Chapter Nine - Tripwires and Forest Fires
The three of them leapt from tree to tree, their eyes darting around; scanning for enemy teams. It had been three hours since the start of the exam and two since they had decided on their plan. They were more confident than they were at the last exam, since they had some idea what to expect, and had greatly improved their skill. With this in mind they decided to battle whichever team they found first, unless it was their comrades or the Suna team.
Although despite her determination, the afternoon sun beating down upon them through the treetops was beginning to get on Ino's nerves. She motioned to her teammates to stop on a large branch.
"There's no point in rushing, since it's the first day, right?"
Sakura nodded, breathing a little heavier. They had been a bit too energetic, they would need as much of their stamina as possible if they were going to defeat two squads.
"Get down!" Choji suddenly whispered coarsely.
He pointed down into a clearing, where three Kirigakure ninjas were standing, looking worn out. Ino grinned as she clutched the kunai in her waist bandage.
"Easy prey"
* * *
Tenten fell to her knees, unwound scrolls waving out from each of her hands and a slew of weapons scattered around the base of the massive oak tree. Lee lay twitching behind her, clearly trying to struggle against the paralysis with which he'd been afflicted. Neji was crawling about five feet away from him, clutching his face. These grass ninja weren't kidding around; it had taken them seconds to blind Neji and debilitate Lee. As much as she had been training, Tenten was no match for three of them. But that had by no means prevented her from trying.
One of the grass ninja stepped forward, holding one hand out expectantly, while twirling two vials in her other.
"You're teammates need these antidotes within the hour, or their ailments will become permanent" she explained, "I will trade you these for your scroll. Consider it a kindness, since we could easily leave you here"
Tenten grit her teeth defiantly as she glared up at her opponent. Slowly she struggled to her feet, only to fall flat on her back again. It was no use. They would have to surrender for now. She took the scroll out from Lee's leg sleeves and tossed it to the grinning kunoichi.
"Pleasure doing business with you" she mocked as she placed the vials on the ground and vanished.
"Dammit" Tenten cursed as she aided her team. She wondered how the others were doing
* * *
"This is absolutely freaking ridiculous!" Kiba growled as he slouched back against the tree trunk. Shino landed to the side of him and looked down at the scruffy boy and his dog. They had been searching all day and hadn't been able to hunt down a single enemy squad. Given that they were, by all descriptions, a tracker squad, this was unbearably embarrassing.
Hinata and Kiba had taken their hoodies off under the influence of the heat. Neither could understand how their companion could bear that heavy looking trenchcoat. More than that, Hinata's thoughts drifted to her new friends. "I wonder if they've had any luck" she thought as she sat cross legged. As she sat there she turned her mind to Naruto; she wondered if he would notice how much stronger she had gotten while he was away.
"Oh Hinata" Kiba said with a teasing tone, "You wouldn't happen to be thinking about a certain hyperactive blonde knucklehead would you?" he continued with a wide grin.
"H-how did you-" Hinata stammered, turning beetroot, causing Kiba to laugh loudly.
"It's a habit you've developed since you started growing your hair out, you fidget with the ends whenever you talk about him, so I figured you might be doing it now because you're thinking about him" the Inuzuka kid explained, trying to hold in his chuckling.
"If you were half as dedicated to your missions as you are to poking fun at Hinata, you might be a decent ninja by now" Shino said bluntly, causing Kiba to forget about Hinata in lew of threatening and yelling at the bug master.
Temari searched the unconscious Iwagakure ninjas. Eventually she pulled out a scroll with "Earth" marked on the side.
"Ahhhh, just our luck" Kankuro complained, looking over her shoulder, "We find someone and they have the same one as us" he raised an eyebrow as he watched Temari pocket the scroll anyway. "Whatcha keeping that for? it's useless"
Temari sighed irritated before turning to her ignorant brother.
"Besides the fact that we can use it as a bargaining piece as well as eliminating another group from the exams, I happen to have personal reasons for carrying spares" she explained, talking as if to a child, "So shut up and let's keep going; ready Gaara?"
* * *
As she landed in the clearing, Sakura sighed loudly.
"I can't believe they didn't have a scroll either" she complained, massaging her knuckles after that last fight. Choji handed her a water flask.
"Don't worry, we've still got plenty of time" he said encouragingly, although he had to admit, it was a bit demotivating to spend an entire day searching and only finding one team. Ino had already began placing traps and alarms around the area; they would stop here to sleep, taking shifts. Or at least that had been the plan.
A trail of fire raced directly for them. Luckily, Sakura reacted quick enough to bury her fists into the ground, bringing up a small wall of earth, stopping the flames from reaching them. Ino leapt down from the branches above, taking her stance with the team. Three ninja stepped out from the now burning foliage. They were Hidden Waterfall ninja.
"Looks like your trap failed, Izumi" One of them said calmly. The female standing at the front of the trio turned to him
"Shut it!" she yelled, before facing them again. "If you've got an Earth scroll then hand it over, if not then get out of our way" she snapped at them. Ino nimbly slid a poison tipped senbon into each of her hands from their holders in her sleeve bandages.
"Come and get it..."
The three ninja rushed forward. Ino leapt backwards into the lower branches of a nearby tree, letting her senbon fly as she went. One went clear over the head of the mouthy kunoichi, the other grazed the cheek of the teammate she had reprimanded. Ino grinned.
"The one on the left won't be a problem in a minute or two" she called to the others, "Sakura, keep the other guy busy, Choji, get ready"
They both nodded and Ino performed a few hand seals. As expected, the waterfall kunoichi ignored Choji and leapt up towards Ino. But it was too late.
"Mind Transfer Jutsu!"
Ino's body fell from the tree into Choji's expanded hand. After placing her down carefully he turned back to the enemy kunoichi, who had leapt back down to the clearing.
"All yours, Choji" she said with a grin. Choji expanded his other arm and gripped her tightly with both arms. "Release!"
Ino stood up. Their tactic had been a success, they now had her restrained. Looking over she saw the unfortunate shinobi who had been hit by her senbon slouching against a large root. The paralysis would last approximately forty minutes. The final Waterfall ninja leapt away from Sakura and threw shuriken at Choji, attempting to make him lose his grip. This momentary distraction was all Sakura needed. She focused the chakra in her hand, trying to make a blade of it. She had always struggled with this, but if it could work just this once it would mean the end of the fight. She swung her imperfect chakra blade at the Waterfall ninja's knee.
"Too slow!" he cried as he pulled his leg up and spun into a kick, sending Sakura across the clearing. Then he started to charge Choji. But before he got halfway there he was engulfed in smoke. When it cleared he was aware of a kunai pressed against his throat. Ino chuckled slightly.
"Both my senbon served their purpose" she stated, kicking the broken shell of her smoke bomb away. "The one that hit your friend was simply a poison tipped senbon. But the other one was attached to a hair thin wire I'd tied to a smoke bomb earlier, and you tripped it."
"Water Style: Aqua Bullets!" came the cry from behind Ino. The ninja she was holding turned to water before her eyes. A substitution! Moving as lithely as she could she dodged the volley of water. Before she could regain sight of her opponent she was sent flying towards the tree as his knee connected with the side of her face. Getting up in time to see Sakura sprint towards him she ran to the kunoichi who was still swearing and threatening Choji while trying to squirm free.
"Choji, plant her in the ground for now, we need to take that guy down fast" she instructed. Choji lifted the kunoichi high up and brought her crashing to the ground, with effects resembling the Head Hunter Jutsu.
Once Choji was free to help it was simple to take the last ninja down. Ino and Sakura kept up a relentless attack until Choji managed to catch a hold of their opponents foot and slam them into a tree, knocking him out cold. This left the buried kunoichi as the only conscious one left. Sakura walked over to her.
"You saw what I did to the ground earlier. Give up your scroll or your face is next" she threatened.
"Like I'd ever!" she screamed, "I'm not giving up my opportunity to beat some respect into that stuck up sand kunoichi" she continued bitterly. Ino couldn't help but sympathize with that, Temari was quite obnxoious, even if you didn't have a more personal grudge against her, like Ino did. However, they needed the scroll, and having the ground right next to her pounded to dust was enough to encourage the feisty shinobi to reconsider. They collected the Heaven scroll from the poisoned ninja before disappearing, feeling even more enthusiatic than they had before as the fire from earlier burned brightly, lighting the twilight behind them.
Taking a deep breath Katsurou tilted his head towards the bushes from which his team-mate had just emerged. She looked refreshed, which was a good sign,
"You found someone then?" he asked with a slight smile.
"Yup! There were some Rock village ninja lying unconscious not far from here, they had full chakra too" Manami answered cheerily. She sat down between Katsurou and Rikuto, who looked as though he was sleeping. "I wish my chakra recharged as fast as yours" she complained, her blue eyes flicking to the Nara genin.
"I wish I had even a fraction of your chakra control" he answered simply, tilting his head back to look at the clouds rolling overhead. The two of them sat with their back against the central tower. The new rule involving the tower remaining locked until the final day made their record breaking acquisition of the scroll pointless.
They sat there for a further hour or so. It was close to noon on the third day. Soon Katsurou would go catch fish from the river which flowed nearby, while Manami started the fire, and Rikuto set up a new set of sentry bugs. So had been the routine since they first got to the tower at the start of the exam. Katsurou was just thinking how it was unusually fortunate that they'd gone so far without encountering an enemy when Rikuto suddenly flung a kunai towards a tree, causing a Rain ninja to sidestep into view.
"Well spotted" he said, glancing at the kunai for a moment before facing the three of them, "But it won't save you; Senbon Rainstorm!"
Before he could throw his weapon up into the sky Manami's foot had planted into his face, knocking him out cold.
"I don't know what you were about to do, but not today!" she turned to give a thumbs up and a grin to her team.
Katsurou laughed quietly to himself as he watched his team-mate put her guard back up. It had always amused him how cheerful she could be at the most inappropriate times. He tilted his head to the side slightly.
"Where are the others?" he whispered to Rikuto, who responded by facing a different tree. "Right, I'll get that one, you find the last and set Manami on them"
With that he stood up and performed several hand seals and, to all onlookers, would have appeared to sink into the ground.
He walked out of the woods nearby moments later with another ninja slung over his shoulder, while Manami caught another one who had tried to flee.
"What sort of slime abandons his team" she scolded before knocking him out. Katsurou took the bodies with him to the river where he let them wash downstream.
"How tedious" he commented as he sat back down with the others to eat.
* * *
The three of them stood silently among the leaves, looking down on the passers by.
"Should we risk it?"
"No, we agreed not to at the beginning"
"It is the last day though"
"Have you forgotten what they are capable of?"
Their whispers were silenced as the group they were discussing suddenly stopped and looked up towards them. Temari growled slightly.
"You! The morons up in that tree! Get down here!"
Ino, Sakura and Choji landed in a close knit group, keeping their eyes on the sand ninja across from them. Gaara stood farthest back, facing away from them all with his arms crossed. Kankuro stood looking impatiently over Temari's shoulder. Temari seemed to be staring daggers at Ino. Soon she stepped forward and all three of them tightened their grip on their weapons. Temari stopped.
"Relax, I don't want to fight you. I want to talk with you" she said, pointing at Ino, "Alone".
Naturally they were tentative, but decided to take her word for it when she handed her fan to her brother and walked off into the woods by herself. Ino followed reluctantly. They wandered until they were out of earshot, then Temari turned to face her.
"Do you need either of the scrolls" she asked Ino bluntly. The leaf kunoichi blinked in surprise.
"We're still looking for an Earth scroll..." she answered tentatively, "...why?"
Temari paced back and forth in front of her, seemingly lost in thought. She began mumbling as if arguing with herself. After a moment she seemed to come to a decision. Reaching into her belt she pulled out an Earth scroll and thrust it towards Ino.
"Take it" she said with an acidic tone, as if she might reconsider at any moment. Ino kept her hands to herself.
"What's the catch" she enquired accusingly
"Face me, one on one, in the finals"
Ino was stunned. So Temari wanted to fight her too? What was her motive? Could it have been intrigue after last years exams? But Ino had tied in her match, and didn't feel like she'd performed spectacularly or anything. In the end she decided it would be unfair on the team to risk passing because of her pride. She took the scroll from the Suna nin's trembling hand.
"Deal" she agreed, exchanging a fiery stare with the other kunoichi.
* * *Anko lifted the large wooden bar locking the tower door and pushed them open, allowing sunlight to spill in across the hall. Moments later three shinobi walked in looking surprisingly no worse for wear.
"Well well, looks like another successful year for the rookies" she said in a slightly congratulatory tone as she pointed them towards the wall scroll. Sooner or later three more teams came in. Another Konoha team, the Suna team from last year and a Kusagakure squad. The latter group dropped a large pile of scrolls at the door, keeping a pair to themselves. "Well that explains the lack of teams" Anko thought to herself as she went to attend the Hokage's speech.
It didn't take as long to get through the main points of the speech this time around. Tsunade-sama wasn't one for beating around the bush. Thankfully there were few enough remaining participants to negate the neccesity of a preliminary exam, so they began drawing lots for their final matches.
"Four" Ino called when prompted.
"Five" Sakura stated.
"Two" announced Choji.
"Eleven" a Grass ninja with a large sheath on his back answered.
"Eight" called the Grass kunoichi who had been eyeing Temari.
"One" squeaked a scrawny looking Grass ninja who seemed to be slouching to minimize himself.
"Twelve" said Katsurou clearly.
"Six" Manami sang brightly.
"Nine" Rikuto responded abruptly.
"Seven" Gaara grunted.
"Ten" Kankuro answered lazily.
"Three" Temari smirked, barely hiding the satisfaction in her voice as she turned to look down the line at Ino.
So the matches were set. Ino was going to face Temari in her first match, the second one of the finals. Sakura was set to fight her cousin; Choji, Katsurou and Gaara were squaring off against the Grass ninjas, and Kankuro had another Aburame opponent. The month leading up to the exams was bound to be dedicated to training mercilessly. Ino smiled as she fixed her eyes on Shikamaru, who was attending as an exam proctor. She had so much more to fight for than the simple rank of Chunin. -
Anyway enough shameless plugging, time for teasers!She walked forward with a slight frown on her face.
"I suggest you surrender, you're not the one I wanted to fight..." she glared across at him, "... fat boy!"
