"Damn it!! This kind of ninjutsu!"
Sunk bodily into the swamp, Hinata genuinely felt her strength being sapped. Kakashi had found the most effective approach after all—first pin down the Byakugan user with a restraining-type ninjutsu, then use a subterranean technique to evade Naruto's line of sight and most ground-level attacks, leveraging a Jōnin's deep repertoire and experience to dictate the outcome.
Sometimes, knowing one extra jutsu really could decide a fight—and that was no empty talk. A single B-rank Earth Release ninjutsu had successfully pinned down Hinata, whose taijutsu was formidable. That was the true essence of ninjutsu: not the raw pursuit of destructive power, but the ability to produce a specific effect at the right moment.
No matter how good her taijutsu or how sharp her eyes, being mired waist-deep in mud sealed off both advantages completely. Confirming that reality sent a chill through Hinata: the gap between a Jōnin and a Chūnin was never about how many techniques you knew. It was about understanding exactly what each technique did—and deploying it at precisely the right place and time.
In terms of raw destructive output, she was confident she could match an elite Chūnin. But when it came to tactical application and fluency with ninjutsu, she was still just a freshly graduated student.
"But don't think you can shake me off that easily!"
Her gaze hardened. Hinata plunged both arms into the mud around her and pushed out Fire-nature chakra. The viscous muck rapidly dried and hardened. Mud trapped you because of its viscosity—bake it dry, and the trap lost its teeth.
Meanwhile, gliding smoothly underground with Earth Release: Underground Projection Fish Technique, Kakashi moved freely beneath the surface. With his left-eye Sharingan reading chakra signatures, he could perceive everything around him clearly. But what he saw next made him blink.
By all rights, Naruto and Sasuke should have been hiding and continuing to maneuver. Instead—
"Hinata! I'm coming to save you!"
Naruto's voice carried from halfway across the clearing. The instant he spotted Hinata stuck in the swamp, the blond idiot had apparently forgotten they were in the middle of a fight. Every last Shadow Clone plus the original was stampeding toward her, clearly intent on hauling her out bodily.
"You—!! You moron, stay back!"
Hinata nearly choked. Her battle plan had been sound, but Naruto's unpredictability was the number-one variable in all of the Naruto story. Plans, to him, were roughly equivalent to a bad fart.
Heh. Still an idiot after all.
Underground, Kakashi shook his head—but a faint, involuntary smile tugged at the silver-haired Jōnin's lips. Locking onto the stampede of Narutos, he formed hand signs smoothly and released a wide-area genjutsu: "Genjutsu! Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique!"
Without question, it was an extremely simple, low-level genjutsu. But against a completely unguarded Naruto, it took effect almost instantly.
"Aieeee! No! I'm a guy! I'm really a guy!!"
The next moment, Naruto—who had been charging forward like a wild boar—crumpled into a forward roll and hit the ground, then curled up hugging his knees and thrashing back and forth, sobbing and wailing. Whatever he was seeing in the illusion was evidently the most terrifying thing imaginable to him.
With the original incapacitated, every Shadow Clone vanished in a puff of smoke. Hinata could only stare, utterly deadpan. Under normal circumstances, a thickheaded guy like Naruto shouldn't have had much he was afraid of. But perhaps the psychological scars she'd left on this blond were so deep that the Hell Viewing Technique had dealt at least triple critical damage.
As for what exactly he was seeing in that illusion—given the way he was shrieking like an innocent girl about to be violated, it wasn't hard to guess.
"Hmm, looks like this'll be easier than expected."
Kakashi rose slowly from underground, glanced down at the now-neutralized Naruto, and spoke in a thoroughly relaxed tone: "So then—who's the last one?"
"Tch!"
In the thicket, Sasuke clenched his teeth in frustration. Naruto's reckless charge had shoved him straight into a dilemma: keep hiding, or charge out with an almost-zero chance of success to draw Kakashi's attention.
If this were a real battle... what should he do?
He closed his eyes for less than a second, then opened them again. No matter how furious he was, he already knew his answer.
In a real battle, the state Naruto and Hinata were in was no different from lying beneath an enemy's blade. A single thrown kunai could finish either of them.
So—
"Chidori!"
Lightning crackled to life. Sasuke burst from the treeline behind Kakashi, but the silver-haired Jōnin—already on guard—sidestepped with a casual turn, easily dodging the overly linear thrust.
"Heh. Using a technique I invented—against me?"
Kakashi was in no rush to end things. He could sense that this Uchiha boy's potential ran deeper. Sure enough, Sasuke's seeming lunge forward suddenly shifted as he whipped his arm out. The Chidori sphere in his palm elongated like a blade, sweeping toward Kakashi's midsection—Sasuke's privately developed Chidori variant: Chidori Sharp Spear!
But this time, there would be no damage like Naruto had managed earlier. Kakashi was prepared. He raised his own hand, and Lightning Blade's glow effortlessly blocked the Chidori Sharp Spear.
Same lightning-nature techniques—the deciding factor came down to quality. And Kakashi's Lightning Blade barely hesitated before cleanly severing Sasuke's incoming Chidori Sharp Spear.
"Sorry about that. I already saw this move the other day."
Making no effort to conceal his information advantage, Kakashi didn't mind teaching his three students a lesson about information management. But the Sasuke before him suddenly flashed a strange grin: "Obviously I know that. So—!"
Despite his left hand's Chidori Sharp Spear being severed by Lightning Blade, Sasuke didn't care about the failed strike. The boy's lightning-wreathed right hand slammed flat against the ground. Under superb control, Lightning-nature chakra erupted outward, surging like a reverse tide in every direction around him.
"South Dipper Thunder-Burial Fist Ultimate! Ame no Habakiri!!"
With the boy's roar, the expanding Lightning-nature chakra solidified into crackling electric blades that shot skyward in every direction. The wild current genuinely startled Kakashi. The damage wasn't enough to pose a lethal threat, but forcing through it would cost even him considerable injury.
Sasuke's talent had made him the first of the three to master the ultimate technique Hinata had bestowed. Even so, his control was far from complete—the undirected, unfocused arcs of electricity spreading in every direction made it clear this move was still more flash than substance.
"Tch! What an infuriating feeling..."
At the same time, back in the mud pit, the muck around Hinata had been completely baked dry by fire. Soil shattered and flew as the pale-eyed girl leapt free with an ugly expression, then strode briskly over to Naruto—still clutching his head and rolling around on the ground—and slapped him clean across the forehead.
"Aiee—yamete!"
With a teary-eyed shriek, Naruto finally snapped out of the genjutsu. Sasuke, gritting his teeth, leapt back to rejoin them.
Forcing out the incomplete Ame no Habakiri had clearly taken a massive toll on Sasuke's body. Tiny sparks of static still crackled off him at random intervals.
"Hmm, not bad. You managed to rescue both your teammates."
Kakashi nodded and adopted a deliberately stern tone: "But—what do you plan to do now?"
The challenge disguised as a question drew a cold smirk from Hinata. The pale-eyed girl gave a crisp nod and spoke.
"True. Right now Sasuke's spent, Naruto's half-wrecked, and I'm too heavily skewed toward taijutsu—too easy to shut down with restraining ninjutsu. But Kakashi-sensei, you're not doing much better."
She reached behind her and opened the tool pouch at her waist, pulling out a Military Rations Pill and handing it to Sasuke. Her tone stayed frigid: "The difference is, we still have fast-recovery medicine and blood-stopping compounds. Naruto's mental damage will fade quickly. But you, sensei?"
She looked pointedly at Kakashi's still-bleeding left hand. "Even if the wound missed the tendons, the fact that it's still bleeding means the blood vessels and muscle tissue in your palm have been thoroughly shredded by wind-nature chakra. You don't have gauntlets like ours to absorb damage. Then there's countering Naruto's Sonic Boom, and the two consecutive Lightning Blades you fired against Sasuke's Chidori Sharp Spear. If my intel on you is correct, four Lightning Blades per day is your current maximum. Add in every ninjutsu you used against me and Naruto back-to-back... and the Mangekyō Sharingan's drain can't be trivial either."
Hinata's eyes narrowed. The pale-eyed girl raised her right hand. "So—how much chakra do you have left, sensei? A third? A quarter?"
"In a real battle, your move right now wouldn't be to keep fighting us. It would be to disengage as fast as possible. But even running requires knowing who you're running from. With my eyes and Sasuke's, escape isn't an option either. So—"
"Would you mind conceding?"