Jiro sat on a couch looking over the completely plain room of Orochimaru. He and Jiraiya were invited by Orochimaru to discuss what they should do for the second part of the exams. The second part of the exams would be a bounty accepting mission. Different bounties would be put on various ninja within Konoha. The teams with the most points from rounding up various ninja would progress onto the final round of the exams. Unfortunately, only one mission could be accepted per day and if the team that chose the mission did not complete it within the day, it was considered as a failed mission which would be available again tomorrow.The bounty hunting period would last for two weeks. The list of bounties had already been released, but the bounty contract would have to be picked up at the Hokage"s office. People would naturally want to claim missions for themselves so Jiro and his team would have to first choose enough bounties to redeem enough points while also making sure that no other team would choose the bounty that they want.
The mission would begin in two days and the team had been meeting at Orochimaru"s place because he had a secret underground cave below where he lived. The most experienced of ninja probably knew of it, but others did not. The team actually met underground while their shadow clones would talk on the upper area in case they were being stalked by rival teams. When they had first entered here, Jiraiya called it the man cave to Orochimaru"s distaste, but the name stuck around so it was permanently labeled as the man cave.
Tsunade had not been invited during these meetings because it was simply better if less people knew about their plans. Jiro and his teammates each had a picture of a ninja from Konoha in front of them. Each person was a potential target for the team and they were discussing the merits or demerits of hunting said person. Jiraiya brought forward two pictures and began to explain why they should hunt them.
"Guys, everyone knows that I am a pervert and I will continue to be one. They will be expecting me to hunt the kunoichi in this picture, but she also has a boyfriend on the bounty list. We will stalk them when they are together and it seem like we are targeting her, but we will go for her boyfriend instead."
Orochimaru was against Jiraiya"s plan and tore it to shreds.
"The first issue is that you already used that trick during the first part of the exams so it might have lost the element of surprise. Secondly, the ninja you want to target is highly skilled in the use of escaping with clones and he is a master of Taijutsu. He might have the rank of chunin, but he is probably close to the rank of jonin so it would be better to avoid targeting him."
Jiro looked over the picture that gave some basic information about the ninja. It mentioned that he was skilled in Taijutsu as well as using clones, but it did not say anything about him being close to jonin in skill. Both Jiro and Jiraiya expressed their curiosity about Orochimaru"s confidence in what he stated earlier.
"I know that he is close to jonin skill because he lives near this area. He pa.s.ses by this area and I have met him before so I know that he is very strong. He doesn"t specialize in hiding his own fighting ability so it is obvious that he is skilled. Anyways, we could actually take him on with Jiro"s skill in Genjutsu, but that does not accurately reflect our ability as a team and it might hurt our score so it is better to not rely on Jiro"s ridiculous skill in Genjutsu. When I say score, I mean the evaluation from sensei and other skilled ninja on whether we can become chunin."
Orochimaru"s lengthy explanation solved Jiro and Jiraiya"s curiosity. Orochimaru would share his list last so Jiro brought his out. It contained several ninja that were not masters in anything, but jacks of all trade. Jiro also made sure that none of them were known escapists so Jiro figured that because he and his team specialized in a.s.sault, they could just blast the target with ninjutsu. Orochimaru and Jiraiya also agreed with the targets, but they also knew that these targets might be the ones that others would choose so these targets were put on the backburner for now.
Orochimaru finally put his targets forth. Jiro and Jiraiya looked forward in antic.i.p.ation as Orochimaru consistently proved himself as the most tactically minded of their group. He only brought out two pictures of jonin. Both were specialized in a.s.sault just like them. Jiro and Jiraiya had some doubts abut Orochimaru"s decision, but they stayed quiet in order to let him explain.
"Our targets are in a.s.sault which means that it will be much less likely for them to be specialized in escapes. Even though they are jonin which means that they might be faster than us, we have Jiro"s eagle for chasing and my snakes for tracking them. One of them specialize in wind release techniques for attacking and Jiro"s specialization in fire lets him counter him out in that aspect. We also all know fire release techniques so we all are capable of suppressing him.
The other is great at using offensive Genjutsu along with her Taijutsu. It will be easy to beat her because we have Jiro to recognize when a Genjutsu is being used. If we do fight her, we will probably have Jiro lead and hold her down while Jiraiya and I go on the offensive with long range Ninjutsu.
The meeting concluded, but Jiro realized that his teammates did not have the most accurate news on his abilities. More specifically, his ability in Taijutsu. Orochimaru and Jiraiya knew that Jiro had come up with the body refining technique which granted the pract.i.tioners a very strong body which was only strengthening as they aged. They did not know that Jiro mastered the technique to the point where he needed to find a new way to continue to temper his body.
They were also unaware of Jiro"s constantly improving eyesight due to his contract with the eagles. In missions, Jiro kept his sharingan active, but he did not fully utilize it so his teammates did not understand how strong the sharingan really was. These gaps in knowledge might not matter in D- rank missions, but in more important ones where teaming up is key like this test, those gaps in knowledge might lead to their death in the worst case scenario.
Even through they concluded their meeting, Jiro forced everyone to reveal their abilities to their best extent as well as show it off so that everyone had a real grasp on the other"s abilities. After they had finished, the next meeting was planned with modifications to the current plan based on everyone"s abilities being shown.