Wandering around in a blizzard off of vague directions in a land they knew nothing about? Yeah, Shikamaru probably would have taken that option over the one they were currently saddled with. Now they were stuck in a series of underground corridors of all kinds of shapes and sizes leading to who knew where. In addition to that they were now facing off with a foreign team of older genin that seemed several years their elders.
And they didn't necessarily seem to be the helpful type.
"I had hoped we would be able to get through this without having to fight anyone..." Shikamaru said to his teammates so that the team of Ame genin didn't hear him. This was just great. They were dragging in the awareness department due to the pace they had been cutting across the landscape, and now that they had found where to go they still weren't getting a moment of reprieve.
Ino was only slightly more ready for a fight than Shikamaru was, "Come on Shikamaru, the chance of us actually dodging two teams just isn't our luck." She said, not taking her eyes off of their potential opponents, "Maybe a fight will wake us back up?"
"I'm already awake." Naruto commented, holding his machete at the ready, "And what are you guys talking about? What directions?" He asked the other team.
One of the Ame genin laughed at Naruto's question and pointed at him, "It looks like the babies didn't pay attention to everything that their sensei said." He looked towards the member of their team missing an eye with scars on his face, "Shigure let's just squash these runts and move on. Less competition right?"
The lead genin with the battle scars, Shigure let out a scoff, "If they don't know anything about where to go from here then they're just in the way. They can't make any sense of the vague little directions that they got either so who needs them? Get rid of them. Baui, put them down, you've got the most chakra right now." He said to the shortest of the team.
Hearing that caused Naruto and Ino to bristle in anger, "You jerk!" Ino snapped at them, "You think one of your teammates can beat all three of us?"
"Feisty. You're too young for me though." The small one, Baui, commented on Ino's attitude, "But in this case he's kind of right, with our jutsu only one of us really need to attack to beat you. You four little kids are about to see how the big ninja play." He pulled his umbrella from his back and threw it into the air, forming a tiger seal as he did so, "Jouro Senbon (Senbon Shower)!"
The umbrella hovered in the air between the two teams and spun rapidly as it began spitting a rain of needles in all directions.
Team Ten were immediately in full retreat mode, ducking behind the rocky outcroppings that were placed all throughout the corridor of the tunnel that they were in as they barely took cover before the needles implanted themselves in the cave rocks, in a seemingly never-ending spray.
From their place ducking behind the rocks, Ino had to make a comment, "I wonder if they buy some special cartridges of needles to fill those with or if they have to hand-load them?" There was no need to ask. It was probably some Amegakure secret that she wouldn't be privy to anyway. She was kind of jealous though. Well at least her aim was better and she didn't waste nearly as many.
Shikamaru, while disenfranchised over having to fight, already had his mind working on what to do, "Naruto get some clones to knock that thing out of the sky."
"On it." Naruto said, forming the hand-seal for his signature jutsu and creating five Kage Bunshin, one of which threw their machete at the umbrella from behind cover to knock it down and stop the spray of needles. Naruto heard a bark of laughter from one of the Ame ninja about how he apparently threw away his lead weapon.
One of Naruto's clones, namely the one that had thrown its machete, didn't take too kindly to being made fun of for just following the plan lain out by its 'commander', and it reflected this by throwing its entire stock of shuriken from behind cover, getting a satisfying shriek of surprise and pain from the enemy. It then dispelled due to its lack of weaponry taking its actual use away.
With the Ame genin, most of them had avoided Naruto's clone's little angry attack. The one that had been laughing, the one that was taller than Baui but shorter than Shigure wound up taking five shuriken to different parts of his body; two to the chest, three to the thigh.
Baui looked at his wounded teammate in concern, "Midare you're hurt." He commented.
"That's it..." Shigure said, all humor gone from his tone now that his own partner was injured. If those punks wanted to play ninja he'd show them just how real things could get, "Slaughter those rats! Let's see them dodge this!" He threw three umbrellas in the air, "Jouro Senbon (Senbon Shower)!" This time all three of his umbrellas spat needles at a far faster rate, with the umbrellas themselves drifting directly over the cover that the Konoha genin had taken refuge behind.
Midare pulled the shuriken out of his body and let out a mean-spirited laugh, "Serves those punks right..." He said, dropping the last metal star to the ground with a clatter. They all walked over to confirm that Team Ten were firmly out of commission, but when they turned the corner to look behind where they had been taking cover they found nothing.
Shigure growled, "What? Where did they go?"
"Raiton: Kaminari no senpū sokudo (Lightning Release: Whirlwind Speed of Lightning.)" Menma whispered.
Shigure turned his back to begin looking around and saw a blue blur of lightning speeding across the floor at him and his team, "Move!" He shouted in warning as he jumped away.
The warning came too late for one however, as the wounded Midare wasn't fast enough to avoid being caught. He wound up bleeding out on the ground due to Menma slashing at his chest with his Kubikiribōchō,
Menma stood over him his chakra began to glow blue as his aura seemed lightning like, his eyes were emotionless and cold as ice, "Who the hell is this freak? Someone get him away from me!" Midure more or less begged his squadmates as he began coughing up blood and had no idea what would happen to him next. Whatever it was obviously wouldn't be good.
Menma then appeared behind one of the team members and slashed him in the back as he fell to the ground.
"Shigure, two of your teammates are mortally wounded, I would suggest you go back and get help or else they'll die out here." Menma warned looking at him with killer intent.
Shigure shivered in fear grabbed his teammates and ran frantically screaming.
Ignoring him now that the encounter was for all intents and purposes over, Naruto looked over at Menma, "So you said you knew something about the stuff that Asuma-sensei told us Menma?"
"Yeah." He said, trying to speak over Shigure's yelling,
"Well, spit it out." Shikamaru said.
Ino frowned at being left out of the conversation, "Hey, what about the directions or whatever those guys were babbling about."
"About that..." Menma continued where he had left off from, "Remember what Asuma said? It was a really stupid clue telling us we needed to look all over the place find a way down to these tunnels... but I guess he told us that because he knew that I knew how to get to the tunnels... I guess that was just another part of the test. But there wasn't a damn river up there to follow... so I guess the rest of what he said goes for down here."
Naruto had a squinted eyed look of concentration on his face as he tried to dredge up what Asuma meant by his talk of a river, though Shikamaru beat him to it, "Wait. I didn't see any body of water for miles around this mountain. So you're saying that the clue is talking about some underwater river that we're supposed to follow."
"I was going to say that..." Naruto mumbled, trailing his foot in the dirt under him, "...I want to sound smart sometimes too..." He then snapped out of his funk and formed his cross hand-seal, "Menma, make some clones with me, Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" They then formed one clone for each tunnel that he could see leading from the place they were in and sent them off to find something, "I'll have this handled in no time you guys!"
Shikamaru smirked at the sight of all of the Narutos and Menmas making things easy for them, "So I guess we can take a break for a bit while Naruto and Menma's clones scope things out." He said as he went to sit and lean against a rock out of sight in case anyone else came stumbling through the area, "Good, because I need a nap." He finished with a yawn as he shut his eyes.
Ino walked up to him with her hands on her hips, "Really? You're going to sleep here?" She asked incredulously before realizing that the lazy bum was already out of it, "Unbelievable... he's not going to be up until morning."
"It's okay." Menma said, sitting on the highest rock in the cavern overlooking the whole place. Ino didn't even see him or feel him move across the place to get up there, "Shikamaru can sleep. You can sleep too Ino. Naruto and I can stay awake and keep watch while you guys do." He grinned down at her.
Ino pouted over at him from where she was standing, "You can't just stay awake all night Menma, you need to get some rest too. We've been going since early this morning and tomorrow's going to be a long day, I can already tell."
Shaking his head at her, Menma pleaded his own case, "I have to stay awake anyway just in case my clones find something. I won't pick it up if I'm asleep when they dispel. Besides, I'm still not very tired yet." That was a blatant lie, but him working on a quarter of a tank was still better than Shikamaru or Ino working on near empty for certain. The trek outside in that harsh winter weather was a strength drainer, although for some weird reason Menma seemed used to it.
"Fine..." Ino eventually conceded, using the cloak she had been wearing outside to defend from the inclement weather to rest her head on the ground near where Shikamaru was sleeping against a rock, "But when you get tired wake me or the bum up to take over for you guys... no amount of info from your clones will do us any good if you're too weak and tired to go on any further to use it."
"Get some sleep Ino." Menma told her with a grin, "We'll be alright."
Ino stared at him with one blue eye cracked open for a few moments before letting it shut as she moved around trying to get comfortable, "...Alright... goodnight Menma-kun." A small mischievous smile came to her lips, "Don't go and play with me in my sleep now... if you're going to, wait until I'm awake so I can enjoy it." She didn't even need to open her eyes to see the look her probably had on his face. It was as clear as day in her mind.
Menma just stared down at her with a red face and a twitching eye as he ground his teeth together, 'I really wish she'd stop doing that...' He thought to himself. It's a good thing he wasn't going to sleep that night or else he'd probably be thinking of that exact scenario... Damn Ino.
Anko was the only one he'd ever thought of like that.
Wait, that didn't sound right either.
Damn Jiraiya.
XxX
(Back in the Village - Hotel - VIP Lounge)
Kurenai didn't know what she was still doing up especially since there was really nothing to do. All she was even doing at the moment was just watching some of the other jounin in attendance at the exams as they sat around drinking. This was the first real chance she had gotten to hang around this many other jounin at one time and she expected to be regaled with stories of missions from the past that made them who they were, hell at least maybe some personal perspective on what to do with her team.
She should have expected that all they would be doing would be getting drunk.
In their defense however, there wasn't much else to do.
"So this is all you guys have got as far as the entertainment goes?" Kurenai asked with a dull expression on her face as she sat around a coffee table with Kakashi, Asuma, Gai, and a few other Konoha jounin.
"Come on Kurenai..." Asuma attempted to defend, pointing down at the table between all of them, "This is kind of impressive, you've got to admit." Gai was stabbing the space between his fingers with a kunai at a jackhammer pace, "...Especially since he isn't even looking at what he's doing."
"And don't forget that he's been drinking since ten-thirty." The female jounin added as she found her attention drawn to Gai looking like he was doing his best to accidentally sever his pinky finger, "Still this is a waste of time."
"Ha!" Gai exclaimed as he still kept from looking down at his hand as he continued to stab away, "It's never a waste of time to attempt to best my eternal rival Kakashi in a challenge! He could never duplicate such a feat, he couldn't possibly outlast me in this challenge!"
Kurenai palmed her face while Asuma blocked his own laughter, "Kakashi isn't even doing anything! He's just reading! He only stabbed the space between his fingers once and then he started reading and drinking again!" She yelled at Gai before gesturing to the masked man who was doing just that.
"Yes." Kakashi said nonchalantly, "But then no one ever said that I had to keep Gai's pace when doing his challenge. I just had to keep from stabbing my fingers." He put up one hand and waved his fingers in the air showingly, "No cuts here, see?"
Asuma shook his head and looked over at Gai, "You know, you can stop anytime you want Gai. Kakashi's not going to pick his kunai back up." He then took notice of the holes Gai had been making in the table, "Someone's going to be pissed off later when they see this, I know that for sure."
A fire filled Gai's eyes, "No! I will not accept another draw in our epic series of challenges! It doesn't matter, I'll show that hard work can overcome anything! I need to set an example for my precious students, especially Rock Lee!" At that moment, all of the other jounin sitting and listening took a shot.
"Your kids aren't even anywhere around here." Another of the jounin in attendance remarked humorously, "Where are they anyway?" He let out a sigh of depression, "My team had to come back after the first exam... I don't even know what the second one is all about."
Asuma shrugged from his place on his couch next to Kurenai, "I already figured it out... I just had to get some kind of basic knowledge on the land. I asked a few samurai about my guess when night fell." He looked at the other jounin that he knew still had students in the exam, "You know those hints you gave your students when they eventually showed up to see you? Apparently the mountains of the Three Wolves keep a system of tunnels under the village and the whole trio of mountains in general."
"Oh yeah." Kakashi spoke up in realization, "It used to be a supply system for frontline defenders in wartime, but they sealed up all of the entrances that would be around the actual village due to the danger of keeping them open. Now they just use it as a place for their samurai stationed nearby to train. The walls are supposed to be just short of the density of iron so that cave-ins weren't caused by some of the samurai's more destructive techniques."
Kurenai nodded, understanding just where her team had been sent off to, "So what's it like down there?"
"Spacious from what Menma's told me." Asuma stated, "Most places have space so that there's room to move about when fighting, but it's a total ant hill down there. There are all sorts of tunnels to nowhere... some that go deeper or will take you right back outside somewhere else. Multiple passages, stuff like that."
Gai stood up passionately with one fist in the air, "My students will triumph in that labyrinth! I believe in all three of them, they're the best of the field this time around! My Lee will show all of them just how splendid a ninja he is." Once again, similar to before, every jounin took a shot, but this time Gai noticed, "Tell me, why are all of my youthful comrades drinking every time I finish a statement?"
Kakashi, whom no one had even seen move to drink, answered him, "Well that's because we all agreed that every time you said anything about that Rock Lee kid of yours without being asked about it we would all take a shot. We've all been here for two hours..."
Asuma finished his statement for him, "...And I think we've taken a dozen shots each." He scratched his head, "I don't know if I'm right. I had to leave to head to the bathroom for a second. And then there was the time I had to get up to get more drinks."
"It's at seventeen." Kurenai said, seemingly not affected by her alcoholic intake, something that got her an odd look from Asuma, "I don't think I'll be walking back upstairs tonight by the way..." She informed them before letting out a hiccup and going half-lidded.
"There's your cue Asuma." Kakashi chimed in, trying to be a smartass, before catching a kunai that was thrown at him between his fingers, "Hey, don't play with weapons when you're drunk. If you can't take a flight of stairs don't handle a deadly tool." He chided gently, "...That last part is some advice for Kurenai for later." He said before replacing himself with a pillow on his couch that found itself impaled by multiple metal objects, "Defensive..."
"Yes!" Gai shouted loudly, pointing at Kakashi's finger, blood trailing down from where he managed to catch the weakly thrown kunai, "I knew that I could win Kakashi! That's puts me at 51 wins, 50 losses, and 123 draws!" Luckily, the vast majority of the jounin in the room were inebriated and thus Gai's following rant didn't unnerve them nearly as much as it otherwise would have.
XxX
(The Next Morning - Caves Underneath Tetsu no Kuni)
Crappy ration bar equals breakfast... at least as far as Team Ten went in a situation like this. Mostly because actually starting a fire to cook anything like the snake Naruto had killed the previous night would have possibly alerted someone that they were there. At least it was enough to get them up and going.
So after Ino and Shikamaru had awakened and partaken in something to eat, Naruto and Menma told them what they had been getting from his clones all night long, "This place is huge and deep." Menma said, "Our clones had to make clones sometimes because trails branched off. Some tunnels led to the surface, some had to dispel before running into other people... and then there was the one that fell off that cliff around the corner into that pit." He said, remembering the memory he got of that particular clone's demise.
"Do you guys have a way out?" Shikamaru asked them.
"A way out? Yeah." Naruto said with a dry look on his face, "So far we found like twenty of them... that lead back to the surface." He shook his head, "There isn't anything at any of the exits. The clones checked."
"So none of these places led to a river?" Shikamaru questioned, pondering things once more. He got a shake of the head from both, "I guess that means that we really are looking for one underground. Did they find one of those?"
Menma nodded and then looked away sheepishly, "Yeah... about that... are you sure that's where we're supposed to go?"
Ino and Shikamaru looked at each other before Ino spoke up, "What's with the second-guessing? Yeah, we're sure. What other possible clue would we have? Did you find one or not?"
"I did, but..." Menma tried to explain why he wasn't so keen on the idea before eventually giving up, "Whatever, if you guys are sure then let's go." He said with a gesture, prompting them to follow him, "It's a long way though..." He said before yawning.
Ino put a hand on his shoulder, "Do you need a nap?"
Menma kept walking forward, "No, I just need to get moving again and I'll be fine." Another lie as he broke into a run that his teammates followed. His clones had been going nonstop all night, circulating the fatigue back onto him when they dispelled, and he had already been tired in the first place when he made them. But it was a race, and they needed to find the finish immediately. If they thought he was tired they would stay for even longer to let him get sleep. And he didn't need sleep.
As far as Menma was concerned, admitting that one needed sleep was for weak.
"This is great." Ino said as she and Shikamaru ran through the caves behind Naruto and Menma, "We've got the two-man scouting party to look through the place for us."
Naruto let out a groan, "This place is seriously huge though... I only think our clones have gone through the tunnels in only one of the mountains..." It was a wonder how anyone else was finding their way around down there, some people would have to get creative with how they searched.
XxX
(With Team Seven)
Sakura had a torch in hand that she had requested Sasuke to light for her shortly after they had entered the tunnels for more reasons than just illumination. The chamber that they were in had multiple passages leading to and away from it. She walked in front of each way, holding up the torch carefully.
As she moved between the openings to different paths, Sasuke had his eyes firmly in her as she did so. To be honest, the attention was a little flustering, even if Sakura knew that he wasn't really looking at her so intently, more like the torch... but hey, she'd take what she could get in this instance. After going back and forth three times, Sakura turned towards him and Chouji, "So how about it Sasuke-kun, which one?"
Sasuke had his Sharingan on the entire time as he had been staring at the torch so that he could tell which tunnels influenced the flames of it to the slightest motion, "The first two are dead ends, the one after the third is probably a lead back to the surface. I would take the sixth tunnel, but we should mark our place because the fifth tunnel would be my second guess. The fourth and the seventh are connected to each other."
Hearing him say that, Chouji took out a notepad and handed it to Sakura, taking the torch from her as she sketched out the entire mapout she had done thus far of the tunnels, along with their estimated trajectory, "Sakura how are you doing that?" He asked her. She barely had a base to start from, yet the map she had made of where they had been looked extremely effective, "That's way too detailed."
A shrug came from the pink-haired girl, "I don't know. It's not that hard." She stowed the notebook away on her person as Sasuke started leading them down the sixth tunnel to see where it led, "...I like puzzles." She finished lamely, getting a laugh out of Chouji.
XxX
(With Team Eight)
Kiba shook his hands out as he glared over at Shino, a beaten up Konoha team laying behind them, "Great directions Shino." He commented as Akamaru took his place back on Kiba's head, "I told you this way wasn't the right one. I told you there were people down here. Trust the nose man."
"Am I aware of the power of your senses Kiba? Yes, of course I am." Shino said, hands in his pockets as he responded calmly, "I merely figured we could take the two to three minutes to dispose of some of the competition in the race. Who knows how long they've been down here or how close to the end we are? I am clearly going to rely on your senses and Hinata's Byakugan in this test, they are faster to search with than my kikaichu. Now let us continue." He said, walking back down the path they came from.
A growl came from Kiba as he shook his fist at him, "Creepy know-it-all, thinks he's so cool all of the time... since when does he think he's the leader?" He asked no one in particular, getting a small laugh out of Hinata as they followed Shino.
XxX
(With Team Gai)
Tenten paced about as Neji simply sat in front of two different passages, his Byakugan active, "Tenten be calm. We will get moving again in just a moment, you need to rest after being on guard last night."
"We're taking too long!" The weapon-wielding kunoichi responded irritably, "They said only 12 teams get to advance. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Not really." Neji said calmly, "Because I know that we are guaranteed to be one of the teams left standing after this." He then stood up and dusted himself off, "Lee's almost here." He said informatively just as light footsteps came rolling down one of the paths, bringing Lee to them before he came to a stop, "Well Lee?"
"Do not worry Neji." Lee said with a thumbs up, "I ran into another team in that direction, but they will not be causing us any issues if we go that way." He got a nod from the stoic pale-eyed Konoha genin in response.
"You fought them?" Tenten said with a raised eyebrow and her hands on her hips, fully ready to scold her jumpsuit-clad partner, "What if you'd lost or gotten hurt?"
Neji spoke up, "I would have checked with my Byakugan eventually." He said in a manner meant to exonerate Lee, "Besides, there are only a few teams in this competition that I would say Lee had a good chance at being in trouble against. This is why I say that we are guaranteed to advance. With my eyes we'll find exactly where we need to go and with the rest of our skills no one can defeat us."
Tenten rolled her eyes. Yeah she knew they were good, still there had to be some kind of trepidation towards fighting. Three-on-one was not a good affair to find oneself in no matter how good of a genin one was, and knowing Lee he didn't necessarily get the drop on them either, "Well let's get going then 'Mr. Skills', because these caves are massive even if you do know where we're going."
XxX
(A Few Hours Later - With Team Ten)
The sound of running water sounded like music to Ino and Shikamaru's ears as Menma and Naruto began to lead them closer to the sound. Still, as they got closer they realized just how loud it must have been because it took five minutes after first hearing crashing water to get to where they needed to be. Also, Menma kept sending clones up on the walls in places where the path got dark. His explanation for such being, "This place is booby trapped... but whoever did it must think that everyone sucks because they're so blatant." He had been sending his clones to deactivate explosive tags.
Eventually they came across quickly moving stream of water, but it went back the way they came, and directly into a wall, "This is what we're supposed to follow?" Ino said almost angrily, "Follow it to where? And how?"
Menma took that moment to step in and speak, "That's why I didn't know how to just come out and say. I figured you guys knew something I didn't and I just brought you to the closest one. I found like sixteen other branches in other places too. There's no way to see which one is the right one to follow, and even then how are we supposed to follow any of them when they end at a wall? I can't see through walls."
"Well there is always one way to follow any river." Shikamaru said as he walked closer to it and placed his hand in the water only for it to get dragged by the current roughly until he pulled it out, "It's going to suck, but..." Before he could finish, Naruto and Menma caught on to what he wanted and a series of clone jumped in the water to be dragged away by the current, "Well there's always that way too..."
Ino gave Menma a grin and leaned against him, "You are really the best scout ever. There's just no getting around that."
Menma just laughed to himself and basked in the credit being given to him, "Yeah, I'm pretty great huh? If my Kage Bunshin don't get beaten up or drown while they're down there then we'll know where that river takes us in just a bit."
BOOM
"What was that?" Shikamaru asked after an explosion went off nearby that rocked the entire area.
Naruto grimaced at the memory he had just received, "One of my clones messed up trying to diffuse an explosive tag in the dark... idiot." Ino and Shikamaru refrained from commenting that he was basically talking about himself, Menma looked over at direction the explosion came from, "Damn I hope no one comes looking for us because of that one." He still had others out from deactivating other traps set that remained out to watch over the path they had taken. Hopefully this area was rather vacant of anyone looking for the path to the goal, one would have to be deaf to not be able to hear the last explosion.
Ino looked into the rushing water nearby, not even able to see her own reflection through the rushing white waves, "Your clones have been down there for a while. Do you think they made it to the end of this thing or what?" She asked.
At that moment before he could answer, Menma's eyes widened and he bared his teeth in threat, "Take a deep breath and get in the water!" He ordered with a low hiss, but the signs of alarm were evident for someone like Naruto who knew how to read Menma's expressions by now. If Menma decided to beg off from something it was obviously something to be wary of.
"Did your clones reach the end yet?" Ino asked. She hadn't turned around so she didn't see the look on her fellow blonde teammate's face, and as close as she was to the water she didn't hear the way he had been speaking to know that they might be in trouble.
Shikamaru did however, and knew to trust Menma's gut. Come to think of it, it wasn't Menma's gut he was trusting, it was the multitude of clones that he had left behind as they had been travelling, especially since Naruto was looking down the way that they had just come from, "Ino just take the deepest breath you can and get in the water now!" Shikamaru, Menma, and Naruto got near the edge and prepared to jump in, and the looks on their faces let her know that this was deadly serious.
"What's the matter?" Ino hadn't remembered seeing both of them so serious at the same time in quite some while.
"We're being tracked down." Menma told her, "And it's really not someone that I think we should try to fight. Not here, not when we don't have to." His eyes kept darting towards the tunnel all of his clones were down, "Can we go now? We don't have a lot of time."
'Is he scared?' The thought was almost absurd. Menma wasn't afraid of anything as far as Ino had seen. This was the guy that wanted to go face down a missing-ninja that gave even a pair of hardened Konoha jounin second thoughts just to talk to him. As they all jumped into the river, the thought ran through her head again and again, 'What on earth could actually scare him?'
After a minute or two, down the path that Menma had been looking, Kankuro and Temari emerged, looking back at the same way they had just come with some trepidation, "Man it's a good thing Gaara saw all of those copies of the blonde kid in these tunnels... if he hadn't then he might have turned on us out of boredom." Kankuro said.
Temari wasn't convinced however, "You didn't see any blood come from those clones did you? That's not going to satisfy him at all. We still need to find the way to the end quickly. I think the only reason he's let us live for this long is because he needs us to keep going. He hasn't really gotten to kill anyone since we came down here. A few dozen clones, even if they are solid, they aren't going to calm him down."
BOOM
Both Kankuro and Temari swiftly leapt away as a massive amount of smoke and debris flew from where they had left Gaara to deal with all of Naruto and Menma's clones. They had to admit that the sheer amount that were there were rather dangerous. Temari just cut through a swatch of them and left the rest to Gaara. That was the way he would have wanted it anyway. But the explosion that had just rang out wasn't small by any measure, not nearly as weak as the explosion that had set them off in this direction. It was five times as intense.
"Gaara!" Temari shouted into the tunnel in worry, "Gaara are you alright?"
"Stop shouting Temari." Gaara's monotone voice responded calmly as he walked his way out of the debris with not a scratch on him, "Let's continue."
Kankuro looked at where the dust was still settling, "What happened back there Gaara?" He felt the need to ask. The temperature seemed to drop to let him know that it wasn't the right question to ask at the moment.
Gaara seemed to stare a hole through the black-clad Suna genin as he answered, "Eventually whatever was left of that little attack squad realized I would just kill the rest of them too. They attempted to blow themselves up with explosive tags to kill me when it became desperate... fools." 'Just like them. If I come face-to-face with the two that created those annoyances I'll kill them.' The red-haired boy thought to himself, "And Temari. Don't yell as if I could be defeated by something so rudimentary again."
"I was just worried Gaara." Temari tried to assure him without upsetting him, "I'm your big sister."
Gaara just walked past them without sparing them a glance, "You say that as if it means something to me."
XxX
(With Team Ten)
"Shit!" Menma yelled as he was the first to be spat out of the tunnel of water that he and his team had been stuck in. He flew as if he had been rocketed out of a water slide before yelling prior to landing on the ground after a ten to twenty foot drop, "Ow..." He muttered to himself as he stared up at the ceiling of the cave.
Turning his head to the side from his painful place on the ground, he saw Naruto and Shikamaru get spit out next, only they managed to fall into the pool of water at the bottom of the rather short waterfall that stood at the end of their little watery route. Oh of course, when he got spit out of the waterfall he flew across the nice watery landing and hit the solid ground but Naruto and Shikamaru hit the water where he could just swim to land. With Menma's luck next out would obviously be Ino and she'd-
"Oof!"
-Land right on top of his stomach.
"Ow..." Ino said in a mirror of how Menma had just moments prior, only he probably had more of a reason to do so at this point in time than she did. She finally noticed exactly what had broken her fall and looked down owlishly at who she was more or less straddling, "Menma-kun?" Menma gave a pained grunt to let her know he was listening, "Sorry."
"It's alright Ino." Menma replied trying to give a reassuring grin but letting out a cough due to getting his ribs compressed by the girl, "Could you get off though?"
Noticing the position they were in, Ino just couldn't help herself and had to get a jab in, "Hmm, now this is really forward of you. I don't think this is the time to show your Ino-chan how much you love her though. Not like this anyway." She laughed when Menma pushed her aside off of himself and stood up grumbling with a red face, "You should have taken your chance last night!"
"Alright you troublesome idiots..." Shikamaru said, probably keeping a long incensed rant from Menma from breaking out as he pulled himself out of the water, "Where the hell are we now?" He looked over at Menma for some kind of confirmation of their location.
A shrug came from the Swordsman, "I don't know. My clones all fell out of the waterfall the same way I did. They didn't make it through the landing though." They also didn't have a very wet Yamanaka Ino land on them either. Menma was still in debate over whether that was a good or bad thing all things considered.
The quartet looked around the room they were in. It looked like an antechamber as the waterfall they all fell out of spat water that trailed around the dome-like area, a little peninsula of land being the only thing that there was of solid ground that led to a door at the other end of the space.
Ino wrung the water from her clothes with a frown, "What did we jump in so fast for before Menma-kun's clones told him what was down here?"
Menma fought back a shiver, "My clones up top, the ones I had disarming traps and watching our backs... they got massacred. Every single one of them. By one guy. They never touched him even once. They never got close."
His clones never got close enough to use Menma's new jutsu on the weird Suna ninja. They managed to make some impact on the sand they had attacking them, but causing internal damage on a wave of sand was a moot point. Cutting through sand was also a moot point as their katanas were all but useless in the frontal attack they were forced into. A last ditch effort from his clones using the traps they had been disarming didn't give Menma any confidence in his demise either. He hadn't even seen the other two fight, and at the moment he didn't care about the other two at all.
"Then let's get the hell out of here and end this mess." Naruto said as he walked forward towards the door. It had to be something worthwhile. This had been the only door that they had seen period since getting down in the tunnels. Almost two days of miserable, squalid searching and playing cat-and-mouse with bullseyes on their backs. He was done with it.
Not needing to be told twice as Ino wanted a shower and real food, and Menma wanted to get as far away from that Suna genin as he possibly could, they followed Shikamaru as he pushed the massive doors open and stepped inside, the doors closing behind them and leaving them in the dark.
Lights in the room then flickered on to reveal a well-lit path that they walked along until they found a pair of fully armored samurai guarding the door. Menma stepped up and spoke, "So go ahead and tell me how late we are."
"Its been a while Menma, You guys are the seventh team to arrive." One of the samurai said, "You are all safe and free to proceed. Congratulations on passing your second exam." All four of Team Ten sighed in relief and walked past the guards through the door. One of them noticed Menma freeze in his tracks and lag behind his teammates, "Yes? What is the matter?"
Menma turned around and grinned disarmingly with a sheepish laugh, "There's no fighting allowed past this point, right?"
The two samurai looked at each other before one of them answered Menma, "That is correct. All of your fighting should have been done outside of this point. Why?"
"No reason. Thanks." Menma said, satisfaction evident in his face. No creepy Suna ninja would be coming for him looking for a payback shot in here... maybe. With his curiosity sated, he followed after and caught up to his other teammates, not looking back at all.
XxX
(Hours Later)
The waiting area for all passing teams turned out to be a very tranquil underground bamboo grove. For Shikamaru it was the perfect place to catch some more rest. For Naruto it was the perfect place to finally sit back and fix himself some ramen... and maybe get some much needed sleep after he was done eating, and for Menma it was the perfect opportunity to continue reading his icha icha paradise book.
They had been beaten there by a few other people.
A team from Kirigakure. One of them wore a very thick specially made brown bodysuit that went over their head and covered their face, with only his red eyes and the metal plate stitched into the chest of the suit visible. On their back they had a tank that looked similar to the oxygen tank that the Ame ninja from before wore, only it was twice the size and there was no apparatus going around towards any kind of breathing mask. Who knew what it was for?
Another member of this team was a rather tall, lanky older teen, with half black and half silver hair pulled into a ponytail to go with the goatee on his chin and his headband on his forehead. He wore black pants, a long-sleeved kimono top, and thick metal braces wrapped around the length of his forearms and around his waist. The last member of the team was a young woman with short dark hair and eye shadow wearing a blood red battle dress and mesh stockings. Her hands were wrapped up and she had a large round shield on her back almost her entire size with an odd erratic pattern on it in the colors of blue, yellow, and brown. It was weird.
The same Iwa team that had been after Team Ten earlier were down there as well. With the one that had the shaved head, Hisashi, glaring a hole into Menma and Naruto while his teammates relaxed and talked. Naruto glared right back sticking out his tongue. Menma didn't notice and couldn't care less, which for some reason really ground his gears.
From Takigakure there was also a team there. There was a girl with spiky, neck length hair with an orange clip in it, orange eyes, and a tanned appearance. She wore a white sleeveless shirt that left much of her torso bare as well as fishnet shorts underneath a white mini-skirt. She had her village headband tied around her right bicep and on her back she had a cylindrical object wrapped in a red material. She also had quite the scowl on her face as her teammates gave her a decent berth
Speaking of her teammates, one of them was quite average looking one. He had brown hair in something of a puffy small afro and his headband around his forehead. He wore an open black jacket with his collar turned up and a grey shirt underneath to go with his brown pants. Her other teammate was a level-headed looking shinobi with spiky black hair and strange eyes that had green irises and red sclera. He wore a long black cloak that left his entire body concealed from sight.
Also there was the team from Otogakure with the guy that looked like a mummy leading the pack, a team of genin from Amegakure wearing white cloths over their faces with eye-holes, air-mask mouthpieces, and straitjacket looking outfits, and a team from Kumogakure that seemed rare as it had two girls and one boy on the team. One of the girls seemed pretty calm with blonde hair and a steel blue-eyed stare while the other one with dark skin and red hair seemed to be a hot-head... usually taking it out on the dark skinned boy with white hair that was their teammate.
As he focused on eating his ramen once more instead of trying to size up his possible competition, he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked over and up to see Lee standing there with his smile that seemed to gleam. Maybe Naruto was hungrier than he thought if he was seeing that? "Naruto-san Menma-san, it is good to see a fellow Konoha team make it here as well as us! Tell me how you found the test to be."
Naruto let out a sigh as he looked down at his bowl of steaming ramen, "Let's just say I don't feel like doing this again." He said to the bushy eyebrowed Konoha genin, "What about you guys? You and Tenten probably breezed right through this thing... Neji too I guess." He begrudgingly admitted. Never having seen the guy fight or even operate as a ninja, he couldn't just assume that he could stop Neji. First of all that wasn't fair to Neji, and second of all what was he going to do if that attitude got him beaten if they just so happened to fight?
"Thank you for the compliment Naruto-san." Lee said in a very thankful manner, "My teammates and myself had a very youthful experience in Tetsu no Kuni's wilderness around the mountains! Why, on the first day of the test we-."
Lee had launched into a long story in an attempt to regale Naruto and Menma of his and his team's experiences on the mountain and in the caverns, but Menma wasn't listening. The reason for that being that the team of genin from Sunagakure that he had come across by way of his clones had just walked in. And here he was hoping they wouldn't manage to make it by tomorrow at noon. Apparently around twenty hours was too much of a time span to be praying for a team with a guy like that to miss.
And the very redhead with the marks around his eyes that had cut through his clones with sand, using it in ways that Menma didn't even know sand could be used to hurt people with, looked over at him as the world seemed to stop for just a moment. Just as quickly as the moment came it passed and he looked away and went about his own business, letting Menma sigh in relief.
So why did he just feel like he had been marked or something?
"-And even Tenten would have to admit that-."
At that time he realized that the entire time he had been worrying about the Suna kid, Lee had been steadily talking away. By now he had missed so much of the conversation there was probably no way that he could wing it if he were to be asked a question. That wasn't fair to Lee. Other than cold-cocking him with a kick the day that they had met he hadn't really seemed like a bad guy. Anyone that would protect a teammate like that had to be kind of alright in his book.
He had to fess up and just come clean with it, "Ugh... I'm sorry Lee, were you saying something?" Naruto said in a sincere and apologetic way. And somehow he felt like that had been the wrong thing to say for entirely foreign reasons.
Lee just stopped in his tracks and stared at Naruto, his eyes wide in shock or whatever emotion it was that he was feeling before he began to shake and his eyes filled with a fire, "Such a hip attitude Naruto-san! I will show you, from this day forward you are my eternal rival!"
Naruto just tilted his head to the side in confusion, "What?" Even Shikamaru and Ino were paying attention at this point and were wondering how Naruto knew such a strange guy in the first place.
Thankfully someone came along well-versed enough to actually know how to handle Lee's brand of insanity, having had to deal with it for well over a year at this point. Tenten walked over and tried to get things in order, "Lee I thought Neji was your 'eternal rival'. How are you supposed to have two of them?"
"I can balance them both!" Lee exclaimed with determination, "As long as I can routinely defeat both of them then it is no problem at all!"
"Maybe you should work on defeating just one of them first." Tenten suggested with a dry look on her face before pointing over to where Neji was sitting, seemingly meditating in an attempt to block out any connection he had to his strange teammate, "You've already been working on Neji for so long, you shouldn't let off of him in case you reach a breakthrough."
Lee took on a pondering look before pounding his fist into his other hand, "You are correct Tenten. I cannot afford to divert my attention away from defeating my original eternal rival now that I am so close to doing so." He turned to Naruto, "I am sorry Naruto-san, but perhaps when I have already proven myself victorious over another we can truly be eternal rivals."
Not knowing really what to do, or how to handle the situation, the blonde Kyuubi container just nodded and gave a weak thumbs up, getting Lee to smile and then take off back over towards Neji. With Lee more or less gone, Naruto turned to Tenten who was smirking down at him quite triumphantly, "What just happened and why do I feel like I just got shoved out of the line of fire?"
"Because you more or less just did." Tenten informed him, pointing back at Lee sitting on the ground directly in front of Neji in an attempt to find any weakness whatsoever in him that he could. If Neji's eyes weren't closed he might have found the complete lack of blinking from Lee rather unnerving, "Unless you wanted to have that in your life regularly."
Naruto could say that he most certainly did not. So far he had enough problems to work out that he hadn't even begun to address to have to deal with any eternal rivals yet... except Sasuke... because he just had to kick that guy's ass...
...Man he hoped Sasuke made it so he could beat him up close and personal.
"I don't think I want that in my life at all." Naruto admitted to Tenten... who was probably a second rival of his since he never got to prove that he could beat her. She was just way nicer than his original rival, "I would thank you, but I'll save my thank yous for after I beat you."
Tenten shook her head with her arms crossed over her chest, "You're still on that are you? Oh well, at least you aren't as bad as Lee is with it. I can deal with smacking you around once every blue moon just to keep showing you who's boss." Her eyes then panned over to Naruto's two teammates who were looking at her with some suspicion, "So are you going to introduce me to your team or are you going to keep me as the weird girl that just started talking to you out of the blue as far as they're concerned?"
"Yeah, whatever." Naruto said, rolling his eyes before pointing at her, "Guys this is Tenten, a friend of Menma and I that we met right after we graduated... and I am going to beat her up one of these days." He got a flick on his ear for his trouble, "What? It's true, I am going to beat you up one of these days."
Hearing that Naruto had met her right after graduating put Shikamaru slightly at ease. She wasn't just over here to scope them out or pry any kind of secret away from them, and hearing that Naruto wanted to defeat her also made him realize that Naruto himself wouldn't tell her anything unnecessary, thus he went back to not caring too much about the people or things around him while he could, "Nara Shikamaru." He said, giving out his name before then tuning everything else out.
"I'm Yamanaka Ino." Ino said, seeming to size Tenten up, at least momentarily before smirking, "I see you're a friend of my Menma-kun's."
"Your what?" Tenten asked with a raised eyebrow.
Ino sidled up to Menma and threw one arm around him, getting him to growl at her for the embarrassing situation and for almost spilling the ramen he had in his lap, "Oh Menma-kun's madly in love with me, but I love another. Still, he holds quite the flame for me; isn't that right?" She asked Menma, pulling on his cheek.
Menma to his credit was keeping his cool... on the outside, "I hope you're enjoying this now because when the exam is over and I get the first chance, you're so getting it." He said in a steady, even-toned voice that belied the true danger that she was in. She had obviously forgotten who she was dealing with. It was his fault for not terrorizing the general populace with horrible pranks to remind her of just how dangerous he was.
"Actually when he puts it that way..." Tenten chose to interject, grinning down at the busting of chops proceeding to take place, "...Yeah! I can totally see it! I mean, he said that you were 'getting it' the first chance he got. What else could he mean by that other than, you know?"
Okay, exam or not those two weren't getting away with this. And why wasn't Shikamaru or Naruto helping him out? A lot of use he was when they weren't in mortal danger for some reason. Oh well, when in doubt curse loudly and vehemently to show your displeasure with a situation, which was just what was about to happen before an adult voice chimed in.
"Hello team." A group of jounin were led into the bamboo grove, one of whom were Asuma, "Good to see that you didn't turn into brat-sicles out in that blizzard the other day. Way to go."
The moment of her favorite pastime over, Ino hopped up from her place on the ground to leave Menma alone to pay attention to the team's sensei, "Asuma-sensei what are you doing here?"
Asuma gave him female student a smile, "Well we're not going to leave you all in this place for another day when after the test is over we have to go back to town anyway, so when you passed we were informed and came down here to get you and take you back just to get it out of the way. I'm sure you don't want to be here any longer either."
"Hell no!" Was the immediate answer from Ino before she felt some embarrassment at her sudden outburst.
Hearing that they were about to leave, Naruto finished his ramen and began to walk with Asuma, Menma closed his book and walked over to Shikamaru, dragging him up to his feet, "Get up Shika, it's time to go. You can sleep when we get back to town."
Shikamaru let out a groan and opened his eyes lazily, "More walking? Count me out. I'll go back after I wake up." He said, shutting his eyes as he tried to sleep on his feet. Everyone that knew him was more than certain that he could actually pull that off.
"You're already awake." Ino told him, "And it's just walking. No looking over your shoulder for someone trying to kill you or trying to navigate a maze of tunnels. It's easy now." When he didn't open his eyes, Ino began impatiently tapping her foot on the ground, eventually ending with him opening his eyes. His mother did that all the time when she was about to get troublesome, he didn't need to see Ino do it too.
Resigned to his fate of more terrible walking, the bane of his existence, Shikamaru looked up at Asuma, "This isn't everyone so what about the other teams? What happens when they pass too?"
Asuma and his team began to leave with the others who had been picked up by their jounin instructors through the back tunnel, "If the rest of the twelve teams show up before noon tomorrow then they'll be led back to the village just like you. At four o'clock you'll be given directions on what to do next along with them at the original meeting place for the exams."
"We're not done yet?" Shikamaru asked in a disgruntled manner, getting a shake of the head from Asuma, "I'm never doing this crap again..." He said under his breath as he shoved his hands in his pockets and followed along, hoping that whatever was set for tomorrow would be easy in contrast to the rest of the chunin exams.
He could always hope, couldn't he?