The air around the training field felt charged before the match even started.
Students clustered at the edge of the ring, packed shoulder to shoulder. The earlier explosions and flaming magenta fire had already turned "monthly assessment day" into something halfway between an exam and a festival, and the moment Jinx's name got paired with Minato's, the whole class shifted.
This wasn't just another spar anymore.Everyone could feel it.
Jinx stood in the middle of the circle with his hands loose at his sides, expression flat, that usual unreadable Uchiha look that made people want to punch or avoid him on reflex. Minato stood opposite him, posture straight, blue eyes focused and clear. There was none of Akira's arrogance in his gaze, none of the panic some of the other kids showed. Just calm determination and a hint of tension at the corners of his mouth.
The substitute teacher glanced between them and rubbed at the singe mark on his vest like a man regretting his life choices.
"Three minutes," he said. "If either of you looks like you're about to die, I stop it. Clear?"
"Yes, sensei," Minato answered.
Jinx just nodded once.
On the gallery rooftop, an ANBU crouched in the shadow of a vent, mask tilted down toward the ring. Farther back, Elder Satsuna leaned against a post, arms folded into his sleeves, eyes sharp behind half-lidded lids.
The teacher took a breath, raised his hand, and dropped it.
"Begin!"
For a beat, neither of them moved.
Dust motes drifted between them in the morning light. A breeze caught Minato's blond hair, made it flicker like flame. Jinx's cloak barely stirred.
Then Minato stepped in.
No wasted movement—just a smooth forward slide, lead foot digging into the dirt, hip turning as his fist shot toward Jinx's jaw. No hesitation, no testing jab. He trusted his speed. He went straight for the head.
Jinx tilted just enough that the punch cut air against his cheek.
Minato's second attack came instantly, a low hook toward the ribs as he shifted his weight. Jinx let the momentum carry past him, turned his torso and used the back of his wrist to deflect the strike, redirecting it down and away. No block, no clash. Barely a touch.
The class murmured.
Again.
Minato flowed into a short combination, textbook Academy form but clean—jab, elbow, sweep for the leg. Jinx slid through it like he'd seen it hours ago. His feet seemed barely to leave the ground; his upper body swayed and turned, letting the blows slip past with inches to spare.
He's fast, Minato realized, breath steady as he reset his stance. Faster than Fugaku? Not quite… but close.
Jinx watched him with that same half-lidded stare, like he was studying a puzzle instead of a person.
His center is good, Jinx thought. Balance doesn't break even when he misses. No fear in his eyes either. It's all just calculation.
He inhaled slowly. Total Concentration Breathing filled his lungs, stretching time around him into something softer, easier to shape. The world sharpened. Heartbeats, dust, wind—everything slotted into a rhythm.
"Stop analyzing and move," Minato muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
He closed the distance again.
This time he didn't attack straight on. He stepped left, then stuttered right, changing angles mid-step. His fist flashed for Jinx's shoulder, then turned into a palm strike for the sternum. Jinx's hand snapped up, guiding it aside with a small circular motion. Minato used the contact, spun, and tried to slam an elbow into his temple.
Jinx dipped under it, pivoting behind him in the same motion.
Minato felt fingers brush the back of his neck and jerked forward, spinning away. When he turned, Jinx was already facing him again, hands still down, expression unchanged.
"You're thinking while you move," Jinx said calmly. "That's rare for kids our age."
Minato didn't reply. He just set his feet again and launched.
Their movements started to pick up speed.
Minato's style was clean, efficient—no extra flourishes, no wild swings, just tight, precise combinations aimed at joints, throat, liver. Mixed in were flashes of something that wasn't Academy-standard taijutsu: a slight twist of the hip that made his pivot faster, a drop in his stance that gave his next step more drive. The beginnings of the speed that would one day make him famous.
Jinx began to answer in kind.
He stopped only dodging and started parrying, redirecting Minato's hands with the lightest taps, occasionally sending back a short, snapping counter just to see how Minato reacted. A knuckle grazed Minato's cheek. A heel stopped just short of his knee. Each one said: I could have taken that if I wanted to.
The crowd's chatter died down into intent silence.
"Thirty seconds," the teacher called, more to himself than to them, but Jinx heard it. The invisible clock in the back of his head ticked louder.
One-minute bonus, he remembered. Permanent memory loss if I screw this up. No pressure.
Minato feinted a high kick, landed light and darted into Jinx's guard with a sharp upward palm. Jinx caught the wrist and they locked for the first time, muscles tensing as they fought for leverage.
Up close, Minato saw it—just for an instant. A flicker of red in Jinx's eyes.
It vanished almost as soon as he noticed.
"Interesting," Minato said under his breath.
He dropped his weight suddenly, yanking his captured hand down while pivoting behind Jinx, trying to lever him off balance. Jinx turned with it, using the pull to roll his shoulder, slipping out of the lock instead of fighting it. The grip broke. Minato stepped back before the counterstrike came and only got caught by a glancing palm to the ribs.
The impact still stung.
He's reading me, Minato realized. Not just reacting. Every time I change my rhythm, he's already adjusting.
He wasn't used to that. Most of his classmates either couldn't follow his speed or fell apart after the first clean hit. Jinx felt different. Like sparring against someone several years ahead in experience, stuffed into an eleven-year-old body.
Jinx, for his part, felt something else entirely.
Footwork's already beyond academy level, he noted as Minato circled, looking for a new angle. He doesn't panic when I shut down a combo. Always ready with plan B. C, too, probably.
His Sharingan itched behind his eyelids, wanting out. He kept it damped down, saving it. He didn't want to win just by overwhelming Minato. He wanted to see what the boy did when pushed.
The whispers on the sidelines grew.
"Minato's actually keeping up…"
"Jinx isn't using that weird flame thing…"
"Is he—are they just punching? This is… weirdly intense."
"Forty-five seconds," the teacher announced, eyes wide despite himself.
Minato's jaw tightened. Less than fifteen seconds before the minute bonus vanished—he didn't know about the quest, but he could feel something in the air ratcheting up. Jinx's stance shifted, the lazy looseness condensing into something sharper.
"You wanted to be Hokage, right?" Jinx called as they moved.
Minato's eyes narrowed. "Yeah."
"Then don't blink."
Jinx moved.
Up until then, he'd been matching Minato's speed. Now he surged past it.
Total Concentration Breathing pushed all hesitation out of his muscles. The world around him blurred, but Minato became crystal clear—weight on his back foot, shoulders turning, breath strong, eyes reading everything he could.
Jinx stepped in and the first strike was a flicker—a short, chopping strike toward the shoulder. Minato jerked his arm up to block. The impact rattled his bones. Before he could recover, Jinx was already in his blind spot, heel scything toward his calf.
Minato hopped out of range, barely. Jinx followed with a palm aimed at his diaphragm. Minato turned it with both forearms, gritting his teeth as the force slid off.
The class gasped at the speed.
Minato's brain raced to keep up. He held back before. This is closer to his real pace.
His own instincts responded—the same instincts that would one day guide kunai marked with formula across battlefields. He dropped his center of gravity, lowered his stance, and let his body move the way it wanted to instead of the way the Academy drills said it should.
He darted to the side, pivoted on the ball of his foot and cut across Jinx's approach line at a diagonal, aiming not where Jinx was but where he'd be half a beat later.
His fist met Jinx's forearm with a sharp crack. Jinx didn't look surprised.
"Good," Jinx said. "Now don't stop."
Blow after blow blurred, the two of them moving in tighter and tighter circles. Minato's style became less textbook and more improvisational—shorter steps, sharper pivots, his natural smoothness starting to show. Jinx's movements were different: more refined, more deliberate, every shift of weight calculated, each strike clean and untelegraphed.
The Sharingan flashed again, this time fully.
Tomoe spun in crimson irises, and the entire battlefield seemed to shift a half-step out of sync—for Jinx, at least.
Minato threw a hook. Jinx saw the intention before the shoulder even twitched. He slipped inside and tapped Minato lightly under the chin, just enough to snap his head back.
Minato stumbled, then steadied. He wiped a smear of blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
"Fifty-five seconds," the teacher called, voice tight.
Five seconds, Jinx thought. Time to cash in.
He took one more breath, filling his lungs until his ribs ached—and then let it all go.
He rushed.
Minato saw him coming, tried to brace, but the speed was different now. Jinx blurred into his guard, one hand snapping to Minato's wrist, the other burying itself in his shoulder. He twisted, hooking a foot behind Minato's heel, and sent him crashing toward the dirt.
The crowd sucked in a breath.
Minato didn't hit.
He twisted mid-fall, slamming a palm into the ground and kicking his legs over, turning the throw into a roll. He came up in a crouch, backpedaling just enough to avoid the stomp that cratered the spot his head had been about to occupy.
Jinx's foot sank into the earth with a dull thud.
A second ticked by.
The teacher's lips parted. "One minute—"
Jinx's mouth curled, half amused, half exasperated.You really forced overtime, huh?
The system's silent chime of a missed bonus sat at the back of his awareness like a shrug. Fine. He'd live without the extra reward. Minato had earned that much.
On the roof, Elder Satsuna's eyes narrowed a fraction. The ANBU's fingers relaxed from fists they hadn't realized they'd formed.
Minato stood slowly, chest rising and falling, sweat beginning to bead at his temples. His eyes stayed sharp despite the hit and the scare. He looked… excited.
"You're strong," Minato said, voice steady. "Way stronger than anyone I've fought."
"And you're more annoying than I expected," Jinx replied.
A few kids snorted nervously.
"But that's good. Annoying opponents live longer."
The teacher was about to call the match—overtime or not, this was already past normal Academy levels—when he caught something in Tatsuma's expression up on the gallery. The clan head hadn't moved, but his gaze was fixed on the ring with a kind of clinical interest.
The teacher swallowed his nerves. "Continue," he said.
Minato sank back into stance, shoulders relaxed, arms loose. Jinx bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, rolling his neck.
This time, they moved together.
Minato darted in with a flurry of jabs, using his speed to layer them so the second arrived before the first fully finished. Jinx knocked them aside with small deflections, countering with sharp chops aimed at the neck and collarbone. Minato dipped under one, slid to the side and drove a knee toward Jinx's torso.
Jinx dropped an elbow, catching the leg on his forearm. The impact rattled him more than he expected. Minato had good power for his age.
He shoved the leg away, then stepped inside Minato's guard and used his shoulder to bump him off balance, flicking a backfist toward his cheek. Minato leaned just far enough that it grazed his skin instead of flattening his nose.
Their movements got less pretty and more desperate.
Footsteps pounded divots into the dirt. Each clash of forearm on forearm or shin on shin sent little tremors up their skeletons. They both started to grunt with effort. The circle of classmates pressed inward unconsciously, drawn to the fight like moths to a bonfire.
Jinx's mind ran calculations with every exchange.
His leading leg loads before he burst-steps. His eyes shift a fraction before he feints. Right shoulder telegraphs more than the left. Head always stays level—he doesn't bob… yet.
Overactive Imagination mapped out Minato's style in real time, turning it into lines of possible motion. The Sharingan layered those lines with actual intent, watching chakra stir before muscles fired.
Minato's mind was doing its own work.
He favors his left when he's about to counter. Steps a little deeper than he needs to, like he's used to a bigger reach—maybe from a weapon. His breathing never breaks rhythm. Doesn't get greedy for big shots. He's… used to fighting things that can kill him.
A hard right from Jinx slipped through Minato's guard and thudded into his shoulder. The impact rocked him sideways. He bit down a cry. His arm tingled, half-dead from the hit.
He moved anyway.
He surged forward, using the momentum of the blow to spin, driving his elbow toward Jinx's ribs. Jinx blocked with his forearm, felt the shock in his own bones, and gave ground instead of testing strength for strength. Minato chased, smelling a brief window.
For the first time since the match started, Jinx was forced backward.
The kids watching erupted, shouting encouragement without even picking a side.
"That's it Minato!"
"Get him, Jinx!"
Akira watched from the far edge, arms folded, eyes narrowed—not at Jinx's power, but at Minato's stubbornness.
Jinx let Minato press for a few seconds, letting his own back skim the edge of the circle. He tested how Minato used space, how much aggression he risked when he thought he had advantage.
He doesn't overextend, Jinx noted. Even now, he's keeping slack in the line. Ready to retreat. That's the difference between courage and stupidity.
"Not bad," Jinx said lightly, catching Minato's fist on his palm and twisting his wrist to break the combo. "You're not just running on talent."
Minato tried to jerk his hand free. "That supposed to be a compliment?"
"Yeah," Jinx said, letting go.
He hopped back a step. His hand drifted, almost casually, toward his hip.
Only then did most of the class notice the sword.
Black lacquered saya, simple but elegant, tied at Jinx's left side with a crimson cord. The tsuba was distinctive—a golden, clover-shaped guard, wide and heavy. The hilt wrap was clean, black with small accents of red. It had been there the whole time, but Jinx hadn't touched it once.
Until now.
A ripple went through the adults watching.
"That sword…" the substitute teacher whispered.
On the gallery, Tatsuma's eyes narrowed. Elder Satsuna straightened a fraction. One of the older Uchiha jonin shifted, hand unconsciously resting near his own hilt.
Minato's gaze flicked to the weapon, then back to Jinx's face.
"You're going to use a sword in a spar?" he asked, not angry—just confirming.
"I'm going to draw it," Jinx said. "Whether I hit you with it is up to you."
He set his right foot back, left foot forward, fingertips resting lightly on the hilt. The world seemed to contract around that motion. The breeze stilled. Even the birds on the surrounding trees quieted.
The sword wasn't just a prop.
The steel inside the sheath felt… hungry. Like it was listening.
Minato swallowed, throat suddenly dry. So that's the gap, he thought. He's been fighting me without using half of what he's got.
He didn't feel discouraged. Strangely, he felt… relieved. If Jinx had been only a little stronger, that would have meant the mountain he had to climb was small. This—this was a wall worth climbing.
The teacher hesitated, looked up toward Tatsuma again. The clan head made no move to stop it.
"Continue," the teacher said, a little hoarsely.
Minato inhaled, grounding himself. No ninjutsu, no fancy tricks. Just hands and feet and whatever his body could manage.
He moved first.
He dashed in, body low, pushing his speed to the maximum he could control. Dust kicked up in his wake. He aimed straight for Jinx's centerline, ready to feint, ready to roll aside the moment the sword cleared the scabbard.
Jinx didn't move.
He watched.
One step. Two. Three. Minato entered striking range. His fist cocked back, but his weight sat on the balls of his feet, ready to spring in any direction.
Jinx drew.
The sound wasn't the high, ringing note of clean steel—it was lower, heavier, like stone grinding against something impossibly sharp. The blade came free in a blur of black and violet.
For a split second, Minato felt it more than saw it. The air pressure shifted. His nerves screamed.
He dropped.
The sword sang inches above his head, slicing a thin line through the wall of air. As he fell into a slide, he caught half a glimpse of it: black steel with a jagged, purple-tinted hamon like the edge of a storm cloud. The weight of the thing in Jinx's hand felt wrong for an academy student—closer to the heavy, hungry presence of a legendary blade.
Jinx turned with the draw, letting the motion carry him into a second cut aimed not at Minato but at where Minato would be if he rolled left.
Minato rolled right instead, chest brushing dirt. The second slash carved a shallow gouge into the training field floor, sending up a spray of dust and pebbles.
Gasps exploded around them.
"That… that's not a practice sword!"
"What kind of blade cuts like that—?"
"Isn't he going too far?!"
The teacher's hand twitched like he wanted to step in, but once again he caught Tatsuma's unreadable gaze and froze.
Jinx stopped after the second swing, blade held low, tip pointed slightly down. His eyes were calm, Sharingan fading back to black. He hadn't overcommitted; both cuts would have missed Minato even if the boy had frozen like a deer. Barely. But Jinx knew exactly where the line was.
Minato came out of his roll in a crouch, heart pounding, sweat cold on his neck.
"I see," he said quietly. "You weren't trying to hit me."
"Not with the blade," Jinx agreed. "Not today."
Minato straightened, breathing hard. "Then what are you testing?"
Jinx smiled, small and sharp. "Your courage."
He flicked the sword up with one hand, letting it rest along his shoulder. The black steel glinted in the sunlight, purple edge almost shimmering.
"This sword," Jinx said, loud enough for the class to hear, "doesn't like cowards. It's a Supreme Grade blade—heavy to carry, heavier to master. If you froze back there, if you turned and ran, it'd tell me all I needed to know about you."
Minato met his gaze head-on. "And?"
"And you ducked and rolled toward me," Jinx said. "So we can keep being friends."
A few kids actually laughed, tension breaking for a moment.
Minato huffed, half-annoyed, half-relieved. "You've got a weird definition of friendship."
"You'll get used to it."
The sword thrummed in his grip again, eager. He exhaled, letting Total Concentration settle his muscles one more time. Time to end it.
"Last exchange," Jinx said. "Give me your best."
Minato nodded and shifted his stance. His right hand curled into a fist. His left hovered just in front of his chest, ready to guard or intercept. He let everything else—the crowd, the teacher, the ANBU—fade to the edges of his awareness.
In front of him was just Jinx. The boy with winter in his lungs and a monster of a blade in his hand.
He pushed off the ground hard enough to leave a small crater where his foot had been.
Jinx moved to meet him, sword drawing a shallow arc that promised a cut to the ribs if Minato tried to simply rush straight in. Minato adjusted mid-step, twisting his torso, letting the edge pass a hair's breadth away from his vest as he slipped inside Jinx's reach.
He drove a punch straight for Jinx's jaw.
Jinx's free hand snapped up and caught Minato's wrist. The impact jolted up both their arms. For a heartbeat they were locked—Minato driving forward, Jinx holding firm, blade behind him.
"Good form," Jinx said quietly. "But your guard's open."
His knee lifted, shooting toward Minato's midsection.
Minato saw it coming and made a choice.
Instead of trying to block and risk getting overwhelmed, he took his trapped wrist as an anchor, shifted his weight, and jumped, letting Jinx's knee pass under him as he swung his legs up. For an instant he was above Jinx, body twisting in the air.
He lashed out with a heel toward the side of Jinx's head.
Jinx released his wrist and leaned with the motion, letting the kick graze his temple instead of crashing into it. In the same fluid motion he stepped through, rotated his own hips and brought the sword's flat up in a sweeping strike that caught Minato square in the ribs mid-air.
The blow wasn't edged—but it didn't need to be. The sheer force sent Minato flying sideways like he'd been hit by a battering ram.
He hit the dirt, rolled twice, then slid to a stop on his back, staring up at the sky as the world rang in his ears.
Silence crashed over the field.
Dust settled slowly.
Jinx stood where he'd struck, sword already sliding back into its sheath with that same heavy, grating whisper. The moment the blade clicked home, the weight in the air eased. The killing edge of the atmosphere dulled into something merely tense.
The teacher hurried over to Minato, kneeling beside him. "Namikaze! Can you move? Speak to me."
Minato winced, sucking air in through his teeth. His ribs screamed in protest, but nothing felt broken. Just bruised to hell.
"I'm… fine," he managed. "That… hurt."
Jinx walked over at a normal pace, stopping just outside arm's reach. He looked down at Minato, then offered a hand.
"Three minutes," Jinx said. "You lasted the full time and didn't run once. Deal's a deal."
Minato blinked up at him. "Deal…?"
"The techniques I promised you," Jinx reminded him. "Three of them. I'll figure out how to teach them without getting yelled at by half the clan."
Minato stared for a second longer, then took the offered hand. Jinx pulled him up with one smooth motion.
Their eyes met—blue and black, future Hokage and winter-forged Uchiha.
"From today," Jinx said quietly, "you're my friend and my rival. Don't make me regret betting on you, Namikaze."
Minato managed a small, crooked smile despite the pain. "Same to you, Jinx."
Around them, the class finally remembered how to breathe. The whispers started again—excited, awed, half afraid. On the rooftop, Elder Satsuna let out a low hum, unreadable. The ANBU vanished in a flicker, already on his way to report.
Farther back, Tatsuma Uchiha watched the two boys in the ring—the swordsman with winter in his veins and the prodigy with sunshine in his eyes—and for the first time that morning, his lips moved in the faintest ghost of a smile.
Konoha's future had just taken a very interesting turn.
(timeskip)
Under the faint light of dawn, Training Ground 23 sat silent and half-frozen in mist. It was the kind of quiet that pressed on the lungs—cold, clean, and heavy with chakra residue from too many old duels. Most villagers avoided it out of superstition; its closeness to the Uchiha compound gave the air here a certain weight.
Jinx didn't mind.
He stood barefoot in the grass, breathing steady, violet eyes tracing the faint shimmer of a translucent screen floating in front of him.
[ Quest completed: Defeat Minato and Make Him Your Friend ]
Requirements: Beat Minato without being humiliated.
Bonus: Win in under one minute.
Reward: Rasengan Manual, Moon Breathing (with Kokushibō's Blood Art)
Bonus Reward: Deep Crimson Spiral, Rokushiki Manual
Failure: Permanent Memory Loss
A cold breeze stirred his hair as he stared at the text. For a few seconds, the only sound was the rustle of leaves and the slow rhythm of his breathing.
Then the information began pouring into his head.
His Overactive Imagination skill—usually helpful—flared to life like wildfire. Schematics, equations, chakra diagrams, every sensory detail of the new jutsu flooded his mind. The Deep Crimson Spiral twisted, unraveled, and rewove itself into something more dangerous. What began as a refined Ōtsutsuki technique mutated in his imagination into a forbidden art that reeked of both divinity and madness.
Jinx grit his teeth and braced his temples until the flood of data settled into coherence.
Deep Crimson Spiral (深紅螺旋, Shinkō Rasengan)
A forbidden, contact-only evolution of the Rasengan created by Jinx Uchiha, merging pure chakra, cursed energy, and negative nature energy to emulate the destructive repulsion of Gojo's Limitless: Red.
Unlike the stable rotation of a normal Rasengan, this sphere churned in stillness—a paradox of motionless collapse, an orb of rejection rather than creation. When Jinx formed it, reality itself seemed to bend, the air humming with a low vibration that made the grass ripple outward.
The crimson glow wasn't just light—it was the bleeding edge of existence unspooling. On contact, it didn't explode. It repelled. Matter shuddered, twisted, and tore apart at the molecular level, hurling everything away from the point of touch. The air cracked with pressure and distortion, like space itself was gasping.
But power had a cost.
The backlash blackened veins across his wrist, his chakra pathways sizzling with the aftertaste of entropy. The cursed energy fed on his emotions—anger amplified destruction, grief deepened collapse—and every time he used it, the jutsu threatened to consume his soul before his opponent's.
It was close-range annihilation, beautiful and terrifying.
Jinx blinked as the red haze of the vision faded. Another screen shimmered to life.
Crimson Spiral (紅螺旋, Kō Rasengan)
A stable variant forged from chakra and cursed energy alone. It was tamer, slower, and mercifully sane—where Deep Crimson Spiral destroyed existence, this one corroded it. The sphere pulsed a deep, bloody red, veins of black energy swirling within. When unleashed, it imploded before bursting outward, tearing through flesh and armor with corrosive chakra that continued to eat at its target.
It lacked the cataclysmic repulsion of its parent technique but carried a predatory malice that lingered long after the strike. Prolonged use came with risk: corruption, fatigue, emotional decay. Cursed energy wasn't meant to be kind.
The words faded, leaving him alone again in the chill air. Jinx slowly exhaled, his breath crystallizing into mist.
"Reality repulsion, entropy collapse, emotional amplification…" he murmured to himself, turning his palm over in front of his face. "Yeah… that's about right. I'm officially insane."
He flexed his fingers, feeling faint static bite the air around his hand. The chakra wanted to spiral, to form that same impossible orb again—but he resisted. For now.
The faint hum of Training Ground 23—cicadas, wind, the distant murmur of the river—felt sharper now. His body still hadn't fully recovered from the Minato fight, but his mind was already dissecting and rewriting techniques like it was second nature.
"Cursed energy as malice… negative nature energy as decay," he thought aloud. "If I balance them just right, maybe I can control the collapse instead of letting it control me."
His gaze drifted toward the treeline, where the faint silhouettes of Uchiha rooftops caught the early sun.
"Madara's power reshaped mountains," he said softly. "Mine… might erase them."
The wind whispered back, carrying frost on its edge.
Training Ground 23 was quiet enough that Jinx could hear every shift in the grass.
He'd just let the last ghost-image of the Deep Crimson Spiral fade from his palm when the soft crunch of footsteps reached him from behind. Light, even, not trying to hide.
He didn't turn right away. He let himself finish his exhale, then pivoted on the ball of his foot into a lazy backflip, swung once in the air just because he could, and landed facing the entrance of the field.
Minato stood there, hands in his pockets, sunlight catching the blond in his hair.
Jinx smirked. "Sup, Minato. I'm guessing you're here for your rewards."
Minato nodded once. "You said three techniques."
"Right, right." Jinx slipped a hand into his cloak and pulled out a single rolled-up scroll, tied with simple twine. He tossed it in an easy arc.
Minato caught it without looking, eyes still on Jinx. Only then did he glance down at what he was holding—and frown. "You said for each minute I lasted, I'd get one technique. Why's there only one scroll?"
Jinx shrugged, completely unbothered. "Because I didn't think you'd survive thirty seconds. I was holding back most of my strength, so I miscalculated."
Minato twitched. "That's not—"
He didn't get to finish.
With a flick of his wrist, Jinx summoned his war fans from… somewhere. They snapped into his hands like they'd been there all along. In the same motion, he unfurled one, cutting it through the air in a smooth, practiced sweep.
Ice exploded.
A spray of narrow spikes shot forward in a tight cone, whistling past Minato's face, shoulders, throat. They stopped a hair's breadth from his skin—so close he could feel the cold radiating off them, see his reflection warped in their glossy surfaces.
His body hadn't even had time to flinch.
For a second, all he could hear was his own heartbeat, pounding in his ears.
Jinx stood relaxed behind the frozen barrage, fan lowered again like nothing had happened. "See? That was still holding back," he said calmly.
Minato stared at the ice, breath shallow. Ice Release. In Konoha. From an Uchiha.
His brain went through the facts on reflex: Ice Release was unique to the Yuki, a bloodline from the Land of Water. Konoha had no record of anyone wielding it. The idea of a Konoha kid—an Uchiha, no less—using that kekkei genkai was something that didn't fit in any of the neat little boxes the Academy tried to pack history into.
Then pride stung him.
Jinx hadn't used this once during their match.
Not when Minato had been pressing him. Not when he'd been forced to draw the sword. Not at all.
For a second, Minato thought, He didn't even think I was worth trying his real power on.
Then another memory pushed in: the ANBU on the rooftops, the way the teacher kept glancing toward the shadows like he was waiting for a signal. Reports going to the Third Hokage. The quiet tension that always seemed to exist between the village and the Uchiha district, a strain even a civilian-born kid like him could feel.
Minato looked back at the ice—and the thought flipped.
Of course Jinx hadn't used this in public.
"Ice Release in front of half the clan and an ANBU squad," Minato realized silently, "would send that report straight to the Hokage. And nobody knows what he'd do with it."
He suddenly understood just how carefully Jinx had walked that line.
Curiosity gnawed at him. He carefully stepped back from the tips of the spikes and unrolled the scroll in his hands.
His eyes widened after the first line.
"A–rank…?" he breathed.
A–rank jutsu didn't end up in the hands of academy students. Even clan heirs rarely got anything more than basics until they'd proved they wouldn't blow their own chakra coils apart.
He kept reading anyway.
The diagram was simple, but the explanation wasn't. It broke the jutsu into motion and intent—pure shape transformation, no nature element. No hand seals, no built-in trigger. Just an orb of rotating chakra you had to form, condense, and maintain solely through control.
His gaze flew over the notes.
Clockwise rotation here. Counter-clockwise here. Compression stable at micro-level. External rotation offset internal spin by half-phase to maintain spherical integrity…
Minato's eleven-year-old brain started to throb. Controlling chakra in one direction was hard enough. Two directions at once, with different speeds, while holding it in a perfect ball?
But at the bottom of the scroll, in neat, narrow handwriting, Jinx had added his own notes—step-by-step, broken into training phases: leaf practice, flow exercises, one-handed drills. Stages for someone who didn't have clan teachers spoon-feeding them advanced control.
Minato realized his fingers had tightened around the paper. He forced himself to relax before he ripped it.
Jinx's voice cut in. "By the way, you can't keep that."
Minato looked up. "What?"
"You heard me." Jinx gestured lazily with his fan, then let the ice spikes melt into clear water that soaked into the dirt between them. "You don't have the rank or background to be legally standing near that technique. If anyone catches you with it—ANBU, instructor, random bored elder—they'll confiscate it and start asking way too many questions about where you got it."
Minato swallowed. He hadn't thought that far—only that he was holding something priceless. "So what am I supposed to do?"
"Memorize it," Jinx said flatly. "Every line, every note, every diagram. Once you're sure it's in your head, you burn the scroll. No copies. No backups."
Minato glanced down at the ink again, then back up. "And practice where? I share a training field with half the class and the dorm brats."
"Yeah, you're not using that thing out in the open." Jinx flicked his fan closed and rested it against his shoulder. "You'll train in my private ground in the compound. We've got a policy—no surveillance in the personal training yards, especially around high-profile clan members."
"Important people," Minato said slowly. "Like the clan head."
"And me," Jinx added without the slightest hint of irony.
He wasn't bragging; he was stating a fact he'd already decided was true.
Minato looked back at the scroll.
A high-level, pure shape-transformation jutsu way beyond anything an academy student should touch. An Uchiha with Ice Release, secret training grounds, politics he was only just starting to understand.
And Jinx was just… handing this to him. Not because of lineage, not because of rank—but because he'd lasted three minutes and refused to run.
Minato tightened his grip on the parchment. "Alright," he said, voice firm. "I'll memorize it. Then I'll burn it."
Jinx's eyes narrowed, that blank stare sharpening just enough to read as approval. "Good. And Minato?"
"Yeah?"
"If anyone asks," Jinx said, turning away toward the center of the ground, "you're just coming over because we're friends."
He raised his hand without looking back, palm opening.
Faint crimson chakra flickered around it for half a heartbeat, twisting the air before he smothered it.
"And rivals," he added under his breath.
Minato kept the scroll tucked under his arm, his brow still furrowed. "Wait—what about the other two techniques you promised? You said three, remember?"
Jinx turned his head halfway, violet eyes glinting under the faint light filtering through the trees. "Right. I did say that." He walked toward a boulder and leaned against it, arms crossed. "Thing is, one of those 'techniques' is technically two. And the other one—you're about to learn right now."
Minato blinked. "Two-in-one?"
"Yeah." Jinx's tone was casual, but there was that faint grin again—the one that always meant trouble or genius. "The first technique requires physical strength you don't have yet. Not at your age, anyway. You'll need serious conditioning to even attempt it without breaking your legs. Luckily for you, the Uchiha specialize in brutal training." He tapped the fan on his shoulder. "You'll get plenty of practice sparring with me."
Minato's mouth twitched into a thin line. "That sounds… comforting."
"Oh, it won't be," Jinx said cheerfully, pushing off the boulder. "But it'll make you stronger. Now, before we even think about the main technique, you need to learn something foundational—Total Concentration Breathing."
Minato straightened slightly. "Breathing?"
"Exactly." Jinx's tone shifted, serious now. "It's not ninjutsu. It's control—absolute, constant control of oxygen, heartbeat, and chakra flow. You focus on maximizing every breath, flooding your bloodstream with oxygen until your body operates at peak efficiency. Faster reflexes, sharper focus, even your healing rate improves. It's like turning your lungs into a forge."
He stepped forward and placed a hand over his own chest. "If you master the basics of that, I'll teach you something special—a swordsmanship style called Thunder Breathing. It's a kinetic art. You funnel oxygen into your legs to move faster than the eye can track, then release it in slashes that look like lightning strikes. Once your chakra control improves, you can actually channel Lightning Release through your body to make it real."
Minato's eyes brightened, awe flickering behind his calm expression. "So… that's how you're so fast?"
Jinx looked at him, then smirked and shook his head. "Nope. That's not Thunder Breathing. My speed comes from something else. A secret I'm not sharing yet."
Minato's curiosity flared immediately. "Why not?"
"Because," Jinx said, half turning away, "that secret's only for people I completely trust. And as much as I like you, you're not there yet."
Minato crossed his arms, mock-offended. "So you're saying there's more?"
"Oh, there's always more," Jinx said, tone low and amused. "I also use another breathing form—Moon Breathing. It's slower, heavier, more deliberate. Think of it as dancing with death instead of racing it. Every move is precise, elegant, and meant to end a fight instantly."
"Moon Breathing…" Minato repeated, letting the words roll off his tongue like they were already etched into his mind.
"Yeah. I made another one too—Sun Breathing." Jinx's gaze drifted toward the horizon. "But I've never been able to use it. It's pure theory. Something I pieced together from old chakra manuscripts and… let's say, personal imagination. The idea was to make a form that could burn away everything—fear, pain, even darkness. But I don't have the affinity for it."
Minato studied him for a long moment. "So you created all of that yourself?"
"Created? Maybe. Borrowed? Definitely," Jinx said, rolling his shoulders. "I've seen things, Minato. Techniques that make chakra look like child's play. Breathing arts are the bridge between the physical and the spiritual—they make every fiber of your being obey your will."
He turned, his eyes gleaming faintly violet as frost misted the ground around his feet. "Master it, and the Rasengan I gave you won't just spin—it'll sing."
Minato looked down at his hands, then back at Jinx, determination settling in. "Alright. Teach me. Where do we start?"
Jinx grinned, stepping close enough for Minato to see the faint mist escaping his lips. "Simple. Breathe in until your lungs scream… and don't stop until I tell you."