Eight

Molt

Two bleary-eyed chuunin guards at Konoha's southern gates—Hijiri Shimon and Akimichi Makaro—sat up straight at the sight of the group slowly making their way up to the check-in station. The early morning skies were at their darkest and there wasn't a single star in the sky. Light poured from the lanterns that hung at the station and the three piked up down the path, and when the figures close in, the guards could at least calm at the sight of what appeared to be a weary team of teens and their animal companion. Maybe chuunin by their age and state of dress.

And honestly, this team looked terrible. The canine stalking in the front had mats in his fur, some of those white hairs stained a sickening green. It was a hulking mass of a beast that stood maybe three feet tall from paw to shoulder, and if it ever poised on its hind legs there was a very real thought that it could reach six feet.

(The Green River had been aptly named from its ungodly amounts of algae to the aquatic plants that littered the river bed. It only took a quick soak and the few minutes of slathering crushed plant matter all over his body for it all to stick.)

Next to it was the shortest of the group: a brown-haired boy with a grimace on his lips, wrinkled tags on his ears, a smattering of cuts littering one side of his body, and his mesh shirt torn at the chest. He was wild around the eyes, dark irises darting back and forth until it landed on the guards with an almost unnatural precision like a hunter searching out its prey.

(Lightning Country was covered in hills and mountains and cliffs. A quick tumble down one was enough to dishevel, but a couple more brought out a battered look that could be mistaken for battle-worn.)

In the middle was another boy with dark glasses over his eyes that had orange rims one of the guards could have sworn was familiar. Mud smeared all over his heavy fern green jacket and his black pants and the bandage wrapped around his thigh was spotting red. His limp wasn't noticeable, not really, but it was there.

(A month cutting himself up in a cell on his own made him used to certain types of pain. It wasn't hard to dig a kunai into his own thigh and carry on like it hurt when it didn't. And if he made sure to track through patches of mud and dispel his chakra through his colony, no one said anything about it.)

And bringing up the rear was the tallest of them—a girl with pink hair and leather pauldrons that stayed fastened on her shoulders. A sword swung at her hip, as does a chain of rusting kusari-fundo, and a red rope is wound diagonally over her chest. Dried blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth and it was hard not to notice the distinct lack of half an arm.

(The blood was easy. A few nicks here and there, one trip down the side of a cliff, and a couple of trudges through thorned bushes were enough. There was no need to excess more injuries when she knew they would all focus on the arm she no longer had.)

Shimon and Makaro stood when the team finally stopped in front of them, the glow of the lanterns lighting up their faces with heavy shadows.

"N-Name and registration, please," Makaro requested. He nearly flinched when the first boy's glare landed on him.

"Inuzuka Kiba. Chuunin. Shinobi ID: oh-one-two-six-two-oh. Ninken companion: Akamaru."

Shimon's eyes flashed in recognition as he pulled out a book and searched.

Then, the next boy. "Aburame Shino. Chuunin." He observed Shimon's nervous page flipping. "Shinobi ID: zero-one-two-six-one-eight."

Last, the girl, who inclined her head down at them. "Sakura, no surname. Chuunin. Shinobi ID: zero-one-two-six-oh-one."

Shimon turned to somewhere in the second half of the book, gulped, and raised his head. His long brown bangs brushed against his face. "You're all supposed to be... dead."