Akira flicked at a speck of dust that was not actually there and kept his expression serious.
"The situation is urgent. I used the Flying Raijin Jutsu to get here."
Gaara immediately understood. That was the space-time jutsu only the Second and Fourth Hokage had ever mastered.
"I almost forgot you could do that too."
Setting down his pen, Gaara folded his hands beneath his chin. "The situation is exactly what the letter said. Mukade was one of our top puppet masters, and he intends to use the Dragon Vein to travel through time."
"I know. That is why I plan to handle this alone and end it fast." Akira had no interest in wasting time.
"That is not happening."
Gaara shook his head. His tone was mild, but there was no give in it. "This is Sunagakure's disgrace. Asking Konoha for help is humiliating enough already. If we do not even send one person with you, what happens to what little pride we have left?"
Akira considered that for a moment, then nodded.
"Fine. Just send someone who knows the way."
Gaara called toward the door. "Temari, come in."
The office door opened, and Temari stepped inside. She had clearly been waiting outside. The giant three-star fan was strapped across her back, and she carried herself with the same sharp confidence as always.
Akira gave her a once-over, then glanced back at Gaara, his expression turning slightly strange.
Gaara gave an awkward little smile. "All the other jonin have already been deployed. There is no one else available, so my sister will go with you."
Temari did not like the way Akira was looking at her. Folding her arms across her chest, she tipped her chin up.
"What? You looking down on me?"
Akira shrugged. "Not at all. This works. Let's go. You know where the Dragon Vein is, right?"
Temari nodded.
"Then move. If that lunatic rewrites history, we are all in trouble."
With that, Akira turned and headed for the door without another word.
In truth, his only thought was: Let's get this finished quickly so it doesn't ruin dinner.
Watching the two of them leave, Gaara gave a faint, helpless smile and shook his head.
"He is still just as impossible as ever."
...
Once they left Sunagakure behind, the two of them plunged straight into the open desert.
After a full day of moving at top speed, a stretch of ruined stone finally appeared on the horizon.
The legendary remains of the ancient kingdom of Roran.
What had once been a thriving city was now nothing but weathered pillars and broken walls half-buried beneath the sand.
Standing atop a dune, Akira looked out over the ruins and could not help feeling a little reflective.
"Not even twenty years, and a city that once ruled the horizon looks like this. Time really does tear through everything."
Temari pulled out a map and checked it against the terrain. "The Dragon Vein is in the middle of the ruins."
Akira closed his eyes. His perception spread outward like a tide.
Almost instantly, a pulse of chakra powerful enough to make his skin crawl lit up in the map forming inside his mind.
"Found it. That way."
He opened his eyes and set a hand casually on Temari's shoulder.
"Hold on."
Before she could react, the world around them twisted.
In the next instant, the two of them were standing deep beneath the ruins of Roran, on an underground stone altar.
Temari's stomach lurched. She stared around, eyes wide.
They had crossed hundreds of yards in a blink.
This monster can even teleport people this easily?
What she did not know was that anywhere within Akira's sensory range, even a hundred kilometers away, was only a thought away for him.
The underground altar was dimly lit, the air thick with an ancient, stale smell.
A man in a dark red robe stood at the center of the platform with his back to them.
Mukade.
He did not seem especially surprised by their sudden appearance. He only frowned slightly.
Both his hands were already wrapped around a specially made kunai, which he had jammed into the very heart of the altar's seal.
"Hmph. Konoha's lapdog and Sunagakure's pursuers. You're too late."
Mukade bared his teeth in a grin and yanked the weapon free with all his strength.
A thunderous roar exploded upward.
In an instant, a storm of violet energy burst out from deep below, like some sleeping dragon waking beneath the earth. It tore through the ground and shot into the sky.
The sheer force of the chakra wave blasted every loose stone in the chamber into the air.
Akira's brows tightened, and he had to raise a hand to shield himself from the violent rush of wind.
"That much chakra... It feels even wilder than the Nine-Tails. What exactly is this thing?"
He could feel it clearly. The power was not only vast, it was primitive, raw, and hungry, as though it were drawing endlessly on the natural energy buried in the earth itself.
It felt disturbingly close to the Divine Tree.
But this was not the time to stop and study it.
Akira moved.
In a flash he appeared behind Mukade, lightning already dancing across his hand as he went for a killing blow.
But at that exact moment, the Dragon Vein's power tipped completely out of control.
A column of violet light swallowed the altar whole.
Akira felt an irresistible force seize both body and soul. It was not ordinary suction. It felt like being dragged by the current of time itself.
His figure and Mukade's vanished into the light.
"Akira!"
Thrown to the ground by the shockwave, Temari could only stare as the two men were erased before her eyes.
"They were... swallowed?"
The Dragon Vein's chakra continued raging. For dozens of yards around the altar, the area had become a dead zone.
...
Time turned backward. Light and shadow twisted together.
When Akira's feet touched solid ground again, the nauseating vertigo had only just begun to fade.
The world in front of him had changed.
No more ruins. No more broken stone.
Instead, tall spired towers rose into the sky. Worn, certainly, but still standing.
Yet he was not inside the city of Roran itself. He stood on a barren stretch of rocky desert outside it.
He had not even finished regaining his balance when a strange three-pronged kunai appeared less than an inch from the bridge of his nose.
Akira's pupils contracted sharply.
His body reacted before his mind did.
He vanished.
In the next heartbeat, he appeared behind a blond young man, his short blade drawn and resting cold and steady against the stranger's throat.
At the same time, a swarm of black insects descended on him like a living storm cloud.
"Wrong move."
Akira snorted, and chakra burst from him in an instant.
Blue-white lightning exploded outward from his body in every direction.
Chidori Current.
The moment those disgusting insects touched the current, they crackled and burst apart, turning instantly into charred flakes of ash.
Sparks flew everywhere, and the air filled with the acrid smell of scorched flesh.
Then, from above, a fist the size of a boulder came crashing down at him with a roar of wind.
Expansion Jutsu.
Akira did not even look up.
The lightning around him surged again and took the shape of a vicious electric serpent, instantly coiling around the gigantic arm.
The current screamed through flesh and bone.
A sharp cry tore through the air.
The enormous fist shrank in an instant, and Akimichi Choza hit the ground smoking like a piece of burnt charcoal, his whole body twitching from the shock.
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