With the single one, yet remarkably complicated question in front of her Mana continued to focus on nothing but the sheet of paper in front of her. In these kinds of tests how one started often laid the foundation for the right or wrong answer. The right start was essential as if one started to pave the ground the wrong way they’ll never finish building that road they needed to build.
The problems of this test were numerous, it was capitally overcomplicated and deliberately designed to eliminate most of the genin taking it. Establishing and understanding the ground rules of the test may have been beneficial, having all the answers and cards on the table flipped up may have helped Mana think more clearly. The magician took her marker in hand and quickly counted the grotesque syringe devices that looked like they made their way there from a horror novel from one of the classic periods.
In general there were thirty six syringes to pick. Judging from what was said, two thirds of them “ twenty four had terrible poison and were the most obvious wrong choices. Then, one sixth of the remaining ones had an intricate truth serum in them that will make the captured ninja useless as they will relay all there is to tell, undoubtedly that was the goal of the imaginary captor and, after such a syringe is picked, the ninja will count as good as dead. That leaves six empty and right picks.
Indeed such a task, to pick not only the right one, but also the same her teammates would pick, was troublesome. That may have been the most difficult criteria to fit. Mana wasn’t sure if it was entirely reasonable. Such a requirement completely eliminated the luck factor out of the equation. One matter was to accidentally guess one of the six right syringes, to guess the same one one’s teammates would pick as well was outright impossible.
Mana could recall such a test being given in the Academy, back then it seemed odd to her, even in its easier and modified version. Back then it only had four syringes, one of which had poison and one of which had the truth serum. Back then it was a fifty-fifty call but back then the test didn’t even have a right answer. The passing grade was determined based on how the student picked their syringe, did their reasoning make sense, could they analyze the situation correctly and other similar factors. Here an actual right answer was expected.
Finally the circulating blackout that left only Mana and the test in an isolated personal dimension of dark oblivion faded and other genin came into view. The magician allowed her glance to waver just to see how her peers would deal with the situation. Judging from what the man said, “cheating” was not forbidden so it was not cheating in the technical meaning of the word. In fact, it was encouraged, likely because it cost precious time and made one wander in the dark woods treading the completely dark path in a random direction. Cheating was a waste of time so it was permitted.
No one was trying to contact their peers, not with the limited perception of the five senses that Mana had available to her. The magician was quite surprised that Kiyomi didn’t try and contact her using the mental transmission ability that the girl had. Either she was located far past the technique’s range or the walls were infused with chakra barriers that would’ve prevented any similar abilities from being used. If this office building was an important establishment of the village administration it likely had all sorts of similar protections.
Then Mana noticed something creepy, a wave of ants was crawling right beside her in a very blurry and thinned out line only to walk through the small space under the door, likely to look for the controller’s teammate and relay some sort of message. Following the path of the insects the magician tracked them all the way back to a short but broad shouldered young man with sunglasses and a rather geeky looking bowl cut of his ginger hair. Could he have figured out the solution to the problem?
Mana stopped looking for clues, she knew that the others were likely contacting their peers in other ways as well. She was the only one who had absolutely no way of contacting her team… Frustrated and stressing over potentially failing the first obstacle in the Chuunin Exams, Mana returned to the test.
“Mana…” she heard Kiyomi’s voice in her mind, albeit greatly weakened and breaking up. Somehow the Yamanaka must’ve broken through.
“Contact Meiko, calm her down. I’ll work this out in a moment…” Mana relayed a thought wondering if Kiyomi even received it as after its transmission a long silence kicked in.
“Mana… I can’t… These walls… Reduce my range… Need different frequency… Just us.” Kiyomi’s voice continuously broke up and began splitting into different weirder tones, must’ve been the negative effect of the girl differing the frequency of her mental chakra signals.
The marker almost broke in two in the magician’s hand when she realized that Meiko was left all alone. From the training with Kiyomi and Hokage-sensei she must’ve known that Kiyomi was capable of telepathically communicating within certain distance. For example the telepathy may not have worked back when they were scattered in the whole training grounds by their mentor but in a situation where the girls were just an office room away from each other there was no reason for it to not work.
Mana could only imagine how scared and alone Meiko must’ve felt confronted by such a daunting task and left to deal with it by herself as her friends didn’t try anything to contact her. The girl tried desperately to think of a way of how she could’ve contacted Meiko, calmed her down, maybe told her how she’d soon work it out and how she needn’t worry.
“Thirty minutes left…” Akina Ishi hummed out before sitting down in a very undignified position and raising his feet on the front desk.
The kunoichi closed her eyes in frustration and bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. This was all going so bad, she couldn’t waste time contacting her friend - she needed to work this out. She needed to at least start working on the problem.
The magician looked outside as the weak late autumn sun was beginning to hide behind the clouds and preparing to disappear beyond the horizon. Something was wrong outside, small particles of what seemed like cotton were accumulating and riding the wind in a highly synchronized shape. It must’ve been a doing of someone from the other office but no one else was seeing it or even bothering to check the window. Even worse “ the magician couldn’t identify what the code of symbols that the cotton made before being thrown around by wind currents said.
The magician pressed her palm against her eyes and face before dragging it down and covering her ears. She needed to do something, she could’ve tried to come up with ways to contact Meiko, she could’ve written down those cotton symbols and tried figuring out what they said and hoped that the message helped her to figure out the right answer.
Mana sighed and leaned down to her test. That message outside made her realize something “ how amazing that young man/woman was. All of these people sitting in that office were outright amazing, so great that the villages they came from were willing to pay the entrance fee and a whole bunch of other taxes for them. What right did Mana have to look down on her friends? How could she have been so arrogant to think that they needed her protection? Meiko and Kiyomi were strong, in many areas they blew the magician right out of the water. It was about time that she let her friends walk on their own feet and focused on getting this exam right herself so that she didn’t end up dragging her friends down while worrying over them too much.
This test was too complicated to be solved. That must’ve been the point. After all there were almost no clues given to these syringes, their positioning or anything else to work any clues out. The genin were all completely in the dark. In tests like this the key was usually in something that the examiner said, in something that the magician overlooked. This was no algebra or geometry, there were no mathematical skills required in this, there were no given or hidden data to be worked out “ everything important was said by Akina as he described the test.
“Twenty minutes left…” the examiner once again interrupted the complete silence with his lazy and bored voice.
Seeing how the criteria were all that mattered to passing the test, it may have been for the best if Mana focused on them entirely before returning to the conditions. In order to pass the magician needed to pick the right syringe. Not only that, she needed to pick the same syringe that both her teammates picked… Okay, that didn’t help, Mana could’ve spent as long as she wanted analyzing those words, making up different linguistic interpretations of them and still not have come back with the clue.
Maybe if she interpreted the test and what it was aiming to examine correctly she could’ve placed herself in the right mind set, that, in terms, could’ve assisted her with better understanding the question and how to work with it? Given how the genin must’ve picked the same syringe as their teammates it obviously condoned teamwork, all three ninja were supposed to mold their minds together, especially if they were unable to contact each other like the ant-boy earlier contacted his own team with a suggestion.
“Mana, look outside… window… answer…” Kiyomi’s mental signal again broke through.
“Don’t close the link, I may get close to the answer soon.” The magician interrupted the Yamanaka before turning her eyes at the window only to see the cotton reforming into a pair of numbers. One of them looked incredibly similar to a number “3” whereas the other one combined into making a formation similar to the number “4”, they were lined out to make out the number “34”. It was odd that the same signal was also visible from Kiyomi’s office room, it didn’t seem that large to be seen from all the way over there.
“It’s a misdirection. I’ve noticed that person communicating with their team before, their previous messages were coded. It makes no sense for them to communicate in decoded messages now. If you could also make it out from your office, that means that the person in charge of this is making multiple copies of this signal, that means that either we are lucky to both be in the same offices that person’s allies are or that they are spreading the misdirection as wide as they can to eliminate as many teams as possible, after all, less teams “ less competition for them as well as simpler exams in general.” Mana relayed her thoughts, she wasn’t sure how much of it Kiyomi got. She could sense the link still being open, after one got used to the mental link they could sense it being open and when it was closed as well as control the thoughts that were sent and what was left within one’s own mind.
“Fifteen minutes.” Akina declared. The desperation around the office room was visible as well as able to be smelled from where Mana was. Her nose was never the sharpest tool in the shed and yet even she could pick up the intense perspiration of both boys and girls in the room.
The more Mana thought about the problem the less certain she was where she needed to approach the test from. Everything seemed like a clever trick meant to misdirect, everything and everywhere was a conspiracy meant to trip her and her team over. Then it occurred to Mana that “picking the right syringe” was never what Akina Ishi really said, his exact words were: “the choice ends up leaving you alive”. That implied that picking a syringe was not even necessary at all, one only needed to choose to fit this criteria and choose thusly so that they survived.
That meant that Mana could pick nothing at all and just hand in the paper blank and empty. If she was captured and given a box of syringes to pick, most of which were poison and some of them were truth serum, it implied that she had something that was worthwhile to acquire. What if she was told the wrong information in general? What if all of the syringes had the truth serum? Picking a syringe when only six of them were allegedly empty was simply too risky. The whole choice of choosing anything at all was too risky.
It took Mana far too long to realize that… She simply flipped the paper face down and sighed. Closing her eyes and trying to focus onto the weak and lingering mental line with Kiyomi she tried to jump into the telepathic conversation she had put on hold before.
“It’s nothing, the right answer is to choose nothing, don’t color any syringe, don’t write or pick or mark anything. Just write your name and the date on the corner as instructed…” the magician concentrated her thoughts waiting for quite the while of uncomfortable silence before a hesitant confirmation returned from Kiyomi. Clearly the Yamanaka thought it was a stupid answer, frankly, Mana wasn’t sure this was how the test was supposed to be solved but, technically, she wouldn’t die from this choice, also Kiyomi will pick it as well.
“What… Meiko?” Kiyomi’s worried mental signal came back, the magician simply assumed that the blonde was worried about their blacksmith friend whom she could not contact. Mana herself was worried, that was by far the worst thing about their current situation as no one could’ve predicted how Meiko would act. She could’ve picked just a random syringe hoping she hit the right one and completely wagering it all on a game of chance, she could’ve thought of something she thought was the right decision as well. Lead down a confusing and lengthy path of reasoning and stumbling into an overly complicated and wrong answer.
Judging from Mana’s silence the Yamanaka must’ve realized that the magician had no idea.
“Five minutes” the examiner sighed, being the eternal economist of his energy and breath he repurposed the influx of air into a coherent yet not lengthy sentence.
Mana began to crack a grin before a weak laughter started cracking her up. She was so stupid, this whole situation was so immensely stupid, knowing the right answer yet tripping over not being able to help and contact her friend. Her only hope now was to just hope and rely on her friend to come up with the right answer or else all three of them would be eliminated from the Chuunin Exams and miss the chance to rank up for the following three years. Everything, her entire ninja career lingered on Meiko’s decision.
It was so amazing that the blacksmith did not know this, else she would’ve been incredibly nervous over how much depended on her call. Then again, trusting Meiko may not have been the wrong idea “ if anyone could’ve been trusted to think outside the box, that person was Meiko.
“Alright, hand ‘em in, boys and girls and… Grown-ass boys and girls…” Akina picked his lazy butt off the chair and started picking up the tests referring to a whole bunch of people taking this exam who were well into their twenties and thirties even. Mana would’ve felt ashamed if she was one of those people, technically there was nothing wrong with being a genin into one’s adulthood. There were several known cases of people serving as genin for well over fifty years before retiring. Still, she wouldn’t change the world as an elderly genin, no one would’ve been inspired by such a person. There were ninja who were already in the black ops and past the rank of jounin in Mana’s current age… Still, Mana didn’t want to be one of those ninja either, being this good at killing people and lying to them only placed responsibility to fulfil those talents to the best of one’s ability…
“Well, good luck in the next Exams, for the most of you…” Akina laughed out. “Okay, wait up outside, once all the tests are checked the results will be hung all over the wall, we’ll also inform your sensei in case you have to be somewhere else or are just too lazy to wait a couple of hours.”
With a completely droopy and defeated face Mana walked out of the office, seeing Kiyomi exit from the neighboring room with a much more hopeful face felt almost unbelievable. Seeing Meiko walk up to them from further away felt even worse, the blacksmith was completely devastated. Her skin was pale as the embodiment of death itself must’ve looked like, her eyes were beginning to water but then her tears stuck somewhere halfway out due to how dysfunctional and shaking the blacksmith’s whole body was.
“Guys… I’m… So sorry…” she covered her face before finally gathering the strength to cry.
“I tried contacting you…” Kiyomi embraced Meiko, taking maybe a bit too much pleasure from her friend’s moment of weakness and being the shoulder she leaned on during it. “I don’t know what that office room you were in used to be but it was more warded off than any other office room.”
“It’s okay…” Mana pressed her own forehead against the cold and rough wall, turning away from her friends just so they couldn’t see her beaten and crushed. “You guys can try again in three years, maybe sooner… If some other country hosts the Exams earlier.”
“I… I didn’t even notice the thirty four floating outside… I’m such a stupid klutz… In the end I just… Froze up and… I’m sorry, I accidentally forgot to write anything. I just gave in to the stress and handed a blank paper… Sorry…” Meiko kept on weeping onto Kiyomi’s shoulder as the two kunoichi just stood there brooding before the words sunk into their brains.
Kiyomi and Mana looked at each other completely knocked out of their boots and then Kiyomi began just shouting out loud. Mana smiled and then joined in as the two girls ran in to hug Meiko and squeeze the life out of her.
Meiko was so silly sometimes… But Mana wouldn’t trade her on her team for the world’s strongest genin.
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