I've been sitting on this little idea for awhile. Finally, I've managed to get around to it. For those who prefer the eldest of the Sand Siblings (such as myself), this is about her and how she grew up. One wonders what it must be like for "being the big sister" to mean something entirely different from "playing the big sister". What impacts her? How has she impacted her siblings? What has she seen that they haven't? How does she view them? All these questions I hope to answer in my own, intimate, hopefully enjoyable interpretation. Of course, even though this story focuses on her life, there are also segments about her brothers, often in third-person (like this prologue with Kankurou and Gaara, for instance). Sit back, enjoy, and prepare yourselves for:

Blow Them Away

Prologue

"You know that if she catches you, she'll kill you, right?" said a stoic, morbid-sounding boy. He sat there, arms crossed, looking at the back of a chubby, preoccupied boy a couple years his senior, who was standing in the threshold of what looked to be a girl's room, wiggling his fingers with such concentration that one could immediately see he was controlling something. The younger of the two sighed.

"Hey, idiot, you heard what I said, right?"

The older of the two turned, his face intricately patterned with red paint and thoroughly annoyed.

"I heard you the first time, okay? I'm busy, and she won't catch me. Not this time. You just keep watch, Gaara, got it?"

Gaara glared. Then he smirked darkly.

"If I get in trouble, I will kill you."

His older brother turned around to face him, laughing rather nervously. Gaara smiled too, but he raised his hand then shut it tight for emphasis. Kankurou shuddered and returned to his current preoccupation; he got the message.

"Alright, just keep watch. I promise she won't catch us."

Kankurou spent his free time (that is to say, when training, eating, and the village girls were not a part of his agenda) partaking in what one could say was a ritual carried over from his younger years. In fact, so devoted to this ritual was he that it almost single-handedly helped him to hone his own craft, for he and Gaara were shinobi. What was this ritual, you ask? Trying to steal something juicy from his older sister's room.

The hierarchy of the sibling structure is a strange thing indeed, so before we continue with this story, one must understand several things. With or without love, sibling relationships are chaotic. The eldest is given the greatest responsibility, the youngest the most attention. As such, age oftentimes throws siblings at odds with each other, the younger ones harassing the older ones because they can get away with it, and the older ones harassing the younger ones out of jealousy or spite, whichever you prefer. Of course, this is the ideal sibling structure. Descending down the ladder of chaos to the next rung, we come to the oftentimes misunderstood middle child. If at any time we have one or more middle children, it is often the case that they are neither heralded as the most responsible nor spoiled as the most in need of nurturing, so they hold the eldest and the youngest in contempt. They are either prone to prove how grown they are by trying to hang out with the elders or prone to trying to vie for attention with the younger ones. Once again, this is still in the ideal sibling structure, a part of what can be called the functional family. Kankurou's family, however, was not functional.

In this particular family, the youngest had taken his mother's life at birth, and killed many neighbors and friends of the family; he was not locked up, either, for he was possessed by a powerful priest that appeared in a demon form. The eldest one's greatest responsibility was ultimately reduced to looking after the two younger ones, so that the youngest did not kill the middle; other than that, she was often overlooked. The youngest had taken her responsibility from her, for he was the village's trump card. The son of the Kazekage, the leader of the Hidden Village of Sand, even though he was feared, the village still looked to him to execute important missions and (as he pleased, so that they would be spared) important people (or just any inconsequential non-member of the village who crossed his path). Because he got stronger with each kill, and because they had difficulty killing him before he became maddened with bloodlust, not to mention that politically they were weak (for a hidden ninja village's greatness could only be measured by its popularity when it came to clients for missions), the village reluctantly fell back on him, relied on him, as their feared and unfortunate savior. The middle child was reluctantly charged the family's successor, however, for the surviving father despised the fact that his firstborn was a girl.

In fact, the dysfunction of this family greatly owed itself to the father, who joined his youngest son and the priest, who sacrificed his wife for that purpose, who ignored his eldest child and only daughter, and who looked on his chubby middle child with contempt; this was not a good father, not in the least. "This is one screwed-up family," one might say (I know you're thinking this; just admit it), even though we all know that demons aren't real, babies can't kill, and ninjas are still beings with human limitations. Wink. Wink. But anyway, the surprising thing about this is that the sibling structure still pretty much remained the same.

Kankurou, the middle child, harassed his brother and sister whenever he could; of course, the bloodthirstiness of the younger made him pick his battles carefully. The younger, Gaara, still harassed the older two (just because he could, even if no one would back him), and the eldest, Temari, distanced herself from both as far as her body and the village could allow.

When he was young, Kankurou would often try (and fail miserably) to sneak into his sister's room. Being that she had so much not going for her even with astonishingly good looks (who would have thought that boys would run from the sister of a monster? So much for marriage…), she developed a rather… unpleasant temper, and Kankurou learned this firsthand.

Temari was always an avid student, both practically and academically. In fact, if Gaara hadn't been so fearsome and powerful, and if she didn't have such a piss pot of a father, she would have been deemed potentially great, and she would have been given all the training she needed to surpass the greatest ninjas of her village, especially her father, but this is neither here nor there at the moment. What is important is that Temari was good at taijutsu (hand-to-hand combat), ninjutsu (specialty techniques) and setting up traps, all of which were helped along immensely by her brother's constant intrusions upon her dominion of privacy.

Kankurou learned that doing impolite things like overlooking a female's privacy, especially Temari's, hurt. Very much so. Even when it was accidental. But what he didn't learn was the most important thing, which was not to do it again. After that first time, the fact that he was so negatively received made it all the more appealing to him. Time and time again, he tried to sneak into that room while she slept, only to trip a trap or just to awaken her—she was an extraordinarily light sleeper, especially good for a potentially great shinobi—and he would either come out with a huge burn on his rear end (Temari preferred explosive tags for traps; keep in mind these were mild explosions; they were in her room, for goodness sake, although it's very likely that she wasn't keeping her brother's good health in mind when she set them) or huge bumps and bruises which evidenced in front of his peers (ie., the boys, the gang, whichever you prefer to call it, jan) that he'd not only been beaten by his sister, but that he'd gotten whipped by a girl.

On many occasions, not only did Kankurou attempt to get creative with his intrusions (using Henge no Jutsu to disguise himself as her father was one such practice), but Temari got creative with trapping him as well. Once, Kankurou stepped on a summoning seal camouflaged into the floor by Chakra. The next thing he knew, he was outside on a mound somewhat far from the village, staring at sandy nothingness. Then, he saw only black nothingness. This was because Temari was standing behind him, looking malevolent and sadistic, knuckles cracked, and her punches were so hard she could knock him out with ease. He woke up several hours later, when dinner was over (his father enforced the idea that if one misses dinner for no good reason, one doesn't deserve to eat at all).

But this was when he was younger, from the 5-8 year-old period. Kankurou couldn't help that. He was relatively strong, but she had a year on him, and he was lazy in the ways of fighting. He didn't care for hitting a moving target (although pounding on something that couldn't move always amused him… too bad he couldn't take those aggressions out on his psycho brother; well, that's what he thought, at least), and Temari was always training both mind and body; he was inferior in every way, except stealth. Being mindful of how much it hurt to get caught, the one useful thing he learned was not to. But getting caught meant he couldn't run, and he'd been caught every single time he attempted to sneak in her room. For most people, if you can't do something, you either continue doing it and failing or you stop, but shinobi have more options. If something is obstructing your path, use ninjutsu to get around it.

To and for that purpose, Kankurou honed puppetry. His friends laughed at him, calling it cowardly, frivolous, and feminine (because the Chakra connection came through the facial paint). Temari snorted at it, making wisecracks about Kankurou trying to entertain his enemies to death, but he could see and appreciate the sheer usefulness and ingenuity behind this oft overlooked, underrated technique. Of course, for a lazy boy such as himself, he had almost no Chakra capacity to move objects for long. This put him in quite the dilemma, since Puppetry no Jutsu demanded huge amounts of Chakra from its control and constant concentration.

Although he disliked it, this forced him to train more. He had to leave off from sneaking into Temari's room for a good while until he was ready (he disliked this too, but he hoped she'd forget about it if he stopped for a few years; she didn't, but that's neither here nor there). He would practice taijutsu with his friends, since his father would have little if nothing to do with him (ironic, since his father settled on him as the suitable family heir). He used this to build his stamina, and continued using basic ninjutsu and genjutsu (illusory) techniques to increase his Chakra capacity. Before long, he had significantly increased his Chakra capacity, stamina, control, and concentration, which allowed him to move objects. Even his friends, father and sister took notice of his improvement. Heh, so much for femininity and mere entertainment now; well, that's what he thought at least. At last, he'd found something in which he had talent.

Next came creating a puppet. At this point in time, the siblings' father, seeing some potential in all three of his children (though he would never admit that to them), felt it a good decision to place them on a genin (beginner-level ninja) team. He put them under the attentive care of his wise and closest friend, Baki. Baki, who was almost the opposite of their crude and corrupt father, was very helpful, insightful, and attentive to their needs. He would help Temari with her training, and he was one of the few people who genuinely didn't hate Gaara, so when Kankurou came to him, asking for his help with a puppet, he immediately set to work.

Baki read books and scrolls alongside the genin in his charge, hopefully trying to uncover things that would contribute toward a decent, efficient puppet. At last, they set to work. At the next shipment of wood, Kankurou used his savings to buy what he needed, and set to work. He and Baki worked for two days and nights, when they could spare the time, to construct a puppet. When done, even Baki had to say that the two of them outdid themselves on the task, for the puppet seemed topnotch and was excellently crafted at that. Kankurou, overwhelmed by his accomplishment, named the puppet Karasu.

With this, Kankurou returned to attempting his favorite hobby, and Temari was waiting. He never did achieve his goals, because she was always cautious, but getting there was certainly more than half the fun. She proved a worthy opponent, forcing him to up his game with each encounter. Soon, before long, she couldn't touch him even when he failed, for he'd learned how to disguise his precious Karasu as himself, so once the disguise faltered, he would be long gone, and she couldn't chase him well, because her weapon was to heavy and if she tried to attack him within the house with such a destructive tool… you get the idea. Also, Kankurou was no longer that little, pesky brat. She could still beat him, but he became a decent fighter on his own. Nowhere as fast as she was, but she soon learned that her father's hits weren't the only painful ones. Once, after she looked over him, victorious and catching her breath, she asked why he couldn't be like Gaara, who kept to himself, before she stalked off leaving a beaten but smiling little brother behind.

And so, we return to the present after this long allusion, and I hope I have not bored you with this information, but this is, after all, a prologue.

With their father missing and Temari off training more than usual after her defeat at the Chuunin exam, Kankurou had more opportunities with better chances of success, and Gaara, after his endeavor with one Uzumaki Naruto, had become less morbid, although he retained the same, grim sense of humor. To keep himself preoccupied, for deciding to try to be nicer didn't stop Shukaku from taking over, he decided to get to know his brother and sister better. Surprisingly, he derived amusement from Kankurou's practices, in the little brother you're-gonna-get-in-trouble way.

Also, deep down inside, so deep that not even he would recognize it, he was hoping for success, as though Kankurou were doing what he himself wanted to do, which he could have, since the sand in his gourd yielded more alternatives and was far more easy to conceal and recall. So, he looked on, wondering how long it would take for the sound of Temari's footsteps or an explosion to make Kankurou retreat. Just then, the most surprising thing happened. Kankurou grinned.

"I've got something," said the older one, looking triumphant. Not even Gaara could suppress his curiosity. Before he knew it, he was walking forward, trying to shove past Kankurou to see what Karasu had managed to retrieve.

When he could see into the room, he saw Karasu holding something, but he couldn't make heads or tails of what it was because, as he had thought at the time, that damned puppet was in the way. Then, Karasu turned, and Gaara's face paled (I mean, went paler than usual, which is strange, considering that he lives in the middle of the desert). Of all the things over which to announce victory, Kankurou had to get that.

No… thought Gaara.

It was Temari's diary. Just how long did Kankurou think he could hold onto that before Temari realized what he'd done? For a brief moment, Gaara considered that he might actually die at Temari's hands. After all, a little boy with red Chakra had managed to topple over a giant sand monster in less than ten minutes. After experiencing that shock to his ego (back then completely and utterly evil) he realized that, hey, he lives in a ninja world. Anything's possible.

He tried to hide his guilt, but the sound of familiar footsteps made him considerably uneasy. If it were difficult for Gaara to act normal, Kankurou had almost forgotten how to use Puppetry no Jutsu; in fact, he'd just about forgotten that he was a puppeteer, and a ninja for that matter.

Gaara, upon seeing this proceeded to smack his brother upside the head—the only thing he thought would bring Kankurou back to his senses. It worked.

"Ow!" whined Kankurou, looking murderous now. If there were one thing he could not stand, it was being pushed around by that little runt he had for a brother. Then, when his intelligence crept in and he remembered that he couldn't do anything about it, he realized where he was, who he was, and what he had to do. With a well-placed poof! Karasu disappeared with the diary to a safer place, and just in time, too. Temari had just appeared around the corner, not noticing the two of them trying to look innocent in front of her because she was looking at the ground, deep in thought.

When she arrived at her bedroom door, she noticed two pairs of sandals that, if she remembered correctly, were not supposed to be there. She looked up to find Gaara and a petrified Kankurou, looking right back at her.

"Oi," she said nonchalantly. "What are you doing by my bedroom door?"