47. Rin's Story: Traps and Pranks

"I'm serious," Obito said hours later. "I'm pretty sure we're stuck in a genjutsu."

"I don't think so, Obito," Rin repeated.

"It's possible, though! Remember when sensei was ambushed by the Rain and that guy trapped him inside that genjutsu to get to him?"

"But that's a very big and complicated technique, and the one who cast it had trained for years! I don't think a genin could do something like that, and especially not in an environment he isn't familiar with."

Obito looked very thoughtful at this, but said no more.

"We should think about getting some food," Rin said as her stomach grumbled again. They had spent a few hours underneath a large, hollow tree and woken up to something close to morning; the trees became thicker and thicker the further they walked, and sunlight had a hard time, if not a completely impossible time, getting through the thickness of leaves and heavy branches. It was fortunate they had found the hollow tree; despite the density of the forest, none of the leaves gave shelter close to the ground. The trees were tall and naked for several meters.

Neither Obito nor Rin had any special tracking skills, but knew the basics. And they figured the best way to find a team – seeing as the older genin were especially good at hiding – was to put themselves out as bait. They had stopped destruction of their trails, and as Obito led the way, Rin kept an extra careful eye up for ambushes or attacks from behind.

"I think I see someone," Obito said after a while. "But they're three."

"We'll have to give it a go," Rin commented with a sigh. "We're stuck here for another twenty-four hours, we need food if we want to get through this task …"

They closed in carefully, hiding behind dark-purple bushes.

"They have three scrolls," Obito whispered and pointed. "That guy carries them in his pocket."

"But that means they're good at fighting," Rin whispered back.

They were three boys at the age of fourteen or fifteen, all with dark brown hair. They wore similar outfits with a few variations in colours; their pants and shirts were black, but any details were coloured either purple, orange or green. They were seemingly calm, two of them leaning against a tree and the other sitting on a bench-like root. Conveniently, the one on the root had their back to them, and the scrolls were poking out of the weapon pouch tied to his belt. And it was clear that they had let their guards down.

It was a difficult dilemma. They had little to lose seeing as their scroll contained ink, paper, blankets and compass, and their lunch boxes were empty. The only thing they were afraid of losing were the bottles of water; filling water was a risky task as many camped around the river or waited for other genin to show up. And even though all this might be worth the food that would probably last the rest of the day, there was no saying if the scrolls actually had any value after all – for all they knew they could have eaten everything – and they were three older genin compared to the two of them, who were both eleven.

"Almost twelve," Obito whispered back as Rin let out her thoughts.

"Doesn't matter," Rin hissed. "What do we do?"

"We go for it."

"Do we go left?" the black-haired boy asked.

"If we go left, they'll ambush us," the brown-haired boy said in a low voice, trying to make themselves unheard. "We should go right and find a way to them so we can attack them first."

"But what if they're really hiding over there?" the black-haired boy said, pointing to the right. "What if they're just making us think they're to the left?"

"Of course, but they could make us think they're to the right and they're actually hiding where the arrow is pointing and we think we're going the right way, so –"

"Wait," Black interrupted and looked down at Minato, who already knew the question and sighed a few bright curses, making the jaws of the two older genin fall a little.

"I already know where they are," Minato said. "They're hiding to the right."

"Thought so," Black said happily, leading the way. "Just let us know when we're closing in."

Minato followed in silence, thinking there was no way Kushina would be pleased with this. They probably didn't know who was coming, and one thing was sure: the prank would not work the way the red-haired girl wanted, which was enough to make her upset. And just the fact that Minato was the one to reveal their plans … well, Minato was sure he'd not be forgiven until New Years.

Obito had done whatever any sensible, eleven year old burglar would do. He had run straight into the three genin's camp, made a complete chaos of his sudden, loud entrance and sprinted out of their sight as soon as he had taken his pray.

Although he had only managed to grab two of the three scrolls, things were looking better than Rin had expected – even despite that they were now being chased by three fifteen-year-olds. And seeing as splitting up was a bad idea – three large on one small was not a good scenario – they had to use the first, simplest strategy they could come up with.

Run for it.

"You know this could have ended up really, really bad?" Rin shouted through the wind as they ran down a non-existent path through the trees.

"Save your breath, they're still chasing us," Obito shouted back.

"Stop," Minato said, and his two temporary team members did. He looked high up at a tree to his right, and he could feel it on his skin; the intense, violet stare of a certain red-head's eyes. He ignored the chuunin who had followed them and stood watching somewhere behind them, and instead heard the rustling of three bodies in the large tree as they submerged towards the ground.

"Oh, crap," Rabi said as he lowered himself down a branch high up where he could see them clearly. "We hit team Minato."

"What's this?" Brown said next to Minato. "Aren't they just kids?"

"They're the same age as you, Minato," Black said as though Minato did not already know this. But Minato didn't reply; he kept staring at the person who had now climbed down next to Rabi, and who was glaring back.

And for some reason, she was smiling.

"Clever prank," Minato said.

"Too bad you were the one who found it," Kushina replied. "Or it would have worked out as we planned."

She wasn't as upset as Minato had expected – she was actually not upset at all. Minato could think of several reasons why. Sure, they had sparred more than Minato had trained with his own team, but never as opponents in a real situation like this. In this match, it wasn't about who was going to pay for tonight's ramen, but who would lose the title of chuunin. It was the real deal, and maybe it thrilled her. Besides, Minato was kind of nature and usually gave more than he took for himself. To fight for the chuunin title against his best friend was the ultimate way to make him feel extremely uncomfortable and possibly be nicer than usual in battle.

But that smirk of hers only made him realise something. It was one thing that Kushina got upset because she would lose to him; it was a whole other thing that she would win because he was being nice. She would never forgive him.

"I think we lost them," Rin breathed. They had tried to run as much in circles and s-shapes as they could to shake them off, and were now sitting on a very thick branch high up in the trees. "Let's eat something before they catch up."

She quickly unrolled one of the scrolls, hoping for food. The seals were done quickly, and out of stress not thoroughly enough, so nothing happened. She did it again, now a bit slower.

There was no compass, no ink or paper, but there were two dinner boxes left. With relieved expressions, they tore open the lids and tossed the food into their mouths.

"I can't believe they set us up to do this," Obito complained when he was done eating. "Everyone else before us has had the same task we had last time, and now we have to do this? It's much harder!"

"I know," Rin sighed; she wasn't happy about it either. She scraped her box until every single rice was eaten before leaving the empty box and packing up the other things. They left the branch cautiously, walked slowly through the leaves on the look-out for the chasers (or anyone else, for that matter) and picked up the pace as soon as they figured the chasers had given up on chasing. Obito checked the compass to adjust their direction now and then.

"If we hurry, we may find the tower before the deadline," Obito suggested. "As long as we keep our guards up it shouldn't be a problem."

"Yes, but the closer to the tower we get, the more dangerous it gets, too, doesn't it?" Rin asked.

"What if we make it before everyone else?"

Rin thought about this. They knew they were somewhat even with the team Obito had stolen their scrolls from, but they had no idea how the other teams were doing. No doubt the strongest and quickest would get to the tower fastest, but they would surely have entered if they made it, instead of lurking outside for no reason …

"Maybe it's a good idea," Rin eventually said. So they broke into a light run, keeping their same strategy as before: Obito taking any direct assault, Rin watching the rear. It wasn't a delightful journey; the stress pressing on them and the constant guard for anything that might hurt them in any way was tiring, but impossible to shake off. They had to stay alert, and especially now that every team must have eaten up the food in their original scrolls. The two of them had one more scroll, but they had no idea if it contained food or not.

Twice they had to sneak around two resting teams, and did not take the chance to see if they had any food left. Once, they went further East because Rin spotted a team running behind them, to let them pass without being noticed. It was, after all, not about reaching the tower first.

"Or is it?" Obito asked when Rin let out her thoughts again. "Maybe it's a race."

Rin wasn't sure if the time went fast or not. She would often try to see the sun's position and come to the conclusion that it hadn't really moved that much since the last check, but as they moved further and further inside the forest, and there was still no sign of any tower, it seemed that nightfall came too quickly. They needed more time. And food.

"We eat now, and we can make it," Obito said. "There can't be more than about eight hours left."

And just as they settled down and Rin opened the scroll, Obito gave a surprised noise.

"Look! Over there!"

Rin looked in the direction he pointed. She hadn't noticed, but the distance between the trees was getting wider. And between the tall logs, they could barely see something red, something with a few, orange lights on, and that looked a lot like a temple.

"There it is!" Obito exclaimed.

"Shh!" Rin hissed. "Be quiet. And we don't know how far away it is, so let's just eat." She did the necessary hand seals and opened the scroll. It was a huge disappointment.

"There's just a compass," she sighed. "And the dinner boxes are empty."

"We'll be fine," Obito said, but sounded disappointed as well. Rin wasn't sure if he said it to convince themselves that they actually would be all right or if he did it to impress, but they had no choice either way. So they packed up the scroll, decided to use it as a decoy if necessary, and moved towards the red tower. They soon saw they weren't that far away, and after half an hour they realised they were only another ten to fifteen minutes away if they walked. Eagerly, they picked up the pace and continued on the straight path.

But not before Obito was flying in the air with his leg trapped in a thin wire.

The battle seemed pretty even. Minato's two temporary team members were precise and possibly more experienced than team Allen when it came to actual battles, but team Allen had the advantage of a rehearsed teamwork. Minato had no knowledge of his new companions' styles or pattern, but figured they would do fine. All they had to do was to take out one opponent each.

Except that Minato had no heart to do so. Kushina had without hesitation chosen him as her main opponent, and as the battle became more individual than it was team battle, Minato began to fall back. In the background, Tsume was doing her most chaotic techniques against poor Black, while Rabi was sparring on short distance with Brown.

"What's up?" Kushina said in a taunting voice, brushing her newly cut fringe from her eyes. "Tired already?"

"Of course not," Minato said in annoyance. She was irritating him on purpose – she knew how good he was, and had lost more times to him than she could count – but it didn't help on his will to fight against her.

He drew his kunai as Kushina did the same. He could see on the scene behind Kushina that his two companions were a bit too experienced for Tsume and Rabi, and that the outcome would be a win for them, which led back to him. If his team was to success, he would have to beat Kushina.

It was funny. Kushina had come to their sparring sessions every time with a different attitude than usual. She would normally become upset if she lost anything or something didn't go well for her sake – bets, missions, even cooking – but whenever she sparred with him, her mindset was that she would lose either way. She would lose, and she would be okay with it. The few times she won, she wouldn't shut up for days.

This was no different, except for the smirk he had seen on her earlier. The fact that he got a mentally challenging task thrilled her.

It was easy to follow her pattern – he knew it pretty well, after all – and was glad she sometimes did something surprising or different than usual. But still, his body worked automatically, making their fight uneventful and without much of a result. It simply dragged on.

"Don't be nice to me," Kushina shouted when the kick he gave her to make distance was weaker than usual. "You're never nice when we train."

Minato cursed silently when he saw that Tsume was lying flat on the ground, unable to move due to the heavier Black pushing her down, and Rabi had his own kunai pointing at his throat. Just as his two companions moved their sight towards him to see how he was doing, he knew there was really nothing to win by losing. He kicked hard off the ground, got around Kushina's first defence and with a fleeting movement kicked her feet off the ground and pointed his kunai towards her neck.

"Battle's over," a voice said, and they all looked up. "Team fifteen, you win."

Minato sat down on the ground with a sigh, expecting a blow to the face for either making Kushina's chances to become chuunin smaller or for being too nice. Or maybe both.

But as Kushina pushed herself up from the hard ground and brushed a few leaves out of her hair and Minato winced in advance, she just grinned.

"Hey, idiot, you owe me ramen."

Obito hanging upside down from a tree when they were so close to the tower was not a good scenario. The wire was painfully cutting into his skin; it looked like the regular wire made for tripping enemies, except that it was connected to a paper with a seal on. Rin was annoyed to the sky and back down again because of their moment of carelessness, and Obito cursed as the three genin from before approached.

"That's for stealing our food," the one who had held the scrolls said.

"We'll give it back if you let us go," Rin said quickly.

"Yeah, like you haven't already eaten up everything," the boy said with a sour expression, and Rin swallowed. "We're not leaving until you're both hanging from a tree."

"Rin, go to the tower," Obito said.

"What?"

"If you're in there, maybe that means we're both safe –"

"It doesn't work like that!"

But before they could come to some sort of agreement, the older genin had attacked. Rin tried to keep a good distance, but it wasn't easy. The three boys were fast.

But that was it. She realised that all three boys went for her alone and didn't mind Obito. They were underestimating them. And while Obito began to figure out how to get out of the trap, Rin had to distract them. She let them cautiously come closer, tried to make it look like she was being pushed further from the tower because of them – she would be without trying, too, but it was a good thing any way – and steered them onto a narrow path that allowed her to take on one at a time. Though she wouldn't last long, and she couldn't let herself out of Obito's sight. It was dark and she could barely see what he was doing.

Obito had now managed to pull a kunai out of the weapon pouch in his belt, and was doing a painful sit-up to try to reach the rope. Rin blocked a kunai with her own and barely made it out of the chaos that followed without her neck being sliced by the other genin; she ran back to Obito, who was now cutting the rope by his foot, and as the knife sliced his ankle and the rope gave in he fell painfully to the ground; without thinking so much about the injuries, Rin grabbed him and pulled him up and started sprinting towards the red tower. Obito had his jaw clenched tightly against the singeing wound in his leg, but he was only wounded on the surface. Running the distance would take much less time than they had calculated by walking, and this was no different than when they were being chased by actual enemies.

The three genin were sprinting after them, shouting, possibly only making a fuzz over it because of stubbornness, of annoyance and principle, not wanting to let them get to the tower without a successful catch first. But Obito and Rin had run away from them once already, they could make it again, even though they were hungry and Obito had several bruises on his body –

As the three genin closed in, so did the tower, and Rin blindly threw a few shuriken behind her – the noise told them she had at least slowed down one of them – and they sprinted as fast as they could with their eyes set on a large, grey door, which was already open with light flowing out of what looked like a warm, safe hallway –

They covered the last few meters and stumbled inside the hallway. Rin pushed herself up on her elbows just as she saw one of the genin come growling at her with his fist lifted.

"You were just three seconds away from disqualification."

It was so quick that none of them could really comprehend what had happened for a moment. The fist was stopped mid-air by a firm grip and the genin had bumped into someone much taller than him, someone with very familiar, blonde hair.

"Sensei," Obito said in relief. Minato let go of the genin's arm and turned to them with a bright smile.

"Just follow me," he said, pulled them up from the floor and led the way down the corridor. Behind them, the three genin who had chased them were now approached by their own sensei, who did not look pleased.

"Hey, sensei," Obito said, limping slightly as they walked. "If they could've been disqualified, why did you stop him?"

"Don't want to sit quietly and watch my companions get hurt, do I?" Minato replied. "Besides, they probably won't make it to chuunin. Everything they do count. That goes for you, too."

Rin and Obito looked at each other and swallowed. Minato opened a door and stood aside to let them in. It was a large, simple hall. The roof was high up, and along the walls were two balconies. In the middle stood two older jounin none of them had seen before, and the teams that had made it so far stood along the walls with their sensei. Minato led them to an empty spot by the wall, pulled out a scroll similar to the ones they had earlier and crouched.

"It's still a while until you're done here, so eat," he said as he opened the scroll with quick and fleeting movements of his hands. Gratefully, they ate the dinner boxes he served them. "So, how did it go?" Minato asked them.

"Haven't you been watching?" Rin asked. "Since you said everything we do counts –"

"Oh, no," Minato smiled. "It's not up to me. I've just been waiting for you."

"Oh," Rin replied. "Well, it went okay, I guess …"

"It's been a lot harder than last time, though," Obito said, finally able to complain to someone who might have something satisfying to reply with. "Last time we only had to do a team battle, but this time we actually had to get through this whole forest and look for food and stuff."

"I know it's a little different than before," Minato said consolingly. "But there's a reason you're the first to go through this. Hokage-sama has for a while tried to develop strategies to sort everyone into their right categories in advance of the war. That way it's easier to give missions and jobs to the right shinobi, and everything goes faster. It's important now that Konoha is weaker than the other great nations. And because he has already worked a lot with us jounin and knows the current chuunin fairly well, the most important thing is to sort out you guys. He's one of those who's been watching you during this task."

"So he'll decide if we become chuunin or not?" Rin asked.

"He's got a lot to say on it, yes."

"And that's why we had to run through a forest without food for two days?" Obito asked.

"The task was designed to resemble war," Minato replied. "You have a destination, and small conflicts are sometimes essential to survive, such as collecting food. You don't know how much food there are or how long it takes to reach the destination."

"Okay, I think I get it," Obito said and fumbled with a pork slice. "But there are two things that don't really resemble war, though."

"What's that?"

"Well, first … like now, we had three people chasing us, and our destination was a corridor. How will a corridor save us if we're at war?"

"Look at the corridor like a metaphor," Minato said. "If it was war, it could be reinforcement instead. What was the other thing?"

"Well," Obito said, finally deciding on eating the pork. "I don't see us fighting each other during war."

Minato had to smile.

I'm sorry it's been long between each chapter. Too much have happened lately, and not all good things. But I'm finally able to see some sort of story instead of having to just force myself to start writing and see if I can come up with anything good, 'cause that doesn't always work …

But I finally made an actual long chapter! Hope you enjoyed it.