A/N: I have to say, this chapter took forever... I worked on it a bunch of times, thinking I'd finally finish it, but each time I only got a little more done. Anyways, I've finally finished it, so I hope you like it.

While writing, at some point I switched to present tense without realizing it. I had to go back and fix it all to past tense, so there might've been some verbs I missed or phrases that sound a bit weird. Oops! Also in the Kabuto/Orochimaru part (spoilers! sorry!) the tenses might've gotten a little mixed up too. It was weird to write about him thinking about the meeting.

This chapter does not have much development of the Mokuton, but it is pretty important in the grand scheme of things. The next one will be even more so :) (Get hyped!)

[Chapter 13]

Sakura awoke to a pounding headache. Her entire body ached and her brain felt scrambled. It was like a baby had reached into her brain, played with it like putty and then stuffed it back in carelessly.

Slowly, the pain and confusion abated as she felt her senses coming back. The floor beneath her was damp and cold. Her vision, still a bit blurry, was dark.

Where was she?

She sat up with a groan, blinking away the wobbling world shown by her eyes. She was surrounded by stone. Damp, cold, stone. She could see an opening a few metres away. A cave then.

For a moment she felt a little bit of panic bubbling up at her unknown surroundings. How had she gotten here? Last she remembered, she'd been in the Forest of Death and then…

Orochimaru had attacked and, and-

Naruto and Sasuke! Where were they?

"Naruto! Sasuke!" she yelled, her voice breaking. Her throat felt dry and scratchy. She knew that this was one of the stupidest things to do after waking up in a foreign location, countless lessons at the academy had taught her that, but she needed to know where her teammates were. She needed to make sure they were alive.

"Oh, you're awake," a calm voice noted. She spun around.

A silver-haired older teen sat leaning against one of the cave walls near her.

Sakura scrambled back, not having noticed him.

"Who are you," she hissed. She vaguely felt as if she should recognize him though. She'd seen him before. She grimaced, if only her head would stop pounding.

He didn't respond for a moment, instead studying her through circular glasses with a curious expression on his face.

Sakura's eyes caught on the Konoha symbol on his forehead protector. She relaxed a little bit. He wasn't an enemy then. An ally? Were they still in the Forest of Death.

"Where are Sasuke and Naruto," she demanded, ignoring that he hadn't answered her previous question.

Grey eyes kept staring at her. She glared back fiercely.

Finally, he sighed. "They're out getting some food. They'll be back in a few minutes."

The fact that he could've been lying didn't even register. Immediately, she felt her body relax against her will and she slumped back against the cave wall. Sasuke and Naruto were fine, they were all still in the second stage of the exams.

Feeling her eyelids slip drowsily, Sakura fell back into unconsciousness seconds later.

Somehow, by some stroke of fate, they'd survived an encounter with Orochimaru.

Kabuto studied the sleeping girl.

Pale pink hair, dirty with grease and tangled from multiple days in the forest. Her limbs looked fragile, with only the slightest of muscle mass beginning to form. She looked harmless, weak.

Yet Orochimaru had chosen her over Sasuke.

His mind flashed back to their earlier encounter in the forest.

There had been a change of plans, his master had informed him. The sound team had been called off of their attack and Kabuto was to 'accidentally' run into Team 7, to offer his help.

To watch over Sasuke, he'd assumed. Attaining the Uchiha boy was their goal after all.

But no, his task was to watch over Sasuke's pink haired teammate. It had taken a moment to even remember her name - she truly had escaped his notice.

Now he wasn't exactly in a habit of questioning the sannin; he knew underlings who were too curious for their own good didn't last long. But this time he pushed.

"Why the change in plans?" He'd asked casually as Orochimaru turned to leave.

The sannin had slowly turned around. His golden eyes had gazed at Kabuto detachedly.

"I just mean, she's a civilian…" he'd said, trailing off. "Isn't the Uchiha significantly more valuable."

To his relief, Orochimaru hadn't seem irritated. A mixture of amusement and slight puzzlement, as if considering a problem he couldn't quite understand, had filled his voice when he finally answered.

"Why would a civilian girl possess a long-dead kekkei-genkai belonging to the shodaime?"

Kabuto had blinked in surprise. So, the girl - Sakura Haruno - had the Mokuton? That wasn't possible. Her name had indeed slipped his memory but he'd done thorough background research on all of Team 7. All records stated that her family was civilian, having moved to Konoha 5 generations ago. And even if by some slight chance the Shodaime's blood has mixed into her lineage at some point, how had the kekkei genkai not appeared before now? Kekkei-genkai almost always appeared as the dominant trait, especially in civilians, where there was nothing to cover it up.

He'd nodded curtly. "An intriguing problem indeed. I'll look into it."

But Orochimaru hadn't left as Kabuto had expected him to.

"The Mokuton is stronger than the Sharingan… Hashirama beat Madara, after all," he'd mused to himself.

Kabuto had almost wanted to grimace. His master was obsessed with the Shodaime's power. He'd experimented using cells collected from his dead body for years, inserting them into the bodies of babies. Yet even the one out of many that had survived, well, his power had been negligible compared to that of the original. If this girl's power was indeed natural...

Still, personally he thought Sasuke would've been a better choice. The curse mark had been practically made for him, it would've worked perfectly. All their plans had been based around Sasuke. Choosing this pink-haired slip of a girl over him… It was a mistake.

Kabuto had cleared his throat softly. "Did you give her the seal?"

Suddenly Orochimaru had snarled and he'd instinctively jumped back.

"I couldn't give her the curse mark," the sannin had hissed, glaring at Kabuto as if it were his fault. "Her body was weak, feeble. Without clan blood she would've died, and the Mokuton would've been lost again."

Kabuto had nodded hastily. "Of course. We'll find another way to turn her against the village."

His master's normally handsome face had been twisted in evil. "After the second stage of the exam finishes, quit. I don't care how you do it. I'll have the sound team keep track of her. I need you to look into the records - find out if anyone within the village knows of her power. If she hasn't been discovered yet then we need to act quickly. Once they realize what power she holds her worth will rise exponentially in their eyes. They won't let a valuable tool go so easily."

Kabuto had nodded again, agreeing to the orders. "My team has not retrieved a second scroll yet. I'll order the other two to stop their search and I'll join up with Team 7."

Orochimaru hadn't even heeded his words. "You know the consequences of failure," he'd said simply, melting into the tree underneath him.

Indeed, Kabuto knew the consequences of failure, he thought, staring at Sakura quietly. Looking at how weak she was, he couldn't help but feel a bit of distaste for the girl. What had made her so special, for fate to grant her the Shodaime's kekkei-genkai?

They'd made it to the exam site.

Sakura felt her head droop. She was so tired.

Her energy felt sapped. It'd been three days since the encounter with Orochimaru, and her body still hadn't recovered from the fight. The constant travelling hadn't helped either. Her head pounded in pain.

Trying to flex her fingers, she frowned. She still couldn't fully move her right hand, the one that had been pinned to a tree by a kunai. The bleeding had been stemmed by a piece of cloth tied around it but the pain was still there. Sakura distinctly remembered the gruesome feeling of the kunai tearing through skin and muscle.

The otherworldly presence hanging around her mind felt sharper than ever.

She could still remember the exact feeling of the tree bursting from its natural form, piercing through Orochimaru's body. That had been her. She'd done that. It had felt like she was molding the world around her.

She'd felt like a god.

Sakura was scared. The power she'd released was somehow connected to the Voice, and she'd been putting off confronting what exactly it was and why this had happened to her.

The three of them and Kabuto hadn't even been travelling through the 'd been forced to hike slowly through the forest after she'd made the excuse of not having enough chakra to tree run. It wasn't fully a lie - her chakra was depleted - but it wasn't the truth either. She was scared. Scared to accidentally brush her skin against a tree trunk and feel the Voice return again. Emotions buzzed at the edge of her mind but she shoved them out violently, too scared to confront her new power.

And if she was really careful to avoid any contact with wood, well, Sasuke didn't say anything, although she was sure he'd noticed.

He'd been there after all - he'd seen the tree defy all natural laws. But as if by a stroke of fate - or perhaps there was a more sinister reason, she didn't trust him - Kabuto hung around irritatingly close to her all the time. Sasuke hadn't yet had an opportunity to confront her alone. For that she was thankful. She couldn't even explain what had happened to herself, nevermind her teammate.

Around half a day after she'd woken up, they ran into another genin team. One that used genjutsu clones and attacked them from the shadows, safely out of their reach.

Sakura's nerves frayed.

She stood in the clearing, awkwardly dodging stray kunai as her teammates won the fight for her. She was useless, but what else could she do? She couldn't help them.

The power was so tempting, right at the edges of her consciousness. She could reach out easily. She could grab it. Accidentally, her hand brushed along bark and emotions and murmurs flooded her mind.

She felt the power rushing through her veins again. It felt good. Right.

Suddenly she could see Orochimaru's eyes in front of her again. That last, intrigued smile that had spread over his face even as the tree pierced through his body. He wasn't dead, that was certain.

Sakura was terrified of whatever this new power is. She couldn't control it.

Kabuto did little to help, but Naruto and Sasuke were amazing, working together like she'd never seen them do before. The second stage had been eye-opening for all of them and this pitiful genin team was nothing like standing before one of the sannin.

They turned out to be in luck, the team has an earth scroll to match their heaven. Kabuto - Naruto had told her his name - waved them a cheery goodbye outside the tower. He was much too happy for someone who'd just failed the exam and supposedly didn't know where his teammates were. None of them trusted him, yet what could they do?

Together, Team 7 entered the tower.

The ringing in her head of the Voice subsided slightly as they left the forest, enough for her to finally clear her thoughts a bit. There was a scroll on the wall, depicting a story of heaven and earth, mind and body.

Sakura didn't think she truly grasped the meaning but she understood enough for her to fumble a few thoughts together.

"We have to put the scrolls on the ground together and open them together," she instructed the two boys, relatively certain in her guess.

They did and as they opened them Iruka-sensei appeared in a poof of smoke.

He surveyed them for a second and she thought she saw relief in his eyes.

She was so tired

"Hey, Iruka-sensei," she greeted. Her body collapsed.

They were all safe now

Iruka rushed over, fear in his eyes. "What happened to you guys," he breathed out. It wasn't phrased as a question, but Naruto was unusually serious as he answered it anyways.

"We survived an encounter with Orochimaru."

The feeling of foreign chakra entering her system woke sakura.

It felt like liquid beneath her skin and she could feel it slithering around her body with an acute awareness. It was an incredibly strange sensation. If she had to describe it, she'd say it was like soft plant tendrils caressing her skin. But instead of touching her skin, they were inside of her, moving through her chakra pathways.

It wasn't necessarily uncomfortable. In a way, it was soothing. For the first time since waking up in the Forest of Death, she felt herself relax a bit.

It was strange, she'd never been so sensitive to chakra before.

"Try moving your fingers for me," a soft voice commanded from her side.

Doing as she was ordered and looking over, she saw a middle-aged medic-nin standing over her, her hands glowing green with healing chakra. Short brown hair framed a tanned face, just starting the show the first hints of wrinkles. Creases from smiling often lined her eyes and mouth. She looked nice.

Sakura tried wiggling her fingers and was surprised to find that it was easy. Her hand - the one that had been sliced through by a kunai - didn't hurt that much anymore.

"What'd you do to it?" She asked in amazement, clenching and unclenching her fist a few times to marvel at how much her dexterity had improved.

"I reconnected the severed tendons," the medic explained. "The good news is that you don't seem to have many other injuries apart from some bruising and chakra exhaustion. You should be alright to use your hand, but try not to rely on it too much - I wasn't able to fix everything, only the bare minimum. Is anything else bothering you?"

"My head hurts," Sakura breathed out. It did, like there was stress physically collecting behind her skull, trying to burst out. It had been pounding ever since she'd started trying to shut out the Voice.

The medic placed a glowing hand against her forehead, closing her eyes in concentration.

"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong," she said. "You might have a minor concussion, but nothing with lasting damage. I can give you some painkillers, if you'd like."

Sakura nodded gratefully.

The medic smiled in sympathy, handing her a few pills and a glass of water to swallow them down. "Unfortunately I can't do much more, the preliminaries are starting soon. Due to your team's relatively late arrival to the tower, you won't have much time to rest and recover. This is designed to give an advantage to the teams that finish earlier."

Sakura nodded in understanding, processing the new information. They didn't get to rest, they had to keep fighting. her head pounded.

"When did we get here," she asked.

"A few hours ago, you were one of the last teams to pass the stage."

The medic casually looked over. "One of the teams set a new record for finishing time."

"Really?" Sakura asked. "Which team?"

"The sand team. The one with the Kazekage's children," she answered.

There'd only been one Sand team of note. So that meant that the red-headed genin was the Kazekage's son. Sakura shivered. Growing up, they'd heard stories of Suna-nin. They'd always been presented as deadly and cunning, similar to the poisonous scorpions with who they shared their dessert.

"Whenever you're ready just leave this room and keep going right down the hallway to reach the area for the preliminaries. You won't miss it, most of the other participants are already there."

The medic left the room quietly soon after, leaving sakura alone with her thoughts

She allowed herself to close her eyes for just a moment before gritting her teeth and rolling out of bed. Luckily nothing seems to be in pain, the medic has healed most of her bruises. But a bone-weary exhaustion settled on her as she started walking to the door. Her limbs felt like they were moving through slush and she had the overwhelming urge to lie back down in the bed.

No, she had to keep moving.

She tried to access her chakra. Startled, she found that most of it was still gone. She had only about a quarter of her usual reserves, which were already tiny. Worry managed to creep into her slightly hazy mind. That wasn't right. She knew the rate at which her chakra returned, and it had been three days at least since she'd last used it - they hadn't even travel through the trees, after all. Sakura shrugged it off. She was going to have to make due with what she had.

Hopefully the preliminaries would be easy.

The hallway the medic had directed her to opened up into a large cavernous room. There was a large, flat, open space along the floor. The arena, she assumed. Along the edges of the room, balconies had been built for observers.

The other genin were milling around on the floor-level. Anxiously, she scanned the crowd for blond and black hair.

There they were! Sakura hurried towards her teammates, brushing by another contestant with a mumbled apology.

"Naruto! Sasuke!" She called, perhaps a bit too loudly. Other genin turned to look at her, taking in her physical appearance. They looked at her as if she was prey. Sakura knew she didn't look good - clothes torn from days in the forest and hair matted and tangled. She looked as exhausted and weak as she felt.

Naruto turned and greeted her happily. "Sakura! We were really worried about you!"

Casting a subtle glance at Sasuke she would say that worry was the last emotion he was feeling at the moment.

"Thanks Naruto," she found herself saying. "I'm fine though. A medic fixed up my injuries."

He grinned widely, and it made her heart lift a bit. "Alright! Once we all pass the preliminaries we can go celebrate at Ichiraku's."

She gave a tired smile back. "That sounds good, yeah."

Out of the corner of her vision she noticed the Hokage making his way onto one of the balconies. His robe billowed behind him and despite herself, the sight of him made her feel safer. What could be the worst that would happen with the Hokage himself here? Even Orochimaru wouldn't dare attack again.

She nudged Naruto and Sauke - the latter sending her a dark look and twisting away.

"I think we're starting," she told them, slightly hurt. Sure, she knew Sasuke didn't exactly consider her his best friend, but they'd made progress since the Academy. She had felt as if he'd recognized her as his teammate.

"Welcome," the Hokage greeted the gathered genin. His voice boomed throughout the cavern, echoing a few times. This only seemed to solidify his powerful presence.

"Congratulations to all the genin that have passed the second stage of this year's chunin exams," he said. "However, as many of you might have figured out, there are still too many contestants to continue onto the final stage, which will be an exhibition tournament with many of the land's most wealthy and powerful civilians attending. Due to this, we will be holding preliminaries to cut down the final number."

Casting a quick look around, Sakura guessed that most of them had already been told to expect this by their mentors or had figured it out themselves. No one looked surprised.

"The rules of the preliminaries are simple. A computer will randomly choose two genin to fight. The winner of the match proceeds to the final stage. As we have an even number of participants, all genin will fight once. Killing is strongly discouraged."

Sakura would have felt like laughing had that not been such a morbid statement. 'Killing is strongly discouraged', the Hokage had said. Sure, they didn't want the genin slaughtering each other, but if they did… well there'd be no consequences. Not that she hadn't already learned as much in the Forest of Death. She wondered if the teams that hadn't made it were still alive. She wondered if their villages would mourn them.

"With that said, I'd like to announce the first match of the day," the Hokage said. Collectively, the genin and the rest of the shinobi standing on the floor of the arena turned to a large screen, where names and faces were already flashing. She saw her face flash by for a split second, pink hair framing a soft smile, before it was replaced with another genin's.

Next to her Naruto was fidgeting and she could feel her hands sweating. The air held a nervous tension now, everyone anticipating the result.

The image and words slowed to a crawl, eventually stopping entirely. The first contestant had been determined.

A boy with red hair and a kanji tattooed onto his forehead stared out from the screen. Sakura didn't even have to read the name beneath to know who it was.

"Gaara Sabaku will be the first fighter," the Hokage announced, his voice spreading across the silence easily. "Now for his opponent."

"I feel bad for whoever has to go up against Gaara," Naruto chuckled quietly to her, under his breath. "That kid is scary."

She nodded in agreement.

The faces and names on the screen were rolling again, going too fast to see more than a few features or letters.

She could feel the room holding its breath. None of the genin were particularly eager to face Gaara. Even without having fought him, he exuded an aura of bloodlust.

The rate of the pictures changing slowed again. Slower, and slower, and slower. A bit disconnectedly, Sakura realized she hadn't seen her face yet.

It stopped.

Pink hair and green eyes stared out at her from the screen, and Sakura stopped.

Move on, she thought desperately. Keep moving.

The image and the words beneath it stayed still. Beside her, she heard Naruto let out a startled gasp.

"It has been decided. Our second fighter will be Sakura Haruno," the Hokage said. Each word was like a blow to the gut, sealing her fate.

"Anyone who is not fighting, please make your way up to the stands," The Hokage finished. "The preliminaries start now."