Kakuzu's mouth twitched into a cold, rigid curve, as if he could already hear the clink of coins hitting his purse.
In the instant the tidal wave of flame crashed toward Ryo, he was cornered.
Ahead, a devouring sea of wind and fire.
Left and right, walls of invisible, knife edged wind.
Behind, dead ground still sparking with Lightning Release.
"Huff, ha!"
At the razor's edge, Ryo sucked air in with a detonation.
His silver eyes pinholed, and under the crushing vise he chose madness.
He did not retreat. He inhaled the burning air, bellows chest swelling.
Every packed muscle groaned under the load, then locked by greater will.
All power, chakra, every last shred of life scraped from the brink, compressed and fused, target, both legs.
Stones not yet fully cracked powdered under a thunderclap of force.
The recoil launched him like a fired shell, straight into the Flame Gale maelstrom.
He chose the rudest, most brutal road, forward.
At the storm's edge his body bent backward from the spine into a drawn bow.
Back and core, bone and muscle, every cell howled.
Kusanagi rose.
"HRAAA!"
Sword followed heart.
The dark red light did not arc, it ignited like a hell furnace.
A compressed pillar of molten crimson, sharp at its point as if to pierce the void, a furnace at its tail, erupted from Kusanagi.
"RRRR, BOOOOM!"
Two planes colliding, an eschaton rolling through the trees.
White blaze swallowed everything.
The Flame Gale's pallid glare and the crimson column smashed and locked, space itself laced with hairline black cracks.
A heartbeat of stalemate, and then, under Kakuzu's disbelieving stare,
schlrrk, the red column knifed into the storm's core like a hot blade into iron.
At the contact point, annihilation thundered.
Pallid fire tore. Wind compressed to blades hit a spinning mill and ground to dust.
Shredded flame and wind spat like stray bullets, lighting distant trees.
Ryo, wreathed in lava red glow, shot from the rupture, an arrow forged in a hell furnace, burning itself out yet carrying killing weight.
Man and blade as one.
Pft. Pft. Pft.
He was on fire.
Half his hair was seared away.
Skin was charred and crazed, left side worst, armor ash, muscle smelling of cooked meat, bone winking pale.
Fresh wounds layered over lightning burns.
But the blaze in his eyes outstripped the blaze on his skin.
His right arm trembled from the force he had wrung from it. The tiger's mouth split, blood slipping down the grip.
He did not stop.
He hit, slid, and lunged, Kusanagi trailing sparks, a blood red blur again.
Target, the lightning mask hovering at Kakuzu's right hip.
Kakuzu's pupils finally flashed with real shock and fury.
The Flame Gale, broken head on?
Not in his math.
"Hmph."
The lightning mask's beak yawned. Blue white glare tightened to a point, Pseudo Darkness, a world ender's spear, locking the charging crimson for a pin to the void.
The wind mask whirled, scalpels of pressure crossing into a death net ahead.
The earth mask flashed ocher into Kakuzu, Earth Spear thickening his hide to stone.
Lightning to the throat, wind to the ribs, a double kill.
Ryo's silver eyes flared.
Observation, open.
Time smeared thin.
The spear's blinding path, the wind net's blind spots, the instant the ocher glow sank in and his skin took a second lamina, all of it laid out like a slowed blueprint.
"Three left, drop!"
His body moved before thought.
At full sprint, he folded like paper and dove left.
KRA THOOM.
The lightning spear scraped his nape and ploughed a trench meters deep.
Shhh.
Wind scalpels kissed scalp and spine, carving trenches to the bone. Blood seared into scabs at once.
No pause.
At the dive's bottom he pivoted on his left foot, a top's whirl, and with that spin he hauled Kusanagi from low to high in a scything crescent.
Target, the lightning mask in reach.
"Skreek."
Lightning flared as it tried to harden defense.
Too late.
His dive and spin lived in the masks' overlap blind spot, timed like a god's fingertip.
The dark red edge split the lightning mask down the center.
For a breath, the world froze.
The mask halved. Blue white arced madly, a net losing control, snapping and fizzing before going to dust.
One heart, down.
"Ghh, AAAH!"
Kakuzu screamed, inhuman, like a heart ripped live.
His chakra rhythm lurched.
Chance.
No breath to savor.
In the same slice, Ryo's pupils caught the coal red fire mask at Kakuzu's right hip, its mouth flaring to birth.
No second chance.
Cost, meaningless.
A tenth of a blink before the blast, Ryo ignored skin sizzling, blood loss, bone deep hurt.
He packed what remained, right arm only.
Kusanagi shrieked under the load, blade juddering as if to snap.
"Off."
He crushed the charred earth and sprang, shoving the arm with the last of his life.
No art, only a savage thrust.
Pierce Flow, all of Pierce the Gale crushed to a point, body's push stacked on top, a dark red needle faster than lightning, straight for the mask's core.
Sensing death, the fire core collapsed inward to a white hot shield.
PFF, SKSH.
The tip stabbed the collapsing red, a hot knife into cold tallow, resistance heavy, but the edge, born to kill, bit through.
A thunder inside a drum, not explosion, annihilation.
The fire mask imploded like a pricked blister. Light dimmed, warped, then shredded into sparks drifting on a sulfur wail.
Second heart, down.
"Kff, pt."
Ryo spat blood, breath burning.
Every wound tore wider in that thrust.
Kusanagi nearly leapt from his grip. He clamped harder.
He swayed, but his gaze locked the next mark, the wind mask over Kakuzu's left shoulder.
Kakuzu's stone face finally broke, twisted rage and a miser's grief for lost assets.
Not sorrow, loss.
Earth light thickened his hide again. His killing intent peaked.
Finish it, lock with stone spears below, a wind drill to the heart, crush under falling pressure.
Blood hissed out of Ryo's charred skin, steaming hopelessness.
The left arm was gone to numbness, lightning and fire's shared feast leaving bone peeking white.
Every fiber screamed. Strength ebbed like a falling tide.
Kakuzu's greedy focus pinning him.
And then, from the deepest place, the swordsman's soul he had forged under the Red Haired Emperor's shadow roared.
"One, more!"
The cry was cracked and sanded, but it carried a terminal courage.
It jarred even Kakuzu's control, a flicker of disbelief in those wrinkled green eyes.
He still has a last move?
Ryo's silver blaze exploded, bright enough to outshine the fire on him.
Not chakra. Not muscle.
Will, burning the soul.
Observation, beyond the limit.
Every wild arc around him, each micro path of the wind drill's inner streams, every spike's microsecond of birth from the earth below, even the grain shift of Kakuzu's twice hardened skin, all of it etched with icy clarity into his mind.
Time dragged long in thought, warped at the edges.
His body moved before intent.
He abandoned defense wholly.
He poured his last filament of chakra, the dregs wrested from burning life, and the will to pierce the sky and sever fate, into his right hand, into the partner that had sung through a hundred battles, Kusanagi.
No slash.
No stab.
Those demanded paths and space he no longer owned.
Throw.
The instant the earth spears burst from below, stone, iron hard with Earth Release, drilled through his left calf and outer thigh.
Pain flared like torn lightning.
"Ghh."
Blood flooded his mouth. He crushed it between his teeth and swallowed.
No hesitation.
He used the micro hitch of the impalement to finish a perfect, instinct born cast.
"Off."
Kusanagi left his hand like a red meteor.
(To be continued.)