"Hey, you, up there!" came Temari's nagging voice from below. "Top heavy!"
Startled, Sakura looked down at the arena, where Temari had already taken her place. Had she flown down on her fan?
"Who, me?" Sakura called back, pointing at herself.
"Yes, you. You're the one I'm supposed to be fighting, right?" Temari said mockingly. "If you're almost done chatting with your little friends, would you mind coming down here? I have a match to win…"
In Sakura's opinion, it was likely that Temari was being provocative on purpose to make her mad, in order to take the initiative in their upcoming duel. Temari would be aiming for a quick and easy win; showing fewer of her Jutsu in the preliminaries would mean that her opponents in the third exam would have that much less information to go on when it came to making preparations against her.
A lot could change in the month-long period that would lead to the finals, after all…
In any case, Temari was the strategist in Team Gaara. In the original, she had pretty much fought 200 IQ Shikamaru to a draw, a testament to her strength and her ability to avoid each one of his traps… except the last. (To be fair, all of Shikamaru's traps had been leading towards that last one, but he would have preferred it if she had lost before it had come to that!)
That being said, Sakura wasn't about to start underestimating Temari just because she couldn't pilot a Susanoo.
Sakura vaulted off the railing and dropped lightly to the stone floor below, thanking her lucky stars that she wasn't afraid of heights, and that her chest bindings hadn't come undone… yet.
"Step forward," said Gekko Hayate drowsily. A rivulet of blood was flowing out of the corner of his mouth, despite him not having fought a single battle, as he was only acting as a proctor.
Was this bloke going to be okay?
Both girls took a step closer to the centre of the arena; Temari smirked condescendingly at Sakura, who stuck her tongue out at her.
"Begin!"
Sakura darted forwards as soon as the starting signal was given. Temari was a long-range specialist, so closing the distance was the obvious thing to do, right?
"Shannarooo!" Sakura shouted.
But just as Sakura was about to punch her in the face, Temari raised her iron fan in front of her, planting it firmly in a crack in the stone floor. Sakura's fist collided with the unyielding iron fan's guard, causing it to resonate loudly like a gong…
"Predictable," Temari sniggered.
Temari twirled her folding fan, forcing Sakura to back away; getting smacked by the heavy-looking iron war fan looked like it would hurt…
Having managed to buy herself some breathing room, Temari unfolded her fan to a greater degree, revealing the first of three purple dots that were drawn on its leaf. Naturally, as the number of exposed dots increased, so would the giant fan's effective surface area increase— and as a result, the winds that Temari could conjure would increase in strength accordingly…
Temari drew back her fan with a twirl, infusing the surface of her weapon with a thin layer of wind-nature chakra; she was intending on sending Sakura flying with a gust of gale-force winds! But unfortunately for Temari, Sakura had already begun preparing herself for the inevitable counterattack, knowing the fan's true purpose!
Snake! Ram! Boar! Horse! Bird!
Upon completing the seals, Sakura clapped her hands together, and a brief gust of wind escaped from between her fingers, ruffling her long pink hair.
Despite needing to perform hand signs to complete her Jutsu, Sakura was the first one to finish readying her attack. While she didn't have any ninja tools like Temari to bolster her Ninjutsu's power, neither was she weighed down by the iron fan's tremendous size and weight!
"Wind Style: Gale Palm!"
Sakura snapped her right palm against the air, pushing the wind-nature chakra she had gathered in the palm of her hands against the mass of air in front of her. And a fraction of a second later, having finally accumulated enough chakra on her weapon, Temari forcefully swung her folding fan towards her!
"Wind Style: Sickle Weasel Jutsu!"
The air between Sakura and Temari rippled… and Temari's fan was wrenched out of her grip by the accumulating air pressure generated by Sakura's Jutsu; she had been aiming for Temari's weapon from the start!
Temari's fan was naturally designed to move as much air as possible, but the reverse was also true: large amounts of moving air could just as easily move the fan itself! By striking before her opponent could complete her Jutsu, Sakura had effectively turned Temari's weapon against her, and turned her opponent's advantage into a disadvantage!
"Why, you…!" Temari hissed.
How embarrassing was it for a serious, battle-oriented kunoichi like herself to lose her weapon to a girl who, rather than belonging on the battlefield, looked like she would be more at home in a Daimyō's harem or warming a nobleman's bed!
"I'm sorry," said Sakura provocatively. "Did you think I was just another pretty face?"
"WAY TO GO, SAKURA!" Naruto shouted at the top of his lungs. "YOU'VE GOT THIS, YA KNOW!"
"Wind Style, huh?" said Asuma casually, joining Team Kakashi on the sidelines. "Pretty impressive to have that much mastery over nature transformation at her age. You teach her that, Kakashi?"
Kakashi shook his head slowly.
"Last I checked, Sakura only knew Fire Style," said Kakashi. "And I didn't teach her that either; Sasuke here did, and she learned that in under five minutes."
Asuma's jaw nearly dropped open. Training one's chakra to change its nature to one that it held no affinity towards required years of gruelling work, which meant that Sakura must have…
"Dual nature affinity?" Asuma grunted. "So, she's a natural-born genius, then…"
"It might be even more than dual nature," Kakashi admitted. "I never bothered to check, since I assumed her affinity was towards fire…"
He glanced down at the arena; Temari was trying to retrieve her fan, which had got embedded in the wall behind her, but Sakura kept sending pressurized gusts of air at her, preventing her from getting close to her weapon. However, Sakura's Jutsu was weakening; the wind chakra coating her palms would soon run out, and she'd have to perform the Jutsu again…
"I was thinking of having Sakura train under you for a while, if she passes the preliminaries," said Kakashi nonchalantly. "You were pretty good at wind and fire nature transformation, if I'm remembering correctly?"
Asuma's face immediately turned ugly. It had been a mistake to come talk to Team 7's Jōnin-in-charge; he should have known that Kakashi would try to sweet-talk him into doing his job for him…
"I am, but I wouldn't say that Ninjutsu is my speciality," said Asuma hurriedly. "Besides, I—"
Kakashi immediately cut him off mid-sentence.
"You took the month off to prepare your disciples for the Chūnin exams, right?" he said nonchalantly. "But since Team 10 is currently hospitalized, you must have a lot of free time on your hands…"
"Actually, I was planning on spending that time with Ku—"
However, Kakashi just wouldn't let the matter lie! He would die before teaching anything of value to anyone other than Sasuke, his beloved!
"That reminds me, Sakura was also interested in learning Genjutsu," Kakashi interjected, nodding to himself wisely. "Maybe you could also get Kurenai to give her a few pointers?"
"Fine," said Asuma wearily. "But you'll owe—"
"We'll be even after that," said Kakashi, patting Asuma on the shoulder. "You still owe me for that thing from last time, remember?"
Asuma's shoulders drooped in defeat. There was just no winning with this bloke…
Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!
'Ah,' Inner Sakura said flatly. 'The Jutsu just ran out. So, Plan B?'
The thing with the Gale Palm Jutsu was that it was only good for a few uses; the wind chakra that Sakura had moulded and gathered on her palms was all but gone. Sakura did have plenty of stamina left to keep fighting, but until she moulded some more wind chakra for her Jutsu (which would take a bit of time since she wasn't very used to this particular nature transformation yet), Sakura wouldn't be able to maintain the pressure on Temari as effectively as before.
Although, on the bright side, Sakura was still standing in between Temari and her war fan, the latter of the two having ended up embedded in the wall behind her.
If Temari had tried to approach her war fan before Sakura's Gale Palm state had ended, Sakura would have simply blasted her into the wall, just as she had done with her weapon. The shock from the impact would have been an instant game over for her, but as it was, Sakura's Gale Palm Jutsu had merely flung Temari head over heels to the opposite side of the arena, leaving her no worse for wear.
"I'll admit I've underestimated you a little," said Temari, as she rose to her feet and dusted herself off. "But from now on, I'm going all out. You've only got yourself to blame for not losing when you were supposed to~"
"Summoning: Quick Beheading Dance!"
Unfortunately, Sakura had sent her opponent flying away from her; meaning that she was now too far away to interrupt the summons. Unsure as to what would come out of the Summoning Jutsu, Sakura could only formulate last-minute plans and mould chakra as she watched Temari biting her thumb and drawing a line of blood onto her forearm…
'Since when does Temari have summoned beast!?' Inner Sakura hollered. 'This isn't fair, we haven't even met Tsunade yet!'
In truth, Temari's summoning Jutsu was the one thing she didn't want to show off in front of anyone. Unlike Kankurō's special puppet gimmicks, her Jutsu were pretty straightforward… but her summoned beast was her ace in the hole.
Temari hated to lose, and she hated losing to other women the most. And she hated to admit it, but the younger pink-haired girl had more stamina than she did. If she wanted to avoid a drawn-out fight and win cleanly, she would need to retrieve her fan…
Now, Temari didn't necessarily have to pass the preliminaries in order to play her part in the Konoha Crush Plan, since she would still be allowed to stick around in the Leaf until the conclusion of the exams (to watch the finals), but it would be preferable if she could stay as close as possible to Gaara, upon whom the entire plan hinged.
…
A puff of white smoke exploded from Temari's arm; a weasel the size of a human, wielding a scythe, popped out of the smoke. It began spinning rapidly, gathering cutting winds around its body as it flew towards Sakura like a boomerang!
'I really should have brought the sword!' Inner Sakura groaned. 'Damn it!'
In actuality, the Manyuu Blade wouldn't have made much of a difference here; it would have easily allowed Sakura to block the weasel's scythe, but the slicing winds, which had now extended to cover the entire length of the arena, would have still cut Sakura's body to ribbons…
Sakura turned on her heel and flickered towards the war fan embedded in the wall, wrenching it out and deploying it in front of her as a shield. A fraction of a second later, the hurricane winds hit the fan; Sakura's bones and articulations screamed as she held on to the fan for dear life, which threatened to fly out of her grasp at any moment.
Plan B had failed before it had even started, and Sakura was now in the eye of the cyclone; if she moved even slightly, she would be torn to shreds!
But eventually, as the weasel began running out of chakra, the fierce winds began dying down and the dust settled. The stone floor and walls on Sakura's side of the arena were marked with an uncountable number of deep incisions, and Sakura herself hadn't exactly escaped unscathed…
'No more sleeping on earth style,' said Inner Sakura miserably. 'It feels like we got hit by ten thousand paper cuts…'
Sakura's delicate skin was filled with gashes and lacerations of varying lengths and sizes, and her clothes were beginning to fall apart at the seams. Diamonds of skin peeked through the holes in her clothes; unless she won this quickly, she would get arrested for indecent exposure…
"Whoa!"
Sakura just barely avoided getting decapitated by the weasel's scythe by ducking under it, but its blade hooked onto the war fan; finally knocking it out of Sakura's grasp and sending it clattering to Temari's feet.
"I'll take this back," she said sweetly. "Thank you very much."
Sakura kicked the weasel off of her and rolled away, putting some distance between herself and her two opponents. The summoned beast had already expended most of its chakra upon coming out, and Temari must have also spent a lot of her own chakra to summon such a powerful beast…
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A second copy of Sakura poofed into existence at her side. Unlike Naruto, Sakura had limited amounts of chakra, so just one would have to do.
"A Shadow Clone?" said Temari mockingly. "Go ahead, this'll just end twice as quickly…"
To a certain extent, a shinobi's heightened reflexes would dull as they began to run out of chakra. However, such logic didn't perfectly apply to Sakura, since she had a Jōnin-level chakra pool, and furthermore, Minato's baseline nerve signal transmission speed remained superhuman, even without the help of chakra!
"You distract blondie," Sakura shouted to her Shadow Clone. "I'll take the overgrown rat!"
'Overgrown rat!?' the weasel squeaked indignantly in the tongue of weasels.
"You're not even bothering to block me in person!?" Temari sputtered in anger.
The weasel was much faster and deadlier than Temari; Sakura still needed her Shadow Clone for her plan, and a single scratch would be enough to pop the fragile Shadow Clone, if she was the one facing the weasel…
"Scatter!" Sakura shouted. "Plan C… Begins now!"
"Forget about the Shadow Clone, Kamatari!" Temari shouted to her summoned beast. "Focus on the real one, and we win!"
Sakura inwardly grinned… Instigation successful; just according to Keikaku.
(T/N: Keikaku means plan)
The weasel skittered rapidly towards Sakura, chittering angrily as it fiercely swung its scythe at her repeatedly from all directions. The creature was fast, but its attacks were still very honest and straightforward, since it was still a beast. Making full use of her reflexes, Sakura ducked and weaved to dodge the flurry of swings… until the weasel suddenly backed away.
"Wind Style: Great Sickle Weasel Jutsu!"
Temari swung her fan, generating gale-force winds, but Sakura had already flickered away, one step ahead of her. Kamatari, as a kamaitachi very sensitive to the winds, had pre-emptively moved out of the way of Temari's Jutsu, a clear indicator that Temari had been about to attack from behind!
Meanwhile, Sakura's Shadow Clone was doing something very strange: she had started by making a few additional Shadow Clones of her own, and now, they were all running around, picking up fallen kunai and shuriken off the floor…
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