The world was a vertical nightmare of groaning timber and bone-white granite.
They were at Step 1,200, deep in the "Hover" section. Here, the staircase abandoned the security of the granite cliff and rose on aging wooden trestles, arching over a jagged ravine of icy scree. Through the gaps in the rotting planks beneath his sandals, Sasuke could see the three-hundred-meter drop—a black maw leading to the fjord a thousand feet below.
The smell of wet, rotting cedar rose from the planks—a sick, sweet scent of decay that hinted at how little was holding them above the abyss.
The wind didn't just blow here; it clawed, whistling through the steps and the iron penstock pipes with a metallic shriek that threatened to turn their footing into a kite.
A loose splinter of wood tore away and vanished into the dark—zip—the silence of its fall more terrifying than any crash.
"Incoming!" Tenten's voice cracked like a whip, the sound nearly whipped away by the gale.
In the grey void to their right, Fubuki Kakuyoku was a pink-haired blur against the bruised twilight. She banked hard, her mechanical wings beating with a rhythmic, insectoid thrum that kept her suspended in the empty air parallel to the stairs. She didn't need the wood; she owned the sky. She circled them like a vulture, eyes bright with the arrogance of the high ground.
Her wings purged heat with a sharp hiss-click, smelling of hot copper and ozone that cut through the sterile mountain air.
"Ice Style: Swallow Hail!"
She swept her arm, and a swarm of ice shards—sharp and jagged as broken glass and honed to obsidian sharpness—descended upon them.
The hail whistled—sh-sh-sh-sh—the sound of a thousand tiny knives slicing the wind into ribbons.
"Cover me!" Sasuke commanded.
"On it!" Tenten didn't hesitate. She unrolled a scroll with a fluid snap of her wrist, her fingers dancing across the seals. "Twin Rising Dragons!"
Sasuke ducked behind a thick wooden riser, the shards splintering the wood inches from his head. Tenten leaped into the air, spinning on the 55-degree incline. She didn't aim for the woman; she aimed for the space around her. A hurricane of kunai and shuriken spiraled upward, creating a steel curtain between the team and the hail. The clatter of metal on ice was a frantic, percussive rhythm against the granite walls.
A stray shard of ice struck the iron railing near Sasuke's hand—tink—vibrating through the metal like a tuning fork.
The wood beneath Sasuke's sandals was slick with algae and freezing mist. He reached for his chakra, the heat of the Uchiha fire itching in his throat, but he suppressed it instantly.
No. One misplaced ember and the 4,444 Steps would become a 4,444-step funeral pyre. He was trapped by the environment, forced into a battle of physics. He looked at Fubuki. The pale light of the fjord glinted off her Chakra Armor. It was bulky and ungraceful.
Is this the peak of their 'evolution'? he thought, his lip curling. A metal shell to hide a weak spirit?
"Sasuke! I can't keep her pinned forever!" Tenten yelled, her thighs burning as she braced against the steep slope.
Tenten's barrage was forcing Fubuki to tuck her wings and engage her chakra shield. The Snow kunoichi was forced into a predictable banking maneuver to avoid the high-volume suppression fire. There, Sasuke thought, his Sharingan tracking the blue-shifted wake of her armor. She's compensating for the wind shear.
He reached into the heavy, oversized holster at his lower back and deployed his new acquisition from the shadow-merchants at Nekobaa's: a collapsible, heavy-gauge Fūma Shuriken. With a sharp clack, the four obsidian blades locked into place, singing a low note in the wind.
The obsidian blades were cold, the texture of the grip rough and grounding against his numb, frozen palms.
"Tenten! Herd her toward the penstock pipes!"
"On it!"
Tenten shifted her barrage. Instead of a cloud, she fired in rhythmic bursts, forcing Fubuki to roll to her right. The winged ninja laughed, a shrill, arrogant sound, as she dived toward the massive iron tubes humming with cold coolant. She thought she was using the pipes for cover.
The penstock pipe hummed beneath her—a deep thrum that resonated in her armor's sensors like a warning.
She was walking into a trap.
Sasuke launched the Fūma Shuriken. It didn't fly straight. He had rigged the center hub with high-tensile wire, the silver thread nearly invisible in the blue hour. As the giant blade whirled toward Fubuki, he jerked his hand, snapping the wire taut. The shuriken changed trajectory mid-air, banking like a bird of prey.
Fubuki's eyes widened behind her visor. She flared her wings, the Chakra Armor glowing a brilliant, electric blue as it prepared to absorb the kinetic impact.
Tink.
The armor flared as it sucked the momentum from the blades. Sasuke felt a cold knot of doubt tighten in his chest. His Sharingan cataloged the efficiency of the energy absorption—it was near-perfect.
The armor gave off a low, predatory whirrr, the sound of a machine digesting his kinetic energy into heat.
Would Amaterasu even stick? he wondered, his mind involuntarily leaping to the image of Itachi. Or would the black flames be consumed by the machine before they could burn the man?
But the Fūma was a feint. He had lined the inner edge of the blades with explosive tags, sealed with the same wax Sylvie used to protect against the damp.
"Now!" Sasuke barked.
He yanked the wire. The Fūma, already past her, snapped back like a tethered hawk. The wire wrapped around the hinge of her left mechanical wing, and the tags—primed by the contact—detonated.
BOOM.
The explosion was small, focused, and brutal. The wing buckled, the metal shrieking as the gears stripped and the mechanical joints sparked. Fubuki shrieked as her lift coefficient vanished. She didn't fall gracefully; she began a violent, spinning descent toward the rocky abyss before slamming hard into the side of the iron penstock pipe. She slid down the frosted metal with a screeching sound that set Sasuke's teeth on edge.
The smell of burning rubber and scorched wiring drifted up the stairs—the scent of a machine being pushed to its thermal limits.
"Grounding confirmed!" Tenten panted, landing back on the stairs with a heavy thud, her lungs burning in the thin, freezing air.
Her breath came in visible, jagged plumes—huff... huff—each exhale smelling of iron and exertion.
"Nice shot!"
Sasuke stood at the edge of the trestle, watching the smoke rise from the woman's battered wing. The armor was already repairing itself, the blue light knitting the metal back together. It had absorbed the blast. If it could handle that, could it handle the gaze that tore through the Uchiha district?
He looked at the pink-haired ninja as she struggled to regain her footing on the pipe below. She was a nuisance. A mere obstacle.
"Don't celebrate yet," Sasuke muttered, turning back to the climb. "The armor absorbed the heat of the blast. We only broke the hardware. She's not grounded; she's just angry."
He looked up the endless spine of wood, his thighs burning. They were at Step 1,500. The rain was turning to slush. The snow line was close, and the real battle was just beginning.