Something was wrong, and Taro knew it. The lightning no longer struck Okuri, instead it would only wrap around him. ‘He’s putting out wind chakra, and lots of it.’ He thought to himself. ‘Must’ve slipped a pill while I wasn’t looking.’ Taro forced more power out of the naginata, but no matter how much lightning was hurled at Okuri, he was always able to shell out more than enough wind chakra to dispel it. Taro gave one final burst of lightning…
The wind chakra from Okuri’s body suddenly swirled around him, and quickly formed a tornado. Taro was picked up off his feet and flung into the wall. Audience members felt a swift, cold breeze pass them by. Even the kages, occupying the highest seats in the stadium, felt the sudden drop in temperature. Taro pulled himself out of the wall and hit the cold, hard ground. The tornado has dissipated, but the chilling air still remained. It was then that Okuri growled.
It sounded like something you’d hear in a horror movie, or a fairy tale about some demon risen up from hell to scare children. Except this wasn’t a horror movie or a fairy tale, and this sound terrified even full grown men. The growls of a hundred angry wolves, the howling of the northern wind and the rumble of thunder mixed together in a terrible melody…..it was not the growl of an earth born creature.
Almost too scared to look, Taro eyed his opponent. Okuri’s body had grown more muscular and had spurted a short white fur coat. His fingers and toes gripped the earth beneath them tightly, firmly clenching it with colossal black claws. His head still down, facial features hidden by a mass of thick hair, the only indication of what change it had undergone was the stream of drool pouring from it.
“Jiinchuriki.” The other kages turned their heads to Hiruzen. “It’s a jiinchuriki.”
This fight had gone too far. Taro knew this had to end quickly if it was to end in his favour. He raised his weapon……
Okuri lifted his head and snarled. His eyes had turned yellow, and his mouth overflowed with sharp teeth, the largest of which were his canines. Copious amounts of drool formed liquid pillars between his jaws, and the excess flew everywhere whenever he opened his mouth. The snarl horrified Taro, who stumbled rearward onto his backside.
“It’s a jiinchuriki.” Hiruzen said again. “Years ago, one branch of the Inuzuka clan headed to Yuki no Kuni in search of a tenth bijuu…a so called ‘Shichibi Okami’….everyone thought they were mad. The last of that branch came home about a decade ago with one of the recovery team as his wife and a son born up in those frozen lands. I always suspected that he had found the Okami and sealed it up in that boy….but this is the first proof I’ve ever seen.”
“A JIINCHURIKI!” Takayuki screamed. “MY BOY IS FIGHTING A JIINCHURIKI??!!?” He turned to his guards. “DON’T JUST STAND THERE, FILTHY NIGGERS! SAVE MY BOY!”
Hiruzen and the Kazekage were shocked to hear another kage, the highest ranked ninja of all, make use of such a lowly racial slur. The guards reacted in a manner suggesting that this sort of racial degradation was normal, and their sarcasm showed they were growing tired of it. “There’s nothing we can do. After all, it’s a jiinchuriki, what chance can a bunch of filthy niggers like us stand?”
The Raikage’s eyes were bursting out of his head out of rage, and the Kazekage offered what little condolence he could. “Relax. This jiinchuriki is clearly not in his bijuu’s Land of Power.* Your boy stands a good chance of…..surviving.” Still, as the Kazekage looked upon the…thing….below him in the stadium, could not help but ponder what his youngest son might become. After all, Shukaku had been trapped in him with a very weak seal. If this jiinchuriki - thousands of miles from its bijuu’s Land of Power, and never having shown signs of being a jiinchuriki before - could flip out like this, imagine what Gaara could do.
*A term I’m using to refer to the portion of the world a given bijuu receives infinite chakra they have sealed there. The physical and geographic location makes sense for every bijuu: Shichbi no Okami gets the frozen wastelands of the north, Ichibi no Shukaku gets the deserts, Sanbi gets the oceans, etc. Kyuubi no Kitsune is considered the greatest of all the bijuu by humans because his Land of Power encompasses the entire world.
