Master Of Puppets (no, not the song)


Massive chakra dickflop.

Noun

A massive chakra dickflop (or 'chakra flex') is when a shinobi uses a powerful and often wide-area jutsu just to show off how big their chakra reserves are. At genin levels anything as simple as a great fireball can count as one, but when Kage are trying to intimidate armies of foreign ninja the feats can reach large building or even city level in magnitude.

Uses:

1: "Then Jiraiya just flexed his chakra and summoned a fucking five storey toad in the middle of the hidden village."

2: "And then Hashirama went 'true ten thousand hands' and made a giant fuckoff Buddha statue like, we get it, your chakra dick is really big-"

"Madara it's been three days. Chill."


"Just thought I'd mention, we don't have an antidote to his poison and by all accounts he puts that shit on everything." Kankuro warned. "We can't get hit. Once."

"I didn't plan to." Sasuke held up Raito, and his Sharingan flashed. Then he grinned. "Oh man, that was a good one. Did you feel that?"

Across from them, Sasori's tail flicked through the air. "Those eyes...very desirable. I'm curious as to how useful they'll be once you've been turned into my puppet." His eyes flicked to Kankuro. "You too. I've never tried to use puppet mastery through a puppet before."

"He turns people into puppets." Kankuro whispered. "It's really fucked up."

"Yeah, I caught onto that." Sasuke charged. Sasori once again attempted the senbon cannon, but Sasuke didn't even falter, batting everything in his way right out of it with his blade. The moment the flurry ended he sheathed it, and made hand seals. The chidori sprung to life in his palm. Sasori's tail spiked towards him, moving to skewer him where he stood, but Sasuke didn't stray from his path.

The small spider drone camouflaged on the his back did move though, jumping up towards the attacking limb.

Kankuro moved his fingers deftly, and the spider's chakra thread wound around the tail and tightened, restraining it just above Sasuke's head. The Uchiha continued unhindered, and blasted the chidori straight into Sasori. The wooden exterior exploded.

Splinters and shards went hurtling across the cave, landing in a mess some distance away.

"Well." Sasuke remarked. "I gotta say I thought that would take a bit bit more-Nope; nevermind he's still alive."

A figure rose up from the wreckage.

"That...wasn't too bad." Said a much younger voice. "I guess I'll have to take you both seriously."

"Wearing a puppet as armour...I should've thought of that." Kankuro muttered.

Standing up was a boy with red hair who didn't look much more than eighteen. "Do you know," he remarked with a smile, "I haven't had to use my real body in-"

"Is that a second Akatsuki cloak?"

"...years, what?"

Sasuke pointed. "Did you deadass get the Akatsuki to make you a second cloak for when you're pretending to be a puppet?"

"Only two members of the Akatsuki have ever known of my true appearance." Sasori boasted, before saying a little quieter, "I had to get the second cloak commissioned."

Sasuke snorted. "How much did it cost?"

"Like 40 ryo."

"That's not bad actually, where did you-"

Sasori drew a scroll from his back and it glowed, before revealing its contents with a puff of smoke.

Sasuke heard Kankuro swear, and then felt a series of small points on his back tense. His eyes widened as he was yanked backwards by chakra strings, and only had a moment to wonder what the hell Kankuro was doing before the ground he was previously stood upon was torn apart by blades.

A puppet with blue hair and spines protruding from its arms looked up at him.

"That's the third Kazekage." Kankuro hissed, as Sasuke landed beside him. "The one he assassinated? Yeah we're fucked."

Sasuke took in the sight, Sasori's easy smile. "I take it he was strong?"

"The strongest so far."

"Did he have spike arms?"

"No, he just-"

"Did he have arm-arms?"

"What do you mean arm-arms?"

"That!" Sasuke pointed.

The Third's puppet reached out, and one of its arms opened to reveal a set of seals, out from which appeared more arms that stretched out in a tsunami towards the two teenagers.

Kankuro whipped his arms out and two of his puppets charged forwards with their own blades, slicing at the wooden poles.

Sasuke jumped forwards to join them, but then backed up again as purple clouds began spewing from the arms. "Poison gas?" He snarled. "Really? Kankuro, do you have wind release?"

"No, damnit, where's Temari when you need her..." Kankuro unsealed another puppet and sent it in. "Leave this to me."

Inside the smoke, the puppets were engaged in a full on brawl.

The Kazekage puppet was lethal, stronger and faster than any of Kankuro's, but the younger puppeteer had it outnumbered, and his own machines had an impressive number of tricks and traps contained within them. Sasuke dimly remembered that wielding more than one puppet at a time was incredibly difficult, and gave his teammate an appraising look.

Kankuro was (understandably) not looking up, his body posture was hunched, his arms were held out to either side like he was reading air currents, and his fingers were twitching like an inane person. But apparently it was working.

"These puppets are good." Sasori praised, from across the cave. "Who made them?"

"I did." Kankuro growled.

"Really? What happened to the ones I left in Suna?"

"I destroyed them."

"You-" Sasori's face actually showed some emotion. "What about the man and the woman with red hair?"

"Those too."

The missing-nin's eyes narrowed. "Those were my parents."

"Shouldn't have turned them into robots." Kankuro didn't even flinch.

"O-ho-kay. You are very much going to die now." Sasori twitched, and his puppet's back opened.

A glimmering black fluid spilled out of the Third and whipped towards the other puppets, digging it's way into their mouths and joints. They stopped moving.

"Iron sand." Kankuro bit out, cutting chakra to the constructs and letting them collapse. "The puppets keep their owners' bloodline limits? That's bullshit."

Sasuke pat him on the shoulder, walking forwards. "Tag out. I got this."

More metal particulates appeared from the Third, forming into a large cube which it hurled straight at the two of them.

They dodged.

So it made another cube.

Sasuke found himself flinging himself around the cave to avoid all sorts of metal projectiles, from shuriken to giant blocks to spinning inverse pyramid things. Avoiding it got even harder when it sprouted metal wings (how do those help-) and began flying around the space. Wait for it wait for it wait for it...there!

The puppet turned the metal into tentacles like this was Konoha Ghoul and began flailing them at its opponents. Perfect. Sasuke charged up a lightning jutsu and waited. As a tendril swept for his legs, he sideflipped over it and blasted it with the technique, causing the electricity to conduct right through the metal and into the puppet itself. It made a horrible, far too human screeching noise, shuddering in place as it lost control of its wings and crashed to the floor. Sasori was quick to make it stab one of the tentacles into the earth as a ground wire, but not quick enough; one of Kankuro's puppets latched onto it and buried inside it, tearing it apart.

This immediately disintegrated all the metal constructs, including the one swinging for Sasuke, which left him free to bring his blade to bear on Sasori.

The Akatsuki jumped away, barely avoiding the sword, and all Sasuke was able to do was cut into his cloak, forcing him back against the wall. He sighed. "Forty ryo, asshole. Being a terrorist doesn't pay well, you know."

He unbuttoned the ruined cloak and threw it away.

Both of his opponents took a step back.

"What?" Smiled the human puppet. "You're not squeamish about nudity, are you?"


Temari awoke with a strangled gasp.

"She's up!" Called a black haired girl, hands glowing over the Suna girl's chest. "Calm down, breathe, Temari. You're safe."

Temari squinted upwards, trying to make the world stop spinning. "Haku? That you? What are you doing in...wait, where am I?"

"Everything went to shit." Haku summaried quite nicely. "Village got attacked, Gaara got kidnapped, you got poisoned."

"Gaara-"

Temari tried to sit up, and Haku calmly but firmly pushed her back down. "Easy. Your other brother and some of Konoha's finest are tracking him down now."

"Oh, she's awake?" An old lady leaned over Haku's shoulder. "Great! There was about a 30% chance that last dose would kill her."

"Chiyo." Somehow, despite her less than reassuring comments, the old lady had a comforting presence. Temari (more slowly, and Haku allowed it) sat up, rubbing her head. "Sasori."

"We know."

"Some blond guy on a bird."

"We know."

"So what are we doing about it?"

Haku sighed. "I told you, we sent-"

"Not them." Temari interrupted him. "What are we doing about it?"

Chiyo 'hmm'ed. "Well, we've now got the cure to Sasori's poison, assuming he hasn't changed it in the past two days. And your brother and his friends may well be in dire need of it."


Sasuke and Kabuto both backed up a few steps. Sasori was very obviously not a human being anymore. There was a hatch in his bare stomach, seams at all his joints, and just for effect he was putting on a creepy head tilt.

"You are two of four people alive who've seen me like this." He mused. "One other was Hyuuga Neji, not much you can hide from him, and the last was Orochimaru."

"You knew that guy?" Sasuke asked. "We've kinda got history with him and want to murder his ass."

"Oh of course." Sasori nodded understandingly. "One of my spies with him is meeting me at Tenchi bridge ten days from now."

Kabuto frowned. "You're just...telling us this?"

"Well we were supposed to assassinate him anyway." The puppet master shrugged. "If you manage to kill me, at least you'll go on to finish my job. Alternatively," He pointed his arms forwards. "If I kill you, there's no harm, is there?"

"Oh, thanks, how reasona-"

Flames erupted from his palms.

Sasuke countered with a great fireball, the two jutsu clashing in the middle of the cave, and backed up until Kankuro used his threads to pull up some large rocks to use as cover.

Sasuke called across to him. "Do you have water rel-"

"I'm a puppet master! I don't 'have nature transformations'!"

The flames cut out, and Sasuke jumped across to Kankuro's location, throwing a kunai. The flames immediately restarted, melting the kunai before it could even get halfway.

"Can we use your puppets as cover?" Sasuke tried.

"They're made of wood!"

"Fair enough...alright, new plan, we're gonna move this rock forwards until-"

The fire cut out, before being immediately followed by a jet of pressurised water that split the rock in two, and Sasuke was forced to grab Kankuro by his lapels and tug him away from it while he summoned more of his seeing-eye puppets. The water jets swept through the air like instadeath lasers, cutting holes in just about everything, but Sasori had made the mistake of using another attack that conducted electricity.

Sasuke pulled Raito and held it up, splitting the jet in two, and channeled lightning chakra into the blade. The electricity immediately conducted back across through the water and into Sasori's puppet body. He jerked, and the water cut off, and Sasuke immediately sprinted straight for him, sword pointed at the incredibly conspicuous thingy in his breast.

Without the Sharingan, he'd have been skewered.

The metal wire darted out of Sasori's chest, grounding him, and blades popped out of his shoulders and began spinning, and Sasuke had to stick his feet to the floor with chakra to arrest his momentum before-It was a Trick-His face came within inches of the blades, and Raito was knocked out of his hands and up into the air. Sasori pressed forwards, and Kankuro once again had to grab Sasuke with chakra threads to pull him out of danger.

"You think I've never had to go up against lightning release before?" Sasori chuckled.

"Thanks again." Sasuke offered his ally, eyes tracking the movements of the spinning blades. "If it's just one melee opponent, I can take him. Can you be ready to bail me if I can't get away?"

Kankuro nodded.

"I'd hate to interrupt your incredibly unsubtle planning, but..." The wires within Sasori's chest began spinning rapidly. "Allow me to completely interrupt that plan.

Red secret technique. Master of a hundred puppets."

"Oh shit." Sasuke gulped. "Kankuro! Massive chakra dickflop incoming!"

Sasori pulled another scroll from his back, but this one didn't simply conjure one puppet. It made, well, have a guess how many puppets the 'master of 100 puppets' jutsu creates.

"How many can you control?" Sasuke whispered.

"Four." Kankuro whispered back.

"Cmon, dude-"

"Oh fuck you!"

Sasori gestured, and the puppets flew in.


"Get him!"

"Vengeance for Gaara!"

"Blood for the blood god!"

"Skulls for the iron throne!"

"Will you two both calm down please?"

Sakura, Naruto realised, wasn't so bad to be around after all. Sure, when he'd essentially functioned as a blocker between her and Sasuke she'd been a massive pain, but now he was starting to appreciate her viciously witty streak.

Or maybe they were just bonding over their desire to hunt down and beat up the Gaara-Killing-Clay-Throwing-Piece-Of-Shit currently flying off on a bird.

Naruto squinted at the fleeing Akatsuki, just out of range and slowly (now he had some wind to work with) pulling away from them.

"Sakura!" He shouted. "Throw me!"

She looked across at him, understood, and grinned.

They locked forearms, Sakura planted her feet on a branch, and yote Naruto up above tree level. He bled momentum fast, but it got him close enough to launch a set of adamantine chains to wrap around the bird's tail.

It screeched, Naruto fell, he had a flash of deja-vu, and then he braced as his legs crashed back into the tree trunks.

After a few resounding crashes, he was able to stick himself to a tree without destroying it and keep the bird still, albeit flapping wildly in one spot. That was when Sakura stepped on Naruto's face. "Hey!"

She ignored him, sprinting straight up his chains (he realised, impressed, that she'd have to be balancing entirely without any tree-walking techniques) chasing straight for the struggling bird. Deidara quickly span in place, manifesting clay in his hands, but Sakura didn't even bother to reach him, launching a chakra enhanced punch that smashed the bird apart, then grabbing Gaara's body as it fell. Deidara angrily hurled one of the blobs at her, but before it could land she disappeared to be replaced with a grinning Naruto clone.

The explosion lit up the sky.

A few moments later, the three Konoha-nin landed in a clearing, where Deidara was busy brushing clay debris off his clothes.

"Alright." Deidara sighed. "You're all super fucking annoying."

"I know." Kakashi sighed.

"It's a gift." Naruto smiled, sweetly.

"Uh huh?" Deidara began spewing clay from some gross-ass mouth on his hand, forming some four legged animal in front of him. "Well then. If you wanna fight the guy that just killed the Kazekage, you step right up."

Kakashi and Sakura immediately stepped right up, but Naruto held out a hand to forestall them. Hey Kyuubi? He asked, inside his head.

What? Came a bored voice.

Gimme power.

No.

Please?

I'm not stooping to give you my power so you can fight some little blond crossdresser.

Oh, alright, fine, I just thought...

...what?

This guy beat the One tails jinchurikki in a fight. If we beat him...

I already know I'm stronger than Shukaku.

Me too. But won't it be fun to rub his face in it?

...Heh. Go.

"Guys?" Naruto said aloud. "You might want to stand back."

His eyes flashed red. A glowing, bubbling crimson aura burst into existence around him, forming two ears above his head and one long tail out his back.

"I'll take care of this one." Said the nine tails jinchurikki, charging forwards.


"This-" whoomph " technique is-" crash "So-" boom "BULLSHIT!"

On the plus side, Sasuke found that his great fireball technique was very effective against Sasori's wooden ass puppets. On the minus side; there were one-hundred of them. His Sharingan was darting about like nobody's business trying to keep track of them all and his only consolation was that only so many could try and ram their weapons down his throat at once. Kankuro was doing equally horribly, the ground around him was littered with destroyed puppets as his active four formed a defensive perimeter around him and tried desperately to keep him safe.

Crap, what do I have. Fire jutsu? Insufficient. Chidori? Good against Sasori but I can't reach him. The swords? Most of them are just swords, they won't-

A-ha.

He battled his way over until he was side by side with Kankuro.

"I have a plan!" He shouted. "Maybe!"

"What?" Kankuro yelled back, making an impressive attempt to keep track of everything without any ocular powers (or, in fact, eyes.)

Sasuke reached for his left bracer where seven seals (two currently blacked out) resided on the inside leather. He tapped one specifically, and through a burst of smoke drew out a thin, blade sized needle with a long coil of wire attached to one end.

"What is that?" Kankuro asked, seeing it with one of his puppets.

"Nuibari!" Sasuke replied. "One of the seven-"

"Why does it help?"

Not bothered to explain, Sasuke used a genjutsu to shove the information into Kankuro's head.

"...Oh. That...might work."

"Yeah! Hold this!" Sasuke threw the wire coil into Kankuro's hands and ran. The first puppet he encountered, he speared the blade straight through its chest. The piercing attack had no effect on the puppet, but Sasuke ignored that entirely, stepping out from behind it to launch the needle against the next puppet. And the next. And the next. The thin wire glinted.

Nuibari was perhaps the weirdest of the seven swords of the mist, and that included the one-that-was-really-an-axe and the one-that-exploded-when-you-swung-it. The point of it, apparently, was that you impaled some people with it, and then channelled your chakra into the wire to manipulate their corpses and make some pretty patterns. Which sounded absolutely stupid. It was only after visiting Suna that he'd had an idea about what the sword's original purpose might have been.

After all, Hidden Mist must have had some puppet masters, right?

Kankuro, letting loose more and more wire as Sasuke continued his stabbing spree, gave it a little tug. The puppets moved.

He tugged it again. The puppets moved once more. He grinned. "Mist, you sly bastards. It's a puppet-stealer." he dropped all control of his own contraptions, grabbed the wire with both hands, and poured his chakra into it.

Across the room, Sasori (previously sat on a rock picking his nose) jumped up in surprise as a small contingent of his puppets began disobeying his commands. He checked that, yes, the chakra strings were intact and functioning, but nonetheless ten of the remaining puppets had turned on their brethren. Then eleven, then twelve-

"What are you doing?" He snarled, looking across at the duo.

"You broke my toys." Kankuro fired back. "So now? I'm playing with yours."

Sasori glowered.

"That was another good one-liner we are killing it today-" Sasuke called out, continuing his rampant 'hacking' of Sasori's combatants, as the number of puppets on either side began to even out. Not to mention Kankuro was becoming more comfortable wielding his end of Nuibari, and the fights were becoming closer deals.

The air was filled with the sound of clashing blades, smashing wood and mechanical rending noises.

Sasori, clearly unhappy with the proceedings, made to join the fray. His central wire extended out like a grappling hook, clamping down onto one of the stolen puppets, and he accelerated towards it.

Sasuke realised the problem; Sasori only had to sever the wire in one place to cut the effects entirely.

Midair, he jumped off his latest victim, gauged distances with his Sharingan, threw his sword into the air and spun, kicking it as hard as he could over his own head.

Just as Sasori's spinning blades moved towards the wire, Nuibari penetrated straight through his stomach and out the other side.

Sasori's eyes widened in surprise.

Then Kankuro caught the sword, and holding both ends tugged, sharply.

The puppet-man froze in midair.

That was when everything happened very quickly.

Kankuro threaded his end of the wire through the needle again and pulled, and the wire's long loop tightened. Fast. Over thirty puppets were all tugged violently inwards, including Sasori himself, as the circle grew tighter and tighter. All were forced into a tight bundle right in front of Kankuro, just as Sasuke fell from the sky with a loud shout and a Chidori trailing from his lead arm, and crashed down onto Sasori's body.

There was a massive flash of light, as some of the closer puppets were vaporised entirely, and lightning chakra tore all the surrounding ones to threads. The light was almost enough to keep Sasuke from noticing the strange cylinder, pulsing with chakra, that flew relatively unharmed from the wreckage.

Almost.

Oh no you don't- "Amateras-hngh!"

Threads wrapped around Sasuke's head and jerked it downwards, pulling his focal point off the core and forcing the black flames to burst into existence on the floor a few steps away.

He can use the threads even as a-that's not fair!

Sasuke didn't see much other than the floor, but he felt the puppet wreckage he'd landed in move at Sasori's command, making dozens of parts tighten around his body and put him in a complete bind, then force him to a kneel on the stone ground.

He heard swearing and shouting from Kankuro, undergoing the same treatment, and he heard a clunk as, presumably, Sasori's core fit into a new puppet.

"That." Said the puppetmaster's voice from behind him. "Was exceedingly close."

"I know this is a bit rich coming from me." Sasuke recited. "But your powers are bullshit."

"Oh it is rich." There was a flash of a foot in Sasuke's peripheral as Sasori walked over to inspect the Amaterasu. "You know, I never thought I'd be grateful to Orochimaru for spending so long going on and on about the Leaf's dojutsu. Rule one, he said; never let the Uchiha look at you."

The strings tightened, Sasuke felt bloodflow to his brain begin to slow.

"Tell me, Uchiha." (Sasuke made sure to pinpoint exactly where Sasori's voice was coming from.) "How does it feel to have your precious eyesight rendered useless?"

"I-" Sasuke coughed. "I'd have thought you'd have realised by now. Just because someone can't see..." his right eye shifted pattern, "doesn't mean they can't kill you.

Blaze release; Kagutsuchi."

The Amaterasu he'd lit upon the ground rushed across it, and was upon Sasori in an instant, and the Akatsuki let out a blood-curdling shriek as his form was engulfed in black flames.

Almost immediately he lost control over his threads, and Sasuke was released from the cage of puppet parts, which only resulted in him flopping ungracefully to the floor.


Kabuto blinked, as the mind control was released. "Yo, holy shit."


Sasuke turned his head, eyes bleeding, to look the rapidly melting metal scrap that used to be an S-rank ninja. "I guess you could say the puppeteer...uh, fire...dammit, I was doing so good on the action hero lines."

There was a rough grip on his shoulder, and Kankuro pulled him to his feet. "I'm sure you can be forgiven, just this once." He'd pulled out another puppet to see with, and it was looking worriedly at Sasori's remains. "Mind telling me what the hell that was?"

"Blaze release." Sasuke stretched, closing his eyes against the blinding headache. "My personal and incredibly painful nature transformation."

"There's no such thing as blaze release."

"Well technically it's just really good fire release, but do you really wanna debate me on it?"

Sasori's corpse bubbled slightly. Kankuro looked to it, then back at Sasuke. "No."

"Precisely. C'mon, lets find my swords and get on after the others."


With a loud boom, Deidara crashed into the ground.

Naruto landed perfectly calmly in front of him, brushing some lint off his shoulder. In his left hand, he casually hefted one of Deidara's arms, sniffed it, then chucked it to one side.

Around them was a scene of...middling to large devastation. Trees had been uprooted, foot-deep claw marks were etched into the ground, explosion craters peppered the area. Kakashi and Sakura were stood a few metres back, staring at their teammate with just a little fear in their eyes.

Deidara stood up, clutching his stump arm and glaring at them. "Well damn. That's why they were saving the nine-tails for Pain."

"That was one tail of power." Naruto grinned. "Do you want all nine?"

Can we make him fight all nine?

No.

You're no fun.

The chakra cloak dispersed from around Naruto's form, and he stretched as his two teammates came to stand beside him.

"Heh. No thanks. But if I'm going out, I'm sure as hell not doing it like a little bitch." Deidara shrugged off the tattered remnants of his cloak and put his hand on the mouth on his chest. "This is a little something I like to call my 'suicide bomb' technique. Ten guesses what it does."

Naruto tilted his head. "...Does it blow you-"

"Yeah it blows me up." Deidara started glowing, grinning at them. "Don't bother trying to run. This is gonna destroy the whole damn forest."

"Crap." Sakura summarised. "What do we do?"

"I got nothing." Admitted Naruto.

"I could stop him." Kakashi mentioned.

"What?" The two chunin rounded on him. "That's great! Do it!"

Kakashi sighed. "I dunno."

There was a pause.

"Sorry what?" Naruto repeated.

"I mean," Kakashi looked down dejectedly, "It just feels like you and Sasuke haven't been appreciating me very much recently. You've really hurt my feelings and I don't know if I'm up to this."

"You're-" Naruto looked between him and Deidara, the latter of which was making a gradually more high pitched humming noise. "You're holding us all hostage because we hurt your ego?"

"Does he do stuff like this often?" Sakura asked.

"All the time." Naruto sighed. "For the...Kakashi-sensei, you're an amazing ninja who's very strong and talented."

"And attractive?" Kakashi looked up hopefully.

"And attractive." Naruto growled. "And intelligent and you have great taste in masks. Now save us from the exploding person! Please?"

"See that's more like it." Kakashi walked forwards and lifted his headband. "Hey Deidara. Knock knock."

Five seconds from exploding, the Akatsuki raised an eyebrow. "Who's there?"

"Kamuiy."

"Kamuiy wh-"

There was a muffled boom.


Countries away, Tobi looked up into the middle distance.

"Something wrong?" Asked Neji, playing cards with Hidan.

Tobi didn't say anything for a long time. Then, heavily, "Someone blew up my sandcastle."

"The one in the different dimension you keep telling us you have?" Hidan checked.

"Ye that one."

"Shame."

They went back to doing whatever they had been doing.


Always did wonder what Nuibari was supposed to do. This is all massively headcannon, but I thought it would be a fun inclusion.

Sasori is defeated! Sasuke is making friends, Temari isn't dead (Shia Surprise!) and Naruto is flexing his Kyuubi muscles. Again, guys, he is really strong, but things are gonna get shaken up as we progress.

Next week, the fallout of the attack.