Chapter 79 — Titus and the Blood in the Rain
The rain never let up. It hammered off ceramite plates and clanged down metal flanges, ran in thin rivers from shoulder to elbow, and pooled in the seams of boots.
The village of Amegakure stood quiet beneath the storm. Tall metal towers rose from the mist, their sides dark with rain and rust. Pipes ran along the walls, and thin trails of steam drifted through the air. The streets below were narrow and wet, reflecting the faint light of the storm above.
Mud clung to everything.
Titus led. His steps were heavy but measured, each footfall a deliberate statement. Behind him, three Bladeguard Veterans formed a loose wedge, methodical, silent, and exact. They carried no banners. They spoke no words. Their auto-senses scanned constantly the area.
Civilians watched from behind shutters and cracked doors. Faces peered out for a beat and then retreated when Titus's approach did not slow. Somewhere a child began to cry and was quickly hushed. The household shutters snapped closed; the village held its breath.
They were not sneaking. There was no attempt at camouflage or trick. They did not need it. Their armor marked them as different, not just in metal and scale but in intent. They moved like a thing with purpose, a machine that knew its objective and refused to be distracted.
A patrol stepped into their path.
Five shinobi emerged from a narrow alley, cloaks soaked and plastered to their backs. Kunai and short spears flashed in their hands. Their faces were set, surprised but resolute. The patrol leader, a chunin with a bandage wrapped around one forearm, stepped forward a half pace.
"Who are you? Identify yourselves!" His voice tried for command but came out thin against the rain.
Titus stopped. Rain beaded and ran down his shoulder plates. Even with the helm on, his head tilted as if listening. When he spoke, the sound came from the squad vox, flat and certain.
"Do you know where those who wear the black cloaks with red clouds are?"
Silence answered. Eyes widened, the word "Akatsuki" unspoken but understood, they are enemies. The chunin's jaw worked. He barked a short laugh that carried no humor.
He didn't feel intimidated by the enemy. Even though they were twice his size and clad in heavy armor, they looked like samurai, most of them carried swords. They seemed slow and weighed down, or so he thought.
"They're enemies, kill them!" he spat and signaled his men.
One of the shinobi inhaled sharply, forming hand seals with trained speed. His cheeks swelled, Water Release: Water Bullet. The jutsu gathered in his mouth, a dense sphere of water charged with chakra.
A Bladeguard raised his bolter. No shout, no hesitation. The weapon roared.
The round struck the water bullet as it left the shinobi's lips, and detonated. The compressed jutsu ruptured instantly, exploding in a burst of steam and shattered rain. The blast punched through the caster's head and chest, leaving a ragged hole before hurling him into the mud.
The others froze, stunned by what had just happened. Their comrade's jutsu had been erased mid-cast, his life ended in the same instant.
Titus's assessment came through quiet and mechanical on the vox. "Hostile. Psychic manipulation through symbols, hand signs. Disrupt before release."
Auto-sensors locked on to the subtle shifts of chakra beneath skin. A new targeting protocol unfurled: hands, heads, and centers of concentration. They did not aim to wound; they aimed to stop the action before it began.
Another shinobi began forming a Water Clone, fingers weaving through practiced seals despite the downpour. But before the final sign could lock, a bolter round screamed through the rain. The impact ripped his chest open, ceramite-shredding force vaporizing flesh and scattering fragments of flak armor. The chakra he'd gathered burst into harmless mist. The clone never formed; the man toppled backward, limbs limp, collapsing into the mud like a puppet with its strings severed.
A second tried to move, too late. A third shinobi vaulted toward a nearby rooftop, hoping for height and visibility, sandals slapping against wet stone. He never made it. A mass-reactive shell hit mid-leap, detonating inside his torso. The body twisted violently in the air, spinning like a broken kite before slamming into a wooden beam with a hollow crack. Blood and splinters mixed with rain as he slid to the ground in silence.
Another tried a desperate Substitution Jutsu. His body vanished in a puff of chakra smoke, leaving behind a rain-soaked log. But the Bladeguard's helm sensors caught the telltale spike of heat displacement, a flicker of life behind the nearest tree. The response was instantaneous. A shot thundered. The bolter shell pierced bark and bone alike, exploding outward in a red mist. The shinobi's body slumped behind the trunk, the rain quickly washing the blood into the mud.
More jutsu flickered through the chaos, hands blurring, water coalescing from the downpour. A serpent of liquid pressure began to coil; another shinobi formed the beginnings of a water prison, others gathered chakra for a surging wave meant to swallow the intruders whole. None succeeded.
Every forming seal was answered with thunder. Bolter fire tore through half-shaped signs, ripped arms apart mid-motion, shattered chakra control like snapping wet reeds. The air filled with hissing steam where superheated propellant met water, flashes of muzzle fire drowning in sheets of rain.
One by one, the shinobi fell. The scent of ozone, blood, and wet metal filled the air. The rain continued to fall, indifferent, relentless, mixing with what spilled into the mud until it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the blood began.
Casings clinked into puddles and floated there, catching the lead-gray light. Feet left prints in the mash of crimson and clay. Bodies collapsed on the stones and were left where they fell. The street became a map of sudden, fatal mistakes.
The patrol leader did not die. He tried to stand, his knees first to fail, then the rest. He dropped his kunai and his hands came up uselessly. Rain ran in greasy streaks down his face and mixed with the salt of tears.
Titus walked to him as if approaching a minor obstruction. He crouched , or rather, his gauntleted hand reached down and lifted the man by the crest of his vest without any visible effort. The man's breath sawed. His eyes found Titus's red optic and tried to read the face behind it.
"W-Why… what are you…?" he stammered, voice small.
Titus's voice was a low resonance from inside that helmet. "Where are the ones in black and red clouds?"
The chunin swallowed. He stammered names he'd heard whispered in marketplaces and shrines.
"T-They're called Akatsuki… Pain rules Amegakure… w-we're just soldiers… we don't know more..."
His hand clenched, his pulse racing, but Titus's sensors showed no shift in rhythm, only the steady, panicked beat of a man who believed every word he said. No lie was present where the man thought none could be safe.
"I-i can help," the man gasped. "I can show you—"
There was a pause long enough for thunder to roll. Titus's gauntlet tightened.
"Then you have no purpose."
He slammed the man into the mud-caked stone. The impact was a single, blunt sentence. The man did not move again. Rain splashed up, carrying dark petals of blood away along the gutters.
The squad moved on. Titus released the corpse and the Bladeguards shifted into formation with two quiet clicks. The rain washed blood off a gauntlet like someone rinsing a tool; it ran into the cracks of armor and vanished under plates. They did not look back.
Inside the Rain Tower, Nagato sensed the change through the Rain Tiger at Will, a technique that let him sense everything That the rains hits within the range of his Jutsu.
Konan moved close to his side, concern pressed into her voice. "Nagato?"
His hands clenched on the arms of his chair. He didn't speak at first. Through the rain, his shinobi, the ones they had trained and controlled, were dying fast, Each life winked out across his senses, sharp and sudden, like nerves being cut one after another, They needed to be stopped, and Nagato looked at Konan.
He would not send Konan down. She was too valuable, and she was not meant to fall. He would not risk her.
Nagato's fingers tightened around the ring on his hand, the metal pulsing faintly with chakra. A surge of signal rippled outward, a single, resonant call. It would reach every bearer of an Akatsuki ring, wherever they were. It was the summons, unmistakable and absolute. The call to gather.
"They defile my village," Nagato said at last, voice low and precise. "I will show them true pain."
Back in the street, Titus signaled with two fingers. The formation folded into itself and advanced deeper into the village. Corpses lay where they had fallen; civilians dared only to look now through narrower slits in shutters. Shells and spent casings dotted the puddles.
Titus's vox carried a single dry report. "Objective unchanged. Locate and purge the red-clouded."
The Bladeguard answered with movements, not words. Their boots sank into mud that had been churned by the sudden violence. The village inside was silent except for the rain and the occasional drip from a torn banner. The storm inside the houses beat against the shutters in the form of low, scared sobs and whispered prayers.
Titus watched, always scanning. He noticed footprints leading into a narrow alley, small, hurried steps, someone running. A doorway nearby caught his attention; the latch had just been lifted, and moments later the curtains inside snapped shut.
They advanced without Haste. Haste led to mistakes.
In one narrow lane, a woman tried to flee, clutching a child beneath a soaked shawl. Titus's sensors registered the child's heartbeat, fast, frightened, but untrained. When the woman saw them, she dropped to her knees in the mud. Her lips moved, but no words came. How could she beg for mercy from beings that looked more like machines than men?
Titus' helm did not look the way a human's did, but he could see enough. He could read posture and micro-shifts. A voice broke the rain.
"We will pass. Move aside," the squad vox said even, without threat or sympathy.
The woman did not move. Whatever strength she had was gone.
A Bladeguard stepped forward and moved her aside with practiced ease, his armored gauntlet brushing her shoulder. The motion was efficient, impersonal. She stumbled, clutching the child tight as she fell to one knee, the little one pressed close beneath her arms.
The Ultramarines did not look back.
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