"Will the individuals whose names are listed on the board come forward now?" Hayate requested.
The two walked forward.
"Yoroi Akado, Sasuke Uchiha… You two have been selected to compete in the first bout. Any objections?"
"I'm good…" Sasuke said.
"None…" Yoroi replied.
Yoroi was a taller, broader figure, his face concealed behind a cloth mask and tinted glasses that obscured any readable expression.
Everyone could see that Sasuke was not in top condition. It was obvious.
Hayate coughed, cleared his throat, and said. "Uhhhh.. It's time for the first round to commence… Alright?"
"Everyone other than the two combatants should move to the upper gallery now." gestured upward.
The genin and jonin began to move. Team Guy bunched together naturally. As did the other ninja teams.
"All right… Please begin." Hayate said.
Yoroi moved first.
He weaved through some hand signs, coating his hand in a faint blue glow that Lee's eyes picked up immediately. Not a jutsu in the traditional sense, more like a technique that channeled chakra through the palm for a purpose Lee couldn't immediately identify. He tossed three shuriken forward at Sasuke. Sasuke used a kunai to deflect all three shurikens back at the sound ninja.
Yoroi ducked leaped out of the way of his own ninja tools. It seemed just deflecting those shuriken took a lot out of Sasuke as he fell on the floor right after swinging. Yoroi didn't waste time and immediately rushed forward. His fist came crashing down to where Sasuke's face was.
Sasuke barely dodged out of the fatal blow. Yoroi's fist smashed directly through the floor. Before Yoroi could wrench his arm out of the ground, Sasuke stabbed his kunai into the floor, tripped Yoroi off his feet, and trapped him into an armbar, fully extending it. Yoroi didn't panic, as he calmly palmed his overextended palm on Sasuke's chest. His palm glowing blue.
Lee could see was shaking and shivering. Whatever Yoroi's hand did to him weakened him enough that he could break free of the lock, uppercut Sasuke, and get back to his feet. Sasuke was left twitching on the ground, groaning in pain and weakness.
"Sasuke!" Sakura cried out.
Sasuke tried to get back to his feet at that cry, only for Yoroi to grip his forehead with that glowing palm. Sasuke weakly gripped the man's arm trying to stop him. "Heh heh…" Yoroi chuckled. "You're feeding on my chakra…" Sasuke realized. "Finally figured it out, eh?" He laughed as Sasuke screamed.
"You son of a!" Sasuke somehow managed to call upon some strength, kicking Yoroi off of him, sliding away.
"Heh heh… Imagine a little vermin like you… having any strength left to oppose me." Yoroi was enjoying this battle.
"Sasuke Uchiha… This is all he can do?" The red-haired shinobi muttered in disappointment.
Lee could see Naruto and Sakura incredibly worried. And Naruto showed his worry through the only way he knew. "HOW CAN YOU STILL CALL YOURSELF SASUKE UCHIHA?! YOU'RE A DISGRACE TO… TO YOURSELF! AREN'T YOU EMBARRASSED TO HAVE EVERYONE SEE YOU AS A BIG LOSER?!" Naruto shouted.
His words reached Sasuke as Sasuke looked up in their direction. Then he made eye contact with Lee. And it seemed like some sort of idea popped up in his head.
"You couldn't have picked a worse time to let your mind wander!" Yoroi started rushing toward Sasuke.
What followed made Lee's eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline.
Sasuke launched himself at Yoroi with a low upward kick that sent the larger man flying into the air. Before Yoroi could recover, Sasuke was already airborne behind him with the Dancing Leaf Shadow.
Sasuke had copied the foundation of Lee's taijutsu and was now using it to compensate for his inability to use ninjutsu.
"That's..." Tenten whispered from Lee's other side, clearly seeing the same thing.
"My technique." Lee finished, his voice carrying no anger or indignation. If anything, there was a note of fascination in it, the genuine curiosity of someone watching another person attempt to replicate their art.
But Lee was not worried. Not in the slightest.
Because watching Sasuke attempt to use his taijutsu was like watching someone try to play a song they'd heard once from memory. The notes were mostly right, the rhythm was close, but the soul of it was missing. Every movement cost Sasuke something. His body wasn't conditioned for this kind of combat, hadn't been forged through thousands of hours of repetitive, agonizing physical training. Where Lee's kicks flowed from one to the next with ease, Sasuke's were labored. He hit hard, certainly, but each impact sent visible tremors through his own body. His muscles were fighting against the technique rather than working with it.
The Sharingan could copy the form. It could not copy the years.
Sasuke finished his adapted Lion Combo with a dropping heel kick that smashed Yoroi into the arena floor hard enough to crack stone. The older genin went limp, unconscious, and Hayate called the match after a brief assessment.
"I'm halting this match before it goes any further!. In other words, Sasuke Uchiha is the winner of the first battle and advances past the preliminaries to the finals!"
"HE DID IT!!!" Naruto exclaimed in joy. "Hey Sasuke, you won but in such a lame way! And you came out looking like you're the one who got beat up!" He laughed.
"Shut up, clown." Sasuke looked up at Naruto.
"Sasuke-kun!!! You're the best!!!" Ino cheered.
"I'm starving. My stomach could not be more empty right now." Choji complained.
"Come on, it wasn't that great." Kiba smirked.
"To think he could steal my moves with only one battle. The Sharingan is truly admirable." Lee smiled.
"I thought I recognized them." Tenten muttered.
"I inspired a Uchiha!" Lee corrected with a bright smile. "I wonder how many people can say the same!"
"It doesn't matter." Neji's voice was ice. He hadn't taken his eyes off Sasuke's retreating form, and whatever he saw with those all-seeing eyes hadn't impressed him. "He nearly collapsed performing a pale imitation of your basics. If that is the extent of the Uchiha's capabilities, then he is no threat to anyone on this team."
Lee said nothing to that. He simply smiled and turned his attention back to the floor.
"Well then, right! Let's get the next match going." Hayate said.
The next name pairing appeared:
Aburame Shino vs. Abumi Zaku
Lee leaned forward slightly, genuinely interested. The Aburame Clan was an interesting opponent he had visualized fighting before. Shinobi whose abilities presented a unique challenge for someone who relied entirely on taijutsu. The Aburame clan's destruction beetles were, in many ways, the worst kind of enemy for a close-range specialist. Tiny, numerous, nearly invisible, and capable of draining a person's chakra on contact.
Thousands of insects crawling over his body, biting, burrowing, blocking his airways and his vision. He wouldn't be able to hold back against an Aburame. He only needed to let his guard down once to lose a fight against them. In his opinion, they were one of the most dangerous opponents for an extreme taijutsu specialist like himself to face.
Zaku, one of the Sound genin Lee had fought in the Forest of Death, was in rough shape. Despite this, the Sound ninja projected arrogance like heat from a furnace, sneering at Shino with the contempt of someone who'd already decided they'd won.
That arrogance lasted approximately ninety seconds.
Shino fought with his hands in his pocket. When Zaku raised his arms and fired a blast of concentrated air pressure, Shino simply stood there and took it. Or appeared to. When the dust cleared, the figure that had been standing in Shino's position dissolved into a cloud of buzzing insects, a clone made entirely of destruction beetles that dispersed and reformed behind Zaku's position.
The real Shino hadn't moved from his original spot. He'd sent the clone as a distraction while his insects surrounded Zaku from every conceivable angle, entering through blind spots and gaps in clothing with a patience that bordered on sadistic.
By the time Zaku realized what was happening, his arms were numb. His chakra was dropping. Insects had infiltrated the air tubes in his palms, the very weapon system he relied on, and blocked them completely. When he tried to fire another air blast, the pressure had nowhere to go. The resulting backfire blew up his arms from the inside out.
Lee winced at the screamed, both arms now useless and separated from his body, and Shino stood before him with all the emotional expressiveness of a stone wall.
"Do you concede?" Shino asked, and his voice was so quiet that Lee had to strain his enhanced hearing to catch it.
Zaku conceded without his consent.
"He's finished…" Hayate declared.
"His entire body is infested with insects…" Neji had his Byakugan activated.
"What?!" Tenten exclaimed.
"That's the Aburame Clan. The moment they're born, their bodies are used as nests for bugs." Guy-sensei enlightened.
"I definitely don't want to fight that guy…" Tenten shivered.
Lee understood he would have to use his secret technique to end the fight as soon as possible against an opponent like that. His normal methods aren't enough.
"So… uh… Let's move on to the next match." Hayate said.
The board cycled again.
Tsurugi Misumi vs. Kankuro
Kankuro walked to the arena floor with confidence. The painted lines on his face made him like an performer preparing for a performance. The large wrapped bundle on his back hung interested Lee.
Misumi attacked with a body modification technique that allowed him to contort and extend his limbs like rubber, wrapping around Kankuro's body in a constricting hold that would have crushed a normal person's bones. Then he snapped his neck. For a moment, it seemed like the match was over in an instant.
Then Kankuro's face cracked.
Literally cracked, the painted features splitting apart to reveal wooden joints and mechanical components underneath. The figure Misumi had been strangling wasn't Kankuro at all. It was the puppet. Kankuro himself emerged from the wrapped bundle on the puppet's back, grinning broadly, and the puppet's arms came alive with a speed and force that spoke of chakra threads pulled by a master's hands. The wooden limbs seized Misumi in a grip far stronger than flesh and bone, bending him backward toward something in his spine gave way with an audible pop.
But Hayate stopped it before it reached that point. "Due to Misumi's inability to fight back, the winner of this match is Kankuro!" He announced.
"Huh." Tenten murmured, and Lee could hear genuine interest in her voice. "So that's how puppeteers work up close. They make you think you're fighting one thing while the real threat is something else entirely. I should try making my own puppet!"
"A mere toy." Neji scoffed. "Useless against me, but might be useful against lesser shinobi."
Lee nodded thoughtfully. Against a puppeteer, the key would be identifying the real body. His ears could help with that. A puppet didn't breathe. It didn't have a heartbeat. No matter how convincing the disguise, the human body made sounds that wood and metal could never replicate. The challenge would be pressing the attack on the real body while simultaneously avoiding the puppet's trickery. Another challenge to train for. The world of shinobi was wonderfully complicated.
Haruno Sakura vs. Yamanaka Ino
Lee's heart clenched when Sakura's name appeared on the board. He straightened up unconsciously.
"Chill out." Tenten said, nudging him with her elbow. "Your little crush is just fighting another rookie."
"I am chill." Lee responded, though he didn't loosen his grip on the railing. "I am simply concerned for her well-being! Any match has the potential for injury!"
"Whatever lover boy." Tenten laughed at him.
Sakura and Ino faced each other on the arena floor, and the tension between them was immediately, obviously personal. Sakura made the first move, removing her hitai-ate from its usual position around her head.
"Understand this… I'm never letting you anywhere near Sasuke." Sakura declared as a spike of pain struck Lee's heart.
"What?!" Ino shouted.
"You're not even his type! And I'm not the weak, needy little girl I used to be! You're not even on my radar now." Sakura claimed.
"Sakura… I think you forgotten who you're talking to." Ino stated. "Don't cop an attitude with me, you little crybaby!"
Lee watched the fight with a mixture of emotions that tangled together in his chest like knotted rope.
They were... not good.
That was his honest opinion, and Lee felt guilty for making it, even inside his own head. Sakura and Ino were both brave. They were both determined. The Power of Youth burning brightly within both of them! When the Yamanaka girl's Mind Transfer Jutsu forced the fight into a battle of willpower, Lee had felt genuine admiration for Sakura's ability to resist and expel the foreign consciousness from her mind through sheer force of will. That took incredible mental strength that he couldn't even claim he had himself. He's never been put in that jutsu before.
But the taijutsu.
Lee had grown up fighting Neji Hyuga. He had trained alongside Tenten, who could split a falling leaf at thirty paces with a thrown senbon blindfolded and fight in close quarters with almost any weapon ever forged. He sparred daily with Guy-sensei, a man who could shatter boulders with his bare hands and move faster than most shinobi could see.
Compared to the standard Lee had grown accustomed to, Sakura and Ino's physical exchange was... clumsy. Their punches lacked proper form. Their kicks were telegraphed. Their movements were flat and predictable. Lee and Neji could've beaten them when they were still in the academy.
His crush on Sakura had always been fueled by something innocent and sincere, a genuine admiration for her beauty, the sort of wholesome attraction that Guy-sensei would have called a beautiful expression of youth. And that hadn't changed. Lee still felt his stomach do something acrobatic whenever she smiled, still felt his face grow warm when she spoke to him, still wanted desperately to protect her from harm.
But watching her fight, truly fight, forced him to see something he'd hadn't even thought about. Sakura was not a strong shinobi. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if she didn't change the way she trained.
And that was okay, Lee decided, surprising himself with the ease of the conclusion. His future girlfriend didn't need to be a powerful shinobi. She was smart, beautiful, and sometimes kind. That was more than enough. If she wanted to grow stronger, Lee would happily help her train. If she didn't, that was her choice, and he would respect it.
But even as he made peace with that thought, his eyes drifted to his right, where Tenten leaned against the railing with her chin propped on one hand, watching the same fight with a look of amusement.
Tenten, who could engage Neji Hyuga in a sparring match and not lose instantly.
There was a gulf between Sakura and Tenten that had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with effort. Tenten had earned her strength through the same grueling process Lee had, through sweat and blood and days that ended with muscles so sore she could barely hold chopsticks at dinner.
The fight below ended in a double knockout. Both girls collapsed simultaneously, their final punches landing at the same moment with enough force to knock each other unconscious. Hayate examined them both and declared a draw. Neither would advance.
"Pathetic." Neji murmured.
"They fought with the power of youth!" Lee said quietly. "There is no shame in that."
Neji said nothing. His pale eyes had already moved on.
Then the board cycled again, and Lee felt the atmosphere on the observation balcony shift.
Tenten vs. Temari
"Finally!" Tenten's voice cut through the lingering heaviness like a blade through silk. She leaped off from the railing, cracking her knuckles. Turning back to look at her teammates after landing with a confident smile.
Lee cupped his hands around his mouth. "GO, TENTEN! SHOW THEM THE POWER OF TEAM 3! THE FLAMES OF YOUR YOUTH BURN BRIGHTLY!"
"Another sand ninja. Should be interesting to watch" Neji said.
On the arena floor, Tenten took her position across from the blonde kunoichi from Sunagakure. Temari stood with one hand resting on the massive iron fan strapped to her back, her posture radiating a kind of smugness before the fight even started. Her teal eyes dogged Tenten. Tenten simply smiled, more than happy to accept the challenge.
Hayate raised his hand. "The fifth match of the preliminaries… Tenten against Temari. Please step forward."
The two moved closer to each other.
"Begin."
"Tenten! Use the Power of Youth!" Lee cheered.
"That's the spirit! Keep cheering her on!" Guy added.
Tenten moved first.
Her hand blurred to the scroll on her back, and in a single fluid motion she unfurled it across the air in front of her, several poofs of smoke appeared alongside weapons that shot out like steel rain: kunai, shuriken, senbon, swords, axes, etc. All thrown with the kind of speed and volume that would have overwhelmed most genin before they could form a single hand seal.
The first volley numbered somewhere north of thirty individual projectiles. They filled the air between the two kunoichi in a deadly cloud of spinning metal, approaching from multiple angles and trajectories that accounted for evasion, ducking, and sidestepping. Wire strings trailed from several of the weapons, giving Tenten the ability to redirect them mid-flight if her opponent dodged in an unexpected direction.
It was the kind of opening barrage that Lee had seen Tenten practice hundreds of times. Against an ordinary opponent, it would have ended the fight in seconds. No ordinary genin could handle that volume of incoming projectiles without taking significant damage. It was even a struggle for him a year ago.
Temari unfolded her fan with one hand.
A single swing.
The wind that erupted from the fan's arc was not a breeze. It was a wall of compressed air that screamed across the arena floor with enough force to send every single one of Tenten's projectiles spinning wildly off course. Kunai embedded themselves in the stone walls. Shuriken clattered across the balcony railings. Senbon scattered like silver needles across the floor.
The wire strings snapped under the wind pressure, severing Tenten's control over her redirected weapons in an instant.
Not a single projectile had come within five meters of Temari.
"Oh no." Lee breathed.
"Hmm." Neji realized this wouldn't be so easy for Tenten.
The Sand kunoichi smirked wider, her fan resting casually on her shoulder as if she were carrying an umbrella rather than a weapon.
"Is that all?" Temari called across the arena, and her voice dripped with satisfaction. "I heard Konoha's kunoichi were supposed to be impressive. Was that the best you've got? Those other two were nothing special either."
Tenten said nothing.
Lee watched his teammate's face and saw that there was no panic in Tenten's expression. No despair. She was thinking. Her eyes moved from the scattered remains of her first volley to Temari's fan, to the distance between them, to the arena floor itself. Lee could almost see the gears turning behind those steel-grey eyes.
She had expected this. Maybe not specifically wind techniques, but the possibility that her ranged approach would be countered. Tenten always had a backup plan. She'd learned that from having to fight those taijutsu monsters on her team.
"All right." Tenten said, and her voice was calm and level in a way that made Lee swell with pride. She reached behind her back and, instead of drawing another scroll, unsealed something directly from the storage array sewn into her clothing.
A pair of tonfa appeared in her hands. Short, angular, the kind of close-quarters weapon that transformed the wielder's forearms into both shield and striking surface. They were well-made, the wood polished dark and reinforced with metal bands at the striking points, and they fit Tenten's grip perfectly.
Temari's eyebrows rose a fraction. "Switching to close range? Smart, I guess."
Tenten's response was to close the distance between them.
She moved fast. Far faster than anyone watching expected from the "weapons girl" of Team 3, and Lee felt a fierce grin split his face. This was the Tenten that trained alongside him and Neji, the Tenten who endured Guy-sensei's morning training and sparred against the taijutsu freaks on her team. The muscles in her legs weren't decorative. They had been built through the same punishing regimen that had forged Lee and Neji into what they were, and they propelled her across the arena floor with speed that forced Temari to react instead of observe.
Temari swung her fan.
The wind blast erupted toward Tenten's rushing form, a horizontal gale designed to knock her off her feet and send her tumbling across the arena. Against most charging opponents, it would have been devastatingly effective.
Tenten dropped low at the last possible second, sliding under the wind's trajectory on her knees and the balls of her feet, the compressed air screaming over her head close enough to yank her buns loose and send strands of dark hair whipping wildly around her face. She came out of the slide already rising, her momentum carrying her directly into Temari's guard.
The first tonfa strike caught Temari's fan in a block that the Sand kunoichi barely managed, the metal-reinforced wood slamming into the iron frame of the fan with a clang that echoed off the arena walls. Temari braced, her feet sliding on the stone floor from the unexpected force behind the blow. Her eyes widened. That wasn't the kind of strength she'd expected from a thin girl like this.
Tenten didn't give her time to comprehend.
The second tonfa came from below, hooking around the edge of the fan in an attempt to pry it from Temari's grip. When Temari adjusted to counter, Tenten reversed the motion and snapped the tonfa's butt end into Temari's exposed forearm. The impact was sharp and painful, driving directly into the muscle tissue.
Temari hissed through her teeth and created space with a backward leap, but Tenten was on her immediately. The tonfa were a blur, striking from angles that cycled between high, low, inside, and outside with a fluidity that spoke of hundreds of hours of close-combat drilling. When one tonfa was blocked, the other was already swinging. When Temari shifted her fan to intercept one angle, Tenten was attacking from two more.
Temari was on her back foot for the first time in the match, and it showed. The massive fan that was her primary weapon had become a liability at this range, too large and unwieldy to serve as an effective close-combat defense. She was using it more as a shield than a weapon now, holding it sideways between herself and Tenten's relentless assault, but the tonfa strikes were finding gaps around the edges.
A blow caught Temari in the ribs. Another grazed her shoulder. A third struck the back of her hand hard enough to loosen her grip on the fan.
Tenten saw the opening.
She dropped the tonfa. In a movement so fast it blurred, she unsealed a new weapon from her sleeve array, and suddenly she was holding a staff that was taller than she was, its reach extending her striking range by nearly two meters. The shift was instant and disorienting, like a swordsman suddenly becoming a spearman mid-sentence, and it caught Temari completely off guard.
The staff swept low, smacking Temari's ankle and sending her off her feet. The Sand kunoichi fell, her balance broken, and Tenten reversed the staff into an overhead strike that drove the butt end toward Temari's collarbone with enough force to break it.
Temari got her fan up just in time. The staff struck iron instead of bone, and the impact rang through the arena like a bell. But Tenten was already transitioning again, summoning a pair of kama, short sickles whose curved blades let her hook and pull at the fan from angles a straight weapon couldn't reach.
"She keeps changing weapons." Sakura's voice drifted down from somewhere along the balcony, tinged with disbelief. "How is she doing that so fast?"
Lee grinned. Because that was Tenten's genius. Not in a single weapon, but in all of them. Any weapon she touched became an extension of her body, an instinct so natural it looked like she'd been born with steel in her hands. And by switching between weapons constantly, she never let her opponent adapt to a single style.
Staff range countered the fan's width. Tonfa closed the distance. Kama hooked around guards. A chain whip appeared next, its weighted end wrapping around the fan's edge and yanking it sideways, and for one heart-stopping moment, Tenten nearly pulled the weapon from Temari's grip entirely.
But Temari was not a genin who had reached this stage by accident.
The Sand kunoichi's teal eyes had been hardening throughout the close-quarters exchange, the surprise and discomfort burning away to reveal the core of a fighter who was every bit as stubborn and resourceful as the girl pressing her. She planted her feet, channeled wind chakra through her fan even at this close range, and detonated a burst of compressed air directly between them.
The concussive force blasted Tenten backward across the arena. She rolled with the impact, tucking her body and absorbing the momentum as best she could, but the blast carried her a good ten meters before she managed to arrest her slide with a kunai dug into the stone floor.
Temari pressed the advantage immediately. She fully opened her fan, revealing the three purple moons painted across its surface. One moon had been visible during the first exchange. Now two were showing, and the wind she generated was noticeably stronger, sharper, carrying enough cutting force to leave shallow gouges in the stone floor.
"Wind Scythe Jutsu!"
The attack was a horizontal crescent of compressed air that screamed across the arena floor at a speed that would have caught most genin squarely. Tenten threw herself sideways, barely avoiding the worst of it, but the wind's edge caught her left arm and opened a shallow cut from elbow to wrist. She rolled to her feet, blood streaming down her forearm, and Lee saw her mouth tighten.
"She's trying to keep distance now." Neji observed, his Byakugan tracking every movement on the arena floor. "She realized she can't match Tenten in close combat. She's going to play a keep-away game with the wind."
That was exactly what happened.
Every time Tenten tried to close the gap, Temari punished her with a wind blast that forced her back to long range. At long range, Tenten's weapons were useless. She tried again with her Twin Rising Dragons, launching an enormous volume of weapons from twin spiraling scrolls, the air filling with steel and wire in a display that drew gasps from the watching genin. But Temari swung her fan twice more, each swing more powerful than the last, and the wind shredded Tenten's assault before it could reach her.
Weapons clattered to the arena floor in every direction, rendered harmless by the simple, insurmountable reality that steel couldn't pierce a wall of wind.
Tenten landed from her aerial position, breathing hard, her arms scratched and bleeding from multiple wind lacerations. Her arsenal was scattered across the arena like fallen leaves. Her tonfa were gone, her staff was somewhere behind Temari's position, her kama had been blown into the far wall.
But she didn't stop.
She pulled a kusarigama from her last remaining scroll, the weighted chain end giving her ranged capability while the sickle kept her dangerous up close. She whipped the chain in a wide arc, trying to get around the wind's trajectory, but Temari's fan swings were too broad, too all-encompassing. The chain was caught in the gale and sent snapping back toward Tenten, the weighted end nearly catching her in the temple.
"Give it up!" Temari called, and there was no malice in her voice now, only the straightforward assessment of one fighter recognizing another's limitations. "You're outmatched. Your weapons can't reach me. There's no shame in forfeiting."
Tenten's chest heaved. Blood from the cuts on her arms dripped onto the stone floor. Her hair had come completely loose from its buns, dark strands falling across her face in a wild curtain that she made no effort to push back.
Lee gripped the railing so hard the metal groaned beneath his fingers. He wanted to shout something, some encouragement, some reminder of who she was and what she was capable of. But the words caught in his throat because the expression on Tenten's face told him she didn't need encouragement.
She needed a way to win. And she didn't have one.
Tenten charged.
It was a desperate, furious rush, everything she had left thrown into one final attempt to close the distance. She serpentined across the arena floor, dodging the first wind blast by a hair, ducking under the second, leaping over the third. She was fast, fast enough to make Temari's eyes widen with genuine alarm, fast enough to close half the distance before the next swing came.
But half wasn't enough.
Temari's fourth swing was the strongest yet, all three moons visible on the fully opened fan, the Wind Scythe Jutsu enhanced with every ounce of chakra the Sand kunoichi could channel into it. The compressed air blade caught Tenten mid-stride, lifting her off her feet and sending her cartwheeling through the air. She crashed into the arena wall hard enough to crack the stone, slid down to the floor, and lay still for three heartbeats that felt like an eternity.
Then she moved. Slowly, painfully, planting one hand on the ground and pushing herself up with shaking arms. She got to one knee. Blood ran from a cut on her forehead, partially blinding her right eye. Her breathing was ragged and wet.
She looked up at Temari, and her eyes were still burning.
"I..." Tenten forced the word out through gritted teeth. "I am not..."
She tried to stand. Her legs buckled. She caught herself on the wall, found her feet again, and stood upright through what must have been an enormous act of will. Her hands came up in a loose fighting stance, empty of weapons now, just her bare fists.
The arena was dead silent.
Temari stared at her from across the distance, fan raised, wind already gathering for another swing. But she hesitated. Something in the way Tenten stood, broken and bleeding and refusing to fall, gave even the confident Sand kunoichi pause.
"Proctor." Temari said, not taking her eyes off Tenten. "Call the match."
Hayate stepped forward, assessed Tenten's condition with a quick, experienced eye, and made his decision.
"Winner: Temari."
The silence lasted one more beat. Then Lee's voice exploded from the balcony.
"TENTEN!" He vaulted over the railing without a second thought, dropping to the arena floor from the observation level and crossing the distance to his teammate in a blur. He caught her just as her legs finally gave out completely, her body sagging against his with the dead weight of total exhaustion.
"I lost." Tenten said into his shoulder, and her voice was small and hollow in a way that hurt Lee to hear.
"You did amazing, Tenten." Lee told her, and he meant it with every cell in his body. "You were absolutely amazing, Tenten."
"I couldn't reach her. I tried everything and I couldn't..."
"You made her respect you." Lee pulled back just enough to look her in the face. "You forced an opponent that wasn't taking you seriously, to go all out against you. You saw how she never let you get close again after that first time. She knew that she would've lost if she hadn't."
Tenten stared at him for a long moment, her steel-grey eyes red but not crying, her face streaked with blood and dirt and sweat. Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth twitched.
"You're such an idiot, Lee." Tenten sighed. "I lost fair and square! I just have to train harder to prevent something like this from happening again."
"That's the spirit, Tenten!" Guy-sensei appeared next to Lee.
"Next time, I fight against some stupid fan user, I'm gonna take their fan and shove it up their-"
"Ah, medical nin!" Lee suddenly shouted, handing her over to the professionals.
Medical-nin arrived and began treating her wounds. Lee stayed beside her until they gently insisted he return to the observation balcony.
When Lee returned to the balcony, Neji was standing exactly where he'd been throughout the entire match. His arms were folded. His face was stone. But his Byakugan was deactivated, and Lee caught the faintest tension in his jaw.
"She did her best." Neji said.
"She did." Lee agreed.
The electronic board hummed, cycling through its next set of names, and the arena's attention shifted once more. Lee let the banter fade, his eyes drifting back to where Tenten sat against the wall below, a medical-nin wrapping the last of her bandages.
She caught him looking and raised one hand in a lazy wave, her expression carrying the resigned half-smile of someone who was already thinking about how to come back stronger.
Lee returned the wave with a thumbs-up and turned back to the board. Wondering who was next.