Chapter 7 : Shocking
Ren lay there for a second, staring up at the blue sky through the canopy of trees. Then, a sound started. Low at first, then rising. Laughter. Harsh, humorless laughter bubbled up from Ren's throat, blood flecking his lips. He laughed as he lay sprawled in the dirt.
The crowd shifted uneasily. Murmurs changed tone.
"He's lost it..."
"Mad with grief..."
"Uchiha madness..."
Asuma frowned, confused. "What's so funny, loser?"
Still laughing, Ren pushed himself up onto his elbows, then slowly, painfully, got to his feet. He swayed slightly, wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand, a dark, unsettling grin spreading across his face. He looked directly at Asuma. "Win?" Ren rasped, his laughter fading to a chilling chuckle. "Are you *sure* you won, Sarutobi?"
Asuma bristled. "I beat you into the dirt! Look at you! Everyone saw it!"
The crowd roared its agreement. "Accept your loss, Uchiha!"
"Shameless!"
"Can't even admit defeat!
Ren ignored them, his gaze fixed on Asuma, the unsettling grin still in place. His ordinary brown eyes seemed to hold an infinite, alien depth. "How," he asked, his voice suddenly clear and cold, cutting through the noise, "can you win a fight... that never happened?"
Confusion rippled through the crowd. "What?"
"Never happened?"
"He *is* mad!"
Asuma took a step back, unease flickering across his face. "What are you talking—?"
Then, it began.
A scorch mark on the ground where a stray fireball had landed... simply *vanished*. Like it had been wiped away by an invisible eraser. The scattered shuriken Genma had been throwing earlier... dissolved into nothingness. The gouge Ren's heel had made when he stumbled... smoothed over as if the earth had never been disturbed.
Gasps erupted. People rubbed their eyes. Asuma stared, open-mouthed, at the ground where Ren had just lain bleeding. It was pristine.
The changes accelerated. The scuff marks from their frantic footwork disappeared. The slight tear in Asuma's sleeve from a near-graze vanished. The faint smudges of dirt on both their clothes... gone. The very *memory* of the impact, the jarring force of the blows Ren had felt... it all began to feel distant, unreal, like a half-remembered dream.
Ren stood perfectly clean, unmarked, no trace of blood on his chin or pain in his stance. He looked exactly as he had moments *before* the fight began.
The crowd's noise died into utter, stunned silence. Eyes wide with disbelief and dawning terror scanned the perfectly restored training ground. "Illusion!" someone whispered hoarsely. "Genjutsu! It has to be!"
Asuma stood frozen, pale, his triumphant posture gone, replaced by pure shock. He looked at his own hands, then at the spotless ground, then back at Ren, who met his gaze with unnerving calm.
Then, Ren himself began to... *unmake*. Not fade, but his presence seemed to *retract*. One moment he was solidly there, the next, it was as if the light bent subtly around where he should be, and then he was simply *standing a few feet away*, exactly where he had been when Asuma first called out to him. The position he occupied before the confrontation even started.
The world seemed to *snap* back into place with a silent, profound finality. Field 5 was pristine. No signs of combat. No scattered weapons. Ren stood near the oak tree, looking slightly bored, as if he'd just arrived. Asuma stood frozen near the center of the field, his expression one of utter, bewildered horror, the flush of victory replaced by the pallor of existential confusion. The crowd was utterly silent, mouths agape, some trembling.
In the deep shadows beneath the trees at the far edge of the field, two figures stood, unnoticed until now. Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage, leaned forward slightly, his normally calm blue eyes wide with intense scrutiny and profound shock. Beside him, Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime, clutched his pipe, the bowl cold and forgotten. His face was ashen, his eyes fixed on the spot where reality had just unraveled and rewoven itself.
Minato's voice was a bare whisper, tight with disbelief. "Genjutsu? On this scale... undetectable?"
Hiruzen slowly shook his head, his knuckles white on his pipe. His voice, when it came, was thin, strained with an unfamiliar fear. "No, Minato. That... that was no illusion. I don't... I don't know *what* that was."