A/N: I'd like to apologize for confusion in the previous chapter regarding Hinata's affinity. I was editing and adjusting and deciding and it was late and I have AP Exams to worry about…excuses (heh). Just to clarify, Hinata has an affinity for doton, not suiton. Thank you to LilyVampire for pointing this mistake out, of which I've fixed.
Read on!
A fluke, Sakura reminds herself. She glares up at the ceiling and quickly slips into her clothes and swings down the polished oak railing with one goal in mind: get as far away from her father's abode as quickly as possible. He is a despicable man, she reminds herself. A drunken and cheating idiot, the reason she drowned herself in books, but also the reason she was able to afford private tutors. He was Konoha's most important civilian, after all.
She would've glared at him as she left or simply paid him no mind, but instead she frowns when she sees the man sitting at his desk, poured over some papers. "Tou-san, what is that?"
She never saw him focused on anything but the hookers that ran their hands over his unshaven face or his half-full sake bottles. Did he actually care about something now?
"Kiri isn't safe to trade with anymore," he sighs, "You're a shinobi…maybe you should know about this. They don't teach economics anymore, so you should try to soak up information on other countries' economies and culture so if you travel abroad you don't die."
"Kirigakure?" Sakura looks over his shoulder at his paperwork.
"Yeah," he rubs his eyes tiredly, "Kiri used to have Genin tests, for Academy students, with just one order: the last one standing will graduate. They'd fazed it out after the war ended, but someone just as terrifying has resurfaced. A child, much younger than you, has surfaced in Kiri that annihilated several port towns, supposedly under the guise that they held illegal opium traders and human trafficking and the sort of crimes."
"Seriously?" Sakura says incredulously.
"Yeah. She's only six right now. She's a Genin and will be taking the Chuunin Exams soon, for sure. I can't risk my merchants to be attacked and the cargo lost, much less the merchants to die. Dangerous business," he stretches, "I've been up all night trying to figure out something to do about this. Trade with Kiri brings in quite a bit of money, after all. Their seafood is the best."
"Is there a picture of this…girl?" Sakura can't seem to say the last word with confidence. Just what six-year-old murdered whole towns? Thirteen-year-old was one she'd almost not believed if such a fellow hadn't annihilated Sasuke's clan, and thirteen is—was—her limit. The notion that a person less than half her age had killed at all was dizzying and nauseating. And, the more horrifying thing: she'd be taking the Chuunin Exams with such a person. No, monster. No one that young could be a killer and still be considered human, much less a person or child or even a girl. There's just no way.
"Yeah," he shuffles through the papers and produces it. He stands, "I'm going to take a nap now. Put that back when you're done with it, okay?" he yawns and collapses on a nearby couch, snoring almost immediately.
Sakura scrutinizes the photo of the young girl, with unruly dark grey locks and black eyes. She expects to see a ruthless killer with cold eyes, but the girl looks like any innocent and naïve six-year old. Looks can be very, very deceiving, Sakura thinks glumly. It was scary how innocent the girl looked. Her hair was even in little pigtails.
"Enter," he organizes a few papers on his desk and straightens out a few more. He looks up as a thin-framed Jounin steps in and looks at him with no emotion.
"I have one question. It is a yes or no question," Hound states calmly.
"Yes?" Hiruzen doesn't look up at her, feigning annoyance.
"Have you truly called back my brother? I don't give damn about Jiraiya," Kosari spits. "Please tell me, Hokage-sama."
"I don't have to tell you anything. Shikaku said it himself: you're to have no part in any of this spy business. You're just bait. It's better if you don't know the strategy; if you get captured and put under a genjutsu that makes you spit out the truth, isn't it better if you just don't say anything, truly not knowing a thing? Information is important and while I do trust you, you need to have more faith in your fellow shinobi. Kakashi will take as long as he needs to gather as much information as he can. You are to remain the bait for the spies. That is the most useful role you can play in. You aren't a Nara who can catch people with shadows and your aren't a Yamanaka who can extract memories."
"And," Hiruzen continues, "You already have his memento. Shouldn't you trust him, the last—"
"I understand," Kosari cuts in sharply and storms out.
She arrives on the training grounds, seething, and blows off most of her steam training with her students and the jutsu they'd mastered. Hinata was quick to try to ambush her and once Kosari dodged, Naruto was prepared to electrocute her. She produces her own lighting of the same voltage and the jutsu cancel one another out. Sasuke's flames blind her for a moment, not seeing the wire he set, and Naruto sends electricity running down the metal. Kosari unleashes a torrent of water and a clone seamlessly takes her place as she launches herself from elsewhere, casting a genjutsu net.
Six months left.
As her body twists and turns to evade punches and deliver kicks towards the children whose ears do not ring with the drums of war booming as flames replace the sky, her mind wanders off.
Kakashi was on her mind, running over to her as a three-year-old with a stuffed bear under his arm and cute bunny outfit enveloping him. It was a fuzzy, light blue outfit with a white stomach and light pink ears. Kakashi was eagerly telling her that he'd heard about something called 'dango' and wanted to try it. Even back then, Kakashi had had a large vocabulary and error-free grammar. She stole some pocket money from Sakumo and slipped out of the house with Kakashi. Upon tasting the treat, Kakashi at first seemed to like it. But disgust quickly surged through him quicker than lightning and he spat it out, the white mush landing on Kosari's face. She wiped it off of her face and hurled it at the toddler with a face burning with anger. Kakashi's eyes widened—back when he had both of them, Kosari thinks sadly—but a man, around Sakumo's age, caught it with hand lined with a gum wrapper he must've in his pocket. He tossed it in a trashcan a hundred feet away with startling accuracy. Kosari had stared at the man in wonder and admiration before bursting into a carefree smile threw her dango stick into a trashcan about fifty feet away. It, too, landed into the bin with uncanny accuracy. The man simply frowned at her, as if deep in thought, or just uncaringness.
This was the first time she'd met Uchiha Kagami.
But Kakashi was entertained. Very much so. He giggled and threw his bear up in the air, as if mimicking the two, and overflowed with joy. He threw his arms around the bear, tight enough to choke it, and cackled as if throwing objects, of which one was sharp and dangerous, was the funniest thing. His enthusiasm and aura of childish innocence was so heartwarming that it made even the bunny around him dull in comparison.
Flames in front of her and wire glinting in the sun with lightning crackling and Hinata's hands nearly dragging her down under made her focus a little more on team training and less on memory lane. Time skips by and the setting sun illuminates a sea of clones, in which she's sure Sasuke and Hinata are mixed in. The clones hurl kunai at her while flames come from elsewhere. The Jounin jumps into the air and releases a gust of wind that fans Sasuke's flames and extinguishes Naruto's jutsu. Sasuke stands, looking pissed, and nods at Naruto. The two charge and the Jounin engages them, taking on both boys on in a taijutsu bout where punches and kicks fly and whirl in clean arcs, only for Kosari to sink her own attacks into their soft flesh and avoid having her hair pulled out. She sidesteps to get momentum to hurl them away into the trees, but her feet don't want to seem to cooperate. She looks down when the boys snicker in victory and her body is pulled into the ground. A cloud of dirt, a byproduct in novice attempts at the doton jutsu, rises and Naruto laughs, "We totally got you…"
Then horror rises to his face, and embarrassment colors his face red.
"Hey!" he begins to panic as he looks around for anyone to help dig him out. Sasuke sniggers, "Idiot. Substitution jutsu."
"Sorry," Hinata says as she resurfaces, "I didn't mean to…" but she can't help but smile.
Sasuke pulls him out before he is tackled by a blur. The boy is wrung out before being thrown into a tree. He barely catches it and splinters embed his hands. The implications of it are obvious: he can't form seals or use his hands. Sasuke turns on a heel and sprints into a deeper and denser part of the forest. Kosari deftly snakes her way past trunks, roots, and branches covered in moss and thick foliage that only grow wider and bigger and more monstrous. In a split second, Sasuke is gone. Kosari stops for a moment before gathering her chakra to sense out the boy. Sure, he had good chakra control, but he wasn't as good as the A-Rank and S-Rank criminals and thieves and rogue shinobi she'd tracked down in the past.
A few moments pass before she hurls a kunai with fūton chakra coating and coaxing it to hit her target. She hears a hiss of pain before the area around her grows to be a bright orange color with a wave of tangible heat. The smell of smoke and burning and the sound of maybe fifty exploding tags go off all at once. She'd been late in noticing, but it was too late. She turns to see a blur quickly hightail it out right before the flames surround her.
Sasuke rolls on the ground, trying to stop his clothes from smoking and burning. Naruto peers down at the black-haired boy, "Did it work?"
Sasuke glances back at the forest, "I think so."
Naruto hauls him up and looks at Hinata, "Do you see her?"
Hinata's eyes peer into the forest where the explosion had happened. Then she gasps, "No."
Their chakra flow…She smiles at the two boys before sighing, "Damn it."
"What?" Naruto asks, "I can send out clones and…"
"It's not that," Hinata forms a simple seal with a single hand, "Genjutsu."
"Kai!" the three say and the smell of smoke overpower them and they look up to see Kosari sitting on the grass with a pool of water surrounding her. Her clothes and hair were soaked, but looks as if she hadn't even seen an explosion, much less been in the epicenter of one. The Genin glance over at the blackened trees, where no billowing smoke rises. Confusion is written on their faces until she clears her throat, "I'd recommend not to use explosion tags around a suiton user."
"Ohh," Naruto says as the realization dawns on him. Kosari can practically see the wheels and gears churning in his head as he realizes this. "You used some sort of barrier, then? With water?"
"Right," Kosari says, "Similar to katon techniques, I bring up chakra to my chest, but instead of converting it to fire, I convert it to water and force it out of my mouth in the same manner as with katon techniques. In my case, I created a ball of water around myself. It serves quite well for both defense from fire and offense for my lightning."
Then she looks at them with a quizzical look, "You three took too long in realizing the genjutsu. Hyuuga-san alone is valuable as the Hyuuga heiress and is a target, especially during the Exams. You don't know if you're going to be ambushed or not and if Hyuuga-san is taken, what will you two do?" it's a rhetorical question, but Naruto opens his mouth to answer, only to be cut off, "You'd die. Or be hypnotized into spilling out some information. Wars have been fought over information, even something as petty as eye color of a particular shinobi. But do be careful; misinformation is more dangerous than no information."
"Tomorrow we'll be taking up a mission," Kosari says, "Dismissed."
"What?!" Ino exclaims, her eyes going wide. "Sakura-chan, you're kidding, right?"
"Unfortunately," Asuma says with her two male teammates in tow, "She isn't. That girl is causing problems with Konoha's tie to Kiri in terms of economics, like trading. We like Kiri's ocean products, like the mother of pearl inside of an abalone shell, which Kiri has in abundance. Our merchants are uneasy to travel there after hearing about this."
"This's that troublesome Satsuko girl Tou-san was talking about," Shikamaru mutters, "I don't want to take the damn Exams if we're going to be up against a seasoned killer. It'll just be a bother and a waste of time, especially if I fight and end up dying. The worst part is that we only have just a name and a photo and age. No known abilities or skillset or anything. We're," Shikamaru says, exasperated, "Screwed."
"Stop whining," Asuma chides, "You'll get killed for sure with that attitude."
"Tch," Shikamaru remarks, "My team, as capable as we may seem, aren't equipped to be an opponent for this girl."
"Then why not team up?" Sakura's eyes glint in a startling way. Asuma taps off the end of his cigarette, letting the ashes fall to the ground. She looks like a businesswoman, ready to pounce on any business and financial opportunity. Like a shark sniffing out one drop of blood within an ocean, knowing that one drop means a million drops—sustenance. It's an opportunity and Asuma glances over at Shikamaru. Will he take it? He'd be a fool not to.
Or would be very, very wise. He barely knew Sakura after all. But, she was a Konoha shinobi, more of a trustable ally than the Kiri girl.
"What's in it for me?" Shikamaru says simply. Asuma pushes down a smile as he watches the event unfold.
"For my team and your team. Teaming up would increase our chances of surviving in the Exams. We're going to be fighting against not just this Kiri girl, but also others from all different nations. We have different skillsets and forming one group, as one 'shinobi', we would be stronger and better off than others who have a limited skillset, since they only have three people. My teammates are both trackers and I'm the one who sets up traps for ambushing enemies. Your team, so I hear, is a team of stunning teamwork that can attack and defend. While your team is busy preparing an ambush, for example, my team can be your eyes and ears. We'd be able to cover our backs and nearly invulnerable," Sakura says. Her green eyes gleam like the ryo in her pocket. Asuma knew that her father wasn't necessarily a good role model, especially after Sakura's mother passed, but they possessed not only the same hair color and green eyes, but also the same greed for greater opportunities and progress. Sakura wouldn't screw this up; she truly had her heart and mind in this. She wanted this.
Shikamaru looked skeptical. Ino can just take over the mind of a bird and fly around to look for enemies. I don't see why we'd need Sakura's team. Sakura's team would only attract more attention and my team, despite our ninjutsu, doesn't really do offense. Laying low is what's best, since Chouji wouldn't want to hurt even a blade of grass and Ino is too hesitant. Even I don't want to have to hurl my kunai at someone. Not only that, but we're not all that strong or fast. We have low stamina and low chakra reserves. Effective, yes, but not for very long. We're nothing but ants in a bloody tournament filled with bloodthirsty hawks.
Shikamaru sighs, puts his hands in his pockets, and walks away before calling over his shoulder, "We'd need more."
Sakura's mind whirrs at that before turning on a heel and running in the opposite direction towards a familiar compound.
An old, wizened man led her to a room where Sasuke sat on a dark wood floor with white tape around his ankles, white shorts, and a blue shirt with the Uchiha symbol on the back. He sat with a dark grey stone between his outstretched and far-apart legs and a pile of kunai next to him. The grey stone sat in water that he periodically used a hand to cup and pour over the stone and kunai before him.
The boy's head whips up and his nose wrinkles, "What're you doing here?"
"Information," Sakura says, "About a rather worrying competitor in the Exams."
"Oh?" Sasuke intones, going back to his work of sharpening the kunai. He exudes pure uncaring. The girl was simply annoying to him in the Academy because of her skills. She'd stood in his way of being the Rookie of the Year and the best, the strongest—the strongest shinobi. By extension, she'd stood in his way to kill the demons that still walk the earth with bloody hands. Shirusu…
Behind her, Kagami looks at him sharply. Sasuke sighs and puts down his work to look up at her, "What?" he gives her an annoyed look. Satisfied, Kagami walks away.
Sakura walks over before plopping down with her legs folded underneath her and her hands clasped in her lap. Sasuke goes back to his work, "Spit it out."
Sakura quickly explains what she'd heard and shows him the photo before telling him of Shikamaru's not-quite refusal. Sasuke snorts and looks up at her with amusement and mockery in his eyes, "And you expect my team to join you six? Ridiculous. And, you're a fool to have come and told me all this, about your team and Shikamaru's team's abilities. My team specializes in traps, tracking, taijutsu, and ninjutsu. We don't need you."
Sakura smiles, "Yes, you do."
"Hn," Sasuke grunts, completely unconvinced.
"Because," Sakura pushes, "Strength in numbers. Two heads are better than one, and nine are certainly much more so."
Sasuke slowly looks up at her, with pure seriousness. He carefully enunciates, "No," Sasuke's eyes narrow dangerously, "Leave."
"You'll regret this," Sakura warns coldly, "But, I will not retract my offer. You'll still have this opportunity," and walks out, slamming his front door behind her. Sasuke goes back to his work until dusk, sharpening all of the kunai he could find to a deadly sharp point.
"Like I'll need your damn offer," Sasuke mutters.
A parcel.
Her fingers trace over the small, narrow, skinny scroll with intricate gold edges and a deep green outside, thickly dyed. The paper opens, seemingly without the need of blood or even chakra. It's curious—she's curious—if she'd been an ignorant Genin whose eyes lit up at nearly everything, so excited by everything, until someone far away lit a fuse that would wrap around the hearts of everyone in the entire world and set off bombs filled with every emotion to explode. It was a brighter and darker explosion than most of the descendants of the First War thought—children from the Second War hadn't expected it, and Genin, like herself, of the Third War, found that field promotions were nothing but licenses to paint the entire sky and reflective ocean red with agony.
If it were a wedding gift, she would've been surprised. She isn't married, after all. It isn't, and wasn't, and will never be. She applies a smear of bubbling chakra, bubbling with hidden fear with outward fangs of anger, and the matrix agrees like a bowing ANBU and carries out its duty faster than Shisui could teleport.
You were right. I should've had my guard up.
"I should've…" Kosari's hands shake, "Had my guard up."
The matrix settles down, kneeling as it awaits another order, and is indifferent to the screech, a scream, a yelp, a cry, a shout, that escapes from the depths of her nightmares. Not only for that, should she had have a sentry awaiting enemies to skewer with a lance dipped in poisonous war paint that glows with the strength and cowardice of a lion, but for this as well. In hindsight, it was all too obvious. Wasn't it?
It's a long, flat, product of a lot of work, sweat, and heat. And time. Lots of time. Someone had carefully created this masterpiece, only for one crazed, now dead, man to run it through a supposed pockmark on a family's reputation. Smelting, forming, hammering, heating, waiting, watching, hammering, thrusting into water, polishing, sharpening, and fashioning a hilt. Later on, someone who'd put on a façade of caring—nothing less than another bullet point in a shinobi's job description: acting—had put a silver band around the top of the hilt and a gold one on the bottom and two small little diamonds on the end of the hilt. Kosari thrusts it away from her and scuttles away, feeling her stomach rip open and as her heart echoes like a gong as it jumps as quickly as a rabbit does when a hungry fox is around, she sees someone clamber out, grab her neck, and laugh and laugh as blood pours from his mouth like a waterfall.
"Nee-chan!"
She turns and sees little Kakashi hugging his bear tightly with a childish smile. A few moments later, she sees Sakumo put down his bottle, grab the bear, and Fugaku lights the stuffed animal on fire. Kakashi stared in shock, not knowing what to think or do, and flinches hard enough to fall to the ground when Kosari screams in anger, defying her father, and grabs the blackened bear, burning her hands in the process, and tamps out the hungry flames. Her hands blister and burn and throb more painfully than anything she'd felt, but she felt even more pain when Kakashi just walked away to his room and buried himself in his pile of stuffed animals.
24 hours later, the house was warm with a hearth glowing without embers or coal. It was a very nice fireplace.
"Kakashi…" Kosari clutches a hand to her chest as poisonous flowers of a rotten tree spread their pollen into the air. The rain threaten to pour down but Kosari is too tired of feeling like letting those saline drips roll down her cheeks.
Kakashi's late, so what?
"Shisui…" Kosari's voice darkens, "Why did you give me this? Why did you give me the sword that witnessed my shame and left a forever scar? Why does it have the two apples of your eyes and the wedding bands of you and your wife? Your wife is dead, Shisui. She's long gone, but you kept her ring until you jammed it on this sword along with yours, as if shedding your eternal vows. Is that it? You are retracting your vows?"
She looks at the gleaming sword with contempt, "Right? Be sure to tell your wife in the afterlife. I'll avenge her and her broken heart, for she was my friend, and you will repent. How dare you use this sword, a symbol of an Uchiha's anger and prejudice, and give it to me, studded with your unfaithfulness. Disgusting."
She wraps black tape, dyed in ink and mixed with her own blood, as a promise to the dead wife of Shisui, around the hilt.
There's also a family photo in the scroll, and nothing more. Kosari studies it with a detached heart, having set it to rest when she sheathed the sword in a scabbard. It's Shisui holding a toddler with one arm and his other arm slung around his wife's waist. Kosari quickly rips out the wife, a dear friend from long ago, and tacks it to the wall with a senbon. Shisui and his son are electrocuted in the sink, before the lightning turns to fire and the paper quickly burns to ash.
A hypocrite, she resigns herself as. She wants Sasuke and Hinata to just let go…but seeing the photo of the woman she'd been unable to save—perhaps burned alive or something torturous—set her heart ablaze. Emotions that she'd managed to more or less rid herself of, like hate and anger and rage, flooded back.
Under the moonlight, Kosari scrubs the tombstones free of encroaching moss and ever-present dirt. She slips into the Yamanaka compound and steals all of their flowers and sets them beside the names.
Shirusu's mother's name isn't present on any of the tombstones. Kosari hadn't really noticed until now. In a haze, Kosari stumbles around the cemetery for a stone and uses a kunai to engrave the woman's name, using her maiden name. Shisui had done enough damage, from breathing two new lives that became the two beings that his wife dearly loved, into his clan before killing them, and breaking his vows. The former was more than enough to have her roll in her grave. She didn't need to be dyed in her husband's color, his name, any longer. Kosari sets it beside Shirusu's stone and cuts her hand, allowing blood to fall.
It is a vow, the highest that can never be broken. It requires nothing, not seals or ink or chakra. Those three aren't permanent.
The blood fills out the engraving and Kosari wraps her hand tightly in bandages and stares at the—
A wisp, to the north. Male, katon user... Kosari whirls around, "Who's there?"
Her grief-stricken eyes search the area and see nothing. She sends out a wave of chakra, but there is truly no one. Kosari walks away with her hands in her pockets and takes a few steps on the alley before waiting out the rest of the night by the Hokage tower, knowing that sleep was far away from her.
"…C-Rank…bring materials…"
Kosari can't seem to apply herself. Her eyes waver from Hiruzen's warbling voice to the nervous looking Chuunin, flinching at something in her general vicinity. She glances at her Genin out of the corner of her eyes and sees that they are doing nothing but listening to the fire shadow quietly, silently, and motionlessly. What was his name? Umaro? Uhano?
"Is something the matter?" Kosari queries the Chuunin. The man flinches hard and wrings his hand as he haltingly explains, "I-it's just…you look so…"
"Yes?" Kosari asks genuinely, furrowing her brows in surprise, "Do I look angry?"
"Yes!" the man exclaims, growing paler and paler, "You're saturating this room in killer intent. S-stop…please."
"Pardon," Kosari bows slightly before discreetly slipping a 'cough drop' in her mouth. I had no idea…no wonder other ANBU say it's better to just die than quit…it's only been six months. She looks at the three worriedly. Am I going to snap and kill them? It's possible…
But, she had her 'cough drops'. There was a reason she took painkillers. They numbed her. To avoid being so numb as to not sense an enemy on a mission, though, she only took half the pill or a quarter if she really needed it during a high-stakes mission.
Drugs were quite prevalent in ANBU, especially Black Ops where the expectations were higher, and ROOT even more so. Humans naturally had emotions and killing someone wouldn't erase them completely, of which Danzo was well aware. There was a reason that the ROOT members looked so pale and malnourished aside from being shut in all the time. Danzo drugged all of his operatives to a degree to make sure emotions didn't sabotage a mission. Drugs worked very, very well in ROOT because not only did the children get addicted from a young age and would be for a long, long time, but also because the children would adjust quicker and be more dependent upon it than adults or teens from regular ANBU and Black Ops and would have higher rates of the desired effects.
"-sensei?"
A hand tugs her sleeve, bringing her out of her musings and into the real world once more. She sees Hinata looking at her strangely, "Kosari-sensei, come on; we've got to go."
"Y-yeah," Kosari says reflexively, not having listened to a word of Hiruzen's explanation. Once the three walk towards the gates, Kosari crosses her arms, "Shinobi must have excellent memory and recall of vital information, even if the information was shown to them for just an instant. They must remember every detail they can. Now, just what exactly can you recall from Hokage-sama's briefing on our mission?"
"It's a C-Rank mission, carrying materials to an ANBU checkpoint, where the ANBU will then carry to merchant centers," Hinata says, grinning at Naruto as he'd opened his mouth to respond.
"To the south or north?" Kosari asks.
"Southeast," Sasuke cuts off Naruto as well with a smirk.
At the gates, a simple merchant hands Kosari a box four times long as it is wide and twice as tall as it is wide. It's heavy. Kosari seals it in a scroll neatly and turns to go to the southeastern checkpoint on the border of the Land of Fire, but is stopped when the rather skinny merchant places a hand on her shoulder, "P-please deliver this, no matter what. My family is just scraping by and I was just getting enough money to send my daughter here to learn to read, but after the rumors in Kiri…I fear not only I will perish from starvation or the merciless hands of the Kiri shinobi, but my daughter and wife will as well. They live near the checkpoint, less than a mile away, so please…make sure you deliver this to the checkpoint," the man drops to his knees and bows deeply.
Kosari can't relate to the man and his struggles economically, but replies coolly, "Our mission is to deliver this to the ANBU checkpoint. So, we will carry out this order and deliver it."
"Thank you so much," the man says as tears run down his face. "Thank you…thank you…"
As the three Genin sail through the trees and over branches, Hinata realizes something, "Isn't the checkpoint on the seaside? It might border the same sea as Kiri, but it certainly isn't close. What's to fear about Kiri in this time of peace?"
"Nothing," Kosari says, "Well, Kiri has always been good at keeping information hidden from the rest of the world. It's unlikely we'll run into someone particularly strong in the Land of Fire, for the reason you stated. Kiri is far. However, I won't rule out anything. This is a C-Rank, after all, and with the Exams coming around, I wouldn't be surprised to find a few Kiri shinobi training on the Land of Fire's soil to get used to fighting on different terrain. If we do run into any of them, fighting will be out of the question. Killing a Konoha shinobi, with the Exams so close, could potentially disqualify Kiri from being able to participate."
"So what's in the scroll?" Naruto asks eagerly, "Gold?"
"No," Kosari says bluntly, "Konoha has mere slivers of gold deposits. It's probably silk or jade."
The sky wanes and its blue color, one that rivaled that of a pair of startlingly blue eyes, loses its battle with the flames of the chariot fleeing the silver crab. The trees seem to loom and grow more gigantic and ominous, as if it were some kind of setting for a horror film. Smooth roots turn into gnarled fingers bent at odd angles, ready to fly up and drag any unsuspecting being down into the depths of the earth. Darkness quickly follows the flames, once a brilliant orange, and an imitation of such magnificent but fleeting flames is all he can see. The silver crab glows high in the sky and the Jounin leans back on a tree and stares up at the foliage, a black mold rustling above her. Quietly, the Genin converse, sometimes interjecting and interrupting a sentence or two. A fight doesn't quite break out, but she knows that the girl's hands were close enough to form seals and then drag both of her teammates under. Hinata had grown from being able to just pull kunai under the soil to pulling entire people, two if she tried and had full chakra reserves, under the earth. She figures there's some kind of tension slowly growing within the Hyuuga clan—Hiashi didn't glare at her even when the two crossed paths in the streets—and Hinata seems more at ease to be away from it. In Konoha, the girl's shoulders had been unusually tense and straight, but now they relaxed as she converses with her two male teammates.
Conversed.
"Sensei."
"Hm?" Kosari looks down from studying the stars in the sky.
"Just what kind of people will be in the Exams?"
Abysmal obsidian eyes flicker up and catch the firelight and a scary glint sends chills down Hinata's back, even though she wasn't the one who'd asked. It was Sasuke. She looks at his face, focused and poised like a young lion in the grasses, ready to sink his claws and drain the life from anyone who got in his way.
"With the Second and Third Wars seemingly right on each other's heels, people were quick to repopulate after the horror, destruction, and frequent massacres. I can say this: there will be a lot of Genin, and a good chunk of them will have kekkei genkai, or some kind of specialty if they don't come from a clan. By kekkei genkai, I mean a special ability only passed down within a clan. When I took the Exams, only about a fourth possessed special abilities. If I were to put a number on it, I'd say perhaps half of the examinees would have some sort of kekkei genkai in the upcoming Exams," Kosari stares into the orange flames, "But, this is just a guess."
"Massacres?" Naruto asks, "I know war is brutal and all, but massacres?"
"There was a shinobi who went up a thousand man army on the northwestern front, during the Third War. There was also another shinobi in the southeastern front who slaughtered around 1,500 people. A massacre, Uzumaki-san, is defined by mass killings in a short period of time; very useful for taking down a large amount of enemies when you have little time but the element of surprise," then Kosari tilts her head and her eyes glint like a tiger assured of its prey, "What makes you so interested in such a bloody affair?" Shall I show you?
Well…
Kosari bites her tongue until it bleeds, "Don't answer that," she says curtly, looking away before standing and briskly walking away, "I'm going to take a walk."
Damn it damn it damn it! Her hands shake at her sides as a maniacal smile threatens to split her face in two. I need to get this under control.
The Genin are left alone with traps carefully set—basic ones were scattered around as larger ones were set and camouflaged. The basic ones were ones that Kosari had taught them how to set. The larger ones, much more intricate, required a skilled hand, and were ones that Kosari simply allowed them to watch how to make, but not to set up. I'll teach you later, was all she'd said.
As Hinata chewed a strip of gum in her mouth, Naruto reaches over to where Kosari had been seated and picks up a kunai, blacker than the night above them. He examines it with a close eye. It feels…different than the Konoha ones I have. Curiously, he sends a wave of chakra through it and gasps when it reacts with his lightning evenly. He hastily brings out his own kunai and frowns at the result. The lightning is able to go through it, but not nearly as well as the black kunai he had. He chucks the black one, coated with his lightning chakra, at a tree and it wedges itself deeply into the wide tree.
"Wow…" Naruto mutters before standing up, in a trance with tunnel vision squarely only at the kunai, and pulls it out with a sharp tug.
"What're you doing?" Hinata asks, "Isn't that Kosari-sensei's? I don't think you should be messing around with that…the look in her eyes wasn't a good one."
"She's harmless," Naruto rolls his eyes, "She wouldn't hurt me, or any of us without a reason.
A few moments pass before the bushes rustle loudly. After hearing none of the traps go off, not even the large and intricate ones that Kosari had sent, the Genin swallow hard before standing back to back with kunai in their hands. Something blurs and Sasuke is quick to engulf the entire surrounding forest in flames. The wire that Kosari had strung is closest to Naruto and he sends a flicker of electricity into it—yet another little trick that Kosari had mentioned offhandedly after a long day of training. For two weeks after that, he'd practiced with the wire until he not only could discharge lightning from just three fingers buzzing with condensed chakra, but also could raise the voltage to be quite painful on a wire. A good trapper. As the flames sputter out from Sasuke's mouth, he slams his hands together with more chakra than necessary and a burning inferno surrounds the three. In the searing heat, Hinata squints with one eye and sees several chakra signatures around them.
"Come on," Hinata hisses as she grabs their arms and plunges under the ground. With the last of her breath, having had to hold her breath under the ground so that the two of them could breathe without being hindered by another pair of lungs, she shoves them out of the ground far from the forest. Black spots dance in her vision as her lungs burn. Her sense of time warps. It feels as if it were only a blink of an eye as she used her chakra to carve a way through the soil, but judging from the distance between the Genin and the flames, it must've been a few minutes.
Even though her vision fades and ears rung and her lungs burn, she can barely even see the smoke rising up.
The girl passes out as Sasuke tries to sense Kosari's signature, but to no avail.
Naruto hauls Hinata on his back and looks at Sasuke as wind suddenly picks up. It isn't long until leaves and wind and debris whip across their faces and sting their eyes.
"There's a building over there!" Sasuke yells over the wind. The two sprint through the windy storm and burst into a small house. A warm and bright hearth is quickly extinguished by the gust of wind brought in by the three Genin bursting in. The light that had illuminated the interior is gone and the three are plunged into darkness. Naruto opens his mouth to say something to Sasuke, but something reminiscent of a glass window and an explosion tag going off right next to his ears no less than one thousand times reverberates in his eardrums and time simply stops.