Mitokado Hamura and Utatane Koharu met Sarutobi Hiruzen during an escort mission lead by Tobirama Senju. A long and dangerous mission brought them closer to the duo of Danzo and Hiruzen.

When Sarutobi became Hokage after Tobiroma's death, thanks to their friendship, they shared the executive position of the Konoha council. Although they didn't agree on some things, their relationship tightened as time passed, and after a night of celebration, it became more than friendship.

After a few tens of years of living as an unhappy, classic couple, they recently decided to divorce by mutual consent. So they could continue to do their work, even if it felt a bit strange.

Even though Hamura had just told him that Yuta was using a wind-type ninjutsu, he had doubts.

Danzo could hardly resist jumping into the arena right now and forcibly rooting for the boy. Seeing that at his age Yuta could make a one-handed seal and attack his opponent without making a sound, he decided that he was a genius wind-type ninjutsu user on the same level as him.

Meanwhile, Sarutobi heard the conversation between Hamura and Koharu and raised his head to look around the arena.

As the ninja blocking Yuta's path opened the way in surprise, a long-haired boy fell to the ground crying with a large cut just above his nose.

When the boy's mother saw that her son was hurt, she jumped on the stage screaming but was stopped by another referee. The boy's mother and father were just civilian ninjas. They already knew they were no match for the Anbu ninja standing before them.

Of course, this did not allay a mother's worries. "Iruka, stay with me! Medical ninjas! Please save my son."

When the man saw his son crying on the ground, he was convinced that the blow was not fatal anyway and tried to calm his wife. The wound on his son's face would probably not heal in the future, but his son's life was more important than anything else.

Meanwhile, Yuta, walking back to the seating area with his hands in his pockets, looking cool and calm, enjoying the stares he was getting, heard her shouting and turned back to look around the arena. Now he understood why this boy felt so familiar to him.

This boy had to be Iruka Umino, Naruto's first teacher in the anime. Yuta felt a pang of regret as he realized he had injured one of his favorite characters from the anime. The damn sun had slowed down his ability to think and his tolerance level was dropping.

Feeling like an asshole, Yuta cursed the sun and decided to apologize later. By this time the whole arena had fallen silent and everyone was talking among themselves about what Yuta had done. Some middle-aged women even started looking at Yuta like he was food.

"Tsunade, did you teach him the technique he just used?"

Tsunade continued to watch Yuta in amazement, ignoring Danzo's question as it was, causing him to grit his teeth. But when her teacher repeated the same question, she had to reluctantly admit that she didn't know Yuta could use such a technique.

"He told me he was going to surprise me today, but I never thought he could master ninjutsu so quickly. Only a month ago I taught him how to extract chakra and he has already developed his own ninjutsu. I really am the best teacher alive..."

As Sarutobi ignored her bragging and fell back into deep thought, the people in the arena changed twice more, and the last four groups of students came out for a one vs. one.

As the flashy fighting styles of the Uchiha seniors and a few geniuses from the Hyuga clan drew people's attention away from Yuta, the second round of eliminations began.

99 students participated in the competition and after a single elimination round, 45 participants remained. As the second round of the competition began, Yuta was the first to be drawn. So Yuta was the one to skip this round this time.

When the round was over, there were 23 people left. There was hardly any noise around the arena anymore because many people had seen the truth. Those who were eliminated were mostly the children of civilian ninjas, while the rest were the children of the big clans.

Up to this point in the competition, civilian families had been bragging to those around them about their children's physical strength or throwing abilities, thinking that their children would place well in the competition. But reality slapped these families hard in the face.

The competition was not as taijutsu-oriented as they thought. The children from the big clans were using ninjutsu combos like experienced ninjas, eliminating their opponents without giving them a chance to fight back.

Danzo turned to Hiruzen, to the displeasure of the families. "Do you really think this battle will boost the morale of the village?"

Sarutobi was silent for a short while, then said yes. "All this was unavoidable in the first place."

"We could have matched civilians against civilians, and the competition would have been more competitive."

At this point, Hamura and Koharu joined the conversation. "I think Danzo is right, Hiruzen."

"I agree with Danzo, I feel like the morale of the village is about to drop even lower."

"No, that would only delay the unavoidable. Right now they have an unspoken grudge against the Clan children. Soon the civilians will enjoy it as the children of the big clans hurt each other and they will be able to really enjoy the competition because they have nothing to worry about. And if I tell them that half of the special class at the end of the competition will be civilians and that the ranking will not affect the selection, the hatred in their hearts will fade with the newfound excitement and expectation."

As Sarutobi Hiruzen finished speaking as if he were saying something ordinary and watched the special match between the two students who had been exempted in the previous two rounds, the surrounding people felt as if they had been hit by an invisible wave of cold air.

"Ladies and gentlemen, before the final elimination rounds, we will take a 20-minute break so that our contestants can rest for a while, of course, there will be a short intermediate battle round so as not to interrupt the excitement. This battle will be between the 2 students who advanced to the next round by lottery in the previous two rounds. Senju Yuta and Nara Ensui, please come to the stage in three minutes."

In three minutes? Yuta thought so, then turned his head to look at Ensui sitting next to him and smiled mischievously.

Ensui smiled awkwardly in response and mumbled "Probably three minutes for stage rebuilding". Immediately after his words, an anbu ninja appeared in each of the four corners of the nine arenas and slapped their hands on the ground at the same time.

With a slight earth tremor, the nine arenas sank into the ground and became flat earth, and immediately afterward, four slightly larger arenas emerged from the ground in the area where the nine arenas had been.

The chunins and genins, who had spent a long time building the nine arenas, muttered that life was unfair when they saw four anbu ninjas replacing the arenas they had built in an hour with much more robust arenas in a few seconds.

Fortunately, they got some relief when they returned to the Hokage to hear the anbu ninja being scolded by the Hokage about why they hadn't painted the emblem of the hidden leaf village on the arena.

Three minutes had already passed after the Anbu ninjas had quickly gone to the arena with the body flicker technique to draw the emblem.

In those 3 minutes, some of the people were talking about the battles that had just taken place, while the majority were complaining about the unfairness of the battles. The Hokage's arrangement had already made people forget about Tsunade.

Realizing this, Danzo pouted, but no one noticed because his face was ugly. Except Sarutobi Hiruzen, of course.

As one child each from the Nara and Senju clans entered the arena, some of the civilian Ninjas felt a little relieved that the children of the big clans were finally meeting, and others felt that a giant clan like the Senju was bullying a small clan like Nara, and a little more warmth appeared in their hearts for the Nara clan.

It is not known whether the Hokage had arranged it this way on purpose, as the Nara clan was a clan that did not have eyes for the Hokage's seat, but Ensui, looking at Yuta standing at one end of the Arena, was extremely uncomfortable with the situation.

Yuta had something he wanted to try with the Nara clan's techniques, so he didn't run at his opponent as soon as the competition started. Ensui, on the other hand, was watching Yuta's arm carefully.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

During the previous battle, Yuta had finished the battle from a distance by waving his arm. With this in mind, Ensui watched Yuta carefully while thinking in his head about how to win this battle.

Like every Nara clansman, Ensui was familiar with fire and earth-type ninjutsu techniques other than shadow techniques. After thinking for a while, Ensui decided that he should first understand more about his opponent's abilities and then make a plan.

Ensui took a kunai out of his pocket and quickly threw it at Yuta, followed by another one, making sure that the two kunai were not at the same level.

Yuta waved his hand at the first kunai that came at him and sliced it in half in mid-air, at the same time he saw another kunai flying towards his feet, so he moved his foot slightly and dodged the kunai. Seeing this, Ensui made a few guesses about his technique; either Yuta's invisible slashing attack was created by making hand seals in advance and launched when he waved his hand, or he had some kind of unknown bloodline, but this ability had a cooldown.

Ensui realized that if he formulated a plan based on the estimates he had, there was an eighty percent chance that he would be defeated by his own plan, and after cursing his lack of knowledge, he decided to give it another try with a few kunai.

While Ensui was trying to find a way to win this battle by using all of his brain like in a life or death situation, Yuta was lazily looking at the sun and thinking about using the curtain technique, but if he used the curtain technique, he would not try what he wanted to try with the shadow abilities of the Nara clan.

After thinking for a while, Yuta turned a bit to dodge the kunai attacks coming at him, after all, even though Ensui came from the Nara clan, he was lazy and not skilled in anything other than clan techniques.

After Yuta came out of his thought process, he lazily raised his hands and told his opponent directly that there was something he wanted to try.

Ensui responded with surprise. "You really want me to catch you with my shadow technique?"

"Yes. I want to see if I can escape the shadow technique."

"If you cannot escape, I will show you no mercy."

Yuta chuckled loudly in response and raised his hands, waiting for Ensu to catch him.

Meanwhile, the people whose only entertainment before the next round began was this battle stopped making noise and focused on what was going to happen. No one really thought Yuta had given up, especially after what he had done to his opponent in the first round, which had marked him out as a bad boy in many people's minds.

Ensui clasped his hands together to use a technique he hadn't fully mastered, and his own shadow slowly began to stretch out and reach toward Yuta.

As Yuta looked at the shadow slowly approaching him, swaying around like a drunk, he sensed that if this went on much longer the crowd would be distracted and Ensui would become the joke of the village, so he took a few steps forward and approached the shadow.

By the time Ensui's shadow made contact with Yuta, Ensui was already drenched in sweat.

Yuta thought that he would be immobilized as soon as the shadows made contact because he remembered it being like that in the anime, but when Ensui's shadow reached Yuta's feet, it began to expand.

As Yuta stared at the pool of shadows beneath his feet, tens of small shadow hands appeared out of the shadows at the same time and grabbed Yuta.

"Shadow Sewing Technique is complete"

As soon as Yuta heard Ensui's words, he realized that he couldn't move his body and in the next seconds, the hands wrapped around his body tightened even more and began to crush him.

"Yuta-san, you have been captured by my technique. I hope you saw what you wanted to see because now I am going to crush you."

"I thought that by capturing my shadow you would force me to act like you."

Ensui was about to start the crushing technique when he heard Yuta's question and checked the amount of chakra he had left. When he was sure he still had enough chakra to hold Yuta for close to two minutes, he answered him. "The technique you heard about is called the shadow-imitation technique, the technique I use is the Shadow-Sewing technique. To get that technique, we need to achieve great success first. My father said that if I defeated a Uchiha or Senju, they would teach me the technique. Sighh, though that's no achievement at all, considering you surrendered on your own."

Hearing his explanation, Yuta understood why he hadn't moved his ninja bag to a different location than his own ninja bag. "I see, sorry my memory is a bit bad. Oh, by the way, you seem to have misunderstood something Ensui..."

Ensui was giving Yuta a chance to speak while continuing to count down inwardly. After all, even if he didn't beat Yuta like he wanted to, it was still an important achievement to get a good ranking in this competition. There were only ten seconds left on the countdown before Ensui heard Yuta's last words, and then the shadow hands holding Yuta passed through him as if Yuta wasn't even there.

Immediately afterward, before Ensui realized why the technique had broken down, Yuta dived into the pool of shadows that the shadow hands had just thrown out as if it were a real pool, and Ensui was completely unable to feel his presence.

"I never surrendered." Ensui didn't even realize what was happening as he felt the hand on his shoulder and heard the familiar voice behind him, but he knew one thing: Yuta was a lazy cat. Thinking about the way Yuta slept all day in the classroom and his pale skin, Ensui decided that he must have an even weaker physique than he did.

Ensui used his shadow technique as a distraction to make sure Yuta didn't suddenly use his invisible attack and turned around and quickly kicked Yuta.

Just a hard kick... What followed was a child knocked to the ground and another child praised by his clan and rewarded with a technique that was seen as a rite of passage into adulthood. I'm sorry, Yuta...

These were Ensui's thoughts before he turned around and faced a red fist approaching his face.

When Ensui saw the fist covered in red flames about to make contact with his face, his eyes widened and his mind worked at full speed, analyzing what was happening, focusing on every little detail. He was prejudiced, it was his fault, why would seeing a child sleepy make him think that the child was lazy?

Yuta was obviously not lazy. Maybe it was because he had been training hard all night that he was so sleepy in the morning. And isn't Kakashi always sleepy too? "I'm such an idiot."

All of Ensui's question marks quickly disappeared as time, which had come to a standstill due to his overworked brain, began to move again. When Ensui saw a tiny black bolt of lightning slowly lick his face from the flames in Yuta's fist, he did the only thing he could do: he closed his eyes and wished it would end immediately.

Ensui felt a strong wind passing over him, but no sensation of pain followed. This made him think of a frightening possibility and he immediately opened his eyes to check if he was still alive.

From the others' point of view, it had been much shorter; as soon as Yuta disappeared into Ensui's shadow, he came up from the ground behind him and grabbed his shoulder. Immediately Ensui reacted quickly enough to surprise everyone and spun around to attack his back.

The Hokage, though he found Ensui's behavior disrespectful, said nothing, and then Yuta, almost as fast as a chunin, dodged the oncoming attack and counterattacked.

When the referee saw Yuta's fist flash with a red flame as it was about to hit Ensui, he immediately tried to stop it, but he reacted too late. No one thought that a child would use another mysterious technique at such a sudden speed and without using a seal. Fortunately, Yuta's intention was only to scare and he stopped himself just before his fist hit Ensui.

Ensui's hairpin was blown away by the wind, and his hair fell loose and disheveled. Just then Yuta shook his own long hair from right to left and said: "Hahaha nice try, but don't underestimate me. Nazenara, warawa ga... utsukushii kara!"

Tsunade, still stunned by what had happened, raised her hands to cover her face at these words and the referee in the arena tripped and fell to the ground.

A cold autumn wind blew through the stadium and no one made a sound. Meanwhile, a female student turned her head and asked Shizune, who was sitting next to her, why she was covering her face.

"No reason."

"He's from the Senju clan, right? Do you know him?"

"No."

"Don't lie"

Shizune embarrassedly tried to prove to the classmate girls around her that she didn't know Yuta, while other people woke up in shock.