This is so late. My bad guys, I was working on being more on top of deadlines, but clearly ts not working. Anyway, here's chapter 13. One of the questions from the exam is loosely based on an LSAT practice problem so if you can figure it out, congrats your better at logic then me! Also thank you to all the reviewers form the last chapter! I always love to hear back from people and it's like crack to check my email and see that I have a new reviewer. (Shout out to Kassie whose been reviewing since chapter one- thanks!)

Also in this email, we deviate from cannon! The rules are different and we can further explore the slightly twisted differences between Kage's old and new life!

As usual, let me know what you think or if you have an questions! I answer PM's pretty quickly so feel free to message me. (Also, like enjoy this chapter and all, but get hype for chapter 14 cause its gonna get crazyyyyyy. Like this is almost necessary filler for the story...)

~Line break~

The room was larger then any of the classrooms had seen when I attended the academy. I wondered if this room was reserved for the exams or if class sizes had just shrunk since the building of the academy. It was set up like a lecture hall, with long tables and rows of desks. There were three people to a desk with 9 rows and 6 columns. Although not every chair was filled, most were which meant that there were roughly 150 participants. The large room was bordered by numerous chunin proctors. Each was holding a clip board and was sitting a chair. Those participants in an end seat close to the chunin leaned away from them, clearly uncomfortable with the cold and calculating looks they were receiving. At the front of the room was a chalk board and a lectern. To the right hand side were huge windows that brightened up the whole room. The main proctor who had been yelling at us all was already standing up front with his arms crossed.

(As a quick aside, I just want to point out that even in the Naruto Universe, the rule 'dress for the job you want' was very true. For example, Kakashi sensei went out of his way to seem unassuming. He purposefully slumped and read porn in public while wearing the standard jonin outfit, a calculated 'lazy' decision. I had accidentally followed his path in trying to seem harmless, dressing down and could always be found slouching. There was also Shisui who made himself out to be an overexcited moron. Albeit some of his stupidity was real—but Shisui had been considered the Uchiha prodigy before Itachi took over. And with the clumsy and affable personality he portrayed to the village, you wouldn't guess his near 100% mission success rate. Then there was Uncle Inoichi, who owned a flower shop and was always quick with a smile and a friendly compliment. His demeanor hid his profession in the Torture and Interrogation Department. The head of the interrogation unit, as I understood it. Basically what I'm getting at is that people in the village—ninja everywhere really— dressed a certain way for a reason. Which was why this proctor stood out.)
The man at the front of the room was tall and had a face covered in scars. His head was covered in a bandana, but it wasn't low enough on his forehead to hide the scars creeping over his head. He was dressed in a heavy black and his long coat swung ominously behind him. He stood with his shoulders thrown back and he positively loomed over everyone in the room. In short, he looked intimidating. (Which was, based on my experience, an entirely personal choice.) He was probably trying to frighten us. The line of chunin on each side of the room fit that narrative. The pressure in the room was high and I swear he must subtly be releasing killing intent because I had to force myself to relax into my chair.

"Welcome to the Chunin exam brats. You'll be dealing with me for the first part." He gave a face splitting grin, which looked all kinds of wrong on his face. It reminded me of my own use of smiles to disarm people. (I wondered if my face would also look so scary once I accumulated some more scars.)

He continued on "My name is Morino Ibiki. I'm a jonin of Konoha and I'll be overseeing your written test. You don't pass the test, you don't become a chunin; simple as that. You'll have 2 hours to complete questions one through nine. Question ten will be given after the time limit. The rules will only be said once, but are written on the board behind me so that you don't bother asking me again. Rule number one: Each team must attain at least fifteen points to pass the exam. Rule two: Each team member must contribute at least 3 points to the total score. Rule number three: Cheating is prohibited and anyone caught cheating more then 3 times will be asked to leave the examination. Rule four: If your team fails, you fail. Anything else you need to know will be told to you before the final question is provided. Any questions?"

The stern faced proctor stared down everyone in the room, daring us to bother him.
I looked around the room. Curiously, there were no clocks around the room. Two hours seemed rather generous to complete 9 questions so I wondered if the 2 hours was just an arbitrarily picked amount of time. I noticed the examines were all sitting stiffly, with their shoulders hunched and most already had their pencils in their hand, eager to begin. I looked back to the proctor and tentatively raised my hand. He stared at me with his creepy grin still in place. (His gaze was sharp. Clearly he must be intelligent to be a jonin, but I felt like his eyes were seeing more then just a genin raising their hand.) I suppressed a shiver and raised my and I pasted on my smile, the one I used on everyone from the hokage to Gato.

"Participant number 137?"

"Yes sir! Just two questions actually!" His face remained immobile. The chunin closest to me was marking something down on his clip board already. I ignored him. "For the exam, we had to compete with groups of 3. If one of my team members is eliminated here, is the rest too my cell allowed to continue forward?"

I watched people around the room flinch at that. I hoped that was the case. Weaker teams to deal with later on, and I had also (accidently) suggested in-team fighting. Some participants turned to eye their teammates warily, and some just grew very pale. Others raised their eye brows and looked at Ibiki curiously. I kept my smile steady.
"The chunin exams look to provide a test of your ability to act as a chunin during real mission stress. If you lose a teammate, a mission does not end." Cold and rational. People again flinched.

"Oh okay great!" I answered perkily. Faking excitement and bouncing in my seat, I asked my other question. This was the one I actually cared about. "Also, are the exams all the same version? It wouldn't be very fair is some had a different version and it was easier then the majority of the tests…" I let my voice trail off. The proctor raised an eyebrow, clearly not fooled, but I widened my smile: I didn't care if he was fooled—I just needed to know if I as going to have the same exam as Naruto.

"We only have the same version circulating the room in the essence of 'fairness'" He mocked me with the word. "Although that's an idea for next time…"

I blinked. (Did this world not have multiple versions of exams? I could believe it; I knew we all always had the same exam in the academy, but I figured that was because we were kids. Sometimes the differences from my first life were so randomly different from the aspects of my current life. In my past life, university cheating had been a huge issue and academic dishonesty was always being fought. I'd never had a collegiate exam that only used one version for a class.)

Ibika was still eying me, so I gave a slight nod. He turned to his left. A ninja shushinned next to him and handed him a stack of exams. He quickly distributed them throughout the room. The genin to my left was from Grass and he kept shooting me wary looks. The 'genin' to my right was sitting stiffly and wore a leaf head protector. I didn't recognize him at all and again figured he was a plant. What a shame for the room at large. They were missing someone to cheat off of; I was sure I wouldn't need to glance over at his paper.

Once Ibiki boomed "Start!" the room was a flurry of motion. Everyone hurried to flip over their test and answer as many questions as they could in the limited time. I took my time, first glancing up and noticing a sleeping Naruto. He had his head down on the desk, the test remaining unanswered in front of him. I smiled softly, then controlled my face. No reason to give away anything more to the room; the grass ninja next to me seemed convinced I was a team abandoning psychopath who smiled too much

(maybe. He hadn't said as much, but that's probably what I would be thinking in his shoes). I grabbed my pencil and flipped over the exam. Languidly with large bold strokes I wrote my name on the top of the exam before glancing over the questions.

They were high chunin level. Not impossible to answer, but morale breaking if you were the average genin in this test. I shook my head in annoyance. This would require some calculations in each questions. I wasn't going to finish as early as I had hoped.

'Question 1: You have received information from numerous informants in a village. Some of the information seems conflicting, however, the facts provided are 100% truthful. Based on the statements below, give a detailed description of your target.

-Target is tall and has a distinctive walk compared to the average inhabitant of the town.
-The target is short compared to tallest man in the small town you are staking out.
-Target is highly charismatic and spends a large amount of time conversing with the townspeople.
-Target has hair that is colored purple and wears it in a very distinct style.
-Target carries a large weapon the size of their wing span, but the informant is not sure what the name of it is.
-Target stride is unaffected by choice in footwear or dress including heavy bulky jackets and clunky work boots.'

I scoffed and glanced around the room. People looked stumped. I shook my head in disbelief and began writing out the profile.

'Target is a tall female, identified by distinctive purple hair held up in some kind of hairstyle. Target most likely has ninja background based distinctive walk being unaffected by different shoes (ie, most kunoichi train to fight in heels and kimonos). Target is most likely an information gathering expert based on ability to charm towns people. Target should be approached from a distance as the target most likely has a mid range to close range weapon. Target most likely gathering information on town, so should be captured alive to discover what information she was targeting and why she was sent to this town in particular.'

I figured that was enough for question one; anything else I could write would be heavy extrapolation and I didn't want to lose points for making false assumptions. The next question was a heavy logic question. I had answered fairly quickly, but this looked like one of the easier questions on the exam.I glanced up and noticed Ibiki still standing at the front of the room, looming over everyone in the front row. The chunin at the sides of the room were also marking things on their clip board and leering at the participants closest to them. I bit on the eraser to my pencil and moved on to the next question.

Question 2: The Land of Samurai to the north heavily taxes all importation of agriculture revenue from the taxes goes towards subsidies for trade schools. A non-analogous situation is a library charging fees for late books and then using the proceeds to purchase new books. Explain why this is not a good comparison and provide an analogous situation in example.'

I chewed on the end of my pencil. This test was turning out to be a pain in the ass. Even copying the answers to Naruto's test was going to be bothersome because they were written answers which would imply variance. I jotted down my answer (The greater the success achieved in meeting the first objective, the less the success in achieved in meeting the second objective. A better example is charging a toll over an older bridge to encourage travelers to use a different bridge. If the proceeds from the tolls were pooled together to fund the building of a new bridge, the situations are comparable and reach the same analysis.)

"THUNK" A kunai was buried in the desk of a participant two seats away from Sasuke.
"Whaa-huh?" The poor kid looked startled and could barely form a response. A chunin from one of the outer seats leered at him.
"You're out number 145. You were caught cheating three times."
"No but I didn't—!"
"KEEP ARGUING AND YOUR ENTIRE TEAM IS OUT!" Ibiza roared from his place in the front of the room. Near tears, the chunin-hopeful gathered his stuff and quickly exited the room. Ibiza gave a dark smile to everyone watching the proceedings. "Tick tock children. Only 90 minutes left."

Everyone tensed and hurried back to writing. I frowned and glanced out the window. The sun hadn't moved enough. Maybe 30 minutes had passed since the test began, but I doubted it. Feeling the tension in my shoulders, I gave them a quick roll still frowning. I noticed Ibiki glance my way and I shot him a brilliant smile. (If he was part of torture and interrogation, his whole shtick was mind games. I doubted we'd get the full two hours for the exam. I also doubted that the first person eliminated hadn't been a plant intended to stress everyone out. I could be wrong. But it made sense…)

I moved on to question three. A mathematical question asking for the instantaneous rate of speed of a smoke bomb being lobbed from a tree at 4 seconds post throw. (Of course, it wasn't called instantaneous rate of speed; I was pretty sure that calculus hadn't been invented in this world as Issac Newton didn't exist here. But I had taken a calc class or two, albeit over 2 decades ago, and this was similar enough to 'the tangent problem' that I wasn't worried.)
In the time it took me to complete the next problem, three more individual participants were eliminated and one full team.

I ignored their leaving, as well as the comments said by the proctors and Ibiki—As far as I was concerned, everything being done was a show to further intimidate us. I only looked up when I was interrupted from moving on to start question 4. A kunai landed in front of me. Sort of. I looked at it, then the chunin who had thrown it.
"Number 97 you're out! Grab your things and leave!" The person to my right flinched, but moved to leave. The chunin made eye contact with me and gave me a nasty grin. I forced myself to calm my racing heart and shot him the same smile I had given Ibiki before—I wasn't going to lose to mind games. (A chunin should be able to aim a kunai. This was a power move)

Questions 4 through 7 were more logic problems. As I wrote out answers, more and more people were eliminated. I watched as people around me hunched their shoulders and wrote quicker. (I internally marveled at the ability Ibiki had—everyone in this room was convinced there was only an hour left for the test. I put it at an hour and half to an hour and fifteen.

The last two questions were more math problems. One was a statistical problem and the other was a simple algebra problem disguised as a grossly over complicated word problem. I hurried through them, completing them as quickly as I could.

I glanced up at the first row. Naruto was out cold, with Hinata glancing at him in worry every few minutes. Sasuke was writing furiously, but his eyes were on a person a few tables over and across from him. ('Must be the sharingan, which is such bullshit, but I'm not even going to let myself get mad at that overpowered heirloom right now.') Shikamaru already had his head down (of course he was finished, genius that he was) and Ino was also seemed to be asleep, although it was more likely that she had currently taken over Choji and was filling in his test questions, because he was writing far quicker then I had ever seen him write before. Everyone else from my graduating class seemed to have things well in hand. I quickly moved all my items to match Naruto's desk as exactly as I could. I angled my test the same way his was facing, then put my pencil the in the same place as his. I needed to walk him through every step of the way and if I wasn't doing the task myself, I had no way to force his body to do it.
(Although Shika and Dad could have done all this without having an actual test in front of them or holding a pencil, I had no where near the skill in shadow mimicry that they did. I was trying my best to work around my inadequacies. )

Once everything was set, I went through the hand seals for the shadow possession, dropped my head to the desk just like Naruto's was, and let my shadow stretch out. (I wasn't worried about the proctors seeing the hand seals. That was my only attempt at cheating—I probably wasn't going to be disqualified for just the one attempt.) I used the desks shadows to extend mine until I felt the connection to his shadow. I quickly latched on and then raised my head.

Naruto copied me. I grabbed my pencil, then quickly pulled my test towards me. Naruto did the same. There was only the slightest bit of resistance. He was probably still asleep—lucky for me. I steadily traced over the answers I had written for the math problems on the test. As it was all math, having the same exact answer as Naruto wouldn't be quite as suspicious as having the same exact analysis in a logic problem. I worked as quickly as I could, already feeling the slight drain on my chakra. I had no idea when the next portion of the exam would be, and I wanted as much chakra available as possible. For this reason alone, I only completed 3 questions on Naruto's test—he only needs to contribute 3 points and I saw no reason to waste time adding another question when we would exceed the required 15 points for our team.

Once I was finally finished, I flipped over my exam (and Naruto's), released the possession and let Naruto's head thunk into his desk. He woke up with a shout that got him a dirty look from Ibiki. He glanced down and saw the turned over exam. He didn't turn around, but I could imagine the huge smile on his face, even as he put his head back down and sat squirming in his chair. I inwardly snickered and put my own head down. I let the proctors imagine I was taking a nap like the lazy Nara I was. Unfortunately, I couldn't fall asleep even if I wanted too; I was wide awake.

I instead used my time to observe the competition. Regrettably, the more competent were wrapping up their completed tests, whether from their own knowledge or from their superior cheating skills, I wasn't quite sure. I eyed a leaf ninja who had rigged a mirror up to the ceiling. I wondered if she got docked for cheating every time she got caught using it, or just during the set up. There was also another Hyuuga a few rows over, and I could see his byakugan from where I was sitting. (Another cheating dojoutsu. Shadows were cool and I loved them, but lets be honest and just say that some clans were over powered. It was like a video game character that was too stacked. It was just waiting to be nerfed by the developers.)

One of the few grass teams remaining seemed to be using a pretty overt hand sign system, but the chunin weren't paying attention. (I mentally made note of the team—at least one of them was must be an expert genjutsu user.)
I looked around curiously. The snake dude's apprentice was already finished. Awkwardly, he was sitting next to a sound ninja. (I inwardly delighted at the cringe he must be feeling.) It took me a second to locate the sound ninja who had thrown the punch. He was almost completely opposite the room from where I was sitting, and he was hunched over, similar to how he'd been standing. (back problems this young was not a good sign. Thank goodness for Konoha's healthcare being above standard.)

He had a hand cupping his ear and he was writing while he listened. (Tell me he wasn't hearing people writing and copying it. The physics in this world were just broken. I made an even stronger worded mental note to avoid the sound team. They were beyond what I thought we could handle at the moment. Besides their techniques were even more broken then the sharingan.)

More and more people were being eliminated, teams holding back tears as they watched their teammates leave. The room looked about two-thirds full, compared to the packed room I had walked into. According to Ibiki, we still had another 20 minutes to go before we received the final exam. (More like 45. He wasn't even being consistent with his increments of time.)

I whiled away the time. Kiba had his nindog walking around the room and giving small yips. (I rolled my eyes. Whoever was watching his section was clearly a dog lover because everyone in Konoha knew that Inuzuka's understood their dogs and that their partners were intelligent enough to be considered ninja in their own rights. )
The Kazekage sat close enough for me to eye him curiously. He was a scrawny brat now, but I remembered the show. He was going to grow up to be an awesome ambassador of peace. I couldn't wait till Naruto became friends with him. Maybe when Naruto was on his training trip/time skip, I could go visit Sand and hang out with the Kage. Chilling in the desert might be like chilling at the beach, without all the water.

As if sensing my eyes on her brother, Temari turned around and glared at me. I mock scowled back then winked at her. (I had no idea why she didn't like me, but the nicer I was, the more mad she got. I totally understood why sensei showed up late to everything if this was the kind of reaction he received. Pissing people off was just so much fun.)

Her glare grew even stronger and she whirled around to stare at the front of the room with her arms crossed. I kept my head down and moved my arm over to cover my mouth so my smile wouldn't show.

When about half the room had been eliminated, Ibiki finally spoke up. (Huh, guess I was a bit slow on the uptake there. He wasn't measuring time—he was measuring the amount of teams he was going to allow to pass.)

"Alright brats, your time to complete the first nine questions is over. Pass your exams to the front of the room." I eyed my test, making sure no sleight of hand occurred to 'lose' my test on the way up. Thankfully, I was pretty sure my exam made it into the chunin at the front of the room's hands. Ibiza continued talking.

"They're going to begin grading these exams while I give you the final question. This question has slightly…different rules." He let out a soft chuckle. It had the intended effect, with a wave of shivers sweeping through the room, chunin proctors on the side included.

"You only have one chance to take question ten. You can opt out right now if you'd like. There will be no penalty against you for not proceeding with the question. Instead, you will simply be eliminated from the exam. HOWEVER" The people in the front jumped as he slammed a hand down on Naruto's table. Naruto popped up, abruptly awoken.
"If you chose to take the tenth question and you get it wrong, you will be ineligible to ever become a chunin. You will be barred from all future chunin exams. Weigh the risk carefully.

Oh but before I forget, question ten is special. We're weighing it as 3 points, rather then one. Which means those of you that passed forward a blank test—"he glanced around the room, "Or those of you that didn't manage to get enough right on the first portion might be able to earn enough points with this final question." His smile grew even larger, if that was possible.

He looked absolutely demented.

"Is it worth it?" His voice was a whisper. The whole room froze then —

"Thats it: I'm out! No way am I gonna be stuck a genin forever!" The plant next to me stood up so abruptly his chair fell over.

Ibiza gave the room a cold smile and acknowledged the man. "Good for you. Chunin need to be able to think clearly. Better luck next time. Participant number 12, you and your team may leave."

Two other stood up to protest, but Ibiki stared them down. They shut up and glared at their teammate the way out. Even with the show they'd given the room, another raised his hand and announced his wish to withdraw.
Another genin gave out a displeased groan.

"Why? We could've gotten 15 points even with Maika being disqualified!" I heard the teammate grumbled on the way out.

Slowly the room emptied out. Naruto was tense, but I relaxed back in my chair, ignoring the atmosphere. Our team had 9 points from my exam, 3 from Naruto's and I was sure at least 3 correct answers from Sasuke's paper. We would pass. And they had said nothing about abstaining from the 10th question. We had enough points without the inclusion of the final question. Sasuke also looked tense in his seat, and he shot me a look, but I just gave him a small smile in reassurance. (Sasuke was always tense anyway. The guy didn't know how to relax)

Once the flux of people stopped, Ibiki spoke up again.

"That it? All of you ready for the final question then? This is going to make or break you—chunin hopeful or eternal genin." The room stayed quiet but determinedly stared forward.

"Well then…You all pass!" I nearly dropped out of my chair.

"What the fuck was all that then?" One of the other competitors shouted out.

Ibiki gave a small smile to the person who shouted, quieting down the rock ninja. "The final question was a test of your will. As a chunin you will be presented with situation that seem hopeless. You will be presented with the option of proceeding or retreating. And while sometimes retreat is the correct choice—sometimes you need the guts to make the hard choices and to power on."

Naruto sat up straighter and I could tell he liked this final test. (I, meanwhile, was furious. I had wasted a good hour of my life on a test that had been fairly difficult, for nothing. I mentally cursed sensei for signing team seven up for this bullshit.)

Tamara spoke up, sounding furious. "So this whole test was a bs way of testing our mettle?"

"No, no, we wouldn't waste your time like that. Your test scores are going to factor into your over all chunin promotion score. There are certain factors that weigh in the choice. A good score, i.e.: 3 to 5 points or potentially even more, will make you look much more favorable as a candidate." (Well that was something good at least. All three of us had achieved at least three questions.)

"The next portion of the exam will begin in 20 minutes. You will be required at the main entrance to training ground 44. Don't be late."

At some unseen signal, every chunin and Ibiki disappeared from the room. It struck me as very theatrical and cool looking, but a waste of time synchronizing. (How much time was wasted gathering all the chunin together just to practice making an impression on foreign genin?)

Once the proctors were gone, everyone stood up in a mad rush to join with their teams. I stayed where I was, waiting for Sasuke and Naruto to come find me. It didn't take them long to push past the crowd. I motioned for them to sit down next to me while I continued watching the crowd. Some were moving around harried, glancing around the room for some hint on where training ground 44 was. Others were huddled together, lips hidden as they discussed the test. Leaf ninja looked equally as baffled about the location of training ground 44. (If I had to guess it would be by all the rest of the training grounds our village offered, but what did I know?)

The Kazekage and his sibling were off to the side, no group getting to close to them. Tamari and Kankuro were whispering to each other but Gaara stood on his own, also watching the room. When his gaze scanned over to me, I gave a slightly cheery wave and a huge genuine smile. His face didn't change, but he turned to join in the conversation with his siblings. Instantly they stopped talking and stared at him. While I watched them speak, I spoke quietly to Naruto and Sasuke.

"I think we should try working with that sand team for the next part." I motioned lazily over to the window by where the kazekage stood.

"We don't need help!" Naruto was quick to say no. Sasuke looked at me thoughtfully.

"Why?" He had his hands clasped in front of him, and he rested his head on his fingers. He looked like a philosopher debating the meaning of life. I gave him a smirk.

"I'm not a betting woman but—" Sasuke couldn't hold back his slight guffaw. (On the bridge, he and I had gone back and forth playing poker and blackjack. And I was very much a betting woman.) "I bet you both that the red head is gonna be the biggest competition in this exam. I wouldn't be surprised to find out we're looking at a future kage of Suna. He gives off the right aura."

Naruto tilted his head and looked at Gaara quizzically. "I dunno Kage. I don't have that aura and I'm the future Hokage, datebayo. He seems kind of…weird." (Bless Naruto and his small vocabulary. Calling someone as terrifying as the other demon boy 'scary' instead of petrifying)

I smiled at him gently. "Naruto, haven't you been sensing the chakra in the room?"

"Of course, Datebayo! It's what I did when I woke up from the test!"

"So you can tell even better then I can that he's got the most chakra out of anyone else in this room?" (I excluded Naruto in my count. If Gaara made me seem like a thimble to his lake, Naruto made Gaara seem like a lake to his ocean. And if Naruto wasn't my friend, I would've been very worried to be in this exam with him.)

"Besides, he seems like he'll be fun to mess with. Looks too uptight. Like Sasuke when he first wakes up." Sasuke shot me and Naruto a dirty look as Naruto burst out laughing. "Sasuke, the only person who's worse in the mornings then you is Kage."

"What? I'm not bad in the mornings!" I protested. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"We're getting off track. I don't think we should work with the sand team—we have the ability to finish this exam on our own, so lets do it and become chunin."

I frowned but shrugged my shoulders. "Fine, fine sounds like a plan to me. Right, I'm glad we brought our bags. This next stage seems bothersome."

"It sounds like a breeze! We're just going to a training ground!" Naruto jumped from his seat, already too excited at the prospect of continuing to sit still any longer.

Sasuke gave a long suffering sigh and face palmed. (Sometimes I wondered how he stayed sane. I only managed Naruto from long time exposure to Shisui and some heavy behavior modification on my part.)

"Naruto, training ground forty four? Come on, I know you're not that dense, teme." At Naruto's uncomprehending explanation, I explained for Sasuke.

"The number four sounds like death right Naruto?" He nodded. "So forty four sounds like…." I looked at him meaningfully.

"Wait. So the second part of our exam is in the training ground of…death-y death?"

"Yup. Speaking of that, can you do me a favor Naruto?"

"Of course I can, Datebayo!" He flexed his muscles. "Want me to handle the next part of the test?"

"Not like you're thinking. Can you make a clone and have them run to the hokage tower? I want them to go to the permit office, you know where you request private training grounds and stuff? And then can your clone ask the desk ninja on duty as much information as possible on training ground 44? Hopefully your clone can find some stuff out and bring us some information for the test."

Sasuke nodded in approval. His eyebrows were slightly raised, which meant he was impressed. (It was such a warm and cozy dynamic our team had, especially when I received such high praise.)

I glanced around the room again, which was nearly empty. The sand siblings had already exited. Shika and his team were talking in the corner still, but besides them, we were the only full team left in the room.I gave a slight salute to Shika as I stood up. Sasuke stood next to me and we both slung our packs over our shoulders, copying Naruto.
Naruto made quick clone and the clone hurried ahead of us, while the three of us moved towards the now open window. Other ninja had already exited out of it, so we followed suite and hopped out. After all our practice with Sensei, roof hoping was now second nature for me and Naruto, and Sasuke could manage it without damaging any property most of the time.

The clone quickly hoped down the streets and moved to the nearby hokage tower while the three of us quickly traversed the vilage. Training grounds were labeled 1-20, before they received more inspired and personalized names such as 'Jonin restricted training ground 3', called JR 3 for short. Beyond the chunin and jonin restricted training grounds was more empty land,still well within the massive outer walls that encompassed the village. Once we past the huge fields that were within the village proper, we finally started to reach the more volatile grounds. There was the 'simulated explosives training ground'(which didn't have a name for short, but that was okay because you wouldn't catch me dead working with explosives anyway).

It was only near the outskirts of the village, to the point that we were well within the range of the outer village wall that we came upon training ground 44. It was the furthest out of the village of any training ground that I had seen. I could weakly sense the other competitors the closer we got to the fence off wooded area.

"Behold!" I said dramatically sweeping a hand out in front of us as we hopped towards the cluster of chakra signals that were probably signifying the entrance. "Training ground forty four!"

"Hnng." Sasuke was unimpressed. Naruto giggled and copied my theatrical arm sweep.

"BEHOLD! THE CHUNIN EXAMS PART TWO: THE TRAINING GROUNDS OF DEATHY-DEATH!"