"Kushina, are you ready!" yelled Miramaru, discarding his failing scroll of water summoning and grabbing a kunai.
"Yeah!" nodded the blonde girl, holding her swirling sphere of air away from her body. "Here I go, Haiko-chan!"
The Mokuton using girl was dangling from her own bokken, which was held by a long tentacle belonging to the monstrous worm-like creature. She glanced to the side and noticed the worm's fanged mouth uncomfortably close, gaping like a black, dried out well; she could hear a soft sucking noise emanating from inside, but there was no particular scent. Behind the glasses, her eyes got rounder and she gulped. However, the monster apparently had no intention of swallowing its tiny prey. Instead it started waving the tentacle wildly, trying to get rid of the annoying little ninja. Haiko silently gripped her bokken, her palms turning white.
After a few seconds of fruitless waving Haiko around, the worm changed its tactics. It turned sharply and extended its tentacles, attempting to slam Haiko into a particularly tall tombstone nearby. However, in the last moment Haiko's bokken snapped, the girl flying above the tombstone and finally crouching on top of it, her left hand gripping a wooden stump.
Seeing her friend unharmed, Kushina grinned with relief, but she instantly refocused on her foe. The enormous worm was towering over her, three time as tall as herself. Luckily it was bent now, momentarily creating a steep path up its back. The blond ninja didn't miss this opportunity, her sandals tapping a staccato against the monster's chitin plates.
"Rasengan!" she bellowed, raising her right hand that was holding a bluish sphere over her head and then striking from above, a bright smudge trailing behind the sphere.
Kushina squeezed her eyes shut, expecting a fountain of yellow bile spurting from the wound or something equally disgusting. What happened was completely unexpected though: her feet and striking hand lost contact with the monster's body and out of the blue she started falling. Kushina opened her eyes to check what was going on, but all she could see was rapidly approaching ground; the giant worm was nowhere to be seen.
The blonde ninja positioned herself for a graceful landing, but the slippery mud left from Miramaru's water attack wasn't what she was accustomed to and she fell on her face into a puddle. She sprung back immediately, spluttering and casting wild glances left and right, but she could not see nor feel the danger.
"Where… Where did it go?", she inquired.
"It would seem", answered approaching Miramaru matter-of-factly, "that it was a summon. You've managed to dispel it nicely."
"Oh… a summon. Right." Kushina got on her feet, wiping sandy mud off her eyes, which prompted Miramaru to chuckle. "Using war paint now? How professional."
"Shu up, you twiggy water freak!" Kushina growled, throwing a ball of mud which Miramaru expertly dodged. She stomped out of the puddle, shaking her head to get the wet sand out of her unruly hair. She had a proud smile on her face though; this battle was definitely something to brag about in the future.
Miramaru stopped chuckling. "Wait! The token. Can you find the token?"
"Oh, right, that thing." Kushina looked around, immediately spotting a silvery plate stuck in the mud. "Is this it?", she asked, picking it up. It was about the size of a kunai and had a single seal inscribed on it, one she didn't know.
"Oh, that's a relief. I was afraid it would have disappeared with the monster. But I guess that would be against the rules." He glanced at his other comrade. "Haiko-chan, is your sword okay?"
Haiko jumped off the tombstone and approached her teammates, the remains of her bokken still in her left hand. "Boshuuken is never truly broken", she said softly. "I will regrow it later. But there is something else I have noticed. The summon probably was not sent here by its master. It seemed to be influenced by a genjutsu."
"A genjutsu?", Kushina repeated, wiping the plate against her pants. "But isn't it, like, very hard to cast a genjutsu on a summoned creature?"
"It is", confirmed Miramaru. "And that's bad news."
"Why?"
"Because if Haiko-chan is right, we may be against a genjutsu expert. One that may be too strong to be a chuunin candidate."
The party felt silent for a moment.
"Do you suspect some sort of trouble?" Kushina asked. "Like, someone's interfering with the exam?"
"That would be kinda clichéd… But we can't really say it's not the case", said Miramaru tentatively. "Haiko-chan, do you have anything to add?"
Haiko shook her head slowly. "I detected nothing else."
"Well I don't think it's all that likely", Kushina mused. "Anyway, certainly not enough to abandoning the exam, right? That would be totally childish!"
"I agree", Miramaru nodded. "But it seems that we're against someone strong. We should be prepared for anything."
"How fortunate that we have an anti-genjutsu specialist with us then!" Kushina exclaimed with a huge smile on her face, throwing her arm around Miramaru's shoulders. The boy grimaced at the sudden show of affection from the curvy girl, even if it was a little mischievous. He didn't mind the mud still covering her clothes; being Water type made him virtually stain-proof. "Yeah, yeah, I'll save your butts if necessary."
"The enemy may be nearby", Haiko interrupted in her usual soft but down-to-business tone. "We should relocate. I suggest finding an open crypt to rest and hold a meeting."
"An opened crypt… That's not scary at all", said Kushina with a smile that was more than slightly uncomfortable now.
oooOOOooo
Finding an appropriate place wasn't hard, considering that Akagufuzubochi used to be a cemetery of living death, so most tombstones were open anyway. The one where they found a shelter must have belonged to some kind of an ancient swordmaster; the walls were decorated with reliefs of various kata and barely readable inscriptions of haiku and fighting-related proverbs. It looked more like a miniature dojo than a tomb, with the single but painfully obvious exception being an empty stone coffin standing in the middle, its granite lid casually cast aside. At least there was enough light creeping into the burial chamber to see properly.
The group sat with their eyes towards the entrance. They hadn't laid any traps, not planning on staying here for long.
"Gosh, I'm sleepy", Kushina yawned and stretched. Luckily, her jacket was loose enough to not tear at the front.
Miramaru ostentatiously ignored the sight to his left side. "Isn't it too early to make a camp? We could, but it's not like we can relax now. Someone seems to be following us, maybe even with a desire to see us dead."
Kushina gave him a dignified look. "I didn't mean we should be resting! I was only saying I was a bit sleepy. Do you think I could even sleep right now? I'm all pumped up for a fight!"
"Normally I'd say it's contradictory, but I actually believe you."
Haiko, who was sitting on Kushina's other side, didn't interrupt their banter. Instead she ran another scan of their environments. She didn't quite admit to her teammates that her sensory abilities were diminished in this environment; they largely depended on connecting to nearby living plants and there were very little of them here. Nevertheless, she was still the most perceptive of the three and she knew they were counting on her.
After a moment of silence, Miramaru took out some rations and shared them with Kushina, sensing that Haiko wouldn't want one now. "So, Kushina… I understand you want to go and look for the one that attacked us, right?"
Kushina nodded. "Oh yeah. I don't like being followed. They should fight us fair and square, or I'll make them to." She took a bite and glanced sideways at Miramaru. "What about you, Yamanaka? You'd probably prefer losing them and doing our task silently, eh?"
"Nope. In this case, I think you're right. I've been thinking about it and those people, or person, seem like a logical target. You know why, ladies?"
"Yes", Haiko answered. "If this person is a genjutsu specialist, we can capitalize on Yamanaka-san's resistance to genjutsu. Moreover, it will be easier to track someone who is tracking us. Finally, they wasted a token on a trap to eliminate our squad, which means that they probably have one or even two tokens with them; they probably wouldn't risk their only token otherwise."
"Wow, Haiko-chan!", Kushina beamed at the smaller girl. "When I'm important enough to assign people to jobs, I'm definitely putting you in the ANBU."
"So it's decided", Miramaru concluded, swallowing the last piece of his tiny meal. "Finish your business and move it, people. I don't want to fight a genjutsu user after dark."