---Konoha - The Kenway Compound - Backyard---
Minato's smile lingered for only a heartbeat after his quiet warning.
Then, the air fractured.
What followed no longer resembled a polite testing of physical boundaries. It did not even resemble a spar between two elite shinobi feeling out each other's styles. It resembled the raw, unadulterated legend of the Yellow Flash.
Minato vanished with a soft, almost polite distortion of space, and this time the movement carried a lethal decisiveness that immediately caused the temperature of the field to plummet. His presence flickered from one marked point to another in rapid, disorienting succession, each transition so surgically clean that even the wind struggled to keep pace with his displacement.
To an ordinary observer, or even a seasoned Jonin, he would have seemed to exist everywhere at once… a localized storm of yellow light and killing intent.
To Alaric, however... it was simply interesting.
The first follow-up came from above. Minato reappeared in mid-air with his body already rotating, his heel carving downward toward Alaric's shoulder in a devastating axe kick meant to break the taller man's posture and pry open a defensive gap. The motion was fluid, carrying the full weight of gravity and momentum, perfectly timed to exploit a blind spot.
Yet, Alaric simply shifted half a step backward, his posture relaxed, allowing the crushing blow to split empty air mere inches from his chest. Without missing a beat, Alaric's hand swept upward in a blurred, economical counter-strike aimed squarely for Minato's exposed ribs.
But Minato was already gone.
He flickered to another invisible marker directly behind Alaric, a kunai flashing in a lethal arc toward the back of the blonde anomaly's neck. But instead of turning, Alaric leaned forward just enough that the razor edge skimmed past his collar with millimeters to spare, severing only a phantom breath of air. Before Minato could follow through with the momentum of his thrust, Alaric's elbow snapped backward in a precise, compact arc, forcing the Hokage to instinctively disengage and vanish once more to avoid a shattered sternum.
Space bent.
The manicured grass flattened in concentric, violent bursts as Minato began chaining Hiraishin jumps in earnest, each sudden appearance flowing seamlessly into a high-lethality strike. A kunai thrust aimed for the kidney from the left. A sweeping, bone-breaking kick from the right. A palm strike infused with dense chakra from directly behind.
The pressure mounted rapidly, transforming the serene backyard into a crucible of kinetic force.
On the veranda, Kushina's arms slowly uncrossed.
"…He's serious now," she murmured, her violet eyes gleaming with a mixture of immense pride and creeping tension. She knew better than anyone the terrifying tempo her husband could dictate when he stopped holding back.
Beside her, Haku said nothing, although his breathing had grown noticeably quieter, shallower, as he tried… and was challenged… to track Minato's full movement pattern. Haku was ungodly fast, yes; his Zero Friction was a continuous, nearly instantaneous velocity that defied physical resistance. But Minato himself was truly instant. He did not travel through space; he erased the distance entirely.
However, as Haku narrowed his eyes, tracking the slight, telltale fluctuations of chakra that preceded every materialization, he realized something crucial. 'He's incredibly fast... but if I try hard enough, I can keep up with the execution of his strikes after he teleports. I can read the intent.' Haku's gaze shifted to the man in the crimson coat. 'So it makes perfect sense that Sensei is still completely comfortable.'
At the center of the geometric storm of yellow flashes, Alaric's smile remained faint, focused, and utterly undisturbed.
He adjusted his physical output again. Just enough.
Minato felt it immediately. The defensive windows, which were already impossibly narrow, slammed shut.
'Good.'
Without warning, Minato's hands blurred. Three shadow clones burst into existence around the perimeter of the warded field, each one already mid-motion as they hurled handfuls of marked kunai in carefully calculated, intersecting arcs. The heavy, three-pronged steel flashed through the air, embedding into the ground, the stone pathway, the trunks of the ornamental trees, and even the reinforced barrier posts at the edges of the yard.
The battlefield transformed instantly into a massive, inescapable Hiraishin network.
Minato moved.
Now, he truly blurred.
He flashed between the newly established markers in rapid-fire succession, each teleport chained so tightly to the next that the rhythm of space itself seemed to stutter and glitch. One moment he was at Alaric's flank, driving a blade toward his ribs; the next he was suspended above him, raining down strikes; then behind; then directly in front, a kunai already lunging forward before the previous afterimage had even faded.
And Alaric flowed through it all like a man taking a leisurely stroll through a light, spring rain.
He pivoted just enough to let lethal blades pass harmlessly by his vital organs. He redirected crushing strikes with economical, open-handed palms that expertly hijacked Minato's kinetic energy. Once, he even leaned aside with a look of mild, theatrical annoyance as a kunai passed close enough to stir his platinum hair, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder in the same fluid motion.
Still, Minato's cerulean eyes sharpened with absolute focus.
Because Alaric was matching him. Not barely, no... he was matching him comfortably.
It was time to escalate.
Minato appeared thirty meters away in a single, brilliant flash, his right hand already raised, swirling with dense, rapidly rotating chakra. The Rasengan formed with perfect, spherical stability in less than a breath, its compressed, grinding power humming with a quiet, terrifying violence that distorted the air around it.
Haku leaned forward sharply, his hands gripping the wooden railing of the veranda in sheer intellectual interest.
Kushina's eyes widened in genuine surprise, a gasp escaping her lips. "You'd use that here!?"
"Yep! The opponent's strong, after all!" Minato called out, his voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere before he vanished.
He reappeared directly in Alaric's absolute blind spot, his body already driving forward with explosive momentum as the Rasengan surged toward the center of Alaric's torso with textbook precision and terrifying speed.
It was a flawless execution of the Flying Thunder God–Rasengan combination… the very technique that had shattered the defenses of armies and broken the masked man who had attacked their village sixteen years ago.
Even most current Kage would have been struck, their bodies obliterated by the grinding vortex before their synapses could even register the threat.
However, Alaric simply lifted his hand.
He didn't move to block it. He didn't attempt to dodge. He casually raised his open palm, allowing his fingers to hover around the violently spinning ball of blue chakra.
For a fraction of a second... a window of time so microscopically small that even Kushina nearly missed the mechanics of it... his fingers gently brushed the outer, rotating shell of the Rasengan.
Then, the impossible happened.
The spiraling, destructive chakra… simply obeyed him.
The tightly controlled, violent sphere of Minato's signature jutsu stuttered, its furious rotation faltering for the barest, imperceptible instant. Instead of meeting force with opposing force, Alaric's chakra seamlessly invaded the structure, harmonizing with the rotational frequency before entirely subverting the jutsu's ownership mid-motion. The Rasengan did not disperse into harmless wind. It did not destabilize and explode.
It just transferred... cleanly and flawlessly. It was now spinning steadily, perfectly obedient, in the center of Alaric's palm.
Minato's eyes widened to comical proportions, his forward momentum carrying him past Alaric as his empty hand struck nothing but air. 'He stole it!?'
On the porch, Kushina's mouth actually fell open, her hands dropping to her sides in utter disbelief.
Even Haku's legendary composure cracked, his jaw tightening as he tried to process the sheer absurdity of the physics involved.
The level of chakra control required to intercept a fully formed, A-rank shape-manipulation jutsu at the exact microsecond of lethal contact... while the Yellow Flash was mid-strike at maximum velocity... was beyond absurd. It was a divine insult to the rules of ninjutsu. It required not only god-like timing, but an absolute, tyrannical dominance over fine chakra manipulation.
"Making a Rasengan is easy," Alaric remarked, glancing down at the humming sphere of blue light in his hand with an expression of mild, academic curiosity. "…but I have to admit, this is the first time I actually stole it from someone... literally ripped it right out of their hands."
Then, with the casual disregard of a man tossing a discarded apple core, he flicked his wrist and threw it back.
But the speed at which the stolen Rasengan traveled back toward Minato was anything but casual; it shrieked through the air like a fired cannonball.
Minato barely had the time to twist his body, channeling his own chakra to meet the projectile and forcibly disperse the technique before it could strike him. The Rasengan burst harmlessly against the heavily reinforced ground, tearing a tight, spiraling crater into the earth in a sudden release of compressed force.
When the Fourth Hokage straightened up, the dust settling around his boots, his expression had fundamentally changed. 'He has extremely good chakra control… might even be better than Tsunade-sama…'
The warmth of the gentle father remained, etched deeply into his features. But now, there was an unmistakable, piercing focus behind it… the absolute seriousness of a shinobi who recognized that conventional warfare was entirely useless here.
"…I see," Minato said quietly, his voice carrying clearly over the humming of the barrier seals.
Across from him, Alaric's smile turned significantly brighter, more genuinely excited and feral than it had been since the spar began. He let his arms drop loosely to his sides.
"Now we're having fun."
Minato did not argue. He didn't reach for another kunai. He didn't shift into a Taijutsu stance.
Instead, he lifted one hand slowly, bringing his palms together in a simple, centering seal.
Then, he paused.
For the first time since the spar had commenced, the Yellow Flash went completely, unnervingly still. He closed his cerulean eyes, shutting out the physical world.
The shift in the atmosphere was subtle, yet immediately undeniable to anyone with sensory capabilities.
Kushina's brows rose high, a mixture of shock and profound awe painting her features.
Haku leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing as he felt a strange, heavy pressure descending upon the backyard… a pressure that did not originate from Minato's internal coils, but from the earth and sky themselves.
Minato exhaled once, a long and deeply controlled breath, as the sharp lines of his posture relaxed into something deceptively calm, deeply rooted, and perfectly balanced.
When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle, carrying a resonant echo that seemed to vibrate through the very grass beneath their feet.
"Alaric… would you mind giving me some time?"
Alaric tilted his head, his electric-blue eyes sharpening with intense interest as he watched the subtle, monumental change in Minato's chakra flow. Already, the air around the resurrected Hokage was beginning to feel… different. Quieter. Denser. As though the natural world itself… the trees, the soil, the ambient sunlight… were being actively invited closer, gathering around Minato like a silent, invisible army.
Recognition sparked instantly in Alaric's mind.
Then, pure, unadulterated excitement.
Slowly... very slowly... Alaric's confident smirk spread into something openly, fiercely delighted.
"Well now," Alaric murmured, folding his arms loosely across his chest as the wind began to stir faintly around them, drawn inward by the gathering senjutsu. "Sage Mode, huh?"
His gaze gleamed with the ravenous anticipation of a true predator.
Because three years ago, during the chaotic, crumbling climax of the Chunin Exams, he had crossed hands with the Edo Tensei versions of Hashirama and Tobirama Senju. And while their legendary techniques had been visually impressive, the artificial, ashen bodies had severely dulled their edge. The reanimation jutsu had shackled their true output, leaving the fight technically interesting for a historian, but ultimately disappointing for a warrior of Alaric's caliber.
But this time was fundamentally different.
This time... Minato Namikaze stood before him in his true, living, breathing prime, channeling the absolute zenith of the shinobi arts.
Alaric's eyes brightened like a man who had finally been handed a puzzle worthy of his intellect, a challenge worthy of his strength.
"Take your time," Alaric said softly, his voice vibrating with an eager, dangerous thrill. He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp in the dense air. 'I should probably get serious as well.'
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