Disclaimer: Naruto and Touhou project belong to their respective owners, and I will delete this story if requested.
A ship pierced through the summer night before crashing into a beach, throwing its five passengers from the deck onto the wet sand. It was team 10, consisting of Asuma Sarutobi, Chōji Akimichi, Shikamaru Nara, and Ino Yamanaka. They were in the same team to serve as a symbol of cooperation between the four clans. Other than these four from Konoha, team 10 had an extra brute force attached: Gāra. Only Gāra. His surname had been removed.
Seven months before this point, Konoha had received a document from anonymous sender detailing Suna's plan to attack Konoha, its only ally, because the Land of Wind was relying on Konoha more than Suna, its own military powerhouse. The document was then sent to the daimyo of the Land of Fire, who immediately ordered Konoha to conquer Suna while the Land of Fire's regular military forces prepared to annex the Land of Wind. Within two weeks, Suna's defence crumbled, and Konoha poured in to cull everyone unwilling to surrender. Since Konoha had lost its jinchūriki nineteen months before the invasion, Hiruzen ordered a campaign to capture Gāra, at the time Suna's jinchūriki, which lasted for two weeks until Gāra's surrender.
Since then, Gāra had been treated well by Konoha in general to cement loyalty, which worked as far as the high command was concerned. However, Hiruzen was concerned—as his experience with Naruto had convinced him that having a jinchūriki in the middle of Konoha was more costly than was beneficial—because jinchūriki required special units dedicated into monitoring it and manipulating its course of action—all of which overruled normal procedures and even direct commands from the high command. With Naruto, the benefit had outweighed the cost, since he'd been conditioned since childhood and contained the strongest beast in the world known to humanity. With Gāra, on the other hand, the benefit was a footnote under pages of cost reports, since Gāra's beast was the weakest and his mind had been broken by constant abuse, which unlike in Naruto's case, had never been mitigated. Gāra was a timed bomb that should be thrown into the enemy so that it would detonate on them instead of in the middle of Konoha.
This was the reason team 10 was here in the Land of Waves; it had a mission to turn the island into a massive mine to deter invasion from the Land of Water by placing Gāra in the middle of it. Not that Gāra was aware of it. For him, his dearest friends were looking for a place to let him retire early from Konoha's military service.
"Hey, look!" Ino pointed over the trees with her finger. "There's a bright light on the other side of the island!"
Chōji and Shikamaru exchanged a look, while Gāra approached Ino and said, "Weird chakra's coming from there."
Asuma put himself between Ino and Gāra, facing at the latter. "How does it feels like?"
"Angry. It also feels sad. But…."
"But what?"
"It feels…. I don't know the word."
Asuma clicked his tongue. "Damn those people, yeah, suppressing your ability to express like that?"
"It's fine; I'm not one of them anymore."
"Describe it then."
"It feels like I'm meeting mother."
"What?!" Ino shrieked, "Which mother?!"
"The one taking care of me since my birth."
Asuma appeared relaxed, but his mind was racing for possible scenarios that might unfold. Looking through the corner of his eyes, he saw Shikamaru and Chōji boarding the ship. "Well, those two don't want to accompany you to the end. Those softies. They're too soft to even give a proper farewell."
"I…. I understand," said Gāra, disappearing into the trees.
"Ino," said Asuma, "Let's go with him."
Both Ino and Asuma understood Shikamaru and Chōji's real reasoning to stay behind. Shikamaru and Chōji opposed Konoha's decision to discard Gāra in a poverty-stricken island after exploiting his power, especially since Konoha had made him massacre two entire divisions of invading army from the Land of Water. However, Shikamaru and Chōji didn't want to be suspected as traitors, so they went with the plan, only to retreat just before the completion then entrust their teammates with finishing the task.
"Say, Shikamaru," said Chōji, lying on the deck, "don't those birds look suspicious to you?"
"Yeah," said Shikamaru, "they look more like origami pieces than animals. I don't know what kind of technique can do that, though."
"Genjutsu?"
"Nah, too peaceful to bother casting. Let's stay cautious, though. It can be someone testing us for vulnerability before sending the real deal."
Gāra, after disappearing from his teammates, stood in nervous silence as he watched trough a binocular from his hiding place in a foliage. Far Standing on the tumultuous sea was a man in a black cloak, two red eyes brimming with controled menace under his black, long hair. This young man was protected by a red spectre in the shape of a skeleton, which had four hands and armed with swords. If Gāra looked more carefully, he would see red clouds motif on the black cloak.
The young man aimed high, loosing a volley of magatama-shaped projectiles towards a speck from which a torrent of papers rained. A gust of wind brought one of those papers towards Gāra, terrorising him with its sizzle.
"What's that?" Ino wondered on the other side of the island. "An explosion! Asuma, that's an explosion!"
"Mother," muttered Gāra, wincing as he cradled his bleeding head, "please, be patient. Let's wait for Ino. She can calm you." Gāra's gourd burst, releasing sand that then swallowed Gāra in a cocoon. "Uncle? My uncle?" Gāra was trembling. His mother, the beast within him, was the only creature he was afraid of, and her sibling was fighting before his eyes. "No, mother, my head hurts, ears ringing. My sight's blurry."
Against Gāra's will, more sand came into being and enveloped him to protect him from a magatama from the spectre, which then slammed into the cocoon and exploded. "Yes, mother. Do it."
A deafening roar split the night, accompanied by a lump of sand rising tall until it's visible from every side of the island. "I'm back, brother!"
"What the hell is that?" Shikamaru wondered in the sleeping quarter of the ship.
Chōji barged into the quarter from the deck, looking panicked. "Shikamaru, they."
"They what?" Shikamaru approached Chōji, tapping his rotund friend's back. "What happened?"
"We must save Asuma and Ino!"
Shikamaru rushed to the deck to see a sight he'd never thought to see. A gigantic tanuki made of sand was standing among the trees, facing two giants known as incarnations of disaster in Konoha. One was a red construct of a tengu in full armour—a susanō, a conjured being of the Uchiha clan said to bestow its conjurer with immense defence and offence while keeping high mobility, thus raising them above most humans as long the susanō was maintained. The other one was a kyūbi no kitsune, although it was different from the one which had attacked Konoha fourteen years ago. This one had three arms, rather than two paws, and three heads. Chains cascaded from its necks and upper and lower arms, as though it had just broken free from a shackle. And it was black, glistening under the gentle, silvery moonlight.
Shikamaru looked at Chōj. "Is that Naruto?"
"No it's not," said Chōji, emerging onto the deck. "Naruto's orange."
"But that guy's too creative for his own good. What if he made the kyūbi like that?"
Chōji stared, blinking. "No way, you're joking!"
"I'm serious, Chōji!" Shikamaru pointed at the beast with his fingers. "How many kyūbi are in this world? There's only one! Naruto's over here!"
"What if it's not him?"
"We've got no choice. We've got to extract Asuma and Ino before they encounter him. Even if it's not Naruto, being in the middle of their fight will kill those two all the same. Let's go!" Shikamaru leapt into the water, followed by Chōji.
Tanuki : When referring to normal animals, 'tanuki' means Nyctereutes Procyonoides, a species of East Asian canine similar to badgers. When referring to yōkai Tanuki, the referred creatures are tanuki that behave similarly to wild kitsune in many ways, such as loving to trick humans and capable of changing shape. In addition to capability of changing shape, tanuki are famous for their magical testicles. The animal tanuki is often translated in English as Racoon dog, while the yōkai often keeps its name in English.
This chapter and the next serve to explain what happened in the time skip between chapter 6 and 7 while advancing the plot a little. Don't expect character development or any significant plot advancement in the next chapter, since it will only demonstrate, or show or something like that lol, what the characters have learnt during the time skip.
