Chiyo glanced at Baki, who frowned and nodded. "I'll stay here. Be careful, Granny."
Chiyo nodded back. "Fine. I'll take the other side."
With that, she vanished into the distance.
At the five designated spots, the five seals were found. Through the wireless headsets, the team coordinated and lifted all five talismans at once.
The instant they did, bursts of smoke erupted, and from each position appeared human-shaped figures identical to the ones who had removed the tags.
Only by defeating these mirrored copies could they succeed.
For now, every one of them was locked in combat with their own duplicate.
At the main entrance, Baki tore away the seal. The massive boulder sealing the cave exploded outward.
A shadow flashed out. Before Baki could react, a scorpion tail lanced through his torso.
The stinger dripped venom, and as it pierced him, black-red blood spattered the ground.
Sasori flicked his tail, flinging Baki's body aside.
Agony flooded Baki's limbs. In that moment, he finally understood why that young man had made him trade places with Chiyo.
Against an opponent like this, he had stood no chance.
"S-save me…" Blood dripped from his lips. He looked up toward the cliff, where the young shinobi stood against the wind. "Please—help me…"
He remembered—the man had once saved Kankurō. He could cure poison.
Shigeo's eyes stayed cold. "Why should I save you?"
Baki froze, mind spinning. "But you saved Kankurō!"
"Hah. I saved him because I liked him," Shigeo said flatly. "You? You annoy me."
He turned his gaze away, looking instead into the cave beyond.
Inside, Deidara and Sasori—hidden within his puppet Hiruko—had emerged through the dust. Both were watching him.
Shigeo had come here for Deidara.
He thought a talent like that shouldn't die under Akatsuki's hand—better to recruit him than waste him.
And if he could recover Gaara's body in the process, that would settle an old connection.
But what Shigeo didn't know was that while he considered recruiting Deidara, Deidara was thinking the same: to make him join Akatsuki.
They didn't know he was Shigeo.
They'd only guessed. After seeing him fight Kisame and Itachi without using Magnet Release, they dismissed the idea—Hyūga Shigeo was known for Jiton (Magnet Release).
This one relied on Mokuton (Wood Release) and taijutsu. So they judged him merely a powerful jōnin.
If they'd been sure of his identity, Pain would never have sent Deidara and Sasori to "recruit" him.
"Save me…" Baki gasped again, trembling. "I was wrong. Please, forgive me… save me!"
"You're noisy." Deidara's bored voice came from above.
He dropped a clay bomb from his bird. The explosion swallowed Baki whole—shredded to dust.
Deidara and Sasori—one in the air, one on the ground—stood revealed.
Both were artists, yet with utterly different philosophies: one sought fleeting beauty, the other eternal preservation.
One loved explosions; the other collected corpses.
Shigeo's eyes swept over them, then to Gaara's body lying deeper in the cave.
"I'll give you a choice," he said coldly. "Swear loyalty and live—or refuse, and die here."
Deidara laughed aloud. "Hear that, Sasori? Funniest thing I've heard all year! Someone thinks he can kill us!"
Sasori's hoarse voice replied, "Then we'll offer you a choice—surrender and live, or resist and die."
"My offer still stands," Shigeo said calmly. "Serve me, and never betray."
"Our offer's the same. Join Akatsuki. Serve and obey."
Sasori's tail rose, poison glinting blue; Deidara's clay bird swooped above.
Two attacks came as one—poisoned needles and aerial bombs closing the trap around him.
The valley thundered with explosions.
Smoke and dust blanketed the gorge.
But from the haze, Shigeo shot forward untouched.
"Fast!" Deidara shouted, eyes wide as the blur cut through the smoke.
Sasori reacted instantly. Hiruko's tail jetted forward in a sweeping strike, the tip glowing faintly blue—venom potent enough to kill in seconds.
Even a brush with it caused agony no antidote could fully relieve.
It was the same poison that had defeated Sand's own medics.
The air hissed with each strike as Sasori's tail lashed faster and faster, while Deidara's miniature clay birds swarmed from above, bursting in clouds of flame and shockwaves.
To an onlooker, Shigeo seemed completely pinned, surrounded by fire and iron rain.
But in truth, every motion was under his control.
Sasori's tail flickered up and down, launching volleys of hidden blades to seal his movements.
Above, Deidara's bombs strafed from every angle.
Shigeo weaved between them, hands flashing through seals. Jiton (Magnet Release) surged around him, shifting form within the dust kicked up by Deidara's blasts.
Particles of magnetic iron sand flowed outward—fine, dark, and unseen—clinging to the puppet's joints.
The gaps between puppet joints were Sasori's greatest weakness.
If the iron sand could wedge into those seams, it could seize the mechanism entirely.
That was why Sasori had never gone after Gaara himself.
Gaara's sand could destroy his puppets just by touch.
Against Gaara, victory would have been uncertain.
Deidara, on the other hand, fought from the sky.
Gaara's sand couldn't reach him, and it had no effect on explosive clay.
He could bombard freely, forcing Gaara to defend, then shift the battlefield to the air.
That was how, after two failed attempts, they finally captured him on the third.
"Boom!" Deidara shouted, detonating another volley straight at Shigeo.
Flames swallowed the canyon once more.
(End of Chapter)
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