"I figured Ino would be all over you again," noted Naruto.
"Hn."
"Instead she's hanging back and looking over here a lot," noted Naruto further. "Why's she looking at me like that?"
"Hn."
"And why are you keeping me between you and her?" asked Naruto.
"You're fangirl repellant. I have at last found a use for you."
Naruto glared at Sasuke and managed to put a fair amount of sarcasm into his voice. "Gee. Thanks."
"Maybe she's just giving up on Sasuke and recognizing that the fate has me as the superior?" wondered Sakura aloud.
"All right you punks! Welcome to Training Ground 44, the Forest Of Death!" said the trenchcoat-wearing proctor.
"Why is it always the 'Forest Of Death'?" asked a Takigakure genin. "Or the 'Desert Of Suffering', 'Valley Of The End', 'Doom Crater', 'River Of A Thousand Teeth', 'Mountain Of Lost Hope', and so on?"
"We're ninja," said Shikamaru. "We love the dramatic. Even if it's entirely too troublesome."
"I heard about a place called the 'Island of Horror' that's actually fairly nice and picturesque," said a Kusa genin. "They named it that to keep the tourists away."
"Did it work?" asked a Suna genin.
"Mostly. I hear they get a few ninja every so often who get disgusted with the worst hazard being when the ice machine breaks down," answered the Kusa genin.
"Excuse me," said Anko Mitarashi. "The test?"
"Oh right," said the Taki genin.
"Anyway, this is not that island," said Anko. "In there, it is kill or be killed. Monstrous creatures abound."
"Abound? What's that mean?" asked a Kusa genin.
"It means they pounce a lot, dummy," said another Kusa genin.
"Oh! That makes sense!"
Anko twitched.
"Monstrous creatures abound?" prompted a Takigakure genin.
"Right," said Anko, displaying two scrolls and talking about how they would be issued one and have to get the other by any means possible. "You have a week to do it."
"So, is there a MRSP system?" asked the Takigakure genin who'd prompted her earlier.
"A wha?" asked Anko.
"Minimum Required Sanity Point system," said the Takigakure. "Will points be taken away from teams displaying a lack of sane behavior?"
Anko stared at the Takigakure ninja for a moment. "We're ninja. Why would we need 'sanity'?"
"Oh, it's one of those tests," mumbled the Taki ninja, clearly disappointed.
"Screw it," said Anko, throwing a kunai to cut someone's cheek, then disappearing behind them to lick the blood off. "Anyone else want to interrupt me?"
"GET AWAY FROM SASUKE! His blood is mine to lick... Wait a minute, that didn't come out right."
Anko stepped away after giving an extra squeeze to the young genin in question.
Sakura growled and went over to squeeze Sasuke there, only stopped when Sasuke doubled the glare he was giving his female team-member.
"Why me?" asked Sasuke after Sakura backed off.
"Why do you get all the girls?" grumbled Naruto.
"Hn," indicated Sasuke with a shrug.
"You dropped this," said a Kusa genin, handing a kunai back to Anko though he used his tongue to do so.
"Gee thanks," said Anko, barely glancing at the Kusa nin. "Anyway, any of you wanting to take the test - fill out these forms absolving Konohagakure and me personally for anything that might happen in there. We are not responsible for death, dismemberment, physical or emotional scarring, disease, food poisoning, yandere fangirls..."
"I AM NOT YANDERE!" yelled six or seven kunoichi.
Temari and Tenten both facepalmed, then noticed each other's reaction. A tiny amount of mutual respect was felt - not that it would keep one from attacking the other if it was deemed at least a momentary advantage.
"...or any other mishap that might occur," continued Anko. "Anyone want to quit, now's a good time."
"Right," said Naruto. He couldn't do too much with his Power Ring concealed, but he could Scan.
Sasuke glanced his way, curious.
"Large predators in the trees to the right," whispered Naruto. "There's also a couple of giant tigers prowling around a half-mile in. There's also some kind of space/time jutsu involved. The fence is only thirty miles long, but the forest is much bigger than you'd think from that."
"Makes sense," whispered back Sasuke. The village was only so big after all.
"Wood technique... this was made by the First Hokage," whispered Naruto as the Ring scanned. "Ring speculates it may have been his first attempt to make Konohagakure and something twisted or went wrong."
"Hn," indicated Sasuke, intrigued. The First Hokage was so powerful that even when something went wrong with his jutsu - what was left was a testament to his raw power.
The Gate opened, Team 7 leapt in.
They'd gone about fifty yards in, then Sasuke jagged left abruptly and went another hundred yards in that direction before stopping.
"What's up? Why are we stopping?" asked Sakura, having drawn a kunai and looking nervously around herself.
"Dobe. Use that Ring of yours, look around, then display a map," said Sasuke.
"Who made you boss?" asked Naruto, but he went ahead and did it because it made sense. The Ring lost its invisibility as it used more processing power to the task at hand.
A map of the area showed, with the edges slowly growing outward as they watched.
"Can you display hostile creatures?" asked Sasuke.
The map area was abruptly crawling with pulsing dots.
"Okay, clear that and display other genin teams," tried Sasuke.
"I see where you're going with this," said Naruto. The map lost most of the pulsing dots with new ones appearing.
"We've got an Earth scroll," said Sakura. "Can you just display those teams with a Heaven scroll?"
Seven blips showed on the map as it slowly continued to expand. Two were near their own location.
Sasuke met Naruto's eyes, a smug smile fitting into place on both of their faces.
"Uhm, how powerful are they?" asked Sakura, a little more cautious.
"Ring-san says it's difficult to say, and I should use shadow clones as probes to refine the search," said Naruto after a few moments. "Apparently there's so many predators it's having trouble filtering out chakra levels."
"Where is the Pink Hannya?" asked Gaara of the Rain genin caught in his sand trap.
"I don't know," choked the trapped genin.
"Wrong answer," said Gaara. "Sand Burial!"
"Ugh," said Kankuro a few minutes later. "Gaara, can you NOT get gore and blood all over the scroll? Now I'm having trouble reading which one it is."
Gaara just glared at his brother.
"He's right, we need to..."
A pink-haired girl ran past them. "Excuse me. Gotta run. Later."
"I thought I saw the Pink Hannya," said Kankuro, looking around.
"You did, you did see the Pink Hannya," said a slightly unnerved Temari. There hadn't been a hint of presence and then zoom - she was moving past them.
"That was the Pink Hannya," said Gaara, staring in the direction she'd disappeared in. "We're going after her."
"Why did you make forty copies of ME?!" asked Sakura.
"It seemed to work in Wave, besides - nobody's scared of me and they'd just mob Sasuke," pointed out Naruto. Not to mention I'm supposed to keep Ring-san secret, so having my reinforced shadow clones look like someone else is a good plan.
"They won't just dispel if they run into a tree branch or something will they?" asked Sasuke, sounding thoughtful.
"Nah, with Ring-san reinforcing them, they can take minor hits. Any serious injury and they'll still go 'poof' but just light scratches or stuff won't break it," said Naruto. "I figured out how to do that back in Wave, remember?"
"Why did some of them look different?" asked Sasuke. "Some were carrying swords or other weapons."
"I got tired of just making regular copies and Ring-san said I could get in weapons practice with shadow clones," said Naruto, remembering when it had informed him of the way shadow clone memories fed back to him when they dispelled.
"Why did two of them have those masks?" asked Sakura, ready to belt Naruto.
"Well, you heard 'em call you the 'Pink Hannya' right? So I added a hannya mask," said Naruto.
"Don't hit him, you might dispel the technique," said Sasuke to Sakura.
Ino wasn't sure how to handle the new information she'd gotten about Naruto Uzumaki. She'd SEEN some of his memories, almost lived them herself.
She'd had to revise her opinion of him. He had a strength he'd kept hidden if he could keep smiling and act like a clown in the face of THAT kind of treatment. Or no, he hadn't hidden it so much as she'd just never seen it.
She'd have to ask around and get answers though. Her curiosity was fully engaged.
Now wasn't the time though. Just surviving would be a goal requiring her full attention.
Sakura ran past her, wearing a hannya mask and carrying a two-handed scythe.
Shikamaru turned to her. Choji scratched his head.
"I have NO idea, honestly," protested Ino.
They'd stabbed it, pinning the Pink Hannya to a tree. Who then looked up at them with an EVIL grin before dissolving into blue flecks of light.
"That was a shadow clone, right?" asked Koni.
"No," said Poni, drawing her tanto and looking wildly around. "A shadow clone would have dispelled at the first hit. Not bled blue blood and look at us like that before dispelling. Something else."
"That rumor that she's undead?" asked Doni.
"Just a rumor, Konoha wouldn't use zombies," said Poni, looking around. "It may have been some kind of substitution jutsu."
"Why was her blood BLUE?" asked Koni.
"Why are you asking me?" asked Poni. "Doni? Any sign of her? Doni?"
Silence.
Poni slowly looked over to where her other team-member was.
Crouched in an unnatural fashion, as if her joints didn't bend quite right, the Pink Hannya was perched on the back of the fallen Doni.
She looked up with a jerk, blood dribbling down from her mouth with her eyes strangely glowing and reflective.
"WAGH!" Poni reacted by running forward, slashing wildly at the MONSTER.
Koni panicked and started throwing explosive-tagged kunai.
A few minutes later, a Sakura Haruno with hannya mask and scythe walked in, grabbed the scroll, fired a signal gun, and then left.
All the while thinking that shadow clone + transformation + a bit of cleverness was a very effective combination.
Sakura and Sasuke both stared, then looked at each other, then back to where Sakura had just slung a set of packs down in front of them.
"Uhm, what's this?" asked Sakura finally.
"Well, I'm kinda playing with that 'Pink Hannya' thing," answered the other Sakura, ignoring Sakura's growl at the nickname. "And ya know how much it drove that Zabuza guy up the wall when I did this. So we got more clones going out - providing Ring-san some kinda extension on the sensor stuff. Also looting everything possible cause more supplies for us, obviously."
"These are the more durable shadow clones you used back there then," said Sasuke.
"That's not all!" bragged the clone-Sakura. "Higher physical strength and some ability to use techniques like transformation and veil!"
"Veil?" asked Sakura.
"That was that technique the chunin were using back on that stairwell in the first exam building," answered Naruto as he walked into their little clearing. "Ring-san scanned it."
"So you got a Heaven scroll plus a bunch of supplies?" asked Sakura. "Who did you have to kill for it?"
"Nobody," said the other Sakura. "They were alive when I left them, had to bandage two of them up though or they wouldn't have lived much longer."
"I -" Naruto stopped and glanced up.
"What the heck?" asked the clone-Sakura. "Someone's attacked and dispelled two clones so far."
"Where did she go THIS time?!" growled Gaara.
"That's an interesting variation of the shunshin, dissolving into blue sparkles that fly away on the breeze before vanishing," noted Temari. "It's sort of like your Sand Body technique."
"I'm still working on that one," grumbled Gaara, not calmed down by reminder of a failure.
"Do you suppose she's mainly dodging and evading us because she doesn't want to display what techniques she actually has?" asked Kankuro, mainly because that was HIS sort of strategy.
"Most likely," said Temari after considering that. It wasn't HER sort of strategy but it was certainly a valid ninja sort of strategy. "As long as nobody gets chased around again."
"Don't worry, I'm in no hurry to spend more time repairing joints on my puppets," said Kankuro, irritated by the reminder. "Wait. I just saw-"
"SAND BINDING COFFIN!" said Gaara, sending tendrils of sand out at the girl as she leapt from one tree to another.
Again she ducked behind a tree at the first hit, then came the blue sparkles floating on the breeze.
"AGAIN?!" asked Gaara.
"AGH! HENTAI TENTACLES!"
That exclamation brought all three of them to a stunned halt. Gaara at the thought that someone had mistaken his attempts to kill the girl as anything other than just that. Kankuro at the thought of his little brother doing ANYTHING hentai. Temari at the sudden image she would be trying to get out of her head for a long time to come.
"PERVERT!" yelled the Pink Hannya, leaping from concealment and smashing a fist into Gaara's cheek before leaping away again.
Gaara just stood there for a few moments, shock over his features.
Temari stared at something new. "She got through his Sand Armor."
"WHAT?!" asked Kankuro. Gaara NEVER got hurt. Gaara NEVER got so much as a scratch on him. Gaara currently had a large purple slap-mark on one cheek.
Gaara brought a trembling hand up to the affected cheek.
"Gaara! Calm down!" Temari said, a little panicked. Who knew how her little brother would rage at this? He could end up going on an insane killing spree and letting his bijuu out.
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(Posted Sat, 07 Sep 2013 11:30)
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