10.

Those few weeks back in Konoha were peaceful and beautiful.

We had a break in the harsh training and even in the missions. Kakashi-sensei seemed to think we had improved so much we needed a well deserved break, though I sometimes got the suspicious feeling there was something else he was not telling us...

Sasuke had stopped complaining so much, seeming at least somewhat satisfied with the fact that he had performed well in a mission that was above a D rank. (I suspected Sasuke was just a perfectionist and hated the idea of leaving his fighting on such a... self sacrificing note.) Naruto was friends with everyone again, and listening to Sensei. Naruto and Sasuke weren't bickering anymore. We were one unit, the three of us, and we hung out often together, just to spar or sometimes just to hang out. When we sparred, we practiced the basics: taijutsu, kunai and shuriken throwing, and the three Academy ninjutsu spells. There was a mutual understanding that we all had spells we were not using.

But I also learned other stuff about my teammates. I learned that Sasuke liked to take walks, so sometimes I would take walks with him. He never said much, but we had a silent sort of understanding pass between us. I also hung out at Naruto's apartment sometimes, which was so full of plants and pet frogs and toads that it resembled a green house, and we would watch movies together; Naruto would get really excited at all his favorite parts.

And of course, I also hung out with Ino, at her mother's flower shop or sometimes we would go out shopping together. Hinata was still silent - that hurt. I had a whole book of pressed flowers I couldn't even look at anymore. I wondered sadly if we would ever be friends again.

I read new books and did crossword and sudoku puzzles and made photo collages, mostly of me with my new teammates. (We took a group photo once with a professional photographer, and that sat on my bed stand with the alarm clock next to my framed picture of me with my parents and my framed picture of me with Ino and Hinata.) I danced around and sang in my high soprano voice to songs like "So What" and "The Best Damn Thing" in my fighting spirit cloak in my bedroom and didn't tell anyone. I cuddled with my kitten.

I was a fairly competent active duty ninja. I was now making money alongside my parents, though most of it just went into the general house fund anyway.

Life was good.

One afternoon, while Sasuke, Naruto, and I were out in the village together, the Hokage's young grandson Konohamaru decided to try to sneak up on us. This was the first time I was introduced to Naruto's mysterious protege.

The introduction was rather inglorious. We heard this weird sliding sound behind us while we were walking down the street, so we turned around and we saw a square box with eye holes in it following us, three sets of little legs poking out of the bottom.

"What the shit is that?" asked Sasuke, staring at it blankly. Sasuke's what-the-fuck face was one of those little things that made me smile in life.

"It's a rock!" said Naruto in a purposefully loud voice. "Obviously!"

We gaped at him and, while he was looking away from the box, he winked. So we played along and we all started walking again, faster and faster, and then Naruto suddenly stopped and the box nearly ran into his legs. He turned around and whipped off the "rock" cover.

"Shoot! Positions, quick!" I heard a little boy's voice say, and then there was a comically loud explosion of gunpowder and a minute later three kids stumbled out of the cloud of smoke, coughing. "Too much gunpowder! Too much gunpowder!" said the center one, the one with messy brown hair, through his hacking.

Then they all straightened and took a pose, introducing themselves like they were on one of the after-school TV shows they probably watched.

"The girl who's as pretty as an adult ninja, Moegi!"

"The one who loves diving numbers, Udon!"

"And Konoha's number one ninja genius, Konohamaru!"

Honestly, it was kind of cute. That last one was the one with messy brown hair, and he was the Hokage's grandson. (The girl had red pigtails and freckles and the other boy had glasses and a runny nose.) Konohamaru seemed to be the leader.

"So you're the Young Master?" I asked him politely, smiling in amusement. The minute I said that, Konohamaru sagged, scowling.

"He, uh, doesn't like being called that," said Naruto, looking between us. "Wants to be recognized on his own merits and not his grandfather's."

"That's admirable," said Sasuke, surprising everyone by speaking up.

Konohamaru puffed himself up a little. "Yeah," he said as if he'd known it all along, "it is." At least he seemed to have spunk and self confidence. Sasuke raised a skeptical eyebrow. Maybe Konohamaru reminded him too much of Naruto.

"So you have big goals," I told Konohamaru, and then I turned to Moegi. "What about you?" I asked gently. "You said you want to be a woman. Why grow up so fast? Why not just enjoy being a girl?"

"Because, because, women get to do such cool things!" said Moegi, jumping in place excitedly. "They get to fight bad guys and have hot guys look at them!"

"Not all the time," I said dryly. (I was not thinking of Sasuke when I said this. I was not.)

"Who are you guys?" Konohamaru asked, looking over at me and Sasuke. "Why are you hanging out with Naruto?"

"We're his teammates," I said.

"Oh." Konohamaru was puzzled, as if the idea of Naruto having other friends was completely foreign to him. He only looked about eight. Maybe he just wasn't that aware of the rest of the world existing outside of himself yet. Konohamaru perked up as he thought about it. "Hey," he said, "do you guys want to play ninja with us?"

"We are ninja," said Sasuke, rather coldly.

"He means 'no thanks'," I said, smiling in slight embarrassment. "You guys are pretty cute, though. Does Naruto often play ninja with you?"

"All the time! But he hasn't been doing it as much lately." Konohamaru gave a little boy glare over at Naruto, who seemed patiently exasperated. Aww.

"Well - who said I'd play ninja with you today?" Naruto asked.

"You did!" the three kids chorused.

"Ah... you remembered that, huh...?" Naruto smiled sheepishly. I could already tell he was going to give in.

"Oh, why not?" I sighed at last, rolling my eyes. "I'll play too." Naruto sent me a grateful glance and the little kids perked up, shouting excitedly.

"Alright, alright! I'll be the hero!" said Konohamaru, running forward and then looking behind himself with bright eyes to his friends as he continued walking backwards. "And you guys'll be -"

He accidentally ran into somebody's leg and tripped, falling over. I half expected him to start crying, but apparently he wasn't that young. Instead, he looked up in a young sort of dazed bewilderment at the person he'd run into.

And then I realized why he was staring, and I was too. The way the person was dressed... I'd never seen anything like it before.

He was a teenage boy, that much was clear, broad shouldered and round faced. He was also wearing a ninja hitai-ate from a foreign village - not the Mist symbol, but a different one. This one was not slashed; he was loyal to his village. So that much was clear. But he was also wearing a black full-body suit with an animalistically shaped sort of hood that came down around his forehead. His face was painted in broad white and purple strips, like some sort of tribal warrior face makeup. There was a kind of large, shapeless weapon under wraps that was strapped to his back. The tall teenage girl behind him, also a loyal foreign ninja, with a complex bun sort of hairdo and golden hair and skin, also had a large weapon I'd never seen tied to her back.

The teenage boy grabbed Konohamaru by the scruff of his neck and lifted him into the air. "That hurt, you little shit," he growled, and Konohamaru swallowed from where he was dangling with his legs in the air. Konohamaru wasn't a ninja yet and this ninja meant business.

The ninja made a move to punch Konohamaru - I heard Naruto shout, I saw Sasuke go for his kunai pouch with narrowed eyes - but unthinkingly, I was the one who ran forward. It was a stupid idea from the beginning. But punching a little kid was a shitty thing to do, and I knew what it felt like to be bullied.

For some reason, the ninja let me approach. He smirked as I grabbed Konohamaru, glaring, and pulled him out of his grasp. I set Konohamaru back on his feet. The ninja was watching me with narrowed eyes, still with that peculiar smirk on his face. Then he made a sudden move toward Konohamaru; I moved in front of Konohamaru and put my arms out. "Stop."

The ninja did. "He ran into me," he snapped, like I hadn't already seen that.

"It was a mistake," I said angrily. "He's just a little kid. Haven't you ever had someone run into you before?"

"I'm the Kazekage's son," the ninja snapped, and suddenly I understood. Kazekage. That would make them ninja from the Wind Country, the Hidden Village of Sand, Suna, our ally. And that would make this boy important wherever he was from. His father had been the village leader, possibly for all of his life. He had been the spoiled young master with servants.

"Well, guess what?" I said. "The boy you just tried to pick on is the Hokage's grandson." The ninja's eyes, at last, widened minutely. Konohamaru ran over to Naruto, who gave him a hug. Moegi and Udon had gotten a little teary, so the moment was right.

The girl at last spoke. "Kankurou," she snapped, "I don't care if you get yourself in trouble with Baki, but if you cause an international incident for us you're going to hear about it from me!" This implied that the only thing she cared about was her own problems, which didn't exactly impress me, but at least now she seemed to care about the situation.

"Well, fine, then," said Kankurou, brightening, after a moment. "I'll just pick on you!"

He twitched a finger and all of a sudden it was like a band of iron had latched itself around my ankle. I was pulled and flown off my feet, dragged along the ground on my back inexorably toward Kankurou. My scar was there and this hurt. I let out a distinctly unladylike swear word. The girl sighed, rolled her eyes, and looked away. It appeared I wasn't important enough to warrant her intervention.

The boy, Kankurou, was smirking as he dragged me along toward him. I still couldn't see how he was pulling me. There was no ninja wire attached to his finger, nothing.

"Let me go," I snapped, struggling.

"Make me," he said childishly. And then, grinning, "What'll you do for me if I let you go?" The question was lewd.

"Good God, Kankurou," said the girl in a faint kind of disgust. "I can't believe we're related." She still did nothing.

"Look at her!" Kankurou was crowing. "She's so weak! She can't do anything!"

"Let her go, asshole!" Naruto was shouting; Sasuke let out a kunai and threw it at Kankurou's hand, but Kankurou saw it coming. His hand dodged and he just kept right on pulling me.

I made a hand seal and flashed out chakra, thinking it might be an illusion, but no such thing. There was a faint buzzing around my ankle, but the bond held, and I couldn't break out of it if I couldn't see it. I took out a kunai and stabbed it toward where I'd felt the buzzing; my kunai flashed blue for a moment, but no go.

"You really don't know what's going on, do you?" Kankurou asked, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. I was almost level with his foot...

"Kankurou. Stop."

Kankurou looked around wildly, and I took the opportunity for what it was. While he wasn't looking, I made a hand seal and replaced myself with a rock just behind the nearest tree. I'd been afraid before that he would see my hand move and bind my hands, too. Whoever had just spoken so coldly had afforded me the moment I needed.

I appeared behind the tree, and looked out around cautiously. Everyone was so busy looking up toward the tree, nobody had noticed I was gone. They were all looking at a tree branch up above me. Someone was standing on it, but I couldn't see them from behind the trunk.

The voice was a boy's voice, cold and severe. "Kankurou," it said, "you're a disgrace to our village. Temari: you let him harass a girl?"

"G-Gaara." Kankurou and Temari were clearly fearful. "Gaara, they started it!" said Kankurou immediately, defensively. "They -"

"Shut up or I'll kill you." The wording was so blunt, there was a moment of silence as if the collective audience had been hit in the proverbial face. "We didn't come here to make a scene. My apologies," the voice said, to the Konoha ninja I assumed.

"You're right, Gaara. It was our fault," said Kankurou and Temari, to my faint shock. They stepped back away from Gaara - who might be their brother, and was certainly their teammate - smiling, smiling. Ingratiating, greasy. It was as if they genuinely feared their sibling would hurt them. Like he was socially above them in some way.

Who were these people?

"Look, Gaara, I'll release her right now," said Kankurou in a falsely cheerful voice, and he looked around - and stared.

His invisible chakra string was holding a rock. I hid a smile behind my hand for a moment at the expression on his face.

"Hey, where the hell did she go?!" he said before he could stop himself.

Naruto started laughing uproariously. "You have to be careful of Sakura," said Sasuke, smirking. "She's the sneakiest person on our team."

"I'm flattered," I said sarcastically. I stepped out from behind the tree and leaned against it. "Thanks for helping me," I said to my teammates, mostly jokingly.

"Hey, we were getting there!" said Naruto, mostly jokingly.

I rolled my eyes and smiled.

And in a flurry of sand, the boy I hadn't been able to see moved from the tree branch to the ground beside his teammates. His youth made it clearest that they were Genin. He couldn't have been any older than us. At the same time, he was just as definitively the leader of his siblings as Konohamaru was of his friends.

His skin was golden, like theirs, and his hair went pell-mell all over his head, a deep blood red in color. He had green eyes hollow and black-rimmed from lack of sleep, a great gourd attached to his back like a weapon, and he had shaved off his eyebrows which gave his face an eerie, pale sort of look. He reminded me a little of Zabuza, but he was much, much quieter - harder to read. He had a tattoo over one of his eyes that said "Love" and it was peculiarly out of place on his face.

I walked up to stand before the collected team, trying to be bold, and not scared like I was inside. "That hurt," I said in a steely tone to Kankurou, lifting my chin defiantly. "Remind me to pay you back for that one of these days."

Kankurou looked for a moment as if he might respond, but then he looked sideways at Gaara and fell silent.

"I apologize on behalf of my idiot brother," said Gaara, and it could have had a lot of different tones to it: humor, exasperation, affection, regret, anger. But none of these passed across his face. His stare was blank and cold. He didn't look sorry.

"Of course," I said, looking him over curiously. "What are you three doing in our village? We may be allies, but there are treaties forbidding ninja from entering each other's territories without permission."

"We have passes," said Temari immediately, and she held hers up. "Did you guys really not know your village is hosting the latest Chuunin Selection Exam?"

"What's a Chuunin Selection Exam?" Naruto asked, and I nearly closed my eyes.

"Sasuke," I said tightly, "could you please explain to our teammate that 'Chuunin Selection Exam' means 'exam where certain people are selected to graduate to Chuunin'?"

Kankurou snickered and from Naruto's sudden shout, I got the feeling Sasuke had just punched him in the arm. Boys.

"What is your name?" Gaara said at last. I realized he had not taken his eyes off of me - not in the romantic way, either. He must think I was the leader of my team. The idea was laughable.

"Sakura," I said, instead of laughing, which would have been rude and out of place.

His eyes narrowed for a moment in something like confusion.

"Why did you want to know?" I asked, smiling uncomfortably.

His gaze fixed on me expressionlessly for a moment. "... Why did you protect that boy?" he asked then.

"Because he needed my help," I said in confusion. "Why?"

This didn't look like it cleared anything up. Gaara's eyes were still narrowed at me. "You reminded me of someone I once knew," he said enigmatically after a while, and turned away. Even Kankurou and Temari looked bewildered, staring between us as if uncertain of what Gaara meant.

But they nevertheless went to follow their brother away. It appeared Gaara had nothing more left to say, and thus, neither did his teammates. They were probably holed up in a hotel with their Sensei, Baki, somewhere. They must have to get back.

Chuunin Selection Exam. Was that what Kakashi had been hiding lately?

But while the encounter was over for me, it wasn't for my teammates. "Hey," said Sasuke forcefully after a moment, glaring at Gaara's back and stepping forward, "don't you want to know my name?"

"Or mine?" Naruto asked.

Gaara looked back at them and smiled a peculiar, cold kind of smile. "And why," he asked quietly, "would I want to know something like that?"

(Temari looked like she wanted to know at least one of the boys' names, but she was too reserved to ask and I don't think either of the boys noticed.)

Sasuke and Naruto's faces darkened. They looked angry and distinctly unhappy as the Kazekage's children left. Oops?

The next morning, sure enough, when Kakashi came to the bridge he had some news for us.

As usual, he was hours tardy. "Hello, everyone," he said, giving a sarcastic little wave, when he finally appeared. "Sorry, I got lost on the path known as life today."

"Sensei," I said, "are you ever going to tell us why you really always show up late?"

"No!" He was still smiling.

Well, at least he was honest. To be frank, I'd gotten used to Kakashi-sensei's chronic tardiness by this point. It gave me more time to sleep in and walk leisurely to our meeting spot. I mean, so I was an hour or so late. So what? He was always at least two hours late. Some girls might have used that time to fiddle with their hair. I used that time to further the serious relationship I was in with my bed.

Hatake Kakashi. Totally not preparing his Genin for the real world. Woot.

"Let's get straight to the point," said Kakashi. "I've nominated all three of you for the Chuunin Selection Exam."

"YES! I LOVE YOU, KAKASHI-SENSEI!" That was Naruto.

"Don't you dare hug me." That was Kakashi-sensei.

"That's what you've been keeping under wraps?" I asked in exasperation.

"Well, I wouldn't say 'under wraps', necessarily..." Kakashi-sensei avoided the question.

"Are you sure we're ready?" This little piece of self consciousness came from, of all people, Uchiha Sasuke. Everyone turned to gape at him. "What?" he asked in embarrassment. "We met some Genin who were going to take the Chuunin Selection Exam, strong ninja, the Kazekage's children. And they... didn't seem interested."

"How much could they have gotten from a surface glance?" Kakashi asked skeptically.

"And how do you know they were strong?" I protested.

"They were the Kazekage's children!" said Naruto. "And that one guy was really stealthy. And that other guy had that weird limb control thingy! And they were so mean!"

"So they come from an important family and they're assholes," I said. "What does that prove? And as for Gaara, it wouldn't have been hard to sneak up on us. We were all focused on someone else."

"But there was something about him..." Sasuke said.

I knew what he meant. "Yeah," I said, shivering a little. "I agree. He seemed pretty confident. And..."

"Robotic? Inhuman? Subarctic?" Naruto offered.

"Wow, big words, Naruto. I'm impressed," said Sasuke.

"Fuck you," said Naruto, almost lazily. "But what about the other guy, the one who caught you?" He turned to me with this question.

"I found a way out of it, didn't I?" I said. "Besides, I think I have the basic idea figured out. I think he found some way to make a chakra string. I wonder what would happen if I tried to shoot fire chakra at it..."

"He could have been a puppet master," said Kakashi. "Elaborate dress? Face paint?" We nodded. "It's a Suna thing," he said, shrugging. "They control fighting machines with chakra strings. And as for the fire chakra... creative. If you ever have to fight him, I fully recommend giving it a shot."

"But, really, Sasuke." Naruto turned to him. "If we're worse than someone, that way we'll have something to work toward. And we'll just keep fighting and training till we're better. See? That's what I've always done." Naruto shrugged. "I'm still alive."

"Thanks, that makes me feel loads better," said Sasuke, and it was sarcasm, but underneath that he did seem a bit more relaxed than he had been.

"And on that upbeat note, here are the applications." Kakashi handed one out to each Genin. "This doesn't force you to take the Exam, mind you. You can always just throw the application in the trash and not show up. But I've recommended you because I think you can handle it, and I recommend you try it out. Get a feel for the territory. You all work well as a team, have a good understanding of the basics, can chakra walk on sideways surfaces, and you each have at least one spell outside that." Kakashi shrugged. "Sounds like a Chuunin to me," he offered simply. "Chuunin are usually not taken out of teams until all of them have made at least Chuunin, so you'd probably still be working together afterward."

"The Sannin worked together always," I remembered from my studies. "The famous Sages were always known to work best as a team."

"That's right," said Kakashi, nodding to me. Then he said, "Anyway. Not going to push the issue. If you want to take the Exam, fill out the application and meet at the Academy five days from now, at 1500 hours or preferably a little beforehand, in room 301."

As we were all walking together afterward, Naruto was chanting, "I'm gonna be Hokage! I'm gonna be Hokage!"

"First stop: Chuunin, next stop: Hokage?" I asked jokingly.

"You bet!" Naruto grinned. "It's all up from here, baby!"

"Hey, I'm game if you are," I laughed. Then I said thoughtfully, "It would be cool, to be able to call myself a Chuunin."

"Some ninja don't make Chuunin till their teens or even their twenties. A lot in the reserves never make Chuunin at all," Sasuke offered. "We're already ahead of the game, technically."

"Clan knowledge?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Basically. It would be nice if I'd gone faster, but..."

"But then you wouldn't have a life," I finished for him.

Sasuke snorted. "Oh, God," he said dryly. "That would be horrible." I laughed. "But there should be plenty of strong people at this thing," said Sasuke thoughtfully. "It would be good to test ourselves, further our skills. Whether we make Chuunin or not."

"Kakashi-sensei nominated us for the Chuunin Selection Exam today," I offered to my parents over dinner.

"Mmm," they said. "That's nice, honey." It was a polite kind of dismissal.

So I called Ino and of course we totally spazzed over it together. "I got in, too! Girl, I will see you there!"

So now I had one more reason to attend the Chuunin Exam: keeping up with Ino.

So I waited the five days and tried to prepare as best I could for the Chuunin Exam by working out, doing taijutsu combinations and chakra flexing exercises, and looking through old Academy scrolls and notes. It was the strangest thing, though. I sometimes got the weird, creepy feeling that someone was watching me. The last time it had happened had been during Zabuza's initial assault and that made me a little leery of the feeling. Sometimes while I was out walking alone at night, I thought I spied a shadow on a rooftop out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned around there was never anyone there. I would watch grains of sand float down through the air by the light of the street lamp and wonder if I was just going crazy.

(What was with all the sand, though, seriously? Did Suna ninja just emit it in this constant, thick cloud wherever they went?)

So I was half expecting an attack at any moment. But one night shortly before the Exam was due to start, something weird finally happened.

I was out jogging, one of the only times of the day I was really, truly alone. It was early in the morning and it was still pleasantly cool and dewy out. The peaceful silence was broken by a sudden snarl. I whirled around and saw a tiger launching itself straight at me!

Reflexively, I shot a kunai directly into its open maw and leaped back to give myself more space. But the kunai went... through the tiger? It was a genjutsu, I realized. An illusion. I channeled chakra and broke the illusion, only for an entirely silent assailant coming from behind to bowl me over and wrap his hands around my neck, trying to choke me.

"Give up on the Chuunin Exam!" he hissed. "Give it up!"

I did what I'd done with the Zabuza clone. I shot my knee up, directed it at his balls, slid out from underneath his grasp, bent his arm at an uncomfortable angle, and broke it. The Bunshin disappeared. I had just had enough time to catch that he was a foreign ninja, a man, probably here for the Chuunin Exam.

I waited, but no real assailant came after the Bunshin. I figured after a while that he'd just run away.

"... He's reduced himself to trying to scare girls into trying to quit the Exam?" I scoffed after a moment. "Pathetic."

So, I thought, no more creepy feeling. Problem solved.