Okay, so if I get anything wrong this chapter (Like jutsu or the hint side affects of a certain jutsu hint), please tell me.
Second Exam II
Sakura stood… and immediately fell down again. The attack had caught her foot, and only her foot, throwing her off balance for the landing and potentially breaking a couple of bones. Luckily, the power had been spread out over the blast, so her foot wasn't gone. She cursed under her breath, running a hand over her foot and wincing. About…a couple broken bones…She surmised, channeling enough chakra into the foot for her to be able to stand up.
Standing, not ten feet away from her was Orochimaru.
-
Sasuke watched, out of the corner of his eye, Sakura standing up, failing, then standing up again. Hopefully she can fight… or run if need be. This…person…is stronger than the others.
The grass-nin just stood there, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. "So I see you got both scrolls." She stated, "Good job… you might be as good as I hoped you would be."
Sasuke, confused but wary of the praise, merely drew a kunai and, gripping it tightly, brought it up in a defensive position. Sakura… she was just staring at the grass-nin… at least that's what it looked like. What is she doing?
-
Sakura didn't even know what she was doing. But… it seemed like she was having a killing intent and staring contest with Orochimaru. He was the one that started all of this. Without him, no Sound-nin, without him, no curse seal, without him, Kabuto might not have gotten that strong. In short, the only one she wanted to kill more than Kabuto was Orochimaru, then Itachi, because if she killed him, Sasuke might probably stop his… dream, maybe, though something like that…can't be a dream. Snapping out of her slightly detached thoughts, she cleared her mind… just in time for something worse.
Orochimaru…did whatever he did the last time.
-
Naruto stared at the snake in front of him. T-that thing is bigger than a… house. Two houses! And it could…swallow…me…whole. The snake, dappled green and brown, leaned forward, staring at Naruto through yellowish eyes. And then, before Naruto had time to draw even a kunai, it swallowed him in one gulp.
-
Sasuke, hit with something more than fear, collapsed on the ground, shaking, and almost puking. Genjutsu? N-no… too much…I swear I saw the moment of my own death… twice?
-
Sakura, on the other hand, was experiencing something completely different. She collapsed as well, but she was no longer in the present to register it.
…Naruto's mangled body lay near the trees, his last… forced… smile still on his face. His eyes, what were left of them, had a glazed look to them, like smooth painted pottery. His jacket and shirt underneath were torn to shreds, exposing a clearly visible seal on his stomach. Tsunade immediately started to try to heal him… but it was too late…
…Sasuke they found on a scouting mission… any—any—mission out of the village had been changed to S-ranks. It had been Sharingan vs. Sharingan, Sasuke's and Itachi's last battle, and neither won…
…Kakashi-sensei, muttering words that should have been impossible to him after that blast, his clothes and skin all tinted a blood red from the multitude of hits he had taken…
…Hinata, like a sister to her, Sasuke's hand sticking out of her back, a shocked expression on his face as he failed to impale the one he had been aiming for, her face a determined mask…
…Neji, not a mark on him, but past the healing stage, eyes frozen open, face contorted with almost concealed pain…
…Kiba, in depression after Akamaru died in an escort mission that came to close to a sound patrol—ten miles—, falls from the cliff, the sound attack blasting him off the precarious edge…
…Tenten, body not even found, just a scroll, proof that the fight had brought one of her back-up attacks into play…
…Lee, valiantly fighting Kabuto, but not fast enough, even with extreme speed, not able to open the gates for help…
…Ino, friendly-ish rivalry still in place after…everything, grinning at her, "Forehead." no longer afraid of the death that claimed her only minutes later…
…Shino…the only thing supposedly left of him was a pile of ash after the sound invasion of Sand. He, and a team of jounin, had been sent to help, but by the time they found out the pure extent of the attack, it was nearly to late for the village, much less the ninja on the front lines…
…Shikamaru, trapped and checkmated by the sound army, holding as many of them as possible as he ordered—ordered—his friends to go, that this was the only way to make sure that the rest could get out safely, and to close in the tunnel behind them…
…Choji's funeral, everyone there, Ino actually crying for him…
-
Sasuke recovered himself just in time to get Sakura and himself out of there, literally having to pick the shaking girl up and jump into the nearest tree. This has to be a genjutsu, she won't snap out of it. But as he released a small pulse of Chakra and she didn't wake up, he rethought that, what? Not a genjutsu… then what? What did that ninja do to her?
"Sakura! Wake up!" Well, it was better than nothing, wasn't it? But what he didn't expect was Sakura to jump at least two or three feet in the air almost instantaneously, and land, channeling as much killing intent as one could into Sasuke. But it only lasted for a moment, then she immediately withdrew the killing intent, but the mistrustful look remained for a couple moments more.
"Where are we?" She asked, as curtly as she could, but it still came out with the hoarseness as if she had been silently screaming the last few minutes. What did shesee?
Sakura was visibly shaking, but still steady with considerable effort. Her eyes held mistrustfulness…and… hate? Whatever she had experienced had shocked or scared her beyond reason. Will she be able to fight now? Because whatever the grass-nin did to her, she can probably do to me…
-
Naruto was immensely disgruntled.
Well, who wouldn't be, if a snake had swallowed them? Apparently the snake had oxygen in his stomach, and apparently Naruto was still alive.
And… he was…extremely annoyed.
Fire or Clone? Fire or Clone? Fire or Clone?
He repeated to himself, finally deciding that exploding by clones would be the snake's fate.
-
Sakura braced herself for the inevitable—
'Shish—kht'
She jumped, just as the snake exploded through the tree. He's more desperate this time… probably because I'm here, and he's unsure of weather we're stronger or not. She hadn't meant to react that way to Sasuke, but at that time she was reliving a scene with him that still shook her. But she just, like she was good at doing after years of experience, pushed it to the back of her head.
But she had been shaking, she had been scared. And now, Sasuke was somewhat shaken, too, and just as much on guard as her.
I hadn't meant to do that.
-
Sasuke leapt only seconds after Sakura. But despite the fact that he leapt in almost the opposite direction, the snake diverted its course, heading after him. He activated his Sharingan, and…
GET IT AWAY!
The almost incoherent thought roared through his head, and he couldn't even think of a jutsu. Reacting purely on instinct, he threw a dozen shuriken at the reptilian beast, not even registering he did throw them.
"Sasuke!" He heard Sakura's voice just as the shuriken impaled the beast in its mouth, and it fell, seemingly dead. Sakura suddenly rushed by, and since Sasuke was still in midair, about to land, he couldn't follow.
But he watched as she dove towards one spot a little from the head of the snake, glowing fist upraised. Bringing it down, she smashed a bloody hole in the dead snake. What is she doing?
Suddenly, he understood. Rising from the…snake was the grass-nin.
-
Sakura stood, blood covering both arms. I didn't get him.
But Orochimaru was rising from the snake far enough to her right for her not to be a threat. Coincidence? She thought, but then immediately discarded the thought. Nothing like that is coincidental. Kabuto told him more than I guessed.
-
Where are they, where are they? Naruto shouted inside his head, cursing himself for not jumping out of the way soon enough. Not only are Sakura-chan and Sasuke-teme in trouble, now I have snake acid all over me.
Something close to an explosion came from his left. Bingo!
-
Sakura Leafstorm. She had dubbed the…thing… the first time she had used it. It used fresh, natural leaves, a common occurrence in the Forest of Death, or all of Konoha and most of the Land of Fire, and also used chakra to reinforce and sharpen the leaves. The enemy didn't know what was happening until the leaves reached them. It was used mostly as a distraction, because of the immense concentration it took to greatly injure someone with them, but you could, in some cases, attach a couple explosion tags to the leaf, and if you pour the right amount of chakra into it, the tags would explode when you wanted them to.
That's exactly what Sakura did.
The explosions followed Orochimaru one by one, gaining on him due to the fact that Sasuke was continually doing fire and shuriken-based attacks from the other side. He couldn't keep it up for long, though. But what Sakura hadn't expected was Sasuke's fire jutsu to collide with her group of explosion tags… right on top of Orochimaru.
-
Naruto arrived in time to see the fire fading, the explosions fading away…and someone was behind him. He whirled, and came face-to-face with some grass-nin. Is this a girl…or a guy? Was his first thought. He couldn't help it, ever since spending the week with Haku a while back; he had been corrupted in a way.
The ninja's fingers lit up, and Naruto had barely any time to think before he was thrown backwards into… he guessed one of his teammates. A pain erupted from his stomach, and he almost lost his grip on the branch that he was holding onto. But the pain persisted, and he instinctively tried to curl into a ball and hang onto the branch at the same time. He couldn't even climb up.
-
Sasuke, as soon as he noticed that Naruto was there and possibly in danger, leapt to the branch the dobe had knocked Sakura off of. Sakura was probably okay, but Naruto's face was contorting with pain, and he was barely able to hold onto the branch. "Dobe." He muttered, reaching down and grabbing Naruto's wrists, pulling him up onto the branch.
Immediately Naruto staggered up, still in pain, but not as much, or he was just hiding it. Sakura appeared beside them, placing an arm around Naruto, steadying him.
That was when the grass-nin appeared again.
Along with a giant snake.
---
A plume of fire destroyed all of Naruto's clones…
…but was also heading straight for Orochimaru.
He had greatly underestimated the genins' teamwork, as well as their individual skills. He might have to send the sound four to capture Sasuke, after all, if the invasion didn't work. And the blonde idiot hadn't looked like he could've done much, but he had already showed off a surprising jutsu… the Kage Bunshin Technique. And the seal hadn't affected the kid as much as he had hoped.
And the way the two, Uzumaki and Uchiha, seemed to know each other's moves was indeed something that he almost didn't want to break up.
Of course, nothing was greater than his own dreams and ambitions.
He jumped out of the way of the fire, landing deftly on the waiting snake.
-
"Guys, we have to get rid of the snake first." Sakura said, barely even able to finish the sentence before the large snake crashed into the spot where Team Seven had been moments before.
We're going to attract the attention of…someone sooner or later…
-
Gaara looked up.
Something wasn't right. The air seemed full of Chakra and killing intent, the small tensions in the air you could feel telling of emotion were taught, reminding him of every time he would run into someone of his village, and, to an extent, this village as well.
It was obvious Kankuro and Temari felt it too.
Without a word to his siblings, he set off towards the commotion.
What did they have to lose, anyway? They had already passed, and no one else could beat the sand siblings out here, not genin.
But he had a feeling that this was more than genin level.
-
Sasuke let out another Fire Jutsu, trying to distract the grass-nin… Orochimaru… Sakura had said. That one word just increased the mystery surrounding Sakura. Orochimaru; The name from the Ramen stand three days ago.
"It's…a…disguise!" Sakura yelled at odd intervals, "Orochi…maru…is…masquerading…as…a…grass-nin." She only yelled when Sasuke and Naruto could both hear her, and it took about a minute or two to get the point across. Sasuke didn't question the information, just stored it in the back of his mind for later when he would ask Sakura how she knew all of this.
But it seemed that this ninja…Orochimaru…was just...playing with them. But the enemy was getting low on Chakra, and Sasuke could sense it. But it wasn't nearly low enough to win.
Springing forward, he ran up the entire length of the snake, throwing a punch at the ninja's head.
Orochimaru dodged. He dodged smoothly, bringing up his hand to hit Sasuke in the jaw with enough force to knock him off the snake. Sasuke blocked the punch, jarring his arm, and spun around, almost landing a kick on the grass-nin. But it was caught and Sasuke was spun around, thrown off the snake. Sasuke righted himself, landing ungracefully on the tree branch below, just in time to be almost smashed into the ground by the snake itself.
-
Naruto had launched an attach directly after Sasuke, only this one with a hundred or so Kage Bunshins punching and kicking at the same time. The ninja…Orochimaru, he guessed…was just as good, if not better, than Kakashi-sensei. But…he seemed better than that. It seemed like their opponent was holding back, but why? Why not just finish them then?
That…thing he hit my stomach with still hurts as if I was being stabbed by kunai… He noted, rubbing his midsection as he recovered from the steady loss of clones. There were still about forty left, but that wouldn't last long. He needed to think of something, and fast to help his friends.
-
Gaara stayed in the undergrowth, observing the scene in front of him with mild interest. Temari, on his left, and Kankuro, on his right, were completely engrossed in the battle, staring at the Team…Seven? And their opponent with wide eyes.
"That's not a genin, I can tell that much." Temari muttered, "That grass-nin…there is no way."
Kankuro just nodded in agreement.
Maybe
-
Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke were getting desperate. Sure, their opponent was getting worn out, but so were they, and to a much larger degree. Naruto had started to conserve on Kage Bunshins, and was now relying on his…now erratic fire jutsus. Sasuke guessed that whatever was messing up his jutsu related to the purple glowing from up above before Naruto fell.
And we need at least him at full proficiency. Neither Sakura nor I are able to fight as well as usual. Sakura due to whatever happened to her and me because of my previous battle. We're not doing well right now.
It was turning into a standoff. After an almost excruciating battle, there was now a lull in the action, and it seemed that Sakura knew what was going to happen next by the glances she was continuing to give Sasuke. Nervous, and slightly fearful glances, he noted with slight discomfort. Whatever she knew was going to happen was bound to be worse than what had already happened.
-
Sakura was unsure of what to do next, most likely because she was in a completely different situation from last time, and she didn't know what Orochimaru was going to do. She knew his main goal, but now the timeline had diverged so much she didn't know what was coming next.
She could barely react when Orochimaru shot forward.
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Author's Note: So yeah, I don't think this is a good chapter. This was a really long chapter. The Chunnin Exams will last another one chapter. I've ended three sentences so far with the word 'chapter'.
Yeah, I hope everything was believable. Plus, I typed this on a laptop (Never again will I type on one of these.) And mistakes might be common-er than usual.
Ja ne!
MD