Snap!
A cold, hard sensation, like an iron clamp seizing his wrist, shot through him. Excruciating pain flared.
Ryo's hand, the same one that had just crushed the kunai and lightning, had at some unknown point, like a ghost, already wrapped around from behind him, moving faster than Minato's nerves could react.
Precise. Ruthless. It locked onto the pulse point of his outstretched wrist.
Five fingers tightened.
Immovable, as if welded shut.
Minato felt his entire arm, half his body, instantly locked by an unimaginable, irresistible force. He had become a matchstick cast into a ten-thousand-ton steel ingot.
Ryo did not even bother to fully turn his head.
He merely tilted his face slightly, almost dismissively, as if shooing a fly, glancing back with his peripheral vision.
Then, the hand gripping Minato's wrist, it was not a technique.
He simply, contemptuously, threw it downward, like tossing a bag of trash.
"Ugh!" A terrifying, unreasonable force, like a bursting celestial river, surged through Minato's body.
"Wah!" Agonizing pain exploded in his chest and abdomen. His bones felt instantly crushed. His strength drained in an instant. He truly felt like a broken sack.
Whoosh, boom.
Crack. Clang.
His body flew like a cannonball, slamming into a solid wooden stake as thick as a bowl, used to reinforce the training ground. The stake burst apart with a resounding crack, splinters shooting like shrapnel.
He then smashed into the hard ground without mercy.
Bang.
Dust billowed like a small sandstorm. A shallow pit was gouged out of the earth.
"Cough, cough… pfft…" Minato curled at the bottom of the pit, as disheveled as a dying wild dog, coughing continuously. Blood foam mixed with sweat. Dirt and blood from a cut on his forehead smeared half his once-handsome face.
Everything hurt. His bones groaned. His internal organs felt displaced. A despair, cold to the marrow, spread through his body like poison.
Again, defeated.
No suspense. No dignity. A crushing defeat, trampled underfoot.
Two years of desperate training, day and night sweat and conviction, looked so pathetic, so ridiculous under that casual throw.
The humiliating images of his past dozen failures flashed uncontrollably through his mind like a tide.
Each time Ryo's "clone" looked at him with that indifferen gaze, like at a roadside pebble or dust. Each time he fell, the whispers or mocking chuckles, real or imagined, in his ears.
All that unwillingness, all that accumulation, collapsed under this cold reality, almost grinding his will into dust.
In front of Ryo, he was always a clown, a prancing clown.
Especially in front of her, in front of Kushina.
Hiruzen's pipe paused at his lips.
Wreaths of blue smoke hung for a moment.
His worldly, wise eyes stared solemnly at the red-haired Ryo standing in the center, who had ended the battle with an understatement. Then his gaze swept to Minato coughing blood in the pit, a miserable sight.
Terrifying. A brutish, unreasonable physique, a terrifying chakra reserve, the most basic absolute defense, yet showing the most fundamental power. No hand seals, effortless. Ryo, your talent is inhuman. You are a monster. Minato losing to you is not unfair at all. It is just that the gap is too despairing. I hope it does not shatter the little resilience Minato still has.
As Hokage, a deeper worry settled in Hiruzen's heart, for Minato's state of mind, and even more for the profound potential Ryo displayed, bringing changes even he could not foresee.
"Waaah!"
Just then, a clear cry, filled with explosive joy, like a sharp blade, instantly cut through the dead-silent training ground.
Kushina jumped up from her seat.
Like a lit powder keg, her iconic fiery red hair danced wildly.
Her bright blue eyes shone with extreme excitement and pride that could melt ice.
She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted with all her strength at Ryo standing like a god in the center.
"See?! I told you Ryo is the strongest! Minato's flashy, sissy tricks are useless! They can't even touch a single hair on Ryo! Ahhh! Ryo! Strongest!"
Her cheeks flushed with excitement, as if she herself had won.
She grabbed Mikoto's arm and shook her madly like a girl who had received her favorite candy, eager to share her joy. "Mikoto! Mikoto, look! I told you Ryo would be fine, didn't I?! Isn't he handsome?! He just went snap like that! He smacked that big fireball and big wind blade and blew them apart! Minato tried a sneak attack? Tsk tsk, he bounced around like a flea and did not even scratch Ryo's skin!"
Mikoto's body tensed the moment Kushina grabbed her.
As if struck by a faint current, then instantly suppressed.
On her fair, beautiful face, the next second, a brilliant smile bloomed, full of "sisterly affection" and surprise, like switching on a perfect mask, enough to intoxicate anyone. "Mhm mhm! I saw it, I saw it! Kushina is absolutely right! Ryo… he is unbelievably strong! Not a normal person at all! Minato-kun… sigh, he really tried his very, very best, and his tactics were perfectly planned… but Ryo… he did not even look serious. The difference is too great."
Her voice was as melodious as a spring, filled with joy and pride for her good friend's beloved.
She even naturally stretched out an arm and embraced Kushina's trembling shoulders, beaming, fully supportive of her good sister.
However.
No one noticed.
In the depths of her obsidian eyes, when her gaze brushed over Ryo's tall, mountain-like figure in the center, a flash of ardent adoration flickered deep within.
"Cough, cough, cough… pfft… cough…" From the shallow pit came harsher, heart-wrenching coughing, filled with pain and the despair of something breaking.
Minato used his only movable elbow to push his upper body from the muddy ground with extreme difficulty and humiliation.
Sweat mixed with blood and mud flowed into his stinging eyes. His vision was a blurry red.
Through the tears and swirling dust, he clearly saw, at the side of the field, that fiery red figure who haunted his dreams now had her back to him.
All her passion, all her excitement, all her dazzling light, was devoted to shaking Uchiha Mikoto, cheering with fanatic joy for the person who had trampled him into the dust and plunged him into the mud.
Cheering for his failure, for his pathetic state, for his bottomless abyss, with unrestrained shouts.
That piercing sound, that posture of cheering, was like a giant chisel smashing through the last wall of his dignity, casting him into an eternal, dark ice prison.
It is over. Everything is over.
(To be continued.)
◇◇◇
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)