The fifth day went by quickly, Chosuke looked at his two comrades who were both undergoing rehab under the supervision of medical ninjas.
The taller one was looking through the medical reports and assessing their progress, the shorter one was observing Kaito and Satoru perform exercises and checking if they had any difficulties.
He stopped both of them and said, "We have done as much as we could repair to your bodies in the limited time we had. We would have completely healed you if we had more time." The medic said with a sympathetic look as he eyed Kaito's little finger's stump.
"What you have done is more than enough for us. You don't have to feel bad for our condition, we chose this path and we are aware of all the risks. Right, Satoru?" Kaito said while smiling at the medic then looking at Satoru. His fingers traced the place where his finger once was.
"Yeah! We only have to endure one match, the elimination round. After that, we get a month long break to train and heal!" Satoru said, smiling back to Kaito.
"Though you guys are capable of fighting in your current condition, I wouldn't recommend you guys to continue any further till you guys recover." The taller medic chimed in, confusing the genins.
"Why? We can use chakra just as usual, I get it that I cannot use shadow clones anymore but Kaito doesn't even use hand signs which require his pinky!" Satoru protested, the smile faded into a look of annoyance.
"Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Letting you both go would go against everything that I stand for. You can take the test next year as well." The tall medic refused making the team frown in dissatisfaction.
Satoru look of annoyance turned into complete apathy as he walked towards the tall man, he placed his hand on his shoulder and patted him.
"You know, I'm deeply grateful to the both of you for dating my friend and me from certain death. But, we are in the death business, we know that we will die one day. Let us do this. The chunin exams means more to us than just a title and higher salary pay." Satoru said, the words seemed very sincere and emotional, they were said in a completely monotone manner.
"B-but I..." the medic tried to oppose but couldn't. Satoeu ans the other two walk away without saying anything else to them.
The team headed to the place where Orochimaru had ordered them to assemble at. Satoeu saw a massive hall at the ground floor of the tower, it had a ground meant to be used for battling. There was also an elevated part around the floor meant for observers to watch the battle.
The Satoeu ans his teammates saw all the people who passed the round 2, and the number was was larger than he expected...or wanted. Majority of them were either konoha shinobi or from its allied nations, making Satoru breathe out a sigh of relief.
Once everyone arrived to the hall, orochimaru began counting everyone and saw that there are 42 genins still left.
'Although more than a hundred were disqualified, it wasn't enough. Guess I'll have to cut down ten to make this good enough for the audience later on.' Orochimaru thought, her eyes already scanning for weakling and leaches to eliminate.
"You guys are aware of the fact that everyone has to earn a badge for their team, aren't you? I have come to realize that a lot of uou guys have either leached off your teammate by exploiting the rules or straight stole from other teams. That is not acceptable, youll pay for this offense!" Orochimaru said, reveling in the despaired team who passed due to Kaito distributing the extra badges.
"It's not fair! We used a loop hole set up by the rules you set up. You cannot do this to us!" A shinobi said, his teammates were sweating hard, they had completely offloaded the entire work to him.
"You earned all five by yourself and then traded them with other teams to make it seem like you stole them to avoid getting caught, if I remembered correctly!"
Orochimaru instantly flickered next to the boy and his team. Her smile faded into a look of condescension as she stared at him. "You not only did all of work and brought two useless shinobis with you to the last stage but also stole badges by killing people! You broke all the rule I made for this test!"
Orochimaru's glare turned to two other teams who instantly felt paralyzed from her gaze.
"You, you and you. Take your team and through that team and fo through that door. You'll face your punishment and then go to the tournament." Orochimaru pointed to a door and then continued "Rest of you...uhh...just go to stadium in training ground 69."
The genins picked out left the hall and left through the door. The door closed with a loud creak before returning into silence.
The genins, scared for their lives but also curious as to what will happen to the other genins who will be punished left to the stadium immediately. Satoru's team walked ahead, leaving him alone yo think about what happened.
'Why didn't she punish our team? We also broke these rules. At least killing a clown should have some punishment, right?' Satoru thought but suddenly he heard, "there's no such thing as punishment for breaking the rules. I just wanted to minimize those damn foreigner in the exam."
Satoru was surprised to hear this and instantly turned around to look at Orochimaru, who was smiling sadistically.
"WHAT?!"
"Those genins don't know this...but since the exam is being conducted here, it is heavily biased towards konoha ninjas. Next year it might biased towards another country." She said while checking her nails.
"What will happen to those people?" Satoru pointed to the door.
"They died, I hope so. The hallway after the door is actually a trapdoor which leads to a...meatgrinder." she said casually before turning to looking at Satoru who was horrified.
"I-I think I'm going to go, my teammates have gone quite far." Satoru said before running to his friends. Orochimaru just stared at his retreating figure before giving a flying kiss in his direction. She then left to meet with Danzo.
---
The stadium was filled with people, some cheered for the genins, some booed, some were silent.
Silent because if the genin they wanted to see wasn't here in the stadium then they have probably died. People looked on hoping to find their siblings, sons and daughter waving back at them, only to find them missing.
A tense atmosphere took over the stadium as they saw only 32 genins enter. Their attention was then directed towards the next proctor of the exam.
The man had a long spiky white hair which resembled a lion's mane. His large frame and muscular physique sent a wave of fear among every genin and the audience.
He had a large smile on his face while looking at the genins, suddenly a toad popped out of his jacket and said, "What do you think Jiraiya boy...will any of them become chunin? They don't look that strong to me!"
"Hahahaha, Sensei often thought us to never judge a book by its cover and never underestimate a shinobi based on how harmless they look! You should take these lessons to heart my friend!" The man named Jiraiya said to the talking toad. The toad shrugged and went back inside Jiraiya's jacket.
"Did that toad just...talk? How is that possible?" Dai said his thought out loud, other genins also were intrigued by such an animal.
"It's probably a ninja beast of some kind, I have heard the hokage also has his own ninja beasts!" Another ninja said, the others heard him and were amazed by the toad who suddenly disappeared into a puff of smoke.
*clap* *clap*
"Enough talking, all of you. let's not waste time and get started already, the audience have have waiting for a while now!" Jiraiya said, pointing towards a massive board.
'Just a few more hours! The hot springs will open up soon, I'll have to end this quickly and go there before the hotties leave!' Jiraiya thought, he trembled just at the thought of what he would witness today.
"On the board is the matchups. You will fight the one whose photo is next to yours. Except the first two, everyone leave immediately!" Jiraiya said pointing at two people who will fight first.
Satoru went to audience and sat down, he looked at the board with disinterest.
'Looks like the entire gang is facing some randos for the first round. It will be a breeze, but then...I'll face my friends. I'm sure I'll win this tournament as well. I'm the strongest afterall.' Satoru thought while looking at the two genins fighting.
Satoru vs
Tanaka vs
Ay vs
Hinoka vs
Tatsuo vs
Kaito vs
Sakumo vs
Tsume vs
Kana vs
Dai vs
Nawaki vs
Gaku vs
Etc
'Guess I'm not fighting Tatsuo or Sakumo for a while, I'll destroy the first match and get this over with...' Satoru winced in pain as he held his head. The pain spiked randomly ever since Soma.
'Ugh! That hurt! It seems like my brain is still damaged. But those pills...the pain has reduced considerably.' Satoru took out a pill and ate it
---
A few hours later, Satoru stretched before walking into the battleground. His two swords radiated an aura which made his opponent take a step back. Satoru yawned before he unsheathed his Fumikage.
'If he got scared just from looking at my sword then he won't make it as a genin. He's an easy prey!' Satoru smirked as he waited for the toad sage to give the signal.
"Begin!"
Satoru dashed forward with his sword coated with chakra. The black aura of the sword instilled fear into the genin's heart. Satoru swung his blade making him jump away and throw several shuriken and kunai at Satoru.
Satoru deflected all the shuriken, making them ricochet into the kunai which now missed Satoru by a large margin.
The genin took out his kunai and swung at Satoru to get him to back off, but Satoru's longer reach allowed him to leave a shallow gash into his knuckles, making him drop the kunai.
Satoru smiled as he looked at the scared expression of his opponent, who desperately threw more kunai and shuriken in Satoru's direction.
He looked at the kunais and defected the ones which would hit him and ignored the rest. 'He is scared shitless. And his injured knuckles aren't helping him in aiming either. I'll probably win without taking any injuries!'
Satoru slowly walked towards the genin who got backed into a corner. "Give up and save me the trouble! You won't get any more injuri..." Satoru said before suddenly he saw the genin make a quick hand motion, it felt like he was pulling something back.
Satoru saw his hands move but then noticed a...string. A FUCKING STRING!!!
He instantly turned around and saw those shurikens and kunais coming back. He used his sword and slashed at as many of them as he could.
Suddenly he felt a powerful jolt of electricity hit him in the back, stunning him momentarily. The rest of the weapons, with their strings wrapped around Satoru, immobilizing his entire body neck down.
The genin added exploding paper tags to the string and came forward with a kunai in his hand. "D-do you gi-ive up? The boy said while Satoru just looked at him with hatred.
Satoru augmented himself with chakra and gave him a powerful headbutt, breaking his nose and sending him flying.
The genin instantly weaved handsigns to activate the tags. Satoeu forcefully moved his hands to weave signs of his own despite the the strings digging into his skin, making him bleed.
The tags activated and exploded. A huge dust formed around Satoru as the crowd could see multiple explosions occurring one after the other.
The genin sighed in relief. "I-I won. I WON. Let's g..."
*BANG*
A wind bullet pierced through the genin the moment he began celebrating. Satoru walked out of the smokescreen relatively unscathed, a few parts of his clothes were still burnt.
"Exploding tags use earth style chakra to keep them stable for a long time, and that can be countered with lightning chakra easily. The lightning you shot at me..." He pointed at arashi-ken which glowed with sparks
"I dumped most of the lightning into it to minimize the damage. And released it like an EMP. Not like you will understand what it is though!" Satoru said while walking towards the wounded genin who began shivering.
All form of hope was replaced with despair as his best strategy was countered easily.
"I-I surrender!"