The first day of the second test had come and gone. Rather than stay behind at the start to try to capture someone early, we'd used our headstart to clear over half of the distance to the other side of the valley, stopping on the other side of the river we'd seen from the top of the cliff, hiding out of sight behind a large grouping of rocks.
On our way, we'd encountered some pretty large, ravenous-looking creatures that none of us recognized, but between me being able to trap them in their own shadows and Misaki giving us advance warning of their approach, they didn't pose much of a threat.
The current plan was to wait until night to make our move. We were in unfamiliar territory, and many of our enemies were Iwa nin who had grown up around these rocks and flora. The thin trees that grew here were nothing like the thick-trunked, cloud-brushing trees that grew in Konoha. We were out of our element, and needed every advantage possible.
Kenji had spent a short amount of time booby-trapping the river with explosive tags of varying yields. We needed a living hostage to pass the test, so he hadn't used his strongest tags. We were aiming to disorient rather than kill. Once a team made it to our position, we'd have plenty of opportunities to eliminate what targets we didn't need to pass the test, but for now, we waited. We wanted every advantage, and there was one advantage we could claim that no other team in this Exam could.
The night was on our side. Our team was perfectly suited to fighting in the dead of night. Not only did we have a Hyuga with us whose eyes would let her see as easily in the dark as she did in the light, but we had me.
I was a Nara, a Clan famed for its ability to bend the shadows to their will. Not only that, but, according to the current Clan Head Shikaku, I was the most attuned to shadows of any Nara he had ever seen. When darkness came, my reach expanded astronomically. The more shadows there were, the stronger I was.
So we waited for night, keeping a low profile.
As the sun slowly began to disappear, Misaki raised her hand and flashed through Konoha's sign language. She'd spotted enemies approaching. There were…
Eight? Eight! There were eight enemy nin closing in on us! Why didn't we hear any fighting? I silently cursed my inability to respond to her. I could raise my hands to where she could see them and ask for clarification on the enemies she saw, but if I did that, I'd expose myself.
A kunoichi deftly landed on the bank of the river opposite our hiding place. Unlike Misaki and Kenji who were hiding behind a rock, I was using the Hiding in Shadows Technique, which was why I couldn't respond to Misaki. In order to talk to her, I would need to raise my hands out of the technique which would reveal my location. I could see the river from where I lay, pooled in the shadow of a thin tree. She was wearing a red kimono with a ninjato sheathed at her side. There was a cloud headband covering her forehead; she was from Kumo.
The kunoichi on the riverbank looking around. After a moment, she clicked her tongue twice. Seven other figures quickly joined her on the bank. They all wore Kumo headbands. That was why there were eight of them. Three of the Kumo teams had banded together. I recognized two of them as part of the team who had a member withdraw prior to the test. What was their plan? Were they going to try to work together to capture an entire team and bring the three genin back as their hostages? Not a bad plan if I was being honest. It just irritated me that it, and the numbers advantage it abused, was pitted against my team and I.
"Where did she go, Saki?" one of the shinobi asked the kunoichi who'd landed first. He was the largest, most burly among them, his muscles bulging out of his tank top. There was a frustrated scowl on his face. "You said they came this way!"
"They did! Just give me a minute to pick the trail back up. They spent a lot of time at the river, and I'm having trouble distinguishing which tracks they left last." the first kunoichi said, her eyes fixed on the ground intently. "Stop stomping around or you'll ruin the trail."
They were tracking us then. That wasn't good. No, wait. The shinobi had said 'she'. They weren't tracking us.
From where I was obscured in my shadow, I shot a quick glance towards Misaki. Her lips were pulled into a thin line. She'd heard them and reached the same conclusion I had. The Kumo nin were after her, after her eyes. We needed to get out of here.
Kenji raised his fist.
I very nearly leapt out of my shadow to scream at him, only just managing to restrain myself. That was the signal that he was going to trigger his tags. Had he not seen Misaki say there were eight of them? Had he not heard them talking? Or had he heard them talking and put together what they wanted to do, pissing him off and making him make stupid mistakes? This wasn't the time. We were outnumbered. We needed to fall back, not attack.
Kenji raised three fingers…two fingers…one finger…
The ground shook, the rushing sound of the river was banished by a cacophonous boom. Water, dirt, rock and bits of exploded tree branches rained down from the sky in the wake of the explosion.
The Kumo nin had been at ground zero. Most of them were lying on their stomachs or their backs, knocked down by the explosion. The only exception was the burly man who'd been speaking to the tracker kunoichi. There was a thin trail of blood leaking out of his ears, but he appeared to be otherwise unharmed. He started flashing through hand signs.
Kenji and Misaki exploded out from behind the rock they'd hidden behind. Kenji whipped two kunai forward, both trailing explosive tags. Misaki had thrown a kunai coated in electricity around the rock before she'd even mounted it, her byakugan allowing her to target enemies behind walls.
The burly man held one last hand sign as Kenji and Misaki's attacks lanced towards him. "Raiton: Spider Web!" he roared, slamming his hand down into the ground.
I exploded out of my shadow and into the air as a web of bright blue light expanded out from him across the ground, racing up the trees and over the rocks. The web only moved across the river. He controlled it to where it wouldn't affect his teammates.
Misaki had seen it coming first, so she was able to leap up off the rock before the attack hit her, but Kenji was too slow.
"Aah!" Kenji screamed as electricity coarse through his body, sending him tumbling to the ground. In the same instant, the kunai Misaki and Kenji threw both reached their targets.
The burly shinobi was knocked backwards as a lightning-coated kunai tore a hole in his chest. Another kunai took him in the stomach. The moment it hit him, the explosive tag attached to it triggered, causing the shinobi's torso to be blown up and away from his limbs. It wasn't a pretty death.
The prone Kumo nin were recovering from the explosion. I had to use my chance.
My shadows and chakra strings popped open three storage seals plastered against the inside of my jacket to retrieve the weapons in them. I started flinging weapons down at the Kumo nin, covering the air with metal. I cast False Barrage as I did, obscuring the true weapons and making ten times the thrown number appear.
A kunoichi in a dark coat and tight-fitting pants was up to one knee. As she saw my kunai coming, she rapidly wove hand signs and shouted, "Suiton: Wild Water Wave!" A torrent of water poured out of her mouth, lengthening into a great wave to blast away my projectiles. Hidden as they were by my genjutsu, she only managed to deflect a quarter of them. She'd aimed her defensive wave at the illusions, not the actual weapons. Her and the two Kumo shinobi at her side were saved from my poisoned projectiles. The other four weren't so lucky. They were riddled with senbon and kunai, each of them falling to the ground, dead as the poisons did their work. I'd been targeting the shinobi behind water wave kunoichi with my paralysis kunai to take him alive, but she'd blocked them all with her jutsu.
The sun was lost to the high cliff to the west, casting the valley in darkness. I grinned.
The moment I made contact with the ground, having leapt high to avoid the lightning jutsu the beefcake had used, I reached out with my shadows. Smothered in darkness as the valley was, all I needed to do to trap the Kumo nin was activate the Shadow Imitation Technique. The valley had become one large shadow for me to control.
Each of the Kumo nin froze as my technique took hold of them. They slowly stood to mirror my movements.
"Misaki, Kenji." I said, clipped.
"Hai." Misaki rushed back around the rock they'd hidden behind where Kenji fell after being hit with the lightning jutsu. It shouldn't have killed him, but if we needed to triage him we needed to do it now.
Misaki hopped down from the rock with Kenji in her arms. "He is unconscious, but he will live."
"Good. Kill two and paralyze one." I said quickly. I could feel the Kumo nin struggling hard against my control, tearing at my control with their chakra and strength alike. I was very good with shadows. I could hold them for a while, but the less chakra I had to burn to cage them the better.
Misaki retrieved three senbon from her bag, holding them between her fingers. She reared her hand back… And immediately whipped around, her eyes wide in shock. "Down!" she yelled, bodily tackling me to the side.
"Raiton: False Darkness!" a new voice cried from behind us. The voice originated from the same side of the river that we'd been lurking on to spring our trap.
A spear of lightning tore through the air faster than sound, a crackling boom echoing in its wake. Had Misaki not knocked me aside, that jutsu probably would have killed me.
Standing atop a rock sixty meters away were three more Kumo nin. A shinobi lowered a hand sign, a frustrated growl escaping his lips as his attack missed. The three of them must have been working with the greater Kumo force, stealthily traveling at the head of the group a wide distance apart to avoid Misaki's range. They must have doubled back to support their comrades when they heard the explosions. If the range of Misaki's byakugan hadn't increased during our training, she wouldn't have seen the nin emerge, and I would be dead.
Misaki and I both rolled to our feet. My shadowy tendrils curled around me, whipping projectiles towards the three newly arrived Kumo nin while Misaki wove hand signs.
"Raiton: Electromagnetic Murder!" Misaki yelled, thrusting her hands towards the three nin from the original group. Lightning danced away from her fingertips like she was Emperor Palpatine, creating a discordant maze of electrical cords in the air.
The nin who'd circled back towards us all leapt away from the rock in different directions to avoid my kunai, each of them shouting, "Kai!" to dispel my False Barrage. I didn't know how they'd figured out my trick so fast, but I needed to try something else.
The nin still near the water scattered as well to avoid Misaki's lightning. The Kumo nin created a rough circle around Misaki and I, cutting off our escape and trapping us between them. I could try to grab them with my shadows, but they were all too far apart to effectively hold now, and grabbing one would leave me open to attacks from the others. Luckily, there were other uses for my shadows.
I clicked my tongue twice, signaling Misaki.
Together, we rushed towards the closest Kumo nin, a shinobi who had moved to cover our backs.
The teen's eyes widened as we approached. He started to weave through hand signs to try to get a jutsu off, but it was too late. He was already at the mercy of my shadows.
Pointed rods of dark shadow grew out of the ground around him to impale him, striking his legs, arms, torso, head – his entire body was penetrated by my deadly shadows.
A barrage of shuriken and kunai sang through the air towards my back as I dispatched the nin, but Misaki was there, spinning like a ballerina as she used her clan's famed proficiency in taijutsu to bat away each of the projectiles with the kunai in her hands.
"Suiton: Water Prison!" the voice of the kunoichi who'd blocked my first barrage shouted.
Misaki's foot lashed out towards me, striking me in the chest and sending me flying backwards just as the water of the river surged up around her.
I landed on the riverbank and looked up. Misaki was held aloft in an undulating sphere of water. She thrashed against the water, but she was unable to escape. The kunoichi who had cast the technique was kneeling in the river ten meters behind her, her hand pressed against the surface of the water, her brow creased in concentration.
"I have her!" the kunoichi shouted. "Kill the teammate!"
The Kumo nin converged around her to protect her and prepare to strike me.
Still suspended in the water prison, Misaki rapidly flashed through Konoha sign language, telling me all of the Kumo nin in her range were now around the kunoichi and telling me what to do.
I gathered my chakra as I stood to my full height. The air around me heated up as my shadow curled around me.
"What are you waiting for? Get him!" the Kumo kunoichi who'd trapped Misaki ordered, her voice strained from maintaining her technique.
A shinobi in the lead smirked at me. He raised his hand, obscured until now by the long-tailed coat he wore. His fist was knotted in hair.
"Kai!" I called out under my breath. The image in front of me didn't change. This was real.
"You're next!" the Kumo shinobi called, tossing Kenji's head forwards.
The world slowed down as Kenji's head sunk into the water in front of me. We'd left Kenji on the ground when that lightning jutsu came through. I hadn't thought about him since that attack. That bastard must have used the opening provided by us killing his teammate to hit Kenji while he was down.
They were going to fucking die.
I clapped my hands together, falling into my shadow as I did. Using Transport Via Shadows, I zipped across a valley floor coated in the dark of night and reappeared directly behind their group. Before they could react, I flashed through rapid hand seals and unleashed the technique I'd been preparing.
"Futton: Scalding Mist!" I opened my mouth wide and sent a torrent of superheated steam right into their group.
The river beneath me hissed as it evaporated on contact with my jutsu. The Kumo nin screamed in agony for a brief moment before falling silent, their immolated bodies falling to the ground. Only one of them wasn't caught by my technique.
The girl who had maintained Misaki's water prison slunk into the river the moment she saw her first teammate die and flowed right up into the water prison with Misaki. She'd tried to best Misaki in taijutsu, but even slowed by the water, Misaki batted her strikes away and cut her with a kunai. The enemy kunoichi went slack moments later, her muscles paralyzed by the poison on Misaki's blade.
The water prison unraveled as my mist rose into the air to dissipate.
"Clear?" I called.
"Clear." Misaki confirmed.
I reached down into the water and retrieved Kenji's head. My hand was shaking as I lifted it out of the water. The flow of the river had raised the water level back up to what it was before my mist caused it to evaporate. Submerged as it was in the water, Kenji's head was mostly undamaged by my mist. I would have inspected it more closely, but I couldn't bear to look at it any longer. My stomach was heaving, threatening to send the energy bar I'd eaten back up.
I hurried back to the rest of Kenji's body and sealed him in a body storage seal. I couldn't deal with him right now. I was behind enemy lines. I needed to move.
Misaki walked up behind me where I knelt over the storage seal. She gently placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Did you… Did you…?" I couldn't bring myself to ask the whole question. With her byakugan, it was almost impossible she didn't see him die.
Misaki squeezed my shoulder. "The shinobi went for him while they were throwing projectiles at your back. I made a choice. I chose you."
I swallowed loudly. There was a large lump in my throat. I reached up and squeezed Misaki's hand. I didn't begrudge her choice. I was thankful I was still alive. I just…
Fuck.
"We need to move." I placed Kenji's seal in my bag belt pouch and stood up.
Misaki silently walked at my side.
"Is the kunoichi still alive?" I asked, the world reverting to a singular purpose: Finish the second task of the Chunin Exams.
"Yes." Misaki answered, picking up the kunoichi and hefting her over her shoulder.
"Set her on the ground. We run for the cliff now. We won't be able to come out on top of another fight like that."
Misaki dumped the kunoichi on the ground. I grabbed her body with the Shadow Imitation Technique and puppetted her to her feet. The kunoichi's immobile body followed my movements as Misaki and I began sprinting through the valley. Without Kenji with us, we could move at our top speed.
I'd gladly run with both him and the Kumo nin in my shadow if it meant he was still alive.
Misaki diverted us around a few traps placed by other teams, but we didn't encounter any enemy nin.
Before the sun had risen on the second day, we arrived at the top of the cliff.
Tenjo was standing there, unmoving as he looked at us.
"The Kumo girl is our captive." I said coldly, dismissing my jutsu and letting her limp body fall heavily to the ground.
Tenjo nodded. "The two of you pass. Does your teammate wish to withdraw, or will he be completing the test on his own?"
"He's dead." I forced myself to speak without venom. Throwing a fit wouldn't bring Kenji back.
"My condolences." Tenjo said, surprising me when he sounded genuinely remorseful. It was likely an act. "The two of you are the first to complete the second portion of the Chunin Exams. You will be given the first choice of your opponent in the tournament one month from now. If there are an odd number of finalists, one of you will be granted the bye. Spirit-san will escort you back to your accommodations."
The same ANBU that had evacuated the injured Kumo genin before the start of the second test appeared next to Tenjo and motioned for Misaki and I to follow him.
"One moment." I said, walking over to the immobile Kumo kunoichi. I pulled a senbon out of my pocket and stuck her with it.
The kunoichi jolted as her muscles suddenly responded to her commands again. She leapt to her feet and started weaving hand signs.
Tenjo appeared in front of her and crushed her hands together with his fist. "You have been captured. You are disqualified." Tenjo said, his tone deadly cold.
The Kumo girl staggered back as Tenjo released her, stammering, she said, "But…But th-they killed them!"
"Team 3, please return to your accommodations." Tenjo said, not looking away from the kunoichi in front of him.
Misaki and I took the hint, turning and following Spirit as he began to run. I'd debated lacing the senbon coated in the paralytic antidote with a subtle, slow acting, incredibly deadly poison Aika had shown me how to mix together, but I didn't. I was concerned for my mental state that the majority of the reason was because I wasn't sure I could get away with it. If she died after the Exams and it was traced back to me, Kumo might come after the Nara Clan, and I cared more about Shikaku than I did about getting revenge on the girl.
But she wasn't the only one who felt scorned for her teammate's death. If we ever met on the field again, I wouldn't show any mercy.
Spirit ran ahead of Misaki and I, adjusting…his? – it was hard to tell beneath that ANBU robe – pace to ours. A little over an hour later, he left us outside our hotel. We went up to our room. Hiroshi was sitting on the bed, tapping his foot anxiously.
"You made it!" Hiroshi cheered as he leapt to his feet. "I had the utmost faith in you, my talented little genin! We need to…" He trailed off, his face paling. "Where is Kenji?"
Wordlessly, I reached into my pouch and retrieved Kenji's seal, holding it out towards Hiroshi with both hands.
Hiroshi didn't move, staring at the paper disbelievingly, as if he could will reality to rewrite itself if he stared hard enough. A trembling hand slowly reached out to take the seal. He closed his hands around the seal protectively, eyes vacant.
"I am very proud of you both. You did well to succeed. Rest and recover. I need to… I will return." Hiroshi said, walking past us and out the door.
Misaki closed the door after him and locked it, setting several explosive tags on it to activate if someone tried to force it open.
"You can shower first." I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at the ground.
The bed springs creaked as Misaki sat beside me. She took my hand and we sat in silence for a moment.
"Thank you for saving my life." I said after a while. I hadn't said it before, and I didn't want her to think I didn't appreciate what she'd done, or that I blamed her for what happened to Kenji.
"Shinto?"
I looked up at her. "Yes?"
Her eyes were hard as she stared at me "I need you to make me a promise." she said, her tone deadly serious.
"Speak it." I owed her my life. She'd let our friend die to keep me alive. I owed her this much.
"If I die, do not let the scum that killed me take my eyes. Burn them with your mist before you let them take them."
I nodded. "I swear it."
She squeezed my hand tight. "I… I miss him." Her voice cracked before she finished speaking.
"I do too." I said, squeezing her hand back.
Misaki's breathing was growing erratic. "Yesterday, I thought Kenji would be my children's jonin instructor. But now he's–" her voice caught, tears were leaking from her eyes. She was trembling.
I swallowed, slowly reaching out to wrap my arm around her shoulders. She leaned her weight into me, tears still falling down her face.
"I miss him too." I said quietly as tears began to stream from my own eyes. "I miss him too."
I don't know how long we stayed like that, holding each other, weeping for our lost friend. We'd been introduced to the reality of our world, and neither of us liked what we saw.