The waiting tunnel under the arena smelled like sun-baked stone and old sweat—layers of it, like the place had soaked up every nervous breath from every kid who'd ever walked toward that bright circle.
Temari rolled her shoulders once, fan strapped across her back like a promise.
Kankurō leaned against the wall, arms folded, face paint already cracked a little at the edges. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. Gaara stood a few steps away, silent, hands loose at his sides, like the world was a distant rumor.
Temari kept her eyes on the rectangle of light at the tunnel's mouth. Past it: noise. A stadium full of it. Thousands of throats hungry for a story.
An exam, they called it.
A performance, the adults meant.
"Try not to embarrass us," Kankurō muttered, but it didn't have any heat. Just habit. Like breathing.
Temari smirked without turning her head. "You first."
He made a small sound of disgust. "I'm not the one who's about to get tricked by some Leaf weirdo and come back whining."
"You say that like it's a rare event."
Behind them, Gaara's gaze didn't move. Temari didn't look at him, not directly. It was like looking at a crater and expecting it to blink back.
Somewhere above, the crowd surged—an announcement booming through the arena—names thrown into the air like coins.
"Temari of the Sand!"
Applause. Cheers. A few boos. The sound of Konoha loving a guest until the guest started winning.
Temari stepped forward.
"Temari," Kankurō said, low. A warning word.
She paused at the threshold and glanced back just enough to catch his eyes. He didn't need to say it out loud. They both carried it in their ribs like an extra bone.
Remember what this really is.
Temari's fingers curled around the strap of her fan.
"I remember," she said.
Then she walked into the light.
The arena hit her all at once: heat, noise, the glare of midday sun on pale sand.
She lifted her hand in a lazy wave because that was what you did when a thousand strangers decided you were entertainment. The stands rippled. Somewhere, a vendor yelled about skewers and cold drinks like this was a festival, not a knife show.
Across the field, her opponent stood with his hands in his pockets.
Nara Shikamaru.
He looked like he'd gotten lost on the way to a nap and accidentally wandered into a high-stakes public duel.
Temari stopped at her starting line and stared at him. Really stared. Waiting for the tell. The twitch. The tension.
He gave her… none.
Just that half-lidded, faintly annoyed expression like she'd personally scheduled this.
"Seriously?" Temari called, voice carrying. "That's your face? That's what you brought to my match?"
Shikamaru sighed like she'd asked him to help move furniture. "I'm here, aren't I?"
Temari's smile showed teeth. "Wow. Inspirational."
He tilted his head, looking her up and down like he was trying to decide if fighting her was worth the paperwork. "You've got the big fan. Wind user. Sand. Probably loud."
"I'm standing right here."
"I know," he said. "That's the problem."
The proctor's voice rang out, clean and official. "Begin!"
Temari didn't bother with a dramatic stance. She reached over her shoulder, grabbed her fan, and snapped it open with a sharp thwack.
The sound alone made the crowd lean forward.
Shikamaru's eyes flicked to the shadow under the fan's ribs.
Good. He was paying attention.
Temari exhaled and swung.
Wind tore across the arena in a pale arc—fast enough to shave sand into a low storm, sharp enough to slice.
Shikamaru moved like he'd done this in his head a hundred times. He didn't dodge in panic. He stepped aside at the last second, letting the gust pass close enough to ruffle his ponytail and make his jacket snap.
Temari's second swing came before the first gust finished dying.
He jumped back.
Third swing—lower, aimed to cut his legs out.
He flipped, landing light.
Temari felt irritation bloom in her chest like a warm coal.
So he's not slow.
She planted her feet and pulled the fan wider, opening it to two circles.
The wind responded like a faithful dog.
"Not bad," Temari called, voice sweet in the way that wasn't sweet. "For someone who looks like he'd lose a fight to stairs."
Shikamaru's mouth twisted. "Stairs are troublesome."
Temari laughed once and swung again, hard.
The wind hit the ground and carved a long trench straight toward him, sand blasting upward.
Shikamaru darted left—
—and his shadow stretched wrong.
Temari's eyes narrowed.
There it was. The real fight.
Shadows slid along the sand like dark water, creeping for her feet.
Temari hopped back, fan snapping shut halfway as she moved. The shadow missed by a hair.
The crowd roared anyway, because they always roared at near-misses.
Temari used the noise like cover. She flicked her wrist and tossed a kunai upward.
Shikamaru's gaze followed it—just a fraction too long.
Temari swung her fan again, slicing the air.
The kunai changed its path mid-flight—caught in the wind—and shot toward him like a crooked bullet.
Shikamaru tilted his head and let it pass, but Temari's real target wasn't his throat.
The kunai landed behind him, stabbed into the sand at a shallow angle.
A tether point.
Temari smiled.
"Wind Style—" she started.
Shikamaru's shadow surged again, longer now, wider. It licked over the trench Temari had carved.
Temari realized, a beat late, what she'd done.
She hadn't just made distance.
She'd made shape.
A trench meant depth. An edge. A place where shadow could cling and stretch—
Temari clicked her tongue and snapped her fan open to three circles.
Wind erupted.
The trench collapsed into a rolling wave of sand, filling itself like a mouth swallowing a secret. Dust rose thick, turning the arena into a sunlit fog.
If Shikamaru wanted to use her terrain, he'd have to see it.
Temari moved first—always.
She dashed forward, low, fan angled like a blade. The sandstorm hid her feet, hid her shadow. Perfect.
Then Shikamaru spoke from somewhere inside the dust.
"Smart."
Temari's spine tightened.
His voice wasn't strained. It wasn't even distant. It was close.
Temari pivoted—
—and her shadow snagged.
Not her foot. Her shadow.
It stuck to something, pulled taut like a wire.
Temari's eyes widened as the sandstorm thinned for half a second and she saw it: Shikamaru's shadow stretched under the dust, a long black ribbon, anchored through the trench line she'd tried to erase.
He didn't need to see the whole arena. He just needed to know where her shadow would be.
"Got you," Shikamaru said, and his hand lifted.
Temari's body copied the motion against her will.
The first time it happened, it felt like being pranked by her own muscles. The second time, it felt like a cage.
Temari bared her teeth and yanked her fan down.
Wind exploded out, violent and messy, blasting sand into Shikamaru's face.
He blinked through it and kept his shadow locked.
Of course he did.
Temari's own arm lifted, mirroring his again. The fan raised—
No.
Temari strained, fighting her own joints, trying to force a misalignment. If she could get even a finger's difference—
Shikamaru's eyes sharpened, like he'd noticed the smallest shift.
"Stop resisting," he said, almost bored. "You're making it harder for both of us."
Temari wanted to spit sand at him.
Instead she smiled, because she was still Temari of the Sand and she didn't panic in public.
"Is that your strategy?" she called, voice bright. "Annoy me until I surrender?"
Shikamaru's gaze flicked upward—toward the stands. Toward the VIP box. Toward the kind of people who pretended this was about skill and not politics.
Then his eyes came back to her, quiet.
"No," he said. "My strategy is to win."
Temari's stomach dropped by half an inch.
Because he sounded like he meant it.
Shikamaru shifted his stance.
Temari's body mirrored, forced forward.
He moved his hand again—
—and Temari stepped toward the trench line without meaning to, toward the shadow anchor.
Shikamaru's shadow tightened like a noose.
Then Shikamaru tossed something.
A kunai? No—
A piece of cloth. A jacket?
It fluttered in the air like a stupid bird.
Temari's eyes tracked it despite herself. Her brain insisted on making sense of it.
Shikamaru's shadow shot up with it, stretched along the cloth's underside as it fell.
A moving shadow.
A moving shadow that drifted across the arena—
—and landed right in the trench line where Temari's shadow had snagged, reinforcing it, thickening the connection.
Temari's body stiffened hard enough her teeth clicked.
"Oh," she breathed, and it wasn't awe, it was fury.
Shikamaru stepped closer, still holding his hand out like a puppet master.
Temari's hands rose, copying his posture. Her fan lifted as if she'd politely volunteered to be disarmed.
"Check," he said.
Temari snapped, "Don't—"
He moved his fingers.
Temari's fingers moved too, and she hated that it felt so effortless for him.
Shikamaru's expression didn't gloat. It didn't smirk.
It was worse.
It was honest.
"This is the part where I could make you hit yourself," he said. "Or make you walk into another attack. Or make you drop your fan and step back and let me take the match clean."
Temari's pulse hammered in her throat. She could feel every eye on them. Every Leaf shinobi in the crowd thinking Look at our genius.
And somewhere in the back of her skull, a colder thought watched too.
This is an exam. This is harmless. This is normal.
And we're going to burn this place down anyway.
Temari swallowed sand and pride.
"Well?" she snapped. "Do it."
Shikamaru's eyes narrowed a fraction.
He looked… tired.
Not physically. Something deeper. Like he was already paying the cost of being smart in a village that turned brains into weapons.
His voice lowered. "You're strong. You don't waste movement. You're not sloppy."
Temari blinked, thrown off balance by the compliment more than the jutsu.
"And?" she said.
"And he said, "I'm out of chakra."
Temari stared.
"That's a lie," she hissed.
Shikamaru's eyelids drooped. "It's not. Shadow possession takes a lot. Especially on someone with… big gusty murder energy."
Temari's mouth twitched despite herself.
The crowd was shouting now, the proctor's voice rising over it, trying to maintain the illusion of control.
"Shikamaru has immobilized Temari! Will Temari concede?"
Temari's face burned with heat and rage.
She could still fight. If she could free even an inch of movement, she could—
Shikamaru sighed.
Then, clearly, loudly, into the stadium's hungry silence, he said:
"I forfeit."
For a second, the arena didn't understand what it had heard. Like the whole crowd had hit a lag spike.
Temari's shadow snapped free.
Her body jerked as control returned. The fan nearly slipped from her hands.
She stood there, breathing hard, and stared at him like he'd just stabbed the rules.
The proctor's eyes widened. "—What?"
"I forfeit," Shikamaru repeated, and scratched the back of his head like this was a scheduling problem. "I don't have enough chakra to keep going. And if I win, I'd have to fight again today. That's… too much."
The crowd erupted.
Boos, laughter, yelling, confused applause. The kind of noise people make when they realize the story has become complicated and they don't know what to do with their hands.
Temari's throat went tight.
You had me.
He had her.
He could have won. He could have humiliated her cleanly, made Sand look weak in front of Konoha's nobles and the Hokage and the masked Kazekage sitting like a statue carved from patience.
And he'd thrown it away like a used tag.
Temari snapped, "Are you insane?"
Shikamaru looked at her, finally letting a sliver of emotion through.
Annoyance.
"Probably," he said. "But I'm also tired."
Temari's eyes narrowed. "That's not an answer."
"It is if you're me."
Temari stepped forward, fan still in hand, and leaned in just enough that her words wouldn't carry to the stands.
"Why?" she demanded, voice low and sharp. "You won. You already did the hard part."
Shikamaru's gaze flicked past her shoulder—toward the benches of the Leaf genin, toward the people he'd grown up with. Toward that pink-haired girl with glasses sitting near Ino, notebook open, scribbling like she was trying to draw the stadium into something less terrifying.
Temari didn't know the girl's name. Only that her posture was too tense for someone who wasn't fighting.
Shikamaru looked back at Temari and shrugged, almost gentle.
"I don't want to be the kind of person who keeps winning just because he can," he said.
Temari's chest tightened with something she didn't want to name.
Because that was a lie too.
Or not a lie—worse.
A truth that didn't fit in their orders.
The proctor cleared his throat loudly, trying to wrestle the narrative back.
"Winner: Temari of the Sand!"
More noise. More confusion. Temari lifted her fan again and gave the crowd the wave they wanted. The wave that said Yes, this is fine.
Inside her ribs, something felt sour.
Shikamaru turned and started walking away like the match had been a minor inconvenience.
Temari called after him, unable to stop herself, "Nara."
He paused without turning.
Temari's voice softened by half a shade, just enough to be real.
"You're… bothersome," she said.
Shikamaru's shoulders slumped like he'd been complimented. "Yeah."
Then he kept walking.
Temari stood there alone in the sun, fan open, victory announced like a joke everyone pretended to understand.
And somewhere in her blood, the secret plan hummed—quiet and huge.
Soon.
She closed her fan with a snap that sounded like a door shutting.
Back in the tunnel, Kankurō grabbed her shoulder as soon as she stepped into shadow.
"What was that?" he hissed. "Why are you making friends?"
Temari shrugged him off. "I didn't. He forfeited."
Kankurō blinked, then scowled harder. "That's worse."
Temari shot him a look. "You're going to lecture me about 'worse' after the things you do with puppets?"
Kankurō's jaw tightened. "Don't get distracted."
Temari's gaze flicked to Gaara.
He hadn't moved. Not during the fight. Not at the announcement. Not at the crowd.
He stared toward the arena like he could see through walls.
Temari didn't ask what he was thinking. She didn't want the answer.
She adjusted the strap of her fan and forced her shoulders loose again.
Above them, the stadium roared for the next match.
Temari listened, and for a split second the noise sounded like surf.
Like a storm a long way off.
Still far enough to pretend it wasn't real.