Five to One, Apparently.


"What's up kid? Hey, listen. Our boss has got a lot of money riding on the other guy, so we've come here to convince you to-Urk!"


"Well well well, the prodigal son returns."

"Fuck off, sensei." Sasuke smiled as he limped up the stairs to the viewing stands. "I'm not late, am I? Walking with this leg is a bitch..."

"Yes, actually, but I wouldn't be worried." Kakashi, in a rare bout of kindness, took Sasuke's hand and hauled him up into a good viewing position. "Naruto has set up a warmup fight, which was nice of him."

"Warmup-?"

"Ladies...and...gentlemen!" Naruto shouted from down in the arena, gesturing dramatically. "Before the official match begins, you get to see a special bonus match! The assholes who tried to threaten me! Versus! The assholes who tried to threaten Gaara!"

The crowd cheered wildly.

"Please don't." One of the four thugs was crying. "We're just being paid, dude, don't make us kill each other."

"If you don't fight, I kill all four of you." Gaara told them. "This was a good idea, Naruto."

"I have kids man, don't do this-"

"Thank you!" Beamed the nine-tails, ignoring the whimpering. "A much better idea than trying to beat into submission trained ninja who are already in the finals of the chunin exams. Idiots."

The thugs whimpered.

"What's got into Naruto?" Sasuke turned to Kakashi.

"I don't know." Admitted the Jonin. "But something pissed him off last evening and he hasn't gotten over it yet."

"His eyes are red." Jiraiya noted from beside them.

"That always happens when he's around Gaara." Sasuke pointed out. "We're pretty sure it's the tailed beasts reacting to each other." He frowned. "Which would get worse if they had to fight...hey are the betting pools still open?"

"Sure, why?" Kakashi asked.

"Can you put me down for 500 ryo that one of them is going to lose control and turn into a big monster?"

"Sure thing. Pretty sure odds are five to one."

"That high?"

"This fight has worried a lot of people."

Down in the arena, Gekko had managed to clear out all the poor thugs, much to the Jinchurikkis' disappointment.

"Alright, enough dicking about." He told them. "Are you ready or not?"

"I'm going to warn you." Naruto called across to Gaara. "I am in a terrible mood right now and can't promise any of the usual things like honour or mercy."

Gaara smiled back at him. "That's good. There's no point in fighting you when you're not trying as hard as you could." His eyes narrowed, and his voice took on an unusual growl. "Come at me like you're trying to kill me."

Naruto smiled as well. "Thanks, Gaara! You always seem to understand me like that! Now..." He got into stance, and his smile turned feral. "I'm going to tear you into pieces."

"Oooooh boy, somebody's gonna die." Chuckled Jiraiya.

"Then may the second (third? Technically?) Duel of the final round...begin!"


Naruto acted first, pulling a storage scroll from inside his orange jacket and throwing it into the air. It released its contents with a puff of smoke, that being a very large number of peculiar, three pronged kunai.

Kakashi sucked in a surprised breath.

Naruto called out "Buffeting wind jutsu!" And a gust of wind blasted out from his palms, catching and accelerating the knives. The result? A hurricane of spinning metal rushed towards Gaara. The Suna genin didn't even move, sand poured from his gourd and formed a wide, impenetrable barrier in front of him. Most of the kunai thudded into the sand, some flew harmlessly over or around it. And while Gaara was functionally blinded-

"Blade of wind jutsu!" Glinting white, an arc of sharpened wind release chakra hurtled towards Gaara's shield and hit it with a mighty slam. Sand was hurled away at the point of impact.

Naruto looked through the hole it had cut in the sand and grinned, Gaara had been forced to manifest a second shield to fully block the technique. "You like the Haku special?" He taunted, "Because there's more where that came from!" He repeated the hand signals.

Gaara was glowering. When that had taken over his usual vacant smile, Naruto wasn't sure. Some of the sand coalesced, forming a similarly glaring clone that strafed towards Naruto. The next wind blade hit the clone dead on, bisecting it, but the sand simply knitted itself back together. Naruto grimaced, and fell into a taijutsu stance.

"Would anyone be so kind as to tell me," Kakashi asked, as Naruto crashed into the sand clone, "where Naruto got his hands on a stash of Minato-sensei's kunai?"

"A gift straight from the old man. 'A future Hokage should have a Hokage's tools' I believe was the line." Jiraiya drawled.

"Is he even trying to be subtle with his gestures anymore?"

"I don't think so, no." The sannin sighed.

Down in the arena, Naruto drew up for an axe kick that slammed down on the sand clone's head, carving a massive gouge through its entire body. It crumpled. Naruto launched back into the wind blade hand seals, but across the arena Gaara had finished his own preparations.

"Shukaku shield." He uttered, solemnly. Rather than from his gourd, sand rose from the ground beneath him, the stone splitting into pieces to form a...fat tanooki with a hat? Whatever it was it looked weird as hell and stood in front of Gaara imposingly.

Naruto's third wind blade tore straight towards it, but upon impact it only drew a shallow vertical line in the golem's surface. That line quickly disappeared as more sand filled in the gaps. "My ultimate defence." Gaara declared. "It's sand is formed from the strongest minerals in the ground around me. Your teammates' chidori would penetrate many of my shields. They would not penetrate this."

Naruto 'tch'd. He ran in an arc around Gaara, trying to get an angle on him, but the shield moved with him, trundling around Gaara to remain perfectly between him and Naruto. Said Nine-tails tried to get closer, but the moment he did Gaara's other sand lashed out at him and forced him to retreat, then began snaking towards him across the floor.

"Why do I get the feeling he's just going to use the wind blade lots of times to try and get through?" Sasuke remarked.

"He'd better not." Kakashi muttered, darkly. "I've spent weeks trying to get the basics of combat theory in his head. The first lesson was that he can't take every opponent head on, and sometimes he has to find away around. You know, think like a real ninja?"

True enough, Naruto had a plan. The ground around Gaara was swamped with sand he hadn't bothered to return to the gourd, and littered among that sand were dozens of the three pronged kunai.

"Substitution jutsu!" Naruto shouted. One of the kunai appeared in his place, as he was transported right next to Gaara, behind the fat-shield. He punched, twice. The first blew a hole in the sand wall that came unconsciously to Gaara's defence, and the second whipped through that hole to catch Gaara in the stomach. It doubled him up and sent him flying.

"Naruto's faster." Sasuke noted.

"And Gaara didn't have his sand armour up!" Jiraiya cackled. "That'll have hurt."

The Suna child still failed entirely to make any sort of combat stance; his sand flew from his gourd and formed a cushion that he fell gracefully into, then he glared back across at Naruto. His sand began to whip about more aggressively, drumming against the ground and grinding the arena floor itself into more sand. That was bad. Naruto bit his finger and palmed the ground. "Summoning jutsu!"

Appearing in front of him was the greatest toad summon he was physically capable of.

...it was about two and a half metres tall. Sue him, he couldn't do Gamabunta unless Jiraiya threw him off a cliff, that asshole. And while he could start throwing around the kyuubi chakra, he really didn't want to kill everyone present, and he was just pissed off enough to try that if he let the red power loose...

"That guy is freaky." Remarked the toad, looking at Gaara.

"Blastoise! Water gun!" Naruto shouted.

"That's still not my name-you know what? Whatever." The blue toad focused on Gaara. "Water bullet jutsu!" And then it fucking projectile vomited a blast of water at the one-tails jinchurikki.

The sand rose, and the water slammed into it, doing little visibly to the wall. The now soaked sand fell back to the floor with a thump.

"Keep up the pressure." Naruto told his summon, and put his hands together in a familiar position. "Shadow clone jutsu!" Thirty copies of him sprung into existence. That was when the arena floor fell into chaos.

The three-pronged kunai were still buried in the sand. They made very convenient things to substitute with. Cries of "Substitution jutsu!" Echoed throughout the stadium as the clones began swapping with everything they could spot. They switched places with the knives, they switched places with each other, they switched places with blastoise, they threw more shadow-knives and switched places with those too. And of course, when they weren't teleporting, they were attacking. Punches, kicks, wind blades and thrown weapons bombarded Gaara, some clones even feeling clever and using the transformation jutsu to pretend to be kunai and jump out at Gaara from within his guard. Any individual clone's run of hand seals took long seconds, but with thirty overlapping it was impossible to keep track of them.

Gaara didn't need to keep track, however. His sand moved of its own accord, getting in the way of every little thing that came even close to him. There was enough of it; Gaara's strategy of turning the floor itself into sand had paid dividends and now he had a veritable storm of the stuff to fling around as whips and blades. The shadow clones didn't care about having sand in their eyes, but the real Naruto did, so for a moment Gaara was able to spot and trap him. "Sabaku-no-"

"Sabaku-go-fuck-yourself!" A hasty substitution sacrificed a clone to save Naruto from the immediate sand coffin.

"You noticed what I noticed?" Kakashi deadpanned.

"Yup." Jiraiya chuckled.

"What am I missing?" Sasuke asked them, not turning away from the battle.

"It looks an awful lot," the Sannin explained, "like he's using the flying raijin. He isn't, obviously, Minato didn't teach it to anyone, but it's one heck of an image to present. Especially for someone with ambitions regarding that hat." He pointed upwards to the Hokage's box.

There, Hiruzen was smiling a very particular smile down at the arena.

"Not enjoying the show?" He asked the Kazekage, who was scribbling on a piece of paper.

"Oh, its very entertaining." The man agreed. "I'm just writing down my recommendations for Chunin. Final call is yours, obviously, but now we've seen everybody fight I wanted to get some points down. You know, just in case the jinchurikki lose control and kill us all."

"You think that might happen?" The Hokage checked.

"I've got a hundred ryo on it." The kazekage cackled. "Five to one odds, apparently."

"You may have a point." Hiruzen mused. "Itachi, pass me a pen and paper, would you?"

The Uchiha rolled his eyes and acquiesced.

Down with Naruto, tides were turning. Not quite literally, but with a shallow level of amusing irony.

The ninja academy had taught him that water release fared poorly against earth release, but Kakashi had later told him that that wasn't due to some inherent 'supereffectiveness'. It was a practical issue; water attacked through concussive force over a wide area, and that was bad at damaging stone structures.

But this wasn't true in all circumstances. For example, if you drench sand in water it will absorb it, and get a lot slower and a lot heavier. Blastoise, though he was now panting heavily, had successfully wet most if not all of the sand and even caught the gourd in the spray; Gaara's defences moved sluggishly. Too sluggishly. He was forced to duck one kunai as it flew by his head, too fast for the sand to catch, then again as a different Naruto grabbed that kunai and swung it for him. A blade of sand stabbed that Naruto through the stomach, dispelling it, but that took sand away from his other defences, allowing a different Naruto to plant a kick into his back and send him sprawling into a dune.

"Two hits." Gaara muttered to himself. "Two too many." At once, all the sand began to move.

The Naruto jumped away as every stray grain in the arena rushed back towards Gaara, surrounding him and hardening. After a few seconds, a perfect sphere stood in the middle of the arena. Within the sphere, Gaara started chanting.

Naruto prime made a signal, and two of his clones rushed the ball with kunai in hand. The moment they got too close, spikes of the hardened sand emerged and impaled both clones, popping them. This distorted the sphere's shape, and revealed something glinting in amongst the sand. Naruto saw it, and his eyes widened.

He started laughing. Guffawing. It was a sadistic and slightly insane sound.

"What's so funny?" Muttered Sasuke.

"The kunai." Kakashi helped.

"What do you...oh."

Naruto put his fingers together, growling victoriously, "I win."

He flared his chakra.

Anyone familiar with Minato's kunai knew of the seals on them that allowed him to perform the flying raijin. Naruto didn't have any use for those, so he had carefully stripped them off and replaced them with something more useful.

So, concurrently, on the several kunai which had been swept up with the sand and were now within the wall of Gaara's sand shield, the explosive tags detonated.

There was predictably a very loud noise.

The massive boom was followed by a rain of grit and sand that fell all over the audience, and a plume of smoke billowing up from around where Gaara had been. There was a long silence.

"Did Naruto just...kill a guy?" Sasuke was looking on with wide eyes.

Kakashi raised his headband and squinted. "Nnnnnnope. Sharingan."

Sasuke activated his. He could, with effort, spot Gaara's chakra amongst the rockdust. It was tinted earth-brown, indicating its usual nature, and was gradually...bubbling up and growing exponentially every moment- "what the fu-"

A giant claw made from sand burst through the smoke and slammed as a fist down on Blastoise, crushing and desummoning him immediately.

"B-buffeting wind jutsu!" Stammered Naruto. The dust was blown away, revealing Gaara stood in a low stance. Blood dripped from all over his body where dozens of individual pieces of shrapnel had embedded into his skin. One, dead centre in the red 'love' tatoo on his forehead. His right arm was encased completely in sand, with blue markings covering the surface. His right eye was black, with a golden, starred pupil. "Naruto." He growled. He took a step forwards, but grimaced, falling to a kneel.

Then, things began to happen very quickly.


Sasuke saw the genjutsu before he could feel it. He wasn't sure whether the shining white feathers were revealed by the Sharingan or everyone could see them; but he caught the effects on his mind the moment they arose and dispelled them easily enough. Looking around, the crowd was not faring so well.

Hundreds to thousands of civilians began slumping in their seats as sleep overtook them.

"Shit..."

Kakashi span in place. "Jiraiya!"

"On it!"

Both jonin vanished.

Sasuke's Sharingan tracked ninja fighting in the stands, picking out sound, sand, and leaf headbands, the former two working together against the latter.

Down in the arena, Temari and Kankuro had already ran up to the injured Gaara, picking him up despite his attempts to shake them off. Gekko took a threatening step forwards, but suddenly the Sand team sensei (Baki?) had engaged him, freeing up his students to begin a retreat from the arena. Naruto was clearly overwhelmed, stood looking around in horror.

Sasuke grimaced, testing his leg. It still didn't want to support his weight. Perfect. Sorry Haku. He vaulted the railing.

He landed in a roll on the arena floor, letting out a cry as pain lanced through his leg before ignoring it and shambling up to his teammate. "Naruto!" He shouted, grabbing him by the shoulder.

"What-" Naruto began in a very strange voice, before coughing. "What's going on?"

"Betrayal." Sasuke told him. "We need to get after Gaara. He's the Kazekage's son and Suna's only jinchurikki, if we stop him we can stop this whole thing."

"But what about the civilians? The Hokage?" Naruto asked, looking back at the chaotic arena.

"Kakashi, Gai, and Jiraiya are all fighting off the enemy ninja." Sasuke reassured, trying to smile. "And my brother is with the Hokage. What ninja can take on Itachi and the god of shinobi at the same time?"

Naruto paused for a moment, pained, before nodding, taking in Sasuke's condition. "You're wounded. Let me carry you, it'll be faster."


Up in the kage's box, Sarutobi Hiruzen looked across at the Kazekage with hard eyes. He and Itachi stood amidst half a dozen dead ninja. "This seems a little further than your usual tricks, Rasa. If you are even the Kazekage."

The man in the white-blue hat stood up and stretched, casually. "Oh come on, old man. Are you telling me you really don't know who I am?"

"Does it start with O and end with your funeral?" Itachi checked, drawing his sword and pointing it towards the man.

Orochimaru threw off the Kazekage's hat and smiled. "Something like that, yeah. Oh, I forgot you were here, Itachi. Leave us alone, would you? Me and my sensei need to catch up."

"Not happening, sorry." Itachi replied.

Orochimaru chuckled. "Funny. The way you say that, it's like you think you have a choice." He snapped his fingers.

A collection of bones tore up through the wooden floor, trapping Itachi in a cage. He swung his sword, but to his shock, couldn't leave much more than a knot in the ivory. Not pausing, he began making hand seals, which was when the floor beneath him exploded inwards completely, and a hand reached up and grabbed his leg, pulling him down. He twisted out of the grip as soon as he could, but still landed heavily on the floor of a lower corridor, then was forced to block another bone that was swung at his face. He slid backwards and assessed the threat.

Before him was a man with green eyes, white hair, and strange markings across his face. As Itachi watched, another bone grew out from his wrist, and he gripped it like a knife.

"And who the fuck are you?" Itachi asked.

"My name is Kimimaro." The man said, simply. "And my master has instructed me to kill you."


I have written the word 'sand' so many times this chapter I swear to god...

We finally get to the good bit. I had to think long and hard about this fight, because in the chunin exams Gaara is such a monster. Like, seriously. He blocks all of your everything and then crushes you. If Naruto hadn't had a month's prep time he wouldn't have had much to do against normal Gaara; except for using the Kyuubi cloak or summoning a toad the size of the whole arena; but with the guidance of Kakashi and Jiraiya I'm sure he could have come up with a plan. Or just, you know, made 500 shadow clones and had them all use A rank jutsu at once. (some of kid-Naruto's feats like jesus if you just did that every time you'd have been able to kill your whole class at once)

And yes, ya boi kimimaro is here. Why? Because I'll tell you next chapter that's why.