I didn't notice her for a long time.

I know I should have, I was training to be a shinobi after all, but I was too busy puzzling over why everyone kept looking past me. Not like Naruto, where they did that on purpose. The people in Suna would usually pay close attention to me just in case I would attack them or something. But now they seemed to just look through me. They would stand up to look behind me, instead of leaving to find a safer place.

But when I looked, I didn't see anything.

I didn't notice the orange-haired child in tattered red and brown clothes watching me from a distance.

-Line break no jutsu!-

I really didn't have much to do anymore, anyways. I didn't have the patience to do any more work, the sanity to go out and make an effort to be friendly with people(so I wasn't interacting with them at all), or the willingness at that. I had retired to decorating and puttering around the next door houses from my (not so empty anymore) empty lot. The people living on both sides had moved out, so I had two free houses all to myself! Not that I knew what I was going to do with them.

I was looking for popcorn and various other snacks in Suna's commercial district. Well, more like stealing popcorn from all the shops I could find it at, not that it mattered though. Gotta fill my shelves somehow.

But when I heard two kunoichi talking about affairs in Konoha, I paused. Quietly slipping up to the roof, I eavesdropped. One of them had their hair pulled up in a high ponytail, and the other just had it cut to her shoulders.

"Did you hear? They say that Shisui the Teleporter went missing," Ponytail Lady said.

Well, Crap. Of course I couldn't do anything about Sasuke's revenge problem. Just my bad luck. Or Itachi's illogical thought process. Or Danzo.

"Idiot! That was a month ago! Actually, the rumor going 'round is that the clan heir murdered the entire Uchiha clan in a single night then went rogue. Every single person except his little brother. Even the ones out on missions were found dead the next morning,"

I'm at a loss for words. Great job me, you totally let an entire clan be killed. Minus three people, who would all turn evil.

You know you could've just killed this Itachi guy yourself.

Absolutely not. He's not actually that evil, just partly evil. I might have been able to convince him to not be evil if I was in contact with him.

Blackmail!

That too. Sometimes I wonder If you're trying to be helpful or still annoying. I groan and return to my overhearing of the shinobi's gossip.

"And speaking of mass murderers, did you hear about that girl? The council has been making some, ah, concerning decisions regarding our village's safety."

What girl? I do classify as a mass murderer, right? I think, just in the six months I've lived here, hmmmmm, I've killed nine people? But I identify as male right now, I don't think they know I'm me yet, so who are they talking about?

"Yeah, you mean the one from Iwa? I heard about her. I'm scared of the next generation now, they keep-" Short Hair clamps her hand over ponytail's mouth, pointing at something on the other side of the street.

"Shhh, she's over there."

Iwa? This can't be canon. Unless Original Gaara just killed them. I turn to look where Short Hair is pointing, and see a harmless-looking girl with orange hair in a high ponytail hiding behind a pole.

She leans out, looks around for a second, and spots me. We hold eye contact for a few seconds, then she averts her gaze back to the two shinobi who were getting up to leave, warily gazing at her.

What's up with this girl? Definitely from Iwa, judging by those clothes. She looks a bit like Deidara with the ponytail- Aaand she's gone. That girl just straight up disappeared. And to Kaguya if I was willing to look for her.

-Line break no jutsu!-

I kept seeing my stalker, the Iwagakure child, for months. Yet whenever I would look, she would quickly duck away and not be seen again for days.

The first time I got a good look at her was five months after that first incident. It was the middle of the night, and someone new had attacked me.

Turns out it was Rasa.

He attacked me around midnight, when I was practicing chakra control for a week straight out of pure boredom and mindlessness. It has helped my chakra control a lot (what I could do in two days with sleep, I keep telling Shukaku. I swear the tanuki deprives me of sleep just for amusement) and I could now successfully make strings of sand a single grain wide.

I turn towards him, shoving aside his spear of gold dust. Time to start Stop Trying to Kill Me rant #2. A significantly shorter version of the original.

I got up to leave, sulking that my current father was trying to kill me, and started to doze off (what a wonderful opportunity!) as I left.

"If you're gonna do this, let's take this out of the village. I'm in need of some sleep, and I'm sure that-"

"I Would be happy to fight you." Shukaku leaks out.

"Disappointing," Rasa said as we exit the village and my transformation into Shukaku begins.

"Disappointing?" I growl. "You mean your parenting skills? The way the village treats your youngest child? The only thing disappointing here is you."

I'd like to believe that the last thing I saw before I drifted off was Rasa looking conflicted, but I'm pretty sure that was not the case.

-Line break no jutsu!-

"Your dad is pretty mean," I say flatly as I arrive in my mindscape.

"He's not that bad," replies little Gaara from the left. I turn and see a large cactus garden and little Gaara watering a few small looked nice, organized and had small sandstone steps.

"Disagreement here. But your garden is nice."

"Thanks!"

"Of course! My aunt in my old world had a decent cactus garden. Nothing like what you've got here, but cool anyway. So do you want to talk about anything specific?"

Little Gaara sets down his watering can and comes over.

"I wanna learn to talk to you like Shu does."

"Shu-"

I jerked awake to the loud boom of an explosion. What bad timing! I wanted to know why Little Gaara was calling Shukaku Shu! Were they friends? If so, that would be amazing.

Wait, an explosion? I'm pretty sure Rasa doesn't use explosives, did someone throw a paper bomb?

Then I notice my stalker standing in front of me.

That ponytail though, it just screams Deidara. And explosions? Also a Deidara thing. I don't know what to think of this because Deidara killed Gaara in canon. I don't think that this child in torn Iwa is an Akatsuki, besides, the first time they attempted to kidnap Naruto was after the chunin exams, and this is five years before.

"I won't let you hurt him!" The little girl screamed. "If you want him, you have to go through me!" How cliche. Was this kid watching too many cheesy movies?

Rasa pulled his gold dust back for a few seconds in thought.

"Very well," he said as his dust rises to attack again.

Only for the girl to grab it and for it to explode.

The kazekage grunted, and after collecting his dust, turned back toward the village.

Oh, looks like I destroyed a section of the wall. Oops.

After Rasa left, The little girl turned towards me.

"My name's Atsuko!" She exclaimed loudly. "You like killing meanies too, don't you?"

What the hell? "No! Why would you ever want to?" Actually, there have been examples of that. Seeing your parents and/or best friend die, seeing your brother die, and revenge, among other things.

"That's too bad. I like other things too though, like, whatwasitagain, right! Sculpting! Like Deidara did! Also your sand is really good at it," Atsuko said with an excited expression.

… Thanks? Like Deidara?

"Come on! Imma show you mine!" The girl grabbed my sleeve and dragged me toward the village.

-Line break no jutsu!-

"My home!" Atsuko said as she brushes sand off a tarp in an alley, then pulls the tarp up to reveal a cave.

Her home… is not what I expected, to say the least. A hole. With a tarp covering the entrance. I'll admit, it was a nice little cave. There were bricks lining the walls and little unlit candles in notches, kind of orochimaru-style. The roof was a bit low, maybe four feet tall, and the corners were rough, but it was decent. There was an old, bleached carpet on the floor.

"You made this yourself?" I asked, as I ducked into the miniature living space.

"Uh-huh! Nobody wants me to have a house, so I made one on my own! I had a better one, but it fell apart a bit ago."

The little girl ducked into a corner and pulled out an old half-opened bag of tortilla chips. "Want some?"

I waved it away with a polite "no thanks," and sat down. "I have food at my house if you're hungry."

"People get mad when I eat their food. I don't want it," she held up a crumbling sandstone bird. "Look! I made a bird! Like Deidara does!"

I frowned. "What's with your obsession with Deidara!"

"Deidara's my big cousin! He said he wanted to go away from the village and I wanted to come too! But Old Meanie caught us when he got silly mouths on his hands and he ran away without me! So I blew Old Meanie up and ran away too!" Atsuko smiled so cutely for what she was talking about. "But there's meanies here too and when I blow them up they get mad but won't let me leave. Nobody wants me to have cool stuff anymore."

Great. So Suna is a bloodline thief too now. Rasa's really rocking this leadership and childcare thing. And this lonely outcast character looks up to the person who tries to kill me in the future.

Time to make a dumb decision!

"You can live with me if you want. Everyone's scared of me too so they gave me the houses next to where I usually hang out. I can't go to sleep though, and sometimes turn into a big scary tanuki like before."

Atsuko's eyes went wide. "Really?" I can go to a real toilet?"

I'm not scary, am I? Shukaku taunts.

"Yes, Atsuko. A real toilet. I meant it. And Shukaku, of course something eight stories tall and trying to kill you is scary. And I talk to myself a lot too."

I was being sarcastic.

"That's 'kay, Big Cousin Deidara does too! I don't mind!"

"Awesome. Then we can go take some sheets from the store and get you all set up."

"They let you buy stuff?"

"Of course not. They let me walk out of the store with it because they think I'll kill them if they don't."

The little girl jumped up in excitement, hitting her head on the ceiling. She ran around in circles the whole way to the store, and back and forth the whole way to my newly acquired houses.

A/N: Lots of things. 1) my update schedule will be sporadic from now on, as you could probably guess. 2) about that third review, I appreciate it a lot, but could you please give me advice on what I did wrong and what would make it better next time? But I agree, my fanfiction is cringy as hell. 3) A beta is appreciated if you people despise the spelling errors and past/present tense switches I don't doubt are in here.

I don't own this series. I am writing for my own enjoyment.

Thanks for all the reviews and please continue!