XLIII: Preliminary Round End

Konoha Forest of Death Tower: One month Four Days ago:

"You're going to die," Sakura said calmly, though the fires of madness burned behind her eyes. "I know killing you won't bring them back but I need to do it anyway."

"I'm sorry about what happened to your parents Sakura, but I nev…"

"YOU KILLED THEM!" she screamed as she began a series of hand seals for a jutsu he didn't recognize. "You're going to suffer before I kill you!"

As soon as she began Naruto charged her, intending to end the fight in one, hopefully painless blow. He got three steps before something grabbed his legs. Naruto looked down-the floor seemed to be covered in a thick dark smoke, seemingly made of shadows. The smoke had condensed around his legs to form a skeletal hand.

"GAH!" Naruto kicked against the grasp of the smoke hand, but instead of breaking its grip the kick pulled a creature, made of the same shadowy smoke as its hand, out of the ground.

Naruto took an involuntary step back at the sight of the creature. "What the hell is that?" he demanded.

Sakura and the rest of the room seemed to fade from sight and she said, "Your doom, Uzumaki." Ten hands shot out of the smoke and grabbed him. Naruto yanked himself free, pulling a little under a dozen of the smokey wraiths out of the ground.

They circled him making strange chittering sounds that set his teeth on edge. Without warning, the first wraith leapt at Naruto. Naruto easily sidestepped the creature's lunge but another of the ten dug its claws into his back.

The blow didn't seem to do any physical damage but left a sensation of freezing cold in its wake. Naruto shuddered as he sidestepped another one of the shadows' blows. He countered it with a half hearted punch, half expecting his fist to pass harmlessly through the creature's chest. Instead there was a crunch and he felt his arm impale the creature's rib cage.

The smokey form of the wraith fell away, revealing a pretty oval face with shoulder length blue-black hair and pure white eyes. "Wh…why…?" Hinata croaked, still impaled on Naruto's arm.

"I…I…" Naruto staggered backwards, pulling his arm free of Hinata's chest as he did. "I didn't…"

Hinata crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from her chest, "m…monster…" she stammered before her eyes glazed over.

"No! No… no… no…" Naruto staggered away from the motionless body of his girlfriend, and straight into the arms of another wraith. When he felt the icy grip of the wraith bite into his arm he reflexively pulled back. His fist drove into another wraith's head with a sickening crunch.

"Uuuuuuggggghhhhh." The smoke dissipated, revealing Sasuke with the entire bottom half of his face ripped away by Naruto's blow.

Kakashi watched Naruto flail around, fighting enemies who weren't there. He had recognized the Genjutsus Sakura used on Naruto, and wasn't happy that a genin knew such strong techniques. Kakashi glared at Kurenai. "Those are some nasty Genjutsu you taught her," he growled.

Kurenai watched the fight with wide eyes, "I only taught her the binding jutsu she used in the beginning. I would never teach a twelve year old a Genin a Genjutsu used for physiological torture!" Kurenai huffed, "Especially since she apparently planned on using it against a fellow leaf shinobi."

Naruto sunk to his knees sobbing-around him laid the mangled bodies of ten of the most important people in his world: Hinata, Sasuke, Jiraiya, Kakashi, the Hokage, Haku, Iruka, Shikamaru, Choji, and Zabuza; his friends, his family.

"Look what you've done," Sakura's voice echoed around him. The darkness that had filled the room fell away. They were on top of the Hokage monument, and below them Konoha burned. "You did this," Sakura growled, "Everywhere you go death and destruction follows. You're a menace, a danger to society. And I'm going to kill you."

"That's a forbidden Jutsu, Kurenai," Kakashi said through gritted teeth as Sakura began another Genjutsu, "If you didn't teach it to her, who did?"

"I …I don't know," Kurenai said, her red eyes filled with worry, both for her pupil and the blonde jinchūriki she was fighting.

Back inside the illusion, the corpses of his friends rose shakily to their feet. "…ill… him…. kill… the monster… kill," they moaned in unison.

"Monster," Sakura's voice echoed, "The world will be rid of you once and for all today."

Sakura stalked toward her opponent who was kneeling on the ground, tears pouring down the sides of his face. Sakura licked her lips and pulled a kunai from her pouch. "Are you ready to die monster?" she whispered into Naruto's ear.

"…t a monster," Naruto hissed.

Sakura glared at him, "What was that?"

"…Not a monster," Naruto said a little louder this time, "I'm not a monster…I'm not a Monster…" Naruto repeated, each time a little louder than the last,"I'M NOTA MONSTER" Naruto's voice dropped a full octave, "I'M NOT A MONSTER!" He roared as his fingernails lengthened, his whisker-marks thickened and his eyes became bloody purple color.

"RAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGH!" Red chakra erupted around Naruto in the shape of a three tailed fox. The shroud quickly grew opaque as a fourth and then a fifth tail sprouted. "RAAAUUUGGGHHH!" Naruto roared again while a fox skull formed around his head and a spine materialized along his back. With another roar, he back handed Sakura and sent her crashing into a wall.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion; the Hokage, Jiraiya, and Kakashi leapt towards Naruto. Naruto turned his head towards the far wall and unleashed a blast of chakra that vaporized it. Before Jiraiya and the others were halfway across the room, Naruto had run through the whole in the wall and out into the forest.

"I'm going after him!" Jiraiya and Kakashi shouted in unison before sprinting after the fleeing Jinchūriki.

"Everyone stay calm," the Hokage ordered, "Jiraiya and Kakashi have everything under control. We will continue with the preliminaries." He gestured towards Hayate, "Please continue."

"Um… Winner *cough* Uzumaki Naruto?" Hayate ventured, while checking on Sakura. "She *cough* should be fine if she gets immediate medical attention."

While following Naruto was easy, due to the fact that he ran in a straight line and didn't let little things like trees and boulders force him to change his course, keeping up with an enraged jinchūriki was incredibly difficult, especially with the amount of wreckage Naruto had left in his wake.

"Just how fast is he?" Jiraiya puffed as they scrambled over the shattered remains of a large tree.

"I've never tried to race him when he's got that Chakra shroud thing," Kakashi replied.

"Come on, we've got to get to him before he goes all the way to nine tails," Jiraiya urged, "If that happens…. "

"The seal will break and Naruto…"

"Will die."

Naruto's Mindscape:

Here, Naruto was seven again; lost, alone, and frightened; curled into a little ball as the water rose. "'m n't a m'nster 'm n't a m'nster," he sobbed.

"Come on!" Kurama growled. Naruto was just out of his reach on the other side of the seal.

"Stupid brat," the fox growled, "It was just a genjutsu." The fox felt more of his energy drain away, "Crap. Six Tails now…"

If he could just get more of his arm out of the cage…Kurama growled and threw his weight against a particularly weak looking section of the bars. He had to be careful; a damaged section wouldn't kill Naruto, but if he broke the seal itself…

Kurama growled and threw his weight against the bars again and again, until three finally broke. The opening was enough for Kurama to squeeze his entire arm through and scoop Naruto up and pull him into the seal.

"Hush kit. It was a Genjutsu, Just a Genjutsu. Your friends are fine. You're not a monster," Kurama murmured, trying to comfort his host.

Naruto slowly stopped crying and drifted off to sleep in Kurama's hands. "No don't fall asle… Damn it Kit… Wake up!" Kurama grumbled when Naruto fell asleep. "You're body is still in the middle of its temper tantrum." Kurama felt a little of his energy return as the sixth tail dissipated. "Well… That's a start I guess."

Jiraiya's camp, Present day:

"We found him eventually," Jiraiya said. "The Brat ran halfway to the coast in a couple of hours."

"How'd you stop him?"

"We didn't Hime; we found him curled up on a boulder sleeping in the afternoon sun," Jiraiya grumbled.

"How many people made it out of the preliminary round, Jiraiya–sama?"

"Fifteen in total: Zabuza, Kabuto, Haku, Fu, Shikamaru, Shino, Dosu, Lee, the Sand Siblings, Neji, Sasuke, Naruto and Akimichi Choji."

"Isn't fifteen a little much?" Tsunade asked, "I thought the preliminaries would end when there were eight left."

"Naruto's…sudden exit kind of distracted everyone, Hime."

"I can see that, I guess. Well, what happened next?"

"That night Hayate was att…"

There was a blur and a pale boy wearing a shirt that left his entire midsection exposed shunshined into the camp. "Sai reporting, Jiraiya-sama." The boy dropped onto one knee and bowed his head. "Danzo is moving out with two assassination teams disguised as Iwa ANBU."

"Targets?"

"Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto and Sarutobi Hiruzen."

"Both teams have orders to kill?" Tsunade interjected, "I thought Danzo wanted Naruto alive?"

"Affirmative, Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto has been moved from Priority: Capture to Priority: Eliminate," Sai answered, his even monotone betraying no sign of emotion. "Sarutobi Hiruzen has been deemed a failure as Hokage by Danzo for allowing Orochimaru to launch an attack against Konoha."

"Who's leading the teams?"

"Aburame Torune is leading the team targeting the Hokage, Jiraiya-sama. I do not know the name of the Lieutenant leading the team targeting the Jinchūriki of the Kyuubi no Kitsune, she is a recent addition to ROOT."

"What are we waiting for?" Shizune said, "We have to stop him!"

"Send a message to Kakashi, we'll try to stop them before they get to the hospital." With a nod, Sai shunshined away. "Let's go!"

Location: Unknown, Date: Unknown

"Where is MY SON?"

The beast shrugged its massive shoulders and held up the object it had been cradling, "Right here."

The man gasped. In the beast's hands was a young boy that was about thirteen years old. His son, who he hadn't seen in Kami knows how many years was inside the seal. But that wasn't what scared the man. It was the giant gash extending from just below his solar plexus down to his left hip-someone had tried to bisect his son and had damned near succeeded.

"NARUTO!"

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter length. I'm honestly not very happy with the fight, but I had something in mind when I wrote it and anything else I added just didn't seem to mesh.

And now for some bad news, my laptop's fan died on me the other day and as it's currently the only thing I have to write with updates will be slowed to once a week. So what do you guys prefer, Wednesdays or Saturdays?