Twirlygigs and Gizzards: The Unlikely Continuation of an Unlikely Romance
Chapter 7: The Collective Destiny of Team Gai
OR: Everything Your Siblings Do For You
A/N: As always, thanks to all my reviewers! Your comments are really very helpful, especially when I get stuck on something (as I was on this chapter, for a while). If it wasn't for you, this story wouldn't exist at all.
"Sakura, I need you to watch the kids today."
"What?... But, Mom! I can't! I've got plans for today!"
"Well, then cancel them. Family first."
"This isn't fair!"
"Deal with it, Sakura. I need you here, your little friends can go for one day without you."
"Mom!"
"Sakura."
The meeting of the Committee for the Investigation of the Sakura and Gaara Affair was well under way. At the suggestion of Lee, Naruto, and Hinata, the others had brought their own refreshments along with supply of paper plates and utensils; they had seen seen Sasuke's kitchen, and they didn't trust anything that had spent time in it. Hinata also invested in an economy-sized bottle of disinfectant.
"There! Look, the door's opening!" Lee exclaimed. The others abandoned their picnic on the dusty old bed and crowded around the window. "Someone is exiting the house."
"That's Kankuro," Kiba pointed out. Lee wasn't listening.
"Subject is walking to the street. He is picking up the newspaper... subject is looking this way! Repeat, subject has spotted us!"
The surveillance team, as a group, vanished from sight, ducking under the window sill. After a moment, Lee poked his head up again.
"Danger past, subject is retreating... he is entering the house, door is closing... subject is no longer in sight."
With the climax of this dramatic moment over, the others looked at one another.
"Lee, I'm curious," Shikamaru said finally. "What would you have done if that had been Gaara?"
"Well... um... I would have... um..."
"He would have confronted him of course, baka!" Naruto exclaimed. "He would have jumped through this window and smashed his fist straight into his creepy, Sakura-stealing face!"
Sasuke looked over at Lee as though he come up with this plan. "Hey! Let's remember, these are my neighbors! I'm going to have to live with them after your "revenge", you know!"
Lee, outraged, threw a potato chip at him. "Sasuke! How can your standing with that family of- of-,"
"Psychotic, life-destroying serial killers?" Shino suggested helpfully.
"Yes, them. How can you care more about what the Sand Siblings think of you than you care about the honor of your devoted and beautiful teammate?"
"Um... have any of us seen Gaara yet today?" Hinata asked suddenly. The room grew very very quiet.
Lee moaned, his imagination taking flight in the silence. "What if... he spent the night... at her house?
"I'm pretty sure her parents would have a problem with that," Naruto assured him.
"Hey, how's she going to react to you killing her boyfriend, Lee?" Kiba asked. "Remember, she kinda likes him. A lot."
"I hadn't thought about that..." Lee said, sucking in his breath. "But I cannot allow him to simply use her like this! I have to stop him somehow!"
"We should probably try to warn her," Sasuke butted in, "let her know that Gaara isn't being sincere... you know, gently."
"And if Gaara has somehow managed to slip by our impenetrable watch, we can at least guard her," Naruto added. "We should be protecting her, for when he begins to put his evil plans into motion."
"To Sakura-san's house!" Hinata exclaimed, standing up. The group, now gung-ho about defending Sakura, began to break camp.
Something crunched in the next room, a la a campfire ghost story.
"What was that?" Shino whispered, almost dropping the Coke bottle he was holding.
Crunch.
"...we... haven't seen Gaara at all today," Hinata reminded everyone.
"And Kankuro might have seen us earlier," Kiba added.
Crunch.
"Stop making so much noise," hissed a girl just outside the door. "We're trespassing with the intent to murder, here!"
"I'm telling you, nobody lives here," a young man hissed back in an low, irritable voice.
"Then why are you whispering?"
"...to humor you? Look, this place is deserted, half the rooms are locked, it's covered in dust,"
Crunch.
"There are pop cans all over the floor," the girl added sarcastically, "because mice drink pop,"
"So, kids break in once in a while and hang out, big deal. Do you want to get even or not?"
The committee went pale and sucked in its' breath.
"Temari and Gaara...?" Kiba suggested quietly, eyeing the exits.
"Did you hear something?" the boy in the hall asked. Hinata and Naruto cried out and jumped into each others' arms as the door began to open, slowly... slowly...
"NEJI? TENTEN? What are you doing here?"
Naruto and Hinata stood quivering in the corner, trapped, hoping they wouldn't be noticed.
Tenten rounded on Neji. "I TOLD you we were trespassing!"
"And I'm telling you, nobody lives here," Neji repeated patiently. "They're probably just having a party."
"Actually," Sasuke stood, eyeing Neji coldly. "I live here."
"In the old Uchiha place?" Neji asked skeptically, then thought about what he had just said. "Oh... I guess that makes sense."
"So, since we've established that you're trespassing on my ancestral property," Sasuke said, trying to keep Neji and Tenten's attention on him and away from the NaruHina corner while the couple worked out an exit strategy (difficult, as Neji and Tenten were standing in the doorway), "what are you two doing here?"
The others crowded around Sasuke, trying to look interesting and eye-catching.
At Sasuke's question, Tenten actually upstaged Neji for once, standing dramatically before the group.
"Temari of the Sand, my bitter arch-rival, has taken a summer residence across the street, providing me with the perfect opportunity to settle an old, old score between the two of us," she explained, staring bitterly at the house visible across the street.
"You mean how she kicked your ass in the Chunin Prelims?" Shikamaru asked.
"YES! Ever since, I've sworn to avenge myself on that arrogant little hermaphrodite and her stupid-ass fan."
"And I'm just along for the ride," Neji added with a shrug.
"Funny thing, that," Sasuke mused, "Because Lee here is convinced that her youngest brother is out to systematically destroy his life, starting with taking the woman he loves, and he's vowed that the little blighter won't leave this town alive."
Tenten's eyes lit up, and she rushed to her thick-browed teammate's side, taking his hands earnestly. "Lee! This must be DESTINY!" (Neji did the "Destiny Rocks" double thumbs-up, which is somewhat similar to the Nice Guy Pose.) "We, Team Gai, are meant to destroy the Sand Siblings! From the very beginning, we have been pitted against them,"
"And I'm just along for the ride," Neji threw in.
"Actually, Neji, you're probably going to end up finishing the job for your fallen teammates," Shikamaru said, "I mean, we all know how the last Tenten-Temari and Lee-Gaara fights ended,"
"Shut yo' mouth!" Tenten and Lee snapped.
The rest sweat-dropped. "Yeah, we're going to want someone capable of intervening around for this one," Shino decided.
"Preferably someone more capable than the guy at the Prelims," Neji laughed, "That guy couldn't've recognized the impending death of a competitor if the grim reaper was following them around wearing pink silk boxers, right, Hinata-sama?"
Hinata had a total meltdown. "HOW— how did you know I was here?"
Neji glanced around like he might be missing something. "I saw you when we walked in?"
Hinata curled into a fetal position, and Naruto wrapped an arm protectively around the fetal-Hinata and pulled a kunai out of his back pocket defensively with the other.
Neji stared at his little cousin uncertainly. "Uh... Hinata?"
"I can't run anymore, I can't run anymore,"
Neji turned to the others. "Is she... um..." He put his thumb and forefinger to his mouth as though smoking a marijuana cigarette. "you know,"
"Of course not!"
"Just wondering... because, well, Tenten and I did find a bong in one of the other bedrooms."
"Which one?" Sasuke asked sharply.
"Uh... the one with the StarWars sheets."
"I knew it!" Sasuke whispered to himself.
"So, if she's not stoned," Neji continued, "What's,"
Hinata rose to her feet and stood protectively in front of Naruto. "Nii-san," she said, rather boldly, for Hinata, "Naruto-kun and I are in love, and no matter what you or anyone else thinks, no matter what obstacles we must overcome, I still love him. And if you kill him, you'll have to kill me first."
Neji, confronted by such courage and pure emotion, blinked. "Are you sure she's not stoned?" he asked Sasuke.
Hinata closed her eyes, but kept her head held high. "If you hurt Naruto, be prepared to kill me, first," she repeated.
"And if you plan to touch Hinata, you'd better be ready to kill me first," Naruto growled, standing beside her.
Neji, now thoroughly confused, turned to the group behind him for clarification, only to find an array of weapons and jutsus-in-the-making pointed at him. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Don't try to get out of this, we know you're after Naruto for daring to touch Hinata," Shino growled.
"What?"
"They're in love, and we won't let you stop them. You'll have to get by all of us."
"...so, you're saying that Naruto's dating Hinata?"
Sasuke nodded, uncertainly lowering his shuriken.
"That's great!" Neji smiled, turning back to Hinata and Naruto. "I was wondering when you two would get down to it!"
"You... you mean, you don't want to dismember me and make it look like an accident?" Naruto asked hopefully.
"Of course not! There are few, if any, people in this world I consider more worthy of my Hinata than you."
"But..." Naruto blushed a little at the praise, "I thought you said,"
"Oh, no. I said that if you hurt her I WILL kill you, and no one will be able to mistake it for an accident by the time I'm done, but as is, you're fine."
Naruto laughed. "If I do hurt her, you'd better get in line, because Kiba, Shino, Kurenai, Sakura, and some little seven-year-old I've never seen before in my life named Hanabi all have dibs on making my death long and painful."
"So I guess you're stuck with me?" Hinata whispered in her boyfriend's ear.
"Pretty much," Naruto winked back.
"Well, good!" Neji grinned, enveloping Hinata in a giant hug. "And you, cuz! I'm so proud of you! Just standing up and saying, "screw my fiancé! Living my own life is more important!" That takes a lot of guts I didn't know you had!"
"Fi-fiancé?" Hinata stuttered, bewildered. "What fiancé?"
"Oh," Neji released her in the embarrassed fashion of somebody who had just said something he wasn't supposed to let leak. "Sorry... I could have sworn one of you girls had an arranged marriage going on... maybe I'm wrong."
"Do you remember who it was with?"
"No... I'm probably wrong, it's probably Hanabi or someone else... just forget it."
Hinata nodded thoughtfully. "Sasuke-kun, may I use your phone?"
"Oh, sure, go ahead."
Hinata left the room, and the rest sheathed their various weapons.
"... do you two want some chips or anything?" Lee asked his teammates.
"I thought you'd never ask!" Tenten beamed, sitting down and taking a chip. She held it up to her mouth. "Oh... um..."
"Don't worry, Kiba brought them," Naruto assured her. She and Neji proceeded to chow down.
"Hi, Daddy!" Hinata's voice chirped from the hallway. "Yes, it's me... yes, I'm still alive... No, Daddy... yes... yes... no... yes... look, um, I have a really stupid question. You know how nii-san's always spreading crazy rumors about us? Well, he just told me the silliest thing. He said... yes, Daddy."
"So, Lee," Neji asked, apparently deaf to anything being said about him outside the room. "Why are you after Gaara, again?"
"Therein lies a tale," Lee said.
"And a long one, at that," Naruto added.
"This is what, the fourth time we've told it?" Sasuke said.
"WHAT?" Hinata gasped outside. "I mean um... ok... who...? Really? Ok, thank you, Daddy. Goodbye!"
Hinata re-entered the room.
"Well?" Tenten asked after a moment, grabbing another chip.
"Well, I am engaged," Hinata sighed. Everyone in the room gasped sympathetically. Hinata and Naruto were just so sweet together, the Konoha Kids just hated to see them doomed like this. "The good news is," Hinata continued, "my future husband is one Uchiha Sasuke."
Sasuke froze in place, a bean-dip covered tortilla chip halfway to his lips. Hinata knelt in front of him.
"Sasuke-san, I ask that you give me my freedom," she requested.
In case Sasuke was considering the wrong answer, Tenten, Neji, Naruto, Lee, and Shino all drew threatening fingers across their throats.
"Of course," Sasuke stuttered, unsure why this formality was necessary. For God's sake, he didn't care what anybody, especially Hyuuga Hinata, did with their love life, as long as they kept him out of it!
"Thank you!" Hinata whispered, snagging a chip out of the bag as she rejoined Naruto in the corner.
Something had been trouble Kiba ever since Tenten's entrance, causing him to uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. Finally, in the silence that followed the severing of Sasuke and Hinata's engagement, he voiced his concern.
"Wait," he said. "Did you say Temari's a hermaphrodite?"
During Tenten and Neji's entrance and the conversation that followed, Gaara, unaware that he was being stalked by his neighbor, had walked out his front door and turned down the street, towards Sakura's house. No one noticed him.
"Hey, Sakura! Your boyfriend's here!" Maki called tauntingly upon opening the door and finding Gaara.
"Well, let him in, don't be rude!" Sakura called back, making her way to the door.
This threw Maki a little; he was used to his sister vehemently denying that she had ever spoken to a boy. Unprepared to retort, he moved aside and let Gaara pass.
"All right, kids!" Sakura said when she saw him, "This is my friend Gaara, and he's going to stay here and help me deal with you today, so be nice, got it?"
The couch giggled, a pair of blue-green eyes poking out shyly from behind it, then hiding once again.
"What's that thing on his back?" Maki asked, pointing. Sakura turned red and slapped a hand against her forehead.
"It's a gourd," Gaara explained. Shoko peeked out from behind the couch a little, to observe better.
"Like a pumpkin or something?" Maki asked, looking skeptical. "How'd you get a pumpkin to grow like that?"
"Well, it's actually made out of sand, so it's not really a gourd, but there is a kind of gourd that grows like this on its' own."
"Weird," Maki breathed. Shoko took a small step beyond her hiding place. "What's in it?"
"Sand."
"Why would you want to carry sand around?" the little boy asked, sticking out his tongue.
"... Because I get homesick," Gaara said, sitting down next to him on the floor. Sakura winked at him, and Shoko, grinning, took a few more steps forward, so she was completely in view.
Sayu, the baby, was playing nearby on the floor, and, gurgling happily, she took her pacifier out of her mouth and winged it at Gaara's head. Or maybe she wasn't aiming for Gaara's head, she could have been trying to hit Maki or Sakura, it was hard to tell.
Sakura winced a little and prepared to snatch Sayu out of any harm's way. Her little siblings really were a disaster waiting to happen.
The pacifier bounced off a small patch of sand that had appeared mid-air and landed harmlessly on the floor. Gaara picked it up, dusted it off, and returned it to the baby. "Oh, and it does that, too," he told Maki.
"Cool," Maki whispered, his mouth hanging open.
"The real question here is how did they afford the Takatori place?" Tenten asked as the group at Sasuke's discussed the situation with Sakura, Gaara, and Temari. "I mean, it is a nice house, and they swooped in here and bought it and furnished it without breaking a sweat. That can't have been cheap."
"And why do we care?" Shikamaru asked, tossing a chip in the air and catching it with his mouth idly.
"What if they made the money illegally? What if they're involved in something big? We could cash in on that, somehow..."
"I don't think they made it illegally," Sasuke said.
"Yeah," Naruto threw in, "I heard that their parents died and left them with more money than God."
"Word on the street is, their father's rich and doesn't love them, but he does feel somewhat guilty about not loving them, since their his kids and all, so he makes it up to them by giving them whatever they ask for," Sasuke shrugged.
"The way I heard it, he's afraid of all of them, so he just lets them get away with whatever," Shino said.
"If my daughter had a wiener, I'd be afraid of her," Kiba said with a shudder.
"Uh, Kiba, I don't think Temari's really a hermaphrodite," Shino said.
"Tenten said she was."
"Yes, but she meant it as, oh, never mind."
"So, now that all of us are up to scratch," Lee said, "We need to formulate a plan!"
"Yes!" Tenten agreed. "Sasuke, do you have any paper? We're going to need to write all this down! This is going to be a difficult operation."
"Yeah, we're running out of bean dip, too," Naruto noticed. "Some of us should make a run to the store or something."
"I'll make a man out of you 'cause I'm a woman! Double-U Oh Em A En!" Temari sang to herself as she tossed her laundry back into her dresser.
"I can't tell you how disturbed I am right now," Kankuro, who had been sitting on the bed for half an hour, told her.
"I didn't ask you to come sit in my room."
"I was... worried."
"Really?" Temari dropped her underwear unceremoniously in her drawer and sat down next to her brother. "What's wrong?"
"It's Gaara... you know, he hasn't told that Sakura girl about..."
"Shukaku, he can't sleep without being possessed, he gets off on killing people, his family's crazy, he's convinced that no one is capable of loving him,...?" Temari filled in.
"All of that, yeah... and what if she doesn't take it very well? He's been doing so good since he met her..."
"You're worried he's going to get hurt?"
"Yeah... He's so fragile... a stiff wind could knock his self-esteem over."
Temari smiled sadly and wrapped an arm around Kankuro. "I know... but I don't know what we can do about it. We can't protect him from everything. He needs someone like Sakura."
"If she was the kind of girl that would understand, I'd feel better. He doesn't need any more heartbreak."
Temari sighed. "None of us do... he's been at her house for a few hours now, right?" Kankuro nodded. "Let's go pick him up. We can at least talk to him... I'm not sure about what, but it can't hurt."
So, determined to discuss their concerns with their baby brother, Temari and Kankuro traveled to Sakura's house. Once again, no one at the Uchiha Mansion saw them leave.
Sakura, Gaara, Maki, Shoko, and baby Sayu were still on the floor. They were making a sand castle, courtesy of Gaara's unique chakra.
"Ooh, ooh, can we put a turret right here, Gaara-san?"
"Of course!"
Someone knocked on the door.
"I'll get it!" Shoko offered. Shy as she was, she liked answering the door; she liked the importance of interviewing potential guests.
Temari and Kankuro smiled at the little girl answering the door.
"Hello, sweetie. Is Gaara here?"
Shoko nodded and pointed to the room behind her.
"I wish we had some seashells," Sakura remarked, "Sand castles aren't the same without seashells."
"No, they aren't," Gaara agreed.
Sayu crawled over to the outer wall of the castle and stuck her pacifier against it. It fell, and she picked it up and slammed it more forcefully. It stuck for a moment, then fell again. Frustrated, Sayu handed the toy to Sakura, who smiled and tried to stick it to the wall herself, with similar results.
Gaara smiled and took the pacifier from her, holding it against the wall carefully. A little sand molded around the toy, keeping it in place. Sayu clapped her hands delightedly.
"Mr. Gaara-san!" Shoko called. "Your brother and sister want to talk to you."
Temari's eyes widened when she saw the smile on her brother's face. Kankuro squeezed her hand.
"'Mari?" he whispered while Sakura and Gaara kissed goodbye (much to Maki's disgust) and cleaned up the remains of the sand castle.
"I know, Kan-kun," Temari whispered back.