Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Shikaku by his own admission did not want to be in Suna. Indeed he had felt so strongly about not travelling here that when asked to by Hiruzen he had almost told him he had felt so. Efforts in that direction would probably prove ultimately fruitless however and not to mention troublesome. It was not the Suna kage that vexed him, though that man could be a difficulty on his own, but the climate out here was unavoidably hostile. Even now having merely travelled a small distance from his accommodation to the kage tower he felt wilted like fauna under too much heat. Perhaps, Shikaku mused, that might be why the people who lived in this place were so prickly to talk to, instead of some kind of flower they must have the countenance of a cactus to thrive here.

Though that attitude was not shared by all he thought as he approached the desk before the Suna Kage's office.

"Hey, I'm Shikaku, I have an appointment." He announced to the woman behind the desk.

The woman in question was a mystery to Shikaku, seemingly in perpetual motion she exuded an aura of constant anxiety, even her left eye followed an oscillation all of its own. When she raised her head to see who had spoken it span off somewhere towards the window even as the other creased, whether in recognition or suspicion Shikaku couldn't say. It was entirely possible that the puppet master wielding their creation from beneath the desk was unsure of the expression she was supposed to be giving, in fact shikaku thought he would be surprised if he had intended for her expression to change at all, it seemed quite an accomplishment that they had managed to get it sitting in a chair.

It was a strange practice among shinobi in suna that they should choose to interact with others through their puppets in lieu of doing as everyone else did. He imagined that perhaps it was to surprise enemies when they finally came to fight them. Shikaku doubted this trick worked anymore as all of the suna puppet users seemed to do this as if it was a de rigueur element of being a user of puppets and the natural response of shinobi in the elemental nations at this point was to combat them with this in mind.

The puppet master must have recognised Shikaku for the next moment it wordlessly gestured him forward, Shikaku inclined his head in thanks and made his way past the desk, accidentally knocking a book from it on his way past. He tried to pretend he didn't hear the muffled exclamation of pain as it hit its mark. He tried quite hard in fact. A soft smile made its way to his face all the same.

The office of the Kazekage had the appearance as if every book, scroll and paper had been placed to the side, as if put aside temporarily to be dealt with later. Even the desk found itself at an awkward slant protruding from one wall. Shikaku took all this in peripherally and noted too that though all the documents looked discarded they still possessed signs of having been dealt with, a stamp there, some notes in the margins there.

The Kazekage was stood before one of the windows, Rasa had not changed since last Shikaku had seen him, a face of slate it held a serious slant in every line etched into it. Little else though was ever given a way. A diligent man by all accounts Rasa cared deeply for his people. Shikaku was not sent because of this man's values though but because of his intellect. Shikaku suspected it was his almost religious devotion to the denizens of his village that allowed his mind to run to such fringe thought processes and with such speed and alacrity. Rasa rarely made mistakes but he was sometimes known not to make the right decision as well. It is an important distinction. In the last war he had chosen to withdraw a team of 20 shinobi to ensure that there were no unnecessary casualties among his force in the defence of his country but doing so he abandoned a small village neutral to the war. The village does not exist anymore but Suna was one of the few villages not to give ground in the last war and they had the lowest number of casualties.

"Shikaku." Rasa acknowledged. He did not continue for several moments. Shikaku knew he had been sent as a negotiator in his leaders stead, there was something the Hokage needed, he could already sense the next war coming, there was too much ill will from the last one which pooled around like some macabre fuel, Shikaku himself knew it could only be one diplomatic faux pas from igniting. The Hokage had thus been in talks with the village's closest allies to shore up old pacts, Rasa as the closest ally after the unfortunate destruction of the Whirlpool village was top of the list. Friendships of this kind were a two way street however and there was some boon that Rasa wanted before he committed his forces any further in a pact with Konoha. Shikaku waited out Rasa's silence, he knew that many times a silence could ask a question you didn't know to ask.

"I need a seal master," There it is, the key to this lock, Shikaku's thoughts raced out in a hundred directions his mood souring as he arrived at the most probable reasons for this request, "The village needs a defender, someone that can be used as the anvil to meet the hammer at war time. Yes I can see it coming. Too quick perhaps for this plan to bare fruit but maybe for the one after, who knows. I lack however the tools to create the anvil I need."

An anvil? Shikaku thought to himself, It was an odd way of describing what he sought to create. He knew now what Rasa desired - a Jinchuriki. There were few sealmasters even in Konoha that could craft such a seal, let alone an improvement over the one Suna had used in the past, crude as it was, the methods to seal a tailed beast were closely guarded secrets.

Shikaku sighed inwardly, in the end he had come here for nothing, the only sealmasters in Konoha that could perform this task were unavailable, Kushina could not leave the village because it was too much of a security risk and no one but perhaps the Hokage knew where Jiraiya was at the moment and he wasn't expected back for months. Shikaku was about to relay the disappointment to Rasa when he suddenly remembered there had been another seal master join Konoha. And it just so happened he was in Suna for the exams. Shikaku didn't let his elation at finding a solution show on his face. It would be most important for now to find out what Rasa could offer the Leaf village in return. Instead Shikaku took a hand out of his pocket and scratched the back of his neck whilst looking somewhere into the middle distance over Rasa's forehead.

There were a few moments of silence that seemed to stretch on before Rasa finally broke it, "We can offer the support of some of our chunin defending your border during wartime." Rasa stated. An opening offer, and better than Shikaku had hoped, the Hokage had spoken of hoping to keep trade lines open during wartime. Rasa must truly be desperate for this seal.

"I can get you a seal master but finding one that knows anything regarding the sealing of Biju might be difficult." It wasn't quite the truth but it wasn't common knowledge that Ko was one of our foremost seal masters - who would expect it in such a young kid - not to mention one of only three in our entire village that had an in depth education on the sealing of tailed beasts.

Shikaku thought that perhaps Rasa had nodded, it was an infinitesimal inclination of the head, it might have been his imagination and then Rasa moved to a chair behind his desk and gestured Shikaku into the other one.

"I have 2 hours before my next appointment." Rasa said as he sat down.

Shikaku understood. They had 2 hours to hammer this agreement out, he fell into his chair and into the negotiation.

To say their bark was worse than their bite would be an understatement, after trying some rudimentary genjutsu even I could easily dispatch the two Kiri nin had abdicated to the back of the room for a time speaking in hushed tones I could hear snippets of from my place a few metres away.

"No I don't know anymore genjutsu… Zaku always used to take of this sort of thing... should we try it again?... I don't know!... Maybe we could try..."

Throughout this exchange I remained stuck in my chair, I looked to the proctor who still stood by the door and rolled my eyes, he grimaced back in much the same way I might to someone to whom I was delivering bad news.

Eventually my tormentors seemed to come to some agreement and came back into view looking a little flustered.

"Alright Konoha scum, we're going to start ripping out your fingernails until you give us the code." The seeming leader of the two announced.

I audibly sighed. That was what they had come up with? I had seen more inventiveness from small children, ranked against the other times I had been tortured this ranked a distant third and only then by default.

The sigh did not go down well among the kiri nin who took umbrage to my nonchalance and quickly set to work.

It must be coming up to an hour soon. I looked to the proctor in askance and he took the gist of my expression as he looked at his watch and then held up 5 fingers. 5 minutes. 5 Minutes more of this idiocy.

"What kind of ninja are you?", the quieter one had started to ask such questions in the last few minutes, they had moved on to, one by one, breaking my fingers. Painful certainly but not outside my experience and after around a minute the affected areas became oddly numb anyway with only the odd feeling of my digits protruding from unusual angles remaining, "We've ripped your nails out, broke all of your fingers and you haven't even uttered a sound of discomfort." She looked almost fearfully perplexed. I was just happy that these shinobi were at least competent enough to make the breaks clean making them fixable in minutes by even a novice medic like Kakashi.

I rose an eyebrow in response, I shouldn't be the one intimidating her in this situation. These might be the sorriest excuses for shinobi I had ever come across. Both of them stared at me thinking of where to go from here for a few moments before the proctor discreetly coughed from the back of the room.

"That, I am afraid is time." He approached my chair and knelt behind me quickly undoing my bindings, I brought my hands in front of me and winced. No doubt they would be easily fixed but they were un extremely unpleasant sight, the two kiri nin stepped back their faces whitening as one of them uttered almost under their breath "Zaku is going to kill us for not getting the code."

"Don't move your hands please," my attention was brought back to the proctor who took my hands in his and enveloped them in the green glow of medical chakra. It was a curious and not particularly enjoyable experience to feel my fingers pop and then lock through various configurations before finally resting back as they were before the kiri nin had begun work on them, even my fingernails had been returned. I nodded my thanks to the proctor who returned the nod and I turned to my ex-torturers.

"For future reference you might want to check if your captive is capable of talking before you tie up their hands." I signed with derision.

The female nin facepalmed with an admirable amount of force even as the one I had identified as the unofficial leader muttered "No way."

"If you follow the hallway the way we came you will find your sensei, your teammate will meet you there." The proctor explained to them as he stood up before he turned to me, "You will follow me through this door." he continued indicating a second door on the other side of the room.

The amount of teams didn't seem much diminished after the first task with only perhaps 2 other teams out of the ones that entered missing. Kakashi joined me in the large room the proctor had guided me to running an extremely critical eye over me for injuries, I smiled back to reassure him. The room itself seemed to be at least partially underground, no windows were present and the rock here felt almost cool against my bare feet. A large door on one side of the room was the only feature other than the small one we had milled in from.

When we had taken our place among the other teams I took some time to look at how the other teams had made it through. None of them seemed particularly injured, some sported somewhat superficial souvenirs of their trials, some singed hair, spots of blood on their clothes, I spotted Kakashi's partner pretty quickly and mentally winced, he didn't look injured but his hair was extremely frazzled and his face twitched slightly every few moments, it looked like Kakashi had charged him with static electricity until his body could take no more, I raised an eyebrow at Kakashi and he stared mischievously back.

We didn't have long to wait, Karura entered the room before I had a chance to look over the other teams in detail, entering from the larger door the room behind her seemed to be a small anteroom with another door within sight, "congratulations on completing this first task, you will now be sent into the next room one team at a time to enter both parts of your code, those gained by the interrogators and those kept by the interrogated, after entering your code the next door will open and you will receive a scroll."

From there she gestured for the team on the far left to enter the ante room and after they did the door closed behind them. A few moments later the door opened again with the team nowhere in sight, I frowned, it all seemed a little dramatic to be handing out the scrolls this way, why not confirm our Passcodes and then give us a scroll?

A few minutes passed and around 15 teams has passed in front of us before Kakashi and I were sent forward, we entered the ante room and the door ground closed behind us.

"What was your code?" Kakashi asked

"Red." I replied

"Perhaps you are meant to go on that side then." He said indicating the right side of the door where a selection of colored beads lay in a bowl with an ornate looking pedestal stood next to it.

I nodded and looked at Kakashi's side, it was an abacus so…

He nodded confirming what I was thinking. "I got a number." That confirmed that whilst the the decision of who would be the interrogated had been random the number given was very specific so that every team had the capability of getting both parts of the code. The must have been setting it up right until we had all taken our places in the first room.

After entering our respective codes there was a muffled clack like a giant lock being opened and the door grumbled open in front of us, we walked through and found to our surprise that there were only another 2 teams present out of the 15 that had gone ahead of us, one of them Suna and the other from Kumo.

I looked around in a confusion Kakashi shared, "Secondary objective?" He signed to me. It was possible and I couldn't see much reason other than that for them splitting up the teams that had come out of the first exam, but what could it be? We were only given two codes so there wasn't much else I could think of that might separate us, my brain thought back to the instructions we were given for the first exam when it suddenly struck me, it didn't matter for me since I never got the chance to speak to my tormentors but - Ah!

I pulled on Kakashi's sleeve to get his attention but before I could explain to him Karura entered again with a final team, it was the other Konoha team.

"As you might have realised by now the first exam wasn't just about obtaining information, its other aim was teaching the value of making sure the information was correct, in the life of a Shinobi the only thing worse than no information at all is wrong information." Karura began, confirming my suspicion, "Those of you that were tortured were allowed to give any code you wanted, those of you on the other side of the table had the job of making sure that information was correct"

I looked at Kakashi, had he suspected that he might be given an incorrect code all along even from a shinobi from our own village? It would explain the still crackling member of the other konoha team, he sensed my gaze and confirmed with a deft sign simply saying "Trust, but confirm."

"Those that failed to get the correct code were dropped into a subterranean network of caves that opens outside the village, for them the second exam has already begun, their task will be to get out of the cave, which has its own challenges, and once out to track you down and obtain one of these" Here she held up a scroll with a wax seal holding it closed, "Each of you will be given one of these scrolls and will be required to deliver them to the village from the location we will take you to in the desert within 24 hours, as long as the scroll makes it in that time your entire team will pass regardless of whether they make it within the time limit."

I mentally took it in, it seemed a convoluted idea but I could see the reasoning behind it, now that we had obtained our information we had to safely deliver it.

"You will now be blindfolded and carried to where you will start the first exam." Even as she said said this my proctor from the first part of the exam appeared, as if from nowhere, and handed us both bags to place over our head, once done I was picked up and carried at a speed that just seemed to accelerate further and further until, even through the bag all I could hear was wind, it felt like this lasted forever but was probably closer to an hour later when my handler stopped, placed me down and removed my bag.

"You have 24 hours to make it back to the village, here is your scroll," He gave the scroll to me but I passed it to Kakashi who deftly slipped it into one of his pockets, "Good luck" he finished and disintegrated into sand. Well there goes my plan to follow him back to the village. I looked at Kakashi who was already observing the sun, I had never been particularly skilled at navigating without a map, after a few moments he pointed in a direction that seemed much the same as any other in this landscape and we set off.

We quickly realised why the time limit was as low as 24 hours. If we hadn't made it back to the village by then we were unlikely to. Without water, out here and moving at the pace we had set, we'd be lucky to survive 48 hours. We occasionally stopped so Kakashi could correct our course, strangely we were apparently veering very slightly to the right the further we ran, Kakashi suspected that without a point to navigate from we might be walking in circles.

The afternoon passed and we found ourselves cursing the cold rather than the heat. Suna still hadn't appeared in view but once the stars were out Kakashi was, If anything, more sure that we were going in the right direction. We made the decision to run through the night early on, it would be hard enough to sleep in the cold without a blanket but also we could not be sure we wouldn't freeze to death in the night.

We remained vigilant at all times, there was no moon this night so we ran with only the pin prick constellation of lights above us which did little to illuminate our surroundings let alone give us hope of seeing the village at range, we likely would not know we were there until we were on top of it.

With every step we took though we were aware we were heading further and further into danger. Somewhere in the desert ahead there were maybe as many as 10 teams watching for us, laying traps.

The night stretched on and Kakashi started to show the first signs of the anxiousness I felt, seen in scant black reliefs against a darker background the silhouette of his face showed a clenched jaw, and perhaps the beginning of a frown. The biggest giveaway though was the brief charges of static electricity that raced between his fingers, shockingly blue against the pitch of night.

Being on edge against attack for too long is almost as bad as being caught unawares. Eventually it drained you, especially when you were operating exhausted, deprived of sleep. It was somewhere around 3 in the morning when we were finally attacked.

We were not prepared.

At first I thought I had slipped on the cusp of a dune, the sand slipped downwards and away immediately in front of me so it seemed the most likely explanation but only for a moment. My leg slipping beneath the sand was my first warning something was wrong, the adapted tree walking exercise was no longer working, closer inspection would reveal that it was because the sand was already charged with a great deal of chakra. I let out a brief exhale of air that would have been a shout of surprise, Kakashi seemed to realise the danger for I felt his chakra hit the sand like small concussions and plumes of sand flew up and fell in his wake as he approached, his electrified chakra superheating the sand to a platform of glass where he stepped.

He tried to wrench me out of the sand by my arms but I was already up to my waist in the stuff and it held fast, slowly sucking me deeper.

I whispered a curse, which seemed to shock Kakashi, His shock grew into confusion as I pushed him away, "They're after the scroll," I whispered, "We can't be far from the village, go."

"I'm not about to leave you." Kakashi replied redoubling his efforts.

I understood how he felt but the scroll was more important, as long as he made it we'd both be through. We were running out of time, the sand was up to my chest now, I ripped my arms away from him to push him bodily away. "Go." I ordered, communicating with a violent slash through the air.

I didn't see whether he listened, I sank too quickly and then it went dark.

"Your teammate will be exposed to the sun without respite, by the time the end of the exam comes he will be irrevocably scarred. All you need do is give us your scroll and he can go."

I awoke to a girl shouting in a not unusual situation for me, happily they only seemed to have bound my hands. Not so happily there were chakra suppressing seals applied on the chains. It was the shouting that had woken me up, I opened my eyes to find my environment awash in orange. There were lots of torches surrounding me on the walls of the cave with brackets installed to hold them. This was not an improvised holding area, this had been used often in the past.

I looked ahead to where the person shouting was. They were stood on an outcrop of rock with a small shelf of smooth rock hanging overhead, it seemed like an unusual cave, it had an almost artificial feel. Ahead of the girl at the front I could see only stars so the cave must be protruding from the ground at a slight angle. My foot slipped against the smooth stone and I grunted as my weight was placed on my wrists before regaining my balance on my toes. My convalescence did not go unnoticed though, against the night I saw sparks fly in the distance, perhaps on the cusp of a dune that rose high enough to come into view. They were intermittent and probably too small to see unless you were looking for them. It took me a moment to realise they were Morse code, something all of us were taught in the academy.

"six"

It was a question, from his point of view he could probably see 5 and had assumed there would be another to make up 2 complete teams. He couldn't see the ones in the shadowed corners though. Or the one I could sense keeping watch from the top of the shelf of rock. His chakra told me he was asleep though. I held up 9 fingers.

Against one team I would have liked our chances, against two maybe we could have escaped when things got too rough but three was insurmountable. Still as more small sparks glinted in the distance I read the message Kakashi had sent with hopeful optimism.

"Rescue"

I crossed my hand in front of each other in response.

"Escape"

I shrugged. It was possible, alone and if they let down their guard. I was still working on the specifics though. I read his final message come back to me in halting morse.

"I'll deliver the scroll. But I'll be back."

I nodded my head and that seemed to draw the attention of my closest captor.

"Don't get any ideas. We used to hold prisoners here, before interrogation was moved inside the village. There's no chance of escape." he said confidently.

I looked at him and noted that like the girl at the front of the cave he too was wearing a Suna headband. It was likely that this was a coalition of Suna shinobi who had failed the true objective of the first exam. I shrugged with raised eyebrows in response and he seemed to lose interest after a few moments.

In the next few hours nothing really changed. The girl at the front of the cave continued to shout for all that would hear her that I would be burnt to a crisp come midday. The others seemed to grow increasingly weary of her shouts though and some of them even took up spots dozing against the back wall. My closest captor had not moved though, he stayed resolutely at my side, eventually I had made efforts to talk to him. It was pretty much a one way conversation however.

As the first tinges of a lighter blue reached the sky the girl at the mouth of the cave threw up her hands and walked back towards me, "If your friend has any sense he'll be here before the sun is up, come on Kazu, we need to find a scroll from another team if his teammate won't show up."

The one closest to me, now identified as Kazu looked wearily about and the girl recognised his misgivings, "There's still 7 of us here, if his teammate comes they can take care of it."

Eventually Kazu nodded and, after collecting some equipment, they leaped out into the early twilight and I waited. They assumed that the shinobi posted above the cave was still awake but he wasn't. And almost everyone else was already dozing. A glance at the torches told me they'd last maybe 30 minutes more before they sputtered out, likely attracting the attention of my captors who would wake up to illuminate the cave again. They would after all want to be able to see. So I had 30 minutes to come up with a plan. I moved my hands into the now familiar seal I had first utilised at the Nara clan and began to speculate on my situation.

20 minutes later and the horizon was beginning to glow a brilliant crimson and I had figured out an escape. I began by gradually placing my full weight on my wrists and hauling my feet towards the ceiling, everyone in the cave, if not asleep, was at least lightly dozing. When I had my fee on the ceiling I anchored my feet there and began to pull. The chain had not merely been installed onto the sandstone but by some mechanism had been placed within the stone and the sandstone been placed around it. I placed more strain on my chain and the ceiling made a deep cracking noise, it was too loud, I lessened my strain and continued to pull.

Fifteen minutes passed and finally one of the torches was beginning to splutter, not leaving me with much time. Sweat was dripping up my body down onto the floor but there was now a fissure approximately 30 centimetres across that was gradually stretching open, another thin fracture had opened up around my chain, I took the time to make sure my feet were not attached to the stone within the circle.

Almost tent minutes later and the light of the sun had begun stretching its way down the cave, almost reaching my toes. It was then that my chain finally broke free. The chain came free with little noise luckily but I has to be quick to catch the large pieces of rock that tried to drop behind it. The clinking of my chain was gratingly loud to me but none of my captors stirred though I could feel the one sleeping above the cave beginning to wake up in the sun. Not much time left. My manacles were were easily dealt with, they had rusted on one side so applying some leverage they quickly gave way.

It was strange the things you saw but never really registered. In the Nara state they were as obvious as the nose in front of your face, walking forwards on the ceiling, I approached a row of deep circular holes in the ceiling, presumably intended to hold the same chains that held me at one time they had been left empty for so long an infinitesimally slight hairline crack had appeared between them. From the weight of the overhanging roof. I sent a rush of chakra to my muscles and brought my fists down on the ceiling. Even with all my training i felt my hands jarr uncomfortably against the rock. The sound was loud enough to rouse the lightest sleepers below me and I worried for a moment if I might have to make a second attempt until a deep crack grumbled in the depths of the rock and the fracture widened to a chasm, I stepped back even as there were shouts from below.

An entire shelf of rock fell into the cave rocking the ground titanically with its weight, dust from where it fell shot with a great woosh to the back of the cave temporarily blinding my captors. Sand began trickling in from above the rock, there was almost a meter of clearance between the top of the fallen shelf and the ceiling through which the sand was falling but between the grains I could see the sun glinting. I shot through the gap as the fallen shelf began a grinding slide down towards the back of the cave and the Suna ninja.

It was a few minutes later as I hugged the cusp of an overlooking dune that I was ambushed. In hindsight I shouldn't have stuck around to make sure all the Suna shinobi got out, it was when one of them melted into sand that I realised something was wrong. It was the ninja who was sleeping above the cave. To have gotten so close to me without me sensing him he must have been very adept. Luckily I had been training my senses since the first time I had been caught unawares by a ninja capable of hiding his chakra and I leaped sidewards with moments to spare as his knee crashed down where my back had been.

"You should have stayed put." He said getting up

I smiled, "I've never been one to stay pinned down for too long."

He was a few years older than the other Suna shinobi and he wore fabric over his head to protect him from the sun which also hid one side of his face. Judging by the dent he put into the dune he wasn't weak. I took all this in within moments readying myself for battle before a shout interrupted us.

"Stop!"

It was the girl from earlier. And she was holding a kunai to a ragged looking Kakashi's neck whilst Kazu held him in place from behind.

"Give us the scroll." She demanded

I raised my hands, "Let's calm down. I don't have the scroll."

"So you can't talk? I wondered why you responded with sign language" The older one grumbled stepping closer. "These two haven't learned that yet." He explained.

"Shut up Baki," the girl practically shrieked, "What did he say?"

"He says he doesn't have the scroll."

"Bullshit, this guy says it's in a storage seal on his arm." the girl exclaimed shoving the kunai further towards Kakashi's throat.

I offered Baki my arm which he tentatively took and examined, "This… isn't a storage seal."

In that moment many things happened at once. There was a noise of strangled pain and high pitched crackling as Kakashi's captors fell over electrocuted unconscious, the girls electrocution coming courtesy of the kunai she had held too close to Kakashi's neck. I redoubled my grip on Baki's hand as he tried to pull away. I grunted in surprise but kept my grip. This guy was strong. Baki appeared surprised himself that he hadn't pulled away.

With his arm in mine I began to swing him in circles, quickly building enough speed to toss him towards the other Suna ninja at the collapsed cave.

I turned to Kakashi who was collapsed on one knee, his injured leg sported a wound that didn't look large but must have gone into the muscle to make standing so difficult, I picked him up.

"Where is the scroll?" I whispered

He reached up and plucked the scroll out of his gravity defying hair, "They never search my hair" he said grinning through his ripped masked.

I laughed silently, "What happened to delivering the scroll?"

"Would you have left me behind?" He almost sounded offended. I suppose he was right. We had no more time to talk however and Kakashi promptly pointed in a direction, "It's not far."

I rose an eyebrow in response, I couldn't see any hint of the village just more sand but I began running all the same with the Suna ninja not far behind.

When I reached the top of the next dune I saw what he meant. We were literally right on top of it, from here the sand rapidly fell away like a cliff but from where I stood I could very nearly see over the walls of Suna. We were on the wrong side though, the valley that was the only gap in the wall was on the other side of suna, we'd never make it on foot with me carrying Kakashi. I had an idea.

"What are you doing?" Kakashi asked, I had taken a few strides back.

"Getting a run up." I whispered back

Kakashi paled, "could you speak up I thought I just heard you say - wait!" He finished with a shouted exclamation as I started sprinting towards the edge, powering my legs with as much chakra as they could hold on the very edge I propelled myself at the wall and I realised almost instantly we weren't going to make the top.

I'd have told Kakashi to hold on if he could have heard me over the wind, he seemed to being doing a good job of that anyway. When we hit the wall about three quarters of the way up I began trying to stick to the wall with my feet, we slid around 10 metres before it took hold though.

"Can you climb?" I asked

Kakashi, looking oddly dazed, nodded and reached out his hand to get a handhold. He got a hold and set off ahead of me, climbing with only his hands his legs hanging beneath him, I made to follow when I was slashed from behind, I let out a silent shout as I felt blood, warm even in the heat of the desert, drip down my back. I looked behind myself but couldn't see who had slashed me. Only our pursuers now at the bottom of the dune and running toward the wall.

An almost imperceptible warping of the air was my only warning, truth be told if I hadn't seen it enough in training it would have hit me, instead I leapt back as the blade of wind cut into the rock beneath me. I narrowed my eyes, it was the guy they called Baki, firing them from the ground.

I took up position next to Kakashi who looked over wearily, "I don't suppose you could pick up the pace?" I asked half jokingly, he had probably been up all night and he was injured. He looked looked down just as another blade of wind carved itself into the rock, he looked back up and nodded resolutely.

We eventually made or way to the top of the wall, Kakashi climbing ahead and myself fighting fire with fire, or I guess air with air in this case. Every blade of air that came close was swiftly dispatched with a whip of my shaggy hair imbued with wind chakra, finally on top of the wall we sat down to take brief rest during which Kakashi started applying medical ninjutsu to his leg.

"What business do you have here Konoha Ninja?" A voice called out from behind me.

I turned to find a Suna ninja, likely making a patrol, "we're on the exam, we were to make it back the village with this scroll." I explained, Kakashi Held the scroll aloft.

"And you decided the best way into the village was by going over the wall?" He asked raising an eyebrow, I nodded slowly and then all at once his demeanor cracked and he started laughing, "You Konoha nin are something else," He got out between his bouts of laughter, "Well you've made it back to the village I guess, congratulations on making it through part two of the exam, let's get you back to the main gate." He finished, wiping a tear.

AN: Man what a hard chapter to write. It's mostly OK, I think at some point its better to just write and shove it out than continuously rewrite it. So Keiko and Kakashi make it through in unconventional style, as if they'd do it any other way. Please leave a review if you have time. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I'll see you in the next one.

Also passed 100k words woopwoop

Edited to fix Rasa's name, cheers GodOfPixies, no idea how that was missed.