Kakashi didn't find Max provocation appealing for him, but he still nodded to the idea.
"Sensei! Are you telling me that Max is as strong as you!? But he's so young!?" Sakura was the one to react first.
*sigh* "Max level of strength should be at middle chunin level. Sasuke have now entered chunin rank of strength with his Sharingan, which is why Sasuke can't keep up with him." Kakashi explained. Remembering something, he decided to continue. "Zabuza is an jounin as me, while Haku should be a special jounin. If Haku as taking everything serious since the start, none of us should have came alive from that bridge."
This information shocked the trio.
"Anyway while I say that Max is at middle level chunin don't forget that his way of fighting gives him an additional level to him. Making him a high level chunin." Kakashi finished saying.
"You know, I really don't like how you are saying a lot of things that I can't understand. At least, you are telling me that I'm close to strength to Haku, which is something that I can accept. He moved too fast for me when he when to save Zabuza." Max added. Then, he suddenly remembered something which made him smile.
"Speaking of it, he moved fast enough to reach you before you could get to Zabuza. Care to comment on that?"
Kakashi almost choke when Max made him remember that. He quickly stop himself and faced the trio that was still thinking about what he said.
"You huys need to go by the side for now. I'm planing to test Max's abilities which could be a little dangerous."
"Really!?" Naruto couldn't still accept that Max and Haku were that strong. At the end, Sakura and Sasuke had to drag him to the said to stop him to continue asking Kakashi things.
"Well now that we have some space, lets be clear on something. The ninja way bases on surprises and finishes. We don't tend to drag battles out since our chakra can only takes us so far before running out.
With that said, we are still our village inmediate reach, so I'm planing to conserve some chakra for emergencies. In short, nothing too serious, Ok?" Kakashi explained to Max after he saw the exictment in his face.
This comment made some of it go away, but not all of it. Still, Max nodded as he took out his sword this time.
"Let's start!" Max said as he suddenly charged at Kakashi. Max speed was a lot faster than what he had used versus Sasuke. But Kakashi had more mastery with his Sharingan and had a better physical condition.
Before he got close to strike, Max saw Kakashi do some hand signs. Max didn't know what Kakashi was doing, but he reached Kakashi as he finished and pierced him in his shoulder.
After piercing Kakashi, Max felt something wrong as he kicked Kakashi's body and jumped back. Just after Max left the place that he was at, three shurikens struck the ground.
Max got confused by the sudden attack from out of nowhere as he looked again at the pierced Kakashi. The he saw that what was left of that Kakashi, was only a wood branch.
"This is one of the basic arts of ninjas: Subtitution. We are fast enough to do it without the enemy noticing, but I made my hand signs slower than normal so that you could see them.
At least your sense of danger is capable enough to evade any sudden ambush." Kakashi said.
Max couldn't place Kakashi's voice anywere which meant, so he knew that he should had already moved from the spot from were the shuriken were threw from.
"Ohhh, that is a nice technique to have. Let's see what more do you have in stored." Maz said as he holstered his sword.
Kakashi got curious as to what Max was going to do in this situation so he focused a little more on Max.
'Shit' Kakashi suddenly noticed his blunder and quickly moved from his position.
Sadly for him, Max was already closing in his position even faster than before. As he got closer, threw the Kakashi's shurikens that he had took before moving towards him.
Kakashi decided to evade them by jumping towards another tree branch which was something that Max wanted for him to do.
"iai - Blade Wave" Max send his Balde wave towards Kakashi.
Kakashi couldn't evade in time and got struck by it. As he fell, Max got a little confused since things whent a to well compared to how he imagined.
*Poof*
Out of the sudden, the Kakashi that was falling disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The sudden disappearing act of Kakashi gave a sudden chill to Max that made him prepare to evade anything that came his way, but he was already late.
"That is one of the more advance techniques for ninjas: Cloning. The one that I used is called Shadow Clone Jutsu. It can make a clone that acts the same as you, but it dissapears after getting hit by something."
Max quickly turned around to slash at Kakashi who was now behind him. In mid way of rotating, his eyes saw Kakashi made another sign that made him blackout.
While he couldn't see Kakashi he still heard a voice in his heard.
"What I used to approach you is called: Body Flicker Technique. Every village have I different way to camoflauge the jutsu, but the foundation is the same. To move from one place to another as quickly as possible.
The last thing I did was to place you in a genjutsu. Genjutsu are techniques capable of change the psyque of a person which place them in a illusion. The most basic way to affect people with then is for them to look at the hand signs and have them in a high stress situation. Stronger genjutsu can make people fall for them with just a hand gesture."
Max noticed that he hadn't lost consiousness at all. His sight was taken away from him.
'Maybe Kakashi did, more than that. Thankfuly, he still doesn't know the extent of my ablities.'
Kakashi kept looking at Max body moving in place confused. He noticed that Max didn't have a way to escape from genjutsu, which is something common on people not prepared to fight against that form of jutsu.
At the side, the trio had seen some of the action performed by both Max and Kakashi which left them surprised. Kakashi could be seen explaining things as he fought, but theystarted to realize that he only do so because Max really didn't have any experience fighting ninjas.
"I feel like a fool. To think that this is all that he could do and was too concerned with his jutsu instead of just attacking." Sasuke was now mad, thinking how easyly he was defeated by Max.
"Wait Sasuke." Sakura came to a realization when she saw the technique that Max had used on Kakashi's clone. "At the bridge, I remember hearing a sundend wave of chakra passing by Kakashi. That should have been the same technique that Max had just used on Kakashi's clone."
"What does that mean?" Sasuke was clearly 'dead' by that time, so he didn't see any of that. Still he did find Sakura mentioning that relevant.
"If the technique that he just did is the same as that one, Max should be holding back a lot of his strength in this fight. I didn't feel anything close to what I felt that time on the bridge." Sakura finished.
Sasuke frowned after hearing that, but stayed quiet.
"You guys still are far from the truth." Naruto said with a serious face. Sakura noticed Naruto been serious so she listen to him. Sasuke wasn't interested to heard Naruto speak, but he still did.
"I told you guys what happen when Gato's group reached the bridge. Max and Zabuza charged at them and made them feel in fright. The thing is that the one that scared them the most was Max instead of Zabuza.
Max did some technique that cut eveyone on his way. I felt that even Kakashi-sensei couldn't face something like dad easyly. So, maybe this why Kakashi told him that he couldn't fight at full strength from the very beggining."
*pow*
"AHH"
Out of nowhere, Sakura hit Naruto in the head.
"Sakura-chan, why did you hi me!?" Naruto didn't expect the sudden agression of Sakura.
Sakura on the other hand, looked at Naruto and at her fist and nodded. "It seems that it really isn't an illusion. Naruto just had a miracle moment as he was making sense."
"Why would hitting me would dispel an illusion?" Naruto quickly commented but Sakura decided to ignore him.
At the side, Sasuke crossed his hands while he thought for a while but he stayed looking at the fight with a weird sense of expectation.
'They really have a weird way to get along.' Kakashi tought arfter looking at the trio interaction.
Kakashi only sigh with defeat and focused again at Max. Max was now doing circle in place. Kakashi could feel a weird wake of chakra emanating from the sword in Max hand, but nothing more.
'He should be trying something. Sadly you have no training to deal with genjutsu.' Kakashi thought as he made his way towards him. 'Still, his reaction and techniques is something that he should be proud of. I couldn't imagine someone becoming so strong just training by themselves.'
Max could be seen doing circles in place as he released chakra from his sword. Kakashi found how Max could release such a fine wave of chakra interesting since such abilities could even rival that of the Hyuuga. Still, the wave wasn't as strong enough to be something as dangerous as their gentle fist.
Max had done two full circles by the time he was close enough to Max. As he reached to his head to release the genjutsu, Max suddenly smiled.
"With this, I killed you one time Kakashi."