Battle of Fear

The effect of my response was immediate. Baki flinched and his eyes narrowed at me with wariness. Temari's eyes widened with uneasiness in addition to her grip tightening on her iron fan. It was obvious that they would have this sort of reaction to what I had said. They had long grown used to a cold, bloodthirsty, psychopath that only cared for himself. Hearing him suddenly flip to call them comrades was more than unsettling. Baki was the first one to regain his composure. As strange as Baki thought Gaara was acting, he decided that if wanted to train with them that was perfectly fine. Baki knew Gaara might be playing with them in order to try and kill them to cease his thirst for blood. Nevertheless, it was his duty to train as well as encourage his genins.

"Very well Gaara, come on down and we will decide which training dummy configuration you will practice with today," declared Baki as he moved toward the training dummies. It wasn't totally uncommon for Gaara to come in every once in a while to pulverize training dummies for his own enjoyment.

"No Baki-sensei, I want to train with you three today," I told him with confidence. I quickly leaped down to the arena floor to join them. Baki froze when I uttered those words.

"You know I can't allow that Gaara, it's the Kazekage's orders. He has forbidden training bouts between you and any Sand shinobi who does not try to kill you." he reminded me. Temari and now Kankuro who had stepped out of the shadows of the arena outskirts both seemed to look like they strongly agreed with him. They had seen first hand what I could do to another human.

"I have no intention of harming any of you too much, you'll still be alive when I'm done"

"Even if I thought that was true I still must follow the Kazekage's orders"

Maybe I should take a different approach to try to train with them. I was really starting to care less and less about transitioning slowly to be a better Gaara and just switching right now. I'd have to just take the middle road in order to still move forward with my plan. I wanted to at the very least have Kankuro and Temari somewhat trust me by the chunin exams at the Hidden Leaf. I shot sand out of my gourd, emptying it quickly. I surrounded the sand around myself and split off a quarter of it for attacking. The rest of course would be used for my sand shield. They were all quick on the uptake of what I was doing. Baki drew his katana, Temari unfolded her iron fan, and Kankuro brought out his Crow puppet with his chakra threads.

"Gaara what are you doing?" shouted Baki. The once coolheaded shinobi was now undeniably nervous. I had no memories of ever fighting Baki before so it was easy to understand why he was now acting this way. The same went for Kankuro and Temari but they were beyond nervous, it was more like terrified. Words wouldn't work right now, I needed to show them what I wanted to do was train with them, not kill them. I formed the sand into several whip-like shapes to attack. I sent three of the whips lightning-quick towards Baki, not holding back too much due to the fact he was a jonin. I knew even as strong as I was, Baki was easily good enough to defend against those weak sand whips. He proved me right as he sliced down the whips with wind style and his sword. He even managed to send a wind scythe towards me. My sand shield effortlessly stopped it with no trouble at all. While Baki's wind style was powerful, my chakra-infused sand was far too tough for it. I reformed the whips and made several slower ones with normal sand that was acquired from the arena floor. I then sent them after Baki again, along with adjusting their attack window to make it shorter so he would have less time to counter. He still persisted even with it becoming increasingly more difficult. I guess that's what I should expect from a high-ranking jonin.

I was quickly getting the hang of Gaara's sand powers, with the whips feeling like extensions of my own body. My sand shield abruptly enveloped me which stripped away my vision. Yet I realized I could actually steel feel around blind with my sand whips. I felt Baki-sensei's wind style along with his sword slashes. I used this information and still pushed forward with my attack albeit with much less intensity. I also felt what I guessed was a large wind-style attack from Temari. I would have to familiarize myself with this ability so I could better exploit it in the near future. I would be at a huge advantage if I could have my sand shield up and still attack without lowering it. The sand shield fell after the attack was over so I formed more sand whips from the arena floor and sent them after Temari. She managed to destroy or dodge them just as Baki currently was. I had to tune the difficulty down significantly compared to him though. Temari could only keep up with five normal sand whips whereas Baki could handle a total of twenty-five normal sand whips and four chakra-infused ones.

I heard a rattling sound of wood on wood coming from behind me. I swerved to face the unnerving yet familiar sound. I now faced Kankuro who had sent his puppet called Crow after me. Both of its wrists had detached to show short blades coated with poison. I raised up my arms and made sand shoot up from beneath the puppet. This stopped Crow dead in its tracks, around ten yards from where I stood. I used my Sand Coffin Jutsu to trap it entirely and prevent any retaliation. I now looked at Kankuro to see what he would do next now that his puppet was out of action. Kankuro was solely a puppet user so he never practiced with anything else. He spent hours upon hours putting them together and fixing Crow after training with it. A puppet user was never truly defeated until his puppet was destroyed or immobilized as I had done. They could always reattach the chakra threads to a certain piece of it no matter how mangled it was. Kankuro only had one puppet though which left him with his main and most used method of attack gone. He wasn't like Temari who could still use wind style without her iron fan. I wanted to make him think, to put pressure on him that would give him growth so that when he fought an opponent such as myself he would know what to do. I could tell both Temari and Baki were fighting even harder against my sand whips by their uptick in intensity. Temari was sparing no chakra in her attacks, using Jutsu such as Wind Release Great Cast Net and Wind Release Wind Cutter. I upped the difficulty and number of the sand whips, as well as formed a few moving sand walls for them to dodge. My own chakra was getting noticeably lower by the minute, getting close to half my normal level of chakra. My sand shield raised partially as three small daggers raced towards me. They sunk harmlessly into the shield and then fell to the ground as the shield lowered. I looked at Kankuro with a small feeling of happiness at his futile but crafty plan. He must have had the daggers on his person from reloading Crow's mechanisms earlier. I formed a blunt sand spear in my hand which I forced to harden. Making it blunt was just a precaution in case my aim was worse than I thought.

I needed Kankuro to think this was a real danger and not an obvious fake. I pulled my arm back threw it slightly to the left of him. I controlled the sand so it went exactly where I needed it to go, eliminating the possibility of bad throwing skills messing it up. Kankuro dived away from the spear as it slammed into the wall in a cloud of dust. Kankuro scrambled up and then started running. I frowned at what I assumed was his fear of me taking over him. I threw up a short sand wall to see what he would do. Instead of running away from it like I thought he would, he jumped and threw himself over it. There must be a reason why he's running in that direction I thought. I glanced in the direction he was going to find the weapon racks and the training dummies in his direct path. Was he really trying to grab one of the swords or spears on the rack? I didn't remember Kankuro ever training with one before so why was he attempting it now? It wasn't like it could defeat me or even my sand shield alone.

I was forced to put my attention back on Temari and Baki as they began to predict the movements of my sand-whips along with the sand walls. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold them forever but this exceeded my expectations, especially Temari. She was sending wave after wave of Jutsu at my whips to try and gain ground towards me. I decided to give her a few more whips just to challenge her a little me. Out of nowhere all of my sand whips that were fighting Baki went dead. It was as if someone had simply snapped my connection to them with scissors. In the blink of an eye, my sand shield had raised to cover me. Except for this time, I felt the attack as it rocked my shield hard. This wasn't a simple Wind Scythe Jutsu it was something much bigger. My shield still managed to hold up though but I didn't let it lower due to the worry Baki might be waiting for that. I decided to use my Sand Eye Jutsu to see what was happening since all my other sand had now been wiped out too. Covering my left eye, my vision went dark for a little bit and then reemerged. I had formed the eye in a corner of the arena so they wouldn't notice it spying on them. As I anticipated Baki was holding some kind of condensed wind jutsu in his hands, aimed right at my sand shield. I frowned as I had never seen him use it before, it swirled in a vortex around his hand faster than seemed possible. I could see the strain on his face for maintaining it for so long which probably meant that he couldn't wait forever for my shield to drop. Wanting to see the unseen Jutsu with my own eyes, I decided to provoke him. I made a massive hand from the sand floor and shot it straight for Baki. I could then grab him and use Sand Coffin to immobilize him in case he didn't use his Jutsu. I knew he wouldn't allow me to encase him in my Sand Coffin in fear that i would use Sand Burial after I captured him. I of course had no intention of doing that but Baki obviously wouldn't think so.

The reaction was just as I had hoped for, Baki pushed his arm with the Jutsu toward the hand. Wind surged from his palm and hit the hand. Instead of blowing it to pieces, it struggled against the sand for a few seconds. Then came what I roughly guessed would happen, the wind exploded outwards in a wave-like fashion in everydirection. My hand was completely disintegrated into dust before you could even blink. My sand shield shook a little bit when the wave hit it however it wasn't nearly as bad as the one before it. I chalked this up to my sand hand taking the brunt of the blow. This Jutsu truly was impressive, not nearly as powerful as the Rasengan but still enough to make me worry about it. I would have to ask Baki about it later when he didn't think I was trying to murder him. I now notice that Baki looked completely exhausted from using so much chakra. He most likely didn't have much left so he wasn't too concerning anymore.

I canceled my Sand Eye Jutsu and dropped the sand shield so I could see better. Temari ran to Baki and placed herself in front of him. She obviously was protecting him from me which made my heart twinge a little. I may be new to this world but Gaara's memories felt more than real and so did his emotions. To see my own sister look at me with fear and hear was more than crushing. I hadn't really been looking so I hadn't notiice but now it seemed so abundantly obvious. Maybe this hadn't been a good idea, I might've miscalculated just how removed I was from them. I had thought challenging them and walking away after defeating them might give them a new impression. They thought Gaara only wanted to kill them, so what if he stopped right before they thought he would? That had been my train of thought, that such a surprising and unusual action might make them realize I had changed. I sighed and gathered all my chakra infused sand back into my gourd with regret. I should've done better and not let my excitement to try out my powers cloud my judgement. I had now probably made things worse than they already were. I went to walk away when the sand on the arena floor rose up and protected me. Training dummies seemed to leap off the balcony above and pelt my shield with crushing blows from their wooden hands. What was going on, training dummies attacking me out of the blue was pretty bizarre to say the least. I sent a Sand Wave toward them which sent them crashing into a wall. This seemed to work quite well but then another dozen rushed forward to take the destoryed ones place. I glanced around to find Kankuro standing behind the dummies. I smiled a little as it was all starting to make sense now to me. Kankuro hadn't been running for the weapons rack, he'd been running to the training dummies to use as improvised puppets. They weren't nearly as strong as Crow but they easily made up for that in numbers. I felt proud that Kankuro had thought up such a simple yet effective way to get back to what he was familair along with effective with. I found myself smiling in enjoyment as I crushed, pummeled, and threw the wooden dummies. I even found Kankuro smiling at every little time he made me retreat or dogde his puppets when my sand shield couldn't compensate.

I was almost entirely empty on chakra but I decided I had just enough to attempt a Jutsu that would be a fun way to end the fight. Crouching low I closed my eyes and place my hands onto the arena floor. I let my chakra openly flow into it to start my Justu, then I opened my mouth and gave Kankuro a warning. It seemed only fair considering what I was about to pull.

"Sand Tsunami"