Chapter 46

She finished her jutsu first. Sasori was not surprised. Noel was skilled, but she weaved seals faster than anyone he'd seen except from Itachi and Kisame. That team of absolute monsters could weave seals so quickly it was like their fingers were blurs even to his eyes. Nii Yugito was only a bit slower than that.

Her jutsu's completion was marked by her fingers rising towards her mouth while in the ram seal. She spat out several balls of bright blue flame that scorched the air as they flew right at his partner's form.

They bathed the hall in an eerie blue glow. His partner's voice rang out next, "Suiton: Suijinheki" he said as he spat out a massive amount of water that rose to form a wall. Both jutsu clashed with a hissing sound that grated on his ears as the fire prevailed. The fireballs continued on their path, while the water turned to naught but quick spreading steam. Noel was able to dodge them with ease, body twisting to allow the fireballs to miss him by a wide margin. The woman showed her creativity as the fireballs spun in the air, reorienting themselves to strike at her opponent from his blindspot.

To exactly no one's surprise, the cheap trick didn't kill the S-rank missing nin. He twisted at the last minute and spat out a tight, compressed lance of water that drilled straight through the fireballs, one after another. A ninjutsu master with little in the way of peers, was the language Leader-sama had sed to describe him during his introduction, and Sasori could see it. Clear as day.

Noel lifted his hand, and all that marked the activation of his jutsu to Sasori's senses was a telltale feeling of static in the air. Nii Yugito dove to the floor with no hesitation, and where there had been previously castle walls behind her, there was now nothing but a view of the outside world. Again, there was static in the air, and again the woman jumped out of the way. Once again, where there'd been something, there was now nothing.

"I've gotten much stronger, Yugito. Don't underestimate me" He said with laughter in his voice.

"Hmph. A hundred times zero is still zero, Noel-chan." She smugly replied before closing the distance, not giving him the time to reply to her barb. He dodged out of the way of the first swipe. This time, however, with the blue chakra that surrounded her getting more intense, her speed has seen a notable jump. Where before, he might have had an easy time keeping ahead of her attacks, Noel was now thoroughly on the Blackfoot. It was all he could do to stay ahead. That was why, this time, he was the one to retreat from close quarters. He did it with style as well, planting his hands on the ground before thrusting at her with a mule kick that she blocked. In the same movement, he executed a swift backflip that took him out of her range.

Even before he'd landed, there was a stream of pure blue flames heading for him. I watched as instead of forming multiple seals, he formed only a single one as his chakra output nearly tripled. The fire washed over him a second later, and when it all cleared, I was left with a view of my partner in his undersuit, and a clear cloak of lightning natured chakra surrounding him.

"You dare use that jutsu? After all you've done" Yugito was the one who sounded furious now. Not furious, Sasori amended, apoplectic. The blue chakra surrounding her thickened as an intangible weight began to settle on the room. The fire shifted, moving into the appearance of a cat's head, before it swelled and began to rise from the floor as the rest of the Nibi's body began to form.

"I don't know what organisation you belong to, but you both die here and now" She said before she moved. He'd been wrong with his previous descriptions. She wasn't fast before. Now, this. This was speed. She moved faster than he could track, and both her and Noel clashed in the middle of the hall. The force of their bodies hitting each other was enough to cause a shockwave that sent everything that wasn't bolted to the ground flying. It also caused a spiderweb of cracks on the floor. Sasori could already tell that there wouldn't be much of a castle left by the time they finally finished with each other.

The cracks spread as they hit each other again, with one tail of the Nibi slamming right into Noel's outstretched fist. With his cloak gone, Sasori could see the musculature that the Akatsuki cloak had hidden from view. Noel Yatsuki was absolutely massive, with a body that reminded one of the Raikage at their fittest. It was impressive how he'd managed to achieve such a constitution, especially considering the Raikage had genetics to help them get there. Sasori had needed to study the human body to a startling degree to perfect his human puppet project, and those studies told him just how much effort would have been required to build a body like that.

Sasori enjoyed the view as both beast and man clashed over and over again. He could already tell that while he was putting up a valiant fight, his partner was already being pushed back, slowly but surely. Man was not made to strive against tailed beasts like this. He could already see what would happen soon enough, and began to execute his plan. Within Hiruko, his fingers twitched with muscle memory, even though he no longer needed them so. He guided multiple balls across the room, making sure that everything was done when both beast and man were distracted. And then he pulled with his chakra, triggering the trap. Nothing happened. Nothing that either of the fighters would notice, at least.

The poison that was spreading across the air was virtually undetectable. He might have been more hesitant about using this particular poison if he hadn't gotten to use the time they spent in close proximity to each other during the journey to help his partner build a resistance without his knowledge.

Sasori watched the next clash between the two of them carefully as the tailed beast exerted itself in its combat with the smaller human. On an ordinary day, with things being equal, he wouldn't expect even a tailed beast as weak as the two tails to lose out to poison, but he hoped that with the exertion from engaging in combat with someone on relatively the same level of power would sway things in his favour even more. Besides, he'd read thew briefings on Nii Yugito cover to cover, multiple times. She wasn't a perfect jinchuriki like Killer Bee. She had a time limit to the transformation, and was limited in what she could do. According to Kumo's own intelligence, even, this wasn't a true transformation where the body of the human was replaced with that of the tailed beast, but her body was in there somewhere.

They clashed again, except this time, the Nibi's tails overpowered her human opponent and slammed him right into the wall. The giant cat scoffed audibly and rested on its haunches, waiting for its opponent to reveal itself again. Sasori almost smiled as he saw what it was doing. When Noel flew right out of the wall like a bat from hell and slammed into another tail that tossed him into the ground, it was all he could do to prevent himself from bursting into laughter at the sight. The Nibi seemed keen on humiliating the human before her.

He rose again, but it was only for the Nibi to rear back and unleash a roar that Sasori smartly prevented from affecting him by disabling his auditory function the moment the first hint of the sound got to him. With a lowly human body of flesh and bone, his partner didn't have such an ability and was sent right to his knees, head clutched right in his hands. Sasori couldn't hear, but from what he could see, the sound was torture of some sort. Noel, normally the stoic sort, was on his knees screaming, with blood leaking from his hands as it escaped his eardrums. Fascinating. The pain on his face was something of legend. In all his years of testing pain causing poisons, not a single one had managed to get that kind of effect from a jounin-level ninja with the training to match.

Noel was finished. Sasori knew it. Even the poison hadn't been enough to make the man a match for the beast. It was a saddening fact, but there was simply nothing the puppet master could do about it. Instead, he decided to honour his partner's last words by allowing him to fall in combat with his pride intact. His puppets began to spread into the floor as he prepared himself to do battle against the mighty Nibi. His body dropped into the ground with the _subterranean voyage_ technique as he continued to see through Hiruko's eyes. A puppet body came with hundreds of advantages over a purely human one. One aspect of that was that he could turn off vision in his main body completely and focus on seeing through Hiruko's eyes. The files had said that the Nibi would be incapable of calling upon the mighty bijudama as an imperfect jinchuriki, but he was not going to test it with his life on the line. He was well aware of how incomplete information could mean the difference between life and death.

He watched as the beast reached down. Not with its claws or tails, but with its mouth. It intended to eat the man, Sasori thought with a mixture of revulsion and intrigue. Fascinating. He wondered if he should poison Noel's body now to see if it would have more profound effects on the tailed beast than the airborne poison that seemed to be doing a good amount of nothing. When it was about to snap its teeth around his body, Noel lifted his head suddenly, and there was a strange feeling in the air. Not something he could perceive through Hiruko, but even underground he could feel it. He watched as Noel's armour, previously a calm blue cloak, began to spark and sizzle. "Finally" He shouted, probably much louder than he'd intended to, considering the busted eardrums. He caught the Nibi's teeth right in his hands, using his strength and that alone to prevent said teeth from turning him into dinner. He fought against the strength of the beast's jaws for a second or two before the jaws clamped down on thin air. He'd escaped, faster than he'd previously been moving.

"Storm Release Armour: Complete" He said, with an audibly smug tone.

"Hahaha. He said it was impossible. They all said it was impossible. Of course, it was. Impossible for them. Never me. I'm better. This proves it" He said, going on about the seeming achievement endlessly. If Sasori's suspicions were correct, then the pride would be understandable. Nay, even expected. This was a new form of the lightning armour that matched nothing he'd read about the Raikage. First of all, he could not a single thing about the man's body within the cloak. It was like the lightning cloak had become his body. In the same deep blue colour that marked his storm release jutsu, this new form of the lightning cloak had a distinctively inhuman feeling to it. This time, when the man moved, the tailed beast was too slow to react. It was not even a blink to Sasori's eyes. All he knew was that in one instant, Noel had been standing at least a hundred metres away, and in the next, his fist was buried in the Nibi's flame cloaked face. The Nibi did not move, the beast too strong to be shaken by the strength of the human, but it did feel the attack. At the very least, the speed had surprised the creature.

When its tails swept out, trying to smash the one who dared lay hands on it, Noel was gone. He dodged the barrage of attacks with ease. With movements that Sasori's eyes failed to track. All while weaving seals and humming to himself. It was disrespectful. And if it was designed to irritate the jinchuriki, then it accomplished its goal. Every swipe of the twin tails tore through the ground now. Tearing deep rents as the beast put all its strength into it. Nothing changed for Noel as he dodged the attacks with ease. Eventually, the Jinchuriki gave up and lifted its head up. Balls of red and black chakra began to gather, and Sasori needed no other hint to know just what Noel had foolishly unleashed on them all. The tailed beast was going to destroy the entire castle. Nay, the whole mountain. Just to take them out. He'd have been flattered if it wouldn't have meant his death. Always one with a backup on top of a backup, Sasori kept watching the fight through Hiruko's eyes while his real body swam deeper and deeper into the ground at an angle. He was certain that by the time the attack landed, he would be well out of its radius. The puppets he'd already spread were of little consequence. Each one had a copy on his person already, and more back at the base. Nothing of value would be lost, and he knew the beast would be exhausted after the attack, so he'd have an even easier time taking out Nii Yugito. It was just a shame that his partner had to perish in the attempt.

Through Hiruko's eyes and ears, he heard Noel burst into laughter. Laughter that his cloak converted into barely intelligible static. He disappeared from his previous position before appearing right in front of the forming tailed beast bomb. "Take this, bitch" He screamed as he completed whatever seals he'd been forming and threw forth his hands.

"Hidden Jutsu: Storm Release: Roar of the Storm God" He screamed to the heavens as he executed an impossibly impressive jutsu. Hiruko's eyes had been carefully calibrated to function in all forms of lighting, but this jutsu managed to blind said eyes for a second. The entire jutsu was a flash, as a veritable pillar of light slammed into the half formed tailed beast bomb before destabilising it and pushing it right into its creator.

Sasori's retreat proved to be the right move, as the entire castle's foundation shook from the impact as it began to collapse. Hiruko's feed ended as the puppet perished from the jutsu's blast radius. "He'd better get that woman's body with him" Sasori said to himself in irritation as he kept swimming through the ground. That escapade had taken his number of Hiruko bodies down to five. He'd have to make at least two more to replenish his supply and ensure he didn't run out any time soon. He could already imagine the griping he'd get from that cheapskate Kakuzu when he'd send him the bill for the supplies and the new Akatsuki cloak custom-made to fit Hiruko's form.

XXXXX- JIRAIYA OF THE SANNIN

He did his best not to blink as they were guided down the waterfall and the twisting turns that marked the entrance to the Village hidden in the Waterfalls. He couldn't see a thing, bound as his head was, but what he could do was prevent himself from giving in entirely. It was his own little bit of rebellion. He could already feel that both his teammates were nothing short of indignant at the reality of the situation.

Even when they were mere genin, they'd been the students of the Hokage and thus gotten to use the more dignified entrance that was made for visiting dignitaries. Those days were long passed, though. The present situation — this insult was a representation of how far they'd sunk in the world with things going wrong and wrong.

Perhaps also contributing to their indignity was the fact that they knew that the only reason they were being subjected to this was a power-play. They were the supplicants here, and the ever grasping council of the Village Hidden in the Waterfalls would not cease to remind them of that. They'd spent months in the Fire Lord's court after recruiting Tsunade to their purpose, but they'd been forced to accept the reality that the man was going to equivocate and obfuscate until they got bored with asking him to pick a side. He could understand the man's position, however. Having been the one actually connected to the village in the past ten years, he knew that the village and the Daimyo had scarcely been more distant, and he probably wasn't too keen on meddling with an intra-village matter on the behalf of either side. If he ended up supporting the wrong side, the winner would have all the motivation to see him hang next to their enemies. But if he remained neutral, neither aiding nor hindering any side, then he denied the prospective winners of any legitimacy in attacking him.

He was probably right. No village would have the audacity to kill a sitting Daimyo, That was one way to ensure that the other four nations turned on you. It was expected at this point that the second a Daimyo was killed, the other four would band together to do whatever was necessary to ensure that those who'd done it would never be able to get away with it. It was both out of a sense of familial duty, for they were all related in one way or the other, and a sense of self-preservation. If the death of a Daimyo was met with serious consequences, then no one would dare. It was most of the reason the shinobi didn't just jettison the entire Daimyo-led feudal system to replace it with a 'might makes right' kind of approach that was in common within the Shinobi villages themselves. The consequences spelt of a form of mutually assured destruction. Besides, the armies of thousands that each Daimyo controlled had some minor role to play in the matter.

They travelled, and he kept a good sense of Naruto's position next to him. It was one of the worries of travelling with Orochimaru. You had to make sure he didn't get much of an opportunity to give into his base instincts. He still remembered their first. Conversation with Tsunade all; those months ago.

_"Hey"_

_"Go away" She said, half asleep and slumped over in front of a table with an empty glass in front of her. They'd watched over the hours as the bar had emptied of patrons, but she'd kept drinking and drinking. Even the bartender had simply given up, handed the keys over to her apprentice, Dan's niece, and told them to lock up when they finished. It made me wonder how much she had already paid for them to get that kind of trust, _

_"Tsunade-sama?" Said apprentice called, whispering into her ears while she just maintained her half asleep posture. Those were the first words she'd managed to utter after having been rendered speechless by what must have been a sudden appearance to her. _

_"Yes?" She said, at least speaking to Dan's niece in a much better tone than what she'd used when disregarding them._

_"It's Jiraiya-sama" She said, pointing to him, and as if her skin was not already pale enough, it got even paler as she pointed at the man next to him. _

_"And Orochimaru" She said, making the idiot next to him burst into his ever familiar laughter. _

_If there was anything that would return Tsunade to wakefulness, it would be those words, and return she did, She bolted upright instantly. Using reflexes that he would never have expected her to have while drunk to leap to her feet and connect an uppercut with Orochimaru's head. It erupted into mud as he used a substitution to escape at the last moment, while Tsunade did not even wait to notice that her attack did not succeed- because she never truly expected it to- before she turned around, gathered her apprentice in her hands in a feat of co-ordination and strength that bellied her drunken state as she jumped away from him at a simultaneously impressive and uninspiring speed. He was in front of her before her drink-addled brain could plot what to do next, and he rendered her unconscious with a quick usage of Frog Kumite. _

_Having some of the benefits of sage mode without even triggering the transformation had been pretty much the only upside to having Danzo take over their village. Apparently, when the Great Elders flooded his brain with senjutsu to get rid of the genjutsu that had taken such a complete hold on his mind, and that had done wonders for his potential with the skill after he got off the combat high. Once he'd calmed down, he'd noticed that several of the benefits normally associated with sage mode had stayed over, even ion his base state. The best part was that he now had access to perfect sage mode when he meditated on his own. Time to train the skill had been sparse with them having to move so fast to keep ahead of Danzo's plan, but he could taste the potential._

_"You know Sensei being dead is almost entirely his fault, right?" She'd said after returning to consciousness and being calmed down, pointing at Orochimaru. _

_"Sensei had decades of life left, even if that life would not have been as an active Ninja. Danzo was the one who took that from him." He'd replied almost instantly. _

_"The only way Danzo would have gotten that opportunity was thanks to his damned invasion. I don't see why you can trust this man and work with him, Jiraiya" _

_"Are we going to keep talking about me like I'm not in the damn room?" Orochimaru piped out from the other side of the admittedly luxurious hotel room. _

_"Yes We are" He said in reply, while Tsunade settled for glaring at him. _

_"Never-mind me then. I'll just remain here trying to tempt your respective apprentices to my nefarious ways" He replied sarcastically, but remained content to sit in his previous position, next to a glaring Naruto and a skittish Shizune. _

_"How can you even trust him?" She asked._

_"That's easy." He replied, rolling up his left sleeve to reveal a set of seals that the uninitiated could have mistaken for extremely ceremonial tattoos. _

_" I got the idea from Danzo himself. Juinjutsu." He explained to her as she went over the script with a keen eye. _

_"This is stupid, Jiraiya" She said to him as she read through the seals to understand their meanings. It was not an extremely well-known fact, but each and every one of them had a more than passable understanding of the art. Tsunade was not known for it for some reason, and most people seemed to ignore the fact that she literally had one of the most impressive pieces of fuinjutsu on her forehead. The Strength of a hundred seal did not come to bear that name by accident. She'd made the seal herself, designed after the seal that her own grandmother had borne to contain the Kyubi no Kitsune. _

_"It's necessary" He said to her. _

_"No it's not. You don't need him, and going to this length to secure his alliance is the most brain-dead thing I've ever seen you do" She'd said with what he thought was worry in her eyes. He killed the very thought before it could rear into something ugly. He'd been down that road too many times to count. It only ended in one way. There was nothing but pain for him there. _

_"I disagree. I do need him. And I need you as well. Danzo killed Sensei. He has Konoha" He knew that with those last three sentences, he had her. He also knew that she was going to resist and make him work for it. But he knew he had her. She loved Konoha just as much as he did. _

Getting the team together had been for both selfish and selfless reasons. Yes, Tsunade was probably right. The two of them could probably manage what they needed to do without involving Orochimaru, but part of him couldn't deny the truth. He wanted his best friend back. And for the moment, it felt like he had that.

XXXXXX

"What do you mean I should wait behind?" Naruto asked with ever present indignity in his voice. "Jiji was my hokage too, you know" He said, raging at the decision to keep him out of the negotiations with the council of Taki. In truth, Jiraiya would have loved to have the boy tag along for the experience so he got some actual context on just how thing were when it came to the interactions between different villages and their interests- villages because he would never consider himself anything other than a ninja of Konoha. Even if she didn't know it yet, Tsunade was his kage. They were merely in temporary exile while insurgents took control of their home.

"I mean you should follow the nice Lady to our living accommodations while we begin the negotiations, brat" Tsunade said, brash as ever. The decision was hers. He would not disagree with it. Not now. He agreed with part of the rationale, but felt that she was underestimating the Gaki. She felt that the Taki bastards would say something rude and that Naruto would be unable to keep himself from replying them in kind, leading to a break down in negotiations. She was giving him less credit than he deserved, but it was not Jiraiya's place to argue with his Kage. Whether she knew herself as such or not.

"But why? I promise to behave" He said, still resisting.

"Naruto" He said, stepping in. It was like mentioning the boy's name was the signal for things to begin to go wrong, as there was an explosion within the village. Suddenly, a girl came flying past them, with ethereal wings sprouted from her back. That was the Nanabi Jinchuriki, no doubt, he casually assessed as he turned to see a detached hand stretch out and grab the girl by the ankle before slamming her to the ground. He followed the line of black threads(?) that connected the hand to find a man with a face mask, and a dead looking appearance to his eyes. Nothing took more of Jiraiya's notice than the cloak of black and red that the man sported, however. Akatsuki.

"Kukukuku. Isn't this such a coincidence" Orochimaru cackled out loud, drawing the man's attention away from the Jinchuriki on the floor to their party of seven - the four of them and their three escorts. Most worryingly was the way the bounty hunter- for who else could it be but Kakuzu the Immortal- kept his eyes on Naruto.

"The Jinchuriki of the Kyubi no Kitsune in the company of the Densestu no Sannin" His voice had a rough quality to it. Like his vocal cords were made of sandpaper and not flesh and blood. With the information Orochimaru had given on the man's abilities, that would not be much of a surprise.

"Between the four of you, I can see Five Hundred Million Ryo. Do well to die peacefully" The man said before he began weaving seals.

Orochimaru wasted no time in matching him, seal for seal, while Tsunade took place as the tip of the spear with practiced ease as she ran forwards, taking all of his attention to her. "Lightning Release: False Darkness" He said, before pointing his hands forwards and letting loose with a blast of lightning natured energy.

The jutsu did little as, with speed that would have caught most by surprise, Naruto appeared in front of Tsunade and clapped his hands. The gesture was more than enough to mark the trigger of a powerful wind release jutsu that tore the lightning jutsu to nothingness as it continued towards the bounty hunter. His skin darkened a shade, and the barely visible blades of wind tore into his cloak without doing anything to his body. Tsunade wove around Naruto's form with ease as her speed quadrupled, smelling blood in the water. Kakuzu was barely able to lift his hand to block the attack in time, but that gesture proved fruitless as the force of the punch tore through his earth release armour and ripped the hand from the body.

Another person jumped at Tsunade from behind Kakuzu's form, trying to prevent her from getting her due. She never even looked at the flying body as it was consumed by flames from Orochimaru's fire release jutsu. Jiraiya almost cried at the display of simple teamwork. This is what had made them famous, and it was good to see that it was not gone completely. He did his part by forming a single seal with his clasped hands. As Kakuzu tried to backpedal, he found his feet trapped in stone. Tsunade took great pleasure in the punch she unleashed on his midsection, tearing most of it to pieces.

"So that is Akatsuki? Nothing impressive at all" She said, turning away from her dead opponent to face him.

It was in that second that she showed that all was not well with them. They were sloppy after so long away from the battlefield. Tsunade of old would never have turned her back on an enemy like that. Not even a dead one. People were fond of faking their deaths when they arrived at the battlefield, so they'd grown to expect it. That caution was nowhere to be found as the man who had been caught by Orochimaru's fire release jutsu lifted himself from the floor with skin caked in charcoal and a crazed smile on his face. As he lifted his scythe to bring it down on an unaware Tsunade, Jiraiya began to move without even thinking.

His hands formed a seal they hadn't formed in over a decade as their special substitution activated. Tsunade did not fight his jutsu as they switched places. He bent underneath the swipe of the scythe, and rose with the fury of a storm god himself. In his right hand lay his improved version of his student's technique. "Odama Rasengan" He shouted as he slammed the grinding ball of chakra against the man's body. Unlike what his young apprentice favoured, this was not the non-lethal version of the technique designed to blow enemies away. No, this was the meat grinder that had put Minato's name on the map even before the Flying Thunder God was a twinkle in his eyes. It lived up to the name the shinobi of Iwa gave it, as it ground the man's body so thoroughly that the head popped off with a distinct sound. He deactivated the jutsu then. That was his mistake.

In turning his attention to the one who had threatened Tsunade, he had removed his attention from every other facet of his surroundings. In keeping the rasengan active for much longer than he'd needed to, he'd given his enemy the privilege of time. He felt a squeezing sensation right as he stood up, and it was the realisation that there was a hand in his chest that kept him still.

"The three of you. You are scary. Especially the woman. Took four of my hearts with one punch. If I didn't start sending my earth heart into the ground after I got trapped, then I'd be dead now." A voice said in his ear, from right behind him. Jiraiya figured that that was where the immortal part of the man's epithet came in. To think that it would be something as inelegant as having multiple hearts. One for each of the elements, Jiraiya suspected.

He turned his neck to get a view of his assailant and felt the squeezing sensation around his precious organ intensify as the man squeezed. He was squeezing lightly. Perhaps he intended to use Jiraiya's life as a bargaining chip. He would never get to find out if that would have worked as the man's own chest was stabbed clean through. Jiraiya could recognise the sword of Kusanagi anywhere as Orochimaru let go of the sword to hold on to Kakuzu's body, most especially the hand that was inside Jiraiya's chest. "How careless of you" The snake summoner tutted as Tsunade rushed towards them.

"We've gotten rusty" He said as both of his teammates worked to put his body down and extract Kakuzu's hand from his chest.

"Stop talking, you fool" Tsunade admonished.

"Tell Naruto, I will always be proud of him" Jiraiya said, trying to come up with the perfect last words. It almost saddened him that he'd never thought to write his own last words ahead of today.

"Shut up, you idiot. You're not dying" Orochimaru said with a chuckle.

"I'm not?" He asked, surprised.

"The bastard didn't cause anything more than superficial damage with that stunt of his. Nothing I can't fix up in a few minutes." She said with a bright smile on her face. He wasn't fooled, though. The fact that it was going to take her minutes was a sign that Kakuzu had caused much more damage than she was saying. There were scarcely any things Tsunade could not heal in a matter of seconds. Especially when it came to his body. She was more familiar with it than he himself was, after all.

"Oi Kakuzu! Come get me my body" They heard suddenly.

XXXXX- GAARA OF THE DESERT

He smiled as he came to. That was precisely what he needed. A nap. Of course, he was still pissed that the Four Tails managed to knock him out so quickly but that was water under the bridge. He had an idea. As he watched Han's body get slammed through a building by one of the Yonbi's massive tails, he completed the rest of the plan in his mind. It all came from a single thought he'd had as he fell into the Morpheus' grasp. 'How is that so loud?' For some reason, it had prompted his brain to begin thinking about sound.

Sound is nothing more than a series of vibrations through a medium. In this case, the medium was the air. The funky part of it was that sound could change when it came into contact with different mediums. Like how Dosu's technique worked. It was fine over the air, but once it got into the ears, it began to mess up toe complex internal operations. The fact that something like that was possible with wind release gave him an idea. Could he use the wind to amplify the sound? Change the frequency? Could he weaponise something as simple as snapping his fingers? He had to test it, and where would he ever find testing grounds as ripe as this one.

First of all, precautions. He lifted his hands to his ears and used a simple medical ninjutsu to deactivate his auditory nerves. He then tested it out by snapping his fingers. He could hear nothing. Good. The next step was trying to feel the sound as it travelled through the air. He clapped his hands. There was something there. Focusing all his energy and attention on trying to feel it gave him results quickly. His high wind affinity made it much easier than it probably should have been for him to feel the sound as it escaped has clasped fingers. It wasn't so much feeling the sound itself, as it was feeling it travel through the air, he corrected himself. He clapped again, to make sure he could feel it. He could.

Feeling it wasn't the goal, though. The goal was manipulation. 'First of all, make it travel the air faster', he thought to himself. He clapped and then when he felt the sound leave his fingers, he hurried it along, making it travel through the air faster. Perfect, he self congratulated. But that still wasn't the goal. He wanted to give the four tails a taste of its medicine because that roar thing it was fond of pulling out was so fucking annoying. He clapped again. He could feel the sound. He could even manipulate where it went and how.

All he now needed to do was sue out how to manipulate the frequency of the sound itself. He knew that the higher pitched a sound went-passed a certain point-the less detectable it became to humans and the more potential it had to annoy or irritate animals. Considering the Four Tails was a monkey, I assumed its frequency response was going to be somewhat similar to ours. I clapped again. Feeling the sound, but failing to manipulate it. It was fundamentally different from manipulating the air. I tried it again, and again. Working to make it work, but nothing I tried to do let me achieve more than I could just do. I then wondered if I could use the wind it travelled through to amplify the sound itself.

In this, I was more successful. But only by the barest margin. I could tweak it a bit. Trying to use the air to stretch it and expand it. But even that was negligible. It didn't fight me every step of the way, in so much as it just remained unchanged regardless of what I tried. Whatever changes I managed were minute. All of that stopped mattering as I saw something out of the corner of my eyes. I turned to it and almost gulped at the sight. It was a fucking Tsunami. Not a small one, either. It was so big that it made what Mei had conjured back in our fight back then look like a kiddie splash.

I lifted my hands to my ears to restore my hearing, and that it when I began to hear the cackling. I traced it to the surface of the Tsunami. Even from this distance, I could pick out the black cloak with red clouds. Akatsuki. Kisame Hoshigaki. Needless to say, I did the sensible thing. Where one went, the other would follow, and fighting Clankiller Itachi and the Tailless Tailed Beast at the same time was way beyond my pay grade. Either of those men was a Kage-killer on their own, and I had no interest in being the one that proved it.

So, I did the thing anyone with a brain would. I tucked tail and ran like the hounds of hell were at my heels. Not before leaving a clone behind to watch the fight, of course. I still wanted the entertainment. When I flew above the cloud cover, I summoned more sand from my inventory to create a wide enough platform before I bit my finger and went through a familiar set of seals. "Kuchiyose no jutsu" I whispered as all the ninja who had joined me on this mission appeared on the platform in a puff of smoke. Not all of them, I amended, as I noticed that two backpacks had come without being attached to their owners.

"Report" I ordered sharply.

XXXX- CLONE GAARA (BECAUSE I KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE ITACHI AND KISAME GET IT DONE)

It was like night and day. The difference between the battlefield before and after they arrived. Kisame rode in on a massive tsunami that quenched most of the lava flowing through the village before it crashed into the Four Tails. The tailed beast tried to evaporate the water with just its body heat, but that was insufficient, and then it was forced under. I almost choked at the sight. The four tails was in a physical battle, and it was losing.

The second that Kismet managed to force it under the water with his water manipulation, the shape of the tsunami changed. The water that had crashed to the ground suddenly rose again before slamming into the larger mass. Suddenly, like it had taken seconds, there was no a massive dome of water over a third of Iwa with the Four Tails right in the middle. It tried to scream, but just ended up swallowing water. It was then I spotted Kisame's form in the water. He looked even more shark like than usual as he chased the creature as it tried to stumble out of the water. He was upon it before it could make any progress, and he latched on.

I could tell that the fight was over from there. I turned my attention to the other fight.

Han had recognised Itachi the moment the Uchiha had pulled up on him, and you could see it in how his approach to combat changed. He moved back from wide ranged, massive attacks to a simpler style. When he and the Uchiha clashed in hand-to-hand combat, Gaara could see it from the very first punch. The difference between them was night and day. Even with the chakra of a tailed beast amplifying his strength and speed to levels that Gaara would never have been able to dream of, Itachi maintained a comfortable advantage over him. Every attack he made was foreseen and reacted to before the Jinchuriki could even dream of landing it. Han gained distance for a second or two before suddenly switching tacks and jumping right at the Uchiha with a massive burst of speed. Itachi dodged the dive with so much grace that it was like Han had been moving in slow motion, giving the dark-haired assassin all the time in the world.

Watching Itachi fight was enough for Gaara to decide that they were wrong. All the people who had considered him a prodigy as great as the Uchiha Clankiller had clearly never seen the man fight. His taijutsu was graceful. Not just graceful, it was perfect. Not a single strand of hair went where he did not wish it to as he demonstrated masterful control of his body. This was what the power of the Sharingan really was. He watched as Han struggled to lay a single finer on the agile Uchiha, and it was only because of the amount of attention he paid to the situation that he could tell when things suddenly shifted.

Itachi moved backwards, and he brought his hands together for a few seconds, where he weaved seals so quickly that the only way Gaara was able to predict his next jutsu was because of his knowledge of the jutsu itself. He let loose with a fireball that was large enough to consume the Jinchuriki whole. Spinning his tails around himself, Han weathered the jutsu with no sustained damage, but when Itachi closed the distance this time, it was different. After their first exchange, against all rhyme and reason, Han opened his eyes for a quick second. That brief second of eye contact was all that was needed as the Jinchuriki suddenly went still.

As Itachi looked up at him, the clone dispelled himself immediately.