Konoha no Mai

Chapter Two

a/n I do not own Naruto, the manga, the anime, or the game.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

-Robert Frost

He walked down the cobblestone street, overwhelmed by the new, foreign sights, sounds, voices. And smells. The hot, dry air burned his nostrils and parched his throat. If it weren't for the green surrounding forest, he could have sworn that he was in the desert.

But of course, if it were in the desert, he wouldn't be there. If it were in the Hidden Sand and not the Hidden Leaf, he'd be—sniff, sniff. "What's that?"

"Why, that's dango. Would you like to buy some?"

Dango?

Hmm…

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Kimimaro walked away from the training grounds, dismissed from quite possibly the worst set of D-ranked missions that he'd ever encountered in his life. It wasn't a failure, at least, in terms of objectives. He sometimes doubted that those kinds of missions were possible to fail. They just took a while and left a lot of unpleasant memories that he was trying (unsuccessfully) to forget.

That's when he saw something impossible.

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Hinata sat down under a tree and opened her book. Normally she would have been practicing medical ninjutsu with Kabuto-sensei, but he had duties at the hospital, so she settled for a large textbook of medical theory he had given her. Her large, white eyes scanned the contents, going past cancers, strokes, and finally settling on poisons.

A nagging voice in the back of her head told her that she should focus more on the Jyuuken, the family's traditional fighting style, but she knew that she would never be proficient enough in the gentle fist for her father to accept her. And besides, medical ninjutsu was something she was actually good at—possibly the only thing I'm good at, she thought critically. Kabuto-sensei always seemed impressed with how fast she learned things.

Although if that was in comparison to how fast people normally learned it or how slowly she learned everything else, she couldn't tell.

Eventually, she gave in and closed her book. For nothing else, it would be good to balance her training. There was just as much a chance of her getting her team killed by not being able to fight competently as there was by not knowing the difference between neurotoxins and hemotoxins.

Hinata slid into the traditional stance and, even though she wasn't facing a real opponent, activated her Byakugan.

That's when she saw something impossible.

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Naruto walked down the street, determined to make the absolute most of the limited free time he now had. There would be an unprecedented amount of training. First he would practice dodging as his shadow clones threw kunai at him (or maybe he should use rocks this time. Kunai were kind of sharp), and then he would take out every individual kage bunshin until he was bruised, bloodied, and on the point of collapse, and then he would do it again!

But at the start of every great day, there was an even greater meal.

"Ichiraku, here I come!"

But he hesitated. Ramen was important, but getting stronger was even more important still, and Kabuto-sensei had always stressed the importance of a balanced, nutritional diet. And yet…

"Ramen is full of wonderful and awesome," he decided firmly. "And that's all the nutrition I need."

That's when he saw something impossible.

"Hey, Kimimaro," he said, passing by. "Hey Haku."

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Kimimaro knew it was impossible, but possibility seldom had a great effect on reality. In the middle of the street, not five meters in front of him, in broad daylight, was Haku, a missing nin from Kirigakure that his team had encountered not two months past.

Haku's dark brown eyes looked startled when he saw him, but only for an instant. "Hello, Kimimaro-kun."

Kimimaro hesitated to reply when he noticed Haku's unblemished hitai-ate. When they had last met, Haku's forehead protector bore the emblem of the Hidden Mist, but it had a slash through it to show his disaffiliation with the village. Haku's hitai-ate still wore the mark of the kiri, but…

"You are no longer a missing nin," he noted.

Haku ran a finger down the smooth surface of the metal plate. "No," he said, with a hint of…what? Sadness, perhaps? "I used to think that I could live apart from the war and despair of this world, but things are changing, Kimimaro-kun. Things that I cannot let happen are happening, and I cannot stand aside and let the people around me fall."

Kimimaro nodded, not specifically understanding what was said, but understanding Haku. The mist shinobi had a talent of inspiring trust, and it was much too sublime to be feigned. "But if you are an official shinobi of the Hidden Mist," Kimimaro asked, "then what are you doing here?"

"It's complicated," he started before a voice interrupted him.

"There you are, Haku!" called a kunochi with a mist headband, followed by another shinobi of the same village. "I found Hano. Who's your frie—" Her eyes widened when she noticed Kimimaro's red facial markings, which marked him as a member of the Kaguya clan, a clan which was, with one exception, extinct.

Kimimaro looked carefully at the two strangers. "And these are…" he asked Haku.

"Hey, Kimimaro," Naruto said, walking amiably down the street. "Hey Haku." He stopped and did a double take. "You!" he started, straining to make sense of the situation. "…you!"

"Wow," said the other mist shinobi, Hano, apparently, seemingly impressed. "It can point and talk. Most of the monkeys I've met on the way here can only do the first."

Naruto turned from Haku and glared at the other one. "Who are you?"

"He's my teammate," Haku supplied. "They both are."

"What?" Naruto asked incredulously. "He's your…what?"

"It must be part parrot," Hano observed. "It does seem to repeat itself a lot."

"Call me that again and I'll punch you in the face!" Naruto growled.

"Touchy little parrot-monkey, aren't you?"

WHAM!

Haku didn't move and the kunochi on his team jumped back and reached for a knife, but Hano just laughed as a drop of blood trickled from his lip. "You have no idea how often that happens to me."

Naruto looked surprised. He apparently expected the other shinobi to block or dodge or do at least something. "Sorry, I didn't mean to, well, I did, but…right."

An awkward silence filled the air before Haku broke it. "Hello, Hinata-chan. It's good to see you again." He had the air of a man forcibly ignoring reality, and inviting everyone else to do the same.

"Good afternoon, Haku-kun," she replied politely, if a little nervous. "Um, may I ask what exactly are you doing in Konoha?"

"It's complicated," he began.

"We're here to burn the village to the ground!" Hano proclaimed cheerfully.

"No we're not," said the mist kunochi, glaring at Hano. "We're just here to participate in the chunin exams."

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"Kabuto-sensei!" shouted Naruto, bursting into the room. "It's here!"

It was only due to years of honing his temperament that Kabuto resisted the impulse to jump at the unexpected noise. "You know," he said calmly as he slipped a needle into an unconscious patient's shoulder. "I may have told you this before, but you shouldn't try to surprise me when I'm in the middle of surgery. If you distract me at the wrong moment, someone may die."

"But—but sensei! This isn't like a matter of life and death! This is about the chunin exams! They're here! Right here in Konoha!"

Kabuto carefully removed the blood sample he had just taken. The patient wasn't responding optimally to the medication, but not so much as to be attributed to allergy. Kabuto hoped that he didn't have a resistant strain, but it seemed probable.

He glanced at Naruto. He didn't bother asking how the boy had gotten here. Naruto could break into the Hokage's office if he really wanted to, and hospital security wasn't what it used to be. Hinata had probably located him with her Byakugan and had told Naruto where he was.

"And I imagine you want to join," he said, just slowly enough to irritate his student.

"Yes!"

"Are you sure you're ready?" Kabuto asked, knowing in full the answer. "You could just wait till next time."

"Next time?" he shrieked. "I can't wait till next time! That could take forever!"

"Six months?"

"Yes!"

Kabuto tried very hard not to smile as he adjusted his glasses. The first time he had taken the chunin exam, it had been a calculated risk, to gauge the expectations of the rank and measure the skill of the competition. Naruto, on the other hand, expected to plow through every segment of the test with flying colors, completely oblivious to the difficulties—and dangers—involved.

"Do Kimimaro and Hinata know about the exam too?"

"Of course they do. They want to enter just as much as I do."

Somehow I doubt that's possible. "Where are they?"

"They're downstairs in the waiting room. I guess they didn't think that breaking in the emergency room would be that much fun."

"Well, I'll tell you what," he replied. "I still have to make a few rounds, so tell everyone to meet me at training ground twelve at around five o'clock."

Naruto agreed with his typical enthusiasm and left.

The chunin exams? Kabuto mused, alone with his thoughts. I wasn't planning on entering them so quickly. And yet…they had progressed a great deal in the last few months. Not necessarily enough to make chunin, but still…

This could be interesting.

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Haku glanced at the rooftops nervously, as if expecting to be shadowed by a team of Konoha ANBU. This place was new, foreign to him, and he didn't trust this village any more than he expected the village to trust him, but he did his best to keep his emotions from showing on his face.

"Relax, Haku. You don't have anything to worry about," Kaya said. Keeping his feelings hidden was never a strength of his. In fact, that was one of the reasons why he preferred to hide behind a mask, and his teammate had a gift for reading people. "After all your years as a missing nin," she continued, "something as simple as the chunin exams should be a walk in the park."

"All my years as a missing nin," Haku said softly, "taught me that simple missions aren't. Not too long ago, we were hired to assassinate a defenseless, old man. It was supposed to be simple. It wasn't."

Kaya nodded. "And that team of shinobi we just met, were they the ones who stopped you?"

Haku shook his head. "No. We were stopped by a team lead by the Copy nin, Kakashi. I didn't run into them until a few weeks afterwards."

"There was that tall guy," mused Hano. "He was from the Kaguya clan, wasn't he?" He laughed. "And all this time I thought they were extinct. More the pity, I guess."

Haku looked at his teammate. Hano could prove erratic, and often careless with his own life. He had gotten lost and separated from the team within five minutes of entering Konoha, and more than once he had gotten in a fight with a more powerful shinobi by innocently insulting the man's mother, dog, country, honor, and all his ancestors. But every time he got into a near-death situation, he would always laugh afterwards, and say "I can't die! I'm invincible!"

"By the way, where were you?" Haku asked. "We were looking for you for nearly half an hour after you got lost."

"I was looking at stuff," he said defensively. "There's all sorts of stuff that no one would ever think of putting in the Hidden Mist. I saw these hot springs, where you can boil yourself alive with a bunch of naked people, and then I saw this stand that sells rice dumplings on a stick! They were really cheap, too."

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Naruto paced the training grounds impatiently. He was fidgeting, pacing, tapping his foot, glancing at his watch as he had been for the past half hour. Kimimaro sat motionless with his back to a tree. Both of them seemed confident, sure, even excited about the prospect of entering the exam.

Hinata wanted to throw up.

Kimimaro was ready. He was skilled and a genius at taijutsu. Naruto didn't have the same natural talent, but he had the sort of will and determination that could carve through a stone wall. But Hinata…she had neither. She had a faint hope that Kabuto-sensei would come and tell them that there was a complication and they couldn't enter the exam, but she doubted it.

But what if…what if they pass the exam and become chunin…and I don't? She glanced at Naruto, at his vibrant blue eyes and bright sunny hair, and had a wrenching feeling in her gut.

What if I get left behind?

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Kimimaro looked up when he saw his sensei arrive. Naruto, who had been bursting with excitement for nearly half the afternoon, exploded in enthusiasm. Hinata looked up, gulped, and looked back at her feet.

"Kabuto-sensei! You made it!" Naruto shouted exuberantly. "We've been waiting forever for you!"

Oddly enough, less than two hours ago forever was a period of six months. Now, it was less than a day. The difference was due to either a concentrated time dilation or hyperbole. Kabuto suspected the latter.

"Sorry I took so long," he replied. "I had a patient who came down with the H-12-7 virus, someone got palsy and can't feel the left side of his body, and in another twenty minutes I have to do an autopsy, but in the mean time, I did manage to get the forms you need for the chunin exam."

"Excellent!" said Naruto. Kimimaro nodded respectfully. Hinata looked grim.

"However," Kabuto continued, "there are some things that you have to understand about the exam. Do you remember the genin exam?" They nodded. "Good, because the chunin exam will be nothing like it. First of all, this exam will be a lot more difficult. Usually, less than ten percent of the participating genin pass each time. Secondly, this exam is much more dangerous."

Kabuto adjusted his glasses and continued. "The exam is composed of three parts: the written test, the survival test, and the tournament. The first one is relatively safe—no one has died during the written segment in a long time. The tournament can be tougher. Despite it's safe guards, people can get seriously injured during the fight. The survival segment, however, is completely unsupervised, and if you run into someone who wants to kill you and is stronger than you and you can't get away, you will die."

Hinata looked pale and was trembling visibly, and even Naruto looked sober. Kabuto didn't like slamming the unpleasant truth in their faces, but there were things they had to know. "And when you die, that's it. No more second chances. If you get yourself killed in this exam, you lose everything, including your dream. So don't try to take the exam this year. Not unless you're willing to risk it."

"Although," he added, taking the forms out of his vest pocket, "if you are willing to take the exam, sign these applications and take them to room 301 of the registration office tomorrow at four. That is all."

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Kimimaro looked down at the application after Kabuto left. He didn't express his enthusiasm as much as Naruto did, but he did want to join. He felt he stood a chance of becoming chunin, and even though he had absolutely nothing against babysitting and shoveling manure (cough, cough), he felt that he could be more useful to his village by accomplishing more dangerous missions, which missions he could not participate in as a genin.

Naruto would enter, too. Of that, Kimimaro had no doubt. Naruto would boldly go where angels feared to tread, and often did. Kabuto's speech had quieted him to some degree, but the effect was wearing off.

Hinata was another story entirely.

"I…I'm sorry," she whispered, dropping the form on the ground. "I just…I can't do this." She left without another word.

"Huh?" asked Naruto. "Hey, Hinata! Where are you going?" He looked down at her unsigned examination form and then at Kimimaro. "What just happened?"

"Besides the obvious, I can't say," Kimimaro replied. "Are you going to go talk to her?"

Naruto glanced over his shoulder and looked at the ground nervously. "I'm not really good at talking to people," he muttered. He could talk about any subject indefinitely, but any job that required subtlety was a job that required someone else. "Why don't you talk to her?"

"What could I say? I do not understand her problem."

That wasn't exactly true. Kimimaro did understand that Hinata was scared and self conscious about her weaknesses, but he understood that on a purely intellectual level. He could not, however, relate to her very well. Relating to people in general was something that he was not adept at.

"But what does it matter?" Kimimaro asked rhetorically. "If she doesn't want to join, then she doesn't want to join. And even if she did, she'd probably just get in the way. We'd be better off without her."

"Better off without her?" Naruto repeated incredulously. "What do you mean, we'd be better off without her? Hinata's one of us, she's part of the team! We need her! And even if you're too much of an arrogant prick to realize that, I do!" He paused and looked in the direction that Hinata had left. "And I'm going to make sure she realizes that too!"

Kimimaro tried not to smile after Naruto left. He couldn't manipulate people like Kabuto-sensei could, but he had been observing his sensei a great deal over the past few months, and Kimimaro hopefully learned a thing or two.

More importantly, Naruto was painfully easy to manipulate.

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She didn't want to die. She wasn't ready, and death terrified her. Fear ruled her life, not just of death, but of everything. Fear of dying, fear of being hurt, of letting her team down, of what her friends thought of her, of her father's disapproval, and she hated herself for it.

Hinata knew that she wasn't chunin material, but until Kabuto-sensei mentioned it, she hadn't suspected that she could come home from the exam dead. She thought about what would happen if she did come home dead, what people would say if they saw her bloody, torn up carcass brought back. Kabuto-sensei would be disappointed—All that time I spent training her. What a waste—and Naruto-kun and Kimimaro-kun would be sad. Kimimaro would remain solemn and aloof, and Naruto would never know how she felt about him. And her father—Pity. It seems she really did turn out to be a failure her whole life. How…unfortunate—well, she didn't want to think about that.

"Hinata! There you are. I've been looking for you."

Hinata looked up and saw a blurry orange form coming towards her. Blurry…she didn't even notice she was crying. Hinata wiped her eyes quickly so no one would see. As if I weren't pathetic enough already.

"Hey, Hinata, I need to talk to you," Naruto said as he sat down next to her. "Uh, are you alright?"

"Yes, Naruto-kun, I'm fine," she lied. "I…I'm sorry, but, but I"—stuttering tongue, clumsy mouth, fleeing words—"I can't do it. I can't enter the exam. You and Kimimaro-kun can, but…I'm sorry. I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Why can't you?"

"Because I…I'm not strong enough." She hated to admit it, but it was true. "I'm not strong enough to compete. I can't be strong like you." Naruto was one of the strongest people she knew. He was confident, brave, determined; he was everything she wasn't. It was a cosmic joke when they had been put on the same team, as though fate was taunting her with a dream that could never happen.

"Bull crap!" he retorted. "You're plenty strong. You're almost as smart as Kabuto-sensei, you can do that weird, green-chakra ninjutsu he does, you can see through walls, you can do that weird, magic touch taijutsu thing. How can you even say you're not strong?"

Hinata wished with all her heart that she could believe what Naruto was telling her, but she had a lifetime of cold, hideous truths to disagree. "I've always been the weakest on the team, Naruto-kun," she said sadly. "You know that. I'm always the one getting in the way of the mission. Do you remember our first C-ranked mission? The very first fight, I got captured. If I wasn't rescued, I could have…I would have been killed. And later, at the bridge, I didn't help anyone, I only got in the way. I nearly drowned at the waterfall, and the whole team could have died trying to save me. If that happens again in the exam…I don't think I could handle it."

Naruto let the silence fall for a moment. Hinata expected him to deny the plain, obvious facts that she was a weakling with no talent.

"Uh, Hinata," Naruto replied. "Are you blind?" Hinata flinched visibly. "Or were you just too busy looking at your own mistakes that you didn't notice the rest of us? Two weeks ago, we had a D-ranked mission where we had to walk dogs. My dog nearly made off with my right leg and almost dragged me through a minefield before Kabuto-sensei stepped in. Last week, when we had to clean up trash from the river, I got stuck in the current and would have drowned if Kimimaro hadn't helped me. And then just today, when we were looking for the fire Daimyo's wife's cat, that thing nearly took out my jugular! If it weren't for your medical ninjutsu, I'd either be dead or passed out from lack of blood."

"We're all going to make mistakes, Hinata," he continued. "I've screwed up more times than I can count, but you've always been there for me. That's why we're on a team, so we can look out for each other. That's why we need you. So just forget about what Kabuto said about this 'mortal peril' thing. I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."

Hinata looked at him, and saw him smiling back at her. It was that smile that she had first fallen in love with. He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that someone might come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on her with an irresistible prejudice in her favor. It understood her just as far as she wanted to be understood, believed in her as she would like to believe in herself.

When she looked at that smile, his smile, she felt as though she could do anything.

Well, almost anything.

She couldn't say no, and she couldn't help but smile back.

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a/n So here's chapter two. First and foremost, I would like to thank my beta for beta-ing this. I really ought to pay him more. And I would also like to congratulate ArmorOfGeddon for being the first reader to leave a review. ArmorOfGeddon, you deserve a cookie. If I had one, and you lived nearby, and I for some reason didn't want to eat said cookie, I would give it to you. And for the rest of my readers who would like to deserve a cookie that I won't give, who noticed the Great Gatsby reference? It was pretty obvious, so if you read it in the last half decade, you should have spotted it. The frozen lake in the beginning poem is Haku, and the woods are the leaf nin.