Chapter 45: A Draw in the Dunes
Indeed, Akatsurugi's current state—the full-body elementalization—had not been in the intelligence reports.
Akatsurugi himself was forced to acknowledge the Second Kazekage's resourcefulness. The man had layers upon layers of tactics. Poisoning the Hidden Mist technique was a brutally simple yet effective innovation. The Mist ninja had used that jutsu for decades without such a twist. It took a mind like Shamon's to see its potential, and the use of puppets removed the risk of poisoning the user.
"Water Release: Water Severing Wave!" Another of the Mist-nin puppets completed its seals, spewing a powerful jet of water straight for Akatsurugi.
Using Water Release at the desert's edge drastically reduced its potency, but Shamon didn't care. This was a test. He needed to see if water could truly counter this Konoha anomaly.
Akatsurugi didn't bother with seals. Instead, he cocked his right fist back. It was time to end this stalemate.
As he threw the punch, his fist erupted into a massive ball of fire that instantly morphed into a colossal, articulated arm of pure flame. At its end, a giant fiery fist formed and shot forward, meeting the waterfall head-on.
This was the Flame-Flame Fruit's power: Hiken (Fire Fist).
The water evaporated on contact, exploding into a vast cloud of superheated steam that mingled with the existing mist, reducing visibility to zero. But the fire fist was undeterred, plowing through the vapor toward the three puppets.
Shamon slammed both hands on the ground. A series of thick sand walls erupted, one after another, blocking the path of the fiery projectile. Dozens of walls were pulverized before the fist's momentum finally waned. The third, previously inactive puppet formed a one-handed seal, erecting multiple walls of ice that finally halted the attack.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" Shamon's hands formed another seal. A powerful gust of wind erupted, sweeping the dense mist and steam toward Akatsurugi like a tangible, suffocating blanket.
Akatsurugi raised a single palm. "Kagami no Hōka (Mirror of Flames and Fire)."
A massive wall of fire roared to life from his arm, standing as a blazing bulwark against the advancing storm. The wind, laden with moisture, hit the flames with a violent hissing and sputtering, the water content actively eating away at the fire until both techniques dissolved into nothingness.
The battlefield cleared once more. The Second Kazekage was crouched low, his three human puppets flanking him. Akatsurugi stood firm, Ryūjin Jakka held ready in his grip.
"Ice Release: Thousand Flying Water Killers!" The Ice Release puppet formed its seals. Countless sharpened ice blades materialized in the air, homing in on Akatsurugi from every conceivable angle.
The other two puppets spewed more water, which instantly flash-froze into a forest of deadly ice spikes shooting toward him.
Simultaneously, Shamon, his hands still pressed to the earth, caused dozens of giant sand hands to erupt from the ground all around Akatsurugi, slamming inward from every direction. It was a perfect, inescapable pincer attack. Short of sinking into the earth, there seemed to be no escape.
"As expected of a Kage," Akatsurugi conceded internally. He had underestimated Shamon. The man had pushed him to reveal nearly his entire hand.
He could simply transform into flame and fly away, but that would fully expose the nature of his elemental intangibility. Right now, Shamon only knew he could enter a "special state." Revealing the full truth would send that intelligence to every major village.
Unwilling to give up that secret, Akatsurugi had one clear option left. He had to use the eye.
The three tomoe in his Sharingan spun wildly, morphing into the distinct, four-pointed windmill pattern of the Mangekyō.
Shamon saw the change and his heart lurched. A sudden, inexplicable force locked his body in place. The world swam before his eyes, and in a disorienting flash, he found himself standing exactly where Akatsurugi had been, while the Konoha ninja now stood in his previous spot.
What kind of ability is this?!
Before the thought could fully form, the very attacks he had orchestrated converged on him. The sand hands slammed down. The countless ice blades shredded the air around him.
SWISH!
Akatsurugi, now safely outside the kill zone, swung Ryūjin Jakka. A wide arc of fire swept out, engulfing the three Mist-nin puppets and reducing them to cinders in an instant.
He scanned the area where Shamon had been, his brow furrowed. The Kazekage was gone. He rushed over, but found only a disturbed patch of sand where the man had stood. There was no body, no blood—nothing to harvest.
He had used the Transposition specifically to draw Shamon's blood, but the wily Kage had somehow vanished, taking even the sand he stood on with him.
In truth, Shamon, unaware of the Evil God Cult's methods, had been gravely injured—both by his own sand palms and the ice blades. His escape, manipulating the sand to carry him underground, was a desperate survival instinct, not a counter to a blood-based curse. But it had worked. By using the sand itself as a medium, he had escaped certain death.
With their Kage in retreat, the Sand ninja forces lost all will to fight and began a frantic withdrawal.
Akatsurugi's anger flared. He would not let them disengage so easily. He took to the air, a vengeful specter.
"Ennetsu Jigoku (Blazing Hell)!"
He swung Ryūjin Jakka, and from the blade, two gigantic hands of fire erupted, slamming together from opposite sides to trap hundreds of retreating Sand ninja within a prison of incandescent flame.
The Sand shinobi tried to break through, but any who touched the barrier were instantly immolated by the 6,000-degree inferno. A few attempted Water Release, but their pitiful jets of water vaporized uselessly against the overwhelming heat.
"Sand Style: Imperial Sand Funeral!"
A voice, ragged and bloody, roared from the distance. Shamon had reappeared, leaning heavily on a dune. He clapped his hands together with his final strength. A colossal wave of sand, a desert tsunami, crashed over Akatsurugi's fiery prison, smothering the flames under tons of grit.
As the sand settled and the last of the fire died, the scene was revealed. Of the hundreds trapped moments before, only sixty or seventy remained. Before Akatsurugi could react, the sand beneath the survivors churned, sweeping them away and carrying them off into the vastness of the desert.
The Second Kazekage was gone, his forces in tattered retreat. It was a victory for Konoha, but a costly and incomplete one. Akatsurugi hovered in the air, watching the retreating sand cloud, a deep sense of frustration settling in his chest. The Kage had escaped his grasp.