Disclaimer: I do not own NARUTO.

WILL OF STONE

THE FIRST TRIAL: "Beneath the Surface"

No one spoke as they descended into the earth below Iwa. Anake tried, once or twice, but Ino told him to shut up and he did.

Everything was completely black. At first they used their handheld flashlights; then Kankuro re-jiggered his puppet Kuroari to emit a bright light from a lamp lashed to the top of the puppet's head.

The Catacombs were a maze of dusty, cobwebbed tunnels, infested with rat dung and a soft, dark material that Kankuro cheerfully informed Sakura were bat droppings. Sakura heard the bats before she saw them. A low, high-pitched screeching came from the ceilings. Kankuro shined his light there and Sakura beheld the specter of a flock of black bats flapping wildly from the direction of Haghira Tower. Night was almost over, and the bats were coming home.

More and more bats appeared as they moved lower into the Catacombs. There must have been multiple entrances into the Catacombs, if so many bats were roosting down here. But Sakura could not see any of them.

In fact, she was pretty sure they were lost.

"No wonder Haghira Doi gave us an entire day to finish the Trial," grumbled Chouji.

Shimura Anake was oddly silent. He looked like he was going to be sick, and kept on glancing up at the ceilings, as if he was afraid the bats were going to attack him. Ino giggled when she noticed. "Anake's afraid of the dark," she whispered in Sakura's ear. "Who knew? It's kind of cute."

Soon enough they came to a a large burial chamber, with three different tunnels boring down in opposite directions. A crossroads. The stone walls were recessed with row upon row of mass graves. Some of the graves had broken apart with age, and when Kankuro flashed his light over the cracks, Sakura could see piles of yellowed bones inside.

"Which way?" Kankuro asked.

"This one," said Temari, picking a tunnel at random.

"Oh, sure. Lead the way, sister. I'll mark down the way back. You know, just in case."

They had only taken a few steps when they discovered the tunnel had already been marked. The boy lay in a pool of blood, facedown. "It's a leaf-nin," said Sakura. Koharu Okazaki, she recognized, from Anake's class. His stomach was split open, guts hanging out. Someone had urinated on the United Countries symbol on his back. "He was cut open with a kunai."

Chouji looked sick. "Where's his teammates?"

"Probably ran away," said Anake dryly, as if he approved.

"The boy died slowly," Temari said. "He was still alive when whoever killed him pissed on his back. He crawled to this place—trying to get out of the tunnel, I think. His killer wanted to humiliate him."

Ino was leaning over the body. "Hey. His chunnin exam key is gone."

Sakura saw that it was true. The key had been ripped off the necklace that Koharu Okazaki had worn around his throat. Why would his killer want that? A trophy?

They left the dead genin there, where he lay on the ground. There was not much they could do. The chunnin examiners would be there later to clean the body up. And so they kept going, walking deeper and deeper into the earth, far beneath the surface. The Catacombs were a silent empty maze, twisting and turning. They met no one but a string of other dead genin, many killed in a similar manner. These genin were keyless, as well. Why? This is the place of ghosts, a voice whispered inside her, soft as smoke, sharp as a blade's edge.

That was when she heard the sound.

It was the faint sound of screaming.

"What the hell is that?" Ino whispered.

"You said it," Anake whispered back. "Let's not go that way, eh?" He jerked a thumb in the opposite direction.

Temari ignored him, stalking forward to follow the sound. She gripped her fan weapon in readiness, eyes intent. Kankuro shut his light. In the darkness Sakura could make out a dim glow ahead of her, far down the tunnel in some kind of open crypt. The sound was coming from that light. Closer they moved, closer. Shadows stretched around the corner of the crypt. Then Sakura understood what was happening. There was a young girl inside there, screaming. Accompanying this came the grunts of a young man, strained with excitement. A third voice was complaining in a bored tone. "Won't you hurry up, Fue? I'm still waiting."

Fue had his blood up. "This cloud-nin bitch has a cunt so tight it's sucking me in. Goddamn, she loves it. You had your turn. If you don't want to wait, you can rape the dead one."

Sakura realized with a chill that these were the people responsible for the deaths of all the genin they'd just come across. Fue, the other voice had called him. That must be Hiroshi Fue, a genin from Mist. And his team must be Team Keel.

"Rapists," Temari hissed. "Let's kill them."

"Wait—" Sakura started, but it was already too late. Temari rushed forward, rounding the corner. There was no choice but for the rest of them to follow. They discovered Hiroshi Fue lying on top of the cloud-nin girl, the pants of his blue mist-nin uniform pulled down around his ankles, thrusting into the screaming girl with a smile. When he heard them coming, the boy tried to sit up, but Temari sliced Hiroshi Fue in half with the edge of her War Fan.

"Shit!" said Fue's teammate, slouching against the Catacomb wall with a flashlight. Houzuki Suigetsu, Sakura knew. The short white-haired boy attacked her with a sword. Sakura blocked the strike with one glittering chakra-cast kunai, and then stabbed at his head with the other. Half of Suigetsu's face blew away, exploding in a spray of water.

"That was easy," said Chouji, eyes round as spinning plates.

"No," said Sakura, her heart pounding, "no, this is Team Keel. There's still—"

"—me," finished a voice, stepping out from the shadows deeper in the crypt. Hoshigaki Makera's laughter was as rough as a saw on stone. Samekaijin, his bloodline was called. Shark Monster. A glance was enough to explain why. The mist-nin was half again as tall as Sakura, lean and predatory, and his body was covered not with skin but with scales like a shark; like barbed sandpaper, sharp enough to draw blood with a touch. Dead black eyes stared out from a face made of nightmares.

According to Chief Inoichi's databook, this was the most dangerous genin in the entire exam.

When Hoshigaki Makera smiled, a thousand sharp teeth glinted between his gray cold lips.

"Die, you bastards," said Temari, and threw a hurricane wind at him.

Makera ran through the wind as if it was a soothing breeze. In an instant he had crossed the distance to Temari, lunging down on her with his teeth. Temari tried to blocked with her metal War Fan; it broke into pieces and Temari was knocked hard to the ground. Insane strength, thought Sakura.

"Bitch!" said Hiroshi Fue. He lay on the floor where Temari had cut him in half, blood pouring out his torso from both ends. Yet he seemed none the worse for it. "I was about to climax, damnit." He brought his hands together and shot a Water Shark Missile at them, which Anake countered with his Vacuum Wave. Fue took this window of opportunity to put his body back together. He stood up grinning, good as new.

Beside Fue, Houzuki Suigetsu was also rising from the dead. Water poured back into the missing half of his skull and reformed it.

"What the hell!" Ino screamed.

"All of them have bloodlines!" Sakura shouted back. "They're unkillable."

Kankuro was helping his sister fight Makera. Unfortunately, the Sand Siblings were losing. Kankuro sent his puppet Karasu at Makera, blades whirling from its wooden body. Makera crushed the puppet in his bare hands and then roared. A hundred shark teeth exploded out of the mist-nin's mouth. Kankuro threw himself to the ground as the teeth whizzed past and slammed into the stone wall behind him. Meanwhile Sakura and Anake fought off Fue and Suigetsu.

"Team Asuma!" Anake pleaded. "Please, for the sweet love you bear me, do something."

Ino flashed hand seals. "Well, when you put it like that. Mind Body Switch!"

Sakura had Suigetsu pinned up against a wall, and Ino's jutsu connected. Taking control of Suigetsu's body, Ino turned on Fue and attacked him with a wave of water. Chouji followed up, slamming against Fue with his spinning Human Bullet Tank. Fue's body regenerated very fast, but not that fast. He fell back, battered in a dozen places.

"Makera!" Fue shouted. "We're outnumbered! We got to retreat."

Makera laughed. The laugh was as cold and hollow as if it had come from the bottom of a deep well, and it chilled Sakura through to the bone. He's not afraid of anything, she realized. Not death, not killing, not pain, not mercy. He's the perfect predator. Makera laughed and laughed, and then black water poured from his throat. A massive surge of water, flooding the cave.

Sakura recognized the jutsu. Water Release: Exploding Darkness Wave! She had seen it once before, on the roof of the Asylum, when the Akatsuki missing-nin Kakuzu had used it to clear away all resistance. Sakura had been swept away and would have died if Maito Gai had not rescued her.

"Earth Release: Earth Wall!" she shouted, pressing her palms against the floor. A thick stone wall shot up between them and the enemy Team Keel. The wall held for only a few seconds, cracking. Then it exploded under the pressure, and thick black water blew them out of the crypt.

For a moment Sakura thought she was going to drown. Then the black water rushed past her and began to drain away, flowing out into the rest of the Catacombs. Wet bat droppings stuck to the stone walls like moss. Sakura groaned as she collapsed to the floor. Bruises studded her body in a dozen places, and her uniform was completely soaked. But at least she was alive. The rest of them were alive, too, and conscious. Ino lay against a wall, muttering obscenities; evidently she had jumped back into her body in time.

Team Keel was gone, escaped through the back entrance of the crypt.

Temari was curled up on the floor in a fetal position. "Temari!" Kankuro cried out. But then Temari stretched out, and Sakura saw that the sand-nin was cradling the cloud-nin girl. Temari protected her from Makera's attack. The girl was naked, and badly injured, covered in blood from a thousand cuts and gashes all over her pale skin. The mist-nins had torn her ninja uniform away and then took turns gang-raping her. She was still awake, trembling and crying. Team Keel must have taken special care to keep her awake. She could not have been older than twelve.

"God save us," Ino whispered, when she saw.

Sakura went to the girl, wanting to examine her wounds. The girl would not let Sakura touch her. She shook in Temari's arms, asking after her teammates, asking after her sensei, asking for her uncle, hysterical with terror. Her eyes were dark and wide. She would have been a very pretty girl, with long silver hair, Sakura thought, if not for the blood that obscured her features. It's Juukan Dee, she realized with a start, finally recognizing the girl from her photo in the datebook. Dee was a genin on Team Kaiza.

And the Raikage's niece.

"It's all right," Temari whispered to Dee, her voice as soft as silk. Sakura had never heard Temari use a voice like that. "It's all right. You're safe. Shhh, now. It's over. They're gone. They're gone. Don't worry." Temari said the words over and over, like a lullaby, and soon enough Dee calmed down, drifting off into an exhausted sleep.

Temari stared at Sakura, her eyes hard. "Take care of her."

"I will."

Sakura gently examined Dee's wounds. The cloud-nin girl wasn't as badly hurt as she had feared. Oh, there was plenty of damage, especially around her vaginal cavity. But her insides were more or less intact. The worst wound is in her mind, not her body. Sakura healed Dee as best she could. To cover the girl's nakedness, she scrounged around the crypt for the pieces of Dee's cloud-nin genin uniform. The silver bodysuit was tattered and ripped to shreds, but it was better than nothing. Temari added her own United Country jacket, two sizes too big.

The others found Dee's teammates.

Both of them were sprawled dead in pools of black water. Two cloud-nin boys, no older than Sakura. Komatsu Kanke and Saburai Ise, she remembered. They were naked. Cold blood leaked from between their thighs, and deep gashes crisscrossed their limp bodies, exposing bones and organs beneath the peeled skin. The torture had been done very methodically.

"The boys were raped, too," said Kankuro. "The mist-nin shrimps fucked them in the ass. Look."

Their rectums looked like someone had driven a truck covered in spikes through them, over and over again.

"And I thought I had a big dick," Anake tried to joke.

Temari rounded on him. "If you talk again, I'll rip out your tongue and nail it to your eyes."

Anake swallowed, and did not talk again.

"It was that shark-thing," whispered Ino. "Makera. His skin was made of scales. Like sandpaper on human flesh. When he was doing it… he must have…"

"No," said Sakura, seeing the signs. "He raped them after they were dead. That's what Makera was doing when we attacked. That's why we didn't hear the boys scream."

Chouji finally threw up.

The moment had been building all evening, and now it finally came. Waves of yellow puke tumbled against the wet stones of the crypt. Everyone else looked like they wanted to vomit, too.

"Hoshigaki Makera," Temari said. "I've heard the stories… but this." She clutched the sleeping Juukan Dee close against her chest. "He's not human. He's an animal that needs to be put down." Her face was a mask of cold fury. "I'll put him down."

"What… what are gonna do with the girl?" Ino asked. "We can't leave her here."

The chuunin examiners will be here eventually, thought Sakura. We can't afford to take Dee, she's dead weight. She could get us killed. Better to abandon Dee now. Even if she does wake up later, terrified, alone, surrounded by the corpses of her teammates.

She thought that, but Sakura could not bring herself to say it.

"I'll carry her," said Temari, in a tone that brooked no argument. She strode out of the crypt forcefully, heading deeper into the Catacombs. "Let's go."

They didn't look back.

Next: THE FIRST TRIAL: "Tears of Life"