Naruto woke to a small stream of bubbles gently filtering past his face. It only took him a moment to realize he was underwater before he quickly oriented himself and kicked out with his legs to reach the surface. It was times like these he wished he could figure out how to make the Hiraishin work underwater. He surfaced easily and dragged himself up on top of the water with a slight grumble of annoyance. He hated being wet, it weighed him down and made his hair cling to his face.
From there it only took him a second to regain his bearings and take stock of the situation. The Sanbi was exactly where he remembered it being, still enclosed by the incomplete web of the sealing matrix. That meant his ANBU weren't dead; good. Mei was exchanging pre-fight banter with an Akatsuki member, the cloak was a bit of a giveaway. That was fine, the Mizukage could handle herself so there was no need for the damsel-in-distress antics.
The problem was that Akatsuki always worked in pa-
Yep, there was the other one. He almost missed him thanks to the glare of the sun masking his silhouette. The long blond hair was notable, but a quick flick through his internal bingo-book couldn't put a face to a name. He was likely a recent nuke-nin then. The other option was that he was too weak to have been memorable and that seemed unlikely when he was wearing those red clouds.
A quick survey of the potential battlefield had Naruto feeling uneasy, this guy either had a summons that let him fly, or a technique that did the same. They were quite far off the coast by now, as had been the plan to slowly lure the Sanbi that way to prevent further destruction. It wasn't like he could place hiraishin seals on water – although that was something to think about for the future – as his kunai would be next to useless at the bottom of the sea.
That left the Bijuu itself as the only reliable source of stable terrain. Not exactly a comforting thought. He cracked his neck and stood a little straighter, all of these thoughts having passed through his head in a few seconds. The beginnings of the idea that he might have become just a little too reliant on his father's technique crept into the back of his mind before it was trampled down by more pressing concerns.
He felt for the kunai still embedded in the Sanbi's shell and flashed there, ignoring the shuddering growls of the creature still recovering from his previous attack. He glanced up in time to spot the Akatsuki member suddenly take a dive towards the dog-masked ANBU holding the north position. Instinctively the redhead reached for his tanto only for his hand to close on thin air. With a curse, he realized he must have been separated from it by the explosion.
The hard way it was.
With aim born through years of rigorous training and refined by two Uchiha teammates he managed to catch the strange white bird right in the underbelly with a kunai. When he appeared in the air next to it, his arm flicked out like a whip to grab a handful of… clay? He had been expecting feathers, or maybe skin. The soft, yielding material that he gripped was disconcerting, almost like it would come apart in his hands. He grabbed the Kunai instead, nearly pulling it out of the… thing, by accident.
"Huh, Sasori-danna was right, you are made of sterner stuff than I thought." The blond man was peering over the edge of the bird-thing's wing at him, a bemused grin warping his features. "That's good to know. Means I can test some of my stronger art, yeah?" The man then did one of the most disgusting things Naruto had ever seen, which was saying a lot, by reaching into two pouches on his waist. When he withdrew them it revealed a set of mouths embedded in each of his palms, audibly chewing with grotesque exaggeration.
"Feel honoured Hokage-danna, you're the first Kage ever to see my art firsthand." The mouths spat out their wads of clay and with deft movements the man easily moulded them into little white hummingbirds. It might have been impressive if the redhead hadn't already seen what those things could do. "The names Deidara by the way, you'll want to remember that, yeah?" The blond seemed to rethink his statement as the hummingbirds took to the air. "For as long as you have left, anyway."
The clay birds immediately zipped towards him with all the speed of their biological counterparts. Acting on instinct alone, Naruto let go of the larger bird. He grabbed his kunai and twisted his body around to send a slash of wind chakra at the first of the mobile-bombs. He succeeded in cutting it in half, but that only caused it to explode prematurely. The shockwave battered his body mid-air, making him tumble in a less controlled fashion than he might have liked.
He could still spot the other one buzzing towards him. He tried to cut it in half as well but they were apparently smarter than that. It began jinking madly to avoid his repeated slashes. Testing just how smart they were, he threw his kunai downwards as hard as possible and sure enough the hummingbird shot after it. That meant they were anticipating his technique instead of just homing in on him. They were either completely autonomous – which was worrying – or more likely, guided by Deidara.
Bucking expectation, he did in fact vanish in a flash of red, only to reappear atop the larger clay bird behind the man in question. He had made sure to place a marker on the thing when he was holding on before. Before the Akatsuki-member could even widen his eyes in surprise a tri-pronged kunai was embedded in his throat. Naruto might have been satisfied by this if the man's skin didn't start turning an alarming shade of white.
He tried to pull his weapon back only to find it stuck. He abandoned it in favour of diving from the clay construct just as it exploded in a dizzyingly large blast that once again had him tumbling through the air in an uncontrolled spin…. Right towards the Sanbi.
He sighed internally, wondering how Mei was getting on.
Far from the pitched, frantic battle of the Hokage, Mei and Sasori had yet to move from where they had begun their exchange. The Mizukage may have been slightly disadvantaged, surrounded by water where her lava techniques were less than optimal, but far from defenceless. Even now the thin veil of her boil technique was evaporating, taking with it the melted, useless lumps that were once hundreds of poisoned kunai. The ones that had breached her acidic mist had been so thoroughly scoured that even if she hadn't moved to avoid them, they would have been no more lethal than their medicinal counterparts.
"An impressive technique for sure, I look forward to working out it's intricacies when you lie still on my workshop table," Sasori mused in his gruff tones, shifting slightly beneath his cloak.
Mei hummed thoughtfully. "Akasuna no Sasori, yes I'd heard of your grisly little technique with human puppets." Her smirk was devilish. "A shame, I had always somewhat admired the Suna puppet corp, for their discipline if not their predilection for playing with dolls."
The hunched man failed to rise to the bait, once again shifting beneath his cloak. It made it difficult to determine exactly what he was doing. Both glanced up briefly as a huge explosion tore through the sky, apparently enough of a distraction for Sasori to suddenly launch himself forward at surprising speeds. Mei wasn't one to be taken off-guard so lightly though and easily flipped back, actually stepping off the thin silvery blur that whipped out of Sasoir's cloak like some metallic snake.
She landed elegantly on the water in a slight crouch, moving with all the fluidity of her country's namesake. Teal eyes peered out from a veil of auburn hair at the new weapon, eyeing it wearily. Some kind of prehensile blade that appeared more like the tail of a scorpion given what had been revealed when Sasori tore through his own cloak. Appropriate, in her mind, given his name.
The tail was easily dismissed though, no more dangerous than any other weapon, even with the tell-tale purple sheen of the virulent poison Sasori favoured. No, the disturbing revelations were the clearly segmented joints littering Sasori's body.
"Now now, don't you know it's rude to keep secrets from a lady?" She asked demurely, eyes glancing about to try and spot where Sasori might really be hiding. For a puppeteer of his fame, it could be damn near anywhere. The fact that they were this far off the coast narrowed it down somewhat, but even beneath the water was suspect.
"And it is ruder still to keep one waiting, so I will endeavour to make this quick so I can go mop up that useless new Hokage for my idiot of a partner."
"I would recommend not underestimating that one, I've already made the same mistake once."
Sasori didn't deign to answer that time, which was good because Mei – despite appearances – wasn't the type to banter in a fight. Banter was a luxury of victory, the civil war had taught that lesson to all of its survivors. She had already concluded that trying to locate a skilled puppeteer was a fool's errand so settled with smashing all of his toys until he revealed himself. It was more in line with her skillset anyway.
With a fingertip just beneath her lips she began spitting out large globules of molten lava like bullets. Each was hot enough to visibly warp the air around them, but not nearly fast enough to catch the puppet unawares. Sasori, or at least his puppet, was easily able to dodge to the side and allow the dangerous projectiles to harmlessly land in the water with hissing gusts. It was only when the steam failed to dissipate after a few volleys of the technique that Sasori caught on to what was going on.
By then it was too late.
Mei had expertly hidden her slow application of the hidden mist technique amidst the geysers of steam her lava created, quickly shrouding the immediate area in an impenetrable shroud of fog. She was far from a swordsman of the mist in her use of the silent killing techniques, but against an inanimate puppet? She didn't have to be all that quiet. Sasori cleared his surroundings with some kind of compressed air canister attached to one of his arms just in time for Mei to descend on him with a punishing axe-kick that formed a crescent of lava behind it.
The first hit was enough to crack the tough carapace of the puppet, the molten rock that followed finished the job. Mei jumped back to land on the water's surface even as the puppet began to bubble and hiss, wood and metal alike buckling and scorched under the intense heat of the technique. She did not, however, miss the small form that darted out of the wreckage in time to avoid a similar fate.
Sasori brushed a few smouldering embers from his shoulder with a surprisingly neutral expression. "That was one of my best puppets."
Mei defaulted to her usual smirk at the comment. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was your favourite toy."
Sasori's lip didn't so much as twitch. "You will have ample opportunity to replace him when all is said and done."
"Two boys in a row? What kind of woman do you take me for… young man." She hid her astonishment at Sasori's appearance rather well. For a man supposedly in his late forties he had all the trappings of a teen younger than even Naruto. A bubbling sense of irritation rose in her stomach all the same, some people could wish to age even half as well as that.
Some people really did win the gene pool.
"It won't matter soon enough."
The banter was somewhat interrupted by the deafening cry of the Sanbi somewhere off to one side before the world turned white.
Naruto was getting sick of dodging. He may have been fast, agile and on most occasions highly manoeuvrable; but those traits leant themselves towards sharp, aggressive fights. Protracted battles of attrition were not his cup of tea. He could certainly manage them, as the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi his chakra wasn't running out any time soon, but he didn't enjoy them. His fights were sprints, and right now this one was turning into a marathon.
Even on the limited grounds of the Sanbi's shell, he was able to dodge Deidara's various explosive creations. However, the same thing that prevented the Akatsuki-member from ensnaring the redhead, also prevented Naruto from caching him in return; distance. As long as Deidara rode around on his latest beast, a clay dragon of all things, he was nigh untouchable. Throwing hiraishin kunai at him was an exercise in futility, the dragon simply coughed up smaller versions of itself that swooped in and ate the damn things.
Clearly the blond was trying to goad him into flashing to one anyway, likely to blow him up in the attempt, as the smaller dragons orbited him instead of homing in for the kill. Naruto had already demonstrated he could move fast enough to avoid them if they tried. So for now, the two of them were at somewhat of a deadlock. They might have stayed that way if it were just the two of them. Fortunately, or unfortunately dependant on perspective, there was a rather notable third player.
The Sanbi bucked suddenly, lifting Naruto off his feet almost long enough for Deidara to actually catch him with one of his C-2 sculptures. It smacked into an enormous scaled tail instead, reduced to putty in an instant and exploding without leaving so much as a scorch mark against the Bijuu's near-impenetrable carapace. The blast, while ineffectual, was apparently irritating and the response was the beast's tails suddenly arching up over its body like a scorpion's.
Deidara nearly fell off his dragon when the first lance of pressurised water cleaved the air next to his head. A few inches to the right and it would be missing entirely. He was forced to drop his creation into a steep dive as the tight beam of water tracked him, aiming to cut him in half. Naruto wasn't faring much better, forced to roll and weave even more madly as two different streams tried to corral him into bifurcation. They didn't so much as dent the Sanbi's shell, but he didn't want to find out what they would do to human flesh.
It was an untenable situation. The water didn't look like it was stopping any time soon and eventually Naruto was forced to dive right off the shell and into the surrounding water. It wasn't much better though as he was immediately caught up in the undertow of the beast's enormous body. Before he could be sent tumbling deeper underwater he used a simple water bullet jutsu to launch him in the opposite direction. He pulled himself back onto the surface nearby to one of his ANBU, once again irritatingly wet.
From there he had a wonderful view of the Sanbi turning its full attention on Deidara. He watched at the three deadly streams slowly converged on the man's position, despite his attempts to disrupt them with explosions of various size. Outside of the frantic melee Naruto could appreciate the faint rainbow in the air caused by the showering mist of the streams bursting apart only to tighten again to continue bearing down on the blond.
The Akatsuki-member appeared to be growing desperate, especially when the three separate streams converged into one enormous deluge that was likely to leave little of him left if it struck. Finally, he was forced to sacrifice his mount in a titanic explosion that disrupted the Sanbi's technique long enough for him to create a replica of his earlier clay bird, quickly climbing upwards and almost out of earshot.
Almost. Naruto could still just about make out his near-hysterical screams directed at the glowering beast below.
"…think you can finish me with such pathetic spirit, yeah? How about you chew on my latest creation!"
Naruto felt a pit grow in his stomach following the announcement as an odd sort of pressure settled over the battlefield. The Sanbi had craned it's neck up, its tails stretching almost improbably to point at its mouth where humming balls of pure chakra were beginning to congeal into a larger, darker sphere Naruto only knew of through second-hand accounts.
"ANBU, brace yourselves!" Naruto didn't know just how much of an understatement his declaration was as the hyper-dense sphere of chakra was sent careening up through the air to meet the comparatively tiny sculpture Deidara had dropped. This moment would be the future reminder to the young Hokage not to estimate a jutsu's potency by its size.
To describe the meeting of those two techniques as catastrophic wouldn't have done it justice. For a moment, the entire sky was wreathed in a halo of white and all sound seemed to have been sucked from creation. If Naruto hadn't forcibly pulled his eyes down at the last moment he may have been seriously blinded. As it was, that likely stopped him from being so awed by the scale of the explosion that he forgot to move.
He jumped in front of his ANBU just in time to pull up as large a water-wall as he was able just as the first wave of superheated air rushed past them. Even with the Chakra pumping through his technique the wall of dense water was threatening to evaporate on the spot. The ocean beneath their feet recoiled sharply as a wave of pressure tried to crush everything beneath it into a crater, only to rush back in the opposite direction in time to meet the wall of pure noise.
It took a few seconds for the world to settle itself. Mist rose in sheets as the superheated water was swept away by the pressure wave, replaced by cooler, deeper waters. All Naruto could hear was a tinny whine that he prayed wasn't permanent damage. For one, he'd never hear the end of it from Tsunade. A quick glance told him that, thankfully, the Kiri ANBU's training had prevailed and they had the wherewithal to copy him, shielding his own subordinates from the worst of the blast.
The Sanbi on the other hand wasn't so lucky. Its shell was visibly glowing from the heat and the fleshy parts of its body were smoking. Right now, it just floated lazily atop the water, unconscious, but Naruto wasn't sure how long that would last. He turned to his nearest ANBU to check on him, finding the man, miraculously, still holding onto the sealing technique. It looked almost ready.
"…" he tried to ask how the man was, but his voice sounded like it had been muffled by several layers of carpet. The ANBU tilted his head at him so he signed the same message. He got a slightly shaky nod, but right now he would take that. He glanced back at the Bijuu; now would be the best time to seal it, but he still didn't know where their errant Akatsuki bomber had ended up.
Although, he found it unlikely the man had come out of that unscathed.
Mei swiftly dispelled the sphere of water she had hidden within, moisture that might have clung to her clothes and hair included. The explosion had been tremendous, but it seemed all of her ANBU had reacted in time to save themselves and their Konoha counterparts. They had been trained in a crucible after all and knew very well how devastating a bijuudama could be. Although, this one seemed a tad more… spectacular, than usual.
She put that up to the Hokage's opponent. And speaking of opponents…
She eyed the faintly glowing orb of metal that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere to enshroud and protect Sasori. Near the bottom, where it touched the water, she could see it was composed of thousands of metal filings. The same could not be said for the top, that part was melted together into glowing red lump. A moment later it cracked off and sank into the water with a hiss, the still-usable metal dust beneath buzzing agitatedly as it dispersed.
This time Sasori didn't mask the displeasure in his voice, even if his features remained as neutral as ever. "That fool, I warned him not to use anything so extravagant."
While he was muttering to himself Mei took the lull in combat to examine his latest puppet. She didn't recognise the face, but the technique was distinctive enough.
"I didn't realize I would have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of two foreign Kage when I woke up this morning," she called.
"I'm afraid he's long past the point of political banter, as am I," came the curt response. "I'm continually having to clean up that idiot's messes and that's my time wasted. I can't stand having my time wasted."
Mei's eyebrow quirked elegantly at the unwanted insight. "Don't we all?" she mused sardonically. She wasted no time in flashing through hand seals, once again bringing a hand up as though she were blowing smoke from her fingertips. A deep violet mist spread from her lips in a stream towards the puppeteer and his puppet, although Sasori seemed unconcerned.
"Your acidic mist is an interesting technique, I grant, but you'll find my puppets are well treated against such degradation." He raised a hand, hidden beneath his voluminous robe, and the third Kazekage lurched forward. A good chunk of the iron particles hanging in the air swarmed around it, forming two wicked blades extending from its forearms.
Mei smirked in a manner that, to any Kiri shinobi, should have been warning enough. "The funny thing about my skilled mist, is that everyone assumes it's simply acidic." She raised a hand and gently clicked her fingers, sending a single spark flickering through the air. The moment it touched the mist, the entire vicinity was engulfed in a roaring blaze that flared white for a few seconds before vanishing as fast as it appeared.
There was a loud splash as the Kazekage puppet, unable to protect itself completely, fell uselessly into the water. Sasori had only survived because he had diverted the rest of the iron dust to act as a shield for himself. His cloak hadn't fared quite so well, falling apart in scorched tatters to reveal the monstrosity of his body beneath.
Mei hid her revulsion expertly. "I knew it wasn't possible to look so good at your age without having a bit of work done, but that seems a bit much."
Sasori ignored the taunt, allowing the prehensile cable coiled in his abdomen unwind as the blade-like propellers on his back unfurled. "When I kill you, and transform you into a puppet, you will be the same as me; free from the ravages of age, a perfect marriage of art and immortality. Though you certainly aren't as valuable as the ones you have destroyed, it is a start. I will take immense pleasure in it."
During his little speech, he missed the increasingly dark look Mei was giving him as her face slowly lowered, hair falling forward to shadow her eyes. 'Ravaged by age … imperfect marriage … have no value … can't offer pleasure?'
"I'm going to kill you," she whispered almost soft enough for Sasori to miss. He glanced back at her in confusion only to see her lunging towards him, breathing out a thick crescent of lava. His hand immediately came up, a small tube emerging from his palm. As if emulating the Sanbi, a stream of water burst out, immediately cooling the lava down into useless rocks that splashed into the water at his feet.
He moved his hand in an almost lazy arc. The palm-tube turned as the pressure of the water increased from a thick spray, to a stream thinner than a ryo coin that could cut through solid rock. It split the rushing Mizukage in half with almost negligible ease. Too much ease. Sasori turned, and if his eyes could still widen they would have as he found the cruel gaze of the Mizukage inches from his face.
"You're clearly inexperienced with women, otherwise you would know better." She leaned forward lightning quick and almost tenderly caught the puppeteer's wooden lips with her own. It soon became obvious that this was no ordinary kiss though as, one-by-one, glowing orange veins spread across the Akatsuki-member's body. He tried to gut her with his poisoned cable, but she had already danced back, looking on with a quite sort of satisfaction.
He grasped his neck, body starting to fail him as more and more of his internal workings were rendered useless by the streams of lava coursing through his body. He was luckier than most, had he still been flesh and blood the technique would have been excruciating. As it was, he only had to contend with the sense of panic as his body was melted away from the inside. In a last-ditch effort, the tiny part of him that was still organic detached from his torso, launching itself in the direction the Kazekage had sunk.
It was a desperate attempt though and Mei caught the pulsing little thing with a disgusted grimace, watching it writhe and paw at her with pathetically weak chakra strings.
"You should have learned to grow old with some dignity," she said, feeling little sympathy for the monster she held. A final breath of acidic mist put the Suna nuke-nin out of his misery and without much care she tossed the bubbling lump into the water.
She took a single moment to commemorate an opponent that had put up a decent fight and, under different circumstances, may have seriously given her a run for her money, before turning her attention to more pressing matters.
Such as where the young Hokage had gotten himself to.
With no direct line of sight on the wayward bomber, Naruto did the next best thing and did the rounds with his ANBU, keeping a wary eye on the unconscious Sanbi all the while. He also made sure to thank the Kiri shinobi he came across, which apparently was both unprecedented and surprising to them. However, these men and women had put their lives on the line to protect his subordinates; he wasn't going to let something like national borders hold back his gratitude.
Mei and Sasori's battle had moved away before the blast so by the time he reached Komachi she was alone again, still holding up the sealing matrix with the admirable perseverance that made Konoha such a menace on the battlefield. It was the moment he stepped away from her to more thoroughly search the area that he felt the first tingle of that oh-so-important sixth sense all surviving shinobi gained at some point or another.
A sudden dive to the left saved his arm as a hummingbird burst out of the water below him and exploded without warning. It was not alone. He was swarmed in instant, only his prodigious speed keeping him ahead of the legion of small explosions that herded him towards the Bijuu's slumbering form. When they tried to surround him, trapping him neatly in a swirling vortex of the buzzing, faux-creatures, he flashed to his only hiraishin marker on the Sanbi's back.
That was a mistake. Deidara had clearly used the redhead's concern over his troops to strategize, realizing that, if cornered, there was only one place Naruto could go. The Deidara that was already lying in wait atop the beast sprang immediately, wrapping Naruto in a bear hug even as his skin began to pale and his form lost consistency. The gloopy clone swiftly locked down Naruto's mobility, congealing until the redhead was completely captive in the clay.
It was only then that Deidara revealed himself, hopping down off one of his birds to land in front of the redhead. His hair was singed badly and it looked like one of his arms was broken, but he was still grinning madly.
"I knew it, not so tough after all. Although, to survive the magnificence of my C-3 was impressive, I'll give you that, yeah?" His hand was perpetually held in a half-ram seal; a warning that if Naruto tried anything he'd detonate the clay. "But look at you, a Hokage at the mercy of my art! This is how things should be! Soon all of the world's leaders will understand, that true art… is an explosion!"
He gestured grandly, sweeping his arms wide, crying, "Katsu!" Only to falter slightly when nothing happened. His eyes grew panicked when Naruto began chuckling.
"You forgot something about leaders." He strained a moment and managed to break apart the now brittle clay, dusting himself off as he stood back up to full height. "They're rarely ever alone."
Deidara tried to flee only to find his feet rooted firmly in place, literally. When he looked down he saw tree roots growing up from the cracks in the Sanbi's shell, securing to the spot. He scowled, free hand reaching into his pack of clay and moulding a bird with astonishing speed. However, the moment he let the little thing loose a senbon skewered it right out of the air, still crackling with raiton chakra. A moment later and two swords were crossed against his throat, slowly forcing him down into a kneeling position.
He could only glance at the four ANBU that had suddenly appeared with disbelief. "But that's…" When he strained his eyes over to where one of the operatives had been standing, they were still there. A moment later though and the henge dispelled, revealing a clone of a certain redhead waving at him congenially.
Naruto could have had his clones perform the sealing from the start, but they were so much more fragile than ANBU and even one being dispelled by accident could have screwed up the entire process. Once the matrix was set though? The ANBU were more useful in other ways, as he was demonstrating.
He strode forward, cutting an impressive figure in his new haori, face set into the epitome of the cold leader. When he came to a stop in front of the Iwa nuk-nin, the man was trembling with poorly-supressed rage.
"Your art is derivative and uninspired."
Deidara had only a fraction of a second to look offended before Naruto slugged him, instantly knocking him unconscious.
There was a moment of silence before Komachi sighed.
"Hokage-sama, that was just… awful."