Outskirts of Konoha — Forest Perimeter
Amid the chaos of Konoha's invasion, the Sand Sibling Trio tore through the trees, leaping from branch to branch with desperate urgency. Gaara was ahead, his breath heavy, sand swirling protectively around him. Behind him, Kankuro glanced over his shoulder—
Sasuke was gaining. Fast.
"Gaara, go!" Kankuro shouted. "We'll hold him off!"
But the reply never came. Gaara didn't even glance back.
His body was already changing.
Sand coated his skin like armor. Markings—ancient and feral—crawled over his face. His pupils stretched into slits. And the voice that echoed from him?
Not Gaara's.
Shukaku. Ichibi.
Kankuro gritted his teeth and leapt from the trees, landing to block Sasuke's path. "You're not getting past me!"
Sasuke didn't even stop moving.
CHINK—KRK!
Two precise strikes. In a flash of lightning, Kankuro's puppet arms were shredded, his chakra strings sliced mid-air. He tumbled backward, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Temari landed a short distance away, fan in hand, trembling. "Damn it… Kankuro…"
Her gaze flicked to Gaara—but it wasn't her brother anymore. Not fully.
"Gaara! You have to keep going! I'll buy you time—!"
"No," Sasuke cut her off coldly as he landed with a hiss of chakra. "It's too late."
The thing before them wasn't Gaara anymore. His form was nearly consumed in sand, shaped like a monstrous raccoon. Towering. Insatiable. Laughing.
"Kukuku… So the brat knows my name." The voice was a guttural growl. "Shukaku of the Desert. Haven't had a good hunt in years."
Sasuke stared at him, unflinching, unsheathing his katana with a clean metallic slide.
"Oh, I know exactly who you are," he said. "One-Tail. Ichibi. The weakest of the tailed beasts."
Shukaku's eye twitched. "You humans and your rankings…"
"Don't get me wrong," Sasuke continued, his Sharingan glowing blood-red. "You're still strong. But compared to the rest of your kind, you're barely an elite jōnin."
He raised his katana, now crackling with Chidori-infused lightning, the blade humming with power.
"And I'm above that."
Shukaku snarled.
"Tch. You talk too much like that damn fox. What was his name again? Kurama? Can't believe he actually made friends with a human…"
If Kurama had been there, he'd have vaporized half the forest just to slap the tanuki.
But Sasuke smirked. "Yeah. And that 'dumbass' who befriended him? He's my brother."
With that, Sasuke surged forward.
CRACK—!
His blade collided with a rising sand wall, electricity arcing as it struck the barrier. Sparks flew. Shukaku reinforced it, thickening the layer.
But it wasn't enough.
The lightning chakra screamed as it dug through the sand like a hot knife, the force behind it enhanced by Sasuke's deadly precision.
BOOM!
The wall exploded in a cloud of dust and static. Sasuke landed on the other side, Sharingan locked onto Shukaku's massive eye.
"You think lightning doesn't hurt just because you're made of sand?" Sasuke said.
The electricity licked through Shukaku's outer form, causing it to glitch—fracture—shudder.
Shukaku howled, staggering slightly. "RAAAAAAH! You little bastard! You'll pay for that!"
Sasuke gripped his katana tightly, lightning humming once more.
"Then come at me, Tanuki. I'll carve your name into the desert."
Shukaku's rage hit a fever pitch.
His body swelled, sand twisting violently into the full monstrous form of the One-Tail—ears, claws, tail and all—towering over the trees, casting a shadow like death itself.
"NOW, BRAT!" he roared, his voice like a sandstorm in a canyon. "FEEL THE GAP BETWEEN US—PURE, RAW, POWER!"
With a snarl, he raised both clawed arms.
A tidal wave of sand burst outward, swallowing a full hundred meters of terrain. Trees, rocks—obliterated. The air turned thick and dry, the sky veiled in swirling grit.
Sasuke stood unfazed at the center of the storm.
His blade hummed with residual lightning, and his eyes glinted with crimson focus.
He turned slightly toward Temari, who stood frozen with Kankurō slung over her shoulder.
"You," he ordered, his tone sharp. "Take your brother and get out of here. Now."
Temari blinked. "What—?"
"If anything happens to you, I'll be stuck explaining it to that dumbass Naruto. And frankly," he added, flicking his katana to the side, "I've got bigger problems."
Temari hesitated only a second before nodding and leaping away.
Sasuke turned back to Shukaku, his gaze narrowing.
"Hey, dumb tanuki," he shouted. "You think all that sand is enough to beat me?"
He raised a single hand skyward.
Crack.
BOOM.
Thunder rumbled through the heavens as dark clouds churned unnaturally fast above them.
In seconds, the sky blackened.
Lightning danced.
And then—a rumbling growl from the clouds themselves.
Temari, still running, turned in time to see the sky split open.
"Wh—what the hell are they feeding the kids in Konoha?!" she gasped.
High above, light bloomed into form.
A beast of storm and fury. A dragon made of lightning, coiling through the stormfront with crackling grace, its maw roaring silently across the sky.
"KIRIN."
Sasuke's voice was quiet. Deadly.
The lightning dragon descended.
Screaming. Burning. Divine.
Shukaku's eyes widened.
"WAIT—NO—!"
He threw up his sand—three layered domes in quick succession, each thicker than the last, each infused with the full might of a tailed beast's chakra.
The Kirin roared downward.
First dome—shattered.
Second dome—ripped clean open.
Third dome—the thickest, strongest—melted like snow under the sun.
Then came the explosion.
KABOOOOOOM!
A sound like the world cracking in half. Blinding white engulfed the horizon. The shockwave blasted outward, tearing trees from roots, flattening the earth into scorched, barren wasteland.
Wind howled. Dust screamed.
And silence followed.
When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a smoking crater where Shukaku had stood.
The trees were gone. The grass was ash. The forest had become a battlefield of ruin.
Sasuke stood at the epicenter, katana lowered, cloak fluttering in the wind.
"…Weakest of the tailed beasts, huh?" he muttered, exhaling slowly.
Then his legs trembled.
He dropped to one knee, gasping for breath. Sweat poured down his face, the strain of calling lightning from the heavens catching up to him.
But he smiled.
Because the monster was gone.
And the sand… was silent.
As the smoke began to clear, the battlefield was finally visible again.
And at the center of a fifty-meter crater lay Gaara, unconscious. The monstrous sand tanuki was gone—no claws, no tail, just the broken remnants of a jinchūriki overwhelmed by his own power.
From the treeline, Temari emerged, breath hitching as she scanned the devastation.
She'd left Kankurō leaning against a tree a distance back, still unconscious after his defeat.
Her eyes widened.
"GAARA!" she screamed, sprinting across the cracked battlefield.
Sasuke stood near the crater's edge, cloak still rustling in the lingering breeze. He turned slightly as she approached.
Temari dropped to her knees beside her brother, checking his pulse, brushing the sand from his face with trembling fingers. He was alive.
Relieved, she looked up at Sasuke.
"…Hey," she called out, voice soft but earnest. "Thank you. For sparing him."
Sasuke didn't stop walking as he turned away. "I did what he asked."
Temari blinked. "Who?"
He paused.
"Naruto."
And with that, Sasuke vanished into the forest, lightning chakra still faintly flickering in his footsteps.
Temari furrowed her brows in confusion but etched the name into her heart. She gently lifted Gaara into her arms and returned to Kankurō. Laying Gaara down beside him, she finally let herself breathe.
She hugged her knees to her chest, closed her eyes, and just sat there—a sister not as a shinobi, but as a human trying to keep her family whole.
Meanwhile, in Konoha
The village was still a battlefield.
Explosions echoed through the streets, smoke rising from shattered buildings. Civilians had been evacuated to safe zones, and shinobi clashed with Suna-nin in the alleys and rooftops.
But wherever a fight broke out, it ended just as fast.
Naruto was moving like a storm. Blink and you missed him. One punch, one kick, one kunai—and another enemy was down.
But that wasn't all. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of shadow clones were spread throughout the village, protecting people, capturing rogue shinobi, and holding down strategic zones.
In the middle of it all, the real Naruto stood atop a rooftop, surveying the village like a guardian watching over his people.
He cracked a grin.
"Alright... enough warm-up. Time for the main event."
At that moment, a swirl of chakra beside him pulsed.
Kurama manifested in his miniaturized, fox-form glory—his expression one of barely-restrained bloodlust and overwhelming sass.
"Finally," Kurama growled, stretching. "Let's go. I wanna smash those old fossils—Hashirama and Minato—into the dirt."
Naruto blinked. "Pfft. You? Beat them?"
He smirked. "Yeah, good luck. You couldn't do it when they were alive. What makes you think you'll win now that they're dead and probably got even more hacks from the afterlife?"
Kurama puffed up, ears twitching in irritation.
"Tch. That was because of that cursed Makoto and all those ridiculous fūinjutsu chains. If not for those, I would've stomped them."
"Uh-huh. Excuses, excuses." Naruto gave him a sideways glance and snickered.
Kurama turned his head away with a dramatic huff. "Then fine, I'll just leave you behind."
With a poof of chakra, the fox leapt off the rooftop and dashed toward the towering golden barrier that surrounded the Kage battle.
Naruto called after him, laughing. "Oi! Wait for me! You tsundere furball!"