Chapter 41: The Test!

Dawn at Training Ground Eleven.

Yoshino arrived first. She'd eaten a full breakfast, exactly as instructed, and stood at the edge of the clearing with her arms crossed and her ponytail neat and her eyes already looking around for whatever the test might involve.

Tsume arrived second, with crumbs on her face and Kuromaru bounding at her heels. "Did I miss it? Did it start? Kuromaru wanted to chase a squirrel and I told him no but then I chased it too and-"

"You're late." Yoshino said.

"Barely!"

"Late is late."

"It's dawn! Look, the sun's right there! That's dawn!"

Mikoto stood in the center of the clearing, watching them bicker, with Nawaki beside her. The morning mist was still burning off the grass. Birds singing amongst the trees. It was, for the moment, peaceful.

"Over here girls." Mikoto waved at them.

They came over.

"Today's test is simple to explain and hard to pass." Mikoto said. "Here are the rules. Nawaki is a wounded comrade. During this exercise, he's been injured badly enough that he can't fight and can barely move. Your mission is to get him from this clearing to the safe zone, which is the large boulder at the north end of the training ground, roughly two kilometers from here."

She gestured north, toward the treeline.

"Standing between you and the safe zone is an enemy. That enemy will hunt you. If the enemy incapacitates you, you fail. If you abandon the mission, you fail." She paused. "And if you fail, you go back to the Academy and try again next year."

Yoshino's jaw tightened. Tsume's eyes narrowed.

"The enemy," Tsume said. "Is it you, sensei?"

"In a manner of speaking." Mikoto formed a single hand sign. Water pulled from the morning dew and the damp air, swirling beside her, and resolved into a perfect copy of herself. The water clone formed, opened its eyes, and looked at the two genin with a flat, emotionless stare.

"This is a water clone." Mikoto said. "It has one-tenth of my strength. That's still considerable, but it's a far fairer fight than facing me directly. The clone will hunt you. I'll observe."

The clone drew the gunbai from its hip. The wide war fan, the tomoe markings, the chain. It held the weapon at ready.

"Nawaki," Mikoto said. "Lie down. You're wounded now."

Nawaki dropped to the grass with a theatrical groan. "Oh no. My everything. I am so injured. I cannot fight at all." He winked at the genin, then arranged himself into a convincing look of someone who'd taken a serious hit, breathing shallow, limbs limp. He was in the war, he’d seen plenty of severely injured comrades.

"You have a five minute head start." Mikoto said. She vanished in a Body Flicker, leaving only the water clone standing in the clearing, gunbai in hand.

The clone's eyes moved between the two genin and the wounded boy.

"You have until I catch you." it said. "Run."

"Okay," Yoshino said, dropping to a crouch beside Nawaki. "Okay. Think. Two kilometers, carrying a wounded comrade, with a jonin’s clone hunting us. We need a plan."

"The plan is we grab him and go!" Tsume said, lifting up Nawaki over her head. Kuromaru circled, sniffing the air, ears swiveling.

"That's not a plan, that's a death sentence." Yoshino ran alongside Tsume. "If we move slow because we're carrying him, the clone catches us. If the clone catches us, we fail. We need to think about this."

“Tsume, can your dog mask our scent?"

"Kuromaru's not a scent-eraser, he's a scent-tracker!" Tsume said. "But he can tell us where the clone is! His nose is way better than any ninja's!"

"Then use it. We need every advantage."

They reached the treeline and ran along the shadows.

For the first few hundred meters, it worked. They moved through the forest with Nawaki carried by Tsume, Kuromaru ranging ahead and circling back, and no sign of the clone.

“This is a little uncomfortable.” Nawaki mentioned.

“Suck it up, buttercup. Who told you to get injured?” Tsume giggled.

Then Kuromaru froze. A low growl rumbled in his chest. He swiveled toward the east.

"It's coming," Tsume whispered. "That way. Fast."

"Move!" Yoshino hissed.

They ran harder.

The water clone moved through the forest without hurrying.

It didn't need to hurry. It could see the disturbance the genin left in the air, could read the bent grass and the broken twigs. The real Mikoto watched from a distance, perched in a tree with her Sharingan active, observing everything while making sure her water clone didn’t get too far away. Otherwise it would dissolve!

The clone found their trail and followed it at hunting speed. It caught sight of them crossing a stream. One genin carrying a wounded boy, a dog and the other genin running alongside. The clone raised the gunbai.

A pulse of killing intent rolled across the clearing.

Both genin staggered. It was a fraction of what Mikoto could produce, but even a fraction of a war hero's bloodlust was enough to make two children's legs go weak. Tsume snarled through it. Yoshino's heart skipped a beat as sweat dripped down her forehead.

"Keep moving!" Yoshino shouted, and they did, scrambling up the far bank and into the trees as the clone gave chase.

The hunt went on.

The clone herded them. It didn't catch them immediately, though it could have. It cut off escape routes, forced them onto harder terrain, made them work for every meter while the weight of Nawaki dragged at their stamina. It was teaching as much as testing.

Yoshino's mind worked the whole time. She tried a genjutsu disruption when the world wasn’t looking right anymore, breaking the simple genjutsu Mikoto put her into. She remembered her academy training, surged chakra through her body, disrupted the technique.

Tsume fought with instinct. Kuromaru dropped a flash bomb when the clone got close and they used the blinding light to change direction. Kuromaru tracked the clone's position through the chaos, barking warnings, guiding them away from the worst of it.

But they were tiring. The clone was relentless. And the gap between them was closing.

"This isn't working," Yoshino panted as they crouched behind a fallen log, Nawaki held over Tsume’s head still, Kuromaru's sides heaving. "We're not going to make it. Not carrying him. The clone's too fast and we're too slow with the dead weight."

"So we go faster, duh." Tsume said.

"We can't go faster! That's the problem!" Yoshino's voice was sharp. "Listen to me. We should leave him. Hide him somewhere, mark the spot, and run for the safe zone. Then we come back with reinforcements. If we all die trying to carry him, that’s it! But if we survive, we can come back."

"Leave him?" Tsume was confused.

"It's the smart move! It's the logical move! A wounded comrade you can't extract becomes a liability that gets the whole squad killed! If we leave him and survive, that's two shinobi who live to fight again instead of three who die in a forest!"

Nawaki, between them, said nothing. His eyes were half-lidded. He breathed shallow. He gave no opinion, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, playing the wounded comrade who couldn't weigh in on whether he should be abandoned.

"No." Tsume said.

"Tsume-"

"NO!" Tsume bared her teeth. "You don't leave a pack member behind. Ever. He's ours. He's part of the team. You don't abandon the team."

"Even if staying means we all die?"

"Even then." Tsume's eyes were fierce. "You can run if you want, Yoshino. Run back to the safe zone, run back to the village, run wherever. But me and Kuromaru? We're saving Nawaki or we're dying next to him. That's it. That's the only two options I've got."

Kuromaru barked once. Hard. Final.

Yoshino stared at her. "That's so stupid. That's so completely, totally stupid. You'd rather die than make the reasonable call?"

"I'd rather die than leave a comrade." Tsume hauled Nawaki up again. "Stay or go. Decide fast. The clone's almost here."

The clone found them in a small clearing ringed by trees.

There was nowhere left to run. The clone had herded them here, cut off the escape routes, and now it stood at the clearing's edge with the gunbai in hand and Mikoto's face set in a cold, hunting expression.

Tsume put down Nawaki, Kuromaru was beside her, both of them low and ready. Her hands were shaking, but her stance was solid. She'd dropped into the Four Legs Technique, her chakra surging, her canine features sharpening.

Yoshino stood at the clearing's edge. The escape route was right there. Open. She could run. The smart move, the logical move, was to run and survive and come back.

She looked at Tsume, standing between a wounded boy and a jonin-level enemy, fully prepared to die.

"This is so stupid!" Yoshino shouted in frustration.

And she walked back into the clearing to stand beside Tsume.

"You came back…" Tsume said.

"Shut up." Yoshino dropped into the taijutsu stance they were taught in the academy. "Running back alone like a cowardly failure is worse than this. At least if I stand with my team, I'm not a coward who abandoned them. Even if it's stupid. Even if we lose."

"We're totally gonna die, you know?" Tsume said, almost cheerful. "How far did you think you'd get anyway? The clone would've caught you before you hit the safe zone. We either die here or we die running. And dying together beats dying alone for nothing."

"Yea! I know! I just said that."

"No you didn’t?" Tsume tilted her head.

The clone raised the gunbai. The killing intent rolled out again, stronger this time, a wave of murderous pressure that made both girls uncontrollably shake, made Kuromaru whine, made the air itself feel heavy. The clone's eyes were merciless. It rushed forward, the gunbai swinging up and then down, aimed at Tsume's skull.

Tsume screamed and lunged forward to meet it. Kuromaru launched beside her. Yoshino charged in from the flank, her fist drawn back, a desperate attempt to do something, anything, to protect the wounded boy behind them.

Two children and a dog, throwing themselves at a jonin-level enemy, refusing to abandon a comrade.

The gunbai stopped a hair's breadth from Tsume's head.

The killing intent vanished. The cold hunting expression melted. And the water clone’s emotionless face shifted into a warm smile.

"You pass." it said.

Tsume's momentum carried her stumbling forward into empty air. Kuromaru skidded to a halt. Yoshino froze mid-swing, her fist hanging.

"...What?" Tsume said.

"You pass." the clone repeated. "Both of you."

The real Mikoto dropped from the trees, landing softly in the clearing. Nawaki sat up from his wounded act, grinning, brushing grass off his clothes.

"The test was never about reaching the safe zone," Mikoto said. "It was never about beating the clone. You couldn't beat the clone. That was the point."

She looked at the two of them. Tsume, still in her Four Legs stance, confused. Yoshino, slowly lowering her fist, the gears in her mind already turning.

"The test was whether you'd abandon your comrade to save yourselves." Mikoto said. "That's it. That's the whole test. A wounded ally you can't easily extract is the hardest situation a shinobi faces. The mission says leave him. Survival says leave him. Logic says leave him." Her voice softened. "And leaving him would have been the wrong answer for me. You both would have failed."

Yoshino's eyes widened.

"Tsume. You never wavered. The moment Nawaki was 'wounded,' you decided he was coming with you no matter what, and nothing moved you off that. That's exactly what I needed to see."

Tsume grinned, fangs and all, and Kuromaru barked happily.

"Yoshino." Mikoto turned to her. "You wanted to leave him."

Yoshino flinched.

"And then you didn't. When it mattered, when the clone had you cornered and running was still an option, you walked back into the fight. You chose your team over the mission." Mikoto's expression was kind. "That's what passed you. Not the wanting to leave. The choosing to stay."

"I almost ran," Yoshino said quietly. "I argued for it. I really thought it was the right call."

"You did. And if you'd actually run, you'd be on your way back to the Academy right now." Mikoto crouched down to Yoshino's level. "There's nothing wrong with thinking about survival. With weighing the odds. That's good shinobi instinct, and it'll save your life one day. But there's a line. The mission is never worth more than your comrade's life. The day you leave someone behind to save yourself is the day you stop being the kind of shinobi worth following."

Yoshino absorbed that. Her teeth ground. Internally, she was frustrated. Her way of thinking had been wrong. Sound logic, smart tactics, and it would have failed her. If she'd trusted her reasoning over her loyalty, she'd be packing for the Academy. But at the same time, was it Mikoto-sensei who was wrong? Why should all of them die instead of just one? She didn’t understand it. But, Yoshino chose not to question it, who’s to say that she couldn’t still fail her and send her back. A sensei as infamous as Mikoto wouldn't fall into her lap twice. So, for now, she’d just accept it.

"WE PASSED!" Tsume launched herself at Mikoto, Kuromaru right behind her, and the three of them went down in a tangle of limbs and fur and cheering. "WE PASSED, KUROMARU! WE'RE REAL GENIN NOW!"

"You're real genin now." Mikoto confirmed, laughing as the dog licked her face.

"You're SO scary though!" Tsume said, sitting up. "Whatever you did that made my hair stand up! I almost peed myself! You're like, way scarier than the rumors said! The rumors made you sound nice and you ARE nice but you're also TERRIFYING!"

"I’m not that scary." Mikoto disagreed...

Nawaki ambled over, fully recovered from his fatal wounds. "You two did great. I didn’t really have a sensei test because the war didn’t really give us time for it, but I think it would’ve been fun."

“I don’t know about fun…” Mikoto thought about what she would’ve had Emi, Nonō, and Nawaki do. It’d probably be another spar like with Inoichi, Shikaku, and Chōza or something similar. “I would’ve had to do my best to prepare you for the war. I don’t think I would’ve had time for fun.”

“Really? It would’ve been super hard?”

“I don’t know.” Mikoto shrugged.

“Well, we’d probably failed if you gave us a test like this. Emi definitely would’ve left me behind.” Nawaki laughed.

Mikoto smiled. She probably would have. Mikoto stood up, dusting herself off, Tsume still hanging off one arm.

"You both passed. As of right now, you're genin of Konohagakure, and you're members of Team Mikoto." She looked at the three of them. "We start real training tomorrow. For now, go home. Rest. Eat. You've earned it."

"Can we get food together?" Tsume asked. "Like a team? The pack eats together!"

Yoshino opened her mouth to object, then closed it. "...Fine. But somewhere with actual vegetables, not just meat."

"Boring, but okay!"

"Vegetables aren't boring, they're essential for-"

"Boooring!"

Mikoto watched her new squad bicker their way toward the village, Nawaki refereeing, Kuromaru weaving between their legs. She had a feeling they’d have a better relationship than her last squad. Emi and Nonō had been promoted to chunin, while Nawaki still had a ways to go before he earned his own vest. But he was changing for the better, and Mikoto felt it wouldn’t be long before he got his own vest and went his own way.