Songs For The Heartbroken: That's What You Get

Chapter 11

All twenty teams lined up in outside Konoha's T&I building. Its shadow loomed over us in the early morning as silence reigned and a nervous sense of dread settled over that year's chunin hopefuls. Only Konoha Genin could be found among the lines due to the recent end of the war and, as far as I could see, other than my team mates, there were only two familiar faces.

Four rows to my left stood Hana with her team. There was nothing that caught my attention about them other than Hana herself was an Inuzuka and her sensei an Aburame. I knew better than to underestimate her team though, I'd seen my friend training with the other two on various occasions, and was well aware of the threat they could pose.

To my right, about six teams away, stood Itachi with his own three man cell. I'd never met his team, but I could easily tell who the new member out of the two was. There was a sense of uneasiness about the pre teen that neither Itachi nor the kunoichi of the group had. Both of them stood with the poise and calm of a shinobi who had experienced fieldwork, while the new kid seemed to be having a hard time suppressing his nerves.

Behind me, my team stood every bit as still as I did, scanning the other teams, trying to figure out which team would threaten us the most. I'd already told them to be weary of Hana and Itachi's teams. Even if the only other Uchiha had the handicap of a new untrained comrade, underestimating them would be a grave mistake; one that could cost us our promotion.

Not that the other teams mattered on this first instance of the exam. It was common knowledge that the fighting belonged in the second and third instances of the chunin exams, and that the first was usually about the team's ability to work under pressure and making decisions on the spot. And now we stood there, facing the heads of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation department. It was meant to be an intimidation technique, I knew that, but for the life of me I couldn't bring myself to be completely at ease in the presence of those two. If anyone ever said Morino Ibiki and Yamanaka Inoichi weren't at least a bit scary, they were either insane or very, very stupid.

"Okay newbies, here's how things are gonna go:" started Ibiki with the deepest, most authoritative voice I'd ever heard. "You gakis are going into the T&I building and retrieving a scroll with your team's number on it." Every genin on the premises were giving him his undivided attention, and when he made sure of that, he continued. "Whichever fails to bring back the scroll within the next two hours is out of the chunin exams."

The task sounded fairly easy: go in, get the scroll, and get out. In fact, it seemed way too easy, no mentions of fighting or hints of there being something wrong had been made; which to me, was what had raised all of the red flags in my head. A few excited whispers could be heard among the lines of waiting genin, who apparently hadn't thought anything was amiss.

Behind me, my team mates were as silent as I was; we had been on the receiving end of Akira-sensei's teachings for too long to believe there wasn't more to the exam than what met the eye. We stood silent, waiting for the proctors to call the number of our team. It had been surprising that they'd decided to make the teams go one at a time. In general, the first and second instances were taken by the entire body of chunin hopefuls, so when they told us we would be examined separately; I decided something was definitely up. They wouldn't have called in the teams one by one if there wasn't something specific they were hoping to get out of them.

We were the eighth team, and if the faces of the people that went before us was anything to go by, then there was a lot more to the exam than what we had expected. Hana's team, I noticed, had been one of the few to pass the first instance, and a surge of pride overcame me. that was my friend, my sister who had got through the first part of the chunin exams when a lot of other people hadn't. If they had done it, so would we. I wasn't about to get left behind, and neither were Hota and Taka.