Chapter 60: The Reaping in the Rain
The entire sequence unfolded in the space between heartbeats. Moonlight Swiftfire's life had dangled over a puddle, saved by a yank he hadn't seen coming. The retaliatory water blades had been a silent, lethal bloom, swallowed by a shield of dying insects.
The rain fell, indifferent, each drop pocking the puddles that now looked like a thousand lurking mouths.
Aburame Shigeru, ever practical, had sacrificed a small hive of his kikaichu. The Aburame's secrets lay outside the five chakra natures—a symbiosis of will and swarm.
Swiftfire took a shuddering breath, the cold air and adrenaline mixing in his lungs. He turned to the boy in the center of their formation, the one he'd been tasked to protect. "Rakshasa… thank you." The words were heavy. That trap would have maimed him at best. On this sodden ground, a maiming was a death sentence.
"The battlefield is full of surprises, Captain," Ragnar replied, his voice calm, almost detached. "But I think our surprise is just beginning. We've walked into an ambush."
As he spoke, he fully opened his Observation Haki. The world gained a new layer of definition. The thick mist, the sheeting rain—they became transparent to his senses. Chakra signatures, previously hidden by the natural gloom, resolved like inkblots in the grey. A dozen. More. Encircling them. Their auras were coarse, solid, tinged with the stubborn, grinding intent of earth.
They appeared not with a dramatic entrance, but by simply stepping forward from behind veils of rain and rock, as if materializing from the landscape itself. Iwagakure shinobi. Their uniforms were the color of dried mud and clay. A quick scan: all elite chunin or higher. And among them, two presences burned brighter, denser. Jonin.
The circle closed. The Iwa-nin didn't rush. They had the time, the numbers, the terrain.
One of the Jonin, a man with a scar like a trench worming down his cheek, sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. "Tch. Thought we'd net a commander at least. Maybe a captain. Instead… Konoha's masked puppies."
The other Jonin, built like a quarry worker with bulging arms bare to the rain, cast a disinterested glance over Team Nine. "Quit whining, Oishi. Just clean it up. Konoha's sensors will have felt that trap trigger. Be quick."
Moonlight Swiftfire felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. Yamanaka Kaiji's face was pale under his mask, sweat mixing with the rain. Aburame Shigeru's posture was rigid, the hum of his remaining insects a tense vibration in the air. This wasn't a patrol they'd stumbled into. This was a killing field, laid for bigger prey—a Jonin team, perhaps even a figure like the White Fang himself. They were the flies who'd wandered into the spider's web.
"Captain…" Kaiji whispered, his voice tight.
Swiftfire gripped his ninjato, his knuckles white. With his other hand, he palmed a cluster of explosive tags from his pouch. "We are reconnaissance ANBU. Direct combat is not our specialty. But the Will of Fire… it does not fear extinction." The words were rote, hollow. His own voice trembled.
The two Iwa Jonin didn't move. They were spectators now. A flick of Oishi's wrist was the only command needed.
The ring of Iwa chunin tightened, their expressions a mix of boredom and predatory glee. Shigeru's arms darkened as more kikaichu poured forth. Kaiji focused, trying to lock onto a mind amidst the closing wall of enemies. Swiftfire raised his blade, the explosive tags ready to be flung in a final, defiant act.
And then, the one they were protecting moved.
Ragnar took a step forward. Then another. His boots sank into the bloody, rain-churned mud, but he made no sound. He produced the ANBU storage scroll, unfurled it with a touch, and in a puff of smoke, Yama was in his hand.
The demon blade seemed to wake. A faint, malevolent purple aura whispered from its edge. The very air around the blade grew colder, sharper, a pocket of killing intent that made the rain sizzle and evaporate before touching the steel.
Moonlight Swiftfire and the others stared, stunned. In the face of certain death, the rookie wasn't cowering. He was walking toward it. A flicker of admiration was smothered by overwhelming despair. Brave fool.
"Aren't you afraid to die, little ghost?" Oishi the Jonin sneered, amused by the theatrics.
The dozen chunin were upon Ragnar, a wave of earth-toned death.
Ragnar's world narrowed. The cold of Yama's hilt was an anchor. His mind, under the pressure of imminent violence, became a lake of perfect, glacial calm.
"Kill." Oishi's order was a bored dismissal.
The chunin surged, kunai gleaming dully in the grey light.
And Ragnar moved.
SHING—!
Yama left its scabbard. But it wasn't a draw; it was an unveiling. A black light—deep, absolute, light-eating black—sheathed the blade from tip to hilt in an instant as Armament Haki flooded it.
An aura of pure, annihilating pressure exploded from him.
He didn't aim at a person. He aimed at the space they occupied.
CAAAAAAAAANG!
A single, horizontal slash.
A crescent of pure black force, visible as a distortion in the rain, a tear in the fabric of the world, ripped outward from Yama.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The world in the path of the slash seemed to lose color, turning monochrome. The endless rain stopped. The fat droplets hung in the air, frozen in a crystalline matrix.
Then the slash hit.
The Iwa chunin at the forefront didn't have time to understand. They were still in their forward lunge when the black line passed through them at waist height. Their upper bodies continued forward for a step, confusion dawning in their eyes as they looked down at their legs still standing behind them. Then they collapsed.
Those further back, reacting a fraction faster, threw themselves aside or raised earth walls. The black crescent shredded the crude defenses, leaving deep, smoking gouges in the ground and severing limbs that rose in futile guards. Screams, cut short, mixed with the sudden roar of collapsing stone and splashing mud.
In the span of a single breath, the encircling ring of a dozen chunin was broken. Half were dead, dismembered on the sodden ground. The rest were wounded, staggering, their confidence shattered into bloody confusion.
It wasn't over.
Shave.
Ragnar vanished from where he stood. He reappeared amidst the reeling, wounded survivors, Yama already raised for the next cut. His voice, when it came, was a flat chant, the demon blade's will mingling with his own.
"All the thirty-six troubles of this life…"
"Will be cut away by this blade."
"One Sword Style: Thirty-Six Pound Phoenix!"
He didn't swing at them. He unleashed a storm.
Yama became a blur. Not one slash, but a whirlwind of intersecting, crisscrossing cuts. The black and purple energy coalesced into a localized tornado of slicing intent, a sphere of devastation that expanded outward from his position.
The remaining chunin, the wounded, the stunned—they were engulfed. There was no time for screams, only the terrible, wet sound of multiple, simultaneous severances. The rain, released from its unnatural stasis, fell again, now tinged pink.
The violent tornado of sword energy dissipated.
Silence, deeper than before, slammed down over the valley. The only sounds were the relentless patter of rain on the new carnage and the ragged, disbelieving breaths of Moonlight Swiftfire, Yamanaka Kaiji, and Aburame Shigeru.
In the center of the freshly made charnel house, standing atop the mangled remains of a dozen Iwa chunin, stood Ragnar. Yama was pointed downwards, dark blood sheeting off the blackened blade, steaming in the cold rain.
He slowly turned his head, the blank, white eyes of his Rakshasa mask fixing on the two Iwa Jonin who stood frozen, their expressions of bored amusement now etched into masks of utter, stupefied horror.
(End of Chapter)
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