The sand was painted red.
Gaara lay crumpled at the heart of the village, barely breathing. His body, buried halfway in a crater, twitched once—then fell still. Around him, the wreckage of the battle still smoldered.
Deidara hovered above on his clay bird, eyes gleaming with manic satisfaction."Art... is an explosion," he whispered, descending slowly toward his unconscious prize.
But then—
Boom.
A sudden shockwave split the air. Something crashed between Deidara and Gaara like a bolt of thunder. Dust erupted from the impact, obscuring everything.
Deidara reeled back, clay at the ready.
The smoke cleared.
A lone figure stood protectively over Gaara's broken form, black cloak whipping in the wind. His face was hidden behind a fox-like mask, his eyes unreadable. Around his body flickered threads of restrained chakra, heavy and unfamiliar.
"…Who the hell are you?" Deidara barked, immediately on edge.
The masked figure didn't answer.
He knelt beside Gaara and checked his pulse, relief flashing briefly through his body language. Barely alive.
'Why am I even doing this?'He wasn't sure. He hadn't planned to interfere—just observe. But when he saw Gaara lying there, helpless… something in him moved.
Something he thought had died.
"I asked you a question," Deidara growled. "Answer or explode, your choice."
Still no reply.
Deidara scoffed. "Tch. So dramatic."
He formed a clay spider in his hand and tossed it down. The masked man flicked his wrist, and a burst of wind chakra shredded the spider mid-air before it could land.
Deidara's eyes widened. "He's fast."
"Not fast," the masked man finally said, his voice low and slightly distorted by the mask."Just not wasting time on trash."
Deidara twitched. "What did you say?"
"You heard me."
The air shifted.
Deidara launched two clay birds that homed in with screeching velocity. But the masked figure was gone—a blur of motion, reappearing above the birds mid-air. With a precise spin-kick and wind-infused chakra, he tore both constructs apart in a single motion.
Debris fell like feathers.
"You've got a big mouth for a walking clay pot," the masked man said.
Deidara clenched his teeth, fury bubbling. "You're going to regret that."
The ground cracked as chakra began to surge from both of them.
And from the distance, a flicker of swirling space signaled something approaching.