They probably knew everything there was to know about sand and rocks, and would be using this knowledge to their full advantage.
Furthermore, it looked like this first test was going to be entirely a physical challenge, which would be problematic considering their team's strengths.
...
Naruto pondered the mammoth rocks before them. Rai's artillery alone would do little against the tough rocks, and Mayu's genjutsu would have no effect at all. His wind chakra was sharp, but he hadn't tried cutting through rock before - meaning that their best bet would probably be to take out the opposing genin.
Suddenly remembering something, Naruto knelt and picked up some of the sand. He rubbed it between his fingers, and while most of it fell to the ground, some of it stuck to his skin – it was slightly moist.
"So? What's the plan?" prompted Rai.
Naruto looked up to see that he and Mayu were looking at him expectantly. He glanced at the enemy genin; they didn't appear to be listening, but...
"We'll go with Plan E," he said, talking quickly. Baki, the jōnin, was opening his mouth. "Mayu, take the Kusa. Rai, take the closer Suna team."
"Begin!"
Immediately, a flurry of action and clanging filled the air.
As Naruto quickly formed the necessary seals with his hands, he saw that the Suna genin were focusing their attentions on attacking the rocks. The genin from Kusa, like his team, were already attacking their enemy genin directly. As a stream of shuriken embedded themselves in their unprotected rock, pieces of rock shattered and crumbled down.
Ignoring the attack, Naruto exhaled a small but powerful gale of wind from his mouth.
Wind Release: Gale
Whipping through the surrounding rocks, it careened towards the Suna team farthest from them. They jumped behind their rock, easily avoiding it. The wind blasted harmlessly against the rock, which wobbled, but otherwise remained stoutly standing.
Naruto smiled.
Meanwhile, Mayu had lowered her hood, and unclipped her hairclips, letting her hair fall around her shoulders. Her hands blurred into action, and as she stoked them to life with her chakra, the blue bird-shaped clips began to twitch and ruffle their feathers, swelling to twice their size. Stretching their wings, they took to the air.
Suddenly, there was a shout of pain as Rai managed to hit one of the Suna genin in both legs with shuriken. The genin fell to the ground, and several chūnin rapidly appeared by his side with a stretcher. As the incapacitated genin was taken away, in vengeance, the remaining two turned their attentions on Team Kakashi. One of them was a puppet-user, and she directed her scorpion-like puppet towards Rai. It scuttled rapidly towards him, its stinger gleaming with the promise of slow-working poison. Letting out a stream of swears, Rai pulled out another scroll of artillery.
Trusting his teammates to carry out their part of the plan, Naruto sat down behind the rock and closed his eyes. Making the appropriate hand seals, he concentrated on first shaping his chakra into being as thin as sharp as possible, before sending it trickling deep underground. Slowly but surely, he could feel the air pressure building up below him, and in reaction, something else began to surge upwards.
In the distance, he heard further screams of pain coming from the Kusa team and felt a glimmer of pride. Mayu's genjutsu operated through her blue birds – if a bird made physical contact with another person, they would immediately fall under her trap. She could cause them to feel any sensation, including intense pain. The Suna genin probably wouldn't have fallen for the trick, seeing as how they were familiar with the birds of the region, but the Kusa genin hadn't suspected a thing.
Now this left the two remaining Suna teams. Leaving Rai to handle one, Naruto fed an extra burst of chakra into the jutsu, and then finally gathered it all into a concentrated ball directly below them.
Wind Release: Air Bubble
Opening his eyes – blinking rapidly to adjust them once more to the sun – he inhaled deeply, rapidly forming the hand signals for his followup jutsu. When his lungs were full, he blew the same strong gust of wind towards the rock of the Suna team.
Once again, they prepared to leap behind their rock – and froze as they couldn't. Looking down, they found their feet submerged in quicksand. With a yelp of panic as the sharp wind blew towards them, they ducked down. The wind blew over their bodies, and smashed against the face of the rock. With looks of blatant relief, they straightened up – and then froze once more, as the rock teetered dangerously.
Disbelief dawning on their faces as their bodies continued to be swallowed up by the quicksand, they helplessly looked up as the rock wavered back and forth above them. After a few seconds of dangerous indecision, the rock finally lost its battle against the combined force of gravity and an unsteady base. Only the genins' screaming heads were visible above the ground now, and with a groaning sound, its base rose out of the ground as it began to fall on the immobile genin.
Sweating from the effort, Naruto rapidly urged more of the air pressure to build up, which would in turn cause the underground water to gush up. Just before the rock hit the ground, the genins faces slipped below the watery quicksand with a slurping sound. There was a tense moment of silence, in which the sounds of the other battles around them seemed magnified. Finally, a second later, the three genins heads popped up again above ground from besides the rock, which floated on the surface.
Naruto exhaled. Their faces were smeared with mud, but they were alive. Hacking and coughing out mud, they limply floated in the quicksand.
Naruto had directed his wind chakra to squeeze in on itself underground, causing the gas particles to accumulate and increase pressure.
As a result, the stores of water below ground had moved upwards to the surface by pure hydraulic pressure. Since they were in a desert, Naruto hadn't been expecting to have access to a source of water large enough to create quicksand, but to his surprise, there had been an abundant water source beneath them.
Due credit for the discovery had to be given to the genin from Takigakure who'd been complaining about the mud.
Sitting down on the ground besides their standing rock, Naruto saw that Mayu and Rai were already done. The genin from Kusa were all slumped around their rock, frothing at the mouth. Mayu's blue bird was chirping from on top of one their chests. The two other Suna genin struggled as they stood pinned against their rock with multiple kunai. A destroyed scorpion puppet lay in pieces by their feet.
Taking in the chaos of the quicksand, Rai raised his eyebrows. "You overdid it, Naruto."
Mayu was smiling, the color of her face returned to its normal shade. She raised a finger, and one of her birds landed on it.
Naruto regarded the remaining desert space. The chūnin examiners were collecting the incapacitated genin, and most of the battles were still going on. The pristine rows of rocks from barely ten minutes ago were already in shambles. Some of the rocks had been shattered into pieces, and he could see several genin moving feebly under the fragments. By the looks of it, less than twenty teams would be passing.
"Team 79 passes the first test," said Baki. "Standby for the second test."
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