A/N: Hey guys, I'm starting to go through the story from the beginning and really shore up the early chapters to improve the quality. So far, both chapters 1 and 2 have been nearly completely rewritten. Go give them a skim and let me know if you think the quality took one heck of a jump or if I've ruined everything.

Team Rin

Chapter 13

Seven and the Sannin

"Naruto."

He stared at the middle distance ahead, paying just enough attention to keep solid wood beneath his feet between every leap.

"Naruto?"

He flexed his hands, trying to ignore the lingering buzz and tingle left behind by the molding of his wind chakra. How it felt as it wrapped around this solid metal in his grip, whistling with deadly intent. How jubilant he was that he had gotten it to work at all.

"Naruto!"

A hand grabbed his shoulder, and it was all the jinchuriki could do to not sprawl forward, off balance and at the mercy of gravity.

Natsuko stared him down, sweat dripping from her brow and her breathing labored. "We need to rest, Naruto." She nodded her head behind her and Naruto glanced to find Ayano supporting Karin with an arm over her shoulder. He blinked, surprised they were already so winded, but did not argue as Natsuko led the four genin down the gigantic tree to a point they could shelter within its roots.

"I'll set up a perimeter," Naruto said as Natsuko plopped to a seat the moment they were out of the midmorning daylight.

"Do you… want to talk?" Ayano asked, studying the way he moved in an attempt to impersonate Rin-sensei.

Yes, he thought.

"No," he said, shaking his head and not meeting either of his teammates' or their new ally's eyes. The three needed to sleep, and if Naruto had been the only one to keep up with Gaara when they were on the A-game, he did not want to know what would happen if someone just as strong or worse caught them when everyone was about to pass out. "I'll be back in a minute."

With his clones, it would take little time to set up basic traps that would give them enough warning to get the hell out, but he left a dozen shadow clones in the shelter beneath the roots, just in case.

He laid the warning system into place, running through habitual motions with little thought. Satisfied his teammates would be safe, Naruto climbed several levels higher and sat, watching the sun and trying not to think too hard on the battles before.

"You're a terrible liar," Natsuko said several minutes later, almost startling him enough to fall off his branch. "And I could sense you not coming back."

"I'm keeping watch."

She believed his excuse as much as he did, sitting next to him with a sarcastic "uh huh."

Natsuko seemed happy to let that be the end of it as she pulled out the elemental cards she had grabbed off of Naruto and started to organize them. Naruto watched the process, wondering why he felt so indifferent at the prospect of passing.

"Four or five of everything but wind," Natsuko said, shaking her head at the four piles in front of her. "They had to have gone through a lot of teams, Naruto."

"Any wind?" He asked, dodging her attempt to make him feel better.

"Nope. I asked Ayano before coming up here, and she thinks that's how they're trying to cut a bunch of teams."

Naruto hummed his agreement.

Natsuko gave him a long look before she spoke again. "You knew this was going to happen one day." Her words came hard despite her quavering voice, striking Naruto like a blow to the ribs. "Especially after what happened in Taki."

"I know," Naruto said, recalling Rin-sensei's lectures as well as his teammate. "But I didn't mean to…" He trailed off, turning his head and closing his eyes as his stomach churned. He could have dealt with it if he had hit Gaara, but the brother hadn't been fighting…

"It sucks," Natsuko agreed. "But you have to deal with it, Naruto."

He snapped his attention back to his teammate, found nothing but hard sympathy meeting his gaze, and felt the back of his eyes sting with unshed tears.

He pressed his face into his palms to hide them as they leaked out.

"We're dead if you aren't ready to go." Natsuko's tone softened, her tiredness shining through. "Ayano and I can't do this without you."

Naruto nodded behind his hands, took a breath, and forced himself back towards something approaching composure.

"Alright," Naruto said after a long minute. "How do we figure out who has wind?"

Karin hugged her legs to her chest, rubbing the bare skin beneath her shorts in a vain attempt to warm them up. The ground beneath the tree was moist, mossy, and freezing, and she lamented the need for stealth, longing for a fire.

"You came through the waypoint about two days ago, right?"

Karin blinked, having forgotten about her new companion. Her fellow redhead sat between two of the thicker roots, arms curled around her knees. She looked to Karin with a steady gaze despite the exhaustion clear behind the green of her eyes.

"Yes?"

The girl nodded. "I remember you arguing with Naruto."

Karin turned her attention to a hole in the roots leading outside as if expecting the blond to be there. She reached out with her senses, and felt the boy's chakra like a beacon some dozen or so meters above them.

"Now I'm sort of glad he pissed me off," she said. "If he hadn't remembered me…" She shuddered, trying not to remember how terrifying the Suna shinobi had been.

"He would have intervened anyway," the girl said with certainty. "We all would have."

"Sure," Karin said, not feeling up to arguing.

A quiet fell between them for only a moment before the other girl spoke again.

"I'm sorry about your teammates."

Karin grit her teeth to swallow down bile as the memory played itself across her mind with unrelenting clarity. The confident swagger of her teammates brought low before the demon that was the Suna genin. It had taken less than thirty seconds before the sand had trapped them, and their opponent showed no mercy.

They hadn't had time to scream. From humans to pulped meat in the breadth of a single second.

She gripped her legs hard enough to bruise. If not for sheer, dumb luck, Karin knew she would have shared the assholes' fate.

"We have enough cards," the other girl said, drawing Karin back to the present. "If we find two wind, the others won't argue if we give you a set."

"…why?" Konoha weakness, her sensei's words echoed in her head, the flash his teeth bared in a snarl of a grin clear in her mind's eye.

The Konoha genin shrugged and looked up to the ceiling, the cold coloring her cheeks.

"I figured if something…" she swallowed. "If something happened to Naruto or Natsuko, I would want to finish. Avenge them? Make it not meaningless?" She shook her head. "I can't really imagine it."

The girl's chakra roiled around at the thought, matching the pained expression on her face.

"I don't need charity," Karin said, not caring to go into detail how it only bothered her how her teammates died.

Green eyes met hers once more. "Then think of it like a mission. A fourth member of the team would give us an advantage. If we get out of this, your payment will be the five elemental cards."

Karin considered the offer, relying on her senses to root out any insincerity, but found none. She could not deny that part of her still wanted to pass, even moreso now that two of her tormenters were gone. She looked away and hugged her arms, thumbs tracing the bite scars hidden beneath her sleeves.

"What's your name?"

"Ayano," the girl said, bowing her head.

Karin nodded. "Then consider me hired, Ayano."

The girl's smile got caught halfway in a grimace, but it was genuine, and Karin closed her eyes to steal what little rest she could.

Sasuke kept his center of balance as he flipped over his attacker's weapon, hands already flashing through the seals to his newest technique.

"Raiton: Tenohira Teiden!"

Just as he crossed over the Amegakure genin's head, he lashed out, touching the edge of his hand to the back of his opponent's neck. The boy collapsed with a pained cry and Sasuke twisted his landing to press his full weight into a knee in the middle of the genin's back.

The genin passed out with a strangled gasp and Sasuke clicked his tongue, disappointed.

Well into the second day of the exam, and he still had not found anyone that tested him enough to use his sharingan. Shaking his head, he dug through the genin's pockets and pouches until he found a white card bearing the kanji for wind.

That's a second wind, he thought with a sigh, and turned to his teammates.

Ino frowned toward another Amegakure shinobi who rolled on the ground, laughing and frothing at the mouth despite the fresh line of scarlet cut down the side of his arm. The blonde stood over her opponent with a frown, holding two fire cards and twirling a kunai, lost in thought.

"New formula?" He asked, holding out his hand. Ino handed over the cards without a seconds' thought, nodding.

"I might have made it a bit too intense," she said, then reared back a kick which caught her drugged opponent in the back of the head. He joined his teammate in unconsciousness. "Psychedelics are hard to predict."

He hummed, glad Kakashi had banned Ino from testing her experiments on her teammates. "Where's Sakura?"

Ino blinked, glanced around them, then cursed. Sasuke grumbled, activating his sharingan - irises blooming to blood red and two tamoe spinning to life around his pupils - and tried to spot the telltale signs of battle.

"This way," he said, seeing motion in the trees to the south and leaping to follow.

"Please don't be a giant tiger this time," Ino muttered behind him, and Sasuke had to clamp down on his embarrassed annoyance.

At least they had enough food for the week…

"—tch now!? Hah!"

They found Sakura less than two hundred meters away surrounded by senbon, huffing and puffing as she stood over an Amegakure kunoichi, who clawed at her face despite her rebreather covering everything but her eyes she had clenched shut. Sasuke heard the girl's muffled screams and shared a glance with Ino, surprised, and let his dōjutsu slip away.

"Sasuke-kun, Ino!" Sakura grinned toward them, rising to her full height and holding out an elemental card with the kanji for water emblazoned on a blue background. Sasuke's heart skipped a beat and he allowed himself a small smile.

"That's all five!" Ino shouted with a cheer, leaping over their opponent and wrapping an arm around Sakura's shoulders, drawing her into a one arm hug. "Sasuke-kun!"

They both held their arms open for a group hug, and Sasuke rolled his eyes, moving forward fast enough to snatch the water card from Sakura and duck under their attempt to trap him.

The pink haired girl hung her head in defeat, but Ino just stuck her tongue out at him.

"You're no fun."

Sasuke shrugged, flipping through the small deck of cards they'd gathered to pull out one of each before stuffing the several spares of each element save water back into one of his inner pockets.

"Let's figure out where we're going," he said, dropping to one knee and laying the cards next to each other on the ground. The girls stood at his shoulder as he tried to figure out how to combine them.

"In less than two days! Impressive!"

Sasuke swept the cards back into his pockets while spinning himself to his feet in one smooth motion. Sakura and Ino flanked each of his shoulders, all their eyes locked on the newcomer. A kunoichi leapt down to their small clearing, clapping with a mocking air. She stood taller than the three, long black hair limp in framing her plain, pale face and held back by a Kusagakure hitai-ate. A beige tunic and thick, purple roped belt looked to offer little in the way of protection, but left plenty of room for hidden weapons.

Sasuke's instincts screamed danger.

"Uchiha Sasuke," the foreign girl said with an embellished bow, never taking her eyes off of him. "It is an honor to meet Konoha's favorite genin."

"Our reputation precedes us," Ino said from his right, going for flippant and cocky. Sasuke caught the slight hesitation in her words. "Can't say the same for you."

The girl laughed. "I would be disappointed if you did, Yamanaka Ino."

The blonde tensed and Sasuke let chakra flow into his eyes, activating his family's bloodlineanew. The Kusa girl's lips twisted into a smile at the sight.

"The legendary sharingan," she said, licking her lips and leaving Sasuke deeply unsettled. Killing intent began to lace through the air "How perfect."

"Who the hell are you?" Sakura could not hide the shaking in her voice, and the strange kunoichi laughed, mocking.

"It does not matter," she said, and moved.

Sasuke's eyes widened and he brought his hands together into an overhead block that caught the kunoichi's kick full on. He grunted as his bones groaned at the contact.

Before he could recover his balance, the girl spun her momentum around to drive a punch toward his gut, and only letting himself stumble backwards allowed him to escape the blow. Ino and Sakura leapt back to surround the girl.

Sasuke did not dwell on his surprise at his opponent's strength and launched a counterattack as soon as he found his balance. He attacked the girl in a flurry of taijutsu, the tomeo of his sharingan spinning to keep up with his opponent's lightning-quick reflexes.

"Is this all?" She asked, dodging everything he could throw at her while wearing a grin. "I expected more." She caught one of his fists, spun, and drove an elbow into his back to send him flying forward.

He bounced off the ground with a breathless grunt, already pushing the pain to the back of his mind, and glared at his opponent.

Whoever she was, she was no genin.

"Genjutsu: Sakura Burēdo no Dansu!" Sakura's hands glowed blue as she tried to tag the kunoichi with her new technique, but her target bent backwards at the waist until her back was parallel to the ground so Sakura over extended enough to catch an elbow to the stomach.

His pink-haired teammate doubled over, eyes wide and mouth open in a soundless cry. The kunoichi followed it up with a knee to the jaw, sending Sakura flying backwards in a heap, unconscious.

Shit. Sasuke pulled himself to his feet and raced forward to engage the foreign ninja before she could move in for a killing blow. His sharingan spotted Ino waiting off to the corner in a crouch, her fingers folded into her family jutsu's signature seal, and Sasuke adjusted his approach to get their opponent's back to the girl.

The kunoichi met his attack with another round of laughter, falling back from each blow with a mocking ease.

Sasuke kept his temper in check, changing his speed and angles of attack to corral his opponent into position.

"Come now Sasuke-kun. Show me your true power."

He grunted, lashing out with a series of kicks to free up his hands to form seals. Electricity arced between each knuckle and his punches sped up, infused with the power of lightning chakra. The kunoichi flicked an eyebrow in interest, but still managed to dodge or turn away most of his attacks without any apparent effort.

"Not very efficient," she noted, and Sasuke growled in frustration. This technique's drain on his reserves made its usefulness limited.

If only Kakashi had taught him the damn Chidori…

"I had expected so much more from y—"

The kunoichi jerked her head to the left, and Sasuke's sharingan picked up Ino's body falling limp behind her before he lost control of his body.

Instinctive panic flooded his mind even as logic told him what had happened.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. Ino's voice echoed in his head, and Sasuke tried to shout at her to get out, but nothing he tried made a sound.

The Kusa kunoichi pulled a kunai and flipped it behind her with a sickening smile.

My body!

Control returned to Sasuke in a flash, disorientation driving him to his hands and knees with heavy breaths. Ino's pained shout forced his focus and he looked in time to see the blonde clutching a wicked cut at the base of her neck along her right shoulder. Wide-eyed, his teammate backed away from their enemy in a three-limbed crabwalk as she reared her arm back to throw another pair of kunai.

"Your recovery is impressive for your clan," the foreign girl said, almost mocking as she let deadly steel fly. Sasuke let loose a volley of shuriken to knock the weapon off its path, but he was off his mark.

Ino was better prepared, twisting herself as best she could, and dodged one entirely, but the second sliced into the meat of her calf.

Sasuke's defiant shout drowned out Ino's scream while he hoisted himself back to his feet and released a Gōkakyū no Jutsu at the enemy shinobi, point blank. To Sasuke's confusion, his opponent saw the attack right away, but took the full brunt of the fireball with a grin and no attempt to dodge.

Her body burned, but she did not scream.

Sasuke forced himself not to dwell on the unsettling nature of the girl and leapt over the remnants of his technique to check on his teammate. Ino was already binding the wound on her leg, teeth locked into a grimace as she stemmed her bleeding in the worse of her two injuries.

Satisfied she was fine, he left to find Sakura laying in a heap just beyond the tree line, unconscious. A quick check to her pulse found it slow, but steady. He let out the barest whisper of a sigh and dug in his pouches for smelling salts.

The pink haired girl jerked away from them as soon as he brought them beneath her nose. She blinked, and rolled herself to her knees only to double over and clutch her middle with a choked whimper.

Sasuke grimaced, imagining what taking a full powered kick from their opponent would have done to her insides.

"Can you stand?"

She bit her lip and nodded, taking his arm as helped her to her feet. From the way she grunted with every step, Sasuke did not have to guess how much pain she was in.

Need to finish before anyone else finds us.

Ino had dragged herself up to lean on a tree, applying a pressure bandage to the slice on her neck and shoulder.

"You okay?" She asked Sakura, wiping sweat from her forehead and leaving blood in its wake.

"I don't know," Sakura managed to say. She leaned most of her weight on Sasuke. "Everything feels like it's been crushed by rocks."

"Let's figure out where we're going. I want out of this damned forest."

"A shame, that you would want to leave me so soon."

Sasuke's blood turned to ice as the same voice as the burned kunoichi spoke, dropping several octaves along the sentence.

The charred corpse in the clearing split down the middle, and Sasuke barely kept his stomach as a human-shaped figure molted from within it. A man rose where a girl had been before, naked as the day of his birth. He had the same limp hair, the same pale skin, but his eyes were golden, his pupils the slit of snakes. Purple markings framed his eyes and ran down each side of his nose as if depicting fangs.

He smiled – fierce and mocking – before he spoke.

"So much potential, Sasuke-kun," he said before his eyes cut to Ino and Sakura for the briefest of seconds. "Wasted. All the power you could have, but you allow yourself be held back."

"Who are you?" Sakura asked and Sasuke felt her trembling.

Nonchalant, he said, "Orochimaru of the Sannin."

Before Sasuke could register the name, an immense killing intent stole his breath and forced him to his knees. He struggled to bring in air, every muscle in his body trembling in protest of his commands.

It was almost as bad as Itachi's had been the night his older brother massacred the clan.

Sasuke forced his eyes to track the Sannin as the man approached, a distant part of his brain registering that Ino and Sakura had collapsed entirely. He grit his teeth together and pushed all of his will against Orochimaru's presence, managing to get one leg beneath him before his enemy was upon him.

The man laughed.

"Oh, this will be interesting." Orochimaru leaned down close enough for Sasuke to feel his breath brush against his neck with every word he spoke. Sasuke's stomach roiled, and bile burned the back of his throat. "Consider this a taste, Sasuke-kun, of all I can offer you."

Orochimaru bit Sasuke at the base of his neck, and his world faded to black.

"Well we have to do something, Forehead," Ino shouted as loud as a whisper would allow, eyes alight with worry.

"I can't carry both of you, Ino-pig," Sakura retorted, pulling a ninja wire taught around the final release in her trap. She fell to a seat heavily on the ground, grasping at her tortured middle and resting her eyes for a moment's respite.

After waking up to find the S-class enemy gone and Sasuke writhing on the ground, unconscious and in pain, it had fallen to Sakura to find shelter. She had found an alcove between three of the forest's overgrown trees shielded from above by a lattice of branches, and spent the better part of an hour dragging each of her crippled teammates to safety and setting up traps.

"Is his shoulder any better?" Ino asked, heat gone from her voice. Sakura glanced to their fallen teammate and frowned in worry. His collar had been ripped away and the point where his neck met his shoulder almost glowed an angry red.

There were no mistaking the teeth marks dug into Sasuke-kun's skin.

Sakura shivered and shook her head.

"Damn it," Ino cursed, before she looked to her own wounds. The bandages on her shoulder and leg were more red than white, now. "I'm going to bleed out, here."

"I don't have anything to sew them up," Sakura said, cursing whoever thought of sending them into this forest without time to prepare. "But let me bind them up better."

She was halfway through wrapping Ino's leg in a bind tight enough to almost cut off circulation when her traps went off, setting off a series of explosions that used the last of her exploding tags.

She tied off her work and jumped to her feet, trying to ignore the pain in her belly as she edged out of their alcove to check to see if she had gotten anyone.

"—way too close!" A boy with spiky black hair yelled, holding a hand over his heart. He wore a beige trench coat with kanji for death repeated three times down its center. His dark eyes glared above him, to where Sakura's net of ninja wire caught nobody.

A girl with jet black hair down to her ankles laughed. "You're the only one that didn't spot it, Zaku." She crossed her bare arms and cocked her head to the side with a grin. "You're lucky Dosu blasted you away from those tags."

"I think he busted my shoulder," Zaku complained, stretching out his left arm with a grimace.

"Quiet, both of you," a third ninja said. She caught sight of his hitai-ate, unfamiliar with the musical note that rested where a village's official symbol should have been. Most of his head and faced were wrapped in bandages with only his left eye free. It roamed the area around them. "The Uchiha is here."

Her breath froze and she retreated back into the alcove. Ino had settled onto her knees in front of Sasuke, her hands locked in her family's signature jutsu seal. Her grimace spoke volumes and Sakura hesitated to trust the blonde could pull it off in her state.

Sakura gulped and pulled a kunai, surprise would be their only advantage.

"You think, I thought the last Uchiha would come up with a better trap…"

"It was his teammate." Dosu stepped in front of the gap between the trees and Sakura let metal fly.

Her kunai missed its mark as it was thrown off course by a boomingburst of wind. Zaku stepped next to Dosu, lowering his arm and frowning.

"We're even," the spiky haired kid said. Dosu just grunted, his free eye locked past Sakura onto Sasuke's unconscious form.

"Well, our job just got easier," the girl said, spinning a pair of senbon between her fingers, end over end.

"Don't underestimate the Uchiha, Kin. It can still be a trap."

"We don't have any cards," Sakura lied, stepping back closer to Ino and Sasuke. "They were already taken from us."

The bandaged one chuckled. "Who cares?" He raised his arm, muttered something, and a jet of a pure force rocketed from beneath one of his sleeves, striking Sakura directly in the chest. Her feet left the ground and Sakura rolled end over end in the air, landing behind Sasuke in a heap.

A glance to her side showed Ino slumped forward as well, unconscious.

"One blow, for the whole team?" Kin asked, looking disgusted. "That's ridiculous."

"They were already weakened," Dosu said, stepping forward. Sakura grit her teeth and, somehow, found it in her to pull herself to her feet.

"I won't let you hurt them." She struggled the words out through labored breaths, stepping around her fallen teammates.

"Then you will die here and—" Dosu was cut off as a kunai lodged straight through his left arm from behind. The boy roared in pain, ripping the weapon out of his flesh and leaping up and away from Sakura. Just outside the alcove, Zaku had turned on Kin and was doing his level best to take her out.

Sakura grinned.

"What the hell?" Kin shouted, deflected her mind controlled teammate's attacks, giving ground rather than countering. "What the fuck is wrong with you Zaku?"

"It's a Konoha trick! Kill him if you have to, Kin!"

Dosu dropped back down into the alcove, his arm bound and his visible eye wide and crazed, reminding Sakura of the time Kakashi-sensei had tricked them into believing he was going to kill them all.

Her throat went dry.

"If I kill the bitch, does Zaku get his mind back?" He asked, walking forward.

Sakura formed the hand seal to her best genjutsu behind her back, hoping it would work on Dosu as it had not on Orochimaru.

She charged as quickly as she could push her exhausted muscles to work, rearing back her chakra laced palm to strike at his chest. Dosu dodged her strike and brought his right arm into her gut. She felt cold metal for a brief second before a ball of air pulsed out of his limb and knocked her back once more.

She landed and tasted blood as Dosu raised a kunai to strike at Ino's unconscious body.

"I-Ino!" She managed to call out, spluttering, coughing, and curling around her middle as her lungs and gut radiated agony at the small effort.

Kin screamed, Dosu cursed, and Ino stumbled away, crouching over Sasuke-kun with a defiant grin.

"She killed him!" Kin shouted, running around the corner, blood covering her entire front. "He sliced his own fucking neck. I'll fucking kill you, you bitch!" She made to attack, but Dosu held her back.

"No more games!" He swept his sleeve away from his right arm, revealing metal where there should have been flesh and blood. It ran down his arm from his elbow, ending in a hole that gathered chakra at its center. "Die!"

Sakura closed her eyes and felt the air pressure drop like the moments before a storm, and thunder roared.

Seconds later, she was not dead, and chanced a glance through cracked eyelids.

Ino had been knocked away and lay unconscious, but Sasuke stood in front of their attacker, chakra lightning flaring from his hand as he held onto Dosu's weapon in an unforgiving grip. The foreign ninja writhed under Sasuke's attack, muscles twitching and limbs flailing as electricity arced through them, but he did not scream.

The smell of burning clothes, hair, and skin dominated the air, and Sakura's stomach churned.

"What— what the fuck are you?" Kin had stumbled backward onto the ground, watching Sasuke with the same fear she had looked to inspire moments ago.

Sasuke dropped Dosu and the shinobi dropped to the ground in a boneless heap, his visible eye staring at Sakura through Sasuke's legs with the glassy tint found only in death.

Sasuke didn't say a word as he turned his attention to the foreign kunoichi, who scrambled back in a crabwalk once his attention was on her.

"St-stay away!"

Faster than Sakura had ever seen him manage it, Sasuke ran through the seals for his first jutsu, and a grand fireball crossed the distance between him and their enemy in a flash.

Kin did not get the chance to do more than scream as Sasuke's attack incinerated her whole.

"Weak."

Sakura tore her eyes away from the spot where Kin simply wasn't any more, and found Sasuke staring at her and Ino with pure hatred visible in his eyes despite his sharingan.

Black, flame-like markings radiated out over his skin, covering half his face and stemming from angry wound on his neck. Every one of Sakura's instincts cried out with how wrong it was.

"Sasuke-kun," she managed to say, but killing intent flooded the area the moment she spoke. Compared to Orochimaru's it was nothing, but Sakura was on her last legs.

"Holding me back," he said at a whisper before stepping forward, only to stumble and clutch at his neck. He fell to one knee with a pained cry, and the markings faded from his skin as his eyes reverted from sharingan red to their natural black. He blinked, confused, before pitching forward into the dirt, face first.

Sakura tried to move, but could not force any of her limbs to follow her commands. Frustrated, distraught tears flowed freely as darkness crept the edge of her vision, and the last thing Sakura registered before succumbing to unconsciousness was a flash of orange in the distance.

A/N: So I'm not really feeling this one too much. I wasn't one hundred percent sure how I was going to play the Orochimaru/Team Dosu interactions with Sasuke without Naruto in the mix, and let the characters guide me. Both Sakura and Ino are better off at this point than they were in canon, but there is still a huge gap between them and Sasuke.

Ignoring the Grand Canyon between all three of them and Orochimaru.

I'm going to be playing with how the different dynamics of this story's Team 7 and the other rookies will affect Sasuke in the future. Let me know what you think!

One more chapter for the second exam, I think, and then we're on to the preliminaries. Thanks for sticking with me, folks.

Brief Technique Glossary:

Raiton: Tenohira Teiden (Lightning Release - Blackout Palm) - User creates a layer of lightning chakra around their palm, stunning, immobilizing, or killing anything it touches depending on the strength used and the target's resistance.

Genjutsu: Sakura Burēdo no Dansu (Genjutsu: Dance of the Sakura Blades) - Sakura creates a situation in the target's mind that has them in a middle of a cherry blossom field, but each petal cuts as if it were a blade.