"Come on, we need to deal with that fatso, if we don't, the enemy will snowball him out of control!" Jon-D turned back at the team leader who shared his worries, judging from his facial expression.
"What was that, you bastard!?" Choji's eyes whited out and turned round in blind fury as he prepared to lunge forward and tear Jon-D to shreds with his bare hands. "I'm not fat, I'm just a little chubby!"
"It would be a lot easier to deal with this threat if you knew the exact nature of our abilities prior to using them…" the male member of team Rutile who introduced himself as Portorigus during the introductory stage said.
"No, I think this is no oversight." Minato shook his head. "They're still testing what makes a good chuunin, oftentimes the team leader has little time to accommodate and introduce themselves with the abilities of their team and needs to have their team functional in no time at all. This is a simulation for just that kind of situation."
"Are you going to make your move or not?" Midare from Team Black yelled out at Team White which was discussing ways of how to deal with the impending threat of Choji more efficiently.
"Ummm… Minato-san…" Shino spoke up. "I believe the enemy has made a mistake. Why? Because Choji has walked into my elimination range."
Minato blinked a couple of times, looking over the field and then his jaw dropped – Shino was right. It was true that the Aburame needed to move first before he could attack but his movement was so slow that it would not have disturbed the plan.
"Shino, move one square forward and then eliminate Shira and Choji." Minato pointed his finger with a confident smirk as if he was a member of the Ninja Tribunal throwing accusations during the tribunal proceedings. The boy must have felt like one too.
"Wait, what?" Midare scratched his head.
"You absolute fool!" Ino flipped out. "How did you miss that? Shino's cutting pattern lit up after his first movement a couple of turns ago!"
Shino stepped forward and removed one hand from his pocket, the hand was already sinking in a living, buzzing swarm of the Aburame Kidaichu insects that formed a floaty, black mass which swiftly shaped itself after a round ball shape and moved onward at the speed of an insect's natural flight while managing to maintain the intricate formation, which wasn't all that impressive though there was an effect of intimidation in that inevitable, creeping and crawling threat.
"Secret Technique: Insect Sphere," Shino mumbled to himself, the name of his technique might have easily been missed over how the stoic young man spoke into the collar of his own coat rather than declaring the name of his jutsu with the appropriate pride.
"Damn it, I've completely missed that creepy bug guy…" Midare clutched his fingers.
"Indeed, I am quite easy to overlook, why do I act that way? Because I find that is the main talent of a shinobi." Shino declared while his insect sphere covered Shira and Choji. The squares underneath the two eliminated pieces lit up, teleporting them off of the board and a few meters behind Team White's side of the board as if the two were claimed by the enemy team after eliminating them.
"That was my plan from the beginning." Minato nodded. I placed Shino there because I counted on him being a viable long-range threat to your front lines, although you appeared to not have picked up on it and instead of protecting Shira-san, you've moved your other pieces around which confused me. Although, I must admit, when you started moving Sakura around, her potential on the board distracted me as well from my own plan. I am glad that Shino-san reminded me of that…"
The young man looked confident of his own plan and abilities but then he turned a bit shy when he explained his own folly and how he himself had committed the same mistake of overlooking Shino after realizing Sakura's role in the field and the danger she posed.
Midare looked down. To say that he looked unhappy and mad would have been a massive understatement. He was livid.
"Well, what now, cap? It's our move, you know?" Naruto wondered, looking at the leader of Team Black.
"What can we do? We had two whole pieces removed in one go. Continuing this game would be an exercise in futility at this point." Midare growled.
"What the hell are you saying!?" Naruto took a step that was dangerously close to the edge of him stepping outside of his boundaries on his own turn.
"The game ends when the "King" of the team is removed. That is why Musha-san said that there is potential in saving a great number of pieces." Midare sighed.
"True." Minato nodded and spoke up from the other side of the board. "If the team captain surrenders, his own team is likely to be removed from the game even though he would be the only one losing. I doubt that the staff would let the King save his own hide by surrendering, although it would save a great number of other teams in the process. Sometimes that's the best option in a war that carries the chance of horrific bloodshed in its future."
"Shut up," Naruto yelled out with his fist raised up and shaking. "Don't you dare surrender now, so you've lost a couple of pieces, big whoop. I'm not a big shogi or board game guy but I know one thing and it served me just fine enough – I never surrender, no matter what, you know!"
"It's true." Shigure encouraged his team leader and his own teammate as well. "All you've lost is a pair of close-range fodder. That is their intended purpose, isn't it? Now use what you still have left to do your best. We didn't make you the strategist of Team Shigure so that you bailed out on us at the first opportunity."
Meiko turned at Minato who couldn't stop his oversized grin from scarring his cute, childish face. Jon-D appeared to notice it as well.
"What's your business, captain? Don't you think the grin is a bit too early, as Shigure said, we've only claimed a pair of pawns." Jon-D wondered.
"True. I also think that the decision to prolong the game after such a notable mistake would be reckless and too costly. If I was in Midare-san's shoes, I might have reached a whole different decision…" Minato shrugged.
"Hey, hey, you pale-skinned shrimp, don't you dare surrender, no matter how badly you get your ass kicked, you hear!?" Spyder-Wolf turned to his team leader in shock of such a declaration.
"Although…" Minato breathed in deep, his young chest lifted up and inflated, almost reaching the wide and encompassing the entire village's worries size it would have in the future of his universe, "I must admit, there's a lot to respect in the toughness and foolhardiness of never giving up too."
"Hmph, you have quite a frightening piece there, Minato." Midare smiled, brushing his two fingers over his chin with a showy facial gesture, almost like he knew something the enemy did not. "Even right now, you could have Shino advance one more space next turn and eliminate Mijin and me, ending the game at once. You've cornered me into losing a piece either way for I must move forward to avoid my inevitable elimination next turn."
"Indeed." Minato nodded. "Shino-san is an impressive piece on the board, just like Choji-san was on your team."
"Then… Perhaps Naruto-san was right, there needs to be something for Yamanaka Ino of Team Asuma to do as well."
"Wait, you don't intend on…" Minato took a small, staggering step forward.
"Sacrifice her?" Midare shrugged. "Make no mistake, Minato, I will sacrifice any and any number of pieces but placing her in front of myself will do me no good – it would only make Shino eliminate three pieces instead of two next turn. No… What I have in mind for the Yamanaka girl is something different entirely…"
Further to the right of the board, a laying young woman sneezed and woke up from a hazy slumber, scratching her sleepy eyes with her knuckles and observing the madness of a handful of teams having assembled onto the game board and playing a real-life board game with one another.
"About time you would wake up…" Meiko grumbled to herself, alerting the returned to consciousness leader of Team Hokage that her own team was involved in this game too.
"Now, Ino Yamanaka, would you please move diagonally, right in front of me?" Midare made it a game by asking Ino nicely even though he had absolute control over what piece moved where. As prompted, Ino made the appropriate move and stood in front of Shino, on the third square ahead of her.
"B-But you said…" Minato got worked up in confusion. The captain of the enemy team just declared that he would not be sacrificing pieces and yet he did just that – put Ino right in front of him. Sure, she might have had a long-range for her attack but surely Midare could not have counted for Ino's range to extend three whole squares?
As expected, Ino's elimination range was even worse than that of most close-range figures. Whereas most normal close-range pieces could eliminate a piece right in one square distance anywhere in front of them, behind them, to their sides or diagonally, Ino could only eliminate someone one square in front, behind or to any of her two sides, ruling out diagonal elimination altogether.
However, there was a frightening orange streak that covered the entire board ahead of her, ranging right from the square ahead of Ino all the way to Shino on the board's middle and Takanami Senka of the Three Senka Brothers on the end of the board's middle.
"That shut you up?" Midare wondered, extending his own hand over the board with matching confidence to Minato's when he claimed two of his pieces. "Now, Ino, work your magic, take over that piece with your Yamanaka hijutsu!"
"Umm… Mind-Body Switch Jutsu!" Ino extended her hands out in a hand seal position and sent her consciousness floating ahead, bumping straight into the invisible wall of the square she was standing on. "Boss… I don't think I can just take over pieces like that…" she chuckled with an embarrassed look on her face.
"Ugh… I'm teamed up with utter idiots, you know…" Naruto shriveled, noting to himself and keeping the irony of being the most sensible member on his team to himself, something that would have been found surprisingly mature by any bystander that knew Naruto to be thinking that, especially for him.
"M-Minato-san…" Shino twitched, he tried to move around but was evidently frozen in place. Ino might not have done what Midare had instructed her to do but she did do something. "I… I don't think I've been taken but I am not stunned either… Why? Because I am turning around and preparing my attack…"
"Wait… Yeah, I guess that does make sense." Ino snapped her fingers. "I can't just take over pieces because that's not quite how my jutsu works, but I can have the piece attack its own team as a disturbance strategy."
"Secret Technique: Insect Sphere," Shino mumbled while unleashing the insect sphere on his own team's side. Jon-D, Senka Takanami and Vespiga from Team Rutile covered themselves up as they became coated with layers of chakra-consuming parasitic insects and teleported off the board.
Minato looked concerned temporarily but then he turned back at Midare, who was biting his nails in distress. Despite the crushing move from the side of Midare, eliminating three whole pieces in one move, both team captains knew just what this development meant.
"I did good, huh, captain?" Ino turned to Midare with a cheerful smile, "Would you say I am, perhaps, the top star of my entire team? Certainly better than Sakura, at least…"
"You stupid bimbo!" Midare yelled out, having lost all traces of composure, "Don't you realize what this means!? Without taking over Shino, you're useless to me! I've just doomed myself now! Shino will just eliminate all three of us the next turn anyway!"
Ino turned around, realizing that, since Shino stayed on the same square, he could have just sent another insect sphere Team Black's way and eliminated Mijin, Midare and, now, her too. Midare had one way of avoiding a certain, forceful and violent end to the board game – by moving himself away from Shino's range and sacrificing Mijin of Team Sajin but he chose to risk it for the potential reward of claiming this profound piece to himself.
"So you've lost… But you have to work on that tone, buddy!" Ino wrapped her arms over her chest with a scorned expression while she pouted her lips. She at least felt glad that Midare would get booted out from the exam while Team Asuma would continue since Sakura still would have remained on the board. If anyone should have taken responsibility for this game and gotten kicked to the curb – it was the team leader so this whole thing just felt kind of right to her.
"Shino, please move one space forward and eliminate Midare-san, Ino-san, and Mijin-san." Minato declared the order but Shino just twitched again.
"I'm afraid I cannot do that, Minato-san, why? Because I can't move." Shino explained, unable to face his team captain because he still felt rooted in place and frozen.
"There seems to be more to the ability of Yamanaka Ino that we've seen. The piece she has afflicted cannot move as well." Sazanami Senka turned at Minato with a rather simple explanation of the obvious.
"We need to remove that creepy bug guy off the board, he's too much of a loose cannon!" Spyder-Wolf turned back at Minato as well. "If the blonde moves him to the right, he could eliminate four whole pieces, amongst which is Jean-D, that would leave me – the expendable pawn as the only member of my team on board. I won't let you throw this game!"
"Calm down, Spyder-Wolf-san," Minato pleaded with the powerhouse giant of Team Nimbus. "We don't know for sure if Ino-san can even move the pieces around. Last turn she just used Shino-san's elimination without even moving him, which should be an illegal move. I don't think she can move pieces around, which means that she only has a barren space to have Shino attack in."
"Plus, she'll be stuck in her current position this way, she'll have to keep her eyes on Shino because Shino can just eliminate her team leader and win the game if she doesn't keep him pinned down with her ability." Meiko pointed out in a shocking moment of brightness from her.
"That's a good point, Meiko-san." Minato agreed.
"What can I say, I work alongside a Yamanaka too, you come to learn a thing or two…" Meiko scratched her itchy nose making it contrast the shade of her blushing face.
"Alright, so what's our game plan now, genius?" Spyder-Wolf growled, clearly ticked off by how Minato was running things.
"Kushina-san, please move one square forward." Minato pointed, letting his other teammate enter the board at last.
Meiko found it admirable that Minato was willing to put his whole team on the line and send out both of his teammates out like that. It was almost like he acknowledged the tremendous responsibility that Team White entrusted him with and put his own head on the block, rushing on into the brawl whenever he found the chance, then again, Minato himself remained safe in the corner, for now.
When the red lights lit up on the squares, telegraphing Kushina's eliminating pattern, the entire Team White reacted to the revelation of how powerful of a piece this tomboyish redhead truly was. She was able to eliminate pieces one square ahead of her as well as two squares diagonally in each direction, leaving her just one square short of being able to remove Yome from Team Shira off the board.
"Naruto, let's see what you can do…" Midare sighed, his eyes kept wandering off to Ino, the complete inability to predict how the Yamanaka's skill worked for real caused him a great deal of a headache. He had contemplated for a brief moment about having Ino repeat her movements from the last turn just to keep Shino in place but that would have locked his team into a perpetual dance of having to sacrifice any moves to keep Shino rooted and if that truly was the only way to play this, then Team Black had already lost. Fueled by these thoughts, the leader of Team Black decided to move his pieces around and count on Ino being able to keep Shino rooted in place for the duration of the Yamanaka piece not being moved or used.
Green squares lit up around Naruto, signaling that his movement patterns weren't all that unusual from the other pieces but he had orange spaces ahead of him, all lined up, piquing Midare's curiosity enough for him to call out for Naruto to use that skill. Just like that, a trio of Naruto clones appeared in front of the original piece. Each one of the clones appeared to have an elimination pattern one square ahead of them. That was a useful skill, one that allowed Team Black to express their claim for three whole pieces a few turns in the future while protecting their own front lines.
"Kushina-san, move one space forward and eliminate one clone and Yome," Minato ordered without hesitation.
"Yes-sir, ya know!" Kushina yelled out with excitement while walking out and clapping her hands together. A trio of large chains with a shine of golden aura around them erupted from the abdomen of the young woman and penetrated Naruto's clone and hit Yome straight in the gut as well, teleporting the little girl off the board while merely dispelling Naruto's clone.
"Ya know…" Naruto mumbled to himself. He felt like there was something familiar to the verbal tick that the redhead used, somehow not having put it together still, despite seeing the woman working on the same team with his father… Meiko couldn't help but smirk at the clueless buffoon but she saw the brightening in his eyes that suggested that the young man was beginning to put two and two together in his head.
"Both of Naruto's clones, move ahead and eliminate Kushina!" Midare ordered without skipping a beat, similarly to Minato's ruthless jab during his turn. The ninja board game was beginning to heat up with pieces lost on both sides of the board and jarring, seemingly game-ending moves being exchanged from both sides of the board. While most of the pieces were still on the board, with heart-aimed thrusts like those last few turns, nobody truly knew when the game would end for real.
"What are you waiting for? Eliminate that troublesome girl! Her elimination patterns are way too dangerous!" Midare ordered Naruto again since the young man just stood still there, looking at the square under his feet with a blank stare.
