Sakaze closed her eyes, breathing in the dry, scorched air. The sand beneath her feet shifted minutely, grains vibrating against her skin like a second pulse. The mad Prophet had worked long and hard at building her network--her informants were everywhere now. She had agents in cities, in towns, on the roads, in temples, even in Sunagakure herself. Small, unimportant people. Servants and slaves went unnoticed and unremarked on, most everywhere, and they heard things that others simply could not. As long as they were careful and clever--and let's face it, most people in the lower strata of society were smarter and cleverer than anyone gave them credit for--she would be fed a steady stream of useful information.
She despised leaving any of her people in bondage, but these were all volunteers who had readily agreed to put themselves in danger if it meant they could work for a day where Her light would shine on a free and prosperous Land of Wind.
But now, she knew, she still wasn't strong enough to truly threaten Iwagakure. Their famous ninja were among the strongest in the world, as much as she called them dogs and cursed their existence, and mere words would not be enough for her to drive them from her home. She would need to fight their most dangerous fighters and win, consistently, or else the people would lose faith--already she could feel them growing restless, could hear her Lady in her mind, urging her to fight back harder. And so, now, she stood in the center of a ring of her followers, each of them instructed to launch attacks at her at random--and she wasn't to move from the spot she was in.
"Begin," she said.
The first attacker came from behind--no warning, no shouted signal. A kunai whistled toward her spine, but before it could strike, the sand at her feet rippled. A thin whip of granular gold lashed upward, intercepting the blade midair and sending it clattering to the ground without Sakaze moving an inch, relying on her own observational skill. The second attack, a fireball launched from her right, barely got a glance as a round shield of golden sand formed in mid-air faster than an eyeblink and caused the ball of superheated plasma to break upon it like a wave.
One of her followers leapt at her from her back left with a dynamic entry aimed at her head, only for a tentacle of sand to reach up from the ground, latch around his ankle and send him spinning off into the air until he embedded in a sand dune. While he was still flying through the air, a dozen kunai found themselves embedded in a column of sand that simply erupted from the earth underneath them, catching the whole lot before they could even approach the beige-robed woman that stood at the center of a maelstrom of violence. The sand around her moved as if the desert's only goal were her protection--a goal that it was achieving handily, as none of the rebels she'd brought with her were quite at her level, though quantity was a quality all on its own.
It took every ounce of Sakaze's concentration to maintain the steady kinesis she was employing to great effect, but it wasn't like she lacked for endurance--her chakra reserves were among the most vast she'd ever even heard of, and she'd always relied on them to carry her through most any fight. But she knew that wasn't a tactic she would always be able to rely on. There would be those who could match her, could perhaps even outspeed her, and she needed to be better
A shuriken barrage arced from the left while a rebel lunged from the right, his staff aimed at her ribs. Sakaze's sand lashed out in two directions simultaneously, a tendril reaching out and snagging the staff from the man's hand while the shuriken met a sudden wall of compacted grit, embedding harmlessly. Sakaze exhaled slowly, centering herself. The sand beneath her feet was alive, an extension of her will, but she could not rely on raw power alone. "Again," she commanded, her voice calm despite the sweat tracing her brow.
This time, the rebels attacked in unison. A Raiton-charged kunai streaked toward her throat, crackling with electricity. At the same moment, a Doton • Earth Pillar erupted beneath her, threatening to unbalance her, but Sakaze did not flinch.
Her sand reacted in twin flashes: one tendril erupted out of the earth and wrapped around the kunai's handle, stopping the crackling projectile a full 5 meters away from her before it drew the blade back under the sand, while the sand beneath her feet began to whirl and buzz like a chainsaw save for the two solid platforms she left beneath her feet. The pillar ground to sand before it could move her more than a few feet up, allowing her to drop harmlessly back into her standing position with her arms held behind her back.
Fatigue gnawed at her. Her chakra reserves were vast, but not infinite. The rebels, sensing weakness, redoubled their efforts. A Suiton • Water Whip lashed at her face, and a wall of silica rose up to intercept it and slump back down to the earth in muddy clumps. A volley of senbon, each tipped with a mild paralytic, flew at her from behind before a small, localized sandstorm deflected their flight in midair. Another rebel, cloaked in a genjutsu, flickered into her blind spot, but the sand beneath him melted, trapping him ankle-deep before he could strike.
But then she made a mistake, something that almost never happened. The half-second it had taken to register and then dispel the jutsu that had hidden her opponent caused her focus to split, and one attacker, too fast, slipped through her defenses. A kunai grazed her arm, drawing a thin line of blood.
The rebels froze. The desert itself seemed to hold its breath.
Sakaze looked down at the wound, then at the trembling man who’d landed the hit. "…Good," she said softly. Then, with a flick of her wrist, the sand swarmed him, lifting him into the air before depositing him gently back with the others.
"That is what Iwa will do," she said, wiping the blood away. "They will find the gaps. They will exploit them."
She met each rebel’s eyes in turn. "So we leave none. Get some water, take five minutes, and we're running again," she ordered, getting sighs and groans of relief from the dozen or so men and women that she'd dragged out into the desert under the blazing sun in order to train. The training was good experience for them, taught them how to coordinate attacks against a superior opponent, but they also helped her. The faster her reaction time, the faster she would be able to react to new threats and keep her people safe.
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*[Sandkinesis]
A-rank Ninjutsu
Having achieved notable mastery over Sand, the user is capable of shaping, directing, and manipulating existing bodies of the element without the need of hand seals or an existing technique. The range at which the user can manipulate the element is equal to the user's control times 2 metres. While the user can freely manipulate this element, they cannot produce the element naturally.
A-rank Ninjutsu
Having achieved notable mastery over Sand, the user is capable of shaping, directing, and manipulating existing bodies of the element without the need of hand seals or an existing technique. The range at which the user can manipulate the element is equal to the user's control times 2 metres. While the user can freely manipulate this element, they cannot produce the element naturally.