The Uchiha’s grimoire guide to winning: chapter 3: what do you see?

The drone of the academy’s teacher voice washed over me, a slurring wave of facts about the first great Shinobi War crashing against the shores of my profound indifference. Chalk dust hung in the afternoon sunbeams slanting through the high windows, motes dancing like lazy fireflies in the stifling air. History. Geography. Chakra theory distilled into equations drier than the deserts of Wind Country. Calligraphy lessons where the brush strokes felt like dragging my soul through mud. It was a feat, truly. How did they manage to render lessons about a world where people spat fire like dragons, walked on water like myths, moved faster than thought, crushed mountains with a punch, and literally wrestled souls back from the underworld boring? It defied logic. Was it the soul-deep ennui of the original Ren, the minor prodigy who’d probably absorbed this years ago? Or the jaded perspective of the older consciousness grafted onto him, for whom textbooks were a universal language of tedium? Either way, the minutes crawled, each one a grain of sand slipping through an hourglass filled with molasses.

My fingers itched. Not for the brush, not for the scroll. For the cool weight of a kunai. For the burn of chakra channeling through pathways still thrillingly new to the deeper part of me. For the world to sharpen into the cold, crystalline clarity of the Sharingan. The enforced rest of the past week had been a velvet prison; this felt like being buried alive in cotton wool.

Finally, finally, the bell clanged, a sound that felt at that moment sweeter than any celestial chorus. The theoretical paralysis shattered. We spilled out of the classroom like uncorked genies, the collective sigh of relief practically audible. Practical training. Salvation.

The first part was ritual. Kunai and shuriken throwing. Wooden dummies stood sentinel at the far end of the designated yard, their painted-on grimaces seeming almost mocking. For me, it was effortless. Muscle memory, deep as bone, carved by years of Uchiha tutelage starting almost as soon as I could walk. The grip, the stance, the flick of the wrist – it flowed like instinct. Thunk. Thunk. Thwip. Each blade found its mark in the dummy's 'heart' or 'eye socket' with satisfying precision. Takeshi gave a curt nod of approval nearby; Yumi smirked, her own throws a blur of deadly accuracy. Even Kenji, silent as ever, landed his projectiles with economical grace. Clan legacy. Ingrained.

Then came the laps. Around the vast Academy training field, under the watchful eye of a Chunin instructor whose expression suggested he genuinely believed ten-year-olds possessed the stamina of tireless badgers. An hour and a half. Non-stop. A grueling test of endurance that seemed to be meant to weed out the weak, to build the foundation for the chakra-fueled marathons of real shinobi life. My lungs burned, yes. Sweat plastered the dark blue of my Uchiha branded clothes to my skin. But beneath the surface fatigue, a different awareness thrummed. The borrowed chakra system, even passive, was working miracles. The original Ren had been fit, talented, but this? This felt… easy. Like a light jog through the compound gardens, not a lung-bursting ordeal. The cellular furnace burned clean and hot, the spiritual energy lending a focus that pushed the screaming protests of muscles into the background. I finished near the front, breathing hard but steady, a stark contrast to some of my gasping, red-faced classmates. The Chunin instructor’s eyebrow twitched slightly as I passed.

And now. The best part in my opinion. Sparring.

A low thrum of anticipation vibrated through the gathered students. Matches were being called. My name hung in the air, followed inevitably by his.

"Hiroto Hyuuga."

A ripple went through the crowd. The Rookie of the Year. The prodigy of the main branch. My or more accurately, the original’s Ren personal nemesis.

The original Ren’s memories surged, a cocktail of resentment, frustration, and cold, hard defeat. Every previous encounter etched in humiliation. Hiroto moved with an infuriating, effortless grace, his pale eyes perpetually holding a look of faint disdain, as if the very air we breathed was beneath him. He embodied everything the Uchiha despised about the Hyuuga: the rigid hierarchy, the poisonous belief in their own divine superiority. The memory flashed – Hiroto, coldly activating the Caged Bird Seal on a branch family classmate during a minor disagreement, the boy crumpling in silent agony while Hiroto looked on, impassive. Who does that? The rage, old and new, curdled in my gut like spoiled milk. Especially to family? What twisted logic justifies that torture? The Sharingan’s coal pulsed behind my eyelids almost like a sympathetic echo of the fury. Disgust wasn’t strong enough. It was a visceral revulsion.

And then there were the comments. The subtle barbs, delivered with his clan’s special brand of haughtiness. "A shame your… accident didn't teach more caution, Uchiha." "One wonders if your clan's famed eyes are truly worth the fragility they seem to bring." Never overt, always deniable, but the intent – the gloating over my near-death, the implication of weakness – was crystal clear. He was a child, yes. So was the Ren who had died. Age offered no absolution for cruelty wrapped in silk or in other words, your age didn’t excuse you being an asshole, maybe explained it or justified it but never excused it.

I stepped onto the worn earth of the sparring ring. The familiar scent of damp soil and trampled grass filled my nostrils. Across from me, Hiroto mirrored the movement, his expression serene, already radiating that insufferable certainty. We faced each other, the air seeming, feeling as if it was thickening, as if it had become heavier. The tradition of Konoha demanded it: the Reconciliation Seal. Hands brought together in a formal gesture of peace before and after a combat.

He straightened, and without preamble, the transformation began. Veins bulged grotesquely around his temples, spiderwebbing outwards as his pupils vanished, replaced by the eerie, pupil-less white of the activated Byakugan. The air around him seemed to still, charged with an oppressive awareness. His voice, when it came, was calm, devoid of inflection, carrying perfectly in the sudden hush.

"You should concede, Uchiha. History dictates the outcome. Your limitations remain unchanged." A statement of fact, in his world. "You never could win. You never will."

A soft inhale. The scent of earth, sweat, anticipation. Exhale, pushing out doubt, pushing out the phantom ache of past defeats. I closed my dark eyes. Behind the lids, the coal ignited, flaring into life. When I opened them, the world fractured into hyper-reality. Sharingan. Twin crimson pinwheels, each bearing two tomoe, spun lazily, drinking in the light, the shadows, the minute shift of dust motes, the almost imperceptible tension coiling in Hiroto's shoulders. Every detail screamed its importance. The world wasn't just seen; it was understood, predicted.

A slow smirk spread across my face, sharp and dangerous. It felt alien on Ren's features, a reflection of the older, angrier consciousness now steering the ship. My voice, when it came, was lower, colder than the original Ren's had ever managed.

"Hiroto Hyuuga," I said, the name dropping like a stone. "It seems a fundamental misunderstanding clouds your perception." I took a single, deliberate step forward. The Sharingan tracked the infinitesimal tightening around his Byakugan-veined eyes. "You and your borrowed sight… you are the challengers here."

The silence that followed was absolute. Stunned. Even the chunin, the academy teacher, moving to oversee, paused mid-step. The original Ren had after all never dared to insult so blatantly Hiroto and his clan unlike me.

Hiroto’s serene mask cracked, just for a microsecond, a flicker of surprise, then cold fury, flashing across his face before the Hyuuga impassivity slammed back down.

He moved.

The world became a whirlwind of predicted trajectories and lethal intent. Hiroto wasn't fast in the blinding, teleportation sense  but the way he moved, the efficiency of it, the speed of it was I had to admit in a sense terrifying. The Hyuga was moving at speeds I was sure would make a sport car seem as slow as a snail.

The part of me that came from another world had once watched a captain America movie and in it, there was one particular scene that in my opinion showed how different, how better than the average person were superhumans like Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and T Challa. In the scene that was a pursuit one, the three of them had been running faster than cars. I was sure without a doubt that Hiroto who was I had to remind an academy studen not over twelve would have probably been able to run faster than them. Truly, chakra was bullshit.

The Byakugan granted him near-perfect spherical awareness. He flowed across the packed earth like quicksilver, closing the distance with deceptive, gliding steps that covered ground far quicker than his relaxed posture suggested. Advanced agility, honed by relentless Hyuuga drills. His lead hand snapped out, fingers rigid, aiming not for my face or torso, but for the cluster of tenketsu points on my right shoulder – the Gentle Fist's opening gambit, designed to sever chakra flow, cripple the limb before the fight truly began.

Predictable.

The Sharingan saw it unfolding frames before his muscles fully committed. The neural impulse, the micro-shift of weight, the angle of his wrist – a data stream flooding my visual cortex, processed instantly into evasive action. My body reacted before conscious thought could bridge the gap. Not a grand leap, but a subtle, economical twist of the hips, a fractional sway backwards. His fingertips whistled past the fabric of my sleeve, close enough to feel the displaced air kiss my skin. Miss.

He didn't pause. His momentum carried him forward, the missed strike seamlessly transitioning into a low, sweeping kick aimed at my ankles, a move designed to off-balance, to create an opening for precision strikes. The earth exploded upwards where his foot impacted, making dust bloomed.

Pattern recognized.

The Sharingan mapped his flow, the ingrained Hyuuga kata. He favored linear entries, trusting his vision to cover flanks and rear. I didn't retreat. I stepped in, inside the arc of his kick before it reached full extension. My left forearm slammed down, not against his shin, but against his supporting thigh, a brutal block channeling my own building-level strength. Bone met bone with a sickening thud that echoed across the suddenly silent field. Hiroto grunted, his perfect balance faltering for a heartbeat.

Exploit.

My right hand, fingers curled not into a fist but into a rigid spear-hand (Uchiha variant – less finesse, more penetrating force), jabbed towards his exposed solar plexus. Speed amplified by anticipation, by the Sharingan’s guidance system.

The Byakugan saved him. He saw it coming, twisting his torso with serpentine grace, my fingertips grazing his uniform instead of finding soft tissue. He used the momentum of his dodge, spinning away, putting precious meters between us. His breathing, for the first time, hitched slightly. The veins around his eyes pulsed.

"Lucky," he hissed, the calm veneer finally fracturing. "A stray breeze."

"Call it foresight," I countered, my voice steady despite the adrenaline singing in my veins. The Sharingan whirled, drinking in his micro-expressions, the slight tension in his neck, the way his weight settled more heavily on his back foot. He's reassessing. Good. Let him.

He came again, not with a single thrust, but with a flurry. Hands became blurs, a storm of jabs, palms, and finger strikes aimed at tenketsu points across my chest, arms, and legs. The Gentle Fist unleashed. Each strike carried the potential to deaden muscle, to block meridians, to turn limbs into useless weights. The air hummed with the speed of his attacks, a deadly melody only the Sharingan could fully parse.

Analysis: High-speed, multi-vector assault. Primary threat: chakra disruption. Secondary: cumulative impact damage.

The world narrowed to the dance of his limbs. My body became a leaf in a hurricane, swaying, twisting, bending. I didn't try to match his intricate precision blow-for-blow. The Sharingan gave me the path through the storm. A head snapped back, millimeters clear of a thumb aimed at my temple. A shoulder rolled, letting a palm-strike whisper past. A knee lifted, deflecting a low kick aimed at my thigh point. I moved with a fluidity that felt alien yet instinctive, a blend of Uchiha agility drills and the Sharingan’s predictive grace. My blocks were economical, brutal parries that knocked his strikes offline with jarring force, exploiting the fraction of a second his commitment to an attack created. Each block sent shockwaves up my arms, a reminder of his strength, but the Sharingan ensured they were glancing blows, not direct hits.

Counter.

He overextended on a lunge aimed at my hip point. My left hand shot out, not to block, but to grab his extended wrist. Bone ground against bone. My right fist, powered by coiled legs and twisting hips, rocketed towards his face. A basic straight punch, amplified by anticipation and chakra reinforcement.

He saw it. Of course he saw it. The Byakugan’s near-360 vision meant little escaped its notice. His free hand came up in a palm block, intercepting my fist inches from his nose. The impact was thunderous. CRACK! Not bone breaking, but the sound of colliding forces meeting with brutal finality. Shockwaves rippled outwards, kicking up dust devils around our locked forms. We strained, muscles corded, feet digging trenches in the earth. For a suspended moment, brute force met Hyuuga technique.

His eyes, wide and white within their nest of veins, held mine. Pure, unadulterated fury burned there now, mixed with a dawning disbelief. "Impossible! Your speed… your reactions…"

"The Sharingan sees, Hiroto," I goaded him through gritted teeth, pushing against his resisting palm. "It sees everything you are." Including the tiny, almost imperceptible lag – the processing time – between what the Byakugan showed him and his body's reaction.

I disengaged abruptly, not with a push, but by dropping my center of gravity and twisting violently, wrenching my captured wrist free with a surge of strength that surprised even me. He stumbled forward, off-balance. Before he could recover, I was a blur of motion, not attacking him directly, but moving.

The sparring ring wasn't just dirt. Training dummies lined the edges. Buckets of water for cooling off stood near the entrance. Racks held practice weapons – wooden staves, training swords. The Sharingan cataloged it all, not as backdrop, but as potential. There were no consign decrying using our environment.

I feinted left, towards a cluster of dummies. Hiroto pivoted smoothly, Byakugan tracking, expecting a dodge or perhaps a desperate grab for a weapon. Instead, my foot hooked under the base of a heavy wooden dummy as I passed. Channeling chakra instinctively, not for a technique, but for raw kinetic enhancement – a surge of Yang energy into the leg – I heaved.

The dummy, easily twice my weight, tore free from its mounting with a splintering shriek. It became a tumbling projectile, hurtling end-over-end directly towards Hiroto. Not to hit him – he'd easily dodge that – but to occupy the Byakugan’s primary focus, to fill its vast field of view with chaotic motion.

He reacted instantly, sidestepping the tumbling mass of wood with contemptuous ease. But that was the point. The Sharingan saw his focus lock onto the dummy, saw the micro-second his awareness shifted from me to the immediate physical threat.

Now.

I wasn't where he expected. The dummy-throw masked my true vector. I'd used its bulk as a screen, darting low and right, towards the water buckets. My hand dipped into the icy water, scooped, and flung. Not a handful, but a chakra-infused sheet, fanned out into a glittering spray. It wouldn't hurt him. But water refracts light. For a fraction of a second, the Byakugan’s perfect vision would be filled with a million shimmering, shifting prisms and his vision being so much better should logically be more impacted.

He flinched. Visibly. A split-second loss of perfect clarity. A chink in the Hyuuga armor.

I was already moving, not towards his front, but exploiting the one thing the older memories, the knowledge from beyond, granted me: the dead angle. High on the back of the neck, just below the skull. A tiny cone of blindness inherent in the Byakugan's otherwise godlike view. The Sharingan, with its intense focus on him, pinpointed the exact vector.

Chakra surged through my legs. All the speed I was capable of, but focused into a single, explosive burst. The earth cratered where I pushed off. I became a crimson-and-blue streak, closing the gap behind him before the water droplets even hit the ground. My right hand, fingers rigid once more, aimed not for a nebulous point, but for a precise, powerful chop  targeting the vulnerable base of his skull. A knockout blow. It should normally work because no matter how stronger the humans of this world were, they still were human.

He sensed it. The Byakugan, even momentarily dazzled, still perceived the surge of chakra, the displacement of air. His Hyuuga reflexes were extraordinary. He couldn't turn fully, couldn't see the strike coming, but he twisted, throwing himself forward into a desperate dive, trying to roll with the impact.

He was fast. But the Sharingan had predicted the evasion. My strike adjusted mid-flight, millimeters, compensating for his movement.

THWACK!

The edge of my hand connected, not cleanly on the sweet spot, but high on his shoulder, just above the collarbone. Bone crunched. Not broken, but bruised, deeply. The force, amplified by my momentum and chakra-enhanced strength, slammed him down into the dirt face-first. He skidded, plowing a furrow in the earth, coming to a stop near the splintered remains of the dummy I'd thrown.

Silence. Absolute and crushing. Dust settled slowly. The only sounds were Hiroto’s ragged, pained gasps as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, his pristine white Hyuuga robes torn and smeared with dirt, his Byakugan still active but wide with shock and agony. Blood trickled from a split lip where his face had hit the ground.

I stood a few paces away, breathing steadily, the Sharingan still casting the world in crimson and black, the twin tomoe spinning slowly. My knuckles throbbed from the impact on his shoulder. The scent of damp earth, sweat, and the faint coppery tang of blood filled my nostrils.

The academy teacher stepped forward, his face a mask of that seemed to want to scream indifference , but his eyes - wide - showed the truth of the matter. "Match!" he called, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. "Ren Uchiha is the victor."

The reaction was delayed, then erupted. Gasps. Murmurs. Disbelief. Takeshi let out a low, satisfied chuckle. Yumi whistled, sharp and approving. Kenji simply nodded, a ghost of a smile touching his lips.

Hiroto pushed himself fully up, wincing as he clutched his injured shoulder. His Byakugan veins receded, leaving his pale eyes bloodshot and filled with a venomous mixture of pain, humiliation, and utter, uncomprehending fury. He looked at me, not with disdain, but with something raw and primal. The invincible facade lay shattered in the dirt beside him.

He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The hatred radiating from him was a physical force.

I met his gaze, the Sharingan drinking in every flicker of emotion, every tremor of pain. “The only reason you were able to win was because no Uchiha with a sharingan was there to show you the truth. Your clan and you are obsessed with fate, with predestination but know one thing, we, Uchihas are the exceptions!”