Chapter 37
Uchiha Sasuke slowly rose from the ground, head bowed low, black tousled hair covering his eyes.
His body trembled slightly from overwhelming rage and grief. The air around him seemed to freeze solid.
"Still standing there spacing out, kid?"
The lead Takigakure ninja clutched his still-bleeding wound.
Looking at the seemingly "terrified" Uchiha brat, he sneered viciously: "Your friend's already turned to charcoal. Next up is… hm?"
Sasuke snapped his head up.
The instant those eyes came into view, all three Takigakure ninja's breathing hitched simultaneously.
"Sha… Sharingan?!"
One of them spoke with a tremor in his voice: "Awakened at this age?"
To ninja outside Konoha, the Uchiha clan's Sharingan was a name that struck fear like thunder.
"Kill him!"
The lead ninja's alarm bells rang loudly. He prepared to step forward and eliminate this anomaly.
But in Sasuke's vision, the world had changed.
The trajectory of falling leaves in the distance, the lingering sparks in the air—everything became impossibly clear.
The once lightning-fast blades now moved as though trapped in thick glue.
He could even clearly see the minute twitches in the opponent's arm muscles, predicting the exact path of the sword edge.
Every action was broken down into countless slow-motion frames.
Sasuke's face remained expressionless. His body shifted slightly to the side.
Whoosh!
The long sword grazed past the tip of his nose and cut through empty air.
In Uchiha Sasuke's field of view, the entire world seemed to have been put on slow playback.
He drew a scavenged kunai. Crimson light flashed in his eyes. His movements were precise like a killing machine.
Without a single wasted motion, he stabbed directly into the opponent's exposed underarm—the soft spot revealed when they raised their arm to attack.
Pfft!
"AHH!!"
A scream rang out. Half the body convulsed from the pain.
With one strike successful, Sasuke didn't pause for even a moment.
He kicked the lead Takigakure ninja's knee, using the force to backflip and evade the simultaneous attack from the other two.
"This brat… what's going on? His movements completely changed!"
The remaining two Takigakure ninja watched their captain spraying blood, shocked by the sudden shift in the kid's aura.
Those red eyes seemed to pierce straight through their souls.
"I want you all… to accompany Naruto in death."
Sasuke's voice was ice-cold and bone-chilling, as though it came from the depths of the underworld.
He reached for more shuriken with both hands.
No need for the complicated ricochet technique from earlier.
Now he only needed to look at the target and throw.
Sharingan · Dynamic Vision.
The chakra just beginning to surge inside his opponents appeared as flowing colors in his newly awakened Sharingan eyes.
The instant the two Takigakure ninja began forming seals, Sasuke's shuriken were already in motion.
Thud! Thud!
Two shuriken struck with perfect precision into the backs of their hands, forcibly interrupting their seals.
The Takigakure ninja completely panicked.
Facing an Uchiha with awakened Sharingan—even if just a child—
they found themselves utterly powerless.
Swing sword, dodge. Kick, dodge…
Every attack aimed at vitals. Every evasion perfectly timed.
In less than a minute,
all three Takigakure ninja lay on the ground.
The leader had already fainted from blood loss.
The battle was over.
Sasuke stood among the fallen enemies, chest heaving violently.
As the adrenaline faded, the extreme exhaustion from chakra depletion crashed over him.
The scarlet Sharingan, starved of chakra, reverted to his original black pupils.
He turned around and looked toward the scorched earth blasted by the fire dragon.
Nothing remained there—not even a fragment of bone.
"Naruto…"
Sasuke's legs gave out. He dropped to his knees.
Staring at the charred ground, tears finally spilled uncontrollably: "You big… idiot…"
Just as Sasuke threw his head back in a long, anguished howl, venting the grief tearing through his heart—
Crack.
The blackened soil suddenly shifted.
Sasuke's crying stopped abruptly. He stared blankly ahead.
"Cough cough… ptoo ptoo ptoo! This dirt tastes all burnt—choking me to death."
A dust-covered hand broke through the earth.
Immediately after, a dusty blond head popped up like a groundhog.
Uzumaki Naruto clawed at the soil, laboriously pulling half his body out and gulping fresh air.
"Haa… almost suffocated down there."
Naruto patted the dust off his head and looked up—
right into Sasuke's tear-streaked eyes, the expression shifting from sorrow to stunned petrification.
"Yo, Sasuke."
Naruto grinned wide, showing a big set of white teeth: "You took out those guys? Pretty awesome!"
"…"
Sasuke remained kneeling in place, frozen like a statue.
He stayed dumbfounded for a full five seconds.
"Z-zombie…?! You came back from the dead?!" Sasuke shot to his feet with a voice-cracking shriek.
"What zombie?!"
Naruto braced both hands on the ground and pulled himself up like a carrot being uprooted.
There was no trace of劫後餘生的 (post-near-death) drama in his tone—instead he spoke with casual reassurance: "Relax, Fox Sage blocked the ninjutsu for me. Otherwise I really would've died this time."
"Unfortunately I still got buried by the explosion. Took forever to dig myself out."
A faint, almost transparent layer of red-golden chakra film was slowly retracting from his body surface.
It was what had shielded him from the fatal ninjutsu and fiery blast.
"You… big idiot!!!"
Sasuke roared with the last of his strength.
His voice carried both relief and the lingering crying tone he hadn't yet suppressed: "You're alive and you didn't say anything?! Pretending to be dead?!"
Looking at the lively, bouncing Naruto, Sasuke's face went through an incredible range of emotions.
From despair to grief, to the rush of vengeance, to the emptiness afterward.
And finally to the current shock and embarrassed fury.
"Eh, you were crying!" Naruto blinked innocently.
"Shut up! I wasn't crying!" Sasuke bellowed.
His words denied it, but his body moved on its own—walking over and throwing his arms around the idiot in a tight hug.
Alive is good!
"Aiya aiya, looks like I arrived one step too late."
Just as the two children were enacting their "touching reunion,"
a lazy voice drifted down from the trees.
Naruto and Sasuke instantly became alert and looked up.
Perched on a branch was a Konoha ninja wearing a mask, forehead protector covering his left eye, and sporting silver-white gravity-defying hair.
—Hatake Kakashi
Looking at the two unharmed boys below, Kakashi's thoughts began to wander.
More than a year ago, on the Third Hokage's orders, he had removed his Anbu mask and left the Anbu division.
Afterward he was assigned as a jōnin squad leader to guide genin graduates from the academy.
But both batches of graduates so far had failed his test and were sent back to the academy.
As a result, he currently had no missions and no team of students to instruct.
Most days he spent resting on a roadside bench near the academy or wandering nearby.
He passed time reading books or other activities—partly so he could occasionally catch a glimpse of his teacher's child, Uzumaki Naruto.
Speaking of books… Jiraiya-sama's novels really are something else!
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