( the Examination Room)
Mito sighed as she rested her head in her hands, she had quickly been able to figure out the point of the test she had taken for the first part of the Chunin Exams.
Initially they had been given an exam paper which contained a number of questions, each question getting progressively harder until they reached a point at which she doubted even a Jounin would know the answer.
Then after having passed out the exams sheets the proctor, a guy called Ibiki Morino had told them they had half an hour to answer the nine questions in front of them, then after the time was up he would give them the final one.
Answering the questions had not been the purpose of the test though, in fact they had just been a ruse, a smokescreen. The true purpose of the test had been the last question, one which tested the candidate's grit, strength of will and whether they had what it took to be a Chunin.
Ibiki had told them they had a choice whether or not they wanted to answer the question. They were told that if they did choose to answer it and they got it wrong, then they would never be allowed to take part in another Chunin Exam again.
If they chose not to answer though and left the room then they would fail this Chunin Exam but would be allowed to take another Chunin Exam later.
This had put the pressure on a number of teams and more than one genin had caved in and left the room, which of course meant that their entire team had failed as well.
Fifteen teams probably failed this stage of the test, whittling the number of candidates down drastically. Luckily though Mito's team, along with the other rookie's teams had all held their nerve and had passed.
As too did the Kiri Team, the Oto Team, Kabuto's Team and the Suna Team which contained the Kazekage's children. In fact most of those who failed the test were those teams that had taken the Chunin Exams a number of times before.
A few minutes later when it looked like no one else was going to leave, Ibiki had then told them they had all passed, before he had explained the purpose of the test and how it related to being a Chunin. Overall it was as Mito had suspected, a simple ruse which separated the weakest candidate's from the strong ones.
A smile spread across Mito's face as she looked around the room and saw that all of her friends had made it too. Her smile widened even further as she met her sister, Erza's, gaze.
The two of them sharing a grin at their triumph. Her exultation only lasted a few minutes though before she was distracted as one of the classrooms windows suddenly shattered, drawing the attention of the entire class.
Mito's hand instinctively went towards her kunai pouch, gripping onto the comforting grip of one of her knives as she leapt to her feet. Around her Mito could see a number of the other genin's reacting the same, all of them on guard as they looked over at the now broken window cautiously.
Seeing what came through the window though had Mito rolling her eyes as she saw a large banner spread across the front of the room, held up by two kunai which had been embedded through the corners of the banner and into the wall behind it.
Putting her kunai away and relaxing slightly, Mito smiled faintly as she read the message written across the banner, "The Second Exam Proctor Mitarashi Anko."
Turning to look at the woman in front of the banner Mito smile grew bigger. It was Anko, a Kunoichi who Mito and Erza had met a couple of years ago.
The woman had spent a month living in their Clan Compound, whilst their mother had worked on removing a strange seal, a cursed seal Anko had told them, which had been put on her a number of years ago.
The seal had apparently fused itself to both Anko's chakra and soul, causing her pain if she drew on too much chakra.
Because of this and the complexities involved in removing it Kushina had apparently spent a number of years coming up with a way to safely remove it, and when she had finally discovered a way to remove the complicated seal, Anko had had to spend a month at the Compound under Kushina's watchful eye in case something had went wrong.
Suffice to say over the course of that month both Erza and Mito had grown quite close to Anko, who was only four years old them, yet had been a Chunin at the time.
They had grown to like her mischievous personality, her sly humour and the complete lack of deference she had for them, even though they were the Hokage's daughters, it was very refreshing.
"Alright you brats, this is no time to be celebrating!" Anko yelled out, a sly grin on her face as she looked around at all the surprised genin.
"I am going to be one of the examiners for the second test, the name's Anko Mitarashi, make sure you all remember it!"
Ibiki merely scowled as he saw Anko's overly flamboyant entrance, his eyes narrowing as he noticed the conspicuous absence of the other proctor for this stage of the exam.
"Where's the other guy? Or have you already scared him off?"
Anko snorted at that, the chances of her scaring someone like Grimm off was laughable. "No he should be coming, he just refused to join me in my awesome entrance."
As if what she had said was prophetic, the second proctor chose that moment to open the door and walk in.
The minute she saw him Mito's breath hitched. It was Pain, or possibly Grimm if her hypothesis was correct.
Pain looked the same as he did before, with short hair and a muscular build. His eyes were distinctive in the fact that the irises were crimson red and yet the sclera were black.
Half of his face was covered by a half mask, one which was quite similar to Kakashi's. Other than that his garb was like that of a normal Jounin, he was wearing black Shinobi pants, some kind of sleeveless shirt which showed his heavily muscled arms off, with a blue, Kiri Jounin's flak jacket over the top.
Overall he looked distinctive, but other than his build and his height Mito was having trouble working out the similarities between Grimm and Pain, Grimm had worn, a full black outfit, with a hood and blank full face mask after all, this had made his eyes difficult to see.
"Finally caught up did you Grimmy?" Anko said cheerily.
The instant she said that Mito had frozen, it seems she was not the only one who thought that Grimm and Pain might be the same person.
Turning to her left Mito watched as Sasuke seemed to sit up straighter, his eyes locked on Pain and his hands clenched into fists.
Looking away from Sasuke, Mito could also see that the others who had been with her when they had been talking to Kabuto tensing. Even Kiba seemed to have picked up on the connection, now that Anko's taunting had drawn attention to it.
Standing next to Anko, Ibiki narrowed his eyes as he heard what the woman said. Glancing sideways he met Anko's gaze for a fraction of a second before he nodded his head in understanding.
It appeared that this guy, Pain of Kiri, was actually the Grimm. As soon as he finished this portion of the test he would head to the Hokage's office to alert him to this if he wasn't already aware.
The fact that an S-Class Shinobi, even an elusive one like Grimm, had been able to enter Konoha undetected was very worrying. Heads were going to roll for this fuck up, Ibiki was certain of that.