Saotome sat at their normal meeting place near the woods, playing his guitar idly. He was training hard, using weights and trying to make a few signature jutsu of his own. His training with Lee was going very well, and his taijutsu was making great progress. Through his training, he had become more confident than ever, especially around Junichi, who no longer creeped him out. He had spent enough time with Junichi to know that he was a good guy, who just like to mess with people's heads.
Ayane skipped up cheerfully. She was proud of herself as well. She had been working really hard and was pleased with the outcome. She was no longer the weak link in the team. She probably couldn't take on Junichi or Saotome, but she was making leaps and bounds over where she used to be. She sat down next to Saotome with a giggle.
"Did you have a good day Saotome kun?" She asked as sweetly as possible. She was as nice as can be, so everybody felt bad when they were annoyed by it.
"Well, I imagine it was good." Saotome said "I'm just waiting for the next chuunin exam so I can see Temari chan again."
"Have you two been writing each other regularly? How is everybody doing in the wind country?" Ayane asked with a big smile on her face.
"Everybody's doing fine. Kankuro is still wigging out from the whole cave thing, but there haven't been any more attacks on the village, so they're doing fine. Gaara's been trying to act like a normal person, but he's not doing too good. He was trying to smile and some children started crying. He tries to laugh at jokes and stuff, but it just turns out horrible. He comes off creepier than he really is." Saotome said with a small chuckle.
"That's great!" Ayane said happily "I'm glad to see Gaara kun is finally starting to come around. At first he scared me too, but we got to talking and he's really a nice person. He just doesn't know how to show it."
It was then that Junichi walked up, looking like he had been hit very hard several times. He casually sat down next to a tree and tried not to make conversation.
"Dude, did you lose a fight with a building or something?" Saotome asked stupidly. Buildings can't fight.
"Yeah man. I lost a fight with an inanimate object. It wasn't a building though. It was a spoon in my house. The bastard caught me while I was sleeping and kicked my ass." Junichi said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Oh, long as you didn't break anybody's house, cause then we'd all have to fix it for some lazy person." Saotome said, not catching the sarcasm.
"Good morning everyone" Kanoe said as she suddenly appeared in front of them. "You'll never guess what today is."
"Did you kill Kakashi sensei for random stupidity?" Junichi asked, half serious. He admired Kakashi for his strength, but absolutely abhorred his repeated tardiness.
"Nope, its better than that!" Kanoe said exitedly "The chuunin exam is coming up and I entered you all! All you have to do is sign these papers and go to room 301 tomorrow. I wish you all best of luck. No mission today. Now if you excuse me, I have to meet Kakashi for lunch."
And with that she disappeared, leaving three forms in their hands and shocked looks on their faces. Kanoe and Kakashi…It was freakin weird man.
"Kanoe sensei having lunch with Kakashi sensei…dear god send me to hell right now so I don't have to endure this torment here on earth." Junichi said as he hung his head.
"Amen to that blasphemy brother." Saotome said as he picked up his paper and studied it like he really had to think about what he was looking at.
The next day they all met together and handed their papers in. Not signing up wasn't an option for this team. They began walking up the stairs to get to room 301.
As soon as they walked through the doors they saw a huge gathering of genin standing around. Upon further inspection, they seemed to be trying to get past a door but two guys were standing in front of it. They slowly picked their way through the crowd just as the guys were taken down by Sasuke. Then all they saw was a green blur and then a strange guy wearing green spandex with a bowl cut and huge eyebrows standing in front of him. As soon as he saw him, Saotome stepped forward in front of Sasuke, knowing good and well what was going on.
"Stand down Lee, fighting now would be foolish" Saotome said with a grin "you can kick his ass later dude. You got all the time in the world."
"BUT I MUST SEE IF THE FIRE OF YOUTH BURNS WITHIN HIM!" The creature called Lee shouted.
"Dude I told you to cut that crap out. I also told you that youth doesn't burn, it lightly chills if you're any good at it." Saotome said, though few people knew what he was talking about "You know what Gai sensei would do if he caught you trying to kick everybody's ass? He would deck you. Lay you out flat man. He could snatch your ass in a bear trap for all we know, that guy is crazy."
"GAI SENSEI IS THE GREATEST! IF HE WERE TO DECK ME I'M SURE I WOULD DESERVE IT!" Lee yelled crazily.
"If you don't stop being annoying I'LL deck you." Saotome said, "Don't make me pull out my skills on you, cause you know I will. Like that one time I tied you up and messed with your hair. You looked like an electroshock victim."
"AS ALWAYS YOUR WORDS OF WISDOM RING TRUE!" Lee continued yelling, and now tears were streaming down his face "ONE DAY I WISH TO BE AS WISE AS YOU SAOTOME!"
Then there was hugging. It was by far the strangest thing anybody had seen. Junichi was seriously thinking about taking a kunai to the temple and just forget everything. Many other people had the same thought.
Everybody walked up the next set of stairs and filed into room 301. It was at this point where they met up with the sand trio. Everybody looked happy to see each other, except Kankuro. But nobody cared about him anyway so it didn't matter.
"It feels like its been years and years since we last talked." Temari said to Saotome warmly.
"Well it hasn't." He said rather bluntly "And I've been writing you every single freaking day. So we've been talking for at least three mo-" He didn't get to finish the sentence because Temari punched him in the face, and then picked him up and hugged him. Women…
"Its been a while Junichi san. I assume you've been keeping up with your training." Gaara said calmly, trying to ignore his sister hanging all over Saotome, which he didn't really like but accepted.
"I have Gaara. I only hope you have too, because now I can beat you even easier." Junichi said with a grin to his friend.
"We have to establish some rules this time." Gaara said with a grin "No demons and no summonings."
"But you still have your sand. What do I have?" Junichi asked with sarcastic concern.
"I thought you had been training." Gaara said jokingly, pulling it off well enough to not be considered a weirdo.
"Well you make a good point as always. Good to see you around man." Junichi said as he patted Gaara on the shoulder.
It was now that Saotome and Temari rejoined the rest of the group in normal conversation. Temari was punching Saotome way less than he deserved though, and everybody could tell she was going easy on him. The also began looking around and checking out the other genin standing around. There seemed to be a tall guy with a bunch of cards talking to the members or team seven, so they walked over casually and checked everything out.
"Yo guys." Saotome said as they walked up, his hand around Temari's waist, knowing she wouldn't mind him showing her off in front of people "Glad to see you're all signing up this year."
"Same to you guys!" Naruto said loudly "Who's she Saotome san? Is she your girlfriend or something?"
"As a matter of fact I am" Temari said, rather smugly "So all of Saotome kun's fan girls can just get a life."
"I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but Saotome doesn't have any fan girls. He barely has any hygiene." Junichi said with a grin and watched as Temari pummeled Saotome into the ground again. Always fun to see…
"So who is this?" Ayane said, ever so sweetly gesturing towards Kabuto, who was slightly disturbed by Temari beating the crap out of Saotome.
"This guy says his name is Kabuto" Sasuke explained shortly "He has these cards that show information on people."
"That's interesting…How is it you get this information Ka-" Junichi started to say but was cut short by a purple and yellow blur suddenly knocking him to the ground and punching the crap out of his already bruised face.
"I'LL TEACH YOU TO STEAL OUR FAMILY SECRETS YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Yelled and enraged Ino, as several people tried desperately to pull her off of him. Finally Sasuke just touched her on the shoulder and she passed out at the sight of who it was.
"What was she talking about Junichi kun?" Ayane asked innocently "You wouldn't steal techniques from people would you? Because that would be wrong, and I would have to punish you for that."
For some reason, everybody got chills up their spines when she said that, including a bleeding Junichi, who stared at her for a second before replying while trying to stop his nose from bleeding.
"N-no ma'am. I would never steal from anybody because stealing is bad and I'm a good person." Junichi stammered, for some reason. Females…
At that moment the instructor walked in. It was none other than Morino Ibiki. The torture and interrogation specialist of Kohona. With a few words he got everybody to their seats and explained the rules of the written exam they were to take. Junichi looked at Saotome who had his mouth hanging open and shrugged before turning back to Ibiki.
Junichi stared down at his test for a good ten minutes. He was a fairly educated person but he was stumped. This test was way over his head. He idly thought that he could still be qualified to be a chuunin because he knew hundreds of ways to destroy the test, but figured that wasn't what they were testing. The entire thing had to be rigged. Shinobi were taught never to take anything at face value. There had to be something more to this. Junichi put his pencil down and stared at Ibiki for the remainder of the exam…
Saotome's left eye was twitching. He had got number one in his particular class, but man, this test was just too much. Without even a moral battle, he began thinking of ways to cheat. Cheating was good. Saotome liked cheating…. He was about to look over at Naruto's paper, who was sitting next to him, when the blonde started shouting about something or another. Saotome glanced at his paper quickly and saw that there were no answers on it. If Naruto was going in with his pants down, he could too, and he napped the rest of the exam.
Ayane was having problems. She had no intention of cheating in any form. She didn't know any answers to the questions of course, but she certainly wasn't going to go against her morals and cheat. Cheating was just out of the question. Her only chance was to try her hardest to answer the questions. And thus she tried her best to think clearly and answer the hardest questions she had ever come upon.
At the end of the exam everyone gasped as Ibiki laid out the final choice for everyone. It was either answer the question and never be able to advance, or go home and try again some other time. As the minutes ticked by, more and more raised their hands and left the exam.
Ibiki was slightly disappointed. The blonde boy had blasted everyone's fears away and the white haired one was creeping him out majorly, which was hard because he was a specialist in breaking down a person's mind.
"To all those who are left I have to say…" Ibiki said letting the suspense ring "you pass."
Everybody in the room face faulted except for Junichi and Saotome, who was still sleeping. There were uproars of confusion and anger at having to do all that work for nothing. Ibiki calmed everybody down and waved a hand at Junichi, signaling for him to explain.
"All I know is, that Shinobi look underneath the underneath, so this test was complete bull from the start." Junichi explained calmly as everybody stared at him with wide eyes, once again except for Saotome who was still napping "And besides, you can't take the chance to refuse so many genin the chance to ever advance. One day all of the jounin will either die or have to retire and the chounin will move up, the genin have to follow suit and eventually move up to jounin. If you interrupt that pattern, the entire system could crash out from under you. Complete chaos…that and I enjoy these mind games as well."
"Very good boy. You just might have a future in the torture department." He said, knowing full and well that Junichi wouldn't give a care about interrogation.
Just then, what looked like a bullet slammed through the building wall and landed in front of them with a banner held up with kunai waving behind her.
"QUICK TEMARI CHAN, PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON!" Saotome yelled as he jumped up, awoken from the sound of Anko crashing into the room. Everybody stared at him until Temari came over and started beating him with a chair, and got a new one when the first one broke. Everybody ignored his screams of pain and followed Anko to the next area.