Boom!
Savage force tore the flimsy camouflage from the cave mouth.
In the thin moonlight, the entrance snapped into cruel relief. Iwa forehead protectors glinted with rain. Countless greedy eyes burned through the downpour and locked onto the prey inside, the Legendary Three of Konoha, three bodies slashed and battered, hanging by a thread.
The leading Iwa Jōnin stepped forward. A blood-smeared metal bracer lifted, the kunai in his grip sliced the silence.
"Heh. Konoha's Sannin? They're just, uh—"
Rrip.
An anomaly.
A dark-crimson meteor, beyond sight's limit, like blood lightning fallen from the ninth heaven, smashed into the tight Iwa formation.
KRAKOOM.
A shock blast roared out, braided with the crack of bones and the shriek of twisting steel.
The seven or eight Iwa at the very front took the hit like a million-ton hammer to the face. Terror froze on them as their bodies turned to ragdolls, hurled backward without the slightest resistance.
Splut. Splut. Splut.
Scarlet blossoms burst in the cold rain, death's red lotus.
The aftershock slammed the side walls. Rocks tumbled and rattled, mixing with mud and blood into a single, viscous smear. Crimson.
In an instant, the Iwa vision filled with searing scarlet. Time seemed to clot with the raindrops. From the core of the soul, cold dread clutched every Iwa heart. Fear, like liquid mercury, rushed through limbs and marrow. Weaker Chūnin collapsed outright. Weapons fell from numb hands. Bodies shook like leaves.
At ground zero, where a killing void had been wrenched open, steam boiled up and veiled the world.
A figure took shape within the haze, blurred to sharp.
Red hair.
Sopping, flame-bright red hair, like fire in the rain.
He crouched low, one knee bent, on mud slicked with blood. Under his feet the ground had caved in with a spiderweb of fractures. A battered white rain cloak clung to a lean frame coiled with force, stained deep with blood.
He rose. Straight as a spear.
Rain slid from a jaw cut like a blade. Neither steam nor pounding rain could blunt the cold light in those long, narrow eyes. They aimed with unerring precision at the back of the cave, at the gold-haired woman shielding two comrades with her own body, swaying like a candle in a gale.
A thin, icy snort, like a knife scraping frozen earth, cut the lull and struck Tsunade's ear.
"Turned yourself into sludge again, crazy woman."
Tsunade jerked her head up, burning the last scraps of strength to focus on a silhouette that should not be there.
Shock snapped through her frayed nerves.
Then came the sting of being seen through, and a surge of shame and fury. Even now this brat still had jokes.
"Idiot brat. Trying to die?!" she rasped. Her breath heaved from a body bled dry of chakra. Every word snapped, half in rage, yet under it, a small tremor of relief. He came alone. Mad. The words jammed in her throat and tore out as a snarl. "Can't you see someone's dying!"
In the shadows, Orochimaru's pupils cinched to slits. The serpent's gaze locked on Ryo in the rain, then snapped to the ancient blade at his hip, that unmistakable hilt.
Kusanagi.
"So, it's in your hands…" a strangled hiss rasped in his throat. Fingers whitened around his kunai, a strange light quivered in his eyes. "Heh, no wonder…"
On the other side, Jiraiya pried his eyelids open as if iron weights hung from them. Through the smear of blood and rain, he saw the bright red at the cave's mouth.
His blown pupils struggled to focus.
"R-red… red-haired kid… khh, khh…" His split lips twitched. Blood foamed, choking off words. "Minato… that punk always said… a monster… heh…"
"Shut it! Idiot! Don't waste air!" Tsunade's roar almost shattered his chest. At the same instant, she caught it at the corner of her eye, three flecks of cold light flaring in the dark beyond the vines.
Three poisoned streaks, angles wicked beyond belief, vipers through the rain, arrowing for the cave mouth. Target, Ryo. A kill shot loosed from cover in the chaos.
A soft, contemptuous breath, so faint it barely existed, still made every Iwa hair stand on end.
Ryo blurred, then wasn't there.
No chakra flare. Pure speed that seemed to rip space.
Only torn rain remained as an afterimage.
Three tiny spurts of blood popped at three separate points, the outer ring of the Iwa formation.
The three Iwa Jōnin, arms cocked for another throw, froze mid-motion, eyes locked in disbelief.
A neat, pin-round hole opened at each brow's center.
Smooth. Circular. Not a drop wasted. As if death itself had tapped them with a needle. The bodies fell backward without a sound and sank into the red mud.
The next instant, Ryo stood where he had begun again, like he had never moved.
He tilted his head as if brushing off dust. Breathing calm.
His eyes slid across the huge Iwa host already shuddering into panic. No contempt, only a chill absence. As if nothing stood there at all.
A quick scan, blurred ranks upon ranks in the rain, a sea of bodies. More than a dozen elite Jōnin chakra signatures, lighthouse-bright in the dark, mingled among hundreds of killing-hungry Chūnin and thousands of hollow-eyed Genin smothered by fear. A colossal blood mill.
Without looking back, Ryo spoke. "Take the two dead weights behind you and fall back."
"Kill him! Rip him apart!"
A shrill, shamed bellow blew from the rear, Commander Akagan. Veins bulged in his gaunt face, spittle flew. He slammed a hidden control beneath his heavy vambrace and shrieked, "Spatial Lock Barrier, full power! Seal and suppress! Let's see you summon your big frogs and snakes now. Grind him down. If we must, we'll bury him in bodies!"
Vwoooom.
Crushing pressure rolled out.
Space congealed. Raindrops grew heavy and slow, even their impacts dulled. The whole cliff locked beneath a vast, glass-clear dome, isolating the zone. All spatial techniques, summons, Flying Thunder God, smothered dead.
"Earth Release: Multiple Earth-Style Wall!"
Around Akagan, a dozen veteran Iwa elite Jōnin roared in unison, moving as one. Their chakra poured out like floodgates blown.
BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
The world howled. The ground bellowed. A dozen titanic earth walls, mountain-thick and ten stories high, ripped upward from the wet ground, caging the cave mouth and the patch where Ryo stood, blocking all light and exits.
Not enough. The kill followed.
"Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullets!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
"Combination Technique, Rock-Thousand Burst Burial!"
The shouts fused into a tide of ruin. Iwa's killing intent went white hot.
The earth rolled and bucked. Stone dragons tore from the rising walls, maws yawning, force enough to grind anything to grit, lunging for the intruder.
Wind screamed inside the sealed space, shredded into a storm of knife-edge blades, slicing and flensing. Air's shriek became a tight, hellish whistle.
Worst was the combo, a blizzard of razor stone shards, each boosted by the gale to terminal speed, countless as the rain, fast as meteors, each carrying steel-piercing force. A sky of killing hail came down to erase everything inside.
Wind. Stone. Rain. Earth. Poison. Death.
Within the ten-story walls, a prison of total annihilation bloomed. A storm of destruction and a smothering radiance swallowed all, fixed on a single aim, grind the red-haired figure, along with that troublesome cave mouth, into dust.
The walls swallowed every glimmer of light. Only lightning-like flickers strobed like demons on a mural, while the rain's hiss turned into a tight, suffocating roar inside the sealed void.
An absolute kill zone.
In the storm, Ryo's silhouette seemed about to vanish in grit and glare, when a streak of blood red cut the dark.
The barrier shuddered. Akagan howled, "He can't—"
(To be continued.)