| [Jul. 7th, 2013|06:31 am] |
ANBU’s commander—Kakashi’s new commander—stepped forward.
“Follow me,” she said, and took them through the main doors.
On the way out, Kakashi saw the T&I commander heading purposefully towards the antechamber, where the four rejected candidates waited. Oita was hot on his heels. Not all the candidates were being returned to regular jounin or special-jounin status, Kakashi suspected.
As useful as Intel and, arguably, T&I was to Konoha, he was profoundly glad he wasn’t one of them.
Sagara took them down a complicated back-way of stairs Kakashi recognized from an adolescence partially spent rattling around the Hokage’s oversized palace, chasing Naruto out of dangerous crannies. Behind them, Minato’s sun-flare of chakra faded down to a distant glimmer.
“If you are called to deliver a report to the Hokage in uniform, or to perform guard duty, this is the way you will exit,” Sagara said. “Remember it.”
She stopped at a blank wall, formed a seal, and touched the plaster.
A door opened seamlessly.
More than one of the candidates blinked. Kakashi’s eyebrows lifted. Well, that answered a few long-standing questions.
The door led into a downwards sloping tunnel, which, if Kakashi had his bearings correctly, took them into the connecting network of emergency tunnels carved into the Hokage’s monument. He didn’t recognize this tunnel, but that just meant Minato had done his work well.
Without warning, Sagara broke into a fast run. The candidates leapt after her.
The tunnel cut a razor-straight line until it hit three narrow switchbacks, places a single ninja could hold off an invading force by bottlenecking them, then another straight line right up to a vertical shaft.
“Lift for injured,” Sagara said, pointing at a slender crack carved into the base of the rock face. They had those in the regular tunnels, too, discretely hidden unless you knew where to look. A seal would open doors in the rock, and a wooden platform could be raised or lowered by a pulley operation.
As they were demonstrably uninjured, Sagara did not invite them to use it. Instead, she ran directly up the shaft wall, fleet on chakra-lined feet. Her chakra control was perfect. Flocking at her heels, the candidates were just as good.
Kakashi hung a little to the back, watching his new teammates with interest. He wasn’t the only one—to his right, Ayane briefly met his eye, then looked away. Ryouma was ahead of them both, moving with a loping, long-legged stride that cost him very little effort. He was a head taller than most of the candidates, but he didn’t jostle anyone for a better position.
The wall was at least the height of the whole monument, but easier to run up without anyone’s giant stone nostrils getting in the way. They reached a flat ledge, Sagara opened a new door with a different seal, and the candidates filed out of a bush-shrouded rocky outcrop onto the training field from the first Trial.
The door sealed smoothly behind them, and even with his acute chakra-senses, Kakashi couldn’t tell it was there.
Across the village, the sun was rising over the main gate, which made it nearly 7am. Any other non-mission day, he’d be making tracks to the Hero’s Stone about now.
Without any disrespect to Obito, Kakashi had to admit this was more interesting. |
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