Ninja's Life Remake

Preliminaries?

Bright and early everyone stood in the middle of the training arena. Seven teams stood in single file lines, only one team had a row of four. Team Seven. Twenty-five students stood standing cut and bruised worn out and wobbly. But everyone was either pleased or excited that they had finally passed the second exam.

As soon as team seven met up for the morning Kira couldn't help notice that Sasuke would every now and then glare over at Gaara's team. She didn't know what was going on with them, but she was more than surprised when she saw Gaara looked perfectly fine. There was nothing wrong with him, no scratches, no bruises, heck no injuries at all!

She was so surprised that she couldn't help but stare. Her team had a day to rest and they still were littered with cuts and bruises. Heck, her face still felt inflamed from Zaku. A dark black and blue bruise spread across her jaw on the left side to her eye. After this test she needed to go see a dentist.

Maybe she'll start wearing a mask like her brother. It did help protect him when it came to attacks to the face.

"Congratulations to you all on passing the second exam!" Anko called happily though Kira could hear that she wanted to have the remaining students to be in the single digits.

The proctors stood in the front staring down at their students.

"Sasuke's team made it!" Ino squealed happily, she was so happy that Sasuke made it to the final part of the exam.

"Hey! Check it out! Old man Hokage, Master Iruka, Master Kakshi, and even that Mega Brows guy are all gathered together! It's like a dream team!" Kira stood at the end of the line and let out a chocked laugh at the idea of her brother and Guy sensei being a dream team. She could just picture them both wearing the same bright green outfit and Kakashi acting just like Guy.

Sasuke reached up touching his mark, the bite throbbed. "I've got a bad feeling about this..." he muttered to himself.

"Now Lord Hokage himself will explain about the third exam. Listen up and take every word he says to heart!" Anko growled. No one was to disrespect the Hokage and everyone would do as she says or pay for their actions. "They're all yours, my lord."

"Very well." Lord Hokage looked over every student. "The third examination is about to commence. But before I go into specifics of how it will be conducted let me make one thing perfectly clear. It pertains to the underlying purpose of the exam."

Most stood staring at the Hokage confused not sure what he meant. "Why do you suppose an examination of this mature is being jointly conducted by all of the nations in our mutual alliance?" The Hokage was fingering his hat as he spoke. Still he saw nothing but confusion on most of the kid's faces. "To promote friendship among allied nations and raise the level and standards in the art of the shinobi."

"Friendship?" someone muttered confused.

"Be very clear about what those fine sounding phrases actually mean. This series of so called examinations is, in fact a war in miniature between of our lands."

War?! Sakura and Kira glance at one another nervously. War? Beside us you could hear Tenten mutter to herself. "Wh-what do you mean?" she currently had a cold sweat start to drip.

"If you were to study our recent history and consult a map it would swiftly become apparent that our alliance is in face a temporary and mutually beneficial agreement between groups of geographically contiguous lands whose previous existence was one of continual strife. Constantly jockeying against one another, openly and in secret, for power and the control of resources that were perpetually depleted almost to exhaustion in the struggle. Until a better way was devised. The way of the chunin journeyman ninja selection examination."