There was a gratifying little ripple of noise from the spectators when what was left of the pig carcass dripped off the rope, half-decayed bones splattering in the blackened ooze beneath. Ryouma cut the chakra flow; the reddish-black light haloing his hands flickered out, leaving his palm slick with rotting sludge. He shook a few drops off and stooped to wipe his hand in the rain-wet grass. The commander was conferring with the proctors at the edge of the field; no one had new orders for him yet. He cast a quick glance back, over his shoulder.

Most of the other candidates were staring. A few—probably the more imaginative ones—looked a little pale.

Kakashi was reading his book, with the slanted hitai-ate anchored firmly over the Sharingan eye.

Well, Ryouma had deliberately turned his back when he started the hand-seals for the Nikutai Hakai no Jutsu. Maybe Kakashi’d gotten bored. Or maybe he wasn’t, actually, anxious to get his lungs liquified.

Shinobi told stories, in bars, around campfires. Senju Hashirama, the Shodai Hokage, defeating Uchiha Madara at the Valley of the End; the legendary Sannin, including Shodai’s granddaughter Tsunade-hime, holding Traitor’s Gap alone against an army. The Yellow Flash, Yondaime himself, who was barely twenty-two when he came closer than anyone ever had to killing the Raikage. And Yondaime’s silver-haired student, Sharingan no Kakashi, who’d inherited an eye from an Uchiha and split a lightning bolt.

People said he was kind of weird, mostly rude, and scary as hell on the battlefield. No one actually said he was a bastard, though, and they didn’t hesitate to apply that label to Uchiha who earned it.

Still—who got to say they’d punched Sharingan no Kakashi and lived?