Outside Konoha, two figures clashed fiercely.
One was bathed in a cool, watery blue chakra, the chakra mode of the Three-Tails. That chakra condensed in Nohara Rin's hands into a sharp chakra blade.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Rin was fighting Kakashi.
Kakashi, crackling with lightning chakra, wielded his whitefang ninjato, the blade flashing up and down in rapid strikes, locking repeatedly with Rin's chakra blade.
Slash!
After multiple collisions of their blades, Rin suddenly flickered, swinging her twin chakra blades down to suppress Kakashi's white fang. Then, from behind her, a burst of chakra shot out, transforming into a massive tail that swept toward Kakashi's body.
Kakashi's expression changed slightly. With a low shout, he forcefully pushed away Rin's chakra blade and retreated backward, then slashed his whitefang to sever the chakra tail.
Huff… huff…
Kakashi backed off a short distance, breathing heavily.
Rin also wiped some sweat from her brow, her chest rising and falling with exertion, controlling the Three-Tails' chakra was a tremendous burden for her.
Their duel was a near stalemate.
In previous confrontations, Kakashi had consistently dominated Rin in her Three-Tails mode.
But this time, Rin had basically matched Kakashi's skill and was even beginning to press him, clearly gaining the upper hand.
Elsewhere, Kaede stood in an open space facing two wooden stakes. Strange symbols were carved into each, Kaede's Flying Thunder God jutsu seals.
Kaede focused on the stakes, sensing the spatial coordinates of his seals, then circulated chakra within his body.
Flash!
In an instant, he teleported to one of the stakes.
Though his body moved, other things remained behind.
Landing on the stake, Kaede immediately felt a chill run through him, but without pause, he flashed back to his original spot. His clothes, which hadn't yet touched the ground, were pulled on swiftly as his afterimage flickered.
Because this wasn't the first time this issue had occurred, his movements were now very practiced.
Moving with clothes versus just the body was a completely different challenge. Even after training nearly a month at five times speed, Kaede still occasionally experienced this problem when using Flying Thunder God, about once in ten uses at most.
"This should be good enough…" Kaede muttered.
His spatial talent was slightly stronger than Kakashi, but only by a little. Using Flying Thunder God still required about a second to locate the seals spatially, and even a one-second delay rendered the technique nearly useless in battle.
The power of Flying Thunder God was that no hand seals were needed, a one-second delay was enough for an opponent to form two Shadow Clone seals.
However, for Kaede, who wasn't using the jutsu for combat but purely for long-distance teleportation, this delay didn't really matter.
What mattered was sensing the seal's position over long distances.
Thanks to his spatial aptitude, Kaede could detect the location of seals even far away, though roughly. The farther the seal, the longer it took to lock onto it.
By his estimate, if a seal was left in Rōran, sensing it from Konoha would take between ten seconds to half a minute before teleporting.
That was more than enough.
Stopping his training for now, Kaede flickered several times and appeared near where Kakashi and Rin were battling, ending their fight with a call:
"All right, let's call it here."
After halting their duel, Kaede glanced at the visibly more exhausted Kakashi and smiled.
"Finally, you can't beat Rin anymore, huh, Kakashi."
Previous fights mostly ended with Kakashi winning, but as Rin's control over the Three-Tails chakra improved, the tide was turning, this was the first time Kakashi found himself on the losing side.
Kakashi steadied his heavy breathing, exhaled gloomily, and said, "If it was life or death, I could still win."
Rin's combat experience was still lacking.
If it came to a real fight where he didn't care about injuries, Kakashi was confident he could kill Rin even while wounded. But that was a tactic reserved for enemies.
Rin dissipated the Three-Tails chakra and smiled without much concern for victory or defeat.
"Kakashi is still very strong. I'm just borrowing the power of the Three-Tails."
"Come on, let's eat."
Kaede smiled at both of them and headed toward Konoha.
Rin and Kakashi followed separately.
As their figures faded from view, about a hundred meters away, a masked ninja dropped from the treetops.
He stared toward Kaede's departing direction for several seconds, then vanished into the village from another path, swiftly making his way underground.
This was the base of the Root organization.
"Danzo-sama."
The ninja monitoring Kaede knelt on one knee and reported in a low voice, "Hatake Kaede and Hatake Kakashi, along with the Three-Tails Jinchuriki, are still training at the previous location. No abnormalities detected. However, the Three-Tails Jinchuriki's control over the tailed beast's power has strengthened. His combat capability now seems to exceed Kakashi's."
Listening to the report, Danzo paced the room with a grim expression.
The growing strength of the Three-Tails Jinchuriki was bad news.
The more powerful the opponent became, the harder it would be to control Kaede.
If the Three-Tails Jinchuriki's strength grew to Danzo's level, he would be a massive threat and a huge obstacle to Danzo's plans.
He couldn't wait any longer!
A cold glint flashed in Danzo's eyes.
So far, Sarutobi Hiruzen had refused to let him control Kaede, only assigning Root to monitor him, this indecision was a ticking time bomb in Danzo's eyes.
"For balance? But Kaede's uniqueness makes him impossible to balance, Hiruzen…"
Danzo made his decision.
It was time to act.
If he could control Kaede and turn him into his weapon, Danzo would immediately reach parity with Sarutobi Hiruzen.
His influence would dominate Konoha's leadership, wrestling power away from Sarutobi and Minato.
From there, he could fully control the village, reignite war, and finally start executing his plan to unify the ninja world!
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