Konoha's Red Dragon

Prileminary observation

They did not get out of the forest completely intact.

Her hunch on the weird smelling Genin had been correct. He had not been who he claimed. They had survived, but the snake person- she found out he was a snake, that's why he smelled scale-y- was Orochimaru. She knew who he was, but only because of that two month period of learning about the three sanin of the leaf when it was her second year of the academy.

Both Naruto and Sasuke had something done to them. She couldn't hear it, couldn't hear Chakra, because she knew it had something to do with their Chakra, but it changed their scents in the slightest way.

Darker, more malicious then before, while Naruto just smelled less... spicy to her. That was the best way she could describe it.

Sakura was shaking, scratched, bleeding and hurt. She was scared. Terrified. It made Aki want to snarl, her blood heating up as she checked over her teammate. a protective instinct rearing its head the first time she took notice of how shaken Sakura was.

She did a cursory glance over the two boys as well, but knew they wouldn't have liked being fussed over. Seen it as a weakness.

And quite frankly, she wasn't friends with either of them. She didn't have that same protective feeling over them as she did Sakura. Sure it was there, but it didn't quite feel the same.

Now she stood beside her Sensei, almost pressing against his side so she was out of the way as the preliminary rounds were talked about.

Apparently there were too many people who made it past the forest of death. She was glad her team was apart of them

"Aki," she looked up at Kakashi, "I want you to watch these fights, analyze them and write down what you see. Same as the last test." She nodded. She could do that.

They moved up to the viewing area, watching the names match up on the screen.

Sasuke would be fighting one of the ones Aki didn't know, Sakura would be fighting Ino and Naruto would be fighting Kiba. Interesting matchups, the only unknown was the Yoroi Akadō. He was an odd one, she couldn't make anything out of his scent or anything else. His scent was just muted.

When the fight started, her eyes narrowed as she focused, completely zeroed in, it was kind of fascinating to see how his technique worked.

He could take Chakra from other people, a sort of siphon or something similar. All he had to do was touch Sasuke and he had whittled away at her teammates reserves quickly. Touch would be a no go in this fight, minimizing it would be the best option.

She knew Sasuke was tired, injured and somehow his chakra was being messed with, of course she wrote all of this down. But she was a little nicer with writing down her observations.

He needed to work on his dodging, it lacked quite a bit. Why he wasn't using any of his techniques, she wasn't sure, but she could hear his pained grunts whenever something happened. She noted down that he could work on his speed a little bit, and not put himself into a compromising position with the arm lock. Or to finish it quickly and just dislocate the other boy's shoulder.

His taijutsu was good, really good, but he would need to stop talking in fights. Honestly, why was talking even a thing when you fight someone?
She could understand why Kakashi did it in his fight with Zabuza, he was trying to keep the man talking so he could pin down where he was by the sound of his voice.

That she could understand, but this? Talking wasn't a requirement in a fight-

She heard a distorted screeching and she flinched. The off scent coming from Sasuke flared up and she covered her nose with furrowed eyebrows.