Chapter 331: Motile
adj. moving or capable of moving spontaneously
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Since the moment that Naruto had woken in the arena, he had felt as if he was missing pieces of a bigger puzzle. His head swiveled from ninja to summons to team members, eyes and brain grasping for understanding that leaked from his mind at the next observation. It was hard to catch his breath, stomach dropping in confusion that intensified as they left Shikamaru to deal with foreign nins.
Crashing to a stop when they finally caught up to Sasuke, only to see a thing standing over his writhing teammate, black marks squirming across Sasuke's face. Forcefully shoving the confusion down, Naruto did what he did best, acted.
Naruto zoomed through tree branches, sneaking around the thing's blindside to kick them solidly across the face, forcing them away from Sasuke.
"Hey Sakura-chan!" called Naruto, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. The thing was starting to stand up again, a new sandy appendage growing and waving behind it.
"What is it?!" she shouted distractedly.
"Who is that?" he asked in concern, "I thought Sasuke went after Gaara?"
"That is Gaara," informed Pakkun, his nose sniffing the air.
"Really?" Naruto squawked, the small hints he had gathered about Gaara sinking into place.
Kagome's breath rattled out of her lungs when she allowed herself a minute of rest in the middle of the forest. The trees towered high overhead, their tall boughs blocking out the sun from the forest floor. Her lungs burned and her legs felt like jelly, but she still managed to press herself away from her resting tree to continue onward.
Her pace turned shuffling, her focus on placing one foot in front of the other, rather than returning to the loping pace she started with. Her eyes seized on the demonic aura billowing in the distance. The nebula had continued to rise above the skyline. While she had been picking her way through the village another presence had appeared in a violent clash of black and red.
Kagome gasped in a deep breath, finding the motivation to propel herself forward. Her mind turned towards wishful thinking. She wished Inuyasha was there to carry her towards the fight, riding her bicycle, or even hoping for Gaara's protective sand to cart her through the air and towards their destination.
A twinge of longing shot through Kagome as she looked into the distance, wishing she could have been there with the siblings.
Temari remained paralyzed from her position in the trees, watching the blond boy battle against her powerful little brother. While Sasuke had aimed to kill her brother, Naruto seemed to be trying to match Gaara blow for blow.
Temari deliberately pulled her attention away from the giant toad summon that the blond had called to fight off the fully transformed Gaara, to glance at the pink haired ninja welded to the tree as Sasuke squirmed and seized beneath her.
Temari's thoughts swirled through her mind as she wrestled with her fears. Confronting Gaara's demon side had paralyzed her body, but as the blond drew her brother further into the forest, she felt a tug to act, to do something.
Barely giving herself time to second guess, she landed lightly on the branch beside the downed Ninjas. Her fingers sought Sasuke's pulse, the beat sluggish, before tentatively approaching the pink haired girl. Temari breathed in deeply and pulsed her charka into the sand. With Gaara distracted she had enough time to resonate her charka to a frequency that caused the chakra packed sand to vibrate and loosen.
Time sluggishly passed, before the pink haired ninja's body fell into Temari's fatigued arms.
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