Chunin Exam Arc: Mountain Maze - Hatake Yuina

Yuina hovered over the body of the person she knocked out through poison. She was uncertain what to do. There was a chance he would die from eventual dehydration if she left him there. She could also kill him, but felt conflicted. This wasn't a mission – well it was, but it didn't entail killing anyone. It would be a convenience but nothing more.

The idea killing someone defenseless for no more a reason then they were participating in the same exam felt wrong, even if he was an Iwa-nin. He wasn't even at a level where he could be considered a threat.

But he could be one day.

What stupid logic. Potentials didn't meant little until they were achieved.

It was horrible. Horrible that she changed to the point where this was even a question. Even if it was horrible she didn't want to be a victim of the world even if that meant becoming a perpetrator.

Her shoulders slumped as she sighed in defeat. She was wasting time thinking about this. Yuina reached for one of her double lidded glass vials, the middle separated by a glass divider, and pulled the Iwa-nin's body further from the wall before tossing the vial.

It broke against the cavern wall and exploded, rumbling the structural integrity. Debris fell and she could hear a shout somewhere above her.

Even that little amount of substance was as good as an explosive tag.

Yuina dragged his body to the opening. She couldn't allow herself to exit, but she tossed his legs to hang out hoping that being disqualified meant someone would come to help him. His future was in the hands of his village now.

The explosive would have attracted attention to her position, so she needed to get moving.

Yuina reached in and grabbed the container of modified soldier pills. Couldn't have a military or violent conflict without someone discovering stimulants to help keep combatants going. Orochimaru and her adjusted the formula so there was a lower risk of addiction. Well, she found the components that made it addictive while Orochimaru found a way to alter it.

She didn't need it for physical energy. It helped recuperate chakra. It's been constantly used since arriving and needed a method to sustain it. Unfortunately, overdosing on the pills was her solution. It would have been one thing if they could have isolated the chakra benefits, but there hadn't been enough time meaning that she hadn't been getting proper rest since arriving in Iwagakure.

At least she finally got some luck. His scroll had been in the red ink she needed. Now she could head to the victory room. Nothing else mattered.

She descended further into the mountain.

Yuina's dark eyes widened as far as they could as she jumped back, narrowly avoiding a giant spherical rock rolling on a downward slope. A trap? She looked around trying to discover what she may have triggered only to be unsettled when she couldn't pinpoint anything.

She didn't trust her sense of directions navigating the mountain. She felt her chakra slowly recovering so she glossed her fingers over the walls, reaching her chakra into the stone's chakra to navigate the pathways. Wood, stone, dirt, water, and air were the chakras she was the most familiar with from how much time she spent on them.

Yuina made three hand seals. Her feet sunk into the rocks as she moved through the floor down to the next level. There was a possibility for the victory room to be at the level but she decided to add a few more floors between them, repeating the same process another seven times.

Orochimaru told her that she likely only learned the jutsu so fast because of her low yang energy, high yin energy, and being intimately familiar with chakra theory – even linking it as a technique similar to how she wrongly continued to use chakra to walk on surfaces like water and trees. Even then it took a little over a month to perfect. It worked for her purposes, but she wished it was a little less chakra intensive.

She took another modified soldier pill as she scouted out the new floor.

She felt shivers prick up her spine as she walked into a small clearing of four oversized reddish-brown salamanders who she awoke from their sleep.

Yuina quickly went into another set of seals.

Lightning Release: Flash!

A bright light blinded the room as she grabbed her tanto and ran forward to slash off the head of one, jumping away as another whipped out it's projectile tongue.

Just her luck. She did not want that wrapped around her.

Her feet hit the side of the wall and used it to push off as momentum to cut off the head of another. Yuina clicked her tongue. The width of her tanto was only barely large enough to cut off their heads. Even with the sharpness of her blade, she could feel some resistance.

Yuina dodged another tongue attack. It's tongue could move fast unlike it's relatively slow body. She landed on her hand and flipped back up to a guarded standing position.

She sheathed her tanto and made a split decision between using Lightning Release: Lightning Strike or using more of her preparations.

She had brought things to make a spectacle. She didn't even know if anyone would see it from where she was.

Better to test it on these things than on humans.

Yuina reached for one of the two scrolls Orochimaru had prepared for her. If it worked as design, it should fire out the highly potent acid she made. It was meant as a demonstration of destruction. Strong enough to dissolve most metals with a bit of time. She still had the second to unleash at another time, but she felt a wave of relief as she unsealed the scroll to spray the acid as she created distance between them. She didn't want any of it to splash on her. It would eat through flesh.

The sounds of distress they wailed were painful to listen to. It was too bad that it wasn't flammable. It was reactive to water, but she neither had any nor knew any water jutsu to fasten the process.

With that taken care of, Yuina began looking for another route.