Training ground.
Obito was still sweating profusely over there.
He punched the wooden stake again and again until his hands were red.
“Obito.”
Makoto called out.
Obito stopped, turned his head to see Makoto, and his eyes lit up.
“Makoto! You’re here!”
“Yeah.” Makoto walked over.
“How is your training going?”
“Pretty good!” Obito wiped away some sweat.
“It’s just that I always feel like something’s missing…”
“Missing what?”
“Missing…” Obito thought for a moment.
“A killer move to beat Aoki!”
Makoto chuckled.
“What a coincidence, I’m here today to teach you just that.”
“Really?!” Obito got excited.
“What killer move?”
“A new taijutsu,” Makoto said.
“Called Tekkai.”
“Tekkai?” Obito tilted his head.
“Sounds very hard.”
“Right, it is hard.” Makoto took a stance.
“Come on, hit me.”
“Hit you?” Obito was stunned.
“Why?”
“To let you experience it,” Makoto said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.”
Obito hesitated.
“But…”
“No buts,” Makoto urged.
“Hurry up, it’s getting dark.”
Obito gritted his teeth.
“Then… then I’m really going to hit you?”
“Hit me.”
Obito took a deep breath and clenched his fists. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
He remembered how Makoto had beaten Aoki with one hand earlier.
He remembered Makoto saying, “We are both geniuses.”
He remembered the special training over the past month.
Then, he threw a punch.
“Bang!”
A muffled sound echoed.
Obito felt like his fist had hit an iron plate.
He grimaced in pain, shaking his hand as he stepped back.
“Makoto… You…”
“This is Tekkai.” Makoto dropped his stance and rubbed his chest.
He felt nothing at all.
At 70% power, Tekkai’s defense was already quite good.
At least someone of Obito’s level couldn’t break through the defense.
“So… so awesome!” Obito stared at his swollen, red fist, his eyes wide.
“If this is used in actual combat…”
“If used in actual combat, Aoki could punch you ten times and you wouldn’t even feel it,” Makoto said.
Obito’s eyes lit up even more.
“Teach me! Makoto! Teach me!”
Uchiha Makoto looked at Obito and chuckled.
Indeed, you shouldn’t fleece the same sheep over and over again.
“Ha! Tekkai!”
On the training ground, Obito took a horse stance, his face flushed red, his muscles tensing up like stones all over his body.
Not far away, two sparrows perched on a treetop, tilting their heads to look at him.
Uchiha Makoto squatted under the shade of a tree, holding a small notebook, shaking his head as he watched.
“Thirty-seventh attempt, duration… 1.2 seconds.”
He drew a stroke in his notebook.
“An improvement of 0.3 seconds compared to last time. Obito, do you know what this means?”
“It means… I’m almost successful!” Obito maintained his Tekkai posture, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.
“It means at this rate, by the time you can actually use Tekkai in combat, the grass on both of our graves will be three meters high.”
Uchiha Makoto closed the notebook and sighed.
Honestly, it wasn’t really Obito’s fault for being slow.
The principle behind Tekkai was dirt simple.
But the problem was, would an enemy fighting you say, “Hold on, let me prepare” beforehand?
Of course not.
People just slash at you in a flash.
By the time you hold your breath, circulate your energy, and shout out the name of your move, finishing the whole routine, the blade has already pierced from your back straight through your chest.
Obito released Tekkai, sat heavily on the ground, panting as if he had run ten kilometers:
“Brother Makoto, this move… this move has a problem! There’s no time to use it at all!”
“You’re only realizing this now?” Uchiha Makoto raised an eyebrow.
“I wanted to say that three days ago.”
“Then why didn’t you say so earlier?!”
“Would you have mastered it if I told you earlier?” Uchiha Makoto stood up and patted the dust off his pants.
“Let’s go, we’re not practicing this today.”
“Huh? Then what are we practicing?”
“Practicing something more advanced.”
Uchiha Makoto led Obito to the other side of the training ground and sat down on a flat rock.
Obito looked at him eagerly, with eyes like a puppy waiting to be fed.
“Obito, have you ever heard of ‘partial hardening’?” Uchiha Makoto asked.
“Partial… what?”
“Meaning, you don’t need to harden your entire body.”
Uchiha Makoto extended his right hand.
“For example, when fighting, if the opponent throws a punch, you only harden the specific area taking the hit, while doing whatever you want with the rest of your body.”
Obito blinked and his brain whirred for a long time.
“Then… isn’t that just…”
“It just means defending only the parts that need defense, while the rest can still move.”
Uchiha Makoto took over the conversation.
“This way you won’t become a sitting duck, and you can still block attacks. I call this ‘Flowing Tekkai’.”
“Flowing Tekkai…” Obito repeated, his eyes slowly lighting up.
“Brother Makoto! You’re a genius! You were able to think of this!”
Uchiha Makoto gave a silent chuckle inside.
A genius?
This kind of trick was practically played to death in Tekkai’s original world of One Piece, alright?
Armament Haki was basically a form of Flowing Tekkai.
But out loud, he said, “Actually, I’ve been researching this for a while. I haven’t slept well these past few nights just pondering over it.”
This was the truth!
He really hadn’t slept well, but not because of researching Tekkai, but rather because he kept flipping through the system panel, figuring out how to fatten up those two leeks, Obito and Guy, even more.