Chihiro accepts the book back, and agrees to see the marks. She tilts her head curiously when they get there, but makes no further comment.

Kakashi uses the sharingan to pick up the basics of arcana fairly quickly. He's not terribly hard to pin down for lessons.

The team takes a handful more C-rank mission, mostly merchant escort. These are all actually C-rank, and the most they run across is a small group of bandits.

Kakashi receives a ream of warnings about how ridiculously dangerous spell development is if you don't know what you're doing.

Sugira has, by now, figured out how to do 'shocking grasp but range of thirty to forty feet.' Not quite a full lightning bolt, but... His lightning's also getting more powerful, and while he never bothers using teleports on actual C-ranks he manages to increase the range of his shift-step to ten feet and the number he can pull off to seven.

He finishes a spell early on that adds additional protections against ranged attacks - stacking with mage armor - and then starts in on both invisibility and a counter to it. These four - lightning ray, protection from arrows, invisibility, and glitterdust - are all second level; he also figures out how to apply the alarm ward to an area for a night, and how to make a thin sheet of stone spring up between him and any attacks, and visual-only illusions (those last three being still first level).

A few weeks later, Kakashi calls them together to announce he's going to sponsor them in the imminent chunin exams.

"None of you don't have to participate if you don't want to, but only teams of three will be accepted, so."

He has zero problems with not getting promoted. He has zero problems with never getting promoted, though he knows Naruto should probably hit chuunin eventually.

One minute of staring at Naruto's puppy-dog-eyes later, he grumbles, "Fine. But if we're in over our heads we bail."

"Hahah! Sweet! I wanna do it!"

Chihiro simply nods.

"Great!" says Kakashi. "Here are the forms, just turn them in at the Tower. Oh, and the applicants from other villages will be arriving in the next day or so, so try not to start any fights."

"We'll be good sensei, promise."

"Not everyone's as nice as we are. But run along now."

"Alright!"

He even doesn't need help with the forms by now, though he still asks Sasuke to check them over for errors.

And then: "Chihiro, do you know anything about the exams?"

"The chunin exams are an inter-village competition held semi-annually to assess the strength of each village's genin. The host village rotates among the ninja villages, alternating between one of the Five Great Ninja Villages and selection of the more prosperous smaller villages. Not every village attends every exam; for example, Hidden Rock and Hidden Cloud do not attend exams hosted here. The format of the exam is three parts, each testing a different aspect of the skills needed by chunin. The exact form the tests will take is at the discretion of the host village and is rarely repeated, with an exception for the final stage, which is a tournament between those who have not yet been eliminated."

"Right. Guess that's to make it hard to prepare for... What type of skills are usually listed for chuunin? We can at least guess it'll address some of those..."

"Qualities looked for in chunin include leadership, intelligence, courage, dedication, teamwork, resourcefulness, martial skill, and adherence to the shinobi code."

"Well, we've got those between us three..."

Chihiro nods.

Behind them, another group is coming up the main road to the tower. There are three of them, led by a girl around the same age as the Konoha group, while the other two look to be a year or two older. She looks like she hasn't slept in a week.

Naruto smiles, friendly, as they pass, asks, "You guys here for the exam?"

"That's right," says the boy. He's got a tall package wrapped in cloth bandages strapped to his back. "All the way from Suna, just for this."

The other girl, hair tied into several pigtails, simply sneers.

The girl in front keeps walking. "Keep up," she says in a low voice, not turning her head.

"Gotta go," he says, winking. "See you around."

He shrugs, says, "See you," and then, once they're probably out of earshot - 

"Was it me or was there something really weird about the girl our age."

"Based on the distribution of ages, those are the Sand Siblings, children of the Kazekage. The youngest, according to intelligence, is the current jinchuuriki of the Ichibi."

"...Let's get our forms dropped off."

"Very well."