"Are you sure this is… safe?" Sama's voice was a hushed whisper, though the two figures standing in the cleared space fifty feet away showed no sign of hearing. She stood beside her brother, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, knuckles white.
Minato didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the scene ahead: Renjiro and Kushina, standing about ten feet apart in a rough circle of flattened grass and hard-packed earth. The distance between the combatants and the observers felt both vast and perilously small.
He watched the way Renjiro shifted his weight, a predator's subtle motion, and the way Kushina stood utterly relaxed, a deceptive calm that presaged a hurricane. He trusted them both with his life. He trusted their skill, their control.
But this… this was a different calculus.
"They're two of the most capable shinobi I know," Minato said finally, his voice calm, the rational part of him stating facts. "They set the parameters. They asked for isolation. They understand the risks."
The words were logical, reassuring. Yet, the slight hesitation before he spoke, the almost imperceptible tension in the line of his jaw, betrayed the truth: he didn't fully believe his own reassurance, not in his gut.
Sama saw it. She knew her brother too well.
"Minato," she said, her voice gaining a quiet, emotional edge. "They might kill each other."
"Then it's a good thing I'm the fastest man alive," Minato quipped, a defensive attempt at humour, his gaze never leaving the two figures.
"I'll stop them before it goes too far."
Sama turned to look at him fully, her expression stark with sisterly disbelief.
Minato felt the unspoken challenge, a mild, professional insult mixing with familial annoyance.
'I stopped the Third Raikage's hellstab. I've intercepted bijuudama. I can certainly intervene between two people I know.'
The thought was defensive, and he shoved it down, focusing on the present.
He took a deliberate step forward, his voice amplified with a thread of chakra to carry across the clearing without shouting.
"Final rules!" he called out, the words crisp in the mountain air. "No killing intent. No techniques meant to cause permanent injury or disability. Everything else is fair game."
'They'd practically strong-armed him into this,' he reflected internally. Renjiro's determined request, Kushina's eager agreement. They wanted a real test, away from prying eyes and village sensors. Only he could give them the isolation they needed with a single Hiraishin marker. And only Sama, by chance and familial concern, had become their second witness.
From the distance, Renjiro's voice floated back, laced with dry humour. "The second one might be impossible, Minato-sensei. Permanent injury is kinda impossible."
Minato didn't miss a beat. "Yeah, I know about your healing, but the point still remains."
Minato knew the terrifying regenerative power Kushina possessed, and he'd seen Renjiro walk away from wounds that should have been fatal. This rule was less for their safety and more for his own peace of mind.
"Win conditions are immobilisation for one full minute, voluntary surrender, or loss of consciousness." He paused, the formalities feeling absurdly thin over the raw power about to be unleashed.
"Are you ready?"
Kushina gave a single, calm nod, her violet eyes locked on Renjiro. Renjiro cracked his neck, a grin spreading across his face that was all fierce joy. "I was born ready for this."
Kushina rolled her eyes heavenward, as if asking the sky for patience. "Show-off."
Minato took a deep breath. His hand chopped down through the air. "Begin!"
In the same instant, he was a blur of yellow, reappearing beside Sama another fifty feet back, putting more distance between them and the impending storm.
"The village council meeting is tomorrow afternoon," Sama murmured, her eyes wide as she stared at the now-active clearing. "I hope you didn't plan on being too sore to attend."
"Priorities, Sama," Minato replied softly, his attention already wholly consumed by the two figures who had not yet moved.
"Watch."
In the circle, a profound stillness had descended. Renjiro and Kushina stood frozen, ten feet of charged emptiness between them. The wind tugged at their hair.
"Getting nervous?" Kushina teased, her voice a low, playful taunt.
"Just admiring the view before I rearrange it," Renjiro shot back. Then, with a deliberate, old-fashioned gallantry that was utterly incongruous with the situation, he gestured with one hand.
"Ladies first."
Kushina's smile turned sharp, feral. "Then here I come."
She vanished.
Not with a Shunshin's puff of smoke or a blur of motion—to the untrained eye, she simply ceased to exist in one spot and was in another. She reappeared not in front of Renjiro, but behind him, her fist already driving toward his kidney with force enough to shatter stone.
Renjiro was already moving. He didn't turn. He folded, his body tilting forward as Kushina's fist grazed the back of his gi with a sound like a ripping sail. The near-miss launched him into motion, and the spar exploded into life.
What followed was a symphony of controlled violence. Kushina was a force of nature, a typhoon contained in human form. Her attacks were not technically complex; they were overwhelming.
Straight punches that made the air crack, roundhouse kicks that whirred like falling trees, grapples that sought to crush and dominate. Each impact of her fist or foot against his blocks sent jolting shockwaves through Renjiro's frame, vibrating up his bones and into his teeth.
Renjiro was a ghost in the storm. He weaved, ducked, and flowed, his movements a masterpiece of evasion.
His tri-wheel Mangekyō was active, spinning with silent, crimson intensity. Through it, he could see everything. He could track the minute tension in her shoulder before a strike, predict the shift of her weight for a kick, and read the flicker of intent in her chakra flow.
But seeing and stopping were two different things.
'Blocking hurts,' he thought, a clinical assessment amidst the adrenaline. A crossed-arm guard against a descending axe kick sent a numbing jolt through both forearms, the bones screaming in protest.
His enhanced Uzumaki healing would mend the micro-fractures in seconds, but the pain was immediate and insistent, a constant reminder of the gap in their raw physical power.
'Speed does not equal strength. I can see the hurricane, but I cannot stand against its wind.'
Frustration, hot and metallic, began to bleed into his focus. He was being pushed, step by grinding step, across the clearing. Every exchange cost him more stamina than it cost her. Her relentless pressure was a wall, and he was the water splashing against it, eroding himself in the process. He was cornered, not by strategy, but by sheer, undeniable force.
Then, in the middle of a furious exchange—as Kushina feinted low and launched a piston-like jab at his throat—Renjiro did something inexplicable.
He closed his eyes.
It was an act of such profound insanity that Kushina, for half a heartbeat, thought it was a trick, a genjutsu feint. But her chakra field saw no chakra flare. He had simply… shut them. Her strike, already committed, didn't slow. It was a fight-ending blow, aimed with precision to crush his windpipe and drop him into unconsciousness.
Renjiro's arm came up. His forearm met her fist not with a desperate, braced block, but with a perfect, parrying deflection, his body turning with the motion to spill the force harmlessly past him. The movement was so smooth, so preternaturally timed, it seemed impossible.
"THWACK."
The sound of the impact was clean, final. Kushina's forward momentum carried her past him. She skidded to a halt, whirling around, her Sharingan-wide eyes staring. He had blocked it. With his eyes closed.
Renjiro opened his eyes.
The difference was instantaneous and profound. It wasn't a change in his chakra, which remained tightly leashed. It was in his presence. The focused, analytical fighter was gone.
In his place stood something stiller, calmer, and infinitely more grounded. The air around him seemed to grow heavier. His Mangekyō still spun, but it seemed less like a tool he was using and more like a natural phenomenon occurring behind his eyes.
Kushina stared. She knew this feeling. It was the feeling of a limit being removed, a deeper well of power being accessed. It wasn't about more chakra. It was about efficiency. About the body and mind operating on a fundamental level that bypassed conscious thought.
A slow, wild smirk spread across Kushina's face, pushing aside her shock. The thrill of a real challenge, the one she'd secretly been hoping for, ignited in her violet eyes.
"Well," she said, her voice a mix of awe and exhilaration. "I thought you would open the Gates earlier than this."
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