Hey guys, this chapter has been Beta-ed by Tifer, hope you like it.

Also if you did notice before, I had accidently missed a chapter in the story so have added more to chapters 2 and 3. Luckily my brilliant Beta's (Tifer and SharetheBook) pointed this out. Sorry about that! At least from now one I have two very helpful Beta's looking out of those kind of mistakes...

Chapter 4

Amazing. That was the only word that Sasuke and Sakura could think while they watched Naruto dodge and slashed back at the snake-summoning ninja. Naruto's body moved as though it was boneless, bending effortlessly to avoid a strike, and then twisting to hit the opponent with his own. It was almost like he was possessed. This fighting style was like nothing the two rookie ninja had ever witnessed before.

The long haired man began to get frustrated. He wasn't aware that Naruto had this amount of power, why didn't his spies tell him such an important detail? His snake like eyes looked from the Uchiha to Naruto and back, he was reconsidering who to have as his knew body. To become the master of all jutsu's and the most powerful in all the hidden ninja villages he would need the sharingan, the copycat eyes. However…was Naruto's jutsu something that could be copied? He had never seen someone wield such a weapon before.

"What jutsu is that?" The snake-eyed man asked curiously, letting his thirst for knowledge get the better of him when he should be focusing on the fight. He eyed the black scythe, imagining himself using the weapon of death to cut down his enemies.

"What do you want?" Naruto countered before slashing the scythe through the air, cutting Orochimaru across the face. The slick black haired ninja hissed in pain and jumped out of the weapons range.

From the distance everyone heard the telltale sound of foot falls. Or more precisely, three pairs of foot falls. "Seems my time is up." The man hissed as he eyed the source of the sound that represented his timer. Each foot step indicated his remaining time here if he wanted to avoid complications, "My name is Orochimaru, and if you want to see me again you have to pass the exams."

With that Orochimaru's neck extended rapidly, so fast in fact that no one but Naruto noticed. His neck stretched as if it was made of rubber, a sickening sight, showing just how much of a monster Orochimaru is. As the snake man's head extended towards Sasuke, Naruto intersected by throwing his scythe once more. It projected through the air and implanted itself into a tree, stopping Orochimaru's progress towards the rookie Uchiha.

Orochimaru hissed his annoyance, but the footsteps were too close for his to do anything now. The snake ninja hated that there wasn't enough time to implant his curse on the boy and the fact that there was no time to find any more information about Naruto's power. Though if he was caught, he wouldn't be able to do these things in the future, so instead his head retracted back to its body and sunk into the ground.

The scythe, which was still implanted in the tree, vanished and the dark aura that surrounded Naruto dispersed with it. This caused the blond haired boy to fall to the ground in exhaustion.

Moments later the examiner, the Hokage, and Kakashi burst into the clearing that the three rookies sat in. The children panted with the exertion it took to fight off Orochimaru.

"Are you alright?" The examiner asked.

Naruto stared at them before saying. "We are fine. This is an exam, what are you doing here."

"We felt a very powerful chakra here and discovered that an S-class missing-nin had infiltrated." The Hokage explained as he looked over Naruto suspiciously. The damn old man always knew how to read him like an open book.

"Orochimaru... He left." Naruto said shortly. Nevertheless, Sakura felt the need to say more.

The pink haired girl started saying, "He was after something. He wanted Sasuke. That much was obvious."

"What makes you think that, Sakura?" Kakashi asked.

"Just before you got here, Orochimaru tried to attack Sasuke! And he used one of his snakes to try and distract Naruto, but Naruto used his scy-."

"Enough, Sakura!" Naruto nearly shouted. "Although I agree with you that he was after Sasuke, we are running out of time and have an exam to complete." Naruto was hoping that the girl got the message that she should not continue that sentence. It was enough trouble that most of the village knows about the Ninetails, if they found out that Naruto had other unusual abilities he might just end up as one of the councils weapons. He didn't want that. Who would?

"Y-Yes, of course, you may continue with the exam." The female exam instructor said before looking at Kakashi and the Hokage, then they were gone. Running back through the forest and away from the chunin candidates.

In the forest everything was eerily silent, it was as if the sound had been sucked out of the surrounds: no trees rustled in the wind, no animals ran through the woods. Where was all the sound?

Then it came, the first sound that team seven heard since the group of older ninja left them. It was the crunch of leaves. The group of three turned around to witness a squirrel as it ran across their path then up a tree, quick to disappear into the brush.

Several throwing knives flew from the bushes and before Naruto could even blink, there was a kunai sticking out from his right shoulder. The dull stinging burn radiated from the wound, Naruto instinctively gritted his teeth and grunted in pain as he hovered his hand over the wound, resisting the urge to pull it out. Sasuke had been lucky enough and managed to get away with a simple slice by the bland, at least he had avoided getting impaled by one. The three turned towards the opposing direction where the knives had come from and had each gotten into similar defensive stances.

A voice spoke with mirth from the bushes. "Hehe, just fought and know you must fight again. This won't be as fun. Will it, Sasuke-kun?"

"We want to fight you." The ninja bound in bandages said. His head was tilted to one side, he eyes were lone, black pupils and on his back was a pelt of spiky fur.

"What!" Sakura suddenly shouted in anger and frustration. She felt useless. "What are you talking about? Are you doing this because of Orochimaru? What is his purpose?" she asked with exasperation.

"Hmm," The bandaged, sound-nin hummed, ignoring the pink haired kunoichi, "I wonder what that man is thinking. Your team doesn't seem to be hurt, so why would he leave you uninjured?"

"Oh well." The other sound ninja shrugged. "It doesn't matter, it just means that we can kill them instead."

The two sound ninjas sprinted toward the three rookies. Naruto, despite his shoulder injury, stood in front of Sakura knowing full well that she would not be able to protect herself efficiently enough. Naruto made a vow to himself that he wouldn't summon the scythe in this fight. He couldn't. Bringing the weapon out once was dangerous enough but a second time... Naruto didn't want to know what the consequences would be. No one could know about his power.

But now three people did.

"Leaf spinning wind!" A ninja called as he dove out of the trees and defended the exhausted young ninja's. The sound-nin were pushed back, taken by surprise.

"Who are you?" Questioned the man that looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a living human being.

The thick-browed ninja introduced himself almost cheerfully as the leaves flowed in the wind. "The beautiful green beast of the Hidden Leaf," He flipped his hair as the epic moment drawled out, "Rock Lee."

"Oh?" Said a third unknown voice. This time it was female. Out of the trees came a female sound-nin with long black hair and pale eye with a matching outfit theme as her two teammates.

"Oh well." The bandaged ninja sighed with a shrug of the shoulders, "Zaku, you can have Sasuke-kun. I'll take care of the others." With this, the sound ninja ran at Lee. Although he was young, Lee was very advanced in the art of taijutsu. The spandex clad boy had great strength and speed, however, the sound ninja's abilities bested him by far. He was much more experienced than Lee, and the young green beast of the Hidden Leaf was defeated, but the mummy had not won without any wounds of his own.

Just as the finishing blow was about to be drawn onto Lee, Sakura leaped around Naruto's body and hurled her kunai towards the enemy. With that as a distraction, she ran towards them forming a hand sign. As the he went to strike Sakura, her body vanished and in its place was a wooden tree log.

Meanwhile, during Lee and Sakura's fight, Zaku took his chance and went for Sasuke. Naruto yanked the kunai embed in his shoulder and turned towards the Sound kunochi that was rushing towards his bleeding battle-ready figure.

Sakura hurled kunai after kunai at her enemy, while Lee took advantage of the distraction and got in close to cause some damage of his own. Sasuke had activated his sharingan and used the fire jutsu his father had taught him so long ago against the enemy. Naruto, although injured, managed (without using the abilities of his past lives) to wound his opponent greatly with the kunai. The female sound-nin now clutched on to her broken arm as blood slowly dripped from her moth due to the blood stained wound on her stomach with the knife implanted in her.

Naruto formed a hand sign and created ten more shadow clones, each seemed more real than the ones before it. One clone dived for the woman only to be destroyed, but this allowed for another to hit her with a punch or a kick strong enough to send the dark haired ninja on her knees. Naruto wouldn't kill her, he could never sink to such a level. The blond would simply knock her out for now so she won't get in the way again.

Minutes later Naruto and his clones delivered the final blow and the black haired, ninja collapsed. The ground of the green-grassed clearing was now splashed with blood and as the whiskered boy turned to look at his companions it was obvious that they were struggling with their opponents. The bandaged-nin was covered in wounds but so were Lee and Sakura. Zaku appeared to only have small, minor wounds while Sasuke panted, hands on his knees. They wouldn't be able to keep this up for long.

He could use that. The Innocence.

No! Naruto shook himself mentally. He wouldn't use his powers from his previous lives, no matter how tempting it is. After using it twice, a third would be too much. Especially in a world where these type of abilities are not supposed to exist. Not to mention that Sasuke would probably hate him for interrupting his fight and showing the Uchiha up. And, as harsh as it sounded, Sakura needed this fight. She had to learn from this fight that she won't always be protected, that she must grow strong alongside us. So Naruto decided to wait and watch the outcomes of these fights. However, he also decided that he wouldn't let his team die, he would only fight if they were in dire need of help.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the fight between the sand-nin's and the hidden rain-nins were in tight battle. And of course with Gaara's ultimate defense, the three ninja of the Village Hidden in the Rain didn't stand a chance.

They had made it. As the blond turned towards his team mates, he couldn't believe the fact that they had made it through the Forest of Death. The rookie team had come out a little more worse for wear than the other teams, but that just meant that they a fought better than those who hadn't made it this far and that their struggling had made their own team that much stronger.

Yes, struggles are what life is made of and, despite what the people around him think, the blue-eyed boy had to face a hell of a lot of them.

Sakura had cut her hair during the fight with the bandaged sound-nin, when this happened Naruto had watched in amazement. The spiky haired boy didn't think that any girl would do that... But then again Lenalee did have her hair burned off during a fight. Was that the same thing? Eh, close enough.

The blond felt a sudden pang in his chest as he thought of his past. She was one of the few that didn't betray him, yet in that world, where Innocence exists, she had probably forgotten about him... Or she may have even passed into the finality that the young boy has wished from the very beginning of this endless loop.

As team seven looked around them, only seven teams had passed in total: there was team Asuma, team Kurenai, team Guy, along with other teams from other villages that Naruto didn't recognize.

Finally out of the forest, Sakura now yanked irritably at her hair, trying to get used to the length. The last time she had had her hair this short was when she was six or seven. The pink-haired girl then glanced sideways at the onyx eyed Uchiha, now that she has short hair Sasuke probably won't like her. After all, it was common knowledge that Sasuke only like girls with long hair.

Please review- It's the only thing that keeps me going! (she cries dramatically!)