The spiral staircase Sylvie had engineered was screaming.
Sasuke leaned against the jagged ice railing, cradling his crushed left wrist against his chest. Every breath was a negotiation with his fractured ribs, a sharp hitch-wheeze that tasted of copper. Below him, the fortress was groaning, the internal pressure of the geothermal pumps destabilizing the very foundation of the tower.
But the real threat was standing ten meters down the spiral.
Nadare Rōga stood alone, blocked from the exit by Kakashi and Anko. The Snow Ninja's armor was smoking, the blue tubing on his chest pulsing with an erratic, syncopated rhythm—thump-thump... pause... thump. He was cornered, and the desperation rolled off him in waves of sour sweat and ozone.
"You Konoha rats," Nadare spat, his voice distorted by the static of his suit's speakers. "You think you can just break the machine?"
He didn't weave signs. He slammed his massive, black-gauntleted palm directly onto the surface of the ice staircase.
SKREEE-CRACK.
The sound was like a glacier calving. The ice beneath their feet didn't just crack; it animated. The chemical bonds of the frozen water sheared and reformed in an instant, twisting upward into jagged, predatory shapes.
"Ice Style: White Wolf Avalanche!"
The staircase disintegrated into a pack of mid-sized wolves made of dense rime and razor-sharp slush. They defied gravity, clawing out of the very air, their maws gaping wide as they surged upward toward Kakashi and Anko.
Sasuke's Sharingan spun, tracking the chakra flow. It was crude but massive—a kinetic sledgehammer powered by the reactor on Nadare's chest.
Kakashi didn't flinch. He mirrored the motion, his hand slapping the ice railing.
"Ice Style: White Wolf Avalanche!"
The floor around the Copy Ninja erupted. A counter-pack of ice wolves, identical in every fractal detail to Nadare's, surged downward.
CRASH-SHATTER.
The two waves of frozen violence collided in the center of the spiral. Ice ground against ice with a deafening, teeth-rattling roar. Shards of diamond-hard water sprayed the air like shrapnel, pinging off Sasuke's forehead protector.
Nadare roared, pushing more chakra into the technique. The cooling vents on his shoulders hissed violently, spewing white steam. He was trying to out-muscle the physics of the jutsu, forcing the armor to output beyond its thermal limits.
Whiiiiine-POP.
Sasuke heard it—the distinct, sickening sound of a capacitor bursting.
The blue light in Nadare's chest tubing turned a blinding, critical white. The flow stuttered. The wolves lost their cohesion, crumbling back into harmless slush.
"There!" Kakashi yelled, spotting the thermal failure.
Anko was already in the air. She vaulted over the crumbling ice, her body coiled like a whip. She didn't use a stream of fire; she inhaled, superheating the air in her lungs until the pressure was explosive.
"FIRE STYLE: DRAGON FLAME JUTSU!"
She exhaled a concentrated, wire-thin stream of fire that traveled faster than sound. It hit Nadare dead center in the chest, right on the failing intake vent.
FWOOM-HISS.
It wasn't a burn; it was an incineration. The fire engulfed him, instantly sucking the oxygen out of the narrow stairwell. The air pressure dropped so sharply Sasuke's ears popped.
Nadare tried to scream, but there was no air to carry the sound. The fire didn't just cook the armor; it boiled the man inside it. The fluids in his throat turned to steam instantly. He thrashed once, a horrific, silent convulsion, and then collapsed as the armor fused into a slag of molten black metal and cooked meat.
The smell hit Sasuke a second later—scorched synthetic rubber and sweet, boiled pork. He gagged, turning his head away.
"Move," Kakashi ordered, his voice tight. He didn't look at the body.
Sasuke pushed himself off the railing, ready to follow.
Thump.
A sudden, searing heat flared at the base of his neck. It wasn't the burn of an injury; it was the roar of an infection.
Sasuke gasped, his knees buckling. He grabbed his shoulder. The Cursed Mark was reacting to the density of the chakra in the air, to the violence, to the sheer proximity of Naruto's earlier transformation.
Black flame-like markings crawled out from under his collar, spreading across his left cheek and down his injured arm. The pain in his wrist vanished, replaced by a darker, intoxicating power that felt like sludge in his veins.
"Sasuke?" Anko stopped, her eyes narrowing as she saw the markings.
"I'm... fine," Sasuke gritted out, forcing himself to stand upright despite the trembling in his legs. The power whispered to him, telling him the broken bones didn't matter.
Kakashi looked at the mark, then at the crumbling ceiling above them. The fortress was coming down. There was no time for seals. No time for lectures.
"We deal with it later," Kakashi said, his eye cold. "Run."