Kabuto lay on a hospital bed a bit too far gone to reflect on the fact that Orochimaru was probably going to kill him for catching Pneumonia right before he was due to leave for some necessary intelligence gathering at the Chunin Exams. The rain hadn't let up while he was on the border, and neither had his cough or the fever that settled in to roost with the cough despite the number of remedies he'd ingested in an attempt to rid himself of both. His teammates had been forced to carry him back to the village, and now he was in the ICU, shaking, burning with fever, and barely able to breathe.

Being in no condition to worry about how or even if his team was going to get to Suna without him, Kabuto continued to breathe in and breathe out, struggling to make each breath not be his last while hospital staff nervously hovered over his bedside.

It was a couple days after Naruto had returned to Konoha from his latest mission. Feeling out of sorts about things, he had settled himself on the swing in the tree by the Academy as he usually did when he was feeling somewhat depressed. There were two things that were currently bugging him, his new teammates who seemed to be shutting him out now that they'd learned he was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, and the Chunin Exams which a number of Genin teams were already leaving for.

The rejection from his teammates after it was revealed that he had the Kyuubi inside of him had stung, but not nearly as much as it would have if he didn't have precious people who had seen him at his worst and still cared about him anyways. Suzume, Satoshi, and Kurosaki had seen him when he'd released a portion of the Kyuubi's Chakra, tore two people apart, and nearly tore them apart and they were still willing to associate with him when they weren't busy with missions of their own. If his current teammates wanted to cut him out of their lives without having witnessed anything even remotely close to that, it was their loss. Besides, it was just Sasuke the Jerk, and his biggest fangirl.

Another thing that stung was that despite the fact that his sensei had tried his best to keep his promise, he'd still not been able to participate in the Chunin Exams through no fault of his own. He'd been somewhat looking forward to them and the chance of promotion they represented despite what had happened to him and his team the last time he'd participated. He'd also been dreading them out of fear of what could happen to his new team which was even more inexperienced than the last one as well. As a result, despite the fact that it stung somewhat that he wasn't going, he felt both relieved and disappointed that he wouldn't be participating in the Exams this time which made him feel mixed up since he didn't think he should be feeling relieved that he wasn't going.

As he began to gently sway back and forth on the swing, he noticed Tetsuo-sensei approaching him with a wide smile on his face. Wondering what had his sensei so happy, he watched the man approach in apparent good cheer, and he greeted his sensei a little less sullenly than he would've a minute earlier when he reached him because he was more curious than depressed at that moment.

"Yakushi Kabuto is sick." Tetsuo-sensei said as he stood over him looking rather cheerful. "I managed to finagle a few things the moment I found out."

"You mean..." he started, almost not daring to hope. Kabuto's team was older than him, more experienced, and they had only not managed to make Chunin through a run of seriously bad luck. A big part of that bad luck was Kabuto who wouldn't be there to muck things up for them however he managed to do so every time considering this would've been lucky number seven for the young man if he hadn't fallen ill.

"You'd better hurry up and get packed. You're leaving for Suna in an hour." Tetsuo-sensei said. "Your team will be waiting for you by the Eastern Gate."

He leapt off of the swing with a whoop of joy as he realized that he wouldn't be missing another shot at promotion while Suzume and Satoshi continued on without him and started running to his apartment. He'd have to send Kabuto a thank you note and a get well present.

It never once occurred to him to tell Sasuke and Sakura the good news.

Akado Yoroi, Tsurugi Misumi, and their sensei who'd been a student of Orochimaru's alongside Anko stood at the Eastern Gate nervously awaiting the arrival of their final member. They'd nearly not gone since they were sans Kabuto, but the Uzumaki's sensei who was desperate to see his student promoted had done an end run around them and gone straight to the Hokage. So now, in less than an hour they would be departing with a very serious risk to their cover in their midst since you just didn't say no to the Hokage.

"The kid isn't a complete blockhead." Yoroi said. "He's going to notice something's up, and we can't Genjutsu him for the entire trip."

"If he's going to know something's up, why don't we make him think it's something else that would allow us to be secretive without being suspicious?" Misumi said.

"What could possibly...? You're not suggesting..." the team's Jounin commander said as he suddenly got what Misumi was hinting at.

"We'll have to take a few for the team, but if the brat's convinced that we're just one of those teams that take "Teamwork" to a whole new level..." Misumi replied.

"You do realize that Kabuto's going to kill us for this when he gets better, right?" Yoroi said.

"Come on," Misumi replied. "If Kabuto were all that concerned about his reputation, he wouldn't have taken the Chunin Exams six times and made himself look like the next Eternal Genin."

The Uzumaki caught Neji's eye as he made his way to his team's training grounds following that day's remedial lessons at the Academy. Despite the fact that he'd briefly been in his class before he'd transferred over to the class that was a year below his prior to graduating a year prior to him, and the reputation that preceded him, Neji didn't really know the Uzumaki boy from a hole in the wall and could've continued not noticing him forever if that giant fruit basket that was balanced on the boy's blond head hadn't caught his eye.

"...And, I'm going to trust you to not let Satoshi into my apartment unsupervised. I'm sorry I couldn't play Ninja with you today as planned, but things kinda happened last-minute and if I don't get going, I'll be really late." the Uzumaki boy said as he gave the Honorable Grandson a set of keys and what were obviously last-minute instructions.

Deciding that it was none of his business, he continued on his way to his team meeting. If he were Lee, he might've asked about the fruit basket, but he wasn't, so he didn't.

The first thing Kabuto noticed when his mind regained some semblance of coherence was the massive fruit basket by his bed. At first, he thought he might've been hallucinating when he caught sight of it, but after closing his eyes a couple of times and opening them again to find a giant slightly blurry fruit basket full of hothouse fruits which had been grown out of season, he realized it was real. The nurse who'd been sitting there watching him to make sure he didn't die on her when she turned around to do some paperwork smiled when she noticed the direction he was looking in.

"It was rather sweet of him, even if you can't eat them just yet." the nurse said. "It came with a card though."

Somewhat bewildered by the fact that someone had sent him a card and a fruit basket which nobody had done for him before, Kabuto hastily gave something that could be construed as assent when the nurse asked if he wanted her to read the card.

"Dear Kabuto," the nurse read. "Thanks for opening a spot on your team for me. Sorry it had to happen in such a sucky manner though. Uzumaki Naruto."

His fever slowed mind took a long time to process this strange message from the Kyuubi Jinchuriki and exactly what it meant. Then, it hit him. It hit him like a ton of brick masonry which had tumbled off of a previously stable building without warning, catching him by surprise.

The only thing Kabuto could think as he laid back and the implications of the card began to fully blossom in his mind as myriad scenarios played nightmarishly before his eyes was SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!.

That night, Kabuto's feverish nightmares were of a small blonde boy turning into a monster and destroying Everything.

Author's Note: No, I didn't just pull this out of my ass. I made a throwaway line in Team 7 to cover a miscalculation on my part, and as I was plotting out this story and its eventual sequel (Never try to stiff the Akatsuki by the way) I came across the line about Kabuto being sick and went "Wait a minute..."