Alright! Part 3! This chapter was actually a lot longer, but upon further consideration, I moved the chapter break. So, I'm almost half-way done with Chapter 14(: I might finish it tonight, I might not. Depends on if I get the rest of my homework done. Haha oh, school...
Anyway! On to the story! :DD Make sure you press that cute little review button at the bottom of the page! (:
Mind, Body, and Soul
By LexLogikk
Chapter Thirteen
Third Person Point of View
There was a spark in the air when Moeru woke up the next morning with the sunlight peeking into her room, splashed across her tan-colored carpet and lighting up the whole room. She found that she was already smiling and buzzing with excitement that coursed through her veins and tickled at her fingertips as she hurried to get ready. She went across the hall to wake up her sister, only to find that she was already up, bouncing with the same kind of energy. "Good morning," the two greeted each other. Emi smiled as she fumbled around with the clasp to her kunai holster that wrapped around her leg. "You ready for today?" Emi asked her littler sister.
Moeru couldn't respond in any other way but, "yes!" She smirked excitedly. "You?"
Emi nodded back to her sister, finally getting the holster to stay in place. "Yeah, I'm ready. I'm pumped. I can't wait!"
The two laughed. "Well, hurry up and finish getting ready. We have to leave soon if we're gonna be early."
"Or on-time, according to Yama-sensei, right?" Emi grinned and winked at her sister.
"Yes," Moeru agreed amusedly. "Or on-time." She smirked and left the room to pack her own holsters full of her tools.
Emi smiled, bemused. She grabbed the three other holsters that she wore around her thighs and secured them around her legs before filling up the pouches of her utility belt. She turned to look at herself in her full-length mirror, admiring her image. Her training with Yama had been paying off in the tone of her muscle, she noticed with pride. She just hoped that her training would be enough to get her through the next Exam.
She stepped out into the hall, pulling on her favorite black jacket, the one that hung past the hem of her shorts, just as Moeru stepped out of her own room in her usual attire. Moeru smirked. "Ready to go?"
"Yep," Emi said. "Let's get going. Iyasu and Yama are probably going to be waiting for us to get there already."
"I can't wait for breakfast!" Moeru said excitedly as they hurried out the door.
The two of them scurried across the town as quickly as they could to meet the rest of their team for their morning meal.
Yama welcomed them as they arrived. "Good morning, you two. You both get enough sleep last night?" she asked.
"Yes, sensei," they replied simultaneously, earning entertained giggles from the both of them and an amused smile from their sensei.
Yama flipped the long black hair off of her shoulder. "Good. Let's make sure you get fed properly. Iyasu is already inside." She smirked and turned around, moving to go inside the restaurant.
The sisters followed their sensei into the restaurant. They followed her to the back of the restaurant where they joined Iyasu and ate their fill of food that filled up their stomachs until they could eat no more. Finally, once everyone had finished with their food, Yama looked at her three students with a serious expression. "So," she started. "Are you guys ready for today?" she asked, looking each of her students in the eyes.
They all immediately responded positively. "Yeah, of course sensei!"
"Definitely, sensei! I was born ready!"
"I've been waiting for this for weeks!"
Yama smiled proudly at her students. They certainly had grown in her time with them. "Just promise me you three will stick together in there. It's a whole different world in that arena."
The three of them all look at each other before nodding at their sensei. "Of course. We're a team."
"Good," Yama said. "Then it's time to be going. You're going to be late to the second Exam if you don't get leaving."
Her team smiled at her enthusiastically. "Right!" The three of them scurried to exit the restaurant and hurry off toward the forested training ground they were due to be at. Emi couldn't help but lose the fight to the butterflies that were flitting around in her stomach and lungs as they saw the mass of students standing outside the training ground. It's time! Emi thought excitedly. It's time! It's finally time!
Finally, they reached the rest of the students that had clustered around, waiting for the examiners to begin the test. Emi looked around — they were the first of their age group to reach the training ground, apparently, because she did not see a single familiar face.
She glanced over at her sister, who seemed to also be bouncing with energy. "Ah, I wish they would hurry up and start the exam. I don't know how long I can stand waiting like this!" Moeru said, boiling over with excitement.
"I know, I know," Iyasu added in with a grin. "This is going to take far too long. I can't wait to get in there."
"What do you think we'll be doing in there?" Emi asked the other two.
Iyasu and Moeru both shrugged. "I don't know," Moeru admitted. "With any luck, we'll be fighting something in there."
"Hopefully," Iyasu echoed.
Anko, the woman from yesterday, dropped down in front of all the students, looking around at each of them. "Alright! Everybody, gather up! I'm not gonna explain this twice, so you're going to want to listen up," she announced, pausing to give everyone a chance to quiet down.
"Alright, so this is how things are going to work: you all will be going into this training ground behind me," she told them with a sadistic smile. "It's nicknamed the Forest of Death," she added, a flash in her eyes. "Back in the day, the fights you would engage in inside this chain-link fence would be to the death. Unfortunately, killing during the Chuunin Selection exams is now grounds for immediate disqualification.
"Anyway, you will each be given one of two scrolls — each scroll will have either 'Heaven' or 'Earth' written on it. Your goal will be to collect the other scroll to make a complete scroll. That means if you are given a Heaven scroll, you will be looking for an Earth scroll, and vise versa." Anko smiled darkly. "As you can tell, this means that only half of you will be able to proceed on in after this test, assuming all scrolls are recovered and returned to the central tower."
There was a muttering between all the Genin.
"You will have 3 days to complete the task. Any of those who have not reached the center tower by sunset on the third day with both a Heaven and Earth scroll will automatically be disqualified. Only those who have both scrolls and are at the tower by the deadline will be allowed to continue on in these exams. Understood?" Anko asked, looking around at all the Genin.
"Alright, then," she continued. "Everyone will be assigned a gate from which to enter the forest and will be given a scroll. You will be behind these barriers so that no other teams know which scroll you have. Once everyone has received their scrolls, we will line you all up around the perimeter of the forest, and the test will begin." Anko smirked at all the Genin. "Good luck, to all," she said before jumping away, contemplating all the dumplings she was going to eat.
Emi looked over at her team. "Yes!" she exclaimed finally. "We're battling!"
Moeru was shaking with excitement. "I can't wait to get in there. Survival skills and battle skills. What kind of things do you think will be in there?"
"I'm not sure," Iyasu said, a contemplative look on his face. "But we have to make sure we set up shelter and find a source for both food and water before we think about getting into battle."
"Of course," Emi said with a smirk. "Can't kick anyone's ass if we are dying of starvation."
Moeru bounced on the balls of her feet. "Let's get in line to get a scroll. I want to hurry up as much as we can."
The blonde girl smiled. "You're ridiculously excited, aren't you? I've never seen you like this before. It's rather impressive."
Moeru winked at her sister. "I'm just ready to prove that we can do this. You know, that we deserve to be Chuunin. We're good enough. And I can't wait to make sure everyone knows it."
Emi and Iyasu both laughed in chorus. "We are good enough. So let's prove it," Emi said with a grin.
"Let's," Iyasu said, his purple eyes sparkling with excitement.
Emi put her hand in the center of the group. "Ready to do this? As a team?"
Moeru and Iyasu didn't even hesitate to put their hands on top of hers. "Definitely," Iyasu chimed.
Emi grinned. "Good. Let's stick together in there."
"Always," Moeru said.
"Chuunin on three?" Emi asked with a perked eyebrow and a grin on her face.
"Chuunin on three. Just not too loud," Moeru said with a matching smirk.
"One,"
"Two,"
"Three! Chuunin!" the three said together, throwing their hands up. Moeru smiled at her team. "Let's go get that scroll."
The three of them made their way to the side wall of the forest, where there were stations set up for people to be given scrolls. Finally, the group made it through the line, filing into the small dugout. The screen slid shut behind them.
One of the examiners stood at the back of the dugout, with black hair and dead-looking eyes. "Alright, who is your Jounin?" he asked, a bored look on his face, likely from the on going tediousness of his task.
"Yama Tomi, from the Leaf village," Emi said, taking on the role of spokesperson.
"Ahh, Yama's kids," the man said, a grin in his eyes. "She treating you well?"
"She's great," Emi said politely. "Thank you for asking."
He nodded. "Well, you kids will be entering the forest from gate 18, which will be a ways to the left of where we are now." He reached into a bag behind him, pulling out a scroll, mostly green with a white seal wrapped around it. When he handed it to Emi, she saw that the seal had "Earth" written on it. "Don't mention which scroll you have until you have entered the forest and are away from others. The other examiners are supposed to be keeping people from listening in on this, but you never know what kind of shinobi there are — some of them might be able to hear us anyway."
"Thank you," Emi said, bowing respectively to the examiner, Moeru and Iyasu following suit.
"You're welcome," he said, returning to a bored monotone. "Good luck in the second Chuunin exam." He turned to a clipboard hanging on the wall and flipped through papers, marking off something, which Emi presumed to be her team. Emi smiled at her teammates as she put the scroll away with a nod to tell them that she would take care of their scroll without saying it. She slipped the scroll into one of the many pouches hanging from her body. With a final goodbye to the examiner, the three of them left the room. All of them then decided to make their way to the gate they were assigned to - gate 18, which indeed turn out to be a great distance away from where they started, almost on the completely opposite side of the seemingly perfectly circular forest.
Finally, they reached the gate, a large 18 hanging over the doorway. Emi sighed, leaning against the chain fence. "I can't wait till they open the gates. I'm ready to go, already," she said, watching as teams began to slowly line up at their own designated gates. She found herself looking for Sasuke, but saw no one familiar around her.
"I agree," Moeru said. "I hope they don't have too many more teams to go through before the exam starts. We need to get this thing going," she said exasperatedly.
"Just relax, guys," Iyasu said to calm his teammates. "It'll start soon enough. We were in the middle of the line, and they probably got through the rest of the line in the time that we took to get all the way around the arena. Besides, it's not going to be a whole lot of action in the beginning anyway, so it might be a good idea to calm down a little so that we don't rush right into anything. Let's start out with a level head so that we approach this thing right."
Emi laughed. "Since when are you the voice of reason?" she asked teasingly. "I thought Moeru was the old guy of the group."
"Hey!" Moeru said objectively.
Emi winked at her sister. "You know it's true," she said with a playful tone.
Just as Emi started to continue on, the three of them heard a voice over a megaphone. "The Second Chuunin Exam is about to begin. Teams, please ready yourselves in front of your assigned gates."
Moeru couldn't quite tell if it was Anko's voice or not, but she assumed it wasn't — it seemed too mellowed down. Never the less, Emi, Moeru, and Iyasu all readied themselves to bolt into the forest, all of them peering intently at the trees within, the deep forest that seemed to go on forever into pitch blackness.
"The Second Chuunin Exam will begin in five seconds. Five, four, three, two, one! Begin!" the voice called, the chain fences swinging open to allow the teams all entrance to the forest. Emi, Moeru, and Iyasu all shot forward, springing into the forest with great, intensive speed. As they wound through the trees, keeping low to the ground because they knew most of the others would travel through the tree tops, they began to hear the sounds of critters and creatures that lived in the arms of the trees.
Moeru finally led the team to a clearing after about twenty minutes of running through the trees, following the stream they had found earlier on. They made sure not to stop anywhere too far away from the stream, but knew better than to make camp directly next to it; to do that would be to simply ask to be found. "Let's wait around here for a while, see if anyone else comes through. If it's good, we'll set up a camp here and use this as our grouping point."
"Want me to scout the perimeter?" Emi asked. "Make sure we can know if there's someone coming before they actually get to us?"
Moeru nodded. "Yeah," she agreed. "Sounds good. You run faster than the rest of us, so you'll be able to take care of the perimeter. Throw a kunai toward the center of the clearing if you hear or see someone coming so that we can ready ourselves."
"Alrighty, sis. Iyasu, you want to get a fire pit started? Don't light it, just get it made."
Iyasu nodded. "Sure thing."
"And I suppose I'll set up some traps around the area so that we can have so peace of mind," Moeru suggested.
Emi nodded. "One more thing," she said before the other two turned away. "We should set up a code to let each other know we really are who we say we are. You know — because it's so easy to just use a transformation jutsu to look like someone else. I want to be able to trust you guys."
Moeru nodded back, a thoughtful look on her face. "So how about we answer questions about our training with Yama-sensei. Like what we did on our first day of practice, and where we went with her for the first few weeks, what we did then, et cetera. Sound good?"
Iyasu nodded. "Or stuff about what we've been working on. Like our abilities and jutsus and times we've had through training. Specifics."
Emi nodded. "Good. Any time we're separated, we have to answer a question like that, so keep them in mind for each other. And no two people can leave. Two people needs to stay at camp at all times, so that there's a voucher system for the people returning."
Moeru laughed. "Emi, you're getting too deep into this. Just go watch the perimeter."
The blonde rolled her eyes, but laughed slightly as well. "Right. I'll be back."
"Try to stay where I can see you!" Moeru shot out teasingly as her sister left. "Wouldn't want to have to tell me what your birthday is!"
"Shut up!" Emi shot back with a snicker as she started running through the trees, keeping a careful eye out for any kind of movement around camp. I can't believe we're finally in the second exam, she thought as she ran. It's finally time to show the examiners what we've got. I just hope someone stumbles across us soon. She laughed to herself as she got a thought. Maybe we should set up camp and then go looking for trouble. We're a strong enough team, pretty well balanced… we'll probably be able to take on whoever we come across. And if we find them, we can always choose to ignore them and find a different group. If we sit like ducks in a pond, we'll only get to fight whoever finds us. That won't be much fun.
She grinned. Well, I'll finish this sweep and pitch it to Moeru and Iyasu. I'm sure they don't want to wait for the grass to grow, either. They're just as aggressive as I am, or about so.
Emi nodded, having made up her mind, and continued her watch of the perimeter of the clearing, looking around intently. If I find someone before, though, we can jump on it. That would be great.
Just then, she heard the sound of a branch snapping, someone falling out of a tree a relatively short distance away from her, and birds flying away swiftly from the great sound of disturbance. Emi couldn't stop the grin that automatically reached her face. She took out a kunai from her pouch, turned toward the clearing where Iyasu and Moeru were, and threw it, watching it sink into the ground, closer to Moeru than Iyasu. Moeru looked up at Emi with curiosity, which Emi answered by holding up a hand, palm toward Moeru. Moeru knew that meant that Emi was going to check it out before they made their attack. Emi then waved her hand slightly to tell them to follow along with her, just in case, and the two of them did just that.
Emi turned and started to stealthily make her way over to the sound. As she got closer, she began to hear the sound of groans — the person that had fallen obviously had not broken their fall, and had hit the ground quite hard. The thought made Emi shake with excitement. Finally, Emi could see the team. She wasn't sure what village they were from, but they definitely seemed novice to her, not at all aware that there were any other teams in the entire forest, let alone of her presence, or the presence of her teammates. They seemed to be about their age, but as Emi got closer and was able to distinctly hear their voices, she knew they weren't from the hidden leaf village.
"Jeez Hiro! Why are you so god damned loud!" one of them said, not himself quietly. "You're going to get us caught by someone!"
"I'm going to get us caught?" a different boy said, Emi assumed the one addressed as Hiro. "You're the one yelling!"
"Shut up, both of you!" their last teammate said authoritatively. "You're both being loud, and therefore both of you just need to stop talking."
Too late, Emi thought smugly. She turned, looking over her shoulder at Moeru and Iyasu, and signaled them. She nodded, holding up three fingers as they positioned themselves. She counted down. They pounced.
The other team didn't even know what hit them. Each of them attacked a different member of the opposing team, lashing out quickly. Moeru went after the leader, with fireballs shooting out at him in controlled bursts that hit him square in the chest. Iyasu went after Hiro, the boy who had fallen from the tree in the first place, landing one of his blows on the boy's left arm, air pressure puncturing straight through the meaty tissue. Emi, then, took the last of the three, landing two specific blows, the first to his jaw that sent him off his balance, the second to his chest, before grappling with him, attaching chakra strings to his wrists and attaching those to kunai, planting the kunai in the ground so that he could not move his arms; she finished him with a kick to the abdomen that landed him flat on his back, the air knocked out of his lungs.
Moeru swept the legs of her opponent, pinning him to the ground quickly with a knee on his chest and a kunai knife to his throat. "Where is your scroll?" she demanded, putting a dark tone to her voice to intensify her threat. "Where is it?" she demanded again quickly.
He looked at her stubbornly, as if he were about to try to put up a fight. Moeru pushed the kunai against his neck threateningly. "Where… is… it?" she asked again.
The boy frowned deeply. She could see the curses he was stringing in his mind about his team. "Achiko has it."
Moeru turned to look at Emi, who had the other boy, who swiftly searched the boy for the scroll. She finally found it in the kunai pouch on his thigh, and pulled it out. She frowned when she saw that it was an Earth scroll, holding it up for the others. "Earth," she announced.
Moeru also frowned, but shook it off quickly, turning to the boy she was kneeling on top of to pin to the ground. "Thank you for your cooperation," she said smugly. "Put 'em down, guys," she said suddenly to her teammates, her fingers quickly reaching the pressure point on the boy's neck that made him pass out. Once he was unconscious, she stood up, looking over to the others. "Well, that was for nothing," she said as the others knocked out their opponents.
Iyasu shook his head. "Not at all. We can use this as a bargaining chip if we get in a pinch. And if we don't, that's one more team that can't go on. Anko never said we couldn't have more than two scrolls, just that we needed to have both a Heaven and an Earth scroll."
"True," Emi said with a nod. "This is a good thing, either way. Besides, think of it as a notch in our headboard, only without the sex and with battles instead. One team down, however many we can get at before the test ends to go!" she said with a grin.
The other two laughed. "Alright," Moeru said. "Why don't I take that one, so that we can keep one if we lose a battle? If we lose, we give up my scroll, not yours. Alright?"
Emi nodded as she tossed her sister the scroll. "Sounds good!" She smirked. "But I'm kind of feeling like going after someone else. Got that fighting urge in me now."
Moeru and Iyasu gave her an unsure look. "You think it's a good idea?" Moeru finally asked.
"Yeah, while we're still on our guard. Don't you think? While we're in the gear."
Iyasu shrugged. "I guess we never really got camp started…" he said.
Moeru sighed and nodded. "Sure. Let's go."
So the three of them set off to find another opponent. They made their ways through the forest, but minutes trickled by little by little, flowing into hour by hour, and the still had yet to come across anyone else. The only other human contact they'd gotten was when the sound of blood-curling screams reached their ears, and they all decided immediately that it would be best if they avoided the source of the sound, just to be safe. Finally, they all agreed to break to eat, Iyasu watching over the area as Emi and Moeru caught fish from the stream and cooked them over a fire. Their only disturbance was a snake slithering over Moeru's foot, causing Emi to shriek out in surprise. They then spent the rest of lunch on the run, eating while they ran, just to make sure they wouldn't be around for anyone that heard Emi scream. Moeru made sure to give her sister a slightly soured look before laughing as they packed up.
Once they had finished eating, they began to patrol for perspective battles again, but alas, they found no one else that day. The sun began to set, a shade starting fall over the forest, and the team agreed that it was time to set up camp for the night. The new clearing they found wasn't as good as the first they had found at the beginning of the day, but it would do for the night. They set up a few traps around their camp before their sleeping bags in the crevice between two very large tree roots, Iyasu agreeing to stay up and take the first watch.
Emi sighed as she settled into her bed roll, sinking into the warm fabric gratefully. But before she ever got the chance to fall asleep, she heard a rustling in the bushes to the right. Her eyes peered at the bush, and upon seeing nothing, she looked at Iyasu with curiosity in her eyes.
The brown haired boy smiled at her softly, shaking his head. "It was nothing. Go to sleep," he assured her.
Emi nodded back, but couldn't keep from pulling out a kunai from one of the pouches still fastened to her leg under her covers. She felt safer with the cold metal weapon in her hand. She drifted off into a light sleep.