"Time to get serious!"
Naruto's voice echoed across the stadium. The air grew charged, heavy and vibrant. The tension was almost physical, the silence before an explosion. The energy swirling around him was no longer the blue chakra everyone knew.
A bubbling, intense red aura began to pour from his body. It was visible, a dense, hot fog that coiled around his feet. The small stones and dust around him levitated for an instant before disintegrating into nothing. A wave of pure, untamed heat spread out, forcing everyone to take an instinctive step back.
From her position on the ground, Temari, with Shizune trying to heal her arm, felt the change in her bones. It wasn't just the feeling of powerful chakra. It was a physical pressure, a crushing presence that stole the air from her lungs. It was a primal fear, the instinct of prey before a predator.
Karin, whose ability to sense chakra was both a blessing and a curse, clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Naruto.
'No... it's not just chakra,' she thought, a cold sweat running down her neck. 'How can something like that fit inside a person?'
Kiba, who had been about to let out a boast, was struck dumb. Akamaru whimpered beside him, cowering against the ground.
"What… what the hell is that?" he managed to whisper, his voice stripped of all its usual arrogance. "Naruto?"
The transformation continued, oblivious to the panicked stares. The marks on Naruto's cheeks, normally thin, widened. They grew thicker and more jagged; black claws that looked like they were tearing through his skin. His eyes, once a vibrant blue, faded, replaced by a brilliant blood-red. His pupils contracted and elongated vertically, becoming the inhuman gaze of a beast. A low, guttural growl escaped his throat, a sound that vibrated in the chests of everyone present.
In the midst of that whirlwind of foreign power, Naruto's mind fought not to drown. A voice that wasn't his own roared in his head, a storm of rage that threatened to consume everything.
'Just a little,' he told himself, clinging to his consciousness with all his might. 'I just need a little of its power. Just enough. I can control it. I have to. For them. I'm not going to let it control me.'
Across from him, the gigantic sand beast, Shukaku, seemed to sense the change. Its yellow eyes narrowed. The crazed amusement it had shown until now was replaced by a flash of recognition, of an ancient and bitter rivalry.
"So… you finally show your true colors, brat," the creature hissed, its voice a grinding of rocks. "The vessel of another. I recognize that stench. This will be much more fun!"
Naruto's response wasn't a word. It was movement.
He vanished.
One moment he was there, hunched over and surrounded by the red aura. The next, the space he occupied was empty.
He reappeared directly in front of the sand monstrosity. His fist, wreathed in red chakra energy, was already in motion, and the air split in his wake.
The blow impacted the beast's torso. A sonic boom created a shockwave that swept across the battlefield, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris. The sand forming Shukaku's body wasn't merely displaced; it was obliterated, disintegrated by the pure force of the impact. A clean hole the size of a grown man appeared in the creature's chest.
Naruto didn't stop to admire his work. The momentum carried him upward. He used the beast's immobile body, running up its sand arm with a speed that defied gravity. The red chakra extended from his hands, forming sharp claws at his fingertips. With a brutal arc, he tore across Shukaku's sand-face, leaving five deep gouges that smoked with red energy.
The display of power was so overwhelming, so sudden, that it silenced everyone watching.
"But what…?" was all Kiba could articulate.
Shizune, who was applying medical ninjutsu to Temari's arm, stopped completely, her hand, cloaked in green chakra, trembling visibly. "That power… It's the Kyubi's. But he's… using it. He's not being consumed. He's… controlling it. How is that possible?"
The sand beast roared, a sound that was more surprise and fury than pain. It swung its massive, compacted sand claw toward the tiny red dot on its shoulder. But Naruto was already gone. He leaped backward, landing nimbly thirty meters away, the red aura swirling around him with renewed intensity.
The enormous hole in Shukaku's chest and the gashes on its face began to repair themselves. The sand flowed to fill the gaps. But it was different this time, slower. The corrosive red chakra Naruto had left embedded seemed to interfere with the regeneration, preventing the wound from closing completely.
"All of you, stay back!" Shizune commanded, her voice regaining the firmness of a battlefield commander. She stood up, placing herself between the genin and the fight. "Sakura, Hinata! This is beyond your level! That's a direct order! Retreat to a safe distance! Right now!"
Sakura didn't hear her. Not really. Her eyes were fixed on Naruto. She saw the way his shoulders were hunched, the tension running through his body as he fought to contain the tide of power enveloping him. She saw the loneliness in his stance, a single boy standing against a monster. And she remembered the feeling of utter uselessness that had consumed her for much of her life, the promise she had made to herself with blood and tears.
'Stay back?' she thought, a fire igniting in her chest. 'Watch him fight alone until that thing completely consumes him? And what am I supposed to do? Wait for it to be over to try and heal his wounds? Not anymore.'
"No," Sakura said. Her voice was quiet, but it resonated with an unbreakable weight. She took a deliberate step forward, crossing the invisible line Shizune had drawn.
"Sakura, what do you think you're doing?" Shizune asked, her tone a mix of disbelief and anger. "That's an order from a superior officer!"
"We're a team," Sakura replied, not taking her green eyes off Naruto's back. "And teams don't let one of their own fight alone. That's the first lesson Kakashi-sensei taught us."
Hinata said nothing. She simply stepped forward and stood beside Sakura, her body relaxed but ready. Her hands fell into the Gentle Fist stance. Her Byakugan was already active, her pale eyes analyzing the battlefield with a cold, analytical intensity. Her silence was a statement more powerful than any shout.
Shizune looked at them, from the open defiance on Sakura's face to the quiet, iron-willed determination in Hinata's. She saw the same resolve she had seen in Naruto just minutes before. They were kids, yes, but in that moment, they were shinobi.
'Damn it,' she thought. 'They're… a real team. They trust him. And he's trusting them to have his back. If I force them to retreat now, I won't be protecting them. I'll be breaking the one thing that might be keeping Naruto sane.'
She sighed, a short exhale that was a mix of frustration and a strange, reluctant pride. "Fine. But I want no recklessness. Your objective is not to defeat that thing, it's to support Naruto. Keep him anchored to reality. Understood?"
"Understood!" they both replied in unison.
The battle resumed without warning. Shukaku, completely enraged by the wound and the humiliation, unleashed a volley of sand spears. There were dozens, each one sharp and fast. Naruto, moving with his new demonic speed, became a red blur, dodging or destroying the spears with simple swipes of his chakra claws. Each impact sounded like a small explosion.
"Naruto-kun, to your right!" Hinata shouted, her voice clear and precise, cutting through the din. "It's forming a spear underground! Five meters from your position!"
Naruto, who was in the middle of a sideways leap to dodge three spears, twisted in mid-air, a contortion impossible for a normal body. Just as the tip of a massive sand spear erupted from the ground where he was about to land, he kicked it with incredible force. The kick, imbued with the Kyubi's chakra, shattered it, sending a shower of sand in every direction.
He landed in a crouch, ready to spring again, and prepared to charge.
"Insects!" Shukaku roared, its frustration growing. "All of you are annoying insects! I'll crush you all together!"
This time, it didn't use a precise attack. It made the ground itself rise. A wave of sand and concrete debris, the size of a three-story building, surged toward the three of them.
"That's not going to work!" Sakura yelled, and her voice held a new, solid confidence. "I'm going to break its footing! Get ready!"
She ran head-on toward the wave to intercept it at its weakest point. She leaped, channeling all the chakra she could muster into her fist, and with a cry that released all her frustration and power, she slammed it into the ground just in front of the approaching wave.
The entire stadium trembled. A massive fissure opened in the concrete floor, spreading out in all directions and creating a small, makeshift canyon that swallowed most of the sand attack, which fell into the crevice with a dull roar.
The display of raw strength made even Naruto turn for a second, his red, slitted eyes widening slightly.
'Incredible… Sakura-chan…'
The sand beast, thrown off balance by the collapsing ground beneath it, stumbled, planting an arm to keep from falling. It was an opening of barely a second. But it was all they needed.
"Now, Naruto-kun!" Hinata shouted.
Naruto didn't need to be told twice. He launched himself forward, a red and orange missile that left a heat trail in its wake. Shukaku saw him coming and, with a roar, raised its left claw to crush him effortlessly.
"Not so fast!" Sakura yelled.
With a Herculean effort, she ripped a huge chunk of the concrete stands from the ground and hurled it with incredible force. The makeshift projectile, weighing several tons, crashed against Shukaku's claw. It didn't stop it, but it deflected it just enough, just so it passed inches from Naruto's head.
Naruto reached his target. He drove his chakra claws into the beast's right shoulder and pulled with all the strength the borrowed power gave him. A massive chunk of sand was torn away, revealing for an instant a swirl of dark blue chakra within: Gaara's chakra, fighting weakly to hold on.
The monster roared in pain, a heart-wrenching sound that was half Shukaku's fury and half Gaara's agony.
The battle became a chaotic yet strangely coordinated dance. Hinata was the team's eyes. Her Byakugan penetrated the sand defenses, ignored distractions, and found the chakra fluctuations, the momentary weaknesses. She directed their attacks with a calm and precision that contradicted her normally timid nature.
"Sakura-san, to the left! It's going to use an area-of-effect attack, shatter the ground ten meters out to destabilize it!"
Sakura was the muscle and the shield. Her monstrous strength controlled the battlefield. She shattered the ground to create trenches and obstacles, hurled debris to deflect massive attacks, and, when necessary, stood in the way to intercept blows that would have been fatal to the others.
"On it! Naruto, get ready to attack when it stumbles!"
And Naruto… Naruto was the spear.
With the Kyubi's power flowing through him, he was a whirlwind of destruction. Every blow he landed carried explosive force, every movement was blindingly fast. He fought with a wild abandon that terrified his own friends, but his attacks were never random. He followed Hinata's directions with absolute trust, exploiting every opening Sakura created for him without a moment's hesitation.
"Hinata! Where's the next weak spot?" he growled, his voice growing more distorted by the red chakra.
"The left leg! It's channeling chakra for a ground-based area attack! If you hit it there, you'll stop it!"
"Sakura, I need a diversion! Anything!"
"I'm on it!"
They worked together, three genin and a demonic power, holding a Tailed Beast at bay. It was impossible. It was suicidal. It was absurd. And yet, they were doing it.
But the Kyubi's power came at a price. With every passing minute, the red chakra grew denser. Naruto's growl became more animalistic, his movements fiercer and less controlled.
'More… I need more power…' a voice whispered in his head that wasn't his. 'Let me out, brat… I can finish this bag of sand in an instant…'
'No! Shut up!' Naruto thought, gritting his teeth, the pain of resistance mixing with the heat of battle. 'I'm in control! This is my power!'
Shukaku, realizing this coordinated assault was wearing it down faster than it could regenerate, decided to change tactics. It suddenly stopped attacking. It stood still and began to gather sand. Tons of sand from all over the stadium swirled around it, drawn by an unseen force, forming a massive, protective dome that completely encased it.
"What's it doing?" Sakura asked, panting, placing her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Her arms ached from the strain.
"It's protecting itself," Hinata answered, her pale eyes fixed on the dome. The effort of keeping her Byakugan active for so long was causing a pounding headache. "It's accumulating an incredible amount of chakra inside. It's preparing something big! Something that will wipe out the entire stadium!"
"I can't let it do that!" Naruto roared, the red chakra flaring around him.
He threw himself against the sand dome, striking it with all his might. The dome cracked under the impact but repaired itself instantly. He struck again, and again, and again. Each blow shook the stadium with a thundering crash, but the defense was too thick, too dense.
With a final cry of frustration, he gathered as much red chakra as he could into his right hand. The energy condensed, swirled, not into a sphere, but into something more sinister. It solidified into a demonic claw, a miniature replica of the Kyubi's own, pulsing with tangible, destructive power.
"Get back!" he yelled.
He launched himself forward one last time and pierced through the dome.
The wall of sand, several meters thick, disintegrated in his path without resistance. For an instant, Naruto was inside the sand sphere, in the silent eye of the storm.
And there, in the center, he saw him.
Suspended in the air, his eyes closed and his face contorted in a pained grimace, was Gaara's real body. Sand was emanating from him, yes, but for a second, through the monstrous transformation and Shukaku's chakra, Naruto saw what he really was.
A boy. A boy his own age, pale and frail, with deep, dark circles under his eyes and a kanji mark burned into his forehead. And on his cheek, still in the midst of the chaos, Naruto could have sworn he saw the dry track of a tear.
'He's… just a boy. Just like me.'
For a fraction of a second, the red chakra claw in his hand wavered, the murderous energy dissipating.
Doubt. Empathy. Humanity.
It was all the time Shukaku needed.
The beast's yellow eye, watching him from the sand-form still surrounding Gaara, flew wide open with malicious, triumphant delight.
The sand Naruto had pierced through reformed behind him, sealing his only exit and trapping him inside the dome. And the sand forming Gaara's armor exploded outward, not as a wave, but as dozens of sharp-clawed arms that shot toward the momentarily frozen Naruto.
"GOT YOU!" the beast shrieked, its voice filled with absolute, psychotic triumph.
*****
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