Kakashi didn't run.
That was the thing about him that made Sasuke want to commit crimes.
The stadium loomed ahead—stone ribs, banners snapping in a wind that didn't feel like wind. It felt like the village was inhaling and refusing to exhale.
From inside, the crowd's noise rolled out in angry waves. Not cheering. Not even impatience.
Hunger.
Sasuke's legs ate distance anyway. He could feel the burn in his calves, that familiar razor-sweet ache from a month of being ground down and rebuilt. The Sharingan wasn't even on. He didn't need it to know the rhythm of his own stride.
Kakashi's voice cut through the roar like a blade slid under a door.
"You're late."
Sasuke didn't look at him. "I know."
"You're going to walk in there and everyone's going to stare."
"So?"
Kakashi's visible eye narrowed. "So don't let it get in your head."
Sasuke's jaw ticked. Everything was already in his head. The arena. The eyes on him. The way Gaara's sand had moved like it wanted to eat light. The way the curse mark still felt like it was whispering under his skin whenever he got too quiet.
And under all of that—
The Chidori.
It was there even before he started it. A memory-groove carved into his nervous system, waiting for the current.
He flexed his fingers once. Twice. Like he was testing the idea of electricity.
"You're thinking too loud," Kakashi said, and it was annoying because it was true.
Sasuke didn't answer. He reached the gate and felt the barrier's hum against his skin like heat off a stove.
Two Leaf shinobi at the entrance stiffened, recognizing Kakashi first, then Sasuke.
"Uchiha—" one of them started.
Kakashi flicked a hand. "He's with me."
No drama. No delay. Kakashi's existence was a credential.
They passed through.
The sound hit Sasuke full-force.
Jeers. Shouts. Vendors trying to keep selling like the world wasn't sharpening its teeth. Somewhere, a drunk voice yelled "Fight already!" like it was a personal complaint to the gods.
The hallway beyond the gate smelled like old stone, sweat, and lacquered wood from the arena railings. Sasuke caught a glimpse of a proctor ahead—Genma, toothpick in his mouth—standing in the arena center like a placeholder for the concept of "order."
Genma's voice carried, calm and professional.
"We will wait."
The crowd booed him for it. Like discipline was an insult.
Sasuke kept walking.
Kakashi leaned in just slightly, close enough that the words were only Sasuke's. "Remember. You hit him—then you stop. You don't chase him into whatever he is."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Whatever he is?"
Kakashi didn't answer.
That was also the thing about him: he could smell storms and refused to name them.
The arena gates opened, sunlight slamming into Sasuke's eyes, and for a split second the whole stadium looked like a painted bowl full of faces.
Sasuke stepped out.
He didn't bow.
He didn't wave.
He just walked onto the sand like it belonged to him.
Across from him, Gaara stood waiting.
Still.
Sand pooled around his feet like a loyal animal.
Gaara's eyes were fixed on him with the kind of interest that wasn't about winning.
It was about opening.
Sasuke's hand twitched.
He could feel the Chidori itch behind his ribs, a thing that wanted to be born screaming.
Genma raised his arm.
Sasuke's world narrowed to the space between his body and Gaara's.
Everything else became background noise.
Until it didn't.
They were stalling.
Everyone could feel it—like when Iruka used to "take attendance" for way too long because somebody important hadn't shown up yet.
Genma stood in the arena like a statue with a toothpick, doing that jōnin thing where they pretend boredom is the same as calm. Proctors rotated in and out. Somebody brought Genma water. Somebody whispered to him. Genma nodded like this was all normal.
The crowd did not agree.
"Where's the Uchiha?!" a guy shouted from two sections over.
"Probably crying in a mirror!" someone else yelled, and a bunch of people laughed too hard.
Naruto's knee bounced so fast it felt like it might take off and leave his body behind.
"He's coming," Naruto snapped, like he was personally responsible for Sasuke's legs working.
Ino—sitting near Sylvie with the other "benched but still here to suffer" crew—snorted loud enough for Naruto to hear.
"Sure, Naruto," she called. "Maybe he got lost on the way to his own ego."
Naruto whipped around. "He is NOT lost—he's—he's—"
He didn't have an excuse that didn't sound like a love letter, and that made it worse.
Sylvie wasn't talking. She was doing that thing where she watched the VIP box too hard, like her eyes were trying to carve holes through faces. She'd been tense since the opening ceremony—tight shoulders, jaw set, fingers rubbing the bridge of her nose every few minutes like she was fighting off a headache.
Naruto hated that.
He hated when she looked like she was bracing for impact and nobody else in the world noticed.
Naruto leaned toward her anyway. "Hey. You okay?"
Sylvie didn't look away from the box. "I'm fine."
That meant not fine.
In the VIP seats, the Third Hokage sat like a tired mountain forced to play "dignified." The Fire Daimyō was there with his little entourage, smiling like this was a nice day at the theater.
And the Kazekage—
Naruto squinted.
The Kazekage sat too comfortably.
Not "guest of honor" comfortable. Not "political ally" comfortable.
More like… owner of the schedule.
Every time the Kazekage shifted, Naruto got the weirdest urge to look away. Like his brain was trying to protect itself by refusing to focus.
"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered somewhere behind them, voice dead. "This is going to make the whole day run late."
Naruto shot him a look. "You already forfeited. Stop caring."
"I care about naps," Shikamaru replied. "This is a nap crime."
The crowd's restlessness rose like heat.
Vendors stopped shouting. That was the first real sign something was wrong. People only stop selling when they think they might have to run.
Genma opened his mouth again.
"We will—"
A ripple moved through the stadium.
Naruto felt it before he saw it: the shift of attention, the sudden snapping of thousands of eyes toward one gate.
And then Sasuke walked in.
Of course he did.
Late. Silent. Perfect hair. Expression like the world was beneath him and also an enemy.
Naruto's chest did the stupid thing it always did around Sasuke now: half jealousy, half relief, half I'm going to kill you for making me worry.
Naruto stood up and yelled, "YOU'RE LATE!"
Sasuke didn't look up.
Naruto yelled louder. "I SAID YOU'RE LATE, TEME—!"
Sasuke still didn't look up.
Which meant Naruto had been acknowledged, technically, in Sasuke's private universe, and that was enough to make Naruto want to bite a wall.
Genma's hand lifted.
The arena quieted—not fully, but enough for the first sound of the match to cut through.
"Begin."
Sasuke moved.
Not fast like "wow, a genin is quick."
Fast like someone had shaved the air thin.
Gaara didn't move at all. His sand did.
It surged up in front of him, a living wall, and Sasuke vanished into the blur of motion—left, right, around, in, out—testing the sand's reactions like he was trying to find the gap in a heartbeat.
Naruto's eyes strained.
He couldn't keep up.
Not really.
But he could see the shape of it: Sasuke wasn't just running. He was measuring. He was looking for the moment when the sand hesitated.
Gaara's sand didn't hesitate.
The wall snapped out like a fist and Sasuke barely twisted away, the sand grazing his sleeve, shredding cloth like it was paper.
Naruto's stomach flipped.
"He's gonna get crushed," Kiba said, voice low and mean with worry. Akamaru's head poked from his jacket, ears flattened.
"No," Naruto said, because if he said yes, something in his chest might split.
Sasuke slammed his foot down, skidding, and—
He stopped moving like a runner.
He moved like a blade.
Hands flicked. Chakra gathered.
The air changed.
Naruto heard it first: a sound like a thousand angry birds screaming inside a metal pipe.
Chidori.
The sound came through the arena speakers and the crowd reacted like the stadium itself had roared. People leaned forward. Even the vendors forgot their own names.
Naruto's skin prickled.
Sylvie flinched beside him—hard, like the noise had slapped her.
Sasuke's hand became a bright, violent knot of lightning. Blue-white, crackling, wrong in a way Naruto couldn't explain except that it looked like it wanted to tear the world open and climb inside.
Gaara's eyes widened.
For the first time, he looked… interested.
Sasuke launched.
He didn't go straight into the sand wall. He cut around it, using speed so sharp it looked like the world was skipping frames.
Gaara's sand snapped to meet him—
And Sasuke shoved his lightning through the defense like it was wet cloth.
The Chidori struck.
There was a sound like stone splitting.
Gaara's body jerked.
For a single perfect second, the stadium went dead silent.
Then blood hit the sand.
One drop. Dark. Real.
Naruto's mouth went dry.
Gaara looked down at his own chest like it was a foreign object. Like he couldn't understand the concept of "hurt."
His face—calm mask—cracked.
Not literally, but the expression did. The sanity. The careful stillness.
Something inside Gaara moved.
Naruto felt it in his bones like a low earthquake under his feet.
Gaara's sand writhed, angry now, not automatic. It surged around him in thick waves, building into something heavier, meaner.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
Naruto could see him register it: this is not normal defense.
This is something alive.
Up in the VIP box, the Third Hokage's posture tightened—just slightly, like an old man forcing his spine to be a weapon again.
And the Kazekage—
The Kazekage leaned forward a fraction.
Like he'd been waiting for the blood.
Naruto didn't know why that made his stomach turn.
He just knew it did.
Then—
Feathers drifted down.
At first, Naruto thought it was some stupid celebration thing. Like somebody had thrown confetti early.
But the feathers weren't colorful.
They were white.
Too white.
They fell in a slow, thick snow that didn't belong under a clear sky.
A few people laughed, confused.
Then people started slumping.
Not dramatically. Not like they'd been punched.
Like their strings got cut.
A man in the row below them yawned wide—then his head dropped forward and he didn't lift it.
A woman blinked, blinked again, then her eyes rolled back and she folded sideways into her husband's shoulder.
The sound of the stadium changed—not cheering, not booing.
Thuds.
Bodies hitting benches. Arms sliding off rails. A thousand little impacts, soft and wrong.
Naruto's breath hitched.
"Hey—HEY—!" Naruto grabbed the shoulder of the guy in front of him. "Wake up!"
The guy didn't move.
Naruto looked around, panic trying to crawl up his throat—
Most of the crowd was going down.
In waves.
Like someone had pulled a curtain over their brains.
Shinobi in the stands swayed too—chūnin and jonin—some fighting it, some already slumped, some collapsing mid-reach as they tried to catch civilians.
Genjutsu.
Naruto didn't have the word genjutsu in his mouth yet, but his body knew the shape of this: invisible attack, quiet kill.
Sasuke in the arena turned his head sharply, eyes flicking to the stands, reading the falling bodies like a scoreboard.
Gaara's sand was still moving, building, hungry—
But Sasuke's attention was no longer on the fight.
Naruto saw it in Sasuke's posture: that micro-shift from "match" to "war."
Sasuke's gaze snapped up to the VIP box.
To the Third.
To the Kazekage.
And Naruto, staring at the snowfall of feathers and the sudden dead weight of the world, felt something cold click into place:
This wasn't an exam anymore.
This was a trap.
And they were already inside it.