Chapter 12: Battle of Peregrine Pass
Second Round of the Chuunin Exam
At dawn, the three genin squads from Leaf, Mist and Sand left their camp in the pine thicket by the mountain lake and began their journey up the pass to confront the dozen Cloud genin who stood between them and the Final Round of the Chuunin Exams.
Cognizant of Kokai's warning about the dangerous team from Iwagakure making the ascent somewhere behind them, Sira and Rahl dropped back to scout behind them while Kaede sent swarms of kikai bugs ahead of them and Senne, the Mist team's kunoichi, also moved up the pass to spy on the Cloud positions.
Rahl and Sira returned first, reporting that their backs were clear for at least half a day behind them; Both Sand genin were capable of using wind chakra to enhance their speed, a trick the Rock genin wouldn't be able to duplicate. Shortly after noon when they were getting close to Peregrine Pass, Senne came running back as well, a look of urgency on her face.
"We have to attack now," Senne panted, catching her breath.
"What's happened?" Kokai demanded of his teammate. Their plan had been to wait for nightfall, fill the pass with mist and attack with stealth to counteract the Cloud genin's superior numbers and dangerous ranged lightning ninjutsu.
"When I started spying on their positions this morning all four Cloud teams were there, but they're starting to get antsy because no one's walked into their trap yet. One of their teams just left the pass and headed further up into the mountains; they're probably looking to make sure no one snuck past them. If we hit them now it's even numbers."
Amaya, Rahl and Kokai conferred briefly. "We could go with Plan B," Rahl suggested.
Amaya grimaced. "It's Plan B for a reason, Rahl. If your trick doesn't work we'll all be sitting ducks, and if we attack in daylight Lorn can't plant his explosives."
Kokai scratched his chin in thought. "Our goal here is to take them out with zero casualties, right? Why don't we go with what Lorn and Poe suggested last night? It wouldn't have worked well against twelve, but with nine against us it's doable."
Rahl winced. "That plan also relies on a difficult combination of jutsus that we haven't practiced with. Hell, we didn't even know each other until yesterday. Can you three pull it off? It all comes down to that, and if it doesn't work we're in a worse position than we'd be in just rushing them." 'Just rushing them' was essentially Plan B.
Amaya, Sira and Senne, the three Rahl had questioned, looked at each other. Amaya knew Sira well enough to trust the wind user, but Senne was a total unknown to both of them, and while her skill had been on display the previous evening, the technique they were contemplating would require a level of cooperation and coordination that would challenge even genin who had trained together.
Senne looked back at Amaya and Sira with hard gray eyes that held little trust. Sunagakure and Kirigakure were so far apart that they had essentially no relations, but Leaf and Mist had a long and acrimonious history prior to the rise of the Yondaime Hokage. "I can hold up my end," the Mist kunoichi said defiantly. "As long as you two don't screw it up, it'll work fine."
Amaya snorted before nodding at Sira. "We're going to be chuunin, and chuunin need to be able to work with shinobi they don't know. Let's do it."
It was a cool crisp day and the afternoon sun shone down on Peregrine Pass. Three teams of Cloud genin occupied the pass, keeping an eye out in all directions. They were wary and alert, so when a fast-moving cloud of fog came boiling up the pass, they knew what it was and were ready. "Mist ninja incoming!" the lookouts yelled, and the Cloud genin sprang into action. each squad moving back-to-back as the mist covered them, the three teams placing themselves at points of a triangle to cover all approaches through the pass while remaining close enough to each other to stay in sight. Then the two genin among them with a wind affinity exerted their chakra to start moving the mountain air through the pass. Close to water it would have been difficult, but in the high mountain pass wind trumped water and the fog was shredded by a stiff breeze.
When the fog dissipated however, there weren't nine ninja in the pass anymore; there were twelve. Standing in the middle of the three squads of Cloud genin was a trio of kunoichi mimicking the squad formation of the Cloud genin with one facing each squad. All three wore Kirigakure headbands, had their hair in identical buns held up with senbon, and all three wore black half-masks covering their noses and mouths, as well as similar cut-off kimonos and pants in shades of blue. One was blonde, one brunette, and the third had black hair.
When Senne had produced a storage scroll full of spare outfits, Kaede had coughed and muttered something that sounded like 'clotheshorse', but Amaya had to admit not having to wash clothes in streams on longer missions appealed to her, and had resolved to ask Tenten-sensei about getting a scroll like that herself.
The nine Cloud genin quickly encircled the three Mist kunoichi, weapons drawn and ready, while the hands of the Mist kunoichi remained empty. "You girls surrendering? Fine by us; just hand over your plaque," one of the Cloud genin, a lean, muscular boy with a drawn katana held horizontal to the ground at eye level, on the balls of his feet in a swordsman's stance, ready to strike at a moment's notice.
"Oh sweetheart, we can do better than that," Senne replied, her voice a smooth purr. Noting that all nine Cloud genin were male, she added, "If you boys let us pass we'll give you three plaques."
Sword boy raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure, we'll take that deal. Or we would if you actually had three-" then his jaw dropped as Sira silently took a pouch from her belt and opened it, revealing two thunder plaques and a lightning plaque. She carelessly tossed it to a different Cloud genin in front of her, who lowered his kunai to catch it from the air, staring at the Mist kunoichi with wide eyes.
Amaya shrugged. "We've taken out four teams already, and we don't really need all those. Help yourselves." Then the three Mist kunoichi moved as one, walking calmly away from the stunned genin holding the plaques, towards the opposite end of the pass that opened out into the mountains.
Before they left the circle, however, crossed blades barred their path. "Sorry ladies, I lied," their leader admitted. "We're actually going to need all of your plaques."
Amaya gave him a long, even look as he smirked at her, before she tugged down her mask and gave him a sweet smile. "That's okay; I lied too. Those aren't real plaques." Then just for fun she activated her sharingan and let the Cloud genin realize how screwed he was before she let her genjutsu unravel, and felt Senne and Sira, hiding in the rocks nearby, release their own genjutsu.
Several things happened at once. The hapless Cloud genin holding the 'plaques' watched them turn into a ball of explosive tags wrapped around a trigger as Amaya's genjutsu faded. Then Lorn detonated them remotely. At the same time, the images of the blonde and brunette 'Mist kunoichi' wavered and warped, revealing Kokai and Rahl in their places, the former with broadsword in hand and the latter with glowing orbs of red death ready and waiting. Both men appeared at first to be wearing black shirts, until the blackness moved and exploded outwards in a vicious cloud of kikai bugs.
The explosion of the fake plaques took out the genin holding them; he landed twenty meters away with ruined hands and burns all over the front of his body. The shockwave from the blast floored the genin to his left and right, leaving six on their feet. The nominal leader, the swordsman closest to Amaya, barely hesitated before slashing at her with a snarl, but she dodged his blade, jumping back to give herself room. Kaede's kikai bugs made a beeline from Rahl and Kokai to another luckless genin. They swarmed over him, biting and draining chakra as he flailed ineffectually.
Grinning broadly enough to reveal his pointed shark teeth, Kokai engaged another pair of katana-wielding genin, meeting their smaller blades with his massive one. Rahl lunged at the last two genin and unleashed his scorch orbs. One dodged in time to escape with little more than a burn on his shoulder, but the other wasn't so lucky. The scorch orb hit him in the side and exploded. A cloud of steam rose from the Cloud genin's body and he fell, screaming. Amaya winced, seeing when the steam cleared that his arm and leg on that side of his body were shriveled and wasted like the limbs of a desiccated corpse.
Amaya dodged two more swings from her enraged opponent before her sharingan had recorded enough of his style to predict his next move. Drawing a pair of kunai she slid around the downward slash he directed at her, getting a kunai behind his blade and adding momentum so that the tip of the blade hit the ground. Before he could recover she planted one foot on the back of his blade, brought both kunai down to sink into the meat of his shoulders, and used those points as a springboard to leap over his head and plant a kick in the back of his skull, sending him sprawling to the ground bleeding and senseless.
Landing and looking around, Amaya noted that Rahl had his trench knives out and was dueling with a Cloud genin fighting with a pair of hand axes, of all things. Kokai, who was fighting one-handed to avoid exacerbating the wound in his other shoulder Amaya had given him, was being driven back by his two opponents. One of them got past his guard and sliced into his thigh, driving him to one knee, but before either of them could capitalize, one was hit from behind by a wind jutsu that pounded him to the ground and had half a dozen senbon sprouting from his back before he could get up, as the real Senne and Sira joined the fight. The other genin attacking Kokai retreated, eyeing the new ninja emerging from the rocks with dismay.
The fight looked to be all but over when two more things happened very quickly. The first was Ken's shout of "Reinforcements!" as the last team of Cloud genin charged into the pass, all three older than their routed peers. The second thing was that the three allied teams were attacked from behind. Rahl staggered forward as three shuriken hit him in the back, almost losing his head to his axe-wielding opponent before Black Ant landed on that Cloud genin. At the same time Kaede, Sira and Senne, who had been securing their prisoners, were forced to flee as a hail of small fireballs peppered their position. Amaya had no time to worry about them however, as a very familiar whistling noise coming from close by alerted her to problems of her own. As she turned, she saw Konohamaru leap from behind a boulder straight at her, a swirling ball of bluish-white light in his hand.
Peripherally Amaya was aware of Moegi flashing through the hand signs of another fire jutsu aimed at her friends, and what had to be Udon hurling well-aimed projectiles from the shadows at Kokai, who was struggling to deflect them and rise to his feet. But before she could deal with any of that, she had to survive Konohamaru. Pushing her body to the limit she managed to duck under the Rasengan, feeling it shred some of her hair in passing, but she couldn't avoid Konohamaru's follow up kick, and took his steel toed boot in the side, feeling a rib crack as her body was knocked sideways. Rolling to her feet and ignoring the pain in her side, she drew another kunai and then Konohamaru was on her, the Rasengan still firmly in his hand, a kunai in a reverse grip in his offhand.
Even with the sharingan, Amaya found herself on full defense, pressed just to avoid being hit by the devastating jutsu the Sarutobi heir had learned from his mentor, Namikaze Naruto. Amaya was forcibly reminded that Konohamaru usually got away with being an ass to everyone because he really was almost as skilled a fighter as he imagined himself to be.
"Tell me, Konohamaru, how many times did you have to bend over for Namikaze before he taught you that technique?" Amaya taunted him. Konohamaru let loose a snarl of inarticulate rage, and Amaya almost paid for that comment with her life when he kicked her legs out from under her and lunged down to drive the Rasengan through her chest as she fell, but she managed to get her legs under him, plant her feet in his stomach and launch him up and over her, though she earned a cut on her leg from his kunai for her trouble.
"Touchy, touchy," she chided him as she rolled to her feet, favoring the cut leg. "Must have been at least a dozen times, then. How sore were you afterwards?"
"Uchiha bitch, I'll kill you!" Konohamaru screamed, releasing the Rasengan and making hand signs. Spotting the pattern, Amaya fought off a grin, forming a jutsu of her own. Konohamaru's biggest weakness had always been his temper; get him mad enough and he stopped thinking tactically and just tried to bulldoze his opponents. His chest swelled with air as he completed his jutsu and then exhaled, expelling a rapidly expanding cloud of gray powder.
Before it reached her, Amaya finished her jutsu and spat a fireball into the cloud. It would have been a waste of chakra to produce a full-sized fireball, so Amaya just fired off a little one, but it did its work, and Amaya grinned at Konohamaru's startled yell as his cloud of chakra-laced gunpowder exploded in his face. "Didn't your uncle tell you never to use that against someone with fire ninjutsu, moron?" When the smoke cleared, Amaya laughed at seeing him covered in ash, his eyebrows singed off. "Kami I wish I could take a picture of this," she said with glee.
Even from meters away the tick on Konohamaru's forehead was visible as he glared at her. "I'll beat that smirk off of your face! Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," he yelled, and in a puff of smoke there were five Konohamarus looking at her unpleasantly.
Amaya sighed. "Right, almost forgot about that one," she muttered to herself. It would have been easy enough to copy his hand signs with the sharingan, but she didn't have the older boy's chakra reserves; Amaya would drive herself to the edge of exhaustion making just a few shadow clones. "Bring it on then, whenever you're ready. I know being Naruto's peach bottom boy is hard work." With an indignant yell, five Konohamarus charged her, and she met his charge with the same technique Moegi had ambushed her teammates with. "Katon: Hosenka no Jutsu!" Amaya called, sending a shotgun blast of flaming orbs into the teeth of Konohamaru's charge, dispelling three of his clones. He managed to form another Rasengan with the last one before it dispelled, and then she was back to dodging his swings. I really hope the others are having an easier time, she thought.
"We are not having an easy time here!" Sira yelled as she crouched behind a few boulders with Ken, Kaede and Senne. They were pinned down between two frustratingly skilled ranged specialists, with Moegi hurling fire ninjutsu at them from one side and one of the newly arrived Cloud genin, a dusky-skinned girl with bright red hair was tossing lightning bolts at them every time they stuck their heads up from cover. Senne had already fallen victim to the Cloud genin; hit in the back by an electric blast when she tried to fire a water jutsu at Moegi, she lay on the ground, her muscles seizing painfully while Kaede tried to help her. Having lost a number of kikai bugs to the pair of alert ranged specialists pinning them down Kaede had admitted defeat in trying to counterattack, reminded ruefully of her sensei's prophetic warnings about the limits of her clan's insects.
"I could deal with the lightning bitch if someone distracted the fire specialist; I can't risk using my wind techniques as long as she's chucking fireballs at us; the explosion would kill us all."
"I suppose it's up to me then," Ken stated with a grin, glancing around a rock at Moegi's position before ducking back as orange flame splashed off of his cover.
Sira gave him a look of disbelief. "How are you going to get close enough to her?"
"Yosh! I will test the fires of my youth against hers!" Ken stated confidently, waiting for another fireball to wash over their cover before darting out and running full speed uphill, leaping from one rock to another. He narrowly dodged the next fireball, picking up speed, and from the corner of her eye Sira saw the Cloud genin aiming a lightning jutsu at Ken's back.
"Oh no you don't!" Sira retaliated with a wave of one of her fans, sending a blast of wind hurtling at her opponent, staggering her and making the lightning bolt fly wide.
Moegi was no fool. As soon as she saw Konohagakure's third Green Beast coming for her she abandoned the fireballs and started a different series of hand signs before clapping her hands together. "Katon: Shobonami!" [Fire Wave]
"Run, Ken!" Sira yelled as a wall of flames came roaring down the hill at the green-clad genin. Instead, Ken made some hand signs of his own before the flame wall hit him, and Sira recognized the first few, though she'd never seen a genin with access to that technique. Shaking off her surprise, Sira jumped over the boulder she'd been using for cover and headed for the lightning specialist. After she batted a few lightning bolts away with wind techniques the red-haired Cloud kunoichi gave up and drew a tanto from a sheath on her back in time to block Sira's first strike with her battle fans.
Moegi's smirk turned to a look of disbelief as an odd shadow shot through the wall of fire unharmed, vanishing in a puff of smoke before she could see what it was and revealing Ken behind it, who landed just meters in front of her, his usual 'good-guy' grin replaced with deadly concentration. Knowing she didn't have time for another fire jutsu before he struck, Moegi lashed out with a different technique, wavering and fading from Ken's sight in an instant. "Genjutsu, Moegi?" Ken queried with disappointment. "Most unyouthful!"
"Whatever works," the orange haired girl's voice hissed from all around him. "What now, muscles?" Maneuvering behind Ken as he stood still, looking back and forth for her, Moegi quietly drew a kunai. She didn't want to kill her fellow Leaf genin, but in the Chuunin Exam it was permissible, and she did need to win this fight. Konohamaru put enough bruises on her skin when he was happy with her; if he got knocked out of the exam early and felt she hadn't given her all, he would make sure she suffered. Moegi shuddered silently at the thought, and thrust her kunai at the base of Ken's skull.
Having moved behind Ken, Moegi didn't see the red-haired boy's gray eyes drift shut, or witness his lips silently form a single syllable. "Kai."
Moegi did feel the genjutsu break, but the kunai's razor tip was already speeding towards him. It never connected, though, as he ducked under it, his leg extending in a spin kick that swept Moegi's feet from under her. She fell, and Ken's fist rose to meet her, impacting her stomach just under her ribs. Her breath left her lungs in an explosive rush, and she fell to her knees, eyes wide with panic as she struggled to breathe. "How?" the word formed silently on her lips absent the air to speak, and Ken just shrugged.
"We all had to grow stronger for this exam," he answered quietly. Then his open hand flashed up and the edge struck the side of her neck. Moegi collapsed in his arms, unconscious, and he gently laid her in a cleft between some rocks where she'd be safe from any stray jutsus. That done, Ken rose to his feet and raced down the hill to help his comrades.
Elsewhere, Kokai, Rahl and Poe had their hands full as well. Kokai's surviving opponent from the original nine had been joined by an older Cloud genin with long white hair and dark skin who was not only a better swordsman but skilled enough with lightning ninjutsu to charge his blade with electricity. His backup was a pale-skinned teen with blond hair in a bowl cut, hard ice-blue eyes and a tanto that blurred when he fought. The axe fighter Poe had captured inside Black Ant wasn't out of the fight either, as the impact from his blades on the inside of the puppet's chest testified. Complicating matters further, all the combatants had to deal with an irritatingly accurate and sneaky sniper hiding among the rocks up the cliff face who kept hurling kunai and shuriken at anyone – Cloud, Mist or Sand – who stood still for too long.
"Soren! Thank goodness you came back!" The younger Cloud swordsman said to his older compatriot.
"Shut up and fight, idiot," Soren grated, taking another swing at Kokai, who had to stumble back, giving ground since he couldn't cross blades with the charged katana Soren wielded. On his next dodge Kokai slipped on the blood dripping from his leg wound and almost got hit before Rahl lunged in between him and Soren, catching the falling blade on one of his trench knives. Soren's lazy grin turned to a look of shock as Rahl remained unaffected by the electricity and kicked him in the stomach before he could recover, forcing him back.
"I'll deal with this lighting lover," Rahl called out. "You handle his friends," Kokai noted with concern the trails of blood running down Rahl's back from where the sniper's opening volley of shuriken had tagged him, but nodded and turned to face the blonde and the survivor from the initial ambush.
Knowing he couldn't fight two on one without his kendo moves Kokai took a two-handed grip on his broadsword, accepting the pain from his wounded shoulder as the hastily stitched wound tore open. "C'mon then, who's dying first?" he roared at the pair, flashing his shark teeth. It worked on the younger genin, but the icy blond just snorted and darted forward, his blade flashing as he sought an opening.
Rahl grinned at the irritated looking Soren as they dueled. He could tell the Cloud genin hadn't faced a trench knife fighter before, while he'd fought plenty of swordsmen. The faint red haze of Rahl's scorch aura surrounding his knives kept him safe from his opponent's electricity by heating the air between the weapons to prevent the charge from arcing. On the other hand, Rahl knew he needed to finish the fight soon, because he could feel the blood flowing down his back and the pain every time he moved, while Soren was fresh and uninjured.
Sparing a glance for Black Ant, Rahl saw the puppet's chest starting to splinter from inside. "Poe, what are you waiting for? Finish him!"
Poe, hiding behind a boulder while manipulating his puppet, looked uncertain. "Rahl, I-"
"That's an order, Poe! Kill the fucker before he gets free; we can't handle four of them!" Rahl growled.
Poe nodded in resignation and flexed his chakra strings. Black Ant's six arms, which had been struggling to contain the puppet's prisoner, flew out, a long, sharp blade sliding out of each hand. Then the arms inverted and pierced the puppet's barrel chest from six directions like a magician's trick, but with dire result. A scream from inside was abruptly cut off, and blood began pouring from the bottom of the puppet's barrel chest. Retching, Poe barely held his lunch down, looking away as his hands moved, prompting Black Ant to disgorge its bloody cargo onto the ground. Then the puppet's three yellow eyes turned towards the younger Cloud swordsman, who was staring at what was left of his teammate, looking pale and sick. When the puppet moved towards him, the teen screamed and ran, leaving the blond with the tanto to face Kokai alone.
"Tsch!" Soren spat with a look of disgust. "This is a rout. Mori, let's get out of here," he said to the blond, who nodded and danced out of Kokai's range. "Kari, we're leaving!" Soren bellowed at the red-haired teen who was dueling with Sira. Kari nodded, broke through Sira's guard to kick her in the stomach, and then turned to run. Sira, catching her breath, growled but let the Cloud genin flee.
Rahl and Kokai sagged with relief, then watched as Soren caught up with his fleeing fellow Cloud genin, knocked him over the head from behind and then stole his pouch before all three of them vanished over the hill.
Registering that no one had thrown a shuriken or kunai at him recently, Rahl looked up at the sniper's perch, and laughed when he saw Lorn, the twitchy Mist bomber, standing on the ledge. Hanging off of the cliff by a rope around his ankles was a brown-haired Leaf genin with glasses who was sweating and holding very still, a fact that probably had to do with the fact that there were several explosive tags adhered to his torso, and Lorn was holding a chakra detonator switch.
It was Kokai who noticed that Amaya was still fighting, with another genin from her village, of all things. "Shall we intervene?" the Mist genin enquired of his Sand compatriot.
Rahl was about to agree when he saw a green blur shooting down the hill towards Amaya and Konohamaru with a figure in tan close behind. "Nah, I think they've got it under control," he said with a grin before looking over the fallen Cloud genin around them. "Let's find their plaques."
Amaya had to give Konohamaru credit, he felt Ken coming and even ducked back from Amaya to direct a perfectly timed spinning kick at Ken that the taijutsu specialist had to block with crossed forearms, arresting his momentum. Of course, that didn't solve Konohamaru's main problem; he might be better than Amaya or Ken separately, but he wasn't better than both of them, and he knew it. He formed another batch of shadow clones, but Ken and Amaya tore them apart without much difficulty. "Moegi! Udon! Where the hell are you?" Konohamaru yelled.
"Moegi's sleeping," Ken answered calmly.
"I think Udon's been hung out to dry," Kaede added with amusement as she reached her teammates.
"Cowards," Konohamaru growled, eyeing the three of them and struggling conceal his dismay.
Amaya smirked at him. "That's rich coming from the guy who attacked us from behind while we were engaged with another opponent. Just face it, Konohamaru, you lost. Now come take your medicine."
With Team Tenten working together, Konohamaru didn't stand a chance.
After looting plaques and maps from the fallen Cloud genin, Team Sand Crab and the Mist genin watched with interest. "I'm sensing some personal history at work here," Kokai observed after a number of punishing blows to Konohamaru's face and ribs from Amaya and Ken. He was sitting on a rock while Senne, recovered from her dose of lightning, bandaged his wounds and chided him for aggravating his shoulder injury. "What was I supposed to do, woman," he shot back defensively, "let that guy Mori with the tanto make more holes in my blue hide? He was pretty fast, y'know."
Sira was patching up the wounds on Rahl's back when he twitched. "Did that hurt?" she asked with concern.
"No, but that did," Rahl said with a chuckle, pointing at Konohamaru, who was on his knees and going cross-eyed while cradling the family jewels after Kaede had driven a knee into his groin. "She's not as strong as the other two, but that still has to hurt." He winced again as Amaya's boot met Konohamaru's nose in a spray of blood, laying the Sarutobi heir on the ground, out cold. "Yeah, shot to the nuts and making him a little less pretty for a while? I'll go with personal history," Rahl agreed with Kokai.
After taking Konohamaru's pouch, the Leaf genin rejoined their allies. "Moment of truth time," Amaya said. "What are the spoils?" opening Konohamaru's pouch she already knew she'd find a Lightning plaque. "This is the one we needed." Next she pulled out Team Ebisu's map. "Hey, here's the map to the arena, too."
Rahl and Kokai both held up a matching pair of plaques. "We're all set, then."
Amaya smiled in relief. "Great."
The three teams paused to survey the battlefield. Team Ebisu was all alive and intact. The toll on the Cloud genin was a bit more of a butcher's bill, however. Two of the Cloud genin were dead, the one holding Lorn's bomb, and the one Poe had skewered on Rahl's orders. Poe was busy cleaning out his Black Ant, and if his war paint seemed a bit streaky under the eyes when he was done, no one said anything.
Of the seven Cloud survivors, two were senseless and bleeding from the ears from the bomb's shockwave. Rahl's scorch attack had crippled another and Amaya's first opponent wouldn't be able to lift his arms for months. The one Sira and Senne had defeated was stable but not moving much with a back full of senbon. Soren had mugged one the genin who ran from Poe for his plaque, and the one Kaede's bugs had subdued was still conscious, just immobilized by chakra exhaustion.
With the battle rush faded, Amaya felt some guilt hit her. Two genin they'd faced were dead, and the one hit by the scorch orb was done as a ninja; medical chakra wouldn't fix his arm and leg; they'd have to be amputated before they started rotting.
"You… you killed them," a weak but accusing voice came from the genin Kaede's bugs had taken down.
Kokai was standing over him in two strides, picking up the helpless Cloud ninja by his shirt. "You idiots picked a terrible strategy and lost," he growled as his captive. "You were done as soon as one team spotted your ambush. Even strangers will band together against pricks like you trying to screw everyone. You want your next Chuunin Exam to go better? Forget this bullshit. The exams are a test of squad and individual skill, not who entered the most teams." Then Kokai dropped the younger teen with disgust. "Let's get out of here before those psychos from Iwagakure get up here."
Reminded of the team making the climb behind them, Amaya looked over their fallen opponents. "We can't leave them here."
Rahl shrugged, tossing a looted flare gun to the genin Kokai had lectured, who caught it weakly. "I'd suggest you use that and summon the proctors to get your friends to the hospital." The Cloud genin glared at Rahl but nodded reluctantly, raising a trembling hand and firing the crimson flare into the air. "Let's get moving so they don't think we're giving up too," Rahl said lightly, and the three teams headed up into the mountains. Behind them the proctors descended, collected the wounded and dead, and departed in just a few minutes.
The three teams made camp that night in a defensible cave in the mountains. They tended to Amaya, Rahl and Kokai's injuries with greater care and shared a hearty meal. Before bedding down, the nine genin sat around the fire and talked about the day. Lorn and Poe in particular seemed affected by the fight; they'd been responsible for the two fatalities. Amaya suspected that it was a first kill for both of them.
"I'm the one to blame Poe, not you," Rahl said firmly. "I ordered you to kill him; that blood is on my hands." Unlike Konohagakure, where genin teams decided among themselves to select a 'leader' or operate more democratically, the other villages did have a formal assignment of a genin who was nominally in charge when away from their jounin sensei. Rahl lead Team Sand Crab, and Kokai was in charge of his squad. "Likewise for you Lorn, I put the bomb in that guy's hands," Rahl said quietly.
"I cast the genjutsu that tricked him into taking it," Amaya added.
"Besides, we didn't choose that fight, they did," Kokai added firmly. "They made the choice to try and eliminate all of us from the tournament; not because they needed to, but because they wanted to stack the final round in their favor."
The twitchy bomber and the stocky puppeteer looked thoughtful and a bit less down after that. After setting watches and excusing Amaya, Rahl and Kokai from the rotation so they could heal, the teams turned in for the night.
The next morning they climbed up into the mountains, taking it easy. They still had ample time to get to the arena, and with Konohamaru's map, they knew where it was. They saw no sign of the surviving Cloud team ahead of them, or the Rock team behind them. They reached the spot marked on the map in the afternoon, and found an ordinary looking cave, but when they entered, a pair of proctors emerged from hidden alcoves. Both looked surprised to see three genin teams from three different villages enter together. "Present your plaques," they were commanded. Each team handed over their plaques and then they were allowed to proceed into the cave with guides leading the way. After walking through the tunnel for a few minutes the tunnel sloped upward in what they realized was a gradual spiral, winding up and up into the mountain they had entered. They walked for almost an hour before the tunnel straightened out and they saw light ahead. When they emerge it was onto a wide, curving walkway, and all three teams were stunned into silence as they took in the view.
The terrace they were on was roughly halfway up the inner slope of the massive caldera of a long-extinct volcano. Above them and to their left and right the caldera's walls stretched out, dwarfing them with the immensity of the place. All around they could see buildings hewn into the rock, and once they took in the scope they realized there was an entire city here, nestled in the caldera walls high above the clouds. Citizens of the Land of Lightning thronged around them and above and below them in the thousands.
Moving up to the railing, the genin could see the slope descending down below them. Hundreds of meters below the terraces of buildings tapered off, giving way to misty woodland. Most of the caldera's bottom was actually hidden from view by clouds, actual clouds, half a kilometer below them. It was disorienting to see.
What caught their attention most though was kilometers away, on the other side of the caldera. Eons earlier, that wall of rock had collapsed and fallen outward, turning the caldera's circle into a crescent, and opening a grand vista through which they could see half of the Land of Lightning stretching out until it blurred into the horizon.
"Magnificent," Ken was the first to speak, and Amaya was surprised to see a tear in his eye. "A most youthful place."
"Glad you approve, kid," one of their guides said with a chuckle. "Welcome to Sky City, home of the Chuunin Exam's Final Round. You've been assigned quarters, and your teachers have been informed that you've passed the second round; they should be here shortly. Once you're settled in, you're free to explore the city. The Second Round will end in a few more days, and the drawing of names for the Final Round matches are a week after that."
"Those trees down there… that is a cloud forest, isn't it?" Kaede asked. When their guide nodded, she looked at him. "Are we allowed to enter the forest during our time here?" she asked.
The proctor looked again at her, taking in the coat and Konohagakure hitai-ate. "Oh. You're an Aburame, aren't you?" He scratched his chin. "The cloud forest is the property of the Kutsuku Clan. You'd have to petition them to be allowed to go there, but for a visiting ninja competing in the Final Round, I can't imagine they'd refuse to show you around."
Deciding that the Kutsuku Clan sounded like a shinobi family, Amaya resolved that Kaede would not be visiting them alone, and a glance at Ken showed her the same thought in his mind. Kaede was usually the most cautious of the three of them, but she was also an Aburame, and when it came to opportunities to study new bugs, Aburame tended to get a bit… reckless.
The moment of introspection was interrupted when the nine genin's attention was drawn away from the view by three massive spikes of killing intent around them, and they turned with hands going towards their weapons, only to stop in confusion as they discovered three female jounin arrayed around them, a bun-headed brunette from Konohagakure, a blonde with a quartet of pigtails from Sunagakure and a shark-toothed woman with long crimson hair and a Kirigakure hitai-ate. Each of the women was glaring daggers at the other two.
"You…" all three grated at once, hatred dripping from their voices, hands on their weapons.
"Tenten-sensei?" Amaya, Kaede and Ken asked their angry teacher in confusion, alarmed at the cold look they only saw in their sensei's eyes when she was getting ready to kill someone.
"Temari-sensei?" Rahl inquired of his team's blonde jounin-sensei, newly assigned to them six months earlier when their previous sensei retired. Sabaku no Temari, the Kazekage's older sister, was gripping the hilt of her massive war fan hard enough for her knuckles to go white, and the previously still air was starting to stir around them as Temari's elemental chakra flowed from her skin.
"Ringo-sensei?" Kokai greeted his team's volatile instructor cautiously. Usually when Ameyuri Ringo's flowing crimson hair was fluffing up with static and her hands were resting on the hilts of her legendary twin blades known as Kiba, people started dying.
Each of the three older kunoichi looked at their own teams, then the teams around them, and three jaws dropped at the fact that the nine genin had fallen into a defensive half circle with their backs to the railing by instinct as soon as they'd felt the killing intent.
"WHAT ARE YOU THREE DOING!" a trio of angry sensei yelled in unison at their students.
Author's Note: Gee, I wonder what happened there. I bet there's a story behind it!
Credit is due to xkaiistarx, a dedicated reviewer, for throwing out a name that I decided to toss into the mix as the jounin sensei for Kokai's team.
This chapter concludes the second round of the exams. Now, on to the finals! This is going to be fun.
