Chapter 110 - Arc 7 - We're Ready Kakashi, The Chunin Exams Start Now! - Special Question?

There's a scene at the end of this that needed to be in past tense. I definitely noticed I haven't written past tense in years. Jeez.
Also emotional, so you know. Expect that.

Have fun ya'll, slightly longer chapter than normal.

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Sasuke’s on his own, the poor guy, but his Sharingan is active so she’s pretty sure he’s figured something out. She can’t see him from her position but she could see him as Ino and those eyes were blazing. It’s times like these that she can’t help but feel annoyed she never developed a silent communication method besides hand signs. She trusts Sasuke to figure something out regardless of her own helplessness, but it really sucks leaving her own teammate up to chance when she’s even ensured that Hinata has full marks by slapping a sheet of the right answers right next to her. Assuming that Sasuke’s been caught for cheating but managed to get all the answers with his Sharingan, she can deduce they’re getting eight points from him.

Naruto and her have twenty points - after being returned to her body and allowed to do her own test - and Ino’s got eight, she’s pretty happy with this outcome so far. She gently slides her test over a little when she notices a flying eyeball of sandy origin next to her. Why not help Gaara? Gaara’s great. She likes Gaara a lot, and she wasn’t informed of this, possibly not really a mission, so she can take a detour.

So that’s ten points for his team too, well, probably, they might count the obvious floating sand eye as two negative points which’d leave him at eight too.

She imagines he has a way to give the others her answers too, so they probably have a passing score from her alone. Ino likely memorized her answers and gave them to her teammates with her jutsu, though Shikamaru probably didn’t need her help. There’s a bug from Shino on her shoulder which she presumes is helping Hinata’s team even if Hinata didn’t just straight copy off Naruto’s page. So all in all she’s directly responsible for four teams passing. She feels pretty good about herself. She was kinda worried about how to get the info to Kiba and Shino but this just works. She needs to meet with Shino sometime, she’s pretty sure the boy in the gray coat is just the right amount of sociality to be her friend. He looks very aloof, and she likes that in a playmate.

The only problem is if Ibiki considers Naruto as having cheated for getting Ino’s test, but that’s pretty unlikely. It’s not his fault she did something, and that’d be deducting four points for the same act across the board which is unlikely as well. She feels pretty good, even as she watches countless people disappear after having been called out, she’s pretty sure they have this. They just need to sit here and not mess anything up. Which sucks because she hates waiting. She’s always been able to pull out a game system during times like this but she’s pretty sure pulling out a game system would deduct two points needlessly and Sasuke might need those damn points.

Jeez, she wishes she knew the criteria for passing and didn’t have to work on assumptions. How many do they need, and how well is Sasuke doing? She could be playing her damn switch right now! Actually, why didn’t she just add them all on a platform and share the answers between them all like that? Each team has someone who can transmit messages and losing a couple points per team would have been fine.

Hindsight damn-it!

Tick, tick, tick, tick-

“Alright!” Ibiki’s voice catches her off guard, and she finds herself jumping in place. “It’s time for the special question!” Sakura looks around and finds that almost half of all participants have disappeared which boggles her mind and puts this into perspective. They’re a lot readier than she thought they were. Staring out at all the empty seats and blinking at just how little there is compared to when they start is truly awe inspiring. With just a few simple rules Ibiki’s managed to eliminate more from this test than her sword ever could. It looks barren, like a ghost town, and that makes her gulp. Is she too confident? Probably not but like, what if everything is a trick question? She quickly gives her test a look over and hopes she hasn’t screwed everything. “But before that, I’m going to add some rules for the extra question.”

“Let me explain, these are the hopeless rules!” Ibiki announces while taking a step towards them. “First you will all have to choose whether you even take this question.”

“Choose? What happens if we don’t take the extra question!?” Is that Temari shouting? Woah, she didn’t take her for the type. She’s always so quiet when they’re together with Gaara. Her glance hits the older blonde, and Temari shoots her a look of confidence. She can tell she’s a lot older in a setting like this. Back at her village and on the road, Temari looked more mature but that could have been make-up or stature or even just the confidence in her smile. She holds herself well, and those spiky pigtails serve to make her look chaotically cute, which is something she can get behind. It’s kind of the look she’s going for, albeit they’re using different methods.

Seeing her in a school environment allows her to link up familiarity with what’s in front of her. She spent many years as the underclassman in school, she even did it recently with her return back to education to grind her mental stats. The way Temari sits herself gives her the same vibe upperclassmen always give. She’s supposed to be here, she knows she’ll pass, and she’s better than her. Okay, not every upperclassman looks like that, but it’s still very discernable and Sakura appreciates the reference to frame her understanding of how she should view Temari.

“You will be sent home with your team.” Ibiki interrupts her observation with a coarse statement. He focuses his gaze on Temari, making the older girl shake. Unfortunately it seems a lot of her confidence is experience based, not true grit, which is a problem when someone like Ibiki has you. “The final question is worth ten points, and is infinitely harder than the other questions you have taken. Should you choose not to take it, its full score will be deducted from your total, since no team can pass with a team member who scores zero, you’ll fail them.”

“But that means every team can have sixty points, that totally throws off the math you jerk!” Sakura wonders who shouted, only to realize it’s her. She leans into her own mistake and glares Ibiki down. How is she supposed to ensure everyone passes with a curveball like that? This wasn’t a secret mission at all was it, she just randomly did something from clues given to her accidentally. Damn-it Kakashi! She knew his underneath the underneath crap was stupid!

“The points of this segment are going to be used in the second test, which means getting those questions right or wrong has nothing to do with whether you pass, simply how much advantage you have going forward. The only question that matters is this one.” She blinks at that, Ibiki’s a dick… She grudgingly accepts that new fact in her life with a mournful pout. At least she gave the teams an advantage, they’ll need it as rookies. She still helped them, and that’s all that matters! She’s going to consider this an extremely irritating win.

“You can safely push those papers to the side now, proctors will come along and collect them for you so we can get test two ready.” An eerie silence washes over them as proctor’s do just that.

“Should you choose not to take the final question, your points will be distributed among the other contestants from your village. This ensures you have not wasted your time should you decide to quit now.” There’s a series of gasps, but Sakura’s too busy paying attention to him to look elsewhere. She’s rapidly growing ire towards the man.

“This is important so your village cannot shame you for choosing the smart way out.” He raises his head a little, his piercing eyes trailing over every Genin in attendance. “For if you choose to take the special question and are unable to answer it correctly, you will have to relinquish your right to take the exam ever again!” He slams his fist against the chalkboard behind him, and they all watch as it shakes in place from the impact.

“As you may know, this exam is to gain the attention of your respective higher ups, and prove you are ready for advancement. Your career will be forever crippled, and even should you eventually be promoted, you will be set back years, unable to ever catch up! This isn’t just a personal decision, it’s a tactical decision that you must make. Think about the questions up to this point, understand that there will be no cheating allowed here, do you honestly believe you are ready!? If there is even one member of your team that you are not sure will succeed, do them a favor and stand up now. I will not judge you for doing what is right by your friends and comrades.”

Well, shit. Her thoughts wander quickly at that, to the first time she heard that sentence. It was a very different setting, but the emotional tension in the air was pretty similar. It’s not a good memory… Damn-it Tsume, her eyes are watering during the exams, Ibiki’s gonna think it’s because of him!

Despite trying to fight it back, she can’t help the way her mind wanders directly into the memory like it’s a coming storm.

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It was some time ago. The moon was high in the sky, and she couldn’t see it through all the brimming clouds up overhead. Their downpour felt familiar, correct, she would even say that it made things better for the place she was in.. The dirt was softened by the water, and the drip on her face made it easier to ignore the burning in her eyes and focus on the task at hand. The dirt flowing from her spade to the ground beside her every other second wasn’t of any importance to her, just an obstacle in the way easily discarded like everything else.

She’d thought maybe she could do something useful, Tsume had filled her head with confidence, and here she was. A sniffle escaped her, but she shook her head and pretended it didn’t happen. The crunch beneath her fit her feeling perfectly, and the way it crumbled with every stab into the ground below helped to place her back in the cold harsh reality that she was useless again, and something suffered for it. “What are you doing?” Her gaze jumped up, but what she found wasn’t something surprising to her. The strong woman glaring at her from just a few feet away felt at place, like she belonged there judging her. She couldn’t say when the ragged haired clan head got there, she hadn’t been paying attention to anything, but it made perfect sense that she would be there once her emotional brain shut down and her analytics were all that was left. The entire reason she was digging a hole was to bury a corpse from Tsume’s clan, it’d be weird if she wasn’t here.

“What does it look like?” She bit back a snarky remark, it wasn’t the time, and they were both grieving. She knew when she was just being mean for no reason, no matter how much her heart ached.

“Like you’re an idiot.” The huff from the woman felt right, because she deserved it, because -

“I know.” Sakura grumbled, picking up a little more dirt with her shovel. “I tried and I, I’m sorry.”

“We didn’t expect you to succeed on the first try.” The words sting. She did. She expected to succeed on the first try because she had to. How was she supposed to try again when one failure made the world crumble away to dust, and her heart shifted into a mist that flew from her lungs with every breath.

“Kamo, he was very cute.” She sniffled, “getting to know him over the last two weeks… We should have chosen something random. It worked on the squirrels, maybe it was that I didn’t know them so maybe that’s the key.”

“Squirrels are a lot dumber, Sakura.” The older woman, Tsume, approached her, and ripped the shovel from her hands. She tried to hold onto it, and found herself on her ass in the dirt, the shiny but dirty metal deflecting water away from the woman now holding it over her head like an umbrella. “Go get another shovel, you’re an idiot for doing this alone. No one does that.”

“His master’s dead, who else would do it?” She bit her tongue mid sentence, stopping her from saying something worse. Her glare hit the older woman with all the stray force she could manage, but Tsume shrugged it off. Her red eyes are normally considered intimidating in the darkness of night, they stand out as a glowing beacon in the harsh world that threatens so much, Tsume couldn't care less. All Sakura saw looking back at her was pity.

“You tried something, you failed, you’ll try again later.” Kiba’s mom grunted, picking up much more dirt than Sakura was and throwing it to the side in an instant. Faster, stronger, more experienced. That last one caused a hitch in Sakura’s breath. How many other graves has this woman had to dig over the years? No one did this? She got the feeling that was a lie. No one else is here, and Sakura wouldn’t be here to help normally.

How many times had she done it alone? How dare she criticize her?

But she said none of that, they were both grieving. She got up, and started walking away.

“No one blames you, Sakura.” Tsume grunted, another dirt pile hitting the side.

“I blame me.” She spun around on her feet, glaring daggers at the older woman with fire in her already red eyes, she could feel her blood boiling, her heart beat in her ears, her gaze hurt so much. Everything stung in the rainy night. “He put his trust in me and I failed him. Fierro did it with human beings, if I can’t do it with a dog! That’s…” Her voice cracked harshly, and she found the grieving woman just looked at her with pity, sparing a moment’s glance from the dirt. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You tried to do something for someone else before you were ready. I will not judge you for doing what is right by your friends and comrades. I will judge you for whimpering like a mutt. Get up and try again next week after more practice.” With a grunt, the older woman is back at the dirt, “Kierro’s expected to die soon, we’ll start getting you used to him tomorrow after classes.”

“Can we do someone I don’t know?” The whimpering mutt whimpered.

“We talked about this, you can’t be sure if they have their personality if you do not know them. If you want to practice like that, go back to the squirrels, I won’t condone waste.” Sakura’s answer was given, and she left to go get the shovel.

She’d be back here next week, and the week after, and the week after that.