The Turning Point

Chunin Exams Part 4

Seriously? More of them? All 9 rookie squads must have been nominated for the Chunin exams then,Sakura thought.

"H-hi N-Naruto" Hinata stuttered out shyly and Naruto simply stared at the Huyga girl who turned a bright red. Sasuke watched and shook his head; his blonde teammate truly was a clueless idiot.

"Looks like everyone his here for this stupid thing" Shikamaru spoke; voicing his annoyance which Sasuke silently agreed with.

"Yep! Here we all are the 9 Rookies! This is going to be fun, at least for those of us good enough to make the cut. Right Sasuke?" Kiba declared loudly and smirked at the Uchiha boy.

"Hmph, Kiba. Careful you don't get overconfident now" Sasuke replied arrogantly.

"Just you wait; we're going to blow you guys out of the water. We've been training like crazy" Kiba declared and Naruto's ears pricked up.

"What do you think we've been doing? Sitting around picking daisies? You don't know what training means!" Naruto all but screamed back.

"U-uh d-don't mind Kiba. I-I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it" Hinata spoke in a soft voice, fidgeting and promptly turned a bright red which drew Kiba's attention.

Mmmm, Akamaru's looking plumper… juicier Choji thought hungrily and withdrew his hand from the chip packet before taking a step forward towards Kiba and his clearly edible dog. He didn't get very far before Shino stepped in front of him.

"What do you want?" Choji asked gruffly but Shino remained silent and shifted his gaze to the ground where a bug crawled past Choji's foot.

"Thought maybe you hadn't seen it. Didn't want you stepping on it" Shino said, his voice low with an eeriness to it.

"Why, you saving it for lunch?" Choji asked but was met with no response.

"Hey, you all might want to keep it down a bit" Sakura spoke up as the rookie's turned their attention to her.

"And why would we want to do that forehead?" Ino asked, annoyed by Sakura's new attitude.

Wordlessly Sakura gestured towards the rest of the room, every ninja had their head turned towards the Rookie 9, eyes fixed on the group listening closely.

"I was about to come over here and say the same thing, but looks like she beat me to it" A voice called out from the right hand side of the room.

The owner of the voice approached the genin squads, his silver hair tied back in a ponytail and horn-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. Sakura observed he was quite a few years older than them.

"You're the 9 rookies, fresh out of the academy right? I wouldn't go making a spectacle of yourselves, like your friend said you need to cool it. This isn't a class fieldtrip" The unknown man spoke.

"Well who asked you? Who are you?" Ino asked in an annoyed voice.

"I'm Kabuto Yakushi, but like the pink haired one said, look around you. You've made quite an impression" Kabuto replied smugly and the genin gazed over the room in shock.

Sakura's eye made contact with a group of male ninja who had four straight lines on their forehead protectors and dark cloaks covering their bodies.

"See those guys; they're from the Rain Village. Very touchy. They all are. This exam makes everyone tense and you don't want to rub them the wrong way right now" Kabuto spoke and all genin silently agreed.

"But it's not your fault, how could you know? You're just rookies. You remind me of myself a few years back" The silver haired man mused.

"So this isn't the first time you've taken these exams?" Sakura asked.