Tales of Dogman, Bugman, and Sharkgirl 5-12

[GM]
...
The water moves slowly, but un-erringly. All the waves you see are the ones from your ship.
Though you can see both the sides of the river easily, the surface feels more like that of a still water body right now. Though the water is not exactly dirty, its depths are also murky, probably from all that it's picking up from its new coasts.
Once you've reached the other side of the river, the mulleted fisherman starts pointing at the trees to himself, as if to tell the direction.
"It's a bit up the river from here." he determines.
For his other faults, he also does not mind paddling, himself. Like this, you are carried to a decently large structure in the water, which you can eventually tell is the side of a ship, sticking out of the water.
It's decently large, for a fisherman's boat. Judging by its geometrics, a bit over half of the ship is left in, which would make the water more than five meters deep in here - and it's just the shore.
"How is this possible?" your guide asks no one in particular. "When I left, it was on the shore!"
"They told me that if the water was to rise a bit more, a bunch of us could be able to topple it up, and then I'd get the water out in buckets."
"This is too fast! The river is mad!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Guess the river just got that much larger and we don't have that much time to waste getting to the bottom of this." The raven-haired foreigner stated calmly, not appearing to be too shaken by this news. Then again, water is her element.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'd better fix it."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin had to work to surpress a chuckle at the idea of a mad river. "I guess so." He rubbed the back of his head

[GM]
"You are shinobi, right?" the man seems to finally understand. "Would you be able to fix it with some secret technique?"
"N-no punching!"
Jin observes the ship. "I could set it on fire..."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I don't think it's going to burn hot enough to evaporate the water inside of it" Shin laughed "Try harder next time"

[GM]
Speaking of damage to the ship, there is a small hole smashed into its side pointing up, now that you come close. It's about the size of a skull.
There are a few more bruised bits, actually, along the hole, almost as if the ship has been hit with one big impact, and several smaller ones.
They are not structured, or anything.

[Aburame Shinji]
"The river didn't do this..."

[GM]
These hits didn't seem to be able to penetrate the hull, though. The fisherman, now more lucid, investigates them.
"Come to think of it, I could swear I heard something scratching down there. That's when the big push came."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What could it mean?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Oh boy." Shin wondered "That means that something or somehone could have been on the boat"
"When things went down"

[GM]
"...Maybe." the fisherman admits.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"We aren't going to find anything here. We need to go into the dark, damp, smelly and wet boat" The boy's eyes widened as he described the imagined conditions of the boat

[Aburame Shinji]
"We need to fix it first."

[GM]
"How are we going to do that?" Jin seems curious. "If you could Water Walk, maybe..."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Over there." Shinji suddenly points at something bubbling in the water. "Something is moving."

[GM]
Indeed, there is some movement.
A small patch of bubbly water slowly makes its way toward you.
"It's - just like they said!" the fisherman shouts. "The river is boiling!"

[Aburame Shinji]
"You should stand back."

[GM]
He hugs the ship's floor. "We have angered the river gods! Oh, please, have mercy!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"IT's just a small patch, more likely there's something breathing down there."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I doubt it's anything good."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, lets do something about it!"

[GM]
The fisherman keeps hugging the floor, terrified.
Jin tries to assert the situation. "If we fight in on water, won't the two of you guys be in big trouble?"
"If it topples the boat, or something."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'll have to manage somehow."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Let's try to bring it aboard"

[GM]
(The patch is, at least, wider than your boat. It is not larger than the toppled wreck, but who knows what hides under the sruface?)

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji leaps towards the wreck.

[GM]
Jin steps out of the boat, on the water surface, staring down the boiling water.
He draws a kunai.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha remains calm and steady, having no need to stick to solid surfaces to fight and observing the patch, attempting to discern what's beneath. She won't let a puny creature - or some jackass with a rebreather - get to her. It would be unsightly of her.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin looked at the wreck. He was about to jump over when kohaku let out a whine. "Ok boy." He moved to the fisherman. "I'll keep our friend safe."
Kohaku moved to the tip of the boat

[GM]
"Good." the Uchiha boy says. "How exactly are we going to tackle this?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Use something on the water?"

[GM]
"O-okay." he makes a few seals, in preparation for it to come close.
As he does, the enemy speeds up. It ignores both Eiha and Jin, aiming directly for your ship. Kohaku growls at it as it approaches.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Shin! Get away!"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Don't need to tell me twice." He moved to the fisherman. "Hold on to me. I'm going to get us out of here" He grapped hold of the man and jumped to the wreck while holding him
Kohaku waited until his partner was clear before jumping over himself

[GM]
The fisherman screams, but does not resist.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The foreigner from the Mist narrows her eyes, observing the roiling patch with great scrutiny to see if she can recognize it from one of the many Water Release techniques she's seen before, or gather any other form of clue. "This is just an attack, there's nothing underneath!" She quickly warns the others before starting to dash onto the water in the direction it came from to try to find the source.

[GM]
Jin leaps up, finishing his seals. "Katon: Grand Fireball!"
As the projectile collides with the water surface, it rises a mushroom cloud of steam.
It does not escape your attention that, moments before the impact, it recognized Jin as danger. A series of thin tendrils of water scretched in his direction from the water surface, but they were too late to catch him.
There are a few seconds, where the water first ripples greatly, and then calms, giving you a little bit of hope.
Then, it reappears, under the ship, tentacles of liquid seizing it from each side.
"I thought that might have done something, but..." Jin complains, frustrated. "There is too much water around it."
"I don't think we can handle it under the surface."
He huffs. "I only have one more of those in me."
The ship is slowly being crushed on its sides, and dragged under the water. Hopefully, Hachi won't be to angry about that.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well. I've got a crazy idea" Shin blinked "If I don't come back then..... well, I'll like that to be a surprise." The boy shouted at this dog "Kokaku!"
There was a puff of smoke and the dog turned to a copy of Shin. Shin got down on all fours.

[GM]
The boat is all but consumed. If it cares about you, it should come for you soon.

[GM]
The bugs harass what's left of the tendrils, before they disappear underwater.

[Aburame Shinji]
"With something like this, the user is no doubt in the center of the mass. Conventional attacks won't work, we need to drain its chakra... or hit it with immense power."
"Let's hit it with everything we've got!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha clicked her tongue with mild frustration. She was quite sure that when she last observed the jutsu, there was nothing within it at all, only moving water. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any controller further up north, so she'd rather not waste her time with a potential fool's errand while the others are getting banged up by... a very strange Jutsuu indeed. She dashes back onto the water, swerving at the last moment upon the elemental-like creature, then draws her Tanto, the first strike is a lure, and the second one moves in deeply into the over-extended entity.

[GM]
The water splits with Eiha's slice, and remains split for a few short moments. It brings to one's mind tales of legendary Shinobi who could part seas with their powers.
Then it closes, and moves toward you.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"There's some sort of catalyst at the center! Must be what's keeping it together."

[GM]
Bajinmaru throws his Kunai, and it disappears in the depths. Still, similar effect to Eiha's slash occurs, with the hole lingering briefly in the surface before it can close.
The water roils again, and moves toward the toppled ship agressively now.
A small hill of water rises, in front of the wreck. It seems to be getting ready to do something now.
"It's SHINING!" the terrified fisherman screams, his eyes bleeding. "SHINING SO BRIGHT IT'S BURNING!"

[Inuzuka Shin]
With a snarl. Shin jumps off the wreck on four legs. The Shin-Kokaku does the same. They both fall towards the mass.

[Inuzuka Shin]
A manic feral grin came across the ninja boys face as the mass became closer and closer. With a noise between a snarl and a yell. He started slashing with this hands the very moment he landed on top of the thing
Rip and tear
until it was done

[GM]
The water, its surface deceptively firm, shakes under the impacts. Being torn into, it bubbles and foams, to a degree that physically should not be possible. The enemy is barely holding itself together, now.

[Inuzuka Shin]
In contrast Shin-Kokaku seemed more controlled then his partner. With a seemingly cold fury, the dog-man-clone fell towards the mass and silently, but no less viciously, tore into the 'water'.

[GM]
The mole-hill of water is sprinkled all around, and the strikes dig deeper into the surface.
Soon enough, there is a pit of water in front of you, to which the actual river water starts flowing awkardly. The other Shin jumps into the water headfirst, then, aiming for the middle.
The water closes up after him immediatelly, and he emerges back safely as Kohaku, holding something in its fangs.

[Aburame Shinji]
"What is that?"

[GM]
It seems to be, as you may have suspected, a sealing tag.
Laminated.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin spits up water has be comes back up. "yay.... we did it." He looked over at his dog partner to see what his teammate was talking about.

[GM]
Its corners seem burnt, and a bit of the plastic is also deformed, possibly due to the amount of chakra it was operating.
Though none of you are good at Fuuinjutsu, the letters on this one are tiny and and there is a lot of patterns. It seems to be a very advaned sort of seal.
Though some of the lines are blotted out from the stress now, Kohaku did not damage it. A specialist could still have a field day.
"Such a little thing did all that?" your Uchiha classmate comments.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Whoever is behind this... is probably far beyond our capabilities." Shinji adjusts his sunglasses.

[GM]
"It also would not be surprising if there was more of those." Jin adds.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"yea. We better let our sensei know about this."

[GM]
The fisherman peeks out from inside the boat, having hidden in the middle of the fight. "Is... is it over?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"For now. Was it the same thing that attacked you before?"

[GM]
"I wasn't sure, but moments ago, when it bulged up..."
"It looked the exact same!"
"Maybe, no as big."

[GM]
One you swam to the shore, in your plan to return to sensei's clone, there was one more thing you've noticed.
The water levels have fallen down slightly, right after you have defeated the water spirit. It was only tens of centimeters, but in time, it could be more.
...
Before the clone turned back to a statue, and promptly sunk, it recommended you make camp. It was getting dark, and another such fight would be immeasurably more difficult in the night.
As for the tag, the clone was baffled, especially considering Hachi was supposed to be good at Fuuinjutsu. Since time was a wasting, however, he'd tell you more as you arrived. Right now, it was pretty important for you to dry.
The fisherman returned to the high point village, now reinvigorated to watch the surface fall, and in time ask some of his friends to get his ship back on the water right.
Hachi should arrive relatively quickly, but Jin also pointed out it's uncharacteristic of ninja to make campfires. Perhaps coming to closer to the dry village, and setting up your own tent between the refugees could also work.
You are eventually found by your teacher, surprisingly in the company of the white-haired girl: Kamiko Kame. They seem to be pretty loud before they arrive in the treetops, possibly having an argument, but shut it as they find you.
"Here they are." Hachi lands, shaking the ground a little. The girl lands a lot more gracefully.
"Are you all right?" Kamiko wonders. She says this a bit beratingly, especially to Jin.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Not having needed to dry due to being half-way competent at chakra control, the resident Mist envoy had been staying away from the campfire, sticking to the darkness to keep watch for any hostiles that may have been using the light and planned an attack.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Yes."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Me and Kokaku really did a number on the thing that attacked us."
Shin smiles. "Still feeling pleased about it."
"How was your day?"

[GM]
"I had a few peasant kids climb to safety on my hair." Kamiko announces.
"I'm still feeling disgusted about it."
Hachi sits down among you, stretching. "We laid down our chips exactly right, as Saki would say."
"What was up here was too much, but you were just able to handle it. Can I see the tag again?"
"That's probably the most important thing."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Kokaku been guarding it zealously.
"Go on boy" Shin tells his dog
And the dog dropped it on the group in front of sensei

[GM]
Hachi picks it up, looking at it in the low amounts of available light.
"Just a thought, but did any of this remind you of your first mission?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha conserves her distances, a hate-filled glare being sent the dog's way for just a second before disappearing as she recomposes herself. She was quite intent on recovering that, especially since 'last time', and being swiped by the animal after she went through the trouble to find the tag in the first place is just the cherry on the proverbial shit sundae for her. Behind her undisturbed facade, she seethes. Everything she's tried to do, fate somehow conspired to take away from her, while these softies somehow managed to ace everything. What was it all for? What was the point of the utter ruthlessness of her training if it meant nothing in the end, and these happy-go-lucky kids who had probably not suffered a day in their lives were able to outplay her skills so? It sickened her. Still, it did not distract her so much that she couldn't keep eyes out, which she kept herself to.

[GM]
"The one in the inn, I mean. Where you reported a similar thing, but we didn't believe you." he stares at the tag intently, tragically ingnorant of his student's frustrations.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Now that I think about it... Perhaps these seals are the same."
"The previous one attempted to gather earth around itself."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"They might be related, but they're definitely not the same unless what it did back then was just some sort of preparatory phase."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"The one we encountered summoned rats. So... jelly this time?"

[GM]
"Rats?" Jin seems confused, while the teacher investigates your find.
"There are, I think, three parts to this one." Hachi says finally. "It frustrates me, because I am supposed to be good at this."
"More than half of it is plain old Chakra Devour, which is pretty complex fuuinjutsu, mind you."
"Then this bit here, this one letter, is familiar, but is not formally used."
"These letters," he points to a few signs which look like hard lines and geometric cuts with the brush, "these, I have never seen before. They must be either foreign, or someone's speciality."
"But even in that case, they must be derived from SOMETHING."
"I should take this to sensei..." he looks at it, grimly. "But we are still not done here."
"Long story short, this tag accumulates chakra from water, in a sort of simulation of senjutsu, except about three people in the world can do senjutsu."
"This part," he points out a different bit, "is used in summoning. It is the part where you call for something."
"So, my interpretation is that this invites some sort of a being to where the tag is, and gives it the chakra to work with."
"You still need to give it mind behind the actions... did it seem intelligent?" he asks suddenly.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji ponders the question for a bit. "I would say so."
"It knew to pick targets, it knew to avoid our attacks."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"It didn't exactly avoid anything."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"it crushed the boat we came on."

[Aburame Shinji]
"It wasn't successful, but it tried."

[GM]
"There are certain beings in this world that consist of a certain kind of chakra and not much else."  the sensei starts slowly.* "Such as the tailed beasts. But those kinds of things are rather smart and big league, wheras this seems barely smart enough to count for an animal."
"Clearly, this is a being of water chakra."
"A water...." he searches his mind for the proper word for this, "A water element-al. If you will."
He is sure to feel smart, for having come up with a new word.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Eiha deadpans. That observation was made 3 hours ago already.

[GM]
"The thing is that while Chakra is commonly found in people, there is residual chakra in the environment." he adds.
"But normally, there is no reason for it to accumulate this richly in one spot... or get smart."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"That's what the tag is for."

[GM]
Hachi rises back up slowly, hiding the tag in his vest. "This sounds really dangerous, if there will be more."
"Can you imagine a wind chakra one?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I can imagine fire."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"This sounds like a completely new field of.... ninja stuff"

[GM]
"Or a very, very old one." Kamiko mumbles, all of sudden.
"They are almost done down south, I think." Hachi declares. "We should sweep up the river, and look for those things."
"It would not be surprising if you still needed a ritual circle to activate each of these tags."
"Bottom line is, that we should travel up to where the water first started appearing." he finishes.
"How are you feeling? We traveled all day, and now you got into a fight..."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I'm fine. We didn't sustain any injuries."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, I'm still feeling fine." Shin said. Kokaku barked. "And Kokaku is also feeling fine!" The boy petted the dog in question.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"It wasn't that long and we had plenty of time to rest anyway."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What should we do now?"

[GM]
"Okay..." Hachi says, not quite believing you. "We'll watch the river surface in the moonlight, as we move north."
"Since you don't seem keen on sleeping in the night!"
"We'll just travel along the shore and stop by in every village we see, to ask around. That's all I got."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin opeend his mouth at the implication of the don't seem keen on sleeping in the night, and then closed it again.
"All right. Time to find any more crazy fishermen."

[GM]
He nods to himself, content. "With me, getting rid of more of these things should be a piece of cake!"
"The issue will be when we arrive to where the water first started appearing. If I am not mistaken, there should be some clues there."
"You really shouldn't be able to set this up with just a few laminated tags."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Who do you think is responsible for all of this?"

[GM]
"A rival country is a safe bet. Not the Wind." he thinks. "Honestly, Mist seems like a good suspect."
"Really, Konoha is the most suspicious actor here, though. We have to keep that in mind."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin pauses for a moment "I guess that's not impossible."
Secrecy was a big thing, it wouldn't be too far off to two teams of ninja being sent with conflicting missions

[Aburame Shinji]
"...Let's just get to the bottom of this."

[GM]
"What about Iwa?" Kamiko asks, with a mysterious smile.
"It would be a pretty Iwa thing to do, to flood a few villages." he admits, turning to the river.
So, you leave, searching for more puddles of bubbles.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha remains quiet as she mulls over the question. The use of water would in some way seem to incriminate the Land of Water in general, but given that they discovered a similar tag that functioned with Earth, then it is clear that it's not tied to any one element, and if the two are related, then they may be able to use just about any of them.

[GM]
There are a few more element-als on the way, some larger than others. Your sensei always chooses to confront them  by luring them to the riverbank, and showering them with debris. Thus, disposal is much easier.
You run across a few more toppled ships, but as you go further in the night, the river flow starts noticeably weakening. What villages you visit there have barely noticed any disturbance, but Ishikawa-sensei insists you must go further north.
You are reaching the borders of North country, when the river twists, and reveals a small lake.
Worryingly, a few people are standing on its surface, surrounding a small island in the middle of it.
They do not seem to have noticed you over the huge distance involved, but it is clear who they are.
Either the enemy, or Wind shinobi.
Who just happen to be your enemies as well.
...
(Thank you for playing and please wait warmly for the exciting conclusion to this story arc next time!)

[GM]
(You gain 10MP in the meantime)



...



Throughout the journey to the northwest, Hachi has been mercilessly drilling your chakra control. It was imperative, he said, that you could all do the Water Walking Jutsu before a more difficult encounter than the few elementals would come upon you.
As for the elementals, they were not too difficult to deal with thus far. Sensei has insisted you recover each of the tags, even in the case where he buried it under a hill of rubble from the coast. At least that made for good exercise in water walking!
You are a just a little sleepy, when you finally arrive to the northern lake.
It's not especially big, but aside of the various villages, it's still a noteworthy place - especially because of the small island in the middle of it.
Right now, you can see five figures standing around near it, or on it. They don't seem to have the perimeter secured, seeing that you could come up from down the stream. Then again, the lake's size will give them enough time to prepare should you actually make yourselves seen.
"Opinions?" your teacher asks, the other two genin as well.

[Aburame Shinji]
"My kikaichu shall scout ahead."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin and Kohaku looked at eachother "We could see what sort of scents are in the air."

[GM]
"We might still be able to do go for some sort of a surprise attack." Kamiko proposes.

[Sakurai Eiha]
During the training, Eiha was able to take it reatively easy due to already having access to the Jutsu in question. After routinely proving she was already capable of the feat, she took to the shore to engage in some training of her own, seeming quite driven for some reason. As for the comparatively easy to dispose of Elemental, she made sure to take the opportunity to gather at least one tag of her own to make up for the extreme irritation that was the first battle. By that point, her coldness has mostly receded and she took on a mostly neutral demeanor. "While we're at it, given the direction we've been traveling from Tani, we should be heading pretty much into the territory of the Hidden Valley Village, so we might want to keep that in mind."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Don't want to step on anyone's toes" Shin muttered

[Aburame Shinji]
"How can we be sure that they're enemies?"

[GM]
"I do intend to talk to them first.” Hachi nods slowly, noting that Jin did not say anything.
"And nice knowledge of politics you have, Eiha. They could be from Valley."
"Although recently, that village has been in pretty bad shape, so peopl have been going all over their territory."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I only know the village's general location, nothing much else." The foreigner disclaims. "I took the basis, but this is kinda far from my home and all." She noted before cracking her knuckles slightly in preparation of the potential confrontation. "That does make it sound like they're unlikely to get involved. At the same time though, they might be doing an investigation of their own too."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Wonder if they fought any of those elementals."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"If they're Valley shinobi, they might have actually. They'd want to defend their own country, right?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"They're not Valley shinobi."
"They're from the Wind country."
"From the look of them, I'd say... three genin and two chuunin."

[GM]
"Well." the leader coughs. "We should probably negotiate with them."

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired kunoichi' left eye twitches lightly. "What, your bugs overheard them talk or something?" She inquires with returning mild irritation. "That makes sense too though, crops and all."

[Aburame Shinji]
"They're wearing their headbands."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Headbands!" Shin laughed "They are really convenient. Remember to wear your own for a level playing field"

[Aburame Shinji]
"In any case, what now?"

[GM]
Hachi shrugs. "We go talk to them."
"That does not take covert behavior out of question, though."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I thought the Leaf was on bad terms with the Sand."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"If we are meeting them. I guess some of us should go and others should hang back."
Shin looked at Kokaku and back
"Me and Kokaku should go. We were never that good at stealth"

[GM]
"It is, but I am a pacifist." he explains. "Bad at talking, mind you."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, why would Sand shinobi be here?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"They were buying those crops that got flooded, remember?"
"This whole mess could cause famines in their country."

[Aburame Shinji]
"You think they're investigating the cause?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That would make sense, at least."

[GM]
"The good thing about that would be, that there is something to investigate on that island." Jin points out.
"Well then, any ideas about how to prepare for a fight, if there should be one?"
"You don’t have a rebreather, do you, Eiha."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I don't."

[Aburame Shinji]
"One of them has a drum, the other... uses some kind of machine."

[GM]
"A taiko drum?" Hachi makes an uncomfortable face. "I know that one. She is a Jounin."
"She uses Sound Element. It's going to be awful fighting her on water."
"If there’s a fight, I'll try to get her away from the rest, or something. Doubt any of you could do much."

[Aburame Shinji]
"So far, I see no reason to fight them."

[GM]
"They will see reason to fight us."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Sound? Well that's fascinating."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I would rather end today without my ears ringing"

[GM]
"It's less fun than it sounds. You are fighting invisible jutsus that can break rocks and crack your eardrums."
"Did you mean that we should wait them out, Shinji?" He gets back to the topic.

[Aburame Shinji]
"If our goals align, then there's no reason for conflict."

[GM]
"Hmm."
"We have information to give them, if they want it, so maybe they do have something to tell us as well."
Kamiko looks outraged. "Are you really going to just give them the tags?"
"One tag." the sensei says.
"That's still giving free informations to the enemy!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That.. does sound like dangerous knowledge to give out."

[GM]
"You know, we could profit from this." she says.
"Jutsus are like diseases, Eiha." Hachi tells you calmly. "If a lot of people catch it, a lot of people will be looking for a cure."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"..And that's a pretty morbid analogy." She lets out a small chuckle. "Here I thought I was the creepy one. Well anyway, your call not mine."(edited)

[Aburame Shinji]
"Another possibility is..."
"...That they are the perpetrators."

[GM]
"Pretending to be Wind shinobi. Yes." Jin agrees.
"Unless you mean it’s an inside job. Now that's ridiculous." the Uchiha says.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"False Flag operations are a thing, you know."(edited)

[Aburame Shinji]
"All we know is that the people behind this incident are shinobi."

[GM]
"...Maybe I can make a hair clone." Kamiko says all of sudden.
"Hide it, or myself, on a shore somewhere. When we fight, I just have to go to that place."
"Maybe you should propose an arrangement where the jounin fights the jounin and the rest fights the rest, sensei?"
"A fair fight, you see." she smiles devilishly.

[Aburame Shinji]
"On the other hand, we could continue to observe them from afar."

[GM]
"You kids need sleep." Hachi points out.
This is true. You were training and fighting elemental constructs all night.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yea, That's something people need"
Shin rubs his eyes

[GM]
Before a fight, getting your chakra at the best possible level would be nice.
"I need sleep too, but we can keep someone awake, to keep watch."
"Can your bugs watch the island on their own, Shinji?" Hachi asks.
"And remember what they saw."
The leader stays sitting down for a while, thinking.
"Say, I could give you a Soldier Pill, Shinji."
"That should help you stay awake, and get some of the chakra back."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Alright."

[GM]
He takes out a white wrapper with a medicine pill in it.
"Slice it into small bits and eat it slowly, that’s what Sensei taught me in the war."
"And wake us up if something happens, alright?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Of course."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Remember that!"
Kohaku curled around himself as the dog readed himself for some shuteye

[GM]
"Such is a soldier's life, kids." Hachi tells you apologetically, as the others also look for good sleeping spots, still trying not to stick out among the bushes too much.
...

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji, roughly six hours later, exclaims from atop of a tree. "They're headed this way!"

[GM]
Hachi, who has concealed himself as a rock somehow, snoring problematically loudly up until now, awakes to full personhood.(edited)
He looks over to the lake, seeing the group approach. "Everyone, scatter!" he hisses.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha mostly focuses on concealing her presence after getting out of direct way. If it comes down to it, that'll be necessary.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin mumbes "Just five more minutes..." As he tried to go back to sleep.
Fortunately, or unfortunately considering on your point of view, Kohaku wasn't that slow to wake up. The dog pounced on the boy's chest. Which knocked the wind out of him as well as wake him up.
"Yea... fine.." The boy whispered as me moved to another hiding spot. He couldn't keep the tiredness out of his voice.
Kohaku followed his partner. Nudging him along.

[GM]
Kamiko wakes up with a shout.
She stretches, staring at the sensei, who is now becoming a piece of rock again, and stares at her in horror.
"Hide." he hisses.

[Aburame Shinji]
"They spotted us..."

[GM]
Kamiko looks around in horror as well. Panicked, she summons another herself, who then runs into the woods, while she looks for a better place to hide.
It seems she is awful at stealth.
As she hunkers down, a slight wave of static comes over the forest.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Meanwhile, the Mist foreigner remains perfectly still in her own cover, making neither sound nor shift, save perhaps for the temptation to roll her eyes.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin swallowed. The boy had taken refuge in a tree.
However he got seperated from Kohaku who was hiding in a bush at the base of the tree.
He had to fight to control his breathing

[GM]
Jin, considering his options, heads after Kamiko's clone, and the girl herself follows him, perhaps hoping to get away, or to prepare whatever trap she was speaking of.(edited)
In na few more moments, a woman with a Taiko drum over her shoulder appears on a tree.
Her skin is tan, and she seems to be wearing a lot of fabric for a ninja. Perhaps it hides some surprises.
"One, two, three, four... five." she counts, while the four other Hidden Wind Village nin appear around her.
"Two are missing. Keichi, you said you saw someone?"
The child wearing many shuriken nods. "To the left. Running."
She taps another younger looking one on their shoulder. "The two of you should be able to handle that."
The two leap off, following the two runaway genin.
"Judging by the dog," she speaks to the piece of rock that is your sensei, "You must be Konoha."
"Anything to say before you won't be able to hear anymore?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha frowns. noting that the Jonin was able to effortlessly pick up on the 'stone', which indicated quite significant detection abilities. Heeding the 'warning' though, she attempts to cover her ears by shifting up her scarf subtly. She expects a sound-type attack of sorts, so maybe that'll help with it.

[GM]
Hachi dispels his concealment technique slowly, coughing.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin's eyes widened as Kohaku was mentioned.
The boy clenched his fists together.
He walked along the branch in plain view.
"Yea... do you take requests?"

[GM]
"Oh." the bowman says. "I only saw two and the dog."
"Where is the fifth?"
Hachi does not let her answer the question. "We wanted to avoid a fight, we are investigating."
The woman whistles, apparently recognizing him. "The fight has already started, unfortunately, with those two." she getsures to where Jin and Kamiko had headed.
"I heard that you let my cousin go after almost cutting his head off, Hachi Kame. You sound swell."
"How come you’re doing terrorism now?" she asks him, playfully.
This sentence seems to frustrate him a lot. "I am not."
"You think I'd bring a bunch of genin for that?"
"Or return to the scene of crime?" he asks.
"...Maybe you left something there, yes." she says. "Don't you also do Fuuinjutsu?"

[GM]
The signs of hostility come immediately after, as the woman taps her drum, and your ears tingle, though they do not break.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha curses innerly and shifts her scarf again.

[GM]
"My genin are going to need support soon. Mind if we get it over with?" she asks.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin shivers as his ears tingled. Kohaku softly whined.

[GM]
"A fight it is, then." the sensei answers gruffly. "Let's try to take this elsewhere."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji forms a seal, silently commanding his swarms into action with a pulse of chakra.

[GM]
With that, Hachi leans forward, and disappears from sight momentarily.
At the end of the Shunshin, he appears at the tree, right in the front of the ninja, and takes a swing at the woman.
There is a burst of sound as the woman disappears. The two other ninja left do not seem to be affected by it, though.
"There you are!" he shouts, hopping further into the forest out of your sight.
The man and the boy do not assume they can do anything about him. Instead, one of them aims their bow at you, and a puppet appears below them, in the shrubs.
Their attention is fully turned to you. They are just two opponents, but then again, they may also think they are only facing two.

[GM]
...
The puppeteer approaches his ally, touching him with his open hand. With his other, he seemingly directs the thin puppet that came out of the woods.
The machine moves on its own, requiring only minimal direction.
The bowman, instead, draws his bow, directing it at you. It's difficult to tell whether he's aiming at Shin or Shinji.(edited)
He pulls mightily, for some reason trying to make one really good shot, rather than many.(edited)

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin was a simple person.
Just for simple things.
"Come on boy!" He ran towards the thin puppet.
Someone had to keep it busy.

[Sakurai Eiha]
As the battle unfolds, Eiha prepares herself mentally and psychologically. This is it, the chance to restore her honor and dignity against worthwhile opponents. She can't let the past humiliations slide by, she simply can't. This time for sure, she'll show all of these soft-minded shinobi what it really means to be one. There is no other choice for her at the time, and failure is not an option. In order to live up to her Nindo, she must strike swiftly and decisively. As she readies herself such, the pervading malice and hostility she emanates seeps through the battlefield, like a beasts hungry for blood.

[GM]
The puppeteer walks back on the branches carefully - now he is directing the puppet in the back as well.
Thin one, which originally went to face Shin, now twists to the side, as if to meet Eiha - though he said he did not see her, this could be deception.
Instead, it is replaced by the sturdier-looking one.
As for the puppets themselves, there is not much to say: the thick one is full of spikes, presumably intending to attack with a slam. The thinner one has bladed hands, but they aren't looking much scarier than an armed person would.

[GM]
The arrow is released, moving forward at blinding speed.
It flies right betwen Shin's legs, and lodges itself in a tree behind him.
The entire length of the arrow, in fact.
"Impossible!" The bowman shouts.
"Calm down." the puppeteer tells him. "You should get a second chance."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Wowsers" Shin shouted as he just barely managed to dodge the arrow.
 "Missed me! Now you gotta kiss me!" He taunted
Shin cracked his knuckles and moved up.
The best thing he could do is tie the puppets up
So he moved towards the thin one and tried it a good old left hook

[Inuzuka Shin]
Kohaku understood what his partner was going for.
He moved towards the fatter puppet and tried to attack that one

[GM]
The puppets are hard to attack with your bare hands.
Then again, keeping them busy may be enough.
You notice your hands being stained with something black, from the edges of the puppet's plates. This is likely poison.
That's pretty bad.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The kunoichi from Mist narrows her eyes slightly. The pair from the Sand manage to generate quite the amount of threat, and the otherwise seemingly undeterrable houndmaster is being held back by the puppets rather effectively. From the onset, the situation looks somewhat bad. Still, this is not her first time fighting other Shinobi, and it was for more.. harrowing in the past, so all it means is that this is an opportunity to turn the tide. An opportunity she has all intentions to take.

Dashing from the cover of vegetation to another without a sound, she skirts around the battlefield, waiting for the perfect time for the nearby puppet -which was in the way- to become distracted, letting her pass unnoticed. With a last jolt from shrubs to behind the boulder, her tanto sings from its sheath, taking the ranged shinobi in a blindside. A manic grin paints itself on Eiha's face as despite the resistance of armor, the blade draws blood and and sends the other Shinobi sprawling across and past the trees. The thrill fires her up further as she stares him down for but a second, malice still rippling out before her eyes shift towards the other shinobi, the look on her face like that of one looking for the next prey....

[GM]
The boy is sent rolling under the tree trunk, with the puppeteer turn to Eiha in shock.
"Fuuton: Kazeyari!"
A blade - or rather, a lance of wind is sent Eiha's way.
Though she manages to dodge it, it turns out to be merely a distraction from the thin puppet, which has now leapt off the tree where it fought Shin, and hooked Eiha's tanto out of her hand.
It is sent towards the puppeteer, who, fortunately, does not step on it, or anything.
They seem very busy fending off Kohaku and Shin right now, the Jutsu needed a bit of their focus to finish, and now they must catch up.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The Raven-haired Kunoichi sends the Sand Chuunin a glare after weaving out of the way of the Jutsu, indicating clear killing intent at the embarrassing turn of event. Reacting quickly, she dashes straight at him, ignoring the puppet and bluffing that she has another trick in reserve. She does not, however, so at the last second she makes a roll to the side, picking up her tanto in the maneuver. As she rises back up, she joins an upwards slash in the motion of her movement, but it was merely a feint, as she shifts to the side for a direct lunge, forcing him back towards the insects, staring into his eyes the whole way.

[GM]
The man tumbles around the insects - in the shade of the tree, they are hard to see.
They bite at his strings, this is terrible.

[Inuzuka Shin]
pain wracked the boy's body. He screwed his eyes shut as he tried to focus.
Gritting his teeth, closing is palms. He powered his way through the pain. He looked up at the Puppeter.
No point going after the pupperts it they could take out the controller.
"Hey you!" He shouted as he lept up to the target and tried to land a kick.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji creeps in the shadows as his bugs assail the man from nearly every direction. The kikaichu are autonomous, cunning predators, imperceptible to one who does not know what to look for.

[GM]
The man notices him at the last moment, escaping with a roll into a backflip. He lands close to the thinner puppet, rising one of his palms.
"W-wait, let's talk."
"Maybe."
"This looks like it's going to get ugly if we continue. That kid already poisoned himself. My partner is almost dead, and my puppets..."
"...have a lot in store, if you want to keep fighting."(edited)
"I’ll pick up my kid, and you go your way!"
A thunderclap echoes in the distance. The Jounin seem to still be fighting.
"...All that matters is how those two wind up, anyway."

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin blinked. The poison was a memory now, but he knew he felt that Kohaku had been hurt by the other puppet.
This fight was on a whole different level compared to what they faced before.
The boy looked other at his teammates and their answers

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha quirks an eyebrow, mildly amused by the statements. She flicks her Tanto to the side, not lowering her weapon. "You sure don't seem all that convinced about that whole 'talking' thing." She countered skeptically, what with his whole 'maybe'. "Threats aren't exactly the best way to defuse a situation either." Her grin widened. "But let me tell you one thing. It doesn't really matter what kind of tricks your puppets still have if you're too exhausted to control them. Plus, you won't be able to escape my blade for very long if this keeps up either~"

[GM]
"Maybe." he sighs, still on his own. To his merit, the puppets have stopped moving.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji continues his advance, finally reaching a distance at which he can plant a female bug on the puppeteer, and does so. The bugs crawl closer, though they stop at the last moment, remaining hidden in the leaves of branches and the shadows of trees. "You're not at an advantage." Shinji attempts to throw his voice to not reveal his location. "If you want to get out of this unharmed, then bargain."

[GM]
"That means you think I know something that could help you, eh?"
"That I am not completely clueless about the situation?"
"Well, we are here because we think the storms that have picked up in the desert are similar to this flood."
"You’d probably be able to figure out that much just by traveling to the wind." he sighs deeply.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Then let's work together."

[GM]
Tonzaku has a different idea."
"The woman with a drum, she really does not like Konoha much."
"...Can I go treat the kid over there, maybe?"
"The one witht the bow, don't know how hard you hit 'im."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, you think you are." Shin blinked, the tension leaving him somewhat. "Your teacher could be holding something back from you guys."
"But.... I don't have anything against finishing this peacefully"

[GM]
Something explodes in the forest a bit away from you, making you flinch. It might have been one of Jin's fireballs.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"At least between us...."

[GM]
"I know there is a ritual circle in the sand, similar to this one." he says. "Though i don’t know where they found it."
"They are old, apparently. Someone has been digging them up."
"Apparently, this stuff might go back to time before the Kage..."
"Well, that’s all I really got to extrapolate from what they talk about, though."
"It's dangerous stuff. If you've been doing it, you'd better know nobody will like you for that!"
He smiles nervously, finally moving. He seems to really want to attend to the bowman.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha ponders this new information. Didn't the jutsu in the old inn also been theorized to be very old?

[Aburame Shinji]
"We're coming with you."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Ok" Shin said "How about a ceasefire between us for now. You can go and help your friend."
Shin looked over to his dog "It sounds like it would be better for us to work together... but our superiors might not want us to"

[GM]
"...That's what I had in mind."
"In case someone else comes, we'll keep our distance." he says, just as a figure appears in the woods.

[Aburame Shinji]
"While the jounins are busy over their old grudges, we might as well join forces and investigate."

[GM]
It seems to be Kamiko, slightly bloodied, carrying Shin over her shoulder, like she is the boy and he is the girl.
"He’s going to be fine, how are - oh." she sees the scene.
"...Well, our pair fled."
"This does not mean like they've surrendered, though?" her guard is lowered only slightly.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We were just talking about joining forces." Shinji adjusts his glasses as he finally comes out of hiding.

[GM]
"Sure." she narrows her eyes, being poor at subtlety.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"It sounds like this whole fight has been motivated by grudges between our teachers"(edited)

[GM]
"I don’t feel like fighting anymore, either, though." the girl admits.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"We~eell~ I could always go with a little more bloodshed but the mission goes first and all~" The foreigner states her 2 cents playfully, bringing up her blade close to her face.

[GM]
"I will try to talk to her, if she's still in one piece when we get there." the chuunin sighs.
"My name Fugo, Fugo Dorosu."
"There is not much to it, really. As seems to be a rarity today, I just happen to value my life."
...
(You gain 20 MP, 1 Nindo, and 3 Renown!)
[GM]
...
The brief walk towards the lake is accentuated by distant bursts of sound. As soon as you can see the surface, it's clearly apparent that somehting is very wrong here.
For starters, there are a lot of dead fish floating up here. It's probably not all of them that were in the lake, but it's still a waste.
The more quickly noticeable thing would be the tall wave running in circles around the lake, sometimes spilling on the shores or on the island in the middle, sometimes dispersed by a burst of earthen rubble from the bank, or invisible energies from the island.
It seems that the Jounin's fight has been interrupted, and they have their hands full with something else, now.
Fugo, the puppeteer, stares at the scene.
"Damn. That thing is as tall as a house. I don't know what we can do, here."
It does not escape your attention that the water is rising. The island is already partially submerged.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I'd expect a Puppeteer of all people to know there's always a 'source' somewhere." Eiha noted in a slightly playful manner. If this was another type of elemental, they would already know what the control was, though it would be difficult to get to. If it was not, then there would be something else; perhaps a jutsuu user as had been her very first guess.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses as he looks at the scene. "It really is hard to believe that something of this scale could be done remotely..."

[GM]
"It clearly surprised them, too." Kamiko notes, still carrying Jin.
"Maybe those things are drawn to chakra, and a battle between those two was enough bait for the biggest fish."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Something that killed all the fish" Shin wrinkled his nose. "It smells"

[GM]
"That's probably the Sound Element." Fugo explains. "It works very well with water."
"Or, not well, if you want to keep the things in the water alive."
"I imagine sensei's plan was to lure yours into water so she could attack him remotely."
An edge of stone slides out of the bank, splitting the elemental in two. At the same time, a fox the size of a lion steps out of the island, onto the water, and hurries toward the wave's remains.
Similarly to what Kohaku did, it dives into the depths, and emerges - this time, it is holding a much larger package in its mouth than the tag, wrapped in waterproof fabric.
As the monster's heart is dislodged, the water calms, and the fox hurries to fetch it to its master.
The two jounin enter into the view of each other again, Hachi on the bank, and the woman Fugo has called 'Tonzaku' a while ago, on the island. She unwraps the package, revealing a sizeable scroll.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I guess this means that our sensei's won't be mad at us working together." Shin chuckled "I guess we better meet up with them."

[GM]
"Yes, it seems like a good start to defusing the situation." Fugo nods, stepping onto the water as well.
A bit away from you, you can see the two missing genin, fought by Kamiko, come out of the forest. One is carrying the other.
You, yourselves, are looking pretty beat on average. Kamiko looks at least slightly wounded, Jin has to be carried, and Shin is still bloody from cutting himself on the puppets, and feeling some of Fugo's poison.
Seeing you from the distance, Hachi tries to approach the woman calmly now, his arms folded. He is not the best at controlling his body language, but it wouldn't do to lose the scroll.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin shivers as the poison causes his arms to tingle. "Yea.... I better get some gloves or something"

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji approaches the jounins, his hands in his pockets.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha meanwhile remains wary for any more 'surprises'. Although this elemental was probably the biggest one, if whoever created them is still in the area, they're going to figure out sooner than later by now that something has gone "wrong". Incidentally, she is one of the only two looking unhurt.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Keeping his hands to the side, hopefully keeping them still won't cause the poison to flow around as fast. He moved up with the rest of the group

[GM]
The two genin move to join up with you first, still wary of coming anywhere near the white-haired girl.
You can already hear Hachi shout. "Can I take a look?"
The woman unfolds the scroll from the top towards him, showing that it is, somehow, segmented.
"It's just a lot of tags!" she shouts back. "They aren't all the same, though!"
"Well, can I take a look?" he asks again.
"This is vital evidence I have to take to Wind!" she tells him. "You can take a look at the circle."
"I'd like to do that, too, but I actually know some Fuuinjutsu, you know?" he responds, tauntingly. "Unlike you."
Dropping the topic for now, he turns to the approaching Shinji.
"Are you guys alright?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Shin was hurt."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"It was very rough, I guess that means that we still got some more training to do." Shin grit his teeth. "We only ended it when we decided that it would be better to work together."

[GM]
"I'll take a look at your hands later, Shin." he tells you, and makes to walk towards the island slowly.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Technically he surrendered~"

[GM]
Tonzaku-sensei instead moves out on the water, clearly not wanting the taijutsu expert to come anywhere closer.
"Shh." Fugo says, before moving towards her. He clearly does not want to be embarassed.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha has said her piece, she sees no need to hammer onto the point. She still keeps an eye out for backstabs though, what's the Sand getting closer for?

[Aburame Shinji]
"Our negotiations wouldn't mean much without your approval, however."

[GM]
Fugo is, in fact, moving towards his Sensei. It just so happened Eiha was a bit in the way, so it looked suspicous.
"We're leaving." Tonzaku announces. "You can look at your circles in the sand, here."
Hachi does not seem happy with that, but accepts it. "At least you seem to believe that we did not do this."
"So I'll call that a win."
"The villages down the river are all taken care of, if that's where you're going."
He seems to realize something, putting a hand on his mouth. Again, bad at handling body language.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"our enemy was confident to try to attack both of our groups" Shin muttered

[GM]
"We're going back up." Tonzaku announces, though she could be lying. "This has to be delivered immediatelly."
"Babysitting fishermen is not my mission."
Hachi exhales with relief. That means that they shouldn't run into Fuuka.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Now that you know we're not responsible, why not cooperate?"

[GM]
"We are not sure." Tonzaku responds to the genin. "This goofball here does do seals, and could be incompetent enough to get attacked by his creation like that."
"But it also sets a bad precedent. We are at war."
"My students should not get used to cooperating with the enemy, and neither should you. That's walking into a trap  more often than not."
"...If you DID do it, then you really would not want me to keep the scroll, though. I am keeping it."
"And with that in mind, we scram."
Fugo and the genin following her are much less able to scram dynamically like she does, but they do turn to leave when she says that.
In less than a minute, they are to the lake's edge, and in the trees.
Hachi sigs deeply, walking slowly around the island, to take a look at the circle.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji furrows his brows.

[GM]
"If you're wounded, come lie down here on the beach, I'll take care of you." he shouts from back there.
"This is so weird."
"I'll have to make a drawing for Sensei, or something."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That could have gone a bit more smoothly, yeah."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yea, at least we didn't needlessly kill each other"

[GM]
"It could have been them taking away the evidence of their inside job, you know." Kamiko says, as she goes to deliver Jin.
"Sometimes you just don't get answers very fast." the sensei says. "People cover their tracks."
"They could not cover this one, though."
"There is some sand in the bushes, so maybe Tonzaku found it, and uncovered it first. That's nice of her."
The circle, which the other Jounin has said was 'in the sand', is in fact engraved in a large marble tablet.
It is a geometrical shape made of several triangles spun around a pentagon, with some pictograms on the sides, enclosed within a double circle.
Hachi stars to heal Jin first, he apparently has a lot of shuriken wounds.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji maintains his frustrated expression as he approaches the site, and the brief examination of the circle makes the distaste written on his face even deeper. "This isn't fuuinjutsu at all."

[GM]
"Mhm." Hachi mouths. "It's some different sort of art entirely. But I suppose it can still use tags."
"You should know that ritual Fuuinjutsu is very rare and almost no one can do it. But it still falls under general, let's say, language, of Fuuinjutsu."
"Some of those pictures on the outside of the circle are drawn on Kuchiyose scrolls, I think. But the writing? The circle itself? New to me."
"There are no ofuda here, there is no rope, and the trees are not used in the circle."
"Sensei has once told me that there is ambient Chakra in the world, and in the old times people used to build shrines where it gathered. Maybe that's it?"
"But that's just a theory. A ninjutsu theory. We'll make another stop in Konoha before reporting, kids."
"Anyone have paper and a pencil?" Hachi pulls out some bandages, instead, because those, he does have.
Jin's wounds are mostly taken care of, though it still takes some slapping to get him awake.
"Lost a lot of blood." Hachi tells him. "Eat some liver."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Um..." Shin went through his pockets. Kohaku even sniffed himself. "Err... no"

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses. "You didn't bring any scrolls, sensei?"
"I thought those types of tools were vital for your skills."

[GM]
"Because they're vital, I usually need them."
"I do have some empty ones, but it's expensive paper... and the format is not that large."
He takes out a small scroll, comparing it with the circle.
"You can lie down, Shin, by the way."
"Hmm. I wonder if I can actually get all that with a brush."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Oh, ok then." He lied down "Down I go on the cold hard ground"

[GM]
"...since it's a scroll, I might be able to draw some details. But there really is a lot of that strange text."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I can't help you with that."

[GM]
"If it's not enough, I'll make some stone tablets to write it on, but then we'll have to carry those home."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That shouldn't be too much of a problem."

[GM]
Hachi starts closing Shin's wounds, after having throughly cleaned them with what seemed to be alcohol.
Oddly, he seems to remove some of the tissue from around the wound using his chakra scalpels, leaving odd, rectangular wounds, before making a bit of the skin come back.
"Hmm. Were you poisoned, Shin?"
'You seem to be taking it pretty well."
"Puppeteers always lace the weapons with some, but there are still ways to get around it." he thinks.
"The best being having another way of attacking them, like an element, or a weapon."
"But I could also just teach you the basics of Medical Ninjutsu, Shin."
"Just enough to cleanse your wounds when they're freshly made. That should not be hard to learn."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"To be fair to him, I'm pretty sure it was the puppet's frame itself that was laced with poison, not just its weapons."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well I figured that it's better to just fight with your fists as you can't be disarmed" He laughed at that joke
"Well, not disarmed that easily"

[GM]
"In Ninjutsu theory, puppets are seen as a hard counter to Taijutsu." the sensei goes on. "Though if you are only dealing with one, you can just have Kohaku go around it, or have him take care of it, and yourself go for the puppeteer."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha's eyes narrowed, very much so finding the comment to be a personal attack. "I'll take having to spend two seconds to recover a weapon over being dead because of my own attacks, thanks.."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I don't think there's much that Shin can't brute force his way through..."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, it's something to think about."

[GM]
Hachi rises, Shin's treatment done. He looks over to Kamiko.
"I'm good." she says, which seems to disappoint him.
"Well, then." he reaches into his vest, for a bottle of ink, and a small brush. "Let's get this out of the way."
"We also have to recover Fuuka and Mumei when we're done here. Let me find something to take a seat on..."

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired kunoichi rolled her eyes and crossed her eyes. Of course, that legendary solidarity at work again...

[Aburame Shinji]
"What's our next move?"

[GM]
"I want to say that we are done and should report back." he says, now seated, and drawing.
"But I have no way of telling if these are all the monsters in the river taken care of."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Split up?"

[GM]
"Maybe I'll send you back to Konoha with Fuuka and this scroll, and stay around here, giving the river a proper sweep."
"Or maybe Fuuka will want to stay. We'll see."

[Aburame Shinji]
"It feels like we haven't accomplished much at all..."

[GM]
"That's just because you can't see the happy faces of the people whose livelihoods you've saved!"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I guess getting info back is some form of accomplishment"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's certainly a new one.."

[GM]
"This was pretty insidious, yeah." sensei agrees. "But we prevented a bad situation from getting worse."
"I am going to need you to carry this scroll to the Research Institute in Konoha. Ask for Mai, and older woman with a mask."
"It's about time she had to deal with you, anyway."
He chuckles to himself, as if it's an in-joke.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The foreigner quirks an eyebrow, curious about the strange wording thereof.

[Aburame Shinji]
"The perpetrator is still free to act as he will, and we have no choice but to clean up the mess. I get that we're helping even by doing just that much, but still..."
"Perhaps going easy on those Sand shinobi wasn't the right solution..."

[GM]
"I will cover this circle in a big slab of rock when we're done." he tries to assure you.
"Enough that it won't be easy to get to it."
"Breaking it would probably be a bad idea."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Why?"

[GM]
He shrugs. "It's been here for a pretty long time, hundreds of years at least."
"Until now it's all been fine."
"I am not a scientist, so I won't mess with a complicated apparatus like this circle here."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, I guess that means that more people can have a look at it." Shin frowned "Makes me wonder why no one noticed it before..."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Until we know what it's for, I guess hiding it really would be for the best."

[GM]
"I think it was buried." Hachi says.
"Maybe Tonzaku wasn't the one who uncovered it."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Maybe, but I guess that we don't find out by just talking about it." Shin scatched his head "Although I wonder if we are going to see a lot more of these soon."

[GM]
"If we see it randomly appear in, say, Cloud now," Hachi hazards, "then that would be rather a good thing."
"It would be an independent actor doing it."
"Well, I am about done here."
"Let me get that big rock, now."
...
The circle is covered, and then the cover is covered with sand - though no matter how hard Hachi tries, it still sticks out a little suspiciously.
You traveled down the river, and met up with Fuuka. As you did, it's clear that the water level has been going down very fast.
After a brief discussion, it's decided that Hachi would stay behind, and clean up, and you'd go with Fuuka Kagamine to finish your mission. This means that you still have  an important job to do - deliver the scroll, and describe the events that ocurred here in detail.
The journey to Konoha was uneventful, but long in ninja terms. Fuuka says that she has to conduct a proper debriefing with her own team here, but points you to where the Research Institute is.
"It’s full of Nara, Yamanaka, and old Shinobi.” she explains. "I hate going there, always run into Orochimaru."
"Don't forget you still have to submit a proper report to the Hokage's Office, aside of this!" she reminds you. "Though it will probably include whatever it is you learn in the Institute."
"So you should have a lot to work with this time."
she reaches into her vest, handing you a few of those waterproof tags.
"Give her those, too."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"If I see him again, it would be too soon" Shin muttered to himself, refering to Orochimaru. As quiet as he could mutter.
"All right. I hope they don't blow up in our faces." He said in a nomal tone of voice as he excepted his share of the tags.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Let's head out."

[GM]
The Institute is rather a flat building, reminiscent of a large warehouse. Some parts of it have a second floor, but most of it is one, spread-out level.
Upon being asked to book Mai-sensei, the lady at the reception looks at you through her glasses, but does. She prints you out a small map of how to get to her, through the many corridors.
"Don't go to the wrong door, you might not come back!" she tells you, jokingly.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Oh no!" Shin joined in on the joke

[GM]
"Well, some areas in here are restricted, but nothing should happen to you unless you can't read."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha quirked an eyebrow at the reaction she caught. She supposed perhaps there were still weak links in that net. Had she been in a better disposition, she might have attempted to give some advice about how to deal with those 'types', but after being mocked for no reason earlier - when she was defending him no less - Eiha preferred to watch the houndmaster squirm as much as possible. That should provide enough entertainment to make up for it... as long as they ran into the man, granted. Outwardly though, she remained calm and neutral "I'd be surprised if there weren't."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yea" Shin agreed. He was a bit dissapointed at the lady's elaboration, sort of like explaining the joke. "Lets get going at least." A pause "Before they have to kill us." That last part was a joke

[GM]
The corridors twist and turn, and they all look the same. In fact, they have to be marked with area signs and crossroads signs, so that even locals don't get lost.
The place you find yourself in at the end is a short corridor with numerous doors, titled 'Civilian Applied Fuuinjutsu and Logistics'
It's the door at the very end, apparently, titled 'Director'.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Going to the head honcho." Shin chuckled "Fun"

[GM]
Behind the door, you find an older looking woman - not quite elderly yet, but approaching the area. Some wrinkles are already showing themselves.
Perhaps because of that, she is wearing a mask on her face, which goes well with the white coat.
The room is, of course, an office, one entire wall of which appears to be taken by a big, magnetic whiteboard, on which someone seems to be playing Scrabble with Kanji.
The woman seems to have been busy with something in her hands, which she has already started shoving into a drawer before you opened the door. But you are sure she just hid something.
"Yes, good evening." she looks you over, head to toe.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Greetings."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha wasn't particularly surprised by the gesture. This -was- a "research institute" after all, not the neighborhood daycare, so stumbling upon things one wasn't cleared to see was just an expected matter of course. She gave a small nod in response to the greeting.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Um.. yo!" Shin greeted. He nudged Kohaku as if to say 'Say something'. The dog just yawned.

[GM]
"I wasn't expecting anyone today." she explains her surprise. "Let's see, an Aburame, and Inuzuka..."
"Are you Hachi’s students?"
"He's only been teaching for a year, and he's already offloading his students on the elderly!"
"And one of you really should not be here, either!"
"I need a drink." she rises, and approaches the nearby kitchen sink, filling a kettle with water.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well... Surprisingly, that's not what we're here for."

[GM]
"Ah." she nods. "Go on."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji takes out the scroll and puts it on her desk.
"During our mission, we've discovered this. We need your help in figuring out what it means."

[GM]
As the water heats up, she takes the scroll, and unfolds it.
"The Script is from the Land of Snakes, but I can't translate it."
"The circle is used in sacrificial rituals."
"A really strange combination."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Is there someone who can translate it?"

[GM]
"In this Institute, yes. Where did you find it?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Sacrifice, that's something dark already."

[GM]
"I haven't seen anything like this before."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha cleared her throat slightly at the dismissive statement. This was starting to pile up on quite the unpleasant manner and speed. So much for all of that rambling.. for the time being, she remained quiet, letting the other two handle all the talking. She 'wasn't supposed to be here', so clearly her input was neither necessary nor desired.

[GM]
"The Land of Snakes is beyond the mountains past the Wind country." she explains. "You wouldn’t learn about it in school, because it's not practical knowledge. Ninja can't get there very fast, unless they have a way of flying, or something."
"They also speak a different language, and don’t have Ninja villages."
"But they might have some odd sort of Ninjutsu like this. I wouldn’t know, but we can ask."
"There are big animals with long noses in the Land of Snakes, like this one." she points to a drawing around the circle. "The people there are weirdos. Dark-skinned, but not as much as Cloud."
"Again, where did you come across this?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"River country."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"It caused quite a bit of flooding"

[GM]
She blinks, not quite understanding what you're talking about.
Meanwhile, she fills her cup, and adds milk from the fridge.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Kohaku nudged Shin. "Oh yea. We were sent on a mission to river country. A lot of flooding had been happening in the area. Our mission was to rescue people, and of course we ended up fighting the... stuff..." The boy pointed to the scroll "that must have set the flooding off"
"It caused an.... our sensei called it an elemental.... which was a big blob of water to start attacking people."
"And we had to fight one."

[GM]
She blinks again. "A little more eloquence would help."
"This circle caused a mass of water to come alive, and you had to fight it, then."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Something like that..."
"In any case, we need it translated."

[GM]
"Well, let's go, then." she adds a bit of sugar, and leads the way out, asking questions along the way.
"Was the element...al? Was it standing on the circle the entire time, or could it move away from it?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"It could move freely. Honestly, we can't yet say for sure that the circle was the source of it."

[GM]
"Hm." she nods to herself.
The pacing becomes more intense, as you turn the corner.
Suddenly, she stops at a seemingly random door, knocks politely, and enters. Two Nara men can be seen inside, having a back-and forth as they organize some sort of a database in their computers. They turn to your group.
"Hello, I have a script from Snake Country here, that I would like to have translated." she hands the scroll over, and one man takes it, while the other goes to take a book from a small library of leather-bound books.
Books, not scrolls.
The scroll is spread out, and the letters and words are found in the hand-written dictionary, bit by bit.
"Nobody can really speak this, here." the shorter-ponytailed one tells you. "If you want a good cross-reference, though, have someone summon a snake for you."
"Their mountain is in those parts. It's their native language."
The other man complains: "This seems really archaic."
"One: By becoming one with the nature, we become a force."
"...Two: In accepting the nature's imperfections, we become perfect." he flips the pages of the book rather fast, but the translation still takes time.

[Sakurai Eiha]
At this new development, Eiha tilts her head slightly with some curiosity. She had been remaining uncharacteristically quite on purpose due to the words spoken earlier, but this was quite the interesting turnabout...

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin opened his mouth, but then closed it. It was obvious that something big was happening.

[GM]
"Three: Perfection cannot last, as long as one holds onto their soul."
"Four: In releasing our souls, we become free."
"Five: There cannot be a true force without freedom."
he looks at the circle on the scroll. "That's it. It's written on the insides, like that?"
"Then it loops back into the first verse."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What could it mean...?"

[GM]
"I think I know." Mai says.
"It’s for a ritual that lets human souls pass into an elemental construct."
"Say, have you found any bodies around the circle?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"So... that blob of water had a person inside of it?"
Shin rubbed his chin.... not that I could remember...

[GM]
"Most likely."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We didn't find any bodies during our excursion to River country, but..."

[GM]
"...Although if someone was THAT skilled, they could probably bring a soul sealed already."
"Say, in a tag."
"All the wetwork done beforehand."
"...but?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"...But we know for a fact that several people were killed during our mission at that inn."
"And until now, we had nothing to explain the motives."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"There were big rats we had to fight there"

[GM]
"It would be really hard to make that sort of a thing self-sustaining." Mai explains. "Unless you had something that worked as a chakra anchor."
"Having it be a person is a disappointingly simple way to go about it."
"I’m sure everyone else who studied this with you has hoped it's some sort of a remotely controlled weapon of mass destruction that they could just leave and have it grow."
"If there is a person in there, it's going to be much harder to control. Only good for causing mayhem."

[Aburame Shinji]
"They did use tags."
Shinji takes them out of his pocket and gives them to Mai.

[GM]
She takes it, and inspects it.
"Water-proof, I see."
"Ah, I’ll have to spend days taking it apart. This is more complicated than the circle." she compains. "But at least it's something familiar, even though it still has exotic influences."
"Whoever did this has understanding of both our techniques and the western ones. They might not be that difficult to find." she hides the tag in her coat.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Not many people who would know both"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Meanwhile, the raven-haired kunoichi keeps the samples she had herself held on to to herself. That could possibly be useful later on.

[GM]
"I think that about does it for what I can do for you at the moment." the scientist woman concludes. "Unless you have more questions?"
"Your explanation was a bit confused, but I can probably help you with lots of things, or find someone who can."
"Don't forget to fill out a form that you took in evidence." one of the Nara men reminds her.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin hands over his share of the tags. "Well, not many ways to describe blobs of water coming alive and attacking you."
A thought came to the boy "Have you heard of... rat summons?"

[GM]
She folds her arms. "I have not."
"But I came across summons in my life that are not formally used."
"It’s possible that certain contractors live very far away. For example, in Konoha, it's easy to contract Frogs or Canines, but it would be harder in Lightning Country."
"They might come from elsewhere, maybe past the ocean, or past the Land of Snakes."
"Maybe rats live too far away from any of our regular villages, so you don’t run into them at all."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha takes mental note of that statement. The others did mention that rats as summons were quite rare - and quite old if she recalled - the hypothesis that both the summons and the Not!Fujintsu, both rare and relatively unknown, both came from a distant, perhaps same land was quite plausible...

[GM]
Mai leaves the room, closing the door behind you, and guides you to the exit.
"If there is something else, you can come ask me." the mask moves, perhaps she is smiling. "But make an advance notice, I am not here about half the time."
"And you, Mist girl, could just be jailed on spot for being here alone, so if you do come, bring a friend."
"A lot of people in here have really good eyes, as it turns out."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I'll keep that in mind"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I would hope not to be jailed for following orders of your jonins. I've no intention of returning here unless I absolutely have to." For the first time she spoke, making little to no effort in hiding the distrust to be mutual.

[GM]
"Don't forget to make the report!"
"And, have a nice evening." she gently shoos you out of the building.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I guess its time to be boring and do reports" Shin signed, "wondering how the higher ups would think about the 'stop fighting' thing"

[GM]
...
The reports, a few hours later, are all written, and submitted. It does not seem anyone wants to see you in person today, though there could still be a debriefing.
What is much more worrying is the poster you pass inside, advertising Chuunin Exams on the wall, accessible to general public for the first time, with the date set in three months.
Most likely, something interesting should yet happen before it's that time, but the poster is already worrying.
It seems, that is, that you caught one of the really bad years of Chuunin Exams.
The one where they try to innovate.







[GM]
A month later, you've mostly been doing work at low risk, and low reward.
Then, the news of the Chuunin Exam's final form hits you, in the form of Risei Taguu, the class nerd, visiting you during your post-mission assembly.
Hachi seems to know what he wants, and so he thanks you for the day's work, and departs swiftly.
Taguu's voice is a bit more nasal than usual, when he speaks. "We're going to be making a bit of an all-genin meeting, you see."
"It's what we all agreed on, thus far. There was a bit of an, err, leak, and we wouldn't want one team to have an advantage in the exams."
"Do you have a good idea for the meeting place?" he asks. "Somewhere it'd be comfortable, but the adults would not go there."
"Kamiko offered to host it in her family's house, during her birthday party, but then she could try to make demands, or something." he adjusts his glasses, clearly copying Shinji's style.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired kunoichi quirked an eyebrow at the news, more than a little bit skeptical. She did not believe there could be such a thing as a leak with such a strict event. She supposed it wasn't entirely impossible for the Leaf to be simply that lax, but she figured it far more plausible that the 'leak' was entirely on purpose, and that the evaluators were attempting to make them dance at their tune... She crossed her arms, taking this whole idea with a grain of salt.

[Aburame Shinji]
"What leak are you talking about? Who's the source?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin was... feeling a bit all over the place. One half of him was restless,  he wanted to know more stuff about unknown seals and summoning. The other half was tired, easy missions were tedious missions.
"Even playing field right?" Shin smiled "Well, can't say that I don't want to hear about the jucy info." The boy rubbed his chin as he tried to think of a good place.

[Aburame Shinji]
"But, in any case... a place where adults won't go to..."
Shinji pauses for a little bit as if to think. He adjusts his sunglasses. "How about the arcade?"

[GM]
"It's Chadou's team." Risei hurries to explain. "They're offering us all the information."
"Huh. That sounds like we'd get notcied, but also pretty natural."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"natural...." Shin thought.... "Training? no? Food? Cheap food? Raman stand somewhere?"

[GM]
"A ramen stand won't have enough seats!" the fuuinjutsu-kid complains. "And a restaurant is too quiet."

[Sakurai Eiha]
As she listened, Eiha considered the stated source. She had heard that bloodline to be the naively idealistic type, so it was unlikely this was a willing set-up of sort, but the possibility of unwitting intox remained strong nonetheless...

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, we appear to have made our suggestions."

[GM]
"Alright, I'll add the arcade to what we've got. And some weight to food places." he agrees.
"I'll get back to you about it tomorrow!"
With that, he leaves you to recover from your hardly straining assignment.
...
It turns out the next day, that the meeting would be held in the arcade on the weekend, to which there remains one more day. Kazuma has insisted that there is a somewhat quiet canteen, where you'd be able to talk, though the food there can be a bit expensive.
On the decided day and time, which is somewhat early afternoon as there seems to be a lot to discuss, the arcade greets you with the usual noise. It seems that in order to reach the canteen, you'll have to go all the way through. 'Near the soundproof darts rooms' has been specified.
Even back here, it is kind of crowded, but the music is a little more distant. Half the genin are already here when you arrive.
The first thing you can notice is that the girls are looking quite uncomfortable sitting here, with the exception of Raiko, the tall strong girl on Chadou's team, who seems to like the place.
Kamiko, Jin, and person with an embroided leather mask are sitting around one small circular table, the white-haired girl clearly annoyed at having people refuse her invitation.
Chadou and the two girls sit around another one, the boy waving at you. As for Seika, the shy girl, this is clearly not her kind of place.

[Aburame Shinji]
"No self-respecting adult will stumble into us here." Shinji has looked quite uncomfrotable ever since he stepped foot into the arcade, but he says so with confidence.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That leaves those with slightly less self-respect.~"

[GM]
"That’s the hope." Jin says, though the music has him uncharacteristically raise his voice.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Good thing we are kids with no self-respect!"

[GM]
You can see the fourth team enter the canteen now, lights from afar still reflecting on their skin in the relative darkness of the place.
Kazuma is walking in like he owns the place, Risei is more reserved, similar to Shinji. They are followed by their classmate, Nene, who has typically been seen as the stupid girl.
"This place makes my head hurt!" she complains. "So much flashing!"(edited)
"If I ever get into Genjutsu, I’ll make it simulate this place." Risei adds his bit. "No way the opponent would be able to focus on anything."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I remember hearing something about how some blind ninjas fight with only their hearing. That would get rid of the flashing light problem" Shin pauses "But these machines are noisy..."

[GM]
People seem to have already ordered some drinks, and Jin seems to be eating some rather unprofessionally made udon. For most, it's tea or lemonade, though.
They sell alcohol, but not to you! Unless you change into an adult, with a simple trick.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji orders nothing, and although he looks the most like he wants to get out of the place, his complaints remain unvoiced.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Likewise, Eiha orders naught and remains quiet, mostly just waiting to see if this is going to go anywhere interesting or if it was all a big sham.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Ah man!" Shin takes a seat at the table. Kohaku sits on the floor beside him. "I hope they got some good meat here"
He doesn't order anything though

[GM]
"Maybe something pre-made, like a sausage." Kazuma comments, sitting down, and watching the last team enter.
Through the small fly-door, Yuu enters, and stares daggers at him for making her come here.
She is notably not wearing her weapons that are normally inseperable from her forearms, since it'd be a dead giveaway.
Behind her comes the scruffy bear-summoner of the Okuma clan, Senshi. He waves at everyone cheerfully, smiling with his never-brushed teeth.
The last one slips in practically in their shadow, only giving you all a small nod as he sits down -Raamaru has always been weird like that.
He, as well, is not bringing his kusari-gama with him, unless it's sealed in a scroll, or something.
"You and your stupid games." Yuu hisses at Kazuma. "It just had to be this place, huh?"
"I didn't come up with the idea." he shrugs. "Besides, isn't it fine to have fun if you can walk the walk?"
"You could use more of the time for this fun of yours for walking more walk." she says. "Fun is for when you're tired, and you wouldn't play games well then!"
"This suddenly got more complicated than usual." Kazuma complains. "You've been coming up with it for a longer while, haven't you."
She ’hmpf's at him, and that seems to be the end of it.
Raiko, in the meantime, brings out a scroll, reading the first few lines on it to herself, in preparation.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin had to fight the urge to make a circular motion to just get on with it.
But it looked like things where starting now.
The sooner it started the sooner they could go to a place with real meat!

[GM]
"This is something Seika came to me with, and Chadou insisted we share it." she says "So you can thank him for that."
It does not seem to occur to her that she is embarassing the timid girl, as she usually does.
"Uhh... so, let’s see."
"This year’s Chuunin Exams are, not for the first time but kind of uniquely, going to be made into a show for the public."
"This should seem like a retarded idea to any nin with half a brain, but we’ll get there."
She looks back into the scroll, to confirm something.
"Right. It has five parts to it, the first being a written exam, as usual."
Chadou speaks up. "Here is a weird thing about written exams, I looked into it. There are people who have failed the written exams, and dropped out of the Chuunin Exams there. They were relatively smart, too."
"There are also Jounin out there who don’t know the first thing about genjutsu or fuuinjutsu. There is probably already a trick in the written exam, is all I am saying!"
"Alright, so, the next four parts are set in an open air arena kind of a thing, though it won’t be used for just combat."
"In the team fights and the tournament, the stands are separated into two parts. If any participant does not want their technique revealed, they can ask for a wall to be raised."
"That way, only shinobi, who would sit lower down, would see it, and the folk will have to sit it out."
"However, our performance in combat is rated in three ways."
"The first is our actual result. The second is a jury of jounin rating your performance - even if you lose, you can come ahead of your opponent if you don't really make any mistakes." she squints her eyes, to read the fine print.
"The third is the vote of the audience. Which you lose, in that it instead averages your actual result with the Jury."
Kazuma rises his hand. "But if you lose, wouldn’t you miss out on points because you don't go on in the tournament?"
Seika nods. "There is, there is a score system the whole way through. I don’t know how it works precisely. You would think winning or losing would not give you very different scores."
"But it lets someone like me gather points in the written exam, even if I am going to lose in combat."
Raiko laughs, slapping her on the back with her meaty arm. "You won’t! We all believe in you!"
"You’re sure to get the audience's vote." Jin says, seriously.
"I kind of like it!" Yuu exclaims. "Normally you wouldn't get points for getting the crowd, but if your Nindo is strong enough, then...!"
"I hate it." Kamiko says bitterly. "If I let folk see my Kekkei Genkai, I'll have to crawl home through seweres after every mission."

[Aburame Shinji]
"It's interesting... What are the other two parts?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha leaned back as she listened, somewhat split on this news. Assuming it was true, of course. It was simple common sense that one would want to avoid their techniques being revealed in such a world in which surprise was often a decisive factor in victory, yet at the same time... there could be some advantages to the other way around.. and she wasn't talking about merely pleasing a trivial crowd in some set-up evaluation... She allowed herself the faintest hint of a smirk, mulling over a little bit of an idea...

[GM]
Risei follows up on that thought. "Yeah. Written, Solo tournament, and team fights?"
"This scroll is a preliminary draft from the press." Raiko explains. "It does not have everything."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"That's a lot of stuff to prove"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"This was actually for public release?"

[GM]
"Written is number one, solo tournament is number two - it specifies sixteen participants, which is weird, because there's fifteen of us."
"Maybe Sahara is going to come back from Mist!" Nene suggests.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Secret challanger!"

[GM]
Purging the very thought, Raiko gives Eiha a response. "It does seem that way."
"But we don’t know when it was slated to come out."
"Number four currently has ’public cooking competition', which doesn't seem right."
"They totally just put that in to make us freak out and study cooking techniques for a month!" Chadou laughs heartily.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired girl glanced left and right, taking in the expression of others. "I was expecting deceit, but this is way too obvious. So obvious that in and of itself it's suspicious."

[GM]
"Number four has obstacle course, with no details either. I guess it’s still being built." Raiko finishes.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Cooking...." Shn thought "What other uses of cooking are there? Interrogation? 'Cooking' the target?"

[GM]
"Well, how do you build an obstacle course without making it too easy for taijutsu guys?" Kazuma wonders. "It would make sense if they're still coming up with it."(edited)

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Poison."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Your grim"

[GM]
"Ah." Raiko's mouth opens, and closes.
"That would make plenty of sense."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha allowed herself a smirk. "Now now, don't be a bummer because you're still sore about that one time. It's part of the job~ "

[GM]
"Maybe it’s cooking us!" Senshi, the bear guy, says. "Like the obstacle course is all about the defenses of the body, and the being cooked course is about the defenses of the spirit."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Where did you get this information, Seika?"

[GM]
"One of my uncles works at the print." she explains. "He brought it to me because he thought I could use every advantage."
"But here we are." she looks into her cup of tea.
"It’s really likely that he only got to it to begin with because they wanted this to happen." Risei tries to cheer her up. "Senseis have been acting all weird."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's been my hunch since the start."

[Aburame Shinji]
"The cooking competition makes this hard to believe."
"We're just being made fun of."

[GM]
"Something tells me that the cooking challenge is just a codename for something really spicy." Raiko says again. "Niten-sensei said that in THEIR exam, they were caught in a room that floated on lava."
"And the challenge was getting out of it!"
"You could read that as being cooked alive.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"It's going to keep me up all night guessing"

[GM]
"Well, it’s in a month and some." Raiko muses. "You’ll have long enough to strain your brain."
"I really do hope we get some new information." Kazuma says.
"To be fair, there is a stadium being built in the outskirts." Senshi says suddenly.
"It’s pretty big! The Hokage himself has made the base for it with his mokuton, but it needs some finer work to be a real building."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I am surprised it sounds like they're making it a competition, though..."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I'm not."

[GM]
"Chuunin exams are all about convincing the senseis that your training is complete." Chadou nods wisely, agreeing with Shinji. "There should be years when everyone passes."
"Considering elemental match-ups and the way shinobi warfare is sometimes, you shouldn't get disqualified if you fell behind others, it's supposed to depend on what you actually did."
"The tournament has always been a show." Kamiko, apparently already a bit clued in from her family, insists. "But only for ninja."
"And it was the part that mattered the least!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha couldn't help but let out a slightly crooked chuckle at that. "The way Shinobi warfare is, I'd sooner say you're lucky you're only getting disqualified. War isn't fair." She stated a bit ominously, leaning back in her seat.

[GM]
Chadou unbuttons the highest bit of his collar, suddenly feeling a little hot.
"Ooof!"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"We are supposed to put on a show for the peope who hire us"

[GM]
"Smartest take thus far." Raamaru says suddenly, having been silent up until now. "I guess being in a clan helps with seeing that perspective."

[Aburame Shinji]
"How long will the exams take?"

[GM]
"The date is..." Raiko squints her eyes again. Perhaps the big girl could use glasses. But does it make her weaker against Genjutsu, or stronger?
"Over three days."
"Written and team fights almost definitely on the first. The point of proper tournament being last might be to let us recover."
Jin nods slowly. "So if cooking exam is real, it might be something we can do while recovering from wounds. Since it comes the day after the team fights."
Raiko adds the specific date, though it's also noted to be prone to change.

[Aburame Shinji]
"So after the team fights, there will be only two days to rest?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I guess we better hope it's just the exams and we don't get invaded... or something"

[GM]
"I imagine you get Medical nin help." Yuu speaks up. "It might take them two days if you suffer some really nasty injuries."
"Yeah, I’ve been worried about that, Shin." Chadou laughs. "It's crazy how often that happens!"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, if the information is true, I can't say much has changed. I'll just need to train until the time comes."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yea."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's something we can agree on."

[GM]
...
The party goes on for a bit longer, with people slowly excusing themselves one by one, once it's clear all information has been shared - starting with Raamaru, and Yuu.
Seika and Risei leave soon after, followed by Mumei. Nene seems to be pestering Kazuma to show her around the arcade, much to his dismay, seeing that Yuu could take that wrong.
You can tell that Chadou,  Kazuma, and also Senshi really want to be around people, nobody wanting to be around the last of those nonwithstanding. The rest mostly stays out of politeness, or leave one by one turning this into a gathering of genin, but not all the genin.
The weekend day slips into a warm night eventually, and you eventually slip into your beds, at one house on another.
All you can see is a group of drunk jounin laughing around a table at a wholly different sort of public gathering enterprise. Because that is, almost definitely, what happened.
···
(For now, you each get two downtimes! More things may happen before the exams, however, so don't think you have all the BP you're going to have.)

[GM]
(You also gain 3 resources, as payout for the mission in Land of Rivers! It took a while to get cashed in.)






[GM]
The Chuunin exams draw closer, and you can only watch the arena built beyond Konoha's walls with increasing uncertainity.
Exactly when you start feeling like having some real field practice at last, Hachi comes to you with a mission, which seems to be decent.
"A village to the east is having a festival, and it seems they require guards."
"Apparently, they had a lot of their supplies stolen by rats, so they want to hold onto what’s there. Rats worth calling Ninja for, doesn't that ring a bell?" he laughs.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Both Shin and Kohaku look at each other.
"Oh no" Shin moans

[GM]
"They still just think it's Genin worthy, though, so there you go. I'm coming with you, though I won't be there for the festival itself."

[Sakurai Eiha]
At the mention of guard duty, Eiha's first thought had been to surmise that if shinobi were being called in, the organizers had reasons to expect at least a troublesome level of danger. She did not expect a vengeance of the demi-human creatures from before, whom had been said to be extremely rare, though. Something quite odd was afoul.... that could be interesting.

[GM]
"I am not saying I picked out this one because it seemed like you could redeem yourself in my superior’s eyes, alright?”
"Just every day, giant rat cleanup."

[Aburame Shinji]
"You said you won't be there for the festival?"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"festivals mean food"

[GM]
"I’ll help you investigate first." he nods. "There is a little something that should be done further east, at that particular date, but I can put it off if your mission needs it."
"This means we are coming two days early, so that you can familiarize yourself with the village. They will still want you to catch thieves in stalls, like real security!"
"It might give you enough time to investigate where the food went. If it ends up tying into that River Country job as it might, then I think I will stay." Hachi concludes, in contentment with himself.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The news of genuine D-rank drivel, however, does dampen her enthusiasm somehow, so the kunoichi hopes the obvious connection will present itself sooner than later as she ponders how it might do so.

[GM]
It is difficult to tell whether this is local dialect, or whether he is making fun of you.
"I am the local kokushi, Madara Houtarou."
"Madara being a local title."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, I suppose that's to be expected, considering your history..."
"I am Aburame Shinji."
"We should discuss the mission."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yea, we should"

[GM]
"Ahh, you call it a mission." he makes a difficult expression. "While I appreciate that kind of seriousness, we really just need to reinforce our militia."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Do you hire ninjas every year..."

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired kunoichi's left eye twitched ever so slightly, but she said nothing. She had remained quiet so far for a reason anyway.

[GM]
"Because everyone will be getting drunk the day after tomorrow, and there have to be some people who take care of things in the meantime. Most of the militia here is drafted from neighboring villages, letting us celebrate in peace."
"We usually don’t, it's just that this year, we are a little tight on supplies. The farmers claim that rats have stolen their rice and wheat."
"JUST in the month in which they would be taxed in those, to benefit the festival."
"I suspect embezzlement. But seeing that you won't have much to do, perhaps you could talk to them?"
"Perhaps make some rounds around the farms, and see if their stories even paint a whole picture." he wonders.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"We have encountered some very naughty and smart rats." Shin said "We will see what we can find out"

[GM]
"One will describe a swarm of rats consuming the rice in a flash, one describes a rat as large as a man picking up the sack, and running with it! You cannot trust these people. They are not getting that easy, thee tax will have to be paid eventually."
The young man scratches his shaved head, searching for lost thoughts.
"But we need it this month, not the next."
"If you could find the lost food and drinks - some of them have an agreement to pay in sake, too - that would help. But I really think they have come up with the big story together."
"We cannot execute all of them, they think! But you will show them what's what, am I right?" the kokushi laughs, less formally now.


[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji doesn't share the enthusiasm at all, or at least appears not to, what with his tall collar covering most of his face. "The people you sent to hire us... Were they peasants?"

[GM]
He blinks. "I sent one of my trusted advisors with a message to Konoha, a week ago."
"Why do you ask?"
"I suppose technically, he is a peasant."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, then it's convenient. We'd like to start the investigation by speaking with him."

[GM]
"He just came back yesterday." the kokushi responds. "Though it baffles me, why him."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Sounds a good start"

[GM]
"You can ask the guards for Kanri, he lives close to the town square. Usually, delivers letters across the city." you are given directions.
"It’s probably across the square from here, to the right, but I am not sure of the particualr house."
He adjusts his sitting posture.
"Before the festival, when the stalls are built, do not forget to report here, even if you are busy."
"I will have important orders for you then, but it depends on whether certain stalls are selling, or not."
"There may be jewelry at sale, for example. That would require someone to be there constantly."


[Aburame Shinji]
"...Very well. Will that be all for now?"

[GM]
He looks at the ceiling. "Do you have a place to stay yet?"
"If not, you can stay over at the militia barracks, though it’s a little rowdy.”
"There are also inns, which we may have paid for you if the barracks do not work out, but we still imagine it would be the best if you stayed with the militia."
"It should help you get into their rythm."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"You'll want to save money" Shin muttered under his breath

[GM]
His eye twitches.


[Aburame Shinji]
"...We have a kunoichi among us. I don't think the barracks would be entirely appropriate."

[GM]
"I see."
"Then I will arrange for one of the inns." he exhales. "Stop by again, in the evening."
"But you should visit the barracks as well."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"To know who we will be working with at least"

[GM]
"Exactly. That should be all, now." his gaze returns to his scrolls.


[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji nods and takes his leave.

[GM]
From the warm initial atmosphere, you are leaving the room quite cold.
Hachi is already waiting, not saying anything until you get out of the building.
"That was a bit dangerous, Shin. But I think that calling him greedy got to him. That's why you get the inn."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"He may not be as willing to be cooperative in the future, though."

[GM]
He whistles, staring at the top floor of the builidng, as you make some distance from it.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, I guess we better find this advisor person"

[GM]
"I liked how he did not consider himself a peasant." *Hachi notes. "But that sort of talk is not something you want to bring up on job."

[Aburame Shinji]
"It doesn't seem like he'll be much help in this investigation."
"This advisor, on the other hand, at least seems to take the problem seriously enough to hire ninja to deal with it."

[GM]
"I liked your thinking there, Shinji." the teacher points out. "Since the official letter would not include the whole rat business, the only way we could know of it is that the courier brought it up."
Hachi approaches a man with a yari, overlooking the construction of what seems to be a house for kids to play in, and exchanges a few lines, back and forth, about Kanri the courier.
He returns, guiding you to the house in question. "Since it’s a courier, they may not be at home."
"But the guard seemed to like them, so that’s good."
Once you leave the square, Hachi counts the houses on the left side of the street, until you hit the seventh. Indeed, it has a small sign you may have missed.
KANRI HIBASHITA
POSTING SERVICE
DAIMYO-APPROVED
The house is a bit large, and has a courtyard with a stagecoach parked in it. There are some hoofprints in the dirt, suggesting that the smaller building in the back may be stables.
Since the gate is open, entering is easy enough, but nobody seems to be around.
The building itself, however, has a pretty nice knocking chain in front of its solid-looking front door.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji goes to knock on the door.

[GM]
A bit of nothing, and quick footsteps can be heard inside. Part of the door slides open, letting you see through to the hallway, and then you can hear a piece of furniture being moved.
Standing on it, part of a young girl's face appears in the rectangular opening. "Kanri Hibashita’s courier service... eh, were there guests today?"
"What are you here for?"
She is presumably confused by your appearances, going by the borders of the opening, to get all the angles.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'd like to speak with Kanri Hibashita. Is he here?"

[GM]
"Uhhh, yeah. He's asleep. I just thought you had a letter here, or something."
"Could just shove it through. I’ll go wake him up!" she exclaims, slamming the opening shut.
Some uneven steps can be heard echoing through the building, before the house's owner comes down. You can hear him first pushing the chair that the girl stood on out of the way.
The door reveals a sleepy boy, who can't be more than sixteen, his hair ruffled like a bird's nest. His kimono is only half on.
"You’ll have to excuse me, I just came back from - oh."
"You’re ninja."
"THE ninja!"
He is woken up by the revelation, and makes an attempt to redress himself properly. "You can come in, or something. Hibiki, can you make tea, or something?"
The little girl shouts "Yup, I kept the stove on!" and gets started on it.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin chuckled "THE ninja" He adjusted his headband "That's not something you hear everyday."

[GM]
"I mean, the ninja that we sent for, to deal with the rat plague."
"I was pretty proud of my role in that, you know? But now I am worried, if you are coming to me directly, or something."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'd like to discuss the situation here." Shinji enters the house.

[GM]
"There is uh, a bunch of rats, basically." He sits down on a pillow, at the head of a low table, common in rural areas.
"They have been acting like bandits for the last two weeks."
"Peasants insist that Ninja need to be called in. Some have already pooled some money to call people in from the Mist."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Actually, we've just finished discussing this mission with the kokusho, and he's of the opinion that it's all a made up story."

[GM]
"I tried to convince the Kokushi to send for Ninja as guards, but it seems you saw through what he didn't see through."

[Aburame Shinji]
"But you seem fairly convinced. May I ask why?"

[GM]
"He's really thick headed, for not being much older than me..."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, we have encountered some very smart and big rats"

[GM]
"I talk to a lot of people." he shrugs. "If peasants are sending for ninja on their own, they are serious about it."
"I’ve also heard stories from some of the guys, who tried to form a mob, and catch the rats stealing. That happened a few days ago."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Not a fan of Mist I take it, if they wanted to contact that village, but you decided to go to the West instead."

[GM]
"The city is more culturally oriented to the west." he explains to Eiha. "The farmers, more to the east, just to spite the city folk, really."
"Anyway, the trap."
"They said there was a big rat-woman, who made their muscles hurt, while other rats with weapons stole their rice."

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired girl allows herself a small, amused 'heh'. Spite is a perfectly valid reason to do things.

[GM]
"That's how they explain why they are even still alive, though. That is pretty suspicious to the kokushi."
"So when he heard that nobody has yet been killed by those violent rats, but nobody has defended themselves right against them either, that makes him believe the story even less."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"ummm..." Shin went cross-eyed when me imagined how a big rat woman could 'make their muscles hurt'

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That -is- pretty suspicious, yes." She noted a little bit more seriously, recalling how little qualm the previous group of rats had with killing all those around their area of operation.

[GM]
"You can talk to them." Kanri proposes. "Some of them are in the militia."
"You can also just speak to the farmers. Hear their version of it. What would rats need sake for, really?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Has it rained recently?"

[GM]
"Uhhh." he looks into the table. "I wasn't here, actually, so..."
"Say, Hibiki, do you remember it raining recently?" he shouts into the kitchen.
"I don't think so!" *The girl responds. "Maybe five days?"
"It's been pretty dry!"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, that's fortunate. If the ambush you've mentioned really did take place, we'll likely find traces."

[GM]
"Huh." he eyes Kohaku. "I thought it was weird ninja would keep hounds around."
"Big boy as this one is."
"That should be on the Kashioke farm, which usually pays with sake, but rice was apparently stolen, too. You can go ask, it's about half a day from here on foot."
"On horseback, I make it there and back in a few hours, though!"

[Inuzuka Shin]
"My clan are special ninja's who have dogs as partners" He leaned towards Kanri "Don't ask Shinji what his special ninja thing is"

[GM]
"There's almost twenty heads there, plenty of letters to go around."
"I see. That’s amazing." he leans forward, hoping to see Kohaku do amazing ninja things, while Hibiki brings the tea.
"There’s one thing I should admit to you, since you're probably wondering about that." he leans back. "I am kind of fearing for my life, right now."
"That's why I left the door locked and told Hibiki not to open them."
"The reason for that would be, that I got ambushed on the road a few times. One horse of mine is lying on the whey, she stomped on some caltrops hidden in the mud."
"Another time there was this string between the trees, at chest height for me. A normal person would walk under it."
"I noticed it just in time, managed to stop the horse, fell on the side, and then galloped forward. Someone shot at me when I ran from there!"
"That was horrible. At least I still have one good horse to do work with."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"And this happened soon after the rat attacks started?"

[GM]
"Mhm." he nods. "I am not saying it's the rats, but..."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"It seems like a different method than those used by the creatures, so it's likely to come from a different source. That's not to say it's totally unrelated, though."

[GM]
"It could be competition." he admits. "What really worries me is that it seems like something ninja would do, you know?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Where did all of that take place?"

[GM]
"Two different spots." he recalls, sipping some of the tea. "The caltrops were about a day of travel from here, on foot, to the east." he points his hand in a seemingly arbitary direction. "I noticed that the girl was stumbling, so I left her in some of the stables, paid the doctor there to take care of her, and took a ride with someone's cart home."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I doubt it. Sure, those are tools that can be used by shinobi, but an actual, trained one wouldn't have missed - no offense - so it might be someone without proper training, not affiliated with any village."

[GM]
"The second was - between here and Kashioke, actually." he realizes. "Maybe the wire is still there?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"A trained shinobi would have recovered their tools, even just to avoid leaving evidence."

[GM]
"Mhm." he shelves the idea, not knowing much about the topic. "The caltrops seemed to be there to just ruin someone’s day, though."
"Wait, maybe I’ve got it."
"Lots of livestock passes that road, from the looks of it."
"Maybe they were trying to get one to fall over, and get lost. Easy food for bandits!"
"You'd have to ask in the surrounding villages in the area, though."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Well, that doesn't entirely rule out the possibility of someone being after you. It only rules out the possibility of someone competent being after you, which I guess is still a good thing?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'll have to investigate."

[GM]
"Thanks." he tells Eiha, and nods to Shinji's statement.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Lots of stuff to do in a short space of time. We won't be able to do anything once the festival starts"

[GM]
"I can take one of those places." Hachi admits, from the room's corner.
"I am grading the performance of my students," he explains to Kanri, "But it would not do to leave you in peril for it."
"It should also be noted that when he says on foot, we are faster than that. Even though there aren't many trees here." sensei reminds you.

[Aburame Shinji]
"If there are any tracks left on that farm, Shin and I would have the best chance of finding them."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Soo... split up?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"I think that would be the best approach in our situation."
"The foreigner and sensei could investigate Kanri's would-be attacker."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Fair enough."

[GM]
"Alright." Hachi is fine with this.
"Note though, the ambush point was between here, and the place you are going."
"Me and Eiha will be looking for badly hurt livestock, and hope nothing stings our foot on the way."
"I don't suppose you could tell Shin and Shinji," Hachi points to two of you, who haven't introduced yourselves properly yet, "Where exactly you ran across the trip wire?"
"Since it likely won’t be there anymore, but there could be tracks around the place."
The courier stands up, putting down his cup, and leaves for another room. "I do have maps of this place, fortunately."
"Just wait for it."
The teacher treats himself to some of the tea, in the meantime.
"...I seriously hope you guys know how to read a map, because I'm always confused by it."
"Some more of dad's heirloom I can't make use of, yet."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We were taught to read maps in the Academy."

[GM]
"That's convenient." he responds, having no good idea of what the Academy is. "The local surroundings should be this one..."
A scroll is unfurled over the table, with care not to hit the kettle.
"This here is the city, I know that." he points to a sizeable chunk in the middle. "And Kashioke, where you wanted to go, is here."
"This should be the road, except it twists here and this here shouldn't be a forest..."
"It’s a swamp." Hachi advises him.
"Right." the boy moves his fingers. "So the forest is down here. This small wood, between the fields next to city, and the fields around Kashioke, the swamp is a bit after it, but nobody goes there." he squints his eyes, perhaps his vision is poor. Perhaps that is a requirement of being a good courier.
"About here." *he points to an area a bit past the forest's entrance. "Somewhere in there should be it."
"I can’t think of a good point to tie it down to." he says, disappointed in himself. "A bit after you enter the forest, but not a small bit, if that makes sense."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Does not find it immensely helpful and just hopes there will be some traces left to find. Assuming the perpetrator is as incompetent as she first believed, that shouldn't be too difficult. "We'll find it."

[GM]
"Remember, you're supposed to come with me." *Hachi whirls his finger over the map. "...over here? To the east."
Kanri seems to have further difficulty making sense of the scribbles and lines over there. "The direction is right, but..."
"Just ask between, uh, this village," he specifies one, "and this one here."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, no time to waste."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"lets get going and... solve... stuff"

[GM]
"Mhm." Hachi gulps his remaining tea down. "Thanks for your help."
And so, you split up. Eiha, in the end, coming with you, while the teacher takes the dutiful investigation of various hooves to himself.
Whether this was because he was afraid of letting her go east, and whether your original suggestion was in order to let that happen, is left unsaid
...

[GM]
Traveling on foot for once, hands firmly behind your backs to keep an aerodynamic profile as you have learned in the academy, you eventually find your way into the small grove among the fields. It's not that far from the city, really.
It also seems like it had been grown by humans on purpose. The tree trunks are straight and thin, even though they have grown to a decent height, allowing you to gain some vantage if you need it. There is, however, not much underbush to obscure your vision, but not much of it to hide in, either.
Having counted roughly the distane from the entrance, there is nothing in particular here, as expected. At least, nothing visible.
There is, however, a pair of trees bearing thin horizontal marks from the wire. Since one of them is showing through the bark as you pass, you do not have to look for the spot for too long.
Kohaku seems to take interest in the dirt road, inspecting both the tracks left by wheels with his nose.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Kohaku sniffed the air. "Kohaku says that there is a smell of blood." The boy relayed the message "Sounds like someone got caught... or something else"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"They did mention cattle using one of the roads that were trapped."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I guess that's the someone" Shin chuckled

[GM]
Kohaku circles the place, briefly entering the forest, and coming back.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"What is it?" The ninja asked the dog. Checking to see if he was carrying anything in his mouth

[GM]
The dog spits out a few leaves, stained with blood.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Shin looks from where he was stading to the forest. "I can't see any tracks. Looks like whoever did this covered up."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's a little bit more competence than in the attacks on the Courrier. Wonder if it's even the same person."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Might as well have a look"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Can you track them by the blood?"
Shinji checks the tree for climbing marks.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Ok. Me and Kohaku will go and take a look"

[GM]
There do not seem to be any marks.

[Inuzuka Shin]
The boy and his dog move off into the forest

[GM]
Furthermore, the mountain of leaves underneath the tree is undisturbed before you come close to it.
Kohaku seems to have caught a scent.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Yep, it looks like Kohaku is on to something"

[Aburame Shinji]
"Let's follow the scent."

[GM]
Kohaku stops at one point, feeling a bit confused. About 100m into the forest, the track seems to disappear. He goes in smaller circles, looking for more of it. Perhaps the wind is bad?

[Aburame Shinji]
"There's something nearby..." Shinji begins walking somewhere.
"Rat droppings."
"But really big ones."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Smells like it"

[Aburame Shinji]
"The elevation is different here. You should be able to pick the scent back up."

[GM]
Indeed, in the way that Shinji has walked off, the forest turns into a bit of a valley.
It's also not really a place where an animal would be inclined to go looking for anything, Kohaku included.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"This could be getting close to whatever hideout they use. The victim was dragged, they didn't walk out on their own, plus a location like that would be secluded."

[GM]
Kohaku follows you, drawing in the valley's smells. He grows slightly.
It seems he is not happy about having to go there.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Steady boy" Shin patted Kohaku on the head "I'll be with you. We will get through this together."
"Well, few things would live in places other animals won't go"

[GM]
Looking closely, some of the trees around here have scratch marks on them. That is a pretty bad sign.
Especially since those scratch marks are higher than you are tall.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Let's keep a low profile."

[GM]
Entering the valley, you can hear some slightly unsettling sounds of growling. The dirtier smells of the place are now clear to even a regular nose, while the more subdued, and less awful ones, are only smelled by Kohaku and Shin still.
There is something weird mixed in with the rot... is it smoke?

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Smells like a campsite"

[GM]
That's not exactly how the others would describe the smell based on the surface of it, but Shin probably knows better.
The silence is broken by a singular bark, coming from below.
It sounded a little weak, somehow, like the canine was laughing.
Still, it implies the presence of a cave, somewhere inside the valley.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We should investigate that cave, though it's dangerous..."
"There are dogs feeding on something large."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Dogs? I thought we were supposed to be expecting rats. Plus if it were just a wild pack it should be wolves..."

[Aburame Shinji]
"They could be wolves..."
"In any case, we should proceed."

[GM]
You locate the cave entrance, a small hole, which you have to crouch slightly to get through. It smells  slightly of smoke.
The beasts below manage to notice your presence at the entrance, ceasing to feed. From deep below, twenty meters or so, four pairs of yellow eyes stare at you.
There are also cinders in the middle of the cave, dimly lighting the camp circle around them, but not much else.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha heightens her guard. No matter how smart they might be, animals can't start fires.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"They are not wolves. They are hyenas.." Shin whispered.

[GM]
Normally, these beasts would probably flee, but you are blocking the one entrance. This seems to be a little bit of a situation.
Fightning down in that cave will also probably not be fun, considering you don't know the layout at all.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Let's get out of their way."

[Sakurai Eiha]
The Mist shinobi was obviously not standing in the middle of the way, given that they were all attempting to be discrete about their approach, and therefore out of sight. That would make her just barely peeking in from the edge of the rocky wall, at most.

[GM]
Kohaku seems to have been the one to alarm them for the most part. The instincts are hard to overcome, especially after stalking the prey all the way here.
There is also the fact that they, as well, have a keen sense of smell, even though their noses are stuck deep inside a horse's  guts.
Reasoning with animals is difficult, so you can only hope that they will leave fast once allowed to.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Watch out for something else besides the animal. They couldn't have been the ones to start that fire, and they couldn't have been the ones who dragged the horse here without leaving any trail of blood."

[Inuzuka Shin]
"Well, lets flank these guys. And leave the enterence open for them?" Shin suggested.
Kohaku didn't have that much patence. He moved forward. Barking at the Hyenas.
"Stick to the right wall." Shin shouted as he tried to manuver his dog.

[GM]
Shin and Kohaku disappear into the cave, likely as a result of miscommunication.
Well, at least the thing will be taken care of fast.
The hyenas snap their jaws at Shin threateningly, but they're clearly all bark. The question of whether ninja training can help you fight agains nature has been answered today.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Well, it looks like they found their some fight in them. Time to beat it out of them!
Lets have a show of force first
The boy shouted at the animals

[GM]
The hyenas growl, and respond with their somewhat feminine barks.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Assuming they don't have some sort of way to see through the dark, it's best to set the traps where there won't be any light."
"If they don't expect any trap, they won't have a reason to be on their guard in their little safe spot, and that'll make it hard for them to see anything."

[GM]
The valley is open to any plan of yours.

[Inuzuka Shin]
"I sorta dozed my way through tap making" Shin admitted
"Do you remember much boy?" The ninja asked Kohaku. The dog sneezed

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I have some bases. You?" Eiha glanced over to the Aburame

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'll leave it to you."
"I'll use my kikaichu to keep a lookout."

[GM]
...
Eiha spends some time deciding on the particular way of trapping the entrance, eventually choosing to trap the inside of the tunnel, and preventing the returning rats from entering the open cave proper. Thus, they should have trouble facing offense from the outside, running into caltrops, and hit by a stink bomb.
The bugs do not warn you about anyone approaching before she is done, and so you have ample time to also find good hiding spots. It could take until the evening before they come back.

[GM]
Time passes. You could use this opportunity to eat some lunch, if you weren't waiting on a tree, like soldiers.
The kikaichu and Kohaku both alert you to a large group approaching, which is fortunate, because you could never hear them coming.
The small feet of the trio of rat ninja, followed by a larger swarm of rodents, leave no marks. Unlike the one you've seen near Konoha, these are dressed in black clothing, and somewhat more refined.
The procession passes through the valley, and you remain unnoticed, as the three ratmen enter the cave.
"Something stinks!" one of them shouts. "Like pepper!"
Uh-oh.
"Someone's been there!" one exclaims. "Don't trip over this here!"
"OW!" one of them screams. "KWEE! There's caltrops here!"
"We can't get the scroll like that!"
"Shut up, someone might be listening!"
A burst of air can be heard from the inside, and the unpleasantly smelling explosions hits even your noses instantly. If it's that strong, they should be overwhelmed.
"CHOO!"

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji directs his kikaichu to attack at that moment.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The Mist kunoichi moves in immediately after the bugs begin their distraction. She leaps from the tree noiselessly and comes down hard on the skaven about to exit the cave. Despite the small size of the weapon, it draws copious amounts of blood in a deadly strike that sends the creature barrelling into the one behind it. Keeping her momentum, she spins about and slashes through a normal rat which happened to be just close by. She smirks, relishing in the act and in the long-awaited revenge for the -last- fight.

[Inuzuka Shin]
Both Shin and Kohaku took off. Since Sakurai was bottleing the rat ninjas into the cave. He needed to cover her and stop her getting swarmed.

[GM]
The rodents disappear under your blows. You remember your plan to capture one.
One of the rat ninja inside comes out of the cave, coughing in disgust, and swings his Kama at Eiha. It flies through thin air, but gives him some space to fend for himself.

[GM]
The army of rats finally takes notice of the obvious ninja, and Shin is caught in a wave of snapping front teeth. If they spread out more, this could turn into a nasty scramble.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Leave me the last humanoid one, I have an idea."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji leaps out of his hiding spot and lands beside Shin. He weaves a quick set of handseals, creating illusionary copies of himself to even out their numbers in the face of the oncoming rat swarm.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha moves in on the last skaven. She appears to be going for the kill at first, but her attack turns out to be merely a feint as she pulls out the totally legitimately acquired iron wire in her off-hand.

[GM]
The shinobi tool coils around the rat-man, as he hits the caltrops behind him with a squeak.
The rats outside, hearing the sorrowful cry of their last remaining direct superior, do what rats do best, and scatter into the woods. You may be able to catch them, but you likely won't catch them all.
You got yourself a prisoner for questioning, but there is still a tiny issue you can't get out of your mind.
There were three beds inside. Aside of those rats that ran, there is someone missing here.
Most likely, the true leader of this operation.
This captured specimen better talk, or else.
...

[GM]
It squeaks all the way through the woods, until silenced. This is a little hard to do, since the usual human method of simply covering the mouth is a bit tough to do, here.
Fortunately, as it turns out, the rag can also be used to tie the jaws together.
The grove is not especially large, and you nearly walk out of it just trying to find a secluded enough area. You might want to first catch up with Hachi, or interrogate him in the neighboring village, the city, or somewhere in the fields.
Alternatively, right here at the edge of the forest might be fine - but it's still not quite far enough from the lair, some would say.
"Eeek!" the prisoner says, through its tied mouth. If you have ever heard a rat family feast during the night, it's much worse when they get this big.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We should get back with sensei."

[GM]
That would be on a different road from the city. Though having to run on foot slows you down, he should be about done, too.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I'll keep this secure in the meanwhile, doesn't matter to me all that much where we go or meet."

[GM]
...
Kohaku goes a little crazy on the road that Hachi investigated. There are many more blood droppings here, possibly from all the people and animals hurting themselves on the caltrops.
You pass a place where ground was clearly just uplifted and returned back in short order, its texture not stomped flat, and its color strikingly different from the surrroundings. That might be the spot that sensei was to investigate.
Right then, Kohaku runs madly forward, causing Shin to run after him. The dog seems to be heading to the nearby village.
Entering with the nezu-nin might cause some glances, but you are already going to be odd enough as ninja.
From the distance, you can see the teacher out in the open, bent a little compromisingly under a horse. He seems to be holding its raised back hoof.

[Aburame Shinji]
"What's he doing?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Maybe that horse was hurt from one of the traps and there's some sort of clue on it."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji approaches the teacher.
"We've captured one."

[GM]
He notices you from the distance, but stays focused on the hoof as you arrive.
"That's great. I just thought I'd take care of that messenger's horse here."
"Since he was so helpful."
He stands up. "That should be fine, though I am not sure if I handled a hoof wound right." Then, he looks at your capture properly, having never seen one of these before.
"Interesting."
"That barn over there I took him out of is almost empty, so we should be fine there." Hachi slowly takes command of the horse, leading it towards the barn.
"You do the interrogating, of course, I am still grading you here!"
It seems to be the barn next to an inn, possibly belonging to it. Hachi purposefully does not take you to the stables.
There is a large stack of hay, where the horse was presumably laid.
"This girl could have tangled her guts if they let her lie there for longer..." Hachi lets go of the horse, instead starting to close the two-winged door.
It's a pretty wide and empty space, now rapidly darkening.

[Aburame Shinji]
"...Well then. Should we get the interrogation started?"

[GM]
The rat-man is hanging in Eiha's grasp, tied by the wire, with its mouth shut. He does not seem to be looking forward to this.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Might as well, don't think there'll be a better place."

[GM]
"So, what is he, then?" Hachi asks nonchalantly, waiting for you to set it up.
There is a stool in the corner, possibly meant for milking cows, or something. Shin brings it, to make it all feel right.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"There were 3 of them in a hideout we found in the forest. We defeated two and brought the last. They disappeared just like the one from the inn, so although they look a little different, they're certainly the same kind of summon."
"There was also signs of a fourth person or summon living in that hideout, but that fourth member wasn't with the large group we ambushed, so that one is still at large somewhere."

[GM]
"I see." He nods.
"Summons are cultures upon themselves. When they are called, they have to serve. If they returned back without serving, they would be in trouble."
"So if they come back to wherever their kind lives without a scratch, when the other two that went with them came badly hurt, they might get into trouble."
"I don't know the terms of those contracts exactly, though. This seems like it might be a pretty big violation of loyalty. If he did not disappear yet, it might be that he actually can’t."
"Well, don’t let my rambling hold you back."
The beastman is seated on the chair with the houndmaster's strong  grip, which proves to be a little tricky due to the tail. Eventually, he manages to disentangle it, though, and even ties the wire to the stool.
The rag is removed from the mouth.
"SKREEEEEE!" it shouts instantly. It might bother the villagers, but his allies should be pretty far away now.
It blinks a few times, getting accustomed to the darkness again.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha winces slightly at the unpleasant shout and cracks her knuckles a bit. "Well that wasn't nice." She gives the creature a glare, then glances over to the Sensei. "So, does that mean if I punch it a lot to make it pipes down it might disappear on us because it'll have marks to show to its buddies?"

[GM]
"That’s what I am thinking, yeah." he observes the creature.
"It’s held in this part of the world by just a tiny strand of chakra - probably being a low level summon."
"That's a gross offen-zo! I'm one of the Rat King's elite!"
Who knows if that's true or not. It did not put up much of a fight.

[Aburame Shinji]
"The Rat King?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's a shame, and here I was hoping to teach it to quiet down a little bit." The kunoichi mused with the faintest hint of a smile. "Ah well, what was that about a King now?"

[GM]
"The Big Honch-zo you know! Frogs have big frog, Snakes have big snake. We have THIRTEEN big rats!"
"You shall adress me as fourth hundred seventh-born of the Rat King! That’s real high society, you bozo!"
Hachi blinks a few times, but does not comment.

[Aburame Shinji]
"And what's their objective?"

[GM]
"Well, we’ve been open for busine-zo again for some time now. People almost forgot about the Valley of the Rat."
"Want to contract us? That can be done-zo! Endless swarms of loyal biters at your dispo-zo!"
"But of cour-zo, disclosing details about our local employer, that's a no. He-he."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We'll see about that."
"Do you know about the Aburame clan?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha quirks an eyebrow, wondering if it really is as simple as the creature claims. Surely there must be some sort of catch to it, but that's not here nor there. This is just a distraction, of course; misdirection. Still, her Leaf teammate seems to have an idea.

[GM]
"Skree." That might have been the equivalent of a burp.
"Heard it before, but no. Must have turned up after our last contractor disappeared from this world - and before we got the next." he answers seriously.
"There’s a bit of a gap there, capi-zo. Fifty years!"
"Good old days, everyone was backstabbin’ each other, and now you have those fancy villages, that's new-zo."

[Aburame Shinji]
"You may have caught a glimpse of my technique in our battle. The truth is, members of the Aburame clan serve as hosts for colonies of deadly insects that feast on chakra." Shinji outstretches his arm.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"So, do you have any idea how come there was no one contracting your kin for that long, and then suddenly out of nowhere comes this guy who knows? Did they find you by chance or something? Some sort of ancient heirloom?" Although the Rat had said he did not want to speak of the contractor, perhaps by coaxing them into talking about their history, they could be able to trick them into giving some relevant information.

[GM]
"I love bug-zo." he answers seriously. "Our clan would do work for you as carrier-zo, how's that sound."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha then quirked a brow at Shinji's statement, wondering where he was getting at. The only thing she could think of was that he was attempting to intimidate the creature for some reason. A viable strategy in general, but in this situation? Complicated...

[GM]
"Well, that’s 'cause there's this heriditary trait-zo." he answers to Eiha. "Someone was born with it, and only in the Valley of the Rat could they find knowledge on how to use it."
"So we made a deal, that they'd give us new contracts, in exchange for teaching them all about dirt!"
It seems very content with itself,

[Aburame Shinji]
"But the fact is, these bugs are only deadly in large qualities. Even more than that, one's body can adapt and become a host. But until then... The bugs do as they please once they burrow under your skin. They chew on your insides. They leave you weak, suffering, and powerless." Shinji rolls up his sleeve, revealing a number of miniature holes across his arm.
"And at that point, only with the secrets of the Aburame clan can you learn to control them."

[GM]
"Okay, that sounds a bit creepy." he shudders. "I’ll have you know, rats are very hygienic."
"Unlike say, mice, but let’s not talk about what mice do."

[Aburame Shinji]
The tiny insects begin to seep out of the holes in his flesh. "If you don't cooperate fully, I'll turn you into an improvised hive for some of my kikaichu."

[GM]
"EEEEK!" he starts kicking his tiny feet, trying to get away, but Shin is holding the stool.
"Y-you're trying to scare me!" It shouts, clearly terrified.

[Aburame Shinji]
"You think it's a bluff? Then let's find out." Shinji begins to slowly reach for the ratman's face with his exposed arm.

[GM]
"O?okay-zo!"
"We’ve been called here by a Shinobi woman! She looks like a rat, but she’s human!"
"She’s been trying to make an army of rats for a week now! Summoning them one by one, feeding them, and all!"
"She wanted to attack the town with them during the festival! Was really interested in the fire in the middle of town!"
"And when we cleared the town square, she needed us to dig! All I know!"
It trashes in Shin's arms, deprived of its ratty courage.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha allows herself a smirk. She approves of the Aburame's method and is a little bit proud of it even, but she remains quiet. With this kind of things, interruptions -even if intended to help- can prove more detrimental than anything else

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji stops his arm. After it sounds like the ratman has finished speaking, he pulls it back and covers it with his sleeve.

[GM]
The teacher seems a little entertained, maybe by the possibility of the rodent actually cooperating.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Do you remember her name?"

[GM]
"The one that got summoned first-zo called her Nezumari-sama." It relaxes slightly.
"I think he was a bit of a special attendant for her, used a tanto, when we usually use kama."
"Seemed awfully on board-zo with raiding a town, but I don't know 'im too well."
"We have honor too, you know?" he mumbles squeakily. "Frogs follow you if they think if you're funny, Snakes respect power, Crows like you if you're smart. We kinda go with the social-zo take on things."
"...which is why she summoned a bunch of young-ones to feed first, to make us feel less bad about all that."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What's the plan of the attack?"

[GM]
"I don't know that." he mumbles. "Though she wasn't going to march us through the streets, I tell you that."
"Never actually seen that town. Think they have sewer-zo?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"I imagine they do. Do you usually utilize those?"

[GM]
"Like to keep low. Forest and all is fine, too, but underground is the best."
"We can do water or sand. Snow-zo is pretty bad, but we can burrow there easily."
"You know she knows you're 'ere now, and most of the army's gone. She might not go through-zo."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Took a step back and whispered quietly to Hachi. "Could be fleeing right as we speak actually, if he's saying the truth."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Where is her hideout?"

[GM]
"Where you were." he says, simply. "Though she's always gone for a while."
"She can make ’erself pass for human-zo, so maybe she sleeps in town sometimes?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I thought you said she was human earlier, despite looking a bit... rat-y."

[Aburame Shinji]
"If she lived in that cave with them, though..."

[GM]
"She has a really pretty snot." he agrees.
"But you nin can change your appearance, right-zo?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Now the question is, which is the fake. The human one, or the rat-like one."

[GM]
"She has received the Rat King's blessings when she was born-zo. All there is to it."

[Aburame Shinji]
"I hope you'll be backing our reports on this, sensei..."

[GM]
"Some human must have sired her with someone else, looking similar - they had good taste!"
"Though the flipped knees is a bit of a turn-off."
Hachi shrugs. Everything is being laid pretty bare, assuming the rodent isn't making all of this up.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses. "With some luck, we might be able to catch this woman coming back to the cave."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"We should try to have a backup plan too though, just in case."

[GM]
"W-when can I go?" It asks, its voice full of hope.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji looks to the others.

[GM]
"Hit me a bunch, or maybe stab-zo me with that sword, lady." You are asked. "Or just untie me and let me go? Hehe."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha gave a slightly crooked smile. "Well, he did say you'd get in big trouble if you got back looking like you didn't fight, right?~"

[GM]
"That is zo." the animal answers intelligently.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Guess I should make it quick, else it'd look suspicious." She then mused, at the same time wondering how things actually worked in the lands of the creatures. From what she had heard, they all had their own customs which was a certainly interesting prospect...

[GM]
"Oh, if you want that contract scroll-zo, I could have it provided to you."
"Don't have one on me today, though!"

[Aburame Shinji]
"I'll pass."

[GM]
"Aww." It squeaks in disappointment.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I'll keep that in mind." The raven-haired girl noted before flicking her tanto from its sheath. "Best not keep your buddies waiting now."

[GM]
It shakes a bit, but seems ready.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha takes a few seconds to savor the anticipation, but ultimately makes it quick with a straight jab to what should approximately be the vitals in human anatomy. Somewhat too late, she wonders if summons like these can actually be killed or not, given they always tended to disappear with damage, but realizing that may not happen with a straight kill shot. How potentially problematic...

[GM]
"SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?"
It poofs out of existence, most of the iron wire's length clattering to the ground.
Hachi realizes something, in the brief silence. "Come to think of it, Eiha, that's a shinobi wire. You haven't used it before, have you?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I've trained a bit, but not in actual combat before no, what about it?" She perks up, curious as to why that was important.

[GM]
"Just seems weird to me that this is the first time I’ve seen you use it. I know you've trained with ninja tools." the white mane is scratched, and the topic is changed. "So, anyway, about these rats."
"It’s highly possible that they were weeded out of the shinobi world for a good reason. When Orochimaru said there is no record of them, he might have meant something else."
"Maybe they spread diseases, who knows. It seems odd that an entire menagerie would disappear from the textbooks that way, unless everyone agreed they should not be used."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"A purge? That's an interesting hypothesis..."

[GM]
"That, in a time when we weren't nearly as organized as we are now." he nods, and opens the barn's door, letting light back in.
It also reveals a few townsfolk staring at it dumbly, some wielding pitchforks.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Maybe their 'King' tried to do something that upset the other animals. It could be them who had a beef with them, not necessarily just Shino--" She glances at the townsfolk. "Well that's just cute."

[GM]
"Maybe."
"We are Konohagakure shinobi, as you can see, dealing with your rat problem." Hachi goes on to explain your group.
The folk take a few steps back, but remain a bit baffled still.
"I fixed that horse's leg, someone should get it to the courier." He points to her, still standing - now standing, instead of lying - inside.
Mentioning the courier seems to make them relax a bit, but your leader is already pacing far away from the awkard situation.
...
"Your plan is to stake out the hideout you found, then?" he asks. "I would do well to leave tomorrow morning."
"But I also don’t want to leave you alone, up against this Nezumari woman. A more reliable way to find her would be welcome, so we can deal with her."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"If we had some way to track her, we could probably use the scent from the cot or something."

[GM]
Kohaku barks, as if he understands just what you mean.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Ah you're back."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Yes, it's a good thing we do."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Good timing."

[GM]
You are now far from the village, free to go wherever - the hideout, or the town.
Kohaku seems unhurt, probably only having chased around the village's felines some.
"I don't know how tracking her entire way is going to go." Hachi seems unsure. "She could have gone anywhere around the countryside."
"It’s an option, though."

[Aburame Shinji]
"That's true..."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"...I can't believe I'm the one who has the most faith in the Hound right now." She gave a completely deadpan look. "Besides, trying to track by scent would be the most solid lead we've got. If she's not coming back here, then we have -no- other lead at all. If she's coming back here, then we'll cross paths soon."

[Aburame Shinji]
"We should try it. It's our only way to get ahead of the situation."

[GM]
Shin happily leads Kohaku ahead, back to the rat nest.
...
In there, it does not seem that anything has changed since your last visit, but Kohaku seems a bit confused, avoiding the cave.
"It’s the stink bomb." Shin explains. "It’s still in the air."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"That's a problem, it might mess with the scent and trail."
"...Not that I'm an expert in dogs or anything, but that seems like it'd be logical."

[Aburame Shinji]
"In that case, our chances aren't looking good..."
"We might have to wait for this woman to make her move."

[GM]
Shin is taking Kohaku in larger circles, to not much avail.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Couldn't we just take the cot outside or would that tamper with the scent? How about finding some way to disperse the bomb's smell?"

[GM]
"We popped it about two hours ago." Shin says, apologetically. "At some point, it should dissipate."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I'd expected it to have by now already, but I guess since it was inside, the winds have no effect and it gets to linger for a lot longer."

[GM]
"But being in that cave is not helping it. Hey, maybe he WILL pick it up far from here. He’s smart."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Think he could pick the scent from that hole they used to vent out smoke from their fire, then?"

[GM]
"Huuh." Shin takes Kohaku to the hole.
The dog picks up some more scents, alongside the smoke. It seems that the bomb has either not touched on here, or its influence is already gone - unlike the sweat and grime of the hideout.
Kohaku then barks, running into the woods, with Shin in close pursuit.
It's a bit disappointing that this is the direction that the army of rats came from - before his way bends to the left, where you are pretty sure they did not come from.
The dog runs on.
...
Upon leaving the manmade forest, Kohaku runs for a much further further, before he reaches a brook amongst the fields.
The brook is quite dirty. You are now somewhere between the city and the ocean, by your sensei's reckoning, though the ocean cannot yet be seen from here.
"...Either way, I am pretty sure this is from one of their sewers." He finishes.
"They said they were hygienic, so this is a bit disappointing."
Kohaku has lost his track, and Shin seems mildly nauseated, but you successfully make your way to the hole under the city's modest palissade.
As you could expect, the bars are broken and bent, allowing for a person to pass through, into the sewers.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Well, at least that narrowed it down and gave us a lead, so it worked out." She seems rather optimistic, all things considered, which is a bit ironic given the others seemed not.

[GM]
"Let us get a breather, and we’ll be fine." Shin excuses himself, the stench having taken its toll on both him, and his best friend.
"It’s not a large town." Hachi agrees. "It should not take long, going through the whole system."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"They did mention something about using the sewers to infiltrate the town.. so it would make sense that their leader would be here planning ahead routes in and out."

[GM]
Of course, there is only one way to find out.




...




[GM]
In the end, Kohaku refuses to enter the sewers, and thus Shin is ordered to go around the city, and try to cover more entrances. Your sensei seems uncharacteristially serious.
This should be the opportunity to catch the culprit, or at least someone very close to them. They should be just like rats in a maze.
"There could be ears listening virtually anywhere here." He warns you as you enter.
"Most likely place for them to be is under the town square. Sweeping the place would just get us isolated, so let’s go as a group. Now, shh."
The sewers seem to scretch further, the slower you are going. Despite his hulking stature, Hachi seems alright at this.
Up ahead, he gives you a signal, to take note of a large opening in the ducts. That seems to be a decently largely sized opening up ahead, under where the town square may be. A  whole, lit room.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji uses gestures to signal two enemies ahead.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha remains completely noiseless as she progresses through the darkness. The obvious asides, the sound of flowing water and the stench offer further obfuscation making stealth in the sewers a truly trivia matter, with every single sense being disturbed to a smaller or greater degree. That said, though, once they get out of it the pendulum will swing and the stench that will have attached to them will make them far more easily detected. They would need to settle things here and avoid having to pursue anyone or anything to the surface.

[GM]
As you move up close, you get a decent view of at least a part of the room. It's lit by fresh torches, placed there doubtless by no one else than the rat-woman staring at the ceiling.
More accurately, she seems to be watching her minion, who is doing something up there.
Every now and then, she looks all around the room's corners. She is not at all at ease.
It's possible she already knows of you.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji puts his palms on the sewer floor. Black bugs creep down his arms and begin to silently crawl across the room.

[GM]
"...Seriously, all of them, just like that?" her voice is a bit nasal, but still much more human-like than the rats.
Upon closer inspection, the ceiling features a circular stone, almost as wide as the whole ceiling. It is being upheld by a set of supports, which the rat shinobi now seems to be rigging with Explosive Tags.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The mist Kunoichi meanwhile readies her iron wire in her off-hand, planning to likely attempt to subdue the target from the shadows, seeing as they're almost alone.

[GM]
The minion eventually responsds. "Eh, don't you think this way has a bit more of a ban-zo, Nezumari-sama?"
"Those are expensive." she tells him. "Unlike you, mind."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji signals for everyone to go.

[GM]
Eiha's initial assault is met with, believe it or not, a sprinkle of rats thrown her way, and biting down her wire.

[GM]
Regardless, the wire, does find its mark, and the rat-woman is shrieking on the ground, assaulted by rats.
She eventually manages to squeeze out of it, but by the time she does, she's full of bites.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha's eyes narrow as what she believed to be a perfect surprise attack narrowly nets her a faceful of angry rodents and just barely scrapes by. As she recovers her balance, she notices that her target is being completely harassed with bugs that it can once again not really defend against. This serves both as a reminder that she should develop some ninjutsu to real with such awful situations and as a source of irritation that once more, despite her superior training and technique, she seems to be playing background actor to the Hiden users. Again. This fuels her irritation and she grits her teeth. With renewed determination to not let herself be outclassed, she draws her tanto in a blink, feigning a slice to the neck before pulling back and immediately making a jab towards the hip instead. She attempts to make it not too lethal as she is still going for capture, but the blade still draws significant blood as she swings back with her off-hand, aiming to snare the target in wire once more.

[GM]
The beaten and bitten pile of bugs, rats, and pain looks towards Eiha with insane moxie in her red eye. Her hands manage to free themselves from the wire enough to form several seals.
"Akaton! Grime Wave!"
The dirt rises from the ground, swallowing the room, swallowing the kikaichu, and speeding towards Eiha.
Hachi makes a step forward, wondering whether to let you still handle it from here, or not.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The raven-haired Kunoichi's eyes widen at the speed of the jutsu, but thanks to her own nimbleness, she manages to swiftly avoid the wave, leaping backwards through the air and landing dwn gracefully at the edge of the the wave. She grins, looking none too deterred. "Funny that, this is exactly what I was thinking about!" She shouts at the creature as she takes a stance once more. Whatever she might mean by that was anyone's guess at that point...
As she now lacks any ranged combat option, Eiha takes this moment to study the jutsu before her; its characteristics, its function, its methods. She doubts the rat can maintain it indefinitely, so for now, she bides her time, observing, analyzing. This could be useful for more than just the immediate battle...

[GM]
Hachi steps in, but instead of securing the target, takes out the rat helper, who's been hiding on the ceiling up until now. For some reason, it does not disappear.
Nezumari does not even notice him, instead running toward you, carring the next wave of refuse with her.
It engulfs Eiha, the enemy ninja rising above her menacingly.
The floor is covered with thick sludge now, movement will be difficult, if your feet are not native.

[Sakurai Eiha]
The Mist Kunoichi is still not deterred. Despite being hit from all sides by the dizzying Jutsu, she stands her ground firm. If this jutsu can seemingly keep going on endlessly, she has no ranged weapons and she couldn't get out in time this time, then that means this is her one and only opportunity, and she has to make it count. She is not afraid, as it is her nindo to control and dominate fear rather than be dominated by it. Out of a mixture of determination and willpower, she steadies herself, banishing away the staggering elements of the jutsu for a moment. She moves with another feint to the side, tanto sliding out in a flash, but instead of resheating it she quickly produces a vial and endows a purple liquid on the blade. She is done playing around. Now all she needs is the tiniest glancing blow to make absolutely sure that rodent won't be going anywhere, and the battle will be won.


Unfortunatly, Tzeentch is a dick.

[GM]
As the Weaver of Fates would have it, she seemingly slips on some of her own dirt, but lands with a perfect backflip.
"DAMN KIDS!" she shouts. "Is this some sort of a genin milk run or something!?"

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji darts around the filth jutsu with a handful of shuriken between his fingers and flings them at the rat woman as she backflips out of the way of Eiha's attack.

[GM]
She dodges a few, but gets caught by some of the rest - the blood loss took a heavy toll on her.
Hachi finally steps in, catching the last one, going for her head.
"Huh, you went out of your way to make that one miss." he sees the trajctory. "That makes me proud."
He lifts the motionelss creature onto his knee and out of the dirt, closing the biggest wound, at the same time as he disables her limbs. She reacts to it with quiet whimpering.

[Aburame Shinji]
"This one was quite tough..." Shinji looks over to the other rat's handywork.

[GM]
"I thought it was going to be a blowout." the teacher shakes his head. "But you always encounter new techniques.*
"I was worried she would summon something on you that I'd have to deal with."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I guess she just didn't have the time to."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Or the chakra..."

[GM]
"Still, good job, kids." he looks really content. "We should go get her to Konoha, though I can’t do it."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What do you mean?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha wipes her tanto before sheathing it back. What a waste of poison.

[GM]
"I am going to Mist to pick a few people up." he clarifies, finally. "For the exams."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Blinks and stops, surprised by that statement. "Well then..."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Don't we have our real mission to complete here, though...?"

[GM]
He blinks, a little too simple to realize what you mean. "Oh, right. We should at least report it back to the town hall."
"But I am worried that one of her friends will come save her. Or kill her."
"Our delivery man friend should be able to help. But there are probably still rats around."
Hachi leans the ratwoman on the wall, in the dirt, and starts climbin up, to remove the explosive tags.
"So, what do you think this big stone circle is?"
"Since she was apparently trying to rig the supports, blow them up, and have it crash down here."

[Aburame Shinji]
"It's hard to say."

[GM]
"They said she wanted them to dig after attacking the town square." Hachi reminds you, maybe less clueless than he seems. "And that she was interested in the big fire."
"And she seemed to know about us. This was a desperation move."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"I don't see how that has to do with it. If someone is ambushing you, presumably trying to kill you, there's no reason to hold back if you don't know who they are or what they want. In fact, there'd be even more reason to use this move if she -didn't- know about us."

[GM]
"I mean the explosive tags." he points upwards.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Right."

[GM]
"Remember we are under the town square. She was trying to get at the big stone circle either way."
"Normally you would do that by digging, but she also found this way."
"But she also needs the fire. Now, what does she need it for?"

[Aburame Shinji]
"To create another one of those elemental beings."

[GM]
"That's what I think." *he agrees, happy about getting the answer he wanted. "There is probably one of those circles on the upside."
"Under the pavement."
"Or under the statue, maybe, which is even more interesting. You would think that the Uchiha memorial would be a place where fire would be strong."
"So they might not be unrelated to ninja..." he muses on, removing the tags.
...
You catch up with Shin, who seems disappointed to have missed out on all the fun. Seeing and smelling you, though, he is not that disappointed.
Hachi warns you that there might still be rats around, and more coworkers of Nezumari's may be interested in the circle. In light of that, you should report to the local representative what you think.
He stays behind in the courier's house, letting you go report alone, as a show of good faith.
You walk on the pavement, now aware of what lurked below. The guards tell you that the effective mayor of the city, the young and a bit snobbish boy, is ready to receive you.
He also did not believe in rats.
His concern seemed to be all the missing food for the festival - not the clear wounds and loss of livestock, and general danger the common folk thought itself to be in.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji enters the office. "Greetings."

[GM]
The man looks up from his empty table, either on break, or merely working with his head.
"Greetings! I hoped you would be done soon."
"What is the result?" he looks a little excited there.

[Aburame Shinji]
"We found and took care of the... thieves."

[GM]
"Ah, splendid." he looks content. "The payment was already sent, as I recall."
"Fighting thieves sounds like a bit of an adventure, still. Is there anything you would advise our village, honorable shinobi?"
"So this kind of a thing happens less. Though it’s difficult, living next to Mist!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha quirks an eyebrow, not quite fond of that comment.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji doesn't seem to have much to say.

[GM]
"I suppose that’s that, then. Do your job, get paid!" he laughs with fake familiarity. "Can you tell me your names again?"
"I should record that you were hired specifically. Not much goes around here, so these things can be detailed."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses. "Aburame Shinji."

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Sakurai Eiha."

[GM]
"Inuzuka Shin!" Shin says proudly, a bit unaware of the social intricacies present.
"Thank you. That is all, I believe." he smiles.
...
Thus your assignment here neared an end, though there has been yet another sweep through the countryside which Hachi has asked Shin and Kohaku to do before you left, and the journey back to Konoha, at horse speed.
Along the way, Nezumari seemed very grumpy, and the rat summon borderline hysterical, but you fortunately weren't assaulted, or anything, this being a constantly used merchant road.
On your minds, then, was already something else: Your next real assignment, the Chuunin Exams. Seeing the talent in your class, and seeing what Hachi has said, it was fortunate you still had two weeks.
It need not be said that any sane Genin would spend those training, as hard as they could.
...
(You gain 4 resources, 3 Renown, 1 more Downtime, and 30MP! You count as Chuunin now!)







[GM]
...
It is the day before the Chuunin exams, and your sensei has called you for the final review.
There are, for sure, things to speak of. Each of you has studied relentlessly for the past week.
A stray thought creeps in: Perhaps you want to keep them from each other. The exams are ruthless, and you may even end up facing one another.
Unfortunately, Shin seems to be late. Just as Ishikawa-sensei grows slightly grumpy and wants to go dislodge him from the bed, a litte kid enters the forest clearing. You could hear him break the branches from far away, but he seems to at least have the basics of movement right.
The kid is breathless and sweating, as if they ran all the way here from Konoha. "Are you - are you Shin's team?"
"He’s in big trouble!"

[Aburame Shinji]
"What happened?"

[GM]
"Ooof... some girl came to our mansion and challenged him to a spar this morning."
"It got nasty. He’s bedridden!"
"A girl with white hair. Your age."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What?!"

[GM]
The teacher's expression grows very grim at that last bit.
No time is spared, as you leave the kid behind, racing to affirm Shin's status. You do, of course, know where the Inuzuka live. Everyone knows that.
The courtyard is littered with strands of white hair of ridiculous length, spread over a large part of its size. The servants shoot you a few glances as you pass the gate, but nobody seems to protest against you being here.

[Sakurai Eiha]
As is usually the case, the raven-haired kunoichi remains fairly calm about this turn of event, especially by contrast to the others. "Sure is strange that would happen on that day of all days, isn't it?"

[GM]
"She... probably did not mean to do that." Hachi, even more bizzarely, takes the girl's side. He picks up a long white braid, running its entire length through his fingers, until finally reaching the blood-stained tip.
"Or did she."
"Excuse me." he approaches a woman cleaning up the mess of hair. "Where can we find the kid that fought here this morning?"
"The Inuzuka one."
You are instead pointed to a tall man already approaching you, bearing impressive sideburns. He is followed by a dog that's taller than either of you.
"Came looking for Shin, eh."


[Aburame Shinji]
"How is he?"

[GM]
The man shakes his head. "Chakra Exhaustion Syndrome. The damn technique sucked it right out of him."
"I watched the duel. It’s sort of his fault for not knowing when he's beaten."
"Anyway, the doctors say there’s no way he's coming to the exams."
Hachi sighs deeply. "It’s better being held back a bit, than dying as a Genin on the battlefield. But, maybe I could take a look, sir?"
The man with sideburns shrugs. "Be my guest.*
You are led through the rather sizeable house full of dog-men, dog-boys, and dog-girls, to Shin's bedroom. He's unconscious, his wounds taken care of already.
Kohaku, lying by the bed, greets you with a kindly bark. Maybe he sensed Eiha approaching.
The dog is also pretty badly beaten, with a few bandaged wounds, but he seems at least able to move around. Not that he should.
"Who does that, seriously..." Hachi complains.

[Aburame Shinji]
"Does what?"

[GM]
The teacher massages his face. "I suppose now would be a good time to explain something."

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha pays a little bit closer attention than usual at the whole scene. While she had a certain bit of a rivalry with the currently bedridden Genin and while she was aware of the big lines of his clan's specialty, it is still a rather interesting and unusual thing, and the full-grown beasts were somewhat impressive. Still, that doesn't prevent her from paying attention to the current predicament.

[GM]
"Ishikawa is not my family name. I took Saki's when I married her. I used to be Hachi Kame."
He tears out a hair from the nape of his neck, to demonstrate.
"Kamiko is actually my niece."
"Before she was born, I was to be the family head, but our Kekkei Genkai is recessive. I don’t have it."
He channels some Chakra through the hair, making it twist and turn. "Though I did learn something similar in the end, I need to tear them out first for it to work."
"Anyway, once she was born with the white, I gave the position to my brother so he could pass it to her, and married my childhood sweetheart. That's about it."
"But she seems to respect me, and wanted me to teach her. Of course, that would be a conflict of interests, so I couldn’t do that."
"Instead, I taught Shin the martial arts I knew."

[Aburame Shinji]
"A conflict of interest...?"

[GM]
"Maybe I was scared of the real thing." he wonders. "But it seemed to me I could not teach someone in the family."
"I hoped they’d forget about me as soon as possible, save for maybe mom. Anyway, you get the picture."
He gestures over the room. "This is, most likely, the result of her jealousy."

[Aburame Shinji]
"What a ridiculous reason to hurt a comrade."

[GM]
He doesn't seem to have anything to say in her defense, anymore, instead reconsidering his life choices.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Martial skills aren't the only thing a mentor can teach. The way you're taught also impacts how you grow up as a person." Eiha mentions something she should perhaps be too young to really understand, but she has been forced to mature earlier than would have been normal for exactly that reason, so she's speaking from first-hand experience. "I'll be honest. You come across as a bit of a softie to me, but seeing what she did, maybe a softie to set her straight's what she'd have needed the most, I don't know."

[GM]
"Maybe."
"Anyway, this is not that bad for you, since this year’s Chuunin Exams are only team-based in one of the five disciplines."
"And I imagine you'll get assigned somebody to fill out Shin's place, though it does put the whole point of it into question... The team tournament, though, is a mixer."
"You’re assigned one random ally and fight two random enemies, and if you pass, it changes again. This is not a breach of information, you should already know this if you looked into it."
"It’s pretty awful for Shin, though."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji remains silent, his brows furrowed.

[GM]
"We’re told that the visitors from abroad would not be in neat packages of three, so that's how we reconcile this."
"We’re still doing our final review today, though, even with just the two of you." the teacherly spirit gets back to him.
"But, well, that’s how it goes." he gives the room one final look-over. "After the exams, Eiha will have to go back home, probably."
"The three-man team is a Genin arrangement. You will also not need me anymore. It's a coming of age ritual, after all."
He approaches Kohaku, giving him a pat. "Hang in there, little guy. In my eyes, your master has already passed."
...
You spend hours going through the results of your training, the ways to utilize them. How they could have helped you in previous fights. How you could use them against the other Genin, and what they may have picked up in the meantime. It would be more traditional had the Sensei challenged you to one, final spar, but the mood isn't there today.
Instead, a bit uncharacteristically, he catches you up on the development of your peers, and what fame they may have gained, hopefully without spoiling any surprises. It seems you are considered a strong year by the village, resulting in the whole shebang you are dealing with tomorrow.
In Niten's team, Raiko, whom you have previously seen with a katana, has since picked up a fearsomely large samurai chokuto. You haven't seen her with it in the arcade, but you have seen her carrying a large case on her back around the village.
The timid girl on the team, Seika, has learned Wind Release, and learned some tactical skils from her sensei. Alongside the final member of the team, Chadou, their arrangement is one of fearful offense on all fronts - just the way Niten-sensei likes it.
Hachi has no issues stating that he believes you would outright lose to this team, were you to fight it upfront, even if you did have Shin. Senju are not to be taken lightly.
Team 3, consisting of Kazuma the Amazing Shuriken Kid, Risei the Fuuinjutsu Nerd, and Nene the Idiot, seems to have become decent shinobi themselves, though they wouldn't be taken in as high a regard as Niten's team.
Kazuma has gotten his hands on some sort of an odd, engraved windmill shuriken that was previously enshrined somewhere, and Nene has become something of a speedy kunai duelist. She would place Risei's tags on people, so he could seal them. Since they had good chemistry, Nene and Risei would likely be left to work together after the exam, whether either passes, both, or neither.
The arrangement you have does not seem to favor Risei, though, unless his teammate can do the same thing for him that nene could. He is probably going to be one of the worst choices you can get for your teammate.
Kagamine Fuuka's team seems to be badly brought down by the fact that Jin has still not awakened sharingan, but Kamiko has clearly become a monster.
Jin has instead focused on mastering Fire Element, while the third member of the team, the faceless girl you know as Mumei, trained ever harder. Hachi tells you that she has something called the Chakra Coils Syndrome: She has never used a jutsu in te academy, because she can't.
Mumei seems to have an interesting mode of operation: Disguise and actual infiltration. Since she cannot produce chakra, there is no way anyone could possibly mistake the servant girl in their castle for a ninja.
Mumei has, aside of mastering what would typically be seen as chakra-less genjutsu techniques of silver tongue and sleight of hand, studied with a pair of Nekote, some senbon, and also does regular martial arts. While Jin is something of a regular shinobi, you are warned to take neither of the girls on this team lightly.
The final team, under the bearded drunken master, seems to have ran into some trouble. While Yuu by herself is a strong taijutsu-user, and the bear summoner will do what the bear summoner does, they don't seem to have developed much camaraderie between each other, and came to outright hate the third guy.
Ronan as well would not be attending the exams at all, instead being apparently taken 'elsewhere in Konoha'. Hachi does not seem like he wants to expand on what happened to him, save for that it's 'definitely a step up in his career'.
Aside of Sahara returning from the Mist, who is already back and seems to have become quite potent at Water Release, there is no telling what the foreigners are going to bring.
...
"...That seems to be about it." Hachi concludes the discussion. "Hope you can come up with scenarios where you are matched with and against people, before it comes up. It’s not on the first day of the exams."
Someone seems to have entered the clearing in the meantime, leaning on a tree: Saki, Eiha's ninjutsu teacher. She waves at him, and he seems to only notice her then.
"We’re called to Hokage's Office after you're done." she says, walking up to you. "The two of us. I suppose the kids can try to listen in?"
"Hrm." he grunts.
"I hope you met your deadline, Eiha." she says, hopeful.
"You picked a huge jutsu to start with."
Hachi seems interested in that, so she continues. "It’s like a dam broke inside of her, I tell you!"
"Normally you take a few months coming up with one, but she's split her efforts between THREE different jutsus, as soon as I told her she should be fine trying one out."
"So... did you meet your deadline, Eiha?"

[Sakurai Eiha]
The foreigner allowed herself a small chuckle. "To be entirely fair, I had the concept down for all of these for a while. I already knew what I wanted them to do, how, and for what situations. The only thing that had been stopping me was actually translating those ideas into proper chakra usage. For some reason it took me a really long time to get the basics of it to actually -work-, but once that happened, it was just a matter of adapting things I already knew." She explained in a somewhat humble and rational manner before smirking. What she wasn't saying was that this was also the culmination of several months of frustration. "I wonder if the other teams are going to do their homework..." She then finally mused, no doubt amused at the idea of catching them by surprise and destabilizing them.

[GM]
"They’d better." she nods "Lots of things can happen during the exams."
"We got attacked by Mist during ours. Lost an entire team of Genin." she says, since her husband probably would not dare say it out loud.

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Awkward." She deadpans.

[GM]
"So, be wary. Now, since there doesn’t seem to be a fight..." she looks around. "How about I be your final challenge?"
"I am a bit washed up, though!" she laughs.

[Aburame Shinji]
"What did you have in mind?"

[GM]
"Fighting you, of course!"

[Sakurai Eiha]
"Oh boy."

[GM]
"Though I am not fond of bugs, and it might be an awkard matchup. Maybe not."
"You choose." she extends her arms to the sides.
"Look, you can heal your wounds, but clothes are a different matter." Hachi complains, like a housewife. "You said we were going to the Hokage’s Office."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji adjusts his sunglasses. "We should really be conserving our strength for the exams."

[GM]
"Fine." she nods, a bit disappointed. "I guess I was selfish, and wanted to get some training in, myself."
"It’s been years since I last had a proper fight, and now they're calling on me. I didn't keep up at all. Awkard." she shrugs, while Hachi rises.
"You kids interested in what this is about? We’ll treat you to a dinner later."

[Aburame Shinji]
"Well, if it's something that concerns us."

[GM]
"It’s office first, food second. You can wait for us at whatever steakhouse or ramen place it's going to be, instead." Hachi explains.

[Aburame Shinji]
"...Very well."

[GM]
...
In the steakhouse, the contents of the meeting are explained.
Starting tomorrow, Hachi and Shoshouma-sensei would lose their status as teachers for the next year, instead gaining some sort of a diplomatic position. This would start with their appearance in the exams being more prominent.
Specifically, those two alongside Saki and some man named Ai Senju would have the job of modeling the arena. The arena would remain unchanged between each fight, and each side of the fight would be able to petition to add or remove something from it before it. Contradicting wishes would cancel each other out.
Thus, Hachi could add trenches and stone pillars to hide in and behind, while Saki could make a pool of water for Water Release users, and the Senju could grow trees inside the arena for aerial combatants.
They expect the place to become quite the mess as people are going to keep adding things instead of removing them, resulting in the battlefield becoming a convoluted nightmare of stone and wood, but such is the shinobi world.
It should be noted that both Hachi and Saki seem to be very angry at their inclusion in this, as they had spent quite the long amount of time trying to lay low. Tobirama-sama's take was that as the two were born in Stone and Mist respectively they would better understand foreign cultures. Their take was that once the Mist saw someone from Konoha adding a lake of ice into the arena, they would go ballistic, and would be far less understanding. It was going to come off as taunting the other villages.
But, those were the orders.
...
The next day, early in the morning, commences with the written exam, taken within the walls of Konoha. In there, you manage to meet your fellow Genin. Sahara is there, but not any other visitor. They must be taking their own exams elsewhere, or not bothering.
For her part, the girl who worked as an intern-genin in the village of blood and brutality seems to have changed quite a bit. Instead of the reasonable everygirl, she carries herself with a lot more swagger.
Kazuma tries to speak to her, but she tells him to wait with it after the exam.
At least her teeth are still the old shape.
You can notice very easily that Kamiko has been avoiding your gaze. Everybody must wonder where Shin is, but no one comments on it.
"...Well, Ewo is going to enter the room at any moment now." Kazuma comments, a bit grouchy over being refused.
"...This is already a battlefield!"

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji spends the time in silence, staring daggers at Kamiko from underneath his shades.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha herself is somewhat worried. Her blitz of Ninjutsu-related training has left her completely overlooking her more conventional studies, which she had been meaning to get around to brushing up, but ended up totally neglecting in her rush. She hopes this won't bite her in the proverbial behind. She does find the shift in demeanor of her mirror to be rather interesting, though. The changes was not the one she had expected to see, but that was a good surprise, and she quite wondered what had happened back in her homeland. As for the bitch, she pays her little to no attention whatsoever.

[GM]
"...Yeah." Senshi Okuma comments. "It really raises my fighting spirit...!!"
Footsteps echo in the corridor outside. Nobody seems much for banter.
Finally, a brown-haired man in a tactical vest enters the room. He seems to bear similar features to Chadou, somehow. Ewo, the hooded man, follows him, carrying a stack of papers.
The Senju man stands behind the teacher's desk, shooting the class a beaming smile.
"Good morning kids! I am Ai Senju, and I am going to be your homeroom teacher!"
"...Man, I always wanted to say that. A blast from the past, right?" he straightens up, despite having just given everyone a flashback of the nightmare they had last night, of waking up late for school.
He coughs, while the former sensei hands you your sheets. "Anyway, as you may have suspected, this test will be a bit tricky."
"...But just a little bit. Most of it is straight."
"We have noticed, in the last years, that students tend to forgo the study of Genjutsu. That is a big flaw in our education system. Clearly, we are not making Genjutsu studies spicy enough!"
"Therefore, the test has some spice in it, of the Genjutsu sort. Have fun."
"We’ll be here, watching you!"
Ewo seems done, while Jin is positively beaming. He is proud of at least being strong at Genjutsu.
Ai looks at his pocket watch. "Hmm... we have a few minutes left."
"There’s a question that's not on the test, but I'll ask it in the meantime, my dear adults-to-be."
"What is the Will of Fire? You can speak from the heart."
"Don’t you dare give me the socio-historical dictionary definition!"
This man has clearly never taught a class in his life.
Seeing the dead silence, the kids look around for who will be the one to bite the bullet for the class.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha quirked an eyebrow at this new twist. While Genjutsu was not exactly her strong suit, she -did- have some bases of counter-Genjutsu training and a relatively sharp intuition for her rank, so it did seem like something that she might have a little bit of an edge in, compared to those who completely forsook the discipline altogether. Before she could investigate any further, though, an unexpected question came, and an even more unexepected silence followed. Eiha frowned. "Come on now, am I seriously going to have to be the one to speak up?" She asked rhetorically with a small flick of hair. Such a band of whimps. "I've not been around for long, so I won't pretend to be an expert, but  there's one thing that's been pretty obvious so far. Everyone encourages teamwork as default, but you guys put it to another level, trying to become solid teams that are more than the sum of their parts, and -most- of you are animated by really strong feelings towards one another that make you want to do your best and beyond. If that's not a metaphor for fire, I don't know what is."

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji looks thoroughly confused for a moment, but regains his composure after he adjusts his sunglasses.

[GM]
"That is really exhaustive." Ai smiles. "Thank you, Eiha."
Apparently, he knows your name.
"As you may notice, we are kind of shy about admitting all that stuff sometimes."
"You may turn around your papers. The test begins now!"
The papers, for the most part, feature basic and advanced Taijutsu-related and Ninjutsu-related questions. Taijutsu starts with basic definitions, going through things such as the proper way of approaching enemies wielding a particular weapon, the difficult questions being typically related to area specific styles, such as arts used by the Seven Swordsmen, or Taijutsu native to Hidden Stone.
Ninjutsu starts with the nature of chakra, continuing on to ask about elemental affinities and their relationship, continuing through advanced and theoretical elements, and ending in descriptions of particular Kekkei Genkai, some of which you may have never even heard of before.
Then there is the lore segment... and once it ends, you realize you are only two thirds through the papers.
The final quarter should be Genjutsu, but there are hardly that many questions to ask about Genjutsu out there. Sure, there are a few, but, after them, the questions get, as Ai put it, pretty spicy.
[In this part, fill out these questions you already answered within the test, as you believe other people taking the test would answer them. Start with the person sitting next to the teacher's desk, going down their column, then move on to the right, doing the next column of desks.]
[This segment awards double the amount of points than the others: One for your answer being roughly correct, and one point per each answer about you from others being incorrect.]
People around the room take deep breaths as they reach this part. How are they to take this?
Ewo watches you all, carefully.
It's clear that you can pass the test with a mediocre grade at least, if you ignore or fail this part, but it might betray something else about you if you do - which is probably the point of the test.
Additionally, you can hardly give an answer of someone more educated about the topic than you.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Upon reaching the Genjutsu question, Eiha also reaches a rather logical and perhaps simplistic thought. It would certainly be clever if the questions about Genjutsu were, themselves, under a Genjutsu so that the reader begins answering a serie of totaly false questions and miss all the real one. It's a long shot, and probably not the case, but she subtly attempts a Release jutsu, just in case.

[GM]
Oh, it said, 'per each answer about you from others being incorrect.'
Unfortunately, this is not a genjutsu.
"Uuuh." Senshi Okuma speaks up, unafraid of being heard. "I don’t know how I'm going to pass that last part.  Too dumb to figure others out."
Risei answers. "That’s not on you. Odds are against us."
"...Even if we use a trick of some sort, we are doing ourselves in." Kamiko says, barely audible, unlike the other two.
She might be right. If you use a technique to share information, you are going to be giving information about yourselves to others.
And you would want to deceive the others, in this case. The ones with techniques to gather information one-sidedly, of course, will pass this Genjutsu test completely.
Therefore, no one can be trusted.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji begins moving his pencil.

[GM]
Jin as well seems to be filling out the last part just fine.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Lacking any such easy way out Eiha decides to attempt to simply trust her sense of observation. Noting that those seeing no difficulty at all MUST have something up their sleeves, and contrastingly, those completely stumped might be easiest to figure out. She also avoids answering wherever she has no idea, to avoid giving others free points for being wrong.*

[GM]
In particular, Raiko, Yuu, and Nene, the three taijutsu-girls, seem to be completely helpless. They have trouble with the test itself, before even coming up to the last part. They likely have no technique for it either, relying on their teammates.
Jin has started with the last part right away. Seika, Chadou, Sahara, Risei and Mumei seem to be confident in the first part, focusing on it instead.
Sahara, Kamiko and Kazuma are not writing at all, probably up to some shenanigans before they can start.
Eventually, they also start.
You can sometimes see a few people in the room read small handout messages that they have clearly not written themselves. It seems to be taking you guys a while to receive any.
Finally, a strand of hair creeps from under Eiha's desk, giving her a small. paper, hidden seemingly inside the desk up until now. The letter are tough to read, being written by touch in the dark with a pencil that must have also been hidden there, but they're readable.
[This is awkard but point of test is to share information and all take the B - will of fire. What do you think?]
It's a bit disturbing that she has managed to get this close to you before you noticed, but then, it was obvious she'd do something of the sort.

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha narrows her eyes with suspicion. Teamwork being encouraged would make sense, even among rivals, seemingl, and especially after that bonus question at the start. That said, people could just as well give wrong answers pn purpose. This just may be a test of character on top of everything else. She will have to judge every answer individually for trustworthiness.

[GM]
Shinji gets a similar message, shortly after.
While the handout Eiha got is given, Kamiko apparently flips it over, writing on the other side.
[For you I have NinQ26 - what is the name of family of mist that has sharks, don't know that]
In Shinji's case, it's something else.
[For you I have NinQ31 - what is the name of family of stone that has bees, don't know that]
For Kamiko herself, you both have the same question.
[Tai28 - What is the name of the traditional Jutsu of Hidden Stone, in which one covers their fist in stone?]

[Sakurai Eiha]
Eiha pauses, giving a good look at the evaluator, scrutinizing for motive. Likely, weeding out individualist Glory Hounds just might be the point. Tentativy, she answers correctly, but subtly.

[GM]
More than likely, Ewo is  more aware of what's going on than anyone in the room.
He clearly notices the handouts, and the rumbling in the ceiling as well.

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji writes "nothing" on the paper.

[GM]
It should be noted that while these questions all have specific answers, and the only margin of error would be the person in question not knowing the answer clearly directly related to them, there are more complicated ones.
For example, Risei has 'what happened to the art of Onmyoudo, exorcising evil spirits, that it is no longer in use?
Raiko has 'What made the Samurai replaced by shinobi in the modern world?'.
Senshi has 'What are the ramifications of a summoning contract?'

[Aburame Shinji]
Shinji suddenly stops writing on his exam.
After a pause, he adjusts his sunglasses, flips his pencil, and begins to unsubtly erase all his previously written answers.

[GM]
The paper is taken back, and Kamiko bothers you no more.
Shinji does attract some attention, though.
Yuu and Raiko take Shiji's example, and start erasing a few of the answers they have written into the last part, and in particular, the last bits of both Taijutsu and Ninjutsu segments.
The reason becomes quickly apparent - not all questions in the exam are under the scrutiny of the Genjutsu segment. From the numbers you have on yours, and from the ones Kamiko  gave you on you yourselves, it's probably roughly the last third of each part.
It wouldn't be that odd if everyone got completely different questions on their tests, either, but the area of focus of everyone that is erasing their answers right now is clear.
Ai seems to be smiling.
Jin seems a little unhappy, as he now won't have the perfect score, but follows everyone's unspoken example.
It should be noted that Kamiko, now proably busy explaining the situation to others, is being decently subtle. Her hair is slipping into the floorboards,crawling through the insides of the desks, and her writing is concealed by your laps and clothes, lest you go out of your way to make it apparent.
You still have a hefty amount of time to go. With most of the answers being one or two words, the two hours time limit that Ewo has set after you started writing seemed a little odd.
But, after all these paradigm shifts, it gives you enough time to finish the test. Most likely, everyone has  a dumpling in their throat when the tests are being picked back up, and away from you. Everyone wonders if you made the right choice.
Ai picks out the sheets on the top, going through them covertly.
"...The second Tsuchikage is Byakuren? Well, that’s wrong." he seems a little disappointed, leafing on through it, until he notices the empty parts, and the final one.
"Oh, well. Nobody is going to have a perfect score like that, but that’s life. I'll give you the results in one hour, so you can hype yourself up for the tourney till then. Don’t go running anywhere, though!"
The papers are taken away from your reach and sight.
The scoring system of the exams, which Seika told you about in the arcade, comes to mind. This would only be a part of it.
And the part that truly bites is, that you never figured out the cooking exam.
That's still there, on the menu.