Sasuke knew the moment he saw the look on Nowaki’s face that the other man was not planning to play nice and tell him what he wanted to know. So Sasuke would have to try to catch him with the sharingan.
Meanwhile, Nowaki brought his hands together and wove signs. A wind danced up around him, and his body was hidden by tree leaves and dirt and dust.
“Wind Style? … No.”
Nowaki also had a kekkei genkai. And the wind grew steadily stronger, with no sign of stopping; it appeared to be surpassing the realm of Wind Style. Nowaki was still weaving signs in the center of it. The wind began to expand outward and grow stronger. And then, finished with his signs, Nowaki shouted, “Typhoon Style! Gale Destruction!”
“Ngh!”
The wind roared. The bodies of the kidnapped ninja were swept up by it, the trees around them bent, and Sasuke’s own body threatened to rise up. It really was a typhoon.
“Now, then …”
Nowaki spread out his jacket. Tucked away in the center of it was a chakra sword about the size of a hand. Nowaki took this, concentrated chakra in it, and then casually tossed it. The chakra sword rode the wind to attack Sasuke.
“Tch!” Sasuke clicked his tongue and jumped. When he did, he was caught by the wind and carried upward.
It wasn’t just the chakra sword in the wind; there were felled trees as well. And these large trees also became weapons attacking Sasuke. But, using them as footholds, he somehow managed to land on the ground again, while dodging the flying chakra sword.
But the wind was too strong; he couldn’t get close to Nowaki. The gale was gradually becoming large enough to assault the entire island. Nowaki was a level of magnitude stronger than Dark Thunder’s Karyu, or Futsu from the Coliseum.
Now that he was thinking about it, the leader of Bright Lightning was the one who helped his comrades escape from Kirigakure’s elite.
Nowaki wove even more complicated signs, and then released them. “The final blow … Tornado Destruction!”
The rotating winds began to spin in the other direction. Moving slowly at first as if to build up a vast amount of energy, the wind gradually began to accelerate.
“This …”
The wind roared eerily, and transformed into an enormous blade that shot at Sasuke. The blade mowed down the massive trees of the forest, a scythe cutting down rice.
Susano’o!
His Mangekyo sharingan was activated, and an enormous winged armored warrior appeared to shield Sasuke.
“Hngh!” Sasuke caught the massive blade with Susano’o’s sword. The squeal of the wind blade and the sword pushing against each other rang out, and sweat popped up on the foreheads of the fighters.
“Aaaaaah!” Sasuke concentrated his power in his eyes. Susano’o heaved one foot forward and started to push against the wind blade, leaning his weight into it.
“Ngh.” Nowaki bit his lip and pulled apart the hands weaving signs. When he did, the blade turned back into wind, and disappeared—but Nowaki immediately rewove the signs. “I won’t let you end this!” The wind’s rotation returned, and a fierce, turbulent column of air once again enveloped the area, pushing at Susano’o; he staggered a few steps.
Sasuke wasn’t going to get anywhere until he defeated Nowaki himself. He turned his eyes on the place where he assumed Nowaki was. Then he realized that his opponent had basically not moved at all from before. The center of the winds; the eye of the typhoon. That was where he had to aim.
Careful to keep Nowaki from noticing, Sasuke slipped out from inside Susano’o. He stepped away, leaving Susano’o to keep fighting, bit hard into his thumb, and then, as blood oozed out, he placed his hand on the ground. Summoning jutsu!
Appearing with a poof! was the enormous snake, Aoda. Sasuke’s loyal snake.
“Lord Sasuke, what is your request?”
“Stretch up!”
“Understood.” As instructed, the giant snake threw his head up toward the heavens. His massive body slipped through Now-aki’s wind, and brought Sasuke up beneath a blue sky.
“Nice work!” From there, Sasuke leapt up higher. The center of the wind. He charged in, and cloaked his hand in lightning.
Chidori!
Noticing the whine of Chidori, Nowaki looked up in surprise and tried to launch his wind toward Sasuke, but it was too late.
“Aaaaaah!” Shining with the brilliance of lightning, Sasuke used the force of his descent to slam into Nowaki.
“Ngaaaaah!” An electric shock jolted Nowaki’s body, and he was knocked to the ground. The signs he had woven were released, and the roaring wind immediately disappeared. All that was left then was blue sky.
“Hah … Haah …” Sasuke panted from the effects of using his visual powers. However, he had to catch the ringleader, Nowaki, and get information from him.
“Dammit.” Nowaki tried to stand up to escape from Sasuke’s eyes—but, unable to muster the strength, he fell back down.
Sasuke stood beside him, and caught his eyes with the sharingan. In an instant, he saw a vast trove of information.
His life flowed past like a revolving lantern.
Nowaki was always alone. The great storm that visited the island was blamed on him, and he was sold to a wealthy man interested in his powers. To make him obedient, the man tortured him, sapping the will to fight back. He was forced into unwanted battles, and made to fight for his life simply for the entertainment of his master. Nowaki’s power was great, and people kept their distance from him, fearing that power; he was isolated and made hard-hearted by those around him.
He had never once lost. That alone was his secret pride.
And then he had been knocked on his back, limbs splayed in the center of that Coliseum.
“Did I … lose?”
The wealthy man who was his master turned toward the dumbfounded Nowaki and hurled abuse at him. However, none of this entered Nowaki’s ears.
“That’s right. You lost.” A voice came down at him. A hand appeared before his eyes, reaching out toward him. His eyes slowly moved from the palm of that hand up to the face. And standing there was—
It was red.
His field of view abruptly turned red. He was simply being sucked into a world of red.
“Genjutsu?!” Sasuke concentrated his power in his eyes and forced the red back.
“It really is disagreeable, the Uchiha sharingan.”
He pulled himself out of Nowaki’s mind and returned to the real world.
Chino was there carrying Nowaki on her shoulders. Her eyes were dyed red. And not just the pupils. Her entire eyeball was red. It was unlike the sharingan, an eye he’d never seen before.
“Those eyes,” Sasuke said.
The look on Chino’s face became grim. “The violence of forgetting. It’s said, though, that it was the Uchiha clan who drove our Chinoike clan to the brink.”
“What?”
Chino’s eyes locked onto Sasuke. The ground beneath his feet turned into a red sea, and his body began to sink.
“Ngh!”
“Sassy.” She looked down at him from above the red waves of the sea. “The ringleader’s not Nowaki. It’s me. I turned the ninja into human bombs, and sent them to the villages.”
“Why would you do that?” Sasuke asked.
Chino slowly cocked her head to one side. “Sassy, you barely listen to anything a person says, and you also don’t answer any questions. But now, you’re feeling chatty, huh?” She snorted with laughter and closed her eyes. A drop of blood flowed out of one.
The drop fell into the red ocean.
Stimulated by Chino’s tear, the sea suddenly produced an enormous wave, which came crashing down on Sasuke.
He was pulled into the ocean, and churned and mixed with it until he had no idea which way was up. He couldn’t breathe.
“Dammit!” He concentrated his power in his eyes once more. “Haah!” Finally breaking free of the genjutsu, he took a deep breath.
As he filled his lungs with oxygen, he lifted his face, but Chino was already gone.