A true elite [SC Training]

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Throughout his life, Hiruzen had not always been considered fit for the life of a shinobi. During his younger years, a lot of time had been spent playing around and doing as little work as he possibly could at times or rushing through it just to be done. Not liking it when he had to return home to his father and having nothing to show for in terms of skill, he used to just play around with his toys. Having grown up without a mother and a father that blamed his own son for her death, most of his relatives and the friends of his family took to avoiding the household in which he grew up. It was only when he had someone that believed in him that he finally started increasing the amount of work he put into things. Ranging from his training in the arts of Ninjutsu to his education at the Academy, the youth went from an insignificant student and became one of the greatest prodigies in the history of the Hidden Cloud village. Passing through even the advanced classes within the amount of time set for it and joining a squad of equally promising Genin in a squad, his urge to become stronger only grew that much stronger when the people in his team got murdered on a mission that went wrong. While the team was meant to push each Genin into trying to surpass the other like a bar that constantly raised itself, the fact that people had died so that he could live was the driving force behind Hiruzen's will to become the strongest version of himself there was. When he believed that he had gotten close to the point where further self improvement would only be very minor, he had decided to take up the art of weaponry, notable the school of Kenjutsu.

When the village refused to teach him how this could best be done and he even got shot down by the Raikage that at some point had called him the most promising shinobi in the entire village, the existing urge to become stronger had taken a more sadistic turn. Now that he had come to realize that the village did not view him as a person but merely as a weapon to be wielded whenever they saw fit, the Uchiha no longer wished to be a part of the community. This was because the village that denied him the right to become stronger had to at some point see him wield a sword in a skillful manner and see how much stronger he had become since he left them behind. Before that part of him truly had a chance to grow into a hatred against the Hidden Cloud, his training in the Temple of Raijin taught him that it was not good to hold grudges and that hatred only set him and his personal improvement back. Though it had taken a lot of time to process, the Uchiha had learned to let go of the hate he felt towards the higher ups of the Hidden Cloud. Though the strong feelings of hatred he had felt had certainly awakened something inside of him, it was thanks to the training he received from Guroda the head monk that allowed him to bury it very deep inside of himself. He had done so by taking a very powerful drug before venturing up the mountain on a spiritual quest to it's summit. Forcing him to quite literally fight his inner demons on his way through a nightmarish realm created by the drug and his own mind, he had gotten to the summit and awakened the Hermit Chakra that granted the Ninja Monks their powers along with a large supply of additional chakra to use in the defense of their temple.

Once his training as a Ninja Monk had come to a halt due to his progression reaching a point at which the temple itself had nothing left to teach him at that point in time, the Uchiha started seeking out ways in which he could further improve the skills and abilities that were already there while at the same time looking for something new to add to his arsenal. It was within that period of time that Hiruzen further developed his sixth sense, the ability to sense chakra in people as well as outside of their bodies. Being something that had helped him increase his understanding of how some jutsu functioned as well as how some clans went about performing their jutsu, he found that the further he pushed his abilities, the more they would educate him in return. It was through the use of his sensory abilities that he in turn managed to increase the potency of his Sharingan in battle, something he got to put to the test when a minor rogue shinobi crossed his path and desecrated a grave right in front of his eyes. While he was not truly a monk at heart, some of their ideals had rubbed off on him. It was because of that that he had taken it upon himself to dish out a fitting punishment. After making the man repair what he had broken for as far as that was possible, Hiruzen put the man in his place by showing him just how much stronger the Uchiha was than a common criminal. By using his new and improved sensory skills along with the Sharingan, he had the chance to study the elemental natured attacks used against him, figure out how some of his jutsu worked and even copy some of the more interesting stuff to add to his personal jutsu arsenal.

After he was done testing his skills, he left the man behind to wallow in his own inferiority as he already had his mind set on something else entirely. When his letter was accepted and Hiruzen was allowed to train at the Iron Temple, he spent several days with the other students before he got into trouble with those that did not like having a shinobi training with Samurai. Because they were so hard on him, Hiruzen used his Sharingan to keep up with them as well as to copy and learn their moves for himself until the point where the Shogun believed that it was time for him to personally oversee Hiruzen's training. During his time in the Iron Temple and training directly under the Shogun, Hiruzen had learned to push his swordsmanship further than most others would ever be able to do in so little time, leading up to him learning the art of Iaido. This was both to satisfy his eagerness to learn new things as it was a way to teach him how to bring up patience and bring about his inner calm. After all, Iaido was not a form of Kenjutsu meant for those who were rash, hasty and unfocused. Since Hiruzen had come to rely on his chakra sensory abilities and even his Sharingan, the Shogun forced him to learn how to fight without them. Putting on a blindfold so that he would not be able to use his eyes at all, the Shogun wanted Hiruzen to learn to fight with his scent, his gut and most important, his hearing. Finding new ways to train his perceptive skills every day for a couple of months, the Uchiha learned more and more about himself, setting himself apart from those Uchiha that could fight only by relying on their ocular prowess. When he had learned enough from other people, he said his goodbyes and returned to the outside world to continue his life as a wanderer.

With everything that had happened over the past year, it was always a good thing to reminisce on all that it had gotten him. Back when people believed that he was the second strongest shinobi in the village, he had only been a Jounin that had just been promoted into his new rank. Now, he had grown so much that the old him was hardly even recognizable at all. His arsenal had grown, his perceptive skills had grown beyond that of any other person he had ever seen and perhaps most important of all, he had grown to understand every single aspect of one of the most versatile things in the universe, Chakra. Through his own clan's documents and recordings that had gone back all the way to the era of warring states, he had come to understand more about the workings of his clan and their Kekkei Genkai, the Sharingan. Learning that his clan became more powerful when they lost that which they loved the most, he understood more about why his Sharingan had awakened when it did and why his power seemed to grow more drastically whenever he faced major hardships in his life. When his education took him through several temples and taught him more about the birthplace of religion in the world of shinobi and even pushed him to seek out the origin of the Hermit chakra. The more he tried understanding one aspect of the two types of chakra he had inside of his body and the impact his Kekkei Genkai had on it, the more questions were raised. Traveling all over the world to answer his questions, he eventually learned new ways in which to control, manipulate and even transform his chakra into doing more than just creating balls of fire and shaping the terrain. Ever since he had seen a Guroda perform his thousand-armed murder technique, Hiruzen had been wanting to create a jutsu of his own that was like it, but never had the means to do it.

It was during some alone time in the cold mountain regions of the Iron Country that he did what most people would never be capable of. Focusing his chakra and projecting it out of his body, he molded and augmented his own chakra with that of the Hermit before using what he had learned to control and compress the pillar of gold into a titanic figure. Though this process failed several time due to the chakra ratios not being calibrated properly, it took him seven days before he managed to compress his Jinchuuriki-like chakra capacity into a large golden god shaped in the image of Bishamonten. The golden construct was without a doubt the absolute pinnacle of his Ninjutsu skill. While one might believe that the formation of his jutsu was the hard part, it was in fact learning how to actually fight with it that made the formation process look like a stroll through the park. It was however thanks to the idea to link the chakra making up the construct directly to every inch of his body that he managed to not only control it just as easily as he would do with his own body and even make use of the untapped chakra to recreate parts of it that got destroyed. Considering his Armored Vanquisher technique to be the finest creation he will ever produce, it was through his attempts at bettering his jutsu that the chakra he possessed became easier to control. After spending so much time focusing solely on one thing often had such side products that, while not really expected, were more than welcome to someone such as himself. During his journey back to the land of lightning, he found that even the chakra strain on his eyes as a result of using the Sharingan had diminished to the point where he could barely even feel it at all.

Finally being back in his home country, he felt the strong urge to see how well the village was doing since his departure from it, as well as to make them see just how much stronger he had become after relieving himself of the shackles they had put him in. It was time for them to see that he had risen above just being an elite among the elite of the village. After all, he was now an elite among the elite Uchiha clan, which made him nothing less than a legend in his own right. Soon, the people he had left behind him in the dust would see his face again for the first time in years. Hopefully, there would be at least one person around that was not afraid to put his powers to the test.

2064/2000 words
Training finished