Sakura leapt back.
There was a schiiick as her current opponent pulled out another throwing knife.
The chamber was littered with weapons—kunai, senbon, and shuriken were piled haphazardly onto each other. Each one had been bent, blunted, or rendered useless in some way. Sakura grinned despite the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. This was her longest spar yet, having lasted fifty something minutes. The other kunoichi was rank #140, and if Sakura could win this, she would have enough points to rise to rank #145.
She ducked and raised her own scrapped kunai to deflect the throwing knife. It swung upwards in a wide arc. Sakura leapt upwards, grabbing its handle and sending it back at the kunoichi. They were on their last weapons, and if Sakura played her cards right, they wouldn't even need to go hand to hand.
The kunoichi rushed towards her, deciding it was more advantageous to go close range. Sakura danced out of her reach, snatching her wrist and twisting it. The knife dropped with a clang. The kunoichi simply pulled out another knife, swinging it towards Sakura's arm. Sakura could avoid it, but she would be releasing the kunoichi. She couldn't lose this advantage.
Instead, she raised her other arm to ram it downward into the blade so that it pointed to the ground. The blade had cut deep, but Sakura paid it no mind, twisting the kunoichi's other wrist. Her last knife clattered to the floor. Transferring her two wrists to a one handed hold, Sakura pressed her own last kunai against the kunoichi's collarbone.
Three seconds.
They part. The kunoichi rested a hand on her shoulder, and in her eyes there was respect. The kunoichi didn't really say anything, she's the silent type, and with a shunshin, she's gone.
Their fight had gained a small crowd, and now they came up to Sakura. A few familiar faces congratulated her, and there's some good-natured whining from the others. Apparently her victory had made a lot of the spectators lose money.
Besides providing spars, Training Ground 43 was the betting pool of betting pools, focused on all manner of things from the fights to ranks to competitors' love lives. And if you were really good, like top twenty ranks kind of good, and you fought others in the same range, there would be a sizable chunk of the bet money to take home after every fight.
Sakura is climbing the ranks, slowly, but the spars have eliminated every gap in her defense and even made her develop new defenses, with new gaps which were then tested out in each spar. She was adapting to thinking on her feet. She didn't freeze up anymore. She was catching up to her team.
She collected her share of the bets lost on her, stuffing it in her pocket as she wandered around looking for the medic. The good thing about 43 was that they always had a medic on hand to heal the cuts and bruises. It had been a blessing for Sakura, who didn't need her mother worrying even more. The more serious broken bones and whatnot, though, still had to go to the hospital. That had been a lecture to last a lifetime. Mebuki had the lungs of Inner Sakura, with twice the rage.
Now, her parents thought she spent her days in the library to prepare. Sakura winced. She hated lying to them, but she couldn't spend her days avoiding them trying to sabotage her training. Not to mention their requests for help in the shop. The last time she helped out, she had scared away several customers with her delivery of goods by window. She had forgotten it wasn't the thing to do when one was civilian. It made for a good laugh with her team, but her parents clearly didn't think so.
She finally spotted the medic's telltale silver hair in the crowd.
"Hey, Kabuto! Could you fix this up for me?"
Sakura looked around the clothing shop. She had hit a growth spurt, what with all the lack of dieting and the increased exercise. Her beloved red dress didn't fit her anymore, and neither did any of her other clothes, really. She had already picked out some shinobi gear, in dark colors so any blood or wounds wouldn't stain, and mending it wouldn't be too obvious. Now she was on the lookout for some civilian wear. She had wandered over to a bright green dress and reached for it when a nimble hand grabbed hers.
"Forehead, you are not wearing that. Sasuke would take one look at that and never look at you again."
"Ino!"
"What, no insult attached?" Ino teased. She paused, squinted at Sakura. "Really, are you okay? You don't look too good."
Sakura probably looked like a hot mess. She had bags under her eyes, hadn't touched a tube of makeup in days, her kunai-sheared hair looked choppy as hell, and she probably had wrinkles from the stress. Ino, though, looked more relaxed than Sakura had ever seen her. She looked happy, and Sakura supposed that she deserved to be. No one on her team had been seriously injured, and Shikamaru was a Nara, he could take care of himself in the finals.
"Sakura? Sakura?" Ino was looking more concerned by the minute.
Sakura waved it off. "I'm fine, Ino-pig."
"There it is. I'm going to choose not to reply to that, like the mature young lady I am. Forehead." Sakura snorted. Ino ignored it. "Is it the Chuunin Exams?"
"…yeah."
"Ugh, well come on then. Put back that hideous dress. It's better to shop together than alone, and this way we can catch up some. Let me tell you, since the preliminaries, Asuma has sat on his ass and done absolutely nothing…"
Sakura went along, falling back into the familiar chatter with Ino. She saw Ino every morning when she went to buy flowers for Lee, but Sakura had always left quickly, hating how awkward it felt. It had never occurred to her that Ino might have wanted to talk. Sakura had only expected lingering resentment and more bickering over Sasuke. Now she felt kind of like a jerk.
She let herself be pulled around by Ino to several boutiques, heart lighter than it had been since making it to Team Seven.
Sakura was in 43 once more. She had lost track of the number of matches she had, and in her mind, it was a good thing. Deep in the back of her heart, she was glad that neither Naruto nor Sasuke nor Kakashi knew about this place. Somewhere along the way of her blood-sweat-and-tears desperation, determination, and countless failures, she had come to think of these kunoichi and shinobi as her people. Some came only to prove their worth, some to improve, and others to blow off steam. Some never spoke, some chattered a mile a minute, and the rest only talked after a match. All the same, she felt a basic sense of camaraderie with them.
They were the ones who betted on her winning from the start, and the ones who betted on her losing and whose money filled her pockets now. Through trial by blood or endurance, each person there had lifted her that much higher. It was no secret that Sakura was in the Chuunin Exams finals. Some had even promised to go watch it, for her.
Dosu Kinuta might be backed by Orochimaru, but she had her own support, and they had already begun to bet on her chances. She wouldn't disappoint.
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A/N: Hi! Thanks for the kind reviews! Please keep telling me your thoughts about and reactions to this fic :D
