"Young Master Zoro, Young Master Toji, you are summoned to the main estate tomorrow. I will come back to fetch you when the time comes."
Nine months had passed. I knew the day was coming fast, and I did my best to prepare mentally, but when these words came out of the nurse's mouth, I still started to panic.
I did my best to strengthen both Toji and myself as much as possible, and I was rather proud of the results.
These 9 months had been very productive, but they didn't go without setbacks.
Once the Armament Haki was learned, I thought everything would roll smoothly. Oh, how wrong I was.
Developing Observation Haki was certainly slow, but I could feel the progress with each training session.
This time, it felt like I was hitting a wall that, no matter how hard I struck or pushed it, remained impenetrable and unmoving.
Making the process instinctive and instantaneous took an incredibly long time, nearly three months for the delay between intention and action to be minimal.
And yet, that wasn't even the hardest part.
The part that made me want to vomit blood was the infusion.
Infusing my Haki into the training sword—because yes, in the meantime I had managed to get one thanks to the nurses—was absolutely hellish.
The Haki coming out of my body was impossible to control, let alone extend onto an object.
It was only one day, after thousands of daily strikes, stripped of all unnecessary thoughts and all consciousness of myself, during that brief moment when the sword and I became one, that I succeeded in infusing Haki into my sword.
When I did it, an invisible aura to the untrained sprang from my sword and created a slight cut on the ground.
I hadn't yet mastered flying slashes, so it was obvious that it was Armament Haki that had increased the power of my strike at this level.
This entire event had happened while I was barely conscious, and it took me 2 more weeks to truly master the infusion.
After that, I continued to train my Armament Haki, aiming to master the second phase: Hardening.
I don't know if it was because I had managed to infuse invisible Haki into an object, but I achieved it fairly easily.
Although we never had a concrete explanation of its function in any official document, I could rely on my personal experience and a good dose of fan theory to speculate.
Haki is, in principle, a very real energy. If awakening consisted of concentrating it internally and then externalizing it, hardening should consist of externalizing and then concentrating it outside.
In other words, I had to concentrate the Haki inside, let it out, then concentrate the externalized Haki around my body instead of just letting it escape.
Now you can understand how infusion helped me.
Although the principle of concentration was absent, extrabodily control of Haki was necessary for both.
Already mastering it to a certain level, I managed to master Hardening in 1 month.
---
Observing my arm surrounded by a metallic black substance, I thought back to what the nurse had just said.
"So it's tomorrow."
Time had passed quickly, already a year since I had met Naobito, and yet I had the same knot in my stomach as the first time.
I lowered my fist and looked at the sky. It was clear and bright, glowing with the magnificent red of a sunset.
I turned my gaze to Toji, kicking a tree.
I thought about what I was going to do and finally called him: "Toji."
He stopped what he was doing and looked me straight in the eyes before starting to walk toward me.
Seeing him shirtless, sweating, with muscles extremely developed for his age, I couldn't help but think back to the path we had taken to get here.
Toji had become strong, extremely strong even for his age—I knew that—but I still wanted to feel it with my body.
"Get in position."
Toji asked no questions and assumed a stance, a different stance than he had used before.
His right hand was held slightly open near his chin rather than forming a fist, his arm fully away from his body.
His left arm was extended forward, not fully straight, his fist turned so that his thumb pointed downward.
He was on his tiptoes, right leg bent behind him, left leg pointing at me.
(NOA: Gojo's guard)
He had seen this stance in an action movie and had tried to reproduce it during training. I noticed it suited him better than the normal guard, so I let him adopt it.
As for me, I had adopted an atypical stance.
I didn't form fists with my hands; I used them to form swords.
My hands were straight, fingers together.
This was part of Roronoa Zoro's Mutoryu posture.
Contrary to what the manga shows, he had quite a lot of it.
Toji seemed surprised that I didn't take the standard guard, but he quickly recovered and focused even more.
"I see that you understand. This fight isn't training; it's a test to see if you'll accompany me tomorrow," I said seriously.
Toji didn't respond, but I could see the flame of determination in his eyes.
"Good. I like that look. Let's violence."
At my words, Toji charged at me, throwing a powerful straight punch.
I saw it coming. I calmly used my left hand-sword to deflect his strike, then struck him in the abdomen with my right.
He backed off abruptly, making me miss my target.
I attacked as soon as he landed, reversing his position.
Fwish!
Fwish!
I landed several strikes with my hand-swords, but he dodged them all.
Taking advantage of my imbalance from my own momentum, he raised his leg high and delivered a Brazilian kick to my shoulder.
BAM!
I couldn't dodge, so I chose to go with the strike.
Instead of simply falling, I let myself spin with the impact to reduce the force.
But Toji didn't stop there.
As soon as my feet touched the ground, he followed with a second circular kick aimed at my head.
I ducked just in time, feeling the wind from his heel brush my hair.
I sprang up immediately and struck diagonally with my right hand-sword.
He blocked with his forearm, the clash producing a sharp sound.
He then tried to grab my arm to throw me.
I twisted on myself to escape and swept his left leg with mine.
He jumped over the sweep and delivered a knee strike as he landed.
I partially absorbed it by crossing my forearms.
The pain ran up to my shoulders.
We briefly regained some distance.
Then he attacked again.
This time his combos were faster, more fluid.
A straight punch, a hook, a low kick.
I deflected the first, dodged the second, jumped over the third.
Barely had my feet touched the ground when he faked a high strike before hitting my liver.
The blow landed.
My breath cut for a fraction of a second.
He tried to use it to push me to the ground.
I intentionally fell backward and pushed off with my hands, swinging my legs in a whirlwind to force him back.
Toji jumped backward to avoid my heels.
I sprang to my feet.
We stared at each other for a few seconds.
Our breaths were heavy.
He attacked again, more aggressive.
A punch hit my shoulder.
Another grazed my cheek.
A third struck my ribs.
The pain was real.
Without Haki, my senses were inferior to his.
And physically, he had almost reached my level.
But I still had my techniques.
Soru
A strange sound rang out as I disappeared from his view.
I appeared crouched in front of Toji.
He immediately tried a downward strike.
I rolled to the side to avoid it and rose behind him.
My hands were no longer straight like swords; they were hooked as if catching an invisible blade.
My arms were stretched out to either side at shoulder level.
Mutoryu : Tatsumaki
I spun on myself.
The wind rose around us.
Toji tried to plant his feet but the rotation unbalanced him.
He tried to strike blindly to hit me during the technique.
One blow grazed my flank but he didn't have enough support.
The tornado forced him to deflect.
I stopped my rotation and lunged at him.
He tried to regain balance, but my hand-sword was already on his neck.
I looked him in the eyes and calmly said:
"You lost, Toji."
His face darkened and he clenched his jaw but said nothing.
I stood up and helped him up.
His face was still down, his fist clenched until it bled.
But I turned and headed to the cabin, leaving a few words behind.
"You still have a lot to learn, and I want a full report of everything you did wrong, but for now…" I was already in the cabin when the last words left my mouth, "…well done."
I continued walking but could still hear Toji shouting behind me.
"YES!! I DID IT."
Author's thoughts
First fight scene of the fanfiction, so, what do you think?