'Pressure Test.'

Whilst Eri burrowed into her own thoughts, she let her brown eyes scan the length of the classroom to the tunes of a chorus of pencils tapping constantly against papers. Did they really have to write so loudly? All she could hear was the tapping, and even when she made the attempt to drown it out, it thundered against her eardrums in unwanted echoing.

After a few moments, she deviated the tapping with the sound of her own, the green coin in her hand knocking a bit more heavily against the surface of the desk.

This was the first part of the chunin exams - the written test. It had only been about ten minutes, and this had done too much wearing on the young cat girl's nerves. The lot of them had all been separated from their squads, and in most cases found themselves sitting next to either complete strangers of the same village, or even other examinees from various different regions across the shinobi world. She, herself, as far as she could see, found herself on the end desk, only seated next to a young girl from the Rain village; quite frankly, she seemed as if she were ready to keel over from anxiety at any moment.

"Hmnnn..." Eri near inaudibly loosed a growl of frustration under her breath. It hadn't taken her much time to crack the code.

'Stick us into a desperate situation...' She thought, eyeing the other students that either seemed to be writing aimlessly, or that spent their times searching around the room as if waiting for a sign. The reasoning? It was pretty obvious, maybe not from the first moment the proctor said it, but as he continued to hammer in the details, regulations, and limitations. The emphasis put on cheating was a key detail right away, and the leniency behind it was another circumstance. His words were also very deliberate.

Now Eri couldn't quite articulate everything, but there was a feeling she got when hearing him speak his last line.

'Anyone fool enough to be caught cheating by the sentinels doesn't deserve to be here. If you want to be considered shinobi, then show us what exceptional shinobi you can be.'

She replayed it in her mind back to back, her brow knitting and her closed eyes capturing the imprint of the memory like a movie across her mind. Little circles of blush slowly began to fade into her cheeks, her brow twitching somewhat. 'Ibiki Morino, right? Man, he's so cool..!'

If she were to follow her hunch on the idea of a pressure test, that would make a load of sense. She had already tried to take a good look at the test paper, and just as she thought bad couldn't get any worse, she was greeted with majority of the subjects being based on formulas, mathematics, physics... Three of the things that she couldn't stand. Honestly, most of the time through the academy, if she didn't skip ahead and try to apply logic to learn it backwards, she would guess her way through a lot of the sudden tests and rely on her fortunate to get her through. Usually, she got lucky, though in this case...

'The test doesn't even seem to be what matters so much... I may not be a strong math guy, but I know Iruka-sensei's never explained something of this level.' Her cheek swelled, in thought, the tapping of her coin slowing as the cogs in her brain began to turn somewhat more quickly. 'So if we're being tested on our ability to work under pressure, with such an emphasis on cheating, there's no surprise that cheating's encouraged. Beyond that, if that's the case, then it's probably expected that we would be put in a position where we would be driven to cheat in the first place. So I'm sure there's no reasonable way I could have figured out any of these questions as the average genin applicant anyway.'

Her shifted to catch a subtle glance in the direction of the sentinels that lined the walls. 'So they're here to catch the ones that inevitably slip up. So pressure's only a part of it. If we can't get the answers ourselves, and cheating is the main objective, then somebody has to be planted.' With the size of the room considered, there would have to be several people planted at random points, likely disguised to blend in amongst the Genin.

She rose her hand to her mouth, wedging her nail in between her teeth. 'That's all well and fine. This is a test on gathering intelligence, wonderful, really. The problem is, I don't have anything in my arsenal that can accomplish that...'

If one were to question the validity of her stealth under ordinary circumstances, surely she could rely on the accuracy of a basic technique like transformation, or the reliance on her agility to scale areas where she could conceal herself to eavesdrop. If necessary, she could have a lot more at her disposal to play reconnaissance. Here, however, their venue was so limited, that if she didn't have something akin to a sensory based technique that could pick up senses through others over distances, or some kind of method of manipulating her surroundings covertly, she was screwed.

She tapped the coin in her hand once more - with it, there was something she could do, but it was by no means stealthy. The only thing she had on her at the moment aside from the standard tools was a coil of wire Sasuke had encouraged her to learn to use with more efficiency and versatility, and the rest of her coins. If she were to do things in a normal sense, she would have to figure out who to get the answers from first, and find a way to retrieve them without making a ruckus.

'I hate it!' She mentally dragged, gnawing at her nail furiously. The techniques she received on behalf of her father were all anything but inconspicuous, and her mom's weren't inconspicuous enough for this situation.

She had gone and figured out the nature of the exam, but now she had nothing to show for it. Nothing but a blank test and useless information.

Resigning to thinking, as it was the only thing she could do in the moment, Eri opted to relax her anxiety-ridden nerves and recline her chin into her palm. In terms of her ability to pass this test, she wasn't worried. She still had her team, and she knew that she could trust them beyond any shadow of a doubt. It just left her fidgety that she couldn't do more to assist them in a portion of the exam built upon intellect and psychology; she was typically very useful in that case.

As her eyes lulled shut and she took the time to decompress and wait, the out-of-place scent of lavender wafted about, causing her nose to twitch up to greet it. Rather than alert herself to its presence, or try to find the source, she only tipped her head back slightly and took in a deep breath.

The cavalry had arrived.

'Don't worry, I managed to find the answers.'

After inhaling the lavender enough, Eri could feel her muscles begin to relax, and she knew immediately that this was the calming effect of the scent, easing her brain signals enough to allow for a seamless genjutsu-induced takeover.

'Just let me take control, okay?'

She could practically hear Momo's voice echo in the chambers of her mind, the answers screening through her head in the form of a murky illusion of sorts. Eri had been trapped in this before, and the both of them had learned as a result, that Eri carried a sort of subconscious stubborn resistance control, meaning they would have to be quick. Her chakra was borderline territorial, immediately racing to the scene of an invasion of a foreign energy, and in the same right, Momo was still somewhat inexperienced with the sharpening of the details of this technique, leaving them on crunch time.

'X, 16, 8,' Eri attempted to commit the answers to memory, and for those that required an explanation, she did her best to rationalize the answer written and paraphrase it in simple terms in a way that she could just fluff up with extra bits later.

'Shoot. It's timing out. I hope you got this!'

The voice of her friend began to waver out like distortion through a tunnel, wavering until Eri was met with the clearing vision of her own paper. She did little more than nod her head a few times, a wordless simple to her friend that it was a successful relay, then she went about quickly writing her answers. Tatsuo was good at those nasty, cursed things like math, so she wasn't sure if he would even need assistance on this, or if he even needed to cheat. Regardless, she was grateful for Momo's suiting technique at this point, and raising her own pencil, she dictated in the answers as quickly as she could.

They were on a roll!

After a few moments of perfecting her responses and being sure to deviate from the exact writing of the answers she recalled, she breathed out a calming sigh. It was still an underlying pang that she couldn't be more of use. Feeling she couldn't pull her weight, or put into a situation that emphasized her useless in a case often bothered her. She could feel her mind constantly thinking in hindsight, reeling back to what she could have done better or how she could make it up to them moving forward through the exam.

She attempted to stomach this anxiety and push forward.

For now, all that had to be done was to wait - the tenth question would roll around soon enough and her squad would be sitting pretty in the next part of the exam.

She leaned back and folded her arms, peering ahead at the proctor, and watching his movements intently.

Now Eri couldn't quite explain it, but she liked the way this guy operated. He was savvy and smart, and had she not been so stuck on how to progress with the test long enough to analyze this out, she probably would have been quaking in her boots like many of the other present Genin.

For a brief moment, Ibiki turned in her direction, her intent stare and borderline challenging expression forcing him to quirk a momentary brow with the beginnings of a stoic amusement. He hadn't the slightest clue why that strange girl was watching him like a hawk, but one thing he did take note of was that she was unnervingly calm, maybe even confident one could call her. "Hmph," though it was styled like the beginnings of a scoff, it eased from his lips like huffing chuckle.

'Man!' Eri exclaimed in her thoughts, her shoulders rising and a sparkling gleam glimmering through her large brown eyes, 'He's so dang COOL! He's TOO cool!'

Time ticked on, and as it did, the sound of pencils hitting papers began to die down. More and more students were either giving up or catching on then. The Tenth Question would be given out any moment, so it seemed appropriate. Still...

'Something's bothering me about this whole 'Tenth Question' business...' She pondered, twisting her lips around thoughtfully. She just had a bad feeling about it. Whether it was the acknowledgement that this whole test was a mix of purposeful anxiety and recon, or just the fact that the Ibiki guy had been giving off a sinister vibe of anticipation this whole time, she wasn't really sure. Come to think of it, it didn't make a great deal of sense in theory. Why wait to give some big question separate from the rest of the test? Either it carried some ridiculous weight, or it was some supposed cherry on top of this whole thing.

'This guy makes you fight your mind... Like playing shogi with Shikamaru.'

Speaking of Shikamaru... that guy was probably having the easiest time out of everybody. What a blessing it must have been to have such a natural-born gift of intellect.

Regardless, she gnawed at the inside of her lip and side-eyed the clock, then looked back down at the desk. The possibilities were endless, but just how bad could this tenth question be? More importantly, was it actually of substance, or was it just to add extra pressure?

She wound find out real soon. Asserting that it was time for the next question, Ibiki commanded their attention to his spot in the front of the room, his stance still lax and his face still hardened whilst her drove his hands into the pockets of his coat. Eri paid close attention, both to him and his words, siphoning out the bits that could help her make heads or tails of this all.

'You can choose whether or not to answer the final question?' Eri's expression drooped immediately, 'This is a backhand. I can feel it. What's the catch..?'

"So what's the catch? What if we decide we don't wanna do it? What happens then?"

Eri heard another student speak out, and immediately she felt relief. She was glad she wouldn't have to be the one to ask - she wouldn't want to get on the bad side of this guy.

"If you choose not to take the tenth question, regardless of your answers to the other nine, you get a zero," Ibiki spoke up in reply, oozing a sense of sadism as his calm and collected demeanor finally gave way to the coil of a menacing smirk. "That means, of course, both your teammates fail as well."

The classroom burst into an uproar, and without even turning to locate them, Eri could feel the anxiety raising throughout the applicants. Specifically, she knew that something like this would send Momo spiraling with ease.

'Damn,' Eri thought ruefully, lips twisting again.

"You didn't let me finish," Ibiki began again.

'Damn!' Eri exclaimed again, 'So let me guess. If we do take the question, and we get it wrong, the consequence is probably heavier. That's the only way the risk would work, but ... what's heavier than failing the exam..?'

"If you do accept the question, but answer it incorrectly, you will not only fail..." His words trailed off into suspenseful silence, letting the possible consequence sink in and the anticipation and anxiety come to a peak before crushing them entirely, "You will be barred from taking the chunin exams ever again."

'That's worse! That's definitely worse!' Eri's eyes were practically little white circles, steam puffing from her head. She wasn't worried! Of course she wasn't worried! She had practically spent the entirety of her freetime looking this guy over top to bottom and picking apart this test! She knew better than to be worried. Besides, both consequences aside, should there have been a flaw on behalf of the team, the two that she had were incredibly understanding. She had her doubts that these threats were solid, but she also couldn't be certain that they were hollow.

"Hey, that's bull, man!"

'Oh My God! Kiba Stop! Don'tChallengeHim,He'sTooCool!'

"What kind of stupid rule is that!? There's lots of people here that's taken the test before!"

Her head whirred around to look at the boy closer to the middle of the room, her hands practically shaking on his behalf. She took this moment even to make a full view of the room, looking at the flushed expressions and pallid faces. They tension was thick solely because everyone was absolutely terrified. Even if she didn't feel scared herself, just seeing everyone else struggling with every choice they'd made thus far and every choice they've yet to make was enough to make her feel the weight of their stresses combined on her shoulders.

She ignored the way Ibiki laughed at Kiba's assertion, and in this time she found the face of Momo.

The poor girl looked terrified. Eri could practically see her shaking from here. Momo was so conscious of other peoples' thoughts and feelings, that she was likely beating herself up over the thought of being the reason everyone dealt with the consequences of whatever action she decided to take.

Just as quickly, Eri looked away. She had to think on this. She had to pull it apart just as she had before, because maybe, just maybe, if she made her decision on behalf of the team, even if worst came to worst, she could take the blame, and save the others the guilt.

"If by all means, you're not feeling confident, you can skip it and try again next year."

Ibiki's words struck through Eri like a wave of lightning. The meaning in tandem with the intent. 'Hold on a second...'

That was what she needed. She bypassed the instructions for skipping the tenth question, and instead she closed her eyes, attempting to rationalize out and calm her racing nerves.

'Right then, it was the same as before. Encouraging everyone into cheating through instructing them that they shouldn't get caught. Here, inviting them to skip the tenth question and come back next year, it's like... swaying them.' What was the word? Why could she never say things the way she meant them? She always knew the kind of thing she wanted to say, she could feel the appropriate course of action, but trying to explain it was so difficult.

'He's trying to break our confidence. But then, related to a pressure test, what would be our motive? What are we trying to learn here? What is this testing?' She knocked against the side of her head with her knuckles. Think. Think.

It was so hard to get a grip on her thoughts when she could hear the resigned sound of forfeits from around the classroom, people raising their hands and giving up left and right.

'Think... Think...!' This was a whole new kind of pressure. It was nearly impossible to decide what was true. If they stayed and decided to take the test anyway, would they really become permanent Genin? And if they left, would they just be falling right into their plans? Making them question their thoughts... like playing shogi with Shikamaru, that's what she had used to describe it.

'Shogi!' She practically slammed her fist into her palm. Shogi was a game often used to enact the mindset of battle through a board game. 'Shikamaru was so good at it, because he always anticipated the next move, and even moves ahead of that. It makes one hesitate, because there's a lingering fear of falling right into his trap. In the process, you end up ensnaring yourself even further, and making a poor decision, because you try to minimize your risk.' She wedged her thumb nail between her lips.

'I need to stop looking at this like a game of Shogi and start looking at this like a battle, metaphorically of course... I need to stop looking at this like a test, and start looking at this like a mission. Risk in terms of self-preservation is necessary, and evading that risk for personal safety is unfounded. According to shinobi principle number 4, A Shinobi must always prioritize the mission over him or herself.'

Eri sat up straight, peering around until she noticed Tatsuo sitting across the way. His eyes were turned back, likely in the direction of Momo -expressing that he had the same worry as Eri. He, himself, however, seemed less bothered. She couldn't tell if he had figured it out, if he was just that confident, or if he was keeping on a pretty high quality mask. As for Momo, Eri peered back behind her.

Momo's fingers were locked above her head, her eyes facing down, and her body was quaking. She sucked in shallow breaths, attempting to rationalize her decision, but warring with the thought if maybe, just maybe, she managed to drag the team down despite their efforts. Everything they worked for up until this point would be for nothing if she quit before they got the question, but at the same time, everything they will ever work for in the future would be for nothing if she stayed and failed it. "I don't know what to do..." her voice was high and soft, a quiet whimper to herself as she began to dig her fingertips in against her head, "Ahh..."

She peered from under her curly locks, her eyebrows upturned and a pitiful look of terror winding over her features. She removed her shaky hand from her head, still uncertain on whether or not she would raise it. Luckily, she took a precautionary peek towards Tatsuo, then Eri, and finally for once between exchanged glances, all of their eyes were on each other at the same time.

'I don't know what to do,' Momo mouthed across the way to both of them, moving as if to lift her hand slightly to signal to them about her decision.

Firmly, Eri shook her head once, making a motion to set her hand back onto the tabletop.

In that moment, Momo appeared relieved. They both passed a glance to Tatsuo, who mimicked the motion of his hand flat on the table. Just that quickly, the personal three's tension began to alleviate. They would stay.

"DON'T UNDERESTIMATE ME! I DON'T QUIT AND I DON'T RUN!"

Eri quite nearly sprung from her seat at the sudden injection of a loud shout echoing through a relatively quiet classroom. Her eyes practically shrank to the size of dots, her hand risen in a guarding fashion, coin in tow, as an uncertain "..e-eh..?" echoed from her lips.

"You can act tough all you want! You guys aren't gonna scare me off! No way! I don't care if I get stuck as a Genin for the rest of my life! I'll STILL be Hokage someday!"

'Naruto...' Eri trailed. She hadn't had much of a chance to have spoken to the guy really, but it was hard to miss the him. He was a loud mouth, and that was at the absolute minimum. Still, she hadn't expected him to have the guts to go shouting in the middle of a pressure test like this. Well, to be fair, she also didn't expect him to go shouting to a group of terrifying genin applicants before a pressure test like this either. 'I think he's trying to steel his confidence...'

Tatsuo's expression was skeptical, his head cocked and an eyed narrowed, but with mild hesitance he thought, 'Good for you... Naruto.'

'Naruto...' Then there was Momo, 'Could you just have not raised your hand and been done with it..?' What a show-off...

Eri peered around the classroom. The influx of students bailing had come to a halt. Did Naruto's speaking up... give them a little confidence too? 'Wow, how inspiring... what a guy. I totally wanna be friends with him..!'

"Well, I admire your determination, if nothing else," Ibiki began to speak up at last, peering out at the lot of remaining students, "for those of you remaining, there's only one thing left to do... and that's for me to tell you..." Did he have to go into a suspenseful silence each and every time he dropped and information bomb?! Eri's heart was about to pound out of her chest over here! She was the one that made the final decision after all, so the fault would rest on her! "...That you've all passed the first exam."

"Oh thank goodness," Eri sputtered immediately, loosing her pent up breath. Be still he beating heart, she needed to pray, even if she hadn't a shrine near by. She clasped her hands together and bowed her head immediately.

"Wha- hold on! What just happened!? What do you mean we passed!? Where's the tenth question!?"

Momo grit her teeth, the souls of the damned practically screaming in her eyes as she stared across the way at the pinkette, 'SAKURA, DON'T COMPLAAAAAIN!'

Ibiki loosed a surprising jolly laugh, a wide smile across his face, "There never was one! Not a written one, at least! Actually, your decision to stay was the answer to the tenth question."

Even in the midst of praying, Eri's ear twitched to the sound of his happy-go-lucky disposition, 'It should be illegal to be that cool...'

Though he went on to explain, Eri bypassed the synopsis and focused on the gratitude for her fortune. They had passed the first exam. Who knew how many were remaining for them, but they would have to take this one step at a time, enjoy the accomplishments in the moment and whatnot.

Whatever came to greet them tomorrow, they would deal with that just then - tomorrow.

A/N: Ahhhhhhh! I need to grasp on to the wholesome moments! Put them in a box and keep them to reminisce on. ;w;

I woke up at like 4am and just lied away planning out the entirety of this story's course, and let me tell you. WHEW. W H E W.

I hope you guys like this so far, and as always, thanks so much for the support on this story and the others! Can't wait to see what you guys think and what predictions you can make from Eri's experience in the first exam!

Love you guys! Byeeee!

PS. Weird thing? While I was editing this document in the Doc Manager, it was erasing some parts of dialogue? It was kind of odd, but I think I fixed the ones affected. If you notice any weird issues that slipped past me, please let me know!