Read Or Die Fan Fiction / Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ So Near, Yet So Far ❯ Anita vs. Sakura ( Chapter 5 )

Summary: After encountering one another in an alley, ROD the TV's Anita faces off against Naruto's Sakura, and now, it's Anita's turn to attack.

(Glossary at the bottom for a few more Naruto terms, and the note in the story is found at the very bottom.)

A/N: Considering how I didn't think I could write action, this chapter went surprisingly well, and it even gets quite good near the end. But what am I holding you up here for? Read on...

Chapter 5:

Anita vs. Sakura

`

Anita reached for more paper from the pack on her leg. It was then that Sakura realized that the other girl had yet to attack.

Moving her right arm carefully, Anita pulled three sheets of paper out of the pack on her leg. When Anita saw Sakura's eyes open a little wider with recognition of the coming attack, Anita smirked a little. She looked over at Nenene and her sisters, all whole-heartedly supporting her, and gave them a wave with her right hand, showing them-and Sakura-that she was fine despite her injury.

She looked back at Sakura, who had fallen into a tense, defensive posture, and attempted to judge the effects of her opponent's injury. Sakura was cradling her left arm to her chest with a makeshift sling, made from her forehead protector. Anita nodded to herself as she realized this as an opening she could take advantage of. She continued to look at Sakura, as if further assessing the other girl, when she suddenly pulled several more sheets of paper out and directed them at Sakura. As they flew, they spread out, making it impossible for Sakura to simply dodge to one side.

Sakura watched the paper fly closer, pieces on the top, left, and right blocking off her possible escape routes. The pieces in the middle were positioned randomly, and followed slightly behind those on the sides. Sakura immediately realized she would be unable to dodge so many sheets of paper because Anita would simply send more after her, or possibly even control those in the air to follow her. Quickly dropping her kunai and moving her right hand to the sling on her chest, Sakura rapidly performed a series of hand seals. She realized briefly how lucky she had been to have kept her hand uninjured, despite the pain that shot down her arm as her fingers flew.

Anita wasn't sure what Sakura was attempting as the other girl began moving her hands. Suddenly, she gasped. Where there had been a lone girl in the path of Anita's paper, with a poof of smoke Maggie and Michelle appeared, their arms outstretched, protecting her opponent.

"Ma-nee? Mi-nee? What-? Why are you stopping me?" Confused and hurt, Anita flicked more sheets of paper at those in the air, bringing them to the ground before they could hit her sisters. When they didn't respond, she looked past her sisters just in time to see Sakura throw a kunai at each of them.

"Ma-nee! Mi-nee!" Even Sakura winced at Anita's pain-filled cry, but she still watched, tense, ready to move, depending on how her desperate plan would work.

Anita was too distraught at first to see what was going on in front of her. When she did look up, she had to blink her tear-filled eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on her. Stunned, Anita didn't think to draw any paper up to defend herself. At the last second, she threw herself down and barely out of the way of one kunai, but couldn't avoid the second, which cut a deep gash across the shoulder of her already injured arm.

Sakura nodded somewhat tiredly as she saw her plan had succeeded. She had been able to penetrate Anita's defenses, although she hadn't expected the other girl to have been able to dodge one of the kunai. Apparently using paper was not Anita's only means of defense-or offense.

Anita stood up shakily, her left hand clamped over the new wound on her right arm. "What did you do to my sisters?" she demanded angrily.

"Anita!" Michelle called out, her normally cheerful voice concerned. "Are you alright?"

"You guys-you're ok!" Anita exclaimed, still half-convinced her sisters were lying bleeding on the ground in front of Sakura.

"We're ok. Be careful, Anita," Maggie advised her younger sister.

Satisfied a last, Anita turned to glare furiously at the kunoichi. "What did you do to them?"

Sakura answered her enraged opponent calmly. "They were never there; it was an illusion."

"Illusion?" Anita murmured, disbelieving. But she had seen her sisters appear out of nowhere and she had seen the kunai go straight through them. Then she had seen them out of harm's way, completely fine.

Sakura watched Anita's eyes as the girl thought through her explanation, then saw them harden as she re-evaluated her opponent. As she did, Sakura quickly glanced over at her teammates and grinned a little as she saw the approval on the faces of Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei. Then she noticed Naruto nodding wisely, as if he had seen what she had done as soon as she had performed the hand seals. Sakura sweatdropped. He had actually believed her explanation to Anita!

She closed her eyes and shook her head. Although Anita-and apparently Naruto-believed she had used genjutsu to make the two sisters appear, she had in fact simply combined two ninjutsu techniques. First, she had created two unsubstantial clones of herself with bunshin no jutsu. Then, she had immediately transformed them to take on the appearances of Michelle and Maggie with henge no jutsu.

She hadn't explained correctly to Anita because she didn't want the other girl to be able to understand what she had done-if her attacks were inexplicable, Anita would be under even more pressure. She also hadn't wanted to take the time to explain the basics of ninjutsu to her opponent and allow her recovery time. She had expected Anita's acceptance of her explanation, but Naruto? He had done almost the exact same thing during the chuunin exam. Sometimes he was hopelessly stupid. Wait-make that almost all of the time, Sakura thought as she remembered the incident at the library earlier in the day, and countless other similar occurrences from almost every mission Team 7 received.

Sakura turned back to Anita, prepared to funnel her frustration with her teammate into the continuing fight.

Anita's estimation of her opponent had risen considerably following Sakura's last attack-and so had her anger at the other pink-haired girl. Now that she knew another of Sakura's tricks, she wouldn't trust anything that simply appeared near her opponent, and she would also have to be careful when she saw the other girl begin to move her hands together. Anita felt confident that she could win if she kept to distance paper attacks, but those were Michelle's specialty, not hers. She wanted to try a close attack, if for no other reason than the satisfaction of punching the other girl in the jaw for playing with her mind like she had.

With her plan of attack decided, Anita pulled a small stack of paper out of the holster on her leg. When she did, Anita frowned as she noticed how few sheets she had left.* All the more reason to keep to close attacks, she reasoned.

Sakura blanched when she saw how many pieces of paper the other girl had pulled out. Before she could form a solid plan for defense, Anita had thrown the paper up to form another wall. Sakura frowned. She had given no indication that she was planning to attack, so why had the paper user gone on the defensive?

Seconds later, her inner question was answered as the paper wall began to collapse and Anita literally came flying through it. She hadn't been on the defensive-she had been hiding her movements. Sakura grabbed a kunai from her weapons pouch and raised her injured arm in front of her chest to block her opponent's left-handed attack. The sheet of paper Anita was using almost like a kunai slashed into the metal of the hitai-ate wrapped around her arm. Anita had a moment to look surprised before she slammed into the kunoichi, carrying them both forward toward the ground.

With an agility that surprised Anita, Sakura pushed sideways off the ground, flipping them over and placing Anita between her and the ground. The paper user hit the ground with a grunt and almost succeeded in pulling Sakura down with her by getting her right hand caught in the strap of Sakura's pouch. Without pausing, Sakura sliced through the strap with her kunai, leaving it wrapped around her enemy's wrist. Anita jumped back up quickly after hitting the ground, noting that her fall had at least managed to jerk her paper free of the other girl's hitai-ate.

She glared at Sakura, and noticed the girl wincing with the pain which blocking Anita's attack had caused her. Anita snapped her left arm out and ran at her opponent, giving her no recovery time. As Sakura prepared to block her arm, Anita jumped up to deliver a series of fast kicks instead.

Sakura ducked underneath the attack and brought her kunai up to slash across the backs of Anita's calves. With a cry of pain, Anita hit the ground and tucked her body in to roll to the far wall of the alley, barely avoiding a downward strike by Sakura. Gasping, she reached into her pouch, pulled out her last sheets of paper, and threw them at Sakura to hold off the ninja's pursuit.

Sakura looked up to see the paper flying toward her. Inner Sakura swore in frustration, sorely tempting Sakura to voice a few of the more choice epithets. She quickly collected her chakra, regretting having to use this particular jutsu, but realizing the necessity. And I was saving this, she thought. As the paper flew closer, Anita clenched her teeth against the pain in her legs and looked up through her bangs to see the effect of her desperate attack. She jerked her head all the way up in surprise as the paper hit an unmoving Sakura. She looked down and painstakingly pushed herself to her knees. When she looked back across the alley, she almost fell over again.

Fallen on the ground was a torso-sized log instead of a pink-haired shinobi.

Remembering Sakura's first successful attack, Anita tiredly looked up the wall, where she saw her opponent perched on the ledge of the building. Her attention was drawn back to the log as it disappeared with a large puff of smoke. Sakura jumped off the top of the building and landed skillfully in the alley where the log had been seconds before.

As they rested briefly at opposite ends of the alley, the two girls evaluated their options. Sakura realized she could beat Anita if the other girl attempted another close attack, but now that she was injured that route had been closed for her. With a sigh, Sakura began to brainstorm ideas to defend against more paper attacks.

Anita faced the same realization; she could no longer attack from close range. She reached down into her paper holster and barely managed to keep the shocked look from her face.

She had no paper left.

`

Ooo! Weren't expecting that at the beginning of the chapter, were we? Actually, neither was I. It's amazing to me how certain things connected during this chapter. When I had Sakura make a sling out of her hitai-ate, I didn't know it would come in handy for her later on; it was just the only thing I could think of for her to use. Plus, I really didn't think it would go on for nearly so long; I just kept coming up with ideas.

And as for her rather mean little attack she pulled on Anita, I'm not actually sure if she would do something like that because it was pretty cruel. But, she might if she was desperate and a little pissed. :::shrugs:::

Ok, this took a really long time to get here, AGAIN! And I have no valid excuse. I'm a lazy bum, apparently. That's the only explanation I have. That, and you can only get so much written during a thirty minute dinner break at work. Then, I had it pretty much all done, except for the last edit, and then I needed to move into my house, and it got put off for a few more days... Thank you all for your patience, however. I had originally planned to finish the fight in this chapter, but Sakura and Anita wanted me to wait, so the next chapter will contain the conclusion of the fight, and probably the story. After all, that's what the story was about!

I get to do review responses again!

First off, one of my repeat reviewers, Eadha Ohn; thanks for coming back! And reviewing me again! I'm very sorry to make you and everyone wait so long, but be assured that I do have a winner in mind, and actually have since I began the story. It's just taken me a while to get there...So, in the meantime, thank you very much for reading and reviewing again!

A huge thank you to Worldwalker Pure as well for reading-and enjoying-my fics and taking the time to email me a review! I really, really appreciate it. You've written a lot of stories, and I feel bad that I haven't seen a single series you've written about. :( Thank you so much!

And I have two repeat reviewers! Holy crap! ^_^ Actually, I didn't even know about this review until I went to post this chapter on MediaMiner because they're being bastards and didn't send me a notice... ANYWAY! Many, many thanks to Fionn for another review! Thank you very much for your praise of how I wrote the fight scene! I tried to make it believable that Sakura could do some damage, but it's hard when she doesn't have anything but basic skills. I'm glad I did a good job. Also...origami no jutsu? Great name! It fits perfectly! If I were to give Sakura the ability to become a paper user, that would be the perfect name for the jutsu. I don't think I will, however, because it's kind of a different direction than where I had the story going. However, it does seem to be the kind of special attack that would compliment her intelligence well. It's far more fitting for her than something violent like chidori or rasengan. Anyway, thank you again for the wonderful, thoughtful, and helpful review! Glad to see that you're still reading as well!

Glossary:

bunshin no jutsu: clone skill or replication skill; a ninjutsu that creates an clone of the caster which has no actual substance

genjutsu: illusionary skills carried out by releasing chakra through hand seals

henge no jutsu: transformation skill; ninjutsu used by a ninja to transform herself into someone or something else. Here, Sakura uses it on previously created bunshins of herself, which works because they were created by her, and essentially still her.

hitai-ate: forehead protector. I used this instead of saying "forehead protector" because I think it would have been confusing to keep saying that when it was actually on her arm, not her forehead.

ninjutsu: ninja skills; a wide variety exist, with no real defining element, except the need for chakra and hand seals to carry them out

*No, I didn't forget about this note. In case you were thinking...um, there's all that paper laying on the ground! Why can't Anita just use that? Well, I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details but I've never seen a paper user go back and reuse paper, so I'm therefore assuming that they can't. There is also something about them having to use specially made paper, but that's just in the manga, and since I'm basing this on ROD the TV, well... And as another little FYI about paper users: they can't control the paper simply by looking at it; they actually have to touch it. So when Anita threw the paper at Sakura, she couldn't have moved it to follow her if she managed to dodge them. Of course, Sakura doesn't know this...

Next chapter: It All Ends Here! Pink vs. Pink! Who Will Win?

(um...yes, I'm still trying to make the titles sound like some of the more corny Naruto episode titles...)

`

`