Author's Note: Because I love to torture my favorite characters.

Kankuro always hated cleaning his puppets after missions, Kuroari especially. Karasu could be wiped down with some soap and water and maybe some vinegar, but the capturing puppet usually required immersion in a tub of lye just to get the stains out. Especially this time, now that the puppet had two bodies' worth of blood soaking it instead of just one.

Kuroari was somewhat new to his repertoire of puppets, but even so, every time Kankuro had opened him up in the past, all that he ever came across was a corpse, so of course it was startling when he wrenched the capture puppet open to find out one of the bodies was still breathing. It didn't take long to see why, since the dead inhabitant of the puppet had covered the other and taken almost all of Karasu's blades, only allowing two through, one straight through the living victim's leg and the other through his side. Both deep, both painful, both of which would probably kill the guy eventually if the blood didn't stop flowing, but neither immediately lethal.

For Kankuro, this was an entirely new situation. What did one do with an opponent who wasn't in immediate danger of dying but was most definitely unconscious and not a threat? Kankuro suspected the answer was 'kill him,' but he wasn't, say, Gaara, and quite frankly, at this point running the Sound-nin through would probably be a favor. Kankuro didn't do people favors. So instead he pulled both bodies out of Kuroari, tossed the corpse to one side, and set about bandaging the living one.

The puppeteer had been hard-pressed during the battle to tell his two opponents apart, except that the one he was trying to keep from bleeding to death had a necklace on and the other didn't, but he was fairly sure that this Sound-nin was the one who had fallen for Karasu, since he was also bleeding from a number of deep rents in his arms. All in all, the Sound-nin certainly wasn't ever going to be as pretty as he had been two hours ago, which really wasn't much of a loss. Kankuro smirked, and addressed his unconscious patient. "Heh, maybe now everyone will be able to tell you're a guy." The puppeteer, of course, received no answer.

When he trudged back home an hour later with the pretty-boy slung over one shoulder, Temari could only stare at him. "Kankuro, who the hell is that?"

"I was a little sloppy. One of my opponents survived, and I thought 'hey, why not take advantage of the situation and give Temari an early birthday present?'"

Temari raised one eyebrow. When she finally spoke, her tone was flat. "Birthday present."

"Yeah. Dad always planned on giving you a boy-toy once you hit seventeen, but since he's never going to get around to it, here." He pushed the Sound-nin into his sister's arms. "Happy birthday. And don't worry, he's more than pretty enough. Once he's cleaned up he'll look more like a girl than you."

"Kankuro…"

"Do you know where I could find Baki-sensei? Any of us could kick this guy's ass, but we should probably seal off some of his chakra just so he can't leave or kill off any of the servants."

Temari glanced down at the unconscious body in her arms. Bloody and bruised as he was, the boy definitely was beautiful. Baki-sensei would probably kill him if neither she nor Kankuro insisted otherwise. And, well… she had always had a thing for high cheekbones. "He's in the third living room."

Kankuro grinned.