Goza and Sayo stood on opposite sides of the arena and neither of them liked it.
Goza on the north side. Kusarigama in his right hand, the chain coiled loosely, the weighted end hanging near his knee. He was a boy who'd walked into this exam three times and walked out with nothing three times and was not going to let anything, not even a teammate, stand between him and the fourth attempt being different.
Sayo on the south side. No weapon drawn. Hands at her sides. Her flat brown eyes were fixed on Goza with an apologetic look.
They knew each other. One year of shared training. Countless missions, meals, arguments, silences. Sayo knew how Goza fought quite well. The kusarigama's range. His wind style. His tendency to lead with the chain and follow with the sickle. His temper which made him sloppy when it peaked.
Goza knew Sayo just as well. He knew she was a genjutsu specialist. He knew that her illusions were subtle, that they were difficult to notice and thus difficult to break. He knew that fighting her meant questioning every sense, every second, every breath.
He also knew how to break genjutsu. Disrupt the chakra flow. Flare your energy. Shatter the illusion before it takes hold. Every academy student learned how to break out of genjutsu. If they were paying attention in school anyway.
He paid attention in school. He just wasn't born with the gift of talent.
Chiasa raised her hand. "Third match. Sayo versus Goza."
She dropped her hand. "Begin."
Goza attacked first.
The kusarigama's chain sang as he whipped it forward, the weighted end arcing toward Sayo's midsection. The chain covered ten meters in less than a second, the iron weight whistling through the air.
Sayo sidestepped. The weight passed her hip by inches and she was already backpedaling, creating distance, her hands still at her sides. She hadn't reached for a weapon. Hadn't formed a seal.
Goza yanked the chain back and swung again. Overhead this time, the weight coming down in a vertical arc aimed at Sayo's skull. She dodged left. The weight cratered the sand where she'd been standing.
"Fight back!" Goza shouted. "Don't just run!"
Sayo said nothing. She kept moving. Circling. Her flat eyes tracked his chain, his feet, his hands. Watching for the moment his attention shifted.
Goza pressed forward. The kusarigama spun in his hands, chain and sickle alternating, creating a whirlwind of iron that covered his front and sides. He closed the distance in aggressive steps, each swing driving Sayo further back toward the arena wall.
She couldn't match him physically. He knew that. She knew that. The kusarigama gave him range and his wind style gave him area denial. In a straight fight, he'd overwhelm her in minutes.
Which meant she wasn't going to let it be a straight fight.
Sayo's hands came together, weaving multiple hand signs as she dodged another chain swing.
Goza felt it immediately. The sand began crawling up his body, immobilizing him. Then soon, Sayo formed out of the sand with a kunai in her hand stabbing down toward his heart.
"Not today…" he growled.
He flared his chakra. A burst of energy that disrupted the flow through his chakra network, shattering any foreign influence before it could take hold. Standard genjutsu release. "Kai!"
He felt the technique break. Something that had been forming at the edges of his perception dissolved, a tingling sensation behind his eyes that vanished the moment his chakra flared.
He grinned. "I told you. I know your tricks, Sayo. You can't catch me with that anymore."
Sayo's expression didn't change. Her flat eyes watched him from across the sand.
"Maybe not, but I got more than just genjutsu up my sleeve." She grinned.
"Liar." Goza charged.
The kusarigama led the assault. Chain whipping left, sickle slashing right, wind style occasionally used to mix things up. He was faster than her. Stronger. More aggressive. Every exchange pushed her backward, forced her to dodge rather than counter, kept her hands too busy avoiding iron and wind to form seals.
He was winning. He could feel it. The rhythm of the fight was his. Sayo was on her back foot, reacting to him instead of acting, her flat eyes tracking his attacks with the desperation of someone who was running out of room.
His chain caught her shoulder. The weighted end clipped her on the pass and she stumbled. He followed with a sickle swing that she barely ducked, the blade cutting a line through the air above her head.
"Come on!" Goza pressed harder. "Fight me! You're a shinobi of Sunagakure, even you're not this pathetic!"
Sayo pulled a kunai from her pouch. Finally armed. She parried his next sickle swing, the metals clashing, and countered with a slash at his forearm. He pulled back and the blade caught only air.
But she was fighting now. Engaging. Meeting his attacks instead of just avoiding them. It wasn't enough. Her taijutsu was nothing special and her kunai skills weren't anything either. Goza's kusarigama had more range, more versatility, more options.
He landed a kick to her ribs. She gasped and staggered. He followed with a chain wrap around her wrist that yanked her forward, off balance, and his fist connected with her jaw. Her head snapped sideways. Blood appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"Stay down if you got any sense, Sayo." Goza told her. They were teammates. He didn't want to hurt her worse than he had to. But he needed this win more than he needed anything else in his life.
Sayo didn't stay down. She wiped the blood from her mouth and raised her kunai.
He hit her again. A wind jutsu that knocked her backward three meters. She caught herself, slid in the sand, and came up with her guard raised.
He hit her again. The chain wrapped around her ankle and yanked her feet from under her. She hit the sand on her back.
She got up.
He hit her again. Sickle slash that opened a shallow cut across her forearm. She hissed but didn't drop the kunai.
She kept getting up.
"Sayo, just stay down!" Goza shouted with frustration. "It's over! You can't beat me!"
"You're right…" Sayo said quietly. Blood ran from the cut on her arm. Her jaw was swelling where his fist had connected. Her ribs ached. "I can't beat you like this."
She raised her kunai one more time.
Goza's jaw set. If she wouldn't quit, he'd end it. Cleanly. One more hit, hard enough to put her down but not hard enough to do permanent damage. He'd apologize later. Buy her a doll or whatever girls liked.
He wound up the kusarigama for the finishing blow. The chain spun above his head, building momentum, the weighted end whistling in a circle that would end with an impact against Sayo's temple. Enough force to knock her unconscious. Enough to end the match.
He swung.
The chain passed through empty air.
Sayo wasn't there.
She was behind him. To his left. Three feet away, inside his guard, inside his chain's range, inside the space where the kusarigama couldn't reach because the chain needed distance to build force.
Her kunai pressed against his throat. The cold edge drew a thin line of red beneath his jaw.
"I'm sorry, Goza." Sayo said with blood running down her lip but she was smiling. "I might have just ruined your chance to become chunin again."
Goza didn't move. His eyes were wide. His hands were frozen mid-swing, the kusarigama's chain hanging limp, its momentum dead.
He didn't understand.
She'd been losing. She'd been losing the entire fight. He'd hit her, cut her, knocked her down. She'd been slower, weaker, less armed, less everything. He'd been dominating from the first exchange. Every indicator, every metric, every piece of evidence said he was winning.
And now she had a kunai at his throat.
"How?" he whispered.
Sayo looked at him with those flat brown eyes. The same eyes that had watched him from across training grounds and mission camps and exam rooms for three years. The eyes that saw everything and showed nothing.
"You broke my first genjutsu," she said. "The one I wanted you to break."
The words hit him like cold water.
"There was a second one underneath it. Cast at the same time, layered beneath the first. When you disrupted your chakra to break the obvious illusion, the second one was still there. It stayed after the first one because you never bothered to break the second one."
Goza's face went grey.
"Everything after you shouted 'Kai' was inside my genjutsu. Every hit you landed. Every cut, every kick, every chain swing. You felt them connect. You saw me stumble and bleed. But the distances were wrong. The angles were wrong. You were hitting where I wanted you to hit, not where I actually was."
"That's... that's not..."
"The cuts are real. The bruises are real. I let you hit me. I had to, or you'd realize the illusion wasn't matching your reality. The genjutsu adjusted your perception by inches, not miles. Just enough that your finishing blow would miss. Just enough that I could step inside your guard when you committed to an attack that wasn't going where you thought it was."
Silence.
From the gallery, the arena was motionless. Every shinobi staring and watching.
"You let me think I was winning…" Goza realized.
"I let you think you were beating me up. You landed real hits, but I chose which ones to take. The ones that hurt but didn't cripple. The ones that made you confident. The ones that made you commit to a finishing blow." She paused. "I'm sorry. You're stronger than me in every physical way. But you've always been a meathead."
The kunai pressed a fraction harder. The red line at his throat widened.
"This was the only way I could win."
Chiasa stepped forward. "The match is over. Winner: Sa..."
"NO!"
Goza exploded.
He threw himself sideways, away from the kunai, and the blade drew a longer line across his neck. But the blood was real and the rage that followed was realer.
"I DIDN'T LOSE!" He was on his feet, kusarigama spinning, his painted face twisted beyond recognition. "I DIDN'T LOSE TO A GENJUTSU! SHE CHEATED! SHE, I HAD HER, I WAS WINNING, I..."
"The match is over." Chiasa repeated.
"IT'S NOT OVER! I'M NOT DONE! I CAN STILL FIGHT! THREE EXAMS I'VE COME HERE AND THREE TIMES I'VE LEFT WITH NOTHING AND I'M NOT LEAVING WITH NOTHING AGAIN! I'M NOT..." Goza rushed forward.
Chiasa vanished.
One moment she was standing at the edge of the arena. The next she was behind Goza, one hand on his wrist, the other on the back of his neck. The kusarigama clattered to the sand. Goza's body folded as Chiasa drove him to the ground casually.
"The match," Chiasa said into his ear, "is over."
Goza struggled. His painted face scraped against the sand. His arms strained against Chiasa's grip. He screamed. The raw sound of someone watching the thing they wanted most disappeared for the fourth time.
The arena was silent around his screaming.
From the gallery, Homura looked at the ceiling. His thin face showed nothing. He simply shook his head at the sight, knowing his ally was going to the Genin Corps after this. No jonin would want to waste their time with a four-time failure of the chunin exams.
Sayo stood five meters away, kunai still in her hand, blood dripping from her jaw and her arm and the dozen small wounds Goza had inflicted. She watched her teammate thrash on the ground and felt sorry for him.
She wasn't sorry for winning. She knew what this meant to Goza. She knew that taking this match from him might be the thing that broke something in him that wouldn't heal.
She'd done it anyway. Because the exam demanded it. Because she wanted to advance. Because being a shinobi meant making choices that hurt people. However, at the end of the day, she had to do what was best for her career and her future.
That was how the world worked.
Chiasa released Goza when he stopped struggling. He lay face-down in the sand, breathing hard, his painted face pressed into the grit. His fist smashed the ground. Tears ran down his face.
Medical nin approached. Two for Sayo. Two for Goza, though his injuries were less physical than hers.
As Sayo walked toward the medical wing, she paused beside Goza's prone form. She didn't kneel. Didn't touch him.
"You're a better fighter than me, Goza," she said. "You always have been. But being a chunin isn't about who hits hardest. Please remember that."
He didn't respond. She walked on.
The arena floor was cleared. The maintenance workers swept the sand and wiped the blood and the stone.
Three matches done.
One left.
From the gallery, Mai leaped over the railing. She cracked her neck left, then right. Her glasses caught the lamplight.
Rasa stood on the opposite side of the gallery. Small gold dust particles floating around him.
They looked at each other across the arena.
Mai grinned.
Rasa looked at her with irritation and disdain.