Author's note: Sorry everyone! My meds have been adjusted, and this usually impacts my ability to stay focused, so my writing schedule might be affected. But I'll try to work through it. Thank you for your patience.

Previously:

'Sc… Scary...' Kiba and Naruto thought with nervous beads of sweat sliding down the sides of their faces. She had talked about destroying the guy in the same tone most people used to talk about the weather, and there had been zero mercy in her eyes. Not that Naruto could blame her after everything the creep had done to her… But he still thought April was scary when she was angry.

'Well, he deserved everything he got...' Kakashi and Sakura thought, also feeling zero mercy for the homicidal pervert because of his continuous efforts to sexually harass April, not to mention his threats to kill her. They were glad April K.O.'d him.

"Umm..." Hayate said once the Medical Team had finished taking Biki away, getting their attention. "Now… for the next match..."

Everyone looked up at the signboard to see who the net participants would be.

MISUMI TSURUGI
VS
KANKURO

Chapter 65: A Wall Too High!!

'Finally… My turn...' Kankurō thought with a smirk as he took his place standing across from his opponent. He had this in the bag.

'Kankurō… You're not taking this seriously...' his jōnin thought, frowning with disapproval.

'… Idiot,' Gaara thought.

"!" Naruto furrowed his and leaned closer to get a better look. 'It's him,' he thought, recognizing him as the punk who picked on Konohamaru.

'This is good… We'll finally get to see how he uses that thing in battle,' April thought, keeping her eyes on the bundle on his back. During the first test, he seemed to have been using some sort of puppet or doll to gather answers somehow, but she wondered about it's capabilities in combat. She had never seen this kind of fighting style before.

"We will now begin the fourth match," Hayate announced. He doubted anything could surprise him after what happened in the last one.

"Unlike Yoroi, even against little punks, I show no mercy," Misumi told the younger sand ninja. "I'll say it now, if I put my techniques on you, it's over. Give up immediately." He narrowed his eyes at him. "I'm going to end this quickly."

"Then, I also… will end this quickly," Kankurō said confidently, removing the bundle from his back to set it standing upright on the floor, keeping one hand on it to hold it steady.

Misumi glared at him in annoyance and lunged forth to attack. "I won't give you the chance to do anything!!" he declared, swinging his arm at his opponent.

Kankurō blocked the attack, but was taken aback by the smug smirk on his enemy's face. "!" He gasped when the guy's arm bent unnaturally and began snaking its way up his own. "What?" he exclaimed, startled when he was quickly engulfed in the rest of his enemy's wriggling appendages, trapped as they constricted around him like a nest of large boa constrictors.

"!!" April said, frowning as she was reminded of the way Orochimaru's body had moved similarly to climb a tree when he attacked them. 'No… it couldn't be...' she thought, a bead of sweat sliding down the side of her face. She wanted to dismiss her suspicions, since this guy was from Konoha, but… then she remembered the way Kabuto kept looking at the sound jōnin before he left. She glanced over the sound ninja's direction. Their jōnin had disappeared shortly after Kakashi took Sasuke away, but he had yet to return.

Misumi smirked, squeezing tighter until Kankurō was forced to drop his bundle. "In order to gather information, my body has been altered… to be able to fit into any space," he boasted. "So I can keep squeezing until I break your bones. If you don't give up, I'll keep squeezing harder..."

"Gu..." Kankurō grimaced when he tightened his grip around his neck to emphasize his point. He had begun to sweat from the effort of trying to strain against the vice-like grip his enemy had him in.

"I don't know what kind of ninja tools you use… but you can't do anything like this. If you try something funny, I won't wait until you give up. I'll break your neck immediately. Hurry up and give up."

"Heh," Kankurō smirked, a bead of sweat sliding down his face. "No way."

"!" April said as she looked back at him, furrowing her brow slightly. 'He… doesn't look nervous or upset at all...' she thought, remembering how emotional he got over Sasuke hitting his hand with a pebble. Did that mean he still had something up his sleeve?

"Do you want to die?" Misumi scoffed, squeezing him tighter.

"Guu… You're the one who's gonna die," Kankurō retorted raspily, wincing from the pain.

A large vein throbbed on Misumi's temple. He saw red.

"..." Hayate's eyes widened, and he frowned when Misumi's muscles suddenly clenched far harder than they should have.

SNAP!

April, Naruto, and Sakura stared in shock along with Team 8, while Gaara frowned with disdain, and Temari and Neji furrowed their brows.

"..." Hayate also furrowed his brow and frowned. He had meant to stop it before it reached that point.

"…!" Lee said, frowning and furrowing his brow when he saw how Kankurō's head was hanging so limply from his neck and the unnatural angle it was bent at. A bead of sweat slid down the side of his face. At first, he had thought it was another bone being snapped, but that obviously wasn't the case. "His neck is broken..."

"Yeah..." April agreed grimly, furrowing her brow. She knew the signs, too.

"Huh?" Naruto gasped, startled.

"Hmph… Stupid..." Gaara scoffed impatiently.

Hayate sighed. Another pointless casualty.

"Damn… Idiot…" Misumi cursed. "You made me kill you..."

"Then is it my turn now?" Kankurō asked in a sickeningly sweet tone as his head suddenly did a full 360°.

"!!" April gasped, surprised by the Exorcist twist, but not nearly as surprised as Misumi.

"What?!!" he exclaimed, staring at Kankurō's face with wide eyes as the skin crumbled away to reveal a doll's eye. Before he had time to react, it was already breaking free from the rest of its false flesh and winding its jointed wooden limbs around his body, squeezing him so tightly that he couldn't move his arms or legs. "Ugh… This is... a puppet?!!"

'He disguised his puppet and substituted it for his real body…!?' April thought, impressed. 'Then, this whole time he was actually...' Her eyes wandered to the bundle on the floor, and her suspicions were confirmed when a human hand poked out between the bindings.

Kankurō yanked hard on part of the strip of fabric wrapped around him, unraveling it in an instant to reveal himself.

"!!" Misumi gasped, shocked. 'That's the real one? He's a puppeteer?'

Kankurō pulled on the invisible strings controlling his Karasu, tightening its inescapable grip on his opponent. "If I break your bones, you'll be even softer, right?" he taunted him, pulling them even tighter. "Though, I'll go easy on your neck."

"Give u… Ahhhhhh!!!!" Misumi screamed in pain as his joints began to crack and tendons reached their tearing point.

'Phew, I almost ended that one too early,' Hayate thought, coughing. "The battle cannot be continued. Winner, Kankurō!!"

Although April thought it was an interesting jutsu, Naruto didn't seem to share her opinion.

"Two on one is cheating!!!! That's allowed, Kakashi-sensei?!!!" he asked incredulously, pointing at the weird thing Kankurō was rewrapping. That seemed totally unfair!

"It's not cheating… That's just a doll," Kakashi replied with a sigh. Naruto sure was getting noisy.

"That's puppet jutsu. It's controlling a doll and using it as a weapon with your chakra," Sakura explained, furrowing her brow slightly in annoyance. Was he going to complain after every match now? "It's the same as a shuriken or any other tool."

"Geez, geez!!! There's a bunch of weirdos here," Naruto huffed, crossing his arms. What next, a flying pig?

"Like you're one to talk..." Kakashi remarked dryly.

"Haha, good one," Sakura laughed, making her annoyed teammate pout.

April smiled with wry amusement and tried to turn the conversation back to the topic of the jutsu they were just talking about, since she still had something she wanted to clear up. "Uh… This may be a stupid question, but… How is the puppet controlled with chakra?" she asked curiously. The way he had manipulated that puppet and made it mimic himself was pretty amazing. He even made it sweat!

"The puppet master channels their chakra into their hands and shapes it into threads and attaches them to the doll," Kakashi explained simply.

"Oh… So that's what that was..." April said, thinking back to their first encounter with the sand ninjas, when she thought she felt something try to stick to her while she stole Konohamaru back.

Naruto looked at her and tilted his head a little in confusion. "That's what 'what' was?"

"Well, you remember the first time we ran into that guy, right?" she asked.

"Right!" Naruto and Sakura replied, frowning at the memory.

"That time, when I slipped past him to grab Konohamaru-kun, I felt something weird try to attach to me, so I flared my chakra, and it disappeared," April explained. "I thought it might have been my imagination, but..."

"I see! He must have tried to bind you with his chakra strings!" Sakura said. "It's a really good thing you didn't get caught..." She didn't even want to imagine how things would have turned out otherwise.

"Yeah, I'd hate to have added to the number of hostages..." April agreed wryly.

"Uh, hold on a minute..." Kakashi said, holding up a hand to stop them. "What's this about Konohamaru?"

"You know him, Kakashi-sensei??" Naruto asked. That kid sure got around!

"I know of him..." Kakashi replied. He was the Hokage's grandson after all, not to mention Asuma's nephew.

"Oh," Naruto said, almost disappointed. "Anyway!! Those sand punks picked a fight with me, and then the cowards took Konohamaru hostage!!"

"!" Kakashi said, startled.

"Is that how it happened?" April asked Sakura. She had only arrived after the situation had turned dire, so she wasn't sure how it started. This version seemed a little different from what Naruto and the kids told her originally.

"Only partly," Sakura replied, chagrined. "It was all Naruto's fault. Because of what he did, Konohamaru-kun ended up running into that guy, and he tried to beat him up out of annoyance. I was seriously worried he might kill him, but fortunately you and Sasuke-kun came and saved him!"

'Fortunately is right!' Kakashi thought, a bead of sweat sliding down the side of his face. Did these kids have any idea how close they came to being involved in an international incident? If a foreign ninja had committed the crime of grievous bodily harm against a direct relative of the Hokage… All he could think was how glad he was that it had come to nothing. 'Thank goodness for April and Sasuke...'

"Hey!!" Naruto said indignantly. "All Sasuke did was throw a stupid pebble! And Konohamaru was running from you!!" he reminded her.

April and Kakashi sweat-dropped at that. It was obvious from the expression on Sakura's face that she was guilty as charged.

"Why would he be running from you?" April asked.

"!" Sakura cringed at the memory of how Konohamaru had accused her of being Naruto's girlfriend and the names he and his little gang had called her after she hit him for letting them believe it. "Uh… Oh, look!! I think they're ready for the next match!" she said quickly, pointing to the lower level, where the referee was standing on his own again.

"We will now begin the fifth match," Hayate announced, saving her skin.

Sakura breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sakura..." April said, tapping her lightly on her arm to get her attention when she saw the signboard.

"What?" Sakura asked, glancing at her.

"It looks like this is no time to relax..." Kakashi said, directing her attention to the names on board.

Sakura's eyes widened in surprise when she read them.

SAKURA HARUNO
VS
INO YAMANAKA

"Oh!!" Ino gasped, her eyes widening, too, when she saw it.

Sakura immediately adopted a serious expression as soon as she recovered from the initial shock, and the two girls descended the stairs to face each other on the lower level.

'This is an awkward match...' April thought with a bead of sweat sliding down her face while she watched them. Ino and her team had come to help save them from the sound ninjas. 'I hope Sakura will be alright fighting her...'

"Sakura..." Ino said, furrowing her brow. "I never thought I'd be fighting you..."

Without changing the determined look on her face, Sakura reached up and tugged on the end of her forehead protector, pulling it lose to remove it from her head.

"!" Ino gasped, surprised.

"Wh… What?" Naruto said, startled and confused.

"..." April and Kakashi watched quietly. Despite the odd action, it didn't look like she was giving up yet.

'It may not look like it, but Ino is exceptional among kunoichis… but..." Asuma thought, furrowing his brow slightly. "Will she be able to go all out against Sakura…?"

"Those two…?" Shikamaru asked, a bead of sweat sliding down his face. "This could get annoying..."

"Is Ino gonna be alright?" Chōji asked, concerned.

'Yeah… What will you do, Ino?' Asuma wondered, hoping she wouldn't let their old friendship get in her way.

Sakura and Ino stood staring at each other, each determined to hold their ground, while they remembered their childhood friendship and how Ino was always coming to Sakura's rescue. Sakura really looked up to her. The words Ino told her that day during their class on flower arrangement, after she had scared off her bullies, had been burned into her memory.

"If you ask me, you aren't even a flower… You're just a bud."

Back then, all Sakura could do was smile weakly and force a laugh in response. But she wasn't that insecure little girl anymore. She was going to show Ino that.

"Right now, I have no intention of fighting over Sasuke-kun with you," Sakura told her bluntly.

"!" Ino flinched, taken aback. "What was that?!!" she demanded incredulously. Was Sakura trying to imply that she didn't even view her as competition?

"You and Sasuke-kun don't go together anyway," Sakura continued confidently, giving her a smirk. "And I'm completely stronger than you right now. I don't even need to be concerned with you."

"Sakura… Who do you think you are talking to?" Ino asked angrily, glaring at her. "Don't get ahead of yourself, cry-baby Sakura."

'I guess there was no need to worry...' April thought, sweat-dropping while she listened to them trade insults. It looked like Sakura was going out of her way to make sure Ino wouldn't hold back against her.

"Umm… Hey!! Sakura-chan is going too far… Ino has really scary eyes..." Naruto said, starting to get nervous.

"Hmm… Sakura isn't the type of person to… brag about her strength or hurt others..." Kakashi said. "She just doesn't want… Ino to not take her seriously or show her mercy."

'I'm just a bud, eh?' Sakura thought, remembering the rest of the conversation, and how Ino had said she thought it would be a waste for her to end that way.

"A flower is meaningless unless it blooms, right? And it could grow into… a flower even more beautiful than a cosmos."

No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Sakura had been so grateful, so touched, that she had to lie about getting sand in her eyes when it made her cry.

'Ino… I have always believed those words you told me… I always hoped they were true...' Sakura thought. 'I wanted to be like you, you were my goal. Thanks to that, I am here now. That's why, Ino, I want this to be an all-out fight. Unless I… really surpass you, it's meaningless.'

"Why are they all serious like that?" Naruto asked.

"Huh? Don't you know…?" April asked. His own rivalry with Sasuke…

"I'm asking because I don't!!" Naruto retorted.

'He doesn't even understand… why he acts like he does with Sasuke...' she and Kakashi realized, sweat-dropping.

"Well, you could say that rivalries are strange..." Kakashi said, taking over for her and glancing at Guy as he remembered all of the odd things they had done together over the years.

"Huh?" Guy said, glancing back at him when he felt his stare.

'So they really are rivals...' April thought, noticing the subtle exchange.

Ino stared at Sakura with her brow furrowed and a frown on her face while she remembered when Sakura sought her out to confront her after they were assigned to their teams.

"I'm on the same team as Sasuke-kun… I won't lose to you, Ino," Sakura told her.

"Same here, Sakura… I won't lose to you no matter what," she retorted confidently. "!" She was surprised when suddenly held a familiar object out to her. 'That ribbon?"

"I'm returning this ribbon," Sakura said, furrowing her brow with determination.

"..." Ino frowned. She recognized it well. It was the same ribbon she gave Sakura when they were younger. Even after she had declared herself her rival, Sakura had worn it everyday. That ribbon represented their friendship. Ino didn't want it back. "I gave you that ribbon. And forehead protectors go on your forehead…"

"From now on, I won't be that little girl who follows you around," Sakura said firmly.

"!" Ino furrowed her brow, startled.

Sakura raised her free hand to touch her forehead protector, which had taken the place of the ribbon. "The time I put it on my forehead… is the time, as female shinobi, that I won't lose to you..."

"..." Ino stared her. She could see how serious Sakura was. "Good idea… Then, me too..." she said, reaching out to take the ribbon from her. "Until that time..."

'I get it… Sakura...' Ino thought, smiling slightly as she removed her own forehead protector from around her waist. Both girls retied their forehead protectors tightly over their foreheads. 'All out battle.'

They both lunged forward at the same time. Sakura immediately formed a hand seal.

'Just a Clone Jutsu...' Ino thought, narrowing her eyes at the weak attack. It was almost insulting. "This isn't the academy graduation exam. You think you can beat me with a textbook jutsu like that?" Ino scoffed. 'If I look closely, I can figure out which is the real one...'

Sakura smirked and quickly formed another hand seal. 'When April first showed me this move, I thought it was joke, but… right now, it's just what I need! Focus all chakra to my feet… and explode off the ground,' she thought, shooting forth in a burst of speed, clenching her fist. 'Rocket Punch!!'

"!!" Ino gasped, eyes wide with shock. 'Fast...'

BAMM!

"Kyaa!!" Ino cried, thrown back by the force behind Sakura's punch.

'Yes!! Gorgeous rocket punch, Sakura!!' April thought proudly, clenching her fist with excitement.

"If you think I'm the same cry-baby Sakura, then you will be hurting," Sakura scolded her rival. "Get serious, Ino!!!"

Ino picked herself up from the floor and wiped her cheek. "I'm glad you said that. As you wish, here I come..."