The next morning at the Academy was the Exam.
I dealt with my nerves the way I dealt with everything - by being loud, energetic, and mischievous, shouting things, scare-jumping people, leaping from foot to foot. One annoyed student called me "ridiculously happy considering I was about to go into a test that would define the rest of my life."
I scowled, blushed, and stuck my tongue out at them, glaring.
But soon enough, the test began, and the time for being overly energetic had passed. The girls got there earlier, and Suzume had us participate in a tea ceremony; I was sweet and tranquil and she passed me easily, smiling gently. Then came the standard male ninja stuff with Iruka as head proctor. We had to last in a taijutsu spar with another student for a few minutes, pass a written exam, and then came the final portion which was ninjutsu.
So I was going through the exam, and I was batting like 400. I aced the written test, dominated the taijutsu spar without revealing too much about my clan's Water Fist abilities, and then we all sat down back in the testing room, just a plain classroom with rows of desks, and we were told what the final ninjutsu portion would consist of.
"We have randomly selected one of the three Academy ninjutsu to test you on today," said Iruka. "You will go into the room next door and perform it alone for myself and Mizuki-sensei. You must execute a good and useful ninjutsu to pass. This exam's ninjutsu will be the Clone Technique."
I sat there in horror. The unfairness of it all struck me: I was an excellent student. I was good at everything. I was a powerful budding Uzumaki. They could have tested me on almost anything else in the Academy curriculum and I would have aced that test.
But they were going to pass or fail me based on the one thing I had never managed to correctly do.
Suzume-sensei's words came back to me: Do you have no forward thinking at all?
If I had taken an earlier test… would I have gotten a different ninjutsu?
But no, I couldn't think that way! My life was a great novel, and this was just a plot twist, something to be overcome by the protagonist! I had to do this, and I would. That was all there was to it.
So when my name was called, I took a deep breath and stood. I walked into the next room, where Iruka and Mizuki, my head instructor and my ninjutsu instructor, were sitting behind a long table that cut the room in half. Piled on the table before them were shiny new hitai-ate bands, ready and waiting for graduates.
I did a stance, made the hand seals, and moulded my chakra the best way I knew how. "Clone Technique!"
Around me appeared three… dead clones. Well, they weren't dead, but they were close. They lay prone and pale on the floor, mouths open and drooling, tongues hanging out, eyes glazed. They obviously had only a subhuman form of consciousness.
Iruka stared, and then his face turned slowly into a disappointed glare. That was the worst - the disappointment. "You fail!" he snapped, writing the dreaded F mark down on his clipboard.
I had been working to be a ninja since I was six years old, and dreaming for even longer than that. It was the only way anyone ever became anything worthwhile in Konoha, and I desperately wanted to be someone worthwhile. To be recognized by people. Now I found out that wasn't going to happen. I'd only given myself one shot, and I'd blown it.
The failure was terrible - a sinking weight in the pit of my stomach until the weight went through my feet and into the floor and I felt nothing at all. But the worst part was knowing that I had been stupid, reckless. This was probably my fault.
And all the people who didn't like me had just been proven correct.
"Iruka-sensei," said Mizuki uneasily. He was a quiet man with long, pale hair and we'd never had much to do with one another before. But he stuck up for me. "With all due respect, she did form clones. And her chakra strength and stamina, hand seals, and stance were good. It's her last shot, and we know she's a good student. Maybe we could pass her…?" He smiled nervously.
Hope shot into my heart, only to be viciously crushed once more by Iruka's next words.
"Mizuki-sensei, those clones would only be a bother on the battlefield, and that is the basis of our testing - battlefield usefulness. I cannot rightfully pass a student who has proven herself not to be battlefield ready."
It sounded reasonable, and in the back of my head I knew it sounded reasonable. But hurt anger filled me nonetheless, choking me into unusual silence. I just stood there - wordless.
There was a tree swing in the front courtyard that was my particular favorite. I sat on it, underneath the shade of the tree, watching from a distance as all the other graduates ran in triumph to their parents, talking and laughing together, wearing hitai-ate. Parents congratulated children, said they were proud of them, promised them special dinners.
I was apart from them, separated. I was the only one who didn't have parents. I was the only one nobody liked. I was also the only one who hadn't passed.
I could see Suzume and Iruka talking, frowning, with the Hokage, a little old man with a goatee in baggy red and white robes who had come to see the final graduation. Neither of them came over to talk to me. Maybe they were ashamed of me. And Hinata? She had passed, months ago. She would move on to being a ninja without me.
No matter how hard I struggled, I always came back to the same end result: Nobody cared.
I listened to the others across the courtyard distantly, deep and unfamiliar frown lines pulling down my face, trying desperately not to cry. I didn't want to cry. People in soap operas cried; real people in real goddamn problems, they didn't cry. Crying got you nowhere and nothing. I'd cut out crying ages ago!
But the whispers remained.
"Look. It's the kid. She's the only who didn't pass."
Two mothers were glaring at me coldly from the edge of the crowd, talking to one another loud enough for people to overhear.
"Hmph! Serves her right! I dread the day she becomes a ninja. After all, she's not really even human, is sh -?"
"Quiet! You know it's forbidden to say anymore than that!"
Suddenly, I felt someone walk up to the grass beside me. I looked up and around. Mizuki-sensei was standing there, smiling sympathetically.
"Can we talk?" he said.
We climbed up and sat on a rooftop in the setting sun - just talking quietly, watching the sky turn pink and gold and the clouds misty.
"Iruka-sensei isn't trying to be cruel with you, just as Suzume-sensei isn't trying to be soft. It just comes to a difference in backgrounds," said Mizuki simply, staring ahead of himself. "Suzume lost a little sister when she was young, so you fill that role for her. Iruka, on the other hand, also grew up without any parents - like you. So he projects himself onto you, and wants to make sure you pass on your own merits."
I sat there struggling with words for a while, my face twisted. "I know," I said at last, my voice trembling more than I meant for it too. "I just - I'm good enough. I know I am. He failed me on the one stupid thing I couldn't do. I just want to be a ninja," I whispered longingly.
Mizuki sighed. "... Okay," he said as if preparing himself.
I looked around, puzzled. "Okay?" I echoed, confused.
"There is one other way to pass into Genin. A secret test, if you will. It's just… a lot harder, and we're only supposed to give it to students who fulfill special qualifications," Mizuki admitted. "But I'll give it to you. I'll give you one more shot.
"There's a certain scroll in the Hokage's private library, attached to his office. It's always there, especially for this test. You'll know it, because it's as big as you and has a black seal on it. Sneak in, steal that scroll without getting caught, sneak back out. Ninja may be assigned to stop you - you can't let them.
"Take that scroll to the old abandoned spy outpost in the south forest, near the great wooden surrounding wall. Learn a ninjutsu from the scroll, at least one, and be there with the technique ready to show one of your Academy teachers by eight o'clock tonight.
"You do all that, and you pass. Do we have a deal?" He held out his hand.
I paused. I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that something didn't feel right. But Suzume and Iruka had shunned me while Mizuki had supported me and welcomed me, and I wanted so badly to believe there was another way I could pass, that I chose to believe it.
I shook his hand. "Deal," I said firmly, determination and excitement filling me.
I smiled viciously. This, I could do. All this was, was another prank.
I hung below the ledge of a building roof that was at a direct line with the Hokage's office floor, waiting for the change of guards. Finally, when the guards moved, I sprang across the way and onto the ledge of the Hokage's office floor, my back against the wall and my hands out, my feet inching across the distance until I arrived at his office window.
I used a hairpin to jiggle the window open, and slipped inside. His office was dark, silent, and empty, the great gold-encrusted mahogany desk and vast chair in the middle. I made a hand seal and channeled Mind's Eye of Kagura, my sensory technique, using it to scan the surrounding area.
No waiting traps. The security surrounding this scroll was surprisingly pathetic.
I walked over to the library door, picked the lock, and ghosted my way in. After a minute or so of rooting around, I found what had to be the correct scroll. As big as me, with a black seal, just as Mizuki had said.
I strapped it to my back, snuck back out the window, and leaped across to the opposing roof. As I ran across the rooftops toward the south forest, I saw a guard watch me suspiciously. But he didn't know what I'd done, didn't try to stop me, and by the time he'd figure it out it was too late. I was already in the south forest training as night fell around me, in the clearing among the huge overarching trees, by the old wooden shack in the darkness.
I grumbled to myself as I trained, because ironically the first technique on the scroll was a more advanced version of the one I'd had so much trouble with.
It was the Shadow Clone - physical replicas, with all their power and abilities, of the original human creators.
