Akira, Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto were finally standing in front of one of the gates that led inside the Forest of Death, looking beyond at the darkness that waited for them. Akira wasn't speaking, simply staring at everything her eyes could land on, examining the space between trees, their height, and the terrain. Her fists were clenched at her sides and she cracked each one of her fingers very slowly. Sakura looked over to her, worried.
"Are you going to be okay?" she asked.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Akira replied.
"You look worried."
"Do I?" The Uchiha chuckled. "I'm fine, Sakura."
"Are you sure? After what happened in the Land of—"
"Don't worry about it. After what happened in the Land of Waves, I think I may have an advantage over everyone else."
Sakura was quiet for a moment. She inspected Akira's face but found no trace of worry as she'd claimed earlier. Akira was almost eerily calm.
"What kind of advantage?" Sakura asked tentatively.
"If push comes to shove... I know I can do it again."
The look in Akira's eyes darkened immediately. She had no intention of killing anyone, but she wasn't lying—if there was no other choice, Akira wouldn't hesitate to end someone's life again.
Sakura frowned but nodded in understanding. Akira looked over at her and, while the dark look in her eyes contradicted her, Sakura couldn't help but feel a little reassured seeing the gentle smile on the Uchiha's face.
Moments later, a ninja walked over and stood in front of the gate, checking his watch. Akira counted 9 seconds before he pulled out a kunai and tore the paper bombs off, effectively unlocking the door that kept the training grounds inaccessible.
"Come on! Bring it on! Anyone who dares to attack me, I'll give it back twice as hard!" Naruto shouted, punching at the air.
"That's my kind of thinking," Akira said with a smirk.
The ninja at the gate pushed the door open and stepped aside. With a war cry, Naruto ran inside with Akira on his heels. Sakura and Sasuke followed closely behind her and within moments, the darkness had started to surround them. The first thing that came to Akira's mind were teams that would come for them first or as soon as possible. Naruto had probably peeved quite a few candidates, so some of them might have wanted to take him out. Shikamaru, Kiba and Kai would probably convince their teams to come after Akira first, mostly to prove a point. Speaking of Kiba, he was at a huge advantage here. A survival test like this was going to be a breeze for someone with his skills. For the sake of her pride, Akira needed to beat him to the tower.
Suddenly, there was a collection of screams. Akira came to an abrupt halt and pulled Naruto back as well. It was coming from the left. As the cries died down, Akira noted that she didn't recognise them, so it wasn't a team that she knew that had gone down. Akira almost suspected that Kiba, Kai, Hinata and Shino had already gotten someone.
"That sounded like someone screaming," Sakura whispered, coming to a halt beside Akira. "Oh, I don't like this at all."
"I'm sure it was nothing, Sakura," Naruto said.
"Don't get into the habit of underestimating anybody, Naruto. If you do that, and you underestimate who you think is the weakest, that may just spell death. It's better to assume that everyone can kill you."
"Whatever, I'm just gonna—I gotta..."
"You moron!" Sakura shouted. Akira turned towards them. "Go find a bush or something, this isn't a kennel! You won't be doing that in front of me!"
"Do we really have time for a bathroom break?" Sasuke said, annoyed.
"It'll only be a second!"
Naruto disappeared behind the bushes and the rest of the team waited for him in silence, Akira's and Sasuke's senses on high alert. The forest was dark and foreboding, but there was peace in its sullen ambience. Akira's eyes flickered over the thick, dark trunks of the trees that rose steadily into the sky, their branches interlocking with their neighbours like giants' arms linked together protecting their home. The trees were densely packed together, leaving just enough space to allow someone to manoeuvre through. Akira pressed her palm against its rough bark and breathed in the scent of the forest. The musty scent of leaves after rainfall, the warm soil packed against the earth by scurrying animals, and the scent of things in different stages of blooming and growth. The smell of life. The forest was teeming with it, contrary to its name.
"Wow, that was a lot!" Naruto said, returning from his bathroom break. "I wrote my whole name."
"You're such a pig!" Sakura complained.
Akira turned around to tell them to shut up, but upon looking at Naruto she ended up throwing a kunai at him instead. It embedded itself in his shoulder. Sasuke was thinking along the same lines. With lightning speed, he ran over to Naruto and kicked him in the jaw, sending him flying towards a tree. Akira wasted no time in pulling out her tachi, twirling them in her ritualistic way of unfolding the blades.
"Guys, it wasn't that bad!" Sakura gasped. "Don't you think you went a little overboard!?"
"Yeah! Why the heck do I have a kunai in my shoulder!?" Naruto yelled.
Naruto pulled the kunai from his shoulder. Sasuke lunged at him again, aiming to kick him, but Naruto ducked and dodged. Sasuke landed on the tree and pushed off with his feet, sending his foot towards Naruto's head. Naruto jumped on a branch to evade him, but Sasuke followed and kicked him down with ease.
"Better watch out, Sakura," Naruto said, standing up. "I think they've gone crazy."
"Yeah, you wish," Sasuke said. "We just struck before you could!"
"Sasuke! Akira! What's going on!?" Sakura asked, scared.
"All right, then, bring it on!" Naruto shouted.
Naruto and Sasuke lunged at each other with kunai and sparred. Meanwhile, Akira placed her hand to the ground and closed her eyes, focusing her chakra into the palm of her hand. When she opened her eyes, everything was black except for all the chakra signatures in the surrounding area. There were indeed four of them, but the person thought to be Naruto didn't have the same feel to his chakra. Akira closed her eyes and reopened them to see Sasuke and Naruto still fighting. She ran at them with incredible speed and, with one swing of her tachi, made both Sasuke's and Naruto's arms fly up, allowing her to ram Naruto in the stomach with the pommel of her sword. He slid back, panting, trying to catch his breath. Akira pointed her blade at his head.
"Sasuke, Akira! What are you doing?" Sakura asked.
"Take a good look at him," Sasuke said.
"Talk," Akira demanded. "Where is Naruto?"
"What!?" Naruto gasped. "What do you mean? I am Naruto!"
"Then where's the cut on your cheek?"
Naruto's eyes widened.
"I'm guessing you didn't know the real Naruto got a cut on his face before the start of the test," Sasuke said.
"You're also wearing your shuriken holster on your left leg. Naruto is right-handed," Akira said calmly, staring directly into the impostor's eyes.
"Your transformation skills are worse than Naruto's. Tell us who you are!"
Naruto disappeared in a puff of smoke, only to be replaced by an Amegakure ninja. He wore a ghastly yellow jumpsuit and a rebreather on his mouth, and his face was covered by a white bandanna with eye-holes cut out.
"All right, you got me," he said in a voice that was robotically distorted. "So what? I'm still gonna take your scroll. Now hand it over, or else. So... Which one of you has it?"
No one answered.
"Fine then. Guess I'll just have to take out all three of you!"
Just as the Amegakure ninja dashed forward, Sasuke jumped into the air and sent a volley of fireballs at him. It allowed Akira to charge her tachi with electricity and run at the enemy. She slashed down at him, but he was faster than he seemed, and he dodged it by jumping up in the air. He threw a few kunai at Sasuke, which he blocked with ease. Feeling outmanoeuvred, the Amegakure ninja went to run, but the Uchiha siblings followed him.
Sasuke spotted a tied up Naruto as they went, and he threw a kunai at the ropes that bound him to release the boy. However, this provided enough distraction for the Amegakure ninja to throw senbon and kunai at them. They dodged them easily, but they hadn't noticed the paper bomb rolled around one of the senbon. It blew up in their faces, blowing them back several feet. They regained composure quickly, landing easily on their feet. The Amegakure ninja snuck up behind them but didn't get a chance to attack before Naruto arrived and threw numerous kunai at him.
This gave Akira the opportunity to slash her swords at the ninja. He hadn't move fast enough to avoid it, and he received a large slash over the cut where the kunai was once embedded. He jumped back and attempted to run again, but Sasuke had tossed another kunai at him and, distracted with dodging it at all costs, didn't see Akira coming up behind him. Before he even knew what was happening, Akira's tachi had pierced his side. He slid himself off it, bleeding, and managed to run off.
"He was alone," Akira said, putting her swords back in the holsters. "I didn't sense any other chakra signatures."
She turned to her brother and gave him a look.
"Right," he said, agreeing to whatever mental communication they'd shared. "That proves we can't just trust appearances. We need to come up with a way to know we are who we say we are, and not some impostor using a transformation jutsu."
"All right, so what do we do?" Sakura asked.
"We need a password," Akira said, not looking at her teammates, but at everything else, eyes scanning the area.
"What kind of password?" Naruto asked.
"A secret one. Something known only to the three of us. And don't trust anyone who doesn't know it. No matter what." Akira turned back to her teammates. "Listen closely, I only want to say this once. The question will be: 'when does a ninja strike?' And the response is: 'A ninja waits until the time is right. When the enemy sleeps and drops his guard. When his weapons lie forgotten in the stillness of the night. That is the moment for a ninja to strike.' Got it?"
"I got it," Sakura said, and Sasuke nodded, agreeing.
"You got one a little shorter?" Naruto asked.
"No, Naruto," Akira said. "That's it."
"Come on, what's wrong?" Sakura asked, annoyed. "Didn't you get it? I memorized it easy."
"Yeah, sure, I got it! No problem." Naruto said. "I just thought it was going to be a pass-word, not a pass-speech."
"All right, then," Sasuke said. "I'll take the scroll."
Akira felt a light breeze before she felt the full brunt of someone's attack. It was an unnaturally strong gust of wind and, putting all the chakra into her feet that she could, she stood against it until it died down. It left behind a crater that ripped up all the vegetation in its path, and Akira wondered if this could be the work of the Sand ninja girl with the fan. However, looking around, Akira saw no one. Coming up behind her, though, were Sasuke and Sakura, and she pulled out her tachi and pointed one at each of them.
"When does a ninja strike?" she asked without a beat.
Both ninja gave her a correct answer, as she'd expected. But when Naruto came out of the bushes and also gave a correct answer, Akira glared at him. She planted her swords in the ground and performed a few hand signs. When she grabbed her blades again they lit up with buzzing white lightning chakra. Sasuke threw a kunai at Naruto and, by the time he'd dodged it, Akira had put herself into an offensive position. Sakura looked between her and Sasuke, surprised and a little scared. The last time she had seen this jutsu was when Akira had killed Haku.
"Gotta hand it to you," Sasuke said. "You're faster than the last one."
"Akira, Sasuke, no!" Sakura shouted. "He said it properly! Don't do it!"
"That's clearly why it isn't him, Sakura. Do you really think that Naruto, of all people, would remember a long password like that without a single flaw?" Akira said, keeping her eyes fixed on the imposter. "You'd have a better chance teaching it to a hamster."
"Oh, right, you've got a point," Sakura admitted, deadpan.
"Besides, you saw the way this guy moved when I threw the kunai at him," Sasuke said. "That was definitely not a Naruto move."
"All right, playtime is over," Akira said sternly.
She took a few steps forwards and glared harshly at the imposter.
"Come out, come out whoever you are," she added in a sing-song voice.
Naruto's face broke into a near inhuman grin and he licked his lips.
"Aren't we the clever ones," said a voice that didn't sound like Naruto's at all.
Suddenly, Naruto transformed himself into the creepy grass ninja from earlier.
"Tell me, if your teammate is really that dimwitted, why'd you come up with a password he'd never be able to remember?"
"It wasn't as much for Naruto as it was for people like you, the ones listening and eavesdropping," Akira said.
"I'm impressed," the Kusagakure ninja said, removing her straw hat. She looked darkly at the three rookies. "You certainly haven't dropped your guard, have you... This promises to be very entertaining."
The woman slowly removed an Earth Scroll from a pouch she was carrying, and Sakura gave them away by gasping at the sight of it. The Kusagakure ninja smiled maliciously.
"Ah, you'd love to get your hands on our Earth Scroll, wouldn't you? It would go so nicely with your Heaven Scroll."
Suddenly, the woman's painfully long tongue wrapped itself around the Earth Scroll she was holding near her face, and she easily slid it down her throat. Akira was suddenly reminded of a snake swallowing its prey whole.
"Well, when this is all over, one of us will have both scrolls. And the other will be dead!"
The Kusagakure ninja slowly looked up at them, her eyes no longer black, but golden with slitted pupils. On instinct, Akira closed her eyes and turned away. She knew what this was, she'd experienced it before. It wasn't a technique, a jutsu, or even a genjutsu. It was killing intent, pure and simple, far more terrifying than any jutsu Akira could think of because it was so real. The nauseating feeling crawling through the air was one hundred per cent true intention to commit murder.
Akira didn't dare open her eyes until she heard someone fall and vomit. Her eyelids slowly opened only then, and she glanced away from the Kusagakure ninja immediately. Sasuke and Sakura were both on their knees and in no condition to fight. Every fibre in her being was telling her to grab her teammates and run, but Akira was far too stubborn for that. Instead, she returned the Kusagakure ninja's malevolent glare with equal force and put herself into an attack position.
There was no backing down.