Naruto, Sasuke and Ryoko stepped through the doors and into room 301 and saw a small horde of ninja lounged out all over the place, many turned back to look at the most recent three to walk into the room. Several had a bitter look on their face as they took in the youth of the newest genin to join the examining set.
"Look at those brats," one of them muttered under his breath. "What makes them think they belong here?"
The pink-haired girl next to him grunted neutrally as she watched the newcomers herself with a mix of feelings. Especially as a blonde girl leaped out of the general crowd and latched onto Sasuke's back with a girlish cry.
"Sasuke-kun! You're late!" Ino shouted with a cute trill. "I haven't seen you for a long time so I've been waiting here in excitement!"
She looked over and saw both Naruto and Ryoko staring at her.
"Huh, what are you doing here?" Ino asked. "Still trying to get my Sasuke-kun and following him around?"
She stuck her tongue out at Ryoko childishly.
"Ano?" Ryoko said, confused and looking about as if trying to figure out what Ino was referring to.
"Are you guys taking this stupid test too?" a slow and weary sounding voice asked. "How troublesome. Try not to die."
They looked past Ino and saw a pair of other young genin walking up toward them. One was a bored and slender looking young man with black hair tied up in a sort of pineapple-ish style. The other was a chubby kid eating from a rapidly shrinking bag of chips.
Naruto recognized Shikamaru Nara and Choji Akimichi as they approached.
"Oh, it's the idiot trio," he said quickly.
"Don't call us that," Shikamaru protested irritably before glancing over toward Ryoko curiously and arching an eyebrow.
He didn't have time to comment, however before someone else found them.
"Yahoo! Found you!" Kiba's voice called out loudly as Team 8 started moving forward to join them. "Looks like everyone's here."
"Hello," Hinata said shyly, putting her fingers together nervously.
"Hey, Hinata," Naruto called out. "Kiba, you guys here already?"
"Like that roadblock on the second floor stood a chance at us," Kiba declared proudly.
Ryoko winced and shuffled about on her feet as the dog-boy inadvertently reminded her of her near failure on the floor below.
Lee came in then, a bit behind Team 7 and moved quietly to join his own team as Sasuke, now without a clinging kunoichi, watched the older genin pass.
"So, all three of the rookie teams are in this, huh?" Kiba noted. "How about that?"
"You kids there," a soft, charming voice called out. "You should be more quiet."
They all turned about and watched a slim, silver-haired genin walking towards them, wearing his head-band across his brow. He seemed friendly and disarming, but at the same time he was lecturing them on proper behavior.
"You're all rookies from the academy, aren't you?" he asked. "Shouting like a bunch of school girls."
He shook his head in amused disapproval.
"Who the hell are you?" Sasuke demanded.
"I'm Kabuto," came the reply.
Sakura watched from her hiding spot amongst the crowd wiping off a sheen of sweat and wondering how much longer she could hold this genjutsu. A more nagging question was why such a delicate illusion had held so long.
Surely, out of all the Konoha shinobi she'd accidentally bumped into, somebody had to have seen her before, and as soon as that happened, it should have blown a whole in the simple illusion that she belonged where she was.
Consciously she simply assumed that she was much better than she gave herself credit for, but there was a layer beneath that that had expected to be caught in the attempt and sent back home to her parents. That part of her dearly wanted to go up to the proctors and say exactly who she was and what she had done, but the fear of being caught was greater than the desire for this stress to end.
She'd gotten herself stuck.
Meanwhile, Kabuto had just pointed out the angry faces staring at them.
Sakura noted that the Saotome girl had a predictable response, she stepped forward and bowed respectfully.
"S…sumimasen," she said. "W..we do not mean to be a bo…bother."
Growling one of the Amegakure shinobi stood up to tower over the little martial artist as the silver-haired genin had started to show his cards to the other rookies.
"Stuttering and shuffling about like that and you expect to take this exam?" he asked her.
"H..hai," Ryoko said, trying not to swallow.
"Yo, Ryoko," Naruto called out. "Try not to beat anyone up before the exam starts."
"Naruto-kun," Hinata said quietly. "That might not be the best thing to say."
"H..Hai, Uzumaki-san," Ryoko noted nervously, before turning back to the incensed Amegakure shinobi. "Ano…p…please do not mind m..my teammate. I have no intention of st…starting anything. I already owe Lee-san a….a spar, s…so."
"You're saying that you can beat us up," the Amegakure shinobi demanded of Ryoko. "A little bit of nothing like you?"
"I am Ryoko Saotome of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts," she said. "I do n…not lose."
There was a curious amount of iron in her voice as she spoke the introduction, but then her manner shifted slightly and she added another comment.
"B…but, I d…do not be…believe th…that I am allowed…."
The foreigner growled in response to that and swung out his fist in a simple punch designed to teach Ryoko some manners. Instead, a timely bow, apologetically made, swept over her head. The snapped knee that followed, hoping to take advantage of the girl's head-down manner, swished past her head as it swung upward.
"Ryoko-chan!" Hinata called out.
Ryoko turned to look at Hinata with a swift and apologetic look as a vicious knife hand sailed past where her throat had been until she turned aside.
"Oh, Hyuuga-san," Ryoko said cheerfully, as she swung one of her hands out. "I was j…just trying to ex..explain we do n…not mean any insult."
Ryoko's swinging arm struck the overcommitted Amegakure in the back before his chi settled into a stationary place. Given more impetus, the man stumbled comically until he was stopped by a wall with no harm.
He turned to look at the twelve year-old girl that had just managed to thoroughly embarrass him, as was most of the room.
"Ano?" Ryoko said, glancing around and honestly trying to puzzle out what all the attention was for.
Sakura, from her place stared in outright shock as she tried to comprehend just how lucky the girl was to have avoided getting herself killed right then.
"That's great, Ryoko-chan!" Naruto declared as he stepped forward.
"B..but I was only trying to avoid…" Ryoko protested.
"Now it's my turn," Naruto shouted over her. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki and I'm not going to lose to any of you out there! You got that?"
"That makes two idiots," Sakura thought as she watched Naruto through lidded eyes.
Sasuke was shaking his head in semi-disgust at the antics of his team members. Kiba was staring in semi-disbelief at Naruto while Shikamaru simply shook his head and muttered troublesome.
"You idiot!" Ino shouted, moving forward to grab Naruto and haul him back.
"I was only saying the truth," Naruto protested.
Kabuto watched with an amused look on his face, shaking his head at the antics even as his eye shifted slightly to take in Sasuke Uchiha's form. This was to be the Uchiha genius's test from more than one party.
Someone very powerful was interested in how Sasuke would perform for this event.
He was still watching Sasuke, and concealing it as the same sort of amused observation he had toward the other rookies, when Ryoko stepped away from the general crowd and started moving toward the back of the room. She passed between Sasuke and Kabuto, freezing in place for just a brief second as she did so.
Kabuto noted the oddity and frowned, wondering what that brief freezing meant, but he set it aside for the moment.
For her part, Ryoko swallowed nervously in the wake of that brief spike of heavy, murderous chi that she'd just walked through.
That had to be a mistake of some kind, she decided, especially since there was no one that looked like they were producing that sort of intent. There had been hardly any emotion to it at all, just a terrible sense of intent.
Before anything else could happen a great burst of smoke appeared at the front of the room. As it cleared, was revealed a small army of chunin in proctor uniforms. At their head was a scarred man who scanned the crowds of genin carefully, arching an eyebrow as he came to the stalled commotion in the back.
Ryoko recognized him from her and Joseibi's interviews a few years back.
"Everybody settle down," the scarred man commanded. "I'm Ibiki Morino, the examiner for the first test of the Chunin Selection Exam. Thanks for waiting. We'll start by assigning seating and then we'll get to the rules."
Inwardly he thought that the commotion was much quieter than he had expected it to be, usually the stress-induced confrontations didn't bring themselves to a self-conclusion.
Naruto glanced to the side as one of the chunin picked out a large stack of papers. Slowly what was coming dawned on him.
"A paper test!"
Ibiki frowned as he scanned the room, he wandered close to one of the other proctors and talked to him quietly.
"Get a list of testing teams including photos," he said quietly.
"Something wrong?" the proctor asked quietly.
"There are one hundred fifty seven examinees," the interrogator said softly.
"That's a fairly good number, but what's the security issue?" the other asked.
"It's not divisible by three," Ibiki noted.
Naruto stared at his paper and tried not to freak out. At least not any worse than he was right now. Grimacing, he reached a hand up into his hair and rubbed hard, as if he could force the answers out of his head.
His eyes drifted from question to question, trying to find even one that he could begin to answer.
The first test was a cryptogram that made absolutely no sense to him as he stared at it. Then there was a question about parabolas and options of attack. He could give some rough explanation of what sort of tactics or strategies he could use, but then came the whole "show your work" part and he had no idea how to relate his ideas to math.
Following from that were other complex questions mixing a whole variety of fields and relating to in-the-field situations. Stuff like explaining what impact something that happened three hundred years ago had on an encounter now. Or which chemical would produce the necessary result needed to cover a last minute escape.
"What the hell does some old poem have to do with a ninja mission?" Naruto demanded within his erratic thoughts.
Beside him, Hinata watched with her eyebrows pulling together in a combination of affection and quiet concern for the boy sitting next to her.
Ryoko moved on from the first question, wondering if it was there as a sort of free-points question. She'd never quite realized that her ability to read most ciphers and coded technique scrolls: her own variation of the Saotome analytical ability.
The next one was math-oriented and completely beyond what her mother had taught her for basic home economics. She frowned slightly and moved on. Chemistry and physics were other topics unnecessary to a proper woman by Nodoka's standards. Politics fell into the same group, Ryoko only knew enough for polite conversation, never mind complex analysis.
The history and literature ones were a bit easier, but only just. Most of the classics mother had her read were rather boring. Only a couple of them had any battles or adventure whatsoever. It had been awhile before she'd discovered that there were numerous classics written around the past wars.
In the end, she felt that she had perhaps four questions with a decent answer and two she could make an attempt at. That left four that she had almost no clue where to start on, including the one that hadn't been revealed yet.
And she had no idea what sort of score she had to make to pass this test. If she could only be certain about four questions, then was she dooming her team to failure?
"Ano?"
She bit her lip nervously and held onto her pen nervously, a thin trail of smoke drifting up from it.
Next to her, a tired-looking red-haired sand-genin stared expressionlessly at his paper and then toward Ryoko, noting her skittish and nervous demeanor with a quiet sort of disdain that had most every other examinee near him swallowing nervously.
Only the dark-haired girl seemed to be more concerned with her performance on this paper test.
Sasuke likewise scanned over each of the questions and slowly came to a conclusion of his own.
"I see," he thought. "I can't answer any of these."
He looked over at the row of chunin with their prominent clipboards and smirking faces and grimaced.
"It's like they assume we're going to cheat," he thought to himself bitterly. "Bastards."
Still, only two points off for cheating, that's a pretty light penalty compared to what would happen on most tests if you got caught cheating. Why only two points off?
His mind drifted off toward the examiners instructions. Those pathetic enough to get caught would be eliminated. This wasn't a test of what they knew. This was a test of what they could discover. Of course the examiners expected them to cheat, they had to cheat to get the answers. It was just like being on an information assignment trying to get the intelligence past the guards.
That made things a bit easier.
He only hoped Naruto figured out, or Ryoko for that matter. She wasn't even a ninja, she wouldn't look at things in the same way.
Sakura huddled quietly as she focused entirely on answering her test questions, hoping against hope that nobody would notice her. At least she could answer most of the questions. All she had to do was not stand out and hope that Sasuke's team did just as well.
Suspiciously and guiltily, she watched as a proctor left the room after a brief conversation with the primary examiner. Things were getting very out of control, very fast. It was getting hard to concentrate on the questions.
She huddled in on herself and kept her head down, trying to think of a way to get herself out of this mess.
Luck turned in her favor.
The devil's luck at least.
Ino scanned about, looking for a target of her jutsu. If Sakura had been there, then she would have certainly targeted the huge-foreheaded girl. Instead, she had to look about for someone else the she could hope had the answers.
She'd prefer to wait for one smarty pants to finish writing and move into them, but as it stood, she'd probably have to make two or three trips, plus once each to Choji and Shikamaru, in order to get most of the answers to her team.
Scanning about, she saw the long black ponytail of that outsider scaredy cat and smiled. Most probably hadn't noticed, but she'd overheard enough of the girls talks with her younger sister to know that there was a working mind in that head. She'd at least get a good chunk of information from the girl.
Quietly, checking her sides to see if anybody was watching her, she formed the hand sign of her clan's special technique and shoved herself forward. Then she was pushing Ryoko's spirit back to make room for her own to take over.
In doing so, she burst open a door that been creaking open already.
A wave of fear, outright terror, washed over her as the long, drawn out sound of metal scraping against wood screamed dully into her ears…
…that she was flung out of the body backwards into her own.
Further ahead of her, her target's right hand erupted in orange flame that charred her pen to ashes, and then fell down to burn a hole through her desk before her own mind snapped forward and into control again.
"What's going on here?" Ibiki demanded as he strode forward to look at Ryoko.
The flames around her hand were not quite dying, but reduced to a smoldering shifting aura that released smoke that smelled vaguely of cooking meat. He scanned up the row to where the frantic Yamanaka was staring at the black-haired girl with open shock.
"Saotome," he said. "You're burning yourself."
"Su..sumimasen," Ryoko said swallowing fervently and trying desperately to finish putting out the fire that her fear had raised. "I…I…do not mean to cause a stir."
"That's fine," Ibiki said in carefully soothing manner. "Go get yourself some water and calm down, we don't need people showing off just now."
"H…hai," Ryoko said, standing up and walking off with the chunin proctor called over to escort her and hold her paper.
"What happened?" the chunin asked.
"The Yamanaka girl made a clumsy attempt at possession to get some answers," he responded. "Make sure to take two points off her score."
He didn't say anymore, the Saotome girl's supposed blood gift was a high-ranked secret. He couldn't just go around telling subordinates he thought the Yamanaka turned it on by accident. There was no telling who would hear. Still, he'd seen Kakashi's report on having witnessed the phenomena, not to mention having interrogated than man that had survived being the target.
This little outbreak was much more mild than the previous one.
"Hey, are they going to be okay?" Naruto called out.
"Don't worry about them," Ibiki noted. "They'll be back shortly enough."
"Well," he noted to the crowd. "I think you still have twenty five minutes left, or did you not want to pass this stage?"
The various examinees slowly looked away from the commotion and back to their papers as one of the proctors came up to Ibiki's side, now that he was back at the front of the room.
As she did, Ibiki turned to look at the Yamanaka and frowned as another chunin, the same who had gone to get the files on the entrants, was escorting her out to calm down as well. Frowning, Ibiki moved toward the files and leafed through them, looking about at the faces turned his way.
He couldn't find the one out of place, and that bothered him immensely.
Shikamaru frowned as he watched the interplay. There was no resisting Ino's technique, but there were dangers. Trying to possess someone suffering from severe injuries was near-suicidal as the technique would pass that pain along to the possessor.
He glanced toward the outsider girl as she left and then the hole and char marks her fire had left on the table.
"How troublesome," he muttered.
The same holes and marks were also being examined by Gaara, who narrowed his eyes in consideration. The chakra that had been leaking out of his testing neighbor's body was…intriguing. He felt his mother's spirit shift somewhat within him almost…eagerly.
It reminded him of the twinge he felt when his enemies minds were being destroyed by fear in realization of what facing him meant.
Mother always seemed to enjoy that.
Sakura looked up toward the scarred man standing right beside her and wanted desperately to stand up and say "I'm not supposed to be here" but the situation was getting too serious to back off now. She'd gotten herself in way over her head, and it still bothered her just why she was being so successful.
She set that aside for now and bent down nervously to her test.
Ino quickly caught her breath as she sat outside taking a drink of water at the fountain, a proctor watching her closely. The mind-numbing fear was fading away quickly and becoming nothing more than a memory. Still it was a rather jarring memory.
Everything had been going fine until she'd tried to shift Ryoko's consciousness into the back of the mind.
And now she wasn't going to have enough time to get anything done, and that left Choji and Shikamaru on their own. If she hadn't known better, then she would have accused the Saotome girl of having some sort of counter jutsu to her mind control abilities.
Or maybe she was just that scared all the time.
"Wow, she really is a scaredy cat," Ino muttered.
"Ano," Ryoko muttered shyly as she finished washing her burned hand.
"Are you all right?" the proctor asked her with a bit of curiosity to her voice. "Ah, that isn't more than a sunburn."
"Hai," Ryoko said. "I am just…up..upset I…well…"
"Speaking of that, what was that jutsu you used?" the proctor asked. "It didn't look like a normal katon jutsu."
"M..my father c…called it Kishu-Osore," Ryoko answered.
"I've never heard of that before," the proctor said. "I didn't think you used chakra."
"Father s..said it was an…'experiment'," Ryoko noted. "I…it is diffi..ficult to control…sometimes."
"I see," the ninja noted.
In fact, flame-bringing fears had been harder to hold back. Instead of one or two bursts every few months, she was starting to leave char marks at least twice a month. It had started when that man had tried to…hurt Joseibi.
Just thinking about that brought a firm warmth to her skin and she could almost see the limning orange flames and she immediately stopped that line of thinking. Last time, she started to imagine the criminals coming back to kill Joseibi, perhaps for revenge, and she'd burned one of her training outfits.
With a deep breath, she shoved the fear back away and straightened herself into a proper posture.
"I should be ready to continue now," Ryoko noted.
"Naruto-kun," Hinata said quietly. "You can look at my paper if you want."
The blonde turned to look at the purple-haired kunoichi with a subtle twist. Very, very briefly he wondered if it was some sort of trap, but immediately dropped that idea down a very deep hole. No way would Hinata-chan ever try to trap him like that.
No, this was a very honest offer for help, but…
Naruto's eyes glanced over toward the proctors where they were eagerly waiting for someone to cheat. If he looked over and they saw, then he'd be getting Hinata in trouble as well. And with her in trouble, it would hurt Kiba too and…umm…the bug guy. And if he was sure they'd catch him if he tried.
He couldn't get someone else in trouble for his fault.
"Nah, thanks Hinata-chan," Naruto said. "I couldn't let you get in trouble. Someone like me doesn't need to cheat anyway."
"Are…are you sure?" Hinata asked quietly.
"Yeah," Naruto said, smirking, glancing back toward one of the proctors that was just eyeing him.
Across the room the chunin in question smirked at the situation.
"More clever than he looks I guess," he said to himself.
"Found our extra?" one of the proctors asked as they returned with Ryoko and Ino.
"No," Ibiki said.
"It's probably someone trying to run a distraction to keep us from noticing someone cheating," the proctor noted.
"That's possible," Ibiki said. "But something tells me otherwise."
He glanced up toward the clock and noted the time. The chunin exam was still on and it was time for the last question.
"What the heck is this nonsense about choosing to take the last question?"
Ryoko and Gaara both turned toward the whispering speaker and then the Sunagakure shinobi turned immediately away. The martial artist hesitated, biting her lip, but eventually turned back to listen to the rules herself.
She raised her hand shakily.
"Do you have a question, Saotome?" Ibiki asked with a cruel sarcasm meant to push her.
"I have a…co..concern," the girl noted. "Th…there is no r…risk for me in these rules. I..it is not fair."
Numerous eyes turned to face her in curiosity, all of them wondering why she would view the chance that she would never take the chunin exam again as no risk. Slowly, people began to notice the lack of a headband on her person showing her allegiance.
Gaara frowned as he realized that the girl was either not a shinobi, or was a wandering shinobi. A mercenary or some such that Konoha was appealing to for some reason. Across the room, his eldest sibling mumbled the thoughts he was considering.
"What's she got that makes them so interested?"
Meanwhile, Ibiki smiled darkly at Ryoko's statement.
"What if I were to say that if you were to fail this last question," Ibiki noted. "That you would have to leave here today…and leave everyone behind for the rest of your life? Does that make things fair?"
Ryoko paled beyond her normal light coloring at that pronouncement and bowed slowly as she sat back down into a posture perfect stance.
"H…hai," she whispered.
The genin next to her noted the orange flickering in her eyes with some concern as he glanced toward the holes in the table she'd burned through earlier.
"Now, who plans to take the question and who's giving it a wait?" Ibiki asked, and people started leaving in droves.
Ibiki stared as Ryoko sat there, continuing to just wait, he wasn't the only one.
"She's willing to risk never seeing her sister again for this?" Kiba wondered to himself curiously. "What the hell is this?"
Sasuke focused on the outsider girl, willing Ryoko not to give in to her skittishness and chicken out.
"He can't do that to her," Hinata thought, eyes wide. "Where would she go?"
"Damn it!" Naruto shouted as he stood up and planted his foot down on the table. "Don't underestimate me! I'm not going to run away like a coward! Even if I'm a genin forever, it doesn't matter. I'll will myself to become Hokage anyway. And then I'll get to decide who goes and who stays!"
Breathing heavily, he stepped back and sat back down glowering at the examiner.
"Are you sure?" Ibiki asked. "This is your life riding on this decision. This is your last chance to quit."
"I keep my promises," Naruto said simply.
"Good decisions," Ibiki said. "Now, to those that have chosen to take the tenth question, I congratulate you on passing the first test."
In the wake of the genin leaving to follow Anko Mitarashi to the site for the next test, Kiba caught up to Ryoko's side as Team 7 came together. The Inuzuka reached out and gripped the small girl's shoulder twisting her about with a strange, almost furious look on his face.
"What was that about?" he demanded.
"Ano?" Ryoko asked.
"Hey, back off Kiba," Naruto snapped. "This isn't time for a spar."
"Not now Ryoko, I'm talking to her. You were going to take some test you don't even get anything out of at the risk of abandoning your sister?" he snapped. "I thought you cared about her. Is she your pack or not?"
"I would d…die for her," Ryoko said.
"Then why act like that?" Kiba said.
"Be…because taking the question was only a risk," Ryoko said. "Not ce..certainty. Sumimasen, we are losing the rest of the examinees."
Ryoko lowered her head and moved on to join the rest of the examinees ahead of them.
"Yo, Ryoko, wait up!" Naruto shouted. "Come on, let's get going."
Kiba held back a bit confused as first Naruto and then Hinata moved off after the Saotome. Only Sasuke seemed to hang back for a moment.
"I wonder if Kakashi was being literal when he told her not to be so quick to fall on her sword?" the Uchiha asked.
"What do you mean by that?" Kiba asked.
"Suddenly, I get the feeling she's more old-world fashioned than anybody else we know," Sasuke noted, reluctantly feeling a bit of a kinship with Ryoko as he started off towards the other ninja himself now.
"You're still talking nonsense," the Inuzuka yelled out.
"The boy's talking about seppuku," Ibiki said as he loomed over the two boys, a collection of tests in his hand.
"Eh, who'd kill themselves over this?"
Ibiki shook his head with a smirk.
"Lots of people, every year," he said softly.
Kiba stared out towards where Ryoko was vanishing with the rest of the crowd. The fact that, in Ryoko's mind, this was more than life and death started slowly coming into focus. For someone who lived on challenges as she did, even so skittish socially, to turn down a challenge out of a fear of failure?
"But that can't be all right," Kiba snapped. "Damn it!"
Ibiki watched as the Inuzuka chased after the crowd now, a determined look in his face. He'd long suspected Ryoko's samurai mindset based on what he'd heard from the girl's younger sister. Now that it was very much a certainty, the interrogator felt he could be excused for trying to take steps to…correct the situation.
Konoha law did not consider a belief in seppuku to be a psychological weakness, and the girl's status as essentially a mercenary meant that their only real recourse is to simply stop accepting her services. That would probably risk her choosing to do it anyway.
The Hokage had Ibiki's report on the elder Saotome's personality and despite the quirks and small flaws, Ibiki agreed the girl had potential. She just had to be handled carefully to make sure she reached that potential.
"Kishu-Osore," he mused, repeating the name of the girl's one apparent chakra technique based on what he'd received from one of the other proctors. "Fear-Rider. Wonder what that encompasses."
"Why didn't I leave when I had the chance?" Sakura wondered quietly as she hid amongst the other ninja.
And quietly, a devil smirked at his little decoy's oh so obvious worries.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:23)
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