Encounter 3: Team Ketsueki vs. Team Taki

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The insertion has left you all rattled and disoriented. Wherever you are, you've kicked up alot of dust and debris. The interior of your pod is masked in near-total darkness, and only a very faint light is peeking through the entryways.

Team Ketsueki
"Really? The seat wrinkled my outfit. Hmph." Iris complained, pulling her blade out with her open hand. She cut the belts that held her bound to restraints. She popped her ears, consistently trying to regain her hearing. "Really? This isn't okay at all." Iris stood to her feet she look left and right, her vision had faintly helped her. "Kinomi, Arahi." She stated looking for her teammates it was too dark. "I can smell you." She states, using her opposing hand, that her blade wasn't in, to wrap fire around her index finger. This created a light for her and her team.

"Iris, don't be such a wrinkle-wort," Kinomi laughed as her face was lit up. "But maybe you might want to keep that dim, so we're not all sitting ducks by the fire. But thanks for light, I appreciate it." She said, dusting herself off. "What a ride! And its only just begun!" Kinomi was being her normal happy self. She was really hoping they would do good here.

For Lady Ikioi. She thought.

The dust provided a cover for them, so even with the dim light they wouldn't be discovered. Still in the pod, she whispered to her teammates. "Guys, let's do this. You know our home is counting on us. I think we can do this, together."

Iris frowns at Kinomi, "Someone has to hold the looks of this group." She states, letting the fire on her finger for out. "Fine you have trouble then, I'll just rely on my smelling capabilities." She hissed, wiggling her nose at Kinomi. "Wait, where is Arahi." Iris frantically looked around. "Uh oh." She answer.

"I was complimenting you! Just, don't fret about your outfit, you know?" Kinomi responded. "We need to work together, please? And we should find Arahi, before its too late. We need him too." She joined Iris, and joined in her troubled search.

"He's not here." She gasped.

Iris giggled, "Haha, Kinomi-chan." Iris began to smell around, she realized his scent was indeed gone. Vanished, other than what she was able to remember. Just so, she picked up something, it was familiar. "I found his scent. It's faint, but definitely there." She states heading towards the direction. For minutes the two walked, however on a sudden moment, Iris stopped. "Do you hear that Kinomi." From the dark, four bright white eyeballs shined.

Iris made a hesitation, and it was wrong. She should have continued with her original thought. The four eyes charged in their direction, two heading towards Iris, the other two, towards her teammate. Just a moment before they got two close, the figure began to create memory in her head. This was the animal she feared the most, an. Both animals a few feet away from their face.

Wind blew, pushing the alligators roughly into the pod's walls, disorientating them. Ginyagi was quickly summoned to add to the attack, using his horns to shatter their neck bones, killing the alligators.

"Iris, it's safe now." Kinomi said, smiling. "I think we'll be able to eat these. I have some rations, but they're not substitute for real food. Can you cook them? Preferably in here. Then we'll gather stuff in here and set out to search for Arahi."

Iris stood there, as she watched Kinomi defend the both of them. She couldn't move, her fear was overwhelming and she just stood. It wasn't until Kinomi spoke to her that she made a single budge. "Kinomi, thank you." Iris proclaimed, as she began to head over to the two gators on the ground.

She unsheathed her blade, and stabbed both of the animals. She then dug it into the ground, so nah that it pointed upward. She made a small orb of fire in her palm, and out her hand under the gators, and set them aBlaze, slow cooking them. After a while, she finished, and the two ate. She stood up, and looked at Kinomi, "Let's continue to Arahi."

Kinomi would take the straps from the seats, to choke anything that they found, or hold more food. Moving out of the pod, Iris and her began to investigate. Finding a sewer hole, Kinomi suggested that they should venture in.

Iris, stopped for a moment. Her mind began to race for a moment, "Kinomi, maybe we should seek out our foe." She knew Kinomi would be against this decision, so she decided to go ahead and make herself clear. "Arahi will be perfectly fine, besides. Who else will take my hand in marriage?" She chuckled heading in the opposing direction. "I can actually smell more scents this way."

And indeed, it does smell. The pungent odor of fungus assails Iris's sensitive nostrils. The gently glowing green mushrooms that adorn the sewer line are almost mesmerizing, and the flutter of the beetles around them hypnotic. Water is flowing down the tunnel away from you.

Kinomi understood what Iris was saying, and asked her something. "Well what is better, approaching the other team on the same level, or getting the advantage on them from below? Below is more fun, and more effective. We could even set up mines down there as traps as they walk, sending them down into an environment we control." -

He knew struggle, he understood the feeling of feeling trapped, enslaved, condemned, plunged into the darkness and forgotten. He hated that feeling, so the exams weren’t exactly his favorite activity and that guy, Shichirou, whatever his name was…eh, wasn’t exactly his favorite guy at the moment either. The instant the pod had shot off, Arahitogami’s seatbelt had ripped, shooting from the seat. He followed suit, the momentum of the pod shooting him outwards into the abyss, separating him from his teammates. He remembered, being in the “sky” at one period, then a second later he hit something hard..cement, no water. Really hard water.

His body sank, lower and lower. Even the water was dark, he couldn’t see a thing, but it was surprisingly clean, no plant life..nothing filled it. Probably since it was no sun, nothing could grow down here. Arahitogami, after gaining a sense of balance over his body, even though it ached, he propelled himself through the water, attempting to swim to the not visible surface. However suddenly, a giant force of water pushed him, then pulled him into it. A wave? No, there was no current down here, he would have felt it once he sank. It had to be something else, but he wasn’t sure. However, once he felt the surface of something, something sticky-like, he knew instantly.

He had been swallowed by something, and was currently trapped in its mouth as he thought. “Shit!”, the boy panicked, feeling himself sliding down the creature’s immense tongue. Immediately, he ripped a kunai from his pouch, stabbing the creature’s tongue, but to no avail. The kunai simply bounced off the surface, as if the thing that swallowed him had developed a natural resistant to knives. Before he could even think, he felt himself falling, down a tube… the creature’s throat.

Team Taki
Aimi felt like a rag doll. The ride had been a bumpy one, and she had nearly thrown up twice on the way to where the pod currently lay, completely upside down. Honestly, between the straps and her reverse hanging assets, it was actually kinda hard to breath down here. The dust was not helping either. She had to get down, and that meant getting out of the straps. She grabbed one of the short blades off her back, and slid it between her shoulder and the strap, and unbeknownst to her, also one of the straps on her top. pulling it upwards relative to her, or downwards compared to the rest of the world, she cut through one of the shoulder straps. With one of the two straps holding her cut, she slid sideways out of the seat, however her strap on the other side had caught, meaning that as she twisted she was literally dragged out of her own top, leaving it dangling off the now limp seat strap. She landed on her feet, getting used to her surroundings. The fact she was currently half naked didn't bother her. Her clan's training was frequently done in minimal clothing due to the fact that all of her techniques required open skin in order to use. Normal coverings would merely impede her abilities. Her clothing wasn't even made of cloth, instead being made out of her own skin, shaped and modified to look like it was clothing. Steadying herself, she looked at her groggily stirring team mates above.

"Are you two going to stay up there forever? There is fun to be had." She said, as she waited for one of them to respond.

Enpa responded to Aimi's comments with a chill of cold air, lowering the temperature of the pod significantly. "Speak for yourself Aimi," Enpa replied, freezing then breaking the straps that were currently restraining her. Stepping away from the seat strap, Enpa surveyed her surroundings. With each step she took, the ground froze a little bit more, before condensing to the size of her footprint. She was a Tsuyujimo, a wielder of their bloodline and thought to be the clan's newest prodigy. To say she inherited her clan's abilities in full would simply understate the potency of her bloodline. She froze those she touched, and left traces of frozen footprints where she had passed, for she possessed an overabundance of freezing chakra. Despite her calm demeanor, her insides were at war with each other. For though she had possessed her own personality and values, another one lay underneath. As the elders of her clan put it, she was an old soul, a possessor of memories that she didn't understand and were not her own. In these memories lie a colder demeanor, a murderer who lay waste to the very clan that her ancestors could be drawn from. But enough of that morbid tale, for there was an exam to be fought, and won or lost by either team.

"Ankoku....stop sulking and being mad at your boyfriend for we have a job to do," Enpa said with feeling. "Wait," Enpa thought, "why doesn't something feel right?" Using her sensory abilities, she picked up a significant amount of heat below her. "Is that you Aimi?" she whispered, before realizing that she just might be upside down.

A sneeze signaled Ankoku's presence in the pod. Despite her unique powder bloodline, she still had a little bit of allergies when it came to dust. "I wish my powder gave me some aversion to dust," she sighed, bemoaning her existence. It was the second time she had to take these exams, after failing them at her former home in Getsu. Yes, she was a bit of a missing-nin, something not so surprising for her exceptional skill in the abilities that were gifted to her. "If not for that annoying boyfriend of mine, I would already be on my way to being a Tokubetsu Jonin," she growled, still sore over the subject even after several months had passed. "To think my prodigal reputation was tarnished because of his pathetic test taking abilities.....agh," she thought. Her attention was turned back to her body, as she felt a few bones in her back crack and protest under her stretching. With a heavy sigh, she got out a kunai, using it to wear away at strap still restraining her. Then she fell, with a large "umph!" onto the ground. Despite making a cushion of powder, her butt and her lower back still hurt, though not enough to signal a broken tail bone. As she got up, she felt one of her ankles buckle before slowly, slowly loosing up. "I guess I took more damage in that mission than I thought," she pondered, making a mental note of how the rest of her body was feeling. Her mind drifted to Minobu, who apparently was taking part in these exams as well.

"Aimi, Enpa, where are you?" she called quietly, ignoring the claustrophobic darkness around her.

Aimi felt more than heard the thump next to her. She had heard her team mates stirring above, and was happy that they were finally aware of their surroundings. She was a bit chilled right now, for Enpa had a bit of an anger issue for an ice girl. But she was used to the cold, having been on her team for several years now. All she had to do was thicken her skin a bit, and everything would be fine. Hearing her first berate their newest team mate, as Naotsugu had failed his written test, before whispering "Is that you Aimi?"

"No..." she said with extreme sarcasm, "Its Madara Uchiha, I've come for your chakra." and then she as she heard her other team mate hit the floor with a thud. Ankoku slowly and gingerly made her way to her feet. As she made it to her feet, Aimi gave her a hug, burying the smaller girl's head between her exposed breasts. "Sorry about your boyfriend, but please treat us well. We need you for this exam. It will be so much fun." she said in her own bubbly way.

Enpa jumped down from the upside down pod, landing on her hands before jumping back onto her feet. "Hmph," she replied to Aimi, "someone thinks they're very funny, talking about a guy who nearly shattered the world with his power and genjutsu," Enpa noticed Aimi embracing Ankoku in quite the lovey-dovey fashion. "I hate to break up the lovefest, but this isn't a moonspinner novel," she said, her voice dripping with just a little bit of sarcasm. Opening up her sensory patterns once more, she took stock of the quiet and darkened surroundings. From what she could tell, the pod had landed upside down in a very ungraceful fashion.

However, turning off her sensory perception, she noticed a faint light emitting from a corner of the pod. "Are we the only ones here?" she asked, to which no one responded. Drawn to the light, she walked closer and closer, until she could make out its dimensions. "Well, I guess we might just have to open that entryway a little bit more," as she brushed her hands across the surface, taking off the gloves that prevented "accidental freezing". With a second feeling of the slightly ajar entryway, the entire froze over, weakening the surface underneath. With a kick and a punch, the door caved out, releasing acres of blinding light into the pod's gloomy cabin.

Light, and water. A flow of a strange green liquid spills into the pod from the entryway, filled with tiny flecks of a glowing substance. After a moment of panic, it becomes apparent that the outside of your pod is surrounded in a luminescent fungus. Your pod had struck a street above, and rather than bouncing, it had plowed through the concrete and into the sewer system beneath. Although pungent, the liquid is basically harmless water. Small beetles flit about the fungus, apparently feasting upon the shrooms' spores. They too flicker and glow with a faint green light.

The tunnel your pod rests in has water flowing in one direction downhill. Your pod has blocked the other direction, effectively making passage by it impossible.

Aimi was still half smothering her new team mate with her chest, but she turned slightly to see the illuminated tunnel of some sort. "Well that's different, you don't see glowing mushrooms very much... But Enpa, you shouldn't be so grumpy... This is an opportunity to show our families that we have what it takes to be ninjas. So in the spirit of our new team mate and our chance at this, a group hug is in order." Aimi said as she pulled her other team mate into her embrace, tightly hugging both the smaller, in more ways than one, women into herself.

Ankoku smiled at Enpa's grumbling as she joined the group hug. Her mind wandered while the hug continued, as she wondered how a 14 year old could have such large breasts. "Aimi," she asked while her face was still smothered in Aimi's chest, "I know this might come off as rude, but how come your breasts are so big? At least for a 14 year old anyway," she then went back to hugging Aimi, before making sure that Enpa was firmly tucked into the group hug.

"According to Enpa, just to make men stupid and her jealous." Aimi responded with.

Enpa broke away from the hug first, "enough with lovey-doveyness people, we have a mission to succeed on, and I don't know about you, but I prefer not to be caught off guard in a hug fest," With that Enpa walked away, motioning for Aimi and Ankoku to follow out of the man-made entryway and into the open-space beyond. "Well, let's see what team awaits us," Enpa said, "the weaker they are the sooner I can defeat them and become a chuunin, I have to keep ahead of that little red-eyed girl,"