Chapter 8: A-Rank Jutsu, Muramasa

"Didn't I tell you to not kill every single one of them?"

Sakumo smacked Izuryu as he pointed at the scene of destruction around of them.

"But I destroyed their base too. And besides… It's just a bunch of Iwa-nin, couldn't we just hide our identities and do it."

Sakumo rubbed his forehead and sighed again, not knowing how many times he had done it already in the moments he had regrouped with Izuryu.

"No, we can't. The situation of the shinobi world is in a critical period right now. Each village is wary of every other village's actions. It's a critically tense period where any major action done by any village could light off the fuse that would start the Second Great Ninja War. "

"What's a major action?"

"What you just did, you dumbass!"

Izuryu showed a weird expression and muttered.

"So, only killing some Iwa-nin and destroying their base is not a major action, but killing a few more Iwa-nin and destryoing their base is?"

Sakumo rolled his eyes as he quipped.

"In the original mission, we would've merely destroyed the base. Everything in between would be 'collateral damage'. Konoha would have gotten rid of an Iwa base and Iwagakure would have an idea of a few of the Konoha shinobi's strength, a trade-off of sorts."

Sakumo paused then recontinued with an annoyed tone.

"But a CERTAIN person killed almost every Jonin level shinobi in the base, making Iwagakure lose both their Jonin level shinobi and a base near Konoha."

Izuryu finally realized the consequences of his actions as he lowered his head and apologized.

"I'm sorry for not following the mission requirements…"

Sakumo finally nodded in satisfaction and rubbed Izuryu's hair, messing it up.

Izuryu tried to smack Sakumo's hand away but Izuryu couldn't do anything to Sakumo who was high-Jonin, quasi-Kage level.

The two laughed and re-grouped with their squad members. The team moved back to Konoha with the scrolls as proof of them completing the mission.

The 9 quickly reached the base. They handed over the scrolls and received merit points for completing the mission.

The merit points were quite abundant, enough for them to redeem a few B-grade or a single grade-A Jutsu.

The 9 happily went into the squad room of the base as they changed into their normal clothing. The masks were still on their face as they casually went back to doing things that they did before they moved out.

Izuryu instead, simply took the tanto and walked away to his home.

On the way, Izuryu bought a few Chakra Induction papers, a pack of water balloons and a few rubber balls.

Izuryu opened the door to an empty house. A few dishes were on the table with a note that said,

"Eat your food and don't disappear kid!"

A narutomaki was drawn next to the note.

Izuryu smiled with warmth as he sat down to eat.

***

30 minutes later, Izuryu sat on the floor as he brought out the tanto.

The previously plain tanto had become pitch black. As Izuryu observed the sword, he found a glaring 'mishap' in the blade. The handle of the tanto was a lot longer than the standard tanto. The handle of a standard tanto would be around 7cm while the blade would be around 23cm. In this blade however, the handle itself was around 26cm. The blade and the handle were almost the same size.

Izuryu ran his fingers over the blade as a cut appeared on his finger with the slightest touch.

Izuryu put the finger in his mouth and licked it a few times as his healing factor kicked into action as the wound healed up.

As his gaze fell onto the sword, Izuryu felt the sword's majesty .The blade looked as though it would cut anything, from the air to space itself.

A poem came to his mind as Izuryu spoke out loud.

"For ten years I have been polishing this sword;

"Its frosty edge has never been put to the test.

"Now I am holding it and showing it to you sir;

"Is there anyone suffering from injustice?

"My sword shall cut through it all."

After Izuryu finished speaking, he ran his hand through the blade's body. He froze when he felt his finger move through something uneven. It felt as though it was a groove of sorts.

'What's this?'

Izuryu searched for the groove once again and found it.

It was disguised within the black blade, almost making it impossible to see.

Izuryu lit up a flame near the groove as kanji appeared.

"Muramasa-No-Tsurugi…"

Izuryu felt the name was familiar as he jogged through his Earth memories.

"The legendary cursed blade that forces the user to draw blood, or else the user will have to use their own blood… But why is the 'No-Tsurugi' there? I know that the Totsuka Blade was derived from the real Kusanagi-No-Tsurugi. Wait no, Totsuka-No-Tsurugi was used by Izanagi to kill Kagu-Tsuchi…"

The two Kusanagi blades featured in Naruto were Itachi's Totsuka Blade, Sasuke's Kusanagi Chokuto and Orochimaru's Kusanagi Blade.

Yet, compared to Orochimaru's and Itachi's swords, Sasuke's couldn't be thought of as a legitimate Kusanagi sword.

While Orochimaru's sword could be controlled telekinetically and could cut through almost everything, to the point that Monkey King Enma, the summon who could transform into diamond-hard items, remarked that the blade would give it a bad sore.

Yet the most powerful Kusanagi blade was definitely Itachi Uchiha's Totsuka Blade.

The Susanoo's Totsuka blade was an ethereal weapon with an enchanted blade capable of sealing the target it pierced. Those who were stabbed by the sword were drawn into the jar and trapped in a genjutsu-like world for all eternity. Itachi was able to use the sword to completely remove the Cursed Seal of Heaven from Sasuke when he extracted Orochimaru from Sasuke's body and sealed him in the sword, and was also able to remove Nagato's soul from his body after Kabuto used the Edo Tensei to control him.

It was definitely one of the most powerful artifacts in the world of shinobi.

Izuryu speculated that the Totsuka Blade was an artifact of the Sage of Six Paths. Such a powerful weapon with the ability to seal anything was very overpowered.

Perhaps the Totsuka Blade was merely the sake jar the Sage of Six Paths used to drink from. Lots of Rikudō Artifacts were very powerful, yet not nearly as powerful as the Totsuka-Blade.

Yet, if the Rikudō Sage personally used the sake gourd, it would make sense in why the Totsuka Blade was so powerful.

(A/N: The Totsuka Blade is a blade made from the "sake" inside the sake jar of Itachi's Susanoo)

Now came the question. What was so great about the Muramasa-No-Tsurugi for it to have the Tsurugi 'surname'?

A moment of silence insued as Izuryu tried his best to think of something but couldn't.

He eventually sighed and gave up of thinking about it.

Izuryu then injected his chakra into the blade. It was originally a chakra blade, so channeling chakra into it wouldn't be a big deal.

Blue runes started glowing on the blade as it slowly glowed too.

The 30cm tanto slowly morphed as the blade started extending outwards.

The length slowly increased as the tanto slowly transformed into a katana.

A minute later, the glowing light subisided and a pitch-black katana blade with a pure white handle was held in Izuryu's hand.

The 'Muramasa-no-Tsurugi' was more defined as it shined under the sunlight. The blade looked as though it would cut through space with a mere swing of the sword.

Izuryu marveled at the blade as the lightly swung it, instantly cutting his desk and chair in half.

Thankfully, Izuryu stopped at the middle of the swing, stopping it from cutting it through the floor of his room.

Izuryu stopped supplying chakra into it as the blade slowly started changing again.

'It seems that I can store chakra in this to keep it from shortening incredibly quickly.'

The blade shrunk at a rate of 1 inch every 2 minutes.

The blade was around 40 inches long so it would take around 20 minutes for it to shrink the whole time.

***

20 minutes later, the blade reached its original size.

Izuryu carried the tanto, the balloons, rubber balls and the Chakra Induction Papers and ran towards the Forest of Death.

Izuryu ran towards the inner part of the forest as he stopped in an area with thick jungle trees.

Izuryu started making hand-signs.

"Doton: Tsuchi Henkō!"

A large amount of soil moved away as a large flat ground was made a few feet underground.

Izuryu cut down a tree and stuck them to the ground. He lit them up and sat in the middle.

He brought out a balloon and a large basin of water. After filling the balloon, he put the balloon in his right hand as he started channeling the chakra into the balloon.

Indeed, Izuryu was trying to learn the Rasengan!

As soon as the balloon rippled from the chakra and was showing signs of breaking, Izuryu started molding the chakra into a circle as he moved his hand alongside the balloon, trying to mold the rippling chakra into a ball.

7 minutes later, the balloon was in a stable form as the water inside was constantly moving around.

Yet there was one more step and that was to mold the chakra into spinning.

Izuryu started making the chakra inside the water balloon circulate as he used his hand to guide the chakra around.

8 minutes later this was achieved as well.

Izuryu took a deep breath as he started to use all the steps at once.

The chakra inside the balloon reached a circular shape as Izuryu's hands started molding the chakra into rotating.

Izuryu opened his sharingan as he saw the chakra spinning and moving around the balloon.

It had reached a stable state.

As soon as he saw it, Izuryu spiked up the amount of chakra he used in the water balloon and molded it into a circle.

Izuryu 'saw' inside the balloon that the chakra was spinning around in the shape of the balloon.

The rapidly spinning chakra was disintegrating the balloon in a molecular level. It was constantly spinning against the balloon, breaking the layers of rubber over and over again.

The balloon completely burst and splashed the water around Izuryu.

Izuryu looked at the spinning mass of chakra in his hands as he tried adding more chakra.

Yet having no material support as he tried to rotate his chakra around the prototype-rasengan was very hard to accomplish.

"It seems I can't take a shortcut."

Izuryu pulled out a rubber ball as he started adding chakra into the ball.

Yet, instead of it being harder, Izuryu felt it would be easier to break the ball.

A lot of modern knowledge was stored in his brain, several scientific studies had been made about molecular and atomic studies.

(A/N: I didn't know what to write here)

Izuryu channeled his chakra into the rubber ball. However, instead of trying to bruteforce his way into the rubber ball, he made the chakra spin within the gaps of the rubber ball.

He started making the chakra rapidly move around the spaces as the chakra forcefully stretched around the ball, breaking small amounts of rubber within it.

Izuryu started to increase the amount of chakra as he kept making the rubber contract and expand with his chakra. The chakra kept getting denser as the rubber ball started showing physical expanding and contracting. The rubber ball made for a better scaffold for him to create his rasengan.

As more and more chakra started to move around into the ball, the rubbber forcefully contracted and expanded.

Tearing sounds started appearing as Izuryu finally spiked up the chakra input as the ball exploded with all the rubber exploding.

BANG!

The rubber ball exploded and a wave of very dense chakra exploded around Izuryu, sending Izuryu flying.

The underground cave collapsed on Izuryu as he quickly made a wall with earth.

Five minutes later Izuryu came out of the collapsed cave as he moved the debris away from him.

He looked at his bloodly hand as he winced in pain due to all the earth, soil and rock fall into his wound.

Izuryu quickly washed his hand off and put a bandage around his hand.

After a few minutes of recovery, Izuryu started channeling and moving his chakra around like the way he did a few minutes ago.

As a blue, spinning orb started growing on Izuryu's palm. Visible blue chakra was pulled into the orb as it reached a stable state.

The Rasengan was rapidly contracting and expanding alongside the circular movement of the chakra.

Izuryu took a deep breath and aimed it at the trunk of the largest tree that was around him.

BOOM!

The Rasengan impacted with the tree as the tree's trunk explodes. Izuryu was flung back due to the explosion. He quickly grabbed a tree trunk and slowly landed after the shockwave was over.

CRASH!

Yet right after that the earth shook and another crash happened.

Izuryu was stunned as he looked at the sight in front of him.

The tree had completely fallen over, breaking all the trees in it path, the part where the Rasengan had landed had a large crater with the earth having a large part of it blown off.

The part of the trunk that hadn't been pulverized had many cracks running through it, looking as though it'd break apart at any moment.

Izuryu had successfully learned the Rasengan.