Behind his disguise, Orochimaru fumed as his new vessel failed to turn up on shedule for his fight with Gaara. If the patsie didn't turn up then he'd have to improvise another signal to kick off the invasion and improvising was always more Jiraiya's forte than the Snake-Sannin's.
'Perhaps I need to to motivate the old fool to produce him,' he decided. "Heh heh. Many ninja have that reaction when faced with Gaara," the Kazekage said smugly.
Sarutobi's face tightened. Embarassing him was one thing, but Hatake Kakashi and Uchiha Sasuke had just embarassed the whole Village of Konoha in the most public setting imaginable. He gestured to one of the ninja 'guarding' him and drew two fingers across his throat. The chuunin nodded and used shunshin to reach Genma in the middle of the arena and whisper a quick message.
The jounin acting as judge for the final round nodded. "As he has failed to arrive in time for his match," he said loudly. "Uchiha Sasuke... is disqualified. Sabaku no Gaara will advance to the match against Uzumaki Naruto."
There were approximately four different reactions to this statement.
Orochimaru resisted the temptation to start beating his head against the rail. 'Well, maybe Gaara will be frustrated enough to unleash the Bijuu on the Kyuubi-brat. It'd be overkill for a twerp like that, but it's something.'
The various Konoha ninja watching clenched fists and started quietly arranging a schedule for the vicious beatdown that Hatake Kakashi was going to get from every single one of them once he arrived. The Hokage got the first shot but after that he was fair game... (Maito Gai swore that if he didn't make Kakashi apologise to every single person in the village then he, personally, would burn Kakashi's entire collection of porn).
Various bookies looked at the number of bets on Uchiha Sasuke and started making plans to take long and expensive holidays off the profits this year.
And the last reaction was typified by the man who rose to his feet in the crowd and bellowed. "I JUST LOST MY SHIRT BETTING ON THAT LITTLE SHIT! HOW DARE HE BOTTLE OUT!" The fact that he was a visiting Daimyo only made him more obvious and within moments half the crowd were baying for Sasuke's blood.
Well, there was one other reaction but it was so close to Orochimaru's that it hardly needed mentioning. 'Well crap,' thought Shikamaru. 'If I quit now then I'll get lynched. That Sasuke's as troublesome as a girl.'
.oOo.
Gaara of the Desert was not having a good day.
He had high expectations for today - he'd get to kill Uchiha Sasuke (who was at least somewhat dangerous, perhaps due to the seal that gave him that odd chakra back in the Forest of Death) and Hyuuga Neji (whose insistence that he was a fated winner was clearly in error); as a warm-up before letting Mother out to play with a whole village of shinobi. Plus there would be hundreds of Sand and Sound ninja running around it, so there could be a few not at all accidental accidents happening to some of them as well. Bliss.
First the annoying one actually won his match, meaning that the Hyuuga would probably not be available to be killed. Still, swatting him later would be some compensation, particularly if he got all emotional about the Uchiha's death the way he did over that green one or the other Hyuuga.
Second, inexplicably, Uchiha Sasuke didn't turn up!
Gaara had been feeling significantly gypped at this point. Kankuro had given up before even entering the arena and Temari had been defeated by the lazy Leaf-nin (who'd left his own chakra so depleted that he wouldn't be any contest at all if he got as far as Gaara in the tournament). At this point, the annoying one was about the only consolation that he was getting.
If he could only find the right $£(^)$%^%( one among the clones that kept popping up around the arena to attack him. The annoying one just kept creating them as fast as Gaara could destroy them, something that was actually posing a slight drain to his chakra reserves. This annoying one, this Uzumaki Naruto did have some small strength after all. Not enough, but some.
With all this on his mind, it was perhaps understandable that Gaara's reaction to a spiral of leaves popping into existence in the arena was to attack it instantly.
The leaves, of course, were brushed aside by the mere air being pushed aside by the rush of sand but the two shinobi inside avoided serious injury only because the taller of the two grabbed his companion and used a kawarimi to swap them for two of the Uzumaki's clones that were obliterated by the rush of sand.
Halfway across the arena sheltering in the hole that he'd tunnelled while fighting Neji and that Shikamaru had used against that fan-girl Naruto blinked at the last memories of the two clones. The hell? Kakashi used two of my clones to protect himself and Sasuke? What if one of the clones had been the real me? There's no way that Kakashi-sensei could have known... and I'd have died for sure if I got hit like that! The boy paled. ...he didn't bother to teach me, he didn't bother to show up when I was fighting and he'd risk sacrificing me to protect Sasuke when they appeared someplace they shouldn't even be... that... that... BASTARD!
"You're supposed to wait for the fight to begin," Kakashi lectured Gaara, looking around. Huh, what was Naruto doing with all these clones in the arena? He'd calculated the time pretty carefully - allowing enough time for Huuga Neji to crush Naruto (he'd feel bad but the kid really had no chance and it would be a learning experience); a moderately long fight between Aburame Shino and the puppeteer before the Sand-nin was defeated; and an extended match between Nara Shikamaru and the little blonde sand-kunoichi that could go either way. So what was Naruto still doing in the arena and with Gaara as well? Had the matches been switched at the last minute?
Shiranui Genma chewed on his senbon. Despite the high-grade steel, it was going to need replacing after all the damage it was taking as recipient for the jounin's frustrations - he'd bet a lot of money on the Uchiha and against Uzumaki and while he wasn't going to blame the Kyuubi brat for the upset match (and from what Hayate had told him about the preliminaries, the kid must have been pretending weakness in them, which was admirably sneaky) losing money because the much touted prodigy had lost his nerve was a bit much.
"Kakashi, get your ass out of the arena before you screw up the damn match," he spat. "Uchiha, disqualified contestants have to find their own seats."
"Dis-" both new arrivals began, one noticably higher pitched than the other.
"GET OUT!" came the first of several shouts from the stands.
Up in the stands, the two Kages stared at each other. "On the one hand," the 'Kazekage' said. "That's two of your shinobi interfering with the match. Well, one and a half. On the other, if one of those clones he sacrificed had been the real Uzumaki then he'd have given Gaara the win. What is it that the Wind daimyo sees in your village anyway?"
The Hokage had all but forgotten about Orochimaru at this point, diverted by pleasing fantasies of Kakashi getting that snotty attitude beaten out of him once and for all.
.oOo.
Unfortunately, Gaara was not inclined to let Sasuke get away. He'd already been cheated once of his chance to kill the Uchiha and it did not lie within his nature to take a second disappointment philosophically. Before Kakashi or Sasuke could move to protest further or to depart the arena, the sand was upon them. Both sprang aside instinctively, seperating in an effort to force Gaara to divide his attention.
"Out!" Genma bellowed at Kakashi, desperately trying to reach Sasuke to enforce the order upon him physically. He was too far away...
But Naruto was not and Gaara's sand recoiled in a sudden but belated defense as Naruto repeated his subterranean efforts against Neji, this time emerging immediately behind Gaara and reaching up to bury a kunai right in Gaara's inner sand armour. "Konoha Secret Technique Revised:" he shouted. "Thousand Years of Pain Explosion!" Then he dived back into the tunnel, sand rampaging for a moment before the explosive seal wrapped around the kunai hilt detonated.
Sand went flying across the arena, obscuring everything. Kakashi prudently leapt away, up into the stands. Actually, this might not have been quite so prudent as he entered the stands right in front of Ino and Sakura, who promptly began throwing anything that came to hand at the man responsible for their Sasuke-kun's disqualification.
"Blood!" screamed Gaara. The sands began to part, gathering to him and revealing the changes that were overcoming him. His face was different, half of it shaped by a build-up of sand into a bizarre tanuki mask and his eyes - for those close enough to see - had gone from turquoise to black with four gold diamonds in place of pupils. One arm was encompassed as well, creating a huge limb capped with a clawed paw.
"Oh fuck," muttered Kankuro to Temari. "He's changing!"
Meanwhile, in the arena, Genma had missed catching Sasuke by a fraction of an inch. Rather than moving to escape like his mentor however, the genin was taking the fight to Gaara. Disqualified or not, he was in a fight with the Sand-nin now and he'd show them all the strength of the Uchiha clan. Sharingan eyes spun as chakra crackled around Sasuke's hand and a chirping sound familiar to only a few became audible through the arena as blue chakra carved a path through the still dusty air.
The Sharingan is a powerful doujutsu... but it isn't all that good at picking out precise details through an obscuring fog. And Sasuke was forgetting - or more to the point disregarding as unimportant, one detail.
Gaara wasn't the only person that he couldn't see yet. From above, those with clearer views shouted desperate warnings - warnings that undoubtedly saved a life for Naruto half-turned and the chidori that Sasuke drove inexorably towards the centre of mass of the first figure that he saw through the sand-laden air only struck the shoulder.
"TEME!" Naruto screamed as Sasuke rushed past (the Chidori guttering out, exhausted by the effort of ripping through inches of human flesh and bone) knocking Naruto away to the right of his charge. Naruto's right arm went spinning away to the left of his 'teammate'.
.oOo.
There was a howl of outrage from the crowd, but the sound was nothing to the rush of emotions through Sasuke. He'd killed the dobe. He'd used an assassination technique on one of his teammates. He didn't see the sand rushing towards him, for his eyes, of which he was so proud, were overwhelmed with images from the past of Naruto. He'd killed his best friend and spikes of pain drove through his eyes as the tomoe split and whirled fourfold in his eyes.
Uchiha Sasuke vanished in an explosion of sand, only to appear again, black flames raging around him. Up on the balcony occupied by the two Kages, Orochimaru flinched at the sudden feedback through the Heaven Seal he'd placed on Sasuke's neck. His pawn had suddenly been promoted, he noted, becoming far more dangerous... and correspondingly more valuable. But this situation was simply too unstable. Every minute that this went on was another moment for matters to go further outside of his expectations.
The signal for Kabuto and the Sound Four to begin their respective parts of the plan was simple enough. The trouble was that the plan didn't adequately account for Sasuke advancing this far this fast. There wasn't time anymore, so the Sound Four would have have to obtain Sasuke now and get away with him in the confusion of the invasion. That, of course, would leave Orochimaru and the old man's little duel open to outside interference, so he'd have to bring out his little equalizers onto the field straight away and use them to divert attention. Of course, those faces operating under his direction would probably be very diverting, he calculated. Between that and Gaara, who was right on the brink anyway, the old man's foolish sentimentality would almost certainly have him send any help away, more concerned for the wellbeing of his precious village than for his own life.
Orochimaru's decision was simultaneous with his action upon it.
.oOo.
Orochimaru sneered at the ANBU responding as he held his kunai at Sarutobi's throat. "Change of plans!" he called to the Sound Four as they rushed into position. "Collect our new recruit while I finish off this old business."
"I wish Orochimaru-sama would make up his mind," Tayuya muttered as the four of them headed back down the roof. A couple of ANBU moved to stop the four shinobi and ended up preceding the four down from the roof, their bodies falling to the arena floor with meaty thunks that were all but unnoticed in the sheer howling chaos that was spreading to engulf the entire structure.
"Isn't Kabuto supposed to be putting the damn civilians out of the way?" the kunoichi muttered, looking at the bodyguards of the various daimyo trying to protect their charges, disrupted by the panicking crowd and by the handful of ninja who'd already lost their employers and sought revenge or were just making pre-emptive strikes. The addition of the Sound-nin infiltrators was almost redundant at this point. "Moron."
"That's really harsh, Tayuya-san," Kabuto admonished politely from behind her.
"Yipe!" the redhead shrieked, whirling to locate the speaker. "Don't sneak up on me!"
"It would be hard enough to put a genjutsu on them with all the killing intent Gaara-san radiates... it would be a little much to manage it with all three of them down there..." Kabuto explained, waving down into the arena.
If sheer howling chaos described the stands then the actual arena floor was a thousand times worse. The judge and Sasuke's mentor had both abandoned the area to deal with the Sound-nins, which meant that the only three people down there were...
"Uchiha!" screamed Gaara. "DIE!" His sand was smashing around the arena like a tidal wave, and it looked as if the entire floor was tearing apart to add more and more earth to the swirling mass. The jinchuriki looked even less human than the four of them did when their Cursed Seals were active, which was saying a lot. Judging from the briefings, he was almost completely transitioned to his demon form, only his legs looking more or less human.
Uchiha Sasuke didn't look much better. It was pretty obvious that he wasn't in full control of the blazing black fires were slashing across the sand, or of the black shapes that were writing across his skin. Where the flames touched the sands they were fused instantly into twisted pillars of obsidian only to be torn apart by the continued rush of the sands. The younger of the two surviving Uchiha was flailing around with a column of fire dozens of times his height, trying to strike down Gaara with it, but the fires snaked, whiplike, and despite the fact that Gaara was immobilised for the moment by his transformation, the fires had yet to make contact.
"Orochimaru-sama wants us to go into that?" Kidomaru muttered. "Oh hell..."
"I do believe that the plans have all gone awry," Kabuto said cheerily. "Do I have to give you a push as Naruto-kun did the young Nara?"
"Heh, for trash, that blond kid was kind of amusing," Jirobo said. "Almost a pity that the Uchiha finished him off."
Kabuto's glasses caught the light, the lenses reflecting it and hiding his eyes. "Oh, I wouldn't count him out, just yet," he smiled.
Down in the arena, the sands and fire alike were swept by a red mist that was suddenly evident as a third thread to the symphony of hate and lethal intent that everyone within a mile that was sensitive to chakra could feel in their very bones.
"TEME!" screamed Uzumaki Naruto.
.oOo.
Sasuke blinked. That was the dobe that was standing up. Who he'd killed. Except that he was apparently not dead. But he couldn't have the Mangekyou unless he'd killed his best friend... (he didn't like Naruto that much, did he? Damn. His best friend was the dobe, how low could he go?) ...unless his brother was a lying bastard.
Fuck.
"ITACHI!" he screamed, throwing up his arms in frustration. The fires decided (did the damned things have a mind of their own?) to follow suit and blazed a trail up the side of the arena towards one of the stands. In barely a moment the black flames would reach the rail and start incinerating the audience above it (including Sakura, Ino and Chouji).
"Yaaah!" Sasuke screamed, the flames suddenly guttering out as he sprang into the air, propelled by the sudden jabbing of a Tiger Seal into his backside.
"Thousand Years of Pain!" Naruto shouted. "Take that, teme!"
Up in the stands almost everyone paused, sometimes in mid-fight, to look at the surprising comeback from Konoha's Number One Loudest Ninja. Only a moment before, they'd seen him fall to a devestating and treacherous attack that had destroyed his shoulder, an almost certainly fatal wound. And now he was back in the fight and apparently unscathed?
Only a few, in the know, realised the nature of the limb that now replaced the lost arm and shoulder, a pulsing red shape approximating the missing arm, forged entirely of chakra. "The monster is loose," muttered Kakashi.
"Shannaro!" screamed Sakura from the stands. "Naruto no baka! Stop getting in Sasuke-kun's w-" Thud. Temari brought her fan down in a single economical strike that dropped Sakura to her knees and then forwards to drape over the railing, unconcious.
"Thanks," Ino said gratefully. "If you hadn't I would have."
Temari gave her a sceptical look. "You do remember we're not on the same side, right?" she asked as she and Kankuro squared off against Ino and Chouji.
Down in the arena, Sasuke's chakra reserves looked at what he'd been drawing lately, compared it to their own depths and cancelled his credit. The Uchiha fainted from chakra exhaustion, face down on the floor, knees drawn up to leave his butt pointed up in the air.
.oOo.
A thousand miles away from Konoha, another Uchiha paused and looked in its direction.
"Something wrong?" his partner asked curiously.
"I just heard a scream," Uchiha Itachi said absently. "As if millions of fangirl crushes were cut off at once." He shook his head. "Now, what were we doing?"
.oOo.
"YOU WILL DIE!" screamed Gaara and he lumbered across the Arena, the sands forming two huge clawed arms that descended upon Naruto.
Naruto spun and his own arms came up, the one of chakra and the one of flesh and bone - although the latter was hard to recognise as the crimson chakra rose up from it, overlaying it and swelling until Gaara's clawed paws were met by equally huge paws of chakra, the claws interlocking, each arm pushing against the other - the chakra of the Kyubi and the sands of Shukaku locked into the classic pose for a test of strength.
"WHO ARE YOU!" came Gaara's bellow. "WHAT ARE YOU!? WHAT POWER IS THIS!?" Impossibly, he felt his feet sliding back on the sand of the arena floor. What force could possibly break the traction between him and his own sand?
Naruto, atypically, said nothing, his chakra continuing to push Gaara back.
"Impossible," Gaara hissed. "For this to happen... to this form of myself... to such a person..." He threw back his head. "UZUMAKI NARUTO! I SHALL NOT LOSE! UWAAAAA!!!"
The arena shook violently as Gaara's sand retreated suddenly. Smoke engulfed even the stands this time, hiding anything more than the basic outline of Gaara's monstrous shape, a shape that was growing and growing and GROWING...
"What the hell?" Naruto shouted. "There isn't room in the Arena you lunatic!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! DIE YOU INSECT!" shrieked Gaara as he loomed over Naruto, already larger than the Hokage Tower.
Naruto's face paled... and then his eye caught sight of something... something that reminded him of... YES! There might be a way!
Those fighting in the stands abandoned the effort and joined the others on streaming out of the building. Up on the roof, even Sarutobi paused as he saw the giant forming below him, growing until it would soon be as high as even this elevated battleground.
"Bijuu..." he whispered.
"You've got bigger concerns, old man," Orochimaru sneered. "Summoning: Worldly Resurrection!" Three coffins sprouted from the roof of the stands before the Hokage could gather his chakra to disrupt the summoning.
.oOo.
Seeing their chance of retreiving Sasuke vanishing and knowing that having his next body crushed by Gaara wouldn't make their master at all happy, the Sound Four dived into the arena.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Naruto screamed as he slapped his hand down on the bloodstain left from where his arm had been blasted off by Sasuke. Smoke filled the arena completely, causing even more confusion up in the stands. Up on the rooftop, even Orochimaru himself paused as something HUGE hurtled upwards out of the arena.
In the end, it was Jiraiya who had the best view, from where he was riding one of Gamabunta's larger underlings to crush the serpents that had been unleashed by the invaders against Konoha's defensive structures. One moment, the arena was still, and the next, a gigantic sand-coloured Tanuki exploded upwards out of it, in a parabolic arc, it's face pushed upwards as if something had just hammered an uppercut into the bijuu's jaw.
"Aw fuck," Jiraiya muttered, as he realised that the beast would come down only a few hundred yards into the training grounds that lay behind the Hokage monument. Not even the Kyuubi had gotten so close to the heart of Konoha and if a battle on that scale erupted there then it would endanger the shelters dug into the cliff-face.
"What the?" rumbled a voice in the smoke that still filled the arena. Eyes went wide as the smoke cleared enough to reveal that the Arena floor was almost completely hidden by the massive orange mass of Gamabunta squatting in it, Naruto standing on his back. "Dammit, Jiraiya, don't summon me under things. I'm going to have such a... oh. It's you. Again."
"Gama-oyabun!" Naruto shouted. "Come fight together with me! I ask you this, oyabun!"
"No," the Toad-boss declined. "Firstly, there's nothing here worth my attention. Second, we haven't exchanged sakazuki yet..."
"Dammit!" Naruto shrieked. "I'm not old enough to drink sake yet! And it's not to fight here, it's the sand-tanuki! Come on! Isn't a boss supposed to help his underlings?"
"Yo, Gamabunta-dono!" came a shout from the rooftop and heads turned to stare at the three men standing like statues between Orochimaru and Sarutobi, the former of whom whipped out three kunai hastily, cursing himself for being distracted. "Help the boy!" shouted the blond man in the centre before the first kunai plunged into the back of his head.
"It's the Hokages!" a whisper went around the stands. "The Shodaime, the Nidaime and the Yondaime..." If this new development shocked those Konoha inhabitants in the stands, it sent a shockwave of panic through the the invaders at the thought of fighting against all four of the Hokages at once! While the oto-nin steadied themselves with the recollection that Orochimaru-sama didn't seem too bothered, the Suna-nin began a frantic retreat.
"Aren't you dead already, ya brat?" Gamabunta asked, squinting at the frozen form of the Yondaime. "Aw hell, alright. Where are we going, underling?"
Naruto shook off the shock at being acknowledged by the man who was at one and the same time his biggest hero and the cause of most of his suffering. "That way!" he shouted and Gamabunta bounded out of the Arena in a single leap.
"...fuck happened?" Jirobo muttered. The Sound Four had been brushed aside, almost casually, by the displaced air of the summoning, deposited in the arena stands again, though rather roughly.
"Still think that the kid's amusing?" Kidoumaru asked, picking himself out of the broken remains of three chairs. He looked around. "Huh. Can anyone see Tayuya?"
Kabuto shook his head. "Why is it, with a whole village at Orochimaru-sama's disposal, I still find that I have to do everything myself?" he asked himself as he jumped down into the arena and towards Sasuke.
.oOo.
Tayuya was not a happy Oto-nin. One moment she had been jumping down into the arena to retreive Orochimaru's new body and the next she was caught between a layer of rough silk below her and a mass of knobbly flesh above. On top of which it was pitch black. No sooner had she managed to get herself untangled (although her forehead protector was lost entirely, somewhere in the recesses behind her) than there was a sudden lurch and she tumbled out of the close confines to get a terrifying view of Konohagakure from a moving viewpoint about half a mile above the village.
"Oh shit!" she shrieked and clutched hold of the silk with both hands. Looking up, she realised that she was hanging from the cuff of a blue kimono large enough that it would probably cover any one of the buildings below, and that wearing the kimono was a huge, orange toad. It didn't take long for her to recognise the creature as a Summon - and the brief terror at the unidentified monster was quickly replaced by the more precisely formed fears that she was trapped and alone against the Toad-Sannin... who from Orochimaru's occasional mention was some sort of depraved pervert.
That fear, however, was one that Tayuya felt more capable of facing than the previous one. The ground was approaching rapidly and she swung up to twist her legs into the hem, hanging on for dear life with both her hands and her chakra.
The landing was actually softer than she thought, although she was still shaken around like a rag doll between the teeth of a dog. The instant that the toad had landed, it bounced up again - and not a moment too late as a storm of sand slashed through the air where it had rested, one raking mass passing only a few feet from where Tayuya dangled. "Fuck this!" she shrieked, remembering too late that she was in mid-air and didn't want to the attract the attention of the Toad's summoner.
"What was that?" came a shout from above them. The toad landed and jumped again, for much the same reason as before. "Gama-san, it sounded like there was someone down there.
Another jump. "I'm a little busy, brat," came the booming voice of the summons. "Check it out yourself."
Brat? Who called one of the sannin a brat? Tayuya's question was answered a moment later, when a blond-haired head poked itself over the Toad's shoulder to look down at her. It drew back immediately, but not before the Oto-nin recognised the face as belonging to the kid that had been fighting Gaara in the arena before Orochimaru-sama's next body arrived.
"Neechan!" came a shout from above, the kid apparently, his voice shocked. "Pull your skirt down, that's indecent! What if some pervert saw you?"
Tayuya reflexively started swearing at the idiot. She was hanging from the sleeve of a giant Summons that seemed bound and determined to fight a Bijuu - what did it matter who she flashed, as long as it wasn't the Toad-Sannin himself?
.oOo.
Sarutobi worked through a flurry of handsignals, lightning fast with fingers limber from a life-time of forming hand seals. It had been a complete pain rebuilding the ANBU sign language after Itachi had defected, but now he was glad that he had gone to the trouble for there was not a single doubt in his mind that Orochimaru would have read the older language like an open book even though he had never actually been a member of the Hokage's elite personal command.
Obediently, the ANBU who had been rushing to the aid of their Hokage scattered again. Under other circumstances, using ANBU as messengers would have been wasteful at best. Under these circumstances, it was possibly the only force that could have made their way through the howling chaos of all out shinobi battle being waged inside the walls of the Hidden Village and despite their best efforts, more than half of the force being sent were - at best - hindered by skirmishes.
Suddenly, Kakashi's opponent died as a kunai drove cleanly between two ribs to pierce the Sand ninja's heart. A moment later, a second ANBU closed a net of ninja wire and explosive tags around the ninja from Hidden Sound that was battling Gai and the Mighty Blue Beast of Konoha jumped back as the explosions tore through the unfortunate shinobi.
"Maito Gai, Hatake Kakashi," the ANBU Lieutenant who materialised between the two rivals declared. "The Sandaime Hokage requires your immediate assistance. Sarutobi Asuma. You are to take command of those shinobi within the arena and cover the withdrawal of our citizens to the nearest available bunker."
A moment later he was gone, along with his two subordinates and Kurenai saw barely a flicker as they entered the Arena's tunnels, a kunoichi from Hidden Sand dropping dead as they passed. Before the blood from the Sand ninja's slashed open throat had even begun to pool, Kakashi and Gai were heading for the Hokage's position.
Asuma nodded. "Kurenai, take all six of our genin and head for the medical rooms. You'll need to defend them while I get the rest of this lot moving."
.oOo.
Shukaku hit the ground hard and rolled before coming to his broad feet. The gigantic tanuki wasn't entirely sure what was happening but as felt the chakra of pursuit some things became clear.
It is worth mentioning that Gaara, not being a complete idiot, had actually researched the Tailed Beasts to the extent that the Kazekage had allowed him to access the information and that Shukaku had in fact paid attention to what its host had discovered.
In the aftermath of the Kyuubi's attack upon Konoha rumours had gone wild and the Sandaime Hokage, desperate to avoid the impression of weakness that might be created by his successor's demise, had fed the rumours by having propaganda spread widely. One of those items of propaganda had been a poster showing the Yondaime Hokage, riding on Gamabunta, facing off against the Kyuubi. The notation of the poster had declared this to have been the last moment before the Kyuubi had been destroyed.
Not sealed. Destroyed.
Shukaku was, of course, well aware that he and his kind could be sealed.
Destroyed?
No. There was no way that a Tailed Beast could be destroyed. No way, at least, that he or the other Tailed Beasts knew of. But the Yondaime Hokage had somehow managed it. And not just any Tailed Beast had been destroyed. The Kyuubi, the greatest of them all, had perished.
And now a blond Konoha ninja was chasing after him while riding Gamabunta.
Uh-oh.
Instinctively, the Tailed Beast turned and ran, thinking as frantically as a being of its somewhat elemental nature could.
.oOo.
Jiraiya reached the arena at almost the same moment as Kakashi and Gai, still riding the toad, a fact that did several hundred thousand ryou of damage to the arena. The Toad Hermit's face was noticably pale as he saw his student standing beside the less familiar shapes of the other Hokages. "Orochimaru," he hissed. "You unscrupulous bastard."
Sarutobi leapt back to join his impromptu team. Four Hokages and four of the most powerful shinobi ever to wear Konoha's forehead protector were facing off and the odds were as bad as any that the famed God of Shinobi had ever faced.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OMAKE
"Kakashi!" Gai called. "You cannot mean that.... that... THAT is escaping!" The Beautiful Blue Beast of Konoha appeared to be losing his grip on his 'explosive youthfulness' to judge from his pale face. Now if he would only lose his grip on Kakashi's vest and quit yelling into his face then the great Copy-nin could go demonstrate his total badassness and remind Konoha of why they put up with his perpetual lateness (and smut obsession).
"Gai," he said. "You're spitting in my face."
"Just answer the question," Asuma growled, digging his brass knuckles into the small of Kakashi's back. This close, even the cigarette smoke didn't mask the garlic that he tended to season his meals heavily with.
"Don't you think that the Sound-nin trying to invade us are marginally more of a problem here?" Kakashi sighed. "I mea-yeek!"
"Now that I have your COMPLETE attention," Kurenai whispered, "tell me exactly what you mean by 'the monster is loose'." Who knew that Kurenai's fingernails were that sharp? Kakashi whimpered and even Gai and Asuma backed off, nervously eyeing the kunoichi
"Dammit," Kakashi confessed. "I don't want to go down in history as the instructor of 'Kancho' Naruto! But he's making it his trademark move right in front of half Konoha's clientele! Do you have any idea what this will do to my reputation? And what if he uses it on me!?"
The other three jounin exchanged views. "And this is worse than your existing reputation?" Asuma asked.
"Yes!" Kakashi sobbed.
"My eternal rival!" Gai shouted. "You need not fear that Naruto will use such a terrible move upon you, his beloved teacher!"
"Yeah," Asuma muttered. "It's not like your other student used a move you taught him to almost kill him, is it?" Kakashi's visible eye was almost leaking tears.
"Er... excuse us?" came a voice from outside the little tableau. They turned around to see several dozen Sound-nin approaching. "Are you done? Can we get back to fighting now?"
"Kakashidoken!" shouted Gai all of a sudden. In a split second he had run behind Kakashi and formed a Tiger Seal. With an appalled shout of pain and humiliation, Kakashi went hurtling into the midst of the Sound-nin, scattering them.
"Gai, I'm surprised at you," Kurenai chided.
The spandex-clad jounin rammed one fist into a Sound-nin's face and then raised his thumb, leaving himself in a 'Good Guy pose'. "I promised my eternal rival that he need not fear Naruto using such a move upon him!" he declared proudly. "I never said I wouldn't do so myself!"