Pushing his head inside of the chain holding the locket and letting it carelessly dangle out on his chest, Gaara raised his hand to call forth the entire surrounding desert to shoot out continental masses of sand to tie around the Colossus' joints and slow down his calamitous smash of punishment. With his free hand, Gaara grabbed the locket, pressing it tight as he channeled his chakra into the pillow of his hand until it shined with a blue flame.
"I can't believe it. Gaara should be nigh unbeatable in the desert and yet he can barely do a thing against this cursed statue," Temari bit her lip as the battered allied ninja forces laid scattered around the lone man standing resolute before the world-ending, lifeless goliath.
Just as the Colossus was about to rip free of the entire Wind Country springing to action to entangle him, consuming most of Gaara's chakra, gold nuggets began sprouting from the ground around the terrifying golem until they not only replaced the desert that came to life before it but sank everything that one's mind could encompass in riches.
"The Golden Locket, it must be working…" Skaven's voice rang in Mana's head before everything went black. It seemed as if though the golden nuggets would swarm and bury her under as their numbers were sufficient to imbalance even the monster of melee and sent him fumbling over on his behind. More and more nuggets continued to pile over until everything became black.
A pulse of ethereal energy sent the nuggets flying like shrapnel. A feeling of weightlessness rustled Mana's blazer and nearly took her hat off. The ninja magician reached out to keep a firm hold over it as, otherwise, she'd have lost it to the unknown aether in between different dimensions accessible to the Golden Locket of Sotatsu.
"Where are we?" Damisan's voice shivered.
"Nowhere, from the looks of it..." Mana replied. She could see familiar faces of her friends floating around her. Stuck in the limbo in between different dimensions just as she was. Trapped to plummet forever toward the splat that would never come because there was nothing waiting down below to flatten them. Gaara was the one floating in the center of the storm. His eyes and his mouth shimmered with golden radiance and, as he commanded without a word, the nuggets suddenly lost all of their golden splendor by sending it off in the shape of gold dust to give color and shape to this vortex of oblivion.
"He should have just trapped the Colossus in here. We're the only ones stuck here now…" Temari said, reaching out toward Gaara with her hand as her younger brother seemed lost and completely overwhelmed by the power of the Golden Lockets, handed down to Sotatsu by the Gods themselves if one was to believe the myth.
"It's true that trapping the Colossus of the Covenant in Zahhak's domain, whether we are before the time-space was born or after the beast had consumed it, would have been ideal. I'm sure it was Gaara's first thought as well. There must be a reason he sent all of us here instead," Mana replied, looking up to Gaara with far greater faith in the Kazekage's ability to control the locket's power than his worried sister gave him.
"What if we cannot stop that heap of junk?" Endo wondered. "What if he really smashes the world to smithereens and is now floating in the middle of scorched space dust? How long before it gets pissed by the sun and swims through open space to punch it out or a black hole tries to suck it in only for it to rip its jaws instead?"
"I suppose, in that case, it would make sense for Gaara to save us and leave the Colossus behind," Kakashi nodded, scratching his chin with a gentle rustle of the cloth comprising his mask.
It soon became overshadowed by stony pounds and the golden dust began forming mountain-sized building blocks and slamming one on top of the other as Gaara descended closer to those he had salvaged. He examined the ninja that he had pulled out from the dimension he called home and into this realm of utter nothingness that he was giving shape to.
"You are wrong. The Colossus has not yet destroyed the world or my country. That is just a matter of time, though. That is why we are here," Gaara opened his palms to gesture toward the assembling round, ziggurat-shaped tower that extended all the way from the non-existent bottom of the dimension of oblivion to its equally unbelievable top. Using the Golden Locket and its power, Gaara gave the dimension of nothingness some structure to better understand it and roam it by transforming it into this tower of infinity.
"I see. This is a realm either before or after the existence of time-space. Given how we don't see an apocalyptic serpent eating itself anywhere and go mad at a sight not meant for us to comprehend, Zahhak likely hasn't been born and his cycle hasn't started yet. You've brought us to before Zahhak starts eating itself, before Zahhak manifests," Mana muttered to herself as she admired the sights that no mortal eyes might ever see again after them.
"You know, you could have just brought us somewhere further away from the Colossus…" Damisan's prosthetic hands hung heavily by his side as the half-assembled, cracked face of Sasori of the Red Sand that he wore over his head as a mask bent to the side awkwardly and more of the puppet's face chipped off. Thusly it threatened to reveal the disfigured face hiding underneath.
"Or taken hold of the Colossus and stuffed it down Zahhak's asshole…" Endo rolled his eyes after crossing his arms.
"The Colossus' power surpasses that of the Golden Locket," Gaara observed. "It seems that the architects of the Golden Locket only meant it to transport a human anywhere or any-when. Its power stretches out to multiple people just fine but not the Colossus of the Covenant."
"I see, bringing us to a dimension outside of space-time was a good call." Kakashi placed his hands on his hips, looking around and wondering what to do with their current predicament. "No matter how long we spend here, technically, we'll have spent no time at all back in our home dimension because space-time does not exist here. We'll come back immediately when and where we left."
"That is exactly why I brought us here," Gaara nodded.
"So, what's with this tower?" Skaven scratched the back of his head as he cupped his hand and placed it over his eyes to peer as far and high away as he could into the round surface of the infinite ziggurat but all he could see was golden sandstone, staircases extending into the forever and rustling, purple curtains obstructing entry into the arcs inside the ziggurat tower.
"Is this where the Sands of Time are?" Temari wondered.
"No. The Sands of Time are everywhere at once. At any place where time exists–the Sands exist. They aren't here at this particular moment, but I've built this tower by opening every pathway that this Golden Locket offers at the same time. This ziggurat represents every place and every time, every dimension that the Locket can send you to." Gaara informed, shooting up in the air as he spun around a blizzard of golden dust.
"Good. Real goddamn great that we've got a literal eternity to fuck around this place because that's how long it'll take to find the Sands if we have to check every single doorway here…" Endo flipped his hands up over his head. "Can we go back now? At least I could try to cut the Colossus instead of doing this hopeless shit."
"Is this how I sound when I get mad?" Temari's face soured as she pointed at Endo with her thumb and butted Skaven with her elbow.
"There are similarities, yes." Skaven crossed his arms and nodded.
"Don't get discouraged. There will be no need for us spending our eternity here looking for the Sands." Gaara's face shifted to serene tranquility as he lowered to the level of the ninja that he had brought here.
"It's amazing! The light of the Locket makes Kazekage-sama's eye bags almost invisible. It's like they were never there at all." One of the Black Ops ninja observed, pointing at his superior.
"I call forth the power of the Bag of Fujin!" Gaara yelled out, raising his hands and aiming them toward the center of the ziggurat as the Bag of Fujin that had replaced his usual gourd elevated as if drawn by an invisible, telekinetic push toward somewhere. "I am the one that commands the storm now. Call the Sands of Time forth from whichever portal so that I can command the storm of time as well!"
"He's kind of become a divine diva with his speech patterns, huh?" Damisan pointed at Gaara before noticing that a connected staff with a razor windmill of blades had been attached to where his shoulder blades were as a part of Kankuro's modifications when he had encased Damisan's body with Sasori's puppet frame. Damisan tapped the blade windmill with his finger just to spin it playfully in acknowledgment of its existence.
"The Bag belonged to the God of Storms." Kankuro shrugged, "Maybe pompous speech is the only thing it accepts?"
"Come to think of it, the ogres we've scooped it up from were pretty entitled." Skaven pocketed his hands before shrugging once.
"Wait a second…" Mana pointed at sprinkles of ethereal stardust seeping from every portal at once and accumulating all around Gaara. The white particles shuffled and merged with the golden dust that Gaara wielded, becoming one with it until Gaara hovered, surrounded by a mass of gold and diamond dust alike. The temporal mass enveloped the Kazekage like a cocoon before opening up again and revealing that the man had been fully healed.
"The Sands of Time can heal as well?" Shige-H gasped.
"So what? You can do that too…" Endo rolled his eyes, remaining unimpressed by the combination of the supernatural phenomenon all working under Gaara's control to prepare him to remove the Colossus of the Covenant once and for all, vanquishing the constant paranoia that the goliath might flip out that lingered ever since its first rampage.
"It doesn't just heal," Kakashi observed. "Given that this is Sands of Time we're talking about, it must have reversed Gaara's entire body to an earlier point in time when he was still unharmed and spotless."
"All of those tales… They're all true…" Temari covered her mouth with a shaking hand as tears began accumulating in her eyes.
"What's to get so teary-eyed about? Think about the cool tale you'll have to tell your son…" Skaven shrugged.
"My son's long since past the days when he cares about fairytales…" Temari sighed, wiping her eyes as her entire childhood awe and wonder had come alive before her eyes. All controlled by the little brother she feared the wrath of and used those same stories to hide behind from it. Wielded to save her, her family, both of her homes, and the entire world. If only Temari could show all of this to that frightened little girl that she once was and tell her that everything would be alright with time.
Time mended all wounds. Only time.
"We're back!" a Sunagakure Black Ops ninja stared at his own hands that couldn't stop shaking while Gaara swooped up to intercept the rampaging goliath and demolish with the power of time. For time not only mended all wounds, but it could also ravage with its relentless passage all the same.
"That speed…" Kakashi observed, seeing Gaara all but blink and blur to the face of the gigantic Colossus which couldn't even be seen from all the way down on the ground. It required ascension into the atmosphere to even look the goliath eye-to-eye.
"Gaara controls the Sands of Time now. Speed depends on time. Gaara can now be wherever he wants, whenever he wants. He can stop the Colossus in place for all he cares." Kankuro marveled at his brother engaging the colossal problem to the entire ninja world all by himself, with no sign of struggling.
"That wouldn't work. He would require to coat the entire statue with the Sands to do that. That would mean that the Sands of Time would have to remain on Earth and coating the Colossus of the Covenant. It would be only a matter of time before they would fall into the hands of some other terrorist scumbag, just like the ones that tainted Iwagakure's gift in the first place," Temari said, witnessing Gaara forming a massive fist made of solidified Sands of Time and sock it straight into the titan's nose, cocking the entire wandering structure back as it staggered backward, sending rampant quakes all across the planet.
Mana had to jump up and engage the Mystical Wings technique to avoid the quakes sending her down, meanwhile, Temari had to create a few wind currents to assist the other ninja incapable of sustaining themselves in mid-air for a little while. What started as a fist kept up as a relentless stream of ever-flowing sand that pelted at the Colossus of the Covenant. Though while the titanic statue covered itself up, it didn't seem like it took any notable damage or was any closer to being undone by the sands than before.
"Something's wrong!" Gaara's authoritative tone boomed, enhanced by some supernatural force to ring farther and wider and shake the lungs of his beholder with its resonance and sonority, reaching everyone around him. The Kazekage had blinked down to his allies while forming a construct doppelganger made entirely out of the Sands of Time to continue the silicon destructive wave washing over the Colossus as while it couldn't devastate the statue, it did just fine at keeping it rooted in place.
"I told you these Sands of Time were a bust. Just let me at him, get Shige up in the skies, give us a few openings and let us keep wailing on that damned thing. We'll take it down!" Endo clenched his fist.
"What do you mean it's not working?" Mana took off her hat to run her worried hand across her curly hairdo.
"Right now, I am pelting him with the entire weight of eternity. My duplicate is attacking the Colossus of the Covenant with the Sands of Time and trying them to wash it away into eternal decay. With each grain of sand pelting him in this super-sized storm, he ages millions of years, and yet it doesn't decay. What if it is eternal?" Gaara turned his back at the Colossus as he consulted the Allied Ninja, who have become quite the experts on the unbelievable and supernatural even with the quirks of the ninja world in mind.
"Reverse the body back to an earlier point in time…" Shige-H muttered to herself, stroking her chin as the image of this mystical interdimensional artifact overshadowing her role in the team had stuck in her mind for a while even if the others had given it a rest already. "If you can't decay it by aging it forward, undo it by reversing its age. I mean, it had to be made from something, right?"
"Reverse its age…" Gaara mumbled. "I see…"
The doppelganger that kept up its aging assault on the Colossus dissolved into sands and fused with the mass surrounding Gaara while the Kazekage ascended up to the titan's level with the Bag of Fujin commanding over the Sands of Time by his side. Because of the effects of the Sands of Time restoring his body to a previous point when he was still unhurt by the tremendous might of the Colossus, his previous chakra level from before he employed the entire desert to subdue the calamitous roamer returned as well.
"Return to that which you came from!" Gaara commanded, extending his hand out and twisting his palm sideways as he bent his fingers inward. "Sands of Time Coffin!"
The Sands of Time departed from Gaara, leaving only a trail of golden dust underneath to sustain the Kazekage's flight as the Sands of Time formed a temporal whirlwind anomaly all around the colossal statue. It took mere moments to reverse the aging that Gaara's previous assault put on the Colossus, from then, it was just a matter of microseconds for the clump of Sands, shimmering as radiant stardust, settle down as stacks of clay sprayed through the sides from the pressure. Gaara clutched his palm into a fist. "Sands of Time Funeral!"
When the super-sized structure of the Sands splattered aside from erupting pressure bursting outward, it sent a whole rain of stardust across the evening sky as the Sands of Time scattered all across the heavens and rained back down all over the desert one grain at a time. Nothing at all had remained of the Colossus of the Covenant. Gaara's jutsu had reduced it to mere clay that it started out from even before his coup de grâce. Now it was just a handful of elementary particles that would make a heap of clay eventually, given the potency of the ravages of time. Not in a million years, though.
Slowly Gaara descended into the cheering flock of the Black Ops ninja, Kankuro and Temari, welcoming the hero who saved his country and the entire world from a peril that he very nearly called upon it by wishing to be free of its oppression.
"Giving Gaara the control over the Sands of Time was the right call–he's a natural with that thing," Mana sighed easier. "Though we shouldn't let him keep it. The Sands of Time, the Bag of Fujin, the Golden Locket of Sotatsu… All of those artifacts together are too much for any man to control."
"I'm sure that this universe has learned its lesson with weapons and monuments outside of their control," Shige-H collapsed on her bottom and grabbed hold of her fur coat that she had flung aside in the heat of battle to wrap herself in it as the desert evenings had a mean tendency to send chills down one's back.
"When we first met Gaara, he was a lost young man. He feared his own sand just as much as others feared him and the power it represents. Through meeting Naruto and redeeming for his past in the face of his peers, then through learning the source for his power and accepting the love of his parents that it represented, Gaara has forged a deep personal connection with the sand that he commands. The Sands of Time isn't that. It is just a tool for Gaara to free his village and his country and do his duty as the Kazekage. If I know him at all, he'll want nothing to do with any of those artifacts after today," Kakashi crossed his arms, admiring the heart-warming scene of the Sunagakure ninja celebrating their newly earned freedom.
"You should give those artifacts to Xeno Naruto and Xeno Sasuke for safekeeping. Gaara seems too happy here to remove himself from this universe for its own sake. The Omniverse doesn't need a Xeno Gaara, even if it will, it shouldn't be this one." Mana turned to Kakashi.
"The fuck's a Xeno Naruto and Xeno Sasuke?" Endo scratched his head, sneering at Mana with a mean look.
"They are two extremely powerful versions of Naruto and Sasuke that have come to be because of the machinations within the Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams. They recognized they were too powerful to return to their respective universes and have removed themselves from their respective affairs. I agree, separately these artifacts wouldn't be all that but together… Maybe it's for the best if those two safe keep them for a while," Kakashi nodded in agreement.
Now that the scavenger hunt was complete, it was time to return to the mission at hand and rescue the kidnapped workers of the Allied Ninja.