Gaara took a long swig from his canteen, relishing in the feel of the cold water in his throat. He could feel it pool all the way down in his stomach, making him regret skipping lunch that morning.
The sun was blistering the exposed skin of his hands, so he pulled them inside his Kage robe. He was quite used to Suna's heat, but something about this swelter felt unnatural.
"How many of these are there?" Gaara asked Hideki, who stood to his right.
Hideki glanced off toward a group of dunes to the west and pointed. "There are ten markings here on this side of the dunes and fourteen markings on the other," he explained. "All evenly spaced out."
Gaara crouched down into the sand, peering at the swirling mark that had been drawn there. It was so large it was hard to see what it looked like, but whatever it was it had clearly been drawn with purpose.
"I'm going to get a bird's eye view of it," Gaara said, summoning a floating sand disk. He hovered up toward the sun, pulling the brim of his Kage hat down to shield his eyes.
The markings had appeared the night before, Gaara concluded. The winds would easily have swept them away had they been there for more than several hours.
Looking down at them now, he found that he recognized them. He flew even higher, rising up until he could see both sets of markings on either sides of the dunes. They were the same markings he remembered from the catacombs on the monoliths. He thought of the rubbings he had taken all those years ago, still stashed away somewhere in his office.
Quickly, Gaara made his way back down to the earth.
"Hideki, I'm going to need a pencil and paper," he said.
Before he had even finished the sentence, Hideki was already fishing them out of his pouch. Gaara took them with an appreciative nod.
"I thought you might, Kazekage-sama," Hideki said, returning the nod. "I should also point out that Kankuro has been out here watching the beast fly in patterns. He's been doing his best to write them down, but it's difficult to making them out while that thing is in the air. I have a hunch that the patterns it made in the air are similar to these here in the sand."
Gaara pressed his lips together. Sarabi was right. The beast was trying to communicate with them. That thought was somewhat comforting. Hopefully it meant that the beast meant them no harm.
"Fetch Kankuro, Shikamaru, and Taiyo and meet me in my office," Gaara said, before flying back up into the air to transcribe the markings.
/
Gaara sat at his desk, running his fingers over the rubbings he had made so long ago. The corners were curled up now, the edges slightly yellowed. They'd been stuffed into a drawer, long forgotten until now.
There was no mistaking it now – the beast hadn't just randomly returned. It was here for a reason and Gaara needed to know what it was.
The markings swirled in his vision. He could find no rhyme or reason in their loops and curls. When comparing them to the ones he had drawn from the sky, he was able to recognize the same characters, but he had no idea what they meant.
"Shikamaru," Gaara said, looking up at the trio standing in front of his desk. "Do you still have your notes from when you tried decoding these?"
Shikamaru gave a noncommittal shrug. "I never really had any conclusive notes," he admitted. "With the small sample I had of the language, it was hard to determine anything concrete."
Gaara frowned. He had been hoping they weren't going to have to start at square one again. He flipped the page with his drawings around so that everyone else could see them. "Do any of you recognize these markings?" he asked, carefully watching Taiyo's face.
Though Taiyo had been a decent citizen during his time in Suna, Gaara couldn't forget everything that had happened with the catacombs. He was certain that Taiyo knew more than he was letting it, but how could Gaara figure out what he knew?
"Yep, that's the same," Kankuro said matter-of-factly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rolled up scroll. He unrolled it on Gaara's desk, revealing his own hand drawn versions of the exact same markings. His were much cruder, their loops wider and longer. At times there were small differences – a marking displayed reversed or an extra loop here or there.
But it was undeniably the same.
"Taiyo," Gaara said, bringing the milky-eyed elder's attention to him, "clearly the beast is trying to say something to us. Any idea what it might be?"
"Not a clue, Kazekage-sama," he said, bowing his head so that his wispy bangs fell into his eyes, obscuring them from sight.
Gaara didn't believe that for a second. He frowned and glanced over at Kankuro, who also wore a suspicious expression.
"So you don't know of any other writing like this besides what was written on the monoliths?" Gaara pressed.
Taiyo shook his head. "The writing of our people was lost to us, as you know," he explained, his voice growing darker with each word. "What little of it we could find was kept safe in the archives as we could never translate it with what little information we had."
"Archives?" Shikamaru asked. "You mean like books and scrolls?"
Taiyo nodded. "Yes, there were a handful of scrolls with this kind of writing. We were never able to translate them before the catacombs were destroyed."
Gaara tensed at the almost accusatory way Taiyo mentioned the cave-in – as if Gaara had been personally responsible for the destruction. He bristled uneasily when his eyes connected with Taiyo's and he felt a distinct contempt in them.
"Taiyo and Shikamaru," Gaara said sharply, commanding attention and respect with his authoritative tone. "I want the two of you to head down to the library and work on trying to figure out this language. If there is any record of Sarabi and Taiyo's people in Suna, it will be with the historical archives."
"Forgive me, Kazekage-sama, but I'm not sure I'll be of any use to you," Taiyo said, his eyes still blazing with heat. "I'm not familiar enough with this language."
"Then I'm sure you're curious to learn more," Gaara snapped, feeling a bubble of rage burst in his chest. "It would surprise me if Suna's most renown history teacher wasn't curious about his own culture."
An awkward silence settled over Gaara's office. Gaara could see that Taiyo's jaw was clenched and a vein throbbed near his temple. If Gaara hadn't already been suspicious of Taiyo, he certainly was now.
"Very well," Taiyo said, his voice strained. He bowed low to Gaara and then turned to face Shikamaru, who had never looked more like he wanted to simply float away into the sky, or be anywhere but Gaara's office. Shikamaru gave a lengthy, irritated groan, which prompted a glare from Gaara.
What had he done to deserve all this disrespect?
Without another word, both Taiyo and Shikamaru filed out of the room. Gaara was grateful when his office door shut behind them and he was left with only the company of his brother.
"What the hell was that about?" Kankuro asked, moving to sit on the corner of Gaara's desk.
Gaara sighed and shook his head. With weary hands, he rubbed at his temples. "I don't trust Taiyo," he said. "He's hiding something from us and we need to find out what it is."
Kankuro opened his mouth to speak, but before any sound came out, the office door burst open again, revealing an angry Temari.
"What reason could you possibly have for taking my fiancé away from me during our wedding celebration?" she demanded, cocking her hip out to the side.
In spite of her ire, Gaara was pleased to see her.
"Sister, dear, please come sit," he said, gesturing toward the chair across from his desk.
"Gaara," she said, a slow warning.
"I needed his help with something," Gaara answered, realizing he wouldn't get anywhere with her until he did. "Now come sit down and help your village out before you leave it forever."
Temari rolled her eyes at his drama, but did as she was told, careful not to leave Kankuro out by glaring at him on the way.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Taiyo is hiding something from us," Kankuro said.
"Something about the beast?" she asked. "How do you know?"
"I don't know," Gaara said with defeat. "Maybe Shikamaru can suss it out of him. But in any case, we'll need to keep an eye on him. Tonight I'm taking Sarabi out to do some more investigating on the beast. I'm going to have Hideki tail Taiyo to see what he's up too during that time. You can have Shikamaru back then."
Temari gave him a dry look. "Okay, but I'll be in Sakura's satellite team, waiting to back you up."
"No problem," Kankuro interjected. "I can take your place. Go enjoy all your time with your future husband, sister."
"No, no, I'm still going," she insisted, giving Kankuro a glare through the corner of her eye. "This is the last bit of Suna business for me to handle before I leave."
"It's settled, then," Gaara said, feeling a little anxious. There was no telling what could happen with the beast tonight and he didn't like to feel so uncertain. Not where the safety of his village was concerned.
"It's going to be fine, Gaara," Kankuro said, sensing the unease in his brother. "We can handle this."
Gaara wasn't so sure, but looking at the confident faces of his brother and sister made him feel a little better.
/
Sarabi was nervous, which made Gaara nervous. She was fiddling with the hem of her tunic as they made their way out to the dunes. She had wisely suggested they head toward Turtle Rock, so as soon as the sun had gone down completely, he and Sarabi headed out into the desert.
A few clicks east of their location, Gaara could feel Sakura and Temari's chakra signatures. They were docile, waiting for any sign of distress from Gaara or Sarabi. He felt both comforted and unnerved by their presence. It was nice to know that both Sakura and his sister would be here to help him should he require it. It was also horrifying to know that they were in potential danger. What if the beast went wild and he couldn't manage to protect them?
He shook his head to clear those thoughts away. He couldn't dwell on that now. He needed to focus on Sarabi.
"Do you have a plan?"
Sarabi's eyes snapped over to his. "What?"
"For trying to communicate with it," he clarified. "Do you have some sort of plan or are we just going to wing it?"
"I don't have a plan," she said, her voice panicked. "I thought you had a plan."
Gaara reached out and placed a comforting palm on her shoulder, slowing down their pace to a leisurely walk. "Don't worry about it," he said softly. "We don't need a plan. We just need to stay calm and focused."
Sarabi didn't look placated by his words. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, glancing off toward the rock formation that was just starting to come into view.
"I'm scared," she confessed. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"Don't be scared," Gaara said earnestly, grabbing her by both shoulders to force her to look at his face. "Just remember everything that you've learned. You can handle it. I won't let anything happen to you, and Sakura and Temari are waiting to give us back up if needed. We'll be fine."
She closed her milky eyes and sucked in a deep breath. For a few moments she attempted to even out her breath. Her fingers were trembling where they were still fisted in the fabric of her tunic. Gaara wished there was something he could do to make her less nervous. It was easy to forget that while he and the people he surrounded himself with were fearsome, practiced shinobi, Sarabi was basically a civilian. She had never been on a mission before, never killed someone.
She was right to be nervous.
"Okay," she said, puffing out her chest with all the bravado she could muster. "I'm ready."
Silently, they ambled toward the rock formation. Gaara grew more and more nervous with each step. What if the beast attacked? What if he couldn't protect Sarabi?
When they reached the reddish stone, Gaara climbed atop to survey the landscape. This would be an excellent vantage point for scouting the beast's location. Hopefully it was nearby.
Realizing that Sarabi was not behind him, Gaara looked down at the sand below. She was standing with one hand braced against the stone, looking out toward the north. He couldn't see her face, but the tenseness in her posture worried him.
"Sarabi?" he called down after her.
Hearing her name, she glanced up at him. Her eyes were wide, almost glowing in the moonlight. It reminded him of when she had found him and Sakura after the catacombs had collapsed.
She pointed to the north and then put her finger to her lips. Gaara fell silent, reaching out with his chakra to see what she was trying to tell him.
His chakra told him nothing. His sand, however, was easily able to sense the beast below, moving toward them at breakneck speed.
"He's coming," Sarabi said, finding a solid foothold on the stone so that she could climb up beside Gaara.
Gaara reached for the mic of his radio and clicked down the button. "Beast is approaching," he said, listening to the static crackle on the other end. "No visual yet."
A beat of silence followed.
"Copy that," said Temari's voice in his ear. "We're on standby."
He could practically feel Sakura's energy somehow. He could just imagine her, rigid and ready to spring into action at any second. He would really have hated to be in her position.
The ground beneath them began to rumble – a sensation that Gaara was quite familiar with now. The beast was getting closer. Sand began to quake up from the ground and a low, vibrating hum filled the air.
It grew louder and louder. Gaara and Sarabi scrambled for their balance as the stone began to shift and quake. Quickly, Gaara formed a sand disk and pulled Sarabi up onto it beside him.
"Look," Sarabi said, pointing to a spot off in the distance.
She didn't need to. The rumbling stopped, a deafening silence stretching out across the desert. A split second later, the beast had burst up from the sand like they had seen him do so many times before.
Gaara brought up his sand shield to deflect the sand and debris that crashed over them like a wave. No sooner had he dropped it did Sarabi leap off the disk and begin running toward the beast.
"Sarabi, wait!" he called after her. It was dangerous enough for her to go off after it on her own, but Gaara already knew that she didn't have a plan.
The beast's horrifying screech pierced the air, this time a dramatic wail. Gaara pressed his fingers to his ears to muffle the sharp sound. He gritted his teeth with a wince, feeling the sound vibrate through every bone in his body.
"Is everything okay out there?" he heard the static crackle of radio ask in his ear.
He peered out into the settling dust, looking for Sarabi. He spotted her down below, her dark hair billowing out behind her wildly. She was standing firm, looking up at the beast. Her perfect stillness was concerning. The beast whirled and swooped through the air, circling around her but not touching her.
"I've got a visual on the beast," Gaara muttered into his radio. He didn't want to confirm their safety just yet, but he knew if he didn't respond at all that Sakura would attempt to charge in.
Another static crackle told him that Temari had said something else, but whatever it was had been drowned out by another earsplitting screech.
A spray of mucus erupted from the beast's maw, his aim straight for Sarabi. Gaara felt for his sand, forming it into a sand wall to protect her, but before he could finish, Sarabi had brought up a wall of her own.
Gaara marveled at the sheer size it. Even with an entire desert's worth of sand at his disposal, he had never created a wall so large, so tall before. He watched with wide-eyed fascination as Sarabi hopped aboard her own sand disk and began to float up toward the top of the wall.
With the beast still hissing and spitting on the other side, Gaara had no choice but to join her up at the top. He needed to maintain a visual.
At the top of the wall, Gaara noticed the sand beneath Sarabi's feet begin to harden and turn to stone. It spread slowly along the length of the wall, solidifying beneath his feet. Such a technique would have required a massive amount of chakra for him to do, but he could easily tell that Sarabi was not using chakra to achieve this.
She stood poised elegantly on the crest of the wall, maybe twenty feet from where Gaara stood. He began to approach her, but a whirl of sand blocked his path.
"Don't come any closer," she said to him, her milky eyes flicking over to meet his. He was surprised to see certainty and resolve there. Her mouth was set in a grim line as she returned her attention to the beast, her hands both extended outward toward its massive head.
"Sarabi, what are you doing?" Gaara called out, taking another step toward her in spite of her warning.
More of her sand came up into his path. Gaara tried to manipulate the sand away from him, to clear himself a path to her, but something was wrong. There was a thick, cloying feeling in the sand, something that made it difficult for him to control. He remembered that feeling, that oily, slippery sensation in the sand that made it immovable, unstoppable.
It was the last thing he had felt just before the catacombs had collapsed.
"Sarabi, whatever you're doing, stop it right now," Gaara commanded, raising his voice so she could hear him over the whipping winds.
Ignoring him completely, Sarabi walked until her toes were teetering over the edge of the wall, which was now completely solidified into rough, grey stone. She leaned forward as the beast approached her, it's massive head looming in front of her.
When it was near enough for her to touch, she pressed both palms to its slimy head just above his beady eyes.
Something in the air shifted. Sarabi's sand fell down, opening a path for Gaara to reach her. The air was humming with electricity – Gaara could feel it quite clearly now that Sarabi's sand was gone. The air was thin up so high, but there was a distinct stickiness to it, a humming, throbbing, cooing sound.
Intrigued, Gaara eyed the beast, watching as he closed his eyes and allowed Sarabi to hold her hands against his head. Was he purring?
In Sarabi's distraction, Gaara was able to sneak up beside her, coming just close enough to be able to touch her and pull her away from the beast should it attack.
"What's happening?" Gaara asked, noticing the way her milky eyes had glazed over and her skin was pebbled with goosebumps. "Are you communicating with him?"
Sarabi didn't answer.
"Sarabi?"
The he felt it – the chakra. It was the chakra from the monoliths, the chakra that flowed through Sarabi. Gaara could feel it culminating in the beast.
"Sarabi, you're giving him your chakra," Gaara said, astonished by her ability to do such a thing when she'd had no real training with chakra manipulation before.
Sarabi did not respond, taking another precarious step toward the beast. The beast pushed his head closer to her, moaning with what appeared to be delight. Gaara felt its power growing as Sarabi continued to funnel her chakra into him.
But no, she wasn't. She wasn't voluntarily giving it to him. He was sucking it right out of her like she was nothing more than a juice box.
"Sarabi, stop," Gaara said again, this time a little more desperately.
He realized then that she couldn't hear him. Her eyes were screwed shut, but he noticed a pinprick of light shining from the corner of her eyes.
"No," he breathed. "Sarabi, you have to stop."
He reached out and clapped a hand on her shoulder so that he could yank her back to his side. The moment her hands left the beast's sticky hide, it reared its head back and yowled, filling the air with its desperate, angry wail.
"I'm going to need some backup," Gaara said into his mic, pulling Sarabi's limp body against his. He lifted her up and tossed her onto his shoulder. He had no idea what was happening to her, but if it was anything like what had happened in the catacombs or whatever had happened with Sasuke out here, Gaara didn't want her to have any part in it.
"On our way," Temari's voice said in his ear.
He was both relieved and worried.
With Sarabi still flung over his shoulder, Gaara dropped down to the other side of the wall. She was unconscious, but she was breathing. Her chakra was too low, he realized. She wouldn't wake up until it had been restored.
He dropped her body into the sand and pressed a hand to her forehead. Hopefully Sakura would be here soon to make sure she was okay. Until then, Gaara needed to make sure she was safe.
On the other side of the wall, the beast howled again. There was a loud, sickening thud on the other side, followed quickly by another and then another. Gaara looked up at the wall and saw a crack forming at the top. The beast was trying to break through it to get to Sarabi.
He needed to get her out of here.
He could sense Sakura and Temari approaching quickly. They would be here in a matter of minutes, but until then Gaara needed to make sure the beast didn't touch Sarabi again. She didn't have any more chakra left to lose.
The beast slammed into the stone again, enlarging the crack until it almost reached the ground. Gaara picked Sarabi back up and lugged her body farther away from the wall. The beast spit another spray of acid, some of which managed to make its way over top of the wall. Gaara created a sand shield around Sarabi and hoped that would be enough to protect her for now.
When he was certain that Sakura would be arriving any moment to help Sarabi, Gaara leapt back up toward the wall. Their first order of business was to try to communicate with the beast. Without Sarabi, they had no way of doing that. All they had were the drawings Kankuro had made of the beast's flying patterns.
Gaara fished them out of his pocket and unfolded the creased pages. Staring down at the strange symbols, he felt confusion. He had no idea what they meant, but he hoped that the sight of them would at least let the beast know that they were trying to understand him, that they didn't want to hurt him.
The beast slammed into the wall again, this time, splitting it into two. The resounding crack reverberated through the air. Gaara pressed his fingers to his ears again, certain that he had just ruptured an eardrum.
"Gaara!"
Sakura's voice filled him with dread and relief. He turned to find her pink head bobbing across the dunes at full speed, Temari in tow behind her.
"Sarabi's unconscious," he said into his mic. "Have Sakura tend to her immediately."
"Copy that."
The beast continued to wail on the other side of the wall, but all Gaara could focus on was Sarabi's limp body and the head of pink hair running toward it.
One more time, the beast slammed its head into the wall, tearing it apart until chunks of stone and debris rained down on them. Gaara was hardly aware that Temari had unfolded her fan and launched a stream of wind to deflect what she could. Gaara had raised his own sand wall between the beast and Sarabi to protect her of what debris remained.
Sakura came to a stop near Sarabi's body, her hands glowing and green and pressed into the girl's unmoving chest. Her wide eyes were alert and focused when she looked up at him, her hair blowing wildly in the wind.
"We have to get her back to the village," she yelled over the wind and wails.
Gaara looked back toward the toppled wall where the beast was nursing his self-inflicted wounds, coiled tightly in a ball. If they took Sarabi back to the village, the beast would follow.
But what other option did he have? He couldn't kill the beast before they had discovered what it was trying to say. What if killing it also killed Sarabi? It was a risk he didn't want to take.
"Gaara?"
His eyes flicked over to Temari, who stood waiting for her instructions.
"What do you want to do?" she asked.
He had absolutely no clue.
