Chương 43: Chapter 58
I awoke to a tapping sound coming from the window. I yawned and stumbled out of the futon to let my crow into the room. After I opened the window, it fluttered to my shoulder and whispered into my ear, "The bridge."
I yawned one more time before whispering back, "Thanks, buddy." It cawed and disappeared out the window into the night.
"What was that?" Sasuke asked, staring at me from his futon as I stood by the window.
"Wake up your girlfriend. I'm going to get Kakashi."
He grumbled, "She's not my girlfriend."
I walked over to the door. "Whatever. Just make sure you and Sakura are ready for a fight. There's someone at the bridge and it's probably our bomber friend."
Even out in the hall I could hear him faintly muttering, "She's not my girlfriend."
I knocked on Kakashi's door. "Kakashi-sensei?" The man immediately opened the door.
"What are you doing up? Go back to sleep," Kakashi said.
"So you already know?" I asked seriously. It was obvious that I hadn't woken him up. The jounin was about to leave for the bridge, apparently without us. He had that shameful look in his eye that said he was going to leave us behind for our own safety.
"It's too dangerous for you guys. Stay here. If anything happens to me, you're in charge, Haru." The order was cold and condescending and intolerable.
"No. We're coming with you. If Deidara lets down his guard, I can disable him with genjutsu for a moment. Sasuke can watch your back with his own Sharingan and Sakura can patch you up assuming you don't lose an entire limb or anything." I looked the man in the eye. Sasuke and Sakura arrived in the middle of my subordination to join me in staring down our teacher.
Kakashi sighed and hung his head. "This is a terrible idea."
Kakashi pushed up his headband as we walked onto the bridge. Sakura and I were in the back, following the two Sharingan users who could see Deidara's dangerous chakra. The night was unusually clear, the moonlight only bright enough to discern the sides of the bridge and the trees against the starry sky, shades of black against lighter black. The only sounds on the deserted bridge were our footsteps and the waves of the ocean below.
Sasuke and Kakashi suddenly stopped. And then I noticed the figure walking onto the bridge. Only he walked onto the bridge straight up the side from underneath. In the dark, the only thing I could see properly was Deidara's trademark spiky hair.
"I'm sorry but if you're here for the show, you're a bit early. Come back later if you want to see a once-in-a-lifetime event."
Kakashi spoke, "We can't allow you to blow up this bridge, if that's what you're planning."
Deidara snorted a laugh. "An old man and a few kids think they can stop my art? If this is your idea of a joke, just stop now before you get hurt. Wait...didn't I kill those two already?" He began to growl, "Those eyes...Who are you people? Are you working with the guy in the mask? It doesn't matter. I can't stand those dirty red eyes sullying my art. "
I floated a Rasen-fireball to illuminate the bridge from above. As if reacting to the sudden light, a pair of massive clay centipedes reared up into the air. I heard Deidara yell, "Please die a beautiful death!"
"Obvious head-on fights are definitely not my style. And I'll be low on chakra capacity until my clone finishes." He was too far away for me to enthrall in genjutsu and I didn't trust my pitiful attempts at lightning chakra to fight off Deidara's clay constructs. The only thing I could do was provide support and wait for an opening. Sakura was standing nearby with her hands shrouded in blue Chakra Scalpels, although I doubted how much that would help against the equivalent of plastic explosives.
The centipede in front of Sasuke became a pincushion of blue-glowing senbon. "That's crazy impressive for only a week of training. No wonder he's considered a genius." Kakashi's centipede opponent was taken down by a crackling blue palm thrust when he slammed the head of the centipede into the ground. "If this is the Copy Ninja when he's holding back..."
Deidara scowled under the flickering light of my fireball as he watched his sculptures being so easily dispatched. "Tsch. Lightning chakra. How did you figure it out?"
"We can see through all of your attacks. Make this easy and surrender now, Deidara of the the Stone," Kakashi demanded, his hand still glowing blue.
"I don't think so. You haven't suffered nearly enough for my art!" he screamed as he pointed his palm toward us. The disturbing mouth embedded in his hand vomited forth a swarm of tiny flying white insects.
"Sasuke! Get back!" Kakashi yelled as he finished a short sequence of hand seals. "Lightning Release: Four Pillar Bind!" Around the growing swarm, four pillars of stone arose from over the sides of the bridge, crackling with electricity. Like giant bug zappers, the four pillars struck lightning into the swarm, decimating the miniscule clay sculptures.
Through the cloud of clay being torn apart by lightning, Sasuke pointed at the figure of Deidara who was fleeing down the bridge. "Sensei, he's getting away!" The boy began to run though the field of electric bolts to chase down the missing ninja.
"No! Sasuke! It's too dangerous!" Kakashi yelled again but he couldn't release the technique until the entire swarm was dealt with.
On the other side of the bridge beyond Kakashi's tesla pillars, the bridge underneath Sasuke exploded and crumbled into the sea.
Sakura was screaming hysterically next to me. "Sasuke!" Before I could stop her, she dashed into the lightning storm after Sasuke. Amazingly, she dodged all of the errant bolts of electricity and dived off the end of the bridge, plunging into the sea headfirst.
The sky was growing cloudy above my Rasen-fireball. The fireball continued to spin and burn in the sky like a miniature sun over the bridge. For the time being, there was nothing I could do but continue to wait for a chance to end the fight.
"Ah ha ha ha. That's one set of Sharingan down. You'd think that with his fancy eyes he would have noticed my trap," Deidara taunted on the other side of the huge divide.
Once the air was clear of explosive clay, Kakashi let his fingers come apart from the hand seal that was maintaining the technique and dashed to the end of the bridge. From his body language, it seemed like he wasn't able to see his students anywhere below. And then he gripped his own wrist and pointed it downward, collecting a massive amount of lightning chakra to a single point just below his hand.
"No...Kakashi-sensei!" I yelled helplessly.
In one moment, the white-haired man was rearing back his hand, the sound of chirping birds resounding over the bridge. In the next moment, he was across the chasm with his arm deep in the chest of Deidara's clay clone. The afterimage of his hand's path hung in the air like an overexposed photo of a tracer round.
And then a clay centipede burst from the ground and wrapped around Kakashi. It exploded instantly and when the dust settled, nothing was left behind.
And then I heard Deidara's voice from behind me, "If you don't want to die like your comrades, tell me what you know about the Sharingan user who wears a white mask."
"Shit. When did he get behind me? Was he under the bridge the whole time? It's still too early."
I spun around. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Please don't insult my intelligence. First I get attacked by the masked philistine and then chased down to this backwater country. Then two more Sharingan users show up to finish the job." He rubbed his right shoulder where his arm was missing. "Tell me where I can find him and I might let you live long enough to see what kind of art he makes when he explodes."
"So Kakashi isn't the masked Sharingan user? There's someone else?" I had a feeling Kakashi was still alive but I had no idea where he was at the moment. For now, I was on my own.
I pulled out the Kubikiribocho out of the storage seal hidden within my sleeve. As I sunk lighting chakra into the blade, it crackled with purple arcs of electricity. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm more of a music lover myself," I shot back at Deidara. From the forming clouds, a peal of thunder rang out with perfect timing to accentuate my grandstanding.
But it was all for show. I would have to give up my best chance of taking down Deidara if I tried to fight him now. Between the Rasen-fireball, which thankfully was mostly self-sustaining, and the small amount of electricity lacing my sword, I wouldn't be able to commit to a taijutsu attack with my concentration split three ways.
I was about to end the lightning transformation and resort to revealing my genjutsu early when I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry. This is my fight," a voice said reassuringly from behind a mask. I only caught a glimpse of red through the eye holes before the newcomer disappeared again.
"So you finally show your..." Deidara was cut off as he was kicked away by the stranger who instantly blinked out of sight after connecting his attack. Deidara rolled several times before stopping. Rising to his feet and looking for the assailant, he remarked, "Still just as fast as ever."
"Damn. I can't keep up with his movements. Whoever it is, he's insanely fast."
The masked fighter again appeared in Deidara's blind spot, beginning a barrage of attacks from random directions, batting around Deidara like a cat playing with a toy.
"Is that the Body Flicker Technique? How can he do that so many times in a row?" Most people could only manage two or three flickers at the most before becoming too disoriented to continue. This guy was unreal in how fast he was moving between his attacks.
With a final punch to the gut, Deidara was sent flying over the ruined end of the bridge and into the sea. The masked man stood at the edge and stared down. He was wearing a simple black cloak without any identifying markings.
He turned to me. The only features of his pure white mask were the large eye slits through which I could clearly see his Sharingan. But they didn't have tomoe. Instead, it was a black pinwheel against the crimson iris.
"Shisui."
I stood in amazement at my improbable savior. And in a single blink, he disappeared. In his place was Kakashi, who had chosen that moment to attack the newcomer.
"Who are you?" Kakashi asked, recollecting himself after his missed attack.
"Hatake Kakashi, you are the jounin of this team?" Shisui tossed a scroll to Kakashi past my head. "That is from the Hokage."
Kakashi opened the scroll, applying chakra to verify its authenticity, and appeared to be satisfied when the watermark glowed green.
It was at that moment my clone finished gathering natural energy and dispersed, gifting me with a substantial supply of senjutsu chakra. It was a rush of power that enhanced my senses and speed and strength. And I noticed something was wrong.
"Kakashi-sensei! Deidara is still alive!" I shouted. The man's eye grew wide as he became shadowed by a massive, morbidly exaggerated balloon version of Deidara. In each hand, the gigantic Deidara balloon held Sasuke's unconscious body and Sakura who was struggling in its grasp. Deidara himself was standing on top of the clone's head, himself swollen and battered but still alive.
The Iwagakure outcast laughed maniacally. "Are you ready to see some true art?"
Sakura shouted, "Sensei, I'm okay! Please save Sasuke!"
I tossed him the sword, still crackling with purple arcs of electricity. "Kakashi! Use this! Do it now!"
Kakashi caught the energized Kubikiribocho and leaped into the air. As he brought it downward through Deidara, a massive array of lightning bolts struck from the sky, merging and flowing through the sword as it cut down the blond ninja and his giant explosive clone. The real Deidara was completely incinerated within the pillar of lightning and the giant balloon clone disintegrated as blue electricity coursed through it.
"Grab Sasuke!" I told Shisui as I went to catch Sakura. The two of us ended up on the other side of the section of missing bridge. "Thanks, Shisui," I said but he was already gone. Sakura escaped my arms and rushed over to the boy who was lying on the ground and began to tend to his wounds, her tears drying as she dutifully began her medical work.
As it began to rain from the clouds my Rasen-fireball has created, I thought to myself, "That went better than I thought it would."
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