Paths of Earth (Gaara x Toph)

Chapter 11: The Day of Red

Kankuro

These exams are pointless. At this rate, anyone could become a chunin. All of the kids around me could hardly consider themselves as a shinobi. I'm not impressed with anyone here, the first phase was a written exam which required us to use our abilities to cheat the test.

Now we are moving to the second phase. We were brought to a large gate with what seemed to be a forest on the other side. They explained to us that we needed to receive a scroll from other teams; a Heaven Scroll or an Earth Scroll depending on which scroll we had. The point of this was to make us engage in combat with the other teams to weed out the weak. None of these ninja stand a single chance against Gaara. It's futile to even try.

They let all of us in and that brings us to where we are now. Gaara is leading us through the woods and hasn't said a single word. It has been completely silent between the three of us the entire time we have started the second phase.

Out of nowhere, Gaara ceased his walking. Temari and I stopped too, confused.

"You can stop hiding now." Gaara said.

Silence filled the air, as a slight breeze flew through the air.

"Well well, maybe you aren't helpless after all." A voice said.

Three ninjas appeared twenty feet in front of us. They appeared to be wearing Rain Village headbands. Two of them were wearing large hats and then there was another one with scars on his face.

"My name is Shigure, and this is Midare and Baiu. We're from the Village Hidden in the Rain." The scarred ninja said. "It's unwise for you measly Sand Village kids to try to challenge us."

"Not just unwise, it's foolish." Midare said.

A brief moment of silence passed.

"You guys really should pick your opponents wisely. You're all going to die." Shigure said with a smile.

Gaara raised his hand. "That's enough out of you, you talk too much. You're wasting my time, so let's do this quickly."

Shigure flinched. He didn't know how to respond to Gaara's confidence. 'This is bad. Gaara has no remorse right now, and we don't even know if they have the scroll we need.'

"Gaara, doesn't it make more sense to follow them to gather information? If they have the same type of scroll as us, we don't need to fight. I know you're not in the best mood right now but-"

"I don't care." Gaara interrupted. "If their eyes meet with mine, I'll kill them."

I could literally feel the bloodlust oozing from him, I knew there was no changing his mind. I took a step back and continued to observe.

Shigure spit on the ground, reaching for the umbrellas he had concealed on his back. "Fine then!"