[Fic] Sky on Fire: Slow Burn -- Chapter 15, Part III
Title: Slow Burn
Chapter: 15 Blind (Part III)
Author/Artist: Killaurey
Word Count: 7,956
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. AU immediately after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Part 15 of ? Unbeta'd.
Note: A who's who list of important characters during this Chuunin Exam arc can be found here. This list is accurate as of the end of this update. (Character-motivations and abilities that will be revealed later on are not on this list.)
"I changed my mind," Sayuri announced, slumping against the tunnel wall dramatically. "There is seriously no point in even trying to tail our mark in this situation. I mean, what's the point of having observers and giving them specific teams and then dumping them all willy-nilly in the dark with no way to find the people they're supposed to be watching?"
Hideki snickered. She kicked him and, as he yelped, had to admit that it made her feel better to have done so.
Nothing wrong with a little bit of violence, she thought virtuously.
She didn't even have to feel bad about talking loudly. They stood in a jutsu circle that she'd drawn with ink and her blood and then activated. It was a genjutsu, but a twisty one: it would keep anyone from noticing they were there, no matter if they attempted to seek them by sound, chakra usage, or sight.
And if it got broken, Sayuri was pretty sure it would hold the first attack back long enough for them to get into proper fighting position. They were about as safe as anyone could be, she figured, considering their circumstances.
It was too bad that this jutsu couldn't be used while moving. Though, given time, Sayuri thought she might be able to come up with ways around that… with a sigh she dragged her errant musings back to the present, with the exam and their current situation. Even though thinking about any of it made her want to grind her teeth.
"Maybe it's a test for us too," Inori pointed out. "Maybe they want us to prove that we can manage to pass the standard exam and the one they've set up for us."
She scowled. She couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, that was right. It would fit what she knew of the higher-ups and that meant...
"Do you think that how well we do on the trailing part will affect our chances to be made Chuunin?" she wondered. "Even if we get knocked out of the finals early?"
Everyone knew what the finals would be. That was always the same. The things that changed were the methods of weeding out those who were somehow inadequate.
And if someone thinks that about me and my team, I'll shove their inadequate up their ass, Sayuri thought mutinously.
"I'm not sure they would for this exam," Hideki offered, having regained some semblance of calm. "I mean, we're all pretty disadvantaged except for a few lucky ones with jutsu for just this sort of circumstance."
"Or bloodlines," Inori interjected.
"Or bloodlines," Hideki said. "But there's not many of those in here who're specifically meant to be able to fight underground in the dark."
"Yeah," Sayuri sighed, "including us."
"That's true," Hideki said. "But that's why we've managed to adapt--with your circle, we've got time to plan. We took out that first team easy, but that was luck."
Luck and the fact that one of the enemy had broken their leg while falling down the tunnel.
"Pathetic," Sayuri opined. She'd said the same thing to the guy ('you dare call yourself a shinobi like this? pathetic') before slitting his throat and stealing his number. She didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for that either.
After all, everything was fair in love and war. And this was a substitute for war which clearly meant wartime rules applied.
She fiddled with the numbers. "We've got a lot of options," she admitted, "and we're not far from some of them. You guys think we ought to make for an exit or do you think we should take our chances and track down the team we're supposed to observe. If they're not already dead, I mean."
Inori held up his hand, which glowed faintly in the dark, showing off the seamless band wrapped around his wrist and shook his head. "They're still alive," he said. "All three of their beads are accounted for." He sighed. "If we'd been able to get our hands on hair or something, I'd be able to tell you if they were injured or not--or if they were using a jutsu right this second. As it is, going from chakra signature alone, they're alive."
Sayuri bit down on her lip. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was less than enthused about going off into the dark to find a team she didn't even think was worth the trouble.
But what if that was part of the exam? She couldn't be certain that it wasn't.
"Hideki? Inori?" she asked. "What do you guys think? There are good parts to both options, as far as I can see, and that's what makes this hard."
"Too bad we can't tell how far away they are," Hideki murmured. "There's not a lot we can do without that. Inori's toy is all well and good--"
"It's not a toy."
"--but there's a lot of tunnels and a lot of bloodthirsty teams in here. Is that worth it? What if they're opposite of us? We'd have to fight our way through every tunnel and once we were there, we'd have to hope that the team didn't see us or notice us and then try to get another one of Sayuri's shields up and those take time."
She flushed. "I'm still working on my speed," she snapped. "It's not easy to do seven hundred and thirty six individual lines in a short period of time."
"I wasn't ragging on you," he said, "but it's true."
She huffed. "Okay," she said, "so you're in favour of saying 'screw this' to the observing part of our task for this exam and going to find the nearest exit. Inori, what about you?"
Inori shifted, the muted shush of leather and fishnet giving him away. "I have to agree," he said slowly. "I would rather stick around and try our skills, but the situation is dange--"
The wall above them exploded in a shower of dust and rock and something large and heavy impacted against the next wall. Hideki swore, using words she hadn't even known he'd known, while Inori grabbed her shoulder and held it tightly in his grip. She'd have a bruise later, she knew, from where he held her.
The bruise would be worth it. His touch gave her a focus to ground herself with as she drew her focus and concentration in tight as the wall above them continued to spit rock and dirt down on them. She spun her chakra, lighting up all of those lines that she'd drawn so painstakingly and shoved more of her chakra into it. Please hold, she begged, please hold so that I can kill whatever abysmally stupid person who thought knocking down walls while we're all trapped in tunnels was a good idea. I'll kill them, promise, so please hold long enough to keep be alive to do that.
She coughed on the dust--she couldn't keep that out--and forced more of her chakra into the circle. Sayuri knew that she was pushing it, that it was dangerous for her to be spending so much of her energy at this point in the game but there was nothing else they could do.
"Look," Hideki hissed, "they're trying to get through to the next tunnel now."
Sayuri shuddered at the thought. "We need to get out of here," she said quickly, "before this area gets too destabilized. We really have no idea how strong this structure is--what if they hit one of the crucial supports? Then we'd all be dead."
Which, quipped the tiny unaffected part of her mind, would be a pretty hard showing for an international exam. She winced. That would wind up in war. And not one, she thought, that Kumo would have a great chance at winning. Not if all the other villages united against them.
"Sayuri," Inori murmured. "You know what you were saying about the team we needed to follow?"
She scowled. "Yes, but is this really the time for that?"
"I think it's them," Inori said, rubbing at his eyes. "I can't see clearly, but look--if you watch for it..." He showed her the bracelet. "Their beads are brighter," he said, "which means they're very close."
Sayuri stared at the beads. One was a dark green, one a blood red. Both of those were perfectly acceptable shinobi colours, she thought, and had to approve.
But the third...
The third was a shocking pink.
"Don't tell me," she said, resigned. "The pink is for the girl with the glasses."
"Since you asked me not to tell," Inori said, "I won't."
"But he just did," Hideki pointed out. "What do you guys think? I'm all for following them now. It's not like they're being stealthy."
"They're as stealthy as an elephant learning to dance," Sayuri snapped and, before she could think better of it, she leaned forward and scuffed out on of her jutsu markers. The rest of them, without the support they needed, cascaded down around them. She drew as much of her chakra back from it as possible. If this went badly she was going to need the energy. "Let's go."
"Wonder what they're thinking," Inori said as braced themselves for the final collapse of the shield. "I mean, there's reckless and then there's this."
"I don't wonder about that," Hideki said. "You know what I wonder about?"
Sayuri counted to ten and seriously thought about not asking as the team, the one they were supposed to trail, broke through the far wall with another brutal shaking of the walls, and then gave in. "What?" she asked, the question barely audible over the sound of more rock falling.
Her shield gave a final shiver and faded away. Sayuri felt naked without it though she schooled herself to not show it.
She didn't need to see him to know Hideki was grinning. "How the fuck did they get that fat kid even fatter?"
"Good question," Inori said dryly, "maybe you can ask later."
"Let's just go," Sayuri sighed. "If we lose them now, that's just stupid of us."
Seventy minutes left.
The Jounin Examiner Maki arched one eyebrow at the monitors as the floor began shaking. "Interesting," she said, smiling grimly. "Someone preempted us."
What to do, what to do?
It was a bit early still and yet… if someone was already shaking the walls then, really, who was she to keep them from making the exam just that much more urgent for them all.
Maki flipped a few switches and spoke into an intercom. "Stage Avalanche is now in operation."
She went back to smiling at the monitors as deep inside the tunnels, supports disappeared and walls began trembling--more than could be accounted for by the… enterprising team… that had begun smashing through walls first.
But then Maki doubted that any of the teams who survived would realize that for some time.
It would be interesting, she thought, to see what they made of it.
Midori ducked under the swing of a katana and bubbled with a laugh. She spun up the wall, twirling gratuitously just because she could, and flung herself back down the wall, before the enemy could realize what she was doing, with kunai in her hands. Up and down and slash and clang!
It was like a song, she thought happily as her opponent blocked her and then went on the offensive. She couldn't stop laughing and since Natsu and Ryu were busy with their own fights--she could feel them, like an itch under her skin, only the itch was more something that appealed than reviled, and they were having their own fun--they weren't going to tell her to keep it down.
The sound of her laughter echoed quite satisfyingly in the enclosed space as she leapt from the wall to the other side of the tunnel. Come on, she thought eagerly, like a puppy in a park for the first time ever, come on, come on, come on!
Her opponent figured out where she was and Midori was forced to dodge shuriken. One got her and sunk into the skin of her shoulder. It burned and she couldn't help but feel glad. It was okay to get hurt because she was going to hurt them back and worse and so it was only fair and even though Botan-sensei said over and over that as a shinobi she wasn't supposed to play fair...
What he didn't know couldn't possibly hurt him.
Midori was always fair in her own way. Another shuriken sank into her thigh and she tugged it out heedless of the damage that could cause. It was okay, she chanted, still laughing, still feeling really really good, still glad that she'd gotten an opponent who knew what they were doing, and as they threw a third handful of shuriken, Midori danced up the wall and then flung herself over their throw. Her sandals went clack-clack-clack on the rock and she was certain that was how they were tracking her.
But that was the point, really, so Midori merely congratulated them on noticing and cut her jump short.
Instead of reaching the other wall, where they'd be able to continue the dance of death, she dropped and dropped and she burst into a new bout of giggles as she landed right behind her opponent. They swore, their voice distorted enough that she couldn't tell if they were male or female, and spun for her.
Midori's hand brushed their face and a spark of chakra trembled between them.
Her opponent recoiled, shrieking horribly, in what Midori had heard was some of the worst agony anyone could experience. They collapsed on the ground, writhing. She watched avidly as their chakra went berserk--that much she could see clearly--and knelt down next to her opponent.
"Hey," Midori said, her voice breathless and excited. "Can you get out of that?"
"He won't be able to," Ryu said, coming up behind her. "They never are."
She leaned back against his legs and peered up at where his face would be above her. "Mama says some can," she said calmly. "One day I've got to meet someone who can." Midori mulled over that. "Maybe my new friend will be able to! Wouldn't that be grand?"
Ryu rested one hand on her head as the screams went on and on and on with no sign of stopping. "Maybe," he said, "but I don't think this one is going to manage that."
"How did you know it was a boy?" she asked, wriggling her head a little. It felt good, having him pet her hair, and Midori had never been one to give up what felt good to her.
"I got the girl," he told her. "Our fight made it... quite clear of that."
"He means he groped her, Midori-chan," Natsu said, sounding dry. "I caught that much of their fight while dealing with my bastard. Playing with your latest toy, love?"
"Yes!" she chirped. "But Ryu says he doesn't look like a good prospect."
"No," Natsu said, after a few moments where Midori knew he was listening to the increasingly shrill screams. Midori admired the way the chakra was turning in on itself and ripping new pathways through the nin. It was a sight she never ever got tired of. "I don't think he is."
"Midori," Ryu said, "put him out of his misery."
She pouted. "But I don't want to-we haven't gotten to the best part yet!"
"I know," he said, "but we haven't got the time for it right now. It's too dangerous."
"I don't think it is," she said sulkily. "Who'd be stupid enough to come running towards the sound of him?"
"I'm sure there will be someone," Ryu said dryly. "Put your pet out of his misery, Midori."
She stared up at him, though she couldn't see him, and contemplated not listening. He couldn't kill her for this exam--that was in the rules and he wasn't likely to kill her anyway since he hadn't done so yet...
But it was true that her pet wasn't exactly kicking out of it and that was distressing to her. Boring, she thought, and sighed. Then, before she could give into the urge to argue to see if he could stay alive for even five more minutes, just to see if he could get out in that time, Midori reached out and twisted his strained and tortured chakra ties together and then pulled them away.
The screaming stopped abruptly. She dusted her hands off on her shorts as his chakra fizzled into nothingness and got up. "I guess we should go," she said, sighing. "Since we're not likely to have all that much fun now, right?"
Natsu knelt over the body, his chakra swirling around his body and giving his presence away as he came into contact with the corpse. Midori sat on the urge to touch his chakra. She could just imagine the scoldings she'd get if she played with her teammates' life when they had to all three of them get through this alive.
She closed her hands tightly and turned around to wrap her arms around Ryu. "It's not fair," she said. It was easier to keep from giving into any urge to mess with Natsu when she wasn't looking at him. And Ryu always felt steady and comforting and strong. If he hadn't been on her team and thus off-limits, Midori often thought that she'd have made him her best friend ever. "Why doesn't anyone ever survive?"
Midori knew she was whining and didn't care. Why not? Why shouldn't she get what she wanted? Especially when all they had to do was survive and that was what all of them were supposedly trained to do.
"Because they're not up to your standard," Ryu said, the answer as rote as her question.
She sighed again.
"It's alright," Ryu told her. "You'll get other chances to play in this exam."
"This stage?" she asked dubiously. Even she knew that was unlikely. They had a timeline and all their awesome wasn't going to stop the clock from moving one bit.
The answer was the one she'd expected. "No," he said, "but this exam, yes. We've got at least one more before the semi-finals, if they're needed this year, and then there's going to be the finals a month from now. We'll manage to get you another toy. Maybe we can even use your new friend."
"Maybe." Midori thought about that. "I wonder if she could deal with it?"
"We'll never know until you try."
"Got it," Natsu said. There was the soft shush of fabric as he moved away from the body. "The question now is, what door do we want to go out of?"
"What are our options?" Ryu asked, one arm around her shoulders.
"We've got several of them," Natsu said, with the sound of cards being flipped and shuffled together to accompany his words. "Not this one, but..."
Midori listened as he went on, content in the knowledge that her team would pass this exam (how could they not?) and then they'd be able to find someone more interesting for them to play with and that would be the grandest thing ever.
She hoped it happened soon.
Sixty five minutes left.
If we die here, Sasame thought, ducking and rolling under a gout of flame, then Orochimaru-sama will be rightfully pissed. And if that happens then it's better if we die here.
He hit the wall and went up it rather than coming to a stop. Up and up and up, out of the range of the flame--for the moment, at least, until the other Genin figured out where he'd gone.
Sasame squinted down at the battlefield, using the flickers of fire--this team all seemed to have it as their motif which was rich when. as far as he could tell, they weren't even from the Fire Country--and his familiarity with his teammates' chakra to figure out what was going on. Nariko was dealing with her enemy handily, though her back was against a wall and he knew that was a sign that she was pressed more than she would like to admit.
But Hiro... Hiro needed help. Sasame told himself, as he flung himself into a run back down that wall and past his opponent, that this was stupid. They were a team but they weren't supposed to care about each other. All of them knew that. All of them knew what the price tag for attachments was in Oto. Attachments were one more chain for Orochimaru-sama to wrap around them and keep them captive.
That, he was rapidly finding, meant absolutely nothing when it came to preventing those attachments from forming.
He could tell himself that saving Hiro meant nothing but just looking out for a teammate because they couldn't progress if they didn't all make it. He would probably tell Hiro that.
Sasame knew why though and it was because of the edged and icy fear that tracked down his spine at the thought of Hiro getting hurt. Fire lit up the tunnel and Sasame could feel the heat of it against his back. He didn't bother to look back. His opponent had figured out he'd gone somewhere.
The important thing was the other one. He could only tell what the nin looked like in the vaguest of details. A glimpse of long hair, a katana, a long jacket with fishnet leggings.
Hiro stumbling back, bleeding in several places.
Sasame's fingers flew through a set of seals that he'd learnt at the knee of his father, long before he'd even started properly training to be a shinobi, and murmured the name of his jutsu.
There was a moment of silence, as the shinobi turned to face him, leaving Hiro alone, as if they'd become aware of the other threat. But it's too late, Sasame thought as he counted down. Three, two, one...
All that long hair turned against the enemy nin abruptly. It lifted up, of its own volition, and wrapped around the nin's neck and began to squeeze. The katana dropped to the ground with a steely clatter as Sasame made his way past the still struggling nin to get to Hiro.
"I'm so glad I can't see that," Hiro said weakly. Another flare of light let Sasame see that he was trying to staunch the flow of blood. "And you wonder why Nari-chan and I won't grow out our hair."
"Don't be stupid," Sasame said, kneeling down beside him. He tugged a glow stick from his pouch and snapped and shook it. It lit their area with a greenish glow.
"That's dangerous."
"Not really," Sasame replied, listening to the sounds behind him. "Nariko's got her enemy down and she's going to finish off mine. As for yours... they won't be doing a whole lot now. Now shut up and let me see what I can do."
He gave a blood replenisher, a mild painkiller (mild because they couldn't afford to have one of their members go loopy on them) and a soldier pill along with his canteen to Hiro.
Hiro grimaced as he swallowed them but said nothing about their lack of taste. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't even account for one."
"It's fine. As long as we get through this, no one is going to know. I think you got the leader any how."
"That shouldn't matter," Hiro replied as Sasame closed his eyes and searched for the concentration to summon what medical jutsu he knew. He wasn't the best at it and Hiro's easy acceptance of the fact that he was going to heal him made Sasame feel in equal parts elated and apprehensive.
What if he screwed up?
"Oh?" he asked, his voice absent.
"I'm going to blame that on your preoccupation," Hiro said conversationally as another flare of fire blasted above them. "Because you know as well as I do that saying we couldn't take out an enemy because they were the leader of a team wouldn't be accepted in Oto."
Ah ha, there. Sasame smiled slightly as he felt the chakra come to hand. His hands began glowing softly, with a pale green light. He placed one hand over the worst of the cuts on Hiro's abdomen and the other hand over the nasty scratch on Hiro's head. Head wounds always bled a lot, he knew, but he was healing it for another reason.
A head injury, even a mild one, could spell a death sentence in here faster than almost any other injury.
Sasame rather thought that the only injury that would be even worse to have in here would be a hand injury. Jutsu required hands and...
"So what?" Sasame said, distantly realizing that Hiro was waiting for an answer. "As long as we survive, no one needs to know. You'll get your chance to shine too."
"A chance to shine?" Nariko's voice interrupted them. She sounded bright and almost giddy. There was a pale silver glow around her that came from the whip she held in her hands. As she talked, she coiled it back up neatly, heedless of the blood that was falling off it.
And why would she care? Sasame wondered as he bent his head over the fading injuries as Hiro answered her. Her weapon likes the blood. He knew that if he raised his head and watched her, any blood that was on her clothing and her skin would be disappearing, sucked up by the whip.
They'd use it to clean Hiro up. Another way to keep it from looking like they'd gotten in trouble. There was nothing they could do about the clothing but, Sasame rather thought, as he sat back on his heels and let his chakra fade away, that was all the better.
Looking roughed up for a Chuunin exam was the norm. They would be ignored if they did. It was the teams that were going to come out of this looking like they'd been out for a walk in a park that would be getting the side-eye.
Nariko dropped the whip on Hiro as Sasame dug out a soldier pill of his own and swallowed it dry. Healing always wore him out and the bubbling warmth of artificial energy was a welcome boost.
He'd crash out later of course, and so would Hiro, but that was a matter of necessity and for now... well, as long as they got some rest or a chance to sleep in the next week they could keep using soldier pills almost indefinitely so long as they were careful not to overdose and risk over-taxing their chakra coils.
"How dead are they?" Sasame asked Nariko, stealing his canteen back from Hiro and sipping from it.
"Very," she said and glanced behind her. "So is yours. Nice work on that one."
Sasame shrugged. As far as he was concerned the nice work he'd done was slowly sitting up, still clutching the whip as it drank off the blood on his skin and clothes. Hiro wasn't dead.
The world looked a little brighter.
"They should've known that having long hair is a liability," Sasame said placidly. "Someone would've figured out how to exploit it by now, after all. And it might look pretty but it isn't very practical."
Nariko made a face at him. Her hair fell just to her shoulders and he knew that she wanted it longer.
But she knew that it was dangerous. Having him on her team amply proved that and where one shinobi knew how to exploit a weakness like that there would be others.
"Either way," she said, "we're in the clear. They're from Iwa, which is rich. I don't think they knew who we were at all."
"Sort of hard to tell," Hiro murmured a bit dryly. He was looking better by the minute, as much as Sasame could tell by glow stick anyway. "We should be lucky it wasn't that team from Konoha. We'd be in shit if we'd killed all three of them."
"Nah," Nariko said, "like Sasame said, down here? Who would know?"
"We would," Sasame replied. "And that would be the problem when it came to facing Orochimaru-sama again. Do you really think we could lie to him?"
All three of them fell silent at that.
"No," Nariko said reluctantly. "You're right, Hiro. We should be very glad it wasn't them. Especially since in this situation the smartest reaction is kill first and ask questions later."
"It helps," Sasame said, "that their team is oddly composed. Standard is two guys and a girl. They've got the opposite. I didn't notice many other teams like that, did you?"
Hiro shook his head and Nariko murmured a negation.
"So we'll have to keep that in mind," Sasame continued. "We'll be able to tell them apart that way."
"In the dark?" Nariko said skeptically. "I mean, I'll be the first to admit that we're good but we're not that good, Sasame. We can't see in the dark any better than most of the teams."
He lifted the glow stick and found himself studying a number placed a few feet up on the wall. A tiny metal slot, just big enough for the cards they'd been given. To the side of it, in the middle of the wall, was a closed door.
Sasame smiled.
"It doesn't matter," he said, getting to his feet and watching as Hiro labouriously did the same.
"What are you talking about?" Hiro asked, looking over his clothes and, seeing no blood, handing the whip back to Nariko.
"Look," he said, "we're at our exit. We're getting out of this hellhole."
Nariko whipped around. Hiro did the same, but slowly.
"No way," Nariko said, "we just came in here because we were being chased."
"Luck," Hiro intoned, "is also part of being a shinobi."
Sasame rolled his eyes, smiling despite that. "Give me your cards," he said, "and we'll finish this."
They were handed over before he finished speaking. With a soft laugh, Sasame went up the wall and one after the other inserted the cards. There was a breathless moment of silence and then a grating sound.
The door opened.
Sixty minutes left.
He leaned against the cool rock of the tunnel and pretended that would help to soothe his headache. It didn't, but Neji was inclined to try and make himself believe it would.
Patience, he thought, keeping a sharp eye out for where his teammates were. Their chakra coils as well known to him as the steps of Jyuuken. There was Tenten, her coils bright and sharp and tight, checking over a wall. There was Lee, whose coils were dimmed and flickered oddly in places.
He closed his eyes--with the Byakugan active it didn't matter if he had them open or not--and swept their area for enemy nin.
They couldn't be too careful.
"Found it," Tenten said triumphantly, but very quietly. "You were right, Neji."
Lee beamed so brightly that Neji half-thought that the area they were in was going to light up in response. It didn't. He blamed long association with Lee and Gai-sensei for even considering that as a possibility.
"Good," he said, "and there's no one around here to stop us."
Not any more.
The shaking of the tunnels--worse to the far left of them--had startled Genin out of there like rabbits fleeing from a wolf and as for the team that had been hiding in this particular tunnel, either for an ambush in hopes of getting the numbers they needed to get through the door, or because they were biding their time before moving on...
Neji surveyed their bodies dispassionately. The heat of their chakra was fast dissipating into the darkness and soon he wouldn't be able to tell where they were at all. He felt no guilt for what his team had done. If they hadn't, then they would have been killed in turn.
And I have learned that destiny is what you make it, Neji thought, and I decided that my destiny did not end here, in a dark tunnel, on enemy land.
He knew that Lee hadn't even considered the possibility of losing and that Tenten had been determined to not.
Neji felt a momentary fondness for his team. They were occasionally idiots, but he was used to them. And if they weren't then it meant serious things were going on. Even though this was an exam, they were light-hearted.
Why shouldn't they be? he thought. After all, we're more than a match for most of Genin in here.
There was a soft snick as the door slid open.
"Come on," Tenten said, and went through it. Lee followed.
Neji took a long look around the tunnel, uncertain as to why he was hesitating, but seeing nothing with the Byakugan active, he went.
Even if something was there, after all, they'd passed this exam. That was the important thing. The door swung shut behind them.
Fifty-five minutes left.
"Yasuo," Akira hissed, "is there any way to tell what's shaking the walls?"
They were perched up in the corner of one of the tunnels that headed upwards and as long as the walls kept shaking, Akira had no intentions of moving their team. If the whole thing came down, being up high might save them--once the tunnels began going he was almost certain that there'd be gaps that they might be able to escape through.
"Does it matter?" Ima asked, her voice steady despite the shaking of the walls. "I mean, either way, we've got two choices: go and dare the shaking down there and hope nothing falls on us, or stay up here and fail the exam miserably."
Akira grimaced. That was true enough that he didn't like looking at it. "None of us are equipped to dig ourselves out of rock and our combined number of earth jutsu are nil, Ima," he said. "We can't take unnecessary risks."
"We're going to have to if we want to pass this," Ima said, "you know as well as I do that we're not that far from our goal, just a couple of tunnels. That's manageable in a pretty short period of time and I can't hear any fighting going on down right below us. Just the walls."
"There's no heat signatures either," Yasuo murmured, his voice gone dreamy from the effort of looking. "I would know if that was the case. No one ever thinks to hide that. They'll hide their chakra, their scent, their foot steps but not their body heat."
Akira could imagine the shrug Ima gave at that. "See?" she said, right on cue. "Look, I don't want to fail out here during the first real exam. The whole getting to the room was just to weed out those who were the real failures, right? We all agreed on that."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Yasuo would notice but Ima wouldn't and so he felt safe enough to do that. It didn't help with his level of annoyance but Akira pretended it did.
If he pretended long enough, he thought wryly, maybe it would come true.
The walls around them shook ominously. Akira braced himself better and grabbed Ima when she wobbled slightly. "More chakra to your feet," he told her.
"I know that," she said. "I just got distracted."
He let go of her arm the moment she was stabilized again. Akira studied the darkness and how featureless it was and knew he didn't want to die in here. But he didn't want to lose the exam either.
What to do?
The sound of the walls was unnerving him and he acknowledged that fear and then tucked it inside of him. He couldn't afford to give into non-thinking like that. Not when it wasn't just him he had to see through this. It was also Ima and Yasuo.
And Kioshi-sensei, who had faith in them that they'd put on a good showing in this exam. Akira didn't want to make Konoha look bad, he really didn't, but all the same...
He didn't want to wind up with all of them buried under rock and more rock where no one would ever be able to find their bodies and get them home. This wasn't the same as a mission, he thought, despite the fact it was considered to be almost like one.
Ima shifted next to him. "What is it?" he asked.
"Nothing," she muttered, "I was just moving. Do you think whatever is attacking the walls is getting further away?"
Yasuo snorted.
Akira resisted the urge to do the same. It was obvious that the walls were shaking worse and worse with every passing minute. He still couldn't bring himself to tell her that--not when she had a hopeful note in her voice.
The walls were shaking worse... Akira knew he had to make a decision and make it soon if they wanted to have a chance at getting ahead of whatever it was that was going through the walls.
"Yasuo," he said, "are you getting any heat signatures besides us?"
If no enemies were really below them then they were going to move, he decided, because it was becoming increasingly obvious that they weren't going to have much of a choice about moving if they wanted to get out of here alive.
"Nothing," Yasuo said. "We heading out, boss?"
"We'll try it," Akira said with finality. "We might get crushed but at least we'll make an effort to get to where our door ought to be. Keep low, keep quiet, and we'll do our best to sneak past the other teams. The noise from the walls will help us in that. No one is going to be able to hear over that."
"All the better," Ima said as they stood.
"All the better," Akira echoed with less conviction. "Yasuo, if you spot anyone let me know and we'll figure out how to get around them."
It was the last thing he wanted to do but, nonetheless, he led them down and down and down the tunnel. Their feet were silent on the rock as they picked their way towards where their upward tunnel matched up with a horizontal one.
We only need to move two gates, Akira thought, and that's not that bad. It's just a matter of getting there without dying.
Piece of cake, right?
He shook his head as they touched the ground. "Yasuo." Akira's voice was a whisper that barely made it past his lips.
Yasuo didn't answer him verbally, but he slipped past Ima and him and further down the tunnel. Akira and Ima drifted over to the side of it, feeling the trembling in the rock. He wondered again what was doing that. Some idiotic Iwa Genin showing off? Was this part of the exam? A weakness in the tunnels that someone had found by getting smashed into it?
As long as it didn't make the whole place fall on them Akira didn't much care. It felt like forever before Yasuo returned by he knew that only perhaps five minutes had passed.
"We're clear," Yasuo breathed, "and it looks like a clean run straight to our tunnel."
If it hadn't been so relentlessly, entirely dark, Akira would have exchanged a glance with Ima. They trusted Yasuo, they did.
But that sounded too good to be true.
Please let it be true, Akira thought. "Alright," he said, "we'll make for it. Keep an eye out. Listen for changes in the sounds, Ima."
"And you?"
"I'll look for changes in the light." All of them had their own strengths. It made sense to play to them rather than struggling with something that one of them wasn't very good at.
The run through the tunnels was, for Akira, an exercise in horror. Every step they took might be their last as the walls around them jumped and shook and the floor underneath their feet trembled so violently that twice Yasuo slipped and fell and Akira had to brace himself more and more frequently with chakra to keep from doing the same thing. Ima grimly kept to her feet, or if she fell she did it so silently that Akira wasn't aware of it.
Maybe it wasn't too good to be true, he thought, as they made their way down on tunnel, moving as fast as they dared to get to their next goal. After all, it was looking more and more likely that the other teams who'd been in this area had abandoned it.
Akira wished he could.
It was too bad that their number matched one of the ones that they theorized was down here.
No, he decided, that was an understatement that failed to adequately express how he felt about this. It was devastatingly poor luck that had them setting down this way was the walls jumped around them.
"Oh god," Ima moaned, "I changed my mind, can we go perch up in the tops of tunnels again?"
Yasuo snickered.
"No," Akira said even as a crash echoed behind him. It was loud enough that he felt, for a moment, like he was stuck in a bell. "No, I don't think we can go back any more."
"Don't tell me that," Ima said. "I'm trying to ignore the crashes behind us."
The crashes, Akira thought, made it pretty clear to all of them that their chances of survival if they went backwards weren't going to be very high. All they could do was move forward.
"I know," he said, "but we can't go back. So we've got to go forward."
It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to light up a glow stick or their collapsible lantern but that would just be asking for more trouble. They couldn't be the only person who'd fled the noise and the destruction of the tunnels.
And Ima would think he was insulting her. Which wasn't it at all; Akira was the one who wanted the light so badly that he could almost taste it.
"Yasuo."
"Still nothing," Yasuo reported simply.
Akira nodded. "We're picking up our pace."
He left unspoken the fact that he didn't dare keep them moving slowly with the sounds increasing behind him. They started building speed slowly, using chakra to stick to the rock to give surety to their steps, as they wound their way through one tunnel and then down the next.
"It should be around here," Akira said, his voice tight. The air was getting harder to breathe as the dust kicked up from the destruction got worse and worse.
There was a snap and then a pale glow filled their area. He looked at Ima, who was shaking the glow stick to get it brighter, reproachfully.
"Don't give me that," she said, her voice rough from the dust. "You wanted it and honestly, if we didn't have light, it would take us forever to find the door and we don't have forever thanks to whatever is behind us."
"Alright," he said, because he couldn't argue with any of that. "Let's find it then." Akira tugged out his own glow stick and snapped and shook it to life. "Spread out and search. Don't go too far and stay in this tunnel."
They nodded, the movements made eerie by the light.
By the time the found the door, seven minutes later by Akira's count, the walls of their tunnel were beginning to shatter.
"Hurry," he said as Ima shoved their cards into the slot.
"I'm trying," she snapped as she slid the last one in.
The silence before the door opened was unbearable. Then it was open and Akira urged Ima and Yasuo through it before going himself.
The door shut behind them and the tunnel collapsed in the same breath.
Fifty minutes left.
"Ain't that interesting?" Masanori murmured as Tsubaki-hime dropped her illusion. "He didn't notice us at all."
"Ten feet from him," Taka said, "and he couldn't tell we were there."
Masanori hid a smile as he felt Tsubaki-hime cross her arms. "He almost did," she said, a huff in her voice that had everything to do with the fact that her illusion hadn't been perfect enough to escape notice entirely. "I mean, why else would he hesitate that way?"
"Who cares?" Taka asked. "He didn't see us while his bloodline was active and that's what matters."
"But what if that's just a product of the environment?" Tsubaki-hime's voice was worried. "It's dark and there's no light. In here the only thing I really had to hide from him was our chakra and he couldn't see us at all and even then he almost noticed us."
Masanori winced. He knew that tone of voice well. She was working herself up to fret for hours about her jutsu. "Tsubaki-hime," he said before she could start up again, "it was a good test. We'll have other tests--there's going to be an entire month between the finals and the semi-final test. That's time enough to try to fool his eyes without being suspicious."
She sighed and Masanori smiled faintly at the lessening of tension from her. "True," she conceded grudgingly. "And it won't be hard to manufacture reasons to be around either. I think they're going to be keeping us all in pretty close quarters due to the security risks."
"Ha," Taka said, laughing softly. "Maybe for the other teams. For the good little native teams like us, we're there for spying and just that."
Masanori just shrugged as Tsubaki murmured her agreement to Taka's words. That was likely true. But anyone who'd been permitted to come had to be aware of that. Spying, after all, was part of all of their repertoire.
It was just that some were better than others at it.
"We should head out," he said. "We've got about, what, fifty minutes left?"
There was the tiny glow as Taka checked his watch. "You're good," Taka said, impressed. "Right on the nose."
"Our door isn't far," Tsubaki-hime said. "They wanted to make sure we could follow our assigned teams. That's how we ran into them so easily--we were both heading the same direction."
She didn't say that it was unlikely that they, who'd decided to forego their orders until the next exam, where visibility and conditions might be more favourable in the pursuit of information gathering, would have run into them in any other way.
Contrived, he thought. That's what this is.
Masanori wanted to be disgruntled about it but, really, as long as the commanding Jounin who'd created this exam hadn't rigged the exam in the favour of their Genin then he didn't care. So what if they wanted them to follow a team and learn about them?
Really, he thought with some satisfaction, that just makes it harder on us. We're doing two exams in one.
And how could he be upset about that? It meant that they were trusted with more responsibility than the other teams.
"Masanori," Tsubaki-hime's voice shook him out of his thoughts. "We've got to go."
"Alright," he said, smiling a little helplessly. It didn't matter if he did here. Taka couldn't see him to laugh at him and Tsubaki-hime wouldn't be flustered since she couldn't see it either.
"Just one door over," he said as they slipped back down the tunnel. "Piece of cake."
Forty-five minutes left.
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Originally posted on DW. Comment there. (Unless you want to comment here. That's fine too.)
Chapter: 15 Blind (Part III)
Author/Artist: Killaurey
Word Count: 7,956
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. AU immediately after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Part 15 of ? Unbeta'd.
Note: A who's who list of important characters during this Chuunin Exam arc can be found here. This list is accurate as of the end of this update. (Character-motivations and abilities that will be revealed later on are not on this list.)
"I changed my mind," Sayuri announced, slumping against the tunnel wall dramatically. "There is seriously no point in even trying to tail our mark in this situation. I mean, what's the point of having observers and giving them specific teams and then dumping them all willy-nilly in the dark with no way to find the people they're supposed to be watching?"
Hideki snickered. She kicked him and, as he yelped, had to admit that it made her feel better to have done so.
Nothing wrong with a little bit of violence, she thought virtuously.
She didn't even have to feel bad about talking loudly. They stood in a jutsu circle that she'd drawn with ink and her blood and then activated. It was a genjutsu, but a twisty one: it would keep anyone from noticing they were there, no matter if they attempted to seek them by sound, chakra usage, or sight.
And if it got broken, Sayuri was pretty sure it would hold the first attack back long enough for them to get into proper fighting position. They were about as safe as anyone could be, she figured, considering their circumstances.
It was too bad that this jutsu couldn't be used while moving. Though, given time, Sayuri thought she might be able to come up with ways around that… with a sigh she dragged her errant musings back to the present, with the exam and their current situation. Even though thinking about any of it made her want to grind her teeth.
"Maybe it's a test for us too," Inori pointed out. "Maybe they want us to prove that we can manage to pass the standard exam and the one they've set up for us."
She scowled. She couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, that was right. It would fit what she knew of the higher-ups and that meant...
"Do you think that how well we do on the trailing part will affect our chances to be made Chuunin?" she wondered. "Even if we get knocked out of the finals early?"
Everyone knew what the finals would be. That was always the same. The things that changed were the methods of weeding out those who were somehow inadequate.
And if someone thinks that about me and my team, I'll shove their inadequate up their ass, Sayuri thought mutinously.
"I'm not sure they would for this exam," Hideki offered, having regained some semblance of calm. "I mean, we're all pretty disadvantaged except for a few lucky ones with jutsu for just this sort of circumstance."
"Or bloodlines," Inori interjected.
"Or bloodlines," Hideki said. "But there's not many of those in here who're specifically meant to be able to fight underground in the dark."
"Yeah," Sayuri sighed, "including us."
"That's true," Hideki said. "But that's why we've managed to adapt--with your circle, we've got time to plan. We took out that first team easy, but that was luck."
Luck and the fact that one of the enemy had broken their leg while falling down the tunnel.
"Pathetic," Sayuri opined. She'd said the same thing to the guy ('you dare call yourself a shinobi like this? pathetic') before slitting his throat and stealing his number. She didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for that either.
After all, everything was fair in love and war. And this was a substitute for war which clearly meant wartime rules applied.
She fiddled with the numbers. "We've got a lot of options," she admitted, "and we're not far from some of them. You guys think we ought to make for an exit or do you think we should take our chances and track down the team we're supposed to observe. If they're not already dead, I mean."
Inori held up his hand, which glowed faintly in the dark, showing off the seamless band wrapped around his wrist and shook his head. "They're still alive," he said. "All three of their beads are accounted for." He sighed. "If we'd been able to get our hands on hair or something, I'd be able to tell you if they were injured or not--or if they were using a jutsu right this second. As it is, going from chakra signature alone, they're alive."
Sayuri bit down on her lip. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was less than enthused about going off into the dark to find a team she didn't even think was worth the trouble.
But what if that was part of the exam? She couldn't be certain that it wasn't.
"Hideki? Inori?" she asked. "What do you guys think? There are good parts to both options, as far as I can see, and that's what makes this hard."
"Too bad we can't tell how far away they are," Hideki murmured. "There's not a lot we can do without that. Inori's toy is all well and good--"
"It's not a toy."
"--but there's a lot of tunnels and a lot of bloodthirsty teams in here. Is that worth it? What if they're opposite of us? We'd have to fight our way through every tunnel and once we were there, we'd have to hope that the team didn't see us or notice us and then try to get another one of Sayuri's shields up and those take time."
She flushed. "I'm still working on my speed," she snapped. "It's not easy to do seven hundred and thirty six individual lines in a short period of time."
"I wasn't ragging on you," he said, "but it's true."
She huffed. "Okay," she said, "so you're in favour of saying 'screw this' to the observing part of our task for this exam and going to find the nearest exit. Inori, what about you?"
Inori shifted, the muted shush of leather and fishnet giving him away. "I have to agree," he said slowly. "I would rather stick around and try our skills, but the situation is dange--"
The wall above them exploded in a shower of dust and rock and something large and heavy impacted against the next wall. Hideki swore, using words she hadn't even known he'd known, while Inori grabbed her shoulder and held it tightly in his grip. She'd have a bruise later, she knew, from where he held her.
The bruise would be worth it. His touch gave her a focus to ground herself with as she drew her focus and concentration in tight as the wall above them continued to spit rock and dirt down on them. She spun her chakra, lighting up all of those lines that she'd drawn so painstakingly and shoved more of her chakra into it. Please hold, she begged, please hold so that I can kill whatever abysmally stupid person who thought knocking down walls while we're all trapped in tunnels was a good idea. I'll kill them, promise, so please hold long enough to keep be alive to do that.
She coughed on the dust--she couldn't keep that out--and forced more of her chakra into the circle. Sayuri knew that she was pushing it, that it was dangerous for her to be spending so much of her energy at this point in the game but there was nothing else they could do.
"Look," Hideki hissed, "they're trying to get through to the next tunnel now."
Sayuri shuddered at the thought. "We need to get out of here," she said quickly, "before this area gets too destabilized. We really have no idea how strong this structure is--what if they hit one of the crucial supports? Then we'd all be dead."
Which, quipped the tiny unaffected part of her mind, would be a pretty hard showing for an international exam. She winced. That would wind up in war. And not one, she thought, that Kumo would have a great chance at winning. Not if all the other villages united against them.
"Sayuri," Inori murmured. "You know what you were saying about the team we needed to follow?"
She scowled. "Yes, but is this really the time for that?"
"I think it's them," Inori said, rubbing at his eyes. "I can't see clearly, but look--if you watch for it..." He showed her the bracelet. "Their beads are brighter," he said, "which means they're very close."
Sayuri stared at the beads. One was a dark green, one a blood red. Both of those were perfectly acceptable shinobi colours, she thought, and had to approve.
But the third...
The third was a shocking pink.
"Don't tell me," she said, resigned. "The pink is for the girl with the glasses."
"Since you asked me not to tell," Inori said, "I won't."
"But he just did," Hideki pointed out. "What do you guys think? I'm all for following them now. It's not like they're being stealthy."
"They're as stealthy as an elephant learning to dance," Sayuri snapped and, before she could think better of it, she leaned forward and scuffed out on of her jutsu markers. The rest of them, without the support they needed, cascaded down around them. She drew as much of her chakra back from it as possible. If this went badly she was going to need the energy. "Let's go."
"Wonder what they're thinking," Inori said as braced themselves for the final collapse of the shield. "I mean, there's reckless and then there's this."
"I don't wonder about that," Hideki said. "You know what I wonder about?"
Sayuri counted to ten and seriously thought about not asking as the team, the one they were supposed to trail, broke through the far wall with another brutal shaking of the walls, and then gave in. "What?" she asked, the question barely audible over the sound of more rock falling.
Her shield gave a final shiver and faded away. Sayuri felt naked without it though she schooled herself to not show it.
She didn't need to see him to know Hideki was grinning. "How the fuck did they get that fat kid even fatter?"
"Good question," Inori said dryly, "maybe you can ask later."
"Let's just go," Sayuri sighed. "If we lose them now, that's just stupid of us."
Seventy minutes left.
The Jounin Examiner Maki arched one eyebrow at the monitors as the floor began shaking. "Interesting," she said, smiling grimly. "Someone preempted us."
What to do, what to do?
It was a bit early still and yet… if someone was already shaking the walls then, really, who was she to keep them from making the exam just that much more urgent for them all.
Maki flipped a few switches and spoke into an intercom. "Stage Avalanche is now in operation."
She went back to smiling at the monitors as deep inside the tunnels, supports disappeared and walls began trembling--more than could be accounted for by the… enterprising team… that had begun smashing through walls first.
But then Maki doubted that any of the teams who survived would realize that for some time.
It would be interesting, she thought, to see what they made of it.
Midori ducked under the swing of a katana and bubbled with a laugh. She spun up the wall, twirling gratuitously just because she could, and flung herself back down the wall, before the enemy could realize what she was doing, with kunai in her hands. Up and down and slash and clang!
It was like a song, she thought happily as her opponent blocked her and then went on the offensive. She couldn't stop laughing and since Natsu and Ryu were busy with their own fights--she could feel them, like an itch under her skin, only the itch was more something that appealed than reviled, and they were having their own fun--they weren't going to tell her to keep it down.
The sound of her laughter echoed quite satisfyingly in the enclosed space as she leapt from the wall to the other side of the tunnel. Come on, she thought eagerly, like a puppy in a park for the first time ever, come on, come on, come on!
Her opponent figured out where she was and Midori was forced to dodge shuriken. One got her and sunk into the skin of her shoulder. It burned and she couldn't help but feel glad. It was okay to get hurt because she was going to hurt them back and worse and so it was only fair and even though Botan-sensei said over and over that as a shinobi she wasn't supposed to play fair...
What he didn't know couldn't possibly hurt him.
Midori was always fair in her own way. Another shuriken sank into her thigh and she tugged it out heedless of the damage that could cause. It was okay, she chanted, still laughing, still feeling really really good, still glad that she'd gotten an opponent who knew what they were doing, and as they threw a third handful of shuriken, Midori danced up the wall and then flung herself over their throw. Her sandals went clack-clack-clack on the rock and she was certain that was how they were tracking her.
But that was the point, really, so Midori merely congratulated them on noticing and cut her jump short.
Instead of reaching the other wall, where they'd be able to continue the dance of death, she dropped and dropped and she burst into a new bout of giggles as she landed right behind her opponent. They swore, their voice distorted enough that she couldn't tell if they were male or female, and spun for her.
Midori's hand brushed their face and a spark of chakra trembled between them.
Her opponent recoiled, shrieking horribly, in what Midori had heard was some of the worst agony anyone could experience. They collapsed on the ground, writhing. She watched avidly as their chakra went berserk--that much she could see clearly--and knelt down next to her opponent.
"Hey," Midori said, her voice breathless and excited. "Can you get out of that?"
"He won't be able to," Ryu said, coming up behind her. "They never are."
She leaned back against his legs and peered up at where his face would be above her. "Mama says some can," she said calmly. "One day I've got to meet someone who can." Midori mulled over that. "Maybe my new friend will be able to! Wouldn't that be grand?"
Ryu rested one hand on her head as the screams went on and on and on with no sign of stopping. "Maybe," he said, "but I don't think this one is going to manage that."
"How did you know it was a boy?" she asked, wriggling her head a little. It felt good, having him pet her hair, and Midori had never been one to give up what felt good to her.
"I got the girl," he told her. "Our fight made it... quite clear of that."
"He means he groped her, Midori-chan," Natsu said, sounding dry. "I caught that much of their fight while dealing with my bastard. Playing with your latest toy, love?"
"Yes!" she chirped. "But Ryu says he doesn't look like a good prospect."
"No," Natsu said, after a few moments where Midori knew he was listening to the increasingly shrill screams. Midori admired the way the chakra was turning in on itself and ripping new pathways through the nin. It was a sight she never ever got tired of. "I don't think he is."
"Midori," Ryu said, "put him out of his misery."
She pouted. "But I don't want to-we haven't gotten to the best part yet!"
"I know," he said, "but we haven't got the time for it right now. It's too dangerous."
"I don't think it is," she said sulkily. "Who'd be stupid enough to come running towards the sound of him?"
"I'm sure there will be someone," Ryu said dryly. "Put your pet out of his misery, Midori."
She stared up at him, though she couldn't see him, and contemplated not listening. He couldn't kill her for this exam--that was in the rules and he wasn't likely to kill her anyway since he hadn't done so yet...
But it was true that her pet wasn't exactly kicking out of it and that was distressing to her. Boring, she thought, and sighed. Then, before she could give into the urge to argue to see if he could stay alive for even five more minutes, just to see if he could get out in that time, Midori reached out and twisted his strained and tortured chakra ties together and then pulled them away.
The screaming stopped abruptly. She dusted her hands off on her shorts as his chakra fizzled into nothingness and got up. "I guess we should go," she said, sighing. "Since we're not likely to have all that much fun now, right?"
Natsu knelt over the body, his chakra swirling around his body and giving his presence away as he came into contact with the corpse. Midori sat on the urge to touch his chakra. She could just imagine the scoldings she'd get if she played with her teammates' life when they had to all three of them get through this alive.
She closed her hands tightly and turned around to wrap her arms around Ryu. "It's not fair," she said. It was easier to keep from giving into any urge to mess with Natsu when she wasn't looking at him. And Ryu always felt steady and comforting and strong. If he hadn't been on her team and thus off-limits, Midori often thought that she'd have made him her best friend ever. "Why doesn't anyone ever survive?"
Midori knew she was whining and didn't care. Why not? Why shouldn't she get what she wanted? Especially when all they had to do was survive and that was what all of them were supposedly trained to do.
"Because they're not up to your standard," Ryu said, the answer as rote as her question.
She sighed again.
"It's alright," Ryu told her. "You'll get other chances to play in this exam."
"This stage?" she asked dubiously. Even she knew that was unlikely. They had a timeline and all their awesome wasn't going to stop the clock from moving one bit.
The answer was the one she'd expected. "No," he said, "but this exam, yes. We've got at least one more before the semi-finals, if they're needed this year, and then there's going to be the finals a month from now. We'll manage to get you another toy. Maybe we can even use your new friend."
"Maybe." Midori thought about that. "I wonder if she could deal with it?"
"We'll never know until you try."
"Got it," Natsu said. There was the soft shush of fabric as he moved away from the body. "The question now is, what door do we want to go out of?"
"What are our options?" Ryu asked, one arm around her shoulders.
"We've got several of them," Natsu said, with the sound of cards being flipped and shuffled together to accompany his words. "Not this one, but..."
Midori listened as he went on, content in the knowledge that her team would pass this exam (how could they not?) and then they'd be able to find someone more interesting for them to play with and that would be the grandest thing ever.
She hoped it happened soon.
Sixty five minutes left.
If we die here, Sasame thought, ducking and rolling under a gout of flame, then Orochimaru-sama will be rightfully pissed. And if that happens then it's better if we die here.
He hit the wall and went up it rather than coming to a stop. Up and up and up, out of the range of the flame--for the moment, at least, until the other Genin figured out where he'd gone.
Sasame squinted down at the battlefield, using the flickers of fire--this team all seemed to have it as their motif which was rich when. as far as he could tell, they weren't even from the Fire Country--and his familiarity with his teammates' chakra to figure out what was going on. Nariko was dealing with her enemy handily, though her back was against a wall and he knew that was a sign that she was pressed more than she would like to admit.
But Hiro... Hiro needed help. Sasame told himself, as he flung himself into a run back down that wall and past his opponent, that this was stupid. They were a team but they weren't supposed to care about each other. All of them knew that. All of them knew what the price tag for attachments was in Oto. Attachments were one more chain for Orochimaru-sama to wrap around them and keep them captive.
That, he was rapidly finding, meant absolutely nothing when it came to preventing those attachments from forming.
He could tell himself that saving Hiro meant nothing but just looking out for a teammate because they couldn't progress if they didn't all make it. He would probably tell Hiro that.
Sasame knew why though and it was because of the edged and icy fear that tracked down his spine at the thought of Hiro getting hurt. Fire lit up the tunnel and Sasame could feel the heat of it against his back. He didn't bother to look back. His opponent had figured out he'd gone somewhere.
The important thing was the other one. He could only tell what the nin looked like in the vaguest of details. A glimpse of long hair, a katana, a long jacket with fishnet leggings.
Hiro stumbling back, bleeding in several places.
Sasame's fingers flew through a set of seals that he'd learnt at the knee of his father, long before he'd even started properly training to be a shinobi, and murmured the name of his jutsu.
There was a moment of silence, as the shinobi turned to face him, leaving Hiro alone, as if they'd become aware of the other threat. But it's too late, Sasame thought as he counted down. Three, two, one...
All that long hair turned against the enemy nin abruptly. It lifted up, of its own volition, and wrapped around the nin's neck and began to squeeze. The katana dropped to the ground with a steely clatter as Sasame made his way past the still struggling nin to get to Hiro.
"I'm so glad I can't see that," Hiro said weakly. Another flare of light let Sasame see that he was trying to staunch the flow of blood. "And you wonder why Nari-chan and I won't grow out our hair."
"Don't be stupid," Sasame said, kneeling down beside him. He tugged a glow stick from his pouch and snapped and shook it. It lit their area with a greenish glow.
"That's dangerous."
"Not really," Sasame replied, listening to the sounds behind him. "Nariko's got her enemy down and she's going to finish off mine. As for yours... they won't be doing a whole lot now. Now shut up and let me see what I can do."
He gave a blood replenisher, a mild painkiller (mild because they couldn't afford to have one of their members go loopy on them) and a soldier pill along with his canteen to Hiro.
Hiro grimaced as he swallowed them but said nothing about their lack of taste. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't even account for one."
"It's fine. As long as we get through this, no one is going to know. I think you got the leader any how."
"That shouldn't matter," Hiro replied as Sasame closed his eyes and searched for the concentration to summon what medical jutsu he knew. He wasn't the best at it and Hiro's easy acceptance of the fact that he was going to heal him made Sasame feel in equal parts elated and apprehensive.
What if he screwed up?
"Oh?" he asked, his voice absent.
"I'm going to blame that on your preoccupation," Hiro said conversationally as another flare of fire blasted above them. "Because you know as well as I do that saying we couldn't take out an enemy because they were the leader of a team wouldn't be accepted in Oto."
Ah ha, there. Sasame smiled slightly as he felt the chakra come to hand. His hands began glowing softly, with a pale green light. He placed one hand over the worst of the cuts on Hiro's abdomen and the other hand over the nasty scratch on Hiro's head. Head wounds always bled a lot, he knew, but he was healing it for another reason.
A head injury, even a mild one, could spell a death sentence in here faster than almost any other injury.
Sasame rather thought that the only injury that would be even worse to have in here would be a hand injury. Jutsu required hands and...
"So what?" Sasame said, distantly realizing that Hiro was waiting for an answer. "As long as we survive, no one needs to know. You'll get your chance to shine too."
"A chance to shine?" Nariko's voice interrupted them. She sounded bright and almost giddy. There was a pale silver glow around her that came from the whip she held in her hands. As she talked, she coiled it back up neatly, heedless of the blood that was falling off it.
And why would she care? Sasame wondered as he bent his head over the fading injuries as Hiro answered her. Her weapon likes the blood. He knew that if he raised his head and watched her, any blood that was on her clothing and her skin would be disappearing, sucked up by the whip.
They'd use it to clean Hiro up. Another way to keep it from looking like they'd gotten in trouble. There was nothing they could do about the clothing but, Sasame rather thought, as he sat back on his heels and let his chakra fade away, that was all the better.
Looking roughed up for a Chuunin exam was the norm. They would be ignored if they did. It was the teams that were going to come out of this looking like they'd been out for a walk in a park that would be getting the side-eye.
Nariko dropped the whip on Hiro as Sasame dug out a soldier pill of his own and swallowed it dry. Healing always wore him out and the bubbling warmth of artificial energy was a welcome boost.
He'd crash out later of course, and so would Hiro, but that was a matter of necessity and for now... well, as long as they got some rest or a chance to sleep in the next week they could keep using soldier pills almost indefinitely so long as they were careful not to overdose and risk over-taxing their chakra coils.
"How dead are they?" Sasame asked Nariko, stealing his canteen back from Hiro and sipping from it.
"Very," she said and glanced behind her. "So is yours. Nice work on that one."
Sasame shrugged. As far as he was concerned the nice work he'd done was slowly sitting up, still clutching the whip as it drank off the blood on his skin and clothes. Hiro wasn't dead.
The world looked a little brighter.
"They should've known that having long hair is a liability," Sasame said placidly. "Someone would've figured out how to exploit it by now, after all. And it might look pretty but it isn't very practical."
Nariko made a face at him. Her hair fell just to her shoulders and he knew that she wanted it longer.
But she knew that it was dangerous. Having him on her team amply proved that and where one shinobi knew how to exploit a weakness like that there would be others.
"Either way," she said, "we're in the clear. They're from Iwa, which is rich. I don't think they knew who we were at all."
"Sort of hard to tell," Hiro murmured a bit dryly. He was looking better by the minute, as much as Sasame could tell by glow stick anyway. "We should be lucky it wasn't that team from Konoha. We'd be in shit if we'd killed all three of them."
"Nah," Nariko said, "like Sasame said, down here? Who would know?"
"We would," Sasame replied. "And that would be the problem when it came to facing Orochimaru-sama again. Do you really think we could lie to him?"
All three of them fell silent at that.
"No," Nariko said reluctantly. "You're right, Hiro. We should be very glad it wasn't them. Especially since in this situation the smartest reaction is kill first and ask questions later."
"It helps," Sasame said, "that their team is oddly composed. Standard is two guys and a girl. They've got the opposite. I didn't notice many other teams like that, did you?"
Hiro shook his head and Nariko murmured a negation.
"So we'll have to keep that in mind," Sasame continued. "We'll be able to tell them apart that way."
"In the dark?" Nariko said skeptically. "I mean, I'll be the first to admit that we're good but we're not that good, Sasame. We can't see in the dark any better than most of the teams."
He lifted the glow stick and found himself studying a number placed a few feet up on the wall. A tiny metal slot, just big enough for the cards they'd been given. To the side of it, in the middle of the wall, was a closed door.
Sasame smiled.
"It doesn't matter," he said, getting to his feet and watching as Hiro labouriously did the same.
"What are you talking about?" Hiro asked, looking over his clothes and, seeing no blood, handing the whip back to Nariko.
"Look," he said, "we're at our exit. We're getting out of this hellhole."
Nariko whipped around. Hiro did the same, but slowly.
"No way," Nariko said, "we just came in here because we were being chased."
"Luck," Hiro intoned, "is also part of being a shinobi."
Sasame rolled his eyes, smiling despite that. "Give me your cards," he said, "and we'll finish this."
They were handed over before he finished speaking. With a soft laugh, Sasame went up the wall and one after the other inserted the cards. There was a breathless moment of silence and then a grating sound.
The door opened.
Sixty minutes left.
He leaned against the cool rock of the tunnel and pretended that would help to soothe his headache. It didn't, but Neji was inclined to try and make himself believe it would.
Patience, he thought, keeping a sharp eye out for where his teammates were. Their chakra coils as well known to him as the steps of Jyuuken. There was Tenten, her coils bright and sharp and tight, checking over a wall. There was Lee, whose coils were dimmed and flickered oddly in places.
He closed his eyes--with the Byakugan active it didn't matter if he had them open or not--and swept their area for enemy nin.
They couldn't be too careful.
"Found it," Tenten said triumphantly, but very quietly. "You were right, Neji."
Lee beamed so brightly that Neji half-thought that the area they were in was going to light up in response. It didn't. He blamed long association with Lee and Gai-sensei for even considering that as a possibility.
"Good," he said, "and there's no one around here to stop us."
Not any more.
The shaking of the tunnels--worse to the far left of them--had startled Genin out of there like rabbits fleeing from a wolf and as for the team that had been hiding in this particular tunnel, either for an ambush in hopes of getting the numbers they needed to get through the door, or because they were biding their time before moving on...
Neji surveyed their bodies dispassionately. The heat of their chakra was fast dissipating into the darkness and soon he wouldn't be able to tell where they were at all. He felt no guilt for what his team had done. If they hadn't, then they would have been killed in turn.
And I have learned that destiny is what you make it, Neji thought, and I decided that my destiny did not end here, in a dark tunnel, on enemy land.
He knew that Lee hadn't even considered the possibility of losing and that Tenten had been determined to not.
Neji felt a momentary fondness for his team. They were occasionally idiots, but he was used to them. And if they weren't then it meant serious things were going on. Even though this was an exam, they were light-hearted.
Why shouldn't they be? he thought. After all, we're more than a match for most of Genin in here.
There was a soft snick as the door slid open.
"Come on," Tenten said, and went through it. Lee followed.
Neji took a long look around the tunnel, uncertain as to why he was hesitating, but seeing nothing with the Byakugan active, he went.
Even if something was there, after all, they'd passed this exam. That was the important thing. The door swung shut behind them.
Fifty-five minutes left.
"Yasuo," Akira hissed, "is there any way to tell what's shaking the walls?"
They were perched up in the corner of one of the tunnels that headed upwards and as long as the walls kept shaking, Akira had no intentions of moving their team. If the whole thing came down, being up high might save them--once the tunnels began going he was almost certain that there'd be gaps that they might be able to escape through.
"Does it matter?" Ima asked, her voice steady despite the shaking of the walls. "I mean, either way, we've got two choices: go and dare the shaking down there and hope nothing falls on us, or stay up here and fail the exam miserably."
Akira grimaced. That was true enough that he didn't like looking at it. "None of us are equipped to dig ourselves out of rock and our combined number of earth jutsu are nil, Ima," he said. "We can't take unnecessary risks."
"We're going to have to if we want to pass this," Ima said, "you know as well as I do that we're not that far from our goal, just a couple of tunnels. That's manageable in a pretty short period of time and I can't hear any fighting going on down right below us. Just the walls."
"There's no heat signatures either," Yasuo murmured, his voice gone dreamy from the effort of looking. "I would know if that was the case. No one ever thinks to hide that. They'll hide their chakra, their scent, their foot steps but not their body heat."
Akira could imagine the shrug Ima gave at that. "See?" she said, right on cue. "Look, I don't want to fail out here during the first real exam. The whole getting to the room was just to weed out those who were the real failures, right? We all agreed on that."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Yasuo would notice but Ima wouldn't and so he felt safe enough to do that. It didn't help with his level of annoyance but Akira pretended it did.
If he pretended long enough, he thought wryly, maybe it would come true.
The walls around them shook ominously. Akira braced himself better and grabbed Ima when she wobbled slightly. "More chakra to your feet," he told her.
"I know that," she said. "I just got distracted."
He let go of her arm the moment she was stabilized again. Akira studied the darkness and how featureless it was and knew he didn't want to die in here. But he didn't want to lose the exam either.
What to do?
The sound of the walls was unnerving him and he acknowledged that fear and then tucked it inside of him. He couldn't afford to give into non-thinking like that. Not when it wasn't just him he had to see through this. It was also Ima and Yasuo.
And Kioshi-sensei, who had faith in them that they'd put on a good showing in this exam. Akira didn't want to make Konoha look bad, he really didn't, but all the same...
He didn't want to wind up with all of them buried under rock and more rock where no one would ever be able to find their bodies and get them home. This wasn't the same as a mission, he thought, despite the fact it was considered to be almost like one.
Ima shifted next to him. "What is it?" he asked.
"Nothing," she muttered, "I was just moving. Do you think whatever is attacking the walls is getting further away?"
Yasuo snorted.
Akira resisted the urge to do the same. It was obvious that the walls were shaking worse and worse with every passing minute. He still couldn't bring himself to tell her that--not when she had a hopeful note in her voice.
The walls were shaking worse... Akira knew he had to make a decision and make it soon if they wanted to have a chance at getting ahead of whatever it was that was going through the walls.
"Yasuo," he said, "are you getting any heat signatures besides us?"
If no enemies were really below them then they were going to move, he decided, because it was becoming increasingly obvious that they weren't going to have much of a choice about moving if they wanted to get out of here alive.
"Nothing," Yasuo said. "We heading out, boss?"
"We'll try it," Akira said with finality. "We might get crushed but at least we'll make an effort to get to where our door ought to be. Keep low, keep quiet, and we'll do our best to sneak past the other teams. The noise from the walls will help us in that. No one is going to be able to hear over that."
"All the better," Ima said as they stood.
"All the better," Akira echoed with less conviction. "Yasuo, if you spot anyone let me know and we'll figure out how to get around them."
It was the last thing he wanted to do but, nonetheless, he led them down and down and down the tunnel. Their feet were silent on the rock as they picked their way towards where their upward tunnel matched up with a horizontal one.
We only need to move two gates, Akira thought, and that's not that bad. It's just a matter of getting there without dying.
Piece of cake, right?
He shook his head as they touched the ground. "Yasuo." Akira's voice was a whisper that barely made it past his lips.
Yasuo didn't answer him verbally, but he slipped past Ima and him and further down the tunnel. Akira and Ima drifted over to the side of it, feeling the trembling in the rock. He wondered again what was doing that. Some idiotic Iwa Genin showing off? Was this part of the exam? A weakness in the tunnels that someone had found by getting smashed into it?
As long as it didn't make the whole place fall on them Akira didn't much care. It felt like forever before Yasuo returned by he knew that only perhaps five minutes had passed.
"We're clear," Yasuo breathed, "and it looks like a clean run straight to our tunnel."
If it hadn't been so relentlessly, entirely dark, Akira would have exchanged a glance with Ima. They trusted Yasuo, they did.
But that sounded too good to be true.
Please let it be true, Akira thought. "Alright," he said, "we'll make for it. Keep an eye out. Listen for changes in the sounds, Ima."
"And you?"
"I'll look for changes in the light." All of them had their own strengths. It made sense to play to them rather than struggling with something that one of them wasn't very good at.
The run through the tunnels was, for Akira, an exercise in horror. Every step they took might be their last as the walls around them jumped and shook and the floor underneath their feet trembled so violently that twice Yasuo slipped and fell and Akira had to brace himself more and more frequently with chakra to keep from doing the same thing. Ima grimly kept to her feet, or if she fell she did it so silently that Akira wasn't aware of it.
Maybe it wasn't too good to be true, he thought, as they made their way down on tunnel, moving as fast as they dared to get to their next goal. After all, it was looking more and more likely that the other teams who'd been in this area had abandoned it.
Akira wished he could.
It was too bad that their number matched one of the ones that they theorized was down here.
No, he decided, that was an understatement that failed to adequately express how he felt about this. It was devastatingly poor luck that had them setting down this way was the walls jumped around them.
"Oh god," Ima moaned, "I changed my mind, can we go perch up in the tops of tunnels again?"
Yasuo snickered.
"No," Akira said even as a crash echoed behind him. It was loud enough that he felt, for a moment, like he was stuck in a bell. "No, I don't think we can go back any more."
"Don't tell me that," Ima said. "I'm trying to ignore the crashes behind us."
The crashes, Akira thought, made it pretty clear to all of them that their chances of survival if they went backwards weren't going to be very high. All they could do was move forward.
"I know," he said, "but we can't go back. So we've got to go forward."
It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to light up a glow stick or their collapsible lantern but that would just be asking for more trouble. They couldn't be the only person who'd fled the noise and the destruction of the tunnels.
And Ima would think he was insulting her. Which wasn't it at all; Akira was the one who wanted the light so badly that he could almost taste it.
"Yasuo."
"Still nothing," Yasuo reported simply.
Akira nodded. "We're picking up our pace."
He left unspoken the fact that he didn't dare keep them moving slowly with the sounds increasing behind him. They started building speed slowly, using chakra to stick to the rock to give surety to their steps, as they wound their way through one tunnel and then down the next.
"It should be around here," Akira said, his voice tight. The air was getting harder to breathe as the dust kicked up from the destruction got worse and worse.
There was a snap and then a pale glow filled their area. He looked at Ima, who was shaking the glow stick to get it brighter, reproachfully.
"Don't give me that," she said, her voice rough from the dust. "You wanted it and honestly, if we didn't have light, it would take us forever to find the door and we don't have forever thanks to whatever is behind us."
"Alright," he said, because he couldn't argue with any of that. "Let's find it then." Akira tugged out his own glow stick and snapped and shook it to life. "Spread out and search. Don't go too far and stay in this tunnel."
They nodded, the movements made eerie by the light.
By the time the found the door, seven minutes later by Akira's count, the walls of their tunnel were beginning to shatter.
"Hurry," he said as Ima shoved their cards into the slot.
"I'm trying," she snapped as she slid the last one in.
The silence before the door opened was unbearable. Then it was open and Akira urged Ima and Yasuo through it before going himself.
The door shut behind them and the tunnel collapsed in the same breath.
Fifty minutes left.
"Ain't that interesting?" Masanori murmured as Tsubaki-hime dropped her illusion. "He didn't notice us at all."
"Ten feet from him," Taka said, "and he couldn't tell we were there."
Masanori hid a smile as he felt Tsubaki-hime cross her arms. "He almost did," she said, a huff in her voice that had everything to do with the fact that her illusion hadn't been perfect enough to escape notice entirely. "I mean, why else would he hesitate that way?"
"Who cares?" Taka asked. "He didn't see us while his bloodline was active and that's what matters."
"But what if that's just a product of the environment?" Tsubaki-hime's voice was worried. "It's dark and there's no light. In here the only thing I really had to hide from him was our chakra and he couldn't see us at all and even then he almost noticed us."
Masanori winced. He knew that tone of voice well. She was working herself up to fret for hours about her jutsu. "Tsubaki-hime," he said before she could start up again, "it was a good test. We'll have other tests--there's going to be an entire month between the finals and the semi-final test. That's time enough to try to fool his eyes without being suspicious."
She sighed and Masanori smiled faintly at the lessening of tension from her. "True," she conceded grudgingly. "And it won't be hard to manufacture reasons to be around either. I think they're going to be keeping us all in pretty close quarters due to the security risks."
"Ha," Taka said, laughing softly. "Maybe for the other teams. For the good little native teams like us, we're there for spying and just that."
Masanori just shrugged as Tsubaki murmured her agreement to Taka's words. That was likely true. But anyone who'd been permitted to come had to be aware of that. Spying, after all, was part of all of their repertoire.
It was just that some were better than others at it.
"We should head out," he said. "We've got about, what, fifty minutes left?"
There was the tiny glow as Taka checked his watch. "You're good," Taka said, impressed. "Right on the nose."
"Our door isn't far," Tsubaki-hime said. "They wanted to make sure we could follow our assigned teams. That's how we ran into them so easily--we were both heading the same direction."
She didn't say that it was unlikely that they, who'd decided to forego their orders until the next exam, where visibility and conditions might be more favourable in the pursuit of information gathering, would have run into them in any other way.
Contrived, he thought. That's what this is.
Masanori wanted to be disgruntled about it but, really, as long as the commanding Jounin who'd created this exam hadn't rigged the exam in the favour of their Genin then he didn't care. So what if they wanted them to follow a team and learn about them?
Really, he thought with some satisfaction, that just makes it harder on us. We're doing two exams in one.
And how could he be upset about that? It meant that they were trusted with more responsibility than the other teams.
"Masanori," Tsubaki-hime's voice shook him out of his thoughts. "We've got to go."
"Alright," he said, smiling a little helplessly. It didn't matter if he did here. Taka couldn't see him to laugh at him and Tsubaki-hime wouldn't be flustered since she couldn't see it either.
"Just one door over," he said as they slipped back down the tunnel. "Piece of cake."
Forty-five minutes left.
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