Disclaimer: I don't own the series, characters, etc.
A/N: I don't actually own the third box set, so I've never watched the Forest of Death portion of the anime. Therefore, I can't review it, so please forgive jarring inaccuracies. I'm operating on later flashbacks.
The First Flower of Spring
-Chapter Ten-
Carnivorous Flowers
"I wonder if she gets cold in that." Naruto shot her an incredulous look, still shaken by Anko's speech. "Naruto-san, I already explained to you the implications of the forms. And psychological warfare is a time-honored tactic. It should be assumed they will choose someone disturbing as the second exam proctor."
"What if she hears you?" Naruto hissed, drawing closer to Sakura's side, as if he was using her body to shield himself from the older kunoichi's line of sight.
"I imagine she takes great pride in her ability to discomfit gennin," Sakura told him prosaically.
Naruto didn't quite look as if he believed her, but then it was time to enter the Forest of Death. And Sakura had to latch down tight on the instinct to linger behind, allowing the other teams to draw ahead of them so they could come upon them at their leisure, waiting for that perfect moment of vulnerability before turn the scene into a bloodbath. For Sakura, this was the only way in which she could assure that her own team was safe. She could not trust to the goodwill of others-time in the tunnels beneath Mizu no Kuni had taught her a far different lesson.
Dead people cannot harm you in any way that matters. It's only the living one has to be wary of.
But she knew that Naruto would be aghast at the very thought of it. It was comforting, at times, to know that they still had such a fine moral compass to be consulted. Sasuke as well. She wouldn't do him the disservice of saying he wouldn't call the action "wrong," but he was more likely to keep silent and commit an atrocity in his quest for "hardness" than trust his own moral judgment.
So she listened to the arguments of Naruto and Sasuke as they plotted out a plan of attack that wasn't a plan of attack at all, but mostly a defensive strategy, as if one bearing the Heaven Scroll would just tumble into their laps, as it were.
"What do you think, Sakura?" Naruto appealed to her.
She glanced at him. Then, for the first time since they'd entered the dense jungle, she pushed away her own plan of action and considered her teammates. "Naruto-san, have you considered using your clones to scout the Forest so we might have a better idea of where opposing teams are? Once we know that, we can choose an isolated team to pursue. Since the skill levels of our opponents are unknown, it would be best if we chose an area where other teams would be unlikely to interfere in our hunt. You might be aware of that during your scouting as well."
Naruto blinked, then he grinned, pleased as a fox in a hen coop. "Gotcha, Sakura-chan!" And then he disappeared before she could offer further suggestions.
"Idiot," Sasuke grumbled.
Sakura pursed her lips. It was admittedly a poor idea to rush into something like that, but Naruto had been evading the likes of jounin for years during his pranks. There emerged a distinct possibility that both of them had been underestimating their companion. A companion, who despite all appearances to the contrary, might have potential as more than a frontline brawler. Scouts had to be among the most flexible of shinobi, because not only did they require first-class single combat abilities should they be discovered, they also needed the charisma to unearth secrets, unparalleled transformation abilities, and a great deal of stealth.
While Naruto sometimes fumbled at the last, Sakura could spy prodigious raw talent at the others. After all, while his female transformation was ridiculous, didn't they always say at the Academy that the most difficult identity to assume was that of the opposite gender?
"Sasuke-san, let's keep moving. Naruto-san left before we could establish a rendezvous point, but perhaps we will be lucky enough to stumble upon something interesting."
"Interesting how?" he challenged her.
"Well, have you considered why they are holding this part of the exam in a practice area forbidden to gennin?"
"Besides the giant insects, carnivorous plants and treacherous terrain? No," Sasuke answered dryly.
"Let me rephrase that. How do you think Konohagakure removes any implication of bias in the exam results? By removing any advantage a gennin raised in Konoha would have by thrusting them into an unfamiliar environment. One would think we would have the advantage in forest combat, but none of the flora and fauna here are the ones we're used to. Konohagakure is in a temperate region-our winters are rainy but it rarely snows. Its forests are primarily deciduous. This forest, however, is tropical, to an extent. You'll notice the heavier undergrowth, drooping tree limbs and surface roots, and oversized insects. It's as if they transplanted a patch of somewhere else here. It's meant to disorient us. So, therefore, while Naruto spies on our competition, it will be our responsibility to discover how to use the environment to our advantage. Think of it like this-this area is also a lot wetter, which will be of advantage to the teams from Rain, because the annual precipitation levels in their-."
Sasuke cut her off. "I get it. Let's go."
-X-X-X-
If one could overlook her tedious lectures when goaded into speaking, Sakura really was an invaluable ally, Sasuke grudgingly admitted. He thought she might do it because she was nervous or to distract herself, because if left too long, a kind of vacant, closed expression crossed her face. He only admitted this after the second team they'd successfully ambushed. Both had been teams Naruto had seen fighting other teams during his surveillance, thus giving them the advantage when it came to combat, though she'd still deliberately carefully on which styles would be most easily countered by their own.
It had been Sasuke himself who'd made the final call on both teams. He didn't know how to explain it as anything other than a "feeling"-when he compared a description of an enemy's jutsu with his teammates' styles, he could almost project the course of a battle in his head. Sakura seemed able to do the same thing, except Sakura had a really terrible tendency to not account for personality. Need alone wouldn't make Naruto take on an opponent he felt sorry for. Sakura didn't feel sorry for anyone.
She'd also been having them sleep during the day in two hour shifts, one of them awake to stand guard. They slept every six hours, never in the same place, always moving toward the Tower and their goal. Sakura'd had the strangest look on her face when Naruto asked her where she'd come up with the idea, which to him had the feel of something desperate, something a shinobi forced to extremes, without proper support might do.
She didn't even let them sleep in the tent. She didn't even have them set it up, except at night, and then they slept covered in the dreary moss that clung to the trees, at least twenty yards from their already disguised camp.
The moss had been Naruto's idea. Sasuke wasn't certain who was more surprised, him or Sakura when Naruto had returned looking like he'd fallen in a mud puddle and explained that it had been on purpose.
Naruto was rifling through their bound enemies' pockets at the moment, redistributing their tools and supplies generously. "Aha! Heaven Scroll!" he announced in triumph, holding it aloft for the other two to see. "What now?" he asked Sakura, who looked thoughtful. Sasuke for his part was annoyed at the way the dobe just seemed to hand over the leadership to Sakura.
He reproached himself for the thought the moment he had it. What did it matter which one of them was leading so long as they got to the tower? It wasn't like he cared or anything. After this, it was all individual combat, anyway. And then he'd be a chunin. And chunin didn't necessarily stay in their original squads. Not that it mattered. Rank was nothing-all he wanted was power. Power to defeat him. And he mustn't lose sight of that.
Sakura, for all her eerie-ness, seemed to think of things that would never occur to him or Naruto. "We have two options," she said in a low voice, glancing down at their opponents. Despite them all being unconscious (a direct result of his and Naruto's interference), she motioned them away from the bodies and led them back into the Forest. Once satisfied there were no listeners, she frowned at Naruto until he sheepishly stashed the scroll he'd been carrying openly.
"In option one, we now make for the tower and safety. There, we have plenty of time to rest before the next round begins."
"And option two?" Sasuke prompted.
Sakura tilted her head to one side. "We continue to collect scrolls. Eliminate the competition, therefore increasing our own chances of success. To some extent, we could even control who advances to the third round. One on one, some of the gennin we saw earlier are poor opponents for our individual skill sets. Team on team, however, we have a much better chance. Especially if we manage to draw them out one by one. If we don't overexert ourselves, I don't foresee any trouble, even if reaching the tower isn't the end of the test."
Naruto regarded her thoughtfully. "Isn't that kind of...unsportsmanlike?" But his voice was hesitant and Sasuke could tell he was giving the second option some consideration.
"Some of them teams are obviously poorly prepared. They've already had some valuable experience. Now they know being a shinobi isn't all fun and games. Not many people are like us, Naruto. We've been on an A-rank mission already, but most of these gennin haven't been on anything harder than a C-rank. Think about the mission with Tazuna if it wasn't for Gatou-would you still have learned the same things from it?"
"No," Naruto said quietly. "So you think we'll be doing them a favor, then?"
"Better us now, then Suna no Gaara in the finals."
Naruto shuddered at that. "Yeah. You guys didn't see him-he's not fighting. He's hunting. I've never met-," he shook his head. "He's bad news," he finally concluded.
"Don't worry," Sakura reassured him. "We won't engage anyone without a certain level of confidence in our victory."
Naruto grinned at her, but a hesitance lingered.
"Well then," Sasuke said, "let's go."
-X-X-X-
Sakura let out a shaky breath as she crouched on the branch of a tree. It was almost over-they'd drifting in a wide spiral, drawing ever close to the tower-and their time was getting shorter. Her nerves felt raw-she'd been lecturing more and more lately in response, because the calm, rational analysis kept her grounded. Kept her from letting go of the fear and worry.
Shiho-nii was helping with surveillance with this one last team. But he was frowning as he returned to her side, sleeves billowing as his feet seemed to touch down on the branch. "There's something wrong here."
"Retreat?" she asked him.
"That would be best."
Sakura obeyed him without question, for Shiho-nii had always known best. And she made certain Naruto and Sasuke followed her lead, not giving them answered as she herded them toward the tower.
"What is it?" Sasuke hissed at her.
"Something's wrong," she hissed back, trying to urge them on faster, but then a chill traveled up her spine, not comforting in its familiarity.
"My, my, my," A teasing female voice rang out behind them, "If you run away now, won't that ruin all the fun?"
Sakura couldn't help it. With the combined stress of the past few days and the newcomer's killing intent, her kekkei genkai started to bud. Sasuke was frozen, she noted, though Naruto was not. Peculiar, considering their past reactions. Shiho-nii hovered worriedly near her shoulder, but didn't speak.
"Perhaps, nin-san," Sakura acknowledged. She took in the confident stance of their opponent. Something was indeed wrong. Only someone terribly arrogant, if they were a gennin, would confront three other gennin while they were on-guard. A slight twitch in her hand was the only outward sign of her tension. As if she'd just caught it, she put her hand behind her back, out the shinobi's line of sight. Her agile fingers spelled out a message to Shiho-nii, who'd looked down at her movement. J-U-N.
He nodded, which was when Sakura felt that something terribly bad was going to happen, because Shiho-nii despised Haruno Jun. "Be careful, Sakura," he warned her before he disappeared to retrieve her guard dog.
As the woman opposite her began to peel of her face, Sakura hoped they lasted that long. The battle began with a stately kind of slowness, intentions scraping like knives across their ears, then there were snakes and the world began to move. Sakura unsealed Shiho-nii in an instant, barking at Naruto to watch Sasuke, knowing that size in a snake often equated to slowness, the bulk of the body making it less flexible, which was why a tiny brown snake with potent venom was more dangerous than one of these oversized constrictors.
Sakura had, under Tsubasa-sensei, studied animal hunting styles as a matter of course. Tsubasa-sensei was a kind of old-fashioned ninja in that way, drawing more inspiration from nature and less from manuals. And he was not blind to the possibility of her facing animal summons in the future, though the Haruno did not generally make use of them. Animals tended to sense such things as cruelty in a person and the clan made nin-animals cautious. Some of them even seemed to be able to sense the presence of a branch clan member. Which was dangerous.
So she knew where her strike needed to land, directly behind the skull, severing its spinal cord. Its bulk was the most dangerous thing about it, Sakura decided as it tore down trees in its wake, producing dangerous shrapnel larger than she was. She flicked a few kunai with explosive tags attached to keep its attention on her, then drew it away from her teammates, using the trees as shields against its still deadly jaws. Not that it was much help, the huge constrictor soon crushing them in coils that moved like quicksilver.
Ducking behind another three, she frowned, trying to think through what she knew of snakes. A clone as she would be capable of would be ineffective. Snakes were not visual predators.
I should have let Naruto handle this, she realized belatedly. I would have been a better match against the shinobi.
While she'd been thinking, the snake had as well. Silently, it had kept low, on the forest floor to minimize the sound of its passing. Creeping close, it had intended to make a single strike, swallowing her whole. And it had almost succeeding.
As Sakura thrust Shiho-nii deeper into the roof of the snake's mouth, mining for its brain, she tried to brace herself. The snake lost all conscious nerve control, throwing itself into trees and the ground. Sakura lost all sense of direction as her prison rolled and tumbled, her head slapping hard against Shiho-nii's hilt, but then it finally came to rest.
Stumbling from its mouth, she tried very hard not to vomit, but willpower couldn't overcome motion sickness. "Gross," Sakura pronounced weakly as she stood, taking in the thin coat of saliva that coated her. Better saliva than stomach acid was the only consolation she could give herself as she backtracked, splintered trees leaving an easy trail to follow.
She hoped that Jun had taken one of his odd quirks of humor and protected her teammates. Because a ninja strong enough to summon such a large beast with such ease was far beyond her skills. Far beyond even their combined strength.
And that worried Sakura.
-X-X-X-
Naruto was backing away slowly, Sasuke slung across his shoulder with all the grace of a sack of rice. He didn't know why Sasuke had frozen up, only that he had the worst timing ever. It wasn't the first time he'd seen the red-haired ninja who was facing down the black-haired shinobi. Haruno Jun.
He'd pretty much understood in the first thirty seconds that anyone who could peel their face off and laugh like that was scary, but it wasn't until he saw Jun's expression that he knew there was something more than a little off about Sakura's relative.
The black-haired man, who'd introduced himself as Orochimaru-and expected them to know who that was-was frowning at the newcomer. "I'm afraid I don't know you."
"S'alright," the other man said. "I'm just a dog that's had my master loose my chain. Names won't matter when I'm gnawing on your bones." He smiled so widely then Naruto was almost certain it had to hurt. "Now, let's make history." He flicked his hand, like he was urging on a pet. Naruto could only watch in a strangled kind of awe as the muscles in his back shifted, making the branches shift and flex as if the scarred tree was growing.
He almost shrieked as something grabbed his ankle and pulled them both below, tugging him to flat out sprint. Behind them, he could hear a battle start. "Don't look back," Sakura ordered curtly. "Just run."
The enormous weapon in her hand vanished as she sealed it, increasing her speed and he followed, his shoulder pressing sharply into Sasuke's gut every time his foot touched ground. "Put me down, dobe," a familiar voice growled.
"I think not, scaredy-cat," he snapped back. "If I put you down, you might just freeze up again."
Sasuke stiffened in his hold, which of course just made it more uncomfortable for both of them. "I'm fine now," he insisted darkly.
Naruto snorted, then dumped him on the ground. Sakura skidded to a stop steps from them.
"If either of you dies, I will no longer take responsibility," she told them darkly.
"Che. Just as long as poor Sasuke-chan here can keep up," he baited his rival.
A scathing glare was his answer, but then Sakura was sprinting again his options being to follow her or stay and argue with Sasuke, he chose to follow her.
"Will Jun be okay?" he asked her as he managed to draw even.
Sakura frowned faintly. "I wonder if he wouldn't be doing the world a service," she said beneath her breath. "That man was dangerous," she said louder. "He's not an enemy we should even consider facing. For now, we need to reach the tower."
"It should be safe there?" he prompted, noticing she hadn't really answered his question about Jun.
"We'll have numbers, if nothing else," she said, which was not reassuring. She pulled a pair of scrolls from her pouch. And, pulling up some reserve, increased her pace even more.
Even Sasuke looked visibly winded by the time they'd reached the tower, where Sakura took one look at the inscription and cracked the seal.
When the smoke cleared, familiar smiling Iruka-sensei appeared before them, the words on his lips to congratulate them.
"You have a serious breach of security," was what Sakura told him instead.
-X-X-X-
Their encounter had ate up less of their time than Sakura had expected, but then again, she'd projected their schedule assuming that they wouldn't be running for their lives. So they had a little time to sit in silence, waiting for the straggling teams to reach the tower.
Naruto kept shifting uncomfortably every few minutes, but she ignored him. And Sasuke, who was in some sort of funk of self-loathing. She pitied the next opponent he'd meet. Sasuke rarely forgave himself for his failings, but he was the kind who projected it outward, rather than inward.
Kakashi-sensei was in conference with the Hokage, presumably about their unexpected encounter in the Forest. But what was of most interest to her now was the rumor that was currently circulating that, despite their activities, too many teams had made it through the test and there would be a preliminary round before the third section of the test.
When the proctors announced they were to gather in the arena below, Sakura easily took her place among the assembled genin, watching the Hokage as he made the obligatory greetings and congratulations. He didn't seem overtly concerned about their intruder, so Sakura refocused her attention on the exam. She was slightly surprised when he did announce that there would be a preliminary-after all, these were ninja trials, not a spectator sport. If it took them hours and days, then that was the time it would take. The crowds should be a secondary concern. Though her Haruno heritage made her question the wisdom of allowing such a large crowd, which could be so easily infiltrated, watch any ninja trial. Jounin, at least, wouldn't be using handsigns for all and sundry to see and would have the wisdom not to expose their techniques.
But this was Konohagakure and the Hokage's word was law.
She was surprised, however, to see a taker for opting out of the preliminary. Her jade eyes narrowed. It was that silver-haired medic again. Strange, that.
But then it was time for them to clear off the floor and the matches to begin.
A/N: Short chapter, yes, but I'll be putting a lot of energy into writing the matches. For now Sasuke has avoided the curse seal, but neither has he achieved Sharingan. How will he fare? Find out in the next installment. And I considered a long fight sequence with Orochimaru, but really, discretion is the better part of valor.