Beside Karin, Naho went very still.
Not stiff, not afraid, just still.
There was a difference, and Karin noticed it immediately. Tōji's chakra had spiked when his name was called, fear and excitement mixing together beneath his pride. Naho's did the opposite. Her chakra settled, narrowing down into something cold and precise.
That was good.
Of the two of them, Naho was the better assassin.
Tōji was faster, louder, and better at making people look at him. Naho was the one who preferred when people realized they were in danger too late to do anything about it.
Which wasn't all that uncommon among kunoichi; most were indeed weaker and slower than male shinobi, so they compensated with smarts.
Tōji pushed himself away from the wall despite still looking tired. "Well."
Naho adjusted her gloves, then checked the straps of her mask with calm, practiced motions. "Yes."
"Try not to lose too quickly."
Naho looked at him.
Tōji stared back.
Then she said, "I will last longer than you did."
Tōji made a wounded sound. "That's just cruel."
"The truth sometimes is," Naho shot back with a winning smirk.
"Both of you, enough," Karin said.
They went quiet at once.
Karin looked down at the arena, where Shikamaru Nara had not moved yet. He stood on the balcony with his hands in his pockets, staring at the board as if it had personally wronged him.
He sighed audibly.
From the floor below, Hayate coughed. "Shikamaru Nara. Kirisame Naho. Please come down."
Shikamaru sighed again, even louder this time, and began walking down the stairs like a condemned prisoner on his way to execution.
Karin's eyebrow twitched.
That was either an act, or he was the laziest shinobi she had ever seen.
Possibly both.
Naho turned to Karin and bowed her head slightly. "Karin-sama."
Karin studied her for a moment. "You know what the Nara clan does?"
"Shadows," Naho answered. "Binding, possession, and manipulation, depending on skill."
"Good. Then don't let his shadow touch yours."
"I won't."
"And don't waste time," Karin added. "The longer the fight lasts, the more he learns."
Naho nodded once. "Understood."
Only then did she jump down into the arena.
Her landing was light, far lighter than Tōji's had been. She came down near the edge of the floor rather than the center, one hand resting against the closed umbrella at her back, the other already loose at her side.
Shikamaru reached the arena a few moments later and looked across at her.
"You know," he said, "you could surrender."
Naho tilted her head.
He continued, "No offense, but fighting is troublesome, and you're from Ame, right? Your teammate already lost, so it isn't like your team is getting all three through anyway."
Tōji bristled above them. "Did he just—"
"Quiet," Karin said.
Tōji shut up.
Naho did not react with anger. That was good. Shikamaru was testing her, likely hoping she was proud enough to make a mistake before the match even started.
"I could surrender," Naho agreed.
Shikamaru looked faintly hopeful.
"I won't."
He sighed. "Yeah. Figured."
Hayate looked between them, then raised his hand.
"Begin."
Naho moved first.
She did not charge straight in. Instead, she threw two smoke bombs at the ground in front of her and jumped back before they fully burst, using the first wave of smoke to hide her hand movements.
It was not ordinary smoke. Karin could smell the bitterness even from the balcony, a mild poison mixed with an eye irritant.
Nothing lethal, and not enough to cause the adults watching to step in, nor to try and claim she was reckless, risking hurting others outside the arena to get herself disqualified.
Even if killing wasn't outside the rules, that didn't mean Konoha would stand back and watch one of their own, a clan heir at that, get killed.
As an outsider here, one always had to be mindful of such things.
Shikamaru immediately stepped back as Naho threw the bombs.
Smart.
He didn't try to push through the smoke, and he didn't waste time pretending he could ignore it. His hands came together in a familiar seal as his shadow stretched forward across the floor, thin and dark beneath the chamber lights.
Naho had already moved.
She leapt to the wall, chakra sticking her feet to the stone as she ran sideways along it. At the same time, her umbrella snapped open and spun above her, releasing a controlled spread of senbon.
Unlike Tōji, she did not aim to overwhelm.
She aimed to herd.
The needles struck the ground in a curved pattern around Shikamaru, closing off the easiest paths of retreat while leaving one gap open.
Karin smiled faintly.
A false opening.
If Shikamaru took it, Naho would have the angle she wanted.
Shikamaru looked at the gap, looked at the senbon, then scratched the back of his head.
"What a pain."
He did not take the opening.
Instead, he threw himself backward, rolling away from the needles and letting several of them pass close enough to cut his sleeve. It looked clumsy, but it moved him out of the pattern before it could fully form.
Naho's eyes narrowed slightly above her mask.
So he saw through it.
Good.
The umbrella dropped back toward her, and she caught it by the handle while still standing on the wall. With a flick of her wrist, she sent another cluster of senbon toward the floor, not at Shikamaru, but around him.
This time, several needles had wire attached.
Shikamaru noticed immediately. His shadow shifted, chasing across the floor toward the nearest line, but Naho pulled the wires tight before it could reach, using them to launch herself from the wall to the ceiling.
The watching Genin stirred.
Karin leaned against the railing.
That was Naho's plan, then.
Stay off the ground. Force him to spend chakra stretching his shadow upward or along awkward angles. Use smoke to obscure vision and senbon to control his movement. Never let him connect.
Not bad.
The problem, of course, was that knowing a Nara was dangerous was not the same as understanding how dangerous they were.
Shikamaru stood below, looking up at Naho with a bored expression that was becoming less convincing by the second.
"Troublesome," he muttered.
Naho answered by dropping three senbon from above.
Shikamaru shifted aside, and his shadow snapped upward along the wall behind him, trying to climb toward her. Naho cut the wire she had been hanging from and fell before it could reach, opening her umbrella to slow her descent.
The umbrella spun.
More senbon rained down.
Shikamaru dodged again, but not cleanly this time. One needle grazed his arm, and Karin felt the faintest trace of poison enter his chakra system.
Very mild.
Slow-acting.
A numbing agent.
Naho wasn't trying to win with a single hit. She was trying to make each movement cost him more until his timing fell apart.
Shikamaru glanced at the scratch on his arm.
"Oh, that's annoying."
"Then surrender," Naho said.
"I thought about it."
"And?"
"Too troublesome now." He sighed; he really sounded bummed out about it as well, as if he had really considered it.
Karin's smile grew.
There it was.
The lazy mask was slipping.
Naho landed near the far wall and immediately moved again, refusing to stay in one place. She threw another smoke bomb, then used the cover to switch directions, leaving behind a wire line and a small cluster of senbon embedded in the stone.
Shikamaru did not chase blindly.
He backed toward the center of the arena.
That made several people look confused, but Karin understood. The center was not safe, exactly, but it gave him the most space to see incoming attacks and the fewest walls for Naho to use. By moving there, he was reducing her angles.
Naho understood as well.
Her chakra sharpened.
She snapped her umbrella open fully and spun it once above her head. A soft clicking sound echoed from the mechanism inside, and then she threw it high.
The umbrella spun over the arena, releasing senbon in a wide circle while casting a moving shadow beneath it.
Karin's eyes narrowed.
That was risky.
Very risky.
A moving object meant moving shadows.
Against most opponents, no one would care. Against a Nara, every shadow was part of the battlefield.
Shikamaru looked up.
For the first time, he smiled.
Naho's eyes widened.
She realized it too late.
His shadow shot forward, not toward her, but toward the spinning shadow of the umbrella crossing the floor. The two connected for the briefest moment as the umbrella passed over him, and Shikamaru's shadow bent along it, stretching unnaturally across the arena.
Naho cut her chakra from the umbrella instantly.
Too slow.
The shadow reached the edge of her own.
For a heartbeat, she froze.
Shikamaru's hand twitched.
Naho's hand twitched with it.
Shadow Possession.
Tōji sucked in a breath beside Karin.
"Got her?"
"Yes," Karin answered. "She did well, but against a Nara, well, even the smallest mistake can be fatal."
Shikamaru didn't waste time. With Naho controlled, he quickly forced her to hold a senbon to her own throat, while his own hand held nothing.
He could easily injure or even kill her, all while just gently poking his own throat. That was the terror of the Nara clan's shadow manipulation.
"How about you surrender now?" Shikamaru asked, still sounding as bored as ever.
Even Karin felt annoyed at his tone, much less Naho, who had just lost to him.
But annoyance wasn't very useful in a situation like this. Naho grit her teeth, but the jutsu held her body tight.
"Fine," she bit out, "I give up."
Shikamaru nodded.
The shadow retracted, and Naho stumbled forward, catching herself with one hand against the floor. Shikamaru shoved his hands back into his pockets and walked toward the balcony without another word.
Hayate raised his hand. "Winner, Shikamaru Nara."
Naho took a bit longer to return, as she collected her umbrella, but the senbon—well, she couldn't be bothered to collect them all, and so the proctor used an earth ninjutsu to clean up the battlefield.
Naho stopped in front of Karin and bowed her head. "I lost, Karin-sama."
Karin just nodded. "Yes, but it wasn't your fault. Whether it was you or Tōji, you both were unfortunate. Konoha has many shinobi; few around your age can match you. You were just unlucky to run into some who could."
"Yeah, if we had fought against those two kunoichi from before, we would have passed easily," Tōji joined in, eager to wash away his own disgrace.
Karin nodded again; he wasn't wrong.
Among all the Konoha shinobi here, those two had been laughably weak.
Karin turned her attention back to the arena, where Shikamaru had finally been convinced to stand and return to his team. The blonde girl who had fought Sakura was gone, likely with the medics, so it was the large boy and the Sarutobi sensei who greeted him instead.
Shikamaru looked like he wanted praise even less than he wanted the fight.
Karin found that strange.
Most shinobi wanted recognition. They wanted to be seen, respected, feared, admired. Even those who claimed otherwise usually lied.
But Shikamaru Nara seemed genuinely annoyed by success.
Was that another Nara trait?
What a strange clan, so smart, yet so unmotivated.
The board flickered again.
Names blurred, then stopped.
Naruto Uzumaki.
Kiba Inuzuka.
(End of chapter)
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