I'm updating again. I'm so FING bored! Thanks for the reviews, by the way.

Sakura changed Sasuke's wet towel. Both her teammates lay on their backs underneath a tree. Sakura just gazed down worriedly at her teammates. Naruto seemed to be doing better, and the strange seal on his neck was fading in and out. 'Thank Kami-sama for Kyuubi.' Sakura ignored the irony of her own statement as she switched her focus.

'Sasuke-kun.' Sasuke was not faring nearly as well as the blond. He was twitching slightly, his breathing was irregular and he had a horrible fever. Sakura sighed. None of her healing jutsu did anything. How she wished she had Naruto's skill with seals. Sakura absent-mindedly reached into her equipment pouch and popped a special soldier pill into her mouth. Sakura whirled on a sudden noise, her fists and a kunai at the ready.

"Squeak?" Sakura sweat dropped.

'A squirrel?' The small rodent's nose twitched before he began to run head long towards Sakura. Her eyes widened in fright and she threw her kunai, scaring the squirrel off. Sakura let a sigh of relief escape her lips before turning back to her teammates.

"You think she saw the explosive note?" The spiky haired Oto genin asked.

"No," the bandaged one replied. "There is something else." The spiky haired genin shrugged and smirked.

"Hey! Mind waking Sasuke up for us? We want to fight him!" Sakura whipped her head around to face the three Oto genin. If the Oto ninja had been expecting her to whimper or cry, they were displeased. Sakura slowly stood to her feet and cracked her green-clad knuckles.

"I was hoping for a way to relieve all this stress," she said. "And I'll just beat any information you might have about Orochimaru right out of you." The three Oto ninja looked shocked that she knew their lord's name and they didn't have much time to recover from it. Sakura charged them, her fist drawn back. Zaku smirked and quickly performed some hand seals.

"Zankuuha (Decapitating Air Wave)!" Sakura had crouched down as soon as Zaku had begun his seals, and she launched herself into the air, above the air blasts. "Idiot, now you can't dodge! Zankuuha!" Sakura had to resist her urge to shake her head and smirk as the air blasts blew apart a log.

"You're not very smart, are you?" Zaku didn't have time to reply as a fist made contact with his cheek. He soared through the ground and into a tree, but Sakura didn't' stop at that. With two quick movements, she struck both of the other Oto genin and sent them flying in two different directions. "Is that all you've got? You wouldn't last a second against Sasuke-kun."

To say Ino was shocked as she watched he former friend fight was an understatement. Like saying that it tingles when you're dipped in lava. "Who's their sensei?" Shikamaru asked, breaking Ino away from her memories. Ino clenched her fists. How? How had Sakura gotten so strong and garnered Sasuke's attention? Of course Ino didn't see a correlation between the two, even though there was more to it than that.

"Should we help?"

"What?" Ino turned to Shikamaru.

"You used to be friends, didn't you? Should we help?" Ino turned back to the fight, and she noticed almost regrettably that Sakura didn't need any help.

With several well-placed blows and multiple substitutions Sakura finally gathered the beaten and bruised Oto ninja into one spot. "And now for the coup de grace." She launched a kunai, missing the Oto genin by a mile. Dosu was the first to figure it out.

"Dammit!" he cursed as a giant log came flying at them. "You'll have to do better than that!" He performed his own hand seals and blew the log away with his arm gadget.

"Who said that was it?" Sakura was in between all three of them. The Sakura who had set the trap off smiled before poofing out of existence.

'A clone? We've been fighting a clone since she used Kwarimi the first time?'

"I will save you, Sakura-san!" The sudden shout drew everyone's attention to a spinning green thing. He knocked the Oto genin away from her like flies, but Sakura had to resist punching the bowl-cut weirdo.

'He was just trying to help,' Sakura mentally chanted as she tried to keep a hold on her fist. She spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm fine, Lee. I put myself in between them so I could finish them off." It was then that Lee noticed that the Oto genin were heavily injured whereas Sakura was untouched. A very awkward silence ensued, and eventually ended when Lee fell to his knees and grabbed Sakura's leg.

"I'm so sorry!" He was sobbing on her dreave. "I was only trying to help you!" As fast as he had began crying, he was finished and standing several feet in front of her. Sakura kept looking down from her leg to where he was now.

'How'd he do that?'

"I shall make up for my most unyouthful error by finishing them for you! If I fail I will do one thousand laps around the forest! Rest your pretty head, my spring time blossom!" Sakura's sweat drop was starting to throw her off balance with its sheer enormity. Once the sweat drop finally faded, Sakura dashed back to her teammates to check up on them.

To say that the Oto genin were confused would be a bit of an understatement. Like saying that Naruto shouldn't be allowed to consume caffeine. Zaku was the first out of their group stupor. With a short growl, Zaku readied his jutsu. "Zankuu-!" Lee was gone in a blur before Zaku even finished saying the attack. It only took one strike from Lee to push Zaku past that thin line into unconsciousness. Dosu swung a punch at the very strange Konoha genin, but he had forgotten the damage Sakura had caused his gadget earlier. The backlash stunned both him and Kin, leaving them all too vulnerable. Lee blinked as he wondered what just happened, but decided to go with it.

"Konoha Senpuu!" He slammed both genin into trees, finishing them off. Once he was sure they were out, he was by Sakura's side almost instantaneously, startling the kunoichi.

"Sorry, Lee-san," she apologized as she withdrew her fist from his face.

"I am okay, Sakura-san," he replied, a little woozy. "I am the Handsome Green Beast of Konoha!" He fell on his butt and stared at the sky. " Look, stars…" Sakura placed her hands on Lee's head, and a faint glow began to emanate from them.

"Feeling better?" she asked as she withdrew her hands. Lee nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes, Sakura-san! I feel as if I could out run Kami-sama himself!" Sakura's eye twitched as she forced a smile.

"Oh…um, good for you."

"Lee, what's going on?" Neji and Tenten descended from the trees. Lee stood back up and faced his teammate.

"I was protecting Sakura-san!" Neji had to resist hitting himself.

"Lee, she is our enemy in these exams." Lee looked mortified at the very thought.

"She is not my enemy! She is my springtime blossom of youth and beauty and-"

"We get it, Lee," Neji interrupted him. Neji changed his pale gaze to Sakura. "Oh well. Fighting one weak kunoichi is below the honor of a Hyuuga, anyway." Sakura's fist twitched at the 'weak' comment, but she kept quiet. Lee, however, did not.

"She is not weak! When I got here, she was exploding with youth and defeating her three foes!" Neji raised his eyebrow. He knew Lee wasn't lying, because quite frankly he didn't think Lee was smart enough to lie.

"Then perhaps her scroll is worth taking." Lee's jaw dropped as he realized his error.

"Eh…No! Three on one is wrong!"

"I suppose you have a point. It is still below me to fight a weakened adversary. Come one, Lee." With that Neji disappeared back into the treetops. Lee flashed his ridiculously shiny teeth at Sakura before vanishing into the canopy as well. Tenten spoke to Sakura before leaving as well.

"Boys, what'll you do?" Sakura smiled back at the retreating kunoichi and nodded.

"I'd appreciated your help, Sakura-chan." Naruto's strained voice made Sakura jumped.

"Naruto, are you-" she stopped as she noticed her blond teammate hovering above Sasuke, using his navy chakra to contain some sort of dark purple chakra emanating from Sasuke's body. "What's going on?"

"Hold him down so I can stop this seal from doing whatever the Hell its doing!" Sakura nodded and complied, as it wasn't often her teammate took a harsh tone with her or anyone for that matter. She grabbed the slightly struggling Uchiha by the arms and held him down, allowing Naruto to move over to his neck. Naruto pricked his pointer finger on his canine and smeared the blood around the Cursed Seal in a circle. He then smeared the blood across his thumb and middle finger as well.

"Sangyo Fuuin no Bijuu (Three-part Seal of the Tailed Beasts)!" Naruto slammed his three blood fingers on each of the dots of the Cursed Seal. The purple chakra died down and Sasuke's body stopped moving. There was a moment of deep breaths before Sasuke's eyes blinked open.

"What happened?" Sakura nearly cried with relief and encased Sasuke in a bone-crushing hug. "Hurgh!" Naruto burst out in laughter and was rolling across the floor clutching his sides by the time Sasuke pried himself free. Once Naruto finally stopped laughing and Sasuke caught his breath, the seriousness returned.

"What'd that psycho do to us?" Sasuke touched the back of his neck tentatively, and felt Naruto's dried blood. "You sealed it off? What about yours?"

"Thing's a virus seal of the hook variety. Basically, I overpowered it and over willed it. Now let me try something." Naruto closed his eyes, and slowly his navy chakra surrounded him and took the shape of a fox with one tail around his body. He only held it for a moment, long enough for both his teammates to gasp, before he dispelled the chakra. His grin could have out shined the sun. "Whatever it was, beating it got me the first tail." Naruto did his victory dance. "Chuunin rank here I come!" Sasuke smirked.

"Well, congrats to you, dobe. Now why didn't you get rid of mine?" Naruto stopped dancing.

"I told you, it's a hook seal." Both his teammates stared blankly at him, and Naruto was reminded that this was the one category where he wasn't the idiot. "How to explain this…well, hook seals are seals that are bound in more than just your chakra. They also bite into something else. It can be anything, though judging by the chakra you were emitting, it probably bit into the whole grudge and emo thing you've got. Even I can't get rid of those yet." Sasuke ignored the emo comment; he was too busy remembering the dream the seal had given him.

"About a month ago that thing would've overpowered me." Naruto nodded with his best sage expression on. Any less serious a discussion and it would have made even Sasuke laugh.

"Can't you be serious for more than one minute, Naruto?" Sakura scolded her teammate. "I swear, sometimes I think Kyuubi is making you more childish!"

"Fur ball-san says, 'Up yours'." Naruto paused. "He also says, 'Up yours too, kit' and 'Aw Hell, while I'm at it, up yours too, Uchiha. You'll probably deserve it sooner or later'." Sakura started giggling, but Sasuke stood up.

"Enough silliness for now. I presume you took care of these guys Sakura?" Sasuke jerked his head at the still downed Oto genin. Sakura nodded slightly, but also had a sweat drop just from the memories.

"I'll tell you guys about it on the way to the tower."

"Yeah, then we can have Himaru-sensei get rid of that thing for good!" Team 7 shot back into the canopy. A few minutes passed before Ino and her team came slowly out of the bushes.

"Should we take the Oto genin's scroll?" Shikamaru asked. "It'd save us a lot of trouble."

Team 7 had assumed fighting stances before Kabuto even came out in the open. "Relax," he said, waving his hands and smiling. "I'm not here to fight. I just got separated from my team." Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the older genin.

"If you're not here to fight, then we have no quarrel. Naruto, get some pants on, we're going." Naruto shrugged and went to the riverside to retrieve his outer clothes. It sure was easier to take the bandages off then to put them back on.

"Don't suppose you'd like to travel together to the tower, then?" Sasuke raised his eyebrow at the other genin. Kabuto didn't give off the air of a coward.

"I suppose we owe you for the information earlier. You can come, but first answer me this." Kabuto nodded. "Why have you been following us?" A half-sigh, half-chuckle escaped Kabuto's lips.

"Just curious."

"He's telling the truth," Naruto confirmed as he pulled his orange shirt over his head. Sasuke gave the barest of nods before vanishing back into the branches. The rest of Team 7 followed his lead and kept a brisk pace, and every step they took confirmed Sasuke's theory.

'What's Kabuto hiding?'

What'd you think? Did anyone see my foreshadowing in this chapter? Bet you didn't expect Naruto's little twist on the Cursed Seal! Well, enough yapping. Please read and review! Flamers will be throwing into my den of dragons, and I don't even want to think about that, so just don't. Constructive criticism, however, is welcome.