Hot 'N' Dangerous

Chapter 32: The Third and Final Test

I awoke to the bright sunlight streaming into my face. I felt the steady strides of someone carrying me.

Wait, this doesn't feel like Sasuke, I jerked backwards which caused whoever it was that was carrying me to fall backwards.

I stumbled back onto my feet, blinking rapidly. Kabuto was sprawled on the ground before me.

"Ow... you sure are unpredictable, I can tell you that," he said, rubbing his head where it had hit the ground.

My eyes flickered to the building just in front of me, it was the tower. I looked around to see Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke and Liz staring at me with shock. Naruto was supporting Liz, helping her limp along slowly while Sakura had Sasuke's arm around her neck.

"W-what's happening? Are we done?" I asked immediately.

"Just about, we just need to walk through that door," Kabuto pointed towards the one we were walking towards.

"You're late, Kabuto," a deep, bass voice sounded.

"Oh, it's you guys. Sorry, we ran into some trouble," Kabuto apologized.

"But, it was thanks to you that we got the scroll!" Naruto gave Kabuto a thumbs up.

"No, it was all you guys, especially you at the end, Naruto," he said modestly.

They walked to the next door over, "We'll be going through this door, good luck to the both of us," both groups nodded solemnly to each other and we pushed open our sealed door.

I looked at Kabuto and recalled the memory of his evil, red eyes. Liz looked uncomfortable around him as well, we hurried through the door, eager to get it over with.

"Nobody's here," Naruto said into the empty room.

It was roomy and the wall opposite us had a large tapestry stuck to it. Kanji covered the tapestry. I looked at the gaunt faces of my teammates. This second test had been rough on all of us, I was sure no other team had run into Orochimaru and had over half of their teammates receive a mark.

Sasuke mistook my impassive studying to be a look of unhappiness, he took his arm off of Sakura's shoulders, "Sakura, I'm alright," he backed away a bit.

"Oh... yeah," she said disappointedly.

"What should we do?" Naruto asked.

"Why don't we check out what that says," Liz suggested, limping over to the tapestry.

There were a few moments of silence, then, "I don't get it, this doesn't make sense," Naruto announced.

"It looks like there are missing words there," Sakura pointed out, there were blanks with quotation marks surrounding them, "I think that it's indicating for us to open up the scrolls," she deducted.

Naruto handed me one of the scrolls to open, "Alright, let's open them up," he gulped nervously.

I opened mine right away while he fumbled with it, scared out of his wits. I recognized the kanji on the scroll and smoke began to rise from them. I grabbed Naruto's scroll and threw both of them across the room. I pulled my sword from my sheath and assumed a defensive position with Liz in front of the others. A figure appeared from within the hazy smoke.

"You are..." Sasuke obviously recognized this person.

I kept my hostility up, unsure of who this was.

"Hey, long time no see," it was Iruka, the teacher at the Academy who had sorted out the teams and the man who had given Naruto a lecture just before we received Tazuna's mission.