Yeah; if people didn't want to try to guess the end before it happened, the entire murder mystery genre would be dead, or at least so different as to be something else entirely. Same for action movies; people don't watch to see who wins, they watch to see how they win.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
-
- Tags
- mgln naruto naruto uzumaki complete
Yeah. The same also goes for reruns. There is a reason that tv stations do reruns of older shows and movies. And that is because people still enjoy watching them, despite knowing the plots and twists. So long as the book/show/movie is well written and made, most people will not care if they can tell the plot for the second half after finishing the first.
Ah. But you see. They don't want to have to put in the effort to write it well. Shock value sells just as well if not better the first time around. The first run is also where most of the money is made. People talk about how shockingly the movie or show sucked and surprisingly this commonly leads to people watching it to see if it really does suck that hard. Meaningless shock value is also much, much easier to write. Just write something that seems logical and then pull something completely nonsensical and random from your ass. Congratulations, perfect shock value! They are also all trying to recapture the first Darth Vader revelation. It also doesn't help that in Hollywood people don't generally get hired on actual skill but reputation. Particularly directors. These are big deals in Hollywood even if no one cares about the director or writer outside of Hollywood.
Last edited:
Some recent entries like Velma and that Witcher spin-off, that I've already forgotten the name of, are exceptions then?
In those cases it's more a combination of people getting wise to that tactic and not liking it and they executed so poorly on the concept that it didn't work right.
One Piece has been running non-stop since 1999. It is very much built off the model of a old style anime. Bleach, Dragonball and Fairy Tale are all exampled of anime from that era. Modern anime that fill the same niche tend to only contract to animate one season worth of content at a time and take a break for a season or two before making the next one. If there isn't enough content they don't make the next chunk of story until there is. My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer of examples of the current model.
Chapter 55 - Exam Finals: Demonstrations, Fights, Promotions
Naruto had found Kankuro's reaction to seeing a cemetery in the arena amusing, though not as amusing as Temari's look of horror. The Raikage had commented that it made for an 'oddly appropriate' theme, given the dangers shinobi faced in the field and the use of zombies in the elimination stage. Mei instead thought that it was a bit too much, and Gaara had flinched before realizing that he'd missed getting a picture of Temari's horrified look. At that point he switched to pouting, but he didn't know that Naruto had gotten pictures. Yet. He'd likely get an anonymous set of them sent after they were developed, but Naruto hadn't decided on the particulars.
Technically, Naruto and Kankuro were part of the 'guards' for the Kage box, alongside Ao for Mei and C for the Raikage. Nobody expected any trouble though, and being on the arena floor was considered 'close enough' before the finals even began. As if the four Kage weren't entirely capable of defending themselves and the four guards were thus more likely to get in the way, barring conflicts between those in the box. Which wasn't seeming likely, given that they'd spent plenty of time chatting without guards next to them in the past couple of days already.
Most of the audience had already gathered when the four puppets were brought out, changing it from a 'while people are finding their seats' to a 'while waiting for the main event to start' show. Even the genin had arrived and were waiting in the area set aside for them, looking warily at the cemetery itself. Anko-sensei then tapped a couple of controls in the alcove she'd settled into for the moment and started up the zombies...probably set a little more difficult than originally agreed to.
It was probably abnormal to have almost nobody in the audience reacting with shock to zombies suddenly crawling out of graves to attack them, even though no warning had been given. Needing to keep track of zombies and puppets was obviously more than Kankuro had expected though, even as Naruto found the addition to be lackluster for increasing the difficulty. He also wasn't learning much from Kankuro, who honestly seemed to fight similarly to Sasori. Just with more threads per puppet. What it was about Suna's current puppeteers that disappointed the missing-nin was hard to tell.
Not really wanting to completely destroy Kankuro, Naruto started trying to figure out something else to occupy himself with beyond the zombies. He knew that destroying them faster just caused more to spawn faster, which seemed like a waste of time. He'd agreed to only use the two puppets, so bringing more out and being creative with them to take out the zombies wasn't really an option. His two-armed humanoid puppet was already basically handling zombies while the fox puppet pressured Kankuro alone anyway.
After fifteen minutes of this, Naruto decided that advanced puppeteering was fair game. It took a few attempts to get right, the zombies not really working the same as clones he'd used for practice before now, but he was able to latch onto their controlling chakra networks with strings. Still not wanting to overwhelm Kankuro, he instead considered available options and pulled out a sealing tag. This was something he'd considered using to annoy Sasori a bit, using the man's own puppets for it as a way to keep them out of their next 'testing battle', but figured that the zombies would be better due to having actual hands and fingers. As such, he carefully unsealed a selection of instruments. Nothing that required blowing into them, but puppeting the resisting zombies into setting up and playing the instruments was surprisingly good training. Especially with other zombies still trying to get at him.
Kankuro was very obviously not happy with this change in plans, even if several zombies tied up playing instruments meant less attacking zombies. Doubly so as the quality of the music obviously improved as Naruto got used to managing the zombies. On the other hand, the audience was obviously delighted with the extra bit of show, and use of hands to control the music-playing zombies meant focusing on using feet and tail to take out the attacking zombies. It was a surprisingly good training method and setting up zombie seals in the areas he trained in for doing this kind of thing more often might not be a bad idea.
Eventually Shisui signaled that they were ready to prepare for the actual finals, and Anko-sensei turned off the zombies. Kankuro glared at Naruto as instruments and puppets were cleaned up before the two went up the wall to the Kage box. Then Shisui removed a decorative cloth that had been draped to cover the arena controls so that they'd remain a surprise for the other three Kage, pulling the dial out to turn the graveyard back into an illusion once the cloth was out of the way. That left it just transparent enough to see the group of chunin darting in to clean up the leftover weapons that had been embedded in the dirt before the dirt ceased to be real, causing pretty much the entire audience to stare in shock.
Luckily, Naruto and his clones had plenty of cameras for those he wanted pictures from.
Shisui then changed the setting to the presentation area, pausing long enough to confirm that the chunin were out of the way before pushing the dial in and causing the illusion to solidify into a real environment again.
"What the fuck?" Mei asked, looking between the dial, the arena, and Shisui. "They were fighting in an illusion?"
"It was real while they were fighting," Shisui explained. "Though it's very nearly on the level of some of the insanity that the sharingan can pull off, honestly. But really, when you get Uzumaki sealmasters involved you need to expect the unexpected."
"Not sure I'd consider myself to be a sealmaster," Naruto argued. "There are a pile of things I don't understand well enough yet."
"...okay, you're at or beyond sealmaster level for non-Uzumaki and might just be journeyman level for Uzumaki. How long did it take you to figure out how to make the seals for the arena?"
Naruto shrugged. "If you want to be technical about it, the use of large amounts of chakra to make an illusion temporarily real was an accidental discovery halfway through the original process." That caused the rest of the box to turn to stare at him. "What?"
"You...accidentally created this?"
"I figured out what's happening afterwards, but yes, a slight error in the original seal array led to unexpected places."
"I guess that proves that he really is an Uzumaki," the Raikage said after a moment. "You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise with the hair, but accidentally creating one of the most impressive seals I've ever heard of proves it. Though if this wasn't the intention, I wonder what the plan actually was?"
"Feed the illusions into an array of seals that would quickly build the desired arena up in layers with various elemental releases, the hardest part of which was likely to be getting the wood release seals to create the plants correctly. In some ways the illusion to reality trick saved me days of work...except that I spent days ensuring that I knew what was going on."
"Definitely an Uzumaki," Mei agreed, shaking her head.
The sixteen genin were called down to stand in the arena and introduced for the audience. Anko-sensei explained the rules they were operating under as well as that each round of fights was going to be fought in a different arena as chosen by the Kage. Then all the genin were sent out of the arena so that the Kage could make their choice.
"While I could make the decisions," Shisui said to the crowd after clearing the presentation area. "I doubt anyone would believe that we're prepared for any of the environments to be chosen if we could have limited the work to ones pre-chosen ahead of time. So I shall go through them, and then the Kazekage will pick the first environment. After that whichever of Kiri and Kumo has the fewer competitors remaining will decide who picks the second round arena. The third round arena will go to the other, and I will only pick the arena for the final match."
The variety of arenas seemed to impress the audience and the other Kage. The ability to rotate each environment was also demonstrated, and then Gaara was allowed to operate the controls. It was likely that everyone expected him to pick a desert environment, something the lone Suna genin would be most familiar with, but instead he picked the river passing through the field. Adjusting the rotation followed, and then he pushed in on the dial to make it real. The appropriate waterfall-creating seal activated at the same time as drainage points opened at the opposite end of the river, creating the actual water flow that was the primary feature of this environment.
"Interesting choice," Mei said. "Would've thought you'd have gone with the desert."
"Sand is less than ideal for demonstrating combat skills," Gaara replied. "Especially when those capable of controlling it are present and the sand is within their range. Much better to not leave any chance of accusations of cheating due to sand control."
"Huh, hadn't thought of it that way."
Orochimaru had decided to risk slipping into Konoha for the chunin exam finals, a combination of not trusting his subordinates and spies to report on things properly and simply needing a break from dealing with the idiots. That it gave him a perfect excuse to dump 'teach Deidara more about cooking' onto someone else was a side bonus, though it had originally felt odd that Sasori and Deidara had immediately agreed that visiting to see Uzumaki's work 'in person' was more important.
Seeing Uzumaki casually reveal that he'd mastered puppetry to a level that Suna puppet masters could only dream of, apparently making fully autonomous puppets that were still somehow under his control and then getting bored enough to experiment on puppeting zombies in the middle of a demonstration match? Definitely amusing...but sadly Sasori was going to be far more likely to figure out how any of the puppet-controlling tricks worked. Assuming, of course, that they weren't Uzumaki-brand impossible to decipher insanity.
The real show was the arena itself. Who but an Uzumaki would come up with a way to make illusionary environments real enough to fight in so that you could test genin in different environments? Orochimaru would be planning on finding a way to come back to examine all of the seals if he didn't know that he had no hope of understanding them. Possibly no hope of usefully powering them either, because he'd been able to focus enough to get an idea of how much chakra went into 'illusion becomes real' as the Kazekage was making his choice. Which was another problem with Uzumaki-made seals. They were either stupidly efficient, running for decades off of absorbed chakra to manage things that should take a thousand times the energy or they were incapable of being powered by anyone else short of a jinchuriki. Or former jinchuriki, perhaps, in the case of those that used to hold tailed beasts and were now seemingly merging with the remains instead.
Still, the entire show indicated that little Anko definitely knew how to pick her students, and perhaps a long-overdue apology gift for the boy would be a good idea too. Attempting to kill him, no matter how viscerally terrifying his killing intent was, had definitely been the wrong thing to do. Not when he could pull off wonders like the arena, anyway. Really, to anyone who understood the implications? The actual fights were completely and totally anticlimactic when compared to the show already put on before they began. But you couldn't really expect civilians or anyone below jounin to understand the implications of the pre-show.
The first eight fights had gone well enough. They'd started with a Kumo on Kumo match, followed by Rio against Shino. That hadn't gone well for Rio, but she'd put up a decent fight despite her problems with large numbers of insects. Kin against Lee was closer than anyone not on their team had expected it to be, genjutsu being great for keeping things from turning into a brawl Kin had no chance in, but Lee had been able to use the river to his advantage and took the win. Suna's sole participant had lost to a Kiri kunoichi with surprise lava release, and Sachie's insane throwing arm had allowed her to keep a Kumo shinobi at distance instead of being able to close in with his sword to give her a reasonably easy win.
Neji against Choji had been surprisingly involved, several of the Akimichi clan techniques making the gentle fist less capable of targeting chakra points. But Neji had the better stamina and had worn Choji down before getting in what looked like a lucky strike at the end. A drawn-out Kiri and Kumo sword fight had followed, but the Kumo shinobi had eventually won. The last match of the round pitted Ami against a Kiri kunoichi. That had looked like it was going to end in Ami's defeat, but she'd spent the entire match using a number of tricks to drop traps all over the arena and been able to trigger several in rapid succession to claim victory.
"With only one participant left from Kiri compared to the two from Kumo," Shisui said after dismissing the previous arena setting, as the last of the water drained away and the chunin were nearly done pulling the leftover items out of the pit. "I believe that the Mizukage gets to choose the next environment."
"While I'm tempted to see what they make of the area you introduced them in," Mei replied. "I think we're going for the basic dirt this time. Put their skills on display instead of their ability to take advantage of things in the environment."
"...and here I thought that it had been a waste of time for that one to have been left in as anything but a test."
"I'd originally thought you'd be doing the introductions and final promotion announcements with it," Naruto pointed out. "Before you asked for the much fancier one, and it's easier to just build new ones from scratch than to modify an existing one."
"Oh. That makes sense."
Switching to the plain dirt environment only took a moment, but the 'betting period' wasn't over yet so they'd be a few more minutes before the next round began.
Kiba wasn't sure if he should be annoyed that they'd been sent on a quick mission during the single-combat portion of the exams, but it made sense to hit a couple of noble pricks while they were known to be inside of Konoha. Why anyone would be stupid enough to hire shinobi for a mission and then skip out on the final payment was beyond him. Do that with missing-nin, or most smaller villages, and they'd likely show up and kill you for the insult. The larger villages just tended to do what the bulk of the 'chunin-level' infiltration-grade missions had been, sending out a small team to recoup the lack of payment.
The thing was, these few were compounding the issue by visiting the village they'd stiffed only a couple months prior. Two others had been pulled from the list to hit because they'd shown up with the remaining payment, apologizing for 'temporary financial difficulties'...and three others had known difficulties and had never been on the list to begin with. The rest were going to find that any winnings from betting were going to have their debts removed first on top of their homes being hit.
"Are we hitting any of the neighbors this time?" Sasuke asked as they slipped into the third of five houses. "Since it seems like nobody is home next door."
"We had to bypass locks that normal thieves would've skipped," Ino replied. "So no."
Kiba blinked. "...it took you all of a second to bypass the locks. How is that something that normal thieves would've skipped?"
"I finally figured out the trick to shoving chakra between the key pins and driver pins to let the core turn without a proper key and without causing damage to the lock by pushing things too hard."
"Oh. I still have problems getting my chakra between the pins in those locks. The more common basic warded ones are a lot easier."
"They are, yes, and I know that Akamaru has even figured them out."
"Kuromaru is jealous of that because Akamaru is the only ninken in the clan that can open the basic anti-civilian locks without fighting with the keys."
It took longer to get into the two safes they knew of, one in the home office and the other in the master bedroom. All money was emptied out of both, but the presence of decent locks and no signs of the combinations written down stupidly meant that they didn't go further. They even re-locked the doors on the way out.
"Gonna be weird not working with you two," Sasuke commented as they left town on their way to the next town and the last two targets.
"We're diverging a bit too much in what we actually handle," Ino pointed out. "Akamaru is getting big enough to make proper infiltration a problem as well."
"I'm still surprised at how much you've gone into infiltration."
"...why? I've known that I'd be doing some kind of infiltration since before the academy. That's part of what Yamanaka do, as part of an Ino-Shika-Cho style trio or otherwise. Being able to take over a target's body to gather intelligence doesn't do us any good if we can't immediately drop into the role of being them convincingly. Paperwork clones and shapeshifting are just tools that improve my ability to safely manage it alone."
"...I suppose. Do you know what they plan on having you do though?"
"They've not confirmed anything with me. How about you?"
Kiba snorted. "Mom thinks I should take a team of genin."
"My brother wants me to do that too," Sasuke admitted. "Possibly paired with Kiba, but only if we don't manage to get through to full jounin in the next few months. Something you won't have a problem with."
"No clue how she managed that testing mission on her own with people looking for the unconscious body."
Ino snorted. "I used a clone for the mind-body switch."
"And you still had to hide the clone."
"Nah, I just wandered around carrying it. Nobody wanted to wake up the baby."
...okay, that was honestly genius. Couldn't even be jealous that she was almost guaranteed to make jounin first after hearing that.
The second round of matches in the plain dirt arena had still been a good show, and probably one closer to what most people expected from 'had to rebuild the arena on short notice'. Shino had put up a good showing against his Kumo opponent, but had problems with lightning release and had given up when too many of his insects were killed. Lee had taken out the lava release kunoichi from Kiri, his speed and physical strength well up to the task while she wasn't really able to handle his shell's durability. Neji and Sachie had gone for a bit though, him being good at dodging her projectiles but her being good at keeping distance...at least until he threw up an earth dome and then immediately switched to underground movement to ambush her. Lastly, Ami had surprised everyone by dodging into her opponent's kenjutsu, taking the sword through her stomach, in order to punch him out.
...followed by several minutes of swearing about the poison stinging as she worked to heal herself right there in the arena.
"Three matches to go," Shisui said as the team of chunin cleared out some weapons that had been left embedded in the dirt and fallen when the arena went back to illusionary. "And it's the Raikage's turn to choose the arena for the next two."
"That's a tough one," the Raikage said, looking over the options. "Doubly so since I'm positive that the last match is going to be a slugfest between your two remaining male genin, but let's see. I get enough views of people fighting in rocky terrain back home, but I appreciate the gesture of including an environment my people would be most familiar with. We're avoiding the desert environment for good reason, adding in some grass and trees isn't much of a change from what we've already seen...how about the snowy one? I'm curious how long it takes the snow to melt."
"Whatever you want," Shisui said. "The chunin have cleared things out, so you're clear to activate "
Adjusting of the selector dial and rotating of the illusion to choose the 'best angle' followed, though questions about if a couple of snow-covered rocks were ice or not were asked during the rotating. Then the dial was pushed in and the arena was made real. "Should be interesting to see how Darai handles this, but I doubt that snow is going to slow down the powerhouse he's up against enough for him to have a chance of winning."
With only four combatants remaining, the betting period was smaller, and it wasn't long before Lee and Darai were facing off.
"I apologize," Lee said, taking his stance, impressively steady on the snow. The same could be said for Darai, admittedly, but Konoha didn't get enough snow to reliably practice walking on top of it and that made Lee's ability to do so feel more impressive. "But I find myself severely disliking the snow without proper winter gear, so I shall need to make this quick."
"You're welcome to try," Darai replied, sword in front of him. "But you underestimate me at..."
He didn't get to finish his sentence before Lee had closed the distance between them, slipping around the sword and landing a very solid hit that launched Darai into the arena wall.
"Guess I should've picked something else," the Raikage said. "Didn't think that the snow would make things worse for Darai."
"Wouldn't have guessed that Lee would have that much dislike for snow myself," Shisui admitted. "But at least he was polite about it."
"...true."
Ami and Neji were then called down by Anko-sensei. Neji was stable on the snow as well, but the same couldn't be said for Ami. She was more 'trudging through' the snow instead of walking across it. The impaired mobility was likely going to hurt her, but she didn't look ready to back down. Instead, she held her ground as Neji moved in to start striking her and she used the fact that being in the snow meant she was physically lower than him to her advantage. He could move around her on top of the snow with little issue, but couldn't easily strike her with his hands, while she could force him back by swiping at his legs with a kunai.
"I have to admit that I didn't expect her to turn impaired mobility into a combat advantage," Mei commented.
"Seemed like it was going to be a quick win for the Hyuga," Ao agreed. "But she's making him work for it."
"It's definitely more impressive than I was expecting," the Raikage added. "Still, I suspect she won't be able to pull out a win and she knows it."
"Oh, definitely," C agreed. "But at this point she'd have to make a serious mistake to negate her showing so far."
"True. Throwing herself onto a poisoned sword to get a winning strike in, and then taking care of the injury herself to show that she'd be able to continue a mission afterwards? That would require one hell of a mistake to negate."
After several attempts to get in close for taijutsu failed, Neji backed off and was suddenly holding a tanto to increase his reach. This changed his fighting style significantly, but it was obvious that he wasn't able to channel chakra down the blade to close chakra points with it. Ami ensured that she was holding two kunai as he came back in, which given the awkward angle he had to try to strike her at was enough to deflect the tanto. Then she suddenly grabbed the back of the tanto instead of blocking it, pulling on it to pull him towards her and her towards him. Her other hand hit the snow, didn't sink in, and she flipped on it to deliver a kick to his face as he was pulling back. He rolled with the strike, ensuring that it wasn't anywhere near enough to knock him out, but was far more wary of her as he came to his feet again.
"She was faking not being able to move on top of the snow the whole time," Kankuro chuckled. "Sneaky little pig-girl."
Neji darted after Ami again, his tanto vanishing as he pulled a kunai with an explosive tag tied to it out of his pouch. He got quite close before throwing that at her, and a moment later pulled a circular stone wall out of the ground under the snow to trap her with the explosion. She activated an underground movement technique to get underground before the explosion though, something he obviously noticed as he ignored the explosion itself and started tracking her movements underground. A couple of attempts at slipping traps into the snow followed, but he destroyed each as she moved away from them and was ready when she resurfaced.
Unfortunately, she wasn't ready for him to be right there and took a gentle fist strike to the back of her neck. This was enough to paralyze her and he finished pulling her to the surface before striking her several more times to ensure that she'd stay down.
"So we have our final pair," Shisui said as Anko-sensei called the match. "Do we think that there's any chance either of the two won't be promoted?"
"...not really," the Raikage replied. "But I think the crowd would revolt if we called off the final match."
"I was thinking about offering them a choice. They're known to be roughly equal when sparring, so a time limit and a secondary way of determining the winner might not be a bad idea. Assuming Naruto is willing to count zombies taken out in the course of their fight?"
"That sounds annoying," Naruto admitted. "They're not likely to be moving slowly. But doable."
Shisui nodded, and waited for the arena to be cleared before he returned the arena floor to being illusionary. But then he activated a voice projection technique. "Rock Lee, Neji Hyuga." He waited a moment for the two to come forward in the genin box. "We believe that you two fighting one another is likely to be a drawn-out affair. To that end, I'm going to be imposing a one-hour limit on your fight. Aside from that, I'd like to offer two options to you." He flipped the dial to the pools with poles sticking out of them, but didn't push it in. The chunin were still collecting the remains of Ami's traps, but this was also obviously to show them the option. "You can either do battle in incredibly uneven terrain." The dial was then turned to the graveyard. "Or in the graveyard, with the total number of zombies each of you takes out serving as a tie-breaker if neither of you has emerged victorious after an hour."
The two obviously had a discussion, and then Neji called out. "Are the zombies only usable in the graveyard?"
Shisui blinked, and turned to Naruto, who shook his head. Nodding, he turned back to the genin. "I'm told that no, they are not restricted to the graveyard."
"Then can we take the uneven ground with zombies as a better demonstration of our abilities?"
Shisui nodded, spinning the dial back to the pools with poles but not pushing it in yet. "You can. We will wait for you to have some time to recover from your previous match and so that betting on which of you takes out more zombies can occur."
"Shall I fetch clocks and counters?" Naruto asked.
"...that seems reasonable, if you have some handy."
Naruto had two one-hour clocks and four counters rigged up by the time the betting period was over so that there should be a set visible to everyone, as well as clones in position to operate them all. Lee and Neji were asked to start on top of poles as the zombies were activated and difficulty set, and then the battle began. The two started entirely in the air, bouncing around on top of the poles as the zombies milled about below them, but eventually a strike knocked both of them off course enough to land on top of pools with water-walking. This led to the first zombie kills for each.
"What's with the half-points?" Shisui asked.
"When they take out a zombie together due to it being in the way of them attacking each other my clones are awarding them each half a kill," Naruto replied. "That way the total number of zombies killed is the sum of their individual counts."
"Ah. That's sensible."
After twenty minutes destroying the terrain with repeated taijutsu clashes, the pair pulled swords out and spent some time in a kenjutsu battle. Then both of their blades broke when they clashed and they went back to taijutsu, but after a minute each grabbed downed bamboo poles to extend reach. Lee even found time to sharpen one to a point.
You could understandably think that the arena had always been a puddle in the middle with stone zombie pieces spread about and broken poles occasionally sticking out of it by the time the hour was up. Anko-sensei called them to a halt as they struck at each other through a zombie that had climbed up out of the mud between them, then looked up at one of the two sets of counters. She blinked, then turned to look at the other.
"I don't know if reviewing the footage will help," Anko-sensei said. "But it seems that you each took out two hundred seventy two and a half zombies, which would make this a perfect draw."
After deliberations the promotions were announced. Ami, Kin, Lee, Neji, Sachie, and Shino got their promotions while Choji and Rio did not, the latter pair having their performances in the elimination round cited. Two of the four Kumo shinobi and the Kiri kunoichi with lava release also got promoted, but Naruto wasn't as interested in them. He and Hinata had been tapped to speed up paperwork though, him ending up with all the Konoha participants and her taking all the visiting ones, allowing for everything to be handed out immediately.
The visiting Kage were all varying levels of gobsmacked over the paperwork already being done during the announcements. Complete with vests for the six Konoha promotions. They'd even completed the paperwork known to be needed for Kiri, Kumo, and Suna, just waiting for the final sign-offs back in each village. This wasn't a surprise for Suna, but most of those from Kiri and Kumo seemed a bit confused as to why Konoha had copies of their forms to fill out in advance. Or knowledge of how to do so.
Technically, Naruto and Kankuro were part of the 'guards' for the Kage box, alongside Ao for Mei and C for the Raikage. Nobody expected any trouble though, and being on the arena floor was considered 'close enough' before the finals even began. As if the four Kage weren't entirely capable of defending themselves and the four guards were thus more likely to get in the way, barring conflicts between those in the box. Which wasn't seeming likely, given that they'd spent plenty of time chatting without guards next to them in the past couple of days already.
Most of the audience had already gathered when the four puppets were brought out, changing it from a 'while people are finding their seats' to a 'while waiting for the main event to start' show. Even the genin had arrived and were waiting in the area set aside for them, looking warily at the cemetery itself. Anko-sensei then tapped a couple of controls in the alcove she'd settled into for the moment and started up the zombies...probably set a little more difficult than originally agreed to.
It was probably abnormal to have almost nobody in the audience reacting with shock to zombies suddenly crawling out of graves to attack them, even though no warning had been given. Needing to keep track of zombies and puppets was obviously more than Kankuro had expected though, even as Naruto found the addition to be lackluster for increasing the difficulty. He also wasn't learning much from Kankuro, who honestly seemed to fight similarly to Sasori. Just with more threads per puppet. What it was about Suna's current puppeteers that disappointed the missing-nin was hard to tell.
Not really wanting to completely destroy Kankuro, Naruto started trying to figure out something else to occupy himself with beyond the zombies. He knew that destroying them faster just caused more to spawn faster, which seemed like a waste of time. He'd agreed to only use the two puppets, so bringing more out and being creative with them to take out the zombies wasn't really an option. His two-armed humanoid puppet was already basically handling zombies while the fox puppet pressured Kankuro alone anyway.
After fifteen minutes of this, Naruto decided that advanced puppeteering was fair game. It took a few attempts to get right, the zombies not really working the same as clones he'd used for practice before now, but he was able to latch onto their controlling chakra networks with strings. Still not wanting to overwhelm Kankuro, he instead considered available options and pulled out a sealing tag. This was something he'd considered using to annoy Sasori a bit, using the man's own puppets for it as a way to keep them out of their next 'testing battle', but figured that the zombies would be better due to having actual hands and fingers. As such, he carefully unsealed a selection of instruments. Nothing that required blowing into them, but puppeting the resisting zombies into setting up and playing the instruments was surprisingly good training. Especially with other zombies still trying to get at him.
Kankuro was very obviously not happy with this change in plans, even if several zombies tied up playing instruments meant less attacking zombies. Doubly so as the quality of the music obviously improved as Naruto got used to managing the zombies. On the other hand, the audience was obviously delighted with the extra bit of show, and use of hands to control the music-playing zombies meant focusing on using feet and tail to take out the attacking zombies. It was a surprisingly good training method and setting up zombie seals in the areas he trained in for doing this kind of thing more often might not be a bad idea.
Eventually Shisui signaled that they were ready to prepare for the actual finals, and Anko-sensei turned off the zombies. Kankuro glared at Naruto as instruments and puppets were cleaned up before the two went up the wall to the Kage box. Then Shisui removed a decorative cloth that had been draped to cover the arena controls so that they'd remain a surprise for the other three Kage, pulling the dial out to turn the graveyard back into an illusion once the cloth was out of the way. That left it just transparent enough to see the group of chunin darting in to clean up the leftover weapons that had been embedded in the dirt before the dirt ceased to be real, causing pretty much the entire audience to stare in shock.
Luckily, Naruto and his clones had plenty of cameras for those he wanted pictures from.
Shisui then changed the setting to the presentation area, pausing long enough to confirm that the chunin were out of the way before pushing the dial in and causing the illusion to solidify into a real environment again.
"What the fuck?" Mei asked, looking between the dial, the arena, and Shisui. "They were fighting in an illusion?"
"It was real while they were fighting," Shisui explained. "Though it's very nearly on the level of some of the insanity that the sharingan can pull off, honestly. But really, when you get Uzumaki sealmasters involved you need to expect the unexpected."
"Not sure I'd consider myself to be a sealmaster," Naruto argued. "There are a pile of things I don't understand well enough yet."
"...okay, you're at or beyond sealmaster level for non-Uzumaki and might just be journeyman level for Uzumaki. How long did it take you to figure out how to make the seals for the arena?"
Naruto shrugged. "If you want to be technical about it, the use of large amounts of chakra to make an illusion temporarily real was an accidental discovery halfway through the original process." That caused the rest of the box to turn to stare at him. "What?"
"You...accidentally created this?"
"I figured out what's happening afterwards, but yes, a slight error in the original seal array led to unexpected places."
"I guess that proves that he really is an Uzumaki," the Raikage said after a moment. "You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise with the hair, but accidentally creating one of the most impressive seals I've ever heard of proves it. Though if this wasn't the intention, I wonder what the plan actually was?"
"Feed the illusions into an array of seals that would quickly build the desired arena up in layers with various elemental releases, the hardest part of which was likely to be getting the wood release seals to create the plants correctly. In some ways the illusion to reality trick saved me days of work...except that I spent days ensuring that I knew what was going on."
"Definitely an Uzumaki," Mei agreed, shaking her head.
The sixteen genin were called down to stand in the arena and introduced for the audience. Anko-sensei explained the rules they were operating under as well as that each round of fights was going to be fought in a different arena as chosen by the Kage. Then all the genin were sent out of the arena so that the Kage could make their choice.
"While I could make the decisions," Shisui said to the crowd after clearing the presentation area. "I doubt anyone would believe that we're prepared for any of the environments to be chosen if we could have limited the work to ones pre-chosen ahead of time. So I shall go through them, and then the Kazekage will pick the first environment. After that whichever of Kiri and Kumo has the fewer competitors remaining will decide who picks the second round arena. The third round arena will go to the other, and I will only pick the arena for the final match."
The variety of arenas seemed to impress the audience and the other Kage. The ability to rotate each environment was also demonstrated, and then Gaara was allowed to operate the controls. It was likely that everyone expected him to pick a desert environment, something the lone Suna genin would be most familiar with, but instead he picked the river passing through the field. Adjusting the rotation followed, and then he pushed in on the dial to make it real. The appropriate waterfall-creating seal activated at the same time as drainage points opened at the opposite end of the river, creating the actual water flow that was the primary feature of this environment.
"Interesting choice," Mei said. "Would've thought you'd have gone with the desert."
"Sand is less than ideal for demonstrating combat skills," Gaara replied. "Especially when those capable of controlling it are present and the sand is within their range. Much better to not leave any chance of accusations of cheating due to sand control."
"Huh, hadn't thought of it that way."
Orochimaru had decided to risk slipping into Konoha for the chunin exam finals, a combination of not trusting his subordinates and spies to report on things properly and simply needing a break from dealing with the idiots. That it gave him a perfect excuse to dump 'teach Deidara more about cooking' onto someone else was a side bonus, though it had originally felt odd that Sasori and Deidara had immediately agreed that visiting to see Uzumaki's work 'in person' was more important.
Seeing Uzumaki casually reveal that he'd mastered puppetry to a level that Suna puppet masters could only dream of, apparently making fully autonomous puppets that were still somehow under his control and then getting bored enough to experiment on puppeting zombies in the middle of a demonstration match? Definitely amusing...but sadly Sasori was going to be far more likely to figure out how any of the puppet-controlling tricks worked. Assuming, of course, that they weren't Uzumaki-brand impossible to decipher insanity.
The real show was the arena itself. Who but an Uzumaki would come up with a way to make illusionary environments real enough to fight in so that you could test genin in different environments? Orochimaru would be planning on finding a way to come back to examine all of the seals if he didn't know that he had no hope of understanding them. Possibly no hope of usefully powering them either, because he'd been able to focus enough to get an idea of how much chakra went into 'illusion becomes real' as the Kazekage was making his choice. Which was another problem with Uzumaki-made seals. They were either stupidly efficient, running for decades off of absorbed chakra to manage things that should take a thousand times the energy or they were incapable of being powered by anyone else short of a jinchuriki. Or former jinchuriki, perhaps, in the case of those that used to hold tailed beasts and were now seemingly merging with the remains instead.
Still, the entire show indicated that little Anko definitely knew how to pick her students, and perhaps a long-overdue apology gift for the boy would be a good idea too. Attempting to kill him, no matter how viscerally terrifying his killing intent was, had definitely been the wrong thing to do. Not when he could pull off wonders like the arena, anyway. Really, to anyone who understood the implications? The actual fights were completely and totally anticlimactic when compared to the show already put on before they began. But you couldn't really expect civilians or anyone below jounin to understand the implications of the pre-show.
The first eight fights had gone well enough. They'd started with a Kumo on Kumo match, followed by Rio against Shino. That hadn't gone well for Rio, but she'd put up a decent fight despite her problems with large numbers of insects. Kin against Lee was closer than anyone not on their team had expected it to be, genjutsu being great for keeping things from turning into a brawl Kin had no chance in, but Lee had been able to use the river to his advantage and took the win. Suna's sole participant had lost to a Kiri kunoichi with surprise lava release, and Sachie's insane throwing arm had allowed her to keep a Kumo shinobi at distance instead of being able to close in with his sword to give her a reasonably easy win.
Neji against Choji had been surprisingly involved, several of the Akimichi clan techniques making the gentle fist less capable of targeting chakra points. But Neji had the better stamina and had worn Choji down before getting in what looked like a lucky strike at the end. A drawn-out Kiri and Kumo sword fight had followed, but the Kumo shinobi had eventually won. The last match of the round pitted Ami against a Kiri kunoichi. That had looked like it was going to end in Ami's defeat, but she'd spent the entire match using a number of tricks to drop traps all over the arena and been able to trigger several in rapid succession to claim victory.
"With only one participant left from Kiri compared to the two from Kumo," Shisui said after dismissing the previous arena setting, as the last of the water drained away and the chunin were nearly done pulling the leftover items out of the pit. "I believe that the Mizukage gets to choose the next environment."
"While I'm tempted to see what they make of the area you introduced them in," Mei replied. "I think we're going for the basic dirt this time. Put their skills on display instead of their ability to take advantage of things in the environment."
"...and here I thought that it had been a waste of time for that one to have been left in as anything but a test."
"I'd originally thought you'd be doing the introductions and final promotion announcements with it," Naruto pointed out. "Before you asked for the much fancier one, and it's easier to just build new ones from scratch than to modify an existing one."
"Oh. That makes sense."
Switching to the plain dirt environment only took a moment, but the 'betting period' wasn't over yet so they'd be a few more minutes before the next round began.
Kiba wasn't sure if he should be annoyed that they'd been sent on a quick mission during the single-combat portion of the exams, but it made sense to hit a couple of noble pricks while they were known to be inside of Konoha. Why anyone would be stupid enough to hire shinobi for a mission and then skip out on the final payment was beyond him. Do that with missing-nin, or most smaller villages, and they'd likely show up and kill you for the insult. The larger villages just tended to do what the bulk of the 'chunin-level' infiltration-grade missions had been, sending out a small team to recoup the lack of payment.
The thing was, these few were compounding the issue by visiting the village they'd stiffed only a couple months prior. Two others had been pulled from the list to hit because they'd shown up with the remaining payment, apologizing for 'temporary financial difficulties'...and three others had known difficulties and had never been on the list to begin with. The rest were going to find that any winnings from betting were going to have their debts removed first on top of their homes being hit.
"Are we hitting any of the neighbors this time?" Sasuke asked as they slipped into the third of five houses. "Since it seems like nobody is home next door."
"We had to bypass locks that normal thieves would've skipped," Ino replied. "So no."
Kiba blinked. "...it took you all of a second to bypass the locks. How is that something that normal thieves would've skipped?"
"I finally figured out the trick to shoving chakra between the key pins and driver pins to let the core turn without a proper key and without causing damage to the lock by pushing things too hard."
"Oh. I still have problems getting my chakra between the pins in those locks. The more common basic warded ones are a lot easier."
"They are, yes, and I know that Akamaru has even figured them out."
"Kuromaru is jealous of that because Akamaru is the only ninken in the clan that can open the basic anti-civilian locks without fighting with the keys."
It took longer to get into the two safes they knew of, one in the home office and the other in the master bedroom. All money was emptied out of both, but the presence of decent locks and no signs of the combinations written down stupidly meant that they didn't go further. They even re-locked the doors on the way out.
"Gonna be weird not working with you two," Sasuke commented as they left town on their way to the next town and the last two targets.
"We're diverging a bit too much in what we actually handle," Ino pointed out. "Akamaru is getting big enough to make proper infiltration a problem as well."
"I'm still surprised at how much you've gone into infiltration."
"...why? I've known that I'd be doing some kind of infiltration since before the academy. That's part of what Yamanaka do, as part of an Ino-Shika-Cho style trio or otherwise. Being able to take over a target's body to gather intelligence doesn't do us any good if we can't immediately drop into the role of being them convincingly. Paperwork clones and shapeshifting are just tools that improve my ability to safely manage it alone."
"...I suppose. Do you know what they plan on having you do though?"
"They've not confirmed anything with me. How about you?"
Kiba snorted. "Mom thinks I should take a team of genin."
"My brother wants me to do that too," Sasuke admitted. "Possibly paired with Kiba, but only if we don't manage to get through to full jounin in the next few months. Something you won't have a problem with."
"No clue how she managed that testing mission on her own with people looking for the unconscious body."
Ino snorted. "I used a clone for the mind-body switch."
"And you still had to hide the clone."
"Nah, I just wandered around carrying it. Nobody wanted to wake up the baby."
...okay, that was honestly genius. Couldn't even be jealous that she was almost guaranteed to make jounin first after hearing that.
The second round of matches in the plain dirt arena had still been a good show, and probably one closer to what most people expected from 'had to rebuild the arena on short notice'. Shino had put up a good showing against his Kumo opponent, but had problems with lightning release and had given up when too many of his insects were killed. Lee had taken out the lava release kunoichi from Kiri, his speed and physical strength well up to the task while she wasn't really able to handle his shell's durability. Neji and Sachie had gone for a bit though, him being good at dodging her projectiles but her being good at keeping distance...at least until he threw up an earth dome and then immediately switched to underground movement to ambush her. Lastly, Ami had surprised everyone by dodging into her opponent's kenjutsu, taking the sword through her stomach, in order to punch him out.
...followed by several minutes of swearing about the poison stinging as she worked to heal herself right there in the arena.
"Three matches to go," Shisui said as the team of chunin cleared out some weapons that had been left embedded in the dirt and fallen when the arena went back to illusionary. "And it's the Raikage's turn to choose the arena for the next two."
"That's a tough one," the Raikage said, looking over the options. "Doubly so since I'm positive that the last match is going to be a slugfest between your two remaining male genin, but let's see. I get enough views of people fighting in rocky terrain back home, but I appreciate the gesture of including an environment my people would be most familiar with. We're avoiding the desert environment for good reason, adding in some grass and trees isn't much of a change from what we've already seen...how about the snowy one? I'm curious how long it takes the snow to melt."
"Whatever you want," Shisui said. "The chunin have cleared things out, so you're clear to activate "
Adjusting of the selector dial and rotating of the illusion to choose the 'best angle' followed, though questions about if a couple of snow-covered rocks were ice or not were asked during the rotating. Then the dial was pushed in and the arena was made real. "Should be interesting to see how Darai handles this, but I doubt that snow is going to slow down the powerhouse he's up against enough for him to have a chance of winning."
With only four combatants remaining, the betting period was smaller, and it wasn't long before Lee and Darai were facing off.
"I apologize," Lee said, taking his stance, impressively steady on the snow. The same could be said for Darai, admittedly, but Konoha didn't get enough snow to reliably practice walking on top of it and that made Lee's ability to do so feel more impressive. "But I find myself severely disliking the snow without proper winter gear, so I shall need to make this quick."
"You're welcome to try," Darai replied, sword in front of him. "But you underestimate me at..."
He didn't get to finish his sentence before Lee had closed the distance between them, slipping around the sword and landing a very solid hit that launched Darai into the arena wall.
"Guess I should've picked something else," the Raikage said. "Didn't think that the snow would make things worse for Darai."
"Wouldn't have guessed that Lee would have that much dislike for snow myself," Shisui admitted. "But at least he was polite about it."
"...true."
Ami and Neji were then called down by Anko-sensei. Neji was stable on the snow as well, but the same couldn't be said for Ami. She was more 'trudging through' the snow instead of walking across it. The impaired mobility was likely going to hurt her, but she didn't look ready to back down. Instead, she held her ground as Neji moved in to start striking her and she used the fact that being in the snow meant she was physically lower than him to her advantage. He could move around her on top of the snow with little issue, but couldn't easily strike her with his hands, while she could force him back by swiping at his legs with a kunai.
"I have to admit that I didn't expect her to turn impaired mobility into a combat advantage," Mei commented.
"Seemed like it was going to be a quick win for the Hyuga," Ao agreed. "But she's making him work for it."
"It's definitely more impressive than I was expecting," the Raikage added. "Still, I suspect she won't be able to pull out a win and she knows it."
"Oh, definitely," C agreed. "But at this point she'd have to make a serious mistake to negate her showing so far."
"True. Throwing herself onto a poisoned sword to get a winning strike in, and then taking care of the injury herself to show that she'd be able to continue a mission afterwards? That would require one hell of a mistake to negate."
After several attempts to get in close for taijutsu failed, Neji backed off and was suddenly holding a tanto to increase his reach. This changed his fighting style significantly, but it was obvious that he wasn't able to channel chakra down the blade to close chakra points with it. Ami ensured that she was holding two kunai as he came back in, which given the awkward angle he had to try to strike her at was enough to deflect the tanto. Then she suddenly grabbed the back of the tanto instead of blocking it, pulling on it to pull him towards her and her towards him. Her other hand hit the snow, didn't sink in, and she flipped on it to deliver a kick to his face as he was pulling back. He rolled with the strike, ensuring that it wasn't anywhere near enough to knock him out, but was far more wary of her as he came to his feet again.
"She was faking not being able to move on top of the snow the whole time," Kankuro chuckled. "Sneaky little pig-girl."
Neji darted after Ami again, his tanto vanishing as he pulled a kunai with an explosive tag tied to it out of his pouch. He got quite close before throwing that at her, and a moment later pulled a circular stone wall out of the ground under the snow to trap her with the explosion. She activated an underground movement technique to get underground before the explosion though, something he obviously noticed as he ignored the explosion itself and started tracking her movements underground. A couple of attempts at slipping traps into the snow followed, but he destroyed each as she moved away from them and was ready when she resurfaced.
Unfortunately, she wasn't ready for him to be right there and took a gentle fist strike to the back of her neck. This was enough to paralyze her and he finished pulling her to the surface before striking her several more times to ensure that she'd stay down.
"So we have our final pair," Shisui said as Anko-sensei called the match. "Do we think that there's any chance either of the two won't be promoted?"
"...not really," the Raikage replied. "But I think the crowd would revolt if we called off the final match."
"I was thinking about offering them a choice. They're known to be roughly equal when sparring, so a time limit and a secondary way of determining the winner might not be a bad idea. Assuming Naruto is willing to count zombies taken out in the course of their fight?"
"That sounds annoying," Naruto admitted. "They're not likely to be moving slowly. But doable."
Shisui nodded, and waited for the arena to be cleared before he returned the arena floor to being illusionary. But then he activated a voice projection technique. "Rock Lee, Neji Hyuga." He waited a moment for the two to come forward in the genin box. "We believe that you two fighting one another is likely to be a drawn-out affair. To that end, I'm going to be imposing a one-hour limit on your fight. Aside from that, I'd like to offer two options to you." He flipped the dial to the pools with poles sticking out of them, but didn't push it in. The chunin were still collecting the remains of Ami's traps, but this was also obviously to show them the option. "You can either do battle in incredibly uneven terrain." The dial was then turned to the graveyard. "Or in the graveyard, with the total number of zombies each of you takes out serving as a tie-breaker if neither of you has emerged victorious after an hour."
The two obviously had a discussion, and then Neji called out. "Are the zombies only usable in the graveyard?"
Shisui blinked, and turned to Naruto, who shook his head. Nodding, he turned back to the genin. "I'm told that no, they are not restricted to the graveyard."
"Then can we take the uneven ground with zombies as a better demonstration of our abilities?"
Shisui nodded, spinning the dial back to the pools with poles but not pushing it in yet. "You can. We will wait for you to have some time to recover from your previous match and so that betting on which of you takes out more zombies can occur."
"Shall I fetch clocks and counters?" Naruto asked.
"...that seems reasonable, if you have some handy."
Naruto had two one-hour clocks and four counters rigged up by the time the betting period was over so that there should be a set visible to everyone, as well as clones in position to operate them all. Lee and Neji were asked to start on top of poles as the zombies were activated and difficulty set, and then the battle began. The two started entirely in the air, bouncing around on top of the poles as the zombies milled about below them, but eventually a strike knocked both of them off course enough to land on top of pools with water-walking. This led to the first zombie kills for each.
"What's with the half-points?" Shisui asked.
"When they take out a zombie together due to it being in the way of them attacking each other my clones are awarding them each half a kill," Naruto replied. "That way the total number of zombies killed is the sum of their individual counts."
"Ah. That's sensible."
After twenty minutes destroying the terrain with repeated taijutsu clashes, the pair pulled swords out and spent some time in a kenjutsu battle. Then both of their blades broke when they clashed and they went back to taijutsu, but after a minute each grabbed downed bamboo poles to extend reach. Lee even found time to sharpen one to a point.
You could understandably think that the arena had always been a puddle in the middle with stone zombie pieces spread about and broken poles occasionally sticking out of it by the time the hour was up. Anko-sensei called them to a halt as they struck at each other through a zombie that had climbed up out of the mud between them, then looked up at one of the two sets of counters. She blinked, then turned to look at the other.
"I don't know if reviewing the footage will help," Anko-sensei said. "But it seems that you each took out two hundred seventy two and a half zombies, which would make this a perfect draw."
After deliberations the promotions were announced. Ami, Kin, Lee, Neji, Sachie, and Shino got their promotions while Choji and Rio did not, the latter pair having their performances in the elimination round cited. Two of the four Kumo shinobi and the Kiri kunoichi with lava release also got promoted, but Naruto wasn't as interested in them. He and Hinata had been tapped to speed up paperwork though, him ending up with all the Konoha participants and her taking all the visiting ones, allowing for everything to be handed out immediately.
The visiting Kage were all varying levels of gobsmacked over the paperwork already being done during the announcements. Complete with vests for the six Konoha promotions. They'd even completed the paperwork known to be needed for Kiri, Kumo, and Suna, just waiting for the final sign-offs back in each village. This wasn't a surprise for Suna, but most of those from Kiri and Kumo seemed a bit confused as to why Konoha had copies of their forms to fill out in advance. Or knowledge of how to do so.
Last edited:
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
Every time your version of Orochimaru appears, I see that he has lost no points in Common Sense.
SanguisAnima
Σ Series Z10/0 Group A 4A-GELU Mk1
- Location
- nowhere important
Awww. No Sasori critiquing the puppeteer vs "puppeteer" match, but eh. The present matches made up for it via the amusement factor alone.
I mean, Kumo shouldn't be surprised; with the level of "infiltration" they got, it should've been expected that their paperwork would've been copied and analysed, leading to knowledge - or at the very least, insight - on how their paperwork is filed.
I don't know, Kumo probably wouldn't be that surprised, given Konoha gave them maps of the Village Hidden in the Clouds better than the ones they already had.
Edit:Ninja'd appropriately enough.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Worse, you know what happens when the springs are mixed.
It'd probably be in poor taste to do to an ally... but completing the forms, including perfect forgeries of the final sign-offs, and filing the forms appropriately (including in locked storage), and handing out vests requisitioned from their respective villages (with paperwork for that filed) would be more fun... Though it'd show they've got even greater infiltration than what Konoha actually showed.
- Location
- A Strange Aeon
Bureaucratic flex is still a flex.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
While the exam fights and the arena were impressive, I really enjoyed the little side excursion by Team Yourei, junior addition on their little excursion during the exams. It just shows how thoroughly the trio have absorbed the lessons their trainers fed into them. And the way they are beginning to travel their own paths just shows that the lessons are going to continue propagating down the line into future teams of genin. Whether or not there is a significant dilution of effectiveness in future teams has yet to be seen, since not every individual is likely to be an effective trainer in their own right.
On the other hand, considering the ridiculous levels of skill shown so far, it's likely that a shinobi with even half the effectiveness of the current crop would still be highly useful in the field. At least until the other villages manage to seriously raise their counter espionage efforts in response to what Konoha has been doing.
On the other hand, considering the ridiculous levels of skill shown so far, it's likely that a shinobi with even half the effectiveness of the current crop would still be highly useful in the field. At least until the other villages manage to seriously raise their counter espionage efforts in response to what Konoha has been doing.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The trouble with other villages catching up to Uzumaki Bullshit Infiltration methods is they don't have access to the base requirements of an Uzumaki seal expert and a natural shapeshifter.
Sleep deprivation says if they can come up with another Uzumaki from somewhere, they need to specialize in mid-sized marine mammals somehow.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
And now I have the nightmare of this version of Naruto using the Tome to 'hack' in Maple's game and meeting her.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Maple's BS is at least limited to the VRMMO that she plays, rather then the physical world around her.