บท 25: Chapter 25: Heavy Metal.
"The Third Kazekage?" I asked Lady Chiyo, confused.
"More than ten years ago, he disappeared." She looked harshly at the far too young Sasori.
"Sasori, it was you."
"HMPH! A wretched old bitch like you with one foot in the grave shouldn't trouble yourself with anything. You should have just stayed retired and waited to die in peace."
"Retired, yes, one foot in the grave, maybe. But I can still get around on my own two legs. And there are too many things left undone." Lady Chiyo shook her head disapprovingly.
"My grandson, degrading himself, becoming a criminal, that's one thing. But betraying the village? Participating in the deaths of three Kazekage?"
"Wait, three?" I asked, never taking my eyes off our enemy. I was still topless, but none of us bothered pointing it out. It wasn't relevant.
"Even if it was Orochimaru who actually killed Gaara's father, the Fourth, Sasori was complicit from the start. And now Gaara, the Fifth and Lord Third, ten years ago... Three in a fucking row, Sasori?"
"I wasn't directly involved with the Fourth; that was one of my agents. But yeah, Orochimaru and the Akatsuki go way back, and we've collaborated in the past."
I felt a wave of nausea. I remember when Orochimaru attacked us in the Forest of Death. The terror I felt at the memory of his horrific face gave way to intense anger at him for taking Sasuke away, and that then switched to rage at Sasori and the Akatsuki for working with him.
"You... worked with him..." In the split moment that my anger made me drop my guard, Sasori launched the Kazekage puppet at me. "Fuck!" I called out and tried to jump back out of the way. Even with my enhanced reaction time from the First Gate, I couldn't get out of the way. 'I should have opened the first Three at the start!' I thought to myself as I brought up my arms to block the many blades that extended from the puppet's left arm.
**CLANK**
Just before the blads impacted my arms, Hiruko's tail blocked them, but its segments were ripped apart in the process. Lady Chiyo must have used the strings still attached to it to save me, but the tail was useless now.
"Pretty good, Granny Chiyo, but try blocking this!" Sasori pulled his strings on the puppet's other arm, which split in two, revealing summoning seals. Dozens of long mechanical tendrils with bamboo-like segments and hands on their ends shot out of the puppet's right arm at me.
Thanks to the First Gate increasing my reaction time and lowering my body's inhibitions; I could quickly dodge each of the tendrils, even dislocating my limbs to get them out of the way. But that left me pinned to the ground, like a field of bamboo shoots hand grown around me, tight to my body.
I quickly wormed my body out of the tendrils and jumped away, but I heard a "PSHHH" sound as one of the tendrils unleashed a cloud of gas at me while I was airborne.
"Sakura! Hold your breath!"
I did so as soon as I saw the gas, but as I was in the air, I couldn't completely dodge the kunai-tipped ropes shot at me by two bamboo tendrils. I twisted in the air, but the ropes managed to wrap around my body—one around my legs and the other over my large chest and arms. They tightened around me and held me in the air; the one around my chest almost made me gasp for air as the poison gas engulfed me, which was quite an ingenious combo attack.
"You should have deflected them instead of dodging, you little bimbo." Commented Sasori.
I desperately held my breath as I quickly tried to open the Second and Third Gate.
"Sakura! Hang in there!" I heard Chiyo shout and listened to her feet running towards me, but I couldn't see past the gas.
I managed to slip a kunai out of my belt with one of my hands; then, I felt the Third Gate open. A wave of charka blasted the gas away as I cut the rope around my chest and then the one around my legs. It also popped the summoned hot pants, finger-less gloves and heeled open-toed sandals I wore, which left me naked apart from the headband around my air and the pouch belt around my waist.
My skin turned red, and my eyes fully dilated as the air, poison, and the two ropes blasted away from me. I pulled another kunai from my belt with my other hand.
"I will get you! No matter what you pull! No matter what you've got! I'll drag you to the edge of death and make you scream all about Orochimaru! I swear on my fucking life!" I screamed as I deflected or dodged dozens of kunai shot at me by the tendrils.
While I kept Sasori's attention, Lady Chiyo summoned two puppets of her own and jumped behind me, each standing before me and blocking the rest of the kunai barrage.
These puppets seemed to surprise Sasori.
"Oh, those are..."
"That's right. The very first puppets you created. The mother and father."
I toned down the chakra running through my network while I had the chance as Lady Shiyo and Sasori talked, but I never let my guard down or closed the Third Gate.
"What do you expect to do with them now? I made them. I know their workings inside out."
Lady Chiyo's puppets high-fived each other, and wires connected their fingers to each other. She then launched them forward, and they wrapped the wires around the many bamboo tendrils, cutting them apart as they charged at the Third Kazekage's puppet.
The Kazekage puppet disconnected its right arm and flew back. The mother and father produced swords and circular blades from their sleeves and pursued. There was a series of fast exchanges between the puppets, and Sasori and Lady Chiyo flung their arms and chakra strings around rapidly to manipulate their respective puppets.
By the end, all of Lady Chiyo's puppet's weapons were broken, and both sides jumped back behind their welders.
"This is becoming a nuisance. Better speed things along." Sasori said as he did a single hand sign, and the Third's mechanical mouth fell open. Then, what appeared to be black gas spewed forth from its mouth.
"As I figured, that puppet can use the Third Kazekage's own jutsu." Spoke Lady Chiyo in a sombre tone.
"Haven't seen it for a while, have you? If you recall, this is what got him his reputation as the most powerful in the Sand."
"Things are going to get messy."
"Mind telling me what the fuck that even is?" I asked Lady Chiyo as I bumped my chakra back up.
"It's the Sand's most feared weapon. Satetsu, the Iron Sand."
She explained it was an original jutsu of the Third Kazekage. It was adapted from one used by a former host of Shukaku. It could mould magnetic sand into any shape, perfect for any situation. She said the Third Kazekage was the only one who could use it, as he had a unique constitution that allowed him to convert his chakra into magnetic forces.
"But that's just a puppet? How could it hold chakra?" I asked.
"It's a human puppet built from a real corpse. Like a battery, it kept what chakra the body possessed in life." Lady Chiyo explained. I wondered how that was done. The Leaf is supposed to be the leader of medical jutsu, but I had yet to learn how that could be accomplished apart from the Second Hokage's Reanimation Jutsu.
"Sasori is the only one who can create human puppets. Whoever he made into a puppet, he has access to that person's jutsu. Ultimately, that's what makes him an S-Ranked Ninja." Lady Chiyo finished her explanation as the black sand swirled around Sasori and the Third Kazekage's puppet, which I then realised was his actual body.
"Oh, there's more to it than that. Remember, of all my collection, this one is my favourite."
"Sakura, you get away from here. I'll take care of this."
"What! No!" I exclaimed.
"I did not expect this. You're no match for him now. Not with this card in play."
I was offended that Lady Chiyo thought I was dead weight.
"Too Late." Sasori taunted as he sent a hail of iron sand clumps at us.
Thanks to the Third Gate, I could jump out of the way. Lady Chiyo had one of her puppets deploy some sort of chakra shield to block the clumps aimed at her.
"So you did fiddle with them a bit. The last time I played with them, they had no shields—quite the upgrade. But you should have known that was an attack, and you should have dodged it, not blocked it. I guess your old body is as spry as the busty exhibitionist."
From where I dodged to, I could barely see black spots making their way up the arms of the puppet that shielded Lady Chiyo.
"The Iron Sand has seeped into that doll. So long as I have the magnetic power of the Third Kazekage, that thing can't last." A few moments later, the father puppet started shaking.
The black sand formed several large spears surrounding me and Lady Chiyo. As they fired, I was able to dodge them; I remembered watching Lee dodge Gaara's sand during the Chunin exams and tried to emulate his moves. Lady Chiyo deployed a charka shield from the mother to block her front, but Sasori must have expected it this time and sent some black sand to her flank. She quickly spun around and deployed another shield on her own right arm, which turned out to be a prosthetic.
"Just an arm, but you still removed and replaced part of your own body. We puppet masters are all of the same kind, heh."
The black sand was already making Lady Chiyo's prosthetic shake uncontrollably.
"I see. So that's what you did to your body."
Lady Chiyo detached her prosthetic arm, and I saw the mother puppet creaking and shaking.
"Once the iron sand gets in, the puppet is done for. Well, now you're out of puppets. What next? Even a great puppet master is nothing without a puppet. Heh, heh!"
The black sand spewing from the Third's puppet started to form two large shapes in the air. One was a cuboid, and the other an inverted pyramid.
"This is quite the jam we are in. Indeed, what next?"
Sasori launched the pyramid at us like a spear. We both jumped out of the way, but it shattered the ground beneath us. I looked up and saw the cuboid coming down to crush me, so I backflipped out of the way. It hit the ground, shattering more of the cave floor, then sped forward along the rubble at me. I wound up a right cross and punched it as hard as I could. I felt the knuckles in my right hand, radius and ulna break.
It hurt like hell, even with the gates open, but it was worth it. Though Sasori managed to dodge out of the way, the black cuboid shot back at the Third's puppet and crushed it completely. Then, all at once, all the iron sand in the air fell to the ground.
Without the iron sand to disrupt them, Lady Chiyo had the mother and father launch at Sasori as he was in mid-air. They produced long-bladed swords and pierced his body from both sides.
That gave me a chance to jump towards him, and though my right arm was shattered, I borrowed a move from Guy-sensei and hit Sasori in the chest with a double dropkick, which Guy-sensei liked to call the 'dynamic entry.'
Lady Chiyo was right; his body was fully prosthetic. I burst through him. Being a medical ninja, I knew that there was one part of him he couldn't replace with machinery: his brain. I was ready to go back for his head when I felt something slimy between my bare toes as I hit the rock wall of the cave. It looked and felt like blood and tissue.
"Gross..." I said out loud. "Maybe I should wear real shoes after all."
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