It was just a given that weird things were going to happen if the Sand Siblings ever tried to share living space. Tenten would have been able to overanalyze this concept and dictate her conclusions to a rock, but she was too busy trying to find a way to sneak into the Hyuuga compound without being detected (and thus was discovering the negative points of stalking a person who's family all had 360o vision).

So, as expected, unusual things did happen in their household. On the other hand, nobody could be prepared for absolutely everything, as Kankuro discovered one morning upon entering the kitchen to get himself a harmless bowl of cereal.

Seeing his younger brother, Gaara, sitting in a bright pink dress cutting skittles with a knife was pretty much the last thing Kankuro expected to see first thing in the morning…

The first thought that ran through Kankuro's mind was, "How often do abnormal things have to happen before they become normal dammit?" He promptly realized that some things weren't MEANT to be normal, Gaara in a dress among them.

"OHAIYO KANKURO NII-SAN!"

Kankuro seriously began to wonder about Gaara's already weakened state of mental stability. His brother was actually addressing him, and it WASN'T to threaten to kill him. All he could do was stare in his state of coma-like shock.

Seemingly just to add to the weirdness level, Temari waltzed through the open front door wearing a gold sequined leotard, blaring out "Barbie Girl" from a portable radio. Catching sight of her brothers, she called out to Gaara.

"Gaara dear, I picked up that Maybelline nail polish you wanted… Orange, right?"

Grabbing Karasu from an all-too-convenient spot beside the now open door, he ran out before anything even weirder could happen. At that moment he could have sworn that someone had disrupted the balance of the universe (again).

"Do you think we messed his head up?" Temari laughed as soon as the door slammed shut.

Gaara calmly looked up at her with a death glare painted across his face.

"Give me the cookies you promised or I WILL kill you."

Gaara was defiantly scary… Even if he would do anything for cookies.

…

Kankuro vowed not to return home for a very, VERY long time, favoring instead an attempt to keep his sanity intact. As he wandered aimlessly, he realized that in his state of distraction he had unknowingly traveled thousands of kilometers and ended up in Konoha.

Not fazed by this in the least (on account of being relatively accepting towards anything that isn't a death threat by Gaara, or Temari in a sequined leotard), Kankuro decided that he might as well find that annoying little kid with the weird scarf.

He found himself walking though a section of the village that seemed to be residential more than anything else - one of those quite areas that you could walk though for hours and never see another person. Except for the fact that Kankuro wasn't really quite that lucky on that particular day (with Gaara-in-a-dress and everything). As a result of this, lying in the street was a Konoha chuunin.

Racking his mind, Kankuro remembered that this was that strange ninja Temari had fought in the Chuunin exam, although he didn't quite get as far as remembering a name (his luck and all)…

The other ninja appeared to be both conscious and unhurt, and as such there was absolutely no reason for him to be lying in the middle of a street. Unless - of course - there were tanks about to demolish his house or something and he was protesting, which he wasn't. Indeed, confusingly enough, he appeared to be simply watching the sky.

Possibly due to misplaced compassion, but most likely out of boredom, Kankuro wandered onto the road towards the chuunin.

"Hey! Are you okay?" He called out.

Sighing in annoyance at the disruption, Shikamaru let his eyes focus. The first thing he noticed was Kankuro standing over him. Shikamaru remembered Kankuro – he was that Sand ninja who tried to take out the whole village because he felt his uber-leet ninja skills were wasted fighting forgotten and useless characters like Shino. Secretly Shikamaru thought that Kankuro had an ego complex rivaling even Neji's…

When Shikamaru showed no signs of either moving or responding, Kankuro just shrugged and walked off. He was bored, after all, but not quite bored enough to wait around for an answer form a ninja just as likely to fall asleep as to reply.

As he left, Shikamaru began the long process of deciding whether or not he could be bothered to move out of the road. If there were lawyers in Konoha, Shikamaru would have fitted right in with them. Mostly because, like lawyers, everything he did was likely to take at least five times the amount necessary.

Approximately two and a half hours later, Shikamaru had finally decided that the attention he received from lying in the middle of the road was too troublesome, and took enough time to cross the road as a snail would take to cross Africa.

Of course, by this time Kankuro was over the other side of the village amusing himself in some other way.

…

Kankuro had Konohamaru cornered against a fence, the younger boy having already passed the "You-can't-hurt-me-I'm-the-grandson-of-the-utterly-awesome-former-hokage, WHO WAS DEFINATLY BETTER THAN OLD LADY TSUNADE!" and he had now entered the "Please, please save me and feel sorry for me… You are so cool…You can be my boss!" stage. Not that Kankuro even wanted to be his boss. He wasn't even so sure hurting him was a good idea.

This was only because Kankuro knew that he'd run straight off to that annoying Kyuubi boy and tell him everything. Then, Kankuro further predicted, Naruto would just go and beat Gaara up again for letting Kankuro hurt Konohamaru. Then Gaara and Temari would both beat him up for being an idiot to start with. So his mercy was really all for his own safety…

Muttering about the unfairness of people's warped logic, Kankuro realized that if he scared the boy much more his health may be jeopardized. "Besides," he reasoned, "If I upset Gaara, he wont give me any of those Skittles…" (yes, sad as he was to admit it, Kankuro had a weakness for Skittles).

Letting the highly annoying ninja-wannabe go, he watched only vaguely amused as the child ran to hide under the closest box and pretended to be a rock. A hopelessly pathetic SQUARE rock…

Right that very second (okay, I lied, it was 3.1459265 seconds later) Kankuro was struck blind. As it turned out, it wasn't because he had seen Gai and Lee doing their cry-hug routine either. It was indeed a woeful day, for yet another innocent victim had fallen victim to the evil that was BAD FASHION tm, a subsidiary of Orochimaru and Bastion of Corporate Evil Industries. This was because poor Kankuro was powerless to fight against the blinding orange that was Naruto's jacket.

"God! Naruto! My eyes!" he cried out in extreme torment as he tried to claw out his eyes.

Naruto, having encountered similar situations quite a lot, calmly took hold of Kankuro's hand and lead the sand ninja to the nearest (and consequently, only) hospital.

After all, everybody knew that it wasn't really the Mangekyo Sharingan that made Itachi blind. Why else would Itachi have been hunting for Naruto, if not for revenge?

Duh…