44 - The Proctor Search

"Okay, so who's your proctor?"

Tsuretsu unfurled their scroll, showing it to the Suna team. "Here. You seen anyone like him?"

"I can feel two individual chakra signals spread out nearby... I can't pinpoint them, though, I'm no sensor," Hane offered.

"No, that works," Yozora replied eagerly. "Split up. Bring back the proctors. Two of us can stay with... this guy."

"Areshiki," the blond proctor offered.

With Haikei and Hane staying behind since the former was wounded anyways and the latter was a healer, the remaining five split up. Yozora and Itera went after one, due to being the stronger fighters, while Tsuretsu and Tomo made up for it with teamwork.

Yozora summoned two Aquila, setting off into the air with Itera. It wasn't ideal on a mountain, since anyone could see them, but if anyone tried to attack Itera could always snipe them with an explosive arrow.

"So... how do your arrows work?" Yozora asked, breaking the silence because he was too nice.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to change up an explosive tag seal to make it do whatever you want," the older genin replied, sticking various tags to the arrows in her quiver.

"That's... really smart. How do you come up with stuff like that?"

"Boredom, ninja tools, and annoying civilian parents who don't want to pay for house repairs," the reply came flatly. Seemingly satisfied, Itera slung her quiver back over her shoulders. "Down there."

Yozora glanced down, spotting a proctor eating a sandwich. He pushed the Aquila into a dive, landing beside the proctor who scrambled to put away his sandwich and pretend to be unconscious.

"Not him," Yozora announced after matching the proctor's face to his scroll. "Bring him back anyways."

Half an hour later, the group returned to the tree with two new proctors, though neither were the one they needed.

"Get ready for a whole lot of boredom," Areshiki muttered to his fellow proctors. The black haired one Yozora and Itera found continued pretending to be knocked out while the hazel haired woman Tsuretsu and Tomo found applied more red paint to her legs for the bleeding out effect.

"So... any more leads?" Tsuretsu asked tiredly, glancing unhappily at the three proctors.

"No, sorry," Hane admitted sheepishly. "We can't sense any chakra signals nearby anymore, apart from Kai's team."

"How long has it been?" Yozora glanced up at the sky. They had decided to rest about six hours in, sleeping for eight, before searching for four hours, leaving them with 30 hours to spare. "...what if we get Kai's team to help us? We can just hit her with sleeping gas if we need to."

"That's entirely stupid," Itera announced. "Let's do it."

"I'm going to fucking strangle you!" Kai announced as soon as she was untied.

"That's not a nice thing to say," Hane muttered, quickly falling silent.

"Well I'm not a nice person. What do you want me to say? I shall end thy life via suffocation?" the older genin scoffed. "What do you want?"

"Help," Tsuretsu said, interrupting for the sake of mediation. "You help us find our proctor."

"Or what? We're free now, we can fight you," Modoru argued.

Itera smiled, pulling a sleeping gas arrow out of her quiver. "I have more potent ones that can last about 48 hours. How much time is left in the challenge? 30 hours?"

Jimen took a step back, gesturing at his teammates. "...maybe we should help them. They've been scurrying around all morning, they might have our proctor for all we know."

"..."

"..."

Kai sighed, returning her swords to their places across her back. "Fine. I'll help you. But I'm warning you ahead of time, as soon as you find your proctor, I'm immediately turning against you."

"At least you're honest," Tomo muttered.

"Okay, let's not fight here," Tsuretsu interrupted. "Do you guys know where we can find any proctors?"

The older team looked like they didn't want to speak, but Modoru sighed and spoke. "I saw a proctor near the rocks in the north. Suppressed chakra."

In order to accommodate the quickly growing group, Yozora settled for summoning Draco instead of Aquila. Each starry dragon can fly up to three people, allowing the entire group to travel by air.

"Down there," Modoru instructed, pointing down as they flew at a brown haired proctor reading what looked suspiciously like Icha Icha. The man glanced up, noticing the approaching children and quickly putting away his book and collapsing on the rocks.

"My mock injury is chakra exhaustion, by the way," he informed the genin, opening one eye.

"That's the one we were looking for!" Yozora exclaimed, matching the face with the scroll in his hand.

Tomo and Tsuretsu dragged the proctor onto one of the blue dragons. "Okay, let's go back and hope nobody decided to kidnap the other proctors."

Somebody was trying to kidnap the proctors.

It was another Kumo team, including a geeky looking brown haired boy picking up rocks, a blonde girl complaining about dragging the proctors dirtying her hands, and an airy black haired boy standing around.

"Katamaru, you carry these proctors. My hands are getting rashed," the blonde girl whined, rubbing her perfectly clean hands.

"Ask Nokori," the brown haired boy replied dully, pocketing a particularly shiny piece of rock.

"Hmm... huh?" The black haired boy walked three steps to the left.

"Tch, small fry," Kai scoffed, earth gathering on her dual swords. With a single lunge, she had dispatched of the entire team, leaving three bruised and unconscious genin lying around.

"Okay, great, now hand over the lady proctor," Jimen demanded, whirling around. "We helped find your one. Now honor your promise."

Tsuretsu stared down the older trio, but sighed, gesturing to the hazel haired woman who was reapplying fake blood to her legs. "Okay, you can go now."

"My mock injury is broken legs. They have to carry me," the woman notified, putting away the bottle of fake blood.

Kai slung the full adult kunoichi over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, glaring at anyone who looked confused. "I've trained with heavier swords. Be grateful we're not fighting you. I hope you all fail."

With that, the team strided off.

"Okay, now we go to the drop off point before time runs out," Itera announced. "How much time do we have left?"

Hane glanced at the shadow of the tree. "I'd say... over 24. So we can take our time and not risk any air travel."

Yozora wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead, dispelling his constellations. "How about we take a break first? Let's look for some food."

Haikei and Tsuretsu turned to look at the three proctors, where Areshiki was sharing a sandwich with his fellow proctors. When he noticed the children staring, he quickly moved his sandwich away. "These are proctor-only. Find your own food."

"Injured finger. I'm not going," Haikei immediately announced, sitting down. Hane offered to 'keep watch' as well, followed by Tomo ("I'm doing all the proctor carrying, I deserve a break!") and Yozora ("I've been summoning mounts all day.")

Tsuretsu and Itera glared at each other, sparks flying between them.

"Rock paper scissors."

...

"I'm going to shove an explosive arrow down your throats."