This is the first phase of the jonin exams. Please enjoy it.


After submitting their forms at the entrance, she and her teammates went led to the a pretty large room. There were a few other jonin candidates, some of whom she recognized. There was Tenten, Ino, Shino, Hinata, and also a couple other chunin she'd met before. All in all, there seemed to be about 15 candidates. From what she'd heard, Neji and Sasuke had taken the exam a few months ago, and had passed with flying colors. Shikamaru had been given an emergency field promotion on one of his missions, and when they'd gotten back, Tsunade refused to remove it, because, in her own words, 'His smart ass needed to be put in an appropriate position.' He hadn't been particularly pleased, though the fact that it was mainly a desk job as a strategist relaxed him a little. She could see him up on the dias they were standing in front of, near Tsunade-sama and a bunch of other jonin.

Tsunade began to address them in a loud voice, "Greetings Shinobi. You have all assembled here out of a desire to be promoted to the next rank. These exams will be conducted in 3 phases. Each phase will be an individual exam. The first phase will test your leadership and your ability to operate in a team. The second will be a test of your skill in your chosen specialty. And the last will test whether you possess the true strength of a jonin. That is all for the details of this test. You will each be given a piece of paper with a location, where your test will be conducted. That is all for now."

She looked at the paper she'd been given. It looked like her test would be held at Training Ground 7. It was a normal training ground, didn't really have any special features as far as she knew. So there was no need for any particular preparation. And so she quickly body flickered out of the room and to Training Ground 7.

When she reached there, she saw 4 other shinobi gathered. A red-haired bearded Shinobi greeted her and said "Welcome. You've arrived quickly. This test is simple. It's a game of capture the flag. Me and that guy over there will be defending that flag located there. My name is Shion and he's Ikta. You'll be working with those two over there. I'll give you 5 minutes to get acquainted with them and form a strategy. Good luck."

She nodded and moved towards her two teammates for this. They introduced themselves as Kokage Yanagikage and Kotetsu Hagane. Kokage was a wind release specialist. Kotetsu was a weapons specialist. After learning that information, she asked if they knew anything about their opponents. They didn't know much, though according to them, Ikta was smart. She then looked at the position of the flag and whether there was anything she could take advantage of. This training ground was largely barren, so there wasn't much to work with. At least they hadn't hidden the flag or surrounded it in a barrier. That made things simple. All she has to do was get within a few metres of the flag. If she could get that close, a win was guaranteed. After thinking for a while, she shared her plan.


"What do we do, Ikta ?" asked Shion. He sighed as he thought about it. From what he knew, she was Kakashi Hatake's protege. Someone of her caliber was practically a shoe-in, but they had to do this nevertheless. The easiest method here was to create decoy flags, bury it underground or just surround it in a barrier, but that would be against the purpose of this test. So the best method here was...

"We'll go for the girl. She's the contestant and leader. I doubt the other two will act on their own if she's caught. Just hold off the other two while I catch her."

Once the 5 minutes were done, the 3 chunin charged forward. Sakura was at the front, seemingly focusing solely on running, while leaving her defense to the other two. Kotetsu was covering her with a barrage of weaponry, which Kokage was speeding up with wind release. Shion had created a couple of clones to hold them all back. As a kenjutsu specialist, this was his forte. Sakura, to her credit, managed to slip through while taking down a clone, and threw down a smoke bomb to hide her presence. When the smoke cleared, he saw that she'd made an earth wall to cover her back once she'd snuck past Shion. She was running quickly towards the flag, with only about 10 metres left. Just then, his fist knocked her down. Or rather, she ran into his fist. The camouflage jutsu was his specialty, though moving around made it easier to see through. So he'd predicted her path, and stood waiting for her to get close, while leaving an explosive shadow clone to act as a decoy.

He moved to knock her out, but when he kicked her, the body collapsed into a pile of mud. His eyes widened, but before he could do more, he felt a hand on his leg and was pulled down soon after.


Her decoy earth clone had worked. She quickly pulled herself out of the ground and closed in towards the flag. The clown Ikta had left behind was charging at her blindly. Something seemed off. So she pointed her palms at him and released the seals on them, while sending chakra to her feet to stick to the ground. A powerful burst of wind blew the clone back, after which it exploded. She moved through the remaining smoke, and picked up the flag. She'd done it.

"Well done." The voice came from Ikta, who'd freed himself. "Thank you. It was a close match."

Shion laughed and said "Please, no need for humility. You didn't even have to use your specialty. Now, as for your next match, it'll be held back in the same place you were before. Allow us to accompany you there."

She frowned at that. Why would they send her here just to send her back ? She ignored the question and said "You don't have to do that."

Shion laughed again and said "We're not doing it for you kid. It's not often one gets to see him in a proper match."

Well that was interesting. Just who was her next opponent ?

When they reached the room, she noticed that the stands were packed with jonin. Lee was already done it seemed, with Guy being right next to him, praising out loud while patting his back. For some reason, both of them seemed a little tired. Had Guy been Lee's opponent ?

As she entered, the room quietened. Guy and Lee hopped up to the stands instead of leaving. Tsunade raised her hands for silence, and then spoke. "Sakura, well done on passing the first phase. Now, your chosen specialty is Aerial Combat. Normally, we have someone else with the same specialty come test your skills for the second phase, while having you go up against a full fledged jonin in a normal sparring session for the third phase. Unfortunately, Konoha doesn't have any aerial combatants. And so, we've decided to do things a little differently for you, just as we did for Lee. We'll combine the two phases into one. You'll be going up against a jonin in an all-out sparring session under certain rules. If you demonstrate high skill in the specialty but fail the test, you'll be made a tokubetsu jonin. Your opponent should have arrived by now and was supposed to be the one explaining all this, but he's fashionably late, as always."

That last line got the gears in her mind spinning. Could it be ?

"Ah, my apologies Hokage sama. A black cat crossed my path."

She whirled around to see, standing in his usual lackadaisical manner, her sensei.

"Yo, Sakura. You did well getting this far."


A/N

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that. Next chapter, we have a proper teacher vs student fight.