(A/N) Why are all of the Fairy Tail theme songs so good. Snow Fairy is the best song ever.

Ninja Profile: Gunaji Kokuseki

Ninjutsu: B
Taijutsu: B
Genjutsu: C
Specialties: Stone Bond, Accuracy, Long Range

Description: Gunaji is a Valley genin of average height and build, who wears his sandy-brown hair cut short. His bright blue eyes are always scanning for things he can use to his advantage, and his posture is very rarely relaxed. He almost always wears the Valley Shinobi vest on his chest and headband around his forehead, but stands out from other ninja due to the large container he carries on his back, full of stone he's always looking to improve.

Origin: Gunaji is from the Kokuseki clan, a minor family within the Village Hidden in the Valleys (their status is comparable to the Nara clan in terms of notoriety and respect). From a young age, he was always looking to make his clan's modest Stone Bond Jutsu into something as formidable as the legendary Sharingan of the leaf or Kekkeitota of the Stone. He became a ninja in order to hone his mastery of it and improve upon it further and further, and hopes to make the Kokuseki clan's name into stuff of legend.

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"Here you go!" Fukagaki came over with a few platters of food, giving each member of team eight what they'd ordered. Kame and Deihaka had ordered sashimi, Haku had asked for ramen, and Miriki had gotten a salad. The gathered ninja all took a second to enjoy the sight and smell of their food before digging into it. Kame froze briefly when he saw Haku beside him devouring her ramen at lightning speed, which sent a pang of sadness through him. She must be subconsciously afraid of getting kicked out…

"Hey, Fukagaki-san! Can I get another one?" Or maybe she's just hungry. The old shopowner smiled craftily and Deihaka paled slightly. But shouldn't he be able to afford- wait, are jonin paid more than lower-ranking ninja? Kame wondered if Deihaka got paid extra for taking on a squad of genin. Ninja in the Hidden Sand were paid amounts calculated off of the difficulty of mission completed. As a result, higher ranks tended to get paid more, because their missions were A-B rank as opposed to genins' C-D rank missions. Bounties were different, a single-sum amount based upon the rank of missing-ninja captured that several lands would pool in for.

Kame thought he knew why Deihaka was so annoyed by his teaching job. "Deihaka-sensei, since you took us on as your pupils, are you getting paid for D-ranks like a rank genin?"

Deihaka looked at him crabbily. "No, but I'm sure as hell not getting paid as much as I used to. Teaching a genin squad is treated as an extended B-Rank mission, so I'm getting paid for that- as opposed to my normal A-Rank or higher. So yeah, I'm having to cut back on the-" he coughed a little bit and reoriented himself. "I mean, I love teaching! I can't get drunk, I can't sleep in, I have to make less money, I'm always worried that I'm gonna teach you the wrong thing, but the..." He visibly forced a smile. "'Joy of Teaching' makes up for it all!" He broke down laughing hysterically.

Then there was an awkward silence, until Fukagaki returned with the second bowl she'd ordered as if he'd known that she'd order it ahead of time. Deihaka took the opportunity to clear his throat and then speak again, on a saner note this time. "Well, team eight, all of you are gathered here, so I have a question. Are you confident in your abilities?"

Kame took a moment to think about that one. "Well, I… It depends on what metric-"

"Yes!" Miriki talked right over him. "I'm totally confident in my abilities. I've earned an A-plus on every mission I've been on-" He's only been on one mission. "I finally got my Hatogan stage one unlocked, and I know two different jutsu now!"

Deihaka nodded and turned to Haku. She started a little bit, as if she was confused that he meant her, before responding. "I'm… I think I can probably take on another mission, if that's what you mean. My taijutsu is improving and Shira-sensei said he would think of some new and better ways for me to use my lightning stance… and also teach me something called the Seven Heavens?"

Kame decided to contribute his opinion before Deihaka would ask. "I'm confident that I can do better than before. My puppet jutsu lessons are coming along and my Gale Force Jutsu is down to three seconds of charge-up time."

Deihaka nodded, briefly seeming to think something over, and then turned back to them again. "You all have only been on one mission, but it was at least B-rank and you all held your own. I think… I think you all may be ready."

"For what?" Kame said, thinking get to the point already, Deihaka-sensei.

"For the chunin exams." What!? Kame was shocked. We went up against three chunin and I almost died… well, I guess I did take one of them out… but- "Don't get me wrong, I don't expect any of you to pass, but I'm making an Executive Teacher Decision that the chunin exams will maybe probably be a good learning experience…" Kame would have been a lot less nervous if his sensei had said that with a little more confidence and without the words Executive Teacher Decision. He's a lot more inexperienced than he lets on.

Haku's ramen arrived and she started to dig into it, but with an air of desperation Deihaka resumed his speaking. "But anyway, I spoke to Senshiko and she's entering her genin, so I guess it can't hurt for me to do it, too… Besides, the exams might be dangerous, but usually the deaths are kept to a minimum… plus it's a good chance for you all to scope out the top competition from your generation…"

Miriki nodded sagely. "Yes, this seems like a great opportunity to scope out the… competition… I'm sure that there are many gir- I mean, kunoichi that will be a great challenge." Oh My God, is my chance to participate in the chunin exams going to end up being Miriki's wingman while he hits on our entire generation of genin!? Kame watched his dreams of intense competition, difficult challenges, and eventual victory through ingenuity and wit fall apart, replaced by the sight of Miriki being swarmed by girls.

Haku tentatively raised a hand before she spoke. "I… I would like to have another couple of days to train with Shira-sensei… if that's all right?"

Deihaka nodded. "Yeah, it is. You can actually have a couple of weeks, in fact. The chunin exams aren't for another month, and we will take on a few missions before they start, but I just wanted to get a quick snapshot of all of your skills." He turned to Kame. "I also want you to start coming to our morning lessons again if you really have fully learned the Gale Force Jutsu. I have one more that I want to teach you, and you can keep practicing the Gale Force Jutsu until you've mastered it. That goes for you too, Haku, except with you I want to practice… something else."

Haku nodded as the last traces of her second bowl disappeared into her mouth, then started to turn around towards Fukagaki. Before she could order another bowl, Deihaka was waving the man over and pulling out his wallet.

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"This is pretty boring," Miriki complained to the rest of the team. They were walking alongside a merchant's cart, which caused them to move a lot slower than their normal traveling. A simple escort mission to a nearby town was probably going to cost them the entire day.

Deihaka tried to improve their spirits. "Look, not all ninja work is fighting epic battles and saving the day, okay? We all have to start somewhere."

Miriki sighed dramatically. "But this job could probably be taken by non-ninja. Why are we- and more importantly, an A-class jonin like you- wasting time on this crap?"

Deihaka opened and closed his mouth without any sound a few times, finally conceding the point. "I… you know, I don't want to walk miles on end next to a wagon either. I'm not going to defend the system, I'm just here to make sure that you follow it."

Kame, on the other hand, was finding a lot of happiness in the peace of mind that came with this mission. His mind was free to brainstorm as much as it wanted while his feet went on autopilot, and he had a few theories that he was definitely going to to test out when he got home. The walk also proved a chance for him to strengthen his puppet movement, as floating beside him was a large chunk of spare wood that Kankuro had slapped a seal on and given him. By now, his chakra control and reserves were strong enough that holding the wood in place wasn't taxing him to any dangerous lengths.

It had been two weeks since they'd decided on going into the chunin exams, and Kame was making sure to make the most out of every day. When he wasn't working with Kankuro or Deihaka, he was practicing puppetry, ninjutsu, or both. If I improve enough, maybe Master will even let me take Crow to the chunin exams! It was a pretty great thought.

Deihaka was helping him whittle down the Gale Force Jutsu charging time, but was also teaching him another technique: the Wind Barrier Jutsu. It was surprising to Kame the difference between knowing and mastering a Jutsu; he'd managed to cast the Wind Barrier Jutsu on his first attempt but to sustain and control it was another matter entirely. While he'd been training, Miriki and Haku were no less busy. Miriki was practicing Water style, which was a pretty poor tactical move considering that the odds of Sand shinobi being in a battleground with a ready supply of the necessary water were pretty low. Haku, on the other hand, wasn't learning any jutsu at all. Instead, she spent her practice time with Deihaka training her dodging instincts and learning how to evade ninjutsu attacks. Deihaka's highly malleable iron sand was excellent for mimicking various elemental attacks, and she was improving by the day.

During those two weeks, they'd also been on several missions. There were none at the level of their first one, and quite a few that were frankly insulting. Escorts were the most common, but there was also a scattering of other jobs, many of which subverted the Kazekage's screening process to ensure that genin weren't given nanny chores as jobs. Often they'd be disguised or phrased interestingly, like one old woman who'd asked for a squad of genin to watch a prisoner. When they arrived, they found that the prisoner in question was her grandchild, and they they'd been tricked into being babysitters for an afternoon. Genin work was amazingly easy.

Of the four times they'd been called to provide armed escorts, none of their subjects had been attacked. That might just be because the attacks were called off when they saw the ninja, Kame theorized. Then he looked around and scratched off that theory. Miriki looks stupid, me and Deihaka probably just look bored, and Haku doesn't have any visible weapons or ninja tools. Nobody's calling off an attack because of us… then again, these merchants have been pretty scared, so maybe we do look tough! Kame puffed out his chest a little bit, imagining bandits running off at the mere sight of him.

At that moment, in a feat of irony that couldn't possibly just be coincidental, a large group of angry men dressed in black came charging out of the treeline. A couple of arrows whizzed by, but any that would have hit the cart or the people around it were stopped by Deihaka's iron sand. The merchant yelped in fear and ducked inside his cart, yelling out to the ninja, "This is what I paid you for! Get them!"

Kame wondered why they'd failed to notice the bandits, before realizing that the enemies were actually hundreds of feet away and not closing the distance very fast. Wow, these guys are dumb, he thought. Do they think that they'll manage to win against us from a distance? He rapidly folded together a straight-flying paper airplane, took aim… and then dropped his arm. Damn, they're out of range. While the paper airplanes were great as a way to get a huge amount of destructive power with a decent amount of control for no chakra cost whatsoever, they did have very limited range.

Well then, I guess I'll just have to close the gap. Kame started to rush forward, performing the handsigns he'd been learning before and channeling his chakra in a swirling pattern around him. Envisioning the pure wind cutting through all before it, his chakra gusted into the physical world as a twisting column of air surrounding him. "Wind Barrier Jutsu!"

He continued his charge, and as the bandits turned to face him, their arrows were knocked aside by the tornado. "What the hell- these shinobi are somethin' else!" he heard one of them mutter, which brought a little grin of pride to his face. Once he was within thirty meters of the attackers, he saw them drop the bows and draw weapons for close-quarters. That left him open to use his weaponry, so he dismissed his Wind Barrier (not a moment too soon; that thing drained a lot of chakra). Seeing the angry bandits closing on him fast, he whipped out two paperbombs and tossed them to the earth in front of him, then readied and threw two more paper airplanes.

For once, the enemy didn't seem to realize what the airplanes did and took them to be ordinary projectile attacks. Well, I guess that's that, thought Kame as he made the snake seal and detonated the planes right in the middle of the enemy force. Cries of anguish came from the resulting smoke cloud, but Kame didn't let down his guard. Those bombs were made with less chakra than normal, designed to shock and injure rather than kill.

He wanted to disable as many of the bandits as possible without killing them. They hadn't technically harmed him, so he wasn't sure that it was morally right to execute them. Besides, if I can spare them and I don't, then I killed someone who was weaker than me just because I wanted to, Kame thought. And I know I don't want to be that kind of person.

His overconfidence cost him again, though, when three of them came charging out from within the smoke without a mark on them. How!? Kame had to dart backwards and blow his preliminary defenses, the two paperbombs he'd laid on the ground earlier taking out all three of them. Slightly shaken, he now watched the smoke closely, and as it began to clear out, he saw the walls of earth that had sprung into being and protected the bandits. Most of them had escaped the blasts completely, although an unlucky few who'd been just outside the wall's protection had been downed.

Kame took a quick count of the thieves. There were three on the ground before him, three that had been taken out in the initial blast, and an additional seven left standing. One of the seven, a burly man, was dressed in browns rather than the blacks of the others and had their hands in a sign. When they released it, the walls crumbled away to dust. Did they hire a shinobi? That must be why the Hidden Sand has been getting so many escort requests lately…

The man shouted, "Crushing Boulder Jutsu!" Kame, at the last minute, noticed the shadow of something above him. A quick glance skyward revealed that the man had summoned a large chunk of stone a few feet above him, forcing him to find a way to escape. Alright then, let's do it. He dropped one of his Windbombs behind him with one hand, and then reached out to the wooden slab still attached to him via chakra thread. Substitution! He swapped places with the wood, which was promptly crushed by the boulder, sending a brief shudder through him when he imagined himself getting caught there. Now ten feet away from where he'd stood, he smirked and made the snake seal.

The Windbomb he'd dropped imploded, but since it was pinned between a literal rock and a hard place all of the force was shunted into the easier to move of the two. The boulder was launched back towards its summoner, who growled in anger and made another sign, dismissing the stone into harmless sand. As he was pelted with the dust fragments, he made the mistake of covering his eyes and turning away a little. That was all Haku needed.

Team Eight's kunoichi swept through the bandits before they could even react, only stopping to become fully visible for the few moments where her fist was swinging forward into the jutsu user's stomach. The blow sank deep into his body and then launched him backwards with an audible snapping noise, sending him flyinb back a good twenty feet before he rolled to a stop. Well, that one's going to leave a mark, thought Kame. I think that this fight's over.

The remaining six bandits finally seemed to realize what was going on, turning around far too slowly and seeing their ace in the hole flattened. Haku took a threatening step towards them and they immediately folded faster than Kame's paperbombs, falling to the ground in fetal positions and begging for their lives.

Now that the threat was gone, Deihaka stepped away from guarding the cart and walked up to the bandits on the ground. He grabbed the closest one by the hair and lifted them up, all traces of his normal, awkward self gone. "Who else is there? How many people are in your little group?" Even his voice was harsher now. Is this his personality in battle? I didn't really get to talk with him last time… Kame wondered if all the eccentric jonin he'd heard or read about had a serious side.

The bandit, visibly quivering, said, "N- N- Nobody, it's j- just us, I swear!"

Deihaka grunted, dropping the man and turning around to face his team. "Okay, gather what restraints you can and tie them up, we're gonna take them in." Kame nodded and reached into his pack. Although the recommended ninja tools consisted only of a bare minimum of flash paper, kunai, and shuriken, he was never one to hit the bare minimum. After digging through his spare clothing, extra rations, medical kit, spare flash paper, and journal, he finally located the length of rope and lifted it out triumphantly.

He handed it to Deihaka, who quickly cut it into shorter pieces and bound all twelve of the captured bandits. For the larger jutsu user, he visibly put two fingers over the man's throat and then shook his head, stepping back. Haku was beside him in an instant, looking at him worriedly. "Deihaka-sensei? What's wrong, why aren't you binding that one?" Her tone of voice reminded Kame of when his younger self would ask his parents why they were leaving, knowing full well the reason but wanting to ignore it. I guess if I were the one... if I'd just killed my first person, I don't know how I'd react.

Deihaka looked away from her sadly. "He's… he'd dead, Haku."

She didn't seem to register the words for a few seconds, but after they sank in she looked down at the body, blinking rapidly and slowing her breathing. Kame looked away, not knowing what to do or say. In the end, it was Miriki who walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Haku, that's not you." What the hell is he talking about? Kame noticed his eyes had changed; the pupils had been replaced with a three-pronged star that stretched across his bright blue irises.

Whatever he said seemed to work, because Haku visibly calmed down a little bit and stepped back from the corpse. She walked back towards the cart, and Miriki followed her. Are we just going to leave the body here? Kame didn't really understand who cleaned up after battles, especially little skirmishes like this one. 'Clean up'? What am I talking about, this is a corpse of another human, I'm not going to leave it to rot in the sun. Deihaka walked to the cart with the others, but Kame stayed put. "Guys, I'm going to bury this… umm… I'll catch up, okay?"

Deihaka shrugged. "Make sure that you grab his headband first, though. He might be a missing-ninja, so if Haku want to... claim the... bounty..." He trailed off as he read the situation. I think I'll take the headband anyway, Kame thought. Even if Haku doesn't want it, it'll do some good for families of this guy's victims if they can get some peace of mind. Then he chuckled a little bit. Plus, money is money.

As the other walked off, Miriki didn't even turn around, but Kame saw Haku glance at him with gratitude in her eyes. He turned back the task he'd assigned himself and winced. The man was even bigger up close- luckily, he had a plan for this. He grabbed a kunai and started to dig, making it about three feet deep until he figured it would be enough. Reaching into his pack, he removed three normal-strength bombs and dropped them in, then backed away a good distance and detonated them. A huge plume of earth and dirt shot into the sky, raining down all around the blast point. When he stepped forward to further inspect his handiwork, he saw that a five-foot-wide, four-foot-deep hole had been opened.

The rest of it went by quickly. After grabbing the scratched headband inside the man's pocket, he rolled the body over into the hole as best as he could, then kicked all of the dirt surrounding the grave back into it. While the job wasn't perfect and there was still a depression in the earth, it was as good as it was going to get. Rest in peace, Kame thought. Wait, am I supposed to say that? Should I be mourning him? He hurried off to catch up to the team before he could get any more morally confused.

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"Okay, now stab with the right arm." Kame twitched the correct finger and Crow's arm swung forward as the blade emerged, stabbing into the stomach of the training dummy. "Good, now left." Another finger, another swing. "Poisoned Needle." Kame thought for a split second before sending a flutter of chakra to Crow's head, opening the mouth and releasing a needle that whizzed forward and plunged into the neck of the dummy. "Okay, now roll backwards while stabbing with both arms." What? Kame did his best to roll backwards while maintaining the chakra threads and ordering Crow to attack, but it proved to be too much. While upside-down during the roll he moved the arms the wrong way and Crow simply swiped behind itself.

To add insult to injury, focusing too much on the puppet caused Kame to ungracefully flop out onto his back instead of rolling. Kankuro raised an eyebrow at the display of awkwardness, and Kame hurriedly got up and reattached himself to Crow. Before he could try again, though, his master stopped him.

"Kame, it's late, and you have to depart for the chunin exams tomorrow. Go home, eat, sleep. Another hour of practice won't make any real difference." I can't believe it. Tomorrow, we leave for the… wait, in that case-

He glanced at Crow before he could stop himself. Kankuro clearly noticed it, but just stood there, arms crossed, waiting. Kame cleared his throat a little bit, gathering up the nerve to make his request: "Master, can I take- I mean, may I please take Crow to the chunin exams?" He looked down at Kankuro's feet, waiting for a response, but flicked his gaze upwards curiously at the sound of laughter.

Kankuro was laughing at him, and laughing hard. Kame could feel his face blushing red as his master wheezed out a few words in between laughs. "You… take Crow… to the…" he dissolved back into laughter. Kame could only stand there and wait for what seemed like forever, until the jonin wiped a few tears from his eyes and seemed to recover enough to make a coherent sentence. "No, you can't take Crow to the chunin exams…"

Sensing another fit of laughter, Kame interjected in his own defense. "Why not? It's not like you'll be using it!"

Kankuro snorted. "And with your level of proficiency, neither will you!" Another round of laughing, and Kame gritted his teeth in frustration. I'm not that bad… I mean, I couldn't handle rolling while double attacking, but when am I ever going to do that in a… He remembered the fight a few days ago, when he'd had to roll backwards and drop a paperbomb at the same time.

"Fine." Kame shook his head, trying not to feel bitter.

"Look, Kame," Kankuro said, "It's not an insult to you or your skills. I just honestly feel that, right now, in a real fight, Crow would decrease your chances of winning. You're just not at the level required to make the chakra and attention costs worth it." I know that, thought Kame. "But… I talked with your squad leader about you entering the chunin exams, and his explanation of it being a chance for you to practice did change my mind slightly. When I was a genin, the chunin exams were cutthroat, but I understand things have… loosened up a little bit since then."

Kame nodded along, unsure where his master was going with this. Kankuro's eyes briefly drifted off in remembrance of something, but then snapped back to the subject at hand. "So… oh, yeah. If you are to practice against other ninja, I want you to see what the basics of puppet jutsu feel like, at least. That's why I put together a new puppet for the task."

Kankuro turned around and picked up a moderately-sized object from the workbench behind him. When it was brought into the light, Kame could see it more clearly: It was small, maybe one foot from end to end, and had a curving body that ended with a larger head carved to look like an insect's, with pincers and a hole where the mouth was. Two wings extended from the back, two pairs bent wooden legs ending in metal blades were embedded in the front, and its tail ended in a larger metal blade. "This is Wasp," Kankuro said proudly.

He went on to explain all of Wasp's details and hidden weapons. A mechanism within the body fed needles to a launcher in the mouth. The legs could be fired off as weapons but not controlled separately, as they were too small to accommodate the necessary chakra receptors. The wings would act as stabilizers to keep it from accidentally flipping or getting flung away.

Kame swallowed as he looked at the thing. It's not what I imagined, but… he thought about it for a few seconds before letting himself smile widely. "Thanks, master!" He accepted the Wasp and broke it down into its component parts to help with moving it, before leaving for his home. I can make this work…

When he woke up the next morning, neither packing his things nor a quick breakfast helped settle his riled nerves. He stuffed a few new ninja tools into his new pack, all bought with the ransom money that Haku hadn't wanted. The man she'd killed was called Korisa the Boulder, a D-Rank missing ninja who'd never passed the chunin exams and had left the Hidden Stone Village after his fourth failure. He'd popped up around the lands, working as a mercenary-for-hire, and had killed a few people in the process. Haku had brightened up a little bit at that, perhaps alleviating some of the moral weight from her shoulders.

After one last check to make sure he had everything, including the component parts of Wasp, he walked downstairs to see his parents there. "Come here, son!" His father opened his arms for a hug, which Kame gave him, then his mother joined in. After a few moments, his dad pushed him back to smile and meet his gaze. "I'm so proud of you, heading off to the chunin exams only months after becoming a genin!"

Kame futilely tried to keep the blood from rushing to his cheeks. "Thanks, dad." In that moment, he briefly forgot the butterflies in his stomach, but after leaving his house they returned in force. The chunin exams... there's a reason that people treat chunin and genin so differently. Sure, the mortality rate has gone down with the years, but young ninja have gotten significantly stronger. With the ninja wars gone, people can afford to spend more time teaching children the basics and letting them forge their own style, rather than prepare them for combat before they're even fifteen. The villages have shared far more information, which means that education everywhere has improved. That means that my chunin exams will... a chill ran down his spine. I might have a more difficult time of it than Naruto, Sasuke, and Gaara did.

His anxiety ran more and more rampant, eating away at the false confidence that had been there the previous night at Kankuro's workshop. For once, he walked to the team meeting place rather than running. Upon his arrival, Deihaka, Miriki, and Haku were all already there, having shown up early. When they saw him, their shouted greetings were the things that finally got rid of his nervousness.