Chapter 8: A Lesson in Iron
"This is impossible!"
"How can a fist block shuriken? He must have used ninjutsu, but… there were no hand seals!"
The stunned silence shattered into a cacophony of gasps and exclamations. All across the training ground, students stared, their eyes wide with disbelief. The evidence lay scattered in the dirt: dented, twisted metal where there should have been blood.
Even the stoic ninja instructor's face was a mask of profound shock. These were training shuriken, yes, but thrown with genin-level force. Blocking them bare-handed should have resulted in shattered knuckles, not shattered steel. It defied the basic physics of their world.
The activation of Armament Haki had been a flicker, a momentary darkening lost in the sun and the speed of his movements. To the untrained eye, it was invisible. Only a select few, those with preternatural perception, caught the anomaly.
Namikaze Minato's bright blue eyes were narrowed in intense focus. He hadn't seen the how, but he'd seen the effect. The precise, clean dents on the shuriken spoke of an impact force far beyond a child's punch. A chill, mixed with awe, traced his spine. What if that fist had connected with a person?
In the crowd, a Hyuuga clan student had instinctively activated his Byakugan at the moment of impact. The veins around his eyes bulged. He hadn't seen a strange chakra coating, but he had seen the terrifying, explosive surge of power concentrated in Ragnar's arm and fist—a compression of muscle and energy that defied normal chakra enhancement techniques. What kind of power is that? he thought, a tremor of unease in his gut.
Uchiha Tsuki stood frozen, his earlier arrogance replaced by a gaping, stupid shock. The reality of his failed attack was a physical blow to his pride.
"Amazing!"
"Ragnar! Show that arrogant jerk!"
Kushina's cheers were a bright, defiant sound in the tense air.
Tsuki's face flushed a deep, ugly red. The mockery in a girl's voice, especially that red-haired girl's, was the final spark. "You think some cheap trick can beat an Uchiha?" he snarled, spittle flying. "I'll show you the true power of this clan!"
He drew a kunai, his stance shifting into something more aggressive, more lethal. And then, his eyes changed. The dark pupils swirled, resolving into a blood-red canvas dotted with a single, spinning black tomoe.
The Sharingan.
A murmur of awe and fear rippled through the students. Awakening the famed dojutsu at his age marked Tsuki as a genuine talent.
Ragnar's own hand went to his pouch, his fingers closing around the cool handle of a training kunai. He felt no fear, only a cold, analytical focus. The Sharingan was a formidable tool, but a tool required a skilled user.
"In front of these eyes, your taijutsu is a pathetic joke!" Tsuki lunged, his movements now fluid, predictive. The single tomoe spun, analyzing Ragnar's muscle twitches, predicting the trajectory of his defense. The kunai in Tsuki's hand became a silver blur, aimed with cruel efficiency at Ragnar's shoulder—a disabling, humiliating strike.
Ragnar didn't try to match the Sharingan's visual prediction. He stopped looking with his eyes.
Observation.
The world shifted. The frantic charge slowed. The killing intent radiating from Tsuki was a tangible, red-black smear in the air. The perfect, Sharingan-guided attack revealed its flaw not in form, but in intent—it was too direct, too reliant on the eye's guarantee. Ragnar saw the path of the kunai not as a line, but as a series of points in space and time. He saw the opening a fraction of a second before Tsuki's own body committed to the final thrust.
He moved. It wasn't a dramatic dodge, but a minimal, almost negligent shift of his upper body—a tilt of the hips, a drop of the shoulder. The kunai tip whistled past his shirt, missing by a millimeter.
In the same motion, Ragnar's own arm whipped forward. Armament. The subtle darkness raced up his wrist and coated his kunai, not with a visible sheen, but with an impossible density.
CLANG!
The sound was a dull, heavy crunch of simulated metal failing. Ragnar's empowered kunai met Tsuki's not with a parry, but with a brutal, dismissive smash. The force transmitted up Tsuki's arm was volcanic. Numbness, then searing pain exploded in his wrist and forearm. His grip vanished. His own kunai was torn from his hand and sent cartwheeling through the air to land point-down in the dirt ten feet away.
The momentum lifted Tsuki off his feet. He stumbled, balance gone, and crashed face-first into the hard-packed earth with a grunt, skidding a short distance in a cloud of dust. He lay there for a second, the wind knocked out of him, his face pressed into the dirt.
One exchange. One clean, humiliating counter. The Uchiha with the Sharingan lay in the dirt.
The crowd was silent again, but this time the silence was different—charged with a dawning realization. This wasn't a fluke. Ragnar's evasion had been too precise, his counter too devastating. He had read the Sharingan-user like an open book.
"Well done!" Kushina yelled, jumping slightly with glee, utterly oblivious to the storm of fury she was stoking.
"That evasion… it was perfect," Minato murmured, his mind racing. "It wasn't luck. He saw it coming."
"The Uchiha clan… will not be humiliated!" The voice was a raw, ragged scrape from the ground. Tsuki pushed himself up. His Sharingan-eyed gaze was wild, unhinged with fury and shame. His right hand, the one that had held the kunai, trembled violently, the fingers curled into a painful claw. But his left hand flew through a series of familiar, practiced hand seals—Ram, Snake, Tiger, Ram, Horse, Tiger.
The instructor's eyes widened. "Tsuki, stand down! That's enou—"
It was too late. Tsuki sucked in a massive, chest-expanding breath, his cheeks bulging grotesquely.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
He exhaled.
Whoosh!
A sphere of chakra-ignited flame, wider than a man was tall, erupted from his mouth. It roared across the short distance between them, a miniature sun of heat and destruction. The air wavered and baked. The grass at the edges of its path crisped and blackened instantly. A C-rank technique. Chunin-level firepower. In the confines of a schoolyard spar, it was an act of attempted murder.
"Damn it!" the instructor cursed, his own hands coming up, but he was too far, too slow. The fireball was already halfway to its target.
"RAGNAR!" Kushina's scream was pure terror.
The inferno filled Ragnar's vision, the heat blistering against his skin. The instinct to Substitute, to flee, was a screaming impulse in his nerves. He could do it. His Observation Haki showed him the paths of escape.
But a colder, harder part of him rejected it. To dodge was to concede. To show that such a reckless, overpowering attack could control the field. He had stood his ground against the shuriken. He would stand his ground here.
In the hearts of the watching students, he was already dead or maimed. A human body couldn't withstand that.
Ragnar's body sank into a deeper stance, roots of will driving into the earth. He coiled like a spring, his arms drawing back, fists clenched so tight his bandages strained.
What is he doing?
He's going to try to block it!
He's insane!
The thoughts were almost audible in the stunned silence.
Ragnar ignored them all. He focused on the core of the flame, on the raging chakra at its heart. He drew not on his meager chakra reserves, but on the well of resolve within. The resolve to survive, to break, to conquer.
Armament. Full Body. Hardening.
It wasn't a shout, but a silent command that vibrated through every fiber of his being. Darkness rippled across his skin, starting at his clenched fists and racing up his arms, over his shoulders, across his chest and face. In less than a heartbeat, he was sheathed in an obsidian carapace, his figure transforming from a boy into a statue of polished, dark stone. Only his eyes, gleaming with fierce concentration, remained uncovered.
The fireball hit.
BOOM!
A wave of heat and force exploded outward, forcing students to shield their faces. The heart of the flame engulfed the small, blackened figure completely.
Uchiha Tsuki, panting from the chakra drain, let out a wheezing, triumphant laugh. "Fool! You actually tried to taijutsu a ninjutsu!"
The laughter died in his throat.
For the roaring sphere of fire… split.
From within the heart of the conflagration, a black fist, wreathed in dying flames, punched forward. It wasn't a punch against the fire; it was the spearhead of an indomitable will tearing through it. The fireball distorted, then ruptured, scattering into harmless tongues of flame that licked the air and died.
Standing amidst the dissipating smoke and heat haze was Ragnar. The Armament coating was receding from his body like ink washing away, revealing unburned clothes and unmarked skin. Tendrils of steam rose from him. His expression was calm, but his eyes were locked on Tsuki with an intensity that was more terrifying than any fury.
"Uchiha Tsuki."
The name was a flat statement, a verdict. Ragnar took a step, then became a blur of motion. The distance vanished. Tsuki had only time for his Sharingan to widen in horror, to see the fist—now flesh-colored again, but carrying the memory of its impossible hardness—fill his vision.
The punch took him squarely in the solar plexus.
CRUNCH.
The sound of breaking bone was sickeningly clear in the sudden, absolute quiet.
All the air left Tsuki's body in a choked, wet gasp. His eyes rolled back, showing the whites. He was lifted off his feet, bent double around the fist, before collapsing like a discarded rag doll onto the ground. He didn't move. A small trickle of saliva and blood trailed from the corner of his slack mouth.
Silence.
A profound, ringing silence swallowed the entire training field. The only movement was the slow drift of the last smoke tendrils and the settling dust around Ragnar's feet.
He stood over the unconscious form of the Uchiha prodigy, looked down at his own unblemished fist, then slowly raised his gaze to meet the stunned, fearful, and awestruck eyes of the entire Academy class.
The lesson was complete.
(End of Chapter)
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