Chapter 31

Gaara stared at Naruto with him impassive, intimidating stare, "I thought you were too broken to come out and fight me Uzumaki. I was about to kill your friends and then come looking for you." He said coldly.

Naruto drew his machete, not knowing how much good it would do but ready to use it if he had an opening. It hadn't done him much good a month ago, but a month ago he didn't have a way to hit Gaara either, "Well I'm right here… or am I?" Gaara sent a wave of sand at Naruto that he jumped back out of the way of, "Okay! I'm here! No clone! Now let's do this already!"

"Kick his ass Goldie-kun!"

"I'm gonna, just hold on a minute!" Naruto shouted as he ran in at Gaara, dodging the second attack of the wave of sand that had been sent at him by jumping clear over it with a boost from a clone that ate the attack in his place and was destroyed. After the clone was destroyed and the sand tried to engulf Naruto from the air, Naruto created two more clones right underneath him that he used as a springboard in mid-air. While Naruto jumped higher in the air his clones underneath him tried to bat away the sand with their wind jutsu, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

Like a fan, the jutsu blew the grains of sand away, boosting the clones into the air while the original fell to the ground and ran through the sand that was being suppressed to the ground by his clones. Once the clones dispelled after their purpose had been served, the sand rushed back to chase after and attack Naruto who was rushing towards Gaara. Naruto got close to Gaara and let loose a slash of the machete, but the sand beat him back to Gaara and ran interference in the form of a sand clone.

The wind charged machete cleaved through the neck of the clone before the sand that comprised the head of the construct rushed at Naruto's arm in an attempt to trap it. The sand was about to grab Naruto when he yanked his hand back sharply and formed a long-practiced single hand-seal with his machete in hand, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A tightly packed mass of twenty Naruto clones formed immediately around Naruto and desperately started hacking away at the sand to buy Naruto room to maneuver out of harm's way and head back towards Gaara who was merely a stride away.

As his clones bit the dust, or the sand so to speak, some of the sand barred his path to Gaara as well, but Naruto smirked as he created another two clone in the immediate area inside of Gaara's area of defense past the shield of sand, much to the alarm of Gaara as he wound up taking a hard punch to the face from one of Naruto's clones while another grabbed his arm to keep him from stumbling out of range. The sand was quick to act, moving on the clones and destroying them mercilessly, but in doing this it was still too late, as the clone that had grabbed Gaara's arm threw him back towards the original's direction and Naruto was able to unseal a scroll in direct close range to Gaara, thoroughly drenching his sand armor and any sand in the immediate vicinity trying to react.

Gaara's eyes widened at someone getting that close to him, slipping through his defenses when he was fully aware of them. Naruto wasn't faster than the sand, but with the multitude of clones that he spammed gratuitously Gaara's sand didn't know who to focus on. Attacking the wrong Naruto would end with whichever one was left cutting through the little sand spared to defend against the others with that machete that turned his shield to grains before it could harden to a level that could stop the blade well enough. The wind chakra was formidable.

Naruto's machete was drawn back ready to swing at the vulnerable Gaara when the wet sand smacked against his face and blinded him, forcing him to miss his swing by inches before more wet sand slapped against him, pushing him back with the force of the wet globs hitting him bluntly like beanbags. Gaara couldn't get his weak control over the soaked sand to bind against Naruto to capture him, but he was dealing his damage anyway as a shiner showed itself on Naruto's face where he was hit. With a grunt of effort needed to move the heavy and hard to control sand, Gaara shoved as much as he could at Naruto in one wave, hitting him and knocking him to the ground, burying him as if he were in a sandbox on a rainy day.

The wet slabs of the sand armor dropped from Gaara's face as it was taking too much chakra to keep the sand in shape on his body, even more than usual due to it being wet. Even moving his normal sand was like the chakra control equivalent of trying to lift weights, and with Naruto's constant attacks until Gaara's counter he hadn't had time to dry it out like the last two times something similar had happened.

"I'll crush you with what I have then…" Gaara muttered to himself as he held his hand out to direct his sand to try and squash Naruto, "Is this all your strength? Is this all that you have?" He then felt the pull of Shikamaru's shadow on his body again, "I'm getting tired of you."

"I don't really care." Shikamaru said, holding his rat seal, "Heads up by the way."

Gaara turned his attention to Naruto only to find that he was no longer laying down in the sand. Gaara was actually surrounded on most sides by a dozen clones with their machetes drawn, "Let's try it again!" They all cried in unison before spinning their weapons by the chain on the end, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

Gaara's sand put up the currently clumsy yet still complete defense around his entire body to block the slicing cyclones coming at him. He was mostly unable to see any of the attack until a pair of kunai stuck into the shield prior to exploding, blasting the shield away and revealing a Naruto fist that hit him right in the mouth, knocking him backwards. A smirk from Naruto gave way to the sand, ironically dried out from the wind jutsu that Naruto had been using to chip away at Gaara's shield of sand, grabbing the blonde around his leg before whipping him harshly away from Gaara to allow the rest of the sand time to finish drying again.

Shikamaru had let go of his shadow control over Gaara once Naruto had punched him in the face and watched along with Ino as Gaara's sand mercilessly threw Naruto over the moat into the Zen-garden. That was worst case scenario, "Naruto!" They tried to move to get over to him, but a blast of wind from Temari knocked both Shikamaru and Ino back as she floated out of the moat and landed in front of them barring their path, "Get out of the way already you troublesome woman!" He yelled as he ignored the few cuts he received while standing up.

"So sorry, but that's not happening bum." Temari said, holding her retrieved fan at the ready, "You two aren't going any further over there. Your friend is screwed."

Ino growled at the Suna kunoichi, "Why are you still fighting us for him, this stupid exam? He keeps threatening to kill you and he just crushed your teammate's hand, why are you protecting him?"

"Because he's my little brother!" Temari shouted as she swung her fan, "Kamaitachi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" Both Ino and Shikamaru avoided the rather wide berth of her ranged attack. She seemed angry at them, especially Ino in particular. Probably because it was Ino's fault that Kankuro's hand was injured, "Now back off!"

XxX

Naruto sat up from where he landed in the sand, his still very sore body exceedingly grateful that he missed all of the rocks populating the garden before he realized that he had nothing to be grateful for based on where he was. Naruto quickly tried to jump up on one of the rocks to avoid being completely done in by his field positioning, but a tendril of sand caught his leg and pulled him back down to the ground before swatting him against a rock.

Blood from Naruto's head stained the rock as he regained enough of his bearings to slash at the tendril with his machete to free himself. Immediately making more clones to cover himself in a defensive posture due to the lack of knowledge of Gaara's position, he learned that such a plan wasn't such a hot idea either as his clones began to get sucked into the sand. Before they were forced to submerge beneath the sand they all grabbed the original and chucked him directly upward into the air.

The original Naruto started swinging his machete by its chain and blew himself out of the garden with the push of one blast from his fan-like jutsu. He wound up landing hard on his back in the barren area, not doing any favors to his body, but it was better than being choked and crushed in sand like his clones.

Naruto stood back up and looked at the sand of the Zen-garden only to drop his jaw at the sight of seeing a wave of sand rush his way, "Son of a bitch!" Naruto instantly created around forty clones that all pulled out one of their remaining water scrolls, all using them in the manner that Shikamaru did earlier with a pair of simultaneous hand-seals that sent the water up in a reactionary manner around themselves.

This inexplicably created a semi-controlled wall of water due to all of the water abruptly released. It crashed against Gaara's wave of sand and the two moves cancelled each other out. Still, the sand wave had enough force behind it to knock the original Naruto backwards and along with that rid the area of his clones. It was a very small price to pay though to get himself some distance away from the Zen-garden where Gaara could control more dry sand whenever he needed to instead of having to constantly air out his own to retain better control.

Standing atop a rock in the Zen-garden that allowed him a good point of view of Naruto running into the barren mountainous area, Gaara simply narrowed his eyes at his intended adversary. He seemed to have an answer for everything that was sent his way, and his methods of countering were strange but seemed to work despite the inherent danger in each brazen attempt he made to attack. He hadn't even resorted to using the power-up from the demon within him the way he needed to in order to keep pace with Fuu.

"I was right." Gaara said as he formed a hand-seal that kicked up sand all around him, starting to force it to solidify in a thick protective orb around his body, "You will prove my existence… now let me show you my true power…" He said as he closed himself off from the outside world inside of his little ball.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"He made a ball of sand…" Konohamaru said, very unimpressed by Gaara's new tactic in fighting against Naruto. The little boy had until that point been watching unflinchingly wondering where Naruto was and if his boss was too hurt from the last battle to compete. When he appeared it picked him right up and with his spirits the enthusiasm of the entire class went with it. Now he was sitting on his hands again as the camera shots were split between Gaara's orb of sand, Naruto's expression as he thought about what to do about the orb, and Temari's angry attempts to cut Ino and Shikamaru up with her wind.

"Boss had a lot of trouble getting through the other sand." Udon said having observed the fight thus far. The water was enough to make the sand's reaction sluggish and lessened its ability to defend as well as weakened Gaara's overall control over it. Naruto showed the ability to cut clean through the shield of sand once it was damp, but Gaara's new form of defense looked far more durable and it was dry as well, "How would he punch through that?"

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena – Kage's Box)

The Kazekage shut his eyes and shook his head as he saw Gaara's move to conceal himself in his orb of sand, 'He's willing to do that here?' Well it wasn't illegal, but he would have to interfere himself once Gaara's actions were complete to subdue him. He was just trying to judge the height of the arena's ceiling so he could guess if Gaara would take the whole thing off once he was done preparing his next move.

How would the rest of his peers take that though? How would Mifune and the samurai take it if Gaara transformed?

XxX

(On the Field)

Naruto pulled out three scrolls with a similar labeling as the ones that he had set up against Fuu and prepared to charge Gaara's rock to set them in place, 'I could set these up and turn Gaara's chakra off, but…' He looked above the orb of sand and saw an eye looking directly at him as all of the sand in the Zen-garden waved about threateningly, as if it was waiting to devour him, 'I'd have to charge the Zen-garden.'

He believed in his speed, he truly did. He had worked hard to get faster and faster since the day he had graduated and was proud to be able to use his clones to get Gaara second-guessing long enough to take shots at him. But now Gaara had an entire circular area larger than fifty rounded yards of sand to use to keep himself safe. And getting too close would end with the sand attacking him.

He could avoid the sand long enough to plant the scrolls on rocks surrounding Gaara's particular one in the center of the garden, but the sand could just disrupt his formation before he finished. Water wouldn't stop the sand from moving completely so his seal was out.

Well that left getting to Gaara himself. But he wasn't sure he could get through that orb to injure him.

XxX

Temari had forced Ino and Shikamaru to retreat towards the wooded area with the intensity of her wind attacks, getting a sneer out of her from their hiding once again. She wasn't doing anything but wasting her chakra swinging at shadows… sometimes literally, in an effort to flush them out. At least as long as they were in there they couldn't interfere with Gaara's fight against Naruto. The two of them dealt Gaara their own fair enough share of trouble without the actual person Gaara felt like fighting adding to the equation. All three of them together against Gaara would have more than a fair shake at something serious happening.

Gaara fought better alone. In addition to that, Temari was the kind of opponent that could fend off multiple opponents at once with the range and breadth of her jutsu. Even with Kankuro down she was still more than dangerous to them.

But it was also a good thing that Kankuro wasn't down for the count either.

XxX

"I'm so sick of that stupid fan." Ino said to herself as she and Shikamaru hid in the trees deep inside of the forest area near the back wall on that side of the arena, "If we get close enough again I'm going to knock that thing right out of her hand and shove it right up her-."

"There's a chance she'd like that." Shikamaru said with a smirk on his smudgy and dried blood stained face before frowning, "Ugh. Naruto's teacher is rubbing off on me by contact with the troublesome jerk he's teaching, "Okay. We've got to get a handle on this so we can cross the damn moat already. We're separated by that Temari chick and if she wanted to she could just turn and attack Naruto once she thinks we're not coming back out without a strategy."

Hearing that not only would Naruto have to deal with Gaara but also possibly Temari by himself if they didn't hurry up and defeat her, Ino grabbed Shikamaru and placed him in a crouch before grabbing his hands and setting them in a particular position against each other, commonly referred to as his thinking pose, "Come up with something that will work and do it now damn it. I'll keep her from leaving for as long as I can."

Shikamaru looked at Ino strangely, "Nothing you do can reach her right now. She'll just blow it away." He then stopped talking as he could swear that he heard something moving around and then he realized that if Ino could still fight with her injury there was someone else that could as well, "Crap."

Both Ino and Shikamaru jumped out of the tree they were in and landed on the ground just as a poison bomb exploded off of where they had just been. Karasu landed right on the branch they had been standing on, operating once again.

Ino just stared up at the puppet before growling, "I already beat you jerk! I took your body, I made you attack your brother, and I swear I booby-trapped that stupid thing before I made you go over to Gaara! How bad do I have to kick your ass or inadvertently get your hand crushed to make you quit?"

"You did do all of those things." Kankuro admitted, projecting his voice over the woods so that no one could find his location, "Thanks for the Gaara thing by the way. I just love controlling my puppet with my non-dominant hand." He said sarcastically, "But the match isn't over yet and I didn't get my pound of flesh back for that stunt you tried to pull blondie!" Karasu started clicking as blades emerged from the arms and a set of scythe blades emerged from its chest.

"How did you diffuse the trap?" Ino asked him, getting a chuckle in response.

"I didn't. It went off, but we use the same lethal poison that you trapped Karasu with."

"Oh…" Ino said, making a vacant popping noise with her lips, "Guess I shouldn't have been going to kill with that one…"

"Nope."

"Well in that case-." Ino suddenly shoved Shikamaru hard away from herself as Karasu shot another poison smoke bomb at them. Shikamaru made it out of the way, but Ino found herself stuck in the poison cloud, "Wow *cough*. This is more annoying than I thought it would be."

Shikamaru looked at the cloud trying to make out if his teammate was okay, "Ino are you alright?"

"Oh yeah. I'm fine." Ino assured him, coughing again before she walked out of the cloud, "I'm immune to that. It's my own poison Shikamaru. It's one of the four that I can breathe for an attack." She turned to yell at the puppet as if it were really Kankuro himself, "You hear that you doll-using bastard? I can breathe that crap like it's air!" She said before rethinking her statement, "…But not really because it isn't oxygen and I can still die from oxygen deprivation, so bite me!" She finished her brazen statement with a scream of fear as Karasu jumped down from the tree with her in its sights.

Before it could reach her to attack though, it turned around and suddenly fired a poison coated kunai at Shikamaru, forcing him to dodge and abort his second attempt to successfully take over the puppet's body.

With the opportunity to finally get some distance away from the puppet due to Shikamaru's interference, Ino took the time to head through the forest looking for where Kankuro actually was in order to try and put a stop to him. This led to her scaling a tree hoping to get a better vantage point to search for him from. She eventually reached the very top of a tree to look around the immediate area, only to see Kankuro sticking up on the side of the wall overseeing a massive amount of the arena, especially the forest that the fight was currently taking place in.

Kankuro looked down at her and smirked before waving at her with his busted hand. He then did what Ino guessed was a point behind her because that was what she did only to see Temari standing on the top of a tree much in a similar manner as herself, with her fan out and a smirk on her face as well.

Before Ino could beat a hasty retreat back through the canopy, Temari swung her fan and released a blast of wind at her that sent her flying off of the treetop she had been on to slam against the far wall of the battlefield that Kankuro was sticking to far higher up.

She let out a sharp gasp of air as she smacked against the wall and stuck her feet against it to keep from falling, though her knees shook against each other. The beating she had taken from Lee the day before hadn't left her body in the best condition. Earlier she said that Naruto had looked like one big bruise after his fight with Fuu, well if she were to remove her bandages she could swear that she would be able to give him a run for his money in that department.

Turning around towards Kankuro who was above her on the wall, Ino found out that he had tried to drop down on her with a kick. She crossed her arms to block it, but the weight of the older male genin still was enough to free her grip on the wall with her chakra, sending her falling down off of it to the trees below.

Kankuro smirked as he retook his own feet's grip on the wall all the while watching Ino fall down through the leaves, "Consider the favor returned bitch." He said victoriously. That would be at least a fifty foot fall.

His feeling of victory disappeared as he saw a shadow fly up the wall emerging from a close area to where Ino vanished in the canopy. Kankuro grit his teeth before choosing to jump far out from the wall, preferring that fate to being stuck to Shikamaru's shadow especially since he had an out, "Temari!"

At her brother's behest, Temari used her fan to kick up a strong draft beneath him that carried him from the wall to a nearby tree keeping him from potentially going splat on the ground. Both siblings looked satisfied as Shikamaru's shadow retracted back from the wall and Kankuro turned his attention back to working his puppet to kill Shikamaru.

He looked down through the trees only to find Shikamaru running away from the edge of the battlefield where they had been fighting back closer to the center, Ino held fireman's style over his back as he was set in an all-out retreat, "Heh… I guess you were right after all Temari. All those guys are good at is running away."

There was something wrong though. A guy like Shikamaru wouldn't just cut and run without something in mind. He wasn't really fast enough to outrun them even without Ino over his back so how was he expecting to get away? She looked her hardest through the leaves and saw multiple explosive tags set at the base of a dozen trees, all burning down.

Before the blast and before Temari even finished thinking of a way to get both herself and Kankuro out of trouble she had a useless thought run through her head just out of pure curiosity, "Where in the hell do they keep coming up with these explosions from?"

BOOM

XxX

"Way to clear a forest Shika. You should be a logger." Ino joked weakly from her place on Shikamaru's back as he ran away from the site of the explosion. Even after bouncing off of branches and tree trunks all the way to the ground she seemed to have a sense of humor, "You know you used all of the tags that Goldie-kun gave you on that stunt right?"

"He can make more whenever he wants." Shikamaru disputed, not looking back as he ran his way for the moat to get to the other side of the field, "Now shut up and rest for a minute. We need to get over there."

Ino coughed blood on the back of Shikamaru's shoulder and touched at the blood from past wounds staining her face with a trail of red, "Do you think that got them?"

"Hell no." Shikamaru said without a second thought, "We got the stupid puppet though." And if Ino had beaten Kankuro and had taken over his body on her own after leaving her alone beforehand that meant that he couldn't fight without it. Getting rid of Karasu was a critical blow to their combat effort.

"I don't even think you got the puppet." Ino responded with even more certainty, now looking back in the direction they were running from due to the fact that she had no choice but to from the position over Shikamaru's shoulders.

"Why do you think I didn't?" Shikamaru's tone was a little irritated. How on earth didn't he get the puppet? It was more or less at the epicenter of the entire blast. And then as he thought that a dismembered hand of Karasu that had turned into a blade stabbed itself in a nearby tree as they kept moving.

"Well…" Ino trailed off, looking at the five floating and bladed dissected body parts of Karasu seemingly in hot pursuit of them from behind despite the ends of them looking like they had been blown apart from the body, "You kind of did… but not really if you can get the gist of what I'm trying to say. Don't turn around by the way, just keep running… faster."

That was a rather gentle way of saying they were being chased, "Ugh. You're heavy." Suffering a weak knock to the head for his remark, Shikamaru grunted as he tried to pick up the pace any further if it were possible, "If we live through this somehow then you're still going to swear I'm dead after we're done because that's what I'll be sleeping like."

XxX

"Thanks for the ride Temari." Kankuro said from his place on Temari's fan as they floated high in the air. Both siblings were covered in grime, light burns, and smudged from the residue generated by the explosion that had taken out the forest area, engulfing it in flames. All of the fingers on his good hand were working to manipulate the parts of Karasu that he could save from the blast. If he had the use of both hands then there would be ten pieces of the puppet chasing the Konoha genin down below.

While her brother was looking down at Ino and Shikamaru, guiding the blades after them, Temari was busy trying to keep the fan in the air to allow him to do so freely, "You're just lucky that the blast and the updraft from the fire got us enough elevation to get us both out of that."

"Love you too sis." Kankuro said dryly as he continued to focus on impaling Ino and Shikamaru down below. They had a great bird's eye view of the entire battlefield from that high in the air.

From her position on the fan overseeing the entire arena, Temari's eyes couldn't help but pan over to the other side of the moat since that's where they were headed. She got a glimpse at the Zen-garden and saw Naruto still trying to fight Gaara's orb of sand, "Idiot. He's actually going near that thing? He doesn't know what's going on in there or else he'd run his ass out of the arena and keep on going."

"Gaara's doing that here?" Kankuro asked in shock, "Is he crazy? And don't answer that please."

"The Fuu girl did it." Temari said, "Just because Gaara's is more… unstable? That doesn't mean he can't use it either." It was a double standard if Fuu could transform and Gaara couldn't. So she didn't turn inherently even more psychotic the way Gaara would. That shouldn't have mattered.

"AAAAHHH!"

A scream of horror erupted and sounded out all over the arena stemming right from the middle of it in the Zen-garden. But it wasn't in Naruto's voice due to him being crushed by Gaara, instead it was Gaara's voice screaming at the top of his lungs. A normally bloodcurdling sound was intensified for those of Suna origin due to the fact that Gaara simply didn't ever make a noise like that. Ever.

"Gaara!" Temari shouted as she maneuvered the fan over in that direction.

XxX

(Moments Earlier)

Naruto stood outside of the Zen-garden flexing his fingers out before unsealing a fuuma shuriken with explosive tags attached to each blade. He hurled the projectile at Gaara's orb of sand only for the sand in the garden to reach up and grab it tightly, stopping its movement long enough for the weapon to detonate away from Gaara safely.

A growl slipped from Naruto's throat as he didn't really expect the shuriken to get close, but it didn't even get twenty yards in before getting yanked out of the sky. And the pure mass of sand that grabbed it down didn't make him think that more clones would help in that regard either.

"There has got to be some way in there." Naruto thought as he backed away a little further from the garden to keep the sand from trying to lash out at him. There was no need to get close to the danger when he didn't even have a plan of action. He looked around and eventually saw Temari's fan gliding high above one part of the battlefield, "Showoff…"

This did give him an idea though.

A terrible idea.

In fact future observation years from that moment would say that it would probably go down as one of the worst ideas in recorded history… especially since it would be captured by camera for the world to see and for posterity in Konoha since they would definitely be taping it somehow. Good thing only people that went to the archive library and had proper clearance to get access to it would be able to see it.

Shiho would either call him a moron or a genius once she was able to get a glimpse of it. Probably a healthy balance between both if he had to guess correctly.

"I don't know how many it's going to take to make this work so… Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Fifty Kage Bunshin popped into existence holding their machetes, "If this doesn't work it was great working with you guys since graduation night. You're all awesome and this is the best jutsu in the world." In his own unbiased opinion at least.

"Thanks Boss." One of the clones said, expressing the thoughts of the rest as they all looked at the original sadly, "We'd also like to say thank you for not making one of us do this ourselves." The other clones unanimously sounded off in agreement with their speaker brother.

"You're welcome, but don't look too much into it." Naruto said, sheathing his own machete before stripping off his windbreaker so that now nothing other than his copious amount of bandages shielded his upper body and parts of his arms from the elements, "I'm going instead of one of you because even if this works there's no way one of you would make it even halfway there. You guys are too fragile." He let out a sigh or resignation. This was going to be a lot of discomfort and a lot of chakra that he wasn't going to be getting back and it wasn't like he was operating at 100% capacity to begin with.

"Godspeed Boss." The speaker clone saluted before running up to Naruto in time to grab his foot and assist him with jumping high into the air, "Do it now!" The clone shouted as the others began spinning their machetes by the chain, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" The forty-nine other Kage Bunshin channeled their blasts into one large fan blowing directly underneath Naruto.

The airborne Naruto held onto his windbreaker with both hands to form a makeshift and let the wind send him up into the air, complete with the painful wind blade portion cutting into his back and legs like razors, "Ow! Ow! Fuck! This idea is terrible! Iruka-sensei was right, my mind is seriously scary!"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Iruka palmed his face as the camera managed to pick up Naruto's dialogue all the while the cuts were racking up all over his back. Still, the sand below him wasn't even licking at his heels despite the best attempts of the Zen-garden to drag him down, "Well… at least he kept the ad-libbed lesson. That's all I can ask for I guess."

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

"Ow! Ow!" Naruto kept shouting as gashes kept popping up on his body before looking up at his windbreaker to see that the tough material was finally beginning to give out and cuts were forming in it, "No…" He decided to let go to free up his hands sooner than later since he was going to fall at that moment anyway.

The drop was sudden, but the momentum of being blown that far into the garden already would carry him the rest of the way to Gaara's orb. Too bad the sand realized that as well and was prepared to catch him right out of the sky. Naruto's clones with their weapons had served their purpose and dispelled, leaving the original all alone to deal with his incoming problem. Alone for the time being anyway.

"I am not dying like this!" He shouted right in the face of the sand bearing down on him. Seemingly getting his second wind for the third time today (at least), a boost of chakra preceded Naruto forming his clone hand-seal, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A wave of orange formed in midair as an entire rain of Narutos fell towards the massive amount of sand.

All of the Narutos pulled out one of the water scrolls left in their supply and unsealed it, meeting the sand with a considerable amount of water as well before the masses of humanity hit the sand and dispelled on contact, except for the original that punched his way through the wet sand with the assistance of his giving clones and another physical sacrifice of his own, "Ow!" But he finally got close enough to Gaara's sand orb in the middle of the Zen-garden, now all he had to do was find a way to get through it.

The eye watching the outside of the orb for Gaara saw Naruto falling towards him, thus the sand that the orb was made of shifted into spikes meant to impale the foolish attacker that was falling right for them.

And now Naruto had to make a choice. Take his chances with either the entire Zen-garden worth of sand or fall towards the spikes jutting out from the protective orb.

Gritting his teeth in anticipation he unsealed another of his only two remaining water scrolls. The fluid hit the sandy spikes, softening them just before Naruto's body smacked off of them, dulling the ends of them for a safer landing, but not by much as instead of being impaled he was smashed against them.

After hitting the orb, Naruto just lay there for a second wondering if the impact killed him until he could feel the sand beneath him shifting, to move the wet sand out of the way for the dry sand to properly stab through him. Naruto pushed his body up and in slow motion could see the spikes beginning to form, 'No! I came all of this way and did all of this stuff just so I could get to Gaara!'

Now in addition to the orb itself about to retaliate for his attempt to attack Gaara, the sand of the Zen-garden all converged on the rock the orb sat on as a method of a double attack. There was no escape.

But escape wasn't necessarily his plan of action as Naruto pressed his hands against sand as hard as he could and channeled wind chakra through them, as much as he could until he could feel the sand underneath his hands begin to vibrate. As the spikes began to expand up in order to impale Naruto he twisted his hands while stuck in the sand and pulled back as hard as he could while jumping away, narrowly avoiding a spiky death, but also finishing a jutsu that he wasn't sure would work let alone how it would work, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

As Naruto jumped away from the orb of sand it then did its best impression of a hard-boiled egg shell as the jutsu suddenly sucked the inside of it from Naruto's point of contact with his hands. A dull 'whump' sound was what emitted from the sand that imploded on itself suddenly and violently on all sides producing instant deep cracks on all sides, with a rippling implosion mark where Naruto's hands had pulled away from.

Naruto fell backwards off of the orb and the rock, shutting his eyes as he expected to be caught in the welcoming/crushing embrace of the sand, however once Naruto's attack had landed the sand of the Zen-garden dropped back down to the ground harmlessly as he fell into it.

The fact that he wasn't instantly set upon by the sand like a swarm of locusts got Naruto to crack an eye in curiosity and sit up, shaking the sand out of his hair. His eyes went up to the rock he had just jumped away from to activate the finish of his jutsu and he saw the crumbled orb of sand fall apart.

"…This feeling. What is it? I don't know…" Naruto could hear Gaara mumbling to himself, sounding like he was beside himself, "My body… I don't like this. I can see blood… I can see blood…" His voice got shakier and shakier, "I can see blood! It's my blood!" Gaara then let out a horrifying scream that rang through the arena and pummeled Naruto's ear drums, "AAAAHHH!"

The sight of Gaara stumbling forward on the top of the rock was quite one to behold. The messy red hair of the jinchuuriki ran down to the red of the blood on his forehead staining most of his face, neck, and a lot of his clothing. His eyes looked wild as he stared at his hands covered in his own blood. He tried to let out another yell but instead of noise coming from his mouth, blood fell freely. Kind of ironic that his blood was what stained the sand for once instead of his enemy's.

Gaara looked like he had been thrown from a mountainside just from being inside of the orb when Naruto's jutsu formed the vacuum inside of it that destroyed it. If he could have reached Gaara directly he wondered exactly what would have happened to him then.

All in all he looked like a mess. But the way he was freaking out over what had happened to him was embarrassing from Naruto's point of view.

XxX

(Kage's Box)

"He stopped Gaara's transformation…" The Kazekage said, looking at the condition that Gaara was in. He had never seen his youngest son like that in his entire life, "A mere genin did that to Gaara? An average child."

"There's nothing average about that child." Hiruzen said with a satisfied look on his face, "You should have figured that out by now."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi jumped out of her seat when the full scope of Gaara's injuries came to the forefront, "Yes! Naruto-oniisama got him! I knew he could!" She didn't even bother trying to hide being happy this time, "Kono-baka probably thought he was going to die or something."

This brought along Hiashi's immediate reflexive instinct to cut down and point out any and all mistakes made by his children, "I seem to recall you covering your eyes, shaking your head and calling Uzumaki-san a 'complete moron' when he began to float." Hanabi had the good grace to blush and sit back down once she was called on her 'unflinching faith' in Uzumaki Naruto.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

The hurt Gaara stumbled and fell off of the rock he was standing on and pulled himself up against said rock, still muttering, "It hurts… mother it hurts… how could someone do this to me? How could Uzumaki Naruto hurt me? He's weak!"

Gaara rambled on loudly about being hurt and it almost made Naruto feel bad about getting up off of the ground as he prepared to go in and end the fight… almost. He would be glad when the fight was over. And with that in mind he drew his machete and began walking steadily over to Gaara, still wary of anymore surprises from the boy.

"Gaara!" The voice of the female Suna ninja sounded out before she dropped to the ground and kicked up a sandstorm forcing Naruto to cover his eyes as she stood between him and Gaara. She looked at her injured little brother and seeing him in such a poor condition, one she had never thought in her wildest dreams would be seen on him, put a white-hot protective anger into her eyes and she looked back at Naruto. His team had been the cause of so much harm to her family and it was hard to be professional in a situation like that, "You bastard, you won't kill him! Daikamaitachi no Jutsu (Great Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!"

A more powerful version of Temari's wind attack flew at Naruto who lifted his machete and channeled wind through it as a method of defense. It was a flimsy one at best as Temari's jutsu formed blades with the air currents that mostly slashed around the weapon that only covered what Naruto perceived to be his vital areas. Still, he received powerful cuts across his body that sent blood flying through the air with the help of the wind as he flew backwards at a fast rate with the machete knocked from his hands, eventually smashing his body off of a rock that ricocheted him slightly before sending him to the ground as he slid a trail through the sand and wound up outside of the Zen-garden again, this time back towards the moat.

Temari had used way too much chakra during this battle, that much was evident as she panted after her attack, but Naruto was still alive and as long as he was still moving and was a threat to her brother she would put him down. He wasn't moving to stand, but his hands were moving as if he were trying to pull himself up. That was enough for her to register him as a threat. He wasn't going to quit.

"Your brat teammate almost got Gaara to kill Kankuro… then you almost killed Gaara yourself." Temari wasn't about to waste chakra that she didn't necessarily have to use freely, thus she lifted her closed giant iron fan over her head prepared to club him in his, "I told you it was just better to surrender. He might be a killer, and he may hate us, but he's still our brother. You tried to kill him, now I'll kill you."

Before she could swing down she saw Shikamaru's shadow move towards her again and she jumped away to avoid it. From across the moat, Shikamaru threw a kunai at her that she blocked with her closed fan.

"Don't touch him bitch!"

As she deflected the kunai, Temari found herself eating a punch directly to the face from Ino's good hand that knocked her to the ground. She sat up and glared hatefully at Ino as blood seeped from her lip from the hit, "So the little play kunoichi thinks she can fight?" Across the moat Shikamaru was engaged in combat with Kankuro's puppet segments as he dropped off to fight directly once Temari rushed over to Gaara, "You done running away?"

Ino didn't verbally respond, she merely spat a senbon at Temari, getting her to block with her closed fan. Having finally caught a break she was within striking distance of Temari without her fan being open. She was still fast though, and very dangerous as she rushed Ino and swung her fan much in the same manner she was about to at Naruto's head before she was stopped by Shikamaru and Ino.

How much strength did it take to hold that thing up like it weighed nothing? The force she could put behind it clearly wouldn't be too nice whatsoever if she managed to hit Ino with it.

XxX

Across the moat, after throwing the kunai at Temari, Shikamaru had to switch to the defensive to avoid Karasu's head from stabbing through him with the giant needle sticking out of its mouth dripping with poison. The good news was that he had worked out something of a plan as he immediately stabbed a scroll onto the ground long ways up before moving along into the forest and driving another one into the ground, trying to hide it so that Kankuro wouldn't know where it was.

The immediate reaction of Kankuro was to get his puppets to knock the first scroll away and get it far away, having one of Karasu's hands throw it away into the moat. But once he got near the second one to knock away with a part of his puppet he was in for a surprise when Shikamaru appeared before him and sank a fist into his belly, driving the air and spit out of him as he found himself frozen immediately after taking the punch, "What? How?"

"There's only so many places you can see me plant the second and third scrolls from inside the forest. We blew up a good chunk of it not too long ago so there's nowhere to hide there. Those scrolls were just so I could see how your puppets moved to triangulate where you were." Shikamaru explained before holding up his right arm, getting Kankuro to do the same, "Now give up."

Kankuro let out a laugh, "Sorry punk. A Suna shinobi doesn't surrender that easily." He then let out a scream of pain as Shikamaru forced him to make a tight fist with his injured hand before seemingly wiggling all of his fingers on both hands to torture him.

"Alright, I'm done being nice about this whole thing." Shikamaru said in an uncharacteristically impatient manner before lifting his other hand and moving one of his fingers around in an experimental way before his eyes lit up in apparent satisfaction.

"Oh, and what are you going to do? Punch yourself hoping I knock myself out before you do?" Kankuro taunted from his position being held by Shikamaru's shadow as the boy forced his right hand to keep moving, "Or maybe you'll get me to bang my head against a tree until I knock myself out?" Shikamaru stayed silent as he was apparently concentrating hard working out moving that one finger, angering Kankuro that he was being ignored, "Hey! What are you going to do punk, I'm talking to you!" Shikamaru's eyes turned to Kankuro's and before the puppeteer could say anything else he felt something press up against his back, "What?"

On Kankuro's back sat one explosive note, set there by the dismembered hand of Karasu.

"You use one finger per puppet piece that you were sending at us. I know there were more than five, and more would have been after us if Ino hadn't gotten your other hand crushed." Shikamaru said quietly as Kankuro paled in fear as he realized what Shikamaru had been doing wiggling the fingers on his left hand at first instead of just the right, "You're so used to working with your puppets that you never broke your own chakra flow controlling them after I caught you."

Despite how complex a puppet's mechanisms are and how hard it would be to learn to properly control a good one that was intricate like Karasu, Shikamaru only had to get Kankuro to move one body part with a finger once he worked out which one the hand was controlled by. Not that difficult in comparison.

As the puppet piece fell to the ground once Kankuro let his own chakra strings drop, he still realized that Shikamaru had him, "I give up…" Kankuro said, in the hopes that Shikamaru wouldn't detonate the explosive tag on his back remotely due to his own stubbornness.

"Good." Shikamaru said, letting his control over Kankuro's shadow fade. He was almost out of chakra anyway and would have detonated that tag if he had to.

"By way of verbal surrender, Kankuro is eliminated!"

XxX

Ino was running out of options at this point. She had an injured right hand that wouldn't let her make hand-seals, and she was running out of senbon to throw. Not only that, but with one hand to use in throwing them her rate of fire was sorely decreased to the point where it didn't seem difficult for Temari to block them with her fan.

As she threw another set at the fan-wielding kunoichi, Temari stabbed the bottom of the iron fan into the ground and spread the ran out, opening it and blocking Ino's projectiles simultaneously. But before Temari could yank it out and blow Ino away with a jutsu, the younger girl got around the fan with her body and delivered a kick that Temari blocked, but had to let go of the fan to do so.

"You're a mess, and you're not that much of a threat!" Temari said as she returned with her own kick that knocked Ino down away from her, "Maybe if you had both hands and could rely on more than tools right now I'd think of you as one." She said as she held her fan, prepared to bash the downed Ino once she got close.

Ino simply looked up from her place on the ground and smirked, forming a half-tiger seal with her only good hand, "I don't need two hands to blow you up, do I?"

This prompted Temari to look at her fan to find an explosive tag slapped on the side of the black metal portion. Temari threw the fan away into the moat before Ino could trigger the explosion, but it still went off regardless and the shockwave from the blast still caught Temari anyway.

The very beaten up Ino tried very slowly to get back up, but stumbled each time as her legs kept giving out. She let out a heavy breath and kept trying only to see Temari doing the same after getting up from the blast she had been hit with. She had still thrown the fan far enough away to keep her body parts all intact, much to Ino's misfortune.

Still, she was disarmed, and from the looks of her if she was in any better shape than Ino was at the moment she'd swear that the girl had the Kyuubi in her instead of it being in Naruto.

"What is it…" Temari started to say, gritting her teeth at the burns from the explosion, "What is it with your team and explosions?" She had never seen such gratuitous use of explosive tags in her entire life, even from the outset of the tournament. Anyone would have run out after round one. Ino still had tags left in the finals since she managed to tag her fan with one. Good thing it was way tougher on the edges and happened to be shut at the time.

"UZUMAKI!"

XxX

In the crowd, Kiba jumped up from his seat out of shock at Gaara's appearance, "What the hell? Is that even still a person? There's no way! Akamaru said his chakra was funky, but I didn't know that was what he meant!"

"His chakra is terrible…" Hinata said, her Byakugan active as she stared at Gaara with fear in her eyes, "It doesn't even look like it belongs to a person anymore… and it's getting worse."

'Should I pull them out?' Asuma thought to himself, arguing with his instinct to go down and get them out of there. They had done so well, gotten so far. They didn't need to prove anything else, 'Genin shouldn't be doing things like this. Chunin shouldn't even be touching this stuff.'

"Don't you dare get up and stop this."

All eyes turned to Tsunade who wasn't even looking at Asuma, just at the field. The stern look on her face said that if he didn't listen and decided to go down there anyway he'd pay for it in one way or another. Kurenai looked at Tsunade, "Why are you saying that? Is this still about this stupid bet?"

"If you want to hear a rational reason for why then you can use that." Tsunade said in a serious voice without really explaining anything, "But let's just say I want to see something. So if any of you jump up and try to interfere with that fight I'll put you in the hospital and I won't heal you afterwards. It's not nearly as hopeless as it looks."

XxX

Both girls turned towards the Zen-garden a few dozen yards away and saw Gaara walking out of it, only not the same as when Temari had left him. The gourd that had been on his back seemed to be breaking down, covering his right arm in the form of a massive clawed arm and the right side of his face, giving it strange tanuki features as well as producing a large tail from his back. He stepped out of the sandy area gritting his newly sharpened teeth and looking around rapidly with his warped eyes, now being yellow. The changed parts of his body had blue vein-like markings over them

"G-Gaara?" Temari asked him, taking a step away from him.

Ino did the same in the taking a step away regards to Gaara, "That's Gaara? Why did he change his appearance like that?"

"Where is Uzumaki?" Gaara asked in a manner that demanded a response from someone or else.

Hearing that he still demanded Naruto's blood seemingly more than ever now, Ino yelled at him, "You still want to kill him?" Everyone turned to where Naruto was, still laying on the ground bleeding from Temari's attack as he tried clawing his way back to his feet once more, "This stupid exam isn't worth fighting to the death for! Stay down already Naruto, I don't care about winning anymore!"

"I don't care about the exam!" Gaara shouted, lunging at Ino before taking a swing at her with his massive claw. Ino was surprised by his boost in speed and agility and narrowly escaped getting slashed with the claw, but she was unable to escape the tail of Gaara that smashed into her and sent her flying, "Do I look like I possibly care at all about your stupid exam? This isn't what this is about! Someone like Uzumaki… someone like him is willing to deny my existence! Trying to put an end to me! I'll kill him here and show what will happen to anyone that tries to do the same!"

Naruto saw him hit Ino and saw that she wasn't moving after the attack. Still trying to get up, he could only feel the blood underneath himself from Temari's wind attack. His vision had been getting spotty ever since he had been damaged.

"Get up weakling." Naruto heard from inside of his head, speaking to him as clear as day, "You really are this pathetic that you need me twice in one day aren't you? But I won't just let you lay there and die no matter how much I despise you."

'Oh shut up and give me your chakra.' Naruto thought, wondering if the Kyuubi could even hear his thoughts like that, 'Time to get back up I guess… I won't let him just do what he wants. He's not hurting Ino anymore.' Feeling a swelling of power inside of him that filled his muscles and started knitting the graphic slashes on his chest back together, he began to stand back up, "Hey… leave her alone and mess with me. We're not done yet." He said, his voice sounding stronger than he thought it would.

Gaara just turned towards him and cackled, "So you were going to stay down, but you'll get up to die just because I harm your teammate! You're a fool! You get your energy merely to come to her aid?" He lifted his tail up over Ino and prepared to drill it down on top of her, "Well let's see just how much more chakra you have to give if that's what inspires you!"

Before he could drill down, Naruto vanished from his sight with a burst and blur of orange chakra emitting from him and reappeared, holding onto his tail tightly. Orange chakra blazed off of Naruto's body as he dug his feet into the ground and hurled Gaara by his tail towards the moat.

Gaara's arm stretched out and grabbed onto the wall of the moat to keep from falling into the water and jumped back up to land on the other side, "You shouldn't think the end will come that easily Uzumaki!"

Naruto growled as he walked over to Ino, flashing a glare of a look at Temari, getting her to step back away from him as he kept walking over to his female teammate. He kneeled down by her to find that she was still conscious, "Ino-chan."

"So this is what your special chakra feels like? I told you I couldn't ever be scared of you." Ino coughed and lifted her arm to weakly slap his face, "I'm fine Goldie-kun. Just really, really tired. I don't have to get up to save your ass again do I?"

Naruto just shook his head before looking around for a proctor, "Hey! She's not fighting anymore!" He said, gesturing to Ino, "Someone needs to get her out of here right now!" He wasn't dumb enough to think that fighting Gaara was going to be simple the way he was.

Genma appeared by the two Konoha ninja in a Shunshin and kneeled down by Ino as well, "Are you saying she's out?" He said, trying to ignore the feeling he was getting from Naruto. He still seemed to be in control. Yet there was still the part of Genma that was skeptical, "I feel as if I should stop this whole thing altogether, but Sekka's being a pussy and getting far, far away from Gaara and Jei is making sure Kankuro leaves."

"No way I'm losing just because you're scared of me and Gaara." Naruto replied with a low growl in his voice as he stood up and looked over at Gaara only to be taken back when he saw that Gaara's entire torso was covered in sand that gave him the full appearance of a small Shukaku, "You can try to stop him if you want to though."

"Nevermind, I'll just get the Yamanaka girl out of the way..." Genma said, picking Ino up to evacuate the area, "Yamanaka Ino is eliminated!" If it wasn't illegal to be partial he would have spared Naruto a good luck before leaving.

Once Genma got out of the way, Naruto turned towards Temari and flexed his hand, revealing his elongated nails before making a fist and rushing towards her. While before he had already been faster than her, it wasn't even a contest anymore. Her lack of fan gave her no way to defend against the sudden attack from Naruto as he gave her one good right hand to the face that sent her flying.

He stood with his fist still outstretched as he watched Temari's body flail off along the ground in the distance from the hit. He stretched his fingers and heard them crack in a satisfying manner. Would it be wrong to say that the punch made him feel much better? Temari did try to cut him into at least two bits with a wind jutsu not too long ago… but maybe the chakra running through him made him feel a bit more vengeful than normal.

Sekka rushed over to Temari once it was clear that she wasn't going to be moving again, at least hoping that the kid that clearly had some malevolent powers of his was more stable than Gaara to the extent that he wouldn't attack him for evacuating a disabled competitor, "Temari is unable to continue. She is eliminated!"

"Stop wasting my time Uzumaki!" Gaara roared at him in his bestial form before leaping back across the moat to attack him. He swung one of his massive clawed arms at Naruto releasing dozens of projectiles, "Suna Shuriken (Sand Shuriken)!"

"Stop wasting mine!" Naruto yelled back as he started charging through the uninterrupted barrage of sand weapons to get close to Gaara again. Apparently his sand defenses were gone because he didn't use any, instead deciding to lunge at Naruto and rely on his size to dominate. Naruto delivered a violent punch directly to Gaara's head that pulverized part of his sand face and knocked him backwards, but Gaara just jumped right back up and laughed, "What's so funny?" Naruto growled to him, feeling like he had just punched slowly drying cement.

Gaara stopped laughing and snarled at Naruto again, "I'll tell you! It's your pathetic attempts to get through to me! You can't hurt me Uzumaki! You aren't strong enough, you're weak! Do you know why you're weak?"

"I don't care!" Naruto yelled, shutting Gaara up as the Kyuubi's chakra fueled him. It was one of the best feelings he had ever had in his life, being fully aware of just how strong he was for once. He knew he was strong, and one way or another he was going to make Gaara feel it. The desire to beat Gaara senseless was overriding any strategic thought he had. He was about to rush Gaara again and beat on him for as long as it took to put him down until Shikamaru's voice called out to him.

"Naruto stop!" the pineapple-haired genius ran up to Naruto from behind, "Is that stuff messing with your head or what? Quit being stupid and wait! Stop attacking blindly and start thinking!" Naruto turned towards Shikamaru with a glare, getting him to wriggle slightly at that overwhelming aura being directed at him before he got himself together, "You just hit him with your best shot didn't you? You hit Fuu like that too and she barely budged just like now, so how did you win?"

Naruto paused in his intention to assault Gaara to take what Shikamaru said to mind. Though now it was clear that his fight with Gaara was more level than his fight with Fuu as she was better with slowly imposing her will with her powers in a battle of attrition. While Fuu tried to evade him once she knew he had gotten stronger, Gaara would just try to hit you or goad you to attack him and you would trade back and forth. He wasn't as fast as Fuu with her wings… he wasn't even as fast as Naruto was with the Kyuubi's chakra active.

He didn't defeat Fuu by beating his head against the proverbial brick wall until it crumbled, he beat her with outright trickery.

"That's why you're weak right there!" Gaara roared at Naruto, glaring threateningly at Shikamaru, "You're going to listen to him? You're going to stop fighting the way you want to, you're going to stop doing what you want just because he says something to you! For what? Live for yourself! Love only yourself and you will always be the strongest because you're the only one that matters!"

Naruto looked between Gaara and Shikamaru repeatedly as the Kyuubi's chakra still rolled off of his body.

Gaara lunged at Naruto and Shikamaru once he got sick of the posturing from the pair of Konoha genin, "If you won't fight then you'll just have to die!" Naruto moved in front of Gaara to get between him and Shikamaru only for Shikamaru's shadow to roll around his body and get a hold of Gaara's. He simply couldn't hold Gaara still due to the pure brute force provided by his current form, "I'll kill you first for interrupting our fight! You're ruining everything!" He did what could be best described as a shoulder-check that bullied Naruto to the ground and out of the way as he moved towards Shikamaru.

'He's obsessed with fighting Naruto, but why?' Before Gaara could hit Shikamaru a puff of smoke engulfed him and he was replaced with Naruto's presence who immediately lunged at Gaara and forcefully tackled him mid-swing. Gaara and Naruto rolled on the ground before Gaara's tail pried Naruto off and left him open enough for Gaara to slash him across the body. Before anything else could be done, Shikamaru kicked Gaara in the side of the head, directing his attention again, 'Oh great idea Shikamaru. Pick a fight with the scary sand monster.'

Before Shikamaru could pay for his useless interference, Naruto punched Gaara in the head three times, turning it to mush and freeing himself from the grip of Gaara. Before the head could reform, Naruto took up a position behind him grabbing around Gaara's tail, "You're not too big to get tossed around!" Naruto took to slamming Gaara about on the ground repeatedly, trying to smash open that monstrous shell of his with pure blunt damage due to the absence of his machete.

Gaara dug his claws into the ground to keep Naruto from doing it again and used his new anchor point to lift Naruto off of the ground with his tail, throwing him at Shikamaru and hitting him, sending them both to the ground in a heap, "Troublesome…" Shikamaru groaned as they removed themselves from the tangled situation, "Are you going to try and actually think of something now? Use a scroll."

"I only had one left and it's with the vest that I can't find anymore." Naruto informed him, spitting more of the leftover blood from Temari's deep wind slash on him out onto the ground, "I don't know where the machete is either." It was kind of redundant as well because he had nails that could be claws… even though the machete was undoubtedly stronger.

At that point a multitude of mouths appeared on Gaara's body and began inhaling deeply, something that neither of them liked too much once they saw his belly begin to expand. Shikamaru ran as far to the side out of his blast range as he could and Naruto ran directly at the still preparing Gaara before slamming a fist directly into his stomach to disrupt whatever he was planning.

Gaara violently exhaled due to the punch and the wind that he sucked in released in a sudden explosion that both he and Naruto got caught up in.

"Naruto!" Shikamaru ran back over to his friend that slid along the ground after being forced away by Gaara's backfiring attack, "Stop going head-to-head!" He urged more intensely this time. He was tired of watching his teammate get kicked around, and he knew that he was just in the way, but Naruto was making this fight something that it didn't have to be, 'Is it the Kyuubi making him fight so aggressively?' Over the last few months Naruto stopped just running futilely at his enemies and usually took a second to feel them out. But he stopped doing that when he used the Kyuubi's chakra against Fuu right up until the end, "This is what he wants! Stop fighting his fight!"

Naruto got back up and growled at getting blown away by the backlash from Gaara's attempted jutsu. Over with Gaara he could see that his sand was quickly regenerating what little damage his form had taken. Hitting him head on was like trying to punch through that stupid orb of sand from earlier. He was about to march back over to Gaara to keep fighting when Shikamaru grabbed his arm.

"Listen to me you idiot." Once Naruto turned to glare at him again for stopping him, Shikamaru returned it as best he could, exhausted from using so much chakra during the battle, "Live with it. You're going to be 'idiot' as long as you keep fighting like one now listen up. Where is he not covered in sand?" Both of them looked at Gaara's sand-covered frame and could clearly see that his little human legs didn't match up to the rest of his appearance. Seeing that Naruto was focusing in on that fact, Shikamaru decided to force it to sink in, "You don't have to bust through that sand to beat him."

A nod came from the Kyuubi-charged Naruto as he set himself ready to face off with Gaara again. The monster Gaara seemed to lick his lips right before they charged each other again. Instead of trying to outquick Gaara and knock his block off again, Naruto formed dozens of Kage Bunshin in a massive puff of smoke, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Gaara stopped in his tracks and the mouths appeared on his body again, inhaling deeply as the Naruto clones charged him, "Numbers don't mean anything to me Uzumaki! Fuuton: Mugen Saijin Daitoppa (Wind Release: Infinite Sand Cloud Great Breakthrough)!" Gaara exhaled through his mouth, producing a wide and powerful sandy burst of wind that easily sent them flying back and dispelling from the force of the wind.

Naruto however, wasn't among the clones that got blown away. Having left under the cover of the cloud that had created them, Naruto appeared at Gaara's side alerting the jinchuuriki to his presence and well-being after avoiding the attack. Maybe if they hadn't been fighting on flat ground it would have been so easy to outflank Gaara, but that was neither here nor there. Before Gaara could swat Naruto away with his sizeable tail, Naruto already had his fist cocked back.

Instead of punching at the head or body like he had been, he found a much more readily available target presenting itself in the form of two limbs wearing brown pants not covered by protective sand like the rest of Gaara's body.

One haymaker of a punch from Naruto directly at the joint of Gaara's left knee brought him to said knee. Gaara's mini-demon form let out a horrible cry of agony from the punch as he found himself unable to stand back up due to injury.

Shikamaru nodded to himself as he watched Naruto dance back out of the danger area of getting hit by Gaara's stretching limbs and tail that tried to desperately get revenge. Whenever Gaara missed, Naruto would just get behind him out of his field of sight and blast him with a kick to the back of the head that sent Gaara flying forward, 'If he can't move then he can be as big and ugly as he wants to be. All that power doesn't mean a thing if he can't touch Naruto.'

Getting punched and kicked around back and forth by Naruto was setting Gaara off even further. A basic divergence from the repeated clashes of force between the two crippled Gaara to a point where he was at a distinct disadvantage. Even if Naruto still couldn't get through his sand to get him, he was in a far better situation at this point. All because he had listened. He had listened to his friend that was there to help him.

His friend.

Why did Naruto have someone that was clearly okay with his demon sealed within him, willing to help him and even step into a fight between the two of them, when Gaara himself didn't have that? Even then as Naruto kept himself out of the way of his attacks and made his way back to Shikamaru to ensure that Gaara didn't try any dirty hostage technique (something he was admittedly thinking of doing at this point), Shikamaru was right there with him as they conversed over the next move when Shikamaru placed something into his hand… whatever it was it put a massive grin on Naruto's face, rather intimidating with the red eyes, deeper whisker-marks, and sharper canines.

"Do you remember what you did when we first met Gaara?" Naruto asked him, speaking up loud enough to be heard from the distance away that they were, "You just grabbed a bunch of my clones in the tunnels and crushed them… and then they did the suicide tag move. Yeah, I named it… and there's more than 25 of them this time." With that, he formed a countless number of clones that all held up what Shikamaru had given the original Naruto, an explosive tag.

Gaara's eyes widened as Naruto slapped his own explosive tag on the back of one of the clones and proceeded to have it begin burning down, giving the signal for them to all rush towards Gaara.

"That isn't good enough Uzumaki!" Gaara roared as the mouths appeared on his body, inhaling air for his wind attack again, "Fuuton: Mugen Saijin Daitoppa (Wind Release: Infinite Sand Cloud Great Breakthrough)!" He only managed to get a quarter of them from the immediate burst because they scattered like roaches when they saw him exhale. With his lack of mobility Gaara couldn't turn to get them all and they closed in around him on the sides he couldn't face from.

"Bunshin Jibaku Danmaku (Clone Suicide Barrage)!" The clone with the burning tag on its back was the first to explode, setting off a chain reaction of the well more than one hundred remaining Naruto clones blowing up engulfing Gaara once again in a mirror of what happened one month prior. Only these explosions were far closer to Gaara himself than the others were last time around.

The blasts rocked the entire arena with deafening noise and both Shikamaru and Naruto looked towards it, with Naruto panting at the effort it took to get that much up against Gaara, "Do you think that did it?" Shikamaru asked, feeling déjà vu due to Ino asking him the same question before, only about far less explosive tags.

"I just blew up 250 clones all around that son of a bitch again and again and again…" Naruto said, "If he gets up from that… I don't know what else to do. I really don't."

"If he gets up from that I'm getting the hell out of here. Are you out of chakra?" Turning towards him, Shikamaru had to bring up the point that was actually plaguing him at the moment. He was personally out of chakra to use for fighting, even if his shadow could hold Gaara back which he was most definitely sure could do no such thing even if he had a full amount of chakra to use.

"Kyuubi doesn't run out of chakra…" Naruto said, looking at the massive amount of smoke in the aftermath of the explosion. After saying such though, the chakra faded and he fell down to his knees, "Hah… furry bastard…" Naruto said, referring to the Kyuubi as he breathed heavily.

In the smoke from the explosion, Gaara lay face down in a pile of sand that used to be his Shukaku form. His body was covered in burns due to the overheating of the sand that surrounded him and caused the marks. He had not felt physical pain like that in his entire life. His backside had taken more damage than his front, and he found that he couldn't move, 'Am I… Am I out of chakra?' His head was absolutely ringing as he could make out Shikamaru throwing Naruto's arm over his shoulder in the distance to help him stand, 'Why? How could this happen?'

Genma and Jei could see that Gaara wasn't going to get back up under his own power. Even if he hadn't been out of energy, Naruto broke his leg, "Okay. I'm calling it before someone ends up a quadriplegic…" Jei said, rubbing his head as he finally realized he had been sweating just from watching the battle. Genma nodded and even Sekka did so, "Gaara is unable to continue under his own power! Therefore the winners of the match and the chunin exam tournament are Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!"

"Nooooo!" From his position on the ground Gaara yelled his dispute at the decision even though he couldn't move a muscle to prove it was an unfounded call, "There's no way a guy like that can beat me! He can't even stand up on his own!" Gaara was one to talk…

Genma rolled his senbon around in his mouth, looking at the beaten down jinchuuriki, "He doesn't need to be able to stand on his own. He still has his teammate. You're beaten kid. It's over."

"It's not over!" Gaara shouted as sand began flying up around his body in a wide berth, beginning to form a massive construct with blue vein-like markings on it. It looked like a larger, titanic version of the creature Gaara had turned himself into, or it would have had the sand not been quelled back to the ground around Gaara by a massive amount of gold powder.

XxX

In the stands at the top of the stairs, leaning against a doorway heading out to the hallway, Fuu saw Gaara's attempt to transform into the full Shukaku and sneered, "And with guys like that Uzumaki wonders how I and other people could call us monsters… how stupid." She shook her head and walked away from observing the battle, "Who transforms in the middle of an arena in front of thousands of people? Psychopath…"

XxX

(Kage's Box)

The Kazekage's eyes had dark rings similar to Gaara's around them as he was standing out of his seat by the edge of the box, seemingly manipulating the powder of gold out on the field to keep Gaara's sand from rising up to create his massive Shukaku form, 'You are not releasing that thing in here Gaara. This is not the place for a full possession.' He thought to himself as he focused to prevent Gaara from releasing his biju, "Mifune-dono. I believe it would be best to evacuate the stadium at this time. Gaara is done."

Hiruzen stood up by the Kazekage's side, looking down at what was going on, "So this is your Gold Dust that you use with your Jiton (Magnet Release). Do you require any help Kazekage-dono?"

"That's not necessary." Still keeping Gaara from creating the Shukaku, the Kazekage let out a grunt of effort, "It is Suna's responsibility to keep its jinchuuriki in check. He will not rampage, I can assure you of that. I know what I'm doing Hokage-dono." He had been doing it for decades by this point and was getting better at holding the beast down.

A made a humming noise as he oversaw the battlefield, "So I'll guess that you're using the gold to weigh down the sand and keep it from letting the demon take form. What an inventive taming method." He wasn't a stranger to the Kazekage's kekkei genkai, but he hadn't seen his own use of it in person. It reminded him of how Gaara seemed to normally fight, but with a more potent material to use.

"This is why we don't bring jinchuuriki to the exams…" Onoki stated dryly. In his opinion they were lucky that Fuu was seemingly more stable or had more sense than to release hers the way Gaara had just tried to, "It ruins things for everyone. I was having fun until now."

XxX

Naruto and Shikamaru just stood staring with their jaws dropped once Gaara seemed to release the Shukaku just to keep fighting a meaningless battle that they certainly weren't going to stick around to keep fighting since it was technically over.

They thought they were all about to die and that everyone in the arena was toast until gold started holding the sand down. But the sand wouldn't lay quietly and started trying to thrash under the weight of the Gold Dust, "Crap." Shikamaru said as he could see the sand that was about to try making the Shukaku stretch out in an outpouring wave along the ground.

"Run!" Sekka said, being followed by Genma and Jei off of the field.

"Run where?" Naruto shouted back, still being held over Shikamaru's shoulder. A large amount of the sand started crashing towards the proctors and the genin forcing them all to start running, with Genma helping Shikamaru carry Naruto's near dead weight.

They started running towards the entrance tunnel in an effort to get away and Genma had to make a comment allowing Naruto to hear it purposefully, "Kid I swear to Kami after seeing this, no one in Konoha better be stupid enough to think you're dangerous ever again! I'll slap them myself if I ever hear anyone say so!"

"Thanks, but I'd really just be okay with not dying right now!" Naruto yelled, looking over his shoulder as he tried to move his legs to not be such a burden on his helpers, "Door or stairs?"

"Stairs!" Shikamaru said as they entered the tunnel, the sand bearing down quickly. They weren't going to run further down the tunnel to reach the doors and then stop to open them up. That was stupid.

With that, all five of them rushed up the stairs as the sand came crashing through the tunnel, though they were firmly out of its reach by that time. Sekka let out a breath of relief, "Kazekage-sama kept Gaara's demon from taking over." He looked towards Naruto, "Nothing has pushed Gaara that far in six years."

Shikamaru and Naruto looked at each other before blinking, "Um… thanks?" Shikamaru said, speaking for his dumbfounded friend before speaking to him in a curious whisper, "Can you do anything like that with the you-know-what?"

"How the hell should I know?" Naruto replied a little heatedly, "I just found out I had it a little over a month ago. What you saw was what I can do for right now." In the end it still beat Gaara's ass until he decided to get all genocidal and call the real Shukaku out in the middle of a crowded arena.

"Fine… I was just asking. Geez, bite my head off next time why don't you?" Shikamaru said as he sat down on the stairs, setting Naruto down as well.

Genma, thinking that having a seat wasn't such a bad idea, sat down on the stairs as well and had a thought, "You know, I wonder what that looked like on TV. I'll bet it was completely awesome with the huge-ass explosion and then with the demon stuff with the sand…"

"Meh." Jei said with a shrug of his shoulders, "Older people in Kumo know what biju attacks look like. They've seen their share. Aside from that, the cameras probably faded out to end the broadcast after we announced the end of the match."

That made Naruto realize something he had overlooked with the threat to his life looming overhead prior, "Wait, we won?" Jei nodded, expecting pure joy from the exuberant genin. All he got though was a sigh that confused everyone there, "You know what? I don't even care that much anymore… I need a cigarette. And where's my machete?"

Shikamaru could understand Naruto's not caring sentiment since he had been expressing himself as such since the exams began in the first place, "I think I've learned something from all of this. After everything that's happened over the last month and all of the things I've seen and heard I think I've really learned something here."

"Responsibility?" Genma wondered.

Jei tried to chime in with a guess next, "Grit, determination, and the will to succeed?"

"The dangers of the unknown?" Sekka asked.

"No." Shikamaru said, shooting them all down, "I learned that this job sucks. We don't get any perks, random dangerous stuff seems to happen for no reason at all, if we ever end up making any real money for what we do we'll probably be dead before we ever get a chance to use it, and even after all of this even if we get promoted I don't even feel like we won anything right now. I mean what did we just win? What was all of that for?" He looked at Naruto, "Do you feel like we just won anything?"

"I don't feel like we even won in the first place." Naruto admitted.

Hearing Shikamaru's griping, Genma chuckled, "Honestly? You probably just won the right to go off and do more dangerous missions more frequently. On the bright side you two are probably going to get one of our cool flak jackets though, so at least there's that."

"I learned that explosions and half-baked bullshit plans from Shikamaru solve a lot of life problems." Naruto commented glibly before getting a second though, "Wait, speaking of life problems are we even getting paid for being in this exam? I didn't pay my rent last month at all."

"We were on TV and this entire thing was all about us Naruto." Shikamaru said with some confidence, "We get licensing rights and all of that stuff so I'm sure we're getting paid. We're at least getting some of the gate for everyone that showed up and bought a ticket to watch us in person."

"Actually…" Genma said again, "You don't have any image licensing rights. Your personal image is the property of the Konohagakure no Sato shinobi program and can be used in whatever manner is seen fit. Sorry. You signed your image rights away when you joined the Academy."

Yep, the glory of 'victory'…

"…Just take me to the hospital already… I can't walk anymore."

Jutsu List

Giga Shintou (Giga Impact). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive. This jutsu requires the user to be able to manipulate wind element chakra and also have advanced skill with the tree-walking exercise, enough that they can use it on other parts of their body nearly flawlessly. The user will stick their hands to the target with wind chakra and will then suddenly and quickly twist and yank their hands away, still keeping the pull active. This will create a powerful vacuum effect inside of the target that will cause intense internal damage.

Bunshin Jibaku Danmaku (Clone Suicide Barrage). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive. The attack requires some sort of active, tangible clone jutsu and enough working explosive tags for the attack to be effective, the more the better. The clones will charge the target with the multitude of explosive tags and will all explode with the use of a single trigger explosion to begin the reaction. It can be avoided by outmaneuvering the clones and can be prevented altogether if one can decipher which clone holds the trigger and can destroy it before it gets too close and begins the barrage, but it is usually well protected. Can be very effective on an entrenched position or against a stronghold. Uses an extraordinary amount of chakra.