Naruto: Reborn as Sakura with Manyuu Chifusa Template

"I give up," sighed Mei, planting her hands on her hips. Realising she'd driven everyone out of the arena with her acidic mist, she raised her voice and repeated more forcefully, "I said, I surrender!"

Mei had opposed the Hidden Mist's participation in the Chūnin Exams from the outset, so she had never intended to reveal her full strength. If she really gave it her all, perhaps she'd eventually find a way to strike down her airborne opponent, but in her opinion, a loss in the semi-finals was an acceptable outcome for the Lord Fifth's purposes.

Besides, if she revealed her true power to the world, it would only deepen the fears of her political rivals back home. At the rate things had been going, she might have never made it back to the Land of Water— just as Pakura of the Sand had never returned to the Land of Wind...

Indeed, Mei thought to herself, it would have been wiser for Kirigakure to remain veiled in the mist until it had recovered to meet the standards of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, instead of showcasing this latest iteration of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist— hastily assembled and incomplete to boot, since Samehada was still lost.

After all, the spartan Bloody Mist Policy had left Kirigakure weakened to an unprecedented degree, and any display of that weakness now would surely invite disaster. Maintaining the lockdown on the Land of Water and the information blackout would have been ideal, but now, the world's eyes were once again fixed on the Hidden Mist, for better or for worse…

"Boo! Go back to the Land of Water!" Sakura shouted, joining the crowd in jeering the poor woman as she dispersed her mist and attempted to make a dignified exit. "Why even bother showing up if you're going to give up without even trying? Forever alone! Can't keep a man! Old! Ugly! Saggy! You've got crow's feet around your eyes!"

Towards the end, Sakura's heckling devolved into outright insults.

"Sakura, what is the matter with you?" Ino said, startled by her outburst. "Hinata won!"

With Team Mei's loss in the semi-finals, it would become impossible for Sakura to meet Mei in the finals, which meant she had already lost her opportunity to complete a System Mission and obtain two powerful Kekkei Genkai in one go. But it's not as if Sakura could explain her frustration to Ino without revealing her own Kekkei Genkai…

"Care to repeat that to my face, you little skanks?"

Ino and Sakura whirled around in their seats, only to find Mei looming over them with a scary smile on her lips. After reaching the edge of the arena, Mei had used the Body Flicker to return to her seat, only to overhear two upstart trollops mocking her inability to find a man to settle down with…

"With pleasure," Sakura said defiantly, rising to her feet and staring Mei dead in the eye. "I meant every word I said."

Ino wasted no time throwing Sakura under the metaphorical bus.

"For the record, I didn't say anything!" she said hastily.

What madness had taken hold of Sakura? Why was she insisting on making things worse for them? She had to find a way to defuse the situation before the red-haired woman melted their flesh off their bones with her acid mist!

"Please excuse my teammate," said Ino, thinking quickly. "Temporary teammate, I mean. She didn't mean any harm; we were just talking about this crazy old lady we knew from back home…"

"No, we were definitely talking about you, ya old hag," said Sakura sweetly, bumping her boobs against Mei's. "But what I don't understand is what you're still doing here. Don't you have better things to do, like getting married? Your biological clock's ticking, you old crone. Tick-tock!"

"SAKURAAAA!!!" Ino hissed.

Terumī Mei rubbed her chin and nodded to herself wisely.

"I see, so I wasn't mistaken," she said lightly. "It seems you really do have a death wish…"

Sakura was trying to goad Mei into attacking first, so that she could steal her chest in self-defence! And she had picked the right target, too— Mei was notoriously sensitive about her inability to form meaningful romantic relationships with men.

Even so, the older woman had a good head on her shoulders. She hadn't lost sight that she was in the middle of a crowd filled with civilians, so she wasn't about to fire off any wide-area Ninjutsu. But without warning, she lunged, snarling and scratching at Sakura's exposed skin with her cleverly painted fingernails.

"CATFIGHT!" someone yelled.

Sakura's Sharingan whirled to life, and she slipped past the point-blank strikes, her hands darting towards her opponent's chest for a quick squeeze— but before she could initiate a Munamori-style Breast Flow massage, the other woman caught her by the wrist and twisted her arm sharply, forcing her to release her grip before she could drain so much as a drop of chakra.

"Oi, you two!" someone else barked. "Step away from each other!"

Sakura and Mei froze on the spot, as half a dozen shinobi in Sand uniforms appeared around them, pressing kunai to their throats.

"What's the meaning of this?" came Gaara's voice from above, as he floated down from the V.I.P. box on a cloud of sand. "What's going on, here?"

Sakura's comrades from the Hidden Leaf immediately formed a united front against the lone Kiri kunoichi, conveniently forgetting the part where Sakura had taunted Mei in the first place, but disgusted by the Leaf's hypocrisy, some of the other exam participants filled in the blanks.

"I see…" said Gaara, inspecting the dishevelled and scratched-up Sakura and Mei.

Even though trash-talking wasn't exactly in the spirit of the Chūnin Exams' so-called "friendship between nations," there was no rule against it— rather, it was encouraged. Beneath the veneer of jolly cooperation, the exams were effectively a deadly proxy war: a showcase for nations vying for rich patrons and potential clients. The occasional death was to be expected, so who cared if someone's feelings got hurt?

If anyone was to blame, it was the one who'd taken the bait and broken the rules and started a fistfight in the spectator stands. Sakura might have instigated the violence, but Mei was the first to throw hands, and she only had herself to blame for failing to keep her emotions in check. After all, the word shinobi was written with the radicals for blade and heart— if a shinobi couldn't kill their own heart, then they were worthless as a weapon.

"Team Asuma's match is about to begin, so you are free to go, Sakura-san," Gaara continued. "As for you, Miss Mei—" his voice trailed off, "—I'll let you off with a warning… this time."

Sakura shot one last glare at the older woman for failing to beat up her comrade, before turning on her heel and leaping over the railing into the arena, with Chōji and Ino following close behind.