A short distance away
A figure moved fast through the dense forest, his speed carving a narrow tunnel through the mist and snow. The man was tall, dark-skinned, and muscular, wearing a thick black cloak with the Cloud Village insignia faded near the hem.
His eyes flicked toward the distant flashes of battle, chakra pressure heavy in the air.
"Tch. Those idiots better not have engaged with the Numbers," he muttered. "Damn that Danzo, I knew I shouldn't have trusted him."
He arrived silently on a ridge overlooking the clearing, eyes scanning the battlefield below. And what he saw stunned him.
Five A-rank rogue shinobi, his specially trained secret unit were struggling.
Against a single child?
One of them was already dead, split clean in half. Kenkuro was barely upright, nose broken, arm limp. The others were coordinating tightly, but still couldn't pin the boy down.
Just as Raiken prepared to leap into the fight, a voice spoke from beside him.
Calm. Unhurried. Cold.
"Stay here, Raiken."
The voice froze him in place.
He turned, and his eyes widened in dread as he saw the figure leaning against a tree trunk just behind him, Yoru.
Unmoving. Silent. Staring at the fight with his blank, expressionless mask.
"His role," Yoru said softly, "is to train against your toys."
Then his tone shifted, still level, but edged with finality.
"Your role is to observe and report back to your boss."
Raiken took an involuntary step back. "Y-You... what are you doing here?" There was genuine fear in his voice now. "Was this your plan from the start? You damned madman. You're letting your subordinate fight against trained rogue shinobi, for what?!"
Yoru didn't even look at him.
"Why are you speaking so much?" he asked, as if genuinely puzzled.
His voice dropped into something darker. "Did I not explain your role clearly?"
Raiken clenched his jaw but said nothing. His hand instinctively hovered near the hilt of his weapon, but it stopped short.
Yoru continued, this time without looking at him. "You were told to watch. Do that. Don't interrupt. I've got millions of plans that don't need you."
Then he turned his head ever so slightly, as if to glance at Raiken. Even with a mask, the message was clear.
One wrong move, and you'll vanish.
Raiken said nothing more.
And Yoru turned back to the fight, his hands casually behind his back.
"Let's see what you do next, Ren."
~
Back in the chaos of the clearing, Ren continued to glide through the barrage of attacks with the calm fluidity of someone who had done this hundreds of times before. His feet barely touched the snow-laced ground, his movements light but precise.
Every punch, every sweep of a blade, every attempted grab or grapple was either redirected, ducked, or parried. His counters were brief and efficient filled with pressure-point strikes, light sweeps to throw balance, or palm attacks to deflect weapons.
He wasn't trying to defeat them. Not yet.
He was measuring them. Learning.
Again.
Kenkuro, nose still bleeding from the kick earlier, finally snapped. His voice broke through the sound of boots scraping earth and fists pounding into wind.
"That bastard!" he shouted mid-combo. "He's using us to train himself!"
Makiru didn't respond immediately, but his jaw tightened, and his next swing of the lightning blade had more weight in it, more frustration. The others glanced toward one another as if realizing at the same time how ridiculous this all was.
Here they were, seasoned, lethal rogue shinobi, each with years of battlefield experience and they were being used like warm-up dummies.
Makiru finally barked, "If he wants to train, let him. Let's show him what happens when you severely overestimate yourself. Get ready!"
Their teamwork which was already tight grew sharper.
They dropped their restraint.
Lightning chakra coursed around Makiru's body now like a second skin. Each swing of his blade left long, electrified arcs in the air, the ozone sharp and nauseating. He was no longer just aiming for slashes, he was launching waves of lightning, arcs that bent and twisted unnaturally, designed to catch even the most agile of opponents.
Yuka formed a hand seal mid-combat and her body shimmered faintly with a Genjutsu aura, but when it failed to land on Ren as she already knew it would, she transitioned instantly into a flurry of deceptive kicks and feints.
Shiba used the chaos to his advantage. He vanished mid-step, disappearing into the snow and shadows like a wraith. His attacks came from completely unpredictable angles, up from the ground, down from trees, even bursting through bushes that no one had noticed before.
And Kenkuro?
Despite his broken bones and bruised body, he powered through like a freight train, his fists glowing with chakra, each slam into the earth or air sending quakes through the terrain.
Ren felt the pressure mounting.
Their patterns had changed.
They weren't just being reactive. They were hunting now.
Makiru's blade shot toward him again but Ren ducked.
A blast of lightning followed, the arc curved mid-air and Ren barely rolled under it, yet it still grazed his shoulder.
Kenkuro's punch came from the side but it was a feint.
Yuka followed behind it with a spinning heel strike that Ren ducked, only for Shiba to stab at his back again from the shadows.
Ren spun and deflected it with his elbow, barely avoiding the cut.
He could feel it building again. The adrenaline, the overstimulation of senses, the loudness of silence.
The switch.
He exhaled and focused.
His body twitched.
Click.
The Hyperfocus state activated, faster this time.
Vision tunneled.
Time slowed.
He could see the movements again, the way their bodies tensed before attacking, the subtle shift in their stances.
For one glorious second, he was there again.
But only for a second.
He blinked
Just once
Then, he closed it.
The world snapped back. Sounds came crashing in like a wave.
His stomach turned, head spinning.
The sudden drop left him slightly off balance.
And that moment?
It was all they needed.
Shiba appeared like a shadowy serpent, his twin daggers slicing through Ren's thigh and calf. Pain exploded through Ren's legs.
He winced but didn't scream, he grit his teeth and pivoted on his uninjured leg to create space, but the others weren't going to let up now.
They had learned their lesson from last time.
Makiru was already mid-swing.
Ren raised his arms to block, but the lightning-enhanced blade smashed down with more force than before, crashing into his shoulder.
The force sent him skidding back.
His knees nearly buckled.
Yuka launched herself forward, spinning into a kick that caught Ren in the side of the ribs, sending him rolling.
Kenkuro didn't stop to shout this time.
He leapt, both fists slamming into the earth where Ren rolled. The snow exploded and the dirt lifted.
Ren barely recovered, chakra pouring into his body to begin healing his legs, but this time it wasn't fast enough.
They weren't giving him space.
"Keep him down!" Makiru shouted. "Don't let him heal!"
Ren growled lowly. One hand was healing. The other deflecting. He blocked Yuka's punch. Shiba's dagger scraped along his ribs. Kenkuro's kick caught him in the shoulder.
He was being overwhelmed.
But still, he wasn't losing control.
His eyes narrowed.
His mind was racing, not with panic, but with calculation.
They had rhythm. Every team did.
Makiru shouted before striking. Yuka always feinted with her right before she kicked. Shiba had a 0.8-second delay between disappearing and reappearing. Kenkuro moved slower, but was always trying to follow up Makiru.
Patterns always form and those pattern, they stick.
Ren kept up, always following their pattern and finally.
Click.
The switch was flicked once again.
The bleeding from his legs didn't matter. His body was aching but his moves were precise.
The pain sharpened his focus.
He didn't close it this time.
Hyperfocus.
It was real this time, sustainable.
The world crystallized.
Makiru was winding back his blade. Ren could see it in the twist of his left shoulder. The lightning pulse wasn't forming at the hilt, it was in the blade itself. A more powerful technique?
Yuka's foot scraped slightly, she was adjusting her balance. A heavy attack coming.
Shiba's shadow just twitched in the snow three meters to the left.
Kenkuro was slower, rotating to cut Ren's escape.
All of it made sense.
Ren stood straight.
His breathing slowed.
His pupils dilated slightly.
They all moved in at once.
Makiru swung.
Yuka spun.
Shiba emerged.
Kenkuro charged.
Ren moved.
He ducked under Makiru's blade, his head brushing past the hilt, and closed the distance between them with a palm to Makiru's chest, not to injure, but to shove. Makiru stumbled into Yuka, interrupting her spin and throwing them both off-balance.
Shiba's dagger lunged, Ren turned, caught his wrist mid-strike, twisted, and elbowed Shiba square in the chin. The assassin's body went limp for half a second as he tumbled away.
Kenkuro's punch came flying toward Ren's back.
Ren didn't turn.
He pivoted at the last moment, letting the punch pass beside his ribs, and drove a heel directly into Kenkuro's kneecap.
Crunch.
Kenkuro cried out and dropped to one knee.
It had begun.
The real fight.
~
Back in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the fog-laced clearing, Yoru stood with the kind of stillness that could be mistaken for a statue. Not even the wind disturbed the long dark cloak wrapped around his armor. The golden lines etched on his maroon gear glinted faintly in the ambient light of the snow-covered treetops. His eyes, hidden behind the blank black mask, remained fixed on the battlefield below.
He was watching everything, every motion, every twitch, every burst of chakra that flared in the snow.
And so was Raiken.
The current head ninja of Kumogakure was forced into silence, standing to the side with an increasingly grim expression carved into his face. Unlike Yoru, his presence felt restless, his fists clenched and unclenched every few seconds. His eyes, dark and weathered from years of bloodshed and command, were narrowed in growing disbelief.
He watched as the five-star masked child, moved in ways that defied what a ten-year-old should be capable of. Not just in strength, but in flow. The way his footwork danced between enemy strikes, how his counters were timed with almost mathematical perfection, and the terrifying lack of hesitation in his movements.
Raiken's voice finally broke the silence. He muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone else.
"Hyperfocus. The Raikage's technique," he said. "But this kid, this isn't something polished over years of war. This is like that damned Fourth Hokage. He doesn't need time to grow into it. He was born to use it."
A bitter taste coated the back of Raiken's throat.
'Damn those Konoha bastards,' he thought angrily. 'One genius after another. It's like they've got a secret lab. Or a goddamn genius-farming cow.'
His eye twitched as Ren ducked under Makiru's blade and retaliated with a precision strike to Kenkuro's weakened side, sending the massive brawler tumbling again. It wasn't just speed. It wasn't just strength.
It was timing. Intuition. The fluid synergy of thought and movement that even the best shinobi often struggled with well into their thirties.
Raiken couldn't understand it. And that scared him.
'But why?' he wondered, a crease forming between his brows. 'Why is this bastard letting him reveal everything so soon? He's showing too much, this kind of ability should've been hidden until it could no longer be stopped.'
He glanced sideways at Yoru, hoping for some insight, some reaction, but the commander hadn't moved an inch. The man might as well have been carved from the earth itself.
Raiken's unease deepened. He clenched his jaw, then turned his eyes back to Ren, locking on the only part of the boy not covered by armor or mask, his blue hair, now slightly ruffled by the wind, strands sticking to his mask.
That hair.
A memory resurfaced.
A report. From months ago. Classified distribution. A summary of the Chunin Exams.
A blue-haired boy. The winner. The one who made the Tsuchikage send two separate requests for intelligence.
Raiken stiffened.
"This kid." he muttered. "It's him."
The realization sank in like a boulder in water. His chest grew heavy.
Ren wasn't just some elite trainee. He wasn't some high-potential ANBU candidate.
He was the new weapon being shaped by Konoha.
A weapon with chakra nearing S-rank levels, basic elemental ninjutsu, but Taijutsu skills rivaling battle-hardened veterans, and now, Hyperfocus. The technique historically associated only with elite warriors like the Raikages or the Second and Fourth Hokage.
If Konoha had been testing their new blade before, then today, it was fully unsheathed.
Raiken's instincts screamed at him.
Kill him. Now. Before it's too late.
He slowly reached a hand toward his side, fingers grazing the hilt of the short chakra blade hidden beneath his cloak. His eyes didn't leave the battlefield.
'I can do it,' he thought. 'Even if Yoru reacts, even if I don't escape, if I can at least kill this brat I'll be doing the world a favor.'
But his fingers froze.
The hand never reached the weapon.
Because Yoru spoke.
His voice, calm and casual, slithered through the air like a whisper carried on the cold breeze.
"Stay where you are, Raiken."
Raiken flinched. His hand dropped instantly.
Yoru still hadn't turned his head.
"There's no need to act out of turn. You were told your role. Watch. Report. Don't interfere."
Raiken's face twisted in frustration. "You." he started, voice low. "You're letting your own subordinate be overwhelmed just to... to train him? What kind of man does that? What kind of commander lets a child-"
Yoru finally turned his head a few inches, his masked gaze meeting Raiken's.
"I told you before," he said simply, "don't talk so much."
As he said this, he raised his hand slightly, and a deep gash appeared on Raiken's arm and it fell down to his side.
Raiken shut his mouth as he tightly clutched his almost severed hand, he took deep breathes as he assessed his condition.
Yoru turned back toward the battlefield and added, "Besides. I'm not worried."
Raiken scowled, still clutching his arm. "He's just a kid, Yoru."
"No," Yoru said. "He's the kid."
~~~~~
{The real fight will begin now}
{Also, how was Yoru and Raiken's interaction? One head ninja died from Hizashi's hand and Raiken is the latest one, just to clear out any confusion.}
{If you want, you can support me on pat-reon.}
{ h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n }
{You know what else, 200 stone = Extra Chapter}
{STONES!!!!}