Please leave a comment or PM if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or just compliments. For the sake of this work, the elemental balance will go earth}lightning}water}fire}wind. Thanks to SmallFountainPen for betaing chapters 57-73. Thanks to SoaringJe for betaing chapters 116-166.
It was all coming together.
Despite everything, it was all coming together.
The first, non-public, part of the chuunin exams was ready to begin, and despite Konoha's requirement of three-man teams, they'd still managed to get almost two hundred competitors.
The other major nations, of course, only sent about three teams each (Kumo only two, Suna four), but that was to be expected.
Konoha itself had scrounged up thirty-four teams, most of which were actually eligible for promotion. The past chuunin exams had never had nearly that much—there was an idea that you only wanted to put your best foot forward, not your entire body at once—but Minato wanted to make a statement. He'd still bowed to the judgment of the jounin-senseis over whether their children had the knowledge base necessary to not risk incompetency as a chuunin should they be promoted, but thirty-four was more than enough to say what he wanted to say.
The remaining twenty-two teams were supplied by minor nations—the Lands of Mushrooms, Waterfall, Tea, Rice, Jungle, Steam, Rivers, Birds, Frost, Cedar, Keys, and Stone had all sent at least one team.
Everybody who entered Konoha was vaccinated—Fire residents for free, everyone else for a small fee—and the Fire-vendor spaces were already booked out (the international ones weren't, but that wasn't a surprise; most were probably waiting to see if shinobi from their village would even be there before they spent the money.)
Everything was coming together.
Which meant that Minato had more time for…
Other worries.
.
Ibiki rolled his neck. It was just past dawn, and he and the others who had gathered for the first part of the chuunin exams were all waiting.
They'd been allowed to enter the room already, which was something, but it was just rows and rows of desks and chairs, each evenly spaced.
In the front a lone desk stood, with a far more comfortable chair pushed in behind it, facing the whole of the very large room.
That was it.
He didn't know if he was ready.
He didn't know if any of his team were ready.
It had become very obvious, over the past few months, that even Sensei doubted that any of them had all the skills they would need to be a mission chuunin, but that wasn't necessarily Misaki or Sadao's goals anyway, and Ibiki couldn't be promoted, so this was just…
Necessary.
She'd already disappeared. Said she'd try to make it back for round three, assuming any of them made it that far.
She seemed to doubt they would.
Which, fair.
Ibiki wasn't exactly a powerhouse, and Misaki was far more concerned with soaking up all the medical knowledge Sensei had while she still could.
Sadao was their heavy-hitter, and he didn't have the sharingan, or the firepower to make up for it.
He frowned, looking around.
"Does everyone else seem… bigger to you?" He asked.
Sadao shrugged. "Part one is a written test anyway, so who cares?"
"If we survive the written test, we'll be going up against them."
"They do seem… rather intimidating," Misaki whispered.
The three of them watched the team from Rice (not even shinobi—they'd sent three sixteen-year-old samurai instead) walk by.
"Well, we've been trained by a Sannin," Sadao pointed out.
"And yet no one seems very afraid of us." Not that Ibiki could blame them; the difference between a twelve-year-old and all of the outright teenagers that surrounded him could not be understated.
(He remembered despairing when the Hokage changed the graduation age. Now he had no idea how he was even supposed to handle genin-level conflict, much less chuunin-level.)
"It's just a written test," Misaki whispered, more to herself than Ibiki and Sadao. "I'm good at written tests."
"No way is it just a written test," Ibiki said.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"That's just—too straightforward. I dunno. I'm just expecting some sort of trick, I guess."
"Let's hope not," Sadao said. "They made us leave all our weapons at home."
They'd been searched, quite thoroughly, upon arrival.
Ibiki had not thought of hiding things behind his ears, underneath his fingernails, or between his toes before, but now he knew that such things were entirely possible and—as demonstrated by the Kumo team that had been searched alongside them—actively done.
No weapons of any kind, including poisons. Clothing and that's it.
(Clothing, Ibiki was sure, could be a type of weapon too. Unfortunately he had no idea how to use it. Hopefully this wouldn't turn into a battle royale.)
"Do you—" Ibiki started, and then a gong sounded.
Once, twice, thrice.
By the third gong everyone had gone quiet, were looking around, watching the only door with anticipation.
The Sannin Jiraiya did not arrive by the door.
Ibiki had no idea how he arrived, except that when he whipped around Jiraiya was already there.
"Hello kids!" The Sannin Jiraiya's teeth sparkled. Ibiki wondered if he was using a genjutsu. Probably. "Are you ready?"
No.
Of course they weren't ready.
The Sannin Jiraiya wouldn't be here if this was a simple test, which meant this had to be something worse.
Ibiki frowned.
He'd get through anyway.
They were told to take a seat—whichever.
They sat.
Blank-faced chuunin filed into the room, passing out tests, ink stones, ink, and brushes.
Ibiki swallowed as the test, at least three dozen pages, dropped onto his test.
The first page was blank except for one small stamp in a corner, and a very large line in the middle.
"Please place your name above your line," Jiraiya said. "And the names of your teammates below."
Ibiki did as he was told.
The ink was good quality. So was the paper—very thick.
He still preferred pencils and pens.
At the front of the room, Jiraiya cleared his throat. He was leaning back in the comfortable chair, so that only two of its legs were actually on the ground. His legs were folded, kicked up over the table.
He looked quite comfortable.
He was the only one in the room who did.
"Complete silence is expected for the duration of the test, and you may not leave until you are finished. There are one hundred questions, all of which a prepared chuunin should be able to answer. The chuunin will be roaming to monitor you and ensure you don't cheat. If you have a question, stand. I will come to you. If you do not finish, you do not pass. If you do not get at least ninety-five percent correct, you do not pass. If your answer is not sufficiently legible, it will be treated as incorrect. If you wish to leave at any point, stand and gesture to the nearest chuunin, who will escort you out of the building. Alright, ready?"
Silence.
"Say that you're ready."
The entire room recited "I'm ready" in one discordant slap of noise.
"Great! You have an hour. You may begin."
One hundred questions.
One hour.
Ibiki took a breath, looked at the first question.
It was a question about how much in tariffs a merchant bringing one ton of salt into Earth from Wind would have to pay.
He'd come back to that.
Question two asked what the guests should do after the first pour of tea in a chaji preformed between four nobles in the Land of Steam.
That Ibiki knew—the country did not matter; in the east, chaji was performed the same anywhere.
The guests should drink the tea.
He imagined that that was also true in the west, but he didn't know. At least Steam was an eastern country.
Question three was about pricing an undesirable contract.
Ibiki skipped it.
Question four was about which wife birthed the heir to the fourth Daimyo of Corn.
Ibiki was about to skip that too, when he rethought it.
He had no idea what went on in Corn, but all the Daimyos he knew were born from the first wives of their fathers, with a scant few exceptions when that marriage didn't result in any children.
He put down his guess, The first wife, then went back to question one.
Salt was crazy valuable. Fire didn't tariff it at all, because they didn't exactly have a huge supply themselves and salt was the best preservative there was.
In fact, Wind's economy was almost wholly based on salt—the gold was good too, but explicitly regarded as less valuable than the salt mines. Ibiki remembered learning about that in school—he'd thought it was stupid, because gold was money and money was always valuable, but he'd been young then.
No tariff, Ibiki wrote, because that seemed like the obvious answer.
Question three—about pricing an undesirable contract—also seemed to have an obvious answer, and so he filled that in too; No price; the Hidden Village does not need to take every possible contract.
On and on it went.
Each question had an obvious, or semi-obvious, answer.
Every once in a while Ibiki would stumble across a question he did, explicitly, know the answer to, and even then—
It was the obvious.
This was too easy.
Far, far too easy.
Where was the trick?
Ibiki looked up, checked the clock. He was doing good on time.
He looked around. While some shinobi looked frantic, upset, most seemed to be plowing through the pages at the same rate Ibiki was.
What was the trick?
Ibiki's heart began to race again. He kept going through the questions.
Time kept ticking down.
He'd make it, but 100 questions in 60 minutes was hard.
Every few seconds he had to stop himself, had to keep from going back, re-checking a question he was only kind of sure about.
Every few minutes he caved, went back.
Never changed his answer.
Always wasted time.
Around him the tension was building.
50 questions left. 28 minutes.
When had he fallen behind?
Ibiki tried to speed up, but writing down the answers took time, and he still hadn't figured out the trick.
(What was the trick?)