It was a dark and stormy night.

Rain was uncommon; you could possibly even use the word rare, in Suna. They were so far out in the middle of the desert that there were no trees to support air currents and cloud movement. But that night a torrential downpour was occurring. Lightning flashed and danced in jagged streaks across the sky. Thunder rumbled, echoing off of buildings deep into the Village of Sand.

Kankuro knew that Gaara, his little brother, the Kazekage, was probably lying on his bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling and watching nature's electricity flirt with the shadows. Gaara would be wearing his brooding face.

Temari, he could bet, was calming herself down or cleaning something. She had never dealt well with thunderstorms. Kankuro could just picture his sister. Her hair would be down and the fishnet would be discarded into a monstrous laundry pile. She would be wearing lounge pants and a tank top, sporting headphones as her only accessory. Her hands would be kept busy by repairing any damages made to her massive fan. She might be, if not caring for her weapon, washing her brothers' dirty dishes. Even though she pretended and tried not to show it, she really did love Kankuro and Gaara.

Kankuro couldn't be kept in the house on a night like that like his brother and sister. He was far too antsy; his mind far too preoccupied. Temari could only shake her head at her younger brother, watching him rip open the door and run into the horrendous night. She had learned long ago that Kankuro was unpredictable and had stopped trying to understand his enigmatic decisions.

The puppet master bolted to somewhere; anywhere. He had been so determined to get to a place that he had forgotten his hat and makeup at home. 'Oh well,' he thought. They wouldn't have done him much good in this weather. So he had left with only his black shirt, pants, and sandals.

Kankuro kept up his fast pace, letting the standing and growing water splash up to his shins. The raindrops were cutting at his face and shoulders like razor blades. He could tell his upper layer of skin was going to hurt later on.

Kankuro couldn't explain how he was feeling. He knew that he was sick and tired of his monotonous life, of being controlled and manipulated like all ninja are. 'Just like Karasu,' he thought bitterly, reminded of his puppet. All he had been doing for the past four months was the same routine. Go on a mission or two. The same sort of mission, mind you. Stay at home. Eat. Sleep. Shower. Shit. His seventeenth birthday had come and gone without too much of a fuss. Temari had attempted to make a cake for the occasion, but Kankuro could feel his throat getting tight as he stared down at the pitiful little cake. He knew that under the messily-spread lavender frosting and the three candles Temari had found mixed in with crayons and scissors was something blackened and distorted. But one look at Temari's hopeful, proud, and pleading face could have made him eat the whole thing. It also broke his heart. So when Kankuro couldn't help crying, Temari sighed and shoved the cake down the drain, defeated, as Gaara said, "Wimp." Kankuro never could tell Temari why he couldn't eat her cake.

Slowing down his pace so that his feet dragged and trudged through the muddy street, Kankuro knew his life was a mess. He had no friends. He was lonely. He was moody. His siblings couldn't understand him. He was close to suffering a midlife-crisis at seventeen. If there was one word that could describe him, it would be pathetic.

Some lightning streaked across the bleak sky. Kankuro wearily raised his head. Something was resting in the middle of the street about one hundred feet from him. He walked closer to the blob, apathetic and curious both at the same time. His brown, wet hair clung to his head, making it itch. He scratched at his forehead. When he was about twenty feet away from the blob he realized that it was a person.

The person was sitting, facing him, with their legs stretched out in front of them, their feet at a right angle from the ground. It had its hands resting delicately on its lap. He could tell that it had long hair, but from his distance he still could not determine the gender. After all, he did know many men with femininely long hair. The person was literally covered with dark mud from head to toe. Their clothes clung to their body. On closer inspection, Kankuro saw that it was a skinny girl. As she sat in the puddle of sloppy mud, letting the rain smother her, Kankuro approached apprehensively. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, her white teeth standing out in comparison against her muddy skin.

She opened her eyes and closed her mouth all in one movement. Her head angled upwards to look at him. Rain dripped in her blue eyes. He was now maybe, not even, a foot from her. He stood above her and looked down at her. They stared at each other in silence, listening to the rain pour down and the lightning crack and the thunder roll. "What are you doing?" Kankuro asked. She blinked. "Sitting," she replied. "And yourself?" "Standing." The girl wiped mud from her lips and smiled. "That's a nice answer." Kankuro shook his head rapidly to release some water from his hair, only to have it soak in the rain again. "Thanks. Care to tell me why you're sitting by yourself in the middle of a storm, covered in mud?" Although it didn't look like she was pondering an answer, she took a minute before answering him. "I suppose I'm emptying myself and filling myself up at the same time."

"Oh?" Kankuro said. She smiled again. "I'm letting out all of the bad things in my life and replacing it with good things. I just moved here, you see." Kankuro didn't say anything. He merely nodded. 'I suppose it's hard to let things out when you're empty inside,' he thought. All of a sudden, the girl brought her right hand from her lap, cupped it, dug it into the sopping earth, and flung mud at Kankuro. It hit his face from his nose to his right ear. He stepped back, startled. "Don't wipe it off," she said. "You looked like you needed to be emptied and filled up."

The mud dripped down his chin, running down his neck into his clothes. It tingled a little bit. He immediately countered her statement. "How can I let something out if there isn't anything to get rid of?" She started to laugh. It was soft and friendly. "There's always something that can be let out," she said. He was going to say something, but he stopped himself. "Oh." This girl was very strange. "Would you...would you mind if I sat down with you?" he asked. "I wouldn't mind at all," she replied. And so he sat down across from her, his legs straight out and his feet at a right angle from the ground. "My name's Kankuro." She looked at him almost shyly; staring at him with her blue eyes. "I'm Ko."

Ko reached over to him and pulled his sandals off. He glanced at her feet. She was barefoot too. She was wearing shorts that ended at her mid thigh and a fitted t-shirt. Their color was impossible to tell. Her hair was long and wavy and pushed out of her face. She would probably be washing mud out of her hair for weeks. Ko took her foot and pressed it against his. For some reason, Kankuro didn't pull away. "So Kankuro," she said. "Care to tell me why you're sitting with me in the middle of a storm, covered in mud?" Kankuro smiled at her. He was emptying his emptiness and filling it up with something else. Something...nice.

So when Suna woke up to find the Kazekage's eccentric brother sitting in the middle of the street with a female stranger, both caked in mud, Kankuro was happy to say he didn't care. He and Ko stood up. The mud cracked. It began to chip off. Ko scooted up to him and smiled. She cleared some mud off his cheek before she kissed it and walked away, leaving bits and pieces of her mud shell behind.

Thunder rumbled from the dark morning clouds.

Kankuro smiled.

It was supposed to rain again that night.