Returning to the Shinobi village settled something in Nathan that he had not realized needed settling until the tension of the south began to loosen from his shoulders.
With no word yet from Genzo, no signal to move against Norihiro, the days had a shape to them again. Nathan fell back into the training with Hanzo the way a blade falls back into its scabbard, naturally and without resistance.
He felt the difference more clearly now than he had before Minato. Fighting Morosuke had been the truest measure of what Hanzo's teaching had done to him, not in any dramatic or obvious way but in the small things, the way his feet found angles without him consciously choosing them, the way he read the weight shift in an opponent's shoulder before the arm had decided to move, the way he spent his energy rather than simply throwing it. Against a fight of that scale those subtleties had meant the difference between managing the exchange and being overwhelmed by it.
