Somehow, Sasuke was not surprised to find that they were going to be completing the second stage inside the Forest of Death. Sensei really was simultaneously the best and the worst. Training Ground 44 was an ass and a half, but at least Team 7 had a passing familiarity with the hazards already.

"You will each be given a scroll; yin, yang, or wuji. You need all three scrolls to pass to the finals. How you get them is your own business. You'll all need to sign these death waivers before entering the Forest; Konoha won't be held responsible for what happens to you inside."

There had been a clause like that in their applications; having them sign another waiver was just a fear tactic, and not a very creative one at that. Well, look underneath the underneath and all that, psychological warfare was a standard tactic for shinobi. Sasuke went back to watching the other Genin, trusting his teammates to pay attention to the proctors while he made sure none of the competition got any ideas about taking them out early.

When their turn came Naruto took the scroll and tucked it into the pouch of his orange jacket. It wouldn't be stolen from a storage seal built into his clothes, that was for sure. Once all of the assembled Genin teams had been similarly equipped they were all led to different entry points around the Forest before being let inside the fence by the Chunin Proctors.

Immediately he turned to his teammates.

"Plan?"

Naruto was nominally in charge, not having had a chance to lead a mission before the exams. The blond scanned the somewhat familiar deep purple shadows of the Forest thoughtfully for a second before replying.

"I think we should head straight for the tower. We might be able to ambush another team on the way; if so, great, if not then we'll try and get a full set of scrolls from another team coming to turn them in. Everyone that finishes should already be a little tired, so they'd be safer targets than trying to find another pair of teams to fight, especially since we wouldn't even know if they had the right scrolls."

Sakura hummed and nodded in agreement.

"What scroll did we get?"

"Yin."

The white banded scroll twirled around Naruto's fingers for a second before disappearing back into his pocket. Sasuke grunted an affirmative as well.

"Clone perimeter?"

The foxy Genin gave him a wide smile in return.

"You know it."

They had only been moving for about ten minutes when something prickled at the edge of his awareness. Naruto must have felt it too, because he waved a hand to call a halt to their progress.

"Sorry guys, I gotta take a leak. Gimme a second."

He tracked his teammate as the boy disappeared into the underbrush, noting the single finger held out to the side when the boy waved. Only one enemy. This shouldn't be hard.

Perhaps 30 seconds had passed before someone walked out of the bushes. They looked like Naruto, but Sasuke's nascent chakra sensing wasn't twigging onto the same feeling of banked furnace warmth that the blond usually generated.

His Sharingan activated, and he locked onto the eyes of the surprised Naruto imitator, planting a small genjutsu as he inspected the fake. A simple transformation technique. Unimpressive.

It was Sakura who took down the interloper however, a causal step forward turning into a sweeping kick which transitioned fluidly into a submission hold with the bladed edge of a fan held under the imposter's throat. The Henge dispelled with a puff of chakra smoke to reveal a sweating Rain Genin.

Naruto emerged from the bushes a moment later, bits of rope falling off his arms as he cracked his back.

"Oh good, I knew you could handle it. Hi there Rain-san!"

Sasuke moved to stand behind his teammate as the blond dropped into a crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet and sharp smile on full force. Sakura adjusted the angle of her fan slightly to force the Rain-nin to keep his eyes locked on the Uchiha's Sharingan, and Sasuke started to layer the basic Hypnosis illusion over and over as Naruto spoke.

"You were pretty clever to think up a plan like that. Probably hoping to figure out who had the scroll, right? I know that's what I would do, and you look like a pretty clever guy, you know? Such a clever little ninja, to try and scout out the competition… So many scrolls to keep track of as well, one two three, and who knows where they all are? Where is that pesky scroll anyway, do you remember? Who was it that had it; it wasn't you, was it?"

The foreign ninja's eyes were starting to glaze over as the genjutsu settled in, and he shook his head slowly as Naruto asked his questions.

"Of course not, wouldn't want to put it in harm's way, a clever guy like you, no, you'd leave the scroll with your team, wouldn't you? Safer that way, and you can always go back and get it later, right? But, where was your team, do you remember? They need you to come back now that you've got the scroll. You did it! Good job, well done, now you just need to bring the scroll back to them, right? Where are they, can you tell me? We'll help you back."

The captive Genin twitched slightly, and a brief expression of confusion passed over the part of his face visible above the rebreather. Naruto tutted gently and smoothed away the worry with a hand through the Rain-nin's hair, giving Sasuke a glance at the momentary weakening of the genjutsu. The raven frowned and pushed a little more chakra into it, weaving additional layers of compulsion and compliance.

"No, hey, it's okay, it's okay, don't worry, you're doing fine. Everything is going to be alright, so don't you worry about a thing, okay? We'll take care of everything, we'll help you get the scroll back to your team, you just need to tell us where they are, alright?"

The faint twitches subsided and the Rain Genin spoke in a slow, croaking voice.

"...three miles… east… fallen log…"

Naruto smiled again, knife-sharp and satisfied as he pulled up from the squat. Sasuke's eye contact was broken for a second, and the enemy Genin jerked, slightly, once.

Sakura must have been feeling a little more on edge than she let on, because that small flinch was enough to spook her into slitting the prisoner's throat, releasing a veritable torrent of red which swiftly turned the ground to a syrupy mud. The pink haired girl gave a soft sound of distressed disgust as she hopped back a few steps, keeping her body away from the blood, an action mirrored by the rest of the team a moment later. You never know when someone might have boobytrapped their own body.

Naruto frowned, face pinching into a dispirited and slightly nauseous line as he looked away from the body.

"I was going to bring him with us. We could have used him as a hostage."

Sasuke grimaced and Sakura simply shifted uneasily and muttered a soft apology, already trying to distract herself from the mess by preparing to move out. Their blond teammate simply glanced back at the corpse a final time with an unhappily somber twist to his expression before making a clone to search the pockets. It was unlikely that the other ninja had been lying, but not impossible, and it would be a dumb mistake to lose a scroll simply because they were squeamish.

. . .

A/N: Yeah, Team 7 have not yet been sculpted into perfect assassins, and the little Rain genin wasn't even really a threat, if everything had gone according to plan they probably would have tied them up, broken a couple fingers, and left them behind. You need fingers for handsigns, so it would take the rain team out of the competition without killing them. In theory. But shit happens.

This block didn't split well, so this chapter is pretty short while the next is quite long. It'll be up in a sec, no worries.