"Brother Sasori, we've been looking around for three days now, and there's still no sign of this mining village. Could your intel be bogus?"
At that moment, the "Art Duo" had no idea someone was tracking them. Deidara circled through the sky a few more times without spotting anything and finally landed to vent his frustration.
"The intel came from Zetsu, so I doubt it's wrong. Word is that a 'Kurosuki Family' popped up recently in the Land of Rivers, selling off various minerals on the black market." Sasori's voice was low and gravelly, sounding more than a little heavy. "They must have a big mineral source. If we can find them, we won't have to keep answering to Kakuzu, or running around on missions."
"All right, all right." Deidara sighed. "Fine, I'll help you keep looking for a few more days."
With that, he hopped onto his clay bird, and Sasori climbed aboard as it lifted into the air to head somewhere else. But as they flew, a small shadow suddenly fell across them, blocking out the sunlight.
"Another flying ninja?!"
Deidara squinted upward and blurted, "Don't tell me that old man from the village sent someone to drag me back!"
In the shinobi world, the most famous flight-based ninjutsu is Iwagakure's Earth Release: Light-Weight Rock Technique.
Meanwhile, Sasori, as though realizing something, urged, "That's no Iwa-nin, Deidara. Drop to the ground—now!"
At the same time, Sasori's mouth gaped wide in a rectangular shape, firing a barrage of hyper-dense poison needles upward like a rain of bullets. The volley sped upward from below, threatening to engulf the airborne figure in an instant.
Yet in the next second, it was as though those thousands of needles slammed into an invisible barrier, bouncing right back toward the ground. Seeing that, Deidara quickly maneuvered his white clay bird into a dive, flinging out several paper-sized white clay birds that flapped up toward the sky.
"Detonate!" he muttered, forming a Ram seal with one hand.
Boom—!
A series of overlapping explosions erupted, their dazzling firelight like daytime fireworks in the sky—though the effect was lost a bit in broad daylight. Once a gust of wind dispersed the smoke, Deidara and Sasori, now out from under that strange shadow, finally glimpsed the figure hovering above them.
He was a man standing roughly six feet tall, dressed in a one-piece black cloak with a pure white mask over his face—no openings for eyes, matching the color of his hair. The aura around him was suffused with an air of mystery.
Naturally, he was really Izayoi in disguise via the Transformation Jutsu.
He looked down at Deidara and Sasori, then murmured, "Let's start with a little greeting…"
Raising his right hand, palm up, a wisp of chakra flickered into existence—only to fade moments later.
"Nah, that technique's not in its final form. Using it to say hello is too unimpressive," he mused aloud. "Let's try a new move instead. I think my chakra's big enough to pull it off now…"
Izayoi formed a quick seal, and an intense blue chakra aura flared around him like a gust, tossing his white hair about. Watching from a slope below, Deidara blinked. "What's he doing?"
"He's casting some jutsu," Sasori muttered. "Stay alert—any ninja who can actually fly is no lightweight."
As he spoke, Sasori reached for a scroll on his person, apparently preparing to release his puppet army. But soon he froze. Next to him, Deidara stared upward, slack-jawed.
In the sky, Izayoi seemed to wave farewell, speaking from a distance: "If you manage to survive this, maybe we can be friends." He then flew off at high speed.
Right now, the sun hung high, scorching midday. Whether it was a trick of the eye or not, that giant "fireball" in the sky seemed to be dropping, moving closer to Deidara and Sasori.
"Wh-what is that?"
Elsewhere, traveling along a roundabout mountain path, Kurenai's group and the caravan all froze. Everyone watched in shock as a meteorlike object plummeted toward the Akatsuki duo in the distance. Some of the civilians were so frightened they collapsed on the spot.
"A shooting star…?!"
"No—that's…a meteor!!"
Indeed, that massive flaming sphere was a falling meteor, blazing with heat and friction against the atmosphere. Kurenai eyed its crash site and mumbled, "Is this just…a coincidence? It's gotta be."
She couldn't imagine a shinobi technique that could summon meteors. She failed to notice Hinata's eyes shining with admiration as she stared at the blazing rock in the sky.
Meanwhile, near the "Art Duo," Sasori's voice rang out: "Deidara, run!"
"So…cool…" Deidara just stood there, dumbfounded, gazing at the plunging meteor. He was obviously captivated by the glamorous image of it hitting the ground. "That's real art, yeah?"
"You idiot!" Sasori snarled, tail-like metal stinger erupting from his back to grab Deidara and leap off the slope. Simultaneously, he pulled out a scroll, revealing his trump card. Poof—after a small cloud of smoke dispersed, a black-cloaked puppet emerged. Its "skin" was real human hide, but beneath that lay puppet components. This was his prized "Third Kazekage" human puppet.
Sasori latched onto the puppet with chakra threads, causing the Third Kazekage to spread its arms wide. A surge of iron sand gushed from its sleeves, rapidly forming a giant triangular prism in midair. Sasori then led Deidara onto that prism, using the puppet's Magnet Release to launch them horizontally at another mountainside. By reeling in his chakra threads to the puppet, he raced along the cliff face, trying to get behind the next mountain. But the meteor was falling too fast; there wasn't time.
He changed strategies, ordering the Kazekage puppet to slam the giant prism into the cliff, carving out a temporary cave. Then he and Deidara hopped inside, sealing the opening with iron sand. Layer upon layer of iron sand formed a huge black orb around them all.
BOOOM—!
Almost the instant that black sphere formed, a deafening explosion boomed across the mountain range. The meteor's impact reverberated through the valleys, amplified by echoes, ripping away the hearing of Sasori, Deidara, and every creature in the vicinity.
Terrifying heat and shockwaves obliterated countless animals and plants in seconds, smashed the mountain at the point of impact, and battered the neighboring peaks, fracturing the cliffs.
Even from ten or twenty kilometers away—where Kurenai's group and the caravan were climbing another slope—they heard the blast and saw an enormous mushroom cloud rising in the distance. Even with multiple mountains blocking it, they felt the earth trembling under their feet. This slope was physically shaking.
Such was the power of that blazing meteor.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 100 Chapters Ahead of Others!