At last, Sasori revealed himself. He shed his cloak, exposing the body he had already transformed into a puppet.
"This guy… he even turned himself into a puppet?" Gai gripped the railing, eyes wide in disbelief.
"The more one does something like this, the more flaws appear," Kakashi said, arms folded, his gaze heavy with unease.
On past missions, he had collected intelligence on Sasori. After betraying the village, Sasori had joined Akatsuki, murdered the Third Kazekage, and turned him into a puppet. But never had Kakashi expected that he would take his obsession to this level—making his own body into a puppet as well. What looked like power was nothing but digging his own grave.
Shikamaru, hidden within the arena's shadows, came to the same conclusion at a glance. "This way of gaining strength… it's only a path to destruction."
"Why do you say that?" Choji squinted, struggling to keep his eyes open.
Sasori lunged at Gaara, one arm elongating into countless puppet arms that shot forward like grasping claws.
Gaara evaded with ease, vanishing in a flicker of speed to appear behind Sasori, unleashing an even more devastating wave of sand. Shukaku was a Tailed Beast born of both wind and magnet release, and with Gaara fully attuned to him, those powers now flowed out with terrifying force.
It was like watching a fully-geared warrior face someone with nothing but scraps. Overwhelming in strength, in damage, in chakra—so much so that even the untrained spectators could sense the crushing difference.
Sasori's arm was shredded instantly into fragments.
Though he felt no pain, losing a limb meant little. With a seal, he simply summoned a new arm to replace it.
"Break one piece and he just swaps it out. Destroy one part, and he rebuilds it. But no matter what, there must be a core… a weakest point," Shikamaru murmured, eyes narrowed in thought.
Naruto and Choji both leaned forward, eyes narrowing as they hummed in thought.
"Emmm…"
"Emmm…"
After thinking long and hard, they both turned to Shikamaru and asked in unison, "So… where's his weak point?"
"His butt?" Naruto guessed with complete seriousness, recalling the time Kakashi-sensei had humiliated him with the infamous Thousand Years of Death.
That memory alone convinced him it might truly be the strongest technique in the village.
Even Shikamaru grimaced, remembering the same scene and the sour sting that followed. But quickly, he regained composure.
"No… I don't know exactly where he placed it, but somewhere inside his body there must be a core. That's where his chakra flows, the source that lets him control himself. No matter how strong he makes himself, he's still a puppeteer. And puppeteers always have chakra threads. No matter the tricks, he can't escape that weakness."
"Then let's tell Gaara!" Naruto suggested.
"No need," Shikamaru replied calmly. "Gaara has already noticed."
Just as he spoke, Gaara's iron sand lashed forward, shaped into a sharp triangular spike aimed at Sasori's chest. There, embedded like a cylinder of bamboo, lay his true core—his heart, his source of chakra. How he had managed to survive as a puppet was a mystery, but that was his sole weakness.
But just as the spike was about to pierce through, a female puppet flew out, intercepting the strike, shielding Sasori at the very last moment.
(End of Chapter)
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