"Uchiha brat, you dare look at me like that?" Ayato grabbed Sasuke's hair, snarling viciously.
Their faces were only two centimeters apart, and Sasuke's eyes burned with a mix of ferocity and hatred.
But with his hair firmly in Ayato's grip, every time Sasuke tried to make a surprise move to fight back, Ayato yanked his hair, throwing him off balance and making any effective attack impossible.
"Stop fighting, you two!" Ino and Sakura stood beside Ayato, trying to break up the fight. Ayato glanced at them without a word, then turned back to Sasuke.
Sasuke's face was full of defiance, his hands subtly trying to pry Ayato's grip loose.
Ayato tightened his hold and lifted Sasuke slightly off the ground.
"You? Talk about revenge? At your age, your brother could take on two Kakashis!" Ayato sneered.
"Who's Kakashi?" Naruto, bruised and battered, chimed in from the side.
This was the aftermath of the iconic third-episode scene where Naruto and Sasuke had their "intimate" moment. After they parted, Naruto was promptly mobbed and beaten by the girls in the classroom.
Ayato, of course, knew this scene was coming and had positioned himself for the best view, eagerly watching the drama unfold.
But he hadn't expected Sasuke to catch him smirking while Naruto was getting pummeled.
No one else in the class dared to show Sasuke such an expression. Sasuke was like a loose cannon in their class—always ready to throw hands, ruthless in his attacks (though he refrained from using shuriken), and unbeatable by everyone except Ayato.
Sasuke couldn't hold back. Glaring fiercely at Ayato, he provoked a reaction. How could Ayato, who wasn't about to take attitude from a "paper character," let that slide? He charged forward and grabbed Sasuke, leading to the scene at the start.
"You'll find out soon enough," Ayato replied softly to Naruto's question. He only directed his anger at those who provoked him, not at bystanders.
Turning back to Sasuke, he continued his verbal assault: "You can't even awaken your Sharingan, you useless Uchiha! At your age, any named Uchiha would already have at least two tomoe in their eyes!"
Sasuke's pupils shrank, as if he couldn't believe what Ayato was saying.
None of the other classmates, except Shikamaru, understood what Ayato meant.
"Let go of Sasuke! If you're so tough, come at me!" Ino shouted beside Ayato. Sakura echoed her, yelling the same thing, though inwardly cursing herself for being a step behind Ino again.
"Come at you?" Ayato sized Ino up, his gaze lingering on her chest.
"Your melons aren't even ripe yet."
Ino covered her chest, too embarrassed to respond.
Then Ayato turned to Sakura, frowning as he scrutinized her several times. Sakura's heart raced under his gaze, panicking internally.
"He's not actually going to come at me, is he? I can't beat this savage jerk!" she thought, but she maintained a defiant expression, staring back at Ayato.
"Your melons will never ripen," Ayato said.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Sakura shouted, quickly covering her chest as she noticed where his gaze landed.
"Alright, enough. Today's the last day we're all together before team assignments. Ayato, just let it go," Shikamaru interjected.
Ayato glanced at Shikamaru and casually tossed Sasuke to the ground.
He and Shikamaru got along decently, and Ayato had no real intention of seriously harming Sasuke. After all, Sasuke was an important "support material" for later events. If he broke him now, who'd be there to seal the white-haired woman in the future?
Without a system, why bother doing unnecessary things? This world had its protagonists, and everything would work out in the end. Just coast and you're good.
Sasuke hit the ground but quickly flipped to his feet, glaring cautiously at Ayato.
This was just a classmate squabble. Sasuke still had some restraint and didn't reach for his shuriken, though his stance made it clear he was itching for a fight.
Ayato ignored him, walking to a corner of the room and sitting down.
This level of conflict was enough. There were probably a bunch of jonin teachers secretly watching their potential students right now. If he pushed further, someone would likely step in to stop him.
Sure enough, before Sasuke could make another move, Iruka walked in with a notebook.
Acting as if he hadn't noticed the classroom chaos, he glanced briefly at Sasuke, Ayato, and Naruto.
"Next is the team assignments. You'll be grouped in teams of three, and your jonin instructors have already been chosen. I'll read the names, and once called, you'll wait for your teacher to pick you up."
The class buzzed with whispers as students hoped to be grouped with their preferred teammates, though they had no say in the matter.
"Seventh Team…"
"Eighth Team…"
Each name called sparked a small wave of chatter in the classroom.
Ayato didn't care about the team assignments. Only a few privileged second-generation ninjas would get elite jonin or special jonin instructors.
Among them, Sakura was the only one without a clan background, possibly tied to that unique era.
In the early days of Naruto, when non-mainstream culture was all the rage, Sakura might've benefited from her dad's "artistic" vibe—carrying a starfish on his head. But as trends shifted and non-mainstream culture faded, her dad barely got any screen time later on.
None of this mattered much to Ayato. He figured he'd either be assigned to a random chunin as a mission tool or left as a solo genin, like the other background characters.
Sure enough, when Iruka finished reading the team assignments, Ayato's name wasn't called.
He wasn't alone—there were a few other "nobodies" with little potential, only slightly stronger than Naruto at this point.
As a person without a surname, a descendant of the Senju, not being nurtured was the most fitting outcome. Ideally, he'd stay a genin forever, which suited the current Hokage faction just fine.
He remembered that the Senju clan elders weren't all gone. If someone discovered a promising Senju seedling, it wouldn't be impossible for them to vie for the Hokage position, threatening the current power structure.
Not assigning him a teacher to let him fade into obscurity was the perfect approach. When Tsunade returned, they could claim they treated Ayato no differently from any other commoner, avoiding her wrath.
Without lingering to watch the assigned teams meet their teachers, Ayato left the classroom and headed home.
Though an orphan without parents, he wasn't poor. Before his dad "turned into a tree," he left Ayato an entire street's worth of inheritance.
His mother, he suspected, was likely a Kaguya clan member who fled the Hidden Mist during wartime.
That's what the villagers knew: his dad brought back an ordinary woman from a small village, and she mysteriously died after giving birth.
What they didn't know was that Ayato had already awakened the Kaguya clan's Shikotsumyaku bloodline limit. He could manipulate the bones in his fingers with enough force to rival shuriken.
Even less known was that he had awakened Wood Release and inherited the Senju's massive chakra reserves and powerful recovery abilities.
Somehow, he'd stumbled into cheats. With the two bloodline limits balancing each other, the Kaguya clan's bloodline disease didn't seem to be an issue.