( 27 April- year 8 AK )
We had to stay still for a whole hour in a waiting room, all the other teams slowly trickling in.
"How many?" Hana asked.
"Twenty-five teams." Shin drawled, I could smell the sake in his breath from where I stood. And that reminds me.
"I still can't believe your solution had been getting your prisoner drunk," I said.
They had the decency to at least look sheepish, even if it was Hana who, almost uncharacteristically, rolled her eyes and dismissed my whining.
"We only took ten minutes, you're a tough guy, we knew you could handle it." She said.
Still sore because I haven't told her why I set up a tent in the Uchiha District? I wondered.
"Genins." The proctor called our attention, and the somewhat relaxed environment turned into a more tense one. All of us were staring at him waiting for instructions.
"One genin from each team will come to this stand and be given a wooden chip." He rose one in the air so that everyone could see it.
"On it, there is etched either the Saru, Tatsu, or Tora handsign. To pass the second stage your whole team needs to reach the end of the training ground behind the stall in five days, with at least one of every kind of chip."
And before anyone managed to raise their hands to ask a question, the proctor added: "You will be monitored during the test. You all signed up for this, so everything is allowed to complete your mission, if you want to back out, now it's the time."
I swear I heard someone say 'cool'. What's wrong with these people.
Hana started walking towards the stall when I stopped her. Trying to out-think the second stage. In my head, I ran over the instructions that we had just been given, making a comparison with what was implied.
Take the chips in the training ground and reach the end of it. I summed up. Only, the proctor didn't say when we could start gathering the chips. I looked at the stall, there was a jonin giving them away, so I didn't wish to test my plan against him.
I started gesturing. ~Shin take it. Hana memory smells.~
And before they could question my orders I clapped my hands, plastering a goofy smile on my face. And channeling my own inner Naruto I pointed at Shin.
"You on queue duty, since you are boring," I said at a normal volume, which meant everyone was listening, hoping to get information on the competition.
I turned towards Hana: "You on 'not killing anyone duty!' "
She frowned, she had no idea what I was doing, but she trusted me to have a plan. She whined, and grumbled something under her voice, she even growled a bit, before crossing her arms and pointedly looking away from me.
"And you?" Shin drawled, already walking towards the forming line.
"I'll make us friends!" I exclaimed raising my hands in the air.
For the following half an hour, I mingled, annoying the shit out of everyone, but when I started telling raunchy jokes, on one side I disgusted someone, on the other people, were cracking up. And for shinobi trained to not show emotions, it was kind of a big deal.
Shin went back to Hana, occasionally rocking in the balls on his feet, and making a show of giving the chip to our favorite kunoichi.
Whit a skip in my step, I joined them while the proctor divided us into smaller groups, who would enter the training ground through different gates.
We got lined up with one of the youngest groups, they were from Iwa. When I got a close look at their kunoichi, who was in line for the chip while I was mingling, I froze.
She had pink eyes, no pupil, only two or three years older than Sasuke. Kurotsuchi.
I sighed. Bloody hell what's up with people so eager to climb the ladder?
We were led to a stone gate already opened for us, let inside with a "The end of the training ground that you must reach from here it's somewhere north."
Very specific. I rolled my eyes.
As soon as the gate close behind us, the Iwa genins pounced on us, and before my teammates could butcher the fools, I moved.
To the genin eyes, I simply disappeared, no blur, no telling twitch of my muscles, simply, I was no longer there.
I was behind them and kicked their legs out from beneath them, making them fall to the ground. They were good enough to slam their arms down and turn an embarrassing fall into sloppy handstands.
"Attacking someone you know nothing about is the pinnacle of stupidity." I lectured them with a bored tone, "What would your families say?"
The Iwa team scrambled to get on guard, each of the kids assuming what I supposed was their standard taijutsu stance.
"Relax," I said, raising my hands in a soothing gesture. "Shin, Hana, north, full tilt," I said out loud, while my hand quickly gestured.
~Targets stolen before~
And once again I lamented the existence of a less than satisfactory vocabulary in the combat sign language Hana had created years before. It was a Team 10 thing on which I had insisted a lot. Still, it could be better.
"Aaaw, but they want a fight!" Hana cooed at the younger genins.
"And there was this thing I wanted to test on a human target..." Shin argued.
"You are not deep frying the Tsuchikage's grandaughter while we are in Iwa, Shin." I reprimanded him.
"Besides, Kuro-chan looks kind of cute, with her pigtails and whatnot." I kept going when literally everyone's jaws fell on the ground.
"Why...?" stammered the boy on Kurotsuchi's side. While nobody from team ten had exuded killing intent, it was pretty clear that we could have butchered them without breaking a sweat.
And they probably grew up with horror stories in which the Yellow Flash was the monster.
"I didn't come to Iwa to kill children." I gruffed as an answer.
I grabbed my teammates by the shoulders and yanked them towards the north. Then I spoke to the Iwa genin, who were sweating under the implication of my absolute dismissal of their abilities.
"If you make it quick to the objective, you're in for a gift."
And I started running, followed by my teammates, at a speed that no genin could hope to match unless he too trained extensively under Might Guy for the better part of four years.
The terrain was rock. Period. I distantly heard the trickle of a little course of water, but otherwise the training ground we were crossing was simply a plain crisscrossed by trenches, burrows, and likely tunnels.
Probably filled to the brim with the strange kind of dangerous animals that enjoyed to populate training grounds. Very much like the Forest of Death, or training ground 44, in Konoha.
After a while, I could feel their eyes boring into my back. I sighed. "Okay, questions?".
"Why are we heading to the endpoint already?" Hana asked.
"I presume it has something to do with your 'making friends' while I was in line." Shino commented.
I smiled smugly. "You guys remember that I'm good at stealing, right?"
They stood silent for a second, letting my answer sinking in, before snickering.
"You pickpocketed them!" Hana laughed.
"And you started to mingle before everyone had returned from the line so you wouldn't have raised suspicion," Shin commented. I could tell that he was actually impressed.
"And that thing with the Iwa team?" he then asked.
I raised an eyebrow. "I don't want Onoki to fall on our backs like a ton of bricks." I explained in a tone that conveyed how stupid the question was.
"I meant how did you know her name, and that she is the Tsuchikage's grandaughter." he clarified with an annoyed tone. Ha! I'll rile you up even if you're drunk.
"I listen when I walk." I smoothly lied. "The granddaughter of Onoki taking the exam was being whispered at every corner since we arrived, and I put it together with the way the other Iwa genins looked at her." I lied smoothly.
"And about the chan part?" Hana asked with an unreadable expression on her face.
"To freak them out. Everyone is big on honorifics, so many and so complex that makes only easier to offend someone." I shrugged.
"You're strange Daiki." Shin accused me.
It wasn't the worst thing I've ever been told, and not far from the truth either.
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