AKT8

First, a review response

InARealPickle: Sarutobi wanted to let her attend the academy, but the civilian council was against it. Latent sexism was the final straw that got him to cave to the council. When confronted with a Naruko who had overcome the major obstacle of not being trained to the point of being much stronger than any academy student in ninjutsu (she was still not that great in taijutsu at that point and she never will be that great in genjutsu), who was point blank asking for training, with Jiraya telling him that he was going to ignore the council's wishes and train her if she asked [that last part was important], the third did what he wanted to do in the first place, allowed Naruko to be trained to be a shinobi.

Also, it's kinda cowardly to give people harsh and possibly overly harsh reviews, and then disable private messages so they can't respond.

Enter the Forest of Death

Naruko spent the entire trip to training ground 44 talking with Anko. Some of the genin were starting to get uncomfortable, as the two kunoichi were talking about the various lethalities of the forest of death.

"So how are the giant jumping slugs doing?"

"Oh, they migrated! They're half a mile north of their previous location."

"Oh, but wouldn't that mean that they've encroached on the giant Venus flytrap's territory?"

"Yeah, now the bloody plant is being EXTREMELY aggressive."

"Ooh, I bet it takes out three different teams."

"Hmmm, I say five. There are a lot of teams left."

"Good point. Five sounds about right, since it only needs to eat one team member to knock the team out of the running."

This conversation kept going, until Anko finally brought it to a close as they arrived.

"Welcome to training area 44, the stage of the second part of the chuunin exams." Anko said ominously to the gathered teams of chuunin hopefuls.

"It's also called the forest of death. Don't forget that name, Anko neesan!" Naruko called out.

"I wasn't going to forget that imouto! And as for the rest of you, there's a good reason it's called the forest of death, as you'll all soon find out."

"Err, could it have anything to do with the giant jumping leeches, the killer giant Venus flytrap, the giant poisonous spiders, and all the other giant creatures you were talking about?" one genin asked, as the entire group sweatdropped.

"Ehh? You were listening to that?" Anko said, taken aback.

The gathered genin just looked at her, and sweatdropped again.

Anko explained the rules for the second exam, and handed out the release forms, and after every squad had their scroll, the teams lined up in front of the various entrances to the forest.

At the appointed time, the examiners opened the gates, and the test began.

XXX

Team 7 entered the forest like all the other teams, but Naruko quickly called them to a halt.

"I know this forest like the back of my hand thanks to training here with Anko neesan. The first thing we need to do is to get our second scroll, so follow me. I know of a good spot where someone entering from the next gate would try to set up an ambush. Follow me.

XXX

A few minutes later the three leaf genin were standing in the trees above and behind a trio of rain genin. Each member of team 7 silently dropped behind the rain ninjas and quickly rendered them unconscious. It turned out that they did in fact have an earth scroll, to match the heaven scroll that team 7 was given. With both scrolls acquired so quickly, they swiftly jumped up into the high canopy to make their way to the tower.

As they jumped from branch to branch, Sasuke and Sakura following Naruko who was leading them around any of the dangerous areas, they did not notice a grass kunoichi hiding in one of the trees, until they got hit by a massive burst of wind in mid jump, as the grass nin announced, "Fuuton: Daitoppa [Wind release: great breakthrough]"

Naruko recovered quickly, throwing a three pronged kunai at a tree above a branch before flashing to the kunai she had given her teammates, catching them, then flashed to the kunai she had thrown.

The enemy nin, who was secretly the Snake of the Densetsu no Sannin, Orochimaru, was surprised at Naruko's ability to use Hiraishin. 'That one is not part of my plans, and could prove to be a potential threat with that technique. Her file says she has no potential for genjutsu, so I'll just take advantage of that weakness!' he thought.

Stepping out in front of the genin, the disguised Orochimaru confronted team 7.

"You want my earth scroll, don't you," he said, holding up an earth scroll, "since you have a heaven scroll." He then swallowed the scroll whole. After he finished, he said, "So let the fight begin!"

With that, he unleashed his KI on the three genin.

Sasuke and Sakura fell to their knees, visions of their own demise flashing before their eyes. Naruko was not fazed however. Her experience with the KI of the Kyuubi had done a good job preparing her to deal with this level of KI.

'Kyuubi, think you can make this KI feel like a drop in a bucket?'

'That much KI being channeled through you would be detrimental to your mortal mind at this point. I can safely double it though. Get ready kit.'

Glaring at the disguised sannin, Naruko felt a huge swell of bloodlust welling up from her stomach. As she had done before, she focused it and projected it at her opponent. Unlike before though, she only had one target, so Orochimaru got the full force of the demon's Killing Intent.

Startled that a child could produce so much and so vile KI, Orochimaru lost control of his own KI, allowing Naruko to create a couple of clones to snap her teammates out of it.

"It's going to take more than that to take me out! Besides, we don't need your scroll." Naruko taunted.

"Nevertheless, I have business with little Sasuke kun." With that, the disguised snake-teme attacked. Flashing through several handsigns, then stared into Naruko's eyes.

Naruko saw a swirl of leaves, then everything went black as she felt a massive blow land against her chest, sending her flying.

After dealing with Naruko, Orochimaru took the fight to Sasuke, Dashing at him with a kunai drawn.

Sasuke barely got his own kunai up in time to block, before he jumped back to gain some room to use his own jutsu. Activating his handseals, he drew in a breath, then brought his hand to his mouth and fired a dozen head sized fireballs at the 'grass nin', "Legendary phoenix flower jutsu!"

His opponent dodged the flames, then with more quick handsigns, announced, "Daitoppa!" [wind release: Great breakthrough]. Holding his hands out, another massive blast of air was launched at Sasuke.

The raven haired genin escaped the blast that felled several trees with a well timed kawarimi no jutsu [body replacement technique], and flung a handful of shuriken at his opponent.

Orochimaru smirked as the shuriken went wide, but his eyes narrowed as the wires that were tied to the shuriken wrapped around him and the tree behind him. Then Sasuke placed the ends of the wires in his mouth and performed dragon fire no jutsu, sending flames down the wires.

Emerging from the flames, Orochimaru tore the remains of the face he was wearing off, he said, "Well, I've had fun testing you, I sense power in your eyes that will eventually surpass Itachi."

Sasuke, finding that he could not move, asked, "Who are you?"

"I am Orochimaru. If you want to see me again, then survive this exam." He then formed a seal and his neck inexplicably extended, and he bit Sasuke at the juncture of his neck and his shoulder. "Don't forget to defeat my men, the sound nin trio on the way. You'll seek me out for the power I can give you."

With that, Orochimaru retracted his neck, and then Sasuke passed out from a sharp pain where he had been bitten.

XXX

Meanwhile, what happened to Naruko…

Naruko had been rendered unconscious and sent flying; therefore she didn't see that she was flying headlong toward a dark tear in reality with no way of stopping herself.

Muahahahaha! My first cliffhanger! Actually, I'm doing this for a reason. This cliffhanger is the splitting point where events take two divergent courses. My story will cover one course of events, and my friend Black Phoenix 7777 will be writing the alternate course of events. I've got to go now, but I'll try not to keep you waiting too long for the next chapter. If all goes well, I'll have the next chapter up this weekend.

Also, the chapter is short to facilitate the cliffhanger.

Till then, please review.