Chapter 3: Gaara's Recruits
A/N: I'm sorry I didn't update this weekend, I've decided to take them off since I still have to do things like interact with others and pretend to study for my finals :) . It's hard for me to pump out a chapter a day (even if it's only about 1500 words) and I think I should just relax and search for new inspiration during the weekends so I don't screw up writing any worse than I already have. Other than that the only thing worth mention is that I merged the little proto-chapter I released over the weekend into this one with a few modifications and hopefully with fewer errors. Continued thanks to those who review and appreciation to all those who read but are ignorant of the "review" button (I'm new, but I think that 4 reviews in almost 500 views is a bit shabby). Enough of my complaining, enjoy!
Special Thanks to Torakage for his steady support and Demon of Konoha for his brilliant ideas and generosity in lending them to me. Thanks also to Ivy-Romanticide and stellena10102 for letting me know I'm just (insert adjective here) enough to be on their alert list.
Disclaimer: I am not Japanese however much I admire their culture. I am Greek, Portuguese, French (American to be short)… but sadly not Japanese. Therefore there is little point in trying to claim I am Masashi Kishimoto and own Naruto. I do not.
Since we last left off with poor acnephobic Naruto alone and thoroughly un-sexy in the outskirts of Sunagakure, It is time to visit another angry resident of the sandy pants club.
His name is Sabaku no Gaara. He is not doing well. Let us journey into his head for an intro and see why this is. We could discover wonders within, learn what makes him the Gaara we know and love/hate/fear, possibly even uncover the meaning of life! But let's just take a look first.
Those bastards. Gaara raged as he paced back and forth in his office of sand which was currently floating 200 meters in the air by way of forgotten dreams of children, They think they can walk all over me do they? Just waltz right in and monopolize after what they did to ME? Well I'll show them, the next killer-app will be mine! Then she'll come back to me! All I need is some additional muscle, some idiots to distract them with while I make the move of the century! Yessss………what I need………is a posse.
He ceased pacing and smiled. That smile we all love/hate/fear, the one that chills you to a point pretty close to the bone, the one that makes every obsessed fangirl within seeing distance and beyond swear he is "schmexy", the one that says I-am-Morphumax-the-Godliest-God-and-I-WILL-EAT-YOU. That smile.
Yesssss… and a posse is what I shall have.
He straightened the tie he wore with his otherwise normal Gaara outfit during working hours and continued to display aforementioned smile. He strode out the door and onto the balcony with the same general attitude his smile expressed. The village hidden in the sand was spread out before him, and so soon would be the entire world. (Except those parts he chose to destroy for being to boring/uprising-prone for his taste of course).
Sony Online Entertainment™®©……………….prepare to meet the Sand Man.
Naruto had been sobbing in the Sunagakure ramen stand for close to six hours now, joined only by an equally dejected Lee (Neji having finally expelled him from the Hyuuga Manor for good). It would seem that he had lost all reason for living if he couldn't be sexy enough to become Hokage or even get a date.
Now I know why Sasuke went to Onkyougakure, they're all such ugly bastards that he probably seems like a love god to them.
A/N: I don't know the Japanese name for the Village Hidden in the Sound, I'm guessing, and I've only seen up to about episode 90 so far so I don't know the specifics of Sasuke's betrayal and I don't want to know until I see it so please don't tell me about it. (I hate spoilers and only found out about Sasuke's betrayal by accident).
"I'll never become Hokage, I'll never get laid, and I'm a disgrace to my Ero-Sennin!
I'm too ugly to even die!" Naruto wailed, cried, and violently took out the pent-up aggression of his inferiority complex on a hysterical Lee.
"The only path left for me is to become the lowest form of life there is…" he wiped his eyes, "I must become…" his eyes overflowed again, "An American Citizen!"
"Or you could just use this." Gaara had suddenly appeared and was holding a tube of acne scrub.
"Wh-what?" asked a confused Naruto. He had just been about to commit the worst crime in all of existence and damn his soul for all eternity, so where had Gaara come from?
Gaara sighed with annoyance. Oh well, if I'm looking for idiots I guess that means I can't complain when I find them. Actually, I can, but just because I'm me.
"Right now you're ugly as my brother in the morning and almost half as annoying. If you use this then you will look better and hopefully stop whining."
Naruto narrowed his eyes at the tube. He bent a little closer and sniffed it, unsure whether it would bite him or not. He circled it warily, seeing if it would try to assert itself as the alpha-tube. Finally after several more minutes of rigorous inspection, he barked at it. This final part of Naruto's idiotic ritual snapped Gaara's patience, which is really not much of an accomplishment at all since it is A) extremely easy, and B) usually leads to the offending party's death.
"JUST USE THE FING THING AND STOP ACTING LIKE A DOG!"
Naruto looked up from licking the back of the tube and sprang to his feet. "Uhhhh, yeah, sure. Old habits…late nights with Kiba… sooo much marking…" Naruto's eyes glazed over in nostalgia, ah, the things we urinated on… "Wait! I didn't mean that last part, honest!"
Gaara's eyes were twitching and he himself was dangerously close to resuming his own "old habits". "Just. Wash. Up. NOW!
After taking a deep breath he turned to Lee who was mimicking the behavior he had used with Neji. "You, come with me." Gaara turned and walked out with Lee cowering close behind, leaving Naruto to contemplate a whole new world of a thing called hygiene.
Gaara and Lee walked together in the dusk, the setting sun producing an annoyingly drama-reducing glare upon them.
"We have not known each other long."
"Uh, actually, we have."
"Really? Are you that ambassador from two years ago? I told you already, that was meant as a joke gift to celebrate your country's one-week anniversary. It was never meant to be opened and that plague was not in any way my fault."
"No."
"How do we know each other then?"
"Uh, well, you see, I kind of sorta may have kicked your ass a little in the Chuunin Exam preliminaries a few months ago."
An immediate and highly awkward silence followed. Lee was scared for his life and Gaara was thoroughly puzzled.
Him? But I swear I fed HIM to the Shukaku after I beat him…So that's what happened
to my intern…
"Well then," Said Gaara with a cheery smile "let's just say you killed my parents and we'll call it even."
"But I've never killed anything! It is a terrible crime to steal another's youth away!"
"Wave." Said Gaara.
Lee waved.
"Congratulations," Said Gaara with the same cheery smile as before. "You just brutally
murdered billions of bacteria and their entire families, crushed their homes, and
extinguished their youth forever."
Lee collapsed with tears in his eyes, clutching the hand he had waved with the other and
sobbed quietly.
"Come on, lets go see if that idiot friend of yours is done yet so we can discuss my
proposition."
Naruto and Gaara (actually just Naruto, Gaara was too busy laughing) had finally reassured Lee that bacteria had no families, no homes, lacked the capacity to think or feel pain, and most importantly (to Lee) they had no youthful spirits to be stolen. But while Lee was now happier, Naruto was not doing very well. As with all skin-care products, the acne-scrub took some time to be fully effective and Naruto's head was encased in a shell of linen and gauze to preserve the mental well-being of others and for his own protection. Now, it was finally time for Gaara to reveal his plans, or at least one of them.
He propped up his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
"I have been having problems as of late."
"Dude, I thought you'd always had problems." Naruto smirked and leaned back in his chair, thoroughly impressed with his own coolness."
"Shut up ugly."
Naruto glared at him "Fine. What kind of problems?"
"Let us just say that someone has stolen away what should be mine and I am thoroughly displeased."
Lee looked at him quizzically, "So someone stole your balls?"
Gaara gritted his teeth and was oh-so-tempted to indulge with no witnesses around. Fortunately for Lee, Gaara found his spandex too nauseating to kill, and decided to ignore and continue instead.
"What exactly it is that I have lost I cannot reveal in this location…"
"Why?" Lee was really beginning to enjoy this word.
"Because the walls have ears youth-for-brains."
When Lee and Naruto looked around the back room of the ramen stand in which they were gathered there were indeed ears mounted on boards around the room.
"Well I'm glad the guy who owned this place is dead, he must've been one hell of a freak."
"Agreed." Said Gaara and Lee together. Neither of them did anything for a few seconds from the shock of actually agreeing on something. Clearly this was either a sign of the Apocalypse, or a freak incident totally unrelated in every way (Let's go with the first one). Deciding to just ignore this little sign of divine intervention since they weren't Christian anyways, Gaara pressed on.
"The reason I want you two is to serve as my muscle, toughs, thugs, and all around minions. In return I will grant you three things, 1) your lives." He handed each of them a small piece of paper that read "NARUTO/LEE'S LIVES. DO NOT HANDLE WITH CARE. THIS SIDE UP ↑."
Somehow I thought the physical manifestation of my life-force would at least be gift-wrapped… Thought Naruto. Lee had pulled out a marker and was coloring his green.
"2) A lollipop." He handed them each a lollipop of the variety you receive at banks which they immediately threw over their shoulders.
"And the third reward is my help with a problem of your choice." As the pairs eyes brightened with the thought of what they could achieve with Gaara's help he whispered "Terms and conditions apply, no purchase necessary, not valid in all shinobi villages, void where prohibited, see store for details." All in one breath and with just the right volume so that he could testify in court that he really had said it, that he was astonished they hadn't heard him, and that he deeply regretted their loss.
He sat back until they calmed down and then leaned forward once again. "Do we have a deal?"
They whispered together for about half a second before turning back to Gaara.
Naruto stood up and declared in a dignified and elegant voice: "I, the almighty Uzumaki Naruto, and the youthful man next to me, Rock Lee, have debated long and hard over the matter of your proposal and it is our great pleasure to say Hell Yeah! On all counts."
Gaara smiled, "Good, now we can go back to my lair- um, headquarters, and sign the paperwork."
Together they walked out of the ramen stand, stopping only to "liberate" the money from the corpse of the owner. Gaara called up a cloud of sand which they boarded and set off upon to Gaara's headquarters.
"Now my good little buffoons," he said while turning to face them. "The first rule of working for me is this. You are to call me "Sand Man" at all times."
"Why?" Lee was using his new favorite word again.
"That's the second rule. You will not ask me any questions until all of your paperwork is signed. But if you must know it makes me feel like a pimp."
"Now let's go, morons."
"Screw you bastard."
"What did I just tell you?"
Naruto sighed. "Screw you Sand Man."
Gaara smiled again and backhanded him.
"What the hell was that for Sand Man?"
"Don't ask questions."
With that last irritating response the cloud of sand jumped to hyperspace and was for just a millionth of a second an Indian Elephant. Right before they jumped however, Lee, Naruto and Gaara all had the same thought.
This is gonna suck…
A/N: Just to start things off I'll say that I have a personal vendetta against Sony Online Entertainment™®© and all branches of the Sony™®© Corp. which is why I decided to add them in for a little fun (also I'm sorry If I horribly offended anyone with that "American Citizen" crack, but I'm American to you know, and we should learn to make fun of ourselves because someone else is going to anyways. It also helps that most of the time we deserve it :) ). If you read closely you'll get an idea of what they took from Gaara, and soon you'll find out why/how. More characters will show up in a few chapters, and then it'll get interesting. Thanks for reading and please review (I'll be happy even if you just type in the letter "g" so I know you're reading). Bye everyone, BLARG! (-Honk Honk from Red vs. Blue).
Secondary Disclaimer: I don't own Sony Online Entertainment™®© because I despise them. They are a registered trademark/copyright/whatever of Sony™®© Corp. All rights are reserved I guess.
