Fallen (ItachixOC)

Chapter Seven

第七章

"Welcome to the chūnin exams. I am Chatan Aika and this is the first test. As with other exams, up until the last test, everything is done in teams. If one of you fails, you all fail, as it would be in a real mission. Now then, your task is simple. Each team will be given a description of a person they need to follow and gather information on. They need to do so without getting caught, if you do get caught, you fail. You will follow this person around for one whole day, when the day is up, you will return here and report all the information you have gained," the Iwagakure kunoichi explained with a smirk on her red-painted lips.

"When you arrived and signed in, you should have gotten a number from one to thirty for your teams. I will call your teams' number and you are to come up and get the description of the person you are to follow from me. Once everyone has their target, I will give you five minutes of planning before beginning the test. Now then, team one, come up here," she ordered and a group of Kumogakure ninja walked up to her.

As they watched people get called up, Team 4 of Konohagakure sat in their chairs, sizing up their opponents. They hadn't spoken since they arrived in the testing room, but there was unspoken happiness in the group that they had forced Tsuneo to bring his brother Arihiro to teach them information gathering. The last year had been spent studying the art of information gathering, with some time for missions and other training in-between. Takeo, out of the group, was feeling the most fulfilled as he had started training to become a medic-nin and currently knows the basics of medical ninjutsu.

"OK, last but not least, Team Thirty," Aika called out, bringing Team 4 of Konohagakure out of their thoughts. The trio walked up to the jōnin of Iwagakure, confidence radiating off them, making the other genins in the room wary of their presence. "Konoha genin hmm? The only one for this round of exams. You have to find this woman and gather all the information you can about her. Like with all the other targets, she's a chūnin," Aika explained, holding up a photo of a fairly generic-looking woman with olive skin, black hair, and black eyes. "Remember, failure to gather enough information, to keep track of your target, or to remain hidden means instant disqualification, and a one-way ticket back to the Leaf."

"We understand," Miyako replied and the woman nodded before gesturing for the genins, now dubbed Team Thirty, to leave.

The trio headed to a corner to plan their approach on the mission. They had five minutes to get a basic plan going, and it was those five minutes that would mean passing or failing the test. The trio knew they had a disadvantage, as Aika said, they were the only team of Konoha-nin in the chūnin exams, most were from Iwagakure with some from Sunagakure, Amegakure, and Kumogakure. In other words, the trio stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other teams, made har5der by the fact that they were younger than the rest (Miyako being nine whilst her teammates were turning ten later in the year).

"OK, we can assume that the chūnin's are aware they are being used in the exams, meaning they will be more aware than otherwise. However, we can also assume that they don't know who is following them, besides them being genins. Meaning we have an advantage of hiding in plain sight," Miyako stated and her teammates nodded. "First thing first, we need to find our target and learn her basic mannerisms. Then we split up, switching over whose watching our target every couple of hours from afar, and who's going to be in plain sight. Our age also comes as an advantage, they said nothing about us hiding our forehead protectors, nor did they say anything about us pretending to be local academy students. In other words, we can talk to our target, but they can't know that we are genins following them."

Takeo and Hisoka agreed to Miyako's plan, just as Aika declared the start of the exam.

目

Twenty-four hours later, Team Thirty arrived at the testing room with the other genins. They noticed right off the bat that only twenty teams were left, cutting the total participants down from ninety to sixty. The odd was getting more and more into Team Thirty's favour.