Explosions echoed through the air as smoke curled into the sky. In the span of just a few minutes, the once-celebratory Chūnin Exams had fallen into complete chaos.
The moment Baki gave the signal, I moved.
No… it was more accurate to say my body moved on its own.
Temari was on my left. Kankurō was on my right.
Baki led from the front, leaping across rooftops and outer walls of Konoha with swift, efficient movements. Behind us, the invasion had already begun.
But all of that felt far away.
As if I were underwater.
My head hurt.
No… hurt wasn't the right word.
It felt like something inside my skull was scratching, trying to claw its way out.
My vision shook. The trees ahead blurred, then cleared, then blurred again. I could hear Temari saying something, but her voice sounded stretched and distorted, like it was coming from the bottom of a well.
"Gaara… Gaara!"
The sounds of battle faded behind us, replaced by the rushing wind and the violent pounding of my own heartbeat.
My chest tightened.
Each breath burned hotter than the last.
That bastard…
That brat from the Snow Village…
Haku.
Just thinking about him made something twist violently inside me.
My fingers trembled, then curled into my own arm, digging in so hard my nails nearly drew blood.
He had hurt me.
He had looked at me without fear.
He had stood in front of me with that innocent face, that gentle voice, that disgusting light in his eyes…
A low sound slipped from my throat.
At first, I thought it was a growl.
Then I realized it was laughter.
"Heh…"
Temari glanced back at me, and I saw the fear on her face.
Good.
That expression was familiar.
That expression made sense.
Fear was the correct reaction.
"Baki-sensei," she said tensely, "he's getting worse."
Of course I was getting worse.
Couldn't she feel it?
Didn't they all feel it?
The pressure inside me was rising with every passing second. My skin felt wrong. My bones felt too small. The chakra leaking from my body scraped against the trees around us, making the leaves tremble before we even passed.
Shukaku was awake.
No…
He had never gone back to sleep.
He was laughing.
I could hear him clearly now.
Kill. Kill them. Tear them apart. Let me out, Gaara.
My teeth clenched so hard my jaw hurt.
Shut up.
We landed on a thick branch near the center of the forest. Baki finally stopped and raised one hand. Temari and Kankurō halted immediately beside him.
I stopped a second later.
My body felt strange now, like it no longer belonged entirely to me.
"Here is far enough," Baki said calmly.
Temari turned toward him, confused. "Far enough for what?"
Kankurō said nothing, but his face looked awful.
I slowly lifted my head.
Baki was staring at something behind them.
A faint ripple passed between the trees.
Temari and Kankurō immediately tensed, glancing around in alarm.
Baki's expression changed.
I felt it too.
Someone was there.
A presence hidden so well that an ordinary shinobi would have missed it completely.
But I was no longer in any condition to overlook something like that.
My bloodshot eyes slowly shifted toward a branch above and to the side.
A figure stood there with both hands in his pockets, his expression calm.
It was someone all of them recognized instantly, yet none of them had expected to see here of all places.
Temari and Kankurō froze the moment they saw him.
Gaara was no different.
Even he was surprised.
But that surprise lasted only a moment before it was swallowed by a violent surge of killing intent. He could already feel the grin spreading across his face.
Because the one standing before them was none other than Sasuke Uchiha.
Sasuke himself let out a quiet breath of relief when he saw them stop. If they had kept running, he would have had to waste even more energy catching up.
The moment he had noticed the change in Gaara, he had started paying attention. And when he saw them fleeing, he followed without hesitation.
Why?
Did he have some personal grudge against Gaara?
Yeah, a little.
Gaara had definitely pissed him off the wrong way.
But not enough to make Sasuke chase him this far into danger for no reason.
So why had he come?
It really was strange how fate worked.
Just when he had been thinking about winning the Chūnin Exams, earning that man's approval, and obtaining the power he needed to reach the Mangekyō Sharingan so he could one day kill Itachi…
Another path had opened right in front of him.
A shortcut.
He still remembered those words from the last time they had met.
"How can I make you give me that power?" Sasuke had asked back then with a serious expression, though the hope and expectation in his eyes had been impossible to hide.
"Hm… you're too eager, Sasuke," the man had replied lazily. "Listen, power is important, but getting drunk on it is something else entirely. Still, since you asked so nicely, I'll tell you anyway."
"There are two ways. The first is to do something impressive enough. I'll leave that one for you to figure out. Or maybe there'll be a chance in the future—don't worry, I can always arrange a task for you."
When Sasuke heard that first method, he had felt speechless.
Something impressive enough?
That could take who knew how long.
But when the Chūnin Exams began, he thought that maybe this was the chance he had been waiting for.
Then came the second method.
"The second way is troublesome, Sasuke. I wouldn't recommend it. Mainly because it's dangerous. You would have to capture a tailed beast alive."
At the time, Sasuke hadn't even fully understood what a tailed beast was. But after hearing more from that man, he had gotten a decent idea.
Jinchūriki.
Troublesome monsters in human form.
Back then, he had immediately given up on the idea. There was no way he could deal with a jinchūriki without the Mangekyō Sharingan.
But now, here in the Chūnin Exams, he had come face-to-face with one.
And to his delight, he had realized there was actually an easier way to finish the job.
Capturing a tailed beast was not impossible…
As long as he could defeat the jinchūriki before he completely lost control and went on a rampage.
Sasuke's gaze turned cold as he studied Gaara's condition.
You're going to be my ladder to power, Gaara.
--
"Ho—how… how can you be so strong!? You're just a kid…"
Baki coughed up a mouthful of blood as he clutched his chest. A massive hole had been torn through it.
The battle hadn't lasted long.
And he was already dying.
At first, he had thought he could take this Uchiha brat hostage. If he managed to bring him back, the Sharingan alone would be a priceless reward.
But who could have imagined it?
A brat around Gaara's age… yet this monstrous.
The worst part was how the battle had started.
Just when Baki tried to speak, intending to question him and lower his guard—
The boy had suddenly attacked him without warning.
A terrifying Lightning Release shot forward like a beam of pure chakra, striking from long range and severing his arm instantly.
Even with Temari and Kankurō supporting him, the fight had been anything but easy.
No…
It had been hopeless.
Baki's vision blurred as dread crept into his mind. With great difficulty, he turned his head and glanced one last time at Temari and Kankurō.
Both of them were breathing heavily, their faces pale.
"Run… take… Gaara away… he's—"
Boom.
Before he could finish, his head exploded.
Blood sprayed violently across the surrounding trees.
Sasuke calmly lowered the leg that had just burst Baki's skull open.
His voice was flat.
"Why talk so much?"
"Just die already."
"Damn it!" Kankurō cursed, his throat tightening.
He immediately jumped back into the branches, trying to widen the distance while concealing his presence among the trees.
But no matter how much he tried, he couldn't calm down.
Not at all.
"This bastard… so he was this strong… what a monster!"
"Gaara…" Temari said quietly.
Her gaze shifted toward her brother.
Gaara was lying on the ground now.
One of his arms had already been severed, the detached limb resting not far away in the grass.
Yet he didn't even look at it.
He was staring straight at Sasuke.
His eyes were wide, overflowing with hatred and fury.
That arm…
Sasuke had cut it off.
When Sasuke first severed Baki-sensei's arm, everyone had assumed he would continue targeting Baki.
Even Baki himself had thought the same.
But that lunatic had suddenly shifted targets.
And in the blink of an eye...
Gaara's arm had been taken instead.
Sasuke started walking toward them, his pace neither fast nor slow.
That only made it worse.
Each step felt heavy and deliberate, like he had already decided how this would end and was simply walking toward the result. There was no hesitation in him, no excitement, no wasted movement. His expression remained cold, but the look in his eyes had changed.
It was menacing enough to make even a veteran shinobi feel a chill.
Temari's body tensed the moment she saw him approaching.
She swallowed hard.
"W-Wait…"
"Please… just let us go."
Sasuke didn't even look at her.
That indifference made her heart sink even faster.
"We'll leave," she continued quickly, forcing the words out before her courage vanished. "We'll take Gaara and get out of Konoha. We won't interfere anymore, so just—"
He walked past her as if she hadn't spoken at all.
Temari's pupils trembled.
For a brief second, she actually felt humiliated by how completely she had been ignored.
But that feeling was drowned out by fear.
Sasuke stopped in front of Gaara.
Gaara was still lying there, breathing heavily, his eyes bloodshot, his face twisted with hatred.
Blood stained the ground beneath him. One arm was gone, severed cleanly, yet the madness in his eyes had only grown stronger.
Sasuke looked down at him coldly.
He had already made up his mind.
Killing Gaara here would be troublesome.
But crippling him?
That was a different story.
As long as Gaara was broken badly enough before he fully transformed, capturing him later would become much easier.
Sasuke slowly raised his hand.
Chidori began to chirp.
The sharp, violent sound of Lightning Release crackled through the forest as blue-white chakra gathered in his palm, illuminating his face in harsh flashes.
Temari's face went pale.
"Kankurō!"
"I know!"
Both of them moved at the same time—
But they were too late.
A violent surge of chakra erupted from Gaara's body.
Sand exploded outward like a storm.
Boom!
The force alone made Temari and Kankurō halt and shield themselves. Sasuke himself stepped back lightly, landing on a nearby branch with effortless balance, his eyes narrowing slightly as he watched the change.
Gaara's body convulsed.
The sand around him moved on its own, crawling over his skin like something alive. His severed shoulder twitched, and then, before their eyes, sand gathered there and formed a new arm.
A grotesque arm of compacted sand.
At the same time, Gaara's face began to warp.
His features twisted and bulged, becoming uglier, inhuman. Part of his face was covered by a monstrous layer of sand, taking on the hideous shape of the One-Tail's visage. His eye looked even more unhinged now, framed by that distorted half-transformation.
He looked less like a person and more like some half-born monster dragged out of a nightmare.
Then he laughed.
It was creepy, unstable, and completely wrong.
"Heh… heheheh… hahahaha!"
Temari's face went white. She was no longer in the mood to get close to her brother.
"Gaara…"
Kankurō's expression stiffened, and he also took several steps back.
"Damn it… not now…"
Gaara slowly pushed himself up, his newly formed sand arm hanging at his side as chakra spilled from him in waves. His grin was wide now, ugly and feral.
"I'll kill you…"
His voice sounded wrong—like it was being dragged up from somewhere deeper than his own throat.
"I'll kill you the way I am now… piece by piece…"
He lifted his head fully and stared at Sasuke with pure madness in his eyes.
"You wanted to chase me this far?" Gaara snarled. "Then don't regret it. I'll crush your bones, tear your flesh apart, and paint the trees with your blood! I'll make you scream until your voice breaks!"
Temari and Kankurō didn't move.
For one brief moment, both of them actually thought this might turn around.
That maybe this insane transformation would finally overwhelm Sasuke.
That maybe Gaara, like this, could win.
But Sasuke only looked at him with interest.
"…So this is a jinchūriki half-transformed."
His Sharingan spun once.
Then he met Gaara's eyes directly.
Gaara's grin widened.
But before he could say another word—
Genjutsu.
The world seemed to freeze for a split second.
Gaara's pupils shook violently.
His laughter stopped, and the madness in his expression faltered.
Then the connection between him and the One-Tail was severed for an instant.
The sand arm cracked.
The monstrous features on his face trembled… then receded.
The ugly half-transformation collapsed almost pathetically fast, crumbling away in chunks of loose sand before revealing Gaara's original face again.
A very awkward silence followed.
Temari and Kankurō blinked.
They practically rubbed their eyes as if they were seeing things, and then their expressions twitched.
Just a moment ago, Gaara had looked like a demon crawling out of hell itself, talking like he was about to massacre everyone in the forest.
And now…
He was just… normal again.
The dramatic aura crashed so hard that even Temari didn't know how to react for a second.
Kankurō's mouth opened slightly, then closed again.
"…That's it?" he blurted out before he could stop himself.
Gaara himself seemed frozen in disbelief.
Sasuke stared at him for a moment longer, then let out a faint breath through his nose.
It wasn't quite a laugh.
But it was close.
"So loud," he said calmly. "And that was all?"
Temari and Kankurō's expressions became even stranger.
That line hit far harder than it should have.
Because somehow, after all that horrifying buildup, it really did feel like Gaara had just made the most dramatic entrance possible…
Only to get shut down instantly.
Gaara's face twisted in humiliation and rage.
But Sasuke wasn't interested in his complicated feelings.
He wasn't Naruto.
Before anyone could react, he was already in front of Gaara, his eyes slightly narrowed as he brought down a merciless blow.
Boom!
Gaara's eyes rolled back, losing their focus, and he dropped unconscious on the spot.
"Gaara!!"
Temari and Kankurō shouted and were just about to rush forward—
But then they heard a voice near them that sent a chill down their backs.
"You should be more worried about yourselves."
Bam!
Bam!
Two casual sideways punches slammed into their stomachs.
Both of them gagged and spat saliva as they clutched their stomachs, twitching on the ground and trembling in pain.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Sasuke's footsteps faded into their ears.
Their blurred vision caught the last glimpse of him lifting Gaara with one hand and walking away.
Only then did the two of them finally lose consciousness.
"Gaara… no…"
It was only at this moment that the siblings truly realized something.
Even if their brother acted like a monster…
Even if they were afraid of him…
Seeing him helpless, seeing him taken away like that...
It hurt.
Because no matter how difficult Gaara was, no matter how much pain he caused them, he was still their brother.
And they loved him far more than they had wanted to admit.
Author Note:
Here we go again… starting a new project: Jujutsu Kaisen: Gilgamesh The King of Heroes.
If you like global curses not limited to Japan, strong MCs, and heavy 'Quality' moments, give it a try.
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