"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Seeing his beloved Naruto pinned beneath the massive fleshy appendages, Gaara's heart surged with absolute fury.
He glared murderously at Killer Bee.
'Can't he see I'm here to help? Why is he guarding Naruto against me?!'
Gaara was deeply insulted by this blatant distrust.
With a sharp raise of his hand, a stream of golden sand coalesced into two large, spectral hands.
They gripped the thick octopus tentacles blocking Naruto's body and began to heave.
One, two, three... pull!
One, two, three... PULL!
To Gaara's frustration, the heavy appendages were incredibly stubborn, clinging to the boy's body with immense force.
"THE EIGHT-TAILS' TENTACLES HAVE SUCTION CUPS! DON'T PULL SO HARD—YOU'LL RIP THE SKIN RIGHT OFF THE JINCHŪRIKI!"
A shinobi dressed as a Cloud Village medical ninja rushed out from the crowd, frantically waving his arms to halt Gaara's violent tug-of-war.
Gaara froze awkwardly, his massive sand hands hovering in mid-air.
He turned his head helplessly toward Makoto and the others in the trees, seeking a solution.
Just then, Senju Tobirama appeared.
With a swift sequence of the Flying Thunder God Technique, the Second Hokage teleported both the unconscious Sasuke and Naruto away in a flash of displaced air.
Finally, Tobirama returned to the branch and looked down at Gaara, who was still standing in the dirt, completely dumbfounded.
"Want to go see them?" Tobirama asked dryly.
"YES! PLEASE, SENPAI!" Gaara snapped back to his senses, eagerly accepting the offer.
In the next second, he too was teleported away.
Killer Bee and the assembled crowd from the Hidden Cloud Village were left standing in the ruined clearing, staring blankly at each other.
After confirming that the legendary Second Hokage had taken everyone and wasn't coming back, Killer Bee didn't feel abandoned in the slightest.
His brother's incredibly strange mission was technically complete.
Didn't that mean it was time for some free-styling rap action?
...
Meanwhile, the deeply unconscious Sasuke and Naruto were transported to a secure, heavily reinforced room in a medical research facility just outside the Hidden Rain Village.
They were deliberately placed in this isolated branch facility to minimize collateral damage in case one of them woke up and went on a traumatic rampage.
"Let's go inside. Let us hear what Orochimaru has to say about this mess."
After bringing the remaining spectators to the entrance, Senju Tobirama stepped forward and pushed the heavy iron door open.
"Wait, where is Shikamaru?" Gaara glanced around the sterile hallway, noticing the genius was missing.
"That Nara kid was worried about Uzumaki Naruto, but his entire clan despises anything resembling trouble," Tobirama explained with a dismissive wave. "Once he knew Naruto was out of mortal danger, he said he wouldn't come. I sent him back to the Hidden Cloud Village to watch the tournament matches."
Gaara was the Kazekage after all, so Tobirama felt obligated to explain the situation to maintain the fragile diplomatic alliance between Konoha and Sunagakure.
In Senju Tobirama's pragmatic view, despite the Seventh Hokage's countless flaws and infuriating idealism, Naruto had managed his diplomatic relationship with Kazekage Gaara exceptionally well.
Unfortunately, the Sand Village was the only major power he had managed to truly secure.
According to Makoto's description of the future, the other ninja villages' relationships with Konoha were mediocre at best—no different from his elder brother's era, where their compliance was based entirely on their fear of Konoha's overwhelming military strength.
What was even more frustrating was that Uchiha Sasuke, originally a ruthless hardliner who could have balanced the scales, had been completely softened by Naruto's sentimental rhetoric.
Now, he just spent all his time wandering the world investigating Ōtsutsuki ruins like a vagabond.
Back in the founding era, Uchiha Madara had played the role of the terrifying boggeyman, while Tobirama handled the cold, strategic planning behind the scenes.
The era of the Seventh Hokage was fundamentally flawed.
Naruto was as hopelessly naive as Hashirama, but he lacked a Madara or a Tobirama to play the necessary "bad cop."
Even with the Nara Clan's genius as an advisor, it was far from enough.
Both Madara and Tobirama had the power and standing to speak to Hashirama as absolute equals.
But Shikamaru could only ever be a subordinate military advisor.
Given the Nara Clan's inherent desire to avoid conflict, there were harsh truths he simply wouldn't dare push onto his Hokage.
That was why, in the future, the Mist and the Stone would eventually join forces to challenge Konoha, and the Nara strategist would fail to provide any ruthless effective solutions.
'You claim you want to maintain international relationships purely through bonds of love, but after all this time, you have only managed to romance the Kazekage.'
Tobirama mulled it over bitterly.
Especially when compared to Makoto, Naruto's diplomatic strategy seemed utterly pathetic.
Even if Makoto abandoned all his brilliant strategic development plans and started relying entirely on "love" to stabilize relations between the nations, just like Naruto... he would still be terrifyingly effective.
In Tobirama's cold assessment, Makoto had already secured intimately strong relationships with the Kazekage's sister from the Sand, the Mizukage of the Mist, and the Tsuchikage of the Stone.
And then there was his infuriating, gambling-addicted grandniece, Tsunade.
Their relationship had been deeply strained, but Makoto had somehow managed to "discipline" her into total compliance as well.
All in all, even if Makoto abandoned everything else and started aggressively imitating Naruto's "love-based" diplomacy, the Hidden Cloud would literally be the only village he couldn't conquer through sheer romance.
'It would be vastly better to properly train Uchiha Sarada to take the hat,' Tobirama thought with a heavy sigh.
After all, her goal is to become Hokage too.
"You two really went all out."
As the group entered the sterile examination room, Orochimaru, wearing a pristine surgical mask, withdrew his pale hand from his examination and pulled the white blanket up over Naruto.
Evidently, even the freakish, boundary-pushing Sannin was somewhat taken aback by the depraved state Sasuke and Naruto were left in.
"Excuse me. I will have Shukaku release the seal."
Gaara pushed his way to the front of the group, waving his hand to command the spiritual sand.
He carefully extracted the dense granules from Sasuke's... asshole, and hurled the cursed sand straight out the hospital window.
Even deeply anesthetized, Sasuke twitched on the bed as the sand was pulled out.
As for the other sealed area, only the tanuki could handle it.
Now that Gaara and Shukaku had reconciled their differences, he no longer needed the dangerous Feigning Sleep Technique to give the beast control.
One of Gaara's eyes seamlessly transformed into Shukaku's distinctive, star-patterned coin pupil.
With a flick of his wrist, Shukaku released the heavy sand seal entirely encompassing Sasuke's... front... then obediently retreated back into the Kazekage's subconscious.
"What about Naruto? Should we ask the Second Hokage to bring Killer Bee back from the Cloud to help release this?" Gaara asked, rushing to Naruto's bedside the moment Sasuke was secure.
"No need," Orochimaru said, waving his hand dismissively. "An octopus's limbs lose connection to the main neural network after being severed. The Eight-Tails Jinchūriki didn't use any complex chakra seals or special techniques, it's literally just held in place by the physical grip of the suction cups."
As someone who had once heavily drugged the previous Eight-Tails Jinchūriki to harvest and cultivate a portion of its power, Orochimaru was disturbingly knowledgeable about the beast's biology.
"Then what should we do now?" Gaara asked, his expression intensely anxious as he hovered over the blonde.
Sakura stood quietly to the side with a deadpane expression.
'I knew it,' she thought, her soul leaving her body.
'My earlier suspicions were completely correct.'
Even as a founding member of Team Seven, she wouldn't even be in line to be the third wheel in this tragic romance.
She was just a background extra!
"Don't pull it off by force," Orochimaru instructed, his snake-like eyes narrowing. "Try using your fine sand to meticulously detach each individual suction cup. You must separate them completely from the skin, one by one, and then gently slide the tentacle off his body."
"Huh?" Gaara's pale face suddenly flushed a deep, vibrant red. "Do... do we really have to do it that way?"
'What the hell are you blushing for?!' Sakura screamed in her mind, watching the Kazekage from the sidelines, utterly speechless.
'We are trying to administer medical aid here! What depraved thoughts are running through your head right now?!'
"Wait," Senju Tobirama interjected, drawing everyone's attention away from the flustered Kazekage.
"There is a vastly simpler method that won't require traumatizing anyone or harming Naruto."
"Have Nagato brought here. The Rinnegan's innate ability to absorb chakra should be able to absorb the Eight-Tails' severed tentacle directly into nothingness, correct?"
Tobirama's logic was flawless: Tailed Beasts are massive constructs of pure chakra, and so are their severed limbs.
Ergo, just absorb it.
"HEY! WAIT, LOOK!"
Just as everyone was nodding in agreement, preparing to go fetch the Akatsuki leader, Sakura suddenly pointed a trembling finger at Naruto's bed and cried out.
They all snapped their heads toward the cot.
The thick, fleshy octopus tentacle clinging to Naruto's body was shrinking rapidly, dissolving into mist until it finally vanished completely into thin air.