Mikoto and Eizo get home from their nice walk to find Itachi sitting in the living room, happily munching away on cucumbers, of all things. As soon as Eizo is freed from his pushchair he toddles off to find Sasuke.
Mikoto frowns at Itachi. "I thought you didn't like cucumbers," she says.
"I don't," says Itachi cheerfully, and takes a huge bite out of the one in her hand.
Mikoto is at a loss for words. What the #### #### is WRONG with Itachi? She's been acting crazy for a while.
Fugaku jumps in the window and says, "Drat, I lost him. Bloody shunshin."
"Fugaku, who were you chasing?" Mikoto knows that when Fugaku jumps in the window it means s### just went down.
"Shisui," says Fugaku, an expression like thunder on his face. "The little bugger went and got Itachi pregnant."
"Itachi's PREGNANT!?"
"Yes," says Itachi, and goes back to her cucumbers.
Mikoto clasps her hands together and smiles, a feeling of pure joy filling her heart. "I'm gonna be a grandma…" She floats in that state of pure ecstasy for a few seconds. Then she smiles sweetly at Itachi and says, "Itachi, you are grounded until you leave home. Now go to your room and think about what you have done."
Itachi scoops up her cucumbers and heads to her room.
Once her daughter is gone, Mikoto turns to Fugaku and asks, "How do you feel about this, my love?"
Fugaku falls to his hands and knees, a black cloud hanging over his head. "I'm not ready to be a grandfather!" he whines.
Mikoto smiles and pats Fugaku on the shoulder. "I know what will cheer you up," she says. "But we have to wait until the kids are in bed. Wouldn't want them knowing we have the Make Out Paradise DVDs."
Naruto takes one look at the procter and knows he means business. The calm ones are always worse. Naruto's brain starts churning at a mile a second. A room full of rows of desks. A calm procter. An underling holding a stack of papers. They have to exchange their application forms for seating cards. Paper….
S###.
Sorry Grandma.
"Not a paper test!" Naruto groans. Still, as much as he hates paper tests, Naruto is confident he can pull this off. Naruto goes with his team and swaps his application form for a seating card and a test paper. Then he wishes his teammates 'good luck' and goes to his seat.
"Hey, Naruto," says Hinata, sitting down beside him. "All ready for the test?" she winks knowingly.
Naruto grins back. "We got this." He feels much better with Hinata beside him.
"Keep your papers face down until I tell you to begin," orders Ibiki, calmly. Then he explains the boring test rules. No asking questions. Points are deducted for wrong answers rather than awarded for right answers. A team can only pass if all members get at least one question right. If you're caught cheating, two points are taken from each member of your team. If a team is caught cheating five times, that team is disqualified.
So far, so good. Naruto understands. Each question is worth one point, but Naruto doesn't care about that. What he does care about is the instruction not to let the proctors catch you grins. He has never been caught cheating in his life.
"You have one hour," Ibiki says, once he has explained the rules. "Start NOW!"
Naruto and Hinata clasp hands. "Good luck!" they tell each other.
Naruto reads through the questions on his paper. Sure enough, they are far too hard for him to do. The last one is interesting though. Apparently question ten will be announced in the last ten minutes of the test. Naruto grins. Time to shamelessly cheat and get ten out of ten.
When Naruto was in the Academy, he got sick of failing his tests and getting chewed out by his grandma. Then Shikamaru told him his grandma is troublesome and he should just invent a seal to help him pass. Naruto latched onto that idea immediately and invented the living daylights out of that seal. Since it was Shikamaru's idea, he taught it to Shikamaru, and the two of them used it to find out many things. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the seal, neither boy ever told anyone except Choji and HInata about it. Those two never learned or used it, though.
Naruto takes up his pen and draws the seal on his test paper. Then he sends a short burst of chakra into the seal. The room turns green. Only he can see this, as it was his chakra that went into the seal. Four black lines of ink snake around the room, searching for the answer sheet. Every line stops at a seemingly random candidate. It seems there are people with the answer sheets, ready to be cheated off of. Naruto draws a design in the centre of the seal. The four lines copy the answers off the answer sheets and display the answers above Naruto's test paper. Naruto starts to copy the answers onto his test paper.
When he was in the Academy, Naruto never copied all the answers, just the ones for the easiest questions. That way it looked like he was finally scraping a pass, rather than cheating. They would have known he was cheating if he had suddenly started getting perfect scores. At least, that's what Shikamaru said. Hinata and Choji agreed, so Naruto only copied enough to pass.
But this time…
This time Naruto is going to shamelessly cheat. Naruto copies down every answer word-for-word. By the time he is finished, the first 50 minutes are nearly up. Naruto sighs in relief and releases the seal. The room returns to normal. Now all he has to do is wait for question ten.
Finally, after some guy gets back from the toilet, Ibiki announces, "Alright, listen up. I am about to announce the tenth question." Ibiki waits until bathroom-break-boy sits back down before he continues. "For the last question I am adding one more rule. This rule is absolute. First you must choose whether or not to accept the question." He Pauses and waits for that to sink in.
The girl from the Sand that Naruto met the other day yells, "Choose? What happens if we don't accept the question?"
"If you reject this question you loose all your points and fail the test," explains Ibiki.
"So why would anyone reject the question?" demands some random kid.
Ibiki waits for a tense second before replying, "If you choose to answer the question and get it wrong you will never be allowed to take the chunin exams ever again. You will never advance to chunin."
Naruto thinks about this and wonders if that kind of rule is why some ninjas stay genin until they retire and get civilian jobs. He starts to sweat in fear. If he gets this question wrong, his teammates will kill him.
"That's stupid!" yells Kiba. "There are people here who've taken the test before! I know there are!"
"Tough luck for you, I wasn't making the rules in previous years," says Ibiki so calmly it scares Naruto. "But I am making the rules now. If you have doubts you had better quit now and come back next time."
What a tough choice to make. Naruto is shaking with nerves. Out of the corner of his eye, sees Hinata looking at him. She looks just as nervous as him. But Hinata gives Naruto an encouraging smile, and he finds himself nervously smiling back.
"Those who choose to leave must raise their hands now," says Ibiki. "Once their number is confirmed, they will leave the room."
After a few tense moments, someone raises their hand and rejects the question.
Naruto wonders if he should reject it. If he gets it wrong, Sasuke and Madoka will suffer for his mistake. But, if he accepts it, it will be a whole six months before he can apply again. He is starting to understand why Iruka, who graduated at age 11, didn't make chunin until he was 16. What kind of question is it going to be? Should he quit? Naruto slumps forward and pulls at his hair. What should he do? Quit and know he can come back next year or risk everything and maybe never be a chunin?
Use a weak seal and live, or use a strong seal and maybe get your soul taken by a shinigami.
Naruto puts his hand on his stomach where his father's failed attempt at the Masters' Test holds the Nine Tailed Fox in check. Was it a choice like this that made him seal the fox into Naruto? Did he risk losing everything to seal away the fox when an easier option was available?
As more and more genin quit, Naruto feels anger welling up inside him. Who cares what was going through the Fourth Hokage's head when he sealed the Nine Tails into his own son?! This is NARUTO'S choice. He trusts his team to get the question right, so here's hoping they trust him!
Naruto slams his hand down on his desk. "I DON'T CARE IF I NEVER BECOME A CHUNIN IF IT IS BECAUSE I TOOK THE EASY WAY OUT! I WON'T QUIT AND I WON'T RUN! I WILL BE THE HOKAGE, BUT NO HOKAGE SHOULD EVER TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT, SO I'LL ACCEPT YOUR STUPID QUESTION! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!" Naruto feels much better. That felt good.
"I'll ask you one more time," says Ibiki, a smile playing about the edges of his lips. "This is a decision that will affect the rest of your lives: will you accept the tenth question?"
The room goes silent. No one else is going to quit.
Ibiki smiles, and it is truly terrifying. "Then to all you who still remain: congratulations, you just passed the first test."