The Demon's Power

"Yu!!"

The same was true of everyone else: they'd seen Itachi throw his shuriken.

Seeing Yu standing motionless before them, seemingly too frightened to react, Mayuna and Momoka felt their hearts leap into their throats.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

But soon, three crisp metallic clangs rang out.

Urushi, Mayuna, Momoka, and every kid present stared wide-eyed.

Facing the three shuriken Itachi had angrily hurled at him, Yu remained calm. As if by magic, three kunai appeared in his hands, and he swiftly flung them!

The children watched in disbelief.

Yu's three kunai flew after the shuriken but caught up with them, striking the central holes of all three with incredible precision. They drove Itachi's shuriken deep into the trunk of a nearby tree!

"My shuriken were...?!"

Seeing Yu's astonishing display of Shurikenjutsu, Itachi's eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

"A student at the Ninja Academy using ninja tools against an ordinary villager."

"That kind of offense should come with a pretty serious punishment, right?"

Seemingly oblivious to the other children's disbelieving stares, Yu looked at the incredulous Itachi and curled his lips into a faint smile.

To get an effect like that...

Looks like all that practice throwing shuriken the way Uchiha Itachi did in the original story had paid off...

"Some kid like you! How could you possibly do that?!"

Itachi came to his senses.

Hearing Yu speak so calmly, and imagining the punishment he might face, Itachi grew even more furious. He surged with chakra and charged at Yu like a leopard.

Yu looked two years younger than him, and Itachi was confident he could knock the kid down with one punch, just as he had Urushi and the others.

"Thud!!"

A dull impact sounded, and Itachi was stunned once again.

Yu had caught his fist in one hand and was holding it fast!

"Is this... chakra?!"

Yu's small hand had a firm grip on Itachi's fist.

Feeling the chakra flowing through the white-haired kid in front of him, Itachi's eyes widened.

This kid was so young, and he wasn't even a student at the Ninja Academy, yet he'd already learned to draw out chakra?!

At this age, the only children in the entire Hidden Leaf Village who could usually draw out chakra and begin training were those from the Uchiha, the Hyuga, and a few other major clans.

"If we're comparing chakra..."

"I'm not necessarily weaker than you."

Yu stood unmoving, holding fast to Itachi's fist as it slammed at him, charged with chakra.

Although Yu was two or three years younger than Itachi, the amount of chakra within him was already close to a Genin's.

And after the String-String Fruit had transformed his body, Yu might not have fully grown yet, but he was already far sturdier than Itachi.

A Paramecia Devil Fruit made its user superhuman. Naturally, the body surpassed that of an ordinary person.

"Don't get so full of yourself!"

Yu's calm, unruffled expression stirred an inexplicable fury in Itachi.

A top student at the Ninja Academy couldn't handle a four- or five-year-old kid. If word got out, he had no idea how much those guys at the Academy would laugh at him.

"Poof!!"

With a sharp pop, a cloud of white smoke billowed out.

Itachi, whose fist Yu had caught, had suddenly turned into a log!

The Substitution Technique!!

Yu froze at the sudden change.

Come to think of it, this was the first time he'd ever seen a ninja use a technique.

The Substitution Technique—the Ninja Academy's most basic techniques—allowed a ninja to instantly swap places with a plant or animal to evade an attack.

"Drop dead, brat!!"

With a vicious roar, Itachi appeared behind Yu.

A kunai was already in his hand, slashing viciously toward Yu's handsome face.

"No!!"

Urushi was horrified by the dangerous scene.

They hadn't expected an ordinary kids' scuffle to escalate this far.

"Why..."

"Why..."

Turning to face the sharp kunai cutting toward him in Itachi's hand,

Yu suddenly felt an inexplicable surge of irritation and anger.

"Someone like the matron, traveling from country to country..."

"Giving up her life time and time again to bring back intelligence for the village..."

"We've already been pushed to the very edge of the village..."

Yu remembered Yakushi Nonō's gentle yet determined face.

To him, Konoha's prosperity had been won through the sacrifices of countless people like Yakushi Nonō.

"Why do you people, who know absolutely nothing, still trample on this hard-won peace?!"

A faint red sheen gradually spread across Yu's amber eyes.

As he gazed at Itachi's sneering face, he could clearly feel the Demon's power raging and roaring within him.

"Thump!!"

A clear sound of flesh being pierced.

Blood sprayed everywhere, and everyone present froze.

"AAAAAAHHH!!!"

"It hurts! It hurts so much!!!"

Amid a piglike scream,

Itachi lay on the ground before them.

The hand holding his kunai had been pierced clean through by some unseen object, leaving it a bloody mess.

"If you scream again..."

"My next shot will go through your head."

At Yu's calm, cold words, Itachi's piglike screams abruptly stopped.

Yu stood in front of Itachi, raising the index finger of his right hand and pointing it at his forehead like a gun.

Bullet String—one of the String-String Fruit's most basic techniques.

He raised his index finger and tucked in the rest, then fired a thread made from his fingertip at high speed, like a bullet.

Its destructive power was enough to pierce a person's bones in one shot, and it could easily hit a target even from a distance.

With training, its impact could even blow up a building.

"N-no, please!"

"Don't kill me!!"

Yu's empty-handed imitation of firing a gun looked a little silly.

But facing Yu's finger aimed at his head, Itachi's face was filled with terror.

That finger, which held nothing at all, had just fired a thread that pierced straight through his hand like a bullet.

As terror filled Itachi's face, a foul, pungent odor spread through the air.

A pool of strange yellow liquid flowed from between Itachi's legs, soaking the ground at Yu's feet.

Although he was a student at the Ninja Academy, he was still only seven or eight years old.

Itachi had actually wet himself.