Showdown: Gaara vs. Kimimaro

Gaara versus Kimimaro: the rescue's anchor fight. Kimimaro, dying of disease but deadlier for it, wields his clan's Dead Bone Pulse — a skeleton turned into an inexhaustible armory of blades, bones erupting as spears, drills and whips that shred Gaara's absolute sand defense. Lee crashes in mid-battle, drunk on accidental sake and impossible to predict, and the two Konoha-adjacent fighters tag against a man who cannot be killed by ordinary means because he's already dying for a master who has discarded him.