Amateur

Morino Ibiki POV

Her name was Kira Shetoya.

She walked in suddenly (even though she tried to be subtle about it) after I just told the kids to begin. Of coarse every eye in the room was on her when she walked in. You could tell that she had been trying to avoid such a thing but it happened to her anyway.

She had an orange rucksack slug over her shoulder and held in her hand a genin headband with the markings of The Land of Water on it. I don't know why she didn't bother to put it on just like everyone else.

I reached under my coat and took out the clipboard that had all the names and faces of those who had signed up for the exam. I found her picture. She looked a lot younger than she actually was, she still had that child-like innocence about her.

She'd better be more talented then she appears to be. Babies don't make it past my exam.

She walked up to me and whispered that she was sorry she was late. I stopped her before she could give me any excuses. Feeling high ad mighty, I handed her a copy of the test without a word and pointed in the direction of the only open seat in the classroom. I was temporarily reminded of a high school freshman who gets lost on her way to her very first class.

Pathetic.

Kira finally understood that I wasn't going to give her any sort of verbal instruction. Any ninja who was worthy of the exam wouldn't need to hear an explanation anyway. She nodded, quietly said thank you, and walked over to her new seat.

That's what you get for being late.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself. I had managed to scare (or at least confuse) just about every one in the room. I was being my usual evil self and I very much enjoyed it. Everything was going extremely well... until that girl walked into the room.

I watched her carefully now. She was reading through the questions now, I could see her eyes scanning the paper. After a while she put the paper down.

I smirked.

You could tell from her expression she was thinking "what the heck?" Of coarse she didn't know any of the answers. Who did? The point was she had to cheat without getting caught.

She was staring around the room now and you could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She tapped her fingers upon the paper and loudly blew air from her lips. She looked around at the people in the room. She made eye contact with some blonde kid who gave her a nervous smile. She smiled back and raised her hand to wave, but another kid turned around and gave her a sharp look. She made eye contact with this other boy now (strange kid with a hood and face paint) and you could tell that full understanding passed between them in just one moment. It was as if they had an entire conversation. But then he faced his test again and began scribbling on his paper.

Kira smiled again at the blonde boy before tuning her attention back to her own test. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. There was a pause. Then she opened her eyes, pulled out a pen from her backpack, and began writing in the answers as if she had known them all along.

I studied the loud blonde kid. He hadn't written anything on his paper yet. How could she have gotten answers from him? Or maybe that smile she gave had nothing to do with answers at all.

There were three possibilities: First, she could have known the questions to the answers all along and could write them with ease. This was unlikely, because the questions were specifically designed so that none of the students knew the correct answers, therefore forcing them to cheat. Second, she could be guessing and just writing down an answer that sounded smart. Well that was unlikely too, since she looked so serious about what she was doing. And third… something must be going on. She must have found one of the ninjas planted in the room who were writing the correct answers and was cheating off of them without having to look or move.

Is that possible?

I was impressed. She had managed to cheat somehow without any visible effort.

When the appropriate time came, I announced that I would give the tenth and final question of the written exam.

I looked around the room, making eye contact with each of my victims. I explained the consequences of getting the last question wrong. Most were stunned, their eyes widened in horror.

This is a great trick!

Then my eyes fell open Kira, who had looked just as surprised as everyone else at first, but was now smirking to herself. She was either very cocky or she knew what was going on.

Well even if she does know, she better not reveal it to anyone else!

But it didn't seem as if she had a squad. And out of the genin who were too nervous to move forward, she wasn't one of them. She just sat there with her arms crossed, waiting.

I went through the process of explaining that everyone remaining had passed the first exam, yaddah yaddah, happy ending right? It was actually enjoyable (a little) but then Anko came in and stole my thunder. She makes me sick.

When the leftover genin got up to stand in their squads and follow Anko to the second part of the exam, Kira stood alone.

"Hey, you!" I shouted to her. Everyone in the room turned their heads to look at her.

"Uh, yeah?" she stood up straighter.

"You don't belong to a squad, do you?"

"No sir, I'm a traveling ninja."

"I see… I'll have to put you with another group then." My eyes swept across the room. Some kids looked tough and experienced, others were immature.

Where should I put her?

Standing in the corner were three sand ninjas. From where I was standing, they looked pretty scary… especially the red-haired one. He was staring off into the distance with cold eyes. This squad probably had some of the three fiercest genin ninjas in it.

Perfect.

"You may join them." I said pointing. Hopefully they would scare her. Maybe kill her off themselves in the woods. After all, they were sand ninja.

But instead I was completely surprised. A huge smile broke out of Kira's face and she ran over to them. She hugged the tall guy with weird paint on his face, smiled at the blonde girl, and stood next to the scary-looking guy.

Oh crap. She knew them.