Itachi Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake stood opposite each other in the center of the training ground.
The murmurs of the massive crowd fell into an expectant, heavy silence.
Although Itachi was only six years old, his expression remained perfectly calm. Across from him stood the eight-year-old Kakashi Hatake, already a seasoned veteran of the Third Great Ninja War.
A Jōnin instructor stepped between them. "Prepare yourselves."
Both lowered their stances.
The instructor raised his hand, pausing for a fraction of a second before bringing it down in a sharp chop. "Begin!"
Kakashi moved first. His hand flashed toward his pouch, and a kunai shot through the air toward Itachi with lethal speed.
Itachi didn't flinch. A shuriken slipped from his fingers, thrown with terrifying precision. The two weapons collided in midair.
CLANG!
The shuriken struck the kunai at a calculated angle, deflecting the blade away while instantly changing its own trajectory. Instead of flying past Kakashi, the shuriken curved sharply back toward him.
Kakashi's visible eye narrowed. He drew his short sword.
CLANG!
The shuriken was knocked aside, but Kakashi didn't waste the opening. He immediately charged, closing the distance in a blur.
Itachi drew his own short tantō and met the veteran head-on.
Their blades collided.
CLANG! CLANG!
The sharp sound of steel echoed throughout the training ground. Itachi fought carefully, keeping his movements remarkably compact, conserving his stamina and parrying the heavier strikes. However, Kakashi had the overwhelming advantage. He was two years older, physically stronger, and possessed the experience of real combat. Each violent clash forced the six-year-old backward.
Itachi attempted to redirect Kakashi's blade rather than block it directly, but Kakashi's relentless pressure gradually overwhelmed the boy's defenses.
He's too strong, Itachi realized instantly.
Kakashi swung a heavy, descending arc. Itachi barely parried the strike, using the momentum to separate their blades. He immediately jumped backward, his tiny hands blurring through a sequence of seals.
Kakashi's eye widened slightly. Genjutsu.
Itachi attempted to interfere with Kakashi's sensory network. For a brief, disorienting instant, Kakashi felt his perception of distance warp. But without a Sharingan to act as a medium, Itachi's genjutsu lacked the raw potency necessary to paralyze an experienced killer. Kakashi flared his chakra and shattered the illusion immediately.
But Itachi hadn't expected it to work. He had only needed a single second.
With distance between them, Itachi took a deep breath.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
A massive sphere of condensed, roaring flame erupted from his mouth.
Gasps echoed through the civilian stands. Even the observing Jōnin leaned forward in surprise. The sheer volume and heat of the fireball were monstrous—it was approaching the level of a seasoned Chūnin's Fire Release, fired by a child who hadn't even reached his full height.
Kakashi immediately slammed his hands together. "Earth Style: Earth-Style Wall!"
The ground erupted, groaning as a thick, solid slab of earth rose between them just as the flames hit.
BOOM!
The fireball slammed into the stone, sending superheated smoke billowing across the arena. Kakashi remained hidden behind the scorched wall.
Itachi didn't hesitate. He sprinted directly toward the smoke. He jumped, his feet catching the rough side of the earth wall, and ran vertically to the top. Breaking through the smoke cloud, Itachi hurled three shuriken down at Kakashi's position.
Kakashi emerged from the haze and deflected the first two strikes with effortless sweeps of his blade.
CLANG! CLANG!
The third shuriken flew completely past him.
Kakashi turned his head. A miss? No.
The shuriken suddenly jerked to a halt in midair. Thin, nearly invisible wire cables caught the sunlight. Itachi yanked the wires, pulling his arms in a vicious cross-motion. The weapons changed direction instantly, looping around to strike Kakashi from behind.
Kakashi spun around, his tantō flashing in a blinding sequence.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Every rigged shuriken was deflected into the dirt. But Itachi had anticipated that, too.
A final kunai shot through the lingering smoke directly at Kakashi's blind spot. Kakashi ducked and knocked it away with the hilt of his sword. At that exact instant, Itachi leapt down from the wall, plunging his tantō straight for Kakashi's collarbone.
Kakashi pivoted back, bringing his blade up to intercept. The two engaged in a rapid, ferocious exchange of blows. Itachi struck low; Kakashi parried. Itachi twisted, aiming a reverse grip at Kakashi's shoulder; Kakashi deflected it effortlessly.
As Itachi prepared for his next sequence, the earth beneath his feet shifted.
Before he could react, two hands burst from the soil and clamped around his ankles. Itachi tried to jump away, but the grip was like iron.
Headhunter Jutsu! The hands yanked downward, violently dragging Itachi into the ground until only his head remained above the surface. He struggled, but the packed earth tightened around his limbs, paralyzing him completely.
Itachi looked up at the Kakashi standing before him.
POOF.
The Kakashi he had been fighting vanished in a cloud of white smoke. A Shadow Clone.
Itachi's dark eyes widened. The Earth Wall... He understood his mistake instantly. When Kakashi had created the wall to block the fireball, the smoke and stone had obscured his vision. Kakashi had used that exact moment to swap places with a clone and slip underground, waiting patiently for Itachi to exhaust his traps.
The real Kakashi emerged from the earth silently behind Itachi. He pressed the cold edge of his sword against the boy's neck.
"That's enough," Kakashi said quietly.
The training ground was dead silent.
The Jōnin instructor immediately stepped forward and raised his arm. "Match over! Winner: Kakashi Hatake!"
Itachi remained perfectly still, processing the tactical loss. "I lost."
Kakashi removed his sword and stepped back, offering a respectful nod. "You fought incredibly well."
Itachi didn't react to the praise. He simply stared at the battlefield, mentally cataloging every single mistake he had made so he would never repeat them.
High above in the Hokage's VIP box, Elder Homura nodded in satisfaction. "An expected outcome. The White Fang's son remains exceptionally sharp."
Hiruzen puffed on his pipe, his eyes lingering on the tiny boy being pulled from the dirt. "The outcome was expected, yes. But Itachi's performance was remarkable. His tactical awareness, his speed, his Fire Release... his baseline combat strength is easily comparable to a low-tier Chūnin."
Nearby, Jiraiya crossed his new, pale arm over his chest. "I have to admit, that kid is scary good. Though, he clearly lacks experience."
Tsunade and Orochimaru nodded in silent agreement.
Then, Orochimaru chuckled, a low, hissing sound. "Save your breath, Jiraiya. The real assessment is about to begin."
Down in the arena, Obito Uchiha and Shisui Uchiha walked onto the dirt.
Tsunade leaned against the railing, her eyes locking onto the younger boy. "So that is Shisui Uchiha. The boy who supposedly awakened his Sharingan earlier than anyone in recorded history."
"The Uchiha clan seems to be a cradle of terrifying geniuses lately," Jiraiya noted warily. He glanced at the teenager standing opposite the boy. "And that's Obito, right? Kakashi's teammate under Kushina's squad."
"Yes," Jiraiya continued. "They were deployed to the Land of Grass under my command line during the war."
"He is the one Sensei is truly worried about," Orochimaru whispered, his golden eyes fixed intently on Obito. "Forget Shisui. Obito is currently the youngest shinobi in the Uchiha clan to possess a fully matured, three-tomoe Sharingan."
Down on the ground, the contrast between the two combatants was jarring. Shisui was hyper-alert. He lowered his stance immediately, gripping his tantō, his body coiled like a spring.
Obito, however, simply stood there. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His posture was so relaxed it looked careless, but there was an unnatural, machine-like stillness to him.
The Jōnin instructor raised his hand. "Begin!"
Shisui moved with explosive speed. A single tomoe emerged in his irises. He launched a kunai straight at Obito's chest, immediately following it up with a Body Flicker technique, appearing directly in front of Obito in a blur of motion, his tantō slashing toward the older boy's throat.
Obito didn't dodge the incoming kunai.
He simply raised his right hand and caught the flying kunai by the ring perfectly in midair. In the exact same fluid motion, without breaking eye contact, Obito brought the captured kunai up.
CLANG!
He effortlessly blocked Shisui's high-speed tantō slash with the weapon Shisui had just thrown at him.
Shisui's eyes widened in shock. The two engaged in a blindingly fast exchange of steel—kunai versus tantō. Shisui pushed his speed to the absolute limit, but Obito parried every single strike with terrifying, minimal efficiency. He wasn't fighting; he was simply swatting flies.
Then, Obito slowly opened his eyes wider.
Crimson flooded his irises. Three black tomoe spun into place.
For a fraction of a second, Shisui's one-tomoe Sharingan made direct eye contact with Obito's fully matured eyes.
Shisui's entire body went rigid. The tantō slipped from his fingers, hitting the dirt with a dull thud. His eyes glazed over as a devastating, instantaneous genjutsu slammed into his mind, paralyzing his motor functions completely.
Obito casually stepped forward, moving the kunai until the sharp edge rested gently against Shisui's paralyzed throat.
The Jōnin instructor blinked, completely stunned by the sheer speed of the defeat, before recovering his voice.
"Match over! Winner: Obito Uchiha!"
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the massive crowd.
They had expected a clash of prodigies. They hadn't expected a flawless, effortless execution.
"The match is over," Jiraiya muttered, his jaw slightly open.
"And he didn't even try," Orochimaru observed, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. "He didn't use a single jutsu. He just dismantled a prodigy with pure physical efficiency."
Nawaki Senju, standing near the railing, frowned deeply. He looked over at Kushina. "Your student is... frighteningly impressive, Kushina."
Kushina didn't respond. She gripped the railing so hard her knuckles turned white, her eyes locked onto Obito's emotionless face. She wasn't seeing an elite shinobi; she was grieving the cheerful, boisterous boy who had died inside that shell.
In the VIP box, Elder Koharu turned to Hiruzen, her face pale. "Hiruzen... this boy must be placed under absolute, twenty-four-hour surveillance. His talent is completely unnatural. It might be comparable to Madara Uchiha himself. And we didn't even see a fraction of his true strength today."
Across the arena, in the section reserved for the Uchiha clan, the atmosphere was entirely different. The conservative elders were practically vibrating with pride. They possessed three god-tier geniuses in a single generation.
"Did you see that?" one of the Uchiha elders whispered to Fugaku, a greedy smile on his face. "With growth like this, Obito might even surpass Ren."
The instant the name Ren left the elder's mouth, the entire Uchiha section froze.
The smiles vanished. The triumphant whispers died in their throats. A cold, terrifying reality crashed down on them, and the elders fell into silence, reminded of the monster who had slaughtered two hundred men and defected without a second thought.