"At the end of the day, you're just a kid who never grew up. You couldn't stand the grind of real training, so for the sake of your so-called freedom and art, you threw away honor that was practically already in your hands."
That line hit Deidara like a knife to the chest.
The truth was, when he joined the Akatsuki, it wasn't because he wanted to. He'd been beaten into submission by Itachi and had no real choice in the matter.
Now, hearing Akira say it out loud, Deidara was furious, but he also knew there was no going back.
"Cut the lecture. You sure know a lot, which means you've done your homework."
Even Kakashi was caught off guard. He knew Deidara was a missing-nin from Iwagakure, but he had honestly had no idea the guy had once been the Tsuchikage's direct disciple.
If what Akira said was true, then Deidara really had made the bargain of a lifetime, in the worst possible way.
Walking away from a future as the leader of a great nation just to end up working under someone else? That took a very unusual way of thinking.
With Kage-class strength at Deidara's age, there truly would not have been anyone in Iwagakure's younger generation who could have touched him.
Akira smiled, his tone still easy. "I know enough. Speaking of Iwagakure, they've had it rough too. Onoki's practically one foot in the grave, and he still doesn't dare retire. Why? Because the successor he raised ran off, and now there's no one left to take over."
Deidara's brows knit tightly.
Standing in front of this man made him feel like he was naked, like every secret and weakness had been stripped clean and laid out in the open.
"Enough talk! Since you beat Itachi, that only makes me more interested in blowing you to pieces! Let's see whether your strength actually matches that mouth of yours!"
With that, Deidara flicked his wrist, and a handful of clay spiders he had already molded scattered toward Akira like a storm of deadly petals.
The fight exploded into motion.
Dozens of lifelike white spiders traced arcs through the air as they came raining down toward Akira.
Chiyo's face changed at once, and she shouted a warning. "Careful! Those things explode on contact!"
The grotesque little spiders were already about to splash right into Akira's face.
And yet he didn't dodge.
Bzzzt—
A shrill burst of electric noise rang out.
In an instant, a halo of brilliant blue lightning erupted around Akira's body. Countless fine arcs flashed outward like scalpels, striking every single spider in midair with perfect precision.
Pfft, pfft, pfft—
The expected explosions never came.
Stimulated by the Lightning Style chakra, the unstable detonation clay instantly lost its structure. Every spider turned into a dud, falling to the ground as nothing more than clumps of inert mud with a few thin wisps of black smoke rising from them.
That was the absolute elemental suppression of Lightning Style over Earth Style.
Deidara's detonation clay was a secret art, yes, but at its core it was still Earth-nature transformation. Against high-intensity Lightning Style, the chakra structure inside it could be shut down in an instant.
The smirk on Deidara's face froze solid. He stared like he'd seen a ghost.
"This... how is that possible? That kind of precise Lightning Style control?!"
What Akira had just done looked simple.
It wasn't.
Releasing dozens of separate currents in an instant, hitting each fast-moving target with total accuracy, and controlling the exact nature of the chakra at the same time, that demanded utterly terrifying fine control.
That one move alone was enough to make everyone present rethink exactly how strong Akira really was.
Even Chiyo couldn't help murmuring in admiration, "That level of microscopic chakra control... even Tsunade, that monster-strength woman, probably couldn't pull this off so cleanly."
Kakashi, on the other hand, barely reacted.
Akira's chakra control had always been monstrous.
Naruto and Sakura, meanwhile, were staring so hard their eyes were nearly falling out. That sort of absurdly exact performance completely rewrote what they thought Lightning Style could do.
Akira brushed off his hands as though dusting away something that wasn't there and said to Deidara in a flat voice, "Looks like holding back isn't going to work."
Originally, he'd planned to conserve some effort.
But with Naruto's side already running into problems, he no longer had the luxury of dragging things out.
Deidara finally dropped the last of his earlier contempt, his face turning more serious than it had been at any point so far.
Both hands plunged into the clay pouches at his waist, the mouths in his palms chewing frantically.
"So regular bombs are useless against him. I'll need something with real destructive power! His Lightning Style is a perfect counter to me!"
Deidara might have been arrogant, but he wasn't stupid.
Against a monster who not only countered his element, but also surpassed him in raw combat ability, trying to keep playing around with small C1 explosives would have been suicide.
He had to go straight to C2.
Maybe even C3.
A hard, ruthless gleam flashed across Deidara's eyes as he hurled a massive wad of kneaded clay into the air.
"Art is an explosion! Try this on for size! C2: Dragon!!"
A cloud of white smoke billowed out.
From it emerged an enormous clay dragon over ten meters long, materializing in midair. It opened its jaws wide and let out a deafening roar.
ROOOAR—!!!
The dragon beat its wings and dove straight at Akira with the force of something built to wipe out everything in its path.
Akira still stood where he was, not even blinking, while Kakashi and the others had already moved into defensive positions.
Seeing everyone bracing themselves as though catastrophe were already upon them, Deidara's mouth curled into a cruel grin.
"The power of C2 is enough to flatten half a village. You think you can stop it? Keep dreaming! Hm!"
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