I do not own, or receive any benefits from the Naruto properties.
A Teacher's Glory: A Union of Rejects: Chapter 8
By Larry Huss
A Konoha Jonin named Miumra Hamaki led the surviving applicants from the Academy building in a long double file. They went through the streets and markets squares of Konoha toward where he had informed them they would be having a survival training exercise as their Second Test. As they straggled along, a few of the genin broke out of line for some minutes to do some quick purchases. At Shikamaru's oddly incessant urging Team Asuma quickly cleared a shelf of a convenience store of its stock of dried soups and fruit, as well as two six packs of bottled water before rushing to catch up with the tail of the column. Other genin, from less chakra blessed regions, looked around at the strange sight of a small city that was also partially a park, as they finally left the walls of Konoha and came to the site of the next stage of their test, Training Area 44.
Yamanaka Ino was too keyed up to be overly worried at having to sign a release form absolving Konoha from any responsibility in the event of her death or injury. After all, as a ninja such things were not only part of the job, but really what she planned on doing to the others in the Test. Anyway, she was not only the cutest kunoichi in the test, but also had powerful family techniques that even the acknowledged master of the skills (her father) admitted she was precocious in her ability in using. Shikamaru was undoubtedly the smartest kid in the Test, and Choji was probably one of the strongest. So they had special talents, brains, and a great Meat Tank; how could they not kick ass?
The teams were separated to go to their individual gates into the Training Area, where they would hunt each other to secure the opposite scroll from the one they had been given (either Heaven or Earth). They would have to turn in a set at a central tower in five days to get a passing mark. Ino looked over and saw Team Seven looking at the dank forest inside the wire fence. They had a definite slack-jawed and stunned look on their faces. It was a little odd to think that that bunch was intimidated, but the evidence was written on their faces. Ino just hoped that Sasuke-kun wouldn't have one of his teammates die on him, which would mean that he wouldn't have a full team at the end; that was another of the short list of requirements for passing the Test. Secretly, Ino admitted to herself that she would really miss Sakura if the worst happened; she had no fears that Sasuke himself would get into any real trouble.
"I can absolutely not believe it," Naruto whispered to his teammates. "Do you think Sensei knew about this when she got us the job of thinning out the wildlife?"
"No," said Sakura firmly. "If she had known she'd have leaked the info to us within the last few weeks… somehow. With all the 'plausible deniability' she could figure out."
Sasuke was standing there, trying not to lose his poker face at this turn of events. It was true that they weren't really equipped for an expedition into the Forest of Death, but none of the other teams seemed to be either. They, of course, only carried their walking-around set of cutlery, and a canteen and four or so ration bars. Plus enough explosives to level a few buildings, but that went without saying. Still, even without the Quick Needle equipment and polearms they had a home court advantage not only over the foreign teams, but over the Konoha ones also. He had been worried about Team Guy, older and more experience, giving them a lot of trouble. But they were, he knew, a Taijutsu-heavy team, with decent mid-range missile support. The way Sakura went on how about how good Tamura Tenten was had naturally led him to do a little investigation in that direction. Bad footing and a mass of underbrush would be problems for Team Guy's styles.
But even more important was the fact that the Forest was not only full of things that wanted to eat you, it was full of things to eat. Some not even poisonous! How many of the genin going in would carry even a small supply of food and water when going to a test; half, perhaps? The rest would probably be down with some stomach bug from bad water and be suffering from severe hunger by the second or third day. His team knew enough about the place now to set up a vacation camp in the best spots inside the fence. This Second Test probably wasn't going to be a romp, but he had high hopes for it.
As the gate was unlocked to let them in Naruto caught his eye, made an odd undulating wavy motion with the fingers of his left hand. Sasuke and Sakura nodded, and all three went at their best speed into the forest, to the higher and drier regions. Once there they moved toward their usual rallying place and water-guarded clearing. They arrived near the pool of black water within twenty minutes. They had already heard some loud cries of anguish ringing through the forest; evidently the Exam was getting off to a fast start. Before they would investigate they were going to put together a plan, the chances that the noises were bait… well they had caught striped weasels with a similar plan, and didn't want the embarrassment of falling for that that sort of scheme themselves.
Naruto was just about to create their security screen of disguised Shadow Clones when they had a rude interruption. A tall, androgynous looking Shinobi had either just arrived (or escaped their attention completely) or had been there all the while (and escaped their attention completely). Both situations were disturbing, and an indictment of how much they were failing Sensei's simple instructions to "know where you're going, and what's waiting for you there." The third alternative, that they were totally outclassed, came to their minds when a wave of paralyzing Killing Intent shoved itself into their minds at a level far beyond anything that Sensei had managed to project, even at her most fearsome.
It was Naruto who snapped out of the freezing terror first. It took him a second to identify the head protector, and then he said:
"So, you come from Kusagakure; how do you like our kiddy park so far?"
The stranger was a little taken aback. According to the reports he (she or it might at this time have been equally acceptable designations) had read Anko-chan had been a mediocre sensei to the genin; there was no way they should have been able to move or speak in the face of the terror they should be feeling. Ah, wait; yes, it was the demon-carrier, that must explain it. The Nine-Tails living inside for so long must have given even that stupid little boy so much experience with fear that a certain degree of immunity was built up.
Then the other two started moving into flanking positions slightly behind the blond. They could move, and even get into defensive formations while under this much mental pressure? Interesting. Perhaps Yakushi-kun had been slacking off a little in his investigations?
Still, the stranger hadn't come here to check up on how his old student had developed as a teacher; there was business to do. One Uchiha had escaped him in the past; this fledgling wasn't going to be allowed the opportunity to do the same. Though he hated to do this with so little style, it was time to mark first and gloat later. Suddenly his neck began to elongate as fast as a kunai could be thrown, with his face distorting as his mouth opened to three times human normal in gape. Finger-length fangs deployed, preparing to inject the Cursed Seal of Heaven (a chakra seal in liquid form) into the target Uchiha.
Except, instead of the nice soft neck of a pretty boy, the fangs closed down on and through rough cloth and into a wiry muscled arm as Uzumaki Naruto managed to block the strike of the weird snake-monster-guy from poisoning his teammate by shoving his own flesh into the way of the strike. For the monster-person the next thing to happen was strictly automatic; it wouldn't have happened if he could stop his own reflexes. When the pressure indicated that the fangs were well set, the toxic seal was injected. And six hours of meticulous preparation and careful infusion of ordered chakra were wasted in the wrong genin. Suddenly the false ninja from Grass felt two things: his mouth was burning and the top of his head was suddenly smashed down so hard that he couldn't extract his teeth from the wrong target he had hit.
Between the scorching pain in his mouth, and the unexpected labor of pulling the fangs out of the boy's tough flesh, the attacker didn't have either the perception or the time to notice two other things. One was that Uchiha Sasuke moving to bring down a kick onto the still extended neck; the other was Haruno Sakura racing toward him with murder in her eyes.
If she had been thinking clearer her kodachi might have been drawn and in her hand. Or perhaps not… it would have cost her at least a half-step to do that, and she was in a hurry. As long as this thing had its neck extended, and Sasuke was doing his best to snap it, there was a whole body with no sensory data coming in to let it know it was under attack. Or no sensory data until she put her best hit in at least.
At three meters from target Sakura left the ground and began to cock her leg and gather her chakra. Landing a half-pace behind the monster and to its left, she pivoted her body as she swept her leg around. She used her chakra to anchor her left leg firmly into the ground and put her full force into her kick. Her body burned with a power she had never felt before, and time seemed to slow as her leg moved with unnatural speed. The thing tried to move itself out of the way, but it was far too slow. Perhaps it was Sasuke's hammer kick smashing its head down into the ground, pulling the fangs out of Naruto's left arm distracting it, but in any case she had never done a strike so pure and smooth and fast and on target before.
F=MA: thirty-eight kilos of girl doesn't really produce all that much force, unless she is anchored firmly into the ground and her attacking leg is moving at an insane speed as it impacts the small of the back of a creature that left orthodox humanity a long while ago. Sasuke saw the Kusagakure-marked ninja's body leave the ground and sail through the air. Even with his Sharingan active he could barely see Sakura's strike as anything more than a solid image of speed. He would have started to smile as the sound of the impact reached him, except that Naruto had dropped to his knees and was starting to scream. Naruto, who took the hardest hits Sensei could land on him without a whimper, was screaming with pain and holding his left arm with his right hand. Sasuke whispered "sorry" as he turned. Drawing his short sword, he tried to keep up with the flying body of the monster that had attacked them.
It was contracting its neck as it followed its low-arcing aerial path, until by the time it landed it could have almost passed for an actual human being again. As it landed into the middle of the pool of water Team Seven had used as part of their flank guard it proved it was no genin; one of those would never have been able to land upright after being smacked that hard. It was certainly not a Chunin, even landing on his feet; one would have been driven underwater by the speed he had landed. Instead it landed feet first, and hardly even skidded, its supply and control of its chakra was so complete. Sasuke stopped at the edge of the land; he didn't want to have to fight that thing by himself, and especially not when he would be distracted with making sure he wasn't sinking at the same time. Especially not in that pond.
Shooting a wide cloud of fire out of his mouth over the water, Sasuke doubled back to where Sakura was rubbing her hip and standing over Naruto. "I'm fine, just a bit sore," she said, and Sasuke felt a knot in his chest that he hadn't realized was there ease.
"Do you think Little Suzu is home today?" Sasuke asked, looking back at the figure standing easily in the middle of the pond, out on top of the water, and snapping its dislocated spine back into alignment.
Sakura gave her sore leg another rub, and nodded. She pulled out a knife and slit open the sleeve over Naruto's bitten arm. Opening her waist pack she pulled out some cord, and tied a quick tourniquet above the wound, above where the line a huge blackened bruise had appeared, and was visibly throbbing.
"It's that time of the year, after all. Let's just grab Naruto and get out of here."
Sasuke saw the water behind the enemy… ninja… creature, begin to mound up. He grabbed his teammate, slung him in an across the back carry position, and headed out. Unburdened, Sakura took the lead position and worked her way to about twenty meters in front, her job to scout their way to the next best place to stop and put together a strategy to deal with the aftermath of this disaster of a battle.
Orochimaru the Sannin was fully occupied in re-evaluating his plans as he popped his dislocated jaw back into place, while he managed to get his spine properly aligned again. Knowing how diffuse the cloud of flame from the Uchiha should at this distance he had hardly even tried to dodge it, and was rewarded with having his eyebrows set on fire. Or at least the eyebrows of the skin he was wearing. That shouldn't have happened, not with such a basic technique. This whole Team Seven wasn't what had been reported to him. He spat singed blood out of his borrowed body's mouth. What did the Carrier have in its veins instead of blood?
At least there was an eight out of ten chance it would die, now that the Cursed Seal of Heaven was infecting it. Or else it would become (in time) his little muzzled and collared pet. Still, Yakushi Kabuto would have a lot to answer for, when they next had a little conference.
How did that little girl hit him so hard? It had almost felt like one of Tsunade's love-taps. He had tried to block the kick (a Sannin didn't need his eyes to tell when an attack was coming), but she had been so damn fast. Right now Orochimaru felt more like an arthritic 70 year old than the spry super-ninja of fifty (in a twenty-five year-old's body) that he really was. If Anko hadn't been a traitor, coward, and total failure, Orochimaru would have been very proud how well she had been teaching her students. It was almost a shame that he would now have to kill at least one of the team, probably was already killing another, and would be abducting the third for later use.
Orochimaru felt something dangerous moving toward him; no doubt one of the Carrier's Shadow Clones. Not a real problem, just smack it and it would go 'poof.' Without looking he swung his incredibly flexible arm backwards, to run into something solid, muscular, and wet. He turned and looked at two and half meters of thigh-thick tentacle. While he was taking that all in, two other tentacles reached up from underneath him and grabbed his legs, pulling him down. As his head was submerged his thought was a simple one: "I thought the Giant Fresh Water Squid was a myth!"
As they moved along the slightly drier paths along the forest floor (Naruto might have managed carrying one of them, leaping from tree to tree, but although Sasuke had grown a lot stronger in the last six months he was still just barely a teen, and his family's talents had always been in the ways of speed and skills, not raw physical strength). They were careful not to use any chakra in travelling; that sort of thing could be traced, after all. Despite that, they still went faster than almost anyone else could have gone; this had been their hunting ground, and it had become their familiar playground.
A few more minutes and they were at a large raised hummock, surrounded by a 300 degree sweep of outright marsh. Sasuke laid the moaning Naruto down, his head resting against one of the oddly evenly-sized rectangular blocks that poked up through the soil of the mound. The blond's eyes were dilated, and he wasn't responding to their questions on how he was. Sakura took a kunai and held it up in front of Sasuke's face. He gauged how much would be needed to do the job, and reveal the least, and spat out a short burst of flame to sterilize the blade. Sakura stroked the sharp edge over the bloated and discolored section of the arm, and began to squeeze out a mixture of blood, serum, and something else. That seemed to be colored the darkest shade of grey, and she could swear was sending up little pseudopods moving this way and that, before diving back down again in the flesh. She quickly cut off the sleeve of her silk blouse (sky blue with a pattern of peony blossoms, she had wanted to look her best at the start of the Chunin Exams) and began to use it to blot up the fluids she was getting from the cuts.
"Who… what was he?" Sasuke asked to both of them. "He was even less of a genin than Yakushi was. Physical extensions, not that rare when you think of it. But who ever heard of a bloodline talent, or jutsu like that neck thing, including poison?"
Sakura kept kneading Naruto's arm; there was less of his fluids in the exuded stuff now, and more of the dark grey toxin. Her sleeve was becoming soaked, so she threw it away and cut off the other one for use. There was no way she was going to take a chance of having that stuff, whatever it was, get in contact with her skin.
Naruto's eyes came back into focus for a second, and he mumbled, "Thanks. It helps I think, Sakura-cha…" And then he was out again.
Sasuke was listening with his fullest attention, and scanning the area with his Sharingan activated. He let his eyes revert back to normal; nothing either dangerous or useful (like venomous-skinned frogs or poison-fanged spiders) seemed to be in the area at the moment.
"Naruto was in the lead. Why was that attack on me? Fast as he was, it had to have exposed him more than taking out the point man. I wonder if the teams with Hyugas on them are being targeted; getting rid of the Konoha advanced bloodlines before their newest trained members get too strong? Do you think this guy was part of Yakushi's little group?" Hmm. Sakura with a knife in her hand, it always made him think…
"You make keeping Naruto alive look so graceful, like a tea ceremony or something. I've always admired that about you, when you're not trying so hard you get so… nice looking, I mean."
In a dry tone Sakura acknowledged the most romantic speech Sasuke had ever made to her. "I adore your unbridled passion for me, Sasuke-kun, but until we find a nice love-hotel with good rates around here could you get me some more cloth or something to blot up the poison. I'm running out of sleeves. I want to save the medicated bandages from our med-kits for when I try binding things up here."
Sasuke smiled briefly. He'd lately been coming around to the feeling that real girls (not the parodies of females that had pursued him back at the Academy) could be pleasantly interesting. Of course that could have its drawbacks also. Living with Tamaki had started to become a little complicated as they became more familiar with each other. He tore the sleeves off of his black, long-sleeved, shirt.
Coming to a decision, Sasuke took charge. "Screw the Exam. We head to the central tower as fast as we can and get Naruto medical help. If we can pick up another scroll, fine. If not, these exams aren't a once in a life-time thing, anyway.
"We keep going the same way as before, you're lead and scout, I carry the load. You do not risk that little butt of yours doing anything foolish. Our mission now is medical evacuation."
Sakura nodded. She gingerly poured a little water from Naruto's canteen into his mouth, and he managed to swallow it down without waking up. In another few minutes she wasn't able to get any more useful fluids out of the wounds, and tied the large medicated bandage from her field first aid kit over the cuts she had made. Releasing the tourniquet she stood up and gave a nod, and after orientating herself toward the center of the forest, where the only building was (which Sensei had told them was a convention center), she headed out. By the time she was thirty meters ahead Sasuke had picked up his teammate in a fireman's carry, and followed her.
Naruto was standing in front of the great barred cage that held the Fox. The paper seal holding the door closed was in perfect condition, but the ground beneath his feet was giving little jumps from time to time, and dust would spurt out of the joints and seams of the whole underground structure and filled the air with acid taste. Several stuffed chairs and a table were scattered around inside. The Fox itself was curled up in a ball under the table (Naruto had been true to his word about upgrading the prison) with several scrolls and a pen and ink bottle on it. It was looking much smaller than usual, and its coat was far less vivid than the amount of dust in the air could justify. It was scared, Naruto realized. Perhaps he should be also?
Sensei had said that everyone gets scared sometimes, the trick was not to let it make you choose the wrong decisions. There didn't seem anything going on here but a mongrel hiding, so he tried to wake up. And found he couldn't.
Instead he was in a different corridor, seemingly metal lined and tubular, watching a dark bubbling mass advancing down toward him. Just in front of the surface of darkness the walls of the corridor looked like they were corroding just before they were engulfed.
"This can't be good," he mumbled to himself.
Suddenly the wall of darkness advanced a half dozen steps, and then receded twice as far. Twenty heartbeats later that happened again. The area revealed by this pulsing was deeply pitted and damaged. Naruto once again tried to become conscious; his friends were having a fight up in the land of the waking.
He groggily opened his eyes to see Sakura-chan pushing down on his wounded arm, and using something to blot up whatever was there. It felt like she was applying hot irons to him, but if Sakura-chan was doing it, it must be for his own good.
"Thanks. It helps I think, Sakura-cha…" he managed to get out before he tumbled back to his own inner place.
He was back at the metal corridor, watching the damaged sections slowly change color and become a dark grey and start oozing something that looked like the stuff that had been advancing earlier. Naruto didn't have to be a genius to understand that whatever this part of him was, it had been changed enough to start producing the poison that snake-man had injected into him, and Sakura had been trying to get it out.
He didn't allow himself to think that it was sort of silly when he went through the hand seals Sasuke had shown him as the release for sending a fireball. He put far more chakra into his technique this time than he had ever dared to before, and a larger and thicker fireball came out of his mouth and down the corridor in his mind. It scraped along the floor, turning it cherry-red, and for a moment the mutation of his mindscape stopped. Then, from all around the cleared area little fingers of corruption started extending themselves, until the purified places began to show the signs of pollution again.
He had long ago realized that part of the reason he healed so fast was because he was using his (and maybe sometimes the Fox's) chakra to fix himself up. Now though, now it didn't seem like what he normally did was enough. It was time to get serious, and if he couldn't muster enough fire-power, he knew where he could find it.
In what seemed two steps he was back in front of the cage. Nothing there seemed to have changed all that much. Same seal, same table and chairs, same Fox hiding under the table. Just looking a lot paler, almost grey.
'This is all in my mind' Naruto reminded himself, and slipped between the wide-set bars and into the den of the greatest and most calamitous of the Chakra Demons.
Despite its thousand previous promises to rip him to pieces if he ever got within range the Fox didn't come out and attack. It just whined and cowered into a tighter ball. Naruto had to admit the floor was… pulsing ominously was the best word for it. Evidently the Fox had at least a little more reason than Naruto had thought for being cowed, after all their chakra systems were connected so… an attack on Naruto's was an attack on all that the Fox was. And that was the key to unlock this problem, wasn't it?
Naruto reached under the table and grabbed the Fox by the ruff of the neck. When it tried to snap at him he cuffed it across the snout. Sensei always said that the best way to start an arrangement was to make sure everyone knew who was in charge.
"Listen up, I'm going to need a lot a chakra from you, so don't give me any back-talk or hassle about it. And don't try any silly tricks, 'cause if we end up fighting each other, we both go down. Maybe you won't die, but ya may not be as on top of the heap when you get yourself back together again. "
The Fox whimpered back a reply: "It's eating you, and then it'll eat me. And then it'll put a collar and leash on me and make me do horrible tricks, and…"
"Give me the power, and I'll save us."
"You! You're just a human, and a young one at that! You know nothing about real power!"
Naruto lifted it up till its snout was level with his eyes (yet it was supposed to be tall as the hills) and stared at it until it looked away.
"The chakra, through there, "and Naruto pointed to a new feature in the cell, a horizontal feeding slot in the bars, "and don't hold back anything I want. Because I will win, if we do this together. And if you play things Foxy-cute your hide will be keeping someone's hands warm in the winter."
With that he walked back out between the bars, which somehow were still too narrow for even the diminished Fox to slip through. A thin stream of pale red chakra came through the slot, connecting to Naruto-in-his-own-mind. He looked back into the cage, "More!" And the thread of power became thicker and deeper colored. The Fox inside found it had to get out from under the table it had crawled under again. What it saw was Naruto walking away, crimson flames outlining him. Perhaps things weren't as bad as all that, it thought.
Sasuke saw Sakura suddenly stop up in front, and he came to a halt as quietly as he could. Checking for any fire ant nests or the like he put Naruto down, forcing a henge disguise on him of a plant flowering out of season. If something happened in whatever confrontation was coming up, at least if Sakura was the survivor she'd be able to tell that the shrub was just a cover-up.
Sasuke crept closer, managing to get into hearing range in time for the tail end of Sakura's truthful lie.
"… so after this weird guy attacked I took off and haven't looked back much since. It slows you up too much. If he comes your way, better just run for it, because he's out of our league. Well… maybe you could handle him, but my team couldn't.
"Look, guys, I don't even have a scroll on me; another member of our team had it. If I did I might try to bargain with it to get an escort out of this place, it is definitely dangerous in its own right. So, not having any bargaining leverage I'm just going to peacefully back out of here peacefully and not disturb you in your scroll hunting."
As she started to back off a deeper voice started to speak. Sasuke wiggled forward and off to the right, trying to get a better view of the situation.
"Haruno… yeah, I know about you, we'll let you go if you give us the Uchiha. We've got a little mission related to him, and trying to trace him in this bog is damn near impossible. Don't try to sell that 'I just ran away' shit with us; we know you're his fangirl and wouldn't leave him in the lurch. Be reasonable about leading us to him and you'll live. You can always find another pretty face to be an idiot about, if you're still alive."
By now Sasuke had managed to circle around and forward enough to see that Sakura was facing three genin, with about ten meters separating them. Two guys and a girl, with the headbands indicating they belonged to that new "Village Hidden in the Sound" that was so mysterious in its origins and location. She was trying to slowly back off when one of the boys, the one with his head all bandaged up, lifted his metal-covered right arm and swung it rapidly in her direction. Sasuke heard a high-pitched ringing, while Sakura (directly in the path of the arm's movement) fell to her knees with her hands over her ears. Then her arms went to her waist as if to grab at a rebellious bellyache.
Sasuke activated his Sharingan, and began to creep forward again. He had kicked Sakura often enough in the gut to know what was going on, she and her "delicate and ladylike stomach."
"Gods and demons, they're weak around here," said the other boy as he went to tie Sakura up with a coil of rope he pulled out of his waist-pack. Standard practice for a good torture session if you didn't have something set up beforehand.
As he reached down to flip the retching girl over for a proper binding, she suddenly shot her hand out and rolled to the left. The boy managed to avoid being impaled on the needle she had pulled out of her everyday-walking-around kit, but it was stuck in the short, loose sleeves of his shirt. He lifted his arms stiffly in front of him and a pattern of small explosions began trailing Sakura as she moved.
The girl on the team threw two senbon at the rolling Sakura, one with a bell attached, and one without. Both missed. Sasuke saw that there was a wire attached to the belled needle. Suddenly the Oto kunoichi stopped throwing things and yelled out: "Zaku, your shirt, it's on-" just in time to for the exploding tag Sakura had put on his sleeve under cover of a needle attack went off.
As soon as he had seen Sakura successfully attach the explosive tag Sasuke made a clone, and gave it its movement directions. It ran out straight toward the nearest enemy (the other boy), and with a shout made a spectacular high–leaping attack. Just when he thought the motion would have created the greatest amount of diversion, Sasuke pulled his kodachi from its sheath, and bolted out of the underbrush, as low and fast as he could go.
The clone was dispersed by whatever jutsu was associated with the perforated metal guard on the boy's arm, but before the Oto ninja could get anything in train to use against Sasuke he had to use the arm strictly as a sort of inferior parrying tool. He winced as he saw the Suna-steel blade cut some of the holes in the guard into connected slots. He didn't realize that Sasuke was circling around him so that the only unengaged member of his team was now blocked by his body. When everything was in position, Sasuke finished it.
Slipping a kunai into his left hand, he took a dramatic high slash down at the enemy's head with the kodachi. As one hand went to try to grab Sasuke's arm, and the metal clad one tried to intercept the blade, the Otogakure ninja didn't even realized he was going to die until the shorter blade was already in his abdomen, just above the waist, and traveling upwards. As the knees became weak and gave way Sasuke was already moving so that he was to the rear of the girl Oto ninja.
She looked around desperately; her team leader was down and Zaku was staggering around and still shooting off his airwaves attacks off all over the place. One arm seemed to be hanging on by a thread, and then a kunai from the pink-haired bitch took him in the chest. Now it was just her against both of the Konoha genin, and they had already proven that they were each deadlier than her team's heavy hitters. "I surrender!"
Well, it might not do much good, but her situation was so poor now…
"Lie down, face down you idiot. Spread your legs, hands behind your head. Sakura, full search and disarm procedure."
Out of a certain sense of delicacy Sasuke let Sakura do the bladed removal of all the Oto ninja's possible hiding places. He felt a little sick when he saw her crying in anticipation of her rape, a normal prelude to a kunoichi's interrogation in some places. Even though Sensei had worked with Torture and Interrogation she had never briefed them to do things like that, and both Naruto and Sasuke had been fine with things that way. The poor girl in front of them was so thin and undeveloped it would have been so many levels of levels of perversity that he couldn't even figure it out. Just being tied up and humiliated in her nudity (and with her hair cropped off to prevent things being hidden there) would be more than enough to get her to talk. While he waited for Sakura to finish he went to the other two ninja lying on the ground and cut their throats, then scavenged the various tools and rations they carried off their bodies. Wasting good stuff like that would have been a sin.
Along with the more normal loot Sasuke found a scroll, suitable to complete the set Team Seven needed, as well as a note in the waist-pouch of the metal armed boy, that had short descriptions of each of the members of Team Seven, with an indication that Sasuke was the target.
"What did I ever do to these people?" Sasuke thought as Sakura called him over for the interrogation. They would have to do this quick, and for that two was a better set-up. He saw as he got there that Sakura had gotten the girl into a sitting position and had already started the torture part of the process. As she got into position she pulled out a senbon that was a centimeter or so in deep in the girl's… torso. Sasuke wondered how girls could do things like that to each other. "I guess I'm the good guy on this one," he thought.
It only took about five minutes to get everything she knew that was important to them; in fact get it at least twice.
"This Kusa nin came up, bold as sin, and gave his authorization to Dosu…" She was careful not look in the direction of the disemboweled genin. "He brought us here real fast and said we were to be back-up if some Konoha punks managed to get around him. When he left and Dosu told us what your team looked like…shouldn't there be another one of you? Anyway, we were told to kill the Uchiha, oh Gods that's you…"
"You and your very dead friends are…?" Sasuke inquired, with the most polite, bored voice and a socially bland smile.
The girl tried desperately to keep her legs together, lest she give him ideas. Sasuke was glad Sakura was there; even if he had wanted to look (of course not, never even once!) he wouldn't want to get her angry at him for being perverted.
"Kinuta Dosu, and Abumi Zaku. I'm just Tsuchi Kin. So we were supposed to take the head, your head, and put it in a storage seal and bring it back with us whether we went onto the next stage of the exams or not.
"How did you do Dosu and Zaku so easy? You didn't do anything special!"
"What did… Dosu you said his name was, do to me?" Sakura asked.
"We're the Village Hidden in the Sound. High pitched sounds amplified by his chakra, messes up your balance and you get dizzy-sick. And Zaku… he had this thing done to his hands so he could shoot out these blasts of air that explode and break things. I'm just to make up the number, they didn't make any changes in me, didn't think I had enough chakra to power any of the built-in tools. Or even be strong to enough to have a chance of surviving the Bite."
"The Bite?" Sakura moved a regular senbon needle around vaguely in the air. The other girl winced and tried to cover her exposed chest with her still-tied hands. She tried to distract the sadist-girl by continuing on with her confession.
"Lord Orochimaru, he'll bite you in this special way… and if you don't die you get this weird strength, but you go kind of crazy until it leaves you and you're never really the same afterwards. Some of us wanted it, to show we loved him and wanted to be his special ones. I was always scared… most people die from it…
"Not that it matter, I guess. We failed at everything. I'll… I'll probably just be used as a target dummy or something when I go home. It's the truth! That's what happens to failures, things like that. To blood the next graduating class, you know, make them used to killing.
"They even want to graduate a couple of classes faster than usual; something important is coming up and they want a lot of soldiers, even if they aren't fully trained or their surgeries are fully healed. So they'll need a few more failures as targets."
The Konoha ninja didn't have enough time to do a more thorough interrogation right now. They had got the basics and now wanted to rush Naruto to safety as fast as possible. They couldn't afford to take the girl with them, she'd slow them up too much, and the neatest way of dealing with her was very difficult for them to do in cold blood.
With a sigh Sasuke dulled a kunai and left it stuck in the ground. Next to it he put some field rations and a canteen. He told the girl she could scavenge clothing from her dead teammates, and then he sighed again and pulled off a set of things from the bodies so she wouldn't have to touch her teammate's corpses. He told her she should be quick about getting her bindings cut, because there were a lot of things locally that would be coming to eat all the non-moving food around here very soon, especially with the scent of blood in the air. She should be able to get free in time; Sakura had gone for maximum humiliation, with minimum damage and crippling. He was still glad he hadn't had to do it; he owed her one.
He led his teammate back to where Naruto was stored, and when he got there lifted the disguise from the boy. He heard a sound behind him; it was Sakura puking into some bushes. Well, if he had had to be the one doing the "bad cop" part of the interrogation it might have been him losing lunch right now. He went over to her and rubbed her back, telling her that he was glad she had been so strong. He didn't quite know where that had come from, but it felt right.
While she rinsed her mouth with water and spat it out he went back to Naruto, then called out to his more medically-read teammate: "Sakura, are those bandages you put on Naruto supposed to make his arm smoke?"
"I am the fire that burns out the rot," he thought. "I am the flame that cures the wound."
He walked up the pathways of himself, sending searing clones up the various byways as they split and branched. Before him was the bubbling foam of poison, behind him the red-glowing, scourged and new-tempered tunnel. Each cul-de-sac was scorched clean. Behind him he left pale and ghost-like beings that went and looked, or stayed and waited, to ensure that the cleansing was complete and no seed of future corruption would remain. He knew that much would be lost, but anything lost would inevitably be regained if he persevered. And endurance was his core.
It was slow, fighting something crafted from such strength by so much skill. But each resisted step forward was the slightest bit easier, a hint of victory to come. Uzumaki Naruto didn't stop for weariness, refused to admit fatigue.
Deep in the coils of the seal on his stomach the Fox whimpered now from feeding the boy's demands. Not a great deal of its power, really. But the Fox knew that it could no longer limit what was being taken, Uzumaki Naruto was the one completely in control.
Sasuke was sprinting now. Sakura was leading the way again, but now radiating so much rage that nothing desired to stay in their path. It was only four kilometers to the tower; five perhaps along the crooked pathways they had to take, but now they weren't being cautious and ran straight and unsinking over the streamlets and marshes and bogs in their path. They only diverted around trees and the patches of barbed briars that were in their fastest, straightest path.
Three kilometers back Orochimaru the Sannin felt the great anger as he dripped on the grass next to the black pond, and gave it dirty looks. He wondered who could have that much rage. He'd have been boiling the pool of water in front of him away completely, except he knew that it might be fed by underground as well as the visible sources of water, and the damned impossible squid would just escape anyways. And using that much chakra would noticeably weaken him. Anyway, the longer he stayed here using high levels of power the more likely that Konoha ANBU would get on his case. He had too many things to do and people to see to get involved in a prolonged running fight right now.
Suddenly he smiled; they had suckered him beautifully. Out-classed a hundred to one they had managed to escape with only a third of them dead. He finally had to admit it; screwing over little Anko had been premature and just bad tradecraft, if she could prepare a bunch like this. Besides his freaks it would have been a useful thing to have a properly developed set of tools like these. With an almost weary step he began his retreat. He wondered if the team he had given the assassination orders to would find the Konoha genin. Now he regretted that little bit of over-planning, if they succeeded so much would be wasted. He wasn't even exactly sure anymore why he had given that order. It was really counterproductive if he wanted the Sharingan eyes; they might be damaged in any battle. Odd… very odd, now that he thought about it.
Sakura saw the tower straight ahead down the path, and cut to the left to avoid any traps or ambush that might have been set up on the obvious approach. Sasuke followed in her steps; what she had gone over was as cleared as anything they were likely to find without stopping and wasting time. They didn't realize that their familiarity with the forest, and good fortune in finding a matching scroll so early, had brought them to the finishing point before most of the teams had gone more than two or three kilometers into the forest. Those from the drier and more open elemental lands were most completely discomforted.
The team from Sand, for example, was currently waist deep in muddy water, not completely sure how they had ended up there. One of them was having a complete and total tantrum, while the other two were edging away as fast as their restricted movement would let them. By the time they would finally get out they would all be barefoot, and would suffer from sore feet until they collected a set of dead mens' sandals.
Sakura looked up as she entered the tower's main chamber, and saw a set of typically vague pair of maxims on a plaque fastened to the wall. Those were evidently all the instructions they were going to receive on how to finish the current task. As she mentally worked them over into an actually useable form Sasuke came in, and carefully laid Naruto down, sitting him up against a wall. He didn't speak to Sakura; why distract the brains (if not necessarily the will) of the outfit when she had some heavy thinking to do. Instead he concentrated on his personal dilemma.
There had been two groups after him. The Kusagakure monster had been working with the Oto group from the start. Whether this was a strictly Oto thing or not, someone was going after him in particular. Was Kusagakure village in on this too or just the monster? But put that to the side for now; it didn't really matter how many teams had him as a target, as long as he knew that he was one. Except he couldn't stop wondering: why him? He still wondered if the two teams with Hyuga on them had been getting special attention.
Alright, accept that. Kill the last Uchiha… the last legitimate one anyway… and Konoha loses a powerful bloodline forever. An act of war, then, done in peace. Normal ninja preparations for a strike, it just it seemed a little… out of the blue. Relations with Grass were pretty calm last Sasuke had heard. And Sound was supposed to be trying to gain respectability and get accepted into the major villages' network. Maybe they thought that pulling off a coup would help their prestige; but they should have figured out that Konoha was a lot bigger, and wouldn't accept that sort of insulting act passively. Unless something big was coming very soon and this was their ticket into the event. "This is way beyond my pay grade," he finally decided, and turned to see Sakura flip the scrolls they had brought out of the forest open at the same time.
With a puff of smoke Umino Iruka appeared.
"Congratulations, genin! You have passed… what the hell happened to Naruto-kun?"
Sasuke looked over to his teammate, the smoke had stopped coming through the bandages on the bitten arm, and Sakura had scuttled over to Naruto, giving a head toss to Sasuke that could only mean "deal with things, while I check up on our blockhead."
"Well, send for a medical team immediately, probably one for dealing with really bad poison. I'll tell you later… no. There is so weird guy with a Kusa headband that can elongate his neck and has a venomous bite. He's way above genin, and I think even Chunin. He and a bunch of Oto ninja attacked us, just to get at me. And yes, I know that sounds like egotism, but I really don't want all that kind of attention. Look at this note. No, get the medical team here first!"
With that Sasuke pushed the note he had been going to hand Iruka-sensei back into his pocket, and went into his best "I'm not going to talk to you anymore until you do what I say" sulking pose.
The teacher/Exam official disappeared in a small burst of dust. Satisfied that things were being handled properly Sasuke went over to where Sakura had finished unwrapping the injured arm. The skin, from slightly above where the two bite marks were visible, down to the fingertips, was black and crumbly, falling away like flakey ash. Sakura reached her hand back over her shoulder and Sasuke had his canteen off of his belt into her hand without a conscious thought. She unscrewed the cap and slowly dribbled the water out over the charred limb.
"I've checked his temperature; just a little elevated. No unusual splotching in his mouth or on his tongue, can't really tell about blood pressure… interesting. See, there's a layer of pink skin under the ash; the arm itself has lost so much thickness the skin must be barely covering the bone. The skin itself is- I'm so sorry, sorry… please forgive…" When she had stroked the new skin layer it had not only been incredibly smooth, it had been so thin that it had torn under her gentle touch, and now there was blood welling out from under the crumpled surface.
Sasuke saw her do what he had expected her to do in an emergency. While still mumbling "sorry, sorry," under her breath she had yanked a tube of antiseptic burn cream from the medical kit, ripped off the seal covering the top, and gently began applying a thin ribbon of ointment over the bleeding area.
As she finished a team of medi-nins showed up with a stretcher, being led by Iruka. They gently put Naruto onto it and set off, evidently a decent medical facility had been set up at the finish line for this part of the Exam, and they would be getting their first customer while they were still alert and full of energy. For a few seconds, as the team left, Sakura just knelt there, her eyes blinking. Then she shot to her feet and rushed up to the medics and began to give them a rundown of what she had seen, and how the injury had occurred.
Iruka stood in front of Sasuke, palm out. The genin retrieved the note and passed it over to his former teacher.
"'Intercept Team Seven of Konoha. Three members: pink haired kunoichi Haruno Sakura-timid and talentless. Blond haired, wears orange jump suit Uzumaki Naruto-stupid and clumsy but has endurance and can do Shadow Clones. Uchiha Sasuke- dark haired, and wears Uchiha fan emblem on clothing. Kill the Uchiha and take his head back in storage. Leave no witnesses. Obey orders of bearer. Orochimaru, his seal.'" At that last name Iruka gave a small shudder.
"Orochimaru, sensei? Why is that name familiar?"
"He was one of the three Sannin, the Hokage's perfect team of genin when he was a Jonin-sensei. But one of them went bad; Orochimaru. He's been a missing-nin for years; not like Tsunade-hime or Jiraiya-sama, who are just on prolonged leave."
Sasuke digested that for a moment, then ruminated out loud: "Tsuchi Kin, the Oto kunoichi we captured, said that Orochimaru would bite people, and they would either get very strong, but out of control, or more usually die. The Kusa ninja who attacked us at the start bit Naruto and he was taken out instantly. I wonder… " But before could complete that thought he was grabbed, and even if he had had time to activate his Sharingan he would have seen nothing but the world as a blur as Iruka went off with him at maximum speed to the office in the tower devoted to Security Services.
Sakura stayed in a corner of the room near Naruto's head. She listened to the medical technicians, and saw them gently clean off the rest of the injured arm, as well as take off the rest of his clothing, and cleaning his body. One of the nurses made a rude comment on seeing him that way. Sakura kept quiet, but bristled inside, even though it had actually been sort of complimentary if you were very vulgar. But why did the woman call him "Demon?" Naruto was a bit too sweet, if anything. Maybe he had pranked her back when he was still a kid. That must be it.
The part of his arm that had been charred looked all shiny and pink, and as matchstick thin as a man starved for months until his body had eaten away all the fat and muscle, leaving only the skin tight-covering the bare bones beneath. They talked in low tones about how he might not ever be able to use the arm again.
That wouldn't stop Naruto, she knew. He would just keep on as a one-armed ninja, and never give up his dreams, because that was him. He'd be killed, of course. He never knew when to back down, so he'd do something stupid and die. She started to get mad at him for that. He didn't have any right to make them all so sad, dying like that. Sensei would never forgive him for that, and would take out her bad temper on everybody else. It would be all his fault.
She finally fell asleep in that corner. The medical staff had noticed her, of course. But teammates sometimes did things like that; they were ninjas themselves and understood. They just put a blanket on her, and were quiet on their regular checkup on the boy.
An ANBU search team found Tsuchi Kin wandering, still bare-skinned, later that day. She had refused to cover herself with dead men's things; everybody should know that was bad luck, she'd said. And she had figured that any more bad luck that day would probably kill her. The search party treated her very delicately. She hadn't been able to cut herself free until the early arrivers had already started to feast on her teammates. Even though the team hadn't really been all that close, well… it was bound to be disturbing. She was declared DOA to the Jonin who had brought her team to the Exams. He never asked to see the bodies, or tried to bring them back to the Village Hidden in the Sound. It didn't seem to be a very sentimental place. Morino Ibiki and Yamanaka Inoichi performed her secret de-briefing personally. Much about mysterious Otogakure became clear during it.
