They all received a message from a messenger bird.
Three separate birds, actually, one landing on each of their windowsills within minutes of each other, carrying identical scrolls sealed with Ebizo's personal stamp. The message was brief: training ground nine, noon, don't be late.
Karura arrived first because she'd been in the market district buying supplies for her father's bakery and training ground nine was three streets away. Mai arrived second because she'd been snacking at a stand nearby and the hawk had landed on her head while she was eating. Pakura arrived third because she was training with her mother.
The training ground was one of the smaller ones on the eastern edge of the village, a flat circle of packed sand surrounded by low walls. It was empty at noon. The sun beat down on the sand and the heat shimmered above the ground in waves that made the far wall ripple.
Ebizo stood in the center of the field. Arms at his sides. No scroll. No pack. No indication of why he'd called them here.
"Good. You're all here." He looked at the three of them. "This may or may not shock you, but I've recommended all three of you for the Chunin Exams."
Two seconds of silence.
"SENSEI, I LOVE YOU!"
Mai launched herself across the training ground like a human projectile and hit Ebizo around the neck with both arms. The impact rocked him back a step. She hung there, her legs off the ground, kissing his cheek repeatedly, squealing with the enthusiasm of someone who'd been handed everything she'd ever wanted on a silver platter.
"Mai, get off me."
"NEVER!"
"Mai."
"This is the best day of my life! I'm never letting go! You're the best sensei ever!"
Ebizo pried her off. He set her on the ground. She was vibrating.
"About time." Pakura smiled with her arms crossed.
Karura stood between them, her scarf pulled up, her indigo eyes wide. She wasn't sure what to say.
But Ebizo-sensei had recommended them. He'd looked at everything they'd done, every mission, every fight, and decided they were ready.
"I'll do my best." she said.
"You better do your best." Pakura glanced at her. "If you drag us down because you wanna hold back during the exam, I'll kill you myself."
"She'll do amazing!" Mai threw her arm around Karura's shoulders. "We all will! We're going to crush this exam so hard they'll have to invent a new rank for us!"
Ebizo reached into his vest and produced three sheets of paper. Application forms, each one bearing the Kazekage's seal at the top and blank lines at the bottom for the applicant's name, team designation, and sensei's signature. His signature was already on all three.
"Fill these out and turn them in to room 203 at the academy before four o'clock tomorrow afternoon." He handed one to each of them. "But understand this. The exam is completely voluntary. Not mandatory. If any of you decide you aren't ready, don't turn it in. No matter what your teammates say. No matter what anyone says. This is your decision, individually, and nobody can make it for you."
He looked at each of them in turn. Mai, still bouncing. Pakura, still smiling. Karura, still quiet with her form held in both hands.
"Questions?"
"When does it start?" Mai asked.
"Three days after the application deadline."
"How will it be done?" Pakura asked.
"You'll find out when you get there."
"That's not very helpful..."
"You're shinobi. If you want to find more information, go find it." He had a small smile.
Pakura's eye twitched.
"Anything else?"
Silence.
"Then I'll see you at the exam." He formed a single hand seal and vanished. A swirl of sand where he'd been standing settled back to the ground.
The three of them stood in the empty training ground, application forms in hand, the noon sun beating down.
Mai spoke first. "So who wants to celebrate?"
They ended up on the roof of a tea house near the central district, sitting in a row along the edge with their legs dangling over the street below. Karura had bought dango from a vendor on the corner. Mai was already on her third stick. Pakura ate quietly.
"Chunin Exams…" Mai said around a mouthful of sweet rice. "Chunin. Exams. I've been waiting for this since I graduated."
"You graduated less than a year ago," Pakura said.
"And I've been waiting since then! That's a long time!"
"It's really not."
"It is when you're me."
Karura ate her dango and listened. The application form sat folded in her lap, the paper already warm from the sun.
"Are you guys nervous?" Karura asked.
"No." Pakura said immediately.
"Nope!" Mai said.
"Not even a little?"
"Karura." Pakura turned to look at her. The confident smile was still there, but her eyes were serious. "We've completed B-rank and A-rank missions. We've fought hired shinobi, Kiri, Iwa, Leaf, and some other minor hidden village ninjas. We've killed people on real missions outside our own borders."
She held up her application form. "The Chunin Exams are designed to test whether genin are ready for that level of responsibility. We've been living above that level for months. The exam isn't going to show us anything we haven't already seen."
"She's right, you know?" Mai said, and the fact that she said it without a joke or an insult attached to it made Pakura glance at her. "I mean, think about it. What are they going to throw at us? A written test? Karura's the smartest person I know. A survival challenge? We've been to the Land of Dust, the Land of Salt, the Land of Rivers, and the border badlands. A fight?" Mai cracked her knuckles. "I took down five Kiri ninjas by myself. Pakura assassinated a crime lord surrounded by bandits and like two ninjas I think. Karura wiped out an Iwa squad from so far away with one swing of a fan."
She bit into her last dango stick. "Honestly? I feel kind of bad for whoever we end up fighting."
Karura looked at her. Then at Pakura. Then back at her dango.
"I feel bad for them too…" she admitted.
"Really?" Mai raised an eyebrow.
"We've been through so much. More than most genin ever experience. And the people in this exam, they've probably been doing normal C-rank and D-rank missions. Escorts. Deliveries. Guard duty." Karura pulled at her scarf. "We're going to walk in there with our experience and they're going to be fighting us..."
"It won't be fair." Pakura smirked.
"It definitely won't be," Mai smiled alongside her. "But that's not our problem. Our problem is passing. Their problem is us."
"Do you guys have any friends from the academy who you think will be in the exam?" Karura asked next.
"Friends? No. But people from the academy? Probably Rasa, I guess." Mai figured. "If we got recommended, he definitely did. The Kazekage trains him and his team personally. No way he'd let them skip the exam."
"Rasa," Pakura scoffed. "Anyone who knows him talks about him like he's the next Kazekage."
"Do you know him?" Karura asked.
"I know him. We were in the academy together. He's annoying." She examined her fingernails.
"He's a bastard." Mai nodded.
"A bastard with Magnet Style. Same as the Third Kazekage but with gold instead of iron. He can manipulate Gold Dust." Pakura said.
"So he can control some dust. Big deal." Mai jerked her thumb at Pakura. "You've got a special ability too. Doesn't mean you're unbeatable."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm saying special talents aren't everything. Effort and skill matters more."
"I have both."
"Eh..." Mai shrugged.
"I will kill you, you know?"
Karura giggled underneath her scarf at the two of them. They soon sat in silence for a while, eating, watching the village move below them. The streets of Suna in the early afternoon were busy and nice. Merchants calling out prices. Children playing. A pair of chunin walking toward the academy.
"Hey," Mai said. "What if we all end up fighting each other?"
The question hung in the air.
"In the exam, I mean," Mai continued. "If there's a one-on-one stage. What if the bracket puts us against each other?"
"Then we fight, idiot." Pakura said. No hesitation.
"And?"
"And the best one wins."
"That's me, though. Aren't you scared?" Mai asked with such genuine concern that Karura had to laugh.
"That's so ridiculous that even Karura laughed at you."
"Karura laughs at everything." Mai said, which was true. "I literally beat five swordsmen by myself not too long ago. And I've only gotten stronger since then!"
"No one cares about some Mist swordsmen! If they lost to a cripple like you that's more telling of their lack of skill than anything. Gosh! Stop bringing that up." Pakura was sick of it.
"Somebody sounds jealous."
"Jealous of someone born wrong? Do you even hear yourself?"
"I'd beat you in a fight and you know it."
"You'd burn to a husk before you touched me."
"Wanna test that theory right now?"
"I'm ready to go at any time."
"After you finish eating?"
"I'll consider it."
Karura looked between them. They wanted to fight each other. Because they were both strong and they both knew it and they wanted to know who was stronger.
"What about you, Karura?" Mai turned to her. "If you had to fight one of us?"
Karura thought about it. Really thought about it. Million, Reaper, Moon. The Byakugan she couldn't reveal. The tailed-beast chakra reserves that nobody knew about. The Achievement System rewards that had been stacking since the day she graduated.
"I'd rather not." She honestly said.
"That's not an answer."
"I don't know what else to say." She raised her arms with a shrug. She didn't want to fight her friends.
Mai stared at her. Pakura stared at her. Karura ate her last dango and smiled behind her scarf.
"You're terrifying," Mai shared her truth about Karura's words. "You know that, right? The nice ones are always the scariest."
"I'm not scary." Karura pouted.
"You literally bisected six people from like a million meters away."
"That wasn't me, that was Moon." Karura deflected.
"Moon is you! You built it! You swung it! You're the one who, who!" Mai made the slicing gesture again. "You can't just do that and then sit here eating dango and say 'I'm not scary' with that innocent face!"
"I'm not scary." Karura repeated stubbornly.
"Its even scarier that you can say that with a straight face. Like you actually believe you aren't terrifying." Pakura shook her head, learning a new aspect of her friend.
The sun moved across the sky. The shadows lengthened. Three genin sat on a rooftop in Sunagakure with application forms in their laps and dango sticks in their hands. Confident that no matter what the Chunin Exam throws at them, they'd thrive.