Chapter 63: Plan C it is!

'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…