Chapter 43: The Flame and the Secret
The air hung heavy with silence, broken only by the sigh of the wind through shattered trees.
The battlefield was a scar upon the earth—a testament to the brutal clash. Splintered trunks lay like fallen giants. The ground was a mosaic of craters, deep cracks, and patches of scorched earth where lightning had danced. Puddles from the colossal water techniques reflected the grey sky, and the metallic scent of blood clung to the damp soil. Corpses in Kirigakure grey lay where they had fallen.
In the center of this devastation, two figures stood locked in a lethal stalemate. Ragnar and the Ghost Lantern Jonin were mirrors of exhaustion, each pushed to their absolute limit, waiting for the other to make the final, fatal mistake.
"Huff… Huff…"
Ragnar's breathing was ragged, sweat tracing clean lines through the grime and blood on his face. This was the most desperate fight of his life in this world. The line between victory and death was drawn sharper than any blade. Win, and live. Lose, and everything ended here.
At eight years old, he had slaughtered seven chunin and was now trading blows with a seasoned Jonin. By any metric, his performance was monstrous, unprecedented. A part of him, cold and detached, acknowledged a flicker of pride. He had survived where any other would have been fodder.
"Kid… you're not just a genius," the Ghost Lantern ninja wheezed, using the precious seconds to gulp air and desperately scrape together the dregs of his chakra. "You're a nightmare. If you were allowed to grow… you'd be another White Fang. Maybe worse."
"How many more times can you pull that water trick?" Ragnar shot back, his voice strained but steady. "How many more of my punches can your body take before it turns to pulp?"
"Heh." The Jonin's sneer was weak, bitter. It galled him to be spoken down to by a child, but the truth in the words was a cold stone in his gut.
"Hmph." A faint, grim smile touched Ragnar's lips. He saw the Jonin's eyes tracking his every move, waiting for an opening. So, he gave him one.
He brought his hands together in a flash, fingers weaving through a series of seals with deliberate, visible speed.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!" he shouted, his voice cutting through the tense silence.
The Jonin's eyes widened, then narrowed with predatory focus. A seal! A mistake!
He knew the Great Fireball Jutsu. Eight hand signs. For an average ninja, eight seconds. For a prodigy, three to four. Instant ninjutsu without seals was the realm of legends and Kage. This was his chance!
He bet everything. He estimated Ragnar, even as a top-tier genius, needed three seconds. Three seconds was an eternity at this range.
His own Body Flicker took one and a half.
Time seemed to stretch. Ragnar's hands moved through the signs. The Jonin's muscles coiled, his remaining chakra flaring. Swish!
He vanished, reappearing in a blur directly in front of Ragnar, kunai gleaming with lethal intent, aimed unerringly for the heart. A perfect, decisive strike. The battle was over.
The Jonin watched the tip of his blade close the final inch towards Ragnar's chest. He saw Ragnar's hands still frozen in a seal. Victory was a cold, sweet taste in his mouth. He allowed himself a glance at the boy's face, wanting to see the fear, the realization of death.
He saw none of that.
He saw a smirk. A devilish, triumphant curl of the lips that spoke of a trap sprung.
Wrong. Something is wrong!
The kunai pierced fabric… then met no resistance. No flesh, no bone. Instead, a searing, blinding heat.
Zzzzt!
No blood spilled. The "Ragnar" his blade touched erupted not in gore, but in a wave of blistering air.
Before his disbelieving eyes, the Ragnar before him dissolved, and the real Ragnar—who had never completed the fireball seals—stood a pace to the side, his right arm raised. That arm was no longer flesh and blood. It had transformed into a roaring conflagration of brilliant, sun-gold flames.
The flames condensed, compressed, and swelled with terrifying speed into a massive fist of pure fire, larger than a man, hovering between them like a miniature sun.
This… this isn't any Fireball Jutsu! was the Jonin's last, panicked thought.
Then Ragnar's cold, final command echoed in the superheated air.
"Fire Fist."
The colossal fist of golden flame descended.
It didn't strike so much as consume. It became a crashing pillar of incinerating wrath that swallowed the Ghost Lantern Jonin whole. A scream, cut horrifically short, was lost in the roar of the flames. He instinctively triggered his Hydrification, his body dissolving into water—a defense that had saved him before.
But this was no ordinary fire. This was the flame of a Mythical Zoan, fueled by Ragnar's will and Haki. The water did not quench it; it vaporized instantly into sizzling steam. The Jonin was erased from existence, not by force, but by absolute, purifying heat.
The golden pillar erupted upwards, a beacon of destruction that lit up the forest canopy. For a moment, it was as if a second sun had bloomed on the earth.
At its epicenter, Ragnar stood wreathed in the afterglow. Part of his right shoulder and chest still flickered with dancing blue-gold flames, making him look like an avatar of some ancient fire spirit. With a thought, the flames obediently receded, snuffing out, leaving behind only the intense smell of ozone and scorched stone. The ground for meters around was vitrified, rock melted into glossy, black glass.
*Ding! Killed Jonin. Experience +2000. Total EXP: 13,800 + 2,000 = 15,800/10,000.*
Clunk.
A Silver Treasure Chest materialized at his feet with a solid sound.
Ragnar had no energy to examine it. He willed it into his system space with a thought. Every fiber of his being screamed for rest, for collapse. But his Observation Haki, stretched thin and raw, pinged a distant warning.
A malice. Not from the fallen Kiri ninja. From farther away, from the direction of Konoha. And it was closing in, moving with purpose.
No time.
Gritting his teeth against the protest of his body, he staggered to where Might Dai lay, half-conscious. He hauled the larger man's arm over his shoulders, ignoring the groan of pain, and with a final burst of desperate speed fueled by Shave, he vanished into the deeper, unburned woods.
Long after the last ember died and the glassy ground cooled, a black shadow dropped silently from the trees.
The figure surveyed the devastation, his eyes taking in the unique carnage—the seven chunin killed with brutal efficiency, the two areas of massive water damage, and now, this… this circle of absolute incineration. The rocks had flowed like wax.
"Interesting," the shadow muttered to himself. "Intel said the boy Ragnar doesn't use Fire Release. Might Dai is a taijutsu specialist. So who…?"
He couldn't reconcile the evidence. In the gloom, three tomoe spun slowly in his dark pupils, capturing every detail. The Uchiha clan's pursuit had found the battlefield, but their quarry had already fled.
Elsewhere, beneath a thundering waterfall that masked all sound.
After half a day of focused breathing and minimal movement, Ragnar's strength had crawled back to perhaps sixty percent. The Phoenix fruit's latent regeneration was finally making a noticeable difference, soothing his battered muscles and replenishing his energy far faster than any normal person could hope for.
On the bank of the stream, Might Dai was already back to his energetic self, having borne the brunt of the Gates' recoil but none of the lasting damage of Ragnar's direct combat. He was happily spearing fish with a sharpened stick, having already caught seven or eight small trout.
"Lord Ragnar! A little help, please!" Dai called, holding up the skewered fish with a bright, grateful smile.
With a sigh that was more performative than irritated, Ragnar flicked a finger. A tiny, controlled wisp of blue Phoenix flame shot out, igniting the carefully stacked firewood Dai had prepared into a perfect cooking fire.
"Wow! So convenient!" Dai marveled, immediately setting to roasting the fish with the practiced ease of a man who'd eaten many meals off the land.
As the smell of cooking fish filled the small clearing, Ragnar made a decision. "Dai," he began, his voice serious.
Dai paused in his turning of the skewers.
"I need you to keep my ability with the flames a secret," Ragnar said, watching him closely. "At least until I choose to reveal it myself."
Dai's hands resumed their work after only a brief hesitation. A warm, understanding smile spread across his face. "I don't know why you'd want to keep such an amazing power hidden, Lord Ragnar. But you must have your reasons. You saved my life. My youth and my honor are sworn to keep your secret!"
Ragnar believed him. Dai's character was as solid as the mountains.
His reasons for secrecy were rooted in cold pragmatism. Konoha already watched him for his "strange power" (Haki) and his connection to Tsunade. Now he had displayed a flame ability that required no hand signs, could elementalize his body, and unleashed power on par with A or S-rank ninjutsu. To the village's strategists and shadowy figures like Danzo, he wouldn't be just a talented boy. He'd be a unique, dissect-able weapon. A resource to be controlled, studied, or—if they feared they couldn't control him—eliminated.
He would not judge all of Konoha by the standards of its darkest corners, but he would not be naive. The fate of other bloodline limits—the Ghost Lantern clan, the Kaguya, the Uzumaki—was a stark lesson in the brutal politics of power.
Better to have a trump card no one knew about.
With that settled, another question arose. He looked at Dai, who was now happily munching on a perfectly cooked fish. "Dai," Ragnar asked, genuine curiosity in his tone. "You said you could open seven gates. But you were completely spent after fighting one Jonin with the sixth. Why?"
Crunch.
Dai fumbled the fish. It was a tiny motion, but to Ragnar's observant eyes, it was a tell. When Dai looked up, his ever-present smile was there, but it was strained at the edges, plastered over a deep, well-concealed guilt.
(End of Chapter)
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