Takeshi was shaking the wet sand, practically mud, off his pants with a grimace. The feeling of sand seeping into his clothes was unpleasant. Perhaps he would charge Rasa a couple of teeth for this.
Speaking of the devil.
A shadow enveloped Takeshi and his immediate surroundings. The young man turned just in time to see a sand tsunami rising, ready to swallow him.
Takeshi thought this would be a good a time as any to give a little display of real power.
His chakra flared up, causing an abrupt drop in temperature in his surroundings. His unique Kekkei Genkai was manifesting in the physical world for the first time in a long time.
The reason for Takeshi's confidence did not lie in his large chakra reserve, which, compared to people like Kisame or the Jinchūriki, was not that special. Nor did it reside in abstract things like a system, which he honestly would have liked to have.
No, Takeshi's confidence was based on the particularity of his Kekkei Genkai from his mother's side.
What happened when he came to this world to have this? He wasn't sure, as he was just a wandering soul traveling as fast as light back then, but from Kimiko's stories, he reached a conclusion:
He didn't just absorb the chakra of his mother's and father's pursuers, increasing his raw reserves from the start. No, Takeshi suspected there was something more.
He probably also absorbed the Kekkei Genkai of everyone who died in his path. That would explain why he got his father's Dark Release.
And above all, it would explain why his Ice Release was so different from his mother's.
Without hand signs, without a specific movement of chakra in his internal networks, without thinking too much about the amount of Yin and Yang, Takeshi simply willed his chakra to do something, and it did.
A sudden wave of cold spread outwards, directly impacting the gold sand that was about to ram into him.
The drop in temperature was so absolute that the sand froze in an instant, covering itself with a layer of glacial ice that continued to spread for tens of meters, interfering with the battleground of his clones and causing a shock to the Suna-Nin.
Takeshi not only had the standard Ice Release. His power had a superior application, unique to him.
What he imagined was that by absorbing the same Kekkei Genkai from several high-level users, his own Ice Release underwent an evolution, one that elevated its level.
He decided to call this new application Cold Release (Liberación de Frío).
Takeshi jumped over the frozen sand wave, looking at a stupefied Rasa on the other side of the attack. He smirked, stomping the ground once.
Tremors shook the frozen tsunami, and to Rasa's horror, the ice rippled without cracking, molding his own gold sand into an endless number of gigantic spears pointing in his direction.
And the spears were fired.
Rasa raised his shields again, this time compressing them to the maximum to resist the piercing attacks and perhaps break the ice enveloping his own sand.
But it didn't turn out as he expected. The spears barely penetrated a meter into his walls, but the ice, far from breaking, began to expand along his barriers, effectively freezing his limited amount of gold dust.
That was the disadvantage of the Magnet Release. It wasn't that he could manipulate the sand with his mind. He needed to mix the sand with some metal to produce the movement.
And Rasa didn't have unlimited gold dust to throw around the entire area.
The Kazekage tried to retract his sand, but the ice had already trapped half of his walls, which also began to be molded into spears, adding to the already overwhelming number of them.
A sea of man-sized spikes floated in the air, surrounding an area of almost two hundred meters and enclosing the Suna-Nin and the Kazekage himself in its maw.
A Shunshin could get them out of the predicament, but Rasa had a distance limit for manipulating his gold sand. And above all, a Kage shouldn't run from a child, much less in front of his men.
Distracted by the threatening spears above their heads, the Kazekage didn't notice that his legs were being encased by the ice until it was too late.
—Kazekage-Sama!— some Suna-Nin shouted, trying to move to save their leader, but their feet slipped on the spot and they fell stupidly.
A thin layer of incredibly slippery ice had formed imperceptibly right beneath them without any of them noticing.
Back with Rasa, the Kage weaved hand signs to unleash a fireball at his own legs, but a sudden surge of bluish energy struck him from behind, snatching the chakra he had put into his technique.
As a result, no blaze emerged from his lips, but rather a puff of smoke and residual chakra, similar to a fart.
—Meiton!?— he exclaimed internally, enraged because he hadn't had the time to study the effects of that mysterious Element.
Before he could think of anything else, a fist encased in a layer of ice slammed into his temple, instantly darkening his vision.
****************************
By the time Rasa opened his eyes again, he found himself tied to an ice pillar that sent shivers down his spine, freezing his flesh.
A slight shift in his posture caused a surge of sharp pain, which almost tore a scream from his throat, but he restrained himself. He wouldn't give his opponent the satisfaction of hearing him scream in agony.
He looked down, finding his feet bare and stuck to an apparently spherical surface made of ice. Around him, all the shinobi he brought to that ambush, mostly elites, lay unconscious in the sand, some of them dead.
Rasa gritted his teeth, a low growl resonating in the place, half pain, half frustration.
He had been defeated by a wandering brat. No, not defeated, he had been humiliated, for he was still alive, and so were several of his shinobi.
Sunagakure would become the laughingstock of the world if this were ever exposed.
—Kazekage-Sama!— came a worried voice from one side, and Rasa saw some Anbu appear with shunshin around him, their breaths ragged and their stances tense.
—What are you looking at!? Untie me now!— the man bellowed, outraged by the ineptitude of his village.
—Y-yes, Kazekage-Sama!— an Anbu said clumsily, helping Rasa to remove his restraints and get off the strange ice platform, leaving blood and some pieces of skin on it. He ignored it.
He had received worse wounds in the war.
Rasa turned to the pillar he was tied to, his frown caused by anger and the stinging pain in the soles of his feet in contact with the desert sand.
After a few seconds, his face twisted into a grimace of true fury and red color washed over his entire face.
—H-how did you find me?— he spat slowly, his lips trembling.
The Anbu awkwardly looked at each other, none wanting to be the one to answer that question. Rasa turned to one with bloodshot eyes, and the poor shinobi had no choice but to speak.
—W-well... W-we received a s-scroll with a message for you. And a ph-ph-photograph— the Anbu stammered.
—...What photograph?— Rasa interrogated, his teeth tightly clenched and his chakra flaring, impregnating the air with an almost unbearable heaviness for the Anbu.
The Anbu pointed with a trembling hand at the pillar. —A ph-photo of you... There.
Rasa turned back to the spherical-based pillar and unleashed a whirlwind of wind against the structure, attempting to pulverize it into fragments.
The Anbu were forced to step back from their Kage's fury to avoid being caught in the blades.
After about five seconds, Rasa stopped, breathing heavily. And to add fuel to the fire, the large ice penis he had been tied to remained erect in all its glory.
—Destroy this thing!!— Rasa ordered, shouting as he turned to march back to Sunagakure.