"When I first placed my hopes in you, all I wanted was for you to come close to my sensei's level. Looking at you now, you've not only caught up, you've surpassed him."
Kakashi knew full well that Akira had mastered the Flying Raijin Jutsu, the signature art of the Fourth Hokage.
But what made Akira truly terrifying was this:
His neural reaction speed was even faster than the Fourth's.
The core principle of the Flying Raijin Jutsu itself was not especially complicated. The spatial jump in between worked the same for everyone.
The real deciding factor was the instant the jutsu activated, and the split second after you appeared beside your target and moved to strike.
Especially that moment when you arrived at the enemy's side, that was where life and death were decided.
Your attack had to be faster than the enemy's reaction, or you were the one handing over your own life.
That was the greatest threshold and limitation of the Flying Raijin Jutsu.
It solved the problem of how to get there, but the final cut, the final blow, still depended entirely on the user's own reactions.
If an ordinary shinobi with mediocre reflexes tried to use Flying Raijin, it would practically be suicide. More burden than advantage.
Because if the enemy's reaction speed surpassed yours, then the moment you teleported in, your head would be rolling before your hand even rose.
The most famous example was Minato Namikaze's clash with the Fourth Raikage A and Killer B.
Killer B's instantaneous reaction speed had unquestionably been sharper than even the Fourth Raikage's.
Minato could toy with the Fourth Raikage because his own neural response was faster.
But the reason Killer B managed to predict Minato's landing point and intercept him was simple: B's reaction speed had already come astonishingly close to Minato's.
If, back then, there had been a sensory-type shinobi with that kind of speed, Minato might truly have been in danger.
Still, in that era, people who could outreact Minato were nearly nonexistent.
That was why he had become the Yellow Flash.
He had been born with extraordinary neural reflexes. He was, in every sense, the ideal wielder of the Flying Raijin Jutsu.
And now, Akira's reaction speed had unquestionably surpassed Minato's, and not by some tiny margin either.
The instant Lightning Net he had just cast was proof enough.
That explosion had unfolded in mere milliseconds, too fast for the naked eye to properly follow.
Yet Akira had still managed, in the exact instant the blast occurred, to deploy and fully shape Lightning Net.
That kind of inhuman reaction speed was enough to make anyone despair.
Thinking back to the Fourth Great Ninja War, the reason Tobirama Senju had been toyed with by Madara Uchiha even while using Flying Raijin was because his reaction speed couldn't keep up with Madara's.
His attack hadn't even been fully launched before Madara had already read it and seized the opening.
So in the end, without a mind and set of reflexes fast enough to match, Flying Raijin was little more than a glorified travel jutsu.
That was why so many people either failed to learn it, or learned it and still didn't dare use it.
Not everyone was born with reflexes that could outpace lightning.
And beyond that, Flying Raijin was also a massive chakra drain.
Minato's chakra reserves, while not at the absolute peak of Kage-class fighters, still far exceeded those of an average elite jonin, and he fought with ruthless efficiency.
But Akira?
He didn't just crush earlier users in reaction speed and tactical thought, his chakra reserves were also as vast as the sea.
It was the complete superiority of his stats in every category that led Kakashi to conclude he had already surpassed the Fourth.
The reason no one had realized it sooner was simple: until now, Akira's battles had mostly been won by brute force alone, overwhelming everything in front of him head-on.
That kind of raw power was already Kage-level, even among Kage-class monsters it was hard to find many who could stand against it.
But ever since Akira had learned Flying Raijin, he had rarely needed to truly use it, nor had he encountered an opponent capable of forcing his reaction speed to its limit.
So Kakashi had never dared confirm it.
Until now.
Akira paid no attention to what everyone else was thinking. His gaze shifted instead toward an unremarkable little mound of earth nearby.
"Well, I'll admit it. I didn't expect you to survive the center of a blast like that, Sasori."
The moment the words left his mouth, the mound of dirt a few dozen meters away suddenly twitched.
Then the soil cracked apart, and a figure slowly climbed out from underground.
It was Sasori.
At the instant of the explosion, he had decisively used Earth Style to burrow dozens of meters below the surface, then raised multiple Earth-Style Ramparts above himself for defense.
To him, that world-shaking detonation had amounted to little more than dust falling on his head.
Akira spoke calmly. "Kakashi-sensei, Naruto, Sakura, go after Deidara. Don't let him escape."
Kakashi understood immediately. Akira clearly intended to deal with Sasori alone.
He nodded. "Then be careful."
Akira gave a slight nod in return.
But just then, Sakura suddenly cut in.
"Kakashi-sensei, I want to stay and fight with Akira. I still have antidotes for Sasori's poison. If I stay, I can help."
After all, in the chaos of the explosion, Deidara had used a clay bird to snatch up Gaara's body and flee.
Kakashi weighed the pros and cons for a brief moment, then nodded.
"All right then. Akira, I'm leaving Sakura in your hands."
At that moment, Naruto cast Akira a strangely complicated look, something faintly suspicious and a little sour flickering in his eyes.
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