The woman pulled back and smiled, dark eyes briefly flashing a dusty yellow as she patted Sakura's cheek once and drifted off to her "teammates". Sakura stood paralyzed, nails digging so far into her skin she could feel quiet dribble of blood winding in her palm lines. The cheek those pale, spindly fingers touched felt as if a thousand snakes were crawling beneath her skin—slimy and writhing and sharp and venomous, why is he here what is he doing how many more people are going to die—
That touch was all she could think about, and she barely noted the hand shaking her shoulder nor the other grasping her wrists and turning them upwards. Everything blurred as she was being quickly dragged out of the building, as pressure was pressed into her hands, as the surroundings changed around her from stuffy tan walls packed with participants to mostly plain white walls with padded flooring beneath her feet.
But what she did notice, though, was the quick sting on that wriggling cheek that twisted her head left.
"... I did not expect you to hit her that hard."
"She hasn't said anythin' in like, ten minutes and she's never spazzed out on me before!"
"Arf!"
Sakura blinked and looked around to take in the fact that she was standing in the middle of her room. Her four hand-drawn scrolls hung at her back and her friends peered at her with unveiled concern. She bit her lip, eyes darting around the room—and then relaxed a touch, seeing that, all four seals were in their respective spots around them. She sighed, the exhaustion crashing into her in a wave. "Sorry," she said. "I lost myself for a bit."
"A bit?!" Kiba repeated incredulously. His hands flung out in front of him. "That creepy lady was all over you like flies on a stupid, dumb shit no one wants to pick up at the park!"
Shino opened his mouth, closed it and scrunched his brow at Kiba, then turned back. "I might not use his choice of simile, but he's not wrong," he admitted. "That woman obviously knew you to some degree—" Sakura looked away, frowning— "so the questions remain: who was she and how did you know each other? She was a Kusa-nin, so that immediately draws upon your time before being brought into Konoha."
They all flinched when Sakura suddenly dropped into one of the ratty bean bags on the ground. With one hand she rubbed her forehead, and with the other she gripped the back of her neck. "He's not a Kusa-nin," she informed them quietly. "I'm nearly a hundred percent sure he's using the Shoushagan and the real Kusa-nin and her team are long dead."
Shino slowly lowered himself onto the threadbare cushion. "That's Orochimaru's technique, Sakura."
Her hands dropped to her sides and she leaned back against the wall. Her silence was unsettling at first, but the more she didn't speak and the longer she avoided their eyes, it amassed to startling beacon of clarity—for Shino, at the very least, and his skin started to pale as sweat broke out on his hairline.
"I was being... hypothetical," he said. "The chances of it truly happening were zero to none. Why? Because I was foolish enough to believe he wasn't a factor I needed to consider!"
Kiba's eyes darted from Shino's defeated posture to Sakura's tired slump. "What-What the hell are you guys talking about?" Akamaru ducked his head and whined, and Kiba sputtered. "No way. No fucking way. That snake bastard isn't in Konoha and isn't in the exams and ISN'T..." He trailed off when he realized no one spoke up to tell him any different. He then allowed himself to drop backwards into the sea of pillows and floor seats, snatched the closest cushion, and pressed it to his face to fill the room with his muffled screaming for the next half a minute.
No one stopped him.
But then he tossed the striped pink cushion aside and shot up into a sitting position, eyes blazing and confused and scared. "Sakura, you... How'd you know it was Orochimaru and not some crazy lady?" Shino blinked rapidly and quickly turned to his friend in question, hackles rising. "You knew him, he... he knew—"
"He knew your last name," Shino interjected, near silent. Sakura's jaw nearly cracked at the force of her tension as kikaichu beetles crawled out from behind her ears and from the collar of her hood. "He called you Hoshigaki."
The seals around them crackled a bright, dizzying red—the only warning of an outside attempt to break through the silencing barriers. Kiba jumped to his feet, Shino swelled the room with his insects, and a kunai was in each of Sakura's hands.
Four whole seconds passed before the seals glowed blue again and the light faded back into its paper confines. It was ten more seconds until Kiba crept over to one of his seals to check it.
"They're all... still up. No tears in the algorithms or an addition of a stop matrix," he informed them. "Whoever tried to break in didn't make it all the way..." He glanced at the other seals. "Should we take 'em down or-or something? It's—look, we're already in pretty deep shit as it is, I don't know how much, you know..."
Sakura exhaled through her nose. "Keep them up," she said. She looked down at Akamaru as he trotted over and placed his paw on her knee, then looked back up. "I have a lot of things to tell you."
::
Orochimaru nearly gagged on the blood that flooded his mouth as a hand crushed his throat and choke-slammed him into a tree deep in one of Konoha's training grounds. He laughed wetly at the furious glare of his attacker and was rewarded with a tighter grip.
"I should've known," he wheezed. "Little Hoshigaki Sakura, pink-haired and lovely and alive. Why be surprised when her doting father is lurking around the village when he's supposed to think she's dead?" He eyed Kisame's disguise. "You're a bit discolored, I suppose, but humor me. Have you known she was here the whole time? Was it a recent discovery? Oh, don't tell me, did you know about this the whole time?" The corners of Orochimaru's lips turned up in the vaguest hint of a smile. "I'm impressed. That's cunning, especially for you."
Kisame kept his grip, unfazed at the jabs. "Stay out of her way. She wants to be chuunin and I don't want you fucking it up for her."
"Does she even know you're here, Kisame-kun?"
"And if I ever catch you tryin' ta' break in her apartment again," he continued like he hadn't been interrupted, "I'll snap your bones one by one, piece by piece, and stuff the rest of you into the fresh body of the next shinobi I kill."
Orochimaru chuckled, and though it sounded more like a hack than a laugh, his amusement was as clear as the disgusting shine in his gaze. Kisame loathed people like him—people who toyed with human lives because they could, not because they should. Sure, maybe there were times when he killed and relished in the fight, but he wasn't the kind of sick, twisted fuck that experimented on people for fun.
Kisame opened his fist and dropped the bastard, a slight downturn to his lips. "There're thousands of other lives you can ruin. Leave Sakura's out of it."
Orochimaru pressed a few fingers wreathed in green chakra to the parts of his neck beginning to bruise and stared at his counterpart with clinical fascination. Hoshigaki was never one to shy away from chaotic brutality, and really, someone such as he wouldn't survive without bloodshed. Orochimaru would have expected Kisame to start that earth-shattering fight then and there, bringing both his plans and the exams to a shattering halt. But he hadn't.
All for the sake of one person. And that hadn't changed in over twelve years, it seemed.
"You've always amazed me," Orochimaru said. He glanced at the bright greenery around them, noting all the paths of escape and that Kisame was blocking none of them. "Fearful of nothing towards yourself, fearing everything for her. Thinking nothing of others, thinking the world of her. You're a killer wrapped in sentiment." He hummed. "I've always wondered: why make a weakness for yourself when you could be invincible?"
He said it like it was another one of his riddles or tricks, but there's an unmistakable confusion underlying his words. And even with all the hate he had for him, Kisame couldn't help but feel a little bad, because—
"You've never loved anyone before, have you?" he asked. Orochimaru drew up to full height and scowled in aversion.
"And why would I bother with something as trivial as that?"
"'Cause then you wouldn't be askin' me why I think Sakura's worth all this trouble."
He wasn't surprised when Orochimaru merely rolled his eyes and cast the words aside without a second thought. While it was true they didn't know each other nearly as well as even acquaintances would, he knew just as well that neither had a desire to see that change. But the sannin had the upper hand now—he'd made contact with Sakura and became just one more problem for her to deal with now, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.
Because if she was in his arms again, he'd take her far from Konoha and the Akatsuki, and they'd have to spend the rest of their lives running away from both.
He never meant that for her. He could never do that to her.
So he kept his distance, all the time wishing he could tell her how sorry he was.
"I don't know what you're doin' here and I don't care, so don't bother explaining," said Kisame, "but I'll say this again. Leave Sakura alone or you'll be dead by next sunrise."
Orochimaru smiled. "I don't make promises." His tongue flickered out his mouth and over his lips. "I'll leave her alone if she stays out of my way, but if two days from now we just so happen to cross paths in the Forest of Death, it might be too good of an opportunity to pass up."
Kisame bared his teeth. "You—"
"It's strange," he interrupted. Sickly eyes turned calculating; intrigued, "that you managed to catch me before I broke the seals to that apartment. They were more difficult than I expected, you know." His smile widened. "What did they have to hide?"
Then he was gone and Kisame was left alone on the grounds, the sun burning high in the air and a light breeze fluttering by. He missed the sea.
::
Kotetsu scrutinized the stack of papers in his work space. Ibiki had collected all the tests from the examination room and handed them off to him for disposal, laughing all the while about how Uzumaki Naruto had turned in a blank test with the only line filled in being his name.
He spun around in his chair once before he wheeled back over to the edge of his desk and picked up the stack. As he leaned back and flipped through it, he scanned for three names.
Sakura
Aburame Shino
Inuzuka Kiba
Once he found them, he tossed the rest beside him and stared at the first paper he came across: Kiba's.
Some were untouched, as to be expected, but as he searched for the answers all the implanted proctors were required to write he realized none appeared on her sheet. His brow knotted as he went through each of the nine questions. One, four, five, seven, and nine were answered, and though four and seven appeared the most worked out, he knew for sure one, five, and nine were correct. Almost textbook.
Sakura's was next. Once again, it was five of the nine questions that were answered: one, two, five, eight, and nine.
Kotetsu stuck his tongue against his cheek and he saw that she also had two well thought out answers, but not four and seven—two and eight. He deposited the sheet next to Kiba's and noted that one, five, and nine are exactly the same, word for word, notation for notation.
He pulled Shino's sheet and laid it down next to his teammates'. Five answered. Three and six thoughtfully considered. One, five, and nine mirror images of the other two exams.
Kotetsu reclined and puffed out a long breath of air, his arms crossed behind his head. So they did cheat, which was good. They passed that part flawlessly with correct, identical answers for one, five, and nine, but each did two other problems the rest of the team hadn't even attempted. His gaze roamed over the three papers again; why just one, five, and nine? Why not share the whole test in case they were graded for actual points? Granted, that would never happen since the tests was engineered to be just a little too difficult for the typical genin to solve—
So how did genin get three of them right without cheating the way they were supposed to?
—and even then it would still be a cumulative score...
He snapped back forward and tracked the answered questions across all three exams. One: All. Two: Sakura. Three: Shino. Four: Kiba. Five: All. Six: Shino. Seven: Kiba. Eight: Sakura. Nine: All.
That was a hundred percent completion rate across the whole team. Divide and conquer. Trust.
Kotetsu's eyes went wide. 'Holy shit, Unlucky Eight was playing around the whole time.'
He glanced around the empty office, a sudden surge of discomfort winding around his neck. The realization of Unlucky Eight's show of equal teamwork by actually completing the entirety of the exam across three separate papers on their own accord didn't fill him with amazement or interest. No, he felt something unsettling prickling across his skin and an uncomfortable heat in the palms of his hands, like he found something he shouldn't have or he'd been endowed with a secret he could never tell.
Unlucky Eight was... unlucky. And unexpected. Pushed into unwanted missions, ambushed on a C-rank immediately after Team Kakashi's shit show, walking into the exam one step ahead of Morino Ibiki himself...
Something wasn't right.
He was required to note anomalies like them and bring it up to his superiors. The oddness was light and not quite enough to rouse reasonable suspicion, but this particular instance wasn't something they'd been asked to look out for.
Something wasn't right.
He should tell someone.
Something wasn't right.
But then he remembered the looks on their faces when he brought up everything he thought was wrong with their luck.
Something wasn't... right.
Kotetsu bit his lip and shoved their papers back in the pile, gathered the whole stack up in his arms, and swept away to the building's main document incinerator.
::
"I first met Orochimaru when I was four. One of my father's colleagues was watching me for the day, the same one who used me as a human shield when I was a baby." Sakura gestured to her left ear and endured the stares pinned to the side of her head. Her room was heavy with silence and damp with anxious energy, a lingering fear of the integrity of Kiba's silencing seals. "I was walking behind the colleague in a hallway when Orochimaru took hold of my upper arm. He'd heard about me from his partner who'd tried to kill me a year prior to that—" Kiba blanched at how casual she sounded— "and didn't believe him. I guess he wanted to see if I was real for himself."
It was... odd, hearing this. It wasn't everything, but it was something, and it was far more than they ever expected.
"I didn't see him much after that. My father didn't like him and kept me away as much as possible, but that didn't mean I didn't know what he was doing." She pressed her lips together. "I knew where his lab was; sometimes the smell was too much and Leader-sama ordered him to stop his experiments until the air cleared, but it would only be a few days until everything started up again."
Leader-sama. They'd never heard that name before.
"Eventually he moved his labs to different places outside Ame for less... interruption," she grimaced. "But I can't forget what he'd done before that. People went in and never came out. He picked up people others wouldn't miss—drunks, addicts, orphans, and all the desperate shinobi that thought they had no one else to turn to. Fear and charisma were his tools, and if one didn't work, the other did." Sakura closed her eyes. "He was surprised to see me because he probably thought I was dead."
"... Dead?" Shino questioned. She shook her head and he backed off the topic with the slight nod of his head. She was telling them so much it almost seemed unfair to her, so it was a question for another time.
If they got another time.
"We're going to see him again," she whispered. "He's already seen me and it's not going to be enough for him. We can avoid him all we want, but he's a sannin for a reason—he won't kill us, I don't think. It's not his style."
Kiba burrowed his face in the front of his jacket. "This is crazy," he murmured. "We can't—This is—" His hands, clasped on the faux fur of his hood, started to shake. "If we tell anyone, they'll kill us. They'll kill us. We tell, they'll say we're crazy and it's an excuse to kill us." He looked up, red-faced, and snapped. "WHY THE HELL DID YOU HAVE TO KNOW HIM?!"
"Me?!" Sakura exclaimed. First, it was shock, because Kiba never... screamed at her before. Or accused her of anything. They'd been friends for years and they'd... he was the first one who'd ever...
Then, it was anger.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she hissed. "You think this is what I wanted? You think I wanted to fuck up our chances? I didn't know he would be here!"
"But he is!" he exploded. "He's here and he found you and we're gettin' the worst luck of our goddamn lives 'cause of it!" He yelled a wordless howl and pulled at his already wild hair. He didn't notice Akamaru backing up under the bed or Shino looking between them nervously. "What other secrets you got, huh?" He was on his feet. "You knew about his labs, did you know 'bout the one in Konoha? Huh?! You knew 'bout the Kyuubi too and all the other tailed beasts and we coulda got inta' trouble for that!" He jabbed a finger at her. "All you ever do is get us inta' fucking trouble!"
The next thing he knew, the front of his jacket was scrunched in her hands and he was hoisted to the tips of his sandals.
"Don't put this shit on me," she warned. Kiba smacked her hands away and it forced her to take a hard step back.
Shino winced.
"Why not?! Huh?! If Orochimaru didn't know you this wouldn't be a thing!" he shouted. "If you weren't so goddamn smart we wouldn't have figured things out and we wouldn't have gotten caught!" He shoved her. "It's you! You! YOU!! WE'RE DEAD 'CAUSE OF YOU!!"
Crack.
Shino gaped in horror as Sakura's fist connected with Kiba's cheek and sent him crashing into her desk. Akamaru's startled cry echoed in the room, but it was background noise against the sound of his heartbeat thudding in his ears.
"I didn't ask for this," she said. Her chest heaved and her eyes shone, and as Shino looked upon her and the words on the scrolls that shadowed her back—
—fools who think they can change the world—
—feel to be used—
—not a good man—
—You will be an exemplary shinobi or you will be nothing at all—
—he shivered.
"I didn't ask to be born in Amegakure. I didn't ask to be raised in a criminal league. I didn't ask for Hoshigaki Kisame to be my father." Kiba said nothing, the rage in his eyes pulsing as his insides went cold. "I didn't ask to be taken to Konoha. I didn't ask to leave home. I didn't ask why Dad left me—I didn't ask why Dad thought I was a mistake, because why else would he not come back for me when he promised he would?!"
Her voice broke, and Shino felt a part of himself break too.
"And if you thought I asked for you to look me in the eye and blame everything on me—that I was what made this team unlucky—" She leaned over Kiba, cold and hurt and made him watch as her face slowly melted back into a chilling blankness— "I didn't."
She shunshinned away.
::
Kurenai set her hands on her waist as she peered down the street. She was sure she had the right time and place for the team meeting planned after the first stage of exams, but it had already been half an hour and she was worried. She wished she could imagine they were simply going for some celebratory ramen like she'd seen Kakashi's team doing. But that would require the events leading up to the exams be much different, not filled with seals, lies, and the fight to simply live. So instead she ground her teeth at the ugly feeling unfurling in her gut as the minutes with no sign of her precious students.
"Where could they be..." she muttered to herself. It was a few more painful minutes until she saw Shino in his tell-tale jacket walking towards her from the down the street. She started to smile, but faltered at the sight of a drooping Akamaru in his arms and the absence of the rest of his team.
She frowned. "Shino?" she ventured carefully. Up close he looked even worse than he normally was—which was a terrible thing to note, but he wasn't trying to hide it this time.
"Did something happen? Did you not pass the test?" She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Because it's alright if you didn't, I will get you more opportunities to—"
"We passed, Kurenai-sensei," he interrupted quietly. "We're to meet at Training Ground 44 in two days time at 1 pm sharp; Mitarashi Anko is our proctor and will give us further instructions then."
"Oh." She nodded slowly, that horrible feeling in her gut lightening to something more akin to parental concern. She was pleased and proud and had been hoping to reward them all with a celebratory breakfast upon their passing, but she checked the road again for any sign of her wayward students and found nothing.
"Kiba and Sakura got into a... fight," Shino informed reluctantly. He avoided her eyes as she listened patiently. "It wasn't typical of them. Why? Kiba screamed at Sakura and she punched him in retaliation. I think his jaw is dislocated, but he left before I could reset it." Akamaru whimpered pitifully and he bowed his head. "I apologize for the inconvenience. I will try to get them back as quickly as possible."
He was trying to make himself as small as possible, Kurenai noticed, with the way he hunched his shoulders and how he hadn't faced her once. Whatever Kiba and Sakura fought over must have shaken him enough to reduce him to such a state, and it was such bad—unlucky—timing for them to knock heads during their most important exam to date.
"Were they fighting over something serious?" she asked. It was an honest question and she had every right to know if had the possibility of disrupting the team dynamic. Shino finally raised his head, face riddled with a defining anxiety.
"Sakura found a viper in the grass and Kiba grew angry when she picked it up. Why? He thought she was not being careful and that her indifference to her and our safety could have cost us," he said. "It was not her fault she did not know any better, and it was not his fault because he was scared."
Then, to her continued confusion, he quickly apologized and dismissed himself, toting Akamaru away and merging himself in a crowd of civilians.
Above her, the eyeless depths of a cat mask tilted in consideration before disappearing.
::
Konan held the target in her deft hands, pale as the paper that surrounded her. There were fifteen senbon stuck on the board, and though all were clustered in the center circle, they were not dead center, they were not packed as tightly as possible, and they certainly hadn't been aimed with both 100% precision and accuracy. Her face was as beautifully calm as always when she turned to address the small five year old at her side.
"You will need to do it again," she said without inflection. "The senbon need to be touching so that you can't see the red painted beneath, and you need to hit the very center every single time. Accuracy is one thing, precision is another. I trust you know the meanings to both words?"
Sakura bobbed her head. "Yes, Konan-san. I'll do better. Promise. More targets?"
She swore she saw a flash of sadness bolt across Konan's face, but it became impassive so quickly she thought she'd imagined it and instead became captivated by the way the woman's piercings shone in the low light the rainy skies had to offer.
"Yes. And do you recall why you need to do this?"
"'Cause assets gotta be the best," she replied. She smiled, and there it came again—the momentary crumple in her current guardian's face. "I'll be an exem-pary shinobi or nothin' at all."
Konan's eyes grew distant. "Good."
Sakura pulled herself back to the present and turned her head slightly to address the person who was leisurely making their way towards her. "Maybe you really did get lost this time," she greeted. "But my tourism hours are from 12 to 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, so I'm afraid you have to come back another time."
Kankuro snorted. "What kinda fucked set-up is that? Eight hours across the weekend? You aren't gonna make shit." He crossed his arms and leaned against the nearest tree. "Still, if tourist guides can pass the first part of the exam, I hope I don't die of boredom in the second."
Sakura smiled lightly. She shoved Kiba's acidic words to the far reaches of her mind and dove into this new focus. A minor set back in her social life didn't mean she had to stop herself from diving head first into the catastrophe the exam would no doubt become, so she'd push forward, forward, forward until she met her own end, messy or otherwise.
"The written test did end with a bang," she said.
"And you sat right next to the bomb," he retorted. Sakura patted the spot next to her on the grassy hill that overlooked a handful of lush grounds and felt his hesitation as he took a step forward, paused, then resettled himself against the tree. "Thanks, but no. I'm good over here."
"I'm getting a couple of mixed signals." She shifted around and crossed her legs. "There's nothing too bad about our international relations, I don't think, and I doubt a Suna and Konoha shinobi talking to each other would cause much uproar." His face clouded with uncertainty and she raised an open hand. "Wanna take a seat?"
Her question wasn't weighted enough to force him into a decision between life and death, and though she could understand some of his doubt, she tried to discern why there was so much of it. Kankuro's right hand twitched against his bicep and he stared so hard at the spot at her side that his eyes might as well have popped out of his head. Ultimately, he let both arms fall to the side and scoffed.
"Wonder if you and your team can squeeze your way outta this next stage," he said. He turned and made his way down the path he'd wandered up but not before Sakura's easy voice washed over him.
"I'll meet you at the end of it, Kankuro the Sightseer."
She didn't see the way the corner of his lips quirked up almost against his will. "We'll see about that, Sakura the Tourist Guide."
She listened to his sandals kick against a few pebbles on the beaten-down path until she heard nothing but the faint chirping of the birds that nested overhead. It was only when Sakura was sure he was gone that she turned back to face the horizon.
Sabaku no Kankuro. Middle child born to the Yondaime Kazekage. One child is to be the successor the Kage seat, another child had received the Ichibi, the last child was left to their own devices.
Which label did he fall into?
He was nervous in their brief confrontations and it was hard not to notice, especially when he sought her out only to leave as quickly as he came, so she speculated.
What was he hiding? And if there was something suspicious going on—
What were the chances that it was linked to Orochimaru? Because one way or another, she had to figure this out, and if no one was going to stand by her side and help her, she had no problem doing it all on her own.
"Konan-san, what happens if I'm not exem-pary?"
Konan turned, hauntingly clear eyes shadowed by the dawn breaking behind them.
"Then you'll die."
::
"Kiba—stay still!"
"Ish gon' hur'!"
"Of course it's going to hurt, I have to pop your jaw back into place. Now, please stay still, it'll be over in a few moments."
Kiba pouted, or whatever his face could get close to with two hands sandwiching his face as Umino Iruka's eyebrows knit in concentration. Three, slow, painful minutes of slowly guiding bone back to its normal position left Iruka displeased and Kiba to rub at his sore jaw.
"Ow," he muttered, looking up at the stern expression of his old Academy teacher. "Thanks, sensei."
Iruka held his seriousness for a few more seconds before he dropped it and sighed. He patted the boy's shoulder tiredly. "It's alright, Inuzuka-san." He wondered why he'd stumbled upon Kiba here, sitting in his old seat in his old classroom with the lights off and his head pillowed in his arms as he stared out the window. "You just finished the first part of the exams and passed, right? Congratulations!" Kiba brightened at the praise, but it was duller than what it should've been. "But there was no physical portion. Did you get into a fight sometime after?"
Right on the nose, he guessed, when an annoyed scowl crossed Inuzuka's lips and he tucked his arms against his sides. "I guess," he muttered.
"With?"
"With... With Sakura?"
"Sakura-san dislocated your jaw?"
Iruka didn't keep the shock out of his voice and the genin turned his head away, his scowl growing more severe. Kiba and Sakura were practically inseparable, at least from the little Iruka had seen of them when he taught their final year. They'd skipped class more than half the time, kept afloat by their promptly turned-in assignments and passing exam grades. Their attendance tanked, of course, and he hadn't been more irritated in a couple of uncaring students than when they graduated with—in consideration to circumstance—amazing marks despite never paying attention to their lessons.
He was proud that they did graduate and were on their way to being fantastic shinobi, but he only wished they'd taken their studies more seriously so it didn't hurt them in the long run.
He still remembered those times he'd gone out to try and find and drag them back to class to serve detention. When he did, he always caught Kiba first which allowed Sakura to evade him and to never receive one of his reprimandings.
Iruka tilted his head as a sudden realization washed over him. Sakura had never once been caught cutting class, but yet she would always be back in the classroom when he returned with wayward students and awaited punishment if her friend was getting one too.
He sighed again. Those two were close and pulled through at the end, so how annoyed could he really get?
"You need some fresh air," Iruka decided as he noted the strained way Kiba held himself and how, for the first time, Akamaru isn't there to accompany him. "Come on, I know just the place."
That place, it turned out, was a quaint takoyaki stand a couple minutes from the Academy. He led his old student onto one of the spread out benches and returned the wave the stall owner gave him.
"Your usual, sensei?" she called, octopus snacks sizzling on the grill before her.
"Two, please!"
"Gotcha! It'll be out in a moment!"
He watched as Kiba's gaze darted around the stall and the area around it (Analytical? Precautionary? Either way, he didn't think he'd ever seen such a level of awareness on his face before. He tucked away that bit of information away for another time) before he cleared his throat and kept a calm expression. "How have you been, Inuzuka-san?"
The boy's eyes snapped to his, narrowed and unusually suspicious. "You, uh, helped me with my jaw an' all—"
"Which you should still get checked by a medic when you have the chance."
"—uh, sure, I guess. And now we're at your favorite takoyaki place or somethin'," he answered carefully. "Sorry I was in your classroom. I knew the Academy already let out and no one else was s'pposed to be in. Like, I won't come back anymore and you won't have to realign my face again. Honest."
He quieted when the woman from the stall came by and placed two paper food trays of fresh takoyaki on the bench space between them. Iruka thanked her cheerily and handed over practically double the amount he owed, earning himself a cheek-pinch and a bid that if he needed anything else from her, he'd only have to ask.
Kiba almost flailed when one of the paper trays was nudged into his hands. "Sensei, you didn't have to—"
Iruka waved him off. "No, no, you passed the first exam and this is the least I can do." He pointed with his toothpick. "Now, you were telling me how you've been?"
He'd never seen someone stare so intently at a street stall snack and it almost made him smile, but it was quickly wiped off—practically smacked off, really—when Kiba's shoulders dropped as he pierced one of the dough balls, lifting it up and watching the sauce drip back down onto the tray. He was so... weary in a way that didn't make much sense to him.
There was a type of tired that needed at least six hours of sleep and a comfortable bed and a type of tired that needed soft music in the background and a chair to recline in, but the type of tired he saw in front of him is the type that held the world in its shoulders; that took breaths from mouths little by little until later they're left gasping, wondering why they couldn't breathe, why they'd forgotten how.
This was they type of tired shinobi who came back from A-ranks used to suffer—a little more lost, a little more beaten, a little more gone. This wasn't the tired that came from walking dogs for D-ranks or sending messages for C-ranks.
It was the type of tired that said it was fine, but knew it couldn't be any more.
"There's just a lot goin' on. Exams." Kiba sighed. "It's all good."
"So you decided to go off on your own without Akamaru?"
Iruka's words spurred the boy into a minute panic where he shot to his feet and shifted all around him, looking for any sign of a speck of white fur. When he found none, he dropped back onto the bench.
"Shit," he murmured as he pressed his hands against his face.
"Language," Iruka admonished mildly, unable to keep a newfound concern from blooming in his chest. "Inuzuka-san, that fight you had with Sakura-san..."
Kiba let his hands fall into his lap, takoyaki jostled slightly, and looked to the side. "It's, uh, fine. Just... I just need some time to think. If that's cool."
With no remote idea about what was happening with this old student of his, Iruka heaved a long-suffering sigh before he smiled and gestured to the uneaten snack. "It's still warm, I think. You should eat it before it gets any colder."
Kiba squeezed his eyes and blinked a few times before he picked up the paper tray and a toothpick. "Yeah. Um, thanks for the food, sensei."
"It's no problem," Iruka said easily.
They spent the rest of their time in silence with the sound of oil on a grill crackling in the background. Kiba lightened up a bit, as little as it was, and Iruka warmed at the thought that he could do something, anything to raise his spirits even a notch higher.
But just as the warmth came, a tendril of ice snaked its way in and crushed it.
There was nothing wrong now. Kiba was fighting with Sakura, but friends could get into fights on occasion. If they ended up solving their problems through healthy means, then it was a learning experience they could eventually move on from. Collaboration, not compromise, he always told his students.
Yet there was something squirming at the back of Iruka's mind, and it bothered him because Academy Kiba hadn't looked close to the way he was now—exhausted, defeated, so starkly unlike himself that a red flag was practically waving itself in front of his eyes.
Still, it was no problem now.
But would it be later?
::
Two days later was when it all started.
Eighty-one genin were scattered around their assigned entry gates for Training Ground 44, and as was becoming a pattern, it was only after Naruto had made the loudest, eye-catching scene of everyone there.
Team Eight, silent and together for the first time since the end of the written exam (despite Kurenai's try at wrangling them all in one place), stood poised in front of Gate Sixteen while the others still milled about. Sakura surveyed the left, Kiba took the right, Shino to the front, Akamaru to the back. Not a single world had slipped through them since that confrontation, but they had an understanding.
They didn't have to get along to get things right. Emotions were not an excuse for inefficiency, and as long as they got to the end of the exam united and in one piece, they could figure out their issues at another time.
Besides, one of them had their Heaven Scroll hidden on their person. They couldn't afford to fuck up before the second test even started.
"This'll be fun," Anko laughed from her perch atop the makeshift assignment tent behind the gates. "Remember, you've all already turned in your consent forms before receiving your scrolls. If you die in there, it's not mine or Konoha's problem, so if you're gonna make fools of yourselves and get yourselves killed, make it as clean as possible. I don't want to go in there and spend six hours picking up body parts!"
Kiba caught a glimpse of the team assigned to the gate beside theirs, number Fifteen. The middle-most one turned her head, and he was met with a gaze of toxic yellow.
She smiled.
He tore his eyes away as a tremor wracked through his entire body.
"Five days is all you got here," Anko reminded, a sinister grin on her lips. "Make the most of it. Or don't. My job is to cut down at least ninety percent of ya', and I'll be damned if I'm not going for ninety-five."
::
Half a kilometer south of the the Forest of Death, Hoshigaki Kisame dropped his henge, hid in the shadows of Konoha's grand trees, and waited.
::
Uniformed proctors appeared before each gate and removed the locks. Kotetsu, designated to unlock Gate Sixteen, let the chain fall to his feet before he turned around and observed Unlucky Eight.
All three of their faces were identical in their intense vacancy and it unnerved him.
When the time struck exactly 2:30 pm, the gates crashed open and the uniformed proctors disappeared. Anko's booming voice filled the air.
"The second part of the exams starts NOW!"
::
The porcelain of a Lion mask glinted under harsh fluorescent lights as its wearer knelt before they man they'd sworn their life to. "The second part of the Chuunin Exams is underway. Start time: 14:30. End time: Wednesday, 14:30. Estimated time allotment for your desired mission: 119 hours and 58 minutes."
Danzo barely moved as his eyes lit with cruel excitement.
"Send them in."
::
A/N: Hey Everyone!
I created a Ko-fi account and the link should be in the header of my tumblr page (under the same name as this), and I know I haven't been the best in updating lately, but if you'd like to support me by buying an coffee that would be awesome!
But don't feel obligated to do it, it won't speed up my updating process or anything like that, so if you choose to do so, do it on your own volition.
If you do decide to, each ko-fi will get split equally between me and my two beta readers (OfCloves on Wattpad and @rrage on ff.net). I wouldn't be proud to put out my chapters without them!
Either way, thank you all for your support and thank you all for sticking with me this far!! <3