Chapter 54.2- Gamer of the Desert

It was pure pandemonium. The entire village was in total chaos and she managed to trace the source of the disturbance to two men. Two men with similar red hair and a seemingly similar lack of regard or care for keeping the village standing. One of them had come here with them and ws ostensibly on her side, but she knew that he’d take whatever advantage over their village he could get to cement his own village’s place at the top of the totem pole. An enemy they had to pretend to be friends with. She hated politics. But she did respect his strength. And so it was strange to watch him engaging another man in taijutsu and for it to seem like the other man was even the one winning.

“Nagato?” She heard Jiraiya ask in shock. He was also looking at the two men. So he recognised the other man. Nagato. She tried to remember where she had heard the name before, but Jiraiya kept talking, this time at a whisper.

“I know I saw Konan earlier, but for even Nagato to be involved, that means that…” He said to himself, trailing off as we watched both men barrel into and through an apartment building as they traded powerful blows. The Kazekage was technically superior.. Anyone could see the fight and come to that conclusion. But that was proving not to matter as much as Gaara oof the Desert would have otherwise hoped. The red haired man, Nagato, was proving to ave speed and stregnth just a shade beyond that of the Kazekage, and even worse for the young leader, he had to deal with a body that shifted without notice.

Where the man once had a hand, he now a hand a mechanical like device, and Gaara did not even flinch at the transition, almost seeming used to it. The canon fired off at him and he merely tilted his head to allow the attack pass him by and continue on to tear through both buildings that were behind him. After that interruption, they returned to trading blows.

Nagato punched at Gaara, sending him a few feet backwards, and as the Sand user ran at the other man, a blade appeared in his his hands with nary a motion. Not a blade she recognised, so the silver lining was that it wasn’t stolen from them. On the other hand, it was a beautiful and well crafted so it was a shame that she wouldn’’t get to claim it from him. Both of them clashed blades with a ringing sound as Nagato unveiled some sort of metal rod from thin air.

She would have continued watching the fight from a distance if not for the disturbance in the air behind her. She turned around and was met face to face with two people dressed in the same black and red cloaks as the one fighting the Kazekage. Akatsuki had come to Konoha, and they had come in force.

“Where is Uchiha Itachi?” She asked, noticing that the Clankiller had not joined the rest of his cohorts in their journey to the surface.

“He has some business to deal with. We’ll be more than enough to take the gaki with us.” The blue skinned one replied. Kisame Hoshigaki, the tailless tailed beast, she remembered from Jiraiya’s briefing.

She turned to Jiraiya and found him glaring daggers at the one with purple hair. That was the Konan he had been whispering about, then. She would leave him to handle his personal business on his own. There was no point in her intervening in that. Not when she was about to have her hands full. She just hoped he didn’t do anything stupid. Well, they had Naruto with him to handle that. Speaking of apprentices, she hoped her own apprentice was dealing with her part of this mission.

She leaned forward an inch, and that was the only warning the Monster of the Mist got to put his blade between himself and her. She pushed off the ground with a precise application of chakra and smashed her fist right into the bandaged blade. “Chaaa” She screamed, and increased her force to power through the defence and send both man and sword flying.

She turned to her teammate and said, “I’ll deal with that one”. And then she was off, jumping in the air to meet her opponent who had been sent across the village.

She found him half buried by the building he’d crashed into, but beyond that, he was relatively unscathed.

“That was a good one, Old Woman” He said, standing up with his grip on the weapon. She just tilted her head to make it clear how little his words had done to impress her. Really? Old woman? Of all the insults he could come up with? A dig at her age was just the least inventive thing he could think of.

The body in front of her dissolved into water, and then a blade smashed right into her form, tearing it apart to reveal nothing but splinters from her own substitution. He thought himself smarter than he really was. With his position unveiled, she covered the distance separating them in seconds and aimed another punch at him. This one, he managed to dodge. And then he came at her with the blade. Samehada. One of the seven legendary swords of the Mist. She’d never had the pleasure of facing a user of this particular blade, but she was more than familiar with how it worked.

She dodged underneath the swipe aimed at her head. In mid air, the sword came to a sudden stop and then dropped itself right on to her form. She quickly placed a hand on the ground and pushed herself to the right, allowing the weapon slam down where she had just been. She rolled along the ground for a few metres before stopping her momentum and pushing off the ground to dodge away from a water bullet that carved a line into the stone road.

A/N; Today’s bit