Baki was sitting at the desk that had been provided in the quarters that had been set aside for visiting shinobi, trying to compose a message to send home. Tomorrow morning, the first phase of the Chunin exams would begin and he was seriously considering not allowing his team to enter even though it was a vital component for the invasion plan. Temari and Kankuro were rather freaked out at the moment and were too on edge to do any good, and frankly so was he. Gaara had been acting exceedingly strangely since they had arrived in Konoha a few days ago.
On the first day of their stay, Gaara had seemed to be constantly trying to dispel a Genjutsu. He had observed the boy disrupting his Chakra several times, and had actually seen him stab himself twice. That of course had been only the beginning of Gaara's odd behavior.
Since his mysterious collapse shortly after their arrival in Konoha, Gaara had behaved in an uncharacteristically kindly manner towards his siblings, and hadn't threatened them even once. Even more disturbing was the fact that the boy was even being nice to him and actually coming to him for advice. There was also the fact that he spent virtually all of his free time with a blond Genin who was native to the area. Then, there was the fact that he had started "speaking" with and referring to the Ichibi in a less than loving manner, and had started calling the demon "Damn Raccoon" and "Stupid Raccoon" instead of "Mother".
It had taken him a while to realize that it was Shukaku that he'd been referring to, and he probably wouldn't have, and continued believing the boy had picked up a pet somewhere if it hadn't been for the incident two nights after their arrival...
Gaara was sitting up late as usual. Instead of sitting there staring at the walls as was customary for the boy when he thought he was being observed as he tended to hide his usual nocturnal activities from witnesses, he was...drinking?
He'd gone down to check on the boy to make sure he hadn't gotten into any mischief as he'd been wont to do on occasion when he'd been turned loose without supervision, and found the child who was surrounded by several empty liquor bottles downing a bottle of some potent grain alcohol from Grass.
"I'm going to kill that fucking raccoon!" Gaara yelled as he hurled the now empty bottle at the opposite wall. "Can't sleep...Can't get drunk...Now I know why it took a whole week before Naruto..."
If the boy hadn't been a jinchuriki and therefore incapable of suffering the effects of alcohol poisoning much less intoxication, he would have been more worried about the fact that the boy had been drinking especially considering the medication he was on and the exceedingly heavy doses of it he had to take daily.
Last night had pretty much been the final straw though...
Gaara had apparently grown tired of staring at the walls and, instead of finding some quiet activity to occupy himself with like he usually did, had gone outside. He nearly had a panic attack when he discovered the boy was gone, fearing the sort of mischief the boy could get into and the type of incident it would cause. Hoping and praying that the boy wouldn't decide to kill him rather than comply, he went out after him in order to bring him back, .
It took a while for him to find Gaara but, he eventually located him atop the Hokage Monument where he was seated on the Fourth Hokage's head next to the blond boy he had taken to spending time with.
"...nice to hear about a world where things went right for a change. When Ero-Sennin and Yamato-taicho think that I'm not listening they talk about where things went wrong for them, and I'm starting to think that Kakashi-sensei might have...I can't wait for the Chunin Exams to start so I can help get rid of Orichimaru so things'll be better." the blond boy said.
"You know, for a while, there had been a running joke amongst certain circles that you would have to reach Kage level before you made Chunin." Gaara said.
"And?" the blond boy asked.
"You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces when the Rokudaime Hokage entered himself into the Chunin exams." Gaara replied laughing.
"That's not funny." the blond said, playfully shoving Gaara.
Gaara's mood suddenly shifted. That in itself wasn't so unusual but, the moods he'd shifted from and to were. Gaara's moods usually went from blank calm to bloodlust. This time however, he'd gone from nostalgia to melancholy.
"How did you forgive them?" Gaara asked in an almost contemplative manner.
"Forgive who?" the blond boy asked.
"Your parents." Gaara replied.
"I'm not sure that I have entirely. I understand what needed to be done, and I accept that. Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices for your village. My father wasn't the sort who would ask someone else to do something he himself was unwilling to do. Your situation was different though. I can almost understand why you hated him. I think he was already dead before you arrived, so it isn't your fault for not saving him." the blond boy replied.
"Can I help you when you try to take down Orochimaru?" Gaara asked.
"Sure. We'll need all the help we can get. That guy's one tricky bastard." the blond boy said.
That seemed to end the conversation because the two boys sat there silently before Gaara eventually got up and headed back to their quarters.
There was something seriously wrong with Gaara, and there was a strong possibility that it would put him, his team, and the plan in danger, especially considering the fact that he planned on killing Suna's new ally.
Gaara didn't feel the least bit guilty for destroying the message Baki sent home. Baki was a good man and an excellent advisor but, in this instance, he was misguided. He would do what he had to for the good of his village and, he couldn't do that if people who didn't know what was going on were interfering.
Taking out a brush and some ink, he very carefully forged a response that he would send to Baki at the appropriate time so he wouldn't realize that the message hadn't been received until it was far too late to do anything about it.
Kankuro shuddered as he stared at his brother who stood around looking as if he were waiting for someone, completely ignoring the crowd of Genin that completely surrounded him. He knew that Gaara's nice behavior was too good to last and, that morning, when Baki had said that he was going to withdraw them from the exams, Gaara had flipped. He was still amazed that Baki wasn't dead.
Gaara had gotten his way in the end, and now, they were nervously waiting for the exam to start.
There was one good thing about this though, Gaara would need them until the end of the second phase and wouldn't be able to kill them until then.
Naruto growled when that asshole Kabuto approached the rookie Genin. Now that he wasn't overwhelmed by the experience of being in the Chunin Exams, he was beginning to notice things that had gotten by him before. One of those things was the way Kabuto smelled.
Now he knew why he'd liked Kabuto the last time, why he had been so willing to trust the more experienced boy who was offering his help without questioning his motives and wondering about the little inconsistencies that were bothering him now. The bastard had soaked his clothes in ramen.
To anyone else, it would seem as if he'd just spilled his breakfast like the clumsy moron he was, then allowed it to dry because he didn't have time to change into anything else. To him however, ramen meant comfort, ramen meant safety, ramen meant happiness. Ramen had been given to him by people who liked him, people that he treasured. The memories brought up by the scent would bypass any instincts that screamed that the spy wasn't to be trusted, and instantly place the young man in his "like" category.
Now that he knew what a complete and utter bastard that Kabuto was however, he would not be falling for that trick a second time.
All too soon, Kabuto was showing the trusting little brats who'd gathered round him those cards. Now that he thought about them, they were one hell of an inconsistency, one that he should have noticed even back when he himself was a clueless moron.
"What about Naruto?" Kiba asked Orochimaru's spy.
"What the?" Kabuto said when he looked at the card. "According to this, Naruto has somehow acquired an A-class listing in the Mist Bingo Book under the name Hell-God Uzumaki and is rumored to have defeated Swordsman of the Mist Momochi Zabuza in combat despite the fact that he has only gone on 7 D-rank missions and 1 C-rank mission."
"About that C-rank, the Old Man was being cheap and didn't want to shell out A-rank pay. Apparently, if you sign up for a C-rank and it turns into an A-rank, you get paid for the mission you signed up for." he said, clarifying the information for the other rookies. "The reason I defeated Zabuza was because I used a Wind Stripper Attack Jutsu on him while he was distracted."
If his former classmates knew he wasn't an easy target, they wouldn't go after his team, and therefore they wouldn't get in his way when he took care of the Sound "Genin" who had accompanied Orochimaru in the Forest of Death.
"Wind Stripper Attack? You killed the Devil of the Bloody Mist with a prank jutsu?!" Kabuto said, looking as if someone had pulled a giant halibut out of nowhere and hit him with it.
"Nah, he's still alive. Poor guy was a bloody mess because all the stuff the wind picked up on the way, but he survived. He was even real nice about it when I apologized later. He was just happy that he was free from that stupid contract he'd been tricked into, since I killed Gato with that Water Proctologist Jutsu." he said cheerfully.
"Wa-wa-wa." Kabuto said looking even more stunned.
"Who's Gato?" Kiba asked Shino who was apparently the brains of Team 8.
"He was a billionaire shipping magnate who was rumored to be able to call up an army of mercenaries to crush his competition." Shino replied stunning the rest of the group who'd never heard the quiet boy string so many words together at once.
"What happened to the army of mercenaries?" Kiba asked, looking put out for some strange reason.
"Knocked them out with a Harem Jutsu." he replied.
"Where was Sasuke-kun in all of this?" Ino asked.
"After Haku got him calmed down and convinced that Zabuza wasn't really trying to kill Kakashi-sensei, he showed him how to knit socks with senbon. That's a really useful skill to have. I wish I'd had the patience to sit down and learn it myself." he replied.
At this point, Kabuto was starting to look as if he'd just been thrown into a universe where up was purple, and the conversation went on around him as if he wasn't there. Eventually, Ibiki arrived marking the opening of the first phase of the Chunin Exams.
Kakashi sat on pins and needles as he waited for the first phase of the exams to finish. Soon, he, Jiraiya, and Tenzo would be in the forest hunting down Orochimaru and hopefully crippling him before he could harm his team and put that seal on Naruto and that other seal on Sasuke. For now however, he would have to sit with his fellow Jounin Instructors awaiting news on how the first phase had progressed. Things had to appear to progress normally and seem as if they had gone into the forest after having discovered the Grass Genin so Orochimaru wouldn't change his invasion plans if they failed to bring him down.
Tenzo watched as Jiraiya prepared a variety of sealing inks and put a special knife used for certain blood seals in a place he could get at it quickly. He'd prepared his own weapons the night before and had double and triple checked them that morning. In a few short hours they would be going head to head with Orochimaru and it was questionable as to whether or not they would survive. Neither of them were quite certain what Sasuke had done to defeat Orochimaru and, as Jiraiya's timeline revealed, Sasuke's method probably had only a 50/50 chance of succeeding, if that.
Funny. He thought he quit biting his nails when he was a kid.
Edited 11-3-12.