Naruto : Chapter 80

The break was used to get more bets placed, buy food and drinks, to discuss the previous fights and visit the bathroom. Excitement could nearly be cut with a knife.

The first round had given the spectators a good show of the abilities of the genin that were attempting to gain the rank of chunin. Most in the audience were ninjas with a few civilians and lots of customers of the village mixed into them.

Orochimaru had to suppress a chuckle. The people here were absolutely clueless that soon there wouldn't be a village called Konoha anymore. Or not much of it.

It was probably impossible to kill everybody, but once Gaara was unleashed onto the village in full biju form, the villagers wouldn't know what to do anymore. They didn't have the fourth anymore and neither his son nor his remaining students were capable of taking down a biju. Even if Kabuto's information on Naruto had been massively lacking in quality.

Not to mention that, except for a note that he couldn't send more information because Ibiki was getting paranoid and suspected him or somebody close to him as a spy, he hadn't heard from him since the second round.

Well, he had prepared for anything. And Kabuto knew how to prevent that information got into enemy hands. It would be a shame if he lost the talented young medic, but he could replace him.

He was a bit annoyed at the change of how the third round would be battled, but in the end it didn't matter. He had wanted to see Sasuke go up against Gaara, but the quality of the candidates in the finals was really high so far.

Sarutobi must have done something during the last months to improve the training of the fresh genin, because clearly there was a massive increase in abilities compared to their academy graduation reports and the progress reports that Kabuto had sent on the teams except for team seven under Kakashi. That one was completely wrong.

He would see when Gaara would fight. He would give the signal for the attack when Gaara was fighting any member of Kakashi's team. It would be nice to see the young Hokage lose one of his precious students. After all, who would be able to go up against a jinchuriki that could unleash their biju? Certainly no genin.

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The audience was awaiting the drawing of the first match of the second final round. There were six competitors left now. Three of them the students of the Godaime Hokage. All three had shown their superiority in their fights. Talks about the next generation of the sannin were going round.

Then the giant monitor that had been placed next to the VIP lounge where the kages resided was flashing through names faster than anybody could look. The board settled on two names after a short while. Sakura Haruno would face Shikamaru Nara.

The proctor called the two down to the arena and they stood opposite of each other.

"What a drag. I really hate having to fight girls." Shikamaru complained.

"I'll make it short for you then, slacker." Sakura countered cracking her knuckles threateningly.

"She's as bad as my mother." Shikamaru mumbled. "How troublesome."

"The first fight of the semi-finals of the chunin exams. Sakura Haruno of Konoha versus Shikamaru Nara of Konoha. The same rules as in round one apply. Begin." Hayate called out and jumped away.

Shikamaru knew that if he wanted to have a chance to win this, he needed to catch Sakura before she could poison him. The fight against Kiba had given him a lot of useful information. Too bad that Sakura knew that as well. She unleashed a flurry of shuriken at him which he had to dodge and it prevented him from using his shadows efficiently.

He countered with some kunai of his own to not let her dominate the fight, but he knew that this match up was against him. Sakura was fast and knew about his shadow techniques. She would make very sure to not come too close to them.

He tried an unusual approach. He had worked hard on this part with his father to be able to connect his shadow in another way than being a sitting duck and unable to defend himself properly because he had to hold the handsign until the shadows were connected. So he attacked and went in close, unsheathing a short sword from his back.

He knew that this was unlike his normal fighting style, but the typical Nara style was very much meant to work together with others that took care of the physical and distraction parts to allow him to catch an opponent. He held the sword in his right hand and Sakura blocked each strike with a kunai.

After a short exchange they jumped apart and she threw a purple coloured ball at him. He feared poison smoke and held his breath. But the smoke could also work in his favour if he managed to pull this off.

He jumped upwards out of the cloud of smoke and therefore avoided the shower of senbon that Sakura fired at his former position, to the left of it and to the right. She had had a good idea by covering a wide area while he would be handicapped in his response time with not seeing what she did exactly.

But now the jump in the air allowed him to form his handsign, another improvement he had made in training and his small shadow on the ground reached out and connected with the whole shadow of the cloud.

Sakura must have known that it could happen, which was why she had fired her senbons wide-ranged. Against a normal opponent that would even have worked. Not many would decide to jump into the air for a short while, risking inhaling the poison when they fell again.

But with a smart opponent like Sakura it had been assured that she would do something against normal strategies of avoiding being trapped. He felt the connection from the jutsu and took in a deep breath before landing back in the cloud of poisonous smoke.

He would bet that Sakura had built up an immunity to this type of poison. Or she had learned to hold her breath for long periods of time. Both could be possible and he needed to calculate for it. He ran out of the cloud feeling that his opponent was following him thanks to the shadow connection.

"This match is over." He said, secure in his assessment.

"No, it's not." Sakura countered.

"You can't escape my jutsu, I can simply force you to submit with my sword as you don't have a weapon on your back. So simply give up, Sakura." Shikamaru said.

Then he felt a sharp pain in his neck.

"What?" Shikamaru asked, struggling to keep hold of his shadow possession.

"You should never discount the possibility of a clone, Shikamaru." Sakura said from behind him, fading into view with a syringe in her hand.

Shikamaru felt the drug coursing through his system.

"How? You don't have enough chakra for any kind of solid clone." He asked, dropping to a knee. "You would have needed your full reserves for a simple elemental clone alone. And you couldn't have recovered that after the fight against Kiba yet."

"Well, it has its perks being on a team with Naruto. I know that I don't have the chakra reserves that are necessary for this kind of thing, but he once gave Sasuke and me some useful seals on a mission that allow us to store chakra worth five A-rank jutsus in them.

I used one during the break and am at more than my normal full capacity right now. Good night, Shikamaru." Sakura said.

Shikamaru lost the fight with the drug and fell to the ground, dropping the jutsu against Sakura's clone. Hayate landed next to Shikamaru and checked if he was really asleep.

"Winner by knockout: Sakura Haruno. She commences to the finals." Hayate announced to the cheers of the audience.

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