Chapter 13

I changed the name of this fic since I wasn't a huge fan of the original one. The cover art was changed but it's only temporary. A better one is currently being drawn but it might take a while before it is published. I need to hone my skills.

13

Yuzuki stared down at the team stationed below them. They had stopped running and took refuge in a large tree to wait for another team to show up, and their luck pulled through for them. She shared a look with Daichi and Eiji and activated her byakugan. She quickly looked for a scroll and narrowed her eyes before deactivating it and shaking her head. It was a heaven scroll. It wasn't what they needed.

Daichi signed for them to continue and they jumped from the branches. They needed to find an earth scroll and get to the tower if they didn't it could end up being a problem. She clenched her jaw and let out a silent sigh. She would rather not attack one of her fellow rookies, but she knew they'd be the easiest targets, and she felt bad for thinking such things, but they truly were.

It hadn't been long enough for them to learn anything of value.

"Anyone close by?" Eiji asked her, quickly pulling her from her thoughts.

"Yes, there's another team about a hundred meters to the west." She answered as she reached out with her senses and pinpointed another team.

"Sensor-nin are so weird." Daichi muttered.

She rolled her eyes as they changed directions. She felt something nagging at her in the back of her mind. There was something she was forgetting, but couldn't remember. She scratched the back of her head before sighing, she would remember it when it deemed itself necessary.

"Yuzu-chan, is everything all right?" Eiji asked.

"Yeah, just something on my mind," She quietly admitted, "That Kusa-nin from earlier rubbed me the wrong way."

"Yeah, she was off," He agreed as they landed above another team.

It was a quick check and a nod. There was an earth scroll, they needed the element of surprise. Daichi made the sign for genjutsu and Yuzuki gave a curt nod as Eiji shook his head. With a few quick hand signs, a genjutsu blanketed the three boys below. It didn't take long for the screams to start and her two teammates paled. They hadn't been expecting the screams and looked to see a calm girl controlling the genjutsu.

"You need to hurry," She hissed at them, "It won't take them long to break out of the genjutsu."

Daichi moved first and hit one of the boys in the back of the neck. He went down and he rushed to take care of the second one while Eiji took care of the last. Yuzuki narrowed her eyes, it was too easy. Anko said that this test would cut the teams in half, but they were going to reach the tower before noon.

"Somethings definitely not right," she muttered.

"You can drop the genjutsu!" Daichi called up to her.

She nodded and stopped the flow of chakra. The genjutsu dispelled and she let out a soft sigh. She gave a strained smile as Eiji held up the earth scroll before putting it with their heaven scroll. They shared a look and began to sprint to the tower. It took them less time to reach the tower and hit the cold, stone floor than they thought it would. They had to have been in that forest for a good two hours, maybe less.

"How the hell did we finish this so fast?" Eiji questioned as they tried to catch their breaths, bent over with their hands on their knees.

"Plot convenience," Daichi said with a blank look.

"What?" Eiji and Yuzuki questioned.

"I'm messing with you," Daichi said as he gave a sheepish cough, "Right, let's solve this riddle."

If qualities of heaven are what you desire, acquire wisdom and knowledge to take your mind higher. If earthly abilities are what you lack, train your body in the fields, and prepare to attack. When both heaven and earth are opened together, the path of peril will revert to the righteous path forever. This is the secret way that guides us from this place today. -The Sandaime.

"So, we open them," Yuzuki said as she stared at the two boys, "We need to open the scrolls now."

They did and quickly dropped the scrolls upon seeing what was written on them. Two people appeared, Genma and an unknown woman. Genma gave Yuzuki a lazy grin and she glared at him. She wasn't in the mood for his games. There was something bothering her, and his grin fell upon noticing her expression.

"Something eating at you, kiddo?" He asked her as they went to talk a few feet away from Daichi and Eiji so they wouldn't hear something they shouldn't.

"I met a Yakushi Kabuto and a Kusa-nin," She quietly informed him, "Something was off about both of them."

"I'll trust your gut judgement on this," He muttered, as he made a mental note to keep an eye out on the two she mentioned, "I need you to finish your match as fast as possible, your team already broke a record by getting here within two hours. I'll make sure to treat you to some dango after."

"I tracked down nearby teams and used the byakugan to search for the scroll we needed," She sheepishly admitted, crossing her arms across her chest, "Then ensnared them in the hell viewing technique."

"That's my kid," He couldn't help but feel some pride, "I'm going to be watching the next exam, you'll do me proud."

No one could even make him embarrassed by quoting that at him. He really was proud of his kid, his kid with an adult mind and soul but he digressed. She was flying through the exams on strategy alone. Ibiki had told Hayate that he might try and swipe the kid away from his tutelage and have her train to be one of his best interrogators and torturers. That had been a bit disturbing to think about, but he knew that she would figure out a schedule to make sure she was able to train with him and Hayate. Knowing her, she might hunt down Tsunade just to ask for her secrets on her chakra enhanced strength.

He didn't know why she tried to get as much training as she could.

"Why do you want to learn chakra enhanced strength?" He asked her and she seemed surprised at the question from out of the blue.

"I'm a long-range fighter with a solid foundation in kenjutsu," She stated, "Having more under my belt, like iryo-jutsu and the enhanced strength paired with juken might help to strengthen that."

"You'd be a really weird medical-nin," He said.

"Yeah, but think of how it could be used in interrogation," She said with wide eyes.

He didn't even want to think about it. An interrogator with medical knowledge under their belt was a terrifying image. They could bring pain about just by using the victim's body against them. Not taking? Just set their nerves on fire. She was going to get extremely creative and Anko was going to love learning her ideas. His kid was going to be twisted when she got through her internship under the purple-haired kunoichi.

"Go and get something to eat," He ordered as he ruffled her hair, "You guys earned the rest."

Yuzuki smiled and slowly followed her temporary teammates into the depths of the tower. They were given some lunch by a surprised chuunin and quietly ate together. They were all thoughtful as they bit into the onigiri that was part of their meal. The two boys were wondering why the only female in the room seemed distracted.

"Are you sure nothings wrong?" Eiji asked her.

"Oh, yeah, everything is all right I'm just wondering what the final part of this test will be," She answered as she finished off her onigiri.

"Final part?" Daichi asked.

"Halve the teams," She pointed out, "That's what this part of the test was designed to do, but there will still be too many people participating in the tests."

"They don't want a lot of people participating?" Eiji asked.

"Yes," She answered with a nod, "Whatever the last test is, they don't want too many people, it would drag on too long."

The two boys shared a look and mentally conversed. Yuzuki watched with an unreadable expression, save for the sad glint in her eyes. It had been a long time since she had been able to communicate with someone like that. She wasn't on the same wavelength as the people around her. She supposed that if she wanted to have someone like that then she would have to try and be good friends with Shikamaru. If anything, she'd be intellectually stimulated.

"Would you be upset with us if we chose to drop out?" Daichi asked and at her surprised expression he elaborated, "We would like to advance with our teammate, and we won't leave you behind if you still need teammates for the last part of this test."

"It's all right, I understand," She told them giving a tiny smile of understanding.

"Thanks, Yuzu-chan," Eiji grinned.

She sighed at that and quickly finished her food. She stood up and gave them a small wave. She was going to head to the rooms that were available for the chuunin exams. She claimed a bunk near the window and sat down. Eiji would want to explore and Daichi would be dragged along.

It had been a while since she had truly been alone. As much as she loved Genma and Hayate she missed the quiet. It allowed her time to refocus her thoughts and think about her next steps. She couldn't help but think back to what Genma had said.

Super strength huh? She had made that comment as a joke and he thought she was being serious. Now that she thought about it, it would truly be a perfect foil for her abilities. She hadn't put much stock into iryo-jutsu, she was under the impression that she hadn't had the patience to learn it. She could see that she was patient enough now, twelve years of a new life and six of them spent at the academy was enough proof for that.

Maybe she would hunt down the slug-hime and ask her to train her. Who better to learn from than the best in the field? She paused as that final thought hit her and began to wonder when she became such a sociopath. The life of a shinobi changed people, it showed the darkest parts of the human psyche and bared them to the world.

No wonder Kakashi was as fucked up mentally as he was. She had to wonder what he had gone through to have receded so far into his mind. He had walls up that were so firmly in place that she felt the need for a mental hand grenade to try and get through to him. There were moments, especially now that he was getting some form of help, where he was kind and genuine with her and she lived for them. She made a face.

Great she was the strange kid with a crush on a man ten years older than her, lovely. She scratched the back of her head in annoyance. It made sense, mentally she was closer to him in age than she was physically. It wasn't his fault that puberty was starting to drive her crazy. She almost felt like cracking a joke at Genma saying that she was going to marry the silver haired man, or even Hayate, but she'd rather not kill her father figure due to a stroke. She'd also like to not have Genma kill the jonin, but she digressed.

Anko would find it funny, until she wondered if she was being serious. She brought out her tachi and began to sharpen it with a whetstone as she tried to figure out if they were genuine feelings, or a simple crush. She was leaning towards the latter and was going to make sure they didn't turn into the former. People were judgmental at best, violent at worst. A ten-year age gap, something her former grandparents had, could be considered scandalous especially since he knew her as she is now. People would assume that he had groomed her, and she wouldn't stand to tarnish his reputation like that.

"Ah, shit," She muttered, the former was beginning to happen.

She quickly clamped down on those feelings and tried to ignore them. She wasn't going to be like Sakura and lose her head over a boy, she needed to be analytical and sharp. She wouldn't allow such emotions to cloud her judgment. She wasn't going to let him be a weakness, and she wasn't going to let such feelings grow. She didn't need someone, and she needed to remind herself of that fact.

It didn't stop her from being so lonely.

"The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?" Christine Feehan, Dark Prince. A quote she had never paid much attention to, she had her older brother and niece back when she first heard it. It didn't make much sense to her, but now it did. Even surrounded by people, one could still feel lonely. She still felt it, even with Hayate being in a situation that was like her's. He grew up with the people in this world and had been able to form connections with them before he was brought back. She had been reborn in the world with all her memories and that mentally put her above the other children and made it nearly impossible to form any kind of connection.

The children had avoided her like the plague, her cold disposition being one of the main reasons. She thought back to all the photos of her with her parent's, no one was smiling in them. She stopped sharpening the blade of her tachi and looked at her reflection in it. Yuna was probably the only person who knew what secrets their family hid. Not even Inoichi knew about them, and she realized why.

She had become such a proficient liar that seven she believed what she spouted.

She brought her knees up to her chest and looked out the window and into the forest of death. She didn't know if her cousins were doing all right, but she hoped that they were. Sadly, she hoped that it would teach them that they needed to buckle down and train harder, well, that was more for Ino than Hinata. Hinata worked so hard to try and change herself while Ino slacked. She didn't want to lose a family member that cared about her.

She tilted her head and a curtain of long hair filled her vision. She huffed in annoyance at it and tucked it behind her ear, effectively pulling her long bangs out of her right eye. She almost looked normal like that, but the jagged scar on the left side of her face was a reminder that even she had her faults and weaknesses. She felt the protruding skin with her bandaged fingers and sighed.

There wasn't much she could do about that. She grabbed a kunai from her pouch when the door opened and blinked when Temari walked in. The blonde seemed just as surprised to see the taller girl and simply narrowed her eyes. She seemed shocked when the kunai held in the other girls' hands went back into the pouch attached at her waist.

"What? This is the cool down time of this exam," Yuzuki stated, "I don't have any wish or inclination to do you harm."

"That's why people think you're the nice village," Temari informed her in a blunt tone.

"Are we? I dunno, Morino-san seemed to have scared quite a few contestants away with his test," Yuzuki said with a wry smile, "But most shinobi are not like him, even from other villages."

"How is it nothing fazes you?" Temari huffed.

"Is that the popular opinion among everyone?" Yuzuki asked in confusion, "Because you are the second person to ask that and now I'm starting to worry."

Temari couldn't help but snort at that. She wasn't supposed to be making friends with the Konoha-nin, but it was difficult with some of them. Here was a girl that didn't react to anything like she should. If someone were to be stabbed she would simply kill the attacker and try to stop the victims bleeding with something weird. If she were to be stabbed she would just giver her attacker a look.

"Your team made it through the forest pretty fast if you beat mine here," Temari commented as she took a bed close to the other girl.

"I'm a sensor-nin," Yuzuki simply shrugged, "Finding other teams was a bit of a breeze, I have more range than others expect."

"How'd you know what scroll they had?" That's the part that Temari was curious about.

She looked towards Yuzuki and watched as the girl smiled before tapping her nose. She knew automatically that the girl wasn't going to say anything as to how she did it. As annoyed as she was, she understood it. Keeping one's abilities a secret was the best way to stay alive. She couldn't help but think that this was one girl she didn't want to face, even if she knew that she was well above the rank of chuunin. She decided to change the topic and try to get closer to the girl, it was selfish of her, but she didn't care.

"How do you deal with so much hair?" Temari asked.

"I don't, I think I ignore it like ninety percent of the time and the other ten I just want to chop it off," Yuzuki replied with a sigh, "It's heavier than it looks."

Temari raised a brow at that and relaxed in the presence of the preteen. To her she seemed easy going and calm, to those who knew her well they'd know that it was all a ploy and a cleverly crafted mask. She was luring the blonde into a sense of security to try and figure out what she was planing. The suna-nins were few in number for a regular exam. There had to be some sort of…oh yes. Hayate had said he was killed during the exams and over essential information. He had never been forthcoming with it, and she understood. Things could've changed, but she doubted it.

If the wave mission was still similar then what ever information he had learned might still be valid. She closed her eyes slightly; he was trying to minimize the amount of danger she was put in until she was strong enough to be a force of nature. She would grow strong, strong enough to overcome the Sannin. She wanted to protect those she cared about. If it was a selfish desire then she would gladly accept that title.

"A-Ah, Yuzuki-Chan," Hinata's soft voice rang out.

"Hinata-chan, congrats on making it this early," Yuzuki told the girl.

She was surprised when Temari simply raised a skeptical brow and then looked between the two byakugan users. It was obvious to see the family resemblance. The pale eyes and high cheek bones were nearly identical. The eye shape and hair were more like the blonde girl with long hair from the written exam. They had to be related as well. She just wondered where she got the long lashes from, those were unlike both girls.

"We must have done the same strategy," Yuzuki chuckled, "You made it here before Neji, I'm extremely proud of you."

"Please don't be mean to Neji-nii-sama," Hinata quietly chided.

"I will when he stops being mean to you," Yuzuki huffed with a slight frown, "You haven't done anything to deserve it."

Temari was present for some juicy gossip that she wasn't expecting. She wondered if most females talked like this. She didn't really have female friends, or acquaintances. It was difficult to understand normal girls due to that.

"You have any stories about your brothers?" She was startled by the questioned posed by the taller girl.

"Kankuro is always playing with his dolls," Temari couldn't help but leak that bit of information.

"Suna does have a really good grasp on chakra strings that can't be rivaled," Yuzuki said with a slight nod, "It's really impressive."

Temari couldn't help but smirk at that. She was making it seem as though she didn't know what the strings were used for, but she did. She was amused by the girl in front of her, she was playing a game all of her own. The league she played in was on another level. She wondered who else knew she was doing so.

Her cousin didn't recognize it, but an outsider did. She made eye contact and almost shivered at coldness of them. They reminded her of Gaara's, all she was missing was the bloodlust. She thought that Konohagakure was a "nice" village, how could someone like her exist.

"A-Ano, T-Temari-san?" Hinata asked, "W-Would you join us for breakfast tomorrow?"

"Sure," Temari almost shrugged but gave the dark-haired girl a smile.

She could play the game, but she knew that she wasn't going to win it.