"I never expected you to be this kind of person."
A voice came from above, dripping with judgment.
It was Kurotsuchi, who had followed Makoto to watch the fun.
She happened to hear Temari's desperate plea for mercy when she arrived.
Now she was looking at Makoto with a strange expression.
"That kind of person?" Temari whispered, her expression freezing.
"Didn't you tell me before," Kurotsuchi floated down, landing gracefully beside Makoto, "that if you became the Daimyo, you'd have each major shinobi village offer up young, beautiful kunoichi as tribute?"
Facing Makoto's cold stare, Kurotsuchi explained innocently.
"So you were serious about collecting them?"
"Wasn't that to provoke you, idiot?" Makoto deadpanned.
"Oh," Kurotsuchi blinked. "And you called me 'Leg Kage,' let me see..."
Kurotsuchi thought of something and floated behind Temari.
Temari, like a startled bird, saw Kurotsuchi's movement and quickly raised her massive iron fan to block her ass... she was extremely wary now!
"What do you want to do?!" Temari hissed.
"I just want to see if your butt is perky," Kurotsuchi said casually. "Otherwise why would he be thinking about stabbing it?"
"What?!" Temari shrieked.
Kurotsuchi stretched her neck, using the Light-Weight Rock Technique to fly around Temari like a hummingbird.
Temari spun in circles, trying to block the view, but Kurotsuchi was too fast.
"It's nothing special either," Kurotsuchi concluded, looking disappointed. "Maybe it will develop more later?"
"You people..." Temari retreated several steps, pressing her back against a sturdy oak tree.
This is too terrifying!
Is there any hope for this Shinobi World? The world outside Sunagakure is a den of perverts!
Even the women are in on it!
"It seems your sibling bond is rather weak," Makoto remarked calmly, ignoring Kurotsuchi's harassment.
"Still daydreaming about your self at a time like this?"
His words brought Temari back to her senses like a slap.
Right!
Gaara! He just got exploded in the ass! He was in the most danger right now!
CRACK!
"GAARA!" Temari quickly jumped to another branch and looked toward the explosion's center.
The scene was chaotic.
Half of the Shukaku armor on Gaara's body had turned into flowing sand and sliding off like melting wax.
Thanks to the sand armor, Gaara wasn't injured physically.
But mentally?
The coldness of the kunai... the heat of the explosion... the bloated feeling from the shockwave... the gritty sensation of sand carried by the blast into places sand should never go...
All these left deep psychological scars on young Gaara.
He was trembling.
"Thank goodness," Temari breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Gaara largely unharmed.
Then she remembered—Makoto had been taking photos earlier and saying some inexplicable things about "blackmail."
It seemed she might have genuinely misunderstood him.
Maybe he wasn't a pervert.
Maybe he was just... eccentric?
But with countless past experiences as cautionary tales, Temari remained extremely vigilant.
She cautiously approached Makoto, who was writing on the back of a photograph with a marker.
She stole a glance at the content.
"Something must fill the Jinchuriki's heart. Before Gaara's heart was filled with Naruto's friendship, his ass was filled first by the Hidden Leaf's Secret Technique instead."
"..."
'What the hell is this written nonsense?!'
"Everyone, move aside! It's going to blow!"
A voice suddenly rang out from the sky.
Deidara, riding a giant clay bird, hurled C2 clay bombs downward like a B-2 bomber.
"Art is an EXPLOSION!"
Kurotsuchi immediately sprang into action, levitating diagonally upward to evade the blast radius.
Before retreating, Makoto grabbed Temari by the collar and pulled her along.
"So this is the One-Tail Jinchuriki?" Deidara grinned maniacally. "Since we don't need to capture you alive anymore, let me show you the ultimate technique of me and Sasori-danna, un!"
With a wave of Deidara's hand, a new clay dragon materialized beside him.
"Boring," Sasori grunted from the back of the bird.
He manipulated the Third Kazekage puppet.
A cloud of black Iron Sand erupted, coating the white clay dragon in a layer of metallic armor.
The Iron Sand-Clad Clay Dragon dove toward Gaara below.
This was the first countermeasure Deidara had devised recently against Lightning Style.
By layering Iron Sand over the Explosive Clay, even though the sand was weak to Lightning, it served as a shield.
If the enemy used Lightning to diffuse the bomb, the sand would scatter into shrapnel.
If they didn't, the bomb would detonate, turning the sand into a supersonic shotgun blast.
These experiments had been tested on Kakuzu before.
"Let me go!" Temari struggled as Makoto dragged her out of the bombing zone.
"Is this how you treat your savior?" Makoto asked dryly.
He then flung Temari onto a nearby tree branch like a sack of potatoes.
"I never asked you to save me..." Temari muttered under her breath, straightening her kimono.
"What?" Makoto asked, distracted by the impending explosion.
"I said, I never asked—"
"KATSU!"
BOOM————
A massive explosion tore through the forest.
The shockwave flattened trees and sent a mushroom cloud into the sky.
When the dust settled, a gigantic tanuki—the One-Tail Shukaku—stood in the crater.
Gaara was sleeping soundly on its head, encased in sand.
Gaara had mastered the ultimate defense: 'When in doubt, turn into a bijuu.'
"Don't joke like that," Makoto patted Temari's shoulder as he floated past her.
He flew into the air, shouting at Deidara who was dancing excitedly on his bird.
"That's enough! Go assist elsewhere! Leave this to others!"
Explosions can't open people's hearts—that's Naruto's job.
Only Talk No Jutsu could fix Gaara now.
"Tch, fine," Deidara scoffed. "I'll go bomb Konoha then... uh, I mean, help Konoha bomb those invaders. Yeah." Deidara almost let it slip.
He steered the giant bird back toward the stadium.
...
Below.
Temari sat on a branch, clutching her head in utter despair.
Makoto's remark, "Don't joke like that," had left Temari momentarily stunned.
What joke?
Was the other person so narcissistic as to think her words were a flirtatious joke?
But she quickly realized.
Her earlier sentence had been cut off halfway by the explosion.
She said: "I never asked—"
Then: BOOM!
Then Makoto said: "Don't joke like that."
Temari replayed the sentence in her head.
Without the context... it sounded like she was confessing something. Or worse, making a dirty suggestion that got interrupted.
'What did he think I said?!' Temari was devastated!
"Um, listen to me!" Temari shouted as Makoto floated back down. "You must have misheard just now..."
"So you really were joking, right?" Makoto nodded sagely. "I know. I believe you. You're a tsundere. It's fine."
"I wasn't joking!" Temari instinctively retorted.
"..."
"No, no! I mean... I WAS joking... I mean... I-I-I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
Unable to argue her way out, Temari flew into a rage, she unfold her three-star fan to launch an attack.
"Don't disturb your brother and Uzumaki Naruto's moment of tangled love and hate," Makoto said.
WHOOSH.
Makoto suddenly appeared in front of Temari, pressing a hand onto hers, and the just-unfolded fan snapped shut again.
"Besides," Makoto leaned in, "I already said I believe you. There's no need for you to prove anything to me, so why are you becoming unreasonable?"
"...Who wants to prove anything to you!" Temari gritted her teeth, her face burning.
She wanted to resist, but she could feel the gap in their strength. Her pinned hand couldn't move at all.
Huh?
Temari noticed that while Makoto held her down with one hand, his other hand was holding a pen.
He was swiftly writing something on a sheet of paper floating in mid-air.
She squinted.
'Gaara... Temari...'
Their names appeared on the list.
'Is he gathering intelligence?' Temari watched warily.
'Is this an assassination list? Or a kidnapping list?'
---------
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