66

Ibiki locked the door to the room, then looked over the group of genin. They'd weeded a few teams out with the minor genjutsu on the posted village maps and the building itself, and possibly to a team or two oversleeping this morning. "Welcome to the joint Uzushio-Konoha chunin exams. Allow me to congratulate you on making it this far, but you've likely realized that the worst is yet to come. For those that recognize me, while I am your proctor I did not participate in this stage's planning."

Nodding to his helpers, they started moving through the room, distributing marked armbands to each genin. The registration numbers from their team paperwork and individual registration numbers were present on each armband, alongside security seals. Once half of the armbands had been passed out he continued speaking.

"These armbands will help track your progress and prove that you are participating in the exams. You will need to be wearing them to leave this room, and once you put them on the seals in them will ensure that you can't remove them until the end of the stage. The armbands will also track what skill challenges you have completed, individually or as a team. Each of you needs to have at least one marking on your armbands to continue, and each team needs at least five unique markings across all three members. You will have two days to acquire these markings, gain access to the Forest of Paperwork, and find the waiver forms you need to be granted access to the Forest of Inconvenience and the next stage of the exams."

He enjoyed the visible concern and confusion at the names of the two forests, and waited for the last of the armbands to be handed out and put on before continuing. "Now that you all have your armbands, I'm sure that you'd like me to explain where the skill tests themselves are. Unfortunately for you, that's your responsibility to determine. There are thirty test stations in all, within and around the village. Your armbands will allow you to pass through the village gates to those outside of the village. Some of the stations you are likely to stumble upon, most you will need to search for or otherwise locate through gathering intelligence."

Looking over the genin, he felt a twinge of annoyance that he wasn't giving them a proper psychological test like he preferred. But only a twinge, because the kill test from the day before was honestly hard to beat. Nodding, he pushed the button on the desk that unlocked the doors. "Your two days have now started. Good luck."

The teams flew out of the room, not a single genin paying attention to the stack of face-down maps that had been deposited on a table in the back of the room while he'd been speaking. Pity, because those maps were the only place that contained the locations of a couple of the easiest to pass skill tests. It seemed likely that the helpers at those stations were going to have a boring two days. He moved over and flipped one of the sheets over, shaking his head. Body strength, speed, and all three bloodline stations were listed.

Tenten looked up as a team approached. Unlike the day before, today and tomorrow she got to make calls on whether or not the genin had proven their skills. This was one of the few skill tests where that was the case, due to the incredibly varied nature of bukijutsu. It appeared that this group was from Kiri, and they'd frozen when they saw the display of weapons behind her. She'd been...mildly annoyed upon finding out that some of Kiri's 'legendary swords' were basic tools from Uzushio, but having a complete set of the various sizes was honestly quite cool. And that was before finding out that Hinata had grabbed a bunch of the sewing needles for the Hyuga clan, insisting that Naruto train with them as well, because you could use them to target chakra points.

Actually, she'd said something in passing about needing to collect or have Naruto make one or two for Ino too.

"So," Tenten said. "Are you going to stand there gawking at my collection of repurposed tools, or are you here for a skill test?"

"Repurposed tools?" one of the genin asked.

"Yes. Shinobi have a long history of using anything as a weapon. Kunai are based on gardening or masonry tools, but the Uzumaki clan took this to a bit of an extreme." She gestured at the racks the genin were staring at, which she'd added to after talking with Naruto about what else had been sitting around the ruins. "I've got sewing, woodcutting, mining, fishing, and construction tools here. Then there are the more normal weapons in the other racks."

"But..."

Perhaps the other group approaching would be in more of a 'be tested' mindset?

Iruka had asked to transfer to Uzushio in order to set up the local academy, wanting to see what he could accomplish when starting from scratch. Even if it required accepting a promotion to jounin, and it wasn't like there were enough students to open the academy yet. But he'd known those details and wanted plenty of time to prepare the learning environment he wanted, and being in the village provided an excuse to help out with the exams. He'd looked over the skill tests still available last night when Naruto had made them available to the helpers, blinked a couple of times, and claimed the 'campsite' entry before anyone else could grab it.

Far, far too many shinobi in general overlooked the importance of properly setting up a campsite. Using a prepared bunker was always the best option if available, followed by grabbing a room or two in an inn if one was available and your mission profile allowed it, but there were many missions where those weren't options. Balancing utility, defensibility, detection chances, and the basic requirements for a night of sleep was a challenge. Different missions required different balance points too, such as not caring about detection chances but wanting to boost defensibility on an escort mission.

He had a little hand-crank lottery ball setup with different mission profiles on the balls that he was using, and then the teams would have to set up a suitable camp. If he approved of their choices then they'd pass, otherwise he'd lecture them on where they went wrong. If they did reasonably well the first time but hadn't met the mark then he'd give them one additional chance with a different mission profile, a posted chart showing what one based on their original one to be as different as possible instead of a second random one.

"Good morning," he greeted an Ame team as they approached. They didn't look used to working together, but he'd heard that all the Ame teams had mixed themselves up to provide a more varied skill set for each team. That was likely in anticipation of the various skill tests in this stage more than anything else. But he didn't know if they were here for him or passing through to the next test further down. "If you'd like to see if you can meet my standards for setting up a campsite based on a mission profile then I can see about pulling one out for you."

The genin shared a look, then one of them nodded. "We'd like to make the attempt."

Iruka nodded in return, turned the hand crank on the lottery ball dispenser in the 'mix' direction ten times. After that he turned it in the 'select' direction until a single ball dropped into the output chute. He picked that up, showing it to them. "Escorting a client with a wagon." He placed the ball down on the stand he had for holding the current one, then grabbed the scroll with the wagon sealed in it from the supplies stash. That only took a moment to unseal. "There you go. In this case, the wagon has a tent attachment for the client, who's used to traveling, so you don't need to provide a tent for them. The path you came down is to be treated as the road."

The three of them bickered a little, but quickly deferred to the one of the three with the most experience escorting clients.

Kin looked over the team of Oto genin, frowning. "Are you here to take the genjutsu test or try to grab me?"

"...why would we care about you?" one of the genin asked.

"Because she defected to Konoha," one of the others snapped, before flinching and turning to her and bowing. "We were told to not seek you out for that purpose. I personally believe that your entire team was written off as soon as it became obvious that the original goals were impossible to meet."

"That and your teammates were utter morons," the last genin noted. "You were obviously the brains of the group, and they likely dismissed that entirely. I would like to take the genjutsu test, but understand if you'd rather not interact with us."

"No," Kin said. "I'm not about to hold the past against you in that manner, and you've already passed the first part of the test by finding me." They'd had to have spotted the genjutsu hiding things on one of the village maps and made it through the two disguising the paths they'd come down to reach her. "This station's tests are based on the medium you use, so which do you prefer?" Or more likely, which medium had Orochimaru modified him to use, because she had been one of the few genjutsu users in the man's employ that hadn't been modified.

A container strapped to the boy's arm was flipped open, to her surprise as it didn't look like it was part of modifications. "I work with scents."

"Then I hope you are skilled, as my sense of smell is abnormal. But let me grab the scroll with the scent-based genjutsu test parameters."

"...there are type-of-genjutsu test parameters?"

"Yes, because otherwise I might be inclined to be extra hard on you due to my history with your village."

"Suddenly I'm happy that someone decided to standardize things."

"So by intent or accident you've created the first international definition of 'genin level'," Shisui said as he looked over the reports from the day before. "And then told entire nations that their standards aren't good enough."

"I could've used what I think is a minimum standard," Naruto pointed out.

"...true. You balanced things out at a level that's a cut above the average bandit but not really anywhere near the level of the larger villages and still eliminated most of the genin. I just wish more of our genin met the standard, but can't fault the tests you came up with and probably need to blame their sensei for not pushing them properly. The only part that I found questionable was the final kill test, but you've justified it wonderfully in your write-ups and I was...reminded this morning that something similar was done with war prisoners in the past. Your method at least substitutes a fake person."

"A number of genin obviously figured out that it had to be a trick of some kind, but others kind of panicked after the corpse just kind of remained."

"Probably to be expected. How's today's proctoring going?"

"Looks reasonable enough from the outside."

Shisui blinked a couple of times. "You...aren't participating?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because on paper I'm not allowed to. Can't directly be involved in the proctoring as the leader of a participating village, so I arranged for everything after the initial 'welcome to Uzushio' yesterday to be run by others."

"...huh. I hadn't even considered that."

"I'm admittedly still handling most of the paperwork processing, but that's about it and won't cause issues with the agreements. Unfortunately, I do have to decide how I want to present myself when it comes to needing to do so after the team combat portion of things. I can get away with claiming to be standing in for the village leader, but I've had it pointed out that being known as the actual village leader instead of standing in has benefits regarding international agreements against targeting village leaders. Though it would require officially moving to the village."

"It would also prevent you from taking as many missions."

"Uzushio's laws never had a prohibition from the leader taking missions, their own or Konoha's."

"...they didn't?"

"The leader's pay for being the leader is less because they can still take missions, even."

"Huh. I suppose they never had the problem of the leader being buried in paperwork..."

"Due to having less and knowing the paperwork clone, yes. But if I make the move officially then I imagine that Hinata and Ino will want to as well."

Shisui shrugged. "That won't be a problem. They were cleared to do so early in the process under the expectation that you'd move as a team. The more disruptive move would be Yoko leaving, and that would primarily be civilian near-revolt."

"Oh, she doesn't intend to leave until she has someone who she feels can be trusted to take care of the shrine available. Karin isn't around to do so anymore now that she's running the Uzu hospital. Leaving the Tome over there so that Odoroki can't terrorize the civilian girls here is working nicely though, even beyond having the three tied to the Tome run stations for the exams, and ninety percent of the things that are important in the compound and shrine building have been relocated already."

"Well, that would provide a nice distraction from people making the connection between you and Yoko."

"I'm more annoyed that the details of some of the agreements with the Daimyo basically say that if I'm openly the village leader that I either have to call myself the Whirlpool Daimyo or the Uzukage, depending on if I want to be considered a daimyo first or a shinobi first."

"...I missed those, but you're the paperwork expert."

"Not sure you saw those ones anyway, and they're older agreements the Daimyo invoked instead of new ones for the rebuilding."

"Oh. I do hope that copies you can confirm as legitimate existed in the ruins to confirm that it isn't games being played."

"Yes, there were copies there, and the identification seals on the Daimyo's copies were still intact too."

Lee bounced up from his push-ups as a group approached. "Yosh! Here to prove your power of youth?"

"...I hope that means prove our taijutsu," one of the genin replied.

"Indeed! Would you like to take the test individually or as a team?"

"As a team. We're used to brawls."

Lee nodded, then hit the team mode seal control to create a group of thirty zombies. He would've preferred to test the genin personally, but had to admit that the zombies were impartial and repeatable. He could get lost in his enthusiasm, the zombies wouldn't, and repeated tests wouldn't make the zombies any less effective for each new group. Of course, the zombies also somehow used ten different taijutsu styles, including the Gentle Fist. If they weren't calibrated for chunin-hopefuls then he'd be using them for his own training.

Instead, not participating directly meant that he was free to observe and take notes on their performance. Even that had a set of criteria he was supposed to evaluate them on, and he pulled one of the prepared 'team evaluation' sheets out of the seal containing the blank forms. It quickly became obvious to him that they could use more training, but he had to admit that they covered each other's weaknesses well enough to pass. No disqualifications due to taking significant injuries and they hadn't resorted to pulling out weapons, even if twice one of the genin reached for something before obviously remembering that this was a test of taijutsu. When the last zombie went down he hit the dismissal seal, congratulated them on passing, and used his ring to add the taijutsu marking to each of their armbands.

Much better than the previous group that he'd needed to call for a medic-nin for after one of them palmed a kunai without thinking and then stabbed his own teammate.

Sakura smiled as the group of genin entered the examination room. "Good afternoon. Here to prove that at least one of you has what it takes to patch someone up in the field?"

"Yep," one of the genin replied.

"Just you?"

"Yeah, Tsugai is also working on it but hasn't really progressed far enough."

She grinned, and suddenly there was a kunai in the arm of the kunoichi of the group. "Let's see what you can do, then."

Unlike the previous two groups, this time the genin was able to heal things to her approval. She'd only needed to do a little to correct the scarring that would've otherwise happened, and she explained where the genin had gone wrong in the process. A little scarring was acceptable to get someone back into fighting shape though, and going to the extra effort to prevent or reverse it was generally done in more controlled settings anyway. The important part had been getting the injury to the point where moving around wouldn't reopen it or make it significantly worse.

Her notes included that both the tested genin and their teammate also working on picking up medic-nin skills were attentive with the quick lesson in taking care of the scarring, and she knew that anyone who got the medic marking and either didn't enter or survived the next stage was likely to get an offer to use the medical chakra improvement seals. She added the teammate to her list of additional recommendations in this case though.

Kakashi looked up from his book, slightly annoyed. It seemed that a group had actually followed his trail to find him, and in an incredibly short time. Sure enough, the team came up to the tree he was hiding in and looked directly up at him. He sighed and put the book away. "Looks like you found me."

"You didn't make it easy," one of the genin grumbled. "Nineteen false trails, crossing your own path at least eight times, reasonably certain you used clones at least four times, and we passed through five different genjutsu misdirections."

...five? He'd only used three, but he was close to where the sneaky mouse was set up for the genjutsu station so perhaps he'd crossed her setup without noticing. "Didn't you only find the sign telling you that you had to find me twenty minutes ago?"

"Yes."

"Impressive that you spotted that much then, and you've ensured that I have to go wipe all the trails and recreate them before someone else shows up and simply follows your trail, so there's that." And he probably needed to go further away from the genjutsu station, for that matter, but no need to mention that detail to them.

Adding the marking to their armbands only took a minute, and then he created a couple of shadow clones to help wipe everything and reset for the next team wanting to prove they could track someone.

It wasn't obvious due to the use of shapeshifting, but Hinata was running all of the element skill tests. Using and countering each of the primary five, in a manner significantly more 'standardized' than the versions done in the 'single-stage' exams back in Konoha.

She was particularly happy with how much easier it was to run ten identities after Yoko had used one of her rinnegan practice sessions to replace the shapeshifting seal with direct shapeshifting, allowing clothing to be included. Sure, it had meant losing sand control, but Naruto and Yoko tended to negate it as a useful ability in general just by being in the area.

As for the skill tests, she was pleasantly surprised with the range of elemental skills shown. Most of the genin seemed to have at least some elemental training this year, perhaps because their villages knew that something like this was going to happen. At the same time, several genin were a bit too enthusiastic and she'd disqualified them due to losing control of their elements. Generally when they damaged the stand-in for a hostage or bystander, which meant that they couldn't even claim it was a bad judgment call on her behalf, but most noticeably when she'd been hit by an out of control fire technique. It didn't matter that she was fireproof, attempting to burn the one testing you meant you failed.

Of course, complicating things this year was that the 'use element' stations included a 'demonstrate the goal' component. In theory that meant finding people with the ability to use each element, but of course anyone who had gotten an upgraded 'net' didn't have that problem and that was most of why she was handling the stations. Ino was still prone to overpowering things and Naruto wasn't directly involved for political reasons.

By comparison, the 'counter element' side of things was entirely automated so as to prevent bias in those running the stations. Ino could've handled that, but had decided to let Hinata handle things instead and had clones running around picking up and dropping off paperwork updates. While doing as many chakra control exercises in the process as she could.

The puberty-induced boosts were annoying on their own before adding suddenly having a tailed beast core bound to you in the middle of things.

Shikamaru had claimed the 'tactics' station, which was situated inside of a classroom instead of out in the field. It was a theoretical station, presenting the genin with a scenario and seeing what they thought they could do to handle it with their skill sets. He'd have preferred to be outside so that he could more easily cloud-watch, but he needed the computer with all the genin records for quick reference so that he could call bullshit on tactics.

"Good afternoon," he greeted the latest team to find him. "Spin the wheel to pick a scenario, it has to make at least three full revolutions before stopping to count."

He loaded their profiles while they did that, the first attempt only spinning twice before stopping. It appeared to be an honest mistake on the genin's part, their grip slipping due to how they'd grabbed the edge of the wheel, and it spun five times before stopping on the second attempt.

"Flushing bandits out of a small town," he said, standing up and pulling down a map. Markers were attached to the map in several spots before he turned back to the genin. "Your arrival point is the yellow marker, you can see bandits at the red marked points. Assume that you were stealthy enough to not be spotted and can thus plan for what you do see."

"Can we scout around the edge of the town?" one of the genin asked.

"If you wish to try, we can simulate success or failure. Pick out one of the twenty-sided dice from the bin there and roll it on the table in front of you."

They did so, and thirteen came up. Based on their information that was sufficient to not be spotted, but probably not enough to spot bandits in the buildings. Shikamaru placed more red markers on the map to show other rooftop lookouts. "You weren't spotted and were able to identify these additional bandits."

Twenty minutes later he was satisfied with their plan. There were lots of holes in it, of course, but it was only flushing bandits out of the town. Most teams would probably just go in, draw the attention of the bandits, and then treat it as bandit extermination in a town instead of a forest. The teams landing on hostage rescue had a lot more trouble.

Mio settled in for day two of possibly testing genin in basic sealing. There had only been one attempt the day before, but it was considered to be an esoteric art and most shinobi only ever used storage seals and explosive tags prepared by others. This meant that she was theoretically bored, but Naruto had bribed her with a book on making hot springs. Which was surprisingly detailed in regards to the aesthetics and privacy aspects. He went into the types of rock, how to shape stones so that the seating areas could be adjusted for people of different heights by stacking seating stones of different thicknesses without creating hazards from the stones shifting or uncomfortable spots where they 'locked together', wall or fence design concerns both for aesthetics and the requirements of the privacy seals, lighting...

She'd never really considered just how much time and effort went into the base hot springs themselves, before you even started adding in the seals. It was only the last third of the book that covered the anti-dojutsu and hot spring seals themselves, which were deceptively simple yet subtly complex in a manner that required a master of the art to understand. Or perhaps an Uzumaki just getting started, given that this wasn't labeled as being 'advanced' and she'd seen some of the advanced work.

For example, she'd spent two hours yesterday staring in awe and horror at the little bush under a rain shield that was growing demolition-grade explosive tags. She'd been assured that it was only there for the duration of the stage and would be removed at the end of the two days, but that didn't really change her opinion about the fact that the thing existed. Eventually she'd gotten up the courage to pluck one of the tags from the bush, push chakra into it, and throw it off the cliff to test it. She'd followed that by carefully collecting all but a couple of the tags that were obviously done 'growing', just out of self-preservation for not wanting genin to get their hands on them with her right there.

No, better to not consider the horrors of Uzumaki being able to make explosive tags grow on bushes. All it did was make the Forest of Paperwork tamer in a general sense, except for the dome that apparently contained more of the bushes that grew explosive tags. Focusing on understanding the inner workings of the seals for use in hot springs was a much better use of her time while waiting for genin to maybe show up today.

Neji flipped through the list of genin to watch out for trying to sneak past with faked armband markings while sitting at the desk that had been placed outside of Dome One. He'd been tapped because his byakugan would help him keep tabs on what was going on inside of the dome, but that only worked because he'd been temporarily tied into the security seals. Without being tied in, the dome didn't allow the byakugan to see inside.

Yesterday morning he'd assumed that Naruto was going light on the psychological side of things after subjecting the genin to his pre-test, but that was before entering Dome One and finding out that Uzushio literally grew blank paperwork on trees. That had led to needing time to recover himself, luckily having plenty because the genin teams were unlikely to manage to get anywhere near the needed number of markings in the first half-day. Only one team had managed to do so by the end of the day, and it was assumed that they thought that getting more would help them.

As far as Neji knew, that wasn't the case this time.

After recovering, he'd noted that the only plant in the entire dome that wasn't labeled with a form identification tag was the small bush right next to the door. That bush contained maps of the dome, telling you how to find the blank paperwork by form identification number. Presumably, anyone who was normally authorized to enter the dome to collect blank forms knew to check the bush if they weren't sure where to find a given form.

According to the maps, this dome looked to hold all of the village's 'low security' forms. From spot-checking a few forms he could tell the Uzushio system was a lot less complicated than the Konoha one. As an example, he'd spotted a single form that covered thirty or so forms that a merchant might have to file in Konoha. Possibly more. Another form seemed to replace nine different forms he knew of regarding requesting shinobi assistance, skipping the more specialized forms Konoha used for initial sorting. Next to that had been an internal details amendment form that replaced three different evaluation forms he'd seen.

Some questioning of Naruto last night revealed that he hadn't even created most of the system, just rebuilt it and expanded it as little as needed for turning the city into a proper hidden village. Uzushio had always kept the paperwork simpler, though some of that was probably because ninety percent of the population was extended family to begin with. A comment had been made that adding paperwork for keeping track of other paperwork had been intentionally skipped as well, because as far as Naruto was concerned things weren't allowed to get complicated enough to need them here.

Looking up from the sheets as someone approached, he kept the grin he felt off of his face as the first group of genin to come to the dome came around the bend. Instead, he almost-mechanically confirmed that they met the requirements for entering the dome as a team. They weren't on the list of ones to watch out for, the seals to confirm that things were connected back to the proper rings said the markings were genuine, and they had one more marking than needed. Possibly due to two members splitting up and both succeeding, based on the positioning.

"Okay," he said, unlocking the door. "No attempting to destroy things, no attempting to sabotage other teams by collecting or destroying forms you don't need, and don't forget that you each need a waiver. The form number you need should be in your information packet, so if you didn't keep it then it sucks to be you."

He opened the door and let them in, finally letting his grin out as he heard a couple of them whimper. Even better, there were cameras watching the entrances and every team's reactions were supposedly being captured and pictures framed. All for a much more amusing version of the 'learned what D-Ranks are' wall back in Konoha, though apparently sets for each village were going to be provided to the leaders as well.

Checking on things after all was said and done was going to be needed. The byakugan was good, but not 'get a proper view of the horror on their faces from behind them' good.