Meet and Greet Hour

Since there were still several hours to kill before the meeting, Gaara accepted a tour around the village from Naruto after letting Sasuke ditch his bag at his house. Well, "letting" isn't the proper term. It was demanded of Naruto that Sasuke would be staying there…there wasn't a choice in the matter.

The blonde did show him the sights of the village; he was good on that part. But did he have to tell every personal event that had ever happened to him at each one?!

"And here," Naruto babbled happily, totally oblivious to the tired and blank stare Gaara had now plastered on his face, "Is our academy. It took me four tries to finally become a ninja. Believe it!"

"So shouldn't you be older than your peers? The ones you were supposed to graduate with left you behind years ago," Gaara pointed out, pulling out of his forced daze long enough to notice this part of Naruto's story.

"What?" the boy asked. "No! In fact, Sasuke's a few months older than me!"

"So did you fail too, Sasuke?" Gaara asked.

"What kind of stupid ass question is that?" Sasuke asked, disdain evident in his voice. "Uchiha's fail at nothing."

Gaara gave him a long stare before looking away. "How lovely," he said to him. To Naruto he said, "So, if everyone in your class is as old as you…something here isn't making sense. Currently, you should be like twenty compared to their being around sixteen. This is as crazy as a flashback fog."

Suddenly everyone stilled, waiting for the area to start clouding over with an unexplained mist. After a few moments of nothingness passed, the tension slowly faded.

"Don't diss the fog…" Naruto whispered, looking around cautiously like it might hear him.

"This is a weird village," Gaara was about to say, but was cut off by someone screaming in a very high pitched voice. Then, the next thing he knew, something purple and blonde had thrown itself at him and it took all his might to keep himself standing.

"GAAAAARRRRRRAAAAAAAAA!" Ino shouted out for nearly the whole world to hear. "Long time no see! How are you?"

"I'm sorry, are you deaf?!" Gaara asked her. "Why are you shouting? And how dare you touch me! I'm the Kazekage, bi—no, you don't call women that, Gaara. Or at least not out loud."

"Oh, I'm like, totally sorry about that!" Ino said, throwing her hair over her shoulder. "So, like, you now look, like, totally hot, and like, so cool. So, like, last time I saw you, you were all angry over the whole, Sasuke hitting you or something thing, but like, you're cool with us now, right? I mean, it was a small hit and it was, like, the chuunin exams anyways, so like, hitting each other was the point and…"

Gaara found himself slipping back into his daze. He saw Ino's mouth moving, but had all but muted her voice. Dude, does she ever shut up?! What's this? Now she's talking about liking carrots over broccoli? How did the subject get to that?!

"And I like, know ranch dressing is supposed to be healthier than, like, Thousand Island, but I just find the taste so much better. I mean, when you think about all the flavors out there, it just gets so confusing, right? I mean, you just have to limit it down to like, two or three favorites! Oh, that makes me think of what happened when I went to the store yesterday! I was shopping for…"

Is she still speaking? Gaara thought, still trying his hardest to keep her voice out of his ears. How much can a person talk before their tongue collapses from exhaustion? Does she have an off button?!

"And then my mom was all like, 'You're not grown yet! You don't know what's best for you!' And I'm all like, 'Mo-om, I'm like, sixteen now! Hel-loo!' And so we started to argue over it right there, which was totally not cool, cause, like, I'd already just got done having a fight with my friend Sakura that day, who has, like, the biggest forehead in history! But it's not that I really don't like her, it's just that, like, she and I are too alike, but anyways, so later on I decided to change into this really cute skirt I'd just bought, and…"

That's it. I can't take any more of this. I'm going to tell her to shut the hell up! I-I have to!

"Are you listening, Gaara?" Ino suddenly stopped and asked. It was the only true words Gaara registered from her.

"I'm sure that everything you just said was of extreme importance," he said with a very straight face. The girl cast him a sideways glance as though thinking he wasn't quite right in the head before mercifully walking away.

But just when he thought he was through with impromptu visitors, a very quiet voice could be heard over by a shaded tree. Naruto, Sasuke and Gaara were still standing in front of the academy and the person that had spoken stood by the same tree that Naruto had had most of his emo flashbacks at. Yes, the one with the swing, oh so similar to the same one in Gaara's flashbacks as well.

"Hi, Naruto," the shy, silver-eyed girl said, blushing and looking at the ground. She kept pushing her two index fingertips together as she stood there.

"Oh, hi Hinata!" Naruto said happily. Gaara could see the evident liking the girl had for him, but Naruto greeted her like he would anyone else…by screaming their name only one octave away from being as loud as Ino's was.

"I just wanted to tell you..." Hinata continued, "That, um…I…" Suddenly, her voice trailed off, whatever she was supposed to be saying became a mumble.

"Sorry Hinata, didn't catch any of that!" Naruto screamed at her. Gaara rolled his eyes. Great, half the people here had overly loud voices and those that didn't had voices that faded like farts on the wind…ew…

"I said, I just wanted to tell you…" Hinata started again, but still her voice became an indistinguishable whisper.

"Oh come on Hinata!" Sasuke suddenly said. "I've been gone two years and you still haven't grown some balls to tell Naruto how you feel?"

All noise ceased and three pairs of very shocked eyes met his.

"What? Don't look at me like that! Evidently her mysterious lady parts aren't helping her out any! She needs to start being a man and expressing herself!"

"So would she still be a girl or what…?" Naruto wondered out loud. Gaara groaned to himself again. Figures of speech were lost on this kid.

"Well, I just wanted…" Hinata said, a bit louder than the last two times. "I wanted to tell you…good luck on the chunnin exams!"

Naruto blinked at her. "Huh? That's all? That's your big confession?"

She shifted nervously. "Well, I know that you never passed…back when we first took it, nor the second time, or the third time. This will be your fourth try."

"Not true! I've been gone training with Jiraiya, the pervy sage!"

"But he's always made a point of bringing you back for the exams…which you've not completed."

Naruto narrowed his eyes at her. "Alright, fine, whatever. Is that all you wanted to say to me?" Suddenly, he didn't like Hinata as much as he used to.

"Well, yes…I guess." And just like that, shy Hinata was back. She gave a small bow and then quickly hurried away, mumbling to herself.

Sasuke shrugged. "Well, she didn't grow as big of balls as I'd hoped, but I guess not everyone can have some as big as mine." Gaara gave him a disgusted look that he totally missed. With that, he walked away, whistling some dark tune. Naruto looked torn between showing Gaara around more and following the Uchiha.

"Go on, I need to go get ready for the meeting anyways," Gaara said, having had his fill of Naruto's village people. Or rather, the women in it.

The blonde gave a large wave, then ran after Sasuke to no doubt talk his ear off about all the changes that had happened in his absence…or something like that.

Gaara quickly ran back to the hotel room that he was sharing with his siblings, lest another person cross his path. He'd had enough chit-chat to last a lifetime. He never was one for talking.

When he slid back the door, quite a sight greeted him. Temari was rubbing a sharpening stone over a large metal fan, humming to herself. Who was she planning on attacking? In the bathroom, he could hear the water running and a lot of splashing going on. He went around the corner to check it out.

Kankuro had stripped off his shirt and was scrubbing vigorously all over, his skin red and raw from the pressure.

"Don't tell me you're a germaphobe now," Gaara said ironically.

"Have you come across some kid named Kiba?!" his brother shouted instead.

"No, can't say that I have."

"Good, don't! I thought we were all going to have just a nice conversation, you know? Exchange a bit of ninja info or something. Then he got to talking about his dog which is the size of a deer. And wouldn't you know that damn mutt pissed on me!"

At these last three words, Gaara took a very large step backwards. Oh, that's just nasty.

"The damn kid called it 'dynamic marking' and congratulated it for wizzing on me! Ugh!" But then he stopped for a moment and gave his brother an evil grin, water dripping from his sopping hair. "But that's okay…I got it back. I pissed on his dog too!"

Gaara's eyes were about to now pop out of his head. "Oh, Kankuro! Please tell me you didn't! I'm the Kazekage! You are family of the Kazekage! We have an image to keep! And pissing on dogs isn't it!"

His brother shrugged. "Hey, you'd have done it too if you were in my situation. Besides, the stupid mutt and the kid both found it all funny and just walked away laughing, but not before congratulating me on my "dynamic marking" skills."

Gaara didn't say anything, but left his brother to his scrubbing and his sister to her scraping and went into one of the bedrooms that were in the suite. He would've killed to retreat to his sand shelter, but now wasn't the time for it. He glanced at the clock. One and a half hours left before the meeting. Throwing himself on his back on the bed, he said, "Sand Shuffle!" and the ever-present grains formed a small, rectangular device that turned out to be an iPod Shuffle, complete with over a hundred songs. And yes, it worked.

He smirked to himself. Heh, sand rocks. He passed the time away in his own personal bubble, building back up his patience reserve for the near future when he'd undoubtedly need it again.