The night following the incident in the tunnel was the longest in Madara Uchiha's short life.
He couldn't sleep. His body was burning. It wasn't a normal fever; it was the fire of the "Current"—his chakra—attacking his own nervous system, forcibly expanding his energy pathways. Awakening the Sharingan and channeling chakra into a weapon with an unconditioned body was like installing a jet engine onto a wooden bicycle frame; the structure had nearly shattered under the pressure.
He woke up at noon, pale and exhausted, but his mind buzzed with a terrifying clarity.
He stood before the bathroom mirror and washed his face. He activated the Sharingan. He watched the dust motes dancing in the light. To his eyes, they were moving in slow motion.
He clenched his fist. The movement looked sluggish, pathetic compared to the speed of his perception.
"Vision alone is not enough," Madara whispered to himself, water dripping from his chin. "If I can see the blow coming but lack the physical speed to dodge it, I am merely a witness to my own defeat."
He had ten months before the U.A. entrance exam.
To a normal person, ten months was a short time to build a fighter.
But to an Uchiha prodigy who possessed the forbidden secret of chakra, time was relative.
The world split into two theaters of training.
At Dagobah Municipal Beach, under the bright, unforgiving sun, Izuku Midoriya was screaming and crying as he hauled rusty refrigerators and massive tires through the sand.
"Come on, Young Midoriya! Go beyond! Plus Ultra!"
Midoriya's training was purely physical. He was building the vessel to hold the ultimate power. It was loud, heroic, and filled with sweat and tears.
But in the dark forest behind the mountains, Madara's training was something else entirely. It was silent, technical, and brutal.
On the first day, Madara visited a scrapyard. He bought lead plates and heavy iron scrap. He fashioned them into crude but effective weights: two for his ankles, two for his wrists, and a heavy vest for his torso.
The initial load: 50 kilograms.
He strapped them on under his clothes and swore an oath to never take them off—not while eating, not while sleeping, and not even while at school.
Madara stood in a clearing between the trees, the weights causing his feet to sink slightly into the soft earth.
He clasped his hands into a cross-shaped seal. He focused his chakra, dividing it evenly within his body.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu (Kage Bunshin no Jutsu)."
POOF!
A small cloud of white smoke exploded next to him.
When the smoke cleared, Madara wasn't standing alone.
Another Madara stood facing him. A perfect copy, wearing the same weights, bearing the same cold stare.
This wasn't a mere afterimage or an optical illusion. This was a solid, physical body. And most importantly: when the clone disappeared, all its experiences, memories, and muscle fatigue returned to the original body.
One hour of training with one clone equaled two hours of experience.
The original Madara looked at the clone.
"Are you ready?" the original asked.
"The weights make me feel like I'm moving through tar," the clone replied coldly. "Let's begin."
In the next instant, they vanished.
They collided in mid-air. The sound of the impact was heavy and violent, a dull thud echoing through the trees due to the extra weight.
A manic bout of Taijutsu began. Punches and kicks flew with lethal precision, but the body struggled to keep up with the eyes.
The original Madara took a kick to the stomach that sent him flying back, but he used the momentum to rebound off a tree trunk.
"Too slow!" Madara shouted, aiming a chakra-enhanced punch at the clone's face.
POOF!
The clone vanished into smoke.
The original Madara fell to his knees, gasping for air as if a mountain had been dropped on his chest. The clone's fatigue and memories flooded his brain all at once.
"So that's how it works..." Madara muttered, wiping the sweat from his brow, feeling his muscles tearing and rebuilding in real-time. "This is the way."
The seasons turned. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
Madara increased the weights gradually. 50kg, then 80kg, then 100kg.
On the beach, Midoriya transformed from a crying child into a muscular teenager. In a dramatic moment at sunset, he screamed atop a pile of clean trash, finally worthy of inheriting the torch of "One For All."
In the forest, Madara reached a terrifying level.
He was now fighting three clones simultaneously.
His clothes were tattered, his body covered in bruises, but his movements were fluid as water and hard as stone, despite the tons of metal he carried on his limbs.
He utilized the "Body Flicker Technique" (Shunshin no Jutsu).
He moved with a burst of speed that made him appear to teleport. He appeared behind the first clone, chopping its neck (it vanished), ducked under a kick from the second, and launched a crushing roundhouse kick at the third (it vanished too).
POOF. POOF. POOF.
Madara stood alone in the silent forest.
He walked toward a massive, moss-covered boulder.
He didn't take a fighting stance. He stood completely relaxed.
He focused every ounce of his chakra into his right fist.
"Speed. Power. Timing."
He punched the rock.
There was no loud crashing sound. It was a muffled thud, as if the rock had swallowed the blow.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a hairline crack appeared in the center of the boulder. The crack expanded. Suddenly, the back of the boulder exploded outward, turning into scattered gravel, while the front face remained almost intact.
Total penetration and internal destruction.
Madara looked at his hand. It wasn't shaking.
"I am ready."
On the morning of the exam, the towering gates of U.A. High stood open, welcoming hundreds of dreaming students.
Izuku Midoriya arrived. He looked different. His school uniform was a bit tight around his new muscles. He tripped at the entrance, and before he could face-plant, a nice girl saved him with a touch that made him float.
It was a innocent scene.
But the atmosphere shifted suddenly.
The crowd of students instinctively backed away, parting to create a wide path down the center, pushed aside by a cold, heavy aura that approached them.
Madara Uchiha walked through the open path.
He wore a simple outfit that screamed authority: a dark blue shirt with an excessively high collar that covered his entire neck (the classic Uchiha style), bearing a small red and white fan crest on the back. His black trousers were loose around the thighs for movement but tapered tight at the ankles. A small equipment pouch was strapped to his right thigh.
Underneath that fabric, he was still wearing the weights, making every step a silent exercise in power.
He didn't look around in awe like the others. His black eyes were fixed forward, cold and indifferent, as if he were walking into an execution ground, not a school.
Madara spotted Midoriya standing dazed after his interaction with the girl.
Madara paused for a moment beside him.
He scanned Midoriya. He noticed the stance. He noticed the hardened muscles. He no longer saw the trembling skeleton that used to hide behind trees.
Madara smirked, a faint, arrogant curve of his lips, without looking directly at him.
"You stopped trembling like a frightened rabbit, Midoriya," Madara said, his voice calm and low. "It seems you didn't waste the last ten months just crying."
Midoriya froze. "M-Madara-kun?"
Madara didn't add another word. He didn't ask about the source of the strength. He didn't care. To him, Midoriya was just another competitor to be crushed if he stood in the way.
He continued walking toward the hall, leaving Midoriya staring at his back with a mix of fear and admiration.
(Madara-kun... he's still as scary as ever. But he noticed! He noticed that I changed!)
Madara sat in the massive orientation hall, legs crossed, eyes closed, ignoring Present Mic's loud screaming as he explained the rules.
Robots. Points. The Zero-Pointer.
"Child's play," Madara whispered.
He opened his eyes. A faint red glint shone within them.
The body was ready. The eyes were ready. And the clones were waiting in his shadow.
The training was over.
Let the massacre begin