Authors Forenote – I don't own Naruto, Kishimoto does.
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Sand
The Kazekage frowned as he took the package that had been sent to his son and intercepted by his agents. Carefully unwrapping it, his frown grew deeper as he saw what was inside, a tri-pronged kunai with a familiar-looking handle.
"What?" He muttered as he picked it up and examined it carefully, then he lowered it to his desk and started rummaging through the wrapping paper to see if there was a not to explain why one of the Yondaime Hokage's kunai had been sent to the weapon of Sunagakure.
"Hey!" A young voice pouted. "You're not the Ichibi holder!"
Rasa's reactions took over and he leapt away from the unexpected voice, golden dust erupting from his sleeves as he prepared for combat.
"Oooh! Sparkly!" The same young voice cheered and Rasa blinked as he looked at the unexpected intruders.
The youngest reminded him of the Yondaime Hokage, the main differences being that he had three lines on each cheek and was about the same age as his weapon. The second was a shinobi he didn't recognise, but who was holding an unlit pipe in his hands while the third was…
"Jiraiya." Rasa relaxed, but kept his golden dust out just in case. "I did not expect to see you today. I received no note that you were coming."
"I was hoping to see your youngest… Gaara, isn't it? I've heard bad things about his seal."
"You dare question Lady Chiyo's work?" Rasa growled and Jiraiya paled.
"You let her do the Seal? Dammit, Rasa, she's only a level-four fuuinjutsu user! You need to be at least a level six before you can even think about sealing a Biju, even the Ichibi!"
Rasa blinked. "She's the best we've got."
Jiraiya waved off the protest. "If she did it, she probably brute-forced it. Only the Kamis know how she botched it, but at the very least, I'd say that your son has no mental protection at all given what I know of her sealing styles. Unless you want a beserk Jinchuuriki attacking everyone in an attempt to stop the pain, let me fix it!"
Rasa flinched backwards as for a moment, Jiraiya stopped being the wandering perverted hermit that everyone assumed that he was and instead became Jiraiya of the Sannin, trained by the God of Shinobi and one of the few true Sages alive.
"I… I… I…"
"I see him." The unknown shinobi said, looking into a bubble that Rasa hadn't noticed him forming. "He is on the other side of the village, watching some children play. The sand around him is shifting."
"Take us." Jiraiya ordered and the unknown shinobi scooped up the young boy and leapt out of the window, a bubble forming around him as soon as he cleared the tower. Jiraiya followed, a second bubble forming around him and the three shinobi flew off as Rasa stared in shock.
"…what just happened?" He asked himself, then his eyes fell on the desk. "Where's the kunai? Shit! Someone get me Yashamaru! Tell him to report here NOW! NOW! NOW!"
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Gaara watched as the children threw a ball randomly to each other. Part of him wanted to go and play, but another part of him was scared that his sand would see it as an attck on him and hurt them, driving them away and leaving him even more lonely than he already was.
Taking a deep breath and remembering what his uncle had said, Gaara stepped forwards, then paused as a bubble appeared in front of him. Reaching out, he gently caught the floating bubble and looked at it curiously, then he looked up as the courtyard went quiet and his eyes widened.
"Hiya!" The boy his age waved from the adult shinobi's arms while in a second bubble following just behind was perhaps the largest man that Gaara had ever seen, a man with a huge scroll on his back.
Gaara eyed the scroll, seeing how the man carried it and wondered if he could do something similar with his sand.
"Gaara of the desert?" The large man asked as soon as he had touched down and the bubble had vanished. "My name's Jiraiya and I've come to help you."
Gaara blinked. "You have?"
"I have." Jiraiya confirmed, then he made a sequence of hand-seals, causing stone walls to rise up around them. "I need to see your seal."
"It's okay." The blond smiled. "I'm like you. I hold the Kyuubi."
"Rokubi." The Kinomo-wearer said quietly.
"Now, let's see… aha! The seal is on your back." Jiraiya said and Gaara looked at him quizzically. "And… wow! Chiyo really screwed up! How are you even sane? Okay, I can fix this and once it's fixed, the sand won't attack anyone unless you want it to."
"It won't?" Gaara gasped and Jiraiya smiled as he pulled out a scroll.
"You have my word."
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The stone walls retracted and Rasa stared at the sight before him. Both adult shinobi were cradling sleepy children, the unknown shinobi holding the blond boy while Jiraiya held Gaara. Seeing him, Jiraiya walked over and as Rasa reached out to reclaim his son, headbutted him, sending him to the ground with a broken nose.
"You complete and utter moron!" Jiraiya growled, ignoring the various kunai and swords pressed against him. "That seal you had Chiyo put on him, I could have crapped a better seal than that!"
In Jiraiya's arms, Gaara giggled.
"I've fixed it. Gaara can now sleep without the Ichibi taking over, his sand will only attack when he wants it to, although the automatic defence is still in place and he won't have the Ichibi screaming into his mind constantly. That was just twenty minutes of work! How long did that old bitch take to do her monstrosity?"
Rasa pulled himself to his feet, then allowed a Med-nin to reset and heal his nose before answering.
"That is no concern of…"
"Two hours!" Chiyo snapped as she stormed up, followed by ten of her puppets, causing those threatening Jiraiya to retreat. "It was a masterpiece!"
Jiraiya handed Gaara to Rasa, then pulled two scrolls from his belt, unrolling them so that Chiyo could see what was written on them.
"This one is yours before I got here, this one is how it should have been at the very least! See the difference?"
Chiyo paled as her eyes darted between the two scrolls, then Jiraiya threw them both at her.
"You need to study more. Your skills are good for puppets, but for living beings? Hah!"
Without giving her a chance to respond, Jiraiya stomped over to Rasa.
"Give him proper training and he'll become the greatest shinobi that Suna has ever produced. I'll be keeping an eye on you, so don't do anything stupid like try to turn him into an unthinking weapon. You wouldn't like what happens if you do."
"I… understand." Rasa managed, not allowing himself to look at Yashamaru who was nearby in his masked uniform.
"Good." Jiraiya snapped, then he turned to his companions. "Hey, 'ruto, able to take us back? I think Gaara needs his sleep."
As Rasa watched in disbelief, the trio vanished without trace.
"What do we do now?" One of the shinobi asked and Rasa shook his head, then looked at where Chiyo was frantically perusing the second scroll which was being held for her by tow of her puppets.
"Stand down." He finally ordered. "Stand down. I need to put the... my son to bed."
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Gaara slowly rose through the comforting darkness, awareness of his body slowly returning with a kind of languid peacethat he could never hope to describe or even fully remember afterwards. Opening his eyes, Gaara looked round in confusion. He'd been outside, there had been some new people, talk about his seal (whatever that was) and now…
Gaara paused and his attention turned inwards to where a kind of mental sound echoed.
Snoring?
"Gaara?"
Gaara returned his attention to the world around him and turned his head to look at the door where his sister was staring at him.
"Temari? I… I was asleep?"
"You were." Temari confirmed, still staring at him.
"Oh." Gaara stared at the ceiling for a moment. "So that's what sleeping feels like. It's… nice."
An instant later, Gaara found himself being hugged, another new sensation.
"…Temari?"
"Hey, little bro, welcome back." Kankuro said from the doorway. "You've been out for almost two days."
"I feel… thirsty." Gaara realized and Temari slowly released him from the hug.
"Stay here, I'll get you some water." She mumbled, her face red, then she dashed out of the room, almost knocking Kankuro over.
"Temari!" The Puppeteer-in-training protested. "Huh. Girls. So, little bro, feel any different? Lady Chiyo says you won't have to worry about accidentally attacking people any more."
Gaara thought back to the hug he had received.
If what he had gone through during the fixing of the seal meant he got more hugs, he was happy with it.
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"Gaara's waking up." Naruto announced, looking up from the bowl of steamed vegetables and meat that Utakata insisted he ate. "I'm going to…"
"Finish your dinner first." Utakata stated, giving Naruto a firm glare. "Then finish your lessons. Gaara will have things to do first, you can visit him and tell him about how he can use his new necklace to call you later."
Naruto gave a long, put-upon sigh, then re-applied himself to his meal.
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"So, the Ichibi has been sealed properly?" Hiruzen asked as he looked out of the window of his office.
"That's right." Jiraiya replied from behind him. "Had he stayed like that for much longer, he would have been driven insane. Chiyo thought that she knew what she was doing, but… it would have been nasty. Seriously, if the kid hadn't been helped, chances were that he would have been a total psychopath by the time he became a genin."
"And Suna now knows that we know who their Jinchuuriki is and have access to more than one of our own." Hiruzen mused. "I see no reason to disabuse them of the notion that Utakata is a konoha Jinchuuriki… we'll simply not deny it."
"My organisation's tracked down the others, too." Jiraiya added. "We're liasing with Killer B to get tags and messages to them, most of them seem surprisingly sane given how they generally get treated."
Hiruzen turned to fix his pupil with a quizzical stare. "And you find this amusing… because?"
"B doesn't know that the Raikage knows what he's up to and approves." Jiraiya chuckled. "Turns out some of my agents know some of the Raikage's, they've started swapping info to help keep things calm and peaceful."
"In the long term, peace is far more profitable than war." Hiruzen noted as he turned back to look out over his Village. "Good work."
"Thank you, Sensei."
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Gaara stared at the bubble floating above his head, then he smiled, turning away from the desert to greet two of his first true friends.
"Utakata-san. Naruto-kun."
"Hey, Gaara!" Naruto glomped Gaara as Utakata simply smirked at the resulting pile of limbs. "Feeling better?"
"Slightly squashed." Gaara grunted, then he used his sand to extract himself from Naruto's grip and set them both back up on their feet.
"Wow, that was cool!" Naruto bounced up and down in excitement. "Ooh, can you make a platform that zooms across the sand? that would be awesome!"
"I… don't see why not." Gaara finally admitted.
"Make it like a sledge so that you can sit on it." Utakata suggested. "You know, like a rounded bench with runners going from one end to the other."
Gaara concentrated and a lump of sand rose up, then compacted almost like stone.
"Curve the front up a bit and put handles to hold on to and it'll be just right."
The sledge reshaped slightly, then Gaara carefully climbed on it, Naruto scrambling on behind him.
"All right." Gaara found himself smiling. "Let's see if I can do this."
For a long moment, nothing happened, then the sledge started to slide forwards, slowly at first but increasing rapidly until it zoomed off parallel to Suna's wall, Naruto yell of joy lingering behind.
"Was that… Gaara?" Temari asked as she peered out of the main entrance to Suna. "Oh, hi, Utakata-san."
"Temari-chan." Utakata smiled, then his hand dipped into the satchel he was wearing, re-emerging with a peach. "I come bearing fruit."
Temari's eyes widened as she stared at the pink fruit. "…yay!"
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"This is AWESOME!" Naruto yelled as the sledge launched itself off a dune, arcing through the air before the sand beneath rose to ensure a soft landing with no loss of speed. Gaara didn't answer, partly because he was concentrating on moving the sand in the right way to steer without spilling them off but mainly because he was enjoying himself more than he could remember enjoying himself before.
His friend was right.
It was awesome.
"Wahooooooooo!"