First Blood

"You've done your part, Karin," said Sakura softly, giving the red-headed girl a headpat. "But now, it's my turn to be brave."

Karin was perhaps the only shinobi present who truly understood just how monstrous the One-Tail and the Nine-Tails were, thanks to her Mind's Eye of the Kagura Jutsu. Only she knew just how powerful they really were, and it had taken all of her courage to come to Sakura's rescue amidst the chaos…

In their present states, there was no better word to describe Tailed Beasts than 'monsters.' Humans had come to treat them with fear and hatred, as nothing more than tools for war, and that's exactly what they had become in response. After all, the Tailed Beasts were just mirroring the suffering that had been inflicted upon them by humanity throughout the ages… and they had very long memories.

"If you're going to fight, onee-sama, then I won't hide," said Karin, whose small body was still shivering.

Blood from fallen shinobi ran freely down the spectator stands, and corpses from the Hidden Leaf, Sand and Sound littered the ground all around them.

Luckily, nobody seemed to have taken notice of them just yet— part of the roof over their heads had collapsed, hiding them from view. However, they were bound to get noticed sooner or later— they had to leave as soon as possible. As for Kakashi and Ino, Sakura and Karin would just have to leave them there. Karin couldn't make them swallow her blood without them being conscious, but they would probably be safe where they were, hidden beneath the partly collapsed rubble.

'We just need to sneak out of the coliseum,' Inner Sakura rationalized. 'The worst of the fighting is taking place here, and we won't be very useful in a Jōnin-level battlefield. Our place is at Naruto's side— we need to calm him down before he turns into an even bigger problem than Gaara.'

Not to brag, but Sakura was fairly certain that the reason why Naruto had gone ballistic was because he'd seen her lifeless body— the anguish and hatred eroding his Eight Trigrams Seal to the extent of allowing him to manifest one tail on his chakra cloak.

"Three— two— one—" Sakura counted down, watching the ebb and flow of the battle, "go!"

Sakura and Karin dashed towards the huge hole in the coliseum and jumped!

…

Shukaku's immense mass had caused part of the flooring to collapse under its weight, and the Tailed Beast had then blasted its way out through the building's outer wall, towards the village's downtown area— towards… Ichiraku Ramen.

Thankfully, it seemed like Gaara was still holding on to his consciousness, somehow— otherwise, the gigantic tanuki wouldn't have only been using sand to attack, but also Ninjutsu; Wind Style and Magnet Style, to be precise. Naruto was doing a good job of slowing his progress and of distracting him, all things considered.

…

Sakura and Karin landed on a tall tree growing next to the coliseum, and from there they leapt from rooftop to rooftop, following the trail of demolished buildings, and the crying and screaming of civilians.

'There's no way the villagers won't hate the Sand after this,' said Inner Sakura grimly. 'The alliance between the Leaf and the Sand is definitely over— there'll be hell to pay, even if the Sand claims it was Orochimaru stringing them along all this time…'

"Sound-nin behind us, two squads," said Karin, without even needing to turn around to check. "Eight chakra signatures; six upper-range Genin and two middle-range Chūnin."

Sakura sent sticky chakra down to the soles of her feet and to her hands, before executing a cartwheel— and in doing so, ended up with ceramic roof tiles attached to each of her four appendages— and she then proceeded to sling the four tiles one after the other at her pursuers, as her body completed its revolution.

The tiles whizzed through the air; two met their marks, shattering against two Sound Genin's forehead protectors and knocking them unconscious, but the other two improvised throwing weapons were simply deflected by the enemy's kunai. Two down, six to go…

Without realizing it at first, Sakura and Karin were running out of space to flee to. They'd been jumping from rooftop to rooftop, but an impassable gap now stood before them; Shukaku had flattened the next few apartment buildings in their path, and below, in the streets, an enormous summoned snake was greedily snapping up all of the civilians that it could sink its fangs into.1

'End of the line,' said Inner Sakura, gulping nervously.

Faced with no other choice but to fight back, Sakura turned on her heel; gathering red-hot chakra in the pit of her stomach, she began weaving her hand signs…

"Fire Style: Ash Pile Burning!"

Sakura breathed out a large amount of black smoke from her mouth, obscuring her buxom figure and Karin's malnourished frame from their enemies' sight.

"Smokescreen!" one of the Sound Chūnin shouted to his squad. "You three, flush them out!"

The three Sound Genin obeyed without question, fearlessly entering the smokescreen— which was actually not a smokescreen, but a cloud of extremely volatile chakra-infused gunpowder.

"Three Genin have entered your Jutsu, onee-sama," Karin whispered in Sakura's ear.

'That's as many as we're gonna get,' Inner Sakura pointed out.

After laying down the smokescreen, Sakura and Karin had not hidden within it, but had rather used it as a cover; to mask the fact that they had jumped down to the balcony below. And so, Sakura nodded slightly, before creeping up the wall and gathering some more burning chakra in the pit of her stomach…

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"

Sakura jumped behind the two sound-nin squads and breathed out an enormous ball of roiling flames, instantly cooking one of the Chūnin squad leaders to death and detonating her cloud of gunpowder, blasting the three foolhardy Genin who had entered it to pieces.

One Chūnin and one Genin remained, but Karin quickly took advantage of the ear-splitting explosion to slash the Genin's throat with a kunai, while Sakura knocked out the Chūnin with a proper punch to the jaw while he was distracted.

'That smell,' said Inner Sakura in horror. 'I think we actually killed them— I thought Fire Style wasn't supposed to kill anyone!'

In the type effectiveness chart, humans were pretty weak to fire. Wasn't it obvious that people would die if they were set aflame or blown up into a fine mist?

"Are— are you okay, onee-sama?" asked Karin worriedly.

"I'm— I'm okay," said Sakura, blinking a few times. "Karin, we— we have to hurry."

'We have to make this count,' said Inner Sakura. 'Otherwise…'

"One Jōnin-level and one Chūnin-level— two chakra signatures up ahead, near the monsters," said Karin, closing her eyes to focus. "I almost didn't notice them because of the monsters' evil chakra, but I think they belong to those Sand-nin from the preliminary exam…"

Sakura had no doubt that the chakra signatures belonged to Kankurō and Temari, who were following their brother… but not from too close.

"Three more chakra signatures," said Karin, frowning slightly. "One powerful, but envious, high Chūnin-level — one excited, high Chūnin-level — and one guilty conscience, elite Jōnin-level. I think their names were Sasuke, Neji and Tenten?"