Opening - Rolling Star by Yui
X
The C2 bomb went off and the world turned brilliant white, but that didn't stop Sasuke and Sakura. Sasuke shut his eyes to keep out the light, while Deidara's glowing chakra silhouette shone through to his Sharingan. Sakura merely kept aiming in the direction she had before the bomb went off, preparing her right fist to obliterate the explosives expert.
Unfortunately, Deidara had the common sense to move before she reached him, since he knew that she and Sasuke were coming. Although Sasuke was able to keep on track with his Sharingan, Sakura's punch was a wasted effort.
The light of the explosion high overhead began to dim, and Deidara's eyes had adusted just enough for him to see Sasuke coming with his shashka pulled back to stab him. Damn it! With his eyes closed!? He dodged to the left of the stab, then further away from a few quick swipes that followed it up. "Hm!" he threw a handful of C1 clay spiders forward at Sasuke, grinning.
"Chidori Katana!" Sasuke called, and his sword lit up with screeching blue lightning. Seeing only the chakra in the clay bombs, Sasuke's closed eyes flickered around as he whipped his sword through each of them in turn, slicing all six in half. As the light high above them continued to die down, Sasuke opened his eyes and locked them with Deidara's wide blue one. "Sharingan!"
Deidara recoiled from the illusion momentarily, but then renewed his wicked grin and struck back, sending a white snake of clay out of his sleeve to lunge through the air at Sasuke, who leapt backward to safety before the snake exploded in midair. "You like that? A little trick I picked up from Kabuto, hm. His work is nothing compared to my explosions, but as you can see, it has its merits."
"Hn..." Sakura took up a defensive stance next to him. "He's immune to my Sharingan genjutsu."
"Damn... that means my black eggs probably won't work on him either, at least not the genjutsu ones. The poison, though..." she shrugged. "Did you try Tsukuyomi?"
"No. Just my normal Sharingan genjutsu."
"Hey! Since you're such a big fan of my art, Sasuke Uchiha, let me show you something! I think you'll like it, hm!" Deidara reached into his pouch, pulling out an already formed statue of clay. Sasuke's and Sakura's eyes widened when they saw that it was a dragon. "There's no way I'd set off a whole C2 bomb without already having at least one spare. Did you think I was stupid, hm? I came extra-prepared for this! Tons of clay, and a whole gallery of art made in advance, just for you guys!"
Deidara threw the dragon up into the air, expanding it to full size and hopping onto its back. With its master on board, the second dragon flew upward as the first had, though not as high. Soaring above Sasuke and Sakura, Deidara made a simple half-Ram seal, and several plumes of white smoke blossomed up in the picturesque jungle clearing.
"Susanoo," Sasuke answered, and the demonic yet godlike avatar of violet chakra towered up around Sasuke and Sakura in its full glory. "Stay close, Sakura." The bombs Deidara had activated, four birds and two bats, flew into Susanoo's armor and exploded harmlessly without passing through. "We can't leave Susanoo yet, not if he can activate all these bombs from up there. Before, at least he was on the ground with us, so there was only so much he could do, but now..."
"Hm... if C1 won't get through, I could try one of the others... yeah, don't you dare move!" Deidara pulled forth an abstract-looking statue of clay with two folded wings over what looked like some kind of bird's chest. The dragon flew ever higher upward, and Deidara only put his plan on hold for a moment when he saw something incredible out of the corner of his eye.
In the distance, towering high over the treetops, a dome-shaped explosion of chakra was raging. It was glowing a vibrant, furious orange, but with flickers of liquid-looking black chakra and wisps of pale blue wind chakra racing over its surface. "...Beautiful..." Deidara watched the blast die down, and with an awed wide eye he peered down into the scorched black crater left behind by Kushina's Tailed Beast Ball and Naruto's Rasenshuriken.
He turned his attention back down to Sasuke and Sakura, who had seen and heard the explosion as well. "You guys saw that... now you've gotta know that that is worth competing with!" he laughed giddily. "I'm gonna show you an explosive masterpiece, and I'm going to make it better than that!" he dropped the small white statue, and it expanded to its full size as it fell. "HM!"
"S-Sasuke-kun," Sakura spoke up, "Now might be a good time to try stopping his explosives with a Chidori..."
"It works," Sasuke answered, keeping his scarlet eyes trained on the falling bomb, "but I don't have any Chidori variants with enough range. There's only one plan I can think of..." he brought his hands together in the Tiger seal, and thin lines of blood dripped from each of his fully activated eyes. He went on through the Dog, Horse, and Rat seals, then went back to Dog.
"Blaze Release: Chidori Great Fireball Jutsu!"
Deidara's visible eye went huge as Sasuke's Susanoo was completely obscured by a lightless black fireball that continued to grow as it shot toward his C3 bomb. Chirping blue lightning arced and forked through the fireball, flashing and illuminating its depths. As it struck the bomb, the entire surface of the fireball glistened bright blue, and it gave off the signature screech of the Chidori before it resumed chirping and crackling, washing over the bomb and finally fading away past it.
The bomb slammed into the ground and sank into it with its weight and momentum, still alight with flickering black flames. Sasuke and Sakura sighed in relief as it failed to blow up and kill them both.
Deidara, on the other hand, was much less pleased. Damn it, he gritted his teeth and dipped his hand into his pouch again. Inside was a third C2 dragon and second C3 airstrike, but he hesitated and decided not to reveal the C3 yet. This Uchiha kid is as annoying as Itachi, easily. At least that bastard never actually stopped my bombs from going off! He growled deep in his throat, then sighed and calmed himself with some effort. Fine. I was ready to deal with an Uchiha today, so that's what I'll do, hm...
He pulled off the scope covering his left eye, stashing it in his pouch, and pulled out a fistful of explosive clay. He held it up before his real mouth and began chewing it, working it gradually into a miniature sculpture of himself.
Meanwhile, Sasuke's scarlet eyes gleamed with what looked like childish excitement as he stared at the defused C3 bomb. "I actually did it... with jutsu like this, I should be able to stop his bombs easily. Maybe a Chidori Stream with black flames... yeah, that'll work..."
"You're such a kid," Sakura chuckled. "I can't believe I never noticed that. You probably do this every time you learn a jutsu, like it's a shiny new toy."
"Hn," he answered, making no effort to cover up his grin. "You're probably right. I was pretty eager to mess around with the Chidori when Kakashi taught it to me, and before that, all of those jutsu I picked up from Naruto. And way back when tousan taught me the Great Fireball, I was really giddy then too. Maybe I never grew out of it." he looked up in time to see a small white figure of clay hit the ground before expanding into a much larger replica of Deidara. "...The hell is that?"
"That's C4!" Deidara laughed gleefully. "Something I cooked up just to deal with Sharingan users, hm!" making a Ram hand seal, he went on, "I'm hoping to use it on Itachi too, someday, but that'll have to wait until I'm done with you two..."
The giant clone of Deidara bulged and twisted out of shape, and its surface ripped open to let free a white cloud of what looked almost like ninjutsu smoke, but definitely wasn't. Raising his sword with wide, red on black eyes, Sasuke murmured to Sakura, "Stay inside Susanoo. I can deal with that, but only if you stay here."
"Got it," she nodded tensely.
Sasuke blurred forward and leapt out of Susanoo's protective embrace. His sword lit up with blue lightning and black flames, and he held it in a firm kenjutsu stance before the approaching wave of tiny clay bombs. He raised his sword slightly higher, then called, "Blaze Release: Chidori Stream." lightly swishing his blade through the air, he sent off a crackling wave of lightning carried along by a current of lightless flame.
Controlling the motion of the flames, he was able to push the Chidori lightning much further away than he could before, far enough to spread through much of the white mist and defuse hundreds of thousands of tiny bombs, which then fell to the ground lifelessly to reveal what was left of the intact bombs, obscuring the far side of the clearing.
Meanwhile, Sakura watched with interest as the black flames and lightning struck and scattered against the armor of Susanoo. Huh... so that's why he didn't want me out there with him... "Nice work, Sasuke! But if your jutsu can't reach to those other bombs, what's our plan now?"
Sasuke leapt back into the safety of Susanoo, and replied, "We have two options. We could wait for those bombs to come closer, but I don't like just sitting here and waiting for him to attack... so our other option is to attack from a greater range. We don't actually have to defuse them, as long as we eliminate them somehow. Also..."
Casting a glare up at the C2 dragon, Sasuke set his Eternal Mangekyou to work. As a thin stream of blood trickled from his right eye, he intoned, "Amaterasu."
Deidara cried out in surprise as the belly of his dragon burst into black flame, which then grew upward into the shape of a blade piercing through to the dragon's back, catching Deidara's sleeve. While tearing away the section of burning fabric, feeling its furious heat, he still tested it with his eye to be sure it wasn't just a powerful genjutsu. It didn't fly toward me, the dragon just caught fire without any warning. That's one hell of a fire jutsu, hm...
With the dragon still being impaled and immolated on a floating spear of black flames, Deidara took action. He wasn't able to just split off the burning chunk of the dragon's body and reform the rest of it; if one of his clay contructs was damaged then it was going to stay that way. However, he still had a third C2 dragon, and now he was ready to use it.
"Alright, Sakura," Sasuke began.
This is it, hm!
"Both of us are about to make big moves."
And one slip-up means death.
"We know that I can defuse his bombs..."
...but for that, he has to see them coming and hit them with a lightning jutsu...
"And he has a lot of them already prepared."
Tons of C1 sculptures, another C2 and C3, and a bunch of C4 mist bombs already floating behind me in the clearing.
"Get ready. I have a feeling that he's about to..."
Use all of my art until they die!
Deidara jumped from the back of his burning C2 dragon, pulling forth his third and last dragon sculpture as the second folded its wings and plummeted toward Susanoo. Sasuke's eyes widened, and he made the seals for another Chidori Great Fireball as the C4 mist began creeping forward as well.
"Sasuke-kun," she pointed to the mist.
"I see it. Chidori Great Fireball!" Sasuke breathed out a magnificent storm of black flame and blue light, but the dragon opened its own mouth in kind, firing out six clay miniatures of itself, each slightly larger than Sasuke. They pounded their wings and flew around the black fireball as the dragon itself was consumed and deactivated by the lightning.
"Damn!" Sasuke saw the bombs approaching, circling around to attack him from behind while the explosive mist approached him directly. He spun, trying to decide which was a greater threat, and decided that he should aim for the dragons. He never got a chance to throw his jutsu, however, before the bombs struck Susanoo's armor and detonated with shocking force, throwing the chakra avatar off-balance and to the ground.
The white mist crept ominously over the surface of the purple armor, surrounding them completely in a matter of seconds. "This isn't good... I could let out a shadow clone and we could stay in here, but for that I'd have to open up Susanoo's armor for a moment. That would definitely let some of this mist in..."
"We need to get Deidara on the ground somehow," Sakura murmured. "If we can do that, he won't be able to throw nearly as much at us... wait, I have an idea! Can you channel a Chidori through your chakra Gundam's armor?"
Sasuke considered this, then nodded. "Probably. If I could electrify it, it would defuse the bombs that touch Susanoo, and then all we'd have to do is walk around in the mist for a few seconds to clear up most of it." he laid a hand on the inside of Susanoo's armor, and warned, "This might shock us as well. I'll try to keep it on the outside of the armor, but I can't guarantee it."
She nodded. "It's not like we have any other options."
"Right... Chidori Stream!" Susanoo's entire surface was lit with thin arcs of chirping lightning, and Sasuke was relieved when this failed to numb and paralyze himself and Sakura. "Maybe the jutsu is weaker because it's spread out more than normal," he mused quietly.
"My feet are going numb," Sakura admitted. "So it's working, I guess."
"Mine too," he replied, and guided Susanoo upright. He and Sakura slid from the smooth inside of its armor to the soft grass below. "Don't worry about it; a full shock from my Chidori Stream doesn't paralyze you for long, so a partial dose like this won't keep us numb for more than a minute."
Susanoo's sword-wielding arms swept through the mist cloud, and Sasuke was surprised to feel them actually cutting through something. "Hn?" through the slowly thinning mist, he saw a malformed white humanoid creature sprinting toward Susanoo. When it arrived, it beat its fists furiously on the demonic armor for a few seconds before violently exploding.
"...Whoa," Sakura exclaimed, shocked.
"There's more of them," Sasuke nodded to the approaching C1 clay golems, not all of which were humanoid. Most were birds of varying sizes. "That first one was able to touch Susanoo without being deactivated... Maybe because the Chidori is weaker, and these bombs are much bigger than the mist ones. I'll have to deal with these the old-fashioned way..." Susanoo's blades swept through the air in all directions, slicing through clay monsters by the dozen. Many exploded, but quite a few also fell to the ground in pieces.
As he fought, the C4 mist grew thinner and thinner until eventually he didn't see any chakra left in the air. However, the C1 creatures continued to approach insistently, leaving him with no time to aim an attack at Deidara, who was still floating directly overhead. To make matters worse, Deidara then dropped four more C4 clones which exploded to spread yet more mist through the air.
"...We had it backwards, Sakura," he decided quietly. "We can't get him down here, so we need to go up to him." He activated his Cursed Seal as the white mist approached from all sides, spreading massive black wings with kunai for feathers. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and murmured, "Hold on, and hold your breath."
"Got it," she nodded, clinging to him easily with her incredible chakra-enhanced strength.
Susanoo melted away into wisps of glistening purple chakra, and Sasuke pounded his wings down to take off as quickly as he could. The C4 mist continued to close in, but Sasuke picked up speed and blasted out the top of the cloud just as it consumed himself and Sakura. To his shock, he saw a huge C3 bomb falling directly toward them, and he rolled aside to let it pass before pushing himself to fly upward even faster.
When the bomb went off, he and Sakura were clear of the blast, but the shockwave and sudden surge of rising hot air pushed them up to meet Deidara faster still. They passed by his final C2 dragon, and Sasuke snapped his wings shut to land on its back before him. The dragon bucked, hoping to throw them off, but they stuck to it with chakra control easily.
Sasuke charged with his shashka hissing out of its sheath, and Deidara hastily formed a blunt staff of clay to defend himself. Sasuke lit his sword with lightning and black flame, slicing through the staff twice in a second. He raised the weapon to impale Deidara, but the bomber spat out a small bullet of clay that expanded into a white sphere four feet across, smashing into Sasuke and throwing him back. The shashka fell from his grasp, and he scowled more at its loss than the attack he'd just weathered.
Rallying, Sasuke lit his right fist with lightning and charged again, this time with Deidara unarmed. His foe tried to craft another attack with clay, but he was nowhere near fast enough to stop Sasuke's fist stabbing into and blasting through his chest. "Chidori!"
The clay clone cracked and turned white, and Deidara laughed as he rose from inside the dragon, behind Sasuke with a kunai in hand. "HA! That was just a clay clone, hm! I put a lot of work into making it impossible to recognize with a douju-"
"CHAAAAAA!"
That was the last thing Deidara heard before he was blasted off the side of his C2 dragon in several dozen pieces. He never even had time to feel Sakura's punch land.
Sasuke took a few moments to pull his arm free of the clay clone, at which point he peered over the side of the dragon just as it began to fall lifelessly. "...Hn," he chuckled. "I told you, didn't I? Chunky salsa."
X
"Whoa, look at that," Tenten nudged Gaara's elbow with her own, then pointed to a white dragon soaring high above a distant section of the forest. "An Akatsuki jutsu?"
"It must be," Gaara nodded, watching the dragon continue to ascend. "Likely one of Deidara's Explosion Release bombs. But why is it headed so far up? Is he trying to signal his allies, or escape Sasuke and Sakura?"
The dragon exploded into a ball of fiery white light that was painful to look at. "...Well, I don't think it was an escape strategy," Tenten shook her head. "Sasuke can fly with that Cursed Seal of his. Maybe that was an attack aimed at him?"
"Maybe," Gaara replied, drawing his black-hilted wakizashi in a reverse grip from his right hip. "I think I can feel tousan's chakra ahead of us. He's closing in on the lake quickly."
"Isobu won't be sealed so easily," Yagura replied. "Even if Kazekage-dono gets there before we do, I'm confident that we can retrieve Isobu safely."
"Even so, Tenten and I can move faster than this," Gaara spoke over his shoulder to Yagura and Fuu. "And if it's alright with you two, I'd prefer if we fought the Fourth without your help. You can seal Isobu and take him with you more quickly if you don't wait for us to deal with tousan."
Fuu nodded. "Take as much time as you need. This might be your last chance to talk to him."
"Thank you." Gaara held the shortsword before himself and called, "Stain, Kuroshi." Black sand poured endlessly out of the wakizashi's guard, and he wrapped himself up in a huge, swirling cloud of it.
"Fuinjutsu: Kekkai Kokuei." Streams of glossy black liquid surged out of a seal on Tenten's back, entwining gracefully around her and smoothing out into a solid, sleek black barrier. She drew the massive falchion from where it stuck to the back of her armor, and called, "Ready when you are, Gaara."
Gaara picked up speed, moving the black sand much faster than he himself could leap through the trees. Tenten flickered and vanished in a dark blur as well, leaving Yagura and Fuu behind.
The two of them arrived at the lake in a matter of seconds, first Tenten and then Gaara. Tenten held out the falchion in her right hand, pointing the tip directly forward, and commanded, "Devour everything within reach, Umiyou." A huge, swirling torrent of glowing orange liquid poured forth from the oversized blade, forming a glowing whirlpool around her that sizzled where it touched the cool, damp sand of the beach.
With his wakizashi's blade held horizontally in a reverse grip, Gaara made his stance a bit firmer before calling, "Stain, Kuroshi." Black sand poured out of the round guard's edge, in a quantity that easily eclipsed what he had been carrying three years ago.
The Fourth Kazekage arrived at the lake's opposite shore just after the two weapons were fully unsealed. The black and orange tornadoes looked for all the world like some ungodly counterparts to natural disasters, conjured by a wrathful King of Hell. "...Is that... lava?"
"First Incarnation," Gaara announced, and the black sand around him began to take a shape. "Kuroseikyo." It rose higher and higher, towering up over Tenten's whirlpool of lava as it became solid, humanoid. It was a huge cloaked figure with no discernable features underneath its billowing, smoky black mantle, and armed with a katana of the same black sand. It stood easily forty feet tall.
Gaara emerged from where the wraith's feet would be, and he smiled across the lake. "Hello, tousan."
"Gaara..." the Kazekage took his first steps across the lake, followed by a loose, massive cloud of gold dust. "Is that really you?"
The Fifth Kazekage nodded, meeting his father near the middle of the lake. His towering demon of black sand followed him dutifully. "When I heard you were here, I knew I had to come and meet you here." he glanced to his left as Tenten appeared there in a blur. "This is Tenten. She's the one I told you about three years ago."
Tenten opened up her Kekkai Kokuei to reveal her face and pull down her half-mask. She flashed a smile and waved. Tsurugi nodded solemnly, and replied, "It's wonderful to finally meet the girl who saved my son."
"Uh, it wasn't me," Tenten shook her head, surprising both Kazekage. "Naruto got to him first. He was already nice by the time I met him."
"No," Gaara answered. "Naruto may have spoken to me first, nudged me in the right direction, but it was when I stopped Dosu Kinuta from killing you that I actually headed down that path. It was you."
"We have much to talk about, I'm sure," Tsurugi mused sadly, "but very soon I'll have to begin fighting you. We can continue talking, but please remain focused. Don't allow me to distract you and land a serious blow."
"Okay, then let's start with some of the good news," Tenten had pulled up her mask again to cover her faint blush. "Gaara, you wanna tell him, or can I?"
"Go ahead," he replied.
"Okay..." she grinned under her mask, and turned her attention back to Tsurugi. "Gaara's been the Kazekage for two years now."
Tsurugi's blackened eyes went wide, and he turned to his son who nodded silently. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, his body began to move. Black rings appeared around his already dark Edo Tensei eyes, and his sand began to move. "Get ready!" he commanded.
Tenten vanished in a pitch-black blur, and Gaara guided his sand monstrosity to charge headlong into his father's gold dust. "Tousan, I want to say this quickly while Tenten is too far away to hear us," he began quietly, and dashed forward with Kuroshi in hand swiping at his father several times. "I want to marry her, but now that I have the chance, I felt it was only right to ask for your blessing first."
"...Gaara..." the older Kazekage retreated backward away from his son's kenjutsu, noting that it was vastly better than it had been when they had last met. After a few more moments of shocked silence, he smiled and nodded. "Of course. I can already see that you two are happy together. Of course you have my blessing."
While Tsurugi's gold dust continued to struggle against Gaara's black wraith to his right and Gaara's left, Tsurugi himself dodged Gaara's kenjutsu strikes. "Gaara, how long have I been dead now? Tenten said you've been Kazekage for two years... How old are you?"
"I'm sixteen," Gaara replied, and landed a slash across his father's chest, pressing the attack faster. "It's been three years since Oto invaded Konoha."
"Then you became Kazekage a year after we last met..."
Gaara nodded even as he kept attacking. "There weren't any other candidates in Suna near your level of power, so a council of the highest-ranking Suna-nin in your absence decided to give me a chance to show how I'd changed. I was trained to take up your hat, and I proved that I could be trusted as the Fifth."
"I see..." Tsurugi glanced past Gaara. "Tenten's next attack has been ready for some time now. She's waiting until we're further apart to strike me."
Gaara leapt backward through the air, unsealing more sand from within Kuroshi's guard. "Fourth Incarnation: Kurojin."
Tsurugi's eyes narrowed as he peered at Gaara's blade closely, interested. Kurojin... Black Blade... but whatever jutsu he used doesn't seem to have done anything, except unseal and reseal an impressive amount of black sand. He dashed forward, dodging a huge stream of molten glass that Tenten brought crashing down from above him. It splashed into the lake and violently threw the nearby water into a rapid boil.
"Gold Sand Coffin," Tsurugi called, and made a fist. The cloud of sand fighting with Gaara's Kuroseikyo condensed and crushed the wraith, then flexed downward and forced Gaara's black sand under the surface of the water. It sank in pieces, and the gold dust floated next toward Gaara.
"Stain-!" Gaara's attempt to unseal more sand was interrupted by his father's taijutsu, and he tried to retreat and block the incoming gold sand, but the older Kazekage pressed him relentlessly.
Tenten intervened, sweeping another huge torrent of liquid glass between Gaara and the gold sand, catching it and melting it into useless trickles of liquid gold that were useless to Tsurugi. She let them fall from her weapon, listening contently as they sizzled in the water.
The glass stream then continued, aimed at Tsurugi who retreated from it. Gaara swept his wakizashi through the open air at him, and the Fourth's eyes widened as he was horizontally cut in two by a blade he never even saw. In two pieces, he fell down into the depths of the lake, and closed his eyes in thought. That didn't feel like a wind jutsu, and Gaara's strategy has always been based on sand control. He never truly developed his Wind Release... perhaps this is the power of that jutsu he used. Kurojin...
He shook his head. I have so much more to ask my son. The nature of his jutsu should be the last thing on my mind... he reattached his legs and shot upward to the surface of the lake, pulling a waterlogged scroll from a pouch behind his back. From within the soggy, almost dissolving paper, he unsealed a fresh wave of gold sand. "Gaara, tell me. Where are Temari and Kankurou?"
Gaara looked down sadly. "Kankurou is a Jounin in Suna, and Temari a Special Jounin taking missions out of Konoha. I'm sorry you couldn't see them."
"At least they're alright," Tsurugi smiled in relief, even as he directed his gold sand forward to attack Gaara and Tenten. She moved to block it with her glass, but Tsurugi pulled back and tried to attack from a different angle. "I never actually found out how you two met, even though Gaara told me about you three years ago..."
"It was during the Chuunin Exams in Konoha," Tenten began. "I was fighting an Oto Genin, and it was a close match. We both got injured, but I won. When I turned my back to get on a stretcher..." she paused to catch a stream of gold sand with her molten glass, eliminating it, "...he tried to kill me with a cheap shot. Gaara stopped him. After that, I remember waking up in a hospital bed, and he was there."
"I see..." Tsurugi aimed six more blasts of gold sand at Gaara and Tenten. Gaara caught and chased back four, while Tenten melted down the other two.
"Yeah... so he used the Third Eye Jutsu to let me see my friends' matches, and warned me about Oto's plans. He even gave me a weapon to defend myself." She displayed the Suna ANBU kunai attached to the underside of her right wrist. "In case Oto thought I was worth assassinating."
The Fourth nodded, then froze. He turned to Gaara with wide eyes, and realized aloud, "You only took a stealth kunai from one Suna ANBU. Your first assassin."
Gaara nodded. "That's true."
"Then... that kunai belonged to Yashamaru."
"Yashamaru?" Tenten took a moment to remember the name; she hadn't heard it in years. "Wait. Your uncle!?" she glanced at Gaara, surprised. "This kunai belonged to him!?"
"It was of more use to you than me. When I took that kunai, I told myself that it would serve a purpose one day, and I was right. Over the past three years, it's saved your life several times."
Tenten might have made a reply if not for Tsurugi's unwilling interruption. He directed some of his remaining gold sand under the surface of the lake, reaching up and grabbing Gaara's and Tenten's ankles. "Gold Sand Coffin." Tenten's black barrier held back the gold, and the black sand armor on Gaara's legs exploded outward to push away the gold dust before it could crush him.
"Stain, Kuroshi!" Gaara called, and expelled yet more black sand from his wakizashi, again more than what he'd carried three years ago. "Second Incarnation: Kurosekai!" This time, the sand shot out and covered the lake's surface entirely in a black desert, in addition to the sandstorm floating slowly over that desert. Huge spires of compressed black sand rose out of the desert, and many of them had Shukaku-esque arms that extended and reached toward Tsurugi.
Tsurugi tried to retreat, but his feet were already captured by the black sand as he'd done to Gaara and Tenten moments before. The dark cloud floating around him coated him in a layer of black sand that made it completely impossible to move, and then one of Shukaku's hands caught him and made a fist, crushing him into ash.
Much to Gaara's surprise, said ashes then drifted slowly upward out of his sand's clenched grasp. "He can move his body even in that state... I thought that would be impossible."
Tsurugi's head reformed, floating within a cloud of pale ash. "It's simple. All I have to do is use chakra to carry my body in the same way I would shape gold dust. For what it's worth, however, I imagine I'll be the only Edo Tensei you face with this ability."
Tenten raised her falchion in a two-handed kenjutsu stance, scowling. "If he can still move and fight like that, it won't do any good for me to burn him up with Umiyou's lava. We'll have to get more creative than that."
Gaara nodded. "His ash can slip through my black sand, but if you can catch him with your glass it'd be different."
"And then I could carry him underwater and cool the glass into a solid. We'd be able to seal him easily like that."
"Right. I'll try to hold him still for you." Gaara sheathed Kuroshi and reached toward his father with both hands, crossing his left forearm over his right. "Third Incarnation." Several more arms of black sand shot toward the loose cloud of ash, and they pooled together into a dense ball of black sand to contain all of Tsurugi's ashes.
He's trying to reform inside that sand; I can feel it. Gaara silently and rapidly guided more sand together around the misshapen lump that was already floating around his father, piling up sand from his Second Incarnation into an increasingly smooth and well-defined shape; a four-sided pyramid roughly twenty feet tall. "Kuroi Kakusui."
He balled his crossed hands into fists, and the pyramid crunched into a tighter, smaller one only fifteen feet tall. He would normally have compressed the sand far more, but he didn't because Tenten was going to try and seal it up with her molten glass. If it was compressed to only eight feet before she sealed it, it would likely blow open the cooled glass seal.
"Tenten, it's ready. He's still trying to regenerate, and he's doing it quickly."
"Got it," she nodded quickly, and sent a stream of glowing orange liquid toward the pyramid. It sizzled and bubbled as it struck the side nearest her and spread out over the pyramid's entire surface, including the square bottom once Gaara lifted it for her. She chose to apply the glass in a thick layer, almost five inches thick, and once the entire pyramid was covered in glowing orange, she announced, "Done."
Gaara raised his crossed fists slightly, and the pyramid ascended with them. Then he brought his hands downward quickly and forcefully, and the pyramid shot down into the lake. Its water exploded upward in a boiling geyser on contact with the glass, which slowly began to lose its glow as it sank deeper and deeper in.
"...It should be pretty solid now," Tenten spoke up after several seconds, and pulled open the scroll fixed to her right hip. She unsealed a Sealing Tag from one of the labeled storage seals on the scroll, then pushed a small button on the end of the device to retract the scroll smoothly.
"I'm bringing it up now," Gaara replied. "He's stopped trying to reassemble himself, but I can't quite tell whether he's giving up or if he's already finished regenerating."
"Edo Tensei don't just give up," she remarked. "Gaara, be ready for anything." as the pyramid, now coated in a thick and wavy layer of solid amber-colored glass, rose out of the water, Tenten placed Umiyou on her back and drew Soujihonou instead, wielding it in her left hand with the Sealing Tag in her right. "Stay here for a second."
She blurred forward with unnatural speed, flickering out of and back into Gaara's field of vision to appear next to the pyramid. She reached forward to lay the Sealing Tag on the surface of the glass, but before she could, it exploded violently.
Shit! Blasted backward by a massive wall of shimmering glass shards as fine as sand, Tenten skipped violently along the surface of the lake several times before her momentum shifted downward and she was blasted underwater. He must've had some gold sand in there, and he's probably fully reformed by now... She let go of the shredded Sealing Tag and shifted Soujihonou's hilt into her right hand.
Despite being deep underwater, Tenten gave a defiant roar as she swung her jian up at Tsurugi while streaming her chakra through its seal. The ethereal orange blade of fire chakra surged to life and sliced through the entire distance between herself and the Fourth Kazekage.
From his point of view, Tsurugi saw a staggeringly long beam of orange light burst forth from a point deep underwater. He momentarily mistook it for an attack from the Three-Tails lurking deep below, but as the beam shot well past the surface of the water and swung toward him, he got a better look at it. He realized its shape wasn't merely a laser beam, but a clearly defined straight blade with a flat and two edges.
Tenten, he understood, and placed a wall of gold sand between himself and the blade although he didn't expect it to stop her. He was proven right when her chakra blade scythed easily through his sand and then his body, cutting him in two at the waist and sending a few thick splashes of molten gold into the depths of the lake.
The glowing blade flickered out of existence, and Tenten shot upward out of the lake to sheathe her jian next to Gaara. She then produced Umiyou again, and watched as Tsurugi easily reattached the two halves of his body.
Gaara drew his wakizashi again, flipping it from a reverse grip to a proper one. Holding the weapon out in front of himself, he laid his left hand on the flat of the blade near the guard and decided, "If that couldn't contain him, there's another, more powerful fuinjutsu we have that can seal him..."
"No, wait." he glanced at her, surprised and confused. "You don't need to use that yet. We know he can control his gold sand even when it's soaked with water, so we can't take it from him like that. But we also know that I can melt it with Umiyou and Soujihonou. If we can melt down all of his sand, we can seal him really easily. He won't have any way to break out of anything we can hold him with. We won't even have to do that trick with Kuroi Kakusui again."
"...Hm..." Gaara nodded, and flipped his short blade back into a reverse grip. "It's worth a try. I'll attack him directly, and you'll melt down his gold sand as he throws it at me."
"Yeah, that's it." Tenten leaned forward and lowered Umiyou to her right side. "And another thing... it seems like he can't move his sand when he's just a pile of ash. It just floats on his chakra where he left it last. Any hits you can land on him will make it easier for me to melt his sand... so let's do this!"
Tenten vanished in a blur of glistening black, and Gaara dashed forward over water and dunes of black sand. At least a dozen clawed arms of black sand went with him, brought to his side from where they had been reaching angrily toward Tsurugi with their clawless ends attached to smooth black towers of sand.
Gaara dodged one thin stream of gold sand that reached for him, and batted away the length of gold with a small sand whip of his own. He closed in on his father and lashed out with his wakizashi, and his third slash scored a deep hit across Tsurugi's belly. Father and son sprang back away from each other, and Gaara directed one of the sand arms forward with a shove of his own right arm.
Tsurugi moved to intercept Gaara's sand with his own, but Tenten appeared in front of the gold sand whip and batted it aside with Umiyou covered in sticky molten glass. She directed a flow of the same orange liquid against his gold, swallowing it up and melting it while she vanished again to allow Gaara's still-incoming sand arm to slam into his father.
Tsurugi splashed apart into a loose cloud of white ash and burnt paper scraps, and three other streams of gold sand, with which he had prepared to attack Gaara, stopped moving on their way toward the Fifth Kazekage. Tenten swiftly melted these down with similarly sized masses of molten glass. She turned her attention to Tsurugi, hoping to douse him in lava as well, but he was already mostly regenerated and guiding a much larger wave of gold sand toward her.
Gaara's black sand moved between her and the gold, even though she was raising her own defensive wall of glass. The black sand held back the gold, and Gaara called, "Tenten, now!"
"Right!" she arced a stream of liquid glass over Gaara's black sand, and slammed it into Tsurugi's attack from behind. The glass splashed and spread out over the surface of the gold, melting it in seconds, and she glanced toward Gaara once it was dealt with. He was currently raising his black sand to ward off another attack, so Tenten stepped in and sent a barrier of glass to catch the gold.
When the two substances touched, Tenten immediately shaped the flat wall of glass into a rough ball containing the gold from all sides, then sent the misshapen orb of glowing orange liquid back at Tsurugi, who tried to dodge only to find that his feet were held in place by the black sand he was standing on. The glass and gold struck him and flowed around him, covering his entire body.
Tenten glanced around quickly, sending more of her molten glass to wrestle with and dissolve the streams of gold dust that moved to free Tsurugi. "Gaara, cover it with sand and seal him!"
"Right! First Incarnation: Kuroseikyo!" Gaara's black sand gathered upward into a hill around Tsurugi's makeshift prison, and that hill then kept growing upward into the upper body of the same black-cloaked monster as before. The wraith held its sand blade in a reverse grip, aiming the tip at where its own heart would be, which was exactly where Tsurugi's was contained in slowly cooling molten glass and gold.
"I'll keep his sand off you!" Tenten called as Gaara moved toward Tsurugi with another Sealing Tag in hand. True to her word, she intercepted what remained of Tsurugi's gold with her glass long before it could stop Gaara, while he leapt up into the air and slapped the tag into place over the sand wraith's heart.
For a few tense moments, both of them waited for a sign of whether they had failed or succeeded. Then the few remaining clouds of gold dust fell from the air lifelessly, and Tenten loudly sighed in relief. "I think that means we got him," she observed, and slowly began retrieving what was left of her molten glass to reseal it.
"It's possible that he simply let go of his gold sand to trick us into thinking that," Gaara mused, then stabbed into the cloaked monster with Kuroshi. "But I don't think it's likely..." slowly he sealed away his black sand, and the layer of it between Tsurugi and the tag grew thinner until the tag was resting on the marbled glass and gold prison Tenten had wrought for him. "Yes, it's over."
Tenten glanced around in search of Yagura and Fuu, who had long since arrived on the shore of the lake and had apparently sealed Isobu as well, judging from the fact that said Three-Tailed Turtle hadn't gotten involved in the fight despite all of the lava being dumped into his chosen residence, not to mention the huge energy blade Tenten had used to cut through most of the lake.
She spotted them, and under her black barrier she went pale. "...Gaara, it's not over." she pointed in their direction, and Gaara tensed when he saw that they weren't alone. They were staring with glazed-over crimson eyes at a third shinobi with his back to Gaara and Tenten.
The newcomer was clad in what appeared at first glance to be a typical Konoha uniform, but underneath his flak jacket he wore a long, thin haori of the same blue cloth as his uniform. The bottom of the coat bore a horizontal line pattern of white diamonds. Although Gaara and Tenten couldn't see his face, his hair was roughly shoulder-length and brown dulled by a hint of grey showing through, which meant he was an older man.
Specifically, an older Uchiha, judging from the Sharingan designs that had replaced Yagura's and Fuu's normal irides. The two Jinchuuriki then sharply turned their new scarlet eyes on Gaara and Tenten, who both took a step back and readied their weapons again.
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