Naofumi of the Sharingan

Chapter 19 - Iron Sand

Hey guys, Striker777 here with the next chapter of the story. This chapter will include the finalisation of the Jinpachi Munashi fight, as well as act as a bridge into the next arc of the story. But anyway, for now, onto the story.

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Raphtalia watched on as the black dust sank back onto the ground, losing the form of the wall that it previously held. It descended into a pile atop the rock of the cave that the fight had been occurring for the last few minutes.

Did... did she do that? It seemed ludicrous, seeing as she had never done anything quite like that before. Even if she did, she had no idea how she was meant to replicate what she did. How could she? She hadn't trained to use whatever the hell just happened, so how could she make it happen again?

Whatever it was seemed to really throw off Jinpachi. Naofumi took notice of it, seeing at it was the only weakness he felt he had a chance of exploiting. Jinpachi was scared of the Iron Sand.

Naofumi deduced that Jinpachi had a run-in with the Third Kazekage when he was still alive in his world a good 25 years or so ago. The timeline would certainly add up, seeing is the Third Kazekage went missing 20 years ago, and Jinpachi's early retirement on account of a horrible leg injury that almost left him as an amputee.

Jinpachi almost lost his leg to the Third Kazekage.

The iron sand had put him off, thrown him off his game. He was panicking and probably going through a bunch of negative emotions and trying to regain his thoughts.

This was the best time to attack. Naofumi rushed forward.

The iron sand shifted.

Naofumi caught on just in time to jump to the side as the sand became a prethora of sharp spikes shooting out in every direction. His teammates narrowly were missed, but Dra had suffered a slightly concerning cut to her shoulder. She gasped and fell down, clutching her shoulder as blood began flowing. Jinpachi had panicked and blocked with Shibuki as the spikes of iron lashed out at him.

No way was that Raphtalia. That had to be someone who had a lot of experience with the magnet style. A fool would mistake it as Raphtalia having no control of the Iron Sand and sent it in multiple directions, but the shape of spikes would have to take months,  maybe even years of practice to get right.

So the question was who was using the iron sand.

The first thought Naofumi had was that the Third Kazekage had been summoned as he had 20 years ago, and had actually been the one to manipulate the iron sand. But that seemed unlikely at best. The Third Kazekage would've come after Jinpachi the second he entered this world. Seeing as the man was still somehow alive was the biggest evidence against this theory.

The next idea was a random person who happened to have the Magnet Style used it to attack everyone. That was even less likely than the first option, seeing as Raphtalia's family was killed during the attack on her village, leaving no survivors of her bloodline. She was the last of her family and the only one in this world capable of utilising the Magnet Style.

Then there was the option with less than a 1% chance of being true. Raphtalia subconciously did it. She was somehow able to subconciously morph the iron sand into spikes, but lost control and sent them in every direction. This would be next to impossible, seeing as it was much harder to create and maintain a shape with chakra as opposed to moving an unkept shape. That iron sand wall was Raphtalia. It was ugly work at best, but it worked. Those spikes weren't her doing.

But that raised the question of how the iron sand did what it did.

The sand held it's shape, spiked and sharp enough to draw blood if any part of the body came into contact with it. It was also slightly poisonous, if only from bacterial infections such as Tetanus, but nothing immediately serious. Still, it was cause enough to stay away from the sharp sand.