The room smelled like ink, sweat, and murder attempts waiting for paperwork.
A hundred hostile eyes turned when Naruto kicked the door open and yelled, "All right! We're gonna crush this exam, believe it!"
You could feel the collective "oh this idiot" ripple across the room.
I slipped in behind him, trying very hard to radiate the opposite of "please beat us up in the hallway." Sasuke followed, cool and bored, which somehow just made people glare at us harder.
Chakra pressed in from every direction—sharp, buzzing, heavy, bitter. The whole place felt like someone had taken every bad mood in Konoha, boiled them down, and poured the concentrate into a classroom.
"Great," I muttered. "Shark tank."
We picked our way down the aisles toward three open seats, stepping through the silence like it might explode. Teams had already claimed their tables: foreign headbands, unfamiliar faces, weapons lined up like promises.
On our left, three Grass-nin watched us with flat, insect eyes. On our right, a Rain squad radiated nervous, twitchy static. Ahead—
My gaze snagged on a trio in dark outfits with metal plates on their arms instead of headbands.
Sound.
Their chakra felt like broken glass in a blender. Jagged, high-pitched, restless. The girl—long dark hair, bells in her strands—had a focused, bitter edge. The tall one with the bandages over his ears buzzed like live wire. The leader with the wrappings on his arm just looked amused in a way that made my skin crawl.
I stuck closer to Naruto on instinct, fingers brushing the shape of the Squad Marks inked under my sleeves. My little spiral seals pulsed faintly in response—Naruto bright and hot, Sasuke tight and sharp.
"Why is everyone looking at us?" Naruto whispered, not quietly at all.
"Because you shouted 'we're gonna crush you all' into a room full of killers," I whispered back. "Indoor voice, please."
"Hey! I didn't say killers!"
"Yet," I said. "Give it time."
He pouted. It didn't help.
We hadn't even sat down before a voice from the front left said, "Well, well. So many rookies this year."
I looked.
Three Sand ninja occupied one table like they owned the floorboards. Temari—tall, blonde, giant fan strapped to her back—lounged with her ankles crossed, smirk sharp and lazy. Her chakra was dry heat and amusement, like sun-baked stone.
Next to her, Kankuro slouched with his hood up, arms folded, what was very obviously a puppet swaddled and strapped to his back. His chakra felt bluff and jittery, bravado smeared over nerves.
And then there was the redhead.
Small, pale, the kanji for "love" carved into his forehead. Dark-rimmed eyes. Sand gourd almost as big as he was.
Gaara.
His chakra hit me like walking off a cliff.
Dense. Shifting. Suffocating. A storm made of ground glass grinding against itself, and underneath that, something ancient and hungry curled tight as a fist.
My stomach flipped. For a second, my legs almost forgot how to be legs.
I jerked my awareness back, breathing shallow.
"Don't stare," Sasuke said quietly, not looking at me. "You'll just attract them."
"I'm not staring," I said. "I'm strategically… visually assessing."
He "hn"'d, which meant "I know you almost fell over but I'm not going to ask."
Temari's eyes flicked over us with bored interest. Kankuro snorted.
Gaara didn't look our way at all.
Which, somehow, felt worse.
We reached three open seats near the middle. Naruto flopped into his chair, immediately turning to pick a fight with someone from the next table. Sasuke slid into his spot, arms crossed. I lowered myself into the last chair and tried to ignore the way the air buzzed against my skin.
A kunai thunked into the desk directly in front of Naruto's nose.
He yelped. The room went pin-drop silent.
The kunai owner stood up slowly, chair scraping.
"Hey," an older genin sneered. "If you're gonna be so loud, at least keep it out of the exam room, brat."
Naruto shot to his feet, hands already curling into fists. "What'd you say, you jerk?!"
Chakra snapped around us like static. A couple of other teams leaned forward, eyes bright, like they couldn't wait for the pre-test bloodshed.
Fantastic. We were about two seconds from a brawl before we'd even gotten pencils.
"Um, excuse me," a mild voice cut in from my right. "Maybe try not to get disqualified before we even sit down?"
We turned.
The speaker wore round glasses, gray hair tied back in a low ponytail, standard Konoha gear. Ordinary. Completely ordinary. Even his chakra sat mild and smoothed out, like someone had ironed every wrinkle flat.
He smiled, sheepish and affable.
"My name's Yakushi Kabuto," he said, scratching his cheek. "You three are causing quite a stir."
Naruto bristled. "Yeah? So what!"
Kabuto chuckled. "Well, this is their exam too. Everyone's already tense. You don't want all that focus on you before the proctors even appear, right?"
I watched him carefully.
On the surface, his chakra really did feel harmless. Warm, a little fuzzy, like Iruka on a good day. But underneath that… there were layers. Carefully arranged, all pointing outward—like a stack of masks made of pleasant energy.
"This guy never stops thinking," I thought. "Even his emotions feel rehearsed."
Aloud, I said, "You seem very relaxed for someone about to take a nightmare test with a bunch of strangers who want us dead."
He laughed lightly. "It's not my first time. Or my second." He tapped his forehead protector. "I've taken the Chunin Exams seven times."
Seven.
My eyebrows tried to climb off my face. Naruto's jaw dropped.
"Seven?!" he yelped. "How are you not a chunin yet?!"
Naruto, king of tact.
Kabuto just shrugged, wry. "Well, that's the point of exams, isn't it? You can fail."
Sasuke leaned forward slightly, interest sharpened. "If you've taken it seven times, you've seen other villages' candidates," he said. "You've gathered data."
He didn't phrase it as a question. It wasn't one.
Kabuto pushed his glasses up. The lenses flashed.
"As it happens… I do have a little information." He reached into his pouch and pulled out a small deck of cards, held together with a metal ring. "I've been gathering intel on other teams. Helps make up for my own shortcomings."
The bullying genin who'd thrown the kunai scoffed. "What, you've got flashcards? This isn't school, old man."
"Never underestimate flashcards," I muttered.
Kabuto smiled. "These are special. They're chakra-encoded."
He held up one card between two fingers, drew a thin thread of chakra into it through his thumb. Ink bloomed across the surface, forming words and a simple map.
"All I need is a name," he said. "And a bit of chakra."
Naruto's eyes sparkled. "Whoa! That's awesome!"
Sasuke's gaze sharpened another notch. "Show me," he said.
Kabuto nodded and flipped to a different card. "Let's start with the foreign teams," he said, loud enough for the nearby squads to hear. "Might as well share the stress."
He tapped the card. "Sunagakure, the Village Hidden in the Sand. Three siblings: Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara."
The map showed a vague outline of Wind Country. Notes scrolled on the side.
Kabuto read off the highlights. Temari, wind user. Kankuro, puppet specialist. Gaara…
His voice hitched for half a beat before smoothing again.
"Gaara of the Desert," Kabuto said. "Has completed all his missions without injury. Rumored to have never been touched in battle. Very dangerous."
I didn't need the card to tell me that. My chakra sense still felt like it had brushed the edge of a void.
Temari smirked at us across the room. Kankuro stiffened, annoyed. Gaara glanced up, gaze sliding over everyone like we were already dead. My chest tightened.
"Next, the newcomers—Sound," Kabuto went on.
He flicked to another card. The map updated: a small, recently registered symbol, little more than a mark on the border.
"Village Hidden in the Sound," he said. "Very new. Not much public intel available. Team consists of three: Dosu, Zaku, and Kin. Specialty appears to be—"
He didn't get to finish.
The bandage-wrapped one—Dosu—stood up, chakra spiking, and crossed the space between their desk and ours in three deliberate strides. The room went quiet around him.
"That's enough," Dosu said, voice muffled but clear. "You talk too much."
Kabuto held up his free hand placatingly. "My apologies. Just trying to—"
Dosu's uncovered hand flicked.
Chakra rippled out, a pressure wave so sharp and precise it felt like an invisible needle jammed straight through my eardrums.
Pain exploded behind my eyes. The room lurched. I slapped my hands over my ears on instinct, but it still hit—vibrations shuddering through my skull, making my teeth ache.
Kabuto jerked, glasses cracking. He stumbled back, one hand flying to his ear, face twisting.
The air itself had turned into a weapon.
Sound-based jutsu. Fantastic. As if written tests weren't bad enough, now we had pop quizzes in migraine.
Naruto yelped, clapping his hands over his own ears. "What the hell was that?!"
Dosu's chakra buzzed, satisfied.
"Just a taste," he said calmly. "So you remember we're not here to be measured like numbers on a page."
His gaze flicked to Kabuto's cards, then to Naruto, then to Sasuke. The message was obvious: we're not data; we're threats.
Kin and Zaku smirked behind him, savoring the attention.
Kabuto straightened slowly, forcing a shaky smile. Blood trickled from his nose. One lens of his glasses had spiderweb cracks.
"That was… impressive," he said weakly. "So that's Sound's specialty."
My stomach twisted. He was still playing the harmless idiot even with his inner ear probably doing cartwheels.
Dosu snorted and went back to his seat.
I ground my teeth, willing the ringing in my ears to settle. The ache behind my eyes buzzed like an angry insect. Under the table, I traced a small calming spiral over the skin of my wrist to ground myself.
"Naruto," I hissed. "Stop glaring at them. They will absolutely turn your face into a tuning fork."
"I'm not scared!" he hissed back, even though his chakra was doing a pretty convincing impression of "actually, yes, terrified."
"Cool. Maybe try 'strategically cautious' instead of 'please target me first'," I said.
Before he could reply, Kabuto cleared his throat again.
"Well," he said, a little hoarse, "since we've already started, I might as well finish. Rookies from our own village, for example."
He flipped to a new section of cards. "Konoha's new genin squads."
At the mention of "rookies," several heads turned. Kiba perked up. Ino straightened, clearly ready to be complimented. Shikamaru sighed like he already regretted being alive.
Kabuto tapped a card.
"Team 8: Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Hyūga Hinata," he read. "Tracker type. High success rate in D-ranks, flexible formation…"
As he spoke, impressions flickered under my chakra sense.
Shino: calm, organized, thoughts marching in little neat rows.
Kiba: loud, hot streak of protectiveness under the bravado.
Hinata: soft glow that jumped every time Naruto's name passed anyone's lips.
Kabuto went on. "Team 10: Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino. Classic Ino-Shika-Cho formation. Inherited strategy from the previous generation…"
Shikamaru slouched further down in his seat, muttering, "What a drag." His chakra, annoyingly, did a subtle little shift like he'd just filed away three new pieces of info.
Ino flicked her hair and whispered to Choji, "See? We're classic."
"Classic is old," Shikamaru said.
"Classic is iconic," she snapped.
Kabuto turned another card. "Team Guy: Rock Lee, Hyūga Neji, Tenten. Highly physical team. Lee has no talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu—"
Across the room, Lee straightened at the sound of his name, eyes blazing. He didn't look offended. If anything, he looked proud.
"—but his taijutsu and work ethic are remarkable," Kabuto finished.
Neji's chakra sat coiled and controlled beside him, like a spring held in check. Tenten's hummed with quiet, steady competence. I mentally filed her under "person to talk to about scroll storage and weapon seals later."
"And finally," Kabuto said, adjusting his cracked glasses, "Team 7."
Every muscle in my shoulders tightened.
He tapped the next card.
"Uzumaki Naruto," he read. "Academy graduate on his second attempt. History of pranks and disciplinary issues…"
Naruto puffed up, like that was something to be proud of.
"…secretly stole the Scroll of Seals six months ago, later recovered under the supervision of Umino Iruka and other instructors." Kabuto squinted at the writing. "Unusual chakra levels. Unconfirmed rumors regarding… jinchūriki status."
The unfamiliar word hit me like a cold draft.
Jinchūriki.
I didn't know what it meant exactly. Not in detail. But I knew enough to feel the way the room's mood twitched around it. A couple of older genin stiffened. Someone from another village snorted. The air tasted metallic.
Naruto, blessedly oblivious to half that subtext, just frowned. "What's a 'jinchu-whatever'?"
"Nothing you need to worry about right now," I said quickly, voice sharper than I meant. "Finish the list."
Kabuto flicked his eyes up, studying my face for a split second before continuing.
"Uchiha Sasuke," he read next. "Last surviving member of the Uchiha clan. Top of his class. High aptitude in fire jutsu and taijutsu. Considered one of the strongest rookies this year."
A little ripple ran through the room. Interest. Envy. A few open glares.
Sasuke's jaw tightened. His chakra pulled in, colder, edgier. He didn't react outwardly. Of course he didn't.
"And…" Kabuto hesitated, then turned the card fully.
"Sylvie," he said. "No recorded surname. Found near the village border as a child. No clan affiliation. Orphan status. Graduated Academy on first attempt with above-average scores in written tests and chakra control. Early fuinjutsu aptitude. Basic medical training. Classified as a support-type genin with… 'unknown potential'."
He actually read the quotation marks out loud.
Heat crawled up my neck. My chest went tight in that awful, hollow way.
Orphan. No surname. Unknown potential.
Having my entire life boiled down to a handful of bullet points made me feel like someone had skinned me. Even Naruto's "disciplinary issues" sounded more alive than "support type."
"I didn't think they'd bother tracking me," I thought, fingers clenched under the desk. "Guess I was wrong."
Naruto squinted at the card. "Hey, support type is good! Right? That means you're like, our secret weapon!"
"Wow," I said dryly. "A weapon and a mystery. My two favorite ways to be objectified."
He grinned. "See? You're already good at it."
I elbowed him. Lightly. Mostly.
Across the aisle, Ino leaned around Choji to look at me. "Unknown potential," she whispered. "Fancy. I'm just 'mind-transfer blonde' on mine, aren't I?"
"You're at least 'terrifying mind-transfer blonde,'" I whispered back.
She snickered.
Kabuto shuffled his cards back into a neat stack. "Anyway," he said. "That's the gist. Use it or don't. Just remember—no amount of intel replaces actual skill."
He said it like a joke, but underneath the smile there was a brittle little edge.
Before anyone could respond, the air in the room changed.
The low murmur of conversation snapped off as the door at the front slammed open.
A group of chunin strode in, all in standard flak vests, movements clipped and efficient. They fanned out along the walls and aisles like a net closing.
At their center walked a man with a shaved head, heavy coat, and eyes that seemed to catalog every single person he looked at.
His face was a roadmap of scars. Old burns, jagged lines, the kind that spoke of torture rather than clean battlefield wounds. He carried no visible weapon, just a clipboard and an aura that said he didn't need anything else.
Silence rolled through the room like mist.
My chakra sense reeled for a second. Most people's emotional "color" had a few mixed shades—fear and excitement, nerves and focus. This man's presence was… stripped.
No joy. No cruelty, either. Just iron conviction and a low, constant ache. Like someone who'd torn himself down to the minimum necessary pieces and stapled them together out of sheer stubbornness.
He set the clipboard on the front desk.
"I am Ibiki Morino," he said. His voice was low, rough, the kind that didn't need to be loud to carry. "I'll be your proctor for the first test of the Chunin Exams."
You could practically hear thirty hearts drop into thirty stomachs at once.
He scanned the room slowly. Bullies, prodigies, rookies, foreign killers—nobody had anything to say under that gaze.
Naruto swallowed audibly.
Several chunin assistants began handing out sheets of paper, moving down the rows with crisp efficiency. Answer sheets, question packets, little numbered tags.
"Listen carefully," Ibiki went on. "From this point on, every action you take will be judged."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"The rules for this test are simple," he said. "You each start with ten points. Nine questions. Each wrong answer costs you one point. If your total reaches zero… you fail. Your entire team fails."
A collective flinch went around the room.
Naruto's chakra spiked in panicked loops. I slipped my foot sideways under the table and nudged his ankle once, a silent "breathe."
Ibiki's eyes swept past us, sharp as kunai.
"Cheating," he said, voice flattening, "is allowed."
A confused murmur rippled.
"Being caught cheating," he continued, "is not."
He gestured to the chunin around the room. "My assistants are all trained to detect any form of deception. If we catch you five times, you are out. Your whole team is out. Permanently. There will be no second chances, and no protests."
Kiba bristled. Someone from Rain cursed under their breath. Sasuke's mouth twitched, just barely.
Ibiki's gaze landed on Naruto for a moment, then on me, then on Sasuke.
"Consider this your first real battlefield," he said. "Information is as deadly a weapon as any kunai. Those who don't know how to get it—quietly—have no business being chunin."
He let that hang, then nodded once.
"Now," he said. "We will begin the test. First, write your names and registration numbers at the top of the answer sheet."
Papers slid onto our desks.
Naruto stared at his like it might explode. Sasuke picked up his pen immediately. I rolled my shoulders, trying to force my muscles to remember how to relax as I wrote my name in careful, ink-stained strokes.
Sylvie.
No surname. Not yet.
Ibiki waited until the rustle of paper settled.
"The Chunin Exams first test," he said calmly. "Written."
He smiled; the scars on his face didn't.
"Begin."
Pens scratched. Pages flipped.
And I watched Naruto's brain blue-screen in real time.