A/N: Just read it through. Explaination for this monstrous piece of writing is at the end, I promise.

Chapter One: Set This Space

The girl was pretty. That much was undeniable. Pretty and small—tiny for a kunoichi. Bandages capped her arms (all the way down to her bulky gloves), her neck, and a part of each thigh—underlining the spots where she strapped her shuriken holster and knotted on the symbol of her village. Holster on the right thigh, shinobi headband on the left. The rest of her legs were covered with high boots—not even open-toed, as most shinobi left them, but entirely closed.

She had room to spare on her legs, not because of their endless length—she was tiny, after all—but due in large part to the even tinier shorts connected to her one piece suit—strapless, sleekly black, and netted around her little midsection. Her shoulders were bare. Her collarbone was bare.

But both children in the room had the soft, voluminous reddish brown hair for cover. Hair that didn't quite curl into ringlets, but wouldn't quite lie straight either. Round teal eyes resided on two pale faces, right beneath auburn bangs.

Hair color and eye color were far from the only things she shared with the boy standing on the other side of the sparse, sunless room. Roughly in appearance, they were the same size, though not the same height, and perhaps even the same age—give or take a year or two.

Gaara looked to the girl through lidded eyes. He spoke slowly, almost as if he had to force the words out one by one. "If I have to go, I lead when Baki isn't there."

"I think they already knew that." The girl spoke with a similar tone, a similar volume. Quiet, efficient, and nothing unnecessary. She looked up at him, seeing that his arms were folded around himself. Her arms were propping her up against the windowsill, legs crossed at the ankles.

He didn't acknowledge that she answered—neither a reply nor a nod. "You'll be behind me?"

"Always." She bowed her head briskly, swiftly.

"Don't stop pushing." There was just the slightest bit of misgiving whenever he spoke that sentence to her. It was a rare moment that Sunagakure's ultimate weapon would show even the most infinitesimal hint that he might have a weakness.

"I won't."

His eyes watched her—their teal gazes slipping into one another. "You're dismissed."

She bowed, low, and then disappeared out the window.

A scroll clunked against her head. One brown eye blinked open. The other reluctantly followed. She reached over blindly searching for the fallen scroll and ripped it open, her free hand rubbing at her eye. Her fingers sleepily smoothed out the paper. A yawn escaped her mouth, and she blinked her eyes another two times for good measure before commencing to read the message.

Training area 3. Bring half gear. Depart now.

It was in his handwriting. Or hopefully, what she remembered to be his handwriting. And even if it was his handwriting, it could be another foreign ninja impersonating him in order to lure her into a false sense of security before abducting her. But then again, it was too early to think like that—or at all—and there was no use for abducting a nothing little genin from Konoha other than for pure kicks. And even that was stupid.

Sighing, Ashino Hana swung her legs out from the sheets and glared hazily at the floor. What else could she glare at? The person responsible for this wasn't present before her at the moment. Pretending that she wasn't freezing, and it wasn't four in the morning, she padded across her room and tugged out the first articles of clothing she felt when she reached into her wardrobe.

She chanced a brave glance at her hair in the mirror while she brushed her teeth, and winced at the sight. The black tangles were so encompassed with each other that they actually added to her height.

But really, there wasn't any time for preening and pruning in front of the mirror. Not that she'd ever been the type to preen and prune in the first place. So she settled with whacking a brush through the Forest Known As Her Hair, and knotting it up into a ponytail. Hopefully, one that wouldn't get caught in a branch or crap similar to that.

She secured her headband around her forehead, adjusting the reflective Leaf symbol, and pulled it tighter once more for good measure.

Only half of her team was already at Area 3, waiting, when she reached them. Her sensei and one of her two teammates. Dashimoto Nojiko-sensei, standing by the aiming posts, looking as insanely normal as any living ninja could get—so normal that it was kind of creepy how normal he looked; not to say he was ugly or plain, he was rather good-looking with the dark hair and oddly blue eyes, he was just so normal. Normal, in the way that he dressed and acted.

Nojiko was the complete antithesis to the teammate of Hana's that was currently present. But, Hana felt that that was unfair. It wasn't that Nojiko was his antithesis; it was more that Nakamori Yujo was the antithesis of everyone in the world who was sane. Which, well, actually didn't include that many people, now that Hana really thought about it.

See, the thing was, Yujo wasn't really all that weird regarding the way he was. He was just another genius result from a stupidly (Hana's opinion) noble clan—like the Uchiha and the Hyuuga, only without as much absurd drama. It was the way he dressed.

Black from head-to-toe, chained cargo shorts riding low—riding immensely low, and a sleeveless shirt that rode up much more than often to show a pale, tight strip of skin wound around even tighter, fitter hips—all this, however, wasn't the weird part.

The weird part was that he had a tiny, glinting silver hoop hanging from the right of his full, lower lip. Hana didn't really have a protest against it, although Nojiko had far more than enough commented mockingly on how it would get snagged by some flying kunai or another and Yujo would then, therefore, have to either get reconstructive surgery or look like a freak for the rest of his life.

It was just weird. Especially since they were twelve. Ninja, or no.

And then there was his hair.

Yujo had rather nice hair. Considering the rest of him was new-century pretty boy, his hair would of course be very nice. It was all dark brown, like the color of chocolate. And it looked soft and lustrous—the kind of hair you'd want to sink your hand into and pet all day long without getting bored.

It was just that, well, it pointed in twenty different directions, while simultaneously being wavy, curly, straight, and spiky and all of this combined more or less gave him the look of either a serial killer and/or someone who hadn't bathed in a year. Although, it was assured that Yujo did bathe regularly, as Hana had had her other teammate, Natsu, sniff him once or twice to make sure he was hygienic.

Natsu had concluded that Yujo smelled epic. In the good way.

Hana still wasn't sure if that should reassure her or trouble her. The part where Natsu had described Yujo's scent as epic, that is.

And when Hana finally reached them, Nojiko was staring adamantly at the sky, and Yujo was sitting cross-legged on the ground, tongue out and flirting with his lip ring.

She set her pack on the ground and put her hands on her hips. "So," she said as brightly as her non-breakfasted self could muster, "'Morning."

Nojiko brought his eyes down from the sky and stared at her determined smile for all of two, long, rather painful minutes, before responding with a plain, "Oh. Yeah."

Any other sensei would have greeted their seemingly enthusiastic-to-learn-at-four-in-the-freakin'-morning student with similar seeming enthusiasm. But as Nojiko was one of the youngest Jonin registered as a sensei—barely six years older than his students themselves—he was little more than they were in terms of maturity.

Yujo simply turned his clear, forest eyes up to Hana by way of greeting. It wasn't as though Hana really expected any more than that. Not really. She had already learned that even though Yujo seemed expressionless, everyone had a good and bad side, and if silent stares and nods were Yujo's good side, she decided she didn't want to learn about his bad side.

"Where's Natsu?" she filled into the gaping silence. Her eyes slid back to Yujo, who was now adjusting his ninja headband—he wore it as an armband—around the wiry, taut muscle of his bare upper arm. Plenty of times, Hana honestly thought that Uchiha Sasuke was dearly overrated. At least, where pretty boy status was concerned—Yujo's looks and Yujo's style were far more unique, far more original than the nearly overused dark and broodingly misunderstood MO.

"I was about to ask you." With that, Nojiko finally sighs and straightens away from the post. "I've got a few things to discuss before we get on with the training. And I don't want to have to repeat it just because Natsu doesn't know how to work an alarm."

Yujo threaded his fingers together in his lap neatly and tilted his head upward first to his sensei and then to his teammate. Hana, if she could, mostly avoided looking directly into Yujo's eyes. Looking at his eyes was comparable to looking at the sun, only green. Wherever the sun was too bright to be bearable, Yujo's eyes were too green—too round and perfect—to be human, to be earthly. And for the few months they'd been teammates, Hana had ever only heard his voice twice—excluding when he was executing jutsu, that is.

Any other person who'd never seen Yujo fight before might've included the jutsu casting—because that counted as speaking, too, didn't it? Albeit, shouting perhaps, but still voice usage.

Hana, however, knew that it was nothing of the sort. But for that, one would have to watch Yujo fight—really fight. And thing was, Yujo didn't really like to fight. He liked to train—obsessively. But he didn't quite like to fight—it just wasn't his fancy, or something, and that merely added to his list of eccentricities, as Yujo was a freaking ninja.

"Hey! I'm sure he'll show up soon. It's got nothing to do with working an alarm." Beneath her breath, she muttered, "Since I don't even wake up to mine…"

Nojiko just stared for another bit, before turning his gaze to Yujo. That Hana knew of, Nojiko was the only person—aside, from perhaps members of the Nakamori clan itself—that'd actually ever braved looking into Yujo's eyes for more than a split second. Like Hana had mentioned in the earlier simile, staring at Yujo for too long was like staring at the sun—you just had to look away, because your eyes were starting to water, and it felt like if you looked any longer, one thing would lead to another, and you'd end up unable to look at anything else for the remainder of your life.

And that would be a shame.

Or at least, that was what Nojiko had sarcastically added when Hana had ranted to him about how she swore Yujo had to have some sort of ulterior motive for training himself to be so awesome at what she and Natsu had dubbed as the Ninja Glare—something that'd apparently given Nojiko a migraine by the sheer mention of it, and thus, had had him send Hana and Natsu to run another fifty laps around the training field.

"If you don't like repeating things," Hana said, plopping down beside Yujo, "You can just tell us and then we'll tell Natsu." She chanced a glance at Yujo—staring lifelessly straight ahead. "I mean, I'll tell Natsu."

The thing with Yujo that Hana managed to learn throughout their days at the Academy, and even more so during the small number of months they'd been teammates was that because he didn't talk very much—or at all—all of his words were put into his gestures. Yujo was "actions speak louder than words" incarnate. Meaning, just like now, one had to always pay attention to his movements. And at the moment, Yujo had lifted his arm and was pointing straight ahead, at a tiny moving black dot in the horizon.

"What's—" Hana squinted into the sunrise. "Oh, Nojiko-sensei, hey, isn't that--?"

To live in Konohagakure was to know Uzumaki Naruto. And to know Uzumaki Naruto was to more easily understand Yasashi Natsu. Because whereas Uzumaki Naruto was all things brash, loud, obnoxious, seemingly half-witted, and pint-sized, Yasashi Natsu was just an infinitesimal bit more bearable than that.

At least he wasn't pint-sized.

But he was one for dramatic show—whether intentional or no still remained to be determined. And it was nothing but dramatic show and perhaps that seeming half-wit that brought Natsu skidding through the dirt to a halt, dust clouds exploding around him, stumbling onto his stomach, posterior high in the air, eyes comically unfocused—the whole slapstick bit—and to add an insult to injury, or perhaps to put a cherry on the sundae, a rather demented-looking ball of fur hanging from one ear.

The air around Team 14 wasn't dull, if nothing else. Rather, it was quite tense. And if looks could kill, Nojiko would be charged for the murder of his student. However, looks could not kill, and so Nojiko merely summed up his less than cheery feelings with a nod and walked away (most likely to tip another few aspirins down his throat) with a gaze that conveyed hopelessness for all of humanity, because humanity must be lost—or must soon to be lost—if this was what the village would soon be trusting its civilians to.

Hana pulled her lips into her mouth and sucked a deep lungful of air through her nose. She knew she shouldn't yell, but what she couldn't quite figure out was if she was trying not to be angry with Natsu or if she was just trying not to laugh. Most likely both. Because being both angry and laughing at Natsu would make her seem a bit mentally unstable.

And she knew that Nojiko and Yujo already thought she was more than a bit mentally unstable. Well, Nojiko did. No one really knew what Yujo thought, but it was easier just to lump him in.

She just watched Yujo push himself up to his knees and edge closer to Natsu, leaning down and peering at the furry little creature hanging to his right ear. "This," Yujo whispered hoarsely, as though from lack of use (only thing was there was no "as though" about it, since it really did lack use), "thing has teeth."

Hana bent over and peered at it. Whatever it was, it did indeed have teeth. And it was using its quite sharp teeth to cling onto the shell of Natsu's poor ear. "Actually, I think that's a hamster. Or, it used to be one, anyway." She poked Natsu's shoulder. "Oy, Nojiko-sensei's pissed at you. Again. How much longer are you going to pretend to be unconscious and crap? Pull the freaking hamster off your ear and get up. Sensei wants to tell us something, and I want to have breakfast."

"When is she coming back?" A shaded room, every window save for one closed off from the harsh midday desert sun.

"She'll be back when she's back." Two figures—one lounging on the bare couch, the other standing respectably against the opposing wall.

"Aw. But I want her back now." Tainted golden hair shadowing wicked, violet eyes.

"Well, you can't have her back now. Because clearly, she isn't here. You don't have much patience as a shinobi, do you?" Calm, glowing violet eyes behind fresh, black hair.

"That's not true! I have tons of patience when it comes to being a shinobi." High, pale skin.

"Then why can't you just patiently wait and stop harassing me?" High, defined cheekbones.

"Because I don't miss her as a shinobi." A snort from a fine, delicate nose.

"Then what do you miss her as?" A sigh through full lips—full, but undeniably male.

A grin, and long fingers tugged at the unzipped collar of a shirt. "Well, she's hot, isn't she?"

"Hien…" Another sigh. "If Himawari were here, then she'd—"

"I'd absolutely fucking kill him."

Both boys turned to the only window open. The pretty girl knelt on the sill, desert wind whipping her hair from behind. She slid through the hole, hands on the raised windowpane, and walked steadily across the room toward the boy on the couch. The boy with fair hair—if dark gold could be construed as fair—that hung straight against his neck; a shirt unzipped to show the young, wiry torso behind metal netting; and a bulky, silver amulet around his throat, reaching halfway down his chest.

That left the remaining boy standing—the boy with dark hair and clothes so ordinary, he'd be utterly mistakable down outside in the desert town. He would simply blend in that well with every other shinobi walking about.

Both boys towered over their female teammate, and both boys had similar delicate features and precisely, in appearance, alike violet eyes.

Hien, violet eyes dangerous and wicked, caught Himawari around her tiny hips and pulled her to him—between his stretched legs. "Missed you, babe."

She smiled angelically and gently placed her small hand on his wrist, and squeezed until the satisfying sound of bone crackling echoed through the dim room.

Hien recoiled faster than a cobra with a mongoose on its tail. The boy almost pouted as Himawari continued to stride past him and leaned beside the dark-haired boy—the boy with calm, calculating violet eyes. "Stuff it," she said, her eyes looking deceivingly beatific at Hien. "I'm too pissed to put up with any of your shit today. And I was gone for an hour. Hardly enough time for you to think up any more perverted antics."

"Aw," Hien sighed dramatically, tossing his hair back out of his eyes. "You're just way over there because Rikachi's gay. The only way you can ever go around without getting hit on is when you hang out with homos."

"Either way," Rikachi smiled. "She's beside me, and not you."

"Fucker."

Himawari simply relaxed into her skin and let the cousins go off. It was more than amusing to watch them fight—if only they kept it up for more than just minutes. Not to say that it wasn't true she always stood beside Rikachi during one of their meetings. It lessened the chance of being harassed by a far too pubescent Hien. Because what Hien said was more or less true. Rikachi was gay, and thus, Rikachi was safe.

She was arrogant and she was vain—and she knew that. Thus, she knew she was brilliantly hot. Fiercely pretty. And of course she liked it. Having the usual show of top class perversion from Hien helped lots, too. Thirteen-years-old and knowing one was ultimately desirable was not a terrible place to be.

Thirteen-years-old and being part of the squad specifically designed by her father around Himawari's unique shinobi art (the one mutated into her by birth experiments) to shadow the Shukaku's host on missions was also not a terrible place to be. It was, however, an emotionally detached and a precarious one.

Always teetering on the edge and not knowing if this time she was going to fall off or teeter just so back into place. She was a mistake child. At least Gaara knew that his existence was intentional—at least his existence had a purpose, even if just to be a host for a demon. She herself had none. They meant to have her "pushing" art and the demon all in one child—enabling the host to be able to control the Shukaku.

But they'd missed the timing to infuse her with the demon during the pregnancy. Missed it by a hair, but missed it all the same. Meaning, she wasn't even a completed product. Just a trial error.

And there wasn't a day she went without being reminded of that.

"So how did it go?" Rikachi glanced down at her—both pointedly ignored Hien silently steaming off his frustration on the couch. "Did he agree to it?"

"With a few conditions."

"What sort?"

"The usual." Himawari eyed Hien's pout as he tugged on the amulet wound around his neck. As the main heir of the Nekouga clan from Kumogakure—ambassadors to Sunagakure—Hien was the one to drag the heavy, centuries-so-old-it'd-began-to-rust-decades-before-their-generation-was-even-born, sterling silver amulet with an even heavier and even older topaz stone stuck right at the center—haphazardly cut and nothing set around it.

She folded her arms and Hien's eyes flew to her chest. "Y'know, everything that's already painfully obvious—leading when Baki isn't around, having me behind him, and he told me not to stop pushing, which was weird."

"How, babe?" Hien asked, licking his lips as his eyes flickered up to Himawari's face for a fraction, and then back down to the anatomical part of her that was, at the moment, being rather suspended by the action of her folding arms.

Himawari indifferently turned to the side—just so, in a way that gave Rikachi the full view if he ever cared to be straight enough to look down, and gave Hien a view of her metaphorically cold shoulder. "Because he knows that I'm not allowed to stop—or moreover, that if I do stop, it'll be more detrimental to me than him, in the end and with all things considered."

"Not really," Rikachi intercepted easily.

"How so?" Her query came off flat.

"The positional repercussions will be worse for you—but that can be amended. You think the Kazekage's going to live forever? Well, hey. But for Gaara, it'll just be the end."

Hien's eyebrows went up, but his eyelids went down, as he went spread-eagle on the couch, one gangly arm and leg hanging over the edge and touching the floor. "That's such a great way of thinking, y'know, Rikachi?"

"It's true," his cousin said.

"Like I said," Himawari laced her arm through Rikachi's—small and curvy against tall and lean, "absolutely fucking, beautiful family chemistry we have here, yeah?"

"Go fuck yourself," Hien grumbled, throwing the arm that leaked onto the floor over his eyes.

"Yeah? I thought you wanted to do it for me."

That brought Hien jolting into a sitting position, his eyes alive and wicked lovely. "Does that mean I can? Answering my prayers after all these long, long, long nights alone and masturb—"

Himawari kissed Rikachi.

She heard—using exclusive shinobi hearing—Hien stomp out of the room like a little child. Or maybe, like the little boy he probably never grew out of acting as. Kissing Rikachi wasn't some vehement way to infuriate Hien, as some lesser beings of life might believe it to be at first glance. Kissing Rikachi was just a way to shut Hien up. It was equivalent to any normal human teenager simply saying, "shut up" to their more than overbearing friend. Even Hien himself understood it to be no more than that.

But they'd never been normal. Himawari doubted that even she herself knew the meaning of the word, much less what it took to even attempt normalcy. Not that that was a problem. She'd always liked it that way—and Rikachi and Hien did, too.

Anyhow. This strategy was just made better by the fact that Rikachi was gay—meaning that Himawari could be in confidence that he'd never 1) like-like her or/and 2) try to take advantage of the situation and make-out with her. Not that she wouldn't completely castrate him if he ever tried. Gay or not, she knew that boys of her age were rather fond of their nether regions remaining intact. Gay or not, she knew that males of all ages were rather fond of their nether regions remaining intact.

At most—which was not most at all—the kisses were open-mouthed. Rikachi was a fine-looking boy precisely her own age—not that Hien wasn't also fine-looking and her age, but really—so Himawari was not averse to anything more (considering who her alternative was) than their usual ("We'd better do this soon before Hien has to take his foot out of his mouth again.") contract, but she'd gotten the obvious hint from Rikachi's body language, that he really would rather not stomach any more Girl.

"That was a quick one," Rikachi commented. Normally, they had to resort to groping for Hien to leave.

She shrugged. "Huh. Maybe he's just getting the message, yeah? Y'know, the one on how he has to stop putting feet into his mouth?"

"I thought it was the one on how he has to stop sexually harassing you."

"That one, too."

Rikachi looked at her for a long moment, violet eyes calculating all the way through her own. And he smiled knowingly—quietly and almost arrogantly ("Because I'm as arrogant as you are", he'd once said). "You like it, though."

She smiled. "Well. He doesn't need to know that, yeah?"

A/N: So. The explanation for this is in my profile Updates. Specifically, the one with the (7/6/09) date. I would re-explain it again here, but I'm a lazy bum. Most of you who are reading this straight from your Author Alerts Email notification probably put me on Alert because of my TRC stuff. So those of you who know me from TRC or better yet the Secrets Series, also know Mioru, right? Right, right? The OC that you usually want to punch in the face? But you love anyway (hopefully)? Well, now in this story, as you can see, you'll see me develop characters and work them into completely canon situations. Because everything here is canon except for my added characters. Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Kakashi, Hinata....every character in the actual series is here. And all the events are precisely and accurately canon. But you'll see all of that from different characters' eyes.

This is probably one of the most cliche settings and story ideas ever, but I know that those of you who've read my Secrets Series know that I can pull off cliche pretty well. Although I'm not sure if Secrets is cliche...but, anyhow. If you listened to me in the earlier paragraph in the A/N and went to see the explanation, you'll know that I'm co-authoring (read: co-AUTHORING, not co-writing) this with my best friend who is a fantastic artist and a slightly suckish writer. Actually, she kind of hates reading and writing, but opposites make good best friends. On here, she asked me to introduce her as NTspaz. She's not very used to FF and posting and stuff, but yeah. Oh, and since she loves the idea of reviews and things because I told her all about my reviewers (GHSNeko, Rightside Reflection, pockysnightmare, vicious-kitsune, theRecorder--if any of you are reading this, you guys are the ones I told her about, stalkerish-sounding-way aside) I decided to put this out: When you review, address if you're reviewing to me or to NTspaz, so whichever one it is, we can reply separately.

Without further ado...

NTspaz: hien's a freak.

Himawarixxsandz: Yeah, so this is my co-author. My BFEW (Best Friend of Epic Winsome). She's a yaoi-phobe (not to be confused with homophobe, which she is not). Which is why she probably dies a little inside when I talk about Kurofai and all that awesomeness. So for those of you who read my Secrets Series, or any other Kurofai stuff, feel free to torture her through reviews.

NTspaz: ...right...um, well.. yeah. keep on reading! lawlzah, i don't know what to say...

Himawarixxsandz: Right. Our conversations are a lot more interesting than this. We just seem like boring saps, is all. So NTspaz's job is officially, as of now, to make sure you keep reading and my job (as all of you know) is to beg for reviews.....reviews. Please. I can't really offer you homo cookies though....can I? Since this is my first multi-chaptered fic that isn't in TRC or KuroFai or AU or yaoi.

NTspaz: that's probably only because i'm here, right? haha...

Himawarixxsandz: But Rikachi's gay. And there are two other gays amongst the OCs. So see if you can guess who. I'll sneak you a homo cupcake, then (pockysnightmare). Originally, none of these OCs were gay, but I had to change that due to the yaoi fangirl I am. 'Sides, I rather dislike all the stories with this same idea out there because they couple all of the perfectly happy straight characters together. And I've noticed that that makes some people hate 14 year olds and think that they can't write. Which makes me and NTspaz quite less than pleased. Far, far less than pleased. Anyhow, that's all.