Once More by ItsHardToFindAPenName

Chapter 34: Counterattack

Gaara's eyes fluttered open.

The first thing he saw was the mop of spiky blonde hair hovering right in front of his face.

"Na... ruto...?"

Said blonde grinned cheerily. "Welcome back to the world of living, Gaara."

The young Kazekage pushed himself up from the ground. He held his head in pain. "Ugh... I only remember spending all my chakra to stop that mad bomber's final blast... What happened to the village?"

"From what we saw, it is still standing," Sakura answered in Naruto's place. She was the one who brought Gaara back to consciousness. "But I don't think the shinobi in there can hold on much longer if we don't do anything. From what I heard, you are outnumbered quite a bit, right?"

"Yeah..." Gaara muttered in disdain. "Now I can't even do anything; both my chakra and Shukaku's ran out completely, and now she's sleeping inside my seal..."

Then he felt Naruto's hand grabbing his right shoulder.

Suddenly he felt himself alive. All of his chakra was rejuvenated in an instant, and all of his fatigue, pain and injury seemingly disappeared in a blink of an eye.

"There, that might be enough," Naruto looked at him, still grinning. "Or maybe you need a little bit more?"

"No, that's more than enough," Gaara smiled. He stood up from the ground. "More than enough to protect Sunagakure from those monsters already."

Naruto grinned. "Then let's go in there, yeah?"

Gaara nodded. He made a twisting motion with his hand, and a hole opened on the dome. The three shinobi leapt through the hole, and rushed into the battle.

This might be the proper time to talk about the battle within the village, inside the dome of sand.

When Gaara created the dome of sand to protect the village from Deidara's bomb, the only thing in his mind had been stopping the gigantic explosion from reducing the village to rubble. He didn't even think about his own life; the safety of other Suna shinobi was more important.

And because of that, he had also forgotten another crucial detail.

The sand dome he had created was incredibly strong, strong enough to withstand the explosion from Deidara's C3. That meant it was very, very solid. Nothing could get through it.

Even sunlight.

That meant every shinobi of Sunagakure had suffered a sudden loss in their vision, right in the middle of battle. The consequence was that the inexperienced ones were taken aback by the sudden darkness, and a lot of them were fatally wounded by the incoming White Zetsu army, in just a very short moment.

The only consolation was, that was also the only thing the White Zetsu army could do. Abominable as they were, they still had to depend on their vision to know where to attack. The injuries they had managed to deal to the shinobi in the darkness were due to them blindly flailing around from the sudden loss of vision and hit the shinobi by accident. Right now, they were fumbling around like a horde of zombies, trying to find someone to hit. Many of them were taken down by their own kin.

In contrast, the shinobi of Sunagakure had realized the problem right when it came down on their heads. They had immediately retreated back together and formed manji formations to protect themselves, but hadn't dared to do anything reckless.

Basically, the war inside the dome was now in a complete stalemate. In a situation like this, the disadvantage definitely belonged to the side with the smaller army, because their enemy could just blindly rush in and overwhelm them with sheer number. Especially when they were outnumbered one by five and the enemies didn't even care about the life of their own, or of their comrades.