Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy
14. Battle on Tenchi Bridge! Yamato & Sakura VS Sasori!
Yamato and Sakura stared down the puppet master known as Sasori. Sakura was feeling a little uneasy facing an opponent with strong killer intent. Yamato place his hand on her shoulder.
"Trust in me, I'll make sure we get out of this alive," he reassured her. Although his words were sincere, she still felt shaken up. Since her training under Tsunade and the missions she would go on with Kakashi and Sasuke, she still didn't feel up to par.
Yamato decided to make the first move and threw a few kunai to scout their opponent. As they approached Sasori, he just stood there as if he was going to take the hit. However, a white, metallic tail came out from behind Sasori and swiped away all the kunai. Sakura was quite shocked that he had a tell. Yamato, however, didn't seem impressed.
'So the rumor's are true about this guy,' Yamato thought as he processed what he just witnessed.
Suddenly, Sasori's tail, ripped off his Akatsuki cloak revealing a wooden body. On his back, was a massive face where the mouth was open revealing it was where his metallic tail was coming from. His right arm was wooden, but it looked like a normal arm. However, his left looked to be some sort of weapon.
"What the hell is he?" asked Sakura, terrified of what she is seeing before her.
"I figured as much," Yamato said. "It's not his real body."
Sasori chuckled, "Well I guess I have no choice but to make you two part of my collection then. I don't like to be kept waiting, so I suggest we get started with this fight."
Sakura wanted to run away, run away like she always did in the past. But then it hit her, that's all she's ever done was run away or hide behind Sasuke. At this point she felt useless. Then Sasori continued to speak.
"First, I'll remove your intestines, then I'll rip off your skin, clean the blood and treat the body so it doesn't decay," he said. "After all that's done, you two will equal 300 puppets, my collection, my art!"
Sakura looked at Yamato, who looked bored with Sasori talking. Yamato looked down back at her.
"Sakura, when we find an opening, I want you to use your brute strenght to break that puppet body," Yamato said.
"What?" Sakura said, caught by surprise.
"Like I just said," he began, "That's not his real body, it's a puppet. This is Sasori of the Red Sand from Sunakagure, he's a puppet master."
"I'm quite surprised you know who I am," Sasori said. "But he's right, this is just one of my many puppets."
"Then where is his real body?" asked Sakura. "I thought puppeteers use Chakra strings to move them?"
"That's why I want you to destroy that body," Yamato said. "I believe his real body is hiding inside."
Sasori chuckled, "I'm surprised you learned all that so quickly. I best not underestimate you."
Yamato whispered to Sakura.
"We need to be extra careful. We don't know what kind of traps he has in that puppet and I know there's going to be poison in those traps."
Sakura nodded and prepared herself for her ultimate battle. Yamato was going to create an opening and she was going to smash that puppet to reveal the real body.
Yamato and Sakura quit the chit chat and both charged at Sasori.
"So you're ready to begin, great," Sasori said as he ripped off the cloth covering his mouth, revealing that the bottom jaw can move in three places. Needles came shooting out of the mouth of Sasori's puppet body. Sakura used chakra to jump high into the air. Yamato, however, took the blow, however, it was just a Mokuzai Bunshin. Yamato appeared out of a tree and grabbed Sakura from the air and quickly back to the ground. Sasori didn't waste any time and he launched his left arm, which turned out to be some kind of missle.
"Mokuton: Mokuzai Maruyane (Wood Release: Wood Dome)!" Yamato said as he completed seals. Wood pillars came out of the ground and covered over Yamato and Sakura as the Sasori's left arm exploded into more poisoned needles that ended up impaled ino the wooden dome.
"Mokuton?" Sasori said to himself, "I thought the only one that could use that was the First Hokage."
Sasori then used his metallic tail to break the wooden dome to find no one was inside. He looked to his right he found no one, he looked left to find Sakura charging at him, chakra flowing in her hand. He quickly countered by using the tail to come at Sakura, however, wooden pillars came up the ground and wrapped around the metallic tail to hold in place.
"What the hell?!" Sasori yelled out in surprise. Sakura smirked, their plan worked.
Flashback: (Inside the Doom)
The sounds of needles hitting the wood could be heard as Sakura and Yamato prepared for their next move.
"Alright, now that we got his frontal weapons used up, I'll use more Mokuton to dig us a hole out of here." Yamato began, "Once we get out, wherever side were on, I won't you to charge at Sasori. If he uses that tail of his, I'll grab it with more of my Mokuton and hold it in place which will allow you to crush that puppet with your strenght."
"Hai, Yamato-teichou," Sakura said as Yamato released a wooden beam from his hand digging a hole into the ground for them to escape.
End of flashback.
"Damn it!" Sasori cursed as Sakura jumped and and landed a powerful punch into Sasori's puppet body, breaking it into pieces.
However, a shadow leaped out of the puppet, covered in a piece of the Akatsuki cloak. That signaled the real body of Sasori has now appeared.
"Now I am surprised you two saw through my attacks. However, I didn't take into account you'd be able to use Mokuton powers only known to the First Hokage," Sasori said, in a much softer voice than what was used in the puppet body.
"I was injected with the First Hokage's cell as a research experiment by Orochimaru, you're former partner," replied Yamato.
Sasori was quiet. Their information on the Akatsuki that was supposed to be secreative was very clear in the air to Konoha.
"Alright, time to really get serious," said Sasori as he grabbed the cloak that was covering his face and body and revealed his true identity. He had a child-like face with messy brown hair, as if he just got out of bed. His brown eyes still hold the innocence of his younger self.
Yamato looked surprised.
'What the hell? Sasori should be way older than he looks,' Yamato thought to himself.
"He's - he's just a teenager," said Sakura, shocked.
Yamato just shook his head as Sasori grabbed a scroll from his cloak.
"I think I'll use this to kill you both," Sasori said. "It was troublesome to kill him and that is why he's my favorite out of all of them."
The scroll burst into a cloud of smoke, knowing the scroll summoned that was sealed inside. Once the smoked cleared, it revealed a human puppet, that had long, but small eyes and black spikey hair. Sasori held it with his chakra strings in front of him.
"Now we shall begin," he said.
"That puppet doesn't look all that bad, it looks like one that Kankurou-san carries around," said Sakura.
"I don't know Sakura, this guy seems to have killed strong people and turned them into puppets," replied Yamato. "We have no idea what this puppet is capable of."
Suddenly, Sasori attacked with the black-haired puppet and it was going after Sakura. Yamato quickly reacted, creating another wooden pillar to knock it off course. However, Sasori wasn't done yet. He got it back on track and this time on his right side, blades came out, dripping with poison and it was attacking Sakura again. Yamato, quickly leaped up and pushed Sakura out of the way, however, Yamato managed to make a wooden wall at the last second to stop the poison blades, he jumped back as the wooden wall broke into pieces. Sasori wasn't having anymore of this cat and mouse game. He raised the black-haired puppet's left hand. It opened up, revealing several seals.
"Release!" Sasori said.
The seals on the doors of the left arm broke, revealing hundereds upon thousands of snaking hands, and again, they were targeting Sakura.
'Why does he insist on attacking only Sakura,' thought Yamato as he created seals.
"Mokuton: Mokuzai Maruyane!" yelled at Yamato.
Sakura was in panic as the sea of hands and snaking arms came at her. She closed her eyes and waited for her inevitable death as she heard the snaking hands slam into the ground, but she released she wasn't dead, dying or even in pain. She opened her eyes to darkness. She felt around until she felt surface. It was wood. Yamato had protected her again with his wooden dome. When the dust settled, Sasori noticed another wooden dome.
'That Mokuton of his is a menace,' Sasori thought. 'Enough games.'
Sasori then commanded on of the snaking hands to break through the wood and it did. Yamato saw this and cursed and rushed over to Sakura.
Sakura looked up at the hole that was just made as another snaking arm, however, the hand was missing and it looked like something was about to be shot at her. Her fears were released when purple smog began to pouring into the dome. Sakura held her breath, it was poison fog. Yamato got to the dome fast. He released control of the jutsu hoping to keep Sakura safe while he and Sasori battled, but the plan backfired. Now here we was, creating a wood drill out of his Mokuton and break open the dome. It took a few seconds, but to Sakura, it felt like an eternity. Yamato held his breath and broke open the dome and grabbed Sakura out and they hid. Sasori looked around and noticed Yamato had disappeared.
'Where'd he go?' he thought as he continued to pump in poison fog into the dome, then he noticed it was coming out from behind the dome and he stopped. He commanded the snake hands to crush the wooden dome. When the poison fog cleared, he found no body in the rubble.
'Damn it, that wood user saved her again. At this rate, it'll never end.'
Sakura now charged at the puppet from the right with the intent to break that one as well. Sasori finally noticed her presence, he would not fail her now. He commanded another one of his snake arms to open up, shooting kunai attached with ropes. They wrapped around Sakura and took her to the ground.
"Shit!" Yamato cursed, another one of his plans failed and now Sakura was caught, he was going to have to do something quick to rescue her or she was done for.
Sakura was lying on the ground helpless, memories of Naruto flooded her mind.
'I swore to myself that I would find a way to change Naruto's heart and get him to come home. I can't die here!'
Sakura then did someting she'd never thought she'd do. With her free arm, she grabbed a kunai, wrapped with a paper bomb, and set it off. Sakura was sent flying through the air, but Yamato caught her.
"Sakura, what on earth did you do?" he asked. "Are you alright?"
"I'm- I'm fine," Sakura said as she rose to her feet.
'To use the force of the blow to get out of the trap, that was crazy, too crazy,' Yamato said to himself.
"Yamato-teichou, no matter what happens, I'm going to destroy him," Sakura said suddenly. "If I can find anyway to change Naruto's heart and get him to come home, if that involves killing off the Akatsuki one by one, I'm going to do it."
Yamato was caught by surprised by this. He did not know about Sakura's resolve to get Naruto to come back home, but it surely was driving her to battle now. Yamato then created two Mokuzai Bunshin's to help with the battle.
"Mokuzai Bunshin's? How are those going to help?" asked Sasori.
"You'll just have to find out," taunted Yamato.
Sasori chuckled, "Such confidence coming from someone who's eventually going to die by my hands."
Yamato said nothing as the two clones revealed ninja wire. The two dashed off quickly and slashed through the wooden snake arms, breaking them into pieces. When the clones got to the puppet, Sasori, controlling the black-haired puppet battled Yamato's Mokuzai Bunshin's. After a few minutes of the stalemate, Sasori uses the black-haired puppet to slap away the Bunshin's.
"This petty fighting is useless," Sasori began, "I think it's time I truely got serious."
Sasori, using his chakra threads, opened the mouth of the black-haired puppet. Black powder began coming out of the mouth. Yamato finally recognized the technique, he finally recognized the puppet itself.
"It can't be! That puppet is the Sandaime Kazekage!" Yamato said in shock.
"You finally figured it out?" Sasori asked. "It is my favorite after all."
"So the puppet can use his jutus too, eh?" Yamato asked.
"Now we have to be extra careful, Yamato-teichou?" asked Sakura.
"Yes," replied Yamato. "The Sandaime Kazekage was viewed as the strongest Kazekage because of that technique, the Iron Sand."
"Yes, and I will use it to create whatever I want to kill you quickly," Sasori said. "The real fight has begun now!"
Sasori then controls the puppet Kazekage's jutsu and creates iron shuriken and launches them at both Yamato and Sakura.
"Shit, this is bad!" yelled Yamato as he created seals.
"Mokuton: Mokuzai Kado (Wood Release: Wood Gate)!" yelled Yamato.
A massive wooden gate came up from the ground, Yamato and Sakura ran into the woods nearby to hide as the iron suriken slammed into the wall. Although none of the iron shuriken broke through. Sasori returned the iron shuriken back into the fine, iron sand that it was. The wooden gate then broke down, however, Yamato and Sakura were no where to be found. Sasori figured they had run to the woods, so he created bigger iron shuriken and shot them at the woods, cutting down the trees and shrubs quickly, revealing Sakura and Yamato.
"Hiding is not going to do you any good when I have the Sandaime Kazekage as my puppet," said Sasori. Sasori then commanded the puppet to pull down the cloak to reveal its chest, revealing threads that were holding the chakra of the Sandaime Kazekage. It launched charka into the iron sand, in the shape of spears, and were heading for Yamato and Sakura, as the iron sand spears hit, they exploded, sending dirt and rock into the air. As the dirt cleared, a wooden dome stood, where the iron spears impaled.
"I've had enough of the Mokuton, it's time I crushe your little defense," Sasori said as he commanded the Kazekage puppet to release more iron sand. Sasori then commanded the puppet to mold the iron sand into enormous, but hard square boxes. Sasori commanded the puppet to command the iron squares to squash Yamato and Sakura. They dodged them, but the iron boxes kept coming at them. Over and over they'd dodge as the boxes slammed into the ground.
'At this rate, we're going to tire out then get crushed to death' thought Yamato.
Sakura was thinking the same thing, but this time, she decided to stop running away and do something about this. She pumped chakra into her fist and charged. Yamato, stunned by Sakura's action ran after her.
"Sakura, wait, don't!" he yelled.
As a iron box came crashing down, Sakura punched the iron box with all her might and sent the iron box down into the canyon below.
Sasori was caught off guard by Sakura's attack.
'What incredible strength, to be able to do that to my iron. When she broke Hiruko, I didn't realize he true strength. I can't do this anymore, I'll have to use that.'
The iron boxes Sakura had knocked into the canyon raised back up from the canyon and collided together.
"I don't like where this is going," Yamato said, preparing for whatever was coming.
"Satetsu Kaihou (Iron Sand: World Method)!" called out Sasori.
The Iron began spreading out in thin lines going across the entire battlefield.
"It's spreading everywhere," Sakura said to herself.
The iron continued to spread across the battlefield as Yamato and Sakura kept dodging. Suddenly Sakura did seals, then the iron sand pierced through her body. Sasori smirked, he finally got girl, now he could focus on the Mokuton user. Before he could though, a poof sound was heard, Sasori turned back to where Sakura's body supposed to be and finds a log.
"A subsititute technique?" asked Sasori, surprised that such a low level jutsu was used. Sasori then realized that he caught Yamato as well. Although this time, it looked like the real one.
"Well, at least I got the wood user after all," said Sasori. "You may not die from the iron sand, but you will die from the poison that infused with it. You only have three days to live."
Sasori then noticed something else, Yamato didn't react to what he said. What were they planning? Well, Sasori didn't want to find out, so he got his Kazekage puppet to attack Yamato. As it was heading for Yamato, out of the right arm, a blade came out, ready to slice through Yamato. As it got closer to Yamato, out of no where, Sakura came back into the picture and punched clear through the Kazekage puppet, destroying it completely. Sasori stayed calm though, even though he made a mistake and had forgotten about Sakura. He then took notice the Yamato that was stuck in the Satetsu Kaihou was a Mokuzai Bunshin.
'They've taken out my Kazekage puppet, I have no choice but to use...' Sasori thought as he began taking off his Akatsuki cloak. He revealed that his own body was a puppet. Attatched to his back on both sides was arms with five blades on each. Where his stomach should be was a metallic rope dripping in Sasori's poison, but on the left side of his chest, held a circle with a seal on it.
"What in the hell?" Sakura said.
"My God," Yamato said, "He turned his own body into a puppet."
"I'll give that you two have gave me a run for my money," Sasori said, "Since it's been a long time since I've had to use myself in a fight."
In the middle of Sasori's back contained a compartment to hold several scrolls. Sasori then held up both his palms, revealing a weapon contained in them.
"Sakura, heads up," Yamato said as Sasori unleashed fire from the palms of his hands.
The two began dodging the flames he was shooting out. Yamato knew he couldn't use any of his Mokuton at this point, his fire would just burn it down.
"It's that the best you can do now?" asked Sasori, "To run away."
The rope in Sasori's stomach, which had a sharp spike on the end, began coming out, and went after Yamato. He was done with the girl, he should have taken him out first, so now he was going after the Mokuton user. The sharpned spike rope pierced through the right side of Yamato.
"Yamato-teichou!" yelled Sakura. She knew Sasori's rope was drenched in his poison.
"Now, you die!" Sasori yelled at Sakura and came at her, but before he could reach her, he felt something pull him.
Yamato has the Mokuzai Bunshin he thought was Yamato, and his rope was impaled in that wood, he took the clone and pulled Sasori away from Sakura. Sasori cursed for being tricked again by a Mokuzai Bunshin. Sakura then charged as Sasori was distracted by Yamato. Sasori turned to find Sakura's fist into what would be his gut and his puppet body broke into pieces and flew all across their battlefield.
While Yamato and Sakura were regaining their composure, the red, circular part in Sasori's chest what looked like little branches coming out of it slither across the ground.
"Very good Sakura," Yamato said. "Are you okay?"
"I'm a little beat up but I'm..." she said but was interrupted.
"No, I meant are you okay mentally?" Yamato asked, "Being this was your first kill and all?"
"Oh," Sakura said understanding now, she thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Let's go see how Sasuke's doing," Yamato said but they were stopped dead in their tracks.
The pieces of Sasori Sakura had broke apart, suddenly started coming back together.
"Well then I guess we were wrong," Yamato said. "He's not dead just yet."
"That was good brat," Sasori said, "But not good enough."
Sasori, using his chakra threads, grabbed the scrolls from his back and unrolled them. He then opened the right portion of his chest to reveal even more chakra threads as he attatched them to the scrolls he unrolled. He unsealed the contents of the scrolls to reveal hundreds of puppets that he can control.
"Holy shit," Yamato said, "This is definately not good."
"There's no way the two of us can fight off these puppets!" Sakura yelled.
Yamato had no choice but to create quite a bit of Mokuzai Bunshin's if they were going to survive this battle.
"Akahigi: Hyakki no Souen (Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets)! I'll show this power," Sasori said. "How am I ever going to explain that two nothing Konoha Ninja made me fight all the way to my last trick."
Sasori then sent his hundred puppets to attack. Yamato created several Mokuzai Bunshin's and along with Sakura, began defending from the puppets. Sakura began breaking them down with her brute strength she learned from Tsunade. Yamato and his Bunshin's created wooden spears and bats to break through the puppets too. The battle raged on. Sakura destroyed puppet after puppet. Even though she didn't want to admit it, she was getting tired. Using all that chakra in her punches was starting to get to her. Yamato too, with the creation of so many Mokuzai Bunshin's and all the wood creations as well, Yamato knew he was reaching his limit and they had so many more puppets to break through. They dodged and weaved against Sasori's puppet's traps and continued breaking them into pieces one by one.
Twenty minutes have passed and they were still at it. Sakura was starting to feel sick from using up so much chakra. She cursed herself for her weakness because she wasn't going to die, at least not until she got Naruto back home. Yamato, however, was faring a little better. He managed to find the time time to take a chakra pill to raise his chakra and now he could fight without tiring out. He glanced at Sakura and knew she wasn't going to last in this fight, so he began fighting through Sasori's puppets to get to her to give her a chakra pill too. Yamato finally reached Sakura, allowing his Mokuzai Bunshin's to fight off Sasori's puppets on his behalf for the moment.
"Sakura, take this," Yamato said, handing Sakura a pill.
"A chakra pill?" Sakura asked.
"Eat it, you're not going to last without it," Yamato said. Sakura took the pill from Yamato and swallowed it. Instantly she felt her chakra be restored. Now she could finish the fight. Yamato got back into position and the two Konoha ninja began breaking Sasori's puppets one by one again.
"Just give up and die," Sasori said, "You won't make it through."
Yamato and Sakura didn't heed Sasori's words and continued to smash and break Sasori's puppets one by one. Finally there was only a few puppet's left so Yamato knew it was time.
"Sakura, go ahead and go after Sasori, me and my Mokuzai Bunshin's can handle the rest of these puppets," Yamato called out.
Sakura nodded and began weaving around the puppets while Yamato destroyed them. When Sakura got close enough, she threw a wooden ball. Sasori smirked, what would a wooden ball do to him, but the wooden ball opened up into a wood slab with spikes and slams into Sasori, which slams him to a rock, immobilizing him.
"Alright Sasori, you've been immobilized, it's over," Yamato said. Sasori didn't reply. However, what they didn't realize, Sasori arose in another puppet body from behind Yamato and Sakura and he went for the attack. Sakura realized the puppet they had immobilized was now just an empty shell. She turned quickly to notice Sasori running to attack Yamato, but before she could say anything a sword went through Yamato's body.
"Yamato-teichou! Are you okay?" Sakura asked.
"My blade, of course, has poison too," Sasori replied. Sasori then locked up. Sakura eyes widened. Pierced through the Sasori's left side of his chest was a wooden spear.
"How?" Sasori muttered.
Yamato appeared from behind Sasori.
"I figured out after your first body came back together that this circular object in your left chest cavity was the part of your real body," explained Yamato. Sakura looked over at who was supposed to be Yamato to find it morphed back into another Mokuzai Bunshin.
"Through this whole fight, you still couldn't tell which was me or which one was a Mokuzai Bunshin," Yamato continued. "For a member of the Akatsuki, you're careless."
Sasori didn't say another word and slumped over. The life that was still running through Sasori's real body part ran out thus ending in Sasori's death.
Sakura landed on her butt, exhausted from her fight. Yamato then checked Sasori to make sure the fight was really over.
"Well, it seems he really is dead," said Yamato.
"I'm glad you figured out where to hit, I would of never guessed there was still part of Sasori's real body in his puppet body," Sakura admitted.
"You're still young and got a lot to learn," Yamato replied, "And your battle experience is small, once you gain a higher experience in battling, you'll start to pick up on enemy's tactics and attack patterns. That's how I figured out how Sasori's puppet body worked. I just had to find an opening to pierce Sasori's chest."
Sakura nodded, she was about to lay down to rest when they heard a massive explosion nearby. Seeing a massive fire cloud getting sent into the ground, it was coming from the area Sasuke went to fight Deidara. Sakura then thought the worse.
"Sasuke-kun!" she yelled. Yamato and Sakura then ran in that direction to see if Sasuke was ok.
I know the fight between Sasori and Sakura went sort of like in cannon, but it still had its differences.
Next Chapter: Battle on Tenchi Bridge! Sasuke VS Deidara!