Baki thanked the Aburame's for a delightful evening meal, and made his polite exit. Koto walked beside him to the front gates of the family compound, her Uncle Shibi and his wife a comfortable distance behind them.

Koto's arm was linked through his, proper now that the wedding contracts had been signed.

"Are you sure you don't mind having the wedding here?" She asked him for the umpteenth time. "I don't mind moving the ceremonies to Suna."

Baki's gaze softened, as it often did, when he looked down at her. Wavy brunette hair framed her heart-shaped face with her beautiful dark eyes blinking up at him uncertainly. "It's traditional to have the ceremonies in the bride's village. And you have far more family that wish to attend than I do." He assured her gruffly.

They walked along a bit in silence, Koto very casually sneaking a peek behind them to make sure her aunt and uncle didn't overhear them. "Will I like Suna?" She asked in a small voice.

Surprised his gaze hardened a bit. "It's a little late for asking that, little girl. I can not possibly move here."

"No, no, of course not." She hurried to assure him she understood perfectly. "I …I've just never traveled beyond our village borders, except to the port town to shop. I know so little of Suna, I was …just wondering …"

Baki sighed, annoyed with himself for jumping to conclusions. Of course she was nervous! She was hardly a kunoichi who learned of all the surrounding areas in minute detail. He patted her hand where it rested on his arm. "Suna is very different from the Leaf village, but a lot alike in most ways."

"How so?" She asked, her voice quivering just slightly as she looked up at him, utterly trusting.

Baki's heart turned over a bit as he looked down at her. What had he ever done to deserve such a treasure as this? He cleared his throat and noted that they were approaching the main gates. "I'll fill you in on everything later. But for now, remember that while people's accents might change, they're still just people. We don't have all your trees, but we do have beauty in the deserts of Suna."

"I know, I'm going to be one of them." She smiled a bit coyly, and ignoring their chaperones, she stood up on her tip toes expectantly.

Baki looked down at her uplifted face, her pretty eyes shut and her mouth pursed delightfully. "That's not how to kiss." He said gruffly.

He too ignored Shibi and Kameyo. Instead of the chaste kiss she was expecting, she felt his hard lips settle roughly on hers, his hands framing her face so she couldn't turn away.

Koto's lips fell open as his thumb pulled gently down on her chin, letting his tongue lance in with a heated charge. Unrelenting, his mouth devoured hers, and then just as she started to respond, he pulled back. Smiling into her owlishly wide gaze, her hand rising to her lips in wonder, he ran one finger down her pert nose. "You'll like Suna," He promised with a quick wink. "Trust me."

Koto barely managed a small nod as he took his leave. Long after he'd gone, she just stood there, utterly bemused much to the amusement of both Kameyo and Shibi.

Finally, Kameyo came up behind her and wrapped one arm around the abnormally quiet girl and physically cued her to turn and start walking back to her own house. Even so, the girl's head turned to stare back longingly at where Baki had disappeared.

"Good choice, Koto." Kameyo whispered and the girl nodded absently, lost in her own heated thoughts.

o.O.o.O.o.O

Kankuro was sitting at a small desk in his room in the guest apartments the Leaf village had set aside for visitors when he heard Baki return. The puppeteer steeled himself for some hard questions, or a lecture, or maybe even a bit of a fight. But Baki stayed in the living room, and didn't call out or anything.

Kankuro knew that Baki could sense his presence, it wasn't like he was suppressing his chakra or anything. But he wasn't eager to face his former sensei again, so he too remained quiet as he looked back down at the papers he was working on.

About an hour passed that way, when Kankuro became aware of Baki's presence at his bedroom door. He didn't look up though, until the older shinobi placed a hot cup of tea at his elbow.

"Thanks." Kankuro muttered, but not looking up from his work.

Baki grunted a response, but didn't leave. Kankuro waited for the man to say something, anything, but he remained quiet.

"How long are you going to stand there?" The puppeteer finally asked, leaning back in his chair with a sigh before turning around.

"Until you got tired of playing this child's game and faced me like a man. That is, if you are one." Baki said quietly and evenly.

Kankuro winced. "Always go straight for the jugular, just like you taught us."

"Taught. Past tense. I'm no longer your sensei. You're a jounin now. We're equals now." Baki's voice was hard, yet still without anger.

Kankuro snorted this time. "Yah, right."

"You've passed the test to become a jounin. But you've got to stop looking down on yourself like you have anything left to prove. Your father is dead."

"You're not qualified to teach a puppeteer." Kankuro said a bit harshly as he looked up at his former instructor.

Baki blinked once, but gave no other response.

"He gave us a sensei with Temari's wind affinities, and one that could handle Gaara. But you had no business teaching a puppet shinobi." Kankuro continued.

Baki nodded, with a slight frown. "I know. Don't think I didn't argue against it, either. But your father is dead now, and you exceeded not only his expectations but you also overcame all the obstacles he put in your path as well." He paused a moment, before continuing. "I met secretly with some of the older puppeteers to lay out your training regimens."

"He was never my father." Came the bitter reply, even though they both knew that Kankuro was nearly a mirror image of his sire. "If the Fourth knew you'd been meeting with the puppeteers he'd have been furious."

The younger shinobi picked up his tea, and took a sip now that it had cooled slightly. "I never regretted being taught by you."

Baki nodded, knowing that to Kankuro, that was an apology for his earlier outburst.

Left unsaid, but understood by both, was that Baki had been far more of a father to the young man than the Fourth Kazekage ever had.

Yet both were males, and ninjas, and uncomfortable with such sentiments. So they moved on by mutual, if silent, accord.

"What are you working on?" Baki asked, moving away from the door to peer down at the papers strewn over Kankuro's small desk.

The puppeteer looked a bit abashed as he answered. "It was supposed to be a list of the reasons to stay in Suna, or to stay here."

Baki chuckled lightly. "It looks more like a mechanical drawing of a moveable joint. A puppet joint to be precise."

Kankuro nodded, losing his embarrassment as he pulled out the papers on the bottom. "See? It's in the shape of a spider! I got the idea from that battle that Kiba and I had with Shino. Not that there were any actual spiders, just their webs. Still, it got me thinking. The body is suspended, see? And there are eight articulate legs and at each joint there could be …"

Baki smiled at the animation lighting up his former student's face as he explained his ideas. "But Kankuro, spiders don't have wings."

"They're not wings!" Came the heated reply. "See, they can pop up as additional protection and act as holders for projectiles too! And they are completely retractable so as not to slow the speed of the puppet …."

o.O.o.O.o.O

Inoichi came home singing. Off-key. He bid goodnight to Choza whose baritone was much more pleasing than his own tenor attempts at singing. The two old friends had been commiserating with each other. Seemed young Choji was on the cusp of getting engaged himself, to one of the local tailor's daughters.

Choza had become a bit unnerved by all the women in the Akimichi clan suddenly descending upon his household to 'plan'. Feeling outnumbered, he'd abandoned his son to his fate and fled, meeting up with Inoichi along the way.

Inoichi finished his song as he approached his front door, but stopped when he tried to open the door and found it locked. The blond shinobi frowned, surprised. The Yamanakas never locked the front door until they were all ready to go to sleep. And he knew it wasn't time for the door to be locked yet, because he wasn't in his home yet.

With that thought, he patted his pockets, but knew he didn't have his key on him. His wife usually left the door unlocked for him, she must have forgotten.

He knew his neighbor had a spare key, but didn't want to wake the fellow. So he knocked, calling out to his wife. "Oi, woman. You forgot to leave the door open."

"No I didn't." The voice called back to him. Confused, he looked around him, spinning in a circle but not seeing his wife. Finally, he backed away from the door and looked up.

"Oh, THERE you are!" He cried out happily as he spied his wife leaning out of an upstairs window. "The door's locked." Inoichi told her, and in case she'd missed that fact, he pointed toward the door.

He watched as she pulled her head back into the house, satisfied that she was coming down to let him inside. Instead, he was hit on the head by a pillow. It was followed by an old quilt.

"Whaaaa …?" Inoichi asked, utterly confused. "Woman? Come let me in."

"No." His wife said sternly. "Yoshino brought Ino by tonight. She's not eating."

"Well, feed her." He pointed out logically.

Her answer was to throw and old vase at him, which he narrowly missed being hit with before it shattered around his feet.

"I can't get her to eat, Yoshino can't get her to eat, not even my mother can get her to eat."

"Your mother's here?" Inoichi pouted, "Why didn't you tell me she was coming?"

"I did!" She sputtered. "Fix this, Inoichi. Fix it tonight."

"How?" He muttered.

"Get Kiba. Kiba can get Ino to eat." She demanded, leaning farther out the window shaking her finger at him.

"I don't want Kiba here!" Inoichi hissed up at her.

She snarled back down at him. "You've made your wishes abundantly clear. Now let me tell you mine. You are not stepping foot in this house until you bring my son home."

"Your son? Woman, have you lost it? He's not your son yet!" Inoichi sneered at her, then dodged a second vase as it crashed around his feet.

"Send Kiba here. He's welcome in this house. You're not. Go find somewhere else to sleep." With that, Inoichi watched in shock as his usually compliant wife slammed down the window and closed the curtains.

o.O.o.O.o.O

Kiba was sound asleep when he heard the banging on his front door. Akamaru whined and rolled over, hiding his face.

"Lazy." Kiba muttered, swinging his feet to the ground and stumbling down to the front entry way, scratching his ear and yawning. If he was surprised to see Inoichi on his front step, it didn't show.

"What do you want?" The young man snarled, his eyes narrowing.

Inoichi shrugged and walked past him, into the house, dropping his pillow and quilt on the entry way floor. "My daughter isn't speaking with me and is threatening to bar me from the wedding ceremony."

Kiba yawned, stretched and turned to look at Akamaru who had followed him to the door. "Mark it." He said, pointing to Inoichi's pillow.

"What does that mean?" Inoichi started to ask, then leapt out of the way as the large dog lifted one hind leg and peed on his pillow. "Oh now, that's just wrong."

"Go away. I'm not talking to you either." Kiba told him and held open the door for him.

"What's so wrong with wanting a little propriety for my daughter? It's what, three weeks before the wedding? You can hold off 'til then." Inoichi said, his voice only slightly slurred.

"Sure I can." Kiba frowned. "But Shikamaru's mother won't let us near each other. She's forever coming up with things for me to do, or Ino to do and it's never for US to do together."

Inoichi shrugged. "So, that's what chaperones do."

Kiba scowled. "No, it's not. Chaperones make sure we remain chaste. What that woman is doing is not letting us speak or see each other! I haven't laid eyes on Ino for more than a minute at a time since you stuck her with Nara-sama. And she won't let us talk either."

Inoichi frowned. "Well, that's what I told her to do." He said, though it sounded worse coming from Kiba than it had felt when he'd first told Yoshino what he wanted. He remembered that Nara's wife hadn't liked the idea much, but was willing to humor an old friend of the family.

Kiba's gaze narrowed on his future father-by-marriage and he turned to Akamaru. "Tear it up." He said, pointing toward the quilt.

"No!" Inoichi sputtered and jumped forward, but was too late to stop the dog from stepping on his quilt and ripping into it with his rather large teeth.

"So, why are you here?" Kiba asked coldly. "Just to torture me some more?"

Inoichi flushed a bit, but shook his head. "Ino's stopped eating again."

Concern flashed in Kiba's eyes before the young man could look away. Inoichi nodded. "Seems her mother thinks you're the only one who can get her to eat."

"Where is she?"

"At home with her mother." Inoichi sighed. "Where I should be."

"I'll meet you there." Kiba said with soft menace. "But I need to be allowed to at least see her, talk to her. No more of this keeping us apart. Okay?"

Inoichi nodded reluctantly. Maybe he had gone a bit far. "You go on ahead. I'll take one of your guest rooms."

Surprised, Kiba turned to stare quizzically at Inoichi.

"Seems, you're welcome in my home, but I'm not." The blond man grumbled. "And your dog just ate my bed, so I'll need to borrow one of yours."

Kiba smiled for the first time that day.

o.O.o.O.o.O

Ino watched as her grandmother Kimura set the plate of sweet mitarashi dango on the table, the sticky syrup glistening prettily. "Yum!" She crowed.

"Guests first, young lady." Ino's mother told her, slapping Ino's hand away. "Yoshino?"

"They look delicious!" Nara Yoshino declared and chose a skewer with obvious delight.

Ino grabbed a skewer as well, savoring the sweet treat happily.

Grandmother Kimura smiled, pleased that she still had that 'touch' in the kitchen. "Now then, how long does it take that husband of yours to find one young man?"

Ino's mother merely shrugged. "I just can't believe that Inoichi let it go on this long, I thought he'd have given it up after three or four days."

Yoshino smiled and shook her head. "He is one determined father. It was all I could do not to laugh in his face when he approached me."

Ino sighed, swallowing her food before talking. "I just don't understand why you let me think you weren't going to let me see Kiba ever again? At least not until the wedding itself."

Grandmother Kimura patted the young blond affectionately as she took her own seat at the table. "We thought that the more miserable you seemed, the quicker Inoichi would cave."

"And this isn't to get you two alone together." Yoshino clucked her tongue at Ino. "It's just to let you and Kiba court normally. You still need to act circumspectly."

"The damage is already done." Ino pouted, thinking about the pregnancy. She'd already gained almost two pounds!

"Shhhh, dear. No need to spread that around." Ino's mother told her sternly. "And that's why you and Kiba need to act more ….decently. Luckily you're not that far along, only a month and a half. Your waist won't start to really thicken up until around the third month."

Yoshino then piped up. "The baby will be born about a month 'early' as far as everyone will know, not an uncommon occurrence. Some gossips will wonder and speculate though, especially with you training to be a medical ninja. They'll wonder how you couldn't manage to keep the baby until full term with all you know of healing."

"Oh, so if it looks like Kiba and I are being really, really good and not seeing much of each other, then …"

"Then the gossips will have nothing to hang their hats on." Ino's grandmother spoke up with a broad smile.

"Is that what you did, mother?" Ino asked slyly, earning a slap on the back of her wrist.

"No. I'll have you know I waited until my marriage night."

Grandmother Kimura laughed out loud at that, shaking her head. "Liar."

"Now mother." Ino's own mother looked embarrassed now. "Let's not rehash old history."

"Shikamaru was early." Yoshino said quietly, earning a shocked glance from Ino.

"Early? Or Early?" Ino couldn't help but ask.

Yoshino didn't answer, just turned to pick up another skewer of mitarashi dango. "You know, I need to beg you for this recipe." She told Ino's grandmother, who was grinning from ear to ear.

At that moment, they all heard the knock on the door followed by the sound of Kiba's voice. "Oi! Ino? Let me in! What's with you not eating, huh? And do you know there's broken glass out here?"

All the women smiled at each other as Ino raced toward the door with a happy squeal.

o.O.o.O.o.O

Across town, another door was answered. The kunoichi's face lit up when she saw who it was standing on her front steps.

Before the shinobi could say anything, he'd been dragged inside.

Lips met, parted, then met again.

Hands roamed and teased and not a word was spoken.

Clothing hit the floor and breathing grew raspy while moans filled the apartment as she led him back to her bedroom.

The couple fell on the bed and came together in a heated rush of passion that left them both breathless.

Much later, he finally propped his head up on one hand and looked down at her flushed face. "Glad to see me?" Genma asked.

Shizune just smiled, tracing his face with her eyes. "Maybe." She allowed with as much dignity as she could muster while nude and sweaty.

o.O.o.O.o.O

Tsume, Hana and Gaara stared down at the tattered remains of a quilt in the front entry. Hana sniffed. "I thought Kuramaru told Akamura not to mark the house. It is his territory after all."

Tsume shook her head. "He didn't mark the house, just the pillow there. Don't ask me why."

Kuromaru trotted over to them. "Did you know that Yamanaka Inoichi is sleeping in Kiba's bed?"

The three looked at each other and shrugged.

o.O.o.O.o.O

That's it for tonight. Let's see. It should be one or two chapters more at the most to finish the story (I hope). Then an epilogue.

After that, I HAVE to work on "Gaara's 12 Step Program to Serenity" …I'm behind.

But several story ideas have been percolating at the back of my demented mind. What do you think?

One: Neji, Hinata, and Hanabi are desperate to find Hiashi a new wife so he'd stop mucking around in their lives.

Two: Gaara x Hinata set in Suna, although she's technically engaged to someone else.

Three: A Uzuki Yugao story set a few years after Hayate Gekko's death. A new man in her life? Her friends think its time she moved on.

As always: REVIEW please!