Chapter 3

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto! And none of you are gonna beat me!"

I was jerked out of my thoughts at the annoying yell from, who else? Naruto.

Katsu snorted in my ear, his hand on my shoulder, and I jerked in surprise. He had gotten halfway across without me hearing him.

"That idiot turned a room full of strangers into a room full of enemies with just one sentence," said Shikamaru.

Aika nodded, but I was watching a white-haired girl sidle up to Naruto, and threaten him.

I didn't catch what she said, but Ino sure did, and when she grunted in amusement, the girl turned to her.

"Y'know, I could kill one of you right now, and it'd be a piece of cake," she said.

My mouth dropped open, but then a girl who seemed to be from her team sidled up and whispered to her.

And then, and whole bunch of jonin appeared. Ibiki stepped up, ending a battle that I had missed.

He showed us a little wooden square with a number one and told us,

"Take one of these assignment cards and go sit down in the seat indicated on the card."

I rolled my eyes as he told us that the test was a written one, and Naruto freaked out. But I got a square, and did what I was told.

I had ended up next to a grass ninja and a . . . rock ninja.

I stared at him, thinking, this could be the offspring of one of the shinobi who killed my father.

He noticed me staring at him, and stuck out his tongue. I gave him an evil glare, and averted my attention back to Ibiki, who was talking about the third rule.

"Oh, crap," I whispered, quickly reading through the first two rules.

"You have one hour," he was saying as I finished reading, "starting, NOW!"

I flipped over my paper, and studied it.

These are incredibly tough questions, I thought, he really doesn't expect genin to answer these?

But I answered the first two, slowly rereading my work. The rest had elevated into very hard questions.

I nervously pushed up my glasses, looking around.

I don't believe it. I mean, I understand no cheating, but it definitely doesn't take this many proctors to watch us. And even if he meant us to cheat, what about the people who don't even have exceptional spying jutsus? What are we-wait a minute. What if he did expect us to cheat? That would explain all of the proctors. But that still doesn't tell us what he thinks ninja without spying jutsus to do . . .hmmm . . .

As I was having the think-fest, I was interrupted by a thought that definitely wasn't my own.

It told me the answer to that third problem! And as I looked down at my paper, it was correct! I looked around, and finally spotted Katsu.

He was performing a one-handed seal, and his forehead was scrunched up. Then I looked down at my shoulder.

I could see little specks of dirt on it.

That cheater! I thought, When he had his hand on my shoulder, he rubbed dirt onto it, and communicated to me through that! But, did he do it to Aika too?

I scanned the room for Aika, but couldn't find her. I did, however, see Gaara.

His eyes were closed, and he was holding up his hand in a seal I didn't recognize.

I averted my eyes, concentrating back on my own paper, since Katsu's voice was giving me the next answer.