THE HILL ABOVE THE HOKAGE MONUMENT
Deep within the steep, rocky valley tucked directly behind the towering Hokage stone faces, the air hung incredibly heavy and still.
Thick, rolling mountain mist swallowed the entire hollow, dampening every sound and hiding the area from the busy village below.
The ground here was completely ruined—shattered boulders, deep gouges torn into the dirt, and snapped tree trunks spoke of a terrifying, silent war that had been raging for hours.
Standing amidst the unsettled dust of the clearing were two figures, both breathing in heavy, ragged gasps.
On one side of the pulverized ground stood a young man leaning heavily against a jagged rock. His dark green ninja vest was torn completely down the center, the fabric shredded and heavily stained with dirt.
He was clutching his left ribs in agonizing pain. A blunt, heavy strike had clipped the right side of his head earlier, sending a steady, warm stream of blood trickling down his cheek, covering his messy, bright blond hair and dripping off his jawline.
His right hand was slick with his own blood, trembling violently as he gripped a single, strange, three-pronged kunai. His chakra was low, his body running on nothing but pure, desperate survival instinct.
Opposite him, standing a few dozen yards away through the shifting fog, was another man.
The physical resemblance between them was unbelievable, almost haunting, but the differences were small.
This other man didn't wear a ninja vest at all; his dark clothing was bruised and singed from fire, and his long, high-collared black cloak was torn at the hem.
He stood with a heavier, more mature posture, his shoulders carrying the visible weight of a man who had survived countless tragedies.
He was bleeding from a cut on his lip, and his face was bruised from fighting the other man blow for blow, but his blue eyes held absolutely no confusion.
Only a deep, calculated focus.
Neither of them wore the white, red-flamed haori. To any outsider looking into the mist, it looked like a standard, brutal death-match between a desperate village jōnin and a mysterious, elite ghost from the shadows.
"Who... who are you?!" the younger man demanded, his voice cracking with raw, desperate fury as he forced his trembling legs to straighten.
"WHY DO YOU HAVE MY FACE?!" He yelled into the mist, his knuckles turning white around his blade.
"AND WHY DO YOU KEEP BLOCKING MY WAY!!!"
The loud, crashing echo of their weapons still shook the narrow rock walls, but the canyon had fallen into a heavy, suffocating silence.
The thick mountain fog rolled slowly around the broken boulders, hiding the two identical men who stood on opposite sides of the ruined clearing.
Namikaze Minato, the young Hokage of this era, kept his weight balanced on his left leg, his fingers tightening around the cold metal of his three-pronged kunai.
His chest heaved against his torn green jōnin vest, each breath drawing a sharp, stinging pain from his bruised ribs. Blood trickled steadily from the right side of his head, warming his cheek before dripping into the dirt.
But his mind—the sharp, clever mind of the Leaf's fastest ninja—was working at a terrifying speed, completely ignoring his body's pain.
A deep, dark doubt had taken root in his thoughts. 'How did he do it?' Minato thought, his sharp blue eyes watching the subtle movements of the older man standing across the fog.
'Earlier, in the commercial district... he appeared instantly right in front of Kakashi and that child. And then, without even touching me, he managed to lure me all the way out to this isolated canyon. There was no visible formula. No marked kunai dropped beforehand. How is he moving like that?'
To find the answer, the young Hokage decided to set a trap. He purposefully shifted his stance, letting his shoulders drop to look completely exhausted.
With a sneaky, calculated flick of his bleeding right hand, he let a special marked kunai slip from his sleeve, dropping it silently into the soft moss near an open spot in his defense.
It was a clear bait. Minato watched like a hawk, waiting to see if the impostor would notice and try to jump to it.
Opposite him, the older Minato—the one who had come from the dark future alongside Uchiha Sasuke—stood perfectly still in his dark, burned clothing. He saw the slight shake in the younger man's wrist. He saw the knife land.
A cold, bitter look crossed the future version's face. 'He's baiting me—' the older man thought, his jaw tightening. 'He thinks I am an impostor using a transformation disguise. He wants to see if I will use his marking.'
Because he had the exact same memories, the future Minato knew his younger self's fighting habits inside and out.
Teleporting to that kunai would instantly reveal that they used the exact same marking formulas. He could not let the young Hokage realize they shared the same network—not when the safety of Sasuke and the rescue mission down in the village depended on keeping the young Hokage isolated and confused.
Instead of taking the bait, the future Minato decided to double down on the trick he had been playing during this whole long fight.
He needed his younger self to believe he was wielding—a super advanced version of Shunshin no Jutsu.
With a sudden, explosive burst of raw strength, the future Minato lunged forward. He didn't teleport. He sprinted across the ruined earth with terrifying, natural speed, crashing into the young Hokage with a brutal, rapid-fire rush of hand-to-hand combat.
His normal kunai clashed against Hirashin Kunai, throwing bright sparks into the grey mist.
Then came the trick.
As their blades locked together, the future Minato intentionally twisted on his heel, forcing a sharp burst of energy into his leg to violently kick up a massive, blinding cloud of dirt and broken stone between them.The wall of dust completely blocked their view of each other.
To the young Hokage, it looked like the enemy would naturally use the dust to run backward.
But right before the dust was kicked up, the older Minato had already planned his true move. He had secretly remembered the location of a hidden marking formula he had carved behind a jagged tree trunk hours ago.
The exact microsecond the dust covered his body, the future Minato instantly used his teleportation, vanishing into thin air and appearing instantly behind the distant tree line.
From the young Hokage's view, the movement was seamless. Through the shifting dust, the shadow of his opponent seemed to slide in a flawless, ultra-fast blur, coming out at the edge of the clearing as if he had simply run incredibly fast.
'It's pure physical speed...!!' the young Hokage concluded, his teeth grinding together as he raised his guard, completely tricked for now.
'An advanced movement trick that leaves no energy trace behind. If it's just raw running speed, I can stop him with standard tracking and physical traps. I don't need to waste energy trying to look for invisible Hirashin marks.'
On the other side, the future Minato leaned against the tree trunk, his breathing heavy but his face grimly satisfied. The lie had worked.
He had successfully bought more time, keeping the dangerous mind of the younger Hokage trapped in a physical chasing game, completely unaware of the real trap closing around him.
The thick dust slowly began to settle, drifting away into the damp mountain mist.
Younger Minato stood in a low defensive stance, his eyes darting across the corner. The warm blood from the cut on his head was starting to sting his eye, forcing him to blink it away. He kept his ears strained, listening for the slightest sound of rustling leaves or shifting dirt.
Across the canyon, Older Minato stepped out from the shadow of the massive redwood tree. His dark clothing was coated in dust, his breathing still shallow and heavy. He held his kunai loosely, but his posture was perfectly balanced.
"You are fast—" the younger Hokage said, his voice echoing coldly against the rocky cliff walls. He adjusted his grip on his three-pronged kunai, trying to hide the painful tremor in his right arm.
"To move through a dust cloud like that with a pure Shunshin no Jutsu... your leg strength must be monstrous. But charging straight at the enemy is predictable. You cannot surprise me with that twice."
The older Minato did not smile. He simply shifted his feet, preparing for the next clash. 'Good!' the future version thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. 'Keep believing it is just Shunshin. If you realize the truth—if you look for my Hirashin coordinates—everything fails.'
A heavy bead of sweat mixed with dirt rolled down the older man's cheek. 'I just need to keep him here a little longer. Sasuke, Orochimaru-sama, and Kawaki are already moving through the lower streets. If this younger version of me figures out that our chakra networks are identical, he won't just track me....."
".....In the worst-case scenario, he could sense the spatial markers I placed on Sasuke years ago. He could teleport straight to him and stop the retrieval entirely. I have to keep the lie alive.'
"Less talking!" the older Minato replied, his voice deep and rough from exhaustion. "Show me what the Yellow Flash can actually do when he is pushed into a corner."
With a sudden explosion of movement, the two figures vanished from their spots.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The sound of metal hitting metal rang out in rapid, rhythmic bursts. To any normal ninja, they looked like two streaks of yellow light spinning around the broken boulders. They clashed in the center, parted for a fraction of a second, and clashed again.
But as the seconds ticked by, a chilling realization began to creep into the younger Hokage's mind.
He lunged forward, executing a sudden, deceptive move toward the older man's left side, instantly switching the kunai to his right hand for a blinding slash toward the throat. It was a custom combination he had developed himself—a sequence no outsider had ever seen.
Yet, before the blade even moved an inch toward the throat, the older man's kunai was already there, perfectly waiting to block the strike.
CRACK!
The force of the block rattled the bones in the young Hokage's arm. They stood chest-to-chest, their blades locked tight, grinding against one another.
"How do you know that movement?" the younger Minato growled, his blue eyes staring intensely into the identical eyes of the older man. His breath came out in short, ragged puffs.
"You aren't just reacting to my movements. You are moving a millisecond before I even swing. It's like you already know what I will do next."
The older Minato pushed back hard, forcing their kunai apart. "Maybe you are just getting slow!" he taunted quietly, though his own inner muscles were screaming in agony from the strain.
They jumped backward, creating a few yards of distance.
The young Hokage landed heavily, his boots skidding through the loose dirt. His mind was racing, breaking down the possibilities of the last three exchanges.
'No... something is completely wrong here....' he thought, his chest heaving violently against his shredded green vest. 'A standard Shunshin no jutsu uses chakra to supercharge the legs. It forces the air to displace violently. It leaves a micro-trail of dust, a draft of wind, a predictable line from point A to point B.'
He replayed the image of the older man disappearing behind the dust cloud earlier.
'When he moved... there was no displacement. The dust wasn't pushed away by a rushing body. He didn't travel through the space. He simply ceased to exist in one spot and began to exist in another. HE IS LYING TO ME.'
The young Hokage's blood ran cold as the ultimate truth hit him. 'He isn't using a high-speed Shunshin no jutsu at all...'
'...HE IS TELEPORTING. HE IS USING THE FLYING RAIJIN!...'
But a massive, terrifying question mark still remained. 'If he is teleporting without throwing any kunai, where are his formulas? Unless...'
He looked down at his own marked kunai sitting in the moss. 'Unless he is using my network. Or his own hidden network.'
"You are hiding something—!" the younger Minato said aloud, his voice dropping into a dangerous, deadly calm. He let his arms drop to his sides, completely abandoning his defensive stance. It looked like a total surrender, a suicidal opening.
The older Minato narrowed his eyes, his survival instincts instantly screaming at him to be cautious.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"TESTING A THEORY—"
With a burst of speed, the older Minato lunged forward to attack on the open target, swinging his kunai in a downward arc toward the younger man's shoulder.
The younger Minato didn't dodge. He didn't moved.
SPLAT.
The cold metal cut deep into the young Hokage's shoulder, blood instantly soaking into the torn fabric of his vest. But instead of crying out in pain, a fierce, predatory grin broke across the younger man's bleeding face.
Before the older Minato could pull the blade back, the young Hokage's left hand shot forward like a striking viper. His fingers wrapped around the older man's wrist with an unbreakable grip. The bloody fingers locked tight, clamping down on the bone.
"Got you!!" the young Hokage gasped out, blood leaking from his lips.
'If it is a physical Shunshin, he is trapped!' the younger Minato thought, his heart hammering in immense calculations. 'He cannot run backward while my physical weight is locking his wrist. He will have to break away from my grip.'
The older Minato's eyes widened in sheer shock. 'He let himself get hit just to lock my arm?!He figured it out!' With panic rising in his chest, the future version didn't try to pull away physically. He couldn't risk a prolonged struggle.
'Damn it! Was I this much sharp?!! Sorry Sasuke...'
In a flash of desperation, the older man activated his Hirashin.
POP
Instantly, the older man vanished from the young Hokage's grip. There was no physical pull, no tearing of skin, no displacement of air.
One microsecond his wrist was solid bone under the young man's fingers—and the next microsecond, the grip was completely empty.
The older man teleported thirty feet away, crouching near the tree line, breathing hard.
Younger Minato stayed on one knee, his left hand still raised in the air, his fingers frozen in the exact shape of the wrist he had just been holding.
He stared blankly at his empty palm.
A heavy, terrifying silence fell over the canyon.
Slowly, the young Hokage stood up, his face pale, his eyes wide with an absolute, world-shattering shock.
He looked across the clearing at the older man.
"There is only one jutsu in the entire world that can escape a physical hold without moving through the physical space between us—" the young Hokage whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of awe and raw fury. "You didn't pull away. You disappeared from the inside of my hand."
He raised his eyes, locking them onto the older version.
"YOU ARE USING THE...."
"FLYING RAIJIN."
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