Well, Shikamaru had to show the Great God-on-Earth what he could do, and he had to do it while his actions were being compared to the kid that just tricked his opponent into knocking down a wall onto himself and the girl who tricked her opponent into electrocuting himself.

While he understood that the Great God-on-Earth himself should be of enough tactical thought and wisdom to recognize that flashy displays like that weren't the end-all-be-all of real battles, and would be looking past the cool stories to see what the young Heroes could do in a fight, he also knew that the crowds (probably including his mother) would be hoping that each fight brought something new and spectacular to behold.

His mother in particular would be expecting him to try his hardest and pull off something impressive, an inclination that he did not share in his personal desires, so this was going to suck. What made things even worse was that his enemy was a Mummy who could control the weather, and from what he'd seen she could control it at a level that far surpassed a Hero-level mastery of the Sky Purview. While he had been studying the Darkness and Moon Purviews enough that he was pretty sure that he already was at Lesser Demigod levels with them, the fact that this Mummy already broke such a record was really a drag.

Apparently the Rank Exams weren't always like this. While Mummies were, according to his research, always known for powerful supernatural energy manipulation, the feats that the Fae could pull off and even a lot of what his fellow Scions were doing this year were normally the stuff only a few prodigies could do.

Of course this one bizarre year would be the one where Shikamaru was tasked with proving himself. Kalfu was a bastard like that.

--

Temari was glad that she got to go before the operation started. Proving herself before the Hem-Netjer-Tepi and the crowds at large, even if it was probably going to end up being meaningless in a short bit, well, it made her feel like a Mummy going through the motions to improve herself, show what she could do, and come to a better understanding of Ma'at. With her increasing misgivings about the actual reason for her being here, pretending for a little bit would be nice.

So, she walked down to the arena, scrolls prepared (it was unfortunate that she could not get another Hanging Star ready this time, but she would make do), and looked forward to taking down this Scion.

He had gotten lucky in the preliminaries, but he had gotten lucky doing something unconventionally clever, which made her even more excited. Whether the general crowds agreed or not, she would take a battle of wits over a battle of explosions any day.

The two combatants stepped into the arena, faced one another, and waited to begin. Temari did her best intimidating glare, but Shikamaru felt like she wasn't as into it as others might be. Rather, she seemed like she was calculating something. Great, I'm fighting one with a head on her shoulders, Shikimaru thought.

He, himself, didn't even bother to look scary or tough, just holding his hands behind his head and staring up at the clouds, wondering if they ever felt pressure like this. Of course not, they were clouds. They just bounced around wherever the wind took them. What a life. Not at all like his current one.

Relegating himself to the incredibly depressing fact that he was not, in fact, a cloud, Shikamaru sighed and prepared to channel his Ichor. His opponent seemed to misinterpret his actions, seeming to get angry, possibly guessing that his lack of intimidation attempts stemmed from arrogance rather than laziness; she might actually think he wasn't trying because he was just that confident.

She was about to be sorely disappointed. Or not, as she'd probably win.

When the proctor called for them to start, they dropped into combat-ready positions and stared at each other. The audience held its breath, waiting for the first move. Unfortunately, waiting for the first move meant that they had to release their breaths or suffocate, and no one was dedicated enough to the bit to do the latter.

Shikamaru waited for Temari to act, while Temari waited for Shikamaru to act. It was highly likely that no one would have disagreed with the Loa boy had he noted how much of a drag it all was.

After several minutes had past, Temari realized that her opponent was not about to tip his hand, and so she would have to start. Very well.

"Celestial Hekau: Dust Storm," she intoned while grabbing one of the weather charts on her back, channeling her Sekhem to shift around the natural state of the celestial order to her advantage, disrupting the topsoil and covering the entire arena with a brownish haze.

"Moon Purview: Phase Cloak!" Her opponent responded.

She had thought to limit his sight in an environment that she had trained to deal with, but he promptly responded by taking away her visual advantage by turning partially invisible. Her own technique did the rest of the work for him.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she kneeled down, keeping her ears about, and waited for his next move. Once again, she found herself waiting for an inordinate amount of time.

"Celestial Hekau: Weather Whispers," she intoned, hoping to find out from the breeze itself where her opponent might be trying to strike from.

--

Shikamaru had no idea where he intended to strike from. He had managed to pull off the Crescent Cloak, so only a tiny sliver of himself was visible, and even that was practically nothing when considering that her attempts to alter the weather already had him hard to see, but what was he going to do with this advantage?

He was scared to get close to her, if he was being honest, and didn't know if he could actually put up a fight if he did. Would she see him before he managed to stab into her? Her little dust storm did, in fact, screw with his ability to use ranged weapons, as he could barely make out a girl-shaped silhouette in the distance.

He had, uncharacteristically, sort of hoped that she might use the same trick with the rain she had tried to pull against Tenten, as he actually had a plan for that, but for how he just had to work with…thinking on his fear of water, he thought of a relatively obscure Darkness Boon he knew, and wondered if she might have accidentally given him an opportunity to use it.

Gazing at that silhouette, channeling his Ichor, he intoned "Darkness Purview: Afraid of the Dark," and then stepped back toward the edge of the arena before she could react to him.

--

'He moves. He moves. He moves. He alters. Darkness. Darkness. Not in the world. In the world. In your mind. In your mind.'

Weather Whispers was an annoying spell because the weather had a very annoying method of talking. Still, she had trained with it well enough that she understood him to be moving, where he was moving, and that he was using the Darkness Purview, if she remembered Scion abilities correctly to do something with her head…that last one was certainly true, as she found herself veery concerned about the low visibility.

She was already concerned about it, as he had exploited it to effectively make himself invisible already, but now she was weirded out, noticing every shadow, wondering what could strike out at her from any angle or…what had that god spawn bastard done to her? The shade from her dust storm was shifting, distorting, reaching out into horrific abstractions from her worst nightmares…

"Celestial Hekau: Sahu-Ra," she shouted in response, almost on instinct. It took a few seconds, but her opponent apparently didn't use that time to capitalize on her inaction before she started glowing, taking on the mantel of Ra, or at least a very weak version of it, and sending out streams of sunlight around her.

--

Shikamaru's hopes for "Afraid of the Dark" were that it would distract her for long enough that he could come up with a better plan. He had no idea she could create sunlight and dispel all of the shadows, and thus the forces he was using to drain her of willpower, around her, but he could already see how it would work to his advantage.

While the light she was creating destroyed the shadows immediately around her, it also strengthened the ones the ones further away, enough that he had spots all over that he could use…

"Darkness Purview: Shadow Refuge," he intoned as he jumped into a just lengthened shadow cast by one of the rocks that Naruto and Neji had scattered across the field earlier.

"Intelligence Knacks: Concept to Execution," he whispered, certain that he could remain hidden while his Ichor channeled into helping his mind determine which materials could create a small, floating object that he could deploy behind her.

--

'Behind that stone. That stone. He hides. Hides.' Keeping her scrolls on her back and drawing out her copper-headed mace, Tamara charged the area the whispers specified. From what she had gathered, his abilities relied on Darkness and Moon related energies, and while she wasn't an expert on how Hekau and Purviews interacted, she suspected that the sunlight she was currently generating should prevent any supernatural traps and trusted in her own physical abilities to get her past anything else.

Looking at the size of the rock's shadow and calculating where a mostly grown man could fit, she swung at what seemed to empty air, then turned to a sliver of flesh that her naked eyes would have missed had she not already been looking there as her sunlight banished the shadow he was using to remain completely invisible but not the moon energy he was using to hide the majority of himself, smirking as her weapon made a thud sound and the Scion started cursing.

--

Shikamaru was not, in any way, shape, or form too proud to run away. He wasn't actually certain who was faster between the two of them, but he booked it as he tossed up what he had been able to make with a throwing knife and a cloth meant to act as a parachute, both of them.

This should allow him to create a shadow anywhere he wanted, at least briefly, letting him make use of Shadow Refuge and, if he really wanted to invest some Ichor, Shadow Step (which he only knew in theory, as he had yet to pull it off in practice), but that would just give him more means to get away from her.

His best tactic would be to attempt to get her under the effects of the Cheval Purview, but she was too strong-willed, or at least seemed it, to try while she was in her right state of mind, and he didn't immediately have a totem to use anyway (the dust she had created might work, but it would have been weak, so his issue of dealing with her apparent will was still in play, and he did not want to get stuck meditating for nothing).

She needed to be really distracted, and he needed a good totem if he wanted that tactic to work, and he had already wasted 'Afraid of the Dark.' The light she was producing meant that the silver would shine too brightly for Mirror of Lunacy to be effective, and she was just too focused on pursuing him to use mundane methods to get her into the right state of mind.

She wasn't like the proctor, who was sitting there utterly distracted…the papers he had given them for the Exams would act as a token, he wasn't in the right frame of mind to resist properly, and it wasn't really a proper attack. Shikamaru went through all of the rules he could think of and, as long as he caused no physical harm to the man, there wasn't currently anything that would forbid it. He was absolutely ready to argue with those in charge later about it. If they didn't want contestants doing this, then they should have made the rules clearer. They could stop future Loa.

Stepping into the shadow created by one of his throwing knife devices and desperately pulling on his Ichor as Temari came swinging closer and closer, hoping that he could actually pull if off today as he shouted "Darkness Purview: Shadow Step," he was overjoyed to find himself in the shadow cast by the parachute holding up the throwing knife he had sent into the air earlier, confusing his opponent as she looked to the nearby stones.

Focusing on the proctor as he meditated and concentrated on the papers that said proctor had given all of them, he intoned "Cheval Purview: Horse."

--

'Back there. Back there. Flying thing. Flying thing. Rocks wrong. Rocks wrong.'

Temari could not make heads or tails of what the Weather Whispers were trying to tell her, but she looked around for where shadows were likely to appear, thinking that she understood how the Darkness Purview worked, when she heard the proctor shout, "I am surrendering on Temari's behalf."

What?

"Before anyone objects to this as cheating, I would like to remind everyone of the rules as written. Contestants are forbidden from hurting or attacking the proctor in any way; the Cheval Purview is not an act of violence, and the ability to surrender on another's behalf is based on the proctor's words, so…"

the proctor's body lurched and he started groaning.

"What just happened?" He asked, rubbing his head.

"That's what I want to know!" Temari shouted back.

--

"Did he win?" The Marshall asked.

Both the Great God-on-Earth and the Hem-Netjer-Tepi were completely uncertain as to how they should answer that.

"The proctor did call for her surrender, with his mouth," the leader of the Village Hidden in Legends started, before immediately being interrupted,

"under the influence of a technique used by this 'Shikamaru' fellow. Does it really matter if he didn't directly hurt the target? If, say, he had tossed a crowd member into the arena, keeping them perfectly safe, in the hopes that he could use the rules against hurting them as a shield, would that not disqualify him, just because it didn't hurt?"

"There's still danger to the target in your target in your scenario, so I don't think that matters. Aren't we supposed to be teaching them to use every weapon at their disposal?"

"Do you really want to encourage them to think of the surrounding population as weapons?"

"Regardless, even if their should be a rule against this, he was right in saying that there isn't one currently. We can't punish him for something that wasn't banned when he did it."

Before the Hem-Netjer-Tepi could retort, the Marshall interrupted the heated discussion to say "why don't we jus' table this discussion fer now and move on to the next match. We can let the proctor and the other judges on the ground decide who won before the next match starts."

The Great God-on-Earth relayed the Marshall's words to a nearby messenger before leaning back.

"I suppose it doesn't really matter; the fact that he managed to even start this debate shows a level of out-of-the-box thinking against a technically superior opponent, one who had him outpaced at every level before then, that I want in positions of command."

The Hem-Netjet-Tepi glared at him. "You're going to reward cheating?"

"I'm going to reward thinking through options that others wouldn't have considered, and as I said, the fact that he managed to start such a debate shows that it isn't just blatant cheating."

--

The proctor was somewhat annoyed at the kid for having done that to him, and kind of hoped that some form of brutal punishment was awaiting him, but he still just sighed and accepted his orders once they were relayed to him.

"Either Shikamaru "Kalfu" Loa's actions were cheating, and thus he is disqualified from further participation, though not from further consideration of his performance thus far," the proctor put no effort into hiding his bitterness over that fact, "or they were not, and he just cleverly forced a silly but valid surrender on Temari of the Night Suns. Either way, this concludes this particular match of the Rank Exams. The actual results will be debated and determined before the beginning of the second round."

Several members of the Loa Clan cheered, as well as Shikamaru's teammates and that Naruto kid. No one else did.

Many of the audience members were grumbling about the unresolved fight, others were complaining about the blatant cheating, and still others were frustrated that they still didn't know whether or not their bets on the match would pan out. Yeah, Shikamaru was a Scion of Kalfu, alright, causing trouble wherever he went.

--

Temari was utterly furious, while Shikamaru could only think that this time he had gotten himself into a drag.

--

Orochimaru "Quetzalcoatl" Aztlanti felt his puppet getting irritated. Apparently some Loa kid had pulled a dirty trick against the man's apprentice, and he wasn't happy about it. In spite of everything, the Hem-Netjer-Tepi still wanted a nice, clean Rank Exam that he could study and possibly use to get his apprentices a promotion later. What foolishness.

Still, it did mean that the Exams were interesting, and thus people would have their attention on them. It was why he had planned for this to happen right now; so much of the Village Hidden in Legends was gathered in a single place that one well-placed attack could do a lot of damage, and even if Gaara and Apophis didn't really live up to the hype in the end he could still get what revenge he personally wanted; while the Mummies and less important troops from Sacrifice died in the name of hurting Orochimaru's enemies, he could take care of personal matters.

Of course, he would help them out afterwards, once everything was taken care of. For now, he had to ensure that Kabuto had, in fact, taken care of the biggest potential problem, the leaders from the other Villages.

He had no intention of starting a global war against Sacrifice, as beyond the obvious reasons it might also play into Daybreak's hands, and he had no more interest in the organization.

Kabuto repeatedly assured him, in no uncertain terms, that the proper wards had been placed, making sure that the Marshall, Ancestor, and Flockmaster would simultaneously be unharmed and unable to interfere. Experimentation with mixing and matching the Guardian and Stars Purviews had created some interesting results, even if he had had to rely on Kabuto for the former and espionage on Jiraiya of all people to study the latter (it frustrated him beyond all measure that two people he looked down on were so much more skilled than him in even these highly specific areas), so he was confident that it could be done, but would it be done by Kabuto?

If it wasn't, would that be the result of incompetence or malice? Oh well, steps had to be taken, and at this point that meant bold steps. There was a small chance he could bring the Village Hidden in Legends to ruin today, and an even greater chance that he could finally kill the man who exiled him in the first place. Yes, that was worth a little risk.

--

Gaara was so bored. Wasn't he supposed to get his opportunity to kill already? He and that Sasuke kid were supposed to fight a while ago, weren't they? Apophis was frothing at the idea that it could shed mortal blood today, so when were they going to let it? Why was it so important that he face Sasuke specifically?

He had never understood that part, nor did he care before now (so long as he got to prove his power over life and death, he could play nice), but now, with Sasuke being late and that very lateness keeping him from fulfilling his desires, he really needed to know.

While he respected the boy, seeing an attempt to become a real person in the kid's eyes, he was also perfectly fine killing that Choji kid (he looked like he had a lot of blood to spill) or anyone else that they threw his way. So, when was he coming?

--

Kakashi was aware that Sasuke had developed somewhat of a reputation among those who kept track of the newly graduated Heroes, and thus many would be coming to see him and him alone. This meant that Sasuke was profitable. Being profitable, the Great Vanir was going to need a very important reason to not let them compete.

Failing the first two sections might have been such a reason, but being a little bit late probably wouldn't, so Kakashi got some last minute training in, let Sasuke rest some more, and, most importantly, stopped to reserve tickets for the theatrical adaptation of one of his favorite books that was about to be produced. He couldn't imagine faulting such a priority.

Guessing that the first round probably wasn't over, having reserved the good seats and seeing that Sasuke was as in good a state of health and Ichor as he was going to get today, he not only helped his student arrive at the arena but do so in style; knowing that the guards outside were aware that he wasn't a threat (probably), he intoned "Darkness Purview: Shadow Shroud," covering a good quarter of the arena in pitch blackness, and had his little student saunter up into it and wait for it to fade.

Considering the panic that came from the crowd and the irritated faces that Kakashi saw, especially from the random Scion who called on the Sun Purview to banish his little boon, he thought it was worth it. Especially considering that Sasuke had the sense of mind to strike up a cool pose before the shroud faded, thus making it look like he had just appeared in the middle of the place like some kind of heroic badass. It was what Kakashi was hoping for.

--

The Hem-Netjer-Tepi briefly panicked when the unexplained shadow appeared over half of the arena, as he wondered whether the attack was happening earlier after all, but it turned out to be some worthless dramatics on the part of some Scion. Just as he was about to relax, he realized that the random Scion who performed the stunt was non other than Sasuke and his Guide, and thus the attack was about to commence, before he really got to resolve Temari's match or see Kankuro in action. A pity.

"It seems that the last Amatsukami Clansman really did show up after all. Do we want to send him against Gaara now?"

The Great God-on-Earth sighed. "Very well."

--

Techniques:

Darkness Purview: Afraid of the Dark-enhances a subject's fear of darkness and what they can't see, causing rapid deterioration of the target's mental state

Celestial Hekau: Weather Whispers-user starts to hear vague but technically useful buts of information from the surrounding wind

Celestial Hekau: Sahu-Ra-user emits sunlight and affects the mentalities of those surrounding them, supernaturally comforting allies and terrifying enemies

Intelligence Knack: Concept to Execution-if a user can think of a scientifically possible device, then they will become hyper-aware of any materials in the area that could be used to make the device

Darkness Purview: Shadow-Step-while standing in area of pitch darkness, the user can teleport into an equally shaded area within line-of-sight