The world returned in a series of jagged, disconnected jolts.
A heavy, rhythmic thud resonated through the floor—the sound of mass moving with intent. Sasuke didn't remember the start of the session. His memory of the last hour consisted only of fragmented snapshots: the flickering orange glow of the wall-sconces, the dry metallic taste of his own blood, and the relentless, crushing weight of his opponent.
Jirōbō blurred forward, his bulk defying the laws of inertia. He didn't run; he shifted his center of gravity like a rudder, his whole body generating a terrifying momentum.
CRACK.
Jirōbō's shoulder slammed into Sasuke's sternum—the Thrusting Shoulder.
Sasuke's breath left him in a ragged, involuntary wheeze as his ribs flexed to the point of failure. He tumbled across the stone floor, the gritty dust filling his mouth and nostrils. The scent of stale earth and old salt—Jirōbō's permanent musk—choked the air.
"Slow," Orochimaru's voice slithered from the shadows of the stone throne. It carried a thin, predatory resonance that ignored the distance between them. "The Uchiha legacy looks remarkably brittle today, Kabuto."
"He's working on a deficit, My Lord," Kabuto replied, the snip-click of a pen against a clipboard punctuating his words. "His joint stress is reaching critical levels. Fascinating."
Sasuke forced his leaden limbs to move. His quads burned with a searing fire, and his knees felt like they'd been filled with broken glass. He pushed himself up, his eyes bleeding into red as the Sharingan flared. The three tomoe spun, trying to track the mechanical flow of Jirōbō's Arhat Fist.
Jirōbō didn't wait. He lowered his stance, his movements possessing a showy, violent efficiency.
Shrip-thud.
A Rising Knee caught Sasuke under the jaw, snapping his head back and sending a white-hot vibration through his skull. Sasuke didn't let the momentum take him; he twisted in mid-air, using the force of the blow to launch into a Lion's Barrage. He aimed a heavy, upward kick at Jirōbō's chin.
Jirōbō didn't dodge. He moved his head forward, catching Sasuke's foot with the blunt force of his jaw.
THWACK.
The impact felt like hitting a granite wall. Before Sasuke could retreat, Jirōbō's thick hands locked around Sasuke's ankle and wrist.
The drain began instantly.
Sasuke identified the mechanism through the haze: a dermal siphon. The parasitic link required direct surface contact, and as Jirōbō tightened his grip, the vacuum intensified. Sasuke's extremities cooled; his fingernails turned a bruised, ghostly blue. He attempted a desperate micro-escape, channeling a jagged, low-output Chidori through his own wrist to force a neural shock and break the contact.
The lightning flickered, a weak zzzz-tick, before the energy was simply inhaled. A sudden tremor rippled through Jirōbō's deltoid, and a thin hiss of steam vented from the big man's pores as he metabolized the stolen heat. The counter-measure failed. Sasuke's teeth chattered involuntarily as his internal furnace crashed, his body shivering under the forced metabolic depletion.
"Thank you for the meal," Jirōbō grunted, his voice a low-frequency vibration that rattled Sasuke's teeth.
Jirōbō exploded upward. Mountain Face. His headbutt connected with Sasuke's chest, launching the Uchiha toward the high rafters. Before gravity could reclaim him, Jirōbō leapt.
Rough Rampage.
Jirōbō's elbow drove into Sasuke's gut in mid-air, followed by a violent slam back into the floor. The stone shattered. Jirōbō didn't let go; he gripped Sasuke by the collar and sprinted in a wide, crushing arc, dragging Sasuke through the stone. The ground tore up in jagged, charcoal-black chunks that shredded Sasuke's clothing and skin.
Jirōbō finished the rotation by hurling Sasuke into the center of the room and slamming his palms into the dirt.
Earth Release Barrier: Earth Prison Dome of Magnificent Nothingness.
A massive crust of soil and rock erupted from the floor, arching over Sasuke and sealing him in total darkness. The interior smelled of damp minerals and airless decay.
Sasuke scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against his bruised ribs. The air felt heavy and unrefreshing, clinging to his lungs like wet wool. With every ragged breath, a metallic tang intensified on his tongue—the acidic burn of used air. His skin began to prickle, and his own heartbeat began to boom in his ears, a rhythmic thrumming that pushed against his eardrums as the internal pressure shifted.
"Chidori!" Sasuke hissed.
The zzzz-vrip of the lightning blade illuminated the cramped space in a violent, neon-blue flash. He drove the strike into the wall. The rock shattered, and the resulting shockwave superheated the moisture in the soil, filling the dome with a scalding, white-hot steam. But the rock reformed instantly, the cracks sealing with a wet, sliding sound.
He pivoted, his lungs burning.
Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu.
The flames erupted, the intense heat melting the surface of the dome into a glowing, glass-like slag. The wall reformed slower this time, but it still held. Sasuke didn't stop. He pushed more chakra—Dragon Flame Jutsu. He transformed the attack into a sustained flamethrower.
The temperature inside the dome skyrocketed, conducting heat back into his skin. Sasuke's vision blurred. The oxygen vanished, consumed by the very fire he used for survival. His eardrums rang from the pressure, and a heavy, pressurized ache throbbed behind his eyes.
Fine motor control slipped. His hand seals began to degrade, his fingers fumbling the signs. A thick grain of static flooded his Sharingan's perception, and his heart skipped a single, terrifying beat that sent a cold jolt through his marrow.
Then the Cursed Seal on his neck reached its threshold. It didn't itch. It didn't burn with the usual jagged agony.
It felt soothing.
Something cold and efficient threaded through his nerves, quieting the noise of his failing body. His pulse steadied, the frantic hammering smoothing into a controlled, rhythmic beat. Fear deleted itself from his mind. Pain muted until his shattered ribs were merely a distant, dull pressure. He registered Orochimaru watching from the shadows through a crack in the stone, but the observation carried no weight—the man was a neutral data point in a darkening field.
The black flame-patterns tore across his skin, his capillaries rupturing under the sudden, violent surge of power. The air in the dome tasted of scorched hair and bile.
Sasuke didn't care about the oxygen anymore. He simply stopped caring entirely.
The fire in his hands intensified, the orange-red bleeding into a sickly, pressurized white. He leaned into the override. His muscles answered before he even finished the thought—too fast, too strong. The dome groaned against a force his body was never meant to produce. Microfractures spider-webbed across the ceiling as dust rained down in a heavy, grey curtain.
The stone strained against a body burning past its design, the rock finally giving way to a body running past its own structure.