The full moon cast a dim light over the vast dunes of the desert.
Through his bedroom window, he stared longingly at them. Restless as always, Gaara couldn't sleep. His eyes were enveloped by dark circles, each one a testament to the weeks on end without rest.
It would have driven him crazy if it weren't for his siblings. Normally, Temari and Kankuro were with him through the nights to keep him occupied. In a weird way, despite the insomnia, he enjoyed spending the night with his siblings. They offered their companionship and were the only people since Yashamaru to regard him with any sort of love.
The last two weeks had been rough on him. His brother and sister had mysteriously ceased visiting him. He hadn't gotten to see them once. Spending the entire day and night alone was torture. Without the excitement and laughs that Temari and Kankuro provided, Gaara began to slip away into fits of unconsciousness.
It was in these moments that the Demon would visit him, plaguing his mind with nightmares and whispering atrocities into his ear. When Gaara wasn't awake, that was when the Demon would exert its will. He'd have visceral nightmares of that thingusing his own body, his own hands, to mutilate his brother and sister. The wave of panic that followed was always too much to bear.
No, Gaara had to stay awake on his own now. Keeping Temari and Kankuro safe from Shukaku steeled his resolve to keep his heavy eyes wide open.
So Gaara occupied his mind with fanciful tales of what was beyond the rolling sand dunes that consumed his horizon. They were the only comforting thoughts he could conjure after two weeks of solitude and loneliness.
With his chin resting in his palm, Gaara leaned on the windowsill and watched the endless desert outside grow darker and darker. Before long, the grains had consumed the moon and it was now twice as dark.
"Gaara," a feminine voice called from the darkness.
His eyes snapped open. To his surprise, it was Temari who had spoken. Flanked closely behind her was Kankuro, his familiar purple face paint glistened in the lantern light. Both wore pajamas that warded off the cold air of the desert night.
Gaara's tired eyes flung open as if he wasn't even tired. "What are you two doing here?" Gaara perked up. After two long weeks, he'd all but given up on seeing them again.
"Neither of us could sleep so we thought we'd hang out with you," Kankuro explained, examining Gaara's trusty gourd that lay against the wall.
"Yeah, it must be lonely in here on your own," Temari chimed in, "You only get to leave your room when it's time for Father to train you."
"Yeah, it's been rough being here all on my own, but I'm glad to finally see you guys after so long," Gaara offered an endearing smile.
Temari approached him at the windowsill. "Have you been able to stay awake?"
"It's been hard but I've managed, yeah." Gaara turned away from the window and towards his siblings. A question danced on his tongue but he held his mouth shut out of fear of upsetting his siblings.
"Why the long face?" Kankuro asked half-jokingly as he sat on Gaara's bed.
Gaara looked at his two siblings and contemplated how to put his thoughts into words. "It's just…" Gaara looked down at the floor, dejected, "I don't understand why neither of you have come to see me in so long…"
He met their eyes and gathered that neither Temari nor Kankuro seemed to care about the sadness he expressed.
He frowned and his chest tightened with worry. "Did Father not allow you guys to come visit me?"
"No," Kankuro replied coldly.
"Well then why?" Gaara inquired.
Kankuro shared a glance with Temari who crossed her arms. "It's because we secretly despise you, Gaara," the blonde revealed bluntly.
"Huh–?" Gaara totally froze in bewilderment.
"We could've visited at any time, but refused to because we both hate you," Kankuro explained.
His heart sank into his stomach. The lump in his throat wouldn't permit him to speak. Gaara forced it down. "So then why did you always come here to spend time with me? We had so much fun."
"Father's orders," Temari revealed with an indignant scowl.
"So… you really do hate me…?" Gaara asked meekly.
"Yes," Kankuro replied with a harsh edge to his voice.
"You're the reason Mother died," Temari hissed with a bone-chilling tone.
Gaara fell onto his hands and knees. He gasped for air. Cold beads of sweat dripped down his nose onto the carpeted floor. He felt truly betrayed. He gripped the left side of his chest with his right hand as the panic ravaged his nerves. The old familiar pain in his heart had set in. His head throbbed and his chest pounded.
'This feeling…'
Before he realized it, he was yanked into the air and off his hands and knees. A tight grip restricted his arms from moving.
"What the–?!" Gaara blurted in panic.
"Stay still," his brother said in his ear behind him, "This'll be quick."
"What are you doing?!" Gaara cried.
Temari reached into her pajama sleeve and retrieved a hidden kunai that glistened in the lamplight. She then slowly approached Gaara.
"We're going to kill you," Temari explained bluntly.
"That can't be true! Why?! Temari, Kankuro!" Gaara cried.
"Father's orders, Gaara," Kankuro said into his frightened brother's ear.
Gaara didn't reply. He went totally still. At that moment he could feel the crack in his heart tear it in two. Tears welled up in his dark, bloodshot eyes, and rolled down his cheeks.
'Just like Yashamaru,' the redhead realized. 'Betrayed like then.'
The sharp tip of Temari's kunai breached Gaara's skin.
"Just kill them," a loud, booming voice echoed in Gaara's mind.
'The One-Tail–!'
Gaara was transported before the caged beast in the blink of an eye, paralyzed by its psychotic, yellow-eyed stare.
"I–I can't kill them," Gaara would never hurt his brother and sister. He valued them above everything.
"Aren't you tired of being hated? Being betrayed? It can all be stopped if you just kill them," the Demon Tanuki argued.
"But I love them!" Gaara wailed.
"They don't love you. They never did," The Ichibi replied coldly as it paced the inside of its giant prison.
"I can't just kill them like this… It's wrong!" Gaara defended.
"They are trying to murder you. Your family wants you dead. Everyone wants you dead," the Sand Tanuki said as it grasped the rickety bars of its cage, causing them to rattle. "Everyone hates you, Gaara."
Gaara was speechless.
The Tanuki leaned forward with its imposing mountain-sized body. "You hate being betrayed. Kill them before they kill you. They've been wanting to do this from the start. Smiling and laughing with you while they plotted how to kill their little brother."
The Demon was right. He hated this feeling. This hurt and anguish. It sat on his chest and got heavier and heavier. Now it was smothering. No, Gaara wouldn't take this. His own siblings are about to murder him. This isn't love.
'I hate this,' he thought with a grimace.
He was overwhelmed with a plethora of emotions. Hate, anger, sadness, heartbreak, confusion. It was all so infuriating.
Gaara's tearful eyes flickered yellow like the Beast's. He saw his gourd perched against the wall behind Temari. All he could see before him was red.
"I won't be killed!" Gaara said with a deeply hateful scowl.
The gourd fell over on the floor as golden sand poured out of it and swarmed around the room like a violent sandstorm. It slashed and ground against the walls and chipped the paint and wood.
Temari drew her arm back to prepare a fatal slash for Gaara's throat.
"You won't do this!" he exclaimed.
The gold sand fell to the ground with a deafening crash that caused tremors throughout the entire room. It moved on Temari like a wave of destruction. The floorboards underneath were stripped and splintered as the gold sand swallowed Temari's legs and drug her into the sea of chaos.
"Temari!" Kankuro cried out.
"Sand Coffin Jutsu!" Gaara exclaimed as he squeezed his fist into a tight ball.
The sounds of Temari's bones being ground together by the gold dust reverberated off the walls. Her blood and organs were reduced to red paste that splattered throughout the room in all directions which coated Gaara and Kankuro's faces.
The sea of gold fell lifelessly to the ground. Kankuro released Gaara from his grip. Gaara turned to face him. He expected an immediate attack and prepared a swath ofgolden tendrils to defend. But when he whirled his head around, all he saw was Kankuro's teeth gritting in total fear.
"Your eyes–! You're a monster!" Kankuro exclaimed.
Gaara's eyes flung open. His heart pounded in his chest. His breath was uncontrollable. The cold sweat stained the window seal where his head rested.
He had dozed off again.
'I have to get out of here and see them again. I can't keep doing this alone,' he thought.
His hand grasped the knob to open the doorway. For a moment, he froze to consider his gourd and if he should bring it with him.
'I should be alright,' he surmised before he opened the door and exited his room.
Gaara discreetly traversed the dark hallway. His breaths were slow and hollow as he approached Temari's bedroom door.
He placed his ear to the cold wood surface. It was silent. She was asleep. Gaara's situation was desperate, however, and so he had little qualms about disturbing his sister's rest.
His hand reached for the doorknob. The tips of his fingers barely graced it before he was interrupted.
"You are not supposed to be out this late, Young Lord," a firm voice whispered into his ear from behind him.
"Eh?" Gaara whirled around to see one of his father's anbu knelt obediently before him. His identity was hidden behind a signature oni mask.
"Oh, I just wanted to see Temari and Kankuro since I can't sleep," Gaara explained.
"Unfortunately, they have both been badly injured and Lord Rasa does not want you getting near them," the anbu informed Gaara.
Gaara stiffened with concern. "Well, how bad is it?" he beckoned.
"They haven't been able to leave their beds, Young Lord."
'It's got to be really rough on them,' Gaara thought.
"I have to see them. Maybe I can make them feel better. They need a visitor to cheer them up," Gaara said.
"I can't let you do that, Lord Gaara," the anbu stated.
"Well, I'm going to see them anyway," Gaara declared defiantly.
He turned to face the door to Temari's room again. His hand grasped the handle briefly before he was abruptly stopped. Gaara was torn away from the bedroom door and pulled off the ground.
"Hey!" Gaara cried loudly. "Put me down!"
The anbu tightly constrained Gaara underneath his arms which flailed and lashed in protest.
"You can't go in there," the anbu said bluntly.
"I want to see them!" Gaara wailed.
He tried to fight the anbu's grasp but it was too great. His squirms and kicks were simply no match. The anbu maintained his control as he started to march down the hallway.
"Let me go!" Gaara cried.
It was to no avail. By the time Gaara was ready to give up his escape, he had realized the anbu had taken him to his father's private study.
Gaara went still as the anbu guard by the entrance opened the door to let his fellow anbu inside. The bright light from within the quiet room poured out into the dim hallway.
'Why is he bringing me here?' Gaara questioned.
The anbu marched into the study speckled with as much lavish decor as books. Paintings, trophies, treasures, and more were sprawled throughout his father's personal study.
Gaara was suspended over the ground directly before his father's desk who sat firmly behind it. The anbu gently sat him on the ground and knelt before the Kazekage.
"Lord Rasa," the anbu began softly and plainly, "I caught Lord Gaara attempting to enter Lady Temari's room."
Rasa folded his hands over the desk and gave Gaara a cold stare.
"Good work, Ōtakemaru," Rasa commended plainly.
"Why can't I see Temari and Kankuro?" Gaara inquired while rubbing the inside of his sore armpits for relief.
"Because they are injured," Rasa explained.
"I can cheer them up then. Make them happier," Gaara offered.
"No you can't," Rasa dejected sternly.
"Why not?" Gaara pleaded.
"Because I said so. I am your father," Rasa sternly insisted.
"So you are not concerned for Temari or Kankuro's happiness?" Gaara spat, his annoyed guise plain.
"I do care about their happiness which is why I won't allow you to see them. I can't trust you. You'd end up killing them," Rasa's words pierced Gaara's heart like knives. For him, that remark was entirely too far.
"You know that isn't true, Father. You're trying to turn them against me like Yashamaru," Gaara declared with an infuriated scowl. His bloodshot seafoam eyes focused on his father with disdain.
"Every time you fall asleep you're a threat. I've had to stop you more times than I can count from killing either of your siblings. Who do you think injured them?" Rasa revealed with a stern tone.
Gaara balled his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"You lie. I'd never do that. You're purposely distancing them from me for another reason," Gaara protested sternly.
"Ōtakemaru," Rasa beckoned the anbu who stood behind Gaara, "Have you seen me stop Gaara from killing his siblings in his sleep?"
"Yes, Lord Kazekage," the anbu affirmed.
Rasa's antagonistic stare never left Gaara's face.
Gaara's expression flooded with confusion at the anbu's confirmation. 'Did he tell the truth? Have I really been that evil?'
"They are safer without you around them, Gaara. Stop loving them. It will only cause harm if you end up killing them," Rasa coldly told his youngest son.
Gaara couldn't take this. He fell to his hands and knees. "This can't be!" He cried.
His breath was erratic. Gaara's panic was back. He latched onto his chest from the sharp and chilling pain that plagued his heart.
"Gaara?" A familiar voice called him from the entrance to his Father's study.
His dark eyes were swarmed by tears, he followed the voice to the doorway. "Temari? Kankuro?"
Both siblings stood sheepishly behind the door with concerned auras about them.
"Are you alright?" Temari asked with seemingly genuine worry. "I heard you screaming outside my bedroom and woke Kankuro up so we could check on you but you weren't in your room so I figured–"
"You aren't injured?" Gaara interrupted meekly as he sat on his knees, the tears stained his cheeks.
Kankuro offered Temari a concerned glance. "Neither of us are injured. We were told you were injured," he revealed.
"No. No, I'm not hurt," Gaara said distantly.
They both stepped into the study and approached Gaara. He maintained sad stares with them. Kankuro and Temari took him by the arms and helped him to his feet.
"Are you alright? Why are you crying?" Temari beckoned.
Gaara ignored her. He turned his attention to his father who observed the interaction entirely unphased from behind his desk with his hands still folded together.
Gaara's attention was snatched from him when Temari grabbed him by the shoulders.
"What's going on, Gaara?"
Gaara gently grabbed her forearms and removed her grip on his shoulders as he stepped away from his siblings with a distraught expression.
'Their worry feels so real,' he thought. "Have I ever tried to kill either of you?" Gaara asked softly.
Both siblings were visibly confused. "What? No way!" Kankuro exclaimed.
"Why would you even ask that?" Temari inquired with concern.
Gaara heard what he needed to. It all made sense now. The confusion washed away, replaced by realization.A cold, dreadful, nasty realization.
Gaara looked back to his father again. His demeanor hadn't changed at all. Still stern. Still unphased. He was still unchanged even after Gaara figured him out.
Gaara's face was overcome with a searing hot and unforgiving anger as he stared straight through his father. "You lied to me," Gaara hissed through clenched teeth.
"I did," Rasa replied with little care.
"You told me that I tried to kill them," Gaara said.
"Correct," Rasa confidently reaffirmed.
"You continue to try and ruin everything I love," Gaara bared his teeth in hatred.
"Something like you shouldn't love anything. It's dangerous," Rasa spoke down to his son matter-of-factly.
Gaara had now reached his breaking point. His mind began to shatter under the infuriating pressure. He wiped the tears from his eyes and they changed to a focused yellow just like the Demon's.
Gaara's chakra emanated from him with a powerful intensity. Gusts blew around everyone's hair and kicked up loose papers into the room. The storm shutters on the Kazekage's study windows blew open.
The fact that Rasa still remained unchanged fueled his rage even more. His chakra changed into a fiery red. He turned to the door and held his hand out to the hallway. Every muscle in his body flared with intensity.
A pounding racket was heard crashing through the walls. His gourd soared into the study, suspended in the air, he calmly placed it on his back as the gold sand inside already began to pour into the room.
"Your Magnet Style is considerably more powerful when you're like this," Rasa said as he stood from his chair and similarly called his gourd to him.
"I'll kill you!" Gaara's roar shook the room.
The golden dust that wisped around the room quickly consolidated into sharp spikes. With an intense wave of Gaara's hand, the spikes surrounding Rasa were flung toward him at incredible speeds.
Temari and Kankuro dropped to the floor barely avoiding the spikes of gold. The projectiles sliced through the walls, door, books, and scrolls like a kunai through rice paper. Parchment flew wildly throughout the study and windows were pelted with holes.
Gaara's attack seemed to hit everything… everything but his father who appeared behind him with a stern, but unconcerned expression.
'So fast!' he thought.
Gaara dragged his arm through the air, commanding a massive wave of gold that consumed everything in its path.
Rasa merely stepped forward into a low stance. His fist balled at his side as he launched a devastating uppercut at his son's stomach.
Gaara couldn't block it, he didn't try to, his natural sand shield was going to stop it. But when the sand shield met Rasa's fist it provided little resistance. His father's fistcrashed through Gaara's defense effortlessly and connected with his gut.
He could hear his own back pop and crack as his father's attack distorted his torso. Blood and spit flew out of his mouth. All the air in his lungs was forced out and his eyes rolled back until his irises weren't visable.
He was flung through the study like a stone, slamming through his father's desk and smashing into the wall which only barely held together under the pressure.
Pained grunts and gasps were the only initial signs of life. He started to pick himself up with haste. A bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. 'I can't take many hits like that…!'
Before he could make it back to his feet Rasa descended upon him from the air and drove his foot into his son's abdomen. Gaara feared being torn in two while being kicked through the wall and into the cold desert. Rasa pushed him into the ground below. The earth gave way beneath this power and formed a large crater beneath them. Gaara winced in pain and gasped for air but his father refused to remove his foot from his stomach. Rasa looked down at him with a judgemental gaze.
"You're not going to kill me with that kind of power," Rasa taunted his flattened son. Rasa then stomped on Gaara's face for further emphasis on his point.
Gaara couldn't take it. Such an infuriating and evil person – his father deserved to die. But even now he couldn't touch him. The struggle on his face was swiftly replaced with a pure rage that burned like hellfire.
He wrapped his hand around his father's planted foot and gripped it tightly. "I hate you!" The disdain in his voice was visceral. He focused on that hatred so intently. All he wanted was to bury his father out here in the desert. He felt his muscles tense up as his chakra ignited around him with a red-hot hue.
His newfound strength allowed him to slowly lift his father's heavy leg from his abdomen. The heat from his chakra began to scorch the sand beneath him and white smoke billowed into the air.
Rasa leapt out of the crater and created distance from his raging son. Gaara sluggishly got up to his feet, swaying on his shaking legs. The chakra around him grew more intense from his hands all the way around his person, creating a deadly, thick aura of pure power. Out of the chakra cloak, a single tail began to sprout from his backend. It swayed back and forth with intensity, matching his agitated emotions.
The dark circles around his eyes grew twice as thick, resembling the beast inside him, and his fingernails grew into gnarled, sharp claws. He heaved heavy breaths from the center of the crater as the hate for his father flooded into his yellow gaze.
"You need to hate me more if you ever wish to control all that raw power," Rasa scorned nonchalantly from above.
Gaara roared from below, the blast of air rattling Rasa's gourd. It was Gaara's turn to attack. He dashed at his father with lightning speed, taking off on all fours, the dust picked up beneath him as he drew closer to his target.
Rasa stood there uncaring as Gaara closed the gap. He swiped viciously at his father's throat with his claws. Rasa blocked the attack with little effort but Gaara's burning aura wrapped around his forearm and sliced his father's cheek.
Rasa swiftly kicked his son aside. A concerned expression formed on the Kazekage's face. Gaara's strange movement and the chakra cloak that seemed to lash out on its own danced in the reflection of Rasa's irises.
Gaara jumped with excitement. To finally see his father bleed was invigorating. The single drop of blood that ran down his cheek made Gaara want more. He needed to see more right now. He craved bloodshed like some sort of lunatic.
He rushed forward to his foe again, leaping overhead of Rasa and preparing a jumping switch kick right for his father's face.
The redhead could hardly believe it when Rasa merely snatched his leg out of the air.
"I can't have you destroying the village," Rasa calmly stated.
Gaara was swiftly yanked by the leg over Rasa's shoulder. The Kazekage slung Gaara high into the air. He could feel his lungs in his throat from the intense velocity that he spun with. The desert winds pushed against him so strongly that he couldn't draw a single breath.
It felt like he had flown for ages before he abruptly crashed against the sand dunes with unforgiving force. The redhead quickly exited that sand dune and was swiftly lodged into the next. Buried under tons of sand, he had to utilize the power of the Beast to lift and maneuver the entire dune off of him.
Gaara fell to his knees and gasped for air. He hacked up sand from his throat and wiped the coarse grains from his face. It wasn't until his eyes were clear of sand that he was able to open them and see that he was totally surrounded by nothing but desert as far as he could see.
Rasa had thrown him out of Sunagakure. By the time he stood up, he had noticed Rasa was already positioned atop the sand dune he first crashed through.
'How?' Gaara thought, 'How did he get here so fast?
He used his red aura to his advantage, slinging the cloak of antagonistic chakra at Rasa from a distance. It stretched over the desert like a rubber band with a hungry claw at one end.
Rasa slipped under his attack and blitzed around his son to his right. Gaara's eyes could barely follow him when Rasa devastated him with a bone-crushing haymaker right to the jaw.
Gaara's head hit the sand before his feet did and he was smothered in it from his head to his neck. Consumed by the darkness and deafness around him it was almost peaceful and relaxed until he felt a tug on the back end of his shirt.
Rasa violently yanked the spent boy's head from the sand. The grains in his hair flew into the air while he desperately gulped down oxygen.
"You can't do anything to me like this, boy," Rasa began, "If you can't show me something promising now then I'm going to have to kill Temari and Kankuro after I'm done with you," he warned with a stern tone.
Gaara bared his teeth at his father's threats. His eyes filled with red. Threatening his siblings' lives had crossed a line.
His cloak of chakra burned hotter, so hot Rasa let go of the boy to avoid being burned. Gaara pushed himself off the ground, his chakra slowly becoming a darker and darker red.
"You won't… lay a hand on them!" Gaara declared with a raspy, strained voice.
His body was then enveloped in the thick red hue. It consumed his face, his eyes burned a blinding white as any discernible features of Gaara's were wiped away in the raging chaos around his body. A beam shot into the sky and Rasa leapt even further from the transformation that was unfolding. In an instant, the power around Gaara expanded into a massive explosion that wiped away the mountains of sand around it in a searing flash.
What emerged was enough for Rasa to finally remove the cork from his gourd. The heat that emanated from the scorched desert quickly dissipated in the cold night and the Beast at the center of the destruction burned a fiery red.
Immediately the Beast went on the offensive. It commanded the sands beneath it and they lifted him into the air for meters. Atop the sand, the Beast commanded it forward. A tsunami of desert grain barreled down on Rasa with overwhelming speed.
The gold in Rasa's gourd poured into the moonlit night, but the Beast couldn't allow him to mount a sufficient defense. With a wave of its hand, three massive bullets of sand flew out of the tsunami in different directions.
Rasa responded with a large, concrete-thick dome of gold. The Beast's sand bullets slammed into the dome with a thunderous crash sending a shockwave through the surrounding desert like ripples in a pond.
Rasa was still untouched when the dome of gold fell. His golden grains pooled beneath his feet where he flew to the skies to meet his transformed son in battle.
The Beast buried its feet into the ground and clapped its clawed hands together like prayer. Two sculpted arms over six meters long sprouted from each side of the sand tsunami. They reared back simultaneously and then snapped together to form a deafening clap, squashing Rasa like a fly.
Rasa was not easily trapped and utilized his gold to form his own pair of massive arms which effortlessly deflected the incoming attack.
The Beast's sand arms crumbled to pieces and rejoined the desert but it did not impede him. As quickly as they had disappeared, two new arms sprung forth, fists already interlocked for a crushing overhead blow.
It crashed down on Rasa with an overbearing weight but his gold arms were able to defend against the powerful strike. The Beast couldn't track Rasa's swift response and a giant golden hand smacked down on him with life-ending force.
The Beast, along with the entire top end of his tsunami were flung across the dunes like cannonballs. He skidded over the coarse grains for several meters before rolling to a stop on his backside looking at the moon.
Even with all the bloodlust and hatred, Gaara was barely conscious. He pushed through the painful ache that permeated his entire body and forced himself off his back. By the time he got to his hands and knees, Rasa had approached him.
"All this power just for you to sit here and grovel in the sand," Rasa coldly spat.
Gaara quickly tried to snag his foot with his sand, a desperate maneuver, but by the time the sand started to bend to his will Rasa had stomped down on his neck and grated his face against the countless rough grains.
"Are you going to just allow me to crush your windpipe?" Rasa questioned with a hint of pity. Like he was asking a sickly dog if it wanted to be killed.
Gaara wanted to get up and kill him so badly. But honestly… what could he do? No matter how far Gaara pushed his limits it could never overcome the sheer difference in power between him and his father.
"Your incompetence is truly breathtaking, Gaara," he started, "I didn't want to do this but you can't do anything otherwise," he said ominously.
Gaara's heart beat with panic. His bulging eyes darted to his father's after the immense pressure on his neck was removed. He didn't have time to process what Rasa meant before his face was encased in a smothering sheet of golden sand.
He tore at the metal mask with his mighty claws but could not separate it from his face to be able to breathe. An overbearing anxiety set in as his heart raced. He was about to die.
He wallowed in the sand, punching and tearing at the mask with everything in him but his strength was not enough. As he went without air for longer and longer he rapidly lost steam. Punches devolved into tearing. Tearing was bogged down into futile scratches. Scratches were followed by total darkness.
He wasn't sure if he'd ever wake from this, but he didn't have the strength to care any longer. The darkness swallowed him and he could no longer feel his connection to the world.
Instead, he felt the Beast within hammering against its flimsy cage. The Beast was tired of waiting, his host was asleep, and now Gaara could do nothing to stop him. He watched in horror as the Ichibi emerged from the bottom of the abyss and left him to take over.
In an instant, Gaara faintly felt the mask be ripped from his face. The light was dim but it was there again. Only this time, he wasn't observing the world with his own eyes. He was witnessing reality through the sight of the Demon of the Sand.
Gaara was paralyzed with fear from the sheer amount of sand that the Tanuki commanded effortlessly. He could faintly feel his body being buried under a mountain of sand. He soon realized that this was just the unbelievable size of Shukaku piecing himself together grain by grain. The Beast's victorious roar could be heard for kilometers.
"Finally free!" It confidently declared to itself.
Gaara's train of thought was interrupted when Shukaku quickly got back to his feet.
"I'm finally free!" It shouted into the night, almost like it didn't realize it was just attacked.
Shukaku jumped into the air with intense excitement, kicking up so much sand and wind that it was causing a sandstorm, but Gaara could tell that the Beast wasn't concerned. It was just happy to achieve its freedom again.
Its face met the coarse ground abruptly. Gaara could feel the massive creature fall.
"Eh?" Shukaku blurted as it looked over the sand. Its foot was entrapped by gold sand and its leg had been yanked out from under it. Before it could free its foot from the shackle of gold, its hand was abruptly ensnared in a golden shackle, and then its next hand quickly followed. Shukaku looked into the sky, and there Rasa was floating effortlessly, gold flowing around him.
"Damn human," Shukaku remarked with contempt. "Don't you know not to provoke me in the desert?!"
All three of its trapped limbs disintegrated into massive dunes of sand; it was free of its shackles. As quickly as his hands and foot had degraded, he commanded the sands to him like waves. They conformed to his will with an undeniable perfection. When the sand made contact with its master, it was quickly incorporated into Shukaku's body. He had replaced his lost limbs with ease.
"I could never control this thing," Gaara quietly remarked to himself as he observed this spectacle in awe.
Shukaku stood again and eyed his challenger.
Rasa didn't waste time using his golden sand. It shot out of his gourd, creating two rolling waves of gold that quickly morphed into moving imitations of golden vipers. The serpents raced over the sand toward the Desert Tanuki.
The Tailed Beast commanded its sand accordingly. The sand underneath one viper opened wide like a sinkhole and swallowed the golden snake entirely. The remaining serpent closed the distance to its target and struck at its neck with a ferocious bite but was suddenly halted by the sand at its belly pulling it to the desert floor. Shukaku stomped its golden head back into dust.
"Gaara, if you don't get control of the Demon, you'll die," Rasa warned him from outside. "You have to take your mind back."
"I don't wanna die!" Gaara cried. "How do I escape from here?!" he started to panic to himself.
"The pesky human isn't getting its body back this time," Shukaku declared confidently. "We've been through this already, Rasa!"
It clapped its hands together and a booming wave of wind was unleashed that blew apart the dunes and created a sandstorm directed at Rasa.
Gaara stopped watching the battle. He needed to find an escape. He frantically searched around him. No doors, no windows, no nothing. Just darkness. Gaara whirled around. There he saw the Beast's cage with its wide open entrance. He raced to the jail and noticed that the seal that locked the Tanuki away was totally ruined.
'Maybe if I can somehow restore the seal then the Beast will be trapped again?' Gaara pondered.
The surface beneath his feet shook violently, sending Gaara to the ground. He turned to see what was going on in the battle now.
The rumbling was caused by Shukaku falling onto all fours. The bijū was masterfully evading golden tendrils of sand under Rasa's strict control while running at the Kazekage at top speed.
Shukaku honed in on the gold sand user. Rasa clapped his hands together with a determined expression.
"Magnet Style: Kongōshu Bosatsu!" The golden sand within his gourd rumbled and quaked inside until it burst into the sky.
"Father is really using that jutsu?!" Gaara couldn't turn away from what was about to unfold now that the Fourth Kazekage unleashed his most powerful technique on the One-Tailed Beast.
The gold slammed together in a compact mass in the sky. It was like watching the golden sun form in front of you. The dust continued to pile on more and more until the features of the jutsu were starting to shine through.
Two legs, six arms, and four faces that looked in every direction with a third eye in each forehead of each face. A golden sash and golden monk garb over its body, it sported a crown over its head with five points. In its middle right hand, it wielded a lavish, golden club with rings that converged at the top end.
"Lightning Style: Chained Thunder Bolts!" The Kazekage weaved one-handed signs in a flash before pointing his index and middle finger to the golden club and firing a thunderous lightning bolt right at it. However, he needed to maintain the lightning jutsu and therefore could not channel any further chakra.
"He's done it!" Gaara remarked.
Immediately, the Golden Kongōshu put its electrified club's crosshairs on the ever-approaching bijū. It unleashed three bolts of powerful lighting at Shukaku in quick succession.
Shukaku narrowly avoided the first two bolts but the final stroke of lightning blasted through the Tailed Beast's shoulder, severing its arm.
The Ichibi used the surrounding sand to manifest a new arm as the Golden Kongōshu fired another bolt of lightning from its club.
With its fresh arm, the Sand Tanuki held its fingers to its mouth.
"Wind Style: Great Wind Bullets!"
A trio of booming gusts of pressured wind shot from the Beast's mouth. The first bullet smashed into the Kongōshu's lightning and totally neutralized it. The second gust severed one of the Golden Kongōshu's left arms, while the third wind bullet was evaded.
Shukaku nearly closed the distance in all the chaos and was fast approaching. Rasa summoned more of his precious metal and used it to craft four more golden vipers.
The Golden Kongōshu swiftly snatched each golden viper from the air by their tails. With a snake in all four remaining hands, the Golden Kongōshu whipped, cracked, and snapped the writhing serpents at Shukaku.
They tried to restrain its movements, the Kongōshu cycling the onslaught of the snakes with a crack of its lightning to keep Shukaku at bay.
Shukaku lifted its tail overhead and unexpectedly shot a hail of sand bullets at the golden behemoth. They penetrated through the mass with ease, severing two more arms. The vipers fell to the desert and went on the offensive but Shukaku effortlessly caved their heads in with its foot.
The Kongōshu surprisingly tackled Shukaku which made the ground quake beneath them. The final vipers restrained its arms while the Kongōshu used its club to coat its hands in lightning. Using its fists of lightning, the Golden Kongōshu began to wail on the Sand Demon's head. Punch after punch, the electricity chipped off parts of Shukaku's face. It looked as if Rasa would beat the Ichibi.
"Enough!" it proclaimed with a booming voice. Half of its face was now missing.
It commanded the sand around the two quarreling giants and they circled them in massive flowing tendrils.
"Die!" it shouted as the hundreds of tendrils of sand stabbed into the Golden Kongōshu with wild precision. The tendrils whipped and whirled violently before meeting their mark. When each tendril had found its target, they each tore the Golden Kongōshu apart, ripping away its arms and faces until it crumbled into a pile of gold dust.
Simultaneously, the vipers seemed to also lose life and Shukaku stood, free and victorious. But he couldn't gloat yet, as Rasa had already prepared a giant golden spike and fired it right through Shikaku's chest.
Despite the gaping hole in its chest, Shukaku was unfazed. The Ichibi simply locked eyes with its adversary.
"What must I do," Shukaku started as the sand of the desert quickly replaced his chest, "to make you understand?"
Shukaku clapped both hands together causing a shockwave. "The desert is my domain!"
The sand around the entire surrounding desert began to vibrate. In one swift motion, Shukaku effortlessly lifted all the sand in the surrounding area high into the sky, exposing the rocky mountains and stone beneath the dunes. It was as if the desert was floating in the air, blocking out the moon and the stars.
The look on Rasa's face was pure shock but it was amplified tenfold when he caught a glimpse of something in the sky of sand above him.
Gaara watched with awe from within, but was confused when his father flew headlong into the desert in the sky at an insane speed. Eyeing the trajectory a little further Gaara got an idea of where his father was going, and right there, in the middle of the jostling ocean of sand above, Temari and Kankuro were falling through the sands.
"They must have followed us out here!" Gaara panicked.
Rasa flew to his distressed children with haste. Using his gold sand, he comfortably retrieved them from the flying desert and placed them on his own flying platform of gold.
"Oh no you don't!" Shukaku remarked as he launched an assault of sand tendrils from above. Rasa dodged and weaved the bijū's onslaught but it simply did not cease.
"Gaara," Rasa yelled frantically, "You have to take control right now!" he exclaimed.
Gaara sprung into panic mode. "Oh no," he cried, "No, no, no, no, no." He dashed to the broken seal with haste.
"Father!" Kankuro and Temari cried from outside.
Gaara spun around to see what had happened. Rasa had been snagged by the arm and was dangling over the ground below as he continued to maneuver his children to safety.
Gaara's heart dropped into his gut. He turned back to the seal.
"Please work!" he begged as he placed both hands onto the seal and flushed the paper tag with his chakra.
"Father, no!" the siblings screamed.
Gaara didn't have the opportunity to see what had happened before darkness consumed him. He could feel the ocean of sand in the sky plummeting back to the ground. Gaara hardly noticed the vibrations though. He felt buried under something and couldn't breathe.
'Oh no, I'm gonna suffocate down here! Shukaku is going to have my body," he panicked. He felt something reach deep within and touch his arm before pulling him upward with great effort.
Once again Gaara could see the outside world and the totally reshaped desert around him. But this time, he saw it through his own eyes. "I sealed the Beast again," Gaara remarked with amazement.
Gaara's lower half was retrieved from the sand, "Out of there, Young Lord," the voice said.
It was one of his father's anbu. He looked around the area, and they were all over the place now. At least ten of them, and all of them but the one near Gaara was crowded around Rasa, Temari, and Kankuro.
Gaara raced over to his family, pushing past the surrounding anbu.
"Gaara!" Temari proclaimed in tears.
He had not yet understood why his sister was so distraught.
"We'll return to the village hospital with Lord Kazekage, there seems to be sand in his bloodstream," the anbu captain explained.
'Hospital?' Gaara thought.
He then looked at his father. He leaned against an anbu with one arm over their shoulder. One arm. His other arm had been gruesomely torn off past the elbow. The desert sands absorbed the drops of crimson blood that dripped from the wound. His father appeared sickly, pale, and barely conscious.
"You escort the children back to their homes, and you take Gaara to headquarters," he faintly heard the anbu captain instruct.
Gaara's world had effectively stopped. Was his father about to die? Did he really want this? Would he be blamed if his father died? What happens next? All these questions ran circles through Gaara's mind.
Eight of the anbu Body Flickered away with the Kazekage, leaving only two anbu remaining.
"Why are you taking Gaara to the Anbu Headquarters?" Temari inquired of the anbu tasked with taking Gaara away.
"He will be watched and restrained for the following weeks until we are certain that he will not lose control of the Ichibi," the anbu revealed bluntly.
"That's not fair to Gaara though," Temari cried.
"Yeah," Kankuro started, "Let him go home with us, we all saw that Father purposefully made him lose control."
"I'm sorry, but we can't do that," the anbu stated.
"Gaara needs help, not to be tied down and watched for days on end!" Temari snapped.
"Let him go with us or we'll take him with us ourselves!" Kankuro exclaimed.
The anbu shared passing glances from behind their masks. The anbu that was meant to escort Gaara drew a kunai to his neck.
"Don't try something stupid," the other anbu threatened the siblings.
Temari and Kankuro looked into Gaara's seafoam gaze. Gaara was always restless, even they could tell that he couldn't take it anymore.
Kankuro drew a kunai from his pouch and leapt at the anbu. Gaara knew that his siblings couldn't take on an anbu alone. He drew upon his gold sand from his gourd, pushing the anbu that held him hostage away and then blocking the other anbu's strike on his brother.
Kankuro successfully stabbed the anbu because of Gaara's split-second decision. The anbu keeled over, gripping his stomach in pain.
"That kunai is poison," Kankuro revealed, "if you don't find a medic soon your buddy will surely die."
The anbu backed away with apprehension. He didn't seem confident that he could take on Gaara, much less Temari and Kankuro as well.
The anbu forfeited, raised his hands into the air, and slowly retrieved his poisoned comrade from the ground before Body Flickering away.
"Come on, let's go home," Kankuro urged. Each of the siblings shared a long, silent stare.
"M-Maybe I shouldn't go back," Gaara quietly said.
"What do you mean?" Kankuro said with an edge of confusion.
"The Sand Demon looked so happy to be free," Gaara explained, "And maybe I would be happy if I left too."
"But where would you go?" Temari asked.
"I don't know," Gaara admitted.
"You can't just leave, Gaara, we need you here," Temari asserted.
"You guys don't understand what Father puts me through," Gaara retorted bluntly. "I can't keep going through this. I'll end up killing him or getting killed," he said stoically.
"Father isn't just going to let you leave," Kankuro retorted.
"Father is in no shape to worry about me, and because of that, everyone else is going to be too busy worrying about him," Gaara explained sternly. "This is my chance to get away," Gaara said with a hopeful air about him.
His siblings stared through him, unable to come to terms with what he was saying. "I'll make you guys a promise," he said.
"What's that?"
"I promise that I'll return one day, no matter what," he said sternly.
Temari looked at him with tears welling up in her eyes again. "Well how long could that be?"
"I don't know," Gaara said. "I just can't live with Father around. He's trying to destroy me, you guys saw it."
"Do you really have to go?" Kankuro asked one final time.
"I'm more afraid of what'll happen if I don't…" Gaara revealed plainly. "Like I said, I'll come back no matter what," he reassured his brother and sister.
Temari lunged at him and embraced him in a teary-eyed hug. "Please come back soon."
Gaara felt guilty deep down, but he had made his choice. "I'll try."
Kankuro embraced his brother too and they shared a final hug. It felt like it lasted an eternity and Gaara loved it more than anything.
They let go and Gaara caught one final look at Temari and Kankuro. "Be safe, guys."
He gathered golden sand at his feet and turned away from them. If he looked back he feared that he may change his mind, so he stared directly ahead as he began to fly. Straight ahead at new possibilities, at a place far away where he can live free of the abuse and manipulation of his father.
The sun was coming up and Gaara was finally free.
END