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Deidara had just clashed fiercely with the Allied Shinobi Forces and was still riding the intoxicating high of battle.
Under ordinary circumstances, Deidara already possessed an overwhelming aerial advantage. Unless someone could manage to shoot him down from the sky, he remained the most obnoxiously untouchable presence on the battlefield. And for shinobi attempting to attack him from the water's surface, landing a hit on him in the air was exponentially more difficult. Consequently, Deidara felt supremely, utterly comfortable throughout the course of this engagement. The shinobi who dove beneath the waves were like helpless little fish, ripe for his casual slaughter. They could scarcely mount any effective counterattack against him. A handful of them attempted to retaliate with Water Release techniques, but what good did it do them? They simply could not reach him.
It was only within such an ideal environment that he could dedicate himself wholeheartedly to the study of his art without distraction. Yes, the creation of true art required absolute, single-minded focus, free from any disturbance. This was the creative paradise he had always dreamed of.
Having just finished annihilating the second wave of advance shinobi, Deidara was preparing to report his glorious results to Pain. But at that very moment, an unspeakably ugly, pitch-black thing suddenly hurtled directly towards him.
"What in the world is this abomination?!" Deidara had never in his life laid eyes on something so grotesquely hideous. He immediately wrenched the controls of his giant clay bird, swerving desperately to evade the incoming Muku.
However, even though Deidara could maneuver his giant bird with a high degree of fluid control, relying on an external construct to navigate the skies could never, ever compare to the agility of having one's own wings. Deidara had barely begun his evasive maneuver before Muku was already upon him. In the vast open sky, Muku loomed like a monstrous, demonic titan. Even though Deidara's clay bird was already of considerable size, before Muku, it was dwarfed into insignificance, like a tiny sparrow before a hawk.
"You bastard!"
Seeing Muku bearing down on him with no avenue of escape left, Deidara had no choice but to abandon his clay bird, hurling himself off its back while simultaneously propelling the bird directly on a collision course towards Muku. He had assumed that Muku would crash into the clay bird, granting him a precious window to flee. He never imagined that Muku would abruptly, impossibly shift his trajectory mid-flight, skimming past the bird with mere inches to spare. Although dodging the bird forced Muku to take a slightly longer, curving path, he still caught up to Deidara in a heartbeat.
"This is bad!"
Seeing Muku right behind him, Deidara knew he was in dire straits. Deprived of his clay bird, he was no different from any ordinary man in the air. He could barely control his own body's descent. Just as he was on the verge of being swallowed whole by Muku's gaping maw, a powerful, irresistible gravitational force seized hold of his body. It felt as though a pair of immensely strong, invisible hands had clamped down upon him. In an instant, Deidara felt a wave of disorienting vertigo wash over him, his senses scrambled.
As he teetered on the edge of a brief, blacked-out stupor, his feet suddenly touched something that felt as soft and unsteady as cotton. He snapped his eyes open, only to find the Deva Path standing right beside him. There was no need for explanation. The Deva Path had employed his Universal Pull to yank him to safety.
"What is that monster?" Deidara whipped his head around to stare back up at the sky, reconfirming his initial assessment that the black, airborne creature was indescribably ugly.
"Muku, the son of Mui... Though, at this point, it would be more fitting to call him 'Satori,'" Zetsu supplied helpfully.
"Mui? Where is he?" Deidara immediately scanned his surroundings, but there was no sign of Mui anywhere. Zetsu extended a finger, pointing towards the shoreline. Only then did Deidara notice the corpse bobbing limply in the surf.
"He's dead?"
"He's dead," Zetsu confirmed with a nod.
"So what do we do now?" Deidara asked, nervously wetting his lips. That brief, harrowing skirmish just now had made one thing painfully, unequivocally clear: this colossal creature known as Satori was an exceedingly troublesome and formidable opponent. Relying on his strength alone, there was little to no chance of contending with it directly.
"And what about you? What do you have to say for yourself?" the Deva Path addressed the airborne Satori.
"Why should I place any trust in any of you?" Satori spread his arms wide. The enormous mouth carved into his chest opened and closed in a grotesque, rhythmic pulse. Combined with his unnaturally slender, elongated abdomen, the sight evoked an indescribable, primal sense of dread.
"I aided your father. I granted you your freedom. Surely you should express some measure of gratitude for that?" the Deva Path reasoned.
"Express gratitude? I'm sorry, but that is utterly impossible. When I was in the process of killing him, you made absolutely no move to intervene. With your level of power, saving him would have been as easy as turning over your hand, wouldn't it? The fact that you did nothing to save him proves that in your eyes, he was nothing more than a disposable tool. And I am no exception to that rule."
"You have a remarkably clear understanding of the situation," the Deva Path remarked with a faint, cold smile.
"Therefore, it is impossible for me to assist you! All any of you can do is make me even stronger," Satori bellowed. Violet-hued smoke continued to billow ceaselessly from the Box of Ultimate Bliss, accompanied by a powerful gravitational pull that sought to drag anyone in the vicinity into its depths.
However, whether it was Itachi, Deidara, or especially the Deva Path of Pain, none of them could be so easily snared by such a clumsy technique.
"Since that is your stance, I shall simply send you elsewhere," the Deva Path declared. He extended his hand and spread his five fingers, aligning his open palm directly towards Satori.
"No jutsu can work against me! I can see straight through every single thought in your mind!" Satori roared defiantly.
"Almighty Push!"
A colossal, invisible wave of repulsive force surged outward with devastating, instantaneous speed. The airborne Satori had no time whatsoever to evade. The shockwave struck him squarely, blasting him violently away until he vanished completely into the thick, obscuring fog.
"Where did you fling that thing off to?" Deidara asked.
"The Island Turtle," the Deva Path replied. He then turned his attention to the Box of Ultimate Bliss, extending his hand towards it. "Since it has already departed, you may as well follow after it. Allied Shinobi Forces... I do hope you will enjoy the little gift I am sending your way."
"Ugh... That hideous creature probably won't stand a chance against the entire Allied Forces. It's far too lacking in artistic merit," Deidara remarked, clicking his tongue in disdain.
"That is certainly true. However, as long as it can deplete even a fraction of the Allied Forces' strength, sending it over will have been well worth the effort," the Deva Path stated.
"If you're going to think about it that way... that ugly monster might actually produce some unexpectedly effective results," Deidara muttered, smacking his own cheeks sharply with both palms. "No, this won't do. I absolutely have to brainstorm and devise a way to create an artistic piece of even more breathtaking and devastating power. There is no way I can allow myself to be outdone by that hideous freak!"
Itachi stared into the vast, hazy, grey expanse of fog, a sense of profound disorientation deepening within him by the moment. The reason he had remained within the Akatsuki was not to fight a desperate, suicidal battle against the Allied Shinobi Forces, and certainly not to serve as expendable cannon fodder.
Both Pain and Madara were shrouded in layers upon layers of hidden, impenetrable secrets. He absolutely had to find a way, by any means necessary, to unearth those secrets. Not solely for his own sake, but also for the sake of the entire Uchiha clan.
...
"The second wave of shinobi has also been completely wiped out," Shikaku reported, his expression dark and complicated as he read the grim intelligence relayed by the Analysis and Intelligence Division.
The first wave had been composed primarily of reconnaissance and scouting specialists. Their objective had been to gather critical intelligence on the situation on the island. While these shinobi lacked overwhelming raw combat power, each and every one of them was an exceptional expert in the field of information gathering. And yet, an entire squad of such invaluable operatives had been slaughtered.
A heavy, unspoken understanding hung thickly in the air among the high-ranking commanders. Now that the Akatsuki had definitively detected their approach, any subsequent action they undertook would be fraught with immense, grave danger. It was almost tantamount to marching straight into a death sentence. Therefore, Hiruzen Sarutobi had made the ruthless, pragmatic decision to dispatch the Uchiha defectors who had only recently staged their rebellion.
The Uchiha clan had many members who excelled in Fire Release techniques. There was absolutely no way Hiruzen was not acutely aware of this fact. The reason he had made this calculated decision was chillingly clear: to send those very individuals to their deaths. In doing so, the question of how to deal with the defectors would resolve itself. He could then leverage their sacrificial deaths to demonstrate to the rest of the village that the Uchiha clan was still trustworthy and loyal. The Uchiha defectors themselves were fully, painfully cognizant of this unspoken arrangement. The only reason they had agreed to the suicide mission was to use their own deaths to wash away the stains of treason from their clan's name.
This was a mutually, silently acknowledged operation. Death was the optimal, the most expedient outcome for all parties involved. And yet, even knowing all this, as Shikaku read the report aloud, he still found it impossible to keep his heart calm and untroubled.
Hiruzen closed his eyes gently. A long-festering, intractable problem that had plagued both him and the Hidden Leaf Village had finally, at long last, been laid to rest.
At that precise moment, a thunderous crash erupted from a location not far from their position. It sounded as though something immensely heavy had just slammed violently into the ground nearby.