The three girls across from him apparently still had not figured out the situation.
Yuuga’s expression turned serious.
He cleared his throat and said to Senhime, Yumiko and Reiko, “You might not believe this, but I signed up for a job with Iruka-sensei.
Today I’m in charge of keeping the school festival peaceful and safe.
Don’t make things difficult for me.”
At that, the three of them looked at one another, thrown off for a moment.
But once Senhime pushed back, Reiko and Yumiko straightened up too.
“Yuuga, I know Ino is your friend.
But lying just to get her and Sakura out of trouble is going too far.
Why would Iruka-sensei hand you the responsibility of keeping the school festival peaceful and safe?
Never mind that you’re from another village, you’re the same age we are.
Does that sound believable?” Senhime tilted her head.
Senhime’s challenge sounded reasonable enough that Yuuga almost talked himself into it.
Assuming, of course, that he had been lying.
He had just come from signing up for the job at Iruka’s.
Ino tugged secretly at Yuuga’s sleeve, then leaned close to his right ear and said quietly behind her hand, “Hey, Yuuga, you’re not putting one over on us, are you?
The jobs you used to take were all simple errands.
Shouldn’t Iruka-sensei be giving you something like cleaning duty?”
Sakura turned a doubtful look on Yuuga too, plainly not trusting him.
“Hahaha, caught you, didn’t we?” Yuuga had been about to reassure Ino and Sakura when Reiko’s jeering came from across the way.
She put her left hand on her hip, raised her right, and pointed an index finger at him.
“I’m telling you to stay out of it, or we’ll beat you up too.”
He had nothing to say to that.
However short he fell on strength, he could handle a few kids, surely.
And the way they kept provoking him over and over was starting to grate.
Especially that soft-spoken girl Senhime, whose eyes gave him the creeps.
The joking tone was gone.
Yuuga frowned and said impatiently, “Believe it or not, Iruka-sensei gave me this job himself.
Ino’s my friend, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’ll take her side no matter what.
I saw everything that just happened.
If you don’t believe me, let’s go sort it out in front of Iruka-sensei.
Works out, actually, since I need to tell him how you were bullying your classmates.”
Being afraid to face a teacher seemed to be a universal student affliction.
When Yuuga said they would settle it in front of Iruka, the faces of Senhime, Reiko and Yumiko turned ugly.
Iruka was the person in overall charge of this school festival.
On top of that, Iruka had another role that gave them pause.
Yumiko waved a hand, agitated.
“Don’t be ridiculous.
Iruka-sensei is the S Class homeroom teacher.
He’d definitely blame us for the fight.
Who’s going to go see Iruka-sensei with you?”
“So you’ve got a guilty conscience?” Yuuga said calmly.
“I don’t, which is why I’m willing to go settle it with Iruka-sensei.
Even if Iruka-sensei is Ino and Sakura’s homeroom teacher, he keeps personal feelings out of his work.”
But the three girls had started the trouble in the first place, so how could they not feel guilty?
Reiko bit her lip and said under her breath, “He isn’t really school festival staff, is he?
Iruka-sensei has been handing out jobs these past few days.”
Yumiko’s face went pale, her eyes darting away.
“Let’s not…
if we go to Iruka-sensei and they call our parents, Mom and Dad will find out and we’ll get yelled at…”
Senhime stayed calm.
A gust of wind blew the loose hair by her ear, and she lowered her voice.
“If we deal with Yuuga, Ino and Sakura all at once, that should settle it, right?
Losing a fight and running to the teacher is the most shameful thing you can do at the Academy.
We’ll just say they weren’t good enough.”
“Right.
Deal with them.”
Reiko, Senhime and Yumiko nodded together, then silently split into a triangle formation and surrounded Yuuga, looking ready to strike at any second.
Senhime stood directly in front of him.
“Hmph!
I say you’re all in this together.
We’re not letting you go stir up trouble in front of Iruka-sensei.
Reiko, Yumiko, let’s go!”
The three of them were about to move, and Yuuga had already noticed.
His chakra gathered.
His hands finished the seals in a blink.
“Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!”
Six soft pops sounded, and besides Yuuga himself, six more Yuugas appeared.
He smiled, pointed at Senhime, Yumiko and Reiko, who were still stunned, and said, “Take those three down!”
Yuuga No.
1: “OK, leave it to us!”
Yuuga No.
2: “Piece of cake!”
Over the past two months or so, Yuuga’s chakra reserves had reached chunin level, but he had made little progress in close-range fighting like taijutsu.
Everyone else had trained from childhood, while Yuuga trained for a month and rested for a month, so the results were underwhelming.
As for jutsu, the System had only rewarded him with the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu.
He did not have Naruto’s monstrous chakra, but with chunin-level reserves, splitting off six Shadow Clones was no trouble at all.
So human wave tactics were all he could use.
Still, that was more than enough for three girls.
Sakura watched the “Yuugas” run over and thought it was just a bluff on his part.
“How are a bunch of illusions supposed to fight them?” she said, worried.
Illusions?
Then it hit him.
Shadow Clones were a Forbidden Technique, so they had no idea, and they had to be taking them for the illusory copies made by the Clone Jutsu.
In the time it took him to space out, his Shadow Clones had finished the job the original gave them.
Yumiko, Senhime and Reiko were already subdued.
Yuuga looked at the clones holding the three girls down with satisfaction, and had just turned to strike a cool pose for Ino when his eyes went wide.
His clones had the three of them restrained, sure, and he would say nothing about the tangle of limbs, but where exactly were all those hands landing…?
The atmosphere turned awkward.
Yuuga was about to explain when something hit him hard on the top of the head.
Ino clenched her fist, at the end of her patience.
“Yuuga, where do you and your clones think you’re putting your hands?”