There is a perspective change in this chapter. The perspective change is identified by -------------------------------- on its own line. Once again, I own nothing except my own characters.

The lights suddenly went out. It was pitch black. Not even the door emitted light from the cracks. Everyone started yelling about what was going on. Onimaru decided to ignore everybody and find out for himself what was going on. He did a hand-seal and tried to sense other people's chakra.

Including himself, he sensed twelve people in the center of the room, but at the edge of the room, there were four unidentified chakra signatures. He didn't take the time to tell everyone to shut up, he just did his hand-seal and whispered to himself "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." He created four shadow clones; one for each unknown person. He stood still while he had his clones do hand-seals. He had no need to be quiet anymore because the jutsu he was about to use gave off light. "Chidori!" all four clones shouted in unison.

Four sparks, four spheres of electrical energy, and four shadow clones charging four possible opponents. Everyone grew quiet as they watched Onimaru's clones dash into the darkness towards people they didn't know were there. As the the clones got closer to their targets, they began to become visible through the light the chidori gave off. Even though Onimaru had sensed four people, he only saw three, and for some reason they were lined up like they had expected to be attacked.

One of them was finishing doing hand-seals, the other two just stood there. As the shadow clones neared their targets, the only girl put up her hands and locked her fingers. With that, one of the clones froze, as if it couldn't move a muscle in its body.

The second clone was about to reach the person who'd done the hand-seals and began to wind up for attack. The person simply poked the clone in the forehead and it was destroyed in a puff of smoke. Onimaru cursed the blind spot that the chidori generated without the aid of some type of Doujutsu.

The next clone reached the spot where the fourth person should have been standing. Still no one was there. The clone began to look around as the last clone approached the final target. Onimaru didn't see the person move, but the clone was suddenly destroyed anyway. Onimaru heard a girl near him breathe in sharply.

Just when the clone with no target began to turn to attack one of the other three another person, a girl, seemed to grow from nothingness at the clone's feet, using the inertia of growth to uppercut the clone in the chin. The clone was destroyed instantly.

The one remaining shadow clone was the one that seemed to be somehow frozen. The girl who had locked her fingers seemed to study the face of the clone. Then her fingers twitched and the clone was destroyed. Darkness once again filled the room.

"Damn." Onimaru said to himself. Not only had they defeated each one of his clones with ease, they had made him look like an amateur in doing it. A few seconds passed in silence. Seconds soon turned into minutes. Onimaru would have attacked again by using other's attacks to disguise his movements, but nobody even tried to attack. Not only that, but nobody moved.

Suddenly the lights came back on. It took a second for everyone's eyes to adjust, but when they did, the four people that Onimaru had attacked were still there, standing almost exactly where they were when he did. Before anybody could make sense of the situation, the girl who had somehow frozen Onimaru's clone spoke. "Pathetic!" she began, "Only one of you attacks an unknown threat and then you all give up?! You should all be ashamed of yourselves! I'm surprised any of you even made it this far! At least this kid tried!" She pointed forcefully at Onimaru. She had straight brown hair about as long as Shinya's, but hers wasn't in a ponytail. She wore a faded bright orange shirt and loose-fitting jeans. Her figure looked kind of boyish.

Even though he already looked bad, Izomu sprang toward the girl in what Onimaru guessed was and attempt to make himself look better. In mid-stride, he somehow launched himself into the air to about half the height of the room. He had clearly over-shot his target. Then without touching anything but air, he suddenly moved in a strait line through the air directly at the girl. She raised one had, and with two fingers somehow redirected Izomu's trajectory. She lifted her arm and let Izomu's shoulders collide with it, effectively clothes-lining him.

He hit the floor with a loud thud and began to roll around, letting out yelps of pain. "That's more like it!" the girl announced, not really appearing to care that she'd hurt him. "Even if it was a little bit late."

"Ouch." Onimaru heard himself mutter. That had to have hurt. Izomu probably even had a concussion.

"Geese Mina." the person who'd poked Onimaru's shadow clone said. "Go easy on 'em. Damn. They're just freshmen." Onimaru looked at him and all he could think was 'nerd.' The guy was a twig, and not only that, his short straight brown hair, his glasses and even the way he dressed; it all shouted 'nerd.'

"Oh come on Ki-Sho!" Mina said as she shrugged. "Can't you see I was just having some fun?" She glared at him with a half smile on her face. "Ass."

Ki-Sho began to help Izomu up. "Bitch." Her smirk grew to a full broad smile. She seemed almost proud of what Ki-Sho had meant to be an insult. He ignored her and finished helping Izomu to his feet. Izomu was wobbling back and forth as he stood. He definitely had a concussion. Ki-Sho examined him for a couple seconds. Then he did a few hand-seals and placed his hand on Izomu's head. Izomu's wobbling seemed to lessen and Ki-Sho lifted his hand off Izomu's head after a few seconds.

Izomu turned back to the group of freshmen and started back. He stumbled a few times but seemed to be doing fine.

Onimaru realized now that Ki-Sho was a medical class shinobi. When he poked Onimaru's shadow clone he'd probably been using the chakra scalpel. He'd probably done what he could to help with Izomu's concussion, but seeing as how concussions dealt with the brain, his help hadn't fixed it entirely, seeing as how the brain was vastly uncharted territory, even for the most advance medical shinobi.

"Who are you?" Origama asked. His tone was smooth and calm, yet his demeanor told Onimaru that he was excited, that he wanted to attack.

"Better than you." Mina answered.

"Shut your damn mouth already Mina!" Ki-Sho hissed.

"What?" she asked casually, "We are."

Ki-Sho was given no choice but to ignore her once again. He turned to the group. "Anyway," he began, "I'm Yano Ki-Sho," He pointed at the other guy out of the four "This is Korasitashigawaki Torishima." Torishima didn't seem to have a single hair on his body, and his posture was near perfect. He wore a greenish garb that seemed to be designed for fighting, though form-fitting at the same time.

Ki-Sho then pointed to the girl who'd seemingly grown from nothingness. "This is Kutarro Motoko." Motoko was one of the most attractive girls Onimaru had ever seen. She had unruly hair that was just above her shoulders and that was dyed a pale shade of purple. She had an excellent figure and wore a bright orange short sleeve t-shirt that brought out the color of her hair. She wore a pair of shorts that were an exuberant shade of blue. For the first time in his life, Onimaru found himself drawn to the eyes of someone who didn't have abnormal ones. They were a beautiful shade of light green.

Finally, Ki-Sho pointed to Mina. "And this is the bitch, Yokryo Mina." Mina took a bow. Ki-Sho shook his head and sighed before he continued, "We'll be your teachers and mentors until you graduate."

"So this is sponsored by the school." Shinya confirmed what they'd all been thinking. "Why?"

"All the machine-guns did was wipe out the Genin and lower class Chuunin." Motoko began, "most of the Jounin and the kage's all lived, and were even able to fight off the people with the guns, but they saw that they'd have a very difficult time trying to train more shinobi, so they invested in the modern school system to train them in secret. Those who didn't have the skill to go up against those with the guns were eliminated before their real training began. Yours' starts now."

"So," Kaita said, "we're the only ones that have the potential to fight people with guns out of our entire class?"

"Pretty much," Mina said as she shrugged, "but the key word in that was potential. I don't think any one of you is ready at the moment, and I sure as hell don't think all of you will complete the training and graduate as a shinobi. Even the four of us are having trouble making a career out of it. To be able to get a job as a shinobi you'll have to graduate at the top of the class, but you won't know how well you did until you graduate."

"What do you mean your having trouble?" asked Setsuna, staring at Ki-Sho.

"We graduated as shinobi, but no one would hire us." Ki-Sho explained. "Either because of our jutsu specialty, or because we didn't stack up to the rest of our graduating class. So we agreed to train a generation in the same manner that we were trained in order to get our skills up and at least be doing something."

"Today," Mina interrupted, "you guys are going to introduce yourselves to us, and tell us the type of jutsu you specialize in." She pointed at Origama, who stood furthest to one of the sides of the group. "Let's start with you."

"Origama. Sand." His answer was short, sweet and to the point and his voice was smooth and cold. Onimaru guessed that Origama was usually like that, considering that this was the only the second time he's spoken since Onimaru had arrived.

Kazemaru hit his thumb to his chest as he introduced himself. "Kazemaru. I use snake-like jutsu."

Shinya smiled in confidence. "Shinya. Fire jutsu, so far."

Kimio cracked her knuckles. "Kimio. Taijutsu." That explained how she'd been so fast earlier. Taijutsu users normally were extremely fast.

Onimaru cracked his neck. "Onimaru. Melee jutsu."

"Kaita. Absolute defense."

"Setsuna. Medical jutsu, like my older brother." She pointed to Ki-Sho.

"Don't think I'll go easy on you just 'cause your my little sister Setsuna." Ki-Sho interjected.

"Onro. Stealth" He made a quick glance to the door.

"Kuede. Earth jutsu and a little bit of animal type jutsu."

"Tira. Weapons specialist." Her fingers twitched at her sides as if they were missing something that completed them.

"Yani. Animal type jutsu."

Izomu was still recovering from his concussion. "Izomu. Gravity." He smiled, almost stupidly. "and girls."

"Good." Motoko said as they finished introductions. "Tomorrow, we pick your three-man teams, which we will be the fourth members of. Go home and get some rest. You'll need it."

"Great!" Onimaru whispered sarcastically to himself. His only friend out of the other eleven kids was Shinya, and he wasn't likely to end up on her team. Motoko hadn't said "you'll pick your teams," which made his chances to be with a friend even lower.

"Oh yeah." Motoko added. "Bring any ninja tools you have. You'll be needing them too." Onimaru heard Mina chuckle.

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Later that night, five minutes past midnight, Shinya lay awake in bed. Her life had just become much more complicated, but instead of being afraid like most people she knew would be, she felt excited, like she could run a marathon non-stop at full speed and still have energy to burn. She'd been trying to get to sleep for two hours with no luck. She was just too excited.

She began to think about who's group she'd be in. After a while she managed to narrow it down to the people she might have a good time with. Onimaru, Origama, Tira, Kaita, and Yani were all people she'd have fun with on her team, or at least she thought. Mainly though, she just hoped that she wouldn't be on Kazemaru's team. That idiot was going to get himself killed doing something stupid and she didn't want to be a part of it. Plus, she just flat out didn't like him.

The team she wanted most of all, she'd decided, was Origama and Onimaru. Onimaru was a great friend, and not only that, but she was beginning to like him. She wished she had the courage to tell him, but she didn't know how it'd affect their friendship. The only problem was he wasn't that attractive, he wasn't bad looking by any means, but he wasn't that good looking either. His personality made up for it though. Despite the fact that he liked to act goofy and even immature at times, he was funny, and he knew what situations called for a serious attitude, even though he preferred the goofy attitude.

Origama, on the other hand, she didn't know much about. He was hot, but he isolated himself and was always really quiet. In fact, today had been the first time she'd actually heard him speak. She wondered what kind of secrets he had and why he isolated himself from everybody.

Shinya slowly drifted off to sleep as she tried to think of reasons why Origama was the way he was.

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I hope this chapter was an enjoyable read. I had fun writing it. I would appreciate any reviews and/or constuctive criticism anyone can offer.