First of to those watching me purely for updates on the story "I'm A What!!" an update is coming,

eventually,

honest,

I just have to stop fighting the urge to include angst and murder and character death in what was supposed to be a fairly light-hearted story,

hence the ninja kill'em all gore story you are hopefully about to read.

Anyway enjoy...

OK, I am a poor deprived Australian student so I have only seen the Naruto episodes up until 120 and I haven't read any of the manga cos I don't know where to buy it (sobs). However I have read that Gaara becomes Kazekage of sauna and gets the Racoon demon extracted from him. So I am setting this a little bit after that, maybe a few weeks so Gaara is demon free and fairly healthy but not used to it yet.

Ok so on with the incredibly cliché opening scene.

Gaara stood on the balcony of the Kazekage (did I spell that right?) tower watching the sun set behind the sand dunes in a spectacular wash of colours from a deep blood red to a pale pink like the petals of the desert flowers found at certain times of year.

Though night was approaching and he had spent the day training he did not feel sleepy, years of fearing sleep had trained his body to function on very few hours sleep. Whilst it had been helpful at first with catching up on all the paperwork required of the Kazekage now that he was ahead on all the required reports he now had nothing to do and no desire to rest. Without a change of expression he turned from the now darkening horizon and made his way down to the streets of the village, a walk in the desert would be soothing and perhaps tiring enough to let him sleep tomorrow night.

His passage through the deserted streets was noted by no one, whilst the sun beat down mercilessly during the day the nights quickly became frigid in the desert and the weather encouraged people to stay indoors at night. While Gaara's face remained impassive his thoughts were in turmoil, with the sudden removal of the sand demon from his life his prospects had quite suddenly brightened. Now free of the title of monster he could walk freely within his village without fear of assassins from within the village at least. Add to that the sudden overwhelming fact that he probably wouldn't die the next time he went to sleep had him strangely off balance. Gaara was having trouble reconciling himself to the fact that he was going to be alive and sane for long enough to accomplish something beyond the death of the next person to piss him off.

The great question was what did he want to do with the life he now had? He had already achieved the title of Kazekage so he could not aspire to greatness within his village. He enjoyed teaching but as Kazekage he did not have time during the day to teach more than his original student. He would have liked to discover what it was to have a friend within his own village as Naruto had but as Kazekage it was difficult to tell who was being sincerely nice and who was simply attempting to bootlick.

He was considering planning a trip to the Hidden leaf village to discuss his problem with Naruto himself as he could be sure of receiving an honest if not always intelligent or comprehensible answer from him when he herd a strange sound. To any normal person it would have sounded like a bird call and would not have exited much attention but Gaara was a trained ninja who had grown up in the desert and he knew that it was the call of a bird not native to his country and therefore most probably a whistled signal of an enemy.

He silently cursed his inattention even as he dove and rolled to avoid a barrage of flying shuriken, rising to a crouch he spread out his senses to find the enemy in the darkness. There were five of them all with impressive chakra levels three on the crest of the dune behind him and one on either side creeping steadily forward. In the same instant another barrage of flying weapons was launched, instead of dodging this time Gaara effortlessly raised a wall of sand to intercept them. To his utter shock they passed straight through the barrier and he was once again forced to dive and roll to avoid being hit. Even as he moved Gaara puzzled over how the shuriken could have passed through his barrier. The wall of sand was incredibly dense and should not have let any solid object pass through, however the thin trickle of blood running down his left cheek from a shallow cut made by one of the shuriken gave testament to the absolute solidity of the projectiles. Discarding the use of the barrier entirely Gaara decided to instead attack. A few quick hand seals in his crouched stance and a murmured command and a tidal wave of sand was sent rushing towards his attackers. The shock he received when it passed through them as though they were phantoms was such that he received another wound in his shoulder due to his delayed reaction to the latest barrage of projectiles.

It made no sense, Gaara mused to himself impassively as he dodged and blocked (this time with a kunai knife of his own that thankfully was able to deflect the strange projectiles) Weapon's that could pass through his sand barriers and opponents who could not be touched by his sand attacks. He would have to find another method for dealing with these enemies. Suddenly he realised that he was being herded in a specific direction, all of the attacks came from the north south and eastern sides forcing him to retreat west every time they attacked. He then became aware or a strange blue glow being emitted from behind the dune he was gradually being forced to climb. The connection was a simple one to make, they were herding him towards whatever was causing the strange light the reason however was still a mystery.

The attacks continued but Gaara now noticed that none of them were intended to be fatal and he had only received minor injuries adding a shuriken imbedded in his thigh and a shallow cut across his right bicep to the tally. Obviously they wanted him to arrive at their destination alive. Gaara decided to humour his attackers and allowed himself to be pushed back over the crest of the dune, intending to attack suddenly when they believed him to have given up. However this proved to be a miscalculation on his part and as soon as he reached the top of the dune he was engulfed completely in the strange blue light and he lost all sight and sense of his enemies and of anything else around him for a very long moment….

And it's a cliffy, Hey I have to do something to get people to read more than one chapter of this thing. Let me know if it's half decent please I thrive of praise given by complete strangers !!