The battlefield stretched out in every direction as the Sand swarmed us with their puppet troops and poison. The open green plains that had once been pristine were now chewed apart by numerous jutsu. Scorched lines scored the grass, gouges of earth were ripped apart, and in the distance, glittering clouds of gold dust drifted like storm fronts.
I rushed towards the front, but movement in the distance caught my eye. My other clones were fanning out exactly where they were supposed to be. Fire and Wind tore through the right flank, launching combination bursts that scattered enemy lines with wind-enhanced flames sweeping wide, too fast for their puppet defenses to keep up. On the left, Water and Earth held a solid line, working together to block incoming jutsu and haul injured Leaf shinobi out of danger.
I tightened my grip on Hana and Saru, their tonfa forms hummed with my chakra as I looked ahead of me. The center of the battlefield, with my clones driving the Sand forces more towards the middle was even more overwhelming, intense, and a flurry of action, but it was exactly what I wanted. Lava and I needed to make a big and noticeable momentum through the Sand ninjas.
We moved as one. I dashed forward, closing in on a squad of Sand ninja trying to shield the duo of puppet masters. Saru's red-tonfa flared with Fire and lunched a streak of flames towards the ninjas in front of me as Hana's tonfa lit up with a green glow and launched a stream of Wind to fuel Saru's flames.
The Lava Clone lobbed a molten boulder into another cluster of ninjas, the heat warping the air as the ground swallowed them in liquid rock. The smell of burning metal hit immediately; kunai, shuriken, and puppet limbs sagging into useless shapes. Screams followed, sharp and short.
Two more came at me from the side. I feinted left, caught the first one's strike against my tonfa, and let Hana's wind burst shove him off balance. Saru's fire punched through the second's guard, leaving a streak of blackened armor. They fell, injured, but not dead, yet I did not wait for them to get up.
The Lava Clone kept up the pressure, spraying lines of molten earth to cut off retreat paths. Every time they tried to regroup, she forced them to scatter again. We were not here to kill every last one of them; we were here to make so much noise and destruction that Rasa could not ignore us.
Another squad broke toward us, this one more coordinated. I welcomed them in, sidestepping the rush of puppets. My Wind-enhanced tonfa swept two away while a burst of fire burned a third. Behind them, molten rock bloomed from my clone's hands, drenching the ground and turning it into an orange-black mess that no one could cross without losing their legs.
Already, I could see gold dust shifting more aggressively in the distance, moving with purpose instead of drifting at random. Good. He was watching.
The Lava Clone glanced at me, a wordless understanding passing between us, and she hurled another massive blast of molten chakra at the nearest cluster of Sand shinobi. The ground hissed, bubbled, and split under the heat. We had gotten his attention, and we were ready.
The battlefield shifted with a ripple of killing intent. From the haze of jutsu smoke and drifting gold, a towering wave rose which shimmered in the setting sun like a wall of rippling treasure. Riding atop it, balanced as though gravity itself bent to him, was Rasa in his white robes trimmed in deep green snapping in the wind, his dark eyes scanning the chaos below with a calculating, cold calm.
The weight of his chakra was oppressive. Every grain of gold around him moved like an extension of his will. He may have been a joke in the anime, being killed by Orochimaru and impersonated to launch the Kohona Crush Plan, but his presence still carried the weight of a powerful shinobi.
He did not bother with words. His greeting came in the form of Gold Dust Wave like a roaring surge that swallowed the air and rushed to bury me and the Lava Clone alive.
We split instantly with me darting right as Lava veered to the left. The wave crashed down, swallowing the ground where we had been in a suffocating dune. Lava's hands snapped together, and molten rock burst forth in a wide spray, slamming into the advancing gold. The air filled with the hiss and pop of metal liquefying, the sheen fading to dull slag.
I drove forward with Hana and Saru in their tonfa forms crackling with electricity, but Rasa stayed high, gliding effortlessly on a platform of swirling gold. My strikes cut empty air as he drifted just out of reach with my two attempts at jumping; his robes billowing, almost mockingly, against the dust-filled wind.
A sharp gesture from him sent a dozen tendrils of gold darting toward me, each as quick as a thrown kunai. I ducked under one, deflected another with a tonfa strike, and spun away from the rest, only for a secondary wave to sweep low at my legs. I jumped, but the landing was met by a sudden pull of heavy gold that tried to anchor my feet as it swirled around on the ground.
Before it could pull me under, a blast of lava from my clone ripped through the trap, and the molten heat severed the magnetic pull. The gold clumped together in smoking heaps.
I took the opening and sent a pulse of chakra transformed Hana and Saru into their elemental whips. Hana gleamed silver and sparked with Lightning while Saru glowed faintly red with heat and dripping lava. The Lightning whip snapped up toward him, striking through the shimmering arc of his gold defense. Where it hit, the gold stuttered as the particles shuttered erratically under the static's interference.
Another golden spear shot at me from the side; he had split his control even while defending. I twisted away, the attack grazing my shoulder, and Saru's whip lashed out, slamming into one of his hovering shields. The heat bled through, softening it enough for it to buckle.
Lava Clone did not waste the chance. Her next volley came in the form of a rolling wave of magma that forced him to push back hard with another Gold Dust Wave, the two forces clashing midair in a sizzling hiss.
He was strong, but every defense cost him chakra. Then, by sheer luck, my Lightning whip slipped through the momentary gap in his defense where his gold and lava clashed. It wrapped around his ankle, and the crackle of electricity paralyzed his body.
Before he could sever it, I anchored my feet with chakra and poured Yang Chakra into my muscles. The earth cracked under my stance as I yanked with everything I had. Rasa came down in a blur of white and green, gold scattering in a glittering arc. He hit the ground hard, creating a crater and shockwave rippling out that staggered the Sand troops nearby.
And just like that... he was on my level.
The instant his body hit the dirt; I was on him. Hana and Saru snapped back into their tonfa forms with a crack of chakra, and the silver and red gleaming under the battlefield's dying light as I swung. I did not give him a heartbeat to recover.
The first strike cracked against his forearm while Wind chakra sliced past the impact to cut into his skin beneath his sleeve and across his chest. He staggered back, trying to block my follow up attack with a wall of gold dust, but with Saru crackling with electricity, it was enough to destabilize the gold, combined with my enhanced strength, to swing at his ribs. Unfortunately, more of his Gold Dust was already pulling him back, so I only singed his robes.
Rasa moved like the shifting desert itself... slow at first glance, but with hidden sudden, crushing force, but my rhythm was relentless as I kept close to him, knowing that he had the advantage at range. Strike, pivot, strike. My reinforced tonfa finally slammed into his ribs with a satisfying sharp crack. He hissed, a flicker of pain finally cracking through the cold mask of his face.
A pair of Sand shinobi lunged in from the side, shouting for their Kazekage. Before they could get close, my Lava Clone swept a molten wave across the grass, turning green to black as the ground hissed and buckled. The Sand ninjas were forced to jump back as the heat was blistering against their faces even from a distance.
Rasa tried to rise on a swirl of gold, but I caught his collarbone with a jump and a sharp downward smash, the blow vibrating up my arm as bone cracked under the force. He dropped to one knee as he let out a heavy groan. His breathing grew ragged, but the weight of his chakra only sharpened.
That was a warning. My danger instincts screaming a half-second before the ground around us shifted. The gold dust at his feet churned violently as what was in the air seemed to freeze momentarily before it started rushing inward. My eyes widened with realization.
"Magnet Release: Gold Dust Imperial Funeral."
He was using it on himself. Risky as hell, but the precision in his movements told me he was in full control. The dust swirled tighter, layer after layer trying to seal me inside with him.
I did not hesitate. My feet pushed hard into the earth, Yang chakra exploding through my legs as I sprang back. Lightning crackled between Hana and Saru, breaking through the wall of gold dust, as the ribbons of gold sought to entangle me. Even then, threads of compressed gold dust scraped my skin raw, leaving my right arm and left leg bloodied.
After escaping the range of the jutsu, I dropped Hana and Saru, though they hovered at my side while still in their tonfa forms, then started using the Mystic Palm to heal my leg as mobility was the most important thing. The gold dust formed a massive pyramid as it solidified and shimmered like a beacon in the dying light of the sun.
The golden shell cracked open with a grinding hiss, shards of hardened dust breaking away as Rasa forced himself upright. He rose out of the cocoon like a specter pulled from the earth, his white-and-green robes scorched and smeared with dirt and blood. His eyes burned with the kind of fury that promised nothing short of my death.
Gold dust swirled around his limbs, coiling tightly to splint broken bones and mask the damage I had dealt him. Still, he could not hide the blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, nor the ragged wheeze in every breath; a sound that told me some of his ribs had likely punctured his lungs. His killing intent was radiating like a heatwave, and I knew he was no longer thinking of winning.
Rasa's gaze locked on me like a hawk sighting prey, and in that instant, I knew it; I had him locked on to me alone. Whatever strategy he had come here with, I had beaten it out of him. Now, it was personal. His gold shifted and swirled in jagged bursts, no longer the smooth, measured flow it had been before. He was chasing me, and no longer hunting the battlefield.
Good.
Gripping my tonfas, I rushed towards his own troops. Every step was calculated to keep his eyes on me while my Lava Clone worked behind the curtain of chaos, but she needed a few seconds to complete it. She was already gathering the molten earth that had been spread across the field since the fight began. Her chakra pulling the heat together, shaping it into something massive, and something that only she could handle; even I would end up heavily burn at best, and dead most likely.
Gold spears slammed into the ground where I had been a heartbeat before, throwing dirt and molten slag into the air. I ducked under another sweep of shimmering dust, slipping between two Sand jonin who barely had time to register me before Rasa's next attack tore them apart.
"Is that all you've got, Kazekage?" I called over my shoulder, feet pounding the torn earth. "Glitter and dust?"
Another wave of gold surged after me, forcing me to vault over the remains of a shattered puppet. His control was precise, relentless, but thankfully, predictable.
"Guess I'd be weak too," I shouted, twisting past a blast meant for my chest, "if I spent my life panning for gold in the middle of a desert."
A tendril of gold lashed at me; I batted it aside with a whip crack of lightning. "Careful, you'll run out of your little treasure hoard at this rate. Then what? How will you feed your people then?"
He snarled, the sound carrying even over the battlefield noise. The dust around him thickened, swirling faster.
"Oh, wait," I mocked, slipping through another knot of Sand shinobi who scattered too late, "maybe that's why you're so grumpy... your poor village's budget depends on you mining like some overworked prospector."
Another furious strike came down, but I was already gone, weaving through his troops and forcing him to mow down his own people. Screams followed in my wake, the gold wave smashing through friend and foe alike.
I cut back toward the center, weaving through another pocket of Sand forces. Rasa followed like an avenging spirit, his gold sweeping in great arcs that pulverized everything in his way. He did not even slow when his own troops screamed; his eyes were locked on me, nothing else.
"Come on, Kazekage!" I called, vaulting over a line of earth spikes from one of his allies. "You're supposed to be the desert's greatest weapon, not its crankiest old miner!"
Another burst of gold dust came within inches of tearing my legs out from under me, but I rolled into the gap between two still-smoking patches of molten ground. Steam hissed as heat bit at my skin, and I could feel the Lava Clone's chakra pulsing through the field beneath my feet. She was close.
"Better hurry!" I jeered as I jumped up and sprinted away from another strike. "The longer you chase me, the more molten rock your people have to trip over. Oh wait, that's right, you're too busy burying them to care!"
His killing intent sharpened, a spear of focus that told me I had him exactly where I wanted him. Then the ground behind me rumbled, deep, guttural, alive.
A wall of heat slammed outward, the air shimmering as a shape began to rise from the molten rivers my clone had been quietly feeding this whole time. It started as a massive, glowing silhouette in the haze, then solidified into towering form. Over twenty meters of living lava, glowing veins of molten orange snaking through blackened, volcanic armor.
The creature's head was crowned with jagged horns like half-melted obsidian spears, curving slightly forward as if ready to gore anything that came close. Its face was a molten mask whith its features half-formed, twisted in an eternal snarl and eyes like open furnaces glaring down at the battlefield. Broad shoulders led to arms the size of tree trunks, each hand tipped with claws dripping molten rock that hissed and spat where it fell. The chest swelled with heat, glowing brighter at the core like a forge ready to erupt, and every step made the ground shudder, sending cracks racing through the field. Molten rivulets constantly streamed from its body, pooling and spreading like a creeping tide of fire. Every movement left a burning trail that chewed up the earth.
Rasa's gold faltered for the first time since he had appeared, swirling uncertainly as the shadow of the lava golem fell across him.
"Hey, Rasa!" I called, planting my feet between him and the molten titan, my tonfa humming in my hands. "You wanted me? Congratulations, you just got the full package!"
The lava golem's roar split the air like the cracking of the earth itself. Rasa's snarl deepened into something more primal as the Lava Golem lumbered forward. With a sharp gesture, he summoned a titanic Gold Dust Wave, the glittering surge cresting high enough to meet the golem head-on.
The two forces collided with a sound like a thousand smiths hammering molten metal, sparks of heat and gold flying in every direction. At first, the wave held… and then the edges began to sag as the golem's fingers clawed through; the gold softening and dripping into puddles at the golem's feet.
The golem did not stop. It leaned its molten frame into the gold dust, absorbing the dust like wet clay into a furnace. The gold hissed, dulled, and vanished beneath the roiling surface of the Lava Golem. He tried another wave, but it was another failure, only adding more to the body of the golem.
Rasa's brow furrowed as he unleashed smaller, concentrated projectiles like razor-edged lances of gold aimed at the golem's joints and chest. They struck true but simply sank into the molten mass, bubbles of gold appearing briefly before being swallowed whole.
"What...?!" His voice cracked with disbelief; the first hint of panic seeping in.
The Kazekage had likely never fought something he could not bury under his gold dust. With the sheer heat from the battlefield's molten rivers and the constant pressure from my Lava Clone, he was eating through his reserves faster than he ever had before, and there was no way for him to recover his Gold Dust once it was melted.
I saw the widening of his eyes and the subtle stiffening in his stance as he realized it. He was going to die if he did not flee.
Can't let that happen.
I darted forward, holstering my tonfa as I ran, and drew half a dozen shuriken from my pouch. Lightning chakra crackled along their edges, hissing like snakes in the rain, as they flew through the sky. They cut across the distance in arcs of yellow light, embedding themselves in his shoulders, thighs, and arm. Sparks jumped across his body, drawing sharp curses as the jolts forced his muscles to seize, breaking his flow of chakra for a fraction of a second.
The golem reared back, both massive arms raised, as its core glowed brighter than molten glass fresh from the forge. The next blow would smash through the last of his gold defenses and end this.
That was when the air snapped with new chakra threads.
From the left flank, ten shapes burst into motion, sleek, lethal, and unnervingly graceful. Chiyo's White Secret Technique puppets fanned out like predators in perfect formation, each one bristling with strange weapons. Their lacquered surfaces gleamed in the firelight as they closed in, and I recognized the legendary craftsmanship in an instant.
Three of them broke formation, rushing ahead of the others in a tight, triangular spread. Their joints rotated unnaturally, arms and weapons shifting into a formation I had only read about in old mission logs.
The Three Jewels Suction Crushing technique.
A vortex screamed to life between them, a spiral of invisible force that bent the air, tugging at clothing, weapons, even loose chunks of molten rock. The pull was vicious enough that the golem's next swing slowed mid-motion, the molten claws dragging sideways toward the trap.
Lava Clone fought it as its feet gouged trenches into the boiling ground, but the technique was designed to disrupt and disable even massive targets. The moment of delay was enough, and Rasa was able to pull away from the kill zone, gasping but still alive as his gold dust whirled protectively around him.
I skidded to a halt with my tonfa raised, my eyes snapping between the new arrival and my wounded quarry.
So… the famed Chiyo had entered the fray, and she was looking directly at me.