Naruto : Catastrophe : Chapter 80

I hurriedly dig into my pockets and pull out another pair of blue and gray, not even bothering with the discarded ones behind us. I shove them into the proctor's outstretched hand, and they each light up blue when they touch her skin.

"Alright, you two are good to go. Head upstairs and grab some rooms. You've still got a little while to rest up before the next task starts."

...

Samui and I just stare at her, stunned. She raises an eyebrow. "What, did you think I was going to disqualify you over that bum leg of hers?"

"Well, ah," Samui stammers. I nod.

"Yeah, we did. Didn't you say we couldn't go on if one of our partners got hurt?" I wave my free hand. "Not that I'm complaining or anything!"

"Actually, brat," Mitarash says, taking another bite of her bean paste. "The rule is that if they can't compete in the next task, you're disqualified. But we never said what the next task would entail, now did we?" She asks, winking.

I blink. "You tricked us."

"Hell yeah we did," Mitarashi agrees. "Now get out of my face. I've got other brats to attend to." Samui tugs me forward, all too happy to comply, but I reluctantly pull back on her, my curiosity outweighing my exhaustion.

"One more thing."

She scowls. "Make it quick."

"What were those seals on our hands all about?" I ask. "The ones that opened the door for us."

"Oh, those things?" Mitarashi asks, radiating mischievousness. "Those were the contact seals we bugged the slips with."

Samui goes rigid beside me. "Excuse me?"

"Yup!" The Konoha proctor says cheerfully. "Each of those slips of paper we had you draw came with a contact seal that was different from every other seal except for its pair. The contact seal lets you open the door, but only if its partner seal is used alongside it."

"So if two people ditched their partners and tried to open the door together…" I say, trailing off and glancing at Samui.

"They get rejected," Mitarashi finished for me.

"We weren't supposed to bend the rules after all, then." That's a relief, I guess. At least I made the right decision in that regard.

Mitarashi waves a finger at me. "Not so fast, brat. The point of this task was two part. The first part, and the most obvious one, is the one that samurai forced on us. If you want to be a chunin you have to be capable of working with people you don't like to accomplish a common goal.

You've got to have the charisma and the smarts to get them to see things your way. You've got to have loyalty and honor, because yadda yadda yadda." She stops her wagging and points her finger at me.

"The second lesson here is that while cheating can often be beneficial to you in this line of work, it has its risks. You're far from the first shinobi in the world to bend the rules, and we the proctors have taken that into account. Your job is to take us into account and cheat anyway."

She pops the last piece of dango into her mouth and smiles wickedly. "The moral of the story here isn't that you shouldn't cheat. It's that if you do, you need to do it right."

...

"Naruto!"

I turn, shifting Samui sideways and looking back down the hallway we just hobbled down. I see Sakura come sprinting out of one of the many doors lining the flat gray walls, followed a second later by Sasuke.

The three of us lock eyes, and Sakura's face lights up, while a tension that's probably been there since yesterday eases from Sasuke's eyes. I wave my free hand at them, smiling despite the pain I'm feeling. Mitarashi had assuaged most of my fears that they had gotten jumped again after Samui and I intervened, but seeing them safe and sort of sound puts the last of them to rest.

"Hey guys."

Sakura makes it to us first and half reaches out to me, but pulls back at the last second, eyeing the Kumo nin by my side cautiously. Sasuke jogs up beside her, not even bothering to hide his distrust for my partner in the narrow looks he gives her.

I cough. "Uh, yeah, this is my partner. Her name's Samui, and she's cool." Sakura nods, giving her a polite, if strained, smile. Sasuke is unimpressed. "She helped me bail you guys out yesterday," I say meaningfully.

"Hello," Sakura says, bowing her head. "I'm Sakura. Thank you for helping us." Samui inclines her head in turn. Sasuke grunts.

"Sasuke."

"Ignore him," I sigh, steering us back around. "Anyway, come on. We've still got another set of stairs to climb, somehow. I'll see you guys in a bit," I call over my shoulder.

"Where are you going?" Sakura asks, alarmed.

I crane my neck around and give her a reassuring smile. "Just gotta drop Samui off upstairs real quick. I'll be right back."

We make it up the next flight of stairs through some divine act of god and find ourselves in the medical bay, just like Mitarashi said. The entire floor is filled with cots for patients to sleep on and curtains to ensure those patients have some level of privacy. Several of them are already drawn. Men and women garbed in civilian scrubs litter the room, some loitering around the occupied beds while others chat with one another over coffee and food.

As soon as we walk in one of them breaks off from their conversation, setting their cup down on the table beside them and heading over to us. The medic, a woman of middling height with dark blue eyes and shoulder length brown hair, eyes us.

"Which one of you is it?"

"Both of us," Samui says, and I quickly wave a hand when the woman motions for another medic to come over.

"No, I'm fine," I blurt, and both the medic and my partner look sharply at me. I look down at Samui, scratching the back of my head. "Really. All I need to do is change my bandages and get some rest before the next task and I'll be fine. I heal fast."

Samui looks ready to object, but the medic heads her off by grasping her arm and tugging her towards one of the beds, disentangling us. It's not as much of a relief as I'm expecting it to be.

I shake my head free of its hormone-riddled thoughts and raise two fingers to my forehead in salute. "Good luck in the next task!" Samui huffs and turns her head away, but on my way back down the steps I hear the faintest 'You too' drift out of the room. I smile softly.

Sasuke is leaning in the doorframe to the room Sakura and he have been staying in, and disappears back inside after gesturing for me to follow. I shuffle into the room, shutting the door behind me and slumping against it. The room itself turns out to be a little bigger than my living room in Konoha, furnished with three thin mattresses and a mini fridge, along with a bathroom to my right.

My observations end there as something strong and pink slams into me and a pair of arms wrap around me like steel bars and ow god please ow ow ow.

"You're hurting him, Sakura," Sasuke says in exasperation from his place on his mattress. Sakura immediately lets go, alarm whisking away the relief in her eyes.

"'S fine," I wheeze, forcing myself not to double over and claw at my burning stomach. "Just need a little nap is all."

"Are you sure?" She asks, placing a light hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, it's no big deal," I assure her, pushing off the door. She backs up, though her hand doesn't leave my shoulder, and we both walk over to the unoccupied mattress in the middle. I collapse onto it, groaning in ecstasy. I wiggle the backpack until it's halfway down my arms and then abandon the effort, sinking face first into the bed with my arms trapped on my back. Bliss.

I feel a pull on the backpack a moment later, and allow Sakura to pull it off the rest of the way. I raise my left leg up and kick the sandal on my right foot off. Then I go to do the same with the sandal on my left foot, only to grunt and drop my right leg as pain erupts from my stab wound. As well as some blood, probably.

"You hurt your leg," Sasuke says.

I snort into the mattress. "Had to activate your Sharingan for that one, didn'tcha?" I roll over onto my back and push myself up into a sitting position. I reach for where Sakura set my backpack, digging around for my bandages and muttering to myself. "Stupid Iwa nin."

"Did you get that yesterday?" Sakura asks, the guilt apparent in her voice.

"Nah, this happened a few days ago," I say, peeling off the old bandages and wincing at the wet tearing sound that follows. "It was pretty much good, but then I opened it back up using this new jutsu." Both of my teammates perk up at that.

"You got a new jutsu?" Sakura asks, sitting down on her own mattress.

"Was it the one Kakashi was teaching you back in Konoha?" Sasuke presses.

"Nope," I say, throwing him a smug grin. "Came up with it all by myself."

"When?"

I cough, turning my attention back to wrapping my leg up with fresh bandages. "Right before I used it."

Sakura regards me with naked shock while Sasuke just shakes his head. "You're such an idiot."

"Hey. If it wasn't for that jutsu I wouldn't be here right now," I say, tying off the bandage and tossing the diminished roll vaguely in the direction of my backpack.

"What did it do?" Sakura asks.

"Made me run really, really fast." I fall backwards onto the mattress once more, relishing in the dull throb spreading through my body as it relaxes for the first time in over a day. "Don't know what I'd have done if it didn't work. Those guys chasing you were ruthless." I turn my head, raising an eyebrow at Sasuke. "What was that all about, anyway? Did you try to take them all on at once with your fancy new eyes?"

Sasuke rolls said fancy eyes. "Of course not. They jumped us."

"We think they were trailing us from the start," Sakura says. "There was an enormous battle at the start of the exam, and Sasuke and I ended up fighting a pair from Iwa and Kiri. We knocked the Kiri nin unconscious, but the one from Iwa got away. And when that group ambushed us, she was leading the way."

I groan. "I know exactly who you're talking about. She's the reason I had to break out my new jutsu in the first place."

"Did you take her down?" Sasuke asks, his tone dark.

"There were too many. I took out one of the guys from Iwa, but I had to haul ass pretty soon after that. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Sakura cuts in before Sasuke can say anything. "You already did more than enough. We're just glad you're okay."

"Is that true, Sasuke?" I ask, grin morphing into a smirk. "Are you glad we're together again?"

"Hn."

I chuckle. "Well, I'm glad we're together. All of us." I let my gaze shift from him up to the plain gray ceiling. The exhaustion that I've been pushing aside since I dropped my Breeze Step creeps in on me, tugging at my eyelids and loosening my muscles even more. I reach up with a sluggish hand and unzip my jacket, sliding out of it and tossing it down beside my backpack. Then I throw an arm over my eyes and relax.

"Gonna take that nap now," I mumble. "Wake me up before the next task." Sasuke snorts, and Sakura murmurs a promise to do so.

I don't think I've ever fallen asleep so easily in my whole life. The chakra exhaustion, the stab wound, and the sheer fatigue of going nonstop for over a full day with no sleep all ease as soon as I close my eyes, and the cheap mattress feels like a cloud beneath me. As unconsciousness closes in on me, even the burning in my stomach doesn't hurt so badly anymore.

...

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