Chapter 49: The Illusion of Defense
Gaara's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated malice. His entire being seethed with a killing intent so dense it felt like a physical miasma. He was a creature of slaughter, and he would never tolerate anyone challenging his supremacy.
"Satisfied? I will be satisfied when you are dead!" Gaara's voice was a low, sandpapery rasp.
He brought his hands together, and the giant gourd on his back erupted. A torrent of sand poured forth, not as a clumsy wave, but as countless, ethereal streams that slithered through the air like golden serpents. They converged on Aizen from every angle, seeking to ensnare and crush him.
Seeing Gaara finally commit to the fight, Temari and Kankuro exchanged a glance and instantly retreated, putting a safe distance between themselves and the battlefield. They knew better than to interfere. In a fight of this level, they would only be liabilities.
"Let it rain blood!" Gaara grinned, a horrifying, joyless expression. His fingers twitched, and the sand in the air responded as if it were a part of his own body, swirling and coalescing with a malevolent life of its own.
"Hmph, no matter how flashy your speed is, you're no match for Gaara!" Kankuro sneered from the sidelines, his confidence in his brother's monstrous power overriding the fear he'd felt moments before.
"Sand Binding Coffin!" Gaara roared, thrusting his palm toward Aizen.
The swirling sand solidified in an instant, forming four colossal, claw-like hands that descended from the sky with terrifying force, aiming to smash Aizen into paste. Compared to this onslaught of nature, Aizen's figure appeared pathetically small and fragile.
"Blood-soaked sand? How dramatic," Aizen commented, his voice laced with amusement. Even as the crushing weight of the sand descended, his expression remained one of bored indifference. "However, an attack of this caliber cannot hope to touch me."
Without any visible effort, Aizen vanished. The massive sand hands collided with the ground where he had stood.
BOOM!
The earth trembled violently, fracturing into a spiderweb of deep fissures. The power was immense, but it had struck nothing but empty air.
"That damn Body Flicker again?" Gaara muttered, his brow furrowed in frustration. He was beginning to hate this elusive opponent. Aizen's speed was a variable he couldn't quite pin down.
"It doesn't matter how fast you are," Gaara said, a cold smile returning to his lips. He stood perfectly still, no longer wasting energy on wild attacks. "You still can't lay a finger on me."
"Heh, what an idiot," Kankuro chuckled from the sidelines. "The sand from that gourd moves on its own will. It forms an absolute defense around Gaara. Trying to attack him head-on is suicide!"
As if on cue, Aizen's figure materialized directly behind Gaara, his hand shooting out to strike the small of his back.
"I will not allow the same trick to work twice!" Gaara snarled, not even bothering to turn around.
The sand reacted with an impossible, instinctual speed. It solidified into four more grasping hands that shot up from the ground, clamping around Aizen's wrists and ankles, holding him fast.
"I've seen through your movements," Gaara said, his voice dripping with contempt. He slowly raised his own hands into the air and then clenched them into fists. "In the face of my absolute defense, your speed is meaningless!"
The sand in the air sharpened, condensing into thousands of needle-like projectiles. They shot toward the immobilized Aizen like a storm of golden needles, piercing his body from every direction in a single, brutal instant.
"It's over. The fool brought this on himself," Kankuro said, a triumphant smirk on his face.
But his smirk died as quickly as it had appeared.
The pierced "Aizen" did not bleed. Instead, it began to glitch and distort before dissolving into nothingness. It had been an afterimage.
The real Aizen was now standing directly in front of Gaara, so close their noses almost touched.
"You lose," Aizen stated, his voice flat.
Before Gaara's sand could even begin to react, Aizen's palm was already pressed gently against his abdomen.
Hmm? This chakra... so that's it, Aizen thought, his spiritual senses instantly analyzing the violent, alien energy sealed within the boy. The One-Tailed Beast, Shukaku.
A perfect specimen. A source of power that could be molded to his will.
"Just what I need," Aizen murmured, too softly for anyone to hear. With the contact of his palm, he imprinted a tiny, almost undetectable seed of his own spiritual power onto the seal containing the beast. It was a marker, a trigger for a later time.
From beginning to end, he had not used a single offensive Kidō or a powerful sword stroke. He had dismantled Gaara's confidence, bypassed his "absolute defense," and planted his own secret, all with speed alone. The message was clear: your greatest strength is nothing before me.