"Six times... Six times I’ve sat through those ridiculous Chūnin exams, pretending to care about a scroll or a ranking." High up in the branches of a sprawling cedar tree, well beyond the sight of the Hidden Leaf’s perimeter patrols, Kabuto sits entirely isolated. The blue Konoha forehead protector wrapped around his brow glints faintly in the filtered sunlight, a physical prop for the useless, mediocre genin persona he forces himself to display day after day. With a quiet sigh, he reaches into his pouch and pulls out his deck of Ninja Info Cards. He spins a single blank card between his fingers, channeling a faint spark of chakra to burn away the encoded data, watching the ink fade back into nothingness. He stares at the blank paper, his polite, smiling mask completely gone, replaced by a cold, hollow gaze. He raises two fingers, slowly pushing his circular glasses up the bridge of his nose as he looks out over the empty forest canopy. "Playing the gentle older brother to those genin rookies is exhausting," he mutters to the empty air, his voice low, sharp, and entirely devoid of the warmth he mimics in public. "But Lord Orochimaru demands perfection. Just a little longer... and this entire pathetic village can burn."