Kiyohara put away his kunai, then reached down and offered a hand to Obito, who was still sprawled on the ground.
"Looks like I won," he said, his tone calm, almost casual, as if the outcome had been obvious from the start.
Obito had Uchiha blood. Kiyohara had an urn full of his own ashes. In a way, both of them had brilliant futures ahead of them.
He might only have a slight edge right now, but who was to say that advantage would not grow even larger later?
If he got lucky and drew a future self with truly terrifying potential, then as long as he could fulfill that version's dying wish, he could soar in a single leap.
Of course, the stronger that future version was, the harder its final wish would probably be to complete.
Obito lay there staring at Kiyohara's outstretched hand, then glanced toward Rin, who was watching with open concern.
His face instantly flushed red.
This was humiliating. A complete disgrace to the name of Uchiha.
Still, Obito was used to being the dead-last student. Back at the Academy, losing was practically routine for him.
He had even been knocked out by Might Guy the first time he took the Chunin Exams.
In the end, he gave himself a quick mental pep talk, grabbed Kiyohara's hand, and let himself be pulled upright.
"...Damn it. I'll win next time for sure!"
Minato Namikaze watched Kiyohara with even greater appreciation in his eyes.
Wearing that same gentle smile, he said, "Excellent tactical judgment, and your shurikenjutsu is especially impressive. Kiyohara, your combat ability already exceeds that of an ordinary genin by a wide margin."
As he said it, Minato could not help feeling a little curious.
With strength like that, why had Kiyohara never taken the Chunin Exams?
"At your level, passing the Chunin Exams should not have been difficult at all."
Kiyohara answered without changing expression. "I've been busy cultivating my spirit. I never found the time to take the exam."
"I see."
Minato nodded, though he did not say more.
This was wartime. Promotions did not always have to follow the neat, orderly standards of peacetime.
If someone performed well enough on the battlefield, promoting them early to chunin was not impossible.
He looked at Kiyohara and said, "If this mission succeeds, you should be promoted directly to chunin."
As the jonin in command, Minato understood exactly how dangerous this assignment was.
Looking at the young faces in front of him, he felt a trace of guilt he did not let show.
This was not the kind of mission they should have been carrying out.
But Konoha had already been pushed to the edge. The front line was too dangerous, the pressure too great.
The village had reached a moment where it was struggling for its very survival.
If they could sever Iwagakure's supply line this time, the advantage it would give Konoha would be enormous, and the blow to Iwa's operations would be just as severe.
And because Iwagakure believed no one could break through in the first place, only an ordinary squad had any chance of getting close.
Send a shinobi who was too strong, and the Iwa scouts would notice immediately.
Then reinforcements would arrive, and the mission would collapse before it even began.
"Understood," Kiyohara said with a small nod.
If he really became a chunin after Kannabi Bridge, then his strength would rise dramatically.
More importantly, his chances of surviving the next stretch of the war would climb with it.
As long as he did not die outright, he could continue receiving help from alternate versions of himself that had perished in other timelines.
If he could build on that, snowball it bit by bit, then maybe he would not be so helpless when the future disasters came crashing down one after another.
The Nine-Tails' rampage. The collapse of the Chunin Exams. Pain destroying the village. The Otsutsuki invasion.
At any one of those points, being too weak meant certain death. Each one was an obstacle no ordinary person could ever cross.
It did not take long before Minato was the first to leave.
The mission would begin on the afternoon three days from now, and he still had far too many things to handle before then.
Once Minato was gone, Kakashi walked over to Kiyohara.
His face remained calm, unreadable as ever. "You're pretty capable," he said. "At least you won't drag this mission down."
Ever since his father's death, Kakashi cared about only one thing: following the ninja code and completing the mission.
To him, a ninja who failed a mission was trash.
Given Kiyohara's current strength, he would not slow the squad down or lower their odds of success.
For someone like Kakashi, that was already a meaningful compliment.
"Mm." Kiyohara simply nodded.
Kakashi was in one of the darkest periods of his life right now.
There was no point saying anything more. Some things could only be learned by living through them, and no number of words could replace that.
Kannabi Bridge would become one of the great turning points in Kakashi's life.
But in the original timeline, it was only a brief dawn before deeper darkness. After killing Rin with his own hands, he had fallen so low he once even thought about ending his life.
Honestly, if Kakashi had been born Uchiha Kakashi instead of Hatake Kakashi, he might have awakened his own Mangekyo Sharingan with no trouble at all.
Not only would that have solved his chronic chakra deficiency, it might have let him reach an even higher peak.
"Kakashi, do you want to train together?" Rin Nohara asked.
A ninja could never afford to slack off.
If they stopped training, their strength would inevitably dull. Once someone grew used to comfort, even the tiniest mistake on a mission could get them killed.
"No need," Kakashi replied, curt and direct.
He planned to train alone.
Recently, he had succeeded in developing a particularly powerful technique, one that still needed improvement before it was complete.
Kiyohara narrowed his eyes slightly.
In his memory, Kakashi would become a jonin the day before the mission.
Kakashi's actual strength right now was only that of a newly promoted jonin.
His situation was a little awkward. He had never properly inherited Hatake Sakumo's swordsmanship, and his mastery of Lightning Release was still incomplete.
No matter how powerful Chidori was, it came with a fatal flaw.
To use it perfectly, one needed dynamic vision like the Sharingan. That was why, years later in another era, Kakashi—after losing the Sharingan—developed Purple Lightning, a jutsu of the same level that did not depend on those eyes at all.
When the crucial moment came, Kiyohara estimated he would still have to rely on the rogue-nin Kiyohara possessing him.
A jonin was still a jonin, but there were differences even among jonin.
More than thirty years of training and battle experience far surpassed what Kakashi possessed now.
In a true life-and-death moment, that gap would matter more than titles ever could.
"That's just how Kakashi is," Obito said, hands behind his head as if he had already forgotten his defeat.
He had no idea that Kakashi's father had committed suicide after being slandered by the very comrades he had once saved.
In Obito's eyes, Kakashi was simply arrogant. Annoyingly arrogant, even.
"I think it's better if everyone uses the last few days for targeted training on their own," Genma Shiranui said.
He picked up the senbon that had fallen to the ground, wiped it clean, and tucked it back into his mouth.
The truth was, he had dropped it because he had been so shocked by the strength Kiyohara had just displayed.
"Agreed," Kiyohara said.
There were still three days left. In that time, the rogue-nin Kiyohara could continue helping him improve.
Every extra bit of strength he gained now might become the difference between life and death later.
After saying goodbye to the others, Kiyohara headed home as quickly as he could.
Once back inside, he looked at the ninjutsu scroll in his hand and immediately felt a headache coming on.
Sometimes, even with a teacher personally explaining every step, the final part still came down to your own hands and your own practice.
It was the kind of thing where you could understand it the moment you saw it, but fail the moment you tried to do it yourself.
Everyone knew that feeling—eyes learned fast, hands learned slow.
The issue of chakra volume was even worse.
That was not something he could solve overnight. It required time, accumulation, and steady refinement.
Unless, of course, he fulfilled the rogue-nin Kiyohara's second dying wish immediately and let that version of himself fully merge into him.
He rubbed his chin and asked, "By the way, do you know any other fast ways to get stronger?"
Logically speaking, by the time a man had made it into his thirties as a rogue ninja, he should know all sorts of crooked methods... no, all sorts of efficient methods for growing stronger quickly and painlessly.
"Of course," the rogue-nin Kiyohara replied without hesitation. "Use drugs."
Then he added, in a tone so matter-of-fact it almost sounded profound, "How else are you supposed to get stronger if you don't take medicine?"
Kiyohara blinked.
Hearing that, he immediately remembered Sasuke.
During the three years he had spent under Orochimaru, Sasuke had swallowed more than his fair share of forbidden substances.
Of course, Orochimaru treasured Sasuke's body like some priceless vessel, so the drugs he gave him were not the kind that would ruin the merchandise.
At the very least, they had not turned Sasuke's head into a pointy gourd.
Kiyohara fell silent for a long moment.
Then the corners of his mouth twitched.
This future version of himself really had gone down a thoroughly crooked path.
But when he thought about it carefully, the man was not exactly wrong.
In the shinobi world, bloodline, talent, teachers, resources, forbidden techniques, experimental medicine—anything that could turn into power would eventually be used by someone.
The idea of growing stronger through pure hard work alone sounded noble.
It also sounded a little stupid.
Especially on a battlefield where people died every day.
He lowered his eyes to the scroll in his hand, then glanced at the rogue-nin spirit floating nearby.
The man's form was dimmer than before, little by little fading like smoke in the wind.
Three days. He only had three days before Kannabi Bridge.
And if he wanted to survive what was coming, he would have to squeeze every last drop of strength out of himself—whether that strength came from training, from talent, or from some thoroughly unethical shortcut.
Because on the battlefield, no one cared how you became strong.
Only whether you were still alive in the end.