Shikamaru sighed, and broke into a run himself. Naruto was strange, but he didn't react like that for no reason. He was a good ninja, and he was behaving as if in reaction to a threat.
Shikamaru hadn't figured it out yet when the blond dashed through an open door, leaping forward with a yell.
As the shadow-user warily entered the room, a strange tableau met his eyes. The Sound ninja Zaku was crouched on the far side of a hospital bed he'd evidently been in, clutching his heavily bandaged hand. Gaara of the Sand stood on the opposite side of it, hands clamped to his head as if he was defending against some mental agony. He was surrounded by sand that swirled around him, some of it reaching out towards the cowering Sound-nin. And Naruto was in a defensive posture atop the bed between them; having thrown himself between the two, he was now crouching in readiness for an attack.
Typical of Naruto to get involved in something like this. He's such an – alturist.
Naruto had looked confused by Gaara's evident pain, but the situation changed as Gaara's hands returned to his sides, and he stood up, looking straight at Naruto with the focussed posture of a predator. Shikamaru couldn't see the Suna-nin's expression, but Naruto shifted uneasily.
"Why do you – protect him?!" demanded Gaara.
Shikamaru took a step back, even though he was in the doorway and facing away from the red-haired maniac. There was deep vehemence in that voice, and the cloud-watching ninja realised Gaara was another of those people who believed in something irrationally. Somehow he doubted Gaara's convictions were as morally sound as Naruto's.
"Why are you trying to kill him? You won the fight, didn't you?" The Yondaime's son spoke with an intensity that made him sound authoritative, older than his twelve years. "This isn't rivalry, and there's no need to continue it."
The Sand ninja shifted, body language indifferent, voice now blank. "He lost. His life is worthless, and I want him dead, so I'll kill him."
"That's CRAZY!" Naruto shouted, now as unnerved as Shikamaru was.
"I might kill you. If you continue to bore me, I will."
The sand tendrils that had been shifting purposelessly headed towards Naruto and the Sound-nin, who had been moving steadily away from his blond saviour. Shikamaru reluctantly prepared himself. It's troublesome, but it can't be avoided. Time to intervene.
The window of the room was open, the sun shining through, and it only took a small shift sideways until Gaara was standing neatly between it and Shikamaru. So he focussed, lifted his hands in a seal, looked meaningfully at Naruto, and then stepped forwards, swinging his shadow around into Gaara's.
The Sand shinobi had been raising his hand, and he shuddered and hissed something startled. Shikamaru looked at Naruto again, indicating with his head at the injured Sound man. Naruto nodded reluctantly and lifted the foreign ninja onto his shoulders, directing him round Gaara. Zaku, obviously terrified of Gaara, wasn't cooperating, so Naruto was pretty much dragging him across the room. Why does Naruto want to save this prick?
They seemed to move very slowly, and Shikamaru was disgustingly on edge, wishing he could see Gaara's face; tremors were running through the red-haired boy, so much that the gourd on his back was shivering with them. The Nara kept feeling the urge to raise his hands to his face, provoked by sympathetic feedback across the jutsu. Why does he want to do that? He's clearly unstable, but what exactly's wrong with him?
Shikamaru planned. Talk to him. Assert control through language; since he's dangerous as hell my only hope is to stop this descending into a fight. I have a psychological advantage because of the bind, but I'm not sure how well I can read him. If I turned us to face the other, I'd lose out on the intimidation thing; I can't do the whole determined thing Naruto does and this Gaara scares me enough already.
Still, he could try to beat him in a discussion of philosophy: "Why should you judge who's worthless?"
There was a moment's silence, but Gaara's cold voice rang out, composed despite the fact his fingers were twitching spasmodically.
"Those who are weak are worthless. Only those who can hurt me are significant to me." Geez... he really is screwed up, but that attitude isn't a reflection of childhood abuse and neglection, I'll volunteer for something...
There was a pause, then Gaara spoke again: "The boy who hit me, what was his name?"
"Kazama Naruto." He could find that out anywhere anyway.
"I will kill him. Let me go."
"I'm not going to do that. I'm protecting Naruto, you see."
"Why?! Because his life has value for you?" That had evidently struck a nerve, Gaara was stung and spiteful, and Shikamaru read jealousy under the hatred.
"Kazama Naruto – the son of the dead Hokage." There was a malevolent determination in his tone. "I'll definitely kill him, then. You see, I'm also the son of a Kage. But I have never been protected, even though I was valuable to my village ... I am- Sabaku no Gaara, the ultimate weapon of the Hidden Village of Sand!"
A weapon... That sounded ominous. Shikamaru couldn't quite bring himself to ask about it, and so he forced acerbic sarcasm into his voice.
"Oh, poor you." (and he genuinely disliked people using the excuse of their own mistreatment to justify mistreating others, even if this was a taunt) "No-one's ever defended you, so you hate Naruto for being defended."
He couldn't see Gaara's reaction, so he forced himself to continue.
"Well, you misunderstand our relationship! I didn't step in to protect someone who was valuable to the village, but someone precious to me. And if you'll seek revenge on him for being protected, you're an idiot. That won't help fix whatever's in your past.
"Besides, he's entering the Chuunin exam, and you can wait till then to fight him if you're petulant enough to strike out at someone you consider luckier than you"
"I'll - kill you – both!" On the one hand, Shikamaru thought drily, mytaunts are working - but on the other, this guy's going to rip me apart as soon as he escapes the Kagemane. What next?
The enraged Suna-Nin was struggling against the bind now, chakra combating Shikamaru's own. But the Kagemane was designed for efficiency – generations of Nara had put time into reducing the amount of effort needed to perform their specialised jutsu. You needed hugely more chakra than the person holding you to even be able to shift a finger against the binding when the caster is trying to stop you from doing so. He was letting the other ninja speak, and not stopping his shuddering and shaking, but everything else was under tight control.
"Let – me – go! My victims; the blood! -" The sand that had quiesced while its master was under the Kagemane suddenly began frenzied movement "-Arrrrugh!"
Shikamaru flinched at the scream, but kept a hold on the bind. It felt like Gaara was attacking himself now, instead of the bind; strangely, the struggles he'd made against the Nara paralysis had redirect--
Then inhuman chakra flooded into Shikamaru through the medium of the control jutsu. He yelled, feeling his chakra pathways overloaded from inside. Fuck, fuck, it hurts! But Naruto wasn't out safely yet, and he'd never be able to escape a berserk Gaara while carrying that Sound guy! Shikamaru grimly bought his fingers back up into the primary Kagemane seal, concentrating his will to keep Gaara frozen in place even as his chakra circulation system was overrun.
"You're! - Not leaving." finish speaking! "This room. - Until. I let you go!"
He gritted his teeth, vision blacking out as Gaara – or something else – laughed harshly. He'd called himself a weapon; the control over sand had seemed strange to Shikamaru – for anyone normal the movement of the grains would have to be separately maintained, and the absent orbiting motion of the sand would require effort; an explanation was forming in Shikamaru's mind, rooted in the fact that this horrible chakra wasn't human, it was fixed both in the sand and in Gaara. Hideous truth was dawning on the Kyuubi's host.
Pain. He was burning up from inside, muscles tensed involuntarily but unable to even affect his chakra system, which was – remember, an interlinked network independent of the lymph and vascular system, connected to tissues and external regions through tenketsu. Inaccessible to foreign bodies except through specialised medical jutsu. But his system had been infiltrated because he was affecting Gaara's - the demon's – chakra with his bind. It was like genjutsu being turned on the caster... he was unaware of anything other than himself and Gaara, like he was under genjutsu. It was only the effect of excruciating pain, though. (he would laugh at that, but he was locked in place). He'd tried to turn his head to see if Naruto was around – he couldn't think how long they'd been standing locked there - and he felt like he was bound into place himself. He looked out of the corner of his eye, though his vision was starred and dark. No orange to indicate Naruto. Eyes flicking back with an angry resolve he could see his movements mirrored in Gaara's. Part of his face was – cracked? - marred where Naruto had punched him, and his eyes were traced by veins and mad.
"LET ME GO!!"
Shikamaru held his hands up to his head. A second shout followed the first, but nausea and the rhythm of his heart and the pain shooting through his chakra pathways in time with it made it distant. Fuck, I can't keep this up. But he couldn't disengage the bind, he wasn't using his chakra, it must have all been forced out or subsumed by this other thing. His legs might have been locked in a reversal of the bind, but it could have been pain or terror paralysing them.
Then, for a long, long moment, his awareness of the chakra coils through his body was sharpened, as if (he deduced, feeling total terror and imminent death for the first time ever,) the alien chakra occupying them had met some kind of key point. He felt faint, then completely frozen in a way that made the immobility of a second ago seem relaxed. Then violent red overtook his vision, and for a second twin burning eyes in a giant vulpine face met his.
