Keep your wits about you, mage, true tests never end. - Pride Demon; Dragon Age Origins
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After seeing Gaara I wasn't particularly surprised when Kakashi-sensei announced that he'd entered us into the Chunin Examinations.
I hadn't really expected the Chunin Exams to show up so fast though. We'd only been Genin for two months. There was a reason that Rookies were usually never entered in the Exams. The minimum qualifications to enter were eight completed missions, with at least one at a rank higher than D, and most rookies didn't manage to get that done so quickly. Added to that, with only two months experience we were at a severe disadvantage.
My initial reaction was to turn it down. Turn it down and get us to take a C-rank that would get us far away from here on the day of the Third Exam.
But that would solve nothing. Orochimaru wouldn't be stopped by the rules of the Exam. He'd find Sasuke no matter what. Leaving when I knew there was an attack coming… that was the height of cowardice.
To abandon your duty is not courageous. Below the courageous there is nothing. The words of the First Hokage. Konoha ninja lived by them. Could I really abandon them now?
And, if not Naruto, who would fight Gaara?
What would happen to Shikamaru? To Ino? To Sakura?
Like with Zabuza, there was no avoiding this situation. Unlike with Zabuza, Sensei wouldn't be there to save us.
I thought there would be more time!
Unlike my apprehension, my team mates were much more excited.
"This is all voluntary. If you don't feel ready, you can wait till next year," Kakashi-sensei explained. "Whoever wants to take the exams, sign the application forms and come to room 301 at the Academy. It starts at 3pm, five days from now."
"Alright! Kakashi-sensei, you rock!" Naruto launched himself at Sensei, catching him in a tackle hug. Kakashi-sensei flailed, just a little bit.
"Why did I get the team of cuddlers?" Kakashi-sensei muttered, peeling Naruto off himself.
"Team Cuddler," I repeated, voice serious but I couldn't hide the mirth dancing in my eyes. I was distracting myself by latching onto something so ridiculous and I knew it. "I don't know Sensei, that's not exactly a name that will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies."
Sasuke snickered.
"We should totally have an awesome team name!" Naruto agreed, running with the idea as he was dropped back down to the ground. "And then when we introduce ourselves we can go all 'And we are the great Team…' uh." He frowned. "Team…"
"Team Sharingan," Sasuke suggested.
"No way!" Naruto yelped.
"We have more Sharingan than any other team in Konoha," Sasuke pointed out logically.
"We also have more orange and we're not being called Team that," I said dryly. "Besides we have 5 non to 3 Sharingan eyes so it's not really representative."
"You suggest something then, Shikako."
I was useless at naming things. "Team Triple S." They looked confused. I pointed at each of us in turn. "Shadow, Sharingan… Surprise."
Sensei choked on a laugh.
Sasuke snickered again. "Nah," he said. "We'd have to keep explaining it. Wouldn't be funny after the first time."
Naruto harrumphed. "Sounds like a Bingo Book rank," he muttered. Which was kinda the point. Only bingo book ranks didn't go past SS and even those were rare as hens teeth.
Team Destruction and Team Confusion were thrown out for not being meaningful and Team Friendship was rejected for being too pansy.
"Team World Domination," I suggested offhand, going for the exact opposite of 'pansy'.
There was a pause. "Something you aren't telling us, Shikako?" Sensei asked dryly.
"Nah, that'd be too troublesome," I replied, yawning.
"Team Trouble, more like it," Sensei muttered.
Naruto laughed.
"Anyway," Kakashi-sensei cut in before we could start bouncing more ideas off each other. "These are the application forms." He handed us each a slip of paper. They were fairly straightforward.
I looked at the one in my hand.
Shikako Nara,
I, Kakashi Hatake, recommend the above named student for participation in the Chunin Examinations.
Jounin, Kakashi Hatake
"Do you think we're ready, Sensei?" I asked, being hit by the reality of the situation again.
It wasn't really the Chunin Exams that I was scared of, it was everything that was associated with them.
"I do," Sensei said seriously, eye crinkling with a good humoured smile. "I know we've only been a team for a short time, but I think you three know more about being a ninja than Genin with years more experience. You'll do fine."
"Yeah!" Naruto cheered. "I'll bet we'll go up against a lot of really wicked ninja. Like those Hidden Sand guys!"
"We wont be doing any mission from now until whenever you three finish the Exams." That was a polite way of saying 'fail' I think. "So you wont need to meet up here in the mornings."
I bit my lip. "Will you still train us, Sensei?" I asked hurriedly. "I mean, if we have five days we can still improve, right?"
If only there was some technique that would enable us to win against Orochimaru. I snorted at the very idea. Ninja fights didn't rely on techniques so much as what you could do with them.
We were nowhere near his league.
"Well," Sensei said. "It'd probably be best if you improved what you already know."
"Please, Sensei?" Naruto begged. "You know tons of awesome jutsu, right?"
Sasuke also saw the benefits of it. "You must have some idea of the skills that they will be examining," he commented.
"The content of the Chunin Exams changes every time," Kakashi-sensei said. "And Jounin with students are very much not included in the planning process." He looked at us and sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Though I suppose it can't hurt to tell you that the Chunin Exams usually have three stages. Some kind of decision making test, a survival exercise, and a one-on-one tournament. Most of the older Genin will have probably done at least one Chunin Exam before, so you'll be at a disadvantage there too."
Sasuke scoffed. "That just means they failed."
"If I were going to teach you, what would you want to learn?" Kakashi-sensei asked blandly.
Naruto shouted 'cool jutsu' almost immediately. That boy had a once track mind.
"Hiding," I said slowly, mind working speedily, examining possibilities, tossing over ideas at warp speed. "And escape."
There was definite surprise on their faces.
"Eh?" Naruto asked. "Why would you want to learn that? We don't need to run away. We'll just kick ass!"
I shook my head. "We don't know the kind of opponents we're going to be facing, or how strong they are or anything. We already have some good attack and defence skills, but if we get totally out classed then …" I shrugged. There wasn't much likelihood that we'd be able to pick up enough to evade Orochi-freaking-maru but … maybe?
If we could get to the Tower fast (assuming that the Second Test was what I remembered)… would Orochimaru have a chance to attack? There would be Jounin at the Tower, probably, and surely he'd have better things to do than hang around Konoha looking for Sasuke?
Okay, that was a bit weak.
But what else could we do?
I'd had half a thought to come up with a way to remove the curse seal or transfer it or stop it from being placed but my studies in the sealing arts had ground to a halt looong before they reached a place where that idea was plausible. There were a few containment seals but they were incredibly complex and without knowing more about the curse seal I wasn't even sure that they would work, if I could manage to draw them up correctly.
We couldn't out fight him. We couldn't out run him. We couldn't call for back up. Unless we managed to uncover something before the Exam, we couldn't alert anyone.
We were trapped.
Kakashi-sensei tapped his chin. "Hmm, well I suppose that is a reasonable request."
Kakashi-sensei started us with a really thorough rundown of escape and evasion tactics. I was a little surprised, though I don't know why. Sensei is good at not being found, and he also has a pack of tracking dogs and tracking is the opposite partner of evasion. It wasn't jutsu, but it was useful skills all the same. How to move through the trees without disturbing them, erasing our tracks behind us, avoiding attracting attention, using chakra to walk over grass without bending it - which I had never even considered before - navigation at speed, hiding our chakra… There was a lot to consider. We'd done some stealth work at the Academy, but not much. And certainly not so thoroughly.
"Alright, I think that's enough for the day," Kakashi-sensei said clapping his hands together as we dropped out of the branches, panting. "I guess we better meet tomorrow if you want to keep working on it…" he trailed off like he would very much like us to change our minds.
All three of us nodded. He sighed. "Fine, fine." He puffed away in a cloud of chakra smoke.
"Hmph. I still think that we'd have been better off learning a cool new jutsu," Naruto muttered.
I shrugged, unremorseful. "You've still got your Hidden in the Mist jutsu to work on, don't you? And I know Sasuke has been practicing with his Sharingan. Besides, we don't know what kind of jutsu we need so if we do learn something it might end up being useless and we'll have wasted our time…"
He didn't argue my logic, but he still clearly didn't like it, crossing his arms and pouting.
"Idiot," Sasuke sighed. "Want to spar again?"
Naruto jumped at the chance, but I shook my head. "I've got to get home; Mum's expecting me."
I waved goodbye as I left, the sounds of a fight starting up behind me almost immediately. It was good practice for them to fight each other and not one of us ever fell for the same trick twice.
"There you are," a lazy voice interrupted me when I was halfway home. "I've been looking for you."
I paused and turned. The voice was right. The face was right. The lazy slouch was right. The agonizingly slow pace of his walk was right.
But the chakra was wrong.
"You got recommended for the Chunin Exams?" 'Shikamaru' asked, tilting his eyes towards me.
"Mmm," I confirmed, wondering who was playing what game. "So did Team 10."
He looked surprised. Mistake. "Kakashi-sensei told you?"
"No," I said and didn't elaborate. Shikamaru and I knew each other's thought processes inside out. There was never any need to elaborate.
His expectant expression faded after a few seconds and he yawned. "Troublesome."
It was someone that knew us, at least. They wouldn't be able to do such a close imitation otherwise.
"I'm not going to enter," he said. "You shouldn't either. These ninja are very advanced and they have no mercy. If you try to fight them, you could lose your life."
Bingo.
This was a ninja village. Tests weren't confined to classroom hours. Simply having our names put forward for the Exams looked like it was enough. It made sense. Entering weak shinobi in the Exams could potentially embarrass a village and we were Rookie Genin.
His chakra was a dark olive green, rough to the touch like canvas over thick padding. Like a flack jacket, a Chunin vest. It was a sight that invoked comfort, familiarity, safety in every child in Konoha.
There was only one person it could be.
Now how to pass the test? To show what they wanted to see, or prove I had exceeded their expectations and noticed the test at all? Or both?
"That's mean, Iruka-sensei," I sighed, wrapping my arms around myself. "Targeting my weak spots like that. I might not be the best shinobi but I can handle myself. Besides, how are we ever supposed to know what we can do if we don't try?"
His surprise was palatable. The image of my brother faded and Iruka-sensei stood there instead. "Very good, Shikako," he said, chuckling. "When did you work it out?"
I could have given a lot of answers. Instead I tilted my head and gave him an approximation of Sensei's cheerful 'not telling you anything' smile. "It's way too much effort for Shika to come looking for me," I said. It was truth, to a degree, but lacking any factual information.
Okay, maybe I was slightly annoyed at him. It was a mean test. I wondered if he was going to try something different with the others - there wasn't anyone that would shake Naruto's confidence in himself.
"You know," Iruka-sensei said hesitantly. "You don't have to take the Exams now. There's nothing wrong with waiting a few months for the next round."
I smiled at him, properly this time. "It's okay, Iruka-sensei. We'll do fine."
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"So did anything weird happen to you guys last night?" I asked casually at training the next morning.
Naruto looked startled. "How'd you know? I was… uh… talking to the Konohamaru Corps when this jerk kidnapped Moegi!"
Sasuke looked immediately suspicious. "I got attacked too…" he said. "You think?"
"It was a test," I confirmed.
"Wait, what?" Naruto waved his hands. "Back up! What test?"
"To see if we were good enough for the Chunin Exams, I assume," I said. "Someone transformed into Shikamaru and tried to convince me not to participate, but I called them on it."
"Yeah, that was the gist of what I got too," Sasuke said. I eyed him. There was definitely more to the story there. "I fought the guy off." He shrugged.
"Naruto?" I asked expectantly.
"Yeah," he frowned. "This jerk kidnapped Moegi and ran off with her. He tied her up and everything. You're saying that was a test? She was really scared."
"She probably knew you were going to rescue her," I said. I didn't think Iruka-sensei would do anything that would frighten a child long term, but maybe he hadn't been doing all the tests? "It probably gave her an exciting story to tell at the Academy."
"I guess," he muttered.
"So how'd you rescue her?" Sasuke asked, sounding completely indifferent.
Naruto perked back up. "I was really awesome," he said, tucking his hands behind his head and grinning. "He had her tied to a tree, see? And he made a ransom demand - that I get the scroll of sealing… actually, it's weird that he chose that isn't it?"
"That's what Mizuki…" I trailed off.
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I mean, it must be famous if so many people know about it?"
"Or it was someone that knew you knew what it was," I finished. Sasuke looked from one of us to the other.
"Anyway. I distracted him and made a Shadow Clone that snuck up behind them, then I used the Replacement Jutsu to switch Moegi out for a straw doll!" he looked really pleased with himself.
"Wait, what?" I said, sure I'd misheard.
"I switched Moegi out for a straw doll," he repeated. "With the Replacement Jutsu, you know?"
I looked at Sasuke. He looked at me. He shrugged.
"You switched Moegi with a straw doll," I repeated.
"That's what I said. Geeze," he said, annoyed.
"Could you… show me? Like, pretend I'm Moegi… and Sasuke is the bad guy," I said, moving to stand next to Sasuke.
"Okay," Naruto agreed readily enough, but he still looked puzzled. "So here I am distracting the jerk over there," he said. "And that's my clone in the tree…"
He was actually pretty good at creating clones without smoke. It just sort of … wavered into existence. Shimmered, maybe.
"And then it used Replacement…"
There was a tugging pull, like I was using Replacement but wasn't in control. I nearly fought it, but managed to stop myself. I wasn't sure if that would leave me in tiny pieces across the clearing and I didn't want to find out.
"And viola!"
Sasuke stared blankly the straw doll he was holding. I blinked at the clone.
"Huh," I said. "Where did the straw doll come from?"
Naruto shrugged. "Where ever Replacement stuff normally comes from."
Oh. My. God. Words failed me. He didn't… He … Unconsciously my fingertips formed a circle. If I ignored how impossible it was, then it was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard of. How had I not noticed this before?
I sat down. Hard.
"Of course," I said. "If you cant make illusionary clones because you don't have the chakra control for it… why did we assume you could do the other two? They aren't that different." There were a lot of theories about Naruto's unique transformation skill. I'd already seen him transform clones into other objects, but I'd passed that off as them being chakra constructs. They didn't have to keep a human shape.
"What?" Naruto asked baffled and a little worried.
"Pass me the doll?" I asked Sasuke. He handed it over without complaint. "It's a chakra construct. Like a Shadow Clone… I see." I looked at Naruto's blank face and decided to explain. "A normal Replacement Jutsu switches your body with an object nearby that is of similar size and mass. It's like… a rubber band. If you stretch it out and let it go the recoil pulls the two things in opposite directions. What you're doing is creating an object instead of finding an already existing one. Like a Shadow Clone. That means you can swap other people with it because one half is always you… just the opposite half to what people normally use."
"Does it matter?" Naruto asked.
I smiled. "It's a good thing, Naruto. A very good thing. It means that you don't have to look for things to switch with, right? So you can almost teleport. If you need to get behind some guy, you just create something there and bam!"
He brightened. "That does sound pretty awesome!"
I nodded. "Okay. So. Replacement training?" I suggested, looking at Sasuke. He looked as baffled as I felt.
"But we know how to do that…" Naruto whined, scrunching up his nose. "We're doing lame training with Sensei and now you want to do Replacement Jutsu?"
I was losing him. "Replacement Tag," I suggested slyly. "You can take only three steps, everything else has to be Replacement Jutsu." I switched out with a tree branch and dropped down behind him. "Tag!" I said gleefully, before using another Replacement Jutsu to cross the clearing.
"H-hey! Get back here!"
Even now that I knew what he was doing, it took a while to actually see it in action. Now that he was consciously aware of it, it seemed to disrupt his concentration and his Replacement Technique failed more times than not. Still, Sasuke and I had to scout out possible targets to switch with, which didn't happen automatically. Once Naruto got back into the swing of it, he had an advantage over us.
Then again, Sasuke and I had better control and a much faster switching speed. If he didn't take us by surprise, we could usually get away in the time it took him to tag us.
Replacement was a remarkably underused jutsu. Getting the hang of using it in combat took skill which was why Jounin tended to use it more than Genin did. That being said, done right it was lethally effective. There was a reason it was considered one of the three basic skills any ninja must know.
And if I had to turn training into a game of tag so that we could work on it, then so be it. I wasn't exactly complaining.
Kakashi-sensei showed up and started running us through more evasion drills. Some of them had the feeling of being highly practiced, but since Kakashi-sensei had never taken a Genin team before I wasn't sure.
It was tricky and exhausting work and afterwards I'd go home and be run into the dirt by Mum. She hadn't exactly been happy to hear that Shika and I had been nominated for the Exams, but she was determined that we were going to survive it if we entered.
Shikamaru considered the whole thing troublesome beyond words, but there was the understanding that Ino would make things hell for him if he didn't show up.
The days ticked down. We sparred some more. For the first time I looked at those fights and tried to measure our progress. Naruto had improved by leaps and bounds, that much was easy to see. He still threw around chakra draining attacks like nobodies business, though they were much more targeted now; Shadow Clones deployed for specific actions, combination attacks and simple but effective tactics that could utterly blindside you. You had to put Naruto down hard and stop him completely or he'd just. Keep. Going.
Sasuke was faster now. He tended to revert to using Fire Ninjutsu when he could, though fighting wave after wave of Naruto clones forced him to match them with either Taijutsu, or more usually, kunai, shuriken and ninja wire to thin the herd. Two kunai, with a long stretch of ninja wire between them, thrown to opposite edges of the clearing was remarkably effective at clearing large numbers of them. It reminded me, vaguely, of a cheese grater. After that, Naruto and his clones tended to duck when faced with projectiles. When his Sharingan was active, attacking him head on was sheer folly, though it still had limitations - mostly speed and grappling. Eyesight doesn't play a huge role when someone is about three inches away from you.
Myself? Well, I could match the two boys, and they'd never teamed up on me so I didn't know how I'd fair there.
"Three o'clock this afternoon. Academy Room 301," I said, swinging my feet over the edge of the bridge. "Do you think we should bring mission packs?"
Sasuke paused, clearly he hadn't considered that. "It's in the Academy."
I shrugged. "That might just be where we're meeting." And I didn't know what the time period between the First and Second Exams was. Straight away? Next day?
"Short term mission gear?" Sasuke suggested. We were, after all, taught how to survive in the wilderness with nothing more than a sharp stick and those you could find a dime a dozen; mission gear just made things easier.
I hummed. "I'll bring an extra sealing scroll just in case."
"Chunin Exams, Chunin Exams," Naruto chanted. "This is going to be awesome!"