Chapter Seventeen
"So why do they call it the 'Swamp of Despair'?" Kato asked quietly as the team quickly made their way into the training ground.
"Because it's the most dangerous place in proximity to the village," Ken replied. "Everything here that's not you wants to kill you." He cast his gaze around, clearly taking in the massive brightly-colored mushrooms and the huge and thick bamboo that was bleached to look like bone. "Most of the giant mushrooms are toxic, the bamboo explodes into shrapnel at random-" a far-off crack sounded nearby as if to emphasize his point, "-there's quicksand, and the predators that manage to live here are the animal equivalent of psychotic."
"Sounds alot like Training Ground Forty-Four back home," Kato chuckled mirthlessly. "Koko's mentioned it before as where jonin and some chunin go for survival training."
"I would hope we are prepared for this," Hotaru interjected. "If the area is as dangerous as you claim it would be prudent to secure food, water, and shelter before we search out other teams."
"Food won't be a problem," Ken commented and unsealed a scroll from his cuff enclosed with a wax circle marked with the kanji for rations. "I packed enough here for a week. We can stretch that between us for a few days while we search out enemy teams. Water is going to be a bit trickier, but I have a seal prepared to purify water." He glanced between his teammates' surprised expressions. "What? I told you, I know how to prepare."
"So, with that in mind," Kato grinned, "I say we find the nearest group of thugs and take their prize."
Ken huffed a laugh and looked at them both. "I vote for that plan. Hotaru?"
Rather than verbally reply, Hotaru flared her byakugan and took a few moments searching out their surroundings. "I sense no others within my field of vision," she reported. "I would recommend we move to the center of the swamp to try and find those closer to the endpoint."
With no objections, the trio continued to make their way through the swamp. Ken took the time to conjure a number of staggered shadow clones to scout ahead for predators or quicksand. Kato even took the time to summon Sho and Tsukumo to take advantage of their senses of smell.
They were about halfway through the swamp when they got a bite.
Hotaru, who had taken the lead with her byakugan active, held up a closed fist for her teammates to halt. Ken dismissed the clones he had sent out, their chakra returning to him as well as their memories. While he was confident in his abilities and in those of his teammates, it was never a bad idea to be cautious.
"We know you are there," Hotaru called out. "An ambush is pointless. Reveal yourselves and face us in the open."
In answer, three shinobi in their teens — about the same age as Kato and Hotaru, maybe a little older — moved from behind trees and mushrooms. Their baggy, beige clothing marked them as Suna genin, as did the head coverings they all wore. One girl held a fan that stretched as long as her forearm from end to end, the other holding a pair of smaller hand fans. The boy carried a short sword on his belt.
"We offer you one chance to walk away peacefully," the boy proclaimed. "Leave your token and we will not harm you."
"I was about to say the same thing to you," Kato replied, stepping forward and popping his neck and shoulders. "We're not gonna give it up. Heck, even if you beat us you're not gonna find the thing." He laughed. "We've got a friggin' seal master on our side."
"Why did you say that?" Ken whispered. "So much for the element of surprise."
"Hoping it would intimidate them," Kato admitted.
The Suna team seemed thoroughly unintimidated. "Very well," the boy said. "We shall take your disk by force. Ladies, let's dance."
The woman with the large fan unfurled her weapon and swung, conjuring a raging cyclone of air that hurtled toward them. Kato laughed and sped through hand seals before exhaling a wave of fire that ignited and amplified the winds in a whirling column of fire that was pushed back at the Suna group — who wisely scattered in its wake.
The woman with the smaller fans darted forward next, her fans igniting and her swings hurling waves of fire at them. Ken clapped his hands into a Snake hand seal and then to the ground, raising a wall of stone to protect his team. "The boy has the token! Cover me!" Hotaru cried, darting around the barrier to try and close in on her target.
"Boys, you cover her!" Kato shouted to the monkeys, to which they nodded and leapt to her peripheries, swinging large, thick bokken — wooden swords — to stave off anything that came near her.
Kato and Ken leapt to the top of the wall where Kato continued to pepper the Suna team with rapid bursts of fire. Ken pointed to the girl with the large fan, to which Kato nodded and focused his attacks on her.
With each team member having selected their opponent, Ken jumped down from the rampart and darted to the girl with two fans, conjuring Adamantine Chains from the sealing array on his back that he fed over his shoulders and wound around his forearms. As the woman continued to hurl waves of fire, he lashed out with the chains like whips to disperse the attacks. Finally, he flung his arm forward to lash out with his chains, wrapping them around his opponent and drawing them tight before locking them to seal her chakra. With a sharp tug, he pulled her within his reach and marked her with a paralysis seal to her forehead.
Kato laughed as he wove between the smaller whirlwinds his opponent was casting at him, eyes peeled for signs of fatigue. After all, conjuring so many whirlwinds in such rapid succession had to be draining even for someone with a Wind affinity. After timing her attacks, dodging with elaborate flips in the monkey-esque style of the Sartutobi clan, Kato readied a handful of shuriken and threw, setting up the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique to bombard her with a cloud of razor steel.
The Suna kunoichi gasped at the tactic and swung her fan upward, creating a cyclone as large as her first that absorbed the cloud of steel stars and redirected them upward out of harm's way. This had the unfortunate side effect of blinding her to Kato's whereabouts as he darted around the whirlwind and struck with his escrima sticks. She defended with her closed fan, the steel guard that housed the blades warding off his own steel weapons, but Kato's faster movements kept her on the defensive until he swept her legs out from under her and knocked the fan from her grasp.
In a move he had practiced for weeks, he multiplied his escrima sticks with the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique and drove six pairs of them in rough X-shaped formations into the ground, trapping her neck, arms, waist, and ankles between each of them and the ground, inhibiting her movement and robbing her of leverage to attack him. He stepped back and smirked as the Suna kunoichi struggled to escape before huffing and glowering at him.
"Glad to see that actually works," he commented.
As the boys were handling their opponents, Hotaru kept her focus on the Suna nin bearing their target. Before they had even begun, the Suna nin jumped back, biting his thumb to draw blood and summoning a massive scorpion in a burst of smoke. The scorpion, its caramel shell shining even in the low light and its maw dripping with venom, shrieked and lunged at her.
Hotaru grit her teeth and spun out of the way of the creature's stinging tail, the wicked barb still scoring a line in her robes. She whipped out a kunai in each hand and deflected a series of lightning-fast strikes from the stinger, only her byakugan giving her a needed edge to keep up with its speed. With her attention drawn by the tail, Hotaru yelped as the scorpion lunged with its pincers. On instinct, she jumped over their grasps and struck against the tail, the force of it knocking the weapons from her hands and forcing her back.
Hotaru landed lightly and blinked to find Sho and Tsukumo grappling with the scorpion's pincers, keeping them in place. "Go for the tail!" one shouted. Hotaru nodded and unsheathed another kunai, darting forward with complete surety as the scorpion shrieked and tried to sting one of the monkeys and slicing the stinger from the tail in one fell swoop.
"We've got this," the other monkey shouted, wrenching the scorpion's pincer sideways. "Find the summoner!" Hotaru nodded and focused her byakugan on the final Suna nin's chakra.
As she did so, the ninja she was seeking was silently cursing their team's bad luck and his own poor leadership. The girls, Chihiro and Eshima, had warned him against attacking this particular team; Chihiro, the team's sensory ninja, had been particularly adamant about it after sensing the boys' high chakra levels for genin while Eshima had noticed the girl's byakugan.
But he, Nobu, had taken this as a challenge. His father, a jonin of the Hidden Sand, would occasionally speak to his mother about how the shinobi of their village had to make a stronger impression among the other great Villages, to assert their strength. The village was slowly dwindling, its income from their daimyo diverted to other villages who boasted more powerful forces. It was this sentiment that had blinded Nobu with frustration and driven him to attack the nearest team from a Great Village.
Now he and his teammates would pay the price for his foolishness. Despite the sword he carried, Nobu was not a frontline fighter; he was an illusionist. He could wrap any genin from Suna, and most chunin, in an illusion that would have them collapsing from phantom injuries or screeching from feeling their bodies set on fire.
But a Hyuga, who could see through his illusions with those white devil eyes of theirs, was one of the worst possible opponents he could face. As he sat there, wrapped in a camouflage illusion and coldly observing his teammates being beaten, he could only hope that his scorpion could handle the Hyuga so he could strike the other two down with stealth tactics and retrieve his teammates and their prize.
But that seemed to be a fool's dream as his teammates were summarily defeated with apparent ease and those monkeys diverted his summoned scorpion for the Hyuga to more than likely find him. The Hyuga flung a sphere that detonated to cover the area with an impenetrable smokescreen, one that she could no doubt see through.
Nobu ran into the smoke, hoping the movement would confuse his opponent long enough to free Chihiro so they could escape and come back for Eshima when the Leaf nin had gone. But that plan was dashed when he felt a blinding pain in his side, followed up with fifteen others all over his body that left him unable to move.
He fell and slid across the ground to land before his teammates, who glared at him from their respective positions of being bound by cords, with Eshima paralyzed to boot. Hotaru confidently rummaged in his coat before removing their token.
Ken flexed the fingers of his left hand, his pointer and middle fingers glowing with dark blue chakra, and he brushed those fingers along the paralysis seal on Eshima's forehead to remove it. The girl sighed as she was finally able to relax, even with the cord tying her hands and feet together.
"Man, that was awesome!" Kato said. "You guys may need to refine your skills a bit, but you've got potential."
"Spare us your mockery," Chihiro grumbled.
"I'm not kidding," Kato said with a grin. "You guys just had a bit of bad luck with who you tried to fight." Nobu wilted under his teammates' glares at Kato's words, both very aware that it was more than mere bad luck. "At any rate, Ken volunteered to leave a shadow clone to untie you all after we've gotten far enough away, so there's that."
"You did?" Hotaru asked.
"I did?" Ken asked in an identical tone before Kato kicked him. "Dude, these chicks are hot!" he whispered. "Don't wanna leave any bad blood. Or let them get eaten by anything here." Ken rolled his eyes, flashing back to his own days as a teenager when his hormones were all he could focus on. Ken conjured a shadow clone that split into five with ten-percent reserves.
"If you two are done gossiping," Hotaru said pointedly, "perhaps we should go before anyone comes across us." The boys nodded an agreement and followed as she once again took the lead toward the tower.
As the shadow clones took a circular formation around the Hidden Sand team, counting down five minutes before they would untie them, Chihiro spoke up. "I told you this was a bad idea."
A few more hours of navigating muddy swampland and dodging fellow teams of chunin hopefuls brought Team Fourteen to the base where they would end the second phase of the Exams. A Kusa nin, a jonin by the stripes on his vest shoulders, was waiting for them with a clipboard. He seemed surprised to see a team approach him so soon, but when they revealed two tokens that turned out to be real, he permitted them to pass.
A chunin was waiting for them, also seemingly surprised at their arrival, and guided them to a set of barracks that they would use while they waited out the rest of the Exam phase. "There's a dining hall and a few training rooms if you get bored," the chunin added. "Otherwise, I hope you brought a book or something."
After the chunin guide had departed, Team Fourteen headed for the dining hall. "Kinda sad we only had one meal out of those rations you packed. Eh, Ken?" Kato laughed.
"If you'd rather have them than whatever they're serving, you're free to it," he replied.
Kato waved his hand in refusal before his expression sobered. "On a more serious note, who do you guys think will get through this? And how long will it take for them to arrive."
"Fate smiled upon us," Hotaru interjected. "We encountered a relatively weak team quickly and were able to avoid opposing teams on the way here." The boys got the impression she purposefully avoided bringing up that "avoiding other teams" was made much easier by her byakugan. "Others, however, will very unlikely be so fortunate."
"So do you believe in fate or luck?" Ken asked out of the blue.
"My clan has a long-held belief in fate that most Hyuga take hold of to one degree or another. I, personally, believe that fate and luck are intertwined. It is quite lucky, after all, when fate smiles upon you."
By now they had entered the dining hall and were in the process of being served a rich vegetable stew. Ken smiled at the appearance of mushrooms as he took a few rolls and followed his teammates to one of the provided tables. As they broke into their meal, Ken couldn't help but notice Kato was not eating as vigorously as a teenage boy should be.
"You okay?" Ken asked, the question drawing Hotaru's attention too.
"Just got a bad feeling about the third phase," the Sarutobi replied. "Everything's been kind of … well, not easy, but very straightforward. No real complications. I kind of have the feeling that things are gonna get messy soon."
"If they do, we will deal with it," Hotaru said simply.
"I agree," Ken said. "All we can do is prepare for anything and hope it's enough."
Kato smiled and nodded before properly diving into his food.
After the other two days of the second phase of the Exams had passed, Team Fourteen stood in the arena that comprised the large center of the base with the six other passing teams, totalling twenty-one prospective chunin. At least one team had arrived less than an hour from the cut-off time, and were ragged and dirty as a result.
Among the passing teams aside from Team Fourteen were two teams from Hidden Grass, one from Waterfall, one from Cloud, one from Mist, and one from Rain.
The proctor of the second phase stepped forward, along with the Village Head of Kusa, from a line of jonin instructors and prior proctors. "Congratulations to all of you for making it this far. All of you have shown the grit and determination necessary to thrive under the chunin rank. Now, before we move on to the next phase, our Village Head will address you with the true purpose of the Chunin Exams."
The Village Head, a willowy, middle-aged man with brown hair in a top knot and dressed in armored green robes, spoke about the function of the Chunin Exams as a substitute for war between hidden villages. It acted to display the power of the up-and-coming talent from participating villages to show prospective clients who would be worth investing mission fees in. After congratulating the passing teams and warning them that it would be prudent to put their most powerful foot forward in the upcoming tournament, he stepped back for the third proctor.
The proctor of the third phase, a large man dressed in armor underneath his flak jacket and covered in weapons, addressed the group with a disheartening announcement. "Due to the nature of the tournament that comprises the third phase, we must put on a good, fast-paced show for the audience and the clients therein. Thus, the bracket must be narrow enough that it doesn't get repetitive or drag on. Therefore, we will be having a preliminary tournament right now."
"Now?!" one team asked in unison. Their ragged clothing suggested they were the latecomers.
"Yes. Now," the proctor replied coolly. "Now if any of you don't think you are fit to compete, you are free to go. Your teammates will not be punished if you forfeit." At those words, one of the ragged team, Kusa judging by his headband, lifted his hand and forfeited with a sullen demeanor and wished his teammates good luck before departing. With no other volunteers, the proctor gestured to a randomizing scoreboard.
Sota Souma vs Kato Sarutobi
"Would the two participants please step forward? Everyone else, please make your way to the benches surrounding the arena." The teams did so, leaving Kato and his Kusa opponent.
"Hey man, sorry about the bad luck," Kato said with a grin. "I promise not to make it too painful for ya."
"That's assuming you can handle me, Leaf," Sota of the Hidden Grass replied coldly, unsheathing the sword from his back and taking a ready stance.
"Participants ready?" the proctor asked. Both nodded. The proctor sliced his hand through the air between them. "Begin!"
Chapter seventeen, and we get a quick fight! This was a fun one to write!
*The Suna team's name meanings: Chihiro means "seeker," fitting for a sensor ninja; Eshima means "true intention,"; and Nobu can mean "trust" which he does not do, but it can also mean "prolong" or "stretch" which he does to the fight. Poor guy.
*Let me tell ya, it was a pain to come up with a summon animal for a desert-dwelling people.
*The idea that Neji's belief in fate is derived from a clan-wide culture that all accept and deny to one degree or another is a headcanon. I think it's an interesting concept.
Hope you all liked it! As always, reviews are very much appreciated. Adios and au revoir!