Chapter 46.5- Gamer of the Desert

XXXXX- GAARA OF THE DESERT

He smiled as he came to. That was exactly 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 very quickly. His high wind affinity mad 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 own 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 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 up 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 own 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. 

A/N; Altogether, this chapter will come in at abut 7,000 words. I'll take a day or two to edit and then I'll post the entire chapter as one unified post. This is the change I;ve been talking about. I'll move to posting longer chapters for each of my stories. This will probably mean that I only get to work on on story every week, but we'll see about that. Hopefully, this change means that i can ensure that I put out better content, and that the content is also more enjoyable on your end since it's longer and higher quality.