"He did it again..."
In the Hokage's office, Hiruzen let out a helpless sigh, though he couldn't completely hide the proud smile forming on his face.
Suzuki had just casually flashbanged a Jonin squad leader during a team-building exercise, instantly proving who was the real boss of Team 8. To a traditional ninja, the boy's actions might seem arrogant. But Suzuki was the Hokage's personal disciple now. Whether he liked it or not, he had to prove he was the top dog of his generation. Watching the boy easily take control of the battlefield made Hiruzen's smile widen.
Back on the training ground, the sudden, blinding burst of white light had completely blinded the team.
Naturally, Shino panicked. Temporarily robbed of his vision, the Aburame heir swung a chakra-filled fist blindly through the air. But before his arm even fully extended, his front foot was violently swept out from under him.
His balance vanished. The world spun sickeningly around him, and he was slammed hard into the dirt.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
"Judo..."
Watching through his crystal ball, Hiruzen nodded in appreciation. He had to admit, Suzuki's chosen martial art was fascinating.
Using the absolute minimum effort to deal the maximum amount of damage.
That was the core idea behind Suzuki's fighting style, and he made no effort to hide it. It was simply physics. Even if the entire village watched him fight, he knew it was impossible for anyone to perfectly copy him. A copycat would always just be a copycat, while Suzuki—aided by his mental Manager—would constantly keep evolving his moves.
Suzuki preferred Judo because it was brutally practical. Unlike regular punching and kicking—which bruised a ninja's knuckles and shins over time—Judo used gravity and the planet itself as a weapon. Even if an enemy used Earth jutsu to make their skin as hard as a diamond, it didn't matter. As long as Suzuki slammed them into the ground hard enough, the sudden stop would rattle their brain inside their skull, dealing massive internal damage.
"You're strong, Shino. But your bugs are really weak to heat," Suzuki said calmly.
Pinned to the ground, Shino felt a blistering heat radiating from Suzuki's palm, which was hovering just inches from his face. Beneath his skin, Shino could feel his parasitic bugs practically screaming in panic, trying desperately to crawl away from the fire chakra.
He was completely helpless.
"You win," Shino gave up with a sigh.
Bugs were a terrifying weapon, but they were naturally weak to fire. Unfortunately for Shino, Suzuki was rapidly becoming a master of Fire Release—a surprisingly rare skill in Konoha, despite the village literally being in the "Land of Fire."
Suzuki stood up, let Shino go, and casually walked over to Hinata. The Hyuga heiress hadn't moved an inch, her pale eyes completely shut against the lingering bright spots.
Suzuki stopped in front of her and lightly tapped her forehead with two fingers. "You lose too, Hinata."
"Um," she nodded immediately.
"...."
Suzuki was speechless at how quickly she surrendered. He let out a quiet sigh and gently ruffled her dark hair. "Just stay here. I'm going to see how I stack up against Kurenai-san."
"Yes, Suzuki-kun," Hinata whispered. Her face was bright red, but her pale eyes never looked away from him.
Meanwhile, the moment the flashbang had gone off, Kurenai's Jonin instincts had kicked in. She had instantly leaped backward, putting plenty of distance between herself and the Genin while desperately waiting for her eyes to recover from the blinding light.
What the heck kind of jutsu was that?! she thought frantically, rubbing her watering eyes.
She had never seen an elemental trick used like that before. It didn't do any actual physical damage, but in a real fight, it was a nightmare. Losing your vision for even two seconds was a death sentence.
"Ugh..."
Kurenai gritted her teeth. She could not believe she had just been played by a twelve-year-old kid! Yes, he was the Hokage's disciple, but he had literally graduated the day before!
As her vision finally cleared, she saw Suzuki standing completely still on the opposite side of the clearing. But something looked weird.
"Katon: Shinkiro (Fire Release: Heat Mirage)," Suzuki murmured, his hands forming a single, steady seal.
"Shino-kun, watch him closely," Hinata said softly. "He's about to show you his real mastery over fire."
Shino pushed his cracked sunglasses up his nose, completely at a loss.
Fire Release: Heat Mirage.
As Suzuki fed chakra into the jutsu, the air around his body seemed to violently ripple and warp for a split second. To a normal person, it just looked like a trick of the light, but Hinata's Byakugan instantly noticed a massive, unnatural spike in the air temperature.
Assuming the boy was preparing a ranged attack, Kurenai immediately went on the offensive. She drew a kunai and threw it with deadly accuracy straight at Suzuki's chest.
Swooosh!
The sharp steel tore through the air. The boy didn't even twitch to dodge!
"Suzuki-kun!" Kurenai yelled, suddenly realizing her throw was going to hit him dead on.
But for Hinata and Shino, who knew how smart Suzuki was, something felt totally wrong. And as expected, the kunai didn't draw a single drop of blood.
Instead, the steel blade passed straight through the center of Suzuki's chest. The boy's image rippled violently like a puddle that had just been stepped in, and the kunai buried itself harmlessly into a tree trunk several yards away.
"Eh?"
"...."
Kurenai, Shino, and even Hiruzen watching from his crystal ball were utterly speechless.
"Huh?" Kurenai blinked, rubbing her eyes again.
Suzuki stood there perfectly calm, his hands still resting in his pockets.
So, what exactly had just happened?
This was the custom jutsu Suzuki had spent the last two days creating. He had taken the most basic academy trick—the Transformation Jutsu (Henge)—and merged it with the physics of a Great Fireball.
Normally, the Transformation Jutsu was used as a physical disguise, letting a ninja mold chakra over their body to look like another person or an object.
Suzuki completely ignored that rule. Instead, he combined the illusion of the Henge with the intense heat of a Fireball to weaponize light itself.
Intense heat causes air to rapidly expand, changing how thick it is. When light passes through layers of super-hot air, it bends—the same way the road looks wavy and watery on a really hot summer day. That bending of light is called refraction.
Instead of shooting a fireball at his enemy, Suzuki "swallowed" the technique. He kept a massive blanket of super-hot chakra tightly wrapped around his skin, letting it heat the air around him. Then, he used the Transformation Jutsu to project an image of his own body onto that distorted, wavy hot air. Like a hologram.
The crazy result?
Everyone saw Suzuki standing directly in front of them, but because the hot air was bending the light, his actual, physical body was standing a full two meters to the left. Kurenai hadn't hit a shadow clone; she had hit a literal mirage, striking nothing but hot air.
This was Suzuki's ultimate survival trick. As long as his real location was hidden by the heat mirage, he was basically invincible against normal attacks. The only way to beat it was for an enemy to use a massive jutsu that blew up the entire area. Luckily, very few ninja had that kind of firepower.
Kurenai, assuming she had somehow been caught in a mind-control trick, immediately clamped her hands together to disrupt her internal chakra flow.
"Kai! (Release!)"
She spiked her chakra, trying to reboot her brain and shatter the Genjutsu.
She opened her eyes, panting slightly. Suzuki was still standing right there in the exact same spot. Thinking she had broken the illusion, Kurenai immediately threw a second kunai.
Ripppple.
The blade passed flawlessly through his chest again.
"How?!" Kurenai gasped, completely losing her cool. "I just released my chakra! Are you not using Genjutsu on me?! What did you do?!"
"There's really no reason for me to explain my secrets to my opponent, Sensei," Suzuki replied, his voice echoing slightly from the wavy air.
So, was his technique technically a Genjutsu?
Suzuki wasn't entirely sure how the ninja world would label it. Normal Genjutsu was basically hacking the victim's brain to make them see things that weren't there.
His Heat Mirage did absolutely none of that. He wasn't touching Kurenai's brain. He was physically heating the air in the real world to create a literal, optical trick.
It was a physics-based Genjutsu.
The famous Uchiha Clan bragged that their Sharingan eyes could instantly see through any illusion. But against Suzuki's heat mirage? The legendary Sharingan would be totally useless. The Sharingan tracked chakra and analyzed brain tricks; it couldn't magically force bent light to travel in a straight line. Suzuki wasn't manipulating minds; he was manipulating photons of light.
But hiding was only the first half of his new jutsu. Now that he was safe, it was time to hit back.
"Katon: Netsu-Shikaku (Fire Release: Thermal Vision)," Suzuki murmured softly.
In that instant, nothing was hidden from him anymore.