"Ne, Sasori, do we have a plan? Or are we going to blast the whole desert, un?" Deidara questioned. "And, well, are you sure we are going towards the right direction?" He asked again.
The Akatsuki duo was currently heading towards where the one tailed beast was suspected to be, travelling on a large, white bird.
"We do have a plan, yes. You will use the seal I will give you to make the beast unconscious and use your birds to carry it away. I will be taking care of the guard dogs. I will hold my position for a while to make sure that no one is following us, till then, you will already be at a safe distance from the fighting scene." Sasori said, explaining the plan.
"Eh? Why do you get to have all the fun?" Deidara questioned.
"I am letting you fight the one tailed beast alone, is that not enough?" Sasori said, handing him the seal in question.
" Well, when you say that, you make me sound greedy, un. I suppose I will do it, then." Deidara said.
"Land here." Sasori ordered.
At this point, the gigantic figure of the one tailed beast was visible. It was just moving around, causing havoc with it's movement alone. It almost looked like a child, running around aimlessly.
Once the bird was landed, Sasori threw a rock towards a bush to distract the nearby Suna shinobi. As the Suna shinobi entered the isolation of the sand dunes and bushes, a senbon went through his neck. Quickly attaching strings to the dead shinobi's body, Sasori cleaned the blood and used the dead body as a puppet.
X-X
"Hey, Hoki, what was there?" Another shinobi questioned.
"Hello?" He tried again. But, to his dismay, no answer came.
"Are you al-." Before the sentence could be completed, there was a senbon passing through his neck, in a rather familiar fashion. All the other guards surrounding the beast were given similar deaths.
X-X
"Get to your work, Deidara." Sasori stated.
"Hai hai." Deidara said and took into the air.
Holding a lot of clay structures, he threw them all down, on Shukaku. Curious about this new substance falling on him, the one tailed beast tilted his gigantic head. "What is this?" He questioned in a deep voice, trying to take hold of the substance falling on him.
"Art is an explosion." Deidara said, causing all the clay to blast. The knockback effect of the clay at such close proximity caused even the one tailed beast to fall on it's rear. Seeing the opportunity and grabbing the chance, Deidara jumped down from his bird, straight towards the downed beast, seal in hand.
"Wind Style: Wind Bullet." The tailed beast exclaimed, sensing the danger. As the large wind bullets were launched at Deidara, he had to change his trajectory. Summoning his clay bird again, he took into air once more.
Now, fully aware of the danger, Shukaku summoned a large blob of sand to do his bidding. The sand shot off towards Deidara, capturing him fully. "Sand coffin." Shukaku said, willing the sand to squeeze him to death. It did squeeze, but no blood came out. Regardless, a large explosion did come out.
Looking around for his enemy, The one tailed beast was not expecting someone to fall on his head. So, when Deidara did, he was caught off guard. Slapping the seal on the beast's head, Deidara took a breath of relief. Now, he could just carry it off.
X-X
"I am off, my man Sasori." Deidara said, cheerfully. The one tailed beast being dragged by two clay birds.
But, before Sasori could reply, he had to dodge a purple blur.
"Back up?" Sasori questioned, flipping back to a comfortable distance.
"Hmm, maybe. Who knows?" Naruto said. "Well, conversations apart, I have a tailed beast to rescue. So, can you let me be?" Naruto questioned.
"No can do. You are Naruto Uzumaki, jinchuriki of the nine tailed beast, are you not?" Sasori questioned.
"Maybe, who knows?" Naruto replied.
"Well then, it looks like we are getting two in one day." Sasori said, Flipping backwards and hunching forward in an awkward stance.
Wanting to test his opponent's speed, Naruto released a barrage of kunai towards the awkwardly hunched shinobi. To his astonishment, Sasori did not dodge. The kunai graced his cloak and tear through it, causing it to fall off of his body. And well, now Sasori's posture made sense. He was crouching on all fours, a metal tail waving behind him, compartments visible on his face and body.
"You are one ugly human." Naruto said.
"At this point, I am hardly a human." Sasori replied. As he said that, his mouth opened to impossible proportions and a barrage of senbon launched through it.
Dodging the pointy weapons, Naruto caught one between his fingers. Analyzing the substance on top of the senbon while simultaneously dodging the senbon, Naruto concluded that they were coated in cobra venom. And yes, they were very deadly for the chakra system.
Deciding that the senbon shall not grace his body, Naruto flipped back and willed four chains from his back, rotating them to form a temporary shield to deflect all the senbon. Concluding that smashing him was the only buyable option, Naruto flickered towards his opponent. With chakra concentrated in the center tenketsu point of his palm, he made contact with his opponent.
And...BOOM. A large crater formed on the ground, shattering the body into millions of pieces. But, contrary to what he had thought, the match was not over yet. Through the shattered body, another body came out, dressed in a pitch black cloak, blue strings visible from his finger tips.
"Damn, who are you now?" Naruto questioned.
"I am the master, what you destroyed was just a puppet." Sasori said, dramatically pulling the cloak from his body. And well, the dramatic-ness was worth it, because, out came a young man, probably Naruto's age, with red hair and brown eyes.
"Well, since you have pushed me this far, I will show you a piece of my art that gave me actual struggle while collecting it." He said, un-scrolling the scroll in his hand. Once the content of the scroll was released, there stood a tall man, he had blue hair, yellow eyes and was dressed in a brown rag.
"The third Kazekage, Is he not?" Naruto questioned.
"He was the third, yes. But now, he is just an art in my collection." Sasori said, launching the puppet of the kazekage towards Naruto.
Seeing the puppet transform its arms into blades, Naruto flipped back to avoid getting poisoned. Only when Sasori thought that he was having an advantage and he could win the fight using the iron sand release of the Kazekage, purple, glowing chains burst out from the ground around the puppet of the Kazekage. And, before he could react, a purple ball of chakra formed over each chain in an instant and drilled into the body of the Kazekage. Once the smoke was settled, all that remained of the puppet Kazekage, was dust.
This angered Sasori a lot. And, if his stoic face could express any emotions, it would have been scowling right now.
"Do you understand what you have done? My flawless art which took years upon years to construct, and you destroyed it." Sasori said, unable to provide justice to his emotions due to his permanently stitched face.
"Did you expect cherry blossoms in a fight?" Naruto countered.
"Well, regardless, your body will be a worthy replacement for the loss you have caused." Sasori said.
With that said, Sasori started to remove his cloak. Slowly but surely revealing the horrendous things he had done to his body. The most visible were the segments on his chest, just like a puppet. The left side of his chest had a cylindrical structure embedded in it, his stomach was open, through which a metal wire had come out. From his back, two metal rods were peeking out, which further divided into blades.
Naruto could instantly feel the abundance of chakra in the cylindrical structure and the lack of chakra in his rest of the body. So, he had his target.
Without wasting any time, Sasori rose his hands, out of which two pipes peeked out. And, from them, fire started to spray.
"Earth Style: Earth wall." Naruto said, defending himself from the flames.
Ceasing the opportunity, Sasori sent the poison clad wire of his towards the earth wall to pierce through it. Sensing the wire approaching, he let it stab through the wall. Jumping over the wall, he grabbed the wire from one hand and pulled Sasori towards him. On his other hand, a small purple sphere of chakra formed, a tenth of the size of his original rasengan. But, it's size was not it's only uniqueness. From the small sphere, four, shuriken like blades, were protruding, generating a whistling sound. As soon as Sasori reached him, he slammed the ball of chakra into the left side of Sasori's chest and separated his head from his body at the same time, using his chains, of course.
"Wind Style: Mini Rasenshuriken." He said as he jumped back. And, as soon as he landed back, the small ball of chakra enlarged and engulfed the whole body of his enemy. Breaking him from every possible angle, never to be seen again.
Conforming that there were no more tricks and tired of using his sage mode to such an extent, he willed his purple chakra to sink down, tapping into his usual state. And, as soon as he was done with transforming back, Tsunade, followed by the Kazekage and her ANBU battalion arrived there.
"What happened?" Tsunade questioned.
"Sasori of the red sand engaged me in a fight, I managed to kill him." He said, raising the head he had separated to full view. "But, his partner managed to drag Shukaku away." He concluded.
"Well then, we need to follow him." The Kazekage butted in.
"Of course. He went down south." Naruto said.
X-X
"Sasori is no longer in the possession of the ring." An authoritative voice said.
"Is he dead then, Pain-sama?" Zetsu questioned.
"What happened, Deidara?" Pain questioned.
"Un, I don't know. He looked fine to me last I saw him." Deidara replied.
"Regardless, since you are the only one physically present there, you will escape now. We cannot afford to lose two of our ranks in just one day." Pain ordered.
"Whatever you say. I am off then, Un." Deidara said, preparing to leave.
"The rest of us will begin to extract the one tailed beast's chakra. Itachi, Kisame, the two of you will use the shape shifting technique to delay the rescue team." Pain ordered.
"Yeah." Kisame said and Itachi just nodded.
X-X
AN: I wrote the tailed beast in different pronouns. 'He/his' for when they are mentioned from their own perspective and 'it' when they are mentioned from the perspective of a human. This is because the tailed beasts acknowledge themselves as creatures with knowledge, while the shinobi think of them as just a mass of chakra.
I tried to write the Sasori vs Naruto battle in a bit more depth. Tell me how you like it. Drop your reviews and suggestions. Until next time!