Chapter 3: Meeting Might Guy By Chance
Just like that, Ruri wandered around while letting his mind wander. The people on the surrounding streets gradually thinned out, and the bustling avenue slowly grew quiet and desolate.
Before Ruri knew it, he had almost walked to the outskirts of the village. At that moment, however, Ruri noticed a pair of eyes watching him from not far away.
"Who's there?" Ruri shouted, and with that, Ruri ran toward those eyes, drawing Ruowu along the way.
The figure simply turned tail and bolted. Ruri's first reaction was to chase after him. Thanks to Ruri's high speed, in the blink of an eye, he had sprinted ahead of that person.
Taking advantage of the moonlight, Ruri saw that the person wore a mask, hiding his face. His attire was standard ninja clothing, with a short sword strapped across his back, and his age seemed to roughly match Ruri's.
"Who are you? Why are you following me?" With that, Ruri held his shuriken up in front of him, ready for battle at a moment's notice.
The Masked Man said nothing. He slowly raised his arm, reached back to feel along his shoulder, and then drew the blade from his back. In an instant, the Masked Man charged toward Ruri, slashing his short sword back and forth before him.
Ruri's gaze sharpened, his meridians bulging as he activated the Byakugan, clearly seeing the acupuncture points on the Masked Man's body and the pressure waves kicked up by his sword swings.
Arching his body backward, Ruri released the shuriken in his hand, shooting it straight at the Masked Man. The shuriken traveled at great speed, but the Masked Man unexpectedly twisted his body and dodged Ruri's attack.
Just as the Masked Man was about to close in on Ruri, he swung his blade down at him. Seeing that the situation was bad, Ruri immediately set his stance for the Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms.
An invisible membrane of energy formed around both the Masked Man and Ruri, and Ruri softly murmured, "Eight Trigrams: Thirty-Two Palms."
Ruri's Gentle Fist grew faster and faster, his palms striking in rapid succession, fingers and palms landing together in a rain-like assault that battered fiercely against the Masked Man.
Yet the Masked Man simply brought his hand back to block, deflecting every single one of Ruri's Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms.
"Just as they said, your talent is high! But you're still too weak."
Having said that, the Masked Man formed hand seals with both hands and declared, "Fire Release: Great Fire Dragon Technique."
Ruri's expression sank, and he immediately scrambled to the side, dodging the Masked Man's Fire Release: Great Fire Dragon Technique. Could he be from the Uchiha Clan? he thought to himself.
Ruri pulled a Ruowu shuriken from his ninja pouch, along with an attached explosive tag, and hurled them both toward the Masked Man.
Under normal circumstances, the Masked Man would probably have been finished, but since he belonged to the Uchiha Clan, getting taken out that easily would be an insult to the Uchiha Clan.
The moment Ruri threw the Ruowu shuriken, the Masked Man swiftly scrambled up a tree trunk and called down to Ruri, "Don't worry, I'm not here to kill you. We'll meet again!"
With that, the Masked Man vanished from the tree trunk in an instant, and the shuriken with the explosive tag detonated against the bark.
When the blast cleared, it left Ruri standing quietly in the open space, gazing into the distance and wondering what to make of it all.
"Damn it, who on earth was that? No, I'm way too weak; I need to hurry up and get stronger. He just said we'd meet again-next time we meet, I won't let myself look this pathetic!"
Right at that moment, however, Ruri was drawn in by the sound of intense impacts echoing from somewhere nearby.
Following the direction of the noise, Ruri realized the sound was coming from a training field not far away.
Who's still training this late? Ruri wondered.
In the center of the training ground, before a large tree, a green figure was drenched in sweat as he relentlessly battered the trunk.
Watching the figure clad in green spandex in the training area, Ruri saw that every single strike and movement carried formidable power. With every blow against the trunk, a shower of leaves drifted down.
Moreover, he was muttering to himself: "If I can kick ten thousand times today, I'll go duel Kakashi tomorrow. If I beat Kakashi tomorrow, I'll run twenty laps around Konoha. If I lose, I'll do five thousand push-ups."
This is... Might Guy!
Although Ruri had read the original story and long known about Might Guy's level of diligence, seeing the scene with his own eyes still left Ruri unable to help feeling shocked. To be pushing himself through frantic solo training this late at night-how badly he must want to win against Kakashi.
And Ruri knew that he routinely set himself some very strange goals: for instance, today he would run six hundred laps around the training ground; if he couldn't manage that, he would do some massive number of push-ups; if he couldn't hit that count, he would do ten thousand squats.
Once all those were completed, he would earn the qualification to challenge his chosen rival, Kakashi. Through such a long-term, self-abasing routine of crazy workouts, even an ordinary person with zero talent would eventually become very strong-after all, this was the world of anime.
Seeing this firsthand, Ruri thought it was definitely no coincidence that the later Might Guy could occasionally surpass Kakashi. One was a genius ninja of his youth, while the other was a dropout who lacked ninja talent in his youth.
Anyone who had read Naruto knew that Kakashi in his youth was an utterly gifted genius ninja. He graduated from the Ninja Academy at age five-a record that remained unbroken to this day-became a chunin at twelve, and independently developed an S-rank ninjutsu, the Lightning Blade.
Ever since Obito Uchiha's sacrifice, however, followed by his own hand taking Rin's life, the shackles upon Kakashi's heart kept him in a stagnant state of despondency all the way through Shippuden.
For over a decade in the middle, Kakashi's strength crawled from Jonin to elite Jonin before grinding to a complete halt, and in the later stages he was entirely surpassed by several of his own disciples.
The Fourth Shinobi World War saw him dragging down the protagonists, getting his Sharingan plucked out by Madara Uchiha without even the ability to resist. Although the original author had the entire Team 7 receive power-ups-with Obito even dying only to come back and lend Kakashi a pair of Sharingans-none of that could mask the pale mediocrity of Kakashi's mid-to-late-stage strength.
Yet Guy, who had lacked ninja talent since childhood, steadily caught up to Kakashi's pace through day-after-day, year-after-year effort.
Though he constantly went around shouting about defeating the genius ninja Kakashi, in the later stages he opened the Eight Gates, his strength reaching a level that suppressed the Six Paths-state Madara Uchiha and leaving the Six Paths Madara unable to fight back. He dazzled countless viewers and was revered by countless readers as Lord Guy!
Anyone who worked hard deserved respect, so Ruri quietly activated his Byakugan—his meridians bulging—and intently observed Might Guy inside the training ground.
The techniques Guy practiced differed from the Hyuga Style Gentle Fist. Guy practiced another school of taijutsu: the Konoha-style Strong Fist.
The Gentle Fist focused on upper-body movements, usually keeping a low defensive posture while using the upper body's unique softness to drive chakra into the opponent's body to disrupt their meridian pathways and internal organs-after all, no matter how powerful someone was in the normal ninja world, they could not train their internal organs.
Internal injuries inflicted by the Gentle Fist were usually fatal unless one reached the Six Paths level, possessed Hashirama Senju's Sage Body, and so on.
The Strong Fist, on the other hand, placed greater emphasis on lower-body movements. Its techniques were generally wide open, attacks primarily relied on legs making use of chakra, granting the body greater explosive power and destructiveness. It struck enemies with swift and fierce maneuvers, inflicting direct damage to the surface of the enemy's body.
Ruri intently recorded every single one of Might Guy's movements. With no choice—since he hadn't crossed over into the Uchiha Clan, didn't possess the Sharingan, and lacked the ability to instantly copy an opponent's moves—he could only rely on himself to slowly learn and comprehend.
Ruri knew he was not a taijutsu master and had no way to fuse two different styles of taijutsu simultaneously. His own Gentle Fist and Might Guy's Strong Fist could not be trained side by side.
Ruri merely hoped to infuse more versatility into his Gentle Fist until his future strength reached a certain level, allowing him to forge a supreme taijutsu style uniquely his own.
Might Guy, in the center of the training ground, continued his sweat-drenched training, oblivious to the fact that at this hour, separated by a wire fence a few dozen meters outside the training field, a child was spying on him with the Byakugan.
At this point, Guy was still just a chunin, and his taijutsu had not yet displayed those immensely powerful skills from later years. Ruri simply kept his eyes on a few basic taijutsu movements he had learned: the Konoha Whirlwind and the Leaf Great Whirlwind.
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