When gazing at the Kazekage's office from the inside, it certainly wouldn't have looked like someone had carved the entire building into a pot-shaped sandstone structure that didn't look that much more impressive than a pile of moist sand. The office had been polished and decorated appropriately and reminded Mana of the Hokage's office if a little subtler on the hi-tech gadgetry.
The Kazekage himself was a relatively tall individual, though his relative youth left an impression on Mana. When Mana had met Naruto, it seemed like he may have been too young for such notable duties as well, though that only bolstered how amazing of a ninja he must have been for Konoha to entrust itself to his care and management. Seeing yet another village leader who barely looked a year over thirty just made Mana a tad baffled about the management of this universe's ninja world.
"The Colossus of the Covenant?" Gaara muttered with a raspy voice in reaction to the request of his older sister. "Why do you need intel on that?"
"So then you have some knowledge of its location?" Temari pressed on.
"Of course, I've had scouts observing its movements from as far away as we could keep it ever since it stopped rampaging and just walked off into the sunset, ignoring our best efforts and toppling it over," Gaara answered the question and remind Temari just what sort of walking monolith they were discussing.
"Lord Kazekage, the Colossus has an artifact embedded into it that's crucial for a mission. A mission that comes straight from Hokage himself." Kakashi said. Gaara and Naruto must have been close or at the very least known each other for Kakashi to appeal to such a bond by bringing Naruto up at all.
"That may be so, but it is a Konohagakure mission that takes place on Land of Wind and Sunagakure soil," Gaara weaved his fingers together, giving Kakashi a chilling stare. While Kakashi had the composure and presence of a genuine titan and played it off cool by just yanking his mask with a light pinch and smiling with his eyes, Mana wondered if she could withstand such an intense glare herself if the Kazekage directed on at her.
"Come on, Gaara, it's not like we're going to just attack it and try destroying it. We won't fight it anywhere near Sunagakure," Temari appealed to her brother again, softening her tone to sound less detached and professional. "I may not have been there to fight the Colossus myself when it wrought havoc, but I know how dangerous that thing is."
"Exactly!" a ninja in a black hood with purple face-paint standing by the Kazekage's side during the meeting spoke up. "You weren't there because you were tending to your duties in Konohagakure as a member of the Nara clan. Let's not forget, Temari, that you're officially a Konohagakure kunoichi now. You're requesting sensitive intel from Sunagakure scouts about a potentially world-shaking threat because you want to poke it with a stick to dislodge some mythical, old trinket and you're wondering why Kazekage-sama is hesitant to provide it to you?"
"Kankuro…" Gaara raised his hand to calm his assistant. "It's not like Temari is an alien to Sunagakure. She is our sister, and she grew up in Sunagakure. Her marriage to an esteemed clan head shouldn't be held against Temari, but it should be treated as a jewel that strengthens our relationship with Konoha. Still, we have no guarantee that messing with the Colossus of the Covenant won't reset its calamitous tendencies and cause it to rampage again."
"With all due respect, Kazekage-sama, the artifact that is lodged within the Colossus, and needs to be extracted, is necessary to help the Allied Ninja from another universe. While our plan of action will be stealth, we have never attempted to let a significantly more powerful ninja from another universe give it their go. Mana-san here has survived an exchange of blows with Sasuke when she was just a genin and easily dismantled outer-universal invaders that tore our village's defenses apart all by herself." Kakashi gestured toward the magician. Unable to cope with the influx of attention, Mana gulped and bowed her head nervously.
This felt so unnervingly different from being on stage. When she was in front of an audience, it felt like she had everything she needed to satisfy their expectations and more. That felt more liberating and artistic, whereas the gazes of the Kazekage and his guards focusing on Mana made the magician's gut bubble with tension.
"If she's so dangerous, maybe she should've stayed outside with the rest of the aliens?" Kankuro observed with his eyes closed, while a trail of sweat ran down the side of his face. With the pulsing scorch of the desert being inescapable in this part of the world, it may not have been out of fearful respect of Mana's feats, as Kakashi put them.
"It was your advice to let one member of the Allied Ninja take part in the meeting, Kankuro," Gaara reminded his brother. "Either way, we respect the partnership with Mana's universe and we treasure our partnership with Konoha even more. We won't provide you with the intel that you ask, but I personally, alongside my personal guard, will assist you in locating the Colossus and dealing with it."
"Kazekage-sama!" a well-aged ninja with a Sunagakure flak jacket and a rich assortment of cloth wrapped around his face yelled out in objection with a low-pitched, masculine voice.
"This is not up for debate." Gaara calmly shook his head. "The Colossus of the Covenant is roaming the Land of Wind with the fearsome might that could rattle the entire world, let alone our country. Each day that it roams our deserts, it embarrasses me in front of the Wind Feudal Lord as a leader capable of protecting his domain. Each day it tramples a house or levels a dune. It discredits my capabilities as the Kazekage and stains my duties to my people. The only way this mission of yours can proceed is if I am personally involved."
"Understood, Kazekage-sama," Kakashi nodded. With Kakashi giving in, Mana and Temari bowed their heads in submission to the Kazekage's will as well. While the three left the Kazekage's office, arguments and they heard escalating voices all the way from across the top floor corridor. The Allied Ninja and the Konoha ninja proved to be more manageable to the Kazekage than his own personal guard, it seemed.
"This is kinda dumb…" Skaven picked his ear and blew into his finger after pulling it out with an irritated look on his face. "The more people tag along, the tougher it'll be to sneak up on the Colossus and nab what we need."
"From the sounds of it, it's almost as if the Kazekage is looking for a fight…" Shige-H rubbed her chin with a fair share of worry reflected in her expression as well.
"Hmm… So he's gonna use us and our unnatural power as an excuse to bust that thing," Damisan sighed. "We could've had a much easier time just snagging the locket from wherever it is. We should have asked the burglars to do it for us."
"There'd be no chance of that happening." Temari waved her hand in utter dismissal of the idea. "As if a bunch of lowlifes would risk approaching the Colossus of the Covenant within its line of sight. Even if it would remain completely disinterested the whole time, they'd never even consider such a thing, no matter the prize."
"Whatever, maybe it's for the better that we wreck that walking statue instead of just letting it walk about. It's a crappy look for you guys. You should be thankful to us for helping you get rid of it," Endo crossed his arms and turned his nose up.
"Oh yeah, real ecstatic…" Temari rolled her eyes with a sour expression.
The Kazekage dashed in, surrounded by his personal guard as a red blur with the tail of beige and black ones alongside it. With the arrival of the Sunagakure's leader and his hand-picked squad, the Allied, Konoha, and Suna ninja took off, with the pair of masked ninja with beige hooded cloaks rushing in front and leading the pack toward their goal.
The dancing blurs settled on top of a crescent-shaped dune to observe a sky-reaching stone figure that blocked out most of the sun, almost as if eclipsing the entire star all by itself. One could make out the Colossus' general shapes from hundreds of kilometers away. In the beginning, it looked like a mountainous peak that became larger and larger, seemingly without end. By the time that the tracking squad lined up to get a plan in order, the walking mountain resembled a humanoid shape at last. Its size and man-like movement only added to the uncanny valley effect of the colossal monolith.
Dry desert winds blew a handful of sand particles up that whirled together and formed an eye. One that looked just like an ordinary human eye, except its edges revealed it to be a complete sand construct and every time it blinked, instead of an eyelid, a layer of sand slipped over it before opening up again. The eye moved a lot like a dragonfly, scanning the Colossus for any semblances of bling in its body.
It was fortunate that the Colossus had been an obsidian body decorated with just about every mineral in the book on one patch or another. Hieroglyphs, artistic decorations, and accessories molded out of solid minerals gave the black, sky-reaching humanoid some spice. The eye acted subtly. It didn't at all seem likely that the supermassive monolith could ever sight a silent gnat buzzing about its body and scanning its surface without as much as a rustle of a noise.
The eye lingered over the towering beast's belly, blinking a few times as it fixed on a shiny, golden dot in the sum of stony obsidian mass. The eye of sand dissolved into shapeless, flowing grains as Gaara of the Sand released his jutsu and opened his eyes.
"I've found the Golden Locket of Sotatsu. It's stuck on the Colossus' belly button. Looks too neatly pressed in to be an accident. Someone must have put it there on purpose," Gaara grit his teeth.
"Impossible…" Kankuro hissed. "The Sunagakure scouts had been watching over the Colossus of the Covenant 24/7. There can't be a chance that they would have allowed anyone as much as approach this walking mountain and risk aggravating it."
"Possible or not, it's just the facts." Kakashi closed his eyes calmly. "Now it's up to us to figure out how we're going to dislodge it without being noticed."
"That is still the plan, right, Gaara?" Temari turned to her younger brother who stared at the walking titan with a blank stare, as if begging for the walking monolith to turn around and notice the clumped together ninja, giving them an excuse to go all-out.
"I'll see if I can help with that. I will need some cover, like old times, Temari," Gaara turned back to his older sister with a friendly nod. Temari pushed her body up, still half-crouched, with only her long legs straightened out as she swung her fans down the dune to cause a howling gale that picked up the loose grains of sand and whipped up a localized sandstorm. It didn't seem to bother the sky-scraping golem at all.
Clapping his hands together, Gaara raised his hands up to his mouth and blew into it, aggravating the thickness of the sandstorm while adding his own chakra-infused sand into the fold. The entire sandstorm lit up like a chakra sensory smokescreen. Sensing a Sand Clone forming inside of it with chakra sensory became as difficult as trying to make it out with one's own eyes. Before long, however, Temari began waving her twin fans toward herself, calling in the gale and the localized sand grains.
Only a pair of hands remained of the clone that Gaara had concealed within the sandstorm. The hands parted to the sides, revealing that they've been cradling a locket of golden colors that reflected what limited sunlight passed around the roaming goliath in front of them with a warm shimmer.
"The Golden Locket of Sotatsu," Kakashi observed as everyone sighed easier.
"Wait, if this truly is the Golden Locket of Sotatsu, that means that it can take one to whatever realms one wants to see," a cloaked ninja alongside the Kazekage's personal guard observed. "This means that it could also banish the Colossus of the Covenant to a different realm as well, right?"
"That's enough, Yashin!" Kankuro objected. "We've secured the artifact. We've been tremendously lucky to do so without aggravating the Colossus. Have you forgotten the devastation that it is capable of? If our attempts to banish it fail, there'd be no way for us to stop it again. There'd be nobody controlling it for us to kill!"
"I agree with the masked bodyguard," Endo said. "We should break this lousy golem apart since we're already here."
"That isn't part of our mission, Endo," Shige-H groaned. The tendency of her comrade to always look for extra trouble was a source of much aggravation for the Allied kunoichi. "By engaging this Colossus needlessly, we'd be putting the lives of our workers and engineers stuck on the moon in jeopardy."
"We should destroy this statue…" Damisan proclaimed, clenching his fist with a rubbery churn to the artificial weaves that pressed together. "Back in our universe, nobody did a thing about Fennec. All the ninja passing through his territories just left him alone to be someone else's problem until he ruined my life and the lives of the people in my settlement. We see it right now, right in front of our eyes. We have a responsibility to deal with it or else the lives that this titan claims in the future will be on our hands."
"You guys went on and on about how ninja from another universe had never confronted it, didn't you?" Skaven yawned. "Here's our chance to show just how much more powerful we are. Plus, it would serve as a neat payback for all the kindness and service we got this far."
"I say we should leave it alone," Mana shook her head. "We've no idea what it is or how it works. We don't know how powerful it is. All that we know is that every attempt at as much as damaging this thing has failed in the past. This is nothing like Fennec. The Colossus of the Covenant isn't a man and therefore it lacks malice just as much as it lacks kindness, love, and empathy. For that reason, it is akin to a force of nature and those are better left alone."
"Gaara…" Temari turned to her little brother, who seemed to be deep in thought, staring down and away as if letting every argument for and against engaging the titan pass through his head before he decided.
"Temari, I think you should retreat." Gaara looked up and met his sister's gaze. "You have a family to look after back in Konoha, and your main weapon is ruined. You won't be able to help us much with just your sidearms."
"Tsk," Mana expressed her frustration with what she viewed as a grand mistake. Seeing this titan in action was a marvel to behold and experience. Its slow and methodical stroll comprising effortless, ground-shaking, kilometer-wide steps had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but messing with this force out of fear that it might one day awaken its worst impulses seemed misguided.
"Mana?" Kakashi looked back at the magician. "Are you going to pull back too?"
"No. I see this as a mistake but, I suppose, I am outvoted here. I'll do everything I can to assist you and try to see to it that nobody gets killed." Mana lifted her top hat off and ran her hand across her long and curly hair, brushing the resting sand out of her locks.
"I see. I've noticed you being capable of using multiple Nature Transformations. We could definitely use your assistance," Kakashi noted with a grateful nod.
"Understood, so we fight then. What is our plan?" Kankuro said while removing scrolls from the back of his sash and laying them out in front of him as he prepared to call forth what laid sealed within those scrolls.
"At the moment, our major advantage compared to our last collision is the Allied Ninja from a different universe. We attack together in sync and see if their unnatural might can make this titan crumble," Gaara proclaimed while going through a myriad of hand seals and clapping his hands together in the position of the final hand seal as he blew into the opening in between his palms.
Jets of sand seeped out from Gaara's gourd, drilling into the desert underground and leaving chakra-infused sand particles amongst the vast expanse of the desert. Gaara's technique ground up rocks and minerals resting underground to add to his overwhelming tidal wave of dry sand. The ground underneath the Colossus' feet rumbled and shook. One of Gaara's cloaked Black Ops ninja flickered away, moving onward and toward the Colossus' location while he went through a collection of his own hand seals.
"Water Release: Water Shuriken!" the ninja exclaimed while flinging a barrage of shuriken-shaped water constructs at the uneasy desert surface underneath the Colossus' feet. The blizzard of shuriken formed quicksand that gobbled up the Colossus' feet to its heels, entrapping it.
"Sand Tsunami!" Gaara chanted out, surfacing the sound he had ground up as a crashing tidal wave that dwarfed everyone around it yet only measured up to the Colossus' knees. The crashing sand slammed against the Colossus' kneecaps decorated with jade coils symbolizing the sun, but it seemed like all the sand in the desert world cannot scratch it.
Despite the quicksand tactic proving to be an effective trap for the Colossus, the combined effort of the Kazekage and his personal guard ultimately proved to be every bit as fruitless as the locals had described taking the Colossus on to be.