The silence was the strangest part. It wasn't peace, but a pause, the tense calm before violence erupted again. The roar of the invasion had faded to a distant murmur, a problem for another time. Naruto let his shoulders drop, feeling for the first time in hours how every muscle in his body stopped trembling from the tension.
He took a deep breath.
Beside him, Karin didn't let go of his hand. Her grip was firm, real.
"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Naruto nodded without looking at her. His gaze was lost somewhere in the broken stands of the stadium. "Yeah. I'm just… tired."
"I know," she replied. "I can feel it. Your chakra is almost gone."
"So is yours," he retorted, a half-smile on his face. "Thanks. For… well, you know."
Karin squeezed his hand a little tighter. "You don't have to thank me."
It was Kiba who broke the moment. His head shot up, his nose wrinkling as if he'd smelled something rotten.
"Hey, lovebirds, sorry to interrupt," he said, though his tone lacked its usual bravado. "But something's not right."
Akamaru, who had been lying at his feet, leaped up. The fur on his back stood on end, and a low, guttural growl rumbled in his chest.
Sakura frowned. "What are you talking about, Kiba? We finally have a second to breathe."
"This isn't a joke," he insisted, his eyes fixed in the direction of the Sand team. "There's a weird smell. Like blood and wet sand."
Shino, who had been so still he looked like a statue, moved. A faint buzzing emanated from his jacket. "My kikaichū are agitated," he declared, his voice monotonous but filled with urgency. "They refuse to approach the Sand shinobi. The chakra coming from him…" He paused. "It's erratic. And it's growing at an alarming rate."
Hinata, who already had her Byakugan activated just in case, gasped. "Shino-kun is right. His chakra network… it's chaos. I can't make out the pathways. And there's another energy, enormous and violent, that's… consuming him from the inside."
All eyes snapped to Gaara.
He was unconscious, or so they had thought. A groan escaped his lips. It wasn't human. It was the sound of a trapped animal, a deep, guttural wail that chilled the blood.
The sand from his gourd, which had been inert, began to stir. It poured down Gaara's back, thick and dark. It spread across the ground around him, creeping.
Across the small clearing, Temari's face went pale. "Oh, no," she whispered, the words carried away on a non-existent wind. "It can't be. Not now."
Convulsions wracked Gaara's body. They were brutal. His back arched with a force that should have shattered his spine, a choked scream gurgling in his throat. The sand around him lifted off the ground, forming dozens of small, sharp spikes that floated in the air, vibrating with malevolent energy.
Temari took a step forward. The fear was overwhelming, but beneath it was determination.
I'm not going to let that thing out, she told herself. Not here. We've already lost this war. I don't need it to slaughter everyone. She gritted her teeth. He's my brother. It's my job.
With a metallic click that echoed in the tense silence, she unfolded her giant iron fan.
Naruto took an instinctive step toward her. "Hey! What do you think you're doing?! Get away from him!"
"Don't even think about getting close!" Temari ordered. She didn't take her eyes off her brother's figure, who was now rising to his feet with rigid, spasmodic, unnatural movements. "This is a Sand Village matter! I'll handle it!"
"Don't be an idiot!" Kiba yelled. "That thing will kill you!"
"He's my brother," she repeated, and in those three words was a weight none of them could comprehend. "He's my responsibility."
Without warning, she swung the fan. A controlled but immensely powerful gust of wind swept them back, forcing them to retreat several meters to keep from being knocked over.
When they recovered, Temari already had her back to them, facing the storm that shared her blood.
There were no more words. The sand exploded toward her.
Dozens of spears, each as sharp as steel, hissed through the air, seeking to impale her. But Temari was already moving. She leaped backward, her body flowing with a fluid grace that contrasted with the massive weapon she carried. She opened her fan completely, revealing the three purple moons painted on the fabric.
"Ninjutsu: Wind Scythe Dance!" she yelled, her voice resonating with power.
She swept the air with a herculean motion. An invisible, pressurized blade of wind shot out, a massive slash that distorted the air in its path. It collided head-on with the volley of sand.
The impact was like thunder. For a moment, wind and sand battled, and then the spears disintegrated, reduced to a harmless cloud of dust that Temari's own attack scattered.
Good, she thought, landing nimbly twenty meters away. Her heart pounded against her chest. The tactic is working. Keep my distance. His control is slower at long range. I can cut through anything he throws before it reaches me.
It was the strategy she had perfected in countless training sessions.
But this wasn't training.
The thing controlling Gaara didn't stop to assess. More sand flowed from the gourd, forming a dense, domed shield that blocked the rest of the wind scythe. Through a small opening, Temari saw her brother's face. His eyes were wide open, fixed on her, but they didn't see her. They were empty.
The sand shield retracted, and the next attack was different. Faster. Smarter.
A colossal claw of compressed sand erupted directly from the ground beneath her feet, lunging to trap her.
"Damn it!" she yelled. She jumped at the last second, propelling herself with a small gust of wind from her closed fan to gain height. She landed on the upper stadium seats, her heart in her throat.
From her new vantage point, she saw the whole scene, and fear began to spread.
"He's using too much sand," she muttered to herself. "Way more than he carries in the gourd. He's pulling it from the ground, from the walls… And he's so fast. He's never been this fast."
The armor of sand that always covered Gaara's body began to crack and fall away. But it didn't reveal his skin. Underneath, a new layer, darker and covered in sinister markings, was forming. His left arm swelled grotesquely. Sand covered it, reshaped it, twisted it until it was no longer an arm. It was a monstrous claw, a replica of Shukaku's, with long, blade-like fingers.
"Gaara!" she screamed, her voice tinged with a desperation she couldn't hide. "Please, snap out of it! It's me, Temari! Please, stop this!"
The response was a hiss that didn't seem to come from a human throat.
A crack opened in the sand mask covering Gaara's face. Through it, an eye peered out. A single, enormous yellow eye, bloodshot and insane. The pupil wasn't round; it was shaped like a four-pointed black shuriken that stared at her with pure hatred.
Temari's heart stopped.
That's… not him, she thought, terror seizing her. That's not my brother's eye. It's the thing. It's broken free.
From a distance, the Konoha team watched, trapped in a mixture of awe and helplessness.
"She can't win," Sakura said suddenly, her mind working at top speed despite the panic. "It's a battle of attrition. Her wind attacks are powerful, but look at how much chakra she's using with each move. The sand beast has an almost limitless reserve, it's regenerating and pulling more material from the environment. She'll run out of energy long before it does."
"Then we have to do something!" Kiba snapped, taking a step forward. Akamaru barked in agreement.
"Do what, exactly, Inuzuka?" Shino replied, his voice as cold as ever. "Attacking blindly would only make us additional targets. The Sand kunoichi's strategy is the only viable one: maintain distance. Our specialty is close-quarters combat. We'd be neutralized before we could even get near."
"But we can't just stand here and watch!" Naruto protested, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.
Hinata, beside him, trembled slightly. "The beast's chakra… it's horrible. It's completely drowning Gaara-san's. I can barely sense his own energy. It's consuming him."
Temari felt it too. The air burned in her lungs. Every sweep of her iron fan felt like trying to move a mountain. Her arms screamed in pain. Nearly ten minutes had passed. Ten minutes that felt like ten years. She was reaching her limit.
One more attack, she thought, narrowly dodging a shower of sand bullets. Her breathing was a ragged gasp. It has to be a big one. I can't keep this up. Her gaze fixed on the gourd. The gourd has always been the main source. If I can destroy it… maybe I can reduce its power. Maybe I can reach him.
It was a stupid gamble. All or nothing. And she knew it.
But it was all she had left.
With a battle cry that was more frustration and fear than courage, she launched herself from the stands. She leaped, diving down, using gravity to increase her speed and the power of her attack.
"Third Moon!" she yelled. She threw her fan wide open, revealing the last and most powerful mark. The wind began to swirl around her.
She got closer than she had been the entire fight. The optimal distance for her most devastating jutsu.
It was the worst mistake of her life.
The creature that had been her brother simply stopped moving. It ceased all its attacks. And it waited.
As Temari descended, the sand at Gaara's feet began to rise.
A colossal wave of sand and chakra rose to the sky, growing until it cast a shadow over the entire stadium. A tsunami. An unstoppable wall of destructive power.
Temari's choked cry was lost in the roar of the sand.
"Oh, no…"
Her most powerful jutsu, the windstorm she had prepared, was unleashed. A massive, cutting gust.
It was swallowed.
The immense mass of sand consumed her attack without even faltering. And then it hit her.
The force of the impact was crushing. It stole her breath, her orientation, and for a moment, her consciousness. Her iron fan was ripped from her hands as if it were a twig.
She was dragged, suspended in the center of that whirlwind. And then, the sand began to squeeze.
The pressure was unbearable on every inch of her body. A crushing force that threatened to pulverize every bone. The sand swirled, filling her mouth, her nose, her eyes. Darkness closed in. The Sand Coffin.
Through the panic and pain, one last clear thought cut through her mind.
Kankurō... Gaara... I'm sorry…
She closed her eyes.
And the world exploded.
"MULTI-SHADOW CLONE JUTSU!!"
Naruto's shout wasn't a single voice. It was thunder. One hundred, two hundred, five hundred shouts in unison.
In the instant the sand tsunami was about to crash into the rest of them, the battlefield was flooded with figures dressed in orange.
Hundreds, maybe a thousand Naruto clones appeared from nowhere in a burst of smoke. They formed a human wall, a barrier that slammed head-on into the wave.
The tsunami, which had seemed unstoppable, halted.
The sheer mass of hundreds of bodies, each pushing and struggling with all its might, stopped the sand's advance through brute force. The wave churned and pressed, crushing the first few rows of clones, but those behind them took their place, pushing with the same ferocity.
But the real Naruto wasn't there.
Temari, trapped in the suffocating darkness of her coffin, felt the pressure around her falter for a split second.
And then, a hand clamped down on her arm.
It wasn't a gentle tug. It was a force that nearly dislocated her shoulder. She was yanked out of the half-formed coffin an instant before it slammed shut with a dull, final CRACK! The sound of tons of sand compressing into a solid point. The sound her bones would have made.
She was dragged through the swirling sand, toward the light.
Fresh air filled her lungs in a gasp so painful it made her scream. She coughed violently, feeling sand grains scrape her throat. The first thing she saw was a flash of blond hair and two blue eyes.
Naruto landed softly next to his team, still holding her. With a gentleness that contrasted with the brutality of his rescue, he set her on the ground.
"Temari!" Sakura yelled.
She and Shizune, who had joined them, rushed to her side immediately.
"Breathe deep," Shizune ordered, passing her green, chakra-coated hands over her body. "Don't move. I need to check for fractures."
Temari coughed again, spitting out a mixture of saliva and sand. She clutched her arm, which throbbed with a sharp pain where the sand had begun to crush it. Her mind was spinning. She looked at Naruto, who was already standing with his back to her.
"Why…?" she managed to croak, the word barely a scratch in her throat. "Why did you save me?"
Naruto didn't turn around. His eyes were fixed on the monstrous sand figure, now being held back by the orange tide of his clones.
"Because I know how it feels," he said. His voice was low, serious, stripped of all its usual cheer. "I know what it's like to be alone. And I know what it's like to have a monster locked inside you and be judged for it."
Naruto's expression hardened. The wind lifted his jacket, making him seem larger. His blue eyes, for an instant, seemed to flash with a hint of red.
He took a step forward, deliberately placing himself between the beast and everyone else.
So this is what happens, he thought. This is what you become when you let hate and loneliness consume you. His gaze locked onto the twisted form that was once Gaara. I'm not going to judge you. Not after seeing what's in your eyes. It's the same emptiness I've felt. But I'm not going to let you destroy yourself. And I'm definitely… not going to let you hurt anyone else!
The sand swirled more furiously, as if it sensed the challenge. Shukaku's form became more defined. Naruto's clones were being destroyed by the dozens, but the original didn't flinch.
"What is he doing?" Kiba whispered in awe. "He's going to face that thing… alone?"
"That's not his normal chakra," Karin said, her eyes wide. "That's…"
Naruto simply raised his hands and formed a single, familiar hand sign. The shadow clone sign, but this time, the energy gathering within him felt different.
"Let's get serious!" he yelled, and his voice resonated throughout the stadium with a newfound authority.
********
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