Chapter 3: Kaoru
At 7:59 AM on May ninth, all but one team of genin stood before the gates to the Desert Forest. Midori was sitting on the top of the iron gates and swinging her legs impatiently while waiting for them to quiet down. Finally, it seemed she couldn't take it anymore.
"Quieeettt!"
Several of the genin jumped at the sound of her raised voice and Midori held up a clipboard. Himawari assumed it was a roster of the teams moving on to stage two.
"I'm going to take roll." Midori announced irritably, "Beginning with Konoha. Team four!"
"Here!"
"Here!"
". . . Here."
Two hands shot up and another accompanied by a quiet sigh, as though raising one's hand was an incredible amount of work to go to in order to announce one's presence.
"You know," Shikadai rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously as he whispered to his teammates, "I'm not really sure about this whole Desert Forest thing . . . seems like a lot of work."
"Shut up!" Chouchou hissed fiercely, "You're not backing out now, idiot!"
"Team five!" Midori called. Himawari raised her hand along with Taro and Nobu.
"Here."
"Here."
"Here."
Midori made a check mark. "Team eight! . . . No team eight?" she looked around.
"Here!" someone shouted, "We're here!" Bolt, Sarada, Daichi, and Rika appeared, running for all they were worth.
Midori looked at her watch. "It is almost 8:01. In fourteen seconds," she grinned wolfishly, "you would have been late."
"We apologize, Fujiyama-san." Sarada gared at Bolt. "Boruto had a . . . digestive crisis this morning."
"You were the one who gave me ramen for breakfast!" Bolt shrieked, "You know my stomach can't take it!"
"It wasn't me, it was Daichi!" Sarada flung out her arm to point at Daichi, who shrugged innocently and scratched behind Rika's ears.
"Ugh, enough!" Midori groaned, "Calm down. Konoha, team twelve."
"Here!"
"Here!"
"Ruff!"
"Here!"
Once Midori had finished calling roll, she stood, balancing delicately on the sharp iron spikes of the gates. "As I said before, this test is not only one of survival, but also of teamwork and cooperation." She crossed her arms. "As a shinobi, you must be prepared to work alongside anyone and everyone, but you must also be cautious about your colleagues – can you trust them? Who's to say?"
"From now on," Midori continued, "Until the conclusion of the exams, you will not be working with your current teammates. In fact, you may even be working against them." She gestured to her right, where one of the Suna chunin stepped forward and handed her a single piece of paper. Midori held it up for all spectators to see.
"Each of your names is on this sheet. Collectively, the jonin sensei and I have put you in teams of two – you will all be working with someone of a different village. Shh! You there – yes you! Be quiet! I'm explaining the task." Midori paused to shush Bolt, who had been muttering something to Sarada. Reluctantly, Bolt straightened and Midori continued after sending him a dirty look. "Where was I – oh yes, the teams. Listen closely because I'm only going to say them once." Midori held up the sheet and began to read.
"Aburame Hiro and Seita Rin. Arato Izura and Yuuhi Nobuto. Bishu Enyo and Nara Shikadai." And so it went down the list until somewhere near the bottom, "Uzumaki Himawari and Takahashi Kaoru." And immediately after, "Uzumaki Boruto and Saiyo Hideki."
Takahashi Kaoru, it turned out, was a rather quiet and stony-faced boy with a Kirigakure hitai-ate strapped firmly to his head, the ends hidden underneath a dark ponytail that rivalled Inojin's in length.
"So . . . uh, I guess we'll be getting through this forest together, then." Himawari stuck out her hand. Kaoru eyed it suspiciously, as though not sure if touching her hand would electrocute him or not.
"You shake it." Himawari explained, "It's a type of greeting in my country."
Kaoru, who still had not said anything, took her hand, shook it side to side once, then dropped it quickly as though stung. It was a start, Himawari supposed.
"In my country," he said, "We do this." He touched his chin with two fingers and Himawari copied him. She had never met a Kiri nin before, and discovered that he had a strange accent, more pronounced than those of Suna, Kumo, and Iwa.
"It's because of war." She would learn later upon questioning Konohamaru. "For generations, Konoha and Kiri were on awful terms with one another. It prevented the intermingling of cultures between us, so many of their customs are different from ours. Have you noticed how they never make eye contact while eating? They consider it extremely rude."
"Do you damn genin ever shut up?!"
One hundred fifty-eight eyes blinked in unison at Midori, who was fuming from atop her post at the gate.
"I wasn't finished explaining the task yet." She gestured again to the nin who had brought her the list of names. He nodded and began to pass out small yellow pins to each team as Midori went on.
"Each team will receive one of these badges. Your mission? To end up with two badges by the time you reach the central outpost in the center of the forest. No matter how you do it, if you don't have two badges by the end of this test, you're out. That will leave half of you at most."
A Kisa nin standing next to Inojin raised her hand. "Is there a time limit?"
Midori smiled. "Why yes, in fact, there is. The Desert Forest has roughly a five-mile radius. You're to be at the outpost by noon on May thirteenth with your current teammate. That gives you a little over three and a half days. If you're not there, don't have two badges, or aren't with your teammate, you're not moving on. Got it?"
"Got it." Chorused the genin.
"Oh," Midori added, folding her arms, "And please refrain from killing each other. We proctors aren't paid to clean up that kind of mess."
Seeming to have a taste for abrupt exits, Midori held up two fingers in a handsign and was gone.
…..
"Wait here." Their chunin escort gestured for Kaoru and Himawari to sit down. "It will be a while before everyone gets into position."
Each genin team was being transported to a different entrance to the Desert forest; Himawari and Kaoru were somewhere on the northwest side. The outpost was in the center of the forest, five miles in. with luck, five miles in two and a half days would be nothing.
Fifteen minutes were spent in long silence. Finally, the Suna chuinin looked at his watch, then stood and unlocked the gate. "Alright, you're in. Good luck."
The Desert Forest was nothing at all like Konoha's Forest of Death. For one thing, it was entirely formed of densely packed bamboo, and the sun shining through the upper canopy cast a warm golden light on everything.
For another thing, it was not so much a forest as a maze. Through the bamboo there was an obvious path to follow. The two genin stood and looked at it for a minute.
"Should we follow it?" Kaoru wondered aloud. "It could lead to a trap."
"Well," Himawari shrugged, "The alternative is hacking our way through bamboo for three days, on top of battling another team. Take your pick."
"Yeah," he nodded, "Let's take the path."
"Now I know why they're giving us three days to cover a distance that should only take one." Himawari remarked as they started off, "It would be too easy to get turned around and start going in the wrong direction – I mean, all the bamboo looks the same."
Kaoru held out his hand. "Not a problem."
Himawari observed in his outstretched palm a small compass, the needle wavering for a moment and then settling steadily on the red N.
"We entered the forest from the north northwest." Kaoru stated, "So we should head east southeast from this position." He pointed forward and to the right. "This way."
"No, we entered the forest from the west northwest." Himawari argued, pointing more forward than right. "We need to go this way."
Kaoru frowned, looked at his compass, and then looked up. "The sun is there. It's still rising, so this way is east." He pointed again. "Therefore, our entrance was north northwest, and we should go this way."
He was right so Himawari had to concede defeat and the journey began. Although their path wavered and there were several small paths connected to theirs that went off in various directions, they were able to stay on a general southeasterly route.
May ninth passed without incident. They found a small spring with which to fill their water bottles and ate dried jerky for lunch and dinner. They encountered no other teams, although they saw smoke from an explosion rising over the canopy tops from a clash.
Kaoru grumbled about this over his jerky. "What if we don't meet anyone at all? We won't have a chance to get a second badge."
"There'll be more people as we get further in." Himawari concluded, "The closer in we get, the less distance between us and another team, the more likely we are to meet someone."
Kaoru shrugged. "True."
That night Himawari looked up at the stars through the canopy of the bamboo. She had decided some time ago that Neji had to be the rightmost star in Orion's belt, and she could barely see it now, half obscured by a stray leaf.
…
The next day began uneventfully, but by noon, evidence of a nearby enemy team was found.
"Look at this." Kaoru bent down, brushing the dirt with his fingertips. There in the sand was the distinct impression of a shinobi sandal.
"Probably only half an hour old." Kaoru said upon further inspection of the print, "They should be ahead of us on the path."
Himawari nodded, "I'll see if I can see them."
"If they're a half hour ahead of us you can't see them from here." Kaoru pointed out in a tone that was clearly meant to sound scorning.
"You can't. I can." Himawari had already activated her Byakugan as she scanned ahead . . . there!
"They're about two miles ahead of us." She announced, "Probably travelling slower than we are. If we go by treetop we could probably catch up with them in fifteen minutes."
"Travel by treetop?" Kaoru sent her a strange look.
"Don't tell me you can't." Himawari raised her eyebrows. What kind of nin couldn't travel by treetop?
Kaoru shook his head. "I've never heard of it."
"But they teach it in the academy! Even a six year old can do it!"
"You have to remember," he replied slowly, "That in the Wave Country we do not have many forests and large oaks like you do in Konoha. Kiri is full of marshes and lakes and wetlands, so our basic skill sets differ to accommodate our terrain. A Kiri child can easily swim through quicksand. A Konoha child can easily travel over the trees. But one cannot do the other without some measure of difficulty."
"I hadn't thought of it that way." Himawari admitted, "I guess we'll continue on as we are, then, without quicksand or treetops. The bamboo might be difficult to navigate over anyway. We'll catch up to them soon enough."
Kaoru nodded and silence elapsed for several minutes. Then, "That jutsu that you used to find the other team. It was that famous dojutsu, yes? Ba . . . Ba . . ." he hesitated, unsure of the word.
"Byakugan." Himawari suppled proudly, "It's my clan's kekkei gen –"
She was interrupted by two shuriken crossing the path, having to jump back to avoid getting hit.
Damn! They'd let their guard down and hadn't noticed another team sneaking up on them.
"You didn't really think we wouldn't notice you were following us, did you?" a boy dropped from the bamboo, landing in front of Himawari and Kaoru while another dropped from behind.