Chapter 40: Progression
*4 months later*
In a dark, open room, two figures could be seen with their backs facing towards one another, although both of them were focusing all of their effort on what was to come.
Naturally, these two figures were Anko and Mizuki, and as part of their training, they were going to spar against one another.
Orochimaru: "Ready"
Orochimaru: "Begin"
Both of them turned around instantly as each of them tried to go in for a quick kill.
Anko threw a series of three senbon at Mizuki, all of which were coated in lightning chakra to deal extra damage.
Mizuki on the other hand, quickly weaved a series of hands seals before smashing his hand on the ground, creating a wall of earth, although a relatively thin one as it's purpose was to really only block that one attack.
Ever since they had started their sparring a month ago, Mizuki's and Anko's fighting styles had both been heavily refined.
Mizuki created a single shadow clone and looked over to it before nodding and getting ready to jump.
Seeing that he was ready, the clone quickly formed several hand seals before slamming his hand against the freshly erected earth wall.
{Earth Style: Earth Flow Spears}
The wall morphed as several pillars of earth in the shape of spikes shot out of it, giving the original Mizuki an opening to get close to her.
The boy leaped on top of the wall and looked around and noticed that Anko had used the opportunity to leap into the air herself, after weaving several hand signs she extended her hand, as if grabbing something in front of her.
Anko: "Lightning Style: Lightning Javelin"
Over the past four months, both Mizuki and Anko had learned an array of new jutsu.
Unfortunately for Mizuki though, Anko served as his natural counter, with lightning always causing earth to crumble.
Seeing the meter long pike of lightning that Anko was holding, Mizuki could only curse in his head at how she was nearly a perfect counter to him, at least without revealing the rasengan or eight gates to his sensei.
Seeing him up in the air, she threw her lightning pike at him.
However, Mizuki was able to dodge it just barely by using a shadow clone as a springboard to push himself out of the way.
Mizuki continued to rush towards Anko using the walls to go from different angles.
He summoned another three shadow clones before ordering them to move to the other wall and the floor, effectively flanking her.
Seeing the clones rush her, Anko had a smirk on her face as she placed her hands on her wrist, which had a sealing tag attached, which in a puff of smoke summoned another series of electrically charged senbon.
This assault caused one of the clones to disperse as it was caught in the barrage of needles.
Although, the remaining Mizukis were all now within five meters of her now, and closing fast.
Seeing as things were Anko quickly tried to gain some distance on the clones by jumping over them, as the wall was already at her back so she was left with no other options.
This however, would be her undoing, as soon as she was above the clones, she looked up at the ceiling to see a Mizuki falling towards her fast with a kunai in hand.
By the time she realized what had happened it was already to late, one of Mizuki's shadow clones was able to get the drop on her.
Mizuki: "Gotcha"
Anko: "Damnit, I thought I had you there too"
Anko: "Out of curiosity, where did you hide that shadow clone?"
Mizuki: "It was the one that was originally behind the earth wall that tossed me up."
Anko: "Hm, I wouldn't have expected that"
Mizuki: "That Lightning Javelin is amazing though, that jutsu has really come a long way"
Anko: "Yup, easily the most impressive thing I have ever done"
Over the course of the last four months, Mizuki's and Anko's training began to diverge slightly.
After they learned how to activate seals and how to seal and unseal objects in scrolls, Anko decided to focus on her lightning release abilities, and her long range capacity.
Mizuki on the other hand, decided to focus on strengthening his body and to continue his fuinjutsu training.
He had also picked up a couple of new earth style jutsu, although they weren't necessarily his focus.
Although, both Anko and Mizuki did train together when learning snake style jutsu.
So far, they could both perform Striking shadow snakes and it's variants along with binding snake glare.
Rather than just teaching them snake jutsu, Orochimaru told them to go off and make their own and that they wouldn't be able to bargain for his.
Although it is true that they had both learned new jutsu, what truly made them powerful was how they had gained more combat experience.
When they were sparring with friends, everybody tended to limit themselves to around fifty percent of their actual strength to not deal any lasting damage.
Here, they were forced to go at ninety percent by their sensei, the only reason it wasn't one hundred percent was because Mizuki wasn't using the eight gates and rasengan.
As far as missions went, Mizuki was slowly but surely working their way through the ranks. Over the past four months, they had completed a few dozen D rank missions and roughly ten C rank missions.
Actual C rank missions. Not like Naruto's C rank mission where it ended up getting turned into an A rank mission mid-way through.
Other than missions though, Mizuki actually only saw Idate around twice a week.
Orochimaru was keeping a tight leash on him as he was already marked by him, and with Orochimaru's active training, it was very well possible that his strength could rival Mizuki's if he didn't use his aces.
The thought terrified him that him just being there was already starting to affect canon.
Maybe at some point, even the main plot points of the show would change.
Mizuki chuckled lightly to himself at the thought as he looked back to notice that Orochimaru was gone, probably back to his experiments.
Seeing as they still had time before they would need to leave, Mizuki and Anko ended up raiding the library.
Mizuki took his share in the form of Fuinjutsu books and Anko took hers in the form of lightning release jutsu.
They passed the remainder of the day reading up on their desired subjects in the aforementioned library, taking an occasional break to mess around with one another.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
IWANTMYDINNER
IWANTMYDINNER I changed the cover bc the last one was getting kinda old
So, anybody got some good ideas for some snake jutsu?
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