Ronin wanted Netero's hands.
Not a lock that would keep the 100-Type from existing. A lock in the middle of the motion, hard enough to break the clap.
He knew the page version. Netero could still fire it with one arm. The point was not to forbid the Hatsu. The point was to cut it while it was being built.
Do that, and a win stopped being a fantasy. Fail, and Netero's Fist-Listening ended every tool Ronin had, because none of them were going through that defense.
One palm had already put cracks through the Susanoo. An attack that hit and guarded in the same stroke sat in the same neighborhood as Franklin under a vow-and-restriction, going off like a bomb. Second-stage Susanoo could not tank that for long. When the armor went, Ronin did not have a thicker wall to put in front of the next slap.
So the fight was a clock.
He had to find something that threatened Netero before the Susanoo finished coming apart.
Netero felt the wrongness.
The hands he was lifting stopped halfway. A binding force sat on the space they occupied, as if the air there had turned into a cage.
Even he was startled.
Nobody knew better than he did how short that clap was.
At forty-six he had started the grateful straight punch. Ten thousand a day, thrown with thanks. At the beginning, ten thousand ate eighteen hours. He kept at it. By fifty, ten thousand fit inside an hour.
After that he put more of the work into the prayer.
When he came down off the mountain, years later, the punch was already past sound.
Decades had gone by since that line. The body had started down the far slope. The mind had not. Sound was no longer the speed of the 100-Type.
Twice that. Three times. Faster than an eye could catch. That was the thing he had built.
The extreme of fast.
That was what an Enhancer chased. The extreme.
And in that speed, Ronin had a way to stop the hands on the way up.
Could he see it?
Fist-Listening, then.
At his age?
Even if he had reached that state, grabbing a window that thin and landing something in it was not a thing people did.
A monster.
Netero's mouth would not come back down. In the instant the 100-Type failed to form, he finally felt a spark of real excitement.
The Mangekyō had Netero's whole motion. Amenotokotachi did not cost time worth counting. The aura on the old man hitched. The Guanyin did not arrive the way it should have.
Ronin fired the next one.
Amaterasu.
Black fire bloomed around Netero out of nothing and crawled for his body like it had a claim on the skin.
The seals Ronin had already finished went out with it.
Water Style: Great Waterfall Crash.
If anything could catch a gap that vanished as soon as it opened, it was Amaterasu. Would it burn Netero to death? The answer was there the moment the flames appeared. No.
The waterfall was the other half. Ronin did not think the water would kill him either. A field of water was the only ground he could picture where the old man might feel pressed.
The surge left Ronin's mouth and swallowed the upper half of Trick Tower in a breath.
The stranger part was the shape. A huge sphere of water hung over the roof and did not fall. Two reasons. The water was chakra. The whole mass was under Earth Style: Super Lightened Boulder Jutsu.
It would chew through aura. He did not care. This fight wanted a short clock. He was not saving anything.
Worst case, he cracked the Yin Seal.
Greed Island had been two jobs. Seat the new output in his body. Pack the seal with more chakra for a day like this.
The black fire reached Netero.
It did not touch him.
The clap was still incomplete. The 100-Type still came up behind him after a hitch no longer than a blink. Two of the many arms arrived at his sides without a sound and cupped him into a palm.
The fire did not go into the hands with him. It caught the statue instead.
A second later the Guanyin vanished and took the flames with it. Netero shot upward, out of the burn that had been trying to close.
The climb put him straight into the sphere.
Still a bind, Netero thought, and understood it.
His hands met again. The 100-Type formed in the water.
The strike at the Susanoo punched a vacuum pocket through the sphere.
Sharks filled the hole.
They tore out of the broken water with their mouths open, meaner than anything live. They were not live. Water Style: Water Shark Bullet.
The Guanyin rose at Netero's back again. Not one palm this time. Every hand behind him scythed forward at once.
100-Type Guanyin, Thirty-Second Palm.
The sharks came apart. The sphere came apart with them. The Susanoo took the first of it.
Ronin stood inside the cracking armor with nothing like fear on his face.
A huge spinning sphere sat in his hands.
Wind Style: Super Great Ball Rasenshuriken.