---
The forest trembled as Haku stood atop the ice dome, his silhouette stark against the chaotic backdrop of the Tailed Beast. Below him, Naruto and Sasuke were safe, encased in diamond-hard ice, but the real threat loomed fifty meters into the sky.
Shukaku peered down, his massive, sandy eyelids narrowing.
"YOU... YOU ARE THE BUG THAT KILLED MY HOST'S SENSEI!" Shukaku roared, recognizing the scent of Baki's blood on Haku. "YOU SMELL LIKE DEAD WIND!"
Haku didn't respond with words. He calculated.
'Chakra reserves... 70% remaining. Opponent... infinite chakra, massive area of effect, automatic defense skin,' Haku analyzed rapidly, his Ashura no Mon seal humming as it force-fed stamina into his limbs. 'I cannot outlast a Tailed Beast. A battle of attrition is a guaranteed loss. I have no sealing tags. No space-time ninjutsu to teleport him away.'
There was only one option.
' incapacitate the medium.'
"DIE!" Shukaku swung a claw the size of a galleon.
ZIP.
Haku vanished.
He didn't jump back. He skated forward, creating a frictionless path of ice beneath his sandals. He moved directly under the swinging arm, the wind pressure ruffling his hair, and sped toward the deeper forest, away from the two unconscious Genin.
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?" Shukaku screamed, turning his massive bulk to chase the gnat. "STOP MOVING!"
"Over here," Haku whispered, his voice projected by chakra.
He stopped in a clearing a mile away. He needed to test the beast's durability threshold.
Haku wove signs with blinding speed. 'Ice Release: Ice Ball.'
Moisture in the air condensed instantly into a dense, jagged sphere of ice, two meters in diameter.
"Hah!"
Haku kicked it. The ball flew like a cannon shot, breaking the sound barrier.
SMASH.
It connected squarely with Shukaku's snout.
"OW!" Shukaku blinked, shaking his head. "THAT STUNG! WHY IS IT SO HARD!?"
'It stings him,' Haku noted. 'Good.'
Haku didn't stop. He began to skate around the beast in a wide circle, moving so fast he appeared as a continuous ring of teal light. 'Ice Release: Ice Ball Barrage.'
One sphere. Two spheres. Ten. Twenty.
Haku turned the clearing into a batting cage. Ice balls slammed into Shukaku's face, chest, and knees from every angle, chipping away at the sand armor.
"ANNOYING! YOU ARE ANNOYING!" Shukaku threw a tantrum, stomping the ground. "STOP HITTING ME WITH POPSICLES!"
The beast inhaled deeply. The forest wind rushed into his maw.
"WIND STYLE: DRILLING AIR BULLET!"
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
The volley was apocalyptic. Trees disintegrated. The ground was chewed up into craters.
But Haku was fast. He was ice. He was flow.
As an air bullet approached, Haku shifted his weight on his ice path, altering his trajectory by mere inches. The bullet passed him, the shockwave tearing at his clothes, but he remained untouched. He weaved through the barrage with the grace of a figure skater in a minefield, his expression calm, almost bored.
"STAND STILL!" Shukaku shrieked, his frustration mounting. "WHY WON'T YOU STAND STILL!?"
Haku skidded to a halt on a high branch, looking down at the beast.
'Physical attacks annoy him, but they don't damage him deeply enough,' Haku concluded. 'I need precision. And I need to expose the core.'
He looked up at the sky. The heat from Shukaku's rampage and the coolness of Haku's ice had created a dense layer of storm clouds above the clearing.
'Let's see...'
Haku clapped his hands together.
'Ice Release: Ice Rain.'
The clouds swirled. The humidity froze instantly.
Millions of senbon... needles made of super-hardened ice... began to fall. It wasn't a drizzle; it was a deluge.
"HAH! RAIN?" Shukaku laughed, shielding his eyes. "SAND IS STRONGER THAN-"
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
The needles didn't bounce off. They pierced. The sheer velocity, combined with Haku's chakra, allowed them to dig into the sand armor. Because Shukaku was so massive, he caught every single needle in the AoE.
"GYAAAH! ITCHY! SHARP! STOP IT!"
Suddenly, a specific shriek cut through the noise. It wasn't the Tailed Beast's voice. It was human.
"Guh!"
High on Shukaku's forehead, half-emerged from the sand, Gaara flinched as an ice needle grazed his cheek.
"THE BRAT!" Shukaku panicked instantly.
Sand rushed up from the beast's neck, forming a thick, protective dome over Gaara's sleeping form.
Haku's eyes narrowed. 'There.'
The beast protected the host. If the host was damaged, the transformation might destabilize. Or better yet, if the host was awake completely, the beast might lose its anchor.
'I need to hit him. Hard. Once.'
Haku took a deep breath. His chakra was dropping. He had enough for one massive attack.
'I didn't really want to use this,' Haku muttered, loosening his stance. 'This isn't my style. It is too... brute force. Too much like Zabuza-sama's blade.'
He formed a single hand seal.
Ice Clone.
An ice copy of Haku appeared on the ground, shouting and waving its arms. "Over here, you oversized raccoon!"
"DIE!" Shukaku lunged at the clone.
While the beast was distracted, the real Haku moved.
He ran up Shukaku's tail. He sprinted along the beast's spine, his frictionless boots making no sound on the shifting sand.
By the time Shukaku realized the clone was a fake, Haku was already airborne, launching himself high above the beast's head.
He hung in the air and his hands blurred.
Bird. Dragon. Serpent. Tiger. Ox. Monkey...
Forty hand seals in three seconds. A complexity of chakra molding that few Jonin could attempt, let alone complete.
The moisture in the entire sector was sucked toward Haku's raised right hand.
It condensed. It expanded. It froze.
A handle formed. Then a head. A massive, rectangular block of ice, dense as diamond, glittering in the starlight. It grew larger, and larger, until it rivaled the size of Shukaku's own head.
"Ice Release..." Haku shouted, his voice echoing with finality.
He gripped the massive handle, gravity assisting his descent.
"...ICE HAMMER!"
"WHAT THE-!?" Shukaku looked up.
For the first time since waking up, the One-Tail felt a flicker of genuine fear. The object falling toward him wasn't a jutsu; it was a meteor.
Haku swung. He put the weight of his training, the weight of the weights he had carried, and the weight of his resolve into the blow.
CRAAAAASH!
The hammer slammed into the top of Shukaku's head, directly over the sand dome protecting Gaara.
The sound was apocalyptic. A shockwave of condensed air and ice shards blasted outward, flattening the forest for another hundred meters.
"GYAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Shukaku's scream was cut short. The beast's neck snapped forward. The sand body couldn't hold the shape against the impact. It crumbled. The massive form dissolved into a tidal wave of loose sand, crashing down into the forest floor.
'It worked!'
---
Silence returned to the forest, broken only by the settling dust.
Haku landed gracefully on a tree root, watching the mountain of sand deflate.
Lying in the center of the wreckage, Gaara gasped, his eyes snapping open. The Tailed Beast had receded, forced back by the trauma of the impact. Gaara lay there, bruised, battered, and utterly confused.
He looked up to see a figure walking toward him.
"Stop!" Gaara rasped, scrambling backward in the dirt. Terror filled his eyes. "Don't come over! Stay away!"
Haku didn't stop. He walked until he was standing over the boy who had terrorized the exams.
Haku looked down, revealing his calm, beautiful face.
"You're not the only one who's suffering in this world," Haku said softly. "Stop being such an emo baby."
"W-What?" Gaara blinked.
"Gaara!"
Two figures landed nearby. Temari and Kankuro, battered and exhausted, stood defensively between Haku and their brother. They held their weapons up, though their hands were shaking.
Haku looked at them. Then he looked at Gaara.
"Look," Haku pointed at the siblings. "You treated them as pieces of shit. You threatened to kill them. You terrorized them. Yet, here they are."
Gaara stared at Kankuro and Temari. They were terrified of him, yes. But they were standing in front of him. Protecting him.
"They always come to you because you're their brother," Haku lectured, his tone sounding remarkably like Alaric for a moment. "Control your emotions, will you? I don't know what you went through in life… monsters, bad fathers, I've seen it all… but people would kill to have siblings as loving as yours."
Haku's eyes hardened. He flared his remaining chakra, letting out a sharp, cold killing intent.
"Leave this place," Haku commanded. "Now. I wouldn't want to kill kids the same age as me."
Kankuro gulped. "Let's go, Gaara."
He grabbed his brother's arm. Temari supported the other side. They didn't look back. They fled into the trees, retreating toward the border of Wind Country.
Haku watched them go until they were out of range.
Then, his knees buckled.
He dropped to the ground, sitting heavily against a broken log. His chest heaved. Sweat soaked his clothes. The Ashura no Mon seal was effectively supplying him with chakra, but still, it was his first fighting in that kind of style.
"Haa... haa..."
Haku wiped his forehead, a weak laugh escaping his lips.
"It's hard to act okay when chakra's almost all out."
Rustling from the bushes.
Shikamaru, Sakura, Ino, Choji, and Kiba emerged. They looked at the destruction... the crater, the dissipating ice hammer, the retreating Sand siblings.
Then they looked at Haku.
"Haku!" Sakura rushed forward, checking him for injuries. "Are you okay? That was... that was incredible!"
"You took down a Tailed Beast..." Kiba whispered, staring at Haku like he was an alien. "By yourself."
"Are you okay, man?" Shikamaru asked, looking concerned.
Haku looked up at them. He was exhausted. He was bruised. But at least he did his part.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
"I am fine. Just... five minutes. Give me five minutes."
.
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