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 116-167.


Five minutes to go.

Ibiki was sweating.

He had ten questions left.

Every instinct in him told him to go back, check his answers, but if he didn't finish then none of it mattered—

Ibiki froze.

Not physically, thankfully; physically, he just kept writing his answer, but mentally.

He was sweating, it was true, but that wasn't just the stress of taking an exam.

It was also the heat, which had risen in the room since they'd entered.

It was also the background noise, some sort of high-pitched hum just barely in his hearing range.

It was also the chuunin, pacing, pacing, pacing, looking down at them, judging.

It wasn't a genjutsu—he'd checked for that—but you didn't need a genjutsu to mess with people's emotions; his Yamanaka training had taught him that.

And then he'd come here, so convinced that he was going to fail that he didn't even consider that his background might be useful.

He skimmed question ninety-seven, answered it, ninety-eight, answered it, ninety-nine, answered it, one hundred—answered.

He looked up.

Three minutes to go.

Looked around.

Everyone still looked stressed. Some were even crying.

To his surprise, more than a few desks were even empty—genin who gave up, left early.

A few other desks contained genin who kept their heads down, their palms folded, their test booklets closed. They'd clearly realized this was a stress test more than anything else.

Ibiki found Misaki, who was frantically flipping through the test but, to his relief, she'd clearly answered every question.

He found Sadao, which was harder; Sadao was behind him at a diagonal.

Sadao hadn't finished.

Had at least two pages to go, which meant at least six questions.

And Ibiki couldn't make any noise.

Couldn't just tell him to calm down.

(Of course, telling people to calm down had never had a great success rate anyway.)

He didn't put his head down. He did close his text booklet. Then he leaned back, and hoped.

Hoped that Sadao would look over, would see how calm he was.

Before Sadao even got a chance, Misaki started to tremble, moved to stand.

Ibiki knew what she was doing—

She was giving up.

No.

She turned, looking for the nearest chuunin—who was, blessedly, right beside Ibiki—and caught his eye.

He glared.

She sat.

Someone coughed, tried to muffle it in their sleeve.

The Sannin Jiraiya let the cough pass.

Ibiki glanced back at Sadao.

More frantic flipping, still had his finger holding his spot at least a page or two away from the end.

Glanced at the clock.

Two and a half minutes left.

The cough was allowed. Someone's sneeze, at least half an hour earlier, was allowed. No one was between him and Sadao—

This had to work.

Ibiki yawned. He tried, simultaneously, to make it as quiet and loud as possible.

He wished he'd been allowed to bring his summons in.

Sadao glanced up at the yawn, looked at him.

Ibiki smiled.

Sadao glared, then looked around.

Looked at the empty seats, the calm seats, the frantic seats.

Looked back at Ibiki, at the clock.

Then flipped to the last pages.

Thank the kami.

And then the person between then stood, got the attention of the proctor, left.

Ibiki watched him go with no small amount of consternation—why did they give up? He watched as the boy's two teammates (he recognized one as a guy he'd talked to earlier that morning, from Tea) were approached, made to leave as well.

A bell rang.

The Sannin Jiraiya stood.

"Alright, that's time. I'm sure you all did… as well as you could have," he said. "Trying your best is important, even when you don't succeed. Now, the chuunin let me know that we've lost two teams from the Land of Tea, one team from the Land of Mushrooms, one team from the Land of the Jungle, one team from the Land of Frost, one team from the Land of Steam, and three teams from the Land of Fire." The Sannin Jiraiya tsked. "I expected better from you, my fellow Konohans. What kind of example are you showing?"

Ibiki glanced around, at the still predominantly Konoha teams that surrounded him. The Sannin Jiraiya was laying it on a bit thick, he thought.

"Of course, that's just those who gave up. Now let's find out who simply failed."

The chuunin began walking up and down the aisles, correcting papers.

Delivering them to the Sannin Jiraiya.

He opened the first test booklet, leaned back, and began skimming through the pages. "I hope none of you have failed, to be honest. This was a painfully simple test—just making sure you had basic common sense, honestly."

Ibiki—questioned that. Yeah, he'd found a lot of the answers easy, but they had also relied on some of the information he'd learned in the Academy, as a genin, while working.

They were intuitive enough that you could usually fill in most blanks, but it did require some amount of background knowledge.

Right?

The Sannin Jiraiya finished with the first booklet, threw it on the floor. "Taika Ko, pass. Now you just have to wait and see if your teammates have too."

Time passed.

Every once in a while, in between long rambling stories about women who the Sannin had tried and failed to seduce, he'd rattle off five to ten names of people who'd passed.

Blessedly, Misaki's was one of the first, and Ibiki felt some more tension leave his shoulders.

That was only one, though, and the whole team had to pass.

As time passed though, and more and more names were listed off, Ibiki grew more and more confident—no one was failing.

Until someone did.

"—and so there I was, trying to explain myself to her husband—which one of you is Nohara Tomoya?"

Three spaces to Ibiki's left, a teenager—fourteen, maybe?—stood.

"You failed. You and your team may leave."

Tomoya gasped, starting at him. "I failed?"

"Yeah. This is like, completely illegible. Well, most of the first part was okay, but as some point you started racing to answer, and—I told you, illegibility is the same as a wrong answer. Too many wrong answers, you fail. You failed."

Ibiki watched as Tomoya straightened, tried to look like he wasn't punched in the chest. Watched as Tomoya's teammates walked out with him.

One put his arm around Tomoya's shoulders. The other didn't even wait for Tomoya before leaving.

Ibiki couldn't help but catch Sadao's eye.

He'd been racing, near the end.

Had he messed up enough questions?

Sadao looked back, his face a pale white.

He didn't know.

The Sannin Jiraiya went back to the story about interrupting a couple's honeymoon. Ibiki wished he would just hurry up.

"Shimura Yuya, pass. Morino Ibiki, pass. Uchiha Kanata, pass…"

Okay, he was good.

One left.

He tried not to look at Sadao, tried to look like he trusted him.

He did.

He did trust him.

But did he trust the steadiness of his hands?

Ibiki flashed back to the time they'd spent training together, the time they'd spent living side by side.

Sadao picked his nails with a kunai. He never stubbed his fingers when working construction jobs, even though it was all of their first times using a hammer. He never stumbled over a hand sign, never dropped anything he was carrying—

Ibiki had not once checked Sadao's writing, had never once considered there might be a need to, but—

Sadao was coordinated. Sadao was athletic, and very sure of himself.

Sadao would not scrawl the last few answers, not when so much could be riding on this.

In front of them, the Sannin Jiraiya snorted. "You know, I thought all of these questions were painfully easy, but it's funny to see how many of you missed the same seven questions. Not all of them, obviously, or else you would have flunked already, but enough. Except, of course, for Ogawa Ko—you got all seven wrong. Dismissed."

Ko didn't even wait for his team—just sprinted out of the room. His Shimura and Uchiha teammates followed behind, carefully not looking anyone in the eye.

Ibiki's heart started to race again.

The room was hot, so hot, hotter than the average summer day, was clearly just going to keep getting hot until this was over, and that wasn't helping.

Ibiki hated how calm, how lax the Sannin Jiraiya looked.

At least the chuunin were just straight-faced; the Sannin Jiraiya was already laughing about an encounter he'd had with twins who'd tried to stab him, completely uncaring of the team he'd just failed. Ibiki stiffened—the Sannin Jiraiya was calling names again.

"…and Uchiha Sadao. You've all passed."

Ibiki slumped.

He couldn't help himself.

He turned back, smiled, and Sadao smiled back at him.

Both of them were absolutely soaked in sweat.

Of course, so was everyone else.

When the Sannin Jiraiya was done—only two teams failed, both Konoha, so he had to admonish his fellow Fire residents about that for a bit—the Sannin stood. "Alright, the test's done, everyone's been graded, so you all pass. To give you the rules for Section Two—" Jiraiya gestured, and Head Inoichi appeared.

"Hey kids!" Head Inoichi—who had only turned twenty that January—grinned.