A/N: Did you know there are only 21 fics on this site for Gaara and Fuu? Wack.

Tumblr account where I might post drawings of characters is: *not alive yet sorry*


I woke up the next day to furious pounding on my bedroom door. From the haze of yesterday's planning, sand hidden underneath by bed immediately spilled out and went to attack the slowly opening door. With blurry eyes, I caught sunshine blond hair and a frightened expression. In a flash, the morning haze replenished with fear of my first slip-up with this new family, and I made the sand drop in its tracks, then recede back under the bed.

Temari stood stock-still at the base of the door.

"Sorry," I apologized, thinking of a way to mend the situation. "I made my sand try to close the door, not attack you."

Instantly, she shrugged off the attempted attack, then bounded in. "As long as you don't scare me like that again. Now, Ai-chan, do you have any clothes for the festival today?"

"Wait, what? There's a festival?"

Today was Wednesday... in September... yeah, no idea.

Temari opened the white painted wardrobe and began rifling through dresses I didn't know were even there. Nobody really bothered moving my stuff from Uncle's house to here, and instead just bought new everything. She eventually pulled out a richly woven white robe and some basterdization of a saree outfit. They were both blindingly white - I was going to look like an angel cosplayer by the end of today. Now, I just needed the halo. While fumbling around with the loops and knots of the overly complicated top (what kind of saree was this?), I daftly noticed that Temari had braided intricate designs into her hair and wore an annoyingly loud purple shalwar kameez.

"When is this festival starting?" I asked while finding a suitable scarf for my hair.

"In like forty minutes. And what the heck happened to your hair?"

I gingerly touched the cracked, squishy mess of ink still permeating my scalp. My thousand-count pillow was stained with a grey-ish black blob. "Whoopsies. I was trying to look like you, but accidentally dyed my hair darker than lighter."

At that, her expression softened and I almost felt bad for lying to her. Almost. "Aww, it's alright, Ai-chan. You've got pretty enough hair."

She led me to a bathroom, ran water over a comb, then gently ran through the messy strands of hair. Slowly but surely, the mess of black dripped away into red. The bathroom floor, however, now had a big black stain.

Wonderful.

I winced when Temari pulled scissors from the medicine cabinet and began shearing off red locks. "What festival needs me to be this dolled up, again?"

She aggressively yanked back my bangs back into a shimmery head scarf that only covered my hair and neck. "The Autumn Equinox. And I'm not dolling you up, I'm making sure your hair doesn't tangle from your terrible paint job and won't poke out of the scarf," she huffed defensively. A few memories of Temari of the Sands trickled to my thoughts - about how she found femininity and doll-ish concepts to be useless and didn't care too much about looking pretty. Just intimidating.

A few minutes of torture later, Kankuro, Temari, and I were out the front doors and began making our way to the colorful banners hanging up around the market district. I was almost amazed at how easy our current camaraderie was, considering we had made introductions just yesterday morning and all the two had heard of me during my absence was how monstrous my demon self was. Those two definitely had their heads screwed on right if they judged on personal meetings and character, rather than through the gossip vine.

"Ai-chan, did you bring any money?" Asked Kankuro once we made our way to the center of the action, eyeing the food stalls.

I shrugged. "I mean, I had a weekly allowance for buying groceries and basic necessities when I lived with Uncle, so I have enough."

Tip: Don't ever specify how much money you have on you. Ever. People talk louder than they think, so they might not notice when a random passerby hears a bit of juicy gossip that spreads to the adept pickpocketers who'll take you as a target. Fat wallets lose weight quickly.

Kankuro made heart-eyes when I offered to buy him a snack. Temari just scowled, slapped Kankuro's grubby outstretched hands, and dragged me away by my cuff like some badly behaving dog. "Never offer to buy Kankuro food. He'll just eat you broke," she sniped, ignoring Kankuro's yelp.

"Will... he be okay?"

At that, she paused for dramatic effect. "Eh, he has friends around here somewhere that'll accompany him. For now, though, we're going to go wherever you want."

She glanced down (she was just stupidly tall, okay?) expectantly. "I don't have a preference where we visit first. I've never really attended one of the city's festivals before. But with my newest disguise, I can safely bypass the scared citizens."

At that, I readjusted the shimmery satin headscarf.

Temari's big nine year old eyes glistened dangerously. Fuck. How does one deal with crying children?

"I never asked Otou-sama why the kids at school talked about you like you were a demon," she said, in the worst rendition of forced casualty as we entered a section of the festival dedicated to art. "Most girls are too intimidated as my status as the daughter of the Yondaime Kazekage, but they are downright frightened of you."

"I mean... I have a demon sealed inside me, but I'm not the demon. I'm a scroll with a deadly kunai sealed inside, but civilian citizens don't understand. A good majority of the ninja I've passed by haven't shown any fear, but that's mostly because I haven't yet gone on some wild rampage with my sand."

Temari strolled to a stall run by an old man who looked mildly deceased already, quietly bought an expensive war fan duo set, then pushed them into my hands. "Ai-chan," her voice cracked. Oh no, are those tears? "You're my baby sister. I don't remember much about kaa-san other than how much she loved her children, but she'd hate it if you got hurt."

We continued walking until we reached a deserted bench.

"I know some war fan fighting techniques from kaa-san's journal and tutors. I'm going to teach you how to fight without using your sand. The sand is associated with the demon and I don't want people to be scared of you for something you can't control."

Her thoughtful actions created a blossoming, almost painful, warmth in my chest. The emotion was unnameable, but was positive for the most part. "I... thank you."

That was lackluster. I dropped my Ultimate Defense, watch the chakra-laced sand fall to the ground, then jumped into Temari's arms for a hug. "Thank you, nee-chan!"

Within only twenty-four hours, I had become dangerously attached to my siblings.

Now, there was nothing I wouldn't do for them. Before I had seriously thought about Yashamaru's fate, I once thought the same for him. But this? This was true loyalty. A deep bond forged from barely anything.


The chakra paper split evenly into two parts in my hand, then crumbled into dust.

"Two main chakra natures? Well, it's good that at least you've got wind nature," commented Temari. Kankuro was running in circles on the other side of the training hall. Perk of being the Kazekage's kids was having a personal underground, air-conditioned training hall.

Wait. Let me reiterate. Kankuro was training his stamina by running in circles - vertical circles. Up a wall, across the ceiling, down the opposing wall, across the ground, then back at it again.

I gestured at his general area. "Shouldn't I be doing chakra exercises like wall walking first?"

She shrugged. "Baki-sensei says katas and weaponry are supposed to be learned first."

"Baki? The top jounin? He's your tutor?"

Again, she shrugged halfheartedly. "Yeah...? Anyway, follow my actions like a mirror."

Because I needed to toughen my skin anyway, I shed some of the Ultimate Defense to burn into a two meter by two meter thin sheet of glass in between us. The rest of the Ultimate Defense was used as a frame to hold the glass upright in the air. Even after countless experiments, I just couldn't manipulate glass molecules. It was unnervingly frustrating.

Temari raised an eyebrow at the display. "Alright then. Follow me."

With her own two war fans, she slowly ran through the motions with the flexibility of a cat on steroids. I struggled to keep up with the confusing wrist movements and light yet severe motions concerning the fans themselves.

"Come on, Ai-chan! Once you master the double war fans, you can move onto a battle fan!"

"What's the difference between war and battle fans?" I questioned, panting.

"War fans are disguised to look like the normal fancy fans that noble women carry around, and can fit in the folds of an obi. Battle fans are twenty kilograms at minimum and are the size of Triple H clubs that Otou-san displays on the first floor of the Kazekage tower. Shinobi have to carry battle fans on their backs or seal them into medium capacity scrolls."

Well, fuck. I could barely lift a bag of mangoes without requesting aid from sandy help. "I've got weak noodle arms, I could only ever fight with war fans," I complained.

"Weakli~ing," she sung.

"Oi, oi, oi, I'm stuck in this seven year old body! Can't do much in terms of physicality until I reach a growth spurt, you tall freak."

From a distance, Kankuro called out, "Ai-chan, I'm only a year older than you but ten centimeters taller!"

"You're definitely going down, brother dear!"

Temari snorted. "You're gonna have to finish our war fan katas first, short-stuff."

The easy conversation came naturally to our sibling trio and I loved it.

My sister led me through two hours worth of katas and the wrist flicking motions, then tossed me off to Kankuro to be taught basic chakra exercises. As a fourth year academy student, she had her own exercises to complete for homework. Or so she had bluffed, because her current meditation practice looked suspiciously like a nap.

Kankuro was thoroughly unimpressed with my lack of repertoire. "So, you should've gone through your first year at the academy already. Did Otou-sama not enroll you because you have all the necessary skills to become Genin? At age... how old are you? Three?"

"Seven."

"Yeah, dream on, short-stuff. So, tell me what you know and I'll help you from there."

Most older brothers were annoying shits who were too lazy to be nice to their bratty little siblings. I wondered if Temari bribed him with food to nicely offer aid. "My sand is very volatile. Anything less than ten liters of sand requires basically no chakra."

He tapped a finger on his chin. "Anything other than your version of magnet release?"

"I can turn into sand for an advised less than fifteen minutes. And I can make the sand lift me up."

"Anything other than sand?"

"The sand makes me fly?"

"No sand."

I gasped incredulously, placing a hand over my heart. "What is this blasphemy? Sand is life, man."

"Aiiii," he sighed.

"Fine, fine," I huffed, wiping imaginary tears from my cheeks. "I can... Nee-chan taught me the basics of the art of war fans. And I read a lot. I'm ninety-five percent certain that I know enough of the first-year curriculum's theoretical information."

"But," he implored. "Do you know any chakra exercises? Meditation? Standard weaponry? Basic field prep and medicine? How to survive in a desert?"

My silence told him everything. He pinched his nose in exasperation, then began lecturing.


A/N: Announcement - there will be major character death and some mild disfigurement/loss of body parts for some characters near the end of the story. I've drafted the entirety of this fic, it'll be maybe 200k words?

Have fun, review, favorite, wait for more~!

Y'all know what Ai is planning for her impromptu trip out of Suna, right? It should be pretty obvious...