"Kankuro of the Sand vs Haku. Begin."
An interesting match, if someone asked Sukuna—but he himself wasn't that invested in it. None of the people he cared about were in it.
Haku stepped lightly onto the arena floor, calm as ever.
Across from her, Kankuro rolled his shoulders, face painted in that eerie grin. "Don't blink."
Haku didn't.
He instead vanished.
A blur of movement—senbon flashed forward in a precise volley aimed at joints and pressure points.
They struck right on the mark. As always, Haku rarely missed. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. All of them hit their targets.
But there was no cry of pain. Nor the expected collapse of the opponent, which Haku had anticipated since he used a non-lethal takedown attack.
No blood shed either.
Haku's eyes narrowed.
Kankuro stood unmoving, needles embedded in his cloak. Then, stiffly, his head tilted at an unnatural angle.
Wood creaked.
The arm detached slightly at the elbow.
"…A puppet?" Haku's eyes widened. He remembered Zabuza telling him that shinobi from the Hidden Sand were puppeteers.
Suddenly, the "Kankuro" lunged forward, its torso splitting open. Blades shot outward.
Haku leapt back just in time, ice forming beneath his feet to propel him away.
From the stands, a low murmur spread.
Haku formed seals quickly. "Ice Release."
Frost surged outward, encasing the puppet's legs. Ice climbed its torso, freezing it solid within seconds.
The entire figure became a crystalline statue.
Haku watched carefully.
The ice cracked soon after, and poisoned senbon shot from hidden compartments within the puppet's arms, slicing through the frozen shell toward him.
Haku twisted midair, but one needle grazed his sleeve, tearing the fabric.
His expression sharpened.
"I have to find his real location fast…"
Haku knew how to handle a puppeteer—simply dispose of the shinobi himself. If one could bypass all of their puppets, handling the puppet master was rather easy.
The frozen puppet suddenly jerked again—strings barely visible in the arena lights.
Haku ignored that for a moment. Instead, he focused on chakra sensing. He wasn't a typical sensor, but he had some talent in this area after practicing with Zabuza in Mist Jutsu.
That kind of jutsu required extraordinary senses to operate inside the mist.
And of course, there were the chakra threads trailing upward, attached to the puppet itself.
He followed them until he found Kankuro's location.
'There.'
High in the corner, partially concealed behind the balcony structure—
Without hesitation, he formed seals again.
Ice spread rapidly across the arena floor and up the walls like climbing vines.
Kankuro's eyes widened. "Tch—! Busted."
Haku vanished.
He reappeared along the rising ice path, sprinting vertically with terrifying speed.
Kankuro yanked his strings, sending another puppet body dropping down defensively—but Haku was already past it.
"Ice Release: Thousand Needles."
A concentrated barrage shot upward.
Kankuro barely had time to shield himself before ice formed around his arms, locking his fingers and tangling the chakra threads.
The strings snapped uselessly.
In a final blur, Haku appeared directly before him, palm encased in frost.
A precise strike.
Ice surged across Kankuro's torso, pinning him against the wall in a solid crystalline prison.
It wasn't like Kankuro wasn't used to fighting one-on-one. While being a puppeteer, he had basic taijutsu skills—but Haku was one of the fastest genin present there.
A puppeteer couldn't handle that kind of speed.
Kankuro's best bet was always to apply his poison and wait while keeping his main body hidden for as long as possible.
Unfortunately for him, he was found out rather quickly.
The proctor looked up, assessing.
"…Winner. Haku Yuki."
The frozen puppet below shattered harmlessly on the arena floor.
Haku exhaled slowly, steadying her breathing.
The match was a decent one. Sukuna himself wasn't expecting much from it.
Kankuro came back to his seat, deflated, and Temari was the same. Both brother and sister were out of the exam already. Now only Gaara was left.
Though to them the exam never truly mattered—what mattered was their plan.
But still, losing to a Mist and Konoha shinobi was not acceptable to them.
While the Sand siblings were in a foul mood, the exam itself moved on.
The next match was something most people were looking forward to.
"Naruto Uzumaki vs Shikamaru Nara. Begin."
Naruto cracked his knuckles. "Heh. This'll be easy!"
Shikamaru sighed. "What a drag…"
From the balcony, Sukuna leaned slightly forward. It would be an understatement to say he wasn't interested in this match.
He had always wondered who would win between the future Hokage and the future Hokage's advisor when they were just kids.
Yes, Naruto was a powerhouse later down the line—but right here, the power gap wasn't that disproportionate.
Could Shikamaru come up with a genius-level strategy of pure mind-shattering scale?
Or would Naruto be too unpredictable even for him?
As soon as the match started, Naruto didn't wait—as always, he attacked.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The arena exploded into orange.
Dozens—then scores—of Narutos flooded the field, charging recklessly from every angle.
Shikamaru didn't move at first. If he knew Naruto even a bit, he mostly expected this outcome.
His shadow stretched subtly across the ground, thin and deliberate.
"Too straightforward," he muttered.
The first wave lunged.
Shikamaru sidestepped, shadow snapping outward to catch three clones at once.
"Shadow Possession Jutsu."
Naruto blinked. "Huh?!"
Confused.
This was the first time Naruto had seen Shadow Possession Jutsu in effect.
Naruto didn't have the patience or foresight to study in advance about his own village's shinobi clans and their fighting styles, let alone other villages.
But he adapted fast enough.
One look at that shadow, and he knew that if he got trapped in it, he was done for.
The real Naruto burst from behind Shikamaru.
But Shikamaru had already placed a wire trap earlier.
Naruto's ankle snagged mid-lunge.
"Got you," Shikamaru said calmly.
His shadow curved unnaturally around a broken chunk of arena stone, extending its reach beyond what Naruto expected.
It nearly caught him—
—but a clone tackled the real Naruto out of the way.
"Who fights like that?!" Shikamaru frowned as clones began throwing debris randomly.
If he was right about what technique Naruto was using, then each clone was a huge waste of chakra.
He couldn't even make a single proper clone, and Naruto had a small battalion.
'People are really not born equal… what a drag…!'
The clones didn't directly charge in after that. Instead, they used kunai to force Shikamaru to move, forcing him to dodge instead of think.
More clones circled wide, some deliberately stepping into sunlight to distort the angles of his shadow.
Naruto wasn't letting Shikamaru stay in one place for long.
Shikamaru wasn't used to thinking on his toes—an obvious shortcoming on his part, but something that could be improved sooner or later.
Sukuna smirked faintly.
He knew this was what would happen.
Unpredictable chaos.
What he wished to see was whether someone like Shikamaru could predict pure chaos like Naruto.
After a long game of cat and mouse where Naruto kept annoying Shikamaru with clones while Shikamaru survived purely with Shadow Possession and thinking ahead, he finally had it.
Shikamaru exhaled sharply. "Fine."
He retreated toward the arena wall, subtly maneuvering Naruto's mass of clones into a tighter cluster.
Naruto grinned. "Got you, Shika!"
"Not exactly."
Shikamaru stomped the ground.
Earlier, he had spilled a thin layer of water from his canteen across the stone.
Now, with the sun overhead, reflections multiplied the angles of his shadow.
It split, then stretched—
—and finally connected.
The real Naruto froze mid-charge.
"Eh—?!"
"Shadow Possession. Complete!"
This time, it held.
"What?! But how?!"
Clones rushed forward, but Shikamaru forced Naruto's body to raise a kunai to his own throat.
The clones halted instantly.
Silence.
Naruto strained, sweat beading down his face. "L-Let go!"
Shikamaru's breathing was uneven. That cat-and-mouse game had left him breathless.
His shadow trembled at the edges as Naruto poured more chakra in an attempt to free himself.
He had burned through most of his chakra calculating, extending, adapting to chaos.
He glanced at the sea of clones still surrounding him. They only didn't move because he was holding the real Naruto with a kunai at his neck.
'If those clones knew I can't even move my shadow because Naruto's absurd chakra is blocking me, they would instantly rush at me. And this idiot isn't even calling them… Sigh.'
The proctor waited.
Naruto growled, trying to overpower the technique through sheer stubborn force.
Shikamaru closed his eyes briefly and let out a long sigh.
"…I forfeit."
Gasps erupted.
The shadow dissolved.
Naruto stumbled forward, catching himself. "Huh?! You what?!"
Shikamaru scratched his head lazily. "Yeah. For about ten more seconds, I had you. Then I'd be face down."
He turned and walked off.
"Too much trouble."
Naruto blinked.
From above, Sukuna gave a helpless chuckle.
Honestly… what else was he expecting?
xXx
A/N : Man I feel like this combat section have stretched too much, like really. I wished to skip all of this, but felt like writing some of the matching were pretty interesting. Sigh,
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