KANKUROU'S GROWTH SPURTS
Hello, there! . lol. I got alotta nice reviews for the first chappie and only one flamer (YAY!). SO I decided you all deserved the next chappie. .- R&R!
Chapter Two: Bean Poles, Inc: Kankurou's Gym Experience
Temari frowned when Kankurou showed up for breakfast, looking very much annoyed. "Kankurou, weren't you a bean pole yesterday?"
Kankurou scowled and tried to cross his arms but couldn't. The other three could see why: his jumpsuit, which yesterday had looked like elephant skin, was now very, very tight. As in, clinging-in-wrong-places-tight! In fact, it was so tight, the only movement he could manage was to put one foot in front of the other, and even then, he sort of waddled.
"What do you expect?" Kankurou snapped, not bothering to try and sit down, as he had an uncanny feeling his pants would rip, "I've been eating like a horse!"
"Maybe you should go to a gym," Naruto suggested. "That way, you can get rid of that stuff fast." He smiled innocently.
Kankurou actually grinned a bit. "Yeah, Ok. Temari--food, over here. I can't sit."
Naruto and Gaara exchanged looks. Both of them were beginning to think that Kankurou had the most gullible mind in history; Naruto didn't have anything on him!
"I'll go with you," Temari said, giving Kankurou a plate of food. "I've been meaning to lose a few pounds, myself."
"Temari, are you fat?"
TWHACK!
"NO!" Temari shouted, as poor, fan-shaped-bruised Naruto fell off his chair. Gaara, lucky jerk, was smirking from behind a shield of sand.
At the gym
"Come on, Kankurou, let's do this," Temari said, going into a room.
"But, I wanna watch the—" Kankurou sighed and followed her; Temari had made him change into some of their dad's clothes (How they got the clothes into Konoha within a half hour is beyond me), since it was really embarrassing to be seen with him in public. "WHOA!"
Kankurou proceeded to pass out due to loss of blood. The cause: nose bleed.
Temari looked back at him. "It's only yoga..."
Later
"All right, ladies!" the perky teacher squealed from the front of the room. "And Kankurou!"
Kankurou grinned from where he was standing in the back of the room. He had a goo-oo-od view from here!
"We're going to do some simple moves, so try to keep up!" the teacher squealed, putting her hands on her hips. "Our first move is called Down Dog."
Kankurou looked around frantically as all the girls around him did the pose; apparently, they all knew what she was talking about. He shrugged, and attempted the pose, which required him to put his hands on the front of the mat, and his feet at the other, in an upside-down V shape. Hey, this wasn't too hard!
"The next move is called Plank!"
Kankurou looked around from the Down Dog position. All the girls still had their hands and feet where they had been, except that they looked like an upside-down check mark, with their heads directly above their hands. He sighed and did the pose. Again, not so hard! Ha, ha, he could do this!
Half and hour later
"... Can't ... do this..." he sobbed, crawling out of the room, far behind the other girls, who were chattering happily to themselves, headed for the changing rooms.
"Come on, what was so hard about it?" Temari asked. "Those were easy!"
"Easy for you to say," Kankurou mumbled, face down on the floor, totally exhausted. "I should have started with something easy ... like walking."
"Yeah, right," Temari scoffed. "After you've walked two feet, you'd collapse and say you should have done yoga."
"Uh-huh, but ONLY," Kankurou said, pointing at the ceiling, as if trying to make a practical point, "if I'd seen the girls first."
"You disgust me."
"I'm so glad," he mumbled, putting his hand down again; raising it had consumed all the energy he'd been building up while lying there.
"Fine," she snapped, turning on her heel. "Then you can drag your own corpse to the changing rooms."
"No—wait! TEMARI!" Kankurou sobbed, lifting his chin. "Temari, I love you, darling sister of mine!" He saw her feet keep walking away. "Temari, I—SCREW YOU, I CAN DRAG MYSELF OVER THERE!" He looked around for the changing room.
Suddenly, it seemed very far away.
"TEMARI!"
One hour later
"OK, Kankurou, let's go," Temari said, exiting the ladies' changing room.
"But—but—!" Kankurou looked in the yoga class they had been in. "So many girls ... so many leotards...!"
"Let's GO!" Temari snapped, grabbing the back of his shirt and dragging him out the door.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Kankurou screamed, grabbing the sides of the doors to the yoga class. "I DON'T WANNA GO!"
"YES, YOU DO!" Temari snapped back, yanking him by his feet.
"NO, I DON'T! I WANT TO EXCERISE!"
"YOU NEARLY DIED TRYING!"
"I WANT TO DIE MORE!"
"TOO BAD FOR YOU, FATSO!"
"SHUT UP, YOU BLIMP!"
Dead silence.
"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!"
... Danger!
THUD! TWHACK! BAM! BOOM!
...
"See you tomorrow," Temari said sweetly to the ladies at the counter (whose current expression was not unlike that of a guppy), dragging her brother out of the gym by one foot.
At the Sand-nin's apartment
"Jeez, Kankurou, what happened to your face?" Naruto asked, grinning.
Kankurou scowled at him (Well, they had a feeling he did; his face was so covered in bruises, it was had to tell, but the wave of hate was enough). "You don't want to know."
"Oh..." Gaara shivered. "Called Temari fat, huh?"
"WHAT DID YOU SAY, GAARA?!"
"Nothing, nothing..." Gaara ducked as a frying pan suddenly became airborne, aimed at his head.
"Jeez ... and I thought SAKURA-CHAN was scary," Naruto muttered, instantly diving under the sofa.
...
"OW!" Naruto looked around under the sofa; Temari had slid a frying pan across the floor; he could feel a bruise growing on his arm.
"That's it, I'm never going to a gym again," Kankurou groaned, slapping an ice pack on his face. "Even if it was worth it towards the beginning..."
"Kankurou."
"Wha-a-at?" he groaned, moving the ice pack to look at Temari out of one eye.
"You were unconscious!"
"... Shut up."
Later that night
"It's official," Naruto said, sitting down in Gaara's room, which they had dubbed "H.Q." "Your brother sucks."
"You don't have to remind me," Gaara groaned, in a long-suffering groan. "I live with him, remember?"
"You mean, he always sucked?"
"Naruto." Gaara gave him a pointed look. "He plays with DOLLS."
Three days later (seven days into Naruto's visit)
"Ok, come on, Kankurou, we're going for a jog!" Temari said loudly to her older brother, whose face was currently in his breakfast.
"You go ... you jog..." he mumbled into his rice.
"Come on, you're going too!" she said, loudly, hitting his shoulder.
"'S'all dark..."
"Get your face out of your food, and I promise things'll brighten up," Gaara said, looking at the top of his brother's head.
"Shut up..." Kankurou mumbled, turning his head slightly.
"Whoa..." Naruto looked at the little bit of Kankurou's face that he could now see. "Pig-Ears forgot his war-paint!"
There was a scraping of chairs, and suddenly, all three of them were looking at Kankurou's face, which Temari yanked out of breakfast.
"Wow," Gaara said quietly. "What is it?"
"I don't know," Temari said in a hushed voice. "I think he's possessed..."
"Temari," Kankurou said in a pleading voice. His head was being yanked backwards by his scalp, but he still managed to look like he was begging (even though every single muscle in his body was either sore, or stretched beyond repair). "For the last three days, I have done NOTHING but exercise. I've done sit ups, I've done push-ups, I've jogged one street, I've jogged another, I've lifted weights, I've done your yoga, and I actually got good at it ... Now, can I ... PLEASE ... sleep?"
He really didn't look well, they noticed. Of course, he'd dropped about twenty pounds, which made him fit into his suit (Bean Poles, Inc.). But under his eyes, there were dark bags not unlike Gaara's; his eyes were blood-shot from lack of sleep, and his arms and legs hung uselessly at his side. (The food still stuck to his face added a disgusting effect, as well.)
"Fine," Temari said, after a moment's looking him over. "I guess you could use it."
"Thank god..." he sobbed, dropping his head back into his rice.
"Whoa...Kankurou has hair?" Naruto asked, his eyes wide.
Temari looked at the hood in her hand, then at Kankurou's chocolate-colored head. "I forgot what color it was," she said after a moment. She turned to the two boys. "We should carry him to his room."
The two boys looked at each other, and rolled their eyes hugely, going back to their rice.
"Come on, he's not that fat!" Temari snapped, whacking them (a.k.a. Poor, abused little Naruto). "It's not that far."
Gaara gave her a look.
"What?"
"Temari," he said pointedly, pushing Kankurou's face up with the other end of his chopsticks. "That's just nasty."
Temari bent down to look at the comatose puppeteer again. His eyes were rolled back and his mouth hung open. Gaara gave her a look.
"So, lift him with the sand," she said, shrugging.
"I don't think so," he said, letting Kankurou's head drop again, and going back to his own food.
"Um ... Gaara..." Naruto said quietly.
"What?"
"Does she normally look that evil?"
Gaara looked up again.
Thunder crashed behind Temari. Fires burned in her eyes; her fists clenched and unclenched. "Gaara..." she hissed, in a possessed voice.
"Yup." Gaara went back to his food.
Naruto shrunk back when Temari turned on him. He, however, didn't have Gaara's nerves of steel. "Ok, ok! Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!" Four clones appeared around him; one of the Naruto's went over to Kankurou and draped his listless arm across his shoulder.
"WHOA, HE STINKS!" the Naruto shouted, letting Kankurou drop.
Our puppeteer, however, slept on.
"So, give him a shower," Temari said, shrugging. "Shouldn't be that hard, you all bathe together, anyway."
"Yeah, but not with him!"
Cue thunder
"But, hey, first time for everything!" all the Narutos said, grabbing Kankurou and dragging him away towards the bathroom.
Gaara glanced at Temari, who was currently cleaning up the mess Kankurou had made on the floor and table, then picked up his own rice and chopsticks and followed Naruto. He was gonna watch this, and he was gonna get his nutrition at the same time. Gaara: 2, Rest of the world: 0.
Naruto struggled aimlessly with Kankurou's jumpsuit (how the heck did the dude get it on and off?!) while Gaara sat on a stool near the door, watching him.
"You're gonna give him something to put on, aren't you?" Gaara asked, raising an eyebrow as Naruto started patting around the suit, looking for a zipper.
Naruto gave him a harassed look that said "well duh," then went back to looking for the zipper and/or snaps and/or buttons.
Half and hour later
"Still nothing?" Gaara asked, coming back into the bathroom with another bowl of rice.
"No!"
Gaara rolled his eyes.
"HEY! FAT-FACE!" Naruto shouted, shaking Kankurou. "WAKE UP!"
His shakings, however, only caused Kankurou's head to roll slightly. Naruto scowled. He then proceeded to slap Kankurou right and left.
"Huh...? 'S'all dark still..."
"WHERE'S THE STUPUD ZIPPER ON THE STUPID SUIT SO I CAN GIVE YOU A STUPID BATH?!" Naruto shouted.
"'S'on the back..."
...
"The back?" Naruto flipped Kankurou over and looked. Sure enough, there was a zipper, located at the nape of his neck.
Gaara snorted.
Naruto scowled, unzipping the suit and pulling Kankurou's already-sleeping body out of it.
...
"BAHAHAHAHAHA!" Naruto fell over, laughing so hard he was sure he's broken a few ribs.
"What?" Gaara peeked over the rim of his bowl.
Naruto pointed frantically at Kankurou, still laughing. Gaara was beginning to think something was fundamentally wrong with the blonde ...
But that was before he saw was he was laughing at.
In the kitchen
Temari looked around; she heard a strange noise, one that never dared make its appearance in her house (as if anyone could make it there). It sounded oddly like ...
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Temari scowled at herself, whipping saliva from the corners of her mouth. She wondered how she could have even tried to make an example of it! Oh well. Not like anyone heard it ... right? She better check, just in case.
She headed down the hall to where the three boys were in the bathroom, supposedly bathing Kankurou. She knocked once on the door and opened it. "Is everything—"
"DON'T COME IN!"
The door immediately slammed shut. "THIS IS GUY STUFF!" she heard Naruto shout.
"Um ... ok..." she eyeballed the door for a few minutes, then went back down the hall.
In the bathroom
"That was close," Gaara gasped, pressing himself against the door.
Naruto laughed again, tossing Kankurou in the bathtub. "What could she do?"
Gaara's eyes grew wide. "She can do stuff, Naruto," he said in a shivering voice. "Scary stuff!"
Naruto shrugged, as he had not yet experienced the horror that is an annoyed Temari, while scrubbing Kankurou's hair. "You gotta admit, though, I mean, who knew Kankurou owned those?"
"I know ... I'm never looking at him again ... I don't think my ribs could take it." Gaara shook his head, going back to his rice.
"I know, I mean, who knew he had a pair of heart-and-kisses-print boxers?"
(A/N: Yay! All done! This one was kind of long ... but I had all these ideas for it! And they just kept coming ... and coming ... and coming! And yes I'm aware that sounded VERY wrong. Next Chapter: Grasshopper.)