CHAPTER 13: GAARA AND SHUKAKU
-CHAPTER START-
"Hey dad."
"Hmm?"
"Do you have a feeling like we've been forgotten?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Naruto said, looking at his daughter questioningly. "You got a hit or two too strong on the head or something?"
"Yeah, Kushina-neechan. What's wrong?" Sarutobi Konohamaru, the grandson of the Sandaime who was sitting on Naruto's head said. Konohamaru was introduced to the Uzumaki-Namikazes for a while, but he was good friends with them and was never trained by them, the Sandaime citing that "It's too early for him to start heavy training," a statement that Naruto agreed on, with a certain emphasis on the heavy part, what with Sarutobi knowing of the insane training methods and schedules that they used. Kushina's a different case. A regular kid, even with ninja blood in him would be dead if they were to be put in a very heavy training schedule at his age. Kushina's bloodline gave her unnatural endurance, thus she was able to endure such insane training schedule even if she's just a year old. He called Naruto his brother, a title that Naruto gladly accepted while he called the female members of the Uzumaki-Namikaze family his sisters, one that they all accepted happily. Also, knowing that Naruto was the son of the Yondaime made him look at Naruto in awe and had already accepted future training from him later on. Also, his favourite place to sit on was either Naruto's or Kushina's head, saying that "It's very high and comfortable." Naturally, being good with children, Naruto just lets him ride his neck. Not that he felt his weight on him.
"Nothing." Kushina replied, brushing them all off. "I just had a strange feeling that we're temporarily shelved, that's all."
Shrugging his massive shoulders at their dismissal by his daughter, all three of them continued their walk. The entire family had just finished a mission before and went to the Sandaime's office to give their report on a completed B-rank mission involving the extraction of a High Value Target (HVT) of a high ranking member of a crime syndicate within Fire Country close to their borders. The target was successfully extracted, the base (and everyone in it) was promptly destroyed and incinerated without mercy (though Hinata still shed tears on that, saying that it's overkill), the man brought back to Konoha in a prisoner scroll before being dumped at the TI department where Ibiki was waiting happily for his new target. The man was already pissing in fear as the entire family left. At the office, they met the Sandaime who was entertaining his 8 year old grandson as his clones looked at him grumpily while they're busy plowing over the paperwork that Konoha gave him. Konohamaru then decided to stop bothering his grandfather and went with Naruto.
The day went as usual, what with the Uzumaki-Namikazes walking at the streets of Konoha while the rest of the population threw nasty glares at them. When Konohamaru asked about this once, the entire family immediately explained to him about the Kyuubi attack and everything related. Needless to say, he was afraid of Kurumi for a while, but after being closer with her, he realized that they're just having some misconceptions about her and that people should get closer to them. Also, she played with him in her demon form once in a while, and much to her joy, he liked it, citing that her fur was soft and warm.
A relatively short walk (for those whose legs made a single step felt like an entire bound to others) later, Konohamaru, with his usual penchant to get into trouble, said. "Naruto-niisan, can you drop me off here?"
"Hm? Why?" Naruto asked. He rarely wanted to be let down from his head, so for him to ask was pretty weird. Though he already had an idea why.
"I saw Moegi and Udon over there!" he said, pointing to a place somewhere in front of them. Moegi and Udon were his two best friends, and together, they made what he dubbed the Konohamaru Ninja Squad. The three had a penchant for getting into trouble and usually need the help of the ninjas around them to help them out of sticky situations.
Naruto had actually caught sight of his friends far away from where they were and was just waiting for the tine when he'd ask him to drop him off. And so he lifted the kid up from his shoulders before placing him on the ground where he immediately ran towards his friends amidst the people of the crowd, his cheerful yells of his friends' names heard amidst the noise of the crowd. Seeing this, Hinata had a soft smile on her face. "You're really good with kids aren't you, Naru-koi?"
"Yeah, kinda." Naruto replied. "Maybe it's because of the childhood I never had, being forced to grow up so fast."
"What?" Kushina interjected. "But dad, I'm still your child! Why didn't you treat me like that?" Kushina said, mock pouting. Everyone already knew the reason why though, and Kushina's just pulling his dad's leg.
"Well, one thing is because you grow up too fast. A side effect of our bloodline. You pretty much grew well enough to be trained hard in just a year. And before that, you already ate someone. And I don't mean their brains, you bit his thighs before going straight for his brain. Your mom and I were so shocked that we just watched as you ate the guy. Horrifying, but we assumed that it's because of the demonic instincts and the bloodline mixed together. At least you never did the same thing afterwards." Naruto said.
Ignoring her Hina-mama's extremely horrified look on her, she said. "Aww… but I still remember that part. Anyway, it's really sad if you stop to think about it. We're pretty much born as human weapons."
Naruto nodded sagely. "If one thing is true, it is the fact that you ARE born as a human weapon. Fast growth, a powerful body and an insanely powerful purified demonic youki right on birth with excellent survival instinct, our entirety was actually pretty much designed to ensure that our race, our bloodline, our species in general will be able to survive, to last and to continue in no matter how horrible the situation."
Even more horrified than before, Hinata had her hand covering her mouth while she gasped loudly. But then, when she thought about it, what he said was right. What capabilities that they have also lent themselves to survival and species preservation as well, allowing them to become the apex predator no matter where and how. "Naru-koi, you may be right, but it still is pretty sad to hear you say it like that."
"Is it?" Naruto said, turning to look at his wife. "It still is a point I take much pride in no matter how horrible it may sound. We could survive in extreme conditions, last through things others can't even comprehend, breed faster than rabbits, stronger than many animals or humans and can live off nearly anything. Being a 'human weapon' like me is pretty much synonym to being a 'survivor'. In fact, we're better than most so-called 'human weapons'."
"How so?" Hinata asked.
"It's because we are not just trained and born with abilities that allow us to be powerful warriors. Those same abilities made us into survivors, capable of outlasting nearly anything in any condition. Others… not so much." Naruto said.
"Yeah, Hina-mama." Kushina said next. "It isn't too much of a loss. With this power, this body of ours, even if we are to lack childhood, it's our task to ensure that others had theirs. It's the responsibility of the powerful to protect the weak."
Hinata said nothing afterwards, knowing how true what they both said. It's a point of sadness for her that her husband and her stepdaughter both considered themselves human weapons, no matter how true they were. Being raised like that due to what they were… It's pretty strange if a civilian were to think about it, but coming from a clan which trained their children hard from four years old, it wasn't too much of a surprise for her. Now that she thought about it, she might be impressed. At the age where other children would just start their training, a child with the Astarte bloodline would be close to, if not already jounin level. It's insane.
Naruto was snapped out of this discussion as he watched the figure of Konohamaru as he played around with his friends before he ran into an alley, his friends following behind him. But the two was then seen walking backwards slowly outside the alley without Konohamaru. Sighing, Naruto said. "Guess Kono's gotten himself in trouble again. Let's bail him out." Everybody just nodded and prepared themselves to bail that little hurricane of mischief out again.
-A WHILE AGO-
After Naruto drops him on the ground, Konohamaru immediately dashed towards his friends. "Hey Moegi! Udon!" he called out to them.
Hearing his call, both of them turned and faced his direction. "Kono-kun!" Moegi said. All three of them are of the same age. Moegi was a round-faced girl while Udon was a boy whose snot never stops falling down for whatever reason. They then ran towards Konohamaru as well before stopping in the middle.
"Haven't seen you for a while." Moegi said.
"Yeah, I'm at Naruto-niisan's house." Konohamaru also brought them to his niisan, and all of them are in good terms with him, no matter his demonic traits or nature. But being the energetic kid that he was, he immediately said with enthusiasm, "Hey! Let's go play ninja! We haven't played together for a while!"
"Yeah! Let's go!" Moegi said as Konohamaru's infectious enthusiasm hit her hard. Being a cheerful, energetic person, Konohamaru's energy was nearly boundless forcing his two good friends to keep up with him. Also, they all just started the academy, and still had dreams of a ninja being an awesome profession, something that Naruto plans to break him out of.
And so, as Moegi became the enemy, they stated their game of ninja, with the game being just a regular game of tag, though being called with a different name. Immediately upon being selected as the enemy, Moegi dashed to catch his two friends, both already running away as hard as their tiny legs can carry them.
But immediately turning into an alley, Konohamaru who was running hard suddenly bumped into someone, causing him to fall ass first on the floor. "Oh, sorry sir!" he said as he took a look at the person he bumped into.
The person he bumped into was a pretty strange guy, wearing a black full-body suit with a hood with some sort of cat ears on top of it with a strange bundle at his back that had some weird hair-like thing popping out of it. His face had some strange, purple coloured makeup on it. What scared Konohamaru the most was the fact that he had a Suna headband riveted to his cape.
"Brat..." He said, his tone angry. Konohamaru was scared out of his wits right now as the strange guy in black grabbed a hold of his collar before lifting him up and staring him right in the eyes. "You hit me." He said slowly as Konohamaru paled even more if it's possible.
Behind him, a girl with sharp, green eyes and blonde hair tied into four bushy ponytails, also with Suna forehead protector around her neck was looking around fearfully before saying, "Hey Kankurou, stop playing around. We're in Konoha now, and it'll be problematic if we were to be disqualified."
Snorting , the boy, now known as Kankurou, replied back. "I know Temari, just going to rough this boy up a little. Teach him a lesson or two for bumping into me." Kankurou said, as he looked back towards a silent yet pale Konohamaru, his mouth gaping in fear as the strange dude in black said those words.
"And what kind of lessons do you plan to teach?"
Hearing the mysterious voice immediately made Kankurou turn, and much to his fear this time, he was faced with a giant of a man, standing about two heads taller than he was and he was looking down towards him with an ominous aura surrounding him, so bad that it looked as if he warped the colour around him to black!
Temari was shocked! Here she was, looking at her brother about to beat up a kid like a schoolyard bully, when without any warning, a completely huge, 7' tall at least, giant appeared between her and her brother and spoke normally like there's nothing wrong with the sight! But what made Temari absolutely afraid of the giant was that he was omitting such a powerful, evil aura around him. Instantly Temari had her giant steel fan in front of her, ready to block anything the giant would do.
Meanwhile, Kankurou was about to shit himself as the man seemed to grow even larger, towering over him with what seemed like ominous clouds of evilness swirling on top of him, which to him, made the giant look nearly twice as tall and a hundred times more evil. And as suddenly as he appeared, he slowly opened his mouth, the words and the action that accompanied the words made him drop the already catatonic Konohamaru to the ground, where he fell with a plop on his ass.
"I said..." Naruto slowly said as he released his Linker Core's tightly controlled reign over his chakra, making small, smokelike wisps of bluish human chakra emanate from his upper torso, causing everyone in the alley to suddenly felt a heavy weight on them due to Naruto's immense chakra pressure. "What. Kind of lessons. Are you planning. To teach. My surrogate brother?" and immediately his chakra output doubled, causing the small flickers of chakra to turn into a raging bonfire around Naruto, surrounding him within a fiery cocoon of chakra.
Kankurou was feeling fear unlike anything he ever felt! Not even Gaara did this to him! Just his chakra pressure was able to shook his entire body and then some! He had more chakra than anyone he ever knew! Not even his father, a Kage, had this much chakra! If he was going to die, this is when and where he will die, not against his crazy brother or his enemy, but against this giant whose brother he tried to bully.
An icy fear gripped Temari's fragile heart as the gigantic figure in front of her released his chakra, causing an immense wave of wind to burst out from his location. Immediately concerned about the safety of her brother, Temari was about to open up her fan and blow this guy away when the giant turned his head and sent a powerful, concentrated burst of KI to her. And the next moment, she felt as if the Shinigami himself was grabbing her heart as she was glared at by the giant. He then said a word. "No." And just like that, she fell on her knees, with her fan suddenly cut into pieces without any warning with the pieces falling in front of her in a shower of metal confetti. She ended up kneeling on the floor, her face looking skywards as she ended up fainting on her knees with her eyes open and her mouth gaping in fear, all the blood in her face gone away from her face.
Kankurou was absolutely speechless. This giant in front of him just glared at her sister, and she fainted! Not just that, her fan was suddenly in pieces, with her none the wiser! Just a glare! Now he's absolutely sure that he'll die. But he won't die without a fight! Summoning all the courage in his heart, he reached his hand backwards to take that bundle behind him before placing it in front of him on the ground with a thud. But just as he was about to unravel his bundle, he heard another voice, a voice which had now moved to the second place in his 'most feared voice to hear' list.
"You two are a disgrace to Suna."
Everyone's eyes, even the paralyzed Temari immediately turned towards the speaking figure. The figure was standing upside down on a nearby tree with red hair and the kanji for 'love' seen tattooed on his forehead. Behind his back, a huge gourd was tied to his body with a huge white coloured sash. His eyes had dark rings around them, showing a chronic lack of sleep. And within a swirl of sand, he disappeared before reappearing in front of Naruto, seemingly not even the slightest bit scared of Naruto's raging maelstrom of chakra.
"You..." The boy said, but before he could say anymore, he was intercepted by Kankurou.
"Gaara... He's strong..." He said before the now-named Gaara shot him a death glare, causing him to shut his mouth immediately. No one wants, or was able to stop Gaara if he raged, and he knew that the best thing to do was to just shut up.
Within Gaara's mind, the beast known as Shukaku the Ichibi was screaming hard into Gaara's sleep-addled mind nonstop. "KILL CRUSH BURN MAIM KILL CRUSH BURN MAIM KILL!"
Trying to suppress his 'mother's' raging voice, he spoke to his mother. "Mother... Calm down. I will give you more blood later... but for now, we must not do anything!" But his attempt was failing as Naruto's bijuu aura was felt by the ever-raging Shukaku. Somehow, the deeply buried purified bijuu chakra within Naruto's body was felt by the Ichibi, and the strange resonance that his powers did with the Ichibi's youki created a strange feeling within the Ichibi's heart, who could only think of one way to react to this feeling: killing the source. Preferably as brutal and as bloody as all hell possible.
"KILL HIM! KILL HIM! GIVE ME HIS BLOOD! KILL CRUSH MAIM" the Ichibi suddenly screamed within the crazed mind of her host. After his failed attempt to calm his supposed mother, he struggled more and more against his supposed mother's insane ramblings and her murderous rage, the strange resonance was felt by Gaara through his shitty seal. His 'mother's murderous intent leaked out of him as he slowly but surely failed to suppress her want. In the end, he finally succumbed to his 'mother's' influence, and started laughing slowly, a slow, creepy laugh that made neck hairs rose in fear.
Within the real world, everyone was watching in unbridled fear as Gaara's face grew a grin became more and more unhinged as the demonic, yellow coloured chakra of the Ichibi started to flare around him and his gourd uncorked itself. Sand started pouring out of it with a hissing sound and swirled around Gaara angrily as his KI rose to an unbearable degree as his face turned mad.
Trying to snap Gaara out of his murderous rage, Temari shouted. "Gaara! Stop! We're in allied territory! Fighting with their ninja here might start a war!"
Gaara snapped angrily towards his sister. "NO! MOTHER WANTS HIS BLOOD! AND NOTHING WILL STOP ME!"
Inside Gaara's mind, the beast's little heart that sensed a certain level of familiarity with the man's chakra raged and screamed for the blood of this man, both her kind but also not of her kind, a contradiction unlike anything. "YES! I FELT A FAMILIAR POWER IN THIS MAN! KILL HIM GAARA! GIVE ME HIS BLOOD! KILL!"
Gaara's already insane mind immediately followed through with her mother's instruction, causing Gaara to let loose a truly frightening laugh as his sand came shooting towards Naruto. But before the sand could reach Naruto, he disappeared in a yellow flash before appearing right in Gaara's face before grabbing his entire face in a single palm and flashing away again, this time taking Gaara with him.
The entire Suna contingent, including their sensei Baki who just reached the area was staring at where Gaara was with their eyes wide open in shock. Someone managed to avoid Gaara's sand and took him somewhere! Before they could even react, another flash of yellow appeared behind Baki, grabbing his neck before flashing again, this time appearing on the two Suna Siblings before what seemed like long golden tails wrapped around them and they disappeared as well.
Konohamaru and his friends were pretty much comatose by this point, fallen on their backs on the ground and looking at nothing in particular, their minds and young bodies already stressed beyond breaking point with their first encounter with an enraged jinchuuriki and Naruto showing off his power. Hinata then appeared beside them in a Leaf Shunshin before grabbing all three of them and Shunshined back towards the mansion, intend on healing them and hoping that the ANBUs patrolling would come soon enough.
A squad of ANBU came to investigate the disturbance and the insane amount of chakra, and much to their confusion, the only thing that they could find was a pile of sand together with the lingering presence of bijuu chakra. Immediately one of them disappeared to inform the Hokage of this, since bijuu chakra can only mean that somehow, the Uzumaki-Namikazes must be involved, and any matters involving them must be reported to the Hokage immediately...
-AT THE UZUMAKI-NAMIKAZE MANSION-
Appearing right in the middle of the bijuu-mode training ground with Gaara's face in his hand, he immediately lets him go as he jumped back to avoid a huge wave of sand that came rushing at him from the gourd behind Gaara. Gaara immediately swayed around as the effects of the spontaneous Hiraishin teleportation struck him hard. Grabbing his face as he quickly recovered thanks to the bijuu within him, he sent a glare towards Naruto between his fingers. "You... you're definitely a worthy sacrifice! Give me your blood!"
A huge wave of sand erupted from the ground where he was standing and rushed towards Naruto who drew in a huge breath before blowing it all out in a huge gust of Futon jutsu, a sealless Futon: Great Breakthrough which blew away most of the onrushing hand. Charging through the rapidly dispersing cloud of sand, her reached Gaara's location and cocked a powerful fist behind him, ready to unleash it towards a Gaara who was standing still at his current location, not looking the slightest bit worried at Naruto's superhuman strength fist, a fact that he'll come to regret later.
Naruto was right in front of Gaara as he unleashed his wound up fist at breakneck speeds towards a mad Gaara when a massive wall of sand suddenly appeared between him and his target, causing the fist to hit the compressed sand wall. But much to his surprise, the wall didn't manage to slow down the fist by much. Instead, the sand wall exploded in a shower of sand, causing Gaara's eyes to widen at this act as the massive fist came rocketing towards his face, slowing only a tad bit.
Naruto's fist hit Gaara with all the subtlety of a demolition explosive tag with a loud crack, sending a cloud of sand away from his face while also sending him flying away like a rock. As Gaara was rolling on the ground, his Sand Armour protecting him from the brunt of the blow, he thought, "Yes... Mother! This man will prove my existence! I will kill him in your name!" He immediately stood again, the Sand Armour around his cheekbone literally disintegrating due to the force of the punch. Slowly Gaara let loose a cackle, before that cackle turned into a full-blown maniacal laugh. "YES! YOU'LL PROVE MY EXISTENCE! MOTHER SHALL HAVE YOUR BLOOD!" he screamed as even more demonic chakra leaked out from him.
Grinning, Naruto replied. "Then come get it!" he said as he dashed straight towards the oncoming wave of sand, ready to smash the mad jinchuuriki to pieces. And hopefully saving him from his raving mind in the process.
Meanwhile, close by but still outside the range of where the battle between the two was commencing, a figure of Kushina, carrying Baki in his hand and the two Suna Siblings within her materialized tails appeared within a yellow flash before she unceremoniously dropped all three of them on the ground as all three of them immediately threw up all their breakfast on the ground even as Kushina slapped chakra suppression seals and Hiraishin seals on them both.
Getting up while wiping his mouth, Kankurou started to speak, "Who the fuck-" his words was cut short as he saw that the person who kidnapped him was another giant with blonde hair but was a lady instead of the guy from before, and she was looking at them all with an extremely pissed expression on her face. Wisely, Kankurou said nothing and decided to just stay silent.
Temari also wanted to curse the bitch who carried them to wherever they were (are those things around me just now tails? She thought) to high heaven, but even she knew better than that. But much to her unbridled fear, she felt a massive chakra signature, a chakra signature that she hoped she'd never felt anymore, not mentioning the fact that she was seeing the giant from before fight against Gaara and was probably winning! But she knew better than that. "Stop!" She said towards the woman. "He'll be dead! Do you know who he is fighting?!" she said.
"Yup!" Kushina answered cheerfully, a grin on her face. "Gaara of the Desert, the youngest of the three siblings, the Sand Siblings, sons and daughter of the current Kazekage, the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi, Shukaku the Sand Demon." Watching Temari's blood-drained face, she said. "You guys are all over the Bingo Books. No wonder why we knew so much of you." Not to mention that her father's spying Bug Clones are still active around Fire Country, and they barely even masked their presence. He's like a massive beacon of chakra. And watching as Temari's blood drained face paled even further, she said next, a statement that confused the heck out of Temari. "And don't worry. Dad won't lose to something nine tails weaker than he is. Heck, dad's just playing around. I bet I can defeat him in less than 30 seconds." Kushina said, with the last part being stated only in her heart.
In yet another flash of yellow, Kurumi appeared next beside Kushina, her hands on her waist as she looked at the commotion. "Kushina! Explain to me what happened here, lady!" she shouted out as she watched the three Suna ninjas with Kushina and the chakra suppression seals on them and a Naruto who was fighting a sand-manipulating boy. A power that she knew only one had...
"Oh! Just that dad found your little sister, Shukaku-san! But she's a bit raving mad right now for some reason and that she's in that boy over there." Kushina said, pointing towards a Gaara who was busy trying to block Naruto's powerful punch with his Sand Shield, failing each time. All the time, his KI kept increasing even as more and more bijuu chakra leaked out of him.
"Oh." Kurumi said before she sat on the ground, cross-legged. "I haven't seen Shukaku-chan for a long, long while now. Wonder what made her go crazy. Well, in any case, it's going to be an awesome battle to watch. It's a good thing though. Your father will have another bijuu to test himself against."
"Yeah! That's what I thought too!" Kushina said before she also sat down on the ground together with her mother, the three Suna ninjas between them. She then looked towards the three before saying cheerfully. "What are you guys waiting for?! An invitation?! Sit down! And don't worry, you guys aren't running away no matter what! Those chakra suppression seals on you also had Hiraishin seals on them, so you aren't getting away, so just sit down and watch dad fight!" she said as she patted the ground where she wanted them to sit down.
Both in fear, confusion and surprise, all three of them just sat down on the ground, completely stunned at the nonchalant way that the entire family was treating the guy fighting against an insane jinchuuriki. But Temari's mind was running at this point. "What did he mean by 'nine tails weaker than him'?" Oh, she'll get her answer later.
-WITH HINATA-
She appeared in a Shunshin as she carried all three the kids into the living room before creating Shadow Clones. Already knowing their objectives, they all immediately went to where they're needed while the real Hinata prepared to heal back the kids' comatose mind. "I'll save you, count on it!" She said to herself as she and her clones started to heal the kids.
-BACK TO NARUTO-
After another failed attempt to block Naruto's punch, Gaara ran through some handsigns before clapping his hands together, causing a lot of the sand surrounding the area, both from his gourd and the sand that he makes himself as he ground the earth underneath his feet floats up into the air before forming into a massive number of compressed sand bullets.
"Sand Drizzle!" He shouted as hundreds upon hundreds of small sand bullets came screaming towards Naruto. Naruto, knowing of the force behind each of those sand bullets as they are powered by bijuu chakra, not just human chakra immediately crossed his arms in front of his face as he activated his Spinning Wall, though even the powerful rotational and chakra blocking action of the wall failed to stop the bullets, only slowing them down to nonlethal speeds. Fortunately, his passive Chakra Armour prevented the bullets from injuring him.
Just as he was about to continue his rush towards Gaara, he realised that the ground around him had nearly all turned into sand, a definite result of fighting against a jinchuuriki whose bijuu's main skill was creating and manipulating deserts. All those sands moved instantly, creating huge sand spikes which shot like a speeding arrow towards Naruto's standing position as Gaara said out loud, "Sand Spike Devastation!"
The sand spikes skewed Naruto through and through, all tens of the spikes. But to Gaara's dislike, the figure of Naruto poofed into a destroyed leaf, signalling the use of a substitution. Gaara's sand detected the presence of someone and instantly all his sand rushed towards the location. But just as soon as the sand reached the spot, the presence disappeared in a yellow flash before reappearing right in front of him. Before he could even react, a powerful knee hits his abdomen, causing him to fly upwards before a powerful kick slammed into his stomach, once again breaking through his Sand Armour like it's nothing but paper, sending him flying once again.
As Gaara was rolling on the ground from that hit, he managed to bounce backwards before his face once again had that scary grin on it. "Mother... you'll be pleased with this sacrifice... He will prove my existence for sure... Hehehe..." he ended it with a grin so evil that if it's not Naruto, the person would've ran away in fright. With a hand sign, a sphere of extremely compressed sand surrounded Gaara, while a single eye appeared in front of it, floating, watching Naruto's every movement.
Temari, who was watching with absolute concentration, was completely shocked! Here was someone who could fight on par with Gaara without even having any injuries! In fact, each and every one of Gaara's attempt to capture him in his Sand Coffin failed spectacularly, either due to amazingly fast speeds, quick Substitution, a Shunshin or even a Hiraishin! In fact, just from that Hiraishin, she knew that if he wanted to, her brother would be dead in seconds. But suddenly, Gaara surrounded himself entirely with his Sand Shield, and instantly Temari knew that shit was about to get worse. Much, much worse.
"Kushina-san!" She shouted towards Kushina who was just sitting beside her. "Stop this! Your dad will die! Can't you see?! He's crazy right now! Then he'll kill all of us!"
Kushina just looked at her in confusion. "What do you mean? Are you saying that dad will lose?" watching a terrified Temari nod quickly, Kushina just laughed before waving her off. "Naah. Dad'll win. He's still toying around here. And he taught me not to toy around. Maybe because it's another jinchuuriki, so he wanted to test himself. Don't worry. No way a half-baked jinchuuriki like your brother would even had a shadow of a chance against my dad."
"But-"
"Just shut up and watch, please. It's getting to the good part." Kushina said before looking back at his father. Temari, meanwhile was understandably confused. This entire family was nothing short of insane! "Your loss." She decided to just watch and ignore these crazy idiots. No one wins against Gaara in this form. No one.
Naruto was watching the solid sphere of sand that was emanating bijuu chakra like crazy as that one single eye watched him with an unblinking stare. And so, he decided to do the wise choice: he sat on the ground, watching the sand sphere perform whatever it's performing.
The sight of that made Temari's, and consequently, the members of the Suna contingent to have their jaws on the ground. "That guy's crazy!" they thought.
A while later, the shell of sand cracked like an eggshell, pieces of it falling to the ground before smashing into pieces. From within the sphere, the figure of Gaara was no longer visible. Now, the figure that came out was a miniature figure of Shukaku herself, a racoon dog made out of sand with paws bigger than he was with a tail much longer than he was tall. The miniature Shukaku then roared. "ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRR!" causing the trees and the ground in the area to shook violently from the sheer force of the roar.
Much to the Suna contingent's utter shock, horror and all other words that can express surprise, Naruto just stood up from his sitting position before picking his ear with his pinky before flicking an imaginary ball of earwax away. "Is that all?" he said. "I expected more. Well, what can you expect from the weakest bijuu? Well," Naruto said before straightening his arms beside him. "Let's see what you can do now in that form." Making a 'come here' motion with his hand, he goaded the insane Gaara towards his location, something that Gaara gladly followed through.
"I want to kill you even more now! Die!" Gaara's massive sand-made bulk belied his speed, for in an impressive display of agility, Gaara's half-Shukaku figure appeared right in front of Naruto, extremely sharp sand claws high in the air, ready to tear Naruto to pieces, sand training behind him as he ground more of the earth underneath him to change the terrain entirely to something that would side more with him. And with an astonishing speed, the sand claw came down on Naruto with an extreme force and weight, something that would've killed a lesser man.
But much to their surprise, the huge sand claw fell on nothing, the huge claw sliced in half by an invisible Wind Blade that Naruto shot out, causing the arm to become much shorter as the rest of the pieces broke up and showered Naruto with sand. Not wasting this opportunity, Gaara mentally ordered the sands to surround and trap Naruto in a Sand Coffin, ready to kill him with extreme pressure.
But in a flash of yellow, Naruto disappeared from the deadly cocoon of sand, appearing right behind him, a Great Ball Rasengan, 1 meter in diameter appeared in his hand before he smashed the powerful swirling ball of pure chakra straight into Gaara's sandy back, drilling straight through the compressed sand that made Gaara's half-Shukaku body before Naruto dispelled it, avoiding killing him outright. Instead, he grabbed hold of his shoulders before sending a powerful two-legged kick to Gaara's back, sending him flying away as he landed gracefully on the sandy area where Gaara once was.
Quickly regenerating his sandy body, Gaara decided to change tactics, using long range attacks. Swinging his arms of sand, he shot out a massive amount of extremely sharp Sand Shurikens before he drew breath using both his mouth and a multitude of sand mouths which popped up suddenly all over his body. With his demonic voice, he screamed. "Futon: Infinite Sandstorm Devastation!" Gaara blew out his breath together with all the mouths on him as they released massive sandstorm-like winds from their mouths, the wind also speeding up the shurikens as the sands he blew with the jutsu acting as micro projectiles capable of piercing an entire army.
5 Naruclones popped without a single handsign as all of them ran through the same handsigns at once before they drew a deep breath, moulding powerful Katon chakra within their lungs. Holding it for a moment to achieve maximum heat, all 6 Narutos immediately blew the white-hot stream of fire from their lungs in a powerful, pressurized jet of flames, entering straight into the massive gust of wind. The combination of the Infinite Sandstorm Devastation and 6 Katon: Fire Dragon Flame Bomb instantly exploded in a massive conflagration of Futon chakra enhanced flame, the intense heat flash fired every tree within the vicinity and even washed over the spectators were it not for Kushina's quick Suiton: Water Encampment Wall blocking it and the shards of glassed sand caused by the firestorm.
Jumping away from the firestorm with his longcoat burning, he threw it away, leaving him in his custom-made flak jacket and black shirt and combat pants assemble. Except for some sweat dripping from his brow due to the heat, he doesn't even seem winded even after spending such huge amounts of chakra for that technique. A gigantic eruption of sand around him almost caught him within its grasp, but a quick Hiraishin away saved him from the crushing sand. He was not sure whether his Chakra Armour will be able to survive the sand's crushing pressure, and he's been trained to trust his instincts more than himself, and his instincts said that he'll die in it.
Meanwhile, Gaara was getting more and more pissed. His prey kept avoiding his attacks! Even some of his most powerful attacks are avoided or even countered. More and more of his bijuu's chakra leaked out from his body as his KI increased to unbearable levels as he shed parts of his glassed sand armour. Quickly recovering from the heat, he screamed his rage to the high heavens, his anger unbearable. "WHY! WHY ARE YOU STILL NOT DEAD! MOTHER! GIVE ME MORE POWER!"
As more and more bijuu chakra poured out from him, causing the Suna ninjas spectating to feel like they're being drowned in a sea of sand, Gaara placed both monstrous sand claws on the ground, before the ground rumbled like an earthquake before Gaara threw both palms into the air, making it look like he's trying to rip the earth apart. And rip it he did as he screamed loud enough for everyone to listen, "SAND TSUNAMI!"
A massive rumble was felt from below the ground before the earth beneath his palm just erupted, turning into a massive tsunami of sand, the entire column of sand rushing towards Naruto in a loud roar as the gigantic wave of sand twisted, turned and the grinding sound of the sand particles clashing into each other filled the ears of both Naruto and everyone around the area. The immense wave of devastation sped without mercy towards Naruto, crushing everything and anything that it surged onto, leaving nothing behind. Yet, Naruto only looked at the oncoming wave of sandy devastation with determination and a smirk on his face as he bent his knees, ready to jump upwards to counter the fearsome technique.
-WITH THE SUNA NINS AND UZUMAKI-NAMIKAZES-
Baki was an experienced jounin of Suna. He'd seen many things, did many deeds a regular person would be unable to perform, seen the worst of man's side as he fought, both for his village and for his life. He was even there when Gaara raged and lost control of the Ichibi, his terrifying rage killing all that he met against. His friends, family members, none of those matters in front of Gaara's murderous rage when he's angry. He now learned to treat him with much care, like a glass figure that can break with the slightest touch, with his self-control being that glass figure. The sheer power of a bijuu was otherworldly, and he could say that he experienced it first hand, surviving death by just a sliver.
Yet here he was, being caught in Konoha by a bunch of giants, one who fought against Gaara. Thinking it was a suicide attempt by the giant, he didn't pay much heed to it. There's an unwritten rule in Suna that every speck of sand on the ground or on you was a cause to fear if the demon child came near, being more than capable of manipulating them to quickly end up in your death. The only thing that you can hope for is a quick, painless death, something that Gaara gladly gave, luckily. Only his Kage, the Yondaime Kazekage and his Gold Dust was capable of subduing Gaara, and everyone else was nothing more than meatshields.
And here he was, watching as the giant whom Gaara was somehow pissed off against was handling Gaara like a pro! In fact, he was pretty much defending, with only the Rasengan being his only offensive attack. Yet, Gaara couldn't even get a single scratch on him even in his demonic form. He wasn't even fazed as the Ichibi's oppressive chakra leaked out uncontrollably when Kankurou beside him was already frothing from the mouth and Temari's entire body was shivering uncontrollably in fear. And what's more, much to his surprise, the two ladies guarding them doesn't even look like they felt it!
Baki chose to remain silent. Whoever these people are, they're good. Very good. The guy was capable of countering each and every one of Gaara's move even in his bijuu form, while these two weren't the least bit affected by the sheer amount of demonic chakra flying around. Either they're used to it, or they're jinchuurikis as well. But it doesn't seem like they're too good. The blonde giant lady had a goofy grin on her face and the redhead was looking at Gaara in confusion and sorrow.
Right now, he's just biding time until they got sidetracked by anything. A massive fight in front of them will definitely be able to act as a distraction. He'll gather as much info as he can about their combat capabilities and a way to pull off this seal from his back, the chakra suppression seal. He still had all his physical capabilities, but without chakra, he's practically worthless. And so, he sat on the ground, taking stock of everything around him and the two women, doing his best to suppress the fight-or-flight instinct the sheer amount of bijuu chakra that emanating from Gaara did to him.
But suddenly, he felt a massive earthquake underneath him before a huge tsunami of sand erupted from where Gaara was fighting before a towering wave of destruction made purely out of sand came rushing towards Naruto unstopped, intending on crushing everything in their way. The terror that he felt now multiplied even as he felt a bit relieved, knowing that whoever that monster who was able to keep up with Gaara was, he wouldn't need to fight him, and a large threat towards his village in the form of a powerful ninja will be gone, killed by the unholy terror that was Gaara.
But much to his surprise, the man didn't even falter at the sight of the insane sand tsunami. In fact, he grinned! His eyes had a shine that showed his confidence and excitement, and his entire body composure said that he was waiting for something like this! How can someone had that much confidence against a raging, insane jinchuuriki nearly totally controlled by his bijuu?! Amidst Baki's running thoughts, he failed to see the figure of Naruto jumping into the air, intending to do something about the huge wave of sand rushing towards him in a roar like that of a sandstorm, seemingly unstoppable.
-OUTSIDE THE COMPOUND-
Sakura was skipping in happiness as she walked towards the Uzumaki-Namikaze clan compound, intent on telling her second teacher that her team was entering the Chuunin Exams. It's a sign that her improvements in skill level didn't go unseen by Kakashi. He may be a smut reading pervert, but he's a good teacher and saw her improvement rate, thus allowing them to participate in the Chuunin Exams! "Sensei will want to know this! Other genins might probably enter and her entire team was genins so..."
Suddenly, she stopped skipping as her line of thoughts stopped in abject horror. They're all genins! Her monster of a teacher and her family, they're all genins! And they'll definitely enter the exams too! Immediately her face paled as the thought of going up against her sensei at full strength crashed into her with all the force of a Doton jutsu. She could just feel it: her sensei standing in front of her with a look that said 'I know everything about you and you're dead' before she disappeared with unfathomable speed before her massive knee buried itself into her stomach. A second later, she exploded like a water balloon being poked with a needle, sending a shower of blood to everywhere as her head remained sticking to her neck and what remains of her vertebrae, the nerves seen dangling from them as her internal organs exploded as well from the sheer pressure of the knee strike, her minced internal organs showering the area around her sensei like a bloody, gory confetti as her limbs and head was sent flying every which way, being the parts of her body still intact, with her face stuck in an expression of extreme horror as the medics that came in placed a black body bag on her severed head, her sensei looking at her remains with a blood-soaked sigh as she walked away, her victory beyond assured.
She quickly shook her head rapidly to clear her head of that brutal imagery. Sure, that might be what will happen if she did encounter her second sensei with all her might, but she was sure that she won't do that. After all, they're ninjas from the same village, and her sensei was not one to not hold back. She may be someone who could catch a kunai in mid air, crush it with bare hands before eating them like they're breakfast cereals, but she's still a good person. Half demon. Whatever. It doesn't matter. They're all good person. But God forbid you anger them, because even the Sage of Six Paths himself would wet his pants at their anger.
She snapped out of her thoughts as she reached the gate of the compound which served as both her home and her training grounds for the past two months. The seals have already been altered to allow her entry, though as always, others are blocked with extreme prejudice. She also asked Kushina about how the compound, which doesn't look too big from the outside be large enough to fit a training ground capable of fitting two bijuus inside as they fought or sparred. Kushina answered that the entire compound was actually lined with a special type of seal, derived from a storage seal, making the entire compound be in an alternate dimension of sorts, protected by massive amount of wards, protective jutsu and seals. She then started to explain the theoretical aspects of the modified storage seals and as usual, it just flew over her head. No one could understand such an insane topic such as seals, she finally thought after a couple of Kushina's long-winded, highly detailed and extremely technical explanations.
She opened the gate and lets herself in. She could only walk for a couple of steps before an immensely powerful and oppressive chakra was felt all over her body, flooring her to the ground with its sheer power and density. Having been close to those who had immense chakra and trained with it regularly, she was no stranger to the effects of overwhelming chakra pressure, but this pressure was insane! It's unlike anything that she ever knew before! In fact, it felt a little like Naruto and Kushina's but much, much more evil. The vileness of the chakra nearly made her fragile mind blew from the stress of maintaining her sanity and bodily functions amidst the heavy storm of powerful chakra.
Toughening up her mind to prevent further SAN point loss from the oppressive aura, she grit her teeth before standing up slowly and wobbled to the main house. She only managed to get halfway before she felt her entire body failed her as the oppressive aura took its toll on her. But luckily for her, she was caught by someone as she slowly fell to the ground, saving her from an untimely collapse to the hard ground of the compound.
Blearily, she opened her eyes where she was met with the worried face of Hinata right in front of her face. "Sakura, are you alright?" she asked.
"Y-yeah..." she slowly said before wobbling herself into a standing position with Hinata's support, her entire body felt shaky and unresponsive under the onslaught of the bijuu chakra. "W-what's happening? What's this... vile chakra?" she asked Hinata. Being someone who was in the house while the insanity-inducing chakra was flying around, she would know the situation much better than she does.
Hinata immediately replied. "We just got back from a mission when we saw a couple of Suna ninja trying to bully Konohamaru. Naturally, Naru-koi decided to help him. Turns out, one of them is a jinchuuriki. A pretty insane one too. And the jinchuuriki suddenly went mad before he attacked everyone." Sakura gasped at this. Living with the Uzumaki-Namikazes, she understood better than most about what being a jinchuuriki meant and what they were. And an insane one would mean that their seal was badly designed, or that they fell into their respective bijuus murderous tendencies.
"What then?" Sakura asked.
"Naru-koi then grabbed hold of him before Hiraishining to the training grounds, Kushina following behind with the rest of the Suna contingent while I carried Konohamaru and his friends. I'm healing them right now, but with the bijuu chakra leaking like a broken mains pipe, it's going to be hard." Sakura already knew of the entire family's tendency to spam Shadow Clones for even the most mundane of tasks, but she knew that they are also adept at using them for both battlefield and recovery usage. That jutsu pretty much made them what they are.
"So are you a clone?" She asked.
"Yes." The Hinaclone said, nodding. "The original is healing Konohamaru, though progress was slow, what with this aura all around. Naru-koi need to stop him fast."
"But why did I felt less weak with you around?" Sakura asked. She felt that it's a bit weird that Hinata's mere presence could lessen the effects the bijuu's chakra, especially since the chakra was extremely powerful and oppressive. She could even walk now, albeit slowly.
"To explain it, you should remember that chakra pressure is like a wave. When there's another wave, its effect was reduced. I may not look like it, but I have almost as much chakra as the Sandaime, only a tad bit lower. A clone like me will have quite a lot of chakra, and it helps to counter the bijuu's chakra. That's the reason why only Kages are expected to go up against bijuus, because only their amount of chakra could counter the feeling of dread a bijuu creates with their chakra." The Hinaclone answered.
Sakura only nodded mutely at this. She definitely learned a lot with these guys, her parents be damned! She won't have a better teacher than they were, that's for sure. Now that she thought about it, a fight between jinchuurikis (well technically Naruto's not a jinchuuriki, but he still had bijuu powers so it kind of counts.) is going to be extremely epic and could give her an insight of how a jinchuuriki who's not Naruto or Kushina fought. "Hinata-san, can you take me to where they're fighting?"
"I sure can, but I won't recommend it. You're not used to pure demonic youki, so you'd be dead before you could even get close, no matter if I'm protecting you."
"Oh, come on! What's the worst that could happen?" Sakura asked. Just as she finished saying that, the ground rumbled and shook so hard that she and the clone stumbled even as the demonic chakra increased even more. And from afar, the two heard a loud grinding sound, as if a sandstorm was created within the compound. Looking towards the direction of the training ground, Sakura's jaw fell on the ground in shock and fear as she saw what created the rumble and the grinding noise: a huge, 30 feet tall sand tsunami of death and destruction raging towards something within the training grounds, a little something that she thought was Naruto.
As the sound of the raging wave that was Gaara's Sand Tsunami assaulted her ears like a thousand bees buzzing, Sakura rethought her decision to see the fight. In seconds, her answer was made: NO. Turning towards Hinata, she immediately said, "Hinata-san, let me help you with Konohamaru and his friends. That," Sakura said, pointing towards the still in motion wave of sand, "Is not a battle for regular people."
"Well said." Hinaclone replied, nodding. "I'll take you to the leader." She said before turning around and walked straight towards the mansion. Abruptly, she stopped her walk and turned around to face Sakura, surprising her before speaking with a smile on her face. "And don't worry. Naru-koi will win."
Smiling back, Sakura replied. "Was there any doubt?" both of them chuckled as they began walking back towards the house, Sakura hoping to help Konohamaru and his friends recover.
-BACK TO NARUTO-
Having bent his knees, Naruto pushed chakra to his feet before pushing himself from the ground, creating a crater where he was as he jumped skywards, intent on stopping the rushing wave of death with his myriad skill without turning into his bijuu form. Annoying, but he can't reveal that trump card of his too fast. Besides, he had more than just his bijuu form to counter the giant wave of sand.
25 feet in the air, he created a Shadow Clone which then thrust out his palm before Naruto did the same towards the clone's palm. The clone then started to channel powerful Katon chakra from his palm as Naruto manipulated it, spinning the chakra into a sphere like a miniature, contained hurricane of fire. As the chakra's spin became larger, he compressed the swirling Katon chakra even further, creating a ball of spinning Katon chakra 10 inches in diameter. The clone pushed even more chakra into the sphere as the original compressed it further and further, making the already large sphere become larger and more powerful.
A short while later, both the clone and Naruto lifted up their hands into the air, showing off one of Naruto's most powerful Katon jutsu: the Katon: Rasentaiyou. One half feet in diameter, the Rasentaiyou was one of the most powerful completed Rasengan variants that Naruto created. A sphere of highly compressed, extremely powerful Katon chakra twisting and turning within a thick shell of chakra like a miniature flaming tornado, the sphere itself was white-hot with the shape being a perfect sphere. None of the heat was emitted outside, nor does it create effects outside the main sphere itself like the Futon: Rasenshuriken since the sphere itself had an extremely thick chakra shell to prevent the powerful yet unstable Katon chakra from exploding in one's face.
Knowing of his task, the clone immediately shot forward towards the gigantic tsunami of sand with the sphere of absolute destruction within his hand as Naruto backed away by Hiraishining away, knowing of the sheer power of the SS-ranked Rasentaiyou. When he first created it, he nearly killed himself, losing his arm and part of his torso when it exploded. A couple hundred clones later, he learned of the most optimum way to use it, and that was to have a clone carry it to its destination, preventing himself from dying with his enemy thanks to his own jutsu. Also, the clone can stabilise the jutsu while carrying it to its target, making premature detonation unlikely. As he mastered and improved the Hiraishin, he had a better idea: send a clone then Hiraishin away, just like what he's doing at that time.
And so, as Naruto ran away from the potential power of his own jutsu, the clone shot forwards at high speeds towards the wave of sand, knowing of his own assured destruction by the powerful sphere of Katon chakra he's controlling as the wave of sandy death came roaring towards where the original was, the indescribable roaring of desert sand assaulting his sensitive ears as he was swallowed directly by the brutal wave. A blinding flash of light was the last thing he saw, and he knew no more.
-A MOMENT AGO WITH KUSHINA, KURUMI AND THE SUNA CONTINGENT-
Watching the huge wave of sand came rushing at them really made Baki felt apprehensive at staying with these guys. In fact, they didn't even look the least bit afraid at it! Others would be shitting bricks by now! But as he watched carefully, he saw that the guy fighting Gaara was on ait, close to the height of the wave itself. He was wondering just what the hell he was doing there when a powerful chakra was felt from where he was and a bright light was seen from where he was even as he seemed to split in two, probably a clone or something.
The clue that he received that whatever that guy did would be more powerful and dangerous than Gaara's sand wave was when he realised that the redhead beside him paled as the blonde giant's grin turned to a frown of horror. Whatever he's doing, it's got to be insanely powerful if even these two, who wasn't even the least bit affected by Gaara's raging youki was that much scared against whatever he did.
Kushina was absolutely shocked! Her father just decided to break out the REALLY big guns! That Rasentaiyou... She immediately turned towards her mother, completely ignoring both the shaking Temari, frothing Kankurou and the scared but confused Baki before saying, "Mom! Dad used the Rasentaiyou!"
With a grim look on her face, Kurumi nodded. "I know. We need a barrier. We're a tad bit too close to it."
"On it!" she immediately created a clone as they both ran through handsigns for a skill which didn't need any for them showing the severity of the situation. She trained herself to perform any defensive jutsu without any handsigns, making it easier for her to defend from any attack, yet her father's usage of the Rasentaiyou forced her to use handsigns for her barrier, something that was rare for her.
"Doton: Grand Earth Wall!/Suiton: Grand Water Wall! Suiton/Doton Combination Jutsu: Grand Fire Protection!" both Kushina and her clone shouted before both stomped their feet on the ground. Instantly, a huge wall of chakra-empowered, highly compressed earth appeared in front of them with a massive eruption of underground water appeared in front of them before staying there as a wall of water. The massive earth fortification was a dome 10 feet thick and 20 feet tall and 10 feet long with the water wall itself being the same size entirely around them with an opening at the back, the water at the inside of the wall. The entire assemble was charged with more chakra than an S-ranked jutsu which caused it to glow a bluish colour, making it one of the toughest, most impressive defence Baki had ever seen in his years of being a jounin. In fact, he was sure that even Gaara cannot easily breach this defence, much less him.
The barrier finished just at the right time. Baki only heard a loud boom before he felt blood flowing from his ears as he wobbled due to lost balance, a sure sign his eardrums just popped like a filled balloon being poked with a sharp needle. So does his two captors and his charges. He saw a powerfully bright light from somewhere in front of the barrier that left bright spots in his eyes, practically blinding him temporarily if not permanently. He felt, rather than heard the huge ground-shaking rumble of shockwave caused by the so-called Rasentaiyou crash into the impressive barrier, obliterating it without mercy. He felt the extremely hot wave of heat all around him thanks to the steam the powerful wall of water emitted as it sizzled from the furious heat wave that one jutsu made. As impressive as the Grand Fire Protection was, against the devastating power created by the Rasentaiyou, it crumbled as easily as a house in a tornado. Even so, with them being so close to it, the wall worked wonders, buying just enough time to block out the devastating effects of the Rasentaiyou.
All the devastation that one jutsu caused occurred in seconds, Baki noted.
As the last of the water wall evaporated, an already healed Baki and his charges, mended by the expert hands of Kurumi, managed to get a look at the sheer devastation that one single jutsu caused. And what they saw made all the blood drain from their faces. In front of them was something that can only be described as one thing: a wasteland.
The entire training ground, already a desert thanks to Gaara, had a massive crater in it, so huge that it could fit the Shukaku within it comfortably. What's more surprising to them was the fact that the sand all around and within the crater turned into black glass from the sheer heat of the jutsu. The area around it was utterly devastated, nothing was left standing. The trees, the ground, even the lake within the ground was utterly dry, steam could still be seen wafting away from the lakebed, dried from the powerful heat that one jutsu made. No fires were left, all of the materials that could act as fuel gone within the utterly devastating shockwave it caused. No animals were left, no ground left untouched, even the sky was torn as the heat of the jutsu evaporated the clouds. The sun shines brightly over the devastation the Rasentaiyou mercilessly made, all sounds from the area drowned by the sheer death that it made. Even the air seemed silent as the wind blew the extremely dry air over the spectators.
Temari was beyond shocked. She was so shocked that she had no words to describe what she saw in front of her. The devastation, the destruction, only the area behind her was saved, thanks to whatever jutsu that she saw protected them from that as she recovered thanks to the expert care of Kurumi. Kushina, meanwhile, was sweating from her face as she let the last handsign for the jutsu go, her clone dispelling. That jutsu really took a huge toll to maintain to block the Rasentaiyou. Even her bijuu level reserves were pushed, though she still had a lot more to go with. And she recovered quickly too. She could feel her chakra levels increasing again.
Trembling, Temari covered her mouth as she tried to comprehend the devastation the Rasentaiyou made. "Wha..." was all that came out of her shaking mouth as Baki looked at the glassed crater with stunned fear while Kankurou was stunned speechless at the sight.
"That's the effect of the Rasentaiyou," Kushina said with a frown on her face. "One of dad's city destroyer jutsu."
Trembling in rage, fear and terror, Temari looked at Kushina slowly. "City destroyer? CITY DESTROYER?!" she said before she screamed out the last part. Overcoming the hurricane of emotions within her, she pointed a trembling finger at the glassed crater that was once where Gaara was, fighting for blood with the sands. "THAT CAN DESTROY AN ENTIRE CITY?!"
"Yes." Kushina answered glumly. Somehow, her father decided to use one of his most destructive jutsu within his impressive arsenal to counter that wave of sand. A forbidden jutsu too, one that knows nothing but utter, absolute destruction and nothing else. "He did." A moment's pause, and Kushina continued. "And might probably everything around that city as well. Humans, animals, plants, nothing survives it, point blank or not. Anything close will be vaporized to nothing. Even I wouldn't survive. The heat melts flesh and burns bones. Nothing, absolutely nothing, even a bijuu could survive ground zero of that jutsu. No matter what. Even an immortal cannot live if he didn't have anything left, even a cell.
Outside the already huge fireball that is the ground zero, the shockwave of the blast blows an extremely powerful and hot wind, capable of vaporizing lakes and flaying flesh from bones before destroying the bones as well. The powerful wind will kill anything outside the radius without mercy, the survivors being forced to face the powerful firestorm created from the aftermath of the fireball, if there's anything left afterwards. The winds will go on and on, destroying everything they met with extreme prejudice, without mercy, without regret. Right outside ground zero, huge fires will start from whatever flammable material was left. The fires will be so huge that it will pull the air from the surrounding areas into it, creating a vacuum that will pull more surrounding air, creating an inward-facing hurricane strength winds, killing any survivors. The wind will act as air source for the fires, causing the fire to burn until there's nothing left to burn, being hot enough to melt steel.
After it exhausted its fuel source, then and only then will the fires stop. At that time, nothing will be left of the place. Not even memories. With no shelter, no cover and no way to put out the intense firestorm, the survivors can only hide from the raging flames until they either died from their oxygen supply running out or the fires burned them to ashes, not even a corpse remaining to bury." Kushina said, her eyes sad. Why did her father created something so terrible? She wondered. All those potential deaths, that devastation, it's unlike anything. Yet, she understood why. For one to create and maintain peace, one needs power. And sometimes, the power to destroy anything mercilessly. Sure, peace through superior firepower was nothing but pipe dream, but without power, one cannot maintain peace. "Theoretically at least. Dad never actually used it on a city. It's just conjecture."
Hearing this, Temari trembled hard as tears started falling from her eyes, the last part that Kushina said not calming her down one bit. Being one of Suna's Wind Mistress, she studied the reactions between Katon jutsu and her own Futon jutsus to be able to combine them better. And from what she knew of them and from what she saw in front of her, she could imagine that's what would happen to the place. It is utterly, totally, unquestionably devastating. Then, a though flashed into her mind, and immediately she cried with an anger induced shaky voice, tears flowing uncontrollably from her eyes. "Then what about Gaara?! He's right behind that sand wave! There's nothing there now! WHERE IS MY LITTLE BROTHER?!" Gaara may be a psychotic jinchuuriki who threatened to kill her on a daily basis, but deep inside, she knew that he was still his brother no matter what, and family takes care of their family members.
And just as she said that, a rumble was heard underneath the glassed desert before the glass a little off from the crater cracked and shattered as a huge spike of sand burst out of the desert ground, sending sand and shards of glass out everywhere. The sand spike stayed for a while before it dissolved, revealing a ragged looking Gaara, his sand armour no longer on him with him panting for breath, taking in huge gulps of air.
-WITH GAARA, RIGHT BEFORE THE RASENTAIYOU-
Gaara was absolutely having the fight of his life! This man will prove his existence! The gigantic wave of sand will crush this man, and he'll perform his Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral on him to give mother his blood! A large, maniacal grin appeared on his face as he thought of how happy his 'mother' would be with such a powerful sacrifice.
But suddenly, he felt a wave of chakra. Chakra so powerful that he felt scared for a moment. Immediately recognizing it as a devastating skill that even his demonic form may not be able to handle, he immediately moved all his sand in front of him and compressed them as hard as he could to brace himself against the powerful jutsu.
And the next thing he saw was a huge flash of light, so bright that his sand immediately covered his eyes, protecting him from blindness. His Sand Shield did a lot of nothing against such a powerful force, even his Sand Tsunami was completely obliterated by the sheer power of the jutsu, much less his wall of compressed sand. The wave of force utterly destroyed his wall of sand, and the only reason why he's not dead yet was because his Shukaku-form sand armour around him was held with demonic youki, something vastly more powerful than what his human chakra could provide. Even so, the force still sent him backwards, leaving huge trenches on the ground as he felt his sand armour nearly destroyed.
Using the last of his chakra, he opened a hole in the sandy ground before taking a deep breath and pulled himself underneath just as the last of his Shukaku-form armour dissipated underneath the onslaught of force that was the Rasentaiyou. Pulling himself deeper and deeper as he felt the heat of the jutsu even through such depths, he managed to last long enough on that one breath to outlast the power of the Rasentaiyou and recover a little of his chakra. A while later, as he could feel his air was running out, he moved upwards with his sand before using his chakra once again to create a sand spike to pierce whatever was blocking his exit, letting him escape his confinement for his own survival.
As he was drawing huge gasps of air to recover from his self imposed asphyxiation trap for survival, Naruto appeared in a flash of yellow right in front of him with a cocky grin, though he was sweating actually. He expended quite a bit of chakra to make that Rasentaiyou, more chakra than a jounin would have. Such an attack do not come cheap, by the way. "Had enough yet?" he asked, his body language relaxed and calm, but was actually ready to jump into action in an instant, ready to tear limbs and fight for his life.
Sending an ineffectual death glare towards Naruto while still panting on top of the devastated ground, Gaara slowly replied. "Why... why are you so strong? What gave you power?!"
Slowly tapping his chin while making a thoughtful expression to both make fun of him and to recover some of his chakra, Naruto answered seconds later. "I train a lot?" he said with a smile. "But seriously, bloodline, training, pure power, talent, all that doesn't give you power. What give you power are bonds." Naruto said, seriously this time.
"Bonds?"
"Yes, bonds." Naruto said. "The bonds you made with people around you makes one strong. I grew strong because of my bond with my wife. I trained hard and long due to my daughter. I slaughtered Hyuuga clan members for my second wife. In short, my bonds made me powerful."
Hearing this fallacy, Gaara shook his head hard even as he trembled. "You lie! I grew strong because of myself! You can only be strong by yourself! I have no need for bonds! They make you soft! I FIGHT FOR MYSELF! TO PROVE MY EXISTENCE! AND YOU WILL PROVE IT!"
Naruto then once again released his chakra, having recovered about half of what he used for the Rasentaiyou as he shouted to Gaara, his tempers flaring at the thought of someone testing his belief. "THEN SHOW ME YOUR POWER! THE POWER YOU GAINED BY YOUR LONESOME! SHOW ME YOUR CONVICTION!"
Immediately Gaara ran through handsigns as he heard this, shouting "YES! MOTHER WILL HAVE YOUR BLOOD!" Naruto doing nothing to prevent this. A while later, Gaara finishes his handsigns, saying "Forced Sleep jutsu!" instantly he toppled to the ground as his years upon years of insomnia caught up with him. Suddenly, all the sand around him starts to move as it all gathered towards one spot: Gaara's sleeping figure. More and more sand gathered on Gaara as the pile of sand started to grow, and grow and grow, the glassed ground cracking and shattering due to the moving sands.
Seconds later, a massive figure of a bijuu appeared out of the masses of sand, a huge racoon dog with an equally massive tail longer than he was tall, as thick as a couple logs and made entirely of sand, with wickedly large claws and round eyes while it radiates demonic youki all over. "I'M FREE!" she screamed out. Turning towards Naruto, she then said, "AND YOU'LL BE MY FIRST VICTIM! DIE"
Naruto, recognizing the danger that was the Shukaku, immediately jumped away as the desert underneath him rumbled and sand tendrils shot out of them, intent on crushing him to death. He was forced to quickly backpedal away as more and more tendrils of sand grew from every which way to grab him. Unsealing his cleaver blade, he launched a chakra beam in a horizontal orientation straight in front of him, destroying all of the sand tendrils and allowing him to move forward towards the bijuu.
Suddenly, the entire ground underneath him erupted in a boom before the entire sand cloud, as big as Shukaku's base, swirled around him before imploding into Naruto's position in the middle of the cloud, an attempt on crushing him to his death. As the cloud of deadly sand came closer, Shukaku's manic laugh was heard by everyone before Naruto was entirely covered by the sand.
-WITH TEMARI, A WHILE BEFORE-
Temari looked at the ragged look of his brother as she breathed out a sigh of relief at him being fine. She may not be too close with his brother, but he's family, nonetheless. But then, Naruto appeared withn the Hiraishin's trademarked yellow flash right in front of Gaara before they both talked and Gaara started screaming about how he gained power alone and needed no bonds, probably something about bonds.
But suddenly, Gaara ran through handseals, a series of handsigns that she feared the most. Turning towards Kushina even as her face paled in fear, she tugged Kushina's clothes before shouting. "Stop! We're all going to die! Gaara's going to transform into full Ichibi mode!"
Kushina then looked at her strangely. "What? You really think my dad's going to lose against him?"
"He's a fucking jinchuuriki! And he's turning into his demon form! No matter how powerful a jutsu your father has, he's dead!" Temari said, hoping to prevent a war from Gaara killing an allied shinobi within their land.
"Heh." Kushina scoffed. "Let me tell you this, lady. If dad was serious, your brother would be dead in mere seconds. No flashy, ultra destructive jutsu, no fancy schmancy moves. A stab to the head, and he's dead. Nothing else needed." Before Temari could even continue, Kushina said again. "Luckily for you, dad just decided to teach him a lesson."
"A lesson?!" Temari said, her voice rising. "A lesson you say?! What kind of lesson involves beating him to a pulp?!" she shouts out.
"A lesson that involves him being beat to pulp. Now look, the fun part's started." Kushina said, pointing towards Gaara.
Turning around, Temari looked at where Gaara was standing, and much to her fear, Gaara was already on the ground as sand crawled over his unmoving figure, a sure sign that the Ichibi was about to come out to play. And in seconds, the huge, sixty foot tall figure of the Ichibi appeared from Gaara's sleeping figure as the Ichibi took over his body. Temari failed to hide her fear as the Ichibi's aura was felt even from afar where she was, the feeling was as bad as she remembered before. The heavy, oppressive chakra of the Ichibi in full force from his brother's figure, causing her to almost fall on the sandy ground if not for the presence of the two, who somehow managed to reduce the oppressiveness of the youki.
A while later, the fight starts with Naruto backing away even as the spectators saw that he's avoiding the sand tendrils that came shooting at him before he took out a humongous cleaver blade from somewhere before he somehow shot blue beams of chakra of death from said sword towards the tendrils before running towards the bloodthirsty bijuu.
Suddenly, they all saw as the ground erupted in a massive cloud of sand before all that sand surrounds Naruto, heading straight towards him in an attempt to crush him. Temari almost felt sorry for the guy if not for the fact that he was busy beating the shit out of his brother. But she looked at Kushina and Kurumi, and much to her surprise, they're not looking the least bit worried!
A massive rumble was felt before a huge explosion occurred where Naruto was caught, and to everyone, including the Ichibi's surprise, a huge aquamarine-coloured frog with two katanas behind his back appeared with Naruto on top of it, surrounded by both sand and chakra smoke. For the who-knows-how-many-times-already, the Suna contingent's jaws fell on the ground as they saw that Naruto was calmly standing on top of the frog with his longcoat tails flapping in the wind, his entire body radiating power unmatched even as he stood there with his arms crossed.
"Wha..." was the only thing that Kankurou could say. Even Baki was speechless. Temari looked at Kushina who had a smug look on her face as she turned towards Temari and mouthed, "Told you," causing Temari's temper to flare. However, without her tessen, she cannot do much. And so, she just gritted her teeth in humiliation and anger as they all continued to watch Naruto's battle.
-WITH NARUTO-
Breaking open the sand cocoon surrounding him with his toad summon, Naruto stood on top of Gamahiro, the sword-wielding toad as he stood ready to fight against the Ichibi, ready to beat the crap out of Gaara. Gamahiro, upon being summoned immediately drew both his swords in a defensive position before looking around amidst the chakra smoke from his summoning. With a mighty leap, he jumped backwards as a massive tendril of sand nearly encircled his leg. Landing hard with his body mass, the winds generated from his landing blew away the smoke completely, revealing the enraged Shukaku.
"Naruto, why not summon Bunta? He's better suited for this than I am." One of the three members of the Toad Brothers said with his gruff voice.
"Hiro, I'll need you for this. Bunta's still pissed at me for losing his spar, and I think you're the only one I can summon that can help me with that overgrown racoon dog over there." Naruto replied.
Nodding his gigantic head, he crossed both his sword in front of him, ready to attack whenever Naruto needs him to. Shukaku, seeing this, grew even more enraged. "So you want to play, you big frog?! Take this!" immediately he drew a massive breath before lifting two huge sand fists before hammering them on his own stomach, blowing a powerful ball of compressed air, which was the jutsu Futon: Wind Bullet straight towards Gamahiro. Using his agility, Gamahiro sidestepped to the right to avoid the wind cannon and the 5 more following the first before using his powerful hind legs to pounce the Ichibi, swords ready to cut him.
With two gigantic downwards swing, Gamahiro tried to cut off the Ichibi's sand arms, but his blades were stuck halfway through, showing the sheer strength of the compressed sand. Heaving his blade backwards, he pulled them off of the arms before spinning with both the blades pointing downwards, causing the blades to move in an upwards arc, increasing their speed and force as Gamahiro's gigantic body twirled like a ballerina, showing his expertise in close combat (AN: Kinda like a twin sword wielding anti-titan titan in 40k, if you think about it...) before his blades, whistling through the wind, cleanly severed the Ichibi's left arm. Avoiding a quick retaliation, he jumped backwards again, preparing for anything that the Ichibi might try.
As her arm fell off and crashed on the ground with a loud crash, disintegrating into their constituent grains of sand, the Ichibi flopped the remains of her arm, sand already rushing in to regrew said arm. "Fuck you, you overgrown frog! DIE!" Without waiting for her arm to recover, a swing of her right arm sends forth a wave of sand as big as Gamahiro himself. Unfortunately for her, she underestimated the so-called overgrown frog.
With another massive leap, he jumped skywards, nearly blotting out the sun for the spectators, right over the wave of sand. Before the Ichibi could even do anything, the shadow of Gamahiro fell right on top of her before Gamahiro himself crashed down on her sandy figure, sending a massive cloud of sand everywhere, blocking the spectators' view of the battle.
Holding both swords in a reverse grip, Gamahiro stabbed his swords downwards, going straight through the Ichibi's body and entering the ground, slowing down her regeneration. "Hurry!" Gamahiro shouted to Naruto. "Wake the host up! I cannot hold him long!" He shouts as he struggled to hold the rampaging bijuu, hell bent on killing the two things attacking him.
"Will do!" Naruto said as he jumped off Gamahiro's massive body and Hiraishined straight to the cocoon of sand that held the sleeping Gaara "And the Ichibi's a she!" Naruto shouted to the giant toad as an afterthought. Shukaku, upon realising Naruto's intention was forced to slow down her regeneration as she moved the sands that made up her body to capture Naruto, and hopefully kill this pest that made her mad and get his blood.
But unfortunately for her, the Hiraishin, being a Space-Time jutsu was much, much faster than anything that she could perform, allowing Naruto to dodge the streams of sand rushing towards him before appearing right in front of the sleeping Gaara. Cocking back a chakra charged palm, his hand shot forwards a while later as he screamed, "WAKE THE FUCK UUUUUUUUUUUPP!"
With a loud thwack, the palm smacked right into Gaara's exposed forehead before Naruto sent a jolt of chakra to his brain, breaking the illusion he placed on himself. With a loud gasp, Gaara awoke, returning his consciousness back to the world even as his bijuu's consciousness was pulled back behind her seal forcefully. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I JUST GOT HERE! FUCK YOUU!" The Ichibi screamed as the sand that made up her temporary body dispersed back into regular grains of sand.
Gaara awoke with a gasp, his consciousness returning quickly as Naruto's chakra jolted him out of his self enforced sleep even as all the sand around him fell apart from their actual shape, slowly bringing him down to the ground. Naruto, watching this, waved towards Gamahiro, saying "Thanks!" with a huge grin. With a nod, Gamahiro acknowledges his thanks before returning back to his realm in a gigantic puff of chakra smoke, obscuring everyone's sight.
As Gaara fell on the artificial sand hill, the chakra smoke around him obscuring his sight, he caught sight of a figure walking straight towards him. Much to his unbridled fear, fear that made his face as pale as death, he saw that the figure was none other than Naruto, walking straight towards him in his flak jacket covered black shirt and black combat pants.
"No! Stay away from me! Stay away!" Gaara screamed as he used the last of his chakra to move the sand beneath him. To his absolute fear, the spike hit Naruto, pierced through his flak jacket and hit his chest before dispersing into sand, failing to do anything. A weak attack like that won't even had a chance to pierce through the Uzumaki-Namikaze's trademarked passive defence. Using the last of his strength, Gaara crawled backwards on his elbows, trying to run away from this monstrous person who defeated even his mother.
Looking at Gaara's terrified face, Naruto said even as he kept walking. "It hurts, doesn't it? The feeling of being alone."
Still trying to run, Gaara said, "W-what do you mean? Why are you so strong?!"
Reaching closer to where Gaara was squirming away from him, Naruto continued. "The reason I got my power was to protect my important people. I do not need to prove myself to them, because they are already the reason why I lived."
Already close to where Gaara was, Naruto kept saying even as he stepped on the path where Gaara crawled away from him. "Being alone is something that I cannot even think about. Trust me, Gaara. I know what it felt like, and how painful it was."
Still trying to get away with tears slowly falling from his eyes as he remembered what he went through in his life, he screamed towards Naruto. "What do you know!? I've been alone from my birth! My mother hated me! She cursed my life! My caretaker tried to kill me! My father sent assassins after me to kill me, deeming me a failed weapon! This tattoo on my forehead, the word 'Love' is my promise! My promise that I will be alone, gain power for me and for no one else! No one wanted me! Everyone hated me, even my family!" he lets all his tears lose as he recalled his years of living towards this figure, this monster that defeated him without a single scratch.
"And that's where you're wrong, Gaara." Naruto slowly said. "You may be alone in self, but you're not alone in spirit." He continued, a small smile on his face. He kept walking, only a couple steps away from where Gaara lied, his energy completely spent.
"Get away from my brother!"
Two blurs went past Naruto before standing in front of Gaara, one of them being Temari with nothing but two kunais in her hands while the other being Kankurou, his puppet bundle in front of him, ready to be used. "I will not let you harm him!" Temari shouted, her stance ready. She knew she stood no chance against this guy. He freaking beat Gaara! But she will not sit and just watch as someone killed her little brother! She then said to Gaara, not once removing her eyes from Naruto. "Gaara, my little brother. I'm sorry for all the time I ran away from you. No matter whether you're a jinchuuriki or not, you're still my little brother, and it takes this man beating you for us to see that. For that, I'm sorry. But even if I were to die, I will defend you to the end, Gaara."
"Yeah, me too." Kankurou said before he chuckled lightly, knowing of his prospect at surviving the battle. "Sorry 'bout that, bro. You're just a bit too distant you know. And the daily death threats, those really didn't help much. But you're still our little brother, and I'd be damned if we are to be like our father." His tone suddenly became sadder, more heartfelt. "Sorry for never being there for you. Sorry for never trying to know more about you. Sorry for leaving you alone to face everything." He said, not just for him, but for both him and Temari, both had tears on their eyes as they remembered what abuse their brother went through as they abandoned him, as he was left alone by his entire family, as their entire village left him alone.
Gaara, hearing this, had an incredulous look on her face. "Temari... Kankurou..." he said as his eyes went from one to the other. Watching as they tried to protect him, tears slowly fell from his eyes as he started sobbing slowly before the sobs became louder. "Nee-san... Nii-san... I'm sorry..." he said as his tears fell onto the sandy ground. Who knew that for them to be a family once again, the only thing that needs to happen was for their insane little brother to be defeated in battle? "I... I lost..."
With small smile on their faces as their tears flowed unbidden, they both faced Naruto who, much to their confusion, just stood there with a smile on his face. He opened his mouth, and the Sand Siblings tensed up to counter anything he said, but he just said, "Good, good. All of you." Before he turned to face Gaara once again, tears still falling from his eyes. "See Gaara? You're never alone. You still have your siblings with you. They're ready to sacrifice themselves to protect you. That's the bond that you never saw, the bond you cannot feel. It's there, lying in hiding. It's just that you're too hard for them to get close to. Try remembering those ties. You'll see what I mean."
Gaara, never having much in the way of emotional defence immediately recalled those times. All those times when his sister tried to get close to him but his sand blocked her. The times when she wanted to comfort him after his caretaker, Yashamaru tried to kill him. The times when his brother tried to cheer him up during his birthdays. He could even remember clearly as they started becoming more and more distant from him as he became crazier, but never once did they left his side completely. They're still there, behind the scenes, behind his sand, beside him, never too far, but never close.
Gaara immediately felt as if he's just a baby as he bawled hard on the sandy ground, his tears staining the sands underneath him as he cried towards the sky for everything. For his unfair life, for his lost innocence, for his lost bonds, and for his lost self. A pair of warm arms surrounds his neck and he instinctually tried to move his sand when he saw that the arms belonged to his sister, enveloping him in a loving hug, the culmination of years and years of not being able to hug her little brother.
Lifting an arm, he held Temari's hand. "Warm..." was the only word that came out of his mouth as he felt for the first time the warmth of someone else's hand. Along with that, he felt moisture, the drop of his sister's tears on his shoulders as she cried together with him.
"Gaara... I'll never be away again. I promise you. We're family, and family takes care of each other." Temari said, tears falling from her eyes, splashing on her brother's shoulder as she hugged him tight.
"Yeah." Kankurou said. "We won't leave you no more, bro. You can count on that."
Smiling softly, Naruto said. "Good for all of you. Now that we're done here with all the good stuff, I'll start by introducing myself. Didn't have time for that as we fought." Bowing from his waist for a second before rising back up, he said. "I am Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto, head of clan Namikaze, one of Konoha's Demons and a sealmaster. Also, the kid that make-up boy over there tried to bully just now was actually the Hokage's grandson. I have absolutely no hard feelings about the fight just now, and I have no plans to chase retribution for the unprovoked attack or anything. Just that you listen to me." He said towards the trio.
Hearing this, Temari and Kankurou paled as they considered the ramifications of both Kankurou and Gaara's actions. One's a clan head, and another's the Hokage's grandson! Wars have been started for less! So engrossed in their thought that Kankurou missed the fact that Naruto called him make-up boy and the fact that Namikaze was a family name known only for one ninja: Konoha's Yondaime Hokage, the Yellow Flash, the Bane of Iwa and the fastest ninja ever. Temari also realised that he didn't ask for anything nor will he look for any counter or something, so she decided to act as diplomatic as she could to prevent any major issues with Konoha later.
Straightening herself to act as the spokesperson for their team, Temari said, "Ahem. We are the Sand Siblings, the Suna Trio. I am Temari of the Sand, this is Kankurou of the Sand and my little brother there is Gaara of the Sand. We are the children of the Yondaime Kazekage." She then bowed before forcing Kankurou to bow down as well. "On behalf of Gaara and Suna, we beg for forgiveness for the unprovoked attack that we did towards you and your family members. We are truly sorry. We will do anything to have you forget this incident."
"Yeah, don't worry about that." Naruto said dismissively. "But if you really want to show me that you're sorry, come inside the house and have a drink while I tell all of you a story. How's that?"
"We'd be honoured to." Temari said before standing straight, pulling Kankurou with her. "But can we have someone carry our little brother?" She asked.
"No problem." Naruto replied. "Besides, this little tale I have is all about him." Naruto then created a clone which proceeds to carry Gaara behind his back. All four of them walked back towards where Kushina and Kurumi were standing with Baki in the middle.
Baki was incredulous. He watched as the man defeated Gaara even in full bijuu form with the help of a toad summon, a summon that he only knew one user of: Jiraiya of the Sannin. Which means whoever this guy was, he's probably his apprentice, which means that they're pretty much in bad shape and condition. He was correct in his fear as he saw Gaara being defeated by the giant toad, the man waking him up.
But just as condition cannot get worse, his two charges just shot forwards, leaving him standing there between the two ladies. Just as he was about to go ahead himself, the blonde giant kicked the back of his knee, making him fall before saying, "Don't. They're having family matters. You're not welcome." Knowing of his condition, he just sat there, fuming at his inability to act thanks to the chakra suppression seal on his back.
But a while later, it seemed from afar that they're just having some talk or something before the giant bowed a little followed by Temari for some reason. And now, they're heading here, even as a copy of the man carried Gaara on his back. But before he could do anything, he found his vision slowly getting darker as his sight blurred. The last thing he saw was the sky as his body spun before he hits the ground, his consciousness gone.
Naruto watched as her daughter triggered the sleep seal on the prisoner seal, making the jounin fall asleep. He sure didn't need to listen to what he's going to talk about, that's for sure. Wordlessly, they all walked towards the mansion, intend on listening to whatever Naruto was going to say. Unknown to the trio, what will be shown and told to them will shake their entire world.
-AT THE MANSION-
Sakura watched as Hinata masterfully healed the Konohamaru Ninja Squad members with her not-inconsiderable medical knowledge as she and her clones placed their glowing palm on the foreheads of the kids, intent on healing their comatose state as she used her medical skills to piece back together their partially shattered minds. A long while later, with Sakura assisting in condition monitoring and other small tasks, Hinata have managed to completely recover the kids' mental states, having never felt such insane levels of KI in their lives.
Wiping the sweat of her brow, she said to Sakura. "Alright. They're healed, but they still need to sleep the effects of the KI off. Their minds have been fixed, but a day's sleep will help them both recover their mental state back to its full and they can rest up for a good day." She then gave some orders to Sakura. "Sakura, take them to the guest rooms, have them sleep there. Remember, if you're healing mind injuries, it's better if you let the patient sleep the aftereffects off and let their own body heal their mind. It places less stress on them that way and allows for a full recovery."
Nodding in acknowledgement, Sakura, together with two Hinaclones lifted the kids off the sofas and futon before carrying them into one of the guest room and places them on the bed, praying so that they could recover quickly. As she left the room, she heard the front doors open, and in comes Naruto, a Naruclone carrying a red-haired kid on his back, a make-up wearing black clothed boy, a girl in white combat shirt, Kurumi and Kushina who was carrying a person wearing a turban with a white sheet of cloth on one side of his face. Much to her surprise, the four guests are all wearing Suna headbands.
"Welcome home, sensei." Sakura said to Kushina. "Why do you have Suna nins as visitors today?"
"That's a difficult question to answer." Kushina said. "But suffice to say that it's because of a fight."
Not quite understanding but knowing of the entire family's tendency to get caught in some weird shit, she just nodded before asking. "So, should I leave?"
"Naah." Kushina said again. "Just stay in your room, or better yet, just stay here. I'll carry this guy to the guest room." She said before going somewhere with Baki's sleeping figure to dump him off.
Hinata then walked out of the kitchen, a smile on her face. "Welcome back. And it seems that everyone's fine now. So, apple juice everyone?" no answer was forthcoming, so Hinata took that as a yes before she went back to the kitchen to make some apple juice for all the visitors.
Kankurou felt that the entire experience was extremely surreal. It started with him about to bully a kid who turned out to be the Hokage's grandson. Then, some dude appeared and destroyed Temari's tessen. Then, Gaara appeared out of nowhere and suddenly went all crazy on the guy. Then he got teleported to somewhere, saw his brother fought that guy and losing, saw some insanely powerful jutsus being used and saw that the dude just defeated his brother almost effortlessly with the help of a giant frog even when his brother was in demon form. As if that's not bad enough, he managed to reconcile with his brother and even made peace with him before who was once their enemy invited them for a drink and a tale. It's all so crazy, but he just accepted the glass of apple juice placed in his hands before taking a sip.
As Kankurou continued his internal monologue about the strangeness of the situation, Temari was watching around the house, looking for anything that can be used: potential weapons, escape routes, their watchers, among others. While her mind moves quickly with her analytical capabilities, her physical body just followed where she was instructed to sit. She then snapped out of her tactical stupor and saw that she was sitting at the end of a 3-seater sofa with her little brother in the middle and Kankurou at the other end. In front of her, in a two-seater was the two ladies while at the single-seater was Naruto, watching the three.
A bit later, Hinata came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with a jug of cold apple juice and some glasses, with two of them being larger than the others. No surprises whose glasses were those. Filling the glasses with apple juice, she passed them over to everyone, Kushina and Naruto getting the big glass. All of them took a sip from their respective glasses before Hinata pulled up a chair from somewhere and sat down beside Naruto, Sakura behind Kushina.
Sakura whispered to Kushina, "Kushina-sensei, should I sit in this meeting? It seems... important."
"Well, it is." She replied. "But I'm sure that dad won't mind. So just sit down somewhere." Kushina said, which prompts Sakura to take two chairs from the nearby dining table, one for her and another for Hinata. And so, Sakura sat beside Naruto and facing Kurumi and Kushina while Hinata sat at the other side, facing the Suna contingent.
"A great juice as always, Hina-hime." Naruto said, smiling. His two wives were a handful at times, but he still loved them both.
The Suna contingent tried some of the juice, and much to their surprise, it was definitely a great juice. Not too sweet yet not removing the taste of the fruit used within the juice, it's a great drink, just nice after a huge fight. Placing her glass on the coffee table, Temari looked straight into Naruto's eyes and said, "So, Naruto-san. You said that you have a tale to share with us. Care to start?"
Chuckling for a bit, Naruto said, "Feisty aren't you?" Immediately Temari had a blush on her face before she forced it down with all her willpower. Ignoring the sight of a giggling Kankurou in front of him, Naruto continued. "Now, I'm sure you three have known of a bijuu, or at least its jinchuuriki."
The reminder of their brother's condition immediately caused all three to frown. Before Temari could say anything though, Naruto lifted his hands defensively in front of them. "Whoa, chill out. I haven't finished yet. Anyway, I'll start my tale with a question. Have any of you heard of the Sage of Six Paths?"
This time, surprisingly, Kankurou was the one who answered. "Yeah, of course. He's known as the ancestor of ninjutsu, the person who first harnessed the power of chakra."
"Correct." Naruto said, nodding. "But that's a pretty well known fact. But do you know of his relationship with the bijuus?"
This brought confusion to the trio. Not many knew the of the fact that the old Sage was the one who created the bijuus, but then again, it happened hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. Practically, the only living thing that can act as witnesses were the bijuus themselves. Already expecting this, Naruto continued his tale as the three looked at him in confusion, though Gaara looked deep in thought, which for both Kankurou and Temari, was something really bad according to their previous experience. But as they sat with him between them, they realised, that Gaara was trying to change, if his regretful face was to be believed.
"Once upon a time, there was once a monstrous beast named the Juubi for its ten tails and its immense power..." And so, Naruto's tale about the Sage and the bijuus start, of how the old Sage fought against the Juubi, how he became the first jinchuuriki with his great skill in sealing, how he travelled the world and spread his teachings on ninjutsu, how he used his jutsu to split the Juubi into the nine bijuus, his two sons, his final words at his deathbed and finally, how the bijuus were left alone in the world, their minds slowly being corrupted by the foul power that they are supposed to protect the world from.
Temari was absolutely awed. This man, he told the story as if he lived with the Sage himself! A great story of a man, whose capabilities led him to be called a god amongst men, his sheer skill level on the realm of gods as the two beings, titanic and unrivalled in power fought. Of how a man sacrificed himself to defeat a great evil. How his descendants fought for peace in their own ways. How his stepchildren missed their father and slowly went crazy by their own power. However... "It's a great story, Naruto-san. It truly was. However, I fail to see the relation between the story and my brother."
Hearing the last part made Gaara slowly turn his head to look at Temari's face. Even now, she still considered him her brother. As tears threatened to fall on his normally stoic face, Gaara clenched his fist and forcefully silenced his 'mother' with sheer willpower. "I understand now what he meant by bonds. I will keep these bonds I have forever." He thought, ignoring the mad ramblings of his 'mother' who was screaming about 'hanyous' and 'mate' and 'BLOODBLOODKILLKILLCRUSHMAIM-' before Gaara quashed those thoughts.
Meanwhile, ignoring Gaara's nearly visible drops of tears, Naruto continued. "Oh, you will later Temari-san. But for now, I need to ask your brother of something."
"And what would that be?" She enquired.
"As I told you already, we are the Uzumaki-Namikazes, the greatest sealmasters in Konoha. The thing is that I think I know the reason why your brother was so influenced by his bijuu."
"What? Why?" Temari almost jumped from her seat as Naruto said this. Now she knew she made the right choice in following them! If they could stop Shukaku from influencing Gaara, they'll be much, much better, and Gaara will stop being insane!
"The most probable reason was that his seal was faulty." Kushina interjected in Naruto's stead. "A faulty seal will leak not just the power of the bijuu but also their corrupting influence. If there's no problem, we would like to check the state of his seal, and perform repairs on it if necessary."
Kankurou suddenly said, "Oh yeah? But what's the guarantee that you won't make it worse? The seal's the most important part of him, which might cause him to die if mistakenly tampered with. Is there any guarantee?" showing that even if he's a make-up wearing, doll-playing ninja, he's still the son of a Kage, and it shows.
"True that." Naruto said. "But here's the thing: I was a jinchuuriki as well."
This blew their minds up. A couple seconds was hat it took for their minds to reset before Temari shot him with a question of her own. "You're a jinchuuriki?! Of what? And what do you mean by was?!"
Laughing, Naruto answered. "Damn, never had that reaction for a long time! Okay. I was the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. The 'was' part, well, that one needs one hell of a strange explanation. But suffice to say that I have no bad intentions, only good ones. Now, will you follow us to our sealing lab?"
"Sealing lab?" Kankurou asked, confused. He was a puppet user, and they need some skills in sealing to be able to perform well. However, he never had a sealing lab, so he never knew what that was.
"It's a lab made for seal tests. Meant to contain massive amounts of chakra and force, it is able to take even a bijuudama straight on without any damage to it. Just the right place to check a jinchuuriki's seal." Standing up, Naruto asked for the Suna contingent to follow him. "With me, please."
Reluctantly, they all moved to follow Naruto to the sealing labs, followed by Kurumi, Kushina, Hinata and Sakura, who followed because Kushina told her to. Upon reaching the sealing lab on the second floor, they entered, and immediately gaped at the sheer complexity of the seals painted everywhere on the entire room except for a white human sized oval on the floor.
"So, Gaara, please lie down there and open up your shirt. We'll need to see your seal." Nodding wordlessly, Gaara went straight to the oval before taking off his black shirt, leather band for his gourd (which somehow haven't recovered yet) and mesh armour, placing them right beside the oval before lying flat on the ground and channelling what chakra he had left to his seal, which like Naruto's was on his navel, a location chosen because it is a human's main chakra centre. Immediately, a seal pattern exposes itself to the expert eyes of Naruto, Kurumi and Kushina, while the rest looked in amazement at the complex seal array etched into Gaara's stomach.
But the awe shattered like a thin piece of glass as Kankurou, Temari and Sakura heard Kushina said, "Wow, that's one crappy seal."
Temari immediately got pissed off and questioned her. "What the hell do you mean by that?! That seal was made by Suna's finest sealmasters!" Kankurou nodded in agreement. The intricacies of bijuu sealing was something way, way out of his league but even he knew not to question their own sealmasters. Besides, they did something like that for a living. There's no way they'd use such a bad seal... would they?
Scoffing, Kushina said, "Psh. If this is what Suna sealmasters are capable of, no wonder your hosts always went crazy. Look at this line." She said, pointing a finger on an opening between a line on the seal. "That's supposed to be the chakra gate that allows the bijuu's chakra to leak into the host's. Look how big it is. It seems that they just want to flood the host's body with bijuu chakra, not caring of the effects."
"Look at this part too." Naruto said, pointing towards a series of incomprehensible squiggles. "These are supposed to be the mental contamination filtering. The lock's open too large. No wonder why Gaara went mad. He practically needs to suppress the bijuu's thoughts all the damn time. One lapse and everything's dead."
Temari's face went from shocked to horrified at this new fact. Immediately she asked Gaara, hoping that what they just said was false. "Gaara, is that true? You need to stop it from screaming at you all the time?" much to her horror, Gaara just nodded slowly. Now Temari knew why his brother was so cruel! He basically needs to withstand urgings from a deadly beast in his mind at all times! "So I guess that's why you can't sleep?" once again Temari asked, and once again Gaara nodded, much to her horror.
Temari was more and more horrified with every word and every line that Gaara's seal was as the Uzumaki-Namikazes explained the functions and the seal's condition and its weaknesses to her. If what they said was right, the seal can be attributed to trying to dam a raging river with nothing but twigs and spit. It works, but the water that rushed outside the dam was still fast and furious, damaging everything that it crashed through. The seal array meant to keep the bijuu at bay was practically non-functioning at all!
"...In other words, we can summarize that the seal used was nothing but crap and is meant for the jinchuuriki to just let his body act as a temporary, controllable body for the Ichibi to get out and wreck the enemy in front of them." Kurumi summarized.
Temari was absolutely floored as she crashed into the floor, all her confidence on her own village destroyed. Using such a crappy seal for something so important, so difficult... It's something that she just cannot comprehend. How could her father have allowed this? His seal was made piecemeal with smaller crappy parts with bad links connecting them, which results in her brother. It is an insane seal, meant to be used only by insane idiots.
"Can..." Temari started. "Can you fix that?" she asked.
"Don't worry," Naruto said while looking towards her, smiling. "That's what we are planning to do. It's not going to be easy, but we could reinforce the seal massively. Remaking the entire seal would be difficult and something that's easier said than done, but other than that, it's possible and easy. He won't have these problems anymore, of that I assure you."
"But why?" Kankurou asked. "Why would you do something like this? What would you get?" He had a right to be sceptical of course. It isn't easy to trust someone who came at you, beat your brother badly and said that he'd fix whatever shitty stuff that happened to him with his skill while wanting nothing. There must be a catch!
"Now you're sceptical. Good." Naruto said again. "However, know that I have nothing but good intentions for your brother." Naruto said before he frowned. "As one who was once a jinchuuriki, I understand the feelings of one, though suffice to say that I got lucky. Anyway, I have no ulterior motive, and I just want to help your brother and show something that you've never saw."
"What do you mean by that?" Kankurou asked again. These guys are extremely unsuspicious, which made them even more suspicious to him.
Ignoring him, the three surrounded Gaara while placing a hand on his seal. The seal suddenly exploded into action, wriggling from Gaara's body straight into the now white walls and floors of the sealing lab before staying on the walls as everyone gaped at this action. Already expecting this sight, Naruto laughed a bit before he said, "Seals meant to contain powerful or large things need a similarly large seal array. But having seals wrapping the entire body of a person with tattoos didn't seem like a good solution, so seal crafters used a special method called seal compression which compresses a seal into a much smaller design, the resulting shape actually determined within the original uncompressed design before the seal compression 'encodes' the seal into its design. This is what made those who are not versed in sealcraft unable to understand a complex seal. However, those adept at sealcraft are capable of identifying and processing what a single line of a seal can perform, even when compressed. That is what differs a true sealmaster and a pretend."
Ignoring the looks of amazement that the non-Uzumaki-Namikazes are sporting, the family moved around the room, observing the seal, making thoughts and notes on the lines as they studied the seal and further determine its weaknesses and the strengths, while the rest of them were still gaping at the sight of the immensely complicated seals on the walls and on Gaara himself. After a while, the family finished examining the seals before Naruto called everyone, snapping them of their awestruck looks.
"Alright. Everyone will place their hands on the seal on these locations." Naruto said, pointing towards where everyone was supposed to place their hand on. "Me and Kurumi will bring all of you into the seal so that you'll be able to see what I want all of you to see. Kushina will not follow us and instead will fix the seal once Shukaku's spirit was subdued. To your positions."
Right after Naruto finished his instructions, everyone went to their specific locations before Naruto said again. "Alright, now close your eyes. Open them ONLY when I told you to." Wordlessly everyone closed their eyes, their hands touching the part of the seal that will transport them into the seal's mindscape representation.
And then, they felt the ground shift from stone to sand as the air changed from a static, unmoving mass of trapped air into a breezy yet dry wind, much like a desert. "Okay, open your eyes now." And as they opened their eyes, what they saw absolutely shocked them. Instead of the seal lab just now, they were now mysteriously in a desert. Even to the Suna nins, the desert spreads as far as the eye could see, the sandy dunes of the desert not even registering in the distance. The single sun on the sky was bright, extremely so with no cloud coverage with no plants, no animals, nothing. The heat was nearly unbearable, but living in the desert for years for three of them, having a bloodline that protects them from the extreme heat for Naruto and cooling off with chakra for the rest helped them cope with that. The entire place was nothing but a gigantic mass of sand. Even Gaara, the owner of said mindscape was shocked when he saw it.
Naruto whistled before saying, "Wow. Guess sand's the only thing you can think of eh?" Looking around, Naruto realised something. Or rather, the lack of one. "Well, let's go find that seal. Come on, let's go." And so they started their trek to find Gaara's seal through the massive, endless expanse of desert that was Gaara's mind.
On and on and on they walked, yet not a single structure was found, not even a tiny oasis. Only sand, sand and more sand were seen all around. After what felt like hours of walking, they had a breakthrough. From afar, Naruto spotted a weird structure out in the desert. "There!" he said, pointing towards the structure. Unfortunately, no one else saw it since it's so damn far away. Already feeling the effects of the hot desert, a respite was extremely welcome. Channelling chakra to their legs, they ran towards where the structure was according to Naruto. A long while later, they reached the structure, and what they saw made even the usually stoic Gaara shocked.
The structure was a huge pyramid made of limestone and is sandy brown in colour with blocks upon blocks of the stones arranged, all of them worn out by the looks of it. The pyramid was damaged and huge chunks of broken limestone were seen all over the place beside it. Also, an entrance of sorts was seen from the location they were at, a triangular hole with the carving of the Kanji for 'Sand' on top of the doorway.
"Wha... what is this?" Gaara asked with an awed voice, never before seeing such a strange structure in his life.
"Well, I'll bet that's the mental representation of the seal used to contain the bijuu within you." Naruto answered. "They are shaped like whatever the jinchuuriki's mind sets it as, and most of the time, the condition of the seal can be seen from the condition of the mental representation."
"Does... Does that mean his seal's in bad condition?" Kankurou asked. He was actually afraid of the powerful aura emanating from the pyramid. It almost seems like it's going to eat them! "And what about that entrance? Why is it there?"
"Yeah, it pretty much is bad. About that entrance, believe it or not, jinchuurikis are supposed to be able to communicate with their bijuus. It's how they can utilise the bijuu's borrowed power to its maximum. So it is supposed to be there. However, the aura that came out from the seal showed that the seal's pretty much in terrible shape."
"Then, what'll happen?" A fearful Gaara asked. He was just about to mend the relationship between him and his siblings, and now a sealmaster said that his seal's so crappy that he can die and unleash the Ichibi on everyone! The worst part was that no one was here that could subdue the bijuu!
He completely forgot the fact that Naruto just beat the crap out of him even in bijuu mode just now.
"Well, we'll probably need to hand the Ichibi a nice, fat, juicy beatdown before remaking the entire seal back from scratch. Definitely not easy, but anything worth doing is worth overdoing it the right way. So, let's go see the sand racoon dog now." And so, led by Naruto, the entire party walked into the pyramid, hoping for the life of them that the Ichibi was not out and raging right now.
And so the entire party walked straight and then through the entrance of the pyramid, which was lighted by absolutely nothing, plunging them into absolute darkness the further they walked into the abyss that was the seal pyramid. Suddenly, torches flared to life on the walls high above their heads, surprising the Suna contingent, no doubt their condition being made worse as the demonic youki thickens around them. The lit torches bathes the area with flickering light as the flames crackled on the ends. Pairs of torches lights up as they walked, adding the already eerie condition of the tunnel, their footsteps echoing within the path.
A while later, the party reached what seemed like a doorway of sorts. Made of the same limestone that made the pyramid, the doorway was devoid of any decorations, yet the echoing sounds of whatever behind the doorway which led to an immense inky black darkness shook the courage out of even Temari. Yet, Naruto, Kurumi and Hinata weren't even fazed. In fact, much to the Suna trio's surprise and Sakura's shock, they went straight through the doorway, entering the pitch black room of nothingness. Reluctantly, the Sand trio plus Sakura walked into the room as well, looking around but seeing nothing. And so, they continued walking, their footsteps once again echoing within the chamber.
No one spoke. Not a single word came out of their mouths as they walked straight, or as straight as you possibly can in complete darkness. But all of a sudden, they saw a small prick of light at the distance, just inviting them to head to it. Restraining themselves, they kept walking behind Naruto who never stopped, not once.
A while later, the light source was much more visible, and Temari saw that it actually had multiple bars of light. Coming even closer, she realised that the bars are huge, towering high up, probably until the top of the ceiling of this weird structure. As they got closer, her face paled as she saw the light source in its entirety. The light actually came from massive bars, made of some strange luminescent metal which was emitting a soft yellow light. But much to her horror, the bars are cracked and at some places, almost split in two. She realised now what this was: the Ichibi's cage.
Stepping forward, Kurumi went straight to the bars before she found the metaphorical 'lock' of the seal: a literal lock, the shape of an ancient bronze padlock with a bar on top with a square housing. The padlock itself was extremely worn out, the bar that made the main lock almost split in half, showing just how poor the seal was. In front of the lock, Kurumi shouted. "Shukaku-chan! Come out here! Talk to me!"
Nothing happened. But just before Temari and Kankurou could let out a sigh of relief, the entire room suddenly shook as a powerful series of crash which sounded suspiciously like footfalls made by an extremely large beast was heard before the titanic figure of Ichibi was seen as she rushed with a shoulder in front, about to smash the gate apart.
With a massive boom, the Ichibi shoulder checked the bars, causing the bars to crack even more, though the lock held well. But it doesn't take a sealmaster to see that the lock was in terrible shape. At the same time, Gaara suddenly howled in pain as his head felt like it's about to be split in two. Suddenly, the Ichibi roared, a roar so powerful that a huge gust of wind came rushing out of his figure, slamming into the party, blowing them away except for the usual suspects.
"Shukaku-chan! What are you doing?! Why are you like this?! It's me, your sister, Kurumi!" Kurumi shouted, trying to calm down the raging bijuu.
A sudden calmness hit the furious expression of the Ichibi, before she said, but with a much softer tone this time, though she sounded like she's struggling to hold back something. "K-Kurumi-nee...?"
"Yes! What happened to you?!" Kurumi replied back, her tone obviously worried. She loved her siblings, she really do! It's just that they are separated for too long, and they haven't met each other since she left to have her hundreds of years of hidden sleep. She completely ignored the shocked look the Suna trio and Sakura had.
"Kurumi-nee! I... I cannot hold it longer! I..." Suddenly, she was back to her original condition, her entire face having a look of extreme murderous rage on it. "RAAAAGH! Who the hell are you?!" Her eyes suddenly fell on Naruto. "YOU! WHY ARE YOU HERE?! I'LL GET YOU!" immediately she started banging on the pillars again with his two massive, sandy arms. At the same time, Gaara was grabbing his head as he screamed in pain, the Ichibi's effort to break through his seal affecting his already strained mind.
Immediately Gaara became the focus of an extremely worried Temari and Kankurou. They just got their brother back, and now a fucking bijuu was trying to smash his head to pieces from within! Looking at Naruto, not bothering to conceal her worried face, Temari asked Naruto. "Naruto-san, is there anything you can do?"
Naruto nodded. "There is. It's the reason why we came here: to remake his seal. But the first step to do that was to release the lock." Naruto said, pointing towards the rusty bronze padlock currently restraining the Ichibi.
Temari was absolutely, utterly shocked! They wanted to release the bijuu?! That won't just kill her brother, it'll kill them as well! But before she could voice her fears, Naruto continued. "We'll release the Ichibi, then Kurumi will fight against her, then she'll suppress her down so that Kushina who was outside can rebuild the seal back from scratch."
"But a single person cannot fight a bijuu!" Temari countered. Such notion was ridiculous to begin with! If not, nations would have anti-bijuu forces all over the place!
"Just watch." He then turned towards a still struggling Gaara, kneeling on the ground. "Gaara, I'm sorry. Your body is going to feel extremely bad because it's going to be a place where two bijuus fight. Your mind might be heavily stressed from this, but rest assured that we'll do anything to help you recover. So, be prepared to endure so much more." Naruto said, petting Gaara's red, spiky hair ike a father did to a child.
"Two bijuus?" Temari thought. But before she could expand the line of thought, Naruto was already in front of the nearly shattered padlock, about the size of his fist, both hands already on it, ready to rip it into pieces.
"Kuru-hime! Gaara! Ready or not, here goes!" Naruto shouted before he heaved with his immense strength, the weak padlock finally shattering under the pull, releasing the Ichibi. Immediately the cracked bars disintegrated into tiny motes of light before the darkness around them cracked as well, revealing the sky for the first time within years to the inside of the pyramid.
Outside, the entire pyramid was cracking and braking, huge chunks of limestone breaking apart and fell on the sands of the desert as the seal broke, the entire pyramid shaking as if an earthquake just occurred underneath it. The entire structure rumbled and groaned before the tip cracked and broke apart, falling into itself. Within less than 20 seconds, the entire pyramid was nearly destroyed and the rubble crashing down all over the place.
A sudden flash of yellow appeared within the sands of the desert before Naruto and a Naruclone appeared, carrying everyone except Kurumi within their hands. Dropping everyone on the sand, they all watched as the Ichibi's humongous figure, the size of the pyramid itself, about 50 metres tall appeared from its ruin, roaring a powerfully loud challenge to the sky as it celebrates in happiness. And hopefully his first sacrifice.
The Ichibi was free.
-REAL WORLD-
Kushina was waiting for the sure signs of a bijuu trying to break out of the expanded seal. It's not something that she had any experience with, considering that there were only nine bijuus (as far as others knew) with her mother being one, though she never tried breaking out of her father's seal. The task was something that she only had the theory to, never tested. But she was confident that she could handle it. After all, she was an Uzumaki-Namikaze, the best sealmasters of the Elemental Nations. Her mother could make a seal that bounds one's soul itself to a deal on a scroll, why can't she handle something much simpler, like a bijuu's seal?
As she was pondering this fact, a sudden burst of demonic chakra was felt from Gaara's unmoving body, the yellowish youki of the Ichibi leaking out of his navel as his entire body shook and the seals around his navel started evaporating into thin air, becoming wisps of black smoke.
"Welp, here we go." She calmly said before 8 clones popped around her, 5 immediately holding Gaara's arms, legs and head down to prevent him from moving and to prevent any backlash damage from his body jerking as her mother fought the Ichibi within his mindscape. The remaining clones went straight to the seals on the walls to paint new ones over it and fix the stupidly functioning seal array as the original activated her purified youki, covering her in a cloak of brilliant golden flames with the same line formation as her father's. Immediately she placed both palms on top of Gaara's navel before pushing her chakra against the Ichibi's, preventing any from leaking out while at the same time allowing her to remake the seal array. "Damn. Never thought a bijuu's youki could fight this hard against someone else's chakra." She spoke to herself as she strained to hold back the Ichibi's youki.
And so, Kushina and her entire army of clones started the operation to prevent a bijuu from breaking out while at the same time fixing the sloppy seal that was Gaara's.
-WITH SANDAIME, AFTER GAARA WAS TAKEN-
The Sandaime Hokage was enjoying his work as usual as he read his most beloved limited edition Icha Icha Paradise within his office while his clones are slaving over the usual paperwork being Hokage handed to him. And as usual, he was giggling at his little orange book while his clones are grumbling over the fact that he wasn't doing anything.
An ANBU agent popped into his room in a puff of smoke, and before the chakra smoke could clear, he already hid his book within the secret compartment in his drawer in his table with all the swiftness being a Hokage gave him and dispelled his clones. It wasn't a good idea for his subordinates to see him skimping off his work to his clones. Immediately plastering on his game face, Hiruzen said in an authoritative tone. "Rat, report."
The ANBU, codename Rat, was seen kneeling on one knee on the floor as the smoke cleared from both his Shunshin and the Sandaime's Shadow Clones dispelling. Not realising this, he gave his report. "Hokage-sama, my team was patrolling within Konoha, looking around for any disturbance when my team suddenly felt a huge burst of chakra from within Konoha. But just as soon as we reached the location of the chakra burst, we found no one there. However, we felt a very different chakra within the area: residues of a bijuu's youki."
Hiruzen frowned hearing this. Naruto won't just use his youki when he felt like it, especially considering that he had more chakra than he does. For someone like that, using a huge burst of power like his purified youki wasn't something to be used all the time, only when the condition was right. But then, a particular detail of both the way the ANBU worded his report struck him. "Rat, which bijuu's youki did you felt?"
Rat was understandably perplexed. He understood that there are three somewhat bijuus in Konoha. Everybody did. But he didn't know that they had different feel to their chakra. He had absolutely no idea that the purified youki that the family had had a different feel to it. Not many did. Only some ANBUs, sworn to secrecy and the Hokage himself did. "Uh, I... have no idea sir. It didn't feel like the Kyuubi's though."
"I had expected that." Sarutobi said, nodding to himself, causing the ANBU to become even more confused. "No matter." He said before he stood up and walked towards Rat. "Rat, let's go. Follow me. Call your squad."
"Where to my lord?" He asked, ready to serve.
"To the expert in bijuus, Konoha's Demons themselves." He said as he walked outside his office to meet the family and find out about this demonic youki. Rat then went back to his team, intend on following the Hokage to his destination. And hopefully get the answer to their questions.
-IN GAARA'S MINDSCAPE-
The entire party watched from afar as the humongous figure of the Ichibi was seen roaring to the sky. Suddenly, Temari realized something. "Naruto-san! Kurumi-san isn't here! Where is she?!"
"Oh, don't worry about her." Naruto said, waving off Temari's concern. "Besides, this is one of the things that I wanted to show you four, the truth of the bijuus."
"The what?" Kankurou asked.
"Just watch. This will also show why I said I 'was' a jinchuuriki." Naruto said.
Right in front of the raging figure of the Ichibi, Kurumi stood resolute, intend on subduing her sister here. "Shukaku-chan! If you don't stop this... I will use force!" she shouted towards the Ichibi.
"You're welcome to try, puny human!" She replied before lifting her massive, bluish mark-filled arms into the air before smashing them down in a two handed smash onto Kurumi. But much to her shock, a bright light shined from where Kurumi was standing before a massive explosion of chakra smoke occurred and she found her two arms being restrained by two furry, blood red, white tipped appendages. As the smoke cleared, she gets a clearer view of the things restraining her arms. They're actually tails, connected to the figure of another bijuu, the blood red coloured Nine Tailed fox, Kurumi in her bijuu form.
The Suna contingent heard the threat and the move the Ichibi made and was about to say their farewell prayers to the beautiful lady that tried helping their little brother overcome his bijuu. But the massive cloud of chakra smoke appeared, and they saw that the Ichibi's arms are being restrained by a bunch of weird, furry... things. But as the smoke cleared, they saw what was restraining the Ichibi, and their jaws dropped again that day. They are actually tails, tails of the Kyuubi who somehow appeared out of nowhere before blocking the Ichibi.
"W-what...?" Temari asked. Kankurou and Gaara was just too shocked to say anything, and Temari, being the most sensible, the most sane and the most stable of the trio became the impromptu spokesperson again.
"That," Naruto said, "Was my wife, my lifelong mate, Uzumaki-Namikaze Kurumi, or also known as the Nine Tailed Demon Fox, the Kyuubi. Also, she's the bigger sister of the Ichibi, and she's pissed watching her kind sister suddenly became something like this, killing for blood and filled with anger."
Temari's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water for a while before she said again, this time, as her head snapped towards Naruto's at high speeds. "Wait! The Kyuubi is your wife?!"
"Yup." Naruto said with his hand on his waist, proud of the fact. Not many can claim to be the husband of a bijuu, and among the original bijuus, there can only be nine lucky people who could be the husband or wife of one. And he's one of them. His daughter doesn't count. That's a different matter entirely.
The utterly shocked Temari's mind ran at light speeds trying to think of questions to ask this guy, like what he meant by his wife, the Shukaku being his wife's little sister, how did he get hooked with a bijuu, among others. But in the end, she just lifted her hands in the air in surrender before she watched as the two titanic being battled each other. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning around, she came face to face with Sakura who was looking at her in sympathy. "I understand." She simply said.
Even Temari could see within this pink-haired girl's eyes that she felt the same things as she did. She could see the sympathy of not being able to understand this family, the same sympathy about being unable to ask her myriad of questions, about the sheer inexplicable acts the entire family did. Her eyes shone with such understanding that the only thing Temari was able to do was to instinctively lift up a shaking fist towards her direction, a move that came from the bottom recesses of her mind. A fist which Sakura immediately bumped with one of her own.
And so, a new, lasting partnership was born within the heat of battle. Or maybe the heat of the desert of Gaara's mind.
Unaware of this new development, Kurumi looked Shukaku straight into her eyes before saying. "Shukaku-chan! Stop this, or I will not hesitate to use force!"
Shukaku roared, the sheer volume shook the sandy ground even as both of them are being surrounded by tiny balls of light from the pyramid disintegrating around them. Kurumi, hearing this said. "Then forgive me, but I'll stop you here no matter what!"
Kurumi's remaining tails perked before the ends became charged with chakra and is poised to strike. Unerringly, the tails shot forwards, piercing straight through the wall of sand that Shukaku hastily made in front of her but slowing them down enough to prevent them from hitting her.
Kurumi felt something crawling from underneath her onto her legs and released Shukaku's limbs before jumping backwards, letting loose a burst of chakra that caused the sand tendrils to disperse, their chakra connection scrambled from the chakra burst Kurumi emitted. As soon as her feet touches ground, she was greeted by a gigantic wave of sand as big as she was, about to engulf her within its death grip.
But she was having none of that. Quickly gathering positive and negative chakra on the tips of her tails, the relatively tiny Bijuudamas shot towards the wave of sand like black beams of death before exploding, dispersing the wave of sand into tiny sand clouds.
This was a new bijuu technique that Naruto and her developed. Instead of performing a full charged bijuudama at the mouth, they managed to perform it with a different method: by gathering smaller amounts of positive and negative chakra at the tips of their tails before firing the miniature bijuudamas towards their target. This allows better tactical capabilities, being able to rapidly fire smaller, less damaging attacks with more control towards a target, making it able for them to fire quick retaliation snap shots on someone or something.
Before Shukaku could do anything, Kurumi appeared from the cloud of sand, claws outstretched and fangs bared as her jaws opened wide, ready to chomp on Shukaku's sandy flesh. With a quick lunge, she clamped her jaw on her sister's huge neck, only managing to bite a part of it due to the size as her humanlike clawed arms pushed her down on the sands where she fell with a humongous crash.
As she bit her sister, she managed to feel her chakra. And much to her confusion, her sister's chakra seemed to have some sort of foreign chakra acting as a parasite within it. Something like that wasn't possible to begin with. The bijuus are massive beings made entirely of chakra which means illusions and chakra disruption techniques don't affect them, chakra parasites included. The only exception to this was when their father's powers are considered and/or used. Which means that whatever that caused the chakra parasite to stick with her sister, it's something related to their father in some ways. Only in what way does she not know.
Ripping part of her sister's sandy neck, sending streams of sand everywhere and forcing her sister to lie down to recover herself, Kurumi jumped backwards, lading with a huge boom close to where Naruto and the party was. "Naru-koi," she said. "Somehow, there's a weird chakra clinging to Shukaku-chan's chakra like a parasite."
Naruto was understandably surprised. He understood completely how that was damn hard to do. "So what then? Contain it?" his mind was already running through seal design and methods to do that as his wife fought against the raging bijuu.
"Yeah." She said, stealing a glance towards the party. Much to her humour, the entire team was looking at her in shock and confusion except for the usual suspects. "Well, I'm going to go again, so better think of a way to contain that strange chakra fast."
She was about to jump back into the fray when Naruto called her. "Kuru-hime!"
"What is it? Make it quick! She's about to recover!" Kurumi said, noticing that Shukaku had almost finished recovering.
"Just blast her with a weak bijuudama! Just blow away her sandy body! She's made of sand! She'll take some time to recover! Then we can study how to both restrain her and separate whatever chakra on her that you said!" He shouted to his wife, currently 50 metres tall and raring to go into battle with her already recovering sister.
"That's as good idea as any I guess. Okay! Tell them all to stay back!" Kurumi said back as she stood with all four legs on the ground, bracing for the power of her bijuudama. Although not fully charged, a full on bijuudama from her, unlike the smaller snap shots can still deal a huge amount of damage to everything she shot the huge ball of chakra at.
The entire group watched in horrified awe as Kurumi opened her mouth wide before huge blobs of white positive chakra and black negative chakra gathered into a bigger blob in front of her mouth, all of them swirling and compacting into a huge sphere of chakra. A while later, the chakra stabilized itself into a ball of power before being compressed into a size about 2 metres in diameter before Kurumi ate the ball. And as the underpowered (for her, at least) bijuudama entered her stomach, she opened her mouth wide and literally puked the ball of power, turning it into a high-speed chakra ball of death, obliterating anything it touches.
The entire group once again watched, completely mesmerized as the ball of compressed chakra shot forwards from Kurumi's mouth, glassing everything that it sped on before heading straight towards where the Ichibi, who had fully recovered, was sluggishly trying to get up from his impromptu healing session.
The tiny ball hit her quick wall of sand before it exploded with such force that winds and sands buffeted the area where the group was standing, the booming sound of the explosion the only thing that they could hear. They were not flying away only thanks to Kurumi's quick thinking to block the winds with her body. The entire group opened their eyes, and as Kurumi stepped aside to have them look at the destruction she caused, the Suna contingent once again saw another huge crater of glass within a desert, though this time it's a desert within a mind instead of an artificial one, where the Ichibi's broken body was the only thing to be seen as sand rushed towards it to recover its physical form.
Before they could say anything, Naruto said to them. "Relax, she's not dead yet. She's just recovering. It is going to be very hard to kill her, especially when we are trying not to. Now, let's go." Naruto said before he jumped to Kurumi's back.
"Go where?!" Kankurou shouted.
"Where? To the Ichibi, of course. There's a weird chakra parasite on her, and it's better if we were to remove it. Somehow." Naruto said as everyone followed, though the Suna contingent understandably hesitates to do so. They're jumping on the back of a bijuu, so their hesitation was pretty much normal.
"Relax." Kurumi said. "I don't bite." She continued in humour. "You small ones won't fill my stomach anyway. Hehehe..." She said again, mirth apparent in her voice though she had that weird evil laugh at the end, something that nearly caused Kankurou to shit himself. But steeling himself, they all climbed on top of her back before they all took hold of Kurumi's body with chakra, noticing the soft fur she was covered with, even if it's a bit terrifying, being coloured blood-red, making the Suna contingent felt like they're stepping on a blood-red carpet.
"Kurumi-san, your fur... it's very soft." Sakura said. Already inured to the family's insane acts, she ignored whatever event that made the entire Suna team shocked beyond anything, especially since she saw some of those acts already. And then some. And that bijuudama, it's definitely weaker than what she normally saw she uses. But considering her position as the Kyuubi and the Ichibi, it was justified that even a quickly charged bijuudama was enough to blow her apart. And so, she decided to remark on another fact to push her mind away from whatever scene that she was currently experiencing: that Kurumi's fur was damn soft. Like a high quality mink coat.
Looking back towards her passengers and internally snickering at the discomfort of the Suna contingent, she answered Sakura's question. "Isn't it? I take great care to wash up my fur when I bathe so that they're soft. Just don't tug them. I might just bite you for that." As she said this, Kankurou was restraining himself visibly from asking whether she used dog shampoo or something else, but even he knew that making a stupid joke like that to a freaking bijuu that just beat another bijuu was a terribly bad idea. "Enough talking. We need to get there fast. Hold on!" she said before bending all four of her legs and with a powerful heave, she jumped skywards, causing Kankurou to scream in horror as the world seemed to fly from around him, the wind rushing beside his ears. Only Naruto and Hinata was able to stand properly on the jumping Kurumi, with Sakura on all fours while the Suna trio was grabbing her fur with chakra as hard as they possibly could.
Luckily for them, she felt no discomfort from their tugging since they're too small. If not, someone's going to get an earful. Or a mouthful.
With a loud crash, Kurumi fell on the desert floor right beside her sister, sending showers of sand everywhere even as Naruto jumped straight from her back onto the sandy ground and gathered chakra into his hands, ready to use the Uzumaki secret chakra seal style. Running across the desert sand, Naruto's chakra hung in the air as scores of instantaneous Shadow Clones popped and started performing the same thing around the Ichibi's quickly recovering body.
From Kurumi's back, they all watched in fascination as the masses of Naruclones ran around the Ichibi, his hand glowing blue with chakra, creating humongous blue lines around Shukaku in a mesmerizing display of both ninja arts and seal mastery. As the number of blue lines grew, Gaara asked in a slightly fearful voice. "What is he doing?"
"That's the Uzumaki's Secret Sealing Style: chakra sealing." Hinata answered. "As you three already knew, the Uzumakis are the expert in seals. No seals are secret to them, none unbreakable, and they also made one of the most efficient combat worthy sealing style in history of the Elemental Nations. It is what made them so feared and deadly. So feared that only through an alliance of three of the big 5 villages and minor villagers are they able to destroy Uzushiogakure. Even so, they took so many losses that the late counterattack by Konoha obliterated them and won us the Second Shinobi War." Pausing to take a quick breather, Hinata continued. "Unlike other sealing method that uses ink or blood, the Uzumaki Secret Style uses one's own chakra like the chakra threads of Suna's puppeteers, but instead of making it go from point to point like the threads, Naruto literally painted his seals on air using nothing but chakra. This skill allows an Uzumaki to perform powerful seals on the fly without needing supplies but their own chakra. Considering that they're a clan whose children are born with more chakra than a good genin, it practically means that they have near unlimited supply of chakra for their seals, allowing them to fight effectively using their seals in under any condition without relying on pre-prepared seals."
"But… chakra won't last that long!" Kankurou said. The topic being something remotely related to his puppeteer techniques, it made him able to reply. "Even chakra threads need to have a small, nearly negligible yet constant flow of chakra to maintain it!" Thus why Kankurou actually had the best chakra control among the three, but the lowest chakra. He didn't need much in the first place. "How did he create the seals on air like that?"
"And that is what made the Uzumaki Secret Sealing style so powerful. But even the old Uzumakis are only able to sustain the seals for about 20, 30 seconds at best. That's why they need to be able to create combat-worthy chakra seals on the fly according to the situation to properly counter or attack an enemy." She replied.
Hinata then turned her head and looked towards the masses of Narutos who was running around, creating a spiderweb of seals around the Ichibi, the air aglow with Naruto's bluish chakra. "Naru-koi… He's using the same technique but using even more chakra than usual to ensure that the seal lasts long enough for him to restrain the Ichibi. Even if a single part fades out, the entire seal matrix will be useless and the Ichibi will be free."
The Suna contingent can now understood why Sakura does not seem fazed by whatever the entire family did, no matter how strange. When an entire family kept pulling out weird shit out of their ass to fight all the freaking time, you'll ignore whatever crazy shit they did the next time they did.
The speeding Narutos finally completed the seals a while later before he sped to the legs of his waiting wife and lifted his hand in the Tiger sign. "Uzumaki Secret Sealing Style: Bijuu Suppression Seal!"
The already glowing seals around the Ichibi glowed brighter before it dulled and turned a darker shade of blue, signifying the activation of the seals. Turning to face the group and his wife, he shouted. "Okay! The seals are activated! She's harmless now! Kuru-hime, let's go and check your sister!" he shouted.
Without warning, Kurumi morphed back into her human form, causing everyone who was on her back to fall towards the sand in immense pain, leaving them with broken bones and critical injuries after being dropped by a 50-meter tall demonic bijuu. Or they would be if some of the Naruclones didn't jump towards their literal drop zone and caught each and every one of them before placing them back on the sands.
Ignoring the cursing and screaming Kankurou and the rest of the group, Naruto and Kurumi walked towards the massive pile of sand signifying Shukaku's body. Upon reaching it, the first thing that Naruto did was to place him palm on the sands to feel the chakra. And much to his shock, he felt the same thing that Kurumi did, which was a weird secondary chakra tying itself with the Ichibi's. "Hmm…" Naruto hummed thoughtfully. "This is… weird. Let us check it further." Both of them went around the Ichibi, placing their hand on her all the time. After a while, they came to a surprising conclusion: the chakra force was unlike anything they knew. It's human chakra, that's for sure, but the way that it bound itself to the Ichibi… "It's like father's Soul Bind seal, but modified."
"Or corrupted." Naruto supplied. "That's not going to be easy. Trying to unwind whatever soul that was tied to hers is not something that's easy, considering that the Soul Bind on her lacks a sealing matrix for us to study."
"Hmm…" Kurumi hummed this time. "Or, we could just perform what I did to Anko's Curse Mark. Just isolate the chakra from her system in a sealing sphere before destroying it, or sealing it into something else."
"Sounds as good an idea as any. But we'll need to monitor what happens to your sister as we remove the soul shard from her." Naruto suggested, something that Kurumi absolutely agreed with.
As the rest of the group neared them, the suggestions and the ideas that they talked about went right over their heads as Naruto and Kurumi talked back and forth on the best way to extract the chakra from the Ichibi. Kankurou, who was the best seal user among the group (excluding Hinata) commented on this. "Wow. I consider myself pretty well thought in matters of seals and their making, but whatever these guys are talking about just ripped through me. The skill level, the knowledge, heck, a Soul based seal? I never even knew that one could seal non-corporeal things!"
"There's chakra storage seals." Gaara supplied suddenly, much to the shock of everyone.
Ignoring that the response came from his pacified little brother, Kankurou continued with his rant. "Seals are made of ink and chakra at its basic, so chakra seals aren't impossible to begin with. But these guys… they make Suna's sealmasters look like kiddies in kindergartens! That's just how far the difference is between them and ours!"
He then turned towards his brother. "Gaara, little brother, sorry about everything. I never knew that the reason why you're so bloodthirsty is because of a crappy seal. We trusted our 'sealmasters' too much and look where that got us? We ended up losing a brother. At least, thanks to these guys, they managed to fix that seal on you. So, as a representative of Suna's so-called sealmasters, I ask of you: forgive us." Kankurou said, sadness apparent in his voice as he kneeled in front of Gaara to beg for forgiveness.
"I already did." Gaara said, his voice shaky as he held back his tears. "I already did, brother. I forgive you. Let us be a family again." He said as he hugged his brother. Temari, watching this, joined the family hug, not caring if the Konoha group saw their tears. Sakura and Hinata said nothing, just watching with smiles on their faces as they saw a family mend itself from the brink of falling apart. All thanks to a massive beatdown by Naruto.
After a long discussion, Kurumi and Naruto settled on a method to extract the soul from Shukaku, which was to use a sphere that could siphon the chakra bound to hers into the sphere. Then, they'll proceed with disposal, sealing or anything else that can destroy that parasite. Even though the chakra was intertwined with Shukaku's, the foreign parasite was somehow separate enough from her that separating them will be quite easy, unlike the Cursed Seal of Heaven. However, it's also close enough to affect Shukaku's mental stability or to influence her, from what they could discover from their quick study of the foreign chakra's interaction and Shukaku's chakra. Just like the Scroll of Deals.
And so, as Naruto created the seals on Shukaku's body to extract the foreign chakra while Kurumi created the sphere of chakra seal that was meant to contain the foreign chakra, the entire team watched as all of the involved party ran around, trying their best to quickly isolate the weird chakra from Shukaku. A while later, the entire system was complete. It consists of a chakra extraction array that will pull out the foreign chakra to a certain point, signified by the location of the seal, which was at Shukaku's forehead. From there, the chakra containment sphere will be placed directly on top of the seal so that the chakra will be contained within said sphere.
While they're busy, Temari asked Hinata about a certain aspect that they found quite strange. "Hinata-san, there's something that I feel I should ask here. We are in a mindscape, which is considered as the visualization of one's own consciousness. Which means that all these," she said, sweeping her hand to show the entire sight of Gaara's mindscape, "Isn't real. It's just a figment of the mind. How does performing whatever they did here affect what happens in the real world?"
Hinata smiled at her question before replying. "Good question. The reason was that unlike anything else, a mindscape acts more like one's soul, or what their soul looks and felt like. Another term for it is 'inner world'. Whatever happens in one's mindscape is reflected in the real world, no matter what. So if you were to die, you'll die for real. It is said that there was a forbidden technique that moves one's mindscape into the real world, temporarily overwriting reality to create an alternate area where one's own soul was bared to their enemy, giving them a huge advantage and strength. Also, the reality override uses more chakra than many were capable of and that baring your inner world to an enemy wasn't a good idea to begin with makes it a forbidden jutsu, one that no one had ever performed before, only theories and conjectures."
As the two were discussing the topic about mindscapes, Naruto and Kurumi were finally ready to start the isolation of the chakra. Standing beside his seal with Kurumi holding the containment sphere on the seal, Naruto ran through handsigns before clapping his hands together as Kurumi braced herself to absorb the flowing chakra. "Fuuinjutsu: Chakra Siphoning Seal!"
Instantly, a light purplish miasma of chakra flowed from Naruto's seal straight into the containment sphere where it swirled and whirled in the middle of the sphere as more and more of the chakra flowed from the seal to Kurumi's sphere. The chakra siphoning seal was invented for a couple of reasons where one of them being the absorption of foreign chakra that attacks one's chakra system, much like a chakra parasite would. There are other uses for it, some even combat worthy. But the function that Naruto used was the chakra parasite cure function. The limiting factor of the seal was that it required the chakra sample of the chakra to be extracted, otherwise it won't work. But in this case, it was just the seal that Naruto required. And so, he used it to its maximum, extracting the foreign chakra and storing it in the containment sphere.
About 30 minutes later, the purplish miasma finally stopped flowing from Naruto's chakra siphoning seal to the containment sphere, where the chakra was spinning around in a ball in the middle, completely surrounded by glowing blue chakra seals. Kurumi looked at Naruto and nodded. Getting the sign, Naruto dispels all his clones remotely, leaving the bijuu suppressing sealing array on its own, but no longer replenished by the large number of clones that was zipping around the area to maintain the seal just now. Walking back to the group, Kurumi said, "Now that we've removed... whatever this is," She said, referring to the purplish chakra that she still carried between her hands, "She might just return back to her own mind and she could explain whatever she's been doing these couple hundred of years."
"What happens if she was actually insane like that?" Naruto asked.
"Nah." Kurumi replied confidently. "She's the closest to father. Everyone loved her. She's gentle, kind and not one to harm anything. She cried so much when father died. Thus, her acting like this is definitely wrong. Something must've happened sometime ago that caused her to become bloodthirsty and crazy, and this ball of chakra is definitely the reason for it."
"Well, if you say so. The clones have already stopped replacing the seals, and she'll wake up again in a while. Look, she's already healing." Kurumi didn't look to where Naruto was pointing as they walked through the dimming fields of chakra seals since she already knew and expected that her sister would've healed quickly now that they've stopped the seals and that the foreign chakra had been removed from her.
A quick while later, they reached the location of the group, Kurumi still carrying the sphere which caused the entire group to watch the swirling chakra within in fascination. "What is that?" Temari asked.
"This," Kurumi said, "Would probably be what made my sister over there crazy." She said again, tilting her head to point towards the quickly recovering pile of sand that was her sister.
"Your sister?" Temari asked. A while later, realisation seemed to set in her face as she paled in both shock and horror.
"It seems you've understood. Yes, I am the Kyuubi as you can see just now, and that's my little sister over there, the Ichibi, or Shukaku." She answered with a smile. "And that ball of chakra, as Naru-koi said before, was what caused her to become that insane and bloodthirsty. Well, we'll get our answers later. Oh look, she's recovered." Kurumi said as she turned around and threw the chakra ball towards Naruto. "Hold that. I have a sister to meet." She said before jumping skywards and immediately morphing into her demon form without much fanfare.
Shukaku was honestly shocked. Her sister just beat her hands down! She's definitely strong. And somehow, she removed that... abomination from her! She could regain control of herself again! Moving her sandy figure, she looked in front of her only to come face-to-face with her sister, one whom she haven't seen for years and years. "Nee-saaaaaaaan!" She shouted out before she moved with titanic steps towards her standing sister before enveloping her in a gigantic hug as tears fell from her face.
How did a gigantic pile of living sand cry is a question one shouldn't ask.
Responding to her hug with one of her own, Kurumi patted her sister's sandy back before rubbing it slowly, trying to rid her of her tears and sadness. "Shh, shh. It's okay. I'm here now. Calm down."
"How can I calm down?!" Shukaku loudly replied before prying herself from her sister's hug. "I-i-i... I'm evil! I became just what dad told us not to! That... thing!" She said, turning her head towards where Naruto was standing. "That thing made me! Forced me! I killed so many people! I..." immediately she felt her mind assaulted by the memories of all the atrocities that whatever soul or chakra parasite that she was entangled with made her do. The feeling was like riding shotgun with someone; you saw everything and experience everything that you went through, but ultimately, it wasn't you at the driver's wheel.
Once again Kurumi hugged her crying sister, letting her cry on her shoulders. "Don't worry. It's not your fault. Cry on me. I'm here, and always will be." And so, Shukaku cried and cried for a long time, her tears somehow not drying even when exposed to the monstrous heat that was Gaara's desert mindscape.
About 20 minutes later, Shukaku finally stopped crying, allowing Kurumi to let her go before she asked the question running through everyone's mind at the time. "Shukaku-chan, how did that parasite infect you? It seemed like a very human chakra, though somehow corrupted or something. Care to explain?"
"Of course." She quickly replied. "After all of us separated from each other, I decided to go to the desert, as that's where I can hide myself better, being made of sand and all. I think things happen this way. I'm not too sure since I'm not the one that caused it nor can I access his memory, but I think this would be the most probable happenings that led to me being crazy.
As I was walking towards the desert, a certain mad priest saw me and felt my power for some reason. Wanting to control my power, he searched far and wide for anything that can help him with it as he kept track of me with rumours and scouts. At one point, he must've discovered father's soul seal notes and made a seal that can bind his soul to mine, taking over my body and with it, my powers using a strange blood ritual, except this one uses chakra. But sadly for him, the seal he made was incomplete and imperfect. Instead of taking over my body, it did the next best thing: it turned him into pure chakra that invaded mine when he combined his weird ritual and the seal, bringing with it his mental faculties. He only managed to push aside my consciousness, trapping me in my own body, though he still took over my powers.
With it, he raged and killed and destroyed. Nothing was safe from him. Not man, not nature. He... he destroyed everything he could in any matter he would. The desert and some of the areas around it became a much more dangerous place with him raging and killing. He even expanded the desert areas with his rampage. I... I saw everything as he controlled the sands of the desert to crush everyone, screaming bloody murder to everything that he came across. Trapped within my own body, I can only listen as he screamed about blood and soul sacrifices to his god, named Jashin."
"Jashin?" Kurumi thought, storing that name for future reference.
"Then, one day, a person wearing old armour and was capable of making bijuu suppressing trees that somehow felt like father's chakra being used appeared, and he used it to stop my rampage before handing me to Suna who sealed me into a teapot before I was sealed into their jinchuurikis. I saw from my cage as he made my jinchuurikis go insane from lack of sleep, his constant screaming about blood for his blood god getting to nearly anyone's nerve. They killed in his name, giving him sacrifices in blood and flesh. I... I never felt so dirty and horrible as they all did that!" Once again, Shukaku bawled in front of her sister as she was forced to remember the hows of her streak of insanity.
Taking another 5 minutes to calm down and to wipe her snot and tears, she continued. "As I was trapped, I held strong, hoping that somehow, someone would be able to remove him from me. But for hundreds of years, I'm trapped with no release and no hope but my own dreams. Until Gaara became my jinchuuriki and I met... you? I'm sure it wasn't you, but the feel was so familiar. Did you...?"
"Yes, I did. He is my chosen." Kurumi replied, the question that was about to be asked remained unspoken as she understood what her sister asked.
"That's why. Then, that feeling gets to his head, and he could only think of one way to do so: to kill the source. And that's why he fought. Thankfully, he won, and you managed to release me from his curse! Thank you, nee-san! Thank you!" She said again, tears of happiness still flowing from her eyes.
"Don't worry, Shukaku-chan. That's what siblings are here for." Kurumi replied.
Still crying, Shukaku turned to face the group, all of whom had their mouth gaping wide (except Naruto and Hinata) as what they heard of the two bijuu talking about reached their minds. She then walked straight towards them, each of her steps sending massive shock across the desert floor. Reaching in front of the group who was too stunned to flee, she bent her sandy body down and faced the entire group before saying, "Gaara, you there?"
"Y-yes..." Gaara hesitantly answered. It is one of the few times that Gaara showed fear in his voice, and it is very noticeable when compared to his usual detached, emotionless manner of speaking.
"Don't be afraid. Now that the crazy priest was gone, I am no longer insane or bloodthirsty. I will not harm you." She said before placing a clawed sandy paw in front of the group. "Gaara, get up here, please." She said with a smile, though her smile was quite creepy, considering that what made it was a hugely powerful beast made entirely of sand.
"Don't worry. Please, get up here." She said, her tone slightly begging. Hearing the slightly begging tone that she made, he cannot help but climb on the paw, forsaking his safety to the beast that for his entire life, he only knew her as a raging, homicidal mother of sorts.
She then moved her massive limb, taking Gaara straight to her face where she stared straight into Gaara's eyes. Or she would if Gaara wasn't as big as her eyes. "Gaara, let me first say this: I am sorry. Sorry for all the trouble I've caused you. Sorry for forcing you to never sleep. Sorry for making you kill nearly everything and everyone around you, preventing you from feeling love."
"Let me tell you something, Gaara. About your mother." Shukaku gained a melancholic look on her face as she looked skyward. "Gaara, you should know this. Your mother, Karura, she loved you. She loved you with all her heart. She didn't give you your name out of spite. Even when she was dying due to your stillbirth and my influence, she vowed to protect you forever, as long as you lived. Her oath stayed with you and morphed into your powerful sand defence thanks to the influence of my youki. She loved you, Gaara. Never forget that."
"Mother... loved me? She did? B-b-but Yashamaru..." Gaara slowly said, his eyes wet with tears as he remembered the tragedy that made him this way, the attack and assassination attempt by his uncle. She never forgot what he said, and what he said made him this way, a person who kills and lived for himself, not caring for others, not watching others, only himself and no one else.
"She did Gaara. I was there as witness as she cried on her deathbed for her own death and that she'll never be able to protect you. I was there as her oath transformed your control over sand that all my jinchuuriki had into a defence more powerful than anything. I wept as she died, a smile on her face as she hugged your sand-protected body, hoping that her oath will be kept. A parent's sacrifice is a powerful blessing, Gaara, and it shows."
"B-but Yashamaru! He-he... *sniff* he said that I should die for killing his sister!" Gaara screamed out to Shukaku, his tears streaming down his face unstoppable.
"I don't know what happened Gaara, but listen to me. Your mother never hated you. I am not too sure about your uncle. Your father might know more. But Gaara, she loved you with her entire heart," she said before she turned her head to face the rest of the Suna trio. "Just like she loved all of you. Never forget that, Gaara. I saw everything behind my mental cage. Everything you saw, everything the priest told you, I heard them all. Not one detail was missed. And I knew that you are strong, stronger than anyone to be able to take such a burden like me. You should ask your father, he'll know more than I will." She said before slowly placing the still crying Gaara on the sands in front of the group where the crying Sand Trio immediately ran towards their brother and enveloped her in a family hug, tears from their face as well.
Kurumi then approached Shukaku and said, "Shukaku-chan, in the real world, my daughter is replacing the seal that locked you with a better seal, one that will prevent your youki from influencing him while allowing him greater control over his powers. He will also be able to talk to you anytime he wanted and vice versa, so be nice to him."
"Okay." Shukaku agreed. "I'm better off under lock and key too. It isn't a good idea to let me go considering what happened the last time. Besides, releasing me will kill him right? That's what happened to my other jinchuurikis before Gaara. They lost control and fully released me and died. It... it wasn't a nice experience." She said the last part slowly, which was a huge understatement.
"I understand. I understood that very well." Kurumi answered. "Also, stop blaming yourself. You were under control at the time, just like I did. No one ever blamed me."
"You? Controlled, nee-san? What happened?" Shukaku asked. And so the tale was told once again, of how she was captured and controlled by Madara before being sealed and how Hashirama gave away the bijuus to the countries.
"I see. So it's not only the two of us being caught?" Shukaku asked her sister who nodded.
"The others, they're all caught too. They all had their jinchuurikis as well, though you're the first that I've met." She continued. "So stop blaming yourself. It's not your fault."
"Right." Shukaku answered, though she still held within her mind that she'll be responsible for everything that priest made her do before she looked back towards the trio, still hugging with Sakura and Hinata watching, tears on their eyes at the heartwarming family hug. She then turned back to face her sister. "When will the new seal be complete?"
"Shouldn't be too long now." Kurumi said. "My daughter is making the seal right now."
"Your daughter?!" Shukaku asked loudly.
-IN THE REAL WORLD-
It had just been 15 minutes since the youki beneath her hands pushed against her chakra and tried to struggle to break away from the seal on Gaara. Kushina started to have small beads of sweat falling on her forehead even as her golden flaming chakra cloak was pushed towards the seal to prevent the Ichibi from breaking out as her clones zipped around the room to fix the seal on Gaara's. "I hope mom can stop her sister fast! Never expected that holding back a bijuu from breaking out of her seal would be this hard!"
She completely didn't had it in her mind that she's a bijuu as well. A hanyou, but a bijuu nonetheless.
As sudden as the chakra leaked, it stopped struggling, shocking Kushina but who immediately took the chance to work double time at fixing the seal. Another minute passed before she managed to fix and replace the seal matrix, her clones dispelling at once as they finished.
Quickly assimilating her clones' memories, she ran through the 50 something handsigns needed to activate the sealing matrix on Gaara's body and the walls. "Fuuinjutsu: Seal of the Lone Sun!" Immediately the seals all started to come alive and slowly but surely wobbled on the walls before crawling like a centipede, inching slowly towards the matrix's centre on Gaara's navel. They picked up speed as Kushina maintained her concentration on the last handseal, the sign of the Dragon, causing the rest of the wriggling seal to move even faster before all the lines jumped towards the main seal matrix on Gaara's navel before settling within the already available ink drawing on Gaara's navel. It took quite some time, but now it's finished, Kushina could, with great pride, say that the seal was her best work for now.
The seal was a four point circular shaped seal, with the trademarked Uzumaki spiral in the middle starting from Gaara's bellybutton as its center. But unlike his father's old seal, the seal she made had a clear circle around the middle without any waving; all of them straight with four openings with smaller spirals at the opening that points to his shoulders and hips. The seal, although it seemed quite an overkill seal, making a four point seal for a one tailed bijuu, it is not without its reasons. The extra openings allow Gaara to use Auntie Shukaku's chakra better while preventing the corruption from the youki itself. It also enables Gaara to talk and communicate to her, allowing for better communication and understanding between the two. Also, the seal's loose enough that Auntie Shukaku could have a larger area to move around while also retaining the strength of the seal. At the same time, the seal's strong enough that even transforming into Auntie Shukaku will not affect Gaara's judgement or sound mind, and she's sure that this seal design will be very good for both of them.
Rubbing the tiny beads of sweat on her face, she let go a sigh of relief. Not that she needs to, but she still had a reputation to keep. "Whew. Now to tell him about the key when he wakes up later." She said before she looks at Gaara's right hand, where a similar looking seal was etched on the back of his hand before both seals slowly disappeared from sight. "Now to wait for all of them to come back." She said, looking at the motionless sight of her family and the Suna trio and Sakura , all of them standing on the parts of the seal still remained on the floor.
-INSIDE GAARA'S MINDSCAPE, ON SEAL ACTIVATION-
As everyone was busy taking stock of their current situation, the sun, high at the horizon suddenly moved right on top of the two bijuu's head at the blink of an eye, shocking everyone. And as suddenly as it moved, a huge pillar of light shot downwards from it before separating into many bars of light, curving from their splitting point before heading straight downwards, creating a massive cage of light. Somehow, the bars missed Kurumi and the entire group, only slamming into the sands right between Kurumi and Shukaku and totally avoiding the Suna trio.
The cage of light suddenly expanded, pushing the entire group away from Shukaku before it swept everyone away, leaving Shukaku within a gigantic cage of light. Everyone looked in awe as they watched the bars of light grew, the vertical bars grew smaller, horizontal bars that connected to each other, creating a massive cage of shining bright light that looked like a bird's cage made of light with a single bar of light connecting the cage's tip towards the sun on top of their heads.
As everyone watched in awe at this admittedly insanely cool sight, even Hinata but not Naruto, Kurumi, still in her bijuu form looked at the sun, the gigantic pillar of light, at least three times as big as the pillars it split to heading straight towards the glowing golden cage. "A damn good seal as always." She said.
Shukaku immediately ran towards her sister with massive steps over the sandy ground before grabbing the bars of light that was her new cage before looking at her sister. Much to her pleasant surprise, the bars did not burn her even when they're made of sunlight, allowing her to grab them with her huge, sandy paws. "Wow! The seal's so much better than before! It even gave me some space to run around! My old seal may look large, but not just that it is small, it also had nothing to see in it! And I hate darkness!"
Kurumi chuckled. "Still hates the dark, I see." Turning around at the awestruck group, she leapt towards them, morphing back into her human form, the black and red gown she was wearing before she appeared in her demon form literally growing back on her. "Well, it seems that our business here is finished. We'll be back into the real world after a while." She then turned towards Shukaku. "Shukaku-chan! Will see you later! Be good to Gaara!"
"I will!" her sister replied. "Gaara, no worries! I'm back to my usual self, and I will not bother you anymore! You don't have to kill for me!"
Suddenly, Naruto said something. "Okay, but we still have a problem." He said as he lifted the containment sphere containing the priest's chakra within it, reminding everyone that no, they're still not done.
"Oh. Right." Kurumi answered before going towards Naruto and examining the sphere, staring at it from all angles. "Hmm... Letting it go doesn't seem like a good idea since it's a soul turned into chakra. Letting it be absorbed into Gaara's psyche would do no one any good." She said.
"True." Naruto agreed. "Maybe we can purify it? Just like what you did to Anko's seal?" he suggested.
"No." Kurumi said, shaking her head. "I didn't purify anything. That's just me replacing the soul shard in Anko's seal with my purified youki. No purifying involved there."
"Considering that the chakra also brought with it his intent and mental condition, just letting it go here will cause it to infect Gaara next, turning him into an actual psychopath instead of one caused by a rampaging bijuu in his mind." Naruto said next. "We cannot just leave it here in the mindscape. It won't be a good idea."
"Won't be a good idea was a total understatement." Kurumi said. "What if we made a Shadow Clone using that chakra? Since it's a soul turned into chakra, maybe we could disperse it or destroy it outright then?"
"That... actually was a good idea. Okay, let's go!" Both of them prepared themselves for anything as Naruto remotely moulded the chakra within the containment sphere to create a Shadow Clone of the chakra somehow. They watched as the chakra within the sphere wavered and wobbled from its usual swirling form before it started to move as Naruto forced it to form into a Shadow Clone. Slowly it swirled into the shape of a person as Kurumi took control of the containment sphere before enlarging it slowly as the blob of human-shaped chakra started to expand.
And as the human shaped chakra blob turned into an actual person, they watched as the man appeared from the purplish chakra. Being 6'2" tall with pale face and round, brown eyes with an oval shaped face with shoulder length hair, wearing a weird black robe with a circle within a triangle drawing at the back in white, barefooted. As soon as he finished forming within the chakra sphere, Kurumi broke the containment apart as Naruto and her jumped back to watch the reaction of the man after he finally reformed.
His head, previously looking downwards snapped skywards before he lets out a loud scream filled with anger and hate. "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" he screamed before he looked towards Naruto. "You! You broke my curse over her! I will sacrifice you to Jashin!" he screamed before dashing straight towards Naruto who just stood there, arms in a defending posture.
Much to everyone's shock, Naruto appeared right in front of the man with a brutally powerful downwards right hook due to their height difference, hitting his face with all the power his non-chakra enhanced Astarte strength provided as his eyes glowed with anger and rage. His powerful blow made the man's head spun with a loud crack and broke apart, if not outright shattering his jaw into a million pieces before he flew backwards in a spin before collapsing on the sands of Gaara's mindscape in a cloud of sand, his neck broken beyond recovery.
Clapping his hand together to clear them out of imaginary dust, Naruto then said, "Well, that's another matter taken care of," as he turned around, leaving the disintegrating body of the crazy priest, turning into bluish motes of chakra that was slowly fading as he died within Gaara's mindscape, leaving nothing behind while also granting Gaara extra chakra, due to the fact that his soul died in his mindscape, leaving behind his chakra since there were no body for it to return to.
Turning towards the group, Naruto watched as everyone gaped at his actions before asking "What?" This snapped everyone from their shock before Naruto continued. "Sometimes, the easiest solution is to just punch the guy in the face as hard as you possibly can. See? Problem solved."
Shaking her head though she had a smile on her face, Kurumi said, "Sometimes you just did the most direct solution, ignoring everything else. Wonder why?"
"It's the Uzumaki blood. Can't help that." He answered with a shrug, a smile also on his face.
"Well, at least that's one problem taken care of." Kurumi said. "Now, let's leave." Turning towards the group, she held out her hands. "Grab my hand." Still stunned at Naruto's abruptly brutal yet effective solution and the sheer speed that he executed the move, they grabbed her hand emotionlessly. Turning one last time towards her sister, Kurumi said, "Bye Shukaku-chan! Make sure you treat Gaara well!"
Shukaku nodded, saying "I will," as she watched her sister, her mate and everyone else disappear. Looking upwards towards the dry, clear sky, she thought, "Gaara, I hope that by helping you, being with you, I can both understand humans better, and be able to find my mate as well. Nee-chan looked so happy with him. I could see the love between the two from how they looked at each other. I just hoped that I can get someone as good as she did. Will you be the one? Whilst that, I will try to redeem all the crimes that I was forced to perform, and make sure that your mother's oath be fulfilled. You will definitely not have anything to worry as long as I am here, Gaara. I will keep you safe in lieu of your mother."
And so, Shukaku was left alone within Gaara's mindscape with nothing but her thoughts and her guilt accompanying her...
-BACK IN THE REAL WORLD-
Kushina was just relaxing on her feet when everyone snapped awake from their trances, their journey thorough Gaara's mindscape done as they saw that the room was now blemish-free, none of the previous ink stains and marks that adorned the room was seen as they all flowed into Gaara's new seal. Everyone had a new light on the bijuus from what they could see within the seal just a while ago. Gaara was the last one to recover, snapping forwards at a 90 degree angle from his waist as he woke up from his enforced slumber.
"I... did that happen just now?" he asked.
"It sure did." Kushina answered. "Look at your stomach." Everyone's eyes instantly moved towards the seal on Gaara's stomach, which Naruto and Kurumi immediately inspected.
"A great seal, Kushi-chan." Naruto said. "That'll help Shukaku very much. Good job."
She beamed on her dad's praises before bowing like a magician who made a great performance on stage before looking towards Gaara. "Gaara-san, there's something I should tell you. The thing is, all bijuu seals had their own key."
"A key?" Gaara said, frowning.
"Yes. A key to open your seal and release your bijuu. The seal's a lock, in a sense, and all locks need its key. The key to your previous seal was probably held by your Kage or your council. To remake the seal, we needed to open your seal, so to speak. By entering your mindscape to head for Auntie Shukaku, we just bruteforced our way through the seal, breaking the lock. To make a bijuu seal, you'll need its companion seal which was the key. But since we broke through your seal, you'll need a new key." Kushina explained.
"So, where's this... key now?" He asked. Even the rest was looking at both of them strangely except for Naruto and Kurumi.
"The key... is now in your right hand." She said. "Try channelling some chakra to your hand."
Gaara did just that, and the same pattern of seals as the one on his navel appeared within his hand. Immediately the Suna trio looked at the so-called key in fascination and interest as Gaara turned his hand around to look at the key to his seal.
"The key serves more like a faucet actually. You could change its metaphorical tightness, allowing Auntie Shukaku to be completely trapped and locked, so much so that you couldn't even gain any advantages of having a bijuu within your body or opening it so wide that you basically removed the lock entirely. It's your choice." Kushina explained to Gaara.
"How do I change that... tightness?"
"Just channel chakra to the seal on your hand, place it on the centre spiral of your main seal and turn it counter clockwise to loosen or clockwise to tighten." Kurumi said.
Gaara channelled chakra to the seal on his hand and watched as the lines of the seal glowed blue, signifying the activation of the key. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before placing his hand on the seal before he turned it counter clockwise. His siblings, upon seeing this, tried stopping him, but the motion was too fast, and immediately Gaara had turned his seal about 90 degrees, further loosening the already loose seal.
"Gaara!" Shukaku shouted out from within his mind.
"M-mother?" Gaara stammered out. Hearing this, the Suna trio immediately paled as the ramifications of Gaara calling Shukaku mother again hit them like a speeding truck.
"I told you, I am NOT your mother, nor will I ever be. Your mother was Karura-san, and I am nowhere near good enough to be your mother. Just call me Shukaku." Shukaku said.
"A-alright... Shukaku-san." He replied.
He heard a sigh at the back of his mind at the way he called her. "Well, I guess it can't be helped. If not for the raging monstrosity that was me within your mind, you would grow up to be a polite and nice person. I could see it, even when I am trapped within my own mind." She said.
"No!" Gaara cried out, making the Suna trio who was watching as Gaara seemingly talked to himself jumped in fright. They just cannot grasp the fact that their brother was having quite a civil thought with his bijuu when previously the only thing he talked about with his bijuu was about killing someone and proving his existence.
Scratch that, they didn't expect him to be able to talk to his bijuu without referring her as his mother at all! That seal must've worked wonders if it was capable of making Gaara speak like that.
"No?" Shukaku asked.
"No! You're... You're not a raging monstrosity! A raging monstrosity won't tell me of my mother! Nor will she tell me that my birth mother loved me!" Gaara said as tears once again threatened to flow on his face. Even his siblings were surprised at the emotions that Gaara was capable of projecting now.
"Gaara..."
"That's why I loosened the seal! You... You told me that my mother loved me from the bottom of your heart! I can feel it!" Gaara said again.
"But what if I was lying? What if I was truly corrupted by the power that made me? What if I told you that just to have you be nicer to me?" She may be the clingiest to their father among the nine, but never let it be said that she was not stupid. Following their father in his journey for peace helped with that.
Gaara was silent with his mouth gaping at this statement. Shaking her head quickly, he said, "But you didn't, do you? Everyone could tell that you're saying the truth!"
Gaara felt Shukaku smiling even when he cannot see her. "That's right, Gaara. One's feelings could be obvious and apparent sometimes, but most of the time, a great liar could still express their 'honest' feelings and still lied. Thankfully for you, I am not one of them. Oh, and another thing, you can actually talk to me just by thinking of what you wanted to say to me. Look ahead."
Lifting his head from his seal, he gained a light blush on his face as he saw that his brother and sister was watching him with fear in their eyes at the fact that he was talking loudly with his bijuu. At least he was not doing it in front of everyone. That'll be disastrous. Well, more disastrous than his reputation already was though.
"Sorry." He said to Shukaku.
"Don't worry. Oh, and thanks for loosening the seal. I can actually talk to you even without the seal being loosened, but with it being loosened, I can watch from your sight and feel from your senses at all times. It's quite boring in here, with nothing but the desert. I can even warn you and help break you out of any genjutsu that might be cast on you." She said. "Once again Gaara, thank you for trusting me. I will not let you down." She humbly said. "May we are able to redeem all our sins."
"Me too, for mine." He said.
He stood from his lying position before going straight to his brother and sister who were looking at him with worry. He lifted his arms, causing them to twitch backwards though they tried suppressing it. His arms shot forward, causing both of them to close their eyes in fear, but the only thing they felt were the warm, soft arms of their brother on them.
"Nee-san, nii-san, once again, I'm sorry..." he said as he pulled the two into another hug.
Temari and Kankurou's fears slowly turned into smiles before they hugged him back. "Me too, Gaara." Temari said.
"Yeah, me too." Kankurou said next. "Sorry for everything, lil' bro."
Separating from the hugs quicker than before, Gaara stared Naruto straight into his eyes before saying, "Thank you. For everything." Before bowing down in gratitude.
Sheepishly scratching the back of his head, he said, "Aw, man! No need for that!" before picking Gaara up from his bowing position. "Jinchuurikis need to remain together, right?"
"Speaking of which," Kankurou suddenly interjected. "How did the Kyuubi become your wife?"
"Well, that's a secret." Naruto said. "Only the ones chosen will know."
Kankurou huffed before crossing his arms, though he understood. Everyone had secrets to keep anyway, and how did a bijuu became your wife would be a huge secret anyway.
"Hey!" Temari cried out. "You haven't told us the relation between our brother and the Sage!"
"I told you, didn't I? You'll know about it, much later." Naruto answered without hesitation. "For now, just keep that in mind."
But upon saying that and remembering Kankurou's question, Temari's intelligent mind immediately spun, trying to find the link between the two. "The bijuus are created by the Sage, and somehow he became the husband of a bijuu. But how?! There must be a relation between the two! But there's a huge secret here..." Temari thought.
"Anyway," Hinata said. "Now that we're done, maybe we could go to the living room. This room wasn't exactly made to hold this many people." She suggested.
"Nice idea, Hina-hime." Naruto said. "Let's go." And so, Naruto led the entire group away from the room as they finished their matters in the sealing lab. As Naruto led the party, he felt a chakra signature that was so familiar to him by now. A chakra signature whose owner he knew, and that he knew the reason for his coming.
Reaching the living room, the entire group was surprised as they saw the figure of the Sandaime Hokage sitting in the living room, drinking the remaining juice left on the table. "Old Man! What are you doing here?!" Naruto shouted out towards him.
Hearing Naruto calling him, he placed his cup back on the table before saying, "Hello Naruto." Watching the company that followed behind him, the Hokage said, "And it seems that you're busy."
"Naah!" Kushina said this time. "We're done! So what brings you here, Old Man?" She said cheerfully.
"Nothing." Sarutobi calmly said. "It's just that my ANBUs reported to me that there's an outburst of demonic chakra within Konoha that strangely disappeared. And looking at the fact that your family's the main authority on bijuus, I just think that it is prudent for me to ask you all about it." The Sandaime's eyes went from Kushina to the Suna trio, Sakura and Hinata. "And seeing that desert at the training ground and the fact that Shukaku's jinchuuriki is here, I think I can make sense of the situation now. Though I haven't seen my grandson. I wonder why...? He's with you just now wasn't him?"
"Yeah... About him..." Naruto slowly said.
"Yes?" Sarutobi replied, as calm as ever.
"Well, it's like this..." But before Naruto could say anything, the figure of Kankurou shot out from behind him before he kneeled on all fours right in front of the Sandaime. "I'm sorry!" Kankurou shouted. "Sorry for threatening your grandchild! I was just playing around! Please don't kill me!"
"Is that so?" Sarutobi answered, as calm as ever even as the Uzumaki-Namikazes were holding back a laugh at Kankurou's actions. "Well, what will you do to redeem yourself?"
"I-I-I..." Kankurou stammered out, unable to hold himself against the steely gaze of the so-called God of Shinobi himself, feeling as if he had the weight of a mountain on his back just from that stare. "I'M SORRY! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!"
Unable to hold it any longer, Naruto and Kushina immediately laughed. Their laughter echoed through the house even as Kankurou stared at the floor in confusion at their laughter, not daring to lift his head at all. The laughter just got louder at this sight. Naruto and Kushina were already on the floor, rolling around even as Naruto cracked the floor with his fists hammering the marble in laughter, causing him to get a kick to his head from Kurumi. "Naru-koi, stop that. You're breaking the floor."
"Oh? Woops. Hehe. Sorry." He said upon realising his mistake. But the humour still remained on his face as he stood back up to watch the sweating Kankurou awaiting punishment from the Hokage himself.
Kankurou heard a small chuckle came from in front of him before he felt a pat on his shoulder. "Rise, Kankorou of the Desert." The owner of the hand said. With a trembling body, he lifted his head up only to gaze into the smiling figure of the Sandaime. He was still trembling as he was trying to stand up when Sarutobi said, "I forgive you. My grandson needs a serious reality check sometimes, and you gave him a good scare. Also, he had a Hiraishin seal on him, and there is no way the Uzumaki-Namikazes would leave him alone if he's in trouble."
His tendency of getting into trouble means that Konohamaru really needed the seals on him so that the family could retrieve or back him up any time he went into trouble, so much so that they usually ended up healing him and/or letting him stay for a while at their house. And most of the time his friends got pulled together with whatever things he did. And so, he had no problem letting his grandson around the village. Even so, he understood that he needs a good scare to the life of a ninja or just life in general, and Kankurou had graciously provided that.
"Y-you f-forgave m-me?" Kankurou managed to stammer out.
Still smiling gently, he said, "Yes. I am sure he's safe. As I said, Naruto won't let even a hair from being harmed on grandson if he could help it, and I'm sure that he's taken steps to heal him or save him. Isn't that right?" He said, looking towards Naruto at the last part.
Still huffing from the laugh that he had just now, Naruto drew a deep breath before answering. "Yup. He's fine, just got too close to bijuu youki. You know what that did to someone. He's sleeping in the guest room with his friends."
"Thank you Naruto." Sarutobi said. His tone turned serious as he said, "Now, what's this about bijuu youki?"
"That's going to be a long story. But anyway, the short version is that I fought the Ichibi, defeated her, fixed this dude's," Naruto said, pulling Gaara in front of him, "seal, then Kuru-hime beat her sister, then we removed what made Shukaku crazy as Kuru-hime defeated her next. Then Shukaku became normal, the seal was fixed and here we are now." Naruto spoke.
Sarutobi remained silent for a while before letting out a loud sigh. "I guess that's just par for the course for your family. Well, since there's nothing to worry about, I guess I'll be leaving then. Have a nice day everyone." He said before he stood and left unceremoniously, his Hokage robes fluttering behind him as he walked outside the door of the mansion. But before he fully left the closing door, he turned around and said, "And Naruto, tell Konohamaru and his team to see me later once they wake up. Good day." He said before leaving, this time for real.
Still laughing, Naruto said, "Well! That's done now, and I got a good laugh out of Kankurou!" Kankurou who heard this twitched his eyebrows. Oh, how he wanted to wipe that smug look on his face! But he knew better. This guy beat a bijuu, his wife's somehow the Kyuubi and was capable of punching a man's neck spinning 90 degrees! Messing with him was a bad idea.
Naruto then turned Gaara around and kneeled on the floor in front of him. "Gaara, be good to Shukaku. She's my sister-in-law, and I would like it if she's still fine and not balls-out crazy. Also, the loosening of the seal and her cooperation with you will force you to retrain your skills, so you can come here anytime. Here." Naruto said before handing out Hiraishin kunais to the trio. "You can use that to call me or my daughter any time. Just channel some chakra and toss it somewhere. I'll be there shortly."
Temari was the only one who didn't take the kunai. "What if you tried to kill us with it? We cannot sense you coming, and you can come at any time, any second. Why are you so kind anyway?" she asked.
"If I wanted to kill you, I can do it in a couple thousand times in a variety of ways during the time you're with me. But I didn't. Why? If my method of finding peace involves killing everyone who wronged me, no matter how slight, the world would only have my wives and my daughter. A gift of gratitude works so much better to gain allegiance and friends than brute force don't you think?"
"Finding peace? You must've been crazy. No one can!" She answered back sceptically.
"Maybe." Naruto said, nodding. "Maybe not. We'll just see later. And if you rejected this, Gaara still accepted his."
Temari immediately turned around hearing this, where the only thing she could catch in her eyes was the sight of Gaara pocketing away the kunai he was given. Stomping towards her brother, Temari said out loud. "Gaara! Why are you accepting that from him?! He'll be able to track us anywhere!"
Gaara hesitated for a while before he answered. "He... He's the first that's kind to me no matter how. He helped me, helped Shukaku. He helped us."
"And I am happy to call you a friend." Naruto said with a smile.
"A... friend?" Gaara said. 'Friend' was a very foreign concept for Gaara, considering his life as a jinchuuriki, being shunned by everyone at all times at any moment. Every one of his attempt at making friends failed miserably, everyone thinking that he's a demon in human skin.
"Yes. We jinchuurikis and hanyous most stick together. We must remain united, Gaara. And my kunai will help us. Just call me when you need me. I'll come anytime." Naruto said with a smile.
Temari hesitated, but still took the three pronged Hiraishin kunai before pocketing it in her small weapons pouch. "I hope you won't misuse this."
"I won't. Don't worry." He said. "Anyway, I think it's better for you all to go back to your hotel. I'll send your sensei back to your hotel room later."
And so, the Suna trio left the Uzumaki-Namikaze mansion with both gratitude and fear. Gratitude at returning a family member to their family, and fear for the amount of power that they all so nonchalantly displayed, being able to subdue a bijuu not once, but twice, remaking a jinchuuriki seal on the fly and even healing massive mental trauma cases. They were definitely not one to be trifled with.
As the remaining people watched the backs of the Suna trio disappearing, Kushina turned towards Sakura who was actually still there, due to this being her temporary home for now. "So, Sakura. Let me guess: Kakashi let you guys in the Chuunin Exams."
Sakura snapped out of her semi-trance situation before replying, "Yes! Uh, I mean, yeah, he did. But..." her thoughts were stopped by the sudden realisation that they're going to be entering the exams as well! Her horrifying thoughts from before immediately surfaced which didn't went unnoticed by Kushina.
Smiling, she placed a hand on Sakura's shoulder. "Sakura," she said, her voice filled with gentleness. "Have no fear. Against those of our village, we'll hold back. Don't worry." Sakura let out a sigh of relief at this. "But you'll still lose though. Don't forget to try your best!"
Well, she guessed that that was the best she could get from them. At least that's better than the alternatives. But before she could do anything, Kushina continued. "And since the exam's next week, more training for you! Be happy!" and immediately Sakura gained a horrified look on her face thinking of what she'll go through with the family in terms of training. Yet, she understood that it's her choice. Sighing loudly, she turned around, following the entire family back into their mansion, ready to rest up or to continue training their ass out again.
-WITH THE SUNA TRIO-
As they walked outside the house, Gaara's special sand, the one that he carried within his gourd moved quickly from the desert that was his battlefield just now, crawling straight towards him in a moving carpet of sand. Instinctively Kankurou reached for the bundle behind him as Temari reached her back for her tessen, completely forgetting that it was destroyed in her fear that Gaara went back to being insane and tried to kill them all.
"Shit!" Temari cursed. She looked to where the sand was, and fear assaulted her heart as the moving carpet of sand came at them with surprising speed. Closing her eyes and awaiting her impending death, she was surprised as she heard the grinding of the sands swerved beside her. Opening her eyes, she saw that the sands actively went out of their way to avoid her and Kankurou, something that they both watched in shock before gathering right behind her brother's back.
The sand gathered together before reforming into Gaara's signature gourd behind him as all of his special sand flowed from the impromptu desert straight into the gourd's mouth, like a stream of sand. A while later, all the sand finished gathering and the cork of the gourd also popped out of nowhere to plug the hole. "Nee-san, Nii-san, let's go." He said before he walked towards the gate.
The remaining two, still shocked and in disbelief slowly walked behind Gaara, still couldn't believe the changes that he went through in just a couple of hours. In that short a time, he went from being a homicidally insane jinchuuriki to someone much more stable and well minded than before. Still in shock, both of them silently walked behind him towards their hotel room.
Upon reaching their hotel room in the middle of Konoha, the trio saw that their sensei was already on the bed sleeping, just like he promised. Removing his gourd before placing it on the floor close to the bed, Gaara immediately tried to meditate on the floor, but the cork on his gourd popped out, and sand started flowing from it towards him, much to everyone's surprise.
"What?" Gaara said out loud, so shocked that he was at this. He didn't control his sand that time!
"What?" Both of his siblings said as their heads snapped towards him. "You didn't do that?" they asked at the same time.
Frowning, Gaara answered. "No."
"I did."
"Shukaku-san?" Gaara thought. "Why?"
Gaara heard her mental equivalent of a sigh before she said, "Gaara, just call me Shukaku. Anyway, now that I am no longer crazy, you can sleep now. You don't have to worry about me losing control."
The word was actually so foreign to Gaara's mind that the only thing he could say to that was "How can I sleep? I never did that before."
"Look at your feet." Gaara did so and saw that the sand had created a certain square-shaped patch beside his feet. "Just lie down on it. Your body will handle the rest."
He was about to ask further when his brother suddenly appeared in front of him, both hands on his shoulders before he said, "Gaara, that... actually looked like a futon. Of sand. Maybe... she wanted you to... lie down? Sleep?" Kankurou said, his mind somehow able to connect everything immediately. Maybe what he just saw changed him as well.
"That would be right." Shukaku said. "Gaara, you can just lie down on that sand. I've used your control to create a futon by suspending tiny particles of sand on air. This'll ensure you a nice sleep."
"Shukaku-san said so as well." Gaara said to his brother. Lying down on the futon of sand, Gaara was completely shocked to feel how comfortable it was! Immediately, his years of insomnia caught up to him and he fell asleep near instantly, his sleep dreamless from his sheer tiredness.
Temari was watching all this in awe. Power walking straight to Kankurou, she said, "Kankurou! Explain!"
Holding his hand up in surrender, he said with fear in his voice. "Okay! Geez. Anyway, we both knew that Gaara never slept a wink right? And if it was true that Shukaku was a good girl, and from what we could see, she was, then it's most possible that she just wanted him to sleep wouldn't her?"
Temari was surprised. Her brother caught that detail faster than she did! "But how are you so confident? And how would you explain the sand at their mansion just now?"
"First off," Kankurou began his explanation. "She seemed to be genuinely kind after that weird guy got separated from her. So, it's not too far a stretch. The second one, Gaara controlled that sand. It's infused with his chakra remember? He's better at controlling that sand than others, so he used it to reform his gourd."
Temari backed away considering that what he said was quite true. Looking at Gaara's calm, sleeping face, she gained a smile on hers as well. "He's so calm when he's sleeping."
"Right." Kankurou said as they both watched their little brother sleeping without a sound on his sand futon.
He didn't wake up for 5 days.
-WITH THE HOKAGE-
Entering his office, Sarutobi saw that Jiraiya was there, looking out the office through the window at the back, his arms behind his back. "How's the view?" he asked as he entered the office, his robes flowing behind him.
"Very nice. Extremely so. Was this what Minato saw every day while he was alive?" he replied.
"Possibly." Hiruzen replied. "So? Want to take the hat?" he said. He'd been asking Jiraiya if he'd take his hat ever since he returned. He's too old now, and even if Naruto managed to somehow reverse his age, he still wanted his retirement, having taken the Hokage seat for the longest of time now. He had a grandson to play with and potentially some more.
Jiraiya laughed boisterously at Hiruzen's offer. "No need, old man! I'm too free-spirited to be chained behind a table for good!"
Hiruzen joined the laugh with his own chuckle as he walked beside Jiraiya to look over his beloved village. Both their laughter stopped as they both stared at the village. "Jiraiya," Sandaime said after a while. "After this Chuunin Exam, I'm going to retire." He said. "I've became Hokage for too long, and an old man like me needs his rest." He didn't actually, but he wanted to drive the point to Jiraiya.
"Well, then I sure as hell won't take the job. Get someone else." He said, still fixed on his opinion.
"I already had someone in my mind." Sarutobi said.
Now this caught Jiraiya's interest. To him, there weren't many Hokage candidates within the village right now. Some had the mind, some had the strength, but none had both. Being a Hokage needs both mental and physical strength, and he sure as hell didn't have the mental strength for it.
Sarutobi smiled, opened his mouth and spoke the name of his candidate.
To say Jiraiya was surprised was an understatement. The candidate was good. Very good. A really good choice in fact, having both the power and the mental fortitude to sit on the job. But then... "How will you convince the person? It isn't going to be easy, you know."
"I know." He answered. Turning around to grab a smoke from his favourite pipe, he continued after a while. "But there's no one better, would there?" he said before he lighted the scented tobacco he stuffed into his pipe using a minor Katon jutsu.
Jiraiya chuckled before answering. "There is, but comparing the others, I'd vote for your choice."
Blowing a cloud of smoke, the Hokage replied. "True. I also feel that there's no one else that will be more suited for the job. That person will make a huge impact, both inside Konoha and outside, I'm sure." He said with a smile.
And so, both of them looked outside the window, looking at the magnificent sight of their beloved village as the light of the sun bathed it in all it's amazing splendour, their minds spinning of the potential effects having Sarutobi's candidate became Hokage will do to their precious village...
-CHAPTER END-
Yes, that's a tactical nuke jutsu Naruto just used. Please take your complaints towards the nearest trash bin and stuff it in there.