Chapter Three – Confrontation
After an hour of running, or an hour of being carried on Kuma-san's back for Gaara, the group made it back to the oasis. Kuma-san knelt down in front of one of the palm trees to let Gaara climb off of his back. Gaara felt awful, both physically and mentally. Having Shukaku take control of his body always made him feel a little sluggish, but what Gaara was worried about more was whether or not he would be allowed to stay in anbu. He knew the chances that he would get kicked out after his royal failure were very likely, and if that happened, he could kiss ever being Kazekage goodbye.
"Before we discuss what happened," Kuma-san started, "Usagi-san needs medical attention." Gaara looked over to see Miyuki leaning against another tree to his left. Kuma-san walked over to her while stripping off his mask. He kneeled down beside her and inspected the wound on her shoulder with probing medical chakra. "Well, it's not infected or poisoned. That's good. You'll still need to take some chakra replenishing pills though." Kaito began rummaging through his pack for the pills while Miyuki lifted her good arm to her rabbit mask. Gaara watched discreetly as her fingers wrapped around the edge of the mask. She was slowly pulling it off, and –
"Hey, Tokage!" Gaara whipped his head to see a now unmasked Haruka walking towards him. Gaara's eyes widened behind his mask as he realized he had been distracted from his mission – to see Miyuki without her mask. He quickly turned his head around to see if Miyuki still had her mask on or not. She did, to Gaara's disappointment, and Kaito was putting what looked like a container of chakra replenishing pills back into his pack. Gaara mentally cursed. He had missed seeing her face. Sighing dejectedly, Gaara looked back at Haruka. She was now standing next to him smirking deviously.
"Don't worry, Tokage," she said as she sat down next to him. "Miyuki's had worse injuries. You should be worried about yourself. Your mask's cracked, and I'm guessing it's because Miyuki hit you. That girl can really pack a punch." Haruka's smiled faded after her last statement. She slowly reached towards Gaara's face. He visibly tensed when Haruka's hand made contact with his mask.
"Relax, Tokage. I'm just assessing the damage," she said as she removed Gaara's mask. Turning his head with her fingers to get a better look at his injured cheek, Haruka smiled as she saw the pieces of porcelain that were now lodged into Gaara's skin. "She really got you good, huh? Next time try not to tick her off so much, ne?" Haruka stood up after she was done talking. "Oi, Kaito, do you have any tweezers in your bag?" she asked as she made her way towards her captain.
"Yeah," Kaito responded while still paying attention to Miyuki's shoulder. "They should be towards the bottom of my pack." Haruka grabbed the bag off the sand and began rummaging through it. She let out a light "aha!" after finding it and went back to Gaara's side.
"This might hurt a little," she said as she aimed the tweezers at one of the pieces of porcelain." Gaara winced. She had missed the porcelain entirely and had forcibly grabbed a section of his skin with the tweezers. "Whoops. Sorry there. It's too dark to see all that well," Haruka said. She was smiling widely, and Gaara guessed that she really wasn't terribly sorry that she kept missing the pieces of porcelain with the tweezers and kept getting his skin instead.
Gaara let out a slow sigh, careful not to move so Haruka wouldn't mess up even more. The feeling of getting shards of his mask pulled out of his skin was rather unpleasant, and Gaara knew it would take a while. The sun wouldn't rise for at least another four hours, and the darkness was not helping Haruka's tweezing skills.
"Gaara," Kaito called. "It's time to talk." Both he and a still masked Miyuki walked over to where Gaara and Haruka were sitting. Sitting next to Gaara, Kaito took the tweezers from Haruka's hand and quickly removed the remaining broken porcelain from Gaara's face without ever missing. Once he was done, Kaito quickly stashed the tweezers back into his pack.
"We need to know what happened," Kaito started again. "We'll hear both sides of the story, but we'll start with you, Gaara." Gaara held back a sigh. He was looking forward to this conversation, or the consequences that will follow. He guessed a monster was never meant to become Kazekage anyway.
"There were five guards total. The first two were in the first hallway and were not ninjas. I took them out without incident," Gaara said. "When we moved to the next hallway, there were three more guards, only one of which was a ninja. I took out the non-nin closest to me. After I had killed him, I noticed that Usagi-san had killed the other non-nin and was fighting the Ame ninja. She had sustained the wound on her shoulder and had given the other ninja several wounds. There…" Gaara hesitated. He could see the battle perfectly inside his head, and he didn't particularly want to repeat it, but he continued. "There was so much blood. I haven't been on a mission where fighting was necessary in months. I couldn't stop Shukaku from coming out. I just couldn't stop it…" Gaara bowed his head. He had been ashamed of himself when the event occurred, but retelling it only made the shame worse. He hadn't asked for Shukaku to be put inside of him, and he hadn't asked it to kill all those people either.
"Okay," Kaito said with a nod. "Miyuki, it's your turn."
"It's like Gaara-san said," she began slowly. "He took out the first two guards in the first hallway while I took care of all of the hidden traps. When we got to the second hallway I sensed that there were no hidden traps or weapons so I took out the opponent closest to me, one of the non-ninja guards. While I was doing this, the Ame ninja managed to hit my shoulder with his sword. We fought, and I managed to hit him twice. It was then that I noticed that sand was coming towards us," at this she threw a pointed glance at Gaara.
It was obvious Miyuki was still angry at Gaara for losing control. However, her anger only succeeded in making Gaara more ashamed of himself. "I stopped the sand from attacking me and watched as Gaara-san killed the Ame nin with his sand," Miyuki continued. "While still blocking the sand from attacking me, I then… Then I slapped Gaara-san for doing something so blatantly stupid." Miyuki gave a huff and crossed her arms. She turned to face Gaara, her angry intent obvious.
"How could you do something like that," she asked in a whisper. "You say you couldn't control it, but the demons sealed inside you! It takes conscious effort to undue a seal of that power. There's no way something like that could have happened on accident, Gaara-san." Miyuki said angrily.
Gaara was sitting still, both shocked and ashamed at Miyuki's word. "But I don't have a seal," he said quietly. "Letting Shukaku have control is never a conscious effort. There's nothing I can do when he wants control." Gaara slumped over more. He felt insulted because of Miyuki's accusations, but he knew most people in the village agreed with her, but they couldn't be more wrong.
"You don't a seal for Shukaku?" Kaito asked, breaking the silence that had settled over the group. Gaara nodded the feeling of shame about to overcome him. "If you don't have seal, then how is Shukaku staying inside of you? Without a seal, he should be unable to reside within a host."
"Shukaku was placed inside me while I was in my mother's womb," Gaara said methodically. It was not the first time he had had to explain how he had become the host for Shukaku. "The Elders figured that because Shukaku was physically tied to me that I did not need a seal to further tie him to me."
Kaito slumped back against a tree muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "those idiot elders." "That's a problem, a really big problem, Gaara," Kaito said looking over at Gaara. "A host for one of the bijuu can't be stable without a seal, mentally and physically. I imagine that the elders have caused you a lot of undue suffering because they arbitrarily decided that you didn't need a seal."
Gaara sat completely still. He had never even considered a reality where Shukaku didn't make his life a living hell. It seemed too good to be true.
"I know another member in anbu who's an expert on seals," Kaito said. "I'll talk to him and see what he knows. Gaara, if you could meet me at my house sometime tomorrow, I'll have him talk to you about getting you a seal. I'll give you my address later. We should all go ahead and head back to Sunagakure. The sooner we get home, the sooner we can rest without worries."
Haruka and Kaito stood up, and Kaito helped Miyuki stand up. Kaito let out a sigh as he saw that Gaara was still sitting down, no doubt shocked at the news he had just received.
"Don't worry Gaara." At Kaito's words, Gaara looked up at his squad captain. "We're a team, and we always help each other. This will stay in anbu. None of the Council will know what happened here tonight other than that the mission was successfully completed. Anbu members are only loyal to other anbu members and the Kazekage, not the Council. One day soon, you're going to become Kazekage, and we'll make sure of that." Kaito gave Gaara a grin and motioned for him to stand up.
Once Gaara was standing, the rest of his team put on their masks. They all began running, except for Miyuki who was on Kuma-san's back most likely still recovering from her wound. Gaara hadn't thought that the wound was that bad. Sure, it was bleeding like crazy, but it was only her shoulder. The sword hadn't hit anything vital, but Gaara wasn't a medic so he kept his mouth shut.
Gaara had always enjoyed traveling through the desert. He felt at home in the sandy plains, and talking was for the most part unnecessary. He had never been a fan of starting conversations. The quiet and peaceful landscape of the desert always gave him time to think, and for the past four hours of running, Gaara was thinking about the young girl wearing a rabbit mask in front of him. It was just beginning to get light outside, and Gaara entertained himself by watching Miyuki. She had fallen asleep almost immediately after the group had started traveling.
In the first hour of running, Gaara had attempted to try to not pay any attention to Miyuki, but his eyes always kept on going back to her sleeping figure. Gaara knew he was starting to become infatuated with a girl he didn't even know, and that thought scared him. The only female he talked to on a regular basis was Temari, and she was scary enough. Gaara didn't understand people in general very well to begin with, but girls were like a whole different species. Gaara found himself lost every time a girl came up to talk to him. Kankuro told him they were "flirting" with him, but that term was foreign to Gaara.
Gaara had never given much thought to girls before, but now he was giving nine hours of monotonous traveling to thoughts of just one girl, and it was driving him crazy. He was Sabaku no Gaara, the monster of Sunagakure, not some hormonal teenage boy. His gaze went back to Miyuki. She was still as sound asleep as the last time Gaara had looked at her. Part of Gaara was jealous of Miyuki. The majority of the time he had spent with her so far, she had been asleep. Gaara had never been able to sleep, and now he had to watch some girl do something he'd never get the chance to do.
Even with jealousy boiling inside Gaara, he couldn't bring himself to resent her. She was just too cute. Gaara mentally froze. That was the second time he had thought that she was cute. Shukaku must've really messed up my brain, Gaara thought. He only hoped he was right.
While Gaara was still mulling over his recently acquired girl problems, the group reached Sunagakure's gates. Before they reached the entrance, Kuma-san stopped to wake up Miyuki. He crouched down once she was awake so she could climb off his back. The group then walked to the gates and showed the guards their IDs. As the guards let them through, Kuma-san's hand brushed Gaara's. Gaara jumped at the sensation, but then realized that there was now a piece of paper in his hand, no doubt Kaito's address. Each member of the group then walked in the direction of his or her home, or in Kuma-san's case, to the Kazekage tower to report a mission complete.
Gaara was about to head towards his home, when he was stopped by a hand on his arm, a very small and pretty hand. Gaara's eyes traced the hand to its arm and to its owner's face.
"Tokage-san," Miyuki said after she got Gaara's attention. "I need to apologize. How I acted during the mission was inappropriate and unprofessional. I'm sorry for yelling at you, and for slapping you. I was wrong, and I misjudged you." With that, Miyuki let go of Gaara's arm and walked in the direction complete opposite of Gaara's home. Gaara just stood there stunned. He hadn't expected her to talk to him, let alone apologize for hitting him, especially when she had every right to be angry.
Only one thing was for sure: Gaara had some of the weirdest teammates ever.
Author's note:
So another chapter's done. I hope everyone that's reading this story is enjoying it, and I hope that the shifts between using anbu code names and everyone's real names isn't too abrupt. If it is, someone let me know. I'd really like to have longer chapters, but I just don't have the time, but the shorter chapters will let me update faster. If any one would prefer longer chapters and slower updates, let me know please.
I also don't know whether not Gaara actually has a seal or not, but it makes the story a whole lot more interesting if he doesn't. So he doesn't.
Another thing, I'm trying really hard to get Gaara's personality right. I'm not a boy, and definitely not a fourteen year old boy, so bear with me.
