Hiroki had been suitably perturbed by their warning but had little in the way of advice to offer that they hadn't already thought of. One comfort was the incredible size of the applicant pool this year; more than 50 teams were participating, so the odds of their running into the foreign jinchuuriki was minimal.

The one thing Hiroki had been able to give them was an emergency signal; a seal they could push their chakra through to summon the Jounin to help them out if things got too crazy.

So far, it was looking good for their chances though.

Sasuke gave the cluster of children outside the door an unimpressed look as he and his team slid past. That was… honestly pathetic. There wasn't even any sort of disorientation aspect in the genjutsu over the room number; the other Genin would have been as easily fooled by someone sticking a piece of paper over the sign.

Well, less competition for Team 7 at least. The actual testing room was full to bursting already, and as they moved inside another team of Leaf ninja moved to intercept.

"Hey Kiba, Shino. Hi Hinata."

Sasuke glanced at Naruto at the last, noting the slight change in tone. Was the blond blushing? A little, maybe.

He looked at the Hyuuga girl appraisingly, noting that she seemed a bit red as well.

Huh. Well, Naruto could certainly do worse, he supposed. Hinata was rather pretty, even if her hairstyle was sort of weird. He staunchly ignored the very slight twinge in his stomach which was definitely caused by the poisons he had been testing yesterday.

He found himself gravitating towards the Aburame; Shino was quiet, and a lot less draining to be around compared to Kiba, who had still apparently never learned how to stop yapping. He exchanged a nod with the bug-nin, after which there was no further need to talk.

Sakura twitched in his direction, and he quickly sidestepped the oncoming Yamanaka heiress, Ino. He gave Shikamaru and Chouji quick looks of assessment as they wandered over, and Sasuke was perhaps very slightly disappointed to note that they didn't really look any different than when their class had graduated the academy almost 4 months ago.

"Oooh! Sasuke-kun, your mask is so cool!"

He was entirely thankful that the broad folds of the fabric mask covered his small grimace at Ino's squealed words. He was even more thankful when Sakura casually hip-checked the other kunoichi out of his immediate bubble of space.

"Sasuke is mine; I don't want you sniffing around my team."

The Uchiha smirked, expression hidden by his shemagh. The loosely wrapped cloth served entirely practical purposes of course, and the fact that he thought it looked cool was a distant second. Having something to cover his mouth and nose was essential when dealing with powdered poisons, and it could be used to hide a rebreather as well. It also served some of the same purposes as Hiroki's mask, keeping his identity more hidden. Just because most people already knew who he was didn't mean he had to trumpet it around.

"You guys should keep it down; you're attracting a lot of attention."

The older Genin that wandered up was odd looking, with white hair and a pair of glasses. What sort of ninja wore actual glasses? Aburame wore sunglasses because of photosensitivity, but they could manage well enough without them. If this guy honestly needed glasses to see properly…

Sasuke blinked on his Sharingan and scanned over the crowd of Genin in the room with eyes half-lidded to conceal the activation, looking for any more anomalies.

He hummed under his breath speculatively. There were some strong people here, but mostly because they looked older, which didn't say much for their actual skill levels. As his red gaze traveled over the boy, now introduced as Kabuto, he frowned minutely. The way the kid moved was… off somehow; too smooth. Maybe the glasses were a feint.

"I've got some info cards, if you'd like to check out the competition?"

He caught the glance Sakura sent his way and turned his attention more tightly onto the older Genin. Info like that wasn't particularly easy to come by, and more, wasn't the sort of thing someone would normally be flashing in the middle of a crowd of potential hostiles. But how good was Kabuto's intel?

"Do you have a card for Gaara of the Desert?"

"Sure do! Let's see… hmm, I don't have much on him; looks like he's completed 8 C-ranks and, woah! A B-rank as a Genin? Apparently, he's completed every mission without getting a scratch."

Sasuke's lips quirked down behind the mask. That wasn't good. A Jinchuriki with some sort of defensive ability? Well, he'd started to get a better handle on the lightning sword technique, and Naruto always had his wind… Sakura would be the weak link, but she was fast and flexible and pretty good with genjutsu already; she'd be able to take care of herself.

"Do you have one for Sasuke?"

His attention flickered back to Ino with building irritation but the insipid blonde didn't notice. Kabuto hummed and riffled through his cards.

"Oh! I do. Okay; rookie of the year for his graduating class, holder of the Sharingan bloodline which he's supposedly able to use at level 2, and- Whoa! An A-rank mission and a B-rank mission?! Who are your teammates?"

How did some random Genin know that? Sasuke's eyes flicked back on and shot a momentary illusion at Naruto, who twitched slightly at the suggestion before laughing loudly and waving his hands in the air while moving towards Kabuto, who had pulled two more cards.

"Ahh man! You're making it sound like we're some crazy awesome guys; it wasn't even that big a deal- oops!"

While everyone was distracted by his blond teammate, Sakura was getting more detailed instructions via Sasuke's genjutsu. One of Naruto's errant hands knocked into the stack of info cards, sending the pile to the ground, and while he tried to 'help' Kabuto collect them all again, Sakura flicked out a few chakra strings and snagged the three cards with Team 7's information.

"Quiet down you lot!"

Sasuke pulled behind his squadmates as the proctors finally decided to intervene. Five minutes in and he was already starting to get edgy from all the people nearby; this exam was starting to become a drag.

They were assigned random seats, and the test began.

A written test? Seriously? What were they, 5?

He skimmed over the questions quickly, then frowned.

These were… stupid. And hard. Stupidly hard. Who care what precise angle you threw a shuriken at? No one did that sort of math in the field, it was all instinct and muscle memory.

The raven-haired boy's attention drifted back to his kunoichi teammate, and he noticed she was looking at the test with a thoughtful expression, but not as if she was attempting to puzzle out the questions. She looked up and met his eyes, then casually surveyed the assembled test takers. He followed her shift of attention and noticed a few of his fellow Genin were already writing furiously.

How… plants. Of course, it was a test of their information gathering skills. Hmm, maybe that Kabuto guy had been a test too...

He sighed and slid into a lazy posture, eyes half shut as he turned on his Sharingan and started copying one of the Chunin three rows ahead. He was finished in about three minutes, and he shifted his attention over to Naruto.

Sasuke's eyebrows lifted fractionally in surprise. Huh, the knucklehead had already answered all the questions, and now he was… whispering quietly to Hinata?

The voluminous grey mask he was wearing was pulling overtime today, hiding the very faintly irritated pursing of his lips as he watched his teammate shamelessly consort with the enemy.

The hour passed in silence save for the occasional cough or dropped pencil. A few teams were caught cheating (pathetic) before the tenth question was unveiled.

"If you fail this question, you will be failed from the exam and never allowed to retake it!"

He wanted to laugh in the proctor's face. The idea that some foreign village would give Konoha the power to permanently ban their students from further exams was inane. And it wasn't like rank was the key determiner of skill or power; Maito Dai had been a Genin, and held off the combined Seven Swordsmen for several minutes entirely on his own. It would be perhaps somewhat embarrassing to achieve all of his ambitions and still only be a Genin, sure, but nothing more.

"You pass!"

Oh, wait, what? The Uchiha had been so lost in his contemplation of violent, glorious, murder that he had completely missed whatever had been going on. Blah, blah, blah, willingness to commit, blah, blah, life on the line, blah, blah, something, something, Will of Fire; were they done with the test or not? Maybe this was the true, secret test, to see if they could keep listening to Mr Scarhead without yawning or falling asleep.

He blinked and looked around the room, absently noting that at least half of those participating had been disqualified. Oh. Oh wow. Okay, so no, there were some applicants that were genuinely just that pathetic. Wow. No wonder Sensei had signed them up, this was probably going to be a total cakewalk aside from the few outliers like that Gaara kid.

The door swung open with a bang and a busty Inuzuka with a trio of dogs behind her surveyed the class, bright red fang marks on her cheeks stretching as she smiled crookedly.

"I'm Inuzuka Hana, and I'll be the proctor of the second stage. Follow me."

. . .

A/N: So the last C-rank was not technically increased in rating because what happened wasn't part of the mission itself, but they got extra pay anyway and that needed to be excused somehow so it was listed as a B-rank.

Silly Morino; psychological tricks don't work on the already horribly, horribly traumatized!

Little shorter tonight, but that just means the finale tomorrow will be even bigger!