The ecstasy that was bouncing around the Konoha (and suna) teams as they entered the exam room was quickly snuffed out like a candle. The room was large and long, with multiple tiers of seating each containing a row of desks much like you would find in a typical classroom. A large skylight took up a majority of the ceiling, streams of emerging sun cascading through its confines and illuminating the room (which served as a stark contrast between this area and the previous). A ninja with a set of worn face scars and trailing black trench coat. His gaze was steely and fixed, piercing eyes staying put in one position no matter what emotion he was feeling. His face was wrinkled, not to the point that it made him seem particularly old but it was clear he was starting to age. Judging by the divots around his cheeks, Sasuke guessed he was between his mid-30s and early 40s.

"Quiet. From now on, I want everybody in this room to be silent. Anyone who proceeds to speak will instantly fail the exam."

His words were clear, slashing down any semblance of chatter that lingered throughout the room. Well, maybe most of the chatter. Some of the genin didn't get the memo.

"Oh, what?!" One brown haired boy called out in anger, before promptly slapping his hands over his mouth in an attempt to try and keep the words in.

It was too late however. The proctor motioned to him, marking him and his group as forfeit to the chunin that had been orbiting the sides of the desk. Despite much struggling, the three were pulled out of the room, amounting to nothing more than an example for the rules.

"I am Ibiki Morino, head of the K.I.F. Does anyone know what that stands for?" He asked.

A spectacled boy with a round head shot his hand up, obviously chomping at the bit to answer the question. Naruto guessed that even in the chunin exam you still had those types of people…

"Oh! Oh! I know. It's the Konoha Interrogation Force." He said, the camo coloring of his headband implying that he knew a great deal about this subject.

"Correct. You also spoke, so you fail." Ibiki said, dashing the genin's dreams so casually, his team briefly thought it was a joke.

Then the chunin began dragging them away.

"To recap, I am the head of the K.I.F and a Tokubetsu Jonin, which is a rank attained by ninja's who are adept in categories above even a regular jonin. I have wartime experience dating back to the leaf/mist conflict. Today, I will be guiding you through the second stage of the chunin exams." He explained, ignoring the cries of the genin he'd just ejected as he did so.

"Now, let's start with the rules. This stage will consist of a written exam of ten questions. You will have one hour to finish these questions, though the tenth will be locked off until the last fifteen minutes of the test." Ibiki elucidated, motioning for the chunin to begin handing out small slips of paper. "The sentinels are currently handing out numbers. These will decide where you sit."

The genin were navigated to their seats, each one of them trying to hide their terror. Primary amongst these was Naruto who, while wearing a bright grin outwardly, was inwardly shitting himself.

A written exam?! What is this, the fourth grade? I'm not ready for a written exam, I couldn't even pass the one at the genin tests!

Sure, in his time as a ninja, he'd endured a lot worse than an hour-long pop quiz but at the same time, If Zabuza and Ookami had been asking him to explain the basic law of gravity he still wouldn't have been able to answer them. Luckily, he got seated next to Sasuke, so maybe he'd be able to sticky beak his answers. To his right was a tall (obviously older) Konoha boy with black-rimmed, round glasses. His ashy-grey hair was tied up in a neat ponytail while he wore a dark purple shirt with a wide, yet low collar. His mouth titled up into a small smile, humming something as he tapped his fingers against his desk in rhythm. He looked almost comfortable, lounging around the table much like one would do in the privacy of their own home.

Sasuke stayed focused in the meanwhile. He was next to Naruto, which was nice (even if he was certain that the Uzumaki boy was going to immediately ask if he could cheat off him) but not Sakura. She was several row down from the pair, meaning Sasuke suspected that they had been sorted at random. Hinata was at his side, nervously hiding the bottom of her face within her collar. He suspected she wasn't completely calmed down from the events of the pervious segment and honestly, neither was he. His eyes darted around, looking for anything that could be set-up against them like the last room had. He found nothing of the sort for now, probably because of all the genin that were still being seated.

The hall was very large, more closely resembling an auditorium then the tighter, if still spaced, confines of the earlier room. He immediately noticed some of the stranger looking genin, primarily the ones from the Sound Village. Now, he didn't know much about the Sound Village, but from what he could tell, everyone there apparently had a life-threatening illness because all of them looked injured in some way. The first boy that caught his eye had his head covered in bandages, a large bundle of fur clinging to the back of his coat. His too-long sleeves dripped down far over the point of his hands, making Sasuke wonder how much time he'd waste just rolling them up so he could hold a pencil.

The second was also a boy whose forehead protector connected to a twin stretch of headgear. This trailed down to a breathing apparatus that covered his mouth, resembling a gas-mask in its shape. His neck was covered by a black and white scarf and he wore a long-sleeved tan top with red symbols printed onto it. A few rows over from him was a girl with long black hair that flowed down her back like a waterfall. She was dressed in clothes that resembled an ANBU trainee, clasped hands revealing mosaic scars that trailed in-between her knuckles.

Sasuke's eyes returned back to the front of the room. Most of the genin had been properly seated at this point, giving him a better view of the room's specifics. With the length of the desks across it, Sasuke doubted that the chunin patrolling the sides of the area really had that good of a vantage point over them. There was only eight or nine of them, which seemed like a lot, but even if they spread out over the room in the best possible formation, he doubted they'd even be able to stop half of the genin from eagle-eyeing other's sheets.

"Eyes up front." Ibiki said, grasping the rooms attention and directing it upwards at the blackboard.

He pulled out a piece of chalk, writing as he talked while the chunin walked up and down the rows handing out the exam sheets. They were covered in blue plastic cases that obscured their contents, each casing having "do not open until test begins" printed on them in bright red letters.

"Let's go through the rules. Firstly, for each question you get right, you will score one point. Your total score will be decided by the number of points all three of your teammates get. That means even if two of you get all ten questions right, but one gets only five correct than you will not have a perfect score."

Naruto's gaze stayed fixed on Ibiki, but even when blind to the other two, he could almost feel their thoughts becoming fixated upon him. Others had similar reactions. Neji scoffed, Ino groaned and Shino tilted his glasses. The rest stayed silent.

"Secondly: for any genin caught cheating, a point will be docked from their personal score. If you are caught cheating five times, you and your team will be failed."

Hm? Shikamaru, who had previously been disinterested in what the man had been saying, suddenly listened up. Similar reactions became apparent in the sharper genin.

"Thirdly, the only tools you are permitted to use will be your supplied pencils, erasers and protractors. If you are seen holding a tool of any other kind it will be classified as cheating."

Sakura clasped her hands together, attempting to quickly gauge her situation before Ibiki could talk again and she could miss something. Her surroundings were decently in her favor. To her right was Choji, who, even in the worst-case scenario, was too nice to snitch on her should she try and cheat off someone else's test. To her left was Tenten, who Sakura suspected she was friendly enough with that she may have even been able to willingly get some answers off of her. That being said, she may not have even had to cheat in the first place depending on the challenge of the test. The real issue in her mind, was the scoring system.

I'll probably do fine and Sasuke should get high marks, but Naruto-

The distinct memory of the boy using fingers to count his six times tables flashed through her mind.

Well, even if he gets a zero, we should be fine.

"Lastly, if any member of a team gets a zero, that team will be instantly failed."

Fuck.

Ibiki pulled the seat out from his own (larger) desk, eyes remaining cold and absorbed within the confines of the exam room.

"Are there any questions?"

No hands went up.

"You will be permitted to talk for this section of the exam."

Two hands went up.

"You, the blonde girl to the back." He said, pointing at Ino.

"What's the minimum score we need to pass?" She asked.

"You'll find out." He said back blankly.

She remained composed on the outside, though her eye began twitching. This was reflective of her inward mental state, which was currently moaning and groaning for a number of reasons that grew greater the longer the rant went on.

Oh god, if this guys a super-duper jonin and this useless, imagine how useless most chunin are. I don't even know why I'm bothering, especially when I'm behind Sakura. I can barley see the front of the stage with her big fucking forehead in the way. This must be how Shika feels whenever he complains-

Ibiki pointed to the next questioner.

"You, with the glasses." He said, jutting his attention towards Shino.

"Are we allowed to use the bathroom during the exam?" The Aburame boy asked.

"Yes." Ibiki responded, motioning to the door that sat at the lower levels at the back of the room. "It's through that door and to the left. Anything else."

No other hands went up. Seeing this, Ibiki reached into his drawer and pulled out a small silver timer. It was stained and rickety, looking similar to something you'd find in a second-hand shop but with the amount of tension in the air that was dispersed when he pulled it out, you'd sworn he'd just placed down a bomb. The creaking sound he made as he wound it up did nothing to alleviate this.

"This timer will go off when it's time for you to answer the last question. Your time to answer the other nine starts now."

The collective sound of the exam sheets being unsheathed had the energy of a gunshot with how loud they were. Numerous pages being slipped open while the sound of creaking plastic provided a squeaky backing track. A shared frantic energy radiated through the room, bouncing from ninja to ninja like electricity. However, you could soon notice when this same energy was flushed out. It was when the genin began actually reading the questions.

Question 1

A. Explain the anatomical reactions caused by acute chakra synthesis and how this process can affect the dichotomy of the human body. 250 words minimum.

Naruto read the sentence back to himself three times. He literally didn't know what a quarter of those words were. He nervously turned his eyes over to Sasuke, hoping to see the Uchiha scribbling away at his work. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Sasuke's hands were clasped over each other, obscuring a majority of his face from his view. Naruto immediately recognized this as the action Sasuke made when he was seriously locked in thought. He was correct, Sasuke was locked into his thoughts at this very moment but the thoughts were far away from the rational, ever-thinking ones Naruto though they would be. Instead of "hmm, this hypothesis is interesting but to properly figure out it's statistics, I must first annunciate the initial problem", they were closer to:

Oh, fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck

This…this is insane! No one would be able to answer these questions on their own!

Sakura began to fret, looking over the work with a panicked expression. The questions were a dead-end, to the point where she doubted even the most book-savvy jonin would be able to manage a perfect score. Genins like her had no hope of answering more than a tiny fraction of them.

Maybe you're just dumb. Inner-Sakura helpfully offered.

No way. She could have potentially finished top 3 in the academy if it was only down to the written component of the test, Iruka said so himself in her end of term report. If she was incapable of properly understanding the material, then a majority of the genin were completely fucked. Was this just a way to wean out the overachievers? That'd be stupid, only the most overachieving of the overachievers would be able to properly approach the questions and even then, depending on the minimum score, those people would just be dragged down by their team anyway.

She bit down on her finger, using the slight pain to try and refocus her attention somewhere else. There was something Ibiki had said earlier that she'd found suspicious, especially when considering how they'd been tricked when it came to the locked room.

"Secondly: for any genin caught cheating, a point will be docked from their personal score"

They were willing to fail you on the spot for speaking at the wrong time, but cheating was only worth a docking of a point. With the five times stipulation, it was almost like they were inviting it, which Sakura thought may have been the point. The first stage was meant to clearly explain to them that they needed to question their surroundings. Maybe this wasn't a traditional exam as much as it was a reconnaissance mission. That seemed more in the lane of a chunin then some mathematical equation that most ninja wouldn't be able to figure out no matter their rank.

"Psst…Sakura." A low voice came from her side.

Sakura turned slightly, finding Tenten staring back at her with an inquisitive look.

"So, we probably have to cheat right?" She said.

Sakura nodded.

For a second, she'd felt like she'd happened upon some grand discovery that only a select few in the room had thought of. Upon Tenten's remark, she realized most likely everyone in the room was now thinking the same thing. This assertion, unlike her previous one, would be right.

Akamaru's eyes ran over every sheet he could see, his posture more closely resembling that of a bird than a dog. Occasionally, he'd mumble something into Kiba's hood, which would earn the pair a strange look from one of the patrolling sentinels. Kiba gave little thought to this. It wasn't like they penalized him or anything, as they just assumed it was one of the Inuzuka's stupid dogs having a fit. There was one every exam, they had been told.

In reality, Kiba was utilizing Akamaru to nab every single answer he could get. His pen scratched against the paper, harmoniously flowing in time with Akamaru's grumbles. Dog's had a wider field of vision than humans did, meaning the pup was able to gaze over more answers at once than he would've been able to do on his own. Akamaru scanned his surroundings, cross-examining answers that could've possibly been wrong while checking from ones that were consistent across multiple sheets.

However, the world suddenly went dark for the both of them, as a sharp stinging sensation ran through their eyes.

"Ah!" Kiba growled to himself, bringing an arm up and beginning to rub at his features to try and alleviate the tingle.

Small grains of sand became excavated from his eyes thanks to his digging, Kiba having to brush them outward off his fingernails. He looked down at his hands with a strange expression, before attempting to help alleviate Akamaru of the same struggles. Obviously, these two were not the only ones effected by this. Tiny grains of sand sailed through the air, so small that the sentinels were unable to see them even in the sharp sunlight. Gaara looked on impatiently, waiting for the particles to hit a target before beginning the intended process.

With his sand, the Suna boy was able to use a technique known as "the third eye". Using chakra, he wove a connection between his optic nerve and his sand to create an eye that he was capable of seeing out of no matter it's range. Clearly, this was a very good way to search the room for answers but if he simply used the technique by itself, he ran the risk of getting spotted by either the sentinels or other genin. To counteract this, he proceeded to blow and then direct a bundle of sand into his intended area of watch, blinding its inhabitants long enough for him to guide his sand through the floor and onto the desk so it could form his third eye. He placed one hand over his left eye as he did so, not wanting to be thrown off by the sudden shift in vision that occurred with one of his ocular nerves serving a different purpose.

Unfortunately, this meant that he had to briefly attempt to grapple with the optical rift when it came to answering these questions, to the point that Gaara found his already scrawling handwriting devolving into a slow scribble more becoming of a fourth-grader than someone of his intellect. His speed in particular was what Sasuke took umbrage with as he used his sharingan to copy the writing. Due to the Uchiha's positioning, Gaara was really the only person he could find who was writing at the current moment and, while he'd observed the boy's prior technique, he was also ignorant to what exactly it was doing. In his mind, Gaaras awful penmanship could be chocked down to two things. Either whatever he was using to cheat was giving him a bad view or Gaara just had the worst hand-eye coordination in the world.

Either way, it meant that Sasuke often times had to guess what the exact number Gaara was writing was (2's, 3's, 5's and 4's could all look interchangeable depending on his sloppiness) but it sure as hell was easier for him than the other dojutus user in his row. Hinata was capable of using the byakugan. As a main house member, she would probably have been orphaned or placed into the branch house had she not been able to by this age. However, despite her status, her capability with it was not entirely perfect. She was attempting to use the byakugan to see through Gaara's back and read his answers, but due to his sand gourd, this proved to be impossible.

In all fairness, even completely proficient byakugan-wielders would struggle to do what she was attempting. It was not the gourd itself that was the problem, no, Hinata had little problem seeing through that. Instead, it was what was in the gourd that was giving her grief. Sand had been packed into every square-inch of the container, which was already bad enough. Due to sand's grainy texture, the byakugan struggled to differentiate it's form enough to allow Hinata to see through him entirely transparently. However, the worst part of it was the strange chakra signal that was permeating through the sand itself. This made it practically impossible for the byakugan to assign translucent qualities to Gaara's form, with the dojutsu struggling to differentiate human from object.

Hinata began to fret to herself upon realizing this was a dead end. It was hard not to feel self-conscious when your ace in the hole proved entirely worthless to help you. Maybe if she'd just trained it a little bit harder, she might have been able to make out his answers at least a little bit. Now, all it did was make her head hurt. She looked up to her side, a wave of embarrassment hitting her as she saw Neji a few rows back, scribbling away with his own byakugan activated. This was not a fair comparison, as Neji was presumably copying from someone who didn't have a strangely sentient barrel of sand strapped to his back but by this time, Hinata's "lack of self-worth" train had already prepped to leave the station with little in the way to hold it back.

That's why I've gotta become Hokage. So, all you morons start noticing me and treating me like I'm somebody!

The echoes of words long past shook the Hyuga girl out of her pitiful daze, Hinata quickly refocusing on the work in front of her. She needed to find someone who was currently writing around her. She reactivated the byakugan, sharpening her hearing in an attempt to try and overhear anyone writing. She spotted a few people below her, but they were simply trying to solve the questions through sheer force of thought and, judging by what she could see of their equations, they weren't worth following anyway. She followed her ears around, attempting to find the source of pencil lead scratching that she could hear. This trail of sound eventually led her directly to her side where she found Naruto writing away at his paper.

Sasuke was too, but his body was so lurched over due to trying to copy Gaara that she wouldn't be able to copy off him without making it too obvious to even the slightest glance from a sentinel. Even if she had been able to look at his work though (and she could with the byakugan activated), she was more focused on Naruto. She may have had a childish crush on him, but that crush was certainly not owed to anything to do with his intelligence. He was, at best, academically stupid yet in front of her, she saw him writing away at the work with eyes steely in their focus. His penwork was filled with a virtue and attention that she'd never seen from him in the academy. Maybe he'd really changed since they graduated, maybe he'd…

"What the fuck are you doing?" Sasuke loudly whispered to him.

The Uchiha had also taken a glanced at his friends' paper, but his reaction was significantly more negative than Hinata's. This may have been owed to the fact that he could actually see what Naruto had been writing. Naruto briefly scanned over the room in search of any nearby watchers before he turned to Sasuke (and, consequently, Hinata), holding up his page. On it was a surprisingly well drawn illustration of a cartoonishly-stylized Naruto, who had been blown up to the size of some sort of giant monster, punching through the Hokage tower.

"It's a good drawing, right?"

"It is actually. Now rub it out." Sasuke whispered, earning a pout from Naruto.

"What, why?"

"Because the drawing's taking up your whole question box."

"I think it's good Naruto." Hinata whispered, a smug smile gracing the boy's lips as she did so.

Sasuke's ire temporarily became focused upon her with even the tepid anger he was displaying seeming a little bit more intense thanks to the looming presence of the sharingan in his pupils.

"It doesn't explain acute chakra synthesis though, does it?"

"Oh right, if you're so smart why don't you explain it then?" Naruto barked, maybe a little bit too loud when considering you weren't supposed to talk.

"I can't, these questions are designed for old fucks who sit around reading shit books about stuff that doesn't matter. That's why you're supposed to cheat." Sasuke replied, letting a little bit of lingering frustration simmer into his tone.

Naruto nodded. Despite his lack of intelligence, even he'd been able to figure out that the test hadn't been what it seemed. His problem was that he didn't have any special eye powers that let him magically read other people's sheets or weird nature releases that were specifically designed to sticky beak exam worksheets. All he had were shadow clones, which all looked like him so what could they do. Maybe he could make so many that he could beat all the sentinels and Ibiki up and then just copy at his own discretion. Nah, that wouldn't work unless he was fast enough to kick all their asses before a single one could expel him. Sasuke had promised to give him his own answers when he finished copying them, but with how his copying was going, Naruto doubted he'd get them all done in time.

The Uzumaki searched deeper through his book of tricks, coming up with blank after blank of useful skills that were useless in the current environment. What? He could make enough of himself to match the sentinel's numbers? Cool, what could that do? Wow, he could make himself look like a woman? What did it matter, Ibiki didn't look like the type who would be amused (or aroused) by it anyway?

Wait, hold on a second…

He could make enough of himself to match the sentinel's numbers-

He could make himself look like-

A burst of light erupted in the bulb of Naruto's mind.

He quickly shushed Sasuke and Hinata, the latter of whom wasn't even speaking in the first place, before thrusting his arm up in the air like a kid wanting to answer a question in class. Soon enough, a bandanaed chunin with slicked-over black hair covering one of his eyes walked towards the boy.

"Yes?" He asked.

"I need to go to the bathroom." Naruto explained.

The man looked irritated.

"Already?"

"Hey man, when you gotta go, you gotta go."

"Okay." He agreed, which for some reason did not actually dissuade Naruto from speaking

"And I am busting."

"Alright, just- "

"I mean, it's bad. Like, "seeing a drinking fountain would set me off" bad."

"I've got it." The man growled, finally managing to silence Naruto for a minute.

He reached into his pocket, taking out a pair of handcuffs attached to a long chain.

"Put out your hands." He said calmly only to receive a disgusted response from Naruto.

"Ah, yuck! What are you, some sort creepy sex pervert or something?"

"We escort you to the bathroom to make sure you're not trying to sneak anything by us."

Naruto hesitated for a second, almost making it seem to anyone watching him that he was going to refuse the invitation before he did as instructed and thrust his hands out. The man chained them with a sharp click, before bringing Naruto back to his feet and beginning to walk him to the back of the room. Sasuke watched with interest wondering whether Naruto had some sort of genius plan or if he just needed to piss really bad. If he was making bets, he would've guessed the second one.

Tenten aimed one of her small mirror strips along the length of the skylight, adjusting the sun's rays toward the boy in front of her. The mirrors were just one of the many tools she carried around with her on the daily. They were also one of the many Neji had previously deemed unnecessary, which was a fact that Tenten would've loved to rub in his face had he not been completely justified in saying so. It was no matter to her though, she always knew you could never have too many tools on you and now she was being proven right.

She watched to make sure the guided sunlight didn't alert Ibiki to her presence, casually angling it so that it hit just right to sizzle into the eye of the ninja before her.

"Ah!" He cried, bringing a hand up to try and block out the sun.

It was a war Tenten was more than prepared for, constantly inclining and then re-inclining the sun for long enough that he exposed his work for her completely. She quickly copied down his answers, stowing the mirror for the moment before nudging Sakura.

"I got question six." She said, showing the other girl her nearly completed work.

"I've got question five." Sakura said, doing the same.

It was in this moment that the two of them were glad they had become friendly prior to the exam. If they hadn't, Tenten would imagine her fate would be similar to that of Lee's currently. The poor boy was stationed a few rows above her, stranded in a sea of faces that he didn't recognize. It was clear from the panicked expression on his face that he had already realized he had no hope of passing the questions, but that was to be expected. Lee wasn't particularly intelligent when it came to book smarts, there was no way he could ever comprehend what half the information jotted down on the page was entailing. It wasn't in anyway his fault, the worksheets may as well have been intended for the fucking Hokage, but Tenten still couldn't help but fret. Even if she and Neji somehow managed to cheat themselves to a double set of perfect scores, Lee would still tank them completely if he couldn't answer at least one)

Her mind ran through the ways she could possibly get her answers to Lee. She hadn't gotten penalized for cheating yet, but a lot of people had (multiple times over in fact). That much was evident from the booming voices that would occasionally ring over the room.

"Team 89. Fail!" One of the sentinels would shout, their voice followed with the sound of dejected footsteps from team in question.

"Team 35. Fail!"

"Team 12. Fail!"

"Team 78. Fail!"

It was like bombs being deployed in a warzone, sailing through the air before scattering through the area. Tenten racked her brain through the rules they'd been given, trying to find some sort of loophole to what Ibiki had set out.

Can't use tools except for a pen or pencil. A point gets docked for cheating. Zero means insta-fail, most likely can't talk… She listed.

Then she realized Ibiki may have been too vague for his own good when it came to the rules. She scratched over her sheet, checking what she knew about her answers. She was only missing the tenth question, and if she'd even got four or five of these right, it may have been enough to pull the team through if she did what she did next. Slowly, Tenten rose to her feet, gripping onto her sheet with shaky palms. Ibiki immediately took notice thanks to the squeaking sound of her chair, glancing up at her with a laser-focused glare.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

Tenten's hands stopped shaking. The intentional vagueness in his tone was all she needed to confirm her strategy.

"You never said we had to remain seated." She said, voice rippling with a surprising confidence.

The room had been silenced by the sound of Ibiki's voice, waiting on baited breath for the man to dismiss Tenten for her actions. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then something strange happened. Ibiki smiled. Not a big smile or even something that could be considered a grin, but it was a smile. He gently nodded his head, imploring Tenten to make her next move.

The kunoichi smiled, conviction renewed as she strode over to Lee. The boy perked up upon her appearance, only to be surprised as she slammed her paper onto his table. One of the nearby sentinels became angered at this, lifting up his clipboard to write her down.

"That's cheating!" He barked.

Tenten looked up at him unconcerned.

"Dock me then."

Her benign reaction was warranted. If Lee wasn't allowed to cheat off her answers, then they would most likely fail the test (his sheet was 90% blank at this very moment, so even "likely" was an understatement). If he was allowed to cheat off hers, then, even with the point taken off her score, it was infinitely more than they would've counted had she not stepped in.

Thank god. Neji inwardly said, thought process following a similar pattern of understanding.

Sakura looked up at the pair, impressed by Tenten's ingenuity. This was short lived however. Her turn around had indirectly given her eyeline away to Ino, who had been staring at the girl in wait for what felt like half an hour. Now was her chance, even better with all the attention placed upon a different part of the room. She pushed her hands into a diamond shape, hand seals at the ready before pushing her spirit outwards.

The mindscape was a messy thing to navigate. It was dark, pools and puddles of abstract colors and thoughts clinging at your spirit was you crossed it. Ino trudged forward, the blinding blue of her spirit form cutting through the drudge of Sakura's brain. These qualities weren't specific to billboard brow, they were apparent in every mind. However, with her chakra already lowered thanks to using it on Niro earlier, Ino was struggling to get a grip upon Sakura's subconscious. It didn't help that the girl had a lot more fight in her mind than she expected. She'd managed to get control of her eyesight, but in its hesitance to shut down, Sakura's brain was still clinging onto the motor functions.

"Hey, Sakura?" A whispered voice boomed into her ears.

Was Tenten back already? No way, unless she'd run back across the room, she couldn't have made it in time.

"Sakura?" The voice spoke again.

Ino cursed to herself. It was Choji.

When you took control of a body, the body tended to black out during the process of switching the minds ownership. Unfortunately, Choji lacked the cognitive ability to recognize this and had simply thought Sakura had passed out.

"Hey, can I get someone over here?" He asked, voice panicked.

Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up… Ino chided, beginning to frantically try and wrestle control from Sakura.

Once again, even in perfect conditions, the mindscape was messy to navigate. When stressed, it was a overbearing cluster of information that you were forced to try and untangle.

"Uh, I think she needs a medic or something." Choji said, luckily quiet for the moment.

God, if there was ever an example of "too nice for his own good", Choji was it. Luckily, Ino managed to get complete control of the mind just before he started straight up yelling. "Sakura" snapped to life, quickly thrusting her hands out in front of the Akimichi boy.

"Choji! I'm fine, just had a late night yesterday. Okay?" Ino said, only just able to overcome the strangeness of having to speak with Sakura's voice.

Choji smiled and nodded, taking her words at face value. Upon seeing him turn back to his work, Ino did the same, running Sakura's gaze over the writing. She jammed as much of the information as she could into her own brain, memorizing it before swiftly exiting Sakura's mindscape just in time for the other girl to regain focus by the time Tenten came back. Sakura was clearly shaken by the lapse in memory, a sudden restlessness running through her body but Ino only barely bothered to pay attention as she re-aimed her jutsu upon Choji.

His brain proved significantly easier to gain control of, with there being little downtime between Ino entering his mind and completely seizing control. She looked down at his worksheet, rubbing out any mistakes he'd apparently made before filling in the answers with what she remembered. As soon as the ninth was filled in completely, she exited outwards and began scanning the room for Shikamaru. Due to his smarts, Ino expected him to be just as, if not harder to fully take control of than Sakura, but in reality, he was no more difficult than Choji. This was probably down to laziness. He'd look close to dozing off when Ino had seized his mind, so really, it should've been expected.

The Yamanaka girl quickly looked over his sheet, analyzing his answers only to find that four of them had been written in correctly already, so all she needed to do was fill in the blanks. If she was being honest, she was kind of impressed.

The chunin waited on the other side of a thin wood barrier, wondering why Naruto was just standing at the urinal without peeing. His handcuffs had been loosened for the moment, though he was still bound by the chain should he attempt a sneaky getaway. Seconds ticked away, Naruto beginning to lose valuable exam time because he apparently had the piss-equivalent of stage freight. Around the one-minute mark, the chunin began to get restless.

"Hey, are you going to go or what?" He asked.

"Don't rush me dude."

Was all Naruto said in return. That was until around ten seconds later, when his tone switched from completely zen to suddenly smarmy.

"I kinda feel like you're side-eyeing me."

"I'm not." The chunin said back, completely correct when considering the barrier made it literally impossible for him to "side-eye".

"That's what a side-eyer would say."

"Well, what do you want me to do then?"

"I dunno, maybe stop side-eyeing dumbass."

This got the chunin mad

"Listen shithead. I've been a chunin since I was sixteen years old. Wanna guess how old I am now?"

"Fifty?" Naruto jeered back.

"No! Twenty-six. That's right, I've been a chunin for a decade. I've been a chunin nearly as long as you've been alive. How about showing a little bit of respect to-"

The chunin had gotten so mad, that he didn't even notice Naruto's head peaking out from the top of the barrier. By the time he did, Naruto had latched onto his head and began slamming it back into the barrier.

Bang.

Bang!

BANG!

The wood of the barrier nearly caved in on itself as Naruto slammed him down hard enough to knock him unconscious for the moment. The man's body limply fell to the ground, ruffled hair and still motion sending a small jolt of guilt shivering down Naruto's back. However, this may have been muted because it was not the real Naruto who had done this. Instead, it was a shadow clone he'd summoned while speaking. The clone had been balancing on his back for the moment, and now hopped down in hopes of freeing his maker.

"You get em?" The original asked.

"Yep." The clone responded, digging through the chunins pockets and finding a small grey key.

He clicked it into the lock of Naruto's cuffs, completely freeing him from the length of the chain. The pair wasted no time hoisting the chunin's body up onto their shoulders, carrying the ninja's motionless form into one of the nearby cubicles. After a swift lock of the door, they balanced him against the edge of the toilet seat. The possibility that he may wake up quickly was not lost on Naruto, who clamped the handcuff around the man's ankle before tying the connective chain round the base of the toilet. He turned to the clone with a small nod, prompting the copy to clasp its hands together in seal.

Bamf!

Smoke surrounded the clone, dissipating to reveal it's new, changed form. Clearly, it was trying to copy the looks of the chunin, with the slicked over black hair and such. Naruto looked over it, moving a thoughtful hand to the underside of his chin as he evaluated the sight.

"Nope. You got the nose and eyes wrong. He's got brown eyes, not brown and green. Also, he's got a massive bird nose. You gave him the same as mine"

The clone nodded, shifting its hands into place once again and transforming itself with the changes Naruto had described. This worked well enough. The nose was still too small, and the eyes were a lighter shade of brown than they were supposed to be but he doubted anyone would notice, especially as the time for the tenth question got closer and closer. He reopened the bathroom door, mentally reminding the clone that it needed to act close to the chunin's general behavior. The copy stiffened itself upright, gripping Naruto "hard" across the shoulder and beginning to escort him forward. It was unfortunate that they had had to leave the handcuffs behind, but the room was so crowded that he was willing to bet that no one would notice.

Creak!

Maybe he had spoken too soon. Just as he and the clone exited the bathroom stall, a handcuffed Kankuro emerged into the room along with a chunin tugging him along with the chains. The commonplace silence of the bathroom was quickly laced with tension, Naruto praying that the sentinel didn't find the lack of handcuffs suspicious. Each second that passed felt like a minute, the Uzumaki nearly wilting under the stern gaze of the chunin man.

"Get moving." "The chunin" behind him scolded, shoving his body forwards with a strict hand.

It was seemingly enough to fool the two for the time being, Naruto and the clone quickly exiting the room. Kankuro and the older ninja stood there, watching the door for a few seconds before the Suna boy breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Damn, I thought he figured me out.

Kankuro raised a finger to the strangely still sentinel, tapping the man's unflinching cheek. The sound that followed was not the near-silent one of skin grazing against skin though. No, the sound that emanated from the man was closer to metal. With a sharp pop, his left cheek and eye detached from his face in a single segment, it's shape precise like that of a well-polished machine. Underneath its contents sat a small glass eye imbedded within a wooden face. With the removal of one of the cheek pieces, the smooth metallic finish rest of his "skin" was made significantly more prominent.

If Naruto had been a little bit more observant, he would've noticed that Kankuro was lacking the large bandaged object he had been stowing on his back. Even if he did, though, it wouldn't have meant anything unless he could've somehow guessed that this was a possibility when pertaining to its disappearance. Kankuro smirked to himself, taking a small scroll and pen out from his belt and readying them.

"Alright crow. Tell me what you saw."

The glass eye of the chunin's true form began spinning around, pupil bouncing manically with the recollection of it's past. The mouth of the machine shot downwards robotically, opening far wider than was humanly possible. A small humming began to radiate from the inside of it, manifesting in a voice that sounded somehow close to being human, yet obviously unnatural at the same time.

"First. Question. The answer. Is:"

It spoke in broken sentences, punctuation coming at noticeably inhuman intervals. This was to be expected though, Kankuro supposed. It'd only been a few months ago he'd, one, been able to get it to talk and second, been able to get it to simulate a human's voice. It would be a little while more before he was able to get it to perfectly assimilate speech patterns.

He gently scrawled upon the scroll, writing back the answers Crow told him. It was funny how he'd disguised the puppet at the start of the written test, yet somehow none of the ninja happened to notice that there was an extra sentinel walking amongst them. Then again, Konoha chunin were so stupid he doubted most of them were able to count in the first place.

Ha! That's a good bit, I should write that down. Kankuro scoffed to himself, somehow not realizing that this was an equally stupid thing to do.

Only the select few ninjas that lined the front rows could check the time, yet the realization that the test was going down to the wire was essentially universal around the room. What didn't help was that Ibiki had begun writing team names down on the blackboard, indicating that the dreaded tenth question was not as far away as it had once been. Each scratch of the chalk on the board uprooted more and more butterflies within the genin's stomachs, the stillness and silent order of the room giving way to an undercurrent of panic and fear.

Temari's eyes were locked down on her paper as her pan scratched away, leaving trails of messy ink along with each flick of her wrist. She'd subtly received a scroll from a sentinel just minutes before that contained the answer to each question along with a constant stream of stupid jokes that left no doubt in her mind that it had been written by Kankuro. While genin had previously been standing up to interact with their teammates like Tenten had done earlier, these displays of teamwork had been generally discarded in favor of a hyper-individualized barrage of clacking pencils and scrubbing erasers. Naruto's clone had to avoid breaking out into a sprint, as he attempted to subtly survey the room for answers. Sasuke and Hinata were both relying on said answers, the latter especially so. Sasuke had given Naruto props for his strategy, but there was an obvious, glaring problem with it, which was that the clone was still Naruto and Naruto just wasn't all that smart academically.

Each round trip the clone would do would bring back half an answer if they were lucky, a method which wasn't cost-efficient when you realized the number of factors in play. The clone had to both copy and deliver answers without triggering the suspicions of the other sentinels, meaning each chunk of answer he gave to his original was in the form of small scraps of paper. Luckily, Naruto had surprisingly neat handwriting to offset his lack of grammatical processionary, but it was hardly a saving grace when he was bringing back so many scraps of paper, it was almost like they were playing some fucked-up card game to get just one question finished. At this point, Sasuke was willing to throw caution to the wind, letting both Hinata and Naruto blatantly cheat off the answers he'd already managed to get while the Uzumaki instructed the clone to retrieve answers that his friend lacked.

In all honesty though, Sasuke was significantly more deliberate when letting Hinata cheat off of him then Naruto. While a small part of him was letting her do it for humanitarian fulfillment, he also recognized that, unlike Naruto, her getting caught cheating would only hurt her team, not his. It wasn't like he necessarily wanted to keep her locked out of the next stage, especially since in his eyes, Team 8 definitely seemed like the least threating out of all of the ones they'd interacted with in the exam, but if they were to fail…

It was just good strategy. You didn't have the killer instinct to end your brother's life if you weren't even able to muster up the courage to barely influence another team's shot at passing some pointless exam stage.

BRIIIIIIIIIIING!

The timer went off, the jagged tune of its sound having the same effect on the room than the announcement that a tailed beast had just invaded the village. Ibiki took his place at the front of the room, slick posture and slinging of his coat demanding the attention of the contestants.

"Pencils down, eyes up front." He said, words being followed exactly by every ninja in the room. "We have entered the final fifteen minutes, which means you are now about to take the tenth question."

He motioned to the words on the chalkboard. Each one was a team name with a space for more writing underneath it. It was completely comprehensive, the name of every team who had entered the exam being written upon the board. Ones that had been dismissed during the the exam had had their extra space filled up with the letters "N/A".

Ibiki's gaze went from neutral to stern as he stared to speak.

"Now, to ask the tenth question I need to explain the rules of it to you. As you can see behind me, I have written up the team names of every single squad in the room. In those blank spaces below them, I will write a name selected at random. That is who the question will be directed towards. However, this question will barley be a question at all. It will instead be a choice that quantifies how much you want to be a shinobi."

Ibiki's hardened lips shifted to a devilish smile, ever-evaluating eyes sinisterly glancing over the genin.

"Whoever's name is written underneath the space will have these choices. You can accept the choice, instantly pass the whole exam and become a chunin just like that. However, if you chose this your two teammates will never be able to take the exams again."

He briefly paused to let the genin evaluate the weight of his words. Judging by their faces, Ibiki could see that this weight was hitting them over the head like a brick. It made him smile that bit harder.

"Or, you can allow both your teammates to carry on towards the next stage. However, now you will never be able to take the exams again."

Panicked chatter began to spring up among the examinees, a sudden disregard for the strict speaking rules of the stage spreading between them.

"Quiet. I will begin writing the names down now." Ibiki growled, picking up his chalk and beginning to write across the board.

The chalk may as well have been a nail with how much dread it instilled within the genin when it was used. Naruto put his hands up to his face, a stream of thoughts all trying to take the top spot in his mind at once.

What?! They can't do that…that means…no way! If they can't…huh!

He gazed around. Sasuke had clasped his face within his hands while Sakura had fully transformed into a "deer in headlights". Any color was now sapped from her face, an ethereal paleness grasping at her features. The three of them became locked at a crossroads. None of them thought they had it in them to dismiss the other two, yet the more they thought about it the more they couldn't help but feel like it was a real possibility.

There were a lot of things a genin couldn't and would never be able to do.

A genin couldn't become Hokage.

A genin couldn't kill Itachi Uchiha.

A genin couldn't have any pushback over the authority of their guardian.

These thoughts circulated through their minds, clawing at the three's throats. They tried to push them away, each pair of eyes locking on the board while selfishly hoping one thing. That the decision would not be placed upon them but one of the other two.

Ibiki's chalk connected with the space under the words "Team 7". He paused for a split-second (which felt like literal days for the trio) before regripping the stick and with one sharp flick, writing down the name of the burden bearer. In big bold letters, he had written:

Naruto Uzumaki.