Chapter 26

In the morning, when Baki came to pick them up from their father's office, Kankuro noticed that Baki was already smiling. Well, he's more cheerful today. He wondered if his teacher's change in demeanor had anything to do with Jiraiya. They were living together. He imagined having breakfast with the Sannin was as amusing as sharing dinner.

"So what's Shouryuu like?" Kankuro asked. He was curious about Baki's friend. He considered himself one of Baki's friends. If Baki felt the same way, then his teacher should introduce him to everybody in Baki's circle.

"I think you'll like him," Baki said. "He's cheerful."

Kankuro didn't automatically like cheerful people, though it was true he didn't normally like depressed people. His dad was an exception. Or should he say, he didn't like 'emo' people. People that made a big deal out of being sad and wouldn't shut up, when they didn't have anything to be sad about.

"Are we going to meet him?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah, sure," Baki said. He looked to Yondaime. "How about we run training exercises with Shouryuu's team today? I can show my genin what a jonin team is like." He grinned.

Temari raised an eyebrow.

Yondaime grinned in return. "An excellent idea. That excuse should provide a smokescreen for the real reason for your visit."

Gaara stopped scowling.

xXx

They talked on the way to the training field where they would meet Shouryuu's team.

"Shouryuu is actually a medical ninja," Baki said. "It's rare in the first place for a medical ninja to reach jonin, and to leave ANBU service, since medical ninjas are needed in the field so much. But on top of it, he's an ANBU captain. They don't have such things in Konoha."

"Why not?" Temari asked.

"Tsunade passed a law saying that no medical ninja could lead or take point, because that is a dangerous position to put the medic of a team in," Baki said. "Basically, that means that medical ninjas are taught to fight, but only as a last resort, and the entire team protects them. In order to preserve their healing power."

Kankuro frowned. "That's nice, and all, but if I were trained to be able to fight, I'd wanna fight. Not watch from the sidelines."

Baki nodded. "And the Council believes that we can't afford to waste a teammate by assigning them non-combatant positions on the battlefield. So we don't follow Tsunade's guidelines completely. We've taken a lot of good advice about how to set up field hospitals, but when it comes to not letting our med nins fight…And Tsunade was herself a fighter. So it makes no sense that she would relegate herself to the background."

Kankuro nodded. He tried to work out the system of politics in his head. "And Tsunade knows Jiraiya, right? They're part of that group: the Densetsu no Sannin. Right?"

"Right," Baki said. "The Legendary Three Ninjas."

"What makes them legendary?" Gaara murmured.

"They survived a battle with Hanzo," Baki said.

"Who's Hanzo?" Gaara asked.

Baki laughed, and then sighed. "You're young. And it's complicated. Hanzo is what the ninjas of Amegakure have instead of a jinchuuriki. Or, had. Various reports place him as dead, though we don't know why."

"A jinchuuriki substitute?" Temari asked. She looked uneasy.

Baki nodded. "A man implanted with the poison sac of a black salamander."

"So, a medical experiment." Kankuro was incredulous. The horrors seemed to never end. What will people do for power?

"Yeah. More or less." Baki shrugged.

Gaara's expression turned dark, and then introspective. "Like me," he murmured.

"Not like you," Kankuro said automatically.

"I am an experiment," Gaara said.

Kankuro let it drop. It was useless to contradict Gaara about such things, especially since he had no idea how Gaara came to that conclusion.

"So, Shouryuu is a medical ninja, and he leads a team," Temari said, redirecting.

Baki smiled at her. "Yes."

xXx

Shouryuu's team was at a training field on top of the cliffs. The air was thin, and the sun bright and beautiful. Kankuro could look down and see a landscape of red stone and shadows. Hawks circled overhead.

As they rose to the plateau of the path, Kankuro caught a glimpse of someone in white moving. His gaze darted around instinctively. He saw four men in white uniforms, sand cloaks that covered their standard issue jonin gear and helped protect them from the sun by providing another insulating layer.

They were sparring. Group sparring in a way that Kankuro had never seen. It seemed like a free for all, but with a kind of orderly grace. Kankuro couldn't figure it out. Is this what a jonin team is really like? he thought, awed.

"Ohayo!" Baki called.

The team stopped sparring and turned towards their visitors, forming an orderly line. They bowed.

Baki bowed, so everyone else followed suit as well. When he straightened, he said, "This is my team. I'm sure you've heard of them and been aware of their successes so far. This is Kankuro, Temari, and Gaara." He introduced them in the order they stood; Kankuro right behind him, Temari at Kankuro's left shoulder, and Gaara hanging back the furthest.

"Nice to meet you," the jonin team said, more or less in unison.

Kankuro noticed the medical ninja right away. His white jacket had an armband with a medical symbol on it, and he had long, green hair tied back in a ponytail. That must be Shouryuu. Made sense, really. 'Shouryuu' meant 'green dragon'. The man had green hair… So maybe he's really fierce? Or ANBU just likes badass names?

He knew that 'Yashamaru' meant 'fierce beloved guardian'. A 'yasha' was a mythical, part-animal guard to an ancient god.

Shouryuu straightened and grinned. His amber eyes sparkled. "Baki! How good it is to see you."

Baki grinned in return and crossed the barren ground to his friend. "Indeed! It is good to see you as well, Ryuu. It has been a long time."

"That it has." Shouryuu nodded agreeably.

For a moment, they just looked at each other.

Then they burst out laughing almost at the same moment and hugged each other.

Kankuro was surprised and amused.

"Why were you waiting for me –" Shouryuu started.

"I don't know!" Baki protested, still laughing. "I thought you'd go for it and then we'd get this over with –"

"You are still silly," Shouryuu declared.

They patted each other's backs and parted.

Kankuro stepped forward, taking the initiative, though Temari wasn't far behind. "Silly? I don't think I've ever heard Baki described that way."

Shouryuu looked to Kankuro, still smiling fondly. "Well, you don't know him. He's as silly as they come. Silly, and self-sacrificing, and sacrilegious."

Baki grinned. "Especially that last one."

Temari nodded. "Sacrilegious is a good thing to be."

Someone else on Shouryuu's team snorted.

"So, what's up?" Kankuro asked. "Baki said we'd hang out here for a while and watch you guys, so we'd know what being a 'real jonin' is like. That cool?"

"That's cool," Shouryuu said. "You can watch the guys work." He patted Baki's shoulder. "While your teacher and I talk."

Kankuro nodded and found a rock to sit down on. "Sounds cool to me."

"I wanna know what you guys are going to talk about," Temari said.

Shouryuu shrugged and smiled. "Stuff. We've got a lot to catch up on."

"Boring stuff you wouldn't like," Baki teased. He went across to a rocky area on the other side of the plateau with Shouryuu to get a little privacy.

Temari snorted and smiled. "Fine." She stayed standing where she was, crossing her arms and watching the rest of Shouryuu's team.

Gaara took a cue from Kankuro and came over, sitting on the ground next to Kankuro's rock and leaning back against his sand gourd.

Kankuro was flattered; usually Gaara didn't sit by him. "What's up, Ototo?"

Gaara shrugged. He gave Kankuro an appraising gaze, then turned his attention to the three men on Shouryuu's team. They took turns sparring in pairs, the odd man out cycling in when someone scored a hit on the other.

"Will we ever be like that?" Gaara murmured.

"I'm sure we will," Kankuro said. "We'll make it to jonin, won't we? And then we'll be so badass at our jobs that we'll be able to spar like pros with each other. Heck, I'll even learn to deflect your sand, or something. We'll be inseparable."

Gaara raised an eyebrow at this optimism, but didn't comment.

Kankuro remembered the – recent – days when such a statement would have earned him a scathing critique. This is progress.

A half an hour later, Baki and Shouryuu came back. Shouryuu looked grim, but enlightened. They rejoined Kankuro and Gaara, collecting Temari along the way.

"I see," Shouryuu said quietly. "So we really are in trouble here."

Baki nodded and folded his arms over his chest with a sigh, looking at the ground.

Kankuro nodded as well. "You can see why we want to stop things from getting any worse."

"Yeah." Shouryuu scratched his ear. "I'll talk to my ANBU contacts. See if I can't find some information for you about the Sound. I'll keep you posted."

"Yeah," Baki said. "I appreciate it. These kids are really worried."

"Hn," Gaara said.

Kankuro knew not to take offense. They were called 'the kids' because they were Yondaime's kids, not because they were children. He figured Baki would call them 'the kids' forever.

"Is that it, then?" Kankuro asked. "I mean, is that all we came here for?"

"Yes, and no," Shouryuu said. "I'd still like it if you guys hung around. And if you want, we'll teach you about your nature releases. Baki says that's important. You didn't learn it in school, or something?"

"Temari knows, 'cause she's the oldest, and her sensei on her other team let her learn it," Kankuro said. "With Dad's help, of course. She uses her wind release all the time. But I don't know what mine is, and Gaara doesn't either. Except he's got that megnetism release thing, which is a kind of nature release?"

Shouryuu nodded. "Kind of." He gestured. "You're aware of the five elements, aren't you?"

Kankuro nodded. "Yeah. Fire, Wind, Earth, Lightning, Water."

"Right," Shouryuu said. "And you've learned how everybody has at least one of these releases."

"At least one?" Kankuro asked, startled. "The impression I got was that everybody got only one."

Shouryuu pointed at Gaara. "Not the user of the kekkai genkai. The kekkai genkai is actually the inheritance of more than one nature release at once. That's why it's rare, and doesn't always happen. It's a person with dual natures. It's not something you can learn. You either have it, or you don't. Magnetism release is lightning and earth. In other words, Gaara has two nature releases. And he combines them at once to create his magnetism release. But if he wanted to, he could use each element separately."

Gaara looked interested. "Lightning and earth separately? Why should I want to do that?"

"For one thing, it gives you a greater versatility," Shouryuu said. "You should want to diversify, so you have a jutsu for every situation."

"I can make particles I can control out of anything," Gaara said. "I pull elements from the earth."

"Yes, I know you can," Shouryuu said patiently. "But did you also know that with your fine chakra control and your lightning release, you can perform a technique to restart a man's heart?"
Gaara's eyes widened. He looked at Shouryuu with redoubled interest and surprise. "I can do something like that?"

Shouryuu nodded. "You can. I'll teach you how, if you want."

"Doesn't that involve stopping someone's heart, first?" Gaara asked.

Shouryuu said, tilting his head, "Why, yes, it does. At first, I'll have you discharge your jutsu into the air, so that I can see you're dispersing the charge properly. Then I'll perform a jutsu on myself that stops my heart from beating. You'll take me out of it with your heart-starting jutsu."

Gaara was plainly stunned. "Why should you do such a thing? You would trust me –"

"Why not?" Shouryuu asked. "You're an ally like anyone else. You're a Sand nin." He pointed at the forehead protector tied at Gaara's side. "If you've earned that, then you're someone I can trust with my life. It's as simple as that."

"Why would you want to stop your heart?" Temari asked.

"Believe me, there are reasons," Shouryuu said. "For instance, it's a lot easier to remove shrapnel if you can get your heart to stop beating for a second."

Temari looked at him with awe. "Whoa…that's hardcore."

Shouryuu nodded. "We med nins need to know how to take care of ourselves on the battlefield, too. Stopping one's heart causes a little pain, but no lasting damage if we do it ourselves in a controlled manner. And we remain conscious long enough to get whatever's stuck in our chests out before the jutsu takes its toll. So it's all about knowing what to do and what your body's limits are." He smiled at Gaara reassuringly. "I know you'll do fine. You already have an impressive amount of chakra control. A little spark will be a cinch."

He took Gaara across the training field to practice.

Kankuro had to admit he was stunned. He stood up, looking to Baki. "That's…quite a guy."

Baki nodded. "I know. Shouryuu is great. That's why when this whole thing about the war started getting more complicated, I immediately thought of him. He's just the kind of person we need on our side helping with this thing."

They split up into pairs.

While Shouryuu was off with Gaara, teaching Gaara medical jutsu, Temari paired off with a man named Yozora, who also turned out to have wind release. He started teaching her some basics of advanced wind jutsu, like how to mold her wind release into new shapes. As a sixteen year old kunoichi, Temari was more than ready to learn such things.

Kankuro found himself paired with Enshi, who was the team's puppet master. Almost every team in Suna had a puppet master on it, since the puppet jutsu was Sand's specialty. Enshi had gotten to the point in his training where he knew a lot of taijutsu to combat his vulnerability in battle. He started teaching Kankuro the concept of using the substitution technique with a puppet in order to flash in close to deliver a punch or a kick, and then flash away again, letting the puppet take one's place repeatedly so there was no opening for the enemy. Kankuro liked that idea a lot. Talk about disconcerting. No one would be able to tell if they were fighting a puppet or a person.

That left Baki sparring with Tsutomu, the taijutsu specialist. The two seemed to be greatly enjoying the match, since they frequently distracted the others by letting out a sudden burst of laughter.

Kankuro found himself looking forward to being a jonin.

xXx

After an uneventful dinner, Kankuro showered and got changed for bed, then met his father in his father's bedroom. Today, neither Jiraiya nor Baki had been there, so dinner had been really quiet. Temari was exhausted from her chakra molding lesson, and Gaara was withdrawn as usual. Kankuro himself had been so hungry that he mainly focused on shoveling food into his stomach. Now, after his shower, he felt energized. He'd had time to digest his food, and time to realize how awesome his day had been.

When he entered his father's room, his father was still dressed in his day clothes, minus the black martial arts jacket. Yondaime sat on the bed, writing something in his journal. He finished up and stowed it.

"No need to rush for me," Kankuro said. "I'll come back if you have more stuff to write."

His father shook his head. "No, that's fine. I was done anyway." He gave Kankuro a smile.

Kankuro wasn't completely convinced, but he let it go. "Alright…"

"Did you have fun today?" his father asked.

Kankuro grinned and nodded. "Lots of fun. We met Shouryuu, and Shouryuu's team is really cool. I like them a lot. I think they're great allies to have."

"I agree," Yondaime said. "Shouryuu commands three of our best men." He got up and walked over to the closet, presumably to change attire for the night.

"Enshi taught me some cool taijutsu tricks to use with Karasu," Kankuro said. "And Shouryuu taught Gaara medical jutsu. Did you know Gaara was interested in that? I didn't. Maybe Gaara would make a really great med nin someday. We should ask him about the classification change. I mean, like Baki said this morning, med nins don't have to stand by and watch everyone else fight. This isn't Konoha. We don't have to abide by the same rules. So I think we should. Get Gaara trained as a med nin, I mean. He seems to be really into it."

Yondaime paused in the act of choosing a sleeping yukata and nodded slowly. "That would make sense, since Yashamaru was his guardian. I know that he idolized Yashamaru. That's why…" He frowned, looking troubled.

"Why what happened doesn't make any sense," Kankuro said quietly. "I know." He squeezed his father's arm. "I felt that, too. I know that Gaara loved Yashamaru. I don't know why it happened that they tried to kill each other. I don't think Gaara started it, though. I mean, how could he have? He was the child and Yashamaru was the adult. I still think after all this time that it was somehow Yashamaru's fault."

Yondaime sighed. "I won't argue with you about it. I don't know any more than you do about what went wrong that night. I know…it was my orders that got Yashamaru killed, though. That much I am sure of. So your uncle – and Karura's brother – is dead because of something that I did." He reached out and trailed his fingers over the sleeve of his silky maroon yukata, a pensive gesture that brought him no closer to getting dressed for the night.

"There's that guilt again," Kankuro said. He crossed the space between them and pulled his father into his arms. "Let me love that out of you, right now."

Yondaime didn't protest. He held onto Kankuro, rocking them gently back and forth. "I don't know what I would do without you."

"Me neither," Kankuro said, with a grin that he hoped would lighten the mood.

His father chuckled.

"Now get on the bed, and ake off your shirt," Kankuro said, playfully ordering.

"Hai." Yondaime squeezed him and then obediently lay down in bed on his back, taking off his three layered shirts and exposing his chest.

Kankuro grinned. "Now take out the lube and rub it on your nipples. I think I like watching you work."

Yondaime blushed deeply and looked at Kankuro with wide eyes, but complied. He pulled the drawer open and took out the lubrication, uncapped the bottle, and rubbed his nipples with strawberry flavored oil. He bit his lip, his eyes rolling closed, and let out an involuntary moan.

Kankuro was extremely turned on. "That's it, Dad…" He approached the bed slowly, taking in the sight before him. He was hard enough to make his underwear uncomfortable. "Rub it in good for me." He stood over the bed before he knew it, watching with wide-eyed arousal and fascination as his father pleasured himself. His nipples got darker and redder. Kankuro sucked in his breath slowly.

As his gaze traveled down, he saw a trapped erection tenting out his father's pants.

Kankuro decided that there had been enough watching. He climbed on top of his father, straddling his father's hips, and licked, trailing his tongue upwards to catch on his father's nipple. He moaned at the hardness of his father's nipple, the way it indented his tongue. He lapped up the strawberry and coconut flavors, reveling in the way his father moaned and squirmed underneath him.

"Kankuro," Yondaime murmured, husky. "Kankuro…yes…" He let out another moan.

Kankuro grinned to himself and sucked on his father's nipple gently. "Oh, I am never stopping now. You gotta know that. You can't make such delicious noises and get away."

His father let out a surprised noise and arched his back, pressing into Kankuro's mouth.

Kankuro moaned and mouthed his father's nipple, his face growing hot. He took his time lapping up all the lubrication on his father's chest, cleaning both nipples, and the space in between.

In a fit of mischief, he took his father's hand and gently sucked off the lubrication on his father's fingers.

His father let out a surprised cry that nearly undid Kankuro then and there. Arousal surged through him, soaking the front of his boxers through in an instant. He moaned on his father's fingers. "Oh, Dad. Oh, Dad!"

"I should spank you," his father whispered. "I should make you cry out like the way you're making me cry out." His voice was filled with arousal and desperation.

Kankuro's heart skipped a beat, and his bottom tingled. "Ah…hai."

His father shifted, sitting up and having Kankuro lie across him. He pulled Kankuro's pajama pants and boxers down, and planted kisses on Kankuro's bottom.

Kankuro squirmed, surprised and turned on. The gentle feeling made him leak steadily.

His father kissed and licked his bottom until he was crying out, his erection twitching with the force of his arousal. Then his father massaged his bottom in slow circles. Kankuro moaned deeply. He couldn't get away if he wanted to; his whole body was collapsed in pleasure. His father traced the cleft of his rear with one gentle finger, and Kankuro almost came. His breath hitched in a loud moan.

"Are you ready for me?" Yondaime whispered.

"Hai…" Kankuro's hips shifted. "Oh, hai…"

"It makes me so hard to hear you say that," his father whispered, and before Kankuro could respond with more than a blush, his father popped him gently on the bottom.

A burst of hot tingles stole Kankuro's breath. His hips quivered. He panted and moaned loudly.

His father landed gentle swats on his bottom, rubbing him after every stoke, and Kankuro was soon a moaning mess, his pajama pants soaked through in front with the dampness from his erection.

"Come," Yondaime whispered. He rubbed, and then popped Kankuro again. "So sweet. Come. So special. Come for me, sweetheart. Come for Touchan." Every time he said 'come', he gently popped Kankuro on the bottom with his hand.

Kankuro couldn't possibly resist under these circumstances. There was something unbearably sexy about being called 'sweetheart', about his father being 'Touchan'. His boxers flooded with more wetness, and he let out a heady moan, shaking all over.

His father pulled him close, cradling Kankuro to his chest like the most precious possession he owned, and Kankuro drank it in. Once he was fully recovered, he kissed his father's nipples, then slid down and kissed his father's erection, freeing it. He licked and sucked until his father came, and then they both stumbled to the shower.

They both ended up dressed in two of Yondaime's sleeping yukata, and fell asleep curled up together under the blankets in Yondaime's bed, dazed and flushed and happy.