章 39: Graduation (1)
"Hajime!" The chuunin instructor Iruka declared while the two students approached each other cautiously.
It was finally the graduation exam, and it was currently the taijutsu portion of the series of tests involved in graduating from the Shinobi Academy. The other students and I who were either done or waiting for their turn sat around the spectator stands watching the matches as they went on.
Thus far, the written test, weapons accuracy evaluation and stealth assessment had concluded. What was left was only the taijutsu competition and the ninjutsu showcase. For the first three tests I aced them all just as I planned to do so with the entire genin exam except for taijutsu.
The written exam tested both theory and critical thinking. Questions included history and foreign relations matters which tested your book smarts, but the other parts gave hypothetical scenarios that tested our critical thinking, analytical skills and strategic knowhow.
For example, a question could be something like, 'Your teammate is being held hostage by an enemy combatant. Enemy size and strength are not known, and reinforcements are not available. What should you do?' And the examinees would be expected to provide their answers as well as their justifications for deciding on that course of action. How well you will be graded depended on the likelihood of success and how well reasoned your argument is.
The weapons accuracy evaluation simply evaluated our proficiency with throwing weapons such as kunai and shuriken. Unlike the first accuracy test we participated in on our first day of the academy where the distance was only at 10 meters, the genin exam included multiple human shaped targets in varying distances and behind an assortment of covers.
Some might be hidden behind a tree and only half of the target can be seen or be partially concealed by branches while some targets would be placed in odd angles; all of which was to test our accuracy in a more realistic but controlled environment.
The stealth assessment was rather crude and simple to be a criteria for graduation for future shinobis. We just had to make it to the other side of the corridor which was booby-trapped with easily avoidable alarms like tripwires attached with bells or windchimes that would make noise if we moved too fast past them. We were graded on how fast we could make it to the other side and how little noise we made while doing so.
I honestly thought the stealth test to be exceedingly straightforward and easy; we weren't even tested on how well hidden we had to be, just that we couldn't make noise. How could a major aspect of stealth, which was to remain unseen, be neglected for an exam of sneakiness?
Furthermore, stealth wasn't just hiding behind a barrel while crouching like a video game. For example following someone through a crowd without being noticed by mingling with the crowd, standing close enough to a family to be mistaken as part of their group, looking at stall wares while actually keeping the target in eyesight, or losing pursuers by getting out of their sightline then immediately snagging a paper and sitting on a bench to read it inconspicuously while the pursuers ran by. But things like that weren't being tested.
Because remaining unseen was not part of the test, I easily cleared the obstacle course in a matter of seconds; and I would have been faster had it not been for those meddling windchimes limiting how fast I could go.
Right now for the taijutsu potion, we were ranked according to our taijutsu grades from the last four years. Starting from first place down to the last, we were each assigned a number rank. For people like Sasuke and I who performed consistently well throughout the academy, we were the undisputed rank one and two of the list. While third, fourth and fifth was a fierce competition between Shino, Kiba and surprisingly, Hinata.
Hinata was a person who I had not expected to be as proficient as she appeared to be during the academy. Unlike canon, the Hyuuga heiress seemed to have more confidence in her skills and performed at a level where a scion of the prestigious clan was expected to. For certain reasons, this version of Hinata possessed the self-assurance which did not correlate with the impression I had of her when I first interacted with the girl nor what I knew about her from the anime.
Of course, during social interactions she was still as introverted as ever; unwilling to be the centre of attention and would only speak when spoken to. But the stutter that seemed to have plagued the early days of her academy years faded away with time, and the girl no longer second guessed anything that came out of her mouth. However, when it came to anything hands-on, the shy demeanour would be replaced with a mettle that seemed reminiscent of myself.
In our third year, when the academy stopped separating the girls and boys for physical challenges, Hinata quickly rocketed past the boys and proved herself worthy of contending with the physically superior males in her class with just pure technique and skill. The guys who underestimated her for her gender and reserved personality would pay the price and learn from their mistake the hard way.
During spars, she would mercilessly and rapidly put down her opponent with accurately placed jyuken strikes. But the minute the match was called, Hinata would just as quickly apologize profusely before helping her opponent out of the ring. It was all the compassion I had come to know from her, but with a decisiveness and steel in her I was not expecting.
Of course I was curious about the change, so I had once asked her about it before. Amidst some blushes and stammering that weirdly only occurred around me, she explained that a certain someone inspired her to become stronger and be more confident in herself. That newly found confidence then subsequently invited confidence and pride in her ability from her father, which was the impetus for her progress and eventual self-assurance.
'Ah I see,' I had realized after speaking to her. It was obvious who that certain someone was. Knowing Hinata and the 'future', it could only be Naruto of course. I was slightly confused as tp why this change did not occur in canon if Naruto was still the object of her fancy and inspiration as he was in the anime, but I shrugged it off as irrelevant.
Either way, she soon proved herself to be the top kunoichi of our year in all aspects of the curriculum with the exception of the theoretical portions, which she always narrowly lost out to Sakura.
Anyways, after we were shown the rankings which was all listed on a giant board next to the arena, the chuunin instructors explained how the taijutsu examination would work.
1. Every student had three chances to challenge a student of a higher ranking, and students could only be challenged thrice.
2. The challenged student cannot refuse the challenge.
3. If the challenger won, they would take the rank of the challenged who would be moved down a rank.
4.However, if the challenger lost, they would be moved down a rank too.
The instructors explained that they were testing not just their physical prowess, but also the ability to accurately assess their own limitations as well as the ability to gauge their opponent's strength. A poor judgement and subsequent ill-thought-out decision to challenge someone objectively stronger than themselves would lead to a punishment in the form of a drop in rank.
It was a deceptively elaborate examination that took into account more factors than it would first appear.
This method of competition meant that the students in the lower echelons had to be smart about who they challenged since they only had three chances to do so. There was even a possibility of colluding to challenge the same student and thus tire them out and letting the last challenger have a higher chance of ranking up.
Additionally, while students in the higher rankings had to wait for their turn to challenge a higher ranking student in order to advance, they too had to be aware that they too would be the subject of being challenged by lower ranking students. Thus it was also an issue of whether they should conserve their energy when being challenged or go all out and ruthlessly defend their place.
For Sasuke who was already at the top of the rankings, he would only have to contend with being challenged three times. And if he won all three challenges, he would then get to remain in his first place ranking and be granted the highest grades.
For me who was only below my Uchiha cousin, the only person I could challenge was Sasuke, but it did not matter as I had no intentions of taking the first place spot away from him either way. Although, I would have to point out that the sentiment was not shared by said Uchiha. Sasuke deeply desired to fight me on a public stage. One was to prove himself against me who he always lost against, and the other reason was the fact that he, in his own way, wanted me to be recognized for my strength too.
The Uchiha was unsatisfied that he was always praised to be physically stronger than me even though he never actually won in a real fight against me before. He thought it unfair I would never be recognized as being his better and was thus frustrated I was willingly letting him take the 'credit'. I thought it was sweet of him, but I truly was satisfied with just second place and thankfully managed to convince him of it.
Furthermore, no matter how much he wanted to challenge me in the public arena, he wasn't allowed to since higher ranked students could not challenge lower ranked students – because what was the point? Even if they won their ranks would remain unchanged, whereas the lower ranked student would only be beaten and humiliated for no reason.
The taijutsu competition thus began from the bottom up which for certain reasons consisted majority of the girls. We started with the bottom most student who would state who she wanted to challenge and then slowly move our way up the rankings.
Every time someone won, which was honestly rare since the rankings weren't arbitrary and was formed from the results of our numerous spars throughout the four years, but it would still occasionally occur, and the rankings would change as a result. Most students would only tentatively challenge someone who was one or two ranks above themselves, cautious of overextending themselves and getting humiliated in front of an audience of their peers.
The fights were slow, unentertaining and laughably pathetic – at least compared to the fights I usually fought in. Most of the girls, who were honestly more concerned with how they looked, barely even tried whenever they did challenge anyone. Some were content with their original ranks, so just passed on the opportunities to challenge anyone.
Amongst them was Kaori. She was ranked #32, smack dab in the middle of the bottom half. Kaori was a kunoichi who could be considered painfully mediocre. Her talent, drive, and overall suitability to the life of a shinobi were all objectively unimpressive. In my defence, I didn't just leave her wallowing in her mediocrity. I tried helping by tutoring and training her so that she could at least be at a satisfactory level, but it was to no avail.
My childhood friend was simply unmotivated to pursue the career of a shinobi. When I assigned her homework in the form of practicing taijutsu katas or catching up on the theoretical portions, she would turn up the next day claiming that she forgot, was too tired or simply lazy.
When I tried training her physically though, Kaori would just give up half way saying she was too tired and needed a break. Which would have been fine except that her breaks would last an hour and afterwards only training for 15 minutes before taking a break again.
I didn't even know why she chose to enter the shinobi academy in the first place unless it was only for the monthly stipend given to orphans who were training to be shinobi. She seemed content with her current status quo. I didn't hate the girl for her lack of motivation, just disappointed, and heck I could understand it too. It wasn't as if everyone aspired to be a career shinobi.
For many, obtaining an official shinobi license wasn't just for the desire to become a soldier who ran around killing and assassinating. There were many benefits to signing up to become a shinobi for Konoha: tax deductibles, generous pension schemes upon retirement which required a minimum 10 years of service or permanent injury, and not to mention the lucrative compensation from missions and a range of other benefits.
Many would retire upon reading the minimum years of service and start their own businesses using the tax breaks from their veteran status or simply living a carefree life off their retirement pension.
Neither did the village expect more than 30 percent of their shinobi to even be promoted past genin in the first place. There was a reason why only an average 33.3 percent of teams passed the 'real' graduation test. The village only selected around three or four teams to be actively groomed by elite jounin every year. These were the students evaluated to have the highest potential of breaking past chuunin rank and thus the village would not hold back on cultivating these promising genin.
Team assignments didn't happen by chance nor were they randomly allocated. It was no coincidence that the most prominent clan members were typically grouped together. It was by design of the village leaders.
The other graduates would be assigned to an unofficial genin corp, becoming career genins who were functionally assigned busy work such as patrols, guard posts and similarly low stakes missions. Thus there wasn't really a need for them to push themselves to become stronger when being a mediocre genin with average skills was enough for the missions they would undertake anyways.
Unfortunately for Kaori, she possessed not the talent to achieve particularly stellar results nor the motivation to push through with pure effort.
However, that was not to say that the village was particularly heartless to their less than stellar genin when compared to other villages. It was because Konoha was such a prosperous and militarily strong village that we could spare the manpower of having three or four elite jounin pulled from the frontlines to, in essence, baby sit three fresh genin every year in the first place. Other villages did not have such a luxury, only assigning one or at most two jounin to properly groom their genin teams every year.
While I was lost in my thoughts, several fights that had been going on for some time passed by. Utterly underwhelming performances by equally lacklustre students. Iruka then called out the next challenger.
"#21, Uzumaki Naruto!"
週次パワーステータス
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