The moment Ui completed his Summoning, the atmosphere shifted. Unsure of what monstrosity was being pulled from the void, the masked Fuma leader didn't gamble on his lethal strike; he chose to blast backward, creating immediate distance.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Massive iron chains rattled as they materialized from thin air. One end of each chain pooled on the muddy ground, while the other stretched fifty meters into the sky, anchored to the top of a gargantuan, crimson iron gate. The gate was embossed with a terrifying, leering demonic face.
Ninja Art: Summoning: Rashomon.
This was the ultimate defensive measure used by the First Hokage to redirect Tailed Beast Bombs. It is an A-rank Summoning of such immense scale and weight that only someone with the "cheat-level" chakra of Hashirama Senju could comfortably summon five of them at once. Orochimaru of the Sannin could manage three.
As for Ui... well, he could manage one. And he could hold it just long enough.
The summoning wasn't just a shield. The sheer force of the gate erupting from the earth obliterated the Fuma's Water Clone instantly, shattering the Water Pillar Wire that bound Ui. Had the leader not retreated, the impact of the gate's rise would have crushed him.
Standing back, the masked mercenary looked up at the towering monolith with a mix of confusion and hesitation. Why summon something this massive just to block a kunai? Is he that desperate?
The High Ground
Suddenly, the torrential rain thinned, turning into a fine, needle-like drizzle.
The dark clouds above seemed to descend in a fit of rage, their thickness blotting out every stray beam of sunlight. The wind died, the rain slowed, and the world grew darker than it had been all day.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound of shinobi boots hitting cold iron echoed through the clearing. Ui walked vertically up the back of the Rashomon, eventually coming to a stop at its very peak, fifty meters above the forest floor.
"You were right about one thing," Ui's voice drifted down, clear and calm. The Chidori Nagashi had completely vanished from his body. "My chakra is almost spent. After summoning this gate, I have exactly enough left for one more jutsu."
He looked down at the mercenary. From this height, he could see the residual sparks of electricity he had been "wasting" throughout the fight.
"But you were wrong about everything else. Did you really think I was maintaining that Lightning Release just for show? Or that I was letting my chakra leak into the ground by accident?"
Every spark Ui had released during the fight was a seed. He had been intentionally creating a massive electrical field in this clearing, using the heat of his Fire Style and the conductivity of the rain to draw the thunderclouds together, centering them directly over this spot.
Now, he needed a high point. He hadn't summoned the Rashomon to hide; he had summoned it to get closer to the heavens.
"In the rain, a Lightning specialist is far more dangerous than a Water specialist."
Ui extended his right arm toward the sky, his palm open.
"Lightning Release: Chidori Sharp Spear: Stage Two!"
A blade of pure white lightning shot upward, piercing the clouds.
In that instant, the low rumble of thunder and the flickering light in the sky vanished. They weren't gone—they were being harvested. The sky turned as bright as high noon, illuminated by a terrifying, absolute light.
Behind Ui, a creature began to take shape within the clouds. It was silent, yet it radiated an aura of pure destruction. It was a beast of myth, shaped from the very thunder of the Land of Rain.
The masked Fuma stood frozen, his sandpaper voice reduced to a whisper. "It looks like... a Kirin."
"Yeah. Because it is the Kirin."
Ui's voice was cold, detached. "Our fight proved that while our speeds are similar, your footwork is far more flexible. With a single-target attack, I could never guarantee a killing blow. So, I stopped trying to hit you. I decided to hit the entire map."
The Judgment
This was the S-rank Forbidden Jutsu: Kirin. It utilized the environment to its absolute limit. It was wide-range, devastatingly powerful, required almost no chakra to maintain once summoned, and moved at the speed of natural lightning—making it impossible to dodge.
For its creator, the jutsu required the Sharingan to track the lightning's path and ensure the user didn't incinerate themselves. But Ui didn't need that level of control. He could take the hit. He could take any hit.
Standing on the edge of the Rashomon, Ui stepped off into the void.
He didn't fall. After dropping a few meters, he touched his toes against the vertical face of the gate and sprinted down its surface toward the ground.
The Kirin remained in the clouds for one more heartbeat, then it lunged. It bypassed Ui's falling form, ignoring the laws of time and space, and struck the ground before he even landed.
"STRIKE!"
"BOOM!"
The Kirin hit the earth. The current didn't just strike a point; it flowed outward like water poured onto a mirror, expanding in blinding, circular rings of white-blue death. The roar was deafening, a million times louder than the Chidori's chirp.
The ground buckled. The earth cracked. The very topography of the clearing was rewritten by the lightning's passage. In a radius that large, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and nothing left to bargain with.
Ui landed softly as the Rashomon vanished in a puff of smoke.
The Kirin had existed for only a fraction of a second, but its work was done. The residual electricity hissed in the mud. The Fuma leader lay motionless.
Ui walked toward the body—or what was left of it.
The mercenary was mostly carbonized. In the damp air, a faint, macabre scent of cooked meat lingered. Ui looked down, his mask reflecting the dying sparks. He felt nothing.
In a world as chaotic as this, ninjas of every village must move faster than the shadows they cast. But no matter how fast they run, or how many bonds they break, there are certain sensory triggers that remind them where they came from—and where they are going.
Reality forced them forward. They geared up, they set out, they struggled, they settled. And here, in the mud of the Land of Rain, the young Konoha ninja Kamishiro Ui had finally discovered the "correct" way to cook a Fuma mercenary.