Sasuke unleashed a massive radial wave of Chidori Stream, sending blue currents surging across the ground to detonate Deidara's clay bombs before they could detonate. Beside him, Kabuto rapidly wove hand signs, sending torrents of Water Release jutsu crashing forward to douse the remaining explosives, though the fine clay continued to dodge his strikes with unreal agility.
Sasori evaluated the shifting battlefield and the new threats around them. Before he could make his next move, a clay clone of Deidara flew towards his flank, its molded clay face reformed as it turned into a familiar grin.
"Sasori-no-danna, a squad from Konoha is moving on our position," Deidara informed. "Are you finished playing around with Orochimaru yet?"
"Not quite," Sasori replied with his gaze never leaving the spot where Orochimaru had taken the brunt of the collateral,. "His lackey proved far more trouble than anticipated, but I'll put an end to this shortly."
"If it's taking too long, I will kill Sasuke and lend you a hand," Deidara offered. "I don't need your help," Sasori snapped back. "I've already struck him multiple times with my poison. It's over."
"Are you sure about that, Sasori?" Orochimaru's voice came as he dusted off his clothes.
He chuckled softly as his tissue began to knit together, the decay of the toxic compound seemingly stalling against his abnormal cellular structure. But before Orochimaru could fully celebrate his resilience, a shattered wooden puppet debris sitting at his feet floated. Without making a single sound, the seemingly inert pieces coalesced into a striking posture, and Sasori's true form stepped out from the blind spot behind Orochimaru.
In a fraction of a second, Sasori's arm extended into a spear of dense Iron Sand, plunging it cleanly through Orochimaru's torso from behind.
"Now, I am sure," Sasori whispered into Orochimaru's ear. "This isn't an ordinary batch. You may have built up a resistance to neurotoxins, but I designed this specific formulation to bypass your modified anatomy. I know how your body works, Orochimaru—just as you used to know me. Because it was you, I took extra precautions."
The Sasori that had been speaking to Deidara... and the very same puppet that had narrowly dodged Neji's devastating Black Meteorite moments earlier.. was nothing more than an empty wooden shell dressed assuming Sasori's form, its central core socket was hollow. Sasori had slipped into the shadows early, waiting for the moment when Orochimaru's guard would drop.
"Let's go, Deidara," Sasori said, pulling his Iron Sand back as Orochimaru collapsed to his knees, paralyzed. "We have captured our target."
Deidara hovered on his clay bird, looking toward the third party. "What about the Leaf shinobi?"
"If they follow, we eliminate them," Sasori answered indifferently. "They are nothing more than an annoyance. If they had the nerve to fight us head-on, they wouldn't have launched their attacks from a kilometers away. Let them cower."
"No... you're not taking him anywhere!" Kimimaro stepped forward, his body visibly strained to its limit. His pale skin cracked as black marks spread across his face, and with a scream, he unleashed his ultimate technique.
"Dance of the Seedling Fern: Wild Bloom!"
The earthbed moved and shattered, for nearly two hundred meters in every direction, the ground ruptured as a forest of pristine, razor-sharp bone spires burst forth from the bedrock. The colossal white spears tore into the sky, branching off into thousands of smaller lethal barbs that turned the entire terrain into an impenetrable bone forest.
Through his ultimate jutsu, Kimimaro became one with the osteo-structure he created. His consciousness and body merged into the skeletal forest, allowing him to travel through any spire almost instantaneously.
In a split second, Kimimaro materialized from a bone trunk right beside Sasori as a cloud of poisonous gas bursting from Sasori body as he struck.
Sasori didn't even flinch. "You are quite reckless... all this grandeur techniques are wasted on you and fell to the oldest trick in the book." while it had actually turned out to be a bone clone .
The real Deidara maneuvered his clay bird down near Sasori as the ground stopped trembling. "There you are, danna. Very funny of you to fool me into talking to a puppet."
"Shut up and get us out of here," Sasori retorted, stepping onto the back of the clay bird.
Kimimaro, realizing his attack had failed, emerged from a high spire and hurled a massive Fuma Shuriken aiming to slice the bird's wing and also forced bone tree to branch out to cut their retreat. But Deidara piloted his bird with incredible finesse, banking hard to bank out of the radius of the bone forest and soaring into the open sky.
"Well, look at the bright side," Deidara muttered. "That bone attack completely incapacitated Karin and Kabuto down there. There's no point in staying anyway now that we have the traitor captured."
---
Sakura finished applying her medical ninjutsu to Neji's wounds. Neji stood up, activating his Byakugan as green chakra faded from Sakura's palms. His pale eyes veered through the bone thickets of Kimimaro's creation.
"The Akatsuki has successfully captured Orochimaru," Neji told his team. "They're preparing to leave. Kimimaro has exhausted his chakra reserve in the last attack, Kabuto and the redhead girl were caught in the crossfire of Kimimaro's technique and are unconscious."
Kakashi nodded and reaching up to slide his headband as he undid the seal on Sharingan. "Give us the signal the moment they are clear."
"Now," Neji confirmed.
Team Konoha moved instantly, flashing through the dense foliage and leaping as they reached the newly formed bone forest.
"I have Kimimaro's location," Neji called out as they darted through the maze of bone spires. "Sasuke is at our four o'clock!"
"We split up!" Kakashi ordered. "Neji, Yamato... take Kimimaro! Sakura and I will capture Sasuke!"
The groups diverged without a second thought. Neji and Yamato braced themselves for a ferocious battle, knowing full well the destruction Kimimaro was capable of producing. But when they rounded a towering cluster of bone barbs and reached the location, there was no attack waiting for them.
~~
A/N: Orochimaru is not really dead, he has an another objective it will be covered in Arc 2.
Advance chapters available @patreon.com/aizenDuchiha0