Later that night, we passed by a small farming commune, which utilized a minor tributary of the Gin-gawa river to nourish its crops. Once again, we didn't stop to talk to the locals, all of which seemed to be asleep, but the fields were too sprawling to justify running all the way around them. Instead, we passed through, and I could easily tell what they were growing.

Sorghum, mostly, potatoes, and brassica vegetables like cabbage, bok choy and turnips. However, on the far side of the riverbed, I saw makeshift rice paddies. Amateurly constructed, and poorly maintained.

To me, that was the nail in the coffin. Another thing that I learned about the out-of-touch Waterfall Daimyo was his recent obsession with rice. Bordering Waterfall was the Land of Iron, but on the other side was the Land of Rice Paddies (which would later become the Land of Sound when Orochimaru took over).

As the name suggested, they had kinda cornered the market on rice—in the East, at least. However, they also fought tooth and nail to maintain neutrality between the Lands of Fire and Lightning, almost successfully in the Second Shinobi War (they were the target of several notable and moderately severe sabotage attempts, and there was evidence recovered that implicated one of the two great nations each time—of course, those pieces of evidence were likely planted by the opposite party, or by another warring nation that wanted to target one of the significant food suppliers of Fire and especially Lightning, whose colder climate made growing rice almost impossible).

The Waterfall Daimyo wanted his nation to get in on the action, shifting the Land of Fire's dependance on the Land of Rice Paddies to itself. On paper, it wasn't a terrible move—Waterfall and Rice were on the same latitude and had similar climates. However, the Land of Waterfalls, despite its name, was rather flat in comparison the the Land of Rice Paddies, which meant they couldn't utilize the mountain runoffs to create fertile, watery rice paddies of their own. Mountains also allowed farmers to create terraced rice fields, so despite the favorable climate, Waterfall was truly at a disadvantage, except at certain points within its borders (like the namesake of their nation).

The Daimyo didn't care about that. He decreed that each of his farmers must devote a fifth of their farmlands to growing rice, regardless of the environmental challenges. From what I gathered, very few were successful; everything else notwithstanding, the farmers themselves weren't experienced with growing this crop, and they lacked the infrastructure and techniques that the citizens of the Land of Rice Paddies had been cultivating for centuries. It was a mission doomed to failure.

Of course, I didn't give a shit about that now. I was definitely in Waterfall—the architecture and the presence of newly-constructed rice paddies proved that in my book. Sure, the Land of Grass could have a couple of ineffectual rice farmers, but the Land of Earth and our allies, the Land of Mountains, produced just as much rice as Rice Paddies, if not more. Grass wouldn't feel the need to go through all the trouble of cobbling together environmentally intensive rice paddies all of a sudden, not when the crop was cheaper and more readily available to their buyers than ever before.

"Are we stopping for the night?" I asked, not tired in the slightest. I still felt the buzz from the soldier pill, and that mixed terribly with the ache of fear in my chest.

"Are you capable of sleeping?" he countered. Sho was running on his own power for the moment, with more ease than he had ever been able to before. Drugs in this world were scary.

"I doubt it would be sound," I said. "But my mind is extremely weary, and my legs are spasming. It is becoming difficult to keep step."

He hummed. "Your stamina and chakra is beyond impressive for a ten-year-old, but I suppose it must have its limits. We won't stop for the night, but I suppose we can take a break for dinner. We'll see where that leaves you, condition wise."

"Fire?" Sho croaked, sounding a lot worse than he looked. He was shivering violently.

"Sorry, Hatanaka-san. Not tonight."

Which meant we wouldn't be cooking. Which meant we wouldn't be hunting. Just another drop in the bucket of damning evidence. One thing that I should think we would definitely be tested on in the survival portion was our ability to forage, and our ability to find/catch/dress prey. We hadn't done that the first day, and it was looking like we never would.

I looked back at my batchmate, who was the picture of abject misery. I had never been close to Sho, but I knew him very well. Over the last six years, I've spent almost every day in his presence, and we'd suffered more than several traumas together. I'd seen his greatest fears, his insecurities, his hopes and dreams, and, to an admittedly lesser extent, he'd seen mine. It was unavoidable. And as such, he wasn't some background character to me, no matter how unobtrusive his presence often was.

He was just a kid. And we were stuck together in enemy territory. Possibly, he wouldn't even be in this situation if not for me.

As he sat down to eat against the trunk of a tree, I sat next to him and pressed my body close against his.

"Don't read into this," I muttered. "I'm cold too."

His eyes were slightly wide, but he just nodded, and leaned forward obligingly so I could put my arm around him. His body was like a furnace, as was mine likely, due to the effects of the soldier pill. But the temperature had dropped so much with nightfall it barely mattered.

But I wasn't doing this just for warmth. With my hand hidden behind his back, I began to tap out a message onto his padded shirt, pressing hard enough for him to clearly feel. It was a form of nonverbal communication similar to morse code that we were forced to learn in the academy.

Imposter. Enemy.

Hatanaka Sho wasn't the brightest, the strongest, the fastest or the most skilled in anything. But he was still a capable Iwa shinobi, and had undergone the same training as me. He probably hadn't picked up as many pieces as I did, and he might not even be able to articulate why. But he must have sensed something was wrong nonetheless.

Affirmative, he tapped back, his expression unchanged. Course of action?

Surprise attack, I said. It was the only chance to land a strike against such a skilled opponent.

Target allow (close proximity), I said. This language didn't allow me to spell out complete sentences, but my point would come across. I restrain. You kill.

Kill, he repeated, drawing out a question mark to get his point across. What he wanted to know was, what if we're wrong?

Kill, I said, emphasizing it. If we didn't come at him with the intent to kill, we would never win.

"As heartwarming as this is, we need to get a move on," Not-Motoharu said after only fifteen minutes. "Imai-san?"

"I don't feel much better, Isobe-san," I said, continuing to allow my legs to shake. It wasn't even acting, though I could have tamped down on it if I tried.

"I'll carry you, then," he decided, and I used breathing control in an attempt to keep my heartbeat down. It wasn't very successful, but hopefully he would think it was due to exertion or the drugs. Obligingly, he knelt down and presented his back to me. I climbed on, and gave Sho a meaningful glance. He nodded.

We ran, and though I was excruciatingly aware that every step took us further and further away from safety, I waited, hoping for the perfect moment to present itself. Meanwhile, I shifted my body ever so slightly, wrapping my limbs around the outside of his own.

"Stop squirming," he said, and I knew I was in the best position he would allow me to be in.

"Sho!" I barked, flooding my arms and legs with as much chakra as I safely could and squeezing with all my might. Off guard, Not-Motoharu's limbs snapped together, causing him to stumble. But before he could hit the dirt, Sho was there, kunai en route to deliver a powerful stab to the back of the neck, which I had craned my own head away from to give him an open shot.

The blade sunk in, piercing the space between the vertebrae and severing his brain stem. His limbs immediately failed, offering no resistance as his corpse flopped bonelessly to the ground. I didn't even have the presence of mind to gracefully land in a roll, painfully slamming my shoulder on the ground instead.

I could scarcely believe it. We actually succeeded! We killed a jonin!

…actually, I didn't believe it. We killed a jonin? Two not-even-officially genins? Was he a chunin after all? Was I wrong about everything, and we just killed a proctor?

"Is it over?" Sho asked shakily, his dagger trembling in his hands. We had practiced killing blows on animals before, from hunted rodents to large animals like pigs, dogs and donkeys. But, to my slight surprise, never humans. Though I admittedly wasn't the one doing the stabbing, I was pressed up against the man. I literally felt him die, felt what death did to his body. My actions in my past life had caused—at least indirectly—death, and I wasn't naive enough to think differently. But I never killed a person while they were in view. I had expected to feel something about it.

"I…I think so," I said, casting my gaze around wildly. The sheer stress mixed with the rush of the soldier pill was catching up to me. My head was spinning, and so were my surroundings. Almost like…

I dove into my canals, searching through my brain. They looked engorged and abnormal from the soldier pill, which distracted me. But then, I found something. Chakra that I couldn't manipulate directly.

I didn't have the mental capability to even think of using my genjutsu technique. I needed it out. On instinct, I pushed it through the nearest tenketsu, and my heart dropped as the world quit spinning, and the body of our abductor turned to mud.

"Sho, genjutsu!" I screamed. "It was a clone!"

"My, my," a voice said, and my eyes shot up to a tree we had passed under. Casually leaning against the trunk was a ninja wearing Motoharu's clothes. But his face no longer matched. It was far more tan, suggesting he resided somewhere that saw considerably more sunlight. Also, it was clean shaven and lacked all distinctive scars and blemishes.

"You really tried to kill me there. What if I was actually a proctor for your exam?"

I ignored the useless question. "How…how did you know?"

He arched an eyebrow. "Why in the world would I tell you that? Although, I assumed you would catch on eventually. I'm surprised it took this long—perhaps the rumors of your intelligence were exaggerated."

"Don't sell yourself short," I said to keep him talking as I edged back towards Sho. "You're obviously a decent infiltrationist, more than capable of fooling someone who isn't even a ninja yet."

"To be fair, I had my fair share of factors working against me. None so damning as time. Though I am curious; what was it that finally tipped you off?"

My lips twisted into a snarl. "Why in the world would I tell you that?"

With a pulse of chakra to the backs of my neck, arms and calves, I activated tags folded into my bandages. Immediately, thick streams of gray smoke billowed out, and trusting it to cloak me, I took off at full speed, dragging Sho behind. A loss of sight wasn't enough to throw off a jonin, so I also tossed back an exploding tag variant that I called Nijū Yoko (Double Lateral). This tag split into two parts, which shot away from one another before exploding simultaneously after a miniscule delay. Shinobi could sense the chakra released from an activated tag, so, in conjunction with a smoke screen, it was extremely punishing to anyone who sought to escape an expected single blast by dodging to either side.

I wasn't going to gamble that it even delayed the jonin in the slightest. Forcing Sho to keep pace with me, I ran with all my might.

A hand came out of the smoke, swinging at me from the direction I was headed in. It wasn't even a punch; it simply pushed me.

And I went flying.

Another arm grabbed my shoulder, and it wasn't Sho. Either the clone or the original imposter braced an arm across my neck, not choking me but keeping me planted. I wasted no time snatching another exploding tag from the folds of my bandages and brought it up to his face. It exploded violently with no time delay, the arm around me splattered into mud, and I howled in pain as my own was wrenched out of its socket.

This was one of the directioned exploding tags Gari had been so desperate for. Something that could put the power of the Landmine Fist his clan was known for into the hands of the Explosion Corps' new, non-Bakuhatsu members. It was a pipe dream; without knowledge on how his bloodline worked, I could never come close to replicating it. I had instead come up with a version that sealed away fire and kinetic energy behind the tag, though that didn't focus the blast at all. It effectively just took away half its power.

What I just used was simply the culmination of my efforts following the original prompt. It was still useful in some circumstances. And it wouldn't kill me outright if I activated one at close range, so long as I was on the right side.

I wrenched my arm back into place, and took Sho's clammy hand. My classmate had been ignored, and though he was clearly shell-shocked by all the explosions and the overall suddenness of the situation, he maintained the presence of mind to spot me through the already-closing hole in my smokescreen.

"What is this thing?" he hissed to me, referring to the smoke. I knew it was unlike anything he had ever seen; smoke bombs in the world created a cloud in the shape of a hemisphere, and they didn't pour out smoke for an extended period of time.

"It'll hide our movements," I said unnecessarily, knowing that's not what he was getting at.

"He'll make distance, and be able to figure out where we are!" By looking for the point at which the smoke was emanating.

"Trust me!" I pleaded, and though I could no longer see his face, he gave no resistance as I tugged him in a direction.

I could no longer see the stars above me, but I had used them to determine which way was north before the action started, and I had kept a mental note of my orientation since then. We needed to get back to the Land of Earth, where we could theoretically be rescued by our fellow Iwa nin. However, that was the most obvious course of action, and there was no way we could outpace a jonin. The least likely direction we could choose would be east (which would be stupid) followed by north (which would be slightly less stupid but almost as risky). Our chances were already slim to say the least, but on the off chance we could lose them, south was the best option. Hopefully, we could make it to Grass.

Just booking it in that direction wasn't good enough, however. Our only chance was to make the imposter think we were heading to Earth. To that end, I pulled out another tag, one that was extremely complicated, and took so much time and material to make that I lamented activating it at all. But if there was ever a time, it was now.

It was one of those paper shuriken, like the ones my classmates and I would make in middle school on Earth. But it was positively dripping in fuinjutsu—not just on the outsides, but in every fold and internal surface. I activated the seals inside, waited a moment, and threw it with all my might west.

I couldn't see it work, but I knew what it would do. It possessed seals that would keep it airborne for a long, long while, much longer than my strength alone could manage. And from it, smoke would flow, the same color and with just as much intensity as what was around us now. The night worked in our favor; there was less wind, which, aside from human interference, was the greatest threat to this tool's effectiveness.

As soon as the paper left my fingertips, I tapped into Sho's hand Moguragakure. We shot underground, and I guided him in the right direction. We needed to get away before the smoke dissipated.

I didn't expect to get away. I expected, at any moment, to be yanked straight out of the ground. But that didn't happen. We moved quickly, digging deeper than we ever had before, and faster too. The enemy made a mistake—he should not have given Sho a soldier pill. My classmate never would have been able to keep up otherwise. Still, he was tapping me urgently, after a while.

Air. Air.

I needed it too. The deeper it was, the harder it was to breath, and we were pushing our bodies to the absolute limit.

Suffocating underground was an ever-present threat to any practitioner of this jutsu. Even experienced users died all the time. And I didn't have the skill or the external chakra control to extend my bubble to encapsulate someone else, so if Sho needed to surface, he needed to surface.

And I couldn't let him die.

Surface, I said. We get air. Then go down.

Once again, I expected to find the jonin waiting for us as our heads breached the soil, that sardonic, patronizing smile on his face. I was, frankly, shocked to find us alone.

Despite myself, I began to feel a faint ray of hope. Though not enough to stay above ground for any significant amount of time. As soon as we caught our breath, I had us head underground once more, and we took off at the same speed.

From the lack of resistance, I was starting to think that one of my theories was correct. This wasn't about me after all; I had simply been a convenient excuse to get him out of the Land of Earth.

God. This was all my fault. Indisputably. I was going to be in so much trouble when I got back. Nothing I could say would be enough, not when my brother, a bona fide jonin of Iwagakure, ordered me to return. I was going to be sent to the genin corps for sure, and spend the rest of my life as Gari's slave.

And I'd deserve it, too.

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

When we came up for air a fourth time, I saw that the sun was beginning to rise. We'd been traveling at breakneck pace for over twenty-four hours, and my formidable chakra reserves were depleted. I couldn't use the Moguragakure any more. Don't know how the fuck Hatanaka Sho was managing it.

"Break for din—breakfast?" I gasped. Sho didn't have the capacity to say anything. We found ourselves in a bed of grasses taller than I was by a significant margin. Thank fuck—we were either in the Land of Grass or close to it.

My hands shook as I withdrew jerky and dense nutrient bars from my inventory. Each was difficult to chew, because I had little strength to spare, even in my jaw.

"Where are we?" Sho asked, and I didn't have an answer for him. I looked in every direction, but all I could see was more and more grass.

"Grass. I hope," I said. He had taken out his own storage scroll, this one standard issue. He seemed to hesitate for a second, before handing me something that he withdrew from it.

"Here," he said, handing me a slightly slimy orb. It was a marinated, hard boiled egg. "Know you like these."

It was common knowledge, since I ate three with lunch every day. The protein was good for the body, the sweet, savory marinade for the soul.

"Thank you," I said, more than a little touched. I would really have to do something nice for Sho when we got back to the village. "Do you want some of mine?"

I only packed nonperishable stuff in my inventory, because, contrary to the popular belief of many in the naruto fanfiction community, food sealed away would still go bad just as quickly.

He let out a sound that was an approximation of a chuckle. "Too much work." To unwrap and chew.

I thanked him again and bit into the soft egg. Guess Sho was a fan of spicy food, because it had a kick to it, unlike the ones I usually made. Still, it tasted divine.

We sat together in silence for a while as I felt my mental slipping. Physiologically, I felt worse than I think I ever had before in either life. I would frankly prefer agony; pain I, at least, knew how to deal with. One thing was for sure; I would never take a soldier pill ever again.

Everything around me was fading to a blur, and I fought to keep from throwing up the food I had just eaten. I needed the strength. But it was too flavorful, and it wasn't sitting well with me.

"Who takes first watch?" I asked to distract myself.

"You think you can keep watch?" Sho retorted. He wasn't asking me if I could do it first, he was asking if I was capable at all. Insinuating that he didn't think himself able.

"One of us has to," I said, though privately I felt the same way.

"It's useless. We should both sleep. The grass will cover us."

It was a compelling argument, and not just because I could already feel my mind shutting down. The grass was tall, and as we laid on the ground, we would be completely hidden. It was also extremely uncomfortable, and its strangely sharp edges reminded me of the sawgrass native to Florida. Just needed a downpour and a couple of alligators and I'd really feel at home.

I still felt the spice on my tongue. As I rubbed it against the roof of my mouth, I had a sudden realization.

"Yes, yes. The grass will do a great job in covering you," a voice that was definitely not Sho's said from out of view, and panic roared through my skull.

But there was nothing I could do. My brain was already shutting down.

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

AN: Hey again! I hope you enjoyed the chapters. Here's the important author's note.

Like I discussed in the last update, I've decided to change the name of this fic. However, I actually suck at naming things. Seriously, I've never been satisfied with a single name for anything I've ever created for anything, ever. I definitely didn't want something edgy, but for some reason, literally the only things I could come up with were rock puns.

Here are the choices so far (definitely still taking suggestions):

Rock Bottom—an Iwa story

War Never Changes—an Iwa Story

All Ore Nothing (suggested by user Apperatus on AO3)

Insert Rock Pun—an Iwa Story

A Rocky Start

Sink Like a Stone

Personally, out of these, I'm leaning towards the last one. Not only is it a rock pun, but it calls back to her death and the motif of drowning, which is recurring throughout the fic. The rest don't really have story relevance, which I would ideally like. But again, I'm never satisfied with names, so please let me know in the comments or PMs. If you think all of them are stupid, that's appreciated feedback too. Know that whatever name is picked will be accompanied by a mostly-similar but more exciting summary. One that is more appropriate in tone and excitement for this story.

Your patience is about to be rewarded. Everything you've been waiting for, you're about to get. See you next week.