Naruto looked at his teammates with a critical gaze.
"Are we sure we even want to bother with this?"
Sasuke nodded. "It should be interesting. We might even have fun."
The blond shook his head. "I'm happy therapy allowed you to remember the meaning of that word but I'm not certain I would use it to describe an all-out kill fest."
"Fine, it won't be fun. But you can't deny it should be interesting to see shinobi from other villages in action."
"Genins," spat Naruto.
"Thank you very much for being condescending towards us, Naruto," noted Sakura in a neutral tone.
Naruto cringed. "Sorry, Sakura."
"It's not because you're jonin-level at thirteen that everyone is, Naruto," reminded the girl gently. "I'd like to know how I measure up against normal people."
The blond allowed crocodile tears to streak down his cheeks. "'Cause I'm not normal, Sakura-chan?"
The pink-haired girl vigorously shook her head. "No!" She said firmly. "You're definitely not! Tell him Sasuke."
The Uchiha sighed. "I admit, we are both progressing but it's getting tiresome to have our ass handed to us on a daily basis by you, Naruto. I'd like to fight someone I have a reasonable chance of defeating."
The blond boy rolled his eyes. "So that's what it is, an ego boost?"
Sasuke groaned. "Urgh, yes! But no! Look, just do that for us, please? I'd like to see how I measure up against people."
"But why though?"
The Uchiha groaned again. "Because we're ninjas and it's important to have a proper idea of our level," he explained patiently.
"But why though?"
A vein pulsed on Sasuke's forehead. "Because then," he ground, "we'll have an idea of what mission we can reasonably expect to succeed at."
"But why though?"
"Stop it Naruto, you're not even making sense, leave Sasuke alone," interjected Sakura before Sasuke could try and kill the blond.
Naruto sighed. "Okay, okay," he grumbled. "I suppose we can go. That'll give me an opportunity to study iryo-jutsu."
"You seem sure you can make chuunin." The pink-haired girl noted.
"Konoha and the Hokage know what I'm capable of. This is pretty much formality at this point," explained Naruto matter-of-factly.
"I didn't take you for a braggart," Sasuke said, vaguely surprised.
"I'm not," protested the blond. "Look, I've done… Things that I believe qualify me for chuunin, at least in skill-level. True, I'm not sure about team-leading but well, how can I even learn that if I'm not leading a team in the first place?"
"I know you made Zabuza your bitch but is that enough?" Sakura wondered.
"I did more than that but it's a secret, I can't tell you," said Naruto, forestalling the girl's inevitable question. "Trust me, the Hokage knows roughly what I can do. Soooo… Let's go."
Sasuke sighed in relief and extended his hand. "Thanks. I'm pretty sure we couldn't participate if you didn't."
Naruto shook it. "Yeah, yeah, don't sweat it."
"Onwards!" Sakura exclaimed enthusiastically. The two boys fell in tow behind her.
Kakashi was waiting for them at the entrance of the Academy building. Naruto observed the place. He had been there so little it only evoked very vague memories. The only fun parts had been pranking Iruka and getting Iruka to chase him around and leaving notes to Iruka and basically, Naruto thought he should pay a visit to Iruka. The blond wondered if the man liked ramen.
"Hello team," the white-haired jonin sensei greeted the three genins with a wave of his hand and his trademark eye-smile. "Glad you all made it."
Sakura tilted her head. "Sensei?"
"Well, it's a team exercise."
It took a second for all three genins to deduce what it meant. Sasuke exhaled in relief once more.
"Called it," muttered the Uchiha.
"Okay," said Kakashi, doing a shushing motion with his hand before he pointed at the Academy gates with a finger. "In you go. It starts in room two-o-one. Make me proud."
"Say, Kakashi-sensei, you are of course paying for food if we all make it to the last round," affirmed Naruto with a smile.
Kakashi shuddered. "I supposed I don't have a choice?" The jonin asked, scratching his temple.
Naruto shook his head no. "Of course, you have Kakashi-sensei. If you were to do it, it would certainly show how great a teacher you are and how much you care about us. That would also be fair payment for the fact I, more than you, trained Sasuke and Sakura here."
The two genins nodded, pictures of perfect seriousness.
The white-haired man rolled his visible eye. "Fine but only if all three of you make it."
Naruto cracked his knuckles and looked at his teammates. "We'll choose later what Kakashi is definitely going to treat us to."
"Sure, now let's go before we are somehow late," pressed Sakura.
The three genins entered the Academy main hallway and found it almost deserted. They could, however, hear, the loud voices coming from the first floor. Slowly, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke went up the staircase, a little wary of what could be causing the commotion.
In the first floor hallway, a gaggle of genins were shouting at two older Konoha ninja to let them enter "room two hundred one."
Naruto looked at the panel above the room, which clearly said one hundred one. The blond threw a confused glance at Sakura and Sasuke. The pink-haired girl pressed her index against her lips in a shushing gesture.
"Genjutsu," she whispered.
Naruto nodded his head once very slowly in understanding. The art of illusion had no effect on him. It basically worked by layering a zone with a thin wave of chakra modulated to affect a person's cognitive capacities by affecting the flow of chakra within the coils situated in the head. The most dangerous genjutsu could be applied to a person directly, damaging their brain.
The funny thing was that Naruto's chakra was so dense that trying to use genjutsu on him was like hoping to for a drop of water to influence the ocean. Combined with the blond's trained situational awareness, trying to fool him with such a weak illusion simply couldn't work.
The Uchiha simply pointed up and the trio got to the second floor without any problem.
"Two hundred one," read Naruto. "Never been there, now that I think about it. All classes happened on the ground and first floor."
Sakura scratched her head. "Yeah, now that you mention it… Maybe there are lessons given here to higher-level ninjas? You can still learn even if you're chuunin or jonin, I guess."
"Would make sense," approved Sasuke.
"Yeah… Anyway, let's go in?"
The classroom was chock-full of genin teams leaking killing intent at each other in between rows and rows of desks. Naruto felt sweat gathering on his forehead.
"A test?" The blond whispered harshly.
"What?" Sakura started, looking at the boy.
Naruto pointed at the desks. "These can mean only one thing: they are going to give us a written test." The blond pouted. "I'm not sure I want to be a chuunin."
Sakura choked before she giggled in her hand.
"Afraid you're going to flunk it?" Sasuke taunted, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Naruto's retort was interrupted by a boisterous call. "Hey, you guys made it too!"
Kiba Inuzuka, feral-looking like the rest of his clan, with ref fang-like marks on either cheek and the slitted brown eyes of a canine, swaggered towards them.
"Wasn't sure if you would have the guts to show up!" The boy exclaimed laughingly.
"Sasuke, why didn't we go take a B-rank? We could be away from this loud-mouthed individual right now."
"Endure it, Naruto, you're a ninja."
"Oy! I'm here you know! And don't dismiss me like that, my team and I will show you who's better!"
Naruto cleaned his ear with his pinky. "You said something Kiba?"
While the boy seethed, a taller dark-haired boy, his face hidden by the collar of his jacket and the dark sunglasses he was wearing, had approached them along with a shy-looking girl with blue hair and the moon-white eyes of the Hyuga clan.
"That is quite the diversion technique you possess, Uzumaki-san."
"Hello, Aburame-san. Those are quite the sunglasses you are wearing."
Meanwhile, Sasuke bowed lightly to the girl. "Hinata-san."
She answered with a similar bow. "Sasuke-san."
Sakura did the same.
"You guys are here too?" A voice drawled from behind. "That is such a drag. Why am I here again?" A boy, his dark hair done in a pineapple-looking ponytail, eyes slanted in a bored look and shoulder sagging, complained. Behind him, a pale blonde with jade-blue eyes and a heavy-set auburn-haired boy were following.
"Hello Shikamaru, Ino, Choji." Naruto waved.
"Hey, the newbies."
Naruto swivelled around and saw an older white-haired, glasses-wearing male approaching them with a friendly smile on his face. The boy was wearing a Konoha headband.
"Hello, unknown person approaching us," greeted the blond.
This seemed to surprise the boy for a bit before he regained his countenance. "Ah, yes, well, the name's Kabuto. Hello." The white-haired genin shook his head. "I just wanted to say, maybe you should be a little quieter." The boy pointed behind him at the assembled teams, who were glaring at the youngest rookies with murder in their eyes.
Naruto gazed around with a deadpan stare. He shrugged. "Those guys are small fries. Honestly, except the one with the love carved on his forehead and the Kusa kunoichi, they are well below notice."
The killed intent doubled in intensity at the insult dished out by the blond but Naruto shrugged it off and chuckled.
"You all will have to do much better than that," he said clearly enough for everyone to hear him. "I'm fear two things in life," Naruto announced.
The hostility momentarily receded, replaced by curiosity.
The blond boy frowned at the stares he was receiving. "What? You can't expect me to tell you my fears," he deadpanned, causing a drop of sweat to appear on the assembled genins' forehead. "Anyway, I fear two things and none of you come any close to one of these. So, meh."
Having said that, the blond turned his back to the room. Kabuto chuckled. "Well, you have guts but it was stupid."
Naruto cocked his eyebrows up. "Why is that?"
"You made an enemy of the entire room."
The blond pointed at his two teammates. "They want a good fight, I just prepped the terrain for them. Now, they are guaranteed we'll be sought after."
"Geez, Naruto, so thoughtful. If I die, it's your fault and I'm haunting you," declared Sakura.
"Relax, my heart isn't so completely dried up and dead that I would let you kick the bucket yet. You've been diligent in your training under me so you get a by for the duration of the exams."
"Well, confidence is all good but still," interjected Kabuto. "I'd like to help you. You're ballsy, I like that."
"Help us," wondered Sasuke. "What do you want in exchange?"
The white-haired teenager smiled. "Wary, aren't we? We're both ninjas from Konoha. Let's say I'm just helping rookies out of the goodness of my heart."
"What do you have?" Shikamaru asked, curious if there was a way to make this drag both faster and easier. He was missing on cloud-watching and he could feel his levels of laziness run dangerously low. That wouldn't do for a Nara to actually exert himself.
Kabuto flipped a card in-between his fingers. "These are info cards, containing intel on participants. Look, it's the one for Uzumaki-kun."
On the card, there was a list of all missions achieved by Naruto, organized by rank and a multiple-axis diagram showing his abilities.
Naruto saw his taijutsu and stealth were noted to be through the roof. The blond scratched the back of his head; was there a record somewhere detailing his abilities like that or had Kabuto been spying on them? The boy searched in his mind and admitted that such information could be stored somewhere in the Hokage Tower.
Assuming it was, there was no reason Kabuto could access them. Which meant the white-haired boy had spied on him. It was not very friendly, considering they both were Konoha ninjas.
"Do you have one on the red-haired dude with love tattooed on his forehead?" Sasuke asked.
Kabuto smirked. "Ha, Sabaku no Gaara, a big fish." The teenager flipped through a deck of cards and choose one. One it, there was a picture of Gaara, his mission record and a diagram with his capacity.
There was absolutely no way the white-haired teenager could have legally acquired intelligence on a Suna-nin mission record and abilities. Konoha and Suna were allied but it wasn't a happy marriage at all. Naruto narrowed his eyes. Kabuto was a spy. The question now was, who was the older boy spying for?
Sasuke searched for Naruto's eyes and the two boys had a quick silent conversation. The Uchiha nodded imperceptibly.
"You have intel on who is participating?" Ino Yamanaka, the blond girl in Shikamaru's team was asking.
"Yes, of course. Well, you wouldn't be interested in Konoha but I have cards on Suna, Ame, Taki. Well, there is this new village named Oto but they are new so I don't have much on them. They are rather weak."
Not even had Kabuto finished speaking that one genin wearing a headband bearing a musical note dashed at the teenager and took a swing at him. Kabuto clearly dodged but there was a faint ringing and the white-haired boy stumbled backwards, his balance shot.
"Oto is weak, huh?" The genin growled. "Well, Oto is going to crush you."
Before anyone could answer anything to that, a voice boomed in the room. "Alright maggots, silence!" A tall man dressed in an ugly grey jacket bellowed with all the might of his admittedly powerful lungs. "My name is Ibiki Morino and I'm the head proctor of this first exam."
The room was silent. Naruto was carefully combing his hair back to a normal position.
"Take a seat. Quickly!" The man hollered again, causing the genins to sit down in a hurry.
"Good, now here are the rules."
Basically, the first part of the exams was a team exercise. Every genin was given a test. Each team started with five points in common. If any member was caught cheating while answering the test, one point was subtracted. Reaching zero meant elimination. A tenth final question would be given ten minutes before the end of the test.
Naruto eyed the paper he was given very carefully. Slowly, he read all the questions to make sure he was fully understanding them.
They were impossible. He wasn't book smart, he could admit to that but he was undeniably good at math and history and he could answer absolutely none of the questions. The test was rigged. Cheating was necessary.
Around him, the proctors lining up the walls were calling out teams, ordering them to get out of the room.
Now that he was thinking about it, cheating was encouraged. But it was in no way necessary. Naruto could full well not answer any question, he concluded after reviewing the rules of the test. After all, the proctor in the ugly grey vest had never said that points would be deducted from the final score if questions were left unanswered. He had never actually ordered them to do the test in the first place, only told them that points would be subtracted if he and his assistants caught anyone cheating while completing it.
To not move was the smartest move.
Next to him, Naruto saw Hinata activate her Byakugan. The blond wasn't sure what the eyes could do but apparently, seeing through things was possible for Hinata, as she started to complete her test. The girl quickly completed her paper and looked his way shyly. She took three deep breaths, seemingly trying to say something each time and thinking better of it.
"Do you want to copy my test?" She eventually whispered, so meekly the blond almost didn't hear her.
"Nah, I'm good, thanks," answered Naruto in a normal tone.
Hinata blushed, swallowed thickly and opened her mouth before she sighed.
"You okay Hinata?"
The girl started to hyperventilate and now, Naruto was worried. "Alright, Hinata, slow breathing, you're going to faint otherwise. Focus on my voice-"
"Konoha Team seven, you're out," called a proctor.
Sasuke and Sakura both groaned in disappointment.
"That's it Hinata, slow breathing, you're okay, it's gonna be alright," Naruto continued, ignoring the proctor entirely.
"Team seven from Konoha, I said you're out!" The proctor bellowed, next to Naruto.
"Shut up dude, I'm busy here!" The blond howled back before he turned back to Hinata. "Good, good, Hinata, peace, calm."
Suddenly, the blond felt a hand grab his vest. Naruto immediately swivelled in his chair to find himself nose to nose with the proctor. "What is it?" The blond asked, confused.
"You. Are. Out."
"Oh, that. Right. Well, make me."
"What?"
"You want me out of the exams? Make me."
Chakra flared around the proctor and he used full-chuunin strength and speed to lift Naruto.
Who didn't budge an inch.
"I'm waiting." The blond drawled.
With blinding speed, the chuunin moved, ready to strike Naruto's neck with the edge of his hand.
There was a meaty slap, a gust of wind and a shower of mortar and plaster and suddenly, the proctor was embedded in the room ceiling, unconscious.
"Whoa, gotta be careful there bud," said Naruto as he looked up, fake worry evident in his voice. "There is a guy in the room hitting pretty hard apparently."
Another proctor rose from his seat but was stopped by Ibiki. "Drop it. Team Seven can stay."
The chuunin threw a questioning glance at the grey-clad head proctor but the tall man simply shook his head.
Ibiki couldn't follow Naruto's motions as he socked one of his men into the ceiling. Ibiki was a jonin and the head of the counter-spying department of Konoha. Which meant he knew Kakashi had been put in the hospital by this very "genin". Ibiki wasn't especially willing to risk a trip to the hospital to uphold the supposed fairness of this first exam.
After all, they were ninjas. If the kid could beat his opponents into submission, it was a valid tactic.
Other teams became less careful in their cheating, obviously convinced they could try the same tactic as Naruto if they were caught. Unfortunately for them, they were real genins and the chuunin quickly ousted them. When the time came for the tenth question, there were only a few teams left.
"Good," whispered Ibiki before he rose his voice. "Good. Are you ready for the tenth question?"