"This world of ninja was built on blood – do not speak to me of innocence and guilt, for you stand on as many corpses as the rest of us."

Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang of Konoha

-O-

Sasuke woke up at six o'clock as usual. Sweat stained his sheets and covered his body, courtesy of another night's worth of nightmares and half-memories.

He showered, brushed his teeth and picked out a fresh set of clothes. His bed stayed a rumpled mess. Two weapons pouches – one for everyday wear, and a spare – were already packed, but Sasuke took every item out, checked it, and replaced it. Two shuriken were slightly blunter than he would have liked, so he set them aside for sharpening. He grabbed some replacements from a stack of weapons he kept on the dining table.

For lunch, he chose some rice balls stuffed with pickled plum, together with a fresh tomato and a piece of chocolate. Six cereal bars and a pouch of dried beef, in case the exam lasted longer than expected, also went into the bottom of his lunch bag. He fixed the bag to his belt, under his shirt, where it would be hard for an enemy to tamper with it.

Then there was no more stalling to do. Sasuke grabbed his entry form off the table and picked up his brand-new spear from beside the door. Two days ago in Tanzaku Gai he'd bought it on a whim. Five feet of hardened oak shaft topped with a ten-inch steel spike, it already felt more comfortable in his hand than a sword ever had.

Sasuke Uchiha set off for the Chunin Exams.

-O-

"Well, this is a bit underwhelming," Naruto said, and Sasuke couldn't help but agree.

Participants had been directed to gather in one of the large Academy rooms. Even half a year ago, the hall had seemed bigger. The ceiling was too low, and the ninety-odd participants were barely any bigger than him. Some were shorter, even!

The weakest ninja were still stuck on the wrong floor of the Academy, but even here, no-one looked particularly threatening. Plenty of Leaf ninja were present, and a handful of teams from Sand. Sasuke could only see a dozen Mist headbands and nobody at all from Cloud or Rock.

"They did move the exams," Sakura pointed out. "Maybe these are the only teams that could make the new time."

Sasuke shrugged. The space was clearly meant for a larger crowd. The genin teams looked a little bit lost, surrounded by empty desks.

"How come you brought your spear?" Naruto asked. "I left my new sword at home. We've not practiced with them, and it seems dumb to try them out for such an important event."

Sasuke was starting to feel a little self-conscious about the spear. "Maybe you don't know anything about weapons, but I'm actually a good ninja," he said, nettled.

"Who ever heard of a ninja with a spear, anyway," Naruto said, before he was distracted by new arrivals. "Oh hey, look! It's Hinata and her team, and there's Shikamaru too!"

Sasuke tuned out Team Eight's greetings as Naruto waved them over, and exchanged nods with Ino when she brought her teammates to join the group of Leaf ninja. The waiting was getting to him; his spear felt uncomfortable in his hand. Sasuke could admit that it was smarter to not rely on an unfamiliar weapon. At least it would throw any opponents off if they tried to guess his combat style.

While he was sulking – scratch that, Sasuke wasn't sulking, he was carefully planning battle strategies – Naruto was making friends again. Sasuke knew he shouldn't be surprised. Naruto somehow wormed his way under everyone's skin eventually. At least they were on the same team, so Sasuke got to benefit from it.

"Are you holding up okay?" Sakura whispered to him, jolting him out of his thoughts. A quick glance showed most of the ninja around him were focused on Naruto, who was telling a heavily-edited version of the time Kakashi had pranked Ebisu.

"I'm fine," he said. Sakura looked like she wanted to ask a follow-up question but he glared her into submission.

"If you're sure," she muttered and turned away again.

He sighed. "I just need a moment's calm."

"Of course, I understand," Sakura replied, immediately returning to fussing over him.

That was all the diplomacy that Sasuke had time for.

A giant of a man, dressed all in black even in the summer heat, slammed the door open. The effect on the room was electric. Some genin exploded into a flurry of motion as they drew weapons or slipped into combat stances. Others kept their heads when he entered, but responded to being surrounded by armed and tense ninja by drawing their own weapons. It took a good fifteen seconds for everyone to relax as they realised they weren't under attack.

Sasuke got the impression that the newcomer enjoyed the chaos he'd caused.

"Listen up, you maggots," he spoke, his deep voice effortlessly capturing the room. "My name is Ibiki Morino, and I'm the head of Konoha's torture division. I expect nothing less than instant obedience. For the first stage of the exams, I am the ultimate authority."

Sasuke glanced at Naruto and Sakura, and relaxed when he saw they weren't about to make a scene.

"You will be evaluated in your three-man units. Any team that is missing a member is automatically disqualified." As Ibiki continued, Sasuke saw two angry Leaf ninja head for the exit. "Make your way through the doors to your left in your teams, and remember the code word your examiners give you. Do not tell anyone what the word is or you will be immediately disqualified."

As the crowd set into motion, Sakura grabbed his and Naruto's hands. "Just in case of any tricks," she said, and Sasuke nodded. He had already seen one genjutsu trap, where the room sign had been modified to send people to the wrong floor. There might be more tricks. Until the exams were over, nothing was guaranteed safe, and everyone could be lying.

"If you want to pass this stage, you will have to comport yourselves as upstanding ninja should. Not many of you will manage it," Ibiki called. He stood and watched the genin filter into the next corridor, arms folded across his chest.

Ibiki disliked the candidates, it was glaringly clear, so why was he involved in the Chunin Exams?

As Sasuke and his teammates went through the double doors, a trio of chunin stepped forward and whispered something to each of them. Some sort of wind technique muffled background noise for a second. "Loyalist," Sasuke's chunin told him. He tried to read the lips of the other two chunin but found that their faces were faintly blurred. Some sort of genjutsu, no doubt.

And then the background noise flooded back, and he led his team through into the next hall. It was full of round tables, each of which had three chairs and three slips of paper arranged around it. Sasuke picked a spot near one of the windows – it was never bad to have an emergency exit handy.

"So that was strange," Sakura said. "I can't wait to find out what the point of it is."

"You might not have to wait long," Naruto said, pointing at the stage at the front of the room. Ibiki was walking towards it as the chunin proctors filtered into the room.

"You three!" a proctor shouted, pointing at a guilty-looking trio from Sand. "You've been disqualified for breaking the rules."

"We didn't – you can't do this!" the tallest of them shouted. "That's not fair!"

Sasuke barely kept track of the blur that was one of the chunin proctors darting in and slamming the genin against a wall. "Either leave, or we make you, it's all the same to me," he drawled.

"Silence!" Ibiki called, and instantly the room went still. "Here are the rules for the first round of the Chunin Exams. Break one of these rules and you will be removed, forcibly if necessary. There will be no violence permitted against any other genin during this round."

Sasuke glanced around at the other genin, looking for anyone who seemed relieved. Those would be weaker targets if he had to fight anyone in a later stage. Ibiki had only banned fighting for this round, after all. He marked down a handful of teams as easy pickings.

"There is also no violence allowed against proctors. If you are disqualified, you must leave immediately. Otherwise you are to remain in this room until the end of the stage."

Sasuke tuned out the part about going to the bathroom or voluntary withdrawal (only an entire team could withdraw). He saw Sakura pull out a notebook and write Ibiki's words down. It was a reminder that Sasuke wasn't the only smart member of Team Seven.

"This round is called 'Find the traitor'. Each member of your team has been designated as either a 'loyalist' or a 'traitor'. You have one hour to attempt to determine everyone's true nature. Each team will be given a piece of paper, on which they can write a traitor's name. If they successfully identify the traitor, by majority vote, then the loyal members pass. If the name of someone loyal is given instead, then only the traitor can pass." Ibiki gestured at the wall behind him, and an illusion shimmered and disappeared, revealing a large timer, currently at 59:55. Sasuke cursed himself for missing the genjutsu earlier. "Your time starts now."

The room filled with chatter, and Sasuke turned to face his team. That seemed like a nice and straightforward challenge.

"I don't suppose anyone wants to admit to being the traitor?" he asked. "It would save us all some time."

-O-

"Five minutes left," Ibiki called, an evil grin on his face. Four teams had handed in their suspicions on who the traitor was, and moved to the next room to be told who passed. Another team had been removed when one genin had attacked another. Everyone else was still debating.

Sasuke rested his head on the desk so he wouldn't have to meet Sakura's or Naruto's eyes.

"So we agree it's impossible?" Sakura said. "None of us can prove that we're loyal, or find a way to prove someone else is a traitor. There's no clever tricks, there's no jutsu or whatever that we can use to get out of this."

"Nope," Naruto said, arms folded across his chest. He'd been sulking ever since Sasuke had said he was the most likely traitor of the group.

"What I don't understand is what they're testing us for?" Sasuke said, frustrated. "This doesn't make any sense at all! Konoha is supposed to be about teamwork and trust, not ferreting out traitors."

"...You're right," Naruto agreed. "Maybe the idea is for the traitor to give themselves up so that the other two team members can advance. If I were the traitor, I would do that for you two. Well, more for Sakura."

Sasuke sighed and steeled himself for what he knew he had to do. "I'm sorry for accusing you without evidence, Naruto. I shouldn't have done that."

Naruto stared at him, mouth open.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything back?" Sasuke snapped.

"Apology accepted. It's just, um, are you feeling alright? That's not like you at all."

Sasuke sat and waited. After half a minute, he pointed at the clock. "Time's wasting. Aren't you going to admit to being the traitor now?"

"What!? I'm not the traitor, bastard!" Naruto shouted. It went unnoticed in a room that had heard the same call over and over for almost an hour.

"Then why did you… you know what, never mind." Sasuke folded his arms and stared at the wall. There was nothing he could do now. Sakura or Naruto would admit to being the traitor, or they wouldn't. He scanned the rules again, for lack of something better to do.

And then he read them again, more thoroughly. The precise phrasing was starting to remind Sasuke of the Bell Test. Kakashi might not have been directly involved in the Chunin Exams, but his philosophy was based on the same brutal disregard for fairness.

"I think I've found the solution," Sasuke said, waving Naruto and Sakura close. "Have a read of this, and pretend it's Kakashi saying it."

Naruto's scowl turned to a wide grin as he reached the bottom of the page. Sakura swore under her breath. "You don't think it's really that simple, do you?"

"Nice catch, Sasuke," Naruto whispered. "I guess it's fair to say we have a majority vote?"

"If you're both sure, I guess…" Sakura said.

Sasuke grabbed the note for the traitor's name, and walked to the front of the room, Team Seven following. Ibiki glanced at it, then nodded in approval. There was something other than faint distaste in his eyes now. Then again, Sasuke didn't want to analyse the sadistic examiner in depth. Who knew what he might find?

A pair of proctors led Team Seven through a door and into a smaller waiting room. Shino's team and Ino's team were already waiting, along with a handful of others. A tall Hyuga who had led his teammates straight to Ibiki after the round started was staring at Sasuke. A couple of Sand teams skulked in the corner, although they were all keeping a wary distance from a short redhead with a massive gourd on his back.

Sasuke marked the Hyuga and the redhead as 'interesting, fight them later if you can'. He was taking part to become a Chunin, get better missions and grow stronger faster. If, on the way, he could measure himself against the strongest ninja his age, so much the better.

For now, there was a chance for him to relax, alone with his team.

"Hi Hinata! Hi Shikamaru! How did you guys do?" Naruto shouted from beside him, and the two other rookie teams wandered over.

Sasuke sighed. He already knew what the first question from Ino was going to be.

"What's with the spear?"

Perhaps he should get little cards printed.

"I bought it during my last mission. It gives me more reach than a sword, and I can use the blunt end if I don't want to kill my opponent."

"I've picked up a little something as well," Ino said, showing him a fistful of senbon needles. Apart from those she'd pulled from her weapons pouch, she had a pair keeping her hair in a loose bun. Sasuke liked that. Not only did it give her an extra place to store weapons, but it also stopped enemies from being able to grab a fistful of hair in a fight.

Ibiki entered the room soon after, proctors in tow. Through the door, Sasuke could see the dejected genin who had failed the first round.

"Listen, Sasuke – I'll explain later, but for now just trust me on this. The answer is: six teams from Leaf, three teams from Sand, one team from Mist and two teams from Rain," Ino whispered, her eyes boring into him. He nodded. There was no time for any questions.

"Form up into teams, no talking," Ibiki barked. The genin in the room scrambled to obey. Sasuke wondered what was coming next.

After a pregnant pause, just long enough for Sasuke to grow uncomfortable, Ibiki started talking again. "That was a nice, fun, easy little teamwork test, wasn't it? Well, I think of it as a teamwork test. There are plenty of other ways to pass. Some of you figured out the rules had a loophole. Some of you cheated, as proud ninja should. And as proud ninja, I'm sure you were all trying to gather information about your competitors." Sasuke fought to keep a smirk off his face.

"So let's see whether you're ready to venture out into the world with nothing but your wits. Each team will be asked a question by one of the proctors. Get it wrong, or take more than a minute to decide on an answer, and you will fail. And let me be clear on this. You will have failed yourselves, because you are not worthy to become Chunin." With that, Ibiki scowled at the assembled ninja one last time, and motioned his helpers forward.

The same wind technique as before muffled the sound of the other teams, but this time Naruto and Sakura were in a bubble with Sasuke. As was, apparently, their designated examiner. "How many teams from each village that is participating in the Chunin Exams have been eliminated so far?" the man asked in a bored voice.

Do I trust Ino? The numbers were about right, but could she really have known the question in advance? And if so, was she telling the truth? Sasuke made his decision.

"Six teams from Leaf, three teams from Sand, one team from Mist and two teams from Rain," Sasuke answered. He was careful not to give Naruto a chance to interject with a comment about ramen or something. The examiner nodded and left.

"Wow, that was amazing," Sakura said. "How did you know that off the top of your head? I think we could have worked it out in the minute we had, but only barely."

Sasuke shrugged. He didn't want to rat Ino out, not until he knew how she'd got her hands on the Chunin Exams questions.

Four more teams were led off – two were from Konoha. The only Grass team and one of the two remaining Rain teams had also failed.

"Imagine passing the first round, only to fail the follow-up question," Naruto said, watching them go. They were throwing hate-filled stares at Ibiki, who just smiled.

"After that speech, too," Sakura began. She was interrupted as one of the windows exploded into a cloud of glass shards and a ninja leapt through. Sasuke wondered, not for the first time, if all jounin had a screw loose, or he was just very unlucky.

It was a rather bombastic entrance, even more so than Ibiki's first appearance. The room erupted into shouts of alarm as contestants and proctors alike spun to face the threat, with the notable exception of Ibiki. The scarred man sighed and shook his head as the new arrival posed in front of a banner. Sasuke blinked. When had she set that up?

"Alright, losers – let's get this show on the road! I'm Anko Mitarashi, and I'm in charge of the next round of the Chunin Exams."

Sasuke saw Sakura form the handseal to dispel genjutsu, and he almost did the same. Anko was a short woman wearing a Leaf headband, a long trench coat and metal mesh armour from throat to mid-thigh. She was also, quite obviously, insane. Her banner informed the room that she was 'Leaf's number one sexiest killer'.

"Wanna bet that it's an act, and she's super dangerous?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke shrugged. Any jounin who was that ostentatious was either doing it on purpose, or had enough firepower that they could get away with damn near anything.

The genin followed Anko to the edge of Konoha. A rough semi-circle of cliffs had been left behind when a crater from a long-forgotten catastrophe had half-collapsed. Konoha's forests, brimming with the vitality that Hashirama Senju imparted to all the plant life around the village, had reclaimed the crater floor. It made for an impressive sight. Dozens of waterfalls cascaded down the cliff faces and disappeared into hidden streams and rivers.

At the centre of the original crater stood a squat stone fortress. It was about six miles through dense forest from the building to the edges.

"Count yourselves lucky, twerps – the training ground I wanted instead is in use, so we'll have to make do with this," Anko said. "But to liven things up, I've added some poisonous snakes to the mix. Just a few thousand, though."

As she burst into maniacal laughter, Sasuke snuck a look at the other genin. A couple of them seemed unconcerned, foremost amongst them the Hyuga from earlier and the entire Sand team that had the redhead in it.

He mentally marked everyone else as fodder, probably not worth investigating further.

"Each genin gets a token, then the teams get sent into the Cauldron." Anko gestured at the crater behind her, then held up a solid metal disc the size of her palm. "You need three tokens per person to get into the castle, and only complete teams can get in. That means if you have less than nine tokens, they're worthless. How you get those tokens off each other is entirely up to you."

That meant fighting either two weak teams, or a team that had already won a fight. Naruto's fierce grin and Sakura's narrowed eyes showed that Sasuke's teammates were thinking along the same lines as him. With fourteen teams left, and forty-two tokens in play, at most four teams can pass this stage. And if we get our hands on more than nine tokens we can maybe eliminate an extra team.

Anko tossed her disc into the air and caught it, humming. After a moment she pretended to remember the genin gathered around her. "Oh yeah – come get 'em. One each, and I'll know if you try to cheat. The second round hasn't started yet, so be good."

Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura collected their tokens, each weighing half a pound, and followed a proctor to a spot on the edge of the cliffs. The forest canopy was fifty feet down, and the floor would be another fifty feet at least. Konohan trees were famously tall.

"If you leave the Cauldron, you automatically forfeit any chances of promotion. If you haven't made it out in four days and you're still alive, someone will come fetch you. In that case you fail as well." The chunin proctor sounded bored. He had a scruffy brown beard that was in desperate need of grooming, and he scratched at it incessantly. "Good luck I guess."

Sasuke stood on one of the marked spots, Naruto to his left and Sakura to his right. "So when do we start?" he asked.

"Any moment now," the chunin replied, picking at a loose thread on his jacket. A red flare soared up from the castle in the distance, sputtering out after a few hundred feet. He nodded and formed a dozen handseals. With a crack the ground gave way beneath Sasuke's feet, and he was falling into the Cauldron.

-O-

"That seemed a little unnecessary," Sakura said, picking twigs out of her hair.

Naruto shook his head. "Think about how they're trying to test us. It's meant to make us uncomfortable and on edge. Everyone will be more aggressive now. Just like with the snakes, actually – this is a massive area, and a few thousand snakes means we probably won't even meet any."

"That's only if they're distributed evenly," Sakura disagreed. "They might be dumped all in one corner. Or Anko might have lied."

"It doesn't matter," Sasuke said. He had held onto his spear, and was now crouched on a branch with his teammates. In the distance, the castle was barely visible through the treetops "Or rather, it's not a priority for us to figure out. We need to stay alert anyway. The first thing to do is put a plan together."

"Let's pretend this whole crater is a clock, with the castle in the middle. If the cliffside semicircle covers three o'clock to nine o'clock, then we're at around four o'clock at the moment. There's fourteen teams – if they're spaced out evenly we probably have two teams to our right, and eleven teams to our left. But the teams on the right have nowhere to go except towards the centre or towards us, so we're likely to run into them at some point." Sakura gestured to the sides as she spoke.

Sasuke frowned as he processed that. "I was thinking we push forward as fast as possible. If we're ahead of the other teams, we can prepare an ambush or trap, and we're less likely to run into someone else's prepared ground."

"One more thing to bear in mind," Naruto said. "This terrain is easy for Leaf teams to travel through, but I bet that Mist and Sand and the others will struggle. They're used to water and sand, not trees. I don't even know if they learn tree-hopping; they might have to walk the whole way."

"That's another point in favour of rushing ahead, right?" Sakura asked.

"Let's get moving then," Sasuke decided. "If we delay, the other teams will get ahead of us anyway."

They took off through the trees, Sasuke leading the way. He kept an eye open for traps, tracks and wildlife, but for now there was nothing.

Once he'd covered half the distance to the castle, he called a stop. The sun was starting to dip below the treetops. "Let's set up camp now, while it's still light. We can also look for any good ambush spots nearby." Again, Sasuke marvelled at how well the team worked when he was the leader. Naruto and Sakura trusted him to know what needed doing, and how to split up the work. Naruto, especially, had shocked him when he'd first suggested Sasuke as team leader, but now Sasuke trusted him implicitly.

Sasuke wasn't used to feeling grateful. He figured the best way to repay that trust was to do everything as perfectly as possible.

"We'll set up a hidden camp against the base of the tree here," he said, pointing at a particularly large oak, "and put the tent in the middle of the field here as a decoy. Caltrops and a pit trap near the entrance and a mixture of visible and hidden wires strung in the trees nearby. Put bells and kunai traps on all of them. It will warn us and might injure a careless enemy. Naruto, send out clones to scout, and get started on the traps. Sakura, prepare the hidden camp. I'll set up the tent and dig a pit."

That night, as he watched Naruto cook skewers of fresh rabbit meat over a well-hidden fire, Sasuke wondered when he'd become so possessive of his team. "Good work," he said, trying the words out for the first time. Sakura flushed at the praise and Naruto almost dropped his rabbit into the fire. Sasuke was grateful for the darkness hiding his own reddened cheeks.

Then, for an instant, the shadows shifted and he saw the hem of Itachi's cloak in the gloom. Sasuke blinked and it was gone, but the rush of memories couldn't be held back. Red on black, three days of hell, watching and hearing and feeling everything Itachi had done.

Naruto held out a skewer of meat and Sasuke was almost sick at the smell of cooked flesh. It wasn't real, it was all just a sick illusion, but the taste was still thick in the back of his throat, Itachi forcing strips of cooked meat down Sasuke's protesting throat in that red-on-black world.

Greasy, thick, still slightly bloody, and he tried to spit it out, but he couldn't. Sasuke sometimes wondered how Itachi had known the taste, to copy it so well.

It's just rabbit, Sasuke told himself, but the image of Itachi cheerfully roasting another human haunch, 'Sasuke you have to eat, you're a growing boy', it wouldn't go away, and so Sasuke thanked Naruto and put the meat down and excused himself to go to the bathroom.

When he returned, the taste of sick lingering in his mouth, but better than the taste of meat, Sasuke pulled out a pair of cereal bars. Neither Sakura nor Naruto said anything, and he was grateful all over again.

Sasuke's hand clenched around a kunai, the rough grip helping him center himself. "I'll take the first watch," he announced. He knew it was cowardly, but he didn't want to face the nightmares just yet.

One day he would put his demons to rest. Forever.