Chapter 15 – The Two Vessels: Naruto vs. Gaara

A/N # 1: The poll that I posted at the time I wrote Chapter 13 is still open so please vote quickly; it will close as soon as I post the first chapter in which the "certain group of shinobi" make their first appearance.

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[Chunin Exams Stadium, Konohagakure]

Current Time….

Compared to Naruto's performance the other two fights were not viewed with as much enthusiasm on the part of the spectators; this was due to the fact that the other finalists did not have as much to offer as the blonde-haired ninja, insofar as skill is concerned, as well as the fact that everyone wanted to see the fight that most of them had come to see. Though it was not offical until today almost everyone assumed, correctly, that the first match of second round of the Chunin Exam Finals would be between Naruto and his fellow Jinchuriki, Gaara; many of the foreign lords and daimyos had, in fact, come to Konoha specifically to watch this much-anticipated slugfest.

After both Shino and Sasuke won their fights, beating Kankuro and Temari respectively, Genma announced that there would be a 30-minute interim before the next round. Naruto was staring into the ether when Shino decided to ask him something.

"Have you noticed that neither Sakura nor Sasuke have returned yet?" the member of Team 8 asked to which Naruto nodded; Sakura had gone somewhere after Sasuke's fight with Temar ended and, after 25 minutes, had still not returned. This wouldn't have been as big of an issue if it wasn't for the fact that Sakura's teammates had realized that Gaara had also gone somewhere; after Gaara returned, 10 minutes after he left, Naruto had asked Sasuke to go see where Sakura had gone to, suspecting that comething was wrong. If anything had happened to her Sasuke was to launch his Fireball Jutsu into the sky to warn Naruto; as the interim period ended, however, Sasuke was, apparently, still looking for the kunoichi.

Naruto, knowing that his fight with Gaara was about to begin, Flash Stepped to his fracciones' seats and whispered something into their ears before he Flash Stepped to the stadium floor. Gaara, meanwhile, looked at his opponent with a maniacal grin that seethed of killer intent and sheer bloodlust before he walked down to the floor. After Gaara finally got to the fighting area he stood in front of Naruto, looking at him eye-to-eye as the ninja unsheathed his zanpakuto yet again. Genma almost couldn't start the match amidst the roar of the crowd.

"Ready, begin!" he said; the sand that Gaara carried was suddenly unleashed upon Naruto, who simply Flash Stepped several yards away. Naruto then saw that his opponent place his hands on his head while cringing in pain.

"Don't get so mad...Mother," Gaara said, seemingly to himself, unnerving his siblings who were watching the fight; they had only received minor wounds in their matches and had returned to the finalist's viewing area.

"Damn it, the conversation has already started," Kankuro said to Temari; she nodded in reply.

"We shouldn't be surprised that Gaara would find him that much an opponent; as far as I'm concerned Gaara's the one in actual danger in this battle," Temari reasoned; no matter what she, or Kankuro, tried they could never forget their encounter with Naruto in the Forest of Death over a month back.

While his sibilings considered the possibility of him losing control Gaara was still in the middle of his "conversation".

"I know that I fed you some bad blood all this time. I'm sorry; don't worry, though, because this time... it will be delicious," Gaara claimed to whomever this "Mother" being was; Naruto, who was well aware of whom Gaara was refering to, decided to finally confront the elephant in the room, so to speak.

"You shouldn't listen to Shukaku like that, Gaara; he'll only end up consuming your own being," Naruto warned his fellow Jinchuriki. This shocked Gaara enough to snap him out of his psychotic ramblings.

"So know about him, do you?" the Sand ninja asked to which his opponent nodded.

"Then how could you possibly understand me and what I have been through, Uzumaki?!" Gaara roared; despite being similar to the question that provoked him during his fight with Neji, however, Naruto was not enraged by it and, in fact, the look in eyes had a flicker of sadness in them.

"You know the answer to that, Gaara; you saw it in my fight with the Hyuga," Naruto replied very matter-of-factly; Gaara realized what Naruto was talking about, but still refused to listen to his fellow Jinchuriki.

"All the more reason to kill you; that is how I confirm my exist. Because I must love only myself; that is what decides who is the strongest!" Gaara ranted, expecting Naruto to get intimidated by "his" bloodlust; what Naruto did next, however, surprised Gaara. The blonde ninja gave an angry glare, not towards Gaara but towards his siblings. Whle the other spectators didn't understand the reason behind the direction of that glare the two Sand Shinobi did, if the fact that they both lowered their heads in apparent shame was anything to go by; Naruto, without using words, was saying "you two, and your entire village for that matter, should be ashamed of yourselves for turning your own brother into what he is now".

Naruto, while not looking at his opponent, did notice a large wave of sand coming at him; after easily dodging Gaara's attack Naruto, eyeing the Sand ninja, prepared to use a Hado spell when something caught his, and everyone else's, eye.

It was a giant fireball that had been launched into the sky, several miles outside of Konoha; Naruto was, naturally, the only one who understood what it meant. Naruto gripped his blade as if he was going to slash at something.

"Kurama, Hitotsume: Nadegiri," Naruto said; before anyone realized what had happened Naruto had moved right behind Gaara and sheathed his blade. Everyone in the stands then looked on in shock as Gaara's body split in two; the spectators were further bewildered when the two halves turned to sand and floated away into the wind.

"It's as I feared," Naruto thought to himself before he turned to Genma, who looked as though he hadn't been fazed by what was happening, and whispered something into his ear. The exam proctor nodded in reply to what Naruto had said before the blond ninja flash stepped to the direction from where the fireball had come from.

The spectators, not knowing what was going on, were getting restless as Genma announced that the match would be delayed due to unfortunate circumsatnces; the proctor then appeared before the Third Hokage, Jiraiya, Kakashi, Jango, Tiraran, and Gaara's squad leader, a Sand Village jonin named Baki, to discuss the current situation...

[Several Miles Outside of Konoha]

Meanwhile...

Sasuke was in the worst situation in his young life after the night of his clan's massacre; Gaara, as Naruto suspected, had attacked Sakura and knocked her unconcious before he pinned her to a tree with his sand. The Sand Jinchuriki intended to have Naruto come to where he was so that he could kill the Leaf ninja without any interference from the other Lead ninja. Sasuke, however, had found Gaara first after tracking down Sakura to her, and Gaara's, current location within a massive forest; the Uchiha was now fighting a losing battle against Gaara who, after becoming enraged that he was not facing someone worthy of "his" desire to kill, had partially transformed into Shukaku. The gourd on Gaara's back had slowly broken down and had covered his right arm, and then the right side of his face; Gaara's face had become distorted and was beginning to look more like Shukaku's, with yellow eyes and markings around those eyes. Gaara even grew a crude tail, which had sprouted from the broken gourd; though it was not Shukaku's true tail it could still, to a smaller extent, be used in the same manner. The change in Gaara's appearance also an increase in his power as Sasuke was finding out the hard way.

"What do I do, dammit!? I'm running out of options," Sasuke thought to himself. The Uchiha prodigy had used up three-quarters of his chakra trying to take the Jinchuriki down with the Chidori, which he had learned from Kakashi in the month before the Finals; because of Gaara's sand, however, neither of the two Chidoris Sasuke had used had done anything more the to provoke his opponent and, as of now, two Chidoris per day was his absolute limit. The only reason that Sasuke was still alive was because of his Sharingan, which already had three tomoes. The only thing Sasuke could do now against the rampaging Gaara was to stall him long enough for Naruto to arrive as the Uchiha willing to admit, to himself anyways, that his teammate was the only one who could stop this guy.

Gaara, who had had enough of Sasuke's dodging, decided to place the Uchiha into a trap; he first shot part of his sand into the air before transforming into a drill-like sand spear and launching it at, to Sasuke's horror, at the pinned down Sakura.

"What're going to do now, Uchiha? If you don't stop this attack your teammate dies!" Gaara roared ecstatically; the Jinchuriki was certain that Sasuke, with his desire for revenge, would flee for his life even though he wouldn't be able to escape either way. The Sand ninja was suprised, therefore, when Sasuke did something that was, to put lightly, very drastic in nature.

The sand spear did draw blood... Sasuke's blood, to be more precise, as he got in the path of the attack with only a few feet seperating the spear from its intended target; the spear had lodged itself in Sasuke's lower right abdomen, meaning that the most critcal organs were not destroyed. The pain was still excrutiating, however, and neither the blood loss nor Gaara's psychotic rantings made it any better.

"Now do see how weak you have become, Uchiha? This is because you have been losing the hatred that was welling within you; your strength will never compare to mine. Your little sacrifice is only delaying the inevitable, in any case, as the girl will die soon enough!" Gaara ranted as the spear that had impaled Sasuke dissapated; after Sasuke fell to his knees, clutching his wound with his left hand, Gaara lunged at the Uchiha, fully intending to kill him right there on the spot.

"Move, dammit, move,"Sasuke said to himself as the memories of his time with Team 7, as well as those of his family before the massacre, swirled through his mind.

"If I can't save Sakura's life, how will I be able to face my parents ever again?" Sasuke thought to himself; in all the time, before Naruto's question,that Sasuke had been preparing to avenge his clan he had actually forgotten about the clan itself, only remembering that he had lost them that fateful night. Despite the fact that he still has not decided whether whether he should, or shouldn't, avenge his clan he did know that, for now, he couldn't live with himself if he couldn't protect his teammate.

"I can't...I won't...I WON'T LOSE TO YOU, GAARA!" Sasuke roared; as Sasuke gave the loudest war cry in the history of the Shinobi World, which was coupled with his use of his remaining chakra, something happened to him.

Maybe it was his newfound resolve to protect his friend, the memories of his family, his fear of losing someone close to him yet again, or a combination of any of these sentiments but, whatever the reason was, Sasuke's Sharingan had changed, having a black background with three red ellipses in the center. The moment this occured Gaara's right arm was, to his complete surprise, suddenly enveloped by a black flames; though the flames, apparently, could not burn through the sand that had enveloped Gaara's arm it shocked the Jinchuriki enough to try to put them out, though that soon proved to be futile as the flames just kept burning. As Gaara kept trying to dispel the flames Sasuke, who managed to get to his feet (Gaara had stopped his attack on the Uchiha), was struggling to figure out what just happened when, to his relief, he heard a voice of someone that he had been waiting for this whole time.

"Getsuga Tenshō!" the voice roared as a cresent-shaped wave of Reiryoku hurdled towards Gaara, smaking the right side of the right side of the Sand Jinchuriki's body; the attack sent Gaara flying fast enough for the black flames to come off, though this didn't mean his situation had improved.

Sasuke's view of the Sand ninja's predicament was suddenly obscured when Naruto, who had seen Sasuke's fireball a few moments earlier, appeared in front of him; the blonde-haired ninja was facing Gaara#

"Bakudo # 79. Kuyō Shibari," Naruto said; eight black holes with purple outlines, each of them emitng Reiryoku, suddenly surrounded Gaara while a ninth black hole manifested itself in the center of Gaara's chest. Gaara was, like in his encounter with Naruto in the Forest of Death, completely immobilized by the Kido as Naruto turned to check on his teammates. Naruto was suprised that Sasuke's eyes had a new design; thanks to what he had learned in both Las Noches and the scrolls in his dad's estate, however, he already knew what that technique was.

"I'm actually impressed, if only slightly, for once, Sasuke; to have already awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan at this point is something that, supposedly, has never happened before," Naruto complimented (A/N: I'll will be using an abbreviation, MS, of the dojutsu when I write about it outside of any dialogue). As the Namikaze-Uzumaki clansman healed Sasuke and Sakura, whom he had freed from Gaara's sand, he warned Sasuke that while the Amaterasu, the MS jutsu that Sasuke had just used on Gaara, was powerful he should use it, along with any other MS jutsu he might awaken, sparingly if he didn't want to go blind.

"I'm a Uchiha so I already learned about the risks, Naruto; besides I didn't willfully use that jutsu," Sasuke explained. Naruto, having finished his healing of the unconcious Sakura, nodded in reply.

"Sasuke, I want you to take Sakura with you to Konoha so that the medics can treat you for any remaining injuries, since I don't have enough time to treat them all myself; I also want you to tell the Old Man that I don't want any interference in this battle," Naruto requested. Naruto was rather surprised to see that Sasuke actually nodded in understanding and proceded to do what Naruto had asked of him; though the Uchiha did not want to leave his teammate behind he knew that, with his chakra drained and his inexperience with the MS, there was nothing he could do to help his teammate.

After Sasuke left, with his incapacitated kunoichi teammate in tow, Naruto waited until he sensed that they had reached Konoha; when they did he released Gaara from the Kido that he had used to immobilize him. Despite the terrible things that Gaara had done until then Naruto, knowing all too well the pain that Gaara had gone, and still was going, through due to his life as a Jinchuriki, was determined, more so then ever before, to save his fellow Jinchuriki from the darkness in his heart; Naruto realized, however, that his actions in this battle would be only thing that would get his message to reach Gaara's heart.

As Naruto prepared to release Kurama, Gaara, enraged at the fact that Naruto was able to bind him yet again, prepared to use Shukaku's full power. At this point Naruto heard Kurama's voice speak out to him.

"Are you sure you want to do this Naruto? You know you don't even need to release me in order to defeat Shukaku," Kurama reminded his Jinchuriki; the truth was that Naruto could have simply used a mid to high-level Hado or one of his Hollow attacks to defeat his opponent and Kurama had expected his friend to use one of those methods. Naruto prefered to not reveal his hand, so to speak, in a battle any more than he had to; even if Naruto did enjoy a good fight he did not like to use excess force and would refrained from doing so unless there was a good reason to do otherwise.

"If I just wanted to defeat him then I wouldn't be using this; if I'm to reach Gaara, however, I need to use my full power in order to get my message across," Naruto replied; Kurama simply smirked, glad to hear that Naruto did, as he had told his tailed beast back at Las Noches a few days before his return to the Shinobi World, truly want to help the other Jinchuriki and decided not to press the questions any further as Naruto got into his release stance.

As this was going on Gaara, determined to go all out against Naruto, used his sand to complete the full transformation into the Shukaku, who had the appearance of a sand-brown colored tanuki with black markings all across his body that was the size of the Hokage Monument. Gaara's upper body emerged from the top of Shukaku's head as Naruto "flew" until he reached eye level with his fellow Jinchuriki.

"Now show me your full power so that I can unleash the power of the Shukaku and grind your power into dust!" he yelled, unaware that Naruto had planned to do that anyways.

Naruto took a deep breath to clear his mind, which he always did whenever he was going to release Kurama, before he stated his zanpakuto's release command.

"Devastate, Kurama: Furu Henkan - Tsui Dan (A/N: The last part roughly translates to "Full Transformation - Final Stage)" Naruto said as his blade, minus the red wrappings, disintegrated...

Next Time - On Opposite Ends: Shukaku and Kurama Clash!

A/N # 2: I know some readers will take it this way so I'll say it right now, I'm not bashing Gaara in any sense; I'm just trying, to the best of my ability, give an accurate portrayal.

A/N # 3: Since I also know that some of you may get confused by the differnences in Naruto's release command the part of the command that comes after "Devastate, Kurama" depends on which paticular release form Naruto is use in any given battle. I just want to avoid confusing of you readers.

A/N # 4: If this chapter is not as good as the previous three then I apologize greatly for disappointing you readers out there; I've have a small cold right now so that might be effecting my ability to write.