A/N: this was written jointly with Nathan Baxter and Griever (aka Rieverre aka SoulGriever) a few years on the Drunkard's Walk forum as a side story to the fanfic Team Explosive Youth (which I recommend). All three of us provided a OC for the story and we then thought... hey, these guys bounce off each other well. We never quite finished their own story, which is why it gets fragmentary.

"Beginning today, all of you are real ninja - but you are still merely rookie genin. The hard part has just started. Now, you will soon be assigned duties by the village, so today we will be creating the three-man teams... and each team will have a Jounin as sensei. You will follow that sensei's instructions as you complete the assigned duties." Umino Iruka paused and looked out over his latest class of students, then coughed into his fist quietly and began to read through the list of teams, eventually reaching...

He blinked and shook himself slightly, and tried to figure out why his trained ninja's instincts were insisting that something was off as he read out the next team.

"Team Seven - Kirigishi Katsu, Nara Shikanenai, and Bakusuta Neshan. Team Eight..."

Team Seven: Substitute Shinobi

The classroom was filled with commotion as the twenty-seven genin in class were divided between the jounin assembled to take responsibility for their new teams.

Iruka was so consumed with the last minute details of this handover that it wasn't until he'd shooed the last of the jounin out of the room that he realised that three of his students were still sitting at their desks. No, not three of his students any more, he realised. Three new genin, the members of the new Team Seven.

"Obviously our Jounin-sensei is a master of stealth, disguise and punctuality," said the spiky-haired Nara Shikanenai sardonically from one end of the bench as he noticed Iruka's attention. He wore a rather baggy shirt under a gray vest with bulging pockets and was cleaning his fingernails with a kunai.

Beside Shikanenai, the long-haired and bespectacled Bakusuta Neshan was looking around with an air of curiosity.

At the far end of the bench sat Kirigishi Katsu, glaring intently at Iruka with something oddly feral behind his eyes.

"I suppose that your sensei must have been delayed, Shikanenai-kun," the scar faced chuunin advised. "I'll wait here until he arrives to collect you."

"That's not necessary," Katsu said shortly.

Iruka shot him a suspicious look. "I've gone four years without Shikanenai-kun burning down the school," he retorted. "I'm not going to leave him unsupervised at this late date."

"Ooh," Shikanenai said mockingly. "That's a good idea!"

Four hours later, even Iruka's patience wearing thin and the three genin had begun exchanging glances that the teacher was at a loss to interpret. To the best of his knowledge the three of them weren't particularly friendly - Katsu just didn't talk much, despite his bevy of assorted female admirers - Neshan did talk but generally only to quieter members of the class such as Hyuuga Hinata - and Shikanenai, despite never being at a loss for a smart-alec remark or a destructive response, was in his own way as private a person as Katsu. But all three of them seemed to be troubled by something, and Iruka was fairly sure that the absence of their jounin-sensei was not the cause.

It was at this point that the door to the classroom slid open to reveal a lanky jounin clad in the typical Hidden Leaf uniform, a thin mask across his lower face and his head protector pulled low at one side to cover his right eye. Iruka recognised him almost immediately as Hatake Kakashi, one of Hidden Leaf's more celebrated jounin. Among other things, he was known to have failed every team ever passed to him by the Academy.

"You're late," Iruka snapped, a little harsher than he really should have with ninja who outranked him.

Kakashi blinked (or winked, it was hard to tell), turning his head away from the three genin lined up at the desk and towards Iruka. "Did you say something?" he asked, with apparent sincerity.

Iruka stifled his anger. At least the other ninja was here now and presumably had some sort of excuse. "You've got Team Seven," he said instead. "Baksu-"

The jounin cut him off with a wave of his hand. "I'll get all that from them," he said airily. "You three," he said, looking at the genin. "Meet me on the roof." And with that, he disappeared in a cloud of ninja smoke.

Iruka could have sworn that Shikanenai's hand made the sign for 'asshole' as he stood up to head for the door. But that was impossible of course - no one would have taught signing to a genin who hadn't completed even a single D-rank mission, much less to a mere student.

On the steps up towards the roof, Shikanenai paused and looked at the others. "Does the name Uchiha mean anything to you guys?" 'missing' he signed.

Neshan nodded. "Uchiha Itachi," he said. "S-rank missing-nin." Then he frowned at the Nara. "Didn't he have a brother the same age as... as Shikamaru?" His fingers sketched 'team'

"I think so," Shikanenai said, making the sign for 'seven'. "Talk about it later?"

Neshan nodded at that and then looked measuringly at Katsu, who was looking intrigued. "Ring any bells?"

"Yes," Katsu replied simply. "Let's not keep Hatake-sensei waiting."

As they filed up the stairs and out onto the roof, the three of them fanned out, apparently casually watching their surroundings. Kakashi's visible eyebrow shot up. They were acting more like seasoned ninja than novices - had someone made sweeping changes to the Academy curriculum without his hearing about it? Then he shrugged it off. They were probably just acting tough to impress him.

"So," he said. "Tell me about yourselves. Names, likes, dislikes, dreams?"

The three boys looked at each other wordlessly, and then Shikanenai flicked his hand. "You first," he suggested.

"My name's Hatake Kakashi," replied the jounin. "I've got a few likes, I don't like any of you and I don't think I'll tell you about my dreams."

"I'm Kirigishi Katsu," Katsu started, to the slight surprise of the others. "I like my peace and quiet, I don't like some of the clans in the Hidden Mist and I dream of being a jounin with students of my own." There was a slight emphasis to the word dream, which Neshan and Shikanenai chuckled at, although it wasn't clear to Kakashi what they found amusing.

"Bakusuta Neshan, age... twelve. Blood type, O negative. I like seals, and knowing more than I need to. I don't like pain, or people who think they can take away others' choices. I dream of being Head of the Archives." A nod from Katsu and a smirk from Shikanenai greeted that particular ambition.

The last boy looked at Kakashi but there was something that indicated he wasn't really speaking to him. "Nara Shikanenai," he began. "I like traveling. I don't like 'noble clans' and I dream of going all over the continent once I'm a chuunin - maybe before then."

Kakashi frowned. Seems that they all have a few axes to grind, he thought. I wonder why they put this lot together? A lone wolf, a bookworm and a tourist-wannabe don't make much of a team. "Well," he said. "For our first mission, we'll be doing some survival training."

Neshan and Shikanenai both seemed to be choking on something. Katsu looked intrigued.

"So meet me at Training Ground Five, bright and early," Kakashi said. "Six o'clock sharp. And don't bother with breakfast," he added. "Chances are that you won't keep it down."

"There's more to this than Survival Training, isn't there?" Katsu said.

"Gai-sensei didn't call it 'survival training'," Shikanenai said dryly. "But it'll be the same idea. This is the final test."

"Only a third of the genin who graduate from the Hidden Leaf Academy go onto active teams," Neshan explained. "The rest go back to the Academy and get channeled into administration or the police or the like." The three genin members of Team Seven had been left at the Academy by their new 'sensei' and they had by mutual consent relocated their conversation to Training Ground Five to get a feel for it while they continued their conversation.

"So what's the test?" Katsu asked.

"Depends on the jounin," Shikanenai said simply. "In general, we have to show that we've got the right attitude as well as the skill to be shinobi."

"I hadn't heard that," Katsu said. "We don't do anything like it in Hidden Mist - of course, not as many ninja graduate from the Academy."

"It's not precisely a secret," Neshan said, "but it's supposed to be a surprise for new genin so it's not talked about very much. I suppose the Mist's elders think our training is soft -"

"It is," Shikanenai interjected. "I've seen the numbers."

"Aren't they classified?"

"Yes."

Seeing that Shikanenai wasn't about to say anything else about that, Neshan continued. "- having a large reserve of ninja, even if they aren't trained up to frontline standards, lets Hidden Leaf keep a very high proportion of active teams outside the village without compromising our cash flow."

"Well, we can debate the advantages of respective training methods another time," Katsu pointed out.

"So do you think we should go with what Kakashi said about not eating?" Shikanenai asked.

"I've got a pretty strong stomach," Katsu observed.

"I don't trust him," Neshan advised. "Tenten told me a bit about how he treated his team back home. He's a good leader and one of the best ninja I've ever met - his record is uncanny. But he's a lousy teacher. Probably because everything comes so easily to him."

"We shouldn't have any problem with that," Katsu concluded.

"Well, given that you're jounin and special jounin, I don't suppose he's got much to teach you," Shikanenai observed. "At least that he'd be willing to pass on to twelve year olds. I'll try not to be left too far behind."

He couldn't help feeling both terribly out of place, and at the same time somehow more at home than he ever had before.

And while he had some experience with being of two minds about some things, that had occurred under different circumstances altogether.

Blinking awake in a classroom of the Hidden Leaf's Academy had been disconcerting enough.

One part of him insisted he'd just come back to the temporary lodgings he and his students had been assigned by the Godaime Hokage, that he was a Jounin of the Hidden Mist staying in the Hidden Leaf as a so-called gesture of good will of the Mizukage. Quote, unquote.

The other claimed he'd lived in the Hidden Leaf with his mother, a Mist expatriate, since he was five. That he'd attended the Academy, and had made genin yesterday.

Also, he was apparently not the only one dealing with this sort of displacement, though it was a bit more severe in his case.

That first part of his mind knew the Village Hidden by Leaves somewhat, was aware of its layout, had taken time to stroll around on and above ground to get the lay of the land in case it was of use in the future.

The second, the Leaf-nin him, had knowledge that, while not necessarily superior, was that of someone who'd spent years in Konoha. It was a far more intimate knowledge, tinted by emotion as well.

He'd put these considerations aside until later back when he'd first become aware, sitting in a classroom and waiting for his supposed genin team's, Team 7's, jounin sensei. The realization that his teammates - though it was extremely odd to think of them like that at first, and still, truth be told - were in the same sort of situation had been startling but not really unexpected.

For one thing, he remembered Bakusuta Neshan and Nara Shikanenai as being jounin and chuunin respectively. He didn't really know either by more than name, rank, and a rough outline of what they could do, but that was enough. The three, himself included, were the only people in the classroom of genin who didn't 'fit' as it were.

Their conversation hadn't been enlightening, exactly. Well, not in an immediately useful way, at least. They'd picked the situation apart as much as they could for inconsistencies and such, and had managed to establish they weren't in a genjutsu...

...the paranoid part of him would have still held on to the theory that it was only him trapped in one, for whatever reason, but the darkly snickering growls buried deep in his mind weren't something that could be faked.

Well, that, and he didn't know 'Nenai well enough for any genjutsu to be able to fake a sense of humor _that_ specific.

So, after their conversation, each had gone his own way in an attempt to come to terms with the, apparently genuine, situation.

Which was why he was currently watching the sunset from the top of Konohagakure's outer wall. And absent-mindedly running one hand along his face.

It had felt supremely odd, when he'd bothered to pay attention to it, and he hadn't realized what it was that so unsettled him about it until he'd caught his reflection in a storefront window.

He'd been so used to his scars, he felt naked without them. Ironic, that.

And there were other, more worrying things he'd managed to dredge up. Leaf-him had been keeping up with the goings on in the Hidden Mist, it seemed - at least those that were open to the general public.

The Kaiou clan, one of the major contenders in the political life of the Mist from what the older part of him recalled, was apparently in decline here. The Iwagawa and the Sawamori clans - separate in those memories - had allied, forming the political counterpoint to the traditionalists of the Mizuno - about the only clan to stay roughly the same - which _should_ have been the role of the Kaiou...

Katsu's fingers drummed against his jawline in irritation. At least, that was what he told himself it was.

He kept telling himself this, even as his mind drifted in remembrance of the web of favors, owed and returned, that had bound him to one Kaiou Michiru, and vice versa.

From what he'd seen in the open records, lacking as those were, no such person existed. And his students were likely just as absent, neatly severing any ties with the Mist that his old memories could have imposed upon this life.

Hells, the only bit of carry-over he knew of was the person who'd given him a reason to live back in the really bad old days, and she was living in Konoha... he cut off that train of thought.

He was nowhere near ready enough to try and untangle that particular knot of confused facts and emotions.

With a sigh, he let the thoughts go for a moment, and watched the play of waning sunlight over the Village's rooftops.

"Hey guys, good morning!" called Kakashi as he arrived at the training ground.

The three genin didn't bother to rise from where they were sat in the clear zone at the edge of the heavily wooded training area. They were back to back, each with their legs stretched out in different directions. Shikanenai's reaction to Kakashi's arrival was the most expressive - he checked his watch and said: "Ten past ten," before pulling a couple of coins out of his pocket and passing them to Neshan. Katsu followed suit.

Kakashi raised his eyebrow. "I'm so glad that you're all here on time and ready to go," he said cheerfully. Then he giggled. All three genin stared at him, Shikanenai and Katsu turning their heads to do so over Neshan's shoulders. "When I tell you what this training's about you're all gonna flip," he predicted confidently.

"Final exam," Shikanenai said dryly and turned back to examining his arc of the forest.

"Failure rate above sixty-six percent," Katsu added in an identical tone and followed suit.

Kakashi blinked at their matter-of-fact responses. "Apparently not," he conceded. "Okay, should I tell you what the exam is, or do you know what it is already?"

"Might as well make it official," 'Nenai suggested dismissively.

Kakashi whipped a clock out of his backpack and set it on a tree stump. "Okay, this is set for noon," he said, setting the alarm as he spoke. "Here are two bells." He held out a pair of bells to demonstrate. "Your task is to take these from me before noon. Those who cannot get a bell by noon, get no lunch. I'll not only tie you to one of those stumps but I'll eat right in front of you." To his disappointment, none of the boys looked terribly hungry. The smug little gits had evidently ignored his advice. Oh well. "You only need to get one bell. There are only two, so one of you will definitely be tied to a stump. And the person who doesn't take a bell fails. So at least one of you will be sent back to the Academy."

"You can even use your shuriken," he added. "You won't succeed unless you come at me intending to kill."

"When do we start?" Katsu asked bluntly.

Kakashi shrugged. "Now?" he offered.

Neshan and Shikanenai were on their feet in an instant, Neshan entering the forest only a few seconds behind Shikanenai and obviously on the same route. Kakashi turned his eye on Katsu, who had leapt for the water instead. Splitting up already, not a good sign, the jounin mused. Then he saw the complex series of seals that Katsu had almost completed while he mused and his eye widened. "Crap."

Kakashi blurred, even as the Suiryudan no Jutsu-animated mass of water crashed into where he'd been standing.

Kirigishi was supposed to be good with ninjutsu, but nowhere had it been mentioned that he knew this level of Suiton. Besides which, he was standing on the water and not causing as much as a ripple in the process.

Surprise me once, shame on you. Surprise me twice... Kakashi thought. He'd been expecting... well, the Academy students usually had some problem with working up a proper killing intent. Apparently, this kid didn't. And that hadn't been a stock Suiryudan either. The dragon form hadn't been perfect, but it _had_ been noticeably faster than the norm, actually forcing the Jounin to pour on the speed in order to evade.

The splashdown had thrown up a wave of water droplets into the air, but they didn't have time to be drawn back by gravity before the masked Leaf-nin shot through them. The next series of hand seals the kid had gone into was familiar even without the use of Sharingan.

A good offense was often the best defense, especially while the enemy was busy with a longer technique.

And with Kakashi's speed, 'longer' was an arbitrary value at best. The circular water barrier rose upwards too late to hinder the Jounin from closing in, his speed making him seemingly appear behind Katsu out of thin air, save for the small splashes in places he'd stepped on the surface of the river.

That the genin hadn't reacted to the kunai against his neck clued him in that something was wrong, as did the fact that the water wall was still rising...

...when he felt the concentration of chakra underneath his feet, he only had time for a brief...

"Dammit."

The surface of the river exploded upwards while the water clone of Kirigishi exploded outwards, in a quick and dirty rendition of a Daibakufu no Jutsu that the Suijinheki barrier contained and directed, the water picking Kakashi up and hurling him into the air, while at the same time making him feel as if he'd suffered from the most painful bellyflop in history.

The Jounin's hands moved on instinct, kunai deflecting the barrage of same that had followed him up from underneath the water's surface, even as he directed his fall towards open ground.

When three Bakusuta Neshans rushed from the treeline, naginatas sweeping in, he was forced to admit that he could have picked a better landing spot...

All three blades buried themselves in three separate logs. Or rather, sheared through them, and the smoke they'd replaced Kakashi's body in.

"Alright... I may have given you too little credit," Kakashi said, raising his hand to uncover his left eye.

Only to find the hand refused to move. As did the rest of his body.

He looked down.

Right. Nara. Shadows.

Wonderful.

Shadow Binding was a powerful jutsu and the Nara clan's bloodline affinity for it made them one of the more respected clans of Konohagakure, limited largely by their scanty numbers. However, the jutsu did have the occasional weakness and during his stint in ANBU, Hatake Kakashi had made a point of being able to counter the most common jutsu of the major clans.

Weakness number one was that Shadow Binding only restricted physical movement - and while chakra was usually channelled through seals, doing so without movement was not impossible, merely very very difficult. Kakashi could only reproduce a very few jutsu without resorting to seals, but one of them would be ideal for utilising the other weakness of Shadow Binding - the requirement for the user's shadow to touch the target.

Channelling a pulse of chakra from his feet, Kakashi literally blasted up a few inches from the ground and bounded away from the grasping shadows as a fuuma shuriken whirled through the space he'd been occupying.

Obviously either Kirigishi or Bakusuta had taken his warning to heart and was trying to take the bells from his cold dead body. Equally obviously, Nara was helping them. Teamwork, in other words. It was tempting to simply declare the test was over, since the three of them had all demonstrated the traits that Kakashi was looking for. What was even more tempting, however, was to let the game play out. To see exactly what else they could pull on him.

First things first, he thought, uncovering his left eye.

It was fortunate that he had managed that, he concluded, dashing for cover inside the woods. The swarm of shuriken that had descended upon him were not a problem - he was able to pick out which were real and which were bushin with relative ease, but that had only been a diversion from the real attack and not much short of Sharingan would have detected the lethal ripples in the air behind the shuriken - someone had been researching kamaitachi jutsus, he noted, and wondered which of the three had ties to Sunagakure.

He flipped a few senbon in the most likely direction for whoever was using the Sand's jutsu to be evading and was rewarded by a shout of: "Gami no Yoroi jutsu," from 'Nenai, wrapping himself in a layer of paper that shed the needles with relative ease.

What the hell? Who used paper like that?

Kakashi had no time to ponder the event, or his failure to get a look at the jutsu for his Sharingan to record as he once again had to Kawarimi away from Neshan's naginata and found himself directly in the path of Katsu. Blocking the combination of strikes - most of which would have been crippling or even mortally wounding had they landed, held him in place long enough for Shikanenai, still wearing his paper covering, to grapple him. Countering that - the kid's taijutsu was definitely up to the level of the others - let Katsu land a kick that would have cracked a knee cap if he hadn't turned his leg _just_ right. And then one of them tried to snag him with a genjutsu, which he broke just in time to get distracted by a pair of Bushin that looked _exactly_ like Mitarashi and that punk sensei of the kids' (what was his name, Irupa?) getting it on behind a bush.

The jounin blinked, fended off a pair of snatches at the bells and regretfully chucked a couple of shuriken through the bushin - any entertainment now would be more than counterbalanced by the later pain should Anko find out about it.

Then silence.

He was all alone in a forest glade, quite deep into the training ground, with no sign of his prospective students.

Kakashi looked around and both eyes widened appreciatively as the Sharingan revealed parts of the intricate web of traps around him. And that was only those that had been concealed solely with genjutsu. There were three obvious routes, but they were far too obvious for Kakashi to risk - given the skill used to lay out these traps, the routes had to be even more cunningly trapped. Anyone who broke the genjutsu and bolted impulsively for supposed safety would regret it only briefly, Kakashi suspected - he could see slight signs of other, very well concealed traps that would close the routes and turn them into literal deathtraps.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Kakashi knelt and scooped up the small scroll that rested invitingly on the floor of the forest. The three genin wouldn't have gone to such lengths to trap him if they planned to use such an obvious trigger.

The message was short.

'Bells, balls, what's the difference?'

Kakashi paled behind his mask. They were kidding - right?

The Sharingan does not affect the arc of vision the way that the Byakugan does, and the first thing that Kakashi knew of the senbon that caught him in the shoulder was when it penetrated the tough cloth of his jacket and penetrated the flesh. The sudden numbness made it clear that it wasn't just tipped with metal however and he swore in the moment before his vision glazed over. What the _hell_ was being taught at the Academy these days?

He fell to the ground, everything suddenly too heavy, too tiring, too...

Kakashi tried very hard not to groan as he woke. It was quite hard, he'd evidently taken a serious knock to the head and the sunlight filtering through the trees was quite painful. He tried to move and discovered to his consernation that he was tied to something and his thumbs had been quite securely laced away from the rest of his fingers - he would be hard-pressed to escape with his hands neutralised that thoroughly.

What the hell had happened? he wondered. And whose hands had he fallen into? He must have been on a mission... he could remember crouching by the Memorial Stone remembering his own team before he went to collect his... his... new... genin... students. Oh _fuck_.

With his senses clearing, he could hear three voices faintly, obviously speaking from well outside the range of the handful of techniques available to him in such a position.

"We could take pictures of him without his mask and post them all over town."

"Keep him tied up and throw him into Anko's bedroom covered in dango!"

"Send him back to the Academy for retraining? We did beat him pretty easily and I'm sure Iruka would go along with it."

"Nah, what use is a Jounin who can't beat off three green-as-grass genin?"

"You're right - let's sell him to Hidden Cloud for the bounty."

"I hear that the summoning ritual for Manda involves human sacrifice - anyone want to be a Snake Summoner?"

There was a long silence and Kakashi tried very, very hard to hide any visible signs of fear at what these budding psychopaths might chose to do. On the plus side, it looked like they weren't leaning towards the Anko/dango option. On the down side, he was sure that Hidden Cloud would be only too glad to get hold of him even without the side-benefit of obtaining a Sharingan.

He heard a rustling and saw 'Nenai observing him thoughtfully.

"Ha!" the young Nara said smugly. "Called it. Not even sweating!"

Two small coins came flying towards him on parabolic arcs and the boy easily snatched them out of the air. The next moment a kunai hit the post and Kakashi felt his bonds loosen enough for him to make a start on escaping them.

He paused as a sharp edge pressed gently against his jugular vein.

"The Academy doesn't actually give classes in negotiating from a position of strength," Shikanenai said from the other end of a sword that would give new definition to the concept of death by paper-cut. His voice was calm and conversational. "So, about this test thing... how are we doing?"

Kakashi smirked behind his mask. "Not bad... for beginners," he said. Then his smirk faded as he felt the Shadow Binding settle on him again and the bonds tighten up.

Kakashi could tell that the vein on the side of his head was throbing. It was a good thing his hitae-i disguised the reaction. "I suppose we can call this a pass," he said. "You _do_ have the bells, don't you?"

The Shadow Binding faded away and 'Nenai stepped back. "Take my word for it?"

"Sure, we're both Leaf-nin, aren't we?"

"Great," said Neshan, stepping out from behind Kakashi's field of view. "So, lunch?"

"Er... could you let me loose?" Kakashi requested as the boys turned their backs and began to walk away.

The tip of a kunai traced a line down the side of his mask, barely dimpling the skin underneath.

"After we've eaten," whispered Kirigishi Katsu and then walked after his teammates, whistling merrily and spinning the kunai in his hand.

Katsu and Neshan standing in the streets of Konoha that evening, with Katsu half-glaring at a liquor store

"Look, we're all upset about this, but I doubt drinking yourself into a stupor is going to help... even if you could get your hands on the alcohol."

"I probably could. I mean, oi, assassin here? Eh. What's the use..." grumbled Katsu

"Yeesh, what's got you so damn constipated today?"

"Remember Mizuno Yuki?"

Neshan blinked. "The medic nin you were being all friendly with when the delegation from the Mist came after...?"

Katsu nodded and handed Neshan a picture from his wallet "Here's a photo of this 'me' and his mother."

Neshan looks at photo and winced. "Vey. Okay, you have a point."

"No, I have issues," Katsu deadpanned.

"Kakashi?" Asuma said in a disbeliving tone as he watched the other jounin stalk into the Academy lounge, grey hair bristling.

"I don't see your students," Iruka said in surprise. "Should I send out a rescue party?"

Kakashi tilted his head to look at the chuunin. "Did you send me three ringers?"

"Ringers?"

"Chuunin disguised as genin? As opposed to the kids I was supposed to get?"

"No."

"What - you mean you passed them?" one of the other jounin asked in amazement.

"They're deviant, malicious little scumbags," Kakashi said. "I think I like them. Teamwork's a little ragged but we can work on that."

"You're accepting them as a team?"

"Well it's only until the chuunin exams. I can't see any of them failing."

"Ohayo!" Kakashi said, poofing into existence on the bridge the next day.

"Hope we didn't rush you," said one of the two genin waiting for him.

Hmmm, something wrong there, Kakashi thought. One, two... Neshan, Katsu... "Ara... where's Shikanenai?"

At that point he felt a hand latch onto his ankles and with a crash was dragged through the wooden decking to land on the water underneath. And since the water wasn't all that far below the bridge, promptly cracked his head on one of the support beams.

"I don't think the Groundhog Technique Decaptitation is supposed to be used like that," he told boy who melted out of the shadows under the bridge.

Shikanenai grunted something about lazy assholes deserving a bath and swung himself up through the new hole in the decking two seconds before the explosive tags in the water disrupted the water tension that Kakashi's chakra was latching onto.

Kakashi was still soaked as he made his way into the Hokage Tower. Several of the ninja he passed stifled laughter at the sight of his dripping silver hair. The previous 'brushhead' appearance now looked like more of a mophead.

Sandaime raised one grey eyebrow as the jounin entered the debriefing room. "What happened to you, Kakashi-kun?" he asked.

"Shikanenai-kun decided to practise a minor doton jutsu on the bridge," Kakashi said as drily as he could manage. "There's a sizeable hole in it, by the way."

"I can understand that might put you _on_to the water, Kakashi," Ebisu asked curiously, "But how did it put you _in_to it? You were waterwalking almost before you could walk on dry land, the way I heard it."

"Shikanenai-kun also likes to play with explosive tags. I can't stand on the water when it's flying in all directions at once."

"I'm glad that you're finding your new team such a challenge to your abilities," the Hokage said with an almost straight face. "You always have the best stories out of the jounin-sensei."

There's a little bar not far from the Academy where the teachers gather when they need to let off a little steam. They can be surprisingly territorial about the bar as being their place. The owner doesn't mind - teachers are steady custom and reasonably unlikely to break the furniture. And very few ninja are willing to contest the teacher's dominance, since it was virtually certain that one of them will remember some blackmail-worthy anecdote about your Academy days.

Jounin-sensei are allowed in as honorary members. These days Kakashi hardly ever had to pay for his drinks when he dropped in there.

This wasn't just because Kurenai Yuuhi had offered a week of neck rubs to anyone who could find out what was under his mask, although hope sprang eternal among some of the younger teachers.

No, it was because after a couple of beers in that particular bar, Hatake Kakashi would spill all, proving that even he, the mighty Sharingan Kakashi, Copy-Ninja of Konoha, had trouble dealing with ninja brats.

It just gave the teachers a warm feeling.

There was a ritual to the process. The whispering when he walked in, decorated with whatever detritius of the day's mission and/or training, as wagers were settled up or made on what he'd have to say. The invitation to pull up a stool and have a drink on one of the younger teachers. The tale of whatever hijinks had entailed in the Academy that day, by that same teacher. The purchase of a round by one of the older teachers. That teacher's tale, taken from the days of their relative youth, usually featuring a well-known or fondly recalled ninja.

And then someone, anyone, would pass Kakashi his third mug (the first two having been steadily emptied despite never being seen near the jounin's face).

"That Kirigishi brat," he sighed. "I just don't know what's going on inside his head."

"Half the time, I think he's so Mist that it's a good job we don't use the old Mist genin exam. We'd have another Demon of the Mist in our midst."

"And sometimes..." he sighed. "When I find out who sold him a copy of Icha-Icha Paradise, I'm going to cut the idiot's heart out. With the handle of a kunai."

Several questions sprang to mind among his audience: why a kunai _handle_? How to best punish whoever sold it to a twelve-year-old? Why was Kakashi not happy that his student shared his taste in literature?

Kakashi looked around and then held up one finger. "Because it will hurt more." A second finger. "See point one." Third finger. "Because anytime he wants to avoid a question he just buries his nose in the damn thing and says:" His voice was pitched into an almost perfect imitation of his student. "Well, I _am_ a student of the Copy Ninja Kakashi. You wouldn't believe the things you can pick up from a sensei like that."

"But you already took today's mission," Sandaime told a puzzled Kakashi. "And only half-an-hour late, I was quite impressed," he added with a straight face. By the excellent henge and acting abilities of the genin rather than the relative punctuality of the errant jounin, of course. He was fairly sure even the chuunin guards outside his office had been decieved.

"This is the first time I've been here today," Kakashi said. "It must have been an imposter."

There was a thump from the window and a wicker basket of the kind used to transport pets was deposited on the floor beneath it. Three small heads were visible just above the sill, all of them wearing Konoha hitai-i.

"Found the cat," reported Nara Shikanenai, the leftmost of the heads. "Can we have another pathetically easy D-rank mission or do we have to do some actual work today?"

"Please," Kakashi begged. "If you have any mercy in your heart, Hokage, give me a mission where I can kill them and hide the bodies."

"Kakashi," the Hokage sighed. "If I give you that sort of mission they'll kill _you_ and hide the body. I don't have so many jounin that I can spare you." He rested his chin on his hands. "Still, it is a shame to keep you all cooped up in the village. I'll give you a C-rank mission. It's a bodyguard assignment, protecting a certain individual."

The three junior members of Team Seven looked at each other. "It's got to be better than chasing that damn cat," Katsu snorted. "I swear the damn thing can kawarimi."

Shikanenai looked suddenly intrigued. "Interesting idea," he mused. "I'm pretty sure that I could make that work..."

The Hokage coughed. "Well since you're so enthusiastic, why don't I introduce you to your charge," he offered when he was sure that he had Shikanenai's attention. Important to send our best team to the Wave, since they'll be out on their own. Have to rely on themselves and their sensei's skills. Can't think of a better team than this to deal with anything that might come up in Wave Country. Vital to get them out of Konoha before they get up to any more mischief. "Hey, will you come in here."

The door slid open to reveal a disreputable old man clearly well into the bottle of booze that dangled from one of his hands. "What's this?" he asked. "They're all a bunch of super-brats. Especially... the four-eyes with the stupid hair."

Kakashi covered his visible eye with one gloved hand. "We're supposed to protect him, Neshan... don't kill him."

Neshan looked innocent, focused more on counting the explosive tags he was carrying. Two hundred seventy-one, two hundred seventy-two... "I thought he was talking about himself," he said out loud, indicating the old man's glasses and the tufts of hair visible around the bald crown of his head.

Hatake Kakashi didn't know if he should be happy or annoyed as they escorted the bridge builder along. He'd been giving himself headaches, trying to understand what was going on in the minds of these kids, ever since the Bell Test.

Annoyed would be an option, because he hadn't yet managed the feat.

Happy would be an option, because they were relatively quiet as they walked.

The Nara would have appeared similar to his brother of the recent Ino-Shika-Cho reincarnation genin team, but, as Kakashi had - much to his chagrin - found out, he responded to things with the sort of temper he'd have likened to that of the Yamanaka girl... except that, where she used a tongue that was perhaps sharper than most of the best kunai forged in Konoha, he preferred more direct means of making his displeasure known. Liked to use excessive amounts of explosive notes. Which hurt.

Bakusuta Neshan... good control and technique, poor reserves, and made up for it with weapons. Lots of weapons. And explosive notes. Lots of explosive notes. More than the Nara. Did he mention how much those hurt yet? Currently, he was loaded down with several scroll rolls, and while Kakashi would have normally looked at that more than a little oddly, he'd taken a peek at what the boy had been putting on them... and while the Copy-Ninja wasn't a seal specialist, he had trained under the Yondaime, who'd in turn trained under Jiraiya... some of the seals he'd seen the kid using had made him blink and reach for a research book other than his beloved Icha Icha.

And Kirigishi just plain felt _off_. While his knowledge of Suitons could be explained away by the fact that his mother was an Mist-nukenin who'd sought out shelter in Konohagakure, the sort of killer instinct he'd shown during the Test...

"Five minute break," Kirigishi Katsu said, cracking his neck, and stopping when his foot splashed a bit of a water from a puddle on the side of the road. "I need to take a piss."

And then he'd act like that.

Kakashi sighed, shrugged, and scanned the treeline with what looked like a casual motion, noting the positioning of the puddle without as much as a glance. Well, at least the boredom would likely stop.

A few minutes later the kid was back and they were walking again, when the noise of water being shifted reached them.

There was a whistle of air, and a sound that didn't quite fit into...

*splorch* went Katsu, a formless mass of water falling to the ground where he'd been walking not a moment earlier.

Kakashi and the others spun around.

*crack* went the kunai that had penetrated into a Mist-nin's skull via ear canal, driven by Katsu's hand. The other hand was reaching the Mist-nin's armored glove, which had a razor-chain connecting said Mist-nin to the _second_ Mist-nin, who was currently in the air.

*ching* went the chain as Katsu's hand moved _something_ on the armored glove that made said chain go taut, after which the Leaf-genin yanked the spastic body of the kunai-lobotomized Mist-nin back and around, pulling the airborne one off course as well.

The Mist-nin rolled with the impact as best he could... and stopped dead, or nearly so, when he was caught by Shikanenai's Shadow Bind, and a naginata (where the hell did _that_ come from?) held to his throat by Neshan.

The whole affair took less than three seconds.

"Well," Katsu said, twisting the kunai sticking out of the dead Mist-nin's ear with an audible wet sound. "I think our pay-grade just went up a notch, ne, Hatake-san?"

There was a carefully hidden surge of chakra and flicker of movement that Kakashi spotted only out of the corner of his eye. "Everyone duck!" he shouted and the ninja scattered, Neshan dragging Tazuna behind him by the collar.

Their reaction was just in time as a whirling length of steel - less a sword than a six foot long razor blade - flashed through the air where they had been standing, scattering a cloud of smoke that had replaced Shikanenai. When the cloud was gone, the Nara genin lay in two seperate halves on the ground.

"Sorry, but you appear to be the Sharingan Kakashi," said the grey-clad ninja standing on one of the trees. "The old man is mine."

"Hehe, wearing forehead protectors and acting like real ninja," the Mist-nin sneered. "But you know what? A real ninja is someone who has survived numerous brushes with death. Basically... once you're good enough to be listed in my handbook, then you can start calling yourself - whargh!"

Zabuza was cut off by a mighty splash as both the water he was standing on and the globe of water around Kakashi were shattered by a dozen small simultaneous explosions. As he plunged into the water, he felt the press of feet against his sword and Nara Shikanenai vaulted up out of the water, through Kakashi's broken prison, kicked off from the sword's blade and tore open one of the waterproof pockets in his jacket to produce a wad of paper. "Kakkuuki-no-Gami," he cried out, flowing chakra through the paper.

"A real ninja knows to keep a low enough profile not to wind up in anyone's handbook!" he shouted as his improvised paper glider carried the pair of leaf-nin towards the shore and Zabuza disappeared from sight beneath the water.

A moment later the shortlived glider touched down, depositing Leaf genin and jounin beside Neshan and Tazuna.

Kakashi's eyes narrowed as they scanned the surface of the water. The liquid seemed to momentarily churn, and the Leaf jounin's still uncovered Sharingan caught the shifts, small waves and rolling ripples that hinted at something akin to a struggle happening...

"Where'd Katsu...?"

The water erupted upwards, settling to show Katsu kneeling on the surface, one hand thrust downwards. The genin flinched to the side, keeping his limb submerged, as the blade of Zabuza's sword thrusting upwards from below the water flashed past his head.

Katsu's free hand went from his thigh pouch to being shoved downwards alongside the other, then rapidly pulled back, and Kakashi could see the boy screw his eyes shut and turn his head aside.

The water rippled away from the point his hand, encased in the armored gauntlet he'd scavenged from one of the dead Mist chuunin, remained submerged at, and the muted light of a flashbang going off directly underneath shone, then went out.

Katsu wobbled, then seemed to lose focus, and went splashing down himself. Shortly followed by the swordblade tipping over.

There was a moment of silence.

It was broken by Katsu dragging his sodden self out of the lake.

"Devil!" came a call from the end of the bridge.

With a swift move, Zabuza bludgeoned Kakashi away from him with the flat of his heavy sword. It wasn't enough however and Kakashi's kunai bit into the missing-nin, disabling his other arm.

"Now both arms are useless," Kakashi declared. "You can't even perform a seal."

"Ooh," said the same voice that had spoken before. "You're getting your ass kicked. How disappointing."

Warily, the two jounin turned to look at the speaker and spotted a short middle-aged man in a business suit standing in front of a motley band of heavily armed thugs that filled the bridge from one side to the other.

"Gatou," Zabuza spat. "What are you doing here...? And what's with all these men?"

The man smirked. "You've been a missing-nin ever since you ran out of Kirigakure and you don't recognise this old chestnut?" he asked. "You don't have a village to back you up, remember? So why not hire a missing-nin on empty promises and let him wear down the opposition? Then kill whatever's left with sheer numbers. There was never any intention to pay you."

"Scumbag," Neshan growled from where he was standing.

The businessman locked his eyes on the boy. "Of course, the tactic can't be used if there are any witnesses," he concluded. "Kill them all."

The thugs burst forwards, closng in on the little cluster of ninja.

"Kakashi, I'm sorry," Zabuza told the other jounin. "This fight is over. Now that I have no reason to go after Tazuna, I have no reason to fight you."

"Ah," Kakashi observed, looking at the approaching thugs. "You're right."

Neshan glanced over at Katsu. "It's time," he called out.

"Agreed!" replied the other genin.

Then Kakashi's head snapped up and he focused his Sharingan eye upon the source of the next speaker.

"Understood," said Gatoh as the kage bushin of Shikanenai next to Neshan dissipated in a cloud of smoke, explaining completely how useless he'd been during the fight so far.

The thugs' charge halted completely - not due to any sudden looking beneath the underneath on their part, but due to the lines of shadow that were linking then into a single, immobile mass. Shikanenai was sweating as his henge of Gatoh dissipated - even by using the hundreds of seals that Neshan had drawn on the surface of the bridge when they planned this, using Shadow Binding on this many people at once was tiring him rapidly. Without the seals he couldn't have managed more than a dozen or so and even with the seals, fifty-three thugs was a strain.

Shikanenai passed a scroll across to Tazuna. "Before I forget," he said. "Our bill."

Tazuna looked at him suspiciously, and then cracked the wax seal and scanned it. "Escort from Konohagakure to Wave Country against Jounin level opposition," he read. "A-class Mission. Securing home and workplace from Jounin-level opposition for a month. A-class Mission. Assassination of a merchant target with Jounin level protection. A-class Mission. Neutralisation of a Corporate Entity with Jounin level protection. B-class Mission. Neutralisation of Fifty-Three Non-Ninja Opponents." The old man stared at the totals being charged in utter shock. "You what!?" he screamed. "I can't pay for three A-class Missions and a B-class Mission! I'll be in hock for the rest of Inari's life!"

The Nara member of Team Seven shook his head. "Read the rest of the scroll," he said patiently.

Tazuna glared and scrolled down through the miscellaneous expenses and the legal small print to the bottom of the scroll. "Paid in Full," he read out slowly. "Confirmation that Konohagakure has Payment, signed by... Nara Shikanenai (Genin), Bakusuta Neshan (Genin), Kirigishi Katsu (Genin)."

He stared down at Shikanenai. "Aren't you gonna get into trouble for this? I haven't paid a bent penny yet, but you've put in writing that I've paid you more ryou than I've seen in the last six years. Won't your Hokage want the money?"

"Oh, he'll have it," the ninja said breezily. "Trust me... I know what I'm doing..."

Kakashi glared at the three genin.

"What?" Shikanenai said. "Are you mad that we undermined you as team leader by settling accounts with Tazuna rather than leave it to you?"

"No."

"Mad we nicked Gatoh's slush fund and used it to pay for the mission on Tazuna's behalf?" Neshan speculated.

"No."

"Mad that we didn't tell you we'd assassinated Gatoh and that Shikanenai was impersonating him?" Katsu suggested.

"I'm quite proud of you for pulling that off actually."

"Then what's got you pissed off?" Katsu asked bluntly.

"I spent six hours drawing up the bill for Tazuna," Kakashi whined. "And I could have left it to you and been reading Icha Icha Paradise all that time!"

Shikanenai was leaning against the tree by the far end of the bridge and giving their teacher a flat glare, and Katsu had aborted his kata and was crouching like someone who was expecting a mad dog to lunge, and was looking forward to breaking its neck.

Neshan rolled the scroll he'd had spread out in front of him closed and adjusted his glasses. "You're early, Kakashi."

"Maaa... weren't we supposed to meet ten minutes ago?"

"When someone wastes years of effort being consistently more than three hours late, the time that comes out of his mouth is about as worthwhile as a wooden coin. You've emphatically demonstrated that you're not going to grow a brain and actually act like a leader, so there's another reason for your deciding to interrupt the time we usually spend actually learning. What is it?"

Kakashi had walked over to where his student was sitting on the ground, and now leaned over and smiled into his face. "Most people are more respectful when they talk to a Jounin, you know."

"Earn it, first. And stop stalling."

The teacher shrugged, and stood up straight. "We have a mission," he said seriously. "Come on."

All missions were formally delivered at the Hokage's tower, along with detailed briefings and needed equipment. Nevertheless, Genin training cells wouldn't be chosen for a mission without their Jounin-sensei's foreknowledge, so Shikanenai said, "You wouldn't change routine for a D-rank mission. What've we got?"

"Extermination."

Katsu chuckled under his breath at the news, and Kakashi made a mental note to keep a closer eye on the quietest of his Genin - that sort of grin at this sort of news could be a rather bad sign for the future. "Some sort of big cat seems to've moved into a village about a day from Konoha - it's been attacking livestock, even a couple of people. Local farmers pooled their resources to hire a C-rank mission to eliminate the thing."

"So, mostly tracking, then, with a bit of combat," Shikanenai concluded. "No problem."

But, when Sarutobi Hiruzen, third Hokage of Konohagakure, concluded his directives to Genin Team Seven, he finished with an entirely different conclusion. "This creature's appetite seems to be tremendous, and its attack patterns and the damages left on its prey's remains are unusual. Whether it is some form of constructed nin-beast, a youkai, or even some sort of minor demon is as yet unknown - be very cautious. Your own survival is paramount - Biigaru Village is not the only place to have seen attacks of this sort, and incidents seem to be increasing in both area and frequency. We must have more information."

Rolling fields, a shallow valley with what passed for a river squirming its way along its bottom, land off in the distance, just before the treeline, where the livestock would be put out to pasture... Biigaru Village lay cradled in a bend of the so called river, several bridges leading to its smaller offshot that sat snugly against the outside of the bend's outer bow.

"Not much left," Shikanenai's eyes scanned the ground, catching traces of past movement here and there, the occasional clearer trail as well. "No real struggle after the ox was brought down, though. Looks like whatever did it was either big enough or had enough momentum to take in one pounce."

"Mm," Katsu nodded, standing off to the side. He motioned outwards with one hand, using a kunai to point. "Came from there, I'm guessing. Big paws, good spread, you can barely see any scuffs, much less actual tracks."

"Maaa... if this were anywhere even close to the border with the Stone, or remotely in that direction," the crouching Leaf-nin mused aloud, not rising from his crouch.

"Their mountain cat summons," Katsu concurred.

"Wrong terrain, wrong direction, wrong..." 'Nenai shrugged and stood. "And it's too big."

"Besides which," Katsu replaced the kunai in its vest holster. "They wouldn't eat everything, skin, bones..."

"Well, at least we're closer to finding out what _isn't_ doing it."

"It's a cat," Katsu closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "At the barest basics. That much fits."

"Territorial," Shikanenai added, remembering the rough spread of what the villagers had reported of where the attacks had taken place. The sort of spread that formed as a result _did_ fit. "New territory?"

"Could be. There've been no prior reports of this sort of thing, according to what Neshan dug up from the archives before we left," the Mist expatriate breathed once, deeply, tension leaving his body as his eyes opened again. "A chicken or two missing, then blood in a pen and a pig gone, then an old ox, a few random occurrences in-between, then this."

Shikanenai shook his head slightly at the dismissal of two 'missing' people and one child as a 'random, in-between occurrence', then reconsidered. "Steadily bigger, steadily stronger."

"It's quiet enough to snatch someone in the middle of a village, even if it was night," the paper user continued, bringing what abridged details he'd gotten from the village chief before they'd separated from Kakashi and Neshan to investigate the sites of the attacks while those two would look into the village itself. What was left of those sites, anyway.

"It doesn't have a scent," he heard Katsu add, speaking quietly. Then he fixed Nenai with a brief look. "Trust me on this. And no, you don't want to know."

"Some sort of... embodied chakra spirit?"

Katsu shook his head. "No. Something physical. That sort of chakra summon would need to feed off chakra, which would leave skin and bones as it forced the prey's body to cannibalize its muscle mass, fat, even some organs."

It was Shikanenai's turn to shoot Katsu a look.

"Ran into some on a mission on the East Continent," Katsu looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Distinctly unpleasant experience..." he left off with a shrug.

"So, you're saying it's trying to get all the... mass, it can? Regeneration?"

"Assuming it was injured and chased out of its former territory, not just... dormant around here. Maybe growth, in that case."

Nenai grimaced. "Too many uncertainties."

"Look on the bright side."

"_You're_ seeing a bright side?" The Nara replied instinctively, then frowned. Katsu _had_ been getting a little less gloomy and moody as they'd made their way from the village, but he'd put it down to the fact that they were moving and too busy to actually pull that sort of thing.

"Mm," Katsu grinned wryly. "At least we're sure it's not the Nibi no Nekomata. Well, unless the villagers are better at hiding an outbreak of sickness and dead men walking."

"And you'd... smell the stench," Nenai stated rather than asked.

"And I'd smell the stench," nodded Katsu.

Chakra-conductive ink was expensive. More, since it lacked blood's connection to its user's chakra, it demanded greater precision to achieve the same results. Given these facts, and given that a pricked finger could be expected to heal in minutes at most, most ninja saw no need to bother with the stuff.

There was, however, one advantage to using it - that being that a properly handled pen could produce far finer lines, and, hence, far more complex results, than the simple smears left behind a fingertip.

In short, ink was an expert's tool, and somehow it didn't surprise Kakashi to learn that Neshan kept three seperate wells of the stuff in his pack.

What he was doing with it, though, would have been a surprise no matter what - not so much because it should be beyond a Genin's ability (the Jounin was well on his way to expecting that), as because it was something he couldn't follow.

"So?"

Neshan frowned at the glowing smears of light hovering above the intricate tracery covering the sheet of paper he'd laid out over the grassy yard where the first of the attacks against humans had occured. "Demon. Not a type I know, thought the pattern has some similarities to a nekomata. Teleportive power, probably quite intelligent. Eats meat but not chakra, so probably something else I can't trace without knowing to look for ahead of time."

"Can you track it?" Both of them had completely forgotten their usual, half-serious quarrels - this was a mission, and a serious one, with no time for personality conflicts.

"...Yes. But I'll need a fresher trail. A few hours, at most." In other words, not until it struck again. "What did you learn from the villagers?"

Kakashi had mostly been monitoring their environment while the younger ninja concentrated on his work, but that hadn't kept him from talking to the people who had gathered to watch. "No one saw or heard anything. There were a few catlike tracks and a scuff mark where the body seemed to have fallen - but otherwise, the victims vanished completely."

"So it either eats fast, or it's taking them with it."

"Can you determine which?"

"Not here. There was an ox lost a few days ago, right? That'll be fresh enough."

"Maa... let's go, then."

"Right."

When the four shinobi met at the agreed-on place, a ragged, craggy pillar of granite that heaved itself up above the forest canopy right outside the cleared zone surrounding the village, they had barely had time to exchange greetings when a razor-edged chill danced its way across their spines. "Is that..." Shikanenai asked, and all three of the others nodded in unison.

"Without a doubt," Neshan said, and bit at his thumb before crouching to scrawl a quick, sloppy glyph across the bare stone. When he looked up, a slight film of chakra could be seen dancing across his glasses. "That way," he said, pointing, then took off at a fast cruise that any competent ninja could maintain for hours on end.

Katsu poured on a short burst of speed and fell in beside him, frowning. "The flash came from that direction," he said with a slight nod towards the facing he meant.

"Yes. But cats kill their prey quick, once they decide to. It's already too late to stop it from making the kill, and its den... is right here," Neshan finished as he snapped to a halt perched in the crux of a branch.

"Below us?" Kakashi asked, since the streambank below them didn't seem to have any kind of cave that would be suitable for a creature that size.

Katsu's nostrils flared. "Yes," he said flatly.

"Messy eater?" the third Genin broke in, not quite jokingly.

"No. Just a heavy one."

Training and practice and experience being what they were, none of the team's four members actually tensed at the second pulse of power; while the reaction would have slightly improved their ability to act and react quickly, it would also have made their chakra patterns stand out vivdly against the calmer background of the forest, and called them to the attention of any moderately sensitive animal or civilian.

Neshan brought his free hand up and let the fingers flicker through a short message in Konoha's basic finger-sign. 'proposal', the message went. 'shadow/water twin scouts, (lays traps?), distraction/bait. twin uses jutsu, tests defenses-endurace. assuming loss-destruction, second twin provokes enemy into open and signal's combined attack from all team elements; reccomend shadow-lock as opening. concur/refine?'

Neshan gave the seals a last critical glance, then handed it off. Shikanenai did likewise. So did Katsu, completing the circle. Neshan pocketed the two slips of paper.

He'd done most of the seal work, with Katsu adding in 'his' experience with self-perpetuating chakra constructs (when asked he'd mumble about something called 'Gu-rei-puu-ni-ru') to do the bits that leeched ambient energy from both the person to activate the Seal and the ...err, subject.

Then 'Nenai had looked over the initial project and pointed out redundancies without which the whole thing turned out to be considerably more efficient.

... so much that it was actually marketable. They'd agreed to see about patenting it next morning.

"So, how many D-Class missions' worth should we charge the daimiyo for this, do you think?" Katsu asked as he stood and stretched the kinks out of his limbs.

"Just him? What about the other teams?" 'Nenai's grin was downright predatory. "After all, we're saving them from ever having to hunt down that damn cat again."

The 'Lost and Found' tag and retrieval set proved to be an instant success.

And the Hokage's office staff had to spend the following month coming up with some different kind of reusable D-Class mission they could fill in the blanks of the day's roster with.

"All nine of them were my students at the Academy," Iruka protested. "Every one of them is talented... but it's too early! They need more experience before they enter the exam!"

The three jounin were all scowling at him, but it was Kakashi who spoke. "I became a chuunin when I was six years younger than them."

"They are not the same as you! Are you trying to ruin them!"

"Kirigishi, Nara and Bakusuta are more likely to be ruined by holding them back," Kakashi replied. "Keeping them on D-rank missions isn't just a waste of their talents... it's hazardous to my health!" There was a muffled snickering from around the room. "And possibly to Hidden Leaf's architecture - they're walking around with more explosive tags than ANBU keep stockpiled in their HQ."

"How can they _afford_ that many?" Ibiki asked. "That many purchases would be driving the cost up, surely?"

"Bakusuta taught the other two how to make their own," Kakashi admitted. "I'd suspect them of selling the surplus for extra cash, but at the rate that they go through them..." He gave Iruka a heavy-lidded look. "If a genin can scare me then he's ready for chuunin."

Shikanenai thought back to the last time he'd been in a chuunin exam. It had been a particularly rough one - only six teams had passed the second round and the month before the finals had been particularly rough. Not one of the teams had been from Sunagakure, the host village, and that made the finalists extremely unpopular.

Three teams from Hidden Grass, two from Hidden Waterfall, one from Hidden Leaf. Frankly, he was surprised that the Waterfall teams got as far as they did - one team had some strong ninja but their teamwork was horrible, the other could at least get along but weren't all that impressive. The Grass teams were just scary - he later found out that they were all long-time genin who'd been doing serious C and B solo missions for years - being trained up for some elite role like the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist or the like.

Shikanenai tried to pretend that he hadn't seen the rather obvious fake rock that was creeping up on the team. It was an ugly ruse, but it was better than seeing the travesty that was inside. For the fifth time that week he weighed the merits of battering the box until it actually looked like a natural rock against the flaws of ANBU dragging him in front of the Hokage to explain the hospitalisation of Sarutobi Konohamaru.

Not worth it. Damn.

"Burning Power of -!" The rest of the sentence was 'Youth Explosion Jutsu' but 'Nenai had bullied his cou- er, twin brother into devising a variant of the family's technique that would force the target's facial expression to mimic that of the user. And since his lips were sealed, so were those of 'Team Konohamaru' as they were frozen in mid-attack upon their leader's 'Great Rival'.

Katsu and Neshan looked on with sympathy masked by rough humour. "It's good that the children have someone to look up to," Katsu observed wisely.

"Lee's really very good with children," Neshan agreed as Shikanenai raked the eight-year-olds with a depressed look.

After a minute, the Nara released his prey.

"Very perceptive!" Konohamaru shouted. He was truly as loud as his inspiration. "Just as I expect of my Great Rival!" He puffed up his chest and thrust out an upraised thumb.

Shikanenai gave him an unamused look. The boy had managed with obvious effort to tame his hair into what was recognisably a bowlcut, and was wearing a rather baggy green jumpsuit. The genin could only be glad that the rest of Team Konohamaru hadn't followed suit. Instead, Udon was wearing leather wrap around his head and a baggy jacket, while Moegi had adopted a chinese shirt and had cut her hair into two small bobbles.

"Konohamaru," 'Nenai said, with obvious effort to keep his temper under control. "I want your firm promise to forever abstain from spandex."

"But that would mean I couldn't be like Lee-sensei! and Maito-ji-sama," the boy protested only to recoil as Shikanenai's clawing fingers barely missed his throat. Neshan and Katsu exchanged glances and seized their red-faced teammate by opposite arms.

"Do you remember the first rule?" Neshan asked the kids brightly.

"When in danger or in doubt, run for your life?" Moegi asked sunnily.

Katsu gave them an evil grin and nodded. Shikanenai managed to pull forward by about a step, dragging the other two behind him. Team Konohamaru got the point almost immediately.

"I see Gai's team," Neshan reported.

"What are they doing down there?" Shikanenai asked.

"Looks like they're just milling around. There are a couple of genin blocking the entrance to a second floor classroom. Could be a fight. What about up there?"

"Kakashi's reading his book outside the classroom he told us to go to," Katsu replied.

"Do you ever feel sorry for people who use, you know, doors and corridors and stuff?" asked Shikanenai as he fiddled with the latch of the window leading into the exam room.

"Oi, Neshan," came a voice from their left as the three entered the crowded waiting room. "You're doing this troublesome thing, too?"

That was odd... "Natch. Your brother didn't tell you already?"

Shikamaru snorted. "I thought that you or Katsu'd've had more sense."

"Heh. I take a lot of killing - and Katsu's been in a snit since graduation. Speaking of which -"

"Katsu-kun!" cheered a feminine voice behind them.

Shikanenai snickered and slid in between his twin and his long-haired team mate as the last member of their team scowled and began attempting to dissuade the attentions of an overly-affectionate blonde octopus, aka Yamanaki Ino. "Bets he decks her?"

Neshan slid a five en note out of his sleeve. "He won't - it'd attract too much attention."

"You're on."

"That's mean, you know," the lady's remaining teammate interjected from over their shoulders.

The twins traded a glance and rolled their eyes, and the other adjusted his glasses and shrugged. "He's never had the heart to actually go and break _hers_ before now, and nothing less has slowed her down. She won't care, and _he_ won't care, so there's no reason not to just kick back and enjoy the absurdity of the situation."

"I-it's still mean," a soft voice insisted, joining the conversation.

Neshan turned and faced her, with a slight blush crossing his cheeks involuntarily as he saw that Hinata had left her jacket open rather than zipping it closed over the lightweight, silk-and-netting shirt she customarily wore underneath it. What made the reprimand worse, of course, was that she was quite correct, and he knew it. "Ahh..."

"Oi, Hinata!" someone exclaimed - nearly yelled - from some distance away. "What are you doing talking to _that_ stuck-up bastard?"

The Hyuuga heiress flinched, and the boy she had been talking to rounded on the interloper so quickly his braid swung out and almost wrapped itself around his arm when he stopped. "Whatever she wants to!" he snapped. "You don't own her, _Koinu-chan_, so stop trying to make her heel!"

"_Heel?!_" Kiba choked, and snarled and lunged before Shino's restraining hand on his shoulder brought him up short.

"Stop it!" Hinata protested, stepping in between both of the glaring Genin. "I don't need protected from _anyone_!"

"You guys shouldn't be so noisy, you know," an ironic voice tossed in from near the door. When they turned to face the speaker, he nodded at one group of ninja from Hidden Rain. "Everybody's nervous about the exam. Those guys in particular have short tempers - bugging them like that could cause some real problems for you."

"Ah, but how much of threat could such a noisy, unprofessional ninja as would make this kind of ruckus _be_?" Neshan shot back with a smile and silken tone that was somehow far more menacing than his earlier agression had been. "Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on the more serious, more _controlled_ opposition?"

The ninja by the door chuckled and stood fully rather than leaning against the wall as he had been. As he came closer it became apparent that he was quite a bit older than the nine former classmates, with all but a fraction of his full adult reach and strength. "So you're trying to look like someone too innocent to be a threat? Wouldn't that just make you more of a target, as someone who could be taken out easily?"

"Maa... Yakushi Kabuto, Medi-nin, Genin rank. Graduated year Sixty-One, Konoha date, attending for the seventh time, in company with Akadou Yoroi and Tsurugi Misumi - why don't _you_ tell _me_?"

Kabuto laughed. "I guess we'll see, then."

"Is this really necessary?" Katsu spoke in a mildly exasperated tone of voice, trying to navigate his way to one of the seats still open after the wave of genin had flowed into the exam room around him and the rest of the Rookie Nine. A task made difficult by the unexpected encumbrance of his right arm.

"But Katsu-kun! We haven't seen each other in the longest time," Yamanaka Ino pouted. "I just wanted to catch up with you, since you were gone for so long!"

"That's been known to happen, what with the shinobi thing and all," he replied blandly, giving up on trying to move into the thong of prospective chuunin. A few of those who'd bothered to watch were snickering.

'Well, if nothing else, it's good cover,' he grumbled in his mind. 'Who'd take me seriously after seeing this?'

"Oooh! You were on a mission! Was it exciting? I bet it wasn't as boring as the D-ranks Asuma-sensei had us taking most of the time, since you were out of the Village and..." the blonde girl enthused in a way that could have been called 'bouncy' in a few years' time. Well, her ponytail bounced.

Katsu considered. Drew on previous experience. Reconsidered. Gave her a look that actually managed to stop her from talking.

"We went out, people died - some pretty messily, others not so much - we got the job done, we came back. End of story," he said curtly.

"Eheh..." Ino chuckled awkwardly. "Umm... you're joking, right Katsu-kun?"

"Look around you, Yamanaka. Everybody here has the training, the means, and the talent necessary to kill a person. Some already have. There are shinobi from other villages here, and those won't hesitate to get you out of the way of their promotion, one way or another, if you give them the chance. This isn't an Academy tournament or a training excercise. In a way, the later parts of the exam are supposed to be as close to wartime conditions as a genin or chuunin is likely to encounter in times of peace."

"Don't you think I know that?!" she exclaimed, ignoring for the first time who she was talking to in favor of responding to what was being said.

"No."

"Why, you...!"

The grip her hands had on his arm was starting to become mildly uncomfortable when he saw her pause, blink, and blush in embarassment.

"Katsu-kun, I meant... I mean, I didn't..."

"I'll make you a deal," he told her, cutting her explanation off. "If you can take this exam seriously, make it past the written part, and you're still alive after the next part, I'll help you with some training before the last bit comes around."

Ino froze, considering... then, with reluctance, unclamped from around his arm, a serious expression on her face.

"Alright," she said in an uncharacteristically quiet tone of voice. Then something seemed to occur to her. "Katsu-kun, you know what will be on the exam?"

"Well," he began, feigning nonchalance and reaching for something inside his vest. "I am a student of the great Copy Ninja Kakashi..."

Off to the side, Kabuto cocked his head in puzzlement as a series of muffled thumps seemed to echo through a wall, from the outside of the classroom.

Neshan and Nenai both stiffled chuckles.

In the hallway, the eavesdropping Kakashi was trying to get rid of a sudden headache by virtue of introducing his head to said wall a few times.

"You'll soon find out why it's called the Forest of Death," Mitarashi Anko said, grinning. The Special Jounin's eyes wandered over the gathered genin, noting which were slowly getting increasingly nervous and...

"Because it's supposed to be intimidating," she heard an unexpected reply. "Predators. Parasites. Poison. A number of people who've left their scruples behind. That's only marginal peril. If the name were actually justified, then there'd be far less jounin and chuunin around, ne?"

Whose... oh, Kakashi's. Supposedly, even for all the aggravation they gave the masked jounin, his Team was supposed to be all that and a bag of chips. Anko's grin widened, and her eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, you're spirited."

Her hand came up, the kunai leaving it even as she blurred across the relatively small distance to end up behind the Leaf genin. The thrown weapon had by then sliced through the air, the skin of the kid's cheek, and struck the ground behind him.

"Kids like you are quickly killed..." she began, leaning in close. She was more than aware that the sort of... fondness... she had for blood wasn't exactly natural or healthy, mentally or otherwise, but it was as deeply rooted a part of her that she might as well try and stop breathing as get rid of it. "Spraying that red blood I love..."

Motion in the corner of her eye drew a reaction that was nearly all autonomous muscle memory, another kunai flashing into her hand as she brought it up to block... a tongue.

Specifically, a freakishly long one that belonged to one of the straw-hat wearing Grass nin, and was wrapped around the kunai she'd thrown to freak the Kirigishi kid out a bit.

"Here's your kunai," the Grass nin said, remarkably clearly for someone who had his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

"Why thank you," Anko replied, eyes crinkling into a smile that fooled absolutely nobody.

It was only later that she remembered Kirigishi hadn't as much as flinched through the whole thing.

The gate was closed and locked behind them, and Team Seven took to the trees almost immediately, halting after fifteen minutes worth of hopping from one to another, gaining altitude and getting away from the entry point.

"I thought we were going to be low key," Shikanenai commented as they found a spot with relatively good cover. "How is drawing so much attention, and _that_ kind of attention, supposed to be low key?"

"It isn't," Katsu replied.

"Then I'm failing to see the logic here."

"Which gate did the Grass come in through?"

"Fifteen," Neshan replied. "I stuck the tags at the entry points last night."

"That only gives us a rough direction to head in, though," the ex-Mist nin said. "They're likely already moving away and towards... well, whatever your Sannin is after. A search pattern is likely going to be too slow. Going by scent would be faster, but only just."

Katsu reached up to his cheek, peeling off the band-aid he'd stuck onto the slice Anko's kunai had made. A slice that, by all right, should have been healed already, give both his knowledge of some basic medical ninjutsu he'd picked up from his, err, eh, Kirigishi Yuki, and his own normally boosted healing. Meaning he'd been purposefully keeping it open.

Neshan blinked, and grinned, then pulled out some of his 'art supplies'.

'Nenai chuckled in realization. "Since he picked that kunai up with his tongue, there's now a body in the forest other than Katsu's which has some of his blood on it... or running through it, if we're fortunate. Sort of like the time Neshan tracked the cat demon."

A few minutes later they were moving again, the Seal Neshan had scribbled onto Katsu's cheek giving him a very much more definite idea as to where the 'Grass nin' were.

Hinata wailed, thin and high as the Grass-nin's incisors bit into the side of her neck. Kiba and Shino froze at the sight, both aware that something unnatural was being done to their teammate, neither sure of what it was.

Typically it was Kiba who reacted first. "Get away from her you freak!" he shouted and leapt forwards, Akamaru at his heels. The effeminate Grass-nin opened his jaws almost casually, releasing the small kunoichi in order to deal with the new threat - which he achieved decisively, disabling Akamaru with a shrewdly placed kick that sent the small dog tumbling to the forest floor, scarely able to breathe. Seconds later, Kiba fell after his partner, barely catching hold of a bough with one bloody arm to avoid a collision with the ground that would probably have killed him.

Behind his dark classes, Shino's eyes narrowed and insects poured from his sleeves and pants to move along the branches of the forest. The enemy was clearly not a genin and the Aburame ninja quickly switched his focus from defeating the Grass-nin to escaping him, taking Hinata with him if he could. Even that prospect was looking rather dubious as the two faced each other, until a succession of kunai hammered into the wood beneath the Grass-nin's feet and the explosive seals hanging from them detonated, shattering the thick branch as if it were a twig.

Out of the darkness, a bespectacled leaf-nin swung out, supported only by a long ribbon of paper, catching Hinata as she fell away from her attacker, who had leapt for the next branch when the his foothold was lost. Shino reflexively drew back, relying on the commotion to disguise his departure and was halfway down the tree towards Kiba when he saw the Inuzuka boy accepting Akameru from another classmate, who also held one of those paper strips.

"Head for the tower," ordered Kirigishi Katsu, apparently oblivious to his lack of rank to give such an order. "Notify anyone you encounter and whoever's in charge there that Orochimaru has infiltrated the Exam in the guise of a Grass-nin. His teammates may be assumed to be interlopers and hostile in the extreme. The apparent target is Hyuuga Hinata but it's possible he'll try to grab Hyuuga Neji as well."

The paper strip retracted as he finished speaking and dragged Katsu up into the dense foliage above them. A neat trick, Shino noted, wondering where Team Seven had learnt to do that.

"What about Hinata!?" called Kiba.

Shino looked at him. "In all the years we were at the academy," he said, "Did you ever beat Neshan at taijutsu?"

"...no," Kiba admitted grudgingly.

"Katsu at ninjutsu?"

"...no."

"Shikanenai at..." Shino trailed off, unsure how to express his meaning.

"...being sneaky, devious and nasty?" Kiba asked. He turned and started to head in the direction they'd been sent in. "No. And I'm beginning to feel sorry for Orochi- Orochimaru!" They boy spoun on his heel as he finally realised who they'd been trying to fight. "HINAAAATAAAA!"

Shino grimaced behind his coat's high collar and restrained his teammate, physically dragging him away from the irregular showers of leaves and debris that marked where battle was being fought above them.

Orochimaru laughed softly. "Oh, well done, children! Truly, you have made yourselves worthy prey! But it's too late to fly now, little birds, so whatever shall you do?"

All three of the Genin grinned, and Neshan produced a pair of small scrolls. "Invite you into our parlor," he said, and flipped them high into the air, letting them unroll as they rose.

Shikanenai took his cue and lunged into motion, fanning several dozen small squares of paper between his fingers like a gambler inspecting his hand then spinning away from his target to trail them out hanging in midair. "Kage Shuriken no Jutsu," he said, and began snatching entire handfuls of squares - which stiffened to iron hardness as soon as he touched them - and launching them at the Sannin.

It didn't work, of course. The elder ninja danced around the barrage almost contemptuously, then reached one arm around behind his back to catch the wrist that had been about to slip a kunai into his heart and fling its owner into the most convenient tree-trunk. He laughed again. "Is this all you can do? You don't make as cute a prey as I thought."

"Wait for it," Katsu said, prying himself out of his crater.

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow, then spun as he caught a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. Neshan had leapt up to match his scrolls' peak height and was falling back to earth - or, in this case, tree branch - considerably quicker than they could, dragging a bleeding fingertip along the surface of each as he fell. By the time his opponent finished taking in the knowledge that both of the preceding attacks had been mere distractions the younger ninja had landed with a flourish and the long strips of paper were falling in a perfect double helix around him.

"What did you do?" the Sannin demanded, and there was no play whatsoever in his voice.

Neshan grinned as the scrolls finished settling into a ring around his crouching form, then burst into more than a thousand flying fragments that scattered out from his position like the sparks of a professional firework. There was a sharp popping sound, slightly blurred because it was actually so many mingled simultaneous noises taking place across a wide area, and when he raised his head slightly the light catching his spectacles was duplicated by the many forms that had abruptly attached themselves to any convenient solid surface. "Gotcha," he said, and then the clones threw themselves at their target.

Orochimaru's eyes widened as his first spread of shuriken didn't stop even one of them - the physical damage should have disrupted the stable chakra pattern that held them together! For them to hold through the pain like that, they'd have to be self stabilizing, and the written seals for that characteristic were too complex and delicate to work from a simple scroll! After a moment, he recovered from the shock and snarled and attacked, offended that they hadn't responded the way he knew they were supposed to.

By the time he remembered the Genin team that had introduced the obnoxious things, they were already long gone.

Neshan cocked his head. "Is everyone else clear?"

Katsu sniffed experimentally. "Yep."

He flipped his braid back over his shoulder, and ripped the slip of paper in his fingers in half. "Bang bang."

"Wow," 'Nenai said, looking back the way they had come. "That's pretty impressive."

And, indeed, the rising dome of yellow light visible even from more than a kilometer away was quite stunning.

Not as stunning as the arrival of the shockwave a few moments later, though.

Shikanenai was breathing heavily by the time that he spotted his objective. Hinata wasn't particularly large, but he'd never been the most muscular of ninja, depending more upon speed, precision and sheer nastiness to carry him through. At times like this, carrying in injured comrade through a forest at high speed, he had to admit that a little more brawn would be pleasent.

"We've still got the Heaven Scroll, yeah?" he asked, coming to rest on a convenient branch.

Katsu nodded. "Yes. Why?"

"Cause I was the one who handed out the scrolls 'back then'," the boy replied and lifted Hinata off his back. "And I distinctly recall the team of Sound-nin got an Earth Scroll. Which we need, no?"

Neshan nodded slowly. "Yeah. But taking out the Sound-nin now would keep them out of the preliminary round. Mess up a lot of what we can guess about the match-ups."

"And save the lives of at least six Leaf-nin," Shikanenai replied shortly. "When we did the clean up after the exam, we found they'd lost their own scroll to one of our teams and wiped out at least two teams to get replacements. Six of _our_ genin." He passed Hinata to Neshan and produced several sheets of paper from his pocket. "I buried those kids," he told the rest of his team. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

As he leapt in the direction that the Sound-nin team was moving, the papers folded themselves into a wicked looking ninjato.

Katsu frowned at Nenai's back, then slipped his right hand into the armored gauntlet hanging strapped to his hip. He was still mostly fresh, as far as chakra level was concerned, and it would be faster with two against three than with just one...

He heard Neshan sigh, and turned his head to look.

"Yeah, what I was thinking," the braid wearing Leaf nin said, nodding towards the gauntlet while adjusting his grip on the still unconscious Hyuga. "Just have my hands full at the moment. I'll pace you two and play lookout."

Katsu nodded, and both nins changed direction on the next bound, with Neshan falling slightly behind and to the side while the gauntlet wearer paced their teammate.

The members of Team Seven closed on the Sound genin.

Shikanenai didn't waste any time as he went to town on the Sound-nin. He simply sprang from a branch, ninjato reversed in his fist. A second later, while the Sound were still trying to place the killing intent, the Nara's little finger rested against the collarbone of Abumi Zaku, who barely had time to register the sudden pain before 'Nenai removed and discarded the paper sword that had skewered the Sound-nin through heart, stomach and intestines.

Behind the bandages that covered it, Dosu Kinuta's face contorted with shock and anger. "You little bastard!" he snarled. "You think you can take -" Without warning he sent a burst of sound at Shikanenai who sidestepped almost contemptuously out of the way.

There was a sharp crack and Kin Tsuchi's body fell to the ground. Behind where she had been standing, Katsu lowered his fist and raised a handful of kunai wordlessly.

"You were expecting an explosive carnival of chakra-driven carnage?" Shikanenai asked. "Please. I'm a shinobi." A second pulse of sonic energy did nothing but shatter the log that replaced him as he employed Kawarimi. Hands seized Dosu's ankles and dragged him down into the soil of the forest. A sharp blade pressed into him and uncoiled inside him, ripping through his lungs.

The last sight that Dosu ever saw was the forest floor as his face was dragged beneath it.

*later*

They'd found what could pass for a makeshift shelter between the roots of a great tree that had been washed clear of dirt the last time the water level of the river had risen. After clearing out the giant leeches with a quick Katon, it was servicable, and Neshan had laid out Hinata on top of one of their bedrolls, on her stomach, and was working at nullifying or at least containing the Curse Seal with a fervor neither of the other two were daring enough to disrupt.

Nenai, who was in the process of unpacking his fishing rod, glanced up.

Katsu had said something about getting them some sentries, and wandered out into, or rather onto, the shallows.

Then he started a familiar series of handseals, and kept going...

"Daikirigakure no jutsu."

...the mist swirled up both from the water and the wet soil of the shore, thicker than that which any previous Kirigakure had managed to conjure up, as Katsu continued with another series of handseals...

"Kiri no Okami."

...and another, the mist swirling into patterns and forming shapes around the still sealing nin's legs. Four legged shapes, and patterns that seemed like what a distilled snarl looked like.

Then, Katsu's hands stopped their motion, curling into fists... and Nenai could see why his teammate had taken off his usual reinforced fingerless gloves. Fingernails bit into palms, drawing blood, and hands were thrust into the forming shapes which rapidly snapped from hazy into perfectly detailed and clear...

Six grey furred wolves that stood as tall as a grown man's waist blinked faintly shimmering eyes, yiffed, turned, then sauntered off into the forest... and, in one case, over the surface of the water.

Katsu took a deep breath, and fell back to sit in the shallow water, shaking for a moment.

"What the...?"

"Our sentries. They should last just under a day," the waterlogged nin said. "Less, if they have to fight. That's as many as I can call up, the way I am now. At least, as many as I can call up if I want them for something that's longer term."

"You know, Kage Bushin wouldn't have taken as much out of me as these things did out of you, even right now."

"Yeah, but Orochimaru would likely be able to spot them easier than he does these," Katsu said. "You noticed how he reacted when I was trying to stab him in the back?"

"I was kind of busy at the time, but yeah," 'Nenai nodded. "Seemed like he's just got good danger sense."

"No. I mean, not just that. My emotions were totally blank, I'm sure of it, so that couldn't have been it," was the response. "He's already got a nearly boneless body when he wants to, and the eyes. He even smells more snake-like than human like. And snakes can detect vibration, so he could have felt me stepping behind him. Some can even see heat. The wolves are, for all their solid appearance, mainly made up of dense mist. As for the other thing... well, if we fight him again, we might have to try and channel chakra through our feet, sort of like water walking."

If Kirigishi Katsu ever decided to give up the shinobi thing, Neshan thought as he considered the impromptu skewer of fish cubes he'd picked up, he could likely earn his keep as a short order cook without much trouble.

Though using senbon and a toned down version of that hot chakra assassination technique of his to cook the meat was a way of meal preparation the Leaf nin hadn't seen before. No smoke from a fire was a definite plus, though, and for some reason something about the meal seemed slightly off.

He bit off a chunk of fish... and realized there was next no smell to it, and what was there of it was... odd.

'Nenai sniffed the meat. Frowned.

"I was going to ask why you were lugging a damn spice rack around, but I guess that explains it," said the Nara after taking a bite. "Continent again?"

"Un. Took a bit of finding, and a night-time visit to the poisons and hazardous materials locker in the Hokage Tower," Katsu said calmly, filleting and cutting up another of the fish they'd caught while Neshan was busy with Sealing up Orochimaru's present for the Hyuga heir.

Said Fuuin-jutsu expert stopped chewing, his eyes bugging out slightly at the onetime Mist-nin's admission.

"I know the salty bit, that's from one of their creepers, but it's hardly a poison," 'Nenai commented after taking a small bite of his fish.

"No, that one I picked up at the market. Good price too, since it ruins the smell of just about any meal. Useless for anyone who runs an eatery, but it's why we're using it," Katsu shrugged. "The spicy pepper-like taste, though..."

"Wait, wait, don't tell me, I've almost got it," 'Nenai took another bite. Nodded to himself. "Diluted powdered fire orchid?"

"Heavily," Katsu nodded. It was actually the plant's juices that were dangerous, mildly acidic and working like an extremely efficient coagulant - nothing to be used in straight out medicine, though, since it ate through nerve tissue like nobody's business. The powdered form, on the other hand, had found some medical application in that direction... and if you diluted it enough, nothing gave quite as much zing to a meal, or so he'd found.

"You said you raided the poisons locker. Dried and powdered it yourself?"

"I was bored. And the concentrated stuff is worth it," he patted his pack.

And it was. It was also damn dangerous. Just throwing it in somebody's face would make them feel like they'd stuck their head into a colony of fire ants. If they actually tried to rub it out of their eyes, it was bye-bye sense of sight. And if they inhaled any of it...

"...you're nowhere near insane enough to... oh, kami, you are... tell me you didn't put it in a smoke-bomb..."

"... no. Laced a few senbon with it," Katsu replied. 'Nenai and Neshan looked at their skewers - senbon needles - in horror. "No, not those. I've got the coated parts of the ones I used covered in wax and bandaged up. Interesting idea, though."

He seasoned the fish on his own skewer and started feeding minute amounts of hot chakra through it.

Then bit in without hesitation.

Neshan swallowed.

Kirigishi Katsu vs. Akado Yoroi, read the banner. The first fight. The other genin and the various jounin sensei ascended onto the walkways from where they'd await their turns and watch the bouts, respectively.

The two genin left in the arena sized one-another up for a moment, before Hayate asked whether they were both ready. Yoroi nodded. Katsu did likewise a moment after he'd tightened the straps of the armored gauntlet on his right forearm.

Shuriken flashed, even as the younger genin leapt back... only for the projectiles to skitter harmlessly away when Katsu swatted them out of the air with the gauntlet.

Then Yoroi was on him, dull glow outlining his right hand in a faint light even as he thrust it forward, using the fact that his opponent's main weapon was seemingly out of alignment and his left hand was empty.

In the audience, Kakashi's one eye went wide as he saw Katsu's unarmored hand contort into a short and unfamiliar series of what looked like bastardized seals before he mirrored Yoroi's action, meeting the older genin's right hand with his left, locking their fingers together as gloved palms smacked into one-another...

Yoroi's mask prevented any expression from showing, but the sense of smugness that could first be perceived as the palms of their hands met was momentarily replaced by a frown, to be changed into a grimace a split-second after... before the older nin physically recoiled, left hand grasping desperately at the spasming right, and head going back...

"AUGHHHHHHH, IT BURNS!"

Katsu's gauntleted hand closed, making a fist, and armored knuckles smashed into the older nin's still screaming opponent's face with a resounding *crack* of breaking bone.

A moment later, Yoroi was a still slightly twitching heap on the ground, the skin of his right arm faintly... steaming?

Katsu shook off faint wisps that rose from his left hand with a faint wince, and looked to Hayate.

Yoroi kept whimpering in pain, but didn't get up.

"Dammit," Temari shouted as the blasts of wind shot back and forth across the arena, "Where did you learn Sand Country's jutsu's!"

Shikanenai flicked his halisen, neutralising a gust from Temari's giant gunsen. "It's a long story," he said, sweat running down his face. He might know some of the jutsu but he wasn't as good at them as the girl from Sunagakure and keeping the fan together was something of a strain.

They'd been moving gradually around the large room and a few more steps would place his opponent...

Temari jumped out of the way of a gust, concentrating on a counter attack that blasted the errant trails of wind aside, sending a wave of the debris picked up by the battle of the winds towards Shikanenai.

...right where he wanted her.

Shikanenai vanished in a puff of smoke, his halisen dropping uselessly to the ground.

Temari blinked and then yelped as two hands caught her ankles and dragged then down until she was knee deep in the stone of the arena's floor. She whipped her fan up and a heavy weight caught hold of it from behind her, forcing the weapon down to the ground.

"Nice weapon," said the kage bushin of Shikanenai, flipping the fan away before he dissipated in another cloud of smoke.

"Is there something that you'd like to say to everyone?" asked another bushin from a safe distance as Shikanenai's own hands tightened painfully around her ankles.

Shoulder slumping, Temari raised one hand. "I surrender," she said angrily.

The banner flashed, then came up:

ROCK LEE VS BAXTER NATHAN

"Lee-kun, huh?" the latter breathed, while the weeping and shouting coming from the other end of the balcony revealed how thrilled his opponent was with the match. After a moment of thought, he shrugged his jacket off and laid it carefully on the ground. Most of those present were unsurprised by the unexceptional shirt and harness of kunai holsters and scroll pouches, but only those who knew him best were expecting the close-fitted steel armguards that had been hidden by the bulky garment's sleeves. Then he put one hand on the railing and hopped over to land on the arena floor with a slam.

Lee gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up as he walked over to their initial face-off, then blinked when he saw him slipping on the knuckle-dusters he'd pulled from a pair of slots along his lower back. "My foe, what are you doing? How can the spirit of your youth allow you to adopt so dishonorable a measure as... those." He waved a hand, indicating the linked metal rings. Hayate coughed discreetly into the silence, then flipped a hand up between them, beginning the match.

"Honor's for games, buddy, and that kind of youth's just another word for stupidity. Only a fool turns down an advantage," Neshan sniffed.

The taller Genin's florid complexion and bulging eyes made his expressions a little hard to read, but he still seemed distinctly condescending as he explained, "Depriving yourself of the ability to form hand seals and ninjutsu can hardly be counted as an advantage - particularly against an opponent of my strength."

Neshan laughed in his face. "That makes no more difference to me than it would to you."

"Ah! You seek the glory of the challenge!" Lee grinned and threw out a single hand with its thumb held up. "I approve!"

"Challenge, my ass. Glory's a delusion - and I haven't got the power for ninjutsu. You and I... we're practically the same, that way, though fortunately few others."

That shocked him. He rocked back, then looked solemnly at the floor. "Then... why so hateful?"

Neshan shrugged. "It's a mindjob to throw you off. I think you're annoying. I think you're too loud. Your outfit offends me. Pick whichever you like, any'd be enough. Mostly, though, because someone so thoughtless as you would never be any kind of shinobi, and needs to be kept away from authority over others at any cost."

"Unforgivable!" Lee snapped, lunging into an attack. "To say such things about my dreams! I will show you the power of _youth!_"

"Bring it!" his target roared, and threw a blow of his own - not at Lee's body, but at his incoming fist.

"Don't you know when to quit?" Neji asked, standing over the fallen Hinata. "From the start, your attacks have been completely ineffective." He didn't even look down at her, deeming his cousin unworthy of his attention.

"That was Neji's master-stroke," Gai murmured from the balcony. "It targets the heart. It's a pity, but the girl can no longer even stand."

Shikanenai glanced back from watching Neshan's hands, that were pale where they gripped the metal railing, and scowled at the jounin. "Don't you believe in the power of youth any more?" he asked. "She will stand, even if it kills her - because _not to stand_ would kill her as a ninja."

"Seeing as the match cannot go on, I -"

The judge's voice cut off as there was a scraping from Hinata's position. The scraping of her sandals against the stone floor as she pushed her knees slowly underneath her. She was shaking, panting, bleeding from her mouth to betray the injuries that were tearing her apart from the inside. But she was on her feet.

Neji looked at her grimly. "Why are you getting up?" he asked. "If you push too far you really will die..."

"Why do you push at the main family?" Neshan muttered. "That's no less fatal..." Though he addressed Neji his eyes were on Hinata, watching the curse seal markings that were barely visible under the collar of her jacket.

"This isn't over yet!" Hinata gasped.

"You're not fooling anyone," Neji snorted. "I can see with these eyes... it's taking all... ush!" He cut off, jumping back as Hinata took a wavering step forwards. Neji's byakugan eyes went wide, fixed not on Hinata's face but on the keirakukei that were inexplicably unsealing and sending chakra pouring through her body.

The mind of the Hyuuga 'genius' whirled. Even with her chakra restored Hinata was no threat... but if she could do this then what other secrets might the main branch heir have? Better to finish this now. She was still too weak to survive a second strike to her heart. He lunged forwards.

Hinata's byakugan vision faded, beyond her capability to maintain as the sweet chakra rushed through her. She didn't know where it was coming from. She didn't care. All that mattered was taking another step and another and destroying the enemy. She couldn't have remembered the name of Neji for the life of her as she lunged forwards.

In the split second before the two genin met, before four jounin moved, three words were whispered by three voices.

"Team Seven, sanjo."

A second later, the fight was over and Kakashi, Gai, Hayate and Kurenai were looking nonplused at where their targets, Hinata and Neji, had been. Three yards away from the point where the two Hyuuga would have intersected, Neji was pinned face down to the floor by Kirigishi Katsu. Two yards away in the other direction, Hinata stood frozen, eyes closed, in the grip of Nara Shikanenai's shadow copy jutsu while Bakusuta Neshan had opened her jacket to examine the seals surrounding her neck and left shoulder.

He totally ignored the shouts of "Pervert" and the shower of shuriken from where Tenten, Temari and Ino were standing.

"I've found us some special training to do during the month," Katsu voiced, casting a glance back at Neshan.

He'd found his teammate pretty much where he'd expected him to be, pacing outside the Hyuuga girl's hospital room, and looking ready to bite heads off if spoken to. Or at least lop them off with a polearm.

How the former Mist-nin had managed to drag him off, Neshan still couldn't really put a finger on, but the fact was that the two of them were making their way across Konoha's rooftops. A bit unsteadily, since some lingering fatigue from the 3rd chuunin exam stage preliminaries was still present, but they managed to make do.

"I need to start getting ready for Neji," Neshan said, with a deceptive calmness that belied his underlying mood. "Why am I following you, anyway?"

"My inborn charisma?" snerked Katsu, dropping down to street level, and stopping in an alley which held the back-entrance to a small tea-house. The two genin came to a halt opposite one another, at either sides of that entrance. "Or is it you actually want to _do_ something rather than just stewing? If you don't already have an idea how to handle Neji, I'll go out with Yamanaka."

"Alright, I'll give you that much," admitted the once and current Leaf-nin with a sigh. "More stamina building would be the only thing I'd need to be sure I can pull it off."

"We need to unwind, though. The Forest wasn't a cakewalk, neither were the prelims. And I don't think we were very stress free even before that. And that just invites problems to happen."

Neshan's eyebrow went up. "Nenai-kun hit you over the head with that one, didn't he?"

Katsu looked to the side, a little uncomfortably, and nodded. "He was right, though. I need to have my mind _here_ and not on, erm, other concerns. Hence, the 'special training'."

"Alright, so what did you two have in mind?"

Katsu motioned to the back-entrance of the tea house. They went in.

"Katsu-kun!"

Whereupon one was promptly sporting a blonde attachment.

"Care to explain?" asked a now somewhat bemused Neshan. The situation had returned to what it was prior to the chuunin exam's beginning, it seemed, when for some reason or other the currently glomped-on Yamanaka Ino had restrained herself from more eyecatching displays of affection towards Team 7's silent killing specialist in training.

Said boy gave him a pained look and mouthed 'later', then adressing the kunoichi who'd latched onto his left arm. "Is Nenai-kun back yet, Ino-san?"

"He just got back a few minutes ago, actually," the blonde kunoichi replied, making no move to step away.

Neshan had been expecting Shikanenai. He could even wrap his head around Katsu trying not to pry Ino from his arm, if he tried hard enough. The fact that Yuuhi Kurenai and Mitarashi Anko were also present, however, was ringing all sorts of alarm bells inside his head.

Sitting around a table in the back room of the tea-house (apparently one that Katsu frequented and knew the owner of), with a scroll in the middle of said table and a few candles flickering around...

Though Katsu had been as surprised at Anko-sempai's presence as he had been, Neshan noted.

"Right, now that we're all settled, let's get to why we're here," Shikanenai said. "Kurenai-sensei and Anko-sensei were kind enough to let us consult them on the matter, but this training exercise will chiefly be up to us, planning included. We will be simulating the infiltration of an enemy shinobi stronghold, and information gathering therein without alerting the inhabitants..."

He proceeded to unroll the scroll, which proved to contain a map of a familiar looking compound... Neshan couldn't quite place it for a moment, then blinked. Then he blinked again, to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"We've agreed to give this operation the codename 'White Tears of the Sun' to further simulate actual mission conditions..."

Nara Yoshino was, as her husband would put it, in a mood. There were quite a number of causes for this, not least the fact that said husband was absent for a few days on a mission, leaving her to deal with her sons - whose Chuunin Exam had resulted in their being away from home on an unsheduled camping trip in the Forest of Death.

Those were merely the underlying causes however. As anyone familiar with Yoshino's moods could have reported, once she was in a mood she required a trigger. Fate, had kindly provided this.

As a digression, the layout of the Nara home was such that the master bedroom was on the other side of a interior wall from the bedroom of the Nara twins. The head of the master double-bed was against this wall, and so was the side of the bunkbeds that the twins slept in. As a result Yoshino could hear, from where she lay, pretty much everything happening in the other bedroom.

She could, for example, hear the bed creaking - suggesting that someone was moving around rather than lying asleep. She could hear sleepy complaints about this from Shikamaru in the lower bunk. She could hear heavy breathing from the upper bunk, where Shikanenai was supposed to be asleep.

She could DEFINITELY hear the bedframe thumping against the wall with increasing force, suggesting that the bed was shaking back and forth violently.

Wrapping a robe around herself, the Nara matriarch stormed out of her room and around to the door of her sons' bedroom. Before she could grip the doorknob however, there was a shout of alarm from within and a tremendous crash.

Throwing the door open, Yoshino assessed the room with the practised eye of the veteran shinobi that she was. The bunkbed lay on its side, filling most of the room. Muffled grumbing from where the mattress and bedframe had pinned the elder twin suggested that Shikamaru was alright.

Looking for her younger son, Yoshino saw a shock of black hair in the tangle of blankets on top of his mattress, which unlike his brother's had landed right way up. She also saw a head of blonde hair, mostly tied back in three bushy ponytails (a fourth had come undone at some point). The blonde hair was attached to a girl who was currently lying into top of Shikanenai, pinning him to the mattress. Both looked a little dazed.

"NARA SHI-KA-NE-NAI!" Yoshino exclaimed at the top of her lungs.

Temari of the Desert winced as she saw the woman was dividing her furious glare between 'Nenai and herself.

All she'd wanted to do was beat some information out of the boy. Like where he'd learnt a variant of Sunagakure's Kamaitachi jutsu. Could nothing go right in this stupid Hidden Village?

Kirigishi Yuki, nee Mizuno, mist-nin expatriate and one of the most talented medics currently residing in Konohagakure, had slowly been getting used to her son's odd behavior. Ever since he'd made genin, Katsu had been acting oddly, but it was something she could have blamed on the fact that he was feeling an 'official' Konoha shinobi. In a way, he'd become even more quiet than he'd been before - and he'd never been a loud child by any means - and she'd often caught him at letting his mind wander. Compared to his previous quiet determination, it was a bit of an unsettling change.

As was the fact that he'd apparently learned to cook somewhere, and she'd often wake up to find a plain but by no means unenjoyable breakfast waiting for her.

After a while, things seemed to be getting back to what they'd been previously, though never in their entirety.

Part of her worried. Part of her had always worried. Being a shinobi was dangerous business, after all. She had first-hand experience where that was concerned. That his team had apparently been relegated to accomplish fewer, but higher ranked assignments, had made her both proud and even more concerned.

When he'd come back from one of those C-rank missions, a field-modified Mist-made chain gauntlet riding on one hip...

What was even more unsettling were the little things she'd noticed here and there. She could have written it off as training from the Academy, but mannerisms that would have looked mildly out of place before now looked to be like second nature to him. Her son had always made it a point to be alert after he'd been accepted into the Academy, and she'd tried to encourage it in subtle ways, but now that she thought back, she could see that whenever she'd spoken with him or seen him lately, he'd never had his back to a window when he could help it, his eyes seemed to naturally take in everything that happened around him without their motion seeming one bit suspect to someone not knowing what was going on...

Still, as uneasy as this made her, there were other things that let her know that this was still her son...

And then there was the now.

She'd only just come back home from her shift in the hospital, found him reading some sort of musty looking scroll the outside of which stated it was a gathering of mythological tales and references, and mentioned offhand that she'd heard of a troupe of performers having arrived in town. When she said how one of the apprentice medic nins had been going off about an attractive puppeteer that seemed to be wondrously talented - she had a feeling the young man had meant more than just the way she made her puppets move - he'd paused in his reading.

He'd then asked what other acts she'd heard there were, and when she'd recalled and recited a few he rolled the scroll together, rose, and gave her a quick apology that he'd likely miss dinner.

Then he vaulted through the open window, and out onto the rooftops, as if all the Bijuu were suddenly lighting fires under his heels.

Kirigishi Yuki worried.

He was being clumsy, obvious, and entirely not his usual self. Not ever his usual self from before 'graduation'. The amount of chakra he flared out through the soles of his feet with each jump left craters where he pushed off from the roofs and walls...

...luckily, he'd managed to get that under control by the time he was coming up on one of the Village's many market squares.

When he alighted atop an inn's roof, one which overlooked that particular market, he was back in control of himself. Or as close as he could get.

His heartbeat was still loud enough that it would have given him headaches in other circumstances.

Chasing that away for the moment, he focused on the events below.

The square was teeming, which was not really unusual for whenever a new act arrived in town. Entertainment was worth a lot in a shinobi village, no matter the size. It was a way of getting their minds off things, of briefly forgetting the unpleasant aspects of their work... and the civilian townsfolk didn't want to miss any new acts either, if only out of sheer curiosity. Live acts were better than transmissions, anyway. Those were still often grainy, despite the seal experts' and technicians' best efforts.

Besides, there was a difference in merely watching and in experiencing an event.

Still, there was a fair number of forehead protectors among the crowd. He snickered, momentarily letting his thoughts get sidetracked. It was amusing how many of the shinobi still couldn't apply what they were to everyday life. After all, the high perches afforded by the rooftops and passageways often offered a premium view of the goings on, acts included...

For a few minutes, he let his mind wander and his eyes work, and watched the dolls and puppets perform on stage, moving to the motions of invisible strings held by the head to toe black-clad puppeteers.

He didn't know the scent of what he was looking for, be it physical of chakra, so he had to rely on the old fashioned way.

A flutter sounded from beside him, and he studiously avoided leaping to one side and drawing a kunai. He minutely turned his head.

Atop the inn roof's spine, looking directly at him, sat a brown and grey hawk. The bird, appearing aware of the scrutiny, took off, making a lazy circle of the market before it dove, between a clothing store and a teahouse.

He didn't hesitate, leaping from rooftop to the top of a wooden power mast, then continuing on to land atop the aforementioned inn, before letting himself drop down into the alley.

"Kirigishi-dono," a figure, tall and long limbed - taller than he'd been back when he'd still been tall - its build an odd compromise between powerful and lanky, separated from the shadows that lingered there even in the day. "It looks like your wits remained intact, even with this change. It is good to see."

He even smelled like shadows, or at least like something hidden. More of a feeling than a smell. With a scent of various people and animals about him, mixing to form something that was both unique and oddly indistinct.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Katsu replied, trying to not show surprise. Not that he hadn't expected... it was just that, expecting and actually seeing were two different things. "You still travel with your companions?"

"Hai, hai," the figure responded, scratching the back of its head and giving a smile that... well, it was just plain unsettling, but at the same time didn't appear as threatening as he thought it would have. "As do you, now. Though last time you were alone."

"These days, I'm not even alone when I'm by myself," the Mist-jounin-turned-Leaf-genin said.

"Ah, yes. But, at least you still are," the man replied with a shrug.

"Ah, good! You've found him, Nagamimi," the small, raggedly clad man said, not looking up from the food on the table before him. "Kirigishi-san, I see our advice was sound, yes?"

In a teahouse that Katsu was suddenly aware he had no recollection of. And while he hardly knew all of the Leaf, he did know that the last time he'd passed this place, it had been little more than a ruin.

Deja vu. Especially since the interior was almost a mirror image of that one time, years ago.

Only last time, he hadn't been a Leaf-nin. And this time, he wasn't quite as willing to accept a wild answer without question.

"I'd ask what you were doing here, but getting a straight answer out of a conman..." Katsu said.

"Mmmm, is that any way to react to old traveling companions, Katsu-kun? Even if you are right about Mataichi."

The arm smelled of shadows, wood, bone and blood, with a touch of jasmine to wind around all that. Smooth, as it came from behind, fingers trailing along the side of his face as silky strands of dark green touched the other. The voice had been its usual sultry self.

He gulped, cursed his current body's hormones, and tried his hardest to ignore it. Something not being made any easier by the eminently amused presence in the back of his mind, which had apparently chosen that moment to wake up. Or at least make itself more noticeable.

"Now, now, Ogin, don't make the poor boy's mind wander, or are you considering robbing the cradle?" Mataichi smirked.

"Funny," Katsu ground out.

"I thought so, at least," Ogin chuckled as she untangled her arms from around him, moving past. "I wasn't bothering you, was I b-o-y-o?"

Long legs, long dark green hair, slender and moving with the grace of a dancer, and the faint sound of silk on skin.

'Oh, great. Just as visually distracting as last time, too,' the man stuck in a boy's body thought, not noticing the faint growl that he'd released at the same time.

Katsu shook his head, slowly. Mataichi motioned towards the bench, opposite to where he himself sat. The nin moved, more uncomfortable with the indefinite surroundings than he was with the trio, and sat. The self-styled monk slid a mug of steaming green tea towards Katsu, who accepted.

He sipped it in silence, mulling over the questions in his mind, deciding to stick to simple...

"Why?"

Mataichi chuckled.

"There is always a price, yes, shinobi-dono? Every action has consequence, every decision creates possibilities for other decisions. Every movement sets the stage for another. Last time we met, we gave you something. Words are fleeting, but can affect a great deal of things."

"Oh, this isn't our work, Katsu-kun," Ogin was behind him again, speaking into his ear. "But everything is connected. You'd admitted you would owe us, if the information we provided proved correct. You _are_ still among the living, and still a shinobi, which means there is a matter of debts owed to consider..."

"Why am I not liking where this is going?" Katsu muttered.

"Because you have a brain?" the woman chuckled in reply.

"But, shinobi-dono, if you blame us for your current predicament, you would also have to blame the one you have since become so deeply connected to," the monk was still grinning that darkly amused grin of his. "Despite everything, he did agree. In fact, he thought it would be greatly amusing."

"Somehow, this doesn't come as a very big surprise," Katsu sighed. Kami save him from the whims of bored Demons... well, he supposed it was a bit late for him to be asking for that now.

"Still, you are here for a reason," Mataichi went on. "Though it's one that's a bit complicated to go into. It is a matter of balance. You see, as much as everything is connected, there are places that are more... vital... to those connections. Places where some of those connections could be frayed, if not outright torn."

"Like this place," Katsu stated, looking at the smaller figure of Mataichi inquisitively. "This 'stage', if you will?"

"Ah, you understand!" Mataichi clapped his hands together, grinning an unholy grin.

"Not really."

"I'd be worried if you did, since, to be honest, neither do we, fully," Nagamimi's formerly still form said. "Mataichi just likes to talk like he does."

"Mmm, we are all puppets in one play or another," Ogin added, hand running through Katsu's hair. "To understand who is pulling the strings is to understand the play."

He ignored her, or pretended to. Mataichi was ugly as sin, and quite frankly, safer to look at at the moment.

"So, whoever put me here did so to do what? Protect those connections you speak of?"

"Oh, not just you, Katsu-kun," Ogin kept being distracting. "You know as much, don't you? Yes, you do."

"And you aren't going to need to really try at protecting those connections, anyway," Nagamimi piped in.

"Yes," Mataichi again chuckled. "You see, you three _are_, at the moment, the very representations of those connections. So you must merely... survive."

Katsu's forehead met the table, staying there for a moment. He lifted it a moment later, glaring at Mataichi.

"And I suppose I'm going to have to explain this to Neshan and Shikanenai without the least bit of proof?"

"Oh, no, that would be silly," Ogin's tone became amused. "Bring them over for the evening's performance, and we'll take care of that for you afterwards, Katsu-kun. After all, we're not heartless."

Silently, the nin wondered if he wouldn't have been better off trying to explain the encounter and relay the information on his own.

*snip to several weeks later, early morning*

There was a twitch. It soon developed into a nervous tick. Then came the grinding of teeth, flaring nostrils, and an angry flush to the face. The latter being nearly totally uncharacteristic of the person sporting it right there and then.

Supernaturally keen eyes scanned the courtyard. The hallways. The walls. Through the walls, taking in as much of the entire compound as they could.

It was everywhere.

There was a moment of near absolute silence.

"I demand to know who did this!" Hyuga Hiashi shouted as the breeze picked up, making the lengths of white toilet paper draped all across the Hyuga compound's main courtyard flutter.

"Wow ..." Shikanenai recoiled in a gesture of badly acted out shock. "Let me just fix this image in my mind as proof that the world is ending."

"Don't make me carve out your spleen," Katsu retorted, though the threat lacked any actual intent or substance. In fact ...

"Come on, you're downright bright-eyed and bushy tailed today," the Nara said as Kirigishi vaulted up and onto a treebranch that had become one of his semi-regular perches when just practicing his patience at Team Seven's chosen training ground. "Even you've got to admit that's not something that happens very often. Not unless you've poured ridiculous amounts of coffee into yourself again."

Katsu paused, faux-considered, then shrugged out a: "No."

The last time the Nara had seen him in that sort of light hearted mood had been a week and a half ago, back during the aftermath of their little raid on the Hyuuga compound. Closest the once and future Jounin had come to it on other occasions was a sardonic sort of satisfaction in the wake of a successful mission.

"Kirigishi ..." Shikanenai drawled out, "I know where you live. I know where you sleep. I know what you like to have for breakfast."

Well, no, he didn't. But it wouldn't be difficult to find out.

Katsu actually chuckled. And not darkly, either.

"Sorry, it's just that... I've missed this," he gave a shrug.

"What, being a genin?" 'Nenai gave him a skeptical look.

"We're outnumbered, in territory that will shortly turn very hostile if things go as predicted, likely on the hit list of the renegade Sannin of Konohagakure," Katsu's grin widened. "What's not to like?"

"If I didn't know how much of that insane bloodlust you're giving out is an act, I'd likely be freaked out beyond the capacity for rational thought," the other genin replied, deadpan.

"Maa ..." Kirigishi threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration.

"Right, now that that's done and over with, give."

"I'm just getting a refresher course on how enjoyable it is to teach a willing and apt student," Katsu shrugged.

"Wait, what ... Yamanaka? You actually went through with that?"

"I got bored, and I did sort of promise. I try to keep my word when I can. The girl has a surprising amount of potential."

"Other than her family jutsus, the Academy files don't really have her down as anything noteworthy," 'Nenai left that hanging in a half-inquiry of sorts.

Katsu snapped his fingers. "Ah. Yeah, you and 'Maru were helping Hatake and Neshan deal with Hinata's little problem when she fought Kiba."

"Wait, wasn't that a draw?"

"Considering that most of the Jounin present were betting on Kiba, I'm impressed. Though more by the way she did it. They bloodied one-another for over fifteen minutes."

"Didn't think she had that much endurance," 'Nenai mused. "How was it a draw, anyway? Kiba was too fast of the Shitenshin and his taijutsu and ninjutsu were just plain better."

"She took a hostage and threatened to cut their head off. Stone cold. The kunai didn't as much as shake in her hand," Katsu's tone carried more than a little appreciation.

"The mutt," 'Nenai grinned. He could appreciate that sort of basic nastiness leading up to an easier than usual win. That Yamanaka had manage to force a draw was impressive in and of itself.

"Give that girl some motivation and she's as cold as any of us on a good day," Katsu replied. Then sobered. "Though I think I'll have to talk to Neshan about giving her some pointers about her mind jutsus."

Shikanenai nodded. The bespectacled genin's sheer breadth of knowledge was impressive on its own, but coupled with the fact that it was matched by the depth regarding most of the topics it was a sure bet that he could help with the matter.

Shikanenai hummed a happy tune as he leant on the rail that was all that stood between him and plunging headfirst into the Chuunin Exam's arena. Notionally he was supposed to be waiting for his match on a balcony set aside for contest. Like most rules he encountered, however, Shikanenai was treating that expectation as the merest of guidelines, easily set aside should the need arise.

A few yards along the rail stood Shikamaru, who, having lost his own preliminary match was in fact more or less where he should be - the three of them were standing between the rail and the rank of frontrow seats reserved for the genin who had failed to secure a place in the finals.

Three?

Yes, for between the two Nara boys stood another genin, this one not looking at all her usual meek self.

Hyuuga Hinata looked down at the arena where Neshan and Neji were about to engage in one of the spectacles of chakra-driven carnage that most of the audience had come to see.

Almost idly she tested the restraint of the dual shadow-binding that the two shinobi had laid upon her. Nope. She still couldn't move, although the black markings of Orochimaru's curse seal still rose and fell up and down her neck towards her pale face.

"If you let me go, I promise that I'll only maim him severely?" she offered grudgingly, eyes still fixed on her cousin.

"Is that a promise in the same sense of your promise to prevent either of us from ever siring another generation of the Nara clan if we didn't let you go an hour ago?" Shikanenai asked absently.

Hinata growled softly and from well behind her, Ino and Kiba cowered behind the mass of Chouji. Shikamaru was severely tempted to join them. Bloodline heiresses with cursed chakra-boosting seals were so troublesome...

Neshan bumped his glasses up a little higher on his nose and waited patiently for Hayate-san to finish his introductory spiel. Eventually, once Neji had reached the point of being almost ready to initiate a clash himself, he spoke, quietly but with a careful bit of projection that carried his voice to every person in the arena. "'Because people cannot change, differences are born - expressions like 'elite' and 'loser' are created...' Isn't that what you said, Hyuuga?"

Neji's eyes narrowed. "That is the way the universe is. Our fates are set when we are born, and remain unaltered until our deaths. Everything proceeds as it was determined in the beginning."

That won a bitter grin and a derisive snort. "Really? So, then, your fate is to spend your entire life poisoning and attacking others with the bitterness you feel because your ancestors made a foolish bargain, as though a mere bloodline could be worth eternal servitude? To soil the clean and cast down the righteous out of jealousy and frustration?" He slid back a couple of steps, well away from his opponent's abortive lunge. "And me - what's my destiny? To spend my life alone, wishing someone else would have the courage to reach out to my heart, as I can't do for theirs? To find myself forever barred from success as a shinobi by my body's inability to convert chakra properly? IS THAT MY DESTINY, HYUUGA?!"

The elder of the two Genin glared. "Yes."

"Then prove it."

It was Neji's turn to sniff. "You're no match for the strength of the Hyuuga clan," he said, then charged with a yell that cut off abruptly as his momentum came up short against the butt of the bladed polearm his opponent had seemed, impossibly, to pull easily out of one of his sleeves. He gagged, trying to breath, and then his feet came up off the ground and he found himself rising and still moving forward as the weapon pivoted in Neshan's hands and brought him up and over and down and then he was lying flat on his back, staring at the sky and trying to clear the stars out of his vision.

"I'm waiting," came a voice from somewhere above his head. "Hyuuga."

Neji kipped up and forward into a somersault as he spun, and landed in crouch facing his foe for a moment before he lunged back into motion and slid to one side of the blade that speared at him and skidded to a halt and turned and struck as his opponent twisted away out of his reach and brought his naginata spinning around and down like a staff and Neji ducked beneath it and caught it in one hand as it went by and struck at Neshan's grip on the weapon with his other and missed as the younger boy let go but that let him snatch the thing and send it tumbling away, far out of either's reach a moment before a hammer hit him in the chest and sent him staggering back, gasping for air.

They met each other's eyes across a dozen or so feet, and Neshan's were as cold as the highest mountain top. "You're a bully and a coward, Hyuuga, mouthing off about fate and the will of the gods - as though they excused you from living up to your responsibility to act like a human being. Destiny is a lie people tell to control those they couldn't touch any other way, and those that use it as a tool and those that use it as a reason are the same in at least one way - they deserve no sympathy, no mercy... and no forgiveness." He brought a narrow slip of paper out of his off-hand sleeve, and sneered. "Requiescat in pace, motherfucker."

Neji's eyes widened as the note seemed to catch fire, and by the time the sparks had begun to spread and trace the lines of a large, complex seal in the air between the two Genin he had straighted and begun to spin, mostly out of some instinct he couldn't name.

"HAKKESHOU: KAITEN!"

"Fuuinpo: Ryuuka no Jutsu."

Half of the audience came out of their seats, leaning forward to try and get a better look, and the other half sat back with their jaws hanging open as the incandescent cateract of flame ripped across the sands and splashed off of the arena's far wall, covering everything in such a glare that the sun seemed to go away as the world turned into a stark contrast of red-orange-yellow-white brilliance and crisp, perfect shadows.

Neji landed standing, if only barely and a hundred feet behind where he had started - his clothes were singed and his exposed skin suspiciously red, and he had to conciously work to ignore the way his sandals were smoking against the blackened sand underfoot and the molten slag slumping off of the shallow crater in the stone wall where most of the technique's energy had struck.

He swallowed as he saw a flicker of motion back where they had been facing each other - something a bit like hair caught in the breeze. He couldn't afford to risk another strike like that, and shifted stances in the knowledge that a quick ending was the only option he had, if he wanted to live - and that the Sixty-Four Hands of Hakke were his best chance.

Then there was a flicker of motion and a vise closed around each of his wrists and dragged them up and back and together to stop just barely short of levering his shoulders into tearing themselves apart. The pain made him lose control of the Byakugan, and so he only heard the voice that spoke into his ear, quietly but still so perfectly clear. "If you're wise... you'll get down on your knees, and thank your gods that she felt you were worth saving, that she begged for you. Thank them for making her so much better than you deserve."

Then his hands were free for an instant before something slammed into the back of his skull and tossed his body up and away as the world went dark around him.

Shikanenai looked at his opponent and then shrugged. "I'm going to give you a chance to surrender now," he said in a clear voice, "While you still have your dignity. Because I warn you now - I've already won this battle."

His opponent snorted. "You've got a big head, leaf-nin. But you're way out of your league."

The spiky-haired ninja smirked. "Okay then - how about we settle this with a simple wager? If you meet my challenge, I'll concede. If you fail... well, I don't think that you'll be in any condition to continue. But if you want to fight it out then I'll humour you."

The Sand-nin hesitated, looking for the trap. "What's your challenge?" he asked.

"Bushin," Shikanenai said. "I bet that you can't use a henge to disguise yourself as me."

"What!?"

Shikanenai raised his eyebrows. "Want me to repeat myself? Having trouble hearing me from under that get-up of yours?"

"Hah!" Kankuro snorted. "You can't even dream of how good my henge is! We'll be so alike your own mother could't tell the difference!" His hands flickered through the seals and ninja smoke began to form around him, only to dissipate as a sudden sensation stripped away his concentration. "What the - !?" he yelped incredulously. In desperation, the ninja removed his wraps, revealing that the 'Kankuro' who faced Shikanenai was merely a puppet and that it was the the bundle on the puppet's back that was the Kazekage's eldest son. He clutched at his belly in a panic and then fell to his knees. "Oh gods, oh gods," he gasped before decorating the floor with his breakfast. "What did you do to me, you bastard!?"

Not far from the two boys, Shiranui Genma sniffed the air and grimaced. Whatever Shikanenai had done, it was evident that Kankuro had done his pants.

There was a gurgling sound from Kankuro's belly and a horrified expression crossed his face. "Stop it!"

"You know what to say," Shikanenai replied evenly. "Just two little words." He tilted his head to one side and examined the boy smugly. "You might want to hurry..."

"I SURRENDER!" Kankuro shouted. "I quit! Just stop it!"

Shikanenai glanced at Genma, who nodded. "Please do," requested the jounin. "It's quite unpleasent."

"Maa..." Shikanenai sighed and made a mental note to thank Katsu for the nose plugs. "Listen, Kankuro. Do a Horse seal and channel a little chakra. That should sort you out."

Groaning and twitching, trying to ignore what was happening to him, Kankuro complied. Almost immediately, the sensations began to fade away, although he was still faced with the consequences. No longer distracted by his situation, it only took him a few minutes to deduce how Shikanenai had achieved the effect. "You utter bastard," he gasped. "I wouldn't have believed that even a Leaf-nin would sink to it."

"Now, now," Shikanenai said. "I wouldn't suggest that you try to channel any of your chakra for a couple of hours. And you'd probably better not have any solid foods today either."

Genma looked dubious, the crowd above them muttering uncertainly. "That is a bit low," he observed. "You're supposed to fight him, you know."

Shikanenai shrugged. "We were given a month to prepare," he said reasonably. "Sneaking a chakra-sensitive drug into his breakfast this morning struck me as a very effective form of preparation. It wasn't easy either, I can assure you."

The muttering from above seemed split between anger at the failure of the fight to involve actual fighting and amusement at the plight of the Sand-nin. A ripple of chuckles was spreading as Genma shrugged and upheld the victory.

Up on the highest balcony, the Kazekage turned to look at the Hokage. "That's an interesting approach..." he murmured, his face impossible to read behind its veil. The Hokage simply grunted and tugged the brim of his hat lower over his face.

"Weak," muttered Gaara of the Desert from his place among the other finalists.

When the fuzz cleared from Ino's mind she immediately glanced around, trying to figure out what her opponent had done, since why was obvious, in retrospect - he'd prepared for her, and likely all of his potential foes, the same way he'd done for Neji.

"It's called the Threshold of the Mind's Eye," said a voice she didn't recognize, and when she turned to face it it took her a moment to place why the speaker looked familiar. Neshan wasn't the tallest of her old Academy classmates, nor the sturdiest, but he came close in both categories and the older boy - young adult, really - looking her calmly in the eye was pretty obviously supposed to be a somewhat older version of her opponent. "A semi-permanent external seal jutsu, originally intended for use against various sorts of mind-reading genjutsu. It fell out of use when they did, and your family simply isn't numerous of influential enough to keep people familiar with it."

Belatedly, she realized that the flaring coat he was wearing was in the pattern assigned as part of a department head's uniform. "That's why you let me use the Shintenshin... I suppose it also blocks me from disengaging?"

He shook his head. "Nope. But, unless you hid only some of your study notes - which I'd be shocked at, since you'd have no reason to expect anyone to even look for them - none of the new jutsu you've learned are good enough to keep me from hammering you to a pulp once you break the link. Since the Threshold's effectiveness is, in large part, based on turning the matter into a battle of wills rather than chakra, sticking around is probably your best bet."

He was telling her that?! "You're that confident?" she asked.

He pushed his glasses up slightly. "Yes. The ninjutsu and genjutsu practicals always brought my academy grades down, you know that, but out here in the real world I can compensate more effectively, and given how good I am at expanding my own advantages and that Asuma-sensei's a pretty lousy teacher... Yes. I am that confident."

"Asuma-sensei is not incompetent!" she snapped, and tried to figure out just what the heck a 'battle of wills' was supposed to mean in this context.

"No, he's not," Neshan agreed. "But teaching isn't something he's really trained for - try comparing how much you learned when Iruka-sensei went around and did individual sessions with each student with how much you pick up from him in the same amount of time. The fact that he's got no real clue how to pass on what he knows doesn't mean he doesn't know it."

"Kakashi's even worse, actually, but I've always had to teach myself a lot of things anyway to stay even, so that hasn't slowed me down any."

You could have knocked her over with a feather. Though, when she finally snapped out of it, and had a look around, Yamanaka Ino realized that this held true for most of the Konoha contingent of genin and spectators.

The two figures had gone into the arena, one dark haired, clad in grey fatigues and jacket, with a leaf hitai-ite as said jacket's collar latch. One hand and forearm were metal-clad.

Kirigishi Katsu.

The other shorter, more compact, red haired, and with a gourd of sand on his back and dark rings around his eyes.

Gaara of the Sand.

The rules had been explained. They had both nodded.

A minute went by, and they only stood and stared at one-another.

Ino could have she'd seen Katsu hunch forward slightly, incline his head to the side and...

For a moment, the way he'd moved his head reminded her of Kiba trying to sniff something out, for some reason.

Then something about the Sand-nin's posture changed, stiffened.

After which Katsu-kun had raised his unarmored hand into the air, and clearly stated:

"I forfeit."

You could have knocked her over with a feather.

And _then_ all hell broke loose.

The crack of dawn illuminated an odd sight. At least when one considered the shinobi involved.

Leaves rustled in the wind.

Bakusuta Neshan, Special Jounin of the Hidden Leaf, and head of their Archives.

Nara Shikanenai, Chunin of the same, intrepid traveller, explorer, and someone who'd come by the nickname of 'Eternal Tourist' honestly and legitimately.

Kirigishi Katsu, Jounin of the Hidden Mist, currently residing in the Leaf along with his Genin team as a gesture of good will ... that, at least, was the official reason.

"So... wolf still at the door?" Neshan broke the silence, shooting the Mist-nin a look.

"Mhm... yup." the Mist-nin said. In between munching on a skewer's worth of dango. Something, it should be noted, that he'd never really bothered with even as recently as a day ago.

If asked, he'd claim he'd picked up the habit from when he'd been involved in planning sessions with a person who was obsessed enough with the stuff to always bring some along.

Katsu raised an eyebrow at 'Nenai. "Bells, balls..."

"...what's the difference?" the Nara smirked. Looked to Neshan. "Team Seven..."

"...sanjo!" Neshan finished.

The trio blinked at one-another.

Each had a hand outstretched, holding a roll of white toilet paper.

They grinned.

A ways off, and behind a few walls, Hyuuga Hiashi shivered in his sleep.

same place. same time. one reality to the left.

Three haggard looking nins stumbled into the Training Area.

A blond boy wearing a pair of baggy orange pants, sandals, and an equally orange jacket over a net shirt.

A pink haired girl in fatigues, one of those odd foreign dress shirts and an overcoat.

A black haired boy, in black fatigue pants, a shinobi vest over a ragged-sleeved t-shirt, and a pair of reinforced gauntlets.

"Sakura-chan, I was so worried!" Uzumaki Naruto exclaimed. "Everybody's gone crazy or ..."

The pink haired girl, oddly enough, seemed to actually minutely relax at the exuberant exclamation.

"You... the situation..." Uchiha Sasuke attempted to put his thoughts into words. And failed miserably. "Do any of you have any idea?"

Sakura twitched. Rapidly shook her head. "Nope. No. No. No ideas here. Absolutely no ideas here, Sasuke-kun."

It was a bit before they'd gathered their thoughts enough to voice them in a somewhat coherent manner.

"I was... I mean. I woke up," Naruto scratched his head in embarassment. "Ya know I live alone, right?"

The other two nodded.

"Well, I woke up at Shikamaru's place. And there was stuff there that coulda've been mine... and pictures. Like they adopted me or something," the blond's mind was still reeling at the idea, the possiblity, of having an actual family. Also, he thought he shouldn't mention the fact that that nutsoid Sand-chick was hanging off him in some of the pictures (and trying to kill him in others).

"I ... used to live in an apartment. Still do. I woke up today because I was... disturbed by something. Apparently, I've acquired a roommate." The whip and chain-weapon collection something in his memories told him belonged to Yamanaka and which occupied the biggest wall of the common room of the two bedroom apartment was disturbing ... but he'd also had to stop himself from grabbing a kusari-gama upon leaving for some reason. Most odd. No odder than the fact that the living arrangements seemed ... oddly comfortable for some reason. Though he'd also noticed that his room had several locks on the door ...

Both boys looked to Sakura.

Sakura blinked. And seemed to want to disappear inside the voluminous coat, judging by the fidgeting.

"Somehow, I've got an apartment... and, err, I... umm... sortofwokeupinbedwithHyuugaHinata," she mumbled, beet red.

The birds chirped as the silence stretched on.

Oh, yes. This was going to be a looooooong day.