"Sarah, will you help me today?"
"Wha... Wha?" I blearily open my eyes. Choji stands in my doorway. "Choji, knock first! I'm not dressed!" I scold him, pulling the covers up to my chest.
"It's not like you're naked or anything!" He says, in his defense.
"Well I don't want anyone close enough to know if I'm naked or not while I'm asleep!"
"Okay, I'm sorry. Breakfast is downstairs. I saw that jutsu you did last night and I just want a little advice, that's all. It's not like I'm a criminal."
"You wanna go, Choji? I sentence you to death for waking me up early." I say. He winces. "What time is it?" I ask. He winces again. Something's up. I roll over to check the clock.
"You woke me up two hours early!? Are you suicidal!?"
A few minutes later I find myself downstairs, a grey shirt barely on, uncombed silver hair carelessly tossed down my back.
"Oh, it's nice to see you up so early!" Choza kisses the top oh my head and whips a tie around his neck.
"G'morning Mum, goodmorning dad." I yawn. "What's up with the suit?" I ask.
"Oh, I have a meeting about the Chunin Exams today!" He says. "I hope you two are ready! Sarah, I heard you learned Earthwalker Jutsu in one day. I'm proud of you." He says.
"Thanks, Dad." I say. Choji gives me a bit of an envious look. "You should let Choji and I learn one of the Clan Jutsu. I think Choji already knows Human Boulder." I say.
"How'd you know that?" Choji asks. "I never showed you."
"I'm good at knowing things." I say. "So, are we going to train or did you wake me up for nothing?" I say.
"Oh, you're going to train with Choji? That's great!" Mum says.
"Hmm." I make a noncommital sound as I push Choji out the back door.
"So, do you have any ideas?" Choji asks.
"Well, umm... I dunno. Maybe you should just ask Asuma-Sensei to train you guys extra hard." I say.
"Asuma-Sensei doesn't teach us any jutsu. He's always telling us to revisit the basics and stuff." Choji complains.
"Kakashi-Sensei barely uses any unique jutsu when we're fighting unless it's a really difficult battle." I say. Yuri likes to drill us on the basic three academy jutsu- a while ago, we defeated a thug encampment with only the Replacement Jutsu and no weapons or taijutsu whatsoever, forcing us to come up with creative ways to lure thugs under barrels and then dump the barrels on their heads or appearing suddenly and tripping them or causing them to smack into each other. It took a while- eventually, Sensei just flattened the entire area with a massive mudslide because he was starting to get bored. That's a thing now, apparently- Sensei gets bored, even during the most difficult battles. Then he pulls out the most flashy, ridiculous, chakra-wasting jutsu you could ever think of and ends the battle in a few miliseconds.
Kakashi-Sensei is not like this at all, conserving his chakra perfectly in the case of new enemies and not taking any chances. I suppose that, since both are elite jonin, Yuri does the same but decides to have fun with it, no matter how chakra-exhausted or how many days he's bedridden afterwards. it says something about how much he trusts in Team 15's ability.
Choji and I spar for a little while, but I'm really just going through the motions. Taijutsu really isn't my thing, but Choji is even worse than I am.
"Alright, guys. Today, we're going to do a mission. A D-Rank, then we'll practice your Jutsus." Yuri says, and we hit the road.
As we walk to different places, sometimes I'll fling sticks off the path with chakra strings or uproot a roadsign or a small dead tree or something, just because I'm bored. Another game we play on the road is that we try to pick up rocks, suppress our chakra, and sneak little rocks into each other's backpacks, slowly adding weight to each other's packs as a prank while practicing chakra suppressing, sensing, and stamina at the same time.
On multiple occasions I'll be walking in front of Kaito on a single-file trail, and, at lunchtime, I'll open my backpack only for a few pounds of stones and rocks to fall out. It might sound crazy, but when you're walking twenty miles a day and the weight is only increasing pebble by pebble, it gets pretty heavy. This is a repeated occurrence for all of us. If you try to sneak one into Sensei's backpack, he'll pretend not to notice and, later, while you're not paying him attention, he'll throw it at you. So I guess we improve our dodging skills as well. This is only one of the little games we play while bored on the road.
Every time somebody asks, "Are we there yet?" We respond with, "We're almost there- just fifteen more minutes, around that corner.". This works best on Naruto, because he gets exited for a moment before he realizes we're joking.
"This sucks. Why am I doing this again?" I wonder aloud.
"So you can be there to support me when I become a chunin." Kaito says. I sigh. Honestly, I feel pretty ready for the chunin exam. All three of us have basically worked out the kinks in our jutsus that we learned in the past week, and our teamwork has improved drastically.
I can't say the same for Team 7- Naruto is a little better than I remember him being in the original series, and I hope it was because of me. Now that Naruto is more levelheaded and 'cool', Team 7's teamwork is a little better because Sasuke and Sakura respect him more. Although I'm worried about Sakura. She's the weak link, which is too bad, since she's actually kinda nice when you get past all the fangirl stuff. But she doesn't even know a single non-academy jutsu, making her the weakest rookie this year. Oh well.
Yuri stops in front of the door to the Academy. "Well- I'll leave you guys here! Good luck on the first exam!"
"Thanks, Sensei!" We walk into the lobby. 'Room 301', A sign says. We walk to the stairs and climb up to the third floor, where there's another sign and a door. We walk through.
"Hey, guys, one more thing." Yuri says.
"Yeah?"
"I'm proud of you guys."
"Thank you, Sensei!"
"Oh, and by the way, Sarah- Kakashi wanted me to give you this."
Sensei hands me a dark gray facemask that covers only the bottom of my faces like Kakashi's.
WHY COULDNT HE GIVE IT TO ME HIMSELF? KAKASHI, YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE NOW!
"Sarah? Is there something wrong?"
A few people turn to look at us as we enter, but don't pay too much attention to us. There are thirty or so contestants in the hallway, all crowded around one door. We push our way to the front of the crowd. Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura stand in the middle. "Oh, and, while you're at it, disable the genjutsu. We're going to the third floor." Sasuke is saying.
"Well, well, so you noticed the genjutsu, huh?" One of the genin guards standing by the door says. The three flights of stairs we just climbed turns into two, and the sign above the door that says '301' now says '201'."Well, let's see you deal with this!" the genin does a cartwheel and brings his leg down at incredible speeds against Sasuke. Sasuke prepares to block the attack, when, suddenly, in a flash of green, Lee appears in the middle of the two fighters, catching each one's attack. I barely even saw him move. Holy crap, that guy is fast.
The genin jerks his leg away and Sasuke steps back.
"Lee! I thought you said we should keep a low profile and not show our ability level!" Tenten and Neji run up to Lee.
"I am sorry! I-" Lee suddenly stops. Lee walks up to Sakura. "My name is Rock Lee! Please be my girlfriend!" He says, enthusiastically.
"Definitely. Not!" Sakura says, bewildered, depression lines on her massive forehead.
"Why?" Lee asks.
"Uhh... cuz you're a weirdo." Sakura says. Lee gains a curtain of depression lines.
"Aww, man!"
I take my chance to walk up to the door guards. "So, can you let us in now?" I ask.
"Hi Izumo! Hi Kotetsu!" Kaito chirps beside me. "Remember me? I'm that guy from a while ago when you were on gate guard duty and you found a flaming chipmunk in my backpack."
People around us look at us like we're insane. "Don't ask." I say. "Some crazy sh*t happens to our team."
Ohh yeah, that's right! The guards are actually Izumo and Kotetsu! How did I manage to forget that?
Izumo and Kotetsu hold a up their index and middle fingers, and, with a puff of smoke, they turn into two tall adult chunin. "Well, it looks like we've been found out." Izumo says. Another round of muttering goes through the crowd of candidates.
"I think the exams are gonna be fun this year." The two walk down the hallway to an elevator.
"Maybe for us, but not for them!"
Neji walks over to Sasuke. "Hey, you. Over there. What's you're name?" Neji asks, pointing at Sasuke.
"I am not obliged to answer that." Sasuke says.
"He just doesn't want to tell you his name because it's obvious that you're a waste of our time." Naruto buts in.
Fires light in Neji's eyes. "What did you just say to me?" He says, angrily.
"Excuse me, Neji, Sasuke. You're standing right in front of the door." I say, shoving them both to the side and walking between them, into the stairwell. My team follows me.
"That was rude. Who is that girl?" Neji says.
"Isn't she that Hatake kid everyone was talking about a while ago?"
Hopefully, that poked another small hole in Sasuke's overinflated ego. Over the time I've known him, Iv'e been kinda continually embarrassing Sasuke as much as I can to cut his ego down to size. It looks like it's working, a tiny bit, although he does seem slightly more hostile to me.
We enter a cavernous room filled with other candidates from tons of different villages. And they're all staring directly at us.
"Umm... Hi?"
