In Team Asuma's room, Sakura woke with a start, groggy, but the next moment she noticed a walkie-talkie next to her bed! It hadn't been there the day before.
While she was confused, a voice came from the Walkie-Talkie, not just from her side, but from all the teams that remained.
Jugo began to explain the rules of the exam, finally each group understood what was happening.
Sakura ran outside, clutching the Walkie-Talkie, an item she was supposed to take with her. It served two purposes: first, for Jugo to communicate, and second, in case one team wanted to declare that a mark belonged to another team.
Anyway, Sakura found Choji, with a walkie-talkie in his hand. -So they took Ino.- she sighed.
-How did they take her? I didn't hear anything!- Choji complained, confused.
-I didn't hear it either, probably genjutsu.- Sakura explained, before moving towards the door, they needed to start the exam.
As soon as they stepped out the door, they saw several teams leaving, they encountered Neji and Lee, as well as Hinata and Shino.
-So they took Ino and Kiba away from you!- Lee shouted excitedly, then ran towards the only passage. -Come on, Neji! We have to find Tenten! OOOOOH!
Neji sighed, but soon he followed, and not only him, but everyone went towards the passage, arriving at a circular room with dozens of doors, above each door there was a specific mark.
Sakura looked around and stopped at a mark, but as soon as she saw it, her anger grew, feeling the urge to punch Ino. The mark had only one word on it: "Forehead"
Sakura sighed, but didn't move forward directly, instead, she feigned confusion.
That's because if either team saw their confidence and decided to risk claiming that brand belonged to their team, it would have been eliminated right away.
Most of the ninjas there noticed this and seemed confused, looking around.
Sakura nudged Choji, who was genuinely confused. When he looked at her, she simply gave him a subtle, reassuring look. Choji understood and remained quiet.
Neji punched Lee, who was excitedly shouting, wanting to beat the idiot to death. After silencing him, he looked around and saw a mark he hated, but knew Tenten had left it. It was the mark of the caged bird seal on his forehead, very few knew about it. He sighed and waited a moment to avoid being the first to pass by.
Shino and Hinata had also found their own mark, it was the name Tsume.
Few knew Kiba's mother's name, but the two of them did, so they understood as soon as they saw it.
The other groups also began to find out, but no one wanted to be the first to cross the line and give themselves away. However, some soon noticed a loophole in the rules: fighting wasn't allowed, but genjutsu to obstruct vision was permitted, right?
Furthermore, smoke or flashbang bombs also worked, right?
The next moment, a mist ninja quickly sealed the area, and soon a large amount of mist covered the place. This made everyone happy and when the mist was thick enough, everyone moved, passing through the doors, which closed shortly after they passed.
Karin and Suigetsu also advanced, the mark left by Ranmaru consisted of three tomoe, representing Sasuke's Sharingan.
Once the pair passed through the gate, they walked a short distance, descending stairs that made strange turns, before arriving in another room.
Karin watched as two other groups entered with them, Sen and Yome's group, Shira of the Sand's companions, and Sakura and Choji's group.
Karin glanced briefly at them before looking at the three doors in the room.
There were some words above the door to the right: Wolf/seal/water
A symbol on the middle door: A flower.
A phrase on the door to the left: What a drag...
Sen and Yome recognized the flower as soon as they saw it, it was a cactus flower.
The random words were also recognized by Karin and Suigetsu: "Wolf" was Ranmaru, "Seal" was Karin, and "Water" was Suigetsu.
So, everyone found their doors, but pretended to look around, confused.
Sen was the first to act, a simple genjutsu was enough. By the time the other two groups realized it, one of the doors had already closed, and Sen and Yome had vanished like mist.
Sakura and Choji sighed, even though they wanted to reveal that the symbol belonged to them, they wouldn't take the risk. If they were wrong, they would lose their chance to continue.
Now that there are only two people left, in theory, they can report each other, but what if that's wrong too? In the end, they gave up.
Thus, while Karin and Sakura wanted to report it, in the end neither side was sure.
Finally, the two groups looked at each other before moving out of the room at the same time.
In other rooms, the scene repeated itself continuously, some denounced and got it right, passing, others got it completely wrong, failing. The game had a three-hour limit, after that, the registration period would have passed.
Sure, going down thirty floors is easy, the hard part is making sure you're on the right track, not all ninjas were that close. You only had to look at how many teams Kakashi was on before joining Team Minato.
Therefore, the closer a team was to the tie, the more certain they were.
But this could also be a double-edged sword, for those desperate teams, their only hope was to try their luck by pointing out the opponents' symbol.
Therefore, it became clear that getting down as quickly as possible without being seen was the best choice, in addition to the fact that if someone accidentally used their gate, their chance of pass the Pre-exam would be greatly reduced.
Of course, there were other solutions.
For example, many learned how to use transformation, when the others candidates saw unfamiliar faces, they understood and sought out empty spaces to transform themselves, so soon the exam was full of random people that nobody knew.
Jugo smiled, he had already considered that possibility, but he let it happen because the goal wasn't to eliminate them through denunciation, but to make those who didn't know each other well enough give up. The exam itself favored those who knew each other.
Of course, situations like using the wrong gate can lead to a team that knew each other being eliminated, so Jugo added the possibility of advancing by eliminating other teams.
Jugo also wanted to know if these guys who knew each other would prefer to eliminate each other in order to advance, for example, who among the strongest genin group in Konoha didn't know that Shikamaru said "What a drag...?"
If they wanted to eliminate Sakura, Ino and Choji, that was a good way. In the end, there were many variables in this game, but that's what made it fun.