The basic clone was widely accepted as useless. A mere visual illusion that cast no shadow, made no sound, had no substance, had short range, and required focused concentration to control, it was used as a chakra control exercise by Academy students and then generally forgotten for the rest of a ninja's career in favor of Elemental Clones and similar techniques.

Nara's clone was hiding inside a tree at the edge of the meadow, completely out of sight. Hazō had been staring at that spot for ten minutes before the clone's hands appeared from inside the tree and started making handsigns.

Hazō sighed with relief, being careful to keep it below the threshold that the Silence Mine next to his head would conceal. It had been five minutes since the last team went through and he was starting to get antsy. What he had affectionately termed 'SuperTeam Leaf' needed to be at the rally point in fifteen minutes and so far they had only gathered one hundred and nineteen seals—seventy-eight from the first team to go through, forty-one from the second. Split between the twelve members of SuperTeam Leaf and added to their original totals that was only forty-three apiece. Nowhere near what they estimated was needed in order to be at the top of the rankings. If they didn't get some bigger targets through in the next ten minutes they were going to have a problem.

The worst part, of course, was the uncertainty. How many teams had been eliminated over the past two days? What was the cutoff for making it to the next event? Exactly how much time was left before they had to be at the rally point? After all, clocks were notoriously inaccurate things.

The team faded out of the woods with admirable caution; if Hazō hadn't known exactly where to look he wouldn't have seen them. They paused at the treeline, taking a knee and surveying the meadow carefully before stepping foot inside it.

From the corner of his eye, Hazō saw a Chōji-sized clump of grass shifting. The Lightning team caught it and were on their feet instantly, pivoting to flee.

"Go go go!" Hazō shouted, leaping to his feet and charging. Half a dozen other ninja were on their feet and charging. A pair of kunai went past his ear, exploding into sticky goo that coated the enemy ninja as they attempted to flee.

"We surrender!" shouted the leader of the foreign team, struggling and failing to pull her feet out of the taffy-like chakra construct.

"What?" / "WHAT?!" Her teammates stared at her in shock.

"Stand down, guys," said the leader. A tall blonde with a scar on her cheek, she was perhaps a year or two older than Hazō and, bizarrely, there was a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Stand down, Leaf," Nara called, rising from where he and Hyūga had been crouching behind the bush at the center of the clearing.

Hazō slowed to a halt, eyeing the Lightning team distrustfully.

"Nice ambush," the blonde said, chuckling ruefully. "Should have known Leaf would try ganging up."

"You seem surprisingly unconcerned at the idea of being outnumbered and immobilized," Nara said, closing the distance with un-Nara-like speed and a frown.

"Yeah, well, my sensei used to say that prior planning prevents piss-poor performance." The blonde held up a reassuring hand and reached slowly into the satchel she wore at her hip, bringing out two separate bundles of glowing seals, each tied together with twine. She held them up and turned them slightly, tapping her finger on the explosive tag tied to the back of each one in a completely unnecessary effort to call attention to it.

"These are low-power explosive training tags," she said. "Not strong enough to hurt, but more than enough to destroy all sixty-six of these lovely points I'm holding. You get us out of this muck and let us go, you can have half the seals. Or, alternatively, you can try to take them from me before I can set the explosive off." Her grin became fierce. "What do you say? Want to play 'whose reflexes are faster' with a Lightning nin, or do you want to take thirty-three seals with no risk?" She waggled the bundle of tags in her left hand temptingly.

"You have a total of ninety-three tags," Nara said calmly. "Because you attempted to deceive us, you will hand over fifty of them. At that point we will let you go."

"They should give us their word halves and their chakra, too," Yamamoto said.

"No fucking way," snarled the Lightning ninja on the right, a stocky boy with brown hair and a snarl on his face.

"Don't do it, Hikari," said the Lightning ninja on the left. "Blow them all. Don't give the bastards anything. We'll make it up in the next event."

"Try it and I'll break your legs," Yamamoto said calmly.

Akane rounded on her teammate in surprise. "Yamamoto! That is most unyouthful!"

Yamamoto shrugged. "This isn't hopscotch in the playground," he said calmly. "This is the Chūnin Exams. And we're burning daylight right now. Another team could come along any minute and we're out of position."

"Stop," Nara said, raising a hand. "If we attempt to take their word halves they have no incentive to cooperate and every incentive to detonate the seals." He turned back to the Lightning ninja. "Despite that, he makes a good point. Eliminating three opponents from the Exams would likely be worth losing fifty seals."

Hikari's smile slipped. "Uh...."

Nara tapped his finger on his chin in thought for a moment. "On balance, I think we need the points. You will give us the sixty-six seals you claimed to have. In return we will not take your chakra or your word halves. This deal is on the table for another five seconds."

"Done!" Hikari said gratefully. "Sage, I thought you Leaf types were the nice ones."

"We are," Hyūga said flatly, the lack of intonation and the all-white eyes of his active bloodline rendering him momentarily inhuman. "We're letting you bargain instead of cutting your throats and throwing the bodies in a storage seal." He paused. "Point of information: There's no proctors close enough to hear you scream."

o-o-o-o​

There were three proctors at the rally point. They had set up a small awning to keep the sun off and were lounging on folding camp stools in its shade, sipping on iced drinks as a line of contestants shuffled by to turn in their seals. The Leaf ninja were among the last to arrive and they found themselves facing a very long line indeed. There had been something like three hundred genin in the group that had been dropped off in the swamp two days ago. It was hard to get an accurate count, but the number seemed to be down to around two hundred, although it was probably higher since ninja were leaving as soon as they handed in their seals and some would have been gone by the time SuperTeam Leaf arrived. It didn't take long to process each team, but the proctors kept taking breaks and making everyone stand around while they ate snacks and chatted among themselves for ten or fifteen minutes before getting back to 'work'.

This wasn't such a big deal for SuperTeam Leaf; they had spent the entire time getting plenty of sleep while camped out in a comfortable fort and they were rolling with Team Uplift, who had a couple dozen storage scrolls full of hot food, cold water, and camp stools nicer than the ones the proctors were using.

The contestants who had not been holed up in the Uplifting Fortress of Doom were sleep-deprived and covered in bug bites, as well as being either wounded, on the edge of chakra exhaustion, or both.

Other Leaf teams drifted over to join the party and were welcomed with food and drink in turn. There weren't enough stools to go around, but there were plenty of blankets and it quickly turned into an impromptu picnic. The other Leaf ninja were amused, and somewhat annoyed, to hear that SuperTeam Leaf had sealsmithed, traded, and bargained their way through the exam while only engaging in two actual fights. There was general amusement at the story of the negotiation with the Lightning ninja.

"I wanted to thank you, Yamamoto," Nara said, turning to the worthy in question. "You handled your part of the negotiations excellently."

Yamamoto shrugged. "No worries. Next time you need somebody to play 'hard interrogator', let me know." He went back to spooning up the second bowl of chicken ramen that Hazō had handed him.

"That was a trick?" Akane asked in surprise.

Yamamoto nodded. "Yeah. They were stalling us, so I gave Nara a hard man to play off against."

"It worked well," Nara said. "Neji, your threat at the end provided a certain...piquancy."

Hyūga shrugged. "Lord Hyūga frequently talks about how Leaf's reputation is a two-edged blade. Being known for decency and honor is useful so long as it is not confused with weakness. Given how generous our bargain was, I felt it important to provide the counterpoint so they wouldn't think us weak."

"Looks like the line's clearing out," Haruno said, glancing over to the proctors' area. She tucked her half-eaten sandwich back into a storage scroll and stood up, brushing her hands off on her trousers. "Let's go find out how we did."

o-o-o-o​

'Clearing out' wasn't the same as 'empty'. It took ten minutes before Hazō finally got to the head of the line, Noburi and Keiko at his back to keep an eye on the other ninja in the area. It was very unlikely that anyone would try to jump them right in front of the proctors, but it also wasn't worth taking the chance.

The proctor who was taking the seals was probably in his early thirties, with scars on his face and neck. There was no hair sticking out from under the bandana he wore on his head, hinting at either premature baldness or unsightly combat damage. He sat on his camp stool with a cane on the ground to his right and a bag full of softly-glowing seals to his left. A folding table in front of him held a notepad and a charcoal stick.

"Name and village?" he grunted, not bothering to look up as he flipped to a new page in the notepad.

"Gōketsu Hazō, Leaf. My teammates are Gōketsu Noburi and Gōketsu Keiko."

The proctor finally looked up, eyebrows raised. "You're that Kurosawa traitor, aren't you?"

Hazō grit his teeth. "My name is Gōketsu Hazō," he said firmly, refusing to be baited. "I am the adoptive son of Jiraiya, Lord Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I am also the natural-born nephew of the Mizukage. I have fifty seals. Noburi and Keiko each have forty-nine."

"Let's see 'em," the proctor grunted, holding out a blunt-fingered hand. Hazō wordlessly gave him the seals and watched carefully as the man counted them, twice, before jotting something down in the notebook.

"Fine," the proctor grunted, seeming irritated. "Your scores are recorded, get lost."

"Did we make the cut-off?" Hazō asked.

"What?"

"Did we make the cut-off?" he repeated. "How did we do compared to the other contestants?" He doubted the man would answer, but it was worth asking.

"You'll find out before the last event," one of the proctors in the back grunted. "Your individual score is a running total through the first four events. Top sixteen contestants go on to the tournament on the last day."

"Ah," Hazō said. "Good. Thank you."

"We would like a receipt," Keiko said calmly.

"A what?!" growled the proctor who had taken their seals. "Who the hell do you think you are, you treasonous little—"

"I think I am the daughter of Lord Jiraiya of the Legendary Three far more than I ever was the daughter of the Mori," Keiko cut him off. "I think I am a ninja who has already been betrayed by Mist once and is unwilling to be betrayed a second time. I think I am a Chūnin Exam candidate who is making an entirely reasonable request of a proctor and that refusing such a request would suggest intent to interfere with the scoring."

The proctor's eyes narrowed. "Are you suggesting that I would cheat? Listen, girl, accusing a proctor—"

"The Leaf archives contain eighteen separate registered complaints of interference with Chūnin Exam scoring by Mist proctors in the past," Keiko said, cutting him off again. "Statistically, Mist proctors are an untrustworthy group when it comes to managing the scoring in a fair and objective manner. You in particular felt the need to refer to myself and Hazō as traitors, suggesting that you are less trustworthy than most. Hence my need for a receipt."

The proctor glared at her for a moment longer, then tore a sheet out of the notepad, scribbled their scores on it and signed across the bottom. "Here," he said, shoving it into her hands. "The next event isn't for at least thirty-six hours. Now get lost."

"Thank you," Keiko said, bowing politely. "Your exceptional courtesy and professionalism have been noted." She turned on her heel and walked off, Hazō and Noburi following close behind and struggling to suppress their grins.