Chapter 21: Suna Chunin Exams Arc: Four

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

We are the last of four teams to make it across the finish line. Which, isn't really a priority right now, as Muta and I sit and wait for the medics to finish working on Toku.

"Bad stress fracture and dislocation of the right arm, a major concussion, lacerations, face, and back, check for possibly broken or cracked ribs." The medic turns to us. "What did this to him exactly?"

"A mid-level Futon." I whisper. Oh, Toku, Toku, I'm so sorry for everything. "He took the brunt of it." The salt in the long scratch on my face stings, but I deserve it. What sort of idiot am I to forget that I'm supposed to take care of my team even when one member's angry with me?

En-sensei is waiting outside, and I know that he'd be disappointed with us. With our conduct as a team. Not with Toku, he had only tried to help the best he could, but he couldn't bridge a gap between two arguing teammates if we were intent on disagreeing.

The medic that had asked me a question turns back to removing minuscule pieces of rock from Toku's back, while yet another one is using green chakra to mend the broken bones in his smashed arm.

Muta sets his hand over mine. "I messed up."

I don't look at him when I reply. "So did I." But we're not paying for it, are we? Toku's paying for it. The words that really need saying go unsaid between us because we understand. Whatever the misunderstanding between us, it would not get in the way of our teamwork again.

The price had been too much to pay the first time around.

Sensei walks in half an hour later, and we could see the haggard look on his face as if he'd aged ten years in a night. "You will not do this to me, or your teammate ever again." Is the only thing he says to us as he looks over Toku's still form on the hospital bed. We curl in on ourselves, the long silence stretching out over us like a shroud. We know, Ensui-sensei. We're sorry we betrayed your trust in us.

It is another half hour before he speaks again. "I shouldn't have let you go out there." A sigh. "It was my fault." He turns to us, and opens his arms. We rise like little puppets and cling to him.

We'd killed before, but none of us had been injured so far away from home with the possibility of dying before we ever got to safety before. I have to remember that this is real life. I'm not a character in a manga.

This is real and people can die because of the decisions I choose.

"All will be better." Sensei whispers into our hair. "We'll all be going back to Konoha. You'll be safe enough there." The subtlety of Sensei's phrasing assures us that not even Konoha is really a haven where nothing could hurt us, but home would be better.

Toku chooses that moment to wake up. "Ah, guys?" We break apart and rush to see him. He's sitting up, albeit slowly and painfully. "Can I get some water? I'm parched."

"So we're not fighting anymore?" Toku looks between the two of us, his gaze still somewhat hazy, but much better than it had been back in the I shake my head.

"We're not fighting anymore." And then I look away and worry my teeth over my lip while I scratch Ni behind the ears. "I'm not sure there was much of anything that we had to fight over to begin with." My breakdown had been silly. So what if I hadn't really contributed, and Muta had carried us through that phase of the Exams? We are on a team so that our flaws and weaknesses are balanced, not so we could make nice with expansive egos and inflated senses of self confidence.

"I behaved in a petty fashion." Muta bows his head. "I apologize. It hurt you."

Toku grins. "I'm glad we're not fighting anymore."

Sensei heaves a sigh and slides into a chair. "Wake me up when there's something happening. I didn't get enough sleep last night." Going by the dark smudges under his eyes, and the bruised, tired sort of look in the lines and planes of his face, he hadn't slept at all.

Sensei was waiting for us to come back. I'm so thankful that we did.

We share a smile, the three of us, back together at last before we sigh in unison. "Yes, of course Sensei, do fall asleep."

He opens one dark eye to glare at us futilely. "I did nothing to deserve you three hellions."

We laugh, and Toku winces. It's his ribs. It has to be. "Maybe I shouldn't laugh for the time being."

Muta and I look at each other, but I'm the first to speak. "We should tickle him later so he can get the extra pent up laughs out of his system. It wouldn't do if our resident corrupted Hyuga had time to recalcify."

I see his lips curl up into a visible smile. All is well in the world again.

"Do you want to continue with the exam?" Sensei folds his hands together over his knee and looks at all three of us.

Ichi woofs. "We've come too far to forfeit." In my heart of hearts, he echoes my own sentiments. We've come too far and given up too much to turn back now. San whines his agreement. Ni huffs, but says very little. His brothers would decide this time.

I look up at Sensei. "The Triplets want to continue."

"I as well." Muta sets his hand over mine. "If Hana's going, she shouldn't go on alone." More quietly he adds. "I've learned my lesson about disagreements while in the line of duty. I promise you Ensui-sensei, never again."

Sensei nods. "A wise decision." He then turns to Toku. "So what about you? What will you do?"

Toku laughs and then winces, setting his good hand against his ribs. "I don't think I"ll be able to go on, guys." He settles for a smile instead of a laugh this time. "If I can't make it, at least one of you has to make chunin so this thing isn't a complete wash, you know?"

Sensei smiles. "You all have grown."

He opens his mouth to say more, but at precisely this moment, a dark hared man with a goatee slides open the door. "Hey Ensui, 'S your minion alright?"

Ensui-sensei shoots him an annoyed glare. "We were in the middle of a heart to heart conversation, Asata. You came in and called them mere minions."

Asata-san snorts. "That's what being a jonin sensei is about: having minions. If you don't have them, you aren't doing them right." His casual, lighthearted demeanor drops a moment afterwards. "They're sending in the pick up crews to figure out what happened to the other two teams."

Konoha had started with nine teams, five had dropped in the first round. And now another two were out of the running.

Sensei sighs. "Tell me about it. Are Makito and Hiroshi still strung wires about this?"

Asata-san sits down. "You're one to talk. You didn't get a wink of sleep until your minions made their way across that finish line and you'd have killed anyone who told you that they were dead." I feel my cheeks flush. Sensei is totally a Papa Bear.

"Well, I hope for their sakes, no one's dead." Sensei comments and stretches languidly over his chair.

"I can't figure out how my old man let you teach a genin team. Doesn't he want you working in RnD and Cryptology?" Asata-san chuckles and nudges Sensei with an elbow. He calls the Hokage an old man? Who is he exactly?

"I told him if he didn't give me the exact team I asked for he would no longer have a head of Cryptology." Sensei says this in a drab monotone that warms all of our hearts.

There is pin drop silence in the room broken only by Asata-san's impressed whistle. "I'm surprised you're still alive."

"He needs Cryptology, Asata. The other option was pulling Hatake out of ANBU." Wait. What. I felt my own heart plummet into my stomach. I so narrowly avoided Kakashi as a sensei? Oh thank Kami. I needed to remember to burn some more incense offerings because otherwise I'd probably still be in the academy by now, helping exactly zero people.

"He is the better tracker." Asata-san muses. "But I doubt Tou-chan would care about that when faced with the resignation of the head of his Cryptology department." He calls the Hokage father? So his full name has to be Sarutobi Asata. Doesn't that make him Asuma's elder brother? Did Asuma even have an older brother?

"The tracker team sensei for a top tier team's always the weird one anyway." Sensei mumbles. "They can't get a Hyuga, an Aburame, or an Inuzuka to do it after all. Clan biases and all that jazz." He props his head up with a hand. "Besides, Hatake's a maladjusted teenager. I wouldn't have been able to let him take Kaito's daughter, Shoko's son, and Reichiru's son. It would have been blasphemous." So Sensei knew all of our parents then, which is why he never bothered to show up for team dinners with the rest of us.

His laziness suddenly made sense. They probably forgive him even if it is somewhat rude.

"Just be careful they don't stick you with another team of genin after this one or you'll never get any sleep whatsoever." Asata-san rises and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Looks like it's just your team and mine now. Intel vs the Tracker Squad, and I can tell you, you're going down."

Sensei snorts. "Famous last words, Sarutobi. Famous last words."

There had been two other Konoha deaths in the exams, both from the same team. The thought is sobering enough when they carry the bodies back that evening, partially mutilated beyond reasonable recognition. That could have been us. Two thirds of a team gone. How would the remaining member carry on?

There'd been a scream when one of the tense jonin sensei had realized what was going on. The other team had suffered no fatalities, and reparable injuries, they just hadn't made it in time.

It is a small price to pay for being alive, but they don't seem to think so.

I squeeze Toku's shaking hand. "We're all still alive."

"Thank Kami." He responds.

Muta nods. "We know better now." Sensei doesn't let us out of his sight for the rest of the evening, all the way through the next day. His eyes trailed after us, and the line of his shoulders is set and tense on the trip back into Suna.

We rest for the following three days back in Suna proper. The last test would not be a tournament styled exam taking place a month from the end of the second exam. Instead, it would be a free for all brawl at the end of two weeks. Clearly they didn't expect too many foreign dignitaries to be interested in traveling to the country of Wind to watch genin duke it out in a sand pit.

Frankly, I am not surprised that no one really voluntarily wanted to travel to such a place.

Toku would certainly not be able to recover in time for Sensei to let him fight. There is only so much that chakra can do for some major injuries, and Suna isn't exactly a profusion of medics.

In short, Muta and I had a week and a half to prepare, and Toku would definitely not be promoted this time around.

"So did you pass the test, Dog Girl?" Temari hops into my line of sight as I run through a set of stretches. I pause, with both palms pressed flat on the ground, the same way I had years and years ago the time Itachi and I had a genuine conversation.

"Temari-san, if I didn't pass would I still be alive?" The words come out rather sardonically, but I feel that I'm excused from sugar coating my experiences as we'd been stupidly lucky to not have died.

The question's a rhetorical one, but she still seems to consider it seriously. "I suppose, if you did not pass the Second Stage of the Exams." She announces in a grand tone of voice. "You'd have a good chance of not being alive." She pulls another little boy out from behind a rock. "This is my little brother, Kankuro."

He looks nothing like what he will look like with face paint. A four year old with brown hair and his father's face, did not the purple face paint boy wearing a suit with cat ears make.

"-and I have another little brother too. His name is Gaara, but we can't visit him." And you have no idea how glad I am that we can't.

"Why are you so interested if I passed or not?" And really, why is the Kazekage's only daughter so interested if a foreign kunoichi passed anyway?

She worries her lower lip between her teeth, and stares me straight in the eye. "I'm going to the Academy soon, and I wanted to know if a serious kunoichi can pass her first exams." Oh.

I flip over so I'm stretching my abdominal muscles instead of my legs. "There are plenty of strong kunoichi that pass their first chunin exams."

"Not in Suna, they don't." Temari grins, and it's bloodthirsty and determined. "But I will. I'll prove them all wrong, you see." I think back to what had actually happened during her chunin exams. "I'll be the very first."

"I'm sure you will." What could I say? Um...no, actually you get defeated by a Nara so lazy someone had to kick him down into the ring to fight with you? Somehow, I didn't see that tidbit going over well.

A.N. Short chapter today, and slightly more filler-y, but we do need to cool down from emotional roller coasters some how. Also, Kishimoto didn't name Konohamaru's dad or mom, suggested that they were at one point ANBU agents and gave no clues as to whether or not they're alive during canon. I'm a little irritated by this.

For the purposes of this story, I will be calling Konohamaru's dad Asata, the older brother of Asuma, and Konohamaru's mom Kiyoki.

Also thanks so much to ASH the Trouble, and Guest for informing me about the formatting issues, hopefully this chapter is clearer, but if not, you guys can always tell me and I'll try to fix it.

In that vein, I'll be going over the earlier chapters sometimes to fix the problems.

Thanks to Snidekick and Everbear01 for reviewing! (Don't worry, Hana and Muta are mostly okay now.)

Thanks to everyone who favorited and followed!

~Tavina