Chapter 16: The Gaze of Giants
Kwaaa… Kwaaa…
The mournful cry of a night-hawk sliced through the sudden, heavy silence that had fallen between the two figures. The dark forest seemed to hold its breath, the only movement the gentle, eerie rustle of wind through the high canopy.
Ragnar kept his gaze locked on Tsunade. Her intentions were an enigma wrapped in immense power. The evidence of his deed was all around them—the freshly turned earth, the scorch marks on bark and leaf, the lingering scent of ozone and blood. He was a murderer standing over a shallow grave. She was a legend who had witnessed it all.
"Who am I? Kid, you really don't know?"
Tsunade folded her arms beneath her chest, a gesture that accentuated her formidable profile. A playful, knowing smile touched her lips, her bright eyes glinting in the dappled moonlight.
"Why would I?" Ragnar countered, his voice flat, giving nothing away. If her purpose was arrest, then the calculus changed. He had no illusions about fighting the Slug Princess and winning. Evasion, escape, becoming a missing-nin… those were the grim variables he began to weight.
"About six months ago," she began, her tone shifting to a storyteller's cadence, "I led a squad on a mission. We passed by a small border village. It had been wiped out by Suna-nin. Hundreds dead. A handful of survivors. You were one of them."
"I was unconscious. Dying. I never saw your face," Ragnar stated, neither confirming nor denying. "By your account, then, you are my savior."
"Savior is a strong word. Let's say… a bystander who didn't let a kid bleed out." She took a few steps closer, closing the distance. Then she did something unexpected—she leaned forward slightly, bringing her face closer to his, her eyes searching his stony expression with intense curiosity. "I just never expected that half-dead brat would be strong enough to kill an elite chunin solo barely three months later."
At her height, leaning forward brought her into very close proximity. Ragnar, though tall for his age thanks to Haki-enhanced development, was still a head shorter. His line of sight was now direct and unavoidably filled with the breathtaking, creamy expanse of her décolletage, accented by the v-neck of her shirt. A faint, clean scent of herbs and something uniquely feminine—Tsunade—waffed over him.
Damn. What do they feed Senju? The thought was purely biological, an observation of a natural wonder. He pushed it aside, invoking a mental ice that had served him well. The mind is a mountain lake. Ripples are distractions.
He met her probing gaze, his own unwavering. "You saw everything then, Lady Tsunade."
"Yep. Saw the whole show. Ruthless. Efficient. Not very… childish." She straightened up, her smile turning wry. "But then, what's 'childish' in this world anymore?"
"That's what I was going to ask. Are you here to give a lecture? Or to take me in for 'justice'?" His voice hardened, each word a chip of flint. "If it's the latter, know I won't go quietly."
Tsunade blinked, then let out a short, genuine laugh. "Who said anything about taking you in? One less arrogant Uchiha? The world's a better place. Frankly, I've been tempted to smack a few of them myself lately."
The tension in Ragnar's shoulders eased a fraction. A witness was one thing. An accomplice, or at least a disinterested observer, was another. The danger level plummeted. "My thanks, then," he said, the words stiff but sincere. Her silence was a shield.
"Oho? He says 'thank you'! And here I thought you were carved from ice, kid." She chuckled, shaking her head.
Ragnar had no desire to spend the rest of the night in a philosophical debate with a Sannin in a corpse-littered clearing. The Phoenix Fruit hummed in his system storage, a siren call of power waiting to be claimed. "I'm leaving."
He turned and began walking toward the dense tree line.
"Leaving? Just like that?" Tsunade sounded genuinely nonplussed behind him. "Hey! Brat! Wait up!"
He didn't slow. His pace was deliberate, putting distance between himself and the complication named Tsunade.
Stomp stomp stomp. He could hear her following, her footsteps light but purposeful on the forest floor. "Seriously, kid! That ball of chakra in your hand earlier—how did you do that? No hand seals at all!"
Her curiosity was a tangible force, buzzing around him like an excited hornet. He could sense her analytical mind working, dissecting the Rasengan's impossible appearance.
"Self-made," he tossed over his shoulder, not breaking stride.
"Self-made? Don't be ridiculous! A kid creating a new ninjutsu? And that thing looked like it packed at least A-rank power!" She caught up, walking slightly beside him now, her expression a mix of disbelief and intense professional interest.
"Your disbelief doesn't make it untrue."
"Come on, tell me how it works! The theory!" she pressed, her earlier menace completely gone, replaced by the eager curiosity of a master craftsman shown a new tool.
Ragnar stopped. He turned his head just enough to look at her from the corner of his eye, his face illuminated by a stray beam of moonlight. He delivered the explanation with deadpan finality.
"You rub your hands together."
Then he moved, using a burst of speed to vanish into the deeper shadows between the trees, leaving a utterly flabbergasted Tsunade standing alone in the small clearing.
"...Rub your hands together?" she muttered to the empty night, her brilliant mind utterly short-circuiting on the sheer absurdity of the answer. "What kind of bullshit is that?!"
By the time her brain rebooted, the forest had swallowed him whole. She was left with only the memory of a cold-faced boy, a mysterious, seal-less technique of devastating power, and the lingering sense that the tidy world of Konoha's power structures had just developed a very interesting, very sharp crack.
While the Forest of Death returned to its primordial quiet, the hidden machinery of Konoha was grinding into motion.
The clash between Ragnar and Uchiha Shirou had not gone entirely unseen by the village's darker eyes.
Deep in the Root's subterranean labyrinth, an operative knelt in the gloom, his report delivered in a emotionless monotone to the shadow that was Danzo Shimura.
Even Danzo, a man inured to surprise, felt a moment of stunned silence as the words settled.
"Uchiha Shirou is confirmed dead. An elite chunin, with a three-tomoe Sharingan… eliminated by the academy refugee, Ragnar."
Elite chunin were a cut above the standard. Those with kekkei genkai, especially the Sharingan, operated on a different tier entirely.
"Confirmed, Lord Danzo. Beyond the suspected physical kekkei genkai, the target employed an unknown taijutsu or ninjutsu—a non-elemental sphere of chakra—to deliver the killing blow."
"Fascinating," Danzo's rasp echoed in the stone chamber. A cold, calculating interest ignited in his single visible eye. "A potent weapon, already stained with Uchiha blood. This boy… he must be acquired for Root. He is a blade shaped for a very specific sheath."
"My lord, the Anbu surveillance team also witnessed the encounter. The Hokage will be informed."
"The Hokage has his sentimentalities," Danzo dismissed, his tone final. "We have our necessities. Dismissed."
The operative vanished.
Simultaneously, in the warmly lit Hokage's office high above, the air was thick with tobacco smoke and quiet concern. An Anbu operative with a cat mask finished his report and stood at silent attention.
Sarutobi Hiruzen took a long, slow draw from his pipe, the lines on his face deepening as he exhaled a cloud that wreathed his troubled expression. The news was… explosive. A prodigy born from tragedy, clashing with the pillars of the village. A spark that could ignite a much larger, more dangerous fire.
(End of Chapter)
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