Gaara grinned. He had always known that Ino had a thing for Hinata, despite the fact that she was currently dating Tenten. It was obvious; well, if you were one of her friends.

"When are you going to ask her out?" Gaara asked. Ino turned indignantly to him, her blush deepening.

"When I feel the hell like it!" she shot defensively. Gaara snickered and walked past her into the classroom, Naruto following.

"Where are you going to sit?" Naruto asked, scanning the room. Gaara scoffed.

"Wherever the hell I fee like," he said, quoting Ino. "And you're not sitting with me." Naruto pouted slightly and Gaara shrugged. The little blonde bastard was hard to shake.

Gaara sat at a desk next to a brunette boy he didn't recognize. He must be a new kid. He turned to him and looked him over. I guess he'll do. Gaara thought. The boy next to him had pale alabaster skin and a very feminine complexion. His eyes were a very light pearly lavender and his long brown hair was the color of milk chocolate and looked as though it was made of silk. Gaara didn't describe him this way, though. His description of this boy was as follows; long brown hair, white eyes, pale face, girly. Pretty straightforward.

"You want to be my lab partner?" Gaara asked, a tone of indifference creeping into his voice. The boy next to him surveyed him with a raised brow and his mouth drawn in a tight line.

"I suppose that would be alright," he replied. Gaara looked at him, an invisible eyebrow raised, but shrugged.

"Cool," he said, missing the boy's slight wince. He turned to face the front as the teacher entered the room. She was a tall violet-haired woman with a permanent sneer on her face. Gaara sighed. Miturashi Anko. The worst science teacher of all time. She tended to base her grades off her moods. And she was always in a bad mood when she graded Gaara's papers.

Gaara put a look of complete and utter impudence on his face. It was fun to see Miturashi-Sensei spazzing out. The boy next to him glanced over to him and a look of distaste crossed over his features. Gaara felt his gaze and turned to fix the boy beside him with a famous glare.

"Yeah?" he asked, challenging the boy to respond. However, he just turned to face the front with a slight, "Hn." Gaara shook his head and his attention returned to the front of the room, where Anko was yelling about something or other that disappointed her. Gaara sighed once again as he blocked her shouts out. Honestly. He thought. She may as well be yelling, "Fuck you all, you dumb ass bastards!" At least we'd understand that.

"Now pair up and get to work!" Anko shouted. Gaara turned to the boy next to him and noticed for the first time, his stiff posture.

"Hey," he said. "You okay? You seem stiff." The boy tensed at Gaara's voice.

"I'm fine," he said. His eyes were closed and his fine eyebrows were raised. Gaara looked at him before saying, "Whatever, what's your name?"

"Hyuuga Neji," the boy answered in a forced voice. Gaara chose to ignore this.

"Sabaku no Gaara," he said. Neji nodded his head in acknowledgement.

"Well, then," he said. "Shall we start?" Gaara nodded.

That was probably the worst class in the history of Bad Science Classes. Gaara's partner, as it turned out, had a major superiority complex. He was bossy and always insisted that Gaara was doing everything wrong, so, for a while, Gaara had let him do all the work, but then Neji had insisted that Gaara was being a lazy good-for-nothing sloth. Sloth! Who insulted people like that in the twenty first century!? By the end of the first phase of the lab Gaara was ready to strangle Neji. By the end of class Gaara was one bad comment away from strangling himself.

As soon as the bell rang, Gaara sprang up from the table, ignoring Neji's shouts at him to come back and help clean up this mess he made! He ran to his locker and found the raven haired Uchiha already there. He smirked.

"What's wrong Gaara?" he asked. Gaara looked at him.

"That damned Hyuuga Neji!" he said. "When'd he get here, anyway?" Sasuke chuckled.

"A week after you went to the hospital," he said. "He started hanging out with Naruto, or Naruto started hanging out with him, and he kinda started hanging out with the rest of us too. He's really something, isn't he?" Sasuke looked toward the science room as Neji came storming out angrily and turned to march away to his next class. He shook his head.

"About the only good thing about him is his looks," he pointed out. Gaara rolled his eyes. No way was he going to agree to that. From where he was standing, or, rather where he had been sitting only five minutes ago, nothing was good about Hyuuga Neji.

And, unfortunately for him, that was not the last he saw of the pompous brunette boy.