Konoha's genin in a series of 'accidents' was thoroughly quelled. No shinobi worth their salt would do something so underhanded in front of civilians. One way or another, they all went to the effort of pretending to be upstanding and honourable fellows to their civilian clientele.
Small devices, golden with wings that moved as quickly as a hummingbird's, flew across the arena, attaching themselves to each genin team. Like magic, the screens came to life, showing the smiling or scowling or doing nothing at all faces of the various genin. Shorirama waved at his device and his team's screen grew to cover most of the screen, with the smaller screens being relegated to the side.
"Of course, the view will shift over time to give you the best view of the most action" Jiraiya said.
"An impressive device" His taciturn Samurai companion commented.
"Indeed. Konoha's sealing team is one of the best in the world, after all."
"Moving on to the first task, my companion, Lord Yoroi Musha of Tetsu no Kuni, will introduce the first test."
"The first task is a maze. In a few seconds, the maze will form, covering most of the arena. Around the maze will be clues that you must solve to know the right route to follow. All wrong routes are trapped to high heaven. Only the correct route will be free from traps. The first fifteen teams to make it out of the maze will make it to the next stage." He delivered his words with a sharp tone that amplified their impact. Even the genin began to worriedly whisper to themselves.
"Of course, any combat is prohibited within the maze. The use of ninjutsu to destroy or affect the maze in any way is also prohibited. Either of which will get you disqualified immediately. We're watching" At that, he cut off. Then, the ground around the platform the genin stood on began to vibrate.
All around them, walls began to rise from the ground. The civilians gasped at watching the maze form before their eyes. Sakumo knew that it much have been the work of dozens of Earth release masters working in concert towards a single goal. But even that, it was impressive that the maze was being formed in real time. Noticing the pattern in which the maze rose, he changed that impression. The maze had already been formed. It was probably built and kept underground. Now, they just had to lift it back up. Not a small task, by any means, but still less impressive than building a new maze from scratch.
"Above each entrance to the maze lies a number. There are Ninety entrances for the Ninety teams enrolled in the exams. Move to the one that matches your registration number" His team moved to the Forty-Seventh entrance as he watched Shorirama trade barbs with his Uchiha friend, Uzume's cousin, before the boy left to join his team. Those two were more suited to the Hashirama and Madara comparisons. Shorirama and Uzume could scarcely spend an hour in each other's presence before starting up a fight.
"Now begin" Jiraiya's voice sounded out, and each team ran in. He turned to the screen to get a view of his team, the maze was covered from the top, probably to prevent any genius from deciding to jump over the whole thing.
XXXXXX- SENJU SHORIRAMA
He'd known about the screens ahead of time. He'd even come up with the idea to model the receptors after golden snitches. Tobirama had given the assignment to Grandmother some months ago, and when she struggled to find a good form factor for the receptor devices, I'd drawn her a diagram of a golden snitch, and the rest was history. It was perfect. Their spherical bodies meant that they could contain a surprisingly long fuinjutsu script both within and outside their bodies. The matrix itself was a work of art on the level of the great weapons out there. Certainly, more complex than the Raijin no Ken. The power to attack itself to a genin's chakra signature, to power wings and follow said genin around, to power visual receptors that functioned on the same wavelength as the human eye, and then to transmit everything to the screens.
Comparatively, the screens were simple. More complicated than anything he could make, but still simpler than the receptors. The screens took data from the receptors and displayed it. That wasn't hard. The hard part was designing a matrix that would decide which feed was the most interesting and magnifying that while relegating the rest to a smaller view. It functioned a bit like the computers he knew in his previous life. He'd always thought that fuinjutsu was a plot like programming, and the matrix behind the screens was the clearest example of that similarity. It was trained on a few signs of what would make good content, and it was trained to prioritise them based on a fixed list, but also taught that when two scenes were equally interesting, it would prioritise the one with a visible konoha headband. When both had that, it would basically flip a coin and randomly decide.
The horn went off and both he and his teammates walked into the maze. He noted that it was covered from the outside world with an impressive level of isolations. The screams of the crowd had died out as they walked in. Even the light from outside did not reach them in the labyrinth. Instead, it was lit by strange crystals in the walls. Their first obstacle was the fact that there were two paths waiting for them after they walked in. Toshiro began rifling through his pockets for a notepad. Most likely to decode the obvious cryptograph. Uzume had walked forward to look into each path with her Sharingan. Probably trying to tell which route was trapped with her enhanced eyesight.
He let out a fake cough to get their attention. "This test will be easy. Easy for me, at least" He bragged, he knew he was bragging as he squatted down and placed his palm on the ground. The rules said they weren't allowed to use ninjutsu to affect the walls in any way. They said nothing about using chakra to feel them out.
"What are you doing?" Toshiro asked.
"This entire maze was made with ninjutsu, so it'll be a bit harder, but one of the more advanced applications of Earth natured affinity training is the ability to sense earthen formations. I'm using that skill to build a map of the maze in my head and find which route led to the exit." He said to them.
"So this test will favour Iwa Shinobi?" Uzume asked with a hand on her Gunbai. Combat wasn't permitted in this test, but both of his teammates were clearly on edge. Sakumo had instilled a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on whom you asked) level of paranoia in them.
"This skill is something most chunin won't even be familiar with. If it favours any Iwa genin, then they'd be a prodigy who wouldn't have had any difficulty with the test, regardless of what it was." He replied, assuaging her concerns that their home village had chosen to pander to another.
"Got it" he said.
"Follow me" He then said to the both of them, getting an affirmative response from Toshiro and a begrudging nod from Uzume as he stared at her until she replied. Her usual bullshit wasn't going to be accepted here. She'd got better, for sure. A year of being in the same team with them and training with them meant that a lot of the original aggressiveness had died out quickly. She wasn't what he'd describe as a friend, but they were definitely on the level of friendly acquaintances. With Toshiro, she'd spun up a more genuine friendship than the working relationship they shared. He couldn't have cared less, with not having the time or patience for what he saw as self-entitled bullshit.
They followed his mental map to a tee. Even as they heard traps going off across the maze, nothing affected them as they moved through the completely untrapped route. Another thing he'd noted as he plotted out the map of the maze was that all the trapped routes did eventually lead to exits, but they were so circuitous that it would take at least thrice the time to cover those routes. A determined and skilled enough shinobi could do it, but it wouldn't be easy. He figured that this test would probably be the one that got him the least attention, almost in direct apposition to the orders he'd received to show the world that Konoha's next generation as strong as their predecessors and warn off the other villages from considering war, but he figured finishing this test first would go a long way in projecting that image. Not as long a way as walking through all the traps like some inevitable and indomitable god, but that would be stupid.
His job wasn't to show that Konoha shinobi had more strength than wits. Probably the opposite, as he thought of it. They came across a section of the maze with five paths and a riddle scrawled atop it. Reading the riddle, he cracked a smile; "I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with the wind. What am I?" He loved riddles. They walked into the fourth path, and he noted that every step they took audibly echoed to their ears.
Echo. That was the answer to the riddle. He could just imagine how much time another team would have had to spend on getting through a challenge like that. He looked at the surrounding walls. What others would have mistaken for scratches, he correctly identified as a sealing matrix. A familiar sealing matrix. The same one his mother's clan used for their personal rooms to prevent their byakugan wielders from getting too peaky. He turned his thoughts from his mother. He could not afford a distraction right now. They walked forwards and came face to face with another team walking in the exact opposite direction.
The Iwa team had three shinobi; a wider boy years older who looked muscular enough to crush Toshiro's head in his grip, a lithe girl with sleeves that went past her hands and covered view of her fingers, and a third boy with auburn hair parted off to the side and a wicked smirk on his face. Both his team and theirs kept careful watch of each other as they made sure to pass each other by with as large a margin as possible. Nobody wanted to risk a fight breaking out that would get all of them tossed out of the labyrinth. When they'd finally passed each other, he made a point of not turning to watch them leave.
Uzume had more than enough paranoia for the three of them, as she watched them carefully with blood-red eyes until they rounded the corner.
"The Senju boy didn't look all that. His Uchiha teammate is much more scary" They heard a voice he suspected belonged to the red haired boy come from the corner the Iwa nin had just rounded. Uzume visibly preened at the unintended compliment as he chuckled. He had no need for looking menacing or intimidating. Smaller animals puffed themselves up to look bigger and meaner than they actually were. He was no small animal. He had no need to intimidate with his appearance, he'd let his strength do that for him.
The next fork in the road had two paths. There was a complex equation scrawled above the route that he didn't even bother reading once he saw the saw just how many variables it had. He led his team left, and they followed. They hadn't come across a single trap. He knew Uzume kept a watchful eye out, and that both he and Toshiro were keeping track of their surroundings in their own ways. Him through Earth natured chakra, and Toshiro through his newly discovered affinity for chakra sensing.
The path led to another path that led to a massive room with doors on every side. The puzzle was etched into the ground. He smiled and went to a path a few paths away from the one that they'd come in through. As they walked through, he noted another team come out from another one of the paths. A team in traditional cloud attire. The only one in the team that caught his attention was a boy even younger than they were with long bi-coloured hair (half green half white). It was notable enough that he was sure he'd seen that particular combination in the anime before. The path they walked through led to another intersection, and that led to another, until they finally quite literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He slowed down to draw a seal near the exit as a bit of a gift for whoever came after them.
The labyrinth had been lit with luminous crystals, but that did not compare with the sunlight that beamed in from outside. He walked out of the labyrinth first to roars from the crowd. "Smile and wave, boys" He said to his teammates with a bright smile on his face.
"The first team to complete the first test is Team Forty-Seven from Konoha: Senju Shorirama, Uchiha Uzume, and Takehada Toshiro" Jiraiya's familiar voice rang across the stadium.
A/N: Stage One done. Now to set the stage for exam two. The next three chapters are up on the place of pa –trons- same username as up here so feel free to check it out if you want to support my journey, but don't stress if you can't. Everything will come up here in its own time.
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