6. September VI
Next chapter and next test in the chunin exam,enjoy!
The morning of the exam found most of Konoha's genin and the newly arrived Suna, Ame, Taki and Kusa genin assembled around the impressive gates of the Hattori clan district.
Long ago the Hattori clan had been a merchant clan with skilled traders and a few shinobies. They had always followed the saying that money has no smell and perhaps taken it a little too far when they'd insisted on remaining trade partners with Iwa during the Second Great Shinobi war. When it was discovered that some of their trade included iron to forge weapons there had been all kinds of protests. They weren't doing anything illegal as such, but no one among Konoha's military was sad nor surprised, when soon later the clan chief died in mysterious circumstances. The close family fled to Taki, other clan members left Konoha for calmer parts of Fire-country, and the rest integrated into the population.
The clan grounds remained almost unchanged. Some would suggest it was a symbol to remind everyone that loyalty was valued above all else in Konoha and that any perceived treachery could be ended quite brutally.
Now the condemned entrance of the big clan compound instilled a feeling of excitement and fear in the young ninja for a completely different reason. This would be the playgrounds for the next exam. Here they would risk their lives. Sasuke was looking around trying to gauge the abilities of the people around him. As far as he knew 26 teams had made it to the second task. As he had suspected the trio from Suna that they met a few days ago, had passed. The ominous chakra he had felt from the red-haired boy had made the hairs on his arms stand on ends. Immediately he had known that he wanted to fight him. Soon he may have the oportunity. He could hear Kakashi-sensei's voice in the back of his mind telling him to avoid fights against opponents with unknown powers. He would try to avoid it, but not to hard.
A woman appeared from a nearby tree, long beige coat fluttering in the wind and crashing in the middle of the field, raising a cloud of dust. How flashy and unnecessary. Sasuke however hadn't been able to sense her at all, he admitted to himself, which meant that she must be strong. That, Sasuke felt, was good. He respected very little things apart from strength.
The woman began to explain the rules of the exam. Each team would get a scroll, either a black "earth" scroll or a white "sky" scroll. Then they would be thrown into the Hattori ruins for three days. At the end they would pick however had survived and had hoarded together two scrolls: an earth scroll and a sky scroll.
After getting the nodded agreement from Sakura and the loud ok from Naruto he went to get their own scroll. On the way there the Hyuga guy threw him a challenging look and a condescending smirk but the raven-haired boy ignored it. He had promised to avoid confronting everyone who crossed his path. In the little secluded area he gave all three of his teammate's written agreements to the conditions of the test. They had received the papers a few minutes ago and signed without hesitating. At this point they were all determined to go through with it and, in Sasuke's case, win every fight he'd be involved in. He received a black scroll which he hid under his shirt and not in is weapon pouch. Stealing was forbidden before the beginning of the task but he didn't want to take any chances.
They were brought to four separate doors to the Hattori district. With his group he was told to wait at a side door near Konoha's outer wall. Five other groups were waiting as well but none that had left a particular impression on him.
"You will enter this task one group after the other. We will wait five minutes before letting the next group in. The order has been chosen in relation to the scores of the first exam."
That' s the moment Sasuke realized they were in a bad place. Sakura must have noticed too. The second the first team had been let in she hit Naruto on the head.
"See in which kind of mess we are because of you who couldn't score even one point in the written exam!"
"But Sakura", Naruto whined, "we just have to wait for fifteen minutes."
"Twenty-five, stupid", Sasuke cut in, "and that's not the problem. What do you think will the other teams do during these twenty-five minutes?"
"Go away."
"No, they will set an ambush for us."
Naruto pouted.
"Then we will just show them that we are stronger."
Sakura seemed to want to shout at him again. But Sasuke interrupted her.
"For once your right. I don't think any of them are any good anyway. None of them stood out in my mind."
"Sasuke you're so right." Sakura swooned. "We trained so hard this week, there's no way they can get us!"
Twenty-five minutes later they were finally allowed to step into the Hattori ruins. They were faced with small crumbling buildings that were slowly destroyed by the growing vegetation. A narrow road led into a dense forest of long, lean birches. The ground was split open in several places when roots had cracked open the stone pavement.
Carefully the three stepped onto the road. Behind them the metallic door fell shut with an ominous click.
Their eyes roamed the surrounding buildings. The broken windows let them peek into dark rooms which seemed to be perfect places for a sharp-shooter to take position in. Sasuke activated his sharingan but did not see anything suspicious.
Maybe the other teams didn't want to take the risk of being so close to each other and had set out.
Slowly they entered the forest. Sasuke felt something to his right but it was only a bird. These were the kind of moments where he could feel the shortcomings of a sharingan. The Ushiha kekkai genkai allowed the user to perceive every detail of his surrounding even ones so small that no normal human should be able to take note of them. He should be able to see every disruption of the natural environment, every detail that indicated that something was out of place. It was a great tool but it wasn't the Byakugan which could detect human chakra a mile away, see through everything and made every camouflage obsolete. Of course, the analytical abilities of the sharingan were one of the many skills it offered and there was no kekkai genkai that could rival it's abilities in genjutsu or it's prowess in helping master ninjutsu.
Suddenly he felt a whoosh of air behind him and ducked instinctively. The next second a kunai flew a few millimeters past his shoulder. His sharingan had seen the throw. The attacker must be somewhere behind him, on the left probably behind that big tree.
"Careful we are under attack", he shouted out. Immediately they set into a three man formation. Naruto in front, Sakura and Sasuke behind. Sasuke was still in possession of the scroll, he had insisted he should keep it and while Naruto had argued Sakura had agreed. He was to defend it at all cost.
In a flurry of movement an attacker was upon him. He narrowly avoided a ball of water aimed for his face. Before his sharingan caught sight of a kick coming for his face. He dodged easily but his opponent raised a wave of water behind which he disappeared. A second later his sharingan saved him again when he was able to distinguish the fist coming his way through the water.
He attacked in turn and his feet caught the water clone under the chin before it disappeared into a splash of water and he saw who was fighting him. His opponent was a girl a few years older than him, with round doe-eyes and shoulder long hair. Her expression was blank and her moves careful and flowing. She seemed to be constantly in movement favoring sweeping kicks and rolls to more straightforward attacks. Reading her hand signs he executed a very large fireball that successfully dissipated the barrage of water-bullets before they hit him. Hoping that the mist would hide him he launched an attack in the girl's direction but she deflected his kick and sprang back.
He jumped back and they looked at each other.
He had to admit she was strong, probably as strong as him. He had underestimated the other teams. At no point did Sasuke notice that girl or any of her teammates. She was a Konoha genin her forehead protector said so he must have crossed her path from time to time.
Sasuke wanted to damn his own stupidity. How many other teams had he overlooked because they weren't obnoxious in their display of power, how many other unnoticeable genin were actually just as strong as him. The exam may very well be harder than he thought.
Again they clashed. His kunai against hers and only his reflexes allowed him to jump over her kick. Just in time he aimed a fireball at the spray of water that came his way.
Behind him he could hear the clash of kunais which meant that Naruto and Sakura must be fighting this girl's teammates.
It seems that they did indeed land in an ambush and Sasuke began to doubt it would be so easy to win against these guys.
Sakura turned around the second Sasuke alarmed them. And not a second to late. A barrage of kunai was headed her and Naruto's way. The young blonde immediately expulsed some chakra and deviated the weapons and Sakura jumped behind him as they had trained to in the last few days. The moment Naruto's chakra dissipated she threw her own shuriken still not knowing exactly where their opponent was hiding.
The next second something slashed her arm and she realized a second to late that the kunai were attached to ninja wire. Naruto to her right cursed and asked her in a rushed tone if she was ok. She nodded, the gash was superficial. A second later they turned again. A girl had landed behind them and in a wide arc a kunai came whirling for their throat. It had been attached to wire and the girl was wielding it like a lasso.
Both jumped back in time but their opponent didn't let up and threw her kunai again while running up to Naruto and aiming a downward kick at his face. The boy blocked but stumbled back. He immediately materialized three clones that he launched at the girl. Their opponent didn't seem bothered by it and used a long rope that was still hanging from the tree to lift herself up in one smooth move before hitting a clone, letting go and concentrating all her downward momentum in a kick that killed of both remaining clones and almost caught Sakura in the shoulder. The young kunoichi sprang back behind her blond teammate. Taijutsu was her weakness. It certainly wasn't that girl's weakness. She must be a few years older than her and wore her Konoha sign on her forehead. A short blond ponytail moved at every one of her jumps and rolls. She was wearing dark blue pants and no shoes and constantly aided herself with ropes and ninja wire. She looked at them with a wide grin.
Again Sakura had to duck under three shuriken and then jumped up when she realized that one of them had been attached to wire that was meant to trap her.
She retreated behind Naruto remembering what Kakashi had told her: her task was to think a way out of this situation.
Their opponents were strong: the girl fighting against Sasuke knew at least five different water-based ninjutsus and was good enough to avoid every one of Sasuke's attacks. Sasuke seemed to be able to keep up with her but defeating her would be difficult.
The girl they were fighting against seemed to use little ninjutsu, nothing more than basic replacements, however her style of fighting, her constant barrage of kunais and shuriken, her tricks and her powerful taijutsu, were keeping Naruto occupied. She thought of trying a genjutsu but the blond girl was moving across the clearing without leaving herself open for an attack for more than a second and the brown-haired one was fighting Sasuke in close combat, their was no way she could project it on her without touching Sasuke.
Sakura was the first to see the girls' third teammate emerging from behind a bush finishing the last hand-sign of what seemed to be a basic genjutsu. She said Kai before the illusion of hundreds of moths could take her under. Sasuke was already free and it took her only a second to wake Naruto out of the genjutsu. They had enough time to see the attack from their third opponent easily.
The boy was aiming a kunai at Naruto's exposed midriff but the attack was clumsy and his hold of the kunai was awkward which was absolutely ridiculous. Academy students learnt how to hold a kunai in their first year. Sakura was about to dismiss him as a weak opponent, one even she could take out, when her eyes, still drawn by the blatantly wrong grip of the kunai, fell onto the shape tattooed onto the boy's hand.
The next second she looked up and saw that Sasuke had aimed a fireball at the boy's head that the genjutsu only barely dodged before the Ushiha was drawn back into the fight against the water-jutsu using girl. Naruto however threw a kunai at the boy, that hit its mark and the boy fell to the ground with a kunai in his thigh. Sakura was on him the next second, holding a kunai to his throat.
"Everybody stop fighting or your teammate will die." She shouted knowing she wouldn't act on her threat.
The two other girls stopped for a moment but the blond-haired one settled in a battle stance.
"No way you will have the guts."
"Maybe but I won't hesitate to cut the ligaments of his feet. I don't think you can complete this task with him unable to walk."
The blond tsked but did not say anything.
In the next few seconds no one said or moved and Sakura began to feel unsure. Considering they were supposed to be strong opponents, she found them pretty unresponsive.
"Give me your scroll and I will let him go."
After a second the brown-haired one took out a scroll and walked slowly up to her. Sakura tensed up. This was too easy. She caught a strange movement from the side of her field of vision. The air seemed to flicker like it sometimes did in summer. It was also a tell that one was trapped in a genjutsu.
"Shit. Kai!" She swore before jumping back and joining her two fingers.
She found herself looking at the upper branches of trees hanging upside down from a branch, her legs bound together and her arms secured to her side. A second she had to fight an almost overwhelming nausea and sense of disorientation. Her two teammates were dangling a few meters apart, obviously still trapped in a genjutsu.
It took her almost ten minutes just to free a hand and manage to do the three hand signs for the rope-freeing jutsu. She felt the bindings around her hands loosen and lifted herself up until she could carefully unbind her feet and then swung herself onto a nearby branch. She disrupted both Naruto's and Sasuke's chakra and helped them get out of the ropes binding them. Sasuke immediately checked if they had the scroll and swore when he realized it had been taken.
"We have to go after them." Naruto immediately suggested and Sasuke seemed murderous enough to agree.
"We will not do that." Sakura stated and tried to ignore the dark look Sasuke was sending her.
"These guys surprised us. They are really good", after a second of silence she added: "Probably better than us. The two girls could easily keep up with you two and the boy was able to layer two genjutsus. That' s pretty hard, I don't think a lot of genin can do that."
"How did he do that anyway, I didn't feel it at all." Naruto asked.
Sakura refrained from saying that he never felt genjutsus anyway.
"I wondered about that too. Its very hard to trap three people at the same time but I think it was the sign on his hand."
"The strange kind of swirly thing?"
"Yes, it must be a conductor that sucks our mind into a genjutsu. And I think we were all glancing at it because he was holding the kunai so strangely."
"I did." Sasuke said
"I think I looked at it too." Naruto admitted.
"They planned it all", Sakura sighed. "They aren't even that much stronger than us but they knew exactly what they were doing."
She gathered her resolve, they still had the better part of three days, they couldn't give up.
"We have to do the same they did: find a group, make a plan and then trap them!"
So a few changes I made:
- It's not in the forest of death. This is the result of a mistake I made. I thought the manga stated that the forest of death was Orochimaru's former favorite training ground and as in this story people know he may be up to somehting during the exam, I thought it would be stupid to have the exam happen there. But I reread the manga recently and it is only implied that it is Anko's favorite training ground and not Orochimaru's so I could have kept the Forest of death. At that point I had already written a lot of this and did not want to change it so hopefully it does not bother you to much.
- I added new oppoments, a slightly older Konoha-team. This is part of my ungoing effort to show that there may be other ninja in Konoha appart from the super special and talented Konoha 11. I mean it's weird that almost all Konoha-nin who made it past the first task in the manga were rookies. So for those who really hate OCs don't worry, these characters are not really important, they may appear as background Ninja again but they will have little interaction with team 7 except here, fighting them.