Chapter 31.01

Have you ever done 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 can take a while to form the large scale attacks. That was Onoki had stuck to narrow tiny blasts in the beginning. Anything bigger would have takena 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.

Looking down told me just that. Half my body had been caught in the attack, and in one fell swoop, my entire lower body had been erased from existence. Fuck. I looked up at the short Kage as he floated downwards like some kind of conquering god. “Hmph. Not unexpected.”  He 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 the 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 off 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.

A/N; This is raw. Very raw. Just consider it proof of life.