Fighting Fire with Fire!

"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!"

Up in the peanut gallery, Naruto wasn't the only one to be amazed at Sakura's performance. Sarutobi Hiruzen was busy watching Sakura's amazing chest bouncing around, and his son Sarutobi Asuma had decided to drop in to watch the preliminaries. Despite Asuma's disciples' elimination in the second round of exams, he had still come to watch; Ino had asked him to check out Sakura's match, so as to better gauge her rival's progress!1

"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…