I'm back! Finally! And this time, I have more time to actually write, so I should start to get back onto a regular updating schedule. YAY! I hope this chapter lives up to your guys' expectations, and I hope that it starts to show what direction this story is going to be taking!

I hope you all enjoy~!

When Gaara awoke the next morning, Naruto had buried her face into his chest, and his arms were wrapped around her. He sighed happily and tightened his hold on her, unexpectedly causing Naruto to wake up.

"Gaara?" She asked groggily as she rubbed her eyes. "Oh. Good morning~!" She smiled, paying no mind to the fact that Gaara had his arms around her.

"Yeah, good morning, Naruto." He greeted softly with a small smile on his face. Naruto slipped out of bed and stretched.

"Hey, Panda-chan?" Naruto prompted. Gaara didn't have any noticeable reaction to her nickname that she had so lovingly bestowed upon him.

"Yeah?" he responded, slightly dazed.

"We have to enter our names into the cup of blue flames and wonderment and shit today." She stated simply as she picked up her clothes to change into.

"That would be wise…" Gaara sat up on the bed and thought for a moment, his eyes never leaving her form as she started to change in front of him. Anko had kind of broken most of her sense of modesty. "Naruto, after we enter our names, do you want to write Lee and Anko-sempai?" Naruto turned to Gaara with a huge beaming Uzumaki™ smile.

"Fuck yes. That's music to my ears, Panda-chan."

Naruto strolled into the Great hall for breakfast that morning while dragging Gaara behind her. She held onto his hand and guided him, as if he was physically incapable of doing so himself and had the mental capacity of a tiny fluffy stuffed animal, to her chosen spot at the Gryffindor table, and began eating with gusto. Gaara followed suit, but in a less sloppy manor but was still considerably ungraceful due to his unfamiliarity with these new and potentially dangerous eating utensils known as "forks" and "spoons" if he recalled correctly.

Looking over the current food item Naruto had claimed as the next conquest of her stomach, Naruto spotted two familiar heads of red hair. "Oi! Over here you two~!" Naruto called them over. When the twins sat down in front of her, and she introduced them to Gaara.

"Gred, Forge, this is my best friend Panda-chan. Panda-chan, these two are Forge and Gred. Forge, Gred, and I are currently planning a way to fill the castle with singing goats and die Dumbly Door's beard orange." Naruto believed that the three were now sufficiently introduced and had hopefully moved the twin's status in Gaara's eyes from strangers to tentative acquaintances. For Naruto's purposes, this was more than enough. Basically, she just needed Gaara to know that these two were slowly climbing her latter of awesomeness and badassery, making them off limits to him as potential "tantrum" outlets which more than often result in the death of the target. Naruto was able to communicate this simply by introducing them: she believed this would get the message across to her eyeliner enthusiast friend because the not-kage bushins were the only people Naruto had bothered to talk to, and thus it would be made clear that the two were currently the only people Naruto gave a fuck about in this orchard of pacifists, and so she didn't want them to die.

Gaara understood what she was communicating quite well. He glanced at the red headed boy and his stunt double. Oh no, he understood quite perfectly what she meant. Now, that did not mean that he was happy about this new arrangement. Not in the slightest. He internally glared at the twins. Now, if Naruto's new not-quite-yet-friends were girls or unattractive boys who were considerably younger than her and not pranksters, then he wouldn't have a problem with it. He knew that he would not be able to intentionally keep Naruto away from them to reduce competition because that would make Naruto mad at him and would cause the blonde to distance herself from him, thus backfiring. So, Gaara kind of had all of his chips riding on the hope that the pacifism thing would make Naruto reluctant to be romantically involved with any wizard.

"Yes, I am Gaara." Gaara responded automatically while his mind was in overdrive. Gaara's voice sounded as though he was trying to convince himself that this was a true fact.

Fred and George seemed somewhat uncomfortable. 'Good,' Gaara thought 'squirm in my presence.'

"Like Naruto said-"

"I'm Forge-"

"And I'm Gred-"

"Nice you erm, meet you, Panda-chan~!"

That was it.

That's where Gaara drew the line.

They were going to die.

Yes, he let Naruto call him that, but he let her do it out of love. In his mind, he thought she was giving him a pet name like lovers commonly do in relationships. Secretly, he found it adorable that Naruto called him by such a thoughtful and love filled nickname, and it made hope rise in his heart of her reciprocating his feelings. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone. No way. No chance in hell. He was currently trying to come up with a nickname for her; if she gave him a pet name, he would give her one. Despite Naruto's "popularity" in Konoha, no one really ever gave her a nickname aside from "gaki" courtesy of Tusnade. Not only would being the first to give her a pet name give him great pleasure, it would also demonstrate to other potential "suitors" of Naruto the closeness of their relationship and ward them off. Thus making the pool of potential threats he would have to elimina—deal with much smaller, which, in turn, would allow Gaara to spend more time with Naruto.

But tweedle-dee and tweddle-dumb over here had no such right. Gaara gripped the knife he was using to cut his "waffles" (he was just eating whatever the hell Naruto decided to put onto his plate) a bit tighter and used all of his will power to prevent himself from having a "tantrum" as Naruto had affectionately dubbed them—especially since Naruto had just made it perfectly clear that they were not to be another unlucky victim of his.

"Please, let's not be so formal. Call me Gaara." Gaara said through clenched teeth and a small smile that promised pain later on. He didn't even give a fuck that "Gaara" was much more formal than "Panda-chan"; Gaara just needed a peaceful way to demonstrate to thing 1 and thing 2 that he did not want them to ever call him Panda-chan.

"Well, if we're gonna toss formalities out the window, then you guys should call me Whiskers-sama~!" Naruto told the twins excitedly. The knife snapped in two in Gaara's hand. Naruto, whom he had been panning to be the first to bestow a nickname upon and win her heart in the process, was allowing these two twin pacifist monstrosities to be the first to call her by a nickname?! Gaara's fantasy of Naruto blushing adorably, smiling shyly at him, and kissing his cheek in thanks in response to a pet name, came shattering down around him.

"I came up with it last night! I was looking in the mirror, and I thought, 'Hey, I have whiskers. Whiskers is a cute word. I like it. I want to be called whiskers.' So just decided to roll with it. I'll come up with a better one later because I'll get super bored of this really fast, then end up hating it, spend a long time ranting to the stupid painting outside of my room about my overwhelming stupidity for choosing such a name, and then ultimately switching it. But for now, you two should call me Whiskers-sama~!" Naruto explained, nodding her head as she went as if she was agreeing with what she herself was saying. After she had finished her declaration, she looked at the twins expectantly.

"Well then—"

"Whiskers-sama—" Naruto's face brightened. Gaara stabbed the waffle angrily with the remaining pieces of the knife and slowly wiggled the knife around in the hole he had made while picturing the twins' face and chuckling very quietly to himself.

"We would like to introduce you—"

"As you so kindly introduced us to Panda-chan—" Stab.

"To our friends!" they finished together. Naruto smiled.

"Hell yeah! Let's see if these people can take my awesomeness." She was excited. If they were friends with the only people who seemed to be worth while to get to know here, then maybe they would be worth her time too.

Fred jumped out of his seat and went to go scout the rest of the table for their friends. Hermione was the first one that he spotted, and like always, sitting next to the bright girl were Ron and Harry. Once he had convinced the golden trio to come over, he returned to their spot with the three in tow.

The bushy haired girl was the first to speak. "Fred wanted us to meet you." Hermione smiled. "Actually, I had wanted to introduce myself to you today, but it seems that Fred beat me to it. I'm Hermione Granger. Very nice to meet you, Naruto, Gaara. If you ever need someone to show you around the castle, or help with anything, feel free to ask me. I would be more than happy to oblige." Hermione finished politely. She wanted to make a good impression on this girl no matter how utterly insane she thought her and her eyebrow-less friend to be. Hermione valued knowledge, and she had never heard of either of their schools before. She had gone to the library last night and was unable to come up with even the slightest shred of information. Thus, Hermione thought that it would be a good idea to befriend the mentally disturbed newcomers and get more information from them somewhere down the line.

Ron, who was preoccupied with staring at Naruto's ahem, assets (and was conveniently not noticing the death glare Gaara was giving him), was brought out of his daze by a sharp elbow to the gut courtesy of Hermione. "…Ron… I'm Ron…" Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

"That is Ron, as he managed to say somehow. Ron's Fred and George's brother." Hermione attempted to introduce the red head.

"I'm Harry Potter. Nice to meet the both of you. Hermione's offer extends to me too. I'm happy to if you need it." Harry said with a smile. He expected some sort of reaction to his name, but it didn't come in the way that he expected.

"You're name is actually hairy? HAHAHA that's hilarious! Did you hear that, Gaara? Someone named their child hairy!" Naruto laughed. Gaara forced a dark, monotone chuckle which sounded much more like a robot who was losing power trying to laugh than an actual human being. All the while Gaara was slowly defacing the waffle on his plate. A small, first year Gryffindor

that was unfortunately placed next to Gaara, was on the verge of tears.

"By the way," Naruto added "Who are Fred and George?" she asked curiously. Fred and George started laughing. While Hermione sent them an exasperated look.

"These two here," Hermione gestured to the two laughing red heads "are Fred and George."

"Wait, so you guys aren't Forge and Gred?!" Naruto exclaimed.

"HAHAHA of course not—"

"That's just a—"

"Long running gag—"

"We pull to confuse people—"

"Who can't tell who's Fred—"

"And who's George." George added with a smile.

"Oh." Naruto tilted her head to the side cutely. "Then which one of you is Fred and which is George?" If they told her, she would memorize each of their practically non-existent chakra signatures so that she would be able to tell the two apart from now on.

Blushing slightly, the twins answered truthfully in turn.

"I'm Fred."

"And I'm George."

"Fantastic~!" Naruto beamed. "Now I have who is who memorized!" She announced happily.

"Really? How are you able to do that? Mum's been trying for years and she still can't tell them apart! Not that we're any better at it…" Ron asked, actually contributing something of some substance to the conversation to the first time.

Naruto blinked. "Quite simple really. I just memorized their chakra signatures. Isn't that how you guys do it?" she asked.

"What the bloody hell is katra?" Ron asked smartly.

Fuck. She turned to Gaara who had the same look on his face (she did not notice that the waffle on his plate was now practically sand or the now crying first year on the other side of him). They didn't know what chakra is. Not only were they pacifists, but they were weak pacifists.

She and Gaara were going to have so much fun fucking with these wizard's minds.

That's all I have for now :). But no need to worry, I won't have a super prolonged absence this time. I should be getting back onto a regular updating schedule.

And what you have all been waiting for, the current pairing results~!

NarutoxGaara- 95

NarutoxKurama- 58

FredxNarutoxGeorge- 31

NarutoxSasuke- 11

NarutoxHarry- 9

KuramaxNarutoxGarra- 6

Reverse harem- 5

NarutoxDraco- 4

Past NejixNaru- 2

Onesided DracoxNaru- 1

Gaara has dominated the poll! WOW! Personally, I'm partial to NarutoxGaara and NarutoxKurama, but I'm happy to write whatever pairing that will be decided for this story.

On a side note—I'm also thinking about doing a couple one-shot side stories for this story, and I want to know what you guys would like to see written. Send in your prompts! Put them in a review, and if I really like it, I'll write it! I'm having so much fun writing these characters!

Thanks for all of the support that this story has received so far!

~Slayer of the wind