Another Chapter is here!

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Naruto's heart felt like it would sink into his stomach from primal fear as he looked up to a being that was possibly taller than the Hokage monument. It was even bigger than the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed within him. To think such a thing was sealed inside of Gaara of the Desert, someone roughly his age and height….

"MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!" roared the monster tanuki jollily. "I'M FINALLY FREE! I'M FINALLY FREE TO CUT LOOSE! YEAAAAAAHHHH!"

And it was apparently nuts as well, which only added to Naruto's compounded fear as it turned its beady eyes towards him and the others. A murderous smile crept across its face and its massive hand rose into the air. It was going to smash them beneath its palm, swatting them like flies without mercy.

The looming shadow deepened as Naruto remained frozen in place from the fear, until a white blur swept past him and a pair of slender arms scooped him up. Wind roared and the crashing palm grew distant as he turned to see that Pakkun, Sasuke, and Sakura had mounted Byakko. Sakura was the one who had grabbed him, struggling to pull him up onto Byakko's back while it kept moving.

"Hurry up and climb, Naruto!" Sakura yelled over the fierce wind that whipped at their ears and flesh from the speed which they traversed the uneven land, further ruined by the Sand Cataclysm earlier.

"Eh… right." Naruto grabbed onto the fur and climbed the speeding tiger until he was behind Sakura, just past the leg muscles that pounded the ground hard and fast. Then he reached for the spiritual connection he had with the white tiger construct and transmitted his thoughts. 'Byakko, how long can you last?'

'Not long. Flee and hide.' Byakko had gone far enough in the narrow space of time to where Naruto could make out the Tailed-Beast like he would a small mountain, keeping pace at the expense of burning through the chakra it had left to constitute itself. It darted around at a frantic gait, desperately trying to disappear from the giant creature's line of sight so that they could squirrel themselves away and hide before it vanished in the span of a minute.

The monster tanuki didn't even give them that much time. The darting tiger may have taken refuge beneath the canopy, but it could devastate the area with ease. It inhaled until its inhuman lungs and belly swelled, melding its chakra with the inhaled air and compressing it. Then beat its hand against its stomach like a drum, forcing out a massive Air Bullet that shot forward.

Naruto's world ended in a sea of whiteness and thunderous rumble the moment it hit the ground not all that close to them and the shell of chakra that compressed it was undone. All that constrained air was released like a balloon going pop. The force behind it proved capable of leveling a small village and the area surrounding it as the expanding dome of air swept up everything it touched, carting it further out until the windstorm dispersed.

The world was blurry as Naruto pulled himself from underneath a pile of debris, pieces of wood, earth, and foliage that had been torn asunder still raining down. His flesh ached, rips in his jumpsuit from being scraped against by the flung debris stained red with blood, and the ringing in his ears pounded at his skull. After he finished pulling himself free, he gazed around blearily to see that he had been carried just outside of the impact zone—marked by the massive lake-sized crater through which the monster tanuki was slowly making its way forward.

He… he couldn't fight that. Not when it could bring this level of devastation. He had to keep running—they had to keep running. Where were the others?

Naruto felt his mouth move and words come out, but they were drowned out by the ringing in his ears. He placed his palms against his ears, pressed in, and then pulled to clear it enough that he could pick up Sasuke's drowned out voice. He turned towards it.

Sasuke was sitting down, covered in just as many cuts as Naruto, with some leaking more than others. Sakura was in his arms unconscious, blood cascading down half her face and dripping down her chin. It looked bad.

"We have… to go," Naruto said tiredly as he stumbled to his teammates, the thundering footfalls of the raccoon dog shaking the ground with every step.

"I can't run with my leg like this," Sasuke told him. Naruto looked down to see a large twig had impaled him through the thigh, covered in crimson blood. "Take Sakura and go."

Seeing the wound, realization set in for Naruto. He was too tired as it was to get Sakura away in time, and he couldn't carry Sasuke as well. Not to mention he didn't even see the pug or Byakko's mask, and they didn't have time to dig for them. They… they were going to die unless he fought… and that meant there was only one last thing he could do—rely on the power he hated so much.

"C'mon," he muttered in a harsh whisper, reaching for the spiritual link to the prisoner within his seal. "Give me more chakra…. Or you're… going with me… when it kills us…."

Like Gama said, self-preservation got the fox to answer his plea. He could hear the snarl as it began to leak chakra through the seal. It patched his wounds as it covered him in a wavering coat of crimson chakra that surged out from his tenketsu.

The monster tanuki noticed the chakra. Its expression shifted to something almost human—recognition. Then it began to run towards them rather than slowly walk forward as it had been to savor their fear of impending death.

Ripping into his own flesh with his teeth, Naruto offered as much blood as he could while he made the hand-seals for the Summoning technique. He then slammed his hands down onto the ground and sealing script etched itself across the uneven debris. Using it as a conduit for the Time-Space technique, bridging the distance to be crossed in an instant by dumping as much chakra as he could into the seal, a plume of smoke erupted from it like a volcano and suddenly consumed the three humans.

The Tailed-Beast leapt towards it, only to be caught off-guard as a powerful stream of water slammed it in the torso. The blow came so hard and fast that the massive creature went flying backwards. It crashed into the ground seconds later, tumbling backwards and digging a trench as wide as it was until it came to a stop. The draft released from the impact also blew away to the smoke to reveal Gamabunta in his all his amphibian glory.

"A Tailed-Beast, huh?" He inhaled from his pipe and exhaled a plume of acrid smoke before putting it away. "Been over a decade since I've had to deal with one of those. A little warning would have been nice."

"I'm sorry about this, Boss Toad," Naruto said from atop his head with Sasuke, who was still holding onto Sakura while his eyes were wide in surprise. "I didn't have any other choice."

"I'll overlook it this once." The hiss of his sword leaving its scabbard rang out as the largest of the toads held it at the ready. "Jiraiya told us ahead of time that there was likely to be trouble and intended to keep me in reserve in case there was a threat large enough to warrant it."

Naruto didn't know who that was, but he figured this counted. As the One-Tailed Raccoon Dog rose to its feet, he turned to Sasuke.

"Anchor yourself with the Wall-Walking technique and hold onto Sakura. There isn't going to be a safe place to set either of you down."

Then the battle between titans began.

[0-0-0]

Sasuke felt like he'd been left out of the loop as he anchored himself astride the top of the giant toad, moments before the creature that Gaara of the Desert became retaliated for being knocked on its ass. It fired another of those cannonballs of air that devastated the land beforehand, and the Boss Toad countered with a water variation of the same technique.

They clashed, releasing a storm of wind and rain over the land. The summoning then leapt forward with steel in hand, causing Sasuke's stomach to lurch into his throat. He tightened his good arm around Sakura to keep her helpless body from falling as the blade flashed and cleaved through the air.

The sword abruptly stopped midway through the stout arm of the raccoon dog born of sand and became lodged within it. It then reared its other arm back to strike, sand gathering around the fist to shape it into a massive sphere like a boxing glove. The summoned toad brought both legs forward and kicked off the massive gut of the Tailed-Beast, the firm grip on his sword allowing him to wrench it free while flipping backwards. He skidded to a stop a good distance away, clearing entire tracks of land in the process.

The tanuki roared as it thrust its arms forward and sand extended across the distant in thick streams, only to begin branching out. From two to four to sixteen and then many more, they hardened into spears meant to skewer the giant toad as they sailed towards him. The point of the sword deflected the torrent of hardened spikes before Gamabunta leapt up again.

"GOTCHA!" The raccoon dog gestured and the spikes that had been knocked astride suddenly flew upwards to impale him from below. "GONNA HAVE ME SOME FROG LEGS!"

The Boss Toad's cheeks and stomach swelled before they could and he exhaled a waterspout from his mouth downwards. The spiraling water churned the sand, soaking it to the point it couldn't hold itself together and then stirring the resulting silt until it splashed around to cover what remained of the trees surrounding them. The strong, amphibian legs then touched back down onto the muddy ground.

Sasuke was grateful for once he didn't have anything in his stomach to vomit at this point. Every movement the summoning made rattled his bones and made his leg wound ache. But now, as he looked at the devastation around them, he saw what Naruto had meant that there was no place safer.

Sakura groaned softly in his arm and her eyes wearily opened. The constant shaking had roused her from the depths unconsciousness. "Sas…uke? Where are…." She trailed off as her head lolled forward onto him and she passed out again.

The Uchiha swore under his breath as the bleeding seemed to renew from her head wound and then looked up to Naruto, who was still covered in a visible layer of chakra that wafted from him like a bloody vapor. "If this keeps up she'll lose too much blood!"

Naruto's fist clenched. He could understand that, but the solution wasn't forthcoming. "Boss Toad, do you have any idea how to deal with this now?"

"We need to get to the host," Gamabunta said as he hopped out of the way when a vibrating tendril of sand lashed out at him, intent on grating and grinding into his flesh. Another salvo of water leapt from his mouth and broke it apart. The column of liquid then speared towards the main body, only to be blocked as sand condensed into a makeshift shield in front of the tanuki.

"I can sense that the host is inside of its head with Natural Energy," the giant toad continued. "He used some kind of technique to end up like that, right?"

"Yeah. He made a hand-seal, passed out, and then turned into that."

"I can force him out, but it'll take everything I've got to keep him pinned down after." Sasuke's Sharingan picked up the chakra bleeding out of the summoned toad and saturating the air, melding with the existing water vapor. "Once he's out in the open, you need to knock him out properly and separate them."

"Okay!" Naruto shifted his stance and then re-anchored himself. "Do it!"

"Water Style: Storm Upheaval!" Gamabunta slammed his webbed hands onto the ground and then transmuted all the chakra that bled out into water that crashed down over the giant tanuki. The water washed away the outer layer of sand covering it while soaking the rest, making it darken and grow soggy.

Sasuke understood why he had done so as Gaara of the Desert emerged once the downpour stopped, sticking out of its forehead and gasping for air. The sand became too dense to control and, for all his power, he was still human and needed to breathe. The host, as the giant toad called it, would have been crushed or suffocated if he hadn't done so.

The powerful legs of the Boss Toad tensed like coiled springs and then fired him forward. His blade pointed ahead to pierce first, the massive weight and momentum shook the ground from the impact as the blade ran it through. They both fell over, with the toad pinning the raccoon dog's arms in place while the sword anchored it to the ground. "NOW!"

Sasuke watched as Naruto dislodged himself. He leapt towards Gaara without reservation, throwing himself into his next attack. It seemed like that would be the finishing blow…

Yet, his Sharingan could detect the movement of chakra shifting around, bringing up a patch of dry sand. It would likely reform around Gaara and shape itself into something meant to kill Naruto. That would make everything for naught.

He couldn't let that happen after everything. His body was racked with cuts and injuries, a broken arm and wounded leg sapping his stamina, and his chakra was low from the earlier Chidori and remaining anchored to the giant toad's head. But, just like Naruto, he still had a second source of power to draw from.

Relinquishing to the dark temptation for more power, the Cursed Mark spread over his good arm and flooded him with the foreign chakra while setting his nerves alight. In an instant, he used his functional hand to simultaneously unfurl a Demon Wind Shuriken, use chakra flow to permeate it with lightning chakra, and then fling it so that it curved around as the sand took shape into a thin shell of needles that sought to skewer Naruto using his own momentum against him.

The shuriken swooped in a second before flesh met hardened sand. The lightning covering it spread through the sand saturated with earth-nature chakra and destabilized it. And the force behind the throw, enhanced by the Cursed Mark strengthening his arm, was enough to violently blow away the last line of defense Gaara had.

[0-0-0]

Naruto briefly glanced back to see Sasuke panting after throwing that shuriken, a grimace of pain on his face from the Cursed Mark. He had saved him there, but the price on his body would be steep. It made Naruto grit his teeth as he turned back to Gaara.

He threw his everything into the next attack, rotating while falling to carry more force into the blow. Both of his arms were raised, his fingers interlocked to bring down his hands like a sledgehammer. With a roar, he slammed down against the red bed of hair hard enough that Gaara's entire body wrenched itself free from its perch within the Tailed-Beast.

The massive tanuki groaned as, separated from the unconscious host, its body sloughed and eyes dimmed. It fell apart into pieces of wet sand that threatened to crush both Jinchuuriki as Naruto grabbed the boy from the Hidden Sand while they fell. At least if not for Gamabunta catching and then depositing them on the ground away from it, followed by Sasuke and Sakura.

He fought off the urge to jump when a crash came down behind him not even five seconds later. Cerulean eyes turned to see that there was a large toad there now, a man with big white hair on it. He was joined by several shinobi, many covered in blood that wasn't their own, including Kakashi.

The other shinobi proceeded to deal with Gaara, while the man with white hair began to talk to Gamabunta. Naruto's focus was on the familiar face of his Jounin, who approached the three of them. "Kakashi-sensei, how did you find us?"

"After dealing with the majority of the summonings and Orochimaru's death, most of the surviving Sand and Sound forces retreated." He crouched down and brushed back Sakura's hair to look over her wound. "The constant quakes and noise sent up red flags, and Asuma stumbled across several of our Genin injured and unconscious. He sent a Shadow Clone to inform us of the situation while he retrieved the others and a team of able-bodied shinobi was dispatched. Along the way we stumbled across the other two Sand siblings and they were taken into captivity as well."

"Will Sakura be okay?" Naruto asked as Kakashi picked her up and laid her onto the ground gently, gesturing for two of the other shinobi to come. One crouched down and a soft, pale green light extended from her palms over Sakura, while the other began to look at Sasuke's leg.

"They'll see to her," Kakashi promised, looking around. "Is Pakkun with you?"

Guilt settled into his stomach and Naruto looked down at that. "I'm sorry," he told his Jounin softly. "One of the attacks left us buried in a bunch of debris. I didn't see him before I had to summon the Gamabunta. If he was on the ground, then he might have been caught in the…."

He trailed off as dirt suddenly upturned and a hole popped up in the ground at the base of his feet. Byakko's mask sprung up from the hole and fell onto the dirt next to it, with Pakkun's head following after it. Both were covered in mud. "Don't count me down for a dirt nap just yet."

"Ah, there you are," Kakashi said nonchalantly as the nin-dog pulled himself out of the ground and shook his body to shake off the excess mud. "What happened?"

Pakkun sat down and pointed to the mask. "Well, being lighter than all of them, I was carried further out with the mask when that attack hit. When I woke up, I saw the giant toad and figured it would be best if I stayed out of the way—you know, being squishable and all. So I dug down as deep and far as I could and waited for the shaking to stop, but some of the water and mud got into my hole."

Naruto sighed in relief… and then felt all the energy drain out of him from the fading adrenaline rush and the fox cutting the flow of chakra. It didn't see any point in giving him anymore now that his survival was guaranteed. Kakashi caught his arm before he fell backwards onto the ground and lowered him gently.

"Get some rest, Naruto," he said. "When you wake up, everything will be over."

He did just that.