"Suzuki..."
"Suzuki!"
While Iruka was moved to tears by the boy's intervention, and Naruto stood frozen in awe, Mizuki's face twisted into an ugly, unrecognizable mask of pure rage. Seeing how perfectly calm and detached Suzuki looked only fueled his insane fury!
"DON'T YOU DARE LOOK DOWN ON ME, BRAT! YOU ARE JUST A FRESH GENIN! WHEN YOU WERE STILL SUCKING AT YOUR MAMA'S TITS, I WAS ALREADY—"
Before Mizuki could finish his cliché villain monologue, a sharp, deadly kunai was already whistling through the air, aimed directly at the center of his forehead!
Swoosh!
Mizuki jerked his head just in time to dodge a fatal blow, but the razor-sharp edge sliced cleanly through his ear, leaving a bleeding gash across the side of his head.
"YOU DIRTY LITTLE BASTARD!" Mizuki roared, grabbing his bleeding ear.
"Says the guy actively using forbidden, stolen jutsu to murder children," Suzuki replied, his tone flatter than a boardroom spreadsheet. He didn't waste another second on banter. "Naruto, Iruka-sensei, close your eyes."
Iruka and Naruto weren't entirely sure what Suzuki planned to do, but his voice carried an absolute, undeniable authority. They squeezed their eyes shut.
Suzuki's hands blurred through a rapid sequence of seals. "Fire Release: Flashbang."
A dry, sharp crack echoed through the clearing, making everyone wince, but it was the sudden, apocalyptic flash of pure white light in the middle of the dark forest that delivered the true impact.
"MY EYES! YOU LITTLE SHIT!"
Unlike Iruka and Naruto, who had followed instructions, Mizuki had been staring right at the boy. His retinas were instantly scorched by the blinding intensity of the blast, rendering him completely sightless.
Suzuki didn't hesitate. He immediately closed the distance, dashing forward to strike!
To an outside observer, engaging a Chunin in close-quarters combat might seem like a suicidal tactical error, especially since Mizuki was a grown adult with superior physical conditioning. But Suzuki wasn't fighting like a traditional ninja. He drew a second kunai, but instead of holding it like a blade, he slipped his index finger through the metal ring at the pommel, wrapping his remaining fingers tightly around the hilt.
He had turned the kunai into a heavy, iron brass knuckle.
Channeling a dense burst of chakra into his fist, Suzuki drove the heavy iron ring directly into Mizuki's exposed collarbone with the force of a hydraulic press!
CRACK!
The sickening sound of bone splintering echoed through the trees, causing Naruto and Iruka to flinch blindly.
"ARGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!"
Mizuki shrieked in agony as his clavicle caved in, crushing the underlying nerve cluster. His entire right arm instantly went limp, rendering him incapable of wielding his massive shuriken.
The horrific pain briefly snapped Mizuki out of his blindness. Driven by pure, adrenaline-fueled survival instinct, the traitorous Chunin roared, swinging his functioning left arm in a desperate, heavy haymaker aimed at Suzuki's head!
Mizuki's fist tore through the air like a sledgehammer.
Yet, to Suzuki, whose perception was being hyper-accelerated by the Manager's tactical processing, the world seemed to move in slow motion. As Mizuki's massive fist closed in, Suzuki didn't retreat. Instead, he stepped inside the guard, pivoting his body sharply and dropping his hips below Mizuki's center of gravity.
"Eh?"
For Mizuki, who thought his counterattack was guaranteed to land, the world suddenly tilted violently on its axis.
For everyone else, they simply saw Suzuki flawlessly execute a classic Judo technique—Harai Goshi (Sweeping Hip Throw). Using Mizuki's own forward momentum against him, Suzuki levered the larger man over his hip, spinning him into the air and slamming him brutally into the hard packed earth at a terrible angle.
CRACK!
Mizuki's left arm snapped under the crushing weight of his own body hitting the ground.
"ARGGGHHHHHHH!!!"
Iruka and Naruto finally opened their eyes, staring in absolute, stunned silence. They had just watched a twelve-year-old genin effortlessly dismantle a veteran Chunin using terrifyingly fluid, efficient martial arts.
"S-Sensei... what kind of taijutsu was that?" Naruto asked, his heart hammering against his ribs in awe.
"I... I don't know..." Iruka murmured, equally marveling at the sheer, brutal efficiency of the throw.
They weren't the only ones. Watching through his crystal orb, Hiruzen and his hidden ANBU guards were equally astounded by Suzuki's flawless taijutsu technique.
As for how Suzuki knew Judo? He possessed the uploaded memories of his alternate self—the Kyoto University physics student who had mastered leverage and momentum to survive in the Jujutsu world. But that was irrelevant right now. The main takeaway was that Suzuki realized he was significantly stronger than he had initially calculated.
No, that's wrong, Suzuki corrected himself mentally. Mizuki is just incredibly weak.
Frankly, the ninjas of this world were far too obsessed with flashy, chakra-wasting battles instead of swift, lethal efficiency.
Well, it doesn't matter, Suzuki thought, shaking out his wrist. Now that I've proved my excellence. I should be able to get a safe, comfortable logistics desk job under Hiruzen's protection~.
"Are you kidding me..."
Mizuki spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt. He couldn't accept the reality of the situation. Tossed around like a broken ragdoll by a child who had supposedly never seen a real battlefield?!
WHY DID HE LOSE TO A BRAT?!
"DAMN YOU!"
Driven to the absolute brink of madness, Mizuki reached into his pouch with trembling, broken fingers and pulled out a small vial of strange liquid. He bit the cork off and swallowed it whole.
Instantly, his muscles began to expand and mutate violently. His skin sprouted thick fur, and his facial structure grotesquely reshaped itself into the horrific visage of a human-tiger hybrid!
"DIE!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
The earth beneath Mizuki literally cracked from the sheer, unnatural pressure of his spiking chakra!
"Suzuki! Get back!" Iruka screamed.
Suzuki smoothly backflipped away from the shockwave, landing lightly on a tree branch. He looked down at the mutated Mizuki with immense, calculating curiosity. It looked exactly like an artificial Zoan Devil Fruit transformation from the One Piece universe.
If I can reverse-engineer the chemical compound of that potion and sell a stabilized version to the Inuzuka clan... I could make a staggering amount of money and gain an ally of the Inuzuka clan, Suzuki thought, his corporate instincts instantly recognizing a massive cash cow.
Instead of feeling fear, Suzuki was practically calculating profit margins!
However, watching Suzuki stand alone to protect them, Naruto felt a crushing wave of uselessness. He realized he was doing absolutely nothing but being a burden!
"NO! I'M GOING TO PROTECT EVERYONE TOO!" Naruto roared, stepping in front of Iruka.
"Hahahaha!"
Mizuki, drunk on his new, monstrous power, threw his head back and laughed. "You?! You useless piece of trash? What are you going to do? Nothing! Just stand there and watch while I tear Suzuki apart! You're next!"
Mizuki's muscles bulged as he prepared to leap, fully intending to crush Suzuki with overwhelming, brute strength. But he had vastly underestimated the stubbornness of the village's number one knucklehead.
Naruto crossed his fingers in a familiar cross-shaped seal.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof!
The sound of displaced air didn't happen just once. It echoed continuously, multiplying exponentially! Thick clouds of smoke erupted across the clearing, and when it cleared, everyone saw Naruto multiply from a single boy into a massive army of dozens—no, hundreds—of identical clones!
"SUZUKI, ARE YOU OKAY?!"
"WE'RE GOING TO KICK MIZUKI'S ASS NOW!"
"DON'T WORRY, WE'VE GOT THIS!"
"..."
Suzuki, Iruka, Mizuki, and even the Third Hokage watching from afar could only stare in absolute, paralyzing shock. The sheer volume of chakra required to manifest solid clones on this scale was nothing short of monstrous!
But was a mutated Mizuki really going to be defeated that easily?
"DAMN YOU! YOU SHITTY, FAILURE DEMON FOX!"
While Naruto had successfully multiplied himself, he was still just an academy student with zero actual brawl experience. He had no tactical coordination. Mizuki, currently in his absolute peak physical state, waded into the sea of clones, massacring them left and right with devastating, sweeping blows!
"Suzuki!"
The real Naruto stood near the back of the clearing, breaking out in a cold sweat as his copies were systematically destroyed by the raging human-beast.
"Just step back and leave the cleanup to me, Naruto," Suzuki said calmly, dropping back down to the forest floor.
Suzuki's hands blurred through a sequence of seals, inhaling deeply.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!"
A highly concentrated, dense sphere of blazing orange flames erupted from his mouth. The intense, ambient heat made the surrounding trees immediately start to wither. Yet, the moment the fireball left his lips, Suzuki's hands didn't stop.
With the Manager running simultaneous tactical diagnostics, Suzuki flawlessly maintained the chakra output of the first jutsu while instantly chaining it into a second nature transformation!
"IT'S USELESS!" Mizuki roared, preparing to charge straight through the flames.
His roar was instantly cut short.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough."
Suzuki expelled a massive, highly pressurized gale of wind directly into the back of his own fireball.
The sphere of fire violently ruptured and expanded! What was originally a ten-foot ball of flame mutated into a fifty-foot, towering tidal wave of white-hot death!
The gale-force wind pumped massive, concentrated amounts of oxygen directly into the chakra-fueled flames. The fire instantly shifted colors—flaring from a deep orange to a blinding, predatory yellow, and finally, a searing, brilliant white.
The wind gave the fire "legs." Instead of drifting forward, the flames were now traveling at the speed of a Category 5 hurricane. It became a horizontal, jet-fueled pillar of absolute incineration!
No one could look away. Even the ANBU stationed miles away in the village could see the blinding, artificial sun illuminating the dark forest canopy as Suzuki unleashed the devastating elemental combination.
"Collaboration Jutsu: Ignition Gale!"
Mizuki couldn't move. It was physically impossible to dodge. The roaring, white-hot sun swallowed the mutated traitor whole.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!
---
Sorry for being late~!