The next day, in the inn's backyard, Tsunade was already there. She wasn't drinking. She stood with her arms crossed, staring at a tree with an intensity that seemed capable of wilting its leaves.
"Tired already, brat?" she said without turning as Naruto walked out.
"Never!" he exclaimed, holding up a water balloon he had "borrowed" from the kitchen. "The future Hokage never gives up!"
"Hokage," she repeated, the word like poison on her lips. "An empty word for a hat that only attracts death. Get started already. And don't make too much noise. I have a hangover."
Naruto sat on the ground, his legs crossed. He filled the water balloon and held it in the palm of his hand.
He closed his eyes. He remembered Jiraiya's words. It's not brute force, Naruto. It's control.
Easy for you to say! he thought. My chakra is like a fire hose!
He focused his energy. He felt the torrent of power, vast and untamed, flow into his hand. The balloon swelled, trembling.
"Spin, spin, spin…" he told himself.
He tried to make the chakra rotate. The balloon moved erratically in his hand, like a frightened fish.
"Not like that," Tsunade's sharp voice sounded beside him. She had approached without him noticing. "You're not guiding the chakra. You're shoving it. You're a brute. Don't you have any finesse?"
"Of course I do!" he protested. "I'm super delicate!"
To prove it, he tried again, concentrating so hard his face turned red. The result was the balloon shooting out of his hand and smacking Tsunade right in the face.
Cold water dripped down her chin and soaked her kimono.
The silence that followed was deathly. Tonton, who had come out to sunbathe, let out a squeal of terror and hid behind a flowerpot.
Naruto felt the blood freeze in his veins.
"Granny Tsunade…" he began, a nervous smile on his face. "It was an accident, really. Perfect aim, huh!"
Tsunade slowly wiped her face with the back of her hand. She didn't scream. She didn't hit him. She just looked at him, and in her eyes was a disappointment so deep it hurt more than any punch.
"You don't have the talent," she said, her voice flat. "You have a stupid will and the resilience of a cockroach, but you lack the foundation. The control. It's useless. Give up."
She turned and started walking back toward the inn.
"I won't give up!" Naruto yelled at her back. "I promised you! It's a bet!"
"Bets are for people who have a chance of winning, brat," she replied without stopping. "You're just wasting your time."
Naruto was left alone in the yard, with the echo of her words and the bitter taste of failure in his mouth.
But the frustration transformed into something else. A cold, stubborn fury.
"Don't have talent?" he whispered. "I'll show you what guts are, Granny Tsunade! I'll show you what will is!"
He formed a hand seal. Poof. A shadow clone appeared beside him.
"Hey, boss! How about we try throwing it against the wall? Maybe it'll explode!" the clone suggested enthusiastically.
"Shut up, you idiot! Let's try it together!" the original Naruto retorted. "If I can't do it with one hand, I can with two! And if we can't do it with two, we'll do it with twenty!"
Poof! Poof! Poof!
Nine more clones appeared, filling the yard with orange chaos.
"Me first!" "No, me!" "Hey, what if we use it for a water balloon fight?"
"CONCENTRATE!" the original roared.
And so, under the Tanzaku sun, the real training began. A dance of trial and error, of shouts and splashes, of a dozen identical wills fighting against a single, elusive problem.
In Tanzaku, the water balloons exploded with the regularity of a faulty clock.
Splash!
"Dammit!" yelled a drenched Naruto clone. "My turn! Move it!"
Splash!
"We almost had it!" the original complained, his hair stuck to his face.
Hours had passed. The yard was flooded. They were exhausted, frustrated, but they hadn't given up.
"Hey, you idiots!" the original Naruto yelled at his clones. "Stop pushing! The Pervy Sage said to spin it!"
"But if we only spin it, it has no power!" another clone retorted.
"Then do both at once, genius!" a third one shouted.
It was in the midst of that chaos, of ten Narutos yelling at themselves, that it happened. The original Naruto, fed up, grabbed a balloon. A clone, trying to help, placed his hand over it.
"I'll provide the power!" the clone yelled.
"And I'll provide the spin!" the original roared.
Their wills, for an instant, synchronized in sheer stubbornness. The chakra flowed. The clone pushed. The original spun.
The water balloon in their hands began to tremble. The water inside swirled, forming a small, visible vortex.
The rubber surface tensed, stretching to its limit.
"We got it, we got it…" the clone whispered.
But the tension was too much.
POP!
The balloon didn't just burst. It ruptured. The water splashed them both, but it was different. It wasn't a total failure. It was a partial success.
"We did it!" the original Naruto shouted, jumping for joy. "We almost popped it! We made a whirlpool!"
From the upstairs window, Tsunade watched them, a cup of sake in her hand. Her face was a mask of indifference, but her knuckles were white from how tightly she gripped the cup.
That brat… she thought. He found the solution through the most absolute stupidity. It's… infuriating. And he's just like him…
The image of Jiraiya, laughing his head off, appeared in her mind. And next to him, Nawaki and Dan, smiling with that same blind faith in their dreams.
She gripped the cup so tightly it cracked.
"Stupid dreamers," she whispered into the empty room. "All of them."
But she didn't look away from the window. She couldn't.
****
The third-floor hallway of the Academy was a bottleneck of tension. The thick, stale air vibrated with the hostile glares and contained energy of dozens of genin from different villages. Each of them was a predator sizing up the competition, and the prey, at that moment, was the silence.
Sasuke stopped in front of room 301, with Sakura a couple of steps away. They weren't walking together; they were simply heading in the same direction. The space between them was a chasm of unspoken words, a fracture that had become the new normal for their team.
Kakashi, who had accompanied them with his usual listlessness, stopped behind them. He closed his book with a soft snap, a sound that was unnaturally loud in the quiet hall.
"This is as far as I go," he said, his one visible eye curving into a smile that offered no comfort. His gaze fell on the gap between his two students, the space once occupied by a loud orange blur. "Remember, sometimes a team's greatest weakness is an empty space. Don't let it define you."
With a swirl of leaves that seemed to absorb all sound, he vanished.
Hn. An empty space… Sasuke's fury was a cold fire within him. That idiot was never anything more than a noisy nuisance. His absence isn't a weakness, it's a liberation. This exam… isn't a test for Team 7. It's a stage. My stage. Here, I'll prove to everyone—to Kakashi, to Sakura, to the Hyuga, and to that coward wherever he is—that the power of an Uchiha doesn't need to be propped up by anyone.
Sakura adjusted her glove, feeling the familiar hum of her own chakra under the skin. Kakashi's warning resonated in her mind, but with a different meaning.
Don't worry, Naruto. The thought was a silent oath. I'll protect the team. I'll protect Sasuke… even from himself. I won't let his pride destroy us. I won't be a hindrance anymore. I promised you.
Sasuke pushed the door open and walked in. Sakura followed.
The room was a cauldron of hostility. Eyes fell on them instantly, sharp and analytical. There were ninja from the Rain with breathing masks, a team from the Grass with sinister smiles, and of course, the Konoha teams.
Team 10 was clustered in a corner. Chōji was already eating a bag of chips, Shikamaru was yawning with his gaze lost on the ceiling, and Ino Yamanaka was scanning the room with the arrogance of a queen in her court.
Team 8 was near the opposite wall. Kiba stood with Akamaru peeking out of his jacket, whispering to Shino, who remained as still as an insect waiting for the moment to strike. And Hinata… Hinata wasn't hiding behind her teammates. She was standing beside them, her back straight, observing the crowd with a serene calm that was entirely new.
"Well, well. Look what the wind blew in."
Ino's voice cut through the room's murmur. She had spotted Sasuke. In an instant, she was in front of them, completely ignoring Sakura.
"Sasuke-kun, I knew you'd come! I've been dying to see you!"
She shoved Sakura aside with a calculated bump of her shoulder.
"What are you doing here, Billboard Brow? You're in the way. And where's that idiot Naruto? Did he finally give up and drop out?"
The old Sakura would have exploded. The new Sakura smiled. It was a calm, almost condescending smile that threw Ino completely off balance.
"Naruto is on a special training mission, Ino. Something a little above your level, probably," Sakura said, her voice soft but with an edge of steel. "And don't worry about us. We've had enough… 'field experience'… to handle this."
The way she said "field experience" carried an invisible weight. Ino didn't get it, but irritation flashed in her eyes. Sasuke, however, caught the nuance. His jaw tensed. It was another reference to that secret they'd excluded him from, another thorn in his pride.
"Wow, you've gotten brave!" Ino mocked, unable to find a better comeback.
Before the tension could escalate, Kiba approached, Akamaru barking a silent greeting.
"Hey, Sasuke, Sakura! Ready for action! Though it looks like your team's a little… short-staffed," he said with a sly grin. Then, his attention shifted. "Hinata! See any strong opponents? With your new eyes, you can surely see who's worth a damn!"
All the Konoha rookies instinctively turned to Hinata. They expected her to blush, stutter, hide. She didn't.
Hinata turned to Kiba, and her voice, though quiet, was firm and clear.
"Everyone is strong in their own way, Kiba-kun. True strength isn't always visible. You have to know where to look."
The serenity in her voice, the complete absence of her characteristic stutter, left Ino speechless. Even Shikamaru, who had been about to fall asleep standing up, lifted his head and looked at her, a gleam of analytical interest in his eyes.
What a drag, he thought. She's been a different person since she got back from that mission. This is going to be a pain to analyze.
It was then that a new figure joined the circle, moving with a friendliness that seemed out of place in the predator-filled room.
"Hello, everyone. Are you this year's rookies? You all seem a little tense."
The man who spoke to them wore round glasses and an affable smile. His silver hair was tied back in a ponytail, and his headband was Konoha's.
"My name is Kabuto Yakushi. This is my seventh attempt at the exam, so I guess that makes me your senpai."
As Kabuto spoke, Sakura felt a tingle at the back of her neck, a signal she had learned to recognize. She discreetly activated her Analytical Eye.
His chakra is… flawless. Too flawless. Like a polished surface without a single imperfection, not one fluctuation. It's illogical. No one has such perfect and stable control unless they're deliberately hiding it. A shinobi's flow, no matter how expert, always has small variations, like breathing. His doesn't. It's an act.
Hinata also sensed something was wrong. Subtly, she activated her Byakugan for a fraction of a second, just long enough to scan him.
His chakra circulatory system… it's normal at first glance, but… it flows with an artificial calm. Like a dammed river. There's immense pressure under that tranquil surface that I can't see clearly. It's… unnatural.
"Since I'm a veteran, I've gathered some useful information," Kabuto continued, pulling out a deck of blank cards. "My ninja info cards. They can show any data I've collected just by applying a little chakra."
Sasuke, who had been ignoring the interaction, straightened up. He wasn't interested in friendliness. He was interested in information.
"Show me what you have," he ordered, his voice sharp. "Rock Lee, from Konoha. And Gaara of the Desert."
Kabuto smiled, unoffended. "Sure, sure. Gaara and Lee… good choices."
He took two cards and placed them on the floor. Information appeared on them in a swirl of chakra.
Gaara of the Desert: Missions completed: 8 C-rank, 1 B-rank. Team status: intact. Subject status: unharmed on all missions.
Rock Lee: Missions completed: 11 D-rank, 20 C-rank. Team status: intact. Subject status: unharmed on all missions.
The phrase "unharmed on all missions" resonated in Sasuke's mind. It was a benchmark. A measure of power that he, with his wounded pride and desperate need to grow, had to surpass.
"Looks like there are a lot of talents this year," Kabuto said, putting his cards away. "Especially from villages like Sound. It's a small, fairly new nation, so I don't have much data on them…"
"Would you mind not talking about our village as if we're insignificant?"
The voice came from the other side of the room. Three ninja with Sound headbands were staring at them, their expressions loaded with hostility. The one who had spoken, a man with his face covered in bandages, took a step forward.
"Maybe we should teach you a lesson on how to treat your betters, four-eyes."
The pressure in the room skyrocketed.
There it is, Sakura thought, her analytical mind working at top speed. The trigger.
The Sound ninja moved. It wasn't a sprint, but a glide, a movement designed to be too fast for a genin to react. His fist was aimed directly at Kabuto's face.
Hinata saw it. Not with her eyes, but with her Predictive Byakugan. She saw the intent to attack a split second before the first muscle tensed. She saw the trajectory, the speed. Her eyes met Sakura's for an infinitesimal instant.
It was the only signal they needed.
Sakura reacted. The movement was so subtle no one noticed. A single, invisible thread of chakra shot from her fingertip. It didn't target the ninja, or his fist. It latched onto the kunai pouch on his right thigh.
She didn't pull hard. She didn't stop him. She simply, at the exact moment the Sound ninja threw his weight forward, gave an almost imperceptible tug.
The result was a masterpiece of subtle sabotage. The tug threw the weight of the ninja's gear off by mere grams. His center of gravity shifted by a couple of millimeters. His punch, which should have been perfect, missed.
The fist grazed Kabuto's cheek. To everyone present, it looked like Kabuto had been incredibly lucky to dodge it. The Sound ninja, surprised by his own miss, couldn't stop his momentum. The sonic shockwave from his attack, though it missed, hit Kabuto with a glancing blow.
Kabuto's glasses shattered.
Sasuke frowned. He saw the scene, and something didn't add up. The attacker's clumsiness had been… strange. Unnatural. But he couldn't pinpoint the cause.
Sakura and Hinata exchanged a quick, almost imperceptible glance. A silent understanding passed between them. They had acted as a single unit without speaking a word. They had protected Kabuto, not out of sympathy, but to avoid a direct confrontation that would reveal their own abilities. The plan had worked.
"Listen up, worms!"
The voice that boomed through the room made everyone freeze. It wasn't a shout, but it carried the weight of an avalanche.
A cloud of smoke exploded at the front of the room, and from it emerged a dozen figures, all with expressions that promised pain. At their head, a tall man, his face covered in scars and a bandana tied in a peculiar knot, watched them as if they were insects.
The pressure emanating from him was crushing, a sheer force of will that silenced all conversation and froze all movement.
The man smirked, a grin that held no kindness.
"My name is Ibiki Morino. And from this moment on… I'm your worst nightmare."
The light from the ceiling lamps seemed to dim, casting sinister shadows over Ibiki's scarred face.
Sakura and Hinata stood firm, their initial surprise replaced by a cold determination. This wasn't a physical battle; it was a psychological war. And they, now, were prepared.
Sasuke looked at Ibiki, and his hidden Sharingan throbbed beneath his eyelids. He didn't see an examiner. He saw another obstacle on his path to power, another wall he would have to tear down. Alone.
The team was fractured, yes. The empty space Naruto had left was a constant reminder of their dysfunction. But the individuals who remained were sharper, more dangerous, and more desperate than ever. The real test had just begun.