A/N: Here you go guys; it's Chapter 6! Thanks for reviewing, adding this to your favourites and following, it means a lot to me. c:

The front of the Hyuuga compound was completely packed with people.

At least, that was the way Hinata saw it. Although the dinner was limited to just Hiashi and his daughters, many members of the clan from both the main and branch families had come outside and crowded around the path in order to greet the Kazekage. At least half of the servants, dressed in their most formal attire, had come outside as well and lined up alongside the guards, already bowing low even though he had yet to cross the threshold.

Hinata couldn't see him very well – her view was blocked by the bodies standing before her, and although she caught glimpses through the spaces between them, it wasn't enough to give her a full picture. She and Hanabi had been instructed to wait by the door while their father went forward to welcome Gaara. She stood on her toes to gain a better vantage point, yet her relatives were much taller than her, and as a result she saw nothing but the tops of their heads.

A hush fell over the crowd. "Welcome to our home, Kazekage-sama," she heard her father say.

"Thank you for inviting me," Gaara replied.

For the next ten minutes she contented herself with fiddling around with the edges of her sleeves as Gaara and Hiashi slowly made their way to the house. The distance was as short as it could be, but they were forced to stop every so often and engage in small talk. Playing with her kimono soon grew dull. Her heels were beginning to grow sore, so she started to shift her weight from foot to foot. She snuck a glance at her sister, who was calm and composed, and certainly a lot less fidgety than her. Finally, when they reached the two girls waiting for them, Hinata snapped back into action and bowed forward, as did her sister.

"These are my daughters, Hanabi and Hinata," Hiashi said, gesturing at them. They repeated their father's greeting, and then waited for the two men to pass before returning inside.

The room that awaited them was its usual immaculate self, with its clean white walls and the polished porcelain ornaments that lined the shelves. Multiple vases stood alongside these ornaments, filled with bright yellow and white flowers that fluttered in the breeze from the open window. Their normal, plain gray curtains had been replaced with a shimmering white material, and were held back by thick, gold-tinted ropes that glittered in the low light. Their table, which sat almost right beside this window, was covered with a white tablecloth with gold-thread sewn into the edges in thin, swirling patterns. A small glass bowl filled with flower petals sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by the sparkling place settings which had been arranged for them. One of the servants was standing to the right of her seat, holding a wooden tray with four small, delicate0looking cups balanced atop it. They took their seats around the table – Hinata and Hanabi sat across from each other, while Hiashi and Gaara did the same. Hinata had to shift around in her seat before she could get comfortable – the slip she wore beneath her kimono fit awkwardly, and wasn't easy to ignore. The servant placed a steaming cup in front of each of them. Normally, the tea was always Hinata's favourite part of a dinner. She loved to blow the steam away, to admire the intricate designs of the birds that lined their best china, and to trace these designs with her fingers as she listened to the conversations of those around her. But now, however, she was more interested in their guest than in her teacup.

The last time she'd heard about him had been when Naruto and the other shinobi from the village had gone to rescue him from the Akatsuki. She'd heard that he had died, and then miraculously revived by one of Suna's elders. Taking a small sip of her tea, she peered at him through her eyelashes. She'd only seen him once before, long ago during the chaotic Chuunin exams, but already she remembered the thick black lines around his eyes, and the word etched into his forehead. He'd been intimidating before, but she felt even more intimidated by him now. His official robes gave him an unapproachable air, and the cool, emotionless expression he wore made it seem like he was somehow closed off from the rest of the room.

She caught her sister staring at her oddly from across the table, and fought off the blush that threatened to colour her cheeks. Had she been inspecting him too obviously? He and her father were deep in conversation, so neither of them had noticed anything. Even so, Hanabi raised her eyebrows at Hinata as if telling her to focus. Hanabi had a point – it had to have been at least ten minutes since they sat down, and everyone had already finished their tea except for her. She had no idea what they were talking about. It sounded like something to do with the politics between their villages. She quickly phased out again – politics bored her, and although she'd tried time and time again to fine some sort of interest in them – after all, as her father's daughter it was her duty to know these things – she couldn't. At least her little sister was listening intently and speaking up where she could, seeing as her knowledge wasn't as limited as Hinata's. It seemed like it wasn't necessary for her to do anything except drink her tea and stay quiet. Well, she could do that easily enough. Maybe getting through this night would be a lot simpler than expected.

The hours seemed to just drag on afterwards. She'd already figured out Hiashi didn't expect her to say much, as throughout the course of their meal she barely contributed to the conversation, speaking only when spoken to. Her interest in learning more about the Kazekage was still there, but she couldn't find the courage to ask him any questions. Instead, she stayed quiet, and was free to admire the patterns in her china as she ate. Although her mind wandered from time to time, she managed to keep track of what was going on around her, just in case.

Is this thing getting tighter? Hinata wondered irritably, nonchalantly tugging at her kimono and the material beneath it. Even though she was sitting down and barely moving, it felt like her slip was trying to constrict her. Or was it just her imagination? Giving it one last tug, she decided to distract herself from it by listening to the voices around her once more.

After the preliminary stiff and formal talk, and once her father had a few cups of sake in him, the discussion began to progress to a less formal area. Hinata noticed that Gaara had barely touched the alcohol; at the most he'd only had a cup.

"Tell me, Gaara-sama," Hiashi began, scooping up the remaining food from his bowl. "Have you had a chance to look around Konoha yet?"

"Not yet," Gaara replied. He toyed with the food in his bowl, which Hinata noticed was still half-full. "I have a few more meetings and dinners to attend over the next few days, so I haven't had the time to go around the village yet. It doesn't seem like much has changed since I was last here."

"Hm. But still, you'd like to explore it while you're here, wouldn't you?"

"Well, of course –"

"And has anybody in particular been assigned to show you our village?"

"Not yet, but –"

"Ah, I see, I see. Well then, when you find yourself without any obligations, Hinata would be more than happy to show you around."

Hinata? Her eyes snapped up from her bowl. Me? She looked at the two mean. Gaara was staring at her, and she found herself growing more and more self-conscious under his steady gaze. The way he was looking at her... it was almost like he seemed to just be recognizing he from somewhere. But that was normal, of course – he must've seen her before during the Chuunin exams. Her father's eyes had also settled on her, and she knew he was expecting her to speak up.

"O-of course," she managed to say. "It would be my pleasure to escort you around the village, Kazekage-sama." Hiashi seemed satisfied with her response, and turned back to their guest. She began to nibble on the ends of her chopsticks. What was her father planning?

"She's very busy with her training these days, but I'm sure we could arrange a time that would suit the both of you." Hiashi's comment brought her back to the matter at hand.

"It's alright; I wouldn't want to interfere with your plans –" Gaara was trying to speak directly to Hinata this time, but Hiashi cut him off.

"You wouldn't be interfering with anything. If it needs to be done, she can put in some extra hours to make up for lost time."

Gaara glanced at Hinata again. His gaze betrayed none of his thoughts, and once again she felt incredibly ill at ease. How could he be so intimidating?! Looking away, she stuffed a particularly large bit of food into her mouth and concentrated on the strong flavours dancing on her taste buds. She was sure her father was planning something with this arrangement. But what? The only thing she could think of was that he wanted to build a connection between their clan and the Suna officials, but he could do that himself, couldn't he?

They'd already resumed their conversation without her, and once again she was left to her own musings. They talked about the places he could visit, and the things he could do, and also about the people he would be meeting with over the next few days. Sooner than any of them had expected, the dinner had ended, and it was time for Gaara to take his leave.

"Thank you for a lovely meal," he said, getting up from his seat.

"It was no trouble at all," Hiashi replied. He stood up, and his daughters followed suit. "You're welcome to come here again any time. Hinata will take you to the gate."

"Ah, yes! Follow me, Kazekage-sama," she told him. They walked into the hallway in silence, neither of them sure what to say. Rather than trying to come up with a topic for conversation, her thoughts were focused on the chafing together of her thighs caused by her undergarments. Walking was becoming harder – she couldn't stretch out her legs properly, and had to settle with taking the smallest steps possible at the fastest pace she could manage in order to remain ahead of him.

She tried her best to shuffle forward quickly without looking odd, but it seemed like her odd gait had already caught his attention.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Eh?" They were outside now, and in the distance she could see his guide chatting with the guards at the gate. A cold breeze blew past her, playing with the hem of her kimono and the ends of her fringe.

"You don't seem to be walking very easily," he commented, his hand moving uncertainly towards her as she hobbled forward.

She blushed. "Ah, n-no, I'm fine!" she insisted, waving away his remark. She plastered a smile onto her face. "Erm, when would you like me to show you around our village?"

"I can't quite remember my schedule right now, but I think I may have some free time tomorrow afternoon. Would that be alright with you?"

"It's perfect!" she responded immediately. It was getting harder for her to keep up this cheerful facade; the fabric was rubbing uncomfortably against her skin, and it felt like it had undergone a transformation from soft, silky material to sandpaper. It took all of her willpower not to stop walking right there. She needed to get out of this thing! Once they were halfway down the path, she came to a halt, and he followed suit. This was as far as she could go.

"Where should we meet? I can come meet you here, if you'd like."

"Oh, no, I couldn't make you do that. If it's easier, I can come to you."

"No, no, I insist. We'll meet here."

"Okay." She gave him a small bow. "It was nice to meet you."

"And you. I'll see you tomorrow."

They turned away from each other and went down their respective paths; he met his guide at the gates, and she returned to her home. As soon as she was inside, she rushed towards the staircase, wanting nothing more than to get out of these insanely tight clothes and into something much looser, like a thick, comfy pair of pyjamas.

Taking the steps one at a time, because two was simply impossible at that moment, she started up the stairs to her room but was stopped mid-step when she heard her name being called. She looked back and found her father standing at the foot of the stairs. He didn't look happy. She bit her lip. Had she done something wrong?

"Did you make plans with the Kazekage?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. "W-we're going to meet on Thursday."

"Good," he said. "I'm trusting you with the task of building a relationship with him."

"Huh?!" he wanted her to 'build a relationship' with him?! What did that even mean?!

"You two are the same age. You can get along easily. If our clan develops connections with him, it would benefit us enormously. I have too many other obligations to do this myself, so I'm counting on you to make this happen. Can you handle it?"

So that was why he'd decided to use her in this plan of his. A small smile threatened at the corners of her lips. Not once in her life had her father ever displayed any sort of desire to give her any kind of responsibility. After all, he'd never believed her capable of doing anything properly. The fact that he was standing there telling her now that he was relying on her had to be a sign. Finally, all her hard work was beginning to pay off!

"I won't let you down," she promised.

"I hope so." Nodding slightly, he turned around and briskly walked away. Hinata wheeled around and skipped up the stairs, a slight bounce in her step.

Even though her ill-fitting undergarments caused her skipping to be slightly off, and resulted in her accidentally slamming her shin into the corner of one of the stairs, she couldn't feel a thing. All she was aware of was the warmth that her father's words had brought to her.

He trusts me!

"So you had a good time, then?"

Gaara nodded. He hadn't been in the apartment for more than one minute before Tsunade returned from her office and pounced on him, refusing to leave him be until he gave her every single detail about the dinner. He didn't understand why she was so interested, but she was allowing him to stay in her home, after all, and the least he could do was answer her questions.

Tsunade picked her half-full bottle of sake up from the counter and finished off what was left of it.

"I'm surprise you managed to enjoy yourself," she confessed, twirling the empty bottle in her fingers. He'd been trying his hardest not to count, but so far, this must've been her third one. "Is talking business really that interesting to you?"

"It's my job," he replied simply.

"But still, you must've been able to talk about other things," she said.

"We did discuss my plans while I'm in the village, and I've made arrangements to tour the village with one of his daughters tomorrow."

"Do you mean Hinata?"

"Yes, that's her."

"Oh, so you two talked then?"

"She barely spoke throughout the dinner."

"Ah, well, she's naturally a rather quiet girl."

But she'd stood out.

He couldn't explain it, but there was something about her that had drawn his attention to her over and over again throughout the dinner. She'd seemed so out of place at that table. She was polite, very well-mannered, and she had a rather pleasant, soft yet melodic way of speaking. There was something so...so calm about her presence. But at that point in time, it seemed to him that she was uncomfortable. Through her air of politeness it seemed like she was nervous, and like she didn't want to be there. It was a great contrast to her father and sister, who were practically oozing confidence and pride.

The one thing about her that he simply couldn't get out of his mind was her eyes. It was her, he'd thought the first time she actually looked directly at him. She's the girl I saw! Immediately he'd wanted to speak to her more, to have her look at him, to gaze into those eyes and lose all sense of reality as he had before, but instead he was trapped in conversation with her father, and she never said a word.

Although he'd been pushed into the whole ordeal of having her take him around the town, he was rather glad it was with her. Maybe he'd have a chance to get to know her. Or something.

"Oi, quit daydreaming and take the bottle."

"Huh?"

He blinked in surprise. Sometime or another Tsunade had gotten up and grabbed another two bottles of sake, and was now offering one to him.

"You barely drank anything tonight, right? I think we should change that."

"Erm, no thank you. I'm fine."

"C'mon, are you really going to make me sit here and drink alone?" she whined. "I've had a long, hard day, and all I'm asking for is some company. I wouldn't be asking you if Shizune was here, but she's still in the office, sorting through the work that I – delayed taking action on."

"...I guess I could drink some –"

"Great! Here you go!"

She forced the bottle into his fingers and then returned to her own seat, a content smile on her face. He couldn't tell whether or not this was a drunken motion or if she was actually sober and just a very pushy person.

Yeah, sake! the voice, who he'd now dubbed 'Shukaku', exclaimed with joy. That's exactly what I've been waiting for, Gaara; some lowered inhibitions! I kind of like this lady now. Maybe we'll make her death less painful than the rest, eh?

Tuning it out, he took a large swig of sake and started a new line of conversation with Tsunade, asking her to tell him about the other clans which he would have to dine with. For the first half hour the conversation remained in this area, until Tsunade had finished her fourth bottle and Gaara was on his second one, and ten they began to go off-track, moving on to topics that were less like those between two village leaders and were more like those of two gossiping schoolgirls. Gaara was already feeling the effects of the sake – the alcohol was intensifying his reaction to Tsunade's stories, which had now moved on to the troubles she'd gotten into when getting a little bit too drunk in her office. To his immense surprise, there were many stories to be told.

"I'll tell you, it's all fun and games until someone walks in while you're standing on your desk half-naked and slurring out one of the many corny love songs you've heard at a karaoke bar."

He stifled a laugh. "Did you actually do that?!"

"Oh yeah. I got quite an audience as well."

"Why were you half-naked?"

"I think the question I had in mind at that time was 'Why aren't I half-naked?'"

"So you just did it."

"So I just did it."

He shook his head, unable to fathom the workings of this woman's mind.

"But enough about me – don't you have any funny stories from your office?"

"Me?" He looked up, trying to sort through his muddled and bleary thoughts. "My time in the office...no, there hasn't been anything like that. A lot has happened to Kankuro, definitely, but not much to me."

"What's happened to him?"

"I don't even know where to begin!" Grinning, he beckoned her in closer. "Let's just say that thanks to his antics, the medical staff has had to be trained in multiple unorthodox emergency responses, including the extraction of splinters from certain sensitive areas of the body."

Tsunade burst out laughing at that, and Gaara felt himself joining in. He swallowed down what was left of his bottle, ignoring the spinning in his head. He didn't normally drink more than a few cups of sake, and most of the time that was during formal events where it was simply required. Hell, he didn't know how much he could tolerate before ending up completely out of his head. Sure, this wasn't the smartest thing to be doing, but hey, he was technically on a 'vacation'. Might as well get as much relaxation out of it as he possibly could.

Moving his gaze back to the Hokage, he realised that something was amiss with her appearance. He just couldn't tell what.

"Are you alright?" she asked, slightly unnerved by the way he was leering at her forehead

"Fine," he muttered. His eyes landed on what appeared to be a small scratch just above her eyebrow. Was that really what had attracted his attention? A scratch?

No, that wasn't it. It seemed like the entire right side of her face within the region of the scratch was changing – wrinkles were beginning to form around her eye and cheek, and her skin began to take on a crumpled texture.

"What's going on?"

"Eh?"

"With your face," he explained, gesturing at his own.

She started to press on the wrinkled side of her face, but it looked like she couldn't feel anything different. As she pulled her fingers away, Gaara's stomach gave a violent lurch as he witnessed a patch of her skin cling to her fingers and peel off her face, revealing the bright pink flesh beneath it. Tiny beads of blood ran down from the edges of the torn piece of skin, and there were tiny holes dotting the flesh, as though hundreds of tiny bugs were eating right through it. The rest of her skin beyond the scratch began to curl up and fall off of its own accord, and soon bits of flesh started dropping off as well, hitting the ground with a sickening splat.

She stared at him with a baffled expression, unable to comprehend why he looked so horrified.

"Everything feels fine," she said, scratching at the slightly rotting flesh and revealing the stark white bone beneath it.

"Stop!" he yelled, his panic inducing his voice to raise three octaves. "Don't scratch it!"

"Why not?" She brushed a lock of hair away from her face, and the bits of tissue that had gathered on her fingers now clung to the blond strands – could she really not feel that?!

What the hell was going on?!

He reached his limit when she continued speaking – on one side she looked normal and, well, alive! But watching the other side of her face was like watching a corpse speak to him; he could do nothing but stare, morbidly fascinated by the way her jaw moved, the way her eyeball stuck out of its socket and seemed ready to just pop out at any given time. And still all the time as her jaw moved up and down more flesh bounced off, surrounding her feet with a layer of what looked like pink mush.

Do you like it, Gaara? Because if you do, we could make this become a reality, you know.

YOU'RE DOING THIS?! he screamed at the voice. STOP IT!

Now why would I do that? Shukaku asked mockingly. C'mon, you want it, I want it, and you have to admit, this is a lot more fun than just crushing her. Peeling her away layer by layer until there's nothing left, I think it's brilliant! And if we keep her alive we get to see more blood spill – not to mention there'll be a lot more screaming as well.

STOP DOING THIS TO ME!

I'll admit, I'm surprised I can even do this much while you're still awake. Silly Kazekage, you should've avoided the sake.

"Gaara?" she'd noticed that he wasn't listening to her. "Are you alright?"

He was transfixed by her appearance – he wanted to look away, but it was impossible. She moved in closer, and he felt a glob of skin and tissue drop onto his hand, and in his head he could hear her imaginary screams as Shukaku tried to demonstrate how the entire scenario would go.

See, if we cracked her skull just like this –

A line appeared in her skull, and an entire fragment clattered to the ground, revealing the greyish-pink matter within. Horrified, Gaara slammed a hand over his mouth, holding back the bile that had risen from his throat.

She realised something was wrong, and got off her chair with the intention of getting closer to him and checking him out, but he leapt off his own chair, backing away immediately.

"S-stay back!" he stammered, swiping his bottle off the counter and waving it around him defensively. His gourd was in his room, but he could feel the vibrations of the sand buzzing around, ready to slide out through the crack under the doorway and attack if necessary.

"What's wrong?" She didn't look human any more – she was a monster, a reanimated corpse from one of his nightmares that was out to get him.

He waved his bottle in her direction, ignoring the small rivulet of sake that sloshed out of the bottle and onto his clothing. "Stay back!" he ordered again.

She reached her hand out to him, fingernails stained with blood and tissue. He panicked and threw the bottle at her. The alcohol must have affected his aim – it flew way off to the left and slammed into the wall, breaking to pieces. She turned to it in confusion, and he used the opportunity to dash into his room and bolt the door shut behind him.

Aw, was that too much for you? Shukaku asked as Gaara slid down to the ground. I'll try to tone it down next time. Hahahahaha!