That ANBU were keeping track of them was quite understandable. After all, the last person who'd ended up in what had been dubbed "The Between" had been foaming at the mouth when not screaming about angles and lights and things-that-were-not.
Quite frankly, anything that was scary enough that every single ninja village AND every power-crazed missing-nin had deemed it something to avoid at all costs was something to be eyed uncertainly.
Some, including one of the ANBU, knew that there had been experiments outside the village just to test the truth of what the Second Hokage's experiments had revealed. So far, every try at disproving that experiment had instead proved the idea was a very very bad one.
Until now. Three survivors, apparently alive and well. According to the tale all three told - it was Uzumaki who pulled them back. That he was an Uzumaki and Jinchuriki might have contributed to their continued survival and sanity.
There were ANBU around who could signal other ANBU the moment the group showed signs of going insane or sprouting tentacles or mutating into monstrous chimeric forms. At which point the assembled ANBU would do their absolute best to kill the one (or all three) that was doing that.
Owl met Chameleon outside the room. "Anything to report?"
Chameleon nodded. "Manifestations. Minor things. Examination of chakra turned up some interesting bits."
"No tentacles I hope," said Owl. She didn't even like takoyaki. Much less the sorts of things she'd heard about from Kumo's experiment in "The Between" back during the war.
"No, nothing outright completely unnatural," said Chameleon, sounding disappointed. "Take a candle near the Uchiha."
"Why?" asked Owl, not about to do it.
"It'll flare and then go out," said Chameleon, sounding even more disappointed.
"Strengthened bloodline?" asked Owl. After all, the Uchiha specialized in Fire Release even more than the Sharingan. Many Uchiha had never awakened the Sharingan after all, but almost all members of the clan had shown some degree of affinity for fire.
"Initial tests while they were unconscious supports that theory," said Chameleon. "We're still watching for anything particularly nasty of course. If one of them starts the 'spinning head' thing we'll be ready."
"I hadn't heard of the 'spinning head' bit," admitted Owl.
"Kiri tried to prove that everyone else was blowing smoke about it being so dangerous, had a little girl go there. She came back but it turned out it was just something wearing her shape. Head spinning around on her neck, spewing green stuff. Killed twelve jonin to put her down according to the story." Chameleon glanced towards the room. "The closest we've seen is when that girl crushed the metal tubing on the side of her bed. With her bare fingers."
"I see," said Owl.
"Oh, and do you remember the 'Red Hot Habanero'?" asked Chameleon.
"Yes," said Owl. "Uzumaki?"
"Chains."
Owl was silent briefly. "Kakashi will likely test them with the Bell Test."
"Yes." Chameleon nodded once.
"Twenty ryo they not only pass, but he isn't going to read their files ahead of time."
Chameleon stared at Owl briefly.
"Worth a try," said Owl.
"No it wasn't."
Kakashi was hours late, as was his habit. He spent a couple of minutes observing his students before he would appear to them. Also per habit.
They were asleep. All three of them.
Naruto was sitting against one tree, snoring lightly, and surrounded by four pieces of paper weighted down by rocks.
Sasuke was off by another tree, curled up practically into a ball.
Sakura was actually sleeping next to one of the posts, and someone had put a blanket over the girl. A ratty-looking one with the design of little dancing frogs.
"GOOD MORNING, MY LITTLE STUDENTS!" Kakashi appeared with a voice-amplification jutsu and a swirl of leaves.
"Mph," indicated the sleeping Sasuke.
"Ugh," went Sakura.
"Ehh?" asked a bleary-eyed Naruto, stirring and actually opening his eyes.
Kakashi sent a kunai out to stab into the tree next to Naruto's head. That would wake him up the rest of the way.
(CLINK!)
The kunai hit a barrier which deflected it off to the side.
Naruto finished blinking himself awake. "What? What was that for?"
Barrier jutsu? Odd. Kakashi nodded at his potential student. "Time for the test."
"Oh." Naruto checked his watch. "Wow. You're two hours late."
"Water Hose No Jutsu!" Kakashi sent a narrow stream of water to try waking up Sakura next. This didn't meet a barrier, and resulted in a sopping-wet and spluttering Sakura.
"Ung," went Sasuke, still not quite awake.
"Water Hose No Jutsu," repeated Kakashi, directing a new stream of water towards Sasuke.
(FWOOOOOM!)
Kakashi didn't spend time wondering WHY he was suddenly on fire. He just dealt with the fire by maintaining the technique and changing targets.
The fire was gone in a moment, and Sasuke was awake, so now it was time to go into the rehearsed speech of the Bell Test.
Ah, the expected reactions. Sakura trying to wring out her shirt and ripping it. Sasuke literally steaming.
Kakashi blinked and looked again. Yup. That was steam rising up off of Sasuke as he glared at his wet clothes. Which rapidly became dry clothes. Huh.
Naruto had already packed away those pieces of paper and rubbed his head as if he had a headache.
Well, whatever they'd gone through that put them in the hospital was probably still muting their reactions.
"-and you have to come after me with the intent to kill," continued Kakashi cheerfully.
Sasuke sighed. Sakura groaned. Naruto sneezed.
"Okay," said Naruto. "I need an ice pack, a dark room, and someone to remove the ice pick buried in my right eye."
"You don't have anything buried in any part of your body that I can see," said Kakashi.
Naruto was quiet for a moment. "If the whole 'not eating' was any indication, you wanted to test us when we were at our absolute worse. I'd say you succeeded."
"Critical success," said Sakura.
"Hn," hnned Sasuke.
"There's four bells there between both of you?" asked Naruto.
"Not quite," said Kakashi.
"Naruto, dunk your head in the lake, that might help enough to get you into this," said Sakura. "Okay, when do we start?"
"You can start now," said Kakashi, with no idea of the Doom that might befall him.
Instead he noticed the other two waiting until Naruto had staggered over to the lake, knelt down, and dunked his head in there. When he got back up, the two were still waiting.
"You two are waiting on the dead-last of the Academy before making a move?" asked Kakashi.
"If it hadn't been for Naruto," said Sasuke, "I would have died. I certainly wouldn't have been able to find my way back."
"He's an idiot, and loud, and annoying," said Sakura. "Definitely not useless though."
"Gee thanks, Sakura," said Naruto as he rejoined them. "So, do we take turns or something?"
Sakura considered that. "Part of the test might be individual evaluation of our skills. Yeah. Let's try that."
"Who first?" asked Naruto.
"Sasuke," nominated Sakura. "Top of the class."
"Ah, I'll just try to rest a moment then," said Naruto, sounding relieved. "At least I'm only seeing one of him right now."
Kakashi was bemused as they apparently decided this as a group. That was promising in a way.
Sasuke went through hand-signs rapidly. "Fire Release: Great Fireball!"
A genin knows a jutsu of that rank?! Kakashi was ready to dodge it, being familiar with that jutsu and its effects. What he got was something altogether different.
Sasuke himself was surprised when instead of breathing out a large blast of fire, he got a REALLY large blast of fire - easily four times what he had expected. He also felt a strong connection to the fire and found he was directing where the flame went. So it was not only a huge mass of flame, it was chasing the jonin.
He began to smile as he directed the flame with a hand-gesture, feeling the slow depletion of the fire but he was able to shape it with his will and maintain it to some extent.
He was stronger. In his estimation, this was indeed a very good thing.
At which point the jonin was in front of him and directing a kick into his solar plexus that pretty much shut down his concentration on maintaining the technique.
"Lesson one: taijutsu," announced Kakashi. He's come up with a variant that allows him to control the fireball? Almost like the Fire Dragon technique. Not practiced with it though.
The first kick dug his heel into Sasuke's solar plexus, launching him backwards and driving the breath out of his body. As predicted, the flames died out immediately.
Oddly enough, it was Sakura who charged forward. Trying to defend Sasuke? Straight Academy taijutsu, technically perfect but without any individual variation. No surprises there.
He lazily blocked her initial punch. To his surprise, the impact was considerably harder than he would expect.
He twisted, getting his feet under him and stopping his flight before he could hit a tree.
Sakura looked SHOCKED. Really, he wished he could get a picture. She looked at him, looked at her fist, looked back at him, looked back at her fist, then walked over to one of the posts not holding an alarm clock.
Fingers dug easily into the wood, then she shifted her arm. Concrete under the ground cracked. Then she lifted the post out as easily as if she were lifting a splinter from her skin. She hefted the two meters of wood, her shock having been replaced with a thoughtful expression.
She turned towards him then, and the expression on her face shifted to something EVIL. Not a possessed-by-oni evil. More the sort of evil he'd expect when Kushina had a particularly painful retribution planned for someone. Though, come to think of it, he'd seen the same expression on Tsunade once or twice.
Well, there was absolutely no way he'd stand there and let a mini-Tsunade pound on him.
"Lesson two," said Kakashi. "Genjutsu."
"Ouch," managed Naruto, struggling to become conscious again.
"Sorry Naruto," said Sakura's voice.
Blurs gradually began resolving themselves.
"Uhm. Why am I tied to a post?" asked Naruto in a perfectly reasonable voice. "Why does my chest hurt?"
"Sasuke got beaten by taijutsu, I was hit by a genjutsu. I saw Sasuke dying. I threw the post to the side." Sakura paused. "Apparently I hit you with the post and knocked you out."
"And broke three of your ribs," added Sasuke.
Naruto considered that briefly. "Well. That sucks."
"Since you didn't even get a chance to do something, you were tied to the post. We were told not to feed you, that all three of us failed, and that we would try again this afternoon. That no matter what, you would fail and we weren't to feed you." Sakura let out a deep breath at the end of that.
"Correction. This REALLY sucks," said Naruto.
"So. What now?" asked Sasuke.
"When we were Between," said Naruto. "I saw. Sasuke, you generate and control fire. You could end up being the strongest Fire Release specialist in the nation. That was your biggest desire, your focus, at the time we were over there. Sakura, you wanted to be stronger, more able to endure whatever danger comes. You became harder to hurt and physically stronger. That's why you broke your chopsticks."
"And tore my shirt earlier," said Sakura. "What about you?"
"I'm an Uzumaki," said Naruto. "I wanted to get us out of there, but I also saw and understood what and where we were. I'm going to need more time to work it out, but fuuinjutsu is going to be a lot easier for me for one thing."
"So, all three of us fail and go back to the Academy and try again next year? Maybe we can get someone who is less of an utter dick?" asked Sakura.
"Not used to hearing you talk like that," said Naruto.
"I'm feeding myself by hand. I hurt still, I'm apparently going to have to treat the world like it's all made of eggshells, and I was still taken down like nothing," said Sakura. "It's been eventful."
"Hnn," said Sasuke.
"Yeah," said Naruto.
Sakura considered. "Sasuke. Give Naruto some rice. I'd do it but I'm having enough trouble feeding myself without breaking the bento box."
"Hn," agreed Sasuke.
Kakashi appeared in a swirl of leaves and menace. "YOU GUYS... pass."
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(Posted Sat, 16 May 2015 15:41)
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