3. Sweat, Baby, Sweat

Tenzou glanced anxiously around the hall, sweat beading on his forehead. There were over a hundred exam desks in here, arranged in rows, but only three of them were occupied - his, on the far left of the room, was directly in a horrifically bright square of sunlight that was reflecting from his paper and burning a white rectangle into his retina. In the middle of the room, Kabuto was hunched low over his exam paper, pen racing across the page. Azami sat on the opposite side, head in her hands, staring down at the paper in front of her in abject misery. Tenzou knew the feeling.

Rubbing his damp temples, which were throbbing painfully, Tenzou looked to the front of the room. A large clock hung on the wall; right now it was half past nine in the morning. Beneath it, a chalkboard, which currently said 'KONOHA CITIZENSHIP EXAM'. Their exam had started an hour ago, and Tenzou hadn't even finished the first page. An invigilator was sat at a long desk, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded. He looked as though he didn't want to be here, which Tenzou easily sympathised with. He would've rather been lying in front of the open refrigerator on the kitchen floor. It was so hot in here, Tenzou thought he might boil in his own sweat.

Kabuto had woken them at seven. He was evil. For breakfast, hungover Tenzou had been allowed a glass of water and exactly one painkiller, which had done precisely nothing. Now that his nausea had faded, he was achingly hungry, his head was still pounding as though his brain was battering his skull with a sledgehammer from the inside, and he didn't know any of the answers to this stupid test. But worst of all was the heat. The air conditioner in the corner of the room was doing its best, but it was useless: being in here was like being shut inside an oven.

He looked down at his paper, wiping a little sweat from his upper lip.

What was the name of the First Hokage?

Okay, so he knew one answer. The First Hokage was his dad… in a way. Tenzou knew that he was a clone of old Hashirama, but when he'd seen a portrait of the First, he didn't think he resembled him at all. Their eyes were similar, sort of, but that was where the likeness ended. Tenzou scrawled down his progenitor's name, and then grimaced. It was strange to think that someone exactly like him had already lived their life. It was also confusing, and a little too heavy for a Sunday morning. For that matter, who scheduled exams for Sunday mornings anyway?

Just as he had begun to fume at the ridiculousness of the situation, the door creaked open. Two weary heads looked up from their papers - Kabuto was too transfixed with his work to be distracted - and stared at the door. Tenzou was stricken with a weird feeling of dread as he watched the stranger enter. He was curiously familiar, with silver hair and a mask that covered most of his face…

Leather and Cuffs.

Then his body really stepped on the nervous sweating. He could practically feel sweat drops like bullets pouring down his back as he stared determinedly at his paper, only to realise that the one correct answer he'd put - Hashirama Senju - was now completely illegible underneath a palm-shaped sweat stain. He flicked a sweat drop from the end of his nose and tried to cram the First's name just underneath the question, but there wasn't enough room; he managed to fit it into the margin, with a quickly scrawled arrow pointing to the question number. He then accidentally smudged it, but there was nothing more he could do.

After this, he dared to look up, only to find that the silver-haired stranger and the invigilator were both staring at him, smirking. He shifted uneasily in his seat, feeling his clothes drag across his wet skin. He was so disgusting and this was so embarrassing. Just to add to the uncomfortableness of the situation, his stomach decided that then would be an excellent time to let loose a growl like a starving animal. On the other side of the room, Azami stifled her laughter into a cough.

Tenzou wanted to yell at the guy with the silver hair - why are you here? Do you enjoy watching me make a moron of myself? - but firstly, he would be thrown out of the exam, and secondly, the answer would probably be yes anyway.

The stranger set a pile of papers down on the invigilator's desk, and then he left as quickly as he'd arrived. Tenzou gave a relieved huff. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. And damp. He looked like a schoolboy, with his palms coated in inky sweat, and every inch of him was steeping in uncomfortable clamminess. He'd realised a little too late that morning that he was wearing far too much clothing; he picked irritably at the hem of his shirt - loose black cotton - and scowled. He wondered if tearing off all of his clothes would breach the exam regulations.

Probably.

Suddenly, there was a thud from the front of the room; Tenzou whipped his head up to see that the invigilator's face had hit the desk, and he was now lying perfectly still, dead to the world. Azami gave a dark little chuckle; she must've put a genjutsu on him, because he was out like a light.

"You are awful, Azami," Kabuto said, looking across at her from over his glasses. She shrugged and shot a cheeky grin at him.

"Do us two a favour, then," she said, batting her eyelashes at him. Kabuto rolled his eyes.

"I am only doing this because it'll ruin Orochimaru's plan if we don't pass," he said, "Not because I care about what happens to you."

"Don't worry, Kabuto. No one here thinks you're a good person," Tenzou said, and Azami laughed.

"Good. The answer to the first question is 1839…"

It took Kabuto about five minutes to reel off all the answers. Tenzou made sure to intentionally misspell a few things, or answer questions completely wrong, just so that it wasn't blatantly obvious that they had… collaborated. He scribbled down the last answer with a flourish, careful not to spray sweat everywhere, and then flipped over his paper and dropped his pen.

"Alright. Everybody act natural," Azami said, and Tenzou slumped down again in his seat, sweating. Kabuto leaned back, drumming his fingers on his desk. Azami released the genjutsu she'd put on the invigilator, who sat up - his eyes lost their glaze as he returned to reality. Tenzou guessed that she'd planted a false memory in him, because he didn't look even remotely bothered or confused.

"Are the three of you finished?" he said gruffly, and they nodded in sync. "Okay. You can go. Your results will be published this afternoon."

Giddy, Tenzou followed Kabuto and Azami out of the room. His good mood wasn't dashed even when he saw the silver-haired stranger lurking at the end of the corridor, waiting outside a door. Effortlessly casual, they breezed past him without a second glance.

At least, Kabuto and Azami did.

Meanwhile, the tip of Tenzou's sandal squeaked against the linoleum and he lost his balance. It seemed to happen in slow motion. He gracefully arced through the air with the majesty of a felled oak, watching uselessly as the floor hurtled closer. Then he hit the ground with his face at the stranger's feet, limbs splaying outward confusedly, like they were trying to grab onto something a little too late.

Humiliated, Tenzou wondered if he could just lie there for the rest of his life.

"Oh! Don't mind Tenzou," Azami was telling the stranger, as she hauled him up by his waist. "He's just, um, he's…"

"Damaged," Kabuto supplied, lip quivering like a stretched elastic with suppressed laughter. Tenzou rubbed his face, head pounding, as he staggered to his feet. Azami snatched her hand away from Tenzou's back, probably having realised that he was still damp with sweat. The stranger was staring at him, looking completely indifferent; Tenzou did not meet his eyes.

"Let's go, little oak - er, I mean! Tenzou," Azami said, and now she and Kabuto were falling about with poorly subdued laughter.

With his pride left in tatters, Tenzou limped away.

Later that afternoon, Tenzou lay on the kitchen floor in front of the open refrigerator, in his underpants. It was deliciously cold down here; there were goosebumps prickling up his arms. The cool tiles were heaven on his sticky back, and the fridge dumped a blanket of frigid air onto his prone body.

"Tenzou, you are so gross," Azami said, reaching over him to get into the ice compartment.

"It's hot," Tenzou whined, and Azami rolled her eyes - but she still leaned down and popped an ice cube on his bare stomach. He grinned as tendrils of lusciously cool water crawled down his sides.

"Tenzou, you know that guy from earlier?" Kabuto said, from his perch on the kitchen counter.

"No," said Tenzou, even though he obviously did.

"The one that you keep making an ass of yourself in front of," Azumi said, sipping an iced cocktail of her own creation.

"Oh, yeah," Tenzou said, scowling. How could he forget? "What about him?" It didn't escape his notice that Azami and Kabuto were grinning at each other. Evilly.

"I was just wondering if you knew his name," Kabuto said, pushing his glasses up from where they'd slipped down his nose.

"Why should I know, or care about, his name?" Tenzou snapped furiously, crossing his arms. This gesture did not look very menacing considering as he was lying flat on his back, half-naked, with a slowly melting ice cube on his belly.

"It's Kakashi. If you were curious," said Kabuto.

"I wasn't, thanks."

Now Azami and Kabuto were laughing, and it was patently obvious that they were just reminding him about that guy to get a rise out of him. He wouldn't take the bait.

"How do you know his name, anyway? Have you been stalking him?" Tenzou said, tilting his head back to peer up at Kabuto.

"Of course not," Kabuto said scathingly. "His name came up once in an eyewitness account of the Third Shinobi World War, not that you would know about that, seeing as you failed to actually study for that exam."

Tenzou blew a raspberry at him.

"How mature," Kabuto said, but then they grinned at each other.

"Do you know anything else about him, Kabuto?" Azami said, staring at him with big, eager eyes.

"Nothing you'd be interested in, really. He became a jounin at age thirteen, during the war. That'd put him at about… twenty-one now," Kabuto said, his obsession with facts and figures showing. "Also, his left eye is a Sharingan."

Just before Azami said wow, Tenzou snapped, "Why do either of you care!"

"We're here to gather information, Tenzou, remember?" Azami said. "You're the one getting worked up about it."

Tenzou sat up, wincing as meltwater dripped into his boxers.

"I am not getting worked up."

"Whatever, little oak. Get dressed, anyway, we need to go pick up our results."

"Kabuto Yakushi? Here you are," said a harassed-looking female ninja, thrusting a brown paper envelope at Kabuto. Kabuto took it then stepped aside, taking a seat on a bench along the wall of the waiting room. Azami and Tenzou stood in line behind the female ninja's desk, where two more envelopes were lying.

"Who are you?" she snapped at Azami. Because Azami's hair was in a bun, Tenzou could see from behind that her ears had flooded red. She did not take kindly to being spoken to rudely.

"Azami Yakushi," Azami said snippily. Tenzou looked over his shoulder and caught Kabuto's eye. They smirked.

"This is yours, then," the female ninja said, handing her an envelope that was stamped with her name. Azami snatched it out of the woman's hand and bristled over to sit beside Kabuto. Tenzou stepped forward.

The female ninja fixed him with an unimpressed stare, one that reminded him painfully of the way that Kakashi looked at him. Underwhelmed.

"You're Tenzou?" she said, reading the name stamped on the last envelope. Tenzou nodded, and she handed it to him. He took it, but for a second she didn't release it - she narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, as though she were trying to see through him. Shaken, Tenzou offered her (what he thought was) a winning smile, which only deepened her frown.

After Tenzou had managed to extract the envelope from her hand, she said, "Are you three really related?"

Azami had apparently been waiting for this to happen, because she leapt up from her seat and threw her arm around Tenzou's shoulders. Tenzou swallowed a little nervously; he had known that people would be suspicious. Now that Azami was next to him, the differences between them were even more apparent.

"What a rude thing to say," Azami barked, and Tenzou screwed up his face in an attempt to look stricken. He had never been a particularly good actor. "What are you trying to imply about my brother?"

Obviously, the truth was that none of them were related, and Kabuto was the only one of them who even had a surname. Azami had been orphaned very young and taken in by Orochimaru shortly after. Tenzou had been born under Orochimaru's care; his mother had died in childbirth and Orochimaru had named him. Kabuto had lived in an orphanage, and the matron had given him his name, but Orochimaru had adopted him at about seven years of age. The only link between the three of them was that they were teammates, but they'd been together for so long that they were as good as family - so Azami's outrage was more than justified.

"Nothing," the female ninja said, and then bowed her head.

"Yeah. That's what I thought," Azami spat, and then steered Tenzou away by his shoulders. Kabuto followed them both out of the small waiting room into the corridor; they passed through a screen door into a sunny, hot courtyard.

"Shall we open these, then?" Tenzou said, looking down at the envelope in his hands.

"Oh, I already opened mine," said Kabuto.

"Did you pass?" Azami said eagerly, making to snatch the paper out of his hand, but Kabuto moved it out of her reach.

"Obviously. One hundred percent, actually."

"Awesome! Okay, let's see here," Azami said, tearing her envelope open messily - the fragments of brown paper that fell to the ground were kicked around by a pathetic breeze. She withdrew the sheet of white paper inside, and then beamed at it. "Ninety four percent!"

"Why are you grinning? Obviously you would've done well. You copied me," Kabuto said, affronted, but Azami ignored him.

"Tenzou! Open yours," she said, and Tenzou tore it open, sliding out the results sheet.

"Oh… uh," he said, staring incredulously at the paper.

"Don't tell me you failed," Kabuto said, staring at him in horror.

"No, I passed, but…"

He'd managed fifty three percent. Azami had read this over his shoulder, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Tenzou, how is that possible?"

Kabuto pointed at a line scrawled at the bottom of Tenzou's results sheet.

Candidate's handwriting near illegible. Perhaps written by a five year old.

Author's Note: I'm going to be away for about two weeks, so there won't be any updates until after August 11th. (Side note: August 16th is the day I find out if I got into university or not, EEK. Fingers crossed for me, readers?). I would love to come back to reviews and follows and whatnot, but I'm happy either way. If you're reading this, I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and I'll be back soon! :)