Chunin Exam Arc: Mountain Maze - Hatake Yuina

Yuina knocked the boy out with poison and hovered over his body. There was a chance he would eventually from dehydration if she left him there. She could also kill him, but stared at his body conflicted. The exam wasn't a mission. Well, it was, but she didn't have orders to kill anyone specifically. It would be convenient, but nothing more.

The idea of killing someone defenseless felt wrong. Defenseless was probably the wrong word. He had been armed until a moment ago, and she had killed people after knocking them out before. Rather than defenseless, it was probably the age. Most of the competitors were on the younger side. Tweens and barely teens made up most of the demographic. Yuina's targets so far had been mostly adults. Those who may not have been were killed in battle where her instincts of killed or be killed kicked in.

However, even if he was young, he was still a ninja. Even if his strength was insufficient now, it could become problematic one day.

It was stupid logic. Potentials meant nothing until they were realized.

Yuina's eyes burned into the limp body, wishing he would wake up so she could kill him with a clear conscious.

How horrid. Had she changed to the point where she needed to question her actions? She could be labeled horrible a thousand times over and it wouldn't matter. She didn't want to be a victim of the world, even if that meant becoming a perpetrator.

Yuina's shoulders slumped in defeat as warm air exhaled through her mouth. She was wasting time contemplating what to do. She reached for one of her double lidded glass vials. The middle was 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.

She brought up a hand to act as a shield for her eyes. Even that small amount of substance was as good as a grouping of explosive tags.

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. It had nothing to do with her.

She considered her position and the position of the explosive. It would have attracted attention. She needed to get moving. Yuina grabbed her container of modified soldier pills. It was a bigger surprise than it should have been the day Yuina discovered the development and use of stimulants to keep combatants going. Orochimaru had taken on most of the work to helping her adjust the formula to help lower the risk of addiction. It usually wasn't much of a problem because the process to make them were tedious and could only be reliably made in small batches and required the use of chakra in the making process, meaning their use was rationed. Even modified, Yuina was using it beyond any logical means, but it was a necessary patch up to an otherwise giant problem of her mission.

Yuina didn't need it for physical energy. It also recuperated chakra, both artificially absorbing it into the chakra system and encouraged her chakra pathway system to regenerate her reserves at a quicker pace. She had been using them since her first day in Iwa. Overdosing was unfortunately something she would have to deal with in her predicament. Add in polyphasic sleep in a sleep reducing way, and she felt the toll it was taking on her body.

At least she finally got some luck on this mission. Things had been chaotically contained, so it was nice for something to finally be handed to her on a silver platter. She looked at the red inked scroll. The one she needed. Now all she needed was to get to the victory room. Nothing else mattered.

She expanded her chakra through the stone before making the hand seals necessary. Her feet became intangible first, the rest of her body following, as she moved through the stone to descend through the mountain.

It still felt weird. It shouldn't hurt, but she felt pain anyway. Yuina wondered whether phantom pains were any different. She shook her head. The less she thought about it the better. It had been hard enough to steel herself to learn it. There were too many accidents it could have led to. She was just glad that her mess ups were merely embarrassing and weren't detrimental to her health.

Yuina's eyes widened 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 navigational skills in the mountain. She felt her chakra slowly recovering. A sensation that felt like she was being stretched in every direction as she continued to use her chakra at the rate of recovery. If she didn't know it was her chakra system, she would have assumed it was her soul shredding.

Wood, stone, dirt, water, and air were the chakras she was the most accustomed to with how much time she had used them in her analysis.

There was a sizeable gap of air beneath, so she used Orochimaru's jutsu again to move another floor down. Then another. She had been told that she had only been able to learn the jutsu so fast was because of her low yang chakra and high yin chakra, and her unconventional use of chakra. He never liked to pass the chance to bring up the oddity of how she did basic things like walking on vertical surfaces or water. Even then, it took a little over a month to get comfortable with it. It worked for her purposes, but she wished it was a little less chakra intensive. She was spread thin in that regard.

She moved down another seven floors.

Yuina took another modified soldier pill, and her chakra boiled. Her esophagus dried and her stomach twisted.

She scouted the new floor, granting her body time to adjust and recover as it craved.

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

Yuina quickly went into another set of seals even as her body screamed for her not to.

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 its projectile tongue.

What the hell? Was it part frog?

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, though she felt the resistance even with the sharpness of her blade.

Yuina dodged another tongue attack. Its tongue could move fast unlike its 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 corrosive 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. Too bad that it wasn't flammable. It was reactive to water, but she neither had any nor could she produce enough.

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