The sealed kunai

Chapter 24: Fight With Tools

Deidara watched Sai come ever closer atop his ink bird construct, 'He's much faster and more reflexive this time. The last time it was like he was fighting in slow motion.' Sai had been flying circles around Deidara for the longest time. Having expected to blast Sai out of the sky much like the first go around, Deidara had pumped a lot of exploding clay into the attack on Sai's ink mist feint. He even had to sacrifice one of his birds and an entire clay clone in an effort to defeat the boy, but he was still hanging around.

Sai on the other hand felt that he needed to invest in bringing more ink in case of emergencies. He had been using ink since he first found Naruto on Nami no Kuni, he never thought he would be fighting a member of Akatsuki, and he couldn't borrow any ink from Naruto due to Naruto losing all of his as well as his seal paper to the whirlpool. He was running out as well, but unlike Deidara once he ran out of his long range specialty he still had a weapon on his back to use up close. At this point it was a matter of outlasting him and getting close again. From there Sai had to be able to finish.

Getting sick of fighting in the air, as he felt that it left Sai with something of an advantage due to his lighter airborne creation, Deidara started directing the height of the fight lower and lower. A mid-air dogfight was looking less and less appealing when Sai pulled up right on his tail.

Meanwhile, Sai was wondering how he should go about attacking Deidara from his current position. Ideally he would be able to draw something to shoot him down, but Deidara apparently had a propensity to counter his attacks in a rather explosive manner, and if he did it from this range, Sai would be caught in the explosion. Attacking with his blade in close was also not very appealing. Deidara was slippery and he could detonate the bird he was flying on at any time. They were too close to the ground and moving too fast for Sai to bail out and freefall to escape again.

When Deidara looked back at Sai with a knowing smirk, it put him on high alert, and that feeling was well founded when Deidara proceeded to jump off of his bird's back before tucking and rolling along the ground. Sai's eyes widened as the bird came to a dead stop and began to glow. Crossing his arms in front of his face as some method of defense, Sai ended up being thrown off of his ride violently by the force of the explosion, taking nasty burn wounds across his arms and torso as well as the sheer impact damage of falling along the ground.

Sai rolled onto his belly and crawled along the ground as the blood from a gash on his head soaked into his hitae-ate and down his face, 'This really isn't good.'

XxX

(Naruto vs. Sasori)

Naruto looked back as Sasori emerged from the wreckage of Hiruko, his puppet armor. He was still picking the pieces of the formidable tool off of himself and grumbling. Naruto was surprised at hearing a youthful voice doing the griping. This guy had to be way over thirty.

He looked down at the blades on his forearms and outside legs, 'It really sucks that this is the only way that I can channel elemental chakra to the blade, but I have to say, after that first attack I can't complain too much.'

Sai's message to him was taken verbatim from Hamako about his weapon. The sword was a special construct for whoever was the leader of the village at the time. The final ceremony towards finding a new leader was finding someone that could find their way to exert their will over the blade and bend it to their will. Throughout the existence of the sword the Sen'nenki no Ken was never the same thing twice, therefore the gauntlets were Naruto's own creation and the physical manifestation of his spirit. Hamako didn't know any techniques with the weapon since every listed user had their own attacks to fit their specialized release form, so Naruto was coming up with his own on the fly.

The one thing he could say though, was that he found it far easier to sharpen his chakra and run it through the blades, as if they were just an extension of his body and his chakra was still flowing through him. Even using the Kyuubi's chakra with the Sen'nen Kougake felt easier, he felt no heightened bloodlust at all, and it was clear that the Kyuubi's chakra was circulating through the blades as well due to the fact that they had a red sheen to them. Oh well, he would get used to them on the fly, because right now he still had a fight to win.