You know, I would actually be cool with that. It would be awesome to see him step in, open all of the gates, and make fire wood out of that tree, since he is essentially the only one that can stop it without having his energy drained. Except opening all of the gates would kill him, and I'm not okay with that.
I wonder how the other Rookies are doing right now. Surely they couldn't have all managed to dodge the branches... I wonder if any of them actually died.
The good news is we know Sakura is alive. The bad news is that we can't say the same for all the other rookies, Naruto himself almost got caught.
About Gai and Lee it's a shame but one of them will probably end up dead. I mean we gonna see the eight gate opening sooner or later... it was hinted several times. Also I'm curious about it... I wanna check it out.