Gaara was quite content with his life at this point in time. Aside from losing Shukaku, (a mixed blessing, but he did love his sleep now,) his time as Kazekage had been quite uneventful and that is usually good for a ninja village. Well, it wasn't uneventful but at least they were never surprised. The past month had been one of his hardest however.

He had just received word from Konoha and they were requesting one of their puppeteers for a capture mission of one of their missing nin. Temari, who was on her yearly visit had garnered enough information to conclude that the undescribed missing nin was none other than Naruto. If his sister's words weren't good enough to confirm this fact what he woke up to that morning was.

Gaara had mellowed out from his psychopathic self over the years, with a big help from the loss of Shukaku, and he was mostly calm and collected. Scratch that, he was ALWAYS calm and collected. But not this morning. No, today the most awful thing had happened to him that even rivaled his having to kill the first person who ever loved him, something happened that threatened his reputation and ability to garner respect in other shinobi and villages. The only way to describe this life altering phenomenom would be one word: pink.

Or more precisely the colour pink. It was everywhere. Somehow during the night while he was sleeping, and he was a deep sleeper now that he could since he never had to learn to be a light sleeper (with the automatic sand shield covering him he never worried), some enemy shinobi had defiled his possessions. Simply put they had dyed and/or painted everything pink. On his gourd there was written "Pink makes me happy" In hot pink that bordered on fuschia, not that Gaara would describe it closely. His Kazekage tower had been painted pink as well, not to mention all his robes as well, along with any monuments or statues dedicated to him. Then there was all the graffiti around town that portrayed him in pink drag saying things like "We need as many hunky men as we can get to join the Shinobi ranks." Or "For a good time wear short shorts."

He was currently reprimanding his shinobi who were supposed to be guarding the village when he received a report that there was force of over 50 shinobi currently vandalising the side of their mountain wall! Gaara vowed that he would put a stop to it immediately since his villages reputation was on the line and that was just as important of a defence as any number of shinobi.

Even after losing Shukaku Gaara was no light weight ninja. Most had attributed his ability to control sand unconciously to his demon but only Gaara had known better until after he lost Shukaku and had to inform the council. The true source of this was that a part of his mother had been sealed along with Shukaku. This minor presence was the part of her soul that desired to protect her son and used her ability to control the sand to protect him and to allow itself to be used by him at will. The only thing Shukaku ever did was the armor of sand, his larger than average chakra reserves, and his demon form. It was comforting to know his mother looked out for him somehow, albeit a little creepy that an actual part of her went everywhere he did.

So while not able to assume demon form and having to place the armor of sand on himself mentally was a bit more taxing than it used to be, overall he was stronger for having lost Shukaku since he could think more clearly now. That is except for today, today his thoughts were clouded with rage.

He could just make out the design that was forming on the side of the sheer rock face as he approached it, it seemed the ninja were making a rather large statue of him that was none too flattering and were in the process of painting it pink as well. As he got closer it began to dawn on him that all these ninja looked suspiciously similar... That's when it hit him, these weren't ninjas but ninja. And there was only one Shinobi that he knew of that could make that many physical copies of himself.

Before Gaara could even get two words out one of the narutos approached with (what Gaara assumed since he can't see through the mask) was a sheepish grin. "Well isn't this awkward, I was hoping to have this done before anyone noticed but here you are hehe." The naruto spoke in a slightly nervous manner. "I am to assume that none of you are the real naruto?" It was a statement more than a question, naturally Naruto was never one much for subtlety in conversations and missed the implications. "Well yeah, it would have been rather overconfident of me to think I could get in here and make it out with what I had planned and ..." POOF!

Gaara knew he wasn't going to get anything out of these clones (interrogation would be pointless since the best methods would just destroy them) and the longer he let them distract him the closer they will come to completing that abomination. "Mass desert graveyard!" In a matter of seconds all 50 clones and their monument to pink Gaara had been covered in sand and resolutely crushed into non existence.

"I want the village gone over with a fine tooth comb so that we can find any clues as to WHY a konoha missing nin just decided to humiliate Sunagakure and I want it NOW! Also get all available citizens and shinobi to cleaning up and repairing the damage." Despite the humiliation he had just suffered Gaara's mood was starting to get better.

When he first heard from Temari about Narutos situation and the most probable execution upon his capture he had been trying to think of a way to get ahold of him himself. Originally, once Kankurou got back from his current mission he was gonna send him to konoha as their support in the capture mission and use him to steal Naruto away to Suna shortly after the capture. Since the council would never support such a plan he would be forced to rely on his siblings to pull it off.

As luck would have it though, this new escapade of Naruto's now gave Suna a claim to wanting to jail him personnally, and since the Kazekage was the one to dispense the justice to Shinobis, unlike Konoha, then he could Stave off the death sentence and try to rehabilitate him.

With the new circumstances he could send Kankurou on an official mission to retrieve Naruto, albeit Konoha would not know, with the support of a special force squad lead by Temari from the shadows to jump in and grab Naruto at the best possible oppurtunity.

Gaara knew the worst of the damage was done now and could only hope that the other nations did not ascribe this humiliation to weakness and decide to attack.

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15 miles away from Suna.

"Okay Gaara just got the last of them before they could finish "The Big Pink". Can we go now? I humiliated Gaara, can we go back now?" The impatient Naruto had been like this almost the entire time.

The plan was for Kabuto to get Naruto as close to suna as possible, have him make a bunch of clones, then to have them go out with all the pink dye and paint in order to commence Operation Cuddly Gaara Bear. Kabuto got to have some say in some of the parts but he found for the most part that Naruto's ideas had far more flair to them. Although he was a little disappointed that the big pink couldn't get finished since it was his idea, he found that there was sufficient damage done to complete their needs.

Kabuto didn't now whether to be happy or disappointed that Naruto couldn't figure out the real reason as to why Orochimaru had Naruto vandalise an entire Shinobi village but decided not to think about it too much.

"Yes we can. Wasn't that fun Naruto? Kind of remind you of your childhood? I still remember what you did to the Hokage monument. Man that was a good one." Kabuto was kind of giddy right now, honestly, how often do you get away with painting an entire shinobi village?

Naruto, however, was not feeling good at all. 'well' thought Naruto, 'isn't he just the happy camper? Damn him and that Bastard snake. At least he didn't have me kill anyone, but how long until he does? What happens if I can't get strong enough to scare away my friends? It was close when I fought Shino, Kiba and Hinata. I nearly passed out from having my tenketsu closed before I could get the kyuubi to help! Damn it, what happens if they send Sakura? What'll I do when Jiraiya comes for me, what can I tell him? God I hope Orochimaru has something figured out. Not that I really want him to come out on top...

"Let's just get going, I got alot on my mind right now and would rather be doing something, ANYTHING, than think about it." Naruto replied. With that he turned around and sprinted off in the direction of Otogakure without looking back to see if Kabuto was following him.

Author's note: Yeah it's been awhile, hopefully not too long though. This'll probably be the last time you see Gaara for awhile, or get to hear Naruto's thoughts. The action is gonna be focused closer to Konoha for a bit. Will probably update this chapter, got a bit tired at the end. hehe probably wouldn't have updated if I hadn't received that last review that kind of reminded me to. Hope you enjoyed it if you're reading it, mind you I would write it if no one read but I enjoy your feed back anyways, besides this chapter frees me up to get to the part of the story I have been dying to write. Kudos to parselmaster for catching my error. I changed Kyuubi to Shukaku. Also kudos to Plus-44 for catching the Tsunade reference instead of Orochimaru. I fixed them both.