Izuna sat on a thick, moss-covered branch of an old oak, deep within the shadows of the forest. The branches rustled high above the ground, hiding him from view, but not from his thoughts.
Hmm... soon the Third Shinobi War will begin, he thought, running his fingers over the rough bark. I must be ready. I must become someone to be feared, someone to be respected. I need a name, a nickname, a legend.
Half a year had passed since Kushina grabbed him by the shoulder and said, "If you truly want to understand fuinjutsu, you must understand yourself." Now he could draw complex seals with nearly closed eyes — soon he wouldn't even need ink, just his chakra and will.
But he did not stop there. With Sakumo, teaching him kenjutsu.His mother showed him how water can cut through harder stone, and his father taught him how the body must become a weapon when everything else fails. His uncle opened the doors of illusions, genjutsu weaving a spider's web around the enemy.
And Shisui? Young Shisui was like a shadow — sharp and elusive — but hungry for knowledge. So Izuna taught him what no one else could. He showed him new combinations of taijutsu and ninjutsu, shared parts of seals he was still perfecting himself. Together, they left only traces of discarded kunai and torn leaves in the forest — never words, never witnesses.
Izuna smiled inwardly. Not even Shisui knows everything I know. And it must stay that way.
He silently slid down the tree. The wet earth creaked beneath his feet. Through the morning mist, he saw the shimmering hair — Kushina was already waiting beside an old scroll spread out on a stone.
"You're late," she said sharply, but with a smile in her eyes.
Izuna bowed just enough to show he heard — but not that he was sorry.
"Are we learning a new skill today?" he asked.
"No," Kushina replied, handing him the scroll. "Today, we test how much you've learned."
Izuna knelt before the scroll. The old stone beneath his knees was cold and wet with morning dew. Kushina looked at him as if reading his thoughts.
"Do you know why fuinjutsu is more dangerous than any sword?" she asked calmly.
Izuna didn't answer immediately. He studied the scroll — layers of symbols, complicated sequences of seals, all deeply etched with ink that smelled of pine resin.
"Because it leaves no trace," he said at last. "And because it binds what you cannot break with a sword."
Kushina smiled, but the smile lasted only a moment. Then she threw the scroll into his lap.
"Bind this."
On the scroll was written a complex Kekkai Fuin — a barrier seal that closes off space. If he made a mistake, missed even one symbol, the seal would collapse and the energy would explode back at him.
Izuna took a deep breath, joined his hands, and felt his chakra begin to tremble beneath his skin. The air tightened. With the first sign, the fog on the ground began to swirl, gathering in a thin layer of steam that slid down his fingers. The second sign — the feeling was like pulling spiderweb threads through needle eyes. The third sign — the pine scent vanished, replaced by the sharp, metallic scent of his chakra.
Kushina said nothing. She just watched him, but he felt her chakra pulse, ready to react if something went wrong.
When he placed the last sign, Izuna exhaled softly. He pressed his palm to the ground. The earth beneath him trembled — then stilled. A thin, invisible wall surrounded him in a circle several meters wide. Inside, all was calm. Outside, the wind broke branches, but within the circle, not a breath of air stirred.
Izuna opened his eyes and looked at Kushina. She nodded, then immediately threw a kunai straight at his chest.
When Kushina swung her arm, the kunai flew straight toward his chest — sharp, fast, deadly if he made a mistake. But Izuna didn't move. His Sharingan flickered briefly with red light, and his fingers rose.
A metallic sound cut through the forest's silence — the kunai stopped between two fingers, tightly gripped, the blade calmly shimmering in the morning breeze. Not a drop of blood, not a scratch.
Kushina raised an eyebrow, but her smile now lingered longer. "Good," she said quietly. "But you know what comes next."
Izuna gently lowered the kunai to the ground before him, but didn't lower his hands. His eyes didn't blink, focused on every movement of her chakra.
"I'm ready," he said.
Kushina stepped forward. Her chakra grew, rolling around her like flames. With one motion of her hand, she broke his seal, and the thin layer of the barrier shattered into a misty cloud.
"You succeeded with the seal. Now defend it — but without the scroll. Only your will."
Izuna formed hand signs. His chakra merged with the earth beneath his feet. This time, he did not draw the seal with ink, but with his palms, fingers, and his breath. The ground around him glowed bluish. A new circle closed.
Kushina charged. She was fast — much faster than the first time she trained him. Izuna bent down, dodging the first strike, feeling the wind of her palm pass just past his neck. He blocked the second strike with his forearm, the third with his elbow, and immediately formed a new sign.
For a moment, he saw in his Sharingan: her chakra, her next moves, her strikes. But he knew Kushina was unpredictable. She always had another trick.
"If you hold the seal for another thirty seconds, I will recognize you as a master of the initial circle!" she spat through clenched teeth as her palm cut through the air.
Izuna did not respond. Only the quiet, dangerous smile that carried Madara's spirit appeared at the corner of his mouth. He held the seal. Held it, even though his hands ached and the earth beneath him trembled.
Twenty seconds.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Kushina increased the pressure; now only a red shadow circled him — the shadows of hair and chakra. The seal shook. But did not break.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
Silence.
Kushina stopped, her palm a millimeter from his throat. She looked him in the eyes. The Sharingan still burned.
"Enough," she said, smiling. "From today, the seal is your weapon. Next time… you will learn it without your hands."
Izuna breathed heavily, but in his gaze, there was no fatigue. Only hunger. Hunger for more.
The sky had already cleared when Izuna stepped out of the forest. The sun pierced through the treetops, casting warm patches of light along the path he walked. In his hand, he still twirled the kunai he had caught between his fingers — the blade reminding him how thin the line was between failure and perfection.
By the old oak, where the path branched toward the village foothills, Minato was waiting for him. He sat casually on a stone fence, but even then, he seemed as if he could vanish and reappear a mile away in an instant.
"You're late, Izuna," Minato said, but his voice carried not a reprimand, but mild curiosity.
"I had a little test," Izuna replied, sliding the kunai into its sheath. "It's done."
Minato nodded. His blue hair swayed gently in the breeze, his eyes clear — but deep within them lay something Izuna wanted to uncover: the secret of speed, the perfection of movement.
"Kushina told me you want to learn something new," Minato said, jumping down from the fence. His feet barely touched the ground. "Do you know what you're looking for?"
Izuna smiled faintly — a smile he didn't share with Kushina or Sakumo. This one was just for himself and what was to come.
"The space-time element," he said simply. "I want to understand how space tears, how time bends. I want your technique."
Minato measured him with a look, as if weighing him on some invisible scale. Then he slowly nodded, and in his eyes sparked the same flame that ignites when new rules are forged for an old world.
"Hiraishin isn't just a technique," he said quietly. "It's a way of thinking. You must see space as a web, and time as a thread. And you must be ready for your mind to be faster than your body."
Izuna didn't blink. He simply folded his hands behind his back, sheathing the kunai.
"Show me," he said.
Minato smiled. That smile wasn't childish, nor even kind — it was the smile of a warrior who knows he faces something special.
"Good. But remember," he added, stepping so fast Izuna briefly lost track of him, "if you can't keep up with my shadow, you will never learn to fly."
And Izuna? He just clenched his fists and felt his Sharingan pulse.
I will fly, he thought. I will fly farther than anyone before me.
Minato stepped down to the ground in front of Izuna and pulled a small scroll from his inner pocket. A thin thread of chakra flashed as he unrolled it, revealing complex markings etched onto the parchment — the space-time seal, the first version of the Hiraishin tags.
"This is the heart of the technique," Minato said, handing him the scroll. "A mark. Without it, Hiraishin doesn't exist. With it… Your body becomes irrelevant. Only will and space remain."
Izuna ran his fingers over the black symbols. He felt his skin prickle as the chakra in the seal trembled beneath his touch.
"I want you to make your version of this seal," Minato said. "But don't just copy it. You must understand it — every line, every circle, every point of the chakra. If you mess up, the seal won't move you. It will tear you apart."
Izuna nodded. His hand was steady, but his heart beat faster. His eyes flashed with Sharingan, searching for patterns, logic, weaknesses.
Minato stepped back three paces, then vanished. No dust, no sound — just empty air where he had stood moments before.
His voice echoed from a branch of an old pine high above:
"You have three days. When you finish, we will test it on me. If it works, you will be able to touch me before I touch your neck."
Izuna looked toward the branch. Minato waved at him like a boy, but his eyes shone like an assassin's.
Izuna smiled. Three days, he repeated in his mind. Enough.
That night, Izuna sat alone in his room. The scroll was open, a candle burning low, wax dripping onto the floor. Beneath his Sharingan, the symbols danced, circles dissolved into layers, lines wove like threads of genjutsu.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard rain. Quietly, he whispered:
"If I master this… nothing will bind me to the earth anymore."
The rain had been falling all night, drumming on the old roof, but Izuna never looked up. His eyes burned red with the Sharingan, and the scroll in front of him was covered in smudges of ink and scars of chakra. His hands throbbed from forming seals, his wrists raw from trying to break through the layers of space with nothing but his breath.
The first time, the seal burst and set the paper on fire.
The second time — an empty jump. Nothing.
The third time, blood ran from his nose when he missed the chakra layer and tried to rip himself through half-bound space.
But he didn't stop. Minato wouldn't stop, he thought. Madara wouldn't stop.
So neither did he.
When the third morning broke, the seal on the scroll was different. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't Minato's. It was his.
Three days later
On an old clearing beneath the pine canopy, Minato stood calmly. In his hand was a kunai engraved with the original Hiraishin seal. On the ground, Izuna knelt, a scroll before him—but now the seal was visible on his wrist: etched into his skin, freshly burned with chakra.
Minato smiled. "So, you didn't just copy it."
"I could never catch your shadow by copying," Izuna replied coldly. "I had to create my form."
Minato threw the kunai high into the air. The blade sliced through the air but did not fall—it vanished the moment Minato disappeared with it. A moment later, he stood right behind Izuna, his palm lightly resting on Izuna's neck.
"If you touch me before I break your seal," Minato said, his voice as quiet as rain, "I'll acknowledge you. If not, better learn how to fall."
Izuna said nothing. He only formed hand signs. He felt his chakra rise, his Sharingan tracking Minato's chakra traces through space. One breath. One moment.
The seal on his wrist flared. The space tensed as if about to burst. Minato felt it—just a fraction of a second later than he wished.
The air between them shimmered. Izuna vanished from the ground, appearing a centimeter from Minato's face. His fingers touched Minato's shoulder.
Minato smiled, even as Izuna's Sharingan flared before his eyes.
The space settled. Izuna stood before Minato, fingers still lightly touching his shoulder, eyes burning with a slowly fading Sharingan. The circle on his wrist pulsed but did not break.
Minato still held him by the shoulder to prevent the chakra backlash from tearing him apart. He smiled—but only with his lips. For a moment, his eyes grew serious, almost cautious.
What kind of Uchiha monster is this, Minato thought, watching Izuna. Half a year of fuinjutsu, now space-time…
Still, his voice remained calm, almost friendly:
"From now on… this field is yours. We will continue to train"
Izuna only smiled, his breath misting in the cold morning air. There was no trace of doubt in his eyes anymore—only endless hunger.