Hi no Ishi, Scroll One: Kannabi
Full Summary: {RTS} As Orochimaru and his allies threaten to topple Konoha, Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke are becoming the leaders of their generation. The question is, will they survive the Daiyonji Ninkai Taisen or end up like the previous Sannin – broken? AU diverging at the Chuunin Exams. FemNaru because I can. Team 7-centric.
A/N: Yosh! I would like to thank all of you for reading and reviewing HnIK. I hope you continue to enjoy reading! :D
I don't have any excuses for why this took so long to post. Please forgive me, and thank you for your patience.
Recently a lot of people have reviewed asking about pairings. I will say this now; romance is not going to be a large part of the story at any point. Some of the characters might end up dating and there will be one-sided crushes. It is unlikely that there will be any final pairings, and if there are, they will not affect the plot very much.
Also, I'm working on a collab with misssilivren called Illusions.It's posted under the account name Red Thread Studios, so please check it out!
Edit: Ceralyn pointed out a pretty big mistake that I made, and I couldn't really leave it ; ; Please forgive me for reposting this.
Disclaimer: Nothing has changed, sadly – I don't own anything.
Glossary
Shi no Mori – Forest of Death
There are many destinies
-Uzumaki Mito
Chapter Eight: Stand My Ground
"This is training ground 44, also known as the Shi no Mori, the area where the second exam will take place!" Anko cried as she stepped up to stand in front of the fenced-in forest. The whole place gave off an ominous, imposing aura. The tree trunks were as thick as boss summons, and Sasuke had heard tales from Naruto about the animals within the training ground. Even though he had used it in his example for the second exam, he had hoped somewhere in the back of his mind that the exam would be held somewhere else.
Anko pulled a stack of papers out of one of the pockets on her trench coat, smiled that creepy smile of hers, and said, "Before I start the second exam, I need you to sign these. They're consent forms. This way, when people start dying, it's not my fault. You wouldn't want me to get in trouble, would you? I'll pass out these forms and then start explaining the second exam. Once you've filled in the forms, turn them in at the booth to my left with the rest of your team."
Anko then stepped forward and handed the stack of papers to the genin closest to her before pulling out a scroll and unfurling it to reveal a basic map of the Shi no Mori. The genin took one form and passed it on to the shinobi beside him.
"Now, about the exam. Let's start with the basic terrain of the area. Training ground 44 is surrounded by a circular perimeter of fencing interrupted by exactly forty-four locked gates. A river runs through the center of the training ground, but the rest of it is heavily forested land. In the center is a tower about ten kilometers from the gates. It is within this area that you will undergo your exam. To put it simply, this will be a fight-to-the-death version of capture-the-flag – or capture-the-scroll, in this case," explained Anko.
"Scroll..?" a genin from Taki frowned.
Anko pulled two more scrolls out of her pocket before she spoke again. One had a yellow border and the kanji 'heaven' written on it. The other had a black border and was emblazoned with 'earth'. "Yep! There's a Heaven Scroll and an Earth Scroll. There are eighty-four of you here, so that's twenty-eight teams. Fourteen teams will receive an Earth Scroll when you turn in your forms. The other fourteen will get an Earth Scroll. Your mission is to keep your hands on your own scroll and get the matching scroll from another team through any means necessary."
"So in other words, at least half of us – the fourteen teams who have their scrolls stolen – will fail," Sakura muttered, her eyes narrowing.
"Exactly! And there's a time limit too. You have one hundred and twenty hours to complete this exam from the moment you enter the gates, or exactly five days," chirped Anko.
"Five days!" Ino squawked, eyes widening in surprise.
"What are we supposed to eat?" Chouji demanded frantically.
"That's your problem," Anko said disinterestedly. "The forest is full of food. Of course, there's also man-eating plants and tigers the size of large houses, but hey. There's no way fourteen teams will pass this test. Many will fail due to the harsh environment, hunger, or thirst. You'll be surrounded by enemies at all times, so you'll always have to watch your back. There will be more deaths than those that come from battles over the scrolls.
"I'll explain how you can be disqualified. It's pretty simple. The teams that fail to reach the tower with both scrolls are out. The same goes for any team that reaches the tower with both scrolls but contains a member that is dead or too injured to fight. If you look in the scrolls before you reach the tower, you will fail this exam. None of you will be allowed to leave the forest before the five days are up. No acceptations. Oh, and before I forget, you're going to have to leave behind any tools or items you brought with you."
It took a moment for Anko's last sentence to sink in. When Sasuke finally wrapped his mind around her words, he let a deep scowl settle over his face. They would be in extremely hostile territory for up to five days with no supplies to speak of.
"Wait, what do you mean we're going to have to leave behind our tools?" Sakura asked worriedly.
"Any weapons or other items such as food, scrolls, or poisons will be left with us for the duration of this exam. They will be returned when the exam is over – if you survive, anyway," Anko drawled. "Give them to the proctors manning the scroll booth. They will search you if they suspect you're hiding anything. You can go get your scrolls now."
Sasuke sighed and allowed himself to slouch slightly in his sitting position as he thought through the position he and his team were stuck in. The proctors behind the scroll booth had unrolled a curtain to hide which scroll each team got and who was carrying it. 'We're most likely equally determined to pass this exam. Depending on the strength of the other teams, this could turn into a bloodbath…'he realized. 'We need to finish this exam as fast as possible in order to minimize our chance of dehydration.'
"Sasuke-kun, it's time to turn in our forms," Sakura said as she walked up from behind Sasuke. When the Uchiha turned to look at her, he saw she was carrying her sheathed swords and had wrapped the white cloth she used as a holster around her hips in a makeshift sash. A moment later, Naruto ghosted up to them, silent as always.
Sasuke nodded to Sakura and got up. /Who carry?/he signed.
/Me. Fastest,/Naruto replied.
Sasuke nodded his acceptance while Sakura signed a quick /Yes./That decided, the trio walked up to the scroll both. All three of them passed in their forms. One of the two proctors wordlessly handed Naruto a Heaven Scroll when she signaled that she would be the one carrying it.
"Your supplies," the other said as he pulled out a storage scroll marked "Konoha Team 7".
All three of them unstrapped their kunai and shuriken holsters as well as their standard-issue pouches and placed them on the table. Sakura forfeited her swords after a second of hesitation. Naruto, however, took her trench coat off and hung it upside-down overtop of the table part of the booth. An assortment of scrolls, senbon, seal tags, poison bombs, and shinobi wire cascaded out of the pockets. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at the large pile that was left when Naruto was done. The blonde Uzumaki was quite literally armed to the teeth, her own miniature shinobi supplies store.
The proctor with the storage scroll blinked once in what was probably surprise at just how much Team 7 carried with them. Although, if he unsealed the twenty-odd storage scrolls the three of them carried, the pile on the table would probably double, if not triple. Twenty-five seconds later, all of the tools were sealed within a scroll that was tucked under the table.
As Team 7 exited the booth, another proctor came up to them. "I'll lead you to your gate," he explained. "Please follow me."
All three of the genin exchanged slightly nervous glances. Naruto shrugged, communicating several sentences with that simple motion. We don't have much choice. We've dug our graves, so to speak. Now we have to lie in them.Sasuke had to agree with her. When Sakura gave a small smile, Sasuke knew she had understood Naruto's message as well.
They were lead to gate 12. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near the river, so they couldn't use that as an easy guide. There was nothing near the gate except for the giant trees that populated the Shi no Mori. The teams had been spread out so that none of them were right next to each other. There was nothing ideal about the situation, which was probably exactly how Anko and the rest of the proctors had designed it.
The proctor that had led Team 7 to their gate pulled up his sleeve and glanced at the watch that had been hidden there. He nodded once to himself before going up to the gate and unlocking it. "You can enter the forest in one minute exactly," he said.
Sasuke tensed in preparation. He could feel Sakura and Naruto doing the same beside him. The next sixty seconds seemed to inch by at the rate of a snail. The exams had him and his teammates much tenser than usual, that much was easy to tell – Kakashi had trained all of them to stay relaxed in all but the most dangerous situations. Not only did it serve as a psychological weapon against their opponents, it let them use a lot less energy. It was one of the tricks Kakashi had learned in his ANBU years, according to Naruto and the files she brought with her to their team meetings on many occasions.
"You may go in now," the proctor said as he finally yanked the gate open.
Team 7 practically flew past him and into the trees of the Shi no Mori. Naruto quickly sealed their Heaven Scroll within a small storage seal tattooed into the underside of her forearm. Sasuke's hands began to flow through the code that had become familiar to him over the past months. /Code. Enemies surrounding./
/Split up,/Sakura suggested. /Each attack one team. Meet at tower. One at least will get scroll. Team up if none get scroll. Look for each other if we not show up in two hours./
/Agree,/Naruto signed.
Sasuke nodded and veered to the left. Sakura dropped to the ground and took a route to the right. Naruto performed a quick Kuchiyoseand summoned a large green-feathered falcon to ride on. Once they had left Sasuke's range of sight, he looked forward and activated his Sharingan to make sure he wouldn't be caught in a genjutsu.
Sasuke was careful not to let his guard down even as he forced himself to relax. Enemies could be upon him at any moment, and although he was confident he could take some if not most of the participating teams by himself, there was a possibility that he could run into Lee's team or one of similar strength. If that happened, he would not be able to defeat them by himself. Even if he had Naruto and Sakura with him, they would be hard-pressed to beat Lee's team.
Suddenly, a faint trace of chakra entered Sasuke's Sharingan-enhanced vision. The Uchiha stopped immediately and searched the area with all of his senses to make sure somebody hadn't managed to sneak up on him. He couldn't hear anything, but that didn't mean much; his ears were not hypersensitive like Kakashi's. Since he couldn't hear anything, it was unlikely that the chakra was coming from a fight. And since nobody was near the chakra, it wasn't just somebody passing through. So that meant that the chakra came from a genjutsu, which was no danger to him as long as he had the Sharingan activated. Sasuke leaped through the trees, following the flow of the genjutsu's chakra back to its creator.
It didn't take long for Sasuke to find the person behind the genjutsu. It was a group of Ame-nin dressed in odd beige bodysuits. The genjutsu would block them from sight from any normal pair of eyes, but Sasuke's eyes weren't normal by a long shot. Sasuke laid down on the branch and edged forward so that he was lying just over the three Ame-nin.
"Mubi, you take the scroll," said one of the Ame-nin as he handed an Earth Scroll to his black-haired teammate. Mubi nodded and used some chakra to stick the scroll to his leg, just under the cover of his pants.
"Let's split up and meet back here in an hour," ordered Mubi. His two teammates nodded and disappeared. Mubi took off in a different direction less than a second later.
'Bingo,'Sasuke thought with a smirk as his hands began to blur through seals. "Doton: Ishikawa no Jutsu!" the Uchiha whispered.
The ground beneath Mubi's feet immediately began to soften into a pit of quicksand. Surprisingly, the Ame-nin didn't show any signs of shock or panic and instead raised one hand to his lips and let out a shrill whistle.
Sasuke scowled as he jumped down from the branch he had been standing on. 'Some sort of signal, maybe?'he wondered.
Seconds later, Mubi sunk down into the ground. Sasuke immediately turned his gaze to the ground and wasn't surprised to see the vague imprint of a human moving around underground. He was about to perform another Doton ninjutsu that would reveal Mubi, but he was interrupted by the soft thuds of the other two Ame-nin landing behind him. Sasuke looked over his shoulder only to see that the two Ame-nin were illusions, albeit well-crafted ones.
The two illusory clones charged Sasuke. 'Pointless,'noted Sasuke, 'they're just illusions.'Sasuke only tilted his head to the side out of reflex to avoid the wooden kunai one of the illusions threw at him. His eyes widened in shock when he felt something wet trickle down his cheek. He swiped his hand across his face as he lept backwards. When Sasuke looked at it, his fingertips were stained with blood. 'So the kunai was real…'
Sasuke glanced around for some sort of clue as to how a kunai from an illusion had damaged him. The scratch on his cheek was not fake, so that meant that somehow the creators of the illusions had injured him.
Sasuke glanced around, searching for any sort of unnatural chakra signature while carefully avoiding the handmade knives that the illusions were throwing. A blurry outline of a vaguely human-shaped chakra signature underneath one of the clones caught Sasuke's eye. He shifted his eyes to the earth beneath the second and third clones only to find that those originals were also hiding underneath their copies. After that, it was a relatively simple matter to figure out that the Ame-nin were timing their attacks with the illusions', making it appear that the illusions had the ability to physically harm the victim.
"Tsk," Sasuke muttered under his breath. "I don't have time to play your stupid games." Sasuke knelt down and turned towards the area where Mubi was hidden, completing a short sequence of hand seals. "Doton: Tatakikowasu."
The ground in front of Sasuke raised a couple of inches before splitting apart into four separate blocks of earth. The whole process did not take much more than nine or ten seconds. It took only a couple seconds longer then that for Sasuke to dive into one of the fissures and land behind Mubi. A quick chop to the neck and the Ame-nin was out cold. The scroll tumbled out of Mubi's pants and was quickly snatched up by Sasuke. The Uchiha decided not to waste any more time and pushed some chakra into his legs and made his way to the tower.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Sakura stopped immediately when three Kusa-nin entered her line of vision. They varied greatly in height, as the longest was easily as tall as Kakashi while the shortest was smaller than Naruto, which was saying something. They all wore similar attire; purple, rope-like belts, a conical straw hat with a tag hanging off of it, a black bodysuit, and some sort of robe over top of that.
Sakura had decided that they would be the team she would attack. She grimaced, already missing her shinobi tools. A flash tag would have been very useful. But she did have one technique in her arsenal that would be very useful right now.
Sakura sped up so that she was a reasonable distance ahead of the Kusa team. Then she began to flip through hand seals and muttered, "Katon: Kaen Bakahatsu no Jutsu."
The Haruno channeled a small amount of chakra into her hand before placing it on the branch she was standing on. She then began to systematically do the same to the surrounding trees, insuring that the Kusa team would be in for a nasty surprise when they reached her position. Even thought the technique had taken a lot of chakra for somebody with her reserves, it would assure that she wouldn't have to do much else to get the scroll. Sakura jumped to a safe position and leaned against the tree. She didn't have to wait long.
"What the hell?" somebody shouted. A moment later, a brilliant flash of orange light and the satisfying sound of an explosion reached Sakura's senses. 'Looks like the party's started,'she thought.
Katon: Kaen Bakahatsu no Jutsu created landmines in whatever the user touched. Sakura had quite literally turned the whole area into a deathtrap. Sakura leaped through the trees towards the location of the explosion, careful not to step on trees that she had rigged.
"Han!" somebody cried out just as the Kusa team came into Sakura's line of vision. One of them was dead, one was badly burnt, and the last had a broken leg. The team's Heaven Scroll was flying through the air, about to land on a branch that was burning viciously. Sakura decided not to let a good scroll go to waste. If Naruto somehow lost theirs, it would be good to have a spare. Sakura jumped just over the branch and snatched the scroll out of the air, just barely dodging the tongues of flame that reached for the skirt of her dress.
She took one last glance of the Kusa team and regretted it. They were surrounded almost completely by flames. They wouldn't be able to escape in their current state. They would die by Sakura's landmines. She gulped nervously and forced the image out of her mind. Death was an inevitable part of shinobi life, she reminded herself. However, the thought of those three shinobi dying over a scroll her team might not need made her feel nauseous.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Naruto dismissed her falcon summon when she heard the near-silent conversation of three shinobi.
"But Gaara-!" a female pleaded.
"No!" a male snarled back. "I have not yet been sated!"
Naruto's eyebrows rose at the odd response. 'What the hell is going on here?'she wondered as she soundlessly slunk through the shadows towards the voices.
Three Suna genin crouched on the ground. One was the red-haired male Naruto had sat next to during the first exams. Now that he was with his teammates, she recognized him as Gaara, one of the people she had picked out as a threat simply from the fact that he had, apparently, never been injured on a mission.
Across from him was Temari, his older sister and teammate. She had sandy blonde hair pulled back into four short ponytails. The blonde Suna kunoichi was wearing a short, shoulder less light purple dress over a steel net bodysuit while her hitai-ate was tied around her neck. Her dark green eyes were wide with what was probably a mixture of fear and worry.
A little ways away from them stood Kankurou, Gaara's older brother. Dark purple makeup was painted across his face for some reason or another. He wore a hooded black jumpsuit that had what looked suspiciously like cat ears built into the design. His hitai-ate was attached to the hood as well. He was shifting nervously from foot to foot and his eyes were moving around frantically. It was obvious that he'd much rather be somewhere else.
Suddenly, a violent, vicious chakra flared sharply from within Gaara. An image of a monstrous golden tanuki rose unbidden in Naruto's mind.
Almost simultaneously, Kyuubi broke through Naruto's mental block and roared, 'Jump, you stupid piece of shit!'
Naruto did exactly as commanded when she felt the strange chakra coming from Gaara lash out at her. She just barely managed to avoid the massive wave of sand that could have easily crushed her. As it was, it smashed through the tree Naruto had been standing on, forcing her to jump into the safety of another tree.'What the fuck?'she thought as she dodged another wave of sand and landed in yet another tree.
Naruto looked down at the trio of Suna-nin and was met by pale, sea foam-green eyes. They were cold, angry, bitter…and lonely. They were the eyes that had experienced the true pain of loneliness, eyes that recognized that pain as the greatest in the world, eyes that wished to destroy that which had sent them into that hell.
Naruto jerked backward, away from the familiar gaze that she had seen so many times in the mirror.
Fuck.
This was bad.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Jutsu List
Doton: Ishikawa no Jutsu
English: Earth Release: Stone River Technique
Rank: C
Description: After the hand seals are completed or the user's chakra is molded properly, the user sends their chakra to a specific area of ground and turns the area into a mud pit. The size of the affected area determines the chakra necessary.
Katon: Kaen Bakahatsu no Jutsu
Fire Release: Flame Explosion Technique
Rank: C
Description: After the hand seals are finished, when the user channels their chakra into their hands, anything they touch will have a chakra mine embedded in it. It lasts for three minutes before the hand seals have to be preformed again.
Doton: Dochuu Eigyo no Jutsu
Earth Release: Underground Projection Fish Technique
Rank: C
Description: Once the hand seals are completed, the user can travel through ground or stone as if it was water.
Doton: Tatakikowasu no Jutsu
Earth Release: Shatter Technique
Rank: C
Description: The user places their hands on the ground after completing the proper hand seals. The earth will split apart into separate sections. The sections may become unstable or otherwise change depending on the terrain of the area.
The title of this chapter is Stand My Ground by Within Temptation.