"-to! Naruto!" Something that might be a voice pierces the haze of my sleep-addled mind, echoing softly as if miles away, and then fades. I let it slip away and settle back into oblivion. "Naruto!" Something that is definitely a foot buries itself into my stomach and my eyes fly open.
"Fuck!" I howl, curling around the offending sandal. Sasuke pulls it out of my grasp, taking a step back with a satisfied 'Hn.' I whimper, cursing the stupid bastard and clutching my stomach, waiting for the worst of the pain to come crashing down on me.
It… doesn't.
After a few seconds of nothing but the sting of his kick, I stop cringing and reach under my t-shirt to give my bare skin a rub. It isn't even that hot anymore. Almost normal, it feels like. My brow furrows. I've never gotten over chakra exhaustion that fast before. It's always taken me a full day of rest at the least. What the hell-
"Naruto!" Sakura's voice registers again, this time registering instead of fading into the void. "Come on, get up! We need to hurry!" Why does that sound so ominous?
"Hurry to what?" I ask, even though I'm pretty sure I know the answer. I push myself up onto my elbows, surveying the room and wishing it had a window so I could check the position of the sun.
Sasuke hooks a thumb at the door. "The second task."
"Are you serious?" Of course he's serious, Uzumaki. You knew he was serious before he even said anything. I lunge for my things, throwing my jacket on and shoving my discarded bandages into my backpack. I'd been hoping to change my bandages out at least one more time before the next task, but it doesn't look like I'll have the time. "How long did I sleep for?"
"Almost a full day," Sakura says. I pause in my scrambling and look up at her incredulously.
"What?" I don't sleep that long. I've never slept more than twelve hours in my life, aside from my coma. I always just wake up on my own after seven or eight hours.
I grit my teeth and jerk my backpack over my shoulders. I'll worry about it later. I jam my sandals on and stand up, relieved to find that my injured and reinjured leg only twinges a little bit at the motion. I guess oversleeping did that some good. I look up at my teammates, waiting with varying degrees of impatience by the door. "Alright, where are we going?"
"A proctor stopped by a couple hours ago and dropped this off." Sakura holds up a slip of paper with a room number and a time written on it. "It's somewhere in the upper floors, and we have to be there in twenty minutes."
"Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" I ask as we hurry out the door.
"We tried," Sasuke says, glancing sidelong at me. "Nothing Sakura did woke you up, and she wouldn't let me wake you up my way until we had no choice."
"Oh. Thanks, Sakura."
Sakura giggles. "No problem. Now hurry up before we get disqualified."
We pelt up the stairs, past the infirmary to the floor above, and start looking for room numbers. As we delve into the depths of the building, I realize that it's actually enormous. The combination of the tower and the mountains must have been obscuring the rest of the place from sight, because there's no way anyone could fit this many hallways into that dinky little tower.
I also realize that this place being huge isn't a good thing. It is in fact a very, very bad thing.
"They didn't give you guys anything else on where it'd be?" I ask for the tenth time, jogging down a hallway and glancing over door numbers. None are even close. "A floor number, a map of the building, a compass, maybe?"
"No!" Sakura repeats, also for the tenth time. "They just told us we needed to find our original teammates and get to the room by the time the next task starts."
"Awesome." Maybe she should have let Sasuke wake me up earlier. It's not like I'm not used to it. "I swear to god if we lose to a room…"
"Found it." Sasuke's voice sounds from a staircase off to my right. Sakura and I skid to a stop, and she lifts the paper up, calling back.
"BC 5467?"
"Yeah. Hurry up."
We run down the hall and up the stairs, finding Sasuke holding a door open near the top. Sakura darts in and I move to follow, only for Sasuke to throw an arm in front of my chest. I skid to a stop, looking at him in confusion. He points over my shoulder.
"What happened to your sword?"
I wince. "I forgot to tell you guys about that, didn't I?" He cocks an eyebrow at me. "So uh, Samui broke her sword in one of the earlier fights we got in. And she told me she couldn't fight without it-"
"So you gave her yours." Sasuke says flatly. "You gave the girl from Kumo who you met five days ago your ANBU-grade tanto. That's what you did."
I scowl. "Why do you always have to say it like that?"
He sighs. "God damn it, Naruto."
"Look, it'll be fine!" I insist. "I can fight just fine without it and you know it. And if worst comes to worst I'll just improvise with my wind some more."
"You know how dangerous that is."
"I know, but-" I pause, scrunching my nose up. "I don't know if the same rules apply to me. You remember how Iruka-sensei used to hound us on all of the tenketsu and how difficult each one was to channel chakra through, right?" He nods, a spark of interest breaking through the doubt in his eyes. "It isn't like that for me. There isn't anywhere I have trouble channeling wind through. It just… flows."
He opens his mouth to prod me further, but Sakura appears in the doorway, giving us both the evil eye. "What are you two doing? The task is about to start, and the proctor says you're both disqualified if you're not inside the room!"
"Coming!" I say hastily, following after her as she runs back into the room. Sasuke moves up beside me and whispers.
"She seduced you, didn't she?"
"Fuck you, Sasuke."
"How many times did you stare at her chest?"
"Fuck you, Sasuke."
The inside of the room turns out to be pretty small, a little more than twice the size of the room we'd stayed the night in.
Bare gray walls and an empty room surround us on all sides, and on the far side of the room stands the proctor. He's wearing black shinobi pants and a black short-sleeve shirt partially covering his fishnet undershirt. A dark green chunin vest rests unzipped on his tall, thin frame. He regards us with cool blue-gray eyes, framed by a head of shaggy black hair.
He isn't wearing a headband.
He's leaning against another door with the kanji for Taijutsu emblazoned upon its surface, and there are doors on either side of him emblazoned with the kanji for Ninjutsu and Genjutsu respectively. He pushes off when he sees Sasuke and I walk in, standing up straight and crossing his arms over his chest, towering over us.
"Made it, huh? Lucky for you, you're just in time. You've got just under five minutes until the start of the second task, so pay attention." He twirls his fingers and procures a slip of paper between them. "State your names and shinobi ID numbers. If any of you answers for the other, you're disqualified. Blondy, go."
"Uzumaki Naruto, ID number 470831," I rattle off. He glances down at the slip of paper and nods.
"Alright, you on the left."
"Uchiha Sasuke, ID number 470828," Sasuke grunts.
"Good." He looks expectantly at Sakura.
"Haruno Sakura, ID number 470830," Sakura answers promptly. He looks down at the paper one last time and then pockets it.
"Looks like you're not complete idiots, if nothing else," he says. He waves a hand behind him, at the three doors."Through these doors is the second task. You'll notice that each is labelled with one of the big three shinobi arts. This is because you're going to be choosing the nature of this task yourselves."
I cock my head. "Like, the whole thing?"
...
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