Naruto: Reborn as Gaara!

I moved at breakneck speeds across the field, not allowing anyone or anything to catch up. My mastery of the shunshin had grown with time, so now I covered the space between me and the tower at a speed that most chunin would have difficulty keeping up with.

Of course, everything would go wrong shortly. Very shortly. I moved, and it was only a sudden voice in my head that helped me stop in time to avoid running right into a clothesline. However, the person in front of me didn't stop and crashed into me.

I scattered into sand, quickly reforming before he could take advantage of my dispersion and search for the original. I could only thank the gods for the forethought in setting a decoy trail. If that was the original, he would have been very dead.

Noel Yatsuki just looked down at me from a few feet away, and I resisted the urge to scowl. "Thought you were finishing this task as quickly as possible?" I asked, snarkily.

"Oh. Did I say that? I'm sorry. I meant I'd be finishing my mission as quickly as possible, and I'm sure you're beginning to realize what that mission is." Of course, it had to be to kill me. I had no idea who put it in Rasa's head that this was even a vaguely good idea. Sending me here alone was taunting the other villages, and if there was any village that would not take well to that, it was the hot-headed Cloud Village. The fuckers wouldn't hesitate to just off me.

I checked my surroundings for any other attackers, and that was all that allowed me to duck in time as a kick lashed right over my head. Noel Yatsuki had come in a team of two and had another Cloud team tagging along with him. That meant there were five Ninja with me right now.

I tried to game out the task in my head, and all I could see was that this entire thing was a very bad idea. Either a bad idea or a genius one. Either Kusa didn't realize what would happen by shunting all the genin in the most tense Chunin Exams since their inception in an unsupervised area with a simple goal, or they realized and intended for this to happen. With no other objectives beyond reaching the tower, what was stopping all the genin from deciding to settle whatever long-standing grudges they had with their fellow shinobi? If the Chunin Exams were a substitute for war, then what this task was simulating was a free-for-all when ninja from various shinobi met on contested foreign territory. The kind of shit the books had said had happened in Ame in the first war when Konoha, Iwa, Kumo, and Kiri had ravaged their way through the region in search of whatever objectives could be denied their adversaries. There was no reason for any of them to stay in Ame. It was all pride and bloodlust that had doomed the region. In much the same vein, there was no reason why the genin shouldn't just rush to the tower at the fastest speed possible. Instead, they were seeking opponents to settle grudges or remove threats.

I couldn't be very critical of them either because the original body is doing much the same thing right now. He was taking a circuitous route to the tower to take out as many foreign ninja as possible. My goal as a clone was to arrive there first and save our spot in the top 8 for the third stage.

This plan was stupid, but orders were orders, and I didn't have much leeway to flout those for the time being. I broke the staring contest between me and my assailants by blurring into motion right at one of them. My kunai lashed out, aiming to sever his head from his shoulders, but I found my wrist caught in an unyielding grip. With little leverage and much strength, Noel plucked me from the ground and tossed me straight at the ground. I was able to roll with the impact and use it to boost myself right into a shunshin as I ran. I wouldn't give myself good odds against Noel on his own. With a team of Kumo Ninja at his back, there was no chance, and with the original holding onto the gourd containing most of the sand, escape was my only option.

A chuckle at my side had me looking in shock. With the aura of shunshin around me, turning the world into a blur, I was barely able to see a blond figure moving at my side, keeping pace with me. And then it disappeared. Only instinct helped me duck underneath the second clothesline. This time, I was paying enough attention for me to hear the word he shouted out as the attack missed: "Lariat."

Another ninja's punch sailed past my head, and I stepped into his guard, being quick and lethal before Noel could intervene to save this weaker teammate of his. He tried stepping back, but that was useless. Most people were terrible at adapting to fighting someone of my height. He showed it in how he overextended his kick. Moving to the left and to the right again, my kunai lashed straight through his leg, cutting it out from below the knee. The wind enhancement made it child's play, and from there, it was easy to send the one in my other hand right into his neck in a fatal jab. The screams that started after he lost his leg died out instantly.

I didn't see the punch that obliterated my head from a enraged Noel however.

XXXX - THE ORIGINAL

"Well, that was a bit unexpected," I thought to myself as I stared straight at three of the Konoha ninja who had dropped down to face me from the foliage. I smiled at them placidly while asking them to step aside. I was more interested in Iwa and Kumo than Konoha. My orders had been to kill as many foreign ninja as I could without raising unnecessary suspicion or drawing undue attention to myself, and securing my spot in the finals. Konoha had come with the most ninja, so I wasn't surprised they were the ones I ran into the most. This team had a Hyuga along with two shinobi I couldn't identify. The Hyuga narrowed those pupil-less eyes at me, and I resisted the urge to salivate with greed. Doujutsu. They were something else. The Tenseigan had turned Toneri from a blind creep to someone capable of posing a threat to a fucking demigod. A doujutsu would mean a lot for my future safety. Not this one, though. The covered forehead and common sense told me all I needed to know. He was of the branch house, and I didn't know anything about fuinjutsu, so I didn't have a chance in hell of breaking the curse seal the Hyuga were so proud of.

They moved silently. He came straight at me with a thrust from two extended fingers, and they slammed right into smooth unyielding sand. His shock was his undoing. The sand reached out and grabbed his fingers before he could pull them back. With a thought, his right hand was missing an index and middle finger. With another, the screaming boy was slammed into the ground before being completely encased in sand. Both his teammates had abandoned their own approaches after seeing what happened to their partner. I considered killing him and being done with it, but I ended up changing my mind. I'd need Konoha. There was no way to turn Suna around without a positive relationship with our closest neighbors and allies, and while I doubted this would do much to help, I had a feeling that killing these particular ninja would cause me a headache down the line.

"I will let you all live. Do not forget my mercy here today," I said, doing my best impression of an anime villain before walking away after releasing the Hyuga from my sand. I thought through the conflict with Noel and came to a simple realization. He was stronger than me. Stronger by a wide enough margin that I was actually beginning to have doubts about my ability to win the exams as things stood now.

From there, I moved directly towards the tower. This time, I was less inclined to stop for anything beyond the absolute necessities. Of course, it was difficult for me to ignore all the curious things I caught from the edges of my vision or the various things my sand helped me sense. Speaking of sand sensing, I had to figure out Gaara's sand eye jutsu. My best guess so far was that it had to have some similarities to the way my own sand clone jutsu worked, just a bit more specialized for sensing. Scratch the espionage bit, please. A giant eye made of sand wasn't going to be spying on anyone remotely worthy of being spied on anytime soon. Very few people were that stupid.

I quickly passed Kurotsuchi and her team, and I was lucky not to run into the Kumo squad as I made my way to the tower. I had little doubt that they'd be most upset at me for offing one of their own. In hindsight, it might have been better to disperse the clone and forget about that front, but the opportunity to learn more about Noel Yatsuki had stalled my hand. While I learned a lot, I might have actually succeeded in turning the man from a reluctant rival to a most vehement adversary. We'd see how it turned out, though. We'd see eventually.

The tower was tall and brown. That was the best description I could honestly come up with. I entered and found that the only team to have beaten me here was the Konoha team with Hana Inuzuka, but minus a member. One of the boys, Rin, I think. I avoided bringing it up as I exchanged greetings with them and moved to find one of the rooms set aside for recuperation. I had a jutsu to reverse-engineer.

I had been proven right. Most of the ninja were still in the plains, fighting amongst themselves to settle petty, and mostly inherited grudges. I guess stupidity ran in the shinobi world as strongly as it did in the one I'd been first born in. I noticed a clash between some Kumo and Iwa ninja, and I took the time to peer in with my eye and noticed that Kurotsuchi was the one at the tip of Iwa's spear. Noel was nowhere to be found. He had been the first one I searched for when I finally figured out the sand eye jutsu, but he was nowhere to be found. Either he was deeper in the foliage than my eye could peer from this vantage point, or he had arrived at the tower sometime between me retiring to this room and figuring out Gaara's trademark sand scrying jutsu.

Returning to the battle at hand, Kurotsuchi was nothing if not deadly. She was weaker than me, I'm sure of that, but not by as much as I had thought. Her taijutsu was nothing to write home about. The one time a random Kumo nin had managed to get close enough to her for hand-to-hand combat, she had been sent scrambling and had to rely on her teammate, the burly one, to save her. It would have been pathetic if I didn't also see the kind of ninjutsu she was throwing around. Streams of lava burst from her mouth, causing chaos and redesigning the landscape wherever they landed. It was a fantastic display of skill and power.

Her teammate was also impressive in his own subtler ways. He was older than her by a fair bit, which made him more suited to close combat with the other ninja who appeared to be around his age. With fists cloaked in stone, each punch he managed to land was a battle-ending shot on its own. Eventually, the Iwa contingent dealt with that group and split up to make their way to the tower. I would have expected them to guard Kurotsuchi until she arrived, but it turned out they had different plans. Following a few of them with my eye, I noticed that they weren't even attempting to approach the tower. They were seeking other ninja. Of course, they were. If any exam was a terrible idea, it was this one. And the worst part was that it was too bad for me to dismiss it as stupidity. Kusagakure was making a play here, and it was difficult to pinpoint what it was.

XXXXX - HANA INUZUKA (TWO HOURS AGO)

Isagi had been the one to point out what was wrong with the exam. With only one objective that looked to be easy enough, the overzealous foreigners would create their own objectives for themselves. We could already hear it in how violence had broken out across the fields. Our plan was simple: to ignore everything and make our way straight to the tower. We had no need to fight anyone here, and hopefully, all the monsters would fight amongst themselves and eliminate each other before we had to meet them in the third round.

A fight between Gaara of the Desert and Noel Yatsuki had to be at the very top of my prayers. Metaphorically, of course. Inuzuka did not pray. Mother had been clear enough on that point. The only god we worshipped was the one who had given us our animal partners, and the only way to 'pray' to him was through a good fight. Sadly, I wouldn't be doing any praying here.

I scrapped that assessment as a trio of Iwa genin landed in front of us. They were older than we were, late teenagers at the very youngest. That was one thing I had noticed during these exams. Most of the other villages had sent older teams than Konoha had. With the exception of the prodigies, I was the youngest genin at the tournament, and my teammates weren't much older than I was. Rin was the oldest of us all, and he was six months older than me. Of course, the dumb rockheads had to point it out in the most annoying way possible: "Look at these itty bitty treehuggers," one of them said in a sing-song voice, clearly attempting to rile us up.

I turned to Isagi, and once I received the signal from one of the Kikaichu I had allowed to tag along on my collar, I moved with the triplets following me instantly. The first one to fall was the idiot who had spoken. He was big and wearing the traditional Iwa outfit. He showed no fear as I approached, probably expecting me to lose in a battle of taijutsu due to the size difference between us. He reached out with a punch, but it was slow. Too slow. I ducked underneath it, and Haimaru used my back as a boost to dive right onto him. He tried to swat one of my companions out of the air, but Haimaru2 was already heading for his feet.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, he had no choice but to jump backward in an attempt to retreat. It proved to be of little utility as Haimaru3 was right on his heels. He had come from the left and jumped in the air at the same time as our adversary. I followed his example, and with a single hand seal, we became two whirling tornados of power that crashed right into his body. He was forced back and knocked unconscious in short order. When I finally sat up and got a better look at the battle unfolding around us, I noticed that I had been the last one to finish. Isagi stood above the still form of one of the Kumo attackers. From the way his body twitched in short erratic spurts, I was willing to bet that his kikaichu had had a veritable feast from that one. Rin was staring ahead with unseeing eyes. A look at his opponent told me what had happened, and I rushed to wrap him up in a hug. Isagi, the bastard that he was, appeared in front of me, stopping me from comforting my friend. His words rang out, "We are ninja of Konohagakure. We serve the great tree, and to make her prosper, we must make sacrifices. Rin, what happened today was one of those sacrifices. Do not mourn the death of a foreigner, not when we have a mission to complete." And with that, he was off. I hated him for his speech, and I hated myself for immediately following in his footsteps because he was right. Konoha came first. Konoha would always come first, and we had to make it to the next stage for Konoha's prosperity to remain undisturbed. I didn't quite understand the entirety of it, but what I got was simple: We needed to make it to the third exam at the very least, and win the whole thing if we could. It was important for the village, so it was beyond important to us.

We were in the home stretch when Rin suddenly stopped. I looked at him, and he just closed his eyes before forming the ram seal.

"Someone is coming for us. Someone strong," he said suddenly, the first words the normally talkative boy had spoken since the run-in with the Iwa shinobi.

"Us? Are you sure?" Isagi asked. His shades made it difficult to tell what he was thinking at any time.

"Yes. They've been on our tail for a while now. I didn't say anything to avoid a false alarm, but now I'm sure," Rin confirmed.

I watched Isagi place a gloved hand on his chin as he thought. "Can we outrun them to the tower?"

"No. They'd catch up long before then," Rin instantly replied.

"Then we fight. Rin and I will set up the traps. Hana, prepare the brothers. You will take point," Isagi said, a plan coming together in his head. I nodded in acceptance of my own role in the events that were to follow.

Isagi and Rin moved through the grasslands, setting up a host of traps. Spring-loaded kunai wire traps were spread out with no clear logic to their positioning beyond whatever Isagi saw with those eyes of his. Rin laid out a host of other traps, most of them of the explosive variety, as his own contribution. The blond boy even managed to produce a bear trap from somewhere.

When all the traps were finally placed, we stood in a line and waited for our assailant. Some part of me hoped it was Gaara of the Desert. He was the one most likely to leave us be, but I knew it couldn't be. Rin could recognize his chakra anywhere. He had memorized the feeling like his life depended on it because one day it might.

When Noel Yatsuki landed in front of me, I could barely resist the urge to scream out an expletive.

A/N: We'll probably breeze through these exams before taking a timeskip and getting to the main plot of the story. Thanks for reading. 

Name; Gaara of the Desert

Age; Six

Level; 7

Title; Genin of Sunagakure (10% increased growth when trained by Suna ninja); Jinchuriki of the Ichibi (+ 50 Sand Control; +20 Ninjutsu; 50% increased growth when training in the desert)

Chakra Capacity; 20,000/20,000 (Regeneration; 100 cp per minute)

Stamina; 102/120 (Regeneration; 1sp per minute)

Strength; 28

Dexterity; 32

Endurance; 60

Intelligence; 56

Durability; 32

Stat Points; 0

Skills;

Taijutsu; 41

Ninjutsu; 45

Genjutsu; 2

Sand Control; 65

Pain tolerance; 24

Meditation; 22

Chakra affinities;

Wind; 40

Earth; 32

Fire; 28

Jutsu;

Sand Release: Sand Clone- 54

Wind Release: Great Breakthrough- 46

Wind Release: Wind Bullets- 32

Earth Release: Earth Wall- 22

Earth Release: Earth Flow River- 23

Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld - 9

Fire Release; Great Fireball- 12

Shunshin no jutsu- 49