Chapter 11.1- Gamer of the Desert

I moved at breakneck speeds across the field, not allowing anyone or anything to catch up. My mastery of the shunshin had grown with time, so now I covered the space between me and the tower at a speed most chunin would have had difficulties keeping up with.

Of course, everything would go wrong shortly. Very shortly. I moved, and it was only a sudden voice in my head that helped me stop in time, to avoid running right into a clothesline. Of course, just because I stopped didn’t mean the person in front of me did. He crashed into me, and I scattered into sand, quickly reforming before he could take advantage of my dispersion and search for the original. I could only thank the gods for the forethought in setting a decoy trail. If that was the original, he would have been very dead.

Noel Yatsuki just looked down on me from a few feet away, and I resisted the urge to scowl. "Thought you were finishing this task as quickly as possible?" I asked, snarkily.

"Oh. Did I say that? I’m sorry. I meant I’d be finishing my mission as quickly as possible, and I’m sure you’re beginning to realize what that mission is." Of course, it had to be to kill me. I had no idea who put it in Rasa’s head that this was even a vaguely good idea. Sending me here alone was taunting the other villages, and if there was any village that would not take well to that, it was hot-headed Cloud. The fuckers wouldn’t hesitate to just off me.

I checked my surroundings for any other attackers, and that was all that allowed me to duck in time as a kick lashed right over my head. Noel Yatsuki had come in a team of two and had another Cloud team tagging along with him. That meant there were five Ninja with me right now.

I tried to game out the task in my head, and all I could see was that this entire thing was a very bad idea. Either a bad idea or a genius one. Either Kusa didn’t realize what would happen by shunting all the genin in the most tense Chunin Exams since their inception in an unsupervised area with a simple goal, or they realized and intended for this to happen. With no other objectives beyond reaching the tower, what was stopping all the genin from deciding to settle whatever long-standing grudges they had with their fellow shinobi? If the Chunin Exams were a substitute for war, then what this task was simulating was a free-for-all when ninja from various shinobi met on contested foreign territory. The kind of shit the books had said had happened in Ame in the first war, when Konoha, Iwa, Kumo, and Kiri had ravaged their way through the region in search of whatever objectives could be denied their adversaries. There was no reason for any of them to stay in Ame. It was all pride and bloodlust that had doomed the region. In much the same vein, there was no reason why the genin shouldn't just rush to the tower at the fastest speed possible. Instead, they were seeking opponents to settle grudges or remove threats. I couldn’t be very critical of them either because the original was doing much the same thing. He was taking a circuitous route to the tower to take out as many foreign ninja as possible. My goal was to arrive there and save our spot in the top 8 for the third stage.

This plan was stupid, but orders were orders, and I didn’t have much leeway to flout those for the time being. I broke the staring contest between me and my assailants by blurring into motion right at one of them. My kunai lashed out, aiming to sever his head from his shoulders, but I found my wrist caught in an unyielding grip. With little leverage and much strength, Noel plucked me from the ground and tossed me straight at the ground. I was able to roll with the impact and use it to boost myself right into a shunshin as I ran. I wouldn’t give myself good odds against Noel on his own. With a team at his back, there was no chance, and with the original holding on to the gourd containing most of the sand, escape was my only option.

A chuckle at my side had me looking in shock. With the aura of shunshin around me, turning the world into a blur, I was barely able to see a blond figure moving at my side, keeping pace with me. And then it disappeared. Only instinct helped me duck underneath the second clothesline. This time, I was paying enough attention for me to hear the word he shouted out as the attack missed. "Lariat."

Another ninja’s punch sailed past my head, and I stepped into his guard, being quick and lethal before Noel could intervene. He tried stepping back, but that was useless. Most people were terrible at adapting to fighting someone of my height. He showed it in how he overextended his kick. Moving to the left and to the right again, my kunai lashed straight through his leg, cutting it out from below the knee. The wind enhancement made it child’s play, and from there, it was easy to send the one in my other hand right into his neck. The screams that started after he lost his leg died out instantly.

I didn’t see the punch that obliterated my head.

XXXX- THE ORIGINAL

Well, that was a bit unexpected, I thought to myself as I stared straight at three of the Konoha ninja who had dropped down to face me from the foliage. I smiled at them placidly while asking them to step aside. I was more interested in Iwa and Kumo than Konoha. My orders had been to kill as many foreign ninja as I could without raising unnecessary suspicion or drawing undue attention to myself, and securing my spot in the finals. Konoha had come with the most ninja, so I wasn't surprised they were the ones I ran into the most. This team had a Hyuga along with two shinobi I couldn’t identify. The Hyuga narrowed those pupil-less eyes at me, and I resisted the urge to salivate with greed. Doujutsu. They were something else. The Tenseigan had turned Toneri from a blind creep to someone capable of posing a threat to a fucking demigod. A doujutsu would mean a lot for my future safety. Not this one, though. The covered forehead and common sense told me all I needed to know. He was of the branch house, and I didn’t know anything about fuinjutsu, so I didn’t have a chance in hell of breaking the curse seal the Hyuga were so proud of.

They moved silently. He came straight at me with a thrust from two extended fingers, and they slammed right into smooth unyielding sand. His shock was his undoing. The sand reached out and grabbed his fingers before he could pull them back. With a thought, his right hand was missing an index and middle finger. With another, the screaming boy was slammed into the ground before being completely encased in sand. Both his teammates had abandoned their own approaches after seeing what happened to their partner. I considered killing him and being done with it, but I ended up changing my mind. I’d need Konoha. There was no way to turn Suna around without a positive relationship with our closest neighbors and allies, and while I doubted this would do much to help, I had a feeling that killing these particular ninja would cause me a headache down the line.

“I will let you all live. Do not forget my mercy here today,” I said, doing my best impression of an anime villain before walking away after releasing the Hyuga from my sand. I thought through the conflict with Noel and came to a simple realization. He was stronger than me. Stronger by a wide enough margin that I was actually beginning to have doubts about my ability to win the exams as things stood now.

A/N: Finally back. We’ll probably blur through these exams before we take a timeskip and get to the main plot of the story.