"Kurenai-sensei." Hinata spoke as she landed on the ground next to her. "Can you use your genjutsu to relay information to everybody?"
"Bit busy, but yeah." Kurenai sucked a breath in through her teeth. "What is it?"
"Neji had a plan." Hinata began, quickly. "Tenten has explosives that we think we could use to clear out most of Sasori's puppets. We'll need to temporarily retreat to do so. Approximately a hundred meters away from this area." Hinata noticed Tenten's lips moving, and quickly relayed what she was saying to Kurenai. "About thirty seconds."
"Right." Kurenai weaved a few quick handsigns, her Chakra briefly surging. "It's done."
Hinata nodded, moving away again.
?
"Freeze it?" Isobu suggested.
"It's too strong for ice to hold it." I responded, absentmindedly teleporting from place to place, avoiding a barrage of angry-red Chakra bullets.
"Bury it?"
"Again, too strong."
"What about doing that thing where you speed up time? Can't you do that for yourself or something?"
"I can, but I want to keep that ability hidden until I'm in the position to actually kill the damn thing."
"Which is hard, because it keeps splitting itself up." Isobu nodded.
"Can't you do something like that?" Shukaku suddenly butted in.
"N... no?"
A tug.
Once the thirty seconds were up, everybody who was remotely near Sasori immediately and promptly backed away. At the same time, Hinata saw Tenten throw a number of containers into the air.
They were rather small, all things considered. They reached their apex, and split up, letting a number of long, rectangular rods fall free, which had storage seals on them.
A moment later, their cargo was unsealed, each one of the rods letting free hundreds of cylinders.
Which, upon closer examination, were actually rolled up explosive tags.
Hundreds -thousands- of very loud booms promptly filled the clearing where they had left Sasori. Conflagrations of sound and light and fire and force filled her vision.
It continued for nearly eight full seconds before the tags ran their course, used in a moment of incredible ultraviolence. Dust obscured the entire area, the lingering Chakra of the tags momentarily obscuring her vision.
Tenten, Hinata reflected, had an array of explosives that bordered on excessive.
"Holy shit, Tenten." Kiba called out. "Got enough bombs on you?"
"Don't judge me, dog boy." Tenten spoke back. "Do you have any damned idea how long that took to prepare? Days. I made four damned clones to help me, but it still took forever. You would not believe how bad my hand was cramping after making all those explosive tags."
She frowned.
That lingering chakra seemed awfully solid and still.
"It's not over yet." She spoke.
"Wait, seriously?" Kiba asked. "How?"
"He used something to defend himself." Neji spoke. "It's infused heavily with Chakra."
Gai threw his fist forward almost faster than she could see. His fist stopped, suddenly, coinciding with a burst of Chakra that sent a surge of air forwards, blowing away the dust and smoke.
One really did have to admire Gai's sheer strength and control over himself.
The retreating dust and smoke revealed a lump of metal in the rough shape of dome, which was melted and burned, cracked open in some places, and still glowing with residual heat. It had been reinforced with Chakra, likely the only reason it hadn't been utterly destroyed by Tenten's explosives.
Still, that must have taken a considerable amount of Chakra. Their enemy was not likely to have much left. As a puppeteer, that didn't mean too much, but Sasori's body seemed to require some Chakra to move around...
Something underneath the dome hit it hard, breaking it apart from the inside. Coarse black sand streamed outwards, reminding her not too insignificantly of Gaara's own sand.
It reached back striking at the metal, breaking it apart further and further. It fell to the ground in large pieces, revealing their opponent yet again.
Above Sasori was yet another puppet. This one, however, was extraordinarily damaged, parts of singed, melted, and burned. It was missing a leg, its torso seemed to have had a long piece of metal violently jammed through it, which was also glowing from residual heat, the jaw appeared to have been torn off, and its back had a part of its internal mechanisms exposed to open air, fused together from heat.
Whoever Sasori had fought before must have been very fond of fire. Extraordinarily hot fire, too, because most metals one would think to use as a weapon didn't have a low melting point.
"That's..." Gai spoke aloud, staring at the puppet. "The Third Kazekage?"
"My greatest work." Sasori, unexpectedly, actually answered.
Gai shifted his stance, and at that moment, the chest of the puppet sparked, the black sand falling to the ground a moment later.
She blinked at that. A closer look showed that something inside the mechanism had fractured, the Chakra no longer flowing through it like it had previously.
Hmm.
Sasori put the puppet away quickly, his movements hasty and almost jittery. He seemed... irritated.
Hinata shifted slightly. At the same time, Gai shot forwards.
There was a mechanical sound, before a long, segmented blade-whip shot out from underneath the cloak, lancing towards Gai. Gai shifted to the side, dodging around it and being careful to not let it touch him.
Shino raised a hand, a buzzing cloud of Kikaichu shoot out from his sleeve. It split up into three swarms, one going left, the second going right, and the third going up.
Sasori straightened, before releasing a green mist around him, obscuring him like smoke. Shino's swarms veered off, a small part of the first swarm veering off and flying into the poison.
He grunted, and Hinata saw the fragment of the swarm die in the smoke.
Gai did not seem bothered by this obstruction.
All at once, his chakra surged. Hinata saw the moment he had opened the first of the Eight Gates, but she only barely saw what came afterwards.
Gai struck.