[X] Down the street I'm the girl next door
"Say, aren't you Sakura?"
The girl turns in surprise and smiles nervously in polite confusion. "Uh, yes; who are you?"
"You probably don't remember, but we were in the same class at the Academy in our first year," you say with a grin. "Yamanaka Ino. And this is Inuzuka Kiba and Kuwabara-"
"-Ami," Sakura says, frowning slightly.
Ami blinks. "Have we met?"
Sakura's frown momentarily turns into a look of shock. Then the frown is back, stronger than before. Whatever nervousness she may have had before is now firmly under lock and key.
Your eyes flick back and forth between them, unsure of what to do. Usually it's you people have a problem with and Ami who looks on in dismay. This is an entirely new and backwards state of affairs.
"Yes," Sakura says flatly, in the end. She turns back to you and asks, in a much more cordial tone, "Was there something in particular you wanted, Ino-san?"
"Maa, Sakura-chan," says one of her teammates, a brunette woman in her early thirties from the look of her, "we aren't in the office anymore." She smiles at you. "Ino-chan, was it? I'm Sayuri."
"Pleased to meet you," you say, grinning. "We were just looking around the room and decided it was better to find a spot near some lovely Konoha kunoichi than to test our luck next to some of the other competitors in here."
"Well, you're certainly welcome over here," Sayuri says graciously, and gestures at the no-nonsense twentysomething blonde beside her. "This is Sagiso-chan, and you already know Sakura-chan, of course."
"How do you do?" Sagiso says with a polite nod.
"Three ladies in full bloom," you say, delighted by their alliterative flower names. "Do you all work together, then?"
Sayuri nods. "That's right; we're file clerks at the hospital."
"Really?" Kiba asks, incredulous. "My sister says you guys're indoors all day. When do you have time to train?"
"Oh, we find ways to stay fit," Sayuri says cheerfully. "I used to be on active duty until I met my husband, and I can still carry him under one arm and our two sons under the other." She pats Sakura on the shoulder. "Sakura-chan here's been taking night classes in iryo-ninjutsu for over a year; she's smart as a whip, so you three better watch out!" She winks at you as Sakura blushes at the praise and stammers out a token protest.
It's strange, talking so casually with someone who wears a hitai-ate about their personal business; it's like you've wandered into a civilian costume party by accident.
"If you don't mind my asking," you say, "what made you decide to participate in the exams?" You can get why a teenager or maybe even a young single woman like Sagiso would, but Sayuri has a family and doesn't seem unhappy with her job. She doesn't seem like the type to endanger her life on a whim.
She sighs. "It's all thanks to the recent budget cuts. The hospital's undergoing a restructuring and they want to put a chuunin in charge of the new merged A&DM department - Archives and Data Management," she explains. "But the only people who're already trained and know the system well enough to run the department are genin, so the girls nominated the three of us to go to the exams and hopefully get certified." She looks slightly embarrassed. "Well, it's not a very interesting story to three clan children, I suppose. Sorry to tell you our troubles."
"I'm civilian-born, actually, ma'am," Ami says.
"Are you?" Sayuri looks genuinely surprised, and - interestingly - so does Sakura. "Well, good for you, getting on a proper genin cell! That's no easy feat, from what I hear."
"Thank you," Ami replies, beaming with pride.
"I wasn't expecting so many kids to be participating," Sagiso says fretfully, looking out at the Mist boys, the 'Hina-Shika-Cho', the elite squad from Suna, and the half-dozen other unusually young teams competing. "That girl over there can't be older than eight."
"My mom says it's important to remember as a ninja that there's always someone in the world younger than you who's also stronger than you," Kiba remarks.
Before you can turn the conversation to a less unsettling topic, Dad's scariest co-worker and a dozen shinobi shunshin into the room.
"Thank you for waiting," he says, in that voice that could sound menacing ordering a taco. "I am Morino Ibiki, examiner for the first test. Rule one, there is to be no fighting without the permission of the examiner. Rule two, even if permission is granted, killing your opponent will not be tolerated. Any of you who disobey will be immediately disqualified."
His eyes sweep the room, as if daring any of the assembled hopefuls to snicker at Konoha's softness.
"Now form an orderly line and come pick up your seating assignments," he says finally, "and we'll hand out the tests."
Behind you you hear Sakura let out a sigh of relief. It's almost drowned out, however, by the small groan a few of the other people in the room let out upon realizing that no, this is not just a waiting-room and no, you're not going to be led down the hall to an open gymnasium to begin beating the living crap out of each other.
You pat Ami on the shoulder and wink. "Showtime," you say gleefully.
You're a lot less chipper when you find your seat.
It's at the end of a row, and the Kazekage's son has the spot next to it.
Menka bristles on your shoulder.
Oh, well, I didn't really wanna pass anyway, you think queasily, shifting from foot to foot, trying to decide whether to run for it or just accept the horrific death that awaits you.
Up until this point you've been trying, with varying degrees of success, to ignore the boy's chakra. So've a few other people, and you mark them down in your mind as possible sensors. There's nothing physically intimidating about him from looks alone; he's barely taller than you and he's shorter than practically everyone else in the room but the little girl Sagiso pointed out.
That's what's so creepy. Sabaku no Gaara looks perfectly harmless (aside from the bad eyeliner), but his melody is scary as fuck.
For one thing, he just has a whole hell of a lot of chakra - far past what you'd expect of most jounin, past the point where you can easily measure it, even. Naruto has something like that going on, but then, Naruto doesn't have chakra that sings in harmony with itself. Seriously, what the fucking fuck is up with that? The closest songs to this you've ever heard came from late-term pregnant women, and no baby in the world has chakra this... well, for lack of a better word, evil. You get the impression if you tapped him on the shoulder his chakra would bite your fingers off just because it could.
The redhead spots you staring as he leans back in his chair, and smirks.
"You gonna stand there until you put down roots, or you gonna have a seat?"
You're so pissed off that you forget entirely about wanting to run, and, gritting your teeth, plop down defiantly into your chair, crossing your arms.
"Just tryin' to figure out what kind of big bad ninja has to raid his sister's makeup bag for war paint," you shoot back with a smirk of your own.
For a split-second he looks legitimately shocked, and you wonder if you're about to become the first fatality of the exam.
Then he drops his head and shakes it, quietly laughing.
"Shut up," Ibiki tells everyone, and everyone does, including Gaara after a moment. "Don't turn over your test papers yet. We still have to go over the rules before we begin."
The rules are simple.
You start with ten points.
A point gets removed for every wrong answer.
You pass or fail as a team.
Every time you get caught cheating you lose two points.
People who lose all their points will be failed along with their teams.
When you turn over your paper, you groan inwardly. 'Show your work', 'show your work'... you hate having to show your work. It takes forever! It negates any pride in knowing the answer!
Thankfully there're some fun questions mixed in, like the cryptogram one. But at least half of these are beyond anything a sane person would expect even a chuunin to know - especially a field-duty one; they don't tend to be too hot with math.
So. Looks like this is one of those 'exact words' scenarios. Every time you get caught cheating you lose two points. Lose all your points and then you get thrown out. Have some pride in your skills as a ninja.
Well, now you feel a little better about some of the people in here being stronger than you'd've expected; some of them will be chuunin who've got the answers written down correctly expressly to facilitate cheating. That weird tenth question gives you pause, but knowing Ibiki-san (which you're glad you don't entirely do), it's probably going to be some kind of philosophical dilemma thing, psych you guys out.
You aren't worried about yourself. Given the time you have left you could handle these problems without too much trouble. And no matter how little love Kiba has for bookwork, Akamaru's got great distance vision; those two'll be all right as long as they're near one of the ringers.
Mostly, you're worried about Ami. She's certainly not dumb, but neither are you, and you'll have to bust your hump on some of these questions. And she not only lacks any natural cheating advantages, there're decent odds she wouldn't notice the double-talk in the rules unless you pointed it out to her.
So. What do you do, Yamanaka Ino the Fifth?
[X] Write in. Go to town.
Never change, Lee.
