kinghadouken
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Chapter 8: The Sand Weapon and the Demon
The sun was up high in the sky. The streets leading to the houses seemed abandoned, featuring only a population of dust and tumbleweeds. The air was filled with grains of sand, and the heat made the roads and buildings steam. Life was found near the village’s supplies and armory warehouses, while the villagers continued to follow evacuation procedures.
The village guards stood still as they fulfilled their own duties. One of them started to yell about someone trying to pass through the gates. Within a few moments, the main guards were annihilated by a stranger wearing a straw hat and dusty cloak. The other village guards were alerted and began to swarm towards the perpetrator.
One of the shinobi guards attacked with an Earth Release technique, which was easily dodged by the stranger. The movement however let his hat slip off, revealing his long and unkempt jet black hair, the black shades, the moustache and beard as well as the signature sideburns. The guards were frozen with terror upon seeing the man’s face. One of them recognized the man as the one listed in the wanted posters very recently. Without another word, the wanted man slain all of the guards, no traces of blood spilled in the conflict.
But the message of an infiltration was already sent in a scroll to the main headquarters, forcing them to halt their preparations for the upcoming war and start on ganging up on the invader. Word even reached the three best shinobi of the village: Temari, Kankuro and the Kazekage, Gaara of the Desert. They immediately implemented a two-pronged attack against the enemy, with Gaara leading the front and the two leading the rear.
The figure didn’t expect to have the alert of his wrongdoing to reach the enemy quickly, and was easily cornered in both directions. However, the situation merely had him grinning in amusement rather than cower in fear at the sight of hundreds of enemy shinobi. He eyed the red-haired ninja with the sand gourd, whom he assumed to be the village leader.
“You must be the new Kazekage,” the man declared, his booming voice echoing throughout the surrounding army. “You look pretty young for one though.
“The former host of the OneTail,” Gaara flinched at the mention of the tailed beast that used to reside within him, yet the man continued. “Yet still standing strong, I’m actually impressed.
“I’ve heard you were friends with a certain Uzumaki Naruto,” the perpetrator said, noticing Gaara’s sudden tension and dilating pupils. “I just wanted to ask if you know where he is right now.”
“What do you want from him,” Gaara replied, trying to contain his sudden anger. “And why did you kill my comrades?”
“Oh, so you treat your weak guards as ‘comrades’ now,” the man appeared to be in a jesting mood. “I’ve been left out by many generations already, I see.”
“I said, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM HIM,” Gaara yelled, losing his cool. “AND WHY DID YOU KILL MY COMRADES?”
“Ehhh,” the man groaned, apparently bored by the conversation. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s fight this out and whoever wins forces the loser the winner’s desired information. Deal?”
“Don’t screw with us, you bastard!” Temari shrieked, attacking the man with her large fan. “This is not a ****ing game!”
But the man merely hopped up and avoided the gust easily. He was surprised however, as a large puppet, Black Ant, opened its torso, grabbed him by the arms and shoved him in. Before the puppet’s owner, Kankuro, could finish his technique, the puppet exploded into unrecognizable, burning pieces. From the hovering debris, the man appeared, this time clutching with the right hand a gold blade with a trigger and muzzle. The man aimed and fired a purple fiery ball at Gaara, who just blocked with his sand. The guarding sand formed into shuriken and shot at the man who was weaving seals simultaneously. The man vanished like a mirage and avoided the shuriken, shocking the three.
The next moment, the man was back on land and already clutching with his left hand a large silver sword with glowing yellow gems that began to emit lightning sparks. He swung the speeding sword at Gaara, who was saved by Temari’s Wind Release technique. The man followed his assault with a salvo of fireballs homing in on the three, though some of the surrounding ninja acted quickly and blocked the fireballs with their Earth Release techniques.
The next moment, the man was fighting not only the three best shinobi, but also the hundreds of capable ninja. Dodging thrown projectiles, blocking wind with swords, shooting fireballs, emitting lightning, wind and even water, the sound of clanging metal, collision of sand against metal, avoiding poisoned weapons, exploding ninja, incapacitated ninja, cracking of the earth; the man’s situation looked overwhelming and impossible, yet he handled it with incomparable calm and perfect synchronization, blocking, parrying and countering at every possible opportunity.
After a few more clashes, the dull moment began, where the opposing army decided to regroup, gather the dead and heal the wounded, leaving their nemesis waiting in the middle of the battlefield. He looked around, trying to find any of his stubborn enemies. He then returned his weapons on his back, with the linen wraps automatically binding themselves around the two. He was now unarmed, stretching and cracking his neck a few times, taking advantage of the brief time-out.
“Well, it’s about time,” he declared, while brandishing a copper handle embroidered with gold carvings and silver ends, then threw it high upwards and began to weave the same seals as earlier. “That I have the opportunity to test this newly-created weapon.
“But,” he continued, as he saw sand fast approaching from the corner of his shades from one direction while multiple gusts of wind came from the other. “Let’s see how long you can withstand my taijutsu coupled with my Swift Release!”
He vanished like a blur yet more solid than air. He easily outmatched the speed of the incoming attacks, while pinpointing the sources of the techniques. He changed direction. In one fell swoop, he crushed one of the large boulders, which were the remnants of the Earth Release techniques earlier, with his right heel, creating a deafening explosion from where Gaara hid. Yet his first target, Gaara, protected himself with the sand, forming a dome barrier that absorbed the flying debris.
“He’s faster than THAT guy,” Gaara remarked as he was nested inside the sand barrier, which the enemy bombarded with heavy blows and kicks, trying to lure Gaara out of the slowly breaking sand formation. “His power is unbelievable. He must be the one that Lady Hokage warned us about. At this rate-”
Realizing his futile efforts, without wasting any second, the man then jumped back towards his next target, Temari. A quick but powerful blow to the stomach easily incapacitated the kunoichi, sending her down on her knees, trembling in pain and coughing out blood. Though, it was far from over, as Kankuro immediately sent out another puppet, Crow, to divert the man’s attention from their fallen comrade by shooting poisoned needles at the attacker. Upon dodging the needles, the man dashed towards Crow, with his left foot forward going for an attempt to destroy the next puppet. But Kankuro had a back-up plan, revealing his third puppet, Salamander, and pulling Crow out of harm’s way. Yet his foe was too fast for Kankuro’s reactions, and mowed down both puppets with a flurry of lightning-fast kicks, sending the puppet bits soaring to the air.
The next target was Kankuro himself, who looked feverish and scared as he saw his enemy crush his puppets as easily as breaking clay pots and was starting to aim for him. The handle of the enemy’s unknown weapon was still flying, rotating, twirling in mid-air. As the man dashed towards his next opponent, he raised his left hand and from it emitted large sparks of lightning towards the spinning handle, which in turn seemed to increase the magnitude of the sparks into the hovering clouds. The enemy appeared to attempt punching Kankuro into submission, yet stopped quickly and jumped upwards as he expelled large balls of flames to the charged handle that again looked like it enhanced the firepower towards the sky.
He then grabbed the handle which instantly burst out a large amount of his own chakra. The handle formed the chakra into a shape of a humongous scythe. Kankuro looked up as he noticed the clouds starting to rumble and darken, the lightning sparks lining the curvatures. His eyes widened as he saw his opponent suddenly holding a very big weapon that began to conduct the lightning sparks. Large clumps of sand suddenly rose high as he turned towards Gaara, who was concentrating on protecting them all from Rouzuke, in a similar fashion when Gaara fought one of the Akatsuki members, Deidara.
The clouds formed into rain clouds and soon enough, rain started to pour, making Gaara realize what their opponent was trying to do. The rainwater made the sand heavier, and even Gaara’s sand armor was affected, slowly but surely crumbling as the droplets hit the sand. He knelt in exhaustion, still looking up to the skies, watching out for his opponent’s next attack. The flying sand finally gave in to the heaviness, flowing back to the ground and showering everyone else with it.
“Damn that guy,” Kankuro muttered, alarmed at seeing both Gaara and Temari taken down by their opponent. He immediately ran towards Temari first, who was the nearest. “Oy,Temari, snap out of it!”
“Shit, he’s too powerful,” Temari gasped, still clutching her painful stomach and looking at Gaara. “Even Gaara can’t halt that bastard down. He must be the wanted criminal the Hokage told us about, Momura Rouzuke.”
Yet Gaara wasn’t set on losing. Despite the heaviness of the sand, he managed to form them into shuriken. Upon launching those, Gaara followed with blobs of sand flying towards Rouzuke, attempting to slow down the latter’s movements. The remaining Sand shinobi aimed the last spurt of their Earth Release techniques towards their floating opponent.
“Eh,” Rouzuke moaned in disappointment, seeing the futility of his foes’ incoming attacks. “And I thought you were the Ultimate Weapon, Gaara of the Desert. That piece of information from the Village of Artisans was faulty then. It seems that you’ve become weaker because you are no longer a host of the One Tail.”
With one fancy swing of his chakra blade, he easily parried the shuriken, sand blobs and the boulders. He smiled upon seeing the fear-stricken faces of the opponents below his feet. He raised his new weapon, harnessing the howling winds and thunderous lightning, forming a large swirling drill-shaped veil around the chakra blade.
“Kazekage,” he yelled over the commotion, making Gaara twitch and focus his attention to Rouzuke. “I will give you two choices.”
Gaara seemed to be listening, his face smeared with sand and rain.
“The first,” Rouzuke continued, with his right hand still holding the weapon chirping high in the sky. “Would be that I spare your lives in exchange for a portion of your chakra-infused sand in a container, as well as the information regarding Uzumaki Naruto’s location and mission.”
A fear of foreboding clambered throughout Gaara’s spine, somehow knowing what the second option will be.
“The other option would be,” Rouzuke declared, smiling devilishly, with his weapon sparking and howling simultaneously with murderous intent. “That you **** the first choice and I’ll quickly end your pitiful lives.”
A loud rumble of thunder over the continued slosh of the rain, the man’s shades gleaming evilly in tandem with the pursuing lightning. Gaara and the others stood in silence, with the former trying to assess the current situation. Rouzuke broke the moment, in an attempt to rush the exchange.
“So, Kazekage,” he sneered, knowing what Gaara will pick. “Which is more important now: you and your village, or Uzumaki Naruto’s life?”
Another crackling of thunder and flash of killer lightning over the serenity of the rain reigned in the silence.
“Better choose wisely, young Kazekage.”
To be continued...
The sun was up high in the sky. The streets leading to the houses seemed abandoned, featuring only a population of dust and tumbleweeds. The air was filled with grains of sand, and the heat made the roads and buildings steam. Life was found near the village’s supplies and armory warehouses, while the villagers continued to follow evacuation procedures.
The village guards stood still as they fulfilled their own duties. One of them started to yell about someone trying to pass through the gates. Within a few moments, the main guards were annihilated by a stranger wearing a straw hat and dusty cloak. The other village guards were alerted and began to swarm towards the perpetrator.
One of the shinobi guards attacked with an Earth Release technique, which was easily dodged by the stranger. The movement however let his hat slip off, revealing his long and unkempt jet black hair, the black shades, the moustache and beard as well as the signature sideburns. The guards were frozen with terror upon seeing the man’s face. One of them recognized the man as the one listed in the wanted posters very recently. Without another word, the wanted man slain all of the guards, no traces of blood spilled in the conflict.
But the message of an infiltration was already sent in a scroll to the main headquarters, forcing them to halt their preparations for the upcoming war and start on ganging up on the invader. Word even reached the three best shinobi of the village: Temari, Kankuro and the Kazekage, Gaara of the Desert. They immediately implemented a two-pronged attack against the enemy, with Gaara leading the front and the two leading the rear.
The figure didn’t expect to have the alert of his wrongdoing to reach the enemy quickly, and was easily cornered in both directions. However, the situation merely had him grinning in amusement rather than cower in fear at the sight of hundreds of enemy shinobi. He eyed the red-haired ninja with the sand gourd, whom he assumed to be the village leader.
“You must be the new Kazekage,” the man declared, his booming voice echoing throughout the surrounding army. “You look pretty young for one though.
“The former host of the OneTail,” Gaara flinched at the mention of the tailed beast that used to reside within him, yet the man continued. “Yet still standing strong, I’m actually impressed.
“I’ve heard you were friends with a certain Uzumaki Naruto,” the perpetrator said, noticing Gaara’s sudden tension and dilating pupils. “I just wanted to ask if you know where he is right now.”
“What do you want from him,” Gaara replied, trying to contain his sudden anger. “And why did you kill my comrades?”
“Oh, so you treat your weak guards as ‘comrades’ now,” the man appeared to be in a jesting mood. “I’ve been left out by many generations already, I see.”
“I said, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM HIM,” Gaara yelled, losing his cool. “AND WHY DID YOU KILL MY COMRADES?”
“Ehhh,” the man groaned, apparently bored by the conversation. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s fight this out and whoever wins forces the loser the winner’s desired information. Deal?”
“Don’t screw with us, you bastard!” Temari shrieked, attacking the man with her large fan. “This is not a ****ing game!”
But the man merely hopped up and avoided the gust easily. He was surprised however, as a large puppet, Black Ant, opened its torso, grabbed him by the arms and shoved him in. Before the puppet’s owner, Kankuro, could finish his technique, the puppet exploded into unrecognizable, burning pieces. From the hovering debris, the man appeared, this time clutching with the right hand a gold blade with a trigger and muzzle. The man aimed and fired a purple fiery ball at Gaara, who just blocked with his sand. The guarding sand formed into shuriken and shot at the man who was weaving seals simultaneously. The man vanished like a mirage and avoided the shuriken, shocking the three.
The next moment, the man was back on land and already clutching with his left hand a large silver sword with glowing yellow gems that began to emit lightning sparks. He swung the speeding sword at Gaara, who was saved by Temari’s Wind Release technique. The man followed his assault with a salvo of fireballs homing in on the three, though some of the surrounding ninja acted quickly and blocked the fireballs with their Earth Release techniques.
The next moment, the man was fighting not only the three best shinobi, but also the hundreds of capable ninja. Dodging thrown projectiles, blocking wind with swords, shooting fireballs, emitting lightning, wind and even water, the sound of clanging metal, collision of sand against metal, avoiding poisoned weapons, exploding ninja, incapacitated ninja, cracking of the earth; the man’s situation looked overwhelming and impossible, yet he handled it with incomparable calm and perfect synchronization, blocking, parrying and countering at every possible opportunity.
After a few more clashes, the dull moment began, where the opposing army decided to regroup, gather the dead and heal the wounded, leaving their nemesis waiting in the middle of the battlefield. He looked around, trying to find any of his stubborn enemies. He then returned his weapons on his back, with the linen wraps automatically binding themselves around the two. He was now unarmed, stretching and cracking his neck a few times, taking advantage of the brief time-out.
“Well, it’s about time,” he declared, while brandishing a copper handle embroidered with gold carvings and silver ends, then threw it high upwards and began to weave the same seals as earlier. “That I have the opportunity to test this newly-created weapon.
“But,” he continued, as he saw sand fast approaching from the corner of his shades from one direction while multiple gusts of wind came from the other. “Let’s see how long you can withstand my taijutsu coupled with my Swift Release!”
He vanished like a blur yet more solid than air. He easily outmatched the speed of the incoming attacks, while pinpointing the sources of the techniques. He changed direction. In one fell swoop, he crushed one of the large boulders, which were the remnants of the Earth Release techniques earlier, with his right heel, creating a deafening explosion from where Gaara hid. Yet his first target, Gaara, protected himself with the sand, forming a dome barrier that absorbed the flying debris.
“He’s faster than THAT guy,” Gaara remarked as he was nested inside the sand barrier, which the enemy bombarded with heavy blows and kicks, trying to lure Gaara out of the slowly breaking sand formation. “His power is unbelievable. He must be the one that Lady Hokage warned us about. At this rate-”
Realizing his futile efforts, without wasting any second, the man then jumped back towards his next target, Temari. A quick but powerful blow to the stomach easily incapacitated the kunoichi, sending her down on her knees, trembling in pain and coughing out blood. Though, it was far from over, as Kankuro immediately sent out another puppet, Crow, to divert the man’s attention from their fallen comrade by shooting poisoned needles at the attacker. Upon dodging the needles, the man dashed towards Crow, with his left foot forward going for an attempt to destroy the next puppet. But Kankuro had a back-up plan, revealing his third puppet, Salamander, and pulling Crow out of harm’s way. Yet his foe was too fast for Kankuro’s reactions, and mowed down both puppets with a flurry of lightning-fast kicks, sending the puppet bits soaring to the air.
The next target was Kankuro himself, who looked feverish and scared as he saw his enemy crush his puppets as easily as breaking clay pots and was starting to aim for him. The handle of the enemy’s unknown weapon was still flying, rotating, twirling in mid-air. As the man dashed towards his next opponent, he raised his left hand and from it emitted large sparks of lightning towards the spinning handle, which in turn seemed to increase the magnitude of the sparks into the hovering clouds. The enemy appeared to attempt punching Kankuro into submission, yet stopped quickly and jumped upwards as he expelled large balls of flames to the charged handle that again looked like it enhanced the firepower towards the sky.
He then grabbed the handle which instantly burst out a large amount of his own chakra. The handle formed the chakra into a shape of a humongous scythe. Kankuro looked up as he noticed the clouds starting to rumble and darken, the lightning sparks lining the curvatures. His eyes widened as he saw his opponent suddenly holding a very big weapon that began to conduct the lightning sparks. Large clumps of sand suddenly rose high as he turned towards Gaara, who was concentrating on protecting them all from Rouzuke, in a similar fashion when Gaara fought one of the Akatsuki members, Deidara.
The clouds formed into rain clouds and soon enough, rain started to pour, making Gaara realize what their opponent was trying to do. The rainwater made the sand heavier, and even Gaara’s sand armor was affected, slowly but surely crumbling as the droplets hit the sand. He knelt in exhaustion, still looking up to the skies, watching out for his opponent’s next attack. The flying sand finally gave in to the heaviness, flowing back to the ground and showering everyone else with it.
“Damn that guy,” Kankuro muttered, alarmed at seeing both Gaara and Temari taken down by their opponent. He immediately ran towards Temari first, who was the nearest. “Oy,Temari, snap out of it!”
“Shit, he’s too powerful,” Temari gasped, still clutching her painful stomach and looking at Gaara. “Even Gaara can’t halt that bastard down. He must be the wanted criminal the Hokage told us about, Momura Rouzuke.”
Yet Gaara wasn’t set on losing. Despite the heaviness of the sand, he managed to form them into shuriken. Upon launching those, Gaara followed with blobs of sand flying towards Rouzuke, attempting to slow down the latter’s movements. The remaining Sand shinobi aimed the last spurt of their Earth Release techniques towards their floating opponent.
“Eh,” Rouzuke moaned in disappointment, seeing the futility of his foes’ incoming attacks. “And I thought you were the Ultimate Weapon, Gaara of the Desert. That piece of information from the Village of Artisans was faulty then. It seems that you’ve become weaker because you are no longer a host of the One Tail.”
With one fancy swing of his chakra blade, he easily parried the shuriken, sand blobs and the boulders. He smiled upon seeing the fear-stricken faces of the opponents below his feet. He raised his new weapon, harnessing the howling winds and thunderous lightning, forming a large swirling drill-shaped veil around the chakra blade.
“Kazekage,” he yelled over the commotion, making Gaara twitch and focus his attention to Rouzuke. “I will give you two choices.”
Gaara seemed to be listening, his face smeared with sand and rain.
“The first,” Rouzuke continued, with his right hand still holding the weapon chirping high in the sky. “Would be that I spare your lives in exchange for a portion of your chakra-infused sand in a container, as well as the information regarding Uzumaki Naruto’s location and mission.”
A fear of foreboding clambered throughout Gaara’s spine, somehow knowing what the second option will be.
“The other option would be,” Rouzuke declared, smiling devilishly, with his weapon sparking and howling simultaneously with murderous intent. “That you **** the first choice and I’ll quickly end your pitiful lives.”
A loud rumble of thunder over the continued slosh of the rain, the man’s shades gleaming evilly in tandem with the pursuing lightning. Gaara and the others stood in silence, with the former trying to assess the current situation. Rouzuke broke the moment, in an attempt to rush the exchange.
“So, Kazekage,” he sneered, knowing what Gaara will pick. “Which is more important now: you and your village, or Uzumaki Naruto’s life?”
Another crackling of thunder and flash of killer lightning over the serenity of the rain reigned in the silence.
“Better choose wisely, young Kazekage.”
To be continued...
