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~Welcome to the whirlwind! This chapter is long enough that I decided to be witty on both of its fronts. I hope that you guys enjoy it - there are so many different things going on here, and I tried my best. I'm glad that I threw so many hours into this.

Before we start, I want to say something very genuine to every follower, favoriter, and reviewer out there: Thank you. There was a time - a long time - where seeing a new review filled me with equal delight and fear - I depended on reviews back then. Negative ones scared me, positive ones made me feel I could write. I hoarded them greedily regardless. I've changed since then, and I just wanted to tell you guys that. I know I can write. I don't like to read some things, and there will be people who don't like what I do. That's fine. Writing takes hours and hours of my time and plenty of people inhale my work and never comment - and this is fine. Some people will come alongside and help me paddle a bit, some will watch me float by, and some will smile or give me a thumbs-up. (Reviews, readers, alerts, favorites) I love the days when people take time to interact, but it's my journey and my work.

Encouragement helps. But ever since I've stopped paying attention to the "review count" and started enjoying those friendly moments, well, I'm doing just fine. No review will match the total hours that any chapter took. And so, I no longer will expect other people's time in addition to my own. If you want to review, or favorite, or alert, yes, that helps me write this story. And no, it's no longer the reason I write.

So now I can be elated when I see feedback. Any and all.

Thanks for staying with me!

Chapter Thirty-Three

"What did I miss?" I asked once I'd slipped into place between my teammates.

"Visuals," Kato said.

"What he said," Yakumo agreed.

I shook my head at them—cute as the banter was, it had been an honest question. I couldn't read situations with close-lipped genin teams anywhere near as well as I'd like to.

"What did we miss?" Kato asked quietly.

I gave in to a soft snort and ran unsettled fingers through my thick ponytail. It was time to retie my mane again. On a normal day, I'd cover it over with a henge or genjutsu (no need for the general population to know the full extent of Kakashi's flyaway hair plus Mei's volume) to "feed my vanity," as Shisui would put it. I was still running too many layers of genjutsu to go that route at present, so I allowed myself the small battle of redoing my ponytail.

"You should really start braiding it," Yakumo murmured.

Oh, yeah, because this hair could be styled by anything short of a jutsu.

"That girl has been watching you," she said next.

"Probably with horrified fascination," I replied, but I'd heard the warning in her voice and noted the angle she'd looked in.

I was pretty sure I'd figured out which of these genin was Orochimaru run for your lives—I wasn't blind or deaf to sinister chuckles—and interest from that quarter was definitely my greatest fear.

Yakumo, however, was pointing out a boy who looked like a female, not a man hiding in a strangely female body. Phew! And on the other hand. . . .

Poor Haku.

"That's Haku-san, the one with half of the betting pool on his side." Good thing we had Neji to give the rest of the gamblers someone to bet for.

"The one who saved Naruto's team? No, this is a female Kiri genin. The one with that hairnet, over there."

"Snood," I corrected. "I don't know why he keeps it long." I could see some logic in a snood. I hated that logic. I liked my hair. Shisui was correct, I was vain about it. And not because it was "the next best thing to red eyes," thank you.

Anko chose this moment to halt the parade of genin and begin snapping out orders for the next exam, which went "some of you may die and I won't be sorry if the ones complaining actually do." Yakumo trotted off to grab our team's scroll.

"Holding up?" Kato asked.

"Yes and yes," I said. "Although I wish you guys had stayed close to Team Ten."

"Got you covered," he smirked. "I arranged an alliance while you were occupied. I told Shikamaru-kun how to find us."

"We should have asked Team Seven, too."

Kato snorted. "Like they'd team up with us."

Beyond the rather obvious compatibility between our teams (family ties, friendships, tactics), I didn't really see why Team Seven would avoid us. Predictability wasn't such a terrible opponent.

"Unlike us, they have morals," Kato explained. "Alliances aren't exactly smiled upon."

"You mean Sasuke-kun is still too chicken to be seen talking to me."

Kato grinned under his mask. I sighed. "They'd do well to team up with Haku-san's team. They have experience there. It wouldn't surprise me if Haku-san holds himself back for a while to make sure they pass this phase. He really likes Naruto."

"Then they'd better hope they have the same scroll," Kato said. "Chūnin exams make allies into enemies. We wouldn't want to hear that Haku-san used their friendship to betray Dad's team."

"It's just a chūnin exam."

He shrugged. "By the way, which scrolls do they have?"

I didn't know. Both Haku's team and Team Seven had shared that information nonverbally. I guess Haku had warned his teammates about this village's prying ears. I wonder if that was why I'd barely noticed them in the first phase of the exam? Nah, plenty of genin were quiet under stress. I myself hadn't so much as sighed during that test. From fun, not fear.

"That doesn't matter until we join up with Team Ten," I said. "The teams will spread out quickly. I should be able to find opponents pretty quickly after that." I glanced my brother's way to get a read on him. "By the way, it doesn't matter which scroll either of us has. We'll be aiming for two more regardless. Even if we have the same scroll, it's still worth teaming up."

"I know, I know. I'm just glad that we can team up for this part of the exam. Team Ten won't betray us."

I rolled my eyes. "It's just a chūnin exam."

Kato's expression said that he'd throw that sentence back in my face some time soon.

Yakumo returned with our scroll, and we huddled together as Anko reminded the genin that we'd been assigned specific gates to enter from. "Which gate?" I asked Yakumo. She smirked and used a light genjutsu to show us the number eighteen. I nodded. "Our friends will be at gate twenty-seven."

"You shouldn't say things out loud," Yakumo said grumpily. "Not everyone is like you, but lots of people can read lips."

I wonder if Hyūga Neji was watching us right now?

"Hm, sorry," I conceded. "Are we ready?"

"Let's move," Kato grinned.

.

The gates surrounding the Forest of Death opened precisely at 2:30 in the afternoon of the first of July. A ton of things happened right away.

Gaara and his siblings tore into the forest like there was no tomorrow.

The trio containing the disguised Orochimaru ran inside to the accompaniment of, "Remember, the Uchiha comes first."

Team Ten jogged inside and immediately began heading our way (someone had evidently told them our gate number one way or another).

Team Seven walked through their gate and started planning.

Team Eight, following the whim of Hinata's conscience, found a spot to regroup before she activated her Byakūgan.

Neji's team hadn't gone without the Byakūgan to start with and wasted no time hunting down their first opponents.

Haku's team exchanged glances and entered the forest leisurely enough.

Most of the teams I could hear charged into the forest and stopped pretty quickly to regroup. My own team tried to do the same, but—

"Kana? Are you coming?"

I blinked. "Sorry. I just lost one of the genjutsu."

Yakumo hefted her pack and tried to rein in her impatience. "We can track them later."

The genjutsu weren't up to track people! She knew just as much long distance theory as I did.

"Let's move out," Kato said. "I gave Shikamaru-kun one of those electromagnets Dad taught me how to charge. It should last long enough for us to find each other." Ah. That explained that.

I wasn't worried about finding Team Ten. Kato's magnets would help them find us, and if the magnets broke or ran out of charge, I could locate the team just as well. The only issue was the other teams that were hunkering down between us. Even the ones that remained on the move would set traps. I wasn't very concerned about getting past the hostile teams. My teammates and I were well-practiced at escaping our sensei, and Kato and I had kind of spent a lifetime being slippery in general. No, the problem was how long it would take to meet our allies.

Because while the thought of Orochimaru hurting my father's genin team had petrified me every time I'd really thought about it, now that I was physically here . . . well.

Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.

I'm not going to abandon Naruto. He's tough.

Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.

Sasuke should be fine with the curse seal even if things go south.

Those who . . . Sakura isn't a machine like they are. They're just kids.

Those— That's enough of that mantra! I snapped to myself. You think that after all of the dangers people have risked to save me, I'm just going to leave them alone? They're my father's students! They're my friends.

Nobility aside, there remained the little fact that I probably couldn't do anything to help them. I was vastly under-qualified to face a Sannin—as were they.

All of this stress was pretty distracting. "We shouldn't head straight for Team Ten," I told my teammates. "Most of the other teams have stopped to regroup, and I think the path should be as clear as it will get for the next few minutes. If we're clever, I think we can even steer Team Ten away from other teams."

Kato shrugged. "Okay, lead on, then."

Yakumo, I sure hope this is a good day for your stamina.

The trees were sized like redwoods. I didn't want to meet the local fauna. Not today.

We leapt into the trees at a healthy pace. Meanwhile, Naruto's team waded through opponents animal and human, Orochimaru's team covered a lot of ground, and our allied Team Ten had a small spat when Chōji opted to take a snack break. My route began to lean very heavily in the direction of my father's team.

An enemy genin henged into Naruto but left his weapons pouch on the wrong side and was sent packing. Amateur.

My team persevered through the forest's screams and distant sounds of fighting. We dodged a few of the other teams and blazed past the few genin who were out scouting alone. There was a short pause to dispatch a rather large dragonfly, but for the most part I managed to keep us clear of things that would slow us down.

"How much longer?" Yakumo asked. She was breathing hard. Jumping from tree to tree was not one of her favorite activities.

"Maybe fifteen minutes?" I estimated. "They're going slower than we are."

"Wait here," a nasty voice said elsewhere. "I'm going to summon a snake. If you get between it and its prey, you'll become its prey." The menacing laughter that followed sent a shiver of dread up my spine. There was a quiet whuff as the snake's arrival displaced some air.

My head jerked toward the summoned predator—this forest was full of uncomfortably large animals, but by the sheer amount of crunching leaves and terrified fauna—

"Kana?"

Team Seven was between us and the snake. We weren't in the line of fire. We were still close. I waited for the inevitable whispered command from summoner to summon.

"Kana," Kato said again. The snake whipped forward without input from its master. My teammates froze on their respective branches at the audible crash. I should go, I argued to myself. No, I should wait for their input.

"What was that?" Yakumo breathed.

Kato just darted in the direction of the attack. Ack!

"Large snake, stay back," I warned the teenager, and I rushed after Kato. I should have known that he'd be attracted to danger! Only he wasn't that kind of person . . . I guess he'd read my mind again.

Too bad he couldn't read the layout in front of us while he was at it.

The snake's charge had scattered Team Seven. Sasuke and Sakura were under a bush somewhere. Naruto was wrapped around a tree a good distance away from his team where he'd been thrown. My brother arrived in time to see the blonde genin stagger to his feet and palm a kunai.

I arrived in time to see the tremendously massive serpent gulp Naruto down.

I screamed.

(More of a yelp, really. Never know who's listening.)

It's pathetic, I knew that weird things happened in this world all of the time and that impossible odds here were only rarely insurmountable, and yet for a second I saw Naruto die. Now, granted, there aren't many people who know the boy who haven't entertained that idea at some point during his jabbering, but I had a whole vision of the future that had both comforted and tortured me my entire life. Naruto couldn't just up and die. How could I face my father?

While I had my little internal introspection, my brother had a different idea. A snake had swallowed his friend.

Ergo, kill the snake.

Ergo, overkill the snake before said friend suffocates.

Speaking of suffocation, Kato himself forgot to breathe at this point. I'd spaced out for a philosophical debate. He was in a full-blown panic.

Kato jumped to the ground, flashed through the hand seals for a shadow clone the fastest he'd ever done in his life, and ran out of the undergrowth to distract the snake. While he drew out the large serpent, his clone cycled through the hand seals of Daddy's signature chidori jutsu. I stood still and watched. When Daddy had taught Kato the chidori, Kato had sworn to only perform it via clone. I'd been similarly instructed to never, ever, ever go within striking range. Yeah, like I'm stupid. That jutsu has one of the most annoying sounds to ever grace this earth. I flashed through my own assigned countermeasures and buckled down for the whiny sound of a hundred artificial birds at once. Then I thought past the "stay out of the way" conditioning.

This was chidori against an animal that Naruto was still trapped inside.

"Don't hit Naruto!" I called. What? Daddy had trained Kato to use the jutsu for life-or-death situations as a last resort. Kato was using a shadow clone. Naruto certainly wouldn't be able to dodge the lightning gathering around the clone's hand!

My brother dodged a serpentine lunge and shot me a glance laden with enough disbelief to ruin several happy childhoods. "I'm not blind!"

Then stab it through the eye and cut him out, my rational side finally recovered enough to say. It shouldn't need the chidori.

In fact— "Use kunai!" I said as he feinted in a failed attempt to lure the snake closer to his clone. "There's no point wasting your chakra."

Too late. Kato shouted to his clone and got out of the way as the clone and its handful of noisy greased lightning charged for the giant snake's head. The next second there was no more head, clone, or very much left of the ground save a smoking, medium-sized crater. The snake's body thrashed and quickly released a slimy blob of genin.

Kato didn't breathe until the blob righted itself and coughed the gunk out of its lungs. That wasn't a pleasant sound. On the other hand, I'd pick coughing any day over hearing one of my adorable friends' death by constriction. Which was why I'd led my team in this direction. . . .

"Oh," said Naruto. "I was about to break out, but thanks anyway. Wow, was that Kaka-sensei's jutsu? It's almost as cool as my multiple shadow clones."

("You stabbed me," Sasuke whispered just a short distance away. "Why didn't you stab yourself first?")

"I don't know how you make that many," Kato said. His voice was shaking ever-so-slightly. "Were you separated from your team?"

(Sasuke and Sakura were utterly silent as a new snake slithered into their vicinity.)

"Do you have an earth scroll?" Naruto asked loudly, eyes scrunching into one of his usual public expressions. "I—wait, Sakura-chan! Sorry, guys, I'll come beat you later." He took off into the treetops.

Kato blinked. "Didn't he almost die?"

Yakumo poked her head out from behind a bush. "He didn't even notice me, but I guess with that technique you don't really need backup. Doesn't it use up a lot of chakra?"

"I'll be fine." We might have believed him more had his words not been directed at the ground.

"Then let's go?" Yakumo said hesitantly. Her eyes flickered between Kato's and mine. Right.

I squared my shoulders. "There's another snake and a summoner attacking Team Seven. We need to help. Summoning animals this size takes a ton of chakra. I think we can try for an ambush, but I don't want to underestimate the summoner after what I've heard."

"We can't ambush someone after that lightning jutsu," Yakumo pointed out. "Unless your summoner is deaf. And possibly blind."

"Kana uses a localized genjutsu when I use chi-do-ri," Kato said. "Kana, what else have you noticed?"

There wasn't much to say besides "pray that he doesn't decide to kill us one a whim." I did warn them that Orochimaru had a voice colder than zero degrees kelvin and a happy trigger finger. Better surviving than sorry.

We were involved in this fight, and it would involve huge risks. I would have spared my team if I thought I could have gone without them. Unfortunately, my team wouldn't have bought that excuse.

Team Seven ought to survive this fight just fine on their own.

But I live in my world right alongside my family and friends, and I of all people know what to look out for.

So I knew the risks, and I had to be ready to trust Kato and shield Yakumo when she ran out of stamina. Past that, I would wing it.

(I just wish I'd been able to dredge up more information on Orochimaru from my limited contacts as Suzume.)

Naruto made it to his teammates just in time. Sakura had managed a brave display—she'd broken Sasuke out of Orochimaru's genjutsu-cum-killing-intent, whipped up an olfactory genjutsu to hide them from the second snake, and even pushed Sasuke out of the line of fire. Sasuke, however, was frozen. He'd carried Sakura to safety after she'd broken the genjutsu. He'd lobbed a few weapons at the snake.

The poor kid was shell-shocked.

Naruto took care of the serpent and joined his team. All was well.

Until Orochimaru pulled some creeper substitution jutsu and emerged from the snake's body. Team Seven recoiled.

The majority of Team Twelve had no idea what was going on, just that I'd sped up. My teammates spared a moment to exchange glances behind my back.

"Get away from here, Sakura," Sasuke hissed in front of us. "The idiot refuses to leave, but you have a chance. There's no need for all of us to die here."

Sakura clutched the kunai she'd used to forcibly break the Uchiha from Orochimaru's influence and told him to shut up and come up with a plan, instead. Too bad she didn't say that first part out loud.

Sasuke kept talking over the panicked rhythm of his heartbeat. Orochimaru stopped . . . slithering? to listen. Sasuke offered up Team Seven's scroll. Naruto took offense to this and socked the Uchiha in the jaw (Naruto even accused Sasuke of being an enemy genin under a henge . . . ouch). It was the perfect cover for my team.

I hoped that Naruto couldn't sense us. If he could, we were dead. Although a ninja at the level of Orochimaru was certain to have already sensed us. We weren't dead yet.

At least we'd literally signed a disclaimer (and if something went wrong and Kato died, I'd have to explain this to Daddy? I was dead).

While my team and I set ourselves up for our so-called ambush, Orochimaru summoned the mother of all snakes. A house-sized tail tip slashed toward Team Seven. They scattered. Except for Naruto, who leapt over the attack and went straight for the snake's scaly nose. The giant serpent slapped him to the ground. Right next to Yakumo, as it happened. She didn't break her cover.

Naruto growled inhumanly low and shot back up toward Orochimaru.

Wait for it, wait for it.

The snake intercepted the furious genin, which it probably regretted when it felt the barrage of punches Naruto sent ricocheting through its system. It shook the little pest off. This didn't faze Naruto, of course. Orochimaru assumed the same and inhaled the way Shisui always did right before a fireball jutsu.

NOW! I signaled. Kato threw himself at the back of Orochimaru's head. Yakumo released some sort of fruitless genjutsu. I dove out of my own tree with the intent of recovering Naruto's badly singed body before the arborical damage became too severe.

And maybe I would have, had Sasuke not instantly lobbed kunai at me! Like Orochimaru needed backup.

I batted the needless weaponry away and quickly found that my trajectory had changed slightly. I'd aimed myself just behind Naruto, since he was pretty resilient. The idea was to catch him as I sailed by. Unfortunately, I was now set for head-on collision. And there was also a fireball heading his way.

Sooooo. . . .

I reached into my left pants pocket and whipped out one of the small seals I always kept there. Extended exposure to Kato and Shisui had made it a necessity. I hadn't wanted to use one of my seals right off the bat, but the only other way to absorb this kind of hit without problems was the knee jerk "cover your body in chakra" durability thing that eats stamina like no tomorrow. Naruto was perfect for that. Not me.

I pushed chakra into the seal and shoved the flimsy paper at the stream of fire.

Glomp, went the seal.

Oh, good, I'd added enough chakra, then.

I plowed into Naruto in a jumble of limbs and pointed the seal in front of us—it promptly lit on fire and I threw it hastily away. This one wouldn't work as a propulsion system! Oh, well, couldn't predict everything.

Naruto wriggled out of our awkward hug and took the brunt of our landing with an angry yell. I flinched. We reoriented and he took off again for the snake.

Kato was enjoying his own crash-landing in the forest courtesy of Orochimaru.

Orochimaru looked freakishly smug.

I jumped over to Sasuke's branch. He was the target, after all. "You should run," I told him. "He's after the Sharingan."

Okay, maybe that hadn't been the best thing to say.

"I'm not running," Sasuke said, "not if you want me to."

"Then fight with us," I snapped, and listened as Kato righted himself and muttered something. A tandem attack. With lightning.

My twin and I moved together and went for the snake. I went for its neck.

Kato went for the bulk of its body to make dodging harder.

I reached the neck and kept going as the head danced nimbly to the side.

Kato made contact and drove an electrocution jutsu through his blade.

The snake didn't even bother to shake Kato off.

Orochimaru chuckled. "And to think that I was going to come and find you. Hardly worth the effort, aren't you?"

I didn't know which of us he was referring to but that scared me and I had severely miscalculated. Why—

"I'll show you effort," Kato growled from his attempts by the forest floor. Orochimaru glanced his way. Kato froze. He was still holding his tantō between two of the snake's massive scales. Why hadn't he jumped away? His other hand was on the snake's perch's trunk. Disengaging would have been easy. Too late now.

"How pitiful," the Sannin said carelessly. "You can't even meet my eyes without freezing like the prey you are. What a disappointment to your clan." His tone made it rather clear that the Hatake name didn't mean much, either. Cruel eyes drifted in my direction.

I was already plenty scared of Orochimaru and had zero interest in being caught in a genjutsu. Not that the aura of doom and gloom wasn't affecting me . . . I couldn't ignore my instincts. I just needed to break Kato out of his trance before he got hurt!

No matter how insistently my brain was trying to tell me that I was doomed to failure.

"As for you," the snake Sannin purred.

I kid you not.

"You can't disgrace the Hatake name, can you, Suzu-chan?"

By a sheer miracle, my eyes did not meet his in alarm.

By another sheer miracle, Yakumo chose this time to send a message via genjutsu across my vision (ack!). "ATTACK," it read.

Um, Yaks, I'm not in a position to attack. . . .

That does explain why you're holding on to the invisible ninja wire attached to Kato's tantō, though.

I ducked as Sasuke and Sakura threw a barrage of kunai and shuriken around me toward the Sannin. Naruto charged from the side (yet another recovery from getting knocked back). Orochimaru chuckled, although I could hear a note of annoyance in there this time. Uh-oh. Things were about to get rough.

Then the snake buckled underneath Orochimaru. The massive head sped to the ground as gravity took hold. Coils unwound while the thing sought for purchase on the giant tree to no avail. The snake melted into a puff of smoke a split second before it ought to have landed. Shoot, I didn't have anything against snakes, but I would have felt better knowing that this one wouldn't be surviving long enough alive to hold a grudge later. Hopefully it wasn't the Sannin's big boss snake.

What am I saying? Hopefully that thing was the world's biggest snake.

Orochimaru looked up at the group of us that were still perched in the trees. Trees that were very high up and not high enough, save the fact that Kato was somewhere on the ground now. I couldn't tell if he was functioning just yet. Worse, someone needed to be down there protecting Yakumo! She'd stayed on the ground like a sitting duck this whole time—honestly, where had she thought the snake would go when that jutsu incapacitated it?!

On the other hand, if I ran down there, Orochimaru would fill in any blanks he hadn't by this point.

"That was . . . unwise," the Sannin said very softly. The miniature crater around him was still spitting dust. I barely noticed.

I have no idea what my friends were saying or doing. I couldn't hear anything past the terrifying menace of his breathing. I now sympathized fully with everyone who had frozen earlier. Would I ever be able to move again? Well, it wasn't like I had to yet. I was so focused on Orochimaru that I could practically hear the blood rushing through his veins, on the ground or no. I wouldn't have time to react to whatever instant kill he had planned, but I would at least hear it coming.

Unless he knew the snake had been Yakumo's work.

Suddenly I found the strength to breathe in again, and the world came flooding back with its usual unwanted abandon. Thanks, world. I definitely wanted to know that Team Ten was close by, Kato had formed a clone, Orochimaru's goons were bickering, there were no longer animals in our immediate vicinity, a flock of birds was murdering a farther-off genin team, and Anko was racing towards us. Wait, part of that sounded interesting—

"Enough," said Orochimaru. He crouched, ready to come up to slaughter me and mine.

Naruto jumped down in what looked like a suicide play—only Naruto's pupils were slit, his irises were red, and he managed to punch the Sannin into what soon became a sizable crater. Orochimaru smiled as he brushed himself off. Naruto yelled something inhuman and ran into range again.

Orochimaru caught the angry genin with the world's creepiest tongue. Naruto kicked and slashed as well as he could. The tongue just wrapped around him more securely.

My heart metaphorically stopped. This was Naruto, the future pride and joy of most of the world, and blah, blah, blah. I actually didn't get any time to get to those time-wasting thoughts, though.

Kato's clone charged with a chidori first.

Injuries aside, what had Yakumo done that I hadn't heard that thing form? My hearing ate genjutsu for breakfast!

Orochimaru dodged neatly (quickly enough that Naruto ended up coming with him) and looked up at me again. I put on a defiant face and pretended that my team hadn't done this all without my knowledge. Apparently I'd been the distraction. I was still the distraction.

Kato charged after his clone and tried to attack the Sannin, but Naruto was a very obvious shield. Sasuke jumped to the ground to attack from the opposite side. I probably should have joined them—maybe if I didn't feel like I was on the to-kill list.

Scratch that, we didn't have a chance without teamwork.

I jumped down, Sakura on my tail, and unsheathed my tantō. Kato and I were actually pretty fast by now by most standards.

Not fast enough. Orochimaru exchanged himself and his captive with a log and materialized high up in another tree. He flashed through some hand seals and slammed his fingers onto the currently visible seal on Naruto's stomach. This hurt. A lot. The poor boy passed out almost instantly. Orochimaru threw Naruto off the branch and turned his attention to us.

Sakura and Sasuke were stunned (although Sakura managed to halt Naruto's fall with a rather chillingly-well-aimed kunai). Kato looked like he'd just watched someone die. Even Yakumo, hidden in the bushes as she still was, was trembling.

If I could handle the Academy's being within earshot of the hospital, I could survive a little yelling. Naruto was still breathing fine. He hadn't been hit by the chidori. If Orochimaru wanted him dead, he would already be dead.

Well. I'd gone this long without intentionally drawing the Sannin's attention. He already thought that I'd hurt his genin-safe pet snake. So however unintentional my part, I had to man up to it now. I was the bait.

Anyway, attention on me would leave Yakumo a bit freer to save my skin.

I stepped forward, out of the huddle of shell-shocked kids. Orochimaru watched me lazily.

"You strike me as a pretty down-to-earth person," I said.

The Sannin's lips sidled upward. "Which one of you should I leave alive?"

"You can leave dead," I suggested. This was why I'd stayed silent until now. Talking didn't belong in a fight. Much less a verbal rendition of my automatic commentary. I probably shouldn't have started by referencing his pet snake's near-death.

Oops.

The smirk was literally splitting Orochimaru's face. Ew! He must not have used a henge to adopt his disguise. No surprise there. All of the damage (what damage? I don't think he'd taken a hit yet) probably meant that he'd shed his skin in another minute.

And I didn't want to dwell on that.

Yellow eyes even more menacing than Zabuza's infamous glare flashed. One of my allies squawked. Fists clenched around kunai.

. . . Please, as if I'd never been around an angry ninja before.

"You're losing face," I said flatly. "And you're doing it on purpose. Don't worry, none of us here are used to being patronized. We're fine without the aesthetics."

If there was one thing I'd found from years of associating with ANBU and various people of high rank, the higher ranks don't really like genin. Genin are boastful, repetitious creatures of low wit and lower skills. Ninjas generally had enough respect for the profession to introduce each other (this wasn't the Warring Clans era), but no one wanted to talk to a juvenile genin. Which was why I'd been surprised to learn that even S-ranked missing-nin would tolerate a genin who knew his limits, wasn't obnoxious, and had the backbone and brains to survive. This, I gather, brings back fond memories and a certain spark of tenderness.

I wasn't stupid enough to think that Orochimaru would find anything cute, but if talking would help, it was fine by me.

"Aesthetics?" the Sannin drawled.

I flinched as the massive trees around us suddenly writhed and dragged serpentine heads down to face me. Genjutsu, I told myself firmly. You met his gaze. You would have heard a summoning. Don't play into it. Wait until one strikes. Break its hold then, and watch for the attack it's masking. The genjutsu can't hurt you.

A kunai sliced the side of my left arm before the genjutsu could build further. There was a fuzzy moment of recalibrating. You're. Dead, I thought as a certain male genin behind me slipped a trigger-happy hand into his weapons pouch to reload.

I guess he'd remembered Sakura's freeing him from a previous jutsu.

My flurry of offended thoughts very nearly masked a whisper-thin breath of is-that-Yakumo-no-she-always-knocks-but-that's-like-Shisui-level-groundwork foreign chakra. Orochimaru had laid an extremely subtle suggestion on me. Thank goodness I'd been checking for those since my Itachi-henging days! (Not to mention that Itachi's aptitude at planting the things was just impossible.)

Too bad that I wasn't sensitive enough yet to read the commands that such minute pulses of chakra put out.

Too bad that suggestions were indistinguishable from basic genjutsu warfare layers save that little pulse of command.

I checked out Sasuke's generous body art while Orochimaru wove a few more layers of invisible genjutsu. Each layer dulled my senses to the following layer. For being the illusionary arts, this skillset sure relied on a lot of textbook stuff.

"Genjutsu is kind of my forte," I told Sasuke as the hidden dance of diverting each new genjutsu layer began. "Don't cut in."

Oh, dear. Puns were really a big tell of mine, weren't they—

Shoot, he almost had me. Less mouth, more offensive weaving.

One slip and I'd be caught by the genjutsu, and when that happened, my grasp of my chakra was bound to become inaccurate. Real genjutsu battles used both chakra and illusions to fight, but I wasn't about to jump into the illusion until I'd lost the chakra sprint. Something told me that Orochimaru was lacing our duel with more than serpents this time.

If I managed to slip out of the net, I wouldn't have to deal with the illusion. Surely there were just few more threads to nudge out of place. Plus, throwing the genjutsu off in one clean go would backfire on him . . . which I probably wouldn't believe even if I saw it.

"You're welcome," Sasuke muttered. "Come on, genjutsu girl, give the signal while this creep ninja is distracted. I can see the genjutsu fight without the Sharingan activated. Shisui will kill me if she gets hurt."

Yakumo's group genjutsu pulsed, but I couldn't afford enough attention to let it manifest.

Sasuke jumped up to attack Orochimaru as Sakura let loose with a small barrage of kunai as cover. Kato darted forward to help set up whatever trap they had concocted. Once Sakura's part of the offense was finished, she ran in front of me. Not a moment too soon.

Sakura deflected a hailstorm of kunai thrown for the sheer purpose of, well, fatally distracting me, and I missed a step as the foreign chakra I'd so carefully arranged metaphorically kicked me in the shin. The illusory half of the genjutsu swept me under, and things got weird.

Sakura was chopped in half.

Naruto's unconscious body dissolved into the tree he was pinned against.

Sasuke scratched at his eyes. Ew!

Yakumo screamed and morphed into Orochimaru's most recent summon. I didn't dare to move as it swallowed me (this, unfortunately, was a sign of the genjutsu snaring me deeper. It was a testament to Orochimaru that the pulses of his chakra were all but indiscernible).

I would have stabbed myself, but Sasuke's helpful slice still hurt enough that escaping through pain might well cost me a limb. Sakura would protect me. I trusted her. She and I had a lot in common these days. One of those things in common was definitely a knack for keeping friends alive.

I needed to fight the genjutsu illusion for illusion now—my sense of my chakra was very skewed and the alternative escape route of reversing my chakra flow was guaranteed severe repercussions. Because Orochimaru couldn't have thrown a generic genjutsu at me, oh no. He wanted to make this personal. Which meant that this jutsu was meant to be controlled, not cast, and I could break out of it. Could, not would, and yet—

My imagination versus his cold-blooded thoughts?

He should have cast a generic genjutsu. I was nowhere near mastering my fears.

There are far worse things than genin dying.

I stood tall as the snake swallowed me while my senses whimpered. Muscles contorted around me and should have driven me to the ground. I stood anyway and felt for the whisper of senses that agreed with standing, not the ones that told me I was being digested. The pain was purely part of the genjutsu. It would not affect my body after I escaped. Any panic was really my own fault.

A lack of reaction would get this kind of genjutsu nowhere, so Orochimaru changed the scene. I was still crushed by darkness, but this time it was more of a deliberate stuck-between-two-mountains and probably had more chakra behind it. I concentrated hard on the tiny part of my senses that weren't fully won over by the display and struck back.

The darkness had been utter. The rejoining match-flare in the dark was blinding by comparison. Too blinding. Like all changes, mine came with a moment of reassessment that loses these battles. The Sannin tried the tremendously cliché move of lighting my body on fire, but I focused on the snake's tooth—honestly, I don't know how I could still see one—and failed to light my surroundings on fire, too. Rats.

That option gone, I stole a page from his book and finished burning myself in a puff of smoke that escaped upward and out of the snake's mouth. Greeting me was a pile of recognizable limbs and miscellany that didn't faze me until an arm reached up and pulled me out of the air.

Let's hope I still hadn't moved back in the real world.

Another arm reached over to uncover an appropriately butchered mask. Two could play at this game. He, of course, meant to reveal a relative's posthumous face. I wanted to see Orochimaru's face, instead.

Both of us adjusted our perceptions of his jutsu's chakra web just so. This was a big opportunity for both of us. I had a chance to convince him to adjust to his chakra the wrong way (too obvious and he'd see through it, do nothing and I'd leave myself wide open). He would try for the same. A few rounds of this and we'd either have both lost touch completely (huzzah for the dangers of genjutsu!) or be well into a battle.

We ended up with some amalgam with Kato's eyes and the Sannin's smile that lasted for a half second before—I managed to float out of his clinging grasp and become part of the air.

Dumb idea. Fireballs love air.

But the resulting "lack" of air means that there's a split second to rethink reality again. . . .

Genjutsu battles are a constant stream of consciousness exercise. They're unintelligible to most people.

I think they're pretty fun.

I held my own and bided my time as best I could until my allies' fight with Orochimaru eventually drew away enough of his attention for me to break free. As I'd hoped, Sakura was still between me and the boys. Not as I'd hoped, Orochimaru's disguised shell deteriorated as he walked out of their trap with barely a scratch. At least he looked like himself now.

And we could all definitely recognize him from history class.

"Well, now," the Sannin purred. He waved an arm at Kato, who froze, helpless. "Sasuke-kun, you have something I want." A freakish tongue licked equally freakish lips.

I didn't think.

I mimicked the Third Hokage's chakra and henged into him without even noticing I'd done so.

"Let the child alone," I said heavily.

Everyone conscious did a double take.

Then death looked me in the face and noticed that one of our party was unaccounted for.

"Your precious Hokage will hear your screams," Orochimaru promised. He glided past Sasuke, who was trapped in the same hold as Kato.

Sakura shuddered and literally wilted.

Years of knowing my grandfather and I'd always been too respectful to ever test drive a henge of him!

"I think I'll find out how you did that jutsu first," the murderous Sannin said as he stopped just a few paces in front of me. He smiled darkly. "Hold still, little Hatake."

I heard every muscle in Kato's body fight to get free.

I heard the promise of vindictiveness as the Sannin began a string of hand seals.

And I heard Yakumo choke on nothing and gasp, "Save her, please!"

Oh yeah, and that was about the moment Orochimaru found himself burning alive.

. . . What on earth?

Did he just growl? What kind of jutsu does that?!

Ingrained reflexes barely saved me from a fiery kick. I dodged the first but caught the second blow with my tantō, thanks to my newly-longer reach, and was knocked out of immediate range. This was good—a multitude of shadow shuriken flew at me almost before I rolled into a tree. One of my seals blocked them nicely with a wall of compressed air.

Orochimaru used the time to retreat into the earth. Flames don't burn underground, and I guess he'd already tried a few different ways of extinguishing himself.

But even in the curious not-quite-there state that dirt swimming uses, the flames persisted. That made no sense. Unless there was a gas deposit down there, the lack of oxygen would have shut them down. Even genjutsu had to follow the rules.

I froze.

Genjutsu?

It couldn't be. Genjutsu couldn't affect bodies physically. Illusion or no, I heard the flames and I heard flesh shriveling under their power. It couldn't be genjutsu. I knew that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me.

Orochimaru did something tricky underground and left a shell of himself down there burning. The rest of him sprang out of the ground beneath me (I was partway up the tree by now, thank you) and treated me to an expression that I could feel without seeing. Were I not already busy fleeing for my life I have no doubt that I never would have moved again. I knew better than to look back. Just being alive was miracle enough.

Seals, spam genjutsu, try to free Sasuke—the only one he's unlikely to kill—I'd run but he'd mow down the chūnin proctors if I made it. I don't think swordplay will work against that tongue. Just keep running, everyone else is down. They're safe if I run.

For some reason, my hearing started to do some kind of Hitchcock zoom thing. "Chakra mimicry as a decoy and you're only a genin. You've earned some respect, little Hatake. Be proud of that as you choke in your own blood."

Don't stop, you'll need the distance and you can adapt to this body. He can't use your teammates as bargaining chips if he doesn't notice them. Calm down, they're still down but breathing. Except for Yakumo, she's walking up to Orochimaru. WHAT.

I kicked up bark in my haste to check that my hearing was somehow wrong. Unfortunately, Yakumo was indeed approaching the Sannin.

Just not Yakumo. Green-grey skin, fangs, and ears? horns? covered the places Yakumo's face and neck were supposed to be. The creature wore her clothes and even still had her hair . . . which probably meant . . . this definitely explained what the Hokage and Shisui had been saying about a creature called an Id.

Right. Now I was terrified for my life. This thing had set Orochimaru on fire. What else could it do?

"Oh?" Orochimaru said down on the ground, turning to watch the shuffling figure. "A Yin transformation? I think I'll take you back with me. New specimens are always a pleasant surprise." He turned back to me. "I'll deal with you first, however."

The Id ground its exceedingly prominent teeth.

I hoped desperately that it (she?) was my ally.

"Die," the creature growled. Not female-sounding, then. I'd stick with "it."

This time, flames engulfed a good chunk of Orochimaru's surroundings, too. The Sannin recoiled as his skin caught fire again. He was better prepared this time and managed to spit out a water jutsu before permanent damage set in. The flames melted the water around him, no problem.

Orochimaru tried a substitution jutsu and the flames came, too.

He dissolved into a thousand tiny white snakes that only served to spread the blaze further.

Sakura was gasping from the smoke creeping across the ground, so I jumped around wiggling toasted marshmallows and terrifying swamp monster alike to go rescue my friend. She was trembling. I scooped her up and ran to where Kato and Sasuke were both struggling to break free. Injecting them with chakra was easy. Good, mimicked chakra could be weird around other people.

All three of them coughed now that they were able to do more than breathe. Kato lurched to his feet. "Kana—"

"Did you plan for this?" I cut him off. "Did you know?" It wasn't an accusation. I couldn't care less about secrets today, just that they could work in our favor.

Kato looked hurt. "No, I—"

"Naruto-kun!" Sakura choked in a voice raspy from smoke.

Oh, shoot. "I'll get him," I snapped, and ran towards the tree trunk the unconscious genin was embedded against. The very real smoke from the genjutsu's flames hadn't risen quickly, but he was closer to the fight than any of us were now. And since Orochimaru had reassembled to spit jutsu after jutsu at the transformed Yakumo. . . .

I made it back to the group without a tantō but without getting killed, either. Not too shabby for my first day as Grandfather. Very shabby in comparison to the actual man.

"Is that Yakumo?" Kato asked.

"Are you really Kana-chan?" said Sakura.

"Yes," I said; "we need to run."

"What good will that do?" Sasuke said testily. He was pretty battered.

Kato, equally battered and bleeding from several places, said, "We're not leaving her."

"That monster will finish her off," Sasuke pointed out.

"Wake up, Naruto-kun," Sakura pleaded to her unconscious teammate.

"We're dead and that creep is coming for us next," Sasuke finished.

I liked it better when they were quiet!

"How can we help her?" Kato asked. "It's genjutsu, right? She's good but not that good."

We all watched as Orochimaru charged at the Id only to freeze, melt into a jumble of snakes, and regroup elsewhere. The Id was laughing ominously. I'm pretty certain that it could have stopped Orochimaru's heart with even less effort. But from Orochimaru's comments while he'd attacked with genjutsu . . . the Id might have found a kindred spirit or something. That kind of made the fact that Orochimaru could brush off a stopped heart relieving. And I did not need to think that way. ("This is great, maybe Orochimaru will actually have to expend effort to kill me! Unlike the superior evil here. But that's okay, I already thought I was dead today.")

So now we'd all gotten a good look at the genjutsu massacre going on over there. We took a second to appreciate the sight fully. Sakura even paused her check of Naruto's vitals—which was probably the most productive thing any of us had done for the last twenty seconds. Her voice was ever-so-slightly less hoarse and a whole lot more shocked sounding. "Doesn't anyone on your team look . . . normal?" she whispered, mostly to herself. "Kato-kun looks like Sensei, and you're now Hokage-sama and now Yakumo-san looks like that."

"Well, I could change back, but I was kinda hoping that some of the chūnin proctors would notice me and check this out."

That and I'd been pulsing Grandfather's chakra like a frantic firefly during this, ah, commercial break. Which came with its own set of pros and cons. Maybe I'd intimidate enemies! Maybe a Konoha higher-up would happen along and take me down for impersonation. Or maybe I could even pass along an order to save all of our skins. I had picked up some of Grandfather's special signing commands. Punishment for using them would be worth it.

I took some offense to being compared to Yakumo right now. Thinking about it, though, Yakumo would really hate this appearance. Good thing she probably couldn't see it. Maybe I should be grateful that the Id had an appearance. Otherwise things might get really tricky. Oh, hey, Yaks, are you feeling all right? Oh look, I'm on fire. Boy, that could be a handy trick to take over one day, heh heh. Too bad I had to survive first.

If the Id claimed all of Orochimaru's attention and Orochimaru returned the favor, maybe someone important would notice the pointed flares of the Hokage's chakra going on over here. Subtle flares. I didn't want a flaming Sannin on my tail.

"I'd almost rather be petrified again than watch," Kato muttered. "I didn't even know she had that much chakra. Aren't genjutsu fights supposed to take a lot of chakra?"

. . . Uh-oh.

We all looked at Sasuke. "It's hard to see," he said, scowling at the terrifying fight in front of us.

"If you can't tell, maybe he can't," Sakura said logically.

Sasuke's face paled more than it already had. "It won't matter in a second."

Well actually, the fact that we could all see the genjutsu just fine meant that we were all somewhat affected by it, and if I couldn't sense the crazy-impressive genjutsu, it wasn't a chakra-intensive technique. Yakumo's chakra would probably hold out a bit longer than Sasuke thought. At least until the Id felt a need to blast Orochimaru with another helping of intensity. The creature was clearly perfectly willing to stand and fight.

Orochimaru sent out yet another flurry of snakes. The Id watched them melt into thin air. Sasuke hissed something unproductive.

"Sakura," I said, "take Naruto to safety. Don't go west, his team's other genin are waiting there."

Sakura's solemn gaze met mine and she nodded. She scooped her unconscious teammate into her arms with only a hint of the awkwardness that comes of toting limp human bodies. I guess she had practice.

"Sasuke," I tried.

The Uchiha didn't look away from the fight. "Someone has to buy time." Oh, because he'd been so eager before Naruto had told him off.

"I'll buy time," I snapped. "I can mimic her chakra and henge into it—"

Kato sliced through a small squadron of escapee snakes. Sasuke ducked a stray kunai.

The Id's head whipped our way. Fangs glinted merrily. "Not yet," it said with its grating voice.

Orochimaru caught on fire yet again and melted down to bone this time. This time his regeneration was caught, too. For a second I almost felt hopeful. The regeneration shriveled and died.

Then another Orochimaru popped into existence right next to his distant teammates. Yes! Yes, he'd retreated!

The Id growled and glared at the empty shells left behind. It formed an unfamiliar hand seal. Unluckily for it, Yakumo's empty chakra reserves finally took their toll and her body tumbled to the ground. She hit the ground as herself again. She was breathing. Her alter ego must have been holding out for a retreat, and I suppose it wanted more revenge than it could get. Then again.

The Id had neutralized all of the threats while its genjutsu had been active. The Id, however, was no longer in control.

Orochimaru's traps that had merely been ignored and not outright vanished now activated. No doubt according to the Sannin's plan. Everything lets down its guard eventually.

Kato, Sasuke, and I rushed forward in a rare moment of synchronization.

This left Sakura to her own devices as Orochimaru's two goons charged toward our group while the Sannin himself discreetly turned tail. Eh, I trusted her. Not to mention that she and I had the most chakra left of our conscious teammates.

Orochimaru was a clever, clever man. He'd set quite a few snares for the Id, and many were designed for this exact moment—the thing's guard was nonexistent now, not just gone. Rest in piece, Id. "In pieces" was too literal of a pun.

Kato knew to let me take point in our hasty charge. Sasuke had his own ideas about our collective skillset . . . I shouldered past him and pulled out the rest of my jutsu-countering seals. One of the explosive tags littering the ground around Yakumo lit up. It was a wonder that the ground around her seemed mostly bare.

I dove for her body. Kato threw himself beside us. Sasuke jumped high. No doubt he'd intended to take Yakumo with him. Well, we'd been one second too late.

Even with my seals taking most of the damage, I had to flood my skin with chakra while various elemental and weaponized dangers raged. Kato deflected what he could while I scooped up Yakumo. He found an opening— "Now!" and we leapt to safety. Sasuke had cleared a path via fireball.

I'm starting to dislike fire.

Yakumo coughed as I landed on the leg that had done the better job at dodging Orochimaru's shuriken. "Are you conscious?" I asked her. She choked and frowned helplessly. That was understandable. She hadn't been a walk in the park before the Id, and now she was . . . well, she wasn't dead. Burned and cut up, yes. Unconscious, suffering from chakra depletion, shivering. I'd seen Yakumo force her body past its limits before. She'd always ended up bedridden.

"How is she?" Kato panted. He'd lost half of his mask. He didn't need the missing half—the blood running down his cheek covered his skin very effectively. "Alive?"

"Not good," I said. "Not dead, but." The wrinkles on my face had multiplied. I was starting to get tired of this henge, convenient as it was to mimic the body that I'd mimicked the chakra of.

"She looks bad," he hissed.

I nodded. The action felt like my head lurching up and down. Like a world tipping on its axis. Like a globe that was frankly in pain, running out of chakra, and starting to lose thought process.

Sasuke spared us a glance and raced off towards Sakura and the two opponents that were about to appear. He was running on fumes.

Orochimaru's teammates probably thought they were here to die.

I only saw one option.

"Here," I told my brother, depositing Yakumo into his arms. "She's bleeding. Force a soldier pill down her throat and leave her somewhere safe. If we can take these people out, we can find help." Anko was coming. I think. I couldn't spare the time to check.

"Kana, you lost your tantō." I thought he was trying to convince me to stay with Yakumo, which would be downright suicidal when Sakura and Sasuke were picked off for standing alone.

I dropped the Hokage henge (when I boil it down, it takes more effort to drop a henge than keep it going) and painstakingly flushed his chakra out of my system. I was so out of ideas.

"Take mine," Kato said loyally.

"No, I'm being stupid." I closed my eyes to block out what I could of my surroundings and focused on the singular feeling of Yakumo's chakra. I didn't like to mimic hers. I'd only done it once before. Still, constant genjutsu spars expedited the process and her chakra flooded over mine. I wished I knew how to transfer chakra.

We might need the Id again if the Sannin came back.

Its battered host was coincidentally a higher priority.

I henged into the delightful creature that had done such a number on Orochimaru and told myself that any lurching or limping would be in character. This would throw off Sasuke and Sakura, but I might be able to spare the energy for a communicative genjutsu if worst came to it.

If Orochimaru's buddies slaughtered me indiscriminately, it wasn't like I couldn't use mimicked chakra. It became mine, after all.

I lurched forward.

The enemy duo flinched at the sight. Sakura and Sasuke, who were back-to-back, looked a bit more thoughtful.

Me, I was too busy watching Team Ten jump out of the bushes to reinforce us.

Things suddenly looked a lot more promising.

.

Only Orochimaru hadn't taken genin to a sword fight.

He'd brought two human machines that far outmatched the six of us soon trapped in deadly combat.

There had to be something I could do.

There was, but our enemies respectively wielded hammer-like sound waves and a small army of misshapen puppets. Or possibly the puppets were deformed living things. The puppetmaster was certainly deformed.

Anko, where are you?

She was close. She'd detoured and was now close to where Orochimaru had ordered his minions to keep the Id off his back. She'd stop there to regroup. It was just out of earshot, exactly as the Sannin had intended.

A large bug thing jumped the front ranks and darted past Chōji to bite into Ino's forearm. She hadn't committed to her family jutsu yet. She'd kept her hands safe, but her left hand wasn't working now, so we were down an option.

"Kana, do you have a plan?" Shika called, falling back as Sasuke played chicken with a visible sound wave.

Okay, fine, it was time to use that itty bitty genjutsu I'd laid on people like Anko during the written exam. She was almost in range. I could use Yakumo's chakra to reach her—all I'd done in the exam room was lay "foothold" genjutsu so that I could influence those people remotely. Still, what could I use to get Anko to willingly come closer?

Shika had asked if I had a plan.

"Don't die," I called back while I pushed away my surprise that he'd recognized me. "Play—" For time, but we didn't have that available right now. This was the last stand of two enemies ordered to kill us at all costs.

I had to talk to Kato. As soon as he joined the fight. We didn't have time. I'd thought . . . I'd thought that Orochimaru would bring genin, and now it turned out I shouldn't have left Yakumo. I couldn't even get to Naruto from here.

I couldn't even send instructions to Kato.

Not when I was bait again.

The Id disguise wouldn't help for much longer if at all. I'd have to switch back. I could fight better with my chakra than with Yakumo's and I didn't have much left to work with. . . .

.

"Come on, Yaks, stay with me."

The girl in question groaned. Kato's soldier pill had done well for her, then. I'd worried that she would choke it back up. She tried to slap my hand away when I snatched our team's scroll out of her weapons pouch. "'M fine," she mumbled. Hazel eyes struggled open.

"That's the plan."

I ripped that scroll open like no tomorrow.

How could I have forgotten to do this after saving Yakumo from the traps?

Brainlessness, that was how.

"No!" Yakumo cried.

An unfamiliar chūnin materialized in front of me. "You're disqualif—" Ah, I see he hadn't expected to find a full-out war zone.

"Orochimaru is here," I snapped over him, "and Mitarashi Anko's group is on its way." I signed a similar statement with one of the emergency codes I wasn't supposed to know just yet. That got him moving. Good thing he was high enough to know that particular code.

"Identify yourself!" he commanded as he went to support Chōji and Shika.

I fell to my knees next to Yakumo. She blinked determinedly. "Kana . . . where's Kat." It probably sounded better in her head.

I cupped a hand to the ear that hadn't been injured by those blasted genin impersonators and tried to listen for Anko's group. They'd been close, right? They'd taken my bait and hadn't veered off to follow Orochimaru? I couldn't quite tell. "Kato's conscious," I said. "Sasuke isn't." I'd underestimated Kato's tenacity again. Or his luck.

"Go to sleep," I told her. "You're half dead. I am, too. Just less."

"No," she protested. She fell asleep anyway. Chakra loss, blood loss, same difference. Kato had bandaged the worst of it.

Poor girl.

My eyes fled across the clearing to where Kato was still trying to fight. Now that I'd escaped back to Yakumo to summon someone that could help save her and ideally all of us, I wanted to be back risking my life. I think I'd proven by now that I could keep myself alive. I didn't trust everyone else that much anymore. Shikamaru, maybe.

I felt for the genjutsu that should have linked me to Anko, but it was gone. Like Sasuke was gone. Like Naruto.

How much blood had I lost from Sasuke's slice, my leg wound, ear, and all of the other places I'd forgotten about? Well, that was irrelevant now. I forced my whining body upright, reminded myself that I'd taken a soldier pill of my own when I'd given the other one to Sasuke—some good that had done—and charged certain death once more.

As I charged, Anko and her team swarmed the two Sound ninjas. I limped to a halt.

And then, in the relative silence:

"It's just a chūnin exam," Kato deadpanned.

He collapsed in a dead faint.

.

.

~So this was long! Also, happy first day of July, which is of course that date you remember reading in the story. We will not be remaining on track, sorry.

The dub and sub say that Orochimaru's disguise (he killed a Grass genin named Shiore) is female, but the manga says Shiore is a man, so I went with that. I have mixed feelings about Orochimaru's henchmen that replaced Shiore's teammates. In the anime, they enter the forest with him, and when they find Team Seven he sends them off into the forest . . . and they're never seen again, apparently. I suppose that I haven't checked everywhere in the the manga for them yet. I had enough fun watching the canon fights over and over and over to keep things believable.

Question: Sannin or sannin? Id or Ido?

The Id is not actually as powerful as it comes across as. We'll delve into details later, but if it came down to a fight to the death between Orochimaru and the Id . . . I'm sorry, guys, Orochimaru is really resourceful and even canon can't kill him. We'll see, though.

Hitchcock zoom is really a "dolly zoom," a camera effect where the object you're focusing on stays the same while everything else recedes into the distance. It has twenty-two alternate names on its Wikipedia page. Anyway, this effect with hearing would be disorienting in its own right - it's a bit how I imagine my hearing the rare times I've felt like fainting.

Kana actually has a Really Big Reason for joining the fight that didn't quite fit in anywhere. Some of you have already thought of it - she has super hearing, and the Hatake family is loyal. If the twins were in earshot, they'd join that fight regardless of foreknowledge. No one wants to face Kakashi after ignoring his team getting massacred.

Chronological anonymous replies: Guest (Not according to canon! But it's not bad thinking), jarabali/Jarabali2 (Hi again! Eh heh, I think that if I were a little more trigger-happy about killing off characters, you'd notice more emotions here. It's funny, I feel like half of what Kana does is monologue about feelings and implications and private jokes, and I always feel like I've put as much of that in as anyone can stand - any more and the plot would never happen. Proof that I myself think a lot, I suppose. It's cool how people have different ways of thinking about, describing, and feeling emotions, isn't it? There's so much variation in our world!), Guest (Mm, I have a whole family that agrees with you there!), and Guest (Sorry, not every wrinkle! Remember, he's an over-protective father)

So who saw this coming?

~7.01.18