Chapter 61.3- Gamer of the Desert

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I leaned backwards, enjoying the way I felt my back move with the rest of my body. In my fists was a strength that I had never been capable of before. Sage mode was something else, and I’d spent the last three days at the waterfall of truth, gathering as much senjutsu energy within my body as possible. The seal made it easy to gather even more on the move. But the point ofgoing to a natural energy hotspot like that one was the quality of the stage energy. Not all natural energy was equal, just like I’d theorised, and the twas proving to be true.

When I crossed the distance that separated me and Kabuto, it was like I had moved even faster than my eyes could track. Everything was a blur. Regardless, Kabuto managed to bend around the attack, openly gaping at me as the shockwave from my punch shattered the wall behind him and continued until it broke a hole in the tower’s frame. “This isn’t going to go how you expect” I told him as I caught the snakes that short out from his sleeves in my grip and squeezed them to death.

He formed another hand seal, and nothing happened. I chuckled internally and stepped farther into his guard. Once again, he tried to run, but this time, he found that gravity itself would not allow him to move as he was pulled towards me. I grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the ground, meeting his serpentine gaze with mine. He had some form of snake sage mode going for him, but we weren’t even close to being equals. He was a soft weakling who hid behind the greater dead to exert his influence while I stood at the precipice of the shinobi world. I’d fought all comers and proven myself to be their better. None could match me.

Another handseal and this time, I actually could not stop myself from laughing at him as nothing happened.

“What have you done?” His voice gasped out.

“Levelled the playing field. You see, I had a good time planting seals all around this city you call yours. A seal matrix aimed at one simple thing. Call it a modification of the Reaper death seal if you would, but all it does is that it separates the soul from the body for a second. Just a second. For beings like you and I, living human beings, it’s too short a period to be noticed. For reanimated shinobi, however, that split is enough to separate the bond that connects them to the host. Cleaves it irreparably, you know.”

“An Anti-edo tensei seal. How fascinating” He said next, now beginning to look unbothered within my grip.

“I guess I have to give you a good fight then” He said, before going limp.

I stared at the body in my grip, noting that the chakra in it was gone. All gone, and all at once. How? Some sort of body switching technique? But I hadn’t seen any seals. Hadn’t even felt his chakra move in the way it would have for using a jutsu. To be safe, I smashed through his head with my fist, enjoying the way the grey matter clung to my glove. I put it down and got up next, turning to the other wall where I could feel the buildup of chakra.

“Madara?” I asked, when the body burst through the concrete wall and began to stare me down from on top of it.

“Not quite”

“Kabuto, then”

“I much prefer Ichikage-sama, Kazekage-dono”

Once again, I felt myself burst into laughter against my will.

“Part of me wants to know how you did this, but the rest of me doesn’t really care and would just like to kill you now”

“You will try, and you will fail”

We dove at each other at the same time, and I took some pleasure in noting that even with this body, I was still faster than he was. My roundhouse kick crashed against the arm guards of the Uchiha patriarch and sent Kabuto flying backwards. Stretching out my arm, I turned mat right hand into a chakra canon that smashed right into the space he was flying towards. With these eyes of mine, I could see the sussano form before the canon hit and sent him flying back even further. He flew out of the tower and landed right on top of a duplex.

I jumped right after him and was forced to switch out the asura path for greta as I saw him send several chakra arrows at me from his sussano. I absorbed all of them, and without letting the chakra into my main system, I cycled it into a different jutsu and opened my mouth to breathe out a powerful hurricane that blew apart the building Kabuto was standing atop, and much of the surrounding fixtures.

The sussano remained undamaged, but that was a temporary problem. Still in the air, I opened my inventory and practically dumped a desert’s worth of sand atop his form. I could feel him struggling against the sand for a bit, but I upped my chakra output to prevent him from moving at all. Of course, it only lasted a second, as the purple construct grew beyond its ribcage form into a full spectral giant that was easily the size of the tower that Kabuto had claimed for himself. I took note of the way the construct’s form thickened and became even more complex, adding armour, and weaponry to its construction.

“How does the perfect sussano look in person, Gaara?” Kabuto’s voice came from Madara’s mouth at the crown of the construct. I just shrugged. It wasn’t that impressive, to be honest. This had formed many a nightmare for me in the past few years, and now that I had to look at it in person, I could see a million ways to deal with it.

Opening my inventory again, I took out a series of kunai that I threw at Kabuto’s armoured form. I watched his sharingan cycle around to track each of them, and I teleported to the flying raijin marker on the one to the left, and then switched over to the right as his blade flashed upwards to attack me. I landed on top the armour and placed both my hands upon it and began to absorb the chakra that formed the sussano. The blade came towards me next, but sand flowed from the ground beneath us and grabbed a hold of the construct’s arm keeping it stationary. The sussano went through a visible regression, moving from the armoured from, to the naked giant, and then down to the only top half before returning to the rib cage, and then nothing.

It was just me and Madara face to face. He ran at me, trying to get a punch off. I ducked around the fist and grabbed a hold of his neck before lifting him into the air for a second and then slamming him into the ground in a choke slam.

I felt for his soul within the body, and took great pleasure in dragging it out. This was the first time using this particular path, so I gasped as I felt knowledge flood my mind. Who Kabuto had been, what he had done, what he planned, I had all that information now. Enough information to know that this would have been a much harder fight if I’d waited another year.

And now became the time to decide what to do next.