Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. That dream died the moment that Kishimoto made Naruto… But like a phoenix, like a hard-ass pterodactyl I rise from the ashes and tears of my broken dreams to bring you more awesome fanficcy goodness! Hooray to the soon to be 2000+! God I'm so fucking awesome! Who updates consecutive stories like me?
Seriously? I want to know.
People ask me why I'm so proud/cocky/brash. And I say; if you don't believe in yourself then who the hell else is going to believe in you?
Chapter 24: Fight With Tools
(Sai vs. Deidara)
Deidara watched Sai come ever closer atop his ink bird construct, 'He's much faster and more reflexive this time. The last time it was like he was fighting in slow motion.' Sai had been flying circles around Deidara for the longest time. Having expected to blast Sai out of the sky much like the first go around, Deidara had pumped a lot of exploding clay into the attack on Sai's ink mist feint. He even had to sacrifice one of his birds and an entire clay clone in an effort to defeat the boy, but he was still hanging around.
Sai on the other hand felt that he needed to invest in bringing more ink in case of emergencies. He had been using ink since he first found Naruto on Nami no Kuni, he never thought he would be fighting a member of Akatsuki, and he couldn't borrow any ink from Naruto due to Naruto losing all of his as well as his seal paper to the whirlpool. He was running out as well, but unlike Deidara once he ran out of his long range specialty he still had a weapon on his back to use up close. At this point it was a matter of outlasting him and getting close again. From there Sai had to be able to finish.
Getting sick of fighting in the air, as he felt that it left Sai with something of an advantage due to his lighter airborne creation, Deidara started directing the height of the fight lower and lower. A mid-air dogfight was looking less and less appealing when Sai pulled up right on his tail.
Meanwhile, Sai was wondering how he should go about attacking Deidara from his current position. Ideally he would be able to draw something to shoot him down, but Deidara apparently had a propensity to counter his attacks in a rather explosive manner, and if he did it from this range, Sai would be caught in the explosion. Attacking with his blade in close was also not very appealing. Deidara was slippery and he could detonate the bird he was flying on at any time. They were too close to the ground and moving too fast for Sai to bail out and freefall to escape again.
When Deidara looked back at Sai with a knowing smirk, it put him on high alert, and that feeling was well founded when Deidara proceeded to jump off of his bird's back before tucking and rolling along the ground. Sai's eyes widened as the bird came to a dead stop and began to glow. Crossing his arms in front of his face as some method of defense, Sai ended up being thrown off of his ride violently by the force of the explosion, taking nasty burn wounds across his arms and torso as well as the sheer impact damage of falling along the ground.
Sai rolled onto his belly and crawled along the ground as the blood from a gash on his head soaked into his hitae-ate and down his face, 'This really isn't good.'
XxX
(Naruto vs. Sasori)
Naruto looked back as Sasori emerged from the wreckage of Hiruko, his puppet armor. He was still picking the pieces of the formidable tool off of himself and grumbling. Naruto was surprised at hearing a youthful voice doing the griping. This guy had to be way over thirty.
He looked down at the blades on his forearms and outside legs, 'It really sucks that this is the only way that I can channel elemental chakra to the blade, but I have to say, after that first attack I can't complain too much.'
Sai's message to him was taken verbatim from Hamako about his weapon. The sword was a special construct for whoever was the leader of the village at the time. The final ceremony towards finding a new leader was finding someone that could find their way to exert their will over the blade and bend it to their will. Throughout the existence of the sword the Sen'nenki no Ken was never the same thing twice, therefore the gauntlets were Naruto's own creation and the physical manifestation of his spirit. Hamako didn't know any techniques with the weapon since every listed user had their own attacks to fit their specialized release form, so Naruto was coming up with his own on the fly.
The one thing he could say though, was that he found it far easier to sharpen his chakra and run it through the blades, as if they were just an extension of his body and his chakra was still flowing through him. Even using the Kyuubi's chakra with the Sen'nen Kougake felt easier, he felt no heightened bloodlust at all, and it was clear that the Kyuubi's chakra was circulating through the blades as well due to the fact that they had a red sheen to them. Oh well, he would get used to them on the fly, because right now he still had a fight to win.
Sasori quickly freed himself from Hiruko and looked at Naruto. The man looked like a teenager. He had red-hair and a lazy expression. He also had the usual Akatsuki cloak that Naruto figured he would have to get used to seeing on everyone that came for his head after this.
Naruto raised an eyebrow in confusion, "You sounded way older inside that stupid puppet."
Sasori gave Naruto a cool glance, "So I've been told." A puff of smoke surrounded him, "So I guess that it's time for me to get serious." When it cleared there was a puppet with spiky, long, black hair in a black cloak, "Allow me to introduce you to my favorite puppet. The Sandaime Kazekage."
Naruto raised an eyebrow, "So you made a puppet in the image of the Sandaime Kazekage? Why?"
Sasori laughed, "No, this is the Sandaime Kazekage. I defeated him in battle and claimed his body as my puppet."
It took a moment for Naruto to really understand what he had just been told and it hit him like a sack of bricks, "So you killed a kage and turned him into a puppet? I know a puppeteer, those things he has are elaborate… and not made of people. You made a human being into a puppet… I'm not even going to ask you to go into detail about how you managed to do that."
Sasori nodded, "Good, because sitting here and explaining it to someone that won't be conscious for too much longer would be a waste of everyone's time." With that, he sent the Kazekage at Naruto.
"Let's do this then." Naruto rushed out at the puppet, "I'll break this one too!" Naruto went through the motions for his buzzsaw-esque attack that he had used to destroy Hiruko, "Hyakunen Tsukkakaru (Century Rush)!"
A motion of Sasori's fingers opened the mouth of the Kazekage as an iron powder began to file out. It then took the form of a solid iron wall directly in front of them both. Naruto's attack hit the iron barrier and the two metal forces made a horrible grinding noise before bouncing off.
Naruto adjusted to his dizziness and stared at the wall, growling at the barrier, "Well that's just fantastic." Naruto made a cross seal and formed a dozen Kage Bunshin, "Make that doll playing freak pay." The clones rushed in while Naruto crouched and observed from a distance. They all went around or jumped over the iron wall to attack Sasori. His body twitched as the memories of how they were violently dispelled came to him. He simply stood still and crouched on all fours on the ground, priming himself for an opening to attack.
The wall of iron collapsed back into powder before shooting at Naruto rapidly, "Satetsu Shigure (Iron Sand Drizzle)."
"Fuck!" Naruto generated his one-tail cloak of chakra and cut out in a hasty retreat away from the almost microscopic iron projectiles. He was shocked to see that they had such a wide range of spread 'How the hell is that even happening?' He cut back to avoid getting overtaken by the small iron pellets and rushed Sasori and his Kazekage puppet as he generated a Rasengan in his right hand and drew it back to attack.
Looking closely at Sasori and the Sandaime Kazekage puppet, Naruto saw that his clones were able to get close enough to force a short conflict, as the cloak of the Kazekage was somewhat shredded revealing a shut chest compartment. As he bared closer to the puppet user and his prized tool his senses of danger went off due to the fact that Sasori wasn't moving, he wasn't even making an effort to get the Kazekage in his way to run interference. Naruto aborted his attack just in time to see the mass amounts of iron particles stop in front of Sasori and his puppet.
The chest compartment was wide open as a strange glow emitted from it. It had to be some kind of strange control thing for the sand, as it wasn't visible until it came close enough to almost hit Sasori. That needed to go if he was ever going to get any misdirection on Sasori. He had to put yet another thought aside for later as Sasori pressed his advantage.
"Senju Soubu (Thousand Hands Manipulation Military Art)!" A series of compartments opened up in the left hand of the Kazekage puppet with a series of summoning seals in them. From the seals came an obscene amount of puppet arms that expanded out at Naruto.
They crashed directly in front of him as he dodged the move. Naruto prepared his body to cut right through them before he got another nasty surprise from Sasori. After detaching from the Kazekage, the arms shot poison gas that Naruto was caught off guard by. He quickly emerged from the cloud and went through with his plan to utterly eradicate the puppet arms with extreme prejudice, using his modified taijutsu to dice them up almost effortlessly, turning them into useless chunks of wood.
His vision started to swim as he set himself back into a stance to battle with Sasori. He stopped and glared at Sasori who took the time to speak to him, "Do you feel it yet? The paralyzing effects of my poison?"
Naruto frowned, 'So that's what that was? Kyuubi, systems purge please.' Naruto cringed at the feeling of Kyuubi running his chakra through his organs and nerves to clean his system before smirking at Sasori, "Yep. Felt it. It's not really that bad. It's like a mixture of tons of stuff I've already had before. You deal with it once, you can deal with it all at once. Your poison is useless."
For not showing it, this significantly caught Sasori off guard. He had somewhat been banking on his poison to subdue Naruto. It was meant to paralyze Naruto and slowly kill him over the length of three days. How else was he going to capture and transport Naruto all the way to a point where he could have his biju extracted without paralyzing him? He would wake up and break away. But now that his poison proved to be ineffective he had to come up with a new way to keep Naruto down without killing him. Naruto on the other hand, didn't have such restrictions, and immediately proved that to Sasori with his next move.
Naruto pulled out a handful of shuriken and layered them with wind chakra before throwing it at Sasori. The puppeteer called forth another iron wall to block for him but Naruto ran through a series of hand-seals, "Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" The sheer raw amount of shuriken made by the replication technique stuck into as well as went over the iron wall where Naruto then made his next move, flying through more hand-seals, "Raiton: Kaminari Shuriken (Lightning Release: Lightning Shuriken)!"
The shuriken above Sasori's head began to rain down a torrent of electricity that forced him to flee alongside his puppet. A few jolts actually hit the Kazekage puppet and gave Sasori a significant shock himself as the electricity coursed through his body. The smell of the burnt hair and flesh from the Kazekage wafted through the air. Sasori's eyes narrowed as he saw that the attack had disrupted his puppet's magnetic apparatus. It was slowly losing its power and would soon be useless and deactivated.
Naruto grinned at Sasori, "You aren't going to beat me with a lucky scratch Sasori. You need to actually finish me to claim victory, I wonder if you actually have anything capable of doing that. How did you even take this village down anyway?"
"This village became too dependent on its fuuinjutsu." Sasori started, "Everything that made this village unique and powerful was based on its sealing techniques. From the genjutsu seal they had at the perimeter of the forest surrounding it that would force people to wander about, to the defenses set up around major choke points in the village. After being able to negate that advantage and engage them personally I found that they weren't as skilled as many believe they were."
Naruto didn't accept that answer, there were still too many things to consider on that front, "You're just one man, no matter how you cut it. To take on the bulk of an entire military force seems beyond you in a straight fight. I suppose I'll get the answer from you before I finish you off for good."
Sasori simply smirked, "Finish me off for good? Just try it." The red-haired puppeteer had the Kazekage make use of its still active magnetic part and launch two masses of iron sand at Naruto. As he made to dodge, Sasori simply spoke the name of his attack calmly and coolly, "Satetsu Kaihou (Iron Sand World Order)."
XxX
(Sai vs. Deidara)
Sai eventually picked himself up off of the ground, his head swimming due to the concussive force of the blast and the impact of his hitting the ground. He idly wondered why Deidara hadn't arrived to finish him off. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth in the this case, he pulled out his tipless tanto and began slowly stalking the ruins for a sign of Deidara. He fell off of his ride as well, even if it was intentional, there was no way that he was at one-hundred percent himself after that.
He limped along the area looking for Deidara. Why was that bastard so good at covering his tracks? He and Naruto never even saw him every time he attacked until it was too-
BOOM
-late.
Sai found himself rocked by an explosion that came from under him when he placed a foot on the rubble that made up the bulk of Uzushiogakure. Sai's sandal and pant leg on his right leg were destroyed. Stepping on a landmine, so that's what Deidara had been doing for so long. Looking at the burns on his leg, Sai was extremely grateful that Deidara's explosives didn't have any shrapnel in them.
Walking was now a chore, and running? He didn't even want to think about how he would run for the time being. At this point, his best bet was holding out until he could get some assistance in the form of Naruto, but seeing as how Naruto had his own opponent, he needed to figure out his own way to win or at the very least survive.
For the time being all he could do was take a rest and hide. He was next to worthless the way he was, and trying to move now would probably make things worse than they already were. Sai ran through his supplies and checked his stuff. He still had his tanto that he had placed onto his back once more, he had his scroll, he had enough ink to hopefully carry him through the rest of the fight, he had his still had a holster full of kunai and a pouch of shuriken, no explosive notes, much like Naruto, all of his were ruined when they went into the whirlpool, he also had gauze. That was what he needed right now, something to cover his wounds to keep them from getting infected while he was running around the battlefield.
Wrapping his torso, his now exposed arms, and his wounded leg, he let himself settle for a moment. He pulled up his scroll and drew up some ink mice to search for Deidara in the meantime so he could at least perhaps get the drop on him once he felt well enough to move before a subtle clicking noise alerted him to his left. Turning his head, he saw a clay insect sculpture with its eyes glowing red. Sai immediately propelled himself out of his area of hiding before he found himself caught in another explosion. As he looked around he saw a dozen of the insect sculptures crawling his way. Suicide sentries sent out by Deidara, but where was the man himself? That was what Sai needed to know right now.
In the meantime he drew out his shuriken and tried hitting the explosives before they could get any closer. As they connected with them, the blasts signified that he had finished them off, but now it was abundantly clear where he was and he could be picked off at any time by Deidara.
This was made abundantly clear when Sai looked up and saw clay birds circling overhead. As they came careening down at him to finish him in a suicide divebomb he heard explosions come from behind him before a massive shadow covered him with its stone frame, covering him from damage as the blasts rocked his apparently mobile cover.
"That was close Sai-san."
Sai turned to see Hamako right next to him with a small smile on her face at being able to reach him to assist, "Hamako-san, what are you doing? Senpai gave me orders to make sure you were out of harm's way."
Hamako frowned as even more explosions sounded out around them, "Well that's not fair to you two is it? Doing all of the fighting alone like that. And even more so to me, what am I supposed to do if you two are killed here? I don't know anything or anyone in this time, how am I supposed to get along? If that's the way things are going to go I might as well fight too and risk myself as well."
Sai winced somewhat as he was beginning to feel his injuries, the adrenaline from the hiding and searching finally wearing off, "You aren't a shinobi Hamako-san. You couldn't help either myself or Naruto-senpai in combat."
Hamako gave him a deadpan look, "Really? Because what do you think is shielding you right now? Your iron will to live?"
Sai sweatdropped with an expressionless face, "Random misplaced and sturdy debris?"
Hamako kept her look as the explosions stopped, "Komainu-kun, let's get Sai-san moving again. He's no good to us if he can't even dodge, we have to be the ones to move for him."
'The statue?' Was what Sai was thinking, 'How is a statue going to move for me? I'd be better off moving on my own feet than relying on that massive thing to get me around safely.' He didn't have time to dispute with her however, as the stone cover that had been his saving grace just moments ago had picked up both him and Hamako and set them on adjacent shoulders before stomping along the battlefield.
Sai looked at Hamako who was smiling at being able to seemingly help, "This is going to hurt me more than help me. I can't use chakra on this statue remember? It absorbs any that come into contact with it."
Hamako grinned and patted the side of Komainu's head, "Oh, that. I turned that off."
Sai raised an eyebrow, "You can do that?"
Hamako scoffed, "How many times do I have to tell you and Naruto-sama? I was the one that animated Komainu-kun, I can control his seal array. I just turned that part off so that you could fight from here. I can't do it myself so you have to fight for me Sai-san."
Sai nodded and watched as Komainu stomped over the battlefield like a minesweeper, triggering Deidara's hidden bombs and disposing of them safely from the two on his shoulders. Two black mice scuttled up Komainu and stopped on Sai's legs before turning to words for him, "Hamako-san, we need to head northwest towards the central towers. Deidara is somewhere in that area."
Hamako nodded, "You heard him Komainu. Take us to the citadel."
XxX
(Naruto vs. Sasori)
"This is total bullshit!" Naruto yelled as he dodged ever expanding branches of metal from running him through. Sasori's last jutsu, Satetsu Kaihou, had forced an ever expanding forest of deadly iron branches that could keep branching off at any time, making it one massive pain for Naruto to dodge, as the increasing numbers of branches also meant more potential for him to be impaled by even more iron branches.
Naruto couldn't even anticipate the attacks due to the sporadic habit of the attack to break off and expand randomly, it quickly trapped him deeply inside. His entire reason for keeping in one piece thus far was the fact that he had extreme reflexes and senses from the Kyuubi's chakra in addition to the chakra cloak that the Kyuubi used as an early warning radar for danger, early warning as in a quarter of a second.
Naruto now stood in the middle of a forest of iron spikes that stretched out over a massive amount of space. For some reason all of that evading took it out of him. And the blades on his arms and legs began to feel heavier and heavier, like such weapons should feel as opposed to the light as air feeling that they had when he first activated them.
Naruto began panting, 'Kyuubi what's happening?'
"You are not very attentive towards your reserves are you? You couldn't feel the blades siphoning off your chakra?" The demon in question asked in a disbelieving fashion, "You didn't think that natural feeling of feeling your chakra flow through the gauntlets like another part of you was just a perk did you? It was steadily siphoning off your chakra to power the transformation."
'No I didn't feel it! I've never really run out of chakra before, not like this!' The gauntlets fell off of Naruto and turned back into his ninjato before he fell to his knees, his hand on the handle of the weapon, 'This is not the time for this… Give me more chakra.'
"*sigh* If you use my chakra as a glorified soldier pill you're going to be the walking dead after this fight is over, you know that right, especially since you're using it as a replacement for your own instead of just as a bolster?"
'Duh.' Naruto mentally rolled his eyes, as if Kyuubi could see it, 'Do I have a choice right now? Just keep the juice coming until I finish off this clown and link back up with Sai-kouhai and Hamako-chan.'
"You're going to be puking blood and pissing fire tonight boy… I'll be sure to laugh at that when it occurs." Kyuubi began to increase the flow of chakra to Naruto to get him to move.
Naruto sheathed the Sen'nenki no Ken on his back, not wanting to touch the blade for the time being after getting drained dry by it not a moment ago, 'Sasori, Sasori, Sasori… you missed your chance to finish me off you tenative bastard.' The Kazekage puppet began flying through the iron forest as Naruto felt his strength return to him. The left arm of the puppet was now a buzzsaw and the right had a blade extending from it.
Naruto began springing through the branches, playing a very dangerous game of cat and mouse with the puppet. With it trying to rip into him with its bladed weapons and Naruto trying to get a chance to destroy it and move along to Sasori himself. Naruto wasn't really worried about getting cut or stabbed, he was really trying to lure it in. He figured that since he could probably survive a stab wound from the puppet, especially now since he knew Sasori's poison couldn't beat him, once he destroyed this one, Sasori would have nothing left to fight him with. After all, Kankuro only had two puppets, so maybe it was a Suna puppeteer thing.
Feeling more and more spry and loose as more of the Kyuubi's chakra circulated through his body, Naruto took advantage of his boost and lashed out at the puppet with his chakra shroud tail. Naruto wrapped around it and pulled it in with a Rasengan forming in his hand. The red of the Kyuubi's chakra bled into the Rasengan, giving it a warped color. He proceeded to slam the jutsu into the body of the puppet, ripping it asunder and scattering its body along the ground.
Naruto walked up to the remains of the puppet and stomped on the head for good measure, crushing it under his foot, "Whoops. Sorry, I'm so clumsy with other people's tools. I guess that's why Kankuro never let me mess with his puppets when I was staying in his family's place."
Naruto saw a flash of red hair in the forest of twisted metal and immediately took off in pursuit. After a decent chase that eventually led them out of the iron jungle, Naruto closed the distance swiftly with his speed boosted and smirked as he bared down on Sasori, "Too slow!" Naruto shot out a claw of chakra that cut right through Sasori's arm as he passed him by.
Standing away with a bloodthirsty grin on his face at finally getting the chance to pick apart the puppet user himself he looked down at his hands to find that there was not a drop of blood on them. Looking back at Sasori he saw that he had torn off a good portion of his cloak and saw Sasori's arm coming back to his body, "Well that was potentially barbaric. Like I said earlier, it's a good thing I'm not exactly normal."
Now that he had a good look he could see that Sasori's arm was segmented, like a… puppet. Naruto sighed and pointed at him, "Okay, I was willing to accept the fact that you turned a kage into a puppet, because after watching it fight it seemed like a damn good idea, despite the fact that it's a human being and the idea seems utterly ludicrous and morbid, but this? How the hell can you even do that? Is that even physically possible?" The body of Sasori was that of a puppet.
He pulled off the rest of his cloak and showed his inhuman body. There were clear segments and compartments on his chest, stomach, and back. Even his eyes didn't look human anymore, open and wide like a puppet, "It's very possible seeing as how I did it. And there's nothing ludicrous about it. Why would I want my human body that has weakness, can feel pain, and would have eventually grown old and weak no matter what I would have done? I can have a body that I can upgrade at will, will never feel sickness, and is all around stronger than my human body could ever be. I have turned myself into the ultimate eternal art."
The right compartment of his chest opened as Sasori pulled a scroll from his back, "Now let me show you exactly what my superior body is capable of." Opening the scroll in a puff of smoke, many figures rose out, hovering above Sasori, "Aka Higi: Hyakki no Souen (Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets)!" Over one hundred puppets kept Naruto from Sasori as they all wore red cloaks and had their own weapons, "You wanted to know what took down the majority of this village's forces? This was the technique that did most of the work."
Naruto grit his teeth as he felt an influx of Kyuubi's chakra. His lips started to blacken as a second tail of chakra began forming behind him. As he spoke his voice sounded gruffer and more serious, "One against one hundred, I have to say Sasori, I'm disappointed. You do know what jinchuuriki like me are meant to be don't you?" Two bubbling tails of red chakra swished behind him, "Army killers… Always go with quality over quantity!" Naruto launched himself at the force of puppets.
Sasori's puppets came at Naruto to put this fight to rest once and for all, but as the boy drew close he vanished from immediate sight and began ripping through the puppets savagely with his bare hands. Blood flying through the air was a sign that Naruto was being cut by the weaponry wielded by the puppets, but the fact that he refrained from slowing down at the very least signified that these were shallow, and with him not being susceptible to Sasori's poison this wasn't nearly good enough to beat him.
All Sasori could do was maneuver the puppets around Naruto's path of destruction and cut him off from free range of movement. Eventually he was able to do just this, surrounding Naruto with a circle of puppets a dozen thick. Naruto had the top half of one of Sasori's puppets in his hand as he stared around himself, noting that he was surrounded with an amused smirk, and with his feral features this made it somewhat chilling, especially as his body was now clearly visible due to him having his shirt utterly torn asunder by the puppets with only the strap of his sheath being intact, his substantial amount of shallow wounds sizzling shut right in front of Sasori's eyes. "So this was your big plan when you came after me? Mob me with puppets and hope your poison stops me? Let me show you something that just might get the point across to you."
Naruto took the sword in the hand of the puppet he was holding and stabbed himself in the torso. Naruto pulled the blade out and watched his blood slide down the metal as it mixed with the poison that began running off of the weapon. He tossed them all aside as he looked at Sasori, "That was the best attack that your puppets were going to get with those weapons and it's not even going to make me stumble. You were the wrong person to come and fight me."
Naruto fell on all fours and began to build up air in his lungs. Sasori sent the puppets in to stab him all at once, no matter who he was, there was no way that he could shake off that kind of damage.
As they began to gather around him with their blades drawn to skewer him, Naruto let out a massive concussive roar that sent all of the remaining puppets flying away from him. All of those that were closest were broken apart by the raw power that Naruto's roar had pumped out at ground zero. The others were tossed aside haphazardly all over the place. Some flew off into the distance, others flew somewhere within the mass of iron sand and were shattered upon high speed contact with the branches.
Naruto picked the pieces of what was once his shirt off of his shoulders and chest as he faced down what was his last obstacle, Sasori himself. The puppet-bodied man showed no intimidation at facing down the demonically charged teen, "I'm not done yet. Though I have to say, for a chunin you happen to be a tougher run-down that previously perceived. Itachi said that you were able to survive against him the first time based off of pure misdirection and unconventional tactics."
Naruto chuckled in his gravelly voice, his vocal cords manipulated by the chakra running through him, "I've had almost an entire year to prepare since then. Itachi and Kisame actually matched up with me. You don't. Why you were sent to deal with me, I'll never know. And neither will you, since I'll just have to rip you apart just like I did with every other puppet you've thrown at me today."
"It won't be nearly as easy as you believe it will be." Sasori lifted his palms and revealed pipes that spewed intense flames from them at Naruto who moved aside and started working angles to get at Sasori properly. As he approached from the back left, poles emerged from the back of Sasori's hips with five blades attached that began spinning rapidly. Naruto diverted his attack to avoid getting pureed by the blades as Sasori took off at blinding speed to get some mobility going.
Naruto smirked, so now he wanted to move? He had been fighting the entire battle as stationary as he could and now he decides on dynamic movement once Naruto had it in him to see how many chunks he could tear Sasori into before he stopped functioning. He didn't know whether to be pissed off that Sasori could now move so quickly, or ecstatic that it wouldn't be that easy to pin him down and rip his head off.
Banking on the Kyuubi's ever growing presence in his person giving him these thoughts, Naruto began tearing across the ruined landscape in pursuit of his barely human foe.
XxX
(Sai and Hamako vs. Deidara)
The rising, towering metal structure off in the distance earlier didn't ease Hamako's worries about how Naruto was doing in his fight, but seeing as how they weren't currently being engaged by the man Naruto had been fighting they figured that he was still alive and kicking. Hamako had to admit, after seeing that, if she had remained with Naruto she would have been a liability. At least now he had a chance to only have to worry about himself. Besides, Sai seemed to require the aid after seeing how heavily he was bandaged and knowing that he didn't look like that when he dropped her off he must have been injured pretty badly to require that. They had themselves to worry about for the time being.
As they neared closer and closer to the triumvirate of towers that Naruto and Sai had found so much misery in on their first day in Uzu, they noticed that there were no more mines. Since they were getting closer to Deidara's position didn't that mean there should have been more of them, and yet Komainu hadn't run over any in quite a while.
The pale boy looked over at the silver haired girl who didn't seem frightened at all about heading off to fight, "Aren't you at least a little unnerved about fighting this person. He's been giving me and Naruto-senpai fits ever since he first showed up."
She turned to Sai, "Are you scared?"
Sai frowned, "I don't have feelings like that."
Hamako shook her head and started looking out at the path as they neared closer to the towers, "I'm not scared. I'm not even supposed to exist in this time apparently, I should have died with everyone else, but I didn't and now I'm here. Why would I be afraid of dying in a battle that I'm not even supposed to be alive to fight in the first place? As long as I can help you and Naruto-sama then I'm okay with this."
Sai's eyes narrowed as they now stood between two of the towers, with the other destroyed one on the other side of the clashing rivers that made the whirlpool that gave the village its name. He was around here somewhere. There was no reason for him to leave, he had the complete advantage here.
Deidara watched from his cover of rubble from across the river. Sai and some white haired girl were riding a statue, a giant walking statue! He couldn't have grinned any wider if Sai had painted a multicolored bullseye on his chest. He stuck out on that thing's shoulder like a sore thumb, and while he could see how it would have been useful when avoiding his sentries and land mines, now that he was here to actually take shots at Sai himself, it was naught but a hindrance, "If that's how this is going to go, then I can finish him without going through the rest of my clay, or even moving, un."
He rubbed his broken leg, jumping from a speeding bird in flight was not one of his most capital ideas. However the plus side, from the look of Sai, it certainly worked for him as he didn't really look much better off whatsoever. His hands spit out a wad of clay that he manipulated into three bird sculptures that he sent flying out at Sai and his newfound ally's pet statue.
Hamako saw the first one coming and pointed out at it, "Komainu-kun!" The statue swatted it out of the sky, in response it exploded on the arm of the golem. It was so close that Hamako could feel the heat from the blast on her entire body.
Sai saw that there were two more coming in from both sides of Komainu. Thinking fast, he moved over to the other shoulder and pulled Hamako off along with him just in time for the two birds to collide with its head, taking it out.
Hamako gasped as she saw her favorite creation collapse, its head crumbling and falling off as it fell backwards. She turned to Sai anxiously, "Where is he? Those last two came from nowhere and Komainu is gone. It took me so long to make him…"
Sai kept her head down and kept her from looking back as they crawled along the ground. Hamako was the most mobile of the two of them, and that was not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination, "Hamako-san, what can you do to help us here?"
Hamako turned to him and pulled out a small stack of blank seal notes and the miniscule amount of ink that Sai had given her back in the catacombs, "I may not be a shinobi, but if I can get close to him I can finish him myself."
Sai was skeptical of her chances to actually defeat Deidara, "You believe that you can win?"
Hamako grinned, "Do not underestimate the power of fuuinjutsu Sai-san." The sound of whirring drifted through the air, confusing both Sai and Hamako, "What on Earth is that?"
Sai looked up, thinking that they had somehow been found and saw a man with red hair flying through the air with the use of some strange appendage on his hips. He then saw a mass shrouded in red plow into the figure, sending it careening into the side of one of the towers, blasting a massive hole in the side of it. Due to the shape of the shroud surrounding the second one, Sai knew exactly who it was, "Hamako-san we need to get out of here."
Hamako was confused, "What was that? And why do we need to leave?"
Sai crawled along the ground again while covering her with his body, "That was Naruto-senpai fighting his opponent. And we need to leave because being anywhere near senpai when he uses his special chakra is a horrible idea."
"Special chakra?" Hamako asked innocently, now crawling on her own so that Sai didn't have to strain himself any further than he already had today, "Naruto-sama has special chakra? What does it do?"
Sai didn't even turn back around to answer her, "It destroys."
XxX
(Naruto vs. Sasori)
Sasori wasn't fool enough to believe that he would just lose Naruto by simply taking off on a low flight dash away from the battlefield. Not likely, he was simply doing this so he could find an easier area to fight Naruto than in the wide open area that would grant the agile jinchuuriki the advantage, or better yet, Deidara, who he hadn't seen since they split off earlier, which was why he wasn't really surprised when he found himself body-checked into the side of a building by said jinchuuriki.
Naruto followed Sasori to the ground, landing on him and proceeding to pound away on his face as he heard cracking noises start with every punch he landed. Naruto almost got incinerated however when Sasori tried to burn him off like a tick with one of the flamethrowers in his palm. Naruto quickly rolled off of him and out of the range of the flames that threatened to lick at his body.
Taking this moment to attack, Sasori again used his propellers to speed at Naruto and catch him flat-footed, moving just fast enough to surprise Naruto with the weapon he had been storing in his stomach compartment. Sasori stabbed Naruto right through the belly with a long stinger-like cable that widened Naruto's eyes in pain and surprise.
Sasori kept moving in to kill. Capturing Naruto was now no longer on his mind, this boy destroyed everything. All of his hard work, his favorite and most powerful puppets, the things that were supposed to last for all eternity, just like him. Looking down on Naruto's lifeless face was his only desire now. He idly wondered what a jinchuuriki puppet would be like, he couldn't wait to find out.
Naruto grit his teeth in pain as blood flowed from his mouth and stomach. The pain of having the cable in him was amplified by the feeling of repeatedly having the wound heal around it before being yanked back open by Sasori moving towards him. Naruto planted both hands on the cable and pulled tightly before beginning to whip around and drag Sasori in a swinging circular motion. Sasori subconsciously forced himself to loosen up more cable and ended up getting swung into a pillar, utterly destroying it with the force that Naruto had thrown him into it with.
Sasori's body lay broken on the ground as he tried to eject one of the makeshift puppets in a scroll on his back to shift bodies. Naruto had utterly destroyed his limbs, breaking them where they weren't already intentionally segmented, even his torso, the hardest part of his puppet body and his head were cracked from the impact.
He could survive this, this was nothing at all, as long as only one all-important piece of him survived it would all work out. His plan wasn't to be however, as Naruto yanked hard on the cable, pulling him back in towards the enraged boy fast. Fear actually ended up eating at Sasori's heart as he saw that in one hand Naruto still held the bloody cable that was still sticking out of his chest and in the other, a burning red Rasengan.
Naruto drew his arm back, choking down the bile that was rising from his pesky wound and locking on to the body of Sasori. What the hell was that thing on the left side of his chest? Hopefully an off button because Naruto was about to press it, "You should never have come here! Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"
Naruto obliterated the body of Sasori, as the little cylinder sticking out that Naruto had targeted burst, showering the boy in blood, the only time in the entire battle that he had actually drawn blood from Sasori.
The force behind the Rasengan carried out behind the point that he had hit Sasori at and destroyed the wall behind it. Naruto collapsed and sat down, wiping the blood from his face. Sighing to himself he steeled his nerves as he pulled the long cable out of himself at great pains and tossed it aside as pieces of building began to fall around him, "I should probably get myself out of here before I decide to pass out huh?"
XxX
(Sai and Hamako vs. Deidara)
Deidara had to admit, seeing Sasori get drilled out of mid-air into the side of a building was not something he really expected to see happen, especially while he was fighting a kid, a jinchuuriki kid, but still a kid nonetheless. And the sounds from inside that followed were mighty impressive, and a telltale sign that Sasori wasn't really winning, since if Sasori had been winning he wouldn't be able to hear it from inside a building across a whirlpool. And that flash of red light that came from the holes inside didn't really scream 'victory for Sasori no Danna' either if he had to guess.
Deidara chuckled as the noises of the battle died down and the only noise left was the sound of the whirlpool only fifty feet at the farthest away from him. He shook his head, knowing that Sasori most certainly didn't win that fight, not the way things had looked when he had seen them clash, "He says all of that crap about art being long lasting and then he goes and gets himself wasted one second later."
A sound of growls surrounding him alerted him to his current predicament. Deidara found himself surrounded by lions constructed of ink as Sai limped towards him with his tanto drawn, "You shouldn't have been paying so much attention to Naruto-senpai's battle while you were in the midst of you own, or did you forget about me?"
Deidara chuckled at the sight of Sai and his lions slowly moving towards his downed form, "I guess I should rethink my views on you shouldn't I, un?" He revealed one of his clay figures sitting on his shoulder, putting Sai on guard, "You have art that can both be here for long periods of time, or be gone in a flash. However I think that wishy-washy way of thinking is cheating and makes me sick! At least Sasori no Danna had the decency to choose one side of the fence while you balance in between." With that he picked up the figurine and placed it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it, much to Sai's surprise.
Deidara smirked as his body began to rapidly expand, "I'll turn your little pencil drawings into art for you, because true art is an explosion!" Sai turned to run, but with his leg he had no way to escape no matter how big the blast was.
"Sai-san!" Hamako shouted as she ran up to the bulging Deidara, "Fuuinjutsu: Jikan Bunkatsu (Sealing Technique: Time Splitter)!" Hamako slapped the seal on Deidara's head and ran back towards Sai, "Fuuin!" She then leaned down and placed Sai over her shoulder as she began to run away with him leaning on her, "Come on, we have to go now!"
Sai blinked at her as she moved as fast as she possibly could to get them away from the bulging Deidara, however something seemed off. He was bulging far more slowly than he had been a moment ago. He looked at her as she determinedly assisted him, "What did you do?"
Hamako looked back, "That seal I just used slows things to one-fifth of their maximum speed. I don't know how potent it will be though, since I'm not used to using anyone else's ink for my seals."
Sai looked back to see Deidara slowly approaching critical mass, "So what are you saying?"
Hamako gave him a nervous smile, "Due to a disconnection between me and the seal it might break."
"By 'break' you mean…" Sai fished nervously.
Hamako looked back, "Utterly backfire and fail in about five seconds… and that's being very generous to my seal making."
Sai said nothing and simply pulled the rest of the ink he lent Hamako from her as he started drawing on his scroll, "Choujuu Giga (Super Beasts Imitation Picture)!" Sai quickly summoned up an ink bird that swept him and Hamako up and flew off.
The seal on Deidara's head slipped off as he returned to regular speed, "Art is an explosion!" Before detonating himself and taking out a good chunk of riverside land.
Hamako looked down at the explosion left by Deidara, "Well that's certainly an interesting way to go out, don't you think Sai-san?"
Sai didn't look with her, "He's not dead."
The expression on Hamako's face showed skepticism towards believing that Deidara was still alive, "He blew himself up. Now if there's any way that you yourself have personally seen anyone live through that I think it would be common knowledge even to someone like me."
Sai shook his head, "This isn't the first time that he made a false figure of his explode. He probably switched himself out with it before we were able to reach him once he realized his partner was dead. Even if he could have defeated us, he wouldn't be able to beat Naruto-senpai afterwards, making his staying here any longer a null point."
Hamako nodded before her eyes widened, "Naruto-sama! What happened to him, is he alright?"
Sai turned the bird around to head back towards Naruto's last known whereabouts.
XxX
Deidara limped out of the vicinity of the village, using the trees for support, "I guess I'll have to wait until next time little pale drawing boy." He said to himself as he walked along, "With Sasori no Danna gone it seems that you're the only one I can test my own art against now."
He looked down at the mouths on his hand, "I wonder. Will it be my art of a single moment, or your ink constructs that trumps the other in the end." A smile slowly made its way onto his face, "For some reason I can't wait to find out."
XxX
Sai landed his bird in the midst of the tower that Naruto plowed Sasori into and let Hamako off while he stayed on it with his wounded leg. Hamako ran to the collapsed building and sifted through the rubble, "How did the building even fall?"
Sai yelled back from his place on the bird, "Deidara's blast must have been strong enough to take out what was left of the tower. Naruto-senpai probably did a number on it from the inside to weaken it as well."
Hamako picked through significant pieces of fallen building, "Naruto-sama! Are you alright? Say something if you're still alive!"
"Ow…"
Naruto pushed a chunk of roof off of himself as Hamako ran over to check his injuries, "Please tell me you killed that bastard Sai-kouhai."
Sai's bird walked over with him on its back, "Sorry to say I couldn't senpai. He escaped after you killed your opponent."
"Sasori." Naruto said, "I killed Akasuna no Sasori. That's who that was."
Hamako stared at Naruto in disbelief. They had told her that he was the one who had destroyed her village, and here he just beat him immediately. Naruto wriggled his body free and stood up shakily. He walked past Hamako and set a hand on her shoulder before moving along to Sai, "You look beat the hell up kouhai."
Sai gave him his smile, "As do you senpai. I would venture to say that you probably got it worse than I did."
Naruto scoffed, "Yeah, but I can walk."
Sai shook his head, "That's because you have the Kyuubi inside of you. Normal people like me actually have to deal with their injuries. If chunks of building fell on you and you can just pick the pieces off and walk up to me that kind of tells me you aren't normal doesn't it?" He took a moment to think, "How did the tower fall on you anyway? By the time Deidara's suicide clone exploded you should have been long gone."
Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Well you see, I was kind of picking up a few things after I was done, and then the entire place comes down around me."
Sai raised an eyebrow, "What were you picking up that got your attention like that?"
Naruto opened his mouth to answer before he was glomped by Hamako, "Naruto-sama! You're alright!"
Naruto buckled under her weight, apparently his body was giving out sooner than he thought it would, "Yeah, Hamako-chan, I'm fine, just let go of me please."
Hamako pulled away from him, "Hamako-chan master?"
Naruto grinned at her, "Well yeah. If you're coming with me that means I'm going to have to be your first friend in your new life won't I?" He then gestured to Sai, "And Sai-kouhai here will be your second." Sai simply stared at them both blankly, forcing Naruto to sweatdrop, "He's not got much to say."
Naruto's knees buckled, forcing him to lean on the side of the ink bird, "Alright, Sai, I can't go back to Kiri or Konoha like this, there will be too many questions that I don't feel like answering so just drop me somewhere nearby where I can heal okay? I have a safe place in mind."
XxX
(Later That Night)
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
"I'll get it father."
A door opened to reveal a beautiful, dark-haired woman in a pink shirt staring in a surprised fashion at her guests, "Naruto-kun? Is that you?"
Naruto gave her his best grin while being supported by Hamako on her shoulder, body wrapped in bandages, "Hi there Tsunami-san! It's good to see you again." He rubbed the back of his neck, "I hope it wouldn't be too much to ask of you for a place to stay for the night would it?"
Tsunami gave him a smile, "Of course not Naruto-kun. You and your guest are welcome here always after what you did for this country."
Hamako returned her smile, "We saw the bridge. He almost fell out when we did."
Naruto chuckled, "Yeah… I didn't really see that one coming at all."
Tsunami giggled, "Yes Kakashi-san said the same thing too when he arrived."
Naruto blinked at her, "Wait, you said when Kakashi arrived? He came back here before without our team?"
Tsunami shook her head, "No… he's here right now with two other kids. As a matter of fact he was the one that said that you would probably be showing up here in the next day or two."
With that a familiar masked visage came into Naruto's clear view, with his ever present eye-smile in place, "Oh, hey Naruto! Funny running into you here huh?" Kakashi began laughing humorlessly, which led to Naruto laughing uncomfortably, making the two females between them stare confusedly.
"Shithead is back? Where the hell is he?"
Naruto paled at the sound of that voice as Kakashi slid to his side, "Oh, and just so you know, Tayuya's been very upset since you left in Kirigakure. Good luck with that."
"Thanks Kakashi-sensei… Thanks so much."
People are slacking these days man. If I can write at this pace with all of the crap that I do then… well I guess that just makes me epically awesome then doesn't it? But seriously, I'm jonesing for something good to read, it's actually why I work so hard on my own stories, so that I'm not part of the problem, but an attempt at being part of the solution. Rant over.
Hopefully the fights were up to snuff. This was the first chapter I've had a big fight in since I had Naruto fight Kimimaro so, yeah. Anyway, ENJOY YOURSELF! IT'S A CELEBRATION!
Kenchi out.