The hot afternoon sun fell on the Forest of Death. It marked the end of the first half hour of the second test in the chuunin exams. Many teams had already fallen to the dangers that lurked in the shadowy trees and team number 18 was no exception.

Barely fifteen minutes into the exam they had fallen prey to another team. Team 18 was anything but weak, but they were caught so off guard that the other team gained an unfair advantage over them. There was a brief battle and the leader of team 18 fell at the enemy's hands. Another took a hard blow to the head and was forgotten by her pursuers. The third was forced to flee with the horrible knowledge that she couldn't go back for her surviving friend without being killed herself; her jutsu was no good in close combat. The only thing she could do was pray that the enemy would not go back to finish what they'd intended.

And they didn't. Perhaps it was because they couldn't find where the unconscious girl's body had fallen, or perhaps they'd just forgotten her: Only fate knew.

As the afternoon sun filtered through the trees, the girl awoke. She raised a hand to her aching head and it came away bloody. Her usually perfect red-blonde hair was matted and tangled with the substance. She'd taken quite a hit, that much was obvious, only she couldn't recall how. She wracked her mind, trying to remember something…anything about what had happened.

Nothing came.

Raising her eyes and squinting against the bright sunlight, the girl tried to gain some insight as to where she was. She could see trees and several patches of low lying, gnarled shrubbery, but further in the shadows beneath them, nothing. She was in a forest. That much was clear to her.

Groaning at the pain in her head, the girl stumbled to her feet. She would find no answers here. Her only choice was to move on and pray she could find recover her memories elsewhere. For the next fifteen minutes she stumbled aimlessly through the trees. She had no idea where she was or where she was going. She hadn't managed to call to mind a single detail about herself, her life, or her goals. She couldn't even remember her own name.

As the minutes passed and the sun shone down through the trees on her, a shining ornament on the girl's wrist caught her attention. It was a cloth of some sort that had a silvery metal plate fastened to it. There was a symbol etched into the plate's shimmering surface...a dark design amidst the sunlight resting on the metal. The girl looked at the wristband and the symbol curiously. It seemed familiar.

The symbol was shaped like an hourglass, wide on the top and bottom and pinched in at the middle. At the very top of that shape rested a small rectangle. Yes, it definitely looked like an hourglass.

Hourglasses usually held sand the girl mused as she looked at it. Yes, sand…the symbol represented sand: A village from…the desert? That was it—The Village Hidden in the Sand. She was from a ninja village in the Land of Wind. The girl smiled as she continued to walk. She'd managed to remember at least one thing. That was a good sign. If she could remember that then she would hopefully begin to recall other things as well.