Once he was done bickering with Tsunade to offload his teaching job to her, Sukuna made his way to the training ground again.
Mind still playing flashbacks to the fight he had with Killer Bee yesterday.
"What a blunder." He grumbled to himself with so much intensity that he couldn't even contain his voice to just himself. Good for him that he was alone.
It turns out that testing both the Curse State of his curse mark he practically stole from Orochimaru and the new technique he ended up developing after fighting both Three Tail Isobu and the Raikage to tackle enemies which could hand tank both his Dismantle and Cleave, together, wasn't the best of his ideas.
Perhaps a little context is necessary before going into what exactly happened yesterday.
The curse state, or Curse Sage Mode, as he was calling it, was unstable as it gets. Yesterday was technically its first official testing around. And he did better than he expected, a little too well that it got to his head and he ended up fighting with Killer Bee in that state to test out the power he had.
That was unnecessary risk on his part. Given that there is never any sort of risk as long as he has Kamui, he can also do what Obito had done throughout the series, just bolt at the first sight of trouble.
But nay, he actually did wonderfully against the rapper Jinchuriki, to the point he doubted he would have been able to even do one third of the damage to his Jinchuriki state which he did yesterday if he wasn't using the Curse Sage Mode.
And that too when his efficiency with his technique in Curse Sage Mode was very new, he knew for sure that he could improve the efficiency higher to the point that even his Dismantle's output would go high enough to hurt a Jinchuriki even in his Bijuu cloak.
Let alone Cleave.
No... the real problem was using the new technique which he hardly had any experience with, and something which he didn't directly get from Ryomen's own skill set but something he himself developed alongside the Cursed Sage Mode.
As stated, the technique was intended to take out powerful enemies with strong durability. Something both his Dismantle and Cleave currently can't do.
Though to his doubt, he was willing to accept that after he got the hang of the Curse State better, his efficiency and output would grow to the point that his Cleave might as well be able to do that.
"Perhaps I could have taken out the Raikage back then with it with a single touch..." He mused.
But that was just fantasy, reality was never that nice.
He ended up messing up the technique at its core calculation and control in that hyped state of his.
Now the forest which they fought in was missing a large chunk of its area, everything gone, nothing left behind to even figure out what caused it, like the Tsuchikage decided to use his Dismantling Jutsu there.
As for Bee.
He got away.
Sukuna sighed, walked up a tree, and sat under its shade with a dissatisfied hum.
'To my credit, or the credit of the new Curse State and the new technique I developed based on Ryomen's original Shrine, I practically took out the entirety of the Eight Tails with that one attack. If only my attack was a bit more focused and targeted then that crappy rapper wouldn't have gotten away.' He grumbled.
His technique took out the majority of Gyuki's body, something like Satoru Gojo's Hollow Purple, the technique was very advanced and violent to boot.
But he couldn't control it well enough to take out all of Gyuki. What was left of its body, which wasn't bigger than a tentacle to be honest, did the rest.
Gyuki seemed to transfer Bee's body into that tentacle and before he could react, Bee was already bolting away.
Sukuna couldn't chase him either since after that one attack he used up all of the stored natural energy in his curse mark and was thrown out of his cursed state.
Though that wasn't the real problem, the real problem was the exhaustion which came after that, with bad efficiency came both wastage of curse energy, which honestly doesn't matter to the likes of him who boasts the biggest Curse Energy reserves in jujutsu history, but it also comes with huge mental load.
His mind was close to overloading. He most likely could have caught up to Bee, but wouldn't have been able to fight him in that state.
"I have to get used to the Curse State soon if I wish to use it. And also have to do something regarding the limited reserves of natural energy it stores." He grumbled again while both of his palms pressed hard against his face.
While he wasn't sulking at the failure of his experiment, if anything, it was a huge success; it was Bee getting away which irked him.
This was arguably the first target he had let slip from his fingers after Itachi, and in Itachi's case, he wasn't sure he could beat the man back then.
"Bee shouldn't recognize me in person since I was in the curse state back then, but he might sense the similar curse energy in me, or to be more accurate, the Eight Tails inside him.
I have to keep my curse energy even more tightly closed in if anyone from Cloud is nearby from now on.
Though that wouldn't account for much since even though they don't know who I am, he had seen the Konoha headband." Sukuna said to himself in a low volume so that only he could hear himself while seriously giving it a thought whether he should infiltrate Hidden Cloud and do something regarding this.
'I certainly can with both Flying Thunder God and Kamui. But what then, by now Bee most likely had told everyone back in Cloud who cut open one of his hands and almost lethally wounded him.
Even if I attack him right now, the blame would fall on Konoha. And while the Raikage is not there, there are chances a war will really break out if I try to touch the only official powerhouse of that village visible to the outside world.'
"Its not worth it."
"What's not worth it ?"
Sukuna's eyes shot open as the figure of the person who had almost gotten near him came visible to him. He was too deep in his thoughts that he missed her coming to him.
'Focus man, don't lose your focus...' He reminded himself, this would have been an enemy right now, good for him and the enemy that she wasn't, but still...focus.
"What are you doing here ? You should be in the hospital." Sukuna complained while getting up from his place, cleaning out the dust from his behind while internally giving himself that little amount of time to get his head back in the game.
"I'm done wasting away in there, I got a rematch with that white-eyed bastard in less than a month. Train me." Demanded one Kiyomi Uchiha with fire lit up in her eyes.
"I won't be so sure about it, you did a number on Neji, a bullet right to the f*cking forehead..." Sukuna grumbled, almost complaining since it was he who would have had to heal the boy.
"What the hell were you thinking ?" He asked, with a bit of anger and irritation from his earlier plight mixing in.
No wonder this exact irritation from his blunder back with Killer Bee drove him to be so confrontational against Tsunade earlier today.
Usually he acted calmer than that. At least he didn't call old ladies old directly to their face.
"I was thinking of winning." Kiyomi shrugged.
"Well, you better start thinking about how to handle angry Hyuga elders if anything were to happen to Neji." Sukuna shot back.
Kiyomi at least had the decency to look a bit sheepish but that too was a rather fleeting expression as she once again got back to her usual nonchalant attitude like her brother.
Not quite brooding like her emo Uchiha sibling but unaffected for sure.
"Hey, he too hit me right in the lungs. I could have died." she protested. For her age, this was one of the few times he had seen such a childlike attitude from her.
Though in that case, both of them weren't that different, they both were older than their looks indicated in this regard.
"Why a bullet though, that is not something you use in a friendly spar. And if you were in a tight spot, why not use your Mangekyo ?"
Kiyomi sighed and looked away. "It was out of habit. I'm too used to handling a gun to think of anything else at that point. As for why not Mangekyo, didn't you say not to use it until absolutely necessary." She glared back.
'Ah… I indeed told her that, almost forgot. And for a good reason though, her brother was able to go blind within two days of opening his Mangekyo. And by her trend, I can easily say the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree.
It was Itachi who was the odd one out… no now that I think about it, even Fugaku kept his Mangekyo hidden for a very long time. And yes, I did check he had Mangekyo when I took both his and his wife's Sharingans.
All signs lead to this pair of brother and sister just being a defective pair.' Sukuna couldn't help but muse at the irony.
"Yes and for a good reason, every time you use it, your eyes get damaged, until you completely go blind." Sukuna nodded and said to Kiyomi's shock.
"Wait what ?… what do you mean blind ?"
xXx
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