A/N: I'm sorry there's no differentiation between when they speak English and when they speak Japanese, but it should either be obvious or shouldn't matter. If it does make it difficult to read, I'll see what I can do. (Oh, and also, the fact Gaara initially doesn't understand a word of what people are saying and then starts to gradually catch more and more of it until he's following the conversation is partially my oversight, but also (and I am going with this) because you sort of need to warm up and get into a still-being-learnt foreign language when you're listening to people speak before you can understand what they're saying, in my experience.) And… please forgive me on Shukaku's language… it's Shukaku. And (yes, yes, this A/N is long) Gaara assumes Violet is English because she is speaking English, as he hasn't been paying much attention to the other candidates. I do know she is in fact American.

Gaara blinked. The man in front of him was not as tall as he wanted to be, not as good with people as he needed to be and definitely irritating. It was a pity the Chuunin exams had been a couple of weeks ago, or this man would not have been a man anymore. Indeed, this man would not have been a human being anymore. Perhaps not even recognisable as a human being anymore, unless you happened to be a medical student or perhaps a taxidermist.

If Gaara had been anyone else (indeed, behind him, Baki seemed to be reconsidering his offer of parenthood), he would have been sincerely considering walking back out through the gates. Then acquiring a blowtorch and a canister of petrol. As it was, Gaara simply blinked.

All around him, children sneered and glared and gaped. Gaara turned. Blinked. But that was all he did.

The man - in the top-hat, the goggles and the gloves - looked down at them. Awkwardly.

(Baki, behind Gaara, subtly readied his kunai. It would not work to bring down the boy should he attack, but it would distract. For a moment. Probably. Hopefully. Most likely not. In any case, they couldn't kill the chocolatier on live TV. It wouldn't be diplomatic.)

Up on the makeshift stage... in fact, it was a stage, since it had just been performed upon... the man in the ridiculous top-hat smiled stiffly, and said,

"G-"

Something. In English. The English dictionary in Gaara's pocket laughed tauntingly and jabbed its hard edges into his thigh as if to say 'Ha! What a silly little boy! Doesn't even know our language!' From inside his head, there came a sarcastic clapping noise.

Well, well... slurred the Ichibi, smugly. I told you.

Go away thought Gaara. You are irritating.

To either side of him, the children and their parents seemed to be at a loss for what to do. Apparently they'd already labelled the man an incurable-

Nutcase. Mental fuckup. Whack-job two twigs short of a basket case. Congratulations, Spazimodo! You seem to have found a frien-

Shut up.

You should have studied harder last night. Maybe you could've talked to him about your similarities.

...Shut. Up.

Like the colour red, for example...

...

Or your terminal fear of rejection.

"Shut up..."

There was a pause in the speech. No, the speech had finished. There was a pause in the man's talking. He had been talking for too long - it was a rather a relief - but the eyes burning holes in Gaara's line of sight made it less so.

"If there could be no mumbling on the tour because I can't stand it when people mumble," said the man, eyeing him up and down, but generally looking nervous. It was not something Gaara was unused to.

Behind him, Baki shifted. He wanted him to say something.

"I apologise," he said, flatly. It was the one phrase Baki had drummed and drummed into him before they left, and his accent (although mostly atrocious for other set phrases) was barely noticeable except in a practised sort of way. "I cannot speak yet of good English."

The man on the stage smiled a tight sort of smile and waited.

Gaara waited back.

There was an unannounced staring contest for a few seconds. Then Baki, behind him, spoke. Baki was better at English. It was the most widely-spoken second-language in the world, and it had been a requirement for passing the jounin exam.

"Please forgive my son for interrupting," he said, bowing. "He was merely expressing the pain of his headache and it will not happen again."

Willy Wonka's eye and mouth twitched in unison. It appeared he wasn't sure of what to make of his tourists quite yet.

"Ok then, on with the tour..." he said, and swished between melted doll corpses up through the factory entrance, his contest winners following him like uncertain ducks.

Bet you didn't expect this, said Shukaku from the insides of his mind.

Still irritated, Gaara ignored him and slipped through into the darkness ahead.

...

The corridor was unexpected. For one thing, instead of being cool, air-conditioned beige (like all of the buildings in Suna) and having a slight corporate feel (like a factory should), it was almost tropical - not humid, but not arid either, and very far from damp - and childishly decorated in red and silvery-blue, which did not match in the slightest. It was, in fact, very odd.

"What did Mr. Wonka just say?" asked Baki, coming to walk beside him, and lowering his voice to almost a whisper. It wasn't expectant so much as accusatory.

You're fucked.

I know.

"He said to unwrap."

"No, he said to take off. Close enough. Take off what, however."

"..."

"Gaara."

"..."

"The word is 'coats'."

Gaara, the word is 'coats'.

I know the word is coats.

No you don't. What's the word?

...Cots.

...Cats.

…Coats.

...Goats.

...Coats. It's coats. It's coats.

"Gaara."

"Why are you talking about coats?" came a voice from next to them. A voice wearing a child's fur jacket and a look of disgust. From in front of them came a long, irritated sigh and an abrupt halt.

"Is there anything you wish to discuss with the class?" snapped Mr. Wonka. The eyes of the child beside them flickered impatiently over to the noise, and then back to Gaara. Gaara's eyes narrowed further. More English.

"I talk coats with my father," he said. "I get better my English like this."

There was an icy pause, almost as if an entire party of people had collectively decided their toleration of his presence was going to stop.

It's not just me, said Shukaku.

Shut up thought Gaara.

In front of the group, the purple-suited man took stock of Gaara with narrowed eyes. Then he smirked.

"You must be Gaara Ternooki," he said, pointing a sharp glove, as if his knowing Gaara's fake name and pronouncing it badly would show him to be intelligent and smart beyond all further speculation. "You're the boy who knocked out the interviewer and threw his camera out of a window."

"No," said Gaara, after a slight pause. "That is my brother."

Mr. Wonka frowned, and then snorted dismissively and waved a hand.

"You look alike," he said, and turned.

A second later, a small, blue thing grabbed him round his waist in a sudden, painful-looking version of the Heimlich manoeuvre.

It's called a hug, dimwit.

I will drag your liver out through your nose with chopsticks and eat it with teriyaki sauce.

"Mr. Wonka! I'm Violet Beauregarde!" it said, jumping backward and leaving Mr. Wonka with an expression even Gaara could sympathise with.

Perhaps only.

"Oh," said the man. "I don't care."

"Well," said the girl, "you should care-"

Why should he care? thought Gaara, irritably. You are a shrew.

Shukaku laughed, slamming a hand mentally into his back.

Girls, it laughed. Scare 'em, rape 'em, kill 'em. All they're good for.

No.

Scare 'em, kill 'em, rape 'em.

No.

Rape 'em, scare 'em, kill 'em.

No.

Rape 'em.

No.

Kill 'em.

NO.

Come on brat. My balls are withering away here. They're so blue they're practically black.

Shut up. I do not want to know about the state of your balls.

Prude. Kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em. Do it the fucking civilian way. Split their head against a stone and turn their skin inside out.

"-type of wart you get on the bottom of your foot," the man was saying, giving a forced giggle that set Gaara's teeth on edge.

Her name's Veruca, said Shukaku. She's from England.

Why are they all from England?

"I'm Augustus Gloop," said the fat boy, from in front of them. And there Gaara's comprehension ended: the child had the thickest German accent he had ever come across.

My mistake. Not all.

His eyes flickered up to Baki. Baki ignored him.

"You're Mike Teavee..." continued Willy Wonka, as if Mike Teavee was three and a half years old. "You're the little devil who-"

'Devil'. Useful word.

...

It practically means demon. Oh, and did you just hear him say 'cracked'? What a coincidence. Pretty much your descriptio-

Ripping off your nipples with tweezers and créme-bruléeing your eyeballs.

"And you."

Gaara blinked. His eyes widened. For there, standing beside his grandparent with a frightened face and worn-out brown clothes, was a boy he hadn't even noticed. He hadn't even been mentioned on the television.

"Well you're just lucky to be-" the chocolatier's face suddenly turned grey, and he paused. "Six?" he asked, quietly. Nervously. "Six?"

Around him, parents started murmuring. Noticing for the first time that there were in fact too many children, and that one person had to have entered without a ticket, or at least with a very clever forgery.

One person. And there was one boy that hadn't even been shown on the news.

As one, they turned.

The brown-clothed child's jaw stiffened. The grandparent blinked helplessly.

"He has got a ticket," said the man. "He has. Here it is; I'll show it to you!"

And he pulled a quavering ticket out from his side pocket to give to Willy Wonka.

Mr. Wonka frowned.

After a pause, he shook his head. "It's a ticket," he said. "It is. I made them so that no-one could forge them, even if they'd wanted to. There's a secret ingredient."

Behind Gaara, Baki tensed.

...

"We've been keeping surveillance on 24/7. It's suspicious. No imports, no exports, and yet everything's there exactly as planned. Fresh too. For all we've seen the most likely solution is slave labour. He'd never be able to produce that much on his own, even with machines."

"So, you're wanting a ninja."

"Two ninja: the competition is for a parent and a child. Oh, and a replica Golden Ticket, if possible."

"Done. That'll be B-rank pay, then, sir."

...

"How are we going to get hold of a ticket for long enough to duplicate it, though?"

"Money. Gold. B-rank pay's way more than enough, and, anyway, if it's more, we can just put it on the client's bill."

"..."

"Someone will go for it."

...

"I WANT MY GOLDEN TICKET!"

"I know, darling. I know. It's coming back tomorrow. I haven't lost it, I promise."

"BUT I WANT IT!"

...

"We need someone clever, someone deadly, someone expendable, and we need a child."

"Bugger."

...

Eventually, finally, they had gotten a sixth golden ticket. It had been dangerous, expensive, time-consuming...

...but they hadn't heard anything about a secret ingredient.

...

Willy Wonka waited, glove held out, expressionless. His eyes darted. One by one, the people in the room produced their tickets. One by one, Willy Wonka pronounced them valid.

Then he came to Gaara.

Gaara held out the ticket.

Please hold. Please, please hold.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if he noticed straight away? Wouldn't it be amusing? We could crush all their little brains out and plaster them over the walls. We could sever their tendons and break their limbs. We could-

Please hold. Please, please hold.

Willy Wonka picked the ticket out from between Gaara's fingers and gave it a narrow-eyed inspection.

"Where were you when you bought this ticket?" he asked.

"Japan," said Gaara. It was close enough: they could speak Japanese.

"And what shop did you buy it in?"

"The shop I is near on the time. I think it O-kashi ya* or close."

If he knows Japanese, you are fucked.

Shut up. He doesn't.

Pray.

He doesn't.

"And where's that?" asked Mr. Wonka, leaning in. He was smiling in a not very nice way.

"Tottori**," said Gaara. Hopefully he wouldn't know it.

"Oh," said Mr. Wonka, frowning. "Well... I... Hmm." He turned the ticket over in his hand, and took what looked like a small magnifying glass out of his pocket.

The party watched as he drew his eye along the ticket, stopping at everything that could have been included or missed. Gaara was still. Mr. Wonka drew the magnifying glass much more slowly up the ticket again. His face was slowly turning grey. His pulse - Gaara could hear it, or rather, Shukaku could - was steadily quickening. The ticket was starting to curl up in his hands.

"It's not... It's not..." he stuttered. "I must have made too many. Darn and bust it! I must have made too many, and I can't even recall it."

Gaara, internally, breathed a sigh of relief. Externally, he merely glared. He pulled the ticket out of Mr. Wonka's unresisting grasp, and slid it possessively back into his pocket.

...

"Hey, Kichi-san."

"What?" Kichi got up from his chair, set his coffee mug down, and strode over to his colleague, who was taking his turn examining the ticket, ready for replication. He'd dissected it into eight separate layers, so far, and was currently working on analysing the third; a thicker layer, made of cream-coloured, slightly waxy cotton.

"Come and see this,"

"Yes?" Kichi took his turn looking down the microscope. "So?"

"Heh," His colleague chuckled. "It's got white chocolate in the cotton," he said, grinning. "Ingenious: seems to stick the whole thing together, along with some sort of glue. I didn't know what the smell was at first."

"Weird," said Kichi, huffing, and then returning to his chair and his coffee on the other side of the room.

...

Gaara kept glaring until the man straightened up and turned to the adults, wincing out a sickened grin as he did so, and dusting off the velvet of his coat.

"Ok, let's get moving, people," he said, then laughed falsely, and started striding purposefully along the corridor in a way that gave people the choice of looking undignified and running to catch up, or looking relaxed, and falling significantly behind. Luckily, the corridor was just one straight line, and it wasn't like Mr. Wonka could lose them anywhere, no matter how much he looked like he wanted to.

He hates you, said Shukaku, grinning. How long did that take? Five minutes?

Shut up, said Gaara, coldly, as they processed (leisurely) behind Wonka. The corridor was a long, almost timeless one, and looked from where they were standing as if it stretched for miles, possibly under the surface of the earth: the floor was at an almost-unnoticeable downward tilt, and the factory hadn't looked this big from outside... but, as they walked further, it felt almost as if the walls were closing in on them: the ceiling sloped at a sharper angle than the floor did; the walls narrowed, their decorative grooves getting ever more closely spaced to create the illusion of going on for ages, and the carpet they were standing on seemed to go from rectangular to almost triangular, within the space of about a minute. Claustrophobia started to itch at his senses, and he watched as Baki's movements became much more stiff and jerky than they had been before.

He was almost glad when they stopped… at a brightly coloured door about the size of a grape.

Mr. Wonka bent down in the little concave made by the end of the walls: he seemed to have gained back some of his composure. He said something about the door... or, he must have done, given that he had his keys out, and was talking to them. Gaara didn't really care. To be honest, this mission was starting to bore him already. Pre-Chuunin exams, he would have rolled his eyes at this point, and slaughtered the lot of them, but he was trying to be good.

Fuck you. Give up. Dieting's bad for you.

It's not a diet. Diets don't last.

Like I said; a diet.

He ignored him. It was almost a habit, at this point, to cut off his attention mid-sentence and snap out of whatever mental state he had been in to notice what was going on around him. Shukaku hated it.

Wonka was saying something that sounded like it was supposed to interest them. It was something about chocolate. No surprise there then. Shukaku rolled over in the back of his mind and started wriggling out of his chains. Gaara tightened them mentally and he felt Shukaku's glare, hard and irritated, on the back of his eyes.

A glove pressed against the wall around the door, Wonka's face awash with childish glee and, at the same time, shadowed in dark mystery.

Show off, said Shukaku. He's gone and made a chakra blanket to impress all the kiddies.

What?!

He's a civilian, kid, but he's been places. Don't let that naive child mask fool you for one bit. Fucking bas- Oh, wait. No, he's just a civilian. My mistake.

Now Gaara knew it was there, he could feel the chakra. It hummed about the place in quiet pockets, promoting growth and calming people. Too much exposure, and a person could go insane. Not that that worried Gaara. He already was, truth be told-

Cracked as a fucking plate. Nutty as a tanuki's balls. Twenty-eight kunai and a pack of senbon short of a picnic lunch. You're insane, brat. Wrapped up crooked. A fuzz of wrong ends and sparking wires that shouldn't be sparking. Honestly, kid; you're a mess. And that's coming from me.

Shut up.

It's true.

I'm getting better. It's getting better.

Mad.

I'm ignoring you.

Yeah, and a fucking good job of that you're doing. I-

Gaara cut him off without so much as a warning. The chakra he'd felt earlier was natural; not the result of anything living, which was good. If it had been, it would have been a mess to clear up. He'd have had to flatten the building it lived in and kill it, in that case. Here, it was just congregated nature chakra... which was weird, but not punishable by death.

Wonka, however... now that was more difficult.

"He can use chakra," he whispered in Japanese to Baki. "Shukaku can feel it."

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. It was too tense to be anything but an act for the other parents, but it reassured him none the less.

"I know," replied Baki, barely moving his lips. "It's too wonky to be anything taught, though. It's a classic case of civilian accident. Chances are, he doesn't even realise he's doing it."

Gaara mentally breathed a sigh of relief. Outwardly, he nodded.

Wonka's eyes had narrowed again, but it looked as if he had decided to ignore them.

"Why is the door so small?" came the scathing voice of the girl in the boiler suit. Or, at least, that's what it looked like to Gaara. It was probably latest civilian fashion or something, but he didn't keep track.

Wonka grinned. "That's to keep all the great, big chocolaty flavour inside. Haha..."

And with that, he started to push the door open.

Gaara glared. "No," he said.

Wonka stopped. "Excuse me?" he said. He didn't sound like he could quite believe it.

From behind him, Baki shut his eyes and breathed a deep, calming breath through his nose.

Gaara continued. "Flavour is not like this. You cannot catch it with door. This is ridiculous."

Say 'fucking ridiculous'. It'll make it sound more convincing. Trust me.

Gaara didn't trust him. Gaara didn't trust Shukaku one little bit. However, there still remained the fact that Shukaku actually knew good English, whereas he didn't. It wouldn't hurt, in any case.

"This is very fucking ridiculous," he said, flatly, and then watched their responses.

The suited man - the one they'd hired the ticket from initially - went almost puce: the sort of embarrassed, startled red that shows the occupant wants to strangle the interloper as quickly as they can get their hands around a neck before they say anything else. Wonka stiffened with all the finesse of a corpse. One of the women hissed through her teeth and looked wide-eyed and shocked towards her identical daughter, who was gazing blandly at him with cynical eyes.

The German mother had breathed in and hadn't breathed out. Her son was still eating. The thin-haired man was clenching his teeth. The grandfather in the ratty suit had clapped his hands over his relative's ears, but hadn't otherwise reacted.

Baki had breathed out, calmly.

"I apologise for my son's behaviour," he rattled off. "He is new to English and he cannot yet get a hang of the language. If you will exc-"

"No swearing on the tour," said Wonka, sourly. "If I hear one more word that even remotely sounds like it could be a swearword-"

"I apologise," said Gaara. He was getting tired of this. He could only see a few stalks of grass between the edge of the door and its frame, but it was enough to intrigue him. Had it been but a few months earlier, he would have squashed the factory owner and gone on ahead, but he couldn't, because it was a covert mission.

Do it.

No.

Wonka scowled, but started pushing open the door again. "Now, my dear children," he started, sounding very practised; enough that each child could hear the individually-aimed undertones of irritated cold beneath every word. It was obvious he felt they'd already overstayed their welcome, and it was barely ten minutes into the tour. "Do be careful. Don't lose your heads. Don't-"

No chance of that, said Shukaku, in a wide grin that split his head into what felt like fifty pieces. You lost yours years ago.

Shut up, said Gaara. It was automatic and familiar and fit into his mouth with little to no effort on his part.

"For the last time!" came the exasperated voice of Mr. Wonka. "No mumbling on the tour! I can't stand it when people mumble! Headache or no headache, you can talk clearly with e-nun-ci-a-ted sy-lla-bles, or not at all. Thank you!"

Oh. He'd said it aloud, then. Well, never mind. They already thought he was mad and annoying (which he was); two more words wouldn't tilt the balance.

He grunted in answer. Wonka, as ever, ignored him. His skill at that seemed to be increasing with every minute passed.

Wonder how come that is...

But Gaara ignored him. Finally, Wonka finished pushing open the door.

The one word Gaara could have used to describe it would have been 'fake'. A vast array of plants and greenery, dotted about with strange fruit trees, a very brown river and odd, whimsical little things lay about in bunches – all utterly artificial. This might have been irritating, had it not been for the fact that all of it was edible, and therefore extremely impressive.

A few steps in, and the other children were gasping and gazing around, mouths open. Gaara was, though curious, keeping his excitement in check. It wasn't like he hadn't seen plants before, in any case, and he had certainly seen sugar sculpted to look like plants (In Suna anything plant-shaped was a bit of a novelty and was capitalised on to its full extent.); it just hadn't been quite so large-scale. Besides, he didn't want to give Wonka the satisfaction. Beside him, Baki was gazing appreciatively around at the foliage. Baki wouldn't take anything, Gaara knew: Baki didn't like the thought of anything that wasn't nutritional or of use going into his body.

His spouse is going to be disappointed.

Shut up.

The party descended gradually down a small incline, Wonka at the head of it. Gaara had already had his fill of the scenery and was now bored. Out of the corner of his eye, he was now following the movements of a few small, synthetically-attired red dots in the far distance using a triangular-shaped suction device. Baki was still playing the part of the overawed parent, but, having noticed the red dots before Gaara, had moved his attention to other important things, and was now scanning for threats.

There aren't any fucking threats. Threats are meant to be difficult opponents. The only difficult opponents are the fucking mission parameters. Let's just ditch them, massacre and go.

Shut up.

Massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre…

Shut up...

Tired of me already? Shame. We could've had so much fun together, you and me. D'you know the smell of blood and sugar?

Shut up.

Believe me, one of the best smells in the world. Raw flesh against caramel. Mmm…

Gaara cut him off. Wonka had just said something… odd. Not that that was particularly unusual.

"You say of 'Cannabism'?" he blinked. "I think it is to eat person? Why eat person here?"

Wonka stopped abruptly, irritated. "It was theoretical," he snapped. "If you'd let me finished, you would've been able to find that out… And it's 'cannibalism.'"

Around him, the children were smirking and the parents were an equal mixture of amused and very much unamused. Some looked worried. Only the thinnest and his grandfather were managing to look patient with it.

"Come on," said Teavee. "Are we going? Or is this just gonna be boring the rest of the way?"

Wonka turned irritably to him. "Little boys are meant to be seen and not heard. If you had waited… in fact, if all of you had waited-" he turned around to face the group with an expression that teetered on the edge of hard suggestion "-you might have gotten to try the room sooner. As it is," and he paused for sarcastic breath, aimed directly at Teavee, "…enjoy."

Teavee gave him a bored, 'yeah, great' look, and then turned, running off in the direction of a patch of red sugared pumpkins. The others scattered.

Gaara headed for the river. It, at least, looked quiet.

I wonder how long it would take to drown in it?

Do you want to see?

That skinny one looks like he'd sink fast if you pushed him. Then he could rot in the river and make all the chocolate taste funny. Heh. I'd like to see that, if you could arrange it.

Ha. Ha.

Gaara sat down on the sugar grass. On the surface of it, he just looked bored and lazy. In actuality, the sand he'd had stowed away in his civilian coat pockets since they'd started this nightmare was roaming about the place, top to bottom. He closed his eyes to get a better picture and let the particles drift.

A few minutes passed. He could hear the quiet, viscous gurgle of the chocolate river, and the muted roar of the waterfall, and the chattered murmurings further off between the other guests on the tour, and he could just about make out the heartbeats of all of them… although this was mainly Shukaku at work, again. It was a type of sensory meditation, in a way: absorbing the sounds in his surroundings and finding the synchronised lapping of his pulse against them. He focused on calming his breathing, and taking in all the scents in the air; from synthetic raspberry to hard, unhidden sugar; from burnt caramel to citrus and lime. He concentrated in turn upon each hair on his arms; each nerve ending; each inch of skin… and then he found it in his head: the control centre for the huge mass of sand, and he mentally tagged each individual grain and started following their lazy paths around the space, in this alien giant of a room.

…it took five and a half seconds to register the panic at the side of the chocolate river and another second and a half to rescue the boy; pulling him out of the chocolate using levitating platforms of underarm sand. From the watchers on the side, he felt a surge of confusion and terror as the German boy – frozen mid-scream – suddenly flew upwards into the air and shot backwards onto dry land without any apparent intervention. Gaara stood up and opened his eyes, calling back his sand in lazy, drifting particles that hopefully wouldn't be noticed. To his disgust, the great majority of it was now brown and sticky.

The German boy's mother was now clutching desperately at her son, wailing; Baki was tense but otherwise not reacting, and the other parents were all rather whey-faced. Willy Wonka himself was standing as straight as his back would let him, a nervous mouth pulled up into disapproving terror… and there were little red-suited men standing about looking at a loose end. One of them started signing very rapidly to one of their friends as if to ask what to do.

Gaara gave them a peripheral glance and then turned to watch Wonka.

"Was that meant to happen?" came the voice of the father with the comb-over.

"No," snapped Wonka.

"He was meant to fall in then?" exclaimed the grey-suited father, pulling the wart-girl closer to him.

"No!" said Wonka. "He wasn't meant to do that in the first place!"

"He is just a boy!" wailed the German mother.

"Quite," said the grey-suited father. "Mr Wonka, are you sure this factory passed inspection?"

Mr Wonka was looking increasingly frazzled.

"I don't know why he flew backwards like that," he said. "I didn't build that."

"Well you should've!" said the grey-suited father. "Are there no other protective measures? You can't rely on strokes of luck like that, you know."

"I do not protect stupid children from themselves," he responded, snippily. "Anyway, it's my factory-"

"There are no railings!" interrupted the German boy's mother. "There was even no warning! Your irresponsibility put my son and all these children at risk!"

"This is a factory!" shouted Wonka, "Not a playground!"

"You said enjoy," said Teavee, looking unimpressed.

"And 'enjoy' word is for play," added Gaara. "I agree with these. Your playground room is not very healthy safe."

"Any more ridiculous comments like that and I'll kick you off the tour," snapped Wonka.

"Mr Wonka, if you do not take this seriously," said the grey-suited parent, "I shall file a law suit."

"He isn't even your son!" said Wonka. He sighed. "Yes, maybe the boy was put in danger from his own stupid actions and perhaps there may have been railings and that may have prevented the accident – I shall look into it – but the fact is, he didn't fall in, and therefore the safety of my factory should not be under discussion. I think we're done here. Marcus-" he addressed one of the short little men. "-clean up the room again for when I come back. The rest of you…" He stopped, looking as if he was wondering whether or not the sentence was worth continuing, and then said wearily, "…on with the tour."

In Gaara's head, Shukaku was laughing hysterically. Since it was not at him for once, Gaara's mouth was twitching slightly trying not to join in. Yes, killing held a certain satisfaction, but he understood now why the Uzumaki boy was so addicted to pranks. Slipping to the back of the group to walk with Baki, he took the opportunity to ask, "Who are the strange men in the red suits?"

"His workers," replied Baki. "He calls them something like Unpa-Runpa, which may or may not be just the name he has given them, and he apparently made a deal with them in their native country to house them and pay them in cocoa beans."

Gaara shot him a look.

"I know," said Baki. "If it's slave labour, we'll look into it. Kidnapping we could do something about… but remember the client's 'hunch' was only a hunch. He might not be doing anything wrong."

Doesn't matter. We can kill him anyway. He'll taste nice, I bet.

They do not have 'cannilabism' in this country.

Shame.

"Shukaku wants to eat him if he tries anything," said Gaara.

Baki paled.

"Any more mumbling and I'll make sure you have a nasty accident!" came the floated voice of Wonka over the heads of the others.

"Yes, we know you are good at that," snapped the German boy's mother, and prompted some more English bickering which Gaara didn't listen to.

"He won't eat you," he said instead to Baki, who was still looking rather pale. "He says you're too thin to bother with."

"Thanks," said Baki. He didn't look grateful though.

...

A/N:

*O-kashi ya = I think it means sweet shop / candy store in Japanese. This is based on Google Translate, so, if I'm wrong, please PM me.

**Tottori = It's a real place in South-West Japan. I've actually never been there: I just picked a random place on Google Maps.