S-RANK
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.
After that, I had begun anew fighting against the two Senju Brothers, again without Sage Mode and Sixth or Seventh Gate.
It took me three months. Three months of endless battle, with two Sage Clones at the ready to jump in and save me. The general feeling of that stretch of time was of me being slowly worn down. Combination attacks, twin assaults, ambushes, feints and counterfeits.
It was one thing to fight in planes where mist clung tightly to you. It was a thing fighting in evergrowing and moving forests that answered to your opponent. It was a whole different thing learning how to survive in a mixture of the two without the unnaturally efficient and vast sensing capabilities of Sage Mode.
The first month of me facing against both Tobirama and Hashirama had been survival camp: I ran. I avoided ambushes, I learned how to mask my presence better and better, but in forests made of a wood fed by Hashirama's chakra, I likely stood out like a sore thumb. At the beginning, I lasted less than twelve minutes on average before I was found out and 'killed' (I counted as a failure every time a Sage Clone had to jump in to allow me to retreat). I didn't know what kind of awareness the two Reanimated Corpses had, but apparently, they gunned for the original, knowing that my clones would not attack them.
Even so, I suspected that they roughly understood what was going on, after all, while standard protocol stated that when facing a team you had to take down the weakest member first, it didn't quite apply when the weakest member was the one providing the existence of the strongest components of said team (in this case, my clones). A tactically sound decision would have been hammering down on my clones every time they appeared, forcing me to tire out by creating them before tearing me apart.
I suspected that they were still acting on Orochimaru's order of killing me, and that they were still somehow choosing to interpret said order in a way that allowed me to get out on top.
One month against Tobirama, two weeks against his brother. That had allowed me to grow stronger in way I had only suspected were possible. It was the difference between being someone that attained a certain musculature through training in a gym, and being someone that had performed a set of actions that had caused the development of the musculature, only applied on every level of my being. From how I thought about a fight, to how I set up feints and traps in my taijutsu, to how I exploited the action of my opponent against him.
Without Sage Mode and using the Sixth and Seven Gates (the last option would have left me almost half-dead, to begin with) facing Tobirama and Hashirama both, while not being even remotely close to the real deal, had turned a one-trick pony (albeit a one-trick that was basically a trump card against almost anyone), to something far more dangerous. It had granted me the edge necessary to buy myself time if I ever was to openly fight Pain.
Sarutobi, old as he was, managed to fuck around Tobirama, Hashirama, and Orochimaru without ever using the Gates or Sage Mode. That was a scary old man, there was no other way to explain it, not really. Enough experience to fill a whole library, enough control to make it count.
With a last burst of speed, I weaved through Tobirama's last bout of taijutsu while my clone distracted Hashirama, without giving any pause to the Second Hokage, my hand plunged inside of Tobirama's body, clutching the kunai tied to the strange seal that Orochimaru had used to control the reanimated bodies, and ripped it out.
I didn't stop, dropping low as an accuminate branch tried to skewer me while manipulating the humidity in the air in order to slide over the wet ground, as I charged Hashirama, a clone that I had set up four minutes before out of sight from both of the Senju Brothers appeared out of nowhere, clutching Hashirama's kunai in his hand, Orochimaru's seal dangling quietly in the slowly calming wind.
"Boy." the voice of the second hokage echoed in the small clearing in which I had ended up freeing Hashirama from the renegade Sannin's control: "You could have freed us months ago, explain yourself."
I turned towards him, and his expression was not amused, his pink-red eyes truly fitted well with the deep scowl that was marring his otherwise delicate features, while the tone of his voice was flat, clearly he was expecting me to answer to his orders like he was my superior, and I couldn't truly blame him, he was a scary ninja when alive, now he had on his belt immortality and endless chakra, it was understandable that he felt somewhat entitled to an answer. The dead should remain dead.
I ignored Tobirama Senju and turned towards his older brother, who was looking at me with what looked like genuine curiosity. At least he's not expecting to be in charge. I scoffed in the safe confines of my mind. But then again, what I've seen of him in both the manga and the anime points at him as some kind of man-child, albeit a scary powerful one.
With a sigh, I pulled lightly on my connection with one of the two Sage clones I had at the ready, swiftly compensating the new influx of chakra while my awareness expanded to encompass the whole forest that Hashirama had created in the last months. I felt the black markings don my face while my own presence became somewhat heavier. I breathed in, and I could smell every small insect, ever different flower, deadly or not, that Hashirama had tried to kill me with. I could hear the brushing of leaves and grass against the breeze, while my skin could pick up the position of the two reanimated corpses simply in virtue of how the air moved around us.
With a negligent smirk that I couldn't even try to contain, I tapped the Konoha's symbol on my forehead protector, reminding to both of the undead ninja that I was in service of the Village they had helped found. It wasn't true, but they didn't need to know that, nor they had any reason to doubt me. I studied for a second their grey-ish appearance (after I removed the seals that still bound them to Orochimaru's orders, they lost the vibrant colours that had characterized them, returning to the unhealthy pallor and weak looking constitution).
"We have a lot to talk about." I started: "Your summoning at the hands of the missing-nin Orochimaru had been accounted for, and I received orders from Sandaime-sama about what to do if that eventuality manifested itself."
"You're awfully young to be entrusted to fight my brother and me along with that snakey traitor." Tobirama spoke with an unnervingly calm tone, if this was because the last sparks of vitality had left his body when I removed the seal that enforced Orochimaru's will, or for some other reason, I couldn't tell. "We can no longer move, nor mold chakra, I assume that this was your intention when you removed the blood seals from our bodies?" he asked again, his eyes trailed up and down my form, evaluating me.
"If Sandaime-sama had the time, he would have hammered me into shape himself, however.." I started to reply, only to be interrupted when the First Hokage proved himself quick on the uptake.
"You weren't a true S-class, only a powerful A-class with a couple of dangerous tricks." the elder Senju nodded thoughtfully, while the second completed his reasoning: "Hiruzen-kun certainly has become more cunning since I've last seen him, and more ruthless, I don't know if this is for the better or not."
"There are circumstances you should be made aware of." I waved my hands in a soothing motion, there was no need for the old sensei of the Sandaime to start questioning the orders that I had 'received'. In the following hour, I shared with them the History they missed since after their death, trying to cut short on their commentary, it wasn't something I truly needed, and I didn't quite care about their opinion. So I told them about the Great Ninja Wars, they had missed, about the Fourth Hokage and his demise, the Uchiha Massacre, and about the general state of weakness of Konoha.
When we finished, it was Tobirama to take word: "I still feel the connection to our summoner, why did you keep him alive? Our bodies wouldn't disappear if he was executed."
I nodded without showing a hint of surprise, Kabuto had told the same in the manga, but as I watched the blank expression of the Second Hokage, I knew that his question was more to see my reaction to it than for receiving an answer. If Sarutobi had truly been the one to take into consideration the possibility of Orochimaru using Edo Tensei on me, and had actually charged me with taking care of it, he would have told me weaknesses and strong points of the technique, if only to grant me a greater measure of success. "He had tattooed on one arm the Snake Summoning contract, for now, is a potential asset for Konoha." I bullshitted.
"A dangerous thing, keeping enemies of your home alive only to further your gains, more often than not you end up regretting it." Hashirama spoke with the same empty tone of his brother, forced in unnatural immobility from the condition of the Edo Tensei.
I shrugged, with Sage mode, and Orochimaru no longer protected by Sarutobi's sentimentalism, I knew that the Snake summoner would never leave the Elephant Plane alive. "The first part of my orders was to end the threat that Orochimaru presented to Konoha, the second was to find a way, if possible, to use the attack to shape up and grind some of my skills, you'll have noticed my improvement in the past months. The only question I have now is if you want to serve under my commands, or find a way to return to the Land of the Pure Souls."
"Why under your command? It seems convenient for you, even in that shallow imitation of our old bodies, we were on the lower tier of being S-rank." Tobirama immediately objected.
"Either you believe that I'm actin under orders, and then you'll follow me, or you don't, and we have to figure out how to get you sorry dead asses back to your graves." I was blunt, but I really disliked Tobirama, besides being a stuck up asshole, he was the inventor of the Edo Tensei. How batshit crazy must one be to figure out a way to create countless disposable zombies?
"The dead should stay dead." Hashirama replied.
"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to figure out a way to solve the mess you left behind?" I answered him: "Giving Biju around worked only while you were alive and capable of taking them back, now the jinchuriki are no longer used only for a deterrent, but there are people moving to collect back the Biju, and create some sort of big ass weapon."
"Your orders would see us hunting these people? Why you? Why would Hiruzen-kun entertain the idea of keeping his dead sensei bound to this plane?" Tobirama asked again, his voice, while still flat and without any intonation worthy mentioning, managed to convey his scepticism.
So I gave them the rundown about Akatsuki, that in the canon timeline had started moving only after Naruto had once again been accounted for in Konoha, and then I dropped the bomb: "Danzo always resented Tobirama because he chose Sarutobi over him as his successor when Sandaime-sama offered himself as a distraction against Kumo, since then, he kept up with Root, his secret police, using it indiscriminately in order to further the position of Konoha, even if it meant causing an incident that would lead Konoha to war."
"Danzo-kun is a loyal..." Tobirama managed to sound affronted before I stopped him with a shake of my head.
"How do you think the missing-nin Orochimaru managed to infiltrate Konoha along with your corpses during the Chunin exams?" I asked, revealing a conspiracy that may or may not have existed: "Orochimaru was going for the kill against Sandaime-sama while we had the Tsuchikage and Kazekage in our midst, the plan was gutting Konoha, and Danzo sweeping in with his secret forces to save the day and being named Hokage."
Given the picture of events that I had given them, there were a lot of coincidences that could easily be explained by some mole among the Higher Ups pulling the strings, from the Hyuga incident, to the condition that pushed for the Uchiha Massacre, there was enough dust in the air to throw doubt in both of the First and Second Hokage, and that doubt was all that I needed.
"Would speaking with the one responsible for the Uchiha Massacre help? He'll confirm that he acted under orders if it means that Konoha against you two on the lines for the next conflict, the Fourth Great Ninja War had been brewing for a while now, if it hasn't begun already, it won't be long..." I added, hoping that the blatant urgency of my words could convince them that there were less articulate ways to betray their home.
"This Itachi sounds like a brave soul... it would be difficult for him to fool us when being asked about the death of his family." Hashirama stated, and with that, I knew that I had won.
"If we accepted," Tobirama spoke again in his unnervingly flat tone: "We would first need to figure out a way to give these bodies some kick, at least to the point in which we can keep up with you."
I grinned unashamedly, I had them in the bag: "I guess we should start with fuinjutsu."
SASUKE
Sasuke Uchiha had been labelled a genius, but he never let it go to his head, not really. He knew of the gulf between himself and those that called themselves his peers, and rightfully treated them dismissively, more often than not with barely veiled scorn. Why shouldn't he? Sure as hell mediocre friends wouldn't help him in taking down... that man.
He had been called a genius, but he knew what genius actually looked like. There was no pride in being the first of his class, it wasn't needed, nor warranted. The kids that dragged their feet trough training should have simply remained at home, with their parents, playing cat's cradle or something equally asinine to waste their time. At least they would stay out of his way.
At least with the was Sakura has been pushed back with the Genins and the Gods know what the Idiots orders are. He thought with a hint of relief, finally, the dumb idiot with more luck than chakra and the useless wimp were no longer his responsibility, while Kakashi had been sent to much more important missions than keeping an eye out for the Team 7, which had been disbanded in all but name. Between marching together and camping near each other, Sasuke' eyes had picked up more and more habits from the occasional jonin, turning movements he didn't recognize as sloppy in sleekier and less energy-expensive acts.
Since... that night, Sasuke showed the due respect to those who clearly outclassed him, be they the Hokage to whom he 'owed' his loyalty or Kakashi. With the others, he couldn't be bothered to feign interest, and if they got annoyed when he pointed out their blatant failings, well.. it was no skin off his nose.
He showed some kind of respect to Daiki too. It wasn't only due to the blatant difference in power between them, it was something... different. Their relationship had started out with him camping out in the Uchiha Compound, and not in an out of the way alley, no, but in front of his own house! As if he was saying 'I'm here to stay, if you have a problem, come at me'. Unfortunately, until Sasuke was strong enough, he couldn't turn away a single opportunity to become stronger, and until he reached S-rank, that meant sucking up the sneer and disrespect that he felt towards those stronger than himself, at least long enough to learn something out of it.
Sasuke could have someone kick him out. He was far from powerless, he knew that much, as the last Uchiha-sama loyal to the village, he couldn't easily be buffed away when he voiced complaints. Even if that hadn't stopped the Hokage himself from butting in and forbidding Sasuke from jumping ahead of a class or three at the Academy, despite his more than stellar results.
No, the annoying chunin, who went ahead becoming one of the Twelve Fire Guardians first and join right when he returned a Jonin, had presented himself with some sort of spar, pushing Sasuke again and again, forcing him out of patterns he didn't even know he had adopted. Then, in a few months, he just... talked. Often not expecting Sasuke to answer. He talked about Sasuke's errors, firing him to pay attention, and talked about random stuff. Sadly, the two topics of conversation that Daiki mainly kept up with himself (those being stuff that interested Sasuke and what did not), were strictly intertwined, forcing the Last Loyal Uchiha to pay attention to almost everything that was being said.
Almost unwillingly, Sasuke had found himself considering the words of the older shinobi, who remarked that originality and creativity were of paramount importance, without underselling the severe discipline that the genin had kept up since he first started practising the Great Fireball. The human mind is akin to a river, from the source it is born from, through rapids and waterfalls, to calm currents and through lakes, you cannot force it all the time: true creativity is born out of the combination of a multitude of different experiences the mind goes through. Sasuke recalled his words with a slight frown, at first he had been reprimanding himself again and again when he found his thoughts roaming pretty much randomly across the encounters he had with the older ninja.
Surprisingly enough, learning how to play that Guitar that Daiki had quite frankly pulled out of his ass had taught him something that he would have picked up only after several missions run back to back, like many of the chunin force of Konoha-nin were slowly coming to learn: rhythm, which translated itself in timing and pacing oneself. Sasuke moved with the bare minimum of speed that he could get away with, preserving his strength, not talking, assuming a somewhat relaxed mental state that allowed his senses to pick up irregularities without needing him tense as a guitar's string.
The day had begun badly enough, heavy clouds covering the sun from view and even heavier rain that crashed down on the forest that the Third Batallion of the Chunin Force was crossing to intercept the Iwa Chunin Force which was gunning for some objective that Sasuke didn't have the clearance to know. The morning had consumed itself in a silence that was tense for most of the people around him, but he hadn't minded that. Orders to keep quiet were welcome in his opinion, he didn't have to feign interest in his compatriots' lives.
Sasuke exhaled slowly as he jumped above a thick root, following the movements of the Jonin keeping an eye out for his section of the Battalion with the Sharingan, burning in his own mind how the teller and somewhat bulkier man shifted his weight in order to optimize his own movements.
Sasuke had unlocked his Sharingan on his first C-Rank mission, turned A-Rank, back in Wave, and since then he had slowly been building upon it. He only had two commas on each eye, he knew that much, but it was enough to memorize movements, if not to unlock the more powerful abilities of his bloodline. In any case, keeping it active for as long as he could, had slowly but surely increased his resistance to the drain to his ever-growing chakra reserves, while the transition had become smoother and smoother, until he could activate and deactivate them from blink to blink.
The heavy rain contributed in a not insignificant way to keep the Chunin Battalion from being tracked from the racket that they made when this or that dumbass stumbled.
Shinobi were silent beings, Sasuke had made that philosophy his own in a way few others could understand. His... Ita... no, that man had been quiet, always smiling slightly, always there, always family. Until he wasn't. So, Sasuke kept quiet as much as he could, keeping his expression from betraying his own thoughts, and thusly keeping them quiet too.
Then Daiki had come barrelling in his compound, freely pushing him to his limits and somehow managing to convince him to pick up a guitar and attending the plants into the small green-house that he had set up (Without the Last Uchiha's permission, obviously). Sasuke had found out for himself that there was something that run deeper than his thoughts after a few weeks of him playing the guitar. It was... difficult, at the beginning he hadn't truly understood what was happening, but slowly, as his mind associated each sound that the guitar could produce to the different configurations that his fingers assumed over the strings, he had let out those thoughts that he had kept quiet for all of his life.
Sasuke, after years of casually applying his far above average intellect to music and the somewhat mind-numbing actions required to keep up the green-house, had come to realize how that part of his mind that he always kept quiet influenced his movements and actions. It wasn't something that he would have noticed while practising the rigorous katas of his clan traditional taijutsu, nor Bukijutsu, since both practices required absolute control of even the slightest movement.
There was something, beyond the ... HATE... that always roared in the core of his being, there was... just something. Something else, something different. A note or a ripple that occasionally emerged when he modified this or that piece of music that he had learned from Daiki, turning an accord into a minor one, making the music sound somewhat sadder or just more defeated than he would have liked.
Yet, when Sasuke managed to let go of everything but the Guitar, refusing to replicate what he had already learned, in more than one occasion his fingers had kept moving, echoing that note that was less and less subdued the more he kept following it. That spark, that trembling wavering just behind the roaring fire that was his HATE. And even in his thoughts, Sasuke called the deafening cursing of his feelings for everything HATE, since it was what was needed for the Lat Loyal Uchiha to revenge his clan and clean its name. Sometimes, in those rare and uncommon stretches of time during which Sasuke managed to find the buried note of something-not-HATE within himself, he had caught himself slowly trailing a finger underneath a damp leaf inside the greenhouse, as if he was reassuring the mindless vegetables, or he had realized, with some sort of detached surprise, that his fingers echoed something-not-HATE that he otherwise would have never realized was there.
While Daiki had been away as a Guardian for the Fire Lord, Sasuke had tried, occasionally, to find the mindset in which he could distinguish the note beyond the HATE as he practised against a wooden pole. He couldn't really tell, but he had felt like his strikes were more controlled. That absolute crushing weight that he otherwise put behind every single punch had become something ready to be unleashed on his command, instead of the only thing that he was capable about.
Sasuke had always been better than his peers, and yet, while he was alone and managed to find that particular mindset, he found that he expected Daiki to somehow hear of that change and commenting, if in a positive or negative way, the Last Uchiha could only guess.
In any case, after more than a week of breakneck march through the forest (breakneck for his less than stellar chunin compatriots), Sasuke had found that the constant movements that mimicked the Jonin he had been studying, had lulled him in that strange mindset in which he could observe himself almost as if he was an external element, his mind classifying and identifying what his senses picked up without conscious input from the young Uchiha.
That was why, when the white noise of the downpour suddenly became unbalanced towards his left, his blood-red eyes immediately found the messenger signalling to the Jonin, his eyes memorising the hand signs that communicated the news without any strain on his mind.
Sasuke' eyes immediately turned to the Jonin he had been mimicking for the past few days, recognizing the infinitesimal clenching of the jaw, the telling twitch of his left hand, the blink of his eyes that came just a tad bit too fast, and the straightening of his shoulders.
He knew what he was going to say before his hands started to rely orders in the Konoha-standard-sign-language: ' FIGHT - IWA FORCES E.T.A. 4 MINUTES - FORMATION 8- SCATTER' what the join hadn't placed in his hand signs, however, was clear to Sasuke: fear.
With a detached series of movements, Sasuke saw himself jump upwards the trunk of a tree while his fingers fished out a couple of kunai that he had already prepared with ninja-wire. If the Jonin was scared, it either meant a much larger force than the one of the Third Battalion, or simply one composed by higher-ranked shinobi. In any case, the Last Uchiha would keep going, the note behind the HATE trembling just a tiny bit more, making itself known.
To take down that man, Sasuke knew that he needed to reach S-rank. However, with his new detached and calmer mentality, the Uchiha knew that for him to reach that level, he would need to survive first.
