The dash away from just another attack from the local fauna was not a lengthy one. Granted, it was not easy to tell exactly how far away the three girls had moved, it could've been solid twenty to thirty kilometers, could've been anywhere below that. Judging from how eagerly Kiyomi looked ahead, she wanted to get as far away from Galateia and other useless fights as possible.
Meiko's loud grunting and wheezing made the trio reconsider their grandiose plans for covering grand distances. After realizing that they weren't going anywhere Mana slowed her pace down to get closer to Meiko and signaled her that the three of them were going on the lower levels with her eyes. While the injured blacksmith took some sweet time to follow Mana, it was Kiyomi's annoyed grunt that truly worried the magician.
Once the three had reached the ground floor Mana and Kiyomi carefully aided Meiko to sit by the tree. It was only then that the magician saw her friend's clothes underneath the armor drenching in blood which made her ask for the blacksmith to remove them. Meiko's movements were a bit sloppy and slow, it was painfully clear that she was combatting blood loss and dizziness. A few more dashes and she'd have bumped head on right into a tree and plummeted down the fast and direct way.
"How much chakra did you use?" Mana inquired noticing some familiar symptoms in Meiko's blue lips and bloodshot eyes.
"Probably more than half…" the blacksmith shrugged.
"Doesn't look like more than half, looks more like more than half more than what you should've used in any reasonable fight." Kiyomi expressed her own less than expert medical opinion. Despite her lack of expertise she was right.
Meiko's gut wound was no longer spitting blood, almost immediately once the kunoichi stopped moving around the wound's bleeding ratio diminished almost a dozen times. While it looked like she was hit by a large scale mining drill as the magician's fingers could've fit halfway into the mess that Galateia's weaponry made of Meiko's lower abdomen, it was not something a ninja couldn't survive and recover from over time.
"Keep watch. I'll treat this." Mana sighed before taking Kiyomi's own ninja pouch and removing some bandages from it. The magician lacked medical supplies of her own, she was too busy filling her hidden pockets and hat seal with gimmick cards to have any.
"No. I'll treat Meiko, you keep watch!" Kiyomi whipped Mana back carrying a surprising spice of passion in her voice. Despite having no idea what that was all about the magician shrugged and allowed the bandages to be bullied off of her.
Scaling up a tree wasn't that difficult nor did it take too long, still, feeling uneasy about using the Art of Tree Climbing – an unoriginal technique the magician quickly used her own Mystical Wings to levitate onto the upper layers. Honestly she'd have preferred Kiyomi keeping watch, she had more ways of effectively intercepting an attack, also more experience in general.
Subconsciously Mana knew why she wanted Kiyomi's assistance in this aspect and not the other – her friend had no qualms about hurting people badly or killing them if needed. She was nothing like Mana nor, it turned out, like Meiko, who kind of felt lukewarm about Mana's non-lethal approach.
The magician just sighed, breathing was not easy at this moment – a result of two desperate abuses of speed augmentations. She couldn't even begin to wonder how Meiko must've felt now, she not only dashed around at speeds that weren't really recommended to be used by younger ninja but she also sustained a full-on fight with an almost equal opponent.
Things were about to get even more complicated, likely they'll get worse but hopefully the saying about things getting difficult and the result afterwards would carry out both parts of its bargain. Mana was afraid to think of how it ended since she didn't want to jinx it.
A trio of ninja leaped gracefully from one strong and thick branch to another. A short casually dressed young lady turned at her teammates looking at them with curiosity.
"So any of you got anyone we know?" she asked
The sword wielding and denim loving Kouta's teammate shook his head. He looked at his teammates who also shared his lack of knowledge of whom exactly they'd be fighting.
"Zahafbit, Team Pahlavi from Sunagakure." the young swordsman spoke up showing his file face up to his teammates.
"Relta Ginn, Team Scuti from Hoshigakure." The kunoichi answered in return before the sights of the two lingered on Kouta who was deep in thought. After noticing that his team was curious and beginning to get a bit worried about his pull he shyly smiled and shook his palms in a pacifying manner.
"Trest Bregger, Team Kyanite from Iwagakure. Seems we lucked out…" Kouta smiled. "No one will have to fight someone they know and don't want to fight."
"Like your girlfriend?" Budoki, Kouta's female teammate teased him. "I hope you won't dash off to check up on her…" she locked her arms around her chest while raising an eyebrow.
"No. She's kind and likes helping people but she doesn't need being guided. My father thinks that's stupid and makes her weak but I like that. She weakens herself by limiting what she can do. Always exposing her weaknesses to everyone and as a result she grows stronger than people who don't. If I checked on her or even tried to contact her she'd probably get mad at me…" Kouta laughed out uneasily.
"Plus we can't know if she or her team didn't get your name on their file. Also, obviously, this is a test of skill which means if you guided her through it you'd only lead her to an untimely death on a battlefield she wasn't ready for. Tests are there for a reason, you know, and cheating hurts the cheater more than the examiner." His male teammate nodded in agreement. "Plus, she's not the only one purposefully limiting herself with artificial challenges…" he lingered on that thought.
"I thought we were already past this, Yushijin. I won't use my Curse Seal. I'd also very gladly only serve a supporting role in this, healing you after the fighting is done. It's not like you can't take care of the opposition…" Kouta pouted. His eyes weren't eyes of an expression of playful distaste, they were dead serious.
"I thought your clan was one of warriors. All I'm saying is that you're restraining yourself needlessly, weren't you training with your father almost every time we came to visit you? You're wasting that time you've spent doing it."
"Don't assume to know anything about Juugo. Even I used to hide behind a fake name just because I didn't know my clan well enough, only what I saw in my father, for years. Restraint is our mantra, my father is the odd one out. Every single one of our living members is taught restraint and pacifistic ways from birth. My mother went out of her way to have me spend years amongst my people. Do you know what happens to the likes of my father? Young hotshots who fight needlessly and enjoy the destruction they cause? The elders execute them, that's because they cannot allow to be identified as a violent and threatening clan to Iwagakure ever again…"
The trio just kept on moving in silence. The eerie atmosphere gripped all three of them by the throat. The knowledge of what was done to the Juugo clan by Iwagakure was not common one but due to having a representative of the clan in their team both Budoki and Yushijin knew about it. A genocide unlike any other, ended because the perpetrators themselves felt sickened by their own actions and yet one that could break out at any given point all over again if one bad seed ever got out of line.
"Look…" Budoki finally broke out of the mean shade that messed up the friendly atmosphere around them. Kouta pushed her out of his way, jets spread off of his feet blasting chakra from them and raising him above his team to intercept an upcoming attack.
A colossal fireball so immensely blazing that it wasn't interrupted or detonated by any barriers in its way, it simply incinerated them by its astounding heat. Kouta thrust his arms upwards, chakra cannons split off from his arms firing beams of concentrated chakra blasts at it that barely looked like it did anything to the upcoming destruction.
Yushijin darted past the medical ninja and caught the blazing ball of flaming gas by his own hands. The chakra so intensely focused into his palms formed a barrier that stopped the gas in its path whereas normally it'd have simply swallowed Yushijin whole and incinerated him not unlike all rock and trees or wild predators that got in its way.
The blast stopped in a deadlock, slowly the genin swordsman removed one of his arms which reached for the sword on his back and quickly pulled it out cutting an opening into the flames. The young man pressed on pushing his blade onwards deeper into the blazing inferno before splitting the superheated ball of fire in half.
"This is no ordinary Fire Release technique…" Budoki gasped looking on ahead and trying to locate the assailants. Kouta and Yushijin landed beside her.
"My, my… All three of us put so much love into this technique, surely, we thought, this compacted heat mass, split amongst the three of you, would singe you guys up and take you out." a young teen with shoulder length greasy black as tar hairdo sighed as he hung on the very top and some of the weakest branches of the tree-line.
"What is this?" Kouta growled observing the fact that there were indeed four of the assailants: the greasy and untidy haired boy, a dark and gothic clothes loving young lady with an obsession with white and black make up and eye piercing hair dye and a tall and bulky young man with blonde hair worn in a ponytail and dead inside looking eyes. The fourth member of the team wore a red dress and the signature Iwagakure jonin uniform – a young woman with long black hair and the red bandanna that the Iwagakure ninja often wore.
"Is that… Their sensei, accompanying them!?" Budoki shouted out in disbelief. "We need to get out of here, no way can we take on a jounin!"
"Nor can we escape from one…" Yushijin looked down before strictly turning his attention back at the attackers. "If that woman also joined in on the Fire Release attack she'd have boosted its temperature ten times of what it had before. They'd have knocked us out instantly blowing any augmentations of ours away."
"You're saying the reason she didn't join in and beat us, like an ambushing party would ideally act, was because she couldn't?" Budoki wondered.
"Hey! What's the meaning of this? Why do you have your sensei accompanying you? Is this a trick of some sort?" Kouta shouted out at the quartet that continued to eye at them from above.
The jounin woman closed her eyes in annoyance and shook her head. "No. My signature is being followed closely at all times. I'm here to keep an eye on this young girl. She is on notice and to be very closely observed, I will not interfere into the battle unless the conditions fit the scenario where I was allowed to interfere."
"You mean there's a scenario where you're reasonably allowed to take us out by the examiner?" Yushijin raised his eyebrow. Fear was beginning to slowly stun his facial muscles.
"Oh no, you misunderstand. I will not be fighting you, I will be taking out my own team. You see, this young lady here is the rebellious kind with a very suicidal personality. Two years ago, when she crossed the planetary barrier, she purposefully didn't control her abilities which would've destroyed our very world. For that reason I am to closely watch her so that she doesn't try it again…"
The eyes of the three Konoha genin gapped open wide in shock. A lot of ninja were capable of otherworldly destruction if they didn't control their abilities properly. Chakra was a universal force that tied the entire universe together therefore control was valued more than flat out destructive potential. No one had ever heard of a ninja that purposefully didn't focus their attack exactly onto the body of their opponent and not the surrounding environment.
The loud sound of laughter made Kouta snap out and look at his swordsman teammate.
"In other words, you won't interfere with our fight." Yushijin finally restrained his laughter and got serious. "You must be after one of us, which means that by taking you guys out of this exam one of us will be guaranteed survival of this round. Our strategy actually was to wait until we are attacked until we can take out at least two of our hunters – guaranteeing our team's survival. Who would've known we'd be so lucky!" he smiled wickedly.
"We'd have been even luckier if one of them was a person of our own interest. Still, this is just fine." Budoki shrugged before relaxing her body and taking a dive backwards aiming to disappear in the vast dark green cover of the leaves, bushes and vines.
"And there she goes taking the support role…" Kouta sighed before taking an offensive fighting stance besides his teammate.
A flesh cutting sound following a wild spray of crimson bodily fluids cut into the boys own assault. Further away, the long tongued greasy haired punk got cut down by Yushijin's sword. The scared eyes of the young man that couldn't understand how the genin swordsman had moved in what seemed an instant and his twitching in shock body fell on his back and tumbled down hitting multiple thick tree branches and flipping over them only to continue its fast journey down.
Despite just seeing one of their teammates being cut down, the goth girl didn't respond at all nor did her face betray any emotions. She just raised her foot telegraphing a powerful stomp as her arms worked on hand seals. The ponytail behind Yushijin had wide and shocked eyes and a verily gapping mouth but he did not utter a word.
Sealing glyphs lit up on the ponytail shinobi's palms which unsealed two daggers sealed inside them, his grip didn't wield them as daggers were to be wielded, instead he gripped them upwards like one would hold a blade before repositioning his thumbs to wield the knives in an almost scalpel-like grip. He aimed for a precise cut at Yushijin's throat only for a steel wire to gently yank the swordsman out of the way.
Without uttering a word the scalpel wielding ponytail shinobi dived down after his opponent. The goth girl, after stopping her own technique mid-way, followed him after stabbing a wire tied kunai on the branch she was on only for the team's jounin leader to follow her closely. The woman shadowed her pupil but her stance was neutral and overly full of openings, it was clear she was merely watching over the angsty young lady and didn't intend to protect her from being defeated.
Kouta angrily growled before placing his palms onward.
"Chakra Missiles!" he yelled out firing small blasts of pure chakra at the gothic chick that followed her down.
The young lady yanked her improvised landing tool pulling herself up to avoid the location where Kouta predicted her to be but the chakra projectiles turned up at the last moment detonating on impact as the change of their trajectory was simply too quick and unexpected to avoid. A deafening scream finally made the Iwagakure kunoichi show some emotion.
Kouta's body straightened out and tensed, like a cat waiting to pounce, his excited eyes followed his opponent plummeting down before snapping out of his battle high. The youth's eyes turned away in embarrassment, he pressed his knuckles tightly by his thighs as his breathing raced. The medical ninja slowed it down trying to calm himself down. This wasn't who he was, not who he wanted to be. Not like his father… Never like his father.
A loud tree rustling sound woke him up, a large falling log smacked the greasy haired genin away by slamming at him at the side as he tried to sneak up on Kouta from behind. Must've been Budoki's doing, she liked to just disappear and set traps for people. She was good at supporting him and Yushijin from behind… Kouta had no time to mess around, he needed to get his shit together and get back into the game.
"Ma'am! Team Pyrite from Iwagakure just engaged Team Fir. Zircon Trot, a genin from Team Pyrite is trying to take out his target – Juugo Kouta!" one of the heavy headgear wearing sensory display tracking ninja reported.
"Everyone's really passive about this… Maybe we should've given them a time limit?" Shibari bit her lip.
"Team Pyrite suffered minor injuries, their chakra levels dipped significantly."
"How's the… That girl, Jord Kvasir. The one that didn't channel her chakra right on purpose." Shibari inquired.
"Seems to be behaving."
"Well, I suppose if Iwagakure believed her to be a threat they would've never allowed her to take the Exams… And how's Yoruma Galateia?"
"Her chakra level is reaching critical but she appears to be moving, albeit slowly. Will you be intercepting, ma'am?"
Shibari checked her ninja pouch before walking up to the entrance, a young chuunin rushed up to open the gate for her. The woman didn't even wait for the gate to open completely, just as the gap between the two steel chunks was large enough she just disappeared into the darkness of the forest. Another chuunin took of the headgear and was substituted by the door opening chuunin and assumed command in Shibari's absence.
"Report!" he barked out an order.
"Shibari-san is moving in really fast… The chakra signature of Galateia Yoruma has faded, that of her accomplice however just flared up. His distress gave him a small boost…"
"This is Hozuki Shibari we are talking about, a Konohagakure Jounin. Yoruma Galateia is just a footnote in the Bingo Book, barely even worth her own entry, her accomplice doesn't even have his own bounty, just a boost to Galateia's." the substitute commanding officer remarked.
"Report! Both Galateia Yoruma and her accomplice have been taken out, both of them are moving in to the gate, Shibari-san is so fast!"
"Oh well… I suppose I better get ready to strain my neck with that giant thing again." The commanding officer massaged his aching neck muscles before switching with the young chuunin who just rushed in to open the gate.
From the open gate, completely unscathed stepped out Hozuki Shibari with the unconscious bodies of Aoi and Galateia floating in a large water bubble. Most of Gwido's body was submerged in it as well, just his silly looking head was sticking out.
"Contact the Administration, request a pickup." Shibari stretched her body out like after a good warm up.
"Ma'am!" the entirety of the sensory signal tracking corps replied in unison.
