Yuna sat atop her perch, her patience worn thin but intact, counting quietly to herself. “Five hundred and ninety-eight,” she murmured, her fingers drumming rhythmically against her thigh. “Five hundred and ninety-nine.” A final breath, controlled and deliberate, as she rose to her feet. “Six hundred,” she whispered with a faint, grim smile, dusting herself off. The task was tedious, the kind she detested most, but then again, it was hardly her place to argue with the Hokage's orders. He had made it clear: supervise the kids.
They weren’t completely hopeless, she mused as she turned her head into the wind. Her heightened senses quickly caught the familiar scents drifting faintly on the breeze. Her charges had shifted downwind, a meagre attempt at evasion. Clever, but not clever enough. A flicker of amusement touched her lips. “Come, Hachi,” she called to her companion, the ninken huffing in acknowledgement. It was time to round them up.
Of the three, Tatsuya Hyuga had always irritated her the most. At a mere twelve years old, his taijutsu skills were formidable, a product of his esteemed clan. His appearance, too, was typical of his lineage—dark, flowing hair, pale, pupil-less eyes. And yet, despite his heritage, he was maddeningly lazy, pathologically unambitious. Yuna found it galling. A boy like him, with all the tools at his disposal, should be striving for greatness, not lounging in the shadows of mediocrity. She grimaced at the thought as she followed his trail, already knowing he wouldn't have the scroll.
Next would be Kaede Tanaka, diligent and responsible. Out of the trio, Kaede was perhaps the most likeable, if only because she reminded Yuna of her younger self. The girl shared her black hair and sharp, understated features, though that was where the similarities ended. Kaede lacked the raw talent of her teammates. Competent, yes. Obedient, certainly. But no spark of genius. In another world, Kaede might have been Yuna’s favourite, but talent was what mattered in the end. And Kaede, though far from incompetent, simply wasn’t exceptional.
Then there was the youngest—Uchiha Itachi, a boy whose reputation preceded him at every turn. Eight years old, yet already a polymath. His dossier read like fiction: Sharingan awakened before he could even walk, personal training under his clan head, graduation from the academy in record time. The whispers were always the same: genius, prodigy, Indra reborn—people couldn’t seem to decide how to describe him in a way that did justice to his abilities. Yet Yuna couldn’t shake a certain unease whenever his name was mentioned. Something about him made her skin prickle, as if he saw far more than anyone ever should. The boy unsettled her, even if she couldn’t put her finger on why.
But they were her team, at least for now. And if she had to endure them, she might as well make them worthy of her time. She had to admit, begrudgingly, that this was likely the best team she would ever get. The Hokage’s patience with her was thinning; she’d been avoiding taking on a team for years. It was only a matter of time before he forced her hand. Better to take the initiative now than be saddled with a trio of incompetents later. So, with a silent flicker, she vanished into the trees, a ghost in pursuit of her prey.
Tatsuya was the first to fall. For a moment, she let him think he’d escaped detection, watched as his scent betrayed him beneath the earth where he’d concealed himself. He was clumsy in his haste, chakra surging to his eyes, scanning through the soil. Yuna smiled—a saccharine, knowing smile. He twitched. He must have sensed her watching, his Byakugan piercing the ground between them, because the odour of anxiety started to rise. Still, for all his faults, Yuna did not imagine him a coward.
Sure enough, his panic gave way to bravado. Emerging from his hiding place, Tatsuya squared off with her, Byakugan active, his gaze daring her to strike.
“Not so fast, Sensei,” he growled, a bold move. Yuna merely raised an eyebrow, unimpressed by his posturing. Stalling, she thought. He’s buying time for the others.
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She took a step forward, cracking her knuckles. The boy flinched but stood his ground.
Just before Yuna moved, however, Hachi growled at her side, surprising her. The dog rarely took interest in any of her students. "You want to test him yourself?" she asked, tilting her head. The hound growled again, and Yuna shrugged. "Fine."
With a flick of her fingers, she formed the Tiger seal—Beast Human Clone—and in a puff of smoke, her ninken morphed into a clone of herself, baring fangs. “Have fun,” she said, dismissing Tatsuya as she moved on.
Kaede was less challenging, but only just. She hid well, katana poised and ready in the canopy. When Yuna’s shuriken struck, the girl deflected them with a flash of her blade—her form impeccable. “Good form,” Yuna complimented from below. But then came the girl’s weakness: she hesitated, proud of her performance, forgetting herself. “Don’t get distracted,” was all she heard before a strike from behind rendered her unconscious.
A brief search revealed a henge’d scroll, a clever decoy. Yuna smiled wryly. They were using their brains, at least. Tatsuya probably had a fake one too.
Itachi, of course, was the hardest to find. He was elusive, frustratingly so. The boy’s scent wove through the forest like a phantom, leading her astray at every turn. Yet, after what felt like an age, she finally caught a trace of him, hidden against a tree trunk, camouflaged perfectly. Still, as a rock. Unmoving. If not for her highly advanced sense of smell she would have never known he was even—
The wind shifted.
It stirred in the trees and the light through the canopy dimmed as if drawn back into some unseen source. She felt it before she saw it, a wrongness in the air like the touch of a hand in the dark. Her breath faltered. The world slowed, not in any sense of mercy but in the way a predator's eye settles on its quarry before the strike.
Her body knew it first, the hairs on her skin rising in some primal awareness, some deep instinct carved into her bones by ancestors long since turned to dust. Her heart drummed against her ribs and chakra surged to her brain, igniting the slow, languid pull of time. She blinked, slow, like the dragging of stone lids over blind eyes. The trees bent, leaves shimmered, dancing through air like it was thick as honey. And there he was. A boy in the shadows, a shape formed against the bark, his skin blending with the earth like some trickster spirit. He waited. Silent. Motionless.
But something else. Her nose twitched. The scent was wrong. The boy was there, but also not there. She felt a weight in her chest, her breath slipping out like a whisper too soft to be heard.
Kai.
The word erupted from her throat, tearing through her like a blade. Chakra surged, a wave unleashed, and the genjutsu snapped.
The illusion shattered. The world blinked back into itself. The boy—no longer camouflaged—had shifted. She felt the air change. There. To the left. Fifteen meters out, his presence faint as smoke on the wind. Her hands were already moving, the seals forming like an instinct pulled from her bones.
Hebi.
The earth trembled, shifting like some ancient thing awakened beneath her feet. The ground rippled and tore. A jagged spear of rock lunged from the soil, its obsidian length aimed to pierce the air, to meet the boy with unerring violence. And then—those eyes. Red as blood. Sharingan.
Slowly, they spun.
Time cracked back into itself. The world slammed into motion like a door kicked from its hinges. The rumble of stone, the tearing of earth. He moved. Fast. Too fast. His arm rose to shield him, a futile gesture against the needle’s rage. He weaved, a dragon seal forming in his hand, but the stone was already there.
A crack. A splatter of blood. The jutsu had grazed him, carved a deep line into his flesh. His forearm hung open, raw. Yet he stood. Not fallen. Not dead. Remnant lightning from a movement technique dancing along his skin. Eyes locked on her, dark and bright, like some meat-eater gazing through a veil of leaves.
Angry.