"Merciful ancestors... I remember peaks here. Jagged, high peaks. This basin shouldn't exist!"
"Could it have been a localized disaster? An earthquake?"
"Look! Lord Kitsuchi is still alive! Over there, in the center!"
The tectonic roar of Ikki's 'Fist Bone Meteor' had been impossible to miss. It was a beacon of destruction that had summoned every Iwa-nin within a fifty-mile radius. Kitsuchi hadn't been lying in the dirt for long before dozens of Rock Shinobi descended into the crater, their faces pale as they took in the impossible geography.
The crowd parted as a small, floating figure drifted toward the center of the basin. It was Onoki, the Third Tsuchikage. He looked down at the hollowed-out earth, his expression shifting from professional concern to a cold, creeping dread.
"Kitsuchi! What happened here?" Onoki demanded, landing beside his son. "Where is the battalion? Where are the Sannin? Are they dead? Did you finish them?"
The moment Kitsuchi saw his father, the dam finally broke. He was a veteran commander, a man of iron will, but in that moment, he was merely a son whose world had been shattered. Two lines of bitter tears carved paths through the dust on his face.
"They're gone, Father," he choked out. "All of them. Dead."
"Dead?" Onoki's voice went sharp. He looked at his son—maimed, legless, weeping in front of his subordinates—and felt a searing mixture of fury and heartbreak. "What do you mean? The Sannin? Jiraiya was already crippled by Lao Zi and me. Orochimaru was at his limit. How could a trio of broken ninja slaughter an entire army?"
"It wasn't the Sannin," Kitsuchi roared, his voice cracking with hysteria. "It was him! It was Ikki!"
Onoki froze. The name hit him like a physical blow. "What... what did you just say?"
"The 'Iron Fist'! The hero you used to tell me stories about when I was a boy! The legend from the Sengoku era!"
Onoki's mind raced, desperate to find a logical out. "That's impossible. He'd be ancient—he should be dead! Even if he lived, he'd be a withered husk. How could one old man wipe out three hundred of my finest?!"
The panic in Onoki's eyes was visible now. The Iwa-nin standing nearby watched in stunned silence as their "unshakable" Tsuchikage began to tremble.
"He isn't dead, and he isn't old!" Kitsuchi's voice was a desperate rasp. "Father, you don't understand. Rain's 'Demi-God' Hanzo is a child compared to this monster. He didn't use seals. He didn't use a jutsu. He reached into the ground with one hand and tore out a piece of the world. A mountain, Father! He threw a mountain at us!"
The surrounding shinobi gasped, murmurs of disbelief rippling through the ranks. Pulling a mountain with one hand? Throwing it like a stone? That isn't a ninja; that's a god.
Onoki didn't join in their disbelief. Instead, a hollow look settled over his features. He didn't need to be convinced. He had seen this before.
Long ago, before he had donned the Kage's hat, he had traveled with the Second Tsuchikage, Mu. He remembered a day in the Land of Earth when they had come across Ikki 'taming' the Four-Tails. The Great Ape had been rampaging, and Ikki, looking bored, had simply uprooted a hillside and dropped it onto the beast to keep it quiet.
The Fist Bone Meteor. In the old scrolls, it was sometimes mockingly called the 'Manual Tengai Shinsei.' It wasn't a complex secret technique; it was simply what happened when a man with the strength to move tectonic plates decided to throw something. It was Ikki's 'basic attack,' and it was more devastating than any S-rank ninjutsu in existence.
"He carried it with one hand," Kitsuchi whispered, closing his eyes as the memory replayed behind his lids. "A mountain... and he threw it like a toy. Father, when I saw the sky go dark, I didn't think I was fighting a man. I thought I had offended a deity."
He gestured weakly toward the center of the basin. Onoki followed his son's gaze to the massive, shattered fragments of the boulder. The scale of the debris spoke for itself.
"And then?" Onoki asked, his voice low. He looked at Kitsuchi's stabilized wounds. He could tell at a glance that the boy had been treated by a master of medical ninjutsu—Tsunade.
Kitsuchi opened his bloodshot eyes, a ferocious, desperate light burning within them. He grabbed his father's sleeve, his grip frantic.
"Answer me, Father! You've been building our army for years. You've been obsessed with numbers, with military might! Tell me the truth..." He swallowed hard, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "Could ten thousand of us stop him? If you sent every ninja in Iwagakure against that one man... would it even matter?"
Onoki looked at the crater, then at his broken son. He thought of his ten thousand shinobi—the pride of the Hidden Rock. Then he thought of the man who played catch with mountains. He didn't answer. He couldn't.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the valley.