“Come at me.” The moment the words left her mouth, all three of them scattered. Shikaku went left into the treeline. Chōza went right, his bulk vanishing behind a cluster of thick trunks with surprising speed. Inoichi dropped back and melted into the undergrowth without a sound.
The clearing was empty in three seconds.
Mikoto stood alone. She nodded to herself.
"Shinobi must know how to conceal their movements and hide effectively." she nodded. That’s one of the core things taught in the Academy.
She bent down and plucked a leaf from the grass. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, stood in the center of the clearing, and began channeling lightning chakra into it. The leaf crinkled slowly between her fingers. She closed her eyes halfway, her breathing easy, her posture relaxed.
To anyone watching, she looked like a girl meditating. Distracted. Vulnerable.
She could feel them.
Just by the small sounds that three eleven-year-olds made when they thought they were being quiet. The rustle of Chōza's staff scraping against the soft ground. The faint scrape of Shikaku's sandal on bark. The whisper of Inoichi's breath as he communicated something to the others.
They were planning. She didn’t mind giving them time.
The leaf wrinkled tighter as electricity sparked across it.
Ninety seconds passed. Then the attack came.
Shikaku moved first. His shadow stretched from the treeline, thin and fast, snaking across the grass toward Mikoto's seated form. Shadow Possession Jutsu. The shadow reached for hers.
Mikoto didn't move from her stationary position. She watched the shadow approach.
At the same moment, Chōza burst from the right side of the clearing. He'd used the Expansion Jutsu, his body swelling to twice its normal size, round and heavy, and he tucked into a ball and launched forward. Human Boulder. The spinning mass of flesh tore across the grass toward her, churning dirt in its wake.
From behind, Inoichi had his hands locked in the seal for Mind Body Switch. Ready to shoot upon successful shadow possession.
The timing was rough but the concept was right. Shadow to bind, Yamanaka to seize or Akimichi to crush. Formation Ino-Shika-Cho.
Mikoto switched the leaf to her left hand and kept channeling.
Shikaku's shadow touched hers. The bind connected. His face tightened with concentration from the treeline, pouring chakra into holding her still.
Mikoto let him hold her for one full second.
Then she stood up, breaking the bind with superior strength and chakra. Shikaku gasped, his technique released, the shadow receding back toward him. Inoichi moved in front of Shikaku and tossed two shuriken toward Mikoto.
Chōza's Human Boulder arrived. Mikoto caught his trajectory, stepped to the side at the last instant, and drove her foot into the side of the spinning mass as it passed. The impact redirected his momentum into the ground. He cratered the earth and bounced, unfurling from the ball with dirt in his teeth and his head ringing. Inoichi’s shuriken were caught in between her fingers.
Three seconds. All three techniques countered.
But they weren't done. Shikaku was already on his feet, kunai in hand, rushing from the treeline while Mikoto's back was turned. Inoich surged forward with a kunai drawn. Chōza pushed himself up, shook the dirt from his hair, and grabbed his bo staff.
They converged.
Mikoto turned to face Shikaku first. He threw the kunai at her chest. She tilted her head and it passed her ear. He was already forming the Shadow Bind again, his shadow stretching, and this time he was closer. The shadow nearly caught her feet if Mikoto didn’t throw a kunai at the stationary Shikaku, dead center. Shikaku had to break the jutsu to avoid the kunai.
Chōza came from the right with the bo staff swinging in a wide arc at her midsection. Inoichi came from the left with a kunai aimed low.
Mikoto leaped into the air, performing a split kick that knocked both boys away.
Mikoto appeared behind Chōza. She swept his legs. He went down hard, the bo staff clattering away. Before he could rise, she pinned his arm behind his back and pressed her knee into his spine. The pressure bent the joint to the edge of its range and Chōza yelped.
"Don’t leave your back so open, Choza-kun." she politely instructed him.
She released him and spun toward Inoichi, who had whipped around and was forming the Mind Body Switch seal again. She closed the distance before he finished. Her fist caught him in the stomach, folding him over, and a follow-up kick to his stomach drove him into the ground. He hit the grass back-first and skidded.
"We’re going to have to give you more options than just your clan jutsu..."
Shikaku came at her from behind. Kunai in one hand, the other forming a seal. He was trying to bind her shadow while simultaneously attacking, a two-pronged approach that showed he was already thinking about how to solve the problem of her speed.
Mikoto caught his wrist. She twisted. The kunai dropped. She swept his legs, put him on his back, and drove her knee into his chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
"That was better," she said, looking down at him. "But once your opponent knows what your jutsu can do, you’ll have to think deeply about how to outsmart them to catch them."
Shikaku wheezed.
She let him up. All three of them were bruised, breathing hard, and angry.
They attacked again. This time all at once, no formation, just three kids throwing everything they had at a wall to see what stuck. Shuriken, kunai, taijutsu, Chōza's rolling giant body, Shikaku's shadow reaching for a second of paralysis, Inoichi preparing a Mind Body Switch as soon as Shikaku lands his shadow.
Mikoto handled them while channeling lightning chakra into the leaf in her left hand.
She avoided Chōza's rolling body with the Substitution Jutsu. She dodged Shikaku's shadow with the Body Flicker technique. Then she used a Clone Jutsu, two illusory Mikotos splitting from her body and running in different directions. Shikaku hesitated for half a second, trying to figure out which one was real. She used that half-second to close the distance and put him on the ground again with a kick to his midsection that sent him rolling.
Chōza was back up. He'd expanded fully and charged again, Human Boulder, faster this time, angrier. Mikoto used the Transformation Jutsu to become a copy of Inoichi. Chōza saw his teammate in his path and swerved, unfurling from the ball in a panic, and Mikoto dropped the transformation and kicked him in the side of the head while he was off-balance. He hit the ground and didn't get up immediately.
Inoichi tried one more time. He locked the seal. Mind Body Switch. This time he aimed carefully, waited for her to be still, and released.
Mikoto looked directly at him as she weaved through hand signs of her own..
“Demonic Illusion: Death Mirage.” A simple genjutsu.
Inoichi's eyes went wide. The Mind Body Switch died on his lips. Whatever he saw in that moment, whatever image Mikoto's genjutsu pulled from the deepest part of him, the thing he least wanted to see, it froze him solid. His hands fell. His knees gave. He hit the grass with a sound like a dropped sack and curled inward, his arms wrapped around himself, shaking.
Shikaku saw it happen. He abandoned his attack and ran for Inoichi. He dropped beside his teammate and grabbed his shoulders. "Inoichi! Inoichi, it's not real!" Shikaku released the genjutsu he was in by pushing chakra into him.
Inoichi uncurled slowly, gasping, his eyes red and wet. He looked at Shikaku and then at Mikoto and then at the sky, blinking rapidly, anchoring himself to real things.
Chōza limped over, holding his head, and dropped to his knees beside both of them. He put one hand on Inoichi's back and one on Shikaku's shoulder.
The fight was over.
Mikoto tucked the leaf into her pocket. It was charred black.
She walked over to them. She knelt. The green glow of Mystical Palm lit her hands.
She started with Inoichi. She placed her hands on his chest and healed the bruises. The tissue knitted. The swelling faded.
"You three are pretty good." she kindly smiled at them.
She moved to Chōza. The kick to his head had left a welt the size of a plum above his ear. She healed it, then moved to his ribs where she'd driven her knee into his spine. The bruising was deep. She worked through it layer by layer.
"Your teamwork is awesome. That's the hardest part to teach and you already have it."
She moved to Shikaku. His chest was bruised from the knee. His wrist was swollen from where she'd twisted the kunai free. She healed both.
"You still have a lot to learn, though."
Shikaku looked at her with an expression that said he did not consider that a compliment.
Mikoto giggled. The sound was so out of place after everything that had just happened that all three of them stared at her.
"I'm going to help you get better. Don't worry. That’s my job."
Inoichi sat up. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. His voice was calmer than it had any right to be.
"So... did we pass? Or fail?"
"It wasn't a test. I just needed to know where your strengths and weaknesses are. Now that I know, it'll help me figure out how to train you."
"So what are our strengths and weaknesses?" Shikaku asked.
"I'll tell you later. For now, you've had enough." She stood and offered Chōza her hand. He took it and she pulled him up. "Go eat. Go sleep. We start real training in the morning."
Chōza's stomach growled loudly enough to be heard across the clearing. His face went red.
"I think the food might be the most urgent mission." Inoichi said quietly.
Shikaku smirked.
Mikoto led them back toward camp. Three bruised, beaten, shaken eleven-year-olds walking behind a thirteen-year-old girl who had just dismantled them with a leaf in one hand and her eyes half-closed.
The crowd at the treeline parted to let them through.
"Nice work, Mikoto-chan," one of the older shinobi said, clapping her on the shoulder as she passed. "Wish someone'd done that to me before my first real fight. Would've saved me pissing my pants in front of an Iwa squad."
"You still did that last month." another called.
"That was fucking different!"
A woman with a scarred jaw grinned down at the three genin as they trailed past, pale and shaky. "Don't look so down, little ones. You're still standing. I fainted the first time I faced killing intent."
"My best friend cried." someone offered helpfully.
"I did not cry, I had something in my eye, it was windy that day."
"Hey." A broad chunin crouched to Chōza's level as the Akimichi wiped his face. "You came back up. That's the whole job, kid. Falling down ain't the part that counts. Getting up is." He thumped him once on the back, nearly putting him down again. "You'll do fine. She's a good teacher from what we saw."
The kids blushed. How embarrassing! They didn’t need pep talks! Shouldn’t this have been a private team moment!?
"Lucky brats," A woman said, not unkindly, falling back as they passed. "Stick close to that one. She'll drag you home alive whether you like it or not."
Mikoto blushed, when did these people get here? Didn’t they have better things to do than watch her learn how to be a captain?