So during that time, he only trained in silence.
Whenever the guards weren't watching, which was nearly always, since they had basically locked him away and 'forgotten the key', he would use every spare moment.
Meals were shoved through cracks, rarely accompanied by words.
To them, he was an animal in a cage, best ignored until feeding time.
He spent months like that, confined to whatever prison they had at hand.
Sometimes it was the belly of a half-rotten boat, as was most recently.
Sometimes, a natural cave. Sometimes, a makeshift cage hammered together in haste after another vessel collapsed.
Each place was different, yet the treatment was the same: isolation, silence, and the stench of neglect. But none of it deterred him.
If anything, he decided it was a blessing in disguise.
If he could overcome this state of captivity on his own power, he reasoned and motivated himself, then he would leave it stronger, more tempered, more confident than any pampered child of a great clan in this world, for example.
And he could feel it working already.
His meditation in total darkness and silence sharpened him.
At first, the discomfort gnawed at him: the cold floors, the damp walls, the hunger twisting his stomach, but he adapted.
He let those sensations temper him like fire does steel. With no outside stimulation, he was forced inward.
He probed deeply into himself: his memories of Earth, his analysis of this world's rules, the fragments of the original Kimimaro's feelings still clinging to him, all examined and dismantled.
He planned, he plotted, and at the same time, he refined his perception of the present moment.
Even in that darkness, he began to feel subtle things.
The faint rhythm of his heartbeat.
The weight of his bones inside his flesh.
The smallest trickles of chakra threading through him.
He wasn't sure what to call it, but it felt like the rough beginnings of a sensory ability, internal and near-distance external, self-awakened, born from necessity. Rudimentary, but real.
Although Kimimaro had become stronger than the majority of Kaguya clan members, escaping had never been simple.
Individual strength meant nothing if you were one against hundreds, especially a clan that always clung together in a mob.
Special opportunities arose now and then, but they were rare.
The Kaguya way of life was predictable: find a new isolated island, bleed it dry of food and wealth, burn what was left, and then move on to the next one like a swarm of locusts.
That rhythm gave him no openings.
Until now.
Before, he had also held back.
He had judged himself not ready, not strong enough to face even a handful of them in the open.
Caution had restrained him, patience had chained him.
But this last voyage was different.
The chance had come, and he had decided.
This time, he did not hesitate.
He had made his move, and the proof was simple: the boat was his.
It was the first crack in the cycle, and Kimimaro savored it.
Kimimaro now judged that escaping hadn't been easy, but it hadn't exactly been hard either.
The truth was simple.
The original Kimimaro could logically use the Dead Bone Pulse from a very young age, and to a frightening extent, otherwise the clan would never have feared him so much.
In fact, the current Kimimaro realized that from the moment he had transmigrated, his strength was already close to what it was now, when not held back.
That means that his current "safe-usage" was just low chunin, but "reckless usage" without thinking of the consequences, on his body, also rose even above that.
So, he could have forced an escape then as well.
But there was a problem.
The problem was the outcome of using that ability blindly.
The original had already started suffering from that mysterious disease as a child.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have been so terminally ruined by fifteen.
It had to have accumulated over the years.
That much was obvious.
So from the start, the transmigrator had crossed out even the slightest reckless usage, since it seemingly greatly compounded and scaled negatively.
After all, he planned to use this body for a long time, not die at fifteen like some loser.
It was strong, good-looking, overflowing with potential, wasting that so quickly would've been pathetic.
That was why he had been careful to train more in bone density manipulation, rather than the other two abilities of the bloodline that shredded the body more.
But that also made him realize another strange thing.
The original Kimimaro could have escaped like this, too.
After all, he had never cared about recklessly firing bones and tearing his flesh apart everywhere, later, as Orocimaru's personal male "Yandere".
So why didn't he use it to escape from the Kaguya clan?
Also, the Kaguya clan clearly hadn't "unleashed" him when they threw themselves into that suicidal charge against Kirigakure, or he would have been done for as well.
So how did Kimimaro walk away?
Some noble martyr from Kaguya releasing him? Ridiculous.
He must have broken out on his own power once he realised that no one was checking.
Which only proved the truth, he could've done it literally the entire time.
"In fact, was he a masochist?" The thought crossed his mind again.
"Is that why he didn't escape, because he actually enjoyed being their caged freak??"
After all, the original only really stepped out of his clan's confinement after they were massacred.
And even then, he had been faintly melancholic, as if sad for them.
Lamenting himself as some lonely flower that no one would appreciate anymore.
Kimimaro sneered at the thought. "What appreciation? What "flower"? What kind of appreciation comes from people who lock you in a cage like an animal?"
And to make it worse, the original said those lines right in front of Orochimaru.
No wonder Orochimaru then immediately saw him as the perfect tool and acted swiftly; anyone ambitious and well-versed in psychology would surely not miss such a thing.
From then on, he became Orochimaru's obedient toy, his fate sealed.
The current Kimimaro almost felt embarrassed at the memory.
It was comical, bizarre, and pitiful.
Goosebumps crawled on his skin just thinking about how far off the mark the old Kimimaro's thoughts had been.
"Perhaps some people really are born with strange temperaments. Itachi was also similar to an extent..." He thought.
Anything was possible.
Just as the original Kimimaro was born far more handsome and powerful than all those inbred degenerates in his clan, like a demigod among them, maybe he was also born with the opposite temperament - 'pure', softer, selfless, dependent, 'feminine', putting it politely.
What a strange twist of fate.
The current Kimimaro could only look back on that old self with strangeness, with ridicule, with a sense of grotesque comedy.
He was nothing but a tragic joke.
Whatever it was, the original Kimimaro had simply been wired wrong from the beginning.
That boy clung to bonds as if they were sacred.
To him, belonging meant bending the knee, offering his body and life like a tool to be used up and discarded.
But the one steering this body now was different.
He didn't worship bonds; he dissected them.
The only truth was that bonds held if you were the stronger party. Otherwise, they were just chains.
The old Kimimaro would've waited patiently for someone to open the cell, happy just to be called "useful."
The new Kimimaro had torn the bars apart himself and forced others to row for him.
That was the difference: the flower waiting to be admired, versus the hand that seizes the garden and makes it bloom with blood.
The old Kimimaro begged for belonging.
He himself would demand it.
That was the difference.
He was sharper now, harder, hungrier, and disciplined.
Stoic enough to leash his own desires, patient enough to wait, yet ruthless enough to seize without hesitation.
He wouldn't crawl into someone else's shadow.
He wouldn't die pitifully at fifteen, forgotten even by the "master" he served and worshipped.
He would climb the staircase one step at a time, until no one in the world could look down on him.
The boat creaked steadily beneath him, oars dipping in rhythm, but Kimimaro's gaze was elsewhere.
Out there, across the endless black sea, lay the real stage.
The world had never seen what the Kaguya bloodline could be without sickness dragging it down.
Shikotsumyaku, unchained from sickness and perfected.
The Sage's Body of the Kaguya clan as it was meant to be.
He flexed his palm, thin spikes glinting faintly in the lamplight.
"And if I want a Byakugan," he murmured, lips twitching into a dry smile, "I'll just rip it out of someone's skull myself."
Visions sparked in his mind: great hidden villages crumbling like sandcastles under the tide, Akatsuki scattering like roaches in firelight, even the Otsutsuki "gods" snapping like brittle twigs.
"They abandoned me," his voice dropped to a whisper, cold and certain. "So I'll abandon the world."
Kimimaro had died a flower, delicate and pitied, meant to be admired only until it wilted.
But the one steering this body would not die so easily.
He would live as a forest of bones, vast, unyielding, impossible to ignore.
"Once, Naruto's story forgot me," he thought, eyes fixed on the horizon, "but this time I'll make sure the world never forgets again."
The breeze carried his words into the night, as if even the sea itself had to listen.
He was Kimimaro now.
Back on Earth, he had been no one, just a terminally ill patient wasting away, abandoned by family, friends, and time itself.
Taking on this new identity wasn't hard.
In fact, he welcomed it.
This body was everything his old one was not: powerful, sharp, filled with monstrous potential if used properly.
The fragments of the old Kimimaro's soul still lingered inside him, but fused, swallowed, and devoured, powerless to sway his will.
Yet they were not meaningless.
Their presence gave him a strange sense of belonging to this body, as though his new existence had roots in the story of the original.
Those fragments remembered too.
They remembered the future they saw, Orochimaru's and Kabuto's silent mockery and cold dismissal, the world's indifference.
They remembered the cage, the betrayal, the way his clan had treated him like a curse, from a new perspective.
And though they were weak, part of him still cried through them.
Not out of softness, but out of fury.
It was like watching another version of yourself walk straight into a pit, humiliated and discarded.
That Kimimaro had died as nothing more than a tool, a joke, forgotten by both friend and enemy.
"This time will be different," he thought, gripping the wooden railing until it groaned.
It was the promise one makes to themselves when staring at their own sick corpse, rotting in memory.
The words didn't need to be spoken aloud.
The vow burned hot in his chest, brighter than the lamps swaying on the deck.