After checking up on the sea folk and ensuring that while incapacitated no true lasting damage was done to any one of them— In less than 10 minutes after I dispelled my clone, every single one of them was upright and surprisingly a lot cheerier than they were initially. The suspicious glint in their eyes was gone, and within them was the feeling of doing something you love after having abandoned it for whatever reason. The rediscovery of those joys is what I found in their faces.
I didn’t linger amongst them, not only for the sake of pursuing the last item on my list, but also because they quickly became mini-celebrities amongst the rest of the seafolk. Those who weren’t picked to participate in the exercise quickly began to fawn, comment, and generally appreciate each of the seafolk for their performance. I wondered how they’d been living up till now, what sort of entertainment they had for themselves. They hardly seemed like a normal gathering of people. I briefly considered asking Unaimaru about the intricacies of their living arrangements, but before I stuck my nose in where it likely didn’t belong, I returned to Kaizoku.
The great sea serpent Sage was half-way asleep when I arrived at his gates and stirred him awake with my presence. He opened a single eyeball large enough to crush a small child if it went loose, pupils dilating and then narrowing in focus at me. He spoke with a rumble, “Are you done playing with the children, young Sea Sage?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and nodded instead, “Yes, yes, I am. These abilities, these summons, I thank you.” I bowed low and deep, though it could hardly be appreciated underwater, but I paid my respects and gratitude anyway. “The power you’ve gifted me, the knowledge, I will not waste it.”
Kaizoku snorted, his head rising up to the surface of the water with me forced upon the bridge of his nose. He spoke freely once we burst up to the surface and I could sense his disappointments leaking from his every word. “You have already wasted it, young one. I grant you my knowledge and skills not because I believe you will use them for the right thing, but because you have earned them through might. Well done.”
He might have given me a compliment at the end just there, but it certainly didn’t sound like one. In fact, it very much sounded like a backhanded insult. I knew exactly what his ‘right use’ of Sage mode and its abilities would be, but I wasn’t inclined to become a bloodletting, mass-murdering conqueror.
“Have you come to say your goodbyes? You surely feel like you have learned all you can, don’t you?” Kaizuku asked smugly, yet he was right. I did feel as though I learned all I could from Kaizuku, at least for the moment.
[Kaikyo Ken], [Dance of the Serpent] and [Riptide Step], if there were any other special techniques he could teach me and was just keeping it a secret…I didn’t mind, I was satisfied with what I had learned and had more than enough faith to create my own techniques should I need to.
I sat down on his nose, curling my feet together and smiling just as smugly at he as I said, “Well, if there’s any other skill or technique you’d like to teach me, now would be the time.”
Almost as soon as those words left my mouth, Kaizoku shook his head furiously, throwing me off into the air with reckless abandon as he spat “Tah! As if, you ungrateful human. You should deliver unto me three thousand blood sacrifices for what you have learned alone, but I do not demand that of you. I give freely, and yet you spill not a single pint of blood in my name to show your gratitude, what is a bow? What are words to the King of Sea?”
I landed deftly at the top of the water’s surface unsurprised at Kaizoku’s reaction, I shook my head at him and sighed, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I truly am grateful, Kaizoku. Your knowledge has been illuminating, and even if you refuse to share more, this alone has been more than enough.”
As expected, Kaizoku was not in the least bit satisfied with my response, surely seeking some kind of recompense for the knowledge he’d imparted on me. Instead, I left him with little more than the satisfaction of knowing he’d trained yet another Sea Sage and one worthy of its power.
He grunted, snorting out a cold puff of air from his colossal nostrils as he begrudgingly began to accept the reality, I would not be making any more human sacrifices to him. Once was enough, after all.
He laid his head down on the surface of the water and eyed me. “So, what is it that you have come for? You would have left by now if there wasn’t something else you wanted from me.”
I nodded, no use denying it. I looked up at him and spat it out, “I want to test my full Tailed Beast transformation against you. You’re the only one strong enough to possibly challenge me in that form but more importantly, survive.” His eyes narrowed, and I recognized his disbelief. To quickly dispel it, I pulled on Isobu’s chakra and let my [Stage 0 Chakra Cloak] envelope me. It burst alive around me, an aura of fiery chakra that yet felt warm and as soothing as water itself.
“Ah, I see the turtle within you wishes to show itself to test its mettle against me.” Kaizoku said, his voice taking on a mirthful tone as he began to posture and arrange his body for a battle.
“Wait! Isobu doesn’t want this. In fact, Isobu would prefer if we simply left, but I need to learn how to enter my full form without using wasting his power.” Being a Jinchuriki was less about having the power and more about being able to restrain it.
Technically, the moment Isobu and I came to an understanding, I could achieve a full Tailed Beast mode at any moment with either Isobu or myself in full control. We had that understanding between ourselves, after all, but the issue wasn’t whether I could transform into a full Tailed Beast, but rather how I would perform in that form. There was simply no telling who my opponents might be the moment I actually need to use all that I have within my arsenal. And so, just like with Sage mode, I had to practice. Until Utakata comes to a much less tense understanding with Saiken, Kaizoku was my only option for a sparring partner.
Kaizuku paused in thought, digesting what I’d said. His eyes shifted from side to side before he spoke delicately with his words. “Do I get to fight the turtle or not?” To answer him, I pulled on yet more power from Isobu, summoning up Three Tails and going into a version 2 state of the Tailed Beast cloak. The chakra immediately began to pervade the drowned tower, and even Kaizoku reared back with caution as the transformations of my Sage Mode were slowly but surely undone, burnt away by the three-tailed beasts’ chakra.
My voice was as deep as we were. “Yes, but you will earn his true form.”
Kaizoku hissed, his tongue flicking out at the air as he raised himself to his full height, bearing his fangs and flashing the myriad of barbells at me. “So be it, child, I shall coax you out of your shell!” he surged forward, snapping faster than I’d ever seen him move, all the while manipulating the water at various points into miniature versions of himself.
“All right, this should be enlightening.”