Finally! Had the time to finish the fight I left ya'll hangin' on. A bit short, but there's something to be said about brevity.

Usual disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or anything out of 'Ben Hur' (standard disclaimer- if you get what I'm talking about, I'll give you a cookie).

'Nuff said, now go and read.


"C'mon!" Gosunkugi yelled as the multiple prodigies were forced towards him by his teammates. He flung his arms out in both directions and his deep green cloak fluttered in the breeze, letting loose a salvo of large rusty arm-length square nails.

Hinata pushed off a branch with her left foot and spun gracefully in the air between the airborne spikes, twirling her gauntlet blade to counteract the dark-clad ninja following suit. Her Byakugan had been inactive when the traditional shinobi initially melted from view, but her now- activated bloodline could clearly make out the shorter man as he also spun around the projectiles with his own harsh grace.

The Curse earth clones were not as fortunate. Four of the eleven copies were struck by the elongated nails while distracted in their search for the elaborately decorated man hidden from their sight. The two clones in front of the remaining seven redirected their attention to the emerald-clad enemy and unsheathed a pair of metal spears in preparation for an attack.

When they came within striking distance they lunged forward and connected the bladed staffs against metal. As Gosunkugi twisted his body, his thick clothing tore with the momentum, revealing a quartet of nails loosely strapped to the inside of the cloak interlocking around the spears' blades.

Silence descended on the nail user after successfully fending off her semi-visible assailant. As Onryou dodged behind trees to avoid the multiple exploding stakes fired from the Hyuuga's launchers, the blue-haired girl swung her bladed gauntlet down upon the sage-clad man, aiming for his head. With a mad grin, the enemy shot his right arm back to intercept the female genius while thrusting his opposing limb against Naruto's dual clones. Two of the rusted, angular spikes ripped through his cloak and, somehow forming an air-filled wedge as they traveled side by side, caught her extended blade.

Hinata swore under her breath and kicked her legs out at his back on impulse, hoping to connect her chakra-charged feet with the stationary opponent. Sure enough, her electrified sandals landed on something but it was not flesh. The surface pushed back and she abandoned the attack when she realized it was more elongated nails. "Damnit," she thought as she leapt away into the waiting arms of the ebony-clad ninja, "I can't see through that damn cloak! Must be lined with seals designed specifically to hinder the Byakugan." She swung around and countered Onryou's drawn blade with her own. "If that's true, then these guys have gathered a ton of intel on the village and its weaknesses…"

The Uzumaki copies confronting Gosunkugi dropped their spears when the enemy, unconcerned by the rival prodigy's attack, thrust an arm out, throwing another salvo of angular spikes at them. The moment they stepped back they prepared for a counter attack only to have the farthest one return to mud as the invisible Genseien thrust an arm through it. The invisible enemy had made short work of almost all the clones during the confrontation, reducing their numbers to a mere two.

The earth copy that had not yet engaged the spike-tossing shinobi pressed his back against the one that had, determined to ward off the hidden ninja while his double watched his back. It glanced at the ground and saw a few leaves flatten as if being stepped upon and launched a salvo of ninja stars at the location. But it was all in vain when the now-familiar knife hand strike came in from the side and plunged itself into the clone's neck, dispersing it into a pile of wet dirt.

Swearing like a sailor, the final clone launched a handful of lethal yo-yos around the branches above and retracted the wires in a heartbeat, pulling himself into the temporary safety of the dark canopy. "Can't fight like this," the copy mumbled as it watched its temporary ally divide her attention between Gosunkugi and Onryou. "They're forcing us into a two-front battle and their teamwork's really good. They make up for the others' shortcomings…"

"Yo," a voice said from behind the copy before its owner buried his fist into the copy's skull. "One left to go…" he murmured, peering at the surrounded genius girl despite his blindfolded state. The young prodigy already had her hands full with his teammates, so his assistance would dispatch her easily. Maintaining his technique, he leapt from the oversized branch for another attached to a monstrous tree lower down…

And whipped around when he heard several 'thunks' followed by the sound of his previous position being engulfed in a burst of flames. "There're more of them?!"

Naruto, upon receiving the memories of his deceased clones, had managed to fool his own squad by replacing himself with a clone so he could personally fight the mysterious trio alongside his temporary ally. The final experience to enter his mind revealed the blindfolded man's location, so he unsealed several oversized shuriken covered in explosive tags and lobbed them in the man's last known general direction. He didn't see body parts flying though, so he figured he was two seconds too late.

As the blonde lunged forward past the smoking tree, he felt something press against his mind as well as his chest. Suddenly, a sharp pain emanated from beneath his sternum and his hands instinctively shot around the developing wound, only to stop as if wrapping around an imaginary limb. The boy grit his teeth and, on a hunch, curled his ringed fingers around the unseen appendage and swung himself and whatever he clung to haphazardly to the forest floor. He crashed against the hard dirt and felt massive bruising developing along his side, but he also heard a grunt of pain alongside his own. He held onto his invisible assailant.

"Silence!" he called to his not-so-distant ally, "How you doing?!"

"Not good!" she shouted back as her head fell between her knees in an effort to duck under something the boy couldn't see, "I need some help here!"

"Right! But first, can you see this guy?!" He guessed where Genseien's neck should be and put the man in an awkward headlock that was slowly failing.

"He's using genjutsu!"

"What, seriously?" he muttered to himself as he halted his chakra flow and the colorful man's outline began to shimmer into view. "Oh, hey! You're right!"

"Damn it!" the restrained man swore. "Gos! Onryou!" he addressed his comrades in a rising panic, "Help!"

Hinata, having driven her fight with the traditional ninja into the trees' cover to avoid the nail user's attacks, had finally managed to block the short man's route with a web of wires stretching between her new explosive needles. If her opponent put any pressure on a single line, he would be caught in a conflagration filled with high velocity steel slivers. The girl unleashed her rebuilt Yin and Yang against the trapped man and prepared her right arm's dual stake launchers to fire explosive bolts in whichever direction the enemy planned to dodge. The deadly top bore down on the ebony-clad shinobi and he moved to the right, so she aimed her arm in the same direction. Her fingers twitched, pulling down on the tiny wires that acted as triggers and the pre-fractured rods were let loose with a burst of hot steam. They flew at the man as he drew his second short blade and their fuses dwindled to nothing. The female prodigy smirked; she had this one.

Or so she thought. In a flash, the traditional ninja jabbed his short shorts out straight in front of him in perfect alignment with the airborne rods then thrust his arms akimbo, knocking the stakes into the figurative minefield of wires and needles to his sides. He was easily clear from the ensuing explosion as he sheathed his short ninja blades, drew a pair of shuriken from where his jacket met his pants, and then flung the projectiles at the genius girl with amazing ferocity.

The Hyuuga easily batted them to the side with her bladed gauntlet as she remotely controlled her deadly top to turn into the enemy, but the minor distraction of the ninja stars did its job. Yin and Yang spun like mad, its curved blades blurred around the rim, into the enemy's position, missing by a hair as Onryou made a hasty retreat through the now-cleared needle minefield.

"Damn it!" She twisted in place, loading another pair of explosive bolts and firing wildly at the ebony-clad ninja, failing to hit him by an embarrassingly wide margin. She dashed after him but soon encountered a half-completed ring of arm-sized rusted nails floating in midair and pointing towards her. The small metal pikes flew forward and Hinata was forced into an elaborate dance to avoid them all as they stuck into the ground upon which she stood.

Naruto, having drawn a kunai from one of the smaller seals on his arm, was preparing to run its sharp metal edge across his restrained target when the shorter ninja appeared directly in front of him, snatched the knife from his struggling hand, and stabbed said hand with his own weapon. The Uzumaki, realizing his predicament, released his quarry and leapt back into the trees behind him. He yanked the knife from his hand and the deep wound immediately began to smoke shut thanks to the accursed fox. He unsealed his favored ninjato and was hit with a sudden realization.

"Silence!" he shouted, "Push forward now!" He stuck his sword into the ground and its glyphs glowed brilliantly as it synched with the earth below. He pulled it free and an attached whip of stone followed.

"Right!" the girl yelled back, understanding the tactical advantage the intelligent duo now had. Before, the two had been forced to fight on dual fronts, but now the hostile trio was located between them, trapped in the same disadvantage. She recalled Yin and Yang, sent a surge of electrical energy through it, and then lobbed it at Gosunkugi. The spinning blades crackled as the top of death spun wildly towards the nail wielder.

Said ninja cracked an amused smile and pulled his heavy cloak off, throwing it to the ground with a significant 'clunk' of metal on metal. He began to move his arms like a boisterous soothsayer and the elongated rusted spikes in his discarded clothing moved out of their holsters and began to rotate around his body in a rough spherical shape, slowly building up speed in preparation for clashing with Silence's deadly disk.

The Hyuuga frowned behind her blue, smooth mask as her Byakugan finally got a good look at the man. She could faintly make out chakra strings connecting the free-standing weapons to his fingers; the lines couldn't be more than a few molecules in diameter but they were definitely there, revealed by the amplified glow of chakra in the girl's bloodline eyes.

"I get it…" she mused as her superior vision noted that every nail was rising into the air with the strings' support, including the ones behind her. "Curse!" she called to her temporary ally as the crimson masked genius struggled to fight off the genjutsu user as well as the traditional ninja, "This nail guy's a puppeteer!"

"A puppeteer?!" he shot back as he hacked a log to pieces, convinced that Genseien was merely projecting a piece of wood before his mirrored eyes. He instantly broke off from the skirmish, brushed by Onryou and receiving a minor gash as payment, and approached Gosunkugi with his modified sword drawn. "Lemme handle him! I know how puppeteers work!"

The genius girl nodded and, using Yin and Yang to distract the spike wielding ninja, dashed by Naruto in the opposite direction. Her intelligent rival was obviously having trouble with the illusions cast by the blindfolded shinobi and, combined with the close quarters combat provided by the ebony-clad ninja, was losing to the combination. "Looks like that genjutsu guy's extending his techniques to this 'Onryou' as well," she analyzed, blinking hard as the colorful blind man shimmered from her excellent vision, "Strong stuff, too. My Byakugan's losing him from time to time. Must be directly applying chakra to my senses…" She bound a coil of wires around the lethal disk and lobbed the weapon in the midst of the scattering duo. Utilizing its remote control, the closet genius commanded the circular device to spin chaotically in random patterns around her enemies, enclosing them in an electrified kill zone. They didn't look too worried.

The Uzumaki smirked as he glanced back at his temporary partner's setup before resetting his gaze against the puppeteer. He sealed his blade into one of the large marks on his back and, in the return motion, unsealed a total of eight kunai from the smaller tattoos on his arms and charged them with enough chakra to burn through anything. The moment he was ready, the snakelike line of arm-length square nails shifted towards him and whipped forward.

An eternity of minutes passed as the two geniuses fought with their backs to the other. Whenever Silence encountered a technique beyond her specialties she called upon Curse and he stepped in while she ensured safety for his blind spots. Likewise, if the trio of enemies switched tactics and Naruto got into trouble as a result, Hinata backed him up as he watched her back. Slowly yet surely, the prodigies were inherently learning to work around the other's weaknesses to form a perfect team.

The sun began to noticeably dip into the afternoon sky, and the battleground was littered with scorch marks, destroyed and ignored weaponry, and small smoking craters. The ancient trees bore new marks of intense conflict, and the once grassy clearing around the mostly stationary puppeteer had been ground into burnt dirt and mud. All parties involved displayed signs of weariness; just because they possessed large stores of chakra did not mean they couldn't tire out with such a high number of hostile antics.

"Had enough yet?" Gosunkugi asked with a grin, chest rising and falling as he panted. The nails still revolved around him in midair, but he was using fewer and fewer of the rusted skewers as time went on.

"Not quite," the blonde answered. He brought his ninjato to bear and aimed it at the man. "Who do you guys work for?"

The spike user cocked a curious eyebrow at the masked duo and glanced at his equally puzzled teammates before looking back. "You don't know…? I thought you captured Shia…"

"She doesn't know," he promptly returned. "And Giza died before he could tell us."

"There's that 'Shia' again," the Hyuuga wondered as she threw a hidden look of skepticism towards the boy to her left. "I'm makin' him spill everything about her when we're done here…"

Genseien chuckled. "You know," he raised his open palms in a friendly gesture, "Does it really matter if you know who we work for? I mean, you can't be on our side at this point, not anymore."

Silence decided to add her two cents. "Giza mentioned that everyone in the 'advance recon' is a criminal from your village and hates its leader. Why is that?"

"The answer is simple," Onryou replied in his deep, formal voice, "All of us have a grudge of some sort against our leader. My clan predates the creation of ninjustu and genjutsu, so every ninja produced by my family specializes in close quarters combat, yet he still has the power to hold my clan hostage. If we do not supply him with shinobi, he will eradicate my entire family."

"My village got razed to the ground when I was a kid," the genjutsu user spoke up, "Turned out the guys that did it were under his supervision, so I joined up for revenge."

"I laid railroad track with my old man," Gosunkugi explained as one of his massive nails spun lazily next to his head, "Before my folks got killed in the last great war, so my three little sisters and I were orphans for a while. We joined the village for the promise of 'bread, water, and shelter'. 'Course, you can have all that in a prison…" The rotating nail halted at the implication.

"Then why?" the blonde asked, "Why do you follow his orders? Why don't you join us? You could have your revenge…"

"There're a few assholes that are still loyal," the nail user interjected with anger in his voice, "And we don't know who or how many there are. If there's even a hint of betrayal, we're all fucked. That's why we gotta do what we gotta do…"

Hinata delved further into the mystery. "Giza also mentioned that your leader is coming to Konoha. Who is he? Maybe we can help…"

"We don't want your help," the blindfolded illusionist spat, "And we don't want your sympathy. This is our revenge, not yours. I won't be happy unless I help mount that bastard's head on a pike."

"Sounds familiar," Naruto mused with a certain Uchiha in mind, "If they're as single-minded as Sasuke, then there's no helping them." He tapped his female ally on the shoulder. "They're gone," he said with humility, "We can't help them if they don't want it."

"Yeah," she nodded, accepting what had to be done. She loaded the final two explosive rods into the stake launchers on her right arm as she thumbed the remote for Yin and Yang. The intelligent duo burst forward for the enemies and she whispered into his ear before parting, "Go for the genjutsu guy. I'll back you up when the time comes."

The blonde didn't know what she meant exactly, but he trusted her judgment; she was better at debunking the art of illusions anyway. "Wait a sec," an observation struck him, "There are no eye holes in her mask and she really knows how to dispel genjutsu without too much effort. Isn't there a bloodline that does that…?" His mind instantly dropped the train of thought as Genseien shimmered from view and he went into a defensive stance, batting away the rusty nails encircling him and keeping his azure eyes open for the invisible man.

The blue-haired girl kept her Byakugan focused on the illusionist, Onryou, and the puppeteer's airborne weapons. She had to time things just right in order to eliminate one source of their woes. She swung her left arm, the attached gauntlet's blade clashing with the traditional ninja's dark short swords with glints of sparks announcing the metals' contact. She purposely caught an upturned root with her heel and fell backwards, narrowly avoiding having her head removed as the short shinobi swung one of his blades. Kicking back with both legs, her left foot knocked the short sword out of the man's extended arm before her right appendage's momentum swung her body back into the upright position. In the same motion, she aimed her stake launchers at the opponent and fired one of the final two rods into the close quarter's specialist's shoulder. The projectile wasn't stopped by bone, so instead it passed through and exploded against a tree a ways back. The intended affect, however, was delivered as Onryou clutched his wound and put distance between them. Hinata's superior vision saw Curse systematically fighting off the barrage of angular spikes and a path, however small, opened between the nails. She burst forward when she saw her chance.

Naruto was having a rough time dealing with the constant distraction of the rusty armaments coupled with the impending threat of an invisible assassin. Any small opening between the nails could allow a deathblow hidden from his eyes to pass through, and taking the time to 'secure' the temporary pathways took away from his concentration and allowed several massive spikes to bury themselves into his flesh. He couldn't afford to spend time or effort in removing the rusty things either, because doing so would only break his concentration even more, thus allowing more nails to surpass his defense. Another small break in the line opened up and the Uzumaki only glanced at it once before averting his gaze elsewhere. Suddenly, the sixth sense in the back of his skull felt another presence nearby and his head shot around to find the air next to him vibrating so lightly that a mere glance would easily miss it. He moved to swing his blade at Genseien, but he knew his body was turned too far in the other direction to make it in time. He began to consider dipping into the fox's chakra…

When a flash of blue bumped into him. In that moment, the blonde's senses slowed everything down and he saw the world crawl by. His azure eyes noted another nail thrusting forward as Silence, who was now at his back, grasped the shimmering air with both hands and moved the genjutsu user directly in front of the advancing spike. His slowed vision clearly saw the blood burst from the enemy's chest as the weapon thoroughly pierced the man's heart. The crimson liquid shone brilliantly in the afternoon sun and the sharpness of the rusted spike's edge appeared as an infinite canyon of reddened iron. As the fraction of a second passed, the speed of reality caught up and the boy was surprised to find his ally embracing him tightly enough to somewhat constrict his breathing.

"Shit!" Gosunkugi swore due to the friendly fire. His reaction time had been reduced during the course of the battle, so the heightened possibility of him accidentally killing a comrade with a close attack had become so high it came true. He clenched his hands into fists and pulled his arms back, chakra wires translating the motion into another attack: every nail encircling the enemy shooting inwards with fantastic speed.

In the span of a heartbeat, Hinata pulled Naruto to the ground, creating as little surface area as their combined bodies could manage. The moment they hit the dirt, Yin and Yang's internal generator spun like mad. As the nails neared, the electrical field of the circular device activated and the rusted metal weapons were violently thrown away in the synchronized magnetic wave.

"Shit, shit, shit!" the puppeteer threw a fit as his mind raced. His concentration had fallen to his pent up frustration. He reformed several energy strings, scooped up some nearby angular spikes, and tossed them at the duo.

The genius girl had the advantage at this point. She unattached the deadly top and tossed it at the oncoming weapons, activating the magnetic field when it was clear of her and Curse. Once again, Gosunkugi's attack was nullified by a wave of opposing magnetism.

The blonde broke off from his temporary ally and confronted the wounded Onryou, capitalizing on the opponent's wounded shoulder. The boy summoned a few earth clones and, after surrounding the increasingly desperate ninja, unceremoniously inflicted several wounds on the traditional shinobi. Consciousness fading from blood loss, the close quarters combat specialist fell to his knees and passed out onto the scorched dirt face first.

"That's it, Goddammit!" the nail user shouted in anger as his second teammate went down. He shot his arms out away from his body and exerted the last of his chakra into his final technique. Yin and Yang spun into him with crackling blades, but he winced and took the intense pain like a man, bending over slightly so the circular weapon would be too entangle with his body to be extracted. His eyes darted back and forth, noting that the geniuses were both closing in on him simultaneously. When their distance became satisfactory, he grasped all the chakra strings and every nail scattered across the battlefield shot up and formed a loose, rotating dome around the standing combatants. "See you in hell!" he screamed against the pain and pulled his arms in as he fell to a knee.

The spikes filling the air ceased their rotation and shot inward, sharp end first; it was a mutual suicide technique. Naruto and Hinata instantly realized what was happening but they were far too close to Gosunkugi to escape. The Hyuuga swallowed hard as her swift mind struggled to come up with a solution quickly enough to work.

"Yin and Yang's too far away to reach in time," she analyzed, "Looks like I'll have to use gentle fist techniques…" She began to fall into position when she was suddenly embraced around the abdomen. Glancing back in surprise, she found Curse holding her tightly with his back to the incoming elongated nails.

"Hang on!" he shouted as he dipped into the fox's chakra and applied it to his body. With a great amount of effort, he pushed back with his legs and, along with his ally, flew backwards against the rusty barrage. He winced as a handful of the large nails grazed and stuck into his back, but he emerged with no more than three still painfully attached to him.

As the duo cleared the hailstorm of metal, they witnessed the angular spikes impale Gosunkugi at every angle. He had been the center of the technique and, therefore, the recipient of the full brunt of the suicide move. The nails penetrated him at every possible configuration and there was no evidence that there was even a body underneath the rusted metal save for the dripping of blood and the occasional exposed bone.

"Are you okay?" Silence asked as she moved around to Curse's back and examined his wounds. "Well, no vitals are hit," she diagnosed, "But you got some serious wounds here- what are you doing?!"

"What?" he inquired as he reached back to pull the three spikes from his flesh. Each one hurt like hell and he winced with every motion. With the final weapon removed, he sat on the ground, panting hard. His masked head swiveled around when he felt a pleasant tingling on his back. "What're you doing?"

"Healing the worst injuries," Hinata responded as her medical techniques worked their magic on the most horrific of the wounds. After several minutes, her impromptu patient was stable and she sat a few feet away from him, totally exhausted. She chuckled, "Thanks a bunch for saving my ass."

"Thanks for saving mine," he replied with a smile as his minor wounds began healing with the aid of the nine-tailed demon's chakra. He glanced at the statue of rusted metal and was struck with a horrid realization. His head shot back and forth in search for his target without success. With apprehension lining his voice, he asked, "Where's Onryou…?"

--

Said traditional ninja stumbled away from the battlefield while clutching his wounds closely in an attempt to stem the bleeding. Thankfully, it was working, and he also seemed to have evaded the genius couple. "I'm going home," he thought as pleasant memories of his ancient clan flooded his mind, "They won't miss me here." He passed the corpse of the loyalist, Sonin, and considered what his fate would have been if he had not been forced to serve his tyrant of a ruler.

His musings didn't last long. Before he even realized what was going on, a giant snake erupted from the forest behind him and swallowed him whole. Normally, he would have cut his way out despite his wounds, but the oversized beast was a powerful summon; it disappeared into its own dimension, sealing the doomed fate of the ebony-clad shinobi.

A certain Sannin hiding in the skin of an amorphous Grass ninja oversaw the unorthodox execution with a sickly grin. He gazed at his dead subordinates- also concealed by the other Grass ninjas' flesh- nailed to the massive tree. "That's what you get for killing my servants," he muttered before exiting the scene.

--

As the survival portion of the Chunin exams came to an end with too many contestants passing, elite squads of jounin prowled practice arena fourty-four in search of the test's dropouts, if any were left to be found.

Squad twenty-one was one such team on this search. The day had been unbelievably slow, since almost all participants had already been accounted for, dead or alive. However, standard procedure dictated that the training area be searched over with a fine tooth and comb a second time should not every genin be located on the first pass. This happened every single time, and even then there were almost always rookie shinobi totally missing, vanished into the darkness of the deadly forest.

Haru, a distant relative to Inoichi Yamanaka, searched alongside his comrades as they passed effortlessly beneath the ancient trees' canopy for bodies. He was the black sheep of the family, preferring to keep his distance from family affairs and instead be more involved with his duties as a jounin. He stifled a yawn as he leapt off another branch; he was bored out of his mind. "We're not gonna find anything anyway…" he whined internally. "I mean, there's only a few genin not- whoa…" His train of thought ended instantly when he spotted a scorched section of earth inhabited by a lone individual. He signaled his team and they halted, peering at the scene.

The strange man was in a straight jacket and walked as if inflicted with cerebral palsy. His unruly mane of hair looked like someone had dumped buckets of paint with every color of the spectrum on his head and forgot to wash. He staggered in place around a man-sized column of rusted metal and there was a trail of blood running off the battlefield into the cover of the forest's thick foliage.

"What's his affiliation?" one of Haru's comrades whispered, "I don't see a village headband."

"Let me figure it out," the estranged Yamanaka said as he balanced his body against the tree in preparation for his family's patented mind-body switch. Content that his body wouldn't fall to certain death when 'unattended', he performed the technique and his mind transferred into the distant stranger.

Upon entry, Haru wondered why it was so simple to enter the unusual man's mind; there was always a minute amount of resistance due to the invading personality shoving the original to the side. "Alright, let's access his memories," he thought to himself as he delved into the odd man's mind…

To find almost no substance. There were no old memories, or at least none from before a certain point. He accessed the oldest thought he could find in the stranger to find a fixed vision of a clouded individual coming into view. Slowly, the image clarified as the figure spoke.

"It seems you survived," the still-blurry man said with a sly voice, "I am impressed by your tenacity." The memory continued as its subject came into focus. "Your eyes are full of hate. That's good; hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength…" The speaker came into crystal clarity and Haru gasped when he recognized the man.

"I need to warn the others!" The possessed body swung towards his comrades and he opened his mouth to speak. "Ow! What the hell is this?!" The stranger's tongue moved in front of his eyes and the estranged Yamanaka noticed incredibly sharp piercings lining the rim alongside… "Is that barbed wire?!" He gazed at his teammates and a radio crackled in his ear.

"Hey Mosh-mosh," the voice said, "You see 'em, right? Go ahead and kill 'em."

The stranger's possessed body began a bum rush at the elite jounin and Haru was panicking. "Why can't I control his body?! This is impossible! It's impossible!" His internal monologue froze as 'Mosh-mosh' scaled a tree and leapt at an impossible angle at his startled teammates. "Wait, no… it is possible…" he came to a horrid realization, "If he doesn't have a mind to begin with…"

Haru watched helplessly as his jounin comrades were slaughtered and passed away when his mind broke away from the stranger but had no living body to return to.


As usual, I'm still busy as hell with work. I know I keep saying 'don't expect another chapter 'till the beginning of May', so I'm just gonna say this: I'm very busy and don't know when I'll have the time to write (that is, until classes end in May).