"What fighting styles did you use, Sensoma-kun?" the Hokage asked with the liveliest interest as the boy and his teacher approached him and his wife.
"And what's with the vulgar brawling in my garden, Madara-chan?" Mito raised an eyebrow with pointed calmness. "My 'dark stars'..."
"This was training," the Uchiha replied with a stone face. "The kid managed to surprise me by reading the First Tomoe..."
"The first level of the Kata?!" Hashirama was amazed. "How did you do that, Sensoma?!"
The gazes of the three most experienced shinobi turned to the boy, who offered almost no hope. Now they saw him not just as a funny, exotic pet of one of the Gods of Shinobi, but as a skilled warrior who had managed to fight the strongest opponent. Respect and interest—that's what the reincarnated one felt in those gazes.
"To begin with," Sensoma adjusted his glasses, imagining he was in a mathematics classroom. "I was assessing Madara-sama using my own universal one-on-one fighting style. It's very good in battles against opponents of equal size, but it was almost useless against my teacher. However, I was able to determine the degree of his agility, taking into account the allowances he made for himself."
Madara nodded with satisfaction, acknowledging that he had fought at not even one-hundredth of his true strength. Hashirama listened with interest, while his wife looked strangely at the boy, knowing many details about him from her fuinjutsu. And among them were no skills or talents for battle. Not a single one.
"Then I changed my stance and began to attack with my hands, forgetting about my legs. This allowed me to increase the dynamics of the fight and learn how Madara-sama would move across a larger area of the battlefield," the Uchiha listened more attentively. "The style Madara-sama used was based on maneuvering in the air, thanks to impeccable reaction and anticipation of the opponent's actions. In other words: the Uchiha finish their movements with small jumps after they have read their opponent and know what he will do while their body is in the air. If there is a danger of a leg sweep or just a convenient opportunity for an attack from the air, the jump becomes higher. If not, the jump transitions into a step and allows them to close the distance with the enemy."
"That's the basis of the First Tomoe," Madara nodded. "I didn't think you'd understand everything so quickly."
"I was calculating the combinations of your movements," Sensoma explained, only confusing everyone further. "The thing is, you didn't take me seriously, so you didn't make more than six actions in response to my attack. We'll take your speed as 'y' and mine as 'x'. 'Y' is about twice as large as 'x'—you severely limited your speed with the Sharingan. We add this knowledge to the equation that calculates the speed at which I must move so that you reduce 'y', and the maximum of 'x' would be close to it. The result—your boot ended up in my hand."
"And you predicted the attack from above, guessing that it would be too boring for me to do anything else," Madara continued thoughtfully, mentally dissecting the duel along with his student's words. "Excellent. You read me perfectly."
"Not read, but calculated," Sensoma corrected him, which brought condescending smiles from the "adults." He sighed. "My last move was a deception about the end of the fight. To make everything look unexpected and to be able to distract you from me, I needed to end the duel with a definitive point of your victory. Because you were holding back, I had to move at the maximum of my 'x', which is why at the last moment you found out that I had been intentionally slowing myself down from the very beginning of the fight."
"And only then did I realize that you would have time to reach the back of my head when I turned away..." the legendary Uchiha finished. "You don't dance in battle, you..."
"Calculate," Sensoma smiled. "I love mathematics very much. And applying it in battles is much more interesting than on paper."
A thoughtful silence hung among the adults, during which everyone tried to comprehend the degree of the child's genius. Undoubtedly, the Nara clan had found a kindred spirit, but even they rarely came up with such complex combinations right in the middle of a dynamic battle with a strong enemy. The boy was used to thinking constantly, even while receiving annoying pokes and kicks from his amusing teacher.
"Excellent!" Madara was delighted. "You are a perfect match for me! And we'll figure out your chakra as we go. Mito..." he faltered. "What did you see...?"
The Uzumaki swept a serious gaze over everyone and began to speak. As if reading a verdict.
"Sensoma Tomura, seven years old. Turned seven not long ago, by the way. Physical data—average for ordinary shinobi and slightly below the norm for mid-level clan members. The spiritual component is excellently developed, but it's also too little to provide much chakra. The result for chakra—excellent control, but monstrously small reserves. With such a joke of the gods, the only path is fuinjutsu. However... I digress. His mental abilities are astounding in the opposite direction, and we have seen this clearly—Sensoma, you are a genius. An unclouded mind will allow you, I think, to create something new more easily, and your small chakra reserves will sooner or later put a huge wall in front of you, which you will have to bypass with your mind. I'm sure you'll manage. If you want, I can try to teach you fuinjutsu, if Madara-chan doesn't mind."
"I don't object," Madara replied dryly. No one was even surprised—everyone had already understood that the God of Shinobi would do everything possible to strengthen his student. And he could find out the secrets of the Uzumaki clan's jutsu through him at any time.
"Excellent," Mito nodded seriously. "Sensoma is hardworking and burns with a single desire."
"The Will of Fire!" Hashirama's eyes lit up.
"Victory over enemies!" Madara grinned.
"Definitely not eating cakes," Sensoma sighed.
"Of course," the Uzumaki smirked. "You want battles. Frequent fights with children have sated you, and now you desire something more. War—that one word makes the blood boil in your body. It's not entirely normal, but even I can understand you."
All eyes fell on Madara, who lowered his gaze with a stern expression on his face.
"What's past is past," Mito returned her attention to Sensoma. "Anything else?"
"Oh yes, just a little bit," she nodded. "You have a strange form of pacifism. Of all the strong emotions, only those you experience from battles and playing board games with the Nara. Even the death of your parents left almost no impression. You are almost bored with life, and you almost don't care about anything or anyone, except for your maniacal desire to engage in battles again and again... It's very strange and sad, Sensoma-kun..."
The reincarnated one could not answer this. He himself understood that during his "childhood," his hunger for real battles had only grown, teased by skirmishes with children. The former teacher had stopped feeling human back in the orphanage, never having come to terms with the fact that he was a child. He made fun of adults and was amused when "kids" who hadn't even reached thirty tried to teach him about life or imagined themselves to be wise people.
He read Madara easily, as the same battle proved, and calmly endured the pressure emanating from Mito-sama when she looked at his new teacher. He didn't care about the Village Hidden in the Leaves as long as he could live and study here. He felt gratitude towards the Nara clan but didn't consider himself one of them. He hadn't even made any normal friends in his seven years of childhood! Just acquaintances and buddies, with the exception of the two housemate boys who had become something of a small family.
But a second chance in a world of battles and "magic" was clearly not given to the former mathematics teacher for him to worry about all these trifles.
"That is, of course, sad, Mito-sama," he began cautiously. "But what do you think of the idea of creating a chakra storage unit that would allow it to be released in battle? I'm sure your mastery of fuinjutsu could help me in my research..."
"See, what did I tell you?" the woman smirked. "He's already thinking about how to help himself in battles."
"And yet, tell me more, Sensoma," Hashirama leaned in. "A chakra storage unit? Like a fuin with medical chakra inside?"
Three weeks after Sensoma began his training with one of the Gods of Shinobi, uncomfortable conversations began for the student and teacher.
Returning from a late training session to the clan quarter, the Uchiha head found his clansmen in a monstrously nervous state. Like bees who know a bear is stealing their honey but can do nothing about it. The problem was that brown bears never had the audacity to make all the bees feel so bad. And one of the strongest clans in the world shouldn't look the way it did now. But Madara knew what could have affected his kinsmen so much.
Tobirama Senju...
The albino was found right in the empty house of the clan head. Madara was not in the habit of locking his door, because only the Uchiha themselves could steal in the Uchiha clan quarter, and only Izuna could steal from Madara. And that was a long time ago. So the white-haired man was waiting for his brother's best friend in the guest room, sitting ceremoniously in the very center with his legs crossed. His face, meanwhile, was ordinary—as if he had recently caught his beloved woman cheating. Only he had never had a beloved woman. But he had the face.
And the urge to punch it with all his might was even stronger than usual. It was probably going to rain...
"Why?" Madara thundered upon seeing the uninvited and unpleasant guest in his house.
"We need to talk," Tobirama answered him in the same tone. "And you'd better come with me. Uchiha."
A flash of rage at the fact that the proud name of the clan sounded like an insult from the albino's mouth, and the God of Shinobi lost precious seconds, during which his famous namesake's younger brother calmly walked past. To the door.
Tobirama had no intention of starting a conversation until they were out of the quarter. Then the Senju led the Uchiha to the embankment—there was one in the developing village. A beautiful place, but too peaceful for the fiery Madara.
"So," the albino sighed, who was also finding it difficult to start the conversation. "You've taken on a student..."
"Does this... bother you...?" the brunette, surprised by the direction the conversation was taking, found the right word. He wanted to say the other words, but his status did not allow it.
"It... bothers me," the Senju smirked in response to Madara's vocabulary. "The way you treat him."
"The relationship between a teacher and a student is none of your business!" he waved it away.
"Everything in this village is my business!" Tobirama raised his voice in response. "And the head of one of the strongest clans going crazy is too!"
"Repeat that..." Madara drawled, deceptively quiet and calm.
"I would understand if you were getting attached to the boy, seeing in him a memory of your brother," at the word "brother," the Uchiha flinched with his whole body. "It's not for me to say such things, of course. But know this—Izuna is already dead! You won't bring him back even if you believe that Sensoma is his reincarnation or something else! You won't bring your brother back even if you kill me!"
With the last sentence, the albino hit the mark, because the kunai in Madara's hand appeared too quickly and, as if, casually. But the Uchiha restrained himself. When necessary, he did it perfectly, no matter what anyone thought or said.
"Tobirama Senju," Madara said slowly and with relish. "The shinobi who killed my younger brother. The man who hates my clan the most. A warrior who has survived more than many could in several lifetimes. Worries about me? His worst enemy, who dreams of your blond head, impaled on a stake, watching the village with dead eyes from that mountain over there? Have you gone mad, Tobirama?"
The Senju's red, impassive eyes stared into the Uchiha's black, bottomless ones. Madara read in the gaze of his old enemy... not sympathy, but... understanding! Understanding and... distrust...
"You'd better stop building castles of sweets in your imagination," the albino dropped. "Sensoma is not your brother, and he never will be. I don't care about your black soul—let it torment itself until the end of time, but the boy... You could harm him. I don't care about him either, but by harming him, you will become the cause of trouble in the village. And all the causes of trouble in the village will have to deal with me!"
And Tobirama left, leaving Madara with mixed feelings. Of course, the Uchiha admitted to himself that he saw more of his brother's spirit in Sensoma than a student, but to harm him? How could he harm the boy? He was doing so much for him! For three weeks now, Sensoma had been learning from Madara, and his training was bearing its first fruits—the boy had become noticeably stronger. He was perfectly mastering all the basics, and the Uchiha would give him more!
And of course, the order given to a promising Uchiha boy a couple of weeks ago was not to blame for Madara's vague torments.
The clan needed to be strengthened by strengthening the eyes of its members.
Sensoma was not spared from unpleasant topics concerning his training with the God of Shinobi either. Although there were no legendary shinobi nearby...
"He's evil," Shikonada and his friends pressed during another gathering for a game of shogi. Everyone was already tired of playing chess with Sensoma. "What kind of teacher is he?"
"A decent one," Tomura made a move. "In a couple of days, I'll start learning ninjutsu. For now, we're going over the basics, and they're quite simple."
"Like how to dismember people..." Chori Akimichi giggled, sitting as far away from the game board as possible and stuffing his face with some disgusting thing from a crinkly package.
"Or how to blow up houses while the residents are sleeping," Shikokura frowned. He, as the oldest and smartest, was the official opinion of the group. "Madara is strong. But he's definitely not good, Sensoma. You understand that, right? My father won't teach you much, but at least after training with him, you can become a normal shinobi. The village is just growing, so it will need people like that."
"Dad says that Madara-sama doesn't like Konoha very much," Inori chimed in. "Even his own clan doesn't support him."
The reincarnated one silently made his moves, listening to the dirt about his teacher. He knew that the strongest Uchiha's popularity in the village left much to be desired, but to this extent... Shikogeru, thank God, didn't complain, because he understood everything perfectly—the boy needed power, and the one who had it could give it to him.
Hashirama wouldn't have bothered with Sensoma, no matter how wonderful he was, and neither would his brother. Mito-sama had promised to give a few fuinjutsu lessons, but he needed to grow into them, namely, to know the theory of other "jutsu" and to be able to do some things in practice. No one from the other clans was even considered—for them, the orphan was a funny toy of one of the Gods of Shinobi. That was all.
"Madara-sensei is quite strong," the seven-year-old boy said weightily at last. "As for strength, he knows almost everything. Moreover, unlike Hashirama-sama, he can give knowledge that I can use. I can't reach the Senju, because I don't have Mokuton or such monstrous amounts of chakra, and I never will... Of course, Madara-sensei is far from ideal and is sometimes cruel, rude, and harsh, but... He's not a villain. At least, he treats me better than anyone from the orphanage ever did."
Of course, they began to dissuade him. To talk him out of it, to laugh. Children can be cruel at times. Shikokura was almost grown up by shinobi standards, but even he couldn't understand the former mathematics teacher. However, the latter was aware that, at times, he couldn't understand himself. But he needed Madara, because there was no other such magnificent teacher of combat to be found...
For all these three weeks, the teacher and student were just getting used to each other.
They ran marathons to strengthen the body (it was damn hard for Sensoma to keep up with the tireless shinobi), meditated under waterfalls to temper the spirit (the water in these waterfalls was colder than the most disgusting of nights the reincarnated one had encountered in this world), sparred (Madara had to raise his level time and time again to dominate his student, because he was growing at an astonishing rate), and studied the local sciences (geography, language, and mathematics, perhaps this was the easiest part of the training).
Madara liked the spontaneity of his ward, who was always looking for and finding something new for himself. For example, he was constantly experimenting with his running style. Left arm to left leg and vice versa. Piles of new exercises, variations of styles. Sensoma not only could improve—he wanted to! And the Uchiha liked what he saw...
With each passing day, the memories of the past brought less pain, and the present brought much more joy. Madara was seen smiling more often, and even Hashirama with his eternal optimism no longer caused the same irritation. Mito's attitude didn't stir the God of Shinobi's soul at all, because now she was his colleague in raising his student.
His student and little brother...
Let it be to no one else. Let it be, even, not always to himself and with a backward glance. But Madara was beginning to consider the orphan of the Tomura clan as a brother. Not as a new kinsman, but as the shadow of the old one—Izuna. After all, the thirst for battle, the wit, the spontaneity, and that gaze—all spoke of their connection!
Except for the eyes, which spoiled the whole picture...
A detail that might seem unimportant to someone else drove the great Uchiha mad. At times, he wanted to grab Sensoma and shake him soundly so that he would finally awaken his Sharingan! Sometimes this desire became so strong that Madara was afraid of himself. "You could harm him"? Those words, spoken by Tobirama, were probably true.
He could, but he wouldn't.
"Today, we have the elements on our agenda," the Uchiha announced to his only student, his arms habitually crossed over his chest, as they reached their destination.
As a shinobi village, Konoha had to have its training grounds, and training ground number twenty-four was the first of its kind. This number evoked conflicting feelings in Madara, but it was closely connected to Izuna, so "ones" and "zeros" were passed over for the title of the first training ground of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.
The training ground itself was nothing special—sparse trees, areas with dense trees, bushes, and sand. Madara set up the logs for practicing hand strikes himself, by hand. The only difference between this training ground and the others being built among the first was the huge number of targets scattered throughout its area. The Uchiha were always famous for their accuracy in throwing shuriken and kunai.
Well, and there was also a place nearby that Madara loved very much. And even if for the sake of such a neighborhood he had to run many kilometers every day, an extra training session wouldn't hurt Sensoma.
"So, what are the basic elements called?"
"There are five of them," Sensoma answered diligently. "Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, and Earth."
"The strongest element?"
"There isn't one. All the basic elements are potentially equal. Each basic element has an 'enemy' among its peers and a 'weakling'. The 'enemy' is the element that is inherently stronger. For Earth, it's Lightning. But Earth is stronger than Water, its 'weakling'."
"Excellent," the teacher nodded. "I hope you're aware of the other 'enemies' and 'weaklings' as well. But what about the other elements? I personally fought a user of the Wood Release—Hashirama. Where did that come from?"
"Kekkei Genkai," the student answered. "It's a mutation or heredity. A dormant or altered gene. There are a huge number of them all over the world, but they are mostly known, as are their users, because the attachment of genetics to Kekkei Genkai gives rise to entire clans with unique genes."
"An example."
"The Uchiha clan with the Sharingan, the Hyuga clan with the Byakugan, the Senju clan occasionally has unique individuals who can use the Wood Release. There is also the Hatake clan with unique chakra that allows them to perform stronger techniques. And many others..."
"Indeed, many," Madara grunted and pulled a folder from behind his back. "Here are all the known clans with Kekkei Genkai. And a couple of not-so-famous ones. The data is secret, but not strictly. Memorize them. I'll start quizzing you on this in three weeks."
"I'll need less time," Sensoma shrugged. "Or do you have something new?"
"Exactly," the Uchiha smirked at Tomura's perceptiveness. "Today we will begin to study ninjutsu. I'm sure it will come easily to you, as your chakra control should be great. Remember—large amounts of chakra are important, but if you pour them all into one attack, even an ordinary person can defeat you. In the world, by the way, there are warriors who can resist shinobi even without chakra, but there are few of them."
"Completely without chakra?" the boy blinked in disbelief. "What kind of monsters are they..."
"Mostly skilled swordsmen," one of the greatest shinobi in the world waved it away. "Let's not get distracted. Control will allow you to master techniques more easily, which means you'll learn faster. Theoretically, you could use medical ninjutsu, but only on yourself—to heal others, you need to have sufficient amounts of chakra. For standard techniques, you don't need much—form the hand seals correctly and send the chakra to the right place."
"Why are these seals necessary?" Sensoma ineptly intertwined his fingers, observing a kind of octopus in place of his limbs with a gloomy expression. "Can't you use techniques without them?"
"You can. But that would require not just good control, but perfect control. If we divide chakra control into stages, then... I think my control can be called total, but even so, I can handle complex fire techniques using only one, main seal. I haven't encountered a level of control an order of magnitude stronger than mine, but I don't rule out that such people exist. These people could use techniques without hands. But that's just a theory."
"Will I be able to achieve that?"
"First, just achieve something," the God of Shinobi ruffled the boy's hair and smiled. "From today, we will study hand seals. Pay special attention to them—guys with fast hands can create techniques almost instantly, and in battle, what's important...?"
"Speed, strength, skill," Sensoma reported. "And some minor things..."
"'Minor things'..." Madara pretended to frown. "These minor things cost many their lives. However, you said the main things. Look—this seal is the main one, it's called Tiger and is used mainly in Earth and Fire techniques..."
In a week, Sensoma was able to learn how to correctly form any sequence of seals at a decent speed. It was not a difficult science, requiring perseverance and patience, so the former teacher managed it with ease.
As he studied the seals, the boy received theory about ninjutsu and genjutsu from his teacher. If the boy was supposed to be good at ordinary "superpowers" due to his excellent control over a small level of chakra, then illusionary techniques seemed to have been created specifically for people like him. They didn't need the equivalent of a "crowbar" of chakra; they needed a "lockpick" that gave the user the key to the opponent's consciousness.
The Uchiha clan's lockpick was the Sharingan. It could even be called a universal key, although some could resist its influence.
"To break out of a genjutsu, you need to understand and accept the unreality of what is happening around you, form a seal, and shout a code word. Sometimes the last two points can be omitted," Madara droned on in a boring voice, sitting on a huge purple stone in the shape of Sensoma's face. "You know all this—why is your consciousness still here?"
"I want to understand one thing," the boy feigned deep thought. "Here is my hand. All of this is inside my consciousness, but my body is 'out there'. Can I move my body while I'm here?"
"The consciousness is detached from the body," Madara frowned. "Although... if your body could do something unconsciously..."
"For example, send chakra to the brain, sobering it up," Sensoma picked up. "Let's say, if the body doesn't move for more than a minute."
"You won't be able to sleep," Madara smiled mockingly. "Although sleep is also a kind of genjutsu in its own way."
It gave Teacher Tomura no small pleasure to point out his student's mistakes, as there were excessively few of them. And when he got on his high horse—inventing all sorts of perversions using chakra—he became wildly similar to a certain albino, and so the man simply couldn't resist teasing the boy.
Even if he did it rather clumsily.
"Then you just need to make the body move," the student was still thinking. "React to external stimuli. Now you will come up to me and put a kunai to my throat. I won't even feel it here."
"You don't feel it?" Madara inquired.
"Not at all," the boy touched his neck. "Although the illusion is weak, so if you make a cut, I'll wake up."
"Perhaps not," the teacher was sitting in the same place as at the very beginning. "What are your thoughts?"
"An experienced genjutsu user can confuse a person's brain and easily win. There are few such tricksters, but the Uchiha have good potential. Therefore, the main thing is to understand that you are in an illusion. If you don't do that, you've lost. But if the illusion is very, very skillful... Hmm... I'm sure a trained body can move even without consciousness, but how to achieve that?"
"I can't," Madara admitted, removing the kunai from the throat of the student who had broken out of the genjutsu.
"And I can't," the boy sighed and adjusted his glasses. "But I want to..."
They hadn't started training genjutsu yet, only going over the theory. First, Sensoma would have to choose his method of influencing the brain—through what to send chakra into the opponent's head. There were enough variations: smells, sounds, special touches, and so on, but the reincarnated one wanted something atypical and effective in his arsenal.
The first Ninjutsu training sessions began, as always, with a run to the training ground, a couple of sparring matches, during which Sensoma figured out the Third Tomoe—the completed Uchiha fighting style. He had mastered the Second in a couple of weeks, but this one he had been unable to overcome for longer. Another small test of Sensoma's knowledge, which passed quite quickly and without a spark—Madara knew that his student crammed everything conscientiously.
"Alright," the Uchiha stopped Sensoma as he began to list space-time techniques. "We'll finish with this. Today I will teach you the first ninjutsu that you will perfect. The more often you use one specific technique, the higher your control over it and the efficiency of the chakra-to-power ratio. In other words, by repeating a technique over a million times, you will be able to almost not notice the changes in your chakra after it, if it is not very strong. Of course, you won't have that much time for one technique, but the fact itself is important, that with effort you can level some of the difference between you and a shinobi with a normal level of chakra."
"Then why don't weak shinobi train their hearts out?" Tomura didn't understand. "After all, this is their chance to become stronger. A million times! I'm sure many techniques could be 'leveled up' like that in a year. Or rather, one a year, but that's already not bad."
"You can't win a fight with just one move," the teacher raised a finger. "Shinobi priority number two?"
"Be versatile," the boy answered obediently.
"Good boy. Now memorize the sequence: Tiger, Rabbit, Boar, Dog. This is the Earth Wall. It's quite simple to master: you send chakra to your hands, and then pour it from your hands into the ground in the required amount. I can't explain to you how to regulate the height, width, and hardness of the technique—you'll understand that yourself."
The boy diligently formed the seals and placed his hands on the ground. He shouted the name of the technique and sent chakra—the Sharingan clearly saw it, but... the technique didn't work.
"Chakra dropped by ten percent," Madara clicked his tongue thoughtfully. "Bad, but this is your first time with ninjutsu at all. Almost no one gets it. Keep trying."
Ten more attempts—the boy figured out the control along the way and was able to reduce his chakra consumption, but he couldn't achieve a result. Eleven, twelve attempts, and his chakra would be at zero, with no result.
"That's normal," his teacher encouraged him. "You're spending chakra, which means you're developing your control and the technique itself. It's always hard to learn from scratch, but once you understand the principle, you'll be able to master other ninjutsu faster. Now, since you have almost no chakra left in your body, let's do some physical training—the body develops faster from this, and for you, a weakling in chakra, this is very convenient."
"But your body isn't that muscular," the boy retorted, doing his first push-up. "That's where chakra really hurts."
"It doesn't hurt me," Madara stuck his nose in the air and did a couple of laps around the training ground.
For another four days, the reincarnated one spent all his chakra time and time again to get a satisfactory result, but there was none. The control was indeed not bad for a beginner—chakra expenditure was decreasing steadily, as the boy understood the essence of economy, but to achieve a normal wall... he only managed it on the fifth day.
"Excellent," Madara smiled with satisfaction, looking at the student sitting behind a meter-high stone wall. "The durability, though..."—a kick with a chakra-infused leg easily broke through the obstacle. "—Is nonexistent for now, but the essence is there. It will get easier from here."
And it really did get easier, because the former mathematics teacher understood the principle itself. For him, it was a breakthrough, and in just two weeks, he had mastered the Earth Wall at an excellent level, and this was despite the fact that Madara had given him two new techniques during that time—the Hiding Like a Mole Technique and the Stone Clone Technique—two very useful ninjutsu for combat.
The boy had no problems with learning this side of a shinobi's power, so the Uchiha finally decided to let him go to Mito for a while. Madara himself had to complete a couple of missions that Hashirama had given him at the last meeting with the Daimyo, as well as do something in the clan.
Mito and Sensoma got along perfectly when the great Uchiha was not around, because in his presence, the boy stayed on his side, which could not leave the Uzumaki indifferent.
The boy managed (albeit with huge risks to his life) to find out the full story of the hatred between these two. It all turned out to be simple—Izuna Uchiha fell in love with Mito's best friend, and she reciprocated. But the clans were not going to yield to them, nor was the current wife of the First Hokage, so the friend had no choice but to renounce her feelings. Madara, in this regard, was more lenient and helped his brother sneak into Uzumaki territory every time. Brawls with the Uchiha brothers became a common occurrence for the red-haired clan.
It was then that Madara's blade grazed Mito's chest...
The woman would simply boil with rage, remembering the smug smirk of that idiot when he thought to work his sword from behind as well. The bleeding was severe, and the losses themselves were terrible, but the Uzumaki clan was always famous for its vitality and fuinjutsu, so Mito was able to heal herself and regain what she had lost right on the battlefield.
But the scar on her soul never disappeared, nor did her fixation on the senior head of the red-eyed clan.
However, she quickly found an approach to his student (or was it the other way around?). He had clear problems with his handwriting, but knowing how the Nara taught their children, one couldn't be surprised. When the fuinjutsu master took over, Sensoma's hands straightened, as did the lines he drew. Mito was always considered an excellent teacher, teaching the children in the clan, and this boy also knew perfectly well how to learn new things, so he was destined to be a master of sealing techniques in five years!
Moreover, in an era of war, people were used to using what was already created, rather than developing techniques. Therefore, the new generation, with its unclouded mind, could sometimes greatly puzzle the "old-timers," as Sensoma often did, offering brilliant ideas for using chakra. Tobirama was also knowledgeable in novelties and worked hard to create new techniques, so the Uzumaki would have suggested that Tomura go to him, but... the younger Senju, to put it mildly, did not like it when strangers walked around his laboratory.
And everyone was a stranger in his laboratory. Even his brother.
So the First Hokage's wife had to get creative and give more and more complex knowledge about seals on scrolls and surfaces in general.
"Fuinjutsu—sealing techniques. With the right knowledge and skills, you can seal anything—chakra, things, or even living people. Fuinjutsu works on special formulas, so the accuracy of their drawing and construction is important. You won't have any problems with this in a couple of years—you are surprisingly diligent, Sensoma-kun."
"Thank you, Mito-sama. So what about the technique for increasing reserves?"
The Uzumaki sighed. What the boy had been demanding of her from the very beginning of their acquaintance seemed to her something almost impossible. In order to gather chakra on one's body, even using fuinjutsu, one needed to have perfect control of that very chakra and know a lot about the structure of the chakra channels and the shinobi's body. His request was equal to the pinnacle of fuinjutsu and medical ninjutsu. Mito could not reveal such heights to him—she did not know them herself.
"You should talk about this with someone from the medics," the Uzumaki answered. "Preferably an experienced one. It's not difficult to make a seal on the body, but to pour your chakra into it, and in the background... It has to become a reflex, but at the same time not take all your reserves, leaving some... I don't know, Sensoma, if it's possible. In any case, I will help you as soon as you are ready to constantly transfer the excess of your modest chakra into the Seal. I think the reserve should increase by about six times. If this technique works at all..."
"Six or seven is ideal," Sensoma sighed. "The ideal is almost unattainable. I'd be happy with just four times..."
"It all depends only on your skills and diligence," the woman smiled. "Your main teacher will be back in three days, so let's hurry up and learn a couple of easy seals."
During Madara's two-week absence, Mito taught Sensoma few fuinjutsu, but she gave him the main thing—the basics. Now the boy could experiment on his own, but only under the supervision of the same Madara—it wouldn't do to ruin such a talent. Together with Tomura, the Uzumaki made a plan for his weekly visits to her and a schedule of his progress—it turned out that in three years, by his tenth birthday, Sensoma would be able to learn everything from the Uzumaki that she could give him.
He hadn't been able to find a medical-nin yet, so the thought of the Chakra Reserve Increasing Seal was put on the back burner.
But the boy began to practice taijutsu intensively, in order to fulfill two of his ideas—breaking out of genjutsu (or, at worst, fighting under its influence) and a technique that used the hidden potential of the human body.
The former mathematics teacher had started his training only eleven weeks ago, but he had already learned as much as even clan children who were a couple of years older than him didn't know.
On average, of course.