The forest was quiet, even quieter than it should be... I would say it was way too quiet. Even the cicadas that had been screaming all summer seemed to have gone to sleep, which... should not be the case. But, noticing it was one thing... I was still the group's scout, so I had to also do my part, slipping ahead every few dozen meters while Minato compared my notes against the map we had. The plan was simple: find landmarks that may appear on it, check our orientation, and mark our progress. But every time I came back, Minato's frown deepened.
"Wait," He knelt down when I returned again, while both maps, ours and the given one, were spread across his knees, "Renjiro, say that again... The fallen log that looks like a kunai... was north of the stream?"
"Yeah," I nodded, "Right past that cluster of birch trees with the crooked roots."
"Here..." He pointed at the inked scrawl on the original map. "Then it should be south. We're getting inverted readings..."
"Huh?" Sayuri crouched beside him. "What does that mean? Are we reading it upside down?"
"It's not that." Minato rotated both pages, eyes flicking between them. "Look... every landmark Renji finds lines up with the ones on the map, but mirrored. The terrain itself hasn't changed; only its orientation has, relative to the map. Whoever drew this flipped the coordinates twice... Once horizontally, once vertically."
"Double-mirrored," I muttered, whistling low, "Someone's got a twisted sense of humor, because even if you figure out it's flipped once, you wouldn't start looking for a second flip, and could walk into... trouble."
"Then they failed as a shinobi." Naoto adjusted his glasses. "I confirm his observation. My kikaichū indicates the same chakra density patterns, but reversed directionality. North equals south."
"Then it's confirmed," Minato folded the map with a faint exhale. "All right. We keep the landmarks in mind, and not the directions. From here on, we navigate by memory and only refer to the map to see marks and not the suggested route. Renji, also note down the orientation of those landmarks... If they point towards the wrong direction, we may have a third layer to their deception."
"So far so good, but I'll keep my eyes peeled! Easy." I said, earning a look that translated to please shut up before you jinx us.
With that, we moved again, and the deeper we went, the stranger it all felt. The air, for some reason, pressed harder against my chest, and as I looked around, the trees were too evenly spaced, and the ground felt way too smooth. For an hour, maybe two, we walked without seeing a single trap... What the hell was going on?
"Too easy," Minato whispered.
"Yeah," I agreed, "Even the mosquitoes gave up."
"..." Sayuri glanced around nervously. "Maybe we're just really good?"
"Or," Naoto said in his usual monotone voice, "someone is removing obstacles ahead of us. Unlikely coincidence."
"We aren't that lucky," I said, looking around, then I noticed it... the same fallen log we'd marked earlier. I stopped dead in my tracks, walking up to it. But... There was no mark on it. I could swear that the shape matched it, the way it lay on the ground, the way I left it after drawing onto it with my kunai... "Wait. Didn't we pass this already?"
"But the mark..." Minato looked back, examining it, "No, that was—" but he stopped as we looked at each other, saying the exact words while my stomach sank down as far as it could go.
"It's gone... and we're looping around."
The moment the realization became clear, a pulse ran behind my eye, something that felt sharp, like a sting, originating from somewhere inside my skull. Without having a choice, I blinked my eyes, grabbing at it, rubbing them.
"Ow… okay, that's new... Ouch... Stop it..." I moaned.
"You all right?" Minato asked.
"Yeah, just… stingy eyes." I waved him off, but the edges of the forest shimmered, almost as if a kind of heat-haze was rippling across the trunks, but when I blinked again, everything snapped back to normal.
Fatigue, I told myself. Just fatigue... Or...? No. I... I don't think so. Or...? Maybe? I can't recall what it actually looks like to see through a Sharingan, as that wasn't as detailed as how a Byakugan worked. Haah... but it shouldn't be that, or Minato would have noticed that my eyes went red, heh! While I was fighting with my stinging eyes, we kept walking, spending another hour or so, reaching another landmark that shouldn't exist twice.
"Ow!" And again, that bastardly sting, making my eyes water up! Then, the world flickered as I tried to rub it out from my gaze, and for a heartbeat, the trees around us looked different. They had way fewer leaves, darker bark... "What the hell…" I whispered, but the next moment, everything seemed perfectly fine again... And that was the main issue! The moment it clicked, I stopped in the middle of the trail. "Don't move!" I said at once, one of my hands holding my left eye.
The others froze at once, without thinking about why, only surveying our surroundings.
"I feel nothing..." Minato's head turned slowly, but the others also shook their heads. "Renjiro?"
"We're not moving forward," I said, taking a few deep breaths and following what my instincts were telling me. "We're walking in circles because the forest, no, our senses are directly lying to us."
"Um..." Sayuri swallowed. "You mean…?"
"Genjutsu," I said flatly, as I had no other explanation, "We're under a freaking genjutsu... We probably walked into it without realizing the fact!"
"Genjutsu..." Minato's body flinched, "That's impossible. We are not even Genins, we can't deal with something at that level... The instructors wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't?" I cut him off, scoffing. "You've seen how Mika-sensei looks at me. She hates my guts! I would bet my whole arm that this is her work... Sorry... I think this is because that old hag despises the Uchihas. After all, our eyes are better than her precious Byakugan." I snorted, getting pretty angry, thinking about it.
"Renji—" Minato raised his voice.
"No!" I waved a hand, "She's trying to humiliate us because she hates the fact that we are better than her clansman in our class!"
The anger I was feeling came fast, faster than I could realize, boiling out of nowhere, rising from my stomach as my hands shook, my chakra stirring under my skin like the static you get when you rub your feet on a thick rug.
"Renji..." Minato stepped closer, putting a hand on my shoulder, "Getting angry won't help. We can't break it by yelling at it."
"Then what? Just sit here and fail?" I snapped, "And ruin your streak? If she dislikes me, she should screw me over; that I can handle. But to make others fail and get a bad mark because she has an issue with me? Pathetic woman..."
"We haven't failed yet." His reply was quiet, accompanied by a confident smile. "We find another way. Together, as a team."
Taking a deep breath, I just nodded and followed his lead as we tried everything that came to mind. First, Minato used the creek's current as a guide, mapping direction by the flow of water. But when we followed it, the stream bent back toward where we'd started. Not good... Then Naoto sent his insects outward, but a minute or so later, they returned from the same direction they had left. They were also affected by it... Haaah... When Sayuri and I tried marking trees, the marks vanished the moment we walked away from the tree, and it fell out of view for all of us. And there was no way we would separate because it was too obvious; the moment we did that, we would never find the others. That was a given.
Though... Each failure tightened something in my chest... Every step felt heavier, like the forest itself was laughing at us... Really? You bitch! A genjutsu? Against students who are not even able to create a simple clone to pass the Academy's final test?! How can you fall so low? Feeling myself get more and more emotional and angry, my eyes began burning again. Then, as I was grinding my teeth, the world stuttered before my view as if two versions were overlapping for an instant: one was the false one we were trapped in, but the other... faintly real beneath it. I could almost see through it. Almost... Just as I was about to capture it, it snapped shut.
"Dammit!" I slammed my fist against a tree. "This isn't a test... It's rigged!"
"Renji." Minato's voice was steady, just as unshaken as before. "Breathe."
"I'm fine," I lied through gritted teeth. "Totally fine."
"Haaah..." He didn't believe it, but he didn't argue either, simply patting my shoulder again, trying to reassure me that it wasn't my fault. "If we can't trust what we see," he murmured, "we use other senses. Sound, touch, step counts. We are not yet out of options, don't lose hope." Then he closed his eyes and listened, while I also stopped clicking my tongue, letting him focus. "The wind comes from the east... We keep it on our left shoulder and walk forward. Hold hands, everyone, and don't use your eyes! Just your inner awareness."
"Crazy," Sayuri muttered, holding my hand while I held Minato's, and Naoto took up the rear. "But… okay."
But... It did not work, as ten minutes later, we bumped straight into the same tree again.
"They even affect all of our senses?!" I tore the cloth off my face, "Enough!"
The forest wavered as my eyes tried adapting again... Weirdly... the colors looked too saturated. As if someone turned the contrast up a notch. I could feel my chakra stirring, swirling towards my eyes, fed by anger and well... fear. Fear that the bastard would make Minato fail because of me. He should have had a perfect Academy year, graduating ahead of time with flying colors... I did not come here to screw that up for him or anyone else! If I change the future for the worse... what am I even doing?!
"No," I hissed. "Not like this."
"Renji, calm down—"
"I won't let her win!"
The burn behind my eyes exploded into fire as I refused to accept a loss, even if it was coming from a bastard. You were not even ever mentioned in the story, and you really think you will have a chance?! I gasped, clutching my face as the world twisted around me. As I watched, the little light we had in the forest had also fractured, bending around edges I'd never noticed before. Then I saw it, the thin, translucent veil overlaying the forest around us. I knew it was the genjutsu, shimmering with faint chakra threads, connecting it to probably the caster herself. Well... that didn't matter, because the veil itself looked... fragile. It was close, moving as we did, keeping us inside a loop... Hmph. Fuck you. Half-smiling, I reached out, my fingers trembling, as I touched it, doing my best to release my chakra into it to disturb its surface.
"Break." The veil tore at once as a sharp crack echoed around us, the trees finally changing shape, no longer looking or feeling so uniform, while I fell to my knees, panting. "It's gone…"
"Renji!" Minato was beside me instantly, checking on me.
"What happened?" Sayuri asked, looking around while Naoto released his bugs, letting them fly away, confirming if we were already out of the genjutsu's grasp or not.
"I-I don't know." My vision swam around me, but I soon regained control. "I just… saw it. The real forest."
"True," Naoto's insects returned soon after, "Genjutsu dissipated," he confirmed, as if he'd just commented on the weather.
"Whoa..." Sayuri's eyes were wide. "What did you do?"
"I… broke it," I said, staring at my hands. "I think."
"No wonder," Minato said, pulling me up, grinning, and I was blinking at him, a bit confused, but when Sayuri exclaimed, I already understood.
"No way!" I said, gawking, watching as Minato nodded.
"Congratulations." He laughed, clapping my shoulders, "No wonder your clan is as feared as it is."
No... freaking... way! I have a Sharingan?! I wanted to see, but... oh well. I will have to wait until we are out of this forest! My Sharingan... hahaha! Dad and Mom will freak out! Ahaha! Haahhh... I can still somehow catch up to the others... hopefully. Although if I recall right, Shisui had his Mangekyō at seven... geez. I am not even close to that... Oh well. Don't ruin yourself, and be happy for what is already working, Renji!
Fired up again, we quickly found the correct route after that... and when the first light of dawn rose over the horizon, we finally reached the checkpoint clearing, exhausted but without failing our task! The moment we confirmed we were at the goal, Sayuri collapsed onto the grass, moaning.
"If that was training, I quit..."
"Observation: genjutsu interference, probable instructor bias," Naoto muttered as he sat cross-legged, already jotting notes.
"Don't write that," Minato warned him, "We're not starting a war with the instructors..."
"We should..." I grunted while I leaned against a tree, closing my eyes for a moment.
"Hey," Minato said softly, walking up to me, smiling, "you did well."
"So did you," I nodded back, pursing my lips. "You kept us together."
"That's what teams are for." He brightened even more, visibly proud of our achievement and the fact that, despite everything, we managed to finish our task.
...
....
.....
Far away, on a ridge overlooking the forest, Mika Hyūga lowered her hands as her Byakugan faded, and irritation began furrowing her brow.
"He broke it?" she muttered.
"..." Akira Tenma stood beside her, arms folded, thinking, then finally opening his mouth. "You shouldn't have tried in the first place."
"I barely laced the illusion through the perimeter." She protested, but then remembered that it was still broken, so her excuses were just that: excuses. "It shouldn't have been possible."
"Hmph," Akira's eyes narrowed. "Yet it was. Remember that before you underestimate the kids again. And be happy that I am not going to report this to the others... You went too far. You hear me? Too. Far."
She didn't answer, staring into the trees where the four students had vanished.