Wu Yu vs. Kakashi

Sasuke Uchiha was tied to a wooden post. Without Chakra to sustain them, his crimson Sharingan had gone dark, reverting to their original black pupils. At last, fatigue showed on his face.

Naruto Uzumaki pointed at Kakashi with one hand, mimicking Sasuke's earlier movements, tone, and expression. "That forehead protector on your head... I'll use that to make up for the third bell!"

The bound Sasuke: "..."

Naruto clutched his stomach and burst out laughing. "You talked so coolly, but you got beaten by Kakashi-sensei in the blink of an eye! What an idiot, Sasuke! Hahahaha—"

Bam!

Still laughing, Naruto was punched by Sakura, who had finally reached the end of her patience. He flew off to the side, smoke rising from his head...

Sakura Haruno clenched her fist in fury. "You idiot! Sasuke challenged Kakashi-sensei with everything he had for our sake! He gave us the only two bells!"

"Sorry..." Naruto Uzumaki obediently apologized, his head covered in bumps.

Sasuke: "..." Why were his two classmates each more of a clown than the last?

Kakashi Hatake stood opposite them without a scratch, silently watching the scene unfold.

How much did this resemble the past? Back when they had been on Minato-sensei's team, they had bickered and squabbled like this too—well, perhaps Rin had not been quite as "enthusiastic" as Sakura...

His mask concealed the faint smile at the corner of his lips. Kakashi's gaze seemed calm as he said, "Since you, Sasuke, failed to take my forehead—"

As he spoke, the tied-up Sasuke Uchiha, the bickering Naruto Uzumaki, and Sakura Haruno all stared at him in shock—behind Kakashi's head, a young man's hand eerily appeared in midair and silently removed Kakashi's forehead protector.

Almost instantly!

Kakashi Hatake's battle-honed experience immediately drove every combat instinct in him into motion. The first gate of the Eight Inner Gates Formation, the Gate of Life, burst open at once! His muscles broke past their limits! Chakra erupted wildly!

Kakashi launched a spinning Konoha Whirlwind kick. As he used the momentum to retreat, he pulled three Shuriken from his pouch and flung them out with deadly force. At the same time, his exposed crimson left eye—its Sharingan's Three Tomoe—began spinning frantically!

In that brief instant, the Konoha Jonin's reaction speed and mobility left Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura... well, the three of them saw nothing at all. They only saw that, the instant the ghostly hand in the air took Kakashi's forehead protector, he left behind an afterimage and flashed ten meters away. The three Shuriken he had thrown seemed to shoot out from where he had originally stood.

The Shuriken struck nothing but air and fell into the river behind them.

The ghostly hand that had appeared in the air seemed never to have existed. Even Kakashi's forehead protector, which it had taken, had vanished without a trace.

"There was no sensation of hitting anyone..." Kakashi lowered the hand he had been about to use for hand seals. His left Sharingan continuously gathered ocular power as he observed the surroundings. Though the Sharingan could not see through things or perceive great distances like the Byakugan, it could distinguish the colors of different Chakra, making it naturally useful as a sensory eye.

Tied to the post, Sasuke Uchiha stared at Kakashi's left eye in shock. "That eye of his... How is that possible? How can someone who isn't from the Uchiha Clan have a Sharingan?!"

Sakura Haruno looked at Kakashi in surprise, then at Sasuke. Could it be that Kakashi-sensei had secretly taught Sasuke about those strange eyes? But there should not have been time for that...

"..."

Kakashi Hatake observed for over ten seconds. Yet apart from the Chakra colors of Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura, he saw nothing. Then he suddenly called out, "It's you, isn't it? Wu Yu?"

At the spot where it had appeared before, the hand holding Kakashi's forehead protector eerily emerged from the air again. Then came the forearm, the upper body... Finally, as if an invisible painter's hand were sketching him into existence, Wu Yu appeared out of thin air.

A dark crimson vertical mark ran down his forehead. His eyes were ringed with deep red eyeshadow, and his ears were pointed...

Sakura Haruno and Naruto Uzumaki leaned together and whispered in low voices. Wu Yu had used that strange form again. They had not expected him to be able to move around like a ghost.

"..." Sasuke Uchiha remembered the woman named Kaguya who had appeared and disappeared around Wu Yu. Was this the same technique?

Lord Hokage, this is what you meant by "a little special"? Kakashi grumbled inwardly.

Wu Yu tossed Kakashi's forehead protector in his hand. "Can this really count for one bell?"

Kakashi said, "I already told you, didn't I? You do not need to take part in this exercise. In principle, Team Zero's supervising Jonin is Lady Tsunade, and she has already approved your Genin qualifications."

"Who said it was for me?" Wu Yu smiled. "It's for Sasuke. Teamwork, right?" As he spoke, he tossed the forehead protector to the bound Sasuke.

Kakashi was speechless. "It seems Lady Tsunade told you about this exercise."

Wu Yu was even more speechless. "Generation after generation, they all do it this way. Couldn't you at least replace the bells with something else? Are you really that lazy?"

"It is precisely because it has been done this way generation after generation that it holds special meaning," Kakashi said.

"People's dreams, the will passed down through generations..." Wu Yu began to chant, then realized he had wandered into the wrong script. He coughed lightly and said seriously, "Although I'm in Team Zero, we'll be going on missions together in the future. Kakashi, test my strength too."

Kakashi pulled a Kunai from the pouch at his lower back. "That was exactly my intention."

"All the Chakra in his body is converging on his left eye..." In Jade Rabbit Mode, Wu Yu could clearly sense the flow of Chakra throughout Kakashi's body. "One Sharingan is practically like a water pump. No wonder Kakashi was so weak early on. Who could handle being drained like that... If it were someone with Stamina and Chakra Reserves 2 like me, I'd probably have been sucked dry and dropped dead already..."

"Oh, and one more thing."

Wu Yu formed hand seals with both hands. "You can consider this my Sage Mode, so don't misjudge the power of Ninjutsu enhanced by senjutsu."

"What? Senjutsu?!"

Kakashi's heart jolted. By then, Wu Yu had already completed his seals and opened his mouth, spewing out a massive wave of scorching flames that surged toward him.

"This is the Sarutobi Clan's Great Fireball Technique? The scale is far beyond normal!"

Kakashi formed hand seals at a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow, then slapped both palms against the ground. A stone wall carved with dog heads rose from the earth at an angle. The torrent of flames crashed into the Dog-Head Stone Wall and slid away in a direction far from Sasuke and the other two at the post.

"What a high temperature!" Sasuke Uchiha thought in shock.

Even though the torrent of flames Wu Yu had unleashed had been diverted by Kakashi's earth wall, the heat still came rolling over them. As someone from a Fire Release family, Sasuke naturally understood that even the same Fire Style Jutsu could differ in quality. The Great Fireball used by an expert burned far hotter.

Wu Yu had said yesterday that the Sharingan ocular power in his brain nerves and eyeballs should belong to some extremely high-quality Chakra with Yin Nature Transformation... Since Chakra itself could vary in quality, then Chakra after Fire Release Nature Transformation would naturally vary as well.

The Fire Style Jutsu Wu Yu had used before him possessed very high-quality Chakra—extremely high quality.

He wondered whether Itachi Uchiha's Great Fireball would be hotter than this one...

Blood vessels stood out in Sasuke's eyes. Ignoring the scorching air, he stared fixedly at the fading flames and the Dog-Head Stone Wall, now baked pale and cracked apart. Wu Yu, in Sage Transformation, had already leaped high into the air and smashed the Dog-Head Stone Wall, along with the entire stretch of ground beneath it, into pieces with a single punch.