Chapter 27: An Unlikely Trio
It was Namikaze Minato.
"Picking on someone outnumbered? You'll have to go through me first," he said, his voice calm but firm as he positioned himself beside Reitō. There was no bluster, only a simple statement of fact.
A couple of the Uchiha boys sneered. "Heh, look, the daydreamer wants to play hero! Let's teach them both a lesson—show them that the title of Hokage isn't for just anyone to reach for!"
"Count me in!" Uzumaki Kushina declared, planting herself on Reitō's other side, her red hair seeming to crackle with her fighting spirit. "Three on six? Sounds fair to me!"
Reitō looked from Minato's steady blue eyes to Kushina's blazing blue ones, a flicker of surprise cutting through his usual reserve. They weren't intervening out of pity or obligation. They looked… excited. As if this weren't a perilous confrontation but a shared adventure. A silent understanding passed between the three of them, wordless and immediate. We're doing this. These arrogant fools have had it coming.
Without another word, they moved.
The Uchiha, expecting cowed defiance or a tactical retreat, were caught off-guard by the sudden, coordinated aggression. They scrambled to meet the charge, their numerical advantage making them overconfident.
It quickly became clear their confidence was misplaced.
Namikaze Minato was a blur. He didn't use any flashy jutsu; his speed and agility were simply on another level. Two Uchiha boys lunged at him with clumsy strikes, only to hit empty air as Minato flowed around them like water, his counter-strikes precise and efficient, landing on pressure points that stung and unbalanced them without causing serious harm.
Reitō, for his part, became a phantom. With a thought and the barest whisper of chakra, he executed the Body Replacement Technique not for distance, but for micro-positioning. He would be in front of Uchiha Hibiki one second, and behind him the next, delivering a sharp, discouraging jab to the kidney or a sweep to the ankles. He toyed with Hibiki and another boy, his movements so disorientingly fast and silent that they soon began swinging at afterimages, frustration mounting on their faces.
But the most terrifying of the trio was Uzumaki Kushina. She didn't bother with fancy footwork or evasive tricks. She met force with overwhelming force. Three Uchiha descended on her, and she stood her ground, her small fists moving with surprising power. She parried a punch, grabbed the arm, and used the boy's own momentum to hurl him into one of his friends. Her chakra, vast and wild even at this age, seemed to enhance her raw strength. She fought with a joyous, furious abandon that was far more intimidating than any practiced kata.
"You all, get back!"
Enraged and humiliated, Uchiha Hibiki shoved his flailing clansmen aside. His hands flew into a sequence of seals—Ram, Serpent, Boar, Tiger, Horse—a pattern Reitō recognized instantly from the pages of his inherited memory and the glimpses of a future story.
Fire Release: Fireball Jutsu.
Hibiki took a deep breath, his chest swelling. This was the Uchiha's signature, their proof of superiority.
Reitō didn't wait for the exhale. The moment Hibiki's hands formed the final seal, Reitō was no longer in front of him. With a silent bam, he appeared directly behind the Uchiha heir. As Hibiki leaned forward to unleash the flames, Reitō's foot connected solidly with the small of his back.
"Ugh!"
The kick wasn't meant to cripple, but to disrupt. Hibiki was sent stumbling forward, the carefully built chakra in his lungs erupting prematurely. A sizable fireball shot from his mouth, but it roared harmlessly up into the evening sky, lighting the scene in a brief, dramatic orange glow before dissipating.
"You… you coward! You attacked during my jutsu!" Hibiki gasped, scrambling to his feet, his face a mask of fury and soot.
Reitō looked down at him, his expression one of pure, unadulterated disdain. "A shinobi who announces his technique and stands still long enough to be kicked is no shinobi at all. He's a target. Your weakness isn't my problem."
Hibiki snarled, but the fireball had drained him. His chakra reserves, unlike Kushina's bottomless well, were shallow. He was spent.
Just as Reitō considered making good on his earlier promise about eye color, a new voice, sharp as a whip-crack, cut through the chaos.
"ENOUGH!"
Uno-sensei stood at the end of the path, his arms crossed, his expression thunderous. The fighting stopped instantly.
"Does after-school time mean brawling time to you? Perhaps you all need more training to burn off this excess energy!" he barked. Then, with a dismissive poof, he vanished in a puff of smoke—a Shadow Clone, its purpose served.
The Uchiha boys, bruised, embarrassed, and outmatched, could only glare. Hibiki, the most humiliated, pointed a shaking finger at Reitō. "This isn't over, Hyūga! You won't always have someone to hide behind! I'll pay you back for today tenfold!"
The trio watched them slink away. The path was quiet again, save for their own breathing.
The next day, the Academy buzzed with the news. Whispers followed them through the halls.
"Did you hear? Some first-years took on six Uchiha!"
"Who was it?"
"The Hyūga branch kid, that Namikaze nobody, and the loud redhead girl!"
"No way! The Uchiha lost?"
In a quiet teacher's office, Uno and Sai reviewed the incident.
"So, Uno-sensei, you don't intend to discipline them?" Sai inquired, his smile placid.
"Hmph. Children's squabbles," Uno grunted, sipping his tea. "If they can't handle conflict outside a structured lesson, they'll never handle a battlefield. Better they learn the consequences now."
"Though you did send a Shadow Clone to intervene," Sai observed mildly.
"To preserve school property from a misguided Fireball," Uno corrected, though a faint, grudging smirk touched his lips. "And to ensure they had enough energy left for today's training. Which, given their performance, I believe they do."
Sai nodded slowly, his gaze distant, thoughtful. "Indeed. Their energy is remarkable. And the world outside is growing… tense. Perhaps it is time we applied a different kind of pressure. To see what they're truly made of, to separate the resilient from the brittle."
Uno-sensei set his cup down, his stern eyes narrowing with interest. "Oh? Do you have a specific method in mind, Sai-sensei?"