Foreword:

Mae (前) - before, previously, earlier

Kage (影) - shadow, shade, other side

----------

"Yo."

"Your late!" came Naruto's routine response. The blonde waggled his finger at their silver-haired sensei and adorned an (adorable) scowl on his face.

"You see, a black cat crossed my way so I just had to go around..."

Sakura let a small smile play on her lips, finding amusement in her team's victory. She was content to see that despite feeling like the world had tipped on its axis, some things remain unchanged. The rosette kept still on her branch, her back facing the trunk and a wandering eye on everything around her. She'd have to blame Anko for that habit, for the last time the purple-haired woman trained her before she was appointed proctor had left her wary.

(Days spent in a man-eating forest. Scrabbling for something to survive on. Fending off bigbigbig animals.)

"Anyways, the chūnin exams are coming up," he tossed the three gēnin each a scroll, "Sign this and be at the Academy at eight."

Then he was gone.

Sakura looked up once again, but never let her surroundings leave her peripheral. It seemed as if everyone she met slowly wore down her already thin tolerance. She never made an attempt to hone in her patience, often letting her emotions reign free, but that was before and times change. Now she felt just a tiny bit of pride in her victory over her many emotions.

She peered back over to her team which was still gawking (it was hard to tell with Sasuke but he totally was in his own Uchiha way) at the spot where Kakashi had vanished.

Not much had changed in her teammates, both got along far better (which given the fact they still bicker and call each other names was by normal standards not very much) now and Sasuke had a new collection of pinprick tiny scars from the battle on Naruto bridge, but aside from that, they were, for all accounts, the same as when they graduated.

It made her a little sad but at the same time, a little happy her teammates stayed consistent.

Which means, that not-so-little voice crowed, that despite you changing, despite your drastic change in personality, nothing differed between them. They don't need you.

She was rendered frozen because it was true, and the not-so-little voice wasn't a separate entity, it was what she refused to say aloud, the darkness that brewed and stirred in the shadows of her mind. There was another voice there now, in her mind that is. The other voice she called Mae, the not-so-little voice she called Kage.

Before, who was usually so verbal on everything, stayed eerily quiet.

Sakura found herself alone in a clearing, both boys' backs turned to her, and not a word of greeting or farewell between them.

----------

She dreamt of lemon trees that night. Of fruitless lemon trees and a small hand atop hers, of dreams for the future and whispered promises.

She shot up in her bed that night, silent tears rolling down her cheeks and the voices in her head quiet. She slipped under her bed and curled up on herself, her imagination running away with itself.

When the sun kissed the sky she rose, snatching the scroll she has signed the night before as she left her house. She had swapped her typical overcoat with a fur-lined jacket in the same color. Sakura intended to use the hood of the jacket to conceal her cotton-candy pink hair. Her hair was the antithesis of camouflage and Sakura found that dyeing her hair was impossible, after several attempts at getting it to a brown color she had thrown her hands in the air and cursed her pink locks. Turns out her hair released a chemical (that was produced due to the mutation that made her hair pink in the first place) that wore away hair dye.

So, without a henge that she frankly didn't have the reserves for, she was stuck with pink hair.

Her teammates arrived on the dot. Sakura watched then walk into their designated meeting spot from a tree, something she'd taken to in recent times. There was when she spotted the copperhead in the fallen leaves that littered the ground from the past autumn. The snake peered up at her, eyes far too knowing for a simple animal.

It bowed its small head and Sakura threw a kunai straight through the snake's skull.

The rosette hopped down the back of the tree, coming around to face her team members.

"Ah, Sakura-chan! Where'd you come from, dattebayo?"

"Behind the tree," Sakura answered sagely, mirth dancing in her jade eyes, "I found a copperhead who called himself a garden snake."

"What'd you do to the snake?" Naruto asked, scratching the back of his neck.

"I told him he wasn't a garden snake, and that he needed to try harder if he wanted to stay hidden in the leaves."

Sasuke looked at her strangely, off-put by his teammate's strange story. This was probably the most the pink-haired kunoichi had talked in his presence since Wave.

"Huh," Naruto blinked, "What a weird snake."

"Indeed."

----------

The trio was ready to leave the second floor for the third when a crowd of gēnin caught their attention. Two gēnin stood in front of the door, with matching smirks. The forefront of the crowd was another Konohagakure team composed of a Hyūga, a brunette with twin buns, and a boy in green spandex and orange leg warmers; otherwise known as Team Gai.

It was a show. This was so obviously not the third floor, there's no way someone as genius as Neji would be fooled by the basic of basic genjutsu. Better to be underestimated than overestimated.

But Team Gai had the kind of teamwork Team Kakashi didn't, the kind that allowed you to convincingly act dumb. Sasuke and Naruto would show off, flaunt their skills in others' faces, never in a thousand years would they purposely act dumber than they are.

"C'mon," Sakura muttered lowly, tugging her teammates' sleeves, "We have to get going."

Sasuke's onyx orbs stayed trained on the crowd, a smirk crawling up his face when he recognized the opportunity to show his prowess on a large scale.

Not that it would make him look all that smart, she would suspect half these gēnin were only playing along and would pounce on the chance to berate the Uchiha for his tunnel-vision which obscured the thought that not everyone there was as dumb as a rock and that they were the smarter ones for acting like they were that stupid. Naruto had a lack of perception, it seems, as he seemed to genuinely believe that this was the third floor.

"I can't believe you would fall for such a simple trick," Sasuke's voice cut through the crowd, and Sakura pulled the hood of her jacket over her hair and drifted away from her raven-haired teammate, "This is only the second floor."

A faint murmuring spread through the crowd and several looks were sent the Uchiha's way. Easy prey, they screamed, overconfident.

Gai's team sent them looks, too. A show, it was a fucking show and her moronic bastard of a teammate hasn't enough brains to see it, even with his fancy pinwheel eyes.

Deep breath in, hold, deep breath out, repeat.

Her expression cooled and she stepped in to defuse the pre-exam spar that was about to happen between mini-Gai and the last (Konohagakure-allied) Uchiha.

"Let's not forget that this is an exam, " the rosette said putting a hand on each of the boys' arms. Sasuke flinched back as his head shot up to look at her but Lee only stared up at her curiously, "Wasting our energy in a fight between two friendly shinobi will weaken you and Konoha as a whole."

Her teammate shrugged her off with a glower whilst Lee exclaimed, "Ah, you're right, Sakura-chan! Thank you for the reminder, yosh!"

"You know this loser?" came Sasuke's rough voice as their team separated from Gai's.

The rosette shrugged, "I train."

Then came the incredulous look because Mae would have never trained and all Sasuke knows is Mae. Sakura says nothing because she hears Mae cry over him at night, and she wants him to believe Sakura is still Mae.

Kakashi met them at the entrance to the third floor, giving his team that a little smile.

"Great. Now that you are all here you can really sign up."

"Whaddya mean, sensei?" Naruto asked, scratching the back of his head once more, "We already signed up, dattebayo."

"The Chūnin exams can only be taken in teams of three," their sensei cheerfully explained, "I was testing to see if all of you would come without letting any of you put any unnecessary pressure on an unsure teammate."

Obviously, unsure teammates would have been her (or more accurately Mae if she was still in charge).

Damn.

"Anyway, now that you all are here you can proceed to the real exam."

And so they did.

----------

Room 301 was easy to find. It was a large lecture hall for combined classes in the early years of the Academy before a lot of her year-mates dropped out. It would comfortably accommodate up to two hundred people and possibly two-fifty If you really squeezed people together.

Sakura wasn't expecting just how fucking intimidating it would be.

Her hood was still pulled up (thankfully) and so her pink locks were carefully hidden away, but attention still was spaced on them as they entered.

As all Konoha rookies began to bunch together Sakura slowly drifted over to Gai's team.

"Sakura," Tenten greeted.

"Tenten. Neji. Lee."

Lee did a little wave while Neji just grunted in acknowledgment.

"A loud team you have there," the brunette commented, "I could see why you would want to get away from the attention."

"Whether it be an exam or just out and about those two seem to attract all kind of attention - mostly unwanted," the rosette sighed watching as a white-haired teen diplomatically told their group off, "Better to drift away than to get sucked in."

"No fighting in my lecture hall, maggots!" a booming voice called and Sakura looked up to see Ibiki fucking Morino standing by the podium, "Unless you want to be disqualified, that is."

The sound-nin which had started to haggle the group of rookies stopped and backed away.

"Just got a little excited, you know," one Oto-nin said with a sharp smile, "All the tension in the air."

"Then you best restrain yourselves," the man snarled, "Everyone! To your assigned seats so this test can begin!"

Like scared mice, they did as told.