The opponent's speed was high, which drove him a bit mad. On top of that, Sasori's position was cramping his style, so he shouted, "Scorpion-dono, can you move out of the way? I want to launch an all-directional attack!"
By now Sasori could feel Hiruko's joints starting to stiffen. It seemed to be the effect of Jiton (Magnet Release). He needed to reflow chakra and recalibrate Hiruko's internals. "Fine, I'm pulling back," he said.
The two cooperated smoothly in battle. They bickered at times over the philosophy of art, but it never hindered their teamwork.
A burst of explosions rolled out. When the smoke cleared, Sasori's figure had vanished—he had burrowed underground, sliding through the soil to vacate the field. He would regroup, reset, then rejoin the fight.
Shigeo temporarily lost his window to pressure Sasori. His eyes went cold as he looked to the sky.
"Brat, I'm in a good mood today, so I'll allow you to report your name. Say it. After you die I can at least carve it on your grave."
Perched atop a clay bird, Deidara spoke with a smile. His spiky blond hair flared into a ponytail that fluttered in the wind. On one of his hands, the mouth in his palm was chewing clay.
"Relax. I won't be the one dying. You might, Deidara." Shigeo clenched, and a wave of chakra detonated from his body. A shock ring blasted out for several hundred meters, scouring everything within the radius until nothing remained.
The boom wasn't deafening. It was a hollow thud. But the power was real.
Deidara, riding his clay bird, widened his eyes and raised an arm to shield against the flying leaves and twigs the shockwave hurled up. He bared his teeth and yelled, "Compared to explosions, nothing in this world surpasses me! Do you even understand art? Only my explosions are the most perfect art in the shinobi world. What do you call that—kicking up sand and pebbles? No killing power at all!"
With that, the bird banked on his command and dove at Shigeo. A mid-sized clay bird split off and fell. Its beak gaped wide as it lunged to bite Shigeo.
Shigeo had never seen this specific trick. He knew Naruto's story well and had watched Deidara's fights, but he'd never seen him feed people to birds.
And could a bird like that even bite him? Ridiculous.
Shigeo pivoted aside, evading the bird. Lightning chakra flashed into his hand—Raiton (Lightning Release)—and in one bound he chopped toward the bird. To his surprise, before his lightning ever touched it, the bird unraveled like loose sand, shifting shape and sluicing onto the ground as if it were flowing dunes.
A heartbeat later, his shoes and pants were swarming with tiny clay spiders—the bird had fragmented into scuttling bombs. They moved fast. Some tunneled under his clothes. Some had already crawled up his neck.
"Didn't see that coming, did you? Today I'll show you what a human bomb is!" Deidara cackled from above.
An explosion boomed across the ground, blooming a thick screen of smoke. Deidara shook his head slightly. "My art is perfect, but the opponent seems weak. Blown up after just one exchange? Boring. Akatsuki doesn't need dead weight."
By then Sasori had already surfaced. In less than a minute he'd upgraded his puppet.
This time his puppet would fear neither Jiton (Magnet Release) nor Konan's paper. He'd joined Akatsuki thanks to Konan's recruitment, and that battle back then had been one of the rare epics of his life.
He first met Konan in a wilderness of sand. She appeared in person to invite him to Akatsuki. He refused, and they fought.
Back then, Konan used Shikigami no Mai (Dance of the Shikigami) to jam the joints of his Sandaime Kazekage puppet—thin paper blades wedged into the mechanisms and crippled it. From that day, he researched ways to keep puppets from being disabled by fine particulate materials.
Only two years ago did he succeed. The method burned chakra like a furnace, and his own reserves limited the duration. Still, he felt this young man wouldn't be as troublesome as Gaara.
Give him half the span of a stick of incense and he was confident he could take him down. He'd prepped everything and was about to re-enter the field when he realized Deidara had already turned the man into a human bomb and blown him to soul ash.
"What are you doing? Pein wants him in Akatsuki. And you killed him?" Sasori said. He didn't care about the man's cause of death as much as he hated the implication: someone who had forced him into a passive position had been killed by Deidara.
Did that mean that in some respects he was beneath Deidara?
Absolutely not. He would never accept that.
"Heh. If you can't catch him, I will. If you can't kill him, I can. What, Scorpion-dono, you got a problem? Seems your 'enduring preservation' art isn't the true art. My 'fleeting flash' of explosive beauty is. From now on, you should follow my lead."
"Bastard!" Sasori snapped his body around. From within Hiruko, a storm of poisoned needles fired out like arrows through bamboo—dense as a downpour.
Deidara paled. He'd been poisoned by Sasori once. If he hadn't begged and wheedled until Sasori spared him and handed him the antidote, he'd be dead.
"Oi, oi—Scorpion, aniki? Old master? I'll call you '-sama,' okay? We're arguing a viewpoint here! How can you try to kill me for that?"
He hunched down behind the clay bird. Hundreds of needles thudded into the clay. It discolored at once. The bird lost lift and plunged, seconds from detonating.
Deidara hurriedly chewed out another bird and bolted, shouting as he flew, "Okay, okay, truce!"
He hadn't finished the sentence when a chill pushed through the air. A gray figure flashed into being right in front of him. A blade of light flared. The figure spoke: "Don't you love the art of sudden flashes? Here's one for you."
Before Deidara could react, the bright edge smashed into him. Searing pain crashed over him with a sizzling crackle.
Raiton (Lightning Release). And it was the kid he'd just "blown up." He wasn't dead.
What had exploded was only a Mokuton Bunshin (Wood Clone).
"Aniki, help me!" Deidara plummeted toward the ground. A clay bird dove and barely scooped him up.
If Sasori hadn't gone after him with needles and forced him to focus everything on evasion, he wouldn't have been ambushed like this.
(End of Chapter)
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