"Catch!" the medical ninja shouted.
Clearly enjoying the chaos, he grabbed his own ninja tool pouch and Yuya's, then tossed them toward Yami and Minato.
Both boys caught them cleanly and, with practiced motions that looked far too natural for their age, strapped the pouches on.
"Please instruct me."
Yami and Minato formed the confrontation seal again.
This time, they did not wait for Yuya to call out the start.
Almost in perfect sync, both reached for their pouches, pulled out three shuriken each, and threw them straight at one another.
At the same time, each boy drew a kunai in a reverse grip and surged forward behind the spinning blades, eyes locked through the flickering gaps between shuriken.
To the watching students, it looked like two mirrored reflections.
Shuriken collided, scraped, and slipped past each other in flashing arcs.
Yami and Minato lifted their kunai at the exact same moment, striking the incoming shuriken away with crisp, minimal movements.
Clang.
The two metallic impacts nearly overlapped into one sound.
Then, in the eyes of their classmates, the distance between them vanished.
Both bodies blurred into dark afterimages that slammed together, and the instant their silhouettes sharpened, the duel turned into a brutal, dazzling exchange of blades.
In a world where first through fourth years were still forbidden from using kunai in normal assessments, these two fought like they had been holding weapons for years.
Their dynamic vision was terrifying. They tracked every twitch of the shoulder, every shift of weight, every angle of a kunai's edge and the line it wanted to travel, as if they carried the eyes of an Uchiha.
Parry, slip, counter.
Metal met metal in fast, clean beats. Their footwork stayed tight, their heads stayed calm, and their hands moved with a rhythm that felt less like two children brawling and more like trained fighters crossing blades.
The medical ninja who had been smiling a moment ago stopped smiling entirely.
His face hardened, eyes widening with disbelief.
This kind of speed, this kind of reaction time, this kind of precision.
These were really two fourth year students?
If he had not known better, he would have thought two Uchiha with awakened eyes were fighting.
Yuya's body had gone tense as well, chakra already ready under his feet. He looked like he might Body Flicker in at any second to stop the match.
He had approved the no rules duel.
He had not expected the level of danger in the first few breaths.
A high intensity weapon exchange demanded absolute focus. One blink, one distracted thought, one misread angle, and the match would be decided in an instant.
In that domain, Yami had the advantage.
After only a few exchanges, he created an opening.
Their kunai met again. Yami angled his blade upward in a sharp diagonal lift, and in the same motion, he slid his index finger into the ring at the end of his kunai.
Using the contact as leverage, he rotated his grip from reverse to forward in a heartbeat and slashed straight toward Minato's chest.
Against most people, that sudden change would have been fatal.
Minato's reflexes were simply not normal.
The moment he saw the grip shift, chakra gathered under his feet on instinct.
Before Yami's blade could bite the air in front of him, Minato vanished into a blur.
Yami did not look surprised.
The instant Minato disappeared, Yami pivoted and snapped his arm out, throwing his kunai toward the eight o'clock direction as if he had already seen where Minato would reappear.
Clang.
Kunai struck kunai, both blades deflecting and skidding across the ground.
The duel shifted immediately.
The sharp sounds of metal became the heavy thuds of bodies.
Thud thud thud.
Yami and Minato collided in close quarters, trading strikes with hands, elbows, knees, and kicks.
This time, Yami took control even faster.
Because the difference in their bodies was too obvious.
At this age, girls often developed faster than boys, and Yami, already around one sixty tall, stood only about a head shorter than Kushina.
But against Minato, he was taller by more than a head, closer to a full twenty five centimeters.
That height gap was not just a number.
It became leverage, reach, weight, and force.
Minato tried to block a single whipping kick.
The moment his forearm met Yami's shin, his entire arm went numb.
His body tilted, balance shattered, and he nearly fell on the spot.
Minato's eyes widened in shock.
It had only been a year since their last real fight.
How had Yami's strength become this oppressive?
Minato did not hesitate.
He leapt back to create distance.
And before his feet even touched the ground, his hands were already forming seals.
Yuya and the medical ninja both changed expression the moment they recognized the first sign.
Yami, who could recite every hand seal from memory and understood what each opening movement suggested, recognized it at once as well.
So he formed seals too.
"Wind Style, Great Breakthrough!"
"Earth Style, Earth Rampart!"
Their voices rang out almost together.
The instant Minato landed, his cheeks puffed and he exhaled a twisting stream of air.
In the next breath, that stream expanded into an invisible wave, a roaring pressure that surged toward Yami.
Just as the wind was about to swallow him, the ground in front of Yami flipped up.
A massive square slab of earth rose like a shield.
The gale smashed into it.
It did not topple it, and it did not break through.
Instead, the wind split and scattered, kicking up sand and debris that blasted outward.
Students watching in the distance yelped and raised their arms to shield their eyes.
"As expected," Yuya muttered, and even the medical ninja could not hide his amazement. "They can both use elemental techniques already. That is true talent."
Because the wind still swirled through the field, even Minato, who excelled at Body Flicker movement, could not slip around behind the barrier for a clean ambush.
Yami used that moment to form seals again.
Pop, pop.
Two bursts of white smoke appeared beside him.
When the air cleared, two figures identical to Yami stood at his left and right.
Yuya and the medical ninja did not react with alarm.
They had seen the hand signs.
This was not a real clone.
It was the basic Clone Technique, a pair of phantom images without substance.
If it had been Shadow Clones, they would not have been standing so casually.
But the next scene made both of them stare.
As the wind faded, Yami and the two phantoms rushed out from behind the earth slab at the same time, charging straight at Minato.
Minato's pupils tightened.
He reached into his pouch, pulled out three shuriken, and threw them toward the three Yami figures, intending to confirm whether these were simple illusions or something more dangerous.
The real Yami twisted his body and avoided the spinning blades.
The other two let the shuriken pass through their torsos.
Seeing that, Minato let out a quiet breath of relief and stepped forward to meet them head on.
Yami had closed the distance too quickly.
Minato did not have time to think deeply.
And because of that, he overlooked something critical.
A normal phantom clone should disperse the instant it was touched.
It should vanish at the lightest contact.
But Yami's phantom clones did not vanish after being pierced by shuriken.
They held their form, stable, as if they were anchored by something else.
Minato realized it too late.
He shifted past a straight punch from the Yami in front of him, noticing that strike felt strangely sluggish, and he countered with a fast turning backfist aimed at Yami's chest.
His fist passed straight through.
No impact.
No resistance.
Yet everything about that figure, the timing, the approach, the pressure, screamed that this should have been the real body.
Then what?
Were all three illusions?
Was Yami hidden somewhere else?
Minato's eyes flicked outward, his instincts screaming to scan the surroundings.
And in that instant, something filled his vision.
A fist expanded toward his face, too fast, too close.
Minato's expression changed sharply.
He understood.
But it was already too late.
Boom.
The punch landed with a heavy crack.
Minato's features distorted from the impact, and his body lifted off the ground, thrown backward through the air by the raw force.
That was not the end.
It was only the beginning of the combo.
(End of Chapter)
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