Chapter 22: Unique Trick

Back to Custus and Gold's fight with Caratsu.

Rasa had again dodged one of Caratsu's attacks by quickly slipping away with his gold dust.

While Custus tried to hit the Bandit with a wind Jutsu, but he easily dodged it.

They had been doing this routine of, Attack, dodge, attack, dodge for a few minutes now.

The problem was that Rasa had already almost completely exhausted his chakra, he only had enough chakra to keep dodging a few more of Caratsu's attacks and nothing more, not even enough to make a decisive attack.

Rasa was frustrated, if he had more chakra he could defeat this chunin due to his natural advantage against ninjas using earth and wind jutsu, but now he could only dodge.

And Custus despite still having chakra to fight, was badly injured and her movements were getting slower and slower, preventing her from having a chance against the bandit.

They both knew they wouldn't last much longer against the bandit if things continued like this.

"Wind Release: Sand Bullet" Caratsu stamped his hands quickly directing his attack at Custus.

"Wind Release: Sandy Wind Blast" Custus open her giant fan then waved it and launched a strong blast to counter the fast-moving sand bullets.

But without giving her time, the bandit quickly sealed again:

"Earth Style: Sandy Earth Impact Jutsu."

Custus didn't have time to even counter the Jutsu nor did he have time to dodge, it was going to be a direct hit that would cause her major injuries.

Rasa tried to quickly move her gold dust to help her dodge the attack, but he didn't have enough chakra to be able to do this.

He thought about using his control on the metal to help her, but that would expose him and he had already told himself that he would keep it a secret unless it was a life or death situation.

Now it could become a life or death situation, but it didn't involve him, if Rasa wanted he could easily escape from the bandit.

Before Rasa could make up her mind, he saw his teammate quickly appear at Custus' side.

"Wind Release: Great Sand Dragon" Nomad suddenly appeared just when everyone thought the Jutsu was going to hit Custus.

Nomad transformed his Chakra into air causing it to take the form of a dragon, then it quickly slid across the sand and mixed with the surrounding sand to create a Sand Dragon that charged towards the earthen wall that the Caratsu bandit had made to attack Custus.

Nomad's jutsu hit the wall destroying it easily and then shot towards Caratsu at high speed.

Despite the dragon's speed, Caratsu managed to dodge the sand dragon as his previous attack had slowed it down.

But even so, the impact created by the sand dragon injured Caratsu.

"Wind Release: Sandy Wind Palm" Nomad jumped at the opportunity and threw a powerful blast of wind combined with sand at him.

"Earth Style: Earthen Punch Jutsu" Caratsu who saw that he couldn't dodge Nomad's attack in time, decided to use a Jutsu to mitigate the damage.

"Boom"

Nomad's Sandy Wind Palm impacted against Caratsu's Earth Punch.

After colliding Caratsu was ejected with great force but did not receive much damage.

"Wind Release: Wind Hawk" Custus didn't waste time and used Nomad's interference to her advantage.

She waved her giant fan fiercely and from it came out a large Wind Hawk that went at high speed against Caratsu who was still unstable after the collision of his Jutsu with Nomad's attack.

Without even being able to do anything, Caratsu was cut in the chest by the large wind hawk.

The bandit staggered back a few steps, falling onto the sand.

Caratsu looked at the hole of blood on his body, he knew he was going to die.

"Hehe... hehe, am I going to die?" he said smoothly shaking his head to look at Custus who was the one who had caught him by surprise with that attack.

He then looked at each of the group firmly, and snarled like a maniac:

"You are nothing but ... murderers...yes...a bunch of murderers...haha...pathetic...you..."

The bandit could not finish speaking as his mouth started to choke on his own blood and then his throat only continued to make some meaningless sounds of:

"Ho ho...".

Moments later Caratsu's body stopped moving.

Just at this moment, Nomad reacted, his face filled with shame looking at Custus and Gold in such a bad state.

"This... you two... Are you fine?" Nomad finally asked a little half-heartedly.

"Don't worry, we just have several small injuries" Rasa waved his hand reassuring Nomad, then lay back on the sand tiredly.

Custus didn't respond and just went to Rasa's side to treat both of their wounds.

"Oh good, that's good, when I saw your faces so pallid I thought I'd lose you," Nomad said jokingly.

"You know, if it wasn't for Rasa successfully handling his opponent only to then come to help me we'd probably both be dead by now. So tell me, what happened genius, couldn't you even handle two elite Chunin, what took you so long with just one?" said Custus irritated.

She was very angry with Nomad because if it wasn't for Rasa who apparently can use the gold dust, she and he would have died before that idiot Nomad came to help them.

"Well..., that rat kept hiding and he also got help from two other junior chunin who suddenly appeared to save him so..."

"I'm not interested in your excuses, that's your business, we almost got killed because of that. Now I have to treat our wounds, so it will be up to you to eliminate the ninjas left alive inside the Base" interrupting Nomad's explanation, Custus looked at him seriously, making it clear that he had no choice.

Nomad looked at Rasa for help, he didn't want to deal with the tedious task of searching and eliminating the rest of the survivors in the base.

Rasa could only shake his head:

"That's the only option left, I don't have any more chakra and Custus has many wounds, you'll have to go on your own Nomad."

"Alright, I guess I have no choice left. TCH, more damn rats to deal with" Nomad complained, and just as he was about to go kill desert rats he remembered something and glared at Rasa.

"Hey, now that I remember, what was that move earlier...you know the one about the sand being like gold?" asked Nomad.

Custus could only sigh at how much of an idiot his friend was for not realizing that Gold's identity was Rasa and that sand-like gold he uses is none other than his Kekkei Genkai, she wanted to hit him so badly.

"Oh, you mean this?" asked Rasa mischievously as he moved some gold dust in his hand.

"Yeah, but how the hell do you do that, this... is it real gold?" asked Nomad excitedly and with his eyes wide open.

"That's right, it's real gold and you could say it's a unique trick" laughed Rasa, while Custus rolled her eyes.

"Unbelievable, wait..., I've heard of someone who can release gold like you?" suddenly remembered Nomad.

"Well, if you tell me who he is I might know him," said Rasa with a smile.

"Mmmm, I don't know, I only heard of him from other ninjas, but I don't remember his name, he seemed to be an important and arrogant guy from how everyone described him," said Nomad with a shrug, he clearly wasn't informed of what was going on in the village if he didn't know Rasa.

Rasa quirked an eyebrow at that comment.

He... important and arrogant?, well, sure... as the Kazekage's apprentice and a ninja with the ability to mine gold from the earth he was now quite important, but arrogant...?

'Surely those ninjas were just a bunch of jealous ones' Rasa concluded to himself and nodded satisfied with his conclusion.

Custus on the other hand just laughed that Nomad was literally talking about Rasa right now.

"Anyway he doesn't matter man, the important thing is that you could actually become damn rich, you know how awesome that skill is, TCH, I wish I could do that, yeah...I'd have all the vacations I ever wanted" Nomad said dreamily.

"I thought you'd prefer a good fight" Rasa commented.

"Yeah, but after a good fight, a good vacation always comes nicely" assured Nomad.

"Hey stone head, aren't you forgetting something?" said Custus to Nomad.

Nomad looked at her irritated, but instead of answering her, he kept thinking about everything he could do with Gold's ability, and after a while he disappeared from the place in search of the possible surviving bandits.