Chapter 30: Iwa Chunin Exams Arc: One

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

"You can let go of me now." My arms drop as though they'd been burned. What was I thinking when I did that? What was I thinking, he's going to be so mad at me..."I wasn't crying."

"Of course you weren't." I reply flippantly, and an instant later curse my stupid mouth. I am an idiot. A Kami forsaken, stupid idiot.

Kakashi looks at me, looks at the bright sunlight outside his window, and then back at me. "You said something about a training plan earlier?" His eye smile is a hundred percent plastic, but he probably needs the distraction right now.

But that was a lie so I could get into your apartment...oh who am I kidding. If Hatake Kakashi wants to give me pointers, who am I to say no to him? "I'm working on the next Doton Jutsu in the scroll Tou-san left me." I pull out the scroll for emphasis. "I don't understand how I'm supposed to breath under the surface of the earth for the Earth Walking Jutsu though."

"Make me lunch again and I'll teach you." Kakashi eye smiles again, and this time he looks more like a troll than anything else. I can't believe I felt sorry for you.

"So what's your favorite food then?" But if bribing you will get you to teach me something, then very well, I'll bribe you.

"Broiled fish." He taps his chin with a finger. "Miso soup and eggplant." It doesn't sound too hard. I have two lifetimes of semi decent cooking experience surely I could make it work.

I stand up and brush off my shorts. "Well, I'll have to visit the grocery store again." I glare at him. "Knowing you, your refrigerator is all sad again."

"Well." Kakashi claps his hands together. "We will have to go together then."

I look up at him. Are you kidding? "I can find the grocery store by myself, Kakashi-san."

"No, you can't." Are you actually kidding? "Remember if you only eat convenience store onigiri you won't grow up big and strong, Hana-chan!" I can't possibly punch him can I? I won't be able to connect a punch anyway. Stupid geniuses.

"What do you think of this one?" I turn to find Kakashi holding...a peach of all things.

I feel a vein pulse in my forehead. "Kakashi-san." I take a very deep breath. "That's not even an eggplant. That's a peach."

Kakashi eye smiles at me. "Oh, indeed it is." He looks at the peach as thought it is a foreign object. "I wonder how it got here. I was certain I picked up an eggplant."

"Kai!" I disrupt the flow of my chakra, because I really wouldn't put it past him to put a genjutsu on an eggplant. The peach stays a peach.

"You're so confused, Hana-chan." Kakashi's face is suddenly very very close to mine, and I lean away from him. Personal space...must have more personal space... "And highly suspicious." He withdraws and puts the peach back. "I like it."

"How do you even-" I shake my head. "Oh never mind. I don't want to know how you've survived for this long without knowing the difference between peaches and eggplants, which you claim happens to be your favorite food...so."

I actually open Kakashi's kitchen cabinets when we get back. I expect to find very little...but again I'm surprised. "Kakashi-san...is that a colander?" And suddenly I have far too many suspicions. "Kakashi-san?"

He looks up from polishing his shuriken. "What about my colander?"

"Are you actually capable of cooking?" If you have something as specific as a colander, and you clearly know what it means, then doesn't that mean that you do on occasion cook things?

He blinks at me, but says nothing. I hurriedly pull the pot of miso soup off of the stove top.

Then I turn to glare at him properly. "You do know how to cook."

He blinks at me again. "Of course I do."

What. What? WHAT?! "Why didn't you ever tell me?" I pull the half burnt fish off of the stove too, and stomp my way over to him. "Why do you even want me to make you food when you can do it yourself?"

He calmly sets the shuriken down on the table. "Well Hana-chan," He begins in a sickeningly sweet voice. "You never asked."

I feel as though my brain has short circuited. I wander over to his refrigerator and pull it open. Yogurt...milk...dog food...fruit...oh look, eggplants...and fish...broccoli...he's a normal person after all.

I give in to the sudden urge to just sit on the floor at this point. I don't know why, but this is just hysterically funny. "But I'm such a terrible cook."

By the time I turn around, the half burnt fish is gone. "I have no idea what you mean." He swallows. "I will tell you that there are air pockets in the ground because the Earth Walking Jutsu makes a bubble bigger than you in the ground if you do it correctly."

I raise an eyebrow at him. "I am a terrible cook, but more importantly, I suppose if I don't do it correctly I'll end up dead?"

"Hmmm..." The miso soup is disappearing right before my eyes, but there's no change in the movement of his mask, so I assume it's a genjutsu. I'm just too tired to break it."I don't know what'll happen."

"Fine." I sigh and run a hand through my hair. "I'll go and try it out then."

I poke my head above the earth and gasp for air at my normal training ground. "Oh look, it's the girl." Pakkun is sitting right in front of me. At this moment, we're eye level.

"What are you doing here?" I neither scream nor try to back away, more than half of me is still stuck underground anyway. "Also, my name is Hana, not girl."

"Eh, Kakashi didn't want you to actually die." He offers me a paw. "You should feel them. I have very soft paws."

I wiggle a hand above ground so I could test out the legendary paws. "They are very soft." I laugh. In all honesty...Pakkun is rather cute.

Pakkun withdraws his paw. "It looks like you've mostly gotten the hang of it."

I push myself the rest of the way out of the ground. It doesn't want to give me up, and I end up making a rather loud squelching sound when I finally break free of the earth. "It's just really slow." I sigh. "I can't see myself using this in an actual fight."

"It's good for hiding," Pakkun offers.

I nod. "Yeah." I scratch behind his ears absentmindedly. "I could use it for infiltration if I actually wanted to."

Pakkun hums blissfully. "You do know how to scratch behind ears."

My right eyebrow rises just a touch too high. "I am the sister of three dogs, Pakkun. I think I should know how to scratch behind ears by now."

Pakkun clambers to his feet. "Well, since you aren't going to kill yourself, my job is done."

I turn back to the task still at hand. Ram. Dog. Rat. Bird.

Feel the ground open up and swallow me. I slide down into the vast dark, and pull my chakra towards my ears instead. The world is surprisingly clear and focused without all the visual distraction. There's the sound of birds flying overhead. A slight wind is rattling through the bare branches. A colony of ants is walking towards a new home across the training field above my head. The world is alive and it is becoming spring again.

I'm running out of air again though, so I head back up.

I'm on the pathway home when I run into Cousin Gaku. I'd seen him since the Kyubi Incident, but-and I am indeed ashamed to say this-he hasn't been on my mind as much as his sister. "Cousin Hana." He calls.

I wave at him. "Cousin Gaku!" The white dog at his side must be Shiromaru. "And Shiromaru?"

The small white dog barks once. "I'm Byamaru."

"Oh. I'm so sorry." I pat him on the head once, and turn back to look at Cousin Gaku. "I don't think that I've met your dog before."

"Can I have a moment of your time, Hana-chan?" Cousin Gaku...is...different. He'd been brash and loud in my childhood memories, but now he's smiling politely-blankly-in my direction. And I am deeply ashamed to know that I don't know if it is the Kyubi Incident that has changed him, or if it is something else.

"Yes, of course." I thread my arm through his, and we walk down the path, arm in arm.

"Can you tell me what it's like to be a genin?"

The question is so out of left field that I stop walking. "You were a genin yourself, Cousin Gaku."

He sighs. "I do not remember."

He has memory loss? Has he not been around because he no longer remembers who everyone is? "What else don't you remember?" Did we just lose him in the shuffle? Inuzukas could be scatterbrained. Had no one thought to ask about him?

He frowns. "Many things that I should know." We start walking again. "I could not remember your name for the longest time. It is why I did not speak to you until now."

"Well," I begin. "To answer your question about being a genin..." I search my experiences to figure out what I am supposed to say. "We go on D and C-Rank missions, and we come in teams of three with a Jonin Sensei."

"You were in the hospital." He frowns and his fingers tap out a nervous pattern on my arm. "You weren't hurt though."

He sounds almost like Sai. He doesn't understand. "One of my teammates and my sensei was hurt." I cannot be angry at him. He doesn't understand. "Seeing them hurt is painful for my heart."

"Ah." His tapping fingers have slowed down. "Hana-chan? Where is your Otou-san?" How much has he forgotten? Did he lose everything? He can't have, otherwise he'd not be fit for active duty.

"Tou-san died when I was five, Cousin Gaku." I look up at him, and blink back the tears that threaten to fall, because he wouldn't understand them anyway. "You were there. You brought me to to hospital."

"I did?" He tilts his head to one side. "So I did." His eyes slide closed, and a single tear carves its way down his cheek. "Thank you for returning that memory to me, Hana-chan." He slides his arm away from mine, and we are no longer arm in arm. "I'm not going to enter the house. You should go on alone."

It doesn't entirely sit right with me, but I've been away from the Triplets and Kiba for almost an entire day by now. "Take care of yourself, Cousin Gaku. Don't push too much."

His lips twitch upwards, just slightly. "Ah. I will."

"Hah!" I punch Itachi in the stomach, and San pounces on him. But there's no time for victory, because it isn't one. I'm already turning, a kunai in hand.

The clash of metal on metal tells me that my hunch is correct. "How did you know?" Itachi asks, and I smirk.

I swipe forward with the other kunai, and Itachi blocks almost reflexively and leaps backwards to get more distance to pitch throwing weapons at me. "It was obviously genjutsu, Itachi. How easily would you ever be punched like that by me? Besides, you didn't smell like you were there anyway."

It's a training spar, so we trade comments back and forth even as we also trade blows. "You need to work on how quickly you dispel genjutsu." Itachi holds a kunai to my throat from behind. "There was another layer." I melt back into mud.

My hands break out above the ground, wrap around his ankles and I do my level best to drag him down with me. It's still fairly difficult though. "You were fighting with a clone." I only drag him down to knee depth, and I then slowly extract myself from the ground that still does not seem to want to give me up. "I don't think this jutsu is particularly effective. It only worked because you got distracted by Toku during the beginning of the spar."

Toku offers both of his hands to help pull me out of the ground. "Yeah, you have this down, but it's really slow."

We then offer a hand each to Itachi to also pop him free of the muddy ground. "Hmmm. Perhaps more chakra's needed to exit the ground?" Itachi looks over at Sensei who's sitting with his back against a tree. His eyes are closed though, and the casual observer would think that Sensei hadn't even been watching our sparing match. We know better than that though. Sensei sees everything. "Sensei, what do you think?"

"I don't think Hana has the extra chakra to spare for that sort of thing at this point, although theoretically a careful application to the lowest portion of the body should push the user up out of the earth more quickly."

A careful application of chakra. Hmmm. I'll have to try it sometime.

"Let's see..." Toku taps his chin. "I need to move faster. Itachi needs to watch out from below, and Hana needs to work on chakra control."

Sensei nods. "Yes." He climbs to his feet slowly. "Now, I need to go and see something down at Crypt. You three can keep sparing, or you can go get a D-Rank and earn some pocket money." He looks around the clearing at each of us. "Do make sure to stay together though."

"Yes, Sensei." We chorus, and brush each other off.

"Maybe we should go see if there's a D-Rank available?" I ask

Toku nods. "It would be nice to have more pocket change."

The Hokage watches us very seriously as we enter. "Is your Sensei present?" It is very clear that he is not, Hokage-sama.

Toku shrugs, slings an arm over Itachi's shoulder, and wiggles his hand in the general direction of the left, where the Cryptology Department is based. "Sensei had to go see something in Crypt that's above our clearance level. We just wanted a D-Rank mission."

A slight hint of a smile graces the Sandaime's lips as he sets his pipe down. "Very well." He hands Itachi a mission scroll. "Team Six will be in charge of watching over the Uchiha Clan Head's second son, Uchiha Sasuke for the duration of the afternoon until his parents return home."

Itachi's eyes widen. "I get to go home and spend time with Sasuke? But that's-"

Toku slaps a hand over his mouth. "Say no more, Ita-kun, we'll take-"

"Or." The Hokage interrupts and hands me another mission scroll. "Team Six can be in charge of watching over the Inuzuka Clan Head's son, Inuzuka Kiba for the duration of the afternoon."

"Umm..." Is this a subtle way of reminding us to spend time with our families when we're in the village? "Or we could take them both." I say at last.

The Hokage picks up his pipe. "Or you could take both."

"We should take both." Itachi's hand curls tightly around his mission scroll. "Your brother isn't more important than mine."

"You're the meanie from the sandpit!" Whomever thought that my brother has a short memory deserves to be whacked upside the head. I think as I restrain Kiba from tackling Sasuke. They clearly have no idea how long he holds his grudges.

"Kiba-chan...I already told you that Sasuke-chan is not a meanie." I sweep him up onto my shoulders and he's no longer quite interested in tackling Sasuke, who has started hiding behind Itachi, so I count it as a win. Itachi wisely retreats with Sasuke and Toku towards the swings, as he senses a sibling conflict.

"But Neechan!" Kiba threads his hands through my hair and pulls slightly. He's gotten better at managing his strength, so it's mostly just a gentle tugging with a few yanks here and there, rather than the full on yanking that it used to be. "I made sure that he went home crying last time!" What.

I pull Kiba off of my shoulders. "What did you do to Sasuke-chan last time?" I never would have thought it. My brother the bully. Oh, no one ever really scolded Kiba for much of anything at home, but he'd always been a sweet kid with a good heart, so there hadn't really ever been the need. Still, the news that he'd sent Sasuke home in tears the last time they met doesn't sit well in my chest.

What was it that he'd done to Sasuke during my chunin exams?

"I only told him that Neechan is much better than his rotten Niisan 'cause Neechan was at the exams." Kiba huffily kicks a clod of dirt with his shoes and crosses his arms over his chest. "It's his fault he started crying cause I made up a song 'bout how great you are and what a loser his Niisan is." My darling little brother refuses to meet my eyes.

I set my left hand on his shoulder, and tilt his head up with my right so that I can see his face clearly. "That's not an acceptable way to treat other people, Kiba-chan."

His lips turn down, and his eyes fill with crocodile tears. "But Neechan!"

"No buts." I smile ruefully and ruffle his hair. "You can't say that everyone else's opinions are wrong, you know. You've gotta let them have their opinions. Sasuke loves his brother very much, and you love me very much." He's still not going to let this go though, and I cast about for a good way to explain family relationships to him. "Do you like it when Sasuke-chan wants you to love his Niisan?"

"NO!" Kiba darts forwards and clings to my legs like a leech. "I don't ever want to love his stupid Niisan." He whispers. "I want to go to the kennels with Neechan."

And oh, he is heartwarming, but his love has gotten out of hand. You can't be cruel to other people just because they don't love like you, Kiba-chan. We're a loud folk when it comes to love, and we love wholly and without remorse, but that's no reason to disparage everyone else.

"Then why would Sasuke-chan want to love me?" I gently pry Kiba off of my legs. "You don't want to love his Niisan."

Kiba frowns, but the cogs in his thought process is turning now. He takes me by the hand and marches towards the swing set.

"I s'pose you can like your Niisan 'nd m'sorry about the song." He frowns but hurries to block Sasuke's view of me. "But Neechan's still better!" Still, given that he's barely taller than my waist...he doesn't really block anyone's view of anything.

That's my sweet brother. Loud, and brash and demanding, but ultimately if I explain he'll come around.

The rest of the time at the park passes much more smoothly after that even if Sasuke and Kiba are still, so not friends.

We're about to go our separate ways when Sensei slouches into the park holding three sheets of paper. It's the same as last time.

"I thought you were in Crypt looking at foreign intel above our clearance level, Sensei." Toku sets down the shovel he'd been using to help Sasuke with his sand castle, and pulls a sheet of paper from Sensei's hands. "This looks like the chunin exam form for...Iwa." Except Iwa is really not an allied location.

Why would Sensei want us to go there?

"Something else came up." Sensei flicks a paper each at me and Itachi. "We'll be one of two teams going if you three agree."

I tug on Sensei's sleeve."But why are we going to Iwa?" It hasn't been so many years since the end of the Third War. Iwa's still bleeding from the hand the Yondaime dealt them. Why would we be going to the most dangerous exams besides Kumo in the rotation?

"It's because we have to make sure I stay inside the village for a bit right?" Itachi sighs and absently pulls at the end of his low tail. "The masked attacker is clearly after me, and we can break up the team after the Chunin Exams as long as someone gets promoted."

"Not quite." Sensei sits down at the edge of the sand pit. "The real problem is that the Council is pushing for you to get promoted because you're a prodigy." Sensei casts a glance over at me. "To a lesser extent, they want Hana and Toku to pass as well, because we're still short man power after the Kyubi Incident, and on paper you three should already be low chunin level in skill."

"So they're going to throw us at the exams hosted by a country that hates us." Toku frowns. "I'm not sure I like the Hokage's Council any more than I like Hiashi-sama and the Elders." Toku frowns harder. "Especially with how Hiashi-sama sacrificed his own twin brother not two months ago."

"I wouldn't be giving you these things if I had a choice." Sensei runs a hand through his hair. "I broke way too many rules by making a genin team to begin with, and I've used up their leniency. They want me back in Crypt despite how much weight I've been pulling on top of leading your team."

Suddenly Sensei's sleeping habits, and eternal lassitude made sense. He was hiding how tired he was by behaving even more like a stereotypical Nara. He probably worked late nights. He never came to team dinners that weren't at his house. He didn't have the time, but he wanted to hide his extra work from us.

Has he even been at full fighting capacity the entire time Team Six has been active? How much sleep has he been getting?

"We'll go." The hand that isn't holding the paperwork balls into a fist. "We won't disappoint you, Sensei. Every one of us will be promoted this time." I see my determination echoed in Itachi and Toku.

"That's not really what I'm asking." Sensei chuckles, and it's like dry wind blowing down the husk of a canyon. "I'm just asking that you all stay alive."

"Oh we will, Sensei." I whisper. "Oh we will." We'd faced Tobi together. There isn't a thing that Iwa could throw at us worse than a teleporting S-ranked missing-nin with a Sharingan and the devil's dream.

That night after dinner I slip down to the clan cemetery in my bare feet. Kaa-san had allowed me to sign the papers with the same warnings as last time. An Inuzuka understands when her children must grow up.

And it is strange to think how strictly matrilineal the Inuzuka are, every clan head is a mother, a sister, a daughter. It is why the clan had come to Kaa-san after Kosshi-baasan's death despite the fact that Kaa-san has two elder brothers, one older than even Kosshi-baasan.

But I'm not here to ask for a mother's forgiveness tonight. I set the white lilies down before Tou-san's marker and sit cross legged on the ground before him. "It's a beautiful night, Tou-san. There aren't any clouds."

I'm not here to talk about the clouds though. "I'm going to the Chunin Exams, Tou-san." At times like these, I feel his presence, in spirit if not in body. "They're in Iwa this year."

If Tou-san knew, what would he say? Would he even remember anything about Iwa? He'd fought against them in the war. How did it feel for him? He never said.

"Wish me luck, please." My fingers trail lightly across the top of his stone as I rise. "I'll come back to see you soon."

A.N. This chapter sets up quite a bit of future plot points, and starts a new arc. We have Kakashi's big cooking reveal, Hana learning more jutsu, Cousin Gaku is weird, what Kiba did to Sasuke, village politics and the announcement about Chunin Exams Take Two, all in one chapter. Whew. It was a lot.

And guys, I'm blown away by your wonderful response to last chapter.

A huge thank you to CasJeanne, Rickrossed (You can check out Ashen, the Bloodless side stories, I have more POVs there, and it updates roughly biweekly), Missfroggy, WhiteFang001, Snidekick, Wulfyre(The thing is that Hana can't ask more without breaking Kakashi's frail attempts at sanity), The Yeah(I don't think Hana's going to get too many big attacks.) , and Sis for reviewing!

And for everyone who favorited and followed. Totally blown away guys.

Also, smallish side note. The 100th reviewer gets a request for a short-ish drabble or side story relating to Bloodless. Add it to your review, or PM me.

~Tavina.