The Black Leaf (Part 1)

Chapter 5: The Chunin Exams part 2

The next day we waited outside the Forest of Dead. Itachi and I worked on a plan to finished this as fast as possible. Our objective was to get the opposite scroll form another team and head to the main tower the forest, all in the same day.

"We promised Sasuke we were going to take him to the park today," Itachi reminded me.

"Yeah, we have to do this fast," I said giving him a closed eyed smile.

When the clock turned 12 o'clock the gate guard let us in. Immediately, Itachi and I moved towards the tower in the middle of the forest. It took us three hours to get there and so far there were no threats, besides a couple of giant spiders that Itachi killed with one single fire ball. Once we had the tower in sight, we set up traps for the other teams to obtain their scroll. We waited for 45 minute, when we heard a team come closer. We hid behind the trees, but they didn't come forward.

"If they don't come to us, we got to them, right?" I asked Itachi and he nodded in agreement. "I'll be the bait, then you be my back up okay, here take our scroll," I said as I handed him the scroll.

"I should be the bait," he complained, "I don't want you to get hurt."

"That is why you should be my back up," I said holding his hand, "so I don't get hurt." I immediately let go of his hand when I saw a slight hint of pink growing in his pale cheeks.

"Okay, be careful," he finally said putting the scroll away.

Our opponents were older Hidden Mist shinobi, two boys and one girl. I jumped in front of them, and they immediately got in a defensive stance. "Oh, little girl, are you lost?" one of the older boys asked with a grin.

"No, I'm here for your scroll," I said casually and they all laughed.

"Is this what you want?" the girl asked pulling out an earth scroll from pouch.

"That is exactly what I want," I said throwing a four Kunai at them. They immediately deflected them as Itachi attacked them from behind with a fire ball. I activated my Sharingan and set eyes on the scroll still on the girl's hand. I focus all my chakra on my movement and bolted towards the girl. I took the scroll from her and kicked her hard on the ribs. I could sense the confusion on the two boys and Itachi, he had never seen me do that flickery technique. I moved in front of Itachi, and I motioned as if I was putting the scroll in my back pouch, but I handed it to Itachi instead. "Shisui taught me," I said looking back at him and he smiled wide. We moved forward together and started to attack our opponents with everything we had. Itachi easily took on one of the boys as I struggle with the other one. I didn't wanted to kill my opponent and that was my biggest mistake. The boy used some type of paralyzing jutsu on me and I couldn't move. The boy, took advantage of this and hit me right on the face making me fall on the floor. Right away, he started to search for his team's scroll on all my pockets. But Itachi came from behind him and knock him out with one kick.

"Izu, are you okay?" Itachi immediately picked me up over his shoulder and took me towards the tower. He laid me on the stairs and held my hand until I started to gain movement. He cleaned the blood that was running down my lips carefully. Almost an hour later, I was finally able to move my hands and legs.

"It-Itachi... I'm... sorry," I mutter as best as I could.

"No, don't be," he said hugging me tight. "Look we got both scrolls and we can go take Sasuke to the park now." He helped me walk inside the tower and we passed the second part of the chunin exams with a record of 5 hours and 37 minutes. The Third part was going to take place in six days, so we had plenty time to rest.

A week passed and Itachi and I spend a lot if time together training for the final exam. There was only 8 of participants left which meant we had to fight two times and win if we wanted to get to final round.