It took us 5 minutes of jumping above rooftops to reach our destination, thankfully both Asano and Kione knew the tree walking exercise so it was much faster than walking, the training ground we arrive at was named Training Ground 47. There were various warning signs hanging on the fence, this place reminded me of the forest of death a little bit.
"This place seems off-limits sensei?" I asked, I was a little nervous going into the training ground with my new team, they don't look like they could survive a place that was restricted for Chunin...
"No, it just is a more secluded training ground, it was one of the original training grounds where the Konoha shinobi trained, but since we expanded a lot from the time of Lord First, some of these original training grounds became less used." he walked towards the shinobi that was on guard duty.
I turn to Asano and Kione, "What supplies do you have?" I asked.
"Nothing, just some kunai, and shuriken..." Asano replied her expression a little nervous.
"A couple of soldier pills, a stack of kunai, and two dozen shuriken," Kione replied.
I gave them both a nod as I counted whatever I had managed to cram into my inventory over the year, "Uhh... I have 4 stacks of Kunai and 4 stacks of shuriken..." I never really purchased soldier pills so I didn't have that.
'I need to start learning fuinjutsu after this, to better explain my inventory skill.' I opened a couple of storage scrolls and started unsealing stacks of stuff. We quickly divided the supplies among ourselves, by the time Suzaku Sensei had come back to us.
"Alright, team 7, ready for your first exercise, good, now I have tasked someone with hiding 3 pieces of this shirt somewhere in the forest, your task is to gather these shirts and get out of the forest by sundown, I, on the other hand, will be attacking you once every two hours... Best of luck!" Sensei vanished in a shunshin and I sensed him heading deeper into the forest.
"Okay, that was more time than I expected," I spoke to the team as I presented the torn shirt to Kione, "please tell me you have some Bikochu with you?" I asked.
A swarm of insects appeared from his sleeves engulfing the whole shirt, "Let's get moving, we need to move quickly and get the hell out of there as fast as we can..." I jumped over the fence by enhancing my leg muscles with Chakra, as I was about to continue heading deeper into the forest I stopped and spoke, "Kione, how are you going to spread you Bikochu to search?"
'I shouldn't doubt my teammate but just in case...'
"My Bikochu would travel along the fence searching for the sent along with the three entry points from where the three shinobi entered, or one if all the pieces were scattered by one person..." he responded with a straight face. It was a little difficult to figure out if he was offended by my question regarding his clan's specialty so I apologized, "Sorry about that..." he nodded indicating that it was okay.
While I was debating if we should move for the feedback from his bugs when I sensed Sensei at the edge of my chakra sensing radius, "Careful..." I shouted before immediately throwing a shuriken toward him, he vanished from my senses and I told my teammates to be careful, at least for now Shuzaku Sensei was not suppressing his chakra signature, being a jounin I assume he could do that, and then my senses would be useless if he could suppress his chakra to the genin levels that is.
"Is he still there?" Asano asked, she had two kunai held in her hands.
"No, he is darting in and out of my range, possibly trying to gauge my range..." I bit my bottom lip, to focus more and not give him any information, every jerk that my body does gives him more information.
"Let's start moving, I'll keep a lookout," I spoke and started dashing towards 3 O'clock. I stepped forward as the front line as we moved in a triangle formation, Shino to my right and Asano to my left. We were jumping for about five minutes when Kione spoke, "Found one, it's 2 O'clock from here, about 3 kilometers..."
"Good work, Kione" Asuno complimented as we changed direction towards the first piece of the shirt, I kept my senses up, this would be a good time for Sensei to test our defenses, we traveled for about a km more before my senses screamed at me.
'[Sharingan]'
'[Shunshin-no-Jutsu]'
As soon as I sensed Shuzaku sensei appear from Asano's direction, I used Shunshin to appear between them, my Sharingan tracked his kick easily as I enforced my arms with chakra to block the incoming kick. The kick was heavy, I grunted unconsciously before forcing chakra into my legs to stick to the tree while turning to get some hold on my balance. After gaining some minuscule of balance I jumped back toward my team.
'What now...' I thought I managed to stop the initial attack but we were still vulnerable...
'What would I give to have a few smoke bombs right now...'
I threw some kunai toward Shuzaku Sensei as my team did the same, I saw small blue insects spreading around us as Kione went to work. I jumped back towards my team before we regrouped, and just like that paranoia started to set in, after no peep from Sensei for a minute, I spoke, "Let's go, we have an hour to locate the remaining pieces before Sensei attacks again... Kione take the lead, I'll watch our backs..."
I realized that our initial formation was flawed, I need to be the last one as I needed to watch our backs, and the enemies coming from the front would be easily visible.
After getting the first piece of the shirt we stopped and waited for Kione to gather some more information, "Anything?" I asked, we were waiting for Kione to confirm if there was just one shinobi that hid these or were their multiple ones.
"There was just one person who was hiding these pieces, but after putting this here they used a smell eraser to erase their tracks, now they smell like trees and dirt..." Kione responded I could detect a hint of a frown in his voice.
'Now what? there should be some way that sensei would have left for us to track it...'
I activated Sharingan and started scanning the trees and grass around us for marks, I could identify the tracks of various animals, it took me a moment before I found the tracks left behind by someone using chakra to jump onto the tree.
"Kione," I spoke and jumped to the spot from where the target started tree hopping, as soon as I arrived there a notification appeared in front of me.
[New Skill Created: Tracking (Active/Passive): Lv 1 (0.01%)]
[When actively used in combination with the Sharingan, you can now see the tracks left behind by enemies for 12 hrs or before the marks are removed.]
{CP cost: 2/s}
{Passive- It is easier for you to spot tracks left behind by Shinobis.}
[1 SP gained]
[1 EP gained]
"The Shinobi used tree hopping from here, do you have some who can follow a chakra trail? I can follow the trail with the help of my Sharingan but it won't be as accurate." I asked.
"No, I don't have my full hive with me at the moment..." Kione responded so I cursed.
"Alright follow me, we will have to go a little bit quicker," I scanned the footprint with my Sharingan and it picked in which direction the target jumped, I followed the mark and quickly found another two footprints that followed in the same direction.
'Please don't make this any more difficult...' I pleaded as we followed the trail left behind
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AN: And with this, we should be above 15k words which mean we can get ready for the rankings for the coming week. If you like the story left behind a review and comment, it makes it more visible to others! Thanks for reading and I'll see you tomorrow!