A lone figure tore across the barren stretch of desert, trailing dust like a second shadow. Grit clung stubbornly to her toes and nestled in the seams of her standard-issue sandals, but she pressed on with the unwavering determination of a woman far too busy to mind minor irritations— such as having seemingly half the desert stuck to her feet and a bright red sunburn on her cleavage.
But then, quite suddenly and seemingly for no reason, the girl skidded to a halt and spun on her heel, ending her mad dash through the desert.
"I know you're following me!" Sakura shouted, her voice cutting across the silence of the desert. "Show yourselves!"
Silence.
But after a few tense seconds, three kunoichi wearing Hidden Rain forehead protectors stepped out from behind a dune and faced her. The sun was already dipping low in the sky, so their shadows almost reached Sakura's feet. They had the setting sun at their backs, which really wasn't ideal for her if it came down to a fight.
"You're from the Hidden Rain, aren't you?" said Sakura, recognising the emblem embossed on their forehead protectors— four vertical lines. "Why were you following me?"
Just as Tsunade had expected, the Akatsuki had infiltrated the Chūnin exams, though they'd sent Hidden Rain Genin loyal to their cause instead of their S-rank missing-nin. They had been tracking Sakura's enormous chakra signature for a while— their job was to identify possible Jinchūriki as well as take note of any strong Genin— those who might grow strong enough to threaten the Akatsuki's plans.
"Do you have a scroll on you?" asked a purple-haired kunoichi, instead of answering Sakura's question. "If it's a Heaven Scroll, let's fight."
Even though their primary objective was to gather intelligence on the Chūnin Exams' participants, they couldn't simply lurk on the sidelines, watching everyone else's fights— they still had to make it to the finals themselves if they wanted to maximise their intel gathering!
"So, this lot has an Earth Scroll?" Sakura muttered, tugging at a Heaven Scroll from where she'd stashed it in her cleavage and showing it to them. "Just brilliant. Would've been nice if they'd shown up before we got disqualified…"
Technically, Sakura was being a bit of a cheeky lass by agreeing to a fight, since she'd been automatically DQ'd along with the rest of Team Asuma when Ino had fired her emergency flare. She had no business interfering with other participants at this stage, but since Tenten had asked her so nicely to stick a needle in the purple-haired girl's body… she didn't mind putting the Kazekage's rescue on hold.
Besides, these three girls looked like pushovers. She'd been done with them in a flash.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
To avoid hurting her opponents too badly, Sakura decided to start off the fight with a display of pyrotechnics. And exactly as she'd predicted, with one path cut off by the roiling blue flames, her opponents converged on her from her sides in a pincer manoeuvre. The girls swung their umbrellas at her, and…
Poof!
Sakura's Shadow Clone erupted in a burst of smoke. Using the glare from her flames, she'd concealed the creation of her doppelganger in plain sight.
"Wha—"
"Where did she—"
"Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu!"
A pair of hands burst out from the ground under their feet, grabbing the two girls by their ankles and dragging them into the sand up to their necks. This technique was just a D-rank offshoot of the Hiding Like a Mole Jutsu, with the only difference being that it was used to attack rather than to escape.
Once you knew one variation, you knew them all!
Sakura's head suddenly broke through the ground next to the two girls she'd just buried alive. Her hands slipped through the grains of sand as easily as if she were underwater, swiftly jabbing senbon needles into a certain Tenketsu at their necks and forcing them in a state of suspended animation. With this, they wouldn't be moving for another week…
This wasn't something Sakura could do on a moving opponent, since she didn't have the Byakugan, but as long as her opponents were standing nice and still, it wasn't especially difficult for her to accurately target their acupoints thanks to her medical skills!
"No!"
Unfortunately for Sakura, the two Genin she had paralysed weren't the ones Tenten had asked her to prod with her special needle. Her target— the purple-haired girl named Ajisai, according to Tenten— shoved her hands into her weapons pouch and retrieved a handful of what looked like trading cards.
Without taking her eyes off her opponent, Sakura slipped her hand into her thigh pouch and retrieved Tenten's needle. But just as she was about to stun Ajisai with her Sharingan Genjutsu, a wall of sand appeared before her eyes, separating the two combatants.
Noticing a seemingly ownerless shadow on the ground, Sakura looked up— and to her surprise, she found that it belonged to Gaara, who was floating astride a cloud of sand. After two years, he still hadn't managed to grow himself a pair of eyebrows. He could stand to learn a thing or two from Rock Lee…
"Cease fighting, the second phase of the Chūnin Exams has been cancelled," Gaara said authoritatively. "All participants are to proceed to the central tower immediately. Due to the unexpected sandstorm, any candidates still fit to fight will by default advance to the third and final round, which will take place one week from today."
It didn't seem like Gaara had caused the sandstorm after all. In fact, there wasn't so much as a scratch on him— which meant Sakura's theory, that he'd summoned the storm to fend off the Akatsuki, was completely off the mark.
How embarrassing… how was she going to explain this one to the Hidden Mist gang…?
"What's with the marriage proposal, Lord Kazekage?" Sakura blurted out. "The last time I saw you, you were 100 metres tall, and you nearly flattened my apartment."
Gaara looked away, looking incredibly embarrassed.
"I apologise, I was younger then," he mumbled. "Rest assured I've grown much over the past two years. Please forget any ridiculous demands I may have made to the Leaf in the past."
After making her way around the sand wall to confirm her teammates' condition, Ajisai moved to stand next to Sakura and spoke directly to Gaara.
"So, even if my teammates are dead, and I don't have both required scrolls, I still pass?" she asked in confirmation, her voice trembling slightly. "Is that correct?"
"…that's correct," said Gaara, nodding slightly. "Due to the unforeseen sandstorm's scale, proctors were dispatched to bring the exam participants to safety. However, the sandstorm ended much earlier than we expected, leaving more than half of you still out in the field in varying states of distress. In the interest of fairness, it was decided that anyone still fit to fight would be allowed to move on to the finals."
"Your two teammates aren't dead, they're in a death-like state," Sakura quickly added. "Don't leave them in the sand to dry out, or they'll really wind up dead."
On the bright side, this meant Team Asuma wouldn't be eliminated after all, even if they had used their distress beacon. But still… just what was going on here?