"Elder Chiyo, withdraw the technique!" Rasa commanded, his voice tight as he masked a bitter sigh of defeat.
Chiyo could only click her tongue in frustration and sever her chakra threads. The White Secret Technique: Three Treasures Vacuum Crush demanded immense chakra to sustain, and even in her prime, she couldn't keep the localized tornado spinning indefinitely against an immovable object.
"Why stop so soon?" Ikki complained, brushing non-existent dust from his sleeves with an exaggerated pout as the wooden puppets powered down. "This old man was just starting to have fun!"
Monster... Chiyo stared blankly. Not even the legendary, indestructible bodies of the Raikage over in the Cloud could compare to this level of absolute absurdity. Watching Ikki endure their combined ultimate jutsu without so much as wrinkling his suit finally cracked the bedrock of her resolve.
Can the Hidden Sand truly conquer a mountain that once crushed an entire era? Ebizō felt a suffocating depression settle over his chest. Wind Release. Master Puppetry. Magnet Release. The three pillars of their village's pride were utterly impotent. Ikki wasn't just a mountain; he was an insurmountable peak hidden entirely above the clouds. He had dominated the Warring States, and now, it seemed he would effortlessly subjugate the modern era of the Hidden Villages.
"I refuse to accept this!" Rasa roared, his voice cracking. He could practically feel the elders' wills breaking beside him. Their silent despair was a physical blade twisting in his gut, shredding the grand ambitions he had so proudly proclaimed to his army just moments ago. "I am the Kazekage! I will lead our people out of this wasteland!"
Driven by a sheer, maddening refusal to yield, Rasa thrust his hands toward the heavens. A massive sea of gold dust swept into the sky, blotting out the sun like a gilded thunderhead.
"Magnet Release: Gold Dust Shower!" With a furious battle cry, the metallic cloud unleashed a torrential downpour. Millions of razor-sharp, spear-tipped flecks of gold rained down upon the battlefield in a lethal, inescapable deluge.
"Tekkai." (Iron Body). Ikki didn't even bother to raise his arms. He simply stood there, bathing in the golden rain. His body exuded an aura as dense and unyielding as the continental plates themselves.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The storm of gold needles struck with the velocity of a hurricane, but the only result was a deafening symphony of grinding metal. Blinding sparks showered off Ikki's skin as the gold dust blades shattered upon impact, utterly incapable of piercing his flesh.
Panting heavily, Rasa exhausted the very last drops of the golden cloud. He stared at the shattered fragments of his ultimate attack littering the ground, and then slowly looked up at Ikki—whose skin remained entirely unblemished.
Rasa's knees gave out. Before the horrified eyes of his entire army, the Fourth Kazekage collapsed into the dirt.
Barely a minute ago, he had been the high-spirited leader of the Hidden Sand, bravely commanding the legendary Iron Fist to step aside. Now, that blazing courage had evaporated, leaving him entirely hollow. The fiery ambitions in his heart flickered and died like a candle drowning in a typhoon.
Chiyo and Ebizō stood in dead silence. They felt no anger toward Rasa's breakdown. They didn't feel he had shamed the village. They only felt the exact same agonizing powerlessness, regret, and depression swallowing them alive like a black hole.
"Well, if you're quite finished, then so is this old man."
Ikki brushed the remaining gold dust from his lapels. His mocking smile vanished, replaced by an oppressive, terrifying coldness. "This little Shinobi World War game you've started ends here." He cracked his neck, the sound echoing like splitting boulders. "I'll consider that pathetic display a decent massage. So, I will ask you one final time: Will you crawl back to the Land of Wind to eat sand, or shall I send you down to meet your First Kazekage?"
A massage... A game... Chiyo and Ebizō closed their eyes in quiet defeat. Lord Reto... is this the same absolute despair you felt when he drove us into the deserts all those years ago?
"I will NEVER eat sand again as long as I live!"
Just as the elders were about to bow their heads in surrender, a manic Rasa violently slammed his hands into the earth. "Magnet Release: Gold Dust Spiral Lances!"
"Rasa, stop!" Chiyo screamed, her blood running cold. They had already lost—was surviving in the desert truly worse than total annihilation?
But the frenzied Kazekage ignored her. Manipulating the dense gold dust into hundreds of massive, rapidly rotating drill-spears, he launched them all directly at Ikki.
"Armament."
Facing the overwhelming onslaught of golden drills, Ikki calmly raised his right fist. Instantly, violent arcs of black-and-purple lightning began to crackle around his arm, coiling around his skin like serpentine dragons.
As the crimson-black lightning condensed, his hand and forearm emitted a resounding metallic CLANG. A sheen of obsidian-black energy coated his flesh, hardening his hand into a terrifying, dark-iron gauntlet.
Chiyo and Ebizō's eyes blew wide, the blood draining completely from their faces as every survival instinct they possessed screamed at them to flee. As they stared at that pitch-black, lightning-wreathed strike, a horrifying secret—long buried with the ashes of the Warring States period—suddenly resurfaced in their minds.
They were finally about to witness the true, unadulterated terror of the Iron Fist.
A/N: For this week, every 100 Powerstones will get ya'll an extra chapter! Thank you!