See ch. 1 for disclaimers
CH. 26: Chunin Exam: First Test
The classroom team 7 entered was one of the larger ones at the academy, but it was still crowded, and seemed even more so due to the way people were standing. Clusters of three were scattered around the room, each group trying hard to maintain their distance from the other teams, especially those from other nations.
Suspicious glances were flying in all directions, and each time a group shifted to put distance between themselves and one team, they drew closer to another. Hidden Rain genin eyed the Hidden Cloud genin warily and shifted away, which only brought them closer to the Hidden Mist genin, which wasn't any better, Keiko guessed, based on their reaction.
She nudged Sasuke, gesturing to the groups and the way they were moving and looking at each other. Sasuke nodded, allowing a slight smile. Keiko was clearly enjoying the show the others were unintentionally providing. Hinata and Kiba chose that moment to approach them.
"I-I'm glad you made it," she stammered, looking at Naruto with downcast eyes.
"Good to see all the rookies made it." Kiba grinned. "Even Sakura, Ami, and Jiro are here."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jiro asked irritably. "You think our training hasn't been as tough as yours? Think we didn't earn our shot?"
"H-he didn't say that," Hinata tried to intervene, playing peace-maker.
"He didn't need to." Jiro glared at the Inuzaka boy.
"You guys might want to hold it down," a quiet voice advised from behind Jiro. They turned to find an older teenager with silver hair and glasses. He nodded toward the other teams, all of whom were watching the leaf genin with expressions ranging from thinly veiled suspicion to open hostility.
"It's not a good idea to draw attention to yourselves at these exams, especially as most of you are rookies. Giving away information about your personalities, relationships, and especially abilities, in a room full of people you could wind up fighting just isn't smart."
Naruto looked around the room, noting the way the genin from the other villages were watching them. He snorted dismissively, remembering one of Keiji's most important lessons about concealing one's thoughts and feelings. It boiled down to 'show no fear.' "I'm not worried."
"Yeah," Kiba chimed in, "but you're a moron." Naruto glared at him, promptly forgetting the rest of Keiji's lesson.
"Who are you?" Sasuke asked; trying to divert everyone before the two could start fighting.
"Kabuto Yakushi. I'm a leaf genin, like you. I've taken the exam before; several times actually, so I've got some experience and knowledge I'm willing to share if you'll let me." He drew a stack of cards from his pocket. "These are my own creation. Nin info cards. These contain information about most of the past and many current participants in the exam. I've spent years gathering it."
"How do they work?" Sasuke asked curiously. The other Leaf genin crowded around; intrigued at the idea of gaining an advantage over their opponents in the exam.
"I had to be careful that no one else could access them," Kabuto explained. "They're keyed to my chakra, among other things. When I want to review the information, I just channel a little of my chakra into the card, in just the right way, and the information is made visible." He pulled a card from the deck, and set it on the floor. The rookies and Rock Lee's team gathered around as he demonstrated.
"This is a map of the elemental nations, showing the distribution of the candidates in this exam." He shuffled his deck a bit. "Here. Naruto Uzumaki." He channeled chakra to the card and studied the result. "It says you're a ninjutsu specialist and you've done 30 D-ranks, one C-rank that turned into a B-rank and a C-rank that turned into an A-rank. Bet there are some interesting stories there. Sounds like you don't have much luck with C-ranks."
"Do you have information on Gaara?" Naruto asked, instead of rising to the bait. A room full of potential enemies probably wasn't the best place to be telling tales. "He's from Suna." While he was curious, the other two Suna genin had been terrified of him, and it might be a good idea to know why. Naruto mainly wanted the older genin to talk about someone besides him and his team.
"Let's see." Kabuto smiled and began shuffling his deck. "Can't promise it will be complete, but I've got something on almost everyone here. Ah. Here it is." He channeled chakra to another card, and writing appeared under an image of the redheaded boy Naruto had seen.
"What's it say?" Sasuke asked, curious as well, after hearing what Naruto had to say about the boy.
"Interesting. He's the son of the Kazekage and serves on a team with his two siblings. He's done 8 C-ranks and…one B-rank as a genin. There's also a note here indicating that he's never been injured on a mission."
"That seems unlikely," Keiko offered.
"The information is accurate," Kabuto assured her. "He's either very good or very lucky."
"Do you have one on Rock Lee?" Jiro asked. Rock Lee looked up in surprise at Jiro, wondering what the other genin was thinking.
"Hmm. Rock Lee." Again, Kabuto shuffled his cards before pulling one out and rattling off stats. "Interesting." He glanced up at the green-clad genin. "Says you're a taijutsu specialist."
"Considering who his teacher is," Naruto said, shrugging, "that's not really a surprise."
"I suppose not," Sasuke allowed. He looked back at Kabuto. "What do you have on the Otto team?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid," Kabuto admitted. "Otto is small and just sprang up recently. They haven't made much of a name for themselves, even the jonin. The genin haven't done anything of note outside their village. No one knows anything about them."
"We don't like being insulted," a gravelly voice offered from behind him. "You can put that on your card."
Kabuto and the others turned to find the three Otto genin approaching and looking very angry. He tried to smile and pacify them, but before he got two words out, the burly one swung at him, missing by a wide margin, but Kabuto still grunted and dropped to his knees. The lenses of his glasses cracked and fell from their frames.
"Time you learn to show respect." The leader of the group stood over him, ready to deliver another blow.
"That's enough!"
The words, coming from nowhere and everywhere, startled the genin. They looked around, searching for the source, but a burst of smoke on one side of the room revealed a tall, heavily muscled and heavily scarred man in a trench coat, backed by several chunin.
"I teach the lessons here. My name is Ibiki Morino. I'm the proctor of this exam and, as of now, your worst enemy." He glared at the team from Otto. "No fighting is allowed unless your proctors permit it. Understood?"
"Yeah, whatever." One of the team shrugged.
"Give me your paperwork and I'll give you your seat assignments. I don't want you miserable brats wasting any more of my time than you already have. Get in here and find your seats." His words were colored with just enough killing intent that no one dared hesitate over his orders. They filed into the next room without another word.
Naruto found himself sitting next to Hinata. Sakura was two rows behind him, he noted, and Sasuke and Keiko were toward the back of the room, separated by seven other genin. As far as he could tell, after a quick visual sweep of the room, no one was seated next to a teammate. He supposed that was intended to make it more difficult to cheat. His thoughts were interrupted by the test proctor.
"I don't want to hear a sound out of any of you brats while I explain the rules, because I am not repeating myself." His eyes swept the room and noted that everyone was paying him their full attention.
"You will each start with 10 points, one per question. Each question you get wrong will cost you a point, and if you hit zero, your entire team fails." There were gasps and a few objections from around the room, but they all fell silent at Ibiki's glare.
"The sentinels stationed around the room," he gestured at the chunin who had taken seats along the walls, "are here to watch for signs of cheating. Each time you're caught, they'll deduct two points. If any of you hit zero, I'll toss your entire team out."
He began passing out the tests as he finished. "I will not give you the 10th question until 15 minutes before the end of the hour I've allotted for the test. Begin."
Naruto flipped over his sheet and stared at the first question.
Break a code? When did we ever cover that? He looked at the next question, only to discover that it was worse: High level math involving the flight paths of multiple kunai. The next one was actually harder. Each one, he quickly realized, was harder than the one before it. What the hell?
Realizing there was no way to pass the test without cheating, he began to consider his options. It wasn't something he'd really come prepared to do. Keiji had gone beyond what the academy had taught him about intelligence gathering techniques, but all required some preparation. He had learned nothing that would help in a situation like this. He supposed he could fill the room with steam and snatch someone else's in the confusion, but everyone would know where the steam came from. Aside from being absurdly obvious and likely to get his entire team literally tossed out, he didn't want to display his bloodline.
Hinata noticed him looking worried and moved her arm slightly so he could see her paper. He realized that she must have used her Byakugan to read the answers off someone else's test paper. Realizing what she was offering, Naruto shook his head.
"I can't do that. It would get you in trouble." He had meant it as a simple statement of fact, but the smile that spread across her face seemed way out of proportion to the simple courtesy he was showing. He nodded politely and turned back to his blank page. There were several techniques he could think of that would get him the information he needed, but they all required preparations he hadn't made or time he didn't have.
It was just as well. The idea of cheating went against his nature. He was certain there was more to the test than they had been told. It looked like his only hope was for there to be another way to pass. So he waited, doodling on his paper while he tried to work out the problems for lack of anything productive to do. He was curious as to how his teammates and friends were doing, but he dared not look around for fear of getting them and himself tossed out.
He had begun to discern a pattern in the nonsense that was the coded message from the first question when time ran out. Following instructions, he put his pencil down and turned over the test sheet, mostly to hide the fact that he hadn't done anything.
"Listen closely," Ibiki instructed. "While I explain the rules of the 10th question…" He glared around the room, and no one dared make a sound. "…You have the option of not taking the 10th question. You can back out right now. If you do, you and your team fail the exam."
"Then why would anyone do that?" Temari of the Sand asked.
"Simple." Ibiki let a slightly sadistic smile play over his scarred face. "If you try to answer the 10th question and get it wrong, you not only fail this exam, you lose the right to ever take it again. You'll remain genin forever."
There was an immediate uproar. One participant complained that he'd taken the exam before and there had never been a rule like that.
"You were lucky not to have had me for a proctor," Ibiki answered, clearly enjoying the genins' reactions. "Those are the terms. Delay your chance at promotion or risk never getting promoted. Now decide." He watched the group with an expression that was impossible to read. The only thing that was clear was that he was done listening to the whining about the unfairness of the situation.
There were muttered conversations around the room, and Ibiki didn't comment. Finally, one of the genin raised his hand. "I'm out."
That seemed to open a flood gate, and teams began dropping out in a torrent. Three teams. Four teams. After seven teams left, the exodus slowed. Naruto watched them go angrily, and after a couple of minutes of this, he couldn't take it anymore.
"Don't underestimate us!" He pounded on the desk, getting everyone's attention. "Every mission carries risks bigger than missing out on a stupid promotion. I'm not afraid of your question. Get on with it, and if I get stuck as a genin, don't doubt for a second that I'll still be Hokage someday!"
The students that had still looked uncertain, even those that had been starting to rise, stopped and settled. Their confidence, Ibiki noted with some surprise, seemed to have been restored by the blonde genin's outburst. "You're all certain of that?" he barked. His eyes swept over the room with a touch of killing intent behind the gaze. A few flinched, but no one else left. "Your funeral."
He gave the class one final long look before saying, "In that case, all of you that remain…pass."
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, there was uproar.
"What do you mean, we pass?" Temari demanded. She wasn't the only one who was confused, but she did seem to be the only one not cowed by or at least warry of Ibiki. "What about the 10th question?" Several others echoed her confusion now that someone had spoken up.
"The 10th question," Ibiki replied, "was the entire point of the exam. It was essentially this; are you willing to risk everything to accomplish a mission? Those of you who stayed told me you were." He glanced at Naruto. "Blondie here was right. Every mission carries a risk greater than losing a promotion. You risk your life, the lives of your comrades; sometimes the safety of your village or nation. If you can't make those decisions, then you have no business being chunin. In fact, you should probably look for a different line of work."
"So what was the point of the first nine?" Temari wanted to know.
"Simple. It was to test your ability to gather information covertly while under duress. Whether in war time or peace time, you will have missions that require you to learn things others don't want you to know. You have to be able to gather that information without alerting them."
He let the genin absorb that for a moment. He had more planned for them, but before he could speak, he saw a glint out of the corner of his eye and was forced to step back. Four kunai shattered the window; two stuck to the ceiling and two in the floor, spreading out a banner between them with a name on it. Ibiki repressed a sigh.
"The proctor for the second exam, Miturashi Anko, has arrived!" The woman, apparently named Miturashi, stopped and looked out over the room. "Ibiki! Why are there so many left? You're slipping."
"You came in early. Again."
"Oh. Oops. No matter. My phase of the exam will cut this number in half, for a start." Her grin at the prospect was the most predatory expression that Naruto had ever seen on a human. This did not bode well.