CHUNIN EXAMS-7

NARUTO POV:

Naruto woke up with a start, the memories of the clone Sakura had poof-ed flooding into his brain.

Beside him, he saw Sasuke stand up.

'Something's off.'

'No shit kid he has that snake's chakra going wild around him and half his body has weird marks'

'Good morning to you too furball'

"Sasuke?" he said tentatively, but the Raven-haired boy seemingly ignored him and walked out of the cave, dragging his steps like he was drunk.

"Sakura" he was slurring his words too, there was definitely something wrong "What's going on?"

She blinked, looking unnerved as well by the sudden shift "Taking out the trash?"

He turned around slowly to see the knocked out kunoichi, the approaching mummy and the spiky haired sound shinobi.

"They're…our enemies?"

The purple chakra swirling around seemed to slow down for a second, before it suddenly flared.

In a burst of purple chakra and flames from his leg, Sasuke was upon the mummy, grabbing him by the head and throwing him down, before kicking the downed shinobi.

The third sound shinobi roared in outrage before aiming his arm devices a Sasuke.

Sasuke only quirked an eyebrow before reaching out and grabbing the arms and turning them towards each other.

"GAH!" screamed out the shinobi as both his arms were hit by his own jutsu.

"You seem awfully proud of these arms of yours" Sasuke said sinisterly as he dragged the shinobi's arms behind his own back "Wonder what would happen if I did this"

And then he pulled.

"GRAAAHHH"

The blood curdling scream was all that rang out throughout the forest before Sasuke was suddenly pulled away from the shinobi.

"That's enough Sasuke" Sakura said firmly "He's had enough"

He looked at her with a crazy grin "You want to fight me too, Sakura? Sure, but right after I finish up with this one."

He turned back to see that the shinobi was trying to crawl away.

He tried to hit Sakura's arm to free himself, but that arm too was grabbed.

"Stand down Sasuke" Naruto said, his arm turning black as he tried to cancel out whatever Orochi-pedo had done to Sasuke.

Sasuke blinked as the black marks receded back to a weird mark at the back of Sasuke's neck.

Both Sakura and Naruto looked on in anticipation, worried that something else might happen.

"I'm not murder minded anymore, let me free idiots."

'That's Sasuke alright'

SASUKE POV:

Sasuke scratched the spot where the pedo-snake had bit him while his opponent came around and they started the match.

He did understand why this was going on. If they were going to be showing this off to the world showing mr 'bad at even making clones'#12 fighting 'guy who can't even throw a kunai'#23 might be bad rep.

What he didn't get though, is why it had to be so boring.

There were good opponents here. He would be completely sold into this if it meant fighting someone like Naruto, Shino or Shikamaru. The 2 guys from Gai's team an the sand team looked good too.

"Lets just get this over with" he sighed

"Sasuke Uchiha vs Yoroi Akado, BEGIN!"

The still coughing proctor declared the start.

In an instant, Sasuke was in front of his opponent with his sword swinging.

The glasses wearing shinobi fell to the floor and grabbed Sasuke's right foot.

With a burst of fire chakra from both his legs, Sasuke jumped up to avoid the attack, but to his surprise the chakra disappeared.

His opponent's hands showed no sign of being burned either.

"Wha?" he questioned.

"I absorbed your chakra" his opponent bragged " Theres nothing you can do against me, Uchiha"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. It wasn't his first time seeing this THAT WEEK, yet this guy was acting like this was some ultimate super move.

'Lets not drag this on'

Before he could move to attack again though, he fell to a knee and clutched the back of his neck again as he felt the curse mark flare up, and his mind bombarded by thoughts of using that dark power again, and show this guy who was boss.

He could barely hear Naruto's voice yelling in the real world to finish this already and to show this guy who was boss so they could go get ramen.

He chuckled, but got back up. He was no stranger to fighting off poisonous thoughts.

'Funny that both Naruto and Orochimaru basically said the same thing though' he smiled wryly.

With a blast of fire from his feet, he launched himself at his opponent.

Yoroi simply put up his hands to block, and Sasuke could see the smirk under that stupid cloth blocking his lower face.

With a blast of fire from his hand to change direction mid jump, he landed in a crouch behind his opponent with the tip of his blade pressing right into the still turning Yoroi's neck.

"The winner is Sasuke Uchiha!" declared their proctor.

NARUTO POV:

It was overall pretty boring if Naruto was being really honest.

Shino and Zaku Abumi (the oto shinobi whose arm Sasuke broke) mainly just stood there and then Shino won.

Kabuto's other teammate vs Kankuro was also only mildly interesting when it turned out Kankuro was actually the puppet.

Sakura had completely destroyed Ino, and he hoped that Sakura had finally gotten through to her friend that Sasuke wouldn't magically appear out of nowhere on a shiny horse in Knight armour to save her when she was in trouble (he genuinely laughed so hard at that image that he started coughing halfway)

Temari had basically one shot Tenten of Gai-sensei's team, which honestly made him feel a little disappointed in her.

Shikamaru's fight against the girl from the oto-team just felt he watching a match of live shogi, and while he didn't get some of it, he was glad he hadn't been the one against Shikamaru with the 2 torch fires giving Shikamaru so much shadow to work with.

Naruto's fight against Kiba had been Kiba and Akamaru trying to gatsuga him and Naruto just punching Kiba in the face after getting an impromptu shave at the back of his head by the only attack the feral boy had been able to barely land.

Hinata vs Neji had been… interesting. It started off with Neji being very aggressive for some reason, and Hinata mainly just deflecting.

His dissing got no reaction from her, but he, Sakura and the now present Sasuke had yelled so much encouragement at her and insults at Neji that she chuckled and started to hit back, weaving in water ryou to create bursts of chakra to confuse the very irritated Neji and actually landed a 8 trigrams: 32 palms point blank at him.

Neji won in the end via a point blank rotation in return, but she really wasn't in bad shape and had smiled at the three and thanked them for their encouragement.

Gaara vs Rock Lee had been the most interesting (and most gruesome) one of all the fights that day. The ferocity with which the two fought had Naruto clenching the railing, and he could see Sasuke's excitement by how much his Sharingan kept turning on and off.

Sakura had also been watching intently, but she also looked very unnerved when Gaara crushed Lee's arm and leg and had rushed off with the medics to help treat the injuries before they became too lasting.

That fight also was what helped Naruto realize that Gaara held a Tailed beast, just like Naruto.

He'd gotten a warning from Kurama. The giant fox clearly said that Shukaku, the one tailed tanuki inside Gaara had always been the crazy one in the family and if Naruto fought Gaara he had to be prepared to fight Shukaku too.

Choji vs the last member of the Oto team had again, been boring as all hell and Naruto could feel himself get sleepy again after the excitement from the Gaara vs Lee match.

Now, the 10 finalists stood shoulder to shoulder while the old man gave a speech about the real purpose of the chunin exams and other stuff that entered through one year and left from the other.

He was mostly zoned out, having a conversation regarding the multiple ways to throw someone out a window with Kurama and Liebe, who surprisingly had a lot of insight to give the young blonde about this subject.

"Now ,you will choose your opponents by picking out numbers from a box."

He had the number 1 (because of course he did Dattebayo!), and he saw that his opponent was Neji Hyuga, Hinata's cousin and last opponent.

The white eyed bastard had just snorted and said something about it being Naruto's 'fate' to lose to Neji.

Naruto did not deign the asshat with a response.

Sasuke was scheduled to be against Gaara. Naruto almost immediately had tried to exchange opponents with first Sasuke and then Gaara, but while Sasuke had pulled away his slip with a cackle of "I get to fight a strong guy", Gaara had just stared before saying " I will not be handing you anything other than your own head. My mother screams for your blood"

Man, that guy was intense.

Anyway, Kankuro was up against Shino, Temari was up against Shikamaru and Sakura was up against Dosu.

In a month, the battle between the 10 shinobi, and between 3 villages (not that they knew that) would begin.