Capítulo 144: Chapter 30
If there was one thing about the finals that I had to say stood out, it was just how much of it we got to see before the stone nin sprung their inevitable ambush. Sasuke and Dosu Kinata had spent ten minutes dancing around the arena in a display of good taijutsu until the Uchiha fell prey to the Sound genin's device one too many times and ended the fight with a chidori to the chest. I'd wondered if Kakashi would have taught the move without a psychotic jinchuriki present to warrant the need for it. But maybe the incoming invasion from two rival villages was enough to give him the needed kick up the arse.
Either way, the next two matches had been able to go on as planned, and after Uzumaki Naruto failed to even so much as land a blow on Rock Lee, and Kankuro forfeited after a long battle with Hyuga Neji, it was time for Shira and the stone nin. Daisuke, his name was. From the moment he stepped on the arena, I felt a tension in my bones. This was it. The Kage booth had been silent as the grave as we all watched the matches. The tension of what we all seemingly saw coming was enough to make things quite a bit awkward. After allying with Hiruzen officially, he'd been kind enough to let me know about the true reasons the invasion was being allowed to move forward. He needed the time to evacuate all the civilians, and he wanted to use the invasion as proper justifications for war reparations from Stone and Sound. I could see the reasoning. I wouldn't have done it if I sat in his place, but that was why he was the Hokage and I was the Kazekage.
When Daisuke's match began, Shira jumped forwards to attack, and the boy smiled sardonically before my sand snatched my genin in a cocoon. It was not a second too soon as the stone nin exploded in the middle of the arena, covering the stadium in smoke from the shockwave.
With my sand floating about, I could just about sense what was going on in the arena, and it was pandemonium. Ninja ran across the aisles touching people and making them explode? Stone nin, then. Definitely explosion corps. Of course. Some other ninja were already moving to intercept them, but I could already tell that the death toll would be well into the hundreds. I checked in on Ebizo and my siblings with the clone that they had with them, and they were already halfway out of the village. Good.
When my attention fully returned to the situation, Hiruzen had already been tossed to the rooftop and was faced with both Orochimaru and Ōnoki. They;d ignored me. How drab. In a blur of sand, I reformed on the roof right next to Hiruzen as four shinobi- Kurotsuchi, Akatsuchi, and both of Orochimaru's hooded guards stood on all the corners of the roof and began to go through hand signs. I almost actually laughed as the barrier technique was formed. Guess the more things changed, the more things remained the same.
"Hiruzen, Hiruzen, Hiruzen. You've definitely lost it. The God of Shinobi I knew in my youth would have seen this coming from a mile away and smited us all. He definitely wouldn't have needed an upstart to stand at his side to fight his battles."
"The Ōnoki I knew never needed such tactics. So I guess we've both changed with the times" The Hokage said with a smirk that shone through his voice as he took off his hat and robes to reveal his pure black battle outfit. The Tsuchikage, in a similar vein, floated into the air before removing his own coverings and appearing in a split apart green coat divided into four sections with yellow trimmings, and red collar. Floating in the air above us, he seemed to sneer.
Orochimaru's reveal was much less dramatic. The Sannin just took off his hat while laughing hysterically. "Such a surprise, Gaara-chan. Kukukuuuu" Ignoring him was the best bet, and it was exactly what I did. When the battle began, it was on Hiruzen's terms as Orochimaru was forced to abandon his laughter in favour of weaving seals to form a water wall to shield him from the Hokage's great fireball.
Spotting the opportunity, I weaved two seals of my own before slamming my palm forwards, enhancing and stoking the flames with my great breakthrough. Orochimaru's water wall was a poor defence in the end and he was forced to dive into the roof to escape the explosion from the fireball. Ōnoki, on the other hand, just stared at the rest of us, not weaving seals at all.
In the end, it was Hiruzen that saved my life by kicking me in the chest. I was about to scream betrayal, until a blast of light flew right where I'd been less than a second ago. The blast hit the roof and continued on as everything it touched ceased to exist.
"Ōnoki the fencesitter is not just a master of the dust release. Like his sensei before him, he is also capable of camouflaging his appearance with water release." As Hiruzen spoke, the Ōnoki that had floated before us collapsed into rocks as another one faded into existence a few metres away from me.
"Unlike his master, however, Ōnoki's technique is not perfect. Watch for a tell tale haze or use that sand-sensing ability of yours to suss out his position." I almost did a double take at Hiruzen somehow figuring out that I could sense things through my sand.
"If either of you were going to live past today, I'd tell you that you'd get used to it. The monkey figures out techniques like yours in seconds. " Ōnoki spoke with a scowl on his face, but this time I was ready for the surprise and my body flowed around the attack as I transformed my midsection into sand and let the light blast part as I opened space in my sandy form for it to do so.
I shoved my inventory open and let the sand flow out around me and seep into the rest of the rooftop battlefield. It went around, forming a solid layer of sand on the flooring, apart from a three inch circle around where Orochimaru stood. Hiruzen seemed fine with letting my sand touch him, showing his faith in this marriage of convenience. Ōnoki just floated, unhindered and unbothered by the sudden change in the situation.
"Do you know why I have been Kage for over fifty years, boy? Do you know why in five decades, none has taken this hat from me? Do you know why I have seen three different wars from beginning to end without succumbing while prodigies like yourself fell by the wayside? It is because I, Ōnoki of Iwagakure, is the strongest. Now, be a good boy and die quickly. I have a fight to watch" As he spoke, he weaved visible hand seals for the first time.
Thankfully, I could recognise them from another fight I'd seen years before. When the lava balls shot out from his mouth like they were fired from a cannon, I quickly countered with wind release. A whole storm of it, solidifying the magma into stone before blocking with my sand and turning the attack aside.
This was a big building, but I could already feel the space constraints. I barely dodged another lance of disintegrating dust as I ran towards my opponent's position before commanding the sand at my feet to lift me in the air. My taijutsu would be useless in this fight. At his age, Ōnoki would be a fool to let me close the distance, and the Third Tsuchikage seemed to be everything but.
I was proven right when more hand seals heralded even more balls of lava being shot at my position. This time, it was child's play to dodge them all while keeping track of Hiruzen's fight to prevent Ōnoki's attacks from bleeding over the same way I was sure he was keeping track of my own fight. Of the four of us, Ōnoki was the most dangerous combatant in this situation. I counted myself as fortunate that he hadn't brought out the Island-destroying attacks yet. It couldn't be because of Orochimaru, I'd eat my hat if the Tsuchikage gave a rat's arse about a Konoha missing nin- allies or not-, so my best bet was that he was keeping his reserves filled for either retreat or betrayal. Either way, it was good for me, and bad for him in that it turned nearly certain death into merely probably death.
The sand around us rose into the sky before launching at the Tsuchikage in a mass of tendrils, forcing him to move from his position for the first time since the fight began. This time, I paid keen attention for the telltale haze Hiruzen had warned about when he used his invincibility technique. That was the only reason I noticed when the real him swapped out with a clone. The clone did a good job of miming the chase, pretending to be truly trying to escape.
When the sand inevitably caught up with it and captured it in a sand coffin, I was ready. Quick replacement with a sand clone let me escape the light cylinder that disintegrated my clone instantly. But it seemed Ōnoki had been similarly prepared as a fist of stone clashed with the sand spear I'd sent at him, scattering the sand in all directions.
I quickly took control of those fine grains of sand and sent them into the gauntlet, crushing the man's hand in a second, and when he screamed, I appeared in front of him in a blur of sand as Dark Sister appeared in my hand before separating his head from his body a second later. When the body fell apart into water, I was less surprised than I should have been. Of course he substituted the moment his attack failed.
When the water that splashed on my body began weighing me down, it was already too late. The disintegrating pillar of light hit nothing but a sand clone as I'd triggered my own substitution not a moment too soon.
"Well, that's one hell of a sequence" Kurotsuchi commented from within her place in the barrier. I just stared at her before commanding my platform to juke me to the right to avoid a stream of lava her grandfather had sent to take advantage of my seeming lapse in concentration.
The lava stream, in danger of crashing into Orochimaru, ended up being swallowed by a river of water before the Snake Sannin triggered his summoning jutsu. The moment the coffins appeared, I knew shit was about to hit the fan. Could I prevent the summoning? Maybe. But I didn't want to. Part of me wanted to see the Hokages in action. Another part of me wanted to keep Hiruzen alive till the end of this. There was no guarantee Tsunade would keep his word, and having him owe me his life would be an invaluable bargaining tool for future use.
So the sacrifices went ahead while Ōnoki and I flew through the skies in a constant dance of death. The Third Tsuchikage had already seemingly decided to lay off the Dust release for a while, prefering to instead blanket me with lava release attacks. It wasn't really something that people in the fandom (in my old life) ever bothered to take note of,but Ōnoki had to be the second greatest Ninjutsu master after Hiruzen itself. It was a bit ridiculous that both of these men along with the Third Raikage and Third Kazekage had lived on this planet in the same time period. I guess they were the only ones who could keep each other in check and prevent any single one of them from just taking over the world with their army destroying power.
And then, I had to get some more exposure to army destroying power as massive roots rose out from the rooftop and began to spread into the little airspace Ōnoki and I fought in, in the form of massive trees. Hashirama's deep forest emergence had come out to play. Fuck.
I could barely dodge aside Ōnoki's flying form as he rocketed around a few trees, taking advantage of my reduced vision to get close to me. When he stopped on a dime and twisted around before slamming my head with a backhand, I decided that taijutsu with Ōnoki was only really dangerous to whoever he was fighting. If I couldn't turn my body into sand on a whim, I'd have been a very dead man from that one hit.
As the Tsuchikage's eyes searched his surroundings, I took advantage of him disregarding this body as a sand clone to rise up with an instant attack. The spike of sand I transformed my forearm into was able to get him off guard, but not enough to get the killing blow. Still, his blood flowed easily as I got a deep cut in on the side of his face.
"First blood" I said with a cocky smile that made the man growl. An actual, honest-to-god growl.
"Say your prayers, boy. They will have no body to bury when I am done with you" He said, and I'm not ashamed to say I ran.
XXXXX- With Gaara's clone.
'Well, we definitely hadn't seen this one coming' I thought to myself as I stared at the man that floated before me on a clay bird. If we hadn't cracked the secret to separating our consciousnesses with this jutsu, then the boss would have been in a really bad spot. Piloting two bodies in two different S-rank fights would have been a hell of a tall task.
"So this is Suna's prodigy, huh? What do you know about art, kid?" He asked, somehow managing to look down on me even though we were floating exactly the same height above the ground.
"Not much" I said with a shrug, answering honestly while preparing for the inevitable reaction.
"I'll teach you then. From one prodigy to another, ey? Lesson One; True art" he said, placing his hands behind his back for a second.
"Is an explosion" When the clay spiders flew at us, it was already too late for them. I collapsed the sand platform, letting Ebizo, Kankuro, Temari, Shira, and I free fall towards the ground before surrounding the explosives with the sand and essentially suffocating the explosives. The same sand flew into my control once again to wrap around my siblings and their teammates before sending them to the floor in a controlled descent. As for me, my legs themselves transformed into sand to keep me afloat as I stared at the Iwa missing nin.
"That was a bit of a dick move, you know that right?" I asked him
"Well, you're the one that asked for a lesson."
"No I wasn't"
"That's irrelevant" He screamed as he flew right at me while tossing several clay caterpillars at me. "You denied my art, so I won't rest till you become art, you fucking bastard"
What the actual fuck? What kind of psycho was he? I transformed my entire body into sand before flying away and reforming on a rooftop some distance away.
I took hold of the inventory and summoned enough sand to make another thick platform while I commanded the sand that had made up the first platform to follow me while I flew right at the Mad Bomber of Iwa. His bounty would be a useful boon for Iwa's coffers, and I itched to see how I compared to the canon Gaara who'd lost to this bastard.
"Coming right at me, huh? Good. Let's see whose art is superior" He screamed at me.
"Where the fuck did you even get that idea from? What in all the words I've said to you makes you think I give a flying fuck about art of any kind." I asked him honestly as his screaming began getting on my nerves.
He didn't deign to reply as more clay creatures came flying at me. The sand that flew behind me lashed out in a single concentrated tendril that slapped all of them out of position. The explosions scattered a few grains of sand away, but they all returned to position shortly. The tendril flew right at me and turned into a thick wall that blocked the next volley of explosives before I tapped the wall, and it turned into a barrage of bullet shaped projectiles that shot at the Akatsuki member. Proving that Ninjaguns, Deidara was able to command his mount to dodge away from the bullets in time, before turning to me in a smirk.
Another mental command sent another volley of bullets, but this time, I used chakra flow to surround my sand in wind release. This time, the bullets flew fast and true.
True to his rank, Deidara did manage to dodge the most of them, but I was able to score two scratches on his arm and side. "You bastard" The mad Bomber cursed at me as he flew upwards and I chased him. When his bird suddenly made a U-turn and dove right at me, I was ready. My sand platform boosted me into the air as I slammed right into Deidara and tackled him off of his mount. A kunai from my inventory found itself lodged in his right eye before I noticed the smirk on his face. It was too late as the clay clutched on to me and exploded in a massive conflagration.
I honestly wondered what would have happened if I hadn't unlocked complete sand transformation before this. I gathered some of the sand around me into myself to heal the burns from when I failed to use the technique in time. In seconds, I was fully healed and unscathed from the blast. I enjoyed the look of the Mad Bombers face as the smoke cleared to reveal me floating on a platform of sand, none the worse for wear.
"Is that the best you can do, Deidara of Iwa?" I asked with a smirk on my face that made my opponent scream in actual rage and toss several projectiles at me. This time, I sailed past them with ease as we rushed at each other once again. Like a mediaeval joust, when we clashed, it was with a ringing of steel as kunai hit kunai and I quickly retreated as the body I clashed with exploded in a blast of clay. I'd gone over what I knew of Deidara's technique in my head and found that the easiest way to neutralise him would be allowing him to exhaust his clay supplies. I already had workarounds for every single one of his techniques, so there was little utility to be found in going all out and risking much when I could just win in a battle of attrition.
"You want to see what happens when I run out of clay?" He asks, prompting a blank look.
"What?"
"You're trying to get me to run out of my shit so you can take me down, aren't you?"
"No?"
"Liar"
"Ok. You caught me. What are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to turn it up, of course. You've seen my C1, but did you truly think that was the limit of my art? Die you bastard! C2 Dragon" For some reason, everytime Deidara spoke, it was in a scream. It wasn't like we weren't both ninja with highly trained senses who could pick out whispers across crowded rooms or anything.
I watched, fascinated as Deidara's mouth hands opened up and spa out massive amounts of clay. So this was how the technique worked. The clay clumped together and began to form into a massive dragon that easily dwarfed the bird Deidara had been flying on. When fully formed, it released a soundless roar and flew right at me. What I really wanted to know was how Deidara remotely controlled his clay creatures so easily. When the dragon was close enough, I weaved three seals and released a storm of cutting winds from my palms that tore straight through the creature before I collapsed my sand platform and fell into a free fall to outrace the inevitable explosions, and that was a thing of grace.
I watched as several of the taller buildings around the neighbourhood we fought above sustained heavy damage from the explosive material. Oh yeah, another reason I was content with letting Deidara use up his clay supplies was that it would cause the most possible damage to the village around me. Sure, the Hokage and I were allies, but we were still ninja in the end. I wasn't forgiving the stunt with the walk to the hospital, and even if I was, it wasn't in my best interests for Konoha to come out of this invasion in anything resembling a strong position. Sure, if I could trust them as allies then maybe, but they'd already betrayed Suna before and would do it again at the drop of a hat. That meant I had to put them in such a position that they could not even consider betrayal because they'd need us way too much.
It was a careful balancing act though. I could not overweaken them because that would make them useless allies and render everything moot in the first place. But I also could not let them be any stronger than they needed to be for my purposes. The room for error was large, but the potential payoff was infinite. That was why I did nothing as a scowling Deidara tossed clay figures after me, content to dodge and allow them to do what damage they would.
"Was that the best you could do?" This time, I included a fake played up yawn to get even more of his ire, and it was the right thing to do as Deidara began to swell. His mouth spat out a positively massive amount of clay that he actually began to mould with his own hands. Once again, stopping him wasn't particularly high on my list of priorities.
"You want to see art, huh? You want to see an explosion? Just let me cook. Let me cook!" Sadly enough, those turned out to be the mad bomber's last words as a hand covered in lightning shot out of his chest. I looked behind him to see Kakashi of the Sharingan glaring at me with that red eye spinning menacingly.
"The both of you have caused a lot of damage today" He said, as Deidara's body fell.
I almost laughed as the body turned black. Of course the mad bomber had a dead man's switch. As Kakashi began his retreat, I scattered my body into sand particles.
When I reformed, it was in a crater. A deep crater right in the centre of the hidden leaf village. The entire neighbourhood and the surroundings were gone. It wasn't quite half the village, but surely more than a quarter, and I wasn't even the one to cause it. When I began to laugh, it was a full one that echoed in the empty space surrounding me. And then I sobered up and began to search. My siblings had already been evacuated out of the village by Ebizo before the fight had gotten intense, so my search wasn't for them. Instead, it was for one of the most notorious survivors of the anime. With everything for kilometres around being levelled, it was easy to find Kakashi of the Sharingan, or what remained of him.
I scattered and reformed standing above him. His right leg was missing, and his arms were a mangled mess. What a shame. One of my favourite characters and I never even got to talk to him. And then his eyes snapped open as he took several shallow breaths. "How the fuck are you still alive?" I asked him and he opened his mouth and began to wheeze.
Of course he couldn't speak. I bent down to him and tapped his chest. Hmmm. Internal bleeding in seven different areas. His lungs were a mess, and the same was true for most of his organs. It was a miracle that he was still alive, and that meant I could actually save him if I tried. I stretched out my sand into the surroundings to make sure we were truly alone before I tapped his body again and sealed it in my inventory. Oh what secrets Kakashi of the Sharingan could tell.
A/N; It's canon that Onoki hired Akatsuki at several points, so it does seem logical to me that if he was invading an enemy village with few ninja, he'd hire the S-rank mercenary group he has on speed dial. How does the chapter look, though? Gaara v Deidara? Gaara v Onoki? Kakashi's death?
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