"Hey, thanks for the hard work! I knew you could do it! What jutsu was that, anyway? All I saw was a flash of lightning, and that huge guy was gone!"
"H-how is that possible?"
Sasuke returned to Naruto's side with Gaara. Naruto was not at all surprised by Sasuke's victory, while Kankuro and Temari were dumbfounded yet again.
As far as those two were concerned, Gaara was absolutely invincible. Shukaku had even been fully unleashed, so how had he vanished in an instant?
"Naruto Uzumaki, do you have the Nine-Tailed Fox inside you?"
Gaara could hardly be blamed for his impatience. Now that he had lost to Sasuke, he had lost his way of feeling alive. He wanted to find some common ground with Naruto, someone like himself.
At the same time, Gaara wanted to know why Naruto could live so freely and happily when he was also a jinchūriki.
"What? The Nine-Tailed Fox!"
Kankuro and Temari had been shocked more times that day than in all their previous years of life combined.
"The Nine-Tailed Fox is on par with the Shukaku inside Gaara. Were we just fighting someone like that?"
Kankuro looked at Temari, but she was just as bewildered.
"Yeah, that rotten fox. I only sensed him recently, too. I suffered a lot because of him when I was little."
Faced with Gaara's question, Naruto openly admitted what was inside him.
"Gaara, the guy inside you is called Shukaku, right? I've wanted to talk to you ever since I found out how alike we are. Too bad you were always so cold. Looks like we can finally have a proper conversation now."
In Konoha, atop the rooftop of the Arena's elevated stand, Madara Uchiha appeared once more after subduing all the invaders throughout the village. By