A/N: So, so, so, so, so sorry that it's taken so long to get this chapter up! I will try to update more quickly next time! As always only owning Reyna!

MESSAGES RECEIVED

By the time the reach of the Leaf ninja reached home, Reyna was half way through building her first puppet with Kankuro and finding that the longer she was in the storehouse, the more she really started to hate the place. Over the course of building, Kankuro kept up a steady stream of chatter about various different ways to control puppets and the odd instructional piece of advice on the use of the jutsu which helped Reyna deal with being in such a confined, dark area for long periods of time. Once she had the actual puppet made and it finally met with Kankuro's approval, she found that the jutsu itself was a lot easier for her to figure out than she had thought it would be. Of course her techniques were also quite different from the traditional techniques that were used and her control threads were actually made of shadow, but she finally had a basis to be able to control her shadow weapons with greater accuracy and numbers. She was working on combining using her new puppet (which she had to admit could come in handy in a fight) and her shadow weapons when Kayha found her two weeks after the group had left the Sand.

"Hey, Reyna please tell me you aren't going to start carrying on conversations with your puppet. It's bad enough that Kankuro's that crazy, I'm not sure Kakashi would ever forgive us if we sent you back with the same problem," Kayha laughed as she watched Reyna.

Reyna glanced up with a grin, "No, and if I ever get that bad please just put me out of everyone's misery! I love Kankuro, he's a great guy, but he is a little…out there."

Kayha laughed, "Yeah, he is at that. Then again those puppets are going to come in really handy when we end up fighting in the war."

"What war?" Reyna asked, abandoning her techniques instantly.

"Oh crap. They haven't told anyone yet…shit, shit, shit."

"Kayha, what war?" Reyna snapped.

"Look, I can't tell you any more than that. Gaara will kill me, or at the very least make me wish he would. I was actually coming to see if you wanted to pull a prank on Kankuro with me…"

Reyna sighed, "Fine, keep your secret. If the Kazekage doesn't want to tell us anything yet, so be it. I just hope we have enough of a heads up to actually be able to do something. As for the prank, what did you have in mind?"

Kayha smiled, relieved that Reyna was going to drop it for the moment anyway, "Hmm, how about we hide Crow or something."

Reyna laughed and nodded and the two spent the next two hours finding the perfect hiding place for Kankuro's precious puppet. They laughed when Kankuro finally realized that it was missing and went on a village wide search for the thing. It wasn't until late that night that he finally returned to the house and dejectedly headed into his room; which was exactly where the girls had hid the puppet. The last place he would have expected them it hide it, in plain sight in the middle of the rest of his puppets in his room.

Reyna laughed but the long time away from home was starting to take a toll on her as well. She hadn't hardly slept for those two weeks and spent most nights either on the roof watching the stars or in a training field, taking advantage of the cold nights to get in some hard training. She was starting to seriously consider heading back to the Leaf since she and Kayha hadn't had more than twenty minutes of training in when another of Kayha's kind appeared in the village.

She was walking down the street, heading for coffee when the scent reached her and Reyna spun on her heel instantly. An unfamiliar scent was mingling in the air with Kayha's and they were coming from the same direction. Reyna paused when she didn't hear any sounds of a fight and cautiously headed towards the origin of the scents. She paused when she rounded a corner and found Kayha laughing with another girl that she didn't recognize but was definitely the source of the other scent.

"Reyna! Hey, I was just going to go and find you. This is Sophie; she was working with Zeke but decided that she'd rather help us out. I can't really train you, like Tsunade wanted me to, but we can show you a little bit of what you're going to be up against," Kayha explained.

"And you trust someone who just shows up out of nowhere and tells you that she's changing sides?" Reyna asked, eyeing up the other girl suspiciously.

"There's more to it than that, Reyna. Look she's trustworthy, I swear to you."

Reyna sighed and shrugged, "Fine, but don't expect me to like this."

"I wouldn't dream of it. So what do you say; do you want to watch us get in some training?"

"Sure, why not?"

The three headed out to a more remote training field and Reyna leaned back against a convenient rock, watching as the other two squared off. It didn't take long before Reyna was shaking her head, knowing full well that if she ended up facing on o Zeke's soldier's she was not going to be walking away from it. The two girls were tossing one another like rag dolls across the field and laughing. They weren't even seriously fighting. As they continued, Reyna turned away from them and headed back to the village. She had just made up her mind to start for the Leaf in the morning; there was nothing else she was going to be able to learn in the Sand Village and it was high time that she got home and trained with her team again. That and if she was being completely honest with herself, she wanted to see Kakashi again.

She hadn't gotten half way back to the house when an ANBU agent appeared in front of her, "The Kazekage needs to speak with you immediately!"

Reyna nodded and broke into a run behind the ANBU who was now leading her back to the Kazekage's office. Curiosity crept into her mind, wondering what in the world could be so important that Gaara needed to see her immediately. Then dread seemed to settle in the bottom on her stomach and without conscious effort her legs carried her ever faster to the office until she was outrunning the ANBU. Barely remembering to rap her knuckles on the door, Reyna burst into Gaara's office and he immediately looked up.

"Reyna, you got here fast," he muttered but didn't give her time to speak before he continued; "Asuma Sarutobi has been killed. The Hokage has just informed me of it and asked that I inform you immediately upon my reading the message."

Reyna stood stunned for a moment before she finally drew breath into her lungs again, "I'm leaving for the Leaf…now."

She barely bobbed her head in a bow before she was pushing past the ANBU agent who had appeared in the door behind her and she bolted down the stairs and into the street, heading for the house to gather her things. Gaara shook his head and motioned for the ANBU to leave him. Over the last two weeks, even Gaara had gotten to know the Leaf ninja quite well and was worried as to what she was going to do once she left the Sand. However, Tsunade had wanted him to send her home as soon as he was able to and he supposed there was no reason to delay her from leaving immediately. He turned his gaze to the window behind him and sighed again; he really hoped she wasn't going to do something reckless and he'd be getting another notice like the one he had received about Asuma.

Reyna hurriedly packed her things and even still remembered to pack her new puppet scroll to take back to the Leaf. She had promised Kankuro that she would continue to work on the Puppet Master Jutsu while she was at home so that they could have a puppet battle when they next see one another. After a second quick look around her room, she charged back out into the street. She had nearly reached the main gates when a sand storm blew in and she cursed the weather. Without a thought, she turned back to the village and once again charged into the Kazekage's office.

"This was you, wasn't it?" she snapped, eyes blazing as Gaara slowly turned to face the furious Leaf Ninja.

"I did not summon a sand storm to stop you, Reyna," he intoned watching her closely; not that he really thought she'd do anything against him.

She seemed to pull herself back under control and took a slow deep breath, closing her eyes briefly before she looked back at him, "My apologies, Lord Gaara, I was angry and frustrated."

Gaara smirked to himself, though he knew that she saw it, "It is fine, Reyna. I would have done the same thing in your place, and heaven help whoever would have been on the receiving end if you had been Kayha. As soon as the storm passes, you should leave and it should pass quickly."

Reyna nodded and hunched her shoulders, "Of course, again I apologize."

"Don't worry about it though I have to admit from the things that I've been told about you, I'm surprised you apologized at all."

Reyna shrugged, "I've been trying to keep my temper in check, and it's just not always so easy to do that. Sometimes the wolf is a little too strong and there are times that I don't want to be held in check."

Gaara nodded, "I know that feeling."

Reyna waited in Gaara's office for the next few hours until the sand storm had passed. With a wave and a shout of thanks for everything the Sand had done for her while she'd been there, Reyna disappeared back out the door, into the village and finally into the desert. She was certain that Gaara would tell the others that she had left and why she had left in such a hurry and without saying goodbye, but that thought didn't enter her mind until much later for at that particular moment the only thing that entered her mind was that she had to get home…and quickly.

A/N: Again sorry it took so long to post this one! Anyway, I will try to update more quickly so hopefully no more wild cows decide to run me over and slam me into fences! Or horses that seem to think I should be lying on the ground rather than staying in the saddle! Anyway, please review and the next chapter should be up soon! I hope!