I do not own NATURO

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"Capitan Temari?"

She didn't move her eyes from the landscape of sandy waves before her, and instead only inclined her head in question. "Hm?"

The clear hesitation and crinkle of paper interrupted her peaceful thoughts and she looked to her second in command. She had recently been given her own team to do patrol runs. Her younger brothers were on this team as well and Kankuro had made it very clear he didn't appreciate not acting as her second. Gaara had remained silent on the matter, must like she could always trust him to do. Ever since the death of their father they had been in need of maintaining security around the borders, for the sake of their city as well as their nomadic populations. Her brothers were good at that.

Currently, Gaara and Kankuro were off scouting the borders to the east and she was awaiting their return for mission reports, boring in her own opinion. They had been gone since the early morning, scheduled to radio in with their estimated return time any minute now. Her second – a man she had only bothered to remember as Miller – stood next to her atop the great walls surrounding her village. Miller's eyes shifted to the ground, the radio at his ear crackling with the static of recent communications.

"Well?" she asked, growing rather impatient with his lack of forwardness. He may not have had the strength that her brothers had, but he was a smart one for their age, with the promises of a potential leader. If he could get that lump out of his throat when he spoke to her.

"It's Niko, said she thought she caught something," he explained, not really understanding the chatter that had come in over his headset. The look in his captain's eyes told him to elaborate so he tried reciting the broken message as best as he could. "She's out west, edge of the Basin, said she felt something through the ground, almost missed it too. Sensed some chakra with it, but whatever it was, it was far."

"How far?"

"She's standing by for orders to proceed."

Temari stood and looked out beyond the city to the sands to the west, to the vast nothingness stretched on, seemingly without end, until it hit the canyons and old crumbled mountains of hard and lifeless stone. The nomads called it Death's Valley, and for as long as she could remember that endless stretch of dunes that lead up to it was very ironically called the Basin. Temari knew her scout well, she was not one to shy from the desert or even wait for backup before patrolling potential threats.

Whatever she had felt must have been way, way out there to call for a second opinion.

She shook her head. "Whatever it is would be best saved for Gaara, it could take her hours to reach it as is. Continue with rounds but be vigilant for anything else to come this way. And get me a radio."

Miller nodded curtly and relayed the order, the crackle of static signified the confirmation and Niko was back to her normal patrols along the border. Temari went back to scanning the east, waiting for the specks of darkness on the horizon that would signify the return of her brother's team, or the breezy twisters of sand that told her Gaara was on his way back. She had recently begun to notice the difference between his own and the ones that moved across the dunes naturally.

No such sign yet, but she was patient. In the desert, one had to be.

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"Gaara, do you copy?" asked the crackle in his ear. He sighed, not at all pleased with himself for allowing his sister to tag him with this radio during his outings. He took these scouting trips to get away from the city, not maintain a direct line back to it.

He had been trying very hard over these past few months to maintain a sense of control over everything he had once let run wild. There were many times, in the breezy quiet of the desert nights, that his doubt would come out to play and he felt himself slip back to his old ways. His siblings had been his first way to practice his patience, a fundamental something he had gathered was crucial in social situations, which to him was anything involving something else that breathed. But this was hazardous territory for him, uncharted waters and he'd never been taught to swim.

Thus these little outings, a chance for him to reclaim a sense of calm over himself, taking advantage of the immense seclusion of the desert to manage his demon in newer, less catastrophic ways. But something new had come about within himself as well, after his fight with Naruto, and he was struggling to deal with it. Guilt. He hadn't truly felt guilty in years, but after that fight, it had crashed over him like a ton of bricks. He supposed that's why he brought the radio with him, his sister had asked so nicely, and with such…dare he say it…sincerity, that he would have felt guilty about refusing. After so many years of worry, who was he to deny her peace of mind?

So, with some reluctance, he brought up a hand and threw back the hood of his cloak and pulled down the light cotton scarf from around his face. He pressed the radio bud in his ear, it seemed to pop in response. "Copy," he muttered, his voice almost lost to the wind around him. He left his team with Kankuro and hadn't given orders or maintained communications in hours, it took a moment for his voice to work again.

"Niko picked up a pulse through the ground out in the Basin, northwest of the western walls. Possible foreign entity."

"How far?" he asked, his eyes already moving towards the west.

The receiver in his ear clicked and his sister's voice, though mechanical and broken, spoke again. "She called for a second opinion."

"Hmph," he grunted, more so to himself than the voice in his ear. It must have been far. Farther than he expected nomads this time of year. Gaara clicked the button again and the line cleared for him to speak. "Kankuro is on his way back with the scouts, I'll rendezvous at the western gates and check it out then."

"Took the northeast for yourself this time?" Hardly a question.

"Naturally."

He could hear static laughter over the receiver. "I'm glad you know what you're doing out there, Gaara," she said, her voice holding an obvious smile, even through the crackles. "It's not a good day to be out on your own."

"Not for you, maybe," he said, the ever so slight upward inflection in his voice telling her it was his version of a joke. She snorted a laugh. "Get me the estimated epicenter of the last known pulse. ETA one hour."

"Copy that," Temari affirmed, the hard click after her voice signifying the end of her conversation with him.

Gaara unhooked his canteen from his side belt and took a long needed swig. His sister had been right, it was not a good day to be out alone. The heat alone was bad enough, but the relentless sun was enough to disorient even a seasoned navigator and –

Foreigner

– some had been known to succumb to –

Hostiles aren't to be missed.

Gaara grimaced, hardly even bothering to try and finish his thought. That hoarse, gritty voice still managed to bubble up from the depths of his mind. He had gotten better at pushing it back down, now that he bothered to try, and did his best to forget what that thing sounded like. He refastened his canteen and brought his scarf back up around his face, his hood over his head, and readjusted the goggles that sat snugly over his eyes. He scanned the western skies, beyond the horizon where his village lay hidden amidst the dunes, to what might lay beyond, in the perpetual expanse of that sun-baked desert.

He felt the voice bubble up again and clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking and popping as he did so. Massaging his palm, he cracked his wrists and thumbs, recently discovering that something about the pops alleviated his burden of that voice for a little while.

Grains of sand shifted under his feet, restless beneath him, anticipating his departure. His brother would be back at the village with the rest of their scouts soon, and he had promised his sister a decent time frame. He took a step and, to the naked and untrained eye, it looked as though the dune opened up under him and swallowed him whole, his body dispersing to the grains around him and traveling through the porous and shifting ground faster than anything else in the desert. Here, simply with such vast quantities at his disposal, he could cover the entire country, border to border, within a single day.

Temari needn't wait for him long.

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Sand scraped the heels of her palms as Sakura fell forward atop a dune. The shifting slopes had become too much for her shaken legs and she braced herself for the inevitable impact. More so than the stinging pain of hard grains pressed against her sunburned skin, she resented the heat. Nowhere was safe, nothing was immune to the sun, and all around her everything burned. Her skin, her blood, the ground beneath her, the very air that she tried to breathe. Nothing offered relief, however momentarily.

She whimpered out somewhat of a frustrated groan and sunk her hands deeper into the sand, trying to ignore the way it burned when she was on her knees like she was. Another pulse into the dune, sending more and more ripples across the sands. This would be her fourth. She did not yet know if they had been heard. Long ago she had given up trying to keep her hair from her face, and it stuck to her forehead and cheeks, plastered along her neck and shoulders. Her lips were cracking, her mouth was far too dry, her throat was hoarse and she could only manage shallow, ragged breaths of this hot, unforgivingly dry air.

Sakura stayed there for a moment, her arms shaking under her from the heat, her legs threatening to not stand again, and her stomach had recently started turning in very suspicious and unpleasant knots. She was hungry, very much so, and her thirst, her hunger, and the heat constantly baring down on her body, all caused her stomach to ache and twist in her gut, always one simple misstep from throwing up whatever liquid she had left in her belly.

She steadied her breathing, trying to settle her spinning insides, and did her best to stop the sound ringing in her ears. That had begun two hours ago, starting as a light droning noise that turned into a constant whooshing, like wind through the trees where there was none. She tried to ignore the white spots in her vision too, and the way that they always seemed to overtake her when she picked herself up from the ground. She had managed them so far, she could do it again.

Carefully making her way to her feet, she continued on her way, a hand placed on her forehead to check her temperature.

"One o' two," she groaned, rolling her head forward to once again cool the arteries in her neck. It drained her this time, made her falter in her steps, made keeping her eyes closed a little too tempting.

Sakura was on her knees again. Her legs had simply given out, and in this heat, no one would blame her. She had been walking for hours, at least…she thought it had been hours. She must have been miles from where she landed. But then again, the dunes all held a certain likeness to one another.

Looking on in front of her, to the same sight that had always been there, always just out of reach, she staggered to her feet once again and marched onward. She kept thoughts of water and food from clouding her head, she no longer dwelled on the possibility of who might stumble across her wandering the desert. Instead, she focused on counting. Count to sixty, start over. Count to sixty, start over. Every cycle was a minute survived, a minute closer to whatever was next. There was always something, after all, even when there looked to be nothing.

Forty-seven…forty-six…forty-five…

Wait. When did she start counting backward? She shook her head, slapping her cheeks in hopes of refocusing herself.

Forty-seven…forty-eight…forty-nine... "Sakura…"

She whipped around, so suddenly that her vision filled with stars and her balance quickly left her. She slipped to the side, sliding down a steep slope and burning her skin on the hot sand as she tried to right herself. She looked around, her heart racing, her hope soaring, and she searched frantically for whatever had called her name.

"Hello?" she called, her voice just a parched breath, a quiet wheeze past her lips. She hardly heard it herself. She smacked her lips, smoothing her tongue over the roof of her mouth, trying swallow some spit to coat her throat. She tried again. "Hel–"

She was cut short as her dry throat convulsed and snapped shut, unable to bare her voice after such thirst and neglect. She coughed, her lungs heaving with ragged breaths, her ribs still aching with the bruises of her impact. She looked around to the crests of the dunes, there was nothing that pointed toward life besides herself. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest, yet again sinking to her stomach. It had been in her mind, nothing more than a delusion, a simple auditory hallucination.

She looked behind her, to where she had sent her last pulse. Not yet a quarter mile back. She was getting slower, losing ground as the hours went on and, as she looked toward the west, she saw the sun race on without her. Still unaware as to whether or not her pulses had been in vain, Sakura was unsure if she would make it out of these sands alive. But, as she spied the empty plains of sand around her, void of motion and life, void of sound and any semblance of mercy, she knew one thing with absolute certainty.

She was still very much alone.

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