Sakura pulled back her right fist, letting the headless body thud against the dirt.
She had burst the seal open the moment Kisame smirked and revealed that he was only stalling. She combined the Fourth Breath with her Yin Seal. Her fist never actually touched him. Instead, the massive spike of chakra exploding from her knuckles compressed the air into a blunt shockwave. It tore Kisame's head clean off and cut a massive trench through the forest behind him.
Still bathed in both powers, Sakura vanished from the clearing, leaping through the sky with Moonwalk, going higher and higher, rocketing in the direction that Gai's team and Elder Chiyo had gone.
- With Gai's team and Chiyo -
Down by the river, Team Gai was stuck. The massive stone boulder sealing the Akatsuki hideout wouldn't budge. Gai and Lee had both opened the Third Gate, hammering the rock with everything they had, but their punches barely chipped the surface.
Gai gritted his teeth, his skin turning a deep red as his chakra flared. "Then we push past it! Lee! Prepare for the Fourth, no, the Fifth Gate!"
"Right, Gai-sensei!" Lee yelled, crossing his arms over his chest and preparing to open more gates.
Before they were able to unlock the next gates, Neji suddenly winced, his Byakugan straining as he stared up into the clouds. A massive chakra signature, so bright it was painful to look at, was approaching from the sky.
"Get back! Both of you, move right now!" Neji shouted in warning. "Something is coming from the sky; it's Sakura, and she's moving too fast!"
Everyone leaped back, looking up in time to see a mixed yellow and pink colored streak coming down at the barrier.
- With Sakura -
High above and coming down fast, Sakura pulled her arms back, Moonwalk boosting her descent directly to the barrier.
She didn't just let gravity do the work; each kick against the air detonated a localized sonic boom, driving her downward with shocking velocity. As the massive stone boulder loomed closer, the golden aura of the Fourth Breath and the deep pink chakra of her Yin Seal blended, encircling her arms in a violent, coral-colored vortex. She brought both fists together, aligning her knuckles with the absolute center of the barrier.
"King Gun!"
Sakura shouted, her voice resounding as she thrust her fists at the barrier, all that gathered chakra released at one point, like an anti-tank round piercing through heavy armor.
The shockwave exploded from her hands. The barrier tried to absorb the strike, but the insane volume of her chakra just tore right through the seal's defense network. The paper tag on the boulder ripped to shreds. The massive stone didn't just crack; the pinpoint pressure blew it completely inward, blasting the rock into a cloud of dust that shot straight into the cavern.
The directional force of the blast tore through the front half of the mountain, blowing the cave ceiling clean off and throwing a wall of debris into the sky, shearing the hideout wide open and turning the enclosed cave into an open crater while leaving the very back wall standing.
Behind Sakura, Gai's team looked on in shock, staring at the space where a mountain had stood just seconds ago. Neji was especially stunned, his Byakugan veins bulging as he tried to process the scale of the destruction. To everyone else, it looked like a massive, generic explosion. Neji saw otherwise.
What his eyes actually captured was Sakura's chakra bursting through a single, hyper-focused point before expanding violently. The speed, force, and absolute precision of her control hadn't just smashed a rock; it had sheared through the literal earth, vaporizing millions of tons of stone in an instant. Watching that level of compressed energy made him pity anyone hit by one of her punches, but Neji took comfort in the fact that they wouldn't feel it; they'd just be gone.
Appearing in a flash next to Gai, Naruto ducked once more, but blinked when the expected kick didn't come for his head, looking up with Karin and seeing that the mountain in front of them looked like a giant had smashed the top of it off.
'Were the Akatsuki sealing another tailed beast, and it got a shot off somehow?'
Naruto silently wondered, squinting his eyes as he saw a faint glow near the entrance; a glimpse of pink hair made him nod in understanding.
"So, it was just Sakura, thank goodness; I wouldn't want to deal with another tailed beast in such a short amount of time."
His comment made Karin chuckle. She stepped closer to his side as everyone watched the dust cloud finally clear.
Standing in the now open mountain, Deidara and Sasori looked at the girl in front of them with no small amount of wariness. Sasori's wooden joints clicked silently as his guard went up, but Deidara couldn't take his eyes off the crater. Despite the danger, he held a hidden spark of admiration for the absolute 'art' she had just performed.
"Hm. That was really something, right, Sasori, my man?"
"Be serious, Deidara. If an attack like that hits us, we're finished," Sasori warned. He didn't take his eyes off the girl, a sudden spike of fear hitting him that a strike like that could crush his core along with his puppet shell. But as he scanned the wreckage, someone standing behind Sakura caught his attention.
'Granny Chiyo.'
At the same time, Chiyo gazed back. It felt as though her eyes were piercing straight through the armor of the Hiruko puppet he hid himself in.
"So, that blonde must be the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, unless Itachi lied to us," Deidara spoke up, shifting his gaze toward Naruto. The bitterness in his voice when he mentioned Itachi's name was unmistakable.
"Yes, but you remember what he said, right?"
Deidara ignored his partner's reply. Inside his head, Itachi's detached, 'arrogant' voice echoed the warning: 'You're no match for him; if you fight, you'll die.'
Deidara scoffed at the memory. Pulling his right hand out of his clay pouch, he tossed a tiny, pale bird onto the dirt. The moment the small sculpture left his palm, it rapidly expanded, bloating outward until it reshaped itself into a massive bird, ready for flight.
"Well, what should we do?" Deidara asked quietly. His tone was far more serious now. Even he could recognize the massive predicament they were in. It wasn't just the pink-haired girl and the Jinchuriki; the others standing around them didn't look like people they could afford to underestimate.
"Take the body of the Kazekage," Sasori answered, his deep, metallic voice rattling from inside Hiruko. "You can fly, and most of them are here for him anyway. That'll leave me with fewer people to deal with."
"So I'm a decoy- how cruel, but I hear you loud and clear. Try not to die, Sasori."
Deidara glanced down over the edge of his giant clay bird. Gaara's lifeless corpse lay prostrate on the stone floor right next to the bird's talons.
"Worry about yourself, fool," Sasori snapped, his mechanical tail shifting defensively over his shell. "Now hurry up before they lose patience and swarm us anyway. They won't risk hitting the boy while you have him, but they won't stand there forever."
Deidara nodded, his giant clay bird leaning low as its talons reached down to snatch Gaara's body.
Before the claws could grab him, the earth shattered. Karin's golden Adamantine Chains burst from the dirt, the leading chain slamming violently into the clay bird and batting the massive construct aside.
The remaining chains whipped through the air, targeting both Akatsuki members at the same time. One swung toward Deidara, while another lunged straight for Hiruko's face.
Deidara leaped backward as the first chain whipped toward him, the heavy and fast link slapping a deep gash into the dirt right where he had been standing.
Next to him, Sasori reacted instantly, swinging his massive iron tail forward to deflect the incoming strike. The metallic appendage collided with the golden chain, but there was no contest of strength. The chakra chain sheared straight through the puppet's primary weapon on impact, shattering the scorpion-like tail into bits of broken and bent iron.
- Chapter End -
Hope you enjoy the chapter.
Sorry about not posting sooner, peeps; I've been a busy bee.