Uchiha Demon Dragon - Chapter 13

Chapter 13 — The Anatomy of Panic and a Father’s Pride

A month in the Ninja Academy possessed a very specific, grinding rhythm. For the average civilian child, it was a month of awe, rigorous physical conditioning, and the slow, grueling process of learning to unlock their chakra coils. For Yami, who had the Shendu System continuously injecting fresh chakra into his pathways at a rate of three units per day, the month was an exercise in extreme, calculated boredom.

Autumn had fully settled over the Hidden Leaf Village. The oppressive humidity of the summer had finally broken, replaced by crisp, cool winds that swept down from the northern mountains and scattered dry, orange leaves across the Uchiha compound’s freshly paved streets. Yami’s daily routine had become an exact science: attend class, endure Instructor Daikoku’s heavily redacted history lectures while secretly grinding the Pig Talisman’s experience behind his sunglasses, eat lunch with Itachi in relatively comfortable silence, and return straight home to avoid his father’s wrath.

His chakra reserves had swelled to 418 units. He was comfortably sitting in the mid-to-high Chunin bracket for raw energy. But having a massive engine meant nothing if you didn’t know how to drive the car.

Today, the Academy curriculum was finally transitioning from theory and conditioning to practical application. It was the last Friday of the month, which meant one thing for Section A: the inaugural sparring assessments.

The entire Genius Class was gathered in the main outdoor training courtyard. A large ring, fifteen meters in diameter, had been drawn into the packed dirt with white chalk. Instructor Daikoku stood at the edge of the circle, a thick wooden clipboard resting against his hip. He looked over the thirty students, his scarred eyebrow twitching slightly in the cool morning breeze.

“The purpose of today’s assessment is not to determine who has the most destructive jutsu,” Daikoku announced, his voice carrying easily over the wind. “You are six and seven years old. Most of you barely have the reserves to cast a standard elemental technique without passing out. Today is about evaluating your foundation. Spatial awareness. Reflexes. Instinct. I want to see what kind of combat intuition you possess before we begin layering lethal techniques over it.”

Daikoku raised his clipboard. “No lethal strikes to the throat or eyes. No weapons aside from standard blunted kunai. Ring outs or submissions determine the victor. First match: Hyuga Tokuma versus Uchiha Itachi.”

A collective murmur rippled through the gathered students. Daikoku wasn’t wasting any time. He was putting the village’s two most prestigious bloodlines against each other right out of the gate.

Tokuma stepped into the ring. The pale-eyed boy looked intensely focused, his jaw set, his hands already slipping into the precise, open-palm stances of the Hyuga clan’s Gentle Fist style.

Itachi walked into the ring a moment later. He didn’t look focused. He didn’t look arrogant, either. He simply looked like a boy who had been asked to step into a circle. His posture was perfectly relaxed, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. He didn’t take a stance.

Yami leaned against the wooden fence surrounding the courtyard, adjusting his sunglasses. He pushed a tiny fraction of chakra to his optic nerves, just enough to sharpen his dynamic vision without fully activating the Sharingan. He wanted to see this clearly.

“Begin,” Daikoku ordered, stepping back.

Tokuma lunged. His footwork was genuinely impressive for his age—a rapid, sliding glide that closed the distance in a fraction of a second. He thrust two chakra-coated fingers toward Itachi’s left shoulder, aiming directly for a tenketsu point.

Itachi didn’t block. He didn’t even completely dodge. He merely rotated his left shoulder backward by exactly two inches.

Tokuma’s fingers brushed empty air, grazing the fabric of Itachi’s shirt. Before Tokuma could retract his arm, Itachi stepped into the newly created blind spot. His movement was terrifyingly economical. There was no wasted energy, no dramatic flourishing. Itachi simply placed his foot behind Tokuma’s ankle and pushed his palm lightly against the Hyuga’s overextended chest.

Tokuma lost his balance instantly, tumbling backward and skidding out of the chalk ring, landing hard in the dirt.

The match had lasted exactly three seconds.

The courtyard was dead silent. Tokuma stared up at the sky, utterly bewildered as to how he had ended up on his back so quickly. Itachi offered a brief, polite bow to his fallen opponent, turned, and walked back to the sidelines without waiting for Daikoku to call the match.

Instructor Daikoku silently made a notation on his clipboard.

From his spot against the fence, Yami exhaled a slow breath. The civilian students were whispering about Itachi’s “genius,” but Yami saw exactly what had just happened. That wasn’t just natural talent. That was the result of thousands of hours of brutal, repetitive drilling.

‘He didn’t think about that dodge,’ Yami analyzed internally, his mind dissecting the biomechanics. ‘He didn’t analyze Tokuma’s trajectory and calculate a counter. His body just reacted automatically. His spacing is flawless.’

Yami felt a sudden, sharp pang of inadequacy. He had the Shendu System. He had talismans that could grant him the speed of a veteran ninja and the destructive output of a siege engine. But Itachi possessed something entirely different: elite, real-world combat experience.

‘Fugaku didn’t just teach him the Fireball Jutsu,’ Yami realized. ‘He must have hired active-duty Jonin or ANBU to spar with him every single day since he could walk. Itachi has already bled in private courtyards. Being rich and the clan heir really is the ultimate cheat code.’

Daikoku cleared his throat, snapping the class out of their stupor. “Winner, Uchiha Itachi. Next match. Inuzuka Hana versus Uchiha Yami.”

Yami pushed himself off the fence. His heart gave a slight, unexpected thump against his ribs. He walked toward the chalk circle, trying to project the same aura of calm indifference that Itachi had just demonstrated.

Hana stepped into the ring from the opposite side. She was a year older than most of the class, her wild brown hair tied back, the red fang markings of her clan painted sharply on her cheeks. Trotting loyally beside her was a small, grey-furred ninken pup. The dog couldn’t have been more than a few months old, but it bared its tiny teeth and let out a surprisingly deep growl.

“Ninken are considered extensions of the shinobi,” Daikoku stated, reading the unasked question from the crowd. “Hana is permitted to fight alongside her partner. Begin!”

The whistle blew.

Hana didn’t hesitate. She dropped to all fours, channeling chakra into her limbs to adopt the feral, beast-mimicry style of the Inuzuka. “Get him, Haimaru!” she barked.

The grey pup lunged forward, moving with frightening speed, snapping its jaws directly toward Yami’s shins. Simultaneously, Hana launched herself through the air, her fingernails elongated into sharp claws, aiming a sweeping strike at Yami’s face.

For the first time in his second life, Yami was staring down active, malicious violence.

His adult brain immediately calculated the vectors. ‘The dog is a distraction. Step left, pivot, and sweep Hana’s trailing leg.’ It was a simple, logical counter.

But his six-year-old body didn’t listen.

As the snarling dog closed the distance and Hana’s claws slashed through the air, an intense, blinding wave of pure adrenaline dumped into Yami’s bloodstream. His breath caught in his throat. His chest tightened. For a fraction of a microsecond, the sheer, primal terror of being physically attacked completely short-circuited his rational thought.

‘He froze.’

Panic, cold and absolute, gripped his limbs. He wasn’t a ninja. He was an office worker who had died of a heart attack on a couch. He had never been in a fistfight in his entire life, let alone an orchestrated tactical assault by a feral child and a hunting dog.

‘Move!’ his mind screamed.

Desperation overrode logic. Without thinking, Yami mentally slammed his hand onto the metaphorical panic button.

‘System! Rabbit Talisman! Ten percent!’

The surge of energy was violent and instant. At ten percent output, Yami’s speed spiked to that of a high-level Genin. To the naked eyes of the academy students, Yami simply blurred.

But because he had activated it in a state of blind panic, he had zero control over his momentum. He didn’t gracefully step to the side like Itachi. He merely jerked his entire body forward in a desperate bid to escape the closing jaws of the ninken.

Yami moved so fast he completely bypassed the dog. He careened directly into Hana’s midair trajectory. He had no technique, no brace, no martial arts form. It was essentially a high-speed, accidental shoulder-check.

He collided heavily with Hana’s ribs. The impact knocked the breath out of her in a sharp gasp. The sheer kinetic force of Yami’s momentum launched her backward through the air. She flew past the chalk line and tumbled aggressively into the dirt, rolling twice before coming to a halt, completely disoriented.

Yami stumbled, his boots tearing deep gouges into the earth as he frantically pumped his legs to bleed off the speed. He managed to stop himself just an inch away from stepping out of bounds on the opposite side of the ring.

The ninken, realizing its master was gone, skidded to a halt and began barking frantically at Yami from the center of the ring.

The courtyard was quiet again, but this silence felt entirely different from the aftermath of Itachi’s match. It wasn’t awe. It was confusion.

Instructor Daikoku slowly lowered his clipboard. He looked at Hana, who was sitting up and rubbing her bruised ribs, and then looked at Yami, who was standing stiffly at the edge of the ring, his chest heaving despite the infinite stamina of the Tiger Talisman.

“Winner… Uchiha Yami,” Daikoku announced slowly, jotting down a very long, very deliberate note on his assessment sheet.

Hana’s face burned crimson beneath her clan markings. To be defeated in a single exchange by a boy a year younger than her—without him even using a hand seal—was a profound humiliation. She scooped up her ninken, avoiding the eyes of her classmates, and stormed back to the sidelines.

Yami walked out of the ring, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He didn’t feel like a winner. He felt sick to his stomach.

He bypassed the whispering crowds of civilian students and walked to the far corner of the courtyard, leaning his back against the rough bark of the old oak tree. He pulled his dark glasses off for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off the onset of a stress headache, before quickly sliding them back on.

‘You idiot,’ Yami berated himself relentlessly. ‘You absolute, pathetic coward. You completely locked up.’

He ran the simulation back in his mind. He had the Shendu System. He possessed superhuman speed, heat beams, fire blasts, and perfect chakra control. But none of that mattered. When faced with actual aggression, his modern-world sensibilities had paralyzed him.

‘If I evaluate that objectively,’ Yami thought, a cold sweat pricking the back of his neck, ‘I score a one out of ten. The only reason I won is because I have a cheat code that lets me out-stat her. If Hana and I had the exact same physical speed and strength… she would have gutted me. Her instinct was to attack. My instinct was to run.’

“That was a very sudden burst of speed, Yami-san.”

Yami flinched slightly, pulling himself out of his dark spiral. He looked up. Itachi was standing a few feet away, his hands resting politely in his pockets, his dark eyes observing Yami with quiet intensity.

“Congratulations on your victory,” Itachi added smoothly, stepping into the shade of the oak tree.

Yami let out a bitter, humorless laugh. He didn’t want to play the stoic prodigy right now. The adrenaline crash was making him irritable. “Don’t patronize me, Itachi. We both know what that was.”

Itachi tilted his head, his expression remaining perfectly neutral. “I saw an efficient, overwhelming use of physical speed to instantly remove the opponent from the combat area. It achieved the objective with minimal expenditure of chakra.”

“You saw a kid panic and trip into a girl,” Yami corrected him bluntly, turning his head to look out at the sparring ring, where the Akimichi heir was currently wrestling with a civilian boy. “I didn’t plan that strike. I froze. I got scared of the dog, panicked, and just pushed chakra into my legs to get away. I won by accident.”

Itachi fell silent. He looked at Yami for a long, calculating moment. The facade of the polite, distant clan heir cracked just a fraction, revealing a brief flash of genuine empathy.

“If it offers any consolation,” Itachi said quietly, his voice dropping so the surrounding students couldn’t hear, “fighting experience is not innate. It comes slowly, through repetition and exposure. When my father made me spar against an active Genin for the first time… I almost froze completely. The intent to kill is heavy. It takes time to learn how to breathe underneath it.”

Yami turned his head back to Itachi, genuinely shocked. For a brief, wild second, he wondered if the boy had a rudimentary form of mind-reading.

But as he looked into Itachi’s deep, dark eyes, Yami realized two things simultaneously. First, Itachi was incredibly emotionally intelligent; he had read Yami’s posture, his accelerated breathing, and his self-deprecating tone, and deduced exactly what Yami was feeling.

Second, Itachi was lying through his teeth.

‘You never froze,’ Yami thought, staring at the boy who would one day slaughter his own parents without a tremor in his hands. ‘You are a born killer, Itachi. Your instincts are flawless. You’re just making up a story to make me feel better because your mother told you to be nice to me.’

Despite the lie, the gesture was surprisingly warm. Itachi was actively trying to comfort a clanmate.

“Thanks, Itachi,” Yami said softly, forcing a small smile. “I appreciate it. I guess I just need to get hit a few times to get used to it.”

Itachi nodded slightly. “Repetition is the mother of mastery, Yami-san. You have the speed. You merely need the structure.”

—

The walk home that afternoon felt twice as long as usual. The setting sun cast long, ominous shadows across the Uchiha district.

When Yami pushed open the front door of his house, the warm scent of simmering miso and grilled fish greeted him. Aru was at the stove, humming quietly to herself, while Aki sat on the floor, aggressively trying to force a wooden block through the wrong hole of a shape-sorter toy.

Hanta was sitting at the low dining table, dressed in a comfortable yukata, a steaming cup of green tea resting in his hands. He looked up as Yami entered, a weary smile crossing his face.

“Ah, the academic returns,” Hanta greeted. “How was the sparring assessment? Did you manage to stay off the instructor’s bad side today?”

Yami didn’t smile back. He slipped off his sandals, walked directly to the table, and sat down opposite his father. He placed his hands flat on the wood.

“Dad,” Yami said, his voice deadly serious. “I need you to fight me.”

Hanta paused, his teacup halfway to his mouth. He blinked, clearly thrown off by the request. Aru stopped humming in the kitchen, turning her head to look over her shoulder.

“Excuse me?” Hanta asked, setting the cup down slowly.

“I need to spar,” Yami clarified, his tone unyielding. “Every day. For as long as you can manage it. I won my match today against the Inuzuka girl, but it was a fluke. When she attacked me, I panicked. I completely locked up. I have speed, and I have reserves, but I have absolutely no idea what to do when someone is actually trying to hurt me.”

Hanta stared at his son. The weary, domestic father slowly vanished, replaced by the hardened gaze of an Uchiha Chunin. He understood exactly what Yami was confessing. It was the fundamental crisis of every newly minted academy student: the gap between theory and violence.

“Panic is a killer,” Hanta said quietly. “It breaks your hand seals and makes your feet heavy.”

“I know,” Yami replied. “I need to unlearn it. I need you to hit me until I stop flinching.”

Aru opened her mouth to protest, a mother’s natural instinct rising in her throat, but Hanta raised a hand to silence her. He didn’t take his eyes off Yami.

“I am a Chunin of the Military Police,” Hanta said smoothly. “My shifts are long. I am tired when I come home.”

“I don’t care,” Yami pressed. “Please.”

A slow, proud smile spread across Hanta’s face. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. “Go put your training clothes on. Meet me in the backyard in five minutes.”

—

The backyard of their new compound home was spacious, enclosed by a high wooden fence that offered complete privacy from the street. The grass was already trampled down in the center from Yami’s earlier, solitary katas.

The moon had begun to rise, casting a pale, silver glow over the yard.

Hanta stood in the center, adjusting the tape around his wrists. He wasn’t wearing his police flak jacket, just a simple black undershirt and training pants. He looked entirely relaxed.

“We start with the basics,” Hanta instructed as Yami stepped onto the grass. “I will not use ninjutsu. I will not use the Sharingan. We are fighting purely to condition your nervous system. I want you to attack me with the intent to put me on the ground.”

Yami nodded, settling into a rudimentary stance. He took a deep breath, centering himself. He reached into his system.

‘Activate Rabbit Talisman: 15%. Activate Ox Talisman: 5%.’

He didn’t want to use his full power. He wanted to match Hanta’s physical baseline to force himself to learn technique, not just rely on overwhelming stats.

“Come,” Hanta challenged, gesturing with two fingers.

Yami launched himself forward. The Rabbit Talisman gave his dash a sharp, sudden explosiveness. He closed the gap in an instant, throwing a solid right hook aimed at Hanta’s jaw, utilizing the slight strength enhancement of the Ox to put weight behind the blow.

Hanta didn’t flinch. As the punch came in, he smoothly shifted his weight to the left. He brought his forearm up, parrying Yami’s strike with a sharp, stinging slap that knocked Yami’s arm completely off its trajectory.

Before Yami could recover his balance, Hanta stepped inside his guard, hooked a foot behind Yami’s knee, and shoved his shoulder.

Yami hit the grass hard, the breath rushing out of his lungs in a painful ‘whoosh’.

“Dead,” Hanta stated flatly, looking down at him. “You telegraphed that punch from across the yard. Your eyes looked directly at my jaw before you even moved your feet. Again.”

Yami scrambled back to his feet, ignoring the dull ache in his back. He gritted his teeth and attacked again.

For the first ten minutes, the spar was a brutal, one-sided lesson in humility. Yami possessed the speed to keep up with his father, and the raw strength to make his hits dangerous, but his timing was atrocious. The Shendu System was a well of infinite raw power, but it offered absolutely zero martial arts technique.

Hanta dismantled him systematically. He used the Uchiha Interceptor Style flawlessly—never blocking Yami’s enhanced strikes directly, but slipping past them, parrying the joints, and exploiting Yami’s wild momentum to throw him into the dirt over and over again.

But Yami possessed an adult mind. He wasn’t a child blindly throwing tantrums. With every time he was thrown to the ground, his brain was frantically analyzing the data.

‘He breathes out right before he shifts his weight,’ Yami noted, picking himself up for the twelfth time. ‘He drops his left shoulder when he prepares for a sweep. He always pivots on the ball of his back foot.’

“You’re thinking too loud,” Hanta barked, stepping forward aggressively to press the advantage. He threw a rapid combination—a jab to the face, followed by a sweeping kick to the ribs.

Yami didn’t panic this time. The exposure therapy was working. He saw the jab coming. Instead of freezing, he ducked beneath it, the Rabbit Talisman accelerating his evasion just enough to slip the strike. As the kick came toward his ribs, Yami didn’t try to block it. He stepped ‘into’ the attack, jamming his elbow down onto Hanta’s thigh before the kick could fully extend.

The impact of the Ox Talisman colliding with the muscle made Hanta grunt in surprise. His leg buckled slightly.

Capitalizing on the opening, Yami spun, throwing a sweeping backhand toward his father’s chest.

Hanta recovered instantly, catching Yami’s wrist in a vise-like grip. He twisted sharply, using Yami’s own rotational force to flip the boy over his shoulder. Yami hit the ground again, but this time, he rolled with the impact, springing back to his feet and creating distance immediately.

Hanta didn’t pursue. He stood perfectly still in the center of the yard.

The spar had been going on for twenty uninterrupted minutes.

Yami stood at the edge of the grass, his chest rising and falling evenly. The Tiger Talisman was easily absorbing the stamina drain, his chakra and physical energy remaining at peak levels. He was bruised, covered in dirt, and his pride was thoroughly battered, but he felt a strange, exhilarating clarity. He was beginning to understand the pace of a fight.

He looked at his father, waiting for the next instruction.

Hanta was bent over, his hands resting heavily on his knees. He was taking massive, shuddering gasps of air. Sweat poured down his face, soaking the collar of his undershirt. His legs were visibly trembling.

Yami lowered his guard, his exhilaration vanishing instantly. He stared at his father in shock.

Hanta wasn’t just winded. He was completely, utterly exhausted. His stamina pool was entirely drained from a mere twenty minutes of mid-level Taijutsu against a six-year-old child.

Yami’s analytical mind clicked into gear, and the realization hit him with the force of a physical blow.

‘My stats aren’t that high,’ Yami thought, feeling a cold dread settle in his stomach. ‘With the talismans suppressed to ten percent, my physical output is barely that of a newly promoted Chunin. If he’s a veteran… he shouldn’t be tired.’

But Hanta wasn’t a veteran of the front lines anymore. He was a Military Police officer. For the past several years, his daily life had consisted of filing paperwork, breaking up drunken brawls in the civilian district, and patrolling safe, paved streets. He hadn’t faced a life-or-death battle since before the Kyuubi attack.

The soft, bureaucratic life of the police force had eroded his stamina. His instincts were still sharp, his technique was flawless, but his body had grown lazy. He was a paper tiger.

Yami looked down at his own small hands. A deep, profound depression washed over him.

‘If my father is the standard for the Uchiha Police Force,’ Yami realized grimly, ‘then this clan is doomed. Danzo won’t even need Itachi to kill us. A single squad of hardened, active-duty Root ANBU could tear through this compound in a night. We are soft.’

Across the yard, Hanta slowly straightened up, wiping the sweat from his eyes with the back of a trembling wrist. He looked at his son, who wasn’t even breathing hard.

Hanta saw the realization in Yami’s eyes, and a deep flush of shame crept up his neck. He had wanted to teach his son a lesson about combat, but he had ended up exposing his own severe physical decline. He had almost been outlasted by a boy who hadn’t even unlocked his Sharingan yet.

Hanta closed his eyes, his fists clenching at his sides. The pride of a father, the pride of an Uchiha, flared to life, burning away the lethargy of the past few years.

“We are done for tonight,” Hanta said, his voice raspy but firm. He opened his eyes, the obsidian black burning with a renewed, fierce determination. “Tomorrow, I run the perimeter of the compound before work. And tomorrow evening… we spar again. I will not be the one to hold you back, Yami.”

Yami looked at his father’s determined face and felt a faint, genuine smile break through his depression.

“I’ll hold you to that, Dad,” Yami said quietly.

The road ahead was infinitely longer than he had thought. But for the first time since he had awakened in this world, Yami felt like they were finally taking a step forward together.