Naruto's a brawler. A loud, graceless brawler.

Rather unbecoming for a ninja, true, but for someone who has a notorious inability to tolerate the kind of monotonous repetition that mastering a proper martial style often requires, a near inevitability.

So, yes, Naruto's a brawler; loud, graceless, and near wild.

One thing Naruto also is, is tenacious. Both in body and in spirit. He has the endurance to outlast pretty much anyone (in our age group, at least) and the stubbornness to push himself to that point and likely beyond.

Throw that in with the fact that, while a brawler he's still an experienced fighter, and also that there are now three of him in the fight, and to my complete lack of surprise, Sakura's getting her ass handed to her something fierce.

The Naruto clones aren't very good at working together; they get in each other's way a lot, and if Sakura were a skilled fighter handling them would be doable, especially with her strength.

But Sakura isn't a skilled fighter. She's decent true, as most are after six years in The Academy, but taijutsu is something she never had much of an aptitude for or worked all that hard at.

To make things worse for the girl, Naruto hard counters her stamina-wise, and the boy just won't relent.

It starts with a single hit. Then two, then three, and within fifteen seconds of their second clash, Sakura is barely hanging on.

This is it. Unless Sakura pulls out a miracle, she's lost.

Unfortunately, miracles are Naruto's thing, so I might as well just start trying to figure out how to deal with him when he—

Sakura ducks under the heavy swing of a Naruto, then she moves in and, with her hand burning with blue chakra, drives the tip of her fingers into his right armpit.

The Naruto screams, and Sakura quickly grabs him and flings him at the others, giving herself some space.

Naruto and his clones quickly untangle themselves and rise to their feet, but while two are fine, one of them has a right arm that hangs limp.

With my sharingan, it's clear as day to me, that arm is dead. Sakura used the chakra scalpel to sever everything it could reach; muscle, tendons, blood vessels, even chakra coils.

Assuming that's the real Naruto, which is likely considering that injury should have popped a shadow clone, he is at very real risk of losing that arm. Maybe even dying.

I hadn't imagined Sakura would be willing to go that far for this match, hell, for anything, but she has.

She's beat Naruto. And she knows it.

"If you don't get that arm looked at, you're going to lose it, Naruto," Sakura says, breath coming out heavily, but a glint of satisfaction evident in her eyes. "You've lost."

The three Naruto scowl, then one of the unhurt ones asks; "Hey, is the arm really that bad?"

The injured one looks annoyed about it, but he nods. "Yeah, I'm bleeding out. Sorry, boss."

Wait, what?

The Naruto who'd asked grins at the injured one. "Don't worry about it," he says. "You did good."

No way.

"What are you talking a—" Sakura begins to say, but then the injured Naruto and the quiet one disappear in a sudden burst of smoke.

That was a clone!

Naruto repeats the handsigns for The Shadow Clone Jutsu, and two identical copies of himself puff into existence beside him once again.

While the dip in Naruto's chakra reserve is more noticeable this time, all three still have slightly more chakra than I do while fully rested.

In other words, Naruto literally has to split his chakra three-way twice, for me to have comparable reserves to him.

Sakura blinks. "But..." Sakura splutters. "What?"

Naruto grins at her, but it's obvious that it lacks the joy (or attempt at it) that it usually carries. "I told you I'm a great ninja, Sakura."

Sakura scowls. "And I told you that it doesn't matter even if you make if you make a thousand clones, Naruto."

In a flash, Sakura speeds through a series of handsigns and casts a simple stunning jutsu that causes a loud bang accompanied by an eye searing flash in front of her opponents.

Having seen it coming, I take the necessary precautions, cycling chakra through my eyes and ears to protect them, but Naruto, lacking the sharingan, neither sees it coming nor reacts in time.

Temporarily stunned, Sakura dashes at the middle Naruto, the real one; which we both know because the idiot had made his new clones right in front of us.

Sakura's fist slams into Naruto's jaw with all her might, and the boy goes flying like a ragdoll.

His clones try to jump in, but whatever makes them indistinguishable from human to even the sharingan must give them all the same weaknesses too, because they look to still be suffering the effects of Sakura's stun jutsu with how slowly they react.

Sakura grabs their heads and slam them together so hard the clones explode into smoke.

Over twenty feet away, Naruto rises, a huge, rapidly swelling bruise on his fractured jaw.

Sakura charges, fully intent on knocking his lights out.

Naruto stands still, looking like he intends to 'go out on his feet'.

In the final moment though, with Sakura's fist two inches from his nose, a blast of raw chakra explodes from Naruto, and it slams into Sakura like a brick wall, completely arresting the girl's forward momentum and sending her flying back almost as far as she'd come.

Sakura hits the ground hard and rolls to a stop.

I nearly wince in sympathy.

This isn't the first time I've seen Naruto use this move; he's done so before, against me in fact, and if it hadn't been for my sharingan, he probably would have won that match.

I scowl. Just like he's won this match.

Sakura put up a good fight; a much better fight than I'd expected, to be honest, but this is it. She's do— no. Fucking. Way.

Her long pink hair's a wild tangled mess, her skin sports countless bruises and scrapes, and she's covered in sweat from head to toe, but slowly, Sakura Haruno pushes herself to her feet, her green eyes lit with an undying fire.

She's beautiful.

Naruto looks unsurprised; he'd expected her to get back up.

With measured steps, the genin approach each other for the final round, steps speeding up as they near, until finally, they clash.

Sakura's tired and injured; slow. But she managed to ring Naruto's bell quite solidly with that last punch of hers, leaving the boy unsteady on his feet.

Naruto lands the first punch, then Sakura makes up for it with two. Naruto pays her back for that with a knee to her stomach that almost drops the girl, before, with an inarticulate scream of rage and determination, she tackles Naruto to the ground and the fight devolves into wild grappling and punching.

Watching their graceless tussle on the dusty, concrete rooftop, I'm beginning to wonder if I should intervene when, with a punch to her nose, Naruto screams; "I thought we were friends!"

Wait, what?

Where did that come from?

Sakura falls back, looking stunned, but more by the words than the act of physical violence perpetrated against her. Then, with her face twisting in rage, she throws herself at Naruto and punches him back. "Yes, we were, you idiot," she screams. "And then you went and ruined it."

Naruto blinks. "What are you talking about?" he asks.

Yes, good question. What are the both of you talking about?

Sakura stares at Naruto with visible disdain. "You wrecked our store, Naruto. With your stupid stink bomb. You ruined months of work!"

Naruto's eyes widen. "But, I didn't know it was your family's store, I would have—"

"You would have what? Not messed with someone's livelihood otherwise? Do you have any idea how hard it was to replace what you destroyed? And then The Hokage just... let you off with a slap on the wrist."

Naruto looks torn, like he wants to say something but doesn't know what. Finally, he says; "Sakura, I'm sorry. I—"

"Save it, Naruto," Sakura says, cutting him off. "You're not sorry. You don't care. If you did you wouldn't do the things you do."

The two grow silent then and I just stare at them, almost wanting to shake my head.

Did they seriously just work out their differences, or at least begin to, from beating the crap out of each other?

Seriously!?

I hold back a sigh.

Ridiculous as this is though, there's some positives here. I can work with this.

"Who wants lunch?" I ask.

My teammates look at me.

Despite the situation, Sakura looks excited for the opportunity to eat with me, while Naruto's stomach rumbles.

Yes, indeed, I can work with this.