KONOHA

Present Day.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting!” boomed the voice of one of the newcomers. We turned around to the sight of a group of shinobis gathered behind us, the tell-tale signs of swirling chakra manifesting as a cloud of white smoke around them.

“My name is Morino Ibiki,” the leader of the group continued. We glanced at his scarred face, and for a brief moment caught his gaze fixed upon of form. Hmm? “I am the chief examiner and proctor for the first part of this exam. Before we start I would like to lay a few ground rules. From this point onward, there would be no fighting without the express permission of an examining officer. Even if that permission is granted, anything that endangers another applicant’s life unnecessarily is strictly forbidden. Any of you little piglets who break these rules would be immediately disqualified. No second chances. Got that?”

The hall remained silent, but we could feel the atmosphere in the room take on a disdainful flavour. Sneers formed on the faces of many of the shinobi gathered upon hearing this. “...So this is a test for little girly men?” whispered one particularly gutsy Otogakure fellow. Ibiki’s gaze flickered towards him but the older shinobi remained silent.

“You’ve all been given a tag,” the scarred proctor continued. “Each tag is numbered and corresponds to your respective seats in this hall. I need not tell you what needs to be done. You have five minutes.”

We glared one last time at Kabuto and Kiba before reaching into our obi for our tag. The next moment our gaze panned across the room in search of seat ninety-seven. There! on the fifth row, seventeenth column.

“Uhm…” Naruto began. We glanced at the boy, before shaking our head in mimicry of the human expression most appropriate for this situation. Exasperation. We weren’t even surprised. In a way, one could say we expected this.

“He means the number on your tag corresponds to the number on your seat in the hall,” we tell the blonde, predicting his question. We glanced at his tag before immediately looking towards the rows of seats in the hall. “There,” we said, “Seat number fifty-seven.”

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“I knew that!” Naruto lied before immediately scampering off towards his seat. “Good luck, Sakura!” he shouted as he left. The girl ignored him as she turned to regard us.

“Good luck,” she mumbled, fidgeting.

“You too, Sakura,” we replied as we made our way towards our seat.

We sat down, eyes flickering towards each proctor in our field of vision. The examiners were scattered about the room. In our perception, we could sense a few more in hiding. All were Jōnin. Even for us, cheating during this exam could very well be impossible.

We glanced at the two flanking us. To our left was a girl with red hair and glasses. The headband on her forehead bore the jagged engraving signature to Shinobi from Kusagakure. Her gaze kept flickering towards us, a faint blush staining her face. We ignored her, our attention flickering towards the Hyuga girl on our right. We knew her. It was hard not to given we were classmates for six years. As usual, her gaze was fixated on the orange-clad figure seated ahead of us. We never really understood her fixation with Naruto. It was strange. It confused us. We disliked being confused.

A Tokubetsu jōnin flickered by and three sheets of paper floated down unto the table in front of us.

“Keep your papers down until I signal the start of the exam,” Ibiki instructed from the front of the hall. “Now listen up,” he continued, “there are a few big rules that pertain to this first test. I will write them on the blackboard and explain them all. I will not be taking any questions, and I will only be saying this once, so pay attention!

“Rule number one! Each of you starts out with thirty points. The test has thirty questions, each worth one point. For each question you get wrong, we subtract one point. Rule number two! This written test is still a team event. Passing or failing will be determined by the sum of the points held by all three members of each cell. The object for each cell is to have as few deductions as possible from its joint ninety-point total.

“Rule number three, if, during the course of the exam, a candidate does anything out of the ordinary, in other words, anything that leads the proctors to determine that he or she has cheated, we’ll subtract two points from each member of the cheater’s cell. Rule number four, if any individual loses more than half of their total points, that person’s entire cell, regardless of how well the others do… would be disqualified.

“And finally, rule number five. Only the top twenty-five of the teams gathered today would pass. Regardless of how well the other teams perform, they would all be disqualified. You have an hour to complete the test. You may begin.”