Chapter 15: The Hidden Blade
It was too late. Uchiha Fusa had already moved.
He didn't bother with ninjutsu this time; he simply exploded forward using pure, chakra-enhanced speed, closing the distance to Reitō in a fraction of a second. His palm, glowing faintly with concentrated chakra meant to disrupt and damage, shot straight for the boy's sternum. The force behind it wasn't lethal, but it was brutally pedagogical—a blow meant to shatter tenketsu and leave Reitō bedridden for months, a "lesson" in the cost of defiance.
At the exact instant Fusa's strike should have connected, Reitō vanished.
Again.
There was no prior movement, no gathering of chakra visible even to the activated Sharingan. It was as if the space he occupied simply decided to be empty. Uchiha Fusa's palm sliced through air, the momentum causing him to stumble forward. A cold, nauseating realization washed over him: No hand seals. Again. How?
Whoosh!
Before the thought could fully form, Reitō materialized near the doorway. As Fusa had guessed, the strain was showing. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on Reitō's brow, and his breath came slightly quicker. Five consecutive high-speed Body Replacements, even seal-less, had pushed his underdeveloped chakra system and young body to their limit. A flicker of fatigue was finally visible.
But Reitō's eyes, as they briefly met those of the seemingly unremarkable chūnin leaning against the doorframe, held not panic, but a quiet, calculated relief.
The chūnin's eyebrows rose a fraction, a spark of genuine surprise in his otherwise placid gaze.
"You can't run forever!" Uchiha Fusa snarled, recomposing himself and lunging across the room once more, his fury overriding any tactical caution. "Out of my way!" he barked at the chūnin by the door, dismissing him as a mere functionary, a bureaucratic obstacle weaker than his own two colleagues.
He was wrong.
In the next heartbeat, the unassuming chūnin shifted. It wasn't a dramatic movement, but the air around him changed. A wave of dense, controlled, and palpably powerful chakra erupted from his core, not as a flare of intimidation, but as a focused pressure. He didn't dodge Fusa's charge; he met it with a simple, perfectly timed step-in, his forearm deflecting Fusa's striking arm with an impact that sounded like two blocks of wood cracking together.
Uchiha Fusa's eyes widened. Impossible!
Before he could process the sheer, unexpected force, his opponent was gone from his front.
Bam!
A soft displacement of air from behind.
Fusa whirled, instincts screaming, and hurled a kunai backward without aiming.
Poof!
The kunai struck the chūnin square in the back… and he dissolved into a puff of white smoke.
A substitution clone. Executed at a speed that had completely fooled even his Sharingan's tomoe.
Where—?!
Cold steel kissed his throat from behind, the pressure delicate but absolute. The real chūnin stood there, his other hand resting casually in his pocket, the kunai in his grip held with the lethal, nonchalant precision of a master.
"Who… who are you?" Uchiha Fusa gasped, frozen, the fight draining out of him under the intimate threat of the blade.
The other two examiners in the room were also on their feet now, their expressions shifting from shock to deep alarm. "Identify yourself!" one demanded, hands drifting toward their own weapon pouches. This level of skill was far beyond any ordinary proctor.
Only Hyūga Reitō remained relatively calm, his fatigued expression watching the scene unfold as if he had anticipated this intervention. That calculated calm did not escape the chūnin holding the kunai; it intrigued him.
Seeing the hostility of the other two, the mysterious chūnin simply smiled, a thin, humorless curve of his lips. "At ease. I am here under the Hokage's directive to observe the integrity of the entrance assessments."
With his free hand, he produced not a scroll, but a simple, unadorned porcelain mask and tossed it onto the examiners' table. It was white, featureless save for the stylized, etched markings of a cat.
The effect was immediate. All three examiners, including Uchiha Fusa with the blade at his neck, paled. Their postures stiffened into something between fear and respect.
"An… Anbu," the examiner named Ino breathed.
Reitō's own mind raced. An Anbu operative? Here? At an Academy exam? The implications were profound. Was the Third Hokage's surveillance of the clans, particularly the restless Uchiha, already this deeply embedded into daily affairs?
The Anbu ninja's sharp eyes never left Reitō's face. The boy's earlier glance, that look of relief before the fight even started, was a clue that didn't fit. It suggested foreknowledge. Had this Hyūga child, with his strange, flawed Byakugan, somehow seen through his cover?
The Anbu gently—but unmistakably—pushed Uchiha Fusa away, sheathing his kunai. Fusa staggered back, rubbing his neck, all fight extinguished by the symbol of the mask.
Then the Anbu turned fully to Reitō. His voice was calm, conversational, but it carried an edge of pure, professional curiosity that was more intimidating than any shout.
"An interesting reaction, young Hyūga," he said. "The look on your face a moment ago… it suggested you were counting on my intervention. A curious assumption for a candidate facing a hostile chūnin examiner. How did you arrive at that… judgment?"
The question hung in the tense quiet of the room. All eyes turned to Reitō. It was no longer a question about ninjutsu speed, but about perception, intelligence, and perhaps a secret he wasn't supposed to have. The true test, it seemed, was just beginning.