Previously:

"!!" Zaku was startled when three new leaf ninjas suddenly slid in between him and his prey, with the first guy pulling the third by his scarf.

'Huh?' Sakura thought, stunned. She recognized them immediately. It was Ino's team!

"!!" Kin and Dosu furrowed their brows, surprised. The very nature of this second test meant that every other team should be viewed as an enemy. They never expected anyone else would attempt to come their rescue.

"Hmph… More weirdoes have appeared," Zaku scoffed, smirking as he recovered from the minor shock. It didn't matter how many bugs crawled out. He would crush them all.

"Ino..." Sakura said, relieved, but still surprised to see her there.

"Sakura… I won't lose to you," Ino said as she faced their new enemy, determined to protect their friends and get some payback for her. "I've already told you that."

Chapter 52: All Out War…!!

Sasuke stared at the crying child that stood across from him. 'Who is it?' he wondered, feeling strangely disturbed by the sight of him.

"Mom and Dad… didn't have to die..." the dark-haired boy sobbed with thick tears streaming down his face.

'The old me!?' Sasuke thought, startled when he recognized his younger self.

"In the end, if you don't have strength, you can't do anything..." younger Sasuke cried. 'Because I didn't have strength… the clan was wiped out… Everyone was killed..."

Sasuke's eyes widened as he was bombarded by the painful memories of seeing his own parents' corpses sprawled out on the floor of their home.

"No… You..." his younger self said, an eerie smirk spreading its way across his face as his voice changed to sound like Orochimaru's. "You let them die… All you did was watch..." he reached his hand up to pull away some of the flesh around his eye, which now resembled a snake's.

"If only you had strength..." Orochimaru's voice echoed in his mind.

"Uu..." Sasuke grimaced, but his pain and torment went unnoticed. Everyone else was too preoccupied with the battle at hand.

"Ino… Why…?" Sakura asked.

"I won't let you be the only one who gets to look good in front of Sasuke-kun," Ino said with a smirk, a bead of sweat sliding down her face as she stared down the sound ninjas.

"Looks like more leaf insects have scurried into the open," Dosu remarked with disdain. All these fools did was up the body count.

Chōji flinched at the scary glare the bandaged sound ninja gave them. "What are you two thinking!?" he asked his teammates incredulously, starting to panic. "These guys are too dangerous, we'll be eaten!! Shikamaru, let go of my scarf!!!"

"Yeah, right, idiot," Shikamaru scolded him. "This sucks, but we have no choice. If Ino is coming out, then we men can't runaway. Give me a break!!"

"Sorry to get you guys involved," Ino apologized, "but we are the same team, we share the same destiny."

"We'll get through this somehow..." Shikamaru said, furrowing his brow with the hint of a smirk, already formulating a plan.

"Hehe, you can leave if you want," Zaku taunted Chōji with a smirk. "Fatty..."

Chōji's ear twitched. "What did he say?" he asked with an eerily calm voice. "I couldn't hear him..."

"Huh!?" Zaku said. Was that tub of lard hard of hearing, too?

'That word is a taboo for Chōji,' Shikamaru thought. 'Say it twice, and...'

"If you want to, you can run away… you fat ass!!" Zaku mocked Chōji again.

Chōji lost it. "I'm not a fat ass!!!! I'm just big-boned, dammit it!!!!" he roared with righteous fury and multiple veins throbbing on his head. "Yaaaaay!!! Hurray for big-boned!!!!" he cheered defiantly, raising his fists in the air.

'W… Wow...' Sakura thought, sweat-dropping. She knew it was a bad idea to call Chōji 'fat', but seeing the effects first hand was something else. He was like a completely different person.

"Alright!! You guys know, right!!!" Chōji challenged, pointing his finger at the enemy ninjas. "This is a war between the leaf and the sound!!!"

'Lucky, he's snapped,' Ino thought with a smirk.

"Man… this is going to suck..." Shikamaru said, finally letting go of his friend's scarf. There was no need to worry about Chōji running away now.

"That's our line..." Zaku retorted. 'We are supposed to kill Sasuke before the end of this exam...' he thought with a sigh. "Huh…?" he said, surprised when Biki stepped out to place himself in between him and the newcomers.

'Looks like someone on our side has snapped, too...' Dosu thought when he saw Biki's trembling shoulders and the vein throbbing on his forehead.

Biki clenched his fists as he slowly raised his head. "Shut up… Shut up!! Shut up!!! SHUT UP!!!" he roared furiously, fixing all of the leaf genins with a hateful glare that froze them with terror.

'I… I can't move…!!' Shikamaru thought, startled when he realized that he could barely even breath.

"!!" Ino and Chōji gasped when they realized it was the same for them.

Even Sakura, who was still lying on the ground behind them, was affected. 'This… This is what he did to that girl earlier…!!' she realized, eyes wide with horror when she realized that she had been paralyzed again.

"You…!!!" Biki yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Sakura. "How dare you scratch my face?!! How dare you interrupt my meal!!! Because of all the noise you idiots have been making, I haven't been able to get more than a few drops out of her!!!!" he screamed, shoulders heaving with anger as he moved his hand to point it back in April's direction, still glaring at them. He was sick of this. He decided that he would crush them himself! "I'll slaughter every last one of you!!!!"

"You still haven't finished with her yet?" Zaku asked him, surprised. Biki's victims were usually ready for embalming by now.

"NO!!" Biki snapped. "She's totally my type!! But drawing chakra from her is like trying to draw blood from a freaking stone!!!"

"… Maybe she's the one wearing the seal in her group..." Dosu suggested carefully. He noticed that Kin was very wisely keeping her mouth shut for once.

"No, no, NO!!!" Biki shouted, stomping his foot. "If that were the case, she'd be dead already!!!" Being simultaneously drained by two separate sources should kill her faster, not slower. "That girl's still stubbornly clinging to life!!! It's really starting to piss me off!!!!" He preferred to kill the cute ones by draining them of their chakra to create a perfect, unmarked corpse, but at this rate, he was going to have to slit her throat to get the job done. He was going to have to completely rethink the arrangement that he had in mind for her display!

"!!" Sakura's eyes widened when she heard that. She had been so worried that she wouldn't be able to save April in time, but from what he had just said, it sounded like she was still alright. Sakura wanted to turn to check, but with her body unable to move, she had to take his word for it… which reminded her of the danger she and everyone else was still in.

Biki reached into his holster, removing one kunai for each of the leaf ninjas under his influence. Zaku wanted to finish them himself, but he knew better than to argue with him when he was like that. Dosu didn't care who took care of them as long as it ended quickly.

Biki raised his hand to throw the kunais. He narrowed his eyes menacingly. "You never should have messed with me..." he told Sakura darkly.

BAMM!!

"?!!?" Everyone's eyes widened in shock when April suddenly rammed into him from the side, knocking his attack off balance, so each kunai missed its target by an inch.

"April?!!" Sakura cried in surprise and astonishment, concerned when her teammate fell on her hands and knees while panting heavily from the effort of forcing her aching body to move.

"You..." Shikamaru said while he and his team stared at her with wide eyes, snapping out of their shock when they realized they could move again. "Don't look him in the eyes!!" he immediately shouted at April and everyone else on his side. "He's using some kind of paralysis jutsu!!"

"!" April clenched her fist and struggled to stand again, keeping her eyes on the ground. Her whole body felt heavy, leadened with fatigue. She was exhausted from the strain of the seal's effects on her body. Every muscle burned and screamed at her to stop. She felt ready to collapse again, but she couldn't stay down after Biki's threats to kill everyone woke her.

"But… If we can't look at him, then how are we supposed to fight him!?" Ino asked, averting her eyes quickly along with Chōji.

"Exactly," Biki said with a smirk, standing up again with ease since April's attack had lacked it's usual punch in her weakened state. It was a miracle that she had managed to throw herself this far, but that miracle didn't seem likely to repeat itself with the way she was shaking just from the effort it took her to get back up. "You can't defend yourselves if you don't know how I'm going to attack!!"

"We don't need to see your eyes for that… just your feet," April said, gritting her teeth against the pain as she forced her body into a Wing Chun stance. "We can tell which direction he'll attack from… by watching his feet!" she told her fellow leaf ninjas.

"That's impossible!!" Ino and Chōji retorted.

"The only one here capable of doing that is probably you!" Shikamaru agreed.

"Then… leave this one to me..." April said, gritting her teeth again and narrowing her eyes slightly when she noticed the slight shift in the weight of her opponent's stance. She didn't know how long she would be able to last, but she could at least try to keep him distracted so the others would have a fighting chance.

Shikamaru was about to argue that she clearly wasn't in any sort of condition to fight, when Biki launched himself at her without warning.

"?!!" the leaf and sound ninjas gasped again when she was able to completely block his kick with only a slight change in her stance.

Biki smirked as she pushed his foot away and quickly caught himself, turning his body to deliver an open palm thrust to her chest. April countered by rotating her torso slightly and slipping her arm around and up against his to push his attack offline so that it missed her completely.

'A… Amazing…!!' Sakura and Ino thought. Not only was she fending off his attacks with the absolute minimum energy and motion required, but she really was countering just by watching his feet! April never took her eyes off of them.

"Heh… This is why I usually like to kill your type quickly!" Biki said, narrowing his eyes slightly, as he attacked again with a feral grin. The more they fought, the more scuffed up her body was going to get. He became so focused on her that he completely forgot about the others. "It hurts, right? Go ahead and give up," he told her. "If I have to break your bones, it'll be difficult to pose you later!"

'Pose!?' April thought, frowning as she deflected his fist. But there was no time to dissect that disturbing comment with him following up with another kick and a hand chop. 'This no joke! I'm lucky this guy's attacks are sloppy, and his stances are poor. Reading them isn't a problem… He keeps coming directly at me… but it's better this way,' she thought, gritting her teeth while she strained to keep up with his attacks. At least this way, she didn't have to waste precious energy going after him. 'It's taking every ounce of my strength just to defend myself. My body's screaming in agony!' Her body rebelled against every movement, but she didn't have a choice. She had to keep him focused on her, or the others would become sitting ducks.

'Biki relies too much on his ninjutsu, so his taijutsu is weak...' Dosu thought, watching them out the corner of his eye. He looked like he was having fun playing around over there, even though his prey kept blocking him at every turn. 'His opponent is half dead, but we should finish this fight as soon as possible anyway...'

"I guess… we don't really have a choice..." Shikamaru said, a bead of sweat sliding down his face. April was putting up a good fight, but she wouldn't last long in her condition. They needed to take advantage of the opening she created for them. "Get ready everyone."

Ino furrowed her brow and took up a fighting stance alongside her teammates. "Sakura…!" she said, getting her fellow kunoichi's attention.

"!!" Sakura tore her eyes away from April's fight to look at her.

"Take care of those two," Ino instructed her.

Sakura glanced at Sasuke and Naruto, who were still unconscious. "Yeah…!" she agreed with the hint of a smile. Even though the situation was still desperate, she couldn't help but feel a little happy. She wasn't fighting alone anymore. Their friends had come to help them. April, Sasuke, and Naruto were still alive.

"Alright, time for Ino team, full power!" Ino told her teammates.

"Yeah!!!" the boys agreed, ready to spring into action.

"Ino-Shika-Cho formation!!" Ino ordered. "Chōji, do your thing!!"

"Ok!!!" Chōji responded, forming his hand seal. 'Multi-size Jutsu!!' he thought, activating the special technique passed down in the Akimichi clan, which allowed the user to increase the size of one part, or even all of their body for a short amount of time. But it used up a high amount of calories in return. Chōji chose to expand his torso. 'Followed by, Leaf-Style Taijutsu: Human Bullet Tank!' Chōji quickly tucked his head, arms, and legs in and rolled himself forward, spinning towards Zaku at high speed.

"!" Zaku's eyes widened slightly in surprise. "What's this weird jutsu…?" He had never seen anything like it before, but he was confident that he could blast it away just as easily as any other attack. "Hmph!! It's just a rolling fat ass." He formed a hand seal and thrust his hands out in front of him, unleashing his counter attack. 'Slicing Air!!!'

For a moment, it looked like it might work when the rolling Chōji spun in place for a second, but then the spinning mass popped up high into the air.

"What? He bounced upwards!!" Zaku exclaimed, startled as the flying fat ass sailed toward him. 'With the spinning, air pressure is useless,' he thought. 'But… I can't use a sound wave either… If I try to touch him, my arm will be crushed.'

'Damn!!' Dosu cursed internally, rushing over to help when he saw how much trouble Zaku was in.

'No way! You're the worst of all...' Shikamaru thought, furrowing his brow as he quickly formed his own hand seal. 'Ninja Art: Shadow Possession Jutsu!!' He extended his shadow to intercept and catch the running sound ninja's.

"!!" Dosu gasped when his body suddenly screeched to a halt. 'Urg…! My body…!?' he thought, wondering what was going on. His eye widened when he looked down and saw the unnatural way his shadow was turned and stretched to connect with one of the leaf ninja's. "What…!? My shadow is..."

CRRRRASH!!

"Gu!!" Zaku grunted, managing to dodge Chōji's crash landing with barely a second to spare.

"!?" Dosu said, startled when his hands suddenly flew up to touch his head and form a comedic pose. "What the…!?"

"!?" Kin exclaimed, shocked by his odd behavior. "Dosu, what are you doing at a time like this?!!!" she demanded incredulously with a vein throbbing on her forehead. Biki screwing around was nothing new, but now their leader was acting like some kind of gag comedian!?

Ninja Art: Shadow Possession Jutsu was a special technique passed down through the Nara clan. By connecting their shadow with their opponent's, they could control his or her movements. It was Shikamaru's best skill, but there was a limit on how long it could be used. "Ino! Now there's just the girl," he shouted at her, holding his ridiculous pose to keep the bandaged sound ninja restrained.

"Yup!! Shikamaru, take care of my body," Ino said sweetly, smirking as she formed her hand seal.

'Yeah!" Shikamaru agreed reluctantly, glad she was standing close enough so that he shouldn't have to move much to do it.

'Ninja Art: Mind Transfer Jutsu!!' Ino thought, launching her attack.

"Whoa," Shikamaru said, catching her when her body fell towards him.

Kin's whole body flinched with she was struck by the invisible attack.

"Uuu… Everything is spinning..." Chōji groaned as he undid the multi-size jutsu and straightened up, dizzy from the rolling and sudden loss of precious calories.

"!!" April winced, stumbled back from the force of the kick she just tried to block, and fell to her knees. She struggled to get up again, but all she could do was tremble. 'My body…' she thought, wincing at the terrible pain she was in. 'My body… won't listen… to me anymore…'

Biki smirked down at her, feeling victorious. She had put up a good fight, considering she should never have been awake to begin with, but it seemed she had finally reached her limit.

"Stop! It's over now!!" Ino declared inside Kin's body, controlling it to draw a kunai from the sound kunoichi's holster. "If you guys move an inch, I'll kill this Kin girl! If you don't want it to end here, then leave your scroll and get out of here! When I can't sense your chakra any longer, I'll let her go!" She was startled when the remaining sound ninjas smirked and laughed at the threat. 'They are… strange...' she thought, furrowing her brow with confusion. What was wrong with these jerks? Didn't they care that their teammate could die!?

"!!" Sakura gasped, immediately realizing what was wrong when she saw Zaku raise his arm. "Oh no!! They are…!! No!!" she screamed as he unleashed a blast of air at Kin's body.

"Whoa!" Chōji exclaimed, raising his arms to shield himself from the edge of the roaring wind.

"Kyaaa!!!" Ino cried as she and Kin were hit by its full force and thrown back harshly against a tree trunk. "Gaa!!" Ino grunted in pain as Kin's body coughed up blood.

"!!" Shikamaru gasped when a streak of blood ran from the corner of her real body's mouth, too. "Ino…!"

"These guys..." Ino groaned, trembling as she raised Kin's head to look up at them from her position on the ground. "… Hurting their own comrade..."

"Hehe… You picked the wrong hostage…" Biki laughed at her, squatting down to grab April by one of her ponytails to lift her head.

"!!" April winced and gritted her teeth, trying desperately to muster enough strength to resist, doing her best to avoid his gaze while he gripped her chin tightly with his other hand and started turning her head to face him.

"Heh, you are confused..." Zaku agreed with a smirk.

"Our goals are not the stupid scrolls nor to safely complete this exam..." Dosu added.

"!?" Shikamaru and Ino gasped, while Sakura and Chōji frowned in confusion.

"!!" April squeezed her eyes shut a second before hers could meet Biki's, too preoccupied with her struggle with him to be able to afford to pay much attention to anything else. She bit her lip in frustration as he crashed his against hers, struggling to keep them clamped shut to deny him access. She didn't know what the hell he was up to, but from the little she heard, she knew it had something to do with her chakra.

"It's Sasuke-kun!!" Dosu concluded, ignoring the unsightly struggle between Biki and April. He didn't know how she had managed to survive for so long, but that girl would be dead soon anyway.

'Damn...' Shikamaru thought, starting to panic. 'This jutsu will end soon, and April's...'

Biki succeeded in using his thumbs to pry open her eyelids in order to catch her gaze. April's hands froze, clenched around his wrists, while she stared back at him in horror.

"!" Dosu perked up when Shikamaru's shadow began to disconnect and recede from his own. "Ah… looks like five minutes is this jutsu's limit." He glanced at Ino's unconscious body. "That girl's jutsu, it looks like she can enter her spirit into her opponent's body and take control, but… hehe… from the looks of that internal bleeding it seems that killing Kin will also kill her.

"!" Shikamaru furrowed his brow. He was right. Any damage done to the body Ino possessed would transfer back to her own.

"Hmph, I can't take any more of this..." a new voice said from above. "Some minor sound ninjas bullying these second rate ninjas and declaring victory?"

"!" Everyone on the ground looked up in surprise to see Neji and Tenten staring down at them from their perch in a tree. Biki kept his mouth pressed against April's and glanced at them out the corner of his eye.

"What!?" Dosu said incredulously, starting to get annoyed. "They keep coming out like cockroaches..."

"!?" Biki grunted in pain, pulling back in surprise, when April took advantage of the few seconds he was distracted to bite his lip and headbutt him. "Damn it!" He cursed, shoving her face in the dirt as he held her down. "You're gonna pay for that!!" he growled, glaring up at Neji. Just when he finally had her right where he wanted her, these bastards had to distract him!

But Neji and Tenten's eyes were on their injured teammate. Lee's body was battered, and he looked like he was barely conscious.

"Lee..." Tenten said, concerned. How could they have hurt him so badly?

"You made a mistake..." Neji told the sound ninjas with his arms crossed, frowning down at them.

"..." Sakura stared up at them, recognizing them from their brief encounter in the hall on the second floor before the start of the exams. 'That's Lee-san's team...'

"That knocked out freak right there is from our team, and..." Neji said, confirming what she knew and the others suspected, "you're going to pay for that!!!" He narrowed his eyes, and veins popped up around his eyes as he activated his Byakugan.

"!!" Everyone gasped when they felt his piercing stare.

'This sensation…!' April thought, furrowing her brow slightly.

'What's this… It's like his eyes see thought everything...' Dosu thought, getting a chill.

Biki narrowed his eyes at the haughty leaf ninja and began constricting and dilating his pupils.

"That pathetic technique won't work on me," Neji stated coldly, narrowing his own eyes in annoyance, quickly seeing through the hypnotic movements of his opponent's green eyes.

"!!" The sound ninjas gasped again, shocked to find someone immune to the technique. Since it didn't require any chakra to manipulate the muscles in his eyes, it was supposed to be Biki's trump card with the exam's seal in place.

'He's the first since Orochimaru...' Biki thought, furrowing his brow with irritation and anger. It took an extremely strong will to resist his hypnotic eye jutsu. The movement was so subtle that most people couldn't even tell what he was up to until it was too late.

"If you are going to go any further… I'm going to go all out..." Neji continued, pausing when he sensed a change in the air. "Huh?" The crease in his brow deepened. 'This chakra...'

"Hehe… If you don't like it so much… then stop acting cool and come down here..." Dosu challenged him.

"…!!" Neji and April both gasped when the chakra spiked drastically.

'This is...' She thought, straining in the dirt to move her head enough to glance in the direction of the roots the two remaining members of Team 7 were supposed to be resting under. 'No way…!?'

"No," Neji said, closing his eyes and deactivating his Byakugan. "It seems… that won't be necessary..."

"?" Dosu said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"!!" Sakura gasped, her eyes widening, when she noticed that Sasuke was moving. "Sasuke-kun!! You're awake..." she started to cry in relief, stopping short when she realized something wasn't right. "!" Her smile fell when he stood up and she got a better look at him. 'Huh?'

"!" Shikamaru gasped, too, disturbed.

"..." Chōji and Ino stared at their fellow leaf genin in shock.

'That's… Sasuke-kun…?' Ino thought, staring at him with wide eyes from Kin's body.

'What… What happened to him…?' April wondered, furrowing her brow with concern, while she stared up at him out the corner of her eye in confusion. It was startling enough to wake up to find that he and Naruto had both been knocked out, but this… 'Not only does his chakra feel different, but those marks...' Half of Sasuke's body was covered in strange black marks. His chakra was so dense, it was almost visible. His Sharingan was fully activated. She could feel his killing intent even from her position.

"Sakura..." Sasuke said, noticing her first. His glowing red eyes narrowed into a dark and dangerous glare when he saw her wounds. "Who did that to you…?"

"..." Sakura stared at him with wide eyes, stunned. "Sasuke-kun?" She knew it had to be him, but she barely recognized him in his current state.

"Who was it?" Sasuke demanded, lowering his head slightly as he scanned the odd group gathered before him. His eyes stopped on Biki when he saw the way he was restraining April and how terrible she looked. "Was it you?" he asked darkly, glaring so intensely at the sound ninja that it made him shiver.

'This bastard…!' Biki thought, gritting his teeth as he glared back.

"..." Dosu stared at Sasuke, astonished. 'The cursed seal is wrapped around his whole body...'

Zaku smirked. "We did it!" he said. He didn't know what was going on, but their real prey was finally awake!