"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
I think it'd be hard to argue that- Kimimaro was beating both Lee and Gaara without taking noticeable damage.
I think that, once Sasuke merges with Orochimaru, he's more powerful, but they were pretty equal before that point. Sasuke possibly having the edge due to elemental advantage.
How does Sasuke manage to pull off Kirin when Itachi's amaterasu was the major catalyst for him using it?
EDIT- Anyway, Sasuke would beat Kimmimaro , in either his part 1 or part 2 forms. Genin Rock Lee fresh out of the hospital and still not fully healed was able to keep up with Kimmimaro easily. The only reason Gaara and him had such a hard time for Kimmimaro was because his kekke genkai specifically nullified their physical based attacks.
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"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
Sit the whole forest on fire with one fireball and then shoot super awesome fire dragons into teh sky. Then again, I have no idea where this is taking place, so my default location was where Kimimaro fought Gaara and Lee.
And Sasuke in part 1 never came close to his power. Lee was drunk when he was fighting Kimimaro, making his attacks very unpredictable, to anyone without sharingan. Gaara was tougher but Kimimaro did have them both at his mercy right before dying.
It took amazing fire dragons+amaterasu to create the ideal weather for Kirin. amazing fire dragons + grand fireball is nowhere not enough to replace the absence of amaterasu.
Rock Lee was barely recovered from a massive operation that involved every muscle in his body snapping, when he fought Kimmimaro, and he was still faster than Kimmimaro. Gaara literally would have killed Kimmimaro ten times over if Kimmimaro's blood limit wasn't a direct counter to his abilities, etc.
__________________
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
Fire is fire. Make up for less heat by spreading the fire everywhere. May take longer, but you'll get your clouds.
Rock Lee was recovered enough to think he could use Primary Lotus. And if he gave Gaara a hard time, why would Sasuke suddenly be able to do much better? Kimimaro beat the **** out of the Sand Four with no effort apparently.
Stuff like the field of bone spikes (which he can travel through) is going to be nasty, and while he was good against Gaara's abilities, Gaara's abilities were in turn very good at countering some of Kimimaro's moves, like the bone bullets.
And were it not for sudden death by sickness, Gaara would've died right there. Due to being stabbed in the face and too worn out to do anything about it. And he had backup, and before fighting them he had cut through a ton of Naruto's shadow clones too.
Yes, that beast-transformation thing he does, which takes awhile to do.
I think it was implied that due to the Cursed seal synchronizing with his body, he gained more power in his base form. That said, I don't see VotE Sasuke taking on the Sound 4 and beating them. He could take them all on and win if he could use the Second Stage for the entire battle, but that's impossible for him, and they have Second Stages as well.
Neither do we know what the circumstances were when Kimimaro beat them all.
Anyway, as to the fight, I said it already, Kirin pwns Kimimaro, and Sasuke can pull it off.
Sasuke with Orochimaru absorbed was pretty darn powerful. Healthy Kimimaro would be pretty darn powerful as well, but Orochimaru's abilities and Kirin tip the scales in Sasuke's favour.
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
One of the big benefits of Oro absorption is it allows him the option of trading shots- Kirin's a big jutsu, and it'd be hard to do it if Kimimaro was pressing him, but with body-shedding Sasuke could take finger bullet hits or even being skewered in order to get it off and win.
He wouldn't be able to use Kirin anyway without Amaterasu.
__________________
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
He can use it with his own chakra instead of drawing outside, it'd just take far more. The storm conditions created by amaterasu was needed to use it when almost out of chakra like he was.