The "training" the Uchiha provided was a mess of tribalism and brute force. They threw us against each other in pits of mud and broken stone, screaming about "the heat of battle" and "the fire in the blood."
It was a 98% waste of time.
I stood in the sparring pit, the sun beating down on my neck. Opposite me, Madara was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his chakra radiating like a heat haze. He was fast. He was strong. But he was moving according to a predictable pattern of kinetic outbursts.
"You're standing still again, Kaito," Madara said, his Sharingan spinning. "Are you calculating the wind speed again? I'm going to hit you before you finish the math."
"I finished the math three minutes ago, Madara-sama," I said, my body loose, my center of gravity shifted slightly to the left. "The current variables suggest your next attack will be a right-handed lead-in followed by a Fire Release distraction. The probability of you connecting is 0.4%."
"Let's test that!"
He moved. To a normal eye, he was a blur. To me, he was a series of muscular contractions.
Observation:
* Gluteal activation: High (Indicating a leap).
* Shoulder tilt: 12 degrees (Indicating a feint).
* Chakra flow: Gathering in the lungs (Distraction confirmed).
He didn't breathe a fireball. He breathed a mist of hot ash. A tactical move—obscuring vision while creating a localized heat source to confuse my Sharingan's thermal tracking. Smart. But he was still relying on the "Uchiha Standard."
I didn't move my feet. I manipulated the friction of the air.
Chakra isn't just "magic energy." It's a fundamental force that interacts with the molecular structure of the world. By vibrating my chakra at a specific frequency, I could create a localized high-pressure zone—a Pneumatic Shield.
As Madara lunged through the ash cloud, his blade aimed for my shoulder, I didn't parry. I tapped the flat of his blade with two fingers.
I didn't use strength. I used Resonance.
Every object has a natural frequency. If you hit it at that exact frequency, the energy doesn't dissipate; it amplifies. I had spent the last hour observing the "hum" of Madara's blade. I knew its frequency: 880Hz.
I pulsed my chakra into his steel at 880Hz.
Vrrr-ack!
The sword didn't just vibrate; it screamed. The sudden surge of resonant energy traveled up the blade and into Madara's wrist, turning his own momentum into a neural shock. His hand went numb. The blade flew out of his grip, spinning into the mud.
I stepped forward, my hand stopping an inch from his throat.
"Engagement ended," I said. "Total time: 1.2 seconds. Chakra expenditure: 0.1%."
Madara stared at his shaking hand, his face pale. "What... what was that? You didn't even use a jutsu. My hand... it feels like it was hit by lightning."
"It was hit by your own strength, Madara-sama," I said, retrieving his sword. "I simply redirected the kinetic energy back into the source. You are treating chakra like a fuel. I am treating it like a mathematical operator."
I looked around the pit. The other Uchiha were staring. They didn't understand the physics of resonance, but they understood that the "talentless" brat had just disarmed the Clan Head's son with two fingers.
"The technical flaw in your style is the 'Over-Commitment,'" I continued, walking Madara back to the center of the pit. "You use 100% of your strength for every strike. It makes you powerful, but it makes you rigid. A system that cannot flex under pressure will eventually shatter. You need to learn the Friction of Existence."
"Show me," Madara said, his eyes burning with a new kind of fire—not the fire of hatred, but the fire of a student who had just realized his teacher was a madman.
I spent the next four hours breaking down the physics of tree-walking. Most Uchiha were taught to "stick" to the bark using a steady flow of chakra. I taught Madara to use Capillary Action.
"Don't just push chakra into the wood," I said, as we stood on the underside of a massive cedar branch. "The wood has pores. If you manipulate the surface tension of the moisture within those pores, you can create a vacuum seal. It consumes 90% less chakra and provides a 100% increase in grip stability."
Madara tried it. He fell three times. On the fourth attempt, he stuck. He hung upside down, his hair dangling toward the forest floor, a look of pure, technical shock on his face.
"I can... I can feel the water in the wood," he whispered. "It's like I'm part of the tree."
"You aren't part of the tree," I corrected. "You are exploiting a biological variable. Don't get poetic, Madara-sama. It interferes with the data throughput."
We stayed there for hours, a seven-year-old analyst and the future God of Shinobi, rewriting the laws of combat one variable at a time. I could feel my progression bar ticking upward.
Neurological Adaptation: +2%.
Technical Proficiency: +5%.
Relationship Variable (Madara): Optimized.
But the peace didn't last. A scout burst into the clearing, his armor scorched, his breathing a ragged, bloody mess.
"The Senju!" he gasped. "They've bypassed the Naka River outposts. They're using a new technique... a forest that moves. Hashirama is on the field."
I felt the air temperature drop. Madara dropped from the branch, his face hardening into the mask of a warrior.
"Hashirama," Madara whispered, his hand going to his sword.
I checked my internal clock.
Engagement Probability: 99%.
Survival Probability: 12%.
"We need a technical solution," I said, my Sharingan flickering red. "Because the math says we're all about to die."