Getting To Know You

A/N: Hey hey! This, I suppose, you can call my current 'major' story thing. I've got a basic plan of what I can do and it's got a while to go. The first few chapters are done, I'm just going through them a few more times. And excuse my Shikamaru mentioning xD I'm a shikatema fan and I got used to writing about the both of them. This is primarily about Temari and from her P.O.V but there may be exceptions. I know the title isn't that brilliant too but it's better than nothing for me. Setting is post-Shippuuden.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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Stars and Lady Beetles

Temari looked around at her situation. Her strategic mind analysed every single piece of information there was, ready to alert her to any possible dangers. Unfortunately, a lot of the things she saw seemed somewhat unfamiliar to her, alien even. There was a fluffy pink pillow in the corner, and really… a lot of cute and fluffy. She hadn't seen a room like this since she was three or four or five even. She wasn't quite sure of her exact age, but basically it had been when she was younger at least.

Noticing her companion's somewhat amusing facial expression, Sakura decided to question her about it.

'Ne, Temari-san, are you ok?' she asked kindly.

Temari offered her a weak smile. 'Yeah,' she answered.

'You just seem a little…confused or something,' Sakura continued on.

Temari scratched the back of her head, partially unsure of how to tell the pink-haired kunoichi, or if she should tell her at all. It wasn't a question of trust. She found she did trust her, especially after she saved Kankurou's life and helped bring Gaara back. She was a close friend of that Uzumaki Naruto whom Gaara seemed to greatly trust without saying anything. Although she had to admit, Naruto was a nice person, among other things, with an optimistic attitude so he could have been fooled. All the same, she was certain she could be trusted.

Thing was, no matter how much she trusted someone, there were some things about her past she wouldn't readily share when asked.

'I just haven't been in a room like this in a while,' she told the younger girl, eyeing the room carefully once more. Actually, the room was more of a shop than anything else. A child's shop, she corrected herself. Toy dolls and bears, cute fluffy pillows shaped as flowers, hearts and stars. In another part of the room there were cars and toy kunai and shuriken as well. They were somewhat familiar although she couldn't exactly remember ever playing with toy weapons as a child. They were all real.

Sakura smiled in response. 'Really? You look so uncomfortable though,' she said in her friendly tone, causing Temari to chuckle lightly.

'I'm not used to it, that's all,' she said earnestly. 'I don't even know what to get that little child,' she continued.

Sakura smiled as they continued to wander around the store. 'Moegi's a nice girl, she won't mind anything really. Some of this stuff might be a bit cutesy for her as well,' she added, rolling her eyes as she spotted Ino and TenTen considering to buy lady beetle toys for her.

'Baka, Ino! She invited us because we're kunoichi! We should get her something to encourage her training, not something that looks like we want to treat her like a child!'

'Ne, forehead girl, shut it!' was the response she got. Naturally, their tempers raged as they began to argue. Temari held a bemused expression whilst TenTen sighed and shook her head.

'We're not even here for Moegi's gift, we only came here to check out the new store,' TenTen muttered under her breath to Temari. Temari couldn't help but laugh all the same, as she and TenTen exited the store before they got caught in the cross fire.

'TenTen, what's this Moegi girl like?' Temari asked as they waited out the front of the shop. The younger kunoichi pondered for a few moments.

'Heh, I'm not really sure,' she said with an embarrassed grin. 'Sakura knows her better than I do, and from what she told me she asked Sakura to invite ninja friends of hers, as long as they were girls, to prove to Konohamaru that girls could kick the boys' asses any day,' she said with a shrug.

Temari smirked, out of habit than anything else. She assumed they weren't going to be the only ninja above Moegi's age then as well.

'I presume this Konohamaru will invite Naruto and some of his friends as well then?' Temari replied, as Ino and Sakura were kicked out of the store for 'scaring away my customers'. TenTen grinned in response.

'That's what I'm thinking too. For all we know we might have to fight the boys.'

'And prove that girls are better,' Temari added, smiling with TenTen as Sakura and Ino stumbled towards them, refusing to face each other.

'Ne, let's go eat,' Sakura decided, and the rest simply followed suit. They wandered around for a few minutes as they attempted to find somewhere they wanted to eat. They settled on the barbeque place Ino and her teammates usually found themselves eating at. Apparently the food was really nice there so they gave it a shot.

'Temari-san, how long are you in Konoha for?' Ino asked as they finished eating. 'Any particular kind of party environment you like?'

Temari smiled at Ino, who grinned, ready for some excitement. 'I'm staying for a couple of weeks, I guess. Gaara's given me that long to get back to Suna, even though he knows I could come here and back in a week, meetings attended and duties fulfilled. I think he's hinting for me to take some time off,' she said with a gentle smile, playing with her drink. She purposefully ignored answering the party question.

'How is Gaara-kun?' TenTen asked curiously. 'And Suna? Actually, what's it like in Suna altogether?'

Ino and Sakura looked just as interested, Temari's companions eagerly waiting for a reply.

Temari thought about her home for a moment, eyes drifting to the sky outstretched through the window, the same sky that reached Suna. She found it fascinating still how this was the same sky she saw in Suna, and yet both were so different. Here, there were always clouds, as she was constantly reminded by Nara Shikamaru when he escorted her as ambassador around Konoha. But in Suna, the clouds, if any, were very different; they weren't white and fluffy at all. The same thing went for the night sky. If there was one thing she loved about travelling back home to Suna it was to see the night sky. The stars were so much brighter there, the sky looked so much more magnificent. The light pollution in major cities blocked off the stars' radiance. But in Suna, when desert nights dropped to freezing at some points, people usually returned home. It was on nights like these where fire-lit homes lined the streets and hardly any light reached the sky that she'd learned to love the stars.

She was young the first time she sat outside and watched them. It was her mother who'd introduced her to it, as well as the wind. She remembered a little bit; it had been so long after all. She supposed it was one of her earliest memories. It was before Gaara was there, and Kankurou was still a baby … or at least he wasn't outside with them. She forgot where he was but she remembered the moment.

She'd sat, cradled in her mother's arms as she looked over at Suna. She barely remembered walking a little away from her mother to look over the edge of the roof and gaze at the Hidden Village of the Sand. Apparently she had, according to her uncle Yashamaru. She used to love asking her uncle for stories about her mother and the time she'd spent with her and Kankurou before she went to sleep some nights. She vaguely remembered on her own but the stories helped her build images in her mind that she'd learn to cherish in her heart.

Her mother would point out the stars and constellations. Temari could barely remember her voice or her words, but she remembered her mother's smile as she told her about them. She remembered watching with curious eyes at first, amazement following, before a cold breeze brushed by the mother and daughter and contentment filled her as she felt her mother's loving arms envelop her in a warm embrace.

'You shouldn't fear the wind either, Temari. Your father is the Kazekage, wind is in his title and in our country,' she told her daughter gently. She took out a small fan, something of a smaller version of the fan Temari carries as her weapon, and showed her daughter.

'This is a fan, Temari. This is a weapon for a daughter of Suna as a blade is a weapon for a son. While a fan cannot control the wind, this can guide it and work alongside it. The wind is a powerful thing, Temari, strong-willed and independent. And yet there's a kind of grace about it too. It answers to no one and is capable of both great and destructive things. But the wind is the reason ships learned to sail and leaves learn to fly. The wind is one to be respected, unique in strength and grace. You must remember to be like the wind. Ok, my little princess?'

She could still see her mother's smile, her loving eyes as she looked down at her daughter.

She forgot what happened after that. According to Yashamaru, her mother had found out beforehand about the Kazekage's plan to create the ultimate weapon, and she had an inkling that she may not survive and wanted to leave her daughter some words of wisdom, even if she would not remember. She and Yashamaru had spoken about what she wanted of her children, of course, of Kankurou and Temari, and Yashamaru distinctly remembered that night as the night Temari learned of fans and began to run about their home with the fan tightly grasped in her hands.

She'd made a habit of watching the stars, after that. Sometimes with her mother and brother, sometimes with just her mother. After her death, she'd spent nights on her own, rejecting Yashamaru's offer to sit with her. But she loved to stargaze. She loved the feeling of freedom and contentment as she sat and let the wind brush by her once more as it did then. She shook her head to remove the memories from her mind and the image of present-day Konoha and kunoichi reached her once more.

'Hmm. Where do I start? Suna and Konoha have their differences and similarities, of course; both in people and in geography. What would you like to know about?'

'Everything,' came Sakura's answer immediately. Ino and TenTen merely nodded eagerly in agreement. Temari laughed lightly.

'But where do I start?' she asked with an embarrassed smile.

'Temari-saaaan, it doesn't bother us, really! You could always start with the boys though,' Ino answered with a suggestive wink. The rest laughed in response.

'The boys in Suna, ne? Well, you've met my brothers,' she started, inwardly smirking as she waited for their responses. TenTen seemed somewhat crushed, Sakura had a twitching eye but Ino seemed to be considering the thought. She knew she shouldn't take their reactions to offence at all, but she knew as well that the Suna men were not all like them at all.

'Strong and silent? Mysterious?!' Ino continued.

Temari laughed. 'Some of them are. Don't worry,' she added to TenTen and Sakura, 'they're not all like my brothers. Some are jerks, some are nice, some are proud; there's not really much of a difference between guys in Suna and everywhere else, unless you count their loyalty to the Kazekage instead of Hokage or anything like that. Physically, though,' she thought for a moment. TenTen's head seemed to snap up and Sakura's twitching was replaced by pools of curiosity and anticipation.

'Hmm, well I guess a lot of them have dark hair and they're tanned because of the desert sun.' She paused to put a finger on her lip as she pondered. 'Most of them are well built because there's a strong focus in training in Suna in general, and the want to become a strong shinobi is pretty high there. They're no taller than the guys here…'

She trailed off as she found herself remembering a major difference between Konoha and Suna. Male ninja dominated in Suna. Whilst she was kept in high regard because of her status and ties to the previous and present Kazekage, there was still a somewhat old-fashioned attitude in Suna. Change was more than welcome, of course, but that seemed to be how things went. There were a handful of feminists but there was a great number of women who were content to be the loving wife that their brave husband did or did not return to. They weren't forced to fulfil such a role: it was their own choice. Suna men generally expected their wives to act as such and only a handful were strongly attracted to the strong feminists. Even some of the female shinobi Temari knew and had met loved to cook and clean for their significant other than to have them cook for themselves. She supposed if you cared enough you'd want them to be happy, but still the number of feminists in Konoha was significantly greater than that in Suna.

'Actually,' she added, 'in Konoha it seems that the greater gender does rule and have their way more often but in Suna it's different.'

Three blank faces responded to her with blinks.

'The men in Suna are kind and everything. Like I said, there's not much different personality-wise between them here and in Suna except for I guess our traditions.' She looked each of the younger kunoichi in the eye before continuing. 'Suna has a strong tradition and sometimes the Old Way's influence is still evident, however light. So the traditional patriarchal society is still evident, even if women are given the same rights there as they are anywhere else. The guys don't force it that way or anything, but it's still somewhat expected back home I suppose.'

'Male dominance then?' TenTen suggested as a conclusion. Temari nodded.

'Something like that. Doesn't make them any less kinder though,' Temari said with a smile. She wasn't too sure if she should talk negatively about her home. It was true she knew. Some of the older traditions were still passed down between generations. Her mother had given her a fan because she was a 'daughter of Suna' after all. But her mother was different. Her mother had also encouraged her to be strong and independent, like the wind. She smiled as memories of her mother again returned to her.

'Do you have any specific means of training in Suna?' Ino asked curiously. She wasn't asking Temari to share secrets of Suna with them, if there were any, but was genuinely interested in how things were done in another village.

'Not really,' Temari answered, 'especially since we started running a program for training the next generations similar to the curriculum here in Konoha. I suppose the major difference is we encourage the students to take a weapon and specialise in it. I noticed that in my time spent here and the first Chuunin exams we took.'

As Temari took a drink, her companions pressed on.

'Oh ya, I never really thought about that,' Ino said in a thoughtful tone.

'It's something you notice but don't think about much, isn't it?' TenTen agreed.

Sakura, on the other hand, chose to twist Ino's words and attitude. 'No, Ino, you just don't think, ne?'

That earned her a rather large lump on her head but she seemed please nonetheless, deciding she wanted to continue the conversation with Temari rather than get kicked out again. After all, she'd succeeded in annoying Ino. She supposed she may have been spending too much time with Temari. The older kunoichi seemed to do something similar with Shikamaru when they were forced together. It wasn't so much as a rivalry between the two but competition to prove that the other is better. She sometimes found herself musing about the symbolic battle of the sexes when they spoke. It was rather amusing really.

'Say Temari-san, your choice of weaponry is rather unique,' TenTen told her, glancing at the large fan beside Temari. 'It's not sharp but it's powerful. You'd need a lot of strength to carry it around, I suppose you don't prefer to summon it with a scroll?'

Temari smiled and eyed her fan.

'It would feel strange, actually, to not feel it on my back when I travel.'

'Where did you get it from?' Sakura inquired.

'I've never seen anything like it,' TenTen continued, and she considered herself an expert in weaponry. She wouldn't have thought of using a fan as a weapon, she wasn't quite sure what she'd do with it actually. She'd need an incredible amount of strength to wield the weapon and she wasn't that kind of fighter, really. She liked to surprise her opponents. Temari and her large fan already gave the impression that she was a kunoichi to be feared, or rather, a strong shinobi that should not be overlooked or underestimated.

'I got it made in Suna,' Temari said, brushing her hand over the cool metal before looking back at her companions. 'My father was the Kazekage and he managed to get the most skilled blacksmith in the Wind country to make it for me.'

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A/N: I know it seems weird where I cut it off but I wrote and wrote before I decided to cut it up into chapters. Sorry if I used the Japanese words and suffixes in the wrong content as well and if there's any grammatical errors I missed. If you see any I wouldn't mind being told so I can fix it. Peace.

- jm

Next chapter: 'If you are to do anything in life you are to do it well. Failure is not an option,' he'd tell her and Kankurou.