32 Palms of Chemistry

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The eldest Muramasa stood there in silence, and she inhaled deeply, drawing in the coal dust, the fumes, the gasoline, the heat, the iron, the metal, the shavings, the toxins, and the fires. She drew them into her lungs and loved it greater, it burned and she desired it worse, it hurt her and yet she loathe and recoiled under its touch. She was caught between the black and white, the dark embrace of the deadly coals that others called her eyes yet they pierced into ones soul when she were angered in a way that left them wrenching and angry. Surely, Maido too had a soul? Did she? She didn't see it so easy to tell anymore. Years, years, years passed, gone. But she'd live so many lives, and learned so much knowledge the whole time.

The greatest thing that ever happened was that Shio taught her hundreds of years of jutsu in an instant by accident.

She'd seen it all. She'd lived it. She'd tried everything. There was nothing in this world she couldn't do immediately at any given moment anymore, because Shio had enlightened her. Shio had freed her mind. He had made it so she could see things through the lends of a true elementalist, someone that bended the world to their whim in an instant. It mattered not what the element was anymore, she would be comfortable somewhere, and everywhere, and anywhere. Omniwhere, she had become acid and alkaline. Her left hand shot out of the metal armor that made up her hollow body, nothingness inside its suit as she had discarded her humanity entirely for such nonsense long ago. She was then, her own walking armored horcrux and Shuichi merely watched from the sidelines. The other hand shot out too, and each of them wielded a separate element. Acid spewed out from her left palm, then from her right, and chalk too permeated from every other fingertip, the lines running down the length of the palms and nails and then encompassing the rest of her body.

"Thirty Two Palms of Acid And Alkaline"

Maido and Shuichi struck each other several times very rapidly, but Maido had seen the technique many times already now and overpowered him with it by conserving her energy better and being smoother with her motions, better timed. Her hands bounced and repeated backwards back onto the same spot, very very gently tapping onto the same spot repeatedly as fast as she possibly could, instead of aiming for different spots the way everyone else she had ever seen do the technique, this had her own very special and unique twist on it. The acid created by Maido was usually far more potent than the acid that Shuichi had ever seen others create. Truly, he had heard of the others having acid but seen that Maido's did increasingly more and more damage the longer it affected the same area, and that its effects did indeed stack up very ridiculously quickly in a manner that surprised him once he saw it in application against his own body.

She touched his arm thirty two times and it ceased to exist after four, he was very startled and she had barely even started, the acid and chalk caustic mixture disintegrating very quickly everything that ever dared come into its path. "No, we can make it better." Maido said to him and Shuichi's mind raced with the thoughts. What could possibly be more absurd than what he had just witnessed, he thought to himself as he channeled the chakra throughout his body and caused a great amount of metal to accumulate into the shape of another functioning gauntlet that replaced his entire missing arm. It didn't matter, her next few strikes, another mixture of very fast palms of acid and chalk with almost no strength to them, still immediately began to eat away at his armor body and it melted away after just another touch and he dove backwards to avoid a direct hit. She dove after him and gently touched her palm to his stomach, which melted him instantly, and then she touched it again just as quickly with no strength behind it, and it melted more, then more, then more, and she applied the strikes very fast and tore immediately through every defense that dared stand in her path.

She did it before Shuichi's very eyes with genin level chakra control, strength, but with a speed that downright frightened him, for he could barely comprehend its movements. She called it silly and then swept forwards and killed it off of him, and he dove backwards again but she stayed on his heels, she towered over him though she was smaller than him and how she did it he didn't know, but he felt fear, very real fear suddenly for a moment as Maido reached out with her bare hands and grabbed his core, and began slicing it into smaller pieces, and smaller pieces still and still, yet she healed it exactly and precisely and immediately at the exact same time as though she had meant to do so entirely the whole time and the feat should never have surprised him in the first place yet he sat there in shock still because he couldn't believe what she was doing to him. With acid and alkaline Maido grabbed Shuichi's cores and shaved them, shredded them to bits, and almost killed him on the spot except that she didn't and he survived and the shards of his cored merged and blended and shot throughout all of the metal shards that made up his body except that his core had been equally turned into dust. It had been shattered and resplintered into fine pieces, and he no longer really had cores, but he was still an elemental body.

He tested it out and found that everything hurt now. Like...like a regular human again, but not, it hurt, and he felt like he sorta had a heart, if he took damage there he was certain he'd die if it was just right. Still, even that was made of metal now, all of it was, even the liquid, and the eyes, he couldn't understand exactly how it worked, but it was somehow made of chakra, metal, stone, acid, and chalk in fine proportions. His eyes turned red and pierced the area, but Maido giggled cause he wasn't used to the technique and checked behind him anyway and found much, much more than he did in a much wider area and made a few callouts on targets of interest that Shuichi hadn't detected and made him go hm.

She healed him again, and she performed the technique against with him, and the two of them struck at a training dummy, shards of acid, kouton, and chalk, all of which had been infused with doton, began to accumulate around them in a slurry of horribleness that demanded precise chakra control, and it was to date the most ridiculous jutsu Shuichi had ever personally heard of, but the science behind it was sound enough that he agreed it could work. The fact that she spelled it out in front of him was fascinated, he had never even really conceived that people could forumala jutsu. He had always gathered it was luck, but no, Maido's method was sound, it was science. All of it was science.

All of it was science.

She struck forwards and removed Shuichi's chest cavity out of her way and aimed straight at his heart, and thought her retaliated her body dissolved everything that touched it almost immediately and it was a rather bad time for them either way.

A horse materialized suddenly in between Maido's hands and it was made of Kouton and Doton and swung its legs around and kicked forwards at Shuichi and he screamed immediately and dove to the left out of its way and cried. "What in the fuck?!" He screamed at her and she did it again and again, then again, then teleported behind him twice and then released more horses.

After a moment, she appeared beside him and made a horse appear between his legs and then did it again on top of that horse and played around with it further.

"They will become statues of metal at the end of the technique." She said bluntly to Shuichi. "So, don't be grappled or inside one, under one, you know, that sort of thing." She said to him briskly, then pointed upwards at the ones she had created in the sky that he hadn't even seen and he suddenly had to avoid being killed from above by falling horse statues in every singly direction and screamed again at her that she was completely fucking mad and needed to fuck right the hell off but sure enough... He made it through somehow, he actually dove upwards, and kicked several of them towards her on purpose just to try it and see if he could pull it off before he died and then thought it maybe lucky, maybe not, it was easier than he expected at least. After all, they fell quickly, and he only had time to kick one, and it hurt the hell out of his foot so he never ever ever attempted it again..


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[Sia]

Something changed, Shuichi saw it with his own eyes, Maido suddenly burst into shards of Kouton and circled around the room in front of him, forming together into a larger suit of armor yet performing the same maneuver on him all the same, her palms spitting acid and chalk in perfect unison with every strike. Now, she increased the speed even more, and he could detect a faint hint of metal purposefully added into the mixture, and it was intoxicating to him to see her craft it together so flawlessly. It was science, a math, an understanding to her mind. She understood the math and just made it so right before his very eyes. She didn't even use seals, a feat which always scared him, but it was true. He had, as far back as he could remember, never actually seen Maido use a hand seal in his entire life. A shocking thought, he gathered at some point, but it was what it was. Maido crafted jutsu the old way. Her left leg raised itself, then stomped into the ground, and Shuichi dove to the east out of the way of the flurry of metal and stone that suddenly erupted from the ground in front of Maido. "When had she cast that?" Was the thought that ran through his mind, for he had seen her surge with chakra many many times today but he was never properly able to identify what exactly was going on and how.

He was learning though, because Maido was a great teacher ironically enough, though she was absolutely the most unorganized thing he'd ever had the displeasure of working with. Yet, it was so simple at the same time and made perfect sense all the same. Organized chaos, that's what she had called it at one point, then thrown another series of metal horse statues at him, and more of them again fell from the sky as she finished drawing out the fuuinjutsu that ripped a portal straight open above and below where he stood and caused hordes of spirit bats, rats, and wolves to suddenly pour out by the thousands almost as soon as she finished drawing the seal and he screamed at her again and began running for his dear life. "Oh yeah, that's a fun one too." Maido said to him with a smile and Shuichi's body surged with chakra, spitting forth acid and chalkra in perfectly calculated proportions that wound up making him dive backwards out of the way and curse at her as he did his best not to take the attack, but it didn't matter, because the side of her arm suddenly went through his chest and plucked at the area where his heart now was that she had reassembled back into his body somehow in a manner that he didn't entirely understand.

Maido slammed her foot into the ground calmly and then pivoted her heel and swung the rest of her body around and a flurry of stones and metal shrapnel assaulted Shuichi at a speed that he couldn't react to quite well and some of them tore into his arm. "My apologies little one." Maido said to him, and then immediately did the exact same thing seven more times until he finally figured out a decent enough way to dodge it without taking any damage, which, required him to do a jump that was incredibly uncomfortable. Maido continued to tear Shuichi's cores into pieces, spreading them evenly throughout his body as she continued to heal him and disassemble him piece by piece while he attempted to fight her off and away from him and failed. His cores hurt, and he felt pain in his body again as though he'd been made human once more, but knew that he surely wasn't such.

The blood witch thrust her arm forwards and Shuichi stopped moving immediately against his will. "Ah, yes, there we go, just like with blood." The witch said, then brought her hand upwards and Shuichi flew into the air quickly and his eyes widened. "What the fuck?" Shuichi's arm came up by itself and he used his other hand to try and stop it, but his arm reached towards himself and began to choke him out, hard. His other hand suddenly flickered out of the way and began forming hand seals against his will and he produced a bolt of lightning from his fingertips that split into the sky, striking all of the metal horse statues in the vicinity as well as himself in a chain that bounced back and forth repeatedly. Grimacing, his mind raced with the wild thoughts of how exactly she had managed to accomplish that feat against him he truly had no idea.

"Squid Form, Sixty Four Tentacles of Dissimilation"

Shuichi heard Maido say the words, but what he saw next genuinely terrified him in a manner that he just couldn't particularly get over. Maido ducked low, crouching underneath an incoming blow that he had sent her way, a clean right hook but that she sidestepped, then produced sixteen tentacles each of which wrapped around his limbs whilst her hands suddenly slapped at him practically everywhere with sixty four palm strikes of acid and chalk in perfectly crafted and balanced unison. As he watched, he was pretty sure he also saw her chest plate open up to reveal her bare chest, which then opened up as well to reveal a great beak that then opened up to reveal it was lined with razor sharp...teeth? It screamed at him as the technique was performed and he felt very genuine fear at the sight of the thing that appeared to be living in Maido's chest.

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Shuichi took in a long breath as Maido had instructed him and his arms came upwards at about the same time that she shot chakra out of him like bolts of lightning, a surge of kouton manifested itself into sixteen tendrils of metal chakra, each of which lashed out towards Maido in unison, and to his surprise she moved out of the way and returned the technique back towards him with her own unique spin on it, she shot forward two ropes of Kouton directly into his armpits and paralyzed his arms practically instantaneously with threaded cables that just opened up as soon as they went inside and he found himself having quite the hard time,

"What the heck is that one?"

"A Head Hunter technique from back in the day."

The sensation in his arms returned some time later and he tried again, he brought forth the chakra and swung his arms forward, yet Maido brought forward her own hands and made L shaped hand signs with each of them as she intercepted the tendrils that came towards her and then continued to alternate between smacking one, casting a sign, smacking the next, then casting another sign, and surging kouton chakra throughout her body, gradually getting used to the motion and movement and continuing to practice it and picking up the pace, adding steps, then twists, and elbows into the mixture until Shuichi was massively overwhelmed and began to retreat. With each hand sign another tendril suddenly shot out and all she appeared to be doing was rotating her arms in a circle and making L shapes with her fingers, and yet it appeared to be working at least somewhat. He couldn't get past it and wasn't entirely sure what to do about it, so he merely started doing the same thing and collided with it to see how it would function.

Maidos face, as it were, faster than his, so she tore his out of his body violently and beat him with his own tendrils, laughing and chuckling at the sight of him as the others around them recoiled from the grotesque clack and clang of the metal against the metal.

U shaped signs followed with a B and suddenly Shuichi's body shot upwards from the ground as though someone else had a handle on his movements, and he was wheeled around quite suddenly to make eye contact with Maido, whom made him bow and then encased him in a suit of armor, then produced a horse-shaped full size suit of armor and threw it straight upwards underneath his ass, then made yet another one and slammed it into the side of him an an attempt to knock him off of it, and he had to say that he had particularly grown somewhat tired of Maido throwing horses at him, and finally produced signs in his own hands as both of them shot forwards, "Enough." He said quite bluntly as a solid block of Kouton manifested directly in front of him and began filling the immediate area in front of him for quite some space.

"Shit." Maido said and was crushed almost to death quite instantly.

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[Sia]

Maido grabbed Shuichi's hand and lead him down the staircase, interlocking her fingers into his and making him blush he had never been lead by a woman in such a manner. "Listen to the music, the rhythm, combat has its own pace, you know." She said to him and took a step to the side, brandishing a scimitar she'd produced out of chalk and smacking the flat side of its blade into his upper arm, much to his surprise. She produced another raw mass of chakra and shaped it before his very eyes, reaching out for it and willing its shape into that of another scimitar before her hand got close enough to touch it.

She willed the elements into existence before him freely, without using hand signs, and he still hadn't the slightest clue how she did it. "I have felt death through my own eyes." Was all she could say in response to him, and he stared at her for a long time. "You know, I'm eight hundred years old..." She chuckled. "You learn a thing or two when you've seen a thing or two." Maido chuckled to him, then conjured an entire world before him right on the spot, and he watched as the entire civilization rose and fell, and wars broke out as they split off and built up elsewhere and came back and recollided and redivided and reignited all over again. It reminded him in a way of the world he himself lived in, and yet there they were as clear as day just casting the jutsu about willy nilly. Shuichi didn't understand it, try as he might. He just didn't understand how Maido had become so fluent as to bend the elements thoughtlessly to her whim. "With each death I become the most powerful shinobi alive." She said to him finally.

"I see." Said Shuichi. "How do you reckon?"

"Oh, hehe." Maido began with a smile, "That will have to be my little secret." Her hands clapped together and a mixture of chalk, acid, and metal immediately fell from the sky, skewering the area with giant spears, swords, and halberds as Shuichi dodged about and finally reached forwards into the fray of them and pulled outwards a sword where the guard had the blade of the sword coming out of the mouth of a lion's head. The handle had a furry mane, and a swishy cord at the end with a tuft of feathers at the end of that. He quite liked it.

"How fitting, come then, show me what you have." Said Maido to Shuichi, reaching out and producing one identical to his except with a wolf instead of a lion, and that hers was made of Chalk and Acid whilst his was made of Kouton, and the two of them clashed, their blades meeting each other thirteen times in quick succession as Shuichi had studied Maido's moves many times time and was ready for her first assault. "Impressive." She said, and it was, and she was impressed, truly.

Suddenly, Maido's weapon shifted mid-strike into a long staff.


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