Bonus Chapter (018) - The Final Exam {PT. II}

KONOHA

The rest of the battles went by in a blur. Pointless and insignificant. Jejune.

Temari, Shino, Tenten and Neji all made it to the next round seemingly without any effort. Both our teammates were summarily knocked out of the race. It wasn’t unexpected. How disgraceful, however, it must be for Kakashi that only the student he blatantly refused to train was the one to not suffer a catastrophic defeat.

Of course, we had yet to battle Kankuro, but we all knew what the result of this match would be. We had known this since the moment the pairings were announced a month ago. We leapt from the waiting room into the arena, the sleeves of our noble kimono, as well as our silken mane, billowing in the wind around us. Our feet touched the ground in a swirl of leaves, dust and chakra. From the feminine screams raging through the crowd above, we guessed the audience loved it.

Nothing like a bit of dramatic flair to get a few hearts racing, after all.

“Are you done showboating yet?” Kankuro’s puppet asked. The boy hung from the construct’s back, wrapped up in bandages from head to toe and disguised as the puppet itself. We could see the little chakra threads extending from the puppet’s hard points to his twitching fingers inside his cocoon of fabric.

Our Sharingan flickered off and we tilted our head, as we regarded the boy. “I guess,” we told him.

“...I hate your kind,” he spat a few seconds later, perhaps sensing the mockery in our response. “You sleazy, lecherous lout. I know what your intentions are for Temari, and I promise, I am going to beat it out of that powdered face of yours. Gigolo.”

We smiled at the boy. “Since you care so much about your sister, I guess I’ll go easy on you after all,” we tell him.

The Suna-nin growled in response. Our smile remained, unabated.

“Begin!” Genma said, signalling the start of the match.

“...”

The arena suddenly fell silent. Kankuro’s puppet still disguised as himself remained where it stood. We were now a few dozen paces behind it holding the cocooned Suna-nin to the arena wall. Our grip constricted, wrapping tightly around his neck as our chakra flooded his system, causing the energy flow to grow turbulent and his control over his weapons of choice to turn nonexistent. The puppet behind us fell to the ground with a noisy clatter, the henge shrouding it dispelling in a cloud of white smoke. Kankuro’s cocoon of bandages slowly unfurled, revealing his face pale from asphyxiation. The Shinobi clawed at our wrist in desperation, his hands unable to pry off our chakra-augmented grip.

“I-I yield,” he mouthed.

“He yields,” we said, relaying the message to our stunned proctor.

“...T-the winner is Uchiha Sasuke!” Genma announced, still in disbelief, the senbon in his mouth nearly falling to the ground.

We let the Suna-nin go and he slid to the ground choking for air. The arena remained silent but slowly the crowd seemed to register Genma’s words. It wasn’t until we flickered back to our seat in the waiting area that they finally returned to their shouting, screaming selves. The noise was nearly unbearable. They seemed surprised. Shocked even.

Why? we thought to ourself. 

What were they expecting?