Chapter 10: The Oscar Performance
The Konoha Ninja Academy did not look like a school today. It looked like a processing plant for a slaughterhouse.
Ren stood in the crowded courtyard, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. The air was thick with the nervous sweat of prepubescent kids and the grim, oppressive chakra of the Chunin proctors. There was no laughter. There were no kids pulling pranks or playing tag.
Everyone knew what passing this exam meant.
Look at this depressing assembly line, Ren thought, his eyes scanning the rows of terrified eight- to twelve-year-olds. They are literally sizing us up by our height to see if we can hold a standard-issue katana.
"Ren Uchiha," a tired voice called out from the doorway of testing room three.
Ren snapped to attention, pasting a look of mild, dim-witted confusion onto his face. He shuffled forward, making sure to drag his feet slightly, and slid the door open.
Inside the room sat two Chunin instructors. They looked like they hadn’t slept since the war started. Their flak jackets were stained, and one of them had a fresh bandage wrapped tight around his neck. They were desperate for bodies, which meant their standards were practically subterranean.
"Step forward," the lead instructor rasped, barely glancing at the clipboard in his hands. "The requirement is the basic Clone Jutsu. Produce one viable clone, and you graduate."
Ren stepped onto the designated mat.
Just a basic clone? Ren thought, almost offended. They really are scraping the bottom of the barrel. In the peaceful era, you needed three clones just to pass. Today, they’ll take a single illusion and hand you a frontline deployment.
"Whenever you are ready, Uchiha," the second instructor said, looking up. There was a flicker of expectation in his eyes. Despite Ren’s awful reputation, he still wore the crest on his back. People always expected an Uchiha to pull a miracle out of nowhere.
Ren raised his hands, slowly forming the hand seals.
Ram. Snake. Tiger.
He didn’t draw on his physical stamina. He didn’t mold his chakra properly. He intentionally frayed his own energy, completely destabilizing the output right at the critical moment of manifestation.
Poof.
A pathetic, anemic cloud of gray smoke materialized next to him.
When the smoke cleared, the instructors stared in absolute silence.
The clone standing next to Ren was a crime against ninjutsu. It was severely hunched over, its skin the color of old oatmeal. One of its eyes was situated an inch lower than the other, and its arms hung at bizarre, broken angles. It looked like a deflated balloon that had been left out in the rain.
The lead instructor blinked, rubbing his eyes as if he were hallucinating. "What... what is that?"
The clone let out a wet, wheezing sound and immediately collapsed into a puddle of viscous white smoke.
"I’m sorry," Ren panted, swaying heavily on his feet. "I... I think I pushed my coils too hard."
"You pushed your coils?" the second instructor repeated, his voice rising in disbelief. "You barely extracted enough chakra to light a candle! You are twelve years old! My grandmother has better chakra control, and she’s been dead for six years!"
Time for the finale, Ren decided.
Without another word, Ren’s eyes rolled back into his head.
He flopped violently onto the wooden floorboards, faking a massive, chakra-induced seizure right in front of the proctors. He thrashed his legs, kicked his arms, and let out a series of high-pitched, agonizing groans.
"My coils!" Ren shrieked, clutching his chest and rolling across the mat. "The agony! It burns! I think my pathways are collapsing!"
The two instructors shot out of their chairs, completely horrified.
"Medic!" the lead instructor yelled, rushing forward. "Hold his head! Don’t let him swallow his tongue!"
Ren kept thrashing, making sure to accidentally kick the second instructor right in the shin.
Sell it, Ren commanded himself, putting every ounce of his thirty-year-old soul into the performance of a lifetime. You are weak. You are fragile. You are a liability. If they send you to the front, you will immediately have a stroke and compromise the mission.
After two solid minutes of aggressive twitching, Ren let his body go completely limp. He let out a long, dramatic sigh and let his mouth hang open, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The lead instructor checked his pulse, his face pale and dripping with sweat. He looked at his partner, who was rubbing his bruised shin.
"Chakra sickness," the lead instructor breathed, shaking his head in absolute disgust. "Violent, systemic chakra rejection. I’ve never seen anything like it. His pathways are essentially useless."
The second instructor grabbed the clipboard, looking down at Ren with a mixture of profound pity and intense revulsion.
"He’s a liability," the man muttered, uncapping his red ink pen. "If we put him in a Genin squad, he’ll seize up the second he tries to mold chakra. He’ll get his whole team killed."
Exactly, Ren cheered internally, though he kept his eyes glazed and vacant. Stamp the paper. Do it.
The exhausted instructor slammed his hand down on the clipboard, disgustedly stamping a massive, red "FAIL" on Ren’s permanent record.
"Unfit for shinobi deployment," the lead instructor declared officially. "Send him to the hospital for observation, then send him home. We’re done here."
Ren was loaded onto a stretcher and carried out of the Academy courtyard. The terrified children waiting in line watched him go, whispering in hushed, fearful tones about the Uchiha who had pushed himself so hard his brain broke.
By the time the medics dumped him at the hospital, Ren had miraculously "recovered."
He walked out the front doors an hour later, clutching the official Academy failure notice in his hand.
The afternoon sun felt incredibly warm. The breeze was perfect. Ren looked down at the red ink bleeding into the cheap parchment. He was completely, officially safe from the draft.
He wasn’t going to the Rain Village. He wasn’t going to freeze in a trench. He wasn’t going to be cannon fodder for the Hokage.
Ren walked through the Uchiha compound with a massive, uncontainable grin on his face. When he reached his bedroom, he didn’t throw the paper away. He didn’t hide it in shame.
He found a nice, polished wooden frame.
He slid the failure notice inside and hung it directly above his bed, framing it on the wall like it was a prestigious diploma.
Valedictorian of the draft dodgers, Ren thought proudly, crossing his arms and admiring his handiwork. Now, I just need to figure out how to make money.
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