The rain over the North Flats didn't fall; it evaporated.
Rimon staggered across the jagged obsidian rocks, his breath hitching in his throat. This area of the island was a wasteland—a stretch of barren, volcanic stone where the salt spray of the ocean met the ancient heat of the earth. It was the perfect stage for a monster.
Behind him, the air screamed. A massive plume of white, high-pressure steam cut through the darkness, turning the freezing rain into a scalding mist. Through his Kagura's Eye, Rimon felt the overwhelming presence of the Five-Tails like a sun falling from the sky. His Observation Haki hummed with a constant, jarring vibration—a warning that the very air around him was about to ignite.
"You've run far enough, Uzumaki," the deep, mechanical voice of Han echoed off the rocks.
Rimon spun around, his left hand reaching for the pouch at his waist. His right arm was tucked into his blood-soaked sash, a useless weight. He looked at the titan standing fifty paces away. Han's red armor was venting steam from every joint, the five braided tails swaying behind him like the fingers of a god.
"Far enough?" Rimon wheezed, spitting a glob of blood onto the black stone. "I'm just getting started. I figured a guy with a boiler on his back would appreciate the scenery."
Han didn't respond to the taunt. He simply crouched, the pistons in his leg armor hissing as they built up pressure.
"Steam Release: Unstoppable Force!"
The ground beneath Han's feet didn't just crack; it vanished. He moved like a projectile fired from a railgun. Rimon's Haki saw the line of attack, but his body, drained of chakra and battered by the Root, was a fraction of a second too slow.
Rimon slammed his left palm onto a pre-placed seal on a nearby boulder. Flash. He reappeared twenty meters to the left, but the shockwave of Han's passage caught him. The sheer wall of pressurized air sent Rimon tumbling across the jagged rocks, the skin on his shoulder tearing as he skidded. He groaned, forcing himself back up.
"You're fast," Han rumbled, turning with a heavy, metallic clatter. "But every time you 'Flash,' your heartbeat falters. You are burning your soul to stay ahead of me."
"It's a bright flame, isn't it?" Rimon snarled.
He knew he couldn't win a contest of strength. He needed to lead Han deeper into the Flats, away from the structural integrity of the village. He pulled out three Specialized Vacuum Seals—inventions he had designed to counter Fire-style users, now repurposed for Steam.
As Han lunged again, Rimon didn't teleport. He threw the seals.
The tags ignited in mid-air, creating three localized zones of absolute zero pressure. The steam venting from Han's armor was violently sucked toward the seals, causing his trajectory to wobble. For a brief second, the "Walking Volcano" lost his balance.
Rimon didn't waste the opening. He lunged forward, his left hand glowing with a desperate, flickering Rasengan. It wasn't the stable orb he had used against the Root; it was jagged, sparking with the last of his kinetic energy.
"Take this!"
He slammed the sphere into the side of Han's reinforced ribcage. The rotation met the iron plating with a screeching sound of metal on metal.
BOOM.
The explosion of chakra didn't pierce the armor, but it sent Han skidding backward across the obsidian. Rimon fell back, his hand trembling, his chakra reserves hitting the absolute "red zone."
He looked at his hand, then at the horizon. He could see the faint glow of the harbor under attack. "Almost there," he thought, his fingers brushing the Gold Coin in his pocket. "Just let the Mist finish their landfall. Just give me five more minutes of life."
Han stood up, his armor dented but his aura undiminished. He raised his hand, and the steam began to glow with a violent, orange hue.
"You have earned a warrior's death, Uzumaki Rimon. Now, feel the weight of the mountain."
The Harbor was a screaming vortex of iron and salt. The Three-Tails was no longer just a beast in the water; it was a siege engine of flesh. Every time its massive, spiked shell collided with the harbor's sea-wall, the foundations of Uzushiogakure groaned as if the island itself were being uprooted.
Ashina Uzumaki stood at the center of the chaos, his golden Adamantine Sealing Chains stretched taut, vibrating with a high-pitched hum that set teeth on edge. Blood leaked from his nose, a sign of the internal pressure of holding back a Bijuu's raw mass.
"Don't let the anchors slip!" Ashina roared, his voice hoarse from the salt spray. "Senju! Clear the western pier! The Mist is landing their heavy infantry!"
Nawaki skidded across the slick stone, his breathing ragged. He wasn't alone. Clustered around him were six older Senju clansmen—the secret detachment Mito Uzumaki had dispatched under the cover of night. They were elite, their movements precise and cold, a stark contrast to the desperate ferocity of the Uzumaki.
"Nawaki-sama, stay behind the formation!" one of the Senju veterans barked, parrying a flurry of Mist kunai. "Mito-sama will have our heads if you fall here!"
"I'm not a child!" Nawaki snapped, though his hands were shaking. He wove a set of seals, slamming his palms onto the wet stone. "Water Release: Hiding in Rain!" He blended into the downpour, appearing behind a Mist scout and delivering a precise strike to the neck. But as he looked out past the harbor wall, his heart sank. The Mist fleet wasn't retreating—it was closing the circle. Dozens of ships were now visible through the fog, their lanterns glowing like the eyes of predators.
"There's too many," Nawaki whispered, looking at the massive, spiked tail of the Three-Tails as it rose thirty feet into the air. "Grandpa Ashina, we can't hold the harbor like this!"
"We hold until we are bone and ash!" Ashina countered, his eyes burning with a terrifying light.
The Forest: The Dying Flicker
Deep in the woods between the North Flats and the Harbor, the Shadow Clone of Rimon was crawling.
It had lost the ability to walk minutes ago. Every time the real Rimon, miles away on the Flats, took a hit from Han's steam-propelled strikes, the clone's form would flicker and dim. It was a miracle of sheer willpower that it hadn't popped into a cloud of smoke yet.
The clone's fingers dug into the mud, pulling its fading weight forward inch by inch.
"Just... a little... further," it thought. "The Elders... they'll try it. They'll see the Mist ships and they'll think the Reaper is the only way."
The clone didn't have the chakra to call out. It didn't have the strength to jump. It was a ghost trying to outrun a tragedy, moving through the dark forest while the world above it turned into a furnace of steam and war.
The Land of Rain: The Golden Cage
In the Land of Rain, the sky was a permanent shade of charcoal. Inside the medical command tent, the air was thick with the smell of antiseptic and wet canvas.
Tsunade sat at her desk, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She wasn't moving. She wasn't yelling. She was simply staring at the latest casualty report from the front lines of the Rain. Hanzo's forces had just launched a chemical-laced ambush in the northern valley.
"The third division is reporting sixty percent casualties from the gas," Orochimaru said, his voice level as he stepped into the tent. "They need the Head Medic. They need you, Tsunade."
Tsunade didn't look up. "The messenger birds from the East... they stopped fourteen hours ago, Orochimaru."
"I am aware," he replied with eye flickering because his first and only disciple Nawaki is there in Uzushio. He somehow ran away and went to help his cousin clan . "But you are the only one capable of neutralizing Hanzo's latest toxin. If you leave this post to fly to the Whirlpool, five hundred Leaf shinobi will be dead by dawn. Hanzo is counting on our distractions." Oruchimaru replied.
Tsunade's knuckles turned white. She looked at the medical kit she had already packed—the one she intended to take to Uzushiogakure. She thought of Nawaki. She thought of the red hair of her cousins.
"I know," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I know I can't leave."
She hated it. She hated the logic of the "Sovereign State." She hated that her duty to the strangers in the valley outweighed her duty to her own blood. She looked at the map of the Rain, a place she had grown to loathe.
"Hiruzen-sensei... he knows this," Tsunade said, finally looking at Orochimaru. "He knows that as long as Hanzo is pressing us here, I am anchored. He doesn't have to order me to stay. The war is doing it for him."
She stood up, her face a mask of professional, icy calm, though her eyes were brimming with unshed tears. She grabbed her medical scrolls, but not the travel pack.
"Let's go, Orochimaru. Let's go save the soldiers who are still alive."
As she walked out into the mud, she looked toward the East one last time. "Nawaki... please. Be as lucky as you say you are."