Sasuke rubbed his eyes and sat up from his sleeping mat. He had grown accustomed to solitude a long time ago—yet the past few months had left him genuinely surprised by his own situation.
Naruto was sprawled across the adjacent mat in a completely graceless starfish position, dead to the world, an enormous snot bubble expanding and collapsing at one nostril. He wouldn't be up for at least another hour.
Not surprising. It was barely six in the morning. Yesterday's filming had run overtime, and Hinata—who was never stingy with pay—had once again called a hot-spring banquet in their honor. Everyone had gone to sleep around midnight.
"Hmph... dead last is still dead last."
Looking at the peacefully sleeping Naruto, Sasuke felt an irrational flicker of superiority. The words were contemptuous, but he kept his voice low. He had no intention of waking the idiot.
He dressed quietly and slipped out the door.
He glanced down the corridor at the six side rooms. Shikamaru and Chōji shared one; Hinata, Shino, Kakashi, and Sai each had their own. The once-abandoned rooms had come back to life.
The courtyard was tidy—clearly Sakura's and Ino's doing. The two meticulous girls had swept the grounds and trimmed the cherry blossom tree; in the corner near the wall, a small cluster of freshly planted spider lilies caught the early light. Sasuke's lips pressed together.
Not long ago, he had lived here alone. The courtyard had been a permanent cycle of dead leaves and bare branches—the whole compound radiating a deadness he had trained himself not to feel.
Now it had warmth again.
But—
He curled his fingers, breathed in, then stepped lightly over the wall and made his way to the training field behind the compound.
The sun hadn't risen. Sasuke pulled on the Sacred Fist Gauntlets, tightened his left arm, and ran through the hand seals in rapid sequence. Lightning-natured chakra flowed through the Gauntlets' conversion arrays and gathered in his palm, forming a crackling white sphere that spat electricity against his clenched fist.
Chidori—A-rank ninjutsu—and Sasuke could produce it now with practiced fluency. He exhaled, extended his arm, and began testing the next variation: the crackling sphere in his palm started to fluctuate, then stretched and sharpened at the edge like a spearhead.
Chidori Sharp Spear. Independent research—the same as Hinata's Yami Barai in spirit, if not in kind. An extension of the Chidori's existing form, pushing the lightning chakra outward into a lance for greater reach. Point-damage might suffer, but the coverage gain was substantial.
"Impressive. He's already mastered an A-rank ninjutsu—and he's modifying it on his own?"
A lazy voice materialized behind him without warning. Sasuke's body locked up. He spun.
Kakashi stood a short distance back—no longer in the crew's casual wear, but his proper jōnin uniform—watching Sasuke with an unhurried, appraising look.
As Hinata's mole, Kakashi had freedom to gather information independently. Watching Sasuke produce Chidori had been genuinely unexpected. He'd heard that all three of them had extracted jutsu from the Scroll of Seals; now he had confirmation. What Naruto had learned was still an open question.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
Sasuke's dark eyes narrowed. The Konoha headband said this was one of their own—but after Mizuki, he wasn't inclined toward open doors.
"The Uchiha Clan's famous arrogance toward outsiders—I see it's been faithfully passed down."
Kakashi dropped his hands. He was genuinely curious now. He wanted to see what this so-called genius actually had.
"Although mastering Chidori at eleven is genuinely impressive—I should be honest with you. Someone else learned this technique at the age of six. It's the sort of thing any child can pick up."
Every word calculated to sting. The contempt didn't even try to hide. Sasuke's dark eyes tightened with anger—and he decided to skip the rest of the conversation in favor of a more direct form of dialogue.
Crack—!
Two shuriken left his hand in a single motion, arcing on separate trajectories toward Kakashi's position. Each one crackled with a coating of lightning chakra—Starflower Claw Storm. The erratic spin pattern made the trajectory harder to predict, and that live current meant blocking with a kunai would invite a numbing shock. Dodge only.
Kakashi's eye narrowed in faint appreciation—then the shuriken struck, and the silver-haired man stumbled backward and went down like a toppled post.
But that image made Sasuke's expression go cold. Red bled into his pupils—the Sharingan, awakened weeks ago under the combined pressure of Hinata and Mizuki—left and right eyes both open, two tomoe each, spinning clean. He ducked low, exhaled a sharp breath, and drove his left fist into the earth directly below him with a thunderclap of lightning.
CRACK—
His left fist tore straight through the training ground's hardened soil. But underground, a hand wreathed in its own lightning corona seized his fist.
The Kakashi who'd taken the shuriken burst into a log—Body Replacement Technique. The real Kakashi had used that window to sink underground with Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu, working toward Sasuke's position—only to have the Sharingan read the chakra signature moving beneath the surface, and Aragami had come hammering down at the precise point of approach. If Kakashi hadn't answered with Lightning Blade in time, he'd have taken the full impact even through rock.
As it was, the clash had carried through: Sasuke could feel the tingle still running up his left hand. The conclusion was unavoidable—this man's Lightning Release ran deeper than his own.
Sasuke landed in a backward leap and reset his stance.
He'd hit hard enough to crack bedrock, and the man had blocked it. Worse—when their lightning met, he had been at a clear disadvantage. That tingling in his left hand said everything. This man's Lightning Release surpassed his own.
As expected—he still wasn't strong enough. That white-haired broom head: he was no match for him. Not yet.
"I see. So that's what you've got." Kakashi pulled himself from the ground, tone unhurried. "The Uchiha genius—with two-tomoe Sharingan already, no less."
"Who are you? What are you after?"
Sasuke kept his guard set. Kakashi seemed about to answer, then paused, tilted his head, and shook it with deliberate ambiguity. "No need to rush. We'll meet again. That said, goodbye."
He raised his right hand, index and middle finger pressed together—Body Flicker—and vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Wha—Sasuke? Whoa—what happened out here?!"
Naruto shuffled in from the path in pajamas and sleeping cap, yawning enormously. He'd apparently woken for a bathroom break, noticed Sasuke was missing, heard the noise from the training field, and wandered over. One look at the demolished ground wiped the drowsiness right out of him.
"Nothing that concerns you. A large rat."
Sasuke collected himself and looked away, jaw tight.
He had to get stronger. Starting today.
"Tch—fine, don't tell me. What's your problem!"
Naruto, stung by the dismissal, turned on his heel and stomped off. Sasuke watched him go. Quashed the instinct to explain. Turned back to the training field and set his jaw: today, he was getting Chidori Sharp Spear clean.
Back in Hinata's room, the pale-eyed girl reclined on her sleeping mat with a cold, quiet smile.
"Hm~ Something interesting just happened."
The bulging veins at the corners of her eyes said her Byakugan had been open the entire time. Kakashi and Sasuke, Sasuke and Naruto—every exchange, every reaction, had registered without missing a thing.
So. Neither she nor Sasuke had been content to wait. Both were already developing techniques of their own.
Which left Naruto—the prodigy at being dead last—with the rarest wind-natured chakra in the class going entirely to waste on a single Rasengan. Expecting him to invent his own jutsu was roughly as plausible as expecting him to swear off ramen for the rest of his life.
The combinations were almost painful to think about. Reppuken. Sonic Knifehand. Kaiser Wave. Haoh Shoukou Ken. Shinku Hadoken. Any one of those techniques would integrate perfectly with wind-natured chakra—and not one of them would ever occur to that dense, golden-haired idiot on his own.
She glanced at the scroll on her pillow. She'd compiled it exactly as contingency insurance—assembled the same way she'd once put together the South Dipper Sacred Fists: techniques drawn from taijutsu mechanics and chakra application principles, organized and refined.
Not useful to him.
"No reason at all to remind him~~ ha ha ha ha ha~~"
The laugh was low and privately contemptuous. Hinata dismissed the thought, picked up the scroll, and dropped it into the waste bin beside her. A small flame snapped from her fingertip. The paper caught, curled, and went dark.