"Shikotsumyaku: Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!"
Kaguya Masaru roared, firing a second volley.
His Shikotsumyaku allowed him to manipulate his osteoblasts and osteoclasts at will. Even if he fired every bone in his hands, they regenerated instantly.
Hiss...
White steam rose from Kiyohara's mouth and skin. He was overheating.
The Magnetic Field Rotation was tearing him apart. The localized gravity was so intense that if he tried to walk normally, his knees would shatter. He could only move by relying on the explosive, instantaneous acceleration of the Konoha Body Flicker.
If his chakra reserves hadn't expanded to 1.5 times that of a standard Jonin, he would have already collapsed.
Whoosh!
Kiyohara threw a handful of shuriken, hooking the copper wires with his fingers. He pulled.
The wire net snapped taut, deflecting the incoming bone bullets just enough to send them spiraling into the mud.
"Wait... Masaru, don't be rash!" Mei Terumī yelled from the fog. She was still molding chakra, trying to prepare a large-scale jutsu. "Let me finish!"
But Masaru wasn't listening. His blood was boiling.
He reached over his shoulder and gripped the hilt of a sword protruding from his own flesh. With a wet shhhk, he drew his own humerus bone, wielding it as a pristine white blade.
"Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Camellia!"
Masaru charged.
His body began to spin like a top, bone spikes protruding from every joint. The extreme speed turned the bone sword into a blur of white ribbons, violently churning the lime-fog around him.
Mei could finally see through the swirling vortex. She saw Kiyohara standing in the path of Masaru's ultimate, suicidal sublimation.
'He's coming,' the Radical Spirit sneered in Kiyohara's mind, stabilizing the chakra flow. 'Don't flinch. True strength crushes everything in its path. Show these ignorant fools the power of the Sand!'
'I know,' Kiyohara replied instantly.
Kiyohara felt the rush of wind hitting his mask. Masaru was a human blender of diamond-hard bone.
But Kiyohara also felt the crushing weight of the planet's magnetic field anchored to his fist. He was a lever, and the earth was his fulcrum.
Kiyohara stepped forward. He didn't draw his sword. He didn't weave a sign.
He just threw a punch.
BOOM!
It sounded like a thunderclap.
The sheer kinetic force of the punch didn't just hit Masaru; it hit the air itself. The atmosphere warped, creating a localized shockwave that blasted the fog outward in a massive ring.
The head-on gale hit the spinning Masaru like a brick wall.
But the Kaguya didn't retreat.
"AHHH!" Masaru roared, leaning into the shockwave, his bone sword slashing toward Kiyohara's neck.
Rumble!
Kiyohara threw a second punch.
Shikotsumyaku enhances bone density to rival diamond. But the flesh and blood holding those bones together? That is still mortal.
Pfft!
Masaru's bone blade pierced Kiyohara's left palm, sliding right through the meat.
Kiyohara didn't even flinch. He used the impaled hand to grab Masaru's wrist.
With his right hand, Kiyohara channeled the compressed atmospheric pressure of the magnetic field.
"Wind Release: Gale Palm!"
He slammed his palm directly into Masaru's shoulder joint.
The result was catastrophic. The kinetic energy tore through the mortal flesh, violently blowing Masaru's entire arm clean off his torso.
Before Masaru could even register the shock of amputation, Kiyohara stepped in.
He slapped a paper tag onto Masaru's chest, channeled chakra to his feet, and vanished.
"Masaru, fall back!" Mei screamed.
BOOM!
The explosive tag detonated point-blank.
Masaru was thrown backward out of the fog, landing heavily at Mei's feet.
But it wasn't Masaru anymore. It was just charred white bones mixed with ruined, burning flesh. The Kaguya prodigy had been pulverized.
Mei trembled violently. Her eyelashes fluttered in pure shock.
'He turned Masaru to ash right in front of me.'
In her shock, the Wind Release jutsu she had been building unconsciously released. A massive gale swept across the battlefield, finally blowing away the remaining quicklime and sea fog.
The battlefield was revealed.
Kakashi, Rin, Kurenai, and Genma stared in awe.
The clearing was littered with dead Mist ninja. And standing amidst the carnage was Kiyohara, pulling his left hand off a severed bone blade.
"Instead of recovering the remains, you scattered his ashes?" Kiyohara's voice was calm, muffled slightly by the rebreather mask. He looked at the wind blowing the charred remnants toward the ocean. "I suppose sea burials are popular in the Bloody Mist."
He deactivated the Magnetic Field Rotation. The crushing weight vanished. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking incredibly pale and weak.
"But the scenery here isn't bad," Kiyohara smiled under the mask. "It's a good place for a funeral."
Mei Terumī stared at him.
She wanted to break his legs. She wanted to drag him back to Kiri in chains and make him suffer for the rest of his life.
But she suppressed it. In the Bloody Mist, you learn to swallow your grief. You learn that in the end, death is just a matter of inferior skill.
Mei stopped trembling. She smiled—a cold, terrifying smile.
"A ninja must endure."
She brought her hands together.
"Boil Release: Solid Fog Jutsu!"
She exhaled a cloud of boiling, high-temperature mist. It looked like the regular sea fog, but this was a highly concentrated acid capable of melting even a Susanoo.
Using the acidic cloud as a barrier, Mei turned and fled into the ruins. The two surviving Mist Chunin scrambled after her.
"Pursue!" Kakashi barked, sending Genma and the Ninken after them.
Kakashi ran to Kiyohara. "Are you alright?"
He felt ashamed. Kiyohara had taken on two elite squads entirely alone while they were blinded by the fog.
"It's nothing," Kiyohara said, his breathing ragged.
He pressed his right hand to his pierced left palm. Green chakra glowed faintly—the Hemostasis Technique he had learned from Rin. The blade had missed the major nerves and bones. It was a clean through-and-through.
He pointed to the pile of corpses. "Loot them."
Kiyohara had only intended to thin the herd, but the Magnetic Field Rotation was too intoxicating. He had gotten carried away.
'This power is insane,' Kiyohara thought, gritting his teeth against the exhaustion. 'But the drawbacks are huge. I need to fulfill the dying wish immediately so I can actually control it.'
"Shikotsumyaku bones, huh..." Kiyohara muttered, looking at Masaru's charred remains.
He bent down and began collecting the pristine, diamond-hard bone fragments into a sealing scroll.
'Orochimaru is obsessed with Kekkei Genkai,' Kiyohara calculated. 'If I give him Kaguya samples... he'll give me whatever I want. Like a transfer order to the Sand front.'
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