Chapter 65: Main Family and Branch Family
Honestly, Ino had never been built for straight-up taijutsu.
The Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi clans worked as a system — Ino-Shika-Chō, where one plus one plus one added up to something greater than three. Each clan's techniques filled a different role: Akimichi hit hard, Nara controlled the field, Yamanaka sensed and disrupted. None of them were designed to work in isolation, and of the three, Yamanaka techniques were the least suited to a direct one-on-one brawl.
Sakura pulled a kunai from her pouch and settled into her stance.
Naruto went rigid.
He was thinking about that fight in the forest. He hadn't seen all of it — just a glimpse, long enough to watch Sakura put a punch through something that sent Orochimaru flying. And the ground under her foot afterward. The ground had just... ceased to exist.
He had never in his life seen anyone hit that hard.
He watched Sakura's expression go calm and serious, and said quietly:
"...Is Sakura trying to kill Ino?"
Sasuke glanced at him and shook his head.
"No. She's taking Ino seriously." A beat. "Which means she's not holding back."
"...How is that better?!"
One punch and Ino's in the hospital—
Sasuke didn't answer. But he was right, and Sakura knew it. Pulling her punches would be an insult. Ino deserved the real thing.
That said, Sakura thought, watching Ino reach into her pouch, Enhanced Strength stays off the table. Obviously.
Ino's jaw was set, eyes bright.
She's going full serious. Fine. I hate her the most sometimes.
One shuriken — thrown fast, aimed to force a reaction. Simultaneously, Ino closed the distance, kunai in hand.
"Shuriken as cover to create an opening, then press immediately," Kakashi observed from the railing, not particularly loudly. "Clean enough tactic."
"So?" Naruto leaned in. "So what's wrong with it?"
"Sakura is a taijutsu specialist."
Kakashi watched Ino close in on her.
"The moment Ino chose that approach, the match was over."
The Yamanaka were sensors and infiltrators. Their clan jutsu were exceptional. What they were not built for was this — standing in front of a close-combat fighter and trying to win by hitting them faster.
And there was the other thing, Kakashi reflected. Intelligence gaps. Sakura knew Ino as well as anyone knew anyone. Ino, on the other hand, had nothing to work with. Sakura had gone straight from graduation into ANBU, invisible for four years. The person Ino knew was the girl from the Academy. Whatever Sakura had become in between — Ino had no data on any of it.
Kakashi glanced over at Hiruzen, standing at the center of the second-floor corridor, smoking serenely, the picture of a man who had not arranged anything.
Right.
The seeding in these brackets was spotless — all three villages' strong candidates kept apart from each other, nobody inconveniently bumping a fellow powerhouse early. Sakura had drawn her best friend. That wasn't coincidence. That was the old man ensuring his disciple's sparring partner didn't go home looking too embarrassed.
Thoughtful of him.
Ding.
Sakura deflected the shuriken with a flick of her kunai — fluid, no wasted motion — and caught Ino's stabbing kunai against her own.
Her other hand came up in a blade.
The strike hit the back of Ino's neck — precisely calibrated, not hard enough to damage, exactly hard enough to drop.
Medical-grade control. The kind of force precision that took years of chakra scalpel work to develop. Ino's eyes rolled back and she crumpled, and Sakura caught her on the way down.
Faintly, barely audible, as consciousness left her:
"...Sakura... you absolute... jerk..."
Sakura stared at the girl in her arms.
...I definitely imagined that.
"Winner — Sakura Haruno!"
On the upper level, Shikamaru put a hand over his face.
Called it. There had never been a world where Ino walked away from that one. And with that — Ino-Shika-Chō, this generation's iteration of a legendary trio, had been swept clean. All three, eliminated.
Three competitors had yet to fight.
Neji Hyūga. Hinata Hyūga. Rock Lee — who had drawn a bye and would advance directly to the final tournament.
Sakura carried the unconscious Ino back up to the second floor, set her down carefully, and looked at the board as the final matchup appeared.
HINATA HYŪGA vs. NEJI HYŪGA.
She understood the bracket logic immediately. Lee was too dangerous to waste on a preliminary — putting him against Neji here would burn one of the most interesting matchups before the main event, in front of an audience of exam officials rather than the daimyō and two Kages who'd be watching next month. The old man was protecting the spectacle.
As for Hinata going up against Neji instead — that was cruel, and Sakura knew it, and it was still the correct call. Putting Hinata in the final tournament against the assembled foreign powers would be putting Konoha's reputation on the line behind someone who wasn't ready to carry it. That was the math, and it didn't matter how unfair it was.
It's just reality.
She watched the two Hyūga step into the arena and felt something in her chest go still and quiet.
She didn't know what to do about Neji and Hinata. It wasn't her business. The branch family seal, the resentment, the whole weight of the Hyūga clan bearing down on one boy who'd watched his father die for a family politics game he hadn't chosen — that was something that had to play out on its own terms.
And Hinata. Hinata was gentle and genuine and trying her hardest.
And Neji was in pain and furious and doing the only thing he knew how to do with that.
Naruto should be paying attention right now, Sakura thought, glancing sideways at the orange jacket beside her. He's about to see someone who needs exactly the kind of thing he's good at giving.
She left it alone.
Both Byakugan opened at the same moment. Both dropped into the Gentle Fist stance at the same moment.
Neji did not hold back. Every strike was aimed to end the fight, to make a point, to say something through the match itself that words weren't sufficient for. Hinata bent and staggered like a flower in a downpour, giving ground, holding on past the point where most people would have stopped.
Sakura watched quietly.
She has the heart for it. She doesn't have the strength yet. That's survivable — you can build strength. The softness underneath, though — that's load-bearing. She'd break herself apart trying to lead a clan that needs someone harder on the outside.
She felt some distant sympathy for Hiashi that she hadn't expected to feel.
If I were in his position — watching someone I'd hoped for fall short of what the role demands — I don't know that I'd handle it much better.
The moment Neji moved for the kill, four people hit the floor simultaneously: Kakashi, Kurenai, Guy, Hayate, converging from different angles.
And Sakura registered, only then —
Where's Asuma?
He should have been here. He was Ino-Shika-Chō's jōnin-sensei. His whole team had just competed. He wasn't on the second floor corridor.
The old man sent him to find Tsunade. He left already.
She filed it. Later.
"Why?!" Neji's voice broke the noise, raw and cracking. He was staring down at Hinata — already spitting blood, already on the ground — and the hatred in his face was real, and the pain underneath the hatred was real, and the killing intent he was barely containing was absolutely real. "Why does the main family get to decide everything?! Why is it only the branch family that suffers?!"
Beside Sakura, the orange-jacketed figure had already moved.
Naruto jumped down into the arena.
(End of Chapter 65)