"Sakura-san! Everyone!" Rock Lee called out happily. "You finally made it!"
"Easy for you to say!" Sakura wheezed, doubling over with her hands on her thighs to catch her breath. "You're not the one who was to lug around boulders on your chest!"
Whether it was Team Guy, Team Asuma, or Team Kurenai, they had all been running at top speed for three days and three nights without rest— from the Hidden Leaf Village, through the Land of Rivers, all the way to their destination: an outpost on the edge of the Demon Desert. Everyone was exhausted, sleep-deprived, and starving…
"Food…" moaned Chōji. "Real foooood…"
Luckily for Sakura, Chōji always carried extra rations with him in case of emergencies like this, so she hadn't gone hungry. His size-altering techniques were physically demanding and burned through lots of chakra quickly, so without provisions or supply lines, he'd be worse off than a regular shinobi— just a stronger than average fat bloke.
"I'm glad you could make it," Hinata said softly, as she left her group and approached Sakura, twiddling her thumbs. "I… I just wanted to ask…"
"Yes?" asked Sakura tentatively.
Without Naruto around, Sakura hadn't had many chances to interact with Hinata over the past two years, since her social circles mostly revolved around Tsunade, Shizune, Karin, Ino, and the hospital staff. Hinata was a quiet girl who mostly kept to herself, so all Sakura really knew was that she had been banished from her clan and now rented a small apartment beneath Naruto's.
"I…"
Unfortunately, Hinata was cut off mid-sentence, and Sakura never got to hear the rest. A group of exam applicants was rapidly approaching, kicking up sand as they raced towards the finish line.
"This sucks!" wheezed a white-haired boy at the forefront of the group. "This seriously sucks! Why the desert, of all the places they could have picked!?"
Well, if it wasn't a familiar face! It was an old member of Sasuke's Team Taka, from the original timeline! The desert heat didn't seem to be agreeing with him— he looked like he was melting. Like, not in the metaphorically sweating sense (though he was doing a lot of that as well); he was literally physically melting.
"Just a bit farther, Suigetsu-senpai!" came a young boy's encouraging voice from his back. "I believe in you!"
"Less talking, more running," panted the shark-toothed girl running next to him. "Don't make me zap you!"
As soon as Team Suigetsu had crossed some invisible line in the sand, a tall man wearing a Sunagakure-style flak jacket and a turban flickered behind them, summoning a whirlwind of swirling sand with his arrival.
"That makes 30 teams! The rest of you are disqualified!" shouted Baki, Gekkō Hayate's murderer. "Those of you from the Hidden Sand, return to the village. The rest of you, you're free to return to your own villages… or don't. Feel free to remain here, and wither to death among the dunes!"
And with those chilling words, he turned on his heel and strode towards those who had actually passed the preliminaries. This round had wiped out most of the squads sent from Konohagakure, leaving their numbers roughly equal to those of the Sand shinobi.
"Follow me," he said curtly, and without another word, he led them into the fortress behind them.
The fortress was part of a much larger wall that encircled the Demon Desert, traditionally used as the testing grounds for Suna's Chūnin Exams. If anyone had asked, Sakura would've said building a knockoff Great Wall of China around a desert was a colossal waste of the Land of Wind's taxpayer money. So what if that section of the desert was more dangerous than the rest? Extra dangerous or not, a desert was dangerous all the same.
With such financial mismanagement, no wonder the Hidden Sand was perennially bankrupt…
Their entire survival strategy seemed to revolve around provoking conflicts with their neighbours, then looting what they needed under the guise of national interest. A glorified desert empire with too many human weapons and not enough sense, starting wars of aggression to justify its own meaningless existence.
…
"Entrants, please assemble in the cafeteria," came a woman's voice over the intercom. "This is your final call."
Sakura was starving, and she was seriously looking forward to putting something solid under her teeth. Chōji's flavoured military ration pills were better tasting than most, but they couldn't compare to a hot meal! And judging by the small crowd gathering in the cafeteria, she wasn't the only one to hold this opinion. Sand shinobi were infamous for their fearsome poisons, but at this point, Sakura would have gladly eaten a poisoned meal— as long as it tasted good.
"What are you looking at?" Sakura snapped at the blue-haired, twin-tailed girl staring at her creepily. "Is there something on my face?"
"…not cute at all," said the girl haughtily, clicking her tongue.
The exam applicants had naturally divided themselves by nationality. Rain, Mist, and Grass teams were scattered around the cafeteria, keeping to themselves. The Sand shinobi clustered together in one corner, casting suspicious glares at the other entrants. On the opposite side sat the Leaf teams— except, curiously, one Sand team lingered near their tables, hovering a little too close for comfort.
And for some reason, the Hidden Waterfall team was the only one missing to the party. Were they not hungry? Or were they up to something? Sakura hadn't seen much of the Waterfall team so far, but if the last Chūnin Exams were anything to go by, they were probably just weaklings again this time around. After all, if you were still taking your Chūnin exams in your late 30s, you probably wouldn't get to promote to Jōnin until your next life…
"The fat guy over there is seriously grossing me out," shivered Ino. "It's not even that hot any more, and he's sweating all over the place…"
Desert nights tended to get pretty cold, a stark contrast to the sweltering heat of the day. Even though the air had cooled, the obese man wearing a Hidden Grass forehead protector was still sweating like a pig, sending flecks of sweat raining down as he munched on his snacks as he eagerly waited for dinner to begin in earnest.
"He'd better not get any of that nasty sweat into my food," growled Chōji, staring daggers at the obese man. "Sakura's already wiped out my curry-flavoured rations, so if I can't have my dinner, I might actually lose it..."