In the end, Stone and Kumo had come out best from the first round.
Every single one of their competitors had won—three each.
Worst, in comparison, was a four-way tie: Jungle, Frost, Rice, and Birds each had three competitors, and not one victory between them.
Of all the other minor nations, all but Cedar only had a 1/3-win rate—Cedar had done twice as well, and had two competitors win their matches.
Of the major nations, Iwa did second best—six of nine—while Suna did worst—five of seven.
Konoha had forty-five competitors remaining, third-best (or second-worst, depending on how you looked at it.)
There were also a few cases of double-knock-outs, but those were treated as losses if you weren't able to get out of the arena on your own power, regardless of the status of your opponent, so it was a much more likely occurrence than it would be beginning in the quarter-finals, when only the first person to go down would be considered the loser.
But up until the quarter-finals the main purpose of the matches wasn't really to show skill. These were the rounds immediately after a solid month of varying degrees of discomfort, of two previous parts which weren't physical at all.
So the first round—that was to get rid of a lot of genin that weren't worth the effort to watch carefully.
Sure, a few matches were more of a show of skill, of talent, and saw someone who might very well actually be chuunin-level get knocked out early.
That was why there were monitors, and those monitors would report to their various Kages about the individual matches of their genin.
Most kids, however, the full half that were eliminated—they wouldn't have made it very far no matter who they went up against.
And now it was time for round two.
.
Misaki squinted at Sadao's nose. Ibiki squinted with her, pretending he knew what he was looking at. "Well, they did a good job healing it, but they're right—your nose will break really easily for the next week or so, until it fully heals, so…"
Sadao grinned. "Don't get hit in the face again?"
"Basically, yeah."
"I can't believe you got hit in the face," Ibiki snickered.
"Shut up, your opponent was from Frost. I had to face Suna! In my first round!"
Misaki, who had gone up against another Konoha genin (even another medic-nin, actually) and won only because of Sensei's emphasis on taijutsu, frowned. "I hope you get luckier in round two. This is going to be a battle of endurance, and the easier matches the better if we want to go far."
Ibiki, who mostly just cared about not looking like an idiot, craned his neck to look at the other competitors as the arena was prepped with larger combat areas. "Well, that's the 'fun' of a random draw."
Sadao snorted "I can't believe we're actually doing random draws. Konoha could've overwhelmed all our competitors if they'd done it right."
Misaki poked something in Sadao's neck and he yelped. "You need to do more neck exercises. And if Konoha fixed the matchups, it could seem like Konoha needed to fix the matchups. This way, we come out looking all-out powerful, instead of just powerful-with-asterisks."
Ibiki mulled that in his mind, but he still thought Konoha should've fixed the matchups, just been subtle about it. Instead they were using bingo balls, and the chuunin pulling the match-ups was surrounded by the jounin instructors from all the competing nations—Konoha had gone out of the way to emphasize that the matches really were completely random.
Not the choice Ibiki would have made—if the matches seemed random that was close enough—but, well.
It wasn't up to him, was it?
A voice came over the loudspeakers—round two was about to begin.
"Alright, alright, stop fussing Misaki!" Sadao said. "I need to stretch again!"
"Stretch your neck, too," Misaki reminded him, stepping back and falling into her own warm-up routine as Sadao began his.
Ibiki took another minute, another second to look around as everyone either began stretching or heading into the private rooms they were allowed to use to prepare.
Half—over half, because of the double knock-outs—of the competitors gone.
Before, Ibiki had been able to spot people he felt confident about beating, spot plenty of competitors without much combat experience at all.
And in round one he hadn't gone up against any of them, had gone up against a teen he couldn't read from afar.
And won. Easily.
(Because the genin was from Frost, but still.)
Now, even mentally adjusting for the chance that some of the straight-faced adolescents were less dangerous than they appeared, Ibiki couldn't really spot anybody he felt sure about.
That…
Was expected, Ibiki supposed.
Didn't help with his nerves, though.
He disappeared into one of the private rooms.
.
Unfortunately, everyone began to arrive shortly after round one, and it was time for politicking.
Team chinmoku dispersed.
Sakura, Shin was sure, was off to deal with the minor nations—she was more-or-less remotely controlling all of their economies, now, and ensuring that they realized that had been one of her main tasks for the past several months.
Juro was even easier—he was off to offer discount medical treatments to tourists, get the common folk to see Fire as the sort of magical place that you would never support going to war with.
Shin…
Shin's task was dealing with the major nations.
Iwa was easy.
Iwa had more-or-less already given up on the idea of war while Konoha was still building itself back up, decided to focus instead on the horror of the plague.
Suna—given that it was in the middle of a desert, and far more able to section off plague hotspots—was less deterred.
If anything, it was becoming increasingly clear that they were encouraged; for those in charge, the worst effect of the plague was the decrease in trade, and as far as they were concerned, capturing some of Konoha's territory—Konoha's arable territory—would only help, no matter the human cost.
Honestly, Shin was sure that if Wind hadn't found the railway Konoha had built to the Capital so helpful, Suna would have declared war already.
And then there was Kumo.
Shin put their chance of declaring outright war as about the same as Iwa doing so, but Kumo was very, very interested in continuing its nuisance raids in the former Land of Water—he really needed to stop thinking of the islands like that—and that was a problem.
Not right now, necessarily; right now it was actually quite helpful, because they were charging the nobles for protecting their islands, and it made good money. But eventually the nobles would get pissed enough at the regular cost that they'd start getting ideas, and it was Shin's job to stop that from happening.
So, his 'job' was to go to Kumo's representative (the Raikage would not be arriving until the quarter-finals) and intimate that Konoha would not take it well if they didn't back off, at least a little, and then go to Suna's representative (the Kazekage would also not be arriving until the quarter-finals) and make it very clear that Konoha would consider it an official betrayal and begin embargoing Wind trade Fire-wide if they did not cease their border intrusions, infiltration attempts, and other blatantly anti-Konoha behavior.
Kumo Shin actually felt good about: they had to deal with the plague anyway, would have to redistribute their shinobi force to deal with that.
Suna he didn't. At best, they might be convinced to stop temporarily.
No matter what, however, the International Chuunin Exams had already done what they were supposed to, and convinced all the major nations that Konoha was not a hidden village on the brink of collapse.
Now they just had to keep it that way.
.
Ibiki stiffened as he heard his name, and outright slumped as he heard the name of his opponent—Taika Hiroshi.
Taika. Hiroshi.
Of the clan that could blast fire jutsus so easily that they'd straight-up created about a third of all fire jutsus.
Shit.
.
Officially, the Council of Elders did not meet without the Hokage. What would be the point? They were his advisors, were meant to provide their honest opinions. Three advisors to one Hokage, an intentional and direct reflection of most genin teams.
The Department Heads, meanwhile, met in all sorts of groups and arrangements—sometimes only one-on-one, sometimes with just about everybody but the Hokage; he was a busy man, the thinking went, and if something that didn't need his direction could be resolved without him, all the better.
The Council of the Clans were meant to, outside of meetings with the Hokage, remain separate from the actual governance of Konoha. Their concern was the clans, was maintaining the careful balance of power so that no clan chose to leave Konoha nor attempted to rule Konoha as they did their own clan.
Officially, they were meant to rotate their meetings between the clans according to an increasingly complex system.
This was rather quickly deemed a mistake; most of the time, they couldn't even figure out whose turn it was. Still, as these things went, fixing the system had always been on the agenda, but never high enough to actually be done.
At least, that was true until the end of the Fire-Water war.
Then, with so much cheap real estate and (relative) time, they'd agreed to build their own meeting house, conveniently located and extravagantly built, a display of the power of Konoha's clans.
Hyuuga Hiashi had just entered the building, intent on preparing for their meeting on the current status of the orphan-apprenticeship program, when he froze.
And then several things happened in very quick succession.
First, he kicked the door, putting enough chakra in his legs that it shot off, slamming to the side, blocking the door he knew opened to a closet—just in case.
Second, the snake bit him.
Third, Hiashi took in the unsealed documents, the information now no doubt known to Orochimaru—
The fact that the documents were unsealed at all.
Fourth, the venom began to hit, and Hiashi felt his leg collapse in real time.
Fifth, Hiashi chopped the head off the snake. Its body fell, forced to stay in this world as it had died too quickly to escape to its own.
Sixth, the ANBU arrived.
Seventh—Hiashi gestured to the documents, to them lying there, in the open. He couldn't speak anymore. Didn't know when the venom had taken that away from him.
Eighth—the ANBU who arrived first stepped over him, used some sort of fuinjutsu seal to gather all the papers in one motion, began clearing the meeting house of threats.
Ninth—Hiashi's vision went black.
Tenth—
Tenth—
