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Chapter 114: No Quarter
"Orochimaru, this is my brother, Nawaki."
"Hello, Orochimaru-sensei!"
"Orochimaru, I'm leaving my brother in your care. Teach him well."
"…Alright, Tsunade."
"I will."
The memories, simple and warm, flashed through Orochimaru's mind in the instant the world erupted. The echoes of Tsunade's trust, the boy's bright, annoying chatter, the weight of a promise he'd made without a second thought.
KABOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The chain of explosions tore through the forest's peace. Orochimaru stared at the crater of churned earth and smoking splinters where Nawaki had been running. For a moment—a terrifying, empty moment—the famed Sannin felt something he rarely did: panic. A cold, hollow void where calculation should be.
Nawaki was a genin. Prodigiously talented for his age, yes, but a child. He couldn't have survived a point-blank detonation tag trap meant to cripple or kill a jonin.
It's my fault. I never should have let him run ahead. I should have kept him with me. The self-recrimination was a bitter poison, more acute than any wound.
As the dust began to settle, the enemy arrived. Chiyo and Ishido, along with over fifty mixed Sand and Rock ninja, fanned out through the surrounding trees, cutting off any retreat.
"A pity we couldn't finish you, Orochimaru," Ishido rumbled from a high branch, his granite-like face impassive. "But killing the little Senju brat is a fine consolation prize."
"Hmph," Chiyo added, her voice cold. "My diggers planted those tags all around your little outpost's perimeter. They wouldn't stop a jonin for long, but a child running blindly into them? A waste of potential, but an effective one."
"Kukukuku… HA… HAHAHA!"
Orochimaru's laughter started as a low hiss and spiraled into something unhinged, maniacal. All pretense of cold intellect vanished. His golden eyes blazed with a feral, insane light. His chakra, depleted moments before, began to churn with a violent, chaotic pressure. The air around him grew heavy and sour.
Chiyo's eyes narrowed. This wasn't the composed, dangerous ninja she'd been harassing. This was something raw and rabid. A cornered serpent about to spit its last, most potent venom. She felt a genuine prickle of fear.
"Sensei… I'm okay."
The voice was small, slightly shaken, but unmistakably alive. It cut through Orochimaru's gathering madness like a beam of pure sunlight.
"Nawaki?!" Orochimaru's head snapped toward the sound.
But it wasn't Nawaki he saw first.
From the heart of the dissipating smoke and debris, a black shape resolved. It didn't run; it seemed to eat the distance between heartbeats. One moment it was a blur at the crater's edge, the next it was a clear silhouette standing between the enemy and Orochimaru, a flicker of impossible speed bridging the gap.
"Who is that?!"
"A Konoha ninja?! How?!"
"That speed…!"
Panicked shouts rose from the allied force. Chiyo's blood ran cold. She knew that speed. That silhouette.
The figure stopped. The black cloak settled. The blood-red Rakshasa mask regarded the assembled enemies with utter void.
And from behind him, a little dusty but very much intact, Senju Nawaki stepped out, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe.
"Nawaki! Are you hurt?" Orochimaru's voice was tight, the relief so profound it was almost painful.
"I'm fine! Rakshasa saved me!" Nawaki said, his gaze glued to the back of the masked figure who had, in the split second before the explosion, plucked him from the blast zone with a speed that defied physics.
"Rakshasa…" Orochimaru breathed the name, the gratitude in his heart warring with sheer astonishment. He knew the face behind the mask. But to appear like this, to pull Nawaki from the jaws of a trap he hadn't even sensed… Just how fast is he?
Ragnar himself felt a wave of cold satisfaction. He'd arrived at the camp's edge just in time for his Observation Haki to scream a warning—a cluster of malicious intent buried in the earth directly in the path of a small, frantic chakra signature. Shave had carried him forward not as movement, but as an erasure of space. He'd grabbed Nawaki and cleared the blast radius as the first tag detonated. The promise was intact.
"Take the boy and fall back to the camp. Jiraiya is seconds away."Â His voice, filtered through the mask, was a monotone of absolute certainty.
"Rakshasa, you intend to face them alone?" Orochimaru asked, though he was already moving to pull Nawaki behind him.
"Not face them." Ragnar's head tilted a fraction. The air grew several degrees colder. "Leave them here. All of them."
The killing intent that radiated from him then was not the hot rage of Orochimaru's madness. It was colder. Denser. A glacial, inevitable promise of extinction. It washed over Orochimaru, and even he, a master of death, felt a visceral tremor. This… is pure annihilation.
"Rakshasa!" Chiyo's voice held a note of strangled panic she couldn't quite suppress.
"Old woman." The mask turned toward her. "I let you slink away last time. You won't have that luxury today."
With a flick of his wrist, the air shivered. In his hand materialized the demonic blade, Yama. Black metal drank the light. A faint, ominous purple miasma began to seep from its edge, coiling like predatory smoke. The sword seemed alive, hungry.
"That blade…" Orochimaru murmured, his scientist's mind fascinated despite the danger.
"So cool!" Nawaki whispered, his fear forgotten in the face of his idol's terrifying majesty.
Chiyo saw the armed, intent-filled Rakshasa and felt the last dregs of her courage evaporate. Her puppets were gone. Her strategies were ash. This creature was her natural predator. She took an involuntary step back.
"Ishido," she hissed, using a subtle chakra thread to carry her voice to the Iwa jonin. "I advise immediate withdrawal. That is Rakshasa. Engaging him is tactical suicide."
Ishido's brow furrowed. Withdraw? Now? When they had the Sannin pinned and the Senju heir within grasp? The reputation of 'Rakshasa' was fearsome, but they had numbers. Over fifty ninja, nearly a dozen of them jonin or elite chunin. Humans had limits.
"If we retreat now, everything we've done is wasted!" he growled back, his voice low. "Chiyo-sama, you are a famed veteran. Are you truly so afraid of one masked ANBU?"
Chiyo felt a spike of fury, but it was drowned by cold pragmatism. It wasn't fear of his strength, but respect for the type of strength. He was a perfect counter. And without her puppets, she was half a fighter. But pride, and Ishido's stubbornness, held her in place.
"You must be Rakshasa," Ishido boomed, stepping forward, his massive frame radiating confidence. "I am Ishido of Iwagakure, Captain of the Third ANBU Pursuit Squadron! Others may fear your name, but I do not! Today, you will all die here!"
"Ishido?" The masked head tilted. "Who are you? Shimu? Akazuchi? I killed them all without noticing. They were forgettable."
The insult was delivered with such flat, dismissive honesty it was more devastating than any boast.
"YOU BASTARD!" Ishido roared, his face purpling with rage. "Shimu was my brother!"
His hands flew through seals faster than a man his size should be capable of, then slammed palm-first into the ground.
"EARTH RELEASE: TECTONIC TILT!"
BOOOOOOM!
The earth in front of him didn't just crack. It buckled. A massive slab of forest floor, dozens of meters across, tore free from its foundations. It tilted upward like a colossal wave made of soil, rock, and uprooted trees, gaining momentum as it surged forward in a deafening avalanche of pure geological fury. It was the power of the earth itself, wielded with Kage-level proficiency, a technique meant to crush entire platoons into paste.
Facing this oncoming cataclysm, Ragnar didn't retreat. He didn't brace.
He simply took one smooth step forward.
Yama rose in a single, fluid motion. Armament Haki, black as a starless night and shot through with pulsing crimson veins, sheathed the blade instantly. The purple demonic energy intertwined with it, creating a horrifying, beautiful corona.
He didn't shout a technique name. He just cut.
SHIIIIING—!!!
The sound was the universe itself being parted. A line of absolute blackness, trailing ethereal purple, slashed through the air.
The colossal wave of earth, stone, and timber met the line.
And stopped.
For a fraction of a second, it hung there, the immense kinetic energy frozen.
Then, with a sound like a mountain sighing, the entire titanic construct split cleanly down the middle along the path of the slash. The two halves, each still stories tall, sheared past him to either side, crashing into the forest behind with world-shaking impacts that sent tremors through the ground for miles.
Where the slash had passed, the air shimmered with residual heat and the aftershock of severed molecular bonds. A canyon of smooth, glassy earth was carved into the ground where the technique's core had been.
Ragnar stood untouched in the center of the devastation, Yama held loosely at his side, a wisp of smoke curling from its tip. He looked past the divided ruin at the stunned faces of Ishido, Chiyo, and their combined force.
The message was clear.
Your turn.
(End of Chapter)
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