Turning of Time (Naruto Fanfic) [hiatus]

Turning of Time: Chapter 40

__Sara Pov__

There was dead silence for a split second after the Hokage said one sentence. Of course, that always depends on the sentence. This time the sentence happened to be:

"We'll have to have preliminary rounds before the third round starts."

Dead silence. Which was of course followed by the storm of questions from us genin. I stayed silent in my spot next to Neji.

As if reading my thoughts he said, "the silence before the storm."

I smirked a little at that. It was just something he was bound to say. If he hadn't taken the opprotunity to make some proverbial sentence, I would have been worried.

Once the crowd was settled a proctor walked forward to explain in greater detail.

"From now on... it will be... each person for themselves... no more teams," each break in the sentence being a cough or two let out. He either had a serious cold, in which case he shouldn't be proctor-I didn't want to get sick-or he lived with that cough his whole life. I would bet on the latter, because the Hokage isn't so cruel as to have a sick man as judge.

"Now that that is all... cleared up. Is there any...one that would like to... drop out?"

"What!? The prelims are starting now?" I heard one girl yell out. Not sure quite who it was.

"Yes. If anyone feels... like they can't battle... they should drop out now. It won't affect... your team anymore."

There were some disscussions amongst the crowd. In all Kabuto, another girl, and an entire team dropped out. Next to me was Huroin's team and there was a furious fight going on. I couldn't catch what it was about, but it involved a lot of arm waving and pointing of fingers. At last it seems they came to a decision.

"I'll be dropping out!" Lang proclaimed.

 Kairili raised her hand as well, "I'm leaving too."

For some reason this surprised me a lot less than you would think. I knew Huroin was strong in his determination, but after our team beating their team, seemingly effortless, their conviction was shaken. They would come back in another 6 months, and at that time I had no doubt that they would become chunins.

The proctor looked us over. After seeing no one else contemplating dropping out he nodded briskly. "We'll move on to... the matches then." A board uncovered and the names began to shuffle around. After a few seconds it settled on two names. "Sasuke and Yoroi. If everyone else wou...ld make your way... to the veiwing area."

Everyone filed up the stairs calmly. I stood next to my team and Hitomi quietly slipped in to stand behind us. We were on the opposite side from Naruto and Sakura, standing next to the sand ninja who had threatened Kono and Dai.

The matches progressed smoothly until it came to Naruto's match. Before now all of the matches showed great skills each possessed as ninja. Naruto had to break the trend by winning with a fart. Granted it was classic and I almost fell from the balcony-like stands from laughter, but still. Very uncool.

After the shuffling of the board my name popped up. I was fighting Takeo. I guess that fighting my own teammate wasn't surprising anymore. Not after the first two parts of the test.

__3rd Pov__

Takeo and Sara hopped down calmly into the ring. They didn't say anything for a moment, but finally Sara spoke.

"I guess we can finally solve our mystery from earlier." The spectators looked down confused, but it was obvious that there wouldn't be any elaboration.