34 The Chunin Exams Begin
Today was the day of the Chunin Exams. Chojusen got off his favorite pillow and put on the same black tracksuit he had since he went on his adventure, slaughtering beasts for a year. Since the clothes adapted to his size they grew as the years passed. It was common to see people wear the same clothes for years or even decades in the ninja world, so no one batted an eye towards Chojusen's way after seeing him almost everyday in the same outfit.
Chojusen put Chokogo in his personal dimension and left his house to meet up with the rest of his team in one of the training grounds. When he got there, Ino and Lee were already waiting for him, so they said a couple greetings and left for the exam site.
On their way to the exam site, Chojusen came across Gaara and his siblings. They had a happy little reunion in the middle of the road; prompting Ino and Lee to look at him oddly. Ino said "Chojusen, do you mind introducing your friends to us?"
Chojusen pointed at the boy with auburn hair and said "This is my friend Gaara," he pointed at the blond haired girl to Gaara's left and said "She is Gaara's sister, Temari," then he pointed at a boy donning a black… cosplay outfit? It had cat ears within… he said "and that is Gaara's brother Kankuro."
Ino and Lee were initially hesitant to talk with Gaara and his siblings since they were sand ninjas; the Hidden Sand and Hidden Leaf were not exactly best buddies after the Hidden Leaf started taking more missions from the Wind Daimyo. However, talking with these sand ninjas wasn't as bad as they thought and they quickly got along.
The group of now six, then walked to exam site. Upon entering the building where the first exam would be held, Chojusen's group came across a genjutsu test. Chojusen only needed to use a bit of yin energy to break the illusion and his group easily "passed" this test.
After passing the genjutsu test, Chojusen and company entered a room that held most of the other participants of the Chunin Exams. In the waiting room, he found that most of his friends from the Hidden Leaf were already there; bored and waiting for the exam to start.
Another hour and a half passed and the cut off for registration arrived. At that same moment, all the participant that passed the genjutsu test were escorted into a classroom. The proctor for the first exam, Ibiki, explained how the exam would be conducted.
"Listen up! The first exam of the Chunin Exams will be a written test."
Some of the ninjas were not to happy that they would be revisiting worthless math and history problems, but Ibiki just ignored them and told them to blame their luck for having him be their proctor.
Ibiki said "For my Exam, all of you will start with 10/10 points. For every question wrong, you will lose one point. You will only have access to the first nine questions until the very end of the exam, when I will give out the last question. Also, for every time we catch you cheating, you will lose two points and there will be several Chunin stationed all around the room while you take the test."
The examinees where then randomly assigned seats and given a test. When Ibiki gave the go-ahead, the test started and all the examinees flipped their tests over to the begin.
Chojusen looked at the problems in the test with a bit of amusement. To say that the questions were advanced would be a severe understatement. He could solve the problems in the test without a doubt. But, if he compared the skill level of the test, with his friend's general level of academic understanding, it could at best be described as giving calculus problems to a bunch of algebra newbies.
Chojusen quickly figured out that the test was not meant to be an academic one, as most Chunin would not not how to figure these problems out. Ibiki's word play was oddly constructed, so Chojusen understood that the test was about spying or cheating. He didn't need to cheat, but that didn't mean he wouldn't help out his friends.
As Chojusen looked around the room with his teleportation sensing, he saw that all of his friends already figured out the trick to the test.
Ino was using her mind transferring technique to get information and covertly telling Lee what she found out with secret hand signs. Haku did something similar to Ino, but she used hidden ice mirrors to tell Kimimaro. Shikamaru didn't cheat, he actually knew how to solve the questions and he gave the answers to Choji and Karin. Kiba was using his beast companion to cheat, Shino was using his bugs, Hinata and Neji were using their Byakugans.
Sasuke was using his Sharingan to copy the hand movements of several people and cross checked which answer was used the most. He would then use signs to tell his teammates, Naruto and Sakura.
Tenten's teammate, Akiko Uchiha, used the same style of cheating as Sasuke. Even Gaara and his siblings had their own spying action. Since no one needed his help, Chojusen got bored. There were so many tricks he could use for cheating in this test, but none of them would ever be needed.
Eventually, the end of the test had arrived, and Ibiki gathered everyone's attention. He said "Now for the final question. This question is special, anyone who gets the question wrong will not only be disqualified, they will also be unable to participate in the Chunin Exams ever again. Anyone concerned by this is free to leave, though the rest their team must also leave."
Some people couldn't take the pressure and chose to forfeit; they could always try again in six months. However, none of the people Chojusen cared about stood up to forfeit the question. Once all the people who didn't want to take the last question left the room, Ibiki turned around and said "You only need to have one question right to pass this test, so all of your pass."
He then explained that the last question was to test the examinees' courage. As he finished his explanation, a familiar scary-looking purple-haired lady made a flashy entrance by breaking through one of the windows; they were on the second floor…
As Neji, Kimimaro, and Haku looked at the person who enter, they all collectively let out a disappointed sigh and greeted their Jonin leader. The second Exam's proctor was none other than their teacher, Anko.
Anko led everyone to the location of the second exam, Training Grounds No. 44. She explained how the test would be conducted and what the examinees needed to pass. All the various teams of ninja that passed the first exam would be given either a Heaven Scroll or an Earth Scroll. The Examinees needed to possess one of each scroll and to reach the tower in the center of the training grounds before five days to pass the second test. They also couldn't open the scroll for any reason.
Chojusen's team received an Earth Scroll from Anko, so they needed a Heaven Scroll from some other team of examinees. Chojusen wasn't about to waste time, pointlessly wandering around the forest, so he used his teleporting sense to quickly find a target.
An unfortunate squad of Hidden Rain ninjas were picked; they lost almost immediately, even when Chojusen didn't fight. Lee single-handedly knocked out the three ninjas, even when he was stressed under twenty five times normal gravity. Chojusen felt a bit bad for them so before leaving, he healed their wounds with Water Healing; he still left them there, unconscious.
With a Heaven Scroll in hand, Chojusen's team made their way to the tower in the center of the forest. They travelled at Ino's pace as she was the slowest person in their group. It took them less than an hour to reach the tower. Not only were they the first to arrive, they broke the previous record for fastest time completing the second portion of the Chunin Exams.
Now they had four days and twenty three hours to kill. Lee was a training maniac so Chojusen spent most of his idle time fulfilling his everlasting wish to spar. When he wasn't with Lee, fighting what looked to be life or death battles of melee combat, he was spending time with Ino.
About an hour after Chojusen's team reached the tower, Gaara's team was the second to finish. Then after a couple more hours, more people started showing up. Chojusen thought he would be spending these five days messing around. However, on the second day, he felt a certain energy signature out in the forest. It was the energy signature of a certain snake-man that Chojusen had personally finished off.
Chojusen couldn't just casually teleport around the forest at this time, when it was full of examinees, so he created a clone and had his true body teleport under the effects of his Void Cloak. The reason Chojusen even detected Orochimaru was because the latter used a large scale attack for some reason.
When Chojusen teleported over to where Orochimaru's energy signature spiked, the man in question left without a trace. Chojusen would use his teleportation sensing to find the snake-man later. Right now, the more pressing matter at hand was the sight of three of his friends collapsed on the group before him. All three were unconscious so Chojusen moved them to a more secure location; he was still invisible, so it looked like Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto were being taken by a ghost.
