As the three members of Team Seven moved through the forest, Hinata continuously scanned her surroundings with her byakugan, determined not to let anyone ambush her team again. She was burning through her chakra reserves at a steady rate, though, and hoped they would reach the tower at the center of the forest soon; she had caught glimpses of it already when she focused her eyesight in its direction, but it was still at least another half hour's travel away at the rate they were going.

Beside her, Sakura seemed to be holding up well, only the slight grimace on her face betraying the lingering pain she had to be feeling from her earlier wound. Still, though, the sooner they exited the forest and got her to a proper medic-nin, the better; it wasn't that Hinata thought Naruto had done a poor job—if anything, she had been amazed at how calmly and efficiently he had acted—but she would continue to worry until her friend's injury was properly examined and treated.

She froze momentarily as the ghostly outlines of three humans slipped barely into her field of vision, the first she had seen since their earlier, almost disastrous encounter with the Rain team. "I see one team behind us and to the right," she said, tapping her teammates' shoulders and pointing in the exact direction. "They're about sixty meters away, traveling a little faster than we are, and I don't think they know we're here."

"Anyone you recognize?" Naruto asked. Hinata saw his fingers twitch slightly, as if reaching for a kunai or preparing to form seals, and she put a hand on his arm.

"I don't—wait, yes," she said slowly, nodding her head as the other team drew slightly closer, allowing her to make out their chakra signatures more precisely. "It's Team Eight, and I think they've been in a fight already."

The swarm of insects around Shino was unmistakeable to her enhanced vision, glittering like a cloud of stars in constant motion. They shone somewhat more brightly than usual at the moment, leading her to suspect he had used them to drain someone of his or her chakra. Then something even more noteworthy caught her attention, and she gasped audibly.

"Sasuke…I think he's managed to activate his sharingan!" she exclaimed. She couldn't be sure from this far away, but the chakra coil structure in his upper torso and head was far denser and more intricately interconnected than she remembered seeing even the previous day, and she could think of only one thing that would have caused such a dramatic change.

While Naruto did not look impressed, Sakura's wide-eyed expression of surprise and dismay more than made up for it. "That's not good," she said, biting her lip thoughtfully. "Or…well, it is good, I guess, just not right now. We—all of us—need to get out of here as soon as we can."

"What's so bad about it?" Naruto asked, echoing Hinata's thoughts. "Yeah, now he's going to act like he's got a steel rod up his butt instead of just a stick, but as much as I hate to admit it, the Uchiha—and especially the sharingan—were one of the big reasons why we've always been the strongest of the hidden villages."

Sakura's expression turned stormy. "Haven't you wondered why we haven't seen even a trace of anything that might be remotely connected to Orochimaru yet?" she asked, her injury apparently making her a bit short-tempered. "Sarutobi-shishou and Kakashi-sensei both seemed almost positive he was going to stage some sort of attack during this part of the exams, and it makes a lot of sense. So, why wouldn't he attack earlier, when we were all scattered and distracted by trying to avoid the other teams?

"Because he didn't know if he could get what he wanted," she continued, answering her own question before either Hinata or Naruto could say anything. "I would bet you anything that if Sasuke does have his sharingan now, it's because of an attack Orochimaru set up. Now he can get the sharingan, the byakugan—" she gestured to Hinata, who felt herself shiver— "and whatever else he's interested in."

Naruto's face paled, and he visibly winced at that prospect. "We should go meet them, then," he said. "All of us should stay close together until we reach the tower, just in case anything happens."

"I agree," Hinata said. She had been watching for the other teams ever since they went into the forest, but for some reason, they had apparently been given widely scattered starting positions. That made little sense to her, as it seemed that their chances of survival would be greater in numbers, but Naruto had supplied an obvious—if discomfiting—explanation when she mentioned that to him.

Bait, she remembered his words. We look like easier targets if we're not obviously prepared to defend each other. It was the same reason the three teams had always been at least nominal opponents during the training exercises, even the ones when their jounin-sensei attacked them—so that they wouldn't get too used to relying on another team's capabilities. She knew he was right, and on an intellectual level she could understand that reason, but it made them far too dependant on the ANBU agents supposedly shadowing the three rookie teams.

If the elite ninja were watching them, though, Hinata had been unable to see them, and that lack made her uneasy—not because she thought she and the others would have been deliberately abandoned, but more out of worry that Orochimaru had discovered the trap set for him and found a way to evade it. Something as enormous as preparing to defend the village against potential attack had no doubt required massive amounts of planning, and even if their own role was only one small part of the whole, it was entirely possible that whatever spies the Sound had within the Leaf had learned about it.

"Hinata-chan? Are they still there?"

Hinata shook off her concerns when she heard Naruto's voice. Even if something had gone wrong with the plan, there was nothing she could do about it. "They're almost due east of us now," she said. "Shino should have detected us by now, so we won't have to worry about surprising them."

Her guess turned out to be accurate; all three genin of Team Eight actually seemed relieved when Hinata and her teammates stepped into view, though they—sensibly, in her opinion—did not relax their guard. Each of them bore signs of injury, and even Kiba's tiny canine companion had streaks of blood marring its white fur.

"Wow, you guys look awful. Somebody must've pounded you really well," Naruto commented, causing Hinata to groan and shake her head. She had long ago given up on ever teaching her friend the importance of tact, but she refused to believe even he could be this clueless; he had to be doing it on purpose, probably to get a rise out of Sasuke.

Much to her surprise, the Uchiha simply shrugged. One look at his eyes gave her the reason, though, and she smiled. While the Hyuuga, unlike their distant cousins, possessed their bloodline abilities from birth, that did not mean they could use them that early, and Hinata still vividly remembered the first time she successfully activated her byakugan. It was literally a window to an entirely different world, and if Sasuke was feeling anything even remotely close to how she had at that time, she fully understood why he probably didn't care in the slightest what his rival had to say.

"I can smell blood on you too," Kiba snorted, as if to make up for his teammate's apparent apathy, "so don't act like you're so perfect." He sounded tired, though, and his remark lacked the fire it normally would have had. Hinata noticed he seemed to be more concerned with his dog's health than with arguing, and she supposed she couldn't blame him for that.

Shino simply nodded slightly to the three members of Team Seven. Of his teammates, he had the fewest number of visible injuries, but he appeared somewhat unsteady on his feet. "We were attacked by the Sound team when they realized they would not be able to ambush us," he said unceremoniously. "They have been taken care of, and we are still in adequate fighting condition."

"Sound?" Sakura asked, her head whipping around to stare at him so quickly that Hinata was afraid she might strain her neck. "Have you seen anyone else since you fought them? Or even any trails from people who came through here before us?"

Shino shook his head, as did, somewhat reluctantly, Kiba. "Akamaru was tracking someone earlier, but the scent stopped a little ways back," the Inuzuka said. "You're the first ones we've found since then."

"We're getting close enough to the objective that there should be signs of other teams, but Hinata-chan hasn't seen anyone either," Sakura said, her face scrunched up in what Hinata had come to recognize as her 'thinking mode.' She exchanged a long look with Shino, who nodded again. It was difficult for Hinata to read his half-concealed expression, but Sakura's might as well have been an open book to her, and her pink-haired teammate looked visibly frightened.

It was Hinata's turn to frown as she realized what her teammate was implying. Given the random starting points for the various teams, it was possible that the only two teams Orochimaru was certain to be interested in had started in the same general area through pure chance, but it began to stretch the bounds of coincidence when the Sound team just happened to end up nearby as well. Sixteen teams had passed the first part of the exam, so if four teams had started from roughly each compass direction—and Team Seven had already eliminated the fourth nearby team—then there would be nobody else in a position to help them or even hear them if they were attacked at some point.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Naruto asked, looking around at the other genin. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a moving target than a stationary one."

Everyone, even Kiba and Sasuke, nodded in agreement, and with that, they set off—united, at least for the moment.

- - -

During her training as a ninja, Sakura had come to rely on her unusually sharp danger sense, despite the fact that she suspected it was somehow an artifact of the seal containing the Nine-Tails. Even though the demon had said it was completely contained, with no way to affect or be affected by the outside world unless she herself forced it to do so, there were any number of ways the seal's mere presence could affect her body's chakra patterns.

At the moment, though, she was far more concerned with why she, along with Hinata, Shino, and even Kiba, had somehow failed to notice the twenty-foot-long snake blocking their path until they almost literally ran into it. A snake the size of a ramen stall was not an easy thing to conceal—or, at least, that was what Sakura would have said up until today. While it was making no overtly threatening moves towards the two teams, she very much doubted they had run across it simply by chance, especially given the title by which Orochimaru was commonly known.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a high, menacing voice suddenly spoke from behind the genin. "Don't worry about my pet," it—based on the voice, Sakura honestly had no idea whether the speaker was male or female—said. "She won't bother you unless you try to run."

Fear began to fill Sakura as she turned to see who had spoken, even though she could almost certainly guess. While the man casually standing a short distance away looked nothing like the pictures of Orochimaru she had seen, he could be no-one else; as if the unnaturally huge snake hadn't been enough of a clue, he exuded an air of menace like no human Sakura had ever met, and there was a covetous gleam in his eyes as he examined the assembled genin.

"Ah, how wonderful," Orochimaru said, his lips curling into a slight smile. "An Uchiha, a Hyuuga, and…what's this?"

Sakura realized he was looking straight at her, and she felt her fear turn into outright panic. He knew who—and what—she was, and she very much doubted that breaking the Third's law would bother him in the slightest. Naruto and Hinata already knew about her, but not the members of Team Eight, and they were some of the last people she would want to find out. Despite their recent civility towards her in the wake of the past few weeks of training together, she still hadn't forgotten how Kiba and, to a lesser extent, Sasuke had tormented her at the ninja academy.

"I'm surprised you were even allowed to become a genin, let alone enter this exam, Haruno-san." Oh yes, Orochimaru clearly knew exactly what he was doing; the malicious expression on his face as he stared at her was obvious proof. Then, to her surprise, he shifted his gaze slightly and stepped forward.

"I must remember to thank whoever drafted your genin team assignments," he murmured to Naruto, as if sharing a private joke with him. "Even I could never have come up with such a deliciously ironic punishment for your father as the thought of having his precious son on the same team as—"

Whatever else the Snake Sannin intended to say was drowned out by Naruto's sudden yell. "Don't you dare talk about my father, or about Sakura-chan!" he shouted, lunging forward with a brace of kunai clutched in his hands. "You don't know anything, you sadistic bastard!"

Sakura watched, eyes wide, as Orochimaru slid bonelessly around Naruto, not even bothering to block his attack. Part of her was screaming for her to go help her teammate, but her horror at how close Orochimaru had come to revealing her secret—even more than Naruto's half-remembered warning to avoid fighting because of her leg injury—left her frozen in place as the other genin moved to join the developing melee.

"You bore me, boy," Orochimaru said as he dodged every one of Naruto's strikes with such fluid speed that it almost seemed he wasn't moving at all. "It's almost too bad your father didn't live long enough to teach you any of his fancy tricks, because as it is, you're just another pathetic bump in my path."

As if to punctuate his statement, he lashed out with a viper-quick punch to Naruto's midsection that sent the blond genin staggering backwards to the ground, gasping for breath. When he moved to follow up, though, he found both Hinata and Sasuke blocking him while Shino and Kiba formed a second line of defense in front of Naruto. To Sakura's surprise, he actually nodded to them in a brief show of respect.

"My congratulations, Uchiha Sasuke. It seems my genin were successful in awakening your potential; consider it a…gift, perhaps the first of many." The satisfied smile that appeared on Orochimaru's pale face was somehow more frightening than anything else Sakura had seen of him, until the meaning of his words struck her. He sounded like he was trying to recruit Sasuke.

Fortunately for her peace of mind—she might not have liked the Uchiha heir, but she doubted anyone who followed Orochimaru would have a long or pleasant life—Sasuke didn't even bother to dignify the missing-nin's comment with a response before moving to attack him. Unlike Naruto's almost frenzied charge, Sasuke's blows were precise, measured, and equally ineffective.

Sakura could see he was beginning to grow frustrated as he proved unable to land a hit even with the assistance of his sharingan, but she could also see he was aware of something Orochimaru was not—namely, Hinata, who had edged away from the fight and was now approaching from the rear. As Sasuke continued to attack, Sakura noticed he seemed to be coming closer and closer to hitting Orochimaru, and she wondered if it was due to his sharingan or if the older ninja was simply taunting him.

When Hinata struck, it was with an open-palmed blow to the juncture of the Snake Sannin's skull and neck—a killing strike for a jyuuken practitioner, Sakura remembered from watching her practice. To Sakura's horror, though, Orochimaru absorbed the hit without even stumbling, and faster than she could even follow, he turned and grabbed Hinata's wrist before pivoting and throwing her hard into Sasuke. Both genin tumbled to the ground.

"Clever, ruthless, and obviously talented," he mused, stepping back from the two momentarily stunned genin. "On the surface, you appear the model Hyuuga, but…tell me, Hyuuga heir, what would you do for the power to change your clan?"

Not waiting for an answer, he turned slightly. "And you, last of the Uchiha? I knew your brother well. I can tell you everything about him—everything you would need to know in order to avenge your family's destruction."

Sakura felt as though her heart was stuck somewhere in her throat, and she wondered what could possibly be taking the ANBU patrols so long to arrive. It was obvious that Orochimaru was simply playing with them, and she winced as she saw the hungry expression that momentarily appeared on Sasuke's face before he shook his head. Hinata's expression gave nothing away, but Sakura knew her friend's secret hope and wouldn't be surprised if she had been momentarily tempted as well.

Before either Leaf genin could stand, though, a small sphere of compressed air, visible thanks to the chakra holding it together, slammed into Orochimaru's chest accompanied by Naruto's cry of, "Fuuton: Renkuudan!" Though it only briefly staggered him, Sakura could see the surprise on his face as her teammate, along with Shino and Kiba, stepped forward. Perched on Kiba's shoulder, Akamaru glowed faintly red with built-up chakra—the effect of a soldier pill, Sakura assumed—and bared his teeth in a snarl.

"You're as stubborn as your father," Orochimaru said dismissively, regaining his composure. "Unfortunately for you, without his skills, it seems the Kazama line will end here."

When he stepped forward to attack, though, he froze in mid-stride. Sakura wondered if it was yet another game on his part, but the cause was revealed when the bushes behind her parted and Ino, along with three older Leaf genin, walked out. Chouji and Shikamaru appeared behind Naruto a few moments later, apparently having split off from the others to form a second point of attack. Though she was impossibly glad to see them, she also felt like yelling at them to run away, as Shikamaru was sweating with the effort required to hold Orochimaru in place and couldn't last much longer. Then Ino formed a series of hand seals before collapsing to the ground, and she knew what their plan was.

To Sakura's astonishment, Orochimaru began to laugh, even as two of the genin with Ino stepped forward while the third remained behind to guard her body. Moments later, Sakura inwardly rejoiced at the abrupt cessation of his laughter, which, along with the slack expression on his face, was a clear sign that Ino had successfully taken over his body.

Before any of the other genin could approach him to restrain him, however, the expression on his face shifted to one of sheer horror, and he began to tremble as much as Shikamaru's shadow bindings allowed. With a piercing wail that sounded like it was ripped from the throat of a dying animal, he flung his head back, and on the ground behind Sakura, Ino's body first twitched, then convulsed spasmodically. As Orochimaru fell silent, Ino's back arched upwards, her face set in a rictus of agony.

"Amusing," the Snake Sannin—very obviously back in control of his own body—stated as he casually broke free of Shikamaru's binding technique, causing the genin to stumble backwards and give a brief, pained cry. "You begin to tire me, though. Consider my offers well, young Uchiha and Hyuuga."

Without even a hint of warning, he vanished, leaving the assembled genin staring at nothing more than a patch of empty air. As Sakura glanced back and forth between where he had stood a moment earlier and Ino, who was now lying on the ground, curled into a tight ball with her face pressed between her knees, she saw the giant snake which had been blocking the path towards the tower begin to slither rapidly forwards.

"Look out!" she yelled, even as her mind raced to think of a way to disable or kill a snake capable of swallowing any of them whole. True to their instincts and training, the others did not turn to see what she was talking about but instead dove out of the way, just before it slammed straight into the middle of the group.

Where are the ANBU? Sakura frantically wondered. Kakashi-sensei promised us we wouldn't be alone out here. Orochimaru might have decided to let them live, for whatever reason, but it seemed he had no qualms about allowing his pet to kill them if it could. More than anything, she wished she could help her friends, and for what had to be the hundredth time she cursed the ineptitude that had led to her leg injury.

There was something else she could do, though, she realized. She might not be able to help her teammates or the other genin—now attacking the snake more confidently as they started to grow accustomed to its movements—but she could at least check on Ino. Whatever Orochimaru had done to her, it seemed to have hurt her badly.

I said I wouldn't let anything happen to her, but it looks like I'm a failure at that too, Sakura thought. Never mind that there was no possible way she could have prevented whatever had happened; logic was no comfort next to the sight of her best friend lying on the ground. The older genin kneeling next to Ino appeared to be trying to uncurl her from the fetal position she had assumed, presumably in order to better be able to judge her condition.

Something about the situation was nagging at Sakura, though, and while her danger sense had already failed her once today, she knew not to ignore it. Taking a closer look at the genin, she saw he was reaching for something strapped to his leg—perhaps a medical kit, she thought, but her unease grew even stronger at the sight. The cause was revealed moments later when he pulled out a black-coated knife, slightly larger than a standard kunai, and grabbed a handful of Ino's hair to yank her head roughly back and expose her throat.

There was no time to call to one of the others for help, or even to consider what to do. Sakura had seconds at most to act, and if she failed, Ino would be dead. She would not—could not—let that happen, yet she was still nearly halfway across the small clearing from them. Her only chance lay in something she had theorized about following her team's mission to the borderlands, but it was something she had never actually tried or even fully thought through the details of how it might work.

She had never forgotten what the Hokage had said about the Wind Engraving technique he had taught her; 'As long as the pattern is clear enough and your will strong enough,' he had told her, she would be able to form her chakra into anything she could imagine. Now, with raw, desperate need fueling her will and a brutally simple pattern etched across her mind's eye, she prayed he was correct. The technique had not been designed for the use she intended to make of it, not even remotely, but she would force it to work or die trying.

"Fuuton: Fuuinkoku no Jutsu!" she cried out, even as the knife began to descend towards Ino's throat. A single guiding line of chakra—she might not be able to see it, but she knew it was there; she refused to consider any other possibility—linked her clasped hands with the traitorous genin's chest, and, gathering every last bit of her chakra, she forced it into the technique. Emptying her reserves so completely would bring her to the edge of death, but that didn't matter, not if it saved Ino.

As her vision blurred and darkened, Sakura began to collapse, but not before she saw the older genin reel backwards and away from Ino, his knife falling from his hand. He fell heavily to the ground and showed no signs of getting up again, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief at the sight. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of several powerful techniques being used, and she assumed her other friends had managed to kill Orochimaru's summoned snake.

They're all safe now, she managed to think, a smile forming on her lips even as her consciousness fled.

- - -

Ino was unsure if she would ever fully remember what had happened following her failed attempt to take over Orochimaru's body. In retrospect, it had been a monumentally foolish idea, but she could never have guessed the true extent of her mistake beforehand. Even now, as she ran nearly mindlessly with the others towards the tower at the center of the forest as fast as she could, she still felt filthy—so much so that part of her wondered if she would ever feel clean again.

There was nothing at all to which she could compare the experience. Normally, when she used her technique on someone, she simply assumed control of the person's body; his or her own mind was still there, and she could 'feel' it struggling to push her out, but there was no real contact between them other than that. Somehow Orochimaru had found a way to go beyond that, forcing an unending stream of vile, nauseating imagery into Ino's own mind—and the truly horrifying part of it was that in some way she knew they were his actual memories, not simple imaginings he had dreamed up to unbalance her.

Even that, though, paled in comparison to the sheer wrongness she had felt in the brief moment before he pushed her out of his body. The times she used her technique on Shino, with the thousands of insects living inside him, had been disconcerting enough, but they were nothing compared to what she had sensed from the Snake Sannin. If she didn't know he had once been an ordinary—albeit powerful—Leaf ninja, she would have wondered if he was even human, given the way her mind had reacted to his body.

"Are you okay, Ino-chan?"

Hinata's concerned voice intruded upon the darkness of Ino's thoughts, and she shook her head in an attempt to dispel the lingering remnants of what had happened. She wasn't okay, not yet, but she would be—thanks largely to one person.

"I'm…better," she said, not willing to lie to her friend. That was one skill she had never mastered. "How is Sakura-chan?"

Both girls looked worriedly back over their shoulders to where Chouji was carrying their unconscious friend. She seemed absurdly fragile in his arms, and as if that wasn't enough, Naruto had a troubled look on his face as he periodically checked her pulse.

Hinata frowned grimly, the expression seeming somehow out of place on her ordinarily serene face. "As long as her heart doesn't stop again, Naruto thinks she'll make it," she said. "At least until we get her out of here and to some real medics."

Heart…stop? Hinata continued to speak, but all Ino could focus on were those two words. She didn't remember anything like that, and the knowledge that she had been the cause, even if only indirectly, sent a sickening wave of guilt through her. She remembered virtually nothing of the minutes between when Orochimaru had ejected her from his body and when she had woken up to the rare sight of open concern on Shikamaru's face as he leaned over her—only fragmentary glimpses of the boy who was supposed to be guarding her leaning over her with a tanto visible in his hand, followed by Sakura looking at him and desperately shouting something.

The fact that she had woken up unharmed, her attacker lying several meters away from her with a ragged, fist-sized hole punched through his chest, was enough for her to figure out what must have happened. She had had no idea Sakura knew any attack ninjutsu that powerful, though—and, as it turned out, she didn't. Her friend—her selfless, brilliant, stupid best friend—had channeled nearly every single scrap of her chakra into what Naruto had identified as a short-range technique designed to carve wood or soft stone…and while the end result had been something capable of killing a person from a dozen meters away, the price had apparently nearly been Sakura's own life.

Don't do things like that, she thought, wishing there was some way to convey her words to Sakura's unconscious form. If you died because of me… She couldn't complete the thought, even in the privacy of her own mind. Quite honestly, she had no idea what she would do in a situation like that, and even the idea of finding out terrified her.

"We're near the tower," Hinata said absently, her attention clearly focused elsewhere. "In fact, I think I see the gates just ahead. And…yes, Kabuto-san is coming back, probably to tell the others."

Ino still wasn't sure what to make of the two older Leaf genin, given that their teammate had tried to kill her. They had seemed horrified by his action, and she had to admit that Kabuto in particular had been quite helpful ever since her team met up with theirs, but part of her couldn't quite manage to trust them. Shikamaru's suggestion that the one who had attacked her had done so because he was afraid she would be able to expose him as a traitor, based on whatever she had seen in Orochimaru's mind, made a certain amount of sense, and it notably did not rule out the possibility that the other two were Sound spies as well—just more cautious ones.

Ino almost had to laugh to herself at that idea, though. The Mind-Switch technique worked nothing like that, and she was sure her father would be interested in hearing how Orochimaru had been able to communicate directly with her while she was inhabiting his body. She probably would have been interested as well, if it had happened to someone else, but as it was she only hoped she would be able to forget what the sadistic missing-nin had shown her—and the sooner that happened, the better.

The sight of the tower complex's gates as the group of genin exited the trees was the best thing she had seen in ages, she thought. They had all made it past the second part of the exam, and even though she harbored no delusion that they had defeated Orochimaru—she had felt his satisfaction at how the brief skirmish had gone, like a taste of rancid oil lingering at the back of her mouth—they were truly safe for now.

- - -

Naruto desperately wanted to go check on Sakura, who had been taken away by a group of efficient-looking medic-nins almost before the three rookie teams had even entered the tower complex at the center of the training ground, and he could tell several of the others shared that desire. Unfortunately, he, along with the rest of the genin who had managed to make it through the forest, was currently stuck waiting in an empty room for someone to come and explain what was going on.

Looking around, he could see that he was far from the only one who was unhappy with that situation, and the expressions on some of their faces—especially Neji's team and the three Sand genin, all of whom had taken a completely different approach to the tower and consequently had no idea what had happened to the others—promised violence if no explanation was forthcoming. He himself just wanted to know what had happened to the ANBU squads that were supposed to come if Orochimaru attacked, even if he doubted he would learn anything about that now, or possibly ever.

"Good, you're all here," a Leaf jounin pronounced, walking in through the open double doors at the far end of the room. "You should be proud of yourselves; this is the first time in several years that we've had to hold a preliminary elimination round, but this year's candidates are clearly of excellent quality if so many of you have managed to make it this far."

Tell us something we don't know, Naruto thought cynically. I bet psycho snake-summoning freaks aren't usually part of the exams, either, so does that mean we're extra-good? He felt Hinata place a hand on his arm, then winced as she squeezed it tightly. Looking over at her, she seemed completely unaware of what she was doing—not surprising, given her distant, anxious expression.

"Elimination round?" one of the older Leaf genin—Kabuto's teammate, who still appeared somewhat dazed after the revelation that his other teammate had been a traitor—asked. "But…we've been fighting all day. What are we going to have to do now?"

The jounin turned to walk back through the large doors behind him, gesturing for the gathered genin to follow. "The final round of the exams consists of a series of single-elimination matches between the candidates who have made it this far," he said as they entered what appeared to be a small arena. "However, there are too many of you to take part in the main event this year, so we're going to hold one round now to eliminate half of you."

Naruto, who had been expecting something like this since the jounin's first words, simply shrugged. He was running low on energy—both chakra and in the traditional sense—but so was everyone else, with the apparent exception of the Sand team, so that wouldn't be much of a disadvantage. Straight sparring matches were his specialty in any event. Then something else occurred to him, but before he could open his mouth, Ino beat him to it.

"What about Sakura-chan?" his blonde friend asked loudly, cutting through the noise generated by the other genins' chatter. "She's not going to be in any shape to fight for a few days, probably."

"Haruno Sakura will not be participating, as she has already been eliminated," the jounin said, his mouth thinning into a tight line. "I believe Morino-san informed everyone of the consequences for killing someone during the course of the exams, did he not?"

Naruto felt his mouth fall open, and Hinata's hand dropped off of his arm as she took a step backward in astonishment. The other rookie Leaf genin—even, to his mild surprise, Kiba and Sasuke—appeared equally disbelieving, while Ino turned red-faced with anger. Naruto winced as he anticipated the upcoming explosion, but when it came, it wasn't what he had expected.

"She saved my life," Ino hissed into the sudden silence. "From a 'Leaf' genin, no less—except he obviously wasn't, was he?"

The jounin turned to look at her. "We have considered that," he said, a hint of threat evident in his voice. "If not, she would be in a cell right now, rather than simply barred from further competition in the exams."

Clenching her hands into tight fists, Ino turned and stormed away. "Maybe if you examiners had actually done your jobs, Sakura wouldn't have had to kill anyone, but now you're going to punish her for it?" she called back over her shoulder. "Fine, since it was my fault she had to do it, you can go ahead and eliminate me too!"

Chouji and Shikamaru both looked like they wanted to follow her, and Hinata actually started to, but Naruto pulled her back. Ordinarily he hated taking advantage of the admiration most ninja seemed to have for him, whether due to who his father had been or his own status as an up-and-coming 'genius,' but this was different; he knew they wouldn't start the fights without him, which made him the obvious choice to go after Ino and talk to her. He shared her anger at the jounin's decision, but he doubted Sakura would have wanted her to forfeit as well in some misguided show of solidarity.

He found her sitting curled up on a bench in the furthest corner of the anteroom where they had been waiting before entering the arena, staring down at her feet as though they were the most interesting things in the world. Her expression was not one he could remember ever seeing on her face before now, and he felt his own habitual smile slip as he sat down next to her. She didn't say anything at first, and for a moment he wondered if she would acknowledge his presence at all.

"Why, exactly, does everyone hate Sakura so much?" Ino asked after a while, causing his eyes to widen in surprise; that was definitely not what he had been expecting her to say. "Don't bother telling me you don't know, either. I saw you and Hinata in there, and you were surprised when that…that jounin said that, but not like the rest of us. I told her I wouldn't ask her about things she didn't want to tell me, but I never said anything about not asking you."

Naruto paled. When Ino was truly serious about something—which was about as often as he himself was, he admitted—she had a tendency to get what she wanted, if only out of pure stubbornness. The problem was, this time he absolutely could not tell her what she wanted to know, not without breaking that law Kakashi had told them about.

"I can't tell you," he said finally, after a long time spent considering what to say. He knew he wasn't the most gifted with words, and he didn't want to hurt Ino by explaining things poorly. "Even if I could, I wouldn't. It's something only Sakura really has the right to explain, and Hinata and I only know because of an accident. Just…trust her, okay?"

Ino gave him a very strange look, as though she doubted his sanity. "Of course I trust her," she said. "She's my best friend, and I'd be dead right now if she hadn't saved me."

"Isn't that enough, then?" Naruto asked, mentally crossing his fingers. He honestly wasn't sure what he would do if she kept asking; she had been his friend for a long time, and keeping things from her felt strange.

"Maybe it's not Sakura I'm starting to wonder if I should trust," Ino muttered, quietly enough that he doubted she had intended for him to be able to hear her. To his relief, though, she then smiled slightly at him and stood up, offering him a hand up as well.

"I guess we should go back in, huh?" she asked. "After I walked out, I realized Sakura probably wouldn't be very happy if I quit because of her. So instead, I'm going to win for her, assuming that arrogant, self-righteous ass of an examiner will still let me compete."

Naruto grinned at her as they walked back into the arena. That was much more like the Ino he knew, and he wouldn't be surprised if she found some way to do exactly as she said—though she would have to get past him to do it.

- - -

Author's Notes: So, no cursed seal--or seals...yet, at least. And that's all I'm going to say on that matter. Hopefully Orochimaru came across as as creepy, arrogant, and generally sinister as I intended. There's also the question of what happened to the ANBU who were supposed to capture Orochimaru if he showed up, but given his track record in canon, that one should be fairly easy to guess at. Preliminary fights will be next chapter, along with some other things.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Even if you didn't, though, I would welcome your comments.