Lightning Sage

Itachi and Raiden went inside the desert. The first thing they did is discuss strategy.

"How do you want to do this? Do we find other teams or look for scrolls?" Raiden asked Itachi.

"How about doing both?" Itachi answered and smiled toward Raiden.

"Agreed." Raiden also smiled and they both activated their Sharingan to spot any team close enough.

They started flickering while searching for both scrolls and teams using their Sharingans. Soon enough, they found their first pray, a team from Suna.

Itachi immediately used a Genjutsu: False Surroundings to hide both of them and ambush the team. Raiden waited until they were within range and flickered behind the one with the scroll which was on his body belt.

He grabbed the scroll nimbly and flickered back while showing the scroll to Itachi. "First one down, three to go."

Itachi smiled then released his Genjutsu which made the Suna team think they still had their scroll. The one that held the scroll started panicking, but Raiden and Itachi were already moving towards their next target.

~~~

After two hours from the start of the exam, they held 5 scrolls.

"Should we continue or head for the tower in the middle?" Asked Itachi.

"I heard from Jiraiya-sensei that the third round is always the same, it's a one on one tournament. Only 8 people will be allowed to compete in the finals, so if 10 teams pass this exam, they will most likely have Preliminary matches until only 8 remain.

So how about we help them instead of waiting for two more days. We'll look for the other scrolls hidden around and get the other teams' scrolls. We only need two more teams to pass."

Itachi nodded and they started their hunt. They took the scrolls from all teams that weren't from Konoha and started looking around for the hidden scrolls.

During their search, they found quite a number of ruins that were filled with traps and hidden passages.

Fortunately, most of the scrolls were in obvious places and didn't require searching too much.

~~~

On the second day, a sandstorm hit the desert and blinded most of the teams.

"We have 27 scrolls, that should mean we stopped at least 5 teams, I think that should be enough. Let's wait out the sandstorm then head to the tower." Said Raiden.

Itachi nodded and they moved to find cover.

While looking for cover, Raiden glimpsed a ruin in the horizon. He nudged Itachi and signalled him to follow. They headed towards the building and reached a huge double door a couple of minutes later.

Before Itachi could head to open the door, Raiden put his arm in front of him. Itachi looked at him and saw that he was using his Sharingan. He observed the door as well and realised there were seals on the door that were hidden because of the sandstorm.

Raiden nodded to Itachi and they both went towards one side of the doors and removed the seals at the same time.

Raiden looked at the seal but wasn't able to identify it so he put it away for later. They opened the doors and entered.

They both used their Sharingan to check for traps and what they found was that everywhere other than the main hall was sealed and had multiple traps.

"What is this place? Why does it have so many seals and traps?" Asked Itachi.

Raiden looked around the main hall. There was a man built river on one side of the room with a second one that held nothing on the other side.

In the middle of the hall, there were multiple suits of samurai armour and all kinds of weapons.

"It seems this was a forge of some sort. Now it makes sense why it's so heavily sealed and trapped, you wouldn't want anyone stealing from the forge."

Itachi kept looking around with his Sharingan until he suddenly stopped.

"Above us, about three stories up, there are very large chakra signatures."

Raiden also did the same and looked up. He saw three extremely large chakra signatures.

"Those might be chakra metal weapons. They're probably the best in this forge."

"Do you think we can get through these traps?" asked Itachi.

"Maybe if we take our time with it, but most likely not. We would need a lot of knowledge about the seals and how they were made so we don't trigger any by accident."

Raiden suddenly took out a piece of paper and a brush, he sat down and started writing. After he was done, he slapped the seal on the ground and put his chakra in it.

"This is a beacon seal, it's useless to anyone but the person who injected his chakra in it. If we want to come back later, once we are in its range it'll start releasing a chakra signature to draw us over." (A/N: Made up.)

Itachi nodded and they both sat down to wait out the storm, fortunately they didn't have to wait for long as the storm ended by night. They decided to sleep here for today and head to the tower tomorrow.

The following day, they both headed to the tower. When they were close to the tower, they saw multiple teams preparing an ambush to those going to the tower. They easily dealt with them and took the scrolls they had.

They entered the tower with 15 hours left, they had 33 scrolls in total. They registered with the staff in the tower and were told to rest until the time ended.

15 hours later, the second stage ended. They were told to assemble in the main hall of the tower. When they got there, Baki was waiting.

"Good job on passing. Only four teams passed this stage. Before we proceed does anyone want to forfeit? You won't affect your teammates if you forfeit now."

One of the teams, from Konoha, spoke up and declared they wanted to forfeit. Raiden looked towards them, they were badly injured and looked like they would need some time to recover.

"All three of you?" They nodded their heads.

"Fine, you will be taken care of at the hospital, medic-nin, please take them there." Some ninjas took them outside the hall to start healing them.

Baki looked at the remaining teams in the hall, exactly 8 people. Two teams from Suna and one team from Konoha qualified to the final stage.