Konoha no Mai

Chapter Three

a/n I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters thereof.

I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

-William Blake, London

The sun burnt through a cloudless sky scorching the brown earth except where green leaves cast swaying shadows. The still day left the streets stinking of human sweat and too much talk, in Kimimaro's opinion.

He never arrived late to a mission, and this might be the most important mission that he'd received in years. All the same, he was not surprised when Naruto was already waiting for him. His teammate merely looked up and grunted when he saw him before staring off impatiently into the distance.

"You're not nervous, are you?" Kimimaro probed, having expected Naruto to be vibrating with the ecstatic thrill he usually reserved for near death experiences.

"Hm? Oh, yeah sure," Naruto replied absently. "What time is it?"

"It's about three thirty."

"Ah." He considered that for a moment. "What time does the exam start?"

"At four."

"Hm." Naruto did some calculations in his head. "What? Four? That's in, like, half an hour, and we still need to do the registration thingy!"

"I thought there was something odd about the way you were acting," Kimimaro noted. "How long have you been waiting here?"

"Since lunch, but that doesn't matter! We have to get going!"

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Naruto checked his pockets, but didn't find anything. "Oh crap! Where's Hinata! She's not here yet!"

"No, she isn't," Kimimaro observed.

"We have to find her! She can't be far. You check her house, the hospital, and training grounds one through fifteen. I'll take Ichiraku and training grounds sixteen through forty."

"You really don't see the flaw in your idea, do you?"

"What?"

"First of all, she could arrive here when we're out looking for her, second of all, if one of us finds her, there would be no way to contact the other, and third of all, turn around."

Naruto turned and saw Hinata walking slowly towards them. "Hinata! You're here! What happened?"

She forced a weak smile. "Sorry I'm late," she apologized. "I—"

"Never mind that. Are you ready to go? Let's go!" Not waiting for a response, he grabbed her by the wrist and ran into the examination building and up the stairs.

There was a fight going on. The room Naruto wanted to get into was blocked by two older shinobi who were telling everyone how the chunin exam was going to get all of them killed and how they should all run home to their mothers and hide under their beds. "We've failed the chunin exams three times already, and if people as awesome as us can't pass, you little wimps have no chance."

That wasn't exactly what they said, but that was the gist of it.

Most of the shinobi in the room were, sickeningly, taking it. In fact, only one team was fighting against them, and were doing it very poorly. Hinata stifled a gasp in surprise. Naruto moved to help them, but Hinata grabbed his arm.

"Something's not right," she whispered. "I know that team who's fighting them. They're…pretending."

"What do you mean?"

One of the shinobi got knocked down by the two bullies. He had long, dark hair and pale eyes. He glanced at Hinata, only for a moment, and she stepped back as though struck.

"I—I know that person," Hinata whispered, holding a trembling hand to her mouth.

"The one with hair so long he looks like a girl?"

"His name is Neji. With half his strength, he could put the two shinobi blocking the doorway in the hospital. And his two teammates…the way they're stepping, fighting, just with their body language they're lying."

Lying? Once on a mission, after conversing with an informant, Kabuto turned to Hinata and asked, "So, when was he lying?" At the time, Naruto didn't understand how an experienced jounin could miss something and expect one of them to catch it, but Kabuto laughed and said, "Catching a lie isn't so much about what you hear as what you see. No one can lie to a Hyuuga."

"Oh, I get it," Naruto said. "They're just pretending to fight like Konohamaru's classmates so they can…do what now?"

"You know, Naruto," Kimimaro said, catching up. "Considering how this exam is the most important and dangerous mission we've ever been on, perhaps you might listen to the caution you so frequently throw to the winds."

"Huh? Why is that?"

"I can't say, but something doesn't look right. What do you think, Hinata?

Hinata activated her Byakugan and her eyes widened. "How did you…"

"Not enough stairs."

"What? What's going on?"

Kimimaro gave a long-suffering sigh.

"I'll explain later," Kimimaro told Naruto. "But we'd best hurry. We have less than half an hour before the first exam, and I can't say how many extra tests we'll come across."

After another flight of stairs, Naruto found out that the screwy building had two third stories, but no second one. Sure, even builders made mistakes, and sometimes it paid to have more than one of a certain floor if there was enough cool stuff in it, but it seemed rather sloppy of Kabuto to neglect to mention that they were supposed to report to the second room 301, and not the first.

I guess that's why we had to get here early.

"Excuse me," called a voice from behind. "You are Kaguya Kimimaro, are you not?"

"Heck no," Naruto replied. "My name's Uzumaki Naruto. Kimimaro's my teammate."

"I think he was talking to me," Kimimaro said.

"Oh. I knew that."

"That is correct," the shinobi replied. He was wearing an unnecessary amount of green and had the hugest eyebrows Naruto had ever seen. "My name is Lee. Rock Lee. I have an interest in you, Kimimaro."

"Eh, strange men are interested in you," Naruto interpreted. "You 'd better be careful."

"How so?" Kimimaro asked Lee, ignoring him.

"You are a taijutsu specialist," Lee explained. "I am too. Among your peers, your taijutsu skills are unsurpassed, but last year I graduated from the academy as dead last. I wish to see how my dedicated training fairs against natural genius."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Do you accept?"

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"I accept."

WWW

Kimimaro fell into stance, and his opponent did the same. Lee. A straightforward, simple name. He probably lent himself to a simple, straightforward fighting style, focusing on the basics to an extreme level. He graduated from the academy a year before, but time didn't tell Kimimaro much if he didn't know what the shinobi did with it. A desire to prove himself…

"Hold on a second," Naruto interrupted. "Kimimaro, what are you doing? Didn't you just say twenty seconds ago that we were in a hurry?"

"I said we had to be prepared for unexpected tests. This is one of them. Come at me whenever you're ready, Lee."

"Bullcrap, Kimimaro. You want to know the fast way of getting out of this? Tell the guy in the super hero suit where to go and leave."

Super hero suit? "I'll have to face him eventually in the exam. It might as well be now. Lee? Now means now."

"You are always like this!" Naruto shouted. "On every mission, you always hog all the—"

"Dynamic Entry!"

In a green blur, Lee was right in front of him, planting his heel into Kimimaro's chest, sending him flying through the air. The wall behind him crumbled like styrofoam, and Kimimaro paused for a moment to gather his wits before pulling himself to his feet.

"What was that about, you jerk?" Kimimaro heard Naruto yell. "He wasn't ready!"

"Yes he was," Lee said stiffly. "He said so."

"He's right, Naruto," Kimimaro said, stepping out of the hole in the wall and shaking off some rubble. "If he caught me by surprise, that was my fault, not his. And, Naruto? Either pick a side or stay out of the way."

"What?"

Kimimaro turned to Lee. "You're fast," he said. "Fast enough to hit me. But you'll need much more than that to hurt me."

Lee nodded. "Then I'll just have to go all out." He untied the bandages on his arms until they hung from his wrists like long tentacles.

"Wait!" Hinata said.

Not you, too. "What?"

"If we—this is against the rules," she said. "If someone sees us fighting outside of the exam, we could get disqualified."

"What?" asked Naruto. "That's lame!"

Lee stared at Hinata a long moment before he nodded and reset his bandages. "You look familiar," he said. "Have I…"

Hinata shook her head. "I'm his cousin."

"Ah. Yes, I can see the resemblance."

Hinata looked at the floor and didn't respond.

"Well, Kimimaro, it's been a pleasure meeting you, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Hopefully we'll run into each other again in the exam."

"Wow," Naruto said after Lee left. "We are so majorly out of our league. This is going to be great."

"I could have defeated him," Kimimaro said.

"That's not what I meant," Naruto replied. "What, you didn't see it? No? What about you, Hinata? You saw it, didn't you?"

Hinata frowned and shook her head uncomfortably.

"Wow, this has never happened to me before. Usually it's just the opposite where everyone else sees something and I have no idea." He turned to Kimimaro. "So are you going to ask me what I saw or not?"

He rolled his eyes. "What was it?"

"When he took off his bandages, did you see how bruised up his hands were?"

"So he got back from a rough mission, so what?"

"And still sore from his mission, the first thing he does is pick fights with random people, right? No, he wouldn't have challenged you unless that was something he was used to, that was from training. Have you ever punch something so much that you have marks for it the day after? I've tried, but no matter how much I hit it, the next day my hands are back to normal."

"So you're saying he's dedicated?"

Naruto grinned. "Like I said, this is going to be great."

WWW

Kabuto glanced at his watch and leaned back against the wall. It all depended on Hinata, really, whether or not his team would participate. Naruto and Kimimaro would come, but Hinata was less transparent. She weighed the consequences more than Naruto and was weaker than Kimimaro. Left to herself, Kabuto knew she wouldn't join the chunin exams for maybe another year, but people seldom made decisions alone, that was what made social interactions so fascinating.

"Kabuto-sensei!" Naruto yelled on sight. His team made it with its usual subtle grace. Even Hinata was there.

Well, Kabuto thought. I guess I won a bet with myself. "You made it. I was getting worried that you wouldn't show."

"Are you kidding me?" Naruto asked incredulously. "I wouldn't miss the chunin exams for anything. I've never let something like mortal peril get in my way before, and I'm not going to start now."

"Oh, I knew you wouldn't be afraid," Kabuto said with a laugh. Hinata bowed her head in shame, but he pretended not to notice. "I was just worried that you'd end up lost in the wrong side of the building, or delayed by some overly competitive showoff."

Naruto gave an embarrassed laugh. "You know, there's a funny story about that."

Just then Kabuto saw something that he never wanted to see unexpectedly. It was a single eighth note imprinted in a metal plate, tied around a boy's head. Kabuto's expression flickered for a second—a fraction of a second—no more. Kimimaro and Naruto, he knew, wouldn't even have noticed.

"Well, what have we here?" one asked. "Looks like greenies."

"Hey, don't diss green people," Naruto said immediately. "I saw a green person just now, he moved so fast you couldn't even see him. Which was good, because his speed wasn't the only reason he was hard to look at, if you know what I mean."

Every now and then, Naruto would say something that would put everyone around him off balance, and Kabuto suspected that it was intentional.

"Dude," Naruto continued, facing the hunched over sound nin with bandages all over his face. "That is the most back hair that I've ever seen on anyone. You'll have to tell me how you do it some time. But more importantly, who the heck are you people supposed to be?"

Some of the sound nin restrained grins and smothered laughter, but most just rolled their eyes and glared, convinced that they were talking to an idiot. There wasn't just one team here, but nine genin, three teams total. If Naruto even noticed that he was out numbered, he didn't show it, but Kimimaro was ready to start slicing people if things got dicey.

"Are you blind as well as stupid?" the hunched, bandaged shinobi sneered as he pointed to his headband. "See this? This is the emblem of Otogakure. Or haven't you heard of the Hidden Sound?"

"Otogakure?" Naruto gasped theatrically, thoroughly enjoying himself. "You're from Otogakure? Yeah, you're right, I've never heard you. Though how do you hide a sound? You'd think you'd be able to find it as long as you were within hearing distance."

One of the sound nin, one with spiky brown hair, pulled out a kunai. "That's it. I'm going to kill this guy."

"Clever, Zaku," came a voice from around the corner. "Attack another participant of the chunin exam in the presence of his jounin sensei. May your bravery bring honor to your village and rid us of your incompetence." The speaker stepped around the corner, fixing Zaku with a dead-eyed stare.

"Hoshui-sensei!" the sound nin, Zaku, gasped.

"And in the future," he continued, "I hope you have the decency to cover up your inferiority complex during the exam. I don't want any naked mentalities running around when I'm not here to supervise."

Zaku bowed his head and nodded meekly.

Kabuto looked at the sound nin's jounin sensei—pale skin, straight black hair in a topknot, tight smile—and smiled politely. "Hoshui?" he said. "I wasn't expecting the Otokage to send you here with the genin. This exam just keeps on getting better."

"I hope my genin didn't bother you, Yakushi-san," Hoshui said with the courtesy of a frozen statue.

"Hold on," Naruto interrupted. "How do you know our sensei?"

Hoshui gave Naruto an appraising look before he looked back at Kabuto. "Your sensei is famous. Called 'Bloodless,' for the immaculate, unmarked corpses he makes of his enemies. Or didn't you know that, child?"

"Child? My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm going to ace this exam and someday I'll be Hokage!"

Some of the sound nin smirked, but Hoshui didn't miss a beat. "Training the future Hokage, are you? I'm sure Konoha will be grateful for the loyal service you have rendered her." He granted Kabuto's students a wintery smile. "It's been a pleasure meeting you in person, Yakushi Kabuto, but I don't want to keep you." Hoshui led the nine sound genin past Kabuto and his team. Kabuto gauged the distance between them, but nothing in his manner showed anything that wasn't absolutely polite.

"Well," Kabuto said afterwards. "That was interesting."

"I know," Naruto said. "That jounin was kind of creepy, and he seemed like a jerk too. Like some creepy jerk guy."

"Yes, there's that," Kabuto replied. "What else?"

"There were three three-man teams, but only one jounin sensei," Kimimaro noted. "Is that normal?"

"Actually, it is. I'm here to oversee your progress during the exam, but I can still perform my other duties if necessary. If the exam were in another village, it's more complicated. You would still have an escort, but often one jounin takes three or four teams instead of just his own. But let me put it this way. The genin exam took place only within your village, but the chunin exam is international. Why do you think that is?"

"Because it's so much more awesome that way!" Naruto exclaimed.

"Thank you, Naruto, that was very profound. Hinata, can you add to that?"

"Uh, because this way, we can display the strength of our village, so prospective customers can decide whether to employ shinobi from our village or another," Hinata said uncomfortably. "Oh, and it also maintains a standard, so a chunin from another village will be more or less the same strength as a chunin from this one."

"Precisely," Kabuto said. "Now, suppose you're from a minor village, and you think you can make more money from your genin you just say they're chunin, or that you're jounin will stand a better chance of success if everyone thinks they're genin. That's mostly what Otogakure is like."

"So there a shinobi can change his rank based only on the Otokage's discretion?" Kimimaro asked. "Then why are those sound nin participating in the exams?"

"That is a very good question," Kabuto said. "And I don't know. There's a good chance it's nothing—a change of policy, maybe—but all the same, I want you to avoid the sound nin whenever possible, and if you have to face them, proceed with caution. I don't know what they're capable of, but I can guarantee a surprise."

"Um, Kabuto-sensei?" Hinata asked. "What did Hoshui-san mean about your 'loyal service?'"

Kabuto laughed lightly. "Let's just say the in the sound, they have a very Machiavellian view of loyalty and honor."

"Machia-what now?" Naruto asked.

"That means anyone willing to sacrifice his life for his village is a royal fool, and the ideal leader is someone willing to murder his own mother in cold blood."

"That sounds pretty stupid," Naruto remarked.

"Yeah, they're not exactly Konoha's closest diplomatic friends."

Kabuto felt himself relax as his three students filed into the next room. It took a subtle control to lie to a Hyuuga of any capacity, but Kabuto lived enough lies to make it work. What bothered him most, though, was that Orochimaru was making his move. He just put ten shinobi in Konoha, at least ten. He was planning something.

How come he didn't know?

WWW

Names identified people, created them. All his life, Kimimaro had been Kimimaro. People called him that, but beyond that, Kimimaro called himself that. That was the power of a name. If followed you, accompanied you your whole life. If you're not careful, you become your name.

Nicknames were different. They were no less powerful, but they were sewn of actions and reaped of perceptions. That led Kimimaro to ask something.

How did Kabuto-sensei gain a nickname like Bloodless?

Kimimaro knew better than anyone how Kabuto-sensei could kill a man without shedding blood, but the idea that he never shed blood was an exaggeration. But more than that, the connotation of the word "Bloodless" was disconcerting. It felt…dispassionate? Well, that fit his sensei like glove when it suited him. Unnatural? Made sense. No other word better described what the med-nin could do with corpses. But more precisely, the word felt wrong, like Kabuto-sensei left his enemies bloodless, devoid of blood, life…purpose.

Kimimaro shook his head and steeled his mind in a different direction. He looked around the room. There were more shinobi waiting for the exam than Kimimaro could count. More than a hundred, and most of them would fail. No, almost all will fail. He looked around and saw shinobi from the sand, the grass, the—Haku!

On the far side of the room, he spied Haku and the two mist nin on his team. Kimimaro nodded at him, but Haku's expression remained unreadable. Was he glad that they'd be taking the exam together? Was he nervous about the chance of facing each other? Not too long ago, they fought each other, and if necessary, Kimimaro knew he could win. That seemed plausible, but—

"So you guys got suckered into taking this stupid test too, huh?" Shikamaru said.

"Heck no," Naruto said. "We suckered ourselves into taking this stupid test, thank you very much."

Kimimaro heard Sasuke give a derisive snort. "Yeah, you—gah!"

"Sasuke-kun!" Ino squealed, jumping up and hugging him from behind. "I haven't seen you in ages!"

It took every ounce of self discipline for Sasuke not to tear her from his shoulders and throw her through a wall. Kimimaro did that once at the academy. He was very sincere and apologetic afterwards, a reflex, he called it, but if it works it works. He never had to deal with that problem again, and Sasuke had always secretly admired him for that.

"Get off of Sasuke-kun, you pig!" Sakura growled. Sasuke winced inwardly. It was bad enough to be tackled and nearly strangled by one annoying little girl without another annoying little girl jumping to his rescue.

"Wow," said Ino's teammate, Idate. "I guess it turns out we aren't the only rookies here foolish enough to take the exams."

Kimimaro knew Idate from the academy. He cheated when it suited him, and flirted when it suited no one else, but was overall unremarkable in any way.

"Yeah, I haven't seen you people since graduation," the third member of their team, Yakumo, said. Pale and sickly, she failed at the most basic physical activities—like running—and couldn't even attempt taijutsu. Kimimaro suspected that she passed the taijutsu portion of the genin exam by casting a genjutsu on the chunin instructor.

"I know what you mean," Idate drawled. "I thought I was done for good with these ugly mugs. Except for you, Hinata. How're you doing?"

Hinata backed up a step, ducking her chin under her hitate-ate around her neck.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Naruto growled.

"Work it out, idiot," came a voice from behind. "It seems pretty obvious to me."

Naruto turned around and saw a small white dog sitting on a shinobi's head. "Hey, Akamaru. Kiba, what an unpleasant surprise."

"You can say that again," Kiba replied. "I thought that you'd stop eating ramen for breakfast once you became a genin."

"Wait, how'd you know what I had for breakfast?"

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," Kiba replied. "But I'll give you a hint. If you didn't talk, I'd have no idea."

Akamaru barked in agreement.

Naruto swatted absently at a fly by his face. "You know what? I think you're just trying to get me to shut—dah!"

Shino appeared from nowhere and grabbed him by the wrist. "Careful, Naruto. You might hit something. You don't want to hit something."

"Well, I didn't before," Naruto said irritably, yanking his arm from Shino's grasp.

"Easy there, Shino," Chouji said, holding a bag of chips. "He didn't mean anything."

"Yeah, thanks Chouji," Naruto said. "By the way, you look different. Have you gained weight or something?"

Chouji's eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits.

"…or maybe it's…that scarf! Right. That's a new scarf, isn't it? It looks good on you."

And awkward silence filled their circle, until Haku's teammate, Hano, standing upside-down from the ceiling on the other side of the room, broke it.

"Hey, excuse me, everyone! Could I say something? I'd like to say something real quick."

WWW

There was something horribly psychological about the wait before the first exam. They couldn't just let them go in and take the stupid test, they had to make them wait with nothing to do but dread it.

"It's more than that, Kaya," Haku said. "The examiners are giving us a chance to observe the other contestants. Everyone here is trying to hide or feign weakness and gauge the strengths of their opponents."

Kaya looked around. Not a whole lot of people seemed to be paying attention to them, but… "Your leaf friends are getting a lot of dirty looks."

"They're rookies," Haku explained. "Everyone looking for a quick win with assume they lack experience."

"Assume?" Kaya asked. "Oh. Right."

Hano laughed at some secret joke. "I guess nothing attracts a hungry dog like fresh meat, but some poor little puppy's going to choke." He stood up and stretched. "So, as long as we're supposed to be observing weaknesses, have you got anything yet?"

"So far, it's difficult to do anything besides speculate. Right now they're cautious, but later—"

"Exactly!" Hano interrupted. "Right now, I see some hundred plus shinobi trying to look cool for each other, and honestly they're not doing a very good job. I say we do a little…experiment."

"Hold on a second," Kaya said, narrowing her eyes. "What kind of experiment are you planning?"

"Well, Haku said that everyone is too cautious, so…" He let the implication hang in the air.

"…So?"

Hano let out a large, despairing sigh, then jumped up, doing half a flip and landing upside down on the ceiling.

"Hey, excuse me, everyone! Could I say something? I'd like to say something real quick." Nearly every shinobi in the room looked at him with expressions ranging from confusion to disgust. "Yes, thank you. So my friend Kaya here once told me that if you put enough putrid, revolting, half-witted morons in one place, time would stop. So right now I'm looking at my watch, and I'd like to thank all of you nice people for proving her wrong!"

Amidst the howls of rage, several kunai, a few senbon dripping in what Hano hoped was poison, and at least one jumbo sized shuriken flew at him, and Hano jumped to the floor behind Haku with a yelp.

"Are you crazy, Hano?" Kaya nearly shrieked.

"I think you've asked me that before."

"That was rather reckless of you," Haku said calmly. "I'd rather you not do that sort of thing in the future."

"Yeah, but it worked, didn't it?"

Haku smiled, looking at the crowd, holding his senbon just in case someone tried throwing something else. "Yes, you've shattered their stone masks quite well. I can work with this," Haku said, noting which genin took offense, which attacked, and which flat out ignored him.

Hano yelped in pain as Kaya pulled out a senbon that was stuck in his arm. Haku managed to deflect most of the projectiles, but even he had his limits.

"You'll want to suck out the poison before it festers," Kaya lectured.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But first, I want to find out if this is the kind of poison that makes your muscles cramp up until it stops your heart, or if it just dissolves your blood vessels and makes you bleed internally."

With a growl of frustration, Kaya grabbed his arm and sucked out the poison herself.

"Ow! You bit me!" he complained.

"Well, you should have done it yourself! I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with a five year old."

WWW

The shinobi stood with long black hair falling past his shoulders, his delicate features so pale they might have been covered in a sheet of ice. His dark brown eyes glistened…not fiercely, but protectively, carefully watching the genin in the room. Time and time again, Shikamaru's eyes fell to the senbon the shinobi held in his fingers.

You're being irrational, Shikamaru told himself. It's impossible. There is no logical reason why he would be here. He told himself that, again and again, trying to shake the conviction that the shinobi's height, weapon choice, hair, and posture were something other than nerves.

It didn't work.

"Hey, Sasuke," he called. "See that shinobi over there with the senbon? Does he look familiar to you?"

Sasuke stared at the mist nin for a moment before shaking his head.

"Okay, but imagine him wearing a white mask of a kiri hunter nin."

"…ah."

"You see it?"

"See what?" Sakura asked, stepping in.

"Remember that mission with the bridge builder and the guy with the giant sword?" Shikamaru asked. "I can't shake the feeling that that shinobi over there looks a lot like the guy who was with him."

Sakura peered over at him. "Well…I guess so," she admitted. "But he was wearing a mask at the time. If you just go by height and hair color, a lot of people here match his description, even you could if you wore your hair differently."

"That's true," Sasuke agreed. "Although…" The mist nin noticed them staring at him and looked back at them, neither aggressively nor defensively. I know you're watching me, he seemed to say. I have nothing to hide. "There is the matter of senbon. It's a common weapon, but…"

"He deflected a shuriken that could slice through a tree with it," Shikamaru finished.

Sasuke finally shook his head and turned away. "We're grasping at straws here," he muttered. "Even if he is Haku, it doesn't matter."

"What?"

"If he's not him, then he's just taking part in the exams like everyone else. And if he is…" Sasuke's eyes darkened and his teeth seemed to glisten behind an eager, controlled grin. "I've been hoping for a rematch with that guy."

Across the room, the mist nin said something to his teammate—the one with the death wish. The other shinobi looked at Shikamaru and his team and started laughing.

No, Shikamaru thought. It does matter. Sasuke had been unconscious at the time, and Sakura blocked by a veil of mist, but Shikamaru had been right there. He watched his teammate "die" before he caught Haku in his shadow, and when Zabuza died, he wasn't feeling merciful. He made Haku watch too.

But the way Haku struggled, writhed against his constraints, the way he screamed when Kakashi-sensei drove his hand through Zabuza's chest…it was a thing that Shikamaru couldn't forget. It was a thing that would haunt his nightmares.

No, he decided. If Haku comes after us in the exam…well, there was a reason Shikamaru was called Konoha's Number One Coward.

WWW

a/n A few words by way of explaination. Hoshui is a character developed by my friend Racheakt, who recently became my coauthor instead of just my beta, by the way. He explained it like this:

"I built the idea of Hoshui on the question: 'was that guy Orochimaru impersonating during the Chuunin exams an actual Sound Shinobi? Or was he just a disguise?'

It seems unlikely that Orochimaru would just choose a disguise that resembled himself so closely- not when infiltrating an enemy base during a period of intensified security, not when his face was so well-known. That would bring him unwanted scrutiny.

Why that particular face then? The answer is simple: There was already a Sound shinobi with a well-known face that looked like him, who he killed and used his face-peeling jutsu on. The man already looked like him, so any Hyuuga or similar detector would (presumably) miss the deception. There was no genjutsu to be dispelled, and, knowing the face of the shinobi he was impersonating, Konoha would not pay any special attention to him. He was even supposed to be there, so no-one gave him a second glance, hiding in plain sight, genius!"

In this story, instead of killing Hoshui and taking his face, Orochimaru just sent him ahead to be the sound nin's sensei.

Regarding Idate and Yakumo, my original plan was to have Shino, Ino, Chouji, and Kiba on a team of four, but you never see any teams of four. It would be too much work to make two OC's to make two teams of three, so I just used characters from the anime. Remember the eighty consecutive episodes of fillers? Yakumo appeared near the end. Idate is Morino Ibiki's little brother who left Konoha after failing the chunin exam. In this, both are participating genin. I'll explain more about the teams in the next chapter. Thanks for all the reviews, by the way. You people are awesome.