After asking a few follow-up questions, Temari reached her own mistaken conclusion regarding Takara's absence, as well as the "unfinished business" he mentioned needing to finish.
Under the desperate looks of the genin who hoped for a quiet return, Temari urged them to hasten and return as quickly as possible to deliver the critical information.
Takara watched them leave with mixed feelings.
He successfully avoided the battle on the bridge, one of the favorite places of the ninjas in this world for life or death confrontations, but for the sake of the illusion, he also let go of useful resources.
No matter, leaving Sunagakure doesn't mean the village itself needs to know.
Just give them a bone to keep them happy and not bother him, it will save him time.
He quickened his own pace until he reached the outskirts of a small village, where Roshi occasionally passed irregularly to buy some alcohol. The woman who ran the shop was an undercover agent of Iwagakure, but Roshi seemed to ignore this fact, whether intentionally or not.
Perhaps some kind of tacit agreement?
He waited for his target for two days.
From the information he gathered, Roshi had as much interest in liquor as Tsunade had in gambling, so despite being able to survive in the wild and hide from the world, he simply decided to find a nice forest near a remote village but within his comfort zone to acquire the alcohol.
Takara even noticed that Roshi didn't even pay for the drink, he simply exchanged a few words and took with him two or three jars each time.
Letting some noxins follow him, Takara waited for the woman to go to the back of the store to send a message via a ninja hawk and when he prepared to leave, he was treated to delay the response from Iwagakure.
Takara doubted there was only one person watching Roshi, so he had to be quick.
"It seems he's realized someone is following him."
Roshi didn't walk towards his base camp, instead, as if it were part of his daily route, he veered off to reach a clear area that was clearly waiting to be used for a fight.
Well, Kisame could handle Roshi and it wouldn't be too much work for Takara in his current state.
"Are you coming out or do I have to force you?" Roshi asked as he left the alcohol jars at the foot of a tree and moved towards the clear area.
Is he so confident that he can pick up the jars to enjoy them later?
Takara wasn't polite and directly sent Tier Harribel's five puppets.
"Sunagakure puppeteer?" Roshi narrowed his eyes and scoffed.
With his fusion element, those wooden and metal puppets were a joke to him.
Scrap waiting to be dismantled!
"Don't let your guard down, I have a bad feeling," reminded him Son Goku sealed within him.
Perhaps they didn't have a relationship that could be called friendship, but after so many years together, a certain level of understanding had developed.
Roshi didn't feel it was that problematic, but it didn't hurt to be a bit more cautious.
He knew the poison from puppeteers was troublesome to deal with.
"Fusion Release: Burning Rock Stream!"
Takara looked mildly interested in Roshi's version of Fusion Style.
Interestingly, although there are several users, they all seem to have their preferred personal version.
In the case before them, they use molten rock both in solid and liquid states.
Kurotsuchi and several ninjas from Iwagakure use corrosive lime.
Dodai and Karyu are capable of producing vulcanized rubber that serves as insulation against the lightning element.
Etoro Konjiki even employed a variant shaped like flames at its melting point.
Returning to the fight, a large amount of lava solidified into multiple balls of molten rock that shot towards their targets with great force. Due to the composition of the rocks, they can melt almost any object in their path and cover a very wide range.
Harribel's puppets looked on without changing their expressions at the incoming attacks.
"Hierro x5!"
The rocks hit the puppets and left traces of themselves on the ground after the explosion, covering the surroundings with raised dirt and splashes of magma.
"You didn't even dodge them?" Roshi raised an eyebrow at the unexpected sacrifice of the other party's tool. "Were they some kind of bait?"
"Don't let your guard down!" Son Goku suddenly shouted.
"Sonido x5!"
Roshi's expression changed and using his rich combat experience, he spun around himself at a complicated angle, dodging several swords around him and managing to catch one of the enemy puppets before it could escape.
"Fusion Release: Flame Flower Destruction!"
Covering his hand with lava, he impacted the puppet's stomach and with his other fist dealt another blow that sent it flying away from him.
Takara raised an eyebrow under the mask at the fall of one of his puppets, it seemed that veteran jinchurikis were something else at the end of the day.
Roshi smiled to see that despite the oddity of the puppets, which seemed especially lifelike compared to the ones he remembered from years ago, they still remained somewhat fragile at the end of the day.
"Wipe that smile off your face, they're coming back."
Harribel's puppets watched the state of the fallen puppet and distanced themselves from Roshi, aiming the swords of their right arms towards him as they said in unison:
"La Gota x4!"
Roshi was besieged by high-pressure water shots that shot out at full speed, being fired successively with relative ease and with devastating power.
"Oi, oi!" Roshi was forced to enter the fusion element chakra mode to withstand the sudden massive aquatic onslaught from four directions. "Since when are Suna's puppets so strong?"
For a moment, he thought they were like the infamous human puppets of Sasori of the Red Sand, but seeing that Takara's four puppets were identical, including the one he had destroyed before, he dismissed the possibility.
Quintuplets with this kind of ability would have been famous long ago!
And where did they get enough chakra and water to make these attacks?!
The worst part is that they don't seem to tire soon despite the high consumption and they were effectively repressing him.
But he felt it would be humiliating to resort to the Tailed Beast Transformation when the puppeteer hadn't even come out into the open yet.
Where would his face be?
"Wait, something's wrong," Roshi looked around and realized a problem. "Where is the water they shot?"
The ground was muddy, but very superficially.
"Above!" reminded him Son Goku.
Roshi looked up and observed with horror the massive, no, it would be better to call it titanic, amount of water suspended above him. Since the surroundings hadn't been darkened by its presence, it was something he couldn't understand.
"Cascada x4!"
Curse it, he couldn't get out of the range of that thing in time!
His pride wasn't worth as much as his life!
"Tailed Beast Transformation!"
"Fusion Release: Mountain of Flowers and Fruits!"
"Monkey's Incendiary Flame!"
If someone observed the scene from a distance, they would see a huge red monkey with gorilla features erupting a volcano from the ground to combat the water spout that seemed to dwarf its size while releasing a great green blaze from its mouth.
"Darn it! If only I had time to use the Tailed Beast Bomb…"
The collision of both forces shook the surroundings and when several figures came to investigate two hours later, they only found a large calm lake where there had been none recorded before.