A/N: Hello all and welcome to the start of the second exam! This one's not changed as dramatically as the first, but there will still be a whole new series of challenges for Naruto and company to go through as they try to survive the infamous Forest of Death. Team Twelve is about to get a decent gauge on where they actually stand in the ninja world...


Team Rin

Chapter 12: The Hand We're Dealt


When their new proctor led them to the field outside the overbearing walls of training ground forty-four, Natsuko's stomach twisted into a knot of anxiety. Konoha sported dozens and dozens of training grounds for the use of its shinobi, and every one of them after the thirtieth was made to reflect a unique environment so Konoha's forces could be prepared for countless numbers of scenarios.

Forty-four distinguished itself as one of the few training areas that was forbidden for use without the express consent of the Hokage. Her parents had come back from a "war game" some years back in the worst condition Natsuko had ever seen them at that point in her life. Whenever she and her brother asked what happened, they would only ever say that the training ground had earned its nickname.

"The Forest of Death!" Miturashi Anko stood on the top of her snake summon's head with her fists on her hips and a chilling grin on her lips. "For the next five days, this place will be both your home and your hell."

"Shit," Ayano cursed under her breath as urgent whispering broke out around them at the jōnin's proclamation. Natsuko guessed they all had the same realization she just had.

None of them were prepared for an extended mission.

She thought Anko had to be using a genjutsu to make her smile look that intimidating as she overlooked her flock of panicking genin.

"She's really creepy," Naruto muttered, narrowing his eyes on their proctor. Natsuko couldn't disagree.

"But being lucky enough to survive to the end of day five won't be enough. You will need to find a secret location within the forest and use these to gain access!"

The purple-haired woman pulled five cards from her trench coat's pocket and held them out like a poker hand. There was a kanji character on each that Natsuko could not make out from her spot so far away in the crowd, but the five cards were each a unique color. Blue, red, white, yellow, and brown.

"There are five basic natures of elemental chakra," Anko explained and pointed off to each card in turn. "Water, fire, wind, lightning, and earth. When different elements are combined, they become more powerful than any alone." She lined the cards up into a single pile. "Once one of each of these elemental cards is combined, they will reveal the location of the finish line.

"Every single one of you will be given a card and your team's starting position," she continued and waved toward a half dozen shinobi sitting at a table set far off to the left. "Once you sign your waiver dismissing Konoha from all responsibility when you inevitably get injured or die."

A sober silence overtook the crowd of genin and Natsuko had to keep herself from fidgeting in nervous anticipation.

"The test begins in one hour, and anyone who's not ready to begin will automatically fail! So I suggest you get your waivers signed and get your asses to your starting points as soon as possible."

Anko flashed them another grin, clapped her hands, and disappeared in a puff of smoke along with her summon. A beat of silence passed as everyone seemed frozen in place, but a mad dash for the shinobi with the waivers began as soon as one of the genin from Kusagakure made the first move.

Ayano latched onto both Natsuko's and Naruto's shoulders before either could join the throng of people.

"What gives, Ayano?"

"What are you doing?" Natsuko demanded with a worry driven impatience. "That line's going to take forever and we need to have enough time—"

Ayano cut her off. "I know, Natsuko, but I have a plan." The redhead grinned the way she did whenever she thought of something she thought was clever and Natsuko let herself relax despite the rush of their opponents running past them.

"Naruto, make a bunch of shadow clones."

"Why?" He asked with a quizzical look over his shoulder to their competitors now all in queue.

"Send them one to gather supplies for each of us, and the rest to the library and the mission building to see what you can find on the Forest of Death. Bring it all."

A grin split Naruto's face and a half dozen clones popped into existence behind him, racing off back into the village to give Team Twelve a perfectly fair advantage.

"You're brilliant, Ayano."

The redhead flashed her a grin. "I know, come on." She dragged them both into line, and Natsuko did her best to ignore the looks of varying hostility the other genin were sending their way.

Some of the other teams sent a member to sprint out of the field as well, and Natsuko wondered what their chances were in gathering a decent amount of supplies and still being back in time to sign in.

It took up most of the hour for them to reach the front of the line, where a beleaguered chūnin with her messy hair pulled back in a loose tail and had fingerprints smudged over her glasses greeted them with mild annoyance.

"Team Rin?" She asked, checking their shinobi identifications and checking off something on a massive scroll she had. "You will be starting from gate twenty-nine." She did not explain where the gate was. "And here are your cards. Please do not open them before the exam begins or you will fail." She slid three black envelopes over the table toward them and turned her attention to the next team, already repeating the same instructions.

"Attitudes like that piss me off…" Naruto grumbled, holding his envelope up toward the sun and squinting. The light did not filter through.

"She did have to go through hundreds of us," Ayano said, craning her neck in the direction of a sign hanging over the only gate Natsuko could see. A bold "1" was carved into it.

"Three guesses which way counts up?"

They went clockwise at a good pace, and Naruto made and dismissed another clone to make sure the rest would know where to find them. By the time they reached gate twenty-nine and Naruto's clones caught up to them, they had only five minutes to spare.

Natsuko shrugged on her backpack, finding it weighed exactly as much as it typically did when she packed it herself. She blinked in surprise and noticed a note pinned to the strap over her left shoulder.

Good luck, kid.

Her brother's handwriting lifted Natsuko's spirit in a flash, filling her with a boosted confidence.

"Did you pack the world?" Ayano complained, frowning as she hunched beneath an overstuffed bag that was wider around than the girl who wore it.

Naruto scratched his chin as his clones dispersed.

"Your mom, er, helped me pack." He said, sheepish.

"Of course she did," Ayano said with a sigh, shaking her head. "Well, what'd you get for recon?"

Naruto dug into his backpack and pulled out a scroll that stood as tall as Natsuko's knees. He unfurled it to reveal a topographical map of a forest ringed by a wall. Natsuko squinted and found gate twenty-nine at the westernmost gate on the map.

Then Anko's amplified force shouted "Begin!" and the gate swung open fully before starting to close on their own.

The three genin exchanged glances and raced into the second exam.


"Two fires and a lightning," Ayano said and chewed on her bottom lip and flipping the red card she held between her fingers. She had not considered the possibility that there would be repeat cards within a team. It meant they had more types of cards to find, but they also had a small amount of leeway…

"So what's the play?" Natsuko asked. "There's so much life here that I can hardly focus my sensing."

Damn. Ayano tried to not let her disappointment show. She had been counting on Natsuko's abilities to help give them an edge. She bit her bottom lip in thought.

"Most of the other teams weren't able to get supplies, right?" She said at length, thinking out loud. "Where's the nearest river or stream between here and another gate, Naruto?"

The blond unfurled the map once, flattening it against the curve if a tree trunk.

"Looks like there's one a half kilometer southeast, and another northeast. Gates twenty-eight and thirty." Naruto looked in either direction, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"I think I might be able to sense people if they get closer," Natsuko said, giving Ayano no hint on which direction would be best for them to choose.

She took a steadying breath and fell back on the tried and true method of guessing.

"Let's head south then."

They raced through the ridiculously-sized trees at breakneck speed to beat any of their opponents to the watering hole. Rumblings, growls, and squawks echoed through the forest, sounding as if the animals they came from matched the flora in being thoroughly oversized. Ayano kept a sharp eye for any would be predator as much as she looked for their opponents.

Shinobi training or not, she had no desire to fight a humongous tiger, bear, or spider.

The 'stream' marked on the map proved to be a five meter wide river chugging along at a lazy pace, sourced from a mouth of a cave that spelled danger to anyone stupid enough to have the urge for spelunking. It ran south, winding through the woods and out of sight.

"Alright," Ayano said. "Naruto, did you pack all of my flashbang seals?"

Her teammate nodded, grinning.

"Well, let's set up a trap," Natsuko said, her brows furrowed and her eyes closed. "Either a team of ninjas will be here in a few minutes, or a group of animals with a lot of chakra…"

Ayano let the relief she had picked the right plan relax her for only a moment before focusing. "Get 'em in the net."

The three genin raced in different directions, Naruto making clones to send downriver and both Natsuko and Ayano trailing ninja wire between the trunks of four trees, making a semi-circle wall of the deadly cable until Ayano was certain it could not be escaped without injury.

They doubled down on the trap by lacing it with Ayano's flashbangs and Natsuko flooding the ground with earth-chakra in an improved version of her Nebari no Numa jutsu.

"They're almost to Naruto."

Ayano nodded to her teammate. "Let's get in position then."

They took to the trees and embraced one of Rin-sensei's most important lessons: patience.

Ayano's heart raced as she strained her ears for any sign of combat. The white noise of the forest persisted for long, long seconds before Naruto shouted a battle cry dozens of times over and was met with the surprised shouts of their would-be prey. Ayano saw the trees bending at unnatural angles before she heard the howling wind as Naruto's clones combined their Daitoppa technique into a maelstrom.

Three shinobi tumbled through the trees onto the river, put off by the attack. The barrage of Naruto's clones did not let up, appearing on all sides of the enemy team save for the path leading to the trap. Ayano guessed the genin had to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers as they retreated rather than standing their ground, only sending kunai and senbon toward their attackers.

They managed to dispel several clones, but Naruto proved fantastic at corralling their enemies where they needed to go.

"What the hell?"

Ayano held back a smirk as the first genin sank into the mud to mid-calf, almost toppling over as his momentum came to an abrupt stop. His teammates heeded his misfortune and stopped short, but Naruto caught them with a half dozen clones and twice as many kunai, forcing them to opt for the mud over multiple stab wounds.

"You have two options!" Ayano shouted down to their prey. Three disgruntled genin jerked their attention away from the gaggle of grinning Naruto's up toward Ayano, and she found each wore the hatai-ite of Takigakure.

She wondered if Fū had come to the exam as well, but put it out of mind for now.

"Either you can give up your cards, or I can blow you to hell." She gestured toward the flashbang seals and felt a pang of nostalgia for Rin-sensei's bell test. Had that only been a few months ago?

Three indecisive faces glanced at each other, debating without speaking.

"They're using chakra to break free of the mud," Natsuko said, tone sounding forced in its boredom.

"Then let's make this quick!" Ayano put on her best smirk before continuing, "five, four, three…"

"Doton: Ishi no Kimera!"

Ayano cursed as two of the genin slammed their hands to the ground at the same time, voices crying in unison. The earth moved at their command, a two-headed, winged beast three times the size of its genin creators rising from the same mud that kept the team trapped.

Someone's going to be tricked by the flashbangs, someday, Ayano lamented.

"Plan B!" Naruto yelled, sending his clones into the mud pit to take on their opponents' earthen construct.

Ayano rolled her eyes and called up her chakra into a great fireball aimed square at the back of the beast, paying no heed to the clones in her attack's path. The fire bit into the muddy flesh, baking it into clay until it crackled and chipped away, but the chimera did not stop moving forward. It bit and swung wide claws against the swarm of orange attackers.

"It's getting deeper!" the genin not controlling the earth technique cried out as he sank further into the mud. Ayano spotted Natsuko just beyond the web of ninja wire hands dug into the ground up to her elbows, sweat pouring down her reddened face.

"Eyes!" Ayano shouted a split second before sending a pulse of chakra to the tags encircling the trap, blinding the area with a thunderous boom and a light brighter than the sun. Panicked cursing and screaming from the trapped genin met the commotion and Ayano dropped from the trees, using nothing but her memory to aim a blow with a back of her kunai.

Metal cracked against flesh and bone, cutting off the cries of the center genin. She did not pause to consider the boy's fate before pouring chakra into her feet to scuttle over the mud toward his teammates, intending to knock them out but finding them already unconscious beneath each of her teammates.

It took too many moments for Ayano's heartbeat to calm down and her brain to kick into gear enough to realize they had won the fight.

"Yatta!" Naruto pumped a fist into the air in unison with his few remaining clones.

"That was… easier than expected," Natsuko said.

"They weren't that strong." Naruto kicked at the remnants of the mud chimera, dusting the baked clay with ease. "But that was an awesome jutsu!"

"But it took two of them to do it," Ayano said, glancing around them. "That light might have gotten someone's attention. We should move."

"I don't sense anyone coming."

"Still, just in case." Ayano leapt back up to the trees, gathering up the ninja wire and lamenting the loss of her tags. "Find their cards!"

They were on the move within a minute - proud owners of a new water elemental card, a second lightning, and a third fire - and left their opponents unconscious in the mud.

Ayano wondered if any of the cards were more common than others and hoped against it. Their fire cards would be worth much less leverage if that were the case.

"Where should we head next?" Naruto asked from her left. Natsuko looked to her in askance from her right and Ayano wondered when it was decided that she would be team leader and who was responsible for that decision.

The weight of responsibility settled in her chest, hugging her thundering heart.

"Let's just keep moving. Natsuko, try to find someone with your senses. Naruto, send out clones to scout." She hid her nerves as best she could as her teammates did as she asked.

Ayano hoped their apparent faith was not misplaced.


Naruto rested in the crux between branch and tree, staring up into the canopy in the hope to catch a glimpse of open sky while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. After the rush of finding their first opponents within the first hour of the second exam, Team Twelve spent hour after hour running through the forest and coming against nothing more dangerous than a grove of giant butterflies.

Which had been more annoying than anything else.

He shook his head, sending pollen flying into the night air from his hair.

Naruto grumbled, waving the offending dust away before Ayano could rip into him for setting off her allergies again.

His teammate's rested further down the wide branch, content to let him take last watch. They looked peaceful in their sleep and Naruto wondered if they would be less on edge in the mor—

Naruto's train of thought cut off as Natsuko sat bolt upright from a dead sleep, eyes wide and fearful. She turned her attention to him and her fear morphed into confusion as she closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked in a whisper, shuffling down the branch to sit next to his teammate.

"I thought I sensed," she started to say, but trailed off, shaking her head. "It was like Taki, but somehow worse. I swear I felt it before, but—"

She snapped her head around, looking off into the distance, worry etching into her features.

"Something's going on over there. Bad," she said with absolute certainty. Naruto made up his mind in an instant.

"Then we should go check it out!"

Natsuko looked at him like he'd grown an extra three heads and Ayano stirred from her sleep, blinking owlishly at the pair of them.

"What's up?" Ayano managed to roll onto her feet, look more alert by the second.

"Someone's in trouble," Naruto said, starting to stretch. "We're going to help."

"Oh?"

"Whatever's going on is bad." Natsuko hugged herself. "It's like with Taki, but way worse," she repeated.

Ayano frowned and Naruto got ready to argue his case, but the redhead surprised him by agreeing with him.

"We should go see what's going on," she said. "See if we can get a chance at any cards."

"I think it's a bad idea," Natsuko said, but still climbed to her feet and readied her staff in a white-knuckled grip.

"If it looks bad, we don't have to get involved."

Naruto waved away their concern.

"Whatever it is, we can handle it. Let's go!"

He took to the air, jumping between branches with as much stealth as he could muster while maintaining speed. He couldn't near his teammates behind him, but knew them well enough to know they would be flanking him, just behind.

It was just under a kilometer before they came upon a scene that stole the cheer from Naruto's blood and setting it to boil.

The creepy kid that attacked Konohamaru the day before stood on one side of a small clearing with his siblings flanking him. Sand whirled around the Suna genin in a wind Naruto couldn't feel. Ayano and Natsuko landed beside him, and their quiet gasps gave away their thoughts on the scene.

At the feet of the three foreign ninja were two piles of sand soaked through with crimson that could only be blood, and the redheaded Kusagakure kunoichi – Karin – Naruto remembered from the checkpoint scrambling away from them on all fours.

"Yeah," Kankuro said with a deep grimace. "You're going to want to hand over your cards now."

"If you have a wind, Gaara might even let you go."

"Mother demands blood," Gaara said in monotone, staring at the cowering girl in contempt.

"Or not," his sister said, sounding more resigned than threatening.

The swirling sand flowed toward the redhead and Naruto moved without thinking, launching toward Gaara with as much as speed as he could manage off his jump. None of the three saw him and he reared back a fist to hit the foreign genin straight across the jaw.

A shield of sand rushed to Gaara's defense despite his distraction and Naruto's fist was caught in the earthen defense, stopping his momentum dead in its tracks. Four sets of eyes turned their attention to him – one in hope, the rest in shock – and Naruto flipped his momentum into an overhead kick to free his fist. His next blow was met by the same shielding sand and the blond genin twisted himself away to stand between the Suna shinobi and the smart-mouthed girl from Kusa.

"You're the one from yesterday," Kankuro said, sweat dripping down his brow.

"W-why?" Karin asked, and Naruto felt her eyes burning holes in the back of his head. He kept his focus on the three in front of him while he answered.

"Because you needed help."

It was all the reason he needed, really.

"You are a fool," Gaara said, surprise and incredulity in his voice. The moonlight played games with the shadows, making the foreign genin look both terrifying and vulnerable in turns.

Natsuko held her position, Naruto noticed, but Ayano had circled around to the other side of the clearing, flanking the enemy team. He did not need to have Natsuko's sensing ability to know that both of his teammates were less than eager to fight the Suna team.

So he tried to talk them down.

"You guys already won this fight," he said, trying to smile and failing. "Why don't you take your cards and go?"

The sand in the two piles of pulp moved, drawing back toward Gaara without the stain of blood. The only remainder of the two shinobi the streams carried were their ninja cars – one lightning and the other earth – but otherwise seemed untouched by the blood they had spilled.

"Still missing the fifth," Gaara said in his monotone, which was somehow enough for all of Naruto's hackles to raise. Gaara's sand inched forward, and Naruto formed the ram seal, his chakra coiled to make a ridiculous number of clones.

"What type of card do you have!?" Natsuko shouted the question with a disarming ferocity that had Naruto flinching. He heard the girl behind him shuffle, snapping out of her fear to answer.

"E-earth!" She said, and Naruto heard her dig through her clothes. He guessed she was searching for the card to prove her point.

"Then there's no reason for this fight!" Natusko continued, jumping down to stand next to Naruto. She held her hands out in front of her, trying to smile. Naruto frowned, but followed his teammate's lead by not summoning his signature jutsu. "None of us has a wind card."

Natsuko held up her two fire cards, and Ayano jumped down from the other tree, showing her fire and water cards. Naruto heisted before showing his own pair of lightning cards.

"There's no reason to fight here, Gaara," Temari said, casting her eyes to the forest around them. "We should get out of here before they get any more allies."

"Mother is not satisfied," Gaara said, and his sand jittered from right to left, agitated.

"She can feast when we find someone holding the last card we need," Kankuro pointed out.

"I want to kill them now!" Gaara shouted, and his sand surged forward. Natsuko and Ayano leapt back, dragging the Kusa girl with them, but Naruto held his ground and unleashed his chakra into a squad of clones ready to attack.

A dozen of his counterparts took the brunt of Gaara's sand attack, but the remaining ten all matched Naruto in their forming of the Daitoppa.

Wind ripped from the arc of Naruto and his clones, throwing away Gaara's attacking sand with little effort, but the foreign genin brought up a thick shield around him and his teammates that Naruto's attack could only chip away the edges of.

The moment the gale-force winds ended, the sand lashed out in a whip fast enough that none of the clones were fast enough to dodge. Naruto coughed as the wind was ripped from his lungs by pure force when the whip struck him in the solar plexus, sending him off his feet and crashing back through the trees.

Ow… Naruto dragged himself to his feet, clutching an arm across his chest that he could already feel beginning to bruise. He had little time to recover as three streams of Gaara's sand spiraled toward him at a speed that Naruto was hard pressed to dodge. Wood flew in every direction as the jutsu drilled through trees in its pursuit of Naruto.

Using clones to try and stop the attack was just as successful as it had been in Takigakure with Atsuo's water drill.

He cursed, trying to circle back around toward his teammates. In the glimpses he managed of the rest of the fight, he saw Natsuko playing a desperate shield, using her staff to ward off Gaara's attacks while both Ayano and the Kusa girl peppered their opponent with kunai – some with explosive tags.

Gaara had not moved from where he stood with his arms crossed, watching them with an impassive boredom as his sand came to his defense every time without any indication from the foreign genin was even trying.

Naruto was as impressed as he was terrified, an unstoppable spark of excitement at the challenge urging him forward.

"What the hell is he?" Karin shouted, falling to her knees and staring at Gaara in horror. "His chakra…" She curled in on herself, eyes unseeing.

Naruto frowned at her willingness to give up, but pushed it back with pride as Ayano and Natsuko did not let up despite having to feel the same fear pumping in Naruto's veins.

"He's unstoppable!" Naruto would have called Kankuro's words a boast if not for their lack of bluster. The older genin's pained face shadowed over with resignation. "You should just give up, this isn't worth it."

His sister stood off to the side, her gaze averted, and neither sibling moved to help nor stop their brother.

"Like hell!" Naruto shouted, forming a pair of clones to flank him as he charged back into the clearing straight at Gaara. The boy eyed his approach without flinching, and Naruto had his clones move into a line behind him before he threw chakra into a rushed Kawarimi.

He watched from a nearby tree as Gaara's sand drill killed Naruto's clones with ease only to disintegrate less than a half meter from the boy's face.

"You are a fool," Gaara repeated his assessment, turning his head slightly to look at Naruto in his hiding place. Naruto tsked and leapt out of the woods to join his teammates. Natsuko breathed heavily, leaning on her staff with her chest heaving, and Ayano was not in much better shape.

The foreign girl sat behind them, looking lost.

"We can't keep this up, Naruto," Ayano managed to say under her harsh breaths.

"Nothing we do can cut through his defenses." Natusko shook her head. "We need to make a retreat, I don't think they'll follow us."

Naruto growled in frustration, staring down the foreign ninja who seemed content for the moment to stare at the four of them with his head tilted to the right in thought. Naruto wracked his brain trying to figure out a way to actually hit the Suna genin, and what they would do if the other two joined the fight.

He hated to admit it, but his teammates were probably right.

Still, he wanted to try one more thing.

"You guys start to go," he said, drawing a kunai. "I want to try one more thing."

"We're not about to leave you behind, Naruto," Ayano said in annoyance. Natsuko echoed her and Naruto felt himself grin.

"Then cover me with kunai."

His teammates gave him doubtful looks, but followed his request by bombarding Gaara and his siblings with a rain of metal. The older siblings huddled closer to Gaara as his sand caught every projectile with ease. Naruto watched the boy's expression fall back from curiosity to boredom and he knew he had to attack before Gaara went back on the offensive.

He drew a kunai and worked to mold his chakra around it, separating it and forcing it back together until it ground to a fine edge. Unlike with the leaf exercise, Naruto didn't try to split the kunai, but surround it in chakra. The blue energy hummed over the weapon from Naruto's palm and, despite his best efforts, small pieces of metal chipped away with each passing second.

Hoping it would have enough cutting power, Naruto moved to attack.

"You want wind? Have it!"

A barrier of sand rushed to meet the kunai, but the chakra proved it could do the job as it sliced through the defense like rice paper. Naruto noticed Gaara's eyes widen the smallest of fractions and the blond wore a wicked grin as his opponent was forced to move for the first time in the fight.

The kunai missed Gaara, but Kankuro had not been paying as close attention and stared down at his chest in horror.

He gurgled something that might have been a scream, eyes locked on the kunai buried to the base in his left lung, and collapsed.

"Kankuro!"

The floor fell out beneath Naruto's brief sense of victory, leaving a dull horror as the results of his attack struck home. He watched Temari fall to her knees next to her brother, hands glowing green and pressing against the weeping wound with panic etched in her expression.

"He's dying," Gaara said, watching his siblings with something resembling emotion playing at the edge of his tone.

"Damn it Gaara!" Temari shouted, showing aggression toward her youngest brother for the first time. Fear radiated off the kunoichi in waves as she looked at each of Naruto's teammates in turn. She reached into the pocket of her shirt and pulled a handful of the elemental cards free, throwing them at Naruto with desperate force.

He caught them out of instinct, still unable to tear his eyes away from the bleeding Kankuro.

"Take those and leave us alone!" Temari shouted at them with a snarl before returning her full attention to her medical jutsu. Gaara seemed enthralled by watching the process, his sand circling the three in a lazy orbit.

Naruto could not get his legs to move.

"We should go," Ayano whispered, suddenly on his right. Her hand landed on his shoulder and she kept her eyes on the foreign ninja.

"Come on, Kusa-girl."

He heard Natsuko behind him and chanced a glance to see her throwing Karin's arm over her shoulder and helping the girl to her feet.

"Naruto," Ayano said and Naruto turned his half-focused gaze to her. "We have to move." Concern laced her words but Naruto could see the quiet desperation in the girl's eyes. He swallowed against whatever was caught in his throat and nodded.

He leapt away along with the three girls and tried to get his thoughts in order. He had always known killing was a fact of the shinobi life, and had thought that he would be ready when the time came for him to take a life.

But Kankuro hadn't been his target and had been – sort of – helpless.

Bitter bile burned the back of Naruto's throat as he barely kept the urge to vomit at bay.

He kept focus on nothing more than his next step forward as they put as much space as they could between themselves in the Suna team.

The sun peaked over the horizon in front of them, and Naruto hoped the next four days would have nothing worse in store for them.


A/N: And there you have it! Day 1 of 5 is done, and it was one heck of a day for Team Twelve, to say the least. Fighting Gaara at the genin level is straight unfair to everyone involved, but Naruto being Naruto managed to improvise a solution.

Even if it didn't work out the way he expected.

Temari poor Kankuro certainly learned a lesson of standing idly by while Gaara does all the work. At least, if he survives.

This kerfuffle between the Sand Siblings and Team Twleve will have implications in the future, and I cannot wait to keep pressing forward until I can explore them. I hope you all are still tuned in to see them!

In the meantime, please let me know what you think!