An hour and a half later

Haku finally got to the village gates after running non-stop. He stopped to catch his breath, but then realised that he might still be late. He started running again, bumping a couple of people on his way through the streets.

When he got there, he realised that he was the last one to arrive. But at least he wasn't late. Now, while catching his breath for real this time, he was looking at his competition.

There were seven other applicants, three boys and four girls. To him, only two of the guys and one of the girls looked like they could be real competition. The other four seemed to be wimps not even worth their chunin title. He decided to go meet his "real" competition.

Haku went over to the guy closest to him. The guy was slightly shorter than him, but Haku had learned the hard way that size doesn't matter. He could also see that the boy was about his age.

"Hi, my name is Haku Uchiha, what's yours?", Haku said cheerfully.

"My name is Iruka Uzumaki."

Haku found that Iruka's tone of voice sounded very lazy, so he guessed that Iruka might be a slacker. "He should be easy to defeat", Haku thought to himself.

"Do you mind going away now, I want to take a nap", Iruka added.

Haku decided to leave him be and go see that strong-looking girl. She was the only one already dressed in her combat attire. From what he could see, she was an expert with knives because she about twenty sheathed kunais strapped to her clothes here and there. She probably saw him looking at her because she walked up to him and said.

"Good day, you must be Haku." "My name is Sora Haruno."

This caught Haku completely off guard. He was expecting her to be a very serious person, but here she is casually introducing herself to him. He decided he might as well make one friend out of all these other chunin. So he began talking to her about himself and asking about her.

He pointed to her kunais. "You like knives a lot, don't you?"

She laughed nervously. "It's that obvious isn't it."

"Well, it's because the first weapon my parents ever gave me were my great grandmother's two combat kunai." She pointed to the two large kunai sheathed on her thighs.

Haku took out his sword. "This is my great grandfather, Sasuke Uchiha's, sword, he used it during the battle with the Elemental Oni."

"Really?" "My great grandmother, Sakura Haruno, also took part in that battle..

Haku was taken aback. He never expected to meet another descendant of those famous heroes. He decided to change the subject and ask her about the last worthy-looking adversary.

She looked surprised. "You mean that guy over there with the kusari-gama?" "I think his name is Zabuza Hattori."

"Yeah, that guy." "Is he any good with that kusari-gama?"

"From what I hear, yes." She said. "I also heard that he's insane, and that he killed his own family."

Haku looked at that boy intently. No hints of insanity yet, but he may just be in a calm phase. Suddenly, a ninja appeared in the middle of the chunin. He was carrying a scroll and was preparing to read its contents to them.

"To truly test the mettle of the applicants to the Konoha rank of chunin, the Hokage has organized set of matches between you all." "You have each been assigned a room in the inn outside the arena, and you will find a scroll with opponent's name and the hour of your match waiting for you in your room."

Everyone disbanded and went directly to their rooms.When Haku walked into his room, the first thing he did was see who he was fighting.

""Mika Hasawa", looks like I'll be facing one of the weaker ones."

He wasn't sure if he should be happy or not. "Either way", he thought to himself. "I should get some sleep so I'm in top shape for tomorrow." So he did just that, jumped onto his bed and went to sleep.

-To Be Continued…

Author Notes:

To everyone who doesn't know what a kusari-gama is, it's a sickle attached to a long chain (for watchers of Inuyasha, that's the kind of weapon that Kohaku uses).