The entrance to the Land of Snow didn't welcome you; it swallowed you.
We entered the "Throat of the North" just as the sun failed to rise over the granite peaks. Inspired by the jagged fjords of the old world, the channel was a narrow ribbon of dark, churning water flanked by three-thousand-foot vertical walls of slick, black stone. The scale of it was claustrophobic.
The granite walls smelled of ancient, frozen wetness—a mineral scent so cold it felt like inhaling needles of dust.
It felt like sailing into the open mouth of a titan.
A freezing rain began to fall—thin, needle-like droplets that turned into ice the second they touched the deck.
Tink-tink-tink.
The sound of the sleet hitting the steel hull was sharp and rhythmic, like a thousand invisible fingers drumming on a hollow coffin.
As we approached the mouth of the fjord, we passed a massive, lonely Torii gate rising from the water like a skeletal rib. There were no guards. No patrol boats. No signal fires.
"Pre-clearance," Sandayū muttered, his eyes darting toward the cliffs. He looked small in his heavy coat, his knuckles white as he gripped the railing. "I arranged for the checkpoint to be... quiet."
I adjusted my polarized glasses, scanning the heights. The dark lenses made the shadows in the crevices of the canyon look like ink.
It's a textbook fatal funnel, I thought, my pulse quickening.
If I were an architect of an ambush, I wouldn't stop a ship at the mouth. I'd wait until they were deep in the throat, where the walls were so close you could touch them with an oar, and then I'd pinch the vein.
"Yomu!" Makino's voice cut through the sound of the freezing rain. The Director was standing on the prow, his face tilted back to catch the icy water. "Record the wind howling through these rocks! It is the sound of nature rejecting us! It is the scream of the universe in a state of permanent labor!"
"Got it, Director!" Yomu shouted, his nocturnal eyes wide and frantic as he shielded the lens with a leather tarp.
"This guy is going to get us killed for a soundbite," Anko-sensei grumbled, her hand resting on a scroll pouch.
Beside her, Kakashi-sensei hadn't moved. He was staring straight ahead, his visible eye tracking the movement of the mist. He knew.
We were at the narrowest point of the channel when the world vibrated.
The deep thrum of the engine changed to a low, dying groan as the ship fought a current that had suddenly turned as thick as slush.
It wasn't a sound at first; it was a pressure in the ears. The water ahead of the Yamato Maru began to boil, white foam erupting from the dark depths.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Sandayū shrieked.
"Too late," Sasuke said, his voice a cold blade.
Ice Style: Giant Breaker.
A wall of translucent, jagged blue ice erupted from the sea. It didn't just rise; it surged, a massive artificial glacier that breached like a whale. It slammed into the bow of the ship, lifting the steel hull out of the water.
The sound was apocalyptic—the scream of metal being shredded by frozen geometric force.
The scent of diesel and hot oil erupted into the air, instantly clashing with the sterile, biting smell of the churned-up glacier.
The glacier didn't just stop us; it plugged the fjord. We were wedged, the ship tilting at a sickening thirty-degree angle, the stern grinding against the granite canyon walls.
"High ground!" I yelled, pointing up.
On the cliffs above, two figures appeared against the grey sky. One had massive, mechanical wings that hummed with a low-frequency buzz—Fubuki.
The mechanical wings purged pressure with a sharp hiss-click, a sound of advanced machinery that was utterly alien to the natural silence of the fjord.
The other sat atop a snowboard that glowed with blue chakra—Mizore.
The snowboard made a high-pitched, singing sound as it planed over the cliff edge—shreeee—cutting through the air like a blade on a whetstone.
They looked down at us like gods watching insects in a jar.
"Abandon ship!" Kakashi ordered, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Protect the client! Sylvie, Naruto—get the crew out!"
Below decks, the hull had breached. I could hear the roar of the freezing ocean rushing into the hold, a sound of heavy, suffocating finality.
The water rushing in wasn't just wet; it was a physical weight, smelling of salt and the rotting kelp of the deep ocean floor.
I sprinted toward the storage area, nearly colliding with Makino. The Director wasn't running for the lifeboats. He was wrestling a heavy, waterproof trunk toward the stairs.
"Director! Get to the deck! The ship is sinking!" I shouted.
"Leave the food!" Makino roared, his eyes wild with a frantic, Herzog-ian fire. "The rice can rot! The water can freeze! Save the lenses! Save the film stock! If the celluloid is lost, we have no history! We are just shadows in the dark!"
"You're insane!" Naruto yelled, grabbing a trunk of film and slinging it over his shoulder while I grabbed the Director by the collar.
"I am a visionary!" Makino retorted as we hauled him toward the tilting deck. He looked at the ship, at the ice, and at the two armored figures descending from the cliffs.
He didn't look afraid. He looked inspired.
"Look at the scale of this tragedy!" Makino laughed, a jagged, desperate sound. "You all shall be my new subjects. The ninja, the traitors, the ice! Prepare to become stars, children! Nature has finally provided us a worthy climax!"
He turned to Yomu, who was balancing a tripod on the slanted deck. "Yomu! Film the hull snapping! I want to see the exact moment the steel gives up!"
A rivet popped near my head with a sound like a gunshot—crack!—leaving a faint smell of ozone and singed metal in its wake.
"We're dead," I muttered, sliding across the ice-slicked deck as the glacier continued to rise, crushing the Yamato Maru like an eggshell.
I could taste the freezing spray on my lips—bitter, salty, and thick with the grit of pulverized ice.
"We're actually dead."
Sasuke and Neji had already leaped for the ice, their feet sticking to the vertical surface with chakra. Anko was mid-air, a shower of kunai already flying toward the winged threat above.
We were off the boat. The mission had officially entered the red.
The glacier groaned a deep icy cough as it fully settled into the throat of the canyon, sealing us in the dark.