Orochimaru wasn't entirely certain what happened. He'd gone into the forest as planned, located Sasuke whom he'd wished to test after learning that the boy had changed a great deal lately and therefore might not meet expectations later when he came to retrieve him, and attacked as planned. What hadn't gone to plan however was the outcome of the attack as Jiraiya, little Kakashi, and Little Anko, and the surviving Mokuton test subject had leapt out of the bushes and attacked him the instant he'd attacked the Uchiha boy and his team.
When he'd attacked Sasuke, everyone had jumped on him at once with their signature attacks, and he'd barely managed to escape with his life after taking a Rasengan and a Chidori when he had been bound in the tree created by the successful result of one of his experiments. If he hadn't been able to slip out of his own skin, he would quite likely be dead right now.
Out of the group that had ambushed him, he'd only been half expecting Anko to attack him while he was in the forest, and that was because, since he'd come so close to her earlier, he knew that she couldn't fail to notice he was there, and would eventually be coming for him in search of revenge. Being attacked by Jiraiya who had, to all appearances, finally decided to retire and settle down in Konoha, where he was playing house with little Minato's son, had been unanticipated and unexpected but not outside of the realm of possibility. Little Kakashi and Whasshisname had most likely either been recruited by either Anko or Jiraiya.
Apparently, someone had found the corpse he'd left behind and put two and two together. He didn't know how but, they had divined his true target this evening, and had acted accordingly. While Jiraiya was usually rather quick to figure things out, he wasn't usually that quick, which made his preset this ambush all the more unexpected.
Perhaps, considering how quickly they'd acted, they hadn't figured out his plans. If he were still loyal to Konoha, the first thing he would do if he discovered that it was possible that an S-Class missing nin might be running loose in the village was to make sure that the Kyuubi Jinchuriki was secure. The fact that those who were reportedly closest to the Jinchuriki had been the ones to attack supported this theory.
It quite possibly had just been his bad luck that the Uchiha boy was on the same Genin team as Konoha's Jinchuriki. He would think more on that later however since he was currently too busy running flat out through the forest with Jiraiya, Kakashi, his test subject, and Anko on his ass out for his blood.
All too soon, he found himself regretting the fact that he'd become so focused on his escape despite the fact that he'd managed to get out of sight of his pursuers because, he didn't notice Gaara blocking his path until he'd almost tripped over the homicidal boy who was holding what looked like a macrame owl for some strange reason. He didn't like the look he saw in the boy's eyes as he started to go around him. He really didn't' like the look in the boy's eyes, or the demented smile on his face. He most definitely didn't like the look in the boy's eyes, the demented grin on the boy's face, or the fact that a bunch of sand was now coming up behind him...
Despite being the lowest ranking, and therefore ostensibly weakest member of the group that was pursuing Orochimaru through the forest, Anko had reached the clearing that the Sannin had disappeared into first. Orochimaru was nowhere to be found however. Instead, there was a red-haired Genin from Suna who was playing around with a ball of sand that his two teammates were staring at in horror.
"He shoots, and he scores!" the red haired Genin yelled as he used his Chakra to toss the sand ball into a tree.
Instead of asking the child if he'd seen Orochimaru as she had planned, she had found that somewhere between her brain and her mouth the question had become "What are you doing?"
"Playing basketball with this pale long-haired weirdo that I found." the red haired Genin replied innocently.
"Where is he?" she yelled as her male companions finally entered the clearing.
Both of the red haired Genin's teammates pointed at the ball of sand that the boy was bouncing off of another tree.
Gaara sighed as his entertainment - who was quite amazingly still alive if rather broken - was taken away and put under a number of Chakra suppression seals amongst other things after receiving a swift kick in the balls from each of the Jounin who had come to retrieve him. While he had been waiting to get his revenge on Orochimaru more for the Suna nin that had been killed in the invasion than for his father whom he'd felt obligated to get revenge for as a member of his family rather than out of any particular desire to do so, he'd finished his macrame owl. After a while, with nothing else to do, he'd gotten bored again, and without paperwork to fill the empty hours by turning them into a torturous hell, he'd started getting antsy.
When Orochimaru had finally made his appearance and escaped the Konoha ninjas' attack which had looked more like a scene out of a comedy with everyone jumping out of the bushes at once to fight him, it had almost been a relief. The man had apparently taken much more damage in that funny looking attack than he'd initially thought because, he had rather easily managed to capture him in his sand. After he'd compacted both sand and man-shaped serpent into a ball, he found he needed something else to do, so...
He had a feeling that what had freaked Kankuro and Temari out about his game of Orochiball so badly was the fact that he had been behaving somewhat "out of character" rather than the viciousness and brutality of his actions. This was a side of him that almost nobody ever saw because, they were usually asleep when it came out. During his youth, he'd had to fill his empty hours with something, and killing assassins only took a second or two...
"You do realize that your team is going to kill you." Jiraiya said to Kakashi as he jostled his end of the stretcher he and the other man were carrying in order to aggravate his former teammate's injuries.
Now that the rather anticlimactic fight was over, he wasn't feeling as guilty and apprehensive as he had been, and was starting to remember more of the bad times with Orochimaru. It wasn't like causing his former teammate who'd betrayed him, Tsunade, and Hiruzen-sensei an extra bit of pain was going to kill him...
"Right now, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter." Kakashi replied. "My students are safe, and there's no chance in Hell that the Uchiha will join that snake now. Besides, it's not like I destroyed their only chance for advancement, they can take the Exams again in six months."
"Yeah but, with two pranksters on your team?" he replied. "I'd be triple checking everything I own for the next several years if I were you. Especially considering the fact that one of the Pranksters is Naruto and the other is his protegee. I made the mistake of getting on Naruto's bad side once during our training trip, and let me tell you, it was not fun."
"Fortunately in my timeline, the Prank Lord was dead and buried by the time I was put on the team." Tenzo said.
"If you only knew how much effort that took..." he moaned as he remembered waking up to a booby trapped tent or room on numerous occasions before he finally snapped and put the boy through the training routine from hell.
"Well, that was..." Naruto said as Kakashi, Jiraiya, and Tenzo carried off the broken and bloody body of Orochimaru.
"Rather anticlimactic." Sasuke finished.
He was glad that was over, and was feeling somewhat relieved since he'd been rescued from a fate that was probably worse than death. It wasn't just the whole curse seal and attempted body takeover thing that he feared. While he was willing to wear the ridiculous tracksuit since it actually served a purpose, he'd seen a sketch of what Orochimaru had him wearing in three years, and...He suppressed a shudder as he pictured the open fronted shirt, and purple assbow that apparently matched the one belonging to Orochimaru. The fangirls were bad enough now. He could only imagine what they'd be like if he wandered around with his shirt half-off. They'd probably try to rape him in public or something.
"I'm sorry to tell you guys this but, you may as well follow me to the gate when I go make my report to the Hokage." the Proctor Mitarashi Anko said as Kakashi, Jiraiya and Tenzo disappeared into the distance.
"What? Why?" Naruto asked.
"Since your Sensei entered the training grounds during the exam, your team was disqualified. Unfortunately, I cannot make exceptions for the fact that he had entered the forest to deal with an S-Class missing nin who had infiltrated the Exam. Precedent was set two decades ago after the incident in the Suna Winter Exams." the Proctor replied.
"Fuck." Naruto moaned.
He knew exactly how the other boy felt, and he had a feeling that Sakura did too since she hadn't got on the Uzumaki for swearing.
He had thought of resisting when the Proctor ushered them out of the forest but, there was no point in doing so. Thanks to Kakashi, his team had failed. There would be no becoming a Chunin on his first try just like Itachi. Because of that, he would be making his displeasure with his Sensei known as soon as he was able to. Perhaps some poisonous snakes in the man's bed would do the trick. That, and scorpions in his sandals, and a vicious rabid attack dog in his closet, and...
Kankuro learned a little bit of what it felt like to be Gaara when he had spent the entire night following the capture of Orochimaru wide awake watching his younger brother and praying that he didn't decide to play "basketball" with him since his previous ball had been taken away from him. He survived the night with his mind and body intact however, and had finally solved the mystery of the "Clothes fairy" who had been repairing his and Temari's clothing in the night and leaving new clothes at the ends of their beds on occasion.
While he had been watching, Gaara had pulled a dress pattern and several yards of purple material that he'd seen him purchase at the market the day before out of a storage scroll. His brother then spent the rest of the night cutting out the pattern and sewing it together to create said dress after measuring Temari several times because he didn't get the same measurement each time since his sister was busy quaking in fear. By the time the sun finally rose, the dress that Gaara had decided to make was halfway finished.
After the sun rose, Gaara put the half-completed dress away and got them a scroll by using his sand to pick up a team from Mist and shaking them until their scroll hit the ground, and they made their way to the tower. By the time they reached the tower, both Kankuro and Temari were completely exhausted by the ordeal they had been forced to go through yet unable to sleep while Gaara remained nearby. That mixture of exhaustion and sleeplessness nearly drove Kankuro spare by the time the sun had set once more.
Edited 11-4-12