Naruto looked up at the sun, now red in the sky.
"No." Ryoko hissed, taking a seat as Naruto managed to gather the strength to pull himself up to the branch he'd been hanging off of. "We've got to get food and make some kind of camp before the sun sets!"
"Make camp!? To what? Sleep!?"
"Yes numbnuts we need that, we also need to get food!"
"We could be almost out of here! We have to keep on moving!"
"No! We have to make camp because if we keep on going and we're still stuck here later it'll be too dark to see, and we'll be tired, poisoned and hungry!"
-0-
"The boy panics" Orochimaru observed.
"He's a gennin. Surprised he hasn't burst into tears by now. The girls keeping her cool well enough though."
The pale man nodded. "Indeed. I wonder just how she is considered the dead last."
"Overconfident as hell, didn't study and sucks for everything but Taijutsu, even that is just street brawling more than anything else."
"Orphanage recruit?"
"Close enough. Fathers' a trader, travels constantly almost never in the village. Mothers a...lover of fine wines to put it politely."
Orochimaru smirked "Old Zae must be losing her touch."
"Difficult to teach when they refuse to listen."
-0-
They made camp, such as it was, Naruto, allowing nature chakra to guide him as best he could with his lack of practice, found a hollowed out, dead tree, big enough for them to use. He was relieved when Ryoko and Hanbei volunteered to go get food as opposed to gathering firewood.
Right now, though he hadn't said anything, he could barely see straight, let alone take down an animal big enough for all of them to eat.
And he was only feeling worse.
I'll feel better with some food and sleep.' He thought to himself, his headache pounding across his forehead.
He could not...he could not die here! He had to survive this! There was so much he had to do still...
He moved about gathering dry leaves and twigs for the kindling. The forest of death had plenty of those, so thankfully he didn't have to expel too much effort
All n all, with his small hands and waning strength, it took three trips to gather an amount he thought would be enough to last them the night.
The sun had set before his teammates got back.
Hachiba managed to get three squirrels...Ryoko just caught a single snake.
Hers was the more satisfying meal in his personal opinion.
"Can he really do this!?" Hachiba suddenly asked as they ate. "This is crazy! He can't just...kill fellow leaf ninja!"
"Never...trust...a snake." Naruto wheezed, eyes drooping a bit despite his effort to finish the meal.
"Thought he was your special mentor or something Uzumaki." Ryoko hissed, biting into a rather tasteless piece of meat, the forest of death didn't offer much in the way of seasoning.
This time, strained as the words were, the hostility was unmistakeable in his tone, even if his words hadn't portrayed it just as easilly. "Kill him...one day."
She opened her mouth as though she was about to say something more when she finally took a good look at him. "Hey, hey you okay? Hey!"
But his world went dark and the two gennin had to actually scramble to keep him from tipping face first into the open fires.
Ryoko gnawed on her lower lip as she and Hachiba settled Naruto back, watching him convulse on the ground as his eyes rolled so far back only the whites could be seen and blood began leaking from his nose.
"Shit he's dying! He's really dying!" She screamed, holding him down for lack of anything better to do."
"No shit he's dying! He's half our size!" Hachiba shouted right back.
They held him down, every second bassing in unimaginably slow agony for all huddled within that little hollow.
It seemed an eternity before he finally settled.
"What the hell are we gonna do?" Hachiba groaned, rocking a little where he sat, he probably didn't notice.
Her mouth was dry as she answered, feeling her own heart pounding with adrenalin fueled fear. "We're gonna go to sleep for a few hours...wake up, and carry him out of here the rest of the way that's what! Then when we get back, we're getting Hokage-sama to hold down that snake bastard so we can cut his balls off and feed them to him.
Despite her bravado, her shaking hands and pale features showed just how rattled she really was.
Despite how much they needed it, neither child got much sleep that night.
And the next morning, Naruto was as pale as a corpse.
His breathing didn't sound much better than a dead man's either.
Worst of all, he wasn't waking up.
-0-
Orochimaru smirked, Kakashi had long since left and his replacement was keeping to herself a ways off after Kakashi had briefed her and told her not to interfere.
The poison had worked its way through Naruto's system even quicker than he'd hoped.
Now lets see how they do.
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"We have to leave him!"
Ryoko whipped her head up, blinking at her fellow, aspiring gennin as though he'd just grown a second head. "What?"
"We can't carry him!" The boy explained. "We'll just tire ourselves out and we wont be able to-"
"We're not leaving him here!" She protested, cutting him off. "He's still alive!"
"Not for much longer!" Hachiba shouted back! Its just been a day, look at him! We've got to move fast and we can't do that if we-"
She stood up, silver grey hair whipping around her face as she all but snarled. "We're gonna carry this dumb ass back and I don't care if I've got to tie him to you, get me!?"
Hachiba opened his mouth moving to protest when he seemed to think better of it and closed his mouth.
Ryoko looked down, thinking. "We'll carry him in shifts. You go first I go next!"
"I'm not going-"
"You're going first! What do you think I'm stupid? I carry him first, tire myself out and you just haul ass when its your turn? You go first. I'll live up to my end!"
"You're not-"
"You can stay here and bitch with me and keep wasting time, you can try to run and we can fight, wasting even more time or you can do what I tell you and we can try to get the hell out of this! Long and short of it is we're not leaving the little bastard!"
-0-
Orochimaru watched, yellow eyes gleaming like jewels as the sun rose over the edge of the horizon.
"You wanted this."
He turned a little, looking at the woman-child in her Anbu uniform, the stark white mask glinting with the rays of the early morning.
"That's the purpose of the test. To see if they'll leave him to die." She concluded, her head tilting to the side. "I'm only not certain which outcome will cause them to succeed or fail."
The sannin smiled a little. "They should do what proper Konoha ninja should do. That's the only way to succeed."
"And Naruto? How will you judge him in his state?"
"He'll pass of course."
"You would take him as a student no matter what? That hardly seems fair."
"Life is fair?"
-0-
It was not, by any stretch of the immagination how she could have ever dreamed her Shinobi career would start!
She was feeling sicker than yesterday, her bones ached, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep again even as her stomach churned at the edge of nausea.
Every muscle felt little better than overcooked noodles, flimsy and weak as she forced them to push her along in ever shorter leaps across the trees.
And to think...she still had to carry him after Hachiba couldn't do it anymore.
She coughed, stopping in her run to lean against the trunk of a tree.
it sounded wet, she could almost taste the phlegm at the back of her throat as spittle specked the hand she'd used to cover her mouth.
Hachiba stopped ahead of her, his pasty skin and black ringed eyes serving to only let her imagine how bad she must have looked as well.
She was going to kill that snake bastard...
She looked up, coiling her muscles again before jumping off. "Keep going" Even speaking felt like it leached out the energy from her.
She tried to ignore the blood that had been mixed with the spit.
-0-
Are you seriously gonna let him have a team?"
Sarutobi sighed, it'd been the third time she'd asked in twice as many minutes. And the hundredth time since a week ago when her teammate, his student, first filed for the position.
"What do you want me to do exactly, Tsunade? Walk up to him and say – Yes well seeing as how you've signed all the appropriate paperwork and properly filled out all agreements clauses, guarantees and have proceed to do your due diligence well in time for the responsibility; I've decided to not grant this request despite the fact that I have no other reserve teachers on standby, simply because your motivations are iffy at best and I don't trust you. And this in this is primarily based on a simple hunch of having known you for the last twenty years. – How exactly do you view that as being anywhere near impartial as I'm supposed to be as Hokage."
"Oh come on! You and I both know Orochimaru is practically the anti-thesis to gennin instructor!
"He trained Anko."
"One student who he took on long trips to train in private without doing anything below C rank. Does not, a gennin instructor make."
"Maybe not, but we've always pressured him to interact with the villagers more. This time he'll have to with a large team."
"Yes. Because Orochimaru's people skills let him mingle oh so well. Do you remember the last time we managed to convince him to go to a festival?
Sarutobi nearly winced. That had been...interesting to say the very least.
"He can still train those students to be good, strong Shinobi that will serve the village well."
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