/AN\

Hey!

Poll update:

Genma – 48%

Kakashi – 27%

Itachi – 25%

Link for poll for people who don't have accounts:

.uk/r/V6GFDLM

Thanks! And hope you enjoy!

SC

"Speaking."

'Thoughts'

Jutsus

Chapter 11 - Cheat

The day started like any other. Shizuka woke up did some stretches and laps before showering and helping her mother with breakfast before waking up her younger brother and all but dragging him down to eat.

She got ready and said goodbye to her mother before ushering her younger brother out the door to drop him off at the Yamanaka's house.

"Good luck, nee-san." Shikamaru mumbled as Akira, Ino's mother opened the door to welcome him in.

She walked slowly to the academy building where they were participating in the first part of the chūnin exams. As soon as she went inside she was greeted by a slumping Masaru and an annoyed Kaito.

"After a year and a half training for this why, why must we have a written test?" Masaru groaned as they started making their way to the room to submit their papers.

"It will have an exterior motive, look underneath the underneath, and all that." Kaito shrugged moving to the stairs. "How did you find out it was a written test, Shizuka?"

"Surprisingly not hard to figure out if you look at the history of previous exams." They reached the top of the stairs to see their sensei talking to some other jōnin. "Kouta-sensei, come to wish us luck?"

"More like tell the other two to keep you out of trouble." He teased, walking over to his team. "Knowing you all you'll find trouble anyway so no point in wasting my breath. I know all of you are ready for this."

He led them over to the door and gestured for them to go in. He watched as they closed the door behind them and turned to Rizu who was still waiting for her team.

"Don't look like that, Kouta-kun, I'm sure they will find a way to cause you headaches even after they get promoted."

"Not sure if that is meant to console me or make me feel worse. Those kids don't need more complicated missions."

"Listen up! My name is Morino Ibiki and I will be the proctor for the first part of the exams." His eyes swept over the contestants before opening the door behind him, "You have been given a number when registering, make your way through the doors and find your seat and stay quiet."

The contestants started slowly moving into the room, team Kouta shared a look and fell to the back.

"Isn't that the guy from T&I?" Kaito mumbled as they walked slowly enough to be the last people to go in.

"Yeah, this will be fun." Shizuka smirked and then let it melt when she glanced at her teammates who looked apprehensive, "Stop worrying it's only a paper."

"Easy for you to say." Masaru pinched her arm before they split up to go to their seats.

Shizuka was in the middle seat of the middle column, while Kaito was a row down slightly to her left and Masaru on the first row down at the front and slightly to her right. From where she sat she could look at both of them but knew Masaru couldn't see her without turning completely and he could only see Kaito if he turned his head slightly.

"In front of you, there are nine questions which you must answer before the hour is up. Be warned, if you are caught cheating enough times the sentinels to the sides will remove you and your team. In the last 15 minutes, you will be given the tenth question." Ibiki didn't yell, but his voice was loud and clear, all participants eying the sentinels lined up nervously.

'The test is hard enough for there to be so many sentinels? Crap, I'm screwed.' Masaru slumped and rubbed his face. He turned his head to the right and was first met with Kaito's raised eyebrow. He didn't risk a look at Shizuka since he would have to turn completely to see her, but he could almost feel her gaze on his back.

Kaito and Shizuka shared a look. They couldn't sign or tap a code to Masaru as he was too far. Shizuka considered using her shadows but she would have to be careful as there were so many people around that could be caught in it and she couldn't exactly see where she was sending it.

"The points are calculated in your teams, you need to be in the top fifty percent of the teams with your points. However, all team members must have at least three questions answered correctly." With one last sweep of the room, he pulled out an alarm. "You can start… NOW."

Immediately everyone turned their papers. Shizuka watched most participants read through the questions except three participants that started jotting down answers immediately. Taking note of their positions she glanced down at the questions.

'These are difficult, if I want to score high for the team it would take me more than an hour… But just how correctly do I need to answer these? More detailed just the plain answer?' She sighed and started jotting down some answers, pulling her hair out of her braid and letting it fall around her, covering her paper. 'People are already starting to cheat but the sentinels haven't done anything only taken notes.'

She chanced a glance at Kaito who had his head in his hand as he scribbled some answers. She was sure he could get the minimum three questions down and he was sitting next to one of the people that had all the answers if he figured it out he would be fine. She then shifted her attention to Masaru who was hunched over his paper his pencil still on his desk.

She straightened her back and looked up and watched Ibiki as he scanned the room occasionally sharing a look with the sentinels.

"Team three, Sunagakure. Disqualified for cheating, please leave the room." A chūnin from the side called and with a few complaints, the team left.

After that more teams started leaving. Shizuka ignored them she continued staring at Ibiki, who then made eye contact with her, narrowing his eyes but his face blank of any emotion. In response to his blank stare, she smiled and turned her paper around, making sure he saw the gesture and leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, her head tilting slightly to the side.

Teams were leaving around her and the guy sitting to her right was shaking before he got caught cheating. She turned to look at the sentinels and made eye contact with Izumo who only smirked and returned to writing down notes. She glanced at Masaru who had finally picked up his pencil but judging by the tension in his shoulders he wasn't too confident about this. She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers and then glanced at Kaito who happened to be looking at her.

'Answers. Next to you. Left side.' She typed the code on her cheek but looked away and focused again on Masaru if she can get at least three answers to him they should be able to easily pass. 'Damn, only seven minutes until the last question.'

While Shizuka tried to come up with a last-minute plan, Masaru had just finished answering the third question, but he was pretty sure at least two of them were wrong. He briefly considered throwing a small concentrated genjutsu over himself so that he could look around more clearly but decided not to risk it. At that moment he froze up but recognizing the feeling of Shizuka's shadow possession he relaxed and allowed her to write down answers, with him putting up some resistance when she tried to answer questions he had already.

Unfortunately for them she only had time to write the answer to the fourth question before the alarm rang. In a second, he was released from the jutsu and he slumped, allowing the pencil to slip from his fingers.

"Before I give the tenth question, there are a couple of conditions that I would like to add." Ibiki turned the alarm off and let his eyes sweep over the twenty-five teams remaining teams from the original forty. "If you choose to answer the tenth question and fail, you can never take the chūnin exams again."

He paused for a moment allowing the candidates to complain.

"If answered correctly, the two team members with the highest score move on to the next round while the other is disqualified. Depending on how well they have answered the other questions, they may or may not be allowed to take the chūnin exams again. However, you may choose to not answer the question and if so your entire team has to leave, but you will be allowed to take part in the exam in the future."

A wave of murmurs passed between the participants as some looked towards their teammates. Masaru looked at Shizuka who seemed to be in her thinking position. Masaru knew that he was probably the one with the lowest score out of the three, he had maybe two questions right, not enough to pass so he turned to look at Kaito who was staring directly at him.

'Not good.' Masaru signed to Kaito who nodded and they both turned to Shizuka who had still not opened her eyes.

Meanwhile, three teams had already quit. The comrades from the people giving up barely protesting. Shizuka felt the gaze of her teammates, but remained with her eyes closed, spreading her senses out to see what happened outside. The teams that left were being split up, one team out the door and two to a different room. She opened her eyes and briefly glanced at Ibiki as his eyes swept over the room finding the members of the two teams that had just given up.

'It's a test, I can feel people being split outside.' She quickly signed the message and looked at Kaito knowing he probably had a higher score than Masaru, and signed, 'This is the tenth question.'

'Support each other, probably another test outside then.' Kaito signed, exchanging nods between Masaru and Shizuka.

All three rose and without a word left the room, their tests in hand as the other teams had been instructed to do. They walked out and were greeted by some chūnin sitting at a desk collecting the tests.

"Your tests, please." The chūnin reached out to collect the papers, handing two of them to his colleagues as they quickly marked the answers. "Which one of you gave up?"

"All of us did." Kaito stated, sending a look to his teammates before continuing, "Not worth the risk."

The chūnin looked up at the first answer before nodding to the second. They looked between each other before the one who had spoken before locked eyes with Kaito.

"Even knowing you and the girl would have moved on?"

"The chūnin exams are usually a team competition until the last stage, which means it was unlikely to have been an option of dropping a teammate now to continue." Shizuka shrugged and then raised an eyebrow at the chūnin who exchanged nods, "Where we go for the next part?"

She ignored the looks from her two teammates and the amused expressions from the chūnin before they pointed to a door on their left.

"Well done, and good luck." They handed them three pieces of paper and waved them off.

Team four sat at the back of the room away from the other teams that had passed. Masaru and Kaito sat leaning forwards on two of the seats and Shizuka sitting on the desk, facing her teammates.

"What took you so long to use your little shadows?" Masaru whispered eyeing the other competitors to make sure they weren't listening in. "I wonder what would happen if we all had perfect answers."

"You were far, I would have to go through the aisle and there were too many people, it would have been hard to aim." Shizuka ticked off her fingers and shrugged, "And they would have found a minute difference in our exams and used that."

"So Shizuka you said the next is also a team challenge and it's a survival test?" Kaito questioned quietly too, keeping their knowledge to themselves was more important now than it had been before.

"Yeah, they will give us a few days to complete it too and we're expected to fight other teams." She turned towards the door as she senses Hana and her team arrive to the room, she waves them over before continuing, "You guys took a while to come out."

"We were arguing about the risks, as we all answered all of the nine questions." Kenji said as he nodded in greeting before flicking his black hair out of his eyes.

"We did consider the whole thing being a test in itself and when we saw you guys leave it just confirmed what we were thinking." Hana smiled at Shizuka's annoyed expression.

"Who scored lowest?" The Nara asked as she pushed Masaru to move down the bench so that she could sit, allowing Hana's team to lean on the desk.

"I had half a point less than the other two." Hana shrugged, "But I still had seven questions correct."

The six proceeded to discuss the methods other contestants were using and debating what the next phase would entail. A few minutes later the chūnin who had collected their tests walked into the room and with them Ibiki and some else they didn't recognize.

"Well done to all of you for passing the first stage. Shinobi must see underneath the underneath," Ibiki's voice immediately shut everyone up, the room's focus on him. "And information, knowledge is priceless out in the field, it could be the difference between life and death. This is your proctor for the next stage, good luck."

"Thank you, Ibiki-san." The man took a step forward, his burnt caramel eyes scanning the room, "My name is Seto Gou. The next stage will happen in training ground forty-four, otherwise known as 'The Forest of Death'."

Most of the genin shuffled anxiously, those from Konoha noticeably less than the foreigners. Shizuka took the moment to count how many teams had passed the first stage. '16 teams passed the first stage. Eight from Konoha, three from Sand, two from rain and grass and only one from waterfall.'

"For the next stage, you will be given a gate number and a colour. You need to collect the four flags of that colour which are spread around the grounds. You will have six days to collect them and reach the tower at the centre." Gou pulled out what the flags look like. "Four teams to each colour, each will receive a hint to one of the flags, after that it's up to your team to find the rest."

"Tracking. Wonder who will be the first to find everything." Masaru glared at the team in front of him.

"You will have two hours to get whatever supplies you need before you have to submit these forms at gate one of training ground forty-four to collect your information. Good luck."