It's far too early in the morning, Sakura decided, to have to put up with things like this. All of the rookie genin were gathered together at what she had come to think of as Team Seven's bridge, waiting for their jounin-sensei to arrive, and she was struck by how little seemed to have changed from their time at the academy. Granted, it had only been a few months since they all graduated, but she supposed that she had still expected some dramatic change now that they were all together for the first time as real ninja rather than students.
Shikamaru was asleep, slumped up against the bridge's railing and looking like he was about to fall in the river at any moment, while Naruto, Hinata, Ino, and Chouji talked quietly nearby, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter. The three members of Team Eight were standing together as well—about as far away from Sakura's friends as possible while still remaining on the bridge, she noticed—but they barely spoke to each other, and she wondered whether that was because they disliked each other or because they simply had nothing to say at the moment.
Not that I'm one to talk about being sociable, she scolded herself. After Kakashi's bland non-response to her question about whether she could—or should—tell Ino about Orochimaru and the chuunin exams, Sakura had been avoiding her friends for the past few days. While much of that had been because she simply felt too tired to spend any time with them, she couldn't deny that the fact that she possessed more information than they did made her feel a bit uncomfortable around them. It was something she would have to get used to, she knew, from both perspectives, but for the time being it was enough to make her want to keep her distance.
With any luck, that would be changing today. Kakashi had told them yesterday that they would have their first joint training exercise with the other teams today, and surely the entire situation would have to be explained beforehand. Unfortunately, the other two jounin-sensei seemed to have acquired Kakashi's habit of tardiness, leading to her own annoyed mood as she glanced at her watch and noted that they were now a full hour late.
She was also starting to get an uneasy crawling feeling on the back of her neck, as though someone was staring at her, and she glanced around as she tried to see if anything was obviously out of place. If Orochimaru did have spies within the Leaf, what was stopping him or them from striking before the exams started if given the right opportunity—like all of his targets conveniently gathered together in one place? Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Shino's posture stiffen slightly, though it was hard to tell given his concealing clothing, followed by his teammates' as he flashed a quick series of hand-symbols to them.
His insects, Sakura realized. Whatever she was feeling, he must have picked up on as well through them, and she felt her early-morning sleepiness melt away as she readied herself for a possible fight. Forcing herself to remain outwardly calm, she wandered over to where her friends were standing.
"Hinata-chan," she quietly said, tapping her teammate on the shoulder, "can you take a look around? Something feels strange, and I think Shino noticed it too."
Hinata nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, they bore the telltale signs of her activated bloodline ability. The others noticed as well, but Sakura shook her head minutely, hoping to get the message across to remain casual. The sign language Shino had used would have been very convenient right then, and she made a note to ask Kakashi if he could teach them something like it.
"Three, about twenty meters away," Hinata murmured, bringing Sakura's attention back to more immediately important matters. "Five o'clock angle, mostly hidden behind some rocks not far from the river bank." Then, more loudly, she called out, "You can come out now, Kakashi-sensei. Um…and Kurenai-san and Asuma-san, too."
Sakura felt a wave of relief wash over her when she heard that. While she had not really expected to be attacked in the middle of the village, even the possibility made her nervous. She supposed she should have expected the three jounin-sensei to do something like this, though, and she wondered how long they had been there before she or Shino noticed anything.
"One and a half minutes," Kakashi pronounced, appearing in a puff of smoke. Sakura winced; he did not sound pleased, and, while they appeared content to let him speak, the other two jounin who appeared with him managed to radiate disapproval as well.
"It took nearly a full minute before any of you even realized someone was watching you," he continued. "In that time, we could have disabled or killed all of you. Your reaction time after that was acceptable—barely—but we'll be working on your situational awareness from now on."
The female jounin standing next to him nodded. "That goes double for my team," she said. "You've gotten lazy, relying on Shino-kun's kikai insects to set up a perimeter, but they can be fooled in a number of ways. Most people won't bother to use those countermeasures, but you can't just assume that will be the case."
"Understood, Kurenai-sensei," the three members of Team Eight said, though Sakura thought Kiba sounded a bit sulky. Between his sunglasses and the high collar of his coat, Shino's expression was impossible to make out, while Sasuke was frowning—not that that was anything unusual. Still, she couldn't help but be impressed at the way they seemed to coordinate among themselves, especially when she remembered what Ino had said about their lack of teamwork at first.
The third jounin stepped forward a little ways, then sighed. "Chouji-kun," he said, an air of long-suffering patience entering his voice, "please wake up your teammate. Feel free to be as unpleasant as you—"
His voice cut off abruptly as he froze in place, and Sakura noticed with a tiny grin that his motionless shadow was touching the one cast by the bridge railing—into which he had just stepped, apparently not noticing that the angle of the sun was completely wrong for such a shadow to exist. At the same time, Shikamaru opened his eyes and gave a satisfied smirk. "Check, Asuma-sensei," he said, nodding once at his handiwork.
"Well, at least you're not completely hopeless," Asuma replied, though Sakura could hear the satisfaction in his voice that belied his indifferent words. "I know Ino-kun will tell you everything later, assuming you bother to listen to her, but try to at least pretend like you're paying attention."
Looking around, Sakura saw that both Chouji and Ino were wearing long-suffering expressions. Apparently this was fairly normal for Team Ten, and Sakura smiled at them sympathetically. As she watched, Shikamaru released his shadow bind, then stood up and moved over to join the other members of his team with a great show of reluctance.
"Now that all of that has been taken care of for now, here is what you'll be doing for your first exercise," Kakashi said, again capturing everyone's attention. "This scenario comes from the first organized chuunin examination following the war with the Rock, and it is based on an actual engagement from that war.
"A team of Leaf ninja managed to infiltrate a Rock command post and steal the codebook containing that month's master cipher keys. Upon discovering the theft, the Rock sent a hunter team after the Leaf ninja, while the Cloud—nominally allies of the Rock during that war—sent a team of their own. Supposedly they were there as support, but it was revealed later that they had orders to bring the codebook back to Cloud while reporting it destroyed."
Sakura frowned, puzzled slightly by something he had said. "Kakashi-sensei, couldn't the Rock just have issued new codes?" she asked, then blushed as she realized she had interrupted his explanation.
"Of course," Kakashi replied, "but it takes time to get the new codes distributed to everyone—not to mention the problem of trying to get them to infiltration teams deep within enemy territory, who happen to be the people most at risk from a compromised system. Also, Rock codes at that time followed a repeating cycle, which was something the Cloud knew but we didn't."
Off to her side, Sakura heard Sasuke make a tiny scoffing noise. "So they were going to double-cross their allies and hope they would be able to crack future codes using the stolen book," he said, his frown even more pronounced than usual. "That just proves that you'd have to be stupid to trust anyone."
"Back on topic," Kakashi said, a warning tone appearing in his voice, "each team will assume the role of one of the historical teams, with the same goals that team had. For the Rock: recover or destroy the codebook and kill anyone who came into contact with it. For the Cloud: recover the codebook without drawing the attention of the Rock. For the Leaf: defend your position until backup arrives."
"Eh?" Naruto asked, the confused expression on his face echoed by most of the other genin. "Shouldn't the Leaf ninja just be trying to get away?"
"The Leaf team was forced to go to ground in an abandoned estate after their planned extraction route was cut off by enemy troop movements," Kurenai cut in smoothly, surprising Sakura. "Without updated maps, they would likely have run straight into the main Rock army, so they had to wait for assistance from another team sent in to contact them. Thus demonstrating that sometimes you have no choice but to trust others," she finished, looking pointedly at Sasuke.
Sakura was astonished to see the Uchiha genin snort, then almost grudgingly nod his acceptance. Beside him, Kiba just rolled his eyes, as though this was something that happened on a frequent basis. Then again, she thought, maybe it did; at least their jounin-sensei seemed to have some idea of how to force Sasuke to realize that he might not be right all the time, which was more than most of the teachers at the academy had been able to do.
Kakashi cleared his throat. "Now, for the team assignments," he said. "Team Seven will play the Leaf, Team Eight will play the Rock, and Team Ten will play the Cloud. See your jounin-sensei for specifics—and an explanation of the entire situation," he added, giving Asuma a pointed look. "The exercise begins this evening at six."
- - -
As Hinata inspected the exterior of the abandoned house that her team would be occupying for the duration of the exercise, she frowned unhappily. They had four hours to fortify the area before the start of the exercise, and Kakashi had said they would need to be able to defend themselves for twelve hours after that. That was a long time to stay in one place, especially once the hunter teams tracked them down, and she had a nasty suspicion about which team had succeeded historically.
"Oi, Hinata-chan!" Naruto yelled to her, leaning out of a second-floor window. "Come up here and take a look at this. I think I've found a good watch post for you."
Hinata winced at his volume; they were quite a ways outside of the village, but she had no idea how far away the other teams would be starting, and it wasn't impossible for someone—or, more accurately, a certain someone's canine companion—to have heard him. The last thing she wanted to do was give away their position so early. Waving to show that she had heard him, she went back inside the house and headed upstairs to see what he wanted to show her. Along the way she passed Sakura, who was sitting in the foyer and doing something with a disturbingly large number of explosive tags.
"Do you know what she's doing?" she asked Naruto when she found him, crouched over and apparently checking sight lines between the doors and windows of the various rooms.
Naruto shrugged as he stood up. "Not a clue," he said. "She just asked me for thirty of my tags, but I'm not sure why she wanted them. The look on her face was kind of scary, actually."
"Sakura-chan, scary?" Hinata asked, not sure she had heard him correctly. "As in, our friend who blushes pinker than her hair if she even thinks she might have bothered someone?"
"Like you're one to talk," Naruto muttered, causing Hinata to curse to herself as she felt her cheeks flush, amply proving his point. "But…good-scary, not bad-scary," he added hastily, before she could get too upset with him. "You know how she is sometimes when she's got an idea."
Hinata nodded. Sakura really could get a bit intense when she was working out a plan, and the funniest part—at least from her teammates' perspective—was that she didn't even seem to realize it. Somehow, Hinata found herself unsurprised that that side of her friend had chosen now to appear; in many ways, Sakura had the most to prove in this exercise, both to her former classmates and to herself.
"Come on," Naruto said, tugging her arm insistently so she would follow him. "This place has some sort of attic or something, and it would be a perfect place for you to stay. It doesn't have any windows, but that shouldn't be a problem for you, and that way we might be able to catch them off guard if they don't see anyone keeping watch."
"Maybe," Hinata said. "It depends on how thick the walls are at that height; I checked, and I can't see through the ones on the ground floor. And the other teams know about my byakugan too, so they'll probably be expecting something like that."
Not to mention I'm not sure how long I can keep the byakugan activated without running out of chakra, she thought to herself. She had never left her bloodline ability active for more than ten or so minutes at a time, and she very definitely did not want to run out of chakra in the middle of a fight because she had burned through her reserves beforehand.
"Oh, good point," Naruto sighed, sounding disappointed. "I should've thought of that. Anyways, let's go back downstairs before Sakura blows up the house and we lose by default."
"Not to mention…oh, being hospitalized, or dying," Hinata said dryly, though not without a bit of worry as well. She didn't really think Sakura would blow them all up…at least not on purpose, but she had seemed awfully interested in Kakashi's lectures on traps.
"I'm not blowing anything up!" Sakura called up from the bottom of the steps to them. A moment later, she somewhat sheepishly added, "Well, at least not yet. Come here, I want to show you something."
'Yet'? Sakura mouthed to Naruto, who shrugged and gave her a helpless grin. Rolling her eyes at him, she headed downstairs to find Sakura still sitting in the foyer, leaned up against the side of the staircase. Around her were innumerable scraps of paper; it took Hinata a few moments to realize that they were all pieces of explosive tags, and furthermore that the larger sheets of paper piled next to Sakura seemed to have the remaining portions of the mutilated tags glued to them.
"Aaagh! My tags!" Naruto wailed, looking like he was about to start crying at the sight of so many perfectly good explosive tags in ruins. "What did you do to them, Sakura-chan?"
Sakura grinned widely, looking happier—in a scary sort of way; Naruto was definitely right about that—than Hinata had seen her in quite a while. "Just a second," she hummed, picking up one of the sheets of paper and sticking it to the back of a particularly ratty-looking chair in the next room over. "I think you'll like this surprise, Naruto-kun."
Hinata shared a long, worried look with Naruto, beginning to wonder if the stress of preparing for the chuunin exams had done something to Sakura's brain. That was the only explanation for how utterly bizarre their teammate was acting; it was almost like she was being possessed by Ino, but, Yamanaka family mind-swap technique or no, Hinata somehow doubted that was the case at the moment.
"And now…" Sakura trailed off dramatically, holding up another, larger sheet of paper with a number of little black dots pasted onto it. She touched one of the dots, causing it to glow blue with chakra, and at the same time Hinata saw an echoing blue glow begin to spread over the surface of the paper stuck to the chair. Several seconds later, the chair's back blew apart in a shower of cushioning, fabric, and wooden splinters, accompanied by the sharp double retort of two explosive tags detonating simultaneously.
Her ears still ringing from the force of the explosion, Hinata looked over at Naruto to see him staring at Sakura as though he was ready to fall to his knees and begin worshipping her. "Remote-controlled explosive tags," he breathed, a silly grin appearing on his face. "I always wanted to try some of those, but they're so expensive and hard to find in the stores."
"It really wasn't that hard to figure out," Sakura murmured, though instead of the blush Hinata expected to see on her face, she looked more disappointed than anything. "I think I messed up, though. They weren't supposed to make that big of an explosion. I should have known something would go wrong even though I didn't really create the seal, just modified a few existing ones."
"Are you crazy? That's even better!" Naruto exclaimed. "Supercharged remote-controlled explosive tags…what more could you ask for?" He squatted down and began riffling through the stack of papers, his grin growing a bit wider with each sheet he counted.
Sakura sighed as she looked at the ruined chair. "If we were on a real mission, sure," she said, "but we're not. An explosion that big could really hurt someone, and this is just a training exercise. Just…forget about it. I'm sorry I wasted your tags."
Hinata felt a surge of anger go through her as she watched her now-despondent teammate slump to the floor. "Stop it!" she blurted out, before her mind had a chance to catch up to her mouth. "Stop being so hard on yourself, Sakura-chan! It makes me so mad when you do something like this and then only see whatever you did wrong instead of everything you did right.
"It's like…it's like you don't even realize how incredible you can be sometimes," she finished softly. "I know I don't act much better sometimes, but…just, please stop." Feeling herself beginning to turn scarlet with embarrassment, she dropped to the floor as well, pulling her knees up and hiding her face behind them. She wasn't sure what had prompted her to yell at Sakura like that, and she didn't want to have to see the shock and dismay on her teammate's faces.
To her astonishment, though, she heard Naruto say, "Hinata-chan's right, you know. Even if we couldn't use them now, they'd still come in handy on future missions. Besides, this just makes them easier to hide. If we bury them a foot or two underneath the ground, the explosion won't be so dangerous, and nobody will ever know they're there until we set them off. You're brilliant, Sakura-chan."
Hinata peeked over her knees to see Naruto crouched down next to Sakura, whose face was completely hidden behind her bangs. "Thanks," she murmured after a while, though her eyes remained downcast. "And…I'm sorry, Hinata-chan. You're right too. It's hard, though, when it's so easy to see the mistakes."
I know how you feel, Hinata thought sympathetically, her brief flash of anger now completely gone. Unfolding her legs, she stood up and stretched, then offered Naruto a hand up as well.
"Come on," she told him. "Let's go see if we can find some good places to put these. Is there any sort of range limit on them?"
Sakura shook her head once, then paused for a moment and nodded uncertainly. "I'm sure there is," she said, beginning to sound more like she normally did now that she had a problem to solve. "I don't know how far, though. It would depend on how much chakra you use to charge the remote seal, I think."
"Naruto-kun can be the one responsible for setting them off, then," Hinata said, prompting a grin from her blond teammate and a brief giggle from Sakura. "I'm sure he won't mind."
"How did you figure this out, anyways?" Naruto asked, cocking his head curiously. "I wasn't joking when I said remote-triggered explosive tags are expensive, and I doubt they'd just put the secret to making them in a book somewhere."
Finally, to Hinata's great relief, Sakura looked up at them. "It was actually something I read in you—um…in some notes the Hokage has been showing me," she said, her cheeks acquiring a light pink tone as she blushed under Naruto's inquisitive gaze.
"They said something about chakra resonance between two identical seals, so I thought if I…oh, forget about the details," she sighed, apparently noticing his blank expression. "I read the basic idea in a scroll and figured out how to make it work with the fuse seals on the tags, sort of. They're not as good as the real ones you'd buy in a store, though"
"Got it," Naruto said, giving her a cheerful grin before turning to head out the door, the bundle of explosive sheets in his hand. "Let's go, Hinata-chan. Maybe Sakura-chan will figure out an even better way to blow things up by the time we get back. She's still got another two hours before our prep time is up, after all."
Hinata heaved a long-suffering sigh and followed him outside, but not before she noticed the tiny smile Sakura gave her. Perhaps it hadn't been such a mistake to say what she had after all.
- - -
"Ready?" Ino whispered. She was crouched behind a bush next to Shikamaru, downwind of Team Eight and—apparently, at least—out of Shino's bugs' detection range. It had been a stroke of purest luck that put them in this position rather than upwind of the enemy team or directly in their path, and she intended to take full advantage of it. Even Shikamaru seemed almost excited, or at the very least moderately interested in what was going on; she hadn't had to grab his arm and drag him behind her even once yet, which was practically a miracle.
He still sighed, though, but she was used to that. "For the sixth time, yes," he said, not taking his eyes off of their prey. "We can't do anything until Chouji goes, so you can go bother him if you're in a hurry."
"Fine, be that way," Ino muttered, though inwardly she rejoiced at her success. An annoyed Shikamaru was much less likely to fall asleep and ruin their timing than a bored Shikamaru was, though she doubted that even he could manage to fall asleep at a time like this. Still, poking fun at him was a favorite hobby of hers, and it definitely beat thinking about the reason they were doing all this in the first place.
While she couldn't manage to be angry with Sakura for not telling her about what was expected to happen at the chuunin exams—she had only to remember how upset her friend had seemed when they talked to know that it hadn't been Sakura's choice—she was absolutely furious with Asuma for concealing it from her team for this long. It was bad enough that they didn't have a choice in the matter, but the secrecy made it even worse. Frowning, she forced herself to concentrate on the mission; her father had warned her that her temper could wind up being a liability, and she had no desire to prove him right.
After what seemed like a small eternity, she heard a distant rumbling noise, accompanied by the snapping sound of tree branches breaking. The rumbling quickly grew louder, and she grinned as she saw the members of Team Eight halt and look around. On Kiba's shoulder, his little white dog began barking excitedly despite his attempts to hush it. The three boys exchanged glances, then spread out into a classic triangular defensive pattern after a quick series of hand signals.
Perfect, Ino thought, her grin turning feral. Now, as long as—yes! she exulted. Chouji, in full Human Bullet Tank form, came rolling directly through the center of the enemy formation, clipping Shino and sending him stumbling into one of the many patches of dim sunlight shining down through the tree branches. As Kiba and Sasuke gave chase, neither noticed their teammate's shadow lengthen and freeze in place.
Quietly—not that it made any real difference given the amount of noise Chouji was making—Ino murmured, "Shintenshin no Jutsu," and was enveloped in the still-bizarre sensation of her spirit sliding out of her body and, at what seemed to be a snail's pace, floating across the empty air towards where Shino was struggling against her teammate's shadow binding.
Faster! Faster! she urged herself, knowing that Shikamaru would have trouble holding someone for long at this distance. As she glanced back over her ethereal shoulder, she saw sweat begin to trickle down his face, even as he supported her own limp body with one arm. Then she was to Shino, melting inside him with a brief surge of dizziness at the change in perspective, and she sighed in relief. Somewhere deep inside, like a fly's insistent buzzing, she could feel Shino's own mind trying to fight back, but it paled in comparison to the queasy crawling sensation she could feel all over her temporary body.
She had no idea how Shino, or anyone else, could possibly stand feeling like this all the time. Knowing that hundreds of bugs were moving around inside her gave her the chills, and she found herself wishing she had been able to persuade Shikamaru to go after one of the other two. She didn't mind the difference in sex, but the bugs…she could literally feel her skin crawl, and she gave a silent prayer of thanks when Shikamaru broke his shadow bind, allowing her to run—well, stumble, as she still had some problems with her balance while occupying a boy's body—back to their hiding place.
"On three," she said, unbuttoning Shino's collar and leaning over her own body to reduce the distance she would have to travel after releasing her technique. "One…two…three!" As her lips formed the last word, she quickly dove out of Shino's body and back into her own, the double blurring sensation causing her stomach to churn with nausea as she found herself now looking up at Shino's emotionless visage. Shikamaru had a practice kunai pressed against his throat, and he fell to the ground unceremoniously with two ink marks slashed across either side of his neck.
Ino stood up and stretched—for some reason, the body-switching technique always left her with sore muscles, even if she was only out of her own body for a few moments—as Shikamaru resheathed his kunai. Chouji should have been able to get away from the other two members of Team Eight by now, which meant that they would be coming back to look for their teammate at any moment. Fortunately, his 'corpse' was hidden well enough by the bush that it would take them some time to locate it, especially as there were no signs of struggle to point them in the right direction.
Still, it was time to head out and meet up with Chouji at the arranged location. With Shino gone and any luck whatsoever, Teams Eight and Seven would end up killing each other off, leaving a fully-intact and prepared Team Ten to seize the codebook. It was at times like this that Ino found herself truly appreciating her teammates—even, grudgingly, Shikamaru's lazy streak that led him to find the easiest path to victory. Not that she would ever tell him that, of course.
- - -
Damn them, Sasuke swore to himself, furious at his own inattention. He had been tricked like some pitiful academy student, and while he might not care for his teammates overly much, it reflected badly on him if he allowed anything to happen to them. Team Ten had made him look like a fool, made him look weak, and that was utterly unbearable. To make matters worse, they had just had to 'kill' the more useful—not to mention tolerable—of his teammates. While he disliked having teammates at all, he had to admit that Shino was about as compatible a choice as he could have wished for.
"Find them," Sasuke flatly told his other teammate, who was decidedly not someone he would have chosen to be on his team. Still, Kiba did have his uses. "They must have used up significant amounts of chakra with this trap, so if we attack now, we can catch them while they're weak."
As he watched Kiba communicate with his tiny animal companion, he fought the urge to take off by himself. If nothing else, though, he had learned over the past few months that being the strongest in a fight counted for little when faced with situations that did not involve fighting—not to mention that the preparation for a battle could be as important as the battle itself. It was a simple lesson, perhaps, yet one he had somehow failed to consider until his jounin-sensei, upon learning of his goal, had asked, 'And how will you find him?'
At first Sasuke had been infuriated with her presumption, but as his reason overcame his emotions, he was forced to admit that she was correct. That was when he first considered that perhaps his unwanted teammates might actually be able to help him. Over the past several weeks, he had even gained a certain amount of respect for them in some regards, though he still maintained that they would only get in his way in an actual fight.
"Akamaru says he can only smell two of them," Kiba said—quietly, for a change; it was a relief to discover that he could contain himself when necessary. "The trail goes off towards where Shino-kun said the old abandoned house is."
Upon hearing this, Sasuke paused to think. Could it have been Team Seven that killed Shino? he wondered. He had assumed Team Ten had set up the attack, but it was possible that Team Seven had been patrolling and simply taken advantage of the situation. Leaving one team member to guard their base and sending the other two to scout was foolish in his opinion, but it seemed like the sort of reckless action that his rival would have taken.
"Do you know who they were?" he asked. He knew the older Inuzuka's companions could distinguish between individual human scents with incredible accuracy, as they had often assisted the Uchiha police in criminal cases, but he had no idea if Akamaru was capable of such things yet.
After a few more muted exchanges of barks and whimpers, Kiba shook his head. "One male, one female, that's all he can tell. Maybe if he had something to compare the scents to, but on his own…" He trailed off, growling in frustration.
So, it could have been either team. Sasuke's frown grew even more pronounced. Given the parameters of the exercise, it was even possible—though unlikely—that the other two teams had temporarily joined forces. His team was the only one with actual kill orders, after all, and the others could perhaps have found a way to compromise. Knowing their weakness compared to him, it almost made sense that they might try something like that.
"Forget it," he snorted, shaking his head. "Come on, let's find that house. No more talking…they might have scouts out." That was another thing Kurenai had insisted they learn, and after she demonstrated just how easy it was to track down a group of people by sound alone—not to mention the possible consequences of being overheard—even Sasuke had taken to learning basic hand signals with impressive dedication. He was interested in anything that made working with other people less of a liability, since it seemed he had no choice but to do so.
Kiba nodded once and, after placing Akamaru back inside his coat, followed him out of the small clearing. Sasuke could tell that his teammate was angry as well, but fortunately he seemed to have it under control. They couldn't be far from the house where Team Seven was waiting, and while Sasuke knew he was better than they were, he could not help but feel a reluctant respect for two of them. Caution would be required, and perhaps even his teammate would be of some assistance; if nothing else, Kiba could quickly finish the weak one, Haruno Sakura, and provide some sort of distraction while he himself dealt with the other two.
Yes, that's a good plan, he thought. Perhaps Kurenai was correct; it seemed there were advantages to having teammates after all, even in a fight—provided they stayed out of his way when necessary.
- - -
"Someone's coming!" Hinata called over her shoulder as she watched a blurry figure move towards the abandoned house where she and her teammates were hiding. She had been making quick sweeps of the clearing around the house every few minutes for the past several hours, and to her relief, she was feeling only a light strain on her chakra reserves from her byakugan usage so far. The person was right at the edge of her enhanced vision, so she couldn't make out many details through the intervening trees and brush, but she thought it was too large to be anyone except Chouji. As it drew closer, though, she saw it was actually two people close together, and she frowned when she managed to identify them.
"It's Team Eight," she told Naruto, who had come over to stand next to her. "Only Kiba and Sasuke, though. I don't see Shino anywhere."
The unhappy expression on Naruto's face matched her own. "That's not good," he said, staring out the window as though he was trying to search for the absent genin. "He's really good at tactics, and those bugs of his can do a lot of stuff. They must be trying to set up a trap or something."
"He's not anywhere nearby, though," Hinata said. "I'd see something if he was; human chakra stands out compared to trees and animals." She took another look around, but except for her own team, the other two genin were the only people within range of her eyesight.
"It's possible that he's trailing the other team," Sakura offered, joining them at the window. "With two trackers, maybe they decided to split up and keep an eye on both of their opponents."
An uncertain look appeared on the pink-haired girl's face, though, and she shook her head slowly. "No," she continued, almost talking to herself, "that doesn't make sense. We can't move from here, so if they were going to split up, they should have sent only one person to find us and then rejoin the others."
"Could they have already run into Team Ten?" Hinata asked. She couldn't see any obvious signs of injury on either of the two approaching genin, though, and she found it hard to believe that they could have finished off Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji while only losing Shino. Sasuke was very skilled, though, and she wouldn't put it past Shino to have come up with an effective ambush plan, so it was possible.
"Dunno," Naruto said, "but they're almost to the first set of traps, so I don't think we have time to figure it out." He pointed out the window as two shadowy figures seemed to detach themselves from the treeline and move stealthily forward. If not for the glow of their chakra, Hinata could easily have missed seeing them against the backdrop the evening near-darkness created.
Sakura shook her head. "You didn't put any explosives near that area," she said after looking at the crude map Naruto had drawn up. "The closest is by this…squiggle, whatever that is." She made a face, then handed the map to Naruto.
"But if they're not careful, they're going to trip the shuriken—yes!" Naruto exclaimed as they heard a metallic ringing noise. Hinata permitted herself a smile at the trap's success, but she doubted it had done more than annoy whichever of the enemy genin it had hit. Unfortunately, all of the truly nasty traps were positioned to defend the approaches to the front and rear doors of the house, leaving the side windows relatively unprotected.
Then again, she thought, sighing as she watched one figure—probably Sasuke—disarm a second trap before the other could trigger it, it wasn't like we were really expecting we could just sit back and relax, I guess. At least the traps were forcing the attackers to go slowly rather than rush the house.
"Ready, Hinata-chan?" Naruto asked. He cracked open the window and waited for her to lift herself up and slip through the opening, followed by Sakura, before closing it behind them. A short distance away, a circular sealing diagram was drawn on the dirt, and Hinata stepped carefully into it and crouched down as low as she could.
"Remember, don't make any noise," Sakura whispered to her, placing her hand over one of the seal's symbols. "Now…Fuuinjutsu: Shiryoku Fun'in."
A dim blue glow spread over the surface of the diagram, washing the area inside it with a peculiar radiance. As Sakura had explained earlier, the area encompassed by the Diverting Eyesight seal was not truly invisible—a much more difficult technique—but most people's gazes would simply pass over it as unimportant. The Uchiha sharingan would not be fooled by the seal's effect, and anyone with extensive practice in breaking genjutsu might notice something unusual, but other than that it was practically foolproof. Even her own byakugan would only see an unusually high concentration of chakra in the vicinity of the seal.
As Hinata watched Sakura climb back through the window Naruto opened for her, though, she felt a twinge of worry; their plan depended on her remaining undetected, but it was possible that Kiba or his dog would be able to pick up her scent, and she doubted she could hold both Kiba and Sasuke off long enough for her teammates to help her. They had discussed that possibility, but in the end they had been unable to come up with any better ideas.
And so here I sit, she thought to herself, wishing she could move enough to rub her arms. It was quite cold now that night had fallen, and she had only brought her light jacket with her. Sakura had kept the seal's area small, though, in order to conserve chakra, meaning that Hinata could not move without risking making herself visible outside of its boundaries. Judging by the two enemy genin's swift pace as they made their way around or, occasionally, through the various traps she and her teammates had set up, at least she would not have to wait for long.
Hinata held her breath as she watched them come closer, anxiously waiting for the first sign that one of them had noticed her presence. When Kiba stopped for a few moments and looked around suspiciously, she felt her heart freeze within her, and she had to clamp her hands over her mouth to keep from breathing out a sigh of relief as he shook his head and moved on. Soon, the two boys were crouched directly underneath the window from which she had exited.
As she watched, Kiba unzipped his coat a bit, allowing a small white canine head to pop up over the collar. At the same time, Sasuke raised his hand and held up three fingers before curling them back down again. The meaning was obvious, even if she didn't know the meaning of the rest of their furtive hand signals, and she shut off her byakugan and clenched her eyes tightly shut in preparation for what she knew was about to happen.
Several seconds later, she heard the quiet scrape of the window being forced open, followed by the sounds of one of the attackers levering himself through the narrow gap. Nearly simultaneously, a loud pop—quieter than an explosive tag going off, but seemingly deafening in the nighttime stillness—sounded from inside the house, and even through her closed eyelids she could see a brilliant light flood the area outside the window. She almost felt sorry for whichever of the two of them had gone inside and suffered the full effect of Naruto's technique, but she pushed that feeling aside; it was her turn to strike now.
Hinata opened her eyes and uncoiled from her crouch, activating her byakugan as she stood. In front of her, she saw Kiba, still crouched beside the window and staring up at it in shock. Undoubtedly his night vision was completely ruined for the next few minutes, but his back was to her, so it would not have mattered in any event. She heard his dog give a warning bark as she slipped up behind him on silent feet, but it was too late. Even as he started to turn towards her, her hands were already reaching out to close the tenketsu in his legs and arms, and he collapsed to the ground a moment later, paralyzed.
Carefully making sure she was not putting any chakra into her hand, she placed the tips of her fingers on the center of Kiba's chest, directly over his heart. Her meaning was clear, and, his face a study in displeasure, he nodded once. She couldn't help but smile when his dog, seeming to catch its master's mood, whined quietly and licked his chin. Taking pity on him—the position in which he was lying had to be uncomfortable—she again tapped the tenketsu she had closed, this time forcing a tiny amount of chakra into them.
"The effects of your closed tenketsu should begin to wear off soon now," Hinata told him coolly, hoping he could not hear in her voice how nervous she had been and still was. "You're still dead, though." With that, she turned and grabbed the window ledge, lifting herself up through the narrow opening. She wished that the exterior walls of the house were thin enough for her to be able to see what was going on inside, as, while she had every confidence in her teammates, Sasuke had not been the best in their class for nothing.
Much to her relief, the dim lighting of the room inside revealed Naruto and Sakura standing alertly just far enough back from the window that she would have been unable to attack them as she climbed in. Both were holding kunai, and their faces lit up in matching grins as they saw her.
"Watch it," Naruto said cheerfully. "Don't step on Sasuke." He pointed to her feet, dangling over the window sill, and she looked down to see a quietly furious Sasuke glaring up at her—or at the place where he thought she was, at least; she doubted that his eyesight had had a chance to return yet. Red ink marks from practice kunai and shuriken were liberally spattered across the front of his shirt, providing graphic evidence of his 'death'.
Carefully making sure not to land on the irate Uchiha, Hinata jumped down from the window and walked over to her teammates. "Kiba is out," she said. "I still don't see Shino anywhere, so I guess he must be out as well. I'm going to go check the rest of the perimeter, though, just in case he's trying to come around from behind."
Naruto nodded, and she walked out of the large side room and down a narrow hallway. Fortunately, all of the rooms in the old house possessed an abundance of windows, making it fairly easy for her to take advantage of her bloodline ability despite the thick stone walls making up the exterior.
Nothing to the south, Hinata thought, glancing through the windows of what must have been a beautifully decorated parlor at one time. Continuing along the hallway, she came to the rear door of the house, and she frowned as she noticed it was slightly ajar. She knew there was nobody inside the house who shouldn't be there, as the interior walls were thin enough to see through, but she was certain the door had been firmly closed when she last came this way. While a quick look through it revealed nothing amiss, something seemed very wrong with the situation, and she decided to go back to get Naruto and Sakura.
As she turned away, though, she caught the barest glimpse of movement on the edge of her blind spot, and she felt herself freeze in place before she could turn to see more clearly. Disgusted by her carelessness, she could only watch helplessly as Chouji opened the door, revealing Shikamaru standing just to the side. From that position, concealed from her sight by the exterior wall, he had sent his shadow—cast by a lantern Ino was holding up next to him—through the barely-open door and trapped her.
We were so stupid to assume he wouldn't be able to use his techniques at night, Hinata had time to think before the meaty fist descending towards her head made everything turn black.
- - -
"Well, at least we didn't exactly lose," Naruto sighed, kicking at a loose rock as the three members of Team Seven walked back to the village together.
At any other time, Sakura probably would have appreciated his attempt to be optimistic, but being held prisoner by her own shadow and 'tortured' until she revealed the location of the codebook had put her in something of a sour mood. Ino knew how much she hated being tickled, and frankly, she thought even her own teammates had taken a bit too much amusement in the sight of her writhing on the floor in helpless fits of 'pain'.
She had gotten her revenge, though; after retrieving the book, Team Ten had headed out the front door of the house and straight through a group of three buried mines. Since they had neglected to finish her off after the mock-torture session, Sakura obligingly detonated all of those mines, resulting in a truly satisfying series of explosions, three very scorched, bruised, and mud-splattered genin—she was a bit afraid of what Ino would do to her the next time they met—and the ignomious conclusion of the exercise. The end result, mutual annihilation, promised to earn all three teams scathing lectures the next day, though she held out a faint hope that Kakashi would be interested enough in her trick with the makeshift mines that he might let them off easy.
Not a chance, she decided a moment later. If the situation was serious enough that Kakashi had even stopped reading his books during training sessions, there was no way a bit of tinkering with explosive tags would be enough to distract him.
"We'll still be just as dead if we 'don't exactly lose' like that during the real thing," Hinata said, her defeated tone causing Sakura to look at her in alarm. She was taking their failure harder than either of the other two, and Sakura wished she knew why. Without her, they wouldn't have done even close to as well as they had, but she seemed to feel she had let them down somehow.
On Hinata's other side, Naruto appeared to have reached the same conclusion, as he looked at her with concern in his eyes. "You did great, Hinata-chan," he said, giving her a more genuine smile than the one he had been wearing previously. "Sakura-chan's ambush plan was good too, and we still did way better than the Leaf team in the mission they got this scenario from."
"It was my fault, though," Hinata said, so quietly Sakura could barely hear her. "I got overconfident because of my bloodline ability and let them trick me. What if…what if something like that happens again and you die for real?"
" 'When you only see whatever you did wrong instead of everything you did right,' hmm, Hinata-chan?" Sakura quoted to her, amused in spite of herself at the irony of the situation. "I think I see what you meant, now. It's just as much my fault for focusing too much on how to beat Team Eight and not enough on Team Ten—or even Naruto-kun's for not being good enough to handle three people at once," she added playfully.
Ignoring Naruto's squawk of indignation, she put her arm around her pale-eyed teammate's shoulders, smiling to herself as Naruto did the same a moment later. "Maybe we did rely too much on your byakugan," she said as they continued to walk, more slowly now, "but at least we know that now and won't make the same mistake again."
"I guess," Hinata said, still sounding somewhat doubtful. "But—"
"Nope, no buts," Naruto interrupted her. "We'll go home, go to bed—well, maybe not yet…actually, my mother will probably make me train some more, but anyways—where was I?"
Sakura giggled. "You were demonstrating why you really do need to go to bed, I think," she said, prompting quiet laughter from Hinata as well. "Now, enough blaming yourself, Hinata-chan—and if I'm saying that, you know I must be right."
"Fine," Hinata replied, pretending to pout. "Go ahead, make sense. I just hope Kakashi-sensei doesn't yell at us too badly."
"He's not really the yelling type," Sakura said, relieved that her friend seemed to be cheering up a bit. "Besides, this was only our first try at this sort of thing. The next one will be better."
At least, I hope so, she carefully did not add aloud. The start of the exams was barely a week away now, and the first of the foreign teams would be arriving any day. They were running out of time to prepare, and all of the rookie genin and their jounin-sensei knew it.
- - -
Author's Notes: My thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter. I'm somewhat astonished at how long this one ended up, but hopefully that's a good thing; I tried to present a more "sneaky" style of fighting here rather than the all-out battles that are more commonly seen throughout the series, and I hope it still came across as interesting. Also, there's a bit more perspective on the other two teams, in preparation for the chuunin exams where all three will play important roles. Next chapter will see the start of the exams themselves, along with the introduction of everyone's favorite psychotic Sand ninja. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!