The desert swallowed sound.
Ken moved like vapor through the dunes, chakra masked, presence erased. Behind him, the fury of the Hidden Sand roared across the wind. Patrols combed the outer ridges. High-level jonin tracked footprints that weren't there. Falcons soared overhead, chakra-enhanced eyes scouring the terrain for the ghost who had humiliated the Wind Daimyō’s court.
But none of them frightened Ken.
Only one did.
And he was coming.
Gaara was no longer stalking. He was hunting.
The jinchūriki had been silent for hours since their st csh, but now his presence surged across the sands like a tide. Ken felt the chakra rise before he saw the silhouette.
A tremor.
A ripple in the dunes.
Then, like a sudden rupture, the sand burst open—and Gaara exploded forth, sand spiraling violently from his gourd, chakra fring in waves. There was no restraint. No calcution.
Just fury.
Ken skidded backward across the sand, eyes fshing crimson as his three-tomoe Sharingan spiraled.
"You came fast," Ken muttered.
Gaara's voice cut through the wind, cracked and filled with hatred. "You made me feel weak. You cut through my shield. No one does that."
Ken's stance didn't change. His bde stayed sheathed. "You're not the shield. You're just the cage."
Gaara screamed, and the sand roared upward.
The storm descended. Shukaku’s chakra leaked like poison into the desert air. Gaara's body began to contort as the One-Tail forced itself forward, delighted by the rage that freed it.
Ken inhaled slowly. This was no longer about diplomacy or destabilizing nations.
This was survival.
Or perhaps something more.
As Gaara began to change—eyes yellowing, markings crawling across his skin, sand armor growing heavier—Ken whispered a wordless seal and dropped into stance.
Now.
His chakra pulsed out in a ripple—invisible to all but those with eyes like his. A genjutsu, rge-scale, weaving through the air like an unseen web.
Mirage Prison: Thousand Suns Reflection.
The sand around Gaara shimmered. The sky split in illusion. Shukaku’s voice faltered as the desert around them twisted into a vortex of blinding white, where time folded and each grain of sand screamed like voices from the past.
Gaara staggered, cwing at his face, snarling. "What—what is this?!"
Ken's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "You want to show the world your monster? I'll show you your soul."
Gaara dropped to his knees, eyes wide, as visions pyed through the illusion—not torture, not pain, but emptiness.
Loneliness. Abandonment. The crushing silence of rooms where love had once lived.
It wasn’t meant to break him.
It was meant to unravel him.
In that moment of crity, when Gaara screamed and the sand fell limp, Shukaku roared back.
The illusion broke—shattered by pure chakra will.
The transformation was instant.
Shukaku fully emerged.
A towering beast of sand and hatred, its voice a thunderous boom that echoed across the valley.
"I WILL GRIND YOUR BONES, LITTLE UCHIHA!"
Ken didn’t run.
He stepped forward.
And in that breath between moments, in the eye of Shukaku’s fury, Ken thought:
Could I take him?
Not beat.
Take.
Seal.
Control.
The idea bloomed like fire behind his eyes.
More chakra.
More power.
Tailed Beast Mode.
Like Naruto.
Like the legends.
He could rewrite what it meant to be Uchiha.
Ken inhaled and closed his eyes, memories unlocking as his Sharingan spun into full focus.
Minato's seal.
The split formu.
The yin-yang containment pattern.
He had studied it. Obsessed over it.
It was impossible.
Until now.
Ken formed the hand signs slowly, each one dragging chakra from deep within his coils.
Boar. Dog. Bird. Monkey. Ram.
"Let’s see if the dead Hokage was right."
He drew blood across his palm.
Then smmed it into the sand.
"Seal Art: Crimson Gate Binding!"
A red circle burst beneath him, spreading like fire.
Shukaku charged.
Ken held his ground.
The sand colpsed into the seal.
And the world went bck.
Inside the seal, Ken stood in the void.
A massive golden eye stared down at him.
Shukaku. In spirit.
"YOU THINK YOU CAN CAGE ME?!"
Ken didn’t blink. "No. I think I can make you choose."
"WHAT?!"
"Gaara didn’t deserve this. You tortured him. Used him. I’m not a child. I won’t beg you for power. I’ll take it. But I’ll also use it."
Shukaku snarled. But something behind the rage—curiosity.
"AND WHAT DO YOU OFFER ME, UCHIHA?!"
Ken smirked.
"A battlefield."
The silence that followed was long. Then:
"...I accept."
The world returned.
Shukaku’s form shattered into a storm of sand, then spiraled inward, sucked into the seal now glowing on Ken’s abdomen.
He staggered, knees hitting the ground, heart pounding with unfamiliar pressure.
His veins burned. His chakra coiled like smoke.
He had done it.
He had taken the Tailed Beast.
And Gaara...
Lay still.
Breathing.
Free.
Ken stood, the wind howling around him.
The Sand had tried to hunt a ghost.
Now they had created a monster.
