Chapter 16
He doesn’t become fully conscious again until just after moonset on the last day of full moon. He’s lying on a heap of blood-soaked sand—he prays that the blood is from deer or bears, and not humans, even though crushing animals is bad enough—staring up at the brightening sky. The forest is entirely silent, and he finds when he sits up that Shukaku has flattened almost half a mile of forest. It’s his least favorite way to wake up.
It only gets worse when a flat voice behind him says, “Oh, good. You’re done. You’re the cause of all this trouble. I’ll be happy to seal the one-tail and discard your corpse.”
Gaara gets to his feet, a little unsteadily, and sees six people in Akatsuki cloaks, none of them familiar from the bingo book. He will not be able to deal with this by himself. “Shukaku,” he whispers, “please wake up. I need to you tell Saiken.” Shukaku grumbles in his sleep, and desperately Gaara stabs him with a spike of chakra.
What the fuck? I earned a fucking nap.
“Your nap will be permanent if you don’t tell Saiken that six members of Akatsuki are here.”
Ugh. Fine. I’ll even help you fight like the generous, benevolent fucking god I am.
Two of the Akatsuki members approach, and Gaara can see that the rest have spread out in an arc, almost surrounding him. The first holds out a hand and some force pushes him violently off his feet to land fifty meters away. Mostly unhurt, he gets to his feet again. Is it better to try to engage them until Utakata can get here, or to run toward Taki?
He calls up a sand platform to hover far above them, barely managing to keep it in the air when the force pushes him downward. One of them has summoned an enormous lizard, which becomes invisible before his eyes. At least three of them are actively setting up attacks, and he just can’t keep track of them all. So he traces the trail of devastation back toward Taki and flies away.
His sand defends him from several invisible attacks, but soon enough that force is pulling him backward. He replaces himself with a sand clone, making sure his chakra is masked, and manages to wrap his sand around one of the enemies. “Seal him,” he hisses at Shukaku, and his bijuu’s seal markings crawl up the small pyramid. The man isn’t powerful enough to break free, but his companions might be, together, so Gaara hurls it several kilometers in the opposite direction of Taki. “Shukaku,” he whispers, avoiding a dozen missiles one of them shot from his arm, “is the metal in their faces magnetic?”
Shukaku starts laughing wildly in his head. Oh, this will be fun. Give me your arms. Shukaku wraps sand around Gaara’s arms, approximating his own enormous claws. He raises one toward the nearest enemy, feels for the magnetic metal, and pulls.
It’s not as easy as it should be—there’s some foreign chakra interfering—but he manages to hold one of them in midair, struggling, and throws him far away too. It won’t take him long to get back, but Gaara needs the momentary advantage. His sand shield stops another barrage of missiles, but it still throws him backward, and he finds himself wrapped by—what can only be the tongue of an enormous, invisible lizard. His sand scrapes the inside of its mouth until he starts to smell blood, but it doesn’t release him until he severs its tongue. The smell of fresh blood has always had a strong effect on him, and he’s starting to feel it again. The world seems far away and somehow terribly loud. Focus, dumbass. Utakata won’t be here to save you for at least an hour. If you can’t stay alive till then you’re a worthless excuse for a jinchuuriki.
He does survive, somehow. He finds himself pressed painfully against the ground or thrown by the concussive force of explosives or pierced through the arm by the beak of an enormous bird, and he abandons all strategy to let instinct keep him alive. Shukaku is screaming constantly in his head, advice or insults or both. As the sun rises, he sees that all of his enemies look eerily similar, with rippling purple eyes, pale skin, and orange hair. It must mean something, but he doesn’t know what.
He’s lying on the ground, shaking, trying to force his muscles to move, while Shukaku’s sand lashes out at the enemy. That’s when Utakata comes, riding a massive wave that sweeps them all away. He stands in front of Gaara and blows a minefield of bubbles. “Can you move?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Gaara mumbles, but he tries to push himself up on his arms anyway. “Watch out.”
Utakata engages three of the Akatsuki members at once, dodging so gracefully it almost doesn’t look like he’s in danger, until the one with force powers smashes two fallen trees into him. Gaara smells blood again, but he can’t see Utakata because he’s not getting up. He looks back at the enemy and sees that the one furthest away is suddenly missing his head. And then another, with only a grey blur to show that Uchiha Itachi was there. She doesn’t manage to catch any more of them by surprise, though. The one that stands in the middle gathers up the bodies and summons an enormous gate shaped like a demon’s face.
Itachi has vanished, and the two dead shinobi walk out of the gate with the same flat expressions as before, completely whole. Itachi strikes again, briefly blowing a truly enormous amount of fire at the Akatsuki members—one of them absorbs it. While they’re distracted Gaara has the chance to bring his sand up the back of the gate and rip it from the ground. It’s too strong to crush, probably reinforced with chakra, but he can throw it far away. Itachi takes the hint and beheads another one of them. Although they always seem to know what’s behind them, she seems to have a knack for finding their blind spots.
The gravity user finally looks angry. He crushes her to the ground, but only a flock of crows flies away. Gaara recognizes it as a clone technique because he’s seen her do it before, but they seem confused and wary.
She flickers around the battlefield, aiming kunai and her sword at the Akatsuki members, barely getting away when they notice her. Gaara supports her as best he can by obscuring their vision, pulling on their metal jewelry (?), and wrapping sand around their legs so their attention is divided. It works spectacularly, and Itachi is able to kill all but two of them. Those two are the most dangerous, though, the ones who could repel her: the gravity manipulator and the one who absorbs ninjutsu. They look around for Itachi, but she’s nowhere to be seen—so they return to Gaara.
He’s mostly healed from the injuries he’s accumulated, and he leaps into the sky. The gravity manipulator pulls him back suddenly, and he can’t avoid a bolt of lightning from the ninjutsu user.