Konoha's Weapon Mistress

In that fleeting moment of distraction, something was tossed over Temari - oil. Perhaps, with the power of her winds, she could knock the stuff off of her, but it didn't work. Of course it didn't. She needed to do something to get rid of it, but for now, her chakra was already running out.

"Tanamo will be very disappointed, you've evaded all of her toys... you're lucky she's distracted."

So there were traps of some kind. At this pace, perhaps Tenten and Temari could clear this mountain with ease. She decided to ignore the woman, and turn her attention back to Tenten.

Eh. For Temari's own sake, she would be cooperative.

"And you don't think it's weird how chummy the bird is?" The bird flew away, dipping in and out of Temari's vision with ease. It was almost like a beacon, demanding they follow.

The bird seems to take them some place, and they heard the voice of Higanbana. Tenten stops on the branch she stepped on a few trees away and raises an eyebrow suspiciously. "What are you doing out here?" She asked, making sure her senses are on high alert for any mechanisms or anything that might suddenly spring out, while also keeping an eye on the woman.

Temari did remember her, somewhat. First the one with the eyes, now this one. She wondered where the one with the bowl cut was, then they'd have a full set - like dishware, she supposed.

She let Tenten take the lead: after all, if she wanted to run straight into danger, let her. A raven cawed in the background, almost proud. Strange little bird that it was. "It's a climb, not a race," Temari told the other girl. "Unless you want to burn through your stamina at the halfway point?"

"I didn't realize a little mountain run would tire you out so much." Indeed, compared to Gai's sensei training? A mountain run was rather easy. Having to do dozens of laps around the village was definitely a lot more tiring.

The raven suddenly squawks and takes off, and Tenten's eyes widen before she rushes after it. Still dodging traps as she did so. "Looks like the crow wants to lead the way!"

"Try to keep up, fan girl," Tenten teased with a hint of competitiveness before she took off. Maybe it was thanks to being teamed up with Neji so long, or maybe it's because of her own experience with tools and traps and growing up in a forge, but she was able to see the traps so far. Easily moving around them so she could begin her track up the mountain. "You alright back there?"She called out with a smirk.

"I've used something similar before," he tells her, taking one of the scroll holders and extracting his own scroll from his side, its glow stronger than before but still unfocused. Snapping the holder open, he continues.

"Some high-level scrolls have certain mechanisms that could be extracted with the right type of holder, but I think this one is for— there." With a soft click, the scroll snaps into place, and when twisted at just the right angle, a small hole opens from the top, focusing the light into a stronger beam.

Quickly glancing behind him to check that the proctor hadn't deviated from her path, he slides the trapdoor open again, stepping in with the confidence that his teammate will follow.

Armed with a steady light source, the farthest wall becomes visible to both pairs of eyes, three narrow indents hiding buttons too deep within the stone for any human hands to reach. Even a tool would need to be thrown at a high enough velocity, with high precision. Neji turns with a quirk of his lips.

"Well, this is more to your strength, isn't it?" He hands over the sharpened pencils — exactly three, how convenient — before taking a step away from the wall.

"You'll need to stand farther back, though. The false bottom will likely open right here." Neji toes out the outline along the ground, the thin sheen of the proctor's chakra curving along a particular area.

The light covers only a small area, and the indents are almost impossibly narrow, but he trusts Tenten's skills more than anyone else's.

Tenten smirks at Neji's words and she takes the pencils with a laugh. "My most mighty weapon yet," she jests as she takes the pencils. She crouches down to use them to work on the trapdoor, but instead of heeding Neji's advice she's standing right on top of it. Her feet spread pretty far apart. She eventually figures it out and manuevers the pencils to gracefully unlock the door, and just as Neji said the door slid open under Tenten. However Tenten had one of her feet placed on the wall, and was channeling chakra into it to stop herself from having a rather ungraceful plumet.

She gives Neji a cheeky grin.

"I'll go first, make sure the path is fine and that there are no traps." She says before she drops down. Pulling out a kunai just in case something shoots at her or something while using the light to navigate her way. Eventually she feels a breeze and smiles before speaking into her ear piece. "It leads to an exit. I'm getting out of here. Try not to have to much fun, you two."

There's a gate at the end that is locked, but using those same pencils Tenten is able to navigate the rather cheap and rusted looking lock and make her escape.

This is not her room. Not in the truest of senses.

She searches the room with careful disregard. Scanning desks and files for any useful information. A loose piece of paper catches her eye. It lies slightly protruding from a folder on a shelf. She scans it, "Jackpot."

Into the microphone, she quietly commands, "I found the floor plans. There seems to be a false bottom in the trapdoor Neji found earlier. We should rendezvous there."

(Maybe he should've checked it more thoroughly, he thinks with a flash of disappointment towards himself.)

"Understood," is what he says, turning back immediately to cross the classroom with silent steps. Byakugan still trained on the proctor, he slips deliberately close to her on the other side of the wall, focusing away from the easily followed, bright outlines of chakra surrounding her body to her actual face.

Does she look bored, as though this task has no real consequences, or is she playing the part of the pursuer convincingly?

...Neither, as it turns out, and Neji frowns to himself as the proctor's face comes into sharp focus, eyes completely covered and lips set thin. No wonder she hadn't stopped to look into any of the classrooms; it seems she's hardly focused on her surroundings at all.

A faint blue glow of chakra flows from her being, more visible now that he is no longer focused on the bright silhouette. The glow crawls over the surrounding areas, faint enough to be missed but unmistakably hers.

This entire domain is under her control.

And just as his sight passes completely through the walls, so too does a single line of chakra link them, stopping at the scroll at his side. As she walks on, the line lengthens but holds fast.

Neji is reminded of that fight in the forest, all those years ago. That spider-nin of the Sound, who had brought him closer to death than he ever had been. His fingers hover over the thread of chakra, stretched as thin as the everything else, fragile enough to break, or even to send his own through the link with a single, lethal pulse— before relenting. Doubtlessly, the proctor will notice the link being broken, and if stealth is what they are being evaluated on, it would be best not to jeopardize the mission.

The moment she leaves the room, he slips from the door he had entered, returning to the trapdoor at the corner of the hall. With closer focus, he looks past the pitch darkness to see the outline of the crawlspace, a few indents on the wall that he hadn't given much thought to earlier. If there is a false bottom, it is hidden well, with no visible gaps. Confident that it will be some time before the proctor's return, he looks up, waiting for the others to arrive.

Still, Tenten wasn't going to question it. A gift horse and all that jazz, yeah?

She makes sure that she is quiet and careful as she walks to the hallway that they had first appeared in and sees Neji is already there (and Tsunade if they arrived at the same time). She smiles as she lifts the scroll holders. "Um... I found these? You think we're meant to put the scrolls in here or something?" Tenten asked as she looked at the holders and sighs.

"I hate puzzles," she mumbled lowly.

Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast.

The shadow illuminated of the proctor steadily surveying, paints the floor, it;s form intimidating. Yet the Hokage pays it no mind, dead set on making it towards her office.

"I swear, if anyone touched anything in there..." she whispers to herself, barely loud enough for the mic to pic it up. She traces the wall, making sure to keep to the shadows beneath under the windows.

Soon, she finds herself in front of a familiar door.

"There's a hidden trapdoor in the hallway we started out in," he reports, "The handle's hard to notice, but it's on the ground behind the back door of the classroom Tenten went through. The proctor just walked past it, so it's not something she'll check, if we need a place to hide for a more extended length of time."

As he speaks, Neji traverses the rows of desks, vague snippets of his Academy days floating to his mind as he takes in the familiar sight, illuminated by moonlight. He hadn't given much thought to any of his classmates during that time, and Tenten and Lee were no exception. Inaudible to the other two, Neji's lips quirk into something that's almost a fond smile.

It's funny, how things change.

His gaze still busy keeping track of the others, he feels the sharp points of the pencils on the desk before he actually focuses his vision on them. It's not exactly a concrete clue to the exit, but if anyone can make use of things like this, it would be Tenten. Neji pockets the pencils before moving to head out of the room again.

She shook her head and reminded herself to maintain focus. And she ended up finding three scroll holders. She smiles fondly as she looks at them. Gosh, how she wished she had her scrolls right now. This would be the perfect place for them. But she bets a jonin like Neji probably would find some use for them.

The open air on the roof is hopeful, but unfortunately, Tsunade doesn't have the skills to capitalize on this vulnerability. She light pushes the mic closer to her mouth, "The fence is sturdy, as we are now, we have no way of breaking through. Once the hallway is clear, I'll make my way to my office. I know that place better than anyone."

Her eyes drift off to the distance, inky blackness drapes the edges of her vision, the landscape past the roof rejecting the moons light. Beyond the fence, nothing illuminates clearly. Just how vast is this world to let such fascinating and ninjitsu exists. All the youngins chasing their dreams, each striving as if they are sure the ground will catch them. Truly, what a joy it is to watch a tree grow.

Standing, her posture fills out her form, commanding and ready. Look at me, getting lost in thought. I can't let these kids outdo me. She lingers around the stair's edge, primed, focused, ready.

To be praised for his labor by the Hokage is a pleasant feeling, if somewhat awkward, and for a moment, Neji wonders if he's expected to thank her. A few seconds trickle by in silence, which would make speaking up now even more awkward, which saves him the decision.

"...She's passed the corridor leading to the office," he says instead, hoping the voice quality over the microphone would mask the embarrassed tinge his tone had taken on, "The passage through there should be safe now." The proctor hadn't taken more than a tiny pause at the door to Tenten's classroom or started towards the rooftop, which meant she either hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, or were granting them much larger leeway than he'd initially expected.

(To be fair, that had been true of their first Chunnin exams as well. It would be nearly impossible for the half-dozen proctors there to not notice the signs of an active Byakugan, especially when that would be the obvious method of choice for both Hyuugas present, and the mirror trick that Tenten and Lee had used hadn't been subtle either.

You are your nation.

The proctors back then probably said something just as ominous, didn't they?)

Nonetheless, the proctor seemingly treating them to a genin-level task is no excuse to not take it seriously, and Neji carefully slides the trapdoor back into place — for future use, should they need it — before slipping from the hallway himself, heading for the other classroom.

They still had an exit to find.

"I believe she just passed my room," she told the others after she took a moment to wait for the footsteps to get further away to where she could barely hear them. "She didn't peek inside of the room. I think as long as we're not being too obvious, there's some leeway being given." Kind of like the second exam, Tenten thought back and remembered last eyars exams fondly. The wording had been very specific, and Tenten had been able to take advantage.

Yes, this group is much better.

"Swears are quite alright with me. They were very frequently thrown around in the war."

Seeing the two get right to work, seamlessly transitioning from rest to action, a sense of country pride swells in her heart. Guy truly has taught you both well. I should get moving as well

Tsunade moves swiftly, testing each floorboard for creaks before shifting her weight onto her leading foot. Quietly clambering up to the rooftop, she steadies her breathing, waiting with baited breath, hearing the distant steps of the proctor.

(Well, not quite.)

With a moment of focus, his Byakugan expands his field of vision once more, the flow of chakra clearly labeling the presence of each person. Tenten, entering the classroom, the Hokage heading for the rooftop... and the proctor, currently making her way towards the upper hallway connecting to the Hokage's office. There's a sense of purpose to her movements, but no specific target in mind. It doesn't look like she's actively trying to chase any of them down, at least not yet.

"She's headed through the hallway closest to both of you," he says quietly into the mic, "I'll give a warning if it looks like you'll be running directly across her. Tenten, she might look into the classroom as she passes, so try to stay inconspicuous."

He clicks the radio off, keeping a mental tab on the proctor's movements while his gaze focuses elsewhere. The others should be on the other floors, but when he attempts to focus, it's difficult to place them exactly, figures blending against each other as though they aren't on different floors at all.

We might be in a genjutsu again, he thinks, unsettled at the idea, even though it seems to purely be for the purposes of this exam. The exam, bearing in mind, that none of them, including the Hokage herself, should even be in.

His focus turns back into the room he's standing in, an unnatural slot in the wooden flooring below him catching his attention. The handle barely protrudes from the ground, but a near inaudible whoosh later, the trapdoor opens, exposing the darkened area below.

At least they'll have somewhere to conceal themselves, should they run into trouble.

"Copy. I'll try my best," she quietly whispered, not quite sure how good the woman's hearing was. And she figured that there was really no need to risk it after all. Tenten took a deep breath as she looked around before deciding to go to the window and investigate it. Looking for any clues or signs. This would be easier if she knew just what exactly she was looking for.

She supposed that escaping from the window would be the obvious choice, and she was tempted to do it. But then she thought about it. This test, she represented her nation in a sensitive mission. What if a neighbor spotted the leaf symbol on her headband? Or someone was walking by? Best not to use the window unless it was a last resort.