The training sword was still planted in the dirt.
Its handle pointed up at the evening sky exactly where Ryu had left it.
Ryu stood a few steps away on the training ground with the blindfold wrapped tight around his eyes. His right hand dropped to his weapon pouch. Steel flashed.
He drew a real kunai.
"Let's fight properly with real weapons."
The sentence landed harder than it should have.
Dan's eyes sharpened at once. He leaned slightly toward Shikaku, his voice low. "He must have figured out the flaw just like you did. And he found a way around it."
Hiruzen did not answer. Shikaku's arms stayed folded.
Across from them, Itachi looked at the kunai, then at the dark cloth over Ryu's eyes.
"Are you sure?"
Ryu rolled the kunai once through his fingers and settled into stance. "I have a point to make. Better to make it with everything I have." His grip tightened slightly. "Better we both give it our all."
Itachi held his gaze for a beat, then reached into his pouch and pulled out a scroll. He flicked it open. Smoke curled. A real sword appeared in his hand.
"I hope you don't get hurt while proving a point."
Ryu smiled faintly. "I am a healer, remember."
Then they moved.
Steel met steel.
The first clash cracked across the training ground and changed the air instantly. Wood had sounded disciplined. Steel sounded dangerous. Sparks spat from the collision and vanished before they hit the ground.
Itachi stepped in first. One clean burst. One sharp angle. The blade came for Ryu's neck without wasted motion.
Ryu bent back.
Not by much. Just enough.
The sword passed in front of the blindfold, close enough to split the space where his face should have been. In his mental observation room, the blade existed as a moving absence. A clean dark cut through the field of his Yang chakra. His mind caught the shape, the angle, the speed. Slow enough to understand. Fast enough to matter.
A faint smile touched Ryu's lips. Catching it, Itachi smiled back.
Then Ryu attacked.
He stepped in at an angle, bringing the kunai up to catch the next strike. Their blades scraped. He let the contact ride, tossed the kunai a few inches into the air, caught it with the other hand, and came back from a different angle before Itachi had finished resetting his shoulders. He attacked from places that should have been awkward, blind, or wrong. His feet cut small triangles over the dirt. His hips turned first, then his shoulders, then the wrist. Efficient. Tight. Unnatural to look at.
Itachi adjusted immediately. One parry. Two. A third. He turned with Ryu and matched the shift in tempo.
The fight began to climb.
Every exchange got faster.
Every opening got smaller.
Jaws started dropping around the training ground one by one.
Itachi broke contact half a step, blade held low, eyes fixed on the blindfold.
"Holy shit."
He gave a short, breathless laugh that did not sound amused so much as honestly impressed.
"You can see without eyes. Not just guess." His grip tightened on the sword. "but actually see."
Ryu only smiled.
At the edge of the training ground, Kaia had both hands clasped in front of her now. She did not seem to know she was doing it.
Akihiro stood near her with his bare feet pressed to the earth, his whole body listening. He could not follow everything. The speed was too high. The chakra signatures blurred and overlapped and broke apart too fast for him to track properly. But he kept trying anyway, dragging what little he could from the ground, the air, and the rhythm of impacts.
Hiruzen watched in silence.
Dan looked proud.
Shikaku looked bothered in the exact way he always did when something was both brilliant and troublesome at the same time.
Then two new signatures entered the edge of Ryu's field.
One was heavy, dense, disciplined down to the smallest fluctuation. The other was lighter, sharper, and coiled with quiet speed.
Ryu did not pause.
Itachi cut in from the left. Ryu met the blade, slid along it, shifted the kunai from his right hand to his left, and said over the ring of metal, "Lord Fugaku. Shisui-san. What a pleasant surprise."
Only then did heads begin to turn.
Ryu stepped through another strike and added, "I'll greet you properly after my spar is complete."
At the gate stood Fugaku Uchiha and Shisui.
Itachi's attention flickered for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was enough.
Ryu's kunai snapped toward his wrist, forcing Itachi to withdraw and retake distance.
Fugaku's expression did not move. His eyes travelled across the training ground once, taking in Hiruzen, Shikaku, Naruto, the blindfold, the kunai, and his own son holding a sword.
"Take your time, young Ryu."
"Thank you," Ryu said, and attacked again.
Hiruzen and Shikaku exchanged a brief look. No words. None were needed.
Naruto looked from Hiruzen to Shikaku, trying to read the sudden, heavy silence in the adults.
Shisui's attention stayed locked on the fight. Whatever political reasons had brought him there could wait. The mechanics unfolding in front of him were too interesting.
Fugaku watched in silence.
He had seen gifted children before. He had raised one. But this was different. The blindfold was not a performance. The boy was building something. A style. A system. Something that cut away at assumptions Uchiha fighters had relied on for generations.
Ryu deflected a low sweep, forcing a step of distance. "Your speciality is shuriken jutsu. Why haven't you used it yet?"
Itachi answered without speaking. A shuriken flashed from his fingers.
Simple throw. Straight line. Chest height.
Ryu did not move until the last possible instant. Then he tilted his head and let it pass beside his ear.
"Can you make it not so obvious?"
A small smile touched Itachi's face. "Okay."
His hands blurred.
Three shuriken spun into the air. The first clipped the second. The second redirected the third. Their paths changed mid-flight, bending into converging angles that would have caught an ordinary dodge and punished the follow-up.
Ryu stepped left.
Leaned right.
Dropped his shoulder.
All three missed.
Itachi vanished.
The spectators lost him instantly.
Ryu didn't.
The chakra signature remained sharp in his mental space, circling, lowering, changing height.
"I can see you hiding, actually," Ryu said.
Then, after half a beat, "Well, not see, but you get my point."
A kunai shot in from one side. Ryu twisted away from it.
Two shuriken followed from different angles. He shifted between them with a narrow turn of his body, almost threading a needle—
And then he felt it.
Not the shuriken.
The line between them.
A thread so thin it did not announce itself cleanly. In his observation room, it still cut through the field. It still displaced the chakra around it. But the trace came late. Slower. Fainter. Like a scratch appearing across a painted surface one second after the blade had already passed.
Ryu's body reacted before the thought finished.
He bent back hard. The wire passed a hair above his face.
Ryu thought, "I almost missed it. Too little displacement. Still enough to matter. Enough to turn a simple mistake into a life-and-death situation. More training should fix that."
Itachi was already behind him.
No warning. No sound worth trusting. Just a sword thrust driving straight for his back.
Ryu's mind sharpened. He thought, "Let's test it."
He turned into the attack and drove chakra down his arm. He compressed it into his hand until the tissues themselves seemed to hum with strain, activating a partial [Golden Aura].
Gold bloomed over one finger and across his knuckles.
Itachi's blade hit that glowing finger.
CLANK.
The sound was vicious.
A compressed burst of force blasted out from the impact and punched the air outward in a hard ring.
At the edge of the training ground, Akihiro felt it slap against his face and chest. He heard the metallic crack and understood at once that flesh had not taken that blow. Something denser had. Much denser.
His brow tightened.
Through the little he could sense, he understood enough to hurt.
Ryu's control was better. It was painful for Ryu but he did not show it. He thought, "With practice the tissues will adjust to keep this jutsu active without pain after long practise."
His chakra intensity was higher.
His precision was on another level.
Akihiro clenched his fists at his sides. He thought, "I need to work harder."
In the centre of the training ground, Itachi had frozen for exactly one breath.
He stared at the sword.
Then at the glowing finger.
Then at Ryu.
"He stopped a real blade... with one finger?"
Ryu grinned.
"Why are you stopping? Keep attacking."
Itachi obeyed.
The barrage came fast.
A diagonal line cut. A cut backwards. A low feint that turns into a thrust. At the last second, an overhead drop turned into a horizontal sweep. Silver was blurred through the air by Itachi's sword, which changed patterns over and over again.
Ryu met every strike with the same hand.
No, not clumsily. Not being stubborn. All of the intercepts were exact. The strongest part of the blade hit him with the strongest part of his reinforced hand, his finger.
Clank.
Clank.
Clank.
On the fourth impact Itachi shifted his grip and attacked faster.
On the sixth he stepped inside his own previous pattern.
On the eighth he committed to a straight thrust.
Ryu's hand shot forward and grabbed his sword.
He caught the tip between his thumb and finger.
Held it.
Then snapped it.
The broken piece spun away and buried itself in the dirt.
Silence hit the training ground.
Itachi looked at the shortened blade in his hand.
"How?" His eyes lifted to Ryu's glowing fingers. "Is that like [Iron Skin Jutsu]?"
Ryu flexed his hand once. The gold shimmered, condensed, held.
"It's my new body reinforcement." He kept his tone light, but there was pride underneath it. "Based on a new chakra control method. Much more advanced and powerful than simple [Iron Skin]." He tapped two fingers lightly against the side of his blindfold. "Actually, it's based on the exact same chakra control I'm using to feel and see you right now."
Itachi's expression sharpened.
He took a short breath and said, "So many different ninjutsu from one chakra control method...That must be one hell of a chakra control method."
Ryu smiled. "Yes, it is, and it is now a secret jutsu of the Hamura clan."
Dan let out a quiet sound of genuine delight. "Ohh, he finally developed a reinforcement jutsu... compressing that much chakra into his tissues without tearing them apart..." He shook his head once. "Amazing."
Hiruzen's eyes remained on the glowing hand. "To develop a localised, high-density physical reinforcement solely from a chakra control method..." His voice turned softer, graver. "The boy's rate of innovation is terrifying."
Fugaku was silent and Shisui was amazed.
Shikaku's gaze narrowed. "He can deploy that level of reinforcement instantly to any point on his body." He watched Ryu with a strategist's cold focus. "He must be developing this to counter the negative effects of that doping jutsu."
"A doping jutsu!" Fugaku thought.
Dan did not disagree. Neither did Hiruzen.
"He increased his durability using chakra," Minato said slowly. "But this time he has more control over it."
Kushina's eyes stayed on the scene outside. "Yes."
Kushina smiled.
Proud. Warm. Absolutely certain.
"He learns fast."
Back outside, Itachi lowered the broken sword slightly.
"That sword was a gift from my father."
For the first time since the real spar had begun, Ryu's battle rhythm broke.
Only for a moment.
He turned his head toward Fugaku, then back to the broken blade, then rubbed the back of his neck with his normal hand like a boy who had suddenly remembered he was still a boy.
"I..." He cleared his throat. "I will forge you a new one. A better one."
Fugaku said nothing.
His face remained unreadable, but his mind was elsewhere for a moment—on an old rumour passed through clan conversations and half-dismissed reports. A sword. Artefact-grade. Senbonzakura. Forged by the Hamura heir.
At the time it had sounded exaggerated.
Now, watching Ryu casually break steel with reinforced fingers and then promise Itachi something better, Fugaku found himself quietly interested.
He was not annoyed. He was interested.
He wanted to see what the boy would make when he meant it.
Ryu let the awkwardness pass. The golden reinforcement still covered his fingers in a low glow. He raised that hand and pointed it at Itachi.
His smile returned.
"Let's not stop here."
His voice carried across the training ground, light and challenging at the same time.
"Bring out the good stuff."
Then his grin sharpened.
"The mighty [Sharingan]."
A/N:
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