Suna – The Kazekage's Tower – Dawn Watch
The desert wind carried a strange scent—not just heat and dry stone, but the distant, acrid tang of burnt clay and oil. On the highest balcony of the Suna tower, Gaara stood motionless, his eyes closed. The sand in his gourd beside him shifted restlessly, not at his command, but at the stirring of the beast within.
Shukaku's voice, a grating whisper in his mind: They come. The little clay-bird and the dead-doll man. I can smell their nasty chakra. The doll-man… he smells like family. Dead, angry family.
Gaara: (Internally) Sasori of the Red Sand. Your creator.
Shukaku: Hmph. He made pretty toys out of my jailers. Can't wait to crush them.
Gaara's eyes snapped open, teal orbs sharp and cold. Below, the village of Suna was a basin of muted colors in the pre-dawn light, its citizens sleeping under the uneasy peace of the new coalition's sensor barriers and seismic arrays. But on the horizon, at the very edge of the defensive grid, two pinpricks of foreign chakra flared like malevolent stars.
Baki, materializing at his side, followed his gaze. "The perimeter sensors just flagged them. Two targets. High chakra reserves. Matching Akatsuki signatures from the bingo books. It's them."
Gaara: "Sound the general alert. Stage One defense. Evacuate the eastern and northern outer districts toward the central shelters. Do not let panic spread. This is what we prepared for."
Baki nodded and vanished. A moment later, a deep, resonant gong began to sound from the tower, not a frantic clangor, but a steady, purposeful beat that rolled across the clay rooftops. Suna, a village hardened by scarcity and war, began to move with grim efficiency. Shinobi emerged from barracks, civilians shepherded children toward reinforced basements, and the hidden coalition forces stationed within the village readied themselves.
Temari landed on the balcony, her giant fan already strapped to her back. Kankuro followed, his movements unusually fluid, the puppets Karasu and Kuroari already hovering at his shoulders like silent guardians.
Temari: "They're making no attempt at stealth. They want us to see them coming."
Kankuro: "Arrogant bastards. The barrier's up?"
Gaara: "The localized Emotion-Sensing Barrier is active. The Seismic Weaves are armed. But these are not enemies who rely on stealth or subterfuge. They are a hammer. Prepare for the blow."
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The Northern Bluffs – The Prologue to Annihilation
Perched on a rocky outcrop five kilometers from Suna's outer wall, Deidara grinned like a child on his birthday. He carefully kneaded a large lump of grey clay with his mouth-hands, shaping it with artistic fervor.
Deidara: "A new dawn, a new canvas, yeah! The flat, geometric boringness of this sandbox is just begging for a splash of explosive art, un!"
Sasori, encased within his Hiruko puppet, stood immobile beside him, his voice a dry, dispassionate rasp from within the armored shell. "Sentimentality over topography is a waste of focus. Our objective is chaos, a breach, and forcing the One-Tail to the surface. Your 'art' is merely the tool."
Deidara: "Tsk. You have no soul, Sasori. No appreciation for the fleeting, beautiful moment of Katsu! That's what makes it art!"
He finished the sculpture—a giant, elaborate bird of prey shaped from C1 clay. With a flourish, he tossed it into the air. It grew, wings spreading wide, and with a pulse of his chakra, it shot towards Suna, not as a bomb, but as a scout.
From the Suna walls, a squad of long-range sensor-nin saw it coming.
Sensor Captain: "Incoming aerial construct! Non-living, chakra-signature attached! It's a scout! Archers!"
A volley of chakra-imbued arrows streaked skyward. The clay bird weaved, impossibly agile, before detonating in a blinding flash of light and concussive force high above the walls. No damage, but the sound was colossal, a thunderclap that echoed across the sleeping village, shattering windows in the outer districts.
Deidara: "The opening note, un! Let's see them scramble!"
Sasori: "Enough preamble. Begin the overture."
Deidara's grin turned manic. He plunged both hands into his pouches, pulling out massive quantities of clay. He worked feverishly, his mouth-hands a blur. From the clay erupted a swarm of smaller birds and a dozen massive, spider-like constructs. C2. This was no scout.
Deidara: "C2 Dragon!" he shouted, and the clay morphed, coalescing into a truly monstrous, multi-headed serpentine dragon that took to the sky with a roar of displaced air.
Simultaneously, Sasori's Hiruko shell split open. From within, the legendary Third Kazekage puppet floated out, its body gleaming with magnetic iron sand already weeping from its pores like black blood. But Sasori wasn't done. With a fluid, almost reverent motion, he unsealed a second puppet. This one wore different armor, its face proud and severe, its hands configured for a different, deadly technique.
Kankuro, watching from a distant vantage point through a spyglass, felt the blood drain from his face. His voice was a strangled whisper.
Kankuro: "No… It can't be…"
Temari: "What? What is it?"
Kankuro: "The Fourth… He has the Fourth Kazekage puppet. My… our father's body."
A cold fury, deeper than any he had ever known, flooded Kankuro's veins. This wasn't just an invasion. It was a desecration.
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The Storm Breaks – First Movement: Aerial Terror
The C2 dragon soared over the outer wall, ignoring the puny arrows. From its many mouths, it began to rain down not fire, but living clay explosives—small, agile birds that dove for structures, patrols, defensive emplacements.
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The eastern outskirts of Suna erupted. A watchtower disintegrated into splinters. A sandstone reservoir cracked, spilling precious water into the thirsty sand. Panic, held at bay by discipline, began to bubble up as dust and smoke blotted out the dawn.
Gaara's voice, amplified by a whisper of sand, echoed across the village. "All non-combatants, complete your evacuation. Sand Style users, to the eastern wall. Anti-air teams, focus fire on the smaller constructs. Leave the large one to me."
As he spoke, a tsunami of sand rose from the desert itself, flowing up and over the walls like a golden tide. It formed a massive, shifting canopy over the most densely populated districts, intercepting diving clay birds. The explosions rocked the shield, sending cascades of sand pouring down, but it held.
High above, on the back of his dragon, Deidara cackled.
Deidara: "He's good, un! Such a big, boring shield! Let's see how it handles number C3!" From a pouch, he produced a much smaller, but infinitely more dense lump of clay. He shaped it with reverence into a detailed, humanoid form—a replica of Gaara himself. He dropped it.
The tiny figure fell, then ballooned in size as it descended, becoming a colossal, grinning effigy of the Kazekage, plummeting toward the center of the village.
The sheer, overwhelming malice of the technique was a psychological masterstroke.
On the tower, Gaara didn't flinch. He raised a single hand.
Gaara: "Sand Burial: Imperial Shield."
The sand canopy over the village contorted. A vast portion of it pulled away, surging upward not as a shield, but as a giant, open hand. It didn't try to block the C3 bomb. It enveloped it, miles above the village. Gaara clenched his fist.
The sand hand clenched.
There was a muffled, world-shaking THUMP from high in the atmosphere. A pressure wave slammed down, making everyone stumble. But no light, no destructive blast reached the village. Only a rain of fine, sterile sand and the faint smell of ozone. Gaara had contained a city-killer in the palm of his desert.
Deidara: "...Huh. Not boring after all, un!"
Shukaku, internally: Tch. Showoff. Should've let it blow, would've been a nicer view.
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Second Movement: The Puppet Master's Symphony
While Deidara commanded the sky, Sasori began his ground assault. The Third Kazekage puppet raised its hands. The black Iron Sand that had been pooling around it surged, forming into a storm of countless needles.
Sasori (through the puppet): "Iron Sand: Drizzle."
A black cloud shot forward, a horizontal hailstorm that shredded the sandstone of the outer wall and peppered the sand shield beyond. The sand stopped most, but the needles were magnetically guided, slipping through gaps, targeting shinobi. Screams echoed as the poison-coated tips found flesh.
But Suna was not idle. Temari stood atop a central platform, her fan fully unfolded.
Temari: "You think sand is our only defense? Wind Release: Great Gale Waltz!"
She swung the fan with all her strength. A titanic crescent of razor wind screamed across the desert, not at the puppet, but at the cloud of iron sand. The wind scattered the magnetic formation, disrupting Sasori's control and blowing the poisoned needles harmlessly into the sky.
Sasori: "...Annoying."
He didn't waste time. The Iron Sand reconstituted, forming into a giant, spiked mace. "Iron Sand: Giant Hammer." It slammed down towards Temari's position.
A wall of sand interposed, taking the blow with a grinding crash. Gaara stood on a rising pillar of sand, his gaze locked on the Third Kazekage puppet.
Gaara: "You disgrace the legacy of the strongest Kazekage. You will not touch my sister."
Meanwhile, the Fourth Kazekage puppet, Rasa, floated forward. Its hands formed seals familiar to every Suna shinobi of a certain age.
Puppet Rasa: "Gold Dust: Imperial Funeral."
A wave of glistening, magnetic gold dust erupted, not as dense as Gaara's sand, but faster and sharper, aiming to slice through the defensive sand formations and the shinobi behind them.
Kankuro intervened. Karasu and Kuroari shot forward, not to attack, but to deploy. Karasu split apart, its panels forming a temporary shield reinforced with chakra threads, deflecting the first wave of gold dust.
Kankuro, veins standing out on his forehead: "You don't get to use his techniques here! Not like this!"
His rage fueled his chakra. From his scrolls, he unleashed Sanshōuo, the giant salamander puppet, which burrowed into the ground, causing tremors to disrupt the gold dust's flow.
It was a macabre family reunion: a son fighting the puppeted corpse of his father, manipulated by his grandfather.
Sasori, observing from within his core, felt a flicker of something. Kankuro… you improved. But sentiment is a fatal flaw.
He decided to end the distraction. He unsealed a massive scroll with a flick of his wrist. "Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets."
The sky seemed to darken as a cloud of humanoid figures erupted from the scroll, blotting out the sun. One hundred puppets, each armed, each poisoned, each a masterpiece of lethal engineering, descended upon the Suna defenses like a locust swarm of death. The sheer numbers threatened to overwhelm the sand defenses entirely.
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Third Movement: Reinforcements – Lightning and Leaf
Just as the Hundred Puppets began their deadly dance, new chakra signatures flared at the southern gate—not as arrivals, but as reveals. They had been there for days, hidden.
A flash of lightning cut a clean line through a squad of ten advancing puppets, reducing them to splinters. Kakashi Hatake landed in a crouch, his Sharingan whirling, analyzing the puppet connections.
Kakashi: "One hundred, huh? Seems a bit excessive for a house call."
Might Guy exploded onto the scene beside him in a blur of green, his dynamic entry kick shattering three puppets into kindling.
Guy: "A magnificent challenge for a splendid noon! The flames of youth will burn even these wooden dolls!"
Samui, cool and analytical, stood back-to-back with Karui and Omoi. Samui's twin swords flashed, her Lightning Release chakra conducting through the metal to sever chakra threads with precision.
Samui: "Karui, frontal suppression. Omoi, tactical analysis on the controller's location."
Karui: "On it!" She surged forward, her sword a whirlwind of aggressive kenjutsu, drawing a group of puppets towards her.
Omoi, chewing thoughtfully, his eyes darting. "The chakra threads are incredibly fine and numerous. Primary controller is likely the Third Kazekage puppet unit. But there's a secondary, denser network… probably the core user. Eliminating the Third should reduce efficiency by 60%... probably."
Their arrival changed the calculus. The Hundred Puppets, designed to overrun Suna's forces, now met a wall of elite, coordinated opposition.
Deidara, from above: "Reinforcements, un! Konoha and Kumo! This is getting interesting!"
He launched another wave of C1 birds at the new arrivals. Kakashi looked up, Sharingan tracking the trajectories.
Kakashi: "Guy."
Guy: "Already on it! Front Lotus!" Guy became a green comet, leaping into the air and shattering the clay birds in a series of spectacular mid-air kicks and punches before they could reach their targets.
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Fourth Movement: The Heart of the Battle – Gaara vs. The Legacy
Gaara ignored the periphery. His entire world had narrowed to the two Kazekage puppets. The sand around him grew denser, darker, taking on a menacing glow as Shukaku's chakra began to mix with his own. He couldn't go full Bijuu—not here, not over his village—but he could borrow its weight, its malice.
Gaara: "Sand Shower: Funeral Pyre."
The sand beneath the Third Kazekage puppet turned liquid, then erupted into countless spear-like projectiles infused with wind chakra. The Iron Sand formed a protective sphere, but the sheer force punched holes through it.
The puppet Rasa responded. "Gold Dust: Wave of Fury." The gold dust converged, not on Gaara, but on the supporting sand structures he was using to protect the village's flanks. Sasori was thinking tactically—undermine the defense to force Gaara to split his focus.
Kankuro saw it. He couldn't match his father's technique head-on. So he didn't try. He manipulated Kuroari—the black ant puppet—to scuttle at high speed along the ground, not towards the puppet, but towards the gold dust itself. Kuroari's mouth opened, and it began to absorb the dust, its internal mechanisms grinding as it took in the magnetic particles.
Kankuro, gritting his teeth: "You're not the only one who studied his techniques, Sasori! I built a vacuum for this!"
It was a stopgap, but it worked, buying Gaara a crucial few seconds.
Gaara used them. He focused on the Third. The sand around it grew heavy, gravity itself increasing. "Sand Binding: Burial Coffin." The Iron Sand struggled, but the regular sand, empowered by tailed beast chakra, was overwhelming. It began to compress around the legendary puppet, crushing its limbs.
Sasori, for the first time, felt a spike of annoyance. The One-Tail's chakra… it's different. More cohesive. The boy is not fighting it; he's wielding it.
He made a decision. A chakra thread, thicker than the others, shot from his core—hidden within the Fourth Kazekage puppet—and connected to the Third. He poured more chakra in, sacrificing fine control of a portion of the Hundred Puppets to empower his masterpiece.
The Third Kazekage puppet's eyes glowed. The Iron Sand didn't just defend; it attacked Gaara directly, forming into a dense, rotating drill. "Iron Sand: Last Supper."
The drill met Gaara's sand armor with a screech like a dying mountain. Gaara was pushed back, his feet grinding trenches in the sandstone of the tower roof.
Shukaku: This iron junk is annoying! Let me out! I'll grind it to powder!
Gaara: No. The village…
Shukaku: You're going to lose the village trying to save it, idiot! Use my power, or die holding a handful of sand!
The truth of it hit Gaara. Conservation was losing. He had to escalate, but precisely.
He changed tactics. He released the crushing hold on the Third Kazekage puppet. Instead, the sand that had been surrounding it shot upwards, forming a massive, dense orb high above the battlefield, away from the village.
Gaara: "Deidara! You like things that float?"
The airborne sand orb was a perfect target, glistening in the sun.
Deidara, unable to resist: "A gift, un? C2: Mega-Bird!" He diverted his dragon's payload, shaping a giant bird that slammed into Gaara's sand orb.
KAKOOOOOM!
The explosion was contained within the sand sphere, which glowed white-hot for an instant before shattering, dispersing the force safely into the upper atmosphere. But the effort cost Gaara a huge amount of chakra and control.
Sasori seized the moment. The Third Kazekage puppet, now free, and the Fourth, directed by his core, launched a synchronized assault. Iron Sand formed binding chains. Gold Dust formed slicing blades. They came at Gaara from all sides, a pincer of familial horror.
Kankuro tried to intercept, but a group of the Hundred Puppets, now guided by Sasori's renewed focus, swarmed him, forcing him into a desperate defense.
Gaara was isolated on his tower. The deadly metals closed in.
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Fifth Movement: The Unseen Blade – Coalition Tactics
Just as the chains and blades were about to strike, two things happened simultaneously.
A Lightning Cutter—Chidori's shriek—pierced the air. Kakashi, having deduced the location of the densest chakra network, had used a substitution to get close. His Chidori wasn't aimed at Gaara or the puppets, but at the space between the Third and Fourth Kazekage puppets, where a nearly invisible, thick chakra thread pulsed.
SZZZZZT-CRACK!
The thread, the primary control line from Sasori's core, severed. The synchronized attack faltered. The gold blades veered off, the iron chains went slack.
Sasori, within the Fourth Kazekage puppet: The Sharingan… he saw it.
The second event: Samui and Karui executed a perfect tandem move. While Karui kept a swarm of puppets occupied with her relentless assault, Samui performed a single, flawless hand seal.
Samui: "Lightning Release: Storm Needle."
Not a wide-area blast, but a hyper-concentrated beam of lightning that lanced from her fingertip, not at a puppet, but at the Hiruko shell, still standing abandoned on the distant bluff. The shell, designed for close combat, had no defense against a long-range, penetrating lightning attack. It exploded into fragments, revealing nothing inside—Sasori was already gone, his core transferred—but it destroyed one of his containers.
Omoi, nodding: "60% efficiency drop… now."
The Hundred Puppets stuttered. Their movements became slightly slower, less coordinated.
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Sixth Movement: Gaara's Gambit – The Desert's Will
Gaara didn't waste the opening. He was exhausted, but Shukaku's chakra was a roaring furnace within him, impatient.
Gaara, internally: Fine. We do it your way. But we do it MY way.
Shukaku: Took you long enough, brat!
Gaara slammed his palms together. Not to form a seal, but in a crushing motion. All across the battlefield, the sand that had been defending, attacking, shielding—it all withdrew. It flowed back to him, coalescing into a single, monstrous shape behind him. Not the full Shukaku, but a Partial Transformation—a gigantic, sand-formed upper torso of the One-Tail, with one colossal arm, erupting from the desert floor behind the Kazekage tower. Its single eye, a swirl of sand and malice, glared down at the puppets.
The entire battlefield froze for a second, awestruck and terrified.
Gaara, his voice echoing with a dual timbre—his own and a guttural growl: "Sand Style: Ultimate Imperial Sand Funeral."
The giant sand-arm didn't swat. It opened its palm beneath the entire area where the two Kazekage puppets and the majority of the Hundred Puppets were engaged. The desert floor there—already churned by battle—turned into a bottomless, sucking vortex of chakra-infused sand. It wasn't an attack from above; it was the very earth consuming them.
The puppets, made of wood and metal, were heavy. They sank instantly. The Third Kazekage puppet struggled, using Iron Sand to try and pull itself out, but the gravitational pull of the technique was immense. The Fourth Kazekage puppet fared no better. The Hundred Puppets were dragged down like stones in a quicksand tsunami.
Sasori, his core now acutely vulnerable inside the sinking Fourth puppet, made a cold calculation. Total loss imminent. The Third is too compromised. The collection is expendable.
With a mental command, he triggered a final protocol in the Third Kazekage puppet. Its chest cavity glowed.
Sasori: "Self-destruct. A final masterpiece."
The Iron Sand condensed into a super-dense sphere around the puppet, then imploded with a silent, black flash. The resulting shockwave of shredded metal and poison vaporized the remaining puppets in the vicinity and forced Gaara's giant sand-arm to recoil, dissipating the funeral technique.
When the black sand rain settled, the Third Kazekage puppet was gone, leaving only a crater of glassed sand. The Fourth Kazekage puppet had vanished, likely retrieved underground by Sasori's core. Only about twenty of the Hundred Puppets remained, stumbling without precise control.
In the sky, Deidara watched his partner's signature retreat underground. He scowled.
Deidara: "Party pooper, un. Fine. My grand finale!"
He gathered all his remaining clay. This would be his C4: Karura, the microscopic bombs that would destroy everything from within. He began to mold it.
He never finished.
Kakashi, panting, his Sharingan bleeding, stood on a nearby dune. He had performed a monumental calculation. He couldn't reach Deidara. But he could reach the air around him.
Kakashi: "Sorry… but we can't let you release that. Kamui!"
His Mangekyō whirled. The space in front of Deidara's forming C4 sculpture twisted. A small, but critical portion of the clay—the core initiation matrix—was silently snipped out of reality and sent to the Kamui dimension.
Deidara stared at the suddenly inert, useless lump of clay in his hands.
Deidara: "...What? WHAT DID YOU DO, UN?!"
Guy, leaping from a sand pillar Kakashi had provided: "HIRUDORA!"
The Evening Elephant's air cannon, compressed into a single, devastating punch, connected with Deidara's dragon. The construct disintegrated. Deidara himself was sent tumbling through the air, cursing violently, before righting himself on a small, emergency clay bird.
Deidara: "This is bullshit, un! Retreat! RETREAT!"
He sped away eastward, a tiny, furious speck against the sun.
The remaining puppets collapsed into lifeless wood.
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Aftermath – Sand and Blood
Silence, broken only by the moan of the wind and the crackle of distant fires, fell over the northern approaches of Suna. The village was scarred, its outer districts in ruins, but its heart was intact. The casualties were heavy, but not catastrophic.
Gaara dismissed the partial transformation, sinking to one knee on the tower, breathing heavily. The sand around him settled gently.
Kankuro stumbled to where the Third Kazekage puppet had self-destructed. He picked up a single, unscathed segment of a magnetic joint. He clenched it in his hand, his body trembling with spent rage and grief.
Temari landed beside Gaara, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Temari: "We held."
Gaara, nodding, his voice hoarse: "Barely. They were testing us. And they learned what they came to learn."
Kakashi, appearing in a shunshin next to them, his Sharingan deactivated. "They learned you can wield the One-Tail's power cohesively. They learned the coalition responds fast and hits hard. And they learned Suna isn't an easy target." He looked at the retreating form of Deidara. "But they also learned our capabilities. Obito and Pain will adjust."
Samui, Karui, and Omoi regrouped, checking for injuries among the Suna shinobi.
Samui: "Mission parameters: Defense of Suna. Outcome: Successful. Enemy forces repelled with significant degradation. Coalition casualties: minimal. Suna casualties: moderate. Strategic assessment: The Akatsuki's first conventional strike was blunted."
Omoi: "But they got the data they wanted… probably."
Gaara looked out over his wounded village, then to the east where the enemies had fled. The sun was now fully up, blazing on the desert. The sand was stained with oil, poison, and blood.
Gaara: "The calm before is over. The war of attrition has begun. And the next blow will be harder."
In the depths of the earth, fleeing through a pre-made tunnel, Sasori's core within the salvaged Fourth Kazekage puppet processed the data. Gaara's control is superior to the records. The Jinchuriki cooperation is atypical. The coalition integration is effective. The Hatake ninja possesses a dangerous space-time ninjutsu. Adjustments required. He felt no anger at the loss of the Third or his collection. Only a clinical need to refine his art for the next performance. The puppet of his father, now his sole vessel, moved through the darkness, a king returning to the shadows from which he came.
The sands of Suna had been baptized in fire and metal. They had held. But they all knew, as the hot wind stirred the dust of battle, that this was only the first verse of a much longer, much darker song.
End of Chapter – 82.