Sensei was late. Sakura was worried this might be the start of a trend.
It gave her time to hang out with Sasuke-kun… or, well, hang around Sasuke, for the dark haired boy didn't seem to feel like talking today, and it also gave her time to think.
Sensei seemed like a deliberate sort of person. His little lecture yesterday afternoon implied a fair bit of forethought and deliberation going into his actions, and that he was the sort to choose words carefully. Technically, thinking back, he had only said he would 'see them' at 6, not that they would begin at 6. He could have swung by an hour ago, caught a glimpse of them, and then gone back to sleep, or… whatever it was Jounin ninja did in their free time. Train?
After another hour or so of waiting, it occurred to her that he might actually be there, at the training ground, simply observing their behaviour. The Sharingan was said to be very adept at generating Genjutsu; he might be lurking right nearby and they simply couldn't see him.
Surreptitiously, lest she embarrassed herself by failing, Sakura formed the Ram seal and pushed a burst of chakra through her coils.
The clearing swayed.
"Well, I suppose two hours to think of Genjutsu is acceptable for an academy student."
Everyone jumped a little as Hiroki-sensei appeared, hanging upside down from a nearby tree.
The Jounin dropped, landing on his feet in a silent crouch. Sakura was starting to get seriously unnerved by the dim glimmer of black eyes coming from beneath his hood.
"Well, since we're all here, and all of you are paying attention now…" -Sensei's head turned meaningfully towards Naruto, who had been napping nearby- "we might as well get started."
There was a faint tinkling sound as their teacher rummaged through a pocket, searching for something. His hand emerged holding aloft a pair of small silver bells, which he bounced demonstratively to elicit another small chime.
"The test is simple. There are two bells. Get a bell, you pass. No bell, off to the pit of mediocrity."
Naruto leaped up from his position sitting on the ground with a yell and prepared to dash at their Sensei, only to be stopped, quite suddenly.
Their instructor was smiling in that horribly pleasant way of his, and holding a kunai dangerously close to the blond's face as he stood in a slight crouch directly in front of the orange appareled boy, thumb gently stroking Naruto's cheek.
"I didn't say start yet, Uzumaki-kun."
Sakura blinked, her mouth falling open a little as the man walked back to his original position. She hadn't seen Hiroki-sensei move at all, and she had been looking right at him. He had just- been there. How were they supposed to get the bells from someone like that?
"Now then, on three. One, two, three."
Sakura and Sasuke disappeared into the brush the very instant the last syllable fell from the Jounin's lips, leaving the blond standing challengingly in the open. The hooded head of their instructor tilted slightly to regard the short figure.
"I'm gonna be Hokage someday! There's no way I'm not gonna get one of those bells!"
A hand seal formed a few clones and Sakura almost groaned from her position under a bush a little ways past the edge of the clearing. That wasn't going to be any use against a Jounin. They didn't even know how to get the clones to make sound; Hiroki-sensei would see through it easily.
Her dismay only lasted a few moments however, and once more she almost gave away her position with a sudden sound, this time one of surprise. Naruto could make solid clones? How was that even possible? He was terrible at jutsu! The Clone was his worst technique!
It… wasn't really helping though. Instead it was almost as if Sensei was… dancing? The movements were vaguely reminiscent of some of the soft style martial arts Sakura had seen before, deflections and redirections of the opponent's momentum, but the way they flowed together, moving smoothly from one form to another in a sort of rhythmic cyclic ripple as the Jounin's feet moved in slow circles… It wasn't like anything she had ever seen before, and it didn't look like he was even breaking a sweat fighting five Narutos at once.
It was obviously infuriating to the blond, for his movements were becoming increasingly wild and uncoordinated. Within a few more seconds, the clones had all managed to injure themselves severely enough to dispel into puffs of chakra smoke, deflected strikes leading to the shouting pseudo-Genin becoming their own worst enemy.
"There are generally acknowledged to be three main classes of ninja art. The first, and some might say simplest, is Taijutsu."
A fist buried itself in Naruto's gut, lifting him into the air and sending him flying into the water of the pond on the opposite side of the training ground.
"Taijutsu encompasses many styles and the highest levels can be exceedingly potent, allowing movement speeds that exceed the unaided human eye's capacity to track, and strength great enough to shatter steel with a single blow. Such techniques place a heavy toll on the user, and moreover require very high levels of conditioning, so they are rather rare."
A pair of shuriken spat out of the little pond where Naruto had landed, only to be expertly caught on raised fingers, gradually spinning to a stop. The shortest member of their team pulled himself from the water, gasping as he dripped fat globs of water onto the bank of the pool. Sakura frowned a little in confusion. That blow should have caused a lot more damage, how was Naruto okay?
"I'm not here to get a boring lecture! I'm going to get those bells!"
"Despite being somewhat less showy that the other ninja arts, a solid grounding in Taijutsu is a must to any serious ninja. Physical confrontation can be a valuable fall back after more energy intensive techniques have failed."
The blond yelped as a thin sliver of light hit him right between the eyes, dispelling the clone once more as their instructor continued his lecture undeterred. A slim piece of metal fell to the ground, far smaller than the kunai or shuriken Sakura had seen before. That was a… senbon. Yes. Throwing needles, often for the delivery of poisons.
Oh. Right.
"Bukijutsu, the use of weapons or, more generally, ninja tools, such as wire, is usually considered as a subset of Taijutsu. Both tend to rely heavily on physical strength, stamina, and reflexes, and both generally don't involve much in the way of externalizing chakra. A weapon is a potent force multiplier however; even a sharp rock can be deadly in the hands of a trained fighter, and a specialist equipped with their preferred weapon should not be underestimated. The Kenjutsu used by the Samurai of Iron Country is rightfully feared and respected."
Three more Narutos burst from the water and flung themselves at the Jounin, and all were almost gently laid on the ground and pinned with carefully placed senbon in a move nearly too fast to follow. All but one dispelled from the needles. The last was left to wiggle unhappily in his sodden clothing, sharp bits of metal neatly outlining his form.
"The second major branch of the shinobi arts is Ninjutsu. This is what most civilians think when they imagine Ninja: demons spitting fireballs and conjuring floods from thin air."
Even as the blond was being secured, Sasuke dashed out of the bushes at the perimeter of the training ground, form hugging the earth as he sped towards the bells. Sensei's back was turned as he addressed Naruto, and for a brief moment Sakura felt a surge of hope that her future husband would succeed. This was her chance!
She stood up from the bushes and pulled out a kunai, beginning to move towards the clearing to support her beloved-
Red eyes glittered under a hood which was abruptly facing towards Sasuke, the fresh Genin forced to contort into a flip to convert his momentum into a vicious kick aimed at the shadowed face. A hand caught the foot, only to give the dark haired boy more leverage, the blocked strike turned into a vicious uppercut.
Another block, and now the other leg was spinning around to try and hit Hiroki in the back of the head. A third hand emerged from the older ninja's shoulder and caught the leg, a brief flash of surprise flickered across Sasuke's face and Sakura paused in her attempted charge before the feint became obvious and Sasuke's free hand swung towards the bells hanging at the Jounin's waist.
The outstretched digits were only millimeters away before suddenly Sasuke was desperately grasping at leaves. Sensei was replaced by a thick log, a small branch poking out at the same height as the bells. The hood shook back and forth behind Sasuke in disappointment.
"Ninjutsu is generally highly chakra intensive and should generally be used as a finishing blow after the enemy has been tired out with Taijutsu and can no longer dodge as effectively, as it can leave the user vulnerable for a brief window after a technique is used."
The last(ish?) Uchiha spun towards the sound, hands rising into a blur of seals before he exhaled a huge ball of flame at the older teen. The massive pyre completely consumed the nonchalant figure, and remained burning for several seconds.
Sakura felt a little ill, her knife drooping in her grip and she thought she might smell burning meat. That had definitely hit Sensei dead on; he might be seriously hurt or even dead.
The flame began to dissipate, and as it did it contracted into a whirling vortex around the older teen. Eventually it cleared entirely to reveal an apparently unconcerned Jounin, a perfect circle around his feet devoid of soot as the ground outside the ring gently smoldered.
"A Ninjutsu technique is generally based on one of five elements. Wind, Lightning, Earth, Water, or Fire. Each element is susceptible to being countered by the previous element in the cycle, and can be used to counter that which comes subsequent. However, even that is unnecessary if one has a high enough level of control of their element. One can even bend an opponent's technique against them with the right counter move, like using a stronger Fire element affinity to negate an attack. And, of course, they require you to be able to hit the target."
Their instructor's foot rose slightly before tapping at the ground. "Headhunter jutsu."
Her beloved sunk into the ground as if he had been dropped, and another Hiroki-sensei rose from the earth behind the newly truncated boy. The copy stared blankly at Sasuke before crumbling into so much loose soil.
An Earth Clone! Was that what the extra hand had been? A partially formed clone? That was… very clever. Could she do something like that?
"The last, and often least regarded school, is Genjutsu."
Red eyes were abruptly locked onto Sakura's, seeming to bore into her head like hateful embers.
Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was that she escape as quickly as possible. There was no room for other thought, no space for reason, she had to run.
The kunoichi staggered back, eyes darting frantically for an escape route before cruelly barbed chains burst from the ground and tightly encircled her.
Sakura knew, she just knew, that if she tried to move the chains would slice her to pieces. At the same time, her mind was screaming at her to flee, to run, to escape the predator that was surely only moments away from eating her.
"Genjutsu is often overlooked, as several bloodlines and special abilities can serve to make it less effective, such as the Hyuuga's Byakugan. It also requires extremely high levels of chakra control, and a good imagination. The true downside is that it does very little on its own; Genjutsu will not injure the opponent by itself, and it is always possible that the subject has merely bluffed their susceptibility. If the target is aware they are in a Genjutsu they might break out at any time, and you might never know till it was too late. Thus, the most dangerous Genjutsu is the one you don't see, the subtle knife that cuts the deepest at the most inopportune moment. People only see what they expect, after all."
The chains dissolved, and Sakura flushed in embarrassment as she suddenly realized that she was standing in the middle of the training ground, quaking at nothing.
Then their Sensei waved a hand, and the field rippled.
Naruto was lying in a little puddle of mud wriggling to escape his own clothes, however there was nothing actually pinning him down and he realized after a moment and leaped up with obvious confusion, patting down his arms and checking for holes in his sleeves.
Sasuke was curled into a little ball on the dirt, neck craned painfully back as he tried to turn his head without moving his body at all. He stood abruptly with a furious snarl and started to search for the Jounin, noticing with obvious surprise that the scorch mark on the ground was now a smooth, unblemished sheet devoid of the circle where the Fireball had been deflected.
Sakura was the first to spot their teacher, standing idly beneath the very same tree he had started in without any appearance of having moved. She stumbled back, face stricken with shock, and her gasp brought the attention of the boys to bear on their Sensei.
"What?! How did that- We were in a Genjutsu the whole time?"
The shadowed head cocked at the astounded girl, the face splitting into an amused smile.
"Were?"
The face of their sensei was literally splitting nearly in half as the mask merged with his flesh, his cheeks tore, and blood began to drip forth in a river, the sinister red eyes spinning into empty pits of deepest void as the world around them began to grey, color leaching from the sky, the trees, and every leaf to leave a land devoid of depth or hue. The trees themselves began to sag and droop like melting wax, branches plopping to the ground with a disgusting squelch as reality bled away to leave nothing but an empty night and the skeletons of wood clawing up from the endless white sand.
"What do you mean were?"
Sakura's eyes rolled back in her head, and she slipped into darkness.
. . .
"-eally don't know. I mean, they didn't even recognize an obvious teamwork test, they'd probably just kill themselves accidentally while playing with a kunai or something."
Sakura blinked as her mind cleared, the irritating rattle of an alarm clock ringing somewhere nearby bringing the world back into focus. Finally, normality restored itself after that- that nightmare their Sensei had dropped them all in.
She flushed horribly as a sudden thought occurred to her.
Hopefully all of them; she couldn't stand the thought of passing out in front of Sasuke if he was completely unaffected, though it would be impressive if he could just shrug off a Jounin's Genjutsu.
Her head felt heavy as she turned to look for her teammates, Hiroki's words trickling through the back of her mind as the lingering fog cleared.
Sasuke was nearby, leaning against one of the posts. Naruto was tied to the next post over with ninja wire, still looking a little bit like he might be sick, normal buoyancy dampened by an unhealthy pallor.
"It's not like I hid it from them, though… they thought the same as well, back then. Are all baby Genin just idiots? I mean, they can't be, right? He wasn't, couldn't possibly have been. I wonder if it's just this line? What was Sensei's like? On the one hand the rules. On the other hand, being smart enough to spot a blatant ploy to split up the team."
"WHAT?!"
Sensei turned from the small shape curled on the ground to look at Naruto, head balanced on a raised fist while he lounged on the sparse grass of the training field.
He didn't say anything for a long moment, and the fuzzy ball on the grass uncurled and sat up, revealing itself to be a slightly larger than average cat covered in an even mix of irregular shadings of black with white spots on grey fur.
"Wha- Sassy? Why are you talking to that guy Sassy-chan? Hey! Jerk! Why are you talking to Sassy?!"
The cat and the Jounin exchanged a look before Hiroki-sensei turned to the wiggling blond.
"You named Fovea-kun Sassy?"
"Who's Fobea?"
"Fo-ve-a. My Nin-cat. Him." Sensei pointed a thumb at the feline, who stretched out languorously before walking over to the pole Naruto was strapped to and hopping onto the top, settling into a comfortable ball and licking the spiky blond head a few times.
"That cat is yours?"
Sakura blinked at Sasuke, surprised by his interest. They both knew the cat?
"Of course. Though it's not like I own him; he's my partner. I couldn't bear if something happened to him though, and he's still quite young, so I usually leave him in the village. I guess he got bored with being covert if you both noticed him."
She was pretty sure the Jounin was giving the sleepy cat a disapproving look, but the animal didn't seem to care, gently kneading Naruto's head with its claws, much to the blond's displeasure. Sakura noted with a wry flicker of humor that the orange ninja didn't seem to be trying to actively stop Fovea though, just persuade the cat to desist with soft words.
"...You were watching me?"
The unemotive face under the hood turned fully towards Sasuke before the man stood up and brushed his pants off.
"You are my responsibility. Now, you two-" -he pointed at Sasuke and Sakura- "can have some lunch. He-" -a finger jabbed at Naruto- "is being punished for using a kinjutsu out in the open where anyone could see it. Don't give him anything. We can try this again in a bit. Maybe you won't be so embarrassingly oblivious to simple tricks with some food in your bellies. Come on Fovea."
The cat hopped off the thick wooden stump with a fluid grace that reminded her of Sensei's movements earlier, if that had ever even happened. The bentos sitting nearby were still steaming slightly, which made Sakura wonder how long they had been out. The sun seemed to be much closer to the middle of the sky now, and her stomach rumbled uncomfortably as she picked up the pink wrapped bundle. She couldn't quite muster an appetite though and only picked at her food a little, taking small bites which tasted sour in her mouth, even if the food itself smelled great. Naruto was obviously thinking hard, trying to figure out the relentlessly confusing man.
"..Ne, Sakura-chan. What did he mean simple tricks? That Genjutsu has to be something only crazy powerful ninja can use."
"That's not what he meant."
She let her hand fall a little, resting the chopsticks on the edge of the container as she sighed disappointedly.
"The test was the trick. He said we had to get the bells, but there were only two bells. That meant someone had to lose. We accepted that at face value, we didn't try to figure out if that made sense or if that seemed like what was really going on. The actual test was to see if we could work together to try and accomplish a goal, even if we might have to sacrifice our personal interests."
Sasuke was in his standard brooding pose, hands clasped in front of his mouth and lunch box left untouched as he thought, an act which would normally have elicited a coo of delight from Sakura, but for which she couldn't quite muster the energy at the moment. After a minute his head jerked indicatively at a small stone monolith across the training ground.
"I recognize this place. That's the KIA monument over there. It was right in our faces, and we just… He even told us. What you think determines what you do, but reality determines the outcome. If you see something, that doesn't necessarily mean anything more than that there is something to see. We should have been able to figure it out. I mean, have you ever heard of a two man Genin team? Chunin or Jounin, sure, maybe, but Genin teams are always three. Always."
Sakura took a deep breath before standing and walking over towards Naruto, slightly cold food clutched in her hands as she presented it to the blond.
"Here. Sensei was right. We need some energy if we're going to have a chance once he gets back. We'll eat, and then we can plan."
Sasuke sighed, and she thought the sound might even have had a trace of regret in it behind the usual irritation, but he stood next to her as well, using his chopsticks to pick up one of the little dumplings and poke it towards Naruto's mouth.
"Don't need you falling any further behind, dummy."
The orange ninja smiled, a little hesitantly at first, before the expression became broader and more genuine. He nodded firmly and chomped down on the little dumpling. Speaking around the food with a determined expression.
"We'll definitely beat him this time!"
There was a soft rustle of leaves and Hiroki-sensei was squatting on the post above Naruto, face oddly somber as he inspected the surprised Genin.
"You pass."
. . .
A/N: What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If 'real' is what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see... then 'real' is nothing more than electrical impulses interpreted by your brain.
Anyways, yes the bell test is practically identical, but not for no reason. I really couldn't imagine Team 7 suddenly realizing that teamwork and strategy were the way to go when so little of their interaction has been different thus far. :/
Other parts will go differently.
Anyway, that's all for tonight, another two chapters will drop tomorrow night, and the night after, and so on, until we're done, which should take a while. They probably won't be quite as long as these two though; they just didn't lend themselves to shortening.