Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXXX- SHORIRAMA SENJU
This shouldn't be possible. Should not be fucking possible at all. He was here, in the flesh. I could feel the chakra. And not just his chakra. Hashirama's was there as well. This was not the Madara that should exist in the timeline. This was the one that Kabuto brought back to life with the edo tensei, but it could not be the edo tensei. It couldn't. Even if the jutsu had escaped containment, there were still decades of experimentation and refinement necessary to take it to the level where Kabuto had been able to use it to create this body.
And yet the body stood before me. I felt my clone arrive where Kushina was. At the same time, I released my hold on my seal, allowing nature energy to flood my body. No holding back. I'd start at a 50-50 split. Anything more and I'd run the risk of gassing out before Uzume came, and while I wanted to believe I could do this without her, I knew better. Her eyes would turn this from an uphill battle into something much more manageable.
"At least you can use the Sage Mode. I would have wept for Hashirama's legacy if you could not. Now come, boy, show me how you dance," he called, spreading his arms.
I pushed off the ground, increasing my mass at the last second to push forward and then reducing it once I went flying. The speed should have caught him off guard. Instead, those Rinnegan eyes were almost amused. He twisted out of the way of a punch that created a gust of wind that blew the front wall of the house behind him in. An arm grew from his shoulder and made to grab mine. Asura.
I snatched it back, my feet already taking me to my next attack before I was sent flying. Straight backwards like I had been hit by a train. There had been no resisting it. No digging my heels in. The almighty push sent me flying until I hit a building and then tore through it and past it. I didn't stop until I was two buildings deep. Hadn't hurt at all. And more importantly, I had five seconds now.
I pushed forwards, drawing several flying raijin kunai. I hit several targets of mine, creating paths to jump to before I reached him. This time, he attacked first. A punch that I caught in my palm. Mistake. It hurt something fierce but I still managed to grab a hold of it, only for his chakra to spike. I swallowed my scream of pain as several spikes grew out from his fist, ripping through my hand even through Sage Mode's durability.
Through the pain, I forced myself to go through with the attack, fingers reaching out. Just one touch and this would be over. Instead, I was sent flying once again. I flew a few metres before teleporting over to one of my kunai. Five seconds again. He hadn't given me the time to apply super heavyweight boulder on him with that bit of contact. I needed to grapple with him, not just touch him. His chakra was too strong to push through quickly.
I pushed off the ground, teleporting twice to confuse him about my angle of attack. First from the left, and then from the right before I blitzed him from behind. Still, he somehow managed to turn in time to block my kick. I increased my mass at the very second before our bodies made contact and then the ground around him shattered. His forearm, however, held steady even with my foot above it, straining to break through his guard.
Another arm grew from his forearm and reached out to grab me but I was already gone, pushing against his body to flip backwards. As I did so, I shot two kunai at him from my sleeves. He dodged both by turning his body to the side and letting them pass on either side. I teleported to the one on the left, and as his eyes flicked over to me, I went to the right, rasengan in hand and about to end the fight by putting it in the back of his head.
An arm grew from said back of head, grabbing my rasengan and absorbing the chakra from the jutsu before it could make contact. Rasengan gone, my hand was left bare and was about to stab into even more spikes in his new hand.
I teleported back to the left, only to be hit with the force of a train once more. A second after, I'd teleported to another kunai.
"You use Tobirama's technique better than he ever did," Madara said, before weaving seals even faster than Minato could. I teleported away, arriving at one of my kunai that I'd managed to sneak behind a building. I used the lull in combat to begin healing my weeping hand. I could ignore the pain to do simple things like throw kunai or maybe even weave a seal here and there, but dealing with the pain was slowing me down.
I'd made it through two of the cuts before I heard a growling come from above me. That dog Madara had summoned was fast; it reached out, one of its heads aiming to chomp through me, but I was gone by then. I focused my chakra and extended the range of my byakugan in all directions before I smirked. I stomped the ground, spreading my chakra into it and catching the giant earthworm that had been poised to swallow me in my mud. I crushed it with a flex of will and met Madara's ringed gaze.
"Is that your plan? To bore me to death? Show me the worth of the Hokage, Shorirama Senju," he said.
"Gladly." I bent at my knees, slamming both palms against the ground while ignoring the pain the heavily lacerated one rewarded me with for my efforts. The ground around me, and most of our battlefield, turned to mud that rose up, aiming to swallow Madara in a tsunami of the stuff.
He pushed one hand forward, and my tsunami was torn to shreds with a single almighty push.
The pushing force continued towards me, but this time, I managed to weather it by raising four different mud walls and commanding the mud beneath me to wrap around my arms, feet and waist.
The almighty push tore through the walls but this time when it reached my body, it was much lesser, diminished by having to tear through the walls first. But it was still too much for my mud to withstand. I went flying again, teleporting somewhere else a few seconds later. Another five seconds. Mud came for him this time, forcing him to dodge out of the way of a few tendrils. But they were legion. Before they could grab him though, he stretched out a hand. The skin on the forearm greyed before dozens of missiles flew from it, each one heading to a tendril and destroying much of the mud in one go.
How the fuck did any of that even work? It wasn't like the civilians in this world had missile launchers or anything for this power to draw inspiration from. Wondering wasn't going to solve anything though. The dog tried to reach me from the side even as I commanded more and more mud to form and go after the Uchiha. It ran on the mud with shocking ease, not losing its footing, but slipping was far from the greatest danger where my mud was concerned.
Four tendrils—one on each leg—grabbed it, and stopped it cold before dragging it into its depths. The dog grew a new head each time it was attacked. I didn't bother attacking it. I filled its mouths with mud and buried it. I sent it as deep as I could with my mud and then turned the bit above it into solid clay. It was a prison. In that time, Madara had blasted his way through the second set of tendrils. Now he formed a single hand seal. Horse.
I knew what was coming before he had even finished kneading the chakra.
"Fire Style," he said. My own seals flashed through my mind as my fingers tore through them at what felt to me a glacial pace, but was only seconds in reality.
Still, I was on the back foot when the words, "Great Fire Annihilation" were said, and all my world became fire. It was all I could see in front of me. Up, down and to either side for as far as the human eye could see. My byakugan was not helping much, struggling to comprehend what had once been air suddenly becoming fire and heat and energy. It was suffocating. I could see now why this man had terrified a world to stillness.
But this was not that world. I was not those he had bullied.
I did not intone my technique. My water announced its presence with the sound of crashing waves that turned roaring flames into dying embers. The exploding cooling waves rose into the air one after the other, meeting the fire release from a true master with what Konoha's greatest water release master could do. No offence, Granduncle. But I'm better.
And yet, despite my skill, and my elemental advantage, and my power, the water release technique was only ever able to maintain a stalemate with his flames.
I poured more and more chakra in and the water just kept coming, the dense senjutsu chakra allowing me to generate a truly inhuman amount of water. A small sea was what I created with nothing but some hand seals and the breath in my lungs. Yet, whatever the Rinnegan—that queer mix of Hashirama's power and the peak of Uchiha power—made possible was difficult to match. Fire and water clashed until both jutsu had run their natural course. A fight that had lasted longer than it had any right to. All the fire and water—each individually enough to bring an end to an army—had left in their wake was steam.
Steam that thickened under my influence, forming into the Hiding in the Mist jutsu. I spread it over the whole battlefield, filling the mist with my chakra and deactivating my byakugan once I did so. My eyes were less powerful than his for sure, but what did it matter when we were both robbed of their powers. I bent and teleported five times, spreading even more kunai marked with the flying raijin as I did so; after that, I formed five shadow clones, and sent them out, and then when I was sure that I had prepared the battlefield enough, I took the battle to him.
I sprinted across the space between us, ghosting over the ground with an anbu trick that made not a single bit of sound escape my motion. Yet, Madara was turning before I could reach him. His gunbai—he seemed to have taken advantage of the mist to retrieve it—swung in my direction. I jumped over it, arcing around the swing and landing with my left hand in a one-handed handstand. One kick was followed by another. Both, he blocked with the broad side of the gunbai while the other hand holding the kama came around, intending to rend me in two.
I teleported away, and then back to where my hand had been just seconds earlier thanks to a seal I'd placed during my handstand. I stabbed out with two fingers; he dodged and we danced for seconds, each attack I made missing by the barest of margins. I flexed my chakra, thickening the mist between and around us even further. If he was relying on his eyes, then there was no way for him to even see me standing right in front of him, and whatever senses he had thanks to the stolen sage mode he had would be even less useful. The mist was chock-full of my chakra. There would be no telling us apart. But this was still Madara of the Uchiha Clan, and he still danced like none of my efforts meant anything.
But while the Ghost of the Uchiha was a legend in every ninja art, there was one that I had mastered above all else. My taijutsu was more than the work of a master, it was perfection. And so over minutes, we danced through the smoke until I had manoeuvred our bodies to my advantage. He blocked a stab of my fingers with his gunbai. I changed the angle, coming from the right again, and he was forced to move it even further, but it was a feint. I came for his heart, feeling a flash of victory for a second before I froze mid-stretch. Oh fuck this, I thought as I went flying again. The mist scattered from the almighty push. I allowed it to give me some distance before I teleported over to one of my markers right behind him.
His almighty push had cleared most of the mist, but I would not be denied. I forced it back to being, stoking it with my chakra more and more until it was thick enough that I could part it with my fingers and that if I stretched my hand out far enough, I would lose sight of it. Five seconds now.
Two small puffs of smoke announced the arrival of two fuuma shuriken. Sorry about this, Hiruzen, but I'm going to steal something from your arsenal. I ghosted my fingers over each one, placing a familiar seal on each.
I hurled one forward with all my strength, and then the other. A single handseal and a whispered "Shuriken shadow clone jutsu" turned two fuuma shuriken into hundreds.
They made their way for Madara, intent on tearing apart everything in that direction. The Ghost of the Uchiha turned to look at the attack, and then the ribcage of the susanoo formed around him, blazing a clear purple that managed to somehow shine even through the mist.
It felt like a shell of thick chakra to my senses, and the shuriken broke upon it. Every single one that was correctly aimed hit the immovable object, and broke. I teleported to one of them the second the attack was done and swung, burying my big ball rasengan into the ribcage, cracking the so-called ultimate defence and forcing Madara to yield space. I was so close. The cracks began to spread. This was not the edo tensei. One good attack, and this man would be dead. This was not Juubidara. Not the one that had survived eight gates.
"Watch out, Shorirama," Kurama, who had been uncharacteristically silent, roared, and I realised I'd misstepped a second too late. Once the susanoo was about to break, it just winked out of existence. My rasengan swung forward and I did the same, suddenly lacking anything to push against. Having created the situation, Madara was able to take full advantage, moving faster than I'd ever seen anyone do and grabbing me by the throat. His grip was tight, threatening to crush my windpipe even as he drained my chakra with his touch. I tried to use a jutsu but something about his grip made my chakra refuse to behave. He was not just draining my chakra, I realised as a spectral gate in the shape of a head wearing a smile that spoke of pure malevolence appeared behind him. The King of Hell.
"Disappointing," he spat at me. He was going to kill me. The fucker was actually going to kill me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think.
"Do something," Kurama roared again, flooding my body with his chakra and fucking up my control even further but giving my fading brain the boost I needed. I clicked my tongue in the pre-arranged signal. Three of the broken shuriken around him exploded in puffs of smoke, revealing themselves as clones I'd hidden amongst the blades.
The first one moved for Madara. The second for the arm that held me. The third just weaved seals. Madara dodged away from a knife hand, not allowing his grip on me to slack, until he was forced to release it by a wind release enhanced kunai that threatened to cut off said hand.
"Flying Raijin: triple suicide dance," my third clone said. I felt something take hold of my chakra forcefully. I found myself back at one of my farther back markers. The first clone went left, and then right, all the clones changing positions with each other and spreading explosive seals along the ground as they did so. Madara's attempts to destroy them all faded as they seamlessly used the flying raijin to great effect, all in service of a single purpose.
Madara thought it was the explosive tags on the ground that were being spread about, but it was not. So when it seemed like they were done spreading the trap and he overcommitted with his almighty push to both destroy the clones, and push the ground away, the fourth clone struck.
He appeared on the ground with the seal I'd placed with that handstand from earlier, placing a hand on Madara's back and flashing him into a tower a few streets away.
Boom.
The tower's supports blew up and the whole tower, multiple tons of steel and concrete, fell down on them, seeking to bring an end to the Ghost of the Uchiha.
Another clone appeared behind me, fingers already glowing a soft green. I turned to look at him, the byakugan in his eyes was glaring as he gazed at my chakra coils.
"What's the damage?" I asked.
"Blockage to several of your chakra points. Whatever that was, it was similar to the gentle fist. Or the gentle fist is similar to it, maybe. Give me a minute, I'll have you right as rain," he said.
"Kurama?" I asked next.
"I've given you your chance. This time, we go together," he said in my mind.
"Wouldn't have it any other way, partner," I responded, feeling a smile spread across my face that did not disappear even as Madara hunted down the rest of my clones. One brought another tower down on his head, but in a matter of minutes, he was walking at me, dusting off his armour and looking none the worse for wear.
"Hashirama used clones as well, but you somehow manage to be even more annoying with them," he said to me.
"Boss," my clone called.
"Do it," I said. Now that my chakra control was back, I could sense her.
He was gone with a whisper of space. Madara looked where that clone once was with narrowed purple eyes until he returned with Uzume by his side a second later.
"You good?" Uzume asked me, but her gaze never left her clan's former head.
"Peachy. Ready to kill a dead man?" I asked back.
"Born ready." She said.
"Come show me how you dance, children," he said, spreading his hands. We charged as one.
A/N: Now we get Shori and Uzume v Madara next. Couldn't fit her in here. Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night (Only one chapter this week). Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.