Chapter 452: Raikage vs Gaara
But before Moi could execute his next hand seal, his body locked rigidly in mid-air. The desperate resolve burning in his eyes had not even begun to translate into physical action before his pupils dilated in sheer terror. A short distance behind him, a Special Jonin from the Yamanaka Clan stood with his fingers locked in the clan's signature Mind Transfer seal, cold sweat beading heavily at his temples as he strained to hold the enemy in place.
Uchiha Honoka did not waste a single fraction of a second. Her jet-black longblade sliced through the air, tracing a flawless, deadly arc. A geyser of crimson erupted into the night. Moi's severed head sailed high into the air, his facial muscles still frozen in a twisted mask of absolute shock. A heartbeat later, his headless corpse collapsed against the dirt with a heavy, wet thud.
With a sharp flick of her wrist, Honoka snapped the blood from her blade. Her crimson Sharingan spun lazily in the darkness, sweeping the surrounding forest with cold, calculating precision. There was no further resistance. The remaining Kumogakure shinobi had long since been swallowed alive by the Aburame Clan's suffocating insect tide. Even their final, agonizing screams were entirely drowned out by the deafening, relentless droning of millions of parasitic bugs.
"Clean up the area," Honoka ordered, her voice devoid of emotion as she sheathed her sword. "Keep hunting down any remaining stragglers who dared to slip into the Land of Fire."
Miles away, within the heavily guarded Konoha forward camp.
"Pervy Sage!"
The furious roar violently shook the dust loose from the canvas roof of the command tent. Uzumaki Naruto slammed both of his palms down onto the sprawling tactical map, rattling the wooden table beneath it.
"How much longer are we supposed to just sit here and wait?!" Naruto demanded, his blue eyes blazing with frustration. "They're holed up in their massive turtle shell of a base! Are we seriously just going to stare at them across the border until we die of old age?"
Jiraiya winced, aggressively rubbing his ringing ears before letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
"Idiot Naruto," the Sannin muttered, shaking his head. "This is what grown-ups call a strategic stalemate. Their Iron Wall fortifications are incredibly solid. Launching a rash, head-on assault right now plays perfectly into their hands."
"Then we just smash that stupid wall to pieces!" Naruto argued, clenching his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white. "If Gaara and I team up, and we throw Sasuke into the mix, we can easily—"
"Let him go."
A calm, distinctly icy voice sliced right through Naruto's heated rant, chilling the air inside the tent. Uchiha Fugaku, who had been resting silently in the corner with his arms crossed and eyes closed, slowly lifted his heavy eyelids.
"Fugaku?" Jiraiya frowned deeply, his posture stiffening. "Now is not the time to encourage impulsive behavior."
"It is not impulse," Fugaku replied smoothly. The Uchiha Patriarch rose to his feet, his dark robes shifting as he approached the tactical map with measured, predatory steps. "A blade left unused in its scabbard will only grow rusty."
He cast a brief, assessing glance toward Gaara and Sasuke, both of whom stood silently in the shadows of the tent.
"The current deadlock suits that old fox Ōnoki just fine. He wants to bleed our patience dry. We will not give him the satisfaction." Fugaku's gaze sharpened, radiating that distinct, suffocating arrogance inherent to the Uchiha elite. "Send an elite vanguard squad to provoke them. Not a massive army. One hundred men will be more than enough."
"A hundred?!" Jiraiya's eyes bulged in utter disbelief. "Fugaku, have you lost your mind? Across that valley sits an allied army of tens of thousands, commanded by the Raikage and the Tsuchikage in person!"
"Exactly." Fugaku's lips curled into a chilling, razor-thin smile. "Sending a mere hundred men looks like absolute suicide. More, it looks like a blatant insult. With his notoriously explosive temper, the Fourth Raikage will never stand for such disrespect. Once they break formation and come out to crush our vanguard..."
He shifted his piercing gaze back to the three youths.
"It will serve as the perfect whetstone for our sharpest blades. Naruto. Sasuke. Gaara. You three will lead the vanguard. Jiraiya and I will hold the rear and manage the fallout. Remember this. This mission is not about racking up a body count. It is about seizing the momentum of this war. I want you to march up to their impenetrable fortress and slam their arrogant faces directly into the dirt."
Naruto blinked, processing the aggressive strategy. Then, pure, unadulterated delight flooded his features. He slammed a fist into his open palm, a feral grin splitting his face.
"Now that is exactly what I wanted to hear!!"
Beside him, Sasuke let out a quiet, arrogant snort. A dangerous battle-lust blazed within his dark eyes as his hand instinctively drifted to the hilt of his chokuto.
"A perfect opportunity to test the sharpness of my blade."
Gaara simply crossed his arms over his chest, his expression as impassive as the desert dunes.
"I have no objections."
Half an hour later, the desolate wasteland stretching between the two massive armies became the stage for sheer audacity. A biting, killing wind swept across the barren terrain, kicking up plumes of yellow sand. Exactly one hundred elite Konoha shinobi, led by the monstrous trio of Naruto, Sasuke, and Gaara, swaggered out from the safety of their forward camp. Without a single ounce of hesitation, they marched in a tight, disciplined formation straight toward the enemy's towering steel-wall defenses.
High atop a watchtower within the Allied Shinobi Forces camp, a Kumogakure sentry aggressively rubbed his eyes, utterly refusing to believe the sight unfolding through his binoculars.
"Is that... Konoha? Just that few? Have they completely lost their minds?!"
The alarming report shot through the chain of command, reaching the central headquarters in a matter of seconds.
Inside the command center, the Fourth Raikage, Ay, shattered the porcelain teacup in his massive grip, grinding the shards into fine dust.
"A hundred?!" he bellowed, his voice shaking the very foundations of the tent. "Who the hell does Uchiha Fugaku think he is mocking?!"
Thick, angry veins bulged violently across Ay's dark forehead. A blinding aura of crackling blue Lightning Release Chakra erupted from his muscular frame, scorching the floorboards beneath his boots.
"If those arrogant Konoha brats want to die so badly, I will gladly oblige them!! Pass down the order! Move out! I am going to crush these clueless little bugs with my own two hands!!"
Floating a few feet off the ground, the Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, knit his bushy eyebrows together in deep suspicion.
"Raikage, calm yourself. Beware of a trap. Fugaku is not a fool."
"Trap my ass!" Ay roared back, the lightning armor around his body flaring with blinding intensity. "What kind of pathetic trap can a mere hundred men possibly spring against us?! In the face of absolute, overwhelming power, all of their little schemes are nothing but bad jokes!"
With that final declaration, the Raikage bent his knees and launched himself upward. He violently burst straight through the reinforced roof of the command tent, transforming into a devastating bolt of blue lightning that tore across the sky, racing directly toward the battlefield.
"Sigh..." Ōnoki exhaled a long, weary breath, watching the gaping hole in his ceiling smoke. "Kitsuchi."
"Here, Lord Tsuchikage," a deep voice answered.
"Rally the heavy infantry troops for immediate support," Ōnoki ordered, rubbing his aching lower back. "Do not let that muscle-brained hothead stumble into a disaster."
"Yes, Father!" Kitsuchi, a mountain-sized Iwagakure shinobi, rumbled in acknowledgment before rushing out to mobilize the forces.
Back at the center of the battlefield, the suffocating tension froze the very air in place.
Suddenly, a thunderous, ear-splitting impact shattered the silence. The earth violently cracked open, spider-webbing outward for dozens of yards. A savage, hulking figure wrapped in a blinding shroud of lightning slammed into the dirt a mere fifty meters away from Naruto's vanguard group. Razor-sharp stone shards flew in every direction like shrapnel.
As the thick cloud of dust finally cleared, the Fourth Raikage's tower-like, muscular frame stood revealed, radiating pure, unadulterated hostility.
"Konoha brats!" Ay's voice boomed like a physical shockwave. High-voltage lightning violently crackled and snapped around his body, scorching the earth beneath his feet. "A pathetic handful of rotten potatoes dares to march up and provoke me?!"
His murderous intent surged outward like a suffocating tsunami. It was the raw, unfiltered pressure of a Kage, heavy enough to force ordinary men to their knees.
"Rotten potatoes?" Naruto scoffed, stepping forward without a single shred of fear. He planted his feet firmly, glaring up at the towering giant. "Listen here, big guy. Just because you're loud doesn't mean you're actually tough! Today, we're here to smash that pathetic turtle shell of yours right open!"
Ay's temper officially exploded. He stamped his foot down.
The ground instantly cratered under the sheer, terrifying force of his physical strength. In a flash of blue light, he vanished from sight entirely. A fraction of a second later, he reappeared directly above Naruto, his massive arms raised high to deliver a devastating, bone-crushing slam.
"Liger Bomb!!"
The strike was impossibly fast, carrying an overwhelming, catastrophic level of physical power.
"Shield of Sand!"
A massive tidal wave of dense, chakra-infused golden sand violently erupted from the earth, surging upward to form a tremendously thick, dome-like barrier directly over Naruto's head.
A deafening, muffled crash echoed across the wasteland as the Raikage's tremendous physical might collided with the absolute defense. Deep, jagged cracks instantly spider-webbed across the surface of the sand shield, but miraculously, the barrier held firm.
A few paces away, Gaara stood with his hands locked in a precise seal, a miniature hurricane of golden sand swirling aggressively around his feet. His pale, sea-green eyes stared blankly at the Kage.
"Your opponent is me."
Ay landed heavily on the cracked earth, aggressively shaking the loose grains of sand from his bruised fists. His furious gaze locked onto the red-haired youth.
"The One-Tail Jinchuriki, huh?" Ay sneered, his lightning armor flaring brighter. "Fine! I'll beat you into a bloody pulp first!!"
Lightning Oppression Horizontal!
Ay transformed into an even faster, blinding thunderbolt, shooting horizontally across the battlefield straight at Gaara's neck.
"Spread out!!" Naruto roared at the top of his lungs.
The hundred-man elite Konoha squad instantly scattered like a flock of birds, breaking formation just as the first wave of the Allied Shinobi vanguard charged out from the fortress to clash with them. The sound of clashing steel and roaring ninjutsu instantly filled the air.
"If you want to play..." Gaara's face remained utterly stone-cold, devoid of any human warmth. An endless, suffocating torrent of dense sand gushed violently from the massive gourd strapped to his back, rising into the sky like a waking desert beast. "Then I will play."
He raised both of his hands, his chakra flaring wildly as the earth itself began to tremble and shift beneath the Raikage's feet.
"Sand Waterfall Funeral! Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral!"
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