Finally here…AT LAST! The GAARA CHAPTER!
It's all Gaara goodness, everyone! (sorry if he's a bit out of character)
So, without further ado, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Naruto…urrgggg…yes, I don't own Naruto
Chapter 6 The Table Turns (and Not Just Once)
When it's Kumo vs. Gaara
A pack of wolves sped across the Hidden Mist borders, unhindered by the presence of Akatsuki outposts
In a room lit only by the sunlight, a heavily cloaked man sat at his table thoughtfully, brush dangling a finger's length from the scroll. Beside him, huddled in the corner, two children watched the trees, one with fear, the other with guarded curiosity.
After a time, the latter put an arm around the shuddering boy. No words passed between them, for mere words could not describe the tension suffocating this room.
A drop of ink splashed onto the scroll. The man looked down, sighed, and set down the brush.
"Misty Egg Rolls with a side of skewered eel and de-salted seaweed, anyone?"
And, in a small gesture, but a quite large way, the tension dispersed.
A cool breeze floated past Konoha as Team Gai's Rock Lee, the Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha, the awesome guy known for his blinding teeth and steely bowl-shaped haircut, ran across the meadows, a setting sun shining upon him, and cried tears of utter joy.
"GAI-SENSEI! YOU ARE BACK!" sobbed Lee as he crashed into the arms of his mirror-image, whose face retained just a tiny tint of purple from having been stuck in a sack for nine hours in Ichiraku's storeroom closet.
"Oh god…" Tenten smacked her forehead, earning a warning look from Neji.
Quietly, the Hyuuga thought to himself, Is she really alright? After all, Tenten had only been released from the hospital yesterday after she recovered from the blasted Cloud-nin's "lessons."
And speaking of the devil…Neji's face changed to an ugly shade of red as the Cloud-nin, now officially known as Uchiha Kumo, walked across the field…and inconspicuously stepped on something.
Byakugan flared. Neji waited in anticipation.
Ten minutes passed.
"Lee! The flame of youth burns bright in you!"
"Gai-sensei! Even though it took you a week to get out of the hospital, you are still the BEAUTIFUL GREEN BEAST OF KONOHA!"
"Lee!"
"Oh god…not again…"
Nothing happened.
Then Uchiha Kumo turned to wave at Neji, and Neji saw black.
Some people are fascinated with the universe, how the planets revolve, how life evolves. Others have a deep infatuation with certain animals, like rats that can bite your fingers off or cats that are way to smart for your good. And then there's other people, people like Kankuro, who makes a puppet one day and gets married to the puppet for life.
Said Sunagakure shinobi sweated in his thick, black (which absorbs lots of sunlight), fuzzy (even more heat absorption) suit without his puppet as he sat down at Konoha Diet, Konoha's second best restaurant, to dine without his puppet and with Gaara, the Kazekage who is on everyone's last-people-you-would-want-to-dine-with list.
Kankuro had wanted to find the Cloud-nin as soon as possible, but…
Flashback, half an hour ago…
The Godaime sighed. "Uchiha Kumo…a few days ago, she joined up the Konoha ANBU Interrogation Squad, but where she has been since then, I do not know."
Kankuro whined, "But doesn't she live somewhere! I need my puppet-" He stopped at Gaara's death glare and the uncorking gourd. "I mean…I really want Karasu back," he said with as much Sunagakure dignity as possible, eyeing the gourd warily.
"It's understandable," replied Godaime, also watching the gourd, with a fist that looked like it could throw a very good punch any minute, "but nobody knows where Kumo lives."
Flashback ends
Thus Gaara and Kankuro went to the ANBU Interrogation Squad and discovered most of the ANBU absent due to "a series of unfortunate accidents". Then, Morino Ibiki, who seemed to have a few more pox-like scars on his skin than Kankuro remembered, invited them in with a weird smile on his face for a cup of tea…and told them absolutely nothing about Kumo while putting what looked like tea but tasted like blood in the Sand sibling's teacups. They were also sitting in the ANBU Interrogation Room, which was not a nice place for Kankuro if Karasu wasn't parasiting on his back.
"Your orders, my lords!" said the waiter as he set down two plates in front of Kankuro and one before Gaara. Then he eyed the Kazekage's gourd, eyed the Kazekage's black lined eyes, and scuttled away.
Kankuro stabbed the cabbage in his plate dubiously that looked suspiciously rotten. Curse menus that don't have photos! He thought angrily. And curse Kumo!
According to rumors, due to the recent Nara clan food poisoning episode, Konoha Flame had to close down…or until Kumo finally repaired the three holes that she put into the restaurant walls when her experiments exploded on the street outside. The experiment, according to rumors, had involved a sannin named Jiraiya and a closet pervert named Ebisu. Not much either was known, other than that both were staying in the Konoha Hospital Intensive Care Ward as of this moment.
Before picking up the cabbage, Kankuro peeked at Gaara's culinary choice.
His eyes popped out. Since when! The plate before Gaara was licked clean, not even sauce was left. Powerful shinobis and their secrecy. Thought Kankuro, bitterly.
He heard a sudden shout of: "NEJI-KUN!" (With the voice of a face that matched with green spandex suit, but not quite a name) Out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted a familiar Hyuuga Branch House member walking quickly into the restaurant, prying a bowl-haired, green-spandexed, flashing teethed boy off of him.
When the spectacle of throwing-green-spandex-out-of-Konoha-Diet ended with a round of applause by patrons who had been temporarily blinded by the shinny teeth, Kankuro finally bit down on the cabbage leaves, and tasted something even more bitter. So he cursed like a proper pajama-clothed, puppet-less guy who's afraid of his younger brother.
The Hyuuga Branch House member who had been dawdling at random tables got up and walked out, opening a little notebook and scrabbled something suspiciously like Sabaku no Gaara in tiny handwriting.
"Why…" groaned Hyuuga Neji, dangling from a tree, over a huge bonfire, fifty miles away from Konoha, watched by one of Kumo's grinning bunshins.
Back in Konoha, the real Kumo-as-Neji hid in Team Gai's training field and thought, why is the Kazekage here? She really did think hard. There had been some memory involving face-paint man, but that was all in the murky past buried fifty miles in dust.
Then she considered spying on the Kazekage even further. "But what a scary aura!" she thought aloud, unconsciously loosing the Henge. It was such a bother to be mistaken for Neji by LEE, of all people, fifty times in one day.
Tattoo-forehead had the kind of black, admonishing aura that Orochimaru would kill to possess (and Orochimaru is about halfway there, but nobody is as masterful in the deadly aura as Gaara). There is, if Kumo remembered correctly, an underground school in Kumogakure (conveniently situated under the Raikage tower) that people know to not know about, which teaches all the shinobis who stumble there how to emit the deadly aura (those shinobis are often ones who had quite a traumatizing conversation with the Raikage, and decided that it was better to follow an advice than ignore it). ((Nobody knows how Hanashiba Ryoki does it, but there's the White Ryoki, who's a coward and a kid in heart; and then there's Black Ryoki, who makes cowards out of other people while some never see him, or anyone, ever again))
But, Kumo realized, it would be purely challenging to tail someone who, for once, was neither an Uchiha/Hyuuga bastard or a closet pervert, or just plain boring (or extremely odd) Konoha shinobis.
And what about that huge gourd?
According to Reibane, somewhere in the Wave Country people came up with the proverb "curiosity killed the catfish". Thus, Kumo reasoned, if she didn't turn into a catfish, then she was OK.
Such reasoning was like writing "KILL ME" in big, bold, attractive letters across your forehead and flaunting it in front of a blood-thirsty Sabaku no Gaara with his gourd and without any Naruto to stop him. The good news is, Kumo had at least some shinobi talent as to not get killed…which is precisely why after stalking the Kazekage down four blocks, when she ran into a solid something, she looked up and grinned cheerily into a pair of green eyes with black lines. "Might I sell you a pack of Konoha Flame popcorn?" she asked, producing a bag of moldy things that possessed the white, yellow, and sometimes brown colors of popcorn with butter.
But she didn't know that the Kazekage had been looking for someone, specifically someone who resembled Sasuke, even more specifically a someone named Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo who usually stalked strangers and grinned when caught. Then there was Kankuro, gapping, gagging, and doing lots of other g-words all at once, including gripping Gaara's sleeve and gointing (gargling and pointing) at Kumo.
No emotion flickered across the Kazekage's emotion whatsoever, but Kumo could just detect a small amount of vibration from his gourd that signaled: 1) anger, 2) satisfaction, and 3) bloodlust. None of which were quite appealing, but as it occurred, Kumo was used to Konoha shinobis, and so didn't know, that unlike Konoha shinobis, Sunagakure shinobis NEVER fell for a stupid excuse like that. (unless you were Kankuro, who has been swindled since the day he was born) Particularly Gaara, who was impenetrable to begging and deaf to excuses.
The Kazekage glared.
"Errr…popcorn?" Kumo asked hopefully. She'd heard rumors about the Kazekage from Kumorokunikunin's number one gossiper, Hanashiba Ryoki.
The Kazekage continued glaring, but now his gourd uncorked…
She heard a small click, and to her puzzlement it appeared that her invention, the chakra-restriction wristband, had been snapped around her wrist. "Ohhhh…"
And, for the first time ever in her life, Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo (or Shingen ((Uchiha)) Kumo, however you want to put it, since the great debates of yesterday failed to determine which family name was more important) saw black with a halo of stars and birds circling her head.
Sabaku no Gaara gave off no emotion whatsoever as his sand formed a Sabakukyu around the Uchiha troublemaker.
Kankuro did his own inner dance of triumph (although he did next to nothing apart from an attempted break-in into Kumo's secret lab ((and landed in the Sunagakure hospital)) whereas Gaara spent half an hour and easily found the C-R wristband sealed in a pickle jar along with pickles).
In a very dark room, where the shadows were indeed the darkest of dark and furniture looked like black bits of anything that is dark, a dark form wiggled against what appeared to be a huge anthill cocooned around it. But the anthill was absolutely impenetrable.
"-!" swore Kumo, who had been brought up by the kind of people that swore all the time but hit her when they heard her swear.
And the sands shifted a little at her struggle, only to form an even tighter ring around her throat that left a miniscule amount of space for air (in fact, almost zero). Contradictory to earlier situations in ANBU service where she'd ended up like this, Kumo didn't really know what to do when the sand was alive and a pair of very dark, malicious green eyes glowered at her from the Dark.
"Eeeeeeeehhhhhh…" Kumo gagged, a bit slow with the pounding headache, "popcorn?"
The glower transformed into a glare.
Someone scuttled in the dark. "Ask her…err…ask her about Karasu." The voice had a hopeful ring to it that hoped for survival more than "Karasu".
A dark, dead, dagger-like voice slithered out, "Where is the puppet that you stole in Kumogakure, just three weeks ago?" Meanwhile, the eyes disappeared a moment from Kumo's view as it turned, presumably, to glare at the requester.
Right that moment something else happened that never happened to Kumo before. She had a flash of premonition, and her basic admonishing alarms of responsibility and memory-loss (that had been dead since the day a frantically escaping Kumogakure ANBU dropped her on her head) came to life.
"Eerrrgggghhh…" Kumo felt the sands squeeze her windpipe painfully. The Sharingan would be useful right now. She thought, but since she couldn't do the Sharingan, it was as close to wishful thinking as she would ever get. "What puppet?"
That, apparently, had been the wrong answer, as the sands jerked her arms in the way that arms should never be pulled. Dimly, Kumo could feel an arm tear, but people would be amazed that what they think happened that really didn't happen when you are in an enclosed space with a psychopath interrogating you. This interrogator, especially, was a man for few words.
"Think." Was all he said, very quietly, and it really made Kumo think. Again, people would be amazed at the power of one word from the mouth of a psychopath. It had more bulk and dark thoughts to it than any Uchiha two worded answers and Hyuuga denials could ever achieve. This was the kind of one-word conversation style that any Akatsuki member would die to learn.
"Eeerrrrggggghhhhhhhhh……….." Kumo stared straight ahead, trying to affirm the shape of a gourd. Instinct for survival kicked in, and abruptly she realized that if she wanted to live, she had better remember, and remember fast. "I think…puppet…" Yes, there had been a puppet. On the puppet's back was a messy writing in colorful crayon: "Karasu, Sabaku no Kankuro's puppet, if lost, please send to Sunagakure tower by mail and DON'T trouble the Kazekage for this". That same puppet had last been used to give Konohamaru a spanking, and then…
"Oohhhh…." Kumo mouthed, sweat forming on her forehead. "Do you want the puppet in one piece or disassembled?" And she counted…one, two, three…
"WHAT!"
The sand squeezed tighter, and for the second time in one day and her whole life, Kumo blacked out.
After a march through Konoha above, below, and inside sand to a disassembled puppet, Kumo woke up in the Konoha Hospital, feeling the oppressive weight of the C-R wristband. Oddly enough, she had a visitor, and he was Sasuke.
"-!" Kumo swore again, earning a look from Sasuke that clearly said: those who cannot even swear properly are definitely beneath me, despite how much better your jutsus are, because right now you can't use any, or a certain Hokage will personally make your life MISERABLE.
After the initial shock, Kumo eyed the Uchiha surreptitiously. "Errrggghh…"
"Tch," said the Uchiha prodigy, and marched out of the hospital room, leaving Kumo to wonder what the –! that had been about.
But the wonderment did not stay short. As Kumo snuck out of the Konoha Hospital, leaving a gagged janitor in the closet with a hospital gown, she did a lot of calculations. The C-R W had to come off, of course, and then…
"Vengeance" was not a word in Kumo's usual vocabulary, but after thirty minutes of dwelling with a psychopath in a very dark room, certain words like "vengeance" and "war" and "apricots" had been added to the specific part of the brain governing words (which, for Kumo, hadn't been reopened in a very long time).
Thus, she thought, with the single-mindedness of an Uchiha who had just discovered "revenge," This calls for war, and vengeance shall trounce upon him as the apricots trounce the ants. She had seen an ant disappear under a fallen apricot, once, and something as small as that had to be crushed by an apricot, yeah?
And now a plan…
She colored slightly, but the pink hue was fairly visible on her normally pale-as-ghost face.
She couldn't go back to that. ANYTHING but that! The shame! I shall be the laughingstock of every licensed prankster in the world! But after a short debate with lots of groaning and banging of finger-sized angels and devils, Kumo walked into a dilapidated bookstore and headed directly for the dustiest section of the bookstore, where magical, rare, and sometimes deadly books were always known to be found but for some reason ignored until a boy or girl who knew absolutely zip about dusty shelves and books found the Book of Dark Arts or other works like that. (and quite often these books end up as the wedge in a very drastic change in the course of history)
In this case, however, Kumo pulled out Aa Guydes on Prancs, carefully held her head back as a fountain of one hundred year old milk shot out from the cover, and opened the flap.
She hadn't read this book since six, but, as they say, urgent times call for intellectual reversal.
Her finger found "How to Wrecc Venginces", and she smirked in the way that only an Uchiha on the road of revenge can smirk. Had Ryoki been here, he would have pointed out just how similar Kumo was to the Uchiha prodigy who was forever chasing after Itachi (until he got hit in the stomach with a Rasengan, and then was clubbed over the head by a copy-nin, and then he fell in love with Sakura because she was no longer in love with him ((the last part isn't really true, by the by. It's really just the imagination of overly romantic Konoha citizens (((but, theoretically, if there's an Uchiha out there like Kumo, then anything can happen))) )) ).
"The dead of night descends upon Konoha," said Kumo conversationally, haranguing Naruto as he devoured his ramen. The blonde had been the only one in Konoha who didn't learn a lesson through the "Kumo fiasco". This, Kumo reflected, was a good point, because 1) he's easier to work with, and 2) she understood him very well since a certain Niburo back in Kumogakure was frightening similar.
"Vot?" asked Naruto, the question mark almost visible.
Kumo, feeling obligated to bring a level of maturity into this conversation, sighed. "No, not literally, Naruto-kun. I'm just saying that it's getting dark."
"Oh…" Naruto muttered, but Kumo could tell that nothing was really getting into that skull.
"Soo….we were talking about your…friend, yes?"
"Which one?"
Sigh. "Eerrr..Gaera, I think, the sand guy?"
"Oh! Gaara!"
"Yes, Gaara…hmm…you were talking about his…errr…jutsus, yes?"
"Hah!" Naruto's chest puffed, "but I'm better!"
"Of course, of course," Kumo muttered, "but please, tell me more about Gaara…as you know, for…research purposes to suit the needs of Kumogakure diplomatic measures in the future, yes." Her eyes were glowing.
That night, Kumo labored in the unofficially rented kitchen of Konoha Flame. And no, there were not any floating bodies in liquids or deadly-looking liquids at all, and nobody on the streets heard the explosions or saw chunks of Kinjutsu books as well as bloodline research notes fly out. As it goes, this sort of thing only happened when Kumo faced a particularly nasty challenge, and decided to revert back to the old ways of "shinobi-eat-shinobi".
In the Thunder Country, Hanashiba Ryoki considered whether or not to let Black Ryoki out, and decided against it. Nevertheless, having a thunderstorm thumping your back through a hole in the wall (which was there curtsy of Kumo's video tape package), was enough to give even White Ryoki a sour turn.
Then he heard the howl of wolves, and, without thinking, jumped out through the hole.
One of the lessons that they taught in the Kumogakure underground academy was that ninjas improvise.
The glorious morning sun unfurled a new dawn upon Kumo as she strutted toward the Kazekage's lodging. Konoha Inn was quite the popular place for travelers. (as it happens, any business in Konoha with 'Konoha' in its name was very likely to sell, whereas enterprises like Ichiraku survived Social Darwinism only with the help of single-minded people like Naruto)
She dropped a brown package into the flowerpot as the register lady dozed on the counter, and quickly marched up the stairs.
Then the world went ka-boom.
Even before the dust cleared, Sabaku no Gaara already arrived at the scene, gourd strapped on his back. A few seconds later, Kankuro ambled down the stairs, and the dust was still making pretty patterns in the air. Not knowing what to do until the dust settled (and presumably the offender is still there), the two Sand-nins waited, Kankuro with his newly repaired Karasu.
Someone cackled, but it sure didn't came from anywhere near the dust-filled region. In fact, to Kankuro's growing horror that cackle sounded terribly familiar, with the initial U.S.K., or S.U.K. dashing through his memories and Karasu flopping on his back.
He turned his head, slowly (NEVER turn your head slowly when alerted of impending doom nearby. That is a lesson which many that had encounters with Kumo WILL learn).
He could merely make out the flurry of the impossible, revered, legendary DOUBLE-SEAL SIMULTANEOUS JUTSU (which is exactly as its name says – where the shinobi performs two different hands seals at once). Only one shinobi in history had been able to do it, and that guy had twenty fingers.
Beside Kankuro, Gaara's head whipped around very fast, but it was still too late, for a Kumo without the C-R W plus newly acquired Kinjutsus utter disaster for the one who pissed her off in the first place.
And then Kankuro experienced the overly unpleasant feeling of someone who was being peeled apart layer by layer, mashed under a heavy cement block, and sent off for the meat-packaging assembly line.
When Gaara could see once more, he noticed two things about himself. 1) he was eagle-spread on the dusty carpets of Konoha Inn, 2) a Kankuro-shaped hole was next to him, but the Kankuro in question was nowhere to be found, 3) he didn't feel so well, and for once he couldn't hear Shukaku in his head, and, finally, 4) he was going to kill the Uchiha for the reasons listed below:
a. His gourd was gone
b. There was some sort of gooey substance, a cross between saliva and the stuff that comes out of a spider's back end, all over him
c. He got a good look of himself in the mirror (to check for abnormalities just in case), and realized, for the first time in his life, with horror that his body had reverted to the looks of a four-year-old, and that this was also not his body, but Kankuro's. And if so…
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed somebody in Gaara's voice who Gaara knew really wasn't the Sabaku no Gaara, but was nevertheless strewn with signs of a potential Shukaku break-out.
After much fanfare, (and mistaking Sasuke for somebody else twice) the Konoha ANBU finally found Uchiha Shingen Kumo coercing information of the Hyuuga bloodline out of Neji in a forest. Ere long, the Kumogakure kunoichi was dragged back to Konoha (somehow, and let's just skip the part where twelve out of thirteen on the ANBU team ended up in the hospital).
This time, there was a Hokage AND a Kazekage to beat the daylights out of her. (But only until she finally reversed the double-seal simultaneous jutsu, of course) AND the two Kages would very much have liked to put Kumo into the Konoha Permanently Disabled Shinobi list if a message bird had not arrived from the Thunder Country.
As Tsunade read the message, her brows furrowed.
This was very bad, and it wasn't because Gaara and Kumo have begun mini-battle right here, in her office, which would need a VERY BIG reconstruction job later on.
TBC
Oh yes…Gaara…hahah! Although the Gaara-changes-body-with-somebody-else-thing has been done before, I was just way too tempted to not put it in, so there it is!
More action and Akatsuki plots will come in later on, so read on!
Next chapter: first Cloud-Leaf joint mission ever! What will happen as two Uchihas set out for Kirigakure?
