Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Iwa Chunin Exams Arc: Four
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. But oh, I wish I did.
"Deidara-kun?" I peel him off of me carefully. "I have to keep shopping now, okay?" I'd already spent half an hour with him in a tea house already. Soon, I'd have to return to Sensei and the boys for dinner.
"You're going shopping?" He looks at me with big eyes. "What for, un?"
"I want to find presents for my family." I set the tea cups he'd overturned back onto the table.
Suddenly it's as if he's had an epiphany. He takes me by the hand and pulls me out towards the door. "I can take you, un!"
"Slow down, Deidara-kun." But his energy is contagious, and I laugh in spite of myself. "I'm not in that much of a hurry, un!"
"Look at this one, Cousin Hana!" He pulls out an extension that had been lost beneath the crow feathered ones. "It has so many pretty colors in it, un." The burnt orange sunset of colors seem much more like something Kaa-san would like.
"Oh, that's a good pick, Deidara-kun." I ruffle his hair reflexively and he sets a hand over his hair. "Oh, does that bother you? It does always bother my Otouto." It bothers Kiba-chan 'cause he wants us to match.
"No..." Deidara pauses there in the middle the street, his hand still over his hair. "No one's ever done that before." Does the Tsuchikage realize how much his student's hurting? Does anyone care? He's just a little boy.
"Well, I'll ruffle your hair for you." I do it again, and he seems much more animated than before.
"You have an otouto, un?" He bounces towards the next stand. "What's he like?"
"Kiba-chan is my sun and sky." I smile and follow to him. "He likes lemon candies, like me, and he has the same fangs on his cheeks as I do."
"He sounds nice, un." Deidara pauses in front of a fruit stand and looks at me. "Do you think he'd like me too?"
"Why wouldn't he like you?" I tap him on the nose. "I like you. That's all Kiba-chan needs."
Deidara's face falls. "No one likes me really, un." But he forcibly cheers himself up a moment later. "Someday I'll be great at the explosion release, un! And then they'll all love me, un! And, and they'll all be nice to me, and I'll have lots of nice things, un!" He waves his hands around and I can almost see the future that he's projecting, but I know better. Is this why he leaves Iwa? Because the explosion release cannot buy him the love he wants in his life?
It just made his eventual coerced initiation into the Akatsuki worse. How much did he hate being hated by so many people? But then, the later Deidara shares very few similarities with this boy in front of me. Perhaps he learned to get used to it. If I can make sure that he does not, I will. He doesn't deserve that sort of life. He's just a child.
I kneel down in front of him. "Just know that I like you, okay?" I brush his hair back away from his face. "Never forget that in this world there's someone who likes you." Perhaps if he remembers, he will never leave Iwa.
He nods very seriously. "I'll remember, Cousin Hana, un."
I pat him on the head. "That's good. Make sure you keep that promise, alright?"
"DEIDARA." The crowd around us parts. There's the third Tsuchikage, his arms crossed over his chest as he strides forwards. Deidara wilts. "What have you been doing all day?"
I lean down to whisper in Deidara's ear. "Remember you're not supposed to call me cousin in front of other people, ne?" I can like him. I can care a bit about him. But he's not my most precious person, and I won't like it if he's the reason I can't go home.
"I was spending the day with Leafy, un!" He steps forwards towards his teacher bravely. "Leafy has my nose, so I though maybe..." He trails off. "Maybe she'd like me."
The Tsuchikage scrutinizes me again. "The more I look at you, the less you look like anyone I know." That's a relief.
"I'm glad we could come to that understanding, Tsuchikage-san." I bow to him, as much as should be afforded to man of his stature.
"You should stop consorting with weak Konoha shinobi, Deidara." It would be more polite if you didn't say that right in front of me. The Tsuchikage sets a hand on Deidara's shoulder and marches him off. "Didn't you want to show me something the other day?"
Deidara casts me a glance as he leaves, longing to keep shopping reflected in his blue-grey eyes. He's really not entirely happy here.
Itachi sits in front of me with his slashed throat. "You killed me Hana."
"N-no. I didn't kill you, Ita!" I look around at the room, this bleeding room and feel blood rising in my throat. "I didn't kill you. It was a mud clone."
"You killed me Hana." He stands up, blood dripping down his shirt front. "I thought you wanted to change my fate." He laughs. "Is this a change?"
I turn and run from the room, eyes burning with tears. No. No. No. That's not what I meant at all, Ita. No.
"Hana." Toku's in front of me now. Toku who's eyes are now completely unseeing, blind. He has his entire throat ripped out and I know by whose teeth. "Hana why did you kill me?" He takes a step towards me, and I take a step back. "I thought I was your brother."
"You are my brother, Toku." I take another step back.
He takes another step forwards. "Then why did you kill me, Hana?" The walls of the hallway are also bleeding, and I'm wading ankle deep in it.
"I didn't kill you, Toku." I whisper. "You weren't there."
I take another step back, and I'm back in the room with Itachi, but Toku's leaning against the door frame. "How are you sure it wasn't us that you killed?"
"How do you know?" Itachi asks.
"I just do know." I whisper. "Just like I know that none of this is real." But blood's in my mouth and I'm coughing, choking-
I sit up in the darkness of the room. "Hana?" Ichi's sitting in front of me, licking tears off of my face. "Hana? What's wrong?"
I reach for him, and bury my face in his neck. "I didn't kill them." I take a deep breath. "I didn't kill them. They're fine." And even if I knew it, even if I knew that there was no other way for me to have survived besides what I had done, I couldn't entirely convince myself.
"Of course you didn't kill them." Ichi looks at me with great puzzlement. "You couldn't kill them in real life if someone held a kunai to your throat and told you it was the only way to live. You knew it wasn't them from the moment those muddy things walked into the room."
I laugh at the thought. It's not so unlikely that it could really happen. "Thanks, Ichi."
I slide off of the bed. I'd been given a room to myself tonight, since the remains of Asata-san's team had left for Konoha before noon. Even if I knew it, I really wanted to go and see the boys just to prove it to my irrational heart.
"We're coming with you." Ni bumps my hip with his exuberance. "I don't know how to talk properly."
San whines. "We believe you. You wouldn't hurt them."
"Thank you, guys." I kiss the ends of each of their noses in turn.
A scream bursts from the next room, rising up into the quiet of the night, and I'm out the door in my bare feet and pajamas, a single kunai in hand as I lunge through the open door.
"What's the matter?" There's Sensei with his own kunai scanning the room. There's Itachi, his eyes blood red in the darkness. And there's Toku, his shoulders shaking as he stares at his hands.
"I killed them." He whispers. "I killed my best friends." He gasps, trembles and closes his eyes. "I didn't-I killed them." I drop my kunai on the bedside table as I come to sit next to Toku.
"Toku?" I touch his shoulder, and he flinches away. "Toku, it's Hana."
He trembles. "I killed you this morning."
From the other side of the room, Itachi swallows, and heads over as well. "You didn't kill us. I didn't kill you two, and Hana didn't kill me and you." He sets his hand on Toku's other shoulder. "We're all still alive. No one killed anyone."
Toku rubs his hands over his face. "Yeah." He looks up at us, white eyes glowing in the moonlight. "I should know that, but I just dreamed-" He turns away. "It wasn't real."
"Of course it wasn't real." Sensei turns the lamp on, and the room is no longer quite so awful. "Can any of you picture killing a comrade for a promotion as part of your psyche?"
We shake our heads no.
"So there you have it. No one was killed." Sensei collapses back onto his bed and runs his fingers through his long, loose hair. "Kami damned Council. Kami damned stupid Iwa. Why'd you have to make your test the most psychologically brutal one on the rotation?" But after he's vented his grief about the idiocy that is Iwa's first Exam of the Chunin Exams, he opens his arms. "Get over here you three. Hugs for everyone involved. We're all sleeping here tonight." Sensei pauses to consider the lightening color of the sky and amends his statement. "This morning."
With great relief, we go to get hugs, and pull out our sleeping bags.
When we show up at about seven for the Second Exam, we are already tired.
Sensei trudges along with his hands in his pockets and a bruised tired look in his eyes. "I hate Iwa." He spits at Kitsuchi-san when we check in for the second exam..
Kitsuchi-san raises an eyebrow. "You mean to tell me something new today, Nara?"
Sensei unbends from his slouch. "No." He drawls. "I mean to tell you something near and dear to my heart."
Kitsuchi-san shrugs. "Doesn't bother me the slightest." No matter how normal a shinobi from Iwa is, they don't see the problem in making genin believe that they have to kill their teammates to win a promotion.
They're all sick and twisted.
My thoughts return to the seven year old Deidara. If he stays here, will this all become old hat to him too? Will that be his fate if he doesn't go nuke-nin?
But there's no more time to think about that. Sensei steps back, looks us three in the eye and tells us a single piece of wisdom. "Forget about yesterday. You're a team today, you got it?"
We nod. "Yes, Sensei." For the moment, we lock away our guilt and our grief. "We won't let you down." Sensei's pride depended on us.
And the we'd make sure that the Council knew just how good of a teacher Sensei is. That he'd put in extra work for us.
He'd get his results. He's worth more than just his Nara brain. Sensei has a loving heart. It's a wonder living through a war hasn't torn it all to pieces.
Sensei nods. "Don't get yourselves killed. It's better to forfeit than to push."
"Your second test, is a team brawl." Kitsuchi-san gestures to the four doors in front of us. "Each of the twelve remaining teams will draw a number from the hat we have here, that will determine your room. Three teams to a room, the last three people remaining in each room will move on to the tournament at the end of the month."
"We can do this." Itachi whispers. "It's team brawl."
I nod. "We know each other's fighting styles well enough."
"Plan 13c?" Toku whispers. "Stand back, let the other teams in the room go for blood and pick off whomever's left?"
The other teams would have shaky trust in each other today. Their bonds would be weaker after knowing that the other people they were depending on were willing to kill them for promotion.
Perhaps there'd be infighting in the rooms as each ninja tried to protect themselves.
"Yeah." Itachi murmurs back. "That sounds like a good plan. The other teams will be weak today."
And we are not weak. Sensei had given us just enough courage to forget what happened yesterday. There will be a time for guilt and pain when we win.
"Now, send a representative from each team to pick a number from the hat." Kitsuchi-san claps his hands together, and I walk up the platform with determination in my step.
No one I love is dying today.
The number two is written on the heavy white paper. "Konoha's Team Ensui is in room two." I announce.
Kistuchi-san makes a note of it. "Very good."
There is a team from Kiri in our room, and a team from Suna. Not the same team as the boy that I'd talked to in the hallway outside the second exams, but one of them seems to recognize someone in the room and fairly soon their team is collected together in a quick huddle.
Then a male proctor, not Kitsuchi-san, walks in. "Now, we don't really want needless deaths in this event." He smirks at us. "That's what I'm supposed to tell you anyway. I can't really prevent your deaths given that I'm going to be standing in this box here." Well aren't you kind and helpful. "So you're in charge of preventing the deaths of your enemies." He shrugs. "I don't care much either way."
He steps back. "Begin."
We slip into a triangular formation, a dog for each child.
The team from Kiri erupts with infighting, and the team from Suna comes for us. I throw a brace of shuriken at the boy heading towards me which he deflects. But it's only to buy time. I fly through four hand signs and feel the floor open up to swallow me, leaving only Ichi behind to defend that point of the triangle. I'll trust Ita and Toku to defend themselves.
I open my ears. His footsteps have faltered... he's confused about where I am. There. I expel a small amount of chakra from my feet, and my hands break air.
He's dragged screaming down with me. I bury him up to his neck and then erupt from the ground with a slightly larger amount of chakra used to break free, a kunai at the ready. But it's unnecessary. I glance at the boy who's still buried and wriggling furiously. It is the work of a moment to slam the blunt end of the kunai against his temple, and he's out cold.
Toku's sealed half the tenketsu points on his opponent's arms. "Six Trigrams: Thirty Two Palms." His hands are a blur as he pummels the girl. She drops as his hands slow, no longer capable of moving.
Itachi's got the other boy snarled in ninja wire. A single hand sign would set him aflame. "I suggest you yield." Itachi suggests mildly, and the other boy glares at him.
"You wouldn't be so hot without a sharingan." He spits at Itachi's feet.
Itachi raises an eyebrow. "In case you haven't noticed, I could burn you to death in half a minute." The fact that he has not is the only suggestion of last night that there is in this whole set up.
I walk over and hit his opponent with the blunt handle of the kunai. "You should have just used taijutsu on him, Ita." The boy from Suna slumps. Itachi and I look at each other. Since when did our fights get this easy?
"I didn't know how good they were." I didn't want to actually kill anyone. I didn't want to see the blood. His true words go unsaid, but I understand all the same.
Toku cracks his knuckles. Yeah I didn't either. "So what's left in this room?" We turn to see.
There's been blood spilled on the other side of the room, and two of the three Kiri nin are still standing, if bleeding from several small cuts and probably low on chakra.
They stand shoulder to shoulder and there's fear in their eyes when they look at us. "I suggest you surrender." I comment mildly as I run a hand through Ni's fur. I can still feel the scar he has on his side. I don't want you to get hurt again.
"Never." The kunoichi brandishes a katana before her. "We won't ever surrender."
The boy glances at her, and then back at us. "I don't think we can take them, Fumei." He whispers.
"We have to try." She hisses back. "We can't have just murdered Haru for nothing."
"We don't have any injuries." Itachi comments. "And it's six to two." He included the Triplets. I feel a smile pull at the corners of my mouth. He remembers that I have three partners.
"So?" Fumei responds.
With a sigh, I flash through four hand signs and disappear beneath the floor. Itachi and Toku calmly move forwards, pushing them towards a corner where it would be easy enough for me to bury them.
In another fifteen minutes, they are also knocked out and buried up to the neck.
"No one's going to die today?" The proctor asks. He sounds almost disappointed. What an awful man.
I look back at him. "Mercy is enthroned in the hearts of kings." I whisper. "It is twice blessed. For he who gives and he who takes." I do not want to kill anyone if I don't have to.
I look down at my bloodless hands. At this moment I do not have to.
"Well then." The proctor looks decidedly put out. "You three can leave the room as the victors." We look at each other, a small smile mirrored on each of our faces.
We passed. Toku does not have his throat ripped out. Itachi's throat is uncut.
"You're unburnt." Itachi whispers as he bumps his shoulder with mine.
"And both of you haven't been jyukened to death." Toku answers and slings an arm over my shoulder.
"Do you think we'll be okay?" I ask.
Toku laughs. "Everyone's okay except for Sensei. He's probably half dead because we disturbed his sleep."
The corners of Itachi's mouth tilts up. "Sensei'll forgive us."
"Sensei does forgive you for scaring him half to death by being the last room to finish." Sensei drawls with his arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the opposite walls. "Sensei wants his minions to not scare him or give him gray hair before he's thirty."
I bounce over to him. "But Sensei," I ask and very carefully bat my lashes at him. "Where's the fun in that?"
Sensei flicks my forehead. "I like things that aren't fun."
A.N. Sometimes the mountain we're climbing is just a grain of sand. Sometimes the opponents we think are fearsome are actually not so difficult. So far, Team Six has faced just so many earth shattering problems, such as that one teleporting missing nin, and the false death of their own teammates, it's almost strange for them to be facing normal genin level opponents.
That's why the fight scenes in this chapter are so weird. They just aren't used to it, so the knockout is decidedly disconcerting for all of them.
Thanks to rickrossed (I happen to have a soft spot for Deidara, he's just so funny as an adult), SophieNewman, Alizay (I've always felt that flashing back to life before is a bit pointless. Hana has slowly accepted that she's Hana, not whomever she was before, thus, no flashbacks.), HiddenYori (Hana and Itachi are nine, Toku and Muta are twelve, three years older than Hana, Ensui-sensei is twenty nine or thereabouts. Hopefully this makes you less confused.), ManawaSasa, Sam (I'm of the opinion that most children aren't bad at heart), May525 (I update quickly though, people say so!), WhiteFang001, and Born to Sleep (I fixed it, thanks for telling me!) for reviewing!
And thank you to everyone who favorited and followed.
~Tavina.
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