---Third POV---
The moment Ryouma thought of Hidan calling "Jashin-sama" every other sentence...
Nope. He was going to puke.
He shook his head hard, trying to scatter Hidan's image from his mind.
Beside him, Ōnoki saw that Deidara not only showed no remorse but was even harassing their guest. The anger that had just subsided welled up again.
"Ryouma was just inside the Tsuchikage Building. Were you planning on blowing him up too?"
"As if he would be such a weakling."
Deidara lifted his nose proudly. The kid had balls, you had to give him that.
He's just a spoiled brat... Obito complained in his heart.
At this point, he no longer felt that Deidara was anything like himself as a child. Back then, he wasn't nearly so damn irritating.
Ryouma pulled a pen from the ninja tool pouch at his waist and signed his name on the clay bird Deidara was holding out with both hands.
"Oh! Amazing!"
"You just wanted me to grade your art just now, right? Do you really like explosions that much?" Ryouma asked.
"Yeah, that's right! My dream is to achieve the same accomplishment like you, blowing up a great hidden village!" Deidara answered without hesitation.
Ryouma sighed lightly. "That's not really something worthy of being called a great deed. It was just something I had no choice but to do at the time."
Here, he paused, locking eyes with Deidara.
"I can see how devoted you are to your art. So I won't bother telling you to give up on this."
Kitsuchi, watching from the side, was growing anxious. Say something! Don't just leave it at that!
He felt Ryouma underestimated how much he meant to Deidara. The guy had even filled his house with clay figurines modeled after him.
But Ryouma was unaware of Kitsuchi's thoughts. He wasn't one for preaching life lessons, so he decided to show Deidara through action what true art was.
"What I'm about to say comes from me as a fellow artist with more experience. Listen carefully."
Deidara didn't reply. He carefully stowed away the clay bird bearing Ryouma's signature, then stood at attention.
"Please, go ahead."
Ryouma smiled and ruffled Deidara's hair. At least the kid had a decent attitude.
"First, about your explosion in the plaza just now, my evaluation is this: it was the worst explosion art I've ever seen. A flat zero."
"What?!"
Deidara's eyes widened, his world crashing down around him. He nearly blew up the Tsuchikage Building and that wasn't enough?
Damn it, he knew he shouldn't have settled for just blowing up the plaza.
Seeing Deidara's stunned expression, Kurotsuchi grew furious and turned on Ryouma:
"You bastard! Sure, it was wrong for him to try blowing up the village, but your judgment is way too harsh! You don't even know how hard he works!"
She truly didn't understand what explosions had to do with art. But everyone in the village had witnessed Deidara's hard work in training jutsu. Even so, he deserved at least a 2.5, right? This zero was just unfair bullshit!
Ōnoki too had never seen Deidara look so deflated. So this was the destructive power of an idol's criticism in person? Maybe he should've tried this approach years ago.
Sensing the mood was about right, Ryouma patted Deidara's shoulder.
"I hear from Kitsuchi that you took to blowing up village buildings because of what I once did to Kiri. But that can't really be called art."
"For a true artist of the shinobi world, the mark of entry is being able to blow up a mountain. Blow up a village, and people will rebuild. But blow up a mountain, who's going to stack up rocks and recreate that peak?"
"You get my point, don't you?"
Deidara pressed his lips together. "I—"
"I bet you don't," Ryouma interrupted before he could finish. "Let me just show you."
He spread his arms wide. A gale surged upward, spiraling and roaring, whipping his clothes.
Then, with a sudden burst, a golden wave of energy rippled outward from his body.
Kurama Mode, unleashed.
The torrent of chakra forced those around him to take several steps back instinctively.
Ōnoki had already grown uneasy listening to Ryouma's words, but when that golden light erupted, he hurried to warn him nervously:
"Please, don't get excited!"
He knew all too well the power of that golden form. This was the very technique that treated Madara's Susanoo like a toy to be kicked around.
Ryouma once turned Iwa's mighty war fortress in the Land of Grass into an artificial lake. Their whole village wasn't even much larger than that fortress.
"Watch closely, Deidara. This is your first lesson from me."
He pulled a Flying Thunder God kunai from behind him, held it to his fingertip, and aimed toward a distant mountain outside Iwa.
In the next instant, the kunai shot out like a cannon round, streaking across the sky until it landed precisely on the mountain peak he had locked onto.
The stage was set.
He raised his right hand slowly. In the sky above, colossal yin-yang chakra began to swirl, compress, and expand with terrifying intensity.
In the blink of an eye, a massive black Tailed Beast Ball took shape, hanging over Iwa, blotting out the sun itself.
Cold sweat dripped down Ōnoki's forehead. He knew this all too well. During the war, he had seen such a sight from his village's own jinchūriki nearly every few days.
But the sheer size of this ball was terrifying, almost rivaling the meteorite Madara had once dropped in the Land of Grass. The thing was big enough to wipe out half the village in one shot.
And clearly, this wasn't the power of the Four-Tails or Five-Tails Ryouma had once taken away.
Then he glanced at the nine-tailed fox at Ryouma's feet. So it was the real thing after all.
Looks like Konoha had developed some new kind of sealing technique, having the Uzumaki clan's legacy sure was useful.
As the Tailed Beast Ball continued to swell in the sky, even the air over Iwa turned heavy.
Kitsuchi was already regretting opening his mouth during the meeting at the Tsuchikage's office.
If Ryouma lost control for even a moment and let this bomb go off here, he didn't want to imagine what would be left. No wonder he was Deidara's idol, compared to this, Deidara's building-blasting was child's play.
"This yield should be about right," Ryouma murmured softly.
His heart stirred, and in an instant the Flying Thunder God technique activated, precisely teleporting the massive chakra "Genki Dama" onto the distant mountain peak marked earlier by his kunai.
In the blink of an eye, everything erupted in blinding light.
A colossal mushroom cloud roared skyward in the distance, blazing fire surging, instantly consuming everything in its path. The explosion was so bright it hurt to look at directly.
The shockwave spread outward at a speed nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, shattering rock and reducing trees to powder as it passed. The sound came seconds later.
The mountain collapsed instantly, breaking apart into countless fragments of stone and dust, which were hurled into the sky within the raging blast. Smoke and ash filled the air, it was like watching the end of the world in real time.
At that moment, Kura, who had been enjoying a rare moment of reunion with his family, was startled by the rumble outside.
Not just him, villagers across Iwa were nearly blinded by the light from the Tailed Beast Ball's explosion.
A few minutes later, the smoke from the blast was slowly carried away by the wind. The mountain, once a named landmark near Iwa, had been completely flattened.
A hot wind swept across the land, brushing past Ōnoki and his group.
Seeing that their village remained untouched, their pounding hearts finally began to calm.
With a wave of his hand, Ryouma dispersed the Nine-Tails chakra cloak around him and said, "I calculated it long ago, at that position, the explosion wouldn't reach your village. If you were worried about people in the mountain, there was no one there anyway."
"Hah..." Ōnoki let out a long breath of relief. "Next time please warn me first. Otherwise, you'll scare me to death."
"Next time, for sure." Ryouma agreed offhandedly.
Shukaku removed the claws covering its ears, nodding smugly. "Not bad, partner. Even that fox probably couldn't spit out a Tailed Beast Ball on this scale."
"Want to try, stupid tanuki?"
Though it was true it couldn't release a Tailed Beast Ball of that magnitude, Kurama would never admit it aloud.
After all, when excessive Yin-Yang chakra is poured into a Tailed Beast Ball, even a tailed beast risks losing control and detonating it prematurely.
When it came to controlling tailed beast chakra, even Kurama had to admit, Ryouma was currently better.
Off to the side, Kurotsuchi awkwardly tugged on Deidara's sleeve and whispered, "Um, compared to that explosion... yours really are a bit lacking. Still, giving you a zero was too harsh."
Deidara didn't answer. He just stared blankly at the vanished mountain in the distance, muttering: "This... this is the real art. Yeah."
Ryouma smiled faintly, waving a hand in front of Deidara to snap him back to reality. "See? Deidara, to personally obliterate mountains that have stood since ancient times, that's the truest art of fleeting beauty. Your tricks still have a long way to go."
"You're absolutely right! Please take me as your student! I swear I'll inherit your path of art."
Deidara's face broke into a goofy grin.
Listening to this, Kitsuchi grew restless. He'd only hoped Ryouma might use his influence to guide Deidara in a better direction, not snatch away a future Tsuchikage candidate!
If that happened, all his efforts would be wasted.
Thinking quickly, he cut in, "Deidara, you haven't even graduated from the academy yet, what's this about becoming Ryouma's student?"
"So what? I can quit school if I want!" Deidara shot back.
"Of course not." Ryouma interrupted. "Kids need to finish school properly. Graduate first, and if you can blow apart the mountains around Iwa like I did, then maybe I'll consider taking you on."
"Oh! So it's a test? Don't worry! I'll definitely complete it and make you accept me! Yeah!"
"Do your best, Deidara."
Ryouma humored him, even as he sent a gathering signal to Kura through the Flying Thunder God.
"Obito, give that case of injections to the Tsuchikage. I noticed a few people in the plaza were slightly injured."
Those syringes were only meant as samples, but with this accident, it was the perfect opportunity to hand them out as a goodwill gesture, and free publicity.
Obito immediately passed the case to Kitsuchi, who accepted it with thanks and quickly ordered an ANBU to take it away.
Not long after, Kura received Ryouma's signal. He hastily bid farewell to his family and rushed back to the Tsuchikage's office.
Since his home wasn't near the village center, he'd missed witnessing Deidara's "art."
Looking at the massive crater in the plaza, he scratched his head and asked, "What happened here? Was there a fight?"
"No, just a small incident." Obito shrugged, offering no further detail.
Ōnoki, realizing it was time to part, waved for an ANBU to bring him a storage scroll. He handed it to Ryouma. "This is a small token from me as host."
Never one to refuse gifts, Ryouma didn't even look inside before pocketing it.
"Well then, we'll take our leave, Tsuchikage-sama, Kitsuchi."
"Goodbye."
"Safe travels."
"Wait for me!"
Obito's eyes glowed red as the Kamui vortex expanded, swallowing Ryouma and his companions.
Ōnoki sighed enviously. "Space-time jutsu... so convenient."
Only after Ryouma's presence vanished completely did Deidara's excitement begin to fade.
He pulled from his robe the clay bird signed by Ryouma, confirming once again this wasn't a dream.
Seeing her grandfather still deep in thought, Kurotsuchi quickly tugged Deidara aside and whispered, "Let's run, Deidara."
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