Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious. ~ Sun Tzu

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"Do you think you made enough exploding notes?" Kakashi-sensei asked seriously. "You might only be able to level a very small country."

"They're not all exploding notes," I grumbled at him half-heartedly. And even if they were, it was because they were useful, all jokes about how much I liked explosions aside. They were a good tool, functional and versatile. Simple, easy to use, required little chakra and dangerous. Bang-for-buck they were better than almost anything else I could do, which was why I ended up using them so often.

Okay, if you couldn't make them then they were expensive. But I could, so that didn't even matter. I could use them as frivolously as I liked.

Kakashi-sensei patted me on the shoulder, awkwardly. "Maybe I should have taught you Chidori."

I huffed a laugh. "Thanks, sensei. I'll leave that to Sasuke, though."

I stood and stretched. The sun was dawning now and I'd been hunched over a small table all night. Even with tea it had been a long night and I was tired. Happy with the seals I'd made, but tired.

I circulated some chakra to wash the worst of it away, packed up all my stuff into ways that would be easy to access during the fight. The largest seal was in a thick and heavy meter wide scroll, the kind you had to carry slung across your back, and I had many more slung around my waist in a kind of bandoleer.

I ran through some morning exercises while I waited for the rest of the group to wake up and stumble outside, refreshing myself, testing my range of motion and double checking that my arm had no noticeable weaknesses.

Well, preparation time was over. I was as good as I was going to get.

I barely picked at breakfast, knowing I should eat yet not able to force much past the nerves twisting my stomach.

"You know," Ino said, hesitantly confiding to me in a low voice. "No one will say anything if you forfeit, right? You don't have to do this."

I gave her a weak smile. It didn't seem to reassure her any, so I pulled it together. "Yeah, I do. It's important."

"I know he seems better," she said. "But do you really want to get in the ring with him? You remember what happened in Konoha."

She was actually worried. I could see that. But… "That's why it's important," I said. "Not for me. For him. For everyone else. It's not going to go badly, okay? I have plans."

"This isn't something that explosives can solve," she said, though this time it sounded resigned.

I grinned, cockily. The opening was too good. No wonder everyone kept giving me shit about them, because I could never pass up the chance to say things like this. "If explosives don't solve your problems, then you aren't using enough."

And actually, the conversation had helped. Not that Ino doubted me, but that I'd had to say it, to verbalize and argue that I wanted to do this. I was locked in now; I was going to do this. No backing out.

The only way out, as they said, was through.

At least we were the first match, so I didn't have to wait for it. I took my place on the field across from Gaara.

"Let's have a good match," I suggested.

Gaara nodded, completely inscrutable. It was more than a little intimidating from this side of it.

My heart beat was picking up, a rapid thud-thud-thud echoing in my ears. I swallowed. Why had I thought this was a good idea again?

"Match," said the referee. "Start!"

Well first. First I needed to level the playing field.

Go big or go home.

I swung the giant scroll off my back and planted the end on the ground. "Sealing Style," I commanded, pouring my chakra into it. "Earth Style: City of Pillars!"

The seal poured forth from the point where the scroll touched the ground, a rapidly expanding circle with us at the center, complex glowing on the ground.

Gaara took one look at it, eyes going alarmingly wide, and wrapped himself in a cocoon of sand before retreated to the very edges of it. Smart move.

Then the ground burst forth, earth shaking and heaving. Chiseled columns of it rose up, stone compressed together until it jutted out of the ground and towered into the sky, shaking dirt clods off like rain.

One, rising directly beneath my feet, bore me into the sky and out of range of retaliation.

As a technique, it was not so different from the ones I knew how to do – Earth Wall and Earth Spike. It was only a matter of scale.

This was something I could never have done with ninjutsu. I didn't have the chakra, I didn't have the control, and I didn't have the concentration. The cost was too high. But fuinjutsu was different – you paid in time and knowledge instead. That made it less useful in battle where you so rarely had time, but sometimes. Sometimes it was perfect.

I had redesigned the battle field. Turned it from a flat plain into a near forest, a three dimensional playground with hiding spots and obstacles and shadows. Turned it to my advantage, and disrupted whatever plans my opponent may have formed.

I breathed in. I could do this.

The second step was the follow up. Gaara had not-quite cocooned himself, a half shell of sand rising around him for defense – open enough to see but closed enough it would react to any threat in any direction.

I leapt, pillar to pillar, drawing an arc in the sky, throwing down kunai with trailing pouches. They hit the sand with no discernable impact, the flimsy fabric breaking apart, raining paper confetti into the air and getting tangled with his sand.

Nothing happened.

I touched down, next pillar over. The surface was flat and nicely formed, as easy to stand on as flat ground. My seal had done well.

Gaara's sand flicked, returning the kunai in an arc up to me. I let what would miss miss and knocked aside what wouldn't. They didn't matter, really. Their purpose was done.

Sand whipped up after it, curling lines of it weaving through the air towards me. I threw some kunai and pouches at them too, jumping off and evading, leading it on a chase through my pillar forest. I was light on my feet and fast – resistance seals gone and chakra enhanced to the fullest of my ability. I used ninja wire for fast escapes, tarzaning around in wide arcs – without the hollering, obviously – and left tightropes of it strung up all of the place as I went. My feet left black ink marks of Touch Blast seals where I stepped, and all the while, I was throwing kunai and scattering paper confetti into his sand.

'Forest' wasn't a bad simile. I was used to them, to operating in a three dimensional environment, working with or around things that were in my way, and I was using that to my advantage. He wasn't bad, though. He knew enough to keep me moving away, not letting me approach closer or get the drop on him, and forced me to keep moving at high speeds. If it was a game of stamina, I would lose. I would lose fast if I had to keep up high level enhancements.

I set down and sand wrapped around the base of the pillar I had landed on. Gaara raised his hand, fingers loosely gripped and twisted.

My foundation went sideways. I pushed off, moving from the top to the side and rode it down to ground. It hit with a thundering crash, but it had fallen cleanly, away from the stadium and hadn't even knocked against the others on the way down.

Now was as good a time as any.

Gaara stared at me from across the field. His hand still up, still loosely gripped. The sand slithered under the pillar, circling me, ready to catch me.

"The paper?" I said, loud enough to be heard. "Exploding notes. Think fast." It was in his sand. Which meant it was around him, in his shield. Maybe in the sand underneath me, too. Maybe he wouldn't have time to decide which ones to move.

I held up two fingers, a ready seal, and gave him a fraction of a second to comprehend it.

"Cherry Blossom Blizzard Explosion!"

He swept his hand sideways, the sand following it out of the area, away from the stadium and away from us. Just in time. All the little linked notes I'd made went up, not quite concurrently but with little pockets one after the other, fire blaring into existence and fading again. Not all of them were in the sand, some just burned like tiny fireworks on the ground and in the air around me. They weren't strong explosions, not really; all up they were probably only the strength of one normal tag.

But 'strong' wasn't their purpose. They had done exactly what they were meant to do, and the idea was all Deidara's. I was using that for a variety of reasons. One, I knew it would work. Two, now so did Gaara.

And three, it had temporarily removed his greatest weapon. And that was what we in the biz liked to call 'an opening'.

Well, far be it from me to resist that kind of temptation.

"Shadow Stitching Jutsu!" Shadow Possession wouldn't work, as we'd found out back in Konoha Hospital – it had limited use against someone that could control their jutsu without hand signs or movements. But Shadow Stitching was basically a multipronged mid-range piercing attack, coming from multiple angles.

Gaara wasn't totally defenseless, of course. He hadn't emptied his sand gourd in chasing me, or defending, and therefore it wasn't full of exploding notes and had to be gotten rid of. The shape of it collapsed now, leaving nothing but a red sash, and piled into the air to defend him.

My shadow drove into it, some piercing, some not. Sand tried to travel back along the pathway of it, but I'd had enough of that for one exam, and dissolved the tendrils as they tried. No, I didn't want my own jutsu used as conduits to attack me, thanks.

On the downside, Shadow Stitching didn't really let me be hugely mobile. And that was not a good thing right now.

Stationary was a target and being a target was bad.

I ended the jutsu and pushed off, blitzing forward at the fastest speed that I could manage. It was not inconsiderable.

I feinted one direction, split an illusionary clone to continue on, and backtracked. I circled the other way and led with a leg sweep and a combination of taijutsu that was not so much meant to bypass the remaining barrier as to distract. Gaara was reacting well to the speed – clearly knowing that that weakness had been revealed and having dealt with it.

This close, I could see the particular roughness – fakeness – of his skin. It seemed as though he was wearing his Sand Armour. As expected. Good.

I flipped backwards, hands seeking and finding a particular scroll, before pushing off the ground and reversing, coming down on top of him like I meant to drop an axe kick on his head. That would get my leg caught in sand, almost certainly. And it would be game over for me.

So I opened the scroll and dropped a rock instead.

It didn't get the same amusing response that dropping one on Sasuke had received, unfortunately. It landed on him, cracked the Sand Armour and revealed that Gaara had abandoned it at the last moment with a nicely done Replacement Jutsu.

The empty sand shell dispersed, rising up around my tribute and trying to grab my legs. I bounced off the rock and up onto the nearest pillar, sprinting straight up into the air.

I knew where Gaara was. Probably could have guessed even without sensing him. He'd want to retrieve the majority of the sand that had been sent away. The explosions were finished now, the trap expended.

But I crouched on the opposite side of the pillar from him and gave myself a second to regroup. This whole fight was going to have to be quick volleys and retreats, otherwise I'd be overpowered and done for.

I was breathing harder now, the strain of the extreme chakra enhancement starting to show. And my chakra levels had taken a dip, but I wasn't particularly worried about that. But I wasn't injured yet, so I had options. I had soldier pills and I took one, flooding my system with a new burst of energy. This chakra was a little wilder, a little less controllable. It buzzed off my skin, crackled into the air. My muscles hummed with it. It would drain faster, probably, but not at an appreciable rate.

It was fine.

Everything was going about as expected.

I took a deep breath and set off the exploding seals on the fallen pillar. Partly for distraction, partly for the cover that the dust and smoke would give me.

Then I pulled out the Sword of the Thunder God and moved, jumping until I was positioned to face Gaara once more, and used it to launch huge sweeping arcs of lightning through the smoke. They were massive strikes, length to length nearly the size of the long side of the pitch – the side opposite the audience. I could have explained it as making sure he couldn't dodge sideways, as covering largest possible area I could. But it was also to show that I could.

Like seals, the sword was more efficient and simply better than what I could do without it. This was A-rank stuff, compared to the punny C-rank lightning jutsu I could do on my own.

The first arc forced Gaara back. His sand surged in front of him, an airborne shield that fell apart as the strike disrupted the bonds of it, sand gently collapsing to the ground until it could be reclaimed.

The second strike he was ready for.

"Sand Lightning Needles!" Gaara commanded, and two spikes of hard sand slammed into the earth one near either end of the arc. The lightning warped, drawn between them.

The third strike was therefore wasted, grounding harmlessly on the lightning rods. It was a faster response than I'd been expecting, but then, he had just fought Karui last round and she'd been quicker off the draw than me. It was a tactic he had only just used recently and familiar for it.

The three huge arcs of lightning dropped my levels right down. Not to worrying levels, but in a real fight, it would have been a fools move. Using so much chakra so fast without any appreciable result was a pretty good way to get yourself killed.

I pulled out another soldier pill and bit down. Two in short succession was pushing the limits of 'smart' but it would be fine. I felt like I was mainlining caffeine, like I'd had a triple shot espresso, a liter of energy drink.

I felt like I could fly. Red bull gives you wings~

"Earth Style," I commanded. I dropped to one knee, let the sword fall and raced through the hand seals until I could press my palms flat on the ground. "Earth Spike!" Two sections of earth rose and surrounded the lightning rods, encasing them safely in dirt.

I gritted my teeth. It was closer to one jutsu used in two parts than trying to run two jutsu at once, but it was hard. I barely managed. If he'd made three then I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. But that put them out of commission for a short period of time, and that was all I really needed.

I scooped the lightsaber back up, pulling a scroll and wrapping it loosely around my arm. My fingers were sweating, jittering imperceptibly against the paper.

I braced my feet, like I was expecting kickback, and raised the sword, holding it straight out in front of me. Not a kenjutsu stance. Gun stance, maybe. Then I channeled chakra through the scroll on my arm, ten lights blinking on, one after the other, like a machine powering up. Blink blinkblink.

"Lightning Style," I shouted, because volume meant something. "Super Beam Cannon!"

I flicked the sword on, blade pointing straight at him.

By this point, there was no disbelief. Gaara didn't have a momentary pause of 'does she mean it'. Didn't stop to consider.

Which was good. Because I was so full of shit.

His sand raced together to form the best kind of shield he had. It clumped, thick and fast, until it looked like a Tanuki. It was striped with red markings, though I had no time to wonder where they came from.

"Shield of Shukaku."

I burst forward, pouring on the speed before the realization that it was a feint set in. My arm dropped, collapsing the sword and putting it away. I let the scroll flutter uselessly to the ground, purpose done. My other hand drew out specific scroll, snapped it open and trailing out into the air.

Then I slammed it hard onto the flat surface of the Shukaku's stomach.

"SEAL!" I roared.

The shield was only one 'object'. If one could call a thing compromised of thousands of tiny grains of sand an object. But it was held together with reasonable force, or it would never serve as a shield. So I didn't even have to use one of my new and 'improved' storage seals to manage this. A plain old 'put the thing in the thing' seal did just fine.

Of course, the thing was full of someone else's chakra. So that wasn't ideal.

It went in, with messy chakra smoke and protest. I immediately threw the scroll as hard as I could, as far as I could, just in case.

But for the second time I had gotten rid of the majority of Gaara's sand. Now to see if I could take advantage of it.

As it turned out, the answer to that question was a very fast and very sharp 'no'. Go figure. It wasn't that I was expecting him to have nothing but sand but… I'd kind of been expecting him to have nothing but sand.

I did a very nice swan dive into the ground. It was easy enough, the earth was loose and almost swampy because I'd taken pretty much all the rocky bits out and crushed them into giant pillars.

It was still a bit of a risky move, though, because I knew that Gaara could turn dirt into sand. Which meant I could be diving right into his territory. So to speak. But I was counting on the fact that his sand likely wouldn't be so spread out underground as to be beneath me, and also that I couldn't sense it.

Risky, but not that risky.

I popped up in the shadow of a pillar, enough cover not to be immediately visible to him. Then it was another scroll, one which I checked carefully. I'd had three water scrolls left over from the last exam, and while there was no technical reason they shouldn't still work, it was better to be safe than sorry.

I scaled the pillar and threw it out, arcing into the air above him. Gaara immediately tried to shoot it down with sand, because he knew how this went by now.

But the water thundered down and made that a little difficult. It splashed out, hitting the ground and rebounding, spray flickering off and getting in my face and hair and clothes.

I gathered chakra in my hands and thrust it into the falling water, gathering a blob and pulling it back. The old chakra control exercise that I'd never really used in a fight. But if I could show a reasonable approximation of water jutsu, then that was three out of five elements.

I tracked Gaara's chakra where he had body flickered away from the attack, spinning the water in my hands out into a staff. It was harder than I remembered, or maybe it was just my chakra right now was so amped up on chemicals that it was slightly off.

Still. It would do.

I leapt after him.

The water staff lashed out, changing shape and twisting in my hands. His sand was slower where it was wet, but I was slowing down too, body reaching the limits of how far and fast I could push it.

Attack, attack, deflect.

It wasn't working.

Gaara was a nightmare. The kind of nightmare where you could run and run and never escape the footsteps that followed you oh so calmly. Except in this case, I was throwing everything I could at him and it wasn't doing anything.

If this had been a real fight – yeah, I would be feeling really cornered by now. I would be stressed and I would be panicking.

As it was, I just kind of… admired it.

I gathered it back together, abandoning the technique and just throwing the blob of water at him like a water bullet. It splashed against a shield of sand, already wet and making it no worse.

Then something gripped my ankle and I overbalanced, hand flying through the seals of a replacement jutsu to switch with a piece of rocky debris. And another, when that position turned out to be little better. Then another again.

Thank god for replacement tag, I thought inanely. I slid on slushy ground past my pillar, feet and knees kicking mud up.

But the tide was turning. I was on the run now. Really on the run. The ground was churning with Gaara's chakra and it wouldn't be long now. Not long at all.

I'd had a good run.

"Explode!" I shouted, setting off those lovely Touch Blast seals I'd carefully set at the start of the match. Not all of them. I had to be careful. Had to make sure the pillars fell the right way, away from the crowd.

It wouldn't do for anyone to get hurt.

It was like an apocalypse. Explosions echoed and things tripped and fell and there was smoke and dust and confusion. For a second I couldn't tell which way was up, couldn't see or hear. It was like I was alone, in the smoke, the ground rumbling under my feet, swaying in the breeze.

Then I moved, jumping and hitting falling rocks and bouncing myself higher, up and out of danger. Away. Up. All that was left was up.

"Quicksand Waterfall Flow!"

All that was left was up because Gaara had commandeered down. Everything below us was sand, now. It surged past the pillars and columns, through the cracks and breaks, a vast sea of it. A desert.

Gaara of the desert.

Not Gaara, who belonged to the desert. Gaara who brought the desert with him. Gaara, who could turn a place into a desert.

"Nope," I decided, aiming up, up, up.

There was nothing up but sky.

I pulled out a scroll. Release a pillar into the air and used it as a stage, sprinting up it, even as it fell.

Then I jumped, leaping monkey, straight up into the air. The sand chased me. There was nowhere to go.

I twisted, like a cat, rotating my torso and spiralling around, until I was facing down again. I pulled out my last seal, this one a long sheet of paper folded into an accordion, back and forth on itself.

"Sealing Style: Air Barrier!"

The air thrummed. It pulled together, thickened and became heavy beneath the seal, chakra radiating outwards like bursts of light and holding it. For a second, it worked.

Then it didn't.

It whooshed downwards, barrier breaking and air descending like a thunderclap. The sand turned back, buffeted by the sudden force of wind.

Then I was falling. And the wave of sand rose to engulf me.

It was like hitting water. Like falling into the ocean from a great height. Not soft, exactly, but softer than hitting dirt. I sank into it and it covered me, cutting off light and sound.

It was quiet and dark.

I thought about one last hurrah. About turning to shadows and breaking free. But that was a jutsu I did not want to publicise here, and what else could I do? I had done all I could. And it hadn't been enough.

In a real fight, I would still be struggling. In a real fight, I would be dead.

But this wasn't a 'real' fight, so I was okay. I was at peace with it. I had come here to lose. I had shown what I could do, I had fought and I had lost. I was okay.

I closed my eyes, and let Gaara's sand move around me, buoy me up like I was floating in water. It wasn't so different. It was mostly soft and mostly warm. There was enough give around my arms and legs and chest to move and breathe. I wasn't hurt.

I had lost and it was okay.

I thought I was moving, but I had no points of reference. The chakra in the stands was as distant as the stars, muffled by the sand around me.

And then it was gone.

I blinked in the suddenly too-bright sunshine. I was standing, opposite Gaara, close to the positions we had started in.

And the field around us was…

Destroyed. It looked like the ruins of an ancient civilisation, worn and tattered pillars half swallowed by the desert. Like it had been lying here, exactly like this, for a thousand years.

It had been less than an hour.

My heart was roaring in my ears. No, no, it wasn't. That was the crowd. They were screaming. They were cheering. The thunder was applause.

I swayed in place.

Gaara stared at me. I stared at him.

Oh. Right. If he'd let me go, then the match had been called. Probably. Most likely. Because why else let your opponent go? The referee was staring at us both.

I bowed. "Thank you for the match."

That was polite. Right? Yes. Polite. Good. Now I needed to get back to the competitors arena.

I turned to look at it. That was an awfully long way away.

"Shikako," Gaara said.

I looked at him. Looked up. He was rising, sand underneath his feet. Oh. That was clever. And he was holding a hand out towards me.

I took it. Let him lift me up. Let his sand carry us on a magic carpet ride towards the stadium.

I can show you the world, shining, shimmering splendour~

It was much easier than walking. That was for sure. I wasn't entirely sure I could have made it.

Hands reached out to grab me when I got there. Supporting, holding, congratulating and slapping. Ino was frowning at me, face creased into lines of worry, her fingers pressing tight to the pulse in my wrist.

"The Shikabane-hime strikes again," she said, almost caustically, reminding me that Ino was a sensor too and absolutely had to know how low on chakra I was right this second. After taking two soldier pills.

I made a sound of displeasure at her. She'd said that far too loud. People would hear it. I would get stuck with that dumb name forever. It would be like getting called 'Chucky' all your life because you threw up at a primary school birthday party once.

I tripped, but was held up.

"Soldier pill crash is a bitch, right?" Kiba said, sympathetically. A canteen was pressed into my hands. "Drink this; it'll help."

I fumbled with it, but my hands were trembling too badly to get the lid off. They slipped on it, wet and nerveless.

Someone else took it off me. Opened it. Gave it back.

"Thanks," I croaked. "I'm fine, I'm fine. You can all stop fussing."