I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!
A Naruto crackwut
By
EvilFuzzy9
Rating: T...ish
Genre: Humor/Parody
Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]
Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]
"So, all three of your students have progressed to the second round. Well done, Kakashi."
Might Guy gave his eternal rival a grudging show of respect... from his point of view. To anyone else, it would have looked like his usual Nice Guy Pose™.
It was the thought that counted, though.
"It's a shame about Lee's loss," Kakashi said. "I understand he was your favorite."
"Favorite?" Guy laughed. "Please, Kakashi! No decent teacher would ever play favorites. I love all three of my pupils equally!"
"Really?" Kakashi gave Guy a disbelieving look. "Because that's not how it looks from my perspective. Or literally anyone else's."
"What do you mean?" Guy asked, giving him a genuinely baffled look. "I simply give Lee the most help because he's the one who most needs that help."
This time, he actually DID perform his Nice Guy Pose™.
Kakashi sweatdropped.
"Well, at least I know that I don't play favorites..." he muttered.
(In an estranged timeline roughly twenty-five years ahead of this one, the Sixth Hokage sneezed.)
Temari gulped a tad anxiously as she stepped down into the arena, facing off against her opponent. She did a good job of obfuscating her nerves with a show of mildly contemptuous disinterest, but those who knew her well would be able to see right through.
Everyone had their tells, whether they knew it or not. Naruto knew Temari's as well as anyone short of her brothers and husband.
Not that she knew that he knew.
But even if Naruto hadn't had a fairly close acquaintanceship with Temari's future self, what with the woman being the wife of his advisor and right hand man, he still had his empathic abilities which derived either from some aspect of his Uzumaki ancestry, his mastery of Kurama's chakra, or both or neither.
It was a little ambiguous, depending on who you asked.
Still, Naruto could tell that Temari was more than a little tense as she took her place across from him in the arena. It didn't take a genius to work out that she was at least a little scared of him, after his defeat of Gaara.
To him that seemed a little silly, but people were weird like that.
So, Naruto decided to break the ice with the best method he knew.
Step 1.: Create a shit-ton of shadow clones.
Step 2.: Have those clones perform a mass transformation.
Step 3.: ? ? ?
Step 4.: Profit.
"Reverse Harem Jutsu: Shikamaru Style!"
Temari's first reaction was to stare blankly as a dozen-plus shadow clones transformed in puffs of white smoke before her eyes.
Was this a joke? She misheard that, right?
Yes, she had to have. No one in their right mind would seriously give their jutsu such a ridiculous name... unless you counted the oiroke no jutsu this kid had used against Gaara in the first round, of course.
But,really. How many variations could one guy POSSIBLY have on a single technique?
Temari got the answer to her question as soon as the smoke cleared.
"Hey, babe. Want some sugar?" came the voice of her previous opponent in stereo. Lookalikes of Shikamaru Nara winked at her and struck poses they presumably thought of as cool or seductive, rather thin wisps of smoke the only thing covering their shame.
Well, she thought. At least two, apparently.
One of the not-Shikamarus blew her a kiss. Temari shuddered.
Possibly more.
Up with the other disqualified competitors, the REAL Shikamaru sighed.
"What a drag," he grumbled.
Hinata and Sakura shared a smile and a laugh, amused as much by Shikamaru's prototypically him response as by Naruto's choice of jutsu.
Sasuke, on the other hand, facepalmed.
Lee, for his part, was largely nonplussed. Karin was simply trying not to imagine a Rock Lee-version of that jutsu. Gaara's sand had once more sprung up to block his view.
And Shino furrowed his brow in mild consternation.
"...that boy has a real obsession with his Sexy Jutsu, doesn't he?" Tsunade said, shaking her head bemusedly.
Jiraiya was listless and despondent in his seat next to her.
"I have no godson," he said in a dreary monotone.
Tsunade snorted and gave him a punch on the shoulder, half friendly and half irritated.
"Oh, get over yourself."
Haruna, the Hidden Grass Representative with a name as bland and generic as everything else about her village, cocked an eyebrow.
"That's an interesting jutsu," she said. "How many variations does he have, I wonder?"
"Who cares?" Rasa said flippantly, still a little peevish over Gaara's earlier loss.
"I find his regular Sexy Jutsu to be more agreeable, personally," said Hiruzen as loftily as he could manage.
Haruna smiled. "Yes, that was a very interesting transformation as well."
She hummed in what might have been appreciative recollection.
The Hokage and Kazekage promptly developed matching nosebleeds as their imaginations ran away from them.
Back down in the arena, Temari twitched. She closed her eyes for a moment, thanking her lucky stars for the smoke covering the private places of these henge.
Then her eyes snapped back open, and she let out a low, dangerous growl. "You... damn... PERVERT...!"
Fluidly, menacingly, she drew her war fan and unfolded it to reveal all three moons.
Kamaitachi no Jutsu!
With a lone swing, Temari kicked up a terrible windstorm. In her fury she exerted more power, if less control, making several of the trees in the arena rock and sway from the force of the shrieking gust, despite failing to hone the gale into a proper flurry of keen edges.
Like exchanging a sickle-and-chain for a meteor hammer, she smote the battlefield with sheer blunt force. Dust devils cavorted at the feet of the naked Shikamaru harem, dirt and particulate specks of matter picked up and tossed in a crashing, twisting torrent.
Temari glared daggers, her chest heaving a touch more laboriously in its accustomed respiration than it ought to have. Glinting on a dusky brow, a single bead of sweat trickled down into her eye.
She winced and blinked it away.
Perhaps pouring so much of her chakra into that attack hadn't been the best idea. She should not have been breathing this heavily already.
Maybe she'd spent more stamina in that first round than she thought.
Blinking three more times in quick succession, Temari raised her eyes to assess the damage as the dust finally cleared.
Said eyes than widened to their furthest limit, so much so that it took a conscious strain of effort to hold the lids apart. Temari gaped and nearly dropped her fan. Blood rushed to her face so quickly, and in such a quantity, that for a moment she fancied that either her cheeks would combust or her legs would buckle.
Naruto's Shikamaru-henge'd clones were still there, if a bit dusty. Only one significant change, it seemed, had occurred from Temari's wind scythe assault.
The smoke was gone.
An uproar burst from the audience.
SMACK!
An irate Ino socked Shikamaru in the jaw.
"Gah! You exhibitionist!" she raged, lashing out at the nearest available target in annoyance.
Shikamaru winced and rubbed his cheek.
"What'd I do?" he whined.
Ino reddened and punched him again, striking with more frustration than force.
"It's the principle of the matter, dammit! I don't want to look at your naked...! Grah!" She flailed inarticulately, grasping for some kind of actual words to use.
Shikamaru sighed and rested his chin on his hands.
"Ugh, whatever."
"That's a lot bigger than I would have expected from your friend."
Karui said this to Chouji, the two of them seated in the audience. Her teammates sat on either side of them – Samui next to Karui, Omoi next to Chouji. Bee was at the end, seated right next to the aisle.
Omoi squirmed in his seat, looking self conscious. It didn't take a psychic to figure out what had him so antsy.
Samui had her eyes closed with her temples visibly bulging. It looked like she was counting back and forth between one and ten.
Bee was perfectly nonchalant, like this was the kind of thing that happened every day.
Chouji hummed and looked down into the arena. He squinted.
"Nah, Naruto's just embellishing."
Karui gave him a look.
"And how would you know that?" she asked. "Not that there's anything wrong with knowing it."
Chouji shrugged. "Me and Shikamaru have been friends for years," he said by way of explanation.
The Kumo quartet decided to take his word for it.
"... ... ..."
Temari could see everything.
Everything.
Silently, slowly, her expression perfectly blank, the blonde raised one hand. Without flinching for even an instant, she bit through the calloused pad of her thumb and drew a trickle of red blood.
"Kuchiyose..." Temari whispered lowly.
With a single mechanical swipe of her hand, she smeared that blood over the three purple moons adorning her fan. This, and a bit of chakra, was sufficient to summon her rarely-seen familiar, Kamatari.
White, small, and furry, the weasel clutched a scythe as large as his body. A handful of other phantasmal scythes floated around him, wreathed in a glow of chakra.
"I'll cut ya," said the weasel in an incongruously gruff voice.
The wind mistress raised her fan.
She seemed perfectly serene, with the exception of her eyes. Those glared daggers sharper and more perilous than any sickle she could summon, piercing through the shamelessly naked forms of the Shikamaru lookalikes.
With a slow, steady exhale, she swung.
"KIRIKIRI MAI!"
It was a devastating attack.
This was a jutsu capable of leveling entire swathes of forest at a point in time when most of Temari's peers would be lucky to knock down more than one or two trees in a single go, a standard of measurement that Naruto had once joked would make the First Hokage cry, even if it was remarkably effective.
The Shikamaru doppelgängers were ripped to shreds before they could blink, and they burst into smoke almost instantly. Shrieking, slashing winds tore at the battlefield around Temari, gouging the earth and felling most of the trees in the arena. Paul Bunyan would have been proud.
After a deafening few seconds of absolute hell, the jutsu wound down, speinding ts momentum. The air stilled once more, save for a light breeze that brushed over some of the fallen branches, rustling leaves.
It took Temari a moment to notice something off about this scene.
She looked around, frowning curiously.
Naruto was nowhere to be seen.
What?
Where the hell could he have gone? She didn't slice him to ribbons, did she?
An instant after thinking this, Temari felt an abrupt and distinctive sensation in her gut. Her insides seemed to float, suddenly, as though bereft for a moment of any hindering, burdening substance.
It was a feeling she recognized, if only somewhat. It was the sensation of weightlessness that came in the seconds before a free fall.
She couldn't feel the ground beneath her sandals.
"Bwuh—?!" Temari started to say.
Hands grabbed her ankles, snaring her legs from beneath, and she realized that she was being dragged into the earth. It swallowed her up like quicksand, in the blink of an eye rising up to envelop her legs, her stomach, her chest, her shoulders.
Nearly before she knew what was happening, Temari was encased up to her neck in distressingly tight-packed dirt.
And above her crouched the guilelessly grinning jackass who had just humiliated her.
"Headhunter Jutsu, a real classic," said Naruto Uzumaki, giving a V-sign that made Temari long to break free and punch him in that cocky bastard face. "I guess that's another victory for me! Sorry, Temari, but you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat this guy."
He chuckled and looked up.
"Hey. That rhymes, sort of. Sorry Temari. Hehe."
Temari glared at him in righteous indignation.
"I hate you," she hissed.
"You're not the first," Naruto said. "And you won't be the last either, I'm sure. Lots of people hate me, but way more love me."
Temari growled irritably. Twitching, she looked askance at the referee.
Then a thought struck.
Naruto had been right underneath her.
"You didn't look up my skirt, did you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.
A beat.
Two seconds passed.
"Of course not." Naruto said. "You're a little too far on the young side for me."
Temari scowled, unsure as whether to be relieved, offended, or vaguely weirded out by this remark.
Elsewhere in the arena, Genma belatedly dug his way out from underneath a rather hefty cedar. Seeing Temari buried in the ground and Naruto standing over her, he did the sensible thing and announced the match as a win in the boy's favor.
Naruto would proceed to the next round – either the finals or the semifinals, depending on the outcomes of the next two fights.
Rasa twitched, up in the kage box. His expression was a tad baleful, such that the Kusa representative inched tentatively away from him.
"I know I was largely expecting this outcome, after how handily the boy defeated Gaara..." he said under his breath, almost a sigh. "...but still, this was just embarrassing."
"What?" said Hiruzen. "The way he provoked your daughter into losing her temper and used the ensuing chaos of her jutsu to sneak up on her and launch a surprise attack from underground?"
"No," Rasa said. "That was sound tactical thinking, even if the ease with which Temari rose to his bait was just a touch disappointing. No, I'm talking more about the fact that both of my children have lost to someone who seems obssessed with the most... puerile of ninjutsu. I mean, really!"
"It's appropriate though, in a way," Hiruzen mused. "Kitsune have long been depicted as using such shapeshifting powers to trick and seduce humans..."
"What was that?" Rasa looked up from his mulish brooding, distracted.
"Oh, nothing important." Hiruzen chortled.
Rasa frowned, seeming mildly perplexed.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Haruna's jaw dropped, the Hidden Grass representative quickly connecting the dots.
"Well, call me a monkey's uncle..." she muttered, swallowing.
The Sandaime smiled.
The next match was highly anticipated by young lads and lolicons alike hoping to see a catfight. Everyone else was just excited to see the Hyuuga clan heiress and Tsunade's youngest apprentice duke it out.
Bets were placed, money changing hands all over the place. Expectations were high. It was sure to be a knock-down, drag-out slugfest, a real slobberknocker of a fight.
Hinata Hyuuga and Sakura Haruno faced off. They shared knowing smiles.
While they had never been especially close in the academy, or as genin, in the latter halves of their lives thus far, the two of them had come to establish a certain bond as women suffering, at one point or another, from unrequited love. They came to share a camaraderie and mutual support for one another's affections, a shared understanding.
Even if Sakura's initial motives had been... less than entirely selfless, she'd still ultimately played a bigger part in convincing Naruto and Hinata to get together than just about any other single person. And Hinata had been immeasurably grateful for this, and had stood by Sakura in her own search for love, a close friend and confidant in lonely times.
Ino, for how in sync she and Sakura were, was nonetheless admittedly not always the best at keeping secrets, or the most capable of understanding Sakura's troubles. In matters of love, when it came to her relationship with Sasuke, it was usually Hinata in whom Sakura confided, whose quiet strength and boundless patience she leaned on and borrowed to carry her through lonely years spent waiting for word from her husband.
Hinata and Sakura got each other in a way that few people did, male or female.
"Let's make this a good show, okay?" Sakura said. "Our success hinges on making this look impressive."
"Yes," Hinata said, nodding. "Let's."
It began.
Sakura's fingers danced through a quick sequence of handseals. With a grin, she slapped a hand down on the ground.
"Earth Style: Mud Wave Jutsu!"
The ground rippled violently, concentric circles traveling outward from the point of contact. Like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble, compacted soil rose and fell in a classic waveform.
Hinata jumped over the crest of the first wave, landing in the trough and kicking off. She cleared the next two in a single bound, landing on the rear side of the fourth wave. She formed a handseal, and sparks crackled around her feet.
She vanished in a blur of motion, and the ground stilled.
Sakura was already weaving the seals for her next jutsu. Inhaling deeply, she focused her chakra. Cheeks puffed out, and she spat a formidable quantity of water in front of her.
Water Style: Water Wall.
Flames blossomed before the wave, starbursts of red and orange impacting the fluid rampart. Hissing steam billowed, flame quenched and water boiled. For an instant, Hinata's silhouette was visible in the cloud of vapor.
Then the steam broke on one side, a dark figure leaping out too fast for its shape to discerned. It swerved quickly, lookinging like it aimed to flank Sakura.
Scoffing, the pinkette formed another seal and kicked the ground. A wall of hardened earth shot up, an immovable bulwark intercepting the figure's trajectory. She started running to one side, and more walls rose up to follow the first one, like a line of fortifications painted out in a castle building RTS.
Another figure appeared in front of her, outrunning the wall. In the moment it slowed down while shifting its velocity, swerving on sandaled toes to face her with pale eyes, she saw that it was Hinata.
Or maybe a clone, at least.
Sakura cocked her arm back and curled her hand into a fist. Earth Spear. Her skin darkened, like getting a considerable tan in mere seconds.
She punched.
Her fist passed Hinata's head. The flesh and blood blow didn't land, but the bow wave from her arm – the mere wake of her punch – was enough to knock the other girl off her feet. Hinata stumbled and fell into Sakura's body.
There was a smile on her face.
A shadow clone destabilized. In lieu of a harmless puff of smoke, it broke apart in forks of electricity lashing Sakura's body, coursing through her defensive jutsu like it wasn't even there.
"Damn, that's bracing...!" Sakura hissed, biting her lip. Her skin reverted to its normal shade, except that her face was a touch rosier than usual. She smirked crookedly. "Are you trying to get me excited, Hinata-chan?"
She stepped to the side, and Hinata passed palm-first through the air where Sakura's back had been a second earlier, a silent and catlike pounce.
"Perhaps I am." Hinata smiled in good humor. "That's one way to take an opponent out of the game, isn't it?"
"A very unorthodox way!" Sakura laughed.
They spun. A fist came up with blinding speed, ripping through the air like an anti-tank round. Fluid and graceful, Hinata twisted her torso and sidestepped, a palm lancing out at the same moment. Sakura's punch clipped Hinata's midsection, and Hinata's strike grazed Sakura's shoulder.
One staggered and coughed up a bit of blood-flecked spittle, pressing a hand to her gut and wincing. The other grimaced and flexed, clenching her fist stiffly and awkwardly, her arm's movements a bit clumsy.
Meeting one another's eyes, they leaped back to gain distance, then snapped their hands together in a blinding series of seals. Both inhaled deeply, then exhaled at the end of their mudra.
Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu!
Sakura expectorated ten thousand drowned lungs' worth of lung, an oriental wyrm of pure water. Its coiled length moved ponderously through the air, an elongated head coming down with jaws spread wide.
Katon: Karyuu Endan!
Hinata spewed a sea of flame, and from the inferno rose the visage of a terrible drake. It leaped up baring fangs of yellow and orange, illusory eyes like deep red coals set into a spectral, sneering head.
It was a clash of ninjutsu in the most ancient sense, two warriors shaping the elements to do their bidding, bringing their phantasmal arts to a head in a single, terrible stroke. Dragons of fire and water dueled with a cataclysmic roar of crackling flame and rushing current.
Steam billowed; it enveloped the arena in a thick, searing cloud.
Shizune took a moment to pick her jaw up off the floor. Her mouth was agape, and her eyes were open wide.
Iruka, next to her, was gawping at the spectacle of Sakura and Hinata's fight. Knuckles went bone white with the force of his grip on Shizune's hand, and she was returning the favor ounce for ounce.
"Incredible..." she breathed. "I didn't think these kids were at such a high level. I'm not sure I could pull off that kind of ninjutsu."
"They're shoo-ins for chuunin, at this rate," Iruka said, slowly shaking his head. "At least... as long as they don't make any serious tactical blunders. But it would take a LOT of repeated, foolish decisions on their parts to fumble it by this point."
Shizune nodded slowly, still a little in shock as she observed the scale of the pair's battle.
"You know, the crazy thing is... I'd swear they're not even going all out," she muttered under her breath, her forehead crinkling and corrugating as she knitted her brows and pursed her lips.
Iruka did not miss this. Neither Shizune's words, nor what she observed. He caught both, and had to admit that she might have had a point, even as inconceivable as it seemed...
...but he wasn't sure he wanted to believe that.
He simply wasn't ready to think that these kids were fighting at this level and yet still holding back.
It was a little too scary to contemplate.
"SHANNARO!"
Sakura's battlecry tore through the arena, and a slight figure could be dimly seen leaping through the steam. Scarcely more than a shadow to most of the observers, she struck the ground knuckles-first.
Hinata, her byakugan active and capable of seeing Sakura's chakra through the steam cover, handily dodged the attack. The earth, unfortunately, could not.
Scattering, the cloud of steam exploded. It was blasted away by dust and shockwaves. At Sakura's feet, beneath her fist, the ground tore open. Rock shards and clods of dirt sprayed through the air, solid earth buckling and fracturing around the rim of a newly formed crater.
Hunks of soil and gravel ranging in size from small caliber bullets to minivans flew out from the epicenter of Sakura's brutal strike like the frag grenade from hell. Hinata spun on her heels, seeing a good deal of this ballistic debris headed right for her, and performed a flawless kaiten.
The shrapnel broke or rebounded off of the defensive waza, and for a moment the swirling dome of chakra gouged the soil out in a crater to rival the impact from Sakura's punch. Wisps of ethereal light began to unfurl then, after a handful of seconds, and it dissipated.
For a moment, Hinata seemed to be staring Sakura down. Then she stepped out of the crater and thrust both palms forward.
Hakke: Kuuhekishou!
A wave of pressurized air and chakra slammed into Sakura, and the pinkette had to roll with the attack to keep from being knocked down. She somersaulted backwards and ducked to minimize her profile.
"On your feet, Sakura. I know that wasn't enough to end this."
"Heh. Whoever said I was off my feet?"
Hinata smiled. With a flex of her inner power, she manifested a pair of ghostly lions' heads over her hands. Her body itself became enveloped in the aura of a dragon.
Sakura, at the other end of the field, cracked her knuckles and tapped into her seal of a hundred strengths. Arcane scrit unraveled from the diamond mark on her forehead, spreading to frame her face.
The pinkette bit her thumb and weaved a quick and fairly familiar series of seals. In a puff of smoke, a mini-Katsuyu appeared on her shoulder. Grinning, Sakura clenched her fists.
"Is it time already, Sakura-sama?" the polite slug queried, adressing her summoner with the utmost respect.
"Yeah. Just like we practiced, okay?"
Katsuyu nodded. Her form glowed momentarily with chakra, but the luminescence quickly faded.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen.
Then Sakura's irises turned a piercing gold. Dark red pigment bloomed around her eyes.
"Hell yes," she growled. "Time to kick some Hyuuga booty."
Jiraiya inhaled with a sharp hiss, eyes nearly bugging out of his sockets. Spinning around to face Tsunade, he gaped at her smugly grinning face.
"Um, I don't mean to be rude, but... isn't that sage chakra?"
"Yes," Tsunade said, smirking at her teammate. "Yes it is."
"You taught that girl how to use sage mode?" Jiraiya repeated, at a loss.
"I didn't, no," Tsunade said. "Katsuyu showed her the ropes."
Jiraiya shook his head, slowly settling back into his seat.
"Wow. And she already has the hang of it..." He whistled. "Man, that boy really wasn't kidding about how strong his teammates were. If that girl was ten, twenty years older..."
"She'd kick your ass."
"Well, yes. Probably." Jiraiya grinned. "But I reckon I'd enjoy it, depending on what kind of a woman she grew into..."
Tsunade rolled her eyes.
"Incorrigible lech," she muttered.
Jiraiya shrugged.
"I am what I am."
"Metsu Hadouken!"
An orb of deep indigo flame shot across the battlefield, as large as any Goukakyuu an Uchiha had ever spat. Hinata threw the fireball with her hands, summoning it between the lions' heads through strength of chakra and force of will.
Sakura flipped over the fireball, a graceful and acrobatic move that would have won her the perfect score at any civilian gymnastics competition. Deftly, she bounded and vaulted over subsequent waves of pressure and bolts of energy, elemental chakra flashing across the arena.
They met in the center. An exchange of blows took place, swift and artful.
Sakura's fists shattered the earth with every swing, embedding craters in the arena wall without even coming close to touching them. Hinata danced a perilous tango with her foe, the dragon aura absorbed the worst of the force from Sakura's blows, but it was still enough to nearly lay her out flat with every strike.
Hinata's hands were a blur, springing to and fro. Palms struck, fingers jabbed, while twin lions followed her every movement. Sakura's tenketsu closed, here and there, but the girl was clever and knew enough about anatomy to understand where she did not want Hinata hitting her, and mostly managed to protect those spots.
"Damn, that's one tough cookie," Sakura muttered, ineffectually smiting the brow of Hinata's dragon cloak. "You're barely even staggering when I hit you."
"I know how to take a punch," Hinata said. "But so do you, I must say. I am really not making much headway here."
Hinata grazed Sakura's left arm, barely managing to stick out her thumb and jab it into another tenketsu. Sakura drove a knee into Hinata's gut, and even through the defensive aura the Hyuuga winced.
"How much chakra do you think you have left?" Sakura asked, panting.
"With how we've been burning through it?" Hinata said, beads of sweat scintillating beneath her chakra shroud. "Maybe half."
"Damn," Sakura muttered. "I can't be at more than a third full, myself. We'll have to really stretch to make this convincing."
"You haven't tapped into the Yang chakra yet," Hinata said.
"I don't wanna overpower you. Just end this in a draw." Sakura grinned crookedly. "Plus, I don't really like using that chakra for fighting. As long as I keep it in reserve solely for healing, I can sorta justify spending the rest of my chakra on big, flashy jutsu."
Hinata smiled.
"You just want to show off."
"Don't we all?" Sakura laughed. "Besides, this was your idea... that is, ending the match in a draw so our husbands can fight each other on even footing. Or even-ish, at least."
Hinata stepped back, and so did Sakura. The former's chakra shrouds dissipated. The latter's eyes went back to their natural color, the markings on her face fading. Katsuyu disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Bullets of sweat fell in a torrential shower from their pores, uncountable beads of moisture slicking their skin and dampening their clothes.
"Oof," Sakura panted, wiping some perspiration from her forehead. "Damn, I am going to reek by the time we get back to the boys. This body really can't take the heat. Literally."
Hinata nodded, looking a little woozy.
"Shall we?" she said, moving into a marginally shaky stance.
"Yes." Sakura grinned. "Let's."
And they collided in one last exchange, a single blow each.
Hinata landed a palm square to Sakura's sternum. Sakura drove a fist into Hinata's abdomen.
Both coughed up a bit of blood.
Then they swooned as one, collapsing backwards into the dirt. A dead faint, seemingly.
Genma poked his head out of the shelter he'd erected at the opposite end on the arena, constructed from the logs of the trees Temari had cut down in her rage at Naruto.
"...Is it over?" he wondered anxiously.
A pause.
He looked at Sakura and Hinata's seemingly unconscious forms.
"Oh. Well," he said. "It seems this round ends in a tie."
The audience cheered.
Hinata and Sakura smiled.
"Well," Sasuke said. "It looks like we'll be fighting each other in the finals, Naruto."
"You don't know that," the blond replied with a cheeky wink. "Shino's pretty good."
Sasuke glowered. "It was thoughtful of the girls," he said, stubbornly refusing to take the bait. "Contriving to end their match in a tie like that."
"Oh, you could tell?" Naruto hummed. "Yeah, it was a helluva show."
"They were holding back."
"Yeah, well obviously. The arena's already looking pretty beat up from the last few rounds. If they didn't pull their punches they might've brought the whole place down on everyone's heads."
"Ugh. That's annoying," Sasuke muttered. "If we're going to fight, I want it to be a serious one. It's no fun if we can't cut loose a little."
"Ah. You're sounding a little like Madara, there," Naruto joked.
Sasuke shot him a death glare.
Ino looked catatonic, staring down into the arena.
"Holy shit, Sakura was that strong?" she said. "When? HOW?!"
"Looks like there's no shame in your loss," Shikamaru snarked. "If she's that powerful, then you couldn't have stood a chance to begin with. Right?"
Ino scowled.
"That's not the point!" she snapped.
"Sure it isn't," Shikamaru drawled.
Itachi let out a low whistle, releasing a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Hiashi Hyuuga, one row ahead and two seats over, had his hands folded solemnly in his lap.
"I am convinced," said the Hyuuga patriarch simply, steadily. "Our clan's entire system is bullshit."
Neji couldn't help a smirk a little, overhearing this. Vindication had never tasted so sweet. Tenten, on the other hand, looked surprised to hear such an austere personage as Hiashi swearing.
"What is bullshit, father?" Hanabi asked innocently, not recognizing the word.
"Tradition," said Hiashi laconically, a response that would cause a few hilarious misunderstandings some time down the road.
Itachi eyed this scene bemusedly, then shook his head.
"It seems the future of our clan is bright, with a woman like that as its matriarch," he said to himself, watching as medics carted Hinata and Sakura off the field. "You chose well, Sasuke. I daresay she will be a fine wife. Or rather, she already is..."
"Our little girl is all grown up!" Mebuki Haruno wept tears of motherly pride. "Oh, honey! She's grown so strong!"
She clasped her hands as if thanking heaven or Providence for their daughter's show of skill and power. Beside her, the stout and burly Kizashi, her husband, sniffled.
"Ah, I'm so proud!" he said. "Our little Sakura has truly blossomed."
"Except for her bosom," Mebuki sniffed, smiling wanly. She gave a joking smile. "That's still just a bud."
"Yes," Kizashi repeated, clearing his throat. "Our little cherry blossom has truly flowered. Why, before we know it, she'll have given away her cherry to some no good punk... and then what will she be left with? An empty tree?"
He laughed tearfully.
"She'll always have us," Mebuki said.
"Yes, she'll always have her parents," Kizashi agreed. "I refuse to die until she's a hundred!"
Now, for the last match of the semi-finals.
"Are you going to fight me, Sasuke?"
Shino stood across from the one-armed Uchiha, hands in his pockets. He was inscrutable, with his sunglasses and high collar, his face nearly expressionless. Picture-perfect stoicism.
But Sasuke could detect a hint of impatience beneath the surface. Shino was actually a rather sensitive guy when you got down to it. He hated to be ignored, and not just because of the dreadful, terrible, simply perfect pun of mushi (meaning 'bugs') and mushi (meaning 'to ignore').
"You're awfully restless," he observed, smirking just a tad.
"I haven't fought a single serious opponent since the Forest of Death," the insect user said. "And even that was only a giant snake."
"I wouldn't have taken you for the sort of guy to get worked up about fighting."
Shino pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. He may or may not have used this action as an excuse to subtly flip Sasuke the bird.
(Probably not, but one can always imagine.)
"And I'm not," he said. "But combat is an inherent aspect of shinobi discipline, and while I may know full well where I stand in the fields of stealth, tracking, infiltration, and evasion... my fighting ability is less certain."
"You want to know how good you are in a fight," Sasuke said, cocking his head. "Is that it? But you did pretty well in your last two matches."
"Against insignificant opponents, yes," Shino said. He inclined his own head. "But you are much stronger, aren't you? The fame of the Uchiha is still great, despite their tragic loss."
"You heard the press release." Sasuke shrugged. "It wasn't that big a loss."
Shino hummed thoughtfully.
"You're not upset about their deaths, then?"
"That was years ago," Sasuke said. "I've given up dwelling on the past."
From his perspective, this was a perfectly truthful statement.
From his perspective.
"And has that made you stronger?" Shino wondered aloud. "Your skill precedes you, or at least rumors thereof."
"You saw my last two fights," Sasuke replied. "You know what I can do."
Shino stared at Sasuke, presumably. It was a little difficult to tell exactly where he was looking, with those sunglasses.
"Do I?" he said. "I think you have been holding back. Sakura is not the strongest member of your team. How do I know this? Simple. Akamaru is able to detect a person's chakra and rough combat ability."
Shino raised a hand. On the back of it crawled a small kikaichu.
"According to Kiba," he continued, "Sakura is the weakest member of Team Seven. Therefore, you and Naruto are stronger. Despite this, you have not yet displayed any abilities significantly exceeding what Sakura showed in her fight with Hinata. Thus, you have been holding back."
"Ha. Very good, very good," Sasuke said, smiling. "I'd applaud your deductive reasoning, but that would require me to answer an unanswerable question. And I'm not terribly into zen."
He raised his one hand.
Shino gave Sasuke a deadpan look.
"That was a terrible joke."
"So now you're an expert on humor, too?" Sasuke laughed.
"Enough prelude," Shino said. "Talk is cheap."
He stepped forward and spread his arms. Bugs poured out from under his sleeves, a glistening black mass comprised of hundreds of tiny, chitinous forms. It was an entomophobe's worst nightmare come true, a glossy wave of buzzing drones flying out in attack formation.
Sasuke teleported in past the bugs. One second he was several feet away, the next second he and Shino were within 'accidental kiss' range.
"Sorry, but no," Sasuke said. "One close call is more than enough for today."
A six-pointed star encompassed Shino's entire field of vision, black on red on black on white.
Tsukuyomi.
Shino collapsed after three seconds spent locked to Sasuke's stare, a dead faint. Fast asleep. He dreamed strangely pleasant dreams of a vaguely boyish girl in a very short skirt, a girl with tan skin and short green hair...
Naruto and Sakura weren't the only matchmakers on Team Seven.
Sasuke was just a lot more subtle about it.
A/N: Happy (early) Independence Day! Here's another inexplicably long-ass chapter of IANGTPA! for all of my fellow AMURRICAN readers. And all of the other ones as well, honestly. Haha.
I conceived the idea of Sakura and Hinata's fight ending in a draw fairly early on, though the idea of them contriving to do so was a much more recent inspiration. And that totally seems like the kind of thing Hinata might do for her husband, haha.
Their fight was a lot of fun to write, too.
Also, it always bugs me a touch when anonymous reviewers pose good questions or make thoughtful comments, because there really isn't any way to reply to them. Of course, it also bugs me when they just drop off flames, but I feel like I encounter the latter much more rarely than one might expect.
Updated: 6-3-15
TTFN and R&R!
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