The Yamato Maru was no longer a ship. It was a dying animal.
The hull groaned—a deep shriek of steel protesting against the ice—as the bow listed heavily toward the base of the cliffs.
The scent of diesel and hot coolant erupted as the hull buckled—a sharp, stinging chemical reek that momentarily overpowered the smell of salt and rot.
"Captain! Port-side thrusters! Aim for the trestle!" Sandayū screamed over the roar of the freezing rain.
The Captain didn't answer; he simply locked the wheel. The ship lurched forward, caught in the momentum of the rising glacier behind us.
CRUNCH-GROAN.
The sound was deafening, a percussive explosion of splintering timber and bucking metal as the steel bow rammed into the wooden trestle at the base of the stairs. The impact threw me against the railing, the vibration rattling my teeth in their sockets.
The ship didn't stop; it wedged itself into the ancient framework, its deck tilting at a violent angle to form a jagged, smoking bridge leading directly to the first step of the ascent.
Thick, black grease oozed from the ship's shattered gears, mixing with the freezing rain to form a shimmering, iridescent slick on the wood.
"Go! Move!" Kakashi-sensei's voice cut through the ringing in my ears.
We scrambled off the listing deck, leaping onto the rain-slicked wood of the 4,444 Steps.
I looked up. The stairs were a wooden spine pinned to the bone-white granite of the fjord, a 55-degree incline that shot straight into the grey, heavy clouds.
Alongside the steps ran massive iron penstock pipes—thick, black tubes that hummed with a low-frequency vibration, carrying the mountain's lifeblood down to the sea.
The pipes emitted a low-frequency thrum—a thinner, foreshock vibration that I could feel in the soles of my feet and the roots of my teeth.
"Hatake Kakashi."
The voice drifted down from above, calm and biting as the sleet.
A man stood on a landing fifty steps up. Nadare Rōga. His long purple hair whipped in the wind, and the teal of his eyes seemed to glow in the bruised twilight of the fjord. He was flanked by Fubuki and Mizore, their Chakra Armor humming in a terrifying unison.
"Nadare," Kakashi said, his hand already moving to his headband. "I see you've traded your honor for a machine."
"I've traded obsolescence for evolution," Nadare sneered, tapping the metal plating on his chest. "Your Ninjutsu is a relic, Copy Ninja. In this land, the cold and the steel are the only gods."
"Listen to me!" Kakashi yelled back to us, his voice urgent. "Don't waste your chakra on Ninjutsu. Their armor acts as a vacuum—it will absorb the energy before it connects. Stick to Taijutsu and weapon-play. We win this with friction, not fire."
The climb was a vertical trial.
Within minutes, my thighs were screaming. The wooden planks were slick with a lethal cocktail of algae and freezing rain, offering zero purchase.
Tink-tink-tink.
The sleet hit my polarized lenses like needles of ice, sounding like thousands of invisible fingers drumming on a hollow coffin.
To our left, the granite wall was a sheer face of indifference; to our right, a lethal drop into the churning black water of the fjord.
At Step 400, the "Rain Zone" hit us. The mist was so thick I could barely see Naruto's orange jacket ten feet ahead of me.
The air here smelled of wet moss and ancient, frozen minerals—a scent so cold it felt like inhaling needles of dust.
Yukie collapsed.
She didn't trip; she simply stopped. She slumped against the iron railing, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Her expensive cloak was soaked, dragging her down like a lead shroud.
Her teeth chattered violently—clack-clack-clack—a sound she couldn't stop no matter how hard she clenched her jaw.
"I can't..." she wheezed, her eyes glazed with a mixture of exhaustion and terror. "My heart... it's too fast. I'm going to die here."
Naruto stopped. He didn't turn back to help her up. He didn't offer a hand or a word of comfort. He just stood five steps above her, looking down with eyes as cold as the sleet.
"Then freeze," Naruto said.
Yukie looked up, stunned. "What?"
"The Princess in the movie," Naruto said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth. "She climbed a mountain to save her people. She didn't complain about her heart. But you're not her, are you? You're just a coward in expensive clothes."
He turned his back on her and took another step up.
"I guess you die here, Step 400," he called over his shoulder. "The snow will cover you up before the samurai even get to you. It'll be quiet. Just the way you like it."
I saw Yukie's face transform. The numbness was gone, replaced by a white-hot, burning spite. She gripped the railing so hard her knuckles turned white, her teeth bared in a snarl.
"You... brat," she hissed.
She hauled herself up, her boots slipping on the wood before she found her footing. She began to climb, her movements jerky and desperate, driven by the sheer need to outlast Naruto's insults.
The old wood groaned under her weight—creeeak—as she hauled herself up, the sound echoing off the sheer cliff walls like a dying gasp.
"They're coming!" Tenten yelled from the rear.
I looked down. Nadare and his team weren't climbing; they were ascending.
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.
Fubuki's mechanical wings beat against the rain, while Mizore used his chakra-shielded snowboard to "ride" the iron pipes upward, defying gravity.
Mizore's snowboard made a high-pitched, singing sound as it planed over the iron—shreeee—cutting through the air like a blade on a whetstone.
They were closing the gap.
"Keep moving!" Anko barked, her kunai out. "We hold them at the Snownline! Sylvie, Naruto—protect the client! Sasuke, Neji—with me!"
The stairs groaned under the weight of the pursuit. We were ants on a wooden spine, and the mountain was starting to tilt.