Sozen the Ghost Shinobi

Chapter Twenty-One

✦𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖 ℝ𝕚𝕥𝕖𝕤✦

Tsu pushed Sozen towards the waterfall of the Izanagi chambers, urging him to sit at the small platform base.

"The next rite is the path of a physical connection. You need to connect with the physical world despite yourself, feel the water, the winds, the plants, the life and the chakra forces," Tsu explained, "This time there is the risk of not being unable to connect yourself properly or being unable to connect back to yourself once connected."

"The expert level of mediation then?" Sozen asked with a raised brow.

"If you wish to put it that lightly," Tsu snorted before urging Sozen to start.

Sozen obliged and sat down under the force of the water. Struggling to keep his head up, Sozen took a deep inhale before exhaling. Slowly, he went into a meditative state after his eyes shut.

In the now-familiar inky nothingness, Sozen watched as flickers of blue light started to form in front of him. He eventually saw the outline of Naruto training, walking down a path beside Jiraiya.

Going beyond that was Sasuke training himself in another underground lair with the sinister presence of Orohchimaru causing a shiver to run down Sozen's spine.

His senses trailed back to Konoha, seeing Sakura and Tsunade training, Kakashi reading his book and several other familiar outlines.

Finally, at their reach, Sozen's senses fell short as his attention darted to a room in the middle of a certain place in the middle of nowhere. The Akatsuki as the members he knew stood out with a few other chakra signatures forming odd humanoid shapes.

The one presence that stood out the most to him was of course Itachi. The Uchiha seemingly doing nothing but an idle conversation between Kisame, another form and himself. Sozen allowed his mind to show him this, noting that while he could sense things he couldn't hear them. It was nothing more than a visual and chakra based mental projection in his mind.

Suddenly, Sozen's world started to flicker back. The pressure of the waterfall slowly began to crash down on him as his senses retreated while his mind returned. The chakra outlines faded into darkness before Sozen blinked his eyes open.

The brilliant blue water was crashing on him was reminiscent of chakra. It took a moment for the water to return to its previous colour, allowing Sozen to move despite the pressure around him - he could easily move in it now. 

"You were more adept at that than what I had thought," Tsu noted as she sat not far from Sozen.

"Thanks for the confidence," Sozen muttered as he went to stand up.

Before he could even splutter a yell, a horrendous pain shot across his head causing him to buckle to his knees. Tsu was up on her feet, which could only be a panicked look crossing her face before Sozen's vision faded to black again. 

While Sozen had a lack of vision, his sensory skills suddenly flared and he could feel every point of his chakra system flaring up. The chakra that had been stopped by the seal Orochimaru placed on him burned in agony and Sozen was sure he was screaming as his chakra kept pushing at its limiters. There was the familiar burn of the chakra points in his eyes starting to gather energy. Unlike the extreme force and pain that he went through when summonings two tomoe Sharingan, this time the pain and exhaustion were muted. Before anything else could happen, Sozen felt the pain in his core become warm as if it were overheating. His chakra system started to feel fuzzy before his eyes snapped open with a start. With seemingly increased vision, Sozen let out a cry of pain before crawling his way out of the waterfall seeing as he was still getting pelted by water.