Chapter 6: A Display of Skill and a Glimpse of Shadows
Uzumaki Naruto stomped forward to the firing line, shooting a heated glare at Uchiha Sasuke as they passed. "Hmph!" he snorted, the sound dripping with childish defiance.
Arriving at the mark, he grabbed the offered shuriken with a determined grunt. He stared hard at the distant targets, his brow furrowed in concentration. Taking a deep, theatrical breath, he swung his arm back and hurled the shuriken with all his might.
The problem was, it was all might, and no control.
The shuriken flew from his grasp in a wild, uncontrolled spray. They spun erratically, clattering against the wooden target frames, embedding themselves harmlessly in the grass, and sailing clear over the targets entirely. One particularly wayward piece of metal zipped past the main area, lodging itself into the trunk of a tree with a solid thwack.
A deathly silence fell over the training ground.
Iruka, who had been watching with a hopeful expression, felt the blood drain from his face. The errant shuriken was buried in the wood a mere hand's breadth from where his head had been a moment before.
Naruto stared, horrified, at the disastrous results, his confident posture deflating completely.
A wave of snickers and outright laughter rippled through the crowd of students. "He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" someone jeered.
"Maybe he should stick to painting those lame graffiti on the Hokage Monument!"
Iruka, recovering from his shock, let out a long, weary sigh. "Naruto... we will be having a long talk about focus and control after this. Zero points."
As Naruto slunk back to the group, shoulders hunched and face burning with a mixture of shame and anger, Kamikawa Hiraoka felt a pang of sympathy. He had known this was coming, a fixed point in the timeline, but seeing the boy's public humiliation was still difficult.
"Kamikawa Hiraoka, you're next!" Iruka called, his voice still tight with residual nerves.
So it's my turn, Hiraoka thought, stepping forward.
"You can do it, Hiraoka-kun!" Hinata's soft but firm encouragement came from beside him, her earlier shyness forgotten in her support for him.
As he walked to the line, he noticed the shift in the atmosphere. While Sasuke's performance had been met with awed whispers, the attention on him felt different. The girls watched him with bright, admiring eyes, and even some of the boys looked on with respectful curiosity. His looks and calm demeanor had indeed carved him a unique space in the class's social hierarchy, a fact he found both amusing and slightly burdensome.
"Ding! Host, please choose."
"Option 1: Complete the test with a spectacular, flawless display."
"Reward: Chakra Reserves Tripled."
"Option 2: Pass the test with a solid, standard performance."
"Reward: Chakra Reserves Doubled."
"Option 3: Fail the test deliberately."
"Reward: Chakra Reserves Halved."
The choice was effortless. Power was the currency of this world, and he would take every ounce he could get.
Option one.
A surge of energy, warm and potent, flooded his system the moment he made his choice. It was like a second heart had started beating inside him, pumping raw power through his channels. He flexed his fingers, feeling the vibrant hum of triple the chakra now at his command.
He looked at the targets, a calm focus settling over him. A confident smirk played on his lips.
The students watched, curious as to why he was just standing there. Iruka opened his mouth, perhaps to prompt him, but then closed it as Hiraoka finally moved.
In a single, fluid motion, Hiraoka channeled chakra to the soles of his feet. With a powerful push, he launched himself backward into a graceful, high arc, soaring through the air above the firing line. As he ascended, his hands became a blur, drawing and throwing shuriken not in a wild volley like Naruto, but in a precise, calculated sequence.
The true spectacle, however, was in the trajectories. The shuriken weren't just flying straight; they were ricocheting off one another with sharp pings of colliding metal. A thrown shuriken would strike the flat of another, sending it careening at an impossible angle to strike a distant target's bullseye. It was a breathtaking display of geometry, physics, and chakra control, a web of interlocking throws that concluded in the span of a single breath.
He landed softly back on the ground, his stance perfect, not even bothering to glance at the results.
A stunned silence gripped the field, even deeper than the one that had followed Naruto's failure. Then, it was broken by Iruka's voice, filled with genuine astonishment.
"A-all bullseyes! A perfect score!" Iruka exclaimed, staring at the targets where every shuriken sat dead-center. "Kamikawa Hiraoka... that was masterful control!"
The cheers that erupted were deafening. It was a victory for the entire class, a moment of pure, unadulterated skill that everyone could appreciate. Girls squealed, clutching love letters they now felt too shy to deliver, while boys looked on with wide-eyed respect.
From the corner of his eye, Hiraoka saw Uchiha Sasuke. The Uchiha prodigy's usual mask of indifference had cracked, replaced by a faint, almost imperceptible frown. A spark of competitive fire flickered in his dark eyes.
Their gazes met across the crowded field. For a few seconds, the noise of the celebrating students seemed to fade away. In that silent exchange, Hiraoka saw more than just a rival; he saw a tragedy waiting to unfold.
One month, Hiraoka calculated grimly. The Uchiha massacre is in one month.
His mind raced through the history he knew: the isolation of the clan, the distrust sown by Danzo after the Nine-Tails' attack, the planned coup, and Itachi's impossible choice. This proud boy, standing there trying to measure himself against a new rival, was about to have his entire world ripped away.
Uchiha Sasuke, noticing the strange, almost pitying depth in Kamikawa Hiraoka's stare, felt a prickle of unease. The look wasn't one of challenge or admiration, but of something else entirely—something he couldn't name, and that bothered him more than any showy shuriken technique ever could.
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