Painless (A Naruto Fanfiction) [Completed]

Chapter Four: Genjutsu Greeting

If the situation had been as it should have been, Lee would already be back on his feet and Neji wouldn’t have been doing nothing. As for Tenten, she would have drawn at least a single weapon, yet her hands were bare. When that was combined with the fact that the two genin had only climbed one set of stairs yet the door was marked as a third floor room, it made for a very strange scene to come upon when arriving at the exams. As they silently joined the crowd, Jun spotted them from where he stood just off to the side of the little group and quickly, and none-too-gently, shoved his way through the crowd of genin to join them.

“The chuunin exam isn’t easy.. even we have failed it three straight times. Those that take this exam and end up quitting as shinobis, those that die during the exam, we’ve seen it all.”

Jun beamed at them, tucking his hands behind his back as he came to a stop on the opposite side of Kazue from where Noriaki stood.

“You guys noticed it, right?” he asked cheerfully, quietly enough as to not interrupt the two genin lecturing Lee and the others. “Right?”

Both of his teammates regarded him with slightly confused, yet curious expressions.

“Noticed what?” Noriaki asked, speaking up for both of them. “You know what’s going on?”

Jun sighed.

“Oblivious.”

“And chuunin often become captains of military teams. The failure of a mission- the death of a comrade… that is all the captain's responsibility,” one of them continued as Kazue scowled in Jun’s direction. His only response was to give them a smug smile. “Yet, kids like you think you can pass?”

“Just spit it out!” she hissed to Jun under her breath.

“We are just thinning out those that will fail. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m not telling,” Jun taunted. “Figure it out, baka.”

Kazue started to respond when a figure stepped past the trio, someone she faintly recognized as having met before. Where, she couldn’t recall right away.

“I agree… but you will let me pass through,” the boy was saying as she studied him with slightly furrowed brows. “And also remove the surrounding created with genjutsu.”

“Ha!” Jun declared. “Sasuke-kun noticed it, too!”

“I’m going to the third floor,” Sasuke finished.

Instantly, Kazue remembered where she’d seen him before. He, along with the teammates that had been trailing behind him, had been the ones that Kakashi had been walking with before.

“Those are some of the rookies, huh?” she commented to Noriaki, who simply nodded as he silently slipped through the crowd, knowing Kazue and Jun would follow.

He only stopped when they were standing only a foot behind where Neji and Lee were. He’d doubted that Lee was actually injured, but wanted to get closer and double-check, even if that meant being close to Neji.

“So you noticed,” one of the culprits replied, an impressed smirk appearing on his lips.

Sasuke, unaffected, turned to the girl standing next to him.

“You must have noticed first right?

“Huh?”

Tuning out the conversation for now, Noriaki knelt down next to Lee. The boy offered him an immediate grin, discreetly giving a thumbs up. Noting this, Kazue placed herself closer to Tenten than Lee, studying her while keeping a bit of attention on the scene going down in front of them.