Chapter 237: So, Can Rain Falling from High Altitudes Kill People?
"What is this?!" A man stared up in horror at the hailstones, each one absurdly huge, and instinctively stumbled back.
The next instant, a chunk of ice crashed down from the sky and smashed into him. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, collapsing to the ground without moving.
"Run! It's a natural disaster!" someone screamed.
The already crowded port exploded into chaos. People shoved, tripped, and scrambled in every direction, desperate for shelter.
But the flimsy straw huts near the docks were useless against hail this size. It took only a few impacts for everyone to realize the truth. If they wanted to live, they needed solid concrete buildings, the kind that could actually take a hit.
Kenichi watched, stunned.
To be honest, he had only been trying to develop a sensory technique similar to the Rain Tiger at Will Jutsu. He wanted to locate Koyuki and the person who had dispelled his Shadow Clone.
Instead, he had accidentally created a jutsu of a completely different flavor.
Strictly speaking, it was not some unstoppable killing technique. But the range was enormous, and the destruction was chaotic and indiscriminate. In the right situation, that alone made it worthy of an A rank evaluation.
A ridiculous memory surfaced in Kenichi's mind.
Back in his previous life, there had been a joke about a farmer's wife who wandered into a group chat full of "high IQ" people. One day someone asked, very seriously, whether a single drop of water falling from an extreme height could kill a person.
The chat erupted into debate and calculations.
Then the farmer's wife chimed in.
"Haven't any of you ever been caught in the rain?"
She was kicked out immediately.
Kenichi almost laughed, but the scene outside was too violent for humor to last.
Because in reality, the question was not complicated at all.
If a sphere of water the size of a human head fell from a great height, surface tension would not hold it together for long. The moment it hit airflow, it would tear apart into countless smaller droplets.
Raindrops were tiny. And when rain fell, air resistance increased with speed. The faster it accelerated, the stronger the resistance became, until it reached a terminal velocity and fell in steady motion.
Most raindrops fell at around nine meters per second. That sounded fast, but with their small size, it was not enough to seriously injure anyone.
Even the largest raindrops, driven by strong wind, did little more than sting.
Killing someone with rain was basically impossible.
But that was because rain was liquid.
Liquid broke apart. Liquid dispersed. Liquid bled energy through resistance and surface behavior.
Solid ice was another story.
If it was ice, then the lethality was obvious.
Even an egg, dropped from a ten story building, could become life threatening if it hit the wrong place. And anything falling from a high altitude could build terrifying kinetic energy.
A simple soda can could shatter tempered glass.
That was why people once fantasized about space based weapons.
Later, those ideas were proven impractical. Without additional power, the effect was not as dramatic as the fantasies claimed. To achieve the desired results, you still needed to give the projectile enough kinetic energy.
Kenichi swallowed and glanced up at the roof above them.
"This house probably won't hold much longer," he muttered.
The building they were in was mostly wood and some concrete, with a sheet of tin over the top.
That flimsy tin would struggle to stop even a soda can, let alone hailstones of this size.
Kenichi could practically feel the roof giving up, one impact at a time.
Kakashi stood nearby, equally stunned. His eyes followed the violence outside, and then he looked back at Kenichi with a headache that was almost visible.
"Are you trying to destroy this country?" Kakashi asked, voice tight.
Those hailstones were massive. And somehow, they were connected to his friend.
For the first time since they reunited, Kakashi felt something like a gap form between them, a strange distance he could not name.
Kenichi's expression twisted in frustration. "Do you believe me if I say I was only trying to develop a sensory jutsu?"
After casting something like this, what "tracking" was left? At this point he was more likely to locate minced meat than a living person.
Still, this chaos was not good for the enemy either.
Hail that missed people smashed into the ground and burst apart, turning into chunks of ice and slush. Even a powerful ninja would have trouble moving cleanly through this mess, especially if he was also dragging Koyuki along.
Unless he abandoned her.
Kakashi frowned. "You're telling me this is a sensory jutsu?"
He could not help it. What kind of sensory technique was used like this?
Was the idea to "sense" the enemy by leveling the area until the enemy had no choice but to reveal himself?
Kenichi opened his mouth to explain.
Then he froze.
Something was wrong.
He caught a smell.
Gunpowder.
It was faint, so faint most people would miss it entirely. But Kenichi had just caught a trace.
His eyes sharpened. "No. Move!"
He grabbed Kakashi and yanked him out of the house.
A heartbeat later, the building behind them exploded.
The blast tore upward, sending splinters, debris, and dust into the air. The shockwave slammed into nearby structures hard enough that the roof of the adjacent house was ripped off and flung away.
Immediately, furious curses erupted from inside that neighboring building, loud and creative enough to make Kenichi sigh in genuine admiration.
No matter what world it was, people always found new ways to curse.
They were talented. He almost wanted to write them down.
He could use them later when he wanted to curse Obito.
But Kenichi's attention stayed on what mattered.
That explosion was not an accident.
Explosives in the ninja world were stable. There were no convenient time bombs lying around. Something like that was usually detonated manually.
Which meant the one who triggered it was likely still nearby.
Kenichi's Sharingan caught a flicker of movement.
A figure.
He bolted without hesitation, chasing through the chaos and broken snow, cutting off escape routes until he finally cornered the target outside the port.
An elderly man stood there.
He had a thick patch of white hair and looked to be in his fifties or sixties. He had stopped running and now faced Kenichi without moving.
Kenichi watched him warily.
The man's hair and beard were carefully groomed. He wore orange tinted glasses and a fitted white outfit that looked clean, almost too clean for this weather.
Kenichi's eyes narrowed. "Where is the little girl?"
Even though Kenichi had already seen this man's appearance in the memory that returned when his Shadow Clone dispersed, seeing him up close still made him want to say it out loud.
This man looked completely out of place.
Most ninja wore practical clothing, gear built for movement and combat. And powerful experts often had their own style, like the Akatsuki.
But this man did not look like a ninja at all.
He looked like a model.
A fashionable old gentleman who had somehow walked onto the wrong stage.
.....
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