One of the most awesome things in the history of awesome things has occured. Kishi has given cannon names to the bijuu and their jinchuuriki!

And I'm not just talking about Yugito and Roshi. I'm talking about all nine of them! Hurray for Kishimoto!

To give you the full list, we've got Gaara with the Ichibi no Shukaku, Yugito Nii with the Nibi no Bakeneko, Yagura with the Sanbi no Kyodaigame, Roshi with the Yonbi no Saru, Han with the Gobi no Irukauma, Utakata with the Rokubi no Namekuji, Fu with the Nanabi no Kabutomushi, Kirabi (or Killer Bee) with the Hachibi no Kyogyu, and, of course, Namekaze Uzumaki Naruto with the Kyuubi no Yoko.

Aparently Yagura is the cannon Yondaime Mizukage.

It's a good thing I never followed cannon, I'm not letting someone that cute and cuddly be that evil...

Anyways, the reason why I am rambling on about this is because I've changed a bit of this story and Save You to include the cannon bijuu. How Suna and the other villages got destroyed as well as Gaara flashback of Baki dying have been changed.

So enjoy the super duper newly typed version of I'll Do Anything!

Warning: There will be mild sexual material in this chapter. It is rated M for a reason, people.

Disclaimer: I do not own the concept of Naruto. That belongs to Kishimoto. I can, however, claim copyright for Takama, Izumi, Hibeki, Wataru, and any other manner of OC I happen to create in the near to distant future of this story.

Chapter 6: There is a Beetle in the Woods

Watanabi Izumi climbed the rickety wooden ladder up to the lookout, hands trembling on each rung. She knew who was at the top of the platform and just what he could do if angered.

She had heard the tales that surrounded him: of his moonlight hunts, of his blood thirsty nature, of the demon that lurked just beneath his skin. Her mother had told her frightening stories of the Boy-Monster that ate children who they stayed out too late at night.

Sabaku no Gaara was the nightmare of her childhood and now she was heading right towards him.

Izumi could not even begin to comprehend how much that frightened her.

Finally stepping onto the dirty platform, the girl gazed out on the camp below her. The setting sun illuminated the mud brick homes below, casting long shadows into the makeshift streets. The plains beyond the walls swayed in the wind and the occasional tree stood out like a lone boat on the sea.

And there, leaning against the creaking railing of the tower like an ancient creature from an epic, was Gaara.

He stood with his back to her and his gourd of sand on the floor. His red hair – so similar to her teammate's – waved in the breeze, making him look like any other teenaged boy.

It made him look human, but Izumi promptly ended that train of thoughts. No human could ever do what she had heard in the stories about him. Only a monster…

…Was he singing?

Yes, he was. An old song from Suna, a tune that she half remembered from the buskers during the festivals, flowed freely from Gaara's lips in his deep, gravely voice.

"Kaze ga fuite aa itai keinai omoi

Nani omotte koka atsumete hitostu

Nido to nai nido to nai

Shitteru nante baka mitai

Mujaki ni natte aa ime-ji"

Izumi took a hesitant step forward, and the wooden plank creaked under her foot. Gaara spun around, teal eyes wide and cheeks dusted with pink.

"How long have you been there?" he questioned.

The brunette swallowed as her body began to shake under his gaze. She decided to be honest, "O-o-only a…few min-minutes."

Izumi looked up from the floor into his teal eyes and strangely saw nervousness in them. But that was impossible; why would someone as powerful as him be wary of a weakling like her? It made no sense.

"What do you want?" his second question reminded her of why she was there.

"It's…m-my turn…f-f-for watch d-duty," and with that she hesitantly moved towards the railing. Gaara backed up behind her and grabbed his gourd, swinging it over his back.

"It must get heavy after a while," Izumi thought, remembering how often he took it off during their trip to Kochi. She gazed out into the growing darkness, picking out even the smallest of details on the ground.

"Kaa-san always says…Kaa-san always said I had good eye sight."

"Are you scared of me?" the question was so sudden; she had completely forgotten that he was there. Turning ever so slowly, she faced him.

How what she supposed to answer a question like that? 'Yes, you terrify me beyond belief' would be like sticking a bull's-eye on her back, but then a 'No' would be just as dangerous.

Like he had read her mind, he continued, "I wouldn't know how to answer that question, either, if I were in your place." He smirked – just like Hibeki, so much like Hibeki – and shook his head slightly.

"Why do you want to be a medic?"

If the last question did not startle her, this one certainly did. Why would he want to know something like that?

"I…I c-c-can't really…do any-anything…else well. Shosenjutsu…is t-the o-o-only…thing th-that I've…managed to d-do…correctly."

"Lies" her conscience whispered.

"Quiet," Izumi countered, "What he does not know won't give him a reason to hunt me down."

"I tried to do it once, Shosenjutsu I mean," Gaara said – why was he telling her this? – "It didn't work out to well. I've got too much yokai in my system to perform the jutsu.

"You can save lives, Watanabi Izumi. That is something that I don't know if I can do."

And then it hit her: Sabaku no Gaara was trying to boost her confidence. He was trying to tell her that she was not weak or stupid or anything that the other girls in Suna said she was.

Gaara believe her to be something of worth.

Izumi did not know how to take that.

"Do you think I should try to do it anyways?" he asked.

"Try to do what anyways?" she wondered for a minute, and then voiced it in the strongest voice she could find, "I…don't understand…t-the question…"

"Should I try to save lives even if the stakes are stacked so far up against me that only a fool continue to try?"

Izumi thought it over: would it be worth it, to try and fail? Yes, she realized, it would. It was better to say you did something to help that to say you did nothing at all.

The man that owned the weapons shop on Solstice Avenue had lost his leg trying to get his friend out of danger during the war. He had tried and failed, and was unable to stay a shinobi for his efforts, but he was still trying to do something for Suna, for his friend.

The proof was in the name of his store: Diasuke's, the name of his fallen comrade.

"Yes," Izumi nodded, but said nothing more.

Gaara's eyes widened and then something she had never expected to see occurred.

Sabaku no Gaara, the jinchuuriki of the Shukaku no Ichibi, the monster and weapon of the Kazekage, and nightmare of Suna, smiled.

"Thank you, Izumi-san," he said – HibekiHibekiHibeki, he looked just like Hibeki – "You don't know what that means to me."

And then he turned, walking across the creaking floor towards the ladder, before stopping once more.

"Is there anything good at the mess hall?" he asked as his stomach gave a loud growl.

Izumi would have giggled had Gaara been anyone else.

"N-n-not really…but I-I'd s-s-stay…away f-from the…s-soba noodles. B-Baki-sensei…learned t-that the…hard way," she told him, remembering how the older man's eyes had nearly popped out of their sockets as he stood up from the bench he was on, "H-he…was still…i-in the lat-latrines…l-last time…I ch-checked."

Gaara shivered, "And here I though nothing could get worse that Baki's cooking. I'll see you around." And with that the red head slid down the ladder towards the ground. Izumi abandoned her spot on the railing to watch him go.

He turned back as if having sensed her eyes on him and waved. She turned around sharply, hands fisted in the cloth of her pants and a slight blush on her cheeks.

She had not realized it before, but Gaara kind of attractive. But that thought was then squashed when she made the connection that it was not that she found him handsome, but that he looked so much like her crush, Hibeki.

"This mission might not be as bad as I thought it would be," Izumi thought as she leaned back on the railing, watching a herd of giraffes pass by, "Not that bad at all."

She hated her hair.

It was just another thing that made her different, that made her stand out. And of all the colours for her to have, it had to be emerald green.

She looked like a freak: between her hair and her oddly coloured skin (not brown, but not tanned either) it was obvious that she had not come from any country in the Elemental Nations.

They had found her at the base of the tree that gave the village their Hero Water every one hundred years when she had been a baby, wrapped up in a blanket in a wicker basket. Inside was an envelope containing a single world: Fu.

Her name.

The village believed that she came from the Outer Rim, the area outside the continent where cannibals and monsters live. Her mother must have tried to get rid of her, or her father did not want to be weighted down with the burden of a child.

It did not matter; she had been abandoned at birth by parents that did not love her. All that she knew was that one of the councilmen decreed that since they needed a jinchuuriki to compete in the modern age of shinobi, she being an unwanted child would become their weapon.

It was once said that her eyes had been a hypnotic blue colour. Now that she was carried the Nanabi no Kabutomushi within her body, they had changing into a red-yellow-but-not-quite-orange colour.

Another thing that made her different.

Fu looked down at her clothing. She wore a white, sleeveless shirt that ended just above her stomach, revealing a mesh undershirt and then her oddly coloured skin. Below that was a pair of low ridding white pants held up by a red sash. On her feet were white sandals and on her arms where long white gloves.

She wore white because no other country wore white. Fu was part of the fourth ANBU division in Takigakure, known only as Forty-Two. They did not want to be identified as being part of their home village. It would be a cause for war with Suna if they did, and they were not ready to shift the cold war into a hot one just yet.

She looked towards her poison case, lying by the base of the tree, its red cover beside it. This was her pride and joy; the only time were she could feel truly at home was when she was turning the rotating shelves of test tubes filled with liquid death.

She could only be at peace when she watched something shrivel up and die.

"Oi! Bitch! The caption is calling a meeting!" the ring of Renji's voice carried over to were she was sitting. This man was her lieutenant, but everyone knew that the caption made a mistake promoting him. Renji himself knew it was a mistake, but that did not stop him from barking orders left-right-and-center.

Wrapping the cover back onto her case and slipping it on to her back, Fu walked towards the man smiling a smile that never reached her eyes. That was her motto, "Smile and no one will know what you are thinking."

At the moment, she wanted to disembowel him. She hated men more that she hated her hair.

Being the only girl on their all male division had taken its toll over the years. Not a day went by without them making a crack about her body. Renji was the worst; he was very blunt about how he wanted to break her.

They did not even call her by name. They called her "bitch," "slut," "freak," and "monster." Sometimes they even called her "Nanabi."

But never Fu. Never her name.

"I presume that Squads 1 and 2 failed miserably," she asked innocently, though the question was far from it, "and that Suna was able to send a team to Kochi."

Renji scowled, "Yeah. I knew it was a bad idea to work with them on this mission. Genin, green at grass. They thought that they were immortal and went off wearing clothing that screamed 'Look at us! We're from Takigakure!' Stupid fools deserved what they got."

"It was you that requested we bring them along, idiot," Fu thought harshly, "So it's just you, me, and Jiro-taicho, then."

"Along with one hundred and fifty odd freelance yakuza thugs and three Takumi-made catapults," he answered, "They take down the village, we use the place as a Base of Ops to house shinobi in for the war and make a killing off of selling the inhabitants to the Iwa slave market, and then when those thugs come asking for their payment, you do what you do best and we all come out on top."

"Hmm, sounds like fun," she hummed before she was swung around and held against Renji's body like he owned her.

"You want fun, little bitch, I'll show you fun."

Fu rolled her eyes, having seen this coming a while back. She had no idea what this man saw in her. She was thirteen, and her body was horribly underdeveloped. With no curves and no chest the only things that identified her as being female was her face and the way she walked.

It was weird; most girls her age had began to show some kind of development. But then again, she was a freak.

"Let go of me, Renji, before I make sure it's just Jiro and me leading this mission," she warned.

The man laughed, "Just what are you planning to do, little girl?"

"Nothing much," she said with a smile, "Just inject you with a poison that will cause you to rot from the inside out." She nodded her head towards the needle she had palmed, aimed right at his leg.

Renji pushed her away and delivered her a painful slap across the face.

"Freak!" he yelled. He hated to be reminded that the thing he wanted to control was not human.

Fu smiled at him as the red mark slowly disappeared. She kept smiling has she walked passed him to the caption's tent for the debriefing that would be held as the moon began to rise into the night sky.

She did not need to use the needle. All she needed was a touch to introduce a powerful poison into Renji's bloodstream. The needle had just been for show, a demonstration of power. He knew that he would be dead if she wanted him to be.

She should know better than to encourage him, but this had become a little game of hers, coming up with creative new ways to threaten him with his life.

But in the end, it did not matter. Everything she touched was doomed to die, even if she was not using her power.

Kochi and the Suna team would not stand a chance against the power of the Nanabi, the Seven Tailed Horned Beetle, and the bringer of poisons and plagues.

"Shukaku?"

"What is it, kiddo?"

"If this…food…poisons me, will you be able to heal me?"

"I honestly have no idea…"

"…Great…"

Gaara had taken Izumi's advice to hold the soba noodles, but there was not much other choice in great food. The udon looked safe, but then Wataru had quickly run from the mess hall looking green after he ate some. He decided to stick with the rice.

They could not mess up rice, right?

After poking it with his chopsticks a few times to make sure that it would not attack him if he tried to eat it, he tried to pick up a clump, only to discover that the sticky rice was not sticky.

He must be cursed when it came to food. And he missed Sakura's cooking.

…Sakura…

"No!" Gaara thought, shaking his head to clear it of those thoughts, "She's Naruto's wife! She's your best friend's wife! You shouldn't love her like that. You owe them that much for taking you in after what happened to Suna."

But he could not stop. He tried - gods, he had tried – to stop it for five years now. It was irrational, it was stupid, and it made so little sense that it scared him witless.

Sakura had been the first person to look at him after he had transformed into his jinchuuriki form and had not been scared of him. That was a title that Naruto and his own siblings had never been able to claim.

It sent shivers down his spine and an odd smile to his face when he thought about that day.

She did not dance around the fact that he was jinchuuriki, avoiding the topic of Shukaku as if it was some grave insult. She understood that the sand spirit was just as much a part of him as his arms and legs. She tried to understand his burden, tried as hard as she could, and that made all the difference.

He loved her because she treated him no differently than anyone else but still acknowledged he was different.

Even he did not get his own reasoning.

Something slammed onto the table in front of him startling him out of his thoughts. Hibeki, eyes filled with fury, stood hunched over the table and looked directly into his eyes.

"What did you do to her?" the other boy asked in a dangerously low voice, "You did something, didn't you, you sick freak. What did you do?!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Hibeki-san," Gaara said, trying once again to pick up some rice, only to have it drop, "I really am cursed."

"Bullshit!" Hibeki spat, "Izumi was mumbling when I went up to check up on her. She stutters but she never mumbles. You saw her before I did, so what did you do to her?!"

"I think you're over reacting," he sighed, "I didn't do anything to Izumi-san except talk to her as she came up to relieve me of my watch duty. I asked her why she wanted to become a medic and she told me to watch out for the soba noodles. I didn't touch her."

The black-eyed red head clamped his jaw shut before leaning in closer until Gaara could do nothing but look into his eyes, "I don't care if you can kill me with a single grain of sand, if you ever get any ideas about messing with Izumi, I will hunt you down."

"The nerve of this kid," Gaara thought angrily, "I tell him I didn't do anything, Izumi doesn't show any signs of being attacked, and yet he threatens to kill me."

"You aren't his Kazekage," Shukaku's voice sounded in his mind, "And to him you aren't eighteen years his elder. You're twelve years old just like him and he's only heard the stories of who you were from his family. The Tanakas probably taught him from the cradle to hate your guts."

"Not helping, Shukaku."

"I'm not trying to help you, just be your voice of reason cause you don't have one of your own."

Gaara rose from the bench he was sitting on. Hibeki backed up slightly in order to avoid knocking noses with him. The Shukaku jinchuuriki was just an inch and a half shorter than the Tanaka, but he still commanded respect.

"I do not toy with people's emotions, Tanaka Hibeki. I am not that kind of a man," his voice was deep and powerful, the voice of a Kazekage, "Do not accuse me of things I am not."

"Then what kind of man are you?" Hibeki asked a sneer on his face.

Gaara paused before answering, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

The Tanaka opened his mouth to retort, but was interrupted by another voice, "What is going on here?"

Mori Takama stood beside her student, her hands on her hips, "Hibeki, I told you not to pick fights with people. Especially ones that you can't win." The black-eyed boy started to say that he knew what he was doing, but was once again cut off, "No you don't."

Then Takama turned to him and leaned on to table, giving him a really good view of what was down her flank jacket, "Gaara-sama, my student doesn't know when to shut up. Please forgive him."

"Oh. My. God. Are those real – no! Bad Gaara, down boy! Eyes on the face! Eyes on the face!"

"Yah…sure." Apparently big boobs turned him into a monosyllabic moron.

"Alright!" Takama bounced up – Eyes. On. The. Face. – and dragged Hibeki away, muttering to him the entire time "Next time you get in over your head I am not going to get you out of it again."

She then sat down next to a stunned Kankuro and held out her hand. Eyes still on him, Gaara's brother counted out some bills. Using his lip reading talents, Gaara saw his brother say, "Well, I'll be damned…he does have hormones."

Gaara's jaw dropped. "They were betting on me! That's…that's not fair! And you," he directed his thoughts toward the bijuu inside his mind, "Stop laughing! It's not funny!"

"Are you kidding me? This is most fun I've had since Naruto convinced you to sing that time at the karaoke bar!"

The red head placed his head in his hands before looking skyward, "I know that I've done some horrible things in the past, but I've got to ask…

"Why me?"

Baki was tired. It was nearly midnight and his watch on the tower would begin in almost half an hour. Today after unpacking their gear into the barracks and convincing Hikari that Gaara really did not need to sleep, Taro had introduced him to the men that guarded the walls. It brought back one of the lessons his own jonin sensei had taught him.

"One day," the man had said, "You will have to lead peasants who will not know a katana from a rock into battle. But you will still have to lead them, because you cannot fight an army by yourself."

His sensei had been a smart man. And Baki wished he had paid attention to the rest of the lecture. It would really have helped him now.

Sitting in the barracks on his bed, he gazed over a map of the area. There was a thick grove of trees just to the east of the village. If there was any enemy in the vicinity, they would be hiding there. Maybe he would send Temari and Kankuro there tomorrow to check it out, or make Gaara use his Third Eye technique to spy from a safe distance away.

Temari was sleeping in the bed in front of him, clutching her pillow like a security blanket. She acted so strong and brave in front of people, but in reality, she was just a fragile little girl looking for someone to love her.

Baki's heart went out to the children of the Kazekage. The man was no real father, having judged Temari to be weak for her gender, Kankuro stupid his protectiveness, and Gaara a failure for existing.

Baki felt more like a father to the three of them then their actual one, despite how doubtable the identity of Gaara's biological father remained.

He pulled the covers up around the girl, and she murmured something that sounded like, "Kaa-san."

Karura.

He remembered that woman well. A goddess on earth, they called her. The most beautiful woman to ever walk the desert sands. Men were falling at her feet for a chance to hold her, to love her. And she would haul up, tell them she was only interested in them as a friend, and then buy them something in a local tea shop before sending them on their way.

Baki would know. He had been one of those men.

Her marriage was an arranged one. The Kazekage had been happy at the time, having snagged the most desired woman in the village for his wife. Karura, though, hated to be forced into something. When the idea had been presented before her, it was the first time that anyone had seen her get angry.

She loved her children: Temari, Kankuro, and even little unborn Gaara. Especially Gaara, because he was proof that she had rebelled against her controlling husband. She loved him right until her third trimester when the Shukaku was implanted into her second son and drove her mad.

Baki had met the man who was supposedly Gaara's real father. He was a good person, and a good friend of Karura. He was the shoulder she would lean on when things got too much, the person she would count on in times of trouble.

But they were like brother and sister, and loved each other as such. The idea that anything more would occur between them was unheard of.

Yashamaru was the one that conformed her pregnancy. Baki had been there at the time, and was in on the secret. They had asked her over and over if it was the Kazekage's, but she kept saying no because she had been sleeping on the couch for three months.

He had taken the bed. He always took the bed.

It was not Gaara's fault that he existed, but the Kazekage treated him like it was. Baki had suspected that one of the many reasons that the Yondiame had for turning him into a jinchuuriki was because he was not his child.

The man was selfish, greedy, and controlling, but he was also powerful. Baki could not defeat him, and he was not about to try.

The Kazekage had a tendency to kill the people he sparred with accidentally after a while.

Baki wished he could take the three children away and hide them in his apartment. He wished he could be there more for them, as he had promised their mother he would.

He wished he could be what they really needed him to be: a father.

And then the ceiling exploded.

Baki leaped onto Temari's bed, grapping her and then rolling off it onto the other side.

"Baki?" she cried, wiry hair sticking out at odd angles, "What's going on?"

"We're under attack," one of the guards entered the building to inform him, "Somehow they got onto the east wall. And they got a catapult up here! How did they get a catapult up here?"

Men, women, and children started to scream and surge towards the exit. Hikari tried to calm them down, but then two men can in, armed with curved broadswords and knives. They cut through the guard like he was not even there.

"Lot's a fine wenches here!" one observed.

"They'll make a killin' off a them," the other yelled, "Maybe they'll let us have a few before they get sold."

Baki caught Temari's eye as she grabbed for her fan. Cover me he hand signalled before leaping into at their attackers.

"I just hope that the others will be okay."

I do believe that I have just introduced the main villian for this arc. Ladies and Gents, after making two camio appearences in Save You, I give to you the character of Fu!

She's a sarcastic little thing isn't she?

So Gaara's no longer angsting, Forty Two has launched their attack, Baki is getting flashbacks, and Takama has finally proved to Kankuro that even his little brother is capable of going through puberty.

For a complete explaination of what Forty Two is exactly, go and read the newest chapter of Save You. It will clear a few things up.

Later,

Whitefox