The winds blew harshly through Sunagakure, causing the sands to pick up and swirl around the quickly emptying streets in tiny eddies. A sandstorm was coming, and no one wanted to be caught outside. A young boy walked down that street, his head down as his red hair was blown wildly about. He had foam-green eyes thickly rimmed in black, with no eyebrows. Clutched in his hands was a brown teddy bear. Everyone watched him from inside their homes, but no one moved to go get the boy and bring him in before the sands reached the village.

In all honesty, almost everyone watching was seriously hoping he wouldn't make it to shelter in time to avoid the storm. Only one person felt differently; a young girl with long silver hair, tanned skin and purple eyes. She watched him from the window at her ailing mother's bedside, understanding the danger of the storm but not the threat posed by the boy. Her chosen name was Tsubaki Arashi-Tanuki, and she was six years old. Her given name was 15, and she had 14 other siblings all ranging in age from 1 year older than her to being nearly twenty already.

"Momma, why is that boy outside?" Tsubaki asked, pointing outside. Her mother, however, didn't answer. It was her father to look out through the windowpane and scowl when he saw the young redhead, shaking his head and pulling the curtain shut.

"That is not a boy, Fifteen. That is a monster in a boy's body, and you will stay away from it." He rose and walked to the door, glancing once back at them before stepping out into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him. The click of the door's lock sounded a moment later, and Tsubaki walked to the window, looking out at the boy as he made his way further down the street. She knew she would not be leaving her mother's side until morning when Three or Four came to check on the woman. She heard covers shift behind her and turned to see her mother working to sit up in bed.

"You need to rest, momma." Tsu said, hopping down and running to her mother's side. Her small hands were held in frail, much larger ones a moment later, and she smiled up at her mother, missing a tooth. "I love you."

"I love you too, my little dearest." The balding, silver-haired woman pulled herself fully upright and leaned back against the headboard, patting the pillow beside her and smiling as Tsu moved to sit there. Her papery skin was pale and pulled tight over her brittle bones, her slate grey eyes sunken in. One would never have thought that the woman was only in her early forties. "Allow me to tell you a story…"

Gaara walked in the front doors of the Kazekage Mansion just moments before the order came to bar them. People rushed past him without a word to him, leaving a slight gap of two feet between them and him at the very least. As the young boy walked down a hallway that was seemingly full of Shinobi, they continued giving him this berth. It was like the parting of the seas for Moses and his people, only…they were people and not water, and they were moving away out of fear of his power instead of respect. Also, Gaara had no people nor any desire to lead them somewhere if he did. He was alone. It wasn't like he didn't try to make friends…

"Gaara, come in here." He looked up, wondering who could possibly be talking to him, and saw the smiling face of a young man with short sandy blonde hair and wearing an apron, who was poking his head out of a doorway. "Give me a hand, would you?"

"Uncle Yashamaru!" Gaara ran into the room with a grin. He was so caught up in his gloomy thoughts, he hadn't even considered this guy. As long as he had his uncle…who needed anyone else? The sandstorm he sensed brewing outside and then soon saw blustering towards the village had reached the house, and Yashamaru was trying to block up the windows. Gaara watched him with a frown. "…what can I do?"

"Aahh, I'm almost done anyway, don't worry about it." Yashamaru for some strange reason boarded up the windows (Gaara didn't know about needing to take preventative measures against the glass being shattered by an extreme difference of air pressures on either side) and then sighed as he plopped down on a chair and smiled at Gaara again. "I was starting to get concerned when I realized that was almost on top of the village and you weren't in the house. Surely these storms are dangerous, even for you."

"I don't know, Uncle." Gaara climbed up on the chair and crawled into Yashamaru's lap. He looked at the window, hearing the winds howl outside and then glancing up at his uncle's face. He saw his father walk by the doorway, pausing only for a moment to scowl at the two before moving on.

The next day, Tsubaki woke up bright and early while curled up on her mother's bed. She sat up and immediately went to the window, trying it as she has a hundred times before; like with each and every other one of those times, it didn't budge. The windows of the room had been sealed for years, and the air within was stagnant. At times, it got so stuffy and hot Tsu felt suffocated and sickly herself. Her mother laid on the bed, following the young girl's movements with her eyes alone because she no longer had the strength to move. It felt like hours before Tsubaki heard the click of the bedroom door being unlocked, and then Three poked his head in. He had a head of shaggy dark silver hair that was cut unevenly; some locks reached his collarbone, while others were lucky if they were long enough to reach his ears. His eyes were a greenish slate grey, and he had a wide smile with their mother's long and thin body build.

Tsubaki jumped up and immediately ran out the door past him, not even stopping for breakfast before she darted out of the house and ran down the street. She turned off on the first street she came to, going left before darting into an alley. She met a set of five stairs before she was ready for them however and stumbled before falling into an ungraceful lump of cloth and squirming six-year-old on the sandy ground. When she finally untangled her limbs from her clothes without actually ripping them, she realized she'd caught a flash of red in her peripheral vision.

When she turned, she saw the redheaded boy - a monster, her father had called him - frowning at her, looking amused, concerned, and apprehensive all at once. He didn't speak, and neither did she. In all honesty, neither really knew what to say; Tsubaki because she'd been told two things about him that were the polar opposites of each other, and Gaara because as much as he wanted to speak, he was afraid she would scream about monsters and run away screaming, as those his age and sometimes even older often did. They spent a good two minutes simply staring at each other for a minute, and then Tsubaki flashed him a smile before committing 15% of her Chakra to her hands and then weaving a three sets of six hand signs that Four had shown her, then touching the sands. She changed her chakra nature to a mixture of Earth and Water, then changed its form as it mingled with the sands. At the command of her will, a white camellia with red-tipped petals sprouted from the grains, and she reached to pick the flower and give it to him. But…the sands moved suddenly, lifting the flower and handing it to him before she could.

"It's…how did you do that?" The boy said, holding the stem carefully like he was afraid he would destroy the flower. She stuck her tongue out at him with a giggle and put her hands on her hips, the way she'd seen One do every time someone threw that type of question at her. Only…One had a pretty mane of wavy brown hair that she always tossed back when she did that gesture. Tsu's hair was flat, angel-thin and straight as a board, not to mention as pale a white as a cloud. It would not have been even half as flattering for her to do.

"Mixing Chakra natures is my clan's specialty. I learned Earth and Water so I could create a Flower Release." She pushed her fingers into the sands, and five more of the same flower rose around her hands. She picked them carefully and pulled a ribbon from her pocket, tying them together and holding them out to the boy. "Whad'dya think?"

"How can you do that in the sand? I thought plants needed nutrients…surely delicate flowers like that can't really be made to grow in the desert so easily." The boy took the bouquet and added the flower he was already holding to it and frowned at her again. Tsubaki frowned back and stood up, putting her hands on her hips.

"You just saw me do it. Flowers are my art, I don't care if they don't usually grow in the desert." She grabbed his hand and began walking down the alley, pulling him with her. After a few moments he stopped, and when she turned to ask why, he was staring down at his hand in hers with an odd look on his face. "O-oh! I haven't even introduced myself, have I? I call myself Tsubaki Arashi-Tanuki…though, my birth certificate just says Fifteen."

"I am Gaara." She tugged his hand again, but he refused to budge. She sighed and pulled out a kunai, sitting down on the floor and drawing two vertical lines running parallel to each other, then two horizontal lines running parallel to each other through those lines, until she had a picture that looked like this: #. Then she drew a box around it and held the kunai out to Gaara, who was watching her. "Tsubaki-chan, what are you doing?"

"Drawing a tic-tac-toe game. Here, you start. Pick either X's or O's as your symbol, and I'll use the other." She smiled as he took the kunai and sat down, drawing an X in the corner closest to her left knee. He handed her the kunai, and she drew an O dead center. "You know how to play, right?"

"Um…" Gaara tilted his head to the side, and Tsubaki sighed. She spent a good five or so minutes explaining the basics to him, and then they played for a couple of hours until it came time for Tsubaki to go home. Gaara followed her until they almost reached the house, which was when she turned and told him it might not be a good idea for him to tag along any further.

The next day, Tsubaki rushed out to where she'd found Gaara. It was where they'd agreed to meet back up at, but…he wasn't there. The villagers were gathering in corners and whispering, so she stepped closer and listened carefully. They were always whispering about things, so she usually never paid it any heed, but today…there was something that just seemed wrong. They looked so serious, and their harsh low voices sounded urgently upset.

"…can't believe…"
"…killed his own uncle…"
"…monster!"

What? Tsubaki frowned and ran off down the street, wondering if maybe Gaara had gotten lost or stopped at the wrong spot. She didn't know what they were talking about, but if there was a killer on the loose, then it was a good idea for her to find him and get him somewhere out of the way. "Gaa-kun!"

"Hush, kid! Don't call that demon." A man pulled the back of her shirt and then covered her mouth with his calloused hand, making a show of looking around. She frowned and bit his hand, darting quickly away while he hollered. She ran away again when he made another lunge at her, and finally saw Gaara in her peripherals. He was standing in a dark alleyway, back to her with his head down. Sands swirled wildly around him, which she thought was strange. There was…hardly any breeze at all that day. He didn't seem to have noticed her.

"Gaa-kun! There you are." She ran into the alley, where the man jolted to an abrupt halt behind her. She only glanced back once, and then was throwing her arms around the boy, who stiffened. Sand brushed against her bare legs, and it felt…wet? She looked down, and there was a dark red smear going across her shin. She finally looked at what was in front of him and drew a startled gasp. There on the floor laid the bloody and broken figure of a shinobi, mouth open in a wail of agony that was never able to escape. "G-Gaara…kun…what…"

"He was trying to kill me." A wave of sand knocked her sideways, away from Gaara, and then pinned her to the wall. He turned to her, and she saw blood dripping down over his left eye, coming from where the kanji for "love" was carved into his forehead. His face was stained with tears, though his wide feral eyes had long dried up. He took one step towards her, then another. Gripped in his hands was the bouquet she gave him the day before, covered in blood with all of the stems broken and most of the petals gone from clearly having been thrown, stepped on, and held far too tightly. "They all want me dead, Tsubaki. Even you, huh? That's what this was all about-" he shook the bouquet in his hand at her, and she flinched away, "-just trying to make me care about you so that it would hurt even more when you went for my throat. It's why you didn't want to be seen with me walking home. Too bad for you, someone beat you to the punch last night."

"No, Gaa-k-" The sands suddenly began to crush in on her, pressing her against the wall so tightly she found she couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. A howl of rage sounded from the end of the alley, and they both turned in time to see the man who had followed her finally kick into action, pulling out kunai and launching them at Gaara. The sand that pinned Tsubaki suddenly swept away and wrapped around the man after catching the kunai. He spat blood a moment later, and Gaara smirked before squeezing his hand in a tight fist. Tsubaki…heard every bone in the man's body break. He turned to look at her then, still smiling even though his face was contorted into a mask of fury and despair. "Gaara…"

"Shut up." Sand struck her sideways again, only this time it didn't pin her. It returned to his side, and he turned to face Tsubaki as she slowly forced herself to stand. Her eyes were watering as she started walking towards him again, arms out. Gaara watched her for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes as he gazed down at her feet. Or, more specifically, her left ankle. Sand wrapped around it a moment later, and the leg was tugged right out from under her. She yanked it loose and stood up again, walking towards him. He swung his left arm, and as she suddenly found herself spinning sideways, she blacked out.