Chapter 22.1- Gamer of the Desert

As Orochimaru spoke, his guards took off the cloaks they had been wearing to reveal their identities. I smiled as things began to heat up. Nevermind, I could recognize those clowns. Orochimaru had brought the Sound Five with him. Something I definitely couldn’t understand. Didn’t these fuckers lose to Genin at the end of the Sasuke Recovery Arc? Surely, Orochimaru didn’t think they were at the level to participate in a battle of the kind that was about to unfold here.

Now, I was getting worried. Orochimaru needed to kill Rasa, and I needed to be seen making the ‘utmost effort’ to prevent that. With these clowns, I wouldn’t even take longer than a few minutes to finish them off. Of course, my arrogant thoughts had to be ended as I was forced to lean backward to dodge a sword made of bone(?) from cleaving my head from my neck. Kimimaro, my mind supplied, as the man pursued me in a deadly dance. Left, right, back, forward. I took out two kunai from my inventory, enhancing them with wind chakra. I was able to block one of his swipes but had to jump backward when he moved to take advantage of my surprise when the wind kunai didn’t cut into the bone sword.

Of fucking course. He kept coming, and I was forced to keep retreating. As I backpedaled, I noted what was happening in the other battles. Rasa had managed to get his golden dust unsealed, but Orochimaru was battering his defenses with ninjutsu after ninjutsu. The anbu were fighting against the Sound Four and seemed to be holding their own. At least Suna’s anbu weren’t weaker than Konoha genin. That would be a tragedy, especially since I needed some of them to survive for what would come next.

“Pay attention,” Kimimaro said as he came for my head again.

“Make me,” I replied, dodging the attack, blocking the next one as our dance continued.

“Quite rude to not introduce yourself, don’t you think?”

“Apologies. This one is Kimimaro. This one will be killing you today, Gaara of the Desert.”

I smiled placidly at that introduction before jumping backward and weaving seals as I did so.

Kimimaro began a strafing run, changing directions and making turns as he ran towards me to dodge the wind bullets I sent his way. His coming and my retreat were a continuous dance. After minutes of taijutsu, I could already tell he was nowhere near my level in the art. By that, I mean, he could probably have killed me if he was truly trying and if I was any less attentive to keeping my head on my shoulders.

Fireballs sparked into existence as I practically flooded the space between us with hundreds of them. When Kimimaro appeared before me, this time, his top was gone, and his skin was slightly singed, but beyond that, he was completely untouched from the attacks. Without the top, his bones shot out of his shoulders and multiple parts of his body.

I split my attention between keeping up with his dance and figuring out what I could remember from canon. Kimimaro had fought Gaara, Rock Lee, and Naruto. Against Naruto, he’d won with ease. Rock Lee presented a challenge but was still barely able to touch him. He’d died against Gaara, but that was because of his time running out. He killed himself with exertion in the end. No. Not exertion. A disease. Kimimaro was terminally ill.

He swiped at my head; I dodged underneath it and tapped him on his stomach, using a diagnostic jutsu at the same time. I could only keep it up for a few seconds before a kick at my head forced me to roll out of the way. Still, that was enough time to find what I was looking for. I’d taken a mental snapshot of what the diagnostic jutsu told me, so I was able to run over it over and over again, reading and interpreting the jutsu’s output.

“Of Orochimaru-sama’s tools, I am the greatest. The most powerful. It is an honor for one such as you to fall to one such as me. Dance of the Camellia,” he said in the haughty tone I’d grown to expect from nobility and the likes. He dropped the short bone sword he’d been using to instead take out a longer one from his shoulder bone. Well, that was a really gruesome technique.

He ran at me at speeds I could barely follow, and it was all I could do to avoid attack after attack as he stabbed at me from a variety of angles. When I could, I blocked with a wind release kunai that ground against the bone with neither weapon giving ground. When I couldn’t, I backpedaled. I had to keep a careful balance between dragging this fight on and not letting it drag on for too long. If the fight ended too quickly, I’d be expected to join Rasa in his fight against Orochimaru, and letting him die under the watchful gaze of his anbu guards would be far more difficult. On the other hand, if I wasted too much time, the combination of Orochimaru and Kimimaro would be far more than I had any hope of handling. Kimimaro wasn’t my match, but I also wasn’t 100% sure I was Orochimaru’s. The only reason I wasn’t even just running away and calling it a day was the wildcard I had in my pockets that might even the scales between the Snake Sannin and me.

“As expected, the Dance of the Camellia is not enough to deal with you. Do not despair, though. There is more to come. Dance of the Willow,” he proclaimed, and as bone swords shot out from all his joints and his palms, the fight took a different dimension.

Instead of the straight and technical movements he’d shown off in the first dance, this one was similar to the flower it was named for. Like a willow in the wind, Kimimaro seemed to sway and dance through every attack. With how unpredictable his movements had become, I was more keen on taking whatever distance I could find and relying on what ninjutsu I could without ending the fight too quickly. Balance. In all things, balance.

He moved, and I was forced to jump into the air as the ground beneath him turned to mud. More hand seals, and the mud shot up at him in the form of mud bombs. He managed to block them with his durability, and my sand rose to my face level of its own accord, and I felt it block some bullets of what must have been bone. Sneaky. They moved quickly.

I weaved more seals, creating a powerful gust of wind that sent him flying backward. I spotted one of the Sound nin, the fat one, about to kill one of the anbu guards, and I appeared in the space between them before shredding into his midsection with an instant rasengan.

I was forced away from their engagement as Kimimaro rushed back at me. I dove back, diving into the ground with an instant application of earth release, and feeling the vibrations as he did the same to chase me. Ha. I had a bit of

 fun leading him on a merry-go-round before I resurfaced to the view of Rasa getting stabbed in the shoulder by Orochimaru’s sword of kusanagi. Okay, that meant I had to take this seriously now.

When Kimimaro dove out of the ground, it was to a fireball to the face. He survived it but was sent flying back by a gust of wind. More hand seals, and the ground beneath his feet turned into the swamp of the underworld before he even hit the ground. It took him in, and I watched as he began to sink, weaving hand seals all the while.

When he erupted out, it was with black markings covering his body in contorting and parallel lines. He was faster, I noticed, as he arrived right as my wind bullets crashed into him. He was also much more durable as he shrugged off the drilling bullets of wind and punched at my sand shield before his momentum was instantly arrested. My sand shifted into multiple tendrils before slamming into him. He went flying but was coming back instantly. The sand wall blocked him and shifted into multiple sand bullets. Unlike the wind bullets, they were able to penetrate his denser skin and find purchase.

As he dove into the ground before diving out with a hand aimed at my head, I stretched out a hand and caught him in the air by controlling the sand that was now flowing in his bloodstream. I threw him backward while keeping an eye on the fight between Rasa and Orochimaru. The Kazekage had slowed down since his injury, and now was clearly on his last legs, even if he didn’t know it yet.

Kimimaro grunted as his skin darkened, and his appearance began to shift and change to become much more dinosaur-like.

“Dance of the Clematis: Vine,” he said, and then proceeded to do something that looked much more fascinating to see in real life. He pulled out his entire fucking spine, enlarged as it had become by the second stage of the cursed seal. “This is one half of the premier jutsu of the Kaguya clan. It is an honor for you to die by this jutsu. Be proud, Gaara of the Desert.” He said, with a gravelly voice that grated at my ears.

Was it a feature of this universe? That disgusting sense of confidence. He hadn’t even managed to touch me all through the fight, and he still felt like he had some sort of a chance here.

The whip moved at a speed I could barely track, but my sand was in time to block it. The next time the whip moved out, I was able to snatch it with my sand and drag him towards me, charging up a wind release: Rasengan in my left hand.

A/N; Spent all day on this. Writing Kimimaro is a real slog. If you’ve got any ideas, please feel free to pitch it.