“It’s been four months. You look like you haven’t improved at all Jiraiya. Tsunade congratulations on the second little brother. I bet you and Nawaki are happy to have another.” The jab at Jiraiya was more to piss him off as he put on as much muscle and height as me. It almost became a race to the tallest. I gave Tsunade a big smile, happy for her happiness. 

We walked to Hiruzen and were led to the big group of other members heading to the Chunin exams. It takes place in the hidden mist village and the hidden cloud and hidden rain villages will also participate. The hidden rain village was very, very small with almost no good ninjas.

They’re a fodder village. The hidden cloud village also doesn’t have many strong ninjas as they were heavily affected by the war. The only strong person would be the Raikage. No, I’m being serious, they were absolutely crippled killing the second Hokage. The gold and silver brothers were heavily injured and might try something but I doubted it. It’s too soon it would make more sense recovering and then striking.

We entered the first test and it’s an honest to goodness written test. There’s no subterfuge or needing to cheat because the questions are hard. It was just basic knowledge, and there it is. The basic knowledge of the other villages near the back. So you would either need to be very well read on the other villages or copy information from another page without being noticed.

I had a decent jutsu for this as a dozen finger long snakes poured out of my hands before quickly turning invisible. The sensor snakes let me see the area surrounding me. I needed to give the information I learned to Jiraiya and Tsunade. Dammit why is Jiraiya so stupid. I didn’t have any jutsu that could whisper the answers in his ear but maybe.

I had one of the snakes circle the right answer before blinking his camouflage on and off. Did he just think it was a mirage? Why is he rubbing his eyes like what he just saw was an illusion? I have the snake uncloak his camouflage then cloak it after a second. He finally realizes what’s happening. The only snake themed ninjutsu he knew came from me but he still looked around warily before making eye contact with me.

He called me snake boy and I called him the child of fate. He said it once before and I mocked him with that while he thought I would feel embarrassed about my snakes. Little did he know I thought snakes were cool. He probably thought that destined crap was real too. From blowing myself up I knew that shit was hogwash.

We finished as I circled the correct answers on their papers, double and triple checking other villages' answers so one person couldn’t have just written down the wrong answers to screw us over. Unlike us I could see the other teams were struggling, two people were caught cheating and those members were removed. I decided to help the other teams from Konoha since we finished so quickly compared to everyone else.

I had my snakes crawl up my back and be reabsorbed. I’m glad I learned these support jutsu’s. It made me a decent sensor when I remembered to use it. The main problem was it was very slow to set up and required me to not move too much as the snakes were slow. We finished and after they graded the tests three teams were removed and another opted out having lost one of their members.

None of the hidden leaf teams were kicked out thankfully. There was another team our age and two younger teams. Our grade had significant failure rates and most people had their teams reshuffled because of the casualties in their teams. If everyone survived we’d have had another 2 teams competing.

It was for the best. I would have cut the younger teams as well but their squad leaders thought they were ready. I would do my best to make sure they survive but passing is on them. We moved onto the next part. We needed to scale a cliff and those who fell, were killed or were slower than the other half would be removed from the test.

As the test started and everyone slowly climbed up with some using ninjutsu to climb faster I thought up a decent way to skip a good chunk upwards. Tsunade launched herself up about twenty feet, kicking off a cloud member who had been slowly climbing up and sending him back to the bottom.

Constantly defeating Jiraiya made him far more competent. He risked his life to learn many dangerous techniques. He pulled out a summoning scroll and summoned a cliff climbing kit out of nowhere… That made me think he had the information of the trial beforehand. Hiruzen didn’t even try to hide his tampering. I just sighed at the obvious favoritism, hoping no one else noticed before pulling out my own summoning scroll.

I summoned a ten foot tall snake tied to my family's bloodline that I could activate at the very back of the book. The white snake nuzzled against me before grabbing me in its maw and flinging me like a whip upwards as hard as he could. I slam into the cliff about fifty feet up and dig in two kunai. 

I let them fall down after I get a good grip and start climbing. As I reach the top I’m surprised to see I’m not the first to clear the trial. A dark skinned boy with grayish hair and golden eyes looked back at me. I couldn’t help but smile. Who would have guessed I would actually have fun in this exam.