Mai disappeared.
One second she was standing at the center of the arena, skin red, veins bulging, chakra pouring off her body in visible waves. The next frame she was gone, and the sand where she'd been standing exploded outward from the force of her departure.
Karura's Byakugan tracked her. Barely. Mai was moving at speeds that turned the arena into a blur of red skin and white eyes. The chakra flooding her system was huge, more than any genin should possess.
But the Byakugan also showed Karura something else. Mai's muscles were tearing. Micro-fractures were spider-webbing through her shin bones. The tendons in her ankles were stretched to their limits. Her body was destroying itself with every step.
And with that much raw chakra surging through her system, the subtle Erosion Fist technique was impossible. You couldn't thread a needle during an earthquake. The tenketsu strikes required fine chakra control and right now Mai's control was a storm.
Karura surged chakra through her scroll.
One scroll unsealed instantly. Ten clouds of smoke erupted across the arena floor. When they cleared, ten Millions stood in a circle around Karura. Forty arms. Ten grinning faces. Ten combat puppets, each one identical, each one connected to a single chakra thread from a single finger.
The shinobi watching lost their minds.
"TEN?!" Jomae screamed from the railing. His voice cracked on the word. "TEN PUPPETS?! AT THE SAME TIME?!"
"That's not possible," Kazane said. She was gripping the railing tightly. "She's too young... Only Lady Chiyo..."
"Apparently she can…" Tatewaki said quietly.
"That's my protege!" Chiyo proudly laughed with her hands on her hips.
In the observation room, the Third Kazekage was standing watching carefully at the gifted genin in front of him. His yellow eyes tracked the ten puppets arranging themselves around the eight-year-old girl on the arena floor.
Ten puppets. One thread each. Simultaneous control. Truly astonishing…
He ordered his ANBU around him to prevent anything disastrous from happening by the end of this.
Mai hit the first Million like a cannonball.
Her fist connected with its chest and the puppet exploded. The composite wood shattered outward in a spray of splinters and metal fragments. The grinning face split in half. The four arms flew in different directions. One punch and a Million was kindling.
Mai was already moving to the second. Her foot caught it in the torso and the puppet folded around her kick before flying backward into the arena wall. The wall cracked. The puppet didn't survive the impact.
Two down in less than a second.
Karura's fingers twitched. Two more Millions unsealed from scrolls at her hip. Fresh. Undamaged. They took position in the circle before the debris of the first two had finished falling.
Mai destroyed the third Million with an elbow strike that caved in its head. The fourth she grabbed by two of its arms and ripped apart. The fifth she punched so hard its torso separated from its legs.
Three more Millions appeared. Summoned. Fresh. Grinning.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Mai snarled. Her voice was deeper. Rawer. The gates changed everything, even the way she sounded. "How many of those things do you have?!"
Karura didn't answer. Her fingers moved. Eight remaining Millions charged Mai simultaneously from every angle. They charged to surround her, to crowd her space, to create a cage of wood and wrappings that would slow her down through sheer volume.
Mai tore through them. Every puppet that got close enough was destroyed. Fists and feet and elbows breaking composite wood like it was paper. The arena floor was littered with puppet parts, grinning faces cracked in half, severed arms still twitching from residual chakra.
But every destroyed puppet was replaced. Karura's hands moved in a constant rhythm of unsealing, summoning, connecting. A Million fell and a Million rose. The supply seemed endless.
Because it was. Ten originals. Ten copies from Tenfold. She had puppets to spare.
Mai couldn't reach her. Every time she broke through the circle, another wave of Millions filled the gap. They grabbed at her, wrappings reaching for her ankles, extending arms pouring from forearm housings in waves. She ripped through them but they cost her seconds, and seconds were all Karura needed.
The Byakugan showed the truth. Mai's muscles were tearing faster now. Her right calf had a fracture that was widening with every step. Her left shoulder was dislocated from the force of her own punches. The gates were destroying her.
Karura sent six Millions in a coordinated rush. The wrappings from all six launched simultaneously, a net of reinforced cloth that covered Mai from every direction. She ripped through four of the six. The remaining two caught her left arm and her right leg.
Mai tore free in an instant. But the instant cost her. One more second of the gates burning. One more second of her muscles shredding. One more fracture in her already cracking bones.
"Stop it…" Karura whispered. Her eyes were wet behind the hidden Byakugan. She could see every injury in Mai's body. Every torn fiber. Every stressed bone. Every tendon on the verge of snapping. "Please stop, Mai. You're destroying yourself!"
Mai felt it.
Karura hadn't spoken loud enough for Mai to hear across the arena. But she felt the intent behind the puppets. They weren't attacking. They were restraining. They weren't trying to hurt her. They were trying to hold her until the gates closed. They were trying to protect her from herself.
Karura was trying to save her.
Something in Mai's chest, something deeper than the gates and older than the pain, cracked.
"Don't you dare hold back on me!" Mai screamed. "Don't you dare try to protect me! I'm not some helpless thing you need to save! I'M FIGHTING YOU! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL!"
Her hands came together. Index and middle finger. She pressed them against her stomach, just above the navel.
The fourth gate opened.
The Gate of Pain.
The shockwave blew every remaining Million off its feet. The puppets scattered across the arena like leaves in a gale. The sand around Mai cratered. The stone beneath the sand cracked in a spiderweb pattern that reached the arena walls.
Mai's body changed again. The red deepened. The veins thickened. The chakra output increased again.
She looked at Karura across the puppet-strewn arena with eyes that were white and burning and filled with something that went beyond competition.
Then she moved.
Karura couldn't track her.
The Byakugan, which could see in 359 degrees, which could track chakra through solid walls, which could anticipate an opponent's movements through muscle contractions, couldn't follow Mai. She was too fast. Fourth-gate speed was beyond what Karura's reaction time could process, even with perfect vision.
She saw a red blur.
She felt the wind.
She heard the sound, a crack like thunder, the sound barrier breaking in an enclosed space.
Her hands moved on instinct. To her scrolls. All of them. Every scroll she had. The puppet hands, the defensive tools she'd built for exactly this kind of moment. Ten of them, unsealed simultaneously, each one a giant mechanical hand with a chakra shield emitter in the palm.
The hands formed a wall in front of her. Ten shields activated at once. A barrier of overlapping chakra panels, layered, dense.
Mai's fist hit the barrier.
The first shield shattered. The second shield shattered. The third cracked and the fourth cracked and the fifth buckled, and the force of the punch, the full concentrated power of a fourth-gate strike aimed at a single point, tore through seven of the ten shields before it slowed enough that the remaining three caught it.
The remaining force still launched Karura backward. She flew across the arena and hit the far wall. The stone cratered around her body. Dust and fragments rained down. One of the gallery supports above her creaked.
The arena went silent.
Mai stood where Karura had been. Her fist was still extended. Her arm was shaking from the damage. The bones in her forearm were fractured in three places. Her knuckles were shattered. The skin on her fist had split open and blood ran freely down her wrist.
The fourth gate closed. She couldn't hold it. Her body physically rejected the power, the gates slamming shut one by one, fourth, third, second, first, the red draining from her skin, the veins receding, her pupils returning. The aura of power collapsed and what was left was a girl, broken in a dozen places, standing on legs that could barely hold her weight.
She dropped to one knee.
Her eyes, brown again, normal again, human again, stared at the wall where Karura had hit. The crater in the stone. The dust cloud that hadn't settled. The arena was utterly silent.
Please don't get up…
Please stay down…
Chiasa walked forward. She looked at the crater. At Mai on one knee. At the destruction scattered across the arena floor, the puppet parts and cracked stone and shattered shields.
She opened her mouth.
"Winner: M..."
Movement.
From inside the crater. Stone fragments shifting. Dust clearing. A small hand, pushing rubble aside. A yellow scarf, grey with dust, emerging from the hole in the wall.
Karura stepped out.
She was hurt. Blood ran from a cut on her forehead. Her left arm was dislocated. Her scarf was torn. Her clothes were shredded across the front where the residual force had gotten through the shields.
But she was standing.
The three puppet hands floated behind her, three of them still active, their chakra shields flickering but present. They'd caught the blow. Not all of it but enough.
She walked toward Mai. One step. Two. Each one steady despite the blood and the dust and the shoulder that wouldn't move.
Mai watched her come.
Her brown eyes were wide. Her broken hands pressed against the sand. Her legs wouldn't obey her. The gates had taken everything, every reserve, every drop of chakra, every functional muscle fiber, and spent it on that one punch. The punch that was supposed to end it.
And Karura was walking toward her.
"No..."
Mai's voice was small. Not the loud, brash, arena-filling voice that had taunted Rasa and laughed at Pakura and called everyone losers with a grin. A small voice. A breaking voice.
"Come on... No..."
Karura kept walking.
"No! I was so close!" Mai's hands clawed at the sand, trying to push herself up. Her arms buckled. Her shattered knuckles couldn't bear weight. She collapsed back to one knee. "Why couldn't you just stay down?!"
Karura stopped in front of her.
"Why couldn't you just let me win?!" Tears were streaming down Mai's face. They cut tracks through the dust and blood on her cheeks. Her glasses were crooked. Her bandages were gone. Her fists were ruined. "It was one stupid fight! ONE FIGHT! Why couldn't you just, for once, just..."
"I'm sorry…" Karura said softly. Blood dripped from her forehead onto the sand between them.
The arena was so quiet you could hear the tears hitting the sand.
Chiasa stepped forward. She looked at Mai, broken on one knee, unable to stand. She looked at Karura, standing, bleeding, but standing.
"Winner: Karura."
Mai's face crumpled as she screamed. A raw, shredding howl that started in her chest and tore its way out through her throat, carrying with it every ounce of frustration and pain and grief and rage that she'd been holding since the day she realized her chakra network wasn't like the other kids and she'd never be like other shinobi.
"I HATE YOU, KARURA!!!"
Medical-nin rushed the arena floor. Four of them surrounded Mai, green-glowing hands already pressing against her fractured arms and shattered knuckles and torn muscles. Two more approached Karura, reaching for her shoulder.
Mai tried fighting them, but she couldn't. She screamed, thrashing against hands that were trying to help her, her glasses slipping from her face, her brown eyes wild and wet and locked on Karura.
"YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU SO MUCH!"
The medical-nin lifted her onto a stretcher. She couldn't walk. Her legs were done. They carried her toward the archway, and every step of the way she screamed.
"I FREAKING HATE YOU SO MUCH, KARURA!"
The archway swallowed her voice. The screaming continued, muffled by stone, growing fainter as they carried her deeper into the medical wing. Then it stopped. Whether because she'd been sedated or because the stone was thick enough to absorb the sound, nobody in the arena could tell.
Karura stood in the center of the destroyed arena. Puppet parts everywhere. Craters in the floor. A hole in the wall where her body had been. Blood on the sand that belonged to both of them.
Her good hand reached up and touched the torn edge of her scarf.
She didn't cry. She couldn't do that in front of the gallery, the evaluators, the Kazekage watching from above. She stood straight and she breathed and she let the medical-nin treat her as she stood the victor.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
Ten different versions of her fighting ten different versions of Mai filled her mind and body. Ten versions of Mai's skin turning red. Ten versions of Mai's bones breaking. Ten versions of Mai's fist tearing through her puppets and techniques. Sometimes Mai actually pulled out the victory, sometimes Karura did. Out of the ten different versions, Mai won seven times compared to Karura's three.
That secret technique… was really amazing… If only it didn't hurt Mai so badly to use it…
Karura closed her eyes and wished, for the first time since receiving it, that her kekkei genkai had stayed quiet.
But her hand, the one holding the scarf, was shaking.
From the gallery, Pakura stood at the railing, shaking her head. There was a reason she surrendered against Karura. But Mai was too stupid to see why she did that. An idiot like her had to learn the hard way. There was a difference even among geniuses and prodigies. There were monsters that could not be explained or understood by anyone.
Pakura sighed as she made her way toward the medical wing to console that idiot. She's probably a mess right now. Probably will be for some time especially since her little secret jutsu didn't work out like she thought.
And the Chunin Exams ended on a somber finish...