A Thirst For Power (Naruto Neglect Story)

Chapter 16 - Chunin Exams, Written Test

Naruto watched in interest, at the altercation that was starting between his siblings and the Genin from the Sand Village. Naruto saw two Genin, which were identified as Kankuro, who was wearing a black cat suit, and purple makeup, and Temari, who had a very large fan attached to her back. Naruto sensed a third Genin, who was hiding in the tree. The Genin was emitting a lot of unstable chakra, similar to how his siblings were when they used the Kyuubi's chakra. Naruto started to wonder, was the hidden boy also a jinchuriki? Naruto decided to not make any assumptions, without seeing the Genin. Naruto looked back to the arguing group, and saw Kankuro backing off, after hearing that Natsumi and Kinato were both actually the Hokage's children. Naruto watched as the third Sand ninja jumped out of the tree. "Kankuro.. stop it. You are an embarrassment for the Sand." Kankuro gulped, and backed away. "I'm sorry, Gaara. I didn't think they were related to the Hokage. This won't happen again!" Gaara raised his hand to signal Kankuro to shut up.

Two other figures jumped out of the tree. It was Sasuke and Hiruko. Sasuke smirked and pointed to Gaara. "You seem powerful. Unfortunately, I will easily defeat you during the Chunin Exams." Hiruko rolled his eyes, and spoke. "Unfortunately, Sasuke, I will be the one defeating him." Sasuke turned to face Hiruko, and the two of them started arguing. Naruto almost let out a small chuckle, because the show was just getting better, and better. Gaara ignored the two boys from team 7, and faced Natsumi and Kinato. "Mother says you two are like me. She says that I will have to kill you two. It's not your fault, it's just what mother wants." Kinato and Natsumi took a step back, and Kinato yelled, "Well, we're not gonna be so similar after I beat you in the Chunin Exams! That's why your here, right?" Gaara ignored him, to turn to face Naruto. His face immediately turned to an expression of rage. He glared at Naruto. "Mother tells me to watch out for you? No... mother has never done that for anyone else. I will kill you... yes, mother will be pleased that I killed a powerful opponent."

With that, Gaara walked away with his teammates, and left a very confused group of Genin. Naruto promptly got up, and walked the opposite direction. He called back, without looking back, "I was never part of that!" 'I just wanted to relax the rest of the day, and of course some crazy jinchuriki just had to be at the village today, right at the spot where I was taking a break. That's such bullshit.' Naruto checked every direction, and ran straight towards the Forest of Death. Maybe some training would let him relax. The blond walked into his hideaway that he had created in his days at the academy. It wasn't so small anymore, and he had used it as a place to store all of his scrolls, ninja weapons, and he even had a bed there. He opened a drawer, and took out two scrolls. One of the scrolls was filled with notes that he had, because he was creating a new type of seal. It was similar to a storage seal, but instead of extracting the object, and putting into the scroll, the object's chakra, and form, would be absorbed into the seal, and the user could use the abilities of said object, when the scroll was used. Naruto had gotten some minor success, when he absorbed a Rasengan, but the scroll only held the Rasengan for 6 seconds.

Naruto looked at the other scroll, which was his plan. It was very ambitious, but Naruto knew it would work. The Uzumaki grinned, and pocketed the scroll. He had been working on his plan for four years, at that point, and he could already commence with the plan, but the blond decided to wait until the Chunin Exams ended, so the villagers would be distracted with the outcomes. Naruto tried the absorption seal, and sealed another Rasengan. He created the chakra sphere, and shoved it into the seal. The difference between this, and a storage scroll, was that storage scrolls couldn't store plain chakra. They could store items that were imbued with chakra, but not chakra itself. The reason Naruto was so interested in the absorbing aspect of the scroll, was because he could regain the chakra directly, using the scroll, when he pulled chakra from it. It was a chakra battery, of sorts. He could store a bunch of chakra, and if he used the scrolls in a battle, he could essentially never run out of chakra. At least, in theory. At the moment, the scrolls were just exploding, and he was just wasting chakra.

Timeskip, the next morning.

Naruto got up, and checked the time. He sighed, as he had woke up earlier than he should have. Oh well, he would rather make use of the time, then to go back to sleep. Naruto left his house, and decided that he would head right back to the Forest of Death, before the team meeting started. This time, he wouldn't be training his fuinjutsu, but he would be mapping out a route for the Forest of Death. He didn't know for sure, but he had heard some Chunin talking about the stages of the Chunin Exams, and Naruto had heard that the Forest of Death would be the site of one of the tests. He marked all of the trees near the center, and marked lines of trees, leading to the center, so he could navigate throughout the whole forest easily. Despite his many years of training there, the Forest of Death was still a vary large, and dense forest, which meant it was very hard to completely figure out every nook and cranny of the woods. Naruto could connect to all of the marked trees, from anywhere in the forest, by growing wooden roots from his foot, so that it connected his chakra paths to all the other trees in the forest. The marks that he left on the trees were seals, so he could search for them using his chakra, and he could navigate easily.

Naruto checked the time, and started heading toward training ground 27, which was his team's regular training area for team meetings, and training. He was the last one that arrived, and Sora glared at him. Rimara had a faraway look on her face, as if she wanted to go somewhere. Yugao stood up, and passed them pieces of paper. "These are the permission forms for the Chunun Exams. I told you guys about it yesterday, and I think you guys would want to join. Just sign your name, and we can go give it to the Hokage. The Genin did as they were instructed, and the team started walking towards the Hokage's tower. On their way there, the Genin noticed team 11 walking away from the tower. Team 8 was also going towards the tower, and Team 7 was following behind. It seemed like every shinobi Genin team was signing up for the Chunun Exams, other then team 10, who Naruto assumed signed up before them all, as Asuma liked to be early. Team 9 has signed about a week ago, so they were the only ones remaining.

Natsumi saw that team 12 was also going to be participating in the Chunin Exams. She didn't want them to, as they were probably the second most powerful team, behind her team, of course. She would obviously be one of the people to get a promotion from Genin to Chunin, so she didn't think the other teams should have even bothered to participate.

Timeskip, the day of the Chunin Exams.

Naruto got up extra early today, and he quickly grabbed a piece of toast, and took off towards the training ground. There, he met with Rimara and Sora, and they started walking towards the Ninja Academy, where the first test, the written test, would be taking place. Rimara checked the paper, and saw the room in front of them matched the one on the paper. She frowned, and looked around, to see her teammates narrowing their eyes at the door. Rimara dispelled the genjutsu, and the group made their way up the stairs, and into the true room of the exam. The team heard Sasuke proudly shout, "There is a genjutsu casted on this room, to make it look like it's the room we're supposed to go to! I figured it out because I am a great Uchiha!" There were a few sarcastic gasps, facepalms, and Sakura and Ino started clapping. "Wow, Sasuke! You're so smart!" Sasuke grinned smugly, as he puffed out his chest, as he strutted forewords. Team 8, 10, and 11 followed behind, and all of the teams made it into the room that the test would be taking place in.

Team 12 was already seated, when the other teams arrived. Kinato smirked, and made a show of looking around. "What the hell are these irrelevant villages? You have a musical note on your forehead protector. What are you gonna do, music me to death?" The Sound ninja that he had pointed to, got up, and grabbed Kinato's shirt. "Don't talk ill about the Sound Village again." Kinato just smirked, and crossed his arms. "Why would I care about what one of the four people from the Sound Village say? Besides, I'm the Hokage's son, so I have more power than your entire village!" The masked ninja scowled, and winded up a punch, before the proctor for the written exam pulled him off of Kinato. He barked, "Stop this. I can't have you guys injuring each other before the actual violence begins." He walked to the front of the class, and cleared his throat. "I am Ibiki Morino. I will be your proctor for the first portion of the Chunin Exams, the written test. In this portion of the exam, you will be given nine questions on a piece of paper, and you will have an hour to answer those questions. If you are caught cheating, you, and your entire team will be disqualified from the exam. After the hour has passed, the tenth question will be revealed, and you will have to answer it." The class nodded, as Ibiki began to pass out the papers.

Naruto took the paper, and stared at the question. He was a little surprised, as the questions were extremely difficult, and they were something no Jonin, let alone Chunin, do. He wouldn't be surprised if the Hokage himself could answer the questions correctly. There had to be a different way to beat this part of the Chunin Exams. Naruto quickly glanced at his teammates, and instantly understood what they were meant to do. Rimara's summon was slinking between the participants' legs, and moving to a certain man, who looked older than the rest of the Genin. The tiger looked at their paper, and crept back to Rimara. The tiger, who had assumed a small form, jumped onto her lap, and started making very low, and quick sounds, as if it was communicating with Rimara. Sora had her Sharingan active, and was taking glances at a man who was sitting at the other side of the room, and looked older, just like the man Rimara was copying off of. Sora was looking, and writing at the same time, trying her best to look inconspicuous. Naruto knew that he needed to find a way to copy off of one of the older participants, who were most certainly put into the exam to serve their purposes as answer givers.

Naruto grew small roots out of his table, through the ground, and started growing the root towards one of the suspicious participants. The root connected with their desk, and Naruto was able to sense whatever was on there. He started writing down the answers, without anything looking unnatural. Sasuke banged his fist on the desk, and yelled, "This is too hard! There's no way that we have to do all this to be a Chunin! I should already be promoted! Why do I have to do this?" Ibiki flicked the back of Sasuke's head, and he flinched. "Strike one. Stay silent." Sasuke glared at the proctor, "But-" "Strike two. Stay silent." Sasuke grumbled, and attempted to continue filling out his test. Sakura looked a Sasuke, and bit her lip, as she didn't want to jeopardize her team.