Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Thirteenth Thread

Shibi's clones bent their fingers together in a recognizable gesture, and colors of their coats changed to mossy green. Henge was, indeed, a quite useful skill.

"Also," Jōnin says, "shadow clones are specific in they only take one hit and then disappear."

"Assuming a Genin can touch a Jōnin, let alone hit him," Hanna rolls her eyes, and Ren nods in agreement. They're good, but are they really that good?

(Pfft, of course not!)

"Is that all?" Hibiki asks, and Ren bites down the urge to tell him to shut up. Or, better yet, punch him until he does. "That sounds like an easy task."

"Sounds, sure," Hana growls. "Let's see how you manage in practice."

"Children," real Shibi cuts in, borderline exasperated. Hana glares at Hibiki, and then shrugs. Hibiki, however, is still glaring at her. "I'm having one minute head start. I'll try to tone my tempo down to your level. You go once the alarm goes off," he points at the clock he places on the ground. "If you fail to track me down within two hours, you fail. If you get apprehended and slowed down by my clones, you fail. If you get offed by my clones, you fail. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir!" they all answer in union. Shibi nods, sets the clock off, and bolts, almost too fast to see.

"Well, that's going to be interesting," Ren raises her eyebrow.

"Pfft, please," Hibiki waves his hand. "With my Byakugan, we'll find him in to time!"

Ren and Hana just exchange knowing glances and sigh in union. The sole remaining a three-man-team and not killing Hibiki out of rage of his arrogance and uselessness might prove to be task even harder than actually tracking Shibi down.

This is not exactly how Ren imagined her great ninja upbringing, but, well. Beggars can't be choosers, really.

God damn her life.

...ooo~(x)~ooo...  

This is not good. This is so not very good. Or it's bad. Many ways of wording one line, really. The point was: they were forty minutes into their test, lost and ambushed by one of clone!Shibis. The chakra construct was, of course, giving them a lot of openings and wasn't really going hard on them, but between a fully-trained Jōnin and Hibiki, who not only could stand his ground only barely, but also got in Ren's way on purpose, well-

It wasn't going well. And Ren wasn't going to let Hibiki sabotage their test only because he felt offended by something she had said and done, and long since forgotten. It was getting absolutely ridiculous.

"We're never going to pass like that!" Hana roars in utter frustration, when Ren tries to attack only for Hibiki to get before her and fuck up a perfect opening, trying to hit the clone.

Okay, maybe he wasn't doing that exactly on purpose, only wanted to prove (who?) that he was actually better than Ren. Except, that put their test and passing under big, fat, red question mark. At least Ren had no qualms against using him as a meat shield against Shibi's attack. Hana's dogs try their best, but they're only dogs. Smarter than most, but still pretty dumb, and young to that. They're barely the size that Akamaru was while Kiba was genin – so, obviously, they really couldn't do much.

But exasperated Hana, apparently, can. Let's just say that Ren... Isn't exactly happy with the solution, as the Inuzuka grabs her by the collar, sidesteps Hibiki and hurls her at very shocked Shibi, but when Uchiha's back collides with the clone and it goes poof out of the existence, like magic, she finds it hard to complain. She's too busy trying to choke Hibiki few seconds later, anyway.