Shikamaru could feel the Shukaku's chakra as they drew near to Gaara, and it took all his new-found sense of duty to approach. Naruto was alternately springing ahead with haste and hanging back to let Shikamaru lead (chattering to him, mostly about how he'd wanted to fight Sasuke and had had a great plan to use against him), since the shadow-user was leader. Sakura was staying at the back, ashamed of having hurried and been caught. Shikamaru thought this was foolish, since none of them had sensed an attack, so it wasn't her fault. But he was too tense to speak, so he just watched Pakkun's movements.
As they heard Sasuke's battle-cry they saw fragments of the too-bright aura of the Chidori through the trees, leaving after-images. Naruto dashed forward frantically, closely followed by Sakura. They heard Gaara's screech of pain, and then felt renewed urgency as the insane genin screamed joyously and madly. Shikamaru stopped short behind the duo as they met their mutated opponent, shaken more deeply than he could admit by the other jinchuuriki's appearance. The fallen Sasuke, however, was covered in creeping traceries of black, marks that were no fuuinjutsu Shikamaru had ever seen, but which were hot with chakra-energy. The team leader took a deep breath (he would swear he could taste the demonic chakra in the air, the sense of it was so oppressive), and forced himself to plan. First, the Uchiha needed help. Sasuke's arm was limp, his body still twisted and prone from an awkward landing. His eyes were scarcely focussed, despite the determination in his frowned eyebrows.
"Sakura, take Sasuke to a medic." Shikamaru's voice was clipped, because Gaara had just noticed him.
"Nara" The twisted voice laughed. Gaara's face was twisted, half human. His tail lashed behind him, and he smiled grotesquely. "You'll make an even better opponent than he did."
Then he laughed cruelly and drew his sand-swollen arm back to himself - it was an ugly amalgam of sand and flesh, Shikamaru saw - and then flicked it back out. Shuriken made of sand flew at the kunoichi, who was raising Sasuke gently into a fireman's lift.
Shikamaru jumped, stretched his shadow, mentally calculating from the angle of the sun where in the air it would fall and adjusting his calcuations to catch each projectile. This response was almost reflexive, but not quite, so he had time to consider how much it would hurt to be paralysed by the Shukaku's energy and fall all the way to the forest ground. For one cowardly instant, he was tempted not to activate the bind. But he did it.
It hurt when the shadows connected, but he could still move. The demon energy in the clumps of hardened sand didn't disrupt his chakra, surprisingly, and the implications of that occupied his mind as Sakura left carrying her fallen team-mate (who croaked out in a hoarse whisper something about his continued ability to fight, but it was for the best that those two were gone). He could not let anything except his mission and the safety of his team matter.
He landed, admittedly roughly, and Naruto took up a position next to him. Gaara settled himself into a stance, lopsided with that one arm and tail.
Shikamaru spoke in an undertone to Naruto: "I can't use my kagemane without his chakra hurting me."
"Great," Naruto complained "I've got no chakra, you've got no jutsus. But well then, what are we waiting for?!"
Without delay he flung kunai at Gaara, aiming for the human side of his body. Gaara effortlessly deflected them with his tail, but Naruto used that moment to spring at him with shunshin speed, angling his body to kick Gaara's transfigured face. Gaara lifted his altered arm and knocked the orange-wearing attacker to the side, making Naruto twist in mid-air to land on a tree-trunk.
"Get down from there, conserve your chakra!" Shikamaru tersely called, mind furiously working on a plan. This felt hopeless.
Gaara cast more shuriken at the both of them, and they evaded, hiding behind separate trees. During the brief respite this position offered, Shikamaru spotted Temari, above the easily accessible level of the forest and curled into a fragile position. Her eyes followed Gaara's movements. Other than her, the forest was deserted, and the only sounds were those made by Gaara: charging or throwing shuriken or hissing in thwarted rage. It made the woods seem closed in and small, oppressive because of the hunter in their midst.
After a few nerve-racking minutes Naruto couldn't stand to hide any longer. Gaara's appearance had seemed even more monstrous in the mind's eye - when he was allowed to play the part of a predator he looked like a child's nightmare. Naruto swung down from a tree, screaming in a battle-cry and --
--He was knocked away by a simple but horrifically fast back-handed strike from Gaara. The Yondaime's son was flung powerfully through the trees, unable to slow himself down without chakra.
Gaara grinned sadistically, watching the bright figure grow distant, then turned to the tree that hid Shikamaru.
"Come out of there, Na-ara" He drew the name out, so it rhymed with his own. "Come and play, come and challenge my existence!"
Shikamaru felt something akin to terror as the level of chakra the other jinchuuriki was channelling rose. Gaara's other arm had transformed. Even from this distance, Shikamaru was acutely aware of the demonic chakra. It made the hairs on his arms stand up, constricted his throat as he breathed in. He felt his own heartbeat, and, deeper, the pulse of his chakra.
He shut his eyes, pressing his back against the reassuringly solid tree-trunk. He could only win – maybe only survive – by fighting Gaara with the Kyuubi's chakra. He had no other options, and not for the first time he regretted not learning more jutsu and skills. The demon inside him was an unknown value, and a frightening one. Gaara was scary because of his appearance, but also because he reflected Shikamaru's fears about his own nature as ademon-host. No, think logically. For one, if Naruto deducted Shikamaru's jinchuuriki status he might become emotionally unbalanced and less able to fight (And it was possible Shikamaru would lose a friend, but that wasn't relevant to the mission). Secondly, he had found it difficult to plan when he'd fought Gaara in his garden, and drawing on more of the demon's energy might exacerbate that loss of acuity.
Shikamaru opened his eyes in a hurry as he heard Gaara charge, faster than before, and he leapt to another tree, making two more hops and putting himself behind a sheltering trunk.
He saw the tree he'd just left explode into chips of sand and wood; Gaara leaping again.
The extra chakra the Sand ninja was using raised his speed. I can't hold out for long against him like this, my only option is to get to Naruto. He sprang through close networks of branches, hoping to slow the bulkier Gaara down.
He tried frantically to think what he would tell Naruto. For some reason, it didn't occur to him to lie. Naruto had trusted him with so much of his own life and secrets that it would seem a huge betrayal to fail to explain the truth of his fathers death, something that had been kept secret for far too long.
He found Naruto climbing – without chakra, as specified – along a branch, determinedly heading straight for the two fighting. Shikamaru grabbed his arm and jumped them both to a higher branch, crouching.
"Naruto, listen. Gaara wants to kill me because I'm also a jinchuuriki. Sorry, but-." He cursed himself for not saying this when he would have had time to think it through, and closed his eyes and spoke bluntly: "Your father didn't kill the Kyuubi, he defeated it by sealing it into me on the day I was born, using a jutsu that required his life in payment."
There was a brief but intense silence into which Shikamaru felt himself cringe. Then Gaara screamed and flung shuriken at the two. Shikamaru reasserted himself and grabbed Naruto around the waist, chakra-jumping up and sideways in a flash, then landing on his knees and crouching. Naruto shook himself and moved aside, giving Shikamaru a look that said he could dodge for himself, thank-you. Shikamaru ignored this, putting his hands together then in his thinking seal then taking them back out of it as he realised there was no time. He'd said that for a reason, and he forced himself to persevere.
"That's relevant because I can use the demon's chakra; unlike my kagemane, that should work against him."
They both jumped back from another attack, Naruto stumbling slightly; because he's shocked or just from exhaustion? Shikamaru asked himself.
But as they landed, Shikamaru getting cut by a stray sand-shuriken through sheer carelessness, Naruto looked at him with that same determination fighting Neji had inspired in him.
"Shikamaru. Do it."
Gaara twisted his arms around trees, and catapulted himself towards them
"Fine." Shikamaru said, as fast as he could without gabbling, "Stay back and analyse weaknesses; construct a plan for the two of us to use against him. You won't be able to rely on my strategies, I - don't know how doing this will affect me." He tried to keep his voice steady as he committed himself to this, but Naruto's face turned compassionate as he stepped back.
Gaara pulled his hand back to slash them.
Shikamaru faced him, set his fingers in the basic seal, then undid the shadow-trap line from around his wrist with chakra-aided speed, threw it out. The line met; both of them stilled, Shikamaru flinched with the flood of the Shukaku's chakra that surged through the shadow, hands shaking. But he dropped into a crouch and as he'd hoped, his chakra pulse was strong. He froze it.
The Kyuubi's energy rose like a wave in deep sea, invisible but horrifically strong.
Shikamaru, energised, leapt out of the crouch, igniting the thread-line that stretched between himself and Gaara with flame-like chakra. It raced ahead of Shikamaru to the other jinchuuriki, much like a fuse, and it flared out furiously as soon as it reached the sand-distorted demon-host. Gaara screeched dementedly, flailing backward.
Shikamaru pulled back his arm, fingers drawn ready to strike with claws. They, too, were surrounded by flickering crimson. He flung himself towards Gaara, teeth bared and feral.
And struck; Gaara howled.
And Gaara lifted his arms to attack back, but Shikamaru was already gone, bounding away as the blood-fire chakra burnt itself out reluctantly, leaving dark scar-like marks that were slowly scabbed over by more sand. He took position for another strike, red eyes focussed.
And Naruto and Temari watched from opposite sides as the two demon-hosts faced off.