elevate [itachi x sakura]

19. Fried Chicken

So the last third of the three-man-cell wasn't entirely impressed with her lack of self-control. Unlike Baru and Rei, Kakuzu was a veteran — an old man who had stood by Leader's side since long before Sakura or Itachi.

He was a man of very few words and listened to no one, heeding only Leader's advice. It seemed his respect was short in abundance and he only tolerated Konan — never accepting her orders, not even if Leader had requested she deliver them, unless the thin red-haired man told Kakuzu himself.

He was a pain however he took his instructions seriously. He knew every detail about the mission they were currently on, and even though he was on the other side of the coliseum, shadowing Sakura in disguise without her realising he was her chaperone of some sorts, he had heard her seemingly unintelligent cheers of support and his brow twitched, top lip curling into a half-snarl.

Her voice echoed from where she sat and bounced off the stadium walls, reverberated right down to the lower crowd. Immediately, heads turned and the Kage behind her appeared to be visibly surprised at the pair of lungs the Ame representative seemed to have. A murmur lifted but it wasn't too long later that the vibrant and enthusiastic Hokage joined it, urging the rest of the audience on.

"Go Konoha!" he roared, doing the most as he stood up and put a foot on the seat in front of him. "Do your bestest!"

"Naruto," hissed the dark-haired man beside him. Yet when the blonde showed no signs of calming down, he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Maa...so troublesome."

Kakuzu's eyes filtered through the endless seams of faces that filled the centre, identifying each person his Leader had informed him about, and made a noise of agitation when he failed to spot one specific appearance that would determine just how he might scold Sakura later on.

For now, he silently reprimanded her in his head. And somehow, chills danced across the pinkette's skin as she got a gut feeling she was being glared down from a distance.

The first round was a test of endurance led by an older man with a large thin scar running from beneath his hitai-ate down along his cheek. The ground shuddered and groaned as an impossibly large hatch leveled open like the mouth of a resting hippo and spiralled down into the catacombs.

Usui took one look down into the dungeon and swallowed hard. He wasn't afraid of the dark. Heck, he'd been trapped in underground tunnels before and that wasn't what terrified him. It was the giant spider webs that only belonged to an equally giant spider. To his left, Gouda rolled her eyes and to his right Sarumiko swallowed with the same likeness as him - somehow holding it together a lot better with her only tell being the quivering in the corners of her mouth.

The Exam Proctor introduced himself as Tsurugi. Who he was wasn't important, and why he had such a frightening mark marring his face wasn't anyone's business. All the gennin were required to do was to keep up with him right until the end of the track. Unbeknownst to them, however, the Kirigakure catacombs were littered with old traps and God-awful creatures of the dark that the Mizukage hadn't bothered to see to in decades.

He hoped they were all a lot wiser than he thought they were.

Should they lose pace, fall behind or stop meant disqualification for the whole team. If even one member of the team could no longer participate, the whole cell was out, and it seemed this information had a lot of the gennin spooked as they shared anxious looks with their companions.

"Don't worry," Sarumiko had said, straight-faced, to Gouda who then pulled an ugly expression of agitation as if to ask what that was supposed to mean. "I'll give you a piggy back if you slow us down."