Team H Meetup

Rini was more or less incredibly early, having left to get to the place on time for sure. She had a 175 pound puppet to lug on the back of her wheelchair, so it wasn't like a normal trip. Just getting to her location was tiring, but the young girl had done it (albeit mostly with help from strangers who offered to push her for a bit).

She slept though, while she waited for the second portion of the exams to begin. The girl liked to sleep a lot.

She didn't take a lot with her, just a headband, her Model C-001 puppet, and a bag of ration pills. Other than that, she had her wheelchair, which would be a problem to navigate with more than likely, and her clothes. Rini's outfit was her usual one, although she had brought a second outfit for sleeping. A panda thing, given to her by Chigetsu. It was a little big on her, but it was super comfy and super cute.

After a while, Rini's internal clock woke her up. Time was nearing for the exams to begin. Was her team mate around? Rini took a quick look around to check and see. She hoped that whoever it was actually showed up. Teaming up with people was the name of the game here, and there was no way she'd make it through the round without help.

Verdandi was sorting through her stuff. The young princess was in high spirits, she had passed the first part despite the odds as a freshman. She still basically donned no experience at all as a shinobi, safe for the academy training and the intensive studies with uncle Deacon. Verd was particularly worried how Avalanche would go through this part. Her teachers kept reassuring her that a well trained Ninken like him would ‘die for you’ if needed. But that was actually the part she was worried about. He was big and fluffy but neither well geared yet nor immortal. Hopefully they would make it out alive at least. The spark of hope to actually pass this round was already rather small, but she wasn’t one to chicken out from a challenge.

Verd would profit from being the rich kid again, she had to use all potential advantages to her favor. Father had prepared the leather armor set which would be surprisingly light on the skin, he had offered her the steel one too but Verd liked to keep her already slow movement from becoming worse. She slid her white cape over the whole fabrics and thus would hide the existence of armor in the first place. She tucked the kunai holster to her thigh for easy and quick throwing access, storing the wire in it as well. The hip pouch would be moved to her back, it was full of first aid and food pills, Verd was just a medical initiate at this point and still lacked the experience for proper Iryōjutsu. She was sure the medkit and the pills would come in handy however. At last the leather baldric was wrapped over her shoulder and Verd would slide the large Odachi into its holster, next to it tucked a pretty huge umbrella just about the same length as the longsword. Its edges were full with senbon ammunition. While usually not a killer move, it was still a rather useful weapon and also great protection against the weather.

Fully geared, Dandi would find herself moving through the streets of Kiri with her trusty companion behind her. Deacon and Papa had all poured their own wisdoms on her but she couldn’t really remember what it was, too nervous she was.

The coordinates for her meeting spot at the exam papers were rather specific, as it appeared, her partner had already arrived. Verdandi slid back the white-grayish hood of her overall cape aside and moved towards the rather unique looking girl before her. Verd’s eyes picked up on her wheelchair and the Puppet strapped to it. While she would have ‘oofed’ over her partners handicap, Verd wasn’t one to assume weakness too quickly. As a fairly weak kunoichi herself, she was aware that even those without brawny muscles could be quite resourceful.

“Pleased to meet you. I am Verdandi Yuki and I guess I’ll be your assigned partner for this ...” Verd couldn’t finish as Avalanche quickly trotted towards the girl in front of them. Sniffing at close distance and inhaling her scent. Feeling unusually drawn to the wheelchair girl. Something Verd had not seen yet before. “... Survival Exam …” Verd would actually be hard at work trying to contain her surprise at her pets behavior but it wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant one.

Rini's attention was drawn to the approaching of her teammate, a gorgeous girl and an equally gorgeous polar bear. While Rini had never seen a bear in person, she'd read a lot about them, and couldn't help but let out a gasp of exhilaration. Verdandi introduced herself, but trailed off as the polar bear moved towards Rini, who sniffed back at the bear, emulating its actions herself. From her studies, she knew that it was good to not be intimidating when feeling out an animal, if you wanted them to like you. She wasn't putting on a threatening air, obviously, but she refused to let herself be cowed either, as that could set the tone immediately as her being prey.

Grunting like a polar bear, or at least her approximation of what they should sound like, Rini kept her eyes on the bear, but grinned. "Oh, he's gorgeous." Rini coo'ed. "Yuki, eh? Ice. Polar Bear. Makes sense. Rini Nakamura. Brains, puppeteer, fragile." Rini's monologue was disinterested, giving her own information as quickly as possible. She couldn't care less about introducing herself, and was enamored with the bear and her partner.

"Can he, I assume he's a boy, carry my puppet? It's heavy, moving takes chakra, survival is about stamina conservation. I got a wheelchair, takes a bit to move myself. Super slow. Super tiring." Rini addressed Verdandi again, motioning to her puppet, which was made, at least upon first glance, entirely out of solid concrete. The internals were metal, and that made the entire thing quite heavy.

She wanted to get the logistics out of the way before they entered, rather than while they were in the middle of it. Shifting slightly in her seat, Rini looked out over the forests and thought about what they should best do. Looking at Verdandi, she appeared to be a weapons user, which meant that they had a martial fighter, a bear, a puppet, and Rini on their team. Verdandi didn't appear to be that physically strong, but looks could be deceiving, and even if they weren't, that was fine. The bear and puppet could provide the strength, with Rini being backup support, and field commander, while Verdandi did whatever it was she did.

Tracking things down and finding them shouldn't be too difficult. Rini was good at that sort of thing. She wasn't incredibly perceptive, but intuition and pattern comprehension was her thing. Insightful and inquisitive, rather than outright perceptive, but it would help none the less. Stealth wouldn't be their ally given the party size and the speed at which they moved, so that would be right out. That meant finding a relic and securing it would be difficult, so they should set up an ambush instead, and take another team's relic.

Rini didn't vocalize this just yet though, as she was still pondering the best way to actually do this, and she couldn't fully plan without seeing the survival arena in completion.

Verdandi would watch her usually careful companion feel himself into the situation while the cute wheelchair lady seemed to be doing the same. The quick set of words passing past her lips seemed to be more confusing for the princess but for animal that had it’s troubles with human language it was all quite easy to grasp. Without even the slightest of Verdandi’s introductions needed, the big boy moved slowly behind Rin’s wheelchair. Probably still flattered by the young ladies compliment he was trying to show off, nudging his head to the body of the pupped and hooking an arm into his leathery collar, gently raising his head back up to let the puppet slide onto his back and remain stuck at the collar edge. Verd could tell that her friend probably underestimated the large weapons weight as he was a bit shivery on his legs at first, but eventually his body strength would be leaving him quite comfortable to deal with it like that. ‘Silly boy, showing off like that.’ Verd thought to herself and chuckled. ‘Well I guess there goes my chance of just riding this one out...’ She added in thought and already cursed her own feet, doing a survival exam for multiple weeks was sure going to leave blisters.

“Yes. A good Boy. Understood. Nice Wheelchair.” Verd supplied her reaction in kind as the answers were placed. She wasn’t the judgy type and always had a rather positive experience if she just ‘rolled with it’ and followed the ‘flow’ of a situation. The cute gal wasn’t a talker. Maybe a bit of an oddball. Certainly, going to be part of a burden in terms of movement. But maybe this was indeed not going to be their strength and primary attribute. If one is bad at moving, they shouldn’t do that. A trap would indeed be the better course. They would eventually have to overcome their limited speech patterns in time and share their ideas of how to win this exam part. Verd was circling Rin and ogling the wheelchair, searching for its different angles and composition parts. She eventually seemed to grasp the setup on a not too engineer basis but more one a ‘Where is the central weight balancer’ kind of thought. She then pulled some wire from her side pouch and linked what seemed to be the arm-rests with Ava’s collar as well. Verd then moved to her pets back and tried to fix the puppet a bit better, so it’ would pressure all the weight onto the poor animals throat and neck. Since Rin was a puppeteer, she sure would find other ideas to fix this setup up. But basically, if everything went as Verd planned, Ava could both carry the weapon and slowly tug Rin’s chair forward without requiring Dandi to push it.

“We’ll see how this works out… just don’t run away boy alright?” Verd patted Ava on his fluffy butt and the animal started to move very slowly. Starting to tug on the Wheelchair just enough so it’s wheels replied quite easily. “If it looks stupid but it works… it ain’t stupid…” Verd shrugged. She was ready for whatever was to come. Rin hopefully would feel comfy like this too.

Rini smiled at Verdandi, pushing her glasses back up on her face as her puppet was taken by the bear. The creature was quite intelligent, for an animal, and able to at least understand her speech patterns, which, small as they were, probably helped.

Additionally, she was tied to the polar bear via her wheelchair, so that it was like a little sled or a wagon. The system wasn't perfect, but it worked, and would save Rini a lot of effort. "Not bad. Maybe you should be an engineer." Rini said, appreciating the ingenuity. It was far from perfect, but like Verdandi had said, if it looked stupid but worked, it wasn't stupid. As Verdandi started to tie the wire on, Rini nudged her slightly, and reached for the wire, tying it herself with a slipknot put in for an easy release. It wouldn't do to have her unable to remove herself from the bear, so she wanted to make sure a tug would let her release the chair, while still keeping her fastened normally.

Rini paid attention to how the chair moved, and was fine with it. She could kind of course correct in a way, so the set up was fine. "I don't think we'll find a relic faster than we'll fine another group. Stealth isn't particularly our strong point. But with my mind and your polar bear's scent, tracking people should be much easier. Likely our best chance is to ambush a group. Hit them fast and hard, and complete this as fast as possible while avoiding anyone else. The less we have to worry about conserving stamina, the better off we'll be."

Pointing forward, Rini grinned, excited to finally test out her mind in a situation that it was actually useful for. The first exam was a joke to her, but this was where the real test would be. Could they beat someone who was actually good at combat? Potentially. "Onward!" The genius's words were much less elegant when she wasn't explaining things to people or talking out her though process in a slow and deliberate way. That was definitely attributed to her lack of social comfortability.

-Entering the Exam area!-

Verd noticed the knot and nodded approvingly. Rin obviously added to Verd’s very basic idea with her better understanding of her gear. Verd checked again how Ava was doing and had to say he seemed quite comfy for now. They moved slowly but it seemed to be just withing pace so Rin could comfortably find herself tugged by her new ‘wagon’ of sorts. Dandi guessed she could either try to ride on the back of the wheelchair by hooking her feet into it or just hop on Avalanche’s back. But considering he was already transporting something and their movement was casual, Dandi just kept walking besides them. Actually, she was quite glad she didn’t get paired with someone that would eventually blame the very young Genin for being too slow. This was good. Probably a perfect match even.

“Hmmm I still hope there will be room for diplomacy or mind games… I mean the ambush as a primary phase is good. But I also like the idea of testing the actual combat-will for our opposing teams to meet. Well, we’re going to follow Ava’s nose for sure, at our own pace. It should give us the advantage of a certain sensory range at least!”

Verd already had wild ideas over what’s potentially going to happen. They still had to decide whom gets the relic, Verd would keep it on her body if Rin didn’t feel like she could protect it better. Though it seemed more like, the enemy shouldn’t even make it too close to them to begin with.

Dandi could see the large walled compound now with a gate standing before them. This was their entrance. Soon it’d open for them. Time to take one last deep breath and get this over with.

[Entering the Exam area]