(A/N) Hello! Oh, do go read at least the newest chapters of HCR, they're kind of important… I mean, you don't have to, but I would. Guest: He channeled chakra to his tongue and overloaded the seal. Kind of. The seals aren't meant to take more then like one type of chakra at a time, so Sakura fueling it and then Orochimaru's intervention, overloaded the seal, making the barrier shatter.
"RUN!" Sakura yelled.
Sakura ran in the lead, slapping down barrier seals on every trunk she could hit. Naruto and Sasuke hit which ones they could to charge them, in theory it would give them time to get away. In practice, it wasn't working quite that well, but it was doing something.
Two red flares went up behind them, and Sakura noted them. "C'mon! We have to get to the tower quickly! After those flares, ANBU will start showing up, and we don't want to be disqualified because we interacted with them. Even if there's an enemy in the forest."
"That's what the flare means?" Naruto shouted up, activating another tag, this barrier red.
"Well, it means dangerous missing ninja or invasion, basically something that would require high powered jounin and ANBU," Sakura corrected. "So, we really cannot be here when they arrive!"
"Gah!" Sasuke was abruptly tackled out of the trees, pinned to the ground by a gleeful snake sanin.
"GET AWAY FROM KAKASHI'S STUDENTS!" Akiko shouted, launching herself at the sanin, giant shuriken at the ready to stab him. Unfortunately, she only managed to gut a log, the real snake sanin having substituted away.
Sakura frowned slightly as Akiko checked Sasuke's neck, was there something to worry about? She made a mental note to keep Orochimaru away from Sasuke's neck.
Akiko set Sasuke down again. "Run, I'll hold him off for now. You have two scrolls, right?"
Sakura nodded. They did. From the Ame nin. A slight signal from her, and Sasuke joined her and Naruto in the tree. Together, they fled, Sakura in the lead, Sasuke right behind, Naruto in the back.
"Naruto! Shadow clones!" Sakura snapped after they'd been running for a while.
Puffs of smoke surrounded them, and teams of shadow clones henged as them raced off in every direction.
Sakura changed their direction so they would get to the tower by a slightly more roundabout way, one of the teams of henged clones heading straight for the tower.
"How long till we reach the tower?" Naruto called up. "I only have so much chakra, Sakura!"
"Noted!" Sakura said, her voice slightly strained. Her chakra was running low as well, and she hadn't been doing half the stuff Naruto had. "An hour maybe, but I can't really tell!"
"Sakura," Sasuke said, glancing around with blood red eyes. "We have people behind us."
"Probably the ANBU or some jounin," Sakura replied, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. "Dang it!"
"Stop!" A voice called out behind them. Sakura hissed and skidded to a stop, the boys stopping behind her.
"We don't have time for this," Sakura snapped.
"Then make some," the leader said snidely.
Sakura turned her nose up at him. "We'll see about that."
Naruto pulled out a wind seal. He activated it, sending the sound team flying into the trees. That taken care of, Team 7 resumed their flight through the jungle.
A little while later, the Sound team came after them again.
Sasuke slapped down an electricity tag should they come after them, and sent a fire ball their way. They continued running. They had a tower to reach.
The third time, Sakura sighed, and fully stopped. "We can't afford any more interruptions. We might as well take care of them here."
The leader of the team smirked, readying his arm.
Sakura drew back slightly, narrowing her eyes as she prepared a barrier seal to stop whatever he was going to do.
A sound drove her to her knees, clasping her hands over her ears. Naruto suffered worse, his ears beginning to bleed almost immediately. Sasuke grunted, but otherwise mostly didn't react. Sakura signaled to Sasuke to distract them, and crawled over to Naruto, finding a silencing seal, and slapping two over his ears. Maybe it would help.
It did, and Naruto smiled at her gratefully. Sakura didn't do the same to herself, knowing she had to keep her hearing, in case someone else tried to ambush them.
And someone did. While Sasuke was engaged in a rapidly going south taijutsu battle with the girl, Naruto was fighting the leader, and Sakura was sheltering behind a barrier while she fought the third member, Orochimaru crashed in, destroying Sakura's barrier, knocking out Naruto and the leader in a combined blast, and lunging right for Sasuke. Sakura had been thrown against a tree, a sickening crack accompanying her slumping to the ground, unconsious, and possibly hurt badly.
Sasuke shamelessly sacrificed the girl he was fighting for himself, lunging for Naruto's unconscious body. He lugged him over to lay next to Sakura, then leaped away before Orochimaru could lunge at him, and by extension, his teammates. He started a game of cat and mouse with Orochimaru trying to stall the sannin for long enough for people to reach him and distract the sannin long enough for him to get his two teammates into the tower that was barely 10 meters away.
It paid off, an ANBU squad arriving just in time to find Sasuke stiff as a statue, Orochimaru's fangs sunk deep into his neck.
While the ANBU fought Orochimaru, Sasuke sank to his knees, fighting the pain just long enough to stand up and go over to his teammates, suddenly glad he'd been working on his strength and that his teammates were very light as he lifted them both over his shoulders and staggered as fast as he could for the tower.
He got inside before setting his teammates down, pulling out the two scrolls, and throwing them to open them. As soon as Iruka appeared, he passed out, his vision going abruptly black.
(A/N) DRAMA!