Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto or any of Masashi Kishimoto's characters.

If you want to hear me rant, read the followuing paragraph:

A/N: Not happy with the number of reviews I'm getting. Just for the record, I only have 9 reviews for this story. For ALL my stories, I have a total of 59 reviews. I have 8 stories with reviews, and I'm not counting the 1 story without any reviews. So Divide 59 by 8 and you get 7.375 reviews per story. Makes me feel like shit. I almost don't want to write at all. I know I make mistakes, somewhere, that I'd like somebody to help with. I'd like to hear opinions on what I write, how I write, or even on what YOU think I should write. I don't care if you review just to tell me my writing sucks, as long as you tell me WHY. Although, also just for the record: I have never gotten a single flame in all of my 59 reviews :). Hell, I don't mind if you review me just to bitch about how I never update anymore. I won't blame you. Although, I gotta say 6166 hits for 9 stories is pretty nice. That's averaged out to 685.1 hits per story. Ok, thats enough ranting. I'm not angry anymore. Thanks for listening. xD!

The Eventide of Innocence Part 2

Lunch. That one dreaded word. Gaara wished himself no part of this complicated 'lunch' process that most teenagers went through. Instead, he resolutely stalked away from the school building, towards some unnamed destination down the road. The city billboards with their pasted advertisements were passed by without a glance spared them. Long city blocks were spent away beneath the shadow of platform boots and grey sky. He was alone on the sidewalk, no other pedestrians walked with him and no cars bypassed him on the street. It was as if everybody was gathered at some other place at the end of the globe. This was an occasion of some celebration to Gaara. Quiet was exactly what he wanted, and exactly what he got.

After walking some two or three miles from the school, Gaara hopped up onto a cement railing in front of a small drug store. He dug his hand searchingly into a pocket while looking around idly. There were a few nice houses along the street, one or two really nice ones, and a few small-scale stores. Sighing in exasperation, Gaara switched hands and dug around in his other pocket, finally coming up with a broken watch. The band had snapped a few weeks ago, and Gaara had been too lazy to repair it, so the watch resided in any one of his pockets at irregular intervals. He usually ended up digging for it whenever he needed it, but it didn't really bother him much. The face on the watch read 11:40, and Gaara nodded before slipping it back into the pocket it had come from. He still had forty-five of his fifty-five minutes of lunch left.

Turning, the redhead slipped off of his cement perch and opened the door of the drugstore and walked in. Inside the store, as advertised by the sign in the window, was an old fashioned soda fountain and a mini deli. Gaara's eyes immediately landed on a row of overfilled peach turnovers.

It wasn't long before he was perched outside on the railing with a cherry-limeade float and two dripping pastries. He took a sip of the float before taking a big, satisfying bite of peach and flaky crust. It was the best damn peach turnover he had ever tasted, compliments to the cook. Unconsciously, Gaara licked up the glob of filling that slid down his chin and over his fingers, sucking the heavenly sugar from each pale digit. He repeated the process after he finished each pastry, and then he finished his float while humming happily to himself.

Standing up, Gaara glanced around in search of a trashcan and stuffed his napkins in the paper cup. When he finally spotted a trashcan, he headed towards it and tossed the remains of his lunch in it. Again, the broken watch made a belayed appearance after a quick yet thorough search of the wrong pocket. Blinking, Gaara read the display a second time, noting that it still read 12:13. He had spent thirty-three minutes eating pastries and sipping a float, which just happened to leave him a sparse seven minutes to make it back to school in time for his next class bell. Although he himself held few qualms about being late, Kankuro had expressly forbid him being late on the pretense that 'It's not gonna hurt a scrawny little brat like you to actually be on time for all your classes.'

Sighing, Gaara picked up his pace a little so that he was trotting back the way he had come from. Of course, once he made it within sight of the school, he dropped back to a fast walk. He somehow managed to make it into the school just a moment before the five-minute warning bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

Gaara twitched. Then he twitched again as the man standing before him dropped his arms a little bit and began to take on a crestfallen pout.

"What. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Doing?" Gaara questioned in his coldest and most searing tone. The taller man shrugged a little and gave an unsure grin, putting his arms back down and chewing on his senbon nervously. Gaara quirked his hairless brow upwards, silently demanding and answer to his question as he crossed his arms in front of himself.

"Uh, well, you see…" The sandy-brunet poked uneasily at his own arm with a finger while trying to come up with a legitimate answer. "I'm your teacher and, uh, I just kinda thought, uh, you might, uh…want a…hug?" The man finished his response slowly as if still formulating it in his head, unsure if it would be taken well or not. Gaara was about to respond curtly, but someone beat him to it.

"Genma, are you trying to molest another new student?" The new figure stood beside the abruptly and profusely disagreeing teacher. Sighing, the scarred man swatted Genma over the head and pointed towards the desk at the head of the room. Taking that as his chance for getting out of things before bruises could form, Genma immediately scurried towards the desk. Turning back towards Gaara, the second man smiled resignedly and waved a hand towards Genma.

"Don't mind him. He's…a little…excited today. Hmm, by the way, that's Genma-sensei and I'm Raidou-sensei. If he asks you about sex, ignore him and you should be fine. He just tends to get a little overexcited, is all." Pausing to take a breath, Raidou smiled warmly and indicated the other students in the class. "Welcome to Study Hall."

Gaara stared for a moment before arching his brow again. "Sex?"

"Like I said, just ignore him. It makes everyone's lives easier. Trust me." With that, Raidou headed back towards the front of the room. Wordlessly, Gaara moved to the side and took a seat in the back of the room. He really didn't want to know anything further on the subject.

Since this was his first day at Konoha, the teachers had been rather light on his homework. That being, he had easily finished most of it in his classes. The redhead opened his binder and pulled out a sheet of paper and flipped open his Geometry book. There were only seventeen problems for him to do, and they were all on easy subjects like transmutation and translations. Easy as pie.

Ten minutes later, Gaara put his paper in his book and set it aside. As he pulled his binder to himself, Gaara glanced up to see what everybody else was doing. Genma was excitedly bouncing up and down about something or another while Raidou shook his head in a negative response. A couple of girls were clustered off to Gaara's left, giggling and chatting about this and that. Gaara noticed Hyuuga Neji sitting a few rows up and over and took note that the Hyuuga's nose was buried in a thick book and he seemed to be unaware of what was happening around him.

There were some other kids playing a game of some sort, and a few just taking the opportunity for a nap. Shikamaru was one of the more obvious of these. Sighing, Gaara crossed his arms and decided to copy Shikamaru's example.

Gaara glared into the gleaming gold eyes of his new biology teacher. The gold eyes glared back. The two had immediately come off to a bad start, Orochimaru-sensei refusing to acknowledge that his newest student had given a more apt response than he could have, and Gaara refusing to let the teacher disgrace him by refusing to acknowledge his response.

Orochimaru glared. Gaara glared right back. The class stared on, wordlessly.

Thanks for reading, and I'd REALLY appreciate it if you left a review.