At this moment, elsewhere...
"Slash!"
The blazing firelight was split in two beneath the pitch-black, downward-curving slash of sword light, steaming upward like flames on either side.
"What?!"
Almost at the same time, a horrified cry suddenly rang out from where the firelight had come from.
"Tap!"
At that moment, amid the soft sound of footsteps, Hada Ichiba's graying hair lifted slightly. Maintaining the posture of having turned and struck down with his sword, he spun and landed firmly. Where the black arc of light vanished, dark patterns hidden upon the black Ninja Sword slowly lit up.
In an instant, the flames rising after being split in two suddenly froze.
Looks like they were a team!
Yet at that instant, Hada Ichiba abruptly looked toward his rear left. In the corner of his eye, the cold gleam of a Ninja Sword flashed as it came for his neck.
"Wha—!"
Then, in the next instant, the Konoha ninja wearing a Konoha forehead protector, who had arrived with the Body Flicker Technique and whose Ninja Sword was already at Hada Ichiba's neck, just about to sever his head with one strike, suddenly stopped breathing, his eyes widening in shock.
At that moment, reflected in his pupils were those black eyes, devoid of human emotion yet as terrifying as an abyss.
And the black sword light that slashed upward in reverse.
Along with the firelight that seemed drawn toward that black sword light—the firelight that had just split his companion in two!
Retreat!
In an instant, that was the only thought left in his mind. His foot had already stomped down with a tap.
In that instant, the advancing Ninja Sword abruptly halted, and the Konoha ninja who had launched the ambush leaned backward.
"Slash!"
Then came the sound of sword light ripping