Okay, people… after reading the question in so many reviews, I'm going to answer this one publicly:

Naruto DID NOT know that Anko would be the second examiner.

He knew vaguely that she was involved with the exam from the conversation he overheard (or did I delete that bit?), but nothing more.

Precognition? Uhm, no, I'm trying to steer as far away from the supernatural as is possible when you're working in a fandom that involves demons and fireballs and lightning shooting out of your fingers…

And because we keep getting asked this, yes, it IS possible for blind people to draw. It may not be perfect, and Naruto is probably a little rough around the edges with it, so to speak, but it is possible for them to draw and get it pretty darn right. I was attempting to take it a step further and explain it with chakra, but if we get asked four times a chapter what's going on, I clearly haven't been succeeding.

Right. Question-and-answer time is over. Read-the-story time now, if you're not already.

Eleven: Snakebite

I was checking my backpack for the eighteenth time by feel as I walked towards the second exam with Sasuke, checking that I had packed everything I needed – did the pack feel too light? What if I'd forgotten something? Were my new tags in here? Had I remembered the extra bundles for my teammates?

Ten seconds of frantic scrabbling later, I remembered I'd put them in a pocket of my new pants – Sasuke (who had made me wear them for the exams) informed me they were black, which I wasn't happy about, but he said there was an orange stripe up the hem, so maybe they weren't so bad.

"Hey, Sasuke," I said to get his attention, pulling out three bundles of rectangular paper sheafs with ink seals carefully drawn on them, held together with bands of coloured paper, and gently tossing them to him. "Here."

"What are these for?" he asked as he opened a velcroed pocket to tuck them away.

"They're my latest tags. Red band is explosive tags, my own variety, yellow band is shock tags, and white band is flash tags."

He made a sound of acknowledgement as we kept walking. "Having any luck with the… what are you calling 'em? Freeze tags?"

I shook my head. "Uh-uh; they're difficult. Ice isn't a normal element, so I've been having trouble finding seals. That kid, Haku, said that his element was a by-product of a… kekkei… genkai…" I trailed off, frowning, before starting to grin maniacally. "Aha! I think I've got it!"

I began to scribble in a notebook, suddenly having gotten an idea for combining the two elemental seals ice was made up of – water and wind – but they wouldn't mesh, I could see that straightaway. I would have to modify them enough to work together, but not so much that they would cease to be what they were.

I was still scribbling wildly when we stopped at the edge of the Forest of Death, a good distance from the other waiting genin – Sasuke knew I worked better with quiet, and we still needed to be close enough that we'd know when the exam started. I finished reworking the water release seal I had hopes I could use and started to fiddle with the next one, barely noticing when Sakura came up to us until she actually said hello.

"Oh! Sakura! I have some tag seals for you!" I said, tugging the bundles out of my pocket and separating the ones for Sakura from the test ones I was planning to use in the exam, with the enemy ninja as guinea pigs. "Red is explosive, white is flash, yellow is shock. Wrap em' around a kunai or apply to a surface and put in a bit of chakra. These ones have ten-second timers; I'm still trying to get the remote fuses to work. And I don't trust the impact fuses either."

"What are those purple ones for?" she asked, stowing her own tags in her backpack.

"Uh, what colour stripe?" I asked distractedly, putting the handful of tags away and returning to my sealbook with a frown. No, that bit wasn't going to work, the nodes were all wrong…

"Purple band, yellow stripe," Sakura answered me. "The paper was pale purple, too."

"Uh… those are my new poison tags…" I mumbled, erasing part of the wind seal. "I want to test them in the exam… Yellow stripe means they're tranquilliser tags. They still need direct contact with the enemy to work… Damn! Stupid wind seal… these things are so hard to work with…"

"What about the green tags?" she asked, still bothering me. Damn it, couldn't she see I was trying to work here?

"They were an attempt at a Leaf-signature seal gone awry," I muttered, tapping my chin with my pencil. What if I shifted that part, moved the second node… no, that would reverse it… but if I moved it there and connected it to those two chakra paths…"Aha! I think I've got this! No, wait… argh! Stupid freeze tag. Uh, wait, the green tag seals? They're mud tags. Not lethal but good for a scare. Unless they're the new ones I was going to test… in which case they're quite possibly lethal until I work the kinks out of them."

"LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS!" I heard the proctor bellow. As my team shifted towards her, me putting my seal notebook back in my bag, I caught her muttering faintly about aspirin, Panadeine, and Tylenol, accompanied by a strong whiff of alcohol, and I winced.

"Hey guys?" I said quietly, getting my teammates' attention. "Talk softly around the proctor and be nice. She has a hangover – the mother of all hangovers, from the smell I'm getting."

Sasuke muttered something under his breath. Something to do with so why did she break the window, then…?

I listened to Anko's explanation of the second test, frowning internally. This could be a problem – I'd never been in the Forest of Death before. I was working totally blind, instead of having a pre-researched map to help. Then I let out a slow breath, reminding myself that even the Wave mission turned out okay. We'd get through this. Somehow.

"Here," Sasuke said, handing me a sheet of paper and tapping it near the bottom. "Sign this."

"What's it for? I heard hangover-lady say something about waivers," I told him as I skimmed my fingers over the area he'd tapped to find the 'sign here' line.

"It's to say we know the dangers of this test. Y'know, so if we get killed the village won't get in trouble."

I nodded as I scrawled my messy signature on the paper. "I expected something like that." Mentally, though, I was frowning and taking note of that. This exam would be a perfect time for the up-and-coming genin teams to get snuffed, with no problems. An ambitious village could even sneak in undercover top ninja to kill off as much of the competition as possible. And it would be almost impossible to prove, and then react.

I snorted aloud at my own paranoia and handed the waiver back to Sasuke. Like anyone would have the audacity to do that. Then again, everyone would assume no one would have the audacity to paint the Hokage Monument or electrify the staffroom coffee maker.

I was scanning the chakra signatures of the crowd, trying to sense anyone who was offkey, and taking note that that Gaara guy was sending out waves of his murderous aura, when I heard the faint rustle and then the skim of metal cutting the air, and I instantly ducked out of the way, tipping my head aside and spinning on my heel to face whoever had thrown the kunai at me.

…Now that I think about it, I reacted very calmly, considering. I think I'm getting too used to getting randomly ambushed.

"Yo, brat, pay attention or you might lose your head!" the proctor taunted. I didn't respond except to straighten up and narrow my eyes at her, tilting my head slightly. She was unlikely to actually kill me – too much paperwork – so she was just trying to psych me out. A tiny trickle of blood ran down my cheek, but I wasn't bothered – the cut wasn't serious. I had barely felt it at all anyway.

"Che," she snorted, then I went stiff as someone came up behind me, edging away, closer to Sasuke, before focusing my every sense on the suppressed chakra essence. It was just wrong. The man reeked of snake and poison, scents I had hated for years, and I felt my lip curling for a second before I forcibly blanked out my expression. This signature felt kind of like Kakashi-sensei's, or Old Man Hokage's – sort of solid, heavy, and How old is this guy? He can't be under thirty… but muffled around the edges, so that if someone who wasn't as good as me sensed it, all they would feel was genin-level chakra. But I was better. I'd had practise. And after Wave I sensed the shadow, the 'void' of so much more chakra behind it, lurking in wait. It was a creepy feeling.

This signature meant trouble.

"You dropped your kunai," a snake-like voice hissed, and I recoiled away from the reek of venom as the proctor said, "Ah, thanks. Now if you'd like to stop leaking killing intent, Grass brat, before I take it as a threat?" Her voice was mild, but there was a hidden threat of pain in it.

Killer intent? I had barely noticed it, although there was quite a bit, considering we hadn't even started yet.

"Ah, sorry," the now identified Grass-nin hissed, "I suppose the smell of blood got me a little… excited."

"Shut up and get to your gates," Anko ordered, and I followed my teammates to the gate that they had apparently chosen while I was sensing out the competition.

"You guys ready?" Sasuke asked, more to me than Sakura. I nodded cheerfully, taking a deep breath to steady myself and fingering the tag bundles in my pocket, while Sakura assured him that she was as ready as she was going to get.

FWEEEE!

The whistle blew, and I heard the gates in front of us creak open. We took off running.

We stuck to the ground for a few minutes, Sasuke's hand brushing the trees and my teammates' footsteps guiding me through the forest. For quite a while we just ran, getting some distance, until Sasuke paused and tapped my hand – a signal we needed to talk. I quickly the area, finding no one, and then scanned it again more slowly, even checking underground and sensing nothing more than wildlife.

I eventually nodded. "Ok, we're clear, but keep it quiet."

"Thanks," Sasuke said softly. "We need a password, so that if we get split up we won't be welcoming enemies into our party by mistake. Something easy to remember but hard to guess."

"Maybe the password should be individual, to make it harder to infiltrate," Sakura suggested.

I frowned suddenly and held up two fingers, a signal for silence I hoped they'd recognise – there, no, there, a flicker, not quite right… there. I focused in on the spot, not too concerned, but wary nonetheless. Someone trying to spy – the chakra shielding was only high genin/low chuunin, no real issue, but his vitals had given him away. Not a threat – just some random from… Ame, I think.

"We shouldn't stay in one place for too long," I said aloud, gently testing my senses to check if his teammates were in range. I didn't think so.

Sasuke got my hint and we started to run again, flitting between the trees and quickly leaving the Rain-nin behind – he couldn't keep up with us and stay hidden. When we stopped again I checked the area, then started to speak quietly.

"Okay guys, I'm going to warn you now: look out for that team from Grass, and stay the hell away from them. There is something very wrong about them and I don't want us to be the ones to find out what it is.

"Second team not to go near is the Sand team. That Gaara guy, there's something not right about his chakra. He could probably kill any one of us in an instant, and again, I'd rather not find out. His teammates are pretty dangerous, too, but nothing on his level.

"All the other teams are fair game, but keep an eye out for those two. I'll give you any warning I can, but I don't know what kind of stealth they have. They may be able to slip past."

"They're only genin," Sakura argued, quietly. "They can't be that good; you can sense jounin easily, even when they're hiding their chakra."

I shook my head flatly. "The Grass team, at least one of them is so far above genin level it's not funny," I said grimly. "I sensed out his chakra – it's suppressed, very well, but I've been doing this long enough to sort of shadow-sense what they're hiding."

I swallowed and fell silent, until Sasuke asked, "What power level would you guess? Jounin, high chuunin?"

I shook my head slowly, remembering that heavy weight in my awareness. "I think we're talking Kage level and up."

Sasuke swore softly. "What the hell are they playing at? Someone like that could slaughter every genin here without breaking a sweat!"

"I don't know, but be on your guard," I said flatly. "Now password, fast, before someone shows. Team for now, we may do individual later in the test when things get more desperate."

"Let the fire begin, and we fight until the last one stands," Sasuke said quietly. "Return phrase is 'when the last one standing falls, the fire burns from the ashes, and the cycle begins again'. Got it?"

"Wait," I ordered, my mind deserting the password problem for a more immediate one, "what the hell is that?"

"What's what?" Sakura asked.

"That noise. It's like… I don't know…" I turned to face it, and felt the blood drain out of my face as I finally recognised the sound, and the magnitude. "Start running."

"What? What is it?" Sakura demanded; to my annoyance they hadn't moved.

"It's a GODDAMN GIANT SNAKE! MOVE YOUR GODDAMN ASSES!"

Suddenly grasping the gravity of the situation, the pair started sprinting, me on their heels. "I'm starting to see what that Anko chick meant when she said 'dangerous fauna'!" Sasuke called, rapping his knuckles sharply on a nearby tree that I immediately dodged to the left to avoid. "Hate to see what she meant for the flora!"

I was about to agree when something roughly the size of a building slammed into my side, knocking me flying. Low hanging branches and foliage whipped against my face and limbs as I rolled to a stop in the shrubbery. For several seconds I lay still, ears ringing, before shaking my head and scrambling to my feet. "Sasuke?" I called uncertainly, turning my head and trying to listen for my team's footsteps. "Sakura?"

Then I couldn't help screaming as something hot and wet closed over me, and everything turned upside down and I was dizzy and sick and I couldn't breathe and the smell was horrendous –

Snake. The fucking snake. The fucking snake ate me!

Ewwwww!

"Alright, this thing is so dead!" I snarled, my voice muffled to my own ears, struggling in the snake's throat. "KAGE BUNSHIN!"

The tiny, cramped, damp, moving space was starting to fill up with shadow clones, and I held the jutsu, creating more and more and more and more –

There was a muffled shriek, and then the wet pressure was gone and me and the hundred Kage Bunshin stumbled and landed on the ground.

"Eww…" one of them groaned.

"Was that thing a summon or a real snake?" another asked.

I spat, trying to clear my mouth, then retched, emptying my stomach onto the grass, the acid searing my mouth and throat and burning away the taste. I moaned, and my stomach wrenched again, making me cough and spit at the foul taste. "I think it was real; I'm tasting blood that ain't mine."

"Yuuuck!" whined another clone.

I staggered to my feet, still spitting violently, and turned in a small circle, trying to get my bearings back. "Spread out and search for the others. If you find them, flare your chakra or something to get our attention, and everyone circle in. Got it?"

"Yessir!" a hundred voices answered me, and soon the air was filled with stumbles, curses and the occasional 'poof' of a clone accidentally dispelling itself when it tripped over. More than one walked headfirst into trees, making me roll my eyes – god, clones were really pathetic sometimes. I shoved my irritation aside at a sudden flash of familiar chakra, the sweeping rush I would always recognise as my own backed with Kyuubi's fire. One of my clones had found my teammates, frantically running on and calling out, trying to find me.

I took off at a sprint in the direction of the chakra flash, which was rapidly dying away – the clone had dispelled itself on something – with other bunshin on my tail, closing in on their location. The Forest of Death was actually kinda cool, I mused, dodging a thorned shrub that had just killed a clone. Maybe me and Sasuke could come here to train sometimes.

I half-paused as I came close enough to begin to hear speech, confused by what my senses were registering. Don't tell me that snake was poisonous or something… None of it made sense – it sounded like me talking, but it wasn't one of my clones – hell, it wasn't even my chakra. That made no sense –

Henge. Illusion. Genjutsu.

Aha. That was it – someone henged as me. At least I had recognised it as an illusion this time.

I clearly heard my own voice reciting the password I only half-remembered, and I slowed up a little out of uncertainty. Launching myself straight in there was, flatly, not a good idea. The chakra I was sensing… wasn't it the same as that Rain-nin's…? I couldn't tell; it was warped slightly by the henge, and I was still too far off. I had to get closer.

Sasuke, it seemed, wasn't fooled by the henge or the perfect password, as the next thing I heard from him was a harsh, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

The confused answer of 'five' was not the one he was looking for, and he attacked instantly.

I swore under my breath as they started to move off again, leaving behind the Rain ninja as they continued to search for me. Morons. They'd find me a whole lot faster if they stood still and let me catch up to them!

I brushed rather violently against a tree that I hadn't known was there and stumbled with a curse, swiping at my stinging arm. Stupid bark, stupid bush, stupid thorns, stupid forest, stupid teme… I couldn't go any slower – not if I ever wanted to catch up – but sheez, what I wouldn't give for a map right now…

Then a pulse of killer intent and venomous chakra flushed through the forest, and I nearly choked in horror at the sensations rushing through me, stumbling slightly before running on. My sensitivity to killer intent was dulled naturally thanks to the furball constantly projecting it from the back of my head, but this… this was fresh, pure, unsealed, unmuffled murder.

Someone was going to die.

I just hoped to Kami it wasn't Sasuke or Sakura.

My clones were attempting to follow the noises and were systematically dispelling themselves crashing into trees, shrubs and large tigers. With a growl of "Idiots" I took off in what I thought was the vague direction of my teammates (though I was probably just randomly making the feeling of it's this way up, as I knew I was completely lost) and promptly smashed into a tree myself. I followed them on ground level with a curse, rubbing my sore cheek – no way could I do tree-jumping in an unmapped area. I'd kill myself in four seconds flat. I just wished they'd slow down – I was already bruised up from all the trees I couldn't see (and it was a miracle I'd missed as many as I had).

I had to catch up to them.

And suddenly, I could hear them talking again, hear Sasuke's harsh warning, hear Sakura's panting, hear the softer breathing of the nin who was facing them, sense his shadowed, suppressed, dangerous chakra.

Hear his sneering, 'friendly' voice with the evil so badly hidden.

I sprinted up the nearest tree, gripping with both hands and feet and then springing from all fours, from an animalistic stance at the snake-essence, teeth bared and a feral scream of rage ripping out of my throat.

How dare he hurt my teammates?

I smelt the blood, smelt the fear, smelt the rage and terror and pain as I lashed out at the snake, barely missing and accidentally knocking a scroll from his fingers that had the faint sign of one of those scrolls Anko had been handing out. There were twin flickers of relief from my teammates' chakra, and one of annoyance from the snake's. "It seems you survived," he hissed, and I pinned the irritation in his voice with a smirk.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but you'll find it extremely hard to kill me," I snarled, springing towards my teammates and hoping I wasn't about to miss the branch and hit the floor. To my relief there was solid wood under my feet, and I stood back up on two legs as I held out the scroll I'd snatched and said, "Hey, is this important?"

"Naruto…" Sasuke began calmly, "I love you. That's the Earth scroll we need!"

"Really?" I turned my head to 'look' at the scroll I was holding. "Wow, I'm good."

Killer intent flared from the snake, making all three of us wince, and I said sweetly, "Aw, does the snakey not like being ignored? Well, too bad, bub!" I tucked the scroll into an inside pocket of my jacket, to make it harder to steal back.

"Oooh, that sounded weird," Sakura snorted shakily.

"'Specially coming from him," Sasuke agreed with a 'che' that translated to laughter.

Then we all dodged as a volley of shuriken came our way.

I felt Sasuke's chakra fluctuate as he formed a Goukakyuu, and followed up his movements with a hail of kunai, tagging three of them with my own brand of explosives. Apparently Sasuke noticed the strips of paper, as he immediately dodged back, ready to dive for cover. Hmm… may need to work on the camouflage of those tags…

BOOM!

There was a massive explosion, and I could hear the tree creaking ominously as the snake's chakra hurriedly split itself into several copies – I'd never sensed the jutsu before, but it had the taste of a Doton, so… dirt clones, if I had to guess?

In the rush of adrenaline and terror it was impossible to track him, and I was already in trouble, I knew – I had no idea where I was, where the branches were. All I could do was track Sasuke's movements as he sprang from branch to branch and attacked the clones sporadically, adding in an explosive tagged kunai whenever I could pin down a clone with my hearing. Sakura was throwing shuriken, I think, and trying to weave a genjutsu, but even I could have told her that it was a wasted effort – this guy was way out of our league. We needed to get out of here and fast.

"Sasuke!" I bellowed, wrapping a tag around another kunai – this one a test tag. He ran for it straight away, landing near Sakura, and as the blade shot towards the Grass-nin I took out a pair of mud clones that had been sneaking up on my teammates.

BOOOOM!

"Okay, that was soooo not the intended effect, but I need to remember that formula," I decided, ears still ringing.

The angry hissing from my left was not unexpected, and I merely bared my teeth in response to the wordless threat, reaching for another tag. Sasuke and Sakura suddenly let out choked cries of horror and I sprang back instantly, backing against the tree trunk before looking at them and calling anxiously, "What's wrong? Sasuke, what's happening?" No answer but a strangled sob which only scared me more. "Sasuke?"

"So Shikumi doesn't affect you, eh?" the man said silkily. "You don't even bat an eyelid at killer intent that would knock out a tiger. You're stronger than you look."

"I'll take that as a compliment, you snake," I growled. "Sasuke, snap out of it! Teme! Wake up! What the hell is wrong with you?"

The enemy ninja let out a disturbing peal of laughter, and then Sasuke's chakra flared as he grabbed Sakura and sprang to another branch, stifling a cry of pain. "Sasuke?"

"I'm fine, dobe, it's just a scratch!" His sharp, gasping reply was music to my ears and I relaxed, relieved. Then I let the anger build up inside, needing the furious power for the growing confrontation. This guy was so dead.

Sasuke had strung wires across the trees – I could hear the wind itself being cut and slashed by the razor-edges of the metal threads. I grinned viciously. I could feel the heavy, choking, burning chakra of the Kyuubi surfacing, felt it start to sear my coils, burn my skin, and I waited no longer, letting go of my anger and lashing out.

Instantly the Grass-nin bolted out of reach, brushing one of Sasuke's tripwires and having close to a thousand volts shot through him in a burst of raw chakra. I grinned again. The shock tags had been worth the long hours and repeatedly exploded living room.

He landed, breathing heavily, and I heard Sasuke's quick breathing a few metres above and to my right. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, but I could still hear clearly enough for the snake's words to reach my mind: "Well, this is a problem that needs to be fixed."

And suddenly there was an insane amount of pressure on my stomach and I recoiled sharply with a rising cry as fire was dragged through my chakra coils in a spiralling explosion of pain. I fell to my knees, digging one hand into the branch and driving splinters into my fingers as I crouched, doubled over with pain, but the slivers of wood meant nothing in the face of the agony shredding its way through my veins. I clamped down on my scream, forcing it all inwards, pulling my mind under control in time to hear Sasuke shout, "Naruto!"

Trembling, I pulled my feet back underneath me and stood up unsteadily. "I'm okay!" A lie if there ever was one. But the pain was starting to fade, and through the roaring in my ears that was slowly dying down I could hear Sasuke frantically fighting the snake-guy, trying to drive him back with his Katon jutsu and swiftly losing ground himself.

"Oi, teme!" I bellowed, and hurled a thick chunk of bark at our opponent. Stupid, yes. But Sasuke saw the streaks of blue ink against the white tag wrapped around it and covered his eyes instantly as he leaped backwards, letting me follow it up with a red-inked tag as the Grass-nin snatched the bark chip out of the air easily. I grinned as I felt the first fuse give way.

I actually felt the light blasting my skin, making it tingle slightly with the force of it, and felt extremely pleased with how those amplifying seals had worked out. I wasn't sure how they'd do with the flash tags, so I'd made my team's without them, in case they had the random side effect of making the whole thing explode in your hands. I can deal with that – chakra shields while I'm working, and Kyuubi's oh-so-pleasant influence – but in the battlefield, that wasn't so okay.

The snake's howl of pain made the hazard well worth it.

"Sasuke! Back off!" I hollered, and half a second later, the green-inked, high-powered explosive tag went off, and this time, the tree definitely collapsed. The green-ink tags aren't perfect yet, but man, they pack one hell of a punch.

I leaped over to my team, staggering more than I'd have liked on impact, and gasped out, "What the hell happened? I told you guys to steer clear of this team, this guy in particular!" I put a hand to my stomach with a wince; there was angry red-hot chakra roiling from where it had been suppressed, and it hurt like anything, my muscles still shaking slightly from the shock of having it dragged away. And it was fading fast, blackening in my awareness, but I didn't have the time or concentration to deal with it, my teammates, and the snake at the same time. Team and enemy took priority.

"Naruto, how many fingers am I holding up?" Sasuke panted, sounding worn out.

I stiffened. What the hell? "I'm not that much of an idiot, Sasuke! This is so not the time! And you call me a moron?"

He breathed a sigh of relief and said, I guessed to Sakura, "It's the real one this time." Then, to me again, "What the hell happened to you? You're covered in blood! Are you hurt? How'd you find us again?"

I sensed the snake's chakra flickering back to life alarmingly and reacted instantly, shoving both my teammates away as he pounced, a long blade singing through the air. Crap. He had a sword. Various swearwords. Various bad swearwords.

I threw a handful of shuriken at him, making him bounce back to stick to a nearby tree trunk, painfully aware of my fast-dwindling supply. I had a lot more in a summoning scroll – in my backpack, somewhat inaccessible in the middle of a life-or-death fight. Sasuke had set off one of his wires with a Karyuudan in an attempt to burn him, even slightly, and Sakura was pitching in with a genjutsu that, while not fully affecting him, would probably pull him a little off-balance.

Then I sucked in a breath as his chakra suddenly appeared in front of me, and I heard the blade swinging – I leaned back, twisting away from the razor-sharp edge I could hear cutting the air – it barely skimmed my shoulder, I couldn't lean back far enough –

A line of burning pain slashed across my sightless eyes and I barely had time to register the blood running down my face before I was kicked violently backwards, landing hard against a tree. All the breath was forced out of my lungs and I could hardly sense myself slumping on the branch, hardly hear Sakura and Sasuke both screaming my name, all of my attention focused on the explosion of pain centred just behind my forehead, lightning blasts of pain building up against my grip on consciousness, and I was barely holding on when I heard –

When Sasuke screamed.

It wasn't a yelp of pain or shock, or a shout of fear. It was a scream of utter agony.

I forced my mind to focus in on his chakra, which was flickering fiercely, the snake's backing away from him. There was something – a flux, a violent change – on his neck, the corner of his left collarbone/shoulder. My friend had half-collapsed, kneeling on the branch, still screaming, still screaming as loudly as he could, but I could hardly hear it because someone else was screaming – was Sakura hurt, had the snake gotten her, too –

No, I was screaming.

As soon as I registered it I choked it back, clamping down on the sound, and suddenly everything around me was that much clearer. I could hear the snake-freak's steady hissing again, hear Sakura's frantic attempts to calm Sasuke down, hear my best friend's screams with an all-new clarity.

I snarled furiously and leapt forwards, my mind focusing on just one thought: making the snake hurt, hurt him as much as he'd hurt Sasuke, making him scream like Sasuke was screaming. He wasn't expecting me to recover so fast and so failed to react in time to fend me off properly, receiving several heavy blows before he threw me away. I very nearly missed the branch, dragging myself onto it with muscles that were shaking with badly suppressed rage, and got ready to spring again, ready to attack.

I was pulled up short by Sakura's cry and instantly reeled back, jumping back to my team and abandoning the snake in an instant. I staggered on landing and actually went down on my knees, feeling excruciatingly dizzy. Blood loss, I thought dazedly – it was hard to focus on the fact that if the snake-nin came back we'd be very dead, and I didn't even remember him leaving, and Sasuke was still screaming and my head hurt like fire –

Sasuke's screams suddenly cut out and his chakra dropped, making me flinch, but I soon recognised that he had passed out, presumably from the pain. Which left me in charge. Greeeeaat.

"Sakura, can you carry Sasuke?" I gasped out, getting one foot underneath me and trying to stand. At her affirmative noise, "Can you carry him and support me? I'm too dizzy to jump straight. You need to take us to a spot to recover. We can't stay here – we made a whole lot of noise, and there's blood everywhere, there'll be teams all over us in minutes."

"I – I'll try," she stammered, sounding terrified. And she didn't try to say anything else.

Okay, so this chapter ended up getting split in two because it was so dang long… twelve thousand words, at one point, before it was even finished.

And yet again: sheer. Dumb. Luck. Naruto has no end to his stores, it seems.

I'm going to get a lot of 'what the hell's for this, I know, and if it's worth anything, guys, I'm sorry for depriving you of the amusement of the eventual discovery. However, my muse pulled some strings I wasn't aware I had, and then ganged up with my twin's muse and things kind of went downhill from there…

Soo, apologies. Hope you guys don't kill me for this… (winces)

In other news, Who I Am is currently on five hundred and seventy eight alerts lists. If this chapter gets five hundred and seventy eight reviews, even shrieks of rage or incoherent wailing, I will update tomorrow.