There is only deafening silence after the board flashes with her and Gaara's name on it.
Sakura should feel afraid when she sees her name there beside Gaara's. After all, she is about to face the future Kazekage and ichibi jinchuriiki, but Sakura is not.
She is not because she already has something to combat Gaara's sand.
When she is attacked by Gaara during the Konoha Invasion, Sakura has terrible nightmares after that. At that time, she was weak when she tried to defend Sasuke against Gaara and she nearly died as a result beneath Gaara's crushing sand. That had been a rude wake-up call to her.
It is also the moment that drove Sakura to better herself. More than that, it made Sakura obsessed about the opponents she has faced so far and to find their weakness. So throughout the years, she did just that, finding ways to combat her previous opponents techniques.
Under the tutelage of Tsunade, Sakura has studied the components and consistency of chakra and how it can affect both living and non-living things. Of course, Sakura knew that Gaara's sand is controlled by his chakra and understood that the sand won't be used as a weapon if it didn't have chakra at all.
So Sakura starts to find ways to remove the chakra from non-living things. She soon got the idea when she started studying poison with Shizune and wondered if she could use the poison-extraction technique in the same application as removing chakra. Thus, she began developing her own technique. She has both earth and water affinity, so she uses her water affinity to develop a special kind of water to remove chakra from non-living things, which she plans to expand soon on to living things as well.
It is only after defeating Sasori and his puppets that she is able to perfect the technique and now potentially use it against Gaara's sand. If she had fully completed the Chakra Extraction Technique, she would have easily won against Sasori's puppets by completely removing the chakra strings attached to the puppets with her technique.
Now, Sakura will have the opportunity to use the technique first hand. However, more than that, she also knows that Gaara is weak in genjutsu, which she has learned on a first hand account from Kankuro. So Sakura will also have a chance to showcase a few genjutsu she learned from Kurenai, in which some of them she has made some improvements on.
Certainly, during the three years after Sasuke left the village, Sakura hasn't wasted her time mooning over her lost love. Instead she spent most of her days developing her own techniques and honing her skills into a fine and deadly point with the intent to surpass both Naruto and Sasuke when they meet again. Unfortunately, she isn't able to show most of her skills during Orochimaru's attack days ago after she has been distracted by her heightened emotion, her new doujutsu and her desperation to save her boys.
As she slowly descends from the stairs and towards the arena below, Sakura's attention goes back to the Hokage, where she meets the old man's gaze. She suddenly suspects the reason she wasn't detained earlier after she has revealed herself to the Hokage. The Hokage must want her to defeat Gaara, at the same time, learn more of her abilities.
Since the success of the Sound and Sand Invasion hinges on Gaara and Shukaku, where the other villages want to unleash the Ichibi on Konoha during the Final Exam. It seems the Hokage wants to foil that plan by sending Sakura to defeat Gaara before the bloodthirsty red-head can even advance onto the Final Exam, which will ruin Orochimaru's plans of invasion. Overall, Gaara is important in the invasion so the Hokage wants Sakura to remove him from the equation.
As Sakura stands at the center of the arena with the people watching around her, Sakura's eyes land on Gaara, who stands on the opposite side of her with his arm crossed and looking bored. Judging from his disinterested look, Gaara must be underestimating her already, which she will take advantage of.
The jounin Hayate is saying something but Sakura is already calculating and gearing up for her first move before the jounin can say start. And when he does, Sakura moves without hesitation.
She has days to recuperate and accumulate her chakra, which means she has enough chakra for the techniques she has planned to defeat Gaara. She will have to do this fast and efficiently.
She won't show him what she is truly capable of at first.
Let him think I'm weak, she thinks as she moves.
She has to pretend to be weak just to catch Gaara off guard. So using her normal speed, she runs towards Gaara, who hasn't moved from his place, still with his arm crossed in front of him, but she does see his sand slithering out of his gourd.
First, she throws three shurikens at Gaara, which he swats - almost lazily - to the side using his sand. Then, Sakura runs again to the left and takes out a kunai attached with explosive tags, where she aims it at Gaara.
Sakura watches as Gaara moves to shield himself from it. Before the explosive tags explodes, Sakura uses her earth affinity to create a wall between them.
Sakura knows that Gaara is simply playing with her before going for the kill, but she isn't going to give him the opportunity to surround her with his sand again. Not that she can't help it.
"Doton: "Doryūheki!" she shouts as she slams her palm on the floor.
The ground shakes while a wall of earth rises from the floor until it reaches over twelve feet tall.
With Gaara's eyes hindered by his sand shield, the smoke from the bombs, and her earth wall, Sakura uses this time to initiate her plan to defeat Gaara. She creates two clones, who immediately cast a multi-layered genjutsu on themselves that will render them invisible and undetectable from any senses, especially Gaara's. She also cast it on herself.
With a nod to each other, Sakura and one clone leaves from behind the wall. She concentrates chakra into her hip flexors, quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings and calf muscles to fortify her muscles there and prevent them from tearing once she uses her increased speed. With one clone left behind the earth wall, Sakura and the other clone surround Gaara on either side of the arena.
Still invisible to Gaara's senses, Sakura watches as Gaara's sand crashes against her earth wall in the distance, where her clone is hiding, who reacts by shouting, "Shannaro!" before leaping out from the earth wall and starts evading Gaara's attacking sand.
Using the first clone as a distraction, the other clone on the other side of the arena suddenly raises her leg up before she brings her foot down on the ground.
BOOM!
At once, the floor craters and shakes, where the clone's foot makes contact.
There are loud gasps and shouts from the shock spectators as the ground shatters and quakes while dust particles fall from the ceiling. The audience holds onto the shaking railings. Most of them look utterly surprised to see the sudden appearance of the crater on the arena, where the invisible clone is now quickly attaching chakra strings towards the debris on the ground and starts flinging them at Gaara, who looks astonished and is now in complete guard. The clone continues her assault on Gaara without losing momentum while the other one uses her enhanced speed to try and get behind Gaara's shield wall.
Then, Gaara suddenly erects a dome of sand around himself while both the clones are now simply throwing large debris against Gaara's shield. The clones are putting strength behind their throws that even Gaara tries to fortify his sand shield again and again every time a slab of rock hits it.
Meanwhile, Sakura is already preparing for her next technique while the other clones distract Gaara from her true intent.
Her hand is a blur as she forms the handseals for her own technique. At the last handseal, she places her hands near her mouth. With chakra gathered in her mouth, Sakura doesn't shout it, but more of a whisper when she says, "Suiton: Chakra Chushutsu!" and then simply exhales a rush of water.
There is a loud, rushing sound as the wave of water swiftly flows forward and crashes against Gaara's sand dome. There is another surprised shouting from the spectators as they watch everything unfold before them.
Sakura observes as her technique takes effect in an instant, which swiftly removes the chakra from the sand, where the now glowing water flowed into the arena to surround the two opponents.
Gaara's sand loosens. It's solid form disintegrating before it collapses completely onto the flooded arena. Meanwhile, Gaara looks like a wet dog with his red hair sticking to his face and clumps of wet sand all over him. He also looks beside himself with rage. Sakura can already feel his bloodlust increasing and hear him whispering madly to himself.
However, before Gaara can unleash hell unto Sakura, in a burst of speed that even some of the jonins are unable to track, Sakura is suddenly in front of Gaara, where she uses her finger to tap Gaara in the forehead. With a touch of chakra, she cast a subtle genjutsu on the furious red-headed boy, who easily succumbs to it. It is a multi-layered genjutsu that is hard to dispel until Gaara gets the message and learns from it.
Gaara's legs give way and Sakura instinctively catches him before he falls down on the flooded ground.
Thereafter, there is only dead silence as everyone stares dumbfoundead at her and the boy in her arms.
It takes another moment before the jounin Hayate steps forward to finally announce to the stunned audience, "And the Winner is Haruno Sakura."
AN: Thanks to osterreicher97, samusbot , i30817 , Nemie-Chan, mansta , moodymel and Thornado for reviewing the previous chapter!