Everyone turned toward the spot where my former classmates were standing.
A small conflict had already sparked there: Kabuto, while talking about the genin from different countries, had spoken about the Sound genin—only three of them were sent here—with obvious contempt. The Sound team's leader, a hunched man wrapped in bandages, with a straw raincoat on his back and some kind of chakra bracer strapped to his forearm, obviously didn't like that. So yeah, people started moving.
That guy stepped toward Kabuto with the device held out like a weapon. But…
So fast none of the genin even noticed, Sakura flashed in front of him, grabbed the Sound ninja by the bracer, forced him to stop—then clenched her hand, and with a crunch snapped the device.
"Hands. Keep 'em. To yourself," she said coldly.
"Sakura!" I shouted, happy as hell with how decisively she handled it, and waved my free hand to catch her attention. "You don't have to protect the white-haired one. We're barely even acquainted."
She looked at me, surprised. Then she snorted, shoved his now-unarmed arm away, and stepped aside like she was saying, Fine. Fight, then.
Flashing an "OK" sign, I went back to Karin.
"Since you agreed, we act now."
Two clones popped up on either side of me.
"I'll go talk to the Hokage about you right away," the one on my left nodded.
"And you can leave with me right now. This exam doesn't matter anymore."
Karin turned her head between the three of us. Then, kind of slowed down, she let go of my hand, took a step to the second clone, and grabbed his hand instead—since he'd offered his palm.
Right then—right now, they thought—the Grass genin were about to riot.
But smoke tags blew up by the entrance, and the doorway to the classroom flooded with smoke.
Under that cover, Karin left with the clone. Right before disappearing, she threw me—the original—a hopeful look.
The first clone simply poofed away, while I, not giving a damn about the Grass genin anymore, headed back to mine.
"EVERYONE SHUT UP! You're screaming like little kids!" a big guy roared when the smoke had almost cleared. He wore a black coat and a bandana, and his face was carved up with scars. Behind him, more than a dozen chunin in gray uniforms stood in "cool" poses, hands behind their backs.
"You're the loudest one here," I said irritably, and the shinobi snapped around toward me.
But when he saw who'd said it, the examiner decided to pretend he hadn't heard anything and turned back around like nothing happened.
"Sorry for the delay. The first stage of the Chunin Exams. I'm your examiner, Ibiki Morino." He swept his gaze over us. "Take your seats. We're starting."
Meanwhile, after getting their agreement, I took Hinata and Sakura by the arms and led them to the same desk.
As I walked, my eyes caught on a red head. Gaara of the Sand—Shukaku's jinchuriki, and a Magnet Release kekkei genkai user. Hiruzen had asked me to keep an eye on him. Alright.
When everyone had sat down, the examiner was about to continue, but one of the Grass genin interrupted.
"Morino-san, a Konoha genin took our kunoichi!"
He said it and waited. The scarred man nodded with stiff composure.
"Yeah, I saw. Who was on her team?"
Shigeru and his scarf-wearing buddy hesitantly raised their hands.
"Only full teams can participate. You two—out."
"(＃°Д°)" The genin who'd just tried to rat me out gaped in shock.
"(0_0) (0_0)" The two getting disqualified went wide-eyed too, totally speechless.
They were clearly expecting something else.
Seeing they weren't moving, Ibiki made a circling motion with his finger. Two gray-uniformed chunin immediately walked over and grabbed them by the arms.
"No!" Shigeru kicked and thrashed.
"I'm gonna complain!" the scarf guy screamed.
Nobody listened. They just got carried out.
Kicking two genin out instantly cranked the tension up and made almost everyone tense. The room went quiet. Ibiki broke the silence by turning to the chalkboard.
"Listen carefully. There are several rules in this exam, and one of them is: after we start, you don't ask questions." He tapped the chalk against the board and started writing as he spoke. "The first stage is a written test. Everyone starts with ten points. There are ten questions. You answer one and keep one point. In the end, we total up the points of everyone on the same team. And one more thing—if the proctors—" by then, the gray-uniformed chunin had already taken seats around the sides of the classroom, "—notice you blatantly cheating, you lose two points immediately. If you run out of points, the genin is removed from the exam along with their team."
He hammered the last part down and checked his watch.
"You have exactly one hour. Your sheet has only nine questions. The last one—the tenth—I'll give you fifteen minutes before time's up. Begin!"
After setting a nasty mood, Ibiki started pacing the edges of the room, making the atmosphere even heavier with that grim look of his. For the record, this guy works in Interrogation—actually, he's the boss there—so yeah, he knows how to scare people.
I lowered my eyes to the answer sheet and started reading. The questions were pretty damn interesting. A lot of them didn't give exact data, forcing you to write an answer based on your own assumptions.
Some were just hard to calculate. Others required specific knowledge. Like question eight—you needed chemistry, and they don't really teach that properly at the Academy.
After reading everything, I put a finger on the sheet. A light pulse of chakra—and every blank space filled in with a cocky, perfect calligraphic script. Figured I'd show off a bit on this exam. Burned the letters in like I was making a fuinjutsu seal, without damaging the paper.
Then, activating a mental technique, I linked up with Hinata and Sakura.
I wasn't worried about the girls at my sides in the first place—they were smart enough to write the test themselves. Sakura had the knowledge for it, and Hinata could easily cheat with the Byakugan.
But through the mind-link, we also got to talk about why I'd approached that red-haired girl at all.
Both of my longtime friends were genuinely touched when they found out Karin had basically been invited here as a walking med-kit, while her mother—apparently under the excuse of "protection"—was being kept in the Hidden Grass in, let's say, shitty conditions, already being used as that same "med-kit" right now.
I'd still have to deal with my relative. But my clones would handle that; right now, we had an exam.
After we finished talking about the redhead, we drifted to other topics, and time flew for us. Not for everybody else.
Minute after minute passed, and more and more genin realized they weren't going to write this test on their own. So they started trying to cheat.
The hunched Sound ninja—the one who probably could release sound waves—sat there looking a bit upset. Not surprising: he'd just had his expensive gadget broken, and that also cut his combat options down pretty hard. Now he was listening to the scratch of pencils and using those air vibrations to figure out what other shinobi were writing.
Sasuke activated his Sharingan and used it to copy the hand movements of someone filling in answers.
Shino had his bugs help him cheat.
Kiba had his dog—perched on his head, it could see a bunch of people's papers and somehow relay what it saw to its owner with quiet barks. Not really clear how, but apparently the dog boy understood his pet just fine.
Guy's team had, even before the chunin arrived, fixed mirrors to the ceiling and copied answers using them.
Five minutes in, a kunai slammed into one examinee's answer sheet. One of the proctors announced that genin had been caught five times, and he and his whole team were kicked out of the room.
After that…
No, genin didn't keep getting thrown out immediately.
My clone who'd been with the Hokage slipped into the classroom under an invisibility technique and passed me an interesting little letter. Then he dispelled, dumping all his memories into me.
It all worked out pretty diplomatically. Now, to deal with the Uzumaki problem in Grass fast, I just needed to send another clone there. Of course with that letter—and, just in case, with a whole lot of chakra.
Still, I didn't want to make a scene by creating a clone right in the middle of the classroom. Sure, it'd be fun to piss off the exam staff, but there'd be plenty of chances later, and these particular guys hadn't done anything to me.
So I made a shadow clone out in the hallway instead. Then I put a Flying Thunder God mark on the letter—and a second later I watched it simply vanish from my hands.
After that, I explained to the girls where the paper had come from and why it mattered, still killing the boredom with conversation.
And then, with some time between incidents, more and more people started getting disqualified. A lot of them screamed, tried to argue with the proctors, refused to leave. But the proctors didn't give a shit about their demands or begging and carried them out the exact same way they'd carried out the Grass genin.
Soon it was time for the last, tenth question.
"Time," Ibiki's rough voice rang out through the room. "But before I ask the tenth question, I'm adding a couple more rules. You have to decide whether you'll answer it. If your answer is no, you immediately lose all your points and you're out—along with your team. However…" He paused—heavy as hell for a lot of people—then continued in a threatening tone, "If you choose to answer, but can't…" An even heavier pause. "You will lose the chance to ever become a chunin."
"Does that even happen?! People take this exam multiple times!" Kiba jumped up and shouted.
Ibiki just started laughing.
"Guess you're just unlucky. This year I'm the examiner, and I decide how it's run. If you're not confident, raise your hand and leave with your team."
A few seconds passed. One genin raised a hand—then more. They started filing out in an almost nonstop stream, and the room got emptier and emptier.
But my team—and my other former classmates—had determination on their faces. For some of them, the exam had become a brutal ordeal, but they'd decided to go all the way.
Not even a minute later, barely more than a third of the original number remained. Ibiki continued:
"So. Those of you still in the classroom… you pass."
"Wha—?!" Kiba yelled again.
"Whether you'd keep going despite the fear of being stuck a genin forever—that was the tenth question," the first examiner explained. "A chunin's job isn't just hard. It carries responsibility. Sometimes, with no knowledge—no real idea at all—about the enemy, shinobi still have to complete the mission! Because the result can save a village… or doom its people to death. Those who don't have enough resolve simply can't be chunin!"
"So those nine questions were a complete waste of time?" a female voice called from somewhere behind us.
"Not at all. This was a test of your ability to obtain information. That plays a very important role in a shinobi's life, and it can cost a lot of lives too. You can't always pull truthful information out of an enemy—I already said what that can lead to. You have to know how to get it indirectly as well. That's why we expelled the ones who were worst at it."
Someone in the class was about to ask another question, but the window shattered and a figure wrapped in cloth flew into the room. Pinning the cloth to opposite walls with kunai, the newcomer covered Ibiki. The arrival turned out to be a girl with dark purple hair and light brown eyes. From her neck down to her thighs, her body was covered in protective mesh. Over that she wore an orange skirt, and on top she had a light beige open coat. On her legs, besides standard shinobi footwear, she also wore metal guards up to her knees.
Immediately, she barked in an indignant voice:
"Hey, you! Why the hell are you so cheerful?! I'm your second examiner—Anko Mitarashi! The second stage starts now! Everyone, with me!" She finished by throwing her hand up like she was about to lead a charge.
Ibiki stepped out from behind the cloth, annoyed.
"You can't read the atmosphere? Look at them. Yeah, some of them look like they just gave birth—they're that relaxed. But they're not cheerful," he said, stepping forward.
Anko looked around the classroom. Everyone was staring at her weirdly, and she got a little embarrassed. Then, after counting the genin, she turned to Morino.
"Sixty-nine? Ibiki, I thought you'd let fewer through."
"No, it's fine. That's a bit more than a third."
While they bickered, I lazily stared ahead and waited.
"Well, I'll cut that down by at least half!" she grinned at us a little viciously. "Follow me!"
She shouted and jumped out the window, taking off somewhere.
"About damn time," I stood up with the rest of the genin. "We should've played cards."
"Naruto… this is a serious exam," Sakura said, and Hinata backed her up with a look.
"Ugh, you two are so damn proper. Can't make quick cash that way," I said as we headed for the window. "Hey, did I ever tell you how I screwed over that little aristocrat?"
"Yes, Naruto-kun. A fake identity… that was unethical," Hinata said calmly this time.
"Tch…" I hopped out the window and waited for the girls to get outside too. "I need to fleece someone else. Otherwise I've got nothing to brag about."
All I got back was two sighs.
And that's how we headed toward the start of the second stage.
Though honestly, my clones had it more interesting… The last one had already reached the Hidden Grass Village.
A Little Earlier. First Shadow Clone's POV
"Yo. You busy?" I walked into the Hokage's office.
"Naruto? You're in the middle of the exam," Hiruzen said, surprised, setting aside his usual paperwork. "Did something happen?"
"I'm a clone. And yeah—basically, we're about to have at least two more Uzumaki living here."
I didn't waste time. I dumped everything on him as-is and walked over to a chair to sit down.
For a few seconds, Hiruzen's face cycled through expressions before stopping on baffled confusion.
"…My sensors reported that among the Grass genin there's supposedly an Uzumaki. But where did the second come from? And… no, wait. Wait, Naruto! Don't tell me you're going to— No! You can't! That's an international scandal!"
He finally hit the core of it.
"The second Uzumaki is that girl's mother," I answered the first question in a calm tone. "And I can, actually. They're keeping my relatives in awful conditions and forcing them into… not the nicest stuff. There's nothing wrong with me showing up and solving the problem myself."
For some reason, the old man went pale. Then he snapped again:
"No! Under no circumstances! I'll handle it myself! This is the Hokage's business!"
"You sure?"
"Yes!"
"Then it needs to be solved today…"
I said, and then I told him some details about Karin's mother's life.
With how well I understood chakra, I had a good idea how healing through biting could work. And the important part isn't that it's horribly inefficient—it's why it works at all. Karin's chakra and her mother's are extremely dense and rich with life energy, sure, but a simple bite honestly isn't enough for a visible effect. How much energy can you squeeze out of cells damaged by teeth? Too little. So I was ninety-nine percent sure the shinobi weren't just biting the woman—they were also using their chakra to basically pull the life energy out of her. Which meant the energy wasn't draining only from the bite spot, but from her entire body, and in much larger amounts.
Do I even need to say how dangerous that can be for Karin's mother? Definitely. If they drain too much energy out of her at once and she doesn't recover in time, the woman will simply die.
Taking that into account, Hiruzen quickly scribbled out a letter to the leader of the Hidden Grass. And with that paper in hand, I'd be able to solve all the Grass problems without massive "pest control." Meaning I wouldn't have to kill anyone, cripple anyone, or even torture anyone. Basically, the Hokage was the one solving it—I just had to act as the messenger.
With that in hand, I—the clone—slipped back to the original under an invisibility technique, handed over the letter, and dispelled.
All so my other double could head to the Hidden Grass.
_____
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