"I called everyone here because I'll be the main person responsible for this mission."
Namikaze Minato waited until the group had fully gathered before speaking, his tone calm but carrying the quiet authority that made people straighten without realizing it. "Your original jonin leader has been reassigned to another operation. Because of that, the three of you will be temporarily placed under my command." His eyes moved from Kiyohara to Yūhi Kurenai, then to Shiranui Genma, measuring without judgment, only intent.
"Yes, Minato-sama," Genma replied at once.
With Minato leading, the atmosphere around them turned strangely light, almost as if they were about to head out on something harmless. Kiyohara didn't share that ease. He forced his breathing to stay steady, his gaze sharper than his expression, because he'd learned the hard way that the missions people called "simple" were often the ones that killed you fastest.
The truth was obvious when he looked at their formation. The only true heavyweights here were Minato and Hatake Kakashi, who was already so close to jonin that the title felt like paperwork. Everyone else was chunin. And among all of them, there was only one genin.
Him.
In the past, Kiyohara had done everything possible to delay the moment he'd be pushed into something genuinely lethal. He'd avoided the chunin exams not because he couldn't pass, but because remaining a "safe" genin was a shield, thin, but still a shield. Now, Konoha was bleeding for manpower. At this stage, even the brand-new rookies fresh from the Academy would be sent to war, so someone like Kiyohara, an old hand at staying alive, had no chance of slipping through the cracks.
They called this mission "reinforcement," but he understood what it meant in practice. Most likely, they weren't the blade; they were the distraction. The real objective was to blow up a bridge, and the more bodies moving around, the easier it would be to confuse the enemy, draw eyes, and buy time for whoever was planting the explosives.
"To better understand your capabilities," Minato continued, "we'll do a test."
He knew his own students well. He didn't know Kiyohara's trio. And in a war zone, ignorance wasn't neutral, it was dangerous.
"Obito," Minato said, "spar with Kiyohara first."
Kakashi was too far above the baseline to serve as a meaningful gauge, and Nohara Rin was a medical-nin. That left Uchiha Obito as the most practical choice.
"Heh, perfect." Obito grinned, pushing his goggles up with casual confidence, as if this was a game he'd already decided to win. He took good care of his eyes, almost obsessively, like they were something precious even before the Sharingan awakened. And he didn't take Kiyohara seriously at first glance.
After all… he was an Uchiha. Even without the dōjutsu, that certainty ran in his blood.
"Alright," Kiyohara said, stepping forward.
In the last few days, he hadn't only practiced technique and chakra control. The rogue-nin version of himself, cold, seasoned, and ruthless in the way only survival could teach, had been drilling him in real combat habits. It wasn't about looking good. It was about living. A rogue-nin who couldn't fight wouldn't last long enough to become one.
Kiyohara might not have learned many new techniques, but his body had begun to remember how to move, how to read pressure, how to steal momentum, how to take a single mistake and turn it into an ending.
"Begin," Minato said.
Kiyohara settled into his stance. Once, his chakra reserves had already been near chunin level, he'd simply refused to take the exam. Now, after merging with a portion of his rogue-nin self, his reserves sat comfortably above an average chunin's. Facing Obito in a spar, he felt a steady certainty: not arrogance, not carelessness, just the sense that he belonged here more than his rank suggested.
Obito wasn't weak. Not at all. But before awakening the Sharingan, he fought with too much heat and not enough restraint.
Behind Kiyohara, the rogue-nin's spiritual form surfaced, faint at the edges, but unmistakably present to him.
"Remember," it said, voice low enough to feel like a thought. "Obito has an Uchiha's physical gifts. Don't compete with him head-on. Find the crack. Take it."
Kiyohara gave a barely visible nod.
"Start," Minato declared.
Obito moved first.
His foot slammed into the ground, dirt scattering as he surged forward and erased the gap in an instant. The kunai in his hand flashed toward Kiyohara's throat, clean, direct, fast enough to punish hesitation.
Kiyohara drew his own kunai at the same time.
Clang.
Metal collided. Sparks burst in a brief, violent bloom. Kiyohara let the impact travel through his arms and into his stance, stepping back half a pace to bleed off force instead of absorbing it bluntly. It wasn't flashy, but it was correct, and Obito felt it.
Fast…
He'd expected a genin's clumsy defense. What he met was a response that carried weight.
Obito's expression tightened, and he pressed forward, flipping his kunai into a flowing sequence, feinting high, cutting low, then snapping back in with a sharp thrust. His aggression came in a smooth chain, the kind that showed hours of practice and a fierce desire to dominate.
Kiyohara's body moved almost before he consciously decided. His blade met Obito's at angles that deflected rather than stalled, his feet shifting just enough to keep his center stable.
"Your guard is wrong," the rogue-nin murmured behind him. "Don't meet his line, slide it. Like this."
Each correction landed like ice water down Kiyohara's spine. Clear. Immediate. Unforgiving. And with each beat of steel against steel, his motions became sharper, cleaner, more economical, as if something dormant in him was waking up.
Obito wasn't fighting one opponent anymore.
He was fighting Kiyohara… and the brutal experience whispering in his ear.
The power of a jonin, kid.
Time passed in narrow flashes, kunai scraping, boots grinding dirt, breath tightening. Obito began to realize what terrified him most: Kiyohara was improving mid-fight. What started as a genin struggling to keep rhythm shifted into something that had rhythm of its own. Kiyohara's attacks came from strange, cutting angles, forcing Obito to adjust again and again, and the pressure grew steadily heavier.
"He leans back," the rogue-nin said, voice calm. "His base is unstable. Hit his left. Make him move."
Kiyohara's wrist turned. His kunai changed from a straight stab into a slicing line that attacked Obito's left side.
Obito's defense caught, barely, but there was a fraction of hesitation, a thin lag in his response. In a real fight, fractions were what separated a parry from a puncture. Their exchange continued, and slowly, unmistakably, Obito found himself being pushed.
His eyes widened.
Kiyohara was a civilian-born nobody, no clan name to carry him, and yet his growth was alarmingly fast. Minutes ago, he'd only been matching Obito. Now he was pressing him, forcing him to retreat in small, unwilling steps.
"How is this possible?!" Obito blurted, the shock breaking through his pride.
The pressure became suffocating. Rin was watching. He could feel it, could feel the idea of embarrassment crawling up his throat like bile.
From the side, Minato observed quietly, his gaze thoughtful rather than surprised. If Kiyohara can hold his own against Obito like this, then this mission should be manageable, he judged, recalibrating in silence.
Kurenai watched with her ruby-bright eyes, the reflection of Kiyohara's movement swimming within them. She and Kiyohara had been classmates for years, she knew what he used to be. "It feels like he's gotten much stronger than before…" she murmured, half to herself, as if trying to make sense of it.
Obito didn't have space to think about any of that. His confidence was cracked now, replaced by something harsher and more desperate.
Damn it… Rin is right here.
I carry the Uchiha name. I can't lose.
His left hand shot into his ninja pouch. When it came out, several shuriken were wedged between his fingers.
Shuriken techniques were an Uchiha specialty.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Three shuriken snapped through the air, sealing Kiyohara's upper, middle, and lower lines at tricky angles. The throw was clean, disciplined, proof that Obito had trained this seriously.
"Don't forget what I taught you," the rogue-nin said.
To everyone else, it was empty air. To Kiyohara, it was a hand guiding his timing.
Kiyohara nodded once, and drew only a single shuriken.
Whoosh.
He threw it after Obito's, yet it arrived first, curving through the air in a controlled arc, striking the tail end of the first shuriken with precise intent.
Clink.
The impact redirected its path as if it had "turned," snapping into the second, then the third in rapid succession.
Clink! Clink!
Three sharp chimes rang out. Obito's confident triple throw was shattered by a single shuriken, all three knocked off course and scattering into the dirt.
Obito froze, eyes blown wide.
"What…?!" The disbelief was naked in his face. A bending shuriken technique, something he hadn't even mastered himself, and Kiyohara had just executed it without hesitation.
That shock cost him an instant.
Kiyohara took it.
Obito's vision flashed as Kiyohara closed in. Obito raised his kunai to defend, but Kiyohara's hand clamped down on his wrist like iron, locking his grip and killing his leverage. In the same motion, Kiyohara hooked Obito's footing with a sharp trip.
"Ugh!"
Obito felt his balance vanish, ripped away so completely it was like the ground betrayed him. The world tilted, spun,
Thud.
He hit the earth hard, dust puffing up around his shoulders. Before he could recover, Kiyohara's kunai tip rested lightly at his throat, steady and controlled.
The spar was over.
The field went silent.
Even Kakashi, who'd looked bored up until now, let a flicker of surprise slip into his normally lazy gaze.
End of Chapter