"Begin!" Genma waved his hand and made a long leap to the edge of the arena.
"Gaara, right? Been meaning to ask: why'd you shave your eyebrows?" The moment the match started, I couldn't keep my curiosity on a leash.
He didn't feel like satisfying it, though...
The genin standing across from me thrust his hand forward. From the container on his back, sand began tearing free, surging toward me like an avalanche.
The five meters between us closed fast, like...
Bam.
A sharp swing of my arm, channeling Wind Release, and the resulting explosion sent the sand scattering.
"Not much of a talker, huh?" I sighed. "Fine then, keep your big secrets."
After my words, Gaara's face shifted to anticipation. He clearly wanted a piece of me.
But then, as if struck by lightning, pain crossed the genin's face, and I felt bijuu chakra flare to life within him.
"...Please... don't be angry with me, haa... haa... Mother."
His breathing faltered, growing heavy and ragged. Trying to dull the excruciating feeling tearing through him, he clutched his face and doubled over.
"Hm? Hey kid, you alright?"
"...Back then, I made you taste disgusting blood. And after that... left you starving... forgive me... haa... haa."
His trembling eye fixed on me.
He continued in a quiet whisper:
"This isn't her... And yet... this blood... yes... I'm certain it will do just fine. I can feel it, it's going to be very delicious." A grin crawled across his face, dripping with bloodlust. The same kind he'd worn watching Sasuke and Lee's fight.
"That's creepy," I observed, my face completely blank.
But he had no intention of talking to me, which honestly stung a little. Instead, the sand around him whipped into a furious spiral and came at me again, faster than before.
A river of sand a meter away reared up into a wave and lunged at me. A kick from my leg shattered it, scattering grains across several meters.
The sand kept churning, swirling, this time even encircling the spot where I stood, before finally snapping shut.
Gaara's face twisted with even deeper madness as he thrust his hand forward and clenched his fist.
"Sand Coffin."
The sand converged, pressing in with brutal force.
"Look, I get it, your name's basically 'Sandy' and all that. But do you have anything besides sand? I'm getting bored."
As it turned out, I'd been saying all this while standing behind the opponent the whole time. And right then, the sand still near Gaara whipped around, trying to reach me. But under my will, and with the opponent stunned, I seized control of the nearby element, letting myself finish my point.
"...M-Mother? Wh-why aren't you attacking him?" The Suna nin had clearly never seen anything like this in his life.
"That's not your mother, kid. The voice you hear in your head isn't hers. Your bijuu is just a prankster; it's messing with you," I laid the truth on him. "Anyway, time to wrap this up."
A lunge, and my leg connected with a spinning kick straight to the opponent's gut.
He didn't even get a chance to react properly before he was sent flying several meters, and the skin on his stomach where the hit landed visibly webbed with cracks. That was his sand armor, the one Suna shinobi thought was unbreakable, from what I'd heard.
Taking rapid momentum, Gaara's own sand caught him mid-flight, stopping his body to set him down on the scorched earth.
"Heh. Picking on a mental case." I shook my head. "Then again, wouldn't be the first time."
Another close-in, several times faster than before, and I swung another full-force kick into Gaara, nearly folding him in half. In under a second, he slammed into the arena wall, his body sending a shockwave rolling through the stands and carving a crater roughly half a meter deep.
This time, the hit left a mark on Gaara. The impact knocked every last bit of air from his lungs. He couldn't inhale, but the blood rising in his throat forced his body to work. When he finally gasped in, he choked on the substance pooled in his mouth, gagging and tumbling forward out of the wall.
I walked slowly toward my opponent, who was busy relearning how to breathe.
"When's the attack coming, anyway?" the thought drifted through my mind.
Gaara dropped to his knees, lost his balance, and went down on his hands too. Heaving in ragged, broken gasps, he fought to expel the clot thickening in his throat. His thoughts were chaos. A loud, rhythmic roar of his heartbeat filled his skull, and he couldn't make sense of what was happening to him.
With one final, wrenching effort, he cleared his airway, staining the ground in front of him. His whole body trembling, he stared at the deep-crimson clots beneath him.
"...Th-this," he barely managed to get out, dragging his fingers across the earth toward what had come out of him. "...warm... red liquid." A sharp inhale. "This is my... blood?!"
...
"AAAAAAAAAA!!!" Frozen for a second, a howl of pure suffering tore out of Gaara.
But the air ran out, cutting it short. A pulse in his head, and something inside him broke. Another surge, and Gaara's chakra blazed with rage, erupting outward in an unstoppable torrent of impossibly dense, searing energy.
His eyes flooded yellow, black diamond-shaped pupils stretching within them. Wheezing, he dragged a full breath of air into his lungs, then let out a raw, animal, soul-rending howl!
At that exact moment, movement broke out across the stands, unexpected for almost everyone present. Several people simultaneously folded hand seals, and feathers began raining from the sky, pulling almost everyone into sleep.
The commander of the Kazekage's children's team, a man with bandages wrapped around his head and half his face covered in cloth, quickly formed several seals. He sent an invisible wave of chakra that froze Gaara in place. It was a key jutsu, one that remotely, plain and simple, opened the bijuu seal!
Immediately, a shell of sand began to envelop the Sand genin.
The exam grounds erupted into motion.
Dozens of ANBU, flickering through the space like blurred shadows, launched themselves at what appeared to be their own colleagues in matching cloaked uniforms, and at ordinary shinobi as well. Hiashi, seated in the stands with the Hyuga elders, was forced to defend himself instantly, immediately entangled in combat against multiple attackers. The clan heads and their representatives from the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi, seated together, also moved against the enemies that had materialized around them. As did many others.
On the balcony where Sakura, Hinata, and Shino were sitting, a full ten ANBU hit Sakura at once. Their intent was clearly to kill her, which surprised me, though not enormously. Just as it wasn't too surprising that the two girls, quickly going back-to-back, repelled the first assault without much trouble, taking out five attackers at once with precise strikes. They controlled their strength, so they didn't kill anyone. Then they moved on to the remaining five, neutralizing them in under a few seconds. Shino barely had time to do anything before they'd knocked everyone out.
At the same time, a smoke bomb went off in the Kage viewing box, and several seconds later, a purple rectangular barrier materialized on the roof of the central stands.
My mood slowly began to climb.
"Efficient," I noted. "And I should be moving just as fast."
A clone split off from me and headed for the girls.
Meanwhile, I watched as from the sand sphere, a grotesquely deformed sandy paw with blue veining tore free...
From the Shadow Clone's POV
"I'm relocating you to the invaders," I announced, appearing beside Sakura and Hinata. I got two quick nods, and then the girls vanished in a flash of teleportation.
I shifted my gaze and caught Sasuke, Cursed Seal reactivated, beating the hell out of some cloaked operative with visible satisfaction.
Shifted my eyes again and saw a similar scene with Neji.
Body Flicker, and I landed beside an unconscious Choji, Ino shooting anxious looks around, and Shikamaru doing his best impression of being asleep. I immediately drove a hit into the latter's ribs, making him open his eyes in pain and curl up.
"No sleeping! Today's a great day to show what you've got!" I turned to Ino, who'd already shot a startled look at both me and her now-crumpled teammate. "Wake up the other genin and go stretch your fists on anyone you'd call an enemy. Their heaviest hitters are already occupied with ours, so you don't need to worry too much."
Getting a jerky nod from the more responsible girl, I started scanning around and moving toward the Leaf ninja who were clearly on the losing end.
From the Original Uzumaki Naruto's POV
Keeping an eye on things around me, I considered whether to jump in by flooding the whole place with a few hundred clones. But I decided against it. Not necessary.
Even though the attackers had the numbers advantage, an equilibrium was forming fast enough between the forces. Letting my shinobi handle their fights made them stronger and more self-reliant. The risk could be minimized as long as the clone was around to heal the worst, potentially fatal wounds on our side.
So I calmly turned my attention back to what was happening right in front of me. Appearing seemingly from nowhere, but really from a seal, a mass of flesh was rapidly growing, rising dozens of meters into the air.
"Y-YEEEEEEE-HAW!!! I'M FINALLY FREE!!!"
That squeaky voice rang out as the transformation completed, coming from an enormous sandy tanuki. A massive, just stupidly massive body the color of sand, covered in dark-blue curving lines, barely fit within the arena. Its enormous tail pressed against the wall behind it, while its small eyes, small only relative to the sheer bulk of the thing, stared down at the stands from the height.
The fights stopped. Cold sweat covered every shinobi present. A colossal bijuu, close enough to literally reach out with one arm and crush you, had appeared right in front of them!
"This was not the best idea, Kazekage-sama," the thought surfaced in the mind of Baki, the very same Suna genin team commander who had opened Gaara's seal. He stared desperately at the tailed beast, then at the rooftop behind which his lord and the Hokage had disappeared, and had no idea what to do.
But I wasn't sitting around; I was already preparing a counter-technique against the bijuu. So before it could pull anything, dozens of thick golden chains tore out of me with a ringing sound. Humming with speed, they wrapped around the beast, tail and all, and squeezed tight.
"KYAAA!!! N-NOOO! LET GOOO!!!" the One-Tail shrieked.
But an already deafening roar flooded the area as the air around the tanuki visibly warped, forming a pillar shooting skyward.
A flash, and every conscious spectator was staring at an empty arena. The only evidence that a goddamn bijuu had been there was a hole punched through a cloud above.
"Holy shit! They yoinked it!!!" Baki expressed his extreme shock at the fact that in broad daylight, their tailed beast had simply been taken, stolen with a space-time technique.
Every shinobi present was in complete agreement with his reaction.
A stunned ceasefire held for several more seconds, then the fights, one by one, resumed. The attackers felt very awkward about having just lost a sizable chunk of their combat power, but they still had other cards to play, and the mission wasn't over! Sand and the allied Village of Sound intended to finish the Leaf!
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
One of the watchtower posts on Konoha's wall.
A pair of chunin, shooting the breeze in a relaxed sort of way, were griping about life.
Today was supposed to be a momentous occasion. The final stage of the Chunin Exams. And not just any stage! This one featured two geniuses from the Hyuga and Uchiha clans!
And here these two were, instead of enjoying the spectacle, stuck in some tower on the wall with nothing but a view of the massive forest stretching out to the horizon.
Beautiful view, sure. But it had gone stale after years of service, no longer stirring even a gram of emotion in their hearts. All they could do was stare into the distance with boredom, occasionally swapping empty words.
The minutes dragged by, one after another, until one of the shinobi heard something above. But before they could even turn their attention to it, a massive explosion of dust erupted in the distance. And through it, no less massive snake heads jutted skyward, rising dozens of meters into the air!
The ninjas' hearts skipped a beat. From literally nowhere, enemies had appeared, ones standing taller than the walls they were on. And just as importantly, those snakes were perfectly capable of punching through those walls! And they were looking right at them!!!
And then, right before their eyes, they could've sworn a pink silhouette flickered off to the side, a girl wrapped in lightning!
A flash, and the tower shuddered beneath them as a white line shot forward and vanished into the canopy. Another flash, and under a directed lightning chakra explosion, the snake heads exploded in a bloody mess, painting the treetops red.
For the two chunin on the watchtower, who had just seen more in a couple of seconds than in several years of service, it was over. Snapping out of their stunned silence, they bolted inside, triggered the alarm, and proceeded by the book from there.
Under the tree canopy, though, things were only just getting started.
A wave of powerful sensory chakra swept through kilometers of forest, revealing to the girl every shinobi who'd been hiding beyond the village walls.
"Found them," Sakura thought coldly, because it was indeed her, before her body ignited with lightning once more.
The enemies, alarmed by the noise above, had decided to quickly hide. Right in front of her. At close range. So conveniently...
Finishing an unhurried buildup of concentration, the girl extended her hand forward.
Another flash, and with a loud chirping, a cascade of lightning covered several hundred meters. Less than a second later, several dozen people dropped.
After that, a barely visible shadow, hardly interrupting the Body Flicker, darted to each fallen figure one by one, sending them into the fuinjutsu bracelets she'd been issued.
"Every power has its price," the thought ran through the pink-haired kunoichi's mind as she finished, running her fingers over the cold steel on her wrist. "And I have to pay mine too, not dump everything on him... Because I'm strong too."
With that thought finished, another surge of chakra burst from Sakura, forming a blue sheath. All so she could slip away as a shadow between the trees.
Her mission wasn't finished yet. There were still many... live specimens in the forest that the person she had chosen to follow needed.
At the same time, the smallest of the three main squads of outside invaders was currently being hurriedly stuffed into a spatial seal by Hinata.
Her engagement was far less flashy. The moment the kunoichi appeared, time seemed to slow for her.
Leaping into the thick of the crowd, her extraordinarily powerful body moved like an invisible shadow, practically doing the work on its own. Spinning and landing light, clean, single strikes that put opponents down, she felt no great strain. Her enemies weren't especially experienced or strong, posing no major challenge. A couple of dozen seconds, and her storage had grown by dozens of people.
Carrying out her assignment, she gave it her full effort. Because this task hadn't been entrusted by just anyone, not even by the Hokage himself, but by her Naruto-kun, and she was doing everything in her power not to let him down. Because he was the one who had seen something more in her. A person. And beyond that... he hadn't merely supported her; with his own hands, he'd made her into something greater than she could ever have become on her own. He had helped her get so close to the dream she'd been reaching for since childhood, and given her strength, the kind that grants the right to choose. A right Hinata had been denied for so long.
Naruto wasn't exactly secretive about what he planned to do with the captives. But Hinata was not the fragile maiden she might sometimes seem. She was perfectly capable of understanding the reasons behind what was done by perhaps the closest person to her in this world. And even if the young Hyuga didn't approve, she accepted it.
Shaking the thoughts from her head, Hinata focused her Byakugan.
Her sector wasn't cleared yet. The kunoichi could plainly see, several hundred meters out, a group of ninja using Earth Release to move toward Konoha deep underground. She needed to dig those "moles" out fast and move on to the next group.
Jiraiya, one of the Sannin, was still stuck wearing that disgraceful outfit of his...
Yes, Hiruzen had asked him to keep an eye on the village. But he couldn't care less about some Chunin Exam. What he did care about was what such an event reliably attracted: hordes of women who would enthusiastically discuss the matches while gathered at the hot springs.
Which was precisely why, with no urgency whatsoever since there was still plenty of time, Jiraiya was setting up his spot. He'd broken off branches with leaves from other trees and was sprucing up a particularly full, dense treetop, raised quite high by a thick trunk. High enough that, peering through the binoculars he'd brought along, one could make out the hot spring baths in the near distance.
Cheerfully humming a simple tune, the big man in his ballerina costume danced a little as he laid down the last few branches. Anyone who caught a glimpse of him would've wanted to gouge their own eyes out. But Jiraiya was getting used to it and no longer paid attention to the dirty looks.
It all would've continued merrily enough if, just a moment later, the scenery before his eyes hadn't completely changed!
The leaves surrounding him were replaced by an open, grass-covered clearing. And looking up, Jiraiya found himself facing roughly a hundred ninja in balaclavas. Every one of them wore a headband with a musical note he recognized all too well.
Eyes met. The shinobi unit and the "Sage" froze. But the latter snapped out of it faster.
"Sound ninja..." Jiraiya said, his voice low and heavy, making the already-stunned enemy shinobi flinch, their already-wide eyes going wider.
The "Immortal Spirit" was piecing it together with increasing speed.
How he'd gotten here was no mystery. He knew Naruto had mastered space-time techniques almost better than the Fourth! The kid had mastered Hiraishin a long time ago, and on top of that, there was the sage mode.
Putting the obvious facts together: he was near Konoha, he'd turned around and seen the walls of his home village right there, while in front of him stood very much not Konoha ninja. Factor in a certain snake who'd recently declared war on Konoha... and only one conclusion was possible:
"Orochimaru, you bastard! You're attacking your own village?!"
The kage-level shinobi's roar snapped the enemy unit out of their stupor. Not that it saved most of them.
Almost immediately, biting his thumb, Jiraiya summoned the Toad Boss, that same rust-red toad mafia don in the open black robe, whose arrival simply flattened several dozen of the shinobi standing closest.
Those who managed to surface scattered immediately in every direction. But the forests would catch them soon enough. If not Jiraiya, then one of the two girls Naruto had sent.
Hovering a hundred meters above the forests near Konoha, I hurled the bijuu's body with force, its bulk crashing and carving a path through the vegetation.
"KYAA-A-A!" it shrieked as it finally skidded to a stop. "WHAT WAS THAT?!"
Wobbling, it pushed itself back up onto its stubby legs and started looking around.
"Just moved you somewhere else," I explained the obvious. The bijuu's yellow eyes, with pupils made of diamond-shaped crosses surrounded by dots, snapped to me immediately.
"YOU-U-U-U!!!" the One-Tail screamed, then abruptly fell silent. It narrowed its eyes in recognition. "I REMEMBER!!! MY JINCHURIKI WAS DIGGING UP INFO ON YOU! YOU'RE THE JINCHURIKI OF THAT MANGY FOX, AREN'T YOU?! YEAH! YOU'RE BOTH THE SAME KIND OF LITTLE PUNKS! HOW DARE YOU TREAT THE VENERABLE ME LIKE THAT?!! YOU DON'T RESPECT ME?! HUH?!!"
It laid into me, capping the end of its tirade with the kind of flair you'd expect from a stereotypical drunk.
Then it just kept going on its own wavelength:
"ANYWAY, THAT'S NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THE FACT THAT NOW I GET TO MESS WITH THE FOX! KURAMA-A-A!!! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! AND THE VENERABLE ME IS FREE NOW!!! ORE-SAMA IS FREE!!! WHERE'S YOUR SMUG ASS NOW, HUH?!! OH, 'STRONGEST OF THE BIJUU.' HOW'S THAT DUNGEON TREATING YOU?!!! IS THE FIRE FOX GETTING COLD IN THERE?!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Deafening laughter rolled through the forest.
I cleared my ear with a finger and grimaced. Not that it was really unpleasant, but:
"You're way too loud," I told him. "And he can't hear you. He's got a different seal, no access right now..."
"HM-M? WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT, KID? DON'T INTERRUPT THE VENERABLE ME WHILE I'M GLOATING OVER MY ENEMY. OR DO YOU SERIOUSLY NOT RESPECT ME?!! HUH?!!"
"I expected something different from a thousand-year-old being. The way you talk... doesn't befit you," I shrugged, making it clear with my tone that yeah, my respect for him was in short supply. "I'm curious, what exactly have you been doing all this time? Aren't you ashamed that far weaker creatures managed to capture you?"
My words made the tailed beast's face twist like I'd found a lemon proportionate to its entire body and force-fed it the whole thing in one go.
"I SWAM THROUGH DESERT SAND, DRANK OIL, AND DESTROYED YOUR PITIFUL LITTLE SETTLEMENTS, YOU WORTHLESS HUMANS!" it proclaimed with something approaching pride. "NOW THAT I'M FREE, I'LL PICK UP RIGHT WHERE I LEFT OFF! STARTING WITH YOU, YOU INSOLENT BRAT!!! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"
It launched into laughter. When it finished, streams of air began rushing into its mouth as the One-Tail inhaled, its belly swelling up.
Opening its jaws even wider, it slammed a paw into its inflated gut, and with a massive typhoon, leveling hundreds of trees in its path, a colossal air bullet surged directly at me.
I didn't move an inch. The chakra mantle I'd formed around myself took it. Behind me, where the blast continued, an enormous, prolonged trench replaced what had been forest. The bijuu's attack had a pretty serious range.
"Is that all?" I asked. I didn't wait for an answer.
A shift, and I appeared close behind the One-Tail.
My chakra ignited gray, and rising around me, even larger than the bijuu itself, the torso of a Susano'o coalesced along with an arm.
"THAT'S LIKE WHAT FATHER DOES?!" the mass in front of me noticed as it turned, right before my energy construct grabbed it by the long tail.
A slight strain, and the tailed beast was wrenched into a spin, then heaved straight up above the ground.
"KYAA-A-A-A-A-A!!!"
Bam! It slammed back down with equal force.
And then, yanking the tail again, I flung it skyward once more.
"KYAA-A-A-A-A-A!!!"
Bam!
"KYAA-A-A-A-A-A!!!"
Bam!
The surrounding forest looked considerably more wrecked. The One-Tail's beady eyes were wider than they'd ever been from what had just been done to it.
The gray chakra mantle around me released the poor thing and retracted back inside my body.
"Now then. The actual reason I let you appear," I addressed Shukaku, that being its name, who was opening and closing its mouth in dazed bewilderment. "I'll re-seal you eventually and run some experiments. But right now..."
My face split into a wicked grin.
"I'm curious what happens when I apply a special," I raised a finger, "technique developed against large creatures."
The air around me began to thicken and condense, forming the head of a tiger.
The shattered remnants of the forest filled with a low growl.
The battle in the stands of the Chunin Exam grounds continued. Dozens of ninja clashed, kunai meeting kunai, techniques exchanged here and there.
But at the edges of the fighting, more and more shinobi were starting to notice something strange. Some kind of... ultrasound? No, faint, but very high and thin, a squeal... And it was getting louder.
Unable to resist curiosity any longer, a pair of ANBU, one from Konoha and the other a disguised Sand infiltrator, simultaneously broke off their fight and tilted their heads to the sky.
"...ya-a-a-a-a-a..." it came faintly from somewhere above.
"...You're seeing that too, right?" the Konoha one asked.
"The One-Tail... flying over the village..." the Sand man confirmed.
And indeed, at a very considerable altitude, a very respectable little dot was visible, its long tail twitching rapidly. The whole scene bore a certain resemblance to the life cycle of a spermatozoon.
The two exchanged a glance, nodded, and simultaneously formed seals.
"Kai!" they said in unison, attempting to dispel the genjutsu.
But the sound didn't fade. It only got closer.
"YA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!"
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