Konoha no Mai

Chapter Four

a/n I own nothing. Also, forgive me for my bad transitions.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
Fire and Ice-Robert Frost

The clock ticked, the seconds past, and the chunin exam had begun. Over a hundred genin sat in another room, forcing ideas and desperation out of their inexperienced skulls.

Meanwhile four Konoha jounin brooded in a lounge as nervous as prospective fathers awaiting the birth of their first-born. Kurenai fidgeted with her fingers absent mindedly, Kakashi sat slouched with his head down, not even reading the book he always kept with him, Asuma chain smoked, using one cigarette to light the next, and Kabuto? Kabuto analyzed them.

Kabuto glanced down at his notes in consternation.

Is this what I do when I'm nervous? he wondered, flipping over a card. He kept his notes in personal info cards, much more secure than ink and paper.

"The first exam is halfway done," Asuma said, noting the clock. "If they're still in there…no, the very end is when everyone starts to get sloppy."

Only the jounin sensei of the rookie teams were in the room. The Rookie Twelve, they were already called. Whether they stood for preeminent skill, the future of Konoha, or death-tempting bravado remained to be seen. They sat apart from the other jounin because most of the others were part of the third opinion, which lent itself little to camaraderie.

"How many people usually get through the first exam?" Kurenai asked. "Statistically, I mean."

"About half," Kabuto said. "Thirty-five to sixty percent of the genin fail the first exam, fifty to seventy in the second, and if there are still more than ten left, there may be a preliminary round before the third exam." The other three jounin stared at him. "What? I retook the chunin exam a few times and I had my eyes open."

"Really?" Kakashi asked. "I heard you passed the jounin exam on the first try."

"Yeah, well, I thought it would be more impressive if my whole team passed together. Besides, it was good research. The jounin exam is just the chunin exam with sleeker traps anyways."

That was close enough to the truth, at least. Did they know what finally catapulted him through the two most challenging challenges of a shinobi's career? Probably. Most jounin kept their own Bingo Book, and while that was intended for only missing nin, anyone could become a missing nin eventually. Either way, it didn't matter if they knew why he did it as long as they didn't know how.

"While we're waiting, anyone care to make a few bets?" Kabuto asked.

"Bets?" Kakashi asked incredulously. "What is it with med nin and gambling?"

"Tradition!" he said brightly. "Besides, what are a few bucks among people who toy with death every week? So, who's in?"

"I'll do it," Asuma volunteered. "You said that half the genin fail this? I'll wager 5,000 ryo that my team will be one of the ones that pass, at even odds." 5,000 ryo was how much a D-rank mission was worth.

"I'll take you up on that," Kurenai offered. "And I'll bet 10,000 ryo that my students will pass."

"Deal."

Kakashi leaned back and looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. "This isn't a horse race, it's an exam," he said. "I couldn't bet against my own students even if I wanted to. Heck, they'd probably get upset if they found out that I didn't bet on them."

"You don't think that they'll pass?"

"No, it's just the opposite. They're a sure bet, so much that I'd feel guilty about betting on them at one to one odds." Kakashi didn't talk like he was boasting, he said it like it was a fact. Whether he said that just to provoke his peers into a bolder offer or because he actually believed it, Kabuto couldn't tell, but knowing Kakashi…well, Kabuto didn't know Kakashi, not really.

"Why don't we try a different bet?" Kabuto offered. "Each of the four teams has a fifty percent chance of passing, so I'll bet you at sixteen to one odds that all of our teams will pass."

"Sixteen to one?" Kakashi's eye opened perceptively.

"Sure. One half to the fourth, one over sixteen."

Kakashi hesitated. "Didn't one of your students get a median test score of zero in the academy? That takes talent, sure, but I doubt it's the kind Ibiki's looking for."

"Yeah, but that's the funny thing about betting," Kabuto smiled. "I remember a patient once, a woman suffering from cancer. Her son came to me and bet me a large sum of money that she would live. If she died, he'd get a lot of cash as a consolation prize, and if she lived, he got to skip a funeral. Some people bet like that, they like to keep their bases covered. Either way, they win. On the other hand, they also lose both ways. But regardless, you know the risks, you know the odds, I made the offer. You can accept or decline."

Suspicion lurked in Kakashi's one visible eye. Kabuto smiled politely back at him. He had mastered the sort of smile that suggests to the beholder exactly what he doesn't want to believe, regardless of if it's true. Really, Kabuto didn't care about the money. Money was incredible, though. People pay attention to it. As long as there's money on the table, no one notices how many knives are hidden under it.

Finally, Kakashi spoke. "How about ten to one?"

WWW

Inside the exam room, Kimimaro wished that he had learned Morse Code.

Hinata had finished the exam within the first five minutes. Her abilities were perfect for this sort of test, and she put her head down on her desk and sat quietly. Kimimaro communicated with her by mouthing words to her with his hands over his mouth, but Hinata couldn't respond except for rudimentary sign language. Yes, no, higher, lower. It took forever, but Kimimaro finished.

Naruto, however, was completely hopeless.

Naruto never looked up, he never looked away from his test. It was as though he thought that it was the sort of test that he could figure out just by thinking about it. Hinata motioned to Kimimaro that he wasn't having any success.

If he would just look up, they could work together as a team. Wasn't Kabuto-sensei always telling them about that? "If you fight alone, you die alone. Use your strengths to complement your teammate's weaknesses, and your weaknesses to complement their strengths."

To the side, Ibiki's invigilators watched to make sure no one cheated, but they weren't looking at Kimimaro specifically. Under the desks, Kimimaro had a clear line between him and Naruto. He eased one of his distal phalanges through the skin in his fingers, pointed at Naruto, and fired.

Naruto jolted and rubbed the back of his neck where the bone hit. With an annoyed expression on his face, Naruto glared at his test without looking up.

Kimimaro readied his finger bones for another shot. This can't be the best idea I can come up with.

WWW

"You're late. I'm a busy man, and I don't have time to wait around all day for someone who might show up."

"I keep paranoid company. The chances I have to leave unquestioned do not follow predictable intervals, and if anyone as much as hears us speaking together, there could be some rather questionable, blood-stained absences."

"Hear us? I'm a sound nin, not a cloud nin."

"And I know of a few almost non-fatal surgical operations that can fix that, but as much as I enjoy fraternizing with the enemy, was there not something nontrivial you needed to say?"

"He wants a report. Deliver the top three candidates to me at the end of the survival exam, and make sure they're up to date."

"My reports are always up to date, if you want them now. But I'm not going to give them to you at all, am I? He wants to take them personally."

"Let's just say that he wants to keep that option open. Don't forget, this isn't one of your morbid curiosities, this is about the future, so no games, no nonsense, no mistakes."

"Sounds like fun."

"I take the future seriously."

"Wonderful. Now, out of respect for your future, I suggest you let go of my arm, or we could end up with a blood-stained absence anyway. He trusts me, so if you have any doubts, kindly place them where the sun does not shine."

"Trusts you? Your only redeeming quality is that you're a born traitor."

"And he's a snake. Which leaves me to wonder, where do hopeless idealists fit into that future of yours? Best of luck to your students."

"Same to you."

WWW

"Time's up."

Not yet! Hinata had been finished for a while, and Kimimaro had finished his test too, but Naruto…

"Now it's time for the tenth question," Ibiki said. He looked like he was carved from stone with a sheet of skin rolled over like wallpaper, and his skin itself was scarred horribly, as though he was routinely stabbed and lit on fire. As much as Hinata tried not to judge by appearances, she doubted that he'd give them an extra five minutes.

"Before we begin the tenth question," Ibiki continued, "there are a few rules that you need to know. If you get the question wrong, you fail the chunin exam, permanently. There are no second chances in life, and neither are there here. You will walk out that door, and you will never be able to take the chunin exam again. You may decide to opt out of the tenth question, but if you do, you and your entire team will fail and will have to wait until next time. That is all."

A dead silence filled the room. Then it was broken.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" someone shouted out.

"Yeah, lots of people failed this exam before, and they got to retake it!"

"They had a different examiner," Ibiki said. "These are my rules. You will abide by them, or you will leave."

Hinata looked at her paper. She managed to get the first nine questions, and if the tenth question was anything like it, she'd be fine. She wouldn't bring the team down this time.

"I'm out," a shinobi said, the only one in the room brave enough to be the first coward. "I'm sorry." His teammates were identified and excused.

Naruto's paper was completely blank. Kimimaro stopped at seven out of nine to focus on getting Naruto's attention, so even if they all got the tenth question right and all of the ones they had written down, what was the team score? Nineteen out of thirty, sixty percent or so. How many points did they need to pass? Fifteen? Twenty? And if they got caught cheating a few times, they could have as few as eleven total.

"I can't do this," someone else said. "Sorry, but there's always next year, right?"

They would fail no matter what. The only difference the tenth question made was whether they'd be able to take the exam again. They gained nothing by taking it. They gained nothing by going forward. And yet…Naruto knew this too, didn't he? Why didn't he say anything yet?

Hinata glanced at Naruto over her shoulder. He sat stone faced, jaw clenched, eyes straight ahead. "I'm going to be Hokage someday, the greatest Hokage ever!" he always said. "I won't back down. I won't ever back down!" Never back down…never back down…even if it means losing everything? Never…back…Naruto might be able to live like that, but if he failed, Kimimaro would become chunin, and even Hinata would eventually. Naruto would be left behind, stuck forever as a genin, until he disappeared entirely.

And he'd do it too, before sacrificing his own personal nindo. "If you're not willing to live and die for what you believe in, you don't believe in anything at all." Kimimaro had said that once. And what do I believe in? Hinata thought. I believe…that no one should be left behind. She was always being passed by, by her younger sister, by other ninja, by everyone. But her team had been willing to wait for her, Kabuto was always giving her extra lessons, and Naruto and Kimimaro never looked down on her or resented her.

She wouldn't let that happen. She wouldn't let Naruto get left behind.

"I quit."

Hinata didn't say it. It was a kunochi sitting directly in front of her. She stood up and started walking towards the door.

"Darn it, Ryou!" yelled one of her teammates. "You always got to bring us down, you always have to be the deadweight on the team!"

"Out," Ibiki said, motioning towards the door. The kunochi's two teammates left, glaring at her the whole way.

Could Hinata do that to her team too? She'd do it to help, but would they see it that way? Would she leave, with them hating her? Could she let that stop her? Did she even have the right?

"This is stupid!" Naruto stood up and glared at the instructor. "I'm not going to run away, and I won't be scared off by some scar-faced big shot in a trench coat! The only difference that failing this question of yours will make is that I'll have to be the first genin Hokage ever, and then I'll fire you for making such a stupid rule!"

Ibiki gave him a cold stare. "If that is your final decision…"

"It is. I don't back down, and I never go back on my word."

"If that is your final decision," Ibiki said again, "then sit down, shut-up, and be quiet before I find something else to throw you out of here for." Naruto sat down quickly and took a deep breath, as though shocked by his own audacity. Ibiki looked over the remaining participators, looking each one of them in the eye. "Very well then. You all pass."

"Yes! Wait, what?"

"We…but…huh?"

"This exam had two distinct parts," Ibiki explained. "The first was to test your information gathering abilities. If you are discovered while spying on an enemy during a mission, you may be killed, but you may be fed false information instead. If you are caught in a classroom, you and your team fail. If you are caught on a mission, you, your team, and anyone else involved can die. The fact that you are still here proves that can, whether individually or as a team, gather information without being caught."

"The tenth question was about faith. Every mission has risks, and you won't know about all of them. Will you back down, or will you take that leap of faith into the jaws of death? Sometimes it's not as dangerous as you think. But sometimes…" Ibiki took the bandana off his head. "Sometimes it is much, much worse."

Ibiki's scalp was a mesh of burns and scars. Where his skin wasn't scorched off or slashed open, it was gouged out by screws.

"As chunin, you will have to proceed with the mission, knowing that worse than this can happen to you," Ibiki said, replacing his bandana. "But since this is just an exam, you who have not backed down will have to make do with the surviv—"

CRASH!

Something burst through the window, showering the front of the room with broken glass.

"Alright, you lot, my name is Mitarashi Anko and—man there are a lot of you left." The kunochi who had crashed through the window scanned the room with distaste. "Hey, Ibiki, I'm not early, am I? You said you'd take an hour, you started at nine, it's ten, so you are finished, yeah? Because I can come back later if you want to get rid of a few more of these guys."

"I am quite finished with the written exam, Anko," he said. "I was merely in the middle of an object lesson when you…entered."

"Object lesson? Man, you give the torture and interrogation unit a bad name."

"Regardless, the moment is thoroughly ruined, so you have no reason not to proceed."

"Yeah. Sure. Anyway, I know I've had enough of this stuffy old class room, so let's get out of here. We're heading for the Forest of Death."

WWW

Even by Konoha's standards, the Forest of Death was impossibly old. Most of the trees were ten to twenty feet thick and were centuries older than the village itself. A chain link fence surrounded the forest, and the shadows were so thick they seemed almost solid.

All of the rookie twelve passed the exam. That alone was notable, but the way Naruto stood up—no, challenged the instructor…Hinata smiled. He passed the written exam several times over in her book, with a blank paper.

She looked around at the others who had passed. A warrior should be able to know her opponent with a single blow, and a Hyuuga with a single glance. Hinata looked around and saw…nothing. Well, that wasn't completely true. She saw that Haku had a distant expression on his face as Hano chattered inanely. She saw that two members of a team from the Sand kept their distance and an eye on their smallest member. Team nine was even more disjointed. Yakumo was sitting against the fence, drawing in her sketchbook, Idate was on the other side of the clearing leaning against a tree, and Ino was sharing snarky comments with Sakura. Shino alone stood in the shade of a tree, almost as much of a statue as Kimimaro, Kiba had a dog on his head, and Chouji stood next to him munching contentedly on a bag of potato chips. On Neji's team—Neji made eye contact and Hinata looked away quickly.

"Right, so first things first," Anko said. "For this next exam, some of you might not come back alive. And the rest of you, well, definitely won't, so if you want to take the survival portion of the exam, you'll have to sign these nice little waver forms. I don't want to have to deal with your mother's lawyer when she finds out that you've been eaten by a giant slug."

"Second of all, you need to—you need to pay attention, because I'm not going to repeat myself." She spoke pointedly at Yakumo.

"You have my undivided attention," Yakumo replied in an unperturbed monotone. She turned her sketchbook around to show what she was drawing. "I have your face already. Now I just need your throat."

Anko squinted at the drawing and grinned. "Dang, I look pretty good. But anyway, second of all, you need to know about the rules of engagement," she continued. "There aren't any. So if you run into a team from a village that you really hate, then remember that what happens in the Forest of Death stays in the Forest of Death. Or what happens in the Forest of Death moves on, and whoever they happened to stays."

"Finally, objectives. Each team will get either an earth scroll or a heaven scroll. You have five days to beat the crap out of another team so you have one of each, and make it to the tower in the middle of the forest. If you don't make it within five days, you fail. If you break the seal of the scroll, you fail. If you let a teammate die, you fail and you're a lousy team player. So that's it. Any question? Comments? Snide remarks?"

"Ooh! I got one!" Naruto called out.

"Don't try to stand out!" Anko hurled a kunai at him that grazed his cheek. "If you try to stand out, you end up dead." She picked up the kunai from the ground and licked the blood off. "Then again, everyone dies eventually, so stand out all you want. Hey, kid, you're not B positive, are you?"

"Uh, sure."

"That must suck. But if that's all, then good luck to all of you, goodbye to a lot of you, and don't bother me again till the end of the week." Anko turned and left them to their choices, their paper work, and their fate.

WWW

a/n Man, it feels good to be writing this story again. I mean, Code Geass? Really? Why was I spending so much time with that anyway? I think I wrote this whole chapter in less than a week after I decided to get down a do it, and stop losing my flash drive every half chapter. Man, that's annoying.

Anyway, the next chapter will be out in a timely manner, mostly because I was about half done when Racheakt told me that I should split the next chapter into two. Just to clarify something, in the canon Kurenai's team was team eight, but since I wasn't planning to use her originally, Kabuto's team is number eight. Now that I am using her, she's in charge of team nine.

Man, I love to talk. Will I never shut up? But yeah, until the next chapter.