Their fists collided.
Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura moved in perfect, unspoken agreement. Neither of them used jutsu. Neither of them poured Chakra into the strike.
They tested each other the old way, raw and honest.
A habit from twenty years ago, still intact after twenty more.
A classic opening.
After the punch, it was like the warm-up ended. They each withdrew with a single motion, retreating back to opposite ends of the training ground.
Danzo's face stayed calm, almost lazy, but he made a show of reaching for a kunai, turning his hand behind his back so he could quickly rub his knuckles.
It hurt.
Hiruzen's strength is wrong. What is this?
Sure, he's been working on the Yin Seal, but this is more than when we were young…
Don't tell me he's still "growing" at this age?
The thought flashed through Danzo's mind, but his hands didn't slow.
In the time it took to breathe, he'd already palmed several shuriken. Wind Chakra coiled around the edges, the blades stretching, sharpening, swelling to several times their original length.
He snapped his arm.
They screamed through the air at a strange, skewed angle, cutting toward Hiruzen from multiple directions.
A crackle answered.
Lightning crawled over Hiruzen's skin, sparking across his body and forcing his muscles into a higher gear. He tracked the incoming Wind Style shuriken with a narrowed focus, and instead of dodging…
He charged straight in.
Right as the cutting wind was about to bite into him, Hiruzen sprang upward, movements loose and animal-fast. Like a monkey leaping between branches, he threaded his body through the narrowest gap in the attack, slipping past the blades without losing speed.
His reaction time.
His physical responsiveness.
Just like his senses had told him. As the village grew stronger, he really had been changing with it, like his body had found a second surge of life.
More aggressive, Danzo noted, inhaling hard.
His hands flew through seals, Chakra gathering fast, thick and heavy.
Wind Style: Vacuum Sphere.
A compressed air cannon slammed forward, dense enough to feel real.
Danzo believed it would be difficult, even for someone like Hiruzen who could throw out multiple natures, to keep doing that while running Lightning Style Armour.
But the moment the thought formed—
A thick wall of earth tore up from the ground, blocking the Vacuum Sphere's momentum.
And then fire erupted.
A raging sea of flames rolled forward, riding the wind and swallowing the training ground as it poured toward Danzo.
"Again," Danzo clicked his tongue.
Hiruzen's Fire Style is a nightmare for my wind…
And he dropped Lightning Style Armour instantly? Of course you did.
He retreated in a blur. His clothes were blackened, his hair carrying that sharp, burnt smell.
It wasn't a light singe.
A wind specialist didn't have many good answers to layered combinations like that.
Danzo formed seals again, looking like he was scrambling away, but inside his mouth, Wind Chakra was compressing tighter and tighter.
"My Wind Style is faster now, Hiruzen!"
This was what he'd gained recently.
Wind Style: Vacuum Heavy Sphere.
More refined control over nature and shape, pushed further. Faster. More penetration. And subtler, too.
Perfect for a moment like this, when you looked cornered, when the enemy leaned in with that split-second of arrogance.
He'd gotten the inspiration from his teacher, Tobirama Senju.
Tobirama had a technique called Water Style: Heavenly Weeping.
It sounded flashy, but in truth it was simple and vicious. Compressed water needles gathered beneath the tongue, then spat out at close range, a surprise kill in the middle of a melee.
Through wind and fire, lightning flared again.
Hiruzen cut straight through the burning field, charging directly at Danzo.
Lightning Style Armour was too useful for battlefield adaptation. A ground covered in flames like this, if you didn't have that lightning shell—
You couldn't cross without slowing down. And slowing down gave your opponent room to breathe.
Danzo turned his back deliberately, listening to the rush of air behind him, judging distance by sound.
Then he spun.
A blast of Wind Chakra erupted like artillery, an ear-splitting sonic boom ripping through the air and leaving white scars of vapor in its wake.
Got you. Danzo's heart lifted—
And then he realized, a heartbeat too late.
This technique was too dirty for a spar. If something went wrong…
But Hiruzen didn't have time to care about Danzo's second thoughts.
This was exactly what he wanted from a match like this.
From the beginning, he'd stayed fully locked in. He hadn't relaxed for even a second just because he'd beaten Danzo before.
He was a Kage. The Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village.
The enemies he faced were the strongest and most vicious the shinobi world had to offer. They wouldn't give him fairness or honor. They would do everything in their power to kill him.
Almost at the exact moment Danzo turned—
Hiruzen drove his Lightning Style Armour to its limit, then cut it off.
The expanded lightning cloak burst outward, peeling away from his body like a spherical shell.
He raised two fingers, and his body snapped into Earth Style reinforcement in the same breath.
Earth Style: Iron Skin.
Vacuum Heavy Sphere crashed into the lightning shell. Wind's nature advantage tore through it quickly, but the impact still slowed, just enough.
Hiruzen shifted his body. He planted one hand to the ground and avoided most of the blast, but two heavy spheres grazed his shoulder and wrist.
Metal rang out against metal.
And in the instant his palm touched earth, a thick stone pillar surged up behind Danzo and slammed toward him.
Danzo whipped around and kicked off the pillar, but he still got shoved forward by the force.
Midair, he fought to twist his body into position. He saw the lightning rising on Hiruzen again and narrowed his eyes.
Close combat.
He spat out concentrated Wind Chakra, shaping it into a razor-edged blade.
Wind Style: Vacuum Blade.
But then—
Hiruzen's lightning flickered once and vanished.
His hands blurred through seals.
A massive wave surged up from the ground, swelling into a sphere that swallowed Danzo whole.
A water prison.
This round, the key exchange of techniques…
Hiruzen won.
He flashed to the side of the water prison, his palm wrapped in lightning. Electricity bled into the water instantly.
Danzo's whole body locked, shaking hard, his strength ripped out of him.
Even then, he tried to force Chakra into motion, refusing to yield.
Hiruzen chuckled. He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, slid one out, and set it between his lips.
He shook his head, amused. "Then you can wait a bit."
After all, it wasn't him getting shocked.
Danzo's face darkened. Finally, he blinked quickly, conceding.
The water prison collapsed with a splash.
Hiruzen struck the cigarette tip against a stray arc of lightning, and it sparked to life. He exhaled a thick stream of smoke and rolled his shoulders, loosening up.
"That move of yours," he said, impressed, "was good."
"If I didn't know how strong you are, if I wasn't on guard the whole time, I might've eaten it."
He smiled, eyes crinkling. "Looks like I barely beat you again, Danzo."
Danzo's mouth twitched weakly.
Barely?
He'd heard plenty about Hiruzen training every morning, grinding in the background while acting relaxed to everyone's face.
The great Hokage's right-hand man wasn't getting fooled by that damned monkey.
After a moment—
"You're always 'barely' winning…" Danzo muttered, finally getting some strength back. "Forget it. I wasn't expecting to beat you like this anyway."
"Rest a bit, or get up?" Hiruzen leaned down and offered a hand.
Danzo hesitated, then took it. He rose slowly with Hiruzen's help.
"Hiruzen," he asked, and this time it was genuine, "what am I missing?"