Chapter 414: Gaara and Rasa Meet Again
"Uchiha... Akira?"
Rasa's voice cracked, pitching upward into a shrill, unrecognizable rasp. The suffocating killing intent he had projected only a second ago shattered like fragile glass. In its place, a primal shudder violently seized his Edo Tensei body, radiating from the very core of his reincarnated soul.
'How is this possible?' Rasa's mind spun in chaotic circles. According to their flawless intelligence network, Uchiha Akira was supposed to be firmly planted behind the Hokage's desk in Konoha. Why was he here? Why was he hovering in the dead center of the Land of Fire, directly above the Daimyo's Residence?
"Damn it!"
When raw terror breaches its absolute limit, it twists into hysterical madness. Rasa abandoned all logic. His combat instincts hijacked his paralyzed mind, driving him toward the most violent, desperate reaction possible. He slammed his hands together, the impact echoing sharply.
"Magnet Release: Gold Dust Great Burial!"
The suffocating golden clouds of sand that had been bearing down on the Daimyo's Residence violently shifted course. Driven by Rasa's frantic chakra, tens of thousands of tons of hyper-dense Gold Dust churned and coalesced. The shimmering mass warped into a colossal, sun-blotting golden hand. It lunged toward Uchiha Akira, carrying enough crushing kinetic force to flatten a mountain.
Rasa poured every ounce of his reincarnated chakra into the strike, holding absolutely nothing back.
Yet, facing this apocalyptic golden hand, Uchiha Akira merely floated in the empty air. His expression remained entirely placid. He did not shift his stance. He did not even twitch to dodge.
Instead, the atmosphere around him warped. A catastrophic repulsive force erupted outward, using Akira as its absolute epicenter.
"Shinra... Tensei."
The words left his lips as a quiet, almost bored whisper.
The moment the seemingly indestructible golden hand collided with the invisible barrier of gravity, it detonated. There was no grinding stalemate. There was no dramatic suspense. The tens of thousands of tons of Gold Dust simply disintegrated into a fine, harmless mist.
Rasa's pupils contracted to pinpricks. Before his brain could even process the failure of his ultimate technique, the kinetic backlash of his own Gold Dust rebounded. The shockwave slammed into his chest with the force of a meteor. His Edo Tensei body shattered instantly, exploding into a chaotic storm of fluttering paper scraps and ash that rained down from the sky.
Even Mu, the legendary Second Tsuchikage floating a fair distance away, was caught in the devastating aftershock. The sheer pressure of the repulsive force caught his bandaged form, sending him tumbling backward through the air. He skidded across the sky for hundreds of meters, chakra flaring wildly around his feet before he finally managed to anchor himself.
"Is that it?" Akira tilted his head, watching the cloud of paper scraps slowly knitting back together in the distance to reform Rasa's body. A cold, mocking curve hooked the corner of Akira's mouth. "Is the so-called Fourth Kazekage truly limited to this pathetic level?"
A heavy silence fell over the battlefield. On the opposite side, the Second Tsuchikage stared fixedly at the Uchiha patriarch. Beneath his bandages, Mu's brow furrowed into deep, rigid lines.
'This kind of power...'Mu's analytical mind raced.'With a single, effortless blow, he completely crushed Rasa's full-power attack. And that invisible repulsive force... what exactly was that?' A cold sweat, impossible for an Edo Tensei but real in his mind, formed as stormy waves of disbelief crashed against his usually calm demeanor.
"You..." Rasa finally finished reassembling his paper-like flesh. His reincarnated face twisted into an extremely grim scowl, his dark sclera glaring at the man above. "How can you be here?"
Rasa forced the question out once more, his voice dripping with absolute denial. He refused to accept this reality. Their tactical plan had been utterly flawless.
Akira observed the two legendary Kage, their expressions painted with existential doubt, and let out a low, dry chuckle. "Are you really that surprised?"
He descended slowly from the sky, his dark robes snapping gently in the wind. His boots touched down, toes lightly tapping against the jagged edge of a protruding rock.
"You attacked the Twelfth Outpost on the northwest border, deliberately leaving behind obvious traces of Gold Dust and Dust Release," Akira began, his tone conversational, as if lecturing a pair of slow students. "You went as far as intentionally exposing your tracks, burning supplies to create the grand illusion of a large-scale, multi-front invasion. The entire purpose was a classic scheme to lure the tiger away from the mountain, wasn't it?"
He paced a single step forward, his crimson eyes locking onto Rasa. "You wanted to draw Konoha's main military forces, and specifically me, all the way out to the border. Then, fully using the infinite stamina of your Edo Tensei bodies—bodies that require zero rest, zero sleep, and zero supply lines—you moved. At absolute maximum speed, you bypassed our defenses and crossed half of the Land of Fire to strike directly at the capital."
Akira paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to suffocate them.
"Your goal was to assassinate the Daimyo, burn the capital to the ground, and sever Konoha's logistical and economic lifelines before our command center could even mount a reaction." A dark, amused glint flashed in his eyes. "Am I... right?"
Hearing Uchiha Akira casually dissect their entire master plan, down to the most granular tactical details, caused Rasa and Mu's expressions to shatter. The arrogant confidence of the reincarnated Kage vanished.
"You... you knew all along?" Rasa's voice carried a faint, humiliating tremor.
"Not only did I know," Akira replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of mock helplessness. A playful, dangerous smirk graced his features. "Did you honestly believe that simply masking your chakra signatures would hide you from Konoha's eyes? You severely underestimated the absolute control my village exercises over the entire Land of Fire today. From the very second your boots crossed our sovereign border, you were tracked."
Mu inhaled a sharp, phantom breath, forcibly wrestling down the spike of shock threatening to break his composure.
"Even if you deduced our plan," the Second Tsuchikage countered, his raspy voice tight. "The geographical distance from Konoha to the capital is vast. Even if you mobilized the exact second you received the border intelligence, it is physically impossible for you to have arrived faster than us!"
He and Rasa had sprinted day and night, pushing their immortal vessels to the absolute limit without a single second of rest.
"Speed?" Akira repeated the word as if tasting a particularly amusing joke. He shook his head slowly. "Speed is a biological limitation meant for people like you. For me, physical distance has absolutely no meaning."
He raised his right hand, his slender index finger reaching out to lightly tap the empty air. The moment his fingertip connected with nothingness, the fabric of reality warped. A pitch-black spatial vortex bloomed outward, swirling with terrifying gravitational energy.
"I am quite proficient in Space-Time Ninjutsu." Akira looked between the two stunned Kage, his smile widening into something predatory. "I have been sitting here for an entire day. I drank premium tea. I ate local snacks. I waited for you to finally arrive. In fact..." He let out a soft sigh. "I was starting to get a bit impatient."
Mu and Rasa stared at the swirling black void, utterly paralyzed by shock.
Mu, in particular, felt a cold dread wash over him. As the Second Tsuchikage, he was a veteran of the harshest eras. He had personally witnessed the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, slaughter battlefields with the Flying Thunder God Technique. But Tobirama's jutsu possessed a fatal flaw—it required the careful placement of formula coordinates in advance. What Uchiha Akira had just demonstrated required zero preparation. There were no seals, no kunai, no wind-up at all.
"How is this possible..." Rasa muttered to himself, the dark cracks on his Edo Tensei face seeming to deepen along with the despair in his eyes.
If this was true... then their grand, strategic 'surprise attack'and their brilliant'luring the tiger away' scheme were entirely worthless. They had been performing a ridiculous, pathetic clown show for Uchiha Akira's personal entertainment.
"Alright." Akira's tone shifted, the playful edge vanishing, replaced by cold authority. "Our little reminiscing session ends here."
He did not bother launching another attack at the fully reformed Rasa, nor did he spare a single glance for the hyper-vigilant Mu. Instead, he slowly raised his right hand once more. At his fingertip, the very fabric of space began to violently ripple.
"The timing is just right," Akira murmured. "There is an acquaintance of yours here who has been very eager to see you... Fourth Kazekage."
With a mere shift of Akira's will, the rippling air tore apart. A jagged, pitch-black spatial rift ripped open beside him out of thin air, howling with displaced wind.
A second later, two teenage figures tumbled out of the dark void, landing somewhat clumsily onto the rocky terrain.
"Master! Can you use a gentler way next time?!" Naruto Uzumaki hit the dirt, immediately sitting up to aggressively rub his sore backside. He glared up at Akira, shouting at the top of his lungs. "I was only halfway through my ramen!"
Beside the complaining blonde, a second figure landed. The red-haired boy, carrying a massive sand gourd strapped to his back, hit the ground with perfect balance. Heavy, dark circles framed his pale green eyes. Gaara stood firm the moment his sandals touched the rock. He calmly patted a few specks of dust from his dark clothes, his expression an unreadable mask of stoicism.
However, that calm shattered the instant Gaara raised his head.
His gaze locked onto the man hovering slightly above the ground, his Edo Tensei body still radiating the faint, metallic glimmer of gold sand. In those pale green eyes—eyes that had been as dead and tranquil as an ancient, dried-up well—a violent storm instantly surged.
"Fa...ther?"
Gaara's voice scraped out of his throat, dry and hollow. The single word carried a heavy, suffocating weight of disbelief. But beneath the shock, there was something else. A primal, deeply buried instinct of fear.
Although Gaara had changed immensely under Konoha's guidance, healing from the fractured monster he once was, the sight of Rasa ripped open old wounds. The suffocating shadows of his childhood—the endless, bloody assassination attempts ordered by his own flesh and blood, the cold, merciless words of rejection—flooded his mind. His muscles locked up, his breathing hitched, and his body betrayed him with an involuntary stress reaction.
A few paces away, Rasa froze.
The Fourth Kazekage, who had just finished stitching his paper-like flesh back together, stared at the red-haired teenager. The sheer impossibility of the reunion left him completely stunned.
"Gaara?"
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