Chapter 10: Strength from Within

First I would like to thank dwellerofcrag for the encouraging review. *gives a cookie* You posed some interesting questions. I'll have to write about that when Kankuro has the baby(s). I'm not revealing the details yet though because I'm an evil mean horrible person. I would also like to thank my friend Ari for helping me with the previous chapter when I was a bit stuck on where to go with it and for the help with showing me facts about a relationship that I need to work on defining with Kankey and Rasa. Their the best and I wanna give them a truck full of ice cream and dumplings for being the best ever.

Two weeks later Rasa and Kankuro were on their lunch break. It had been a very difficult morning for the both of them. The paperwork was piled high on each man's desk after a sand storm had swept through the village and caused quite a bit of damage. It had destroyed several buildings and check points around the village and had taken out communication. Toppled over bricks looked like the blocks one might find scattered about a child's play room and seemed to have been knocked down just as easily as the aforementioned child's toys toward the south east border of the village. Thankfully that particular zone was mostly store houses and the odd factory so nobody had been in the buildings at the time they had collapsed, but tensions were high at this moment. Kankuro had called for it to be evacuated but now a large portion of the village's weaponry was underground and excavating the caches of supplies would be more costly than simply demolishing any remnants and rebuilding. This lead simple minded people to question why Kankuro hadn't called for an evacuation while the supplies could have still been relocated, when in reality sand storms were unpredictable phenomenon and this one blew in so quickly he had elected to save the lives of the people over relocating replaceable material goods. All the crap he was dealing with because of his choice had put the already hormonal Kankuro in a foul mood. His nausea wasn't helping to lift his spirits at all either. Nor was the tuna sandwich he smelled from the plate of his husband, which had taken any appetite he may have had and tossed it out the door as if it was yesterday's news.

"Eat your lunch." Rasa snaps, also in a foul mood because of the delays in communication and the estimated repair costs. "You eat something that doesn't smell like a dog pile then. That sandwich ruined my appetite. Where the hell do you get tuna in the middle of a desert any way?" Snaps Kankuro, taking his plate of dumplings to the counter and putting them in a storage container and washing his plate. "In a can at the store. And if it smells so offensive to you eat your lunch elsewhere." He says authoritatively. "You know," Kankuro responds, his threshold for bull shit having finally been reached, "not every meal I skip is because I'm sick. Sometimes my appetite is simply gone. And I guarantee you if I eat right now I'll be vomiting within ten minuets. Not only am I nauseous, but I'm under a lot of stress right now too. And what's more is I'll never get better if you micromanage every meal I eat. I may have needed that in the beginning, but I don't need it any more. You sometimes seem to have difficulty treating me as an equal. Yeah you raised me, but I'm not a child any more and I don't need to be told when to eat and how much. I don't need you to wipe my ass any more." Kankuro's response caused Rasa to drop his sandwich. "I do the things I do because I love you Kankuro. You couldn't keep your breakfast down so I really have to question your choice to skip lunch too. And to be frank I'm already a bit pissed off so much of the supply inventory was buried. And a lot of people are questioning why I put you in charge. They think it's just because we're married and they think someone else could have moved those supplies. And in hind sight, you probably could have set up a barrier or sealed them for future summoning. It didn't cross your mind and your new to the job, but that's still thousands of ryo." He says, taking a deep breath and running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I'm sorry. I fucked up. And I know you love me Rasa. But I don't need training wheels any more. I'm just asking for there to be a bit more trust between us. A relationship isn't one person taking care of the other. It's two people taking care of each other, even if their both perfectly capable of caring for themselves. They do it because they want to. Our relationship dynamic has changed from a child in need of care and his care taker to equals. And what's more is I'm not as sick as I used to be so in order to move forward I need room to make some of my own damn choices. If your still pissed about this and the supplies when I get back you can sleep on the couch tonight. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." He says, grabbing his shoes and scrolls to head out to check on the critical defense points and assess any damages.

At this point Rasa was livid and tosses his lunch in the trash before heading back to his office to do some more paper work, blowing through it as quickly as he could. Frankly the couch sounded like a good option. Not because what they were fighting about was huge, but because as much as he loved Kankuro, he was being bitchy right now. It wasn't that Rasa didn't trust that he could stand on his own so to speak. He knew Kankuro had gotten so much better. It was just that he would like to make sure Kankuro wouldn't trip or stumble. He knew he wouldn't fall again. But he still couldn't stop his instinct to protect. So at the heart of the matter was the fact that letting go scared him. He sighs and grabs another pile of paperwork and starts reading through it. It was an invoice for all the kuni, shurikin, senbon, smoke bombs and exploding tags stored in one of the collapsed buildings. He enters the numbers onto an inventory sheet that he was compiling from all six store houses to determine how much was lost and wether the cost of excavation would be more than just ordering more. And so far it seemed like digging them up would be the best option. He still had two more store houses to add to the list too.

At that present moment Kankuro had walked to a defense checkpoint a mile outside the village that had reported significant damage to assess the situation. It was a checkpoint they simply couldn't afford to lose. But when it came into view there was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It looked like the whole structure had been leveled. He would have to be careful where he stepped because there were levels below the surface and structural damage may have been incurred with the sand being loosened beneath some areas of the subterranean structure. He takes a careful step and the ground below him gives way, sending him falling through the ceiling of one of the rooms. What was that he had said about being careful where he stepped not a moment earlier? Mother fucker nothing seemed to be going his way today. The sand starts caving into the room. He quickly pulls himself to his hands and knees and into the adjoining room, bolting the door to keep the flow of sand from swallowing the whole structure. After putting himself out of immediate danger he sits down on the floor against the wall to evaluate the situation.

First question: was the baby okay? A fall like that could easily have hurt or even killed the unborn child. He puts his hand on his abdomen and checks the chakra flow. It felt the same as it has for these past 8 weeks, though as a puppet master, he had learned to feel emotion through the chakra threads of other puppet masters. The same concept, as of the past few days, had been operating the same way with his and the baby's joint chakra flow. His chakra ran into the baby, so his guess was that the baby could feel what he was feeling. That or the baby wasn't sensitive to the nature of chakra yet. But when the baby's chakra flowed out he could read what the baby was feeling. Thus far the feelings weren't well developed, nor was there any conscious thought, but the fall had scared the child. He took that as a good sign though. Fear meant alive. He didn't feel any pain either. He knew the nervous system was developing and if the baby was injured he would feel it through the signals in it's chakra, seeing as it had some growing pains lately from the growing limbs. But it was just fine and that brought a level of calm to him that wasn't quite natural given the situation he was in. He knew that in order to get out of this alive though, he had to stay calm.

The next question he had to ask himself, was he okay? He takes off his shoes to look at his ankles and rolls his pants up to look at he knees. Right leg was good. He landed on his left side though, and the ankle looked a bit swollen. There was no bruising though and it seemed to be moving just fine. Probably a sprain. He feels along his torso to check for bruising and broken ribs. He was a bit sore but nothing seemed to have been rearranged during the fall. His arms seemed to be working fine. His head had landed on his arms rather than hitting the floor. It seemed he had landed just right. Another sigh of relief was in order. "See kiddo? We're fine, no need to be scared." He says, making his chakra calm down so it would soothe the baby's. He lets himself take a minuet to just lean back and calm down.

After his heart stops pounding and he catches his breath, it was time to orientate himself to the lack of lighting. He opens his eyes and takes a look around. It was simply no good though. He reaches into his side bag and grabs a light stick and cracks it to make the stick glow. Then he looks around to see what was occupying the room to discover it's purpose. It seemed he had locked himself in a storage closet. Well wasn't that just great? He had trapped himself.

'Okay. How can I get out of here?' He thinks to himself and looks around. There was a large vent on the floor that he could crawl through to the next room. If he waited around for rescue this could become his tomb. He throws a poison gas bomb into the vent and puts on a gas mask. That way any venomous insects wouldn't pose any danger. After that he crawls into the vent and crawls about 15 feet to the next large opening. It was a bathroom. The next thing he does is pulls out a blue print to find out where exactly he was at. First locate two vents 15 feet apart on the ventilation blue print, then look at the floor plan and find a janitor closest and bathroom corresponding to those vents and... Bingo. He was on the third floor below ground about 10 rooms away from the stair well. Now to get to his feet since he didn't have to crawl any more. He stands up and oh holy shit! Back on his ass again. Yeah. That ankle was sprained. He looks around to find something to stand with. That bit of wood would do. He looks down at his watch. He had already been down here three hours?

It was at this point where Rasa started to grow worried. He was only supposed to be gone a half hour. Yet three hours later Kankuro still wasn't at his desk. At first he thought maybe it was because they had argued. Maybe he was taking care of errands that took him out of office to avoid another argument. Maybe he had a meeting with someone in public safety about the outposts. Maybe someone from intelligence had found a threat to village defenses. He checked with everyone he might be meeting with and so far nobody had seen head nor tail of him. By this point he was worried and sent a few of his anbu to check the outpost and the news wasn't good. It appeared that there was a cave in. Near the sight they found one of Kankuro's sealing scrolls. He had been caught in the cave in. A rescue party was quickly organized but they didn't provide Rasa with much hope. They instructed him to prepare for the worst. If he had been buried than he would have asphyxiated within a minuet, and the area of the out post he had fallen into was secured with an sealed door that required a punch code to get in and out of in many different places because of secure intelligence and communication channels. In short things didn't look good.

Rasa needed time to process this. Odds were the man he loved so dearly had passed on. He could still hold out hope, but the whole situation made his stomach churn. After walking to a near by boulder he braces his arms on it to try and regain his ability to breathe, clenching his eyes in frustration at the tears forming. It did little good and they still trickled out of the tightly shut eyes. Kankuro had fought so hard and clung to life only months ago. He grappled tooth and nail to live. To think that could all be undone by one misstep. He had learned to stand on his own two feet even if he was still protective of him. It was only because he loved him though and didn't want to put him on his own too soon. They had fallen in love. A kind of love he had never known where both changed for as a result of the other changing for the better. Their souls were connected as though they were on the same wave length. They were expecting a child. Kankuro was nearly a quarter of the way through his pregnancy. Now he was helpless to do anything to save him. All he could do was what Kankuro had asked him to do earlier. He had to put his trust in Kankuro to be able to stand on his own two feet.

It was during this time that Kankuro managed to hobble to the stair case that connected this floor to the second floor. They looked to be sealed with a key pad door, as had most of the doors on this floor. He consults the blue prints again and finds another ventilation shaft near by that ran air down to this level and looks for hand holds to climb up. No good. He tosses a poison flare in the vent, still using his mask to breathe, and mulls over the problem. He couldn't brace his back against the wall of the vent and walk up. His ankle was too sore for that and he didn't yet know if he had done any serious damage to his ankle. He could wait for rescue but the ventilation system wasn't running and he didn't know how much breathable air was left. An air filtering mask wouldn't help at all with no oxygen left. He looks through the content of his bag and finds three kuni, 8 shurikin, 40 senbon and some trip wire. He shines his light up the shaft and down it. Several scorpions had fallen to the bottom of the shaft with the poison. Now that they were taken care of was safe to climb up. He also sees a triple bladed fan at the top that wasn't running. So he cuts the trip wire into three pieces and attached his shurikin to it. Then he throws them up so the shurikin wrap the wire around the bracings of the fan and grab hold like small grappling hooks and attaches his three kuni to each wire with a loop knot that slid up, but not down. He checks the electrical blue print and doesn't find any power wires running congruent to the vent and then attaches the kuni to his hands and his good foot with chakra threads and digs them into the vent. He dug them higher and higher, using them as hand holds until he makes it to the fan, where he removed the blades and tosses them to the bottom so he doesn't cut himself on them and climbs through. The opening it created into the second floor system and looks for an opening. After a bit of crawling around he slithers out into the housing area with bunk beds stacked three high. From the items left inside this was the men's barracks. He locates that on the blue print and plots out a route to the stairs, which were again on the opposite side of the base.

He pulls himself to his feet again and balances his weight on the piece of wood and hobbles through the sleeping quarters to a multipurpose room where there were some pool tables and a few miscellaneous items for entertainment. He couldn't help but notice the drastic change in grade of the surface on which he was limping. A few of the lighter items had slid along the slanted floor before coming to a stop along the wall. It was slanted to such a degree that he had to use his kuni to chip a hole in the door big enough to climb through because the door leading to the mess hall was stuck. The mess hall was in even worse shape than the room he had just come from, but was fortunate enough for this door to be stuck open because of a pile of debris holding the door ajar. He climbs over that and pauses for a moment to rub his belly. "I promise. I'll get you out of here sweet heart." He says and takes a few deep breaths, tears of stress running down his face. After making it through the hall and through an administrative office he comes into a lobby to find that the stairwell had been blocked by rocks. And they weren't stationary. The structure was beginning to cave. He reaches and grabs one of the scrolls off his back and summons his largest puppet: salamander. He climbs inside to control it, making it start digging through the rocks.

Up on the surface the rumbles of shifting ground and falling sand could be heard as the rescue team climbs out of the shifting hole, that was quickly sinking further into the ground. "Sir," says Baki, half his face concealed but an expression of deepest regret on the visible portion of his face. It was evident even through his red face paint. "There's a hole going into a deep chasm underground, and the structure has begun sinking. There's a hole in the bottom of the floor where Kankuro fell leading right to it... It's highly unlikely that we'll ever find anything. We've been looking for 9 hours now. I think it's time we head back." He says, putting his hand on Rasa's shoulder. At this the dam breaks and the tears flood out. "No Baki. You take your team and go back to the village if you want." He says, letting his gold dust out of the canister he carried. "I'm staying right here until that outpost is gone. I trust Kankuro. I have faith in him. He's smart and I'll never leave him behind. He'll make it out. We just have to believe in him. You'll see." He sobs, sending the dust through a crack in the wall large enough for a person to squeeze through and creating multiple trails that would catch anyone's attention who was inside, leading them to an exit and holding up the slipping structure with even more dust, biding time. If Kankuro was alive, if he was moving, which Rasa placed his utmost faith in, he would know where the exit was. Minuets later, Rasa and Baki were the only ones who remained as the structure became increasingly heavy.

Kankuro eventually digs his way out of the rubble blocking the stair well and pulls himself out of the puppet to a sight that makes his eyes water. A trail of gold. He reaches out and touches the swirling particles and reseals salamander and limps along side the gold dust, rounding corners, through a hall and into a filing room. The floor shakes and he can feel the floor beneath him shaking. Each step was careful so he didn't fall back through. He was so close to a crack in the wall when he feels the ground beneath him slipping. He dives for the crack, landing on solid ground. He lies down on his back and looks up at the stars. Outside. Free. Safe.

Not a moment later the crunch and gut wrenching squeak of nails on a chalk board could be heard as the outpost sinks into the bowls of the earth, metal bending and screeching, wood snapping, and cement cracking. As he was still trying to process this a pair of loving arms wraps around him. He opens his eyes to the last of the outpost falling into a newly opened ravine and leans his head back against Rasa's shoulder. The only words that he can bring himself to say were "holy shit!" The response he got was a tighter hug and he turns around and hugs back, both holding each other so tight with fist fulls of the other's clothing.

It's a few minuets before either of them speak. "How did you know I was still_." Kankuro starts, but is silenced by a pair of lips covering his. "Because I trust you Kankuro. You wouldn't ever die so easily. You were right. I've been overbearing lately, but that's because I love you, and because of that I have a hard time letting go. It's not because I don't trust you. Its because nobody wants to let go of something precious. It's their instinct to protect. But you have a strength from within that lets you blaze ahead. I love that about you Kanny." He says and takes Kankuro to the boulder from earlier and looking at his ankle. He would definitely be off his feet for a little while so Rasa piggy backs him back to the village.

"Rasa?" Asks Kankuro, yawning loudly. "Yeah babe?" Asks the older man. "Don't you dare sleep on the couch tonight."

Okay that was a long chapter but I had the inspiration to write this and an unyielding thirst for some creative and adventure filled writing after doing a boring hum drum academic piece. I hope you like it. I wanted to write something action packed while also showing that Kankuro is well enough to stand on his own now, even if Rasa is on the protective side. As always be sure to review. Flames will be used to make my YOUTH burn even hotter. Stay tuned for chapter 11 and QUACK QUACK MOTHER FUCKERS. P.S. No Ari I still haven't forgotten that.