[Chapter Size: 2000 Words.]
Third Person POV
Northern kingdoms.
...
...
"Your damned..." Kenzu said with a frustrated look, staring at the child as they had returned to the previous battlefield, unable to believe he had fallen into the illusion of that Sharingan, cast by a child.
'Just like that time...' he murmured. After all, there were powerful Uchiha in that clan, especially the patriarch, whom he was easily captured by, placed in an illusion, only to be saved because his comrades had gathered to defeat those eyes back then.
Not that this Sharingan was that powerful, but he was shocked that a boy had entered his mind and extracted various pieces of information from his memories, which left him frustrated.
Madara looked at him, noticing how shaken he seemed by the invasion. He had tried to take more, but he wasn't fighting just anyone; this was a shinobi... one who had lived for hundreds of years, like the zombie Kakuzu, and there were more of them out there.
'Including the creators of the Witcher schools... Which makes me think I need to go after them, but that will be for the future. I can get information about them at Kaer Morhen, at least about the creator of the Wolf School with Vesemir... However, for now, I must focus on this Shinobi,' Madara thought.
His eyes quickly focused on the man's hands as he began forming hand seals. 'This damned... he stole Uchiha techniques...' Madara thought, watching the sequence.
Horse, Tiger, Boar, Dog, Snake
The man took a deep breath, ready to incinerate the Uchiha, spewing fire in the next moment as it expanded, only to be stopped by another iron barrier coming from the other side, as the two flames quickly collided against each other.
"Hm?!" Kenzu was surprised to see this, as on the other side, Madara was performing the same jutsu to counter his.
'Do you think you can execute Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu better than an Uchiha?' Madara scoffed, spitting his flames at the opponent. He didn't even need to perform all the seals, using only three out of five to achieve the same result. This was the result of years of training, attempting to reach the jutsu with just a single seal to make it almost instant. Madara knew that for a Shinobi, even a few milliseconds saved could decide the outcome of a battle.
The flames clashed against each other in a dangerous dance, each side trying to push the other. For a moment, as both focused on spewing more fire at each other, it seemed balanced, but Kenzu had to look in surprise as his flames began to be overwhelmed by the Uchiha's.
'A boy surpassed me?!' he muttered, despite not using any of his true powers. Being surpassed by a child again hurt his pride. Meanwhile, a dark mass began to form behind him, falling with a blue mask, pointing toward the mass of fire approaching him as Kenzu was losing the flame battle. It opened its mouth, and electric energy began to form at that moment.
Madara could feel the abnormal amount of chakra concentrating behind the flames, narrowing his eyes, as the next moment, a bright light outshone his flames, and then a lightning bolt shot toward him, moving like a snake through the air, forcing him to prepare for impact.
The flames stopped as an enormous explosion occurred on the other side, sweeping across the terrain with a deafening sound, while the lightning opened a new crater in the already scarred battlefield.
Kenzu also stopped launching flames when he saw that his own had no more resistance against his opponent's. He ceased and looked at the terrain, fire and electrical sparks dancing in the air every second.
'Did I kill him...?' he wondered, not having a Sharingan to see chakra, while his mask remained beside him like a second head with a neck made of wires extending from his back.
He waited for the sound of the explosion to die down as the smoke began to clear. However, a noise emerged from behind the smoke, as something spinning appeared, rushing toward him at that moment.
"I figured not... but a shuriken... Does this boy even have that?" he murmured out loud, watching the shuriken flying in his direction. He simply scoffed and easily jumped over it, but as soon as he landed, he saw a second one coming.
"A second one hidden in the shadow of the first? Smart... but it's still just a shuriken." He said, and just as he was about to deal with it using his mask, a smoke explosion appeared behind him, and his eyes caught sight of Madara throwing a kunai at his back.
His mask quickly turned behind him, opening its mouth and firing another lightning bolt, intercepting both the kunai and Madara behind it. This distracted him for a moment as the kunai got closer, and another explosion erupted in front of him, with his eyes widening at Madara using the substitution jutsu again. Kenzu felt his right eye being pierced as Madara reached him before his mask could fire another lightning bolt.
"AHHHHHHH!!!" he screamed, feeling the real pain. "You bastard!" he shouted as Madara tried to drive the weapon deeper into his eye, aiming for the brain. But at that moment, the mask turned toward Madara and launched another attack, causing Madara to vanish.
"Ahh!!" As the explosion subsided, Kenzu reappeared, clutching his bleeding eye, struggling to stop the flow of blood. "That bastard... was he a clone too?!" He looked at the destroyed ground, finding nothing there.
"You may be a shinobi... but you're certainly not used to fighting another shinobi, are you? Or are you just very rusty..." Footsteps came from the other side of the battlefield as Madara emerged from the first smoke cloud caused by the lightning bolt, walking calmly while analyzing the situation.
He wanted to test this guy, but his overconfidence had caused him to let his guard down, allowing Madara to stun him and get close.
His clone hadn't tried to hit his heart, after all, he had plenty of them left if he was anything like Kakuzu. Although Madara didn't know the exact number this man possessed, instead of reducing their number, he chose to decrease his combat ability by taking out one of his eyes. That would help in the fight.
However, Madara wasn't sure of his opponent's healing capabilities. He might be able to regenerate his eye with some strange technique... but that didn't seem to be the case, as the man was struggling to stop the bleeding, glaring at Madara with hatred in his eyes.
"I will kill you!!!" he shouted, and in the next moment, more and more masks began appearing like new heads, turning him into a kind of Hydra.
'It's not like he can grow two heads every time I take one down...' Madara thought calmly as this occurred to him.
There was a sky-blue mask, a regular blue one, and a green one, each representing different elements. A fourth mask appeared but was immediately shattered, falling to the ground. It was brown.
'So he's like Kakuzu...' Madara thought, analyzing his enemy even further with multiple heads now... He must have five hearts, each representing an element. Madara knew Yennefer had just killed one of his hearts because she had mentioned striking the shinobi's heart, and yet he had risen again. This information had been quickly relayed to his original by the clone that dispersed in the forest.
'He's using the fire element in the heart in his chest... his masks can unleash water, wind, and lightning...' Madara thought as the man stared at him with fury, gritting his teeth while his eye continued to bleed.
He paused, staring back with a more serious look in his remaining eye. "Soon, I'll rip out your heart and make a new one for myself from the Uchiha's fire element... your eyes, I'll gouge them out and put them in a jar as a trophy, to remind me how I killed the last Uchiha. Your body... I'll take pleasure in watching it rot, just to see the fool who once dared challenge me," he spoke calmly, despite the pain, no longer showing it as he glared at Madara, as if he had already sealed his fate to be destroyed.
"You talk too much..." Madara simply scoffed and entered combat mode.
"Die!" Kenzu shouted, and the green mask opened its mouth, generating a strong wind vortex aimed at Madara.
Once again, Madara was quick and launched a fire jutsu against the wind. Both elements clashed, but Madara used an even more powerful technique, Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation, which quickly overwhelmed Kenzu's jutsu, as the flames surged toward him.
"It's a powerful jutsu... I don't have this one in my collection..." For a moment, he set aside his anger, watching the flames begin to overpower the wind. After all, fire had an advantage over wind, so he decided to use the element stronger than fire. The sky-blue mask opened its mouth, and a new water vortex surged forward, combining with the wind, trying to counter the fire, as Madara's jutsu continued to gain strength.
Now it was wind and water fighting against the flames, and with a loud elemental clash, Madara's fire began to lose ground. The water was about to reach him as his flames weakened.
He quickly jumped as the water exploded, gouging the ground beneath him. In the air, Madara looked directly at Kenzu's eye, tracking him with his gaze while the masks continued to unleash the two elements. But it was too late, as Madara had leaped over 15 meters into the air.
"Die!" Kenzu shouted, and the third mask released the lightning element, the most penetrating and fastest of all.
Madara's Sharingan activated at that moment as he twisted his body mid-air, dodging the attack that shot toward the sky behind him.
"He dodged..." Kenzu muttered, thinking he could have killed him at that moment.
Madara, still with his Sharingan fixed on his opponent's eyes, crossed his fingers and quickly created two clones on either side of him. They formed hand signs, transforming into shurikens, which Madara grabbed and hurled down at Kenzu below.
"That won't work this time!!" Kenzu exclaimed as his lightning mask destroyed the two shurikens before they could reach him. The lightning then struck Madara, who didn't dodge.
Kenzu saw Madara take the full hit, a smile forming on his face, but then Madara turned into smoke. "What?! I was sure he was the original!!" Kenzu exclaimed.
"That's because you fell for my little genjutsu again, you idiot." Madara's voice came from behind him, as he appeared running up from Kenzu's back, thrusting a kunai into one of the masks on his neck before Kenzu could react, wondering what was happening.
Madara had placed him under an imperceptible genjutsu, making it appear that he had sent the two clones at him, but in reality, Madara had moved to the other side of the battlefield to catch him off guard, similar to what Sasuke had done to Danzo, deceiving him at the last moment.
Madara had no difficulty selecting his target mask—the one controlling the water element—so the enemy would no longer have the advantage over his strongest element.
The elements worked like this with jutsus: Fire beats Wind, Wind beats Lightning, Lightning beats Earth, Earth beats Water, Water beats Fire. Now, Madara could deal with this guy more easily, having elements that held an advantage over him, while Kenzu had lost vision in one eye.
"Hm?!" Kenzu didn't even have time to act as his mask was struck. The other two masks launched their elements, but Madara wasn't going to just let himself be hit. He kicked Kenzu back with all the strength he could muster, causing the attacks to miss slightly, although they still hit him. Kenzu was sent flying as he noticed something nearby—his water-element mask, with a paper tag burning on the kunai embedded in it.
In the next moment, he was caught in the explosion.
BOOOOOOOOOOM