A/N: I should have figured that uploading on a Thursday was prooobably a bad idea. It tends to be the slowest day of the week here. Jack used to complain about it a bunch.

So no hard feelings on not hitting 950 lmao.

The exam will now begin. Be warned: I will not be following canon outside of an outline for the order in which things happen, and for pivotal events. Those aside, this is where the story really diverges.

Time for Chapter 22

Enjoy!


Naruto suppressed a yawn as he and the rest of his cell strolled into the building they had been instructed to report to for the beginning of the Chunin exam. It was hardly seven in the morning, and while he had managed to rest for a bit over eight hours the previous night, he still found himself feeling sluggish.

'Man, it's a full house in here. I figured it'd be a pretty small crowd. Guess not.' he thought to himself with a low whistle. The initial hall of the building was quite spacious, with high ceilings and a fair bit of room in every direction, but a good portion of that space was being used up by a wide assortment of genin. There were representatives from nearly every elemental nation. From Suna to Kusa, not one nationality was absent.

"I sorta feel like a brat for having complained about our prep so much. We didn't even have to travel for this." Satsuki commented, prompting a nod of agreement from Shikamaru, who stood to her left.

"Most of them look pretty exhausted. Some of them probably got here early this morning. Well, earlier this morning." he said. The written exam was set to begin at seven-twenty, which gave the group a fair few minutes to scope out their soon-to-be competition. As they all went about their silent observations, Naruto noticed something. Nudging Satsuki, who was now standing between himself and Shikamaru, he pointed out the painfully obvious.

"You're popular." he said with a snicker. The Uchiha girl folded her arms across her chest and kept her expression as uninviting as possible. Indeed, nearly every boy in the room, and even a few girls, had taken at least one long look at Satsuki.

"I guess every country is full of creeps." she grumbled, obviously uncomfortable with the unwanted attention. Shikamaru smirked and slid his hands into his pockets.

"These mouth-breathers would kill to see what we've seen." he said, giving Naruto a sly look as he spoke. The blonde laughed out loud.

"You mean the Hair Pin Incident, right?" he asked with a smirk. Satsuki's face immediately flushed bright red with embarrassment and anger.

"We all agreed to forget that ever happened." she hissed. The incident had been an embarrassing one for all involved, but namely for the abrasive Uchiha. Both boys fought to suppress their laughter, earning them each a stomp on their toes.

"One more word and I castrate you both on the spot." Satsuki threatened menacingly. Knowing better than to test her, Naruto and Shikamaru calmed themselves .

"What's the general feeling you two are getting from these guys?" the blonde asked, changing the subject on a dime. Shikamaru, surprisingly, spoke first.

"Most of them seem a little rattled. I think we'll be fine." he said with a fair degree of confidence. Satsuki blew a strand of hair out of her face.

"I think I agree, but quite a few of them look older than we are, so who knows." she pointed out. Naruto considered both perspectives for a moment, as they both held merit.

"My gut tells me that most of them aren't even going to matter." he said honestly. Shikamaru then stopped walking, prompting the rest of Team Seven to do the same.

"What's up?" the blonde inquired. Satsuki silently grabbed his chin with her thumb and index fingers and turned his head from the Nara to what was directly in front of them. Standing static roughly fifteen feet ahead of them was another group of genin. Two boys and one girl. They appeared to be roughly their same age, with room for slight variation from member to member. Their forehead protectors bore the insignia of Suna. All three of them had their eyes fixed on Team Seven.

"Got something to say?" Naruto asked from across the small space between the two groups. The tallest member of the opposite group, a blonde girl with her hair done up in four pigtails, glanced at the boy to her right, who had red hair and an apathetic expression on his face.

"Is it him?" she asked vaguely. The redhead gave a nearly imperceptible nod and took a few steps forward. Sensing that he was now the center of attention, Naruto moved to meet him. A moment later, the two boys were practically toe to toe. They were identical in height, and their builds were largely similar.

"So, I was right after all." the Suna boy said ominously. His voice was coarse and hollow, much like the sand from which he hailed. Naruto raised an eyebrow.

"About what, exactly?" he pressed. The specter of a smile formed on the redhead's face, though it hardly reached his eyes.

"You." he replied. For reasons the Jinchuuriki couldn't pin down, a shiver ran down his spine. Whoever he was effectively staring down at present held a predatory aura. One that made Naruto deeply nervous.

"We should get a move on, Gaara. We're on a schedule." the blonde girl said after clearing her throat to break up the confrontation. The Suna boy, apparently named Gaara, promptly pushed past Naruto without another word. The other two Suna genin then followed after him.

Before they could fully leave Team Seven in their wake, however, the girl halted right in front of Shikamaru. Standing up straight to accentuate her height, she looked the Nara straight in the eyes.

"Name's Temari." she said from well within the lazy genin's personal space. Reacting in characteristic fashion, Shikamaru exhaled through his nose and remained vacant.

"That's nice." he said blankly. The girl tilted her head to one side and kept her unnerving eye contact with him.

"Not gonna tell me your name? That's a little rude." she asked. Shikamaru shrugged his shoulders and met her silent challenge head on.

"I'm not really sure why I have to tell you anything about me, to be honest." he shot back calmly. Temari's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but she contained any reaction that may have been brewing quickly.

"Because it's common courtesy?" she reasoned. Seeming to sense that he would be heckled until he cracked, the Nara sighed.

"It's Shikamaru. Happy now?" he said tiredly. The Suna girl grinned triumphantly and stepped around him, all while maintaining the same uncomfortably close distance.

"I'll find you later on." she said, promptly jogging after her own team once the words had left her mouth. Once she and the rest of the Sand Genin were gone, Naruto shot Shikamaru a questioning look.

"What was that about?" he asked. Satsuki shook her head and chuckled to herself, grabbing both boys by the sleeve and tugging them along in the direction the Suna genin had gone.

"Shikamaru's popular too, I guess." she said humorously, to which the Nara muttered something unintelligible about women and their troublesome nature. Naruto then frowned as he and Shikamaru were led along by their teammate.

"Where are we going? We already passed the stairs." he asked. Kakashi had informed the group the previous night that the written exam would take place on the second level of the testing building, and the time to report was nearing.

"No, we haven't." the Uchiha girl said, not bothering to elaborate further. A few moments later, she quit dragging them. They had stopped in front of what appeared to be a janitor's closet of some kind. Before either Naruto or Shikamaru could ask questions, Satsuki stepped behind them and shoved them both forward. Though both expected to run face-first into the wooden surface of the door, they passed right through it.

Once they had regained their bearings, they found that they were kneeling at the bottom of a short staircase leading to an upper floor. A beat later, Satsuki walked in between them and up a few steps.

"They threw in a filter to weed out the unqualified genin. The staircase is hidden by a pretty weak genjutsu." she explained upon seeing the dumbfounded looks on her teammates' faces. Naruto, who was still mildly bewildered, rose to his feet and ascended a step.

"How did you know?" he asked as Shikamaru also worked his way to his feet and up a step. The raven-haired girl's eyes flashed red.

"These come in handy sometimes." she said proudly, her sharingan alight with amusement at Naruto's begrudging admiration. The group then collectively conquered the remaining steps in the stairway, reaching the next floor inside of a minute. When they did, they found several other teams of genin awaiting them.

'So, they saw through it, too.' the blonde thought to himself. Among the present were a number of familiar faces from the academy, which was both comforting and irritating for differing reasons. Ino Yamanako, Choji Akimichi, Shino Aburame, Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, Sakura Haruno, and another three that Naruto did not recognize were all milling about the upper floor, which was essentially just a hallway.

"If there's a combat phase to this exam like Sensei said there was, we might be screwed." Shikamaru, who had remained silent since their ascension of the stairs, said bleakly. Naruto frowned and beckoned for his teammate to elaborate further. The Nara pointed in the direction of the Konoha genin that Naruto had been unable to identify.

"Those three graduated a year before us. I don't know much about the guy with the bowl cut, or the girl, but I do know that the one with the long hair is Neji Hyuga." he said. Satsuki gave him a skeptical look.

"I get that he has a scary last name, but we had Hinata in our class, and she wasn't much to write home about." she said. Shikamaru shook his head.

"Maybe I'm just reading too much into rumors, but everything I've heard about him suggests that he's the favorite from our village to get promoted." he said. Before the cell could discuss the topic any further, a door on the far end of the hall swung. Soon after, a tall, burly man stepped out into the hall. He wore a dark trench coat, a bandana, and black gloves. In every possible way, he was imposing to look at.

"All of you may now enter the testing room. You are not permitted to sit by your teammates, so use your social skills." he said, a surprising undercurrent of mocking humor in his gruff voice. Naruto looked to both his teammates, who both nodded. The amalgamation of genin then all began to siphon through the open door.

With surprising calm, the Chunin Exams had begun.


Satsuki drummed her fingers on the bench she was seated behind absently. The exam had yet to begin, despite all of the genin having been accounted for nearly five minutes ago. She was situated near the back of the room, seated between Ino Yamanaka and the girl named Temari who had so unsettled Shikamaru. The Uchiha girl had not chosen her seat because she particularly liked either girl, especially in Ino's case, but it was better than risking the advances of the male genin.

'I wish I was hideous sometimes.' she thought to herself. Choosing to think of things other than male perversion, Satsuki scanned the room for her teammates, whom she had not bothered to keep track of since their entrance into the testing room. It took her little time to find Shikamaru, who appeared to be on the verge of falling asleep two rows ahead of her and two seats to her left.

'I'll kill him myself if he dozes off. With a butter knife.' she sighed within her own mind. No serious part of her believed he would sabotage them so unceremoniously, but the sentiment held true regardless. Satsuki's eyes then drifted across the room once more, this time in search of Naruto. It took longer to find him, but she eventually located him right at the front of the room. He was seated next to Hinata Hyuga.

The pair appeared to be having a conversation, with Naruto looking rather serious by his standards. He was clearly invested in succeeding, and his expressions backed it up. Despite his clear focus on the task at hand, he was polite and calm. Hinata, on the other hand, looked something close to starstruck. It had been no secret to anybody with functioning eyes that the Hyuga heiress had been lovesick over the blonde for years by this point, but Naruto himself had never caught on.

'You've got a rich, nice, cute girl loving on you, and you're too dense to see it. Sucker.' Satsuki projected to Naruto silently. At the thought, and at the sight of Naruto being completely oblivious to the endless signals Hinata was sending his way, Satsuki found herself feeling an unexpected emotion.

Relief.

For reasons that she herself could not discern, the Uchiha girl took comfort in Naruto's density. Left to himself, he would always be a vacant lot. Ready for residence to be taken up. With her eyes still firmly fixed on her teammate and Hinata, Satsuki observed them carefully.

'May as well give up, Hinata. He's not going to be receptive. You don't even know him anyway.' she silently pressed. Naruto then laughed at something the meek Hyuga had said. Satsuki's lips twitched downward, teasing a frown.

'Since when can she joke?.' she thought to herself. Before Satsuki could push herself any further toward outright displeasure, the large man who had directed them into the room cleared his throat loudly, snapping the entire room to attention. Once all idle chatter in the room had completely ceased, the man positioned himself at the front of the room.

"As I'm sure you're all aware, you are about to begin this year's Chunin Exams. For some of you, this may be your first attempt. Others of you are veterans, for better or worse." he began, his voice commanding and gripping. The man then slammed his fist into the chalkboard behind him, causing the entire room to collectively flinch. Satsuki glanced over to Shikamaru, who now appeared wide awake.

"As for introductions, my name is Ibiki Morino. I lead Konoha's interrogation and torture unit. I will be your proctor for this exam. You will have one hour to complete ten questions. Any and all cheating is prohibited. If you're caught, your entire team will be disqualified. Are we clear on that?" he asked. It was less a question than a challenge. Daring any overconfident whelp to step up to be made an example of.

'He's a pro, that's for sure.' Satsuki thought to herself. Ibiki Morino was nothing if not intimidating, even to her. From his broad and bulky stature to his job description, he was the definition of a hard man. Not to be crossed. Further consideration of Ibiki's short speech revealed another point of interest beyond the man himself. The wording of his final comments on cheating. There was no jargon on the immorality of the practice, nor an attempt to directly discourage it. Simply a warning about what would happen should one be caught in the act.

As Satsuki considered the potential implication behind Ibiki's speech, the tests were passed out down the bench rows. Once she had received her copy of the questions, the Uchiha girl looked them over. It was a single page, double-sided. It was fairly standard-looking, but two things stood out immediately upon review.

'Did…we miss a few subjects?' Satsuki pondered, now quite concerned. The content of the questions seemed fairly tame at a glance, but a full read-through of any one of them revealed a level of complexity and depth that was far beyond what they had prepared for. Upon further inspection, there also appeared to be only nine of the ten promised questions present on both sides of the sheet put together.

'It's got to be intentional. They'd never let that kind of blunder slide for an exam like this.' Satsuki decided. Slowly but surely, the entire room was saturated with the testing sheets. The stage was set. Nodding approvingly, Ibiki pulled a stopwatch out of his pocket.

"You may now begin." he announced. With this order, the room was quickly filled with the sound of pencils against paper. It appeared that Satsuki's, and by extension, her entire team's lack of preparedness was not a universal issue. Taking one last look over the questions, Satsuki couldn't help but chuckle to herself.

'Yup. I don't know any of this.' she concluded. Opting to take a few moments to clear her head and think, the Uchiha girl began to observe her surroundings. Before she could even form a thought in her mind, a loud voice rang out.

"Morishida Takata, turn over your test, gather your team, and leave the room. You have been disqualified." came the authoritative voice of Ibiki. A cry of protest rang out from just behind Satsuki, prompting her to glance back over her shoulder. It was a boy, appearing a year or two younger than herself. His forehead protector was marked with the symbol of Iwagakure. Try as he might to argue, he was shut down time and again.

Eventually, he dropped his eyes to the floor, picked up his things, and left with his team in tow. Satsuki felt her nerves increase just a tad. Less than three minutes into the test, and somebody had already been caught. There would be no mercy. That much was clear. Within the following ten minutes, seven more teams were eliminated. Twenty one people in total. In that time, despite the unnerving prospect of Shikamaru or Naruto making a blunder, Satsuki came to one single conclusion.

The entire point of the test was to cheat.

As counterintuitive as it felt, in her time simply observing, the raven-haired girl had more than a dozen being dishonest in a variety of ways. Most unusually, there was an eye appearing to be made of sand hovering silently up near the ceiling. It was a test of one's ability to effectively gather information in a constrained environment.

'I guess it's fair game then.' Satsuki thought to herself, quietly allowing her sharingan to manifest. Searching the room discreetly, she quickly found who she was looking for. Sakura Haruno had never been high up on Satsuki's personal list of classmates she liked and disliked, for a variety of reasons, but the one thing she could find within herself to respect about the girl was her academic ability. If anybody would have semi-accurate answers to questions of this difficulty level, it would be her.

Shifting in her seat ever so slightly to get a better look at Sakura's hands, Satsuki invoked one of the many convenient abilities her eyes afforded her, that being the power to perfectly mimic both jutsu and movement at a glance. Within seconds, the Uchiha girl's hand was moving in sync with Sakura's. It appeared that she was on the third question, leaving her answers for the first two unknown to Satsuki.

'I'm gonna have to rewrite all of these so they don't catch that our handwriting is identical.' Satsuki lamented as she wrote. Minute by minute, word by word, the raven-haired genin plagiarized her former classmate. Within twenty odd minutes, she had seven of the nine available questions answered. Closing her eyes and deactivating her dojutsu, Satsuki took a deep breath in, and then promptly released it.

'I'll just guess on the first two.' she thought to herself. Before beginning the tedious task of finalizing her answers and rewriting them in her own penmanship, she took a moment to check up on her teammates. Both were writing, which was good, but Naruto's movements looked odd. As though they didn't fit his body or natural way of motion. Satsuki then narrowed her eyes in Shikamaru's direction.

'Is he…?' she wondered, turning her attention to the aisles between rows. Though it required her to squint, she soon discovered a strange shadow that was somehow twisting around feet and corners. It began at Shikamaru, and appeared to reach in Naruto's direction. Satsuki smirked.

'Nice, Shikamaru. Real nice.' she commended the Nara boy silently. She now felt rather optimistic. Even if the answers she'd stolen from Sakura were far from perfect, she strongly suspected that the answers themselves didn't matter. With her new calmness, Satsuki briskly finished her test as best she could.

'Fifteen minutes left, if I had to guess. Naruto and Shikamaru look about done, too.' she noted mentally. All there was left to do was wait. They had succeeded, at least in theory, in gathering information without being caught. Though, whether or not Shikamaru had drawn his answers from elsewhere at all was an open question. Minute by minute, the remaining time ticked away, with a few more teams being eliminated for their lack of subtlety in cheating.

Eventually, once the final minute had expired, Ibiki pounded his fist on the chalkboard once again.


Shikamaru let out a sigh of relief as the sound of Ibiki's fist against the chalkboard reverberated through the room. They had all made it. The true purpose of the test had been obvious to anybody with any intuition whatsoever five minutes into the ordeal, but that knowledge had made it no less stressful. His heart had been racing at a thousand miles per hour throughout most of his possession of Naruto's shadow.

'Half the original count got kicked out. They thinned the numbers big time.' the shadow user thought to himself as he looked around the room in the tense silence. Ibiki's voice then cut through the void.

"I would like to congratulate you all. Each and every one of you, honest or not, has grasped the concept of this exam. To gather intel without compromising your discretion. As I'm sure you've all noticed, however, there are only nine questions on that sheet in front of you." the proctor said, earning a unified nod from the remaining genin. Ibiki responded to the affirmation by grabbing a piece of chalk and writing the number 10 on the board.

"I will be personally administering the tenth question, and I assure you, this one cannot be cheated or swindled." he said. A few of the genin audibly swallowed. Shikamaru himself simply kept his eyes trained on the man. Whatever he was about to ask was bound to be rather abstract.

"Be warned, if you fail to answer this question correctly, you will automatically fail the exam, and be ineligible to retake it in the future." Ibiki said in a low, threatening tone. The entire room seemed to tense at his words. Like the shark he clearly was, Ibiki easily smelled the fear he had incurred.

"With that in mind, I will offer you an alternative. Forfeit now, and you will be allowed to retake the exam next year." he continued, pausing to gauge the reactions of the genin before him. Once the silence had gone on for just a touch too long, he spoke once again.

"Now, would any of you like to take me up on that offer?" he asked. Though there were initially no takers, a meek voice in the back piped up after a time.

"I…I think I'm gonna bow out." said a scruffy looking boy, who appeared to be from Kumogakure. Two more genin, who one could assume were his teammates, immediately protested, but were quickly silenced by Ibiki.

"If that is your choice, take your things and leave. Anybody else who feels too overwhelmed, I encourage you to follow suit." the proctor said professionally. Shikamaru eyed both of his teammates. Neither had moved, and neither seemed poised to do so. As such, it was on him to make the call. He cared little about the promotion the Exam could result in, but at the same time, he had no room to be selfish. It would be troublesome, but he would see it through with them to the end.

After several teams had filed out of the room, Ibiki eyed those that remained in the room, a faint hint of interest gleaming in his dark eyes.

"So, I take it the rest of you would like to hear the tenth question?" he inquired. Though he received no verbal answer, the genin's continued presence in the room was an answer in and of itself. Shikamaru braced himself. Then, surprisingly, Ibiki Morino, head of the interrogation and torture unit, smiled warmly.

"You all pass." he said simply. Shikamaru, much like every other person in the room, looked on in bewildered confusion. As he was wont to do, Naruto's voice then rang through with the question on the mind of his fellow genin.

"What about the tenth question?" he asked quizzically. Ibiki turned to face the blonde directly and shrugged his broad shoulders.

"That was the tenth question. Whether or not you were willing to risk your futures to advance. You all answered admirably." he said matter-of-factly. Shikamaru, in a rare occurrence, entirely agreed with what Naruto said next.

"That's really stupid." the Jinchuuriki said bluntly. Ibiki, much to the surprise of everybody else in the room, laughed out loud at the boy's insolence.

"It can certainly feel that way the first time through, I agree." he said humorously. He then glanced down at his watch and frowned, muttering something under his breath that Shikamaru could not hear. Seemingly on cue, however, somebody came crashing through one of the windows on the left side of the room.

'Why can't any part of this be normal?' Shikamaru complained silently. Upon further inspection, the person who had sent shattered glass in every direction was a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties. She had purple hair tied up in a high ponytail, and wore a light brown coat over a form-fitting, fishnet shirt.

"You're late, Anko." Ibiki said gruffly as the woman dusted herself off, earning him a punch on the shoulder in return.

"I just wanted to give you more time with them. We both know you love kids." she joked. She then turned her attention to the genin, who were all staring at her with wide eyes. Anko, as she had been called by Ibiki, folded her arms across her chest.

"Looks like around thirty or so genin. You're getting soft, Ibiki." she commented. When the interrogator did not respond, Anko cleared her throat.

"Alright, listen up, punks. I'm Anko Mitarashi. I'll be your proctor for the second phase of your exam." she announced. Shikamaru fought the urge to groan. This Anko woman seemed like a royal pain of the highest order. Loud, brash, and unconcerned with professionalism. A single sentence out of her mouth had been telling.

"You're to report to the Forest of Death at seven sharp tomorrow morning. Any later, and the gates close. I'll explain the rest when we aren't cooped up in a stuffy classroom." Anko said, vanishing into a puff of smoke a moment later, leaving the room dumbstruck and confused. Ibiki scratched the back of his head and sighed.

"If you aren't from around here, the forest she's referring to is on the eastern border of the village. She isn't very punctual or detail-oriented, I'm afraid." he said awkwardly. He then checked his watch again.

"You're all free to go. As she said, seven sharp is your deadline for arrival tomorrow morning. I wish you luck." he said, promptly walking out of the classroom once he had finished speaking. The moment he was gone, the room erupted into chaos, with genin scrambling to find their teammates and loudly talking over one another.

"And now it's loud. This sucks." Shikamaru muttered to himself. Thankfully, he did not need to search to find his teammates, as one of them found him first and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Well, this was…interesting." Satsuki, who was standing behind him, said. The Nara rose to his feet and stretched. Once he was limbered up, he glanced at the Uchiha girl.

"That's one way to put it. I'd use the word 'troublesome', personally." he replied, beckoning to his wayward teammate, Naruto, who was on the other side of the room. The blonde quickly spotted him and jogged over.

"That Ibiki guy seemed pretty neat." he said upon reaching the rest of his team. Satsuki rolled her eyes and elbowed him in the ribs, as she always did.

"You caught him in a good mood. Mouthing off to a jonin is gonna get you hurt someday." she said in a scolding tone. The blonde glared at her momentarily, but soon turned his gaze to Shikamaru.

"All of your answers were weird and wrong. Why?" he asked skeptically in reference to the Nara's assistance during the test. Shikamaru shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought it was pretty obvious that the point of the test was just not to get caught cheating. And we didn't get caught. The details didn't really matter." he said simply. Naruto frowned.

"What if somebody just wrote down a bunch of wrong answers without figuring that out?" he asked. Shikamaru scratched his cheek absently.

"Those were the people who gave up and left when they had the chance." he replied. It was a guess and nothing more, but it sounded reasonable enough out loud. Seeming to accept this logic, the blonde gestured toward the door.

"Wanna get a second breakfast?" he asked. Satsuki's immediate response was to shake her head, but her stomach betrayed her with a low growl.

"I could go for some food." she admitted, looking mildly embarrassed. Finding that he had nothing else planned for the day, and nothing better to do, Shikamaru nodded.

"Show us that ramen place you keep preaching about." he said. Naruto grinned and began hauling them both out of the room. As he was pulled toward the door, Shikamaru swept his eyes around the room to see who still remained upon their exit. His eyes froze halfway through his second look around.

He had locked eyes with Gaara, who was watching them leave with silent menace.


A/N: Very long chapter, this one. I felt the need to knock out the written exam all at once, because while it is pretty interesting conceptually, it's a dull read.

Also, Temari *will* be important to Shikamaru's character development. I am well aware that Haku still exists in this fic, and I have no plans to change her eventual purpose with Shikamaru, but…bear with me. Things won't end the way you think. (I hate love triangles, and there will not be one).

Overall, I hope you enjoyed :)

Read and Review!