Naruto fought the urge to scratch his cheek. The cut from earlier, when that crazy…lady threw a kunai at him, itched like hell. It was shallow, but still. Now he was injured in the Forest of Death. That jonin lady said there were all kinds of wild animals they'd have to avoid, or fight, or whatever; how many could smell blood?

Oh wait, Hinata gave him something for cuts. Where did he put it…

He was so busy looking for the little ointment tin that he ended up getting separated from the others. Not a great start. They were only a few hours in, and so far nothing had come to attack them or steal their scroll or anything, but Sasuke said something about passwords just in case this exact thing happened, and obviously Sakura wouldn't want any of them heading off by themselves after all the trouble it had caused her.

He ran in the direction that he was pretty sure they went and found them both standing on a criss-crossing section of the 'path' (the path was clearly made by some kind of animal, because it was crappy and also no sane human would come in here just to make a road). He guessed they didn't want to pick a direction until he got back, just in case they lost him forever (probably Sakura's idea) (Sasuke would have loved nothing more than to get rid of Naruto) (Actually, that wasn't really fair these days, ever since Sakura disappeared and Kakashi-sensei made them look out for each other) (Sasuke refused to use the 'f' word though, and Naruto sure as hell wasn't going to be the first to do it) ('Friends', not the other 'f' word).

"I'm back! I forget the password." He grinned sheepishly. It was a really long password, and Sasuke had been acting like such a know-it-all when he said it that it distracted him. "But I remembered that we made one? Does that count?"

Sasuke turned around just so he could roll his eyes at him (Naruto rolled his eyes back twice as hard) but Sakura kept looking in the opposite direction. Another team was coming along the other path, one with Cloud symbols stamped on their forehead protectors. They didn't seem too bothered about crossing by Team Seven. They even waved, like they were all on a stroll in the park or something.

"Don't mind us. We're not in the mood to fight."

Sasuke drew a kunai. "That's not really how this works, if you have the scroll we need."

The one who had spoken, a boy with dark skin and long blue locs, pulled out a scroll with the kanji for 'heaven.' "Well, do we?"

"No," Naruto said. They also had heaven, so it was 'earth' they needed. But Sasuke continued to glare at them.

"What's to stop us taking your scroll just to stop you advancing?"

A white-haired girl shrugged. "Nothing. But it's only day one of the test, and they already cancelled the written section because there weren't enough of us to make it worthwhile. I'd be surprised if any teams last three days out here."

It was true; probably because of the guy who took Sakura and all her friends, but the turnout for this exam was pretty dismal, especially from foreign villages. But it would suck if Team Seven passed only because there wasn't enough competition to ever really challenge them.

He was just about to open his mouth and do the unthinkable (agree with Sasuke) when Sakura spoke up.

"No point fighting anyone unless we need to, right?" She looked at the boys hopefully, and Naruto's eagerness disappeared.

"Right," Sasuke agreed after a moment. He was an ass, but Naruto knew he didn't want to upset Sakura either. Still, he glared at the Cloud team as they passed. "You go your way, and we'll go ours."

"Happy to." The blue haired boy smiled and began to lead the others by. As he passed Sakura, he paused. "Actually, there is one thing you might like to know."

"What's that?"

He leaned in. "Hikari Mei says hello."

Sakura grunted, and Naruto watched in horror as a red stain bloomed across her nice new jacket. A kunai stuck out of her side.

The other two Cloud nin had already backed up before the boys could retaliate, and the blue haired boy turned to join them while Sakura examined the blade that he had left in her.

Before anyone could do anything else, she pulled it free (with a horrible meaty noise and a lot more blood) and, just as casually, plunged it into the boy's neck.

"Sakura!" Naruto was torn between horror at what had happened to her and horror at what she had just done back.

Unlike the boy, she didn't leave the kunai there but pulled it free from his neck immediately. Blood squirted from the wound with so much force that it splashed her face, and the boy made a gurgling noise while his teammates cried out. He tried to stumble toward them but Sakura wrapped her left arm around his front from behind. She pressed her right hand to his neck.

"Shh," she said softly, holding the boy upright against her. It might have looked almost…tender, if they hadn't both been covered in their own blood. "I'm healing it now. You can feel that, can't you?"

Naruto looked closer at the hand over the boy's neck, and yes, there was a faint glow of greenish chakra where Sakura was (presumably) healing him.

The boy tried to say something, but once again there was nothing more than a bloody gurgle.

"Ponzu!" The third member of the Cloud trio, a pale girl with black hair like a ghost, took a half step forward.

"That's far enough," Sakura said calmly, twisting Ponzu's body to keep him between them. "If I take my hand off his neck he'll bleed out in seconds, so let's all just talk while I fix him up for you."

They both stopped, eyeing Team Seven warily. Naruto glanced at Sasuke, who looked just as shocked as he felt.

"What do you want to talk about?" the white haired girl said.

"First of all, who's Hikari Mei?"

The Cloud girls stared at Sakura. She stared back.

"De Facto ruler of the southern Lightning region?" The ghost girl said. "Adopted daughter of Hikari Tsubasa, the former ruler? Currently waging a civil war against her uncle Hikari Ando?"

Sakura shrugged. "Never heard of her."

"You killed her father." The ghost girl's glare was chilling. "You're the reason there's a civil war in that region. Mei-hime hired us to get revenge."

"What?" Naruto breathed. Sakura didn't kill someone's dad, did she? He looked at her, hoping to see shock, even anger at being accused of something so awful. Anything that showed him she was innocent.

"Did I use a sword?"

The girls blinked, then looked at each other uneasily. This clearly wasn't how things were supposed to go.

"A letter opener." Ghost girl finally answered. "The lord took an urchin into his home after finding her injured, and she repaid him by cutting out his throat and jumping out the window. She killed a handful of attendants, too, just for good measure."

"Sounds like something you'd remember," White hair added tartly.

"Sounds like it, yeah." Sakura gazed pensively at the ground, as if bored by this whole situation; but Naruto could see that she was still healing the hole in Ponzu's neck. "How do you know it was me?"

Ghost girl retrieved a bundle of red fabric from her backpack, moving slowly to avoid giving Team Seven a reason to attack her. "Witnesses said the girl had pink hair and a red dress, before the lord gave her a change of clothes." She threw the bundle on the ground, revealing a white ring emblazoned on the back. Sakura's dress.

They all stared at it. Sakura's hand even twitched forward a few times, as if she was tempted to let go of Ponzu and grab it instead.

"A girl," she said quietly, before making a harsh barking noise that Naruto realised was a laugh. She reached into her own pack. "Give the daughter this, and tell her your mission was a success." She tossed them a braid of long pink hair, and Ghost girl caught it. "That girl," she nodded at the dress, "is dead."

She pushed Ponzu gently forward, removing her hand to reveal angry pinkish skin and a lot of dried blood. He stumbled a little, but was able to totter back to his comrades.

And that seemed like it would be it. The Cloud girls grabbed Ponzu's arms and began to walk away with him limping between them. He glanced back at Sakura one last time, as if he couldn't quite believe she would first attack him and then heal him.

Naruto wanted to get far, far away from them and anything else that might be attracted to that crossroads by the smell of blood, but once again Ponzu stopped in his tracks, and once again Team Seven tensed up for a fight.

But Ponzu only pointed at Sakura's head. "Where did you get those?" His voice was raspy.

The Cloud girls, who had also tensed up when Ponzu stopped, followed the direction of his finger. Ghost girl frowned. "That's…?"

"Couldn't be," the white haired girl breathed, equally affected by whatever they were looking at.

Sakura raised her fingers to the top of her head. "My goggles?" she said, and then she gave another barking laugh. "You know Tomo?"

"Yes," Ponzu wheezed.

"Then I guess you also know Yoshi and Mayumi. And Chu-chan."

Ghost girl nodded. "They were in the year below us at the academy."

"Makes sense." She unslung her pack and grabbed a few scraps of the multicoloured hair that used to be all over her old clothes. She picked some strands and locs free. "I'm running low, but this belonged to them." She held it out. "I'll trade it for a promise that you'll leave me and my teammates alone for the rest of the exam."

The trio seemed to confer silently, before the ghost girl reached forward. "Deal."

Sakura tipped the snarl of hair into her open palm, and she pocketed it carefully.

"Are they…?"

"Alive?" Sakura bit her lip. "They were the last time I saw them, but that was several days ago. A lot could have happened since then."

"Take this too," Ponzu rasped, lobbing the heaven scroll gently toward them. Naruto caught it, and only realised afterwards that it might have been trapped (oops). "We're leaving the exam anyway."

"Seriously?" Naruto blurted out. Clearly there was a lot going on between these guys and Sakura that he didn't fully understand, but he couldn't help but speak up. "What about becoming chunin?"

"We're already chunin," White haired girl shrugged. "This was just a mission for us."

"Yeah, there's no way Cloud would send actual genin out of the country just for a stupid exam." Ghost girl shuddered. "Way too risky."

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

Kakashi had been getting a headache even before he found out that Orochimaru had somehow infiltrated the chunin exam. Now that he knew one of the most powerful enemies of Konoha was in the same forest with his three genin (one of whom he was directly responsible for), the throbbing feeling in his temples might never go away.

"You can't tell anyone." Genma's face was hidden under his tiger mask, but the warning in his voice was clear. "And you definitely can't go anywhere near the Forest of Death until the three days are up."

"What if he's the one capturing genin?" Kakashi struggled to keep his tone level. "It fits his MO."

"Except for the part where your girl said they use an optical jutsu," Genma countered, languidly rolling a senbon between his long fingers.

"She isn't my gi-"

"In any case, we haven't ruled it out. The Third hasn't ruled anything out, Kakashi, and the only reason he wanted me to tell you about Anko's discovery is so you wouldn't do something reckless if you found out later."

"Does the Third think I'm so irresponsible that I need a direct order to behave myself?" Kakashi scoffed, but inside he was hurt deeply.

Genma punched him lightly on the arm. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. If the Third didn't respect you, he could have just sent you on a three-day mission somewhere instead of warning you like this. He knows you're unusually attached to your comrades, for a ninja. It's probably why he made you responsible for the last Uchiha and the jinchuuriki, because he knows you'd risk life and limb to protect them. Same for Haruno Sakura, now that you're her handler." Genma raised the senbon to his mouth before seeming to realise that he was still wearing his mask. He sighed. "Point is, whatever happens to them out there isn't on you."

"Is the Third expecting something to happen to them?" Kakashi asked, and Genma shrugged carefully.

"I didn't say that. But like I said, nothing has been ruled out at this point."

Kakashi's head gave a particularly sharp throb, right behind his left eye.

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

"Do we need to stop, so you can deal with that properly?" Sasuke pointed at Sakura's wound. After the encounter with Cloud, she had snatched up her old dress and led them far away from the area, but even though she had been pressing her hand firmly to her side the entire time, it still oozed blood. The Cloud boy's neck had only taken a few minutes to heal over, so a (slightly) less serious injury should have been perfect by now.

Sakura just blinked at him for a few seconds, and suddenly Sasuke wished he knew more first aid. Was she in shock? "Sure," she said finally, and went over to sit on a nearby rock.

She lifted her jacket, and Naruto hissed. "That looks painful."

It did. There was a small puncture wound that went right through her black undershirt. It bled sluggishly, and when Sakura peeled back the shirt her skin was tacky with blood.

Naruto caught Sasuke's eye, trying to communicate something without words; but Sasuke didn't have time for Naruto. Sakura was an adult, but after years without sunlight or adequate food she wasn't a particularly big one. How much blood did she have? How much could people usually spare?

"Have you healed it at all?" Naruto asked suddenly. He still had that serious expression, almost like he was mad at Sakura.

"A little," she admitted, and Sasuke frowned. Maybe Naruto wasn't a complete idiot after all, if he'd realised Sakura wasn't even healing herself. "It's hard to do it on the fly, and I wanted to get some distance first."

"Are you out of chakra?" He asked. Had she wasted it all on that Cloud boy?

She shook her head. "It's not that. It's…" She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. "It's easy to heal other people, but it's hard to heal myself. You know how your own chakra has a certain signature? Some people describe it as a colour."

Sasuke nodded immediately, but Naruto seemed to think about it for a few seconds. "I never really thought about it, but I guess my chakra is mostly 'blue' when I imagine using it."

Sakura smiled. "Right. So my chakra feels green to me, but because of whatever The Watcher did when he connected my body with his, half of my body is just constantly burning with it."

Sasuke stared at Sakura's abdomen, wishing he had the sharingan so that he could see the flow of her strange chakra. "Why aren't you exhausted, then?"

"Forget all that," Naruto flapped his hand at Sasuke, who scowled. "Start healing!"

Sakura seemed to oblige, because the wound went a little blurry and there was a smell like ozone. "There are a lot of theories about why it doesn't kill us," she continued answering Sasuke's question, "but I don't think we'll know for sure unless we catch the Watcher and force him to explain. Sensei and I concluded that it was another time-space jutsu, freezing some of our chakra in time so that it could keep our end of the 'bridge' open between us and him. But the point is, when your body is already lit up with your own chakra, it's hard to manipulate the rest of the chakra while it's still inside your body. It's like trying to draw a green line on a green piece of paper; there's no contrast."

"So you need to focus harder," Sasuke concluded. "But using normal jutsu wouldn't be as difficult because the effect produced is outside your body?"

"That's correct." Sakura winced as the dead blood began to burn away and the flesh slowly began to knit back together. "Elemental jutsu, ninjutsu, even healing other people is fine. It's just when I try to heal myself that things get tricky." She smiled ruefully. "One of the many reasons I miss Sensei and Karin."

"Those were some of your friends, right?" Naruto asked gently, and she nodded.

"Once we're properly safe somewhere, I'd like to tell you more about them all. I hate feeling like I'm the only person out here that knows them as they are currently. Or at least, as they were a few days ago. That's years to them."

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

Naruto raced against the rapidly dimming light. There had been some sort of hurricane (or hurricane jutsu) and before he could blink he was blasted halfway across the forest with nobody in sight except a giant snake (which hadn't hesitated to swallow him whole). He managed to free himself with some quick thinking (and a horde of shadow clones) but now the gross snake juices were all over him and he had no idea where Sasuke and Sakura were.

He strained his ears, and before long the sounds of human voices reached him. Hoping he wasn't about to run into someone else's fight, he dropped from one massive branch to another about a storey lower (and still about four storeys from the ground).

He rounded the huge trunk, and finally he could see his friends. They were facing down only a single opponent, the Grass girl that had been standing behind him at the start of the exam. She had been creepy then, but she was downright terrifying now. Even with her attention focused solely on Sasuke and Sakura, Naruto could feel the killing intent radiating from her.

"Prey should try to run," she called out, before dropping to her belly and slithering forward like a snake, "when they come face to face with a predator."

Sakura grabbed Sasuke's shoulder, clearing preparing to flee. Naruto couldn't deny this girl was freaky, but if she had the scroll they needed then Team Seven couldn't let themselves get scared off by a weird snake body and intimidating aura. He flung a handful of shuriken in front of the girl, halting her progress. "I'm here!" He called to the others. "Let's beat her together!"

The girl laughed. "Two opponents or three, the outcome will be the same." Then she struck out at the other two as if Naruto had never spoken.

He jumped toward her back and grabbed her long black hair, hoping to pin her before she reached the other two; but at the last moment there was a puff of smoke and a giant snake, even bigger than the one he had just fought, burst forth and hit him like a sucker punch from Maito Gai. He wheezed, stunned.

"Naruto!" Sakura jumped out to catch his limp body before it crashed into the tree. But this left Sasuke alone, and the snake girl grabbed him around the middle with arms that lengthened and constricted like a pair of boas.

Sakura set Naruto gently on the ground in order to rush back to Sasuke, but the giant snake intercepted her. She drew her sword.

"Naruto, help Sasuke."

After another second of trying to catch his breath, Naruto rejoined the fight. While Sakura was distracting the snake he was able to slip past and plunge a kunai in the girl's back. "Drop him!"

Poor choice of words. The girl did drop Sasuke, and Naruto watched as he toppled off the branch and out of sight. Naruto would have gone after him, but it turned out that the girl wasn't as fazed by the injury as Naruto hoped she would be; she just calmly turned and grabbed him instead.

One hand held both of his over his head, the arm stretching to keep her body safe from his kicks.

"You've grown up interesting," she remarked, the other hand reaching forward to lift the bottom of his shirt.

"What are you-" he struggled, but he couldn't prevent her from placing five fingertips against his belly and twisting like she was opening a jar. He shrieked. Beyond the pain, there was a tightening feeling like a tap being turned off, and after another second all he felt was exhaustion. He closed his eyes, unable to call for help. Unable to stop this girl killing him if she chose to…

"Wake up, idiot."

There was a rush of air, and suddenly Sasuke was standing between him and the girl. His back was to Naruto, but he turned to give his usual annoying smug smile. Naruto would have been furious if he hadn't been so relieved he was okay. And another thing…

"Your eyes…" Sasuke's eyes were red.

Sasuke blinked, turning back to the enemy before she got any ideas about attacking him while he was distracted. "I got stronger."

Naruto knew Sasuke was an Uchiha, like Kakashi's friend who gave him his left eye. But he hadn't fully appreciated that Sasuke might end up with similar eyes one day; he sort of assumed that eye colours never changed, the same way Hinata's eyes didn't change colour when she activated the byakugan, so Sasuke had just been born without the knack. Clearly, he was wrong.

"Such beautiful eyes," the girl cooed at Sasuke. "I think I'll take them."

There was a crashing noise, the sound of a snake carcass falling out of a tree and onto the forest floor. Sakura, sword flashing, shot past the girl and onto the far branch.

The girl stumbled, and Naruto's stomach lurched when he realised Sakura's strike had decapitated her. But no; her awful snake body seemingly included a long, bendy neck. Her head had simply ducked out of sight behind her body and now reared back at them in a fanged scowl.

"Too slow, girly," she hissed, and lunged for Sakura.

Sakura sidestepped the attack, but the girl's snake body simply turned in midair like a human body could never have done, and struck a vicious blow to her wounded side. Sakura made a coughing noise, digging the tip of her sword into the branch so she wouldn't fall off.

Naruto tried to jump in and help despite his sudden exhaustion, but Sasuke was faster. In fact, Sasuke was faster than Naruto had ever seen him. He met the snake girl blow for blow, steel ringing out so violently that it sounded like an army was fighting.

Sakura hesitated, clearly afraid of skewering Sasuke if she didn't anticipate their movements perfectly. Eventually she chose her moment, plunging forward and driving her sword into the girl's shoulder. She dug in her heels and shoved the girl further and further until sword and girl thunked into the trunk of the tree.

"Way to go, Sakura!" Naruto joined them on the branch, and was just about to check the girl's pockets for a scroll when her entire body dissolved into brown sludge.

"Look out!" Sakura spun around at the same time that Sasuke cried out in pain.

Naruto felt like he was moving in slow motion, turning to watch the horror unfold. With her clone defeated, the girl had used the moment of relief to attack Sasuke from behind. Her fangs were sunk into his neck like he was her prey. Just how similar to a snake was she? Did she have venom?

They rushed forward to help. Naruto punched the girl in the head just as Sakura swung her sword from behind, so that his punch sent her head flying back into the path of Sakura's sword. Once again it managed to bend in an unnatural way, but Sakura corrected her angle accordingly.

Instead of dodging, the girl (more snake than girl at this point) opened her mouth wider and wider, until she could swallow the entire sword as well as both of Sakura's arms up to the elbows. She bit down and something crunched.

Sakura made a noise like a choked off scream, tugging her arms free. The humanoid snake spat out the sword and it tumbled, spinning, over the edge.

"Until next time," she murmured, wide mouth turned up in a horrible smile, and then her whole body sank into the trunk and disappeared.

Sasuke wobbled in place, but Naruto was close enough to catch him and take his weight. "Are you okay?" He called to Sakura, who was turning pale. Her left arm hung at a bad angle.

"We need to get to the ground," she said. "How's Sasuke?"

"He's hurt." Naruto shifted his dead weight to get a closer look at his neck. "She bit him. It looks…bruised?"

Sakura scrubbed her face with her good hand. "Alright. Can you take him?" Before he could answer, she dropped to the next branch down, and the next, and so on.

Naruto hefted Sasuke and followed until they were both on the ground. He went to lay him gently down among the roots, but Sakura stopped him.

"Not here; you need to find somewhere safe for the night."

"Me? Not we?" Naruto tried to keep the trepidation from his voice.

Sakura shook her head. "I'm also about to pass out, and it's…it might look strange." She leaned in closely, and now Naruto could see just how much of a toll the fight had taken on her. The giant snake had clearly body-slammed her a few times, judging by the scrapes and bruises he could see, and if her left elbow wasn't dislocated then it was badly sprained. "Listen carefully Naruto: if I completely disappear, wait until Sasuke wakes up and then both of you leave the forest and tell Kakashi right away. Don't wait for the third day, leave as soon as you can."

"Disappear?" Naruto was listening hard, but Sakura's words barely made sense. "Why would you disappear?"

"I hope I won't." Her eyelids fluttered. "But if I do…tell Kakashi he needs to get me out again."

"Sakura? Stay with me, okay?" If she toppled over now, he wouldn't be able to catch her without dropping Sasuke.

"Get Sasuke somewhere safe and then come back for me," she said, and then her eyes went dull. Naruto braced as well as he could with Sasuke's dead weight in his arms, but she didn't actually fall. She remained standing, sightless eyes still wide open. The ozone smell returned.

"Hey." He nudged her gently, and other than rocking slightly in place she neither moved nor reacted in any way. It was as if Sakura was just…gone.