The cloaked man's hairs stood on end. Gripped by an intense sense of mortal danger, he had no time to think about how Mikami Yuu had gotten into that position, and used the Body Flicker Technique without hesitation.
His reaction was already fast enough, and there was nothing wrong with how he responded, but—
he was still half a step too slow.
"Shhk—!"
With a sharp ripping sound, Mikami Yuu came slashing down from above. The blade in his hand carved a vicious arc through the air. Blood burst out along both sides of the edge like a fountain, spraying skyward—along with an arm still wrapped in a torn cloak, spinning high into the air!
"Ughhh—!"
Seven or eight meters away, the cloaked man crashed heavily to the ground. Blood poured wildly from the severed shoulder. The sheer pain twisted his face, veins bulged at his temples, and that blockage caused by the Binding Formula Seal spread through his chakra pathways, leaving him unable even to stop the bleeding.
"Kouji! You damned Konoha bastard, I'll kill you!"
Seeing his comrade injured, the bald man's eyes split wide with rage. Roaring, he charged at the freshly reappeared Mikami Yuu like a mad bull, kunai raised.
At that moment, Mikami Yuu's outline had already gone from a blur in his high-speed dive back to clarity. Several holes had been burned into his outer clothes, their edges charred black, and parts of the exposed skin on his body showed burns of various sizes, but they were all superficial.
After flicking a glance toward Kakashi and Rin's situation nearby, Yuu spun the short sword in his hand and blocked the bald man's frontal attack.
Not far away, the one-armed cloaked man forced himself to his feet despite the agony, using only one hand to brace against the ground. Still unable to stop the bleeding, he quickly pulled out kunai and shuriken with his remaining arm and hurled them at Yuu's back, trying to disrupt his movements and create an opening for the bald man.
Even though the Binding Formula Seal was temporarily hindering his chakra flow, pure physical strength alone was still enough to make the projectiles whistle through the air.
Faced with the pincer attack from both sides, Mikami Yuu remained perfectly calm. He stepped back twice as if taking a leisurely stroll through a courtyard, while the short sword in his hand turned into a dazzling blur of silver light, batting every incoming kunai and shuriken aside with perfect precision. At the same time, he spared another glance toward Kakashi and Rin.
Kakashi was doing alright.
Even though he seemed slightly weaker than the orange-haired girl, he wouldn't be losing anytime soon. He could still hold his own for a while.
Rin, on the other hand, was in real danger. Under the other man's relentless close-range assault, she had no chance to use ninjutsu at all and was being forced to trade blows with the weakest part of her skill set—taijutsu.
"Three against four… yeah, that's a bit troublesome. Better kill two first."
Yuu let out a breath. "Shadow Prison Phantom Kill Formation—activate!"
[Clone Technique: Hehe, is it finally our time to shine?]
[Transformation Technique: Am I late?]
The next instant, the bald man, who had been charging desperately at Yuu, suddenly felt his vision blur. The white-haired boy in front of him split and multiplied—and then one, two, three—several Mikami Yuus appeared at once, blade auras shredding the air as they enveloped him in the blink of an eye!
In a single second, blood burst from multiple vital points—the bald man's throat, heart, wrists, and more. His movements stopped dead. His eyes filled with unbelieving horror, a wet choking sound gurgled in his throat, and then he collapsed limply, blood quickly spreading beneath him.
Four slashes in one second!
Against enemies weaker than Mikami Yuu, this move was almost impossible to dodge. The instant they saw it, they were dead.
After that, Yuu didn't even spare the one-armed cloaked man a look. He kicked off the ground and, in the middle of that leap, flashed directly in front of Rin. He swung his blade downward, making the black-haired spiky-headed man's expression change drastically. The man barely managed to block, only to have another slash from the side burst blood from him a moment later, followed by a kick that sent him flying.
After bailing Rin out, Mikami Yuu appeared behind the orange-haired girl fighting Kakashi almost without pause at all, and swept his sword horizontally!
To be honest, the version of Shadow Prison Phantom Kill Formation Yuu was using now was still the most basic one. He hadn't stacked buffs with large numbers of water clones—he was only using a few illusionary bodies to support his movement. Even the distance of each Substitution shift was kept within forty meters—
because the maximum range he had told Kakashi about before was forty meters.
Since that was already enough for practical use, there was no point in leaking extra information and exposing more of his trump cards early.
And the results unfolded just as Yuu had expected.
The black-haired spiky-headed guy went down easily enough. It wasn't an instant kill, but with his injuries and disrupted chakra flow, he was no longer capable of posing any real threat to Rin.
Rin seized the chance, formed hand seals, and used Water Release: Water Wave, blasting the still-unsteady man away. Because the sealing formula on his wounds prevented him from stopping the bleeding, the water quickly turned red with blood.
The orange-haired girl, though, was more surprising.
Despite being attacked so suddenly, she managed—through sheer reaction speed and incredible reflexes—to block multiple sharp slashes from behind while also keeping Kakashi's offense at bay. The burst clearly took a toll on her, but at least she hadn't been instantly put down like the others.
Realizing that Mikami Yuu was moving like a phantom and that his attacks were impossibly unpredictable, the orange-haired girl knew she couldn't afford to stay passive any longer. So she suddenly unleashed Wind Cutter Technique, blasting Kakashi back, then used Body Flicker to rush to the heavily wounded cloaked man. Grabbing him by the collar, she hurled him toward the black-haired spiky-headed one.
"You two get out of here!! I'll hold him off!!"
As she shouted, she turned back, gripping a kunai, and instead of retreating, charged straight into the center of the densest flickering sword-light. She intended to stop Mikami Yuu head-on and buy time for her teammates to escape.
At that moment, Yuu also came to a stop, stepping out of the blur of high-speed afterimages and standing not far in front of her. Looking at the desperate battle-fire burning in her eyes, he arched a brow slightly.
At that point, the battle had become three against three. The cloaked man had lost an arm, which barely left him counting as half a person. The black-haired spiky-headed one was no longer much of a concern. By contrast, this orange-haired girl—who looked like the squad leader—was clearly strong. She had just managed to hold out against both Yuu and Kakashi attacking from both sides.
In that case—
"Kakashi! Rin! Those two are yours!"
Yuu shouted loudly, lowering the tip of his short sword toward the ground as he took the opening stance of Hatake Swordsmanship. "I'll test this one for myself."
"Got it!"
Kakashi found the whole thing a little strange. In theory, he was still the team leader, the one who was supposed to command the battlefield whenever Namikaze Minato wasn't around. But now it somehow felt like he was the subordinate and Mikami Yuu was the one giving orders.
Still, the situation was tense, there was no time to argue, and it was Yuu who had just stabilized the whole team's crisis. So Kakashi didn't say anything. He simply called to Rin and went after the wounded cloaked man and the black-haired spiky-headed one.
The two of them staggered away, fleeing while fighting back.
Here, the orange-haired girl took a breath and calmed herself.
As the squad leader, she had already done everything she could. What happened next would depend on her teammates. If they couldn't even deal with Kakashi and Rin and ended up being killed or captured, then there was nothing she could do about it.
Because—
judging from the current battle, the most difficult opponent by far was the little white-haired one in front of her. That bizarre ability of his—whether it was Body Flicker or something else entirely—reminded her of the "Yellow Flash" mentioned in their intel, only in teenage form.
"Haa…"
The orange-haired girl inhaled deeply and pulled a second kunai from her pouch, gripping one in each hand as she took up a distinct defensive stance opposite Yuu. Her center of gravity was steady, and her gaze was as sharp as a hawk's.
"Come on, then. Let me see what kind of genius Konoha produces!"
Then—
"Clang!"
Their figures shot forward at the same instant and collided!
Blade-light and kunai smashed together violently, sparks flying in all directions.
Mikami Yuu's Hatake Swordsmanship was fast and vicious, every slash aimed at joints and vital points.
But the orange-haired girl displayed a level of toughness and combat instinct completely at odds with her looks. With an extremely agile body and astonishing instinctive reactions, she moved and twisted within a very tight range, using her kunai to block, deflect, and redirect again and again—barely, but successfully, avoiding one lethal strike after another.
"Interesting…"
Yuu's eyes shifted slightly.
Now he understood why Kakashi had actually been pressured by her earlier. She really was strong, and her battle instincts were genuinely terrifying. This wasn't the level of an ordinary chūnin.
It was more like a jōnin.
In the blink of an eye, the two had already exchanged more than a dozen blows, each clash throwing off another spray of bright sparks.
Suddenly, Yuu felt a subtle sense of danger rise in his heart.
When he glanced over, he saw a sharp glint flash through the orange-haired girl's amber eyes. Though she was still holding her kunai, a huge, blazing mass of chakra had suddenly begun to gather around her without any hand seals at all.
Was that—
a jutsu without seals?
And the feel of that chakra was—
"Whoosh!"
A sheet of pale blue water suddenly surged up in front of Mikami Yuu, forming a thick, rapidly spinning wall—Water Release: Water Formation Wall!
That was clearly Water Formation Wall's 20% auto-defense effect from [Self-Aware Water] triggering on its own!
At almost the same instant—
"Scorch Release: Extremely Steaming Murder!"
Buzz!
As the orange-haired girl finished condensing her chakra, several basketball-sized, blindingly bright white fire spheres materialized out of thin air and shot forward with terrifying heat!
Originally, Yuu had been planning to use Substitution to pull back and observe the situation first. But once Water Formation Wall activated by itself, he decided to wait and see how it held. If it failed, he could still use Substitution in 0.2 seconds.
BOOM—!!!
The blazing white fireballs and the thick, spinning wall of water crashed together head-on!
"SSSSHHH—!!!"
The ultimate heat and freezing water met like a branding iron plunged into ice water, releasing a painful shriek of violent vaporization. Milky-white steam mixed with the shockwave and spread in all directions, quickly turning the battlefield into a cloud of boiling fog!
From the looks of it, Water Formation Wall couldn't actually withstand the heat of those fireballs. By the time the "wall" burned through, the white-hot spheres still had plenty left and kept screaming toward Mikami Yuu. He had to use Substitution to pull himself dozens of meters away before they finally lost momentum.
"So it's her."
Understanding dawned on Yuu's face.
No wonder she had looked familiar.
She wasn't wearing the open-backed outfit, she was a few years younger, her hairstyle and overall look still less mature, and most importantly she was wearing a Konoha forehead protector. That was why Yuu hadn't recognized her immediately.
Only now did he confirm it—
this was Suna's bloodline user, the wielder of Scorch Release: Pakura.
Considering that the setting described her as a "Hero of Sunagakure" who had earned enormous merit, enough to later be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Kirigakure before being sacrificed by Rasa, the Fourth Kazekage, after the war—
that meant she was probably already a jōnin at this point. At the very least, she was jōnin candidate level.
Then it made sense.
She really did have some serious skill.
On the other side, Pakura recalled the remaining fireballs of Extremely Steaming Murder and let them circle around her like a string of Truth-Seeking Balls, then fixed her gaze on Yuu in the distance, brows tightly furrowed.
"Tch! You still dodged it?"
Pakura, promoted exceptionally to jōnin at only fourteen years old, had always had sky-high confidence. In her eyes, there were only a handful of geniuses in all of Sunagakure who could compare with her. Sasori of the Red Sand genuinely counted. Rasa only counted as half.
Because Suna's training resources were relatively poor, only the most outstanding talents got the lion's share. Pakura had long since decided to use this war to distinguish herself and climb higher—and in the first six months she really had racked up a lot of battlefield achievements.
But—
what was this guy?
Judging by his age, he couldn't be more than ten or so. Yet he had swordsmanship this refined, a movement technique fast enough to terrify her, water-style ability requiring no seals that even she hadn't seen him form, and enough sharpness to dodge her near-perfect one-shot kill, Extremely Steaming Murder.
Did Konoha really have that many geniuses, that she could run into one on some random mission?
Or had her luck simply been that bad?
Without wasting time overthinking it, Pakura condensed another three or four scorching fireballs of similar size. Together with the ones already circling her, she thrust out a hand, sending them tearing toward Yuu through the air with their high heat bending the atmosphere around them.
"Scorch Release: Linked Stars!"
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
One scorching-release fireball after another trailed streaks of blazing light, shrieking through the air as they bore down on Mikami Yuu!
On Yuu's side, he had already completed his hand seals.
"Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Fire Jutsu!"
FWOOSH—!!
In an instant, dozens of orange-red fireballs like blooming phoenix erupted from his mouth, dense and fast, flying out from different angles to meet those white-hot Scorch Release orbs head-on—
and explode in violent collision!