From the stands, the fight had looked almost unfair.
Sukuna moved through Gaara's defenses like they barely existed, sand armor cracking under strikes that shouldn't have gotten through at all. Sakura watched with her arms crossed, the tension in her shoulders easing into something like pride each time her brother slipped past another wall of sand that was supposed to be unbreakable. Karin barely blinked, chin propped on both hands, openly admiring her boyfriend.
'Good thing I got him early...' She giggled internally and sent a one-sided triumphant stare at the other girls.
They thought the match would end quickly, but it lasted unusually longer considering Sukuna's usual style.
Most blamed the slow transformation the sand boy was going through during the fight. It was clear that the boy wasn't normal. Few knew what a real Jinchuriki was, and fewer could spot a Jinchuriki at a glance.
It was subtle at first — his eyes going wider, wilder, sclera darkening at the edges. Sand thickened unevenly across his shoulder and down one arm, rougher now, almost scaled. A tail took shape behind him, coiling and restless, built entirely from shifting grains that never quite settled. He hit harder after that, moved faster, sand lashing out with a will that felt less like a jutsu and more like something waking up.
It didn't matter. Sukuna beat him back anyway.
Displays like this blurred the perception of power.
None of it made sense to anyone watching. Cuts kept opening across Gaara's skin that nobody saw land — his armor should have stopped them, thick and reformed after every hit, and yet he kept bleeding, kept taking wounds that should have put anyone else on the ground. He didn't go down. He didn't even slow.
Up in the stands reserved for Suna, Temari's hands had tightened white-knuckled on the railing, and Kankuro had gone very still, the easy confidence both of them carried into the exams long since replaced by something closer to fear.
Fear for whom, they couldn't decide precisely. Fear for their brother, who had never been wounded before and was now bloodied.
Or fear for themselves, knowing what comes after this. Even though it was part of the plan, a mad, out-of-control Biju was not something anyone wished to see.
Then the feathers came.
They drifted down out of nowhere, soft and white, and drowsiness spread through the crowd in their wake — heads nodding, bodies slumping where they sat as genin and civilians alike dropped under a genjutsu nobody had seen cast.
"Heh... what's going..." Naruto was surprised, and mid-sentence his eyes grew heavy.
Sasuke's Sharingan flared and broke it around himself almost instantly. Knowing the boy would sooner or later go after Itachi, Sukuna never held back against using Genjutsu when training against Sasuke.
"It's a Genjutsu."
Sakura felt the pull and fought through it half a second later, blinking hard against the fog.
She too had learned how to break through genjutsu, practically a vital survival skill to have if you're the sister of one Sukuna Haruno, who loved annoying his little sister.
Karin shook it off just as fast, sensory threads snapping taut again. This was all her, actually. Sukuna never taught her because she didn't need it; her sensory ability just did that for her.
All three of them glanced at the people collapsing around them. In that pile was one particular orange loudmouth. All three of them had a tick mark forming at his performance.
'Note this... tell Sukuna later.' Karin glanced at Sakura.
'No problem, I got this.' Sakura understood almost immediately.
And the fun fact was that neither of them had spoken a word to each other, as if it was normal for them.
Fighting had already broken out around the arena almost the instant the feathers finished falling, shouts and the flash of steel replacing the applause of moments before.
And then, without warning, Gaara wasn't Gaara anymore.
They snapped their heads as soon as it happened. One second there was a bleeding Sand Genin, and the next sand exploded outward, folding and thickening into something massive, hunched, and grinning — a tanuki built from grains and killing intent, towering over the arena floor.
"I'm finally out, baby..." shouted the giant.
Screaming tore through the stands.
"What in the world is that?" Sakura's hands flew to her mouth.
Sasuke stiffened.
But the worst was Karin. She was frozen completely. For someone who could sense chakra as well as she could, she had long known Gaara was like Naruto, but they had never seen what happened when that malicious chakra came out. Sukuna never let that happen around Naruto.
She had only felt like this once in the Land of Waves, when that huge turtle appeared out of nowhere; however, she had never felt it from this close.
This was her first time sensing something like this. She felt light-headed, nausea building up at the concentration of malicious chakra she sensed.
Sukuna was still there, small against it, one hand pressed to its shifting hide. Seeing that, Sakura's eyes widened.
"SUKUNA!!!" she shouted, worried.
For just a second she might have imagined it, but her brother looked at her before the space seemed to fold, and in a single blink, both of them were gone.
No flash. No sound. Just an empty circle of torn earth where a boy and a demon the size of a hillside had been standing a heartbeat before — and a stadium already tearing itself apart around the space they'd left behind.
They were left stunned at the sudden disappearance.
Only the constantly rising noise of fighting snapped Sasuke first out of his stupor.
"Get a grip, you two... Sakura, wake that idiot up. Karin, give me an area search... we are under attack..." he shouted.
Both girls snapped out of their daze upon hearing his voice. Karin, as if out of sheer instinctive reaction, opened her Mind's Eye of Kagura.
Her range was absurd. She could sense all of Konoha with a single thought, but what left her stumped was that Sukuna wasn't inside Konoha. She couldn't sense him.
"Sukuna is not in the village," she said with worry plastered on her face.
"Don't worry about him, he can handle himself. Find others first. How many enemies are in the village? Where are our shinobi stationed?" Sasuke didn't even consider for a second that Sukuna would be in any trouble, especially with the Flying Thunder God Technique. He most likely wouldn't have any trouble even if he couldn't beat that Sand Monster.
Even he had to agree that that technique was enviable. He tried to learn it, but it needed too many steps to even begin learning the actual technique itself, like Fuinjutsu, sensory ability, reaction time, and space-time compatibility.
'Sigh...'
Karin hesitated for a second before she nodded and explained the situation of the current invasion.
Both Mist and Suna had launched a full-scale invasion on the village.
She spread her sensory range further only to find more were coming, trying to infiltrate the village.
She explained everything one by one, and Sasuke just nodded. He had to pass the intel to someone in an actual position of command like Kakashi.
"Sakura, snap out of it, and for the last time, wake that dope up." Sasuke repeated himself, seeing Sakura was still in a daze, and shouted before already moving, going to find Kakashi.
"Y-yes." Sakura nodded. There really wasn't anything she could do now besides worrying about Sukuna. She just kept her belief in him and moved to break Naruto's genjutsu.
"Karin, wake others as well... we might need their help soon," Sakura stated, and Karin was already moving.
Fighting had broken out across the stadium floor within seconds — Konoha shinobi meeting Suna and Kiri headbands with steel instead of the polite distance the exams had demanded until now. Kunai met kunai. Genin who'd been sparring an hour ago were suddenly dragging wounded teammates behind cover, and the roar of the crowd had curdled entirely into screaming.
Up in the Kage booth, Hiruzen rose slowly from his seat, pipe still in hand, expression unreadable.
"Kazekage-Dono, Mizukage-Dono." His voice carried none of the alarm spreading through the stands below. "Explain this to me."
The Kazekage didn't bother rising to meet him halfway. "There's nothing to explain, Hokage. Suna's economy has been dying for years while Konoha's grows fat off contracts we used to hold. But it's not like I have to explain anything to you, you already know this, don't you?"
Beside him, Mei Terumi's expression was harder to read, arms folded, watching Hiruzen with something almost like reluctance. "For what it's worth," she said, "I take no pleasure in this. But Mist has its own reasons to see Konoha weakened, and Suna's terms were generous enough not to refuse."
"You understand what you're starting," Hiruzen said. "This won't stay contained to a stadium."
"It already isn't." Rasa's gold dust had begun stirring at his feet, restless and eager. "You should be more concerned with the two of us, old man, than with the shape of the war after," he mocked, though from the corner of his eyes he noticed that something had gone terribly wrong with the plan.
'Where is Shukaku? What happened to Gaara?'
The original plan was for Gaara to turn into Shukaku and wreak havoc inside the village to distract Konoha's manpower.
Something definitely had gone wrong. However, the attack had already started. He couldn't back out now.
Rasa moved first, gold dust lashing out in a wide arc meant to pin Hiruzen in place, and Mei followed a half-second later with a wave of corrosive mist that ate through the railing beside him.
Hiruzen might have done the fastest replacement of his life before he found himself on the other side of the rooftop, already with the two opposing Kage running towards him.
Now Hiruzen once had a fierce reputation. In his prime, he was no less than any enemy Kage-level shinobi.
However, even he had to agree that he had grown old. Fighting two Kage-level shinobi was not something he could handle at this age.
His eyes flickered around, wondering why no reinforcements had arrived yet. He didn't like what he saw. Konoha ANBU and Jonin were held back by shinobi from both Suna and Kiri.
'Where are Tsunade and Jiraiya...' He internally cursed at their laziness. He knew Tsunade was still in the hospital and had no interest in watching some bunch of genin fighting, but why couldn't she just act quickly after seeing Konoha under attack?
And Jiraiya, Hiruzen didn't even begin to think where that pervert would be right now.
"Seems like I have no other option..."
Hiruzen dropped the pipe and moved, faster than his age suggested he should, weaving between both attacks with the kind of economy that came from decades of having no room left for wasted motion.
"Enma!" A summoning seal flared beneath his palm, and the Monkey King landed beside him in a burst of smoke, already transforming into the adamantine staff before his feet touched the floor. "I'll need you."
"I told you to retire, Hiruzen. Do you really think you're 30 to be doing something like this..." Enma said dryly, as his eyes flickered to both Kage Hiruzen was facing.
"Easy for you to say. Who am I to give the hat to, huh... that brat Kakashi who reads prn in open daylight or Jiraiya who writes the said prn..." Hiruzen grumbled.
Enma rolled his eyes and quickly transformed into a weapon that met Rasa's gold dust mid-strike and shattered a chunk of it outright.
"Two Kage. You always did enjoy making things difficult for yourself."
"I didn't choose the difficulty," Hiruzen muttered, sweeping the staff around to block a follow-up strike from Mei's mist clone.
Even with Enma, even with decades of experience against either opponent alone, two at once was a different problem entirely. Hiruzen parried Rasa's gold dust only to have Mei's Lava Release close in from the opposite side, forcing him into a retreat he hated making. His counters landed — Enma cracked ribs Rasa would feel for weeks, and Hiruzen's own fire jutsu forced Mei back twice — but age was age, and the booth kept shrinking around him with every exchange.
"You're better than I expected," Rasa admitted, breathing hard, gold dust reforming around a fresh crack in his defense. "But age has caught up to you, Hiruzen Sarutobi. Admit it, you don't have what it takes to call yourself a Kage at that age. You should have found a successor long ago after the Fourth Hokage's death."
"I'm still more than enough for the likes of you..." Hiruzen answered, and a bit of that old blood started to boil at the insult.
Outside the booth, Konoha's ANBU found themselves boxed in the moment they tried to reach the stairwell, cut off cleanly by Suna and Kiri shinobi who'd clearly planned exactly for this. Steel rang against steel across the stadium's upper level, buying Rasa and Mei time neither of them particularly needed but weren't above taking.
Below, the fighting only spread — Konoha genin and jōnin pulled into skirmishes on every side, civilians shepherded toward exits that weren't nearly clear enough, and smoke beginning to rise from more than one district beyond the stadium walls.
Whatever this invasion had been planned to look like, it was already worse.
xXx
A/N : Finally its starting, its honestly baffling how long it took me to reach upto there, you know what was my estimate when I started this fic, 50 chapters. Yeah, I geniunely thought I'll reach to this point in just 50 chapters. How naive I was.
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