“Damn it, he got it back.”
Tenten fumed.
She’d been so close to grabbing both bells at once.
“Heh, not bad work, honestly.
Friendly reminder, though—the hourglass is running low.”
Kakashi’s insufferable voice rang out again, seemingly from every direction at once.
That trick, sound bouncing from all sides—
The Silent Killing technique?
“Your teamwork’s decent enough, but there’s an obvious weak point.
And that would be—”
Crack!
A tree branch snapped clean through.
“Ahh!”
Tenten dropped from the tree, but mid-fall a length of rope she’d pre-rigged snapped taut and caught her, binding her up—except just as Kakashi moved in to finish her off, a row of spike traps came flying at him from the side.
He substituted out of the way and pressed on toward Tenten regardless.
Chiba moved to intercept.
Wasa, having just cut down one of the trap triggers, dropped into hiding without hesitation.
But.
The next second—
“Got you.”
“What?”
Wasa froze, and turned to see a figure looming behind her.
She hadn’t sensed a trace of him coming.
Whump!
A flying kick slammed in, forcing Kakashi to abandon his motion.
This kid—
How did he shake off my clone that fast?
Could it be—
Guy had gotten reckless again!
Kakashi’s expression shifted slightly, and he braced against the assumption, adjusting his headband.
But.
The next instant, he realized, puzzled, that Chiba’s Gates hadn’t actually opened.
What?
That wasn’t possible—the boy had pushed his entire body into a limit state purely through raw muscular control?
What kind of monster is this kid?
Kakashi couldn’t help the thought.
Chiba, breathing hard, said, “Are you all right?”
“I—I’m fine.
But what about Tenten?”
“She freed herself from the rope.
She’s holding off his shadow clone right now.
Let’s go help her.”
“Right.”
“Wow.
That’s amazing.
Both of them.”
Mayumi stared, wide-eyed.
Next to what was unfolding here, their own exam had felt like child’s play by comparison—nowhere near the same level.
Neji’s hands clenched tight.
An ordinary commoner, with nothing to his name, achieving results like this?
It shouldn’t be possible.
It wasn’t right.
It couldn’t be.
Fate wasn’t supposed to work this way—how could a commoner rewrite his own destiny this thoroughly in the span of two years?
Yanagyū Chiba—
He was a disruption in the pattern of fate itself, following no rule Neji recognized, utterly beyond his ability to make sense of.
“Sensei Guy.
At his level right now—could you do that?”
“No.”
Guy answered Lee’s question plainly, without hesitation.
At first, like Kakashi, Guy had assumed Chiba had somehow worked out a method for opening the Gates himself—the boy read constantly, and voraciously, across every subject imaginable, so it wasn’t impossible he’d stumbled onto some record of the technique and reverse-engineered it.
But.
Watching more closely, Guy realized he’d been wrong.
Chiba was clearly exhausted, but reading his chakra and his movements, this wasn’t the Gates technique at all—it was something entirely his own, a private version of “opening” that belonged to him alone.
“Still, beating Kakashi outright is going to be a tall order for them.
He hasn’t gone all-out yet.
If he did, Chiba’s weaknesses would show up fast enough.”
Guy added, in fairness to his friend.
Not bragging, either—Kakashi genuinely hadn’t used his full strength.
Speed, ninjutsu, even the Sharingan itself, all still held well in reserve.
If he went all out, Chiba’s speed would fall noticeably short.
Kakashi wasn’t weak.
Not remotely.
“Sensei, how much are you holding back, then?”
“Ha ha, just keep watching!”
Guy dodged the question with a laugh instead of answering.
Partly because he didn’t want to discourage his own students.
Partly because the fight itself had just taken a sharp turn—
Kakashi was fighting back now.
Chiba’s team, after all, hadn’t eaten breakfast.
In a short engagement, Tenten and Wasa could still keep pace, but as the fight stretched on, their stamina and focus started to fail them.
Which meant mistakes were bound to pile up.
But there was something even Kakashi and Guy hadn’t anticipated.
BOOM!
A string of explosions rocked the forest, one after another.
Kakashi, perched on a tree at the edge of the clearing, was breathing hard.
Well, well.
He had to admit he’d underestimated Tenten.
This girl—
She’d come loaded.
This was supposed to be an exam, and she’d buried five exploding tags at once, paired with wire and chakra threads to steer a hail of kunai his way, forcing him to burn through the Chidori’s precursor, a Substitution, and a Body Flicker just to escape in time.
Without all three, he’d have taken real damage.
“Don’t underestimate me, you jerk!”
Tenten roared, kunai swarming in from every direction on tightly controlled wire and chakra thread—but by then, Kakashi had already shifted his target.
Fwip!
His speed spiked without warning, and he tore toward a tree off to the side, the kunai in his hand flashing like a fang lunging out of the dark, straight at the trunk.
Clang!
Wasa, poised for a sneak attack of her own, was forced to parry with her blade instead.
But.
Kakashi was simply too fast.
“Help me!”
Wasa scrambled backward, more than a dozen kunai closing in around her fast, but—
No use.
She couldn’t keep up.
Only Chiba could match Kakashi’s speed, and the frustrating part was that Kakashi had pegged his current pace almost exactly at Chiba’s own limit.
Which meant, unless Chiba pushed back into that limit state, he had no way of keeping pace.
And on top of that—
“Ah!”
A pair of hands closed around Tenten’s ankle, and then—
Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu!
Tenten was dragged straight down into the ground.
Chiba wanted to help, but Wasa’s situation was equally dire, and after a moment’s hesitation he pushed forward instead, triggering the last two traps and steering them from a distance with chakra threads.
Kakashi didn’t seem to notice—not until he was already right on top of them.
Wasa spun and split into three, seized the opening the instant she saw it, eyes lighting up, and brought her blade down from above.
Konoha Style: Three-Day Moon Dance!
A nearly flawless angle of attack, except—
Too flawless.
The figure in front of her dissolved into a block of wood.
Above her, Kakashi’s rope shot down, binding Wasa and hoisting her up against a tree trunk.
“Lesson one.”
“On the battlefield, some opportunities only exist because your enemy wants you to see them.”
Ting.
The moment Kakashi finished speaking, an odd sound reached his ears.
He turned his head and froze in genuine surprise.
His bell was gone.
When had—
He looked down at the cleanly severed cord where the bells had hung, and worked back through it.
Only one explanation fit.
Chakra threads could cut.
Chiba had both bells in hand.
But the hourglass had already run to zero before he’d caught them.
Did that count as passing, or not?
“I let my guard down right at the end, and you found the opening instantly.
Though it looks like time’s up, and the other two are already out.”
Kakashi said, smiling faintly.
“Still, your performance exceeded what I expected.
You can become my student.”
“And them?”
“They failed.
They’re out, obviously.”
“Then I’ll fail too.
We’re a team—there’s no way I pass without them.
Unless you’d reconsider and let them through instead, and I’ll just graduate a year late.”
Chiba finished with an easy, unbothered smile.
“Reading books for another year wouldn’t be so bad for me.
Can’t say the same for them, though.”
“No way!”
Both girls answered at once.
“This isn’t a negotiation.
If you won’t accept the terms, then all three of you go back together.
I’m declaring the lot of you—”
“No, sensei, let them—”
“—pass.”
“Huh?”