SC Training

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

With the information he had forcefully extracted from one of the assassin twins, Hiruzen had started moving through the location known as the graveyard mountain and kept heading further north. Though he was not the most skilled tracker in the world, he had the basics down, which when paired with his skills as a navigator and his wits made up for his lack of true tracking abilities. Knowing that the rendezvous point he was supposed to get to if he was to catch the leader of the small group of fairly skilled assassins and murderers known as Ichimaru Gantenjima as well as a contractor that seemed to be rather elusive and feared by Ichimaru's men, he still felt rather psyched about getting to fight a decent opponent. Before this, he had easily dispatched a man that possessed a lot of brute force and a decent set of skills as a swordsmen, though his sluggishness and his short fuse had made him into an easy target for one that possessed the Sharingan. When he punched the man in the throat after tiring him out, the other members of his team believed that he had killed the brute, though he had merely forced him into an unconscious state. What had followed was a pair of assassins, two identical twins that seemed freakishly tall when compared to someone of average height like Hiruzen. Making use of the life long training they had no doubt been through in order to attack as a nearly perfect tag team, Hiruzen had been forced to rely on his evasive maneuvers and his Sharingan to keep him from getting killed by the barrage of projectile attacks that were fired at high speeds while aiming for vital spots on his body. By the time he had gotten to cover, he had been given enough time to create a Kage Bunshin.

With an exact copy in place, he had taken away the advantage they had over him and quickly took them both down before extracting the information and going after Ichimaru. It was true that all three of the enemies he had faced had been formidable in their own way, though they had never managed to get Hiruzen into a position where he believed that he would need to go all out if he wanted to survive. In fact, fighting them had been nothing more than training, giving him the time he needed to sharpen his skills and prepare for the bigger fish that were still left in need of getting fried. Being only a couple of minutes away from his destination, Hiruzen wondered if he might be walking into a trap. Continuing to move towards his destination, the Uchiha eventually hit the breaks once he had gotten extremely close to the rendezvous point. Closing his eyes, he focused his sensory ability on the area around him, stretching out to a hundred meters around him. Within this field, he could feel only one chakra signature, the same one he had felt back when he had started fighting the other man of the group. It was without a doubt the man he had been tracking, though he sensed no other sources of chakra anywhere, giving him reason to believe that there had been no traps in the area at all. Truth be told, Hiruzen had seen the man briefly but already felt like the man was rather full of himself, believing himself to be more than capable of beating the Uchiha if he had to. This became evident when he left Hiruzen in the care of his lackeys, thinking they would be enough to take him down. This had obviously been a big mistake as the underestimating of Hiruzen's abilities had now left him with three men down and bound.

Believing that it was about time for him to start up this party, Hiruzen stepped out into the open, ready to reach for his Kunai in case he had to use it to defend himself. Keeping his eyes on his opponent, the black and green attire instantly gave him away as he knew what he looked like from. That aside, Hiruzen had been having trouble with sensing his chakra as it had felt distorted enough to link it to a specific person, but felt big enough to be a threat to most shinobi. Something about the guy seemed somewhat menacing, though it was probably this same thing that drew Hiruzen in in the first place. After all, since he had fought the Raikage, he had grown to enjoy fighting strong opponents. At the time, his skills had not been on the level of a Kage class shinobi, though he had managed to get some hits in none the less. It was very likely that the Raikage, and by definition the Hidden Cloud would never forget him for what he had done and what he was capable of, though Hiruzen would never forget what he had received from them either. Because of them, he had learned that one of his guilty pleasures was simply to fight. Entering the visual range of his enemy, Ichimaru started walking towards him as well. Showing that he was not afraid of him, Hiruzen himself kept walking forward just the same. The fact that neither of the two were afraid of the other would make for a rather interesting fight, or so Hiruzen believed. Without saying a word to the other, the two shinobi entered the range set by the shinobi academy as the hand-to-hand area. The Uchiha had studied everything in the academy quite well, so he knew that he could expect to be hit any time now. Deciding not to wait for the first hit to be thrown at him, he chose to attack first.

Sending the first punch, he aimed at the side of Ichimaru's head with a fair amount of speed and strength packed into it. Diving under the punch, the cloaked man came in with a punch of his own. Angling his body just right, Hiruzen used the momentum of the punch he had missed to make a quick spin on his right leg and kick at Ichimaru's side with his left leg. Applying enough force to kick him out of balance, Hiruzen came at him again with yet another punch, striking him against the side of his head and temporarily knocking him to the ground. As Ichimaru went down, he rolled to the side, set off against the floor and landed back on his feet roughly two meters away from Hiruzen's position. Standing up straight rather quickly after he had gone down, Ichimaru brushed some of the dirt off of his shoulders before chuckling softly. Narrowing his eyes, Hiruzen looked on as the unexpected behavior of his adversary had thrown him off. If he did not know any better, he'd think that the man actually enjoyed getting beaten around in combat. Waiting for Ichimaru to make his next move, he kept his body relaxed and ready to move once the next attack came.

"Hah.. it seems that I did underestimate you a bit when I let Ichiro and Nichiro deal with you. The Sharingan is a powerful thing to fight indeed, though I think I have done a fairly good job. Going by my own basic knowledge of Taijutsu, I can tell that your physical skills are not all that great either, though those eyes of yours manage to fill in the gaps. Now, I hope you've realized that those hit you got in only made it up to me because I allowed it. After all, figuring out your opponent is the most important part of winning a fight and breaking someone else's spirit. Taking a few calculated risks is an important part of that tactic. Now, lets see how well you do in the second round.".

Shrugging his throat, the Uchiha looked on at his opponent after hearing him out. He could honestly say that he did not enjoy it when people were trying to profile him by figuring out the things he was good at and the things he had not entirely mastered. While the profiling itself only went so far as to annoy him, it was the fact that his opponent seemed to be a very smart and capable tactician. The way in which he spoke made him come off as a well educated person that had been in the process of making his own tactics for a while now. In many ways, the man reminded him of himself, which could turn out to make this a rather interesting and dangerous battle. That was when his eyes registered the rapid formation of hand seals, followed by a build-up of chakra before a slicing current of wind shot towards him. Dashing to the side with a barrel roll, Hiruzen formed his own hand seals at an equally high pace. Once he was done with his roll and looked at his target again, he was shocked to see that another blast of wind was already on his way to him. Releasing the chakra he had built up in his gullet, a shot of fire clashed against the ripping winds that had almost gotten to him. Devouring the wind chakra and increasing the damage behind his own attack, Hiruzen's violet flames pushed on towards Ichimaru with a loud roar, only to crash into an earthen wall that was erected in the very last second. Destroying the entire wall and reducing it to rumble with a deafening blow, a cloud of dust covered the field while chunks of stone flew in every direction. Having trouble keeping up with the man when he could not see him through the cloud, Hiruzen almost believed that this too had been a part of Ichimaru's tactic as a means of taking away the use of his Sharingan.

Whether it had in fact been his strategy to reduce his vision, there was one thing Ichimaru could not possibly have known about, and that was his chakra sensory ability. Focusing on Ichimaru's chakra, Hiruzen soon located him and felt that he was building up earth chakra, most likely to push him out of his current spot and set him up for the next attack. Not allowing this to happen all too easily, he formed seals while preparing chakra in his belly. Firing a dragon-head shaped fireball, he looked on as it burst forth through the dust, followed by two more fireballs. Blowing away the dust with the fireballs, he sent another two out as soon as he could see Ichimaru and knew where his next couple of steps would take him. Though he skillfully evaded the first couple of fireballs, he had most likely not anticipated that Hiruzen's first three dragons had been used only to knock the dust away and get Ichimaru back in his line of sight. With his vision restored, the last two attacks homed in on their target and erupted in a fiery explosion. With all the dust slowly setting down on the ground, the young Uchiha waited until he could see Ichimaru again as a means of assessing the damage he had inflicted. When the fire died down, it seemed that there was no one left in Ichimaru's spot. In fact, it seemed that there was nothing there at all, not even the faintest sign of a chakra signature. Knowing that his attack could not possibly have disintegrated an entire human body like that, he kept his guard up in case he had to defend himself against yet another attack. Having wasted no time whatsoever, Ichimaru became visible again shortly after he had seemingly been hit by Hiruzen's Gouryuuka technique. From the looks of it, he had sustained no damage at all, so it was well within the boundaries of reason to believe that he had only been able to destroy a Shadow Clone while Ichimaru had been watching him.

"So, aside from your lack of expertise in the field of Taijutsu, you more or less make up for it by being a skilled Ninjutsu user. While I had already figured that you would be a practitioner of the fire element, I wanted to at least make sure of it. Finally, your ability to see my clone through the thick cloud of dust indicates that you are capable of sensing chakra signatures as well. I have to say, you're going to be hard to catch off guard with all of those things working in your favor, though I am sure I can take you down in the next... 5 minutes. Now then, the clock is ticking, enjoy your last moments on this earth.".

Getting more annoyed with Ichimaru and his high and mighty attitude, Hiruzen felt ready to bust out the more serious Ninjutsu in order to deal with this man once and for all. Looking as the man created another shadow clone before cloaking himself in his sensory jamming technique, Hiruzen was again left to deal with a clone while the real one had disappeared. Knowing that he was going to try to take Hiruzen off guard by remaining invisible while he had to fend off a clone, Hiruzen did not intend to play around with this one like he had done with the last. Deciding to make more use out of his chakra sensory ability, even though it was scrambled, he believed that it would be the only way to find the real Ichimaru before he had a chance to strike. Knowing that the normal form of sensory would work, there was a chance that if he truly focused solely on his chakra sensory that he would be able to pierce the veil and locate his target. Taking out a Kunai while channeling his chakra, he tossed it at the clone before forming a seal that duplicated it. Forcing the clone to focus on the Shadow Shuriken attack, Hiruzen continued molding chakra and formed even more seals before busting out his most powerful jutsu, Gouka Mekkyaku. Releasing a massive torrent of violet flames, the clone had no way of defending itself against such an onslaught. Once the massive wave of flames had succeeded in washing the clone and anything next to it away, remnants of purple flame remained on the ground, eating away at twigs and fallen leaves. As expected, there was no sign of a body, meaning even his biggest and most offensive Ninjutsu had not been able to take Ichimaru down. Now that the most direct threat to Hiruzen's life had been taken care of, there was only one more enemy left to take care of. Closing his eyes, he focused completely on his chakra sensory, doing his very best to pierce through the jamming technique.

As soon as he felt his opponent come at him from behind with a drawn Kunai, Hiruzen formed the Kongoshin-in seal, causing a bright golden chakra to burst forth and increase his chakra pool while his very skin began radiating with light. Turning around as soon as the Kunai made contact with his skin that had now hardened to steel like properties, Hiruzen popped a Kunai from his own sleeve and moved as fast as he could. As soon as the Kunai held by Ichimaru bounced off of his skin, Hiruzen used the opening it had created to lunge his own weapon right into his chest. Looking the man straight in the eye with his Sharingan, he could see the shock radiating from him. He had assumed that he had already beaten Hiruzen by making him waste chakra on fighting a clone while hiding his own chakra signature and profiling the Uchiha. While it was true that he was a skilled profiler and an even more skilled tactician, his own overconfidence and the belief that he knew all there was to know in order to kill Hiruzen had been his downfall. With the Kunai piercing his lung, the man would most likely die in a matter of minutes. Soon, his lungs would fill up with fluid, keeping him from speaking and shortly after that stop him from breathing, after which his body would systematically shut itself down, followed by his inevitable death. Leaving the Kunai inside of the wound to keep him from dying any faster than he was, he put his hands on both sides of his head, using his index finger and thumb to keep his eyes open. Using his Sharingan on him, it was about time for him to learn a thing or two about his mysterious contractor.

"I'll admit, you were the biggest challenge I have had in years, though you left your own high and mighty attitude get the better of you. If you had been less full of yourself, you might have seen that you were not the only one planning things throughout the fight. Now, before you die in a few minutes, you're going to tell me all you know about your contractor...".

Letting the man speak for as long as he could, Hiruzen took all of the information he received and made sure to memorize all of it well. Once the information he needed had been bestowed upon him through the hypnotic gaze of the Sharingan, Hiruzen turned it off and stopped draining his chakra. Grabbing onto the Kunai, he pulled it out of Ichimaru's chest, who instantly began gasping for air. It only took a few moments for death to set in and for the man to stop trying to survive. Looking on at the dead tactician, Hiruzen got an idea. Taking his cloak, headband and mouthpiece, he believed that there was still something he could do with them after he washed them clean. Perhaps it would even help him in dealing with the contractor once they met. Taking the information and the new outfit with him, it was time to continue planning his next move.

[Ninjutsu Master - 1600/1600 - 800/800 - Extra Words - 585]
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