Where is she? Naruto wondered, glancing around fruitlessly. The thick, choking fog his opponent had summoned obscured his vision in every direction, to the point where he could barely make out the outline of his own body through it. Worse, the fog seemed to distort any sounds, leaving him disoriented and unsure even of where he himself was, let alone of his opponent's location. He mentally cursed Kakashi for having taught them the Killing Mist technique; for someone who professed not to want to use ninjutsu, Hinata certainly had taken to it readily enough.

He had to get rid of the fog somehow if he wanted to win—that was obvious enough—but the trouble with that idea was that he had no idea how to do so. A wind technique was the obvious answer, but the ones he knew required some sort of focusing device like a fan or rod to help mold the chakra, and he had nothing like that with him at the moment. While he would be sure never to be so unprepared in the future, that didn't help him now.

As Naruto considered his options, he felt the barest flicker of a chakra signature approaching, and he turned to face the direction from which it was coming. Thankfully, Kakashi had yet to teach them the genjutsu he used to hide his chakra, or the situation would have been even more dire than it was already. As it was, though, he needed to think of something quickly. Chakra sensing was enough to tell him that Hinata was nearby, and even approximately where she was, but it wasn't precise enough for anything more than that.

But what about a technique that doesn't need precision? he thought. Most wide-area techniques were either wind- or fire-based, and he hadn't learned many of the latter—with one notable exception. Sasuke would probably try to kill him for it, but really, it was the Uchiha's own fault for having used it so often in their sparring matches that Naruto had had a chance to learn it just by watching him.

Drawing in a deep breath, Naruto formed a series of hand seals. Then, placing his hands in front of his mouth, he rapidly exhaled as he called out, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!" As he did so, he forced a tiny amount of chakra into his breath—tiny, because this was only a sparring match; he had no desire to actually hurt his best friend—and had to fight to keep from grinning at the massive plume of fire that resulted. The fog thinned for a moment in the wake of the flames, allowing him to make out the barest hint of Hinata's petite figure before closing in again, but now he could hear the distict sound of someone coughing.

"I forfeit!" Hinata called out, her voice through the mist sounding wavery and far away. Another spate of coughing ensued, this one long enough to cause Naruto to begin to worry, but eventually it ceased. A few moments later, the fog began to disperse, and he realized she must have released her technique. As it thinned, he ran over to where he had seen her; she was leaning over, her hands on her knees, and breathing deeply.

"Are you okay?" Naruto asked, wondering if he had somehow made a mistake in his technique. He didn't think so—he had practiced it before, in private—but it was always possible.

"I'm fine," she finally managed to say as she straightened up. "A little short of breath, but fine. I didn't know you knew how to do that." Her pale skin was flushed with the barest tinge of red, likely from the heat of his technique, and he caught a faint smell of singed hair—not the most pleasant odor—as she shook her head.

Naruto grinned at her. "Well, you know, I have to have some surprises," he said cheerfully. "Can't let you win all the time, after all."

"More like any of the time," Hinata grumbled under her breath, but she smiled back at him regardless. It was an old argument, and not one either of them ever expected—or, at least for Naruto, wanted—to win. He was the better ninja overall, and they both knew it, but she was entirely capable of demonstrating that 'better' was far from the same thing as 'perfect'.

Naruto felt Kakashi and Sakura approaching, and he looked around to see that the fog Hinata had created was almost gone. Only a few scattered traces of grey obscured their surroundings, the rest of it having evaporated as quickly as it formed.

"Decent match, both of you," Kakashi said as he walked up to the two genin. "Your ninjutsu is showing improvement, Hinata, but you need to work on your tactical flexibility and long-range combat skills. Naruto, your counter technique was well chosen, but you're still reacting more slowly than you should be. Before you practice any more, though, sit down so we can go over last night's exercise."

Wincing at the thought of what Kakashi would say about their performance the previous night, Naruto settled down onto the grass, followed by Hinata and Sakura. They traded nervous glances among each other, then looked up at their jounin-sensei. As always, it was difficult to make out his expression, but at least he didn't seem obviously upset with them.

"First, the obvious part," Kakashi began. "You lost. Technically, Team Eight was the winner of the exercise, since they were the only team to fulfill all of their objectives. It was none of their own doing, but that only proves the saying about the limited use of planning in combat situations."

Naruto nodded reluctantly, annoyed in spite of himself at what Kakashi was saying; it figured that Sasuke's team had ended up with the 'win by default' victory condition. Then he remembered the absolutely furious look on the other boy's face when he had fallen so neatly into their trap, which cheered him up immensely, and he shrugged. Who won a training exercise didn't really matter in the long run, after all, at least not compared to the much more serious event awaiting them.

"Now," Kakashi continued, "your actual performance was…not terrible, with one exception." He paused for a moment and looked at each of them, his gaze lingering finally on Hinata. "Can you tell me what your mistake was?"

Naruto was surprised for a moment when Sakura answered, not Hinata. "We split up," she said quietly, her eyes downcast, but it was impossible to mistake the confidence in her voice. "We got careless because of Hinata-chan's byakugan, so we let her go by herself. They wouldn't have been able to ambush her if we had been together."

"Correct," Kakashi said, nodding to her. "Teams are made up of more than one person for a reason, and that reason is because when you're in a threat situation, you should never go anywhere without backup. Single targets are easy targets; don't forget that again.

"Now, on the positive side, your defensive plan was solid. You seem to have picked up on the basics of fortifying a fixed position, and you dealt with Team Eight in an efficient manner, though they were under-strength. Your traps were fairly well-constructed too, given the time and materials you had available. Sakura, the Hokage asked me to tell you that he wishes to see you tomorrow to discuss the explosives you created."

Grinning to himself at the last part, Naruto looked over to see Sakura staring wide-eyed at their jounin-sensei. "He…but…you told him about that?" she stammered out, sounding as far from her previous self as possible. "But it wasn't anything special…I don't understand, Kakashi-sensei."

To Naruto's—and, as he glanced over at her, Hinata's—open amusement, Kakashi simply shrugged, which only served to discomfit Sakura even further. "The Hokage asked to be kept aware of all three rookie teams' progress," he said. "Nearly incinerating one of the teams counts as progress of a sort, I suppose."

"When will the next group session be, Kakashi-sensei?" Hinata asked, presumably in an attempt to save Sakura from blushing to death. Still, Naruto could hear the barely-suppressed laughter in her voice, and he suspected it would be a long time before either of them let Sakura forget what Kakashi had said.

"Tomorrow evening," Kakashi said. "I won't tell you exactly what you'll be doing, but it will be very different from last night."

Oh, that's so much help, Kakashi-sensei, Naruto thought, sighing to himself. While Kakashi had made astonishing improvements in his teaching style during the course of the past few months, he could still be the most annoying person Naruto had ever known—and, given some of the genin in his year, that was a remarkable achievement. He knew from asking his mother that candidates were informed of the chuunin exams' second task the day before it began, so he wasn't sure why Kakashi was being so secretive about their exercises. He wouldn't be surprised, though, if it was just the jounin's warped idea of humor.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura asked, apparently having recovered from her near-terminal embarrassment, "could you teach us the hand signals that Team Eight was using yesterday? I noticed how easy it was for them to coordinate with each other, at least for basic things."

Naruto was somewhat surprised to hear her say that, given how easy it had been to finish off Sasuke and Kiba, but he and Hinata usually let Sakura come up with their strategies for a reason. He himself might be able to think on his feet in a fight better than she could, but when it came to planning ahead, the only person he knew who could rival her—among the genin, at least—was Shikamaru. If she wanted them to learn hand signals, she probably had a good reason for it.

"I was wondering if you would pick up on that," Kakashi said. "It's not a bad idea, and we'll work on that later…after your sparring session. Or did you think I hadn't noticed how easily you were captured last night?"

Listening to Sakura groan in dismay, Naruto snickered, prompting a murderous glare from his green-eyed teammate. He would pay for that later in some way, he knew, but she really did need to work on her close combat skills. All the cleverness and trickery in the world wouldn't help her if someone managed to ambush her, and he had no desire to watch something like the events of the previous night's exercise take place for real.

- - -

"Sa—Hokage-sama?" Sakura asked, after making sure the door was securely closed behind her. The Hokage was seated at his desk, but rather than poring over countless documents as he had been doing every time she saw him recently, he was leaning back in his chair and smoking his pipe.

I guess even the Hokage needs a break every now and then, she thought, giggling softly to herself as she walked up to his desk. Then she winced as she saw that, on top of all the other papers piled on the desk's surface, several of the linked explosive seal-sheets she had made the day before yesterday were sitting out. The dirt staining them only worsened the impression given off by their haphazard construction, and she couldn't help but wonder why she had been so excited about making them in the first place. They were crude, the work of an amateur, and she was certain her teacher was going to criticize her for being silly enough to think she could—

"I am quite impressed," the Hokage said, blowing out a cloud of smoke without opening his eyes. "You have progressed much more quickly in your studies than I could have anticipated—something I seem to be saying quite a lot, recently."

Sakura felt her thoughts come to a jangling halt, and her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. That was about as far from what she had expected to hear him say as it was possible to get. "I don't understand," she murmured, looking down at the floor. "These—" she gestured at the soiled sheets of paper— "aren't anything special, and even if they were, I didn't really do anything except adapt an idea from the Fourth's scroll."

The Hokage frowned around his pipe stem, and he shook his head. "Ignoring the fact that you seem to have found a less expensive way to create a very useful weapon—even though it may be somewhat less efficient than the original—creating anything new at all is still quite noteworthy."

"But I didn't!" Sakura protested, wishing she could make him understand. She hadn't created anything at all, really, and he had just admitted that the sealing configuration she had adapted wasn't as good as what she had been trying to emulate.

"Sakura-chan, modesty is an admirable virtue," the Hokage said as he finally opened his eyes, only to fix her with a piercing stare. "Hiding the true extent of your talent from potential enemies is an even more admirable survival skill. Refusing to recognize that talent at all, however, is simply foolish. You seem to be forgetting that I have read that scroll as well, if not in as much detail as you, and I know that the Fourth never once mentions resonance between identical seals as a useful effect in his notes."

Sakura was close to tears by the time he finished speaking, more from sheer frustration than because of his reprimand. Just because the idea had not been explicitly spelled out in the Fourth's notes didn't mean that it was her own rather than his; all it meant was that she had used his idea in a way he hadn't thought of right at that moment. It certainly wasn't anything like what the Hokage was implying, but she had spent enough time with him to know that it would be useless to try to argue her point any further.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," she said dully, hoping that was all he wanted from her. She was sore from the morning's practice—more taijutsu and ninjutsu training—and she desperately wanted to go back to her apartment and take a hot bath before the joint exercise with the other teams that evening.

"Better," the Hokage said, in a tone that let her know she hadn't fooled him. "I know you are busy preparing for the chuunin examinations, but I would like you to spend some time going over your design. If you could reduce the amount of chakra wastage, I can think of several people who would be very interested in it."

Sakura sighed as she pictured her hot bath slipping further and further out of reach. "Now?" she asked, not bothering to conceal her disappointment.

Much to her relief, the Hokage shook his head. "Not now," he replied. "I know you have another training exercise scheduled for later today, and I am sure you will need time to prepare for it. Come back tomorrow, and we can discuss it further."

It was clearly a dismissal, and she nodded. "Yes, Hokage-sama," she said, then bowed and left his office. The chuunin guards at the door—new since the last time she had come in—gave her curious looks as she passed them, but, to her relief, said nothing to her. After coming closer than she could ever remember to outright arguing with the man who was her mentor, leader, and guardian all in one person, she was in no mood to face the villagers' typical disdain.

Sighing to herself as she exited the Hokage's tower, Sakura looked up at the cloudy sky and shook her head. A cool wind blew pleasantly against her skin, and she took a moment to enjoy the feel of it brushing through her hair, which she had left unbound for once. As she let her feet carry her automatically towards her apartment, she closed her eyes and tried to relax—right up to the point where she ran into something and fell backwards onto the sidewalk.

Ouch, she thought as she stood up, rubbing the bruise she could feel forming on her hip. I guess that's what I deserve for not watching where I was going, but I didn't think—

"Oh!" she exclaimed aloud, noticing what—or, more precisely, who—she had run into. "I'm really sorry! Are you okay?"

The other person, a tall girl with wavy blonde hair pulled back into an odd four-ponytailed style, simply stared at her. She was wearing an outfit much like the ones Sakura had seen on some of the older kunoichi, and she carried herself with a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

"Is this the way you treat all the visitors to your village?" the girl finally asked after several long moments of silence, causing Sakura to start in surprise and take a closer look at her.

Oh, no! Sakura moaned to herself, noticing the Sand insignia on the girl's forehead protector. She could feel her face flush in embarrassment, and she quickly ducked her head, hoping the other girl hadn't noticed.

"You're here for the chuunin exams, aren't you?" she asked, not really expecting a reply to the obvious question. Fire and Wind Countries were allied, but as a rule, ninja from either country didn't enter the other—at least, not officially—except on special occasions. To make matters worse, since it was such a long trip from Wind Country, the Sand surely would only have sent their best genin to compete, and Sakura hoped she hadn't annoyed the foreign ninja too badly.

Much to her relief, the blonde girl nodded, pulling out a travel pass with her picture and name. "That's right," she said. "My brothers and I arrived today. You know, you're lucky you ran into me and not one of them."

Brothers? Sakura wondered, curious in spite of herself. The Sand apparently formed their genin teams much differently than the Leaf, if this Temari and her brothers were all on the same team despite their age differences. Of course, they could be triplets, she supposed, but that seemed rather unlikely.

"Um…do you want me to show you around?" she asked, hoping the offer wouldn't be taken as an insinuation that she didn't trust the Sand genin to wander around the village unsupervised. It was the first time she had ever met a ninja from another country—the Sound ninja who had attacked her team didn't count, she thought—and she wasn't entirely sure of the proprieties involved. Having the chance to talk with someone who hadn't learned to hate her at first sight was a tempting prospect, though, and she found herself hoping that Temari would agree.

As the older girl appeared to be considering her offer, Sakura heard footsteps from behind her and turned around to see a redheaded boy about her own age walking up to them. He was carrying something large on his back—a pack of some kind, she thought at first, then realized it was a large jar as he drew closer—and he had prominent dark circles under his eyes, as though he hadn't slept in days. She felt a sense of empathy towards him at that sight, thanks to her own brushes with sleeplessness as a result of the nightmares that had haunted her in the wake of calling on the Nine-Tails' power, and she found herself wondering at the cause of his insomnia.

"Gaara!" Temari gasped from behind her, the confidence in her voice all but vanishing. "I was coming to look for you and Kankuro, but this girl ran into me."

The boy—one of the brothers Temari had mentioned earlier, Sakura assumed, though she wondered why the other girl sounded almost afraid of him—walked up to stand next to them. Sakura shivered as he passed her, something about him making her feel extremely ill at ease, then had to keep herself from staring too obviously when she saw the red symbol tattooed on his forehead.

'Love,' she thought curiously. That's not a character used in seals. It puzzled her, though, why someone—especially a ninja—would mark himself so obviously if not out of necessity. Some ninja did get decorative tattoos, she knew, but they were almost always done in locations that could be easily covered up.

"We're going, Temari," the boy said abruptly, interrupting Sakura's train of thought. He hadn't even bothered acknowledging her presence, which annoyed her for a moment before he turned to face her, at which point she wished he hadn't. He seemed perfectly normal at first glance, except for the bags under his eyes and the unusual color of his hair—not that she had any room to talk about the latter—but something about his eyes disturbed her. Unconsciously, she found herself avoiding them, and she no longer wondered why Temari appeared unsettled by her brother's presence.

The blonde girl nodded quickly. "Kankuro hasn't gotten into trouble, has he?" she asked, sounding almost worried. "He can get a bit—"

"You should have stayed with him," Gaara interjected. His voice, like his eyes, was flat and hard, and Sakura winced at the sound. "If I have to kill him, we won't be able to compete."

Kill him? Sakura wondered, her eyes growing huge in astonishment at how casually he said it.

"Isn't this Kankuro your brother?" she asked. "How can you even talk about killing him like that?" Almost immediately, she clapped her hands over her mouth, aghast to realize she had spoken aloud. Her cheeks flamed red, and she flinched as the uneasy feeling emanating from the boy slid sharply into outright threat. The look of mingled shock and anticipatory horror on Temari's face only added to her sudden and very real fear.

All Gaara did, though, was stare at her for a long moment before turning and beginning to walk away. "We're going, Temari," he repeated, the deadness in his voice somehow more frightening than any anger could have been. "Now"

Without even a backward glance, the blonde girl hurried after him. Sakura didn't blame her; she couldn't even imagine what living with him must be like, but she was certain that making him angry would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. The only other person she had ever met who frightened her more was the Nine-Tails in its human dream-guise.

Shivering again as that comparison called up memories she wished she could forget, Sakura began walking towards her apartment. The breeze no longer felt refreshing, only chilling, and she wanted to get inside where she could feel warm and safe.

- - -

"That could have gone worse," Kurenai said, tipping back in her chair and examining the glass of sake she was holding.

How? Kakashi wondered. Glaring at his fellow jounin-sensei would not have been conducive to maintaining his image, but he found himself hard-pressed to resist. Her team had done much better in the second exercise than in the first, so he supposed she had somewhat of a right to be pleased, but he winced internally as he recalled his own team's performance.

Sakura had seemed nervous about something, and apparently it had spread to his other two genin and affected them dramatically. In what should have been a simple scenario—a three-way running battle through a section of forest, with the winning team being the first to reach a predetermined location or last to remain alive—Team Seven had made mistakes even an academy student could have exploited.

Hinata had been the first to fall, taken out by Team Eight in what even Kakashi had to admit was a clever display of combined genjutsu and ninjutsu. Her loss had unsettled her teammates—especially Sakura—even more, and in the ensuing skirmish, the pink-haired girl had been 'killed' almost without putting up a fight. Naruto, showing more sense than Kakashi had credited him with, had immediately retreated rather than face three-on-one odds. Unfortunately, he ran straight across Team Ten's path, with predictable results.

"Well, someone could have died, I guess," Asuma commented glumly, staring into his own glass. Kakashi took some comfort in the fact that the other man's team had been finished off almost as quickly as his own, even if they had managed to 'kill' Kiba and wound Sasuke before succumbing to the chakra-draining effects of Shino's swarm.

Kurenai shrugged. "This exercise was stacked in my team's favor," she admitted. "It's hard to beat a hunter team for something like that. Tomorrow's should be interesting, though."

Kakashi just hoped his genin got whatever was bothering them out of their systems before then. Tomorrow's exercise marked the first time the jounin would be actively participating, and if his team performed as poorly then as they had earlier this evening, the experience wouldn't even be valuable as a training tool. Even if everything went perfectly, the teams wouldn't be as well prepared for the exams as he had initially hoped, but they would be torn apart by any serious opponent in their current condition.

In a way, though, that was the entire point of the second part of the exams; unprepared teams shouldn't pass, and ordinarily Kakashi would have been largely indifferent to his genin's fates. If they made mistakes and lost, then they would have proven that they were unready to become chuunin. Orochimaru's plots changed all of that, though, turning a dangerous but regulated test into something much more akin to the trials by fire Kakashi's generation had faced during the war with the Rock.

At least he could be reasonably certain that Akatsuki would wait to make itself known until after the conclusion of the Snake Sannin's plans. The Hokage's agent—and while Kakashi still hadn't managed to learn that mysterious person's name, he had a fairly good idea of who it might be—had passed along information indicating that the organization's team assigned to the Leaf was under strict orders not to do anything that might draw Orochimaru's attention to themselves.

"I think we could have chosen a better scenario," Asuma said, interrupting Kakashi's train of thought. "The second test hasn't involved urban combat in years, and those kinds of tactics don't generalize all that well to other environments."

Kakashi shook his head, disagreeing. He could see the other jounin's point, but the point of tomorrow's exercise was primarily to see how well the genin would react under pressure, and an unfamiliar setting would only help in that regard. He was interested to see Kurenai shake her head as well; of the three of them, she had the least amount of combat experience, and he would have expected her to agree with Asuma.

"Most actual missions take place in towns of some sort, though," the red-eyed woman said. She took a sip of her drink, then continued, "There's no point in training them specifically to get through the exams if they get killed during their first mission afterwards."

It was not a point Kakashi would have made, but he supposed it was a valid one, to some extent. He found it interesting that she had come to the same conclusion he had for a completely different reason, though he also felt that she was overstating the situation, or perhaps underestimating the danger posed by Orochimaru. While their genin would not—could not, regardless of how much preparation they received—be expected to fight and win against him, they would have to survive until Leaf ANBU could intervene. That alone would be a task far more dangerous than any mission a genin or new chuunin might be assigned.

In any event, it was largely irrelevant. With only a few days remaining until the start of the exams, they had time for two—perhaps three—more exercises, all of which they had already selected. Any more would be useless; if their genin came to the exams too exhausted from constant training, it would be worse than no training at all. As it was, Kakashi's own team was coming close to that thin line, and he could only assume the same was true for the other two teams as well.

He had done what he could, and soon enough the rest would be up to his genin. He just hoped they would live up to the potential he could see in them.

- - -

"Late, late, late," Sakura chanted under her breath as she ran down the street leading to the academy grounds. "So late!" Ahead, she could barely make out the figures of her teammates waiting by the door into the main academy building where the first part of the chuunin exams would be held, and she sped up even more.

Naruto openly laughed at her as she came to a halt in front of him, but she couldn't manage to work up the energy to glare at him. "I thought we agreed that there were some lessons we didn't want to learn from Kakashi-sensei," he said, causing Hinata to giggle as well.

"I overslept," Sakura admitted sheepishly after she had caught her breath. "Then I got started thinking about this really interesting property of—never mind, I'll tell you later."

Naruto nodded sagely. "We promise we'll be just as confused then as we would be if you told us now, right, Hinata-chan?" he said. "Why did you oversleep, though? We had the day off from practice yesterday so we could rest."

"My teacher wanted me to work on that thing with the explosive seals," Sakura said, sighing a little as she thought of all the time she had spent over the past few days on what had started out as the product of a moment's whim. She had to admit, though, if only to herself, that the chakra resonance effect was beginning to interest her more and more as she studied it further. Much to her surprise, it seemed to be almost ignored in all of the scrolls she had read, and the ones that did mention it did so only as an annoying side effect to be circumvented.

Naruto turned to her as the three genin walked inside the building. "I've been wondering about that," he said. "Why do you always just call him your teacher? We know he's the Ho—ouch! What was that for, Hinata?"

"Don't be stupid, Naruto-kun," Hinata said pleasantly after removing her elbow from his ribs. "What do we know about Sakura-chan? Now, what do you think other people who also know that about her might say—or do—if they learned who had been giving her private lessons? As in, people like the clan leaders or the village elders."

"Oh. Sorry, Sakura-chan," Naruto muttered, rubbing his side. "I didn't think about that."

Sakura nodded. "Just…be careful, please," she said. "I'm not sure anyone would really care, but he did ask me to keep it a secret as much as possible."

"Trust me, people would care," Hinata said. She frowned and shook her head. "I've been attending some of the council meetings with Father recently, and I can't believe how petty and spiteful the discussions can get."

The three of them stepped out of the stairwell and into the third floor corridor—or, at least, that was what it appeared to be. Sakura was sure they had only gone up one flight of stairs, though, even if the sign for the room in front of them showed 301. Several other genin were gathered near the partially-open door, and two chuunin stood in front of it. As she watched, one genin tried to walk into the room but was immediately shoved away by the chuunin.

She took a few steps forward, then realized Naruto and Hinata hadn't followed. Glancing back at them, she saw they were both looking at the same person, a Leaf genin with long hair and the distinctive Hyuuga eyes. Hinata seemed almost worried, and Sakura watched in surprise as she even edged back a little into the stairwell. Naruto, on the other hand, was glaring at the other boy.

"Speaking of petty and spiteful," Sakura heard him say, just loudly enough to be heard over the noise the other genin were making, and she suddenly realized who the Hyuuga must be. Hinata had mentioned her cousin Neji a few times, and though Sakura had never seen him, the long-haired boy matched his description perfectly, right down to the delicate, almost feminine facial features that were set in a cold expression.

Gathering herself, Hinata stepped forward into the corridor and nodded to her cousin. "Neji-niisan," she said, and even though Sakura could see that the smile on her face was forced, she sounded genuinely happy to see him. "Are you here for the chuunin exams too?"

"Of course," Neji replied, not bothering to turn to face her. "I'm not sure why you're here, though, unless you're hoping your teammates will be able to get you through the first two parts. Even if they do, you'll still fail in the individual matches. You're weak, and you can't change that."

Sakura felt her mouth drop open as she watched him walk away, two other genin hurriedly extricating themselves from the crowd to follow after him. One of them, an odd-looking boy with short, bowl-cut hair who appeared to be wearing a stretchy green jumpsuit of all things, glanced back at her for a moment and smiled widely, but she was so shocked by the Hyuuga's rudeness that she barely even noticed.

"That…Hinata-chan, was that really your cousin?" she asked her friend, who was standing rigidly in the middle of the corridor. Hinata's eyes were wide, and for a moment, Sakura thought she looked like she was about to cry. With visible effort, though, she forced the miserable expression off of her face and turned back to where Naruto was still standing in the doorway. The blond boy had a murderous look in his eyes, but when he started forward as though to chase after Neji and his teammates, Hinata grabbed his arm.

"Don't," she said sadly. "It won't help anything if you fight him, and even if it would, we don't have time for me to fix your tenketsu afterwards. Let's just go; we've wasted enough time here already."

Naruto nodded, and Hinata let him go, though he still seemed furious. Sakura couldn't blame him, as her earlier disbelief was rapidly shading into anger of her own. Now she understood why her friend always changed the subject when the topic of her cousin came up.

As if she sensed the direction Sakura's thoughts were taking, Hinata turned to her and shook her head. "Not you too," she sighed. "Don't worry, I can handle whatever he says. He just…caught me off guard for a moment. I feel sorry for him, actually."

The tone of her voice said otherwise, but her eyes were pleading with Sakura to drop the matter, so she nodded reluctantly. "All right," she said. "We'd better get moving, then. This genjutsu is weak compared to the ones Kurenai-san was using on us in training, but we don't have that much time to get to the real exam room."

Breaking the genjutsu itself was a matter of a moment's concentration, but Sakura groaned as she saw they were halfway across the building from where they needed to be. As one, she and her teammates took off running down the corridor, and she mentally cursed the building's illogical layout. Like most public buildings in the village, it was designed from the perspective of being easily defensible in the case of an invasion, and very few concessions had been made to convenience.

Finally, much to Sakura's relief—she had done more than enough running for one day, she thought—they arrived at the real room 301. After opening the door and seeing the staggering number of people packed inside, though, she almost wished they hadn't; there had to be well over a hundred genin waiting to take the exam. Most of them bore Leaf insignias, but she could see a sizeable number of Sand genin as well, including Temari and Gaara, and scattered handfuls of people from other, smaller villages.

"Is that the creepy guy you told us about the other day?" Naruto whispered to her, pointing at Gaara. Fortunately, the red-haired boy didn't seem to be paying attention, but Sakura pushed his hand down anyways.

"Yes, so don't do stuff like that," she muttered, though with all of the noise in the room, she doubted he could have overheard them even if they were yelling. "His sister seemed okay, but he really scared me, and I don't want him to notice me and come over here."

Naruto looked at her dubiously, then shrugged. "He doesn't look like anything special to me," he said. "That guy next to him with the weird facepaint—now he looks like someone to watch out for. Kind of funny-looking too, though."

"I agree with Sakura-chan," Hinata said. "His chakra is…strange. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it just doesn't look quite right." Sakura glanced over at her to see she had surreptitiously activated her byakugan, concealing the telltale signs by holding her exam application close to her face and pretending to study it.

"Maybe he's just got some weird bloodline ability," Naruto offered, though even he sounded a bit doubtful of that explanation. "Anyways, it's not like he's doing anything right now. We'd better find seats before they all get taken."

Much to her annoyance, Sakura found herself sitting some distance away from her teammates, as well as anyone else she recognized. She had waved to Ino, who was sitting with Shikamaru and Kiba on the other side of the room, but her friend apparently hadn't noticed, and she felt distinctly alone even surrounded by people on all sides. Fortunately, the genin near her seemed content to sit and wait for the exam to start, though she swallowed nervously as she noticed several of them give her measuring stares that lasted just a bit too long to be considered friendly.

Of course, she realized, we're the youngest ones in the room. A lot of them have probably tried the exams before and failed, maybe even more than once. Put that way, it wasn't surprising that some of the other genin might see the presence of the rookie teams as arrogant or presumptuous.

Over by Naruto and Hinata, who were talking with an older Leaf genin Sakura didn't recognize, the members of one of the foreign teams seemed to have reached their limit. Sakura held her breath as they stood up, hoping they wouldn't be stupid enough to actually start a fight in the exam room, but that hope was dashed when she saw one of them take a swing at the unfamiliar Leaf genin. The blow missed, and she sighed thankfully when the attacker stepped back, then gasped as his opponent fell heavily to his knees.

No! Don't! Sakura thought frantically as Naruto and Hinata stood as well and moved to guard the kneeling Leaf genin. The examiners could show up at any moment, and she had no idea what they would do if they walked in on an all-out brawl. If her teammates were going to get into a fight, though, she had no choice but to support them.

As she began to get out of her seat, the entire front of the room was enveloped in a massive cloud of smoke. When it cleared, revealing an entire line of chuunin and a single jounin, she slumped back down and breathed a sigh of relief. The examiners had arrived.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," the jounin said, seemingly ignoring the scuffle that had been on the verge of breaking out before his entrance. His face was heavily scarred, and Sakura wondered what could have hurt him so badly while still leaving him combat-capable. Silence descended over the room as the assembled genin turned to face him.

"My name is Morino Ibiki," he continued, once everyone had resumed their seats. "I am the examiner for the first part of the chuunin selection examinations, and these are my assistants." He gestured to the ranked ninja behind him, all of whom were dressed uniformly in grey and appeared far more professional than any chuunin Sakura had ever seen before.

His eyes swept the crowd, and Sakura winced when she saw them land on her teammates and the group of foreign genin. "The exams have rules," he said. "The first rule is that there is no fighting unless specifically allowed—and even then, killing is completely forbidden. Do not think you can defy me; I will fail you immediately."

In spite of his disfigurement, his presence was commanding, and Sakura found herself listening raptly as he spoke. When he instructed everyone to come forward to turn in their applications and receive a copy of the first exam, she felt like jumping for joy; perhaps she was being overly egotistical, but she had never done poorly on a written test in her life, and she doubted this one would be any different.

Maybe this won't be so bad after all, she thought, feeling a sudden burst of confidence. She could worry about everything else later, but for now she would simply do her best.

- - -

Author's Notes: Well, one hard drive failure later, this chapter is finally complete. Again. Fortunately, I had backed everything up not too long before it died, but I still ended up losing several days' worth of work. Also, I've been having ISP issues, so I apologise for the lack of review responses for last chapter; I tried sending some, but more often than not they wouldn't go through, and eventually I just gave up. The problem seems to have been corrected within the past few days, though, and hopefully won't show up again (or I'll more than likely end up switching ISPs).

But, enough complaining about computer issues from me. Between Gaara, Neji--who really is an ass during the chuunin exam arc, I realized as I reread the relevant sections of the manga--and the start of the exams, hopefully this chapter didn't disappoint. As always, thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments!