"You're sure he's going to make it?" I ask one of the samurai-provided medics a great deal of luck and wandering through the tunnels later. The young woman, decked out in strange gray and white robes with her midnight black hair done up in a bun, spares me a nod while tending to Sasuke's minimal wounds.
"He's just chakra exhausted. He'll make a full recovery so long as he rests well for the next several days."
"Full recovery, huh?" I tap the right bicep of my crossed arms, eying my teammate speculatively. Sasuke raises an eyebrow. "I guess I can't convince you otherwise...?"
The medic is confused, looking between our shared headbands, but Sasuke just rolls his eyes. "Ignore my teammate."
"Ah... Understood."
A couple minutes later Sasuke pushes off from the cot the medic had sat him down on, immediately swaying on his feet and leaning to the right. I move in before he can topple to the infirmary's unforgiving concrete floor and slip myself back under his arm, propping him on my shoulder and shooting the concerned medic a thumbs up.
"It really would be best for you to rest here for a few hours before moving around, shinobi-san," the medic says, her pale gray eyes flickering from my teammate to me. I shrug.
"We can do it this way, or I can leave and he'll drag himself back to the arena when you're not looking." I bow my head in deference, grinning mischievously. "Whichever is best for him, in your professional opinion." Sasuke grunts and punches me in the side, but the haze of chakra exhaustion that's fallen upon him lessens most of the impact.
The medic mumbles something about unreasonable shinobi and waves us off. Sasuke is only too happy to steer us around towards the spacious infirmary's exit, trudging past empty cots and horrifying medical instruments of all shapes and sizes. It makes sense that samurai medicine would be different than shinobi medicine, given the differences in how we use chakra, but some of the tools I see neatly hung on walls and laid out on tables are actual torture devices that Iruka-sensei warned us about in the Academy.
I shudder. God, I hate medicine.
We make it through the open doorway, a foreboding series of hallways spanning out in front of us, and I resign myself to another eternity of looking for somewhere to dump my half-conscious teammate for the rest of the exams. The genin box the proctors had mentioned before leading us off to the arena is the first place that jumps to mind, but then I realize Sasuke isn't technically a participant anymore. How does that work? Also, is it really a great idea to sit him down amongst all the hostile genin without any chakra to defend himself with?
"Yo," a familiar drawl off to my right snaps me from my thoughts, and I sigh in relief when I see Hatake leaning against a wall, gloved hand raised in greeting. "Great job, you two."
"Should have been my win," Sasuke mutters, and if his voice is a little slurred I don't call him out on it.
"I think we were all worried for Naruto when you let that jutsu fly," Hatake agrees. "Very impressive for a genin." He tilts his head towards one of the hallways and starts walking.
"Impressive enough for a promotion, you think?" I ask while attempting to follow without straight up dragging my teammate. He generally doesn't appreciate that sort of thing.
"Who knows?" Hatake says, pulling his orange book from his flak jacket and cracking it open with a flourish. "I will say that you two had the crowds in quite a frenzy by the end of it. Poor Itoh Jo looked like he didn't know what to do with all the enthusiasm." I snort, imagining the boisterous samurai warring with himself over his duty as announcer and his clear love for dramatics.
"We'll get the old man's vote, no problem," I say, convinced that Sasuke has already earned it with his crazy fire nonsense, and if nothing else determined to earn it for myself in the next round.
"I'm not worried about the Hokage," Sasuke says darkly, and Hatake hums in vague agreement behind his book. Bunch of downers.
"It'll be fine. Anyway, where are we going, sensei?"
"The Daimyo was kind enough to provide us with enough extra seats to accommodate any Konoha participants that got knocked out of the tournament. So Sasuke's going to take a nap, and you're going to mingle!" Hatake says happily.
A few twists and turns later, along with multiple flights of stairs, the sounds of the spectators drift back into my awareness. I squint into the white light of the sun at the end of the latest hallway we've found ourselves in, wondering how much Sasuke and I have already missed. I'll have to ask Sakura when I get to the genin box.
Wherever it is.
The first thing I register when we step out into the stadium is that the view of the arena is even more incredible from above than it is from below. The second thing I register is the presence of all my friends who had seen us off when we first left for the chunin exams, spread out amongst a bunch of unforgiving samurai seats covered in slightly more forgiving cushions.
The third thing I register is the weird looks they're all giving me and Sasuke.
Without breaking eye contact, I whisper sidelong to my teammate, "Why are they looking at us like that?"
He grunts. "Your face."
Huh? "I've got something on my face?"
"Sure, whatever."
I blink, glancing at him and finding his eyes half-lidded and somewhat unfocused. "Wow, maybe you should take a nap." He waves me off, urging me forward, and Hatake kindly points out an empty seat for me to dump his loopy ass in. That done, I turn and wave at my former classmates and their weird looks.
"Hey guys! What's up?"
Kiba makes a strangled sort of grunting sound, but doesn't seem to have more in him than that. His sensei pats his shoulder, and when she speaks her smoky voice is gentle.
"That is why you couldn't compete this year, Kiba."
Oh. I rub my neck, laughing sheepishly. "We went a little overboard, huh?"
"A little-!" Ino cuts her own oddly high-pitched voice off before she can finish. She takes a deep breath, attempting to reign in her emotions. She fails. "Where the hell did you guys learn that stuff!? We've only been shinobi for four months!"
I look to Hatake, but he's too absorbed with his book to give me a cue. "From our sensei?" I try. Not the best answer, turns out.
"Don't forget they're heavy assault, Ino," Asuma says, thankfully cutting her off before she can really let me have it. "Hitting hard is what they do."
"Damn right," Sasuke mumbles, eyes fluttering with the effort of staying awake. I snicker.
"Wish you'd have told me you mastered the great breakthrough, though," my temporary sensei continues, exhaling a small cloud of smoke from his cigarette and giving me an exasperated look. "Would have made training you a lot simpler." Mastered-?
Right. That. Was that what my final attack had been? The culmination of months of intensive practice and improvisation with my first real jutsu? Was that staggering feeling what it means to master a shinobi technique?
Somehow... I don't think so.
The fact that my throat locks up when I try to tell him this only cements that my howl has nothing to do with the great breakthrough. It's about my gift. "Heh, sorry," I say for lack of a better option, giving him my best 'what can you do' grin.
Some more grilling and very belated congratulations ensue, and at some point a wave of noise passes through the crowds around us as the victor of the current match is announced- Omoi, the conspiracy theorist that Samui had told me about. His opponent, some guy from Kiri, is carted off by a pair of samurai medics. I wonder how I missed those while Sasuke and I were looking for the infirmary.
...
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