Minato was not thrilled to know that an enemy of the state was prancing around the Chunin Exams without his knowledge. However, now that the exams had started, the situation had become quite sensitive. He couldn't just walk over to one of the Sound Ninja supervisors and demand that he be interrogated; that would make the Hidden Leaf look untrustworthy to the other villages.
Convincing some of the Kages and village leaders was not a valid option as many would seek to profit from the Hidden Leaf's internal troubles. Minato told Chojusen that they would be keeping a close eye on the disguised Orochimaru. As soon as the exams were finished, they would dispose of him.
Chojusen begrudgingly agreed to let the snake-man live for a couple more days, but he did send one of his clones to keep Orochimaru from doing anything too disturbing.
…
More days passed and the second phase of the Chunin Exams had just finished. Apparently, too many ninjas passed, so a preliminary exam for the final exam would now take place. The preliminaries would be a way to reduce the current number of examinees by half; it would be a series of one on one fights, that would end when either opponent was knocked out, killed, or deemed unfit to continue battle.
Unsurprisingly, only the Hidden Leaf and Hidden Sand villages had examinees that made it to the preliminaries. They were the only villages with Kages that were participating in this Chunin Exam. The three other Kages were not in a good relationship with the Hokage and Kazekage. Consequently, no ninjas from the Hidden Mist, Hidden Rock, or Hidden Cloud, attended this exam.
The first fight in the preliminaries was Sakura Haruno versus Ino Yamanaka. Chojusen obviously rooted for Ino since she was his girlfriend. After the two girls walked into the fighting area, they both say "No hard feelings," and began quite the dramatic fight. Both Ino and Sakura were well above Chunin level for taijutsu, when their ridiculous capacity for chakra control was added in the mix, a deadly spar was the result.
To the untrained eye it looked like they were fighting with advanced taijutsu. However, all the supervisors and medics recognized that under the pretense of their melee combat, there was a hidden fight with chakra scalpels and strings. One wrong move and either Ino or Sakura could end up with muscle lacerations.
As the fight progressed in intensity, some of the Chunin supervisors openly expressed shame in themselves for being outclassed by the two twelve-year-old girls.
Three minutes into the fight, Ino was starting to show signs of being more physically exhausted than Sakura. It made sense, since Chojusen gave Sakura the Water Healing technique; with Sakura's excellent chakra control, she could manage to use Water Healing to have a higher endurance when compared to Ino. This sign of weakness was noticed by Sakura and she decided to try and prolong the fight to win by exhausting her opponent.
Noticing the change in Sakura's style of combat, Ino decided to take a risk and go completely offensive. Because Sakura adapted a defensive fighting style to prolong the fight, Ino grasped an opportunity to strike will full force.
She cornered Sakura into one of the walls, and began a two pronged assault. With nowhere to go but left or right, Ino used her chakra scalpel infused hands to send one punch to Sakura's right shoulder. Sakura dodged to the left, so Ino punched with her other hand to the left as well. Sakura ducked under the second punched, now expecting to have a chance to get away. Unfortunately Ino used her left leg to send a kick Sakura's way.
Sakura took the kick head on, but she used this attack as an opportunity herself to trip Ino's only remained leg. Sakura never imagined that Ino would actually jump to get away from her tripping kick. Jumping was a terribly bad idea, as a ninja would lose all their mobility until they landed. Sakura was still somewhat in shock from receiving Ino's kick, so the pain had yet to catch up with her. She used this opportunity to end the fight by tearing apart the tissues in Ino's body as she moved through the air.
To everyone's surprise, Ino stopped mid air and hovered for a split second before she launched a surprise attack which ripped right through the right half of Sakura's body. Ino used the air walking that Chojusen taught her to win the fight. She might not be able to fly through the sky or treat the air as ground, but hovering an using the air as a foothold was not a problem with her current chakra control.
With that final attack, Sakura was completely incapacitated. Ino wasn't holding back, she left Sakura unable to use the right half of her body. They were still friends, so after it was determined that she won, Ino carried her back to the spectating area on the second floor. No one thought it was odd that Chojusen healed Sakura, as he had been the one to teach her Water Healing. She was back to normal after 10 minutes of healing, after Chojusen suppressed his Water Healing back down to A Rank.
The next fight was Choji Akimichi versus Hinata Hyuga. Most people that didn't know about the Akimichi Clan's recent development of the Density Duplication technique would think that Hinata would obviously win, as her clan techniques were a natural counter to taijutsu specialists. However, the outcome of the fight would be muddled until the fight actually took place, as even Chojusen could not accurately judge how well the Density Duplication technique would hold up against Hinata's new taijutsu style.
When the fight began, Choji opted to start off by fighting with the Multisize technique. He would use the Partial version of the skill to grow the size of his hands and staff as he attacked Hinata, so that she would have a harder time blocking off his chakra points.
Hinata activated his Byakugan and began to ward of all of Choji's attacks by seeing how he moved around the Chakra in his body. Regrettably, she had to admit that her new style of combat would not be needed as Choji could be beaten with her clan's regular old Gentle Fist.
It took a couple minutes, but eventually, she blocked one of the points in Choji's arms. At that moment Choji changed tactics and used the Density Duplication technique. He only used it now, because he still hadn't completely mastered the skill and it would empty his chakra reserves if he used it for too long.
When he used the technique, his arms started to let off a blue aura and the weight of his arms increased by at least ten times. In his current state Hinata would not be able to close off Choji's chakra points even if he let her hit him directly. As his arms grew heavier, his staff attacks became more powerful and Hinata had to change her tactics.
She finally started to use the her new taijutsu style which she called the Gentle Step. Instead of aggressively pushing for the capture of enemy chakra points, the Gentle Step is grounded on the principle of diverting the energy generated from chakra points. Since Hinata couldn't hope to rival Choji physical strenght, she used his strenght against him.
Most of the attacks that she deflected, landed on the floor, causing craters to spawn all across the battlefield and after a couple attacks were successful stopped, Choji began to slow down because of his exhaustion. This allowed Hinata to switch back and forth between the Gentle Fist and Gentle Step techniques to ward of Choji's attacks when he tried to strike her with his staff and close of Choki's chakra points when he showed an opening.
The fight ended with Hinata closing off most of the chakra points in Choji's arms. Without his arms, he couldn't use his staff, and while he could try to win by fighting with his legs, Choji reasoned that it would be best to not act like a fool and take the loss like a real man.
Because Choji and Hinata's fight left a myriad of craters behind in the fighting area, a small interlude was held to fix the ground. The supervisors where impressed with Sakura and Ino's fight because of how advanced the two girls' control was. However, this fight impressed the supervisors for different reasons. Choji showed that he had Jonin level taijutsu and strength with his Density Duplication technique and Hinata showed that she tact and skill to beat someone with Jonin level strenght and skill, even while she herself was Mid to High Chunin.
It was sad to see that they were already so impressed, as the most insane battles had yet to take place.
After Hinata won her fight against Choji, it was announced that Shikamaru Nara would be fighting Akiko Uchiha. Shikamaru and Akiko made their way down to the fighting area and the supervisors had the pleasure to see the first battle that wasn't centered around taijutsu.
Akiko being from the Hidden Leaf Village was all too familiar with the Nara Clan's specialty; Shadow Possession. Since Akiko knew Shikamaru's main form of combat, it caused him to struggle as he tried to connect his shadow with her's. Whenever he wanted to use the Shadow Possession Jutsu, Shikamaru needed to crouch on the floor and stay positioned until his shadow connected to his target.
Akiko didn't stay put, she blasted large fireballs towards Shikamaru's way. This broke his form and caused his shadow to recede back to its normal position. Another first in these preliminaries was the use of kunai and shurikens. Unlike some of the other examinees, Akiko wasn't a bucket of chakra, so she had to conserve her chakra pool by throwing kunais at Shikamaru; it accomplished the same thing as the fireball.
In the end, it was Chojusen's Illusion skill that allowed Shikamaru to win the fight. Shikamaru used the Illusion skill on Akiko and caused her to collapse. He put her in a illusion where she heard and saw some of the worst things Shikamaru could think of; with his greater intelligence, he easily thought of horribly creative noises and scenes. Even though Akiko was an Uchiha, she had yet to awaken her Sharingan and it was even possible that she might never awaken it in her life.
Shikamaru carried Akiko back to the spectator area and she woke up a couple minutes later.