“Alright we have our half eliminated. We still have too many people unfortunately. So if anyone wants to drop out now is your time…” After waiting for a few moments the instructor spoke again. “Since we have no teams leaving we’ll do team fights against each other with the winning team moving on to the finals.”

I counted the teams and there were a few who needed to team up since their teammates were eliminated. They’d have a huge disadvantage. There were still seven full teams with only the spares making up the last three. After everyone had joined a group we drew lots to see who would go next.

I tried to find the fights interesting but they were still children. Tsunade or Jiraiya might have been able to beat these teams by themselves. Finally an interesting fight came up as the cloud ninja I had an interest in fought. His teammates looked like the best of the best as well. The golden eyed boy was joined by a tanned skinned blonde and an ebony skinned beauty with fiery red hair and orange tips.

The first thought I had was to kill the man and take his woman for myself. Woah, where did that come from? Must be my snake side wanting me to have more mates. I quickly crush those feelings. They’re from another village so it would be far more difficult getting them to our village. They are also only fourteen, the same as me. It still had me waiting in anticipation for our fight in the finals.

The man had no eyes for the match. He was mismatched with one of the pair teams and didn’t pay any attention towards the match. His teammates decimated their competition while he continued to look into the crowd. He continued to look at me. I couldn’t help but be excited. I didn’t pay much attention to the fight but as they walked away I saw the wind scars and scorch marks from their fight. One of the contestants, one of the few left from the rain village, was crippled. 

One more somewhat interesting fight involving one of our own shinobi where they barely squeaked a win out. A team of shinobi from other villages beat a full team from the cloud village. The final interesting match was the other two hidden leaf village ninjas fighting. It was closer than the rest and the team that was a year older managed to win from more experience and drive to win.

We get to our match and we do our game to see who gets to fight the team by themselves. Tsunade loses first leaving me and Jiraiya. “JAN KEN PO!” Damnit how is this the only thing he’s good at? Jiraiya steps up to fight the group by himself. I yell. “I’m not bailing you out child of fate. If they beat you to death I’ll avenge you though.”

He had a big smile on his face as he spoke to us and the crowd. “You heard him. No need to be wary of them jumping in to save me. It’s three against one, hope you can give me a good fight.”

The hidden mist village was unfortunately Jiraiya’s weakness. The team was composed of all women. Putting the other two from their other team that passed they had the highest number of female ninjas. I gave him one more warning. “That girl with the white skin feels dangerous. She might be from the Yuki clan who can use ice release.”

Just as expected the fight starts out slow with Jiraiya mostly defending. He was just more prepared than the other team, slowly whittling down the two non-special mages. The fight ended with her flinging ice needles at him while he defended using his special hair needle defense and technique. His defense was high enough to soak the needles but she eventually cornered herself and was struck down by Jiraiya’s needle barrage.

They had the lightest injuries as I clicked my tongue. He should have permanently crippled that ice release ninja. Well, so much for that. The remaining fight had the last team against mist village and the last fodder team. They lost badly as one of the mist village practically streamed out “boil release” and significantly injured the rest.

She then yelled. “My name is Melinda Terumi and I’m looking for a husband!” She gave me and the golden eyed boy an extra furtive glance before blushing and running away. Once again my instinct told me to go take her in front of this crowd as my mate. I have to fight back the impulse.

Marrying outside of the village would be the quickest way to get sent on an impossible mission and die. If that were to happen I would just defect but I really didn’t have to for just one woman. We left and had to stick around the village for a month as they prepared for the finals. It was getting harder to control these urges.

After going to a whore house and being attacked I decided I could wait until I was a bit older to try this again. If I was any less skilled the group of grown men could have killed me. I decide to spend the rest of our time here sabotaging the village. I stole all sorts of information and managed to leak plans for the rain village to betray the mist village.

The exams were almost called off but the rain village pushed forwards reconciliation and paid a hefty fine to make up for the betrayal. The mist village was also given any spots that needed to be filled by the examinees who died in the month-long period. Three ninjas died and the group Jiraiya fought were given their positions with a cloud shinobi given the final spot.

Well that’s incredibly unfortunate for Jiraiya as he has to go against the golden eyed shinobi in the first round. I’m given fodder for two rounds unfortunately. I swiftly knock out my opponent by flickering behind him and chopping his neck. If he was stronger I’d cripple him but he got here through luck. The first truly difficult mission would be his death so no need to extend his short life.

Tsunade fought against the Terumi girl and it was an insane fight. Both were far beyond chunin level and would be put at chunin after the fight. Tsunade barely squeaked out a win just from sheer determination and great taijutsu after they both ran out of chakra. The golden eyed both fought and tried to do the same thing I did to the opponent against Jiraiya but he activated his spikey defense causing the boy to punch into the needles.

His hand bled and he flickered away again avoiding the spikes he shot out. The boy pulled out a sword and channeled lightning through it. The hair was a good insulator but after a few chops Jiraiya gave up to save his hair from being cut.