Gaara normally had no competitive spirit. However, his mother was egging him on to, quote, show that stupid fox kit our power. Her bloodlust was getting to him, and he was looking forwards to his fight. He did a sand shunshin and appeared in the middle of the arena when it was his turn to fight again.

Dosu, the genin from Oto, jumped into the arena after him. Last came Shikamaru, who looked utterly bored. The Nara, instead of heading towards the center of the arena for the three-way fight, made a beeline for the proctor.

"Proctor-san, Dosu uses sound and Gaara uses sand. As I am, I have no way of countering their abilities, and it would be too troublesome to fight them. Can I just quit now?"

Hayate frowned at the boy. "Yes. Just go."

"Thanks." The Nara strolled out of the arena as lazily as he had strolled in.

"By forfeit, *cough* Nara Shikamaru has lost," Hayate announced. The crowd booed, irritated that their expected three-way became a standard two-way. "Now, if nobody else wants to forfeit, match ten, start!"

Gaara had been listening. He'd missed Dosu's match against the boy in the green spandex, so any information was good. Upon hearing that Dosu used sound, whatever that meant, Gaara's sand erupted out of his gourd and formed into Shukaku's head around his own. Normally, he kept the material hard and packed whenever it was around his head, such as in his sand armor, which allowed sound to easily flow through. This, however, was thick and loose.

The sand mask grinned wickedly, far more than Gaara was underneath. But the emotion was the same, inside and out. Gaara lusted for blood, and he lusted for it on his own, independent of his mother. "Come!"

"Gladly," Dosu replied. He shot forwards, and was greeted by a wave of sand. He whacked his melody arm and used the vibrations to plow through the sand as if it wasn't controlled by an insane jinchūriki. "Take this!"

"Gladly," Gaara echoed. The sand that had been displaced came back together around Dosu's arm, pinning it in place inches from Gaara's masked face. But it didn't stop when it came into contact with his arm, no, it continued straight on through, hacking the limb off in a bloody mess.

His sand caught the limb as it fell. "Take it, you said. Take it, I did. But I want the rest of you." The sand hadn't stopped with Dosu's arm and more sand was joining it from the gourd. Within a second, it had totally enveloped Dosu. "Sand Waterfall Funeral!"

The mad tanuki mask grinned at the fountain of blood that erupted from the mass of sand and crushed flesh. As the mask dissolved and returned to the gourd, Gaara said, "I win."

"Winner by death, Gaara." There was no cheering at this announcement. Woe to those of weak constitution, for Gaara had no mercy on their stomachs.

Gaara looked up at the stands where the other chūnin candidates were waiting and met Naruto's eyes. Naruto returned the look. Inside each of them, their respective bijū howled for blood.

It was the semi-final fight. Gaara had a bye, so the only two people fighting this round were Sasuke and Naruto. As they approached each other, Sasuke remarked, "You know, I'm half tempted to pull a Shika on you and just quit."

"Were the circumstances different, I'd offer to fight under our sparring rules, but I can't, not now," Naruto replied. "I can't let you win, but I also don't want to hurt you too much. At least put on a show for them."

"And a show it will be, scripted and everything. Unless you pull some other jutsu out of your ass, I'm fairly sure we both know how this will go down," Sasuke remarked.

"Oh? Enlighten the rest of us," Naruto said, motioning to the crowd.

"Proctor-san will start us, and I'll close the distance. Despite your build, you're a ranged fighter, not a melee fighter. You do have that assassination jutsu of yours, but you can't use that on me, meaning that the safest place in this arena is right in front of you."

"I do have Mountain Flower's River," Naruto replied.

"Which is humiliating, not debilitating," Sasuke countered. "It's like getting hit with a short duration genjutsu, except you need contact to initiate it." Naruto didn't actually need contact, as he could hit everyone within a small country at once, but since he wasn't ready to show that ability off just yet, he didn't correct Sasuke. "And I've trained my agility with Itachi, so avoiding you should be easy. The problem is doing damage to you and making it stick. And even if I did, you could just fly away. Once you're airborne, it's game over for me. The only way to beat you is to pin you down and seal you like a bijū or keep pounding until we find a limit to your ability to heal."

Naruto nodded. "Basically, yeah."

Sasuke sighed. "Alright, I'm ready, Proctor-san. Let's get this farce started."

Hayate looked at Naruto, who also nodded. "Begin."

Sasuke's predicted battle came to pass. He was already somewhat low on chakra from his previous two fights, but he had enough to toss around some big fire techniques. Naruto, much to Sasuke's irritation, took the hits and kept going. That said, Sasuke was pleased to be able to burn most of Naruto's clothing off, forcing him to fight in nothing but his underwear.

An unspoken signal passed between the two teammates, who were fighting more for the show than to actually defeat one another. Their fight shifted to a more taijutsu oriented battle, where Sasuke's sharingan and agility gave him an edge. When Sasuke's shirt was also conveniently destroyed, the crowd really started going wild, especially the women, because really, what was not to love? Two men — one lean and beautiful, the other big, strong, and dangerous — fighting one another in a contest of bodies and strength.

At one point, Sasuke managed to knock Naruto down and pin him down by getting atop him. Naruto merely slid two of his arms under his head, as if he were relaxing. "Well, now that we're all hot, sweaty, and mostly undressed, shall we finish with what all those girls are begging to see?"

Sasuke stabbed Naruto with a kunai. "Pervert."

Naruto's tail lashed out, causing the two of them to roll and allowing the demon to pin Sasuke with his much larger weight. Blood dripped from Naruto's wound onto Sasuke. "You're the kinky one, sadist." His arm transformed into a cannon. "Unfortunately, I can't play around much longer. Kurama's getting antsy, so I'm going to need you to surrender."

"Fine. I'm too low on chakra anyway. Proctor-san, I'm done."

"Winner by forfeit, Naruto Namikaze."

Naruto rolled off of Sasuke, stood up, and pulled the Kunai out of his chest. He wiped away the blood with one of the last scraps of cloth that clung to his body, revealing an area of unblemished skin. "Naruto, that is one overpowered ability."

"You're jealous, aren't you?"

"Obviously," Sasuke drawled. "It would be great if you could share it."

"Unfortunately, I can't because... Actually... Minato-tousan might know something that might help. I'll talk to him later," Naruto replied vaguely. Sasuke raised an eyebrow curiously.

Minato had come down and announced a change to the last fight, specifically that it would not be taking place then or there, but that it would be taking place in two hours and the venue would be up on top of the cliff that the Hokages' faces were carved into.

The people were upset about the change, but the Hokage promised that it would be worth it. Hidden in his words was the message to Naruto and Gaara that it had better be worth it. They promised that it would be.

Now, the two hours were up and the competing jinchūriki were in position. All that was left was the Hokage's signal, which came in the form of a flare shot into the air. The moment they spotted it, they jumped away and released their bijū.

Now, all jinchūriki eventually would discover — sometimes on their own, sometimes with help — that cooperating with their bijū would make transforming and using their chakra easier. For Gaara, using any of Shukaku's chakra normally caused him a little stress unless he was trying to kill someone. However, he wanted Shukaku to fight, Shukaku wanted to fight, and Naruto and Kurama had gotten them to have something resembling a truce. Thus, when he activated the playing possum jutsu, Shukaku seizing control was as easy on Gaara as stepping aside on soft sand.

Likewise, Naruto found himself gently pushed aside by his father. Unlike Gaara, who had literally nowhere to go but dreamland, Naruto found himself fully in his Akuma body, nearly blind to what was happening in his original one. But for that, he was glad. Seeing the two behemoths emerge was a sight to behold. Inside the seal, scale was relative. Naruto and Kurama could appear as big or small as they wanted, so Naruto didn't actually know just how big Kurama actually was.

When Kurama manifested, Naruto was shocked, to say the least. The trees beneath him, which Naruto knew to be easily a hundred feet tall, barely made it a quarter of the way up to his belly, and Kurama was crouching. Even Shukaku, who looked comparable in size to Gamabunta, was small compared to Kurama.

Naruto, inside his Akuma body, bounced happily. Haku, standing next to him, could only stare agape at the two bijū. He knew that his master was related to the two behemoths, but there was a difference between knowing intellectually and understanding emotionally. "Those are the bijū?!"

Akuma looked down at Haku and grinned. "They weren't joking when they said that they were big." Then, looking back at them, Akuma remarked, "And to think that one day I might grow that big."

Haku startled, fully yanking his eyes off the two circling bijū to look at Akuma. "Really? That's..." Words failed the Yuki boy.

"Well, I'd have to eat a shit ton of chakra to ever get that big, and even then, I could always shrink back down like they can," Akuma explained. "But it's possible."

Haku tried imagining Akuma at that size, and then a naked Akuma, and wound up developing the seeds of a macrophilia fetish for his troubles. Blushing, Haku returned his attention to the bijū.

The chakra beasts were circling each other, sizing each other up after having spent so long imprisoned. "Shukaku, it's been a long time since we've done this."

"Hah! I'm going to crush you, Kurama. I'm going to trap you in my sand and grind you and squish you and crush you and mash you and eat you up!"

"You say that every time," Kurama replied. "It's time you talk with your actions, sister."

"GAAAAA! I'M STILL A MAN!" The tanuki inhaled and then pounded his bloated gut. Air exploded out of his mouth with more force than any human wind jutsu user could produce, and as the wind bullet emerged, the tanuki shaped it into words. "FUCK YOU!"

Though knocked back by the literal force of his sibling's cussing, Kurama grinned. He lunged at Shukaku, slamming into the smaller bijū. Sand exploded off of Shukaku, but like with the bijū's jinchūriki, the sand immediately began returning.

Shukaku's fist slammed into the underside of the kitsune, and then again and again. Kurama, with his hand trapped inside Shukaku's body, could do nothing but take the blows.

Well, not exactly nothing. He opened his mouth and said, "Hey, Shikaku-chan, here's a ball for you." As he spoke the last word, his mouth stretched wider and a mixture of chakra poured out, forming a bijūdama. He fired it right into Shukaku's face.

Of all the ninja in Konoha, the only ones who had seen a bijūdama had also seen Minato teleport it away, when the hypnotized Kurama tried to hit the village with it, and the only thing they'd seen of the effect was the light and the blasted trees after the fact. Even Minato had not been looking at it when it went off. But here, it was clear as day.

Actually, calling it "clear as day" was an understatement; the tremendous light made even the day look dark. It forced all who were gathered to look away, especially those Uchiha and Hyūga who were foolish enough to look at the blast with their dōjutsu active.

When the light and smoke cleared, Kurama was still standing with his mouth pointed at Shukaku, whose outer layer of sand was glowing orange. Shukaku seemed to have shrug the blast off just as easily as Kurama, though, and charged up his own, smaller bijūdama to fire back.

Within the second blast, Shukaku lunged and knocked Kurama over, and then began extending his sand across Kurama's body.

Kurama was having none of that, however, and used his massive tails to flip them over, much like how Naruto had done with Sasuke earlier that day. That was where the similarities ended, as Kurama suddenly moved again, flipping himself around his vertical axis so that his rear was near Shukaku's face.

Then he sat. Much to Shukaku's dismay, the tanuki now had a face full of kitsune ass and balls. "Take that, you stupid tanuki!" Kurama yelled. "Have a taste of your own fucking medicine!"

Said tanuki screamed in rage, though it was muffled by the fox's massive posterior. Kurama grinned. "Keep screaming, Shukaku, I might just get off from it."

That shut the tanuki up. But it also gave the tanuki the inspiration to reinvent one of Konoha's secret jutsu on the most epic of scales. It was the One Thousand Years of Death: Bijūdama Enema Edition, and it was enough to launch Kurama several times his body length into the air.

The earth quaked when Kurama hit the ground, ass still smoking. He hoisted himself up and turned to face his sibling. "So, you've grown some balls after all, Shukaku-chan..." Kurama muttered, not making eye contact with the tanuki.

"I'm a man, damnit Kurama-baka!" Shukaku yelled. "I HAVE BALLS!" As if to prove his point, the sand shifted around Shukaku's rear, forming a massive, tanuki-sized pair of testicles. And, just to punctuate it further, the sand spirit spun and slapped Kurama with them.

Every man in Konoha wept at the sight, feeling suddenly ashamed of their manhoods, for none were as large and strong as Shukaku's, and they all knew that.

"Good," Kurama growled. "I'm glad that I got the real you back, and not that sniveling coward that I saw earlier. Now FUCKING DIE LIKE A MAN!" Kurama lunged once more. He opened his mouth wide, wider than it should have ever been able to open, and bit Shukaku's head clean off.

He swallowed.

Now, had that been the real Shukaku, that bite would have only incapacitated him, blinding him until he could reform his head from the sand. However, that was Shukaku manifested through Gaara, who was buried inside of Shukaku's head. The sudden exposure to the acidic stomach chakra made in Kurama's stomach was enough to wake Gaara, and with the boy awake, Shukaku's hold on the real world dispersed. Gaara would die unless Kurama spat him back up almost immediately, and the fox had no intentions to, as when Gaara died, Shukaku would as well and would be forced to spend years reforming.

That was the plan, and it would have worked, had Kurama's body been real. But, in the heat of the moment, he had forgotten that he was not free, and was in fact possessing his son. Thus, it was not Kurama's mouth that ate Gaara and Shukaku, it was Naruto's transformed mouth.

Back at the cliff edge of the Hokage monument, Akuma-Naruto suddenly felt as if he'd swallowed a literal brick, and judging from Kurama's expression, the fox was feeling the same thing. Both realized far too late that something was terribly wrong. Kurama tried to cough up Gaara and Shukaku, but the greedy nature of Naruto's powers wouldn't give them up.

As for Akuma, the pain was getting worse, worse than anything he'd ever felt before. It felt like he was going to explode. His vision started going dark, and Naruto lost consciousness. The henge on Akuma poofed just as his legs gave out, sending the oni tumbling off the cliff. The last thing he heard before he fully went under was his name, desperately shouted.

Naruto awoke to the sound of crying. The deep voice boomed as it sobbed. His eyes popped open, and he saw the ceiling of Kurama's seal. It was closer than he remembered.

Both of Naruto's mental forms, Akuma and himself, rolled over, and found themselves lying against Kurama's side. However, the bijū was much closer to his size than Naruto could ever recall seeing him. "Kurama-tousan?" His clawed hands shot to his mouths.

Had that really been his voices?

"What the hell happened? What's going on with my voice."

"Kit?"

"Tousan! What happened? All I remember... You ate Gaara! Oh, Kami! You ate Gaara right out of Shukaku's head!"

Kurama shook his head. "Worse. I was possessing you. It was you that ate him."

Naruto's twin bodily manifestations scrambled up, which was harder than usual due to his suddenly poor balance. However, he wasn't paying attention to that. "Don't you dare blame me for that! You were the one who ate them! I saw you do it!"

Again, Kurama shook his head. "I'm not blaming you. I'm saying that I was possessing you. It was your body that actually did the eating. And you know what happens when you eat someone."

The realization was like a punch to the gut. Naruto fell to the seal's wet floor. "We killed Shukaku. He... he's not coming back, is he?"

"Naruto." The fox rarely ever used his name, so it immediately caught Naruto's attention. "You've been unconscious with both of your bodies. Haku brought Akuma to the hospital. Wake him up; get that body out of here, before they have too much time to notice something's wrong. Right now, your chakra is mostly collected in your main body, and the vast majority of your chakra is being used to dissolve Shukaku's chakra. To the world, it looks like chakra exhaustion. But the moment Shukaku's remains finish, all that chakra is going to flood back into both of your bodies. They'll figure it out if that happens."

"Tousan..."

"Go! Kit, we can mourn Shukaku later. Just wake up and go!"

Akuma's eyes snapped open. The hospital ceiling was above him. His head tilted to the side. "Haku," he said weakly.

"Akuma-sama! You're awake!"

"Get us out of here, now. We need to go far away. Not towards Nami. Not yet."

Haku didn't understand what was wrong. However, he didn't need to know those details to act. His hands went through the signs with practiced ease. Water burst out of the nearby tap and formed into a solitary ice mirror. As it formed, Haku helped Akuma stand, and then pulled him through the mirror. Somewhere far away, though Haku was only relatively sure where, another mirror formed with their reflection already in it. They stepped out, and the mirrors melted into puddles.

"Thank you, Haku," he said, fighting off a groan as his stomach pained him. He absently realized that the pain was not from his physical stomach, but from that part of his chakra and soul that abstractly corresponded to his stomach. He did wince, though.

"What's wrong, Akuma-sama?"

Akuma groaned, unable to hold it back this time. "I feel like shit. Haku, please just drop the 'sama' bullshit right now. I can't deal with it now." He groaned again. "Let's just... walk. Where are we?"

"Southwest of Konohagakure. Near the Fire-River border. My aim isn't that good over these distances, so I can't tell you exactly where we are, and I don't have enough chakra to try that again," Haku replied. "It's a good thing you're feeling like walking."

And walk they did. They had no choice. The miles passed in slow silence, though as his stomach continued to settle, the oni was more and more willing to go at a faster and faster pace. As they walked and then ran, Naruto cast his mind into the seal.

He looked down at his bodies, the manifestations of his chakra. They were huge. Both of them had gained muscle and height, yes, but they'd gained a huge amount of fat. Both the Akuma body and the Naruto body had huge beer guts and a layer of fat over every limb. Naruto knew that Akuma's body in the real world still looked like it was only ever-so-slightly overweight, not with a massively distended gut like this.

There were other changes, too. For one, his balls had expanded to more tanuki-like proportions — that is to say, they were disproportionately massive. For another, on both of his bodies, that body's tail had lengthened until it was longer than body it was attached to was tall and had thickened considerably. The club on Akuma's tail was disproportionately bigger as well, and on Naruto's tail, the spines were longer and more numerous. And finally, both of their eyes had changed; in Akuma's, the slit pupil had changed to a diamond, while in Naruto's, the small dot of a pupil had expanded into the same diamond shape. It was the shape Shukaku's eyes had been.

"What happened to me?" Naruto asked. It wasn't Kurama that answered, but his own gut. It churned, and a rush of chakra surged through his bodies. The gut shrank, but the rest of him grew taller and thicker as the apparent mass was redistributed. The features of his inner chakra manifestation that had been exaggerated the most already grew even more. The young demon recognized what was happening; he was becoming more like Shukaku in form.

Kurama raised himself up from where he was lying, and turned towards his son. Tears dripped down his cheeks, joining the water that eternally coated the bottom of the seal. "I didn't mean to kill him permanently..."

The boy's two bodies went up to him and embraced the fox. For the first time, their limbs could embrace all the way around one of his own limbs. They paid that no mind, though. There were more important things to worry about, namely, his father's happiness.

"Kurama-tousan..."

"DAMNIT!" the fox shouted, pounding the ground, sending water flying. "DAMNIT!" he repeated. "I should have known! You've been slowly eating my chakra for years! I should have known what would happen if I did that! Shukaku-kun, please forgive me!"

Haku and Akuma sat down in a bar, several bottles of Sake having been downed by the latter while the former had only had water. The only mildly drunk Akuma looked at his companion, who looked back at him with questioning eyes but silent lips. "Haku," he eventually said.

"Yes?"

"I know you want to ask me, so ask. I don't feel like playing games."

"What happened back there?" Haku asked.

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific."

"At the final battle. The Kyūbi and the Ichibi appeared. Kurama bit off Shukaku's head, then started trying to cough it back up. You started choking all of a sudden, and then you fell off the cliff. The fox vanished a second later. I know something happened between you all."

Akuma drank again. He set the now empty bottle down. "Haku... You know what I am, but the truth is, that's only half of me. I'm artificial — a manufactured persona. In a way, my other half is also a fake persona. Naruto and I are two halves of the same being. We see through each other's eyes, feel what each other feels, and in truth, have only one mind between the two of us. I, and I mean my collective self, act like Akuma in this body, and like Naruto in that body. They're just more faces." He looked at Haku's shocked expression, and chuckled. "That doesn't mean that nothing about me is real. I'm flesh and blood and chakra, just as Naruto is, and the emotions I show you are very real."

Haku swallowed. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but who is the original?"

"Hmm... I would say... that it's complicated. Naruto was born first and Akuma second. Akuma didn't even get his name until recently; before that, he was just 'Oni-sama' to those who knew him. But at the same time, I feel like Akuma might be closer to my real personality than Naruto. I'm always on guard with him, but with Akuma... well, it takes a certain amount of confidence to strut around naked in front of people you haven't known for all that long." He paused to order another drink. "Anyway, you asked what happened at the battle. Here's what happened: I ate Gaara. His real body was in the sand, in the head. It was Kurama attacking Shukaku, but it was my transformed body eating his transformed body. You know what happens to the people I eat, right?"

"They become a part of you, right?"

Akuma nodded. "That a lot of tanuki to choke down. As much as it looked like he was free, Shukaku was still inside the seal on Gaara's body. It's been, what... Actually, how long has it been?"

"Three days."

"Three days?! Sheesh... Anyways, I normally have someone digested in seconds; Shukaku's still digesting. Currently, all of my chakra is going to digesting him, so much so that I'm having trouble waking up my Naruto body, where most of that is happening. But as that slows down, you and everyone around my bodies is going to feel my chakra spike to the level of an actual bijū. With Naruto, that's explainable — they did just see him eat a bijū. But Akuma? They know me as a non-shinobi who can use a little chakra, a minor demon, who fainted and fell off a cliff. Try explaining that."

His drink arrived. He downed a large portion of the sake as if it were cheap beer rather than pricy rice wine. "You're taking this better than I thought you would."

"It was kind of obvious. You walk and talk like a ninja, and when you fight, you hold back like a ninja trying not to be a ninja. Plus, I'm a Kiri ninja; we have a saying that goes: everyone is a ninja, especially when they prove themselves not to be. Paranoid, yes. Does it save your skin? Definitely." He took a sip of his water, then looked at his master. "That said, since you are a ninja, you are going to fight me harder in our next training session."

"You sure about that, Haku-kun? I can use everything you saw Naruto use, and I'm not afraid to use my emotional jutsu on you. Plus, I technically am undercover."

Haku considered Akuma's words. "Let me rephrase; since you're a ninja with that specific set of jutsu, I expect all six arms to be out when you're screwing me."

"That's more like it, my good little tool," Akuma replied seductively.

Eight genin waited silently in the Hokage's office. The absence of the ninth individual that was supposed to be there was depressingly obvious. But since their friend was still in his mysterious coma, there was little they could do.

The Hokage flashed in. He too noticed the lack of his son, and it showed on his face. But, he was nothing if not professional. "Welcome, chūnin candidates. I think you all know why you're here. Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha, Shikamaru Nara, Ino Yamanaka, pleas step forwards."

They did.

The Hokage turned first to Sakura. "Sakura, although you didn't fight at all, and instead fell into a trap, you showed that you were only thinking of your comrades. As Kakashi and I always say, those who abandon their mission are trash, but those who abandon their team are worse than trash. For putting your teammates first, you showed the sort of courage and attitude that Konoha loves. For that, I congratulate you, chūnin Haruno." He handed her her flak jacket.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama," she replied. On the inside, however, she was dancing and cheering.

"Sasuke, you showed an excellent awareness of your environment and maintained control of your battles. You conserved your strength and used your enemy's emotions against them. During your final fight, you were facing an enemy you yourself admitted was unbeatable at your skill level. Instead of forfeiting, you showed off as many of your skills as you could, advertising yourself and Konoha in the processes. For that, I thank you, chūnin Uchiha." The next flak jacket traded hands.

"Thank you," he replied.

"Shikamaru, you only fought one battle, but in it, you held total control of the battle field from start to finish. In your next round, you forfeited to let to foreign ninja fight among themselves. In the real world, you could have then moved in and taken out the weakened victor. Knowing when to retreat is just as important as knowing when to fight. For that, I am proud of you, chūnin Nara."

Shikamaru took the jacket. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"And finally, Ino. Suna produces more trap masters than any other hidden village, and yet you trapped one of their own ninja. Be proud of that. You were also able to skillfully defend yourself and exploit the weaknesses in a superior ninja's jutsu to hold him off for an extended period of time. In the ninja world, seconds can mean life or death, and you bought yourself minutes. I wish you the same sort of luck, chūnin Yamanaka."

"If you don't mind, Hokage-sama, I'd rather work on my skill so that I don't have to rely on luck."

He handed Ino her flak jacket. "A wise decision." Then, turning to the rest of them, the Hokage said, "Chōji Akimichi, Neji Hyūga, Rock Lee, and Tenten, I am not promoting you, and for all the same reason. Each and every one of you lost your very first match for the exact same reason: your enemy had a way to counter your jutsu, and you had no way to compensate for that. Chōji, you need far more speed and agility. Neji, you need ranged ninjutsu. Lee, you need a ranged weapon or two. And Tenten, you need a way to pierce extreme defenses. Realize that all of you could have made chūnin, you just happened to get the enemies that exposed your biggest flaws."

The four remaining genin accepted the advice. It hurt to be passed up for promotion, but the Hokage had basically told them what they needed for the next time. It was something they could work on, and that's what counted.

"Chūnin, remember to report tomorrow for orientation on your new duties. Team Gai, team Asuma, you are dismissed; team Kakashi, please stay for a minute." Once the others had left, Minato took off his hat and let his business face fade back into his more casual expression. "Sakura, Sasuke, I wanted to talk to you about Naruto."

"Has he been promoted too?" Sakura asked.

Minato shook his head. "Naruto has almost the reverse problem as the other genin who didn't pass. They had the attitude, but weaknesses that had to be fixed. Naruto had no real weaknesses, but treated the chūnin exams as a game. He came to me early on and said that the bijū wanted to fight. I knew from that moment that he was not ready. I sensed that he had been involved in egging on the bijū until they were antsy enough to demand that their hosts surrender their free will in order for them to fight. Had it not been for Naruto, Kurama would not have killed the Kazekage's son, Gaara."

"I see. So what happens now?" Sasuke asked.

"Well, when Naruto wakes up and is cleared for duty, I will authorize him for B and low A rank missions, such that he will be able to do missions with you; he is a capable ninja, but not quite leader material yet. You two will be his superiors for now," Minato explained.

"That all assumes Naruto even wakes up," Sasuke pessimistically replied.

"He will," Minato insisted. "Tsunade-sama was just brought in to check him. His chakra had effectively imploded from whatever Kurama did, reducing it to a tiny ball in his coils. He's steadily recovering, and if he keeps going at this rate, he'll be back before the week is up."

As if to contest that, a malicious, astronomically powerful wave of killer intent crashed down on the village, followed by a metaphorical blast of demonic chakra that made Minato's head spin. It made him feel like he was fighting Kurama again, but worse.

And then it was gone, though not quite as suddenly as it had come. The sensation faded smoothly and swiftly to nothing, rather than cutting itself off instantaneously. A moment later, a masked Anbu burst into the room. "Hokage-sama! That was Naruto! He's awake."

"Well, I did just say 'before the week is up,' didn't I?" He vanished then in a flash of yellow.