(Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do not own Wedding Peach.
I do not own any great quantity of money or property. I'm a STUDENT; that's
why I'm poor, okay?
Author's Notes: It also seems like Minoru-kun is getting a tiny
fan-club. Sorry, but he's not in this chapter!
This chapter will feature a lot of action and strategy, so read more
and more carefully as the fight progresses. I hope it suits your tastes,
dear readers!
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Ninth Annual Junior Battle Tournament!"
the announcer blasted out. "First match: Cardella of the Vampires versus
Haruno Sakura!"
Sakura got up from her seat. She walked past the other contestants with
a pale, expressionless face. The doors closed behind her as she met the
fresh air and the cheers of a crowd.
The arena was huge: it was a little larger than what Konoha used for
the Chuunin exams. Sakura saw her opponent, Cardella, on the other end
of the arena.
Cardella did not resemble a vampire like what Sakura saw in the library
books. Her skin was pink and natural-looking, and a few silver trinkets
laced her neck. She wore a tight black dress with rips all in suggestive
places, not looking 'junior' at all.
'She looks a little gothic, but she seems like a nice girl,' Sakura
thought to herself.
The vampire gave a sadistic grin, revealing a set of pearly white teeth
with fangs.
'Then again, banish that thought.' Sakura gave a small smile back, determined
to show that she wasn't afraid.
Scarlett gave a tiny grin of excitement from the stands. 'Show me what
you have, Daughter of the legendary Love-Angel, Wedding Peach.' She had
a feeling that this was going to be good.
"Now remember," the referee said to both of them. "You are not going
to kill. Only when one of you surrenders or is unconscious is the match
over. Your vital signs are being monitored by the medic team. Got it? NO
KILLING."
"Of course," the vampire purred. Sakura rolled her eyes.
'Like hell you think that.'
The arena became silent.
"READY...GO!!!" The whistle blew.
The two charged at each other. Cardella pulled out a thin sword, and
Sakura took out two kunai. The pink-haired kunoichi deflected the sword
with one, and stabbed her arm with the other.
The vampire jumped back, smirking.
Sakura looked at the wound on the girl's pale arm. The skin around it
started to pull back together, healing slowly but surely.
Sakura stared at her opponent, who smiled back. "When one is a vampire,
the body must preserve whatever blood supply it has," Cardella said casually.
She held up her ancient sword, which was slightly out-of-shape and scratched
in odd places. "Please allow me and my blade taste your sweet Fountain
of Youth. You have so much of that tasty drink, and can make more of it
— and I can't make any on my own." Her face turned into a fake pout.
"You can't scare me," Sakura said, her voice dripping with venom.
"Oh?" Cardella smiled. She loved a challenge. "We'll see about that!"
She charged again.
Sakura held back the slashes of steel with her kunai. 'Weird,' Sakura
thought. 'She's not attempting to give close, large blows. She's aiming
for my limbs — but it's as if she's trying to scratch them, not chop them
off. Is she trying to make me bleed until I faint? No... even if I bleed,
a sword like that wouldn't be able to go deep enough. Unless she stabs
a vital area with it, of course — and she's not even doing any stabbing
moves!'
Cardella scratched Sakura's cheek with the tip of her blade. Sakura
winced, which gave the vampire time to slash her arm and hip. The two jumped
away from each other.
The young kunoichi looked at her wounds. As Sakura had predicted, the
sword didn't go very deep — she was bleeding, but not very quickly. 'What
is she going to do, SCRATCH me to death?'
"That was all I needed," the vampire said as she licked the blade. "It
is very sweet with youth. Although tinged with a slight bitterness. I presume
you were rejected by... oh, say, a past love?"
Indignation flashed across Sakura's face.
Momoko's face creased into worry as she watched the scene: "Sakura!"
'No!' Sakura mentally slapped herself. 'Calm down. What's past is past
— I have a battle to do NOW.' She returned to her battle stance. "You talk
too much," she said.
"You are absolutely right. I am chit-chatting excessively. This is when
the real fun begins." Cardella started chanting, holding the hilt of her
sword with both hands: "My lovely pets lying in the rivers, here is the
blood you shall hunt down!"
Cardella stabbed the blade into the ground, held it for a few seconds,
and pulled it out. She put it back in her sheath, saying, "I won't need
that anymore."
Sakura was confused. Was that a spell of sorts?
A drop of blood from Sakura's arm fell to the ground. It created a dark,
brown speck. Three seconds later, the darkened area turned into a gray
mud. A leech popped out, its slimy mouth sucking the liquid from the medium.
"What the hell?!" Sakura yelled out as she jumped away from the leech.
"It is futile to run," Cardella said. "I told them to go after your
blood. Give up, Human! As time passes, bigger and faster leeches will arise,
attracted to you. You'll get caught, and eventually faint from blood loss."
She smirked. "Of course, I'd rather finish you off, but the rules of this
junior tournament say otherwise."
Sakura ran towards Cardella. She took out a few shuriken and threw them
at the vampire. Leeches oozed out along Sakura's pathway.
"No use! I am too fast for you!" the vampire laughed, dodging the shuriken.
Then she noticed that Sakura had disappeared. 'Those shuriken were a distraction?'
She looked up.
Sakura was in the air, throwing a kunai at the vampire. Cardella jumped
back, and the kunai imbedded itself where she had been just a second ago.
Sakura landed, and then jumped again, using a small amount of chakra
in her legs. Mud rose to the surface around Sakura's newest footprint,
and out of it three leeches appeared. 'She's right,' the kunoichi thought,
'they are getting faster.'
The pink-haired ninja threw a few more kunai while in the air, all of
which Cardella evaded smoothly. Flecks of red sprinkled on the ground,
where addition wet mounds of brown and gray rose up.
Sakura repeated throwing the kunai, until all nine were stuck in the
ground.
The vampire licked her lips. "You're out of weapons now, Haruno. Now
what?"
Sakura sped around Cardella, making a dusty circle in the air. The kunoichi
put a little chakra in her legs as she moved: she switched back and forth
from a solid image into a blurred image, on-and-off.
Sakura panted; her reserves of aura were getting drained. The ground
became muddier and muddier, with the bloodsuckers sprouting out like bean-plants.
Sakura's form spun around the vampire, sometimes disappearing and reappearing
in unexpected places. She grabbed Cardella with her left hand, landed a
punch with her right, and repeated it in different places. The empty-handed
offensive finished with a grappling technique: she grabbed Cardella's ankle
from behind and lifted it up, causing the vampire to fall.
A shot of pain went through Sakura's head. Her chakra was reaching its
limit. Cardella, on the ground, used this opportunity to kick Sakura in
the solar plexus, sending the kunoichi flying in the air.
Sakura somehow twisted her body in the correct manner and skidded on
the ground with her feet. She stood up, her arm and hip covered in blood.
She took one jump backward.
A leech with the thickness of a sausage burst out of the spot she had
jumped off of. Sakura stood delicately on one foot, taking huge gasps.
Cardella stood back up, her head held high. "You have no chance against
me! Surrender now!"
Sakura breathed, looked up, and smirked. "Why don't you?"
A sudden dizziness hit Cardella. A familiar feeling overcame her: a
craving for blood. 'What? I had raw meat this morning. I shouldn't feel
like this!'
"What happened?!" Yousuke asked Momoko.
Momoko's eyes were wide as she watched the scene. "I...I don't know..."
'I feel so weak...' Cardella trembled. She looked down, and saw in horror
that leeches were slowly crawling up her leg. "My leeches! What is the
meaning of this?!"
Yuri, weak at the sight of any slimy creatures, turned pale in the stands
as she saw the bloodsuckers squirming around the vampire's ankles.
"To the leeches, you're a bigger target than I am," Sakura called out.
"Didn't you notice the pattern of my kunai?"
Cardella looked at her surroundings. She stood in the middle of a circle
of mud and upturned dirt. Eight kunai were imbedded in various places,
but Cardella was at the center of them.
Sakura held up her left hand, and showed Cardella her palm. There was
a deep wound in it. The vampire's eyes widened.
Scarlett immediately understood the strategy behind it all. 'Good thinking,
Sakura,' the love-angel thought. 'You stabbed yourself with the kunai and
planted them around Cardella, so that the leeches would more likely come
in that range. Then you dripped your own blood around her surroundings,
then stuck some on her body, and ran off.'
Cardella remembered the punches and that ankle-lift Sakura gave her.
The kunoichi's grasp indeed felt unusually slimy, now that she thought
back to it. Her vision turned blurry.
"But you are covered in more blood than me!" she screamed. "My leeches
don't miss any drop of blood on the ground!"
"Right now, I'm not actually standing on the ground," Sakura explained.
She lifted up the toes on her right foot to reveal what was underneath:
the ninth kunai, vertically thrust into the earth.
"I'm perching on the first kunai I threw. It is completely sterile of
blood. After I threw it and landed, I stabbed myself with the remaining
kunai and threw them towards you. You dodged them — but they were never
intended to actually hit you in the first place. They were just road-signs
for the leeches. I then marked your body with my blood, jumped back on
the clean kunai, and waited for the leeches to do the rest."
Cardella screamed as bigger leeches sprouted around her, grabbing hold
of her and twisting around her legs.
Her opponent sighed. "It seems like your leeches only care about food.
Once a leech attaches itself to a surface, it won't let go for a while.
Even your healing abilities as a vampire is no match for the hunger of
your so-called pets.
"...In other words, I used your own attack against you."
Blood was visibly draining from Cardella's face. She gave a last shriek
of anger, and fainted to the ground. The leeches started to crawl over
her body, sensing Sakura's blood.
"She's unconscious; let's go!" the head medic barked. The team appeared
next to the fall vampire in a flash. One earth-angel nurse summoned a large
mound of salt, which dumped on the squirming leeches. The salt effectively
dehydrated and killed them. The medics pulled off the slimy dead masses
and lifted the now very white Cardella on a stretcher. They flew the girl
up to the emergency ward of the stadium.
Scarlett was impressed — a rare reaction out of her normally critical
nature. "Amazing efficiency," she said aloud to her teammates. "Like a
true assassin."
Meanwhile, the pink-haired kunoichi wobbled. It was hard to keep balance
on the ringed-handle of a kunai. In addition, she couldn't believe what
had just happened.
The words rung throughout the stadium like a trumpet ovation. "Winner:
Haruno Sakura!"
The stands were silent for a while. Not many people had seen a human
defeat a vampire before. Many a committee member was in shock.
Scarlett, Yousuke and Momoko started clapping. Yuri, Limone, Hinagiku
joined in, and it spread. Then the sound turned into a loud applause.
The referee floated over to Sakura and lifted her up from her now sinking
kunai. The leeches were starting to dive back into the ground, abandoning
the arena for their original homes.
"I...I won?" Sakura asked the angel referee.
"Yes, human," he said to her with a smile. "Well done."
Sakura fainted.
"Sakura!" Momoko exclaimed as she stood up.
Yousuke pulled her down. "Don't worry, she just passed out from the
fact that she won."
Hinagiku nodded. "She'll feel like a million bucks when she comes to.
Yeah, Sakura! Go get 'em!"
"Please excuse my short absence," Yuri politely said as she got up to
go to the bathroom. She was very happy at Sakura's win, but the leeches...
Scarlett turned to Momoko — her teammate, leader, and friend. "Wedding
Peach, you can be very proud of your daughter."
If you have questions, or comments, please tell me! If I suck, by all
means, tell me. In an intelligent manner.
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