24 Chuunin exams: part 1

A few weeks had passed and Izana could finally take the Chuunin exams. He had been put in a team that had only two members, though it was only temporarily.

One was a boy from the Inuzuka clan. He had a small black pup on his shoulder. It was small, seemingly too fragile to even fight, though he knew otherwise, as the dogs of the Inuzuka clan were bred for fighting.

The boy in question wasn't something to talk about either. He had short brown hair, the markings of the Inuzuka clan tattooed on his slightly chubby face. He was called Inuzuka Ren. He was very energetic and loved to talk, the pup on his head occasionally tugging aggressively on his hair when he got too loud. As far as he knew, the Ren didn't have any apitude for any kind of chakra natures, as far as he was aware of.

The other one was a girl from the Sarutobi clan. She had short black hair and was mostly adept at using wind release. She was called Sarutobi Miyu. She wasn't particularly sociable, but she and her team mate seemed to have a thorough understanding of each other.

The three of them had trained a lot in the past two weeks to get a clear picture on their strong and weak points, aiming to increase their a cooperating during a fight. Through that they had become closer and learned to cover each others backs at any time.

Miyu was good at Ninjutsu and was adept at Taijutsu. She could fight fairly well and had a decent understanding on battle strategies. Her weak points would be that she was thinking too much during the fight and would lose focus at some points.

Ren would be able to cover her in those moments with his strong taijutsu and let Miyu think of a battle tactic. Ren wasn't that strong of a thinker, leaving all th eplanning to her. They could cooperate fairly well and were able to cover each others weak spots.

Ren was mostly Taijutsu and a bit ninjutsu. He used techniques that were only accessible to his clan, but didn't use techniques that weren't of his clan. While he did attend the academy, he didn't seem to have learned any of the ninjutsu techniques available in the academies library. A pity really, as that would certainly increase his range of counters to any situation.

Ren had a good cooperation with his ninja dog and would be able to disrupt the enemies thinking. Izana would play his part in taking down the enemy with his genjutsu or would attack him with his Katana. Besides that Izana used his fire and wind release. He didn't show the releases he got from Ryuujin, nor did he use his awakened mangekyo or the summoning techniques he had learned from Jiraiya.

He would only use those when necessary and he had judged the sitaution to be fine for now. He would be strong enough with just his kenjutsu, Taijutsu, genjutsu and his own affinity related ninjutsus. If he did get into any danger, he would rethink his previous decision accoding to the situation at hand. 

So far they had gotten a clear view of what his team mates were best or worst at and was confident that they would be able to work together without any trouble. They were capable enough to keep up, as well as prove their strenght without any problems.

Except for training with the other team mates, Izana also visited Shisui.

He had wanted to talk to Itachi about the exam and other things, but unfortunately Itachi wasn't home that often. Aside from that, Shisui had been able to take relatively good care of himself, despite being visibly impaired. While he had struggled at first, he didn't seem to have any trouble navigating through the house as of now. It seemed like his senses had become stronger over time, now that he had been deprived of the one he had been relying most on.

While he visited Shisui to see how he was doing, there were other reasons as well. He wanted to ask Shisui about Danzo, while another was seeing if he could use his regeneration on Shisui's eyes. If he could regenerate his own flesh and blood, maybe there was a slight chance he could do the same for others, in this case, Shisui.

The latter proved to be more difficult that expected. The cells did react, but the result was minimal at best, as only the superficial wounds had healed a bit. Despite the unsatisfactory response of his power, with enough practice, it should be possible.

While Izana was trying to heal Shisui's eyes, Shisui told Izana what he knew about Danzo, which was very little. Danzo was very secretive and mostly let his subordinates do the work, no matter how dark and unsavory it was. Danzo's own capabilities weren't known. Shisui only knew he was a thorough schemer, planning every move he made well in advance.

It didn't matter though, in the long run, Izana would discover whatever Danzo was planning and make sure his plans would end up in failure. It was clear Danzo was scheming against the Uchiha, so Izana would make sure to protect his clan, even if he had to make Konoha an enemy to do it. Well, he planned to avoid that outcome as much as possible. He didn't want to be hunted down by his own village, especially since he wanted to save his family from that fate.

.

.

.

Once inside the examination building, they were led towards a big classroom. Inside, there were many Genin who were all taking the exam. So far, Izana could see people from multiple villages, Sunagakure, Amegakure and even Kumogakure.

Izana and the others from his temporary team sat down near the wall, away from the other candidates and waited for the proctor to arrive. The Genin from the other villages looked vigilantly at each other, while keeping their distance. Some were actively snooping around, trying to find out the stance of the other village Genin.

Once every few minutes they would talk, but that would only be amongst their own team mates. Before the situation could get even tenser, the examiner walked in. There were two examiners, one was an unknown man with a scar going diagonal down his face, while the other was Izana's one-time-only kenjutsu teacher, Gekko Hayate. Beside them were a few other Shinobi who looked at the candidates with stern looks.

The head proctor stepped forward, looking intimidatingly at all the genin's in front of him.

"My name is Morino Ibiki and I will be your Proctor for this year's exam. Don't even think about getting violent or you will be disqualified immediately." Morino held up little cards with numbers on it.

"We will now proceed with the first stage of the exam. As far as those retaking this exam are concerned, it should be at the same level as last year, though the questions will differ, so don't think you will get of this exam easily. Moving on, these cards will be handed out and they will determine where you'll be seated. This is a written test, there will be no fighting between candidates as of now, without the permission of your proctor."

Hayate handed each candidate their number cards and once everyone had them they all went to find their spot. Izana was pretty much cut off from all the people from Konoha and was surrounded by either Genin from Suna or from Ame.

"I will explain this only once and I won't answer questions so listen well. Rule one. The written part of the exam works with a point reductions system. You start the test with a score of ten points. For each answer you get wrong, a point will be deducted. Rule number two. You will pass or fail determined on the combined number of points of your team, not your individual points."

Everyone started to grumble but didn't curse, as Morino seemed increasingly vexed the moment someone would question his words or made even a singel remark about the exam itself.

Izana didn't really care how the points were rated, as he had made enough preparations along with his other team mates. Izana had made sure to ram in enough information in their heads in the little time he had. Even then, they could always try to cheat. It was only a matter of being caught or not. There had been no mention of that whatsoever as of now.

"Rule number three. The people who came with me, the sentinels positioned all around the classroom will be tasked with watching you for any sign of cheating. Everytime you get spotted cheating, two points will be subtracted from the person in question. They can easily spot you and if you're caught five times, you will de dismissed before the test has been scored. If you want to be shinobi, then show us how exceptional you can be."

The candidates all became worried about how difficult the test would be, while others seemed to wonder if they could even make it past the first exam. Ofcourse the people retaking it seemed to be at ease, having already heard the whole spiel before.

"One more thing. If one team member hits zero points, then the whole team will fail."

The whole room became tense as Izana could see multiple people become pale as a sheet, while others banged their head against the tables in despair about their team mates.

"The final question won't be given out until the last fifteen minutes. You'll have one hour total to answer all ten questions."

Morino looked at the clock and once the second hand hit twelve, he shouted at them to begin.

Izana looked at the sheet that was handed to him and once he saw the questions, he was glad he had reviewed content that was harder than Jonin level. He was even more gratefull that Jiraiya had deemed in necessary to let him experience all the scenarios that were described in the questions. Jiraiya had definitely asked around a bit, as he surely didn't remember all the study material comming up on this exam. Izana wondered if this could be counted as fraud or cheating, though he didn't say anything about it. If anything, it was a good use of his connections, something a Shinobi would definitely need in their future occupation.

To summarise the content, I would mostly be at the mission level of upper chuunin or Jonin. They were about the knowledge they should have and how to handle certain situations and analysing situations. There was even questions about decoding codes, though all of them were outdated and faulty. None of the codes were used by Konoha or the other villages. They would definitely have trouble on their hands, should it be a code of the other villages.

Though the Genin were from different villages, the way they handled certain situations should be mostly the same. The questions were simply stated and made sure that every shinobi from each village could aswer it, without giving away information about their respective village.

Izana sighed in relief that he had also made Miyu and Ren learn this, as he wasn't sure if they could've answered these questions if he didn't. Then they would have to cheat and copy answers from others and they weren't nearly skilled enough to do that.

As the clock ticked on, Izana had aswered all the available questions within fifteen minutes. He still had thirty minutes to go and reviewed his answers for any faults. From the corner of his eye, Izana could see other people peeking at other people's test papers using all sorts of jutsus and techniques. Izana made sure his was out of sight, even placing a low level genjutsu for the Genin that would peek his way. 

They could cheat, but don't even think about trying to steal HIS answers. If they needed to get answers so badly, then they could steal from someone else. He didn't have to cheat, nor did he wanted to be cheated on.

From time to time, teams would get called out and got dismissed. They were immediately ordered to leave the room. Some objected, but in the end all of them left the room, on their own or under force.

When the last fifteen minutes started, nearly twently teams had already failed.

With the last fifteen minutes to go, Morino called out.

"The tenth and final question. Before I tell you about the last questions, there are some rules you need to be aware of, they are made especially for this question. Rule one. Each of you can choose not to be given the final question. Though if you choose not to take the last questions, even if you get the other questions correct, you'll get a zero. Then you and your team mates will fail the exam and will be dismissed."

Confusion and terror spread around the room as they all began to curse in their heads. If only one team mate would choose to forfeit, then they would all fail.

"The other rule is that if you decide to take the last question and fail to answer correctly, then not only will you fail the exam, you will be barred from taking the chuunin exam ever again."

This time the whole classroom paled in fear. This was simply unheard of, as far as they knew. Fail to answer correctly and you fail and can't take it again. Decide to forfeit and you fail as well, but then you could at least take the exam again.

Like that, multiple people left the classroom. They all decided it wasn't worth it and they would just try it again. Even a few of the retakers forfeited, having already experienced the fear of failing before and didn't shy away from it. The others remained, though they too were on the edge of their seats, as this question hadn't appeared when they took the exam previously.

Like that only a couple of teams remained.

After he waited a little more, no others stood up. Luckily Ren and Miyu didn't stand up. Otherwise he had to wait another year to take the exam. It could be the same, as stated before, but it could also be different as it all depended on which proctor you would get.

As no one else left, Morino nodded as if he was satisfied with the extremely low number of candidates left. Only twenty teams remained.

"The there is only one thing left to tell you." Morino said as he looked at the remaining candidates. He smirked slightly, as if he was thinking about a joke only he knew.

"You've all passed this exam and are moving on to the next."

Silence ruled the room as everyone was too shocked and relieved to make a sound. Who knew the proctor would decide the end of the first part so easily. Yet other still wondered... is it truly this easy or is there more to this question than meets the eye?