"Let's not stop here," Ryu said. "Bring out the good stuff... The mighty Sharingan."
The challenge hung in the air. If he wanted to prove he didn't need eyes, he had to beat the ones that saw everything.
"Let's see if Ryu can handle the Sharingan with his eyes closed," Itachi thought.
"Okay," Itachi said.
He closed his eyes. When they opened again, the eye had changed. Within each iris, two tomoe turned slowly, their edges glinting in the light.
Ryu felt the disturbance immediately.
Ryu felt a slight change in the chakra of Itachi, a sudden calmness in it.
"That's what I'm talking about," Ryu said.
"Will you go all out too?" Itachi asked.
Ryu smiled faintly. "That would be difficult. I can't go all out without killing myself."
For a split second Itachi simply looked at Ryu, measuring whether that was arrogance, humour, or warning. But he quickly understood. He already knows not all ninjutsus are safe to use.
Then his hands blurred.
"[Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu]"
Small fireballs burst outward in a spreading pattern, fast and low and deceptively simple. Ryu ran through a meaningless sequence of hand seals without breaking eye contact, then released a wind counter. A burst of air slammed into the incoming flames.
Shuriken tore out of the burning fragments and kept flying, their momentum untouched by the extinguished fire. They came from different angles, not a barrage but a pattern, each line placed to punish an ordinary defensive response.
Ryu faked the standard seals again and slammed chakra into the ground.
[Earth Release: Earth Pillar Jutsu]
Stone columns punched up from the ground one after another. Not randomly. Every pillar rose exactly in the path of a shuriken. All shuriken were embedded in the earth pillar. Not one shuriken slipped through.
Shikaku didn't look away from the field. "His accuracy is vey high and he can see past the physical objects with this, just like Byakugan. A Hyuga's eyes can change the outcome of an ambush before it starts. If his technique reaches that level, the tactical value is obvious."
Muaki heard that and remained silent.
Ryu was already moving again. He grabbed the wooden sword he had planted earlier and pulled it free in one smooth motion.
Itachi glanced at it. "Didn't you say real weapons?"
"In my hands, anything can be a weapon." Ryu rolled the handle once through his fingers. "Ask Akira; I once beat her using just sand."
A thin layer of chakra wrapped itself around the wood.
Shikaku's eyes sharpened. "He's reinforcing plain wood. That should splinter on a high chakra amount."
Dan replied, "It would be for anyone else, but His control is holding it together."
Ryu stepped in first. The wooden blade cut in from the right. Itachi met it with steel and turned the force aside. Ryu let the contact ride, shifted the sword angle, and came back from lower than he should have been able to recover from that quickly.
Itachi matched him. One parry. Two. Three. Then four.
The tempo climbed. Ryu was quick, but Itachi became immediately harder to hit. The Sharingan was reading too much—muscle tension, chakra flow, and the first hint of movement. So Ryu began to feed it lies, twitching before the real motion and breaking his rhythm on purpose.
Still, the Uchiha boy's swordsmanship started to show little by little, not in one big, powerful moment but in dozens of small, effective ones. His angles got sharper. His transitions got shorter. He lost less ground with his feet.
Ryu kept up, but Itachi began controlling where the exchanges happened and how they ended.
A parry sent Ryu's blade wide. A kick almost slammed into his chest.
Ryu grabbed Itachi's foot with his free hand just as Itachi, already in the air, spat a close-range burst of flame straight at his face.
Golden light spread across Ryu's upper body in an instant.
The flames washed over him. The cloth burnt. The bandage over his eyes blackened slightly at the edge. A spark clung to it. Ryu brushed it out with two fingers as the golden aura receded from his torso.
He could feel Itachi withdrawing again.
Ryu thought. "He is trying to force me into full-body reinforcement. Make me spend chakra until I'm dry. Good plan."
A burst of shuriken came from all directions.
One sword was not enough for that. Ryu let go of the hilt with his left hand and shaped chakra directly into form. A second blade flashed into existence, forged from pure Yin-Yang chakra.
With a sword in both hands, Ryu danced through the storm of shuriken, deflecting each one effortlessly.
"A chakra-forged blade?" Shisui murmured.
Fugaku said nothing. His eyes stayed on the exchange.
Itachi used the distraction exactly the way Ryu expected he would. He pressed in behind the barrage, attacking while both of Ryu's hands were occupied.
But Ryu kept up and blocked the surprise attack.
"Seeing with chakra instead of eyes means I get all directions at once," he said over the clash of blades. "Walls, smoke, debris, trees... none of that means much."
A shuriken appeared out of nowhere and flew straight at Ryu's face.
"A trap….nice"
Ryu raised the wooden sword and caught it on the hilt. The projectile sank into the wood.
Itachi again tried to take advantage of the moment and tried to jump on Ryu when he stopped the surprise shuriken. But Ryu straight away stabbed him using the chakra blade.
Gasps broke around the yard.
Itachi's face showed pure horror for an instant. Then it changed. The horror twisted into a small smile.
Itachi's body slowly exploded into a flock of crows.
Ryu was already turning, but the real Itachi had used that fraction of delay perfectly. He came in from the side and cut a horizontal line straight across Ryu's face.
The sword hit something hard.
Itachi's eyes sharpened. A smooth, glossy black layer covered the upper half of Ryu's face like a second skin.
"[Crow Clone Jutsu]," Ryu said.
Itachi withdrew a step. "Yes."
Ryu grinned under the black surface. "You finally took my advice and adapted it properly. You're really a genius."
"Coming from you," Itachi said, "that means a lot."
The black material spread further. Across his jaw. Down his neck. Over his shoulders and chest. In seconds Ryu's whole body was covered in a carbon-fibre skin, dark and dense and wrong in a way normal chakra reinforcement never looked.
"You were trying to force my reinforcement out and leave me dry of chakra," Ryu said. He rolled his shoulders once inside the black shell. "Reasonable. But I have another card. This one only protects the surface."
Itachi created another [Crow Clone] and doubled down on Ryu immediately. Both bodies attacked from different sides, driving steel into the carbon surface again and again. Every missed defensive angle that should have drawn blood instead produced a hard scraping sound.
Then Itachi changed methods.
A kunai with an explosive tag flashed from his hand. Both Itachi and his clone jumped clear at exactly the right moment.
The explosion hit Ryu and he was thrown across the ground and rolled through dirt and smoke before stopping on one knee.
Thin trails of heat curled from the black shell covering him. Cracks spread through it. Fragments flaked off and dropped to the earth.
Ryu stood. The carbon skin continued splitting and peeling away.
Shikaku exhaled through his nose. "As expected. This one is simpler than the previous defensive jutsu the boy showed; it's good against cuts and piercing attacks but bad against wide-area impact and blasts… and it slows him down too."
"Yes, but 'simple' isn't the word for it," Dan said. "He's manipulating physical matter directly. Do you know how ridiculous that is? He makes it look easy because his chakra control is monstrous."
"Yes, it's even better than Tsunade?" Hiruzen asked quietly.
Dan only looked at him.
Itachi moved again before the carbon shell had fully cleared from Ryu's shoulders.
He pressed. Parried. Yielded a little ground. Pressed again. Every exchange nudged the geography of the fight just a little farther across the training field.
"He had been leading me there," Ryu realised.
The dampness under his sandal and the map fixed in his memory confirmed it. Itachi had walked him all the way back to the stone basin Jiyuu used for water training.
"The canon story didn't do him justice," Ryu thought. "It credited all his feats to his eyes, but that isn't true. He is a genius even without the Mangekyo."
The moment Ryu's foot touched the wet earth, Itachi's retreat ended.
Hand seals snapped into place.
[Water Release: Water Snake Jutsu]
The serpent lunged from the water source itself, all speed and weight, striking from Ryu's blind side.
Ryu faked a seal sequence and slammed chakra into the ground.
[Earth Release: Earth Pillar Jutsu]
Stone burst upward and shattered the water snake mid-lunge, spraying the training field with cold droplets.
Inside Naruto, Minato watched and smiled despite himself.
Minato said in a soft voice, "It wasn't random. Itachi led Ryu there…Very smart for his age. Every step was calculated."
Kushina Nodded.
Itachi was already on the next move. The real body inhaled.
[Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique]
A massive sphere of flame roared across the training ground.
At the same time, the [Crow Clone] dropped from above and released a wind jutsu into the back of Fire Jutsu.
Flame and wind collided and both jutsu combined, then twisted into something unstable and violent: an inferno of firestorm.
Ryu planted his feet.
A Rasengan formed in his palm. Three smaller ones appeared around it. They touched the core Rasengan and increased its rotaion speed.
"[Planet Rasengan]", Ryu thrust it forward.
The rotating chakra mass turned into a horizontal tornado and launched torwards into the firestorm.
Ryu's jutsu clashed with Itachi's and overpowered it after a few seconds, sending the flames in multiple directions.
At the far edge of the field, several trees caught fire. Smoke began rising into the air.
Ryu reformed carbon over his forearms and shaped it further. Two mantis-like scythes curved out from the backs of his hands. He rushed the nearest Itachi and cut him in two. The target broke apart into crows.
Before the real one could re-enter, five Root ANBU landed in the courtyard.
Dan's irritation hit the air before his voice did. "What is the meaning of this? You cannot just barge into a ninja clan's training grounds."
He was right; the village was built on a promise to keep the clans' secret jutsu safe.
The leader of Root turned toward Naruto. "We are here to take the Naruto Uzumaki into custody."
Naruto blinked. Something in his face quietly accepted the only explanation that made sense to him. "Are you... here to take me back to the orphanage? Sorry...I skipped going back."
The Root leader did not even look at him.
Inside Naruto's seal emotions rattled violently.
Kushina slammed her hands on a torii gate, eyes wide and furious. "How dare they stand there and say that to him... Hiruzen is right there and—"
"Kushina." Minato's voice stayed low. "Watch Ryu."
The black scythes shrank and dissolved from the backs of Ryu's hands.
"That won't be happening," Ryu said.
He pointed the finger toward the Hokage. "I filed an appeal, and the committee's decision has been temporarily stayed by Lord Hokage. You can ask him directly."
The Root leader looked at Hiruzen.
Hiruzen remained silent.
That silence was answer enough. The Root ANBU did not even try to challenge the Hokage's decision. It was not at the level of authority to question or defy the Hokage's orders.
The leader started to turn away.
"Oh, and tell Danzo," Ryu said.
The masked head turned slightly hearing the boy refer to the elder by his name.
Root ninjas are not welcome in the Hamura estate. Or any other Hamura establishment."
Ryu lowered his hand. "Only ANBU acting under the Hokage are allowed onto clan grounds ... that too with valid reasons."
The first layer of killing intent spilled into the training ground.
It was a heavy, ugly thing in the air. Enough that even Itachi's shoulders stiffened and the juniors around the field felt it pressing at their skin. But the trained adults held.
Then Ryu shifted his chakra.
-[Chakra Engine: Gear Second]
-[Golden Aura: Yin-Yang Tissue Reinforcement applied to cardiovascular system.]
Goosebumps ran across Itachi's arms. The Root ANBU visibly tensed, their stillness turning rigid.
"Troublesome," Shikaku thought. "So this is what he meant. He's using his reinforcement jutsu to make his body withstand the doping jutsu. Even then, the strain of over-revving a chakra network that hard should come with some side effects."
His passive healing was still a secret to most.
Ryu pushed further.
[Chakra Engine: Gear Third]
The pressure crashed down over the courtyard. The air thickened into something hostile and heavy.
The Root ANBU remained standing. Barely. Their knees shook. Years of training kept them upright, but only just.
Naruto pressed his hands flat against his chest, eyes wide. "Brother Ryu is... really angry."
Fugaku stared at the boy.
The Sharingan caught the flow of chakra clearly, and looking at Ryu now was like staring into a storm trapped inside human flesh.
Itachi was still younger, and he was standing far too close to the centre of it. He could not cope with the intense killing intent and his knees hit the ground.
"What is this pressure?" he thought. "What is this killing intent? It's not even directed at me... And I cannot move."
His hand shook as he looked at the kunai in his hand.
With grim precision, he drove the tip into his own thigh.
Pain cut through the paralysis like a blade through cloth. Air returned to his chest. He dragged in a breath.
In the red of his eyes, the two tomoe spun. They shifted apart. A black point bled into existence between them, stretched, and settled into place.
The mighty three-tomoe sharingan was born just now and no one noticed.
Fugaku was staring at Ryu. Dan and Shikaku were also staring at Ryu. Ryu himself, blindfolded and locked onto the Root leader.
Then the pressure vanished. Instantly.
Ryu exhaled, unhurried, and rested the wooden sword on his shoulder.
"On second thoughts," he said, his voice completely calm. "I'll tell him myself."
A/N:
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