14

The first day of the chunin exams had started off mildly annoying, but only because Team Yurei hadn't practiced braiding their hair with spikes in it enough. Or, in Naruto's case, he'd not practiced braiding longer hair with spikes in it thanks to a last-minute request from Hinata and Tenten wanting him to grow his hair out so that it would fall to mid-back to match their hair. All three had their Konoha forehead protectors tied to their left arms instead of their foreheads as well, though Naruto had the Uzushio one tied to his right arm in addition, and all three were now able to handle the chakra weights and resistance belts at the same time.

Naruto more so than the other two, but top-tier healing abuse helped quite a bit there.

Then, to Naruto's surprise, Hoshi had transformed into a young boy...also in a similar-looking maid outfit. Just without heels on the shoes or the frilly headband, probably made out of less-resilient materials, and designed to work with his tail that he preferred not to hide if he didn't need to.

"Where did you get that?" Naruto asked.

"The sages helped make it," the little guy replied, frowning as he adjusted his tail. "I've got a couple of 'more normal' outfits too, but we decided that I should match you three for this. Putting them on is annoying, but the complete outfit turns into a forehead protector when I shift back to normal."

"Huh. Too bad we didn't prepare a bunch of seals so you could have equipment like we do."

Hoshi flinched at that. "The sages said you shouldn't even try. Adding storage seals to the mix could make the clothing explode when I shift back to my normal shape."

"Oh."

"But now I can make Akamaru jealous without worrying about the stupid modesty issues humans have!"

"You should only reveal this after we arrive," Hinata said. "Mostly because we don't want you to be treated as though you're a fourth shinobi when teams are supposed to be three."

Hoshi blinked, then nodded and poofed back into his normal form. "That makes sense. It'll be better if Akamaru doesn't see it coming anyway."

Naruto shook his head and picked Hoshi up. "We should get going."

Upon arriving at the academy building being used for the first stage of the exam, the four of them used the transparency jutsu to more easily slip past the crowd falling for or faking falling for the genjutsu on the wrong floor. They dropped the jutsu in the next stairwell, and found themselves interrupted from continuing by Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei once they made it into the hallway on the correct floor.

"Good on all four of you for showing up," Kurenai-sensei said. "And also for not bothering to interact with the trick downstairs."

"This stop is merely a formality," Anko-sensei added. "Less so for teams that may try to enter without everyone together, admittedly, but that doesn't describe you three. Do try to make it to the finals without giving away all your tricks, but don't hold back so much that you don't make it that far."

"We've got the first two stages in the bag," Naruto said with a grin.

He'd already found the nine questions and answers from spying on the chunin plants, as well as the 'obviously wrong' answers some of them were going to be including, and knew how the real test worked. Independently confirmed from three different verbal sources and two written ones. And the only reason they weren't going to set a speed record on the second stage was the plan to get some time to talk to Karin, which Hinata and Tenten were on board with.

"You sound far too confident," Kurenai-sensei said, giving Naruto a look.

"I think you should tell them about your eyes," Hinata sent via the communication jutsu. "They already know that Tenten and I have your chakra chains and elemental mastery, even if she isn't as far along in learning how to use them."

Naruto nodded and connected all of the group before replying. "Well, my clones have been spying on everyone."

"Which explains very little," Anko-sensei challenged.

"And my book might have copied Hinata's byakugan to me as a bit of a kekkei genkai trade."

"It felt like a fair enough trade when I found out," Hinata added. "And Naruto is much better at teaching than my father is."

"So you're so good at the Gentle Fist because you have a secret byakugan?" Tenten asked.

"Plus lots of clones practicing, yes," Naruto agreed.

"Naruto's range is at least four times mine," Hinata added. "But for some reason his clones only get a third of it while my clones seem to have the same range that I do. We think that I just haven't hit the upper limit of what a paperwork clone can support."

"If you'll excuse us," Anko-sensei said, grabbing Kurenai-sensei's arm to drag her off. "There are others about to come up and I have some bets to update."

A moment later it was just the three genin and Hoshi in the hallway. Naruto led the way as Hinata got Tenten moving and they silently slipped into the classroom that served as the location of the first stage. Nobody paid them any attention as they settled into a corner, though part of that might be because there were so few teams there yet. Naruto and Hinata monitored things with their byakugan and used the communication jutsu to keep Tenten in the loop, watching as what had to be a full third of the potential participants were caught by the genjutsu. Others were disqualified for not being a full team, like the Taki team that had decided to tell Fu to meet them in one spot and then ditch her only to be knocked out by jounin in the hallway when trying to enter as a partial team.

Eventually it seemed that they'd gotten all the teams that would be making it, including all of the Konoha teams their age that had been cleared to participate. Those four had all gathered together along one wall, seemingly missing that Team Yurei was there at all, though with Team Gai standing close enough to be 'in the group' without actually joining the group the other three teams had formed.

As far as Naruto could tell, their discussion had started with the animal features on Team Seven, only for the three to obviously switch the topic of discussion away. Eventually they landed on whether or not the 'missing three' were getting the chance to participate in the exams. The initial assumption appeared to be 'no' as there had barely been any rumors of the former Team Eighteen accomplishing much of anything and they hadn't been seen yet.

At least until Akamaru yipped at Kiba.

"What are you...is that Hoshi?" Kiba asked, drawing their attention. "Which means...why is Naruto's team dressed like maids?"

"Because we plan on cleaning out the competition," Naruto quipped as he led his team over to the rest. Ino and Rio both looked at him in a conflicted manner, though Ino's looked more personally embarrassed than anything else. Maybe not wanting to fangirl at him while she had the dog ears and tail? Or based on her twitching nose she might not like the smell of fox. It was hard to tell. "Though we were here long before any of you, so you're not looking good in the paying attention to your surroundings department."

"You're making a mockery of the exams," Sakura accused with a scowl as she looked over the three.

Tenten snorted. "We're just using strategies that nobody could possibly have figured out from the information available about us."

"What information? Your mission counts?"

"The stuff in the betting packets that list various skills and other information. You're Sakura Haruno, right?"

"..yes."

Tenten shrugged. "Your information was particularly unflattering, so I hope that it's as useless as the information on us looked."

"Now that's not fair," Kabuto Yakushi accused as he approached the group. "How am I supposed to impress people with my information-gathering skills if you tell the rookies the secrets?"

Hinata raised an eyebrow. "By explaining something the village doesn't hand out to civilians? Though if their sensei didn't ensure they had copies of things then you could possibly throw some highlights out for them while we wait for things to start."

Kabuto pouted, but produced a deck of cards and flipped through it. "I suppose that's better than nothing. Thanks to a string of bad luck I've attempted the exams six times already. If I don't pass this time then I'll probably be held back from the cycle in January since I'm eligible for field promotions in March."

"Why March?" Lee asked, having moved closer and sounding very curious, simultaneously dragging his teammates in closer as well.

"A few years back Lord Hokage put a rule in that limits field promotions of genin to those who are at least twenty-one, barring exceptional circumstances or wartime, to 'limit needless deaths'. I'll be twenty-one at the end of February." He crouched down and dropped a blank card on the ground. "Let's start with something simple enough and see what we've got on Naruto Uzumaki here." A pulse of chakra caused a pile of information to appear on the card, though it was obvious to the byakugan that it really stopped hiding it from everyone other than Kabuto. Which nicely explained how he was able to identify the card.

Everyone but Team Yurei and Neji moved closer to try to look at the card as Kabuto read off of it. "One of the three genin of Team Yurei, graduated a year earlier than expected. Very impressive mission record for a year and a half. Fifty-two D-ranks, forty C-ranks, three B-ranks, and an A-rank. Believed to be the last Konoha Uzumaki with impressively balanced elemental natures and was the decoy jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox until some classified incident revealed the ruse. Works with a nin-fox named Hoshi and the only primary skills listed are seals, which he sells to several clans, and stealth. Nobody knows how his team returns from most of their missions as they're only seen using the gates to return if escorting someone to the village."

Shikamaru frowned while Shino and Rio had turned to stare at the three maid-dressed genin. "Did you just say Team Yurei? As in the team that spent weeks working in the same areas as other teams without being spotted even once?"

"We're really good at stealth when needed," Naruto replied with a grin. "Yuna was far cuter when not annoyed by a messy diaper too, and your sensei's traps were easily spotted by the byakugan."

"How did you get cleared for B- and A-rank missions, or taking so many C-rank missions?" Neji asked, sounding more annoyed than usual. "We've only completed eleven."

"We had multiple C-ranks go bad," Tenten answered, skipping that at least one B-rank should be for the large-scale zombie invasion. "And our sensei both like doubling or tripling up on missions when possible."

"We got credit for them examining records in the satellite villages when all we were there for was training chakra control," Hinata added. "Plus other things in the middle while doing both of those."

"Ah. Trivial out-of-village missions, glorified D-ranks due to the travel time. Nevermind."

"What the hell is a jinchuriki?" Kiba asked.

Kabuto shrugged. "That wasn't actually explained, just stated as a known detail outside of the village."

"A jinchuriki is a human with one of the nine tailed beasts sealed within them," Naruto answered. "Able to call upon the beast's power to varying degrees and generally having far above average chakra reserves due to the beast's chakra mixing with their own."

"...may I ask how you know that, or where I should visit to learn more?"

"I've been given a full explanation by different people...at least four times now? Knowing what those who heard I was a jinchuriki but missed the decoy part might expect is useful. Don't know if there are any good places for anyone below jounin to learn more about them though."

"Ah. Thank you anyway." He hit the card with another pulse of chakra to 'clear' it by masking it for others again before flipping through and pulling another one out. "How about something less local?" A pulse of chakra revealed the information on this card. "There are seven other villages that sent potential participants to the exam. Suna and Konoha always heavily participate in each others' exams, but we've also got Ame with a number of teams. Kusa and Taki are smaller allies that each sent a couple of teams each this time, and Kiri regularly sends a team to every exam to gauge the strength of other villages, but the real surprises are Kumo and Oto. This is the first time in decades that Kumo has sent teams to a Konoha exam and Oto is a new village participating for the first time. They're especially unimportant given the other participants this year."

It was obvious that others were listening in because the Oto team reacted to that. They suddenly darted across the room, Zaku Abumi jumping up in the air and throwing kunai in Kabuto's direction to get him to separate from the others while Dosu Kinuta moved in for an attack. Except that he had to come to a halt early when Tenten suddenly appeared in front of him with a broom aimed at his head. Hinata had pulled her own broom on Kin Tsuchi, stopping her from completing a genjutsu she'd been preparing, and Naruto was behind Zaku with a feather duster when he landed.

Notably, Zaku had scoffed upon realizing that it was a feather duster until he moved and felt it starting to cut into his neck.

"So are you trying to get kicked out before the exams even start properly?" Tenten asked Dosu. "Because that certainly wouldn't make your village look any more significant than the speck it seems like right now."

More might have been said, but Hoshi distracted everyone by shapeshifting to his fox-boy form and pulling the kunai out of the floor. He followed this up with a minor earth jutsu to fix the holes in the floor tiles.

"Dude," Kiba whined. "Since when can Hoshi do that? And where did the dress come from?"

"I've been able to do this for a while," Hoshi replied as he looked over the kunai. "But I couldn't really do it in public until I got clothing that could change with me because human modesty is annoying."

"Dammit. And you just used a jutsu too, didn't you?"

"One of many I know, yes."

"Akamaru and I are so far behind."

A group of shinobi body-flickered into the room from a few points a moment later, forming a group at the front of the room. Included was Ibiki, who hollered. "Enough! Team Yurei, thank you for stopping things and cleaning up the mess, but please stand down. Team Dosu, consider yourself warned that any more attacks will get you ejected immediately. From this point forward there will be no fighting without my express permission. Gather up in your teams and come get your assigned seats."

It appeared that the genjutsu downstairs had whittled down the competition a bit, and each team was expectedly split up around the room. The six chunin plants were equally spaced throughout the rest of them. Hoshi had changed back to his fox form and sat down next to Naruto's seat and Kankuro had slipped his puppet in with the 'proctors' without most people noticing. Tests and pencils were handed out, the papers face down, and the rules were explained. They'd get an hour to answer ten questions, nine of which were on the papers. Fifteen minutes before the end they'd be given the tenth question, though it being a choice wasn't mentioned. The two point deduction per caught cheating incident, meaning that you'd only be guaranteed a zero after being caught five times, should have been a massive red flag that this wasn't a normal test.

To Naruto, it looked like a number of those in the room had missed it.

The timer was started and they were permitted to flip their papers over, at which point most of the genin in the room stared at the problems with growing apprehension as they realized how difficult they were, and the chunin plants started 'carefully' working their way through them. Sakura also started working her way through them without needing to cheat at all, but most of the rest of the room was obviously less certain about what to do.

Naruto used a little chakra to pulverize the tip of his pencil enough to get some 'dust' that he then abused a cleaning jutsu to spread over his paper to fill in his name and all nine answers, plus a little extra for the tenth. Five seconds later he flipped the paper back over and leaned back in his chair. Hinata and Tenten had done the same basic trick, though Hinata had pulled it off faster than he had and Tenten had taken an additional two seconds. Neither had included the extra blurb in the tenth question slot.

Doing your cheating before the exam where the point was to not get caught cheating took all the pressure out of it. Of course, there were other considerations, like needing to ensure that Karin's team moved on...

Karin glared at the list of questions, trying to decide which couple would be the easiest to work her way through. Shigeri had already signaled that she was on her own for this instead of willing to link her in with his spying jutsu. The asshole. Still, if she was right then the first nine questions were almost certainly going to be meaningless, but she wasn't confident enough in that assessment to just skip working one or two out.

She'd just decided to work on problem three when a line of...dirt? Well, dust really. It flowed up and over the edge of the desk next to her paper and started writing out the answer to problem one. Blinking, she glanced over at the blond in the maid outfit, with an Uzushio forehead protector tied to one arm and whose chakra was moving the dirt. He had one of the strongest and nicest-feeling chakras in the room, but it made her feel more like she was 'home' than anything else.

Which meant that he probably was an Uzumaki, as her mother had always said that being around Uzumaki had made her feel like she was home. Not that it explained why his chakra was green instead of the normal blue, unless that was some kind of trick her sensory abilities were playing on her to indicate that he was family?

Except that despite all of that there was no reason for him to be helping a kunoichi from another village that hadn't even been permitted to keep a clan name. Karin frowned at that, unsure as to what his game was. Unless he was able to sense her chakra and recognized her as an Uzumaki as well?

The dirt shifted, and she blinked as she read the new words spelled out.

Know you're not being treated well, worked with Hokage on a plan to get you out based on clan privilege. Will find you in the forest, but you have to believably pass this first.

Okay, that seemed to be in reaction to her frowning, and mentioning clan privilege meant that he probably had realized that she was an Uzumaki, yet there was no obvious way for him to know that she'd frowned. But he was right about Kusa not treating her well...but what forest was he talking about?

She'd likely find out eventually, so she nodded fractionally and the dirt went back to the answer for problem one.

Watching the various ways people eventually started to cheat was honestly interesting to Naruto, even as he'd helped Karin do so. Gaara's sand eye thing was weird, Neji just used his byakugan before using pulses of chakra down a couple of ninja-wire lines to relay information to Lee and Sachie, and Kankuro had taken that to a different level and just used chakra threads to control Temari's pencil after his puppet pretending to be a proctor relayed information in a trip to the restroom. Karin's teammates were using a communication jutsu that had involved touching to form the link while obviously excluding her and one of them had a chakra mirror that only they could see properly, or at least that was what it seemed like.

Closer to home again, Akamaru was reading papers and feeding the information to Kiba. Ino had taken over Sakura to read her answers before returning to her own body and then taking over Ami to fill things in for her. Shino had gathered information with his insects, passed through Shikamaru and to Rio thanks to shadow manipulation connecting them. Four different teams had pre-deployed mirrors on the ceiling while everyone was finding their seats and were using them in various ways with a couple of others taking advantage of them by chance. One group had taken over a set after the original team that had placed them were caught cheating too many times.

A number of other teams had been sent out for a member being caught too many times as well, each one of those ratcheting up the pressure on the others further...and a number of the Konoha shinobi were very obviously confused about Team Yurei being completely relaxed. Even the proctors and chunin plants didn't seem to know what to think about that as the three sat there.

"Ibiki is going to tear them apart mentally," Anko said as they waited to find out how their teams handled the first stage. She'd only updated a couple of bets with the whole byakugan revelation, never having doubted that at least one of their three was going to get promoted. More than one was likely, unless something put them up against each other should a preliminary round be needed after the second stage.

"That's his job," Kurenai said, shaking her head. "I've learned far more about him than I expected to while working with you."

"I still can't believe that your three are dressed as maids," Asuma said, shaking his head. "What in the world inspired that?"

"Stumbling upon a pile of cleaning jutsu," Anko replied, grinning. "Essentially worthless to the village on paper."

"So they can actually function as maids?" Shito asked. The rotund Akimichi had been tapped for the tradition-trumps-all rookie and kunoichi of the year plus dead last team in the January graduation cycle.

Breaking up the generation's Ino-Shika-Cho trio had caused a lot of complaints, but that was considered far less important of a tradition and they could always be paired up as chunin.

"They freaked me and my team out by secretly changing diapers," Tekuno retorted. "And probably cleaning up after the tyke too, there were never as many messes as we really should've expected until after the diaper changing stopped. As much as I hate to admit it, from what I've seen they're probably the most ready for promotion of the lot, though if any of mine get promoted it'll almost certainly be Shikamaru. Shino's working on not being as insect-focused as he started out and Rio spent most of the last week trying to figure out what might impress Naruto if she ran into him."

Gai sighed. "Unfortunately, I can't disagree that Team Yurei has the best shot at promotion. None of my three are suited for leadership roles right now. Neji frequently allows his hatred of the main branch to cloud his judgment and Lee needs more time to come into his own. Sachie is probably the most likely to pass of the three, but hasn't learned to control her fear responses well enough."

"My three are doing better than I personally expected," Shito said. "And they've adapted to their unfortunate changes faster than expected after I accidentally turned on equipment in that lab and got them doused with serum. Ami's still lagging behind the other two, but not nearly as badly as I'd have expected."

"Why were they in a position to get doused anyway?" Kurenai asked. "The reports didn't mention that detail, just that you'd taken full responsibility and thus it shouldn't count against promotion for them."

"I, er, couldn't fit through the door to enter the chamber and there were various markings in there. So I asked the three of them to document the chamber while I examined the equipment outside of it. Still don't know what I did to turn things on, though I think I had to have bumped a loose cable as I didn't touch the controls themselves, but they got locked in and doused with the serum when the system activated. Ami even asked about ways to secure the door and I dismissed it as not needed since everything was powered down. She dropped a kunai into the frame anyway, which made getting them out easier even if it wasn't enough to hold the door open."

"So yeah," Asuma said, shaking his head. "At least there's more tactical thinking going on there than with my three. Kiba wants to lead the pack without trying to understand why his attitude annoys Sakura or that he needs to take the opinions of his teammates into account, Choji has just been lost after spending a couple of years expecting to be on an Ino-Shika-Cho team, and Sakura herself is scarily book smart but hasn't developed that into field smarts. She also honestly doesn't have the chakra reserves to handle most chunin work yet, but she'll probably be good on that front next year. I'm hoping that they wake up a bit after this experience."

Naruto kept himself from reacting as Ibiki explained that to fail the tenth question meant permanently being barred from all future chunin exams. While that was technically possible for Konoha teams on the surface, anyone who had time to think about it would realize that it was completely absurd. But the point was that they weren't being given time to think about it, and the two teams of chunin plants that most of the room had cheated off of 'giving up' didn't help matters.

He felt bad for Shikamaru and Shino when Rio gave into the pressure and bowed out, taking them with her. Choji followed, taking Kiba and Sakura with him, but Sakura looked relieved that she hadn't been the one to make that decision for their team. Sachie looked like she wanted to bow out, but had gotten 'zapped' by Neji via the ninja wire still connecting them when she'd started to make the move to do so. He'd probably figured out what was actually happening while she hadn't.

It seemed like there were still far too many teams for Ibiki when he finally gave in and told them that they'd all passed, followed by an explanation of the importance of gathering and keeping intelligence safe that included revealing the scars on his head.

"Now then," he said as he covered his scars again. "Uzumaki! I suspect that you know where the next stage is being held, and the proctor for it is running late. Care to tell us?"

"Training ground forty-four has been reserved for the chunin exams over the next week for three months now," Naruto answered. "So presumably that's our next destination."

"Not bad. Now then..."

The man might have continued had another shinobi not tried to knock the door off of its hinges as they barreled into the room.

"You're late," Ibiki noted.

"I ended up helping keep a couple of Taki's idiots from killing their teammate," the shinobi, who Naruto now recognized as the second exam proctor Koichi Toma, replied. "For some reason the two blamed her for not seeing through their attempt to ditch her or something like that. Their sensei wasn't pleased either."

"...ah. Those two, the only ones to intentionally attempt to enter without their full team in the past three years or so, instead of just not realizing that they had to all show up at the same time."

"Yep." Toma spun to look at the room, frowning as he did so. "Not bad, but we'll definitely need to whittle them down further. Luckily the next stage will get them down by at least half." Nodding, he stood up a little straighter. "Now then, all of you have just over an hour to make it to training ground forty-four, locally known as the Forest of Death. If you aren't ready for up to a week in the forest then that's on you."

"Not going to tell the visitors how to find our training grounds by numbers?" Naruto asked.

"Awfully sporting of you, but if they can't find and read a map then I don't know how they made it here in the first place. Dismissed!"

A quick communication-jutsu message to a group of clones had Team Yurei vanishing right out of their seats thanks to summoning.

Ibiki had watched from another room as Team Yurei had spotted Team Dosu's attack and intercepted it, finding himself impressed with their reflexes yet somewhat disappointed in their speed for a team working with Anko. Then again, the maid outfits seemed like something she'd have pushed on them and the heels included weren't exactly great for movement when combined with weights like the three were obviously wearing. A subtle training exercise, perhaps?

Then he'd made his entrance, gotten everything started, and ignored details a civilian wouldn't be expected to notice. Like there suddenly being an extra proctor and a distinct lack of puppet on the puppeteer's back. Simple stuff. Explain the rules for the decoy questions, which for anyone who knew this year's plan for the tenth question could be skipped entirely, and then get them started.

In theory, the plan was to ramp up the pressure in various ways over the next forty-five minutes, to get more and more panicked cheating attempts. But Team Yurei had used a subtle but incredibly effective jutsu to fill out their entire sheets in seconds and flip them over. Not a care in the world. Which almost certainly meant that security around the exam had been breached and they'd grabbed the answers beforehand.

He fully approved, even if he had no clue how they'd done it. Which just improved his opinion of them, really, while also making him want to redo a dozen security procedures.

Their little disappearing trick when dismissed was interesting, because a number of those in the room had definitely noticed that it wasn't a body flicker. One moment they'd been there, and over the range of around three quarters of a second all three shinobi and the fox had just vanished. Those personal summoning contracts Naruto had access to definitely came in handy for confusing the crap out of people, though how the timing had been managed was a good question.

Curious about if the actual answers had been grabbed ahead of time or not, Ibiki grabbed Naruto's paper and flipped it over to skim the answers. All nine of the 'perfect' answers, but number ten had been filled in as well.

Chunin plants are less likely to be spotted immediately if their public info tied to the provided registration numbers doesn't tell you that they're chunin.

That...was an absolutely atrocious oversight on their part. False registration numbers tied to false genin records should have been used instead.