The courtyard still hummed with the ghost of earlier battles. Students packed the stands shoulder to shoulder, whispering the same question: could anyone crack Reina's cold, surgical style—or would Tetsuo's raw force simply bulldoze through it?
Reina stepped into the ring first, chin lifted, eyes like cut glass. No theatrics. No smile this time. Just a predator walking into its own territory.
Tetsuo rolled his shoulders and strode out opposite her, the wolfish grin back on his face as if nothing in the world could dent it. He cracked his neck, flexed his knuckles, and let his gaze sweep the crowd—drinking in the noise like fuel.
The proctor raised his hand. "Begin!"
⸻
Tetsuo exploded forward.
No setup, no feint—just a straight-line charge and a sledgehammer right meant to end the conversation. The wind of it hissed.
Reina didn't meet force with force. She pivoted half a step, the fist shaving past her cheek. Her forearm flicked up and bit into the tendons of his wrist, her other hand knifing into the meat of his ribs—two precise touches more insult than injury.
Tetsuo snorted. "Cute."
He unleashed a combination fit for a heavier fighter: hook, cross, body shot, clinch. His arms were a storm shelter slamming shut around her.
Reina let the hook graze her guard, slipped the cross by a hair's breadth, let the body shot thud against a lowered elbow—and when the clinch snapped closed, she didn't fight it head-on. She turned with it, heel skimming dust, and speared two fingers into the nerve cluster just above his elbow.
Tetsuo's bicep jolted. His grip faltered for a heartbeat.
In that heartbeat, Reina's knee tapped his thigh—exact spot, exact depth—then she ghosted away before he could hammer her.
The crowd murmured. That wasn't evasion; it was extraction, like she was unscrewing pieces from him mid-fight.
Samui's voice was cool from the railing. "She's mapping him."
Karui folded her arms tighter. "Then he should break the map."
Tetsuo tried.
⸻
He cut the angle and came again, feinting high, driving low. Reina's hips slid; her palm brushed his brow, not striking, measuring. He swung to blow through her guard; she let it smash against forearms shaped to absorb, and answered with a short, mean elbow that kissed the side of his jaw and made his grin twitch.
He answered with a shove that would've lifted most students clean off their feet.
Reina's heels carved two neat scars in the dirt—and stopped. She returned to center like a needle finding north.
"Stand still and fight," Tetsuo growled, stalking.
"I am," she replied, voice flat.
He surged. She baited.
He bit.
Her shoulder dipped as if she were about to pivot right; Tetsuo lunged to cut her off—and ran chest-first into a palm spike to the sternum that knocked his breath crooked for a blink. In the same motion she clipped the inside of his lead knee with her shin.
Thud.
Tetsuo blinked hard, vision sharpening. She's picking tendons. Fine.
He threw the plan out the window and reached for what made him dangerous.
⸻
The next exchange was not pretty.
Tetsuo bulldozed, swinging and stepping, forcing Reina to feel every ounce he carried. He half-hip-tossed her, then switched and clubbed at her guard with clamped forearms, driving her back toward the edge. She met him there—no retreat left—and finally traded.
Crack—his hook hammered against her forearm and skimmed her cheek.
Smack—her palm rattled his ear.
Thud—his knee bounced off her hip bone.
Tap—her elbow sank into the hollow above his liver.
Their breath turned harsh. The crowd howled at the violence. Even Takuma's half-lidded eyes opened to a slit, following the ugliness with clinical interest.
"She'll either cut him apart," he murmured around a cigarette, "or get drowned trying."
Tetsuo smelled blood. He crashed forward with a bear's clinch, locked her head under his forearm, and yanked—dragging her down into the same crushing headlock that had ended Raizen.
Reina's expression didn't change—but her hands changed shape.
Her right thumb dug under the meat of his wrist. Her left hand hooked his pinky. The twist was tiny, technical, and merciless.
Tetsuo's forearm spasmed open.
Reina slipped out like water. Her heel raked down his shin. She rose inside his guard and rapped a knuckle into the nerve at his collarbone.
His shoulder stuttered. His next punch arrived a half-beat late.
That half-beat was all she ever needed.
⸻
The rhythm shifted.
Reina's footwork shortened; her attacks lengthened. She didn't retreat now—she nudged. She shepherded Tetsuo with angles more than distance, building a cage he couldn't see.
A jab that barely touched his nose, just enough to pull his head.
A low kick that kissed the inside of his thigh, just enough to deaden the step.
A palm that skimmed his jawline, just enough to rattle his vestibular sense.
Tetsuo snarled and tried to break the cage with a haymaker meant to end things. Reina's head slipped outside the arc; her hand opened and slapped his ear again—an ugly, effective ear clap that staggered him half a step.
Omoi flinched reflexively on the sidelines, hand ghosting to his own ear. "She's stacking disorientation."
Karui hissed, "Punch her!"—as if volume could restore Tetsuo's balance.
He obliged—rushing with anger instead of calculation. Reina invited it. She left a rib open; he took it, his knuckles thudding hard. She winced—and in the exhale of pain she slid inside his arm and locked his wrist against her shoulder.
Her hips turned.
His elbow almost turned with it.
Tetsuo tore free before it screamed—but the escape cost him posture. Reina's knee hammered into his gut. Air burst from him. She followed with a short uppercut that drove his face up into the sunlight.
The crowd roared. Now it looked like Reina was hunting.
⸻
Tetsuo's eyes sharpened even through the hurt. He stopped charging. He circled left, then cut right, feinting to pull a counter and find a path back into a clinch. Reina gave him nothing clean. She dipped a shoulder, then cut across his stance and brushed his ankle with a drag that almost tripped him. He caught himself and kicked at where she'd been—
—she wasn't there.
She came in on his blind quarter and threaded a straight palm under his chin. Not a knockout strike—a posture breaker. His head jerked. His spine lined up wrong for a breath.
In that breath, Reina turned her whole body like a blade.
Heel—inside thigh.
Elbow—floating ribs.
Knee—solar plexus.
Backfist—cheekbone.
Each impact was a stamp on a blueprint only she could see. Tetsuo's guard fell into pieces trying to cover all the fires at once.
He roared and swung wild. Reina swayed and let the fist pass, then punished the overextension with a crisp heel trip. Tetsuo's feet tangled. He dropped to one knee, hand shooting down to post.
Reina stamped his posting hand flat, pinning it for an instant, then snapped a heel toward his temple.
She stopped the kick an inch short.
The air over his ear cracked like a whip.
Tetsuo froze—not from mercy, from fury—and surged up to punish the pause.
That's when she took everything.
Her stopping kick wasn't a pause; it was a beat in a song only she heard. The foot that had hovered slammed down and spun her on the ball of the other. Her shoulder lined. Her hips followed.
The spinning back elbow detonated against his jaw.
CRACK.
Tetsuo's body turned off. He toppled to his side, a heavy sack finding the dirt.
Silence ate the courtyard.
Then the noise hit like a wave.
⸻
The proctor slid in, hand up. "Stop! Winner: Reina!"
Cheers and gasps collided in the same breath. A few of the general students simply stared, quiet, the way people stare at a surgical instrument and only later realize it's sharp.
Reina exhaled once, steadying the pulse in her wrist. She looked down at Tetsuo without triumph—only confirmation. The predator's look: hunt complete.
Karui's jaw worked, a soundless curse caught somewhere between teeth and pride.
Omoi, bruised from yesterday's lesson, nodded once to himself. "She didn't just out-skill him," he muttered, voice thin. "She unmade his choices."
Samui's eyes lingered, cool and measuring. "Her control is cleaner than before."
Takuma flicked ash to the dust without looking away from the ring. "And colder," he said, barely audible.
Tetsuo groaned and rolled to his back, blinking up at the sky. His jaw worked once, twice. Pride burned in his eyes, but the fight was already on the far side of the river.
Reina turned and walked off the stage, the roar of the crowd chasing her steps but never touching her face.
The semifinal bracket shifted in every mind at once.
The courtyard still shook from the last bout, the air buzzing with a thousand whispers. Names ricocheted around the stands—Reina, Tetsuo, Samui—until the proctor's voice cracked through with a problem nobody wanted:
"Due to the bracket gap… Samui advances without an opponent."
Boos. Groans. A few cheers from the lazy. The Elite side of the stands shifted with bored confidence. A free pass was still a pass.
Then Principal Kanzō stepped forward.
The murmurs died without him asking.
Kanzō's gaze passed over the Elite row first—sharp uniforms, polished posture, pride thick as lacquer. He studied each face the way a blacksmith studies metal before the hammer falls. His eyes gave nothing back.
"An empty slot," Kanzō said, voice even. "A match without friction makes no blade."
He turned to the general students. Most straightened on instinct. A few shrank. More than a few looked away. Kanzō let the silence stretch, measuring how long it took before anyone could stand it.
"Today's lesson was discipline," he went on, eyes half-lidded. "But discipline without pressure is just comfort. Kumogakure doesn't raise comfortable shinobi."
A ripple rolled through the stands. Someone hissed, "He's going to pick one of us?" Another: "He can't. This is the Elite tournament."
Kanzō ignored them. He began to walk the edge of the ring, slow enough for the tension to gather, eyes skimming faces the way wind skims grass.
He lingered on a lanky boy who flinched when their eyes met.
Too soft.
A stocky girl with a brave chin and trembling hands.
Too green.
A cluster of clan heirs from other classes—proud, polished, safe.
Too predictable.
He moved on.
Then he saw him.
Daichi wasn't standing tall to be seen. He wasn't posturing for respect. He was just… there—hands loosely taped, shoulders square, that same stubborn, unglamorous presence that had refused to crack all morning. The boy who ate precision and answered with stubborn truth. The boy who took a Kamizuru heir's best and gave him the floor. The boy who let Mizue teach him, then used her lesson to beat her at her own game.
Kanzō's eyes lit, a flash like flint. A feral grin crept across his face, the kind that says the hammer has found the steel it wants.
He stopped.
All of the stands leaned with him.
"Since we lack a proper opponent," Kanzō said, voice carrying clean to the back rows, "we will not hand out free victories. We will introduce a wildcard."
The word hit like a thrown kunai. The Elite row bristled. The general students went electric.
"A wildcard," Kanzō repeated, savoring the weight of it. "One chance to prove you belong in the storm with the Elite. One chance to make this class remember that talent is not a bloodline and pressure is the only equalizer."
He let the pause live a heartbeat too long. Faces turned, hunting the pick in the crowd, hands rising to point at brothers, friends, themselves.
Kanzō raised a hand and the courtyard stilled.
"My choice," he said, "is the student who does not break when struck—who learns mid-fall and stands heavier when he rises. The student who made an heir look ordinary and treated fear like a rumor."
Mizue's eyes slid across the general row and stopped exactly where Kanzō had stopped. Her lips pressed into a thin line—and then, just barely, softened into something proud.
On the Elite railing, Karui leaned forward, eyes shining with the promise of violence. "Pick him," she whispered, almost to herself.
Reina tilted her head, smirk reappearing. "This might be interesting."
Samui didn't blink. But for the first time today, the faintest change touched her posture—a microscopic shift that read like acceptance. Like welcome.
Kanzō's grin sharpened.
"From the General Class," he announced, the words ringing like a bell before a storm, "the wildcard is—"
He pointed.
"—Daichi."
The courtyard detonated.
Some shouted "Unfair!" Others screamed themselves hoarse in a single breath. A few of the Elite scoffed, then shut up when they remembered who Daichi had put down. Somewhere, Jin just sat with his mouth open, trying to understand how a boy from the same benches was now being thrown into lightning.
Daichi didn't throw his hands up or beat his chest. He nodded once to Mizue. She tapped her knuckles to her heart without smiling.
Then he rolled his shoulders and stepped toward the ring as if someone had called his name for lunch.
Kanzō turned back to the fighters, voice returning to iron.
"Samui. Daichi. No more speeches. No free passes. Show this class what happens when ice meets stone."
The crowd swelled again, then hushed in a single, anticipatory inhale.
Somewhere above the arena, thunder rumbled over the mountains.
The storm had its friction.