Streams of Iron Sand wove through the sky like ribbons of black mist, casting flickering, interlaced shadows across the battlefield.
Aburame Tetsumaru stood tall in his chalk-white Bio-Armor, the light and shadow dancing across his chitinous plates as the clouds shifted. He spoke, his voice calm and detached. "Kazekage, time's up."
"Time's up?"
"Heh... your Magnet Style is impressive, I'll give you that. But don't forget: I have a swarm, too."
"Those bugs of yours?" the Kazekage scoffed, his attention barely wavering from his iron. "They're trash—nuisances I can wipe away with a single sweep. You dare compare them to my Magnet Style?"
"How ignorant. Every time you 'wipe them away,' you have to mobilize at least six thousand grains of Iron Sand to ensure a kill. If you reduced that to two or three hundred grains, could you still do it?"
The Kazekage paused. What is this brat babbling about?
Tetsumaru's disdain was palpable, even through the visor of his helmet. "As I thought—you don't understand the math of a swarm. Fine. Experience it for yourself."
Tetsumaru slammed his hands together, issuing a single mental command to the hive-mind.
"Lord Kazekage... have you ever seen a sea of insects?"
The Suna ninjas watching from the periphery bore witness to a sight that would haunt their dreams for years to come. To the east, south, and north of the towering hill of Iron Sand, countless black specks rose from the earth. They coalesced into pitch-black walls of cloud, higher and wider than the Iron Sand prison, slowly and inexorably closing in.
"What is that!?" a Suna ninja shrieked, his voice cracking in pure terror.
Panic rippled through the Suna ranks. They were paralyzed, caught between the urge to flee and their duty to their leader.
"Should we support Lord Kazekage!?"
"Idiot! We'd just be in the way. If we go in there now, we'll hinder him more than help."
"Then what do we do?"
"Trust him! We have to trust the Kazekage!"
"He'll win... he has to win..."
The "slowness" of the approaching cloud walls was an optical illusion caused by their sheer, gargantuan scale. In reality, the four colossal masses—the three swarms and the Iron Sand—were hurtling toward each other. In the blink of an eye, they collided.
The impact sent a spray of debris and insect carapaces flying. A mushroom cloud of dust erupted from the ground. Three breaths later, a low, guttural roar echoed across the plains—a sound that didn't seem loud, yet hit every Suna ninja in the chest like a physical blow.
While those in the distance felt a dull thud, the Kazekage, trapped inside the Iron Sand prison, felt like he'd been struck over the head with a sledgehammer. He staggered, stars dancing in his vision.
Tetsumaru fared no better. Since mastering the Secret Technique: Domain Field Barrier, his sensory input was primarily tied to his insects. The collective shock experienced by millions of bugs within a three-kilometer radius hit him all at once.
He was stunned, his consciousness fading for a terrifying two or three seconds. It was only the rigid structure of the Attached Insect Limbs Bio-Armor that kept him upright. Had he collapsed, the Kazekage would have finished him instantly.
Based on their clashes over the last few days, the Kazekage viewed Tetsumaru as a fox—infinitely cunning, full of petty tricks, and dangerous if given an opening. Consequently, when he sensed a momentary shift in Tetsumaru's aura, the Kage didn't attack; instead, he doubled his guard, fearing a trap.
To the east, the colossal swarm shattered the three-meter-thick wall of Iron Sand and poured into the interior. It surged down like a tsunami, decomposing into millions of individual black specks mid-air as they took flight.
This was the true power of a swarm numbering in the tens of millions.
From the moment he had first laid eyes on the Iron Sand, Tetsumaru had issued the assembly order. To maintain strategic flexibility, he usually kept his bugs scattered across the battlefield, allowing him to summon hundreds of thousands at a moment's notice. But against a Kage, that wasn't enough. He needed a mass mobilization.
He had estimated it would take twenty minutes to gather eight million. But because the Kazekage had spent so long trying to "grind" him down like a stubborn pebble, twenty-six minutes had passed. Eleven million insects had answered the call.
Even Tetsumaru was surprised by the sheer number, but he wasn't about to waste the opportunity. He decided to give the Kazekage a taste of what it felt like to be overwhelmed by sheer volume.
Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet!
A transparent water dragon roared into existence, lunging toward the Kazekage in the sky.
"Hmph. Futile."
The Kazekage recovered from his shock. Seeing the dragon, he flicked a hand dismissively, his focus still lingering on the black clouds above. A stream of Iron Sand shot out from his side, coiling like a giant python to intercept the dragon. He had swatted away dozens of water dragons this way already.
But this time, a thicker, dark-green "python" intercepted his sand. It was a dense column of thousands of Flight-Locusts.
"What!?" The Kazekage's hands blurred as he sent wave after wave of Iron Sand to clear the path, but each one was intercepted and bogged down by a corresponding swarm.
Seeing the water dragon closing in, the Kazekage was forced to dissolve his Iron Sand Wings to form a shield.
CRASH!
The shield held, but without wings, the Kazekage plummeted. He caught himself on a platform of sand near the ground and scanned the area, only to find that Tetsumaru had vanished.
He searched frantically until he looked up. Tetsumaru was standing atop the head of another water dragon, looking down at him. For the first time, their perspectives were flipped.
Tetsumaru licked his lips and chuckled. "I like this view. Looking down on a Kazekage... feels right."
He dove. Simultaneously, over a dozen sub-swarms followed his will, plunging toward the Kazekage like living missiles.
Driven to the peak of fury, the Kazekage achieved a state of icy calm. He wove hand seals as the thick Iron Sand beneath him surged, re-forming his wings while dozens of slender whips of sand lashed out to meet the incoming threats.
In a split second of chaotic crisscrossing, the whips shredded the water dragon and tore through several sub-swarms. Seven iron spears converged on Tetsumaru in mid-air, piercing him through.
Puff!
White smoke erupted.
"A Shadow Clone? Dammit, when did he...?"
"Right when you fell," Tetsumaru's voice echoed from the swarm. "Actually, this feels nostalgic. It reminds me of sparring with Shibi back when we were kids. Tsk... so many unpleasant memories."
"I guess I'm just not built for 'fine control.' Let's go back to the heavy lifting."
The swarms within the Iron Sand prison divided into two massive pincers, launching a pincer attack on the Kazekage.
"So, he lacks the capacity for multi-threading and precision. How pathetic for an Aburame," the Kazekage sneered, directing his sand whips to counter.
But the sheer scale of the swarm had reached a tipping point. With millions of units reinforced by Tetsumaru's massive chakra, their physical attributes had spiked to a level where they could no longer be easily swatted aside.
The Kazekage's whips lashed out, and his iron shuriken and senbon buzzed through the air, but the swarm didn't break. Even as Locust corpses rained down, the collective momentum remained unstoppable.
"What!?" The Kazekage was stunned. He quickly wove more seals.
Magnet Style: Iron Sand Block!
The massive rectangular block smashed through the swarms, but unlike the Iron Sand, these weren't just grains—they were living Flight-Locusts. The scattered bugs simply re-oriented mid-air and buzzed back toward the Kazekage, forcing him to leap backward repeatedly until he could take to the air again to escape the thousands of snapping mandibles.
The Kazekage's expression was grim. When bugs reach this volume and are reinforced by chakra, they become a different beast entirely. Without an overwhelming advantage in iron volume, it's difficult to even kill one.
"Quite the spectacle. Your 'Sea of Insects' is impressive. But tell me—how much chakra do you have left after pumping it into so many millions of units?"
The Kazekage countered with a barrage.
Magnet Style: Iron Sand Drizzle!
Tetsumaru responded instantly.
Water Style: Water Formation Wall!
"You think I'm running low? You think I'm just using the swarm to defend? Think again."
The Kazekage began to doubt his ability to actually finish this man. Tetsumaru was a freak. They had been fighting for an eternity; the man had used at least eighty jutsus and nearly seventy clones, yet he still had the reserves to maintain a chakra-reinforced swarm while spamming elemental jutsus.
Iron Sand clashed with the swarm. Waves of iron were repeatedly broken by the momentum of the locusts. Soon, the sky was no longer black with iron, but dark green with insects. The Kazekage was being hunted, forced to jump and dodge across the battlefield, no longer daring to fly lest he be swamped in mid-air.
To the Suna ninjas watching from afar, it looked like a pitch-black tentacled monster (the Iron Sand) was locked in a death struggle with a dark-green one (the Swarm).
It looked like a battle of slugs, if those slugs were over fifty meters tall. It was a localized natural disaster.
Despite being on the defensive, the Kazekage wasn't worried. Insects had their strengths, but so did Iron Sand. Every time a swarm collided with a wall of iron, bugs died—but iron was eternal.
Furthermore, the Kazekage had noticed that the "spears" on the heads of these locusts were made of iron. While he couldn't manipulate the living, chakra-filled bugs, he could claim their iron once they died. The dead became his fuel.
As the battle dragged on, the Kazekage calculated his moves carefully. He believed time was on his side; it was a war of chakra attrition, and he assumed Tetsumaru was trying to drain him.
He was wrong.
Tetsumaru wasn't calculating the Kage's chakra—he was calculating his exit strategy.
The Tetsumaru standing atop the water dragon was merely a Shadow Clone. His true body had used the moment the Kazekage drew all the surface iron into the sky to slip silently underground.
Earth Style: Subterranean Fish Movement.
This jutsu allowed him to swim through the earth like a fish while maintaining awareness of the surface. He didn't need the visual advantage; he just needed to stay hidden from the Iron Sand being pulled from the crust.
As the Kazekage hopped around to avoid the swarm, he had no idea that he had crossed over Tetsumaru's head multiple times.
Twice, the Kazekage had stopped to cast a high-level Magnet Style jutsu while Tetsumaru was directly beneath his feet. The opportunity was so perfect that Tetsumaru almost reached up to perform the Double Suicide Decapitation Technique.
Should I try to kill the Kazekage?
After a split-second of intense internal debate, Tetsumaru abandoned the idea. He withdrew his hands and moved on. The risk was too high; a Kage's reaction time was not something to gamble with.
Tetsumaru tunneled out of the Iron Sand prison. Once clear, he tapped his heels. The Thruster Bugs ignited, and he rocketed into the sky.
He flew eastward, aiming for the nearest emergency tunnel.
The Suna ninjas, unwilling to remain bystanders, had formed a loose perimeter around the primary battlefield. They were discussing how to catch the "Aburame" once the Kazekage won.
When Tetsumaru soared over them, trailing fire and smoke, they snapped into action. A barrage of Wind Style, senbon, and shuriken hissed toward him.
Tetsumaru saw no reason to hold back. He opened his palms and unleashed a flurry of Corrosive Acid, Wind Style: Air Cannons, and Wind Blades, sending the Suna ninjas scrambling for cover.
Once his pre-loaded runes were spent, Tetsumaru wove a final set of seals.
Wind Style: Wings of Wind.
Two short wings of chakra unfurled from his waist, allowing him to stabilize his flight and begin a horizontal glide toward the east.
The Thruster Bugs burned out within seconds, their bodies charred by the heat of their own propulsion. Tetsumaru discarded them and unfurled the two pairs of folded wings on his back.
The folded wings were fragile. As they buzzed and flapped, Tetsumaru navigated his Bio-Armor toward the hidden entrance with bated breath.
The entrance led to a tunnel network he had excavated himself. Much like the base beneath the waterfall, these were modified underground river channels. In a land full of rivers, there was always a subterranean network if you knew where to look.
The challenge wasn't digging; it was navigating the labyrinthine waterways. For anyone else, it was a death trap. For Tetsumaru, it was home. He had seeded the tunnels with Glowing Marker Insects. These bugs remained dormant until he tapped out a specific rhythmic code on the tunnel wall.
The correct rhythm woke up the bugs along the escape route, creating a glowing path of bioluminescence. An incorrect rhythm would wake them randomly, leading an interloper into a dead end or a watery grave.
He was safe. For now.