Practical Combat Assessment

"Has the intelligence been sent back?"

"It was sent to the village immediately, Lord Danzo."

"Good."

Danzo had already left Konoha and reached the border of the Land of Fire.

As Pot Kage, he had an even heavier workload than Hiruzen Sarutobi.

Friction between the Shinobi Villages was growing fiercer, and Hiruzen Sarutobi needed Danzo to take command at the border in person.

Since arriving, Danzo had led his troops in intercepting and killing several groups of scouts.

He had lived through the Second Shinobi World War. He knew these clashes would not stop. They would only escalate until full-scale war broke out.

"At this rate, the Third Shinobi World War is inevitable. We should strike first and hit the other Shinobi Villages hard."

His report to Konoha had laid out the situation at the border, and he had urged Hiruzen Sarutobi to act at once.

But Danzo knew the weak-willed Hiruzen Sarutobi would only keep pondering how to settle the conflict. If necessary, he would even sacrifice the village's interests.

Danzo would never allow that. He took a far harder line than Hiruzen Sarutobi.

He even wanted to mass their forces, launch an all-out offensive, and crush one of the Shinobi Villages!

That would keep them from being surrounded by the Four Great Shinobi Villages as they had been in the First Shinobi World War.

But he was not the Hokage. In the end, he was not the Hokage!

All because he had hesitated back then and failed to step forward first. The memory had remained a thorn in his heart.

Danzo's thoughts returned to the year he had accompanied his teacher, Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, to Kumogakure to forge an alliance and sign the Ceasefire Agreement.

On the way back to the village, Kinkaku and Ginkaku had ambushed them.

With no time to spare, Tobirama Senju had asked which of his students would stay behind to hold off the enemy and give the others a chance to survive.

Everyone knew staying behind meant death. There would be no escape.

Danzo had kept telling himself, Say it. Say you'll stay behind and hold them off. Let the teacher and the others make it back to the village safely.

In the end, Hiruzen Sarutobi had spoken first. He had volunteered to stay behind, willing to die for the others.

That single moment of hesitation had cost Danzo the Hokage Position.

Their teacher had already decided to stay behind alone. His question had merely been a test to see who was worthy of succeeding him.

Danzo had not necessarily wanted to be Hokage. What stung more was how weak he had been, how he had lacked Hiruzen Sarutobi's resolve.

He had grown since then. He had taken Konoha's darkness onto his shoulders and become a formidable man much like his teacher. Meanwhile, the once-brave Hiruzen Sarutobi had had his edge worn away by a false peace.

Now Danzo was better suited to be Konoha's Hokage.

"Sarutobi, you're no longer fit to lead Konoha. Only I can bring Konoha back to the heights it reached under the First!"

As he brooded, a Root Ninja wearing a demon mask brought him the latest news from the village.

"That boy has defeated Kakashi and gifted youths from both the Uchiha and Hyuga Clans."

"Hm?"

Danzo froze, surprise flashing through his eyes.

That brat, who trained only in Taijutsu and whose temperament Danzo had deemed unsuitable for Root, had that much talent?

Danzo knew Kakashi's defeat alone could have been due to outside factors. It did not necessarily mean the boy called Kazan was truly that strong.

But if he had defeated opponents from both the Uchiha and Hyuga Clans, that was worth thinking about.

"A pity."

Danzo's gaze soon grew calm again.

He had misjudged the boy and missed out on the two most outstanding talents of their generation. Still, he had recruited plenty of fresh blood from other Shinobi Clans.

A small loss was hardly a loss at all!

Meanwhile.

On Konoha's Back Mountain, Kazan had stopped punching.

He sat cross-legged on the ground and created another Shadow Clone.

They said nothing. One glance at each other was enough to know what the other intended.

A moment later...

Bang!

Kazan went flying and rolled several times across the ground before coming to a stop.

He touched his face. It hurt. His Shadow Clone sure knew how to throw a hard punch.

"Again!"

He gritted his teeth and kept going, eager to master Observation Haki and Armament Haki as soon as possible.

Kazan had Garp's memories of training, and his approach to Observation Haki was much the same as that of Rayleigh, that mediocre teacher who led students astray.

He would learn it the bluntest, most direct way possible: by taking hits.

At times like this, Kazan almost wished he had an excellent teacher like Kaido at his side.

One club strike for Ryuo, a second for Conqueror's Coating, and a third for Awakening on the spot!

Unbelievable!

Would that get him killed outright?

Kazan figured he had the Monkey family template. He could pull off the same comeback routine too. No problem at all.

But he would leave that idea as a thought experiment.

"Again!"

Kazan got up, closed his eyes, turned his back to his Shadow Clone, and kept taking hits.

The Ninja Academy graduation exam was close. In other words, he would soon leave the safety of the village and see the outside world.

He had to grasp Observation Haki while he still could.

In this world of the Hokage, Genjutsu was a particularly nasty trick.

It was practically the bane of Taijutsu Ninja. If Kazan did not want to die without knowing what had hit him, mastering Observation Haki was urgent.

Elsewhere.

With graduation exams approaching, the students in this year's class faced a heavier workload.

Lately, every one of them had been gritting their teeth and training like Might Guy. Most secretly put in extra practice after class, hoping to pass the graduation exam and become proud Genin.

Their teachers also arranged tests every few days, hoping to identify each student's weaknesses and help correct them.

Today's test was practical combat, meant to assess every aspect of the students' current abilities.

But before it could begin...

The Chunin teacher had not even called for the start when the proud Uchiha and Hyuga students stepped forward.

"Kazan, I challenge you!"

"Kazan, I'm going to beat you this time!"

The two confronted Kazan almost at the same moment.

They wanted the same thing: to avenge their defeats.

Both had the painful history of being beaten up by Kazan and had even spent some time as fellow patients.

They could not accept losing to a Ninja from an ordinary family, especially one who knew only Taijutsu.

Jing Uchiha took it the hardest.

After leaving the hospital, he had tried to corner Kazan. But that damn pest had somehow stopped training after school, and he left so fast no one could even find a trace of him.

Jing considered his last loss to Kazan a fluke. He acknowledged Kazan's strength now, but still did not believe he would lose again.

During his hospital stay, he had thoroughly reviewed the fight and concluded that if he used Genjutsu, he was bound to win.

Yet he had tried to corner Kazan several times and never caught him.

When Jing challenged Kazan at school, Kazan would not take the bait. All that bravado about "a man never backs down from a challenge" had vanished.

And with those guys in class mocking him day after day, Jing was so angry he could almost awaken his Sharingan!