Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or anything associated with it whatsoever. Alas, and woe.

Written in the Dust

Chapter 2

The whiz of the finely honed steel sliced through the air half a moment before it was replaced by the heavy thud of metal cutting into hard wood grain to sink deep into the log, announcing the hit. Two more quick shrieks of splitting air and two more kunai sunk into the training posts as Sunamaru threw the final hand weapons turned missiles.

"Wow, cool!" Karura declared from her where she was standing beside him. She knew he was in training but this was the first time he had shown her the skill he sometimes bragged about.

She and Sunamaru-sama (she always said it with heavy sarcasm) were hidden away in one of the many canyons and gorges breaking up the desert landscape outside the city walls. They made sure to stay well away from the trails taken by merchants or routes patrolled by the squads of Suna shinobi. It would be really bad if they were seen or overhead out here beyond the city walls, especially for her, and especially if they were found with the posts. Although they were technically trash, the old training posts were still wood, a valuable commodity in Suna, and son of the Kazekage or not, Sunamaru could expect punishment if he was caught 'appropriating' them, as he said, and she would be in big trouble with her okaa-san.

Here in this sandstone canyon with the big overhang of sun-baked rock, coated in enough fine sand grains to somewhat muffle echoes, they could play with the posts and his other gear and findings before carefully hiding them again in a deep crevice obscured behind a large crag. It was easy to pretend she didn't have to go back to the crowded tenement or endure those cold looks from Suna natives who automatically despised her for her paleness and all it meant. It was worth maybe getting in trouble for this.

It hadn't taken long at all for the Suna nin who functioned as Sunamaru's bodyguard to report to his father that the heir had taken to hanging out at the fringes of the ghetto to talk with one of the numerous war refugees. After he was told to strictly stay away from the tenements, she and he had soon discovered together it was in exercise in futility to try to hang out elsewhere. No one could mistake her pale coloring for anything but a displaced person of Kusa no Kuni and many people eagerly turned the both of them in when they were together. Sometimes meaner people would scream and threaten her if she snuck out of the ghetto alone; a parasitic alien in their minds.

Her okaa-san still had to work another year and a half to finish the two year long parole before applying for permanent citizenship, permitting the family to freely leave the boundaries of the shabby collection of buildings without facing the disapproving frown of a member police force. That didn't cover what might happen if their trial status was revoked.

The escapes with Sunamaru were when Karura got to learn more about the shinobi art of stealth and sneakiness. Fortunately for her, Sunamaru just wasn't used to being told no, and had begun to come up with schemes to see her.

Karura thought the whole thing was a blast. The looks she got from the Suna locals made her angry, and the tenements were depressing and ugly. Sneaking out with Sunamaru was a way out of the ghetto and a small way to get even. When she wasn't doing chores around the tiny apartment, helping her brother with his homework from his apprenticeship to the local apothecary, or practicing her weaving, she would sneak out with Sunamaru. Getting around the rounded architecture of the Sunakagure buildings was tough, whether in the brilliant sun or oh-so-quiet desert nights, and his bodyguards hated being out-witted by their charge. She'd seen them practically vibrate with fury and plead with Sunamaru to quit his antics. They must really be embarrassed to face his otou-sama after realizing he had successfully evaded them half the day.

She padded in her new desert boots through the cool, shadowy sand over to where Sunamaru was tugging the stubborn kunai out of the posts with a certain swagger despite the necessity of repeated yanks on the reluctant weapon. He was really cocky, so it was fun to pick on him.

She decided to zero in on his ongoing struggle with the implement.

"What's the matter Sunamaru-sama? Can't get'em out? I thought you said you'd show me how strong you were," she said innocently, syrupy sweet.

Her tease made the hackles on the boy's neck stand up delightfully. His back was to her and he was still riled up. This was so fun.

With an extra yank he pulled the kunai free of the sun bleached, pockmarked wood. He turned around with that sour expression and she just smiled back peacefully.

"I'd like to see you do that," he challenged, offering her the handle end of his training kunai with one hand and gesturing towards the target with the other.

With a cool shrug, she flipped her now evenly cut hair over her shoulder and snapped up the offered kunai with a flourish. They crunched lightly over the shaded sand together before returning to the edge of the shadow just before it gave way to the blazing heat and glare of sun. Karura mentally measured the distance between their position and the post at the other end of the overhang.

Karura had watched his throwing form with interest. She had spent enough time with him when he was applying his ninja skills and even glimpsed his bodyguard squad in action enough times before being practically squashed during capture to want to see more of how they did what they did. She planted her feet slightly apart, mimicking his throwing form, and pushed back her sleeves. She aimed for the post her skin-warmed kunai had come from, steadily setting up the throw, and using the strength gathered from the hard life of a refugee, flung the kunai at the gouge Sunamaru had created.

Given, it traveled through the air with a much quieter whistle, and the dull thud was very much dull, but in the end the kunai was still embedded in the cracked wood.

Karura turned from her successful strike and faced Sunamaru with hands on her hips, a taunting and expectant smile on her face.

Sunamaru looked at the kunai with a surprised and vaguely accusingly look, as if it has somehow turned on him. He harrumphed before stalking back towards the post to retrieve the traitorous weapon.

"Not bad for a girl," he grumbled peevishly, his voice echoing minutely off the rock overhead.

"Not bad, period!" She corrected loudly. "And I'm not even a shinobi!"

"Well, that's your fault, isn't it?" he challenged. He gripping the exposed handle end of the weapon and tugged it loose with more tries than he would have liked. She really was pretty good for having no training. He frowned a little.

Her mouth dropped a moment at the indirect insult. So he wanted to argue, huh? Game on!

"Oh, how so?" She sashayed in place, taunting him through posturing and a flippant attitude. "My family isn't even a shinobi family. Why would I go?"

"You don't have to come from a clan to go." She knew that, but his voice was so irritated. She quashed a giggle.

He turned from the posts and flipped the liberated kunai in his hand. "You just get tested for potential and they take you." He looked her in the eye, walking back over the sand with an annoyed trudge. "Duh."

She pouted back at him.

"You just didn't have the potential," he finished.

She blinked in miscomprehension. Now she was confused. What was he talking about? She tilted her head at him, squinting a little from the glare of the sand beyond him.

"What do you mean?" She blinked thinking back to all the questions she was asked by the shinobi processing her and her brother before they were approved. "I was never tested for something like that. Just disease and lice before the guards let us in the gates."

Sunamaru now had his turn to look confused. "They didn't?"

She shook her head. "Mm-mm. Were they supposed to? I mean, I've never heard anyone say they should have." She was genuinely surprised. No one had ever mentioned refugees being ninja, but Kusa nin weren't very revered. They didn't even have a Kage in the hidden village in Kusa no Kuni.

"Maybe." He eyes pointed up towards his forehead as he thought about what she said. "Maybe they didn't because you aren't from Suna and a refugee and all that?" His dark eyes brightened with an idea.

"Hey," he said smiling, "some of the stuff I appropriated could be used to see if you have the potential anyway."

"Really?" she asked excitedly as he grabbed her hand and tugged her willingly toward the hidden crack in the rough canyon wall. He had held her hand so much while they were racing around Suna dodging his flock of bodyguards she was used to it.

"Yeah," he said, releasing her hand and dropping to his knees to grope into the semi dark hole in the rocky earth.

An excited thrill shot through her. If she could be trained as a shinobi, or at least go to the academy, then she could see Sunamaru a lot more. She could even get better at dodging his bodyguards with him! And the locals who always sneered at her family's pale features when they went for water or food couldn't say a word! Ninja were allowed almost anywhere and civilians always had to defer to them.

Going to the academy would be great! Maybe Yashamaru could come to. Most of the students she saw pass the ghetto boundaries to go to the academy went with their whole family. That meant her brother could come too even though they were only on parole right now, right?

She dropped to her knees in the rough sand beside Sunamaru and peered over his shoulder into the cache. He withdrew an old box that had the words 'chakra strips' written on it in kanji. Her family had taught her to read before her education was cut off by the first wave of soldiers and bombings of the civil war. She missed it sometimes. She liked reading, but books were really expensive and people from the Kusa ghetto weren't allowed in the public library.

"What do those do?" she asked as he spun the box around to reach and open its latch and lid and pull out a strip. She knew what chakra was from his earlier explanations about jutsu theory, but she hadn't heard of these things. He held up a strip of what looked like white paper and she was grateful for the shade; in sunlight the glare off of it would have been blinding.

"They tell you what kind of chakra you have," he said closing the box, and putting it on a small patch of fallen pebbles. "But they only check for the main five since light and dark kinda only run in families. Sit."

She shrugged off that it was a command and decided to get even later. They both plopped cross-legged in the cool sand facing each other and he held the strip out toward her for her to see.

"You remember how I explained to you how to manifest chakra?" he asked.

She nodded. She hadn't been able to try it at the time because four Suna shinobi had dropped on them right then, but she had tried it later after finishing the dishes at her family's home.

She raised her hand up lightly, closed her eyes, and focused.

"What are- whoa!" Sunamaru gasped.

Slender tendrils of chakra curled around her dusty fingertips, faintly glowing as strands twirled around the scratched up digits like ethereal snakes.

"That's… here just touch the strip," he muttered in jealously, extending the strip towards her hand sullenly. She somehow managed to keep her sneaky grin of her face. She'd never tell him she'd practiced.

As soon as the paper made contact with the strings of energy it split down the middle, tearing itself cleanly in two without pause. Karura opened her bright eyes and grinned, then saw the delighted smile on Sunamaru's face.

"You know what this means? Wind chakra!" he laughed and pumped his arms in triumph. "Wind chakra! You have to become a kunoichi now! All children with wind chakra have to go to the academy. Your family can't say no!" He grinned in happiness and looked to her to smile back.

Karura felt her smile fading in confusion. "What do you mean 'have to'? I can't say no if I don't want to go?" She had to? Why 'had to'?

Sunamaru looked puzzled at her lack of elation, then somewhat angered. "You don't want to spend more time with me?"

She shook her head in contradiction.

"No, I just don't understand why I have to," she ignored the glare that challenged her to say she wouldn't do what he clearly wanted.

Her family had always told her she could do whatever she wanted when she grew up as long as she was good at it. She thought about weaving like her okaa-san, or learning to fish like her ojii-chan and uncles, or being a horse tamer, or making instruments from reeds or bamboo or wood from the clusters of trees that dotted the plains. She was always told to do what she wanted. Why would she have to do anything because someone said so like that?

Of course, fishing was out now. Hard to go fishing without a river.

"Why wouldn't you?" Sunamaru leaned forward, snapping her attention out of her musings and into his smoldering expression. "Everyone who could make a good ninja has to go to the academy. Everyone! No one ever says no. You can't say no." He was looking at her really intensely and Karura felt a little weird at the scrutiny.

"But," she said, struggling to make herself understood, "what if, what if I wanted to be a weaver like my Okaa-san?" Why was he so mad anyway? "The city would say I couldn't?"

"No!" He jumped up to his hands and knees, sending sand flying so he could lean right into her face. "Shinobi become shinobi! You aren't allowed to say no!"

"But I'm not a shinobi! I don't even know any except for you!" she blurted out in startled response. His intensity was really getting to her. She shifted her weight to throw her hands behind her to get face away from his. He was practically breathing on her.

He caught himself suddenly, then sat back down. He made a face and fluffed his hair with one stiff motion.

"Look, I'll be with you. We'll be in the same year even!" he insisted earnestly as she leaned forward again hesitantly. "You do want to be a shinobi, right?" in an almost worried tone, as if he was afraid she'd say no.

Well, duh she did. She just didn't understand why it wasn't just an option. Maybe she could say it that way.

"What I don't get is," she started as he looked at her with that challenge again, "is why I can't not if I didn't want to."

Sunamaru threw his hands up towards the rocky ceiling above them in frustration.

"Karura-kun! This isn't hard!" he glared at her but kept his seat. "If you can become a shinobi you do! It's the same for everyone in Sunagakure!" He looked way briefly before muttering. "No one gets away."

Karura felt a spark of inspiration then.

This was a hidden village of shinobi after all. Sunagakure no Sato. Maybe because this was a ninja village you had to become a ninja because that was just what ninjas did. Maybe the rules were different in a hidden village. That made sense.

"Oh, I get it now."

Sunamaru rolled his eyes so hard he threw his head with the effort. "Well, that took long enough." He settled down and looked pensive.

"Okay, so now we have to show everyone you have wind chakra." He thought harder. "Maybe we can find some way to have you touch the chakra paper by accident when some of the Kazekage-sama's nin are around."

She turned thoughtful in turn. How exactly would they make that happen? With out it being really obvious?

"How do we do that without making you look nuts? You're not supposed to see me." It would be awfully tricky to think of a reason for him to see her and have chakra strip out. They didn't seem like something a student would have.

He shrugged. "I do anyway and they know it."

"So why not be honest?" Now he looked at her like she was the one who was nuts. "Why not? It'll save time and it's not like you'll get in more trouble than usual, right?"

The dark-eyed boy looked back towards their stash of appropriated gear.

"We gotta get rid of all that."

"Yup."

AN: Interest in this idea! I'm genuinely and pleasantly shocked! Now all I have to do is figure out how to respond to reviews.

Since I despise abandoned stories I have already finished this work but for polishing it and incorporating constructive criticisms. As I mentioned before, I am a terrible proof reader so if I missed something, let me know.

Translations:

Okaa-san- 'mother' spoken respectfully

Otou-san- 'otou-san' spoken respectfully

Kazekage- Wind shadow, the strongest ninja in Suna

Kusa no Kuni – Grass Country

Sunagakure no Sato – Village Hidden in the Sand, full name of Suna

-sama suffix – Most respectful honorific. Can be translated as 'Lord'.