"Why is he still changing…?!"
"And what is that weird thing?"
Naruto bent slightly forward, resting his hands on his knees, standing on the near-vertical wall of the training field.
They had been fighting Gaara down below for a long time, but instead of being defeated, he kept changing further.
"This isn't going to work…"
Sasuke barely managed to stand next to Naruto, taking a deep breath with a frown.
His stamina and chakra were almost at their limit, unlike Naruto, who seemed to have an endless supply.
That alone put him at a disadvantage.
On top of that, Chidori was a ninjutsu he had only recently learned, and it drained his body heavily.
Kakashi usually treated Chidori, or Raikiri, as a finishing move, but that was also because his chakra reserves were honestly too low.
For Sasuke to last this long was already impressive.
He could probably use Chidori one more time at most, and after that, he'd likely be unable to move.
When those coin-like eyes opened on the raccoon's face, Sasuke instantly remembered the fleeting eyes he had seen earlier inside the sand shell in the training field.
That thing had already been inside back then.
Bang! With a dull sound, Kimimaro stepped onto the wall of the training field, holding a bone blade in his hand.
The impact left a small dent beneath his foot, and bits of stone rolled down from under it.
A lump of bone formed on Kimimaro's stomach, blocking the sand coming at him.
The dense sand slid down along the bone after being stopped.
The bone tip that had been broken by the sand withdrew back into Kimimaro's body after blocking the attack.
Kimimaro wiped the blood from his cheek, glanced at the two people beside him, and said,
"Eyes like coins, body covered in curse marks — that's the One-Tailed Shukaku."
"Gaara should be the Jinchuriki of the One-Tail, but he's not a perfect Jinchuriki, so he can't fully control Shukaku himself."
"Shukaku has pretty much completely taken over now."
Do these two not study at all? How can they not even know something like this?
Especially that blond, cat-faced guy—he's still the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
Hatake Satoru had already explained the tailed beasts to him before.
But it's not just him—everyone in Kirigakure Village takes tailed beast knowledge seriously.
That's because their village has the Three-Tails, which is different from these Jinchuriki. It's a complete tailed beast, locked away in a lake.
Even though there are strict restrictions, there's always someone looking for trouble.
Almost everyone there knows how terrifying a tailed beast is, and they're familiar with the true forms of all of them.
Of course, they don't know exactly who each country's Jinchuriki is—that's classified information.
"This giant tanuki is the One-Tail…"
Naruto could still make the connection—after all, he had a Nine-Tail inside him too.
But in every way, Gaara's condition was completely different from his own.
"What are you three brats whispering about up there?"
"Even if you team up, you can't beat me!"
"Weren't you acting all high and mighty just now? Why'd you stop all of a sudden?"
A few chuckles rumbled from deep in Shukaku's throat.
On the wall of the training grounds behind it, Sakura and several other hostages were pinned tightly in place by sand.
At first, Sasuke had been the only one fighting the One-Tail, and Gaara's transformation back then wasn't as extreme as it was now.
Then Sakura and Naruto came to help.
Sasuke and Naruto could at least hold their own, rolling and dodging so they didn't get completely beaten down.
The only one who couldn't keep up was Sakura, and before long she was bound to the wall by sand, unable to move.
To get more leverage over them, the One-Tail grabbed several audience members from above.
Thankfully, those spectators were caught in a genjutsu, sleeping soundly and unaware they'd been taken hostage.
Right in front of them was the tailed beast they had always feared.
Even with Kimimaro joining in and taking some of the pressure off, they still couldn't find an opening to free the hostages near Shukaku.
Hatake Satoru had gone inside the barrier, while Kakashi-sensei stayed near it to check the situation.
After all, besides Sasuke—who was still fighting—the only person left with a Sharingan was Kakashi, and his was in one eye.
"If you keep hiding up there, I'll kill them."
"Hurry up and fight me! Weren't you three so confident just now?"
Shukaku swung a massive claw at them, shouting fiercely.
"Let's go."
Kimimaro glanced up at the black sphere inside the barrier on the roof, then stepped hard on the ground and suddenly crouched low.
His pale green eyes locked on Shukaku's exposed legs, and he dove down with his bone blade.
The blade scraped along the ground with a harsh sound, leaving a long scratch in the floor of the training grounds.
Sasuke gathered chakra in his feet in an instant, his Sharingan fixed on Sakura and the others as he sprinted toward them.
Meanwhile, Naruto ran straight up the wall of the training grounds, and when he reached near the height of the audience stands, he kicked off hard.
From above, he jumped down while forming hand signs and shouted,
"Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
In an instant, a swarm of Naruto's clones appeared above Shukaku, raining down toward it.
The markings carved into Shukaku's face made it look disturbingly twisted. Its chubby, dark yellow sand face warped even more as it quickly broke into a vicious grin, then suddenly threw its head back.
Several more huge, spiky mouths opened up on its body, and all of them inhaled deeply along with Shukaku.
The air was almost visibly filled with sand.
"Wind Style: Infinite Sand Dust Great Breakthrough!"
A massive blast of wind and sand sprayed straight out of Shukaku's mouth, and in an instant the air around them was filled with dust and grit.
Naruto's large group of shadow clones was blown apart one after another. With a series of popping sounds, they all turned into puffs of white smoke.
Naruto himself was also caught in the blast of wind and sand, sent flying hard until he crashed into the wall inside the training field.
The wall behind him cracked in several spiderweb-like lines from the impact.
Crack!
At that moment, everyone heard a sharp shattering sound. Instinctively, they all looked up at the barrier above.
On the dark-purple Four Violet Flames Formation, several clear cracks had appeared.
The barrier was on the verge of breaking apart from the inside.
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