Of Tales now and Long Ago

Of Sand and the Crush

Chapter FOURTEEN

Haruno Sakura VS Nara Shikamaru VS Gaara

"Well, it's your turn now." Sasuke said. "Good luck."

Naruto grinned. "You have'ta win, Sakura-chan!"

Kakashi ruffled her hair and Itachi nodded encouragingly at her.

Sakura smiled and gave them a mocking salute before she leaned back and flipped off the balcony. She kicked off the wall and landed neatly on the battle grounds.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"This is troublesome." Shikamaru muttered. If he was scared of the glaring redhead standing opposite him, he did a good job of hiding it.

"It's not that bad." Sakura giggled.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "For you, maybe. You're good enough that Anko was willing to take you in."

Sakura had a strange look on her face. "It wont be that bad."

Shikamaru sighed.

Genma gave the starting call. "Ready? Begin!"

Sakura immediately created space between her and her opponents. Gaara remained where he was, as impassive as ever. Shikamaru followed her example.

'So, how do we do this? Get rid of Shikamaru first, or work with him to get rid of Gaara first?'

Sakura narrowed her eyes, watching her equally unmoving opponents. 'Gaara's sand. I want to see what his defense is like.'

'I guess talking to Shukaku is out of the question. We'll do that after this fight is over.'

Sakura summoned a kunai and tossed it at Gaara. Sand rose into the air, blocking the blade. Gaara moved his gaze form Shikamaru to Sakura. Sakura threw a few kunai, this time with explosion tags attached to them. Gaara's shield thickened in layers, easily blocking the explosions.

'Let's just do this!'

"Shika!"

Shikamaru looked up at his name.

"How about a temporary truce?"

Shikamaru sighed in relief. "I was waiting for you to say that."

He casually walked towards Sakura, stopping beside her. "Any ideas?"

Sakura nodded. "A clan specialty." She whispered, so only he could hear. "I don't want to tell you too much, but long story short, I can do a lot of things with this." She summed a Puppet Cursing Sphere. "With this, I should be able to paralyze or stun an opponent. I should also be able to brainwash and control anyone target at close range. I can also use it to absorb most techniques and maybe even chakra from my opponents."

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. "That's almost everything someone could wish for."

Sakura nodded. "But I still can't use it to it's full potential. I can absorb the chakra from an attack. I can also use it in a front attack kind of way. A blunt enough attack should stun an opponent." She paused. "Gaara's sand is most likely controlled by chakra. I should be able to absorb the chakra from it as long as he doesn't insert too much of Shukaku's chakra into it, because it'll burn."

"Wait. How do you know about Shukaku?" Shikamaru asked. "I was at the hospital with Naruto. Where did you hear that?"

Sakura placed a finger over her lips. "That's a clan secret."

Shikamaru sighed. He shot Sakura a 'later' look before turning back to Gaara.

"So, what do you want to do?"