[Ryuu here. Kiyomi signed off, leaving me with the hard part. But I guess we made a deal to take turns on holding the microphone, so it was fair for all of us. Hmm, I guess I wasn't that excited about the Chuunin Exams because
1st, I was scared that the vision of Kiyomi would become real,
2nd, I inherited the grumpiness of Rasen right after he trudged back to his bed earlier,
And finally, I wasn't sure if I could survive the preliminary matches if my opponent would be a comrade of mine (like Kiyomi… Rasen has an exception; I still need to confront with him).]
We left for Konoha exactly at the crack of dawn, just as I said. We had no intentions of waiting for the other teams because Rasen was getting hungrier by the minute.
"Why do we have to leave now?" A grumpy Rasen asks.
I stared at him. "So that it'd be dusk by the time we reach Konoha." I say.
"That's right Rasen. We should arrive there at least by dusk tomorrow so that we can mold enough Chakra for the 2nd Examination and the Preliminary matches." Kiyomi says out of the blue.
Rasen makes a face at her. "What about the 2nd Examinations, Kiyomi-chan?"
She shakes her head and I shrug. "This vision she had last night. Err, should I tell?" I ask.
"Here we go again with the drama." Rasen says sarcastically while heading out the gates of the Hidden Sound Village.
[Kiyomi tells me to hurry up to the part where we met up with the shinobi of Konoha, which I find very interesting.]
Instead of a day and a half of travel, we reached Konoha by only a day. But I wasn't excited at all. Instead, I was damn bored.
"Well, we're here, too early in fact." Rasen says.
"Shall we take a stroll?" Kiyomi asks.
"Oh sure, Kiyomi." I reply slightly smiling.
"Oh! Why don't we head for the Hokage's Quarters first to submit our participation documents?" Kiyomi suggests.
"No can do." I say.
"Why not?" she asks.
"Too early."Rasen and I say simultaneously.
"Fine. I'm renting a room." Kiyomi snaps at us.
She turns on her heel and walks towards a hotel. Her black and blue hair was swaying behind her even though she makes no intentions of making it sway.
I follow her, and so does Rasen.
"This is ridiculous." Rasen whispers to me.
"What? The fact that our team leader is a girl? I think I can handle that very well." I ask with a smirk on my face, still looking at Kiyomi.
"No," he starts, "the fact that we, best friends since forever, became rivals because of THAT girl." Rasen finishes glumly.
I let go of my gaze. He was right; we did fight a lot because of Kiyomi. AND, she HAD to make US promise NOT to FIGHT in front of HER. BUT, we COULD fight WITHOUT her PRESENCE.
Kiyomi stops in her tracks when she accidentally bumps some kid, about Rasen's age, a bit taller than I am with an energetic and idiotic look on his face. She smiles and apologizes. I instantly feel some blood rush up in my face. I speed-walk, stopping behind her.
"Ha. Well, I'm Shikamaru. Nice to meet you Kiyomi." the guy -Shikamaru- says.
"Oh, this is my teammate Ryuu Zen." Kiyomi says, nudging me on the elbow.
I look at him and nod. "Shikamaru right," he nods, "why are you up so early?"
He laughs a bit. "I really don't know. I just like being up early to take strolls."
"Oh well, nice to meet you." I say while dragging Kiyomi away from him.
"What?" she asks me while staring at my hands above her elbows, but below her shoulders. I instantly feel hot and let go.
"We shouldn't talk to strangers, should we?" I ask her.
"His name is Shikamaru, clearly a Konoha genin, that's about Rasen's age. What's the prob?" she blurts out.
"We shouldn't trust anyone just yet. And besides, what would he have done if he mistook you for an enemy?" I snap back.
"Whatever. Let go of my hand." she says while looking at my hand holding hers and shaking it off. I didn't even realize it. I let go and feel my face go hot again.
"Come one. Let's get booked." she says while looking at the hotel sign.
Rasen finally catches up, his face filled with anger.
"Dude, we need to talk." he grabs my shirt and balls his fist.
"Whoa, whoa. Guys! What happened to the Peace Treaty?" she asks alarmingly, grabbing each of our biceps.
"Sorry Kiyomi-chan. I got carried away." Rasen apologizes and let's go of my shirt.
Then we all saw a kid with blond hair and another kid with black and blue hair, just like Kiyomi's -maybe they were distant cousins or something- pass by.
"The blond kid is probably Konoha's Nine-Tailed Fox, or simply called the Kyuubi. What was his name again?"
"Uzumaki Naruto." Kiyomi says, still looking at the kid with black and blue hair.
I just realize that I asked out loud and not in my mind.
The blond kid -Naruto, Kiyomi says- eyes the three of us, noticing the music symbols on our foreheads, and mutters under his breath.
[Blond hair, startling blue eyes, orange jumpsuit, right-handed, probably carefree judging by his current facial expression and are those WHISKERS?]
The black and blue haired kid locks eyes with Kiyomi for a few seconds, just when I realize that she's right in front of the Kyuubi kid. They talked a bit and then Kiyomi nodded in our direction. After a few words, Naruto flipped Kiyomi away like a piece of trash.
I also notice Rasen and the black and blue haired kid talking behind me.
"Nice to finally meet someone from the Uchiha clan, Sasuke." Rasen said while shaking the hand of Sasuke.
"Hah, nice to finally meet another person who can do the Chidori besides me and Kakashi-sensei, Rasen. Say, who's that?" Sasuke replies while pointing towards Kiyomi and Naruto.
"Why are you so interested in Kiyomi?" I asked him.
"I guess I haven't seen another girl as interesting as Sakura-chan." Sasuke replied softly.
Kiyomi's face flushes. I've never, EVER, heard a person like Sasuke compliment her like that.
"You were gonna book in a hotel right? Well, if I were you, I wouldn't book here. This place has the worst room service in the whole town." Naruto said while dragging Sasuke away from Kiyomi by the shirt sleeve.
I dragged Rasen and Kiyomi towards another hotel.
"It was nice meeting you!" Kiyomi called after them.
"They seem alright," Rasen whispered, "they're Chakra stamina's are low, especially Sasuke's, and to think that he was an Uchiha. I'm sort of disappointed."
I entered the hotel and book us in a room with scenery. Kiyomi obviously picked the room nearest to the window; Rasen picked the bed nearest to the desk.
"Enjoying the scenery?" I asked Kiyomi.
"Oh, yeah. It's alright. Err, look. I'm going for a lonely walk." she replied quickly.
"Okay." I turned around and sat on my bed, and started counting all my kunais and shurikens. I already heard
Kiyomi jump out the window to start her "lonely walk" with no one else but her.
"I think I'll spy on her a bit," I said while I made a Shadow Clone, "Blend in with the shadows. You know what to do."
"You'll get in trouble if I get caught, you do know that right?" my clone told me before jumping out the window and disappearing.
"He's right. It'll just be useless in the end." Rasen agreed with my Shadow Clone.
I raced through my Shadow Clone's memories. This is what I saw.
"Hey stranger." Sasuke said while running down his hair with his right hand.
Kiyomi looked around to see if he was referring to anyone else. "Who, me?" she said.
He laughed. "Yes, you."
Kiyomi comes closer to him. They were at the dock.
"I thought I'd never see you again." Sasuke said, holding Kiyomi's hand.
"Me neither. How many months?" she asked him.
"Exactly a year yesterday." Sasuke answered her question.
"Oh, I never really noticed." she told him.
My clone came closer to them.
"There's someone here." he looks at my direction.
"Shit!" My clone said. He still hid in the shadows. Literally. Only a person that smart would notice my clone's presence.
"Howdy y'all." another voice behind my clone said.
"Seriously. Why do you keep interrupting my wanted moments, Ino?" Sasuke said, letting go of Kiyomi's hand.
My clone and I relaxed.
"Who's that? I've never seen her here before. I bet *hiccup* she's gonna kick *hiccup* some ass tomorrow *hiccup*" she was obviously drunk.
"Have you been drinking again?" Sasuke asked her, looking annoyed.
"Kidding! You already know how good I am at pranking." Ino said while twirling her hair in her finger. She was stepping on my clone's shadow, so my clone couldn't move anywhere, "Oh, right. Who's this cutie?" she pulled out my shadow clone. He came out, confused.
"Ryuu?" Kiyomi glared at me, obviously, "What are you doing here?" she storms away, and then disappears.
Sasuke rolls his eyeballs then disappears too.
"At least you're not the real one..." Ino said to my clone. She punched my clone in the stomach and it disappears with a poof along with my vision.
"Ouch. That must've hurt for the clone." Rasen said.
"Quit racking with my memories, Rasen. They're sort of private." I told him.
Rasen laughs. "Alright, alright."
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked him.
"How should I know? I'm not the one who got punched in the stomach by a girl." he replied.
I thumped him on the head. "I'll get back at you soon enough. But first, we need to find Kiyomi."
We went out of our room, then out of the hotel. We encountered Kabuto too.
"Hey you guys! Aren't you the teammates of Kiyomi?" he said with a big grin.
"Yeah, err, have you seen her?" Rasen asked Kabuto.
"No. Not at all. Wait, you're here for the Chuunin Exams tomorrow right? Well, come with me. I'm going to the Hokage's Quarters. You might as well tag along. You know, report about Kiyomi." he took a deep breath.
We ran towards the Hokage's Quarters. We entered huge double doors. We entered the hallway. The floor was covered by a thick, blue carpet, and the walls were covered with framed paintings of shinobi. There were a few doors as we passed by, then Kabuto stopped by another set of double doors with a sign saying "Hokage's Office"
"You wait here. I'll report about Kiyomi, and you better give me your documents if you want this to end quickly."
We handed him our participation documents. He entered and closed the doors behind him.
After a while, Kabuto stepped out. "You'll have to find her yourselves. You have 23 hours until the Chuunin Exams start. Find help too. There must be at least some shinobi from your village who have already arrived. Oh, I'm sorry I can't help you find Kiyomi. I have a mission to do." he left.
I tensed. "Alright, it's now, or never."
We left the Hokage's Quarters. And at the entrance, we bumped (literally) into unexpected shinobi. Hirame Sai, Magami Hotaru, and Uchiha Keisuke.
"Well, hello there. Where's Kiyomi?" Sai said. Sai and Rasen didn't look at each other, obviously. The Restraining Orders already expired, so that they could have excuses to fight during the Chuunin Exams.
"Hi Sai. We need your help. Kiyomi's gone missing. We need to find her in 23 hours." Rasen unbelievably said.
"Kiyomi's gone missing?" Hotaru asked Rasen. He nodded.
"We only have 23 hours left before the Chuunin Exams tomorrow. Please, we need all the help we can get. We can't join the Chuunin Selections if we have a member missing." Rasen also unbelievably said.
"I'm in." Keisuke joined the search party.
"So am I," Hotaru also joined the search party, "Sai?"
"Well, I can't afford to lose a comrade, so, I'm obviously in."
[We had three shinobi helping the two us, 23 hours left to find Kiyomi, and an entire enemy base to search.]
Will we make it in time?
Obviously.
Will we succeed in the mission?
Without doubt.
Will we back down due to team problems?
Never.
Will we find our missing teammate?
We will not take 'no' for an answer.
Like I said earlier, "It's now, or never."