Chapter 30.2- Gamer of the Desert

“Do you know why I have been Kage for over fifty years, boy? Do you know whey in five decades, none has taken this hat from me? Do you know why I have seen three different wars from beginning to end without succumbing while prodigies like yourself fell by the wayside? It is because I, Ōnoki of Iwagakure, is the strongest. Now, be a good boy and die quickly. I have a fight to watch” As he spoke, he weaved visible hand seals for the first time.

Thankfully, I could recognise them from another fight I’d seen years before. When the lava balls shot out from his mouth like they were fiore from a canon, I quickly countered with wind release. A whole storm of it, solidifying the magma into stone before blocking with my sand and turning the attack aside.

This was a big building, but I could already feel the space constraints. I barely dodged another lance of disintegrating dust as I ran towards my opponent’s position before commanding the sand at my feet to lift me in the air. My taijutsu would be useless in this fight. At his age, Ōnoki would be a fool to let me close the distance, and the Third Tsuchikage seemed to be everything but.

I was proven right when more hand seals heralded even more balls of lava being shot at my position. This time, it was child’s play to dodge them all while keeping track of Hiruzen’s fight to prevent Ōnoki’s attacks from bleeding over the same way I was sure he was keeping track of my own fight. Of the four of us, Ōnoki was the most dangerous combatant in this situation. I counted myself as fortunate that he hadn’t brought out the Island-destroying attacks yet. It couldn’t be because of Orochimaru, I’d eat my hat if the Tsuchikage gave a rat’s arse about a Konoha missing nin- allies or not-, so my best bet was that he was keeping his reserves filled for either retreat or betrayal. Either way, it was good for me, and bad for him in  that it turned nearly certain death into merely probably death.

The sand around us rose into the sky before launching at the Tsuchikage in a mass of tendrils, forcing him to move from his position for the first time since the fight began. This time, I paid keen attention for the telltale haze Hiruzen had warned about for when he used his invincibility technique. That was the only reason I noticed when the real him swapped out with a clone. The clone did a good job of miming the chase, pretending to be truly trying to escape.

When the sand inevitably caught up with it and captured it in a sand coffin, I was ready. Quick replacement with a sand clone let me escape the light cylinder that disintegrated my clone instantly. But it seemed Ōnoki had been similarly prepared as a fist of stone clashed with the sand spear I’d sent at him, scattering the sand in all directions.

I quickly took control of those fine grains of sand and sent them into the gauntlet, crushing the man’s hand in a second, and when he screamed, I appeared in front of him in a blur of sand as Dark Sister appeared in my hand before separating his head from his body a second later. When the body fell apart into water, I was less surprised than I should have been. Of course he substituted the moment his attack failed.

When the water that splashed on my body began weighing me down, it was already too late. The disintegrating pillar of light hit nothing but a sand clone as I’d triggered my own substitution not a moment too soon.

“Well, that’s one hell of a sequence” Kurotsuchi commented from within her place in the barrier. I just stared at her before commanding my platform to juke me to the right to avoid a stream of lava her grandfather had sent to take advantage of my seeming lapse in concentration.

The lava stream, in danger of crashing into Orochimaru, ended up being swallowed by a river of water before the Snake Sannin triggered his summoning jutsu. The moment the coffins appeared, I knew shit was about to hit the fan. Could I prevent the summoning? Maybe. But I didn’t want to. Part of me wanted to see the Hokages in action. Another part of me wanted to keep Hiruzen alive till the end of this. There was no guarantee Tsunade would keep his word, and having him owe me his life would be an invaluable bargaining tool for future use.

So the sacrifices went ahead while Ōnoki and I flew through the skies in a constant dance of death. The Third Tsuchikage had already seemingly decided to lay off the Dust release for a while, prefering to instead blanket me with lava release attacks. It wasn’t really something that people in the fandom (in my old life) ever bothered to take note of,m but Ōnoki had to be the second greatest Ninjutsu master after Hiruzen itself. It was a bit ridiculous that both of these men along with the Third Raikage and Third Kazekage had lived on this planet in the same time period. I guess they were the only ones who could keep each other in check and prevent any single one of them from just taking over the world with their army destroying power.

And then, I had to get some more exposure to army destroying power as massive roots rose out from the rooftop and began to spread into the little airspace Ōnoki and I fought in, in the form of massive trees. Hashirama’s deep forest emergence had come out to play. Fuck.

I could barely dodge aside Ōnoki’s flying form as he rocketed around a few tress, taking advantage of my reduced vision to get close to me. When he stopped on a dime and twisted around before slamming my head with a backhand, I decided that taijutsu with Ōnoki was only really dangerous to whoever he was fighting. If I couldn’t turn my body into sand on a whim, I’d have been a very dead man from that one hit.

As the Tsuchikage’s eyes searched his surroundings, I took advantage of him disregarding this body as a sand clone to rise up with an instant attack. The spike of sand I transformed my forearm into was able to get him offguard, but not enough to get the killing blow. Still, his blood flowed easily as I got a deep cut in on the side of his face.

“First blood” I said with a cocky smile that made the man growl. An actual, honest-to-god growl.

“Say your prayers, boy. They will have no body to bury when I am done with you” He said, and I’m not ashamed to say I ran.

XXXXX- With Gaara’s clone.

‘Well, we definitely hadn’t seen this one coming’ I thought to myself as I stared at the man that floated before me on a clay bird. If we hadn’t cracked the secret to separating our consciousnesses with this jutsu, then the boss would have been in a really bad spot. Piloting two bodies in two different S-rank fights would have been a hell of a tall task.

“So this is Suna’s prodigy, huh? What do you know about art, kid?” He asked, somehow managing to look down on me even though we were floating exactly the same height above the ground.

“Not much” I said with a shrug, answering honestly while preparing for the inevitable reaction.

“I’ll teach you then. From one prodigy to another, ey? Lesson One; True art” he said, placing his hands behind his back for a second.

“Is an explosion” When the clay spiders flew at us, it was already too late for them. I collapsed the sand platform, letting Ebizo, Kankuro, Temari, Shira, and I free fall towards the ground before surrounding the explosives with the sand and essentially suffocating the explosives. The same sand flew into my control once again to wrap around my siblings and their teammates before sending them to the floor in a controlled descent. As for me, my legs themselves transformed into sand to keep me afloat as I stared at the Iwa missing nin.

“That was a bit of a dick move, you know that right?” I asked him

“Well, you’re the one that asked for a lesson.”
“No I wasn’t”

“That’s irrelevant” He screamed as he flew right at me while tossing several clay caterpillars at me. “You denied my art, so I won’t rest till you become art, you fucking bastard”

What the actual fuck? What kind of psycho was he? I transformed my entire body into sand before flying away and reforming on a rooftop some distance away.

I took hold of the inventory and summoned enough sand to make another thick platform while I commanded the sand that had made up the first platform to follow me while I flew right at the Mad Bomber of Iwa. His bounty would be a useful boon for Iwa’s coffers, and I itched to see how I compared to the canon Gaara who’d lost to this bastard.

“Coming right at me, huh? Good. Let’s see whose art is superior” He screamed at me.

“Where the fuck did you even get that idea from? What in all the words I’ve said to you makes you think I give a flying fuck about art of any kind.” I asked him honestly as his screaming began getting on my nerves.

He didn’t deign to reply as more clay creatures came flying at me. The sand that flew behind me lashed out in a single concentrated tendril that slapped all of them out of position. The explosions scattered a few grains of sand away, but they all returned to position shortly. The tendril flew right at me and turned into a thick wall that blocked the next volley of explosives before I tapped the wall, and it turned into a barrage of bullet shaped projectiles that shot at the Akatsuki member. Proving that Ninja>guns, Deidara was able to command his mount to dodge away from the bullets in time, before turning to me in a smirk.

Another mental command sent another volley of bullets, but this time, I used chakra flow to surround my sand in wind release. This time, the bullets flew fast and true.

True to his rank, Deidara did manage to dodge the most of them, but I was able to score two scratches on his arm and side. “You bastard” The mad Bomber cursed at me as he flew upwards and I chased him. When his bird suddenly made a U-turn and dove right at me, I was ready. My sand platform boosted me into the air as I slammed right into Deidara and tackled him off of his mount. A kunai from my inventory found itself lodged in his right eye before I noticed the smirk on his face. It was too late as the clay clutched on to me and exploded in a massive conflagaration.

A/N; Remember that Onoki canonically hired the services of Akatsuki at several points. A risky attack on an enemy village seems to be the perfect time for something like that.