"Look at me," Nagatsuka-sensei said sharply, taking Maaya's shoulders in both hands and squeezing hard. The girl's eyes were wide, her face pale, and her body tight with nervousness about the upcoming fight; she needed to be settled down.

Maaya tore her eyes away from the ring where, in less than a minute, she was going to face Takao. Takao of the dreamy eyes that she could lose herself in...if he would stop looking away every time she looked at him. (Was it embarrassment or disinterest? Boys were complicated!) Takao of the silky, messy hair that made her fingers itch to comb it straight. Takao of the tiny little smile that was always hovering at the corner of his mouth. The smile that she always found herself wondering if she could capture with a kiss...and, of course, she always dissolved into stammers and blushes when she found herself wondering.

With an effort of will she met Nagatsuka-sensei's eyes.

"Listen to me, girl," Nagatsuka-sensei said quietly, her voice full of steel. "You can do this. It's time to show that little punk what you can do. Don't hold back, take him down with your first strike. Which do you think he'll respect more, a trembling girl who rolls over at the first punch, or a kunoichi full of confidence who challenges him to improve, who forces him to train harder in order to measure up?"

"A kunoichi full of confidence?" Maaya said uncertainly.

"What are you, girl?" Nagatsuka-sensei demanded. It was a mantra between them.

"A rock leopard, sensei," Maaya responded, the words coming out by pure conditioned response that required no conscious thought. "Fast and strong."

"How fast do you strike?"

"Fast as a leopard, sensei."

"How fast do you strike?!"

"Fast as a leopard, sensei!"

"Godsdamnit, girl, how fast do you strike?! "

"FAST AS A LEOPARD, SENSEI!"

"How hard do you hit?!"

"HARD AS A LEOPARD, SENSEI!"

"Damn straight! Get in there and punt that kid into a wall!"

Maaya put one hand on the railing of the contestants' box and vaulted down to the sandy floor of the arena with the easy grace of the leopard Nagatsuka-sensei had trained her to be. She could feel the beast, her personal totem, rearing up around her in her imagination, its strength flowing through her as its thunderous roar rang in her mind's ears. She barely restrained herself from roaring alongside it, but could not prevent her lips from skinning back from bared teeth.

"Kick his ass, Maaya!" Akihiko yelled from the stands. She turned and gave him a braggart's half-bow of acknowledgement.

Takao, never flashy, walked calmly down the stairs. Unlike Maaya, who carried nothing but a double brace of kunai and wore no armor beyond a pair of trauma plates, he had two bandoleers of darts in an X across his chest and chains looped many times around his forearms. Dozens of metal scales studded his uniform, varying in size but each with a seal carefully carved into its surface; the pouches at his belt probably held even more. His hair was carefully pulled back, held out of his eyes behind his forehead protector. Despite that it still managed to resemble a sideways haystack more than a smooth ponytail.

"Congratulations on making it this far," he said, the smile sincere. "That landslide move in the canyon was amazing. Was that your idea?"

The leopard fled in disgust as blood rushed to Maaya's cheeks. "Th-thanks," she said. She cleared her throat, trying to make sure she wouldn't stammer again. "Yeah, that was mine. You were pretty good too. The way you breezed past that seal trap was smart. We had to brute force it."

He shrugged modestly. "We were lucky," he said. "Happened to spot it before we got too close, so we had the chance to tweak the trigger instead of fighting past it."

"Yeah, but you didn't just disable it, you—"

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, GIRL?! STOP FLIRTING AND KICK HIS ASS UP INTO HIS NECK!"

A wave of laughter rolled around the bleachers; the sound went through Maaya as a spike of shame that converted straight into firey rage when Takao joined in. It was a nervous, embarrassed laugh, but it was still a laugh and—

"Fight!" the proctor shouted.

The nervousness and shame had fled as the rage burned them away; at the proctor's word Maaya charged forward, the leopard roaring in her soul once again. She raised a kunai, ready to throw if he started a technique or reached for a seal—not to kill or harm, simply to interrupt—but Takao leaped forward, chakra blasting from his feet to send him up and over her head. In mid-flight his hands dipped into his pouches and sent dozens of metal disks scattering in all directions, the bright sun glinting on their seal-encrusted surfaces.

Maaya twisted, pushing chakra from her feet to leap blindly to the left. Some of those seal disks were undoubtedly about to land on or right in front of her and if she stepped near one it was over.

She hit the stone wall of the arena feet-first and ran along its surface, her body parallel to the ground as she cut handseals. "Wind Release: Sirocco!" she shouted. The burning-hot breath of the desert howled up the sandy arena, lifting the sand and scouring it across the disks, destroying their seals—some of them, at least. A line of fire and explosions bloomed in a straight line towards Takao; for a moment Maaya's heart stuttered in her chest as she thought he wouldn't move fast enough, that he would actually be caught in the jutsu. If the Sirocco scoured away the seals he wore on his body, potentially activating them in the process—

Fortunately, she wasn't giving him enough credit; he slapped a hand on his chest, activating one of the seals and producing a five-foot granite boulder that he ducked behind just in time.

The moment the wind passed he was up and away from the boulder, left hand hurling darts even as the right grabbed the largest scale off his chest—the size of a tea saucer, barely fitting between the bandoleers—and aimed it. Maaya knew what was coming; she slapped a hand on the surface of the wall, chakra-adhering it in place and letting her feet go out from under her so that she could reverse direction fast. Her body swung around on the pivot of her arm, the momentum of her run transferred straight into her shoulder in a shriek of pain that she ignored in favor of yanking hard to slingshot herself back the way she'd come.

She was just barely in time. The Water Cannon seal was nothing fancy—just a large storage seal set to eject its contents at high speed. Fill it with water and you had a zero-chakra equivalent of Mist's famous Water Bullet. Worse, Takao had apparently gotten one of the really big seals from somewhere (stupid clan kids and their jounin parents!), because there was enough water that it came out in a two-second geyser that he swept back towards her. She put on a burst of speed, staying just barely ahead of the blast until it ran out of water. It was so close on her heels that she could feel the splash soaking her calves.

Takao hurled the expended seal disk aside and started throwing darts from his bandoleers with both hands. The seals on each dart were too small to make out, but Maaya had no doubt they were there.

The best answer to darts would be a Reflecting Barrier, but Takao was too fast and too close. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!" Maaya thrust her hands forward, index fingers extended like spears. It wasn't the best counter, but it was the fastest and that was what mattered. Five meters in front of her pointing fingers, two disks of air froze in place, presenting a nearly invulnerable barrier to the oncoming storm of metal.

The emphasis was on the "nearly".

Two meters after leaving Takao's hands the explosive seals on the back of the first flight of darts detonated, accelerating the weapons forward at insane speeds. The first three slammed into the air barrier and were stopped, but the razor-sharp steel point of the fourth punched through; the impact made the soft iron shaft of the dart crumble into a messy ball that blasted the hole wider, shattering the barrier completely and opening the way for the flock of darts that followed.

Fortunately, the barriers had bought Maaya just enough time to finish the handseals of her next jutsu. "Wind Release: Air Push!" She slashed her palms from right to left in a double-strike move that would have made the village tai chi master nod in iron-faced approval.

Air Push was one of the simplest jutsu there was, just a short-ranged blast of air that wasn't really focused enough to cause harm. What it was absolutely wonderful at, however, was sending a massive group of incoming darts scattering in all directions, many of them back towards their owner. The proximity-sensor seals couldn't tell the difference between one human-sized moving object and another; as they came in range of Takao they started detonating.

She watched Takao's ice-blue eyes go wide as the wave of destruction swept over him. Her heart was in her throat as she charged forward, praying that Nagatsuka-sensei had been right and that Takao would be loading half-powered low-lethality tags. If he hadn't....

He had. Instead of blowing him to shreds the explosions only tossed him across the arena like a slap from a god. He slammed into the wall hard, all the breath going out of him, and collapsed to hands and knees. His forehead protector had come loose and the silky haystack was tumbling around his face as he tried to shake off the impact. She drove harder, chakra surging through her muscles as she closed the distance. Takao's chains were good in close, but she was better. If she closed the range, this fight was over.

BOOM!

She had been so focused on her target that she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings. One of the mines that Takao had dispensed at the start of the fight had been partially buried in sand raised by her Sirocoo and she'd missed it. It sensed her passage and detonated, hurling her into the air and spinning her like a rag doll. The blast was soft, again not intended to kill, but more than enough to interrupt her movement and throw her where, unfortunately, another group of mines waited.

She was still two feet above the ground when the next patch of mines sensed her and detonated, blowing her back into the air like balls in a juggler's hands. The trauma plate on her back soaked most of the damage, but it still felt like she'd taken a hard punch from a pissed-off Nagatsuka-sensei.

Oh gods, Nagatsuka-sensei. Her teacher was going to kill her if she lost this fight.

As she reached the top of her arc she managed to control her tumble until her feet were under her. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!" she cried, pointing down to freeze the air directly under her feet. The protective disks were slick as glass and immune to chakra adhesion—they were, after all, just air—but she managed to push off in generally the right direction. Her feet went out from under her as she did; she landed clumsily, her ankle shrieking in protest as she sprawled out hard.

Takao was back on his feet, weaving like a drunkard but focused enough to cut handseals and flick his hands to the sides. "Masamune Clan Technique: Forty Chains of Death!" The chains around his forearms leaped outwards, curling like metallic snakes and then lunging forward at Maaya.

"Yeep!" Maaya hurled herself straight up like a scalded cat, pushing every scrap of chakra she could into the leap so as to get clear of the spiralling thicket of chains below her. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!"

The twin disks of frozen air formed below her, trapping the links of the chain in place. Takao yanked hard, once, in a futile effort to free his weapons before sensibly dropping the chains and diving aside as Maaya landed right where he'd been standing. The leopard roared in her soul as she went at him with full-force kicks and punches that he wasn't strong or fast enough to completely block.

What looked like a too-weak block was nothing of the sort; at some point he'd palmed a seal and now managed to slap it onto her arm. Her sleeve went rigid, trapping her arm in a stiffly extended position that left her wide open on that side.

Had he trained under Nagatsuka-sensei, he could have ended it right there. One carefully-placed punch would have put her down and out and given him the match. Unfortunately, he wasn't trained by Nagatsuka-sensei. Akagi-sensei put very little emphasis on taijutsu, reasoning (sensibly) that a boy with Takao's delicate frame and small chakra reserves was never going to make a good in-close fighter. Instead of winning the fight immediately, Takao reached for another seal.

Maaya scraped her coils almost empty and sent the chakra through her arm in a punch that tore its way out of the frozen sleeve and surged forward on the tide of her totem's roar. The punch clipped Takao on the jaw, spinning his head around and knocking him to the ground. She pounced, taking side control with his right arm trapped by her legs, his left trapped in the grip of her right hand, his body pinned under her torso and her left free to punch him repeatedly in the head.

In the head. Or, rather, in the face. That delicate, almost pretty face that even now was smiling up at her with ice-blue eyes blinking as they came back into focus.

"You hit really hard, you know that?" he asked, laughter bubbling below the words.

She refused to allow herself to be distracted. "Surrender," she growled, arm cocked menacingly in the air as she forced herself not to think about how nice the heat from his wrist felt between her calves, how firm the muscles were in the forearm trapped between her clenched fingers.

"Huh. You're really pretty," he said, surprised.

One part of her brain sent the words "Stop being ridiculous and surrender!" to her mouth. Another part simultaneously sent "Pretty?" A third sent "NOW you notice?! I've been right here for seven years, you idiot!" A fourth sent "Why do you sound so surprised, huh?!" The various messages all piled up, none of them managing to make it out from behind her teeth.

He seized the moment of her distraction to lean up and kiss her, gently but firmly. Fifteen years old and she'd never kissed a boy; every scrap of her attention was suddenly focused on the sensation of his lips on hers.

Lips are soft, yet strong, one part of her brain noticed.

Tastes great, too! another said. Minty and smokey, yes please.

Less yakking, I'm trying to enjoy this, said a third.

First, Maaya firmly told all of her inner voices to shut up. Second, she headbutted him hard in the nose, wincing slightly at the sound of cartilage crunching under the impact of her forehead protector. She refused to hesitate before punching him in the jaw with a carefully-place left cross that left him out cold on the sand. Even then she was careful, waiting several seconds before releasing him.

She couldn't quite resist pressing one more kiss to his lips before sitting up. One kiss, right on the corner of his mouth where, even in unconsciousness, that tiny little smile hid.

"Maa-ya! Maa-ya! Maa-ya!" her friends were chanting. "Woo-hoo!"

She pushed herself to her feet and waved to the cheering crowd before turning for the stairs, the proctor's completely unnecessary announcement of her victory barely noticed behind her. Years of Nagatsuke-sensei's training forced her to keep moving smoothly even as the adrenaline wore off and her body suddenly realized just how battered it was and how utterly empty her chakra coils were. Never show weakness, girl, the iron voice of her teacher growled in her memories. Rock leopards don't stumble and whine.

She kept a smile on her face, kept nodding to the crowd in grateful acknowledgement as an excuse for making her egress slow and regal. It was the only way to hide the fact that she could barely lift her feet.

Wakako and Umeko were waiting at the top of the steps to unceremoniously sweep her up onto their shoulders.

"Kunoichi rule, boys drool!" Umeko shouted, stabilizing Maaya with her left hand and shaking her right fist mockingly at a clump of their classmates. The boys in question—Umeko's boyfriend among them—laughed and shouted back their own taunts until the girls bustled Maaya through the door at the back of the contestants' box that led into the exam building and the waiting sickbay.

Maaya kept the smile on her face until she was out of sight, then let herself be poured onto one of the sickbay tables to be checked over by a professionally-grumpy medic-nin. Her body was complaining louder and louder as the bruises blossomed. Those mines had really done a number on her, and—

"Acceptable," begrudged Nagatsuka-sensei, appearing from seemingly nowhere in that disconcerting way she had. "Still, that clinch at the end was awful. Your right arm wasn't straight enough; if he had any sort of decent grappling training he could have broken the pin and then where would you have been, hm? And running over that mine—what were you thinking? We're going to have to work on your situational awareness, girl. Pathetic. And of course there was—"

Maaya let the words sweep over her and basked in the effusive praise hidden in that grunted 'acceptable'.

"Nagatsuka-sensei, be fair!" Umeko said chidingly. "She was amazing! Did you see that bit where she ran on air? That was incredible!"

"Yeah!" Wakako said. "Why don't you ever—"

"Do you lot mind?!" the medic growled. "I'm trying to work here. She'll be fine with a little rest. Now, everyone who isn't bleeding, get out!"

Umeko and Wakako turned and headed for the door immediately. Nagatsuka-sensei had to sniff dismissively and pause just long enough to show that she was going because she wanted to, not because she'd been told to. Still, she went.

The medic shifted Maaya's forehead protector aside so that he could rest a warm hand on her forehead. Immediately the battered girl found herself borne into the warm arms of sleep on a surge of warm and comfortable medical chakra.

o-o-o-o​

From the doorway of the sickbay, Nagatsuka Rika watched the medic pull a blanket over Maaya and bustle off to the next patient, who happened to be the unconscious and bloody-nosed Takao. There were too many people around to let herself be seen smiling, but it took a lot of effort to stay stone-faced as she basked in the furnace heat of pride for her student. The girl really was amazing—everything a teacher could ask for. Rika's only regret was that the insular decisions of the stay-at-home village elders meant that Maaya's victory hadn't happened in front of the massive audiences that must have been gathered in...where were the International Chuunin Exams this year? Over in Konoha, weren't they? Well, wherever.

She waited by the door, watching as the doctor set Takao's nose and cleaned off the blood. Maaya's punch had been perfect; enough to put him out, not enough to cause permanent damage. That pretty face wouldn't be too badly messed up and, unless she missed her guess, the first thing he would do when he woke up was seek out the girl who'd decked him. Rika couldn't quite manage to hold back a tiny snort of amusement. It was every sensei's privilege to terrify the new suitor, so she'd have to start working on her 'break my student's heart and I will...' speech. Let's see, what would be appropriately gruesome yet believable?