The Fox's Third Flash of Hope

Chapter 23

And this story has reached 1k reads O.O

Thank you again to everyone who has read all 25 parts that came before this and I hope you'll keep reading until at least Kansen emotionally breaks down.........which probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.

And, if you remember, this is the first chapter of Chunin Exams. I remodeled about half of it with a bunch of ideas of my own. Hopefully you enjoy.

The building was pretty plainly built, being just a relatively small, windowless, multistory, box shaped construction. Kansen, Niju, and Penami had followed the address on the paper and now stopped in front of the unadorned double doors. On their paper it had said room 8. The doors opened to a long hallway of doors with a staircase leading up at the far end. Five doors on either side, numbered one to ten. The number eight was clearly etched next to one of them.

"That wasn't that hard," Niju said.

"Now let's just go in," Kansen walked towards the wooden entryway to their test location. A scanner was embedded in the wall right under the number plate. The redhead aligned the bar code on her copy of the information sheet her sensei's had given her with the little red beam. The light turned green, and the door slid open to the side.

"Fancy," Penami remarked as the three stepped inside, the gate sliding closed behind them. A thick, or at least thick looking, sheet of paper covered the entire 3 x 3 meter area of floor space, black ink markings and hieroglyphics scattered across the surface. It seemed to be a scroll. A black plasma screen was attached to the wall directly across from the door to the small room that was just enough to fit a team of three with each managing just barely to maintain their personal space bubble.

Kansen checked her wristwatch. 8:54 a.m. The test supposedly started at 9 o' clock sharp. Wouldn't be long now.

A few minutes later, right as the seconds display on her watch went from 59 to 00, the display monitor flickered into life and showed a picture of the current Hokage. The Uchiha looked sufficiently annoyed at having to explain the exam rules, but it was her job, after all.

"If you read the information sheet you'll know a bit of this already, but my advisers all tell me to say it again all the same. Thanks to changes suggested and instituted by the Seventh Hokage a few years ago, the written test was abolished, so now the Chunin Exam consists of only the survival and tournament sections. The tournament section remains relatively unchanged, but to all those who are taking the exams for the first time, I assure you, the difficulty of the survival test has been increased drastically. I will now explain the rules, which were not written on your information sheet. Listen well, because right after I'm finished explaining the exams will start. No questions will be answered. Or heard, for that matter."

The team of three genin unconsciously stood up straighter.

"The objective is to get all five pieces of the key to the finish point. Having all five, and only after acquiring all five, will you be counted as having passed this segment. The time limit is five days. How you survive those days is up to you. Here are pictures of the five items you must obtain by defeating other teams. Those teams may be fellow Leaf shinobi, or they might be from one of the five other hidden villages participating in this Chunin Exam."

Five images appeared around the edges of the screen. Judging by their metallic gray sheen, they were all made of silver. There was a round sphere, a cylindrical bar, a cube, and two rings of seemingly different size. But that might just be the test administrators trying to confuse them by making them think that the two rings had different dimensions.

"I'll be nice and tell you this," the Hokage said after a few seconds to let the test takers look over their items. "The rings are different sizes. And yes, in case you can't tell, they're made of pure silver. Each of you will be starting with a different object than four other teams. Slide the TV screen up and you will see what it is," he paused, allowing the participants to reveal what they were in charge of. Some found the sphere in the cubic hollow behind the screen, some discovered the rod, and others found one of the two rings.