Chapitre 7: White Fang's test (Edited)

AN:

Thanks for all your amazing comments.

For now I am exhausted. This chapter was very fun to write but writing a fight scene for the first time took a lot of effort. I hope you enjoy this slightly longer than normal chapter (2442 words including this AN).

I changed some of the details but in general it is still the same. If you already read this chapter you don't have to reread it to move on to the next one.

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The next morning at just before eight I met up with Kushina and Hiro at the entrance of training ground 6. After a quick and energetic "Good morning dattebane" from Kushina and a sleepy "G' monin'" followed by a huge yawn by Hiro I replied with my own greeting before sitting down on a rock to wait for Sakumo sensei.

Last night before going to sleep I had asked my mother about Sakumo sensei and I have to admit I'm impressed at what I found out.

According to her, Sakumo sensei is one of the strongest jonin in the village. Apparently the only two people who could currently beat him one on one in the village were only granny Mito and the third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi himself.

He specializes in using an extremely fast and deadly kenjutsu style utilizing his bright white glowing chakra metal sword with deadly efficiency, earning himself the moniker 'White Fang' of Konoha.

At precisely 8am Sakumo sensei appeared before us and smiled. "Good. You are here on time. Let's go in and then we'll have a little test to see if you are worthy of being my students."

Seeing us paying attention he continued "I have scattered 15 lightning clones within the forest. 5 of them are marked with a white cloth blindfold and will act as civilian hostages. The remaining 10 on the other hand are marked with a black headband and will act as bandits.

Your primary objective is to rescue at least three hostages. Your secondary objective is to eliminate all hostile clones.

You have exactly three hours. Now go."

And with that he disappeared and hid while watching us from the trees.

I immediately focused on my chakra sense and felt for the location of the clones.

"I have found the clones. Let's move closer while we make a plan." I suggested and they agreed.

"They are in a clearing about 2 km south-east from here. Five chakra signals facing each other in the middle with five more with their backs towards each other. The remaining five are spread around in the forest acting as scouts." I said while we were running at moderate speed so Hiro could keep up.

"Let's go then. I'll clobber them all dattebane", Kushina shouted as she attempted to bolt forward only to land on her butt as I held her by the scruff of her neck.

She rounded on me and shouted "What was that for Shiro nii. That hurt dattebane."

Shaking my head I explained "You can't just run in there. Remember our primary objective is to rescue the hostages, not to beat them all up.

Besides do you think you can take on 10 jonin on your own even if they are clones?"

Sticking out her tongue and laughing sheepishly she replied "Hehe.. Sorry about that. I got too excited."

Shaking my head again I turned to Hiro and asked as we resume our journey "Can you make it so the ones in the camp don't notice while we pick off the scouts one by one?"

"I guess I can but not for longer than three minutes. My chakra reserves are not big enough to affect such a big area for any longer than that. And I have to be within 40 meters of all my targets."

"Ok I guess that will do. Kushina you should be able to make seals that will eliminate our smell and presence, right?"

"No problem dattebane" she shouted.

"So here's the plan. Kushina you make those seals. Once we each have one I will help Hiro sneak within range of the camp. There I will use a barrier seal to make sure he stays undetected.

As soon as his genjutsu is up, I will attack the nearest scout while you attack the scouts from the opposite direction as soon as you hear my attack. Then the two of us regroup before we launch a surprise attack on the camp.

We'll have to hit them as hard as we can because they will most likely try to destroy the hostages so we must force them to focus on us and not leave any time for them to target the hostages. Got it?"

Seeing them both nod resolutely we reached the vicinity where the scouts roamed. After applying the stealth seal, I picked up Hiro on my back and using shunshin and my chakra sense I closed in on the camp while making sure the scouts didn't spot us.

Thanks to all of Kushina's pranks neither of us had any trouble avoiding the basic traps scattered around the area.

I could feel Kushina approaching her designated spot and by the time I finished setting up the barrier, Kushina was also in position.

"Ready?"

"Let's do it"

As soon as Hiro gave me the signal I used shunshin to arrive behind the first scout and easily dispelled him by shoving a kunai in his neck. Before he could fully dissolve I was already on my way to the next target.

The thunderclap from a lightning clone dispelling however alerted the remaining scouts of my position and deed. Thankfully Hiro's genjutsu was working so the camp was still calm.

As I arrived in front of the second clone he was already holding his chakra sword that earned him his moniker.

Seeing this I threw my kunai at him and drew my own sword. I was using a rather long two handed katana (compared to Toshiro's 10yo body) similar to my Zanpakuto (in sealed state) in appearance.

I didn't limit the speed of my shunshin but I intentionally slowed down my sword swinging speed and power as we clashed swords for the first time. As such I was easily pushed back a few steps with Sakumo sensei's clone following me immediately to keep the pressure on.

After a few exchanges where I appeared to be getting pushed back, I suddenly sped up and easily managed to dispel the second clone thanks to him underestimating me.

By now Kushina had also managed to beat her first clone in a sneak attack while he was looking towards where I dispelled the first clone.

Two consecutive thunder claps alerted the remaining two scouts of our two pronged attack strategy.

Using shunshin I quickly engaged the fourth scout while the last one and Kushina where speeding towards each other.

This time Sakumo sensei's clone didn't underestimate me anymore and came at me with its full power. Within half a minute we had clashed swords a few dozen times with no one getting the upper hand.

As we separated for a brief pause I used a single one handed hand sign to initiate the hidden mist jutsu. Not half a second later Sakumo used a weak wind jutsu to blow away all the mist as we re-engaged in our kenjutsu duel.

However this time Sakumo's clone had the upper hand as he took the initiative and soon managed to place his sword on my neck. Contrary to his expectation though, I didn't stop and kept moving forward only to have my shadow clone dispel in a puff of smoke while my main body buried its katana in his heart dispelling him with another resounding thunder clap.

By now two minutes had passed and Hiro was slowly reaching his limit while Kushina had some trouble finishing off her second scout.

I immediately shunshined behind Sakumo sensei's last scout clone and finished it off by stabbing my sword in his liver.

The fifth thunder clap signalled our triumph and Hiro breathed a sigh of relief before gradually releasing the genjutsu before collapsing in exhaustion, his part of the plan done.

Kushina and I nodded at each other before stealthily speeding towards the camp.

As we hid in the trees close to the camp, we saw the situation of the hostages for the first time.

Each hostage had a white blindfold over their eyes and their hands were bound behind their backs. Then their hands were tied to each other in a circle making them sit with their backs to each other.

The 'bandits' on the other hand were leisurely sitting around a large flat tree stump and were seemingly trusting in their scouts ability to warn them while playing dice.

I however noticed that two of them were frequently looking towards the forest as if by coincidence but I knew they were actually looking for us.

I silently signalled Kushina to first target the more vigilant duo and she nodded.

On my signal we began our assault. Using the opportunity our stealthy approach afforded me, I took the necessary time to use my strongest jutsu.

I had just started learning this jutsu a few weeks ago after having mastered several C rank wind and water jutsu, so I was not proficient enough in it yet to use it quickly enough for a battle but for an ambush like this, it would suffice.

First I released a quick low powered water bullet on the ground in front of me which created a small pond of water for me to use.

Then I quickly started signing Ox → Monkey → Hare → Rat → Boar → Bird → Ox → Horse → Bird → Rat → Tiger → Dog → Tiger → Snake → Ox → Ram → Snake → Boar → Ram → Rat → Yang Water → Monkey → Bird → Dragon → Bird → Ox → Horse → Ram → Tiger → Snake → Rat → Monkey → Hare → Boar → Dragon → Ram → Rat → Ox → Monkey → Bird → Yang Water → Rat → Boar → Bird.

After ten seconds I was done and a large water dragon rose up out of the mini pond I just created. It then proceeded to shoot at my enemies at high speed intending to crush them.

The two vigilant clones noticed the incoming threat in time to dodge and one of them even managed to pull a third one to safety but the last two were caught unawares and directly dispelled while shocking the water.

I immediately shunshined towards the two enemies who dodged to the right while Kushina rushed to the last enemy who dodged to the left.

As we started fighting using our swords, I could clearly feel one of my opponents trying to disengage in order to deal with the hostages but my extensive combat experience and the fact that these clones were physically much weaker than me allowed me to force them to take me on together or be dispelled in quick succession.

While I was keeping two clones busy Kushina was also fighting with her own clone. Through the liberal use of explosive tags (her own design with double the impact) she managed to push him further and further away but was unable to finish him off quickly.

Seeing our situation from within his stealth barrier, Hiro could clearly see that we could easily keep the remaining enemies busy but it would take a long time to finish our fights. He decided that since we had drawn the enemies away, he could go over to rescue the hostages.

Just as Hiro reached the hostages one of Kushina's kunai got deflected by her opponent and would have dispelled one of the hostage clones if Hiro hadn't used his own kunai to block it.

After a quick "Sorry" Kushina focused on her own fight again.

Seeing a bit of black fabric peek out from under their blindfold Hiro decided not to remove the blindfolds. Instead he used a low powered touch based genjutsu to let them see through his own eyes. That done he proceeded to cut the rope binding their hands and led them to the concealment barrier.

With our primary objective now complete, all we had to do now was finish our fights. After a few minutes of high intensity swordplay one of the clones finally showed an opening. I quickly tried to make use of it and managed to dispell one of the clones but the other one managed to cut my left upper arm pretty badly, just barely missing the bone.

While I could see the blow coming with my chakra sense, I couldn't avoid it if I wanted to take out the other clone.

Now one handed I continued fighting while losing dangerous amounts of blood, so I knew I had to finish this fast.

Thankfully I now only had to deal with a single opponent and the hostages were safe already, so I created a bit of distance and using basic chakra nature transformation I used my ice chakra to freeze the surface of the wound so I wouldn't bleed out.

Now slick with blood I also had to freeze my sword to my right hand so I wouldn't lose my grip and re-engaged the last clone.

Despite having lost function in one arm I still managed to gain the upper hand and after trading another shallow cut on my chest for a fatal one in his heart I managed to beat my last opponent.

Making sure that Kushina could still hold on for a while I proceeded to bandage my wounds and then made my way over to spectate Kushina's fight.

I didn't immediately jump in because I knew Kushina wanted to finish her own fight by herself.

I watched amused as Kushina used lots of explosive seals to drive her opponent up against a tree only to finish it with a strong punch to the face which popped the last lightning clone like a balloon and with a last resounding thunderclap our mission was done.

As we regrouped with Hiro and the five hostage clones, Sakumo sensei arrived in front of us and immediately started checking the wound on my arm.

After seeing that I wouldn't bleed out any time soon he said "Congratulations on passing the test. Well done."

After we were done cheering he continued.

"While I would like to analyse your performance in detail and tell you how you did and where you need to improve I really should get you to the hospital now Toshiro. We'll do it tomorrow morning instead."

After telling us to meet tomorrow at the same time and place he used shunshin together with me and brought me to the hospital within seconds.

As it so happened my mother was on duty today so she came and healed my wounds in a flash before rounding on Sakumo sensei and lecturing him for half an hour about endangering her son during a mere genin test.