"If I kill you, Mother will be pleased, won't she? Heh heh."
In the arena, Gaara had grown frantic since taking damage.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
The bloodlust festering in his chest consumed everything. His mind held only one thought: ending the girl in front of him.
Is he losing his mind?
Is this what a Jinchuriki is?
Facing Gaara's bloodthirsty killing intent, Sakura's brow furrowed slightly.
His killing intent didn't carry the same ferocity and cold confidence as Zabuza's or Kisame's, but it surpassed them in sheer, frenzied bloodlust.
The thing standing across from her felt less like a person and more like a wild beast.
But I've already won.
The calm on Sakura's face broke suddenly into a quiet smile of confidence. She reached into her pouch and produced a smoke bomb.
"Bang!"
Gaara's killing intent erupted. The gourd on his back exploded open, dissolving into churning masses of yellow sand.
He swept his hand forward, and the sand surged toward Sakura like a wave swallowing the sky.
At the same moment, Sakura slammed the smoke bomb into the ground. With a sharp crack, thick smoke billowed out and swallowed her entirely.
Gaara's eyes went even colder. Masses of yellow sand swept back and forth through the smoke, hunting for the girl who had vanished within it.
Overhead, a portion of the sand formed a floating eye of sand, rotating constantly to scan every direction, watching for any sudden strike.
Bam bam bam!
From within the smoke behind Gaara, dozens of fist-sized water projectiles burst out, shooting at him like bullets.
Water Release: Kunai Barrage!
It was a B-rank Water Release technique Sakura had learned from Yamato.
Water release chakra was layered over shuriken in flight, combining the concussive force and flexibility of Water Release with the cutting edge of shuriken.
This wretched Water Release.
Gaara's expression contorted. As a sand manipulator, there was nothing he hated more than Water Release.
And he had already seen how powerful hers was. Bare sand alone could not stop it.
He pushed yellow sand up in front of himself as a shield and began drawing chakra to pull dense minerals from deep beneath the ground into his sand, except...
"What!?"
Gaara's twisted expression froze. He couldn't move the soil or rock beneath his feet at all.
In the instant he hesitated, the solid earth below him gave way. The ground around him transformed in a single moment into a vast, swallowing swamp.
Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld!
A technique that turns the earth beneath an opponent's feet into liquid, forming an enormous swamp from which they cannot escape, pulling them down until they are consumed by the mud.
And this technique wasn't purely Earth Release in its application; it also drew on the flowing properties of Water Release.
"She knows Earth Release too!?"
Up in the stands, Kankuro's eyes went wide. He blurted the words aloud in shock.
This Konoha kunoichi had been displaying overwhelmingly powerful Water Release techniques from the start.
He had assumed she was purely a Water Release ninja. It had never crossed his mind that she also knew Earth Release.
Beside him, Baki's eyes narrowed. The unease in his chest had grown considerably heavier.
Can Gaara actually win this?
He had always held absolute confidence in Gaara's strength. That certainty was beginning to crack.
Bam bam!
The bullet-like water projectiles punched straight through Gaara's yellow sand and buried themselves into the automatic Sand Shield surrounding him.
Almost simultaneously, Sakura burst from the smoke.
A thunderous hum filled the air as a fist-sized sphere of blue light condensed in her palm, spinning at tremendous speed.
"Gaara, behind you!"
Temari spotted it and shouted a warning from the stands. Genma, standing on the field, fixed her with a sharp, disapproving look.
But it worked. The warning caught Gaara. He reflexively looked back.
He swept his right hand around, already beginning to gather yellow sand to block Sakura's incoming strike.
Sakura's charging footsteps shifted in a fraction of a second. Her steps scattered into an intricate, drifting pattern, her silhouette flickering like a ghost through the haze.
Gaara blinked. For a brief, hazy instant, he thought he saw cherry blossoms rising around her, and her figure dissolving into them as they danced on the wind.
His body stiffened.
Leaf Style: Willow!
Gaara's movement in the Swamp of the Underworld had already been severely restricted.
With the binding of Leaf Style: Willow layered on top of that, he could barely move at all.
Boom!
The Rasengan in Sakura's hand drove into Gaara's chest with devastating force, detonating like a shell.
A powerful shockwave blasted outward in a spray of sand and debris. Gaara was hurled back dozens of meters, crashing into the ground and throwing up a cloud of rock and dust.
She won.
Up in the stands, the corner of Kakashi's mouth curved into a small smile. He knew the Rasengan's power as well as anyone.
Even a Jinchuriki taking a direct hit like that would come away with serious injuries.
Sand and blood hung in the air.
"Ugh!"
Just as Gaara tried to push himself up, he couldn't stop himself from coughing up a large mouthful of blood. He sank to his knees.
The Rasengan's high-speed rotation had pulverized his Sand Armor completely, driving directly into his chest before the intensely compressed chakra detonated, dealing massive damage to his body.
Finally landed a clean hit on this guy.
Sakura noted this inwardly.
In the short exchange that had led to this moment, she had realized early on that the real problem wasn't his overwhelming sand offense. It was his defense.
A triple-layered defense, like a turtle wrapped in two sets of armor.
First, control over his sand. Then, the autonomous Sand Shield. And finally, the Sand Armor encasing his entire body.
The Rasengan could shatter one layer at a time.
The Water Severing Wave could break all three at once, but at far too great a cost in chakra, with a charge time too long and a margin for error too slim.
In the end, Sakura had chosen to use her Earth Release and Water Release to bypass two of the three layers, and let the Rasengan finish things.
Judging by Gaara's condition, it had worked.
Blood mixed with fragments of hardened sand continued sliding down Gaara's face.
"You've lost. Give it up."
Sakura said this evenly, her expression unchanged.
She genuinely despised this person who had nearly killed Ino. But she wasn't the kind of person who craved killing. A lesson was enough.
More than that, Sakura knew Gaara was a Jinchuriki. The Hidden Sand and Konoha were allies. Eliminating the Sand's most powerful asset here was something she absolutely could not do.
"Heh heh heh... I will not lose."
Blood, saliva, and fragments of sand continued dripping from the corner of Gaara's mouth. His pupils contracted rapidly.
Veins of red crept across the whites of his eyes, making his expression look utterly monstrous.
"This is bad."
Up in the stands, both Kankuro and Temari went pale, cold sweat breaking across their foreheads. Baki's expression had gone grim as well.
Not because Gaara had lost. But because they could see what was happening.
Gaara was about to go berserk.
It looks like the plan will have to begin early.
Baki thought this quietly and shifted his gaze to the central viewing platform.
In the central viewing platform, Orochimaru watched the situation in the arena with a slight frown.
He had assumed that while Haruno Sakura had some degree of talent, she would be no match for Gaara under any circumstances.
But it hadn't gone that way.
Orochimaru's expression didn't move. He had intended to watch Sasuke's match first.
Looking at how things had unfolded now, the plan would need to begin ahead of schedule.
___
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