Chapter 6

We stayed where we were for a couple minutes.

Katsu was back on the ground, and had enough to cover a great dane on his lap. He formed the tiger seal, and slapped his hand down onto the soil. I looked around.

There were proctors looking at us.

"What?" I said.

Then one of them stated the obvious, "You're supposed to be gone."

"Well, duh," said Aika, "Are you blind?"

He blinked, "No."

"Then what do you see this guy doing?" she said, waving her hand at Katsu.

"Uh, well, um," he stuttered.

"Exactly," I said, "Just be patient, we'll leave."

Katsu, oblivious to the conversation going on above him, slowly opened his eyes, and stood up. A little bit of the dirt fell away from him, but a little more that half clung to him, and he didn't bother to dust it off.

He jerked his head toward the gate, and walked through it. Aika followed, but I paused for a second to turn, smile, and wave and the jonin still watching us.

"See you!" I said, and followed my team.

- - -

We walked. Aika continuously tried to get Katsu to speed up, but since she had no idea where we were going, and Katsu was barely listening to her, she failed drastically.

The hours passed, and we stopped three times for Katsu to perform his dirt direction jutsu. At least, that's what we Aika and I call it. Katsu won't tell us the real name. But anyways, the jutsu was taking longer and longer each time, and soon enough, the day turned into night.

We camped by a river, so we could catch fish. Katsu pulled up huge slabs of rocks from far below the ground to form a shelter, and we slept there for the night.

But in the morning, Aika was getting restless.

"Come ON Katsu!" she said, "You have to tell us where were going!"

He looked at her, and walked outside. A couple seconds later, he cam back in holding a stick. He sat down again, and began to draw out a map.

"What's he drawing?" asked Aika.

"He's explaining why its taking us so long," I said, our target, the team that the dirt is directing us to, is obviously lost, and keeps changing direction. So the dirt is becoming confused, thus Katsu is. Right?"

Katsu nodded.

Then he wrote, GIV ME TIM, ILL FIND THEM.

I looked at Aika, "So, he can't spell."

- - -

We sat in that makeshift shelter for thirty minutes, watching, and waiting for Katsu to open his eyes again.

Aika finally turned to me, and said, "It really can't take him that long to find them."

"He probably fell asleep," I whispered back.

That started a round of laughter that was still going on when Katsu stood up. He walked over to the mouth of the hut and kept on going. I poked Aika out of the euphoria, and we quickly followed him.

"Y'know, I hate how we always follow a silent guy. How'd he end up as our leader anyways?" said Aika.

I shrugged, "Don't ask me, it just happened."

- - -

Katsu stopped a couple hours later, and I caught myself just before I bumped into him. Aika, however, ran right into me. Katsu smiled, and pointed at the cell in the clearing.

I closed my eyes, and shook my head.

Katsu had led us straight to the team with the tough looking white-haired kunoichi!

"Katsu, you idiot!" I whispered fiercely, "We can't fight them!"

He raised his eyebrows, but Aika, who hadn't heard anything I just said, pused me out into the clearing. I, of course, ran right into Katsu, who fell dramatically onto the ground, which lightly caught him.

A boy in a red vest and a long-sleeved white shirt looked up, and we straightened up.

I got a better look at the white-hair girl. She wore it down to where my long hair ended. She had a gray t-shirt and a jean jacket. Her headband was tied to her black capris.

Her other teammate had a purple shirt, though the three-quarters-length sleeves were netted. She had a purple skirt with a lining of net on the end. Her headband played a tie for her long blonde braid.

My insides were shaking. I could feel my heart banging against my ribs. I had to quickly think of an excuse not to fight them.

The tough girl positioned herself, and I blurted out the last thing I wanted to say.

"Stop," I stepped forward, grinning with the lightheadedness I was having right about then, "We have the same scroll."

That sobered me up.

I cannot believe I just said that!

But I had to go along with it. I pulled out my scroll, and showed it to them.

I could hear the girl gasp, and my heart came back from it's hiding place in my stomach. I was right.

Simultaneously, we walked up to them, eye-to-eye, and I lost my train of thought. Finally, I stuck and said, "I'm Amaya, and these are my teammates, Aika and Katsu.

Katsu nodded, and I could feel the tension finally break.

"Hikara," said the girl with the long braid, "and this is Tsukiko, and Ryota."

We nodded to them, and the boy copied, but Tsukiko remained still and silent with an unemotional look on her face.

"Well, since we have the same scroll, shouldn't we work together? I mean, we won't have any need of fighting each other, so…."

"That's fine," said Tsukiko. Then she did a surprising thing.

She shot a lightning bolt at a tree, evenly cutting it into sixths!

I looked at my teammates, and Katsu shrugged, so we sat with them.