An Alternative Path
Author's note: I have to admit I really do love you all, you've been so supportive during my long absence and largely unthreatening, what more could an author ask for? There really is no excuse as to the lateness of this chapter, no excuse, all I can say is life, it's hard, and inspiration, it's fleeting. Still, I hope you like this chapter.
IMPORTANT: This story is AU. That means ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. That means I can do whatever the hell I want and you have to suck it up and deal.
BTW: I don't own Naruto! I do however own Sajiki Atsuko, Yamamoto Yuuka, and Kimura Shuu. You can borrow them if you give me credit.
Extreme Test Taking
It was amazing just how quickly a room of mostly adolescent shinobi could shut up when confronted with a large, heavily scarred man with a deep scowl. Sakura was swift to shut her own mouth from the minute Ibiki opened his, Sasuke too, Naruto however needed a kick in the shins to keep quiet.
"You are all here because someone was under the, most likely misguided, impression that you have what it takes to make chuunin, I'm here to prove that person wrong." The smile he gave the large group of genin was heading dangerously into leer territory. "But don't worry; I'm sure not all of you will fail miserably, just most."
Sakura gulped. The nervous butterflies Sasuke and Naruto had managed to dispel earlier with a few words were back with a vengeance. Sasuke was looking grim and somewhat annoyed, and Naruto… Naruto was inspecting a loose thread on his shirt. Sakura restrained the urge to wallop him in the head and settled for cradling her own in her hands. He could at least pretend to be paying attention.
"The test is simple." Ibiki went on to say, pacing leisurely across the front of the room. "Simple, though, is not to be confused with easy. You will work with the rest of your team-" Ibiki was cut off by loud sighs of relief rushing around the room. "Quiet! You will work with your team, but you are not to communicate with them! Any signs of communication will be marked down, and if your team is caught three times, that's it, you are out of the exam. The chuunin around the room are here to make sure the rules are obeyed. The test is comprised of ten questions; your team must answer at least seven of them to pass. If you are incapable of getting seven points, you fail." He smiled cruelly at the examinees.
"The test looks like this." Ibiki held up a single sheet of paper with two large circular markings on them and a couple of lines of text. "These are seals, you write the answers in them and the seal will shift to the next question, basically if you can't even answer the first question, you're screwed. Screwed, that is, unless you get the last one right." Here he pointed to the second seal. "I'll give this question out fifty minutes into the exam, get it right, you get seven points, get it wrong, and you lose seven points."
"Now, the last question is optional, but your point total at the end of this exam determines the status with which you enter the second exam, and trust me, you want to get as many points as you can."
He paused as the chuunin around the room began passing out the test, facedown.
"You have fifty minutes for the first nine questions, and remember you have all you need to pass this test." Ibiki sat down behind the large desk in the front of the room. "Begin!"
The sounds of shuffling paper filled the rooms as teams flipped over their exams, and then the sounds of absolute silence as everyone got a look at the first question.
1. Name the creator of the A rank jutsu Raiton: Dai Shuurai.
Not only was such a jutsu far above the ability of a typical genin but most shinobi never bothered to learn the creators of a jutsu, as, when it came down to it, it just didn't matter much, especially not the creator of such an obscure jutsu as the Dai Shuurai.
Both Naruto and Sasuke were about ready to groan in dismay, as several in the room were already doing when Sakura grabbed the pen and filled in the blank in the middle of the seal. They all watched in small amazement as the ink of the seal and question seemed to melt away and then arrange itself into the form of another question.
2. Give the exact latitude and longitude of the Great Gulf of the Land of Rivers.
Thankfully Sakura was able to answer this one as well, and the two after it, and that's when she got stuck on the fifth question.
5. Name the General of the army that claimed victory at the Battle of Broken Reeds during the First Great Shinobi War.
Sakura had heard of that small, obscure battle, and she even knew which country won it (Kiri) but she could not for the life of her remember the name of the general, if she had ever known it in the first place. She looked with wide eyes at Naruto and Sasuke, begging silently for one of them to please, please, know the answer but they both just stared back, equally wide eyed. Sakura felt her heart sink at those looks.
Naruto then begin tapping absently under his left eye, looking for all the world like he was merely thinking, but the sharpness of his gaze on Sasuke told another story. He was silently asking if Sasuke's Sharingan could do anything to help, but Sasuke simply leaned his head on one hand and turned to look away. A motion both Naruto and Sakura interpreted as no.
As both Naruto and Sasuke settled in to wait, clearly hoping to be able to answer the tenth question and pass, Sakura looked absently around the room.
Several teams had already been disqualified and escorted out of the room, the tables they had sat at now empty. She had heard some of them try to argue but in the end that had only made things worse for them. One was not meant to argue with one's superiors. Sakura let her eyes roam over the rest of the room slowly.
She remembered this room from her academy days. The kunoichi used to use it occasionally for lessons; tea ceremony, flower arrangement, dancing, kimono tying, and other things that now seemed fairly useless, although who was to say as to their true worth? The tables were far more numerous and closer together than she remembered but otherwise it was unchanged.
Her eyes soon alighted on an old bit of graffiti, carved messily in to the wall under one of the windows. 'Odate Naoyuki is number one' it announced. Sakura shook her head over the silliness of boys, before a thought hit her like a punch from Tsunade. Odate Naoyuki was the name of the creator of Raiton: Dai Shuurai, and the answer to the first question.
For a moment Sakura couldn't breathe as she forced her eyes to calmly continue their examination of the room. She thought back to the last thing Ibiki had said and nearly cursed herself for a fool. The answers had to be spread out all over the room; she just had to find them. Sakura would have laughed is she wasn't afraid it would be taken as communication.
First though she had to confirm her theory. Her eyes drifted to the map on the left wall, a note had been pinned to it, ostensibly with the coordinates to the Fire Country capital, but Sakura knew those weren't the right coordinates, that they were in fact the ones she had written down for question two. She soon found the answers for questions three and four and began hunting excitedly for the answer to the fifth one.
Soon she came to a small poster by the door. It was a list of names of the students of the class, stars next to the names to indicate merit. The fifth name on the list however was a male's name, the only male's name on the list. This was her answer.
She hurriedly snatched the pen away from Naruto, who had been playing with it absently, and wrote the name in the seal, nearly giving a shout of triumph when it dissolved into the next question. Both Naruto and Sasuke looked at her with relief as they took in the next question.
6. Give the exact spatial requirements of an area allowance seal meant to affect three square acres.
As Sakura began looking around the room once more for the answer Naruto stole the pen back from her and wrote in a long string of numbers. Just as Sakura was about to yell at him for wrecking their chances at a perfect score (because pen did not erase they really only had one chance to get it right) the seal reconfigured itself into the next question. Both Sakura and Sasuke nearly gapped at Naruto in shock before turning their attention to the seventh question.
7. Give the exact temperature at which human bones melt.
This time it was Sasuke who took the pen away and wrote in the answer before Sakura could find it in the room. Team Seven held its collective breath as they waited for the seal to do its job and tell them whether or not they got the answer right. They all gave an almost audible sigh of relief when the eighth question appeared.
Naruto and Sasuke leaned back in their chairs, clearly not caring now that they had passed the first test for sure. Sakura however, wanting as much help as she could get in the second test went about filling in the last two answers from the clues she found about the room.
After fifteen more minutes, in which eleven more teams were escorted out of the room, Ibiki stood from his relaxed position behind the sensei's desk at the front of the room. Instantly every pair of eyes in the room was on him.
"It's been fifty minutes and if you haven't managed to get kicked out, that means it's time for the last question. This question is worth seven points, remember, so you could still pass even if you haven't answered a single other question as long as you get this one right. However if you get it wrong you could still fail even if you got all the other nine right. While this question is optional the more points you have on this test the greater your advantage on the next test, which I should add is at least three times as hard as this one." Ibiki gave them a dark smirk as many in the room began fidgeting, obviously wondering what would be best. "The question is short, name the greatest weapon in a shinobi's arsenal. You have ten minutes."
Sakura was confused, whether or not a weapon was great depend solely on the skill of the one using it. The finest crafted sword in the world wouldn't do much good if one didn't know how to wield it properly. But on the flip side even a dull blade could be deadly in the hands of a master. There must be something more to this question; she clearly needed to think differently, needed to look underneath the underneath.
Sakura turned to both Naruto and Sasuke trying to gauge if they had any sort of idea. Naruto lifted one shoulder minutely before letting it fall again, and Sasuke closed his eyes for a couple of heartbeats. They didn't know either. Sakura tried to think back over the past sixteen months she had spent with her team, tried to think about everything Kakashi had ever taught them. From that first lesson with Naruto tied to a log post to... to... Sakura felt like smacking herself.
What was the one thing Kakashi-sensei had been instilling in them from the moment they had graduated? Teamwork. Teamwork had to be the answer, it just had to be!
Sakura smiled brilliantly as she paused with the pen over the paper. Silently she was asking if her teammates trusted her, if they trusted in her knowledge and her place in the team. For some reason this felt like a bigger moment than just whether or not they passed this test. She could have cried when Sasuke slowly nodded his head and Naruto simply smiled back at her.
With hesitant fingers she wrote in the answer she believed so strongly in. Bile rose up in her throat when nothing immediately happened. What if she was wrong? What if that wasn't the right answer and she had just doomed her teammates to fail the exam? They would be so mad at her, they might hate her. Please, please, please let it be the right answer.
Sakura felt all the air leave her lungs in a great rush when the seal slowly began shifting, characters formed, then words, and when it was done Sakura wanted to weep in relief.
Congratulations. You pass.
Naruto was nearly vibrating with joy and it was clear he wanted to grab Sakura up in a giant bear hug. Only fear of wrecking what Sakura had achieved for them stayed his hands. Sasuke actually let slip a small but genuine smile and to the others of Team Seven he might as well have been dancing from happiness.
They paid little attention as Ibiki announced time up. Or when some teams had to be literally dragged from the room, shouting threats and obscenities the whole way. They didn't even pay attention when Ibiki tried to explain the real purpose behind the test.
When the door slammed open and a red haired woman stormed into the room however, that they paid attention too.
---
The woman who had marched her way into the room with stomping boots and wild red hair was not, as kunoichi went, beautiful. She wasn't ugly, not by any means, but she wasn't beautiful. She was perhaps averagely pretty. She'd be prettier however without the fierce scowl on her face.
She looked angry, and frustrated, and, quite frankly, as though she desired desperately to be anywhere but where she was.
"What the fuck, Ibiki," were the first words out of her mouth. "You telling me all these little fuckers fucking passed?"
"It's fewer than last time." Ibiki commented with a shrug. He clearly was used to this woman and her foul mouth. The genin in the room not so much. They stared in blatant astonishment at the woman.
"Aw fuck it." The woman sighed, running a hand through her thick hair. "Listen the fuck up." she called out to the room at large. "'Cause I don't repeat myself. My name is Kobayashi Sakiko and I'm the proctor for the next fucking exam. Now gather your shit and let's get the fuck out of here." She turned to stomp her way out the door when Ibiki grabbed hold of her arm to stop her.
"Forgetting something?" He asked her with an amused look on his face. He held a sheet of paper up at her. "The scores for this exam."
"Yeah, yeah, thanks a fucking lot." Sakiko told him as she snatched the sheet away from him before restarting her irritated march to the door.
The genin blinked blankly in the direction the woman had left, clearly at a loss as to what they should do. Thirty seconds passed before the woman stuck her head back in the door.
"What the fuck are ya'll waiting for? A fucking formal invitation? Get your fucking asses out here if you want to take this fucking test." The woman retreated mumbling dark things as the genin in the room stood simultaneously and fought their way through the door.
On the way to the location of the second test Team Seven studied the proctor of the next exam closely, or at least Sakura did. She didn't know what the heck Sasuke and Naruto were doing.
The woman was dressed oddly for a kunoichi. Not that most kunoichi dressed in any semblance of normal, but Kobayashi Sakiko wasn't wearing clothes a typical shinobi would wear, starting with her boots.
The sandals that shinobi wore were specially designed not to make sound when walking, leave footprints, or slip; they were also made of special materials that made channeling chakra through them easier. This woman wore heavy soled leather boots with steel toes and heels, the type of boots a civilian construction worker might wear, but not boots that made tree or water walking easier. They were loud too, and left clear tracks.
Her pants were odd too. High waisted, and coming down to the tops of her boots, they were made of a thick, heavy canvas that fit closely to her legs. Sakura couldn't imagine that they offered much flexibility or range of movement and they made loud, rustling noises as she walked. The kunai pouch she had wrapped around her right leg was larger than average and she had several more hanging off a belt around her waist, odd unless one needed a great many supplies. Although Sakura supposed she shouldn't talk since she had several pouches filled with medical supplies.
"She has something up her sleeves," Sasuke interrupted Sakura's musing.
"You mean for the exam?" she asked as Naruto turned to walk backwards so he could face them for this conversation.
"No, I mean she literally has something up her sleeves. Weapons, probably."
"Yeah, I thought so too. No one wears sleeves that loose unless they wanna hide weapons or arm movements." Naruto nodded.
Sakura turned her attention back to the woman swiftly leading the group of genin. Sakiko was wearing a loose haori over her shirt; the haori was a plain tan color so it was unlikely she wore it for any fashionable purpose. Studying the haori led Sakura to another observation, Sakiko's arms and hands were heavily bandaged down to the first knuckle. For a kunoichi she showed very little skin.
"It's got to be weapons." Sasuke said. "The way the sleeves move, I can almost make out the forms of things strapped to her arms and the insides of the sleeves."
"You know, I don't think I've ever heard of her family." Sakura murmured. "Have either of you?" Sasuke grunted in the negative and Naruto shook his head.
"No, but I've met her before." He said nonchalantly.
"What? When?" Sakura asked him.
"Few days ago, week maybe? She came into Baa-chan's office for a debriefing. She's been out at the border for the last two years." Naruto shrugged like it wasn't important.
"Why?" Sasuke asked him.
"Why what?" Naruto asked back, confused "Why did she come to Baa-chan's office? I just said-"
"No, why was she at the border for two years?" Sasuke sounded exasperated.
"Oh, border patrol." Naruto answered, shrugging again.
"That's weird. A jounin, even a special jounin, wouldn't be sent on border patrol for so long, not unless it was a punishment." Sakura mused.
"Nah, couldn't be that, she was real mad about being made to come back." Naruto flapped a hand dismissively, turning back around as the group came to a halt outside a large wall. "Said she wanted to be back at the border, something about her training..."
"So you don't really know anything about her." Sakura stated, frowning.
"Well, I know one thing, whatever she was training in it does a lot of damage." Naruto replied. "Baa-chan was reading her the riot act about damage to the forests out there."
The next thing Sakura knew she was being pushed back behind Sasuke as Naruto reached out his hand to catch something. Suddenly there was a near silent explosion and Sakura's vision was blocked by thick black smoke.
"Naruto!" Sakura screamed shrilly. Sasuke she knew was okay as his hand was still on her shoulder but Naruto was out of sight.
"I'm fine!" Naruto's voice replied quickly as the black smoke began to dissipate. Within moments all was clear again.
"If you fuckers in the back are done talking maybe we could get back to the fucking second exam?" Sakiko stood at the front of the group with a deep scowl on her face.
"Did you throw that?" Sasuke asked her.
"Uh, fuck yeah I did." She rolled her eyes so hard her head followed. "Now, if you'd fucking shut up..." She left the rest of the sentence hanging.
"Right, sorry." Sakura apologized for herself and her teammates while inwardly cursing the rude woman to hell.
"Yeah, what-fucking-ever. Let's get started. See this big-ass fucking gate behind me?" She waved at the two-story tall wood and iron gate. "Behind this is Training Grounds fucking 17, and the site for your next exam."
"TG17 is special for many fucking reasons. One, it's the largest fucking training grounds we got to offer. Over twenty square fucking kilometers. Two, it's got a very... unique terrain." The smirk Sakiko sent the group of genin caused them to shift uncomfortably. "The training ground has been split into three fucking parts; the first part is an incredibly fucking dense forest, the second part a wide flat field with a fast as all fuck running river in the middle, and the third part alternates between a fucking sandy and a fucking rocky desert."
"Anyone got any fucking ideas as to the fucking nature of your next fucking exam?" Sakiko's smile was not nice and no one seemed to willing to answer her.
Finally Sakura rose to the challenge.
"The second exam is always a mock mission. I would hazard a guess that we are to escort something through all three terrains of the training ground."
"Well give the girl a fucking gold star, but you're only half right." Sakiko brought something out from behind her back. It was a small wooden box, the type of thing a bracelet might come in from the jewelers. "There are actually two separate fucking missions here. Half of you fuckers will be given this box, you then have three fucking days to get to the safe house located somewhere in there." She waved a lazy hand in the general area of behind. "The other half of you fucks don't have it so easy, 'cause you have to steal this box away from another team and then still escort it through TG17."
"What's in the box?" Someone called out, Sakura couldn't tell who.
"Hmm, well how can I put this...?" Sakiko looked thoughtful for a moment before glaring at the one who dared to ask. "None ya fucking business! Open that fucking box before you get to the fucking safe house and I can only say this, you won't have to fucking worry about being chuunin, mostly you'll just have to worry for your fucking hide, got it?"
The look she gave them was enough to make most of the chuunin hopefuls gulp and some to even take a step back. They all nodded in agreement though.
"Good. Now it's not just the terrain, the time limit, and the other fuckers you'll have to deal with, for the past three fucking days I have been setting up a great manner of traps throughout the area. None of them are particularly deadly, unless you're complete fucking morons, but they are meant to slow or even halt your progress. Don't think these are any fucking simple traps either, my family was well known for its trap laying skills." Sakiko leaned back on her heels for a moment. "I think that's fucking everything."
"The first proctor said our scores would affect this exam, but how?" A girl asked loudly. "Was he lying?"
"Oh yeah, knew I fucking forgot something. You'll enter the training ground in twenty minute intervals based on your fucking score, highest scores going first, obviously." Sakiko explained to them.
"Doesn't seem like much of an advantage." Someone in the crowd murmured loud enough to be heard.
"Che, what the fuck makes you say that? Well, if you don't fucking see it I ain't gonna be the one to fucking explain it to you, idiot." The woman shook her head sadly at the state of the youth in front of her.
"What about supplies?" Another person spoke up from the crowd.
"What the fuck about them?" Sakiko asked back. "You should have come prepared for fucking anything, and if you didn't it's your own fucking fault. 'Sides there are plenty of fucking resources in there, if you use your head to find them."
"Can we bring back more than one box?" A particularly bloodthirsty looking boy from Kiri asked.
"What the fuck is this? Twenty questions time? Fuck. Yeah you can bring back as many fucking boxes as you want, why the fuck should I care? In fact the less of you fuckers who pass the greater advantage those who do pass will have next exam."
"Are there any limits to what we can and cannot do?" The same boy asked her.
"You can't open the box, and you can't leave the training grounds. Other than that do whatever the fuck you want."
"Even kill?" He questioned with a smile.
"Sure, if you die you got no one to blame but yourself." Sakiko's voice was cold and hard when she told them that. "Anymore fucking questions?"
No one in the crowd spoke up this time, and several were eyeing the Kiri team warily.
"Great. Let's get the fuck started." The smile she gave them was narrow-eyed and toothy, and terribly disconcerting.
---
OMAKE: Green is not your best color.
Naruto was seriously considering killing Sajiki Atsuko. He was sure he could do it. She might have all those seals on her side but she had to sleep at some point, and when she did Naruto could swoop in and BAM! She'd be dead.
After all a woman couldn't go around turning a man's hair green (GREEN!) without expecting some kind of retribution, right? Especially when she couldn't turn it back.
"It's not that funny." Naruto grumpily told Sakura and Kakashi as they sat snickering at him on stools at the Ichiraku ramen stand. And was Sasuke's lip twitching? It was! The bastard.
"Yes it is." Sakura disagreed, finally dissolving into full blown laughter at his predicament.
"You know Naruto-kun, I think it kinda suits you, but it does kind of clash terribly with the orange t-shirt," Kakashi added insult to injury.
"Shut up. It's all that bitch's fault. She was laughing so hard she couldn't come up with a way to reverse it." Naruto glared at the counter as he crossed his arms with a huff. "I couldn't take her voice anymore and left."
"Did you try henge?" Sasuke asked him, voice strained.
"Of course I did Teme! It doesn't work! Look!" Naruto attempted to perform henge on himself and while the usual amount of smoke appeared the green hair did not, unfortunately, disappear.
"Hmm." Kakashi hummed thoughtfully. "I wonder how she managed that?"
"Who cares! What I want to know is how soon I can get rid of it!" Naruto ran an agitated hand through his bright green hair. "I tried reading the notes she made last night when she designed this stupid thing but apparently she was so dead drunk that the notes don't actually make any sense. At least I don't think sentences like '2h4 drizli comes to 7g3 rats' make much since."
"...what?" Sakura asked after a moment, clearly trying to work that sentence out in her head.
"I know!" Naruto threw both his hands up wildly, narrowly missing smacking Sasuke in the face.
"Well, surely she'll fix it eventually, right? After she stops laughing that is." Sakura tried to console him.
"Che, I wouldn't count on it, it'd be just like her to leave it like this."
See Part Three in the next installment!
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Author's Note Reprise: Please excuse the crappyness of the omake, frankly I just wasn't feeling very funny.
In other news: Kobayashi Sakiko is the name of a dear friend of mine who used to attend university with me. She went back to Nagano (where I visited her this summer) and so I no longer get to see her. The only things Kobayashi Sakiko in the story has in common with Saki-chan is the name and the usage of the word fuck (although the fictional Sakiko uses it far more often). It is Saki-chan's favorite word in the English language. And let me tell you, there is nothing as disconcerting than seeing this tiny little girl saying the word fuck with absolutely no malice in her voice.
Once again I make no promises as to when the next chapter will be out, however I will say that I have more motivation to write, so hopefully it will not take nine months.
Also: 1700 reviews, FTW?
REVIEW OR I'LL EAT YOU!!! RAWRGH!!!! 100 Reviews Gets An Omake!