Sunagakure - Training Ground, Next Day
Yuji and the Third Kazekage stood facing each other in the center of the training field.
The sidelines were packed. Chiyo, the senior officials, Captain Arai, and a crowd of Sand shinobi had all turned out. Sasori stood among them with his arms crossed, eyes locked on the two figures in the field.
The reason for the turnout was simple: today was Yuji's chunin promotion exam. And the Third Kazekage himself was serving as his opponent.
That wasn't a courtesy extended to just anyone.
They all wanted to see how far his Kekkei Genkai had come.
"Yuji. Don't hold back," the Kazekage said calmly. "Come at me with everything. Don't worry about hurting me."
"Alright."
Yuji smiled. The referee made the signal, and his expression shifted.
The pressure of facing a Kage-level opponent was unlike anything he'd experienced before. Even from across the field, the man's presence was suffocating.
In the crowd, Sasori watched intently. This was a rare chance to observe the Third Kazekage's abilities up close, and he didn't intend to miss a single detail.
Yuji moved first.
He shot forward, but not in a straight line. His path zigzagged sharply, his body leaving afterimages as he closed the distance. The angle of attack was impossible to predict from any single frame.
"That Taijutsu..."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. For a ten-year-old, the raw physical ability on display was abnormal. The speed, the agility, the sheer explosive power packed into that small frame. Whatever training he'd put himself through, it had pushed his body far beyond what anyone his age should be capable of.
He reached the Kazekage and attacked.
Fists. Elbows. Knees. Kicks. A relentless barrage from every angle, fast enough that it looked like multiple attackers hitting simultaneously. He circled behind mid-combination, launching a strike at the Kazekage's blind spot before the first exchange even finished.
None of it connected.
Every blow was intercepted by Iron Sand. Dark metallic particles gathered from the air and formed solid blocks exactly where they needed to be, absorbing each impact with dull, heavy thuds.
The Kazekage hadn't moved.
'No blind spots,' Yuji registered mid-assault. 'Close combat is useless.'
The Iron Sand defense was automatic. Omnidirectional. It sensed incoming threats and responded without conscious input, the same way Gaara's sand shield would one day operate, except this was Iron Sand. Heavier. Harder.
Yuji broke off and leaped into the air. In the brief gap where the Iron Sand plates crumbled from blocking his strikes, he hurled a spread of throwing knives at the exposed opening.
The Iron Sand didn't miss a beat. Individual blocks materialized along each blade's trajectory and swatted them aside.
'Exactly like Gaara's sand,' Yuji thought, catching his breath midair. 'Except the medium is different. To break through this kind of defense, I'd need speed that completely overwhelms his perception and reaction time. Like Rock Lee with the Eight Gates.'
'I'm not there yet.'
He landed. The deflected throwing knives scattered across the sand, seemingly useless.
Then Yuji swept his arm.
Every fallen blade jerked back into the air, trailing silk threads that instantly wove together, wrapping the Kazekage's position in a dense web of razor-thin lines.
Yuji pulled with both hands. Hard. The threads screeched against the Iron Sand as they tightened.
It didn't work.
The Iron Sand dissolved into a swirling cloud of fine particles, flowing like liquid around and between the threads. No matter how tight Yuji pulled, the threads couldn't bite through that shifting, formless barrier.
Taijutsu. Projectiles. Thread techniques. Three different approaches, and the Third Kazekage hadn't moved a single inch.
Yuji was beginning to understand why this man was called the strongest Kazekage in history.
The Kazekage finally turned to face him.
"When the gap in strength is this wide, probing attacks are meaningless. You need the conviction to kill in a single strike. If you give your opponent room to breathe, the one in danger will be you."
As he spoke, Yuji felt his arms dragged downward. The Iron Sand particles in the air had coated every thread, adding weight until the lines snapped. His throwing knives clattered to the ground one by one, each wrapped in black sand. Useless.
"It wasn't a probe."
Yuji smiled.
"Hm?"
The Kazekage sensed it a beat too late.
A flash of blood-red erupted from beneath his feet.
The Iron Sand scrambled to intercept, condensing and chasing the trajectory. But it was half a step behind. The crimson streak punched through the gaps in the defense and struck the Third Kazekage dead center between the eyebrows.
BANG.
The impact was violent. Far louder than any of Yuji's physical strikes had been. Several spectators on the sidelines flinched.
But the Kazekage only rocked back slightly. A thin layer of Iron Sand had formed over his forehead at the last instant, and embedded in its center was a small, bright red crystal.
A solidified blood droplet.
"Hiding the attack inside your ninjutsu as a feint," the Kazekage said, straightening. "You actually managed to deceive me."
He studied the blood crystal with genuine interest. Arai had been reporting on Yuji's Kekkei Genkai development for months, but reading reports was different from seeing it firsthand. An impossibly small blood droplet, concealed on the surface of a throwing knife, carried into range by the thread technique, then launched independently at the moment of maximum distraction.
If Yuji had used the blood openly, the Iron Sand would have caught it. But hidden within the chaos of three simultaneous attack types, it had slipped through.
"Interesting. Such a small amount of blood, at that range, with that kind of speed and penetrating power." The Kazekage sounded almost impressed.
In the crowd, Chiyo and the officials tensed. They knew the Kazekage was fine, but Yuji's attack landing at all was unexpected.
"Your flexibility with the ability is clearly improved from six months ago," the Kazekage continued. "Remote delivery through objects instead of direct control. Extended range. Good."
Yuji pointed a finger gun at the Kazekage and grinned. "Thank you for the praise, Kazekage-sama. But I'm not satisfied with just this much. I'd like to keep going."
"Good. That competitive spirit is worthy of a genius of the Hidden Sand."
The Kazekage nodded.
"Then I'll get a bit more serious."
His eyes sharpened. The calm, almost leisurely presence he'd been projecting vanished, replaced by something dense and heavy. An invisible pressure radiated outward from his body like a physical force.
Yuji felt it immediately. The same crushing sense of crisis he'd experienced fighting that Konoha jonin to the death. Except stronger.
Much stronger.
"Haha..."
His grin widened. His eyes flickered with something that wasn't fear.
"The show begins."
On the sidelines, Sasori watched Yuji's expression shift into that familiar look. The same one from the border. The same excitement, the same edge of wildness that surfaced when Yuji stopped calculating and started enjoying the fight.
His true nature.
Sasori smiled faintly.
A sphere of blood formed at Yuji's fingertip. Palm-sized at first, spinning rapidly, then compressing. Shrinking. The blood condensed tighter and tighter until the orb was no larger than a fingernail, dense and translucent, vibrating with contained force.
A small shockwave burst outward from the compression. The recoil lifted Yuji's feet off the ground and blew his hair back.
The blood bullet fired.
"Blood Release: Crushing Orb!"
...
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