From the Depths

Scroll 890; Memory N50

Category: Trials

We are beholden to fate.

Fate in our sense is not fate in the sense of man. The fate of all life is to live, to spread, and to die; between these milestones, choice is granted. The fate of the Chosen does not flex in this manner. The markers along our paths are a strange sort of rigid, constant in the certainty of their appearance, but changing in their kind of appearance.

Certain events will occur, but not with any certainty of predictability. They will happen, but never the same way as before.

They are referred to as Trials, for that is what they are – tests meant in no small part to establish the Chosen's place in the story. They will occur once every ten cycles, resetting on the tenth and taking place at some point in the ten to follow. There are three Trials for Fire and Water, three for Lightning and Wind, and five for Earth. I understood my own, their purpose, but not the others.

As was explained to me, one Trial will always call upon Shards, one will always challenge an inherent truth, and one will always end in conflict.

The Shard Trials are as different as the Shards themselves, but each is no less deadly. I saw the Trial of Southern Shores swallow islands whole, but I could scarcely imagine the storms that would wrack the world as the Trial of the Four Winds turned deserts to glass.

The stands filled and the crowds swelled as mid-morning approached. Flags and heraldry emblazoned with the colours and sigils of Sunagakure no Sato flew from the stadium walls, symbols of pride above the deep arena at the centre.

In the rooms and passages within the stadium's structure, genin made their preparations, sharpened the tools and loosened their fingers. Upon the rooftops of the private boxes and booths, atop the great shade sails slung over the lower-lying stands, Suna shinobi watched, hawk-eyed, ready to swoop at the first signs of danger among the crowds.

Hiruzen had seen such things many times before.

Perhaps it was at odds with the ancient dogma of the shinobi clans – "the unseen blade cuts a dozen times deep," or so the old adage went – but the hidden villages, in somewhat laughable contrast to their name, were very much required to operate in the open. The Chūnin Exams had become an essential event, a showcase of shinobi talent and ability that ran very much counter to the traditional attitudes of the clans of the preceding era.

But some things remained as they were, such as the likeliness of powerful men and women – shinobi and nobility alike – to pass the time with clever insults, backhanded compliments, and architectural decisions made for symbolism's sake.

The luxurious VIP box was tiered into three levels, a waterfall arrangement of smallest to largest numbers of seats. In the largest, separated from the two above by Suna shinobi and low-lying, banner-draped barricades, were the minor dignitaries, the wealthy, the economically and socially important. The nobility sat in the centre, each row within a microcosm of aristocratic hierarchy, tiny feudal pyramids for each nation, each surrounded by guards in full ceremonial regalia, each with a gilded capstone wrought of royalty's gentle-skinned steel – the daimyo.

Above the noble food chains, in three seats more akin to thrones than leather-swathed chairs, the three of them sat, gazing down upon the stadium, upon the swelling crowds in the packed stands, upon the merchants, the businessmen, the nobles, and the lords of nations.

Hiruzen did not doubt that the seating arrangements were Rasa's own backhanded reminder to all with eyes of the relationship between the daimyo and the Kage – it was not equal.

"Hokage-dono, perhaps it is founded in ignorance, but I've yet to understand the royal insistence on personal guards within shinobi walls. Do our lords think us incapable of protecting such noble patrons?"

"It is not a matter of belief or incompetence, Mizukage-dono," Hiruzen said with a knowing grin. "Royal tradition, irrespective of nation, is long-held and deeply entrenched, centuries old in truth. And all throughout those centuries, they have maintained armies, warriors sworn to the defence of their lord. We shinobi simply lack the pedigree and prestige of time-honoured tradition to yet earn such stalwart faith."

The Mizukage smiled wide. "Yes, I suppose we ninja are still young upstarts on the world stage. But, as it surely must, the tide will turn. Wouldn't you agree, Kazekage-dono?"

"Indeed," the Kazekage intoned, his voice slowly rising. "And, perhaps, it already does. So many in attendance, so many of noble blood and upstanding birth, a litany of historic deeds and deep riches from the world over – all for the sake of Suna's Chūnin Exams. We are blessed with their patronage this day, my friends."

Hiruzen dimmed his smile and drew his face into a considered frown. "What a shame, then, the honoured daimyo of Kaze no Kuni could not grace us with his presence in person today."

Rasa pressed his lips together firmly before he spoke. "Yes, while we are gifted with the company of the honoured daimyo's firstborn, matters of the state are always our lord's utmost concern."

Hiruzen could taste the bitter sarcasm, just as he could see the gathered nobles below shift in their seats. To aristocratic eyes, it was a subtle ripple that barely stirred the waters; to the lethally paranoid, it was an ocean wave in a storm.

Every projected word, every spoken phrase was a reminder of displeasure, irritation, and observation. Mid-speech, mid-sentence, mid-thought, the Kazekage was watching. The remainder of the threat – the torture, the interrogation, the dismantling of a noble house, the disassembly of a nation, the sheer prospect of loss – went unsaid, but not unheard.

But there was no protest, not a hint of dissent or discord brought to bear on lips.

Rasa could threaten, bluster and blow like howling winds all he wished, but the hurricane would not touch a hair on their heads. Beyond the binding, foundational contracts of the hidden villages, beyond the questionable loyalty of shinobi to their feudal lords, beyond the internal animosity constantly present between Kage and daimyo, the relationship was parasitic.

They needed each other, but they were killing each other. If any country shed its shinobi leeches, then every neighbour's worms and ticks would tear it to shreds, spend the next years divvying up the corpse, until new lines were drawn, new feuds were started, and the whole cycle repeated all over again on even bloodier soil.

A weak argument, perhaps, but he was content to be the lesser of two evils, the one that wouldn't throw the world into turmoil again quite so soon.

The conversation lapsed and a powerful silence ensued between the three of them. A few moments of idle, noble chatter passed beneath them until the subtle leak of strength, the meandering suffusion of chakra into the air, slowed their tongues to a crawl, and then to a halt.

A bell tolled.

Beneath a burning sun an hour from its height, the contestants strode out onto the field of battle, and the Kazekage stood to greet them.

The box that cradled their seats was significantly smaller, lower than the grand stand of the dignitaries, the royal personages and the Kage, and set ninety degrees further along the stadium's upper circle. Another box of similar size sat opposite theirs, and the box that opposed the largest of the four was the smallest.

Of course, it wasn't theirs alone. The box was divided in comfortably proportioned sections for different parties by barriers about shoulder-high – for adults, at least. There were at least twenty men and women scattered about the four other sections.

The view was plentiful. He could see the stands, the arena, even glimpses of Suna's cityscape over the edge of the stadium roof.

The people below were not specks to his eyes, but rather capsules of colour more than they were individuals with lungs and voices. The Kage were better defined, but still small enough that their distinct robes and shades painted them better than their shapes. Even still, the visual spectacle of it all was but a sliver of the sensory riot below.

It was the single largest gathering of people he'd ever witnessed.

Perhaps his physical reactions were not as well-hidden as he'd thought, or perhaps her perceptions had simply grown by leaps and bounds, but from the seat beside him, Temari turned her eyes his way.

"Something wrong?"

If he had been any younger, any newer to his senses, any less prepared, the calamitous noise would have had him clutching his head at the furious rush of information pouring through his ears. Thousands of vectors for sound, vessels for breaths and heartbeats roiled beneath his feet, churning with their own waves borne by their own lungs.

Naruto shook his head. "Just a large number of people."

Every great mass seemed singular, lacking complexity. But what was vast indistinction for anyone else was a discernible chorus for him, a song of slighter songs so numerous it would take days on end to scribe each and every note.

"I know, right?" Kankurō didn't really ask the question so much as he vibrated it from his place at Temari's right. "Going to be so cool. Oh, and you guys get to see some kick-ass puppetry as well, plus some other stuff."

The upward twitch of Sasuke's lips betrayed a smile. "Hopefully it'll be interesting to watch."

Kankurō snorted. "Ever seen someone grow kunai out of their skin while spewing fire from their eyes?"

Sasuke blinked. "Can't say I have."

"And he hopes it'll be interesting," Kankurō laughed, nudging an elbow into Temari's side.

Temari just sighed. "Ignore my brother. What he means to say is a puppeteer uses misdirection, often disguising their puppet as themselves. That can lead to some surprises when someone's limbs unhinge or they start spitting metal at inhuman rates."

Naruto smiled, and he saw Temari catch the humour behind it. "Well, surprising for most."

"For most," she echoed with a smile.

It was a few minutes more of idle chatter before some commotion stirred at the entry points onto the field below, and the ten contestants strode in – five from Suna, three from Konoha, two from Kiri.

And then it all went silent.

He'd heard the old man speak to crowds before. There was always a hush that descended, always a sudden onset of quiet that preceded the old man opening his mouth. Everyone in the crowd adhered, all except infants and children too young to understand any real social cue, and they did it unquestioningly, a rule they were careful not to break, even if they didn't know it.

When the Kazekage's voice rang out, the stadium – filled with many times more people than he'd ever seen the Hokage address – did the same.

Naruto listened.

"Contestants."

The word echoed through the stadium, hanging and cloying for a strange moment as Naruto felt something make the air stiff in places and vastly flowing in others, all the better for the voice to reach their ears.

"That you stand on this ground, on this day and beneath this sun, is a testament to the strength of each and every one of you, irrespective of nationality or affiliation. You each have proven your ability, acumen, and dedication to reach this stage, and in doing so, have earned my respect."

The Kazekage paused for a moment. "But respect alone does not grant the rank of chūnin. For all the strength in the world is meaningless with no mind to direct it, with no wisdom to apply it. A chūnin shoulders the mantle of responsibility and consequence, of circumstances greater than the self. Conflict or retreat, death or incapacitation, sacrifice or survival – these are a mere fraction of the questions posed to those of greater rank. But today, a question will be posed to you: are you ready to answer them?"

The Kazekage let the words disseminate, circulating through the air and the people they reached before he gave one final command. "Let the Chūnin Exams begin!"

The hands and the voices of the crowds roared with motion and sound.

When Asuma heard the little speech conclude and the masses erupt in cheers, he started walking away from the foot of the stadium's exterior wall.

The whole structure was a grand, circular affair; plenty enormous, ostentatious and strategically inept as far as shinobi were concerned, but it was a barely a footnote to some of the towers and palaces he'd seen. Even if the hidden villages were comparative shining beacons of economic might to the poverty and the squalor that existed out in the wider world, the seats of power were suns to their little shinobi candles. In their own lofty opinions, the daimyo were slumming it when they came out for the exams.

Asuma had certainly heard it voiced enough in his time with the Guardian Twelve.

There was a part of him – one he would've liked to think of as tiny – that relished the thought of vast discomfort falling on the nobility with some mild sadistic glee. Not death or maiming or anything, but the idea of bouts of shock and horror and the potential for heart arrythmia was a certain sort of morbidly pleasant.

And then he crushed the feeling into paste and brushed the chunks and the blood into a mental waste bin, because he didn't want to feel anything positive from a situation that placed his student at incredible risk.

"Gods damn it all," Asuma muttered.

He had a job to do.

He weaved his way through the burning sunshine and the crowded streets, the full bars and gambling houses, the rampant stalls and the screaming traders, the myriad exotic fragrances and the cloying scent of gold and coin that flowed like a river beneath all of it.

It wasn't a particularly difficult task by jōnin standards. He just needed to stand in a specific spot and keep his eyes open, and trust that the enemy – well, opposing shinobi force he wasn't actively engaging – would react accordingly.

If the eyes already on his back were any indication, he was on the right track.

He picked his way between walls of bodies and ambled down deep-shaded back streets to the target location, watched the occasional flurry of rooftop movement as mobile Suna patrols bounded across city blocks, but watched the sky in the same instant.

He needed to kill a little bit of time, but not too much. Circling was too obvious, too wasteful, too time-consuming. Memorisation of the local area was enough to plot a decently inefficient route to Suna's southern residential quarter.

It was always difficult to say outright whether one urban planning decision was worse than another. Dedicated housing sectors kept maintenance times and costs down, but upped distances from businesses and services. It made for an obvious strategic target in wartime, but close confines likely meant available shelters and civilians well-drilled in evacuation procedures.

It was one of those caveats of design and large-scale logistics he didn't have a head for, but it did mean some near-certainties when it came to shinobi activity.

The change in noise was the first indicator he'd crossed a boundary; the gradual architectural shift from uniform geometry to a looser general sense of style and shape in the structures was the second. The main thoroughfares were wider and the side streets were narrower. The people were fewer and the electric tension of densely packed crowds was all but absent until Asuma strolled in.

A foreign shinobi walking the streets was always a sight, but one brazenly walking into a residential area was an oddity – not illegal or unallowed, but eye-catching and perhaps a bit worrying.

A mother in a tiny front garden ushered her two young boys back inside. An old man reading by his window put his book down. The three off-duty kunoichi tried to look they weren't paying excruciating attention to the Konoha shinobi in their midst, but failed miserably.

Asuma hid a smile as the chūnin following from the rooftops grew ever more nervous.

The scrutiny was all very much expected. His presence made him an object for observation for the general populous, a portion of a collective resource occupied by something unusual but ultimately innocuous. But that was just a fringe benefit.

A housing area in a hidden village necessitated a certain number of shinobi eyes per civilian head. The precise value changed with population density, on the basis of village policy and available resources, but it was guaranteed to exist.

Solid intel on the location of the nearest ANBU barracks didn't hurt either.

Asuma kept walking under the full desert sun interspersed by wide awnings and shade sails, wiping the sweat from his cheeks, trying to keep it from his beard.

Disguise was a tactic at every level of shinobi life; stealth was everywhere. If a man could wear a mask, why couldn't a building? It was one of those ubiquities of modern defensive behaviour. It didn't matter the pattern or the style of placement, deployment or implementation, but it was used in some way or form. The villages all needed systems for quick response, and whether that was tunnel networks, waystations or bits of both, it was there.

It also meant they had a schedule to keep.

After nearly an hour of wandering in the heat, slowly draining his canteen and leading his tail down an aimless path, he finally reached his destination. Asuma found a comfortable bit of shaded wall to lean against, pressed a cigarette to his lips, and watched.

The building opposite him was the same burn-dry desert colour as nearly everything else in Suna. It was rectangular, a little squat, wide windows on the ground and top floors with thick curtains drawn to keep the heat out. The door was a dull red, the paint slightly cracked, the porch a little sandy but recently swept by the broom resting on the entryway wall. It was typical, and it looked like no one was home, everyone gone to watch the tournament.

It was good cover. If he hadn't known already, it would've taken a few hours of careful investigation to actually narrow it down, and then several more of observation to actually confirm it. The building was large enough on its own to hold a fair few agents at any one time, and that wasn't considering the likely underground structure and potential links to whatever Suna's subterranean system was like. It made for a good centre for response and surveillance, able to supply operatives in downtime and deploy the active patrols as dictated.

Shame the next patrol wouldn't be able to leave while he was standing there, vacantly gazing at their little rest stop with a gently smouldering cigarette clutched in two fingers, an absentminded smile plastered on his face.

The moment he'd stepped within range, they would've gone on alert. He wasn't biting down on his chakra, or even trying to hide. He was standing in the open, leaking motes of power loud and bright. According to a written copy of in-house Suna protocol scavenged a few decades back by Konoha, and according to current analysis by Nara Shikaku, procedure for patrols required them to halt deployment if an observer would detect them so the location wouldn't be compromised.

In a handful of minutes, they'd send out a message via some discrete channel, maybe animal summons, maybe some mechanical messaging system, or even via contact with his tail. They'd either request another station to cover their patrol route, attempt to secure their exit, or manufacture some situation to remove him from the premises so they could resume operation. After today, the entire facility would probably be scrubbed and moved for safety's sake, anyway.

The answer came barely five minutes later.

"Stop, thief!"

A man in drab brown and a hood darted past him, clutching a sack – an actual sack, stuffed to overflowing with some combination of money and leather satchels – as a heavyset woman in shopkeeper's garb raced after him.

"Someone, stop that man!"

There was no one else around, no exposed front yards with a decent view of the side street, nothing more than overlooking windows that no civilian could act through. He was the only one nearby.

Asuma sighed, swore under his breath, and blurred into action.

It was a simple set of actions, in all honesty. He applied an even layer of chakra to his legs and his arms, outpaced the thief, reached out with an arm to clothesline him as he ran past, and then deposited him on the ground in a confused heap of limbs and stolen goods.

It was painfully easy.

The woman ran up to him, huffing as she slumped, hands on her thighs even though she'd barely ran around more than a corner.

"Oh, thank you kindly," she said with a bright smile, all button-nosed and rosy-cheeked beneath hazel eyes and chestnut hair. "Such a gesture, helping a stranger like that."

Asuma did his best impression of a heroic grin. "Not at all. Just using my strength for good and whatnot."

She reached down to pick up a leather bag, examined the stitching, and then swatted the groaning man on the ground over the head. "Surely such kindness deserves of a reward. I may not have much to give, but I'm sure something here is worth your efforts."

Asuma just shook his head with a laugh and a smile. "No payment necessary. Consider it my good deed for the –"

"What's going on here?"

Asuma held in his groan as a pair of Suna shinobi dropped to the street and the woman turned to greet them.

"Oh, shinobi-san, this kind gentleman stopped this thief," she said, punctuated with a sharp kick to the prone man's side, "from running off with my last week's earnings and a great deal of my stock. I'm a leatherworker, you see; run a stand in the markets."

"Well," the taller shinobi smiled, "I'll haul this one off to a holding cell, and my colleague here will lead you to the station so we can take your witness statements and get this little incident over and done with."

Asuma grinned. "Sounds like a plan."

He didn't protest, didn't make a fuss at the entire orchestrated affair, of a shinobi's sub-par acting skills – like any civilian thief would dare to operate openly in a hidden village – of a kunoichi overselling a shopkeeper's lack of fitness, and of the incredibly convenient response time of the shinobi making the arrest.

Asuma followed behind a bright-smiling leatherworker, a cuffed and grumbling thief, and two no-nonsense shinobi without a word.

It didn't really matter, anyway. The patrol had been delayed, and if he knew Kakashi, a few minutes was all he needed to get the messiest part of the plan over and done with.

When the genin from Konoha used a defensive Doton jutsu like a battering ram, smashing the Kiri-nin against the stadium wall with an explosive crack and a shallow crater riddled with spiderwebs and crumbling debris, the crowd roared, and Naruto couldn't help the slight wince as Kankurō cheered along with them.

The mud pillar, angled like the buttress of some ancient structure, chipped and powdered when the Konoha genin dropped her hands, the remains losing form and sliding apart in great tracks of mud until the Kiri-nin was no longer pinned to the wall. A sword clattered to the ground, he dropped like a stone, and the call went out.

"Winner – Yazawa Teiko of Konohagakure!"

The applause was immense, punctuated by sharp cheers and whistles as the victor, battered and bruised but upright and proud, raised her fist and walked off the field.

It took bare seconds for the medical team to file in with first-aid and a stretcher for the Kiri-nin, unconscious and rattling with every shallow breath. It was harder for Naruto to ignore the three ribs that had punctured the Kiri-nin's left lung than to acknowledge it.

"Hell yeah!" Kankurō shouted with a pump of his fist before he turned to the rest of them with a laugh. "Now that was pretty kick-ass. Guess some of your ninja are actually really good."

Sasuke shrugged. "Hard to say when it's genin. Problem with training with jōnin is the benchmarks for skill get tossed all over the place."

Kankurō scratched his head. "Well, sort of. I know Temari and me are stronger than other kids our age, but no way I could tell you how much. You know, Temari?"

"Baki-sensei did admit we are someway ahead of the average curve, but warned us about getting complacent. Strength in the present does not equal strength in the future," Temari said.

"Makes sense," Naruto said. "The advice I got was that there's always someone stronger, even when there isn't. And even when you're stronger, people have a way of thinking their way around it."

"So, never underestimate anyone," Temari summed up.

"Words to stay alive by," Sasuke said.

Temari frowned. "Isn't the saying live by?"

"He knows what he said," Naruto smiled, but his heart wasn't in it.

He let Sasuke explain, let Temari argue the merits of the statement, let Kankurō react to the sentiments behind it. An announcement blared through the stadium of the time before the next match. He let it pass him by for just a little while in favour of thought.

The matches were brutal. No deaths as of yet, but blood from cuts, deep bruises, broken bones, even a snapped tibia that had pierced the skin from an intense taijutsu exchange between two Konoha genin – a supposedly friendly fight.

Kankurō was delighted; not by the bloodshed, but the techniques and the skill and raw power behind some impacts – things not so far removed from his reach like all the jōnin and the Kage they were accustomed to.

Temari was sedate, commenting with dry wit, with a mild humour that only he seemed to pick up on. But each fight was focused on as it happened, swallowed and processed through the same eyes but newer ears. She was perceiving more and more with each passing moment, acclimating to a widened lens on everything and anything.

And then there were the little moments where Sasuke bristled in his seat, vague little twitches of electrical perception brushing the air, whispers of the functional expansion of time. They were acts of curiosity, study and interest that prompted examination in an otherworldly depth. It happened every time taijutsu turned fast, or projectiles bounced around the arena, or during exceptionally quick strings of hand seals.

They were meant to be learning from this. According to Asuma-sensei, according to the old man, that had been the aim of bringing them, to watch their seniors fight, to see how far they had to go and how they could better close the distance.

He didn't like it.

Kankurō's voice broke him from his thoughts. "Hey, hey! Hideki-senpai's up next! Man, this going to be sweet!"

"He's a good puppeteer by all standards," Temari said at Naruto's curious glance. "Uses a variety of tactics, but… well, I'm not sure if he'll win."

The announcer's voice rang through the stadium, and the competitors descended to the arena. "Next match: Imada Hideki of Sunagakure versus Hozuki Mangetsu of Kirigakure."

The Suna-nin was the local, the easy choice for crowd favourite. A significant portion of the wall of noise, of thousands of voices, was for him. The dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned boy waved to the audience, a tightly bound cylinder tucked under one arm that was as long as he was tall. But no matter how excited they were – no matter how excited Kankurō was – and no matter how much pride and sentiment they poured out as he strode into the arena, Naruto only focused on the foreigner that stepped onto the battlefield.

The deathly pallor of the Kiri-nin's loose, shoulder-length hair was far from typical. But he wasn't albino, not with the slowly tanning skin and the violet eyes. He wore a black sleeveless shirt, off-grey trousers, and a brown leather belt that held an occupied loop for a sword and… a water bottle.

That didn't make much sense, not until he heard the Kiri-nin's second step. Then it made him twist his head towards Sasuke in abject confusion, only to see that Sasuke was as bewildered as him.

He couldn't restrain the thought. Is he… made out of water?

Sasuke just stared at the arena, at him and then back again. Yeah, but no way in hell is he like us. We would've felt… something from him. Ask questions.

The competitors approached the proctor at the centre of the field, and Naruto looked to Temari.

"That Kiri shinobi – there's something different about him," he said. "For starters, why does he have a water bottle?"

Temari didn't take her eyes from the arena. "That's Hozuki Mangetsu. In case you didn't know, the Hozuki clan has a Suiton technique that lets them convert their bodies directly into water they can control, hence the bottle. He's probably got sealing scrolls filled with it as well."

It was chakra-based, something hereditary or genetic or extremely secretive, but it toed that line between manipulating the elements and existing with them, as them.

Naruto frowned. Just one more piece to add to the confusion.

Sasuke nodded. Water's not our domain, but I agree. It's… worrying.

"And if that wasn't enough," Temari said with a shake of her head, "he fought in the Third Shinobi World War."

Kankurō turned. "Wait, what?"

"Begin!" Down in the arena, the proctor leapt away.

The puppeteer jumped back, dropping his cargo with a flourish and a strangely purposeful movement of his fingers. The thick wrappings came undone, peeling away at specific points, to reveal a bulky bipedal frame complete with arms, legs and masked head. The puppet was covered in a bark-like skin and thick wooden plates, slanted down like the armour of ancient shinobi, when it had been more reminiscent of the classical armoured samurai.

The puppeteer twitched his fingers, and Naruto heard metal creak as it began to walk, mass shifting with each hulking step.

Mangetsu didn't stir, didn't draw his sword. He watched.

There were a dozen more menacing steps, of tension and drama for the crowd, of unerring focus for the combatants, and of analysis for Naruto. And then a dozen things happened at once.

The puppeteer closed his fist. The puppet raised its arms, extended metal rods from the centres of its hands into the air, and the metallic clicks and registries of closing circuits reached Naruto's ears. Mangetsu moved.

The intangible strings of chakra between puppet and master glowed visibly – audibly – and the rods crackled with electricity, bright enough that it almost sapped light from the midday sun before a blue-white arc reached out with a little thunderclap.

It was electrical flow, energy arranged and expressed in one of the purest forms possible, but it wasn't lightning. It was why a shearing gust of wind slapped it down.

Mangetsu lowered his hands from the Fūton jutsu, and then he all but vanished, a blur that reappeared right above the puppet with a downwards swing of an unsheathed blade. Metal screeched as the joint of the puppet's left hand came apart, first by cutting pressure and then by blunt force as the tip of Mangetsu's blade broke.

It was the whirling pieces, the rain of glittering shrapnel and the sight of Mangetsu stood upon the puppet's shoulders that the crowd, that the puppeteer reacted to. The cheers went up and the puppeteer whirled, fingers dancing wildly as the puppet's upper armour was drawn up like a net, wooden spikes with metal tips emerging from every other available space as the pauldrons and plates coiled.

The broken sword turned sideways, jamming the pauldrons midway and letting Mangetsu kick off and away before the other two panels slammed into him. Metal-tipped teeth cracked the sword down the middle and then turned it into mulch before the rolls of armour uncoiled and flapped down across the puppet, right as another electrical arc barked and another burst of wind broke it mid-air.

The battle lulled for just a moment as Mangetsu landed, unfurled a scroll and retrieved a different sword with a little puff of smoke, as the puppeteer launched his puppet back and began unlatching pieces. The cheers and the shouts fell, but the white noise of the masses still rose in volume.

"He could've closed the distance," Sasuke said.

Temari nodded. "Yes, but then it would've been over."

Despite the bloodshed, the circumstances, the echoes of steel, the Chūnin Exams was still a show, and the combatants readied themselves again. Mangetsu unsheathed a much thicker blade, straight-edged and sharp on both sides, that he clutched in two hands. The puppeteer slapped something metal into place in his puppet, and internal mechanical structures started to shift and adjust.

"What're you talking about?" Kankurō looked at them, shocked. "Hideki-senpai can still win this. I mean, he's still got another puppet, and he's got a lot of chakra, and if he lands a hit on the guy, the poison's going to get –"

"He's functionally water, Kankurō," Temari sighed.

"… but the sun's going to get him, right? If Hideki-senpai can hold out, then the sun'll dry him out, and –"

"Water bottle."

"Uh, the lightning rods can still –"

"Fūton jutsu."

Kankurō didn't say a word as movement began once more.

The electrical arcs came out again, cast aside and dashed to pieces each and every time by fierce buffets of wind. Each flash of light made the little hairs on Naruto's skin stand on end, right before they flattened back down with the chakra-compelled rush of air that followed.

However ineffective, each arc required a response, made sure Mangetsu couldn't move too far in any one direction without taking a bolt to the face. The lightshow bought time for the puppeteer to split his creation in two.

The wooden armour peeled off in rolls, revealing the metal skeleton, the disturbingly lifelike skull, the metal plates and the complex internal structure underneath, the wires and the conduits for electricity that pulsed with a distant glow at each pump of chakra sent through to the blazing electrode at the other end. And then the armour reformed as the puppeteer raised his other hand, standing just as tall and human-like, spikes rippling from the thick wooden plates and kunai from slots in its arms and legs.

The infantile lightning strikes halted, a valve inside the metal puppet squealed as it turned, the thing's jaw unhinged, and a gout of flame erupted dead-centre through the last fledgling gust of wind. The fireball was three people across, a searing heat greater than the desert day, and it ripped across the arena.

And then a wall of water drowned it.

The crowd roared as a thick veil of steam drifted up, as the waist-deep, petering wave from nowhere glided over the arena floor, turning the ground into sodden mush before Mangetsu clambered to his feet amid the froth, downing the contents of his bottle as he stood.

The puppeteer recalled the wooden one, forced it to all fours and stood on its back as the metal one jammed the remaining lightning conductor into the water. The strings that held up the puppet glowed, and the dying torrent did the same.

The crowd's noise was paltry to the sound of electricity pouring through water, enough energy thrashing about the make-shift nerves of the water to churn up even more steam into the already heavy shroud. It lasted a scarce few seconds, enough to hush the masses, to make Kankurō lean to the edge of his seat, trying to see the unconscious form of the Kiri-nin through the mist. The silence was thick as the electricity died down for a moment, and Kankurō slid and looked at the ceiling.

"Yes!" Kankurō crowed. "Now that's how it's done!"

Sasuke glanced over. "Give it a second."

He wasn't wrong.

A blast of wind unravelled the blanket of fog, just to reveal Mangetsu standing along the vertical surface of the arena wall, lowering his hands to draw out the sword he hadn't yet had the chance to use.

Then he moved.

It was the same sudden absence of presence, and then so much of it as Mangetsu crossed the entire arena, as his heavy-edged sword swept through the metal puppet's remaining lightning rod without a hint of resistance. The puppeteer reeled back, tugging the metal one free while it spat another jet of flame.

Mangetsu rolled across the saturated ground, circling as the flames died down. Naruto heard the metallic clicks of gears as panels slid aside in the metal one's chest, right before kunai and shuriken starting spraying.

Mangetsu's blade whirled freely, weightless as it carved a path through a deluge of sharp steel, batting and slapping and clashing with ease. The puppeteer's other hand started working as the wooden one skittered low, arms and blades spinning in their sockets as it charged.

The motions that followed were incredible.

Kankurō's mouth hung open just a little. "How… how is he doing that?"

Temari sighed. "According to the bingo book, he graduated when he was younger than us, Kankurō – and according to the bingo book, he was a jōnin until he gave up his rank when the war ended and decided to earn it the other way."

Naruto heard Sasuke tense at the shoulders, at the eyes and the cheeks. "Then this makes sense."

Mangetsu drew circles with his sword. Air parted with force in every reiteration, and each arc carried purpose as the blade changed from hand to hand. The upper quadrants guarded against the sustained rain of steel, while the lower section repelled each strangely coordinated swing and jab from the wooden puppet.

Nothing touched him. Nothing forced him back. Nothing even came close.

It repeated nearly a dozen times in bare seconds before the angles and the vectors started to change. Each loop altered its path ever so slightly, each traced cut through the air gliding towards more and more solid material until, when the wooden puppet reached out with a limb bristling with spikes and blades, it suddenly lost an arm.

Mangetsu stepped. The upper half of his swing deflected seven projectiles, and the lower half cut through thick wood, through metal, through the puppet's midsection before Mangetsu did it again and again, slashing through each limb in turn before he ran the next sweeping arc down the middle.

He reduced it to pieces, kept casting aside pelting metal, ducked under another gout of flame, and then vanished again. His next swing was the last moment of a complete spin, momentum that shattered through the reinforced metal knee of the skeletal puppet, ending when Mangetsu lifted his blade to cleave the thing in half.

The puppeteer's finger moved, like he was flicking a switch, and then a half-metre spike of metal shot through Mangetsu's chest.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd as the threads of chakra became visible once again, glowed bright as the interior circuits forced electricity through the metal. Naruto heard Kankurō stifle a cheer in his throat.

No sound came out of Mangetsu's open mouth as electricity writhed up his body, through his form in vibrant arcs and ladders, steaming and bubbling as it went. It was seconds before the sparks stopped flying, before the radiant lines of chakra faded from view, before Mangetsu's sword dropped and the puppeteer fell to his knees, breathing hard and rasping at the sheer expenditure.

"Did he do it?" Kankurō asked, eyes darting to each of them until Naruto shook his head.

"No."

And then the water clone's structure finally collapsed back into its constituent parts, somewhere between a light mist and coiling steam.

Between the puppeteer and his wounded weapons, a shapeless mass rose out of the sodden earth, transparent and shifting before more and more liquid pooled together, gaining colour and form, clothing and hair as Mangetsu remade himself out of water in barely a second. And he just turned away from his opponent, pointed a finger at the puppet's midsection, and raised his thumb behind it.

The puppeteer, like every other instance, reacted. He reached out a hand, a desperate grab to tug his puppet back and around. It wasn't fast enough.

The sound was high-pitched, a near inaudible squeal as the pressure beneath a material that resembled – functioned as – skin built to the point of insanity. Then Mangetsu dropped his thumb.

The jet of water from his fingertip passed through steel like paper, through circuitry, power sources and fuel lines like they weren't even there. Another went through the last leg joint, through the shoulder connection, through the metal spine and finally through the back of its skull.

In under two seconds, the thing slumped over, metal innards and flammable liquids spilling out of its front, structure decimated and rendered entirely inoperable before Mangetsu turned his eyes back.

The tension was palpable.

The puppeteer pulled out a kunai. Mangetsu looked to his sword, made his insides do something, and his arm stretched into a tendril of water that snatched up his blade and whipped it back to his side, skin already colouring back into human tones.

He sheathed it, and then he took the puppeteer apart.

The skill and the awe and the overwhelming difference in power wavered out of view like a mirage. The reality underneath was brutal and bloody.

Sasuke shifted in his seat, leaning for a better view and reaching out with lightning, another brush of static at the edges of Naruto's senses. Temari watched on, impassive. Kankurō grimaced with every gut-wrenching impact.

Naruto just closed his eyes. The lack of vivid colour made it just a little gentler to perceive, a little easier for him to think.

In the forest, he'd fought for his life against beasts and monsters, things that were fundamentally different to him. He'd beaten, broken and killed animals for his own safety, in the moment and after when he skinned and tore the meat from the dead, an enactment of wisdom much older than him.

But humans weren't the same as animals; they were the same as him.

Ignoring the conflict of identity, duty, and the divine weight of wind upon his soul, he was human in physical form, and he could hear everything that happened down in the stadium in incredible detail. He could hear the breaths of exertion, the flailing of metal, the strains of muscles and tendons, the thunderous pumping of blood and every single time something broke.

Skin, blood vessels, tissue, cells, bones – every vicious instance of contact shattered something at some level, and every one of them touched air, made sound, made him aware.

It was one thing to fight, to actively shift and limit his awareness to the immediate, the moment. Watching, experiencing everything from on high with the time and the unfortunate freedom to process it all, was something else altogether. In every pulse of airborne empathy, there was pain.

He did his best to ignore it.

It was when the sound slowed, the three-dimensional construction of the world around him echoed with a little less clarity, that he opened his eyes again to see the puppeteer with haggard breath, bruised and bleeding, while Mangetsu stood expressionless and utterly untouched as the structures below his watery facsimile of skin tensed and swelled like muscle. The right side of his body buckled out as physical mass was deposited at key points for a brief instant, right before he stepped forward with a right hook that carried most of the weight in whatever defined limits constituted his body.

The impact was –

Naruto didn't hear it.

It was drowned out by the distant explosion, the sudden gust as a faint shockwave passed over everyone and everything, and the crippling terror as something above the line of the stadium roof, above the skyline of Suna, above everything, made its existence known.

The door was rickety, barely clinging to rusted hinges, so he looked to the windows on the left and right just to find them broken, glass shards still in the frames and timbers propped against them on the inside. No matter which way he went, there would be noise on entry. So, he prodded at the door with a finger just to test. The squeak was quiet, but present, and unfortunately the best option on a tight schedule.

With a look over both shoulders to visually clear the dank little alley he crouched in, Kakashi went to work on the lock, and thirty-one seconds after, he eased it open with that haunting, creaking arc of noise.

The hallway was no better than the entry points, old wooden boards littered with debris and trace sparkles of glass – little obstacles, but traps all the same. He listened for a moment, gripped the doorframe as he leaned in, tested the weight of both hands against it, and then flipped himself horizontally and clung to the interior wall with tiny expressions of chakra, edging the door shut behind him.

The hallway wasn't as wide as he was tall, so he shuffled carefully and crouched on cracking plaster, wary of the larger, half-congealed chunks of mould that would drop if he made a misstep. Passing over the windows saw him stretch out, cling his hands to the other side and drag the rest of his body to safety without knocking over every stray plank leant against the half-open holes, much the same with the three doors he stepped over on his way.

It was a just under a minute of consistently awkward movements, switching walls several times to preserve the crumbling sections that would rain down dust and lumps of detritus at the faintest touch, all to get him to the right room.

The door was shut, the bit of floor beneath its opening arc oddly clear of trash and glass shards. It was almost certainly the one. So, he untwisted the iron binds he had clamped down on his chakra the tiniest fraction, not enough to leak through, but enough to leak in. There was that vague sensation of something beyond the door, but a quick glimpse through his Sharingan let him physically see the two chakra signatures behind it. He waited tense seconds, right until he heard the faint shift of weight on flooring, until the near-inaudible padding of sandals faded, until the distant smell of whatever harsh perfume the kunoichi had been wearing the night before drifted away.

He tapped the door twice, paused, and then tapped six more in a staggered fashion.

The shinobi inside started walking, started talking like he knew who was behind it with a frustrated sigh.

"Wow, you boys are late. Didn't think tournament day would make you so –"

The man stopped speaking when he stared into a spinning wheel of red and black, teetered when the kaleidoscope of visual information flooded his occipital lobe, and then fell back into Kakashi's waiting arms when the genjutsu dragged him into unconsciousness.

Closing his eye firmly, he dragged the man gently past the row of lockers on one wall, into a little kitchenette that sat against the other, lowering him into a chair and placing his head on the metal table next to a glass of water and the handful of sleeping pills Kakashi sprinkled loose from a container he pulled from his belt. He walked back past the bunks, past the bench and supplies for equipment maintenance, through the familiar trappings of an ANBU break room, and padded towards the sudden downwards spiral of concrete stairs.

The concrete was even more familiar, but the construction wasn't. He'd never seen a staircase that corkscrewed into the earth in a black-ops installation. Maybe it was a space-saving measure, but he failed to see the relevance to the objective at hand.

He had to keep moving.

He started down, and it was about a minute of silent, consistent little steps until he reached anywhere near the bottom, and judging by the rather steep incline he descended, he was something close to thirty metres below ground.

The heat of the day was gone, replaced by a surprising cold that he completely ignored the moment he almost walked into the unsuppressed chakra signature around the next turn.

He stopped dead in his tracks, listened for the reaction, the acknowledgement of intrusion, but nothing came. So, he enacted the next step. Slowly, Kakashi moved his hands into the right seals, careful to keep the movements smooth and the fabric from rustling. The tiniest indications of presence would give him away.

Then, when it was done, when the chakra was moulded, when he knew the exact point to latch it onto, Kakashi initiated the genjutsu.

Around the corner, at the base of the stairs, the kunoichi's feet clattered loudly on concrete. "What the – oh, no."

Metallic clicks started echoing off the walls, her voice frantic all the while. "Oh, no, no, no, no, this can't be happening. This can't be happening!"

She started straining, grunting with the effort as he heard something big heave its way open with little shrieks of steel on steel. She hurried inside, and Kakashi turned the corner to see the vault door agape and the kunoichi turning around the next narrow corner, running past a second, even bigger steel behemoth.

Two silent turns, and he followed her into the most important room of the complex, a dark space little only by the light of panels and machines.

She stopped dead in her tracks as she gazed through the one-way mirror, into the space beyond it. "What the… I could've sworn that –"

She whirled, dark hair flying about wide eyes, but his Sharingan was already open and whirling. She dropped like a stone for Kakashi to catch before she cracked her head open and spilt bloody evidence all over the place.

He sighed, shuddering just a little as he shut his left eye and felt the wave of fatigue pass over him, felt a familiar, nauseating emptiness in his gut at the relative absence of chakra in him. For the… visitor, for the immigrant that stayed in a land never their own, the Sharingan was a costly thing, even more so to utilise it actively. Passive perception, recognition and prediction were tiring enough, but ocular genjutsu always took it out of him.

He shook his head, took a tiny parcel from his pouch, and unwrapped something foul to the nose and worse on the tongue before he downed it without another thought. Soldier pills were expensive, difficult to manufacture and about as appetising as dog shit, but the rush of vitality that came as chakra flourished anew the very moment after he swallowed it was almost worth the taste.

But he still had…

It took him off guard for a moment.

It shouldn't have surprised him, shocked him like it did. But even still, it managed to, just a little.

In the terribly bright light, in the massive concrete box he peered into through reinforced glass, in a cage suspended in the vault mid-air by thick steel cords, the boy was tiny.

For a moment, all he could do was think.

He hadn't asked where the information came from, but he had suspicions. The dossier had held barely anything from Suna's medical archives, but it had been rife with transcripts, conversations between civilians, shinobi, and even one from the Kazekage himself. It wasn't information readily bought, nor easily sold. It had to have been done in-house. But the timestamps – they went back further than six months, before he'd started training Sasuke.

Even if he considered the possibility of bribery, little acts of treachery, turncoats in Suna's ranks, it couldn't account for the volume, and it couldn't account for how embedded the agents would've needed to be, how embedded they still were.

And that could not have been ANBU – not the Hokage's, anyway.

The thought of Shimura Danzō anywhere near the formation of this plan – of exploiting a weak seal, preying on a child's mind-rotting insomnia – was just one more sour taste in his mouth.

Through the one-way mirror, he stared at the cage – a wooden cage. Readying himself, he opened his left eye and didn't at all expect what he saw.

There was chakra in the wood. There was vibrant, powerful chakra in the wood that circulated wildly and rapidly. And then there was the queasy feeling he got from looking at the boy, at the red-tinted miasma that hung around him, many times his own size, that the wooden cage… siphoned.

It looked – felt – like Tenzō's chakra, yet somehow denser, more compact despite existing inside an inanimate object. And the colour deepened, mote by mote, as the wood slowly devoured the vile, ambient chakra spewing from the boy.

Somehow, the cage was Mokuton-made.

Either Suna had produced a Mokuton-user, or this was a relic from the days of the Shodai Hokage, Senju Hashirama. One was a whole lot more likely than the other.

But it didn't matter.

He found the right switch, and the blinding lights in the vault dimmed just a touch, enough for the boy to shift his head, enough to look into the mirror and see the strange, spinning wheel of red and black that begged him kindly, gently to sleep.

And then Kakashi ran.

The groundswell of sand, the geysers and the jets spraying desert mist into the air, swirled like a storm and coalesced into limbs, a shape, a form, a body, a tail, a snout.

It did not stand. It grew until its sheer mass made it crunch down onto all four pillars of sand, until its hulking silhouette eclipsed the sun and two cruel, fallow stars beamed in the dark of day.

The beast shook, a soundless motion running through it a split-second before a low, earthbound rumbling filled the stadium. The shakes became more frequent, more violent, and the rumbling thrashed from earth to air with mountain peaks of noise, a cacophony with heights and valleys and structure nearing deafening that made no sense.

And then he understood – the moment his ears accounted for the thing's scale, its distance, the rhythmic motion that ran its length, it suddenly made sense.

It was laughing.

It was laughing a chasm-deep, world-shaking laugh, and then a different wave breached the air and struck all of them at once – not sound, not force, not wind, but chakra.

The enormity, the primordial vibrancy, the unbridled power of its existence made him stagger back against his seat, made Temari pale, made Kankurō weep in silence, made Sasuke grip the railing with all his strength. It was a flood, not washing or sweeping or slipping, but a sundering deluge of ancient, soul-forged might that invaded the mind, buried the synapses, and proffered death as the simplest escape from the raging, primeval torrent.

The killing intent was not potent. It was omniscient.

And from the height of gods, the beast roared its malevolent claim to divinity.

"Free, free, free again!"

Words rushed out across the world, burning like the desert air and searing like a gateway to hell.

"Free to be, free to breath, free to kill!"

In the darkness, the crowds – the fainting, frozen, frenzied hordes in the stands below – could finally breathe again, and the first gasp was spent on screams. The heaving masses of people turned into a thrashing sea of flesh and terror in bare seconds.

"Oh. Oh, Gaara," he heard Temari whisper as she leaned over to clutch Kankurō in the throes of his tears, all as Sasuke's hands began to shower sparks, all as he could not tear himself away from the screaming crowds.

Shinobi rushed into the masses, urging, issuing, directing in seconds. A cloud of resplendent gold rose into the sky, torrents and streams of metal dust surging after it as it barrelled towards the tremendous shadow.

But then the beast inhaled.

He felt the pull, the draw on the air, the sky, the breath in his lungs, like the fleeing waters before a tsunami. The almighty chakra went with it, called back home to the breathing desert colossus until the shadow grew bright, until he could see the pitch-black marks on sand made flesh.

The darkness reared back, and the ground shook as it leaned on two skyscrapers of dust, looking down on all of them.

The tail – the trunk of some heavenly garden's tree, the monolith equal in size to the beast itself – swept across buildings, through them, until it pounded into the beast's belly like a god's war drum and forced wind free.

The sound came with words, lost on the skies to all save him.

"Fūton: Renkūdan."

Air warped with fury and hurtled down on everything, a sphere of wrath the size of the stadium and then the size of the sky above them.

Death came on the wind.

Wind.

The world stilled, because it only made sense, because the insult – to life, to the world, to the Five – could not stand.

For just a moment, as a monster's breath filled the heavens, he saw it. There was so much air, so much gathered together, bound up by pressure and power and chakra, that it made light. The glow was gentle, storm and steel, grass and emerald, viridian in the common tongue.

He saw the ribbons of aurora flowing soundless and silent at the edges of his vision. He felt the tug, the pull from within, of a jade gate filled with the same light, the same wind. He saw his hand reach out for the light, felt a different but no less familiar tug and pull of air gathered to a single point, cupped in his palm.

At first, it was a tangled accumulation of white and grey. But then it was less tangled, less white and grey. It coiled into a single, perfect loop of steel and emerald, grass and storm.

He did not give it a name, because there was no need for proof, for acknowledgement by the world.

It was wind. It was the world.

He opened his hand and thrust his palm forward, uttering one last prayer.

"Kaze."

The beast's sky shattered at his touch.

The orb, world-breaker it was, lost sense. It lost cohesion. The natural expansion of all things, the eternal seeking of high to low pressure, occurred. The immediate passage was out and away, into the rows upon rows of the living. The ensuing tempest would claim them.

His perfect loop expanded to encompass it, and then gripped it as his fist clenched tight.

He forced his fist further out, upwards to the heavens, and the shattered, broken mass of air and power followed with a viridian hum. He raised it high, as high as his reach could extend, with every fibre of his being quaking at the strain of leashing a god's anger, the gate in his soul creaking.

It wasn't enough.

In the old world, none had contended with the Chosen. None could have.

Such was their power. Such was their duty.

But this was not the old world, and if allowed, the beast would kill the child of Wind, the girl that could have so very easily been Chosen in his place, the child of Lightning, and many other living things simply because it could. He decided it…

Shameful.

Asura reached out a hand.

And then it was.

Finally, with his bones screaming, with his mind cracking, he let go, and fury blossomed like a flower of storms.

And then, for a time, everything was quiet.

When he came to, he found himself slumped over the railing, gasping for breath. The memories flowed through. It was because he'd let it all leave him, commanded it to leave him in a single moment of… he didn't know what to call it, but it left his world a blur. Colours swirled around him in vast indistinctions and the soundscape underneath it all was raw, angry and pouring blood from the seams.

It came back in drips and drops of awareness, ripples from his feet down, through the stadium, through the cracks and fractures in the foundations, through the crumbling chunks of walls and rooflines, through the slabs of debris littered through the stands, through a quiet disrupted by the cries and the sobs of those gathered around the forms of the bleeding, the broken and the far too still –

Naruto stood up, still short of breath, still short of understanding, still short of time as disparate tears started running down his face before he realised they were even falling.

The structure beneath his feet was chipped and broken. The stands were fractured, the rooftop crumbled and debris still rained down in dusty trails. The arena was a crater.

He turned to face the others, to see Kankurō staring at him through the shock and the shakes, to see relief sweep over Sasuke's features for a moment, and to see Temari half-smile through teary eyes as she held her little brother.

"Gaara," Kankurō whispered. "Gaara."

He repeated the word as Temari rubbed his back and cradled his head to her chest. "It's okay, Kankurō. It's okay. We're safe now. Gaara's safe now."

Her eyes strayed up and away, to a sightline through clear skies he followed to the fading sounds of desert roars and forged bellows, to the resonance of something weightier than mere sand forcing the terrible shadow back into the earth. He heard the demon and its screams – word-riddled, sentient screams – drown beneath a flood of gold, and the cloying sense of wrongness dwindled.

"Naruto?"

He didn't say anything, didn't trust his voice with the tears still dripping and death still ringing in his ears. But he looked back.

She didn't ask how or why, didn't accuse or cry. Her voice was small as she spoke.

"Thank you."

He heard it. He heard it, but he wasn't listening.

He was listening to the old man, Asuma-sensei, Kakashi, the Kazekage and his guards, the Mizukage and his favoured champion with the liquid insides all hurry down the hall behind them. He heard a chūnin running towards them all from the other direction, halfway collapsing as he sputtered words at the Kazekage.

Sandstorm. North, south, east and west. All converging on Suna.

And then Naruto heard the howls of the mourning, the searching and the hunting drawn to one of the greatest outpourings of wind in living memory like moths to a flame.

"Sasuke," he said, turning to meet his friend's eyes, to see the realisation and the horror dawn in onyx lit from within by blue and white as he passed him everything he could – the Shards, the Ikiryō, the scroll, the monk – in the seconds he had.

Sasuke schooled his features, steeled his will, and met his gaze. "I… I understand. I'll warn them."

Naruto nodded his thanks, thought it, expressed it every way he could without words with a grimace he couldn't take from his face before he glanced down. "Temari, what's the tallest structure nearest to Suna's centre?"

She looked from him to Kankurō and back. "The Kazekage's tower, but why do you…"

She stopped, looked out into the stadium, into the sky and visibly shuddered, like she was trying to retreat into herself.

When the shakes stopped, when she could look Kankurō and make sure he wasn't listening between his quiet, hushed sobs, Temari stared back up at him and tried to keep the fear from her face.

"We're going to die, aren't we?"

He didn't know what to say. He couldn't promise her, couldn't swear some grand oath that in the name of his blessing he would carry them on his back to salvation, so that they would all see the sky again. He couldn't lie.

"I… I'll do everything I can."

That much was true.

So, before the Kage could burst through the door, before any of them could try and stop him, he leapt over the railing, thrust wind down beneath his feet and flipped to the box's roof, and jumped again to the stadium's outer roof.

He staggered as he landed, felt the strength in his legs falter, felt the toll of daring to contend with a monster. But he kept walking, kept looking, kept listening.

He could hear the Kage below rushing into the seats, could hear Sasuke stand and speak with lightning coursing through his words, could hear Kankurō's tears keep falling and Temari's shudders spur into resolve.

But he looked beyond them, beyond the stadium, beyond Suna as he heard it. The sound was distant, from beyond the horizon – from beyond every horizon. It was already astonishing and it only grew greater.

He couldn't help but think of the storm of Raikou, of his fear, his terror.

Above Suna's great wall, its grand bulwark to protect them against the world, a brown haze moved. Tendrils of dust and dark reached into the sky, new fingers materialising from the stirring clouds in every direction he could look in until the blue of the sky was vanishing and the sunlight was stolen from view.

But this was so much worse.

The colours – reds and browns and sand – deepened as the storm above roiled with motion and sound, coiling in on itself again and again before the darkening, thickening haze clawed its tendrils, its clouds like ridges, like the veins that rooted mountains into earth, over the walls. The dimming, charring sky began to strangle the last vestiges of light, and the wind howled in his ears.

It was all for him.

Deep in the veil of sand and storms, hundreds – thousands – of Shards cried out as one before they descended to swallow a city, descended to swallow him.

With a hand clutched over his chest, resting above his heart, his lungs, Naruto uttered one last prayer.

"Kaze."

The meaning went unsaid, but not unheard.

Wind guide me.

From his place upon clouds, Asura watched the place where four storms met.

Light was lost to those beneath the torrents of black and brown, the deepest strands of colour. But there was some red, some hints of yellow, soils ripped up from the world over.

It was beautiful in its way, but the results would not be.

Within the storm, all would suffer, assailed by the gaping, screaming wound of incompletion that was each and every Shard of wind, each an horrific absence that howled with all the stolen voices within reach, even those buried deep in skulls, buried deep in death.

It was a test with only two outcomes: failure or success. The latter existed on a scale, one that measured the toll of time. The Chosen would emerge, standing in ruins or a city untouched, or they would lose everything.

The Trial of the Four Winds was a battle of will. Pain – within the body and without, of the mind and the spirit, of all others within sight and hearing, of all living beings that existed in the storm – would galvanise into power, or it would overcome and consume. It was a trial by flameless fire, a baptism in tempest.

It would end in victory, or in a monument to the fallen divine: a sea of glass where a city once stood.

A/N:

Right. Well, that was a long one. Next chapter'll be the actual storm, what the hell any of this means, and some action interspersed with something between a dream sequence and a vision quest.

Oh, and the fact that having the voices of the dead scream at you might have some lasting impact on the story.

Until most of the cast suffers undue mental anguish again,

A238