shikamaru's POV!
The aspiring Chuunin who were still lingering in the hallway finally take their seats when the first chief examiner walks to the front of the classroom. After a few harsh coughs, he introduces himself as Kurouta Madao and apathetically welcomes them to classroom 2-B. Shikamaru absently notes the hoarseness of his voice that makes Ino and Sakura straighten up next to him.
Madao twirls a chalk piece in his hand while one of the proctors distributes the tests and takes their participation slips. "Keep your papers face down for now." Shikamaru thinks it's very in character for the Kiri ninja in charge of designing the test to have only written a recto, then remembers that the same thing happened in Konoha.
"I'll be writing down the rules on the blackboard so you don't forget them or ask questions," Madao says. "Because I don't take questions." He turns his back to them and starts writing as fast as he speaks. "No cheating. No bathroom breaks. No international incidents," he slowly articulates, turning his face towards them to accentuate his point even further, then carries on; "You all start out with zero points. Each question is worth one point. Anyone who scores lower than eight out of ten will be eliminated and take the rest of his or her team with."
The rules seem pretty simple to Shikamaru but as expected, a number of participants start protesting with the same kind of indignated cries that rocked his first try in Konoha. "What a drag," he mutters under his breath.
"I said I don't take questions!" Madao roars, noticeably straining his throat beyond hurt. Shikamaru will admit; he's an impressive looking guy, everyone stopped talking and he even felt Ino startle up. He wonders briefly what kind of position the man holds in Kiri. "As I was saying," he starts again, back to writing on the blackboard, "the first part of the test will end at 11:40. The second part will start at 11:45 and end at noon."
"Done," says the Chuunin who distributes their tests. "We can start."
"We'll begin the exam when the clock strikes eleven o'clock and not a second before." The power Madao holds over the entire classroom in definitely something, Shikamaru decides. Every head looks up at the clock on the wall silently until the second-hand lands on 12. "You may begin."
Shikamaru turns his paper around. First is a multiple choice question and he checks the little boxes after only a moment's reflection. He supposes the others will have a harder time than he did.
There is a large space between the second and third question, where he is asked to write down the first twenty Shinobi Rules. Shikamaru's eyebrows furrow slightly. This seems like a barely-harder version of the Genin test. Still, twenty, in order, is a lot and he doubts anyone besides him, former hardcore bookworms and eidetikers actually remember them that distinctly.
Shikamaru remembers reciting the rules to his dad, and how even he couldn't recall most of them. He doubts the test usually takes into consideration that kind of memorizing capacity. They could be spotting out the geniuses, Shilamaru thinks. He doesn't write anything down, just in case, and moves on just as a proctor passes by his desk.
The next four questions all have to do with mathematics. Which angle to throw a shuriken at, a position one has to adopt in a certain situation faced with a certain number of enemies, the correct way to use the correct percentage of chakra… He spots a trap in the sixth question, and writes down: the centrifuge force of the sound waves emitted by the enemy would make any kunai useless against him.
Questions seven and eight have him scratching his head. He was never the best at Anatomy, he always found it so boring. Still, after a minute, he writes down the correct way to destroy the body of a comrade to eliminate the information in it, and marks the places where a single two inch deep stab wound is lethal. He almost wants to sneer at the proctor passing by him. A petty part of him wants to make all of them sorry for ever underestimating Leaf shinobi.
Question nine is… different. Shikamaru is supposed to come up with a strategic plan to get out of an ambush; it says he can feel that his enemies are numerous, but his chakra can't detect just how many. He's surrounded so he can't run, his allies are dead, and he's carrying an important information scroll. He squints at the paper, and feels his brain almost freshen up. He does that, sometimes, go on autopilot without even realizing. His mother says it's because he's so smart, he doesn't need to use all of his brain. Shikamaru knows it's just his way of resting while working.
He guesses that this is another trap. Writing down I would use an explosive tag to destroy the information regardless of my life is too uncharacteristically easy for the test. It won't get him the point. Plus, his father's motto is 'you can move moutains and sweep the ocean with the right plan.' Shikamaru knows he can come up with one if he just thinks about it. After all, there is twenty five minutes left.
But he won't. If he really is right about Kiri trying to spot out the geniuses, then that makes the Kiri ones ninja to keep an eye on and him and the other foreign ones ninja to eliminate in case of a conflict. Being underestimated goes a long way, sometimes, he told Ino and Sakura earlier.
When he goes to the next question, he finds that there isn't one.
There are only nine questions. Madao said there would be ten, which means that the second part of the exam is that tenth question. Shikamaru's pencil snaps between his fingers. Clever motherfuckers.
If he needs at least eight points to pass and he only gets seven points now, then everything rests on that last question. The question he knows nothing about. He could play it safe and answer at least the second question about Shinobi Rules; it wouldn't say much about his analytical capacities and strategizing skills, just his memory.
Shikamaru scoffs through his nose, a small smirk playing on his lips. Fuck it.
He'll take the risk. He can handle whatever that last question throws at him. He's a Nara either way, right? They know what his clan is capable of.
Shikamaru looks up from his paper to see that twenty three minutes are left. Everyone else is probably still on question four and that is if they skipped question two—
The test was oddly hard and full of traps. Not a lot of the Genin here will be able to even finish. Is that their plan? To keep only the brightest? It can't be. Kiri values strenght and ruthlessness most of all. So why was the test so hard? Shikamaru rattles his brain in search for the answer. The last time, they were supposed to cheat. There must be some kind of hidden purpose that he missed.
He looks around, in a way that can't be perceived as attempted cheating. When the same proctor from earlier passes by his desk, Shikamaru realizes that he's in a loop.
He groans almost inaudibly. "Kai."
When he looks around this time, the genjutsu is expelled, and he seems to be in a different classroom altogether (have they all been under a genjutsu since they walked in?) It's smaller, dirtier, and he notices a few vacant spots where Genin must have been. He isn't the first, he notices irritably. He went through all the questions before he noticed something was wrong. How disappointing.
The sight of Sakura still working on her questions gives him pause. The illusion is both collective and individual, then. A proctor taps his shoulder and ushers him out of the room. Shikamaru recognizes him as the rude Chuunin with the ruder brother.
"Still don't think you're making it past this. Looks like your teammate is still in deep." He smirks. Shikamaru says nothing. The result will speak for itself.
Once outside, he is met with six other Genin, including Ino. It makes sense, she's cleverer than anyone would know. Sakura is smart too, but she's too… literal, booksmart. She doesn't think much outside the box, but he has faith in her.
"What happened?" Ino asks. "I thought you'd be quicker than this. You're the brains, here."
Shikamaru just grumbles. "Just pray that our brawns makes the cut."
Ino beams at being indirectly called the beauty and he sighs as he turns towards the proctor trying to get his attention.
"What?" he asks dryly.
"Give me your test," he demands.
"I thought the whole point was to break the illusion? I passed already." Thankfully, he listened to his gut. Despite the purpose of this first exercise being to clock the genjutsu, Kiri still wants to keep an eye on the gifted minds.
"It is, but we have certain rules to follow."
He hands the man his test wordlessly. He guesses they can only bend universal rules so much, and the first part of the Chuunin Exams is always a written test. Still, as many conjectures as he can make, Shikamaru needs some explanations. The chief examiner did lie to them about the requisites of passing.
"So what's happening here, really?" he asks.
"Apparently, this is a pre-selection for the real test, which will be downstairs in the real room 2-B when the clock hits 11:45," Ino says. "Madao-san is the one holding the illusion inside the classroom."
Shikamaru looks inside at where the man is, absently noticing the 3-B written on the door. Madao is sitting on the front desk, his hands joined in a basic mudra form. Beads of sweat trickle down his forehead, but his face shows no sign of exhaustion. Shikamaru can only imagine the kind of power and discipline it takes to trick a hundred and fifty shinobi while also adjusting it to the individual.
Sakura figures it out at 11:28.
She looks disappointed in herself when she sees the number of Genin who passed before her, which includes Akagi. He can relate to that.
At 11:40, the genjutsu is broken by its caster. About a hundred Genin stand outside the classroom while the rest is told off by Madao. When the unlucky few who passed are eliminated because of their teammate(s) who didn't, the number goes down to seventy eight.
"Who can tell me the point of this exercise?" Madao asks.
Shikamaru answers without raising his hand. "A shinobi needs to know their surroundings at all times. They have to have eyes behind their backs, and notice everything whether or not it's suspicious, even if – especially if they have a particular focus."
To hell with being underestimated.
"Exactly," he rasps. "You were all so wrapped up in the difficulty of the test that you couldn't detect an obvious illusion. I was sent on an assassination mission ten years ago. We had a mole at the time, and the man I was sent to kill—whom I will not name—was prepared. When I got to his quarters, I was immediately put under a genjutsu against my knowledge. In that illusion, I killed my target and collected the information in his body. In reality, his quarters were burning. I only noticed when the smoke inside my lungs got too thick. I escaped by the skin of my teeth." He coughs, startling Akagi. "I spent ten months in the hospital, my lungs are permanently burned, I almost got demoted… And now, I have to babysit a bunch of brats because I might accidently cough too loudly during a mission."
Shikamaru's eyebrows raise on their own. How good was the genjutsu caster if he could trick even Madao? Or did Madao only start training in genjutsu after his Failure? Not everyone is as impressed as he is, apparently, because he hears someone say "Here comes the pity party."
"This is a warning," he shouts. "Now, I see that a lot more teams than I expected passed." Shikamaru glares at him when he glances at his squad. "So, everyone who broke the genjutsu after 11:30 and their teammates are hereby eliminated."
A choir of complaints fill the hallway at his words, that there was no way or fire to notice the genjutsu. Shikamaru rolls his eyes because, really, they were a lot of clues. Genin are the same in every village, after all. When no one complains about the instructions not matching the requisites to pass though, Shikamaru recants that thought. The proctors grab ninjas who refuse to leave and escort them out. Ino and Sakura don't miss their chance to smirk at the Rude Dude who stole their slips as he and his teammates get carried off by his brothers. Shikamaru eventually joins them.
"And what were we supposed to take away from this?" he asks.
Madao scowls and brings a finger to his lips in mock-thinking. He looks absolutely ridiculous. "Hm. I guess the lesson here is that life… isn't fair," he deadpans. "I know, it's a lot. Take your time."
Shikamaru scoffs to cover his chuckle.
A:N: thank u for reading. next chapter will be from Ino's POV and will include some flash backs!
i would love some feedback.