AN: I know this fic isn't quality; I'm too tired to go in and make all of the relations with canon characters heartful. I just don't have the wherewithal, and it would hurt. I really, really hate this thing, but I did promise. So continue reading if you will, because it does get less self-centered and actually has a few good plot twists. Brining in a Kimimaro twist, so fangirls rejoice...
A tisket, a tasket, green and yellow basket-
The snake was creeping closer and closer to Konoha- but there were already malignant parasites circulating through Konoha, searching for the vulnerable gut.
----
"Gawdammit, Oboro. Hurry up!"
"We're gonna be here for three days," heckled the aforementioned Shinobi through his now-needless but still cool-looking breathing apparatus. "I drank a lot of soda. Gimmee a break."
We join these Ame-nin some time before they would trap Team Seven and Kabuto within their endurance-testing genjutsu. They were some of the best representatives from their misty country- but even the best Shinobi, for a half an instant every day, are vulnerable in some way. Knowing this, and knowing it quietly moreover, was a definite key to the forward carriage of the day's upcoming Chunin.
Basically: there's always a way to catch a ninja with his pants down.
Suigen, the one-eyed compatriot of Oboro, stood flightily with his back against a tree. The confined forest gave him the chills; it was so different from the Rain Country. There were definitely more places for a ninja to hide and rain down techniques- and that's what frightened and pleased him at the same time. The Forest of Death, even without that title, was terrifying enough.
And it was about to scar him for life.
And then the quiet sound came: the sheer, thin sound of a string being pulled taut. And suddenly the sound was raining from the unreadable, encompassing canopy above. The sheer fact that he couldn't recognize the noise was what threw Suigen off; he could tell the direction, straight above him, and his first instinct was to hide.
The forest suddenly resounded with a yell that sent chills down Suigen's spine; but Oboro's abrupt scream was cut off, as a line of chakra wire slammed taut against his throat and yanked him sharply through the underbrush,
Suigen's cry of "Oboro!" was silenced by the ghastly sound of his teammate's body striking, sharply, the base of one of the forest's towering, tangled trees. As he bolted in to examine the situation, kunai drawn and wishing the team hadn't gotten separated, he wondered why Oboro didn't leap up and cover his back; he seemed to be stuck to the side of the tree, legs pedaling in empty air. But he only wondered for a moment, because that's all he had, before he realized that Oboro's throat was being slowly cut.
His teammate was pinned to the tree, against gravity and his own weight, by a single piece of wire. It had already cut deeply into the soft flesh beneath his chin, and the pressure was only being worsened as Oboro struggled, beyond panic. It could have been a humorous moment, because Oboro was flailing less from panic and more in attempt to yank the pantsuit at his ankles back up, but Suigen was too freaked to notice.
Because he barely had enough time to take haven, before a massive scythe of wind came bursting through the trees behind, slamming dead into Oboro. Damn! The knives he alone trusted found worn paths to his hands, and he fired fluidly into the cloud of hubris as he leapt; he had seen the one who set off the jutsu, the boy. Suigen quickly leaped out of range, behind the tree his now silent teammate was still tied to.
As soon as he stepped there, the girl lunged from directly in front of him, where she had been crouched, over his head.
He saw the string in her hand, and instantly reacted to slice the damnable thing. Two throwing stars spun, expertly, from his fingers, aiming for the arc of wire that was closing around him; that done, he knew he was taking a risk, but nonetheless decided to activate a Bunshin jutsu. It might give him enough time to put some distance between what he knew now to be two attackers, at which point he could direct the clandestinity of the trees against them.
But chakra suddenly sparked up the strings; Suigen just barely managed to form the last seal, dancing away from the ricocheting weapons. As the sopping mist clones began to rise from the damp earth, the desolate whizzing came once more.
Now he could see!- flipping out of the way, it connected that he was dealing with throwing snares, connected by thin wire. Chakra could be run through these, strengthening them against breakage. Pretty clever, he thought- but not as clever as he.
Only two of them- and determining no other presences, he struck; in a swift two-step, Suigen struck the miniscule handle of an oncoming snare, sending it careening into the greenery. With unspoken symbiosis, he and a dripping clone then both stabbed blindly into the disturbed fronds of a giant fern behind his back. The sickly warmth and give of muscle which soon flowed around the handle of the kunai gave Suigen immediate gratification: he had detected and stabbed one of them.
Vaulting over the impaled Kazeki's head, a purple-haired kunoichi came flying, hard and fast, with another snare whipping around her.
She hit the ground near her opponent, as though she had leapt directly for him and missed; the jerkiness confused him, but then she was gone, on the tree high above, down to his opposite side. She was fast- and trying to distract him. Suigen knew this much, and wrapped one hand into a silent seal. Three of him appeared, within the falling circle of her wire; the reedy boy neatly danced away, letting his clones be tangled together within the restricting bind and also managing to miss Kazeki as he got back up, blood pumping from the wounds in his sides. And oh, my- it seemed that he'd brought out the big guns: a pair of arm-length blades which he flung about with a confidence that made Suigen smile; the girl was good, but this kid was flying by the seat of his pants.
Suigen stepped backwards, and the girl hit the ground beside her teammate. For a moment they all faced each other, Kazeki's pale face drawn with pain and malice, Suzuki's expression lost behind her hair,
And then she drew her hand out in front of her, in a sweeping, almost benevolent gesture; attached to the other end of the wire, Oboro came flying, and hit Suigen so hard that he might have blacked out for a moment. The pair tumbled to the ground in a heap, landing in a tangle of limbs where they lay for a moment, smelling the earth and gathering their senses. His outer clothing and ventilator nowhere in sight, the half-nude Oboro began letting out little wheezing gasps; his neck looked ragged, but on closer inspection, they would discover that it was not cut dangerously. Quickly heaving himself up, Suigen listened to the distant hum of the pair's disappearing chakra presences, and then whistled through his breathing apparatus. Despite all that show, they'd stolen the wrong suit- their Chi scroll was with Kagari, their third teammate, who was stalking some undersized Genin from their own land.
Oboro continued to huff, his breath slowly normalizing. "Suigen?" he finally said.
"It's not- fair. You can't even take a shit in this place without being attacked."
----
Amazingly, getting stabbed was the relatively painless part.
Kazeki bit down on the neck of his shirt before the rag even touched his wound; he knew Suzuki's bedside manner, and was expecting nothing short of perfunctory care.
Some miles away from their first attempt to collect a scroll, Kazeki had remembered his paranoid phobia and insisted on sterilizing his twin wounds; as he could hardly reach the one on his side, Suzuki had been applied to the job.
He tried not to hate her, as she bandaged and probed mercilessly; he just knew how hard it was for her to put herself in another's place, difficult to imagine that anyone else's pain was real.
He had hoped the Chunin Exams would teach them a lot of things; Kazeki about true mettle, and Suzuki about her place in a universe full of hurting people. But first they had to survive it.
And then they heard the massive giving-way of a tree being uprooted.
----
Kiba was a grinder of teeth; but the noise seemed unspeakably loud, so he focused his mind on two things alone: holding Akamaru as close as possible, and hoping his teeth weren't making more noise than Hinata's trembling breaths.
The blood was on his head, he could smell it- it had covered the leaves they now hid behind, dribbled onto his coat. It had used to smell like dogs, home- but now the reeking blood of a Takigakure-nin was sharp and pungent, and it would never come out, he knew. At that moment, he would have given anything not to have such a sensitive nose.
Actually, he would have given anything not to be in the Forest of Death.
Gaara stood like a proud Raj prince before his doings. The deep blood of mine enemies still rained from above, and it was good; it was better than the rat, better than the sand serpent. Mommy was warm and tingling within him, pleased with her good boy. Gaara was a good boy.
But she still wanted more.
If there had been any liquid left in Kiba, he would have pissed all over himself when the sand began to swirl around them. This guy reeked of death, reeked of it, and he could smell the blood in the sand- something older than ages and so full of hate-
But when a huge white stake shot through the air, causing the concentration of the demonic Jinchuuriki to abate, Kiba was able to hold it long enough to throw Hinata forward, and run. When they finally stopped, though, he found himself with a horrid toothache, and Akamaru's urine soaking the front of his jacket.
----
Gaara's gaze shifted with the lazy speed of a lizard anticipating a fly, following thin shadow of someone who was not supposed to be there, a participant who had entered alone and would live just the same.
His thick brown hair obscuring his eyes and his left arm limp at his side, a Shinobi named Hirako bit his lip; it still hurt his skin, when he summoned forth the mantel of his clan.
The remains of the day, the remains of the Kaguya; this child of the moors would hold his knife proudly, even if he'd just brought it to a gunfight.
----
Things weren't going so well for the rest of Konoha's hopefuls, either.
It failed to strike her, how truly terrifying his faceless mask was. The Grass-nin, with inhuman claws for toenails and a guise stitched directly into the flesh of his face, had all the emotion his katana extruded. He might as well have been made of steel; the hot, paranoid feeling was rising in her throat that this could not end well. She had stumbled into this guy in a backwards crook of stinking swamp, and he'd made his intent clear by unsheathing his sword.
Tenten knew she had to run- but the fear that her legs would fail her was suddenly so strong, she remained behind an instant too late.
The genjutsu fell on her like an iron curtain, and she tumbled flat onto her face in the wet, foul-black mud.
There was the quick slicing of air that only a sword with deathly intentions can make, followed by the sickening sound of a blade catching flesh.
CLIFFHANGER, RAWRGH!