Chapter 2:
Hitomi and Akihito chuckled to themselves as Murai's eyes shot daggers into the tall woman at the front of the examinees. "Alright you midgets line up and collect a consent form, else we won't be allowed to throw you in there, plus I don't want to be held responsible for any corpses or anything that happens in there, and you wouldn't want that now would you?" She winked at everyone smirking evilly. Murai groaned as he walked towards her and grabbed his consent form, scowling at her. Hitomi and Akihito followed as Murai crashed onto a grassy hillock as far away from Anko as he could. "Man she gets on my nerves!" He complained as he filled out the consent form.
"Oh well at least you only have to suffer her for the beginning and the end of the exam," Hitomi laughed.
"Yeah but that's far too long for him regardless," Akihito grinned, earning him a gesture from Murai.
"OI YOU LOT FINISHED YET?" Anko's voice boomed out over the surrounding area, signalling the end of the little break and so all three rushed back to where they had started from. "Just in time too, else you'd have missed the big explanation" she smiled at them. "Alright, has everyone got a good hold of their signed forms?" she asked and continued without giving anyone a chance to answer, "Good. Now let me explain the second exam. This area behind me," She indicated the mass of dark greenery behind her, "Is the Forty Fourth Training Ground, or as we jonin like to call it, The Forest Of Death. Now, those consent forms that you all just signed will be traded in that small hut over there," she pointed to a small, cream coloured hut next to the wire mesh surrounding the forest, "for a number indicating your gate, and one of these." She pulled out two scrolls, a blue one with the kanji for Heaven on, whilst the other was a dark cream, adorned with the kanji for Earth.
"Now then, these are your primary target; everyone will start with one and must end up with two. When you have two, you need to go to the centre of the forest, as marked by the massive tower, ten kilometres from every gate. Also, at no point during the exam are you allowed to open the scrolls and read their contents, as that will result in immediate disqualification. The reason for that, is that if you are on a mission with top secret documents, we need to know we can trust you to deliver them without reading them, understood?
"Plus, if you get to the tower before all the time is up, well just sit around and talk to one another for however long you have left. Once you have two, I suggest you head for the tower as fast as you can; there are things in there which are really scary. Oh yeah, even if you have your scroll stolen, you will need to find someone weaker than you who have somehow managed to get a scroll or two, and steal theirs. If the time runs out and you only have one scroll, then you will simply be disqualified. Even if you have two, but you don't make it to the tower by the end of the allotted time, then you will not be allowed in. At the end of the time, we will make a scoop of the entire area, after locking the doors of course, from the tower outwards, so if you can't make it to the tower in time, then you will simply be picked up by us and chucked out. Ok?" She smiled warmly, even as people looked at her with loathing.
"Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, when you reach the tower, we'll provide you with food and a place to sleep, but until then, you'll have to find all that stuff in the forest yourself, whilst guarding yourselves from wild animals, poisonous bugs and stuff like that." She grinned and stepped aside indicating the small hut, the door open, but nothing inside viewable.
'Guess that means we won't be able to tell who's got what scroll, and who is carrying it.' Hitomi thought to herself, as their three man cell walked into the gloom, traded the three consent forms for a scroll and a number and slipped the scroll into their bag, before proceeding to the forty-fourth gate with their proctor. Five minutes after they arrived, a loud boom sounded, causing hundreds of birds to fly up from the forest. The proctor unlocked the gate and pushed it wide open, grinning "Try not to die; it'll be annoying having to clean up your bodies, especially after five days."
Murai strode into the forest and smiled as the gate clacked shut behind them. They waited for the proctor to leave before crouching down and looking at Akihito expectantly. He grinned in response and pulled out a kunai. He drew a large circle, a line running through it from one side to the other, a circle in the centre, and forty four dashes around the edge, before numbering everyone from one to forty four, cutting the forty-fourth in half. "That's us, at the forty-fourth gate." Hitomi and Murai nodded. "Our goal is here," he stabbed the kunai in the centre of the circle, "The tower at the centre. An approximate ten kilometres from our starting point here.
"Now, what we're gonna do is travel over to the river and establish two primary bases about a hundred metres from it on both banks, and one right on the bank, doesn't matter which side, but I say the side furthest from our starting point. Then, we're gonna set up traps for a half kilometre around us, and wait till nightfall before making out move, understood?" Hitomi and Murai nodded once more. "Show me all the weapons you brought with you, any trap materials and stuff like that, anything that you brought with you or were told to bring by Sensei." Akihito grabbed his bag and upturned it next to him, with Murai and Hitomi mirroring him, so three piles of weaponry, paper and wire were heaped next to each person, and the scroll placed above the diagram. Akihito checked each pile before nodding to himself and destroying the diagram with a swoop of his foot.
"I'll make all three camps and trap them myself. You two spread out your traps; use everything bar three kunai and two paper bombs. You should have enough for..." he closed his eyes in thought, "Thirty five different traps each, make sure they're as different as possible, make sure that avoiding one will possibly trigger another, make them as hard to see as possible. When you get started Murai, make a clone and make it finish the rest of the traps, then come after us yourself. As the clone is going through all the traps, have it set a clone up every few metres or so, so you cover the entire area, likewise with you Hitomi. Also, when you cover the river make sure that there is a clear path along it, but not above it, just along it, a gap of...say, three metres. Three metres above the river, other than that make the traps cover everywhere. Understood?" Hitomi and Murai nodded once more before piling everything back into their bags and handing the scroll to Akihito.
"Right, let's go." Akihito signalled for them to move and they shot into the trees and sped along towards the river. After two minutes Akihito threw a kunai into the ground below them and Murai leapt off to the left and landed on a tree, pulling a ball of taught wire from his bag and cutting it with his kunai. Akihito and Hitomi carried on for another minute until they reached the river, where Akihito dropped and Hitomi carried on moving. Akihito immediately began to set up a ring of stones, with dry grass in the centre. Raising his eyes to the forest above, he smiled and leaped upwards, setting up traps all around the camp before dropping to the ground. Murai arrived next to him, before asking "What did the Hokage say to us before we left?"
"That we aren't allowed to come to night classes until after the chunin exams." Akihito answered instantly, hiding one hand behind his back, and raising three fingers before covering it with the other hand and lowering one of them, "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Murai looked at him before muttering "Byakugan!" Instantly, his eyes gained two circles, one where his pupil should be, another further out, the veins raising themselves along his cheeks. He grinned before raising his hand with his first and middle finger raised, "This many." Akihito grinned and they set to work, Murai moving to finish the main camp, whilst Akihito created two clones, sending one to the left of the bank, and the other to the right, both to make a small camp on either side as backup.
Hitomi appeared further down the river, before running along it and arriving next to Murai. "How many times have you turned me down?" he asked her.
"As far as I'm aware you haven't asked me yet, so I believe the answer is zero. What do you call the Hokage?" She replied looking thoughtful before smiling.
"His name of course, that of Kakashi-Sensei, as he is our Sensei." Murai said grinning, before staring at the fish swimming in the river next to them. "Anyone for lunch?"
Akihito and Hitomi grinned as Murai ripped his top off and plunged into the river. Hitomi crouched next to the river, pulled out ten senbon, set four next to her and waited patiently for three fish to flop upwards. She didn't have to wait long. Seven fish shot upwards out of the river, causing her to jump as one landed in her lap, whilst she speared the other six with her senbon. Akihito grabbed them and threw them into the stone circle and waited for Murai to surface again, which he did in spectacular fashion. He launched himself out of the water, flipping over and landing on the rock above them perfectly. He turned to grin at them before a fish smacked him in the face. Grabbing it he stared angrily at a soaking Hitomi who was swearing at him. He laughed and jumped down, lobbing the fish back to Akihito, as he was spearing the other five onto three sticks and setting them up over the stone circle.
Murai grinned, 'Snake Ram Monkey Boar Horse Tiger. Fire Style, Great Fireball Jutsu'. The fire roared into life, nearly singing Hitomi's pink hair in the process. Akihito smiled and flipped the fish onto the Y-Shaped sticks he had set up around the circle, and they sat down, waiting for the fish to cook so that they could eat.
Soon, the fish were ready and Murai flipped a stick up slid the fish off it onto the stone below, before flipping them up and devouring them whole, pulling the bones out his mouth as he went along. Hitomi shook her head before her and Akihito followed suit.
Presently, night fell. Akihito turned to the other two and nodded. They split up and sped off in different directions, Murai to the North, Hitomi to the East, and Akihito to the West.