Sakana was distracted from her musings by the Hokage, who'd begun to speak. She decided to tune in rather than ignore him because he was beginning to talk about the next part of the exam. Suddenly a man appeared in front of him wearing what seemed to be Konoha's normal ninja garb.

"Lord Hokage, please allow me to explain the prelims," he wheezed, coughing heavily as he finished speaking. Sakana immediately began to wonder what was wrong with him. Was he sick? And if so, why was he here instead of at home in bed?

The man introduced himself as Gekko Hayate and quickly explained that, due to the large amount of Genin who'd made it past the Forest of Death, they now had to go through a series of one-on-one battles in order to narrow things down. A large screen suddenly illuminated next to the large hands statue and began scrolling through two sets of names. Sakana saw hers flicker by, but when the scrolling finally came to a stop, it read:

Uchiha Sasuke
vs.
Akado Yoroi

Sakana's eyes flashed to the young man walking towards Hayate, clearly confident that he would make it through the battle, although he didn't look like he could. The one she assumed was Yoroi also came forward.

Hayate ordered the rest of the Genin to head up to the balconies on either side of the chamber to make room for the battle. Sakana followed her teammates up to a balcony on the left, and then leaned excitedly on the rail, anxious to see Sasuke fight. However, she couldn't help but be a little bit worried...

"The first match - Uchiha Sasuke and Akado Yoroi. Begin!" Hayate said before nimbly jumping out of the way.

As Sakana watched intently it didn't take her long to realize what Yoroi's power was; he could drain chakra. Fortunately, if her hypothesis from earlier was correct, Sasuke didn't have much chakra left for his opponent to steal.

"Come on, Sasuke," she whispered quietly to herself, surprised that she could be so worried about someone she barely knew.

At that moment, however, Sasuke delivered a powerful kick to Yoroi launching him high into the air, and then immediately reappeared underneath of him. Suddenly a bolt of pain shot through Sakana's body, radiating from the mark on her neck. At the exact same moment, she saw Sasuke wince as red markings began to spread across his skin. Sakana did everything she could to conceal her pain so she wouldn't worry her teammates; fortunately it subsided Sasuke's markings began to vanish. He continued to fight, beating Yoroi left and right with a powerful assortment of kicks and punches.

"Lion's Barrage!" Sasuke shouted, delivering a final kick to Yoroi's chest, slamming him into the ground and finishing the match.

"The winner is Uchiha Sasuke," Hayate called out, after confirming Yoroi's unconsciousness. As medics came and removed him from the field, a silver-haired man appeared beside Sasuke, probably his sensei, and led him away, brushing off the medics' offers of help.

Sakana had no explanation for what was happening to her. Not only did she and Sasuke have the same odd-shaped scar on their necks, but they both reacted to it at the same time! While the next match played out below, Sakana ran through all of the possible explanations for their odd similarities. The theory she kept coming back to was that they were related; it would explain why they looked so much alike…but not the strange markings. As she kept trying to puzzle things out, her theories simply got more and more absurd; she was only dragged out of her contemplation when Temari's name was called.

"Wish me luck, Sakana-chan!" Temari said, holding up a fist. Sakana bumped it, smiling happily as Temari jumped down from the balcony and onto the field. Her opponent was a kunoichi from Konoha named Tenten, who predominantly relied on an assortment of weapons for her attacks. Unfortunately for her, they were all useless against Temari's fan. Not surprisingly, her friend finished the fight in record time.

Sakana watched the next few matches with little interest. The battle immediately after Temari's ended in a tie when both kunoichi, a Konoha girl named Ino and a Sound girl named Kin, fell unconscious and were disqualified. The match after that didn't even take place because one of the two shinobi, an older Genin named Kabuto, forfeited. Sakana recognized him as the one she'd seen with Sasuke's team as they exited the Forest of Death. His forfeiture made a very bored-looking young man named Shikamaru the automatic winner.

She giggled when she heard him mutter in a tired voice, "Man, what a drag, and I walked all the way down here, too."

Sakana watched the next match intently because Naruto was fighting. It was against another Genin from Konoha named Kiba, but Naruto barely won...and it was only because he farted right in the other boy's face! That gave him the opportunity to use a technique he called the "Uzumaki Barrage", which was obviously copied from Sasuke's move from earlier. Sakana clapped for him nonetheless.

The match after Naruto's was a tragic one - a battle between two relatives; Neji and Hinata. Neji was obviously stronger, but Hinata never gave up. In the end, the match had to be stopped by several of Konoha's Jonin because Neji tried to kill Hinata! It took both Temari and Baki holding her back to stop Sakana from going down to help; eventually she would have broken free if the announcement for the next battle hadn't stopped her in her tracks.

Haruno Sakura
vs.
Mizuko Sakana