Akira walked out into the open and stopped, then crooked two fingers at the pair.
Sakura and Naruto exchanged a glance and instantly fell into sync.
"Let's go!"
With a sharp shout, Sakura's chakra erupted. She shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
"You jerk, take this!"
Her roar rang out as she closed the distance in a blink. Chakra surged into her right fist, the air screaming as she swung straight for Akira's face.
If that punch landed cleanly, it would not just break a person. It could punch through steel.
And yet Akira looked like he had not even reacted. He still had his back to her and seemed to be adjusting his sleeve.
Sakura's heart skipped. No way… he can't really be that careless, can he? If this lands, somebody's dying.
The moment her fist was about to brush his hair, Akira moved.
No, more accurately, the instant he turned around, it felt as if time itself had slowed.
He simply lifted one hand. It looked casual, almost lazy, but it was lightning-fast, impossibly precise, and it closed around Sakura's fist without the slightest struggle.
"Boom!!!"
A deafening blast exploded outward, and a violent shockwave rippled from the point of contact in every direction.
In the next instant, Sakura felt as if she had slammed into a mountain that could not be moved. Then an irresistible force hit her.
She flew backward like a sandbag hurled by a siege engine, turning into a human cannonball as she vanished into the forest.
"Rumble—!"
The ground trembled. Dust and debris billowed into the sky.
A terrifying trench hundreds of meters long tore across the woods in an instant. Towering trees along the path were ripped out of the ground and pulverized like brittle twigs.
It was only because the training ground was so large that the aftershock did not reach the village walls.
The three Kage-level observers at the sidelines all stared in shock.
Kakashi's three-tomoe Sharingan spun frantically, yet even then he had only caught a blur.
"Th-that reaction speed… even my Sharingan couldn't fully track it? Akira, how much faster have you gotten in these last three years?!"
He had heard the blast, then seen Sakura already flying several hundred meters away.
Tsunade's eyes narrowed as well. The sight reminded her of the repulsive force Akira had unleashed years ago when he first awakened the Rinnegan.
At the far end of the trench, Sakura dragged herself up from the wreckage, aching all over. Fortunately, Akira had redirected most of the impact with perfect control, so she was not seriously injured.
Staring at the calm figure still standing hundreds of meters away, a deep sense of helplessness rose in her chest.
That instant… if he had wanted me dead, I would've died hundreds of times over already.
So this is the gap between us…
But before anyone had even finished processing Sakura's instant defeat, a sharp cry split the air from above.
"It's not over yet!"
Naruto's real body, with one shadow clone, came diving down from above, using the dust cloud as cover.
The clone's kunai flashed coldly. More than a dozen shuriken sealed off every possible route of escape, while Naruto himself drove downward with a bright blue Rasengan in hand, fueled by absolute determination.
At the exact moment those countless blades were about to turn Akira into a pincushion, his figure suddenly blurred into something almost insubstantial.
To the naked eye, only a few arcs of electricity remained, flickering where he had been. Every single weapon struck empty air.
"Take this! Rasengan!"
After throwing every last weapon to create an opening, Naruto's clone launched the real Naruto forward like a living projectile.
The spinning sphere of chakra in his palm roared with pressure as it shot straight for Akira's face.
It was one of Naruto's favorite ambush tactics. Against an opponent with even slightly slower reflexes, it might actually have worked.
Faced with the sudden assault, Akira only let the faintest trace of amusement touch his lips. "Not a bad setup. But at this level, you still can't touch me."
In that split second, Naruto was already above him, bringing the Rasengan down with all his strength.
The violent sphere of chakra came within inches of Akira's nose. Even the wind pressure stirred his bangs.
Akira's hands remained hanging naturally at his sides. He did not form a single hand sign.
But the air in front of him exploded.
Wild lightning erupted without warning, weaving itself into a tightly packed shield of crackling energy between them.
"Boom!"
The two completely different forms of power collided head-on, and the explosion thundered across the training ground.
The violent aftershock tore through the earth like an invisible bulldozer, flipping over everything within dozens of meters.
Dense cracks spread wildly through the ground like a spiderweb. Stones were hurled into the air. Dust rolled everywhere.
Naruto had poured an enormous amount of chakra into that Rasengan. Its destructive force was nothing to scoff at.
Yet the instant it touched that lightning barrier, the massive attack slammed into what felt like an iron wall. The violent lightning chakra shredded it apart in seconds.
When the dust cleared, the once-flat ground had been ruined beyond recognition.
Only the small patch of earth beneath Akira's feet remained untouched.
From beginning to end, he had not moved a single step.
The activation speed of that lightning barrier was absurdly fast. It had appeared instantly.
Naruto, on the other hand, had been blasted backward by the violent chakra turbulence and slammed into a giant rock dozens of meters away.
On the viewing side, Kakashi, Jiraiya, and Tsunade all stood frozen, eyes wide.
"Was that some evolved version of Akira's Lightning Style: Thunder Net?" Kakashi muttered.
And in truth, it was derived from Thunder Net, but the form and nature transformation had both been taken to a far more extreme level.
Jiraiya had seen Akira use the jutsu before.
But the version he remembered had been much larger and more dramatic.
And yet this smaller, seemingly simpler defensive form had completely erased Naruto's full-power Rasengan without even a visible ripple.
Naruto gritted his teeth as he climbed out of the rubble, feeling like every bone in his body had been shaken loose. The pain from the chakra backlash made him hiss through clenched teeth.
Even with Uzumaki stamina, taking that hit head-on felt awful.
After that exchange, both he and Sakura understood the truth with painful clarity.
This was not a battle between people on the same level.
Akira had not even truly attacked.
With nothing more than a redirection and a passive lightning barrier, he had completely shut them down.
That hopeless gap in power dimmed the light in both their eyes.
Naruto wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and stared at Akira, his voice more serious than ever.
"I really thought three years of hellish training would let me catch up to your back, even if only by a little."