Pakura had already resigned herself to death previously when the iron storm closed in.
Yet instead of pain, she felt arms seize her, pulling her sharply out of the line of fire.
Some freshness also spread into her body almost instantly, waves of chakra flowing into her battered system. Not poison. Not heat. Healing.
Her eyes widened, blinking past the haze. The figure holding her was masked, his voice muffled but steady as he spoke close to her ear.
"You're not dying here. I'll save you. But first… I'm going to deal with him."
The chakra pulsing into her body was cool, steady, unlike anything she had felt before.
It wrapped through her injuries, numbing the pain just enough for her to breathe.
She stared at the mask, the strange voice behind it, and realized with a shock that the body holding her directly felt young.
A teenager?
Not an old comrade swooping in, but someone who shouldn't even have been here.
Her chest tightened.
She had expected her last moment to be alone, crushed beneath betrayal.
Yet here she was, alive, cradled against someone radiating determination she couldn't understand.
Up above, Sasori had paused.
The threads twitched around his fingers, but for once, his expression flickered.
His voice carried down, sharp and mocking.
"So another insect crawls out. That chakra of yours… strange. You'll make an excellent addition to my collection."
Ryusei looked up at that semi-familiar figure from the memory of his past world, and though the mask hid his expression, he grinned underneath.
From beneath his cloak, faint motes of green light leaked out, tiny slug fragments pulsing with previously stolen, mastered, and fused tailed beast chakra.
He raised one arm from Pakura's shoulder, and a cold, ominous aura surged to life.
"I've been itching to try this out," he said, his voice low. "You'll make good first practice."
From his arm, a greenish, icy chakra burst forth, condensing into a massive, hardened dragon of translucent, corrosive ice.
Its roar split the air as it launched straight at Sasori, who instantly threw up walls of Iron Sand to block it.
But Ryusei had already moved directly.
His veins bulged as he forced open the Third Gate, and still holding Pakura in one arm, he stepped onto the dragon's back, flickering across it with blinding speed.
Ice shards burst from his free hand, slicing through Sasori's defenses.
Sasori snarled, flicking his fingers.
The Kazekage puppet rained iron spikes at them, trying to shred both him and the girl in his arms.
"You really think that power will stop me? I'll carve it out of your body myself!"
"Try it," Ryusei shot back.
The dragon's jaws split open, and from inside another clone lunged out, weaving hand seals at blistering speed.
Fire, lightning, and wind jutsu spewed out in a storm, hammering Sasori from every direction.
The Iron Sand warped into desperate shields, but Ryusei was already there, his fist glowing with the coiling force of his Serpent Fist style.
One punch cracked through the iron barrier like it was brittle stone.
Sasori's puppets swarmed, blades dripping with poison, but Ryusei's answer was close-range annihilation.
"Thunder Serpent.""Flame Fist."
One punch burst with searing heat, detonating on impact like a firebomb.
The other carried a coiling serpent of lightning wrapped around his arm, its crackling head striking forward with thousands of volts.
Flame, then lightning, his fists blazed in turn, each strike smashing through multiple puppets and reducing them to wreckage before they could even touch him.
The battlefield thundered with every blow.
For the first time, Sasori's calm broke.
He saw it then, death.
If he stayed, he would quickly die here.
He was outclassed pretty badly.
A shinobi of his caliber could immediately make a decent assessment of any scenario.
Desperation twisted his movements, and he poured everything he had into the Kazekage puppet.
Magnetism flared, ripping the air as he hurled himself backwards, riding the Iron Sand like a sling, propelling him away at terrifying speed.
Ryusei didn't pursue.
He stood on the fading dragon of ice, holding Pakura close, eyes narrowing as he watched Sasori vanish into the distance.
"So strong emotion really can push even an advanced elemental bloodline further," he muttered, half to himself.
"Her scorch… his magnetism… it makes sense. Spiritual energy at its core."
The dragon cracked beneath them, collapsing into shards.
But before they could fall, Ryusei extended his arm again.
That strange green chakra surged, shaping itself into a solid platform of crystalline ice that caught them gently and carried them down to the scorched earth.
Pakura clutched weakly at his cloak, still trembling.
She didn't know who this masked person was, or why he had saved her, but the warmth of his healing chakra and the iron steadiness of his voice cut through the despair that had nearly swallowed her.
"Let me deal with the rest of them," Ryusei said quietly to Pakura as he set her down against a patch of scorched rock.
The masked figure turned away, and that same eerie green aura surged again.
It twisted out of his arm like liquid frost, solidifying into jagged shapes that pulsed with an ominous chill.
The Suna shinobi who had been standing guard for Sasori froze in place as a suffocating wave of killing intent washed over them.
Knees buckled, throats tightened, and even the veterans among them felt their bodies seize.
Before they could break free, Ryusei moved.
The green chakra lashed out, shaping itself into spears, shards, and whips of crystalline ice that cut through the paralyzed group one by one.
Some were pierced cleanly, others were engulfed as the chakra spread like corrosion, leaving their forms stiff and broken in the dust.
Pakura could only watch, stunned.
That power, she had never seen anything like it.
Ryusei didn't stop until the last of them fell.
Only then did the aura retract, fading back beneath his cloak as if it had never been there.
He exhaled slowly, steadying his breath.
Yes, he was burning through its limited supply now, but he had no choice.
This was the one ability he had never shown in battle before, hence the one that would be the least connected to him, on another front, later.
He used those nature release ninjutsu previously only in the air against Sasori, so there would be no traces.
He turned back to Pakura before approaching her slowly again, the killing edge in his presence vanishing as quickly as it came.
Ryusei's Byakugan traced the poison spreading through her, clogging her chakra pathways like sludge.
It was eating her alive continuously, and yet she still sat upright, hazel eyes steady even as her body failed.
Externally, she was a mess, sweat streaked with dirt, her bun unraveling, green strands with orange tips clinging to her cheeks.
The battlefield's glare dulled her hair's usual fire, but it only made the resilience in her eyes stand out more.
His gaze flicked over her attire in a glance meant to assess injuries, but it lingered longer than it should have on her pale, exposed skin.
Sleeveless, backless, bare shoulders and underarms exposed to the light.
Purple arm guards loose at her sides. Bandages digging into toned thighs.
Even battered, scratched, and poisoned, she was undeniably very enticing.
'Another world-class woman,' Ryusei thought flatly, 'Tsunade first, then her... I'm really lucky.'
Her darker, fuller brows only emphasized that fire in her face, giving her an allure that went beyond beauty; it was a presence.
Dangerous, captivating.
The kind of woman you didn't forget once you'd seen her up close.
He remembered, faintly, from his old world, that Pakura already then had always struck him as the most attractive kunoichi after Tsunade, despite how obscure her role had been.
Seeing her now, real and alive, only made that impression even stronger.
"You're in worse shape than you look. Honestly, you should've blacked out long ago. Your willpower's impressive."
The Byakugan saw deeper, and his tone shifted as he continued.
"There's more. A bloodline flare… your body's pushing out power, but with your pathways collapsing, it's killing you faster."
He exhaled quietly. "At best, you've got minutes, and saving you still won't be an easy task."
Still, his hands again, as if purposely, still stayed steady on her exposed, smooth shoulders, as for some reason, they enticed him the most.
Medical Yang chakra flowed into her with a healing that refused to stop.
Pakura's hazel eyes lifted to the mask again, steady despite the blur creeping into her vision.
The same killing intent that had frozen an entire squad still lingered around him, heavy and suffocating, yet the chakra flowing into her veins was the opposite, careful, almost gentle.
The contrast made her chest tighten.
Part of her wanted to tear the mask off and demand answers.
Another part, the part sinking into that warmth, wanted to forget everything, the betrayal, the puppet threads closing around her throat.
Her lips parted, the words scraping out rougher than she intended.
"…Why save me? You're not Suna. You shouldn't even be here. Who are you, and what do you want from me?"
The edge in her tone was real.
She had already been betrayed by the people she gave her life to; she wasn't about to fall blindly into another stranger's arms.
But her voice cracked at the end, and despite herself, softer words slipped free.
"…Still… thank you."
She hated the weakness in it, hated the vulnerability, but the truth dug deeper than pride.
Relief.
Someone had reached her before death.
For the first time since her world utterly collapsed and the poison set in, she wasn't alone.