Opening - Revolution Dualism by Nana Mizuki and TM Revolution
X
"Bankai: Sasuhonou!"
Zetsu raised the Raikage's fists in a boxing taijutsu stance, flaring his Lightning Release armor for extra protection against Tenten's next move. He didn't recognize the term Bankai, but the way she'd called it out put the so-called Ootsuki on edge. He prepared himself to dodge in whatever direction was most readily available once Tenten fired her attack.
The barest fraction of a second later, he began to realize how lucky he was that he'd assigned a Kage with a superhuman reaction time to this battle. The beam of orange light that shot from Tenten's halberd did so with such speed that even he was scarcely able to register it. Although he did dodge, he still felt the searing heat of the chakra blade that passed him so narrowly by.
Tenten pressed her attack further, slashing and stabbing with the blade, but the Raikage continued to outpace her. After a few moments of watching with a slightly confused expression, Gaara added his black sand to her efforts. "This... is your Bankai? I admit, it's not what I expected."
"It'd be more effective if this guy wasn't so damn fast," Tenten grumbled, and a moment later she withdrew her halberd's chakra blade. "You're right though. It should be something bigger. Like this." she held out her newly modified weapon horizontally before herself, laying her open left palm roughly halfway along its shaft. Gaara blinked in surprise at the sight of fuinjutsu script lighting up along the entirety of the weapon, an orange glow resembling Soujihonou's light and Umiyou's lava.
He staggered away from Tenten under the force of a gale of chakra smoke, and was only more surprised to hear the unmistakable sound of steel crashing on steel in the next few moments. From the low pitch and great volume of the sound, he guessed that its source was massive.
Since he was disoriented and lost in the smoke, he sent out a breeze of black sand to scan the area surrounding himself. His eyes went wide a brief instant before the smoke cloud was filled with fiery light from Tenten's latest design, which promptly flickered into place directly before the Kazekage.
"Get in!" she called without bothering to mask her excitement, and Gaara obeyed. He leapt and turned as he did, thumping into a seat of deep blue cloth positioned above and behind Tenten, and only then did he begin to truly register his surroundings.
The chamber around himself and Tenten was smoothly but irregularly shaped, and the rounded walls around them were transparent like glass despite Gaara knowing they were solid steel on the outside. The floor and ceiling were of the same very opaque metal, and the source of the orange glow could clearly be seen behind Gaara; a flowing curtain of molten glass.
"...Is this...?"
"Damn right it is!" Tenten squeed with overflowing pride, and traced her hand along a glowing orange symbol floating in the air before her. Only then did Gaara realize that there were dozens of similar icons floating at the edges of Tenten's field of view. As she swept this particular image aside, a tubular mechanical arm unfolded from a slot in the floor and offered up a holster for Kuroshi, positioning itself next to Gaara's right armrest. "Put Kuroshi there and let out your sand!"
Gaara was still rather confused, but he followed her instructions and fitted Kuroshi into place with a click. "Stain, Kuroshi." After a few moments, clouds of black sand began rising up around the transparent cockpit, supplementing the cover of the fading white smoke. He also noted that Umiyou was slotted into a similar holster next to Tenten.
The Raikage appeared in the air in front of her with a flash, slamming his fist into the nigh-invisible wall before her. A rather large crack spiderwebbed across the front of it, prompting her to groan. "Aw come on! Gaara, get him!"
"Sand Coffin," Gaara swept his hands forward instinctively, and was mildly surprised when his sand responded without any trouble. Their opponent, however, blurred away from the sand long before it reached him. I can control my sand in here?
Tenten leaned forward and wrapped each of her hands around a small, floating cylinder of transparent orange light, which glowed twice as bright when she touched them and focused her chakra. Gaara fidgeted slightly when the cockpit began lurching forward unsteadily. "Ah, crap. Should've known the seats would be bouncing around like this... Gaara, there's a seatbelt there if you need it. This could get rough."
A gigantic, darkened metal arm to Gaara's right quickly drew his attention, since it was holding a wickedly curved sword of shaped lava scaled to fit its hand. "Alright, let's do this!"
The smokescreen obscuring Zetsu's view of the machine was then whipped away by a swing of the lava sword it wielded. Now with a clear view of his opponents, Zetsu was better able to plan an attack against them.
He was opposed by what appeared to be a suit of sleek, streamlined armor, which mostly matched Tenten's own proportions scaled up to a height of twenty-five feet. Its forearms were encased in far thicker armor, however, and it also bore oversized shoulder armor. Its fingers were longer and thicker than a human's were to the same scale, likely because the machine's hands were such an important and delicate part that they were worth overbuilding.
The front of its torso was quite visibly damaged by the Raikage's earlier punch, but Zetsu couldn't quite peer through the cracks in the dark grey metal to see Tenten and Gaara within. There was a sheet of molten glass flowing behind the machine like a cloak, and several streams of Gaara's black sand drifted through the air around it.
Tenten raised both of the construct's arms to grasp the lava sword in a two-handed grip, and a moment later it flashed behind the Raikage and brought its weapon down.
It can use a movement jutsu!? Zetsu dodged left of the sword and spun on his heels to face the machine, saved by the Raikage's lightning speed. He was only more suprised, however, when his mechanical opponent visibly stumbled and nearly fell over. He pressed an attack, leaping forward and throwing a mighty punch to the same fractured spot on the machine's armor, and this time his fist tore through the dark steel.
Tenten successfully struggled to right her mech's stance, then transformed the liquid sword into a slender whip to wrap it around Zetsu, whose arm was still piercing the machine's chest. The glowing rope twined itself around Zetsu's waist and yanked him free of the mech, violently flicking him across the stone rooftop. "Dammit..." she gritted her teeth and reformed the sword, sending her machine sprinting in pursuit of Zetsu.
"What happened?" Gaara asked, still reeling from the violent shift in momentum that nearly threw both of them from their seats a moment earlier.
"It was the movement jutsu," Tenten explained, and Gaara heard a mechanical clicking noise above them. "Since the jutsu isn't working through our bodies, we're not protected from the momentum... Sasuhonou can move at those speeds easily, but since we're just along for the ride, it's too hard on us. I noticed it the first time, when I moved Sasuhonou to pick you up, but I had to do it again to understand..."
"Are you saying you haven't tested this thing?" Gaara asked quickly, with a slight undertone of worry in his voice.
His concern wasn't lost on Tenten, but all she could do was shrug. "This isn't the finished product, just a prototype. I've made sure each of the components work without any major bugs, but this is the first time it's all been assembled and piloted." Her right hand left the cylinder of orange light she was using to manipulate Sasuhonou, and she pointed at the image of the Raikage projected on the hull in front of her. Surrounding him was a thin square of the same orange light. "This works, though."
"What is it?" Gaara leaned forward, peering over her shoulder. He idly noted that even though the Raikage was unconscious, he still wore a frightening scowl.
"That particular piece of the HUD," she announced with a grin, "shows what target Sasuhonou has a lock on. So when I do this..." she swiped her hand downward along a vertical orange stripe bearing the kanji for 'explosion' in a darker hue, "...the missiles all track that target, even if he dodges."
The missile launchers that had emerged from within Sasuhonou's shoulders then fired off several dozen small rockets loaded with bundles of explosive tags, all of which promptly flocked toward Zetsu.
Gaara settled back into his seat, unable to wipe off his small smile no matter how hard he tried. "...You're just itching to tell me how it works, aren't you?"
"Yep." Tenten laughed giddily. "And you're just itching to know, right? I'm wearing off on you," she all but sang. Since Zetsu was still pushing the Raikage's speed to its limits to avoid the homing missiles and their explosions, she decided that she had time to brag.
"Individually, all of the components are a lot simpler than you'd expect. The whole thing is powered by a chakra battery, the same kind of seal that powers my barrier armor and keeps Umiyou's glass hot. This one's just bigger and filled with more chakra. It took me weeks to fill... I've been working on Sasuhonou for quite a while now."
She paused, then held out both of her hands and swiped them away from each other, promptly zooming in her view on the black cloud of ash and debris where the Raikage had been. "The screens wrapping around us are getting a live feed from view seals on the outside of the cockpit. I adapted 'em from the design of a crystal ball that the Third Hokage used to use. The seals can also keep track of a target once they've initially been spotted, and that's how Sasuhonou can track Zetsu."
"But you can't move your view to him right now," Gaara observed.
"I had to modify the seal," she explained. "The crystal ball could watch over a tracked target's shoulder from anywhere, but these seals always have to show what's in their line of sight for us. I can only zoom in on that view."
"And what about the orange... things?"
"The heads-up display is all actually here, not just a picture on a screen. It's a special barrier ninjutsu that's supposed to glow, register my touch, and send signals to the other parts of the system. They're not solid, though, so they take a bit less chakra to keep running."
"These, for instance," she laid her hands back on the cylinders of soft light, "let me move Sasuhonou's limbs around the same way I'd use my own. That's why most of its proportions are the same as mine, so I can run on instinct and muscle memory without worrying about my arms and legs being longer or thicker or whatever. The hands still feel weird though; they're a lot bigger than mine."
"So you have to stop moving in order to use most of your weapons?"
"...Sort of. I can still keep one hand on the main controller, even if the other one's firing off a bunch of missiles. It's like I'm only half looking where I'm going, or something like that." she shrugged. "Besides, it's still just a prototype. I'll figure out everything that works here and copy it into the next one, and I'll also improve on all the stuff that doesn't work. So the second one won't take me as long as this one did."
"...Tenten... you said the view seals were keeping track of the Raikage, isn't that right?"
"Yeah." she turned her attention back to the black cloud from her explosives. "So?"
"So where's the orange square that shows where he is?"
"...Shit." Sasuhonou turned, and within it Tenten glanced over her shoulder, to more quickly check what had been her blind spot behind Gaara. She paled upon spotting a scorched, scratched and apparently furious A and Zetsu, just before the Raikage's fist slammed downward into the stone brick rooftop all of them were standing on.
Sasuhonou swayed wildly off-balance as the roof cracked and split apart under its feet, the result of the Raikage's full extent of strength being used on a structure already weakened by gratuitous use of explosives, in addition to whatever mess Naruto and Hinata were making beneath them in their own fight.
Tenten righted her machine's stance quickly, leaping to a nearby piece of the roof that had yet to break. It, however, cracked downward from Sasuhonou's suddenly applied weight. She swore under her breath, again jumping to another piece of the roof despite knowing it too would quickly break. She momentarily glanced downward in time to see Hinata wrap herself and Naruto in a Revolving Heaven to hold back the falling rubble.
"Oh, right." Tenten grinned. "I forgot to mention one other cool thing Sasuhonou can do."
The Fifth Kazekage wasn't one to scare easily, but he felt a chill run down his spine at those words. "...Tenten, something tells me whatever you're about to do is-"
A crushing wave of force slammed him down into his seat harder than he thought possible. The wind was forced from his lungs in a quiet, wordless groan, and he desperately clung to the arms of his chair while also trying to understand what had happened. He realized that Tenten was screaming, but there was nothing he could do in his current position.
From what he could see, the entire machine was disastrously malfunctioning, probably as a result of some attack by the Raikage. The lava cloak behind the cockpit was ripped away and the view seals seemed to be broken; they were showing that the world around them was spinning at a terrifying speed. The orange symbols filling the cockpit were similarly whirling around, far too quickly for Gaara to read the warning messages they seemed to be displaying.
"G-Gaara!" she called as loudly as she could, a moment before her hands were jerked away from the orange cylinders that controlled Sasuhonou. "S-Sand!"
He opened his eyes, and only then realized that he'd squeezed them shut. Since Kuroshi was still fitted into one of Sasuhonou's mechanisms, he doubted he'd be able to reach it under these circumstances. He considered stripping away his sand armor hoping that would be enough to accomplish whatever she had in mind, but then he thought of something safer and more effective.
He broke away the sand armor over his right wrist, stretching it out into a black thread connecting his hand to Kuroshi's hilt, then drew it from its metal sheath. The weapon immediately flicked away from his sand, and only then did Gaara realize the cockpit was really spinning after all. Sasuhonou wasn't simply malfunctioning, it was trying to fly and failing miserably.
The wakizashi spun chaotically through the air, striking the front wall of the cockpit and bouncing off, now aimed directly at Tenten. Registering the oddly piercing sensation of adrenaline flooding his body, Gaara swept his hands forward from the armrests of his chair toward the shortsword. The entirety of his sand armor lashed out as well, hoping to catch the blade before it sliced or stabbed Tenten.
He was successful, stopping the sword inches before its tip would've reached her belly. He tugged his sand back in an arc past Tenten, snatching the hilt of the weapon as it neared him. "Stain, Kuroshi!"
A scouring wind of black sand tore past him and Tenten, splashing against the walls of the cockpit and hardening there. The room around them was robbed entirely of light, but Sasuhonou's spinning slowed dramatically in return.
Tenten reached for Umiyou's hilt, but like Gaara before her she couldn't grab it. Desperate, she unbuckled her seatbelt and threw herself from her seat, twisting as she fell forward to land on her back on the front wall of the cockpit. She curled upward, reaching back toward her seat and the falchion holstered at its base, and she just barely managed to wrap her fingers around the hilt.
"Devoureverythingwithinreach Umiyou!" she blurted the command far faster than usual, releasing a splash of liquid glass through a spout leading from the falchion's sheath to an opening on Sasuhonou's back. "Gaara get rid of the sand!"
He pulled his sand away from the walls, plastering it all to the roof of the cockpit. Tenten saw the horror in his eyes, correctly guessing that he saw the ground fast approaching beneath her. It was a look of despair, of someone fully expecting to die in a few moments, and Tenten shared his fear. Still however, she had one last move to make.
She swept her arms outward to her sides, bathing the cockpit in the orange glow of her lava wrapping around it. She stretched the glass out onto Sasuhonou's limbs as well, and pulled upward with as much force as she could. Sasuhonou turned, no longer aimed straight at the ground but diagonally downward. As she continued to struggle, her machine's course curved more and more away from the ground.
She shuddered upon feeling the wall under her back scrape across the ground, or perhaps a rooftop. To her left, one of the armor panels making up the cockpit took on its natural dark grey color, moments before it was ripped away and the cockpit was filled with screeching wind.
Then at last their course curved back upward, and it was over. Tenten slowed their ascent to a far more comfortable pace than it had initially been, as she slumped to the floor and panted. She rolled onto her back to watch and guide their approach toward the heavy grey clouds above. Near the edge of her vision, she noted that Gaara had similarly crumpled into his seat with relief.
"...So... what was that one supposed to do?" he breathed.
She laughed shakily, and reached up to climb back into her seat. "That... was supposed to let us fly," she admitted. "I built rockets into Sasuhonou's feet."
"Maybe not your best idea."
"Yeah, maybe," she chuckled again, this time with less leftover terror. "No more rocket boots; that's a promise." she buckled her seatbelt again, settling her hands once more onto the control cylinders. "But look at this!" Sasuhonou twirled while still reaching skyward. "We're really flying!"
The liquid glass around Sasuhonou settled into place entirely on the machine's wrists and ankles, along with a thick belt of the material just past the edge of the camera seals, leaving their view unobstructed. "I didn't need to use rockets at all... I can just levitate the glass around and move Sasuhonou with it!" she brought their ascent to a gradual stop, peering down at the flickering blue dot of light that marked the Raikage's location.
"He's still watching us," Gaara noted. He could've left to fight Naruto and Hinata again, but he stayed to see us crash... I suppose he didn't want us coming back to help them... "So what are our options now?"
"At this range we have my glass, your sand, and Sasuhonou's missiles. That's about it... I didn't really focus on installing a lot of weapons into this thing," she admitted, then blinked in surprise. "Actually, there is one other thing..."
"Hm?"
"Yeah, we're gonna need something to cover us while we fly down, since we have to move a lot slower than I thought for it to be controllable..." she tapped another orange icon, raising a hand-sized panel in front of Gaara's right hand. "Can you put your hand there and channel a bit of Shukaku's chakra? Just a little bit; we should test this one before we put it to any real use."
"What does it do?" Gaara asked, even as he laid his palm over the metal plate.
"It just funnels your chakra through to Sasuhonou's right hand, and lets me apply a shape transformation to it." The arm in question curled forward into view before Tenten and Gaara, displaying the red-orange glow of Shukaku's chakra bubbling forth in a small pool on its palm. "Great; this one didn't blow up in our faces and nearly kill us." she laughed again, still a bit nervous. "When we get down there we're gonna use this on Zetsu, but I'll need more chakra than this, okay?"
"How much should I give you?" he glanced upward, noting the same metallic clicking above them as before.
"About six times as much as that first bit. That should do it." A small orange square flickered alight in front of Tenten, lined up with her view of the Raikage. She promptly fired a volley of rockets as before, then waited until their opponent was caught in the explosions. A moment after that, Gaara tightened his grip on the arms of his seat when they both began to fall again. "I've got it under control this time!" she clarified. "Gaara, are you okay back there?"
"Just fine," he nodded, loosening his grip slightly. "You?"
"I'm good." Sasuhonou slowed as it neared the ground, with a comparatively gentle landing on its feet. Tenten noted the square orange barrier that remained at the center of her vision, and lowered Sasuhonou into a taijutsu opening stance. "Looks like the Raikage is too."
"So are you going to use Shukaku's chakra?"
"...Not yet," she decided after a moment. "We still have plenty of sand and glass, and I think maybe I could burn Zetsu off without hurting the Raikage too badly. Gaara, try to hold him still for me."
"Right." Gaara reached forward with a number of thick tendrils of black sand. He hadn't thought about how many there were when he shaped them, as usual, but at a glance he counted seven. At the same time, Tenten flicked out five somewhat thinner cables of her molten glass, sending them out around the edges of Gaara's larger attack.
The Raikage's lightning cloak momentarily shone slightly brighter, just as he flash-stepped backward to flee from the black and orange attacks. He reappeared much further away, but remained there for only a split second before he blurred forward again, this time passing completely by Gaara's and Tenten's attacks to reappear at Sasuhonou's right leg, which he promptly punched through.
"W-What the hell!?" Tenten kicked forward with the leg Zetsu was attacking, vainly attempting to throw him back. "Where did that come from!?"
"It doesn't matter," Gaara answered. The next moment he was wrapping his sand around the Raikage, who stopped repeatedly punching Sasuhonou to struggle against the sand instead. "I've got him!" Tenten quickly pulled back her glass tendrils, layering them over the sand pinning down the Raikage. Zetsu hissed in pain, only growing louder as Gaara pulled away the sand between the Raikage and Tenten's glass.
Zetsu's liquid body sizzled and bubbled from the heat of the glass, a sound that Tenten very slightly winced at. However, with the Raikage's body no longer held down by sand, Zetsu now had an oppurtunity to take action. His liquid body reshaped itself, moving away from the cords of lava and leaving them to burn only the Raikage's exposed skin.
Next, he reached out with A's right arm and latched onto the edge of a hole in Sasuhonou's leg. He pulled down with all of the Raikage's incredible strength, firing himself upward rather than pulling Sasuhonou into the ground, tearing himself free of the lava whips in the process. He caught hold of Sasuhonou's right shoulder as he approached it, flipping himself around into a crouch atop the machine's armor.
"Oh nonono not the rocket pods-" Tenten reached up in an attempt to grab the Raikage and fling him away, but Zetsu deftly twisted around Sasuhonou's slightly clumsier hands. He smashed through the enlarged shoulder armor beneath his feet, ripping out bundles of small missiles and chunks of machinery, both of which he tossed aside quickly. "Gahhh," she groaned angrily, "Get the hell off!"
Zetsu declined, and moved to Sasuhonou's left shoulder while still dodging its arms. As the Raikage began dismantling that rocket pod as well, Tenten gritted her teeth and snarled, "Fuck this." She prompted Sasuhonou to leap forward, hands first, and execute a quick forward roll that rather effectively smashed Zetsu into the ground.
Both she and Gaara, despite the dizzying effect of the movement, noted a loud and unpleasant sound coming from beneath them. It was somewhere between a crunch and a squish, and Tenten was the first to silently guess where the sound had come from, namely Zetsu.
Although Sasuhonou did successfully emerge from the roll on its feet, it swayed dangerously as Tenten fought to recover her own balance. Once she did, she quickly spun to face Zetsu again. It didn't take long for her to note the missiles still scattered on the ground around him, and from there she decided to set them off and further injure the liquid creature.
"He wasn't this aggressive before," she realized. "Earlier, he wasn't really doing much. Just dodging our attacks, really... you noticed that, right Gaara?"
He nodded. "He was just stalling... he's fighting us two-on-one so his fight with Naruto and Hinata wouldn't be four-on-three."
"Which means gah holy crap-" Tenten just barely dodged a punch from the Raikage, who came flying out of the still-raging explosions with his right arm held forward. His fist scraped by the front of Sasuhonou's cockpit, ripping a horizontal slash through the metal wall. Fortunately for them, he missed the view seal at the center of the wall, leaving it still functional.
"Which means up until now, the Mizukage and Tsuchikage have at least been keeping up with Naruto and Hinata," Gaara continued for her. At the same time, she released and shaped more molten glass into a sword with similar proportions to Soujihonou. She held it together firmly, using it to catch and deflect the barrage of lightning-fast punches and kicks that Zetsu sent at them next. "They might have even had the upper hand, but now..."
"Now Naruto and Hinata are taking control," Tenten finished, "and this guy's starting to panic!" she dodged backward from his next punch and struck back with a broad horizontal slash from her lava sword, which the Raikage caught on his left forearm. Tenten noted with slight disappointment that the oily liquid making up Zetsu's body had already flowed away from the point of impact, leaving the lava sword to only singe the Raikage's skin.
Zetsu countered with his right arm, striking at the lava sword rather than Sasuhonou itself. His punch sent the sword flying away from his other forearm, stretching it wildly out of shape and nearly blowing it apart completely. Tenten, however, maintained her hold on the weapon, snapping it back into shape and bringing it forward in a forceful stab toward A's sternum.
The Raikage, however, blurred to the side of the thrust and leapt forward, passing easily between Sasuhonou's legs and skidding to a stop behind it. He pounced forward, but at the same time Tenten turned to face him and swept her sword into the path of his punch. This time she held the sword together much more firmly, and used it to push the Raikage back a short distance as she finished turning.
Again the Raikage stepped forward, this time throwing a rapid flurry of punches that each had the potential to rip holes in Sasuhonou's armor. Tenten parried them all while retreating backward, deflecting them past Sasuhonou rather than trying to catch their full force with blocking moves. But Zetsu continued relentlessly, and even though the blows glanced smoothly away from the lava sword, Tenten could feel it flexing and stretching more and more out of the shape she tried to hold it in.
"Tenten, we should fight him at a distance," Gaara suggested. "That's where our attacks are more effective, and the Raikage doesn't use ranged jutsu."
"Yeah," she nodded, taking a short jump back while twisting her glass out of its sword shape and into a short, thick javelin of glowing orange. She drew back Sasuhonou's arm and whipped the projectile at Zetsu with as much force as she could muster, then jumped high into the air. As the javelin got within feet of the Raikage, it exploded outward into a thin sheet of glass that wrapped around its target and scalded him.
The Raikage's lightning aura flared just before the glass touched him, forcing it back and tearing it to scraps at the same time. He saved himself from the glass sticking to his skin and burning him far worse than he was already, but the heat radiating from the glass when it was held back mere inches from his body still scorched him.
The glass he had pushed back hit the ground, a spray of small orange droplets, and sizzled loudly. With his vision no longer obscured by the now-scattered glass, Zetsu took a look at his new situation. Sasuhonou was floating high above where it had been. At a glance, Zetsu guessed it had ascended fifty feet or so.
Its place had been taken, however, by several dense and broad streams of black sand roughly shaped into monstrous arms, which condensed into the shape of a loosely clothed humanoid wielding a slender katana. Zetsu was confused by this, but without a face he couldn't change his expression to show it. Instead he simply sized up the sand monstrosity in one instant, and attacked it in the next.
Gaara's Kuroseikyo raised its sword defensively, but he drastically underestimated the force of A's punches. The sword was reduced to powder by Zetsu's first attack, which then lanced deep into the sand wraith's chest. "Sand Coffin," Gaara called, sealing up the cavity torn into Kuroseikyo's chest, but by then Zetsu had already retracted his arm and moved behind Kuroseikyo with another Body Flicker.
A split second after he reappeared, he jumped straight up into the air and spun a kick through Kuroseikyo's back, blowing the sand construct in two. In response Gaara reshaped the split halves of his sand construct into a cloud to snare the Raikage before he landed back on his feet. Zetsu, however, reached out with both arms and grabbed the offending tendrils of sand, shoving himself backward with the Raikage's superior strength.
Gaara balled his fists and crunched the sand around where the Raikage had touched it, hoping to at least damage his hands, but the maneuver had caught him off-guard for a split second too long. Once again the Raikage escaped, but this time Gaara switched tactics.
"Second Incarnation: Kurosekai!"
The highly condensed black sand making up the wraith exploded in all directions, covering the ground and filling the air with a thick haze of sand. Zetsu glanced around warily, peering into the gloom in search of an incoming attack. He saw the replica of Shukaku's arm just in time to react, and he jumped up and over its clawed hand to land in a crouch along its wrist.
"Not this time!"
Zetsu looked up, and this time he was too late. A second arm of sand smashed into the wrist of the first from directly above, sending both arms crashing violently into the ground. With the Raikage trapped within, Gaara molded the sand of both arms together into a hill and began to crunch it downward. "Sand Coffin!"
"That's gotta hurt," Tenten commented. "Did you get him?"
"He didn't get away," Gaara answered, "but he's not dead either."
Zetsu tore free from the top of the hill, letting loose a horrifying inhuman shriek of pain and rage. Gaara replied by deploying another Sand Coffin, this time crushing the Raikage from the waist down. Zetsu howled again, finished climbing out of the sand, and crouched down with the intent to jump straight into the air toward Sasuhonou.
"Third Incarnation!" Gaara continued, and a gust of black sand shoved the Raikage back to earth. He landed near the top of the sand hill, sending up a black plume of it like smoke. The black sandstorm floating around the hill then began to collapse inward from all sides, thickening and further crushing the Raikage. "Kuroi Kakusui!"
What had been a cloud of loose sand was now solidified into a sharply formed pyramid of pitch-black. Gaara tightened both of his hands into fists, compressing the pyramid down into an ever smaller space. A single bead of sweat trailed down his right temple from the effort, but still he kept applying more force.
"Gaara, what's wrong!?" Tenten peered over her shoulder, noticing his struggle. "Is it working?"
The pyramid exploded, revealing an unharmed Zetsu and the Raikage he was still wrapped around. Despite being unconscious, A was panting now, and his right fist was outstretched while his left was pulled back. He had still been throwing punches and kicks even as the sand crushed him, tearing apart the shadowy prison from within.
"Stain, Kuroshi..." a fresh supply of sand was released from Gaara's sword, and this time it gathered in front of Tenten. "Fourth Incarnation: Kurojin!" she blinked in surprise and watched the sand form into a thin but dense blade, shaped more like her jian than the katana form it normally took. "Use this to finish him," he prompted. "He's tiring out from that last move."
Hesitantly, she took the hilt of the weapon with Sasuhonou's hand. "But Kurojin is too heavy to swing without you using your sand control to move it," she pointed out.
"I'll follow your lead and help you swing it," he replied. "It'll work; I'm sure of it."
"...Alright, let's try it!" Tenten raised the black sword slowly, up over Sasuhonou's head in preparation to sweep it downward. To her surprise, the motion felt effortless; the sword rose even faster than she'd intended to move it. When she brought the blade down diagonally from her top right to bottom left, it moved so quickly that it blurred to her eyes, an unbroken arc of solid black scything through the air before them.
As intended, Kurojin's reach was extended by fragments of it breaking away during the cut, and the sword slashed across the Raikage's chest to slice open even his implausibly durable body. Droplets of blood splashed from the wound as Zetsu stumbled back, his fury only growing even more.
"It worked!" Tenten grinned in her nervous exhilaration. "Gaara, I'm taking us back down. Let's finish this!"
"Absolutely."
She flew toward the ground, and as she did Zetsu lunged skyward to meet her. She whipped Kurojin into the path of his punch and caught it, surprised at her own success. She deflected him past Sasuhonou with his own momentum, and turned in midair to face him just before they both landed in a crouch on the cold ground. She kept Sasuhonou in a crouching stance low to the ground, to better confront the Raikage's smaller frame.
Zetsu flashed forward and swept a left hook at Sasuhonou, but Tenten caught the blow and shoved it outward with Kurojin. Relying on the effortless speed of Sasuhonou's strength working with Gaara's assistance, she raised the sword and brought it down diagonally on the Raikage's shoulder, again from top right to bottom left.
This time, however, she turned the blade and brought it back, slashing near-vertically upward across A's chest. She planted Sasuhonou's foot in his chest to throw him back, charging forward in pursuit and whipping Kurojin at him once more, this time horizontally from left to right.
The Raikage brought up his right arm and caught the blow on his wrist, ignoring the painful gash that resulted from this action. He swept his left arm forward and up into Sasuhonou's chest, tearing through the metal cockpit like paper once more.
Tenten gritted her teeth and jumped back, skidding a short distance along the sandy ground before she stopped and bounded forward again, this time aiming two thrusts at the Raikage's chest. He dodged both, first to the left and then to the right, and he struck back with a wild flurry of punches. Tenten blocked each with Kurojin, counting five before she saw an opening to interrupt him.
She raked her sword from right to left this time, gashing open the Raikage's hip as Sasuhonou stepped past him lightly, turning as it did to stay facing him. She cocked her sword back to impale him from behind, but he flickered and vanished long before her stab reached him. On instinct she continued the motion from a linear stab into a parabolic arc, twisting the sword under Sasuhonou's left arm to catch the Raikage where he reappeared.
The tip of the blade sank shallowly into the Raikage's chest while also shoving him backward and downward, forcing him to skid away on his knees. Zetsu snarled and punched the length of the extended weapon, cracking off several feet of the blade piercing him. He drew it from the wound and tossed it aside with contempt, even as he charged in for another attack.
She leapt forward past the reach of his punch, twirling in midair to face him as she did. Now holding a sword with proportions more similar to Gaara's wakizashi, she flipped the weapon into a reverse grip that more suited his style than hers. "Use one of your moves!" she called, and Gaara obliged quickly.
His next attack was a sword slash carried out more like a punch. Using Kurojin, he moved Sasuhonou's fist past the Raikage's shoulder while the blade instead scythed deep into his chest. Tenten followed the motion through by stepping past Zetsu and turning to face him again, allowing Gaara to chain together four more similar cuts.
Bleeding heavily, the Raikage caught Gaara's sixth attack and pulled mightily on Kurojin, partially tugging it from Sasuhonou's grasp and partially ripping the weapon itself apart. He pounced on Sasuhonou's cockpit and delivered one final blow to the already-crippled armor plates, this time striking the center of the seal that fed a view to the inside of the cockpit.
Blinded, Tenten threw a wild punch with Sasuhonou's right fist. Although she no longer had a view of what lay directly in front of the machine, she could see the Raikage's fist where it had torn through the metal wall, and her punch landed. It ripped Zetsu free of the latest hole he'd made in her armor, and allowed her to open up the walls of the cockpit completely to refresh her view.
"I'm gonna use that seal on Sasuhonou's hand to end this," Tenten decided. "I need some of Shukaku's chakra!"
"I've already filled it with the amount you wanted," Gaara answered, surprising her slightly. "I'm ready when you are."
Tenten grinned, drawing back the machine's right arm. The bubbling glow of demonic chakra started solely on its palm, but it spread an instant later to cover Sasuhonou's entire forearm up to its elbow. An instant after that it began to spin, and Gaara recognized what she intended to do. The spiralling drill of chakra around Sasuhonou's arm distinctly evoked the Rasengan, in function if admittedly not in form.
The Raikage clambered out of a wrecked building, his various wounds still trickling blood, and drew back his right fist in preparation for one final blow. Tenten called forth her Kekkai Kokuei, which Gaara took as a sign to prepare his sand armor as well. He did so just in time, for a moment later both Zetsu and Sasuhonou flashed forward and collided.
Upon impact, the orange and blue chakras strained against each other for a brief few seconds, and after that both of them exploded. Missing an entire arm, Sasuhonou flew backward along the ground, ripping a shallow trench through as it passed. The Raikage similarly tumbled back, with his own arm shredded and gushing blood but at least in one piece.
At the same time that Tenten pulled her halberd free of the destroyed mech and climbed out of it, so too did Zetsu flow up and off of the Raikage. He faced the black silhouette so similar to his own and snarled in frustration. I'll kill you, he spat just before he began to stalk toward her. But not before I weaponize you against that bastard Naruto. I swear it, I'll-
"Not without the big guy's super-speed, you won't," she replied, and a blade of brilliant orange light pierced his chest. Zetsu looked down, and even without a face to express it his disbelief was plain. "Get stuffed," she commanded, and his liquid body was sucked smoothly into the orange blade. She retracted it, momentarily examined the yellow-green seal shining on the flat of her halberd's blade, then twirled it lightly and turned back to Gaara and her destroyed invention.
"I'm uh, gonna seal that pile of scrap up now," she announced. "You might wanna get out of the cockpit."
"R-Right." Gaara climbed out of the wreckage and landed in a slight crouch in front of Tenten. After a moment's consideration, he wrapped her up in his arms and held her close. He'd also thought of kissing her instead, but this felt like a better way to express his overwhelming relief that they were both still alive.
Tenten let out a subtly shaky sigh and returned his embrace, feeling the flow of adrenaline in her system just beginning to settle down. "We w-won." she released him just as he did the same, and she hesitantly climbed up to retrieve Umiyou from where it still sat in the ruined cockpit.
She returned it to its place on her back and exited the ruined mech once more, stuffing it back into the seal on Soujihonou's extended hilt before sealing that as well, converting the halberd back into a sword she could sheath at her hip. "Let's patch Raikage-sama up and get the hell out of here."
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