"What is this thing?!"
Raiga Kurosuki stared in horror as his Lightning Armor was incinerated. The Kiba blades in his hands were pinned down by the Susanoo's skeletal claw, leaving him unable to retreat. The immense impact had driven his legs deep into the earth; he was now a trapped beast, struggling in vain.
"I originally intended to grant you a chance to submit," Hikari stood tall, looking down at the battered Raiga with freezing contempt. "But it seems you lack the qualification."
When Menma had assigned this mission, her orders were clear: investigate the Kurosuki family at the Katabami Gold Mine and their leader, the former Seven Swordsman, Raiga. If possible, recruit them. If they resisted, simply bring back the blades.
Initially, Hikari had held a spark of hope. Adding a powerful combatant to Menma's growing forces was always a net positive. However, after hearing the accounts from Sansho-baaba and the neighboring villagers, her opinion had soured. Raiga's habit of holding "funerals" for innocent civilians—murdering them just to satisfy his own twisted emotional void—disgusted her.
Even as an Uchiha who had grown up amidst the blood-soaked battlefields of the Warring States period, Hikari held nothing but disdain for those who bullied the weak.
"Now, it is my turn to hold a funeral for you."
Hikari's Mangekyō Sharingan spun violently. Dark crimson chakra surged forth like a tidal wave, coating the massive skeleton, weaving flesh and sinew over the bone until it was armored in the plates of a towering warrior.
Raiga's eyes bulged. He watched as the half-bodied skeleton transformed into a majestic, armored titan. Within the mist-shrouded Katabami Gold Mine, the dark crimson giant loomed as high as the mountain peaks, a god of wrath descending upon the mortal realm.
Even from the town miles away, civilians looked up to see the colossal silhouette through the clouds. Some fell to their knees, prostrating themselves and murmuring prayers to what they assumed was a divine manifestation.
On the battlefield, Raiga felt the shadow of death loom. His survival instincts screamed with an intensity he hadn't felt since he barely survived a Konoha Genin named Might Duy and the Eight Gates.
Inside the mist, the Susanoo drew a massive chakra blade from its back. As the blade moved, it whipped up a violent gale that tore the fog asunder and sliced a nearby hilltop clean in half.
The Susanoo raised the blade high, bringing it down with the weight of the heavens.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Burial!"
In a desperate bid for survival, Raiga channeled every ounce of his remaining chakra into the Kiba blades, calling down the thunder from the black clouds above directly onto his own position. He was prepared to drag his enemy into the grave with him.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Countless bolts of lightning poured from the sky, striking both Raiga and the Susanoo. But the celestial fire did nothing to slow the descent of Hikari's blade.
The chakra sword slammed down. The earth groaned and buckled, sending shockwaves through the foundations of the world.
BOOM—!!!
The derelict village at the foot of the mine was instantly vaporized. Where the blade's edge passed, the forest was torn open by a thousand-meter-long fissure, and a distant mountain peak was cleaved in two.
As the billowing smoke cleared, a massive crater sat where Raiga had once stood. He had managed to survive by crossing the Kiba blades in a desperate parry and throwing his body to the left. Even so, his right arm had been severed clean off. The limb, still clutching one of the blades, lay in the dirt amidst a spray of blood.
Raiga wasn't dead, but his chakra was spent. He was broken.
The man who had been laughing maniacally moments ago was now a pathetic heap, spitting blood and staring at the Uchiha girl with a soul-deep terror of the power she wielded.
Hikari dispelled the Susanoo and walked toward him with measured steps. She picked up the fallen Kiba blade and pointed its tip directly at Raiga's throat.
"Wait! Wait!" Raiga gasped, choking on his own blood as he scrambled to plead. "I'll submit! I'll serve you!"
"My Lady! Let me work for you!"
Raiga was no Kisame Hoshigaki; he had no grand ideals or iron-clad convictions to die for. Ever since he escaped death years ago, he had lost himself in the bloody work of the Mist Anbu, eventually deserting to fill his inner emptiness with the thrill of the "funeral."
"A shinobi who slaughters civilians for sport is not worthy of service," Hikari said. She might have respected him if he hunted other shinobi, but this? This was beneath her.
"No more funerals! If you don't like them—"
Before he could finish, Hikari flicked the Kiba blade.
A flash of steel followed. Raiga's head took flight, spinning into the air before thudding into the dirt, his wide, terrified eyes coming to rest facing his own headless corpse.
With Raiga dealt with, Hikari retrieved the second blade. Holding both twin swords, she walked toward the other battlefield.
"My Lady!"
In the graveyard behind the ruins, Natsuhi, Hotarubi, and the three Hoshigakure shinobi had successfully subdued six members of the Kurosuki family. They were currently binding them with rope.
"Those are... the Kiba blades!" One of the Kurosuki ninja paled as he saw the girl approaching with their leader's weapons. "Where is Raiga-sama?! What did you do to him?!"
Hikari glanced at the surrounding graves and stabbed the twin blades into the ground before the captives.
"Raiga Kurosuki is dead," she announced with cold authority. "I am giving you two choices: move the Kurosuki clan to the Land of Stars, or stay here and be buried alongside your leader."
She gestured to a Hoshigakure shinobi, who ran to the crater and returned shortly after with Raiga's head. When the grisly trophy was tossed before them, the last of the Kurosuki family's will to fight shattered.
Their leader—the man who led their desertion from the Mist—was gone. And the towering red giant they had seen earlier was proof enough that resistance was suicide. They chose to submit.
By noon, the work had begun. Hotarubi and his team supervised the Kurosuki clan's relocation and began releasing the enslaved miners and villagers from the Katabami Gold Mine.
Hikari, Natsuhi, and the two lightly injured Hoshigakure shinobi returned to the Curry of Life.
"Grandmother," Hikari's stomach betrayed her again with a loud growl. "Please prepare several extra servings of curry."
Sansho-baaba offered a gentle, grandmotherly smile as she brought out bowls of steaming rice and sauce she had kept warm. "You've worked hard, little girl. Eat up."