Chapter 103: Stray Dogs by the Road
Kurotsuchi held Sakura and hovered high above the Grass Village, watching the fighting below as Konoha's forces engaged the defenders. Sakura studied the battlefield for a clean entry point.
Kurotsuchi, holding her, looked like she was reconsidering her life choices.
She'd never carried a passenger while flying before. The chakra drain was noticeably higher than solo flight, and she was already thinking about conservation.
The pink hair kept catching the wind and brushing across her face. She shook her head. Her nose twitched.
...That's actually kind of nice.
"You smell good," Kurotsuchi said, without meaning to.
Sakura turned her head. Two green eyes, completely without affect, fixed on her.
"You — I — that's not — I don't even like girls—"
Kurotsuchi's face went red. She was mid-explanation when Sakura looked back down at the battlefield.
"Drop me there."
She pointed at a cluster below — one Konoha shinobi, five or six Grass ninja closing in from multiple angles.
"Thank god—"
"Here you go—"
Kurotsuchi launched her into freefall with the energy of someone returning a borrowed object they hadn't wanted.
Sakura, dropping, slid the brass knuckles onto her hands and closed her fists. She channeled chakra.
The chakra metal responded immediately.
Flames, dense enough to look solid, erupted from the knuckles — and then, as the chakra shaped itself through the material, the flames formed.
Tiger heads.
...The Cat Shinobi clan made tiger-head brass knuckles. Because tigers are cats. Of course they did.
She didn't think about it further. The ground was coming up fast. She caught the Konoha shinobi with one hand, set him aside, and drove her other fist into the earth.
BOOM.
The ground split open. Stone and soil flew. Buildings nearby buckled and collapsed. A cloud of dust rolled outward. The impact traveled through the earth like a minor earthquake.
The Konoha shinobi who had been rushing to help their comrade all stopped at the same moment, momentum killed by simple shock.
Above, Kurotsuchi watched the pink-haired girl's fist crater a ten-meter radius and felt a chill she wasn't going to admit to.
Don't make her angry. Self-reminder. Standing note.
The Grass ninja who'd been surrounding the Konoha shinobi had all moved on to meet the Sage of the Six Paths at high velocity.
"Th— thank you."
The rescued shinobi bowed with sweat on his face.
Sakura was already gone.
She moved through the village in a straight line and left a trail. Any Grass shinobi in her path was launched, and they did not get up. The fighting style was recognizable to anyone who'd been paying attention to Konoha long enough.
She fights like Tsunade.
The thought crossed more than one mind on the battlefield.
The minutes passed. Grass resistance eroded and then collapsed. Less than two hours from first contact, and Konoha's forces controlled nearly seventy percent of the village.
In the command building, the Grass Village leader watched his defenders falling back on every front. His chest heaved.
"Leader. We have to go."
His aide's voice was hollow.
No one had anticipated Konoha would strike Grass without warning. There had been no time to mobilize. No assembly. The defensive formations never formed. Each shinobi fought alone, got isolated, and was taken apart.
Against a unit this coordinated, individual combat was a losing proposition from the first exchange. Even the small groups that managed to organize were broken before they could consolidate.
The man's knuckles were white around whatever he was holding.
A long silence.
"Take whoever's left and go."
His voice was flat.
"Find Mui in Hōzukijō."
The aide stared at him.
He wasn't planning to leave.
"Go."
The word hit like a door closing.
The aide looked at him for a moment longer. His eyes went wet. He exhaled, turned, and didn't look back.
The leader of Grass Village stood in the firelight spreading toward his building, watched it come, and let a cold smile form on his face. He was moving toward the stairs, toward the fighting, when a small old man descended from the dark sky and stopped just outside the window.
One window between them.
On one side: black night and the sound of war.
On the other side: lamplight and documents on a desk.
Two worlds separated by glass.
The masked face turned toward the old man. Behind the mask, the pupils contracted.
Despair.
Complete and total despair.
Grass Country had always survived by existing in the crack between Fire and Earth. It had no other option. That was the arithmetic of small nations.
And if Ōnoki was here — standing in the dark outside his window — the arithmetic was finished.
He'd planned, in whatever came after his death, to send what remained of Grass Village's forces to Earth Country. To seek Ōnoki's protection. To rebuild under that shelter.
That option was gone.
Grass Village was over.
"Lord Tsuchikage."
He ran his tongue over cracked lips.
"Will you tell me why?"
Ōnoki looked at him. No unnecessary words. Just one hand, raised, aimed.
"Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique."
That was his answer.
The weak had their own logic for survival. But in the path of a tide this large, the only available outcome was to be ground under.
In Ōnoki's calculation, the Fire-Earth alliance had to be without gaps. Grass Country — sitting directly between the two nations, a potential fracture point, a corridor for enemy movement — was itself the gap. Its existence was the error.
He was correcting the error.
The white light of annihilation wrapped around the Grass Village command building.
The man behind the mask began to laugh.
It climbed. Unraveling. Past reason. Past fear. A laugh that had found the bottom of everything and kept going.
"HAHAHAHA—"
"HAHAHAHAHAHA—"
"This is what great nations are!"
"This is what small nations are!"
"I curse you."
"I curse every last one of you — that you will fall, in the end, and be ground into the dirt like stray dogs eating garbage by the road!"
"I'll be waiting in hell—"
Silence.
The Grass Village command building was gone. In its place: a perfect square cut into the earth, clean-edged and deep.
(End of Chapter)