Naruto: Ren the Sealmaster

Chapter 313: Ch313. Gaara vs Pakura

Pakura casually threw yet another ball of her scorching flames, perfectly holding their shape without even a wisp of flame leaking out. The intense condensation inside only intensified the heat projected outwards, making the whole thing deadly even at a near distance.

Her panting opponent could testify to that.

Just like every other time, the redheaded boy who reminded her of young Rasa blocked her technique with a truly ridiculous wave of sand, making the air scream and sizzle when their attacks met.

She inwardly chuckled and couldn't help but feel genuine admiration. By now, the boy was managing to stop her attacks before they could get close enough to him. He learned fast.

That was good.

Only his reddened skin on his face showed a trace of his earlier failures, where he misjudged the danger from her scorch release when he blocked her fiery balls far too close to his body. He even surprised her when he quickly discarded his sand armor from his body when their fight started.

Pakura was pleased with that. The brat clearly realized she could kill him by simply flash-heating his sand armor into a superheated glass stuck to his skin. That would not only trap him in a cage of glass, making him a sitting duck, but the burns he would suffer from his own defensive technique being used against him would cost him the fight, if not outright cook him alive. It would depend on how direct the hit of her technique would be, really.

At least, the boy was already doing much better than Rasa in this regard.

She could still remember the arrogant redhead challenging her to a fight when they were Jonin. He tried to show his superiority by 'skillfully' dodging her first scorching ball in that fight by just a small margin. He no doubt wanted to use the minimal movement to gain advantage and precious seconds for a counterattack.

And sure, it was less known, but Rasa was also a master of wind release. A very good one, at that. He had a wind technique that could regulate the temperature for his body, nullifying the effect of the scorching heat her balls emitted.

Pakura was almost flattered when he acknowledged that he created it to counter her before the fight. Well, he was more or less bragging, but the thought still counted, in her opinion.

In theory, his logic was sound. His approach sounded reasonable.

The result, however, was that while his body was immune to the heat of the scorching ball he dodged, his golden sand was not. It directly liquified under the enormous heat and became superheated.

When Pakura's scorching ball flew into the distance, and the temperature lowered, the gold started to solidify once more, but by then, Rasa was too busy screaming himself hoarse in horrific pain as his golden armor that covered his back was now molten, scalding him while melding into his melting skin.

The fight was over in five seconds. It was the fastest one she had in her life. The Suna medics needed a chisel and five hours of persistent work to chip away the solid gold from Rasa's back before they could finally start healing it. Yet, despite their best efforts, Rasa still incurred a massive, lifelong scarring covering the majority of his back.

In hindsight, Pakura realized that this might be why he hated and feared her so much. She was his natural counter. But back then, she didn't think about it.

If she could, she would have let out a regretful sigh. That was her mistake.

Similarly, she was also a counter to Rasa's son, whose sand turned to glass near instantly upon coming into contact with her scorch release. The only reason he pushed her back and out of the village was that she was internally fighting against the control her summoner had over her.

She couldn't do much. She couldn't even talk, or she would at least try shouting some advice to the brat. She might be displeased with his father enough to consider some lethal payback, but Sunagakure... her feelings for her village were bittersweet. She spent her entire life fighting for it.

She killed, bled, and eventually died for it.

And now, in her afterlife, she was supposed to silently accept being used as a weapon to destroy her own village!?

Screw that!

Yet, her struggle was mostly meaningless. No matter what she did, her body acted on its own. She could at most underpower her techniques, and even then, just slightly. It was enough to let him push her out of the village, but he was still struggling against her Scorch Release.

The previously sand-filled dunes in their battlefield had long been transformed into thick, jagged, glassy terrain due to her indiscriminate attacks. Sage, how she wished she could waste her chakra like this in her life. By now, she would have been dead several times over from chakra exhaustion back then.

Unfortunately, for Rasa's kid, this meant he had a hard time gathering his sand. He either needed to break through the thick, glassy surface to reach the sands below, or he had to gather sand from further away.

And with how much of his sand became glass every time their attacks met, the boy was in a desperate struggle to constantly replenish his sand stores. All of those storage scrolls filled with sand he had used at the beginning of their battle were long empty.

It also took his biggest advantage away from him. He could not use sneak attacks from the ground. She would detect it the second he started if he tried to break the glassy surface underneath her feet.

That turned the whole battle into a ranged engagement, which was fully in her favor.

Pakura felt her chakra surge for who-knows-which-time during the battle, and instantly, another scorching ball was hurled at Gaara, who, in a split second, raised another wall of sand to meet it.

Pakura helplessly watched the ball sail through the air, inwardly sighing. With a lot of effort, she had managed to slightly shift the technique while it was forming, merging three balls into only that one, if a bit enhanced. It was still a lot less of a threat than the actual three balls, each with eighty percent of this one's power.

The sand met the fireball, causing another earth-shaking explosion, and Pakura, from the corner of her eyes, noticed how the boy was trying to use it as a cover for his attempt to sneak tendrils of sand across the ground toward her.

'Good boy.' She couldn't help but inwardly praise in a wry tone, even as her body moved on its own and another, smaller, fireball appeared in the palm of her hand. Pakura tried to will her arm to jerk to the side, but her limb disobeyed her mind, and the scorching fireball was launched toward the sneaky tendrils of sand, instantly vaporizing them in one go before her eyes trailed back toward the panting redhead.

They were back at square one. Except that he was getting tired.

Pakura's frustration started surging within her. The boy was clearly stalling, and she hoped the reinforcements he was waiting for would be freaking good, because he was not going to win like this. Unlike him, she could most likely continue with this until her summoner got bored.

Silently, the battle continued, and another scorching ball flew at Gaara in what Pakura would call a very uninspired fashion. But this time, just as Gaara was about to raise his sand and form a wall, a kunai flew into the scorching fireball.

Both Gaara and Pakura blinked... Before the surface of the ball near where the kunai landed started to turn into stone. It lasted just for a second, until the whole thing abruptly destabilized the technique and caused it to prematurely explode.

Frenzied gales of dry, scorching wind whipped around as intense light filled the surroundings in one quick flare. It quickly disappeared, but Pakura's eyes went wide as an unknown ninja suddenly appeared very close to her, the kunai in his hand swiping at her.

In a split second, she realized he must have used the explosion as a cover to reach her, and that there was some unknown seal on the kunai. Pakura's hopes surged. She inwardly cheered him on, but her hopes were dashed when two small fireballs started forming above her palms.

'Suicide attack!?' Pakura realized and tried to get her lips to move, to warn the man. But it was futile.

The fireballs almost instantly became as big as a watermelon and promptly detonated while still in her hands, sending a scorching wave of flames into the surroundings that engulfed both Pakura and her assailant in a fiery inferno.