Whish! Whish! Whish!
Nawaki watched with bated breath, the joy in his eyes nearly impossible to suppress. Hatani, under the guise of a Transformation Jutsu, was drawing closer and closer to Parashia. The strike was imminent.
But suddenly, to Nawaki's horror, Parashia spun on a dime. With a flick of his wrist, the Suna commander hurled the six shuriken he had just intercepted back toward the branch—the very branch Hatani had transformed into.
Hatani was still five meters away, well beyond the effective range of his Wind Blades. Realizing the ambush had failed, he was forced to abort. He dispelled the transformation and scrambled awkwardly, using two kunai to parry the incoming shuriken. His forward momentum ground to a halt.
"Hmph!"
Parashia let out a disdainful snort, staring at the wary boy crouched before him with kunai in hand. Despite his arrogant facade, a cold sweat broke out across his back.
He had remembered the warning from those two Suna Anbu: a second Leaf Genin had escaped alongside Nawaki. That lingering shred of caution had saved him. He hadn't let the temptation of capturing Nawaki blind him to his surroundings, and his vigilance had paid off. If he had been a second slower, this brat might actually have succeeded.
Rage began to simmer in his chest.
These two slippery brats were infuriating. He needed Nawaki alive to force Tsunade's surrender and to serve as a bargaining chip for the village, but this other one... this nameless fly...
Parashia looked at Hatani, a cruel, predatory smile twisting his lips.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Wave!"
His hands blurred through a set of seals, and a sharp, destructive aura of death began to coalesce in his mouth. He intended to slaughter this nobody with the most agonizing technique in his arsenal. He would make it a spectacle—a horrific memory that would utterly shatter Nawaki's will to fight.
"Hatani!"
Nawaki turned pale as he realized Parashia's intent. A desperate cry tore from his throat. Ignoring his own safety, he sprinted headlong toward the Suna commander.
His shuriken were gone, and it was too late to weave a jutsu. His only hope of saving Hatani was to force Parashia to fixate on him. He prayed that the desire to capture a Senju alive would outweigh the urge to kill Hatani.
"Nawaki!"
Tsunade, having finally torn through the Gauze Net after throwing Nawaki, let out a terrified scream. Seeing her brother rush toward Parashia like a moth to a flame, she didn't stop to catch her breath. She squeezed every last drop of chakra from her exhausted body, desperate to reach them before Parashia could close his fist.
Meanwhile, Namikaze Hatani stood directly in the path of the high-level jutsu. He could feel the lethal, cutting pressure of the wind—a chill that spoke only of death and destruction.
Yet, there was no fear.
On the contrary, as he stared down the barrel of that terminal gale, his understanding of the element reached a new plateau. Though he had lived two lives and knew intellectually how terrifying wind could be—the kind of hurricane that could level cities—he had never felt the soul of a killing wind until now.
In the face of annihilation, the last shred of his "stranger" status to the wind vanished.
The question he had been obsessing over—how to maintain massive pressure while keeping a razor-sharp edge—finally found its answer.
His mind was clear. His heart was steady. His hands came together, weaving two seals with preternatural speed.
Tiger!
Dragon!
Wind follows the tiger, clouds follow the dragon. In Hatani's understanding, both were masters of the atmosphere. Most Wind Style techniques in this world ended with the Dragon seal, so he chose these two to anchor his creation—a move adapted directly from the Windranger's arsenal.
After all, ninjutsu was simply a method of manifesting energy through chakra. Hand seals were merely the conduits to guide that flow. As long as these two seals ensured the chakra converted into the wind he envisioned, they were enough.
And they were.
As the seals locked, Hatani funneled every scrap of his remaining chakra into a single point. It manifested as a swirling vortex no wider than his wrist, hovering before his mouth.
With his current reserves, a simple blast of wind would never break through the Vacuum Wave, let alone kill an elite Jonin five meters away. The nature of the Vacuum Wave would simply shred his disorganized chakra into nothingness.
But Hatani had just achieved a breakthrough. He could finally command the ambient air around him. The natural winds of the storm answered his call, surging into the vortex he had created, compressing and tightening the spiral.
Under the crushing pressure of the rotating gale, the chakra-laden wind condensed into the unmistakable shape of an arrow.
"Wind Style: Powershot!"
The Vacuum Wave was inches away. Hatani could feel the air being sliced around his skin. With a guttural roar, he released the strike.
The wind-arrow shrieked as it was loosed, spinning at a violent, ultra-high velocity. It was the ultimate spear, focusing all its force on a single, infinitesimal point. Pushed by the gale at its tail, it moved like a streak of pure light.
It didn't just meet the Vacuum Wave; it obliterated it.
The arrow bored through the center of the Suna technique, and as it passed, the disorganized wind from the broken Vacuum Wave was sucked into Hatani's arrow, adding to its mass.
Parashia's eyes bulged. He stared, paralyzed by disbelief, as the shimmering bolt of wind drove into his chest. It tore through skin, muscle, and bone, punching through his internal organs and exiting out his back in a spray of red. The bolt didn't stop there; it slammed into the Umbrella Tree behind him—a trunk as thick as a man's embrace—piercing it completely before finally dissipating into the misty distance.
Behind the arrow, the spiral of wind that had propelled it followed through. Though it looked like a thin line, it was a column of microscopic wind-blades. As it passed through the entry wound, it shredded the finger-thin hole in Parashia's chest into a jagged, horrific crater of mangled flesh.
Thud!
Parashia, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and lingering resentment, collapsed into the mud.
Thud!
Another sound of a body hitting the ground echoed through the clearing. Hatani, seeing the threat neutralized, finally hit his limit. His vision went black, and he keeled over.
Facing death, achieving a spiritual breakthrough, and then performing a counter-attack that drained every ounce of his chakra... he was spent. It was a miracle he had stayed conscious long enough to see Parashia fall.
"Hatani!"
Nawaki, who had been frozen in place by the sheer, terrifying power of that single strike, was jolted awake by the sound of the collapses. He looked at Hatani's prone form and let out a frantic cry, racing toward his friend with everything he had.
In his heart, he was praying.
Ever since they had entered the Land of Rain—ever since Mimura-sensei and Kazuha died and they were forced to run—Hatani had been his pillar. His only anchor.
Now they had found his sister. They had killed their pursuer.
Hatani, don't you dare die! Did you forget our promise? We're going back to the village together!
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