Final Preparations Part 2

On his ninjutsu related tasks, the progress was not so great however. He learned the rasengan just fine but hit snags everywhere else and while he managed to solve some of them, others he could not.

While fire was one of his specialties, what he was trying to do was not something he should be able to accomplish with a fire nature transformation. Still, he persevered and managed to create his own fire jutsu.

Shiki's goal was to create a user enhancing type jutsu for each of the basic nature transformation. Like the Lightning Style: Chakra Mode of the Raikage. While he managed to create his Fire Style: Fiery Wheels, the effect could not cover all the body parts that it should at the same time.

The completed jutsu would create wheels of fire over the user's shoulders and under his elbows, around they're wrists and on each side of the ankles. The wheels can provide propulsion and send fiery blasts when attacking. Right now, Shiki could only do either the shoulders, the ankles or the wrists separately.

For lightning style, he was getting closer but still failing mostly due to his comparatively laking affinity for said element but, after some time that problem was conquered.

Shiki had managed to find the exact locations of the graves of four of the former Guardian Shinobi Twelve that had great innate talent for lightning jutsu. After some stealthy grave robbing, soul summoning and soul melding, Shiki's lightning affinity was enough to finally achieve the effect he desired.

The jutsu he had devised was basically a supercharged version of the relatively basic Lightning Style: Overdrive that can speed up the signals that are sent from the brain to the muscles to increase the user's speed while also also giving the user cutting capabilities from barehanded attacks. Shiki's ultimate goal was to use it as a foundation to reproduce Killua's nen ability from HxH hence creating the Lightning Style: Godspeed.

This jutsu massively enhanced the user's reflexes and speed. The chakra expenditure was quite low, with most of the chakra being spent on activation and requiring very little to keep it going. By spending extra chakra however, the user could perform a chidori like move or launch lightning bolts without weaving hand signs.

Ultimately, Shiki was successful but unfortunately, all his projects for the other elements were met with failure for now, causing Shiki to postpone other attempts until he got a better grasp of the remaining nature transformations.

After long years of effort, Shiki finally managed to crack the Flying Raijin Jutsu. While he still could only teleport himself, now that he had created his own jutsu formula, the rest was just a matter of practice.

One handed seals, a far greater challenge than Shiki expected but definitely a resounding success nonetheless! Now there was no difference in the slightest whether he used one handed or normal hand seals.

Shiki had a surprising easy time learning the Spirit Transformation Jutsu, maybe due to his profound understanding of the soul. All things considered, it was a truly great addition to his arsenal but he couldn't use it for long and decided to make it a reaper exclusive since it fitted his theme.

But Shiki's last two years also had unexpected events. By the end of the first year Anko who had already mastered the first stage of the Curse Mark asked Shiki for help to unlock the second stage. They had frequently trained together and Shiki was plenty amazed at her progress with the use of her Curse Mark the Cursed Seal of Heaven.

Despite this, she was still unsatisfied. She confessed that Orochimaru had abandoned her because he claimed that she lacked the will to use and master the Cursed Seal of Heaven and in her mind, mastering it completely and using it against her former sensei would be the ultimate fuck you.

Shiki knew that this was due to Orochimaru messing with her memories and that in truth she was the one who chose not to follow him but despite not being able to tell her this truth, he was immensely pleased with her attitude towards the matter. It was truly to his taste, so he claimed he was going to look into it.

Shiki's plan was to improve upon the method already developed by Orochimaru which he had obtained from the piece of his soul. Just another thing to add to the list he wanted to take care of before canon.

Since other than the mind awakening pills, the rest of the processes was based on seals and barriers, Shiki was quickly able to get it ready. Having some medical training from the best also helped in the making of the pills.

After he came to Anko with the pills and the "casket" to holder afterwards, Shiki was dumbfounded when she took the pill instantly despite his warning about potential death as a side effect. While feeling immensely flattered by the trust Anko had shown to him, he carefully placed her in the container and sealed it through a process similar but also better than the one used by the sound four in the series.

The hours passed by, the sun could be seen setting on the horizon and just as it faded from view, Anko emerged from the sealed casket, greatly relieving the worried Shiki.

"Well Anko-nee how do you feel?" Asked the boy, a little of his worry showing on his face.

The kunoichi merely grinned at him as curse marks from the Cursed Seal of Heaven started covering her body completely transforming her appearance.

Since her cursed seal was the same as Sasuke's in the series, the appearance was very similar. Her purple hair became a little lighter in color and a lot longer, the typical curse mark yellow eyes with black sclera, lips as if wearing violet lipstick and the star shaped mark on her nose. The only difference was in the wings that unlike fleshy flaps looked somewhat like scaled bat wings as if belonging to a dragon bursting out from her mesh bodysuit.

"What do you think?" She asked with a cheeky grin.

With a somewhat dazed expression, Shiki responded without even thinking.

"Whao! You look even hotter than before!"

Hearing his comment, Anko developed a slight blush than as if incapable of holding back any more, she hugged shiki and lifted his smaller body of the ground planting a kiss in his lips causing him to bush too, mostly from embarrassment though.

'The kiss is great but this position is a bit emasculating though . . .'

Anko quickly put Shiki down and apologised.

"Sorry, I don't know what came over me!" She said with her head down.

'Well, Orochimaru's cursed seals rile up the intensity of the user's emotions like anger and such so in hindsight I'm not so surprised.'

"Not at all Anko-nee couldn't ask for a better reward!" Reassured Shiki with a bright smile while thinking. 'Not until I get a bit older anyway!'

Anko then undid her curse mark's second stage feeling a bit tired from the physical strain.. In the end, after a comment on how she should adapt her clothing to accommodate her wings they parted so she could have some nice rest.

Moving on, all that was left of the preparations for canon events was to adapt some of Orochimaru's jutsus.

His signature Hidden Shadow Snake Hands, as well as most of its derivatives were relatively easy to master. The Orochimaru Style Substitution Jutsu was quite difficult to attain but Shiki learned it as well. He still thought regurgitating another self out of his mouth was utterly disgusting so simply bursting out of his discarded skin became a slightly less gross alternative.

The Summoning: Rashomon was also learned but Shiki was only able to summon a single one for the time being.

(Author: In the manga the Eight Branches Jutsu or Eight-Headed Serpent Jutsu was a product of Orochimaru's years of human experimentation and the Living Corpse Reincarnation Jutsu but in the anime it was stated that Orochimaru, upon defecting from Konohagakure, stole the jutsu's scroll from Konoha. Since I will be mostly basing the story on the anime's events, this jutsu will have the anime origin even though the one from the manga makes more sense to me.)

Shiki also attempted to learn the Eight Branches Jutsu but even though he made great progress he still didn't manage to perform it. The real prize though, was the Living Corpse Reincarnation Jutsu. As Orochimaru's way of achieving immortality.

He was not interested in taking over another body though, what Shiki wanted was the ability to immortalize his soul. Even the soul can age if trapped on the mortal world although the souls of powerful being like Hagoromo and Hamura had their way of staying around through their chakra.

The first part of this jutsu however fixed that problem cleanly. This had been something that stumped generations of the Uzumaki Clan. For all their manipulations of the soul this was extremely difficult to achieve and it truly proved how much of a prodigy Orochimaru truly is.

With his great understanding of the soul attaining mastery of the first part of the jutsu was relatively simple and even allowed him to start developing a new jutsu of his own based on it but that would be left for another time.

Now Shiki's life was not tied to his body and even the most grievous of damages could be healed without his death, even cracking open his head wasn't enough to instantly kill him allowing him to save himself so long as he also managed to get a good enough regeneration ability something his Uzumaki bloodline was continuously improving upon.

'Alright, I'm confident I can take out most if not all jounin and with my healing, substitutions and Flying Raijin even kage level and above opponents won't be able to kill me. All I need to improve is my ability to do damage to powerful opponents and I'll be golden!' Shiki thought to himself.

'Now for the final task before canon . . . I will kill that meddling old bastard Danzo! I already have it all planned out.'