BOOM.
On one side, the sky was dyed an obsidian black, torn apart by the jagged, shrieking arcs of the Third Raikage's Black Lightning. On the other, there was only silence—a stillness so absolute it felt unnatural. Ikki's Finger Pistol possessed no flashy light show, no roaring thunder. It was power stripped to its most lethal, unpretentious essence.
The moment their index fingers collided, the laws of physics seemed to buckle. Gravity within the immediate radius intensified ten-fold, turning the air into a viscous, liquid-like substance. The invisible atmosphere became visible to the naked eye, rippling like the surface of a disturbed lake before erupting into a violent, boiling vacuum.
A localized tsunami of kinetic force exploded outward, tearing up the earth in concentric waves. Even the strongest observers—Danzo, Tsunade, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, and Kato Dan—were forced to retreat. They frantically erected layer after layer of Earth Style walls, only to watch them be pulverized into dust by the unrelenting shockwaves.
When the roar of the collision finally faded and the dust began its slow descent, a single figure emerged from the haze.
Ikki walked out of the smoke, his pace steady and leisurely. To the horror of the Hidden Cloud, the man was entirely spotless. Not a single drop of blood touched him; not a single thread of his tailored black suit was out of place. He reached down with a bored expression, idly smoothing a tiny, almost invisible crease on his cuff.
For the Cloud shinobi, this was the final break.
One by one, they dropped their weapons. Thousands of battle-hardened ninja fell to their knees, their spirits crushed. It was the same hollow, soul-deep despair witnessed years later during the Fourth Ninja World War—the paralyzing realization that they weren't fighting a man, but a force of nature that rendered their very existence irrelevant.
They weren't warriors anymore; they were lambs waiting for the slaughter.
"Damn you!"
Not everyone was ready to surrender to the abyss. The Cloud elites—Tutai, Cee, and Troy—gripped their weapons with white-knuckled intensity. As Ikki approached, they formed a desperate perimeter, their eyes wide with a suicidal determination.
"When I first came out of the mountains, I told that Tsuchikage brat the same thing," Ikki said, his voice flat and disinterested as he ignored the Jōnin surrounding him. "I have no particular penchant for killing children. I don't enjoy bullying the small, though don't mistake that for an inability to do so."
He didn't stop walking. As he passed Tutai, he uttered a single, impatient command:
"Get out of my way."
"We are not the Rock," Troy whispered, his voice trembling but defiant. "We don't live by charity. We make the same choice our Raikage made."
"Let... let them go."
A weak, blood-choked voice rasped from the center of the crater.
The Cloud ninja turned in shock. There, lying at the bottom of a jagged pit, was the Third Raikage. His body was a map of ruin; his arms were bathed in crimson, and his breathing was a wet, shallow rattle. He was dying, but his stubborn vitality refused to let him go just yet.
Tutai and the others rushed to his side, lifting him with agonizing care. Their hearts sank as they looked at his right hand.
The index finger—the legendary Strongest Spear—was no longer a finger. It had been hammered flat, the bone and flesh collapsed all the way down to the root, as if it had been struck head-on by a tectonic shift.
First, the strongest shield had been cracked. Now, the strongest spear had been pulverized.
"Ikki..." The Raikage ignored his subordinates, his eyes fixed on the retreating back of the man who seemed to support the very sky. "Why? Why didn't you finish it?"
Ikki stopped and sighed, slapping his forehead as if he'd forgotten something trivial. "Ah, right. I think I only mentioned it to the Tsuchikage kid. My memory isn't what it used to be, even if my strength is still climbing."
He turned his head slightly, his profile sharp against the setting sun.
"Remember this, Raikage kid. I'll only say it once: I have absolutely no interest in the little war games you children play in your ninja villages."
The silence that followed was deafening. Every ninja on the field—Leaf and Cloud alike—stared at him with their mouths agape.
"War games?" The Raikage's entire body began to shake with a fresh, agonizing fury. "You... you call this? You call the blood we've spilled, the lives my men have risked... you call it child's play?"
He coughed violently, a mist of blood spraying onto the dirt. If it weren't for his monstrous constitution and the frantic efforts of the medical ninja already hovering over him, the sheer weight of that insult might have killed him then and there.
To the world, this was the Third Ninja World War. To Ikki Shinomiya, it was just a noisy distraction from his retirement.
A/N: Drop Powerstones Pretty Please!
100 PS = 3 extra chapters next drop.