Chapter 10: Tactics of Trust
Second Round of the Chuunin Exam
Amaya, Ken and Kaede sat quietly around a cheery fire fed by dry wood from a large stack at the back of the shelter, a natural cave that had been expanded by hand. A narrow, twisting cleft in the rock above allowed the smoke to escape without much snow getting in, and the only entry to the cave was a winding tunnel that opened out behind a row of high, thorny hedges.
They never would have found the cave without their map, but with it they were warm, dry and their packs were full of supplies; when they reached the first shelter on the map they had taken as much food and other useful supplies as they could carry without sacrificing speed before moving on. They were now in the second shelter near the far edge of the forest, less than a day's journey from the pass that lead up into the mountains. They'd beaten the storm there by hours; now it howled like a mad demon outside, audible even in their well concealed shelter.
Even with the storm raging they had taken precautions. The tunnel in was lined with traps and sentry bugs. Amaya was confident there wasn't a genin in the competition that could sneak up on them here. As soon as the storm blew over they'd be on their way and on the hunt for another team; two-thirds of their competition was likely to be worn out or even injured if they hadn't found some manner of protection from the storm.
The mood around the fire should have been jubilant, but instead it was tense. None of them had spoken while preparing and eating dinner, and now that the food was done, the quiet had become painful.
"Why did you do it, Amaya?" Ken finally asked, laying out the uncomfortable question. Kaede's silvery eyes searched Amaya's features as well from behind her dark glasses and hood.
Amaya grimaced, but didn't answer right away. Sighing, Ken looked at Kaede. "I know why she did it," Kaede said slowly. "I simply do not know if it was the right choice or not, and I would have preferred some discussion of that course of action before it was taken."
Once they'd raided the first shelter, the log cabin in a hidden thicket, Kaede and Ken were back in the trees when they realized Amaya wasn't with them. Turning back, they had seen what she intended, but were too far away to stop her. Making familiar hand signs, she called out "Katon: Gokakyu," [Great Fireball] and unleashed a flaming orb from her lips that swelled to be as tall as she was before hitting the cabin, setting the dry logs of its walls ablaze. She gave the building one glance to make sure it was well ablaze and then sprinted for her stunned teammates.
"Amaya, what the hell?" Ken had exclaimed.
"I'll explain later, we need to move now, before the smoke draws our competition," was all she said before taking to the trees and making top speed towards the mountains in the distance. Exchanging a troubled look, Ken and Kaede had no choice but to follow Amaya, and the pace she set left little room for talk. Twice Kaede's bug scouts ahead of them gave them bare warning of approaching teams that they avoided by stealth or speed.
"There wasn't time to discuss it, Kaede. You know we were working against the clock," Amaya answered.
"That would be an acceptable explanation if I thought for a moment you hadn't planned to do that as soon as you saw the map," Kaede shot back. "That wasn't a spur of the moment decision, Amaya. You intended to destroy the first shelter before we left the starting point."
Ken looked back and forth between them. "Why destroy it at all?"
Amaya pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed before getting out the map and laying it out on a rock. Ken and Kaede moved closer. "There were three shelters in the forest. Two near the starting area in the west, and this one here on the east side of the forest near the mountain pass." They both nodded.
Kaede drew a kanji for 'fire' over the northwest one that she'd burned. "I destroyed that first shelter because there are three other teams out there with the same map we have. Since we got to the northwest shelter before any of them, it was good odds that we were faster than any of them, unless some of them headed to the southwest shelter. Since we barely beat the storm here and no one's found this one either, none of the other teams with supply maps got this far, so they all had to double back to avoid the storm. If we'd left the northwest shelter intact, there would have been two options for those three teams. But since the northwest shelter was destroyed in such a visible manner, all three of those teams now have to fight over the southwest shelter. Given the slim chances of three Cloud or Mist teams having the three other supply maps, burning the northwest shelter means some of our opponents will have to fight each other to stay warm tonight. I did it to eliminate at least one and maybe two other teams without throwing a single punch or kunai."
When she finished, Ken was looking at Amaya with a look somewhere between admiration and horror.
"What if one of those teams with supply maps didn't see the smoke or didn't realize what it meant, and is trapped in this storm now because of it?" Kaede inquired. "You could be responsible for the deaths of other genin."
"I can live with that," Amaya answered, and Ken's jaw dropped.
"How can you say that?" he asked, stricken.
"Where do you think we are, Ken?" Amaya snapped. "We don't have any friends out here. Konohamaru wouldn't hesitate to attack us because he's an arrogant prick, and sensei wasn't lying about the Inuzukas. They'd murder us given half a chance. So would the foreign genin. I'm not going to mourn any other team that dies in this storm, because that's one less team gunning for us, and one less team to face in the finals."
"Amaya!" Kaede said sharply. "You have no place to speak to Ken like that." Amaya and Ken both looked at Kaede in surprise; the Aburame rarely raised her voice or spoke in such a tone. "Nor was it your place to make the decision to destroy the shelter without talking to us about it. We agreed when Tenten-sensei first became our teacher that our squad wouldn't be ruled by fiat as Konohamaru's is. You agreed to that."
"So you think we should have left that shelter standing?" Amaya demanded.
"No, my earlier question was rhetorical," Kaede replied evenly. "I agree with your analysis of our situation and I agree with your goal in destroying the shelter, but your method was foolhardy. If you had discussed your plan with us we could have accomplished your goals more effectively."
"Really? How?"
Kaede began ticking off fingers. "We could have poisoned the remaining food instead of burning it. We could have set traps in and around the cabin. My kikai bugs could have weakened the timber of the cabin enough that it would have collapsed during the storm. All of these things could have been done quickly and with more subtlety than blowing up the shelter with a big fireball. We were almost caught by other teams twice because of the smoke signal you created."
By the time Kaede finished, Ken was giving her the same disturbed look Amaya had gotten minutes earlier.
"Those are all good ideas," Amaya conceded, her temper cooling. "You have lots of good ideas Kaede, so why didn't you suggest any of that when we were raiding the shelter?"
Kaede shrugged. "I kept my thoughts to myself in the interest of team unity. I suspected Ken would have objected to the plan, and judging by the way he looks right now I'd say that was correct."
Ken nodded reluctantly as both girls looked at him. "I try to think of what Lee-sensei and Tenten-sensei would do," he said quietly.
"I understand," Amaya admitted. "Truth is I almost didn't do it. But Ken, Tenten-sensei was an active-duty kunoichi before she became our sensei. She's conducted assassinations. She's helped end sieges, and the usual way to do that is to sneak inside the fort and poison the wells. All of our teachers have had to get their hands dirty, even Lee-sensei. It's part of being a ninja." Amaya sighed. "But Kaede, you're right. I'm sorry I acted without talking to you guys."
"Apology accepted," Kaede said quietly, and Ken nodded jerkily. "Amaya is right too, Ken. Consider this: do you think Lee and Tenten would rather that we fought effectively and lived to see them, or fought honorably and died far from home?"
Ken considered that. "I think Lee-sensei would say that the purpose of our strength is to avoid that duality; to be strong enough to fight honorably and win. That's what I'm working for."
"Fair enough," Kaede admitted. "I only hope you won't think less of us for being sneaky on occasion."
Ken started stammering a denial before he saw Kaede's faint smile and realized that the Aburame girl was teasing him. Amaya chuckled, then got to her feet and picked up her warm, long coat, putting it on and wrapping a scarf around her face. "I'm going to go scout around the entrance. I won't go far." Before she left, she gave Kaede the plaque and map. Then she headed down the tunnel, avoiding the traps they'd set.
From the cave mouth she saw the tall bushes concealing the entrance whipping back and forth in the howling wind. Mindful of the thorns she activated her sharingan and waited for a lull in the wind to dart out between the bushes.
The next gale almost knocked Amaya off of her feet before she gripped the dense, wet snow with chakra in her boot soles. She quickly made her way behind the thick bole of a tree for shelter from the wind, and scanned the forest. They shelter was on a small hill with a decent view of the surrounding forest. From her vantage point, Amaya's sharingan scanned the area around her. Without her clan's dojutsu she would have been almost blind; the clouds blotted out the moon, and only occasional flashes of lightning broke the gloom. But her uncle Sasuke had taught her the trick for operating in darkness with the sharingan; if she focused on it, the afterimage of the illuminated landscape from the lightning flashes remained in her vision even when the dark returned. It didn't allow her to track motion, of course, but it was superb for darting from tree to tree, sheltering from the wind and driving snow as she circled the hill.
Halfway around the hill Amaya spotted a point of orange light just under a kilometer away, coming from a thick stand of oak trees. She studied it long enough to realize that it wasn't a fire caused by a lightning strike; the light was too steady. It had to be another team of genin, trying to keep warm in the storm. They obviously didn't have a supply map, or they'd already have attacked.
Amaya contemplated the idea of getting Kaede and Ken, but dismissed the thought. It was too far a distance for her night blind team mates to cover; but that didn't mean Amaya couldn't scout out who was there and get some intel so they could attack in the morning. Making up her mind, Amaya headed for the distant light, suppressing her chakra as Tenten had taught her and moving noiselessly through the shadows.
When she got close, she started moving only when the wind howled and the sky was dark. It made for slow progress, but she got close without alerting her quarry. Having slowly crawled through some bushes on her belly, Amaya peered into the rough camp. There were three genin huddled around a small fire that flickered and wavered in the cold wind that penetrated even into the dense thicket where they'd taken shelter. The tan leather of their coats, the bandages wrapped around the taller boy and the hitai-ate of the kunoichi identified them as hailing from Sunagakure. They don't have any allies either, Amaya reflected. Only one team of Sand genin had made it into the second round, and they hadn't crossed paths with Team Tenten so far in the exam.
All three were bundled up against the cold enough that their features and gear were hidden, but as she studied them, Amaya's eyes narrowed. When the Sand kunoichi leaned forward to warm her hands, Amaya spotted the outline of two small battle fans on her belt. She had bandages wrapped around her head above her hitai-ate, but Amaya glimpsed brown hair sticking out in places. Probably a wind user, Amaya concluded.
The shorter and stockier of the two boys wore a hooded black suit under his winter coat and white-on-red face paint, and had a bandage-wrapped package as tall as he was sitting next to him, and he seemed as concerned for its wellbeing as his own. Definitely a puppeteer.
The third one was a tall, slender boy who was bandaged like a mummy; his whole head save for his dark eyes and his arms and legs were all wrapped, under a Sand genin outfit and warm over clothes. Amaya couldn't guess his specialty.
Wait a minute! Brown haired kunoichi with battle fans, a puppeteer built like an Akimichi and bandage boy? Couldn't be… Then all doubt was removed when the wind and snow extinguished the small, struggling fire. A moment later light returned, not yellow but red, a head-sized glowing orb hovering over the hand of the tall, bandaged genin and radiating heat. The other two threw damp, snowy wood in the fire pit before their companion tossed his red ball after it. A hissing cloud of steam erupted from the pit, and the wood, suddenly dry, started burning fiercely.
No way! Team Sand Crab's here in the Exams! Amaya realized with shock. Unlike Leaf genin teams, Sand genin were named after a desert animal mascot instead of their jounin sensei, and Team Tenten knew this group of Sand genin; they'd shared a room in the barracks for months in Sunagakure. The kunoichi was a wind specialist named Sira, the puppeteer was a doleful boy named Poe, and their tall leader was Rahl, the son of Sunagakure's most famous kunoichi and heir to its most formidable kekkei genkai. His mother was Pakura, a living legend of the Sand, and he commanded the fearsome Scorch Release, a deadly combination of Fire and Air chakra natures. His usual costume wrapped in bandages was a grim homage to his kekkei genkai, which could mummify enemies instantly.
Amaya reassessed her plans. Even in an ambush and with her team warm and better rested, attacking Rahl's team was a dicey prospect. Their only chance would be to kill or incapacitate Rahl before he knew he was under attack; anything less and they'd all be at his mercy. Amaya had one untested counter to the Scorch Release that might work, or might get her killed.
But thinking about it, Amaya realized that the situation wasn't as bad as she'd first thought. Looking at Rahl, she could see signs of fatigue in his slumped posture. Sunagakure ninja were no strangers to cold, but their desert country didn't have winter storms like this, and they were plainly unprepared for the savagery of the weather. Rahl had to be burning a lot of chakra keeping his team from freezing, but Ken predicted the storm would last for another day at least. By then Rahl would probably be tapped out and his teammates short on sleep; they'd be easy pickings. The three of them might even die in the storm and remove the need to fight at all.
But despite her earlier callousness in burning the northwest shelter, Amaya felt her stomach turn at the prospect of waiting for the Sand genin to die and looting their frozen corpses. Team Tenten and Team Rock Crab had been friends in Sunagakure, had sparred together, and while the Chuunin Exams were adversarial by nature, Amaya was reminded of her initial thought upon seeing what village they were from. Like Team Tenten, Team Sand Crab didn't have any allies in the Exam. Maybe we can change that.
Crawling backward out of the bush she had been hiding under, Amaya circled around to the far side of their camp, hiding behind a tree. Now I just have to get their attention without getting killed. "Hello the camp," she called.
As soon as they heard her all three were on their feet, putting their backs to the fire. Sira's fans came out, Poe's puppet leapt free of its bindings and Rahl had a pair of scorch orbs in hand. "I just want to talk, Rahl. It's Amaya, from Konohagakure." Rahl spotted her first, as she peered out from behind the tree, ready to run like hell if he showed any sign of tossing a ball of death at her.
Rahl didn't throw his orbs at her. Sira and Poe didn't turn, keeping an eye out for Kaede and Ken.
"Amaya, is it? I'm listening," Rahl replied in his odd, flowing accent.
"You guys look to be in a bad spot," she observed.
"Less than you think," Rahl shot back. "The Scorch Release works as well on wet wood as it does on opportunistic Leaf genin. We're doing fine."
Rahl sounded confident enough that he might have fooled her, but he didn't know that Amaya had unlocked her sharingan since their last meeting. Even in the gloom she could see the faint tremors in his hands. He wasn't far from chakra exhaustion.
"Storms in the Land of Lightning don't end quickly, you know," Amaya pointed out from her shelter behind the tree.
It wasn't Rahl who spoke next, but stocky Poe. "You wouldn't be talking to us if you planned to ambush us. What do you want, Amaya?"
"I'd prefer not to have you three freezing to death on my conscience, to be honest," Amaya shot back, and was surprised to realize she meant it. "If you'll agree not to attack my team we'll do the same and you can join us in the shelter we've been staying in until the storm passes. Then we go our separate ways. Is that acceptable to you?"
"You want to lead us into a trap, you mean," Sira shot back tartly.
"Oh we set up plenty of traps, Sira, but not for you. Poe already said it; if we wanted to fight you we could have ambushed you, or just waited until tomorrow when Rahl's got no chakra left to fight with because he's been lighting fires all night."
Rahl let his scorch orbs fade. "All right, we accept your offer." To their credit, Sira and Poe didn't argue, packing up their gear quickly. Like Rahl, they probably realized they had nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Amaya was the one taking the risk that they wouldn't attack her team once they were in the shelter. The only reason she was confident they'd keep their word was that even once he had the chance to rest; Rahl wouldn't be back to 100% for a few days if he was already suffering tremors, and he wasn't reckless enough to attack her team when they were better rested.
Amaya stepped out from behind the tree and lead the Sand genin through the woods to the hill that hid the entrance to the shelter cave. Holding up a hand, Amaya ducked her head in the tunnel entrance. "Amaya, Ken, I'm back with some guests. Found the Sand Crabs out in the snow," she called.
A few moments passed before Ken came into view holding a torch, a guarded expression on his face as he studied the Sand genin. "Hey, guys," he commented, before glancing at Amaya. "How's the weather out there?" he inquired.
"Oh, just peachy," Amaya replied, and Ken relaxed a bit. 'Peachy' was their "all clear" code word. If Amaya had called the weather 'fierce', Kaede would start triggering traps and unleashing her hive while Ken attacked. Instead, he gestured for them to follow before heading back the way he'd come.
Kaede was waiting for them when they got to the shelter cave. She'd built up the fire and gotten out some more food. The Sand genin abandoned any pretense at a defensive posture to crowd around the blaze.
Rahl sat down, and unwound the bandages around his head. Underneath them he had nut-brown skin and features with a foreign cast that matched his odd accent. His forehead was marked with three vertical red dots in the center, not paint but tattoos. When Team Tenten had met him they'd noticed how much he stood out in Sunagakure, where the natives were all pale-skinned. They learned his story once he got to know them and invited them to his home to meet his family.
Eating dinner with the legendary Pakura was heady enough, but Team Tenten had found Rahl's father and the story of his marriage to Pakura equally intriguing. When Pakura had begun to feel the desire to marry and start a family, she had faced a problem; she was determined to marry someone who saw her as a wife and not just a duty, but in Sunagakure most men were afraid of her, and the matches the Sand Council found were all political or unpalatable to her. So Pakura had convinced the Yondaime Kazekage, Gaara's father, to allow her to leave the village for a time to find a husband to being back to Sunagakure. The Kazekage allowed it, not out of sentimentality, but because Pakura was one of the few people in his village he feared.
Pakura had travelled far to the west of the Land of Wind, leaving the Elemental Nations entirely. In a distant land she met Rahl's father, Rikkard, a mercenary and native of that distant land. They had come to love one another, and with few ties to his homeland, Rikkard had agreed to marry Pakura and settle in Sunagakure. Rikkard wore a bushy, trimmed beard, and his skin was a deep, rich brown. He had a tattoo on his forehead like Rahl's, though his was a set of nine dots in a square. Among his people the number of dots signified achievements in life.
"Thought I'd never be warm again," Sira muttered by the fire, rubbing her slender hands together by the flames.
Once Kaede had some soup warming up over the fire, she glanced at Amaya. "I thought we just had a conversation about making decisions without consulting the team," she said, but there was no sting to the statement.
Amaya shrugged unrepentantly. "Do you object?"
Studying the Sand genin, Kaede shook her head. "No, it's fine."
Rahl looked up from where he was sitting by the fire. "Thank you, all of you. You didn't have to take the risk of offering us shelter, and I appreciate that you did."
"We lived together and trained together. Even if we are in the Chuunin Exam, that doesn't mean we have to be enemies," Ken observed, "at least not in this round."
Once the soup was ready the Sand genin ate with vigor, all three offering their thanks again. Once the food was set aside, Poe looked at the Leaf genin thoughtfully. "You're alone out here, aren't you? I'm surprised you didn't team up with the other squads from your village."
Amaya and Kaede exchanged a silent glance before Kaede nodded in assent. "Honestly, the other two teams from our village aren't trustworthy," Amaya admitted, not seeing the harm. The Sand genin weren't going to tell anyone. "One group's lead by an egomaniac who would attack us out of spite, and the other's a homicidal bunch who don't get along with anyone outside their clan. If we see them, we'll probably have to fight them."
Rahl and Poe looked at each other, then Amaya. "Well, you know we're in a similar situation. We're the only Sunagakure team that made it to this round. Two other teams from our village failed the Interrogation Room test."
Amaya nodded. "Would you be interested in sharing maps? I know you don't have the supply one."
Rahl considered it and then nodded to Sira, who produced her map. Kaede unfolded theirs, and the two girls set them side by side, getting out pencils and copying information from each other. One glance told Amaya that Rahl's team had the trail map, which had a number of routes through the forest and mountains traced out, along with topographical information. Sira marked down the shelters long before Kaede was done getting the trail data.
"It probably doesn't matter at this point, but that shelter's gone," Ken pointed out to Sira.
"What happened to it?" the Sand kunoichi asked.
"I burned it once we raided it," Amaya admitted.
Rahl's eyebrows went up. "That was you?" when Amaya nodded, he grinned. "Good idea. There was a big battle in the area of the other shelter this afternoon. We avoided it so we didn't see who won, but we could see and hear it from far away. Lots of water flying through the air and the ground was shaking, so there was at least one team from Mist and Rock."
Amaya considered that. "Good to know." Then she yawned, and by the time it stopped, Poe and Sira were yawning too. "Why don't we turn in, it's late. Split watches?" she asked Rahl, who nodded.
"Poe and Ken first, Amaya and I second, Sira and Kaede third?" Rahl suggested, and Amaya nodded in agreement. Each pair was roughly equal in strength, minimizing chances for mischief. Poe and Ken moved to spots where they could see the entrance and each other, while the rest got their bedrolls ready.
The storm did indeed last another full day, but the shelter had more than enough food and firewood for both teams, so the time passed in relative comfort. They all chafed at the delay, but since the storm was affecting every team in the exam equally, they could live with it. They passed the time catching up on events since they last met and playing games.
During that idle day, Kaede suggested what Amaya had been thinking since she saw Team Sand Crab out in the snow. "We've established that neither of our teams has much hope of making alliances elsewhere," she stated. Rahl, who was playing shogi with her, nodded in agreement. "Why don't we agree to make this truce an alliance with the goal of getting both of our teams into the final round?"
Sira looked up from a book she was reading. "Won't that force us to hunt down at least twice as many enemies?"
"It would, but it's probably worth it," Poe offered. "Your Leaf friends may have teamed up; it's possible the Rock or Mist genin have made pacts, and I'd be shocked if the Cloud genin didn't have an agreement."
"That was my thinking as well," Kaede confirmed.
Rahl was silent for a little while, staring at the shogi board. "Sira's right, it is a lot more work," he observed before making his move, "and we'll be a bigger target. But two teams from different villages fighting together and doing it well are also the last thing anyone will be expecting, and that alone could make it worthwhile." He looked at Amaya. "Are you on board with this?"
Amaya nodded. "It's been on my mind since I found you three. Besides, even if we got our plaques separately we still don't know where the entrance to the testing area is; if we stick together, we only have to get that information once between us." Remembering earlier conversations, Amaya looked to Ken. "You okay with a team up?"
Ken chuckled. "Sure. Poe convinced me last night."
Rahl gave the stocky puppeteer an arch look, and Poe had the grace to look embarrassed.
"If we're teaming up there's something I should show you," Amaya said, and when all three Sand genin were looking at her, she activated her sharingan. She hadn't progressed passed two tomoe per eye since unlocking it, but the trio looked impressed anyways. Rahl whistled quietly. "Congratulations, Amaya," he said sincerely. Then a nasty grin crossed his face. "Sharingan and Scorch Release; the other teams won't know what hit them!"
Author's Note: Look, a chapter! No fighting, just a chance to meet some other genin in the exam. I want to try and briefly introduce the cast of strangers, allies and villains who will be taking part in the final round of the Chuunin Exam so the fights actually mean something instead of just being random genin with cookie cutter abilities duking it out.
Don't worry if you have to look up Pakura on Narutopedia. She's a somewhat obscure character. In canon she died before the series started and is first shown as "oh look at this other neat ninja with a kekkei genkai Kabuto resurrected!" In Tenten's world, however, Orochimaru's peace of tyranny meant that Pakura was never betrayed and killed. Instead, she had a kid (because the Scorch Release is fun).