Chūnin Exams (X).

They were running for a little more than three minutes when he noticed that something was off. From their current position, he should be able to hear screams and confused cries, and he did, but there seemed to be too few of them. It could be possible that the first wave of attacks had taken out much more enemies than they had dared to even hope for, but he doubted it. Plans just didn't work that well.

Then the attacks from their other group suddenly stopped and the sound of clashing metal rang through the night.

"Throw your weapons!" Mezo screamed, obviously realizing the same thing he did. "Throw them now, blow them all up!"

'They noticed us,' he thought. 'The surprise failed.' Thanks to his Sharingan, he could see clearly even during the darkest nights, which meant he was more than capable to see the various bodies of Iwa Genin laying on the ground. The problem was that there seemed to be a dozen of them at most, which meant the majority of the camp wasn't present at the camp at all.

But neither we nor the other group had been ambushed before the attack started, he thought as he threw a kunai with an explosion tag in a random direction away from their group. 'So they probably didn't know we would come in advance but saw us while we were getting into position. But then why leave so many people behind...?'

His face hardened when he realized the answer to that question.

They had been decoys. Whoever was in charge of that camp left them behind to serve as targets. But that wasn't all; going by the lack of any defensive structures, he assumed they hadn't even been told what was going on. No, they had probably been fed some lie as to why the rest of the group left and just went about their day, unaware that they would be sacrificed by their leader.

'And as long as they acted normal, there was no reason for us to believe something was wrong. Our scouts probably believed that the rest of them were inside their tents, not thinking anything about their disappearance. If anything, they were probably happy, thinking lesser numbers made for an easier victory and thus making it easier for them to sneak up on us.'

Itachi had no more time to think as just at that moment an arm broke through the ground and tried to grab him, telling him exactly where all the vanished enemies must be.

"They're underground!" he exclaimed while simultaneously jumping away from the arm and throwing an explosion tag towards where the rest of its body should be. "Watch your feet!"

He had no idea how effective his warning was, nor could he see how the fight was going.

They had planned to throw their explosion tags into the ranks of their enemy while they were still a good distance away. Instead, they now threw the weapons at enemies below and right in front of them, meaning they needed to not only pay attention to them but also the weapon of their own allies as well.

All the explosions, be they from explosion tags or other techniques, stirred up so much earth and dust that it soon became impossible to see what was going on more than five feet away from you. Not that he could have focused on anything but his next enemy anyway.

Itachi dodged the sword of the kunoichi in front of him, tilting his head so that it swung a mere centimetre above his face before jumping and twisting his body to send a kick at her temple. Then, without stopping in his movement, he snatched the katana from the loose grip of its now unconscious wielder and used it to block a random shuriken that flew in his direction.

He didn't get a break, though, because another form appeared to his right and nearly decapitated him with a cleaver that was the size of Itachi's body. Rather than using his newly acquired weapon to block it, he backed down and dodged every attack by using his small stature to his advantage. Unfortunately, that worked for less than ten seconds before he collided with someone else. Seeing his chance, his foe took another swing at him. However, his time he left himself wide open, so Itachi jumped forwards and plunged his katana right through his chest at the same moment the cleaver plunged into the person he had collided with.

He ignored the sick sensation as the blood of both his enemy and the third, unknown person sprinkled on his face and neck. He also didn't turn around to see whether the unknown person had been an ally or an enemy.

Seeing the trademark uniform of an Iwa shinobi to his right, he rushed towards that direction and used the grip of one of his kunai to knock the boy in the neck before using the falling body as a springboard to jump towards two shadowy silhouettes.

As it turned out, the bent over one belonged to one of the Genin from Suna while the other one belonged to an enemy who was just about to behead the kneeling Genin before him. As he was closer to the Suna-nin, he used his momentum to kick him out of the way of the incoming attack while simultaneously slashing at the Iwa-nin with his kunai in an attempt to end this quickly.

However, while he managed to save the life of his ally, the Iwa-nin managed to evade his attack.

Not being put off at all by the sudden appearance of another enemy, the other boy swung his sword without any grace and thus allowed Itachi to counter easily. Dodging the slash with a flick-flack, he used his upwards lying feet to kick the sword out of his opponent's hands, throwing it up into the air. Not giving the other boy any time to recover, he next jumped towards him and rammed his elbow against the right side of his ribcage, right where his liver was. Then, finally, he dodged the clumsy counter-attack from the now bend-over enemy before catching the falling sword and using its blunt side to knock the boy out.

He was just about to start running again, looking for his next opponent, when his instincts screamed at him to move. Without thinking about it, he let himself fall to one knee, feeling the breeze of air sweeping through his hair as a leg flew over his head half a second later. He then jumped around to prepare for another fight, but it didn't come to that because as soon as he and his 'enemy' came face to face, they both froze.

"Wait, you aren't-" the Ame-nin started, recognizing that his opponent was actually an ally all along the same moment Itachi did, only to be interrupted as Itachi jumped against his chest. Putting all his strength into his legs, he pushed himself off from the Ame-nin, throwing them in opposite directions.

A big orb of fire hit the place where they had been standing a moment later.

For a second, the flames filled his entire vision, but then the moment was over and he flew out of the cloud of dust he had been fighting in for the last few minutes. However, rather than crashing into the ground, he managed to land on his hands with which he propelled himself upwards again to make a flip and ultimately land on his feet.

Itachi stayed tense and alert, looking around in expectation of another attack only to find that the area was relatively calm. Most of the fighting seemed to be where he came from, the sound of crashing metal and the cries of pain still loud and clear in his ears, while only a handful of fights happened out here in the open.

"Itachi!"

He didn't jump at hearing his name being called, but it was a close thing. A second later, Anko and Yukio landed beside him. Thankfully neither of them seemed hurt aside from a few scratches.

"Anko," he greeted. "Yukio. Good to see that you're alright."

"We're the ones who should say that," the other boy grumbled while still looking him over. "They sent only eight people to our position. Once the surprise wore off, we could handle them without any problems. Only one of our group was taken out while all eight of them are down."

"What about you?" Anko asked with a glance towards the cloud of dirt. "Who is winning?"

"Impossible to say. It's too chaotic and the sight inside is too bad to do more than to react to close-by enemies."

"Then let's change that," a new voice cut in as the three remaining members of his teammate's group appeared, consisting of Yugito Nii and two Genin from Suna.

"And how are you gonna do that?" Yukio asked the Suna-nin that had spoken.

He laughed before bringing his hands together to weave hand seals. "Why don't you just watch and learn?"

"Fūton: Daitoppa!" (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough)

The gust of wind wasn't especially strong, but it didn't need to be to do its job. Blowing all the dirt and dust away, it revealed what had been going on inside the cloud of dust for everyone to see:

There were only about fifteen or sixteen people left fighting, a bit more than half of it being shinobi from Iwa while about the same amount of people was lying on the ground. Some of those injured were screaming in pain, but most forms were unmoving, though whether because they were unconscious or dead was impossible to say.

The moment their cover was exposed, most fights momentarily stopped. The more experienced Genin overcame their surprise pretty fast, however, and used the moment to end their fights in their favour. Soon enough new screams joined the already existing ones.

"Alright," the blonde Jinchūriki at his side said with a somewhat feral grin on her face. "Shall we end this?" She didn't wait for a reply before she jumped into the fray, quickly followed by the two Genin from Suna:

"Come on," Anko whined before following them. "We can't let them have all the fun, guys! Let's go!"

He and Yukio shared a short glance that was similarly amused and long-suffering before they started running as well.

At this point, it was fair to say that the day was won. Not only did they outnumber the Iwa-nins at this point, but they had also superior fighters on the field. In fact, he saw a few figures running away from the fighting, meaning the gap between their two groups became even larger. It wasn't a question of 'if' but of 'when' they would win.

'This didn't go quite as planned at all,' Itachi thought, 'but at least everything worked out just fine.'

....

It was around dawn of the fourth day of the exam that a group consisting of one team from Konoha, one team from Suna, one team from Kumo, a two-man team from Ame, and another two-man team from Taki arrived at the circular building at the centre of the training-ground, bringing with them the necessary pearls to pass the exam. No words were spoken when they walked in, nor when they met their instructors and departed to follow them to their rooms.

They might have been temporarily allies, but while there were no bad feelings between them, no one forgot that they were still opponents as well. However, the fact that none of them felt the need to look over the shoulder in anticipation of a possible attack spoke volumes of the trust in their current alliance, no matter how temporarily it was.

(No one noticed the short eye contact between a certain young Uchiha and the Jinchūriki of the two-tailed beast.)

...

On that day, the instructors of all foreign teams were visited by a crow with a short message that told them the location of the bodies of their Genin, whether they were alive or not.

Just because Iwagakure was willing to risk antagonising other nations by letting their Genin die if they didn't find their way back didn't mean Itachi needed to let it happen. Not after they had allied with each other, even if just briefly.

Besides, who knew what kind of goodwill such a gesture could evoke in the future?

It was just shortly before sunset of the fifth and last day that the last finalist arrived at the building in form of a single team from Iwa, bringing the final number of participants for the third exam up to sixteen.

Shortly afterwards, the second exam was officially declared finished.

The tournament which would serve as the final exam was then set to start in exactly three weeks.