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On the fourteenth day, a veritable downpour rained down suddenly on the Konoha side of the road while, thanks to a meteorological peculiarity which we have previously noted, the Suna side remained dry as a bone and in fact enjoyed a particularly glorious sunshine.

This made Neji grouchier than usual because he was getting drenched on his log while Temari stretched in catlike contentment on her boulder in the sun on the other side of the road and ignored him.

Neji endured the rain until his hair started to go frizzy, which was utterly inadmissible. He considered going into his bunkhouse and not coming back out until the rain stopped, but a Hyuuga could never let a little rain dampen his spirits or frizzle his hair, so he began to concoct a plan whereby he might hang out at Suna until the downpour ceased.

Eventually Neji settled on going to the Sand side under the pretext of asking Temari whether she happened to have any artichoke hearts because he didn't, which was a kind of a thin excuse for a plan but it was the best he could come up with considering that he was soaked down to his boxers and kind of cold.

Neji accordingly made his cool and collected way across the road and emerged from his curtain of rain to stand in front of Temari looking somewhat bedraggled.

Temari laughed pitilessly at Neji's condition and informed him that his white clothes had gone all transparent, upon which she began to look at him very closely indeed and this made Neji glad that his excellent fashion sense had recommended a dark wrap around his waist.

Temari noticed the dark wrap too but she called it poor fashion sense and told him so, and then she lay on her back on her rock, looked at Neji upside-down and told him to get the hell back to his side before she kicked his ass for trespassing on hers.

"Wait," said Neji, who rather regretted the way he had kept Temari off of Leaf turf when she wanted her magazine a few days ago, "I wanted to ask you something."

"What?" asked Temari impatiently when Neji took his time formulating his request for artichoke hearts to try and make it sound at least sort of cool.

"I was…" said Neji, who kept being distracted by the way Temari was laying on her rock and looking upside-down at him because it made her arch her back which made her chest press upwards in a really nice way, "wondering…"

Temari waited a few moments and completed Neji's sentence for him in the following manner: "if you can stay here while your stupid rain keeps pouring? Nope! Get the hell back to your side."

Then Temari stretched on her boulder and Neji could have sworn she was absorbing sunlight or something like a freak lizard. Temari did not appreciate this comparison when he shared it with her and she retorted that she would rather look like a freak lizard than a wet rat in a loincloth.

"Anyway," said Neji, who did not find this likeness flattering, "do you have any artichoke hearts?"

"What the hell," said Temari, "is an artichoke?"

Temari looked at Neji in an upside-down scandalized sort of way, clearly thinking that artichokes were some sort of small fuzzy mammal and Neji ate their hearts, which totally confirmed his horrible nature.

Neji pressed a palm to his forehead. "How can you not know what an artichoke is?"

"Maybe we eat different things in Suna, like not-small-fuzzy-mammals-things." said Temari. "So what's an artichoke?"

"Um," said Neji when he realized he wasn't even sure what exactly an artichoke was, "it's like a bunch of leaves and on the inside there's –"

"A bunch of leaves!" exclaimed Temari in upside-down delight, "I knew you were a vegetarian leaf-eating Leaf! You totally ate that leaf I gave you, didn't you."

Temari sat up properly because the blood was getting to her head and Neji was relieved because otherwise he kept getting distracted by her bust, which made the conversation unfair. Temari began to look around for another leaf with which she could feed Neji.

Neji politely declined the dusty twig with a shrivelled leaf attached that Temari plucked from somewhere beside her boulder and offered him. Temari was offended at this refusal of her cooking and she tried to smack Neji with her fan in retaliation and didn't stop until he had backed out of range and into his curtain of rain.

"Well now," said Temari before leaning forwards and slipping the twig and leaf behind Neji's ear, "maybe this will make a good umbrella for you."

The leaf promptly fell off under the weight of the water and Neji pulled fiercely at the twig, yanking out several hairs in the process, which left him extremely cranky.

Temari wiped her hand carefully because in reaching towards Neji she had gotten it wet and being wet was something she really hated. Then she sat primly upon her boulder with her great fan spread behind her – it occurred to her that Neji might ask to borrow it to serve as a better umbrella than her leaf, which she would love to see happen – and watched Neji smoulder at her behind his sheet of pouring rain.

Temari smiled like a very satisfied feline. "Don't drown or anything, okay?" she called, and she turned her back to Neji to resume her photosynthesizing.

Neji really loathed Temari at that point for her inhuman lack of compassion about him being cold and wet and frizzy-haired, and so he stepped back into sunny Suna, grabbed her around the waist and threw her unceremoniously into the rain so as to make her suffer too.

Temari landed gracefully on her feet (because she had a cat motif to maintain) and hissed and unsheathed her claws – well, figuratively, and she began to swear at Neji very loudly and very longly and very wetly before stalking back towards her rock to get her fan and kick some ass.

Neji wisely prevented her from doing so by using the secret ninja technique of Flying Tackle No Jutsu, which resulted in both of them rolling in mud and Temari kicking and screaming like she was about to be drowned – she really hated water – and Neji telling himself that if anyone came around the bend right now, he would have to kill them because nobody must ever witness this.

Then Temari grabbed a fistful of Neji's hair, which was a big mistake because then he wasn't just mad, he was extremely pissed, which made for two extremely pissed ninja slipping and sliding, tearing at each others' clothes and trying to slay each other.

Soaking wet.

In mud.

Which was pretty sexy if you thought about it, not that either of them was thinking about it.

Eventually Neji gained the upper hand like the guys always do and held Temari down, shouting what might have been "let go of my hair … let go!" but maybe not because Neji would totally come up with something wittier than that.

Then they came to a stalemate and had an impromptu-but-furious staring contest which Neji won because Temari was on her back and thus got rain in her eyes and plus Neji had the whole bloodline thing going for him in that respect.

They panted at each other and Temari said slowly so he would understand, "if you get off, I'll let go," but Neji sure as hell didn't believe her for a second and he said, equally slowly, "if you let go, I'll get off," and then Temari began to squirm and shout "get off!" several times in rapid succession to drown out Neji's stupid proposal and then they both realized that there were vague sexual connotations in those words, which was pretty funky.

Then they realized there were not-so-vague sexual connotations in their positions which was even funkier except not since they were so not attracted to each other, what the hell.

And so Temari wiggled furiously and Neji attacked her arm with his teeth (but not very hard, only enough to make her release his hair), and then Temari landed a knee to his stomach. Unfortunately, Neji had abs o' steel so all that did was make him retaliate with a particularly hard bite which made Temari tighten her hold on his hair even more and vow not to let go until he severed her hand from her arm with his teeth if he could.

Neji considered this very seriously and was about to make the transition from vegetarian to cannibal when the rain let up as abruptly as it had begun and suddenly he and Temari were both blinking dazedly in rainbow-bright sunshine that splintered the light into innumerable prismatic fragments and countless droplets of water scintillated in iridescent splendour all about them.

Both stopped their floundering momentarily to enjoy this trippy experience.

"Whoa," said Temari from somewhere under Neji's chest, "everything is so beautiful!"

She almost lost herself into another descriptive dalliance but then she felt like her nose was getting kind of squashed by Neji's collarbone which reminded her of her dire circumstances and so she added, "except for you," and proceeded to try to damage Neji's face irreparably by smearing it with mud with her free hand. This gave Neji the idea and he returned the favour except he tried to put a handful of mud in Temari's mouth, which she would absolutely not submit to.

Then they writhed together some more and found it very exciting and sensuous which meant that they had to stop immediately because they were so not going to go there.

And so Neji rolled partially off of Temari and Temari partially let go of Neji's hair and they continued in this gradual way until they had successfully disengaged without either party having the final advantage (though Temari did give Neji's hair a good final tug because she was a vindictive female with a reputation to maintain after all) and then they huffily stalked to their respective bunkhouses to clean off the mud that covered them from head to toe.

Temari made a detour to her boulder to fetch her fan, which resulted in a delay that caused a considerable loss of dignity as we shall see in a moment, because Kankuro came swinging out of the Konoha forest at that point smelling faintly of manure.

When he spotted Temari, Kankuro asked her if she had been cleaning out a barn too, because she was covered in crap, in case she didn't know.

When Temari ignored him and picked up her fan, Kankuro asked what the hell kind of keener she was to do border duty and clean out a barn at the same time, anyway.

Temari replied loftily that she had actually taken up women's mud-wrestling, thank you.

When Kankuro pressed for details about the other women's mud-wrestling contestants and whether any of them were naked, Temari was unable to provide further information and she admitted that she had lied: this was just part of a new training regimen whereby she dragged herself around with her teeth – it was all the rage in Konoha.

This answer satisfied Kankuro because on his way back from the barn he had swung over a man in a green outfit and orange leggings doing this very thing.

Temari then took a good look at Kankuro and asked him how exactly he had managed to get two black eyes, massive subcutaneous bruising and a shuriken partially embedded in his chest while cleaning out a barn.

Kankuro looked proudly down at the shuriken sticking out of his sternum and said, "I stopped in Konoha on the way back from the barn."

Temari didn't find this very explanatory and told him so, and Kankuro elaborated, thus: he had gone to Konoha to find Tenten because she was the only accessible chick on his Hit List and he had, very suavely he thought, opened the conversation with jokes about Belgian reporters and pet pigs. Tenten had not taken kindly to his overtures, as his injuries attested.

Temari suggested to Kankuro that maybe he shouldn't have gone to see Tenten right after having cleaned out a barn, because one whiff of him and everyone was running for the hills screaming bloody murder. Kankuro made a note to remember this tip next time.

Kankuro then waved to Temari and swung off again with his arms flapping uselessly behind him and a panoramic sweep of the camera followed him at a distance with occasional close-ups of his face while he muttered his new physiotherapy schedule – courtesy of Tenten – to himself.

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A/N: I love Kankuro!

Double update because I'm out for three weeks – trip to Central America! I'll send you something, pick one:

a) Cheerful postcard

b) Garish souvenir

c) Sand

d) Strange plant(s)

e) A gastrointestinal complaint heretofore undiscovered by science.

Choose wisely… Haha. Take care!