[Deleted]

❝

Shomaru was brooding in wake of the conclusion of the first exams. It felt like he had not achieved anything - like they had finished a few trivial puzzles. Maybe it had been more than that, but he had felt wholly unhelpful, and then they were all escorted out. Shomaru himself specifically was on a saline drip, connected to his arm and he was sat upright in the bed they had all been provided. The mood had been sombre, but with the antidote and some time, they were all coming up a bit.

It did make him wonder whether they were about to be failed, what the purpose had been - but it had been all relatively quiet. Shomaru was in his own little thunderous rage, it had not gone the way he had wanted. Not the kind of exam that he himself would have administered; until they were told what the test was testing, Shomaru would be far from okay.

It had held a sour taste in his mouth at the conclusion of the exam, them being led out - he himself had felt temporary relief until the burdens of his conscious weighed in on the fact that in order for him to have lived, someone else had to have died. Possibly, they didn't know that yet. Nobody knew it yet. He wanted to truly believe that it wasn't just a situation of 'tough- some people die.' Inherently unfair.

So, that's where Shomaru was - and he kept his eyes to himself at the foot of the bed while the rest of them also kept quiet. But that would change shortly.

tags + notes

OOC★

dandy ♫

[Kirigara Sugita]

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[attr="class","sugita"]The sting of the IV in his harm paled in comparison to the shooting pains the poison have brought Sugita. He stared at it, grey eyes lowered and sunken. Fleeting images came and went as well as the words of the now, possibly, deceased Wahei. Sugita didn’t see Wahei pass, and a part of him hoped that it wasn’t the end of it all for someone so young and eager, but he felt the burden of having let it happen in the first place. It didn’t hurt as bad as losing his friend, Shuichi, but then again Sugita didn’t have a direct or indirect part in Shuichi’s death. Wahei, on the other hand…he could have saved. Couldn’t he have?

The boy blamed himself, his thumb stroking the hilt of his blade in the hopes that it would comfort him somehow, but it didn’t. Not at all. Sugita sad upright, his eyes shed a single tear which he left to fall down his puffed cheek. One tear. That was all he could manage. It wasn’t because he didn’t feel enough but that he felt so much that it was beginning to make him numb.

He felt sick at his stomach. Was it the remnants of the poison...or perhaps something else entirely? The boy wrenched, leaning over to a bucket that had been supplied to him. There were no contents left in his stomach.

Around him were the other members of his group. His grey eyes lifted, scanning the room…and trying to get a feel for their thoughts. Landing on Shomaru, the grey orbs lowered again. He seemed mad. Was he mad at himself? Somehow Sugita doubted it. Should he have just let Shomaru die?

Who would have caused the least amount of evil over time? Sugita couldn’t answer that. It wasn’t a fair question to begin with.

He clicked his tongue, pulling the IV out of his arm, but keeping pressure on the wound to prevent further damage. "Well, I for one can’t just sit here. Who the hell do these people think they are…? I can’t not know…” Sugita said in reference to Wahei’s state. He rose from the hospital bed but was forced to sit back down almost immediately. They were not fully recovered.

The boy let out a small whimper. "In what world is this okay…”

It was a world he’d left once before and it wasn’t a world he wanted to be in…

He felt defeated.

Utterly.

Defeated.

[Suzuki Taru]

The poison had gotten so close to consuming them all. They were lucky to be alive. And yet, as Taru began to recover from the antidote and the medical treatment, she couldn't help but be curious. What kind of poison was it? If they'd all come so close to death, yet could be so carefully taken back from it, it must've been carefully distilled. Such a controlled amount. They couldn't risk an actual accidental death. There was no guarantee it had ever really been a lethal dose. People could roll for days in agony in bed with a poison, come to the brink, sweat it out, and rise again. If only she could find the doctors who had made it and ask what it had been made from... 

She stared up at the ceiling of the medical tent, stomach still twisting. Everything ached even as it was getting better. She imagined her blood infested with taibyō no kesshaku, gnawing at her stomach lining and infecting her. This would pass. 

She looked up when Sugita spoke, clearly frustrated, clearly angry. She closed her eyes and settled back. 

"He's going to be okay," Taru decided. She wasn't as confident in her opinion as she would like to be, but she was fairly certain. "I didn't feel any lingering shinigami tied to him. His fate wasn't leading towards death." 

She was antsy as well, though, quickly opening her eyes again and sitting up. 

"I explained it in there, but I meant it. I think they were testing the willingness to sacrifice for what's right for others. Sometimes shinobi do that. It's a job where death is always present. A chuunin has to be able to confront it and make the right decisions, right?" 

[Deleted]

❝

Taru didn't know what was going to happen - what the exams were meant to test. Perhaps these were the little lies people told themselves to make themselves feel better. Shomaru's body just hurt overall, for what purpose? For someone to give their lives away? Shomaru was visibly shaking, both somewhat from the cold (a reaction perhaps?) to the fluid and his body was covered in Goosebumps.

He tried slamming his palm as a fist manoeuvre to the tent. It ended up looking pathetic, given that the tent was a free flowing entity - and all Shomaru did was end up locking out his arm trying to hit nothing, and he yelled in exasperation. No words, beyond the cry of frustration.

He would mostly stay quiet, until some further time had passed and he had cooled off a bit more. "Regardless of who it was, that was a shitty exam." Shomaru thought it was poorly designed. He was currently holding this against Toru, although he might've not had a say in the exams beyond hosting it in Mizu no Kuni. Still. His fault, for lack of oversight.

Using his free hand he rubbed at his chin, wearing away at the skin the longer he did it. It was a look of genuine stress, because he hated how it had gone. For them all.

tags + notes

OOC★

dandy ♫

[Kirigara Sugita]

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[attr="class","sugita"]Sugita kept his emotions in check, but by the red of his ears it would be clear to anyone who knew him that his anger was seeping through. His jaw clenched hard, muscle showing through. He could fill his mind wandering, and the anger building over the course of several seconds before finally he couldn’t manage it any longer.

"Speak for yourself…” Sugita said, snappier than he typically was as he looked away from Shomaru quickly and dodged any glances he would receive. The young man remained silent for a moment before his shoulders relaxed. "I’m sorry. That was uncalled for…You did what you had to do…”

A part of Sugita needed to hear those words as well. He let someone die, or so he still thought. He could have given his antidote to Wahei, but he chose not to. He’d gone against everything he believed in and because of that…someone could be dead.

The Genin’s fist raised upward, then slammed into the soft of the bed next to him. "Damn it all!”

He threw the covers off the bed, his bare feet touching the cold ground. He didn’t think he could just lay around. His mind raced and a battle ensued within Sugita over the right to live and his passion to protect.

Shomaru was right. The test was a shitty thing to do.

"If Wahei is alive…I need to see it for myself,” Sugita said through gritted teeth, but did they even have a way out of here. They were tied to these machines, he assumed to accelerate their healing.

@konoakira Suzuki Taru

[Suzuki Taru]

The two of them were very frustrated, washed by a wave of agonizing moral difficulty. She wished that she could understand. She did, in the abstract. It was sad that Wahei had taken that fall for them all, that he had insisted on it even with full belief that he would die. If he was really dead, it would be a shame. It would be a loss of a good shinobi. It would be a failure of the test.

She couldn't bring herself to feel that full fury, though. Because she was certain that the proctors had been wiser than that, smarter than that. It wasn't like she had full faith in institutions or anything - she didn't particularly care for them even though she was a loyal person. It was more that there was a specific rationale she was considering. It seemed so unlikely, so clownish, that they would do something like throw away a good soldier. Obedience was important in a shinobi.

Morals were good, too, of course. Helping others. But they weren't the most important thing. As she looked at Shomaru and Sugita now, she couldn't help but wonder - if they were ordered to kill another person, could they really do it? Even if it was someone they didn't think deserved it?

"If you get up now and leave, you might not get all the poison out of your system. You don't want to make yourself more sick." None of them knew what kind of poison it was, still. She had an inkling based on the symptoms, but many poisons were similar and she wasn't an expert - there was just one in particular she'd read about and told Toru about.

"Whether or not he has passed, hurting yourself more won't change it. I know being patient hurts, but it's better."

[Deleted]

❝

Fires were running hot between them and that was fair to be.

"I hwill!" Shomaru snapped back, snarling at Sugita. In lieu of actually having any words to say, Shomaru stared up at the tent in silent fury - only because he didn't have anything to say in his mind beyond the memories of the day running through his mind and where it had all gone wrong piece by piece.

Sugita in fact said it all for them: screaming out. And Shomaru felt it. He took a breath, in and out, deeply - feeling the same as Sugita did. When Taru began to speak Shomaru would look over, his neck snapping a bit faster than he would have liked because he forgot that she was there.

He tutted, if the Shinobi was dead then so be it, but he would not trust the shinobi process again to make such an unfair exam, and that fury was translating into a dire hatred for their Mizukage.... or whoever designed the exams! Someone was going to get Shomaru's ire for it, but the only one with power that he would have thought did would've been Toru.

"When is the next exam going to be? Is it just going to be like this? Just unneeded killing? Psh." He wasn't being very productive to his own feelings nor anybody else's.

tags + notes

OOC★

dandy ♫

[Kirigara Sugita]

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[attr="class","sugita"]Sugita listened closely to Taru’s words. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. His face began to relax, but the turmoil inside of him still raged more violently than typical for his generally well managed emotions. It was slowly feeling like the world was closing in around him, and it was harder and harder for Sugita to keep his feelings in check. Everything seemed to conflict with what he thought the world would be like, and as it turned out it was needless killing and savagery. There was no end to it…ever?

The boy sat back down. By this point the antidote had already been administered, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still feeling the effects of the poison throughout his body. He was still partially numb and very clearly sick at his stomach given the pallor and woozy vision.

He shrugged. "I guess it’ll just be like it always has. Some stupid way to show village strength,” Sugita scoffed.

It was really not his decision, but he had to wonder…was Lord Sanosuke really okay with something like this? Did they really have to live like this to achieve some fake level of peace in the world? No…there had to be a better way. His jaw clenched. There didn’t seem to be much else they could do but sit and wait. They were quite literally being held in some sort of medical prison by the looks of it.

Ironically justified.

"You village...has it always been like this...? The exams?" he questioned.

@konoakira Suzuki Taru