The Shirt

A/N: Hello, my darlings. Name's Caith, and this is my first Naruto fanfic. I'm hoping it satisfies. I'm a highly specialized Naruto fan (read: snob) in the sense that no, I don't write many things involving the main characters, and no, I don't really care for Sasuke. In fact, I want to see him burn. Slowly. Over a spit.

General warnings: Crack!Pairing, eventual shounen-ai (no hardcore, kiddies, I'm not good at it) general OOCness for the sand siblings (Come on, they can't be psychotic and scary all the time) timeline is after Sasuke pulls a disappearing act but before the Kazekage-Gaara-getting-his-other-soul-sucked-out incident, so we're using smexy older Chouji. If you have no idea what that means, then you just read a spoiler. Quick, go forget it.

Specialized warnings: This whole multi-chapter thing? I blow at it. Just ask my compatriots over in the Yu Yu Hakusho and Kim Possible fandoms. I'll try, really, I will, but I can't promise any kind of schedule. I suck like that.

Part 1: The Question

Temari realized something weird was going on when she saw Kankuro in The Shirt.

The Shirt was a strange shade of light green, a shade no tailor in Suna used in their dyes. There was a design on The Shirt, big and dark red, the picture-symbol for 'food'. Temari observed Kankuro sitting in The Shirt at six in the morning, blinking blearily and staring at the table like it would answer any question he cared to ask it.

"morn' Tem," he mumbled, but Temari didn't hear him. She was too busy gawking at his choice in clothing- and the fact that The Shirt was at LEAST two sizes two big, and hanging off her six foot tall built-like-a-springboard younger brother like a sack, especially around the middle, where it looked to have bulged to fit a larger person.

"Kankuro?" she asked tentatively, unsure of how to ask her brother where the hell he had gotten the ugly thing.

"Nnneh?" the puppeteer replied, his head landing with a 'thud' on the heavy table. Temari didn't bother finishing her question; she should have known better. Kankuro would not be rational for at least another four hours.

Suna is Suna, and full of things like paperwork and training and sandstorms, and so roughly twenty minutes after Temari's first encounter with The Shirt she forgot about it entirely, having other things on her mind. Gaara, on the other hand, had a better memory. Things like that help you be Kazekage.

The Shirt, as Gaara distinctly remembered, did not, in fact, belong to Kankuro at all.

The last time he had seen The Shirt it had only been near his brother by association.

Gaara spent that night contemplating. He paced back and forth across his office, sand grains following him in a tiny trail like the demented ducklings of a piper as he muttered to himself. By the time day broke over Suna, Gaara had successfully remembered where he had seen The Shirt.

With that answer, however, the Kazakage discovered that he had yet another question on his hands.

He decided to confer with Temari. Of course, Gaara being Gaara, he had decided to confer with her right then and there, at one in the morning when his sister was off in a mostly-permanent dreamland involving flowers, clouds, and one particularly lazy Konoha chunin. Needless to say, it was only Gaara's quick reflexes (and Temari's own ability to sense her sibling) that saved him from an admittedly deserved flight across suna's updrafts courtesy of a huge kunoichi fan.

"It isn't his."

"What isn't?" Temari asked (having forgotten entirely what had disturbed her upon her first meeting with The Shirt)

"The Shirt." Gaara said. "It isn't his."

"Well no duh it isn't his," the kunoichi said waspishly, her usual deference-and-respect-for-formerly-homicidal-sibling face unable to function that early. "That thing's WAYYY too big to be his-"

The metaphorical light bulb came on.

"Gaara," Temari said, almost afraid to speak as she shifted on her bed, staring at her sibling in the half-light, "If it isn't Kankuro's..then whose is it?"

Gaara blinked slowly, as though attempting to gain more time for himself, or perhaps figure out how to say what he was about to say without blowing his sister's brain to shreds. He decided on quick and mostly painless.

"Temari." He asked. "Why would Kankuro have Akimichi Chouji's shirt?"

oOo

Like any good set of siblings, Temari and Gaara unanimously agreed that asking Kankuro outright how he had come into the possession of a shirt that not only belonged to another person, but another nin-village entirely, was probably not the best idea. Thus they came to the natural solution: Snooping.

Kankuro's workshop/bedroom was, and always had been, Off Limits. There was no end to the horror stories the servants of the Kazekage's citadel could tell to anyone who would listen about the things the puppeteer was willing to do to make sure people kept their noses out of his business. Limbs had been lost, cleaning chemicals poisoned, and small children scared in the ongoing war of Middle Sabaku vs. Dedicated household staff.

Temari and Gaara, siblings though they were, had never spent any time in the underground room Temari had lovingly nicknamed 'the Dungeon'- never before had they really had a reason to look into their brother's personal affairs, both of which assumed meant wood carving, poison mixing, and assorted hysterical giggles amongst whirling saw blades. Understandably, they weren't sure how to approach the large wooden door into their brother's domain, which had never before seemed so ominous.

"Should we knock?" Gaara asked. Temari fought the urge to beat her brother for being stupid, something she might have done to Kankuro if he had said it- but the puppeteer Jounin was in Konoha, and hitting Gaara would essentially be suicide, so she shook her head, gave a heavy sigh, and replied, "No, Gaara. I don't think anything will answer."

Gaara nodded and made a motion towards the door. A tendril of his sand slipped from his ever-present gourd and wrapped lightly around the heavy brass handle, tugging.

Gaara wasn't sure where Temari learned her colorful vocabulary, and was going to ask, but decided against it once she managed to get herself down from the wire-mesh net that had snapped her up to the ceiling.

"I didn't see that." He said, a tad unnecessarily. Temari growled.

"From now on, I stand BEHIND you." She grumbled as Gaara's sand slowly tugged the door open. Both siblings dodged the flying kunai.

"GODDAMNIT KANKURO!!" Temari snarled. With each step forward another trap presented itself, until Temari and Gaara (the girl the worse for wear, the boy irritatingly spotless) stood back to back in the center of the room, kunai held in guard position in front of them. This both allowed them to deflect oncoming attacks (senbon seemed to be a favorite) and allowed them to look around.

Kankuro's bedroom was...dark. Very dark. The floor was grey, the walls were brown, and even the bed pushed into a corner had black covers. The only real light came from several long slits, high on the walls- windows to the upper level streets. Several large worktables and cabinets covered the other wall, and from the ceiling were strung various puppets and puppet parts, some finished, some not, all looking grotesque and incredibly dangerous. Temari shuddered as she glared at the lifeless glass eyes. She had never liked her brother's puppets. Behind her, Gaara was eyeing the hooks over Kankuro's bed, where Karasu would hang within easy reach, in case of an intruder- or a nosy cleaning lady.

"What are those?" he asked suddenly, pointing to another small table- this one stuck in what looked to be a niche in the wall. Temari looked at the table over her shoulder and pulled back a reflexive gulp. A tall, thin rack held vial upon vial of multi-colored fluids. Below it, what looked like a professional alchemist's set was sitting- glass colanders, several herb pots, two mortars and pestles, more oddly shaped glass containers. Long cabinets stood on either side, securely locked and, Temari was willing to bet, heavily trapped. The eldest Sabaku took a deep breath. "That," she informed her brother, "Is Kankuro's playground."

His incredibly dangerous, highly toxic, do-not-touch-or-DIE playground.

"I suppose it's booby-trapped too?" Gaara asked. Temari nodded. "I'd assume so, why?"

"If you wanted to hide something where no one would look, where would you put it?" Gaara asked her, lowering his kunai to observe the table speculatively. Temari blinked- then grinned. "I'd hide it where no one would dare to look." She said, an evil grin spreading across her features as her eyes roved the small poison-table- and the tiny white corner sticking out from behind the poisons rack.

"Cover me," she told her brother. "I'm going in."

Gaara nodded and moved behind her, his sand rustling in his gourd. The kunoichi took several cautious steps forward, her eyes and ears pricked for traps. A few more steps and she gained more confidence. When she finally made it to the table, she made a small noise of triumph in the back of her throat, inspecting the bit of white- a partially unrolled scroll- that had been left in the open. She nodded to Gaara, took a breath, reached out, pulled-

The scroll came away easily. She turned around, grinned-

And then felt the tug of the pull cord.

"KANKUROOOOOO!!"

oOo

Walking down the street in Konoha, a pale boy in black paused and sneezed hard, rubbing fiercely at his nose.

"Something wrong?" His companion asked.

"I think someone might be plotting my immenent demise."

"Or maybe you just have a cold."

"Possibly."

A/N: And that's chapter one. Whee! For anyone who thinks Gaara and Temari wouldn't fall for Kankuro's traps: He's a friggin' puppeteer. Traps and stealth are what he does, and he does them WELL, at a master's level. Also, you never expect certain things from your siblings, homicidal killing machines or not.

Well, feel free to click the review button.

EDIT: Fixed as of April 11 at two in the morning EST. Because I was looking through this and saw some glaring errors that made me twitch a lot.