On the nineteenth of January, the year after Haruka's twelfth birthday, it was finally time to take her graduation exam. Between the tips Itachi had given her and the lessons she managed to annoy out of Ibiki and Kakashi over the years it was surprisingly easy.
First they had her fill out a written exam and then prove her physical abilities. For the latter Haruka had to complete an obstacle course that involved anything from swimming, to running, with a little bit of climbing and using chakra to walk up walls sprinkled in. Judging by the face of the teacher who oversaw that test, she hadn't actually been expected to be able to do that last one.
Next was ninjutsu. For that she had to demonstrate hand seals as they were called out. Then she had to watch increasingly longer sequences, memorize them and repeat them back. At some point the teacher started using seals she had never seen before and the sequences got so long that she couldn't remember the end, that was when they moved on to the next test. Namely demonstrating Transformation and Clone techniques. Those were especially hard. Not because she didn't know how, but because wrestling her chakra into them always felt wrong. As if she was trying to force a somewhat oval ball through a round hole that was just a little too narrow. It worked in the end, but if she did it too fast or too often it would hurt. Nothing major in the beginning, just slight cell damage caused by chakra burn. It healed fast enough, but she knew from experience that it would get exponentially worse if she didn't rest long enough in-between using jutsu.
After ninjutsu came genjutsu. First she had to tell when she was and wasn't being influenced by one. Or at least that had been the plan. In reality her own chakra reacted rather violently to foreign chakra in her system. Which meant that minor genjutsu, like the one she was supposed to spot, were dispelled almost before they took hold. If she didn't pay attention she couldn't even tell that someone had tried to put her under one. Stronger genjutsu she had to actively dispel herself, but because her chakra reacted to those as well she didn't miss a single one. The teacher gave up after a while and told her to perform a genjutsu instead. She had a feeling that was another one of those things he didn't expect her to be able to do.
He was almost right. Haruka knew just one genjutsu and even that only because Kakashi had used it on her a few dozen times, not because he had actually been trying to teach it. It was called the Hell Viewing Technique and made someone see their greatest fear. The jutsu only worked over short distances and wasn't particularly convincing because the fear just suddenly appeared, but it would do. Kakashi had used it on her to test her innate defense against genjutsu and to make sure she wouldn't suddenly go into shock or become violent if she saw something that reminded her of life as one of Orochimaru's experiments. The teacher overseeing the graduation exam—his name was Iruka Umino—didn't seem quite sure whether he should be happy or sad that she passed that test as well.
It confused Haruka a little. He'd wished her luck before they had started. That had been genuine as far as she could tell. Yet during the actual exam, whenever she did a little better than he expected, it made him uncomfortable.
Her last test was a sparring match, taijutsu only, against a different teacher. He didn't give a name, only said he specialized in training other ninja. The fight didn't go very well for her. It started out slow, but whenever Haruka landed a blow or dodged one of his he would speed it up a little. She had never been very strong, even with the help of chakra to augment her muscles, so the ninken had focused on making her fast instead. She could run with them for hours at a time, but this man was always a little faster than her. In the end she had to concede defeat.
They made her wait outside for an hour, presumably to look over her written exam. It was well worth it though. When Iruka opened the door again he handed her a hitai-ate—her very own!—and made her officially a shinobi of the Leaf.
***
Three days later Haruka found herself in an Academy classroom for the first time. There were twenty-nine other children, half of which gave her odd looks. They probably all knew each other, whereas she was an outsider. The new girl to join the class on the last day of school. She wasn't the only one being stared at though. There was a loud, blond boy in the room who had apparently failed the exam and then managed to graduate anyway. And after a while she noticed some people whispering about another boy at the back of the room. He was very pale and the smile on his face seemed oddly frozen in place. There was quite a bit of space around him and he seemed to be new as well.
"Do you mind?" Haruka asked, pointing to the empty seat on his left. She wasn't about to make herself a nuisance if he preferred to sit alone, but there weren't that many free places to sit and most of the other children weren't nearly as calm as him.
"Mind what?"
At first she thought he was mocking her, but he looked genuinely confused, as if he really didn't understand the question, so she explained it to him. It was a little bit of a struggle. Apparently he took phrases quite literally and had never even heard of idioms. The boy, Sai, did know a lot about the rules and regulations though. Haruka appreciated the distraction, even if his behavior was a little odd. They were in the middle of a discussion about when breaking a rule might be appropriate—never, according to him—when Iruka entered the room.
The teacher gave a little speech about what it meant for them to officially enter the shinobi force. He explained that they would be divided into three man teams and assigned to a jonin sensei. Some of the children looked surprised by that announcement, which was really weird considering how many books Haruka had read about this policy. Konoha was practically famous for her focus on teamwork. Iruka didn't pay any attention to the reactions, instead he simply began to list the members of each team.
There were some big names among the graduates. Team 8 and Team 10 were actually entirely comprised of clan heirs. Both of Sai's teammates on the other hand had last names that didn't mean anything to Haruka. One was a boy with mousy brown hair that seemed completely unremarkable. The other was a girl who wore a red dress that clashed horribly with her petal pink hair. She—and most of the other girls really—had protested rather loudly when Haruka was assigned to Team 7 with one Uchiha Sasuke. They had calmed down a little at the announcement that the other member of Team 7 would be Uzumaki Naruto though. Not that Haruka had cared, she was way too horrified by the fact that Kakashi would be their sensei.
She liked Kakashi. Really. He was pack. He was the one who taught her about pack. But he was also a horrible teacher, who ascribed to a figure-it-out-yourself philosophy. Haruka had probably gotten more actual lessons from Pakkun than from Kakashi, and that pug was one cranky little dog.