~Scroll 34~

Charging at one another, Sakura immediately weaved her hands into the hand-seals for the art of the doppelganger. For a brief moment, Ino was surprised by the predictable move.

"This isn't an academy graduation exam, you know." The blonde yelled at the pinkette, "You can't beat me with classic, textbook moves!"

Ino knew that the best way to defeat this move was to spot the real Sakura among the false.

But suddenly…

WHOP!

"AIEE!" Ino yelped in surprise at the pinkette's sudden speed and punch.

Sakura frowned.

"I may have been a crybaby back in the day…" She yelled back, "But who's crying now? Come on, Ino… stop holding back. I know you can do better than this!"

Ino smiled as she wiped a bit of blood from her lip.

"If that's the way you want it, fine by me. The gloves are off!"

As the girls faced off down in the arena floor, Naruto and Kakashi watched from the balcony with pride. The pair knew that Sakura would be a solid contender. It might be true that the pinkette was not gifted as Sasuke and Naruto, but it was her mastery of the fundamental techniques for the utilization of chakra that made the pinkette a powerhouse in her own right. Kakashi marveled at his student's absolute mastery of circulating her chakra to every nook and cranny of her body with precise timing, and all of it, he suspected was on a subconscious level… not even the Uchiha heir had perfected the art.

Sakura and Ino charged once again.

The pinkette blocked the blonde's right hook.

The blonde blocked the pinkette's right hook.

The girls crowded closer, trying to gain leverage over the other.

They pushed against each other.

Each drew out shuriken and threw them.

The throwing stars clashed against each other.

Punch for punch, shuriken for shuriken, both Kunoichi threw everything that they had at one another without a single sign of letting up.

Hayate watched, impressed that the match had lasted for nearly 10 minutes, but he knew that they both were feeling fatigue setting in. It was obvious that the girls were getting tired since neither bothered to block the other's right hook.

"You can't be my equal!" Ino shouted as she staggered to her feet, "It's unthinkable."

"Hmph…" Sakura grunted as she too staggered to her feet, "You're right. The magnitude of your obsession with your long, flowing hair and superficial appearances is peerless… I'm no match for you!"

Ino growled in anger. She knew what Sakura was trying to do, trying to make the blonde loose her cool and make a mistake. Ino knew this, but it did not make the comment sting any less.

"Making fun of me?!" The blonde yelled as she pulled out a kunai, "You've gone too far!"

Sakura smirked, thinking her plan worked, but as quickly her smirked formed, it dropped as she watched Ino grabbed her pony-tail and took the kunai to it.

Everyone watched in complete surprise as the young blonde sheared her long locks off.

"This is nothing!" Ino declared as she stood taller without the added weight of her long hair.

"This ends now." The blonde yelled as she weaved her hands into a series of seals, "I'm gonna make your lips say, 'I give up'!"

Her hands thrust forward, creating the shape of a box.

Sakura instantly recognized the blonde's hand-signs. They were Ino's signature Shintenshin move, the transferring heart and soul from one body to another. The pinkette smiled at Ino's impatience. It was a waste of the blonde's time to implement her technique. While Sakura knew that Ino's technique was formidable, it was not without a few inherent flaws. The first being that the bolt of mental energy can only move along a direct path and that energy moved very slowly. The second flaw was that if the mental energy should miss its target, the energy would not return to Ino's body for several minutes, leaving the blonde vulnerable as a rag doll. As long as the pinkette presented as a moving target, the likelihood of the other Kunoichi missing was high, which in turn would leave Ino defenseless to Sakura's physical attacks.

Ino knew it was a gamble to pull a move like this, but she would never know if it will work unless she tried it. She took a deep breathe to center herself then bellowed as she completed her hand-seals.

"NINJA ART – SHINTENSHIN NO JUTSU!"

Immediately Sakura fled from Ino's sight and mental attack.

The blonde's form slumped forward.

Sakura paused with a sigh of relief.

"You lose…" She whispered, "Ino! … Guess you're done."

Moving forward to throw a knockout punch, the pinkette felt something wrap around her ankles.

"Th-this is - !" Her eyes grew wide as she watched Ino's pale locks wrap around her legs.

"Gotcha, Sakura!"

Ino was slumped on the ground but was still conscious. Her hands glowed faintly with her chakra, and from her hands, Sakura could see a trail of the blonde's chakra following the path of her hair.

"Heh…" The blonde weakly chuckled, "I set a trap… and you fell for it."

"… You don't mean - !"

"Yep." Ino smirked in success that her gamble paid off, "The hand seal I made earlier was just a distraction… to keep you from seeing the real trap. You zigged, you zagged… and you fell right into it!

"Can't move at all, can you? I made a living rope by running chakra through my own cut hair."

Sakura vainly struggled against the hair-rope.

"And now that I've got you where I want you…" The blonde stated as she pushed herself to her feet and weaved her hands again, "I can take up occupancy… and make you surrender.

"I think the odds are 100% I'm gonna hit my target, don't you think?"

The pinkette continued to struggle.

"And so… SHINTENSHIN NO JUTSU!"

Ino's body crumbled to the ground.

Sakura's body relaxed a bit before lifting her head up and smiled.

But there was a wrongness to the pinkette's smile.

"Heh…" The not-Sakura chuckled, "Too bad… Sakura!"