A/N: And so comes the other foot.
Kankuro...really shouldn't be as surprised as he is. Or, well, he shouldn't be surprised at how surprising his days have become.
"Come now, Chibi-Kun, you can do better than that!"
Gaara's scream of incoherent rage and annoyance was a wonderful mix of music to his ears, and heart-stoppingly panic-inducing. But, then, he wasn't thrown off by Gaara being his usual self anymore. Not really.
"Watch it!" Temari shouted, one of her quad-braids knocked loose by the sand-whip that cannoned past her.
"Sorry, Temari-Chan!" Came the couldn't-be-more-unapologetic-if-she-tried coo of their sensei as she ducked and weaved through Gaara's many, many attempts to so much as brush her with his sand.
He was privately amazed at how dedicated she was to not let a single grain touch her when out in a desert, training a boy who currently resembled a localized sandstorm more than he did an eleven-year-old.
He was very outwardly surprised at how she was fucking succeeding.
He...really wished that Baki-San had been their Sensei...
Sasori really hated the Third Kazekage.
He didn't think hate was really in his purview anymore, with how hollow he felt, but the old magnet-sand prick had done the unthinkable, and Sasori once again felt the cold, half-forgotten rasp of Hate.
"Ohayo, Sasori-Sensei!" echoed off the smooth sandstone walls of the training ground he was sat in, followed shortly by the light shuffling of clothes as his student landed in front of him, and immediately got into doing stretches.
He silently approved of her, as he did with many people who were too smart to waste time.
That approval died a quiet, weeping death when he saw the look on her face. She wasn't, in fact, doing it because she was smart enough not to waste time.
She was energetic.
Sasori hated energetic people. They were far too loud, far too touchy, and they always-
The white-haired child finished her stretches, and stomped a foot, falling into a stiff-if mocking-salute.
The sand visibly rippled around her.
-always had far too much Chakra for good control. Damnit. Now this was an even bigger waste of his time.
Naruto blinked once. Then again. Then a couple dozen more times for good measure.
The scene didn't change.
"S-Sensei..."
"No! You don't get to Sensei me after losing your cool and nearly killing yourself in a relapse."
"Do you..." Sasuke faltered as every eye in the clearing-which was quite a few, to be frank-turned on him. "Do you normally handle your issues by hugging people?"
The white-haired Suna Jonin blinked, formerly-raving Jinchuriki under one arm, sincerely confused, possibly paralyzed Kisame Hoshigaki under the other. "I have no idea what you mean."
Kisame was prepared to kill his sensei. Kisame was prepared to take Samehada, and after that, Kami knows what, but damn it all he was prepared.
For those two things.
He was not prepared for his Sensei to be bodily dropped at his feet outside the Mizukages office, a white-haired Suna kunoichi grinning smugly at him, Samehada thrown casually over one shoulder, its scales a sudden, almost surprising red.
"Hiya! This one tried selling me village secrets to avoid my kicking his teeth in. I'm keeping the sword as payment."
Then she was gone, and he very distinctly heard two people struggling to hold in laughter, and a third floundering in not-that-quiet what the fuck even's.
Wait. The Mizukage only had one Jonin in his office right now.
Yagura steps down by the end of the day, free of a Genjutsu he didn't know he was under.
Kisame leaves, because he thinks his mind will break if he stays in a village where all of the shit that'd been happing since he was a kid is suddenly not cool anymore because the guy who ordered it was being controlled by Uchiha Mind-Fuckery™.
That, and because Samehada was supposed to be his Damnit.
Sakura blinks many, many times.
She is out of Chakra, in a trashed field she doesn't remember entering, with a grinning Kunoichi resting a kickass, scaled, giant red sword over her shoulder, looking smug-as-you-please, and a little surprised.
"What...What did you do."
"In my defense...I was minding my own business."
When Akaki is born, she is born with life behind her eyes, a pulse in her chest that refuses to be contained, and a desire to run.
So she does, she runs and runs and never stops. Her parents can barely keep up.
When she learns to pump chakra in any way besides passive, she becomes a well-known D-rank, then a C, then a B, and then the Kazekage is bringing her in for afternoon tea to explain why he can't pay his Jonin A-Rank cash to catch a seven-year-old moving faster than most of his Chunin, so he makes her a Genin, and gives her to someone who has an invisible, fast way to keep her contained.
She learns Chakra Strings through sheer You Will NOT Slow Me and keeps running, always running, towards what she can handle, away from what she can't.
She runs and runs, and eventually, she garners a name for it.
The Streak.
Never seen unless she's finally come to a stop, and even then, you only get a glimpse of white hair streaking to a halt as momentum catches it.
She has no confirmed kills, but she defeats hundreds, and the Paranoia of Shinobi creates kills, missing Jonin, and any matter of thing they think they must to justify their survival until it's said she's killed a million men by the time she's twenty.
She laughs at that, because the only blood shes spilled is the blood of lost limbs, disabling her foes to stop them from being a threat.
But that is spoiling the tale, so let me start from the very, very beginning...
A/N: ...When we next meet. Heheheheh, I'm a h.