BOOM
The explosion came without warning — something dropping from the clouds and detonating right atop the ravine floor, sending a plume of dirt and flame skyward. Sukuna was already gone before the blast reached him, Kamui swallowing him out of existence a heartbeat before impact. Yugito, mid-transformation, took the brunt of it directly, though in her Two-Tails form the explosion did little more than singe fur and flame.
Kiyomi, watching from a safe distance, wasn't effected however, was startled at the sudden bombardment.
"Who the fuck did that ?"
From the smoke above, a massive clay bird descended, two figures perched atop it in matching black cloaks lined with red clouds.
"Yo. Didn't expect company already, hm," the blond one drawled, hopping down with a lazy grin, a strange mouth on his palm working absently.
"Who the fuck are you ?" Kiyomi asked, already on the edge. First since they were intruders to the fight and second they drop a bomb on her darling, that more thane enough to put them in her bad books.
"They are the Akatsuki," Sukuna said, tone flattening with sudden interest.
"Akatsuki ?" Kiyomi blinked, but then the memories of running into Itachi and Kisame came to her mind, the day when real Izumi died.
They were wearing the similar clothes. Yeah, it was now coming back to her.
"Oh you know about us, seems like we are getting popular eh Sasori."
"Shut up Deidara. I told you to not to call me by that name." Sasori shouted, currently in the getup of third Kazekage, his entire disguise was rendered useless because of this idiot.
Sukuna just watch them, mood complex. Wondering why this early. Moving against a jinchūriki mid-battlefield, no less.
'What's going on with the Akatsuki. Is this because Obito is no longer there to look over Pain or something ?'
"Anyways" Deidara's grin widened. "If you brats don't mind, we'll just be taking her and—"
"No," Sukuna cut in simply, already recalculating. Three targets now. He found himself almost looking forward to it, the fight until now was honestly unsatisfying. He knew he wouldn't have much fun but it was even worse than what he anticipated it to be.
So he planned to take all three of them together, at could be fun right… or at least that what he thought until both Kiyomi and Naoya, arriving back from the tree line, made their objections known loudly enough to end that plan before it started.
"I want ugly one," Kiyomi said instantly, already summoning liquid metal to her fingertips.
"I'll take the blond," Neji added, Byakugan already active, eyes flicking toward Deidara with open hunger.
Sukuna pursed his lips, though he didn't argue. He kind of did hoard the entire fight earlier.
"Fine. I'll deal with the cat." He tossed something toward Naoya without looking — his own lightning-conducting gloves, spinning through the air. "You'll need those. He doesn't do close range."
Naoya caught them without breaking eye contact with his opponent, sliding them on with a satisfied smirk. "Generous of you."
"I'll be needing those back once you're done with that bastard, you better not break them."
"Yeah yeah…" Neji grinned.
And then the ravine split into three separate battles at once.
-x-
"Sigh, and here I was being really nice and letting you Konoha idiots just walk off…"
Deidara didn't waste time on words after that, already molding clay in his palm, launching a swarm of miniature clay birds skyward that detonated the instant Neji closed distance. Neji weaved through the blast radius with Byakugan-guided precision, curse energy flaring around each palm strike he threw at empty air where Deidara had been a half-second earlier.
"Fast, hm," Deidara noted, retreating higher onto his clay bird, raining down more explosives from above. "But you've got nothing to answer this with, do you?"
He wasn't wrong — not at first. Neji's Gentle Fist was built for close-range precision, and Deidara had no intention of allowing that range to close. Clay spiders skittered across the ground, clay centipedes burrowed beneath the dirt, all of it detonating in overlapping waves meant to box him in with no clean path forward.
But then lightning crackled around Naoya's fist as he pour his curse energy into the gloves Sukuna gave him, and Deidara's grin faltered slightly.
"You sure you're from Konoha, not Kumo ?"
Naoya didn't bother responding. He simply moved, faster now, guided by eyes that saw every twitch of clay before it fully formed, lightning-charged palms cutting clean through explosive constructs before they could detonate, disarming them with contact alone.
The lightning wasn't as strong as what Sasuke's lightning would have been in the story when he fought against Deidara. However, this Deidara was also not that old, he was weaker and have just joined akatsuki. Not to mention, Neji was fast, really fast.
Byakugan mapped Deidara's chakra flow with brutal clarity — precisely which points fed the clay's explosive properties, precisely where to strike to short them out entirely.
"You talk too much for someone running out of tricks," Neji said coolly, closing the gap at last as Deidara's clay bird dipped too low, dodging a barrage of explosive clay in a blur before slamming a lightning-charged palm directly into the beast's wing.
The explosion that followed sent both of them tumbling from the sky, though Neji recovered first, landing in a crouch while Deidara crashed hard several meters away, coughing dust and blood.
"Tenketsu," Naoya said simply, standing over him. "You're finished."
"As if, you wanna see tricks, then watch carefully"
And all of the sudden an giant deidara was form in the battlefiled.
Neji scoffed, just size, no substance, or at leat that what he thought when Giant Deidara's body started to ballooned.
Neji's eyes narrowed, Byakugan flare up and he saw what was going on inside the giant clone, only to find multiple small explosive chain reactions was taking place inside.
And that when the giant clone brust. He was half expecting another explosion, a giant one if aything, but nothing.
However, his Byakugan saw it clearly. Multiple tiny bombs were release in the air, and they were exploding everything in a molecular level of anything they come in contact with.
"Interesting." Neji could of course outrun that chakra cloud which erupted after the clone burst, throwing Kami knows how many small moluclear side bombs.
However, he has a better option.
"Let see what those little bombs of yours do if movement is not longer possible." He grinned.
"Domain Expansion."
-x-
"You should have left when you had the chance." Sasori's puppets unfolded from his back in a mechanical cascade — ten at once, blades and poison-tipped senbon extending from joints that clicked with eerie precision.
Kiyomi's grin only sharpened. "Nope… I rather have you tell me where is my big brother. Itachi Uchiha, I you know him right."
That only narrowed Sasori's eyes. He didn't answer of course, just attacked.
She met the first wave with constructed discs, liquid metal spinning off her fingertips to intercept blades before they reached her, deflecting strikes with practiced ease.
Sometimes even she has to agree that Sharingan was an excellent tool to have.
But Sasori's puppets weren't singular threats — they moved in coordinated waves, poison mist hissing from joints, blades striking from angles designed to overwhelm rather than duel.
One clipped her shoulder before she caught it, poison already burning through her bloodstream the moment contact was made.
"Tch." She staggered half a step, remove remove the metal but the poison took effect almost immediately. She felt her vision blur just for a second.
"That's new." Kiyomi had extensive knowledge of posion, another way to of her fighting when Yorozu wasn't the part of the equation.
However, this fast acting posion, she has seen it for the first time.
"Konoha poisons don't work like mine," Sasori's voice came from somewhere behind his puppet lines, cold and clinical. "You won't be moving for much longer."
Kiyomi smile almost turn ferreal at that, despite the burn spreading through her arm, constructing another wave of discs, this time laced with enough force to shatter two puppets outright. But for every one destroyed, another simply repositioned, relentless, exhausting — ten puppets acting as one coordinated organism against a single opponent.
"Tch… annoying. Don't you have anything else." She complained, getting no reply in return. Winning mattered to Sasori, not enjoying the fight.
Her breathing grew heavier, poison slowing her reflexes just enough that a blade caught her side next, shallow but bleeding freely.
"Alright." Her grin didn't fade, even as her vision blurred. "Guess there is no other way. I wish to use this one for a long time anyways."
Mangekyō bled crimson across her eyes, patterns spiraling into focus, and the space just ahead of her twisted inward — a pinprick of absolute dark, tearing wider by the second.
"Amanozako." Black Hole opened at her command, and the nearest three puppets simply ceased to exist, pulled apart at a level beyond physical resistance, swallowed whole into a void that gave nothing back.
Sasori's tone shifted, sharp with sudden alarm. "That like Itachi's..."
"Yup… so mind telling me where my dear brother is, I wanna kill him," Kiyomi said, breath ragged from both the poison and the Sharingan burning, expanding the void wider, catching two more puppets before Sasori yanked the rest back out of range with practiced caution.
He was more careful now, no longer treating her as simply another genin to be worn down by attrition. But careful cost him tempo, and Kiyomi pressed the advantage despite the poison still working through her system, liquid metal forming into a spear that punched clean through another puppet's core, dropping it lifeless to the ground.
"Five left," she noted, swaying slightly, one hand pressed to her bleeding side. "Feeling talkative yet?"
Sasori said nothing, retreating further into the tree line, puppets regrouping around him in tighter formation — no longer confident this was a fight he could win through sheer numbers alone.
Kiyomi was running out of time though, she also will need time to make an antidote later for the poison, she can't waste time here.
'Guess I can't get it out of him…tch…'
"If you won't speak then you're useless to me…"
"Domain Expansion."
xXx
A/N : Not much to say, I sometimes have to rush because of time, I wish to add more details to this fights but couldn't because of time issue, sorry.
"Thank you Very Much for All Your Support"
If you want to read up to 20+ Chapters in advance, check my Patreon on
Patreon.com/Kamidemond