Springtime Shinobi 59 (Patreon)

After spending the day walking around, eating lunch, and relaxing in a park with Hinata, Seikun returned home to eat dinner with her, Sakura, Ino, and Tenten. They were planning to stay there until the start of the Chunin Exams, and since they were supposed to be conserving energy and taking it easy, they essentially treated it as a spa, enjoying massages, the open-air bath, sauna, and steam room while walking around in yukata, bath robes, or requisitioned sets of his clothing.

Seikun originally expected Tenten to be ostracized within the group, even while being considered a part of it, but her charisma and general outgoing nature allowed her to befriend people easily. She and Ino butted heads a bit, but that was true for the former and just about everyone. Fortunately, Tenten was quick to compromise, laugh things off, and even pander if she felt it would resolve things quickly. She was also genuinely interested in fashion, self-improvement, artistry, and medical ninjutsu, so she could talk or get others to ramble for hours without getting bored.

Unfortunately for Seikun, Tenten was just as, if not more so, mischievous than Sakura and Ino. She was also good at egging people on, so despite everyone gathering to take things easy, Seikun felt like he couldn't catch a break as all four girls assailed him at every opportunity. It didn't matter if it was in the bath, the gym, his studio, the living room, the bathroom, or his bedroom; they were relentless and seemed to get a real kick out of his general inability to resist their incitement. As such, while the four of them woke up the day of the Chunin Exams feeling refreshed and ready, Seikun looked paler than usual and had lost nearly three kilograms despite eating three to five meals a day, not counting the girls themselves...

...

..

.

Heading to the address listed in his mission scroll, Seikun found himself outside a large, three-tiered building with a circular base, no windows, and a red-tiled roof. The building was formerly one of the police stations servicing the Uchiha Police Force, but the ANBU had since repurposed it to function as a safe house and operations site.

Ignoring the many gazes focused on him, Seikun confidently entered the building without anyone stopping or appearing to show him the way. The interior walls were covered in paper talismans that could place those who viewed them under a genjutsu or outright explode, but Seikun did his best to ignore them as he made his way to a room where, based on the quality and quantity of their Chakra, nineteen Chunin and five Jonin-level Shinobi were waiting.

"It's about damn time you showed up," said the person at the front of the room, a slender woman of average height with pupilless brown eyes, an athletic build, and violet hair fixed in a spiky, fanned-out ponytail. More notably, as she was seated on a table with her left leg raised, supporting her elbow, her outfit consisted of a thin metal mesh that conformed to her body from her neck to her thighs, an orange skirt that currently served no purpose, grey shin guards, a standard Konoha forehead protector, dark blue tabi sandals, and a tan overcoat with a purple interior. She also had a pendant around her neck, resembling a snake's fang, but it wasn't the first thing people would notice when gazing at her chest as the thin wire mesh fitted to her body also conformed to her shapely breasts.

"I wear this outfit to distract people," said the woman, Mitarashi Anko. "If you keep gawking, you're going to trigger my instinct to take advantage of your carelessness."

"You can try," responded Seikun, his expression and tone calm, causing a broad, somewhat serpent-like smile to develop across Anko's face. Were it not for the presence of other people, Seikun got the distinct impression she would have attacked right then and there.

"Take a seat, bouzu. And for future reference, someone as young as you should show up at least an hour early for briefings," said Anko. Seikun did as he was told, but since his chronological age was nearly twice what he believed Anko's to be, he couldn't help rolling his eyes...

...

..

.

'At least now I know how Tenten could get away with attaching mirrors to the ceiling in the anime...' thought Seikun, a little shaken after learning just how rigged the Chunin Exams were. The teams that would advance to the Forest of Death were determined even before the exam started, so unless someone dropped out of their own accord, most of the cheating that was supposed to get people disqualified was completely ignored.

With this being the case, Seikun and the other members of the Guardian Squad were able to enter the Forest of Death early, knowing the precise gate through which their designated teams would be entering despite the process being advertised as random. In essence, if Konoha really wanted to eliminate someone, they would have one or more Chunin or Jonin ready and waiting at the gate their targets were predetermined to be assigned...

'Sasuke and Naruto have gotten much stronger...' Seikun noted, sensing the moment they entered his range. Naruto had left the village for a short while with Jiraiya, and the last time he saw Sasuke was when they met up for their promised rematch. Even then, Sasuke had improved considerably under Kakashi's mentorship, mastering several Earth, Wind, and Lightning Release Jutsu, including the Chidori, but now his Chakra reserves were at a level exceeding most Jonin...

'I guess I shouldn't be too surprised considering he's one of the Children of Prophecy and has been training under someone who became a Jonin at ten years old...' thought Seikun. At the same time, he felt like he needed to ramp up the girls' training, as Sakura was easily Chunin-level, but next to Naruto and Sasuke, she came across as...inadequate. She might not have any difficulty taking on dozens of Genin or even Chunin-level opponents, but with most of their future adversaries being S-Rank Shinobi or outright Kage-tier, Seikun couldn't help feeling anxious...

...

..

.

Contrasting the events in canon, where they barely made it at the last moment, Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke completed the second stage of the Chunin Exams in a little over seven hours. Sasuke had entered the event intending to surpass his brother's record of five hours and thirty-seven minutes, but since the first two teams they encountered had the wrong scroll, it wasn't meant to be.

With his mission ending much sooner than anticipated, Seikun could have met up with Sakura and spent time with her as they waited for everyone else to arrive, but since the opportunity had presented itself, he remained in the Forest of Death to search for a specific team. Unfortunately, he only managed to find one of their members, but it was the most important one, a bespectacled young man with ash-gray hair fastened into a ponytail. His forehead protector denoted him as a Genin of Konoha, but anyone familiar with the Naruto anime and manga knew that couldn't be further from the truth...

"Hmmm...?" 

Sensing that something was amiss, the young man, Yakushi Kabuto, demonstrated speed far beyond the level of a Genin as he used Body Flicker to evade Seikun's attempt to crush him with a vortex of watery Chakra.

"Who goes there!?" shouted Kabuto, pretending he had no clue what was happening as he exclaimed, "My team already lost its scroll, so there's no point in attacking me!"

Emerging from behind several trees, Seikun and his clones synchronized their response, stating, "There's no point in pretending. Give your Master my regards when you eventually reunite in Hell..."

Discarding his fretful facade, Kabuto became serious as he gathered a layer of Chakra around his hands, smirked, and remarked, "Takahashi Seikun...Konoha's Seiryu. So, that senile old man finally caught on to me? He sure took his sweet time..."

'Since when did I receive a nickname like Seiryu...?' Seikun asked himself, feeling perplexed despite the stoic severity of his expression. All things considered, Seiryu, meaning Blue Dragon, was a pretty badass nickname. However, as he had only gone on a single mission outside the village, he didn't expect to have already received a sobriquet that would likely follow him his entire career...

"Surrender, and I can at least make things painless..." said Seikun, forming a ram seal while the eleven clones he had produced formed seals of their own. Water Clones were unique in that they were linked to and controlled by the user, albeit with some autonomy, so Seikun caused Kabuto's pupils to contract as he essentially completed all the hand seals he needed for his Jutsu simultaneously, causing nearly a small lake's volume of water to appear out of thin air, swirling around their position.

"It appears the rumors regarding your aptitude were underexaggerated..." remarked Kabuto, a bead of sweat on his left cheek as he got into a ready stance, scanning Seikun and his clones in the hopes of identifying the real one. However, as his Chakra was practically indiscernible from the air and water flowing around them, he would need to be able to perceive the flow of Chakra to have any hope of locating Seikun's true body.

"Last chance..." said Seikun, his expression and tone hardening as the ground beneath them began to tremble. He couldn't recall what Jutsu Kabuto was able to perform, so he manipulated the water around them to tunnel underneath them, eventually causing the section of land they were standing on to start spinning along with the current.

"Sorry, but I have no intention of surrendering, dying, or having my mind melted by the Intelligence Division..." responded Kabuto, punctuating his words by quickly biting his right thumb before slamming his hand against the ground. A pattern of sealing language spread across the ground as a circle with eight lines running from its center, but to Kabuto's wide-eyed stupefaction, what appeared wasn't the colossal snake he was planning to use as a distraction. Instead, it was a much smaller snake, barely even a hundred centimeters long.

"Sorry," said Seikun. "This isn't particularly known, but the water produced by my Shidai Seiun has innate sealing properties. It's honestly impressive you were able to summon anything at all..."

"Well, that's not fair..." remarked Kabuto, his smirk turning into a cramped smile as he had just wasted more than a third of his aggregate Chakra to summon something that would be useless in combat. The water swirling around them had since enclosed into a sphere, so even if he could sprout wings and fly, he doubted breaking through would be easy.

Before Kabuto could think of a plan, Seikun and his clones brought their hands together, causing the sphere of water to contract like an inverted explosion. Kabuto wove hand seals at a blinding speed to form a dome of earth around him, which was supposed to counteract Water Release, but all he did was seal his fate further as Seikun transformed the Chakra kept at bay by the dome into plasma, vaporizing both it and the person within...

...

..

.

Though he hadn't used any of his own Chakra to deal with Kabuto, Seikun felt empty and drained when he arrived at the six-story observation tower at the center of the Forest of Death. He didn't feel nearly as bad as when he had killed Zabuza and Haku, but the fact he could purposely take a life, and with such ease, bothered him. However, as Kabuto was an even greater threat than the Akatsuki if left to his own devices, Seikun believed he had done the right thing.

Fortunately for Seikun, the teams of Hinata and Tenten had also finished the second stage of the exam by the time he reached the tower. Ino was much stronger than she was in canon, but since she was paired with Choji and Shikamaru, who weren't particularly concerned with speed, she didn't arrive until the morning of the third and final day. Until then, Seikun did his best to pretend nothing was wrong but actively sought comfort in the trio, particularly Hinata, by cuddling with them in their rooms...

...

..

.

(A/N: Future Sakura? Keep in mind that these images are AI-generated xD)