One thing that neither of the three teams working in a makeshift squad expected once the wooden doors leading to a complex of dressing rooms slid open was to see a young and spry boy in spiky yellow hair and an orange and blue tracksuit wriggling on the ground all tied up while another ninja with spiky, dark hair and an apathetic expression on his face rested on a nearby bench with one of his feet holding his own teammate down.

"Umm… Don't you have any questions for these guys, leader?" Meiko pressed her arms to her hips and turned to Kiyomi.

"I do have several but… Right now I'd just rather watch and see where this goes…" Kiyomi smirked with a blush on her cheeks. Not even the fact that one of the two was an Uchiha, a clan that Kiyomi wasn't on the best terms when one looked from either side, didn't spoil her fun.

"Ugh! You're a disgrace to Naruto everywhere, you know!" Naruto flipped his hands up while staring at a younger version of himself struggling to get out of his bindings.

"Shut up, you know!" the bound Naruto yelled out with a much more irritating and wide-spreading voice. Who would have known that Naruto actually became more reserved and wiser over the years? To anyone who has met the young man, it might have appeared the other way around.

Neji placed his hands together and opened his Byakugan. He ran a quick scan over the version of Sasuke holding Naruto down. Then his eyes fixed on something behind the wooden door by Sasuke's left that the pair appeared to be safeguarding and Neji promptly closed his Byakugan with a nervous look on his face.

"This Sasuke is the real deal. That is all I am willing to say at this moment…" he mumbled.

"He peeked, he totally peeked, you know!" the bound Naruto began rolling on the floor, due to how difficult it turned to keep a foot down on him in his tireless expression of hilarity, Sasuke let go of his teammate and let him just roll around.

"Sasuke…" the Naruto from Team Hokage mumbled to himself, looking at his teammate. "What's going on here, you know?"

"We've encountered a pair of hunters with Konoha headbands, an Aburame and a Yamanaka, the two worked in a pair. We managed to beat them and flee before any more hunters were drawn to the noises of our battle. Sakura decided that the best course of action would be for us to rest and regroup here, she insisted on taking a bath too and this dweeb decided to peek…" Sasuke squinted down at the more bratty version of Naruto who just pouted his lips and blew out his cheeks while turning his eyes away.

"Forgive me if I missed some details but… This hardly seems like a time to take a bath!" Rock Lee argued, easily rising to the challenge of kid Naruto in terms of energy one spoke with.

"Shut up, Bushy Brows! If you fought some creepy bug guy that made your body go all purple, the bath would be your first idea too, you know! Plus, we were in the vicinity anyway!" Naruto yelled at Lee, looking distraught that he could not shake his fist at the youth.

"Look, it's all very cool and not at all creepy to see two dupes of the same guy talking to one another, not even clones, mind you, despite clones being the guy's whole schtick… But we have to move, don't we?" Mouza grumbled. The bulky man and his Kirigakure headband attracted the attention of young Sasuke though, having in mind that both Team Guy and a team hosting older and arguably wiser Naruto worked with them, the young Uchiha didn't raise any arguments just yet.

"What is your game plan anyway?" Tenten wrapped her arms over her chest.

"After resting? We'll go right back out there and claim our prize. Then we'll go back and win. This buffoon wouldn't understand any plan more complex than that…" Sasuke beamed lightning bolts from his eyes aimed right at the younger Naruto.

"Shut up! Acting all high and mighty, you know! For your information, you better believe Sakura-chan will be peeking at you bathing too!" kid Naruto yelled right back at his teammate.

"That's why we'll be bathing one at a time…" Sasuke closed his eyes and realized with a bitter look on his face that Naruto might have been right.

"So… Those guys were your team, huh?" Mouza could hardly contain the rising impulse to crack while giving Naruto some quirky looks.

"I must admit, I do agree with Mouza, dysfunctional doesn't even begin to describe it…" Toro nodded.

"Nah, it might have seemed that way but… When push came to shove, we were surprisingly effective, you know…" Naruto smirked with a nostalgic grin while he drowned in memories of the past after leaving his own past reflections as well as those of his best friend behind just a couple of moments ago.

"Well… That Sakura girl must be a real G-R-E-A-T kunoichi to glue that mess together." Guna spoke up after staying quiet through the whole awkward ordeal with Team 7. "What are her abilities?"

"She umm… Well… She's… Sakura-chan, you know…" Naruto scratched his chin.

"I… Don't and… I am beginning to believe I don't very much want to anymore." Guna lowered the beak of her top hat to cover up as much as her eyes as possible so that she could hide her embarrassment for Naruto by association better though given how much effort she put into that, she just sort of emphasized it.

"They beat a pair of hunters and slipped away before more could attack them, they must have been doing something right…" Meiko put the dot at the end of that sentence.

"Hmph… It's odd how there are no hunters in the vicinity." Neji noted after scanning their surroundings with his Byakugan.

"Heh, guess all the criminals and scumbags avoid these kinds of places, even though they're pretty tight resting spaces, you know…" Naruto snickered, likely because he was imagining a frightening criminal from his past hanging around the Hot Springs.

"Well… We're off that way." Neji pointed at a tiny bridge leading over a steamy aquatic pathway that reflected the limited sunlight of a dying day with a gleam of a Caribbean glow. "Hope to see you in the next rounds."

"Yeah!" Naruto nodded.

"It has been an honor seeing your maturity. It inspired me to work even harder than my absolute 100% limit! I'll push myself to 150%, no – 200% even!" Rock Lee yelled out while raising a fist up for a bump. Naruto answered that.

"Hey, I'll be expecting those sealing scrolls I borrowed you back, you know, nobody likes a deadbeat rival," Tenten winked at Meiko.

"Whatever, once we finally get a break in-between rounds, let's meet up so I can teach you how to use a weapon and how to make your own, your shit's embarrassing, really." Meiko winked back.

"Wow, what… Was that? It made me feel a bit jealous, won't lie…" Kiyomi turned to Meiko.

Before Meiko could say anything, Toro approached Kiyomi and rolled out the map that he had taken from the offices where they bumped into Team 7, pointing at a specific area of the map. It was not the map for the entirety of the village meant for tourists that had to decide on their next destination after the time of their life resting at the Hot Springs, this was the smaller scale schematic of the entirety of the Hot Springs district.

"I was thinking, those are sewers, correct?" Toro asked.

"In a way. They're channels connecting the source of hot mineral water to various specific locations across the district. It's a way to be effective about village planning without having to become a slave to the natural veins to the underground spring veins." Kiyomi nodded. "I believe you would find them nowhere near as filthy as a sewer. It's an overwhelming smell of Sulphur all around you. Takes some getting used to."

"Really? I always thought it smells a bit like eggs…" Meiko wondered in a rhetorical manner.

"Hey, what's your scheme, slim?" Mouza turned to his fishy-featured teammate.

"You're planning to use those sewers, aren't you?" Guna realized.

"Not a sewer…" Kiyomi pointed out again.

"Indeed." Toro nodded, completely ignoring Kiyomi's note. "I believe that the concealed nature of the underground mineral water channels might hide us from our pursuers, at least most of them. It would be like traversing indoors except we'd be traveling that way for the entire time we're in Konoha."

"Do they lead to A-N-Y of the village gates?" Guna wondered to which Toro had to shake his head. "Oh well, some protection is better than none…" she then concluded.

"Well then, in that case, we'll need to take that bridge…" Toro pointed his long and wet-looking finger at a bridge on a distant floating platform, located a few blocks from where the two teams were at the moment.

"It's goodbye then." Kiyomi realized.

"More like a S-E-E Y-O-U L-A-T-E-R," Guna smirked.


"Well… All on our own again then, you know." Naruto stated while Team Hokage stood in front of a wide opening in a wooden barrier surrounding the Hot Springs district, leading back into the main streets of the village. "Back in my place, this street leads to Amaguriyama…"

"It still does." Meiko nodded. "Traversing through the main street will be a pain though. Those will be full of hunters and if we bother fighting back we'll just be alerting more on our tails."

"If one hears you out, they'd get the impression that you're worried about running into the enemy…" Kiyomi smirked. "If we take this street, we'll cover one-third of the village before getting to Amaguriyama."

"Nah, there will be hunters out in the streets, there will be hunters lurking in alleyways and crawling in crevices around buildings too. I'm getting sick of running." Meiko exclaimed in a grumpy voice. "Running from and around hunters sent us flying all the way to the west of the village without progressing at all, this won't get us anywhere!"

"Alright!" Naruto punched his own palm with excitement. "Then let's charge right through, you know!"

Making a dash past the street leading to Amaguriyama felt quiet, almost too quiet. There didn't appear to be any immediate threats in sight nor any signs of trap or ambush that either of the members of Team Hokage could pick up on. Losing Neji and his environment-scanning eyes was a noticeable loss but if they ran into a whole bunch of nothing on their way to the select location for tea and sweets of the village losing the support of Team Guy was hardly an apocalyptic scenario.

Plus, if they had to rely on another team to do their work for them, they weren't much of a team and likely didn't even deserve any success in the Exams, to begin with.

"Hmmm…" Meiko stared at the jewel of Konoha Tea Avenue with the dazed expression that Kiyomi knew all too well.

"You're hungry again, aren't you?" Kiyomi shook her head.

"What do you mean again? I never complained about being hungry and I've been hungry this whole time, it's one continuous process of starvation, not something that comes and goes…" Meiko pointed out as if she was lecturing about advanced math here.

"We have food pills, they're not just medicinal, you know…" Kiyomi put her hands over her hips, seeing if she could avoid paying the little shop of sweets and tea a visit and waste time here seeing Meiko stuffing her belly while running into more and more risk of running into something. Even a single hunter or a group of weaker hunters could cost them a whole, inescapable chain of never-ending battles for their lives.

"Yeah, but they're bland and those that aren't are flat out disgusting to eat. There's some actual food inside and it smells really good and there's nobody to eat all of it!" Meiko pointed at the alluring shadow and gloom inside the shop. "It's got all the dango, Kiyomi, all the dango!"

"I can't believe we're being bullied into this…" Kiyomi shook her head.

"Hey, I'm more of a ramen guy myself but I wouldn't mind down some sweets for the road, you know…" Naruto shrugged, appearing indifferent toward the entire process. That was just great. As if now was the best time for the knucklehead to act indifferent for the first time in his life!

"Fine, we just pop our heads in, Meiko grabs her dango for the road and…" Kiyomi groaned while she slid the cloth covers leading into the small and cozy sweet shop.

"I'm telling you right now, brat, stop stuffing your face with those pastries and let's go hunt. It's enough trouble as it is that we got involved in all of this, we won't be able to go back to our universe and return you home to Kara if we don't fight!" a husky and enhanced by cybernetics voice croaked at a tattooed young man stuffing his face with dango straight out from the various open compartments, judging from the extent of the boy's passion for sweets, he did not differentiate between dough and completed sweets either.

Kiyomi's face turned sour one degree of sourness at a time, shriveling almost within the observer's view as she shifted between trying to flip out on Meiko and trying to deal with the fact they just bumped into a pair of hunters for humoring the blacksmith's affinity for food.

"See? We don't need to go anywhere…" the young man with dull, grey eyes that possessed the stare of a killer and thick, black hair that was shaved by the sides and dyed blond, donning earrings and tattoos in excess not only for his age but any age in general declared. "The trouble came to us, so if you care that much about going back to that Hell, go deal with it!"

"You, ungrateful fucking brat!" the voicebox wearing companion of the sweet-toothed young man rolled back his rough cloak, revealing what appeared to be a cybernetic enhancement arm of some sort. While the concept of the arm could not have been that far out, the craftsmanship and bother for pristine appearances revealed it to be more than just conveyor standard-issue prosthetic.

"What's that? You want me to knock the other jaw off too, Garo?" the boy turned back to his companion, a description of the relationship between the two that, frankly, Kiyomi was beginning to have doubts with the more time passed seeing the two interact with one another. Despite his messy face, jam and chocolate being smeared all over his lips and cheeks, he still had the stare that could make one go pale with panic.

"Tsk… Of all the impudent…" the half-man, half-cyborg named Garo took a slow and steady step toward the boy but then froze after noticing Meiko sitting right by his side and stuffing her own face too.

"Oh… You like the dough too? That's too bad though, they don't usually let you eat that here but when my mom makes dango she always leaves a bowl of it at least…" Meiko spoke to the younger hunter with a full mouth. The sticky dango dough made it difficult to understand what she was saying but if this young man was hanging around voicebox-using cyborgs like this Garo guy beside him, he must have been used to unnatural sounding speech mannerisms.

"Leave me alone." The young man exclaimed with a grumpy voice before returning to his sweets. Despite seeming antagonistic, he didn't appear to mind too much Meiko just sitting and eating by his side, it was when she spoke to him that bothered him enough to acknowledge her presence.

The cybernetic hunter Garo raised his prosthetic arm which lit up the shadowy interior with rotating flares of Fire Release whirling inside of the central cannon barrel. Without weaving any hand seals or chanting anything about his attack, the cybernetic man unleashed a handful of fireballs with tails of blazing dust around them, coming at Meiko in a rotating trajectory.

Kiyomi stepped forward, about to dash in and cover for her oblivious friend but the fiery projectiles detonated prematurely. When the smoke cleared, the second, youthful hunter stood with a face that screamed bloody murder, his hand having grown vastly in size while bloating just enough to block the incoming projectiles with his hand. Despite having blocked his teammate's attack, the younger hunter dropped his supersized hand with some difficulty breathing and smoke smoldered from the boy's arm when it returned to normal size.

"Y-You would betray the Kara, vessel!?" Garo appeared equal part pissed and shocked that the boy would act this way.

"You fucking prick, you almost blew up the dango. After the Hell that liar put me through, don't you think I deserve at least something nice for just one moment?" the young man lost all sense of composure too. Meiko sighed and put down the sweets she was holding at that moment and turned toward the cybernetic elder as well.

"I see that I won't be able to enjoy my dango without kicking your ass first," she stated while reaching for the zipper of her tracksuit, unzipping it to the bottom of her chest and the reaching underneath her tracksuit. A ray of bright light shimmered from inside her tracksuit while Meiko pulled out a two-edged sword with a solid hilt, meant for one hand.

"A sword!? I'll have you know that I am armed with a Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet and an Argos Unit! It might be a far cry from the technology an Inner of Kara possesses but it is far superior to the primitive..." Garo was forced to raise his much appraised Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet to block Meiko's rushing strike. The old man then pushed the blacksmith back and began waving his three claw-like fingers attached to his Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlets to try and punish the reckless charge of his opponent.

A fussilade of metallic clashes and flocks of sparks later, the two disengaged one another. Meiko swiped her one-handed sword aside while Garo just stared at her with a smug expression and raised his cybernetic Shinobi-Ware.

"You're freakishly strong for an annoying fledgling but the combo of my Reflux-Type Pressure-Enhanced Muscles, Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet and an Argus Unit is unbeatable to all but the Inners of Kara!" Garo declared only to become stumped by tiny stars gleaming inside Meiko's eyes.

"That's some sweet tech, old geezer!" she shrieked out. "Mind taking it off and letting me take a look?!"

"Whoo boy, I knew she'd need some help with this…" Kiyomi smacked her face.

"Why? It looks like she's got things handled, she didn't even coat her sword with chakra yet, you know…" Naruto pointed out.

"Yeah, because she doesn't want to wreck that technology on that old man. Meiko's a gear-head and she wants to slobber all over every fancy toy she sees. Given how those toys are what the enemy is made of…" Kiyomi waved her hands, trying to get Naruto to follow the logical chain and arrive at the proper answer on his own.

"She won't take him on seriously, you know…" Naruto realized. "Still, that other guy is yet to make a move and he's boiling…"

If only Meiko could have swallowed her relentless slobber and soothed her sweet tooth in some other way rather than humoring it. If only Kiyomi had what it took to say no to her sympathy for once… Maybe then things wouldn't have gotten this difficult.