Xero’s smirk was still glued to his face, holding on for dear life like a stubborn barnacle – a defiant little fg of edic bravado bravely waving in the face of potentially immi ninja-fvored doom. But even that grin had taken on a different edge now, a slightly sharper, more brittle quality.

  Like a thin yer of sugar ig over… well, over a whole lot of pent-up pre-fight jitters, maybe. Or maybe geicipation; hard to tell with Xero sometimes.

  He cracked his knuckles – pop, pop, pop – the small sounds suddenly magnified in the oppressive stillness of the clearing, like tiny firecrackers going off in a library.

  “Soooo,”

  Xero drawled, stretg the word out until it ractically doing yoga. Pure, unadulterated Xero-brand theatrical delivery right there.

  “Are we, like, actually gonna do the ninja rumble thingy here then? Or is this just some -level staring test? Because, just putting it out there for the record, I happen to be phenomenal at staring tests. Like, legendary status, seriously. Prepare yourselves to be thhly… stared… down… or something. ”

  He finished with another of those winks, pushing the whole edic performance even further into potentially self-bustion levels of awkwardness.

  And Gaara? Mr. Stone-Faced himself. Yeah, those unblinking, seafoam-colored eyes? Didn't even twitch a millimeter in respoo Xero's little stand-up routine. His expression? Still pstered on pure, unwavering indifference. Unreadable. Unshakeable. Immovable.

  Then he finally spoke again, and it was with that same gcial, ft voice, each word deliberately chipped from ice. And instead of rising to meet Xero's theatrical challenge, he just went in the opposite dire, delivering this almost… casual dismissal that was somehow way more cutting, way more insulting than any amount of shouting or ninja p could ever hope to be. “You,” Gaara said, just ftly stating it, his voipletely, utterly devoid of emotion. As ral as Switzernd on a Tuesday afternoon. “Are… insignifit.” Pause. Just hanging there, that single word, a little verbal dagger to the ego.

  Then, with this almost imperceptible curl of his lip – so slight you might have missed it if you blinked – a tiny twitch of pure, unadulterated boredom, he added, almost as an afterthought: “You are… not worth my time.” And then, back to silent, stoic statue mode. Yeah. Gaara just basically handed Xero his ego on a cold, silver ptter. Ouch. Level: Ice Burn.

  And Xero? Xero actually… bristled. Just for a nanosed, a flicker, so fast you’d almost miss it. That ever-present smirk? It was still resolutely pstered on, not budging an inch. But even through that carefully structed mask of edic defiance, Kuro caught it – a tiny little tremor of genuine, if vanishingly brief, annoyance flickering in Xero's usually bright and breezy eyes. Like a micro-earthquake registering on the Richter scale of Xero's ego.

  For just a heartbeat, that carefully calibrated cocky veneer wavered, cracked along the edges, just a hair. But enough. Enough for Kuro to see. Dismissal? Turns out, fuy like Xero, a verbal brush-off like that probably nded harder, bruised the ego deeper, than any actual kunai to the ribs could ever hope to. Yeah, turns out ‘insignifit’ wasly a pliment in Xero’s internal diary.

  Just wheension seemed poised to explode and turn the whole clearing into a ninja-melee free-for-all, Temari decided to… diplomatically intervene. In a move smoother than fi sand trig through fiips, she stepped forward. "Stepped" isn't really the right word though. It was more of a "glide." Like she just subtly and elegantly flowed into the versational bat zone, somehow positioning herself – all calm petend surprisingly non-frontational vibes – squarely between simmering Gaara and the always-about-to-detonate Xero.

  Then, her voice – surprisingly level, smooth, almost… businesslike – sliced right through that thick, charged atmosphere like a perfectly aimed, perfectly sharpened wind scythe.

  “Alright, people,”

  Temari announced, aone just didn't invite arguments. Like, you could sehe "just try me" simmering underh the surface ess. But at the same time, it was also carefully, deliberately devoid of ht aggression.

  “Let’s all take a collective deep breath here. Everyone, dial dowestosterone levels, shall we? Because exams arely desigo be ‘suddeh match: round one’, right? We're not supposed to be taking early exits due to pletely pointless brawls, are we?"

  Temari, the voice of reason, diplomainja, suddenly takier stage. Huh. Didn’t see that one ing.

  Temari just kept rolling, her gaze sweeping across Kuro’s little team – a proper, no-nonsense, appraising once-over. Like a teacher fag down a rowdy bunch of kids at the back of the .

  "Wasting precious chakra, draining your energy reserves just to py some pointless 'king of the hill' dominance game? Right here? Right now? Seriously? Incredibly ineffit,”

  Temari decred, practically dripping with dry, pragmatic disapproval. “We all want the same shiny, scroll-shaped participation trophy at the end of this forest trek, don’t we?"

  She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow – seriously, Temari had eyebrow game on lock. And that raised eyebrow carried a whole unspoken paragraph of interrogation: Or are you guys just here to admire the local foliage? Take in the ambiance? Are you actually intending to get through this exam or just spontaneously bust due to sheer testosterone overload? Get. Your. Act. Together.

  Her voice still had that smooth, level surface, but underh it was this undeniable current of 'I'm in charge of this situation now, and you will all deal with it. Capiche?'.

  But, and this was the slightly baffling bit, she also… kind of made sense. Her whole 'practical, no-nonsense ninja businesswoman' approach was surprisingly... reasonable. Uedly reasonable.

  Especially sidering she was currently positioned directly to the left of Actual-walkiential-threat-Gaara. Go figure. Temari, the ued voice of (semi) sanity in the esg ninja drama.

  Kankuro, who’d been nailing the whole ‘pletely disied spectator at a slightly dull puppet show’ act right up until this point, suddenly decided to chime in. Seding Temari’s impromptu ninja-peace-summit proposal with a shrug that was so utterly over-the-top in its studied nonce it ractically performa.

  Except… yeah, those twitchy fingers still h near his puppet scroll were kinda shouting “I am anything but rexed” at anyone who was actually paying attention. Which Kuro definitely was.