Naruto scowled as he stared at his exam paper. He had done adequately well in the theory-oriented classes at the academy, but these exam questions were on a completely different level; he would be astonished if any of his year-mates except Sakura could answer a single one, and even she would have trouble with them. The solution, obviously, was to copy the answers from someone else—he suspected some of the genin taking the exam were actually examiners in disguise, there to provide a source of correct information—but it was his misfortune to be severely lacking in cheating techniques.

Many of the other rookie genin had some innate advantage when it came to information gathering, but Naruto possessed nothing like that. Normally, he had no problem with that—he had proven that skill and quick thinking were equal to any secret techniques or bloodline abilities—but he had to admit that he wouldn't have minded having Hinata's byakugan or Ino's mind-switch techniques for this exam. He had already wasted nearly forty minutes trying to come up with a way to copy off of someone without risking detection by the extremely intimidating chuunin examiners, and still the only thing written on his paper was his name.

At least there's been plenty of entertainment, he sighed to himself. Some of the particularly transparent attempts at cheating had been very amusing, though he did feel sorry for the people who had failed due to their teammates' ineptitude. Perhaps the funniest moment of the exam had come when the boy sitting next to Sakura started shrieking as his paper burst into flames, leaving him with nothing but a large charred spot on his desk after a few seconds; blindly copying off of someone could be quite dangerous when the person in question happened to be a fuuinjutsu expert, Naruto thought—and regardless of what Sakura claimed, he had a feeling she deserved that title.

Unfortunately, none of that helped him at the moment. Just as he was about to admit defeat and beg Ino, who happened to be sitting next to him, for help, the head examiner—Morino Ibiki; he knew he had heard that name before, but he couldn't think of where—announced that time was up and the tenth question would be given. The rules for the question itself stunned him, though: decline to answer and fail automatically, or stay and risk answering incorrectly, which would mean a lifetime ban from all future exams. Judging by their reactions, not to mention the angry questions shouted at the examiner, everyone else in the room was equally shocked.

I don't care, though, Naruto thought to himself, tuning out the other genin in the room. If nothing else, the past few weeks of intensive training for a battle he very well might not survive had drilled into him that refusing to do something because it could be dangerous was simply not an option for a ninja. The prospect of remaining a genin for the rest of his life was a painful one, but dying would be infinitely worse, and neither he nor any of the other rookie genin had shirked their duty even when faced with the possibility of fighting one of the legendary sannin. The examiner's words were intimidating, but he had already faced worse even in his few months as a genin.

"Nobody else wants to take the safe option?" Ibiki asked, a twisted smirk appearing on his lips. "This is your last chance not to be genin for the rest of your lives." Naruto shuddered as the scarred man's gaze focused briefly on him before moving on to sweep the rest of the room. Between those genin who had failed during the first nine questions and, now, the ones who decided not to risk the final question, fewer than a third of the teams remained in the room.

"All right, then. Everyone still sitting down…passes."

Immediately, chaos broke out among the genin in the room. Looking around, Naruto saw that the tall blonde Sand kunoichi Sakura had pointed out earlier was protesting the loudest, but nearly everyone seemed to have something to say—or yell—about the fairness of the test, little of it complimentary. Finally, the noise grew too much for him, and almost before he realized it, he was standing up.

"Shut up!" he yelled. "Being a ninja isn't about fairness, it's about doing what you have to, even if you don't want to. And the people who left—they didn't just lose their chances at passing. They made their teammates fail too. How can you call yourself a ninja if you would sacrifice your teammates for yourself?"

As Naruto stopped speaking, he became aware that the room had gone utterly silent and everyone else—genin and examiners alike—was staring at him. Now feeling more than a little embarrassed, he sat back down, though he noticed that Ino was smiling approvingly at him. The head examiner was looking at him as well, a long, considering stare that made him more than a bit uneasy.

"Pretty words," the older man said. "The reality of things is a bit uglier, though." With that, he removed the tight skullcap he had been wearing, revealing a webwork of old cuts and burns covering nearly the entire top of his head. The scars were horrific, and Naruto suspected they resulted from torture rather than combat wounds.

After a few seconds—long enough for everyone to get a good look—he replaced his head covering and looked out at the assembled genin. "It's easy to talk about doing what is necessary," he said. "Sacrificing yourself for the mission, or for your team's sake, is an ideal all of the villages teach. For chuunin, though, that isn't just talk—and it isn't only yourself you might have to sacrifice. Anyone who runs away from a simple thing like an exam isn't ready for that kind of responsibility."

Apparently satisfied with the genins' reactions to his words, Ibiki nodded once and stepped back. Naruto wondered what he was doing, but before he or anyone else could ask any questions, the rear door of the room banged open and another Leaf jounin walked in. She was radiating annoyance from every inch of her body, and as she stalked up to the front of the room, Naruto could hear her muttering something about how all the new restrictions in place for the exams had ruined her plans for a dramatic entrance.

"Listen up, everyone!" the woman called out over the murmuring that had started upon her arrival. "I'm Mitarashi Anko, the examiner for the second part of the exams. This time, you'll be heading into Training Ground 44, better known as the Forest of Death. Some of you have probably been in there for previous exams and might be thinking you'll be bored, but don't worry; it still lives up to its name just as much as it always has!"

Giving the genin a cheerful—yet somewhat sadistic, Naruto thought—grin after her last sentence, Anko waved and turned to leave. "Oh, almost forgot," she said as she reached the door. "You won't all be entering from the same place, so check with your jounin-sensei to find out where and when to meet tomorrow. Bye!"

Naruto exchanged a long glance with Ino, who appeared bemused by the jounin's rapid arrival and departure. "Well, that was different," he muttered to her. "Somehow she didn't do much to reassure me about our chances of survival, though."

"She kind of reminded me of you," Ino teased. "Except taller, and she was dressed pretty weird even by kunoichi standards. Even your fashion sense isn't quite that bad."

"Wouldn't that make her more like you, then?" Naruto asked, ducking the swat she aimed at him in response. Around them, the other genin were beginning to stand up and leave the room, and the examiners had vanished at some point when he hadn't been paying attention.

Ino sighed and stood up as well. "I guess I'd better go get Chouji and Shikamaru so we can meet Asuma-sensei," she said, her eyes scanning the room for her teammates. "We'll never find out where we need to go if I leave it to them."

"See you tomorrow, then," Naruto said. He waved to her as she joined the crowd, stopping to talk to Sakura and Hinata for a moment before disappearing behind a group of Sand genin. His two teammates sat down on either side of him a few moments later.

Groaning as he realized they would have to track down Kakashi somehow, Naruto turned pleading eyes onto Hinata. "Hinata-chan, do you think you could—"

"Find our incurably lazy jounin-sensei, who might have completely forgotten he needs to tell us where to go tomorrow?" Hinata completed for him, giving him a deceptively sweet smile. "Of course, Naruto-kun; I'd be delighted to. But I might have to search the entire village for him, and using my byakugan for that long would make me awfully tired and hungry…"

"Now who's being lazy?" Naruto muttered, knowing exactly what she wanted. It was easier to agree, though, than look for Kakashi himself. "Fine, I'll ask Mother if she'll make oden for dinner tonight instead of ramen. Extortionist."

Nodding happily, Hinata grabbed his and Sakura's arms and pulled them up. "I like to think of it as negotiating from a position of strength," she said as they walked out of the room. "Father says it's a very important lesson for a Hyuuga to learn."

"Aren't Hyuuga also supposed to be stoic traditionalists and not care about things like fancy food?" Naruto asked, poking his friend in the shoulder. He couldn't help but laugh at the scowl that appeared on her face, though he also couldn't blame her in the slightest; there was definitely a reason she always came over to his house rather than the other way around.

As the three genin exited the building, Naruto realized Sakura had stopped at the door. When he turned around to see what the matter was, though, she smiled and motioned for him to keep going. Shrugging slightly, he waved goodbye to her and headed off; Hinata had already disappeared in search of their jounin-sensei, and he wanted to get home before she finished with that.

He felt somewhat guilty at the way he and Hinata were effectively abandoning Sakura for the night, but she hadn't seemed upset in any way about being left behind. While he knew she could be quite skilled at concealing her true emotions when she wished, he was good enough at reading her that he was sure her good cheer had not been feigned.

I just hope she's not going to go off by herself because she thinks Hinata and I want to spend time without her, Naruto thought as he walked. It was true that Hinata had been his first friend and would probably always be his closest in some ways, but he knew neither of them would ever try to exclude their pink-haired teammate—especially not at a time like this. Nobody should ever have to be alone on the night before something as dangerous as the second part of the chuunin exam.

- - -

This is nice, Sakura thought as she sat at the table in the Yamanakas' elegant, albeit simply decorated, dining room. It had been quite a while since the last time she had slept over at Ino's house, and the invitation had made her realize how much she missed doing normal things with her friends—where 'normal' could be defined as anything that did not involve training to survive against one of the deadliest ninja in the history of the Leaf.

She had been expecting to spend the night before the second exam in her apartment by herself, and when Ino invited her and Hinata over, she gratefully accepted. She didn't mind being alone most of the time, but she knew herself well enough to know she would have worried all evening about the upcoming task and slept uneasily, if at all. Unfortunately, Hinata had already made plans to spend time with Naruto and his mother—it seemed that many of the rookie genin had had the same idea, not wanting to be by themselves tonight—but Sakura was enjoying herself immensely despite that.

Ino's mother had prepared a wonderful dinner for them, even going so far as to make sweet dumplings for dessert, which had nearly brought tears to Sakura's eyes all by itself. They were her absolute favorite food, and one she was only rarely able to purchase for herself, but more than that, the effort—even if it was only a small one—to do something nice specifically for her meant more than she ever could have said. Ino's father had vanished into the kitchen not long after they were done eating, leaving Sakura to smile to herself as she watched Ino and her mother happily talk about nothing of consequence.

For one aching moment, she wondered if her own mother would have been as cheerful and kind as Ino's, but then she shook her head. The next few days would bring more than enough pain, she knew, without deliberately creating her own. She had her friends, and even if she could only sit at the edges of real families and watch them, that was enough for her because it was more than she had ever had before.

Just then, as Ino laughed at one of her mother's stories from the flower shop, her father re-entered the room bearing a ceramic bottle of sake and three shallow cups. He set them on the table, then sat down across from Ino and Sakura. Sakura watched as Ino's mother turned to her husband, who simply nodded once and smiled at her.

"If you're sure," the older woman murmured. She then stood up and walked out of the room, though not without casting a long look over her shoulder at Sakura.

Sakura exchanged a puzzled look with Ino, who shrugged before turning to her father. "What are you doing, Dad?" she asked lightly. "Mom would kill you in your sleep if you got me or Sakura-chan drunk, so I know that can't be for us."

"Whatever else you may have learned from him, your jounin-sensei obviously hasn't managed to teach you patience yet," her father replied, sounding amused. He carefully poured a small amount of sake into each of the cups, then set them in front of Sakura, Ino, and himself. Taking his own in both hands, he motioned for Ino to do the same.

"Sakura," he said, turning to her, "could you please excuse us for a few minutes? I want to talk with you also, but…"

Sakura nodded, standing up from the table as the usually-confident jounin trailed off. She couldn't claim to understand completely—she had no idea how her own parents would have acted in a situation like this—but she could never begrudge Ino time with her own father, especially given what all of them would be faced with over the next few days.

This could be one of the last times they ever see each other, she thought uneasily as she went into the kitchen. Trying to distract herself from that particular morbid line of thinking, she began to wash the dishes left over from dinner, but she only found herself dwelling on it more. Once, Kakashi had demonstrated the Hell Viewing genjutsu on them; it was a fairly weak technique by most standards, but the emotional impact of what she had seen under its influence had remained with her for quite some time even after it wore off. Despite her best efforts, some of those images were returning to her now, and she shuddered as she tried to force them away.

Some time later—Sakura had no idea how long, except that the wash water she had drawn had gone cool at some point—Ino poked her head through the doorway. Though her eyes were red from crying and her cheeks glistened with tears she hadn't bothered wiping away, she had a look of quiet happiness on her face, and she smiled at Sakura. "We're…done talking," she said. "I'm going up to my room now, so come up when you're ready."

"Okay, Ino-chan," Sakura said, smiling back at her friend, though inwardly she felt a bit worried about why Ino's father could possibly want to talk with her. As she walked back into the dining room and sat down, though, she was relieved when he appeared glad to see her.

"Do you remember what I said to you the first time you came here?" he began unceremoniously. "I doubt you do—it was several years ago, after all—but at the time it was a difficult enough decision even allowing you inside our home. You surprised me, though, enough that I decided not to interfere with your friendship with my daughter."

Sakura's eyes widened, and she felt a twinge of fear at his words. In all the time she had known Ino's father, he had never referred so bluntly to her outcast social status, and she wondered if she had done something to anger him. Had he somehow learned or figured out what had happened on her team's last mission and now intended to forbid her to spend time with Ino? That thought frightened her more than she cared to admit, even to herself.

Something of her sudden inner turmoil must have shown on her face, as the man sitting across from her groaned and shook his head. "Emi was right," he muttered, apparently to himself. "I am making a mess of this."

Looking Sakura in the eye, he continued, his voice now full of quiet reassurance, "Since that first time we met you, you have never given me or my wife any reason at all to regret that initial decision. If anything, the only thing we've regretted has been that we tried to keep Ino away from you before then. I know this probably comes years too late for you, but I would like to apologize for that."

"Don't…but…you're not…" Sakura tried several times to come up with something—anything at all—that she could possibly say in response, but her mind seemed to have completely shut itself off. As her vision began to blur with tears, she finally managed to whisper, "It doesn't matter, not any more."

That was a lie; it did matter to her, more than she could possibly say, and that was the problem. Nobody had ever—not even once in her entire life—apologized for the way they had treated her, and she literally had no idea what to do now that someone had done so. All she knew was that while those seemingly simple words did not erase her memories of all the years she had been alone, they somehow made her feel more confident that those years were gone and would never come again.

As she wiped her eyes with her sleeve, she saw Ino's father smile at her. He looked as though he wanted to say something, then shook his head as though he had changed his mind. "We Yamanaka are one of the youngest ninja families in the Leaf," he said a moment later, confusing Sakura with the apparent change of subject. "Really, we're young enough that we don't qualify as a true clan; Ino's children will be the first of our line who can claim that distinction.

"Still, we do have a few traditions, mostly started by my father, and one in particular seems appropriate now. The night before each of my missions that would take me outside the village, he would pour sake for the two of us, and the more dangerous the mission was likely to be, the less he would pour. Haruno Sakura, you may not be my daughter by birth, but I would ask you to do me and my family the honor of drinking with me now."

Almost unable to believe what she was hearing, Sakura numbly copied his movements, lifting the dish of sake in front of her with her fingertips and placing it against her lips. The tiny amount of liquid—less than a mouthful, she noted with grim appreciation—slid smoothly down her throat, and she swallowed with a slight grimace; this was the first time she had ever tasted alcohol, and while it was not exactly unpleasant, she thought it would take quite a bit of getting used to in order for her to actually enjoy it. As she set the ceramic saucer back down, she bowed deeply to Ino's father, hoping that would say everything for which she was unable to find the words.

"May you return safely home," he said quietly before standing up from the table and, gathering the sake bottle and used saucers, disappearing from the room. After what seemed like an endless moment spent staring after him, Sakura stood as well.

"I won't let anything happen to her," she whispered, turning off the lights in the room and heading upstairs to join Ino. "I promise, no matter what happens." All three of the rookie teams might be rivals in the exam itself, but some things were more important than succeeding in an exam.

- - -

Sakura pressed her lips together in an attempt to hold back a pained moan as Naruto cut away the fabric of her pants. He was obviously trying hard not to brush against the dart embedded deep into her thigh, but even the slightest movement was enough to send fire racing along her leg, and part of her desperately wished he would just hurry up and get it over with. The only saving grace was that the dart did not seem to have been poisoned, but that wouldn't make it any easier to remove.

A shadow fell across her face, and she looked up to see that Hinata had returned. "The area is secure," her dark-haired teammate reported tersely, the bulging veins around her eyes a clear sign that she had no intention of being caught unaware again.

"What about the Rain team?" Sakura managed to hiss through suddenly clenched teeth, the pain in her leg spiking momentarily. Risking a glance downward at herself, she saw Naruto had finished cutting and peeled back what used to be the left leg of the dark grey ballistic-cloth pants she wore when out in the field. The wound itself seemed laughably small at first glance—nothing but a small trickle of blood oozing out from around a thin metal shaft no more than a few inches in length—but that was only because the wickedly barbed head was invisible beneath her skin.

In some ways, she had gotten lucky; if the dart had hit slightly further down her leg, it could have damaged her knee, and she could easily be dead now if it had landed on her inner thigh and grazed or punctured an artery. Knowing that didn't do anything to decrease the pain she was feeling, though, or the even greater pain she knew would come when her teammates removed the dart.

"The enemy genin are…not an issue," Hinata said coolly, causing Sakura to marvel at the sudden resemblance to her cousin. "We have several hours before we'll need to leave the area. Fortunately, they were carrying an Earth scroll."

"So at least we got something out of this," Naruto muttered. "Not that it was worth it." Turning back to Sakura's leg, he frowned and asked, "Hinata-chan, can you tell if the dart head is far enough in to be near any major blood vessels? I'm going to have to widen the wound, but I won't if it risks cutting anything important. We can signal for pickup and get her to a professional medic-nin if that's the case."

Hinata shook her head. "The byakugan isn't precise enough to tell exactly," she said, "but I don't think so." The emotionless mask her face had been set in since she returned cracked slightly, and for a moment Sakura was stunned at the depth of misery and guilt she saw in her teammate's expression. Then the mask reformed, so quickly the momentary lapse could have been an illusion.

"And closing off the tenketsu in my leg wouldn't do anything to deaden the pain," Sakura sighed, wincing as Naruto gently probed the surface of her leg around the dart with his finger. He had already given her some painkillers, but the basic medical kit simply didn't include anything strong enough to help with what would amount to minor surgery. She was grateful, though, that he had taken the optional field medicine course at the academy and knew the essentials of what to do; that was somewhat unusual for most male ninja, especially at the genin level where severe injuries on missions were unlikely, but Naruto was nothing if not enthusiastic about learning new skills and techniques.

Looking up from his examination, Naruto shook his head slowly. "No," he said, "but it would keep your leg still. This is going to hurt a lot, Sakura-chan, but it shouldn't actually be that bad once I get the dart out. If you move while I'm cutting, though, I might seriously injure you."

"Can't you just knock me out?" Sakura asked him, only somewhat joking. The flatly unamused looks she received from her teammates in return caused her to duck her head apologetically.

Prompted by a glance from Naruto, Hinata reached down and tapped several places on both of Sakura's legs with feather-light touches. As the curiously numb-yet-not sensation produced by the jyuuken flowed down from her hips, Sakura experimentally tried wiggling her toes, and, when that failed, bending her knee. She could still feel the dart pulsing in time with her heartbeat like a knot of pain in her upper leg, but within seconds she was completely unable to move from the waist down.

"I'm ready," she said quietly, staring up at the bare tree branches overhead. Hinata had moved around to sit behind her, and her head was lying in the other girl's lap. Tilting her head back so she wouldn't have to watch what Naruto was about to do, she was just in time to watch another flicker of emotion play across her teammate's face.

Then Naruto began to cut, and it was all Sakura could do simply to keep from screaming. She had been injured before—nobody made it through the ninja academy unscathed—but this was different. Even through the faint haze of pain medication, she could feel every probing cut he made, and at that moment she would have given nearly anything for him to stop. Her torso tried to arch upwards in agony, but Hinata kept her pinned down with a strength that belied her slender frame. She could feel wetness on her face, and some part of her mind that was still able to think wondered whether it was from Hinata's tears or her own.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she felt Naruto's grip on her leg shift slightly. After one last burst of pain so intense she saw the edges of her vision grey out, the sensation of something foreign lodged within her leg disappeared, replaced by a throbbing ache.

"Almost done," Naruto said, his voice filled with relief. She felt him wipe her leg with something cool that stung against her wound, then securely bandage it. Looking down at herself, she saw a surprisingly small swathe of gauze wrapped around her thigh, and she smiled at Naruto—or, at least, tried to, despite the lingering pain.

He didn't appear to notice, though, as he frowned down at something he was holding in one hand. "Chakra-enhanced," he muttered. "That explains how it got through the fabric of your pants, Sakura-chan. I thought this design was banned after the last war, though."

Sakura managed to sit up with Hinata's assistance, and she peered down with morbid fascination at what he was holding. The dart's head, still slick with her blood, appeared to be designed to cause as much pain as possible while it was inside someone and even more when it was removed. Shuddering, she turned away from it, feeling slightly ill at the sight.

"You were lucky," Naruto said, looking everywhere but at her. "It wasn't as far in as I thought, so you should still be able to use your leg normally as long as you don't strain it. We won't be able to tree-hop now, though, and you should definitely avoid any close-range fighting."

I'm a burden, Sakura thought. I was careless and let myself get hit, and now I'm going to be slowing them down. She bowed her head, ashamed of how poorly she had performed even after so much training; for all their confidence in her, she seemed to do nothing but let her teammates down.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sakura-chan."

Hinata's broken whisper snapped her out of her thoughts, and she looked up with surprise at her friend. "Why are you sorry?" she asked. "I'm the one who got hit, even when I should have been able to deflect that."

"But I didn't see them coming," Hinata said, her voice barely audible.

"Would you both stop it?" Naruto growled, causing both Sakura and Hinata to look at him in surprise. "It doesn't matter whose fault it was. We're only a few hours in and we've already screwed up against a team of normal genin, so what's going to happen if Orochimaru really is here? Maybe there's nothing we can do at all, but sitting around whining won't help."

Sakura stared at him, shocked he had spoken so harshly, but then she noticed his hands. Still stained with her blood, they were trembling, and she reached out and took them in her own as she considered what had just happened from his perspective. She had been the one to get hurt, true, but he had had to hurt her—and even if it was to help her in the end, she knew it still must have bothered him to do so.

"Thank you, Naruto-kun," she said quietly, forcing herself to ignore the dull, persistent pain in her leg. "I would have been in a lot more trouble if you hadn't known what to do. We'll be okay, I think; we've only just started and we have the scroll we need, so we can avoid all the other teams from now on."

Hoping she seemed more confident than she felt at the moment, Sakura captured her teammates' eyes with her own. "All we have to do is make it to the center of the forest," she said, her mind already considering possible strategies. "Even if we do run into another team, I'm much better at support than melee combat anyways, so we haven't lost much in terms of fighting ability."

"I…I guess you're right," Hinata murmured, smiling hesitantly at both her and Naruto. She still looked somewhat upset, but Sakura couldn't blame her for that when she was feeling the same way.

Naruto nodded once, already beginning to look more like his usual confident self. "Yeah! We're Team Seven, and we won't let anyone beat us, right?" he said—and even if his grin was a bit too cheerful, Sakura had no intention of saying anything to him. "We should wait a little bit longer for the clotting solution I put on your bandage to work, Sakura-chan, but you should be ready to go then."

"After I put on some new pants," Sakura said, blushing slightly as she looked down at herself; Naruto really had done a hack job on the ones she was wearing at the moment, and, modesty aside, trying to make her way through the forest in them would be quite uncomfortable. The answering laughter from her friends was welcome music to her ears.

- - -

Three. Two at seven o'clock, one at three o'clock. All on the ground. Coming our way.

Sasuke signaled his understanding as he caught Shino's furtive gestures, looking to his side to make sure Kiba had seen as well. The other boy was frowning in concentration as he talked quietly with Akamaru, occasionally nodding in between barks. A few seconds later, the tiny white dog jumped off his shoulder and landed nimbly on the ground.

The three genin continued to move along the trail they were following, showing no outward sign that they knew they were being watched. Sasuke hoped the unknown ninja would take the bait; ambush tactics were far more harmful than helpful when the targets had advance notice of the attack, and anyone trying to sneak up on his team would learn that unpleasant truth in great detail. To his disappointment, though, Shino signaled that the members of the enemy team were maintaining their distance, shadowing Team Eight's movement while remaining out of visual range.

Sasuke and his teammates continued to follow the trail of the team whose scents Kiba—or Akamaru; he didn't know which and didn't really care, either—had picked up earlier for nearly another hour, the hidden ninja mirroring their every change in direction. Finally, his patience with whatever game they were playing wearing thin, he gave his teammates the signal to halt.

"They must be waiting for us to attack another team so that they can pick everyone off in the confusion," he said quietly as Shino and Kiba came over and leaned against the tree next to him, taking out ration bars and water to give the appearance of a brief rest break. Sign language was very useful for communicating some things, but it broke down when dealing with more advanced tactics.

Shino gave the barest tilt of his head, which was as close to nodding as the other boy ever came. "That seems logical," he agreed. "My insects are having some difficulty keeping track of their exact locations, so they may be using masking genjutsu. The one to our right is the most elusive."

"They're scavengers," Kiba muttered. "They know they can't beat us fairly, so they have to wait until we're distracted."

Sasuke didn't bother trying to hide his disdainful snort. "We're ninja," he said. "Fairness doesn't matter, only who's left alive after it's all over." He had his dear brother to thank for teaching him that particular lesson.

"I have managed to get a clearer picture of one of the enemy ninja," Shino said, interrupting what could have become yet another of their frequent arguments on whether or not 'honorable combat' had any relevance to ninja. Bending down, the bug-user picked up a twig and, following the motion of one of his insects, drew a symbol in the dirt which Sasuke instantly recognized.

"Sound," he muttered. The single musical note adorning the other village's forehead protectors was distinctive, and he felt his fists tighten. The Sound were under Orochimaru's control, and, according to Kurenai and the other jounin-sensei, the rogue sannin was after the secrets of the sharingan. As the only remaining Uchiha—the only true one, at any rate—it fell to him to guard his clan's heritage, and while these genin might have nothing to do with that, blindly assuming so would be foolish.

"Can we take out the single one on the right before the other two are able to help?" he asked Shino, now completely ignoring Kiba. Though Sasuke had gained a grudging respect for the Inuzuka's fighting skill over the past few weeks of intensive training—apparently, he had been deemed worthy of learning several of his clan's special techniques—he had virtually no strategic skills and would be all but useless in planning an attack.

"No," Shino replied flatly. "She—I am fairly certain it is a female—is somehow causing any of my insects near her to become disoriented, so I have only a rough idea of her position. The two on our left are easier to track, however."

Sasuke frowned. Three on two odds were not quite as good as he would have liked, but it seemed that was the best they would get. Allowing the Sound team to continue tracking them was not an option, as he had no desire to find himself fighting a three-way battle at some point in the future. Developing a plan of attack would be difficult, though, as they only knew anything about the capabilities of one of the Sound genin, who seemed to have a taijutsu technique that allowed even his missed strikes to inflict injury.

"I will deal with the one who threatened Naruto and Hinata before the first part of the exam," Shino said, apparently thinking along the same line as Sasuke. "Any unusual melee skills he possesses will be useless against me. The two of you should take the other, since with no knowledge of his abilities, numbers will be our main advantage."

That, Sasuke thought, was the problem with Shino; his ideas always made too much sense to argue with. Sasuke would have vastly preferred fighting by himself, but even more than that, he wanted to win—and his teammate's plan was, unfortunately, the one that seemed to offer the greatest chance of success.

"Forgetting something?" another voice called out loudly, barely a moment after Shino's head jerked around to stare at a seemingly unremarkable patch of bushes. The vegetation rustled slightly, and out stepped the two male Sound genin, who began laughing.

The one who had started the trouble at the first part of the exam—presumably the leader, Sasuke assumed—grinned nastily. "You three were so loud we could hear you from all the way back there," he said, causing his teammate to laugh again. "So the Leaf's prize rookie genin don't think they can take on a few lowly Sound ninja without double-teaming one, huh? I guess that just shows how far the 'mighty' Uchiha have fallen."

Forcing himself to remain calm and not allow the other's taunts to affect him, Sasuke subtly caught his teammates' eyes and signaled to attack. As one, the three Leaf genin spread out in an enveloping formation, with Kiba and Shino jumping behind their enemies to prevent any escape. Regardless of the advance notice provided by their exceptional hearing, the Sound had, in the end, been stupid enough to fall into the trap of their own accord.

As Sasuke ran forward, he saw a cloud of insects had already begun to descend upon the Sound genin who had spoken, and he smiled thinly to himself. Chakra draining was not a pleasant way to be defeated, as the arrogant boy would no doubt soon discover. His own target was looking back and forth between Sasuke himself and the tree behind which Kiba had vanished, before settling on Sasuke—which was just fine with him. If he looked closely, he could see a doubled shadow extending out from behind the tree, and he knew Kiba had used his Beast-Clone technique.

Double-team, huh? he thought. Let's see how you like being triple-teamed. Anyone who dared to insult his clan deserved every bit of pain they received, and he intended to make sure that that was quite a bit. Before he reached optimum range to use any of his ninjutsu, though, he was halted by a sudden flash of silver and gold that cut through the air in front of him, accompanied by the sound of a ringing bell.

"I don't think so," a girl's high voice said mockingly, followed by another metallic flash—this one off to his right. Looking closer, Sasuke could see they appeared to be bells attached to senbon needles, which only confused him further; such weapons seemed neither practical nor stealthy in any way.

"You're late, Kin," the second Sound genin grunted, turning away from Sasuke to focus on the area where Kiba was hiding. Sasuke silently fumed at him, but he was forced to turn his own attention to the kunoichi who stepped out of the underbrush off to his left.

As the girl formed a quick series of hand seals and murmured something under her breath, Sasuke was already in motion, rolling to his side and away from her probable line of attack. One hand dipped into his kunai holster, and he flung several of the razor-sharp knives at her in an attempt to disrupt her concentration. When her figure only wavered slightly as the kunai cut through it, he felt his frown grow deeper.

Bunshin, he thought, turning in place to scan the area around him. Soft chiming noises filled the air as yet another bell-adorned needle struck the ground, this one barely a meter away from him, but he felt a sense of triumph; he had seen where that one came from, and he reached for another pair of kunai before changing his mind.

The bells were still ringing, their sounds oddly hypnotic, but he shook off his momentary lethargy and moved his hands rapidly through the seals for his chosen technique. "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!" he called out, exhaling to form a massive fireball that enveloped the entire bush behind which his opponent had to be hiding. In the light of the flame, he saw what appeared to be fine wires coming off of the bells around him, but his fireball evaporated before he could take a closer look—leaving behind nothing but the charred skeleton of the bush.

Laughter, sounding eerily like the chiming of the bells, surrounded Sasuke on all sides, and in some distant corner of his mind he realized he could no longer hear the noise of his teammates' battles. The bells grew gradually louder, until he almost thought he could make out words within their sounds.

"Not there!" one seemed to mock. "Over here!" came from the one behind him. "No, I'm here!" The words and the ringing were starting to blend together, forming a cacophonous noise completely unlike the bells' first gentle chimes, and he began to grow dizzy from the assault on his ears. He knew it had to be a genjutsu of some sort, but as he searched for any trace of the Sound genin, he found himself unable to break it despite Kurenai's training.

One hand, still clutching a kunai, swept up automatically to block yet another needle from hitting him, but the bell on it only added to the tumult around him as it fell to the ground. When his opponent casually stepped out from what appeared to his blurring vision to be thin air, he ran straight for her, no longer caring about winning—only about stopping the noise. As he swept his kunai out in a vicious strike that would have decapitated her, though, the girl's figure wavered and split into three copies of itself.

"I guess Dosu was right," all three chimed thoughtfully. "Orochimaru-sama will be disappointed to learn how weak the Uchiha really are, though. Or, I suppose, were. You wouldn't have a chance of surviving the seal if you can't even beat me, so there's no point in keeping you alive."

Weak…no point keeping you alive…not worth killing…going to let you live… The Sound kunoichi's words began to give way to the ones his brother had spoken so many years ago, and Sasuke felt himself begin to tremble in rage as the memories of that day nearly six years ago filled his mind.

"No!" he yelled over the ringing of the bells. "I won't let you! I have to kill him!" As the words left his mouth, he felt something inside himself begin to change, and the world around him changed in its wake. His vision, formerly blurred due to his enemy's genjutsu, sharpened to an inhuman level of sensitivity, while the three images in front of him grew pale and translucent. All around him, he could see a faintly glowing mist which he knew had to be the chakra forming the genjutsu which had entrapped him, and the lines he thought he had seen coming off of the bells earlier snapped into gleaming relief.

"I suppose I should thank you," Sasuke said as he cut the lines linking his attacker to her bells, his voice cold and distant in the sudden silence. If he could see his eyes, he knew they would be red now, with swirling comma-shaped pupils along their irises.

Sharingan…I'm coming for you, brother. After he defeated this girl, and anyone else who dared to call him weak.

- - -

Author's Notes: Well, I don't really have a whole lot to say this time, I guess. Naruto as paramedic? It seems to make sense given his personality here, though I have no intention of making him a full-fledged medic-nin. The bell-girl is a fair amount more dangerous here than in canon, but that's due more to the different environments than anything else; when she fights against Shikamaru, they're in a bare, open arena with no cover, distractions, or anything else. I always thought the setup of the third part of the exams was more than a little biased against genjutsu and stealth experts, so I decided to make her a bit nastier here.

Anyways, thank you all for reading, and special thanks to those of you who reviewed last time! I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well.