Chapter 31

Have you ever participated in one of those ridiculous anime versus debates? Where it goes, 'oh he dodged those lasers, so he has to be lightspeed'? Yeah, those ones. Well, as I flew down, around and sometimes through Hashirama's forest of wood, I felt like one of those characters. I leaned heavily on my sand and the fact that my body was more sand than flesh to push myself to speeds I didn't truly know I could reach. And even in spite of that, it wasn't enough.

The dust release favoured by the Fence Sitter and his Sensei has only one weakness. It could take a while to form large scale attacks. That was why Onoki had stuck to narrow tiny blasts in the beginning. Anything bigger would have taken a boatload of time and even more chakra. But apart from that formation time. it was for all intents and purposes, a perfect jutsu. That's why I began my retreat the moment he drew his hands together. And even with that, by the time I flew down to ground level, the box had already appeared, covering the entirety of the airspace within the barrier. In a blink, everything there had turned to dust. Hashirama's forest, my sand. All of it. Not just that though, like I said, I was too late.

"Fuck" I screamed out loud, unable to quite stop myself as I noted the change in my body. My legs. Fuck. Most of my lower body was gone. Just one attack. One cube of dust that I'd barely managed to get ahead of and I was already crippled. Fuck. Was this what it meant to fight one of the pillars of the shinobi world? Was I actually in over my head? I thought myself ready. Thought myself on their level. The level of those monsters who remade the world into their will, and here I laid on the floor, maimed and bleeding.

Scratch that, not bleeding. Sand was what leaked from my wound. Guess I managed to instinctively transform my body before the dust release technique closed in.

"Hmph. Not unexpected." Onoki said, looking down on me with disappointment. "This is what has become of the title 'Kage' in this generation. Granted to an upstart with shiny techniques but no experience." He said, turning his nose up at me. I just smiled at him before dissolving into sand.

What was losing a limb to me? My body no longer existed. Not truly, at least. I am no longer Gaara of the Desert. I am the desert itself. I reformed my body, whole, right on the other side of the rooftop, right next to one of Orochimaru's ninja. I couldn't place a name to his face, so he had to be a filler character or something.

"This is a good barrier" I said, placing my hand on the secondary barrier he'd created around himself to protect himself from attempts to kill him and end the barrier. "Not bad at all…." for someone with no idea what they were truly doing.

With a hand gesture, I cleaved his body in half with a wave of my hand. The barrier remained intact. All I'd done was twisted ownership of it until it allowed my chakra to pass through with no resistance. After he fell dead, it was only a matter of seconds until the Four Violet Flames Formation barrier fell. Fighting Onoki in an enclosed space like this rooftop was a death sentence if he was going to be throwing around attacks like that.

I turned to my side and saw him staring at me in a mixture of surprise and respect. All I'd done had taken only a few seconds after all. "Onoki the fencesitter. I am Gaara of the Desert. It is an honour to make your acquaintance. Let this battle be one for the ages" I proclaimed grandly as I dispelled my clone on the other side of the village and returned my chakra to close to full capacity, and began to leak sand from every pore. My clone had really fucked things up. It both annoyed me and made me happy. With Deidara and Kakashi gone, it was all fucked. No more living according to someone else's script, I guess. Fuck Canon. Fuck it all. No more holding back. No more acting to preserve some future only I could see. No more letting this bastard run roughshod over me and acting on the defence. Onoki the fence sitter will die today. This is the beginning of my legend.

Quest Notification!

Finally taking this seriously, huh?

Objectives;

Survive

Kill Onoki the Fencesitter

Kill Orochimaru

Save Hiruzen

Bonus Objectives

Prevent Kurotsuchi from escaping

Prevent Akatsuchi from escaping

Kill Stone Nin (3/127)

Rewards;

5000 XP

Legendary loot roll

Weighted Boulder Technique

Stone Golem Technique

Bonus Rewards;

Lava Release Affinity

Dust Release Affinity

?

?

?

I was drawn from my thoughts by a ping from the game, and as I read through the mission statement and rewards, I was almost overtaken by hysterics at that. Dust release affinity? Fuck. If there was one way to take things from 0 to a 100, then this was it. But there was also an alarming thought that this brought to my mind. What would have happened if I never decided to go for broke in this fight. Would I have never gotten the quest?

And if I never got the quest, would I have gotten other opportunities to get access to all the rewards there? Most notably the lava and dust releases. Quests had been rare and scarce for a while. But this wasn't the time for such thoughts, as I was shortly interrupted by Onoki's arrival on the floor outside the stadium. With space to fight, this was shaping up to be the next phase of combat.

"Oh ho. I see you want to put up a fight, boy. Good. Make this as difficult for me as you can. I could use the exercise." If there was one thing Onoki had going for him, it was his trash talking skills. No one could quite combine disregard with disdain in such a delightful cocktail while still making it sound badass at the same time.

Admirable as it was, it still did manage to get on my nerves. "You're going to regret those words, Old man" I said in reply, still flooding the surrounding area with my sand. If I could, I'd turn the entirety of Konoha into a desert. My clone was a bit shortsighted in how he was willing to let Deidara blow the place to bits to soothe our wounded ego, but his heart was still in the right place. Konoha were still only allies of necessity to me. They'd only keep us around for as long as they needed us, and that was going to be for a good bit of time if I had anything to say about it.

Ohnoki floated downwards and stood on a raised platform of earth before slamming his hand down on it. Multiple earthen spikes rose from the ground beneath my sand but it only took a brief application of concentration for me to prevent them from rising any further, pushing down on the ground with the weight of my sand and chakra. A brief contest of wills followed until Onoki scowled and abandoned the efforts.

I wanted to say something witty. To gloat. But I was cut off by multiple balls of lava firing my way. I didn't even raise my hand to command my sand to wrap around them and shatter them. The lava did well to melt a lot of the sand, but whatever was lost was quickly replaced from my inventory. I traced the origin of the lava to Kurotsuchi from her position still on the stadium rooftops. Onoki and I had since moved into Konoha proper.

Multiple spears of sand were sent flying at the girl and I wasn't surprised to note the fat one moving in front of her to block the attack. Killing her would have been an easy way to prevent her from escaping, but I had the strong feeling that something like that might make my fight with Ohnoki go very differently. Getting the old man so pissed that he stopped thinking logically would be hella stupid.

My sand rose without my input to block a massive spear of stone that the old man had tossed, clearly hoping to take advantage of my inattention. "You'll have to try harder than that, old man. I am the worst possible match for you"

This time, when he flew at me, I did the same, matching his speed and approach by transforming my lower body into sand and controlling it to make me float in the air. Since the original parts were gone, it actually felt easier to use the limbs in their sand form. I'd have to leave testing out what might have changed with my essentially brand new limbs for a different day as Onoki andn I clashed in the middle of the distance between us.

His fist passed by my head with so much force that the wind created by the approach sent my skin flapping. My own attack, a stab with dark sister, was similarly dodged by him as we began our dance. His hands flashed and a mud ball was fired at me from point blank range. I allowed it to pass through my sandy form and used the opportunity to grab on to him with my hands transformed into sand claws reminiscent of Shukaku's. As I prepared to rip his body to shreds, both of the arms went limp as I was suddenly dragged towards the ground by their weight. Onoki's Earth Release: Added-Weight Rock Technique.

I fell to the ground for a few seconds before I suddenly detached my transformed hands from my body, forming replacements from the sand around me in an instant to allow me make seals for the wind jutsu I tried using to cancel out the lightning release jutsu Onoki had charged and fired in my seconds of inattention. Even with how fast I'd become, I was still too slow and the jutsu washed over me for a few seconds, sending me flying into the ground spasming.

Even transforming my body to sand at the last minute had somehow seemed to make the effects worse as I felt my body fall apart at the seams, collapsing into sand and failing to coalesce no matter how much I tried. Fuck. Fucking Ninja magic. Earth would ground lightning any day of the week in any other situation. But now? One blast and I was putty on the ground.

Fuck.

Onoki floated down. I could sense him through the sand particles I had flying through the air, gamer's mind shielding me from the disorientation that would have accompanied falling prey to something like this. Still, it was all I could do to keep my concentration on so many things at once while still consciously trying to recollect my body into one piece.

"All talk." Onoki said, looking down on me with what I was sure was a sneer on his old wizened face. When I felt his fingers come together, I knew I had to do something, so I decided to go with the nuclear option. Sand rushed at him, forcing him to abandon the attempt for a few seconds while I abandoned my attempts to reconstitute my body, instead forcing the sand to take a different shape as it rose towards the sky.

For some reason, this wasn't affected by the lightning jutsu. I took advantage and coalesced massive amounts of sand into one shape. One familiar shape that my sand took with little coaxing from me. The claws formed first and slammed into the ground with a quake. Sand from all over Konoha that I'd sent out joined in creating a truly massive structure. The body was next,squat and solid. The head followed, and as I formed the eyes, I got my first look at the battlefield since Onoki hit me with the lightning jutsu. The tail was last, and once it formed, I swung it in the air a few times to test it. Checking my chakra reserves with the game told me this entire thing had cost me just over 3,000 units and seemed to be costing about 250 every minute that went by.

In a matter of seconds, the Ichibi stood over Konoha with a roar. Of course, I was the only one who knew that this wasn't truly Shukaku. But if there was one way to cement this battle in the minds of the world, announcing myself as history's second perfect jinchuriki had to be it. Lie or not, the look on Onoki's face as I watched him take in my new state, was one for the history books. The only sad part about this was that since I wasn't truly a tailed beast, I couldn't toss out bijuu bombs on whims. But since this was my body and not Shukaku's I should be able to use ninjutsu just like I could with my normal body.