Pre-Chapter AN: Here we go. New chapter. This one rounds up this part of the Gaara and Pain fight and even gives us a glimpse into things happening elsewhere. There's a nice twist or two for those paying attention.. After reading this, you can either wait till next week for the next chapter or read the next two on pa-treon right now and keep reading as I write. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.
Have fun with this. Also, in case you haven't checked out my other story (One Thousand Hands), please do so. It's set in the Naruto Universe as well and is an SI into an OC Grandson of Hashirama with a Hyuga mother. I guarantee you'll love it.
All the sand I had chasing him raced back towards me. I funnelled large swathes of my chakra into the sand to increase the density of the ultimate defence- Magnet release applied to my sand. It allowed me to control the destiny of the material. I was using it liberally. Enhanced in effectiveness by Senjutsu chakra. Even with that, I felt it would not be enough. So I pumped chakra into the sand once more. Ohnoki's super heavyweight boulder technique came to me easily. The sand now weighed a whole order of magnitude more than it already did.
"Shinra Tensei" I heard Nagato proclaim. He was aimed at me. Me, and the village behind me. I knew that if I made my shield any larger, then I risked leaving it too thin and risked my own life in the same vein. Konoha would know Pain in the same way it had in the other universe. The more things changed, the more they remained the same. I felt the gravitational force of the almighty push strain against my shield. The irresistible force versus the immovable object. What happens when they clash? I wondered.
It seemed I was going to find that out now. It pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more. I strained, maintaining the shield. I couldn't see Nagato. I had no idea what he was going through now. But I could 'see' the village behind me. Everything had been pushed away by Nagato's singular attack. Where once was a village, now was a crater. Most of the stronger shinobi had survived, but most of the village's infrastructure was gone. I had done a lot of damage to Konoha. I didn't care much for the village, in truth. But this? This kind of indiscriminate destruction was senseless. Completely senseless.
I felt rage build in my chest. And then the gravitational force gave out. It was spent. I bent my shield around me to give myself a look at the man of the hour and noted that he looked exhausted. Nearly slumped over on himself. Ridiculous. "You arrogant fool" My sand reached him this time. What chance did he have of outrunning it? He tried reaching down to drain the chakra from the tendril around his leg. A fool. I commanded the sand to begin spinning him around the sky. And then I slammed him into the ground. Right at the centre of the crater that had once been a village.
"This is senseless. This kind of destruction. Wasteful. Achieves no purpose. That is what you are" He picked himself from the ground. I walked up to him. He tried a punch. Foolish. I leaned out of the way and kicked him in the stomach. Too slow.
"You think yourself some sort of great liberator. Some chosen one. But you are nothing," I said. He tried to pick himself up. Already on his arms and knees. I ran forward and kicked him in the stomach, making him fly for a second or two before he crashed into the earth again. This time, he prioritised taking me down. He pointed an arm at me. An arm turned into a plasma canon. I watched him charge up the attack for a second before I grabbed the arm with my sand and crushed it. He screamed. I enjoyed that sound. His screaming.
"What have you done with your life, huh? What has your life's mission been? Nothing useful. You sought the tailed beasts. You thought you could use them to power a weapon so powerful that you'd create world peace by using it once. What a fool you have been, Nagato." I reached him again. I picked him up by his Akatsuki Cloak. He sprung his trap, growing a hand from his chest to grab at him. Sand was in the way. Before he could absorb the chakra in the sand, I threw him to the side again.
"You think you have any idea what the Gedo Mazou is? You think you were chosen with those eyes of yours? Newsflash, boy, those eyes were never yours." He looked up at me. He didn't believe me. Fool.
"Never yours, Nagato. Those eyes belonged to Madara Uchiha. He implanted them in you as a baby and expected you to use them to achieve his goals and then bring him to life with the Rinne Rebirth. You thought yourself a player in the great game, Nagato. But trust me, you are nothing more than a pawn. And I'll be taking those eyes." I said. He realised the threat in my voice and began to crawl backwards.
"Trying to run? From me? How disgraceful. Are you not Pain of the Akatsuki? Let me show you a thing or two about Pain." My sand grabbed a hold of him, keeping him mummified. I thickened the sand by several layers. He could absorb the first few layers, but there had to be a limit. And even if there wasn't, I had enough time to get this done.
"Please move and scream as much as possible. This will hurt, I promise" My hand glowed a malicious purple as I commanded the senjutsu chakra running through my tenketsu to form a chakra scalpel. I walked forward. I hadn't even reached him when he began to quiver. He knew I had him.
"I'd have expected you to face your end with more dignity. How disgraceful, Nagato," I scolded with a laugh. He struggled and strained against the sand. He was absorbing the chakra, but not fast enough. I placed one hand around his chin to hold his head still. Next, I struck with my left hand. The Rinnegan was about to become mine. Everything. Nothing. No opposition would matter after all this. But instead of soft flesh, I felt my hand gripping nothing.
There was a chain around my elbow, I noticed distantly. Distantly because it was deadening my chakra. Not draining it, just not letting me use it.
"Leave Cousin Nagato alone, you monster." The words had come from the same woman the chains were connected to—multiple chains. All around my body, I observed a very familiar red-haired teenager, Karin Uzumaki.
'So that is how you did it, eh? Nagato?' I thought to myself, barely able to feel my body being tossed into the air as she ran past me and right at him.
I landed on the ground and rolled for a second or two before coming to a stop. I groaned as I pushed myself off the ground. At least without the adamantium sealing chains on me, I could feel my chakra again. I could feel the senjutsu power flowing in through my seal and balancing itself with my own reserves. Reserves that were steadily approaching the point where they would begin to be considered critical.
Standing, I looked towards their last known position. It wasn't a surprise to find them enclosed in a barrier. A barrier that was being steadily maintained by a swarm of chains in different positions. I just walked towards it, took out Dark Sister and planted her in the ground before making a chair out of sand for me to watch from. I'd read about this precise technique. I had nothing that could break open the barrier without draining me heavily in turn.
A tailed beast bomb would do the trick, but I'd have to drop sage mode and also abandon all the senjutsu chakra Shukaku had been storing on my behalf in order to use the pure tailed beast chakra I needed to pull off the transformation. From what I could tell, her healing had already taken Nagato back to 80% of his max power. He would be at full power by the time I tore down the barrier so what was the point of exhausting myself in trying to accomplish the futile? After all, what would be the point? They'd drop the barrier one way or another at the end of the day.
XXXXX- TEMARI OF THE DESERT
She woke up to the sound of explosions. All around her. For a second, she thought she was dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Gaara had seals all over the place. No one could invade Suna. But when she felt her chakra and reality itself, she accepted that it wasn't a dream. And after that, she was off like an arrow from a crossbow. She pushed herself off her bed in a second and only stopped to pick up her fans on her way out of the room. She cared little that she was still in her pyjamas. Any who'd dared attack Suna would find themselves too busy being cut to shreds to comment on her attire.
She met Kankuro, also jumping out of his room at the same time as her. They needed to exchange no words as they covered the stairs and the distance to the front door in seconds. Their home was at the centre of the village. Gaara had had it built himself. A new home. He claimed that the Kazekage must rule from the middle and could not live at the edges as they had before. The village was also much bigger so their old home had become part of a market district with all the redesigning that was going on.
They came out to a village in chaos. Thanks to Gaara's street lights, Suna had not known darkness at night for a long time, but this was different. So much of the village was in flames that it was beginning to feel like the were in daytime. With a massive heave, she brought her fans to bear, swiping them at the three buildings close to her and releasing a vacuum wave that turned off the fires in front of her. At least that was good. Kankuro's puppets moved across the buildings, bringing out the inhabitants and rescuing them while she marched forwards to find more fires to put out. She trusted that Kankuro would follow behind her the second he could.
She rounded the corner of the block and found nearly a whole street on fire. Grimacing at the chakra expenditure she was sure to incur, she pumped her reserves into the fans and swung once more, releasing winds that sucked the oxygen from the flames and killed them instantly. She marched further into the village, and then there was someone in front of her. Gaara's friend, Mebuki.
"Temari-chan, do you have any idea what's going on? Are we under attack?" The girl sounded panicked. Of course she was. She wasn't a real shinobi. A medic who hadn't seen the field in years.
"Don't worry yourself, Mebuki-san. Everything will be alright. Just stay here and heal whoever you can. I'll continue putting out fires" Temari never asked what the woman was doing on this side of town. Never asked where she'd even appeared from. So intent on helping those in need, she turned her back and began running towards the street's exit to the next danger point.
She never even heard Mebuki throw the senbon that was aimed to end her life. Instead, she was forced to turn around once she heard the thunking sound of a needle sinking into wood. She spun around and saw Oni standing right behind her. She jumped backwards for a better view and saw her brother commanding Kyojin to swing his giant cleaver at a dodging Mebuki.
"Kankuro, what are you doing?" She shouted towards him.
"She tried to toss a senbon in your neck the moment you turned your back. She's either an imposter or a traitor" He said with more seriousness than she was used to hearing from him.
But she could not doubt him. Because how else would Mebuki who barely managed to pass the academy's physical tests be dodging out of the way of one of Kankuro's biggest puppets with such ease. She weaved between two slashes of Kyojin's cleavers as she ran forwards, jumping right at the puppet. Its chest compartment opened itself, unleashing a hail of senbon that ripped through her. A mud clone, Temari realised with dissappointment. But that was short lived as she soon had bigger problems.
There was a kunai at her throat.
"Temari!" Kankuro screamed, worried.
"Don't move, Doll boy or you'll be the one to explain to Gaara of the Desert why his treasured sister is a head shorter when he returns- if he returns, that is."
Kankuro stared at the both of them. But he was obediently still. Beyond tilting his head as he watched her be held hostage, he was as still as a statue. She knew he was doing his best to hide his panic. She was terrible at hiding hers, she knew. Mebuki was a traitor. She had betrayed their village and now she was holding her hostage. But in truth it was not her present scenario running through her head. It was the fact that this would break Gaara. Her brother, her Kage. It was not so long ago that he was distant from everything and everyone. It was not too long ago that he did not seem to care about a single thing. But then he'd opened up. Someone had managed to reach him. And now that woman was turning out to be a traitor. Would he even be able to believe them? Mebuki was the one he trusted above all. The one he asked for advice. The one who spoke with his voice as far as the village was concerned and he was absent. That was what made this entire thing make no sense.
Watching Kankuro's fingers so closely, she could see it the moment his pinky finger moved. So could Mebuki it seemed. It just came down to who was faster. The woman behind her pulled backwards with her kunai aiming to slit Temari's throat. She managed to break the skin, but just barely. Kankuro's puppet was faster. From beneath them, the ground exploded and they found themselves bundled into the midsection of Kankuro's puppets. With her footing thoroughly ruined, Mebuki was unable to do more than break her skin. She then felt the woman slump behind her. This particular puppet was thoroughly laced with one of Kankuro's more fast acting poisons.
The puppet body opened up and she met the worried eyes of her younger brother. She didn't resist the hug he bundled her into.
XXXXXXX- THE GHOST OF THE UCHIHA
"Nicely done, Kabuto" He said as he used Kamui to appear into the cave. His next words froze in his mouth as he looked at the state of the cave. More particularly, the people in the cave. The man in the red armour was undoubtedly Madara, he knew that for sure. The woman with the red hair was also easy enough to spot as an Uzumaki. And then there were more red haired men in the cave. Men who were weaving seals. He couldn't spot Kabuto, but his senses knew what a bad situation this was.
Kamui, he tried. For the first time, his mangekyou's ability did not avail him. He tried again. Tried to force space to sunder and take him with it. The Kamui realm was a place he knew more intimately than any other, and for the first time, it had shut its doors to him. The red haired men were chanting in unison as they weaved more and more seals. Now that he could see them better, he noted the marks that identified them as reanimated shinobi.
"Kabuto! What is the meaning of this?" He called out, trying to locate the smarmy boy that had set this trap for him.
"Up here, Obito," a voice said. He looked up and found the snake standing atop a familiar clay construct. Diedara's technique?
"What have you done?" He asked, trying to stall for time.
"Nothing much. You see, it always annoyed me how everyone in this stupid world underused the most powerful technique of them all. Why use Edo Tensei to make people fight for you? I mean, I understand the concept. Immortal soldiers are one hell of a buff. But why the hell did everyone ignore the technique's power to gain knowledge? In front of you stand seven of the most revered Uzumaki Clanheads. I have had them working for days to create a seal that undoes your technique. In this cave, space will not bend to your will, Obito," He said.
"You fool. Longing, rusted, fur-"
"That hasn't worked on me for a very long time. Try another trick." Kabuto said, seemingly unaffected by the words that Sasori had assured him would put the boy in a trance. He'd been tricked, he realised. Was Sasori in on it, he wondered. He would find the answer to that sooner or later. He turned towards the cave wall, intent on breaking through, but his fist met only a shimmering, glowing barrier. It was only then that he realised who the red-haired woman had to be, Mito Uzumaki. The Shodia's wife. Famed for trapping even the Nine Tails with her powerful barriers.
He watched the barrier fully form to enclose both he and the reanimated body of Uchiha Madara.. Kamui was still not working. He should have moved to kill the Uzumaki first. Or even just interrupt their jutsu.
He barely had time to consider his options before his mentor was upon him. He dodged under the first swing of the powerful gunbai. He could wield the weapon with just as much skill as his mentor. That meant he knew just how to fight against it. He stepped into the man's guard where most would have stepped backwards and aimed a stab at his head with his kunai. Madara dodged the stab with a simple lean out of the way and then brought a knee up to his chest. He willed his chest into the Kamui dimension and then aimed a stab at the man's eyes again.
His thoughts blacked out as he was sent flying from the kick. Fuck. No Kamui, he realised again. Foolish. His entire fighting style had been built around a single technique. Without it, he was beginning to realise that his options were much more limited. He formed a tiger seal and breathed out a literal torrent of flames at his mentor. Uchiha Madara, also using the tiger seal, breathed out flames that put his to shame, overwhelming his attack and continuing towards him. Obito jumped all the way to the other side of the barrier to avoid the attack.
Madara chased after him. His mentor fought in a way Obito had never experienced in his life. He was thoroughly overwhelmed. Whatever he tried failed as Madara dismantled his taijutsu step by step. It felt like fighting Kakashi again. Not entirely. Kakashi was slower. Kakashi liked to lord his superiority over him, so he fought much slower and took him apart step by step to show the gap between them. Madara didn't seem to care about anything like that. He just fought. He was better than Obito. Much like Kakashi was, but instead of taking things slowly to drive that point across, he pounded the lesson into Obito's head with quick savagery.
Obito dodged out of the way of a punch only to take a vicious backhand to the side of his face. He tried to kick him to gain distance, but Madara pushed against his kick, forcing Obito's leg back to the floor with pure strength and then punched Obito in the head again. Half his body was white Zetsu, so he healed quickly. Quicker than everyone he'd ever seen, but with taijutsu alone, it felt like Madara was going to overload his healing factor. How annoying. He jumped backwards, barely avoiding a punch that threatened to take his head off, only for him to freeze suddenly. There was a kunai in his neck. Genjutsu. He flared his chakra, and the Madara he'd been fighting disappeared in place of another who was standing right in front of him and had a kunai driven into his neck. He tried to back off, gain distance to heal, but Madara did not allow it. He stepped even closer, driving the kunai even deeper and completely severing Obito's head from his body.
He took a deep breath. That was a close one. He was lucky he'd had that spare sharingan in his skull. Madara's eyes panned over to his new position, and he did not look impressed. No one there seemed even slightly surprised. Kabuto, the damn bastard, just stood there watching with a smile on his face. "Just to drive home how outmatched you are, let me show you something" The bastard said and formed the ram seal.
Before him, Madara began to swell with telltale purple chakra. Sussano'o. The Spectre of Death. Obito saw his life flash before his eyes as the top half of a Sussano'o body formed before him. He tried his best. Running forward, trusting that Madara would not be able to form the legs in such a tiny cave and trying to use his mobility to his advantage. It was pointless. The chakra construct brought its hands together for a second, and when it separated them, it was with several discs in its hands. They tore through Obito's body, moving too quickly for even he to react.
Again he returned. He could not see a thing. Blind in both eyes. He tried to sense his surroundings, but it was pointless as he felt a blade pass straight through his chest. "Rin" He muttered to himself as he felt the breath leave him. He'd failed her again.
XXXXXXXXXX
The barrier opened and both he and Nagato stood before each other once again. Except this time, Nagato had the numbers advantage with Karin by his side.
"Are you going to send her away? Or is her blood going to be on your head?" He asked, pointing dark sister right at her. It was not an idle threat. The woman had already cost him victory once before, and if it came down to it, he'd kill her without blinking an eye. Spilling 'innocent' Uzumaki blood was not what he had in mind when this fight started, but if that had to be the way of things, then that was that.
"Karin", Nagato said, and she nodded before fleeing south in a body flicker. He tracked her until he was sure that she'd retreated a respectable distance. I considered briefly using her as a hostage but removed the thought from my mind as quickly as it had entered. Nagato was not the type to care about hostages. I knew his ilk.
"Are you ready to dance again?" I asked, taking my stance. With time to stockpile even more senjutsu chakra and think things through, I had quite a plan ready for him.
He raised his hand, and I felt the irresistible force as it tossed me and everything behind me backwards. That body dissolved in smoke, revealing itself as a clone as I jumped out of the ground before him and attempted to shorten his height by a head. I left with only a few strands as he ducked underneath the attack. From that position, his hair shifted form to turn into a series of blades that I had to dive backwards to dodge.
Missile arm came back, and he took pleasure in firing the entire payload right at me. Unable to retreat in time, I forced my sand to cover me, amplifying its density by several orders of magnitude. The missiles hit and failed to even knock loose even a single grain of sand. I brought the shield down, allowing the sand to part around my form as I jumped right at him with dark sister raised. Another almighty push sent the clone flying. I appeared at the other end of the wasteland we battled within and tossed my completed jutsu right at him. "Wind Release: Rasenshuriken". He turned to it and raised his arms to use Gakido's absorption ability.
It worked, and I body flickered to right behind him and prepared to cleave head from shoulders with dark sister. Another hand formed from his shoulder with a black rod in its grip and blocked my sword cold. "There's no way you're getting any leverage from that position", I commented, displeased by the clear unfairness of the situation. He was just clearly cheating at this point.
Still, we were close to each other, and he hadn't forced me away yet. I risked removing my right hand from Dark Sister and moved to place it on him. He noticed what I was doing and formed another hand out of his back to grab mine by the wrist. I forced through, pushing Senjutsu enhanced strength to the maximum as I strained to complete the movement. Just one seal. I just needed one seal on him, and it would be over.
"Almighty Push", He commanded right as my hand was about to touch him. I swallowed as I was sent flying without even the time to brace myself for the impact. I tore through the air like a bullet from a gun until I felt my body slam into one edge of the crater. The lack of much in the way of buildings to arrest my momentum was proving to be as much a boon as it was a detriment. I could see Nagato from all the way across, and that meant I could hurt him. I crossed my fingers and formed two more clones. All three of them us raced down the distance between us as one. His missile arm came up again, but none of the projectiles managed to fly further than a few feet before my sand appeared in their path and contained them all.
My first clone weaved a series of five seals. The other weaved seven.. I weaved three. This was the first true triple-element combination I'd ever come up with. It started simply: "Earth Release: Rising Earth Dragon", Lefty commanded. The earth heeded his will, rumbling and quaking as it sundered itself from the rest of the ground and unleashed itself with the roar of shifting earth and then slammed down towards our target. The next element came from Righty; "Earth Release: Sludge of the Underworld", An original jutsu that I designed a bit after Jiraiya's own arsenal with his toad oil. The sludge was designed to be extremely flammable. The clone to the right aimed perfectly and covered the stone dragon with it as it continued its path towards our target.
My own jutsu was a much simpler one. One that I'd practised with so much that I'd been able to reduce the number of seals to the three most essential ones. "Katon: Karyu Endan" the fire dragon bullet flew through the air while I took in a deep breath. I did not need any seals for this. The Wind Release: Great Breakthrough passed from my lips like a storm from a teacup. It hit the fire dragon and did just as it ought. Kakashi's eye allowed me to get the ratios perfect to a tenth of a percent. The wind amplified the flames but maintained the shape transformation. The fire dragon swelled by several orders of magnitude before slamming into the very flammable stone dragon.
Everything erupted in flames just as it was about to hit Nagato. Absorb this, you arsehole, I thought to myself as I allowed the clones to dispel. He raised both his hands and used his gravitational power once more. This time, I refused to be denied. The dragon still responded to me. I commanded it to resist, to keep going. I fought against the push of gravity for seconds, seconds that passed by with all the speed of hours. And then it was not enough. My dragon was sent flying backwards, destroyed to nought but loose stone, but that had been part of my plan. I body flickered into Nagato's guard.
He hid the fact that he had not fought with this body for long well. Some times I even found myself doubting what had to be the reality. He adapted well to using all his powers as one. But as I'd noticed with his use of the Gakido and Shurado paths earlier, he always hesitated. He should have used Tendo the second I got close, but he spent seconds hesitating. He simply didn't think of it. More used to fighting as six bodies instead of one, there had to be more issues to be spotted. Undoubtedly, one of them was that he just wasn't as sharp after using an almighty push. I'd noticed it, but this was the first time I got the chance to take advantage.
I body flickered in, ignoring the warning bells that rang in my head, and swung my blade, aiming to stab it through his chest in one go. The blade passed through with no resistance, but when our eyes met, I knew that I had made a mistake. He pushed himself in further into my blade and grabbed a hold of my hands.
Behind him, a ghostly spectre appeared. A large demonic head with a Finnegan in each eye socket surrounded by purple flames, darker than the eyes that had called them forth, stared me down. I could not describe what happened. All I knew was that in one second, my tongue had been safely in my mouth, and the next, it had been spontaneously enlarged and pulled across the room into the grip of the King of hell. Please tell me that's not a tongue, I thought to myself, shuddering at the thought of tonguing such a hideous creature. I'd never even gotten to kiss anyone in this life.
"How do you know about my technique" I heard Nagato's voice ask. What a silly question, I thought, and then I felt the grip on my tongue tighten. The King of Hell was pulling. The pain was indescribable. Like my very essence was being torn from me, inch by inch.
A/N; Plot twist? This has been in the cards for about thirty chapters now. It feels so good to finally be on the way to the ending. As I said earlier, next chapter comes up next week or skip the wait and read the next two along with daily uploads on pa-treon. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.