The dunes were continuously to moving forward, grains of sand shifting and spinning in the hot desert wind. The same thing happened every day. The sun would rise, the sands would shift, the sun would set, the sands would shift. There was never a dune in the same place that was the same size as the one before it.
It would piss Kankuro off to no extent.
All the puppet master wanted in his life was a little stability; a foundation. A little piece of knowledge that would let him know that there was something constant and strong in his life that would keep him afloat amidst the ever changing desert sand.
Yes, Temari and Gaara would always be there for him when he needed it. Yes, his village loved him and appreciated everything he does to help them. Of course, there was always the fact that he was the commanding general of the entire Suna ninja force with the help of big sister Temari, the ever skilled tactition. A mostly cushy job, one where everyone listened to him and trusted him. It wasn't such a shabby pay day every week either.
Kankuro didn't have to do much at all with his job. Temari, the overbearing hound, would do most of his desk work in his stead since "men can't do a woman's job effectively." How organizing a battle plan, separating ninja into squadrons and picking new candidates for chunnin exams and such was a woman's job, Kankuro hadn't a clue, but he honestly couldn't be bothered. And the best part of it all? Kankuro didn't have to leave his chair until a war broke out which the puppeteer didn't seem to see in the near future. After the conclusion of the Fourth Great Ninja war last year, all he had to do was sit around and drink his life away. What a way to live.
Where did all the excitement go? Ever since Gaara had become Kazekage, everything seemed to slow down and Kankuro's life had gone down the shitter in return. The long time adrenaline junky puppeteer didn't have any missions to go on or girls to court. He didn't have a gennin team that he could boss around or academy children to teach. His life consisted of sitting at a desk, signing bits of shriveled up paper and looking out the window at the shifting dunes.
Maybe stability wasn't something he needed in his life after all. Maybe it was just the opposite.
"Get up off your damn ass, you lazy baka! We have work to do!"
Temari's voice came rolling ever so loudly into his ears as a pillow came down on his head with enough monstrous force to rival Hokage-hime, Tsunade. Kankuro didn't even bother to cover up. It was the same thing every morning. One man's pain is same man's cue to wake up every morning.
Seeing no response in her brother, Temari growled and lifted her younger brother up by his shirt collar. The puppeteer glared into her sister's own beady eyes, his hair in disarray. "I don't want to."
Temari gave a sinister look. "What."
Kankuro cleared his throat and shoved her off, brushing his fingers through his hair and shaking it out gently. "I. Don't. Want. To. What isn't to understand Temari, huh?"
Bam. Another pillow to the face, this time, causing his head to spin to the side with a hell of a whip lash to tag along with it.
"What's not to understand? Kankuro, you haven't gotten up before eleven o'clock for the past month. You drink enough to rival Tsunade-sama's alcoholism, for Kami's sake! When was the last time you even touched one of your puppets? Karasu, Kuroari, and Sanshouo must miss their master terribly." Temari's voice shivered with rage. "It's time to recheck your priorities."
Kankuro rubbed his face, purple smearing across his fingers. Crap. He had forgotten to take his paint off last night. He was pretty surprised that his favorite call girl didn't take it off for him when they were playing around. He didn't know that she liked a man in war paint. Maybe he should do it more often. "Priorities? What priorities Tema? Tell me what I have to live for. You're the oldest, the wisest. TELL me because I sure as fuck can't figure it out."
The statement struck Temari like a steel rod. Priorities? What her brother had to live for? She bit the bottom of her lip inside her mouth and sighed hotly. She couldn't keep telling him the same thing over and over again about how he owed his brother and his village for their constant support and it was his duty to help them in any way possible. No, Kankuro was too smart to fall for the same thing over and over again. She may be able to pull that stunt over some chunin and some lower rank jonin, but not her little brother.
"I don't know Kankuro, but you better find some quickly. Maybe a girlfriend? Those usually straighten people out pretty quickly," Temari smirked into her fingers.
Kankuro sighed in return. How many times had he heard this conversation? "I don't need a girlfriend."
He sure as hell didn't. The man could care for himself. He could barely deal with Temari half the time and if half of the girls in this damn village were as bad as his sister, Kankuro was in a heap of trouble. He'd make sure he'd die alone before he married one of them.
Temari shrugged her shoulders and her heels clicked against the floor as she started out of the room. "Well, now that you're up and in such a chipper mood Kankuro, it's time to sign some papers. Yay!"
The puppet master groaned and flopped back down onto his bed, his large hand covering his eyes from the sun through the balcony of his room. "Oh, your sarcasm is just riveting in the morning, Temari."
The door clicked closed behind her with a satisfying smirk to go along with it. Kankuro stared at the handle, his beady eyes glaring darts through the wooden handle. "Bitch."
Fully dressed, cleaned, and repainted in his traditional kabuki style, Kankuro yawned as he stepped into his office. The ever present sun shone eerily onto his cherry desk, heating it enough to char the wood. The sight of a stack of paper his own height made the twenty two year old groan in disgust. Big shot Gaara seemed to be just as pissed as Temari at this point if he was throwing this many missions onto his desk. Usually, his little brother would give him a quarter of the work and Temari would just end up doing it for him just because he was slow.
It seemed he would be on his own for the day.
Plopping down in his chair, Kankuro picked up a brush and ink, quickly signing away at a few genin missions. D ranks seemed to be more exciting at this point then his job was. He would rather catch cats and dogs, running through the streets and causing a ruckus than sigh papers. With the hot sun beating down on his hood behind him, Kankuro threw it off in a sweat and continued to sign away like a machine. He didn't bother looking through what the missions entitled or if they were inappropriate. No. He just wanted to get through it so he could go on his lunch brake and down another bottle of sake.
By the time that the sun had reached it's high point, Kankuro had made it to the S rank missions. The fun stuff. The things that the puppet master missed the most. He took more time with these missions, looking through them and fingering at the edges of the papers fondly. There was nothing like a good old assassination mission; he would even deal with annoying reconnaissance missions right now. Only a select few were allowed to pursue these missions. HE was usually one of those people.
Now, all he was was a young alcoholic tethered to a hot desk by an ink pen.
Goddamn he missed it. So much in fact, he pressed down too hard on his brush and the ink spewed all across the mission report.
Cursing, Kankuro reached for a paper towel to wipe the excess ink from the piece of parchment below him. Shimmying other files out of the way from danger, his fingers grabbed at the cloth and wiped quickly. His eyes scanned around the papers to see if the ink had spilled anywhere else before they locked down on a single mission folder. A red tab stuck out from the side.
Suicide mission. The ultimate sacrifice.
His dark eyes were drawn to the thin folder, the only one of it's kind that already seemed to be approved by Temari without his knowledge. Why in the world was it on HIS pile then? Did Gaara like teasing him with missions that he wasn't allowed to go on any longer? Was this the youngest sibling's sick, twisted way of getting back at him for being so lazy? By reminding the puppet master he had the power to send his fellow shinobi to their deaths?
He was doing a damn good job of it.
Ignoring the old, ink stained file, Kankuro reached greedily for the thick folder and opened it gingerly with shaking fingers.
Mission: Retrieve the 'Kugutsu no Jutsu' scroll of Sasori of the Sand.
That was all that was on the single paper.
Kankuro's grip tightened on the folder. So, they wanted old man Sasori's old tricks huh? Probably to teach the younger children about puppetry to make more little demon spawn like himself. If that was the case, why didn't they just ask him to teach them? He surly would have if it meant breeding more puppeteers. Only a few select people with perfect chakra control could do it of course, but that didn't mean that there weren't some freak children with the natural ability to master it. Just look at that pink haired girl from Konoha. Sakura, was it? She went from a nothing to certainly something with a little practice.
The puppeteer couldn't help but give a shudder. Gaara was sending these guys to their deaths under his (or rather, Temari's) approval. Kankuro knew things about that scroll from a circle of the few elderly puppeteers left in Sunagakure. Supposedly, the scroll was hidden with a group of rogue ninja in the desert that had traded their leader's wife for the scroll. Sasori had harnessed her body into one of his puppets which Kankuro was sure Sakura and Chiyo had killed while saving Gaara. But that was beyond the point.
These people were as dangerous as anything. Savages. They created their own moving vehicles that was activated by moving the sands and winds to travel across the shifting terrain. With Earth and Wind elements on their sides, they would be exceedingly deadly.
But of course, there was more.
They attacked using puppet jutsus most likely learned from Sasori's ancient scroll which could mean forbidden jutsus of some kind were being utilized. It was only a matter of time before a retrieval team would be sent to try and find it, but only their own heavily damaged bodies would be found weeks later in the ever suffocating sands.
It's a shame that no one knows much about them. We don't even have any idea of what kind of puppets they use or any of their other techniques since they kill everything in fucking sight! Kankuro let out a loud sigh and snarled before hurling the folder back on the pile with the others.
Maybe he should just turn into a rogue. How bad could it possibly be? You get to go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted, kill whoever you wanted and still be able to get an adrenaline rush every single day. Gaara could turn it into a red tab mission; he could get information about the rogues and their lives, destroy the damned place from the inside out and come back as a hero. That life was a kind of life that Kankuro wanted to get back.
That was a life he was going to return to even if it killed him.
The days went on in the same monotony as they had before. Wake up, work, drink, bitch at Temari, get bitched back at, drink, sex, drink one last time and sleep. Repeat. Kankuro was even starting to get himself sick with the complete normalcy of the days. His desk job was going to drive him insane with the amount of paperwork that he had.
The puppeteer was staring out of his office window again towards the landscape of the desert. Nothing changed. It never did. It was still as tan and dune-riddled as it was before. Why in the world did he bother to look out of it every single day? What could he possibly be looking for?
With a sigh, Kankuro threw his hood on the ground and rubbed a hand through his hair. He must have looked like shit. He didn't bother brushing his hair that morning or applied the normal amount of war paint that he usually did. He was dressed in crumpled sweat pants and a simple black shirt with long sleeve fishnets underneath. He couldn't bother to dress in full gear. Nothing was happening that would require him to get into action anyway.
While signing papers and reading missions from front to back, Kankuro felt his eyes flutter closed. The weeks of partying and lack of sleep were catching up to him. He thought that he would have been used to it by now. After all, only about five hours of sleep should be enough for a shinobi of his stature to be able to recover and recuperate in full after a night of fun. It shouldn't impede him this much.
A slight rumble was felt through the floor of his office building, his eyes coming open slowly. He couldn't tell if it was coming from outside or from inside, whether it was induced by nature itself or man-made. There was definitely chakra in it, but it was frightened; almost as if Mother Earth was trembling underneath his feet from three stories above ground.
It was different.
Slowly, brown eyes narrowed as he reached down to pull his hood up over his ears. Quickly, he lunged for his scrolls and placed the familiar weight on his back. He had to admit, having his puppets back with him was exhilarating. It meant that shit was going down and he was finally going to be able to kick some ass. All he had to do was wait for the signal. So that's what he did.
He sat on the edge of his desk.
And waited.
Finally, after ten minutes, a young chunin shot through his door with a pained expression on his face. "Kankuro-dono! Suna is being attacked! Kazakage-dono requests your presence immediately!"
"Finally. Took you long enough. I'm heading there now. Send all captains over to Kazakage-dono's office and I'll handle them there," he smirked out to the boy and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
First chapter is done!
This story is a KankuroxOc story. Poor Kankuro just can't get any love in any of the manga :(
The Sand-Sibs are the most interesting characters in the entire series, I personally believe, and they don't get enough recognition. So, why not make a Kanky-centered fic since there aren't many out there that aren't about him and Kiba doing it. xD
So, I hope you all stick around :3 The next chapter should be up soon!
Love, your faithful author,
Epsilion 3