Kusanagi paused.
The tip hovered half an inch before Kitsuchi's brow.
A single viscous bead of blood, heavy with its master's killing intent and crushing chakra, trembled there, reflecting a face twisted to ruin by terror, filthy with tears and snot.
That hysterical scream, "My father, Ōnoki," split Kusagakure's deathly quiet for a heartbeat, then was eaten by wind, ash, and blood.
Ryo's gaze dropped to the heap of mud called Kitsuchi at his feet.
Kusagakure?
His eyes skimmed the ruin, fire writhing in broken frames, bodies jumbled, blood running like oars through a red canal.
The fall of Kusagakure, no different from the drowned Whirlpools, no different from the Land of Rain flattened into battlefield slag.
Weakness is original sin. No matter how many die, they are footnotes under great nations' games.
And the culprit? Hiruzen will scold for show, perhaps, but with the war gridlocked, Konoha wants his blade.
Grass fell? Then Grass fell.
But this man, Ōnoki's son, what does he mean to Konoha right now?
A cold thought knifed through Ryo's mind.
Kill him?
Kusanagi's hum deepened.
The cost wrote itself. Ōnoki, old and stubborn, had this late born son as the axis of his heart.
Cut Kitsuchi, and you blind the Tsuchikage, you spear his chest.
A raging Ōnoki would hurl Iwa's full might, cost be damned, to repay Konoha.
If the line buckles?
If the rivers run with blood?
Can Hiruzen hold?
Ryo's mouth twitched into a small, cruel curve.
And if he cannot, so what?
Konoha's lofty advisers, the shortsighted townsfolk, they would only pin a scapegoat, Kamiyama Ryo's fault.
"If he hadn't killed Ōnoki's precious boy, the Tsuchikage wouldn't have gone mad.
Ryo dragged disaster to our door, he took our sons, our fathers."
He could see their faces already.
Nuisance.
He did not care for himself, but Kushina? Tsunade, that glorious maniac? And Mikoto?
Caught in the crossfire, they would only suffer.
Even if Hiruzen was still mostly wise, Ryo's rescue of Tsunade and the power he had shown had already planted a thorn in the Hokage's back.
The elders. Danzō.
Even if Hiruzen did not nod, he would look away.
So why should Ryo kill Kitsuchi for Konoha?
Why carry the blame for them?
Why hand them the knife?
Why stand alone before the tidal wrath of Iwa?
His killing urge thinned, and the ice of mockery grew sharper.
Take Iwa's little envoy with him.
Back to the blood swept Land of Rain.
Let Danzō's black heart weigh Kitsuchi's worth.
Let Root gnaw on Iwa's problem.
Ryo brings him in, mission delivered.
Waste recycled. Value extracted.
But, going back empty handed besides the hostage?
Would he see a share of Kitsuchi's value?
Kusanagi trembled. The bead finally fell, pattering across Kitsuchi's terrified face.
"Trash." Ryo's voice was not loud, but it stabbed the frozen eardrum like an icicle.
Kitsuchi's heart seized.
Death had not moved on.
"Your life has a price," Ryo said, stepping forward, the sole of his foot slick with red chakra. "But not enough to buy those brittle bones."
He stamped the shin.
Crack.
Bone snapped with a sound that tore the air.
Kitsuchi's scream went inhuman.
"Want to live? Pay for it."
Ryo raised his foot again, poised over the other leg.
Agony shattered Kitsuchi's last illusions.
He understood, it was not his father's name buying mercy, it was that he himself had become stock on a market stall.
"Ah, ah, stop! What do you want? Money? Intel?"
He howled, tears and snot mixing with the blood, but the colder fear was the word value in Ryo's mouth.
"Ninjutsu."
Kitsuchi's pupils tightened.
Pride as Ōnoki's son flared one last time.
"Dream on. Iwa's secret arts aren't—"
Crack.
The second leg shattered.
"AAAA—!"
His scream broke pitch. He nearly passed out. Survival clenched his jaw.
He looked into those dead silver eyes, not human.
This man did not care.
Their secret arts were interest, not the core of the bargain.
If life could be spared, Ryo wanted Iwa's secrets, over his corpse. He remembered his father's mantra, the Will of Stone, and locked his teeth.
No matter the torment, Kitsuchi would not talk.
The grit irked Ryo. If force could not pry the seal, there were other doors.
He hauled Kitsuchi up, flashed with Flying Thunder God, and rejoined the others.
"Ryo, who's this?"
Seeing him reappear, slick with blood, Mikoto and the rest finally exhaled.
Nawaki eyed the ruin dangling from Ryo's grip, baffled.
"Mikoto. Your Sharingan, can you cast genjutsu?"
Ryo ignored Nawaki and looked to her.
The quiet Uchiha lifted her gaze, already blood red.
Sometime, somewhere in the Land of Rain's carnage, the twin tomoe had ripened, a little uncanny.
No words. The illusion fell.
Vmm.
An unseen lance of will punched into Kitsuchi's ruined mind.
Reality tore.
Through the pain, the world went red.
Ghosts clanked chains out of blood mud, raking his soul.
Halved comrades staggered toward him, screaming.
Worse, in his mind, sealed seals and chakra routes unspooled without his leave, as if iron hooks ripped memory free.
"Ghh, aah."
He convulsed, the body's agony compounded by the brain's violation.
Ryo stood over him, voice a cold burin.
"Added Weight Rock Technique.
Light–Weight Rock Technique.
Seals. Chakra paths. Effects. Core tricks.
From the start. Now."
Kitsuchi's mind pried open like a clam under a knife.
Secrets, rock village core lore, layered with brand seals, peeled like pearls under Ryo's demand and Mikoto's demonic tomoe.
He rasped them out like a broken machine, snatches of hand signs, meridian routes, choking, coughing blood into every syllable.
Ryo listened, memorized.
Added Weight Rock, a mobile gravity field.
Perfect furnace for tempering a monstrous body.
Light–Heavy Rock, a flight art rare in the shinobi world, priceless.
The greatest windfall of this mission lay in the heap of mud at his feet.
When he was sure he had wrung what he wanted, that glimmer sank.
He nudged Kitsuchi with his toe, the jōnin slumped, more sack than man.
"Tie him. Bring him."
Nawaki's stomach flipped at the sight of what had once been a strutting terror, now meat in a bag, but he grit his teeth and nodded.
Kaori, pale, trotted over with rope.
There was no pity in her eyes, only a tautness born of survival.
The four, with their Iwa VIP, left the furnace that had been Kusagakure.
Their road bent back toward the storm bitten front in the Land of Rain.
Mission complete.
Ryo felt no urge to sprint for that meat grinder.
The job was done. Their shoulders eased a fraction.
No need to hurry back to the downpour and iron.
Who knew what death warrant Danzō would throw next?
Better to slow the pace, let their eyes graze a land battered but stubborn, where green still found a way.
They eased their steps.
For once, no rush.
Ryo led, Kusanagi sheathed, the last blood drying black.
Nawaki dragged the fainted Kitsuchi.
Mikoto shadowed him, gaze clear again. The twin tomoe had faded, their strange gleam unlamented.
Kaori clung to Mikoto's sleeve, trying not to look at the red bundle bumping behind.
A rare quiet set in.
The sky was a smear of gray, but rain held.
They took a narrow path through trees rinsed clean, a touch of life returning.
Far from the stink of Grass, the air held a softer scent of soil.
Nawaki's nerves uncoiled a notch.
"If sis learns we not only finished the job, but netted a big fish—"
He broke off, catching Ryo's eye.
Ryo did not turn, but his steps carried an ease that said he held the reins.
This calm was bought by his blade.
"Rest a bit?" Kaori asked softly, tired.
She was frail to begin with. The long march had been hard.
"Mhm," Ryo said, gaze touching a roadside boulder, a decent perch.
And then, a scream sliced the stillness.
Kaori.
Her face blanched whiter than in Grass, whiter than death had made it.
She shook violently, as if a thunderbolt had struck.
Thin fingers clenched her collar. Breath hitched, like a cold hand pressed her throat.
Her eyes flooded with terror, staring past them down the road.
"What is it, Kaori?"
Nawaki snapped alert, dropped Kitsuchi, and stepped in front of her.
Mikoto's hand was already on her kunai, body bent into guard.
Ryo's body strung tight in the same blink.
He spun, silver eyes lancing toward Kaori's line of sight.
A faint, clinging foreboding, a predator's scent of blood, screamed warning in his chest.
Kaori's teeth chattered.
She pointed toward the bend ahead, voice scraping blood from her throat.
"S something, there. A, a chakra, s so, so terrifying."
She shook like a reed.
This was the Uzumaki's birthright, Kagura's Mind Eye, sounding its hopeless alarm.
That gift had let her slip the Grass repeatedly, vanishing into cracks where hunters could not follow, until Ryo's team had found her.
That same day, she had felt the kin echo in Nawaki's blood, a quarter line from Uzumaki Mito, and gambled everything to step into the open.
Silence.
The air congealed.
The insects and birds cut off as if strangled.
Only the wind moved, pushing the meadow smell past the bend and bringing with it a thread of death.
And in that hush, it burst, a sudden, unheralded, bone deep killing intent that froze marrow.
It detonated.
It fixed on them.
Ryo's pupils pinpricked to needles.
Kusanagi sang in its sheath, a sharp, urgent keening it had never voiced before.
Who was coming?
(To be continued.)