( DAIKI )
In the vast, dry planes that were nothing but a small area that the Elephant Tribe crossed from time to time, I was having my way against two vastly superior opponents. Or at least, opponents that once had been on a whole different level than me, but that now, managed to save themselves only by working together.
I never had the kind of experience necessary to turn my skills from theoric to practical: the only way to truly sharpen one's own skills, at least when talking about the ninja-related disciplines, is to grind them against an equal.
And given the utter bullshit that were the Gates, and the Sage mode that I could use with relative impunity, to get truly better my only option had been to fight to the death against S-class rated shinobi and kunoichi.
That had the unfortunate risk of death, and thusly, I had managed to find only this loophole.
Where Tobirama was undoubtedly the most talented Suiton user I had ever had the pleasure to battle, he combined his masterful manipulation of water with assassination techniques that once would have forced me to enter Sage Mode to survive.
For the first month after my 'death' I had been facing the Second Hokage for longer and longer stretches of time, forcing myself to learn how to survive and counteract the war of attrition he was so capable of carrying on.
Being undead was certainly a great boon on his side, even if I suspected that the imperfect resurrection that Orochimaru had used left him to be less innovative than he would have been when alive.
In any case, he managed to disappear in thin air, and not only through the use of genjutsu, that I had grown incredibly adept at dispelling.
Every attack he carried on was quick, quiet, and quite deadly if it ever landed. I had regretted my training plan several times since I had first freed him, but there was no mistaking the fact that humans learned faster when risking their lives.
Every day had been an endless cycle of refining my attacks, learning how not to let him sense me through any mundane mean, shaping up my defence, turning the inevitable holes in it in traps ready to snap closed on the neck of my opponent, and adapting to not waste a single drop of energy, either in jutsu or in simple movements.
The unnatural mist that clung in the area worked against and in favour of both of us. While he had control over it, thickening it in ways I never thought possible in order to dampen only very specific sounds, while letting me hear others that were either triggers for genjutsu or feints that more often than not lead me to overextend in my defence.
Still, in the damp wetness that wrapped the world in a cover that wanted only for you to lay down and sleep away your problems, I had never felt so alive. How long has it been? I asked myself as I ducked under a hail of kunai and swept my leg to stop the incoming assault carried by yet another mizu bunshin.
How long since I have actually ricked my life in a battle? I swerved on my right, letting my left foot trail on the ground towards my left, making it sound like I was moving in that direction. Since my fight against the Jinchuriki in my chunin exams, I have never truly been out of control of a fight.
I always have a Sage Mode at the ready, shadow clones are bullshittingly useful like that, and even then, how many enemies have I faced that required more Gates than the ones I could control properly?
My heart was beating steadily in my chest, not betraying the strange mixture of excitement and fear that permeated me: Is this what everybody feels when fighting? I could understand why ninja tended to be so bloodthirsty: there was a strange assurance when fighting for your life.
Proving yourself, the skill you spent countless hours honing, testing the strength of ligaments that you stretched to their limits during training, the power of muscles that have screamed at you in more than one occasion when you tried a new movement that forced them to twist in unexpected ways.
There was even some sort of honesty between you and your opponent: both of you were trying to kill the other. No second motivation, no scheming to gain some sort of advantage long term over you, only a fight to the death.
Every movement, every jutsu, every breath, every thought was dedicated to destroying your opponent, by attrition, raining on him more and more wounds, until he finally fell because of blood loss, with the occasional lethal attack to keep him on the backfoot. In its own way, it was beautiful.
After a month of fighting Tobirama one on one, I had gotten better: I no longer needed a Sage Clone to jump in to save me when I messed up, and I stopped using the fifth, sixth and seventh gate.
My control over the first Five was clean enough to allow me to keep them open indefinitely, even if it had cost me great amounts of concentration in the beginning, I had come to ease the flow of chakra that ordinarily caused so much damage with the same ease and focus that I needed to breathe.
There were no flashy jutsu to cause vast amount of damage over an area, catching the opponent and his possible escape routes, there was no taunting. Our fight was quiet. At the beginning, even with the occasional save from one of my Sage Clones, and abundant use of the sixth Gate.
I managed to keep up with the fight for less than an hour: the amount of focus necessary to balance out techniques, tactics, and ration the expenditure of chakra was so heavy on my mind that forced my clone to seal back the reanimation of the Second Hokage in order to give me some time to rest.
After a month, I had found my edge, and even knowing that the second Hokage was less than he had been when alive, I felt that there was some kind of hope for my long term plans to succeed.
On average, I killed him three times every two hours of uninterrupted battle, and given that he didn't tire at all, the training regime of throwing myself at the Second Hokage until I managed to stop dying proved itself effective.
I didn't learn any new skill, no superjutsu, no new form of taijutsu: only effectiveness. I battled until I dropped to the ground, again and again. My attacks became sleekier, my chakra quieter, the few genjutsu in my arsenal were applied with a simple tinge on my coils, disrupting the opponent in critics instants that allowed me to go for the kill.
Given that the Second Hokage was already dead, I didn't have to control my strength, didn't have to avoid some grips that when successful broke his spine, every fight had been to the death, and my skills had adapted in order to bring death.
My fingertips cut deeper than any kunai, Kabuto's idea of using a chakra scalpel had become a founding stone over which I had adapted the strong fist that Guy-sensei had taught me.
Muay Thai could be seen from time to time, but from the tenketsu on my elbows and knees, as well as from my feet, invisible blades less than an inch long cut and damaged my opponent.
Even if he didn't bleed, I forced myself to keep them on, since every time I hit a bunshin, it dissolved due to the damage I inflicted to it.
There was no green chakra shroud covering the area in which I received wounds, only a faintly glowing green sheen over the wound itself. I would never reach Tsunade's level, it was something beyond me, but nevertheless made it possible for me to fight for longer, reducing to 0 my blood loss because of cuts.
In case one poisoned me, I could start counteracting the poison bleeding out the portion of blood that contained it with a subtle application of Suiton.
When the defence of my opponent proved effective, forcing me to hit in precise spots where his armour would disperse the energy from my blow, Rasengan formed itself in a split second and exploded against my opponent. Truly, it was a marvellous jutsu.
In a single month, my awareness of myself in my 'base' form had grown along with a select number of my skills. From before my training and after said month, the difference was the one between an athlete with all the right muscles used to sprint, and the one that played football professionally.
There were less and less wasted movements, and each step had at least two possible variations that allowed me to set up this or that series of attacks.
Fighting against the Reanimation of the First Hokage had required another two weeks. In that time, the already streamlined version of me that could counter Tobirama with almost effortless precision reintroduced the occasionally powerful and vast expenditure of chakra.
There was no circumventing a forest sprouting out of nowhere in order to spear through whatever there was in front of it.
Against my better hopes, I resumed using Kage Bunshin for prolonged fights. I used the same alternative jutsu that I had first developed back when I was in service of the Fire Lord: creating a clone with no feedback of memories.
Back then, it allowed me to leave a clone that didn't waste chakra for either jutsu or techniques capable of writing down whatever it remembered from the works I had read back home.
The clone I created either spent itself in a jutsu to counter the wide-area one of Hashirama, or acted as a support, allowing me some breathing room when facing the Mokuton user.
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