Temari had her vision blocked by an incredible sandstorm the second that the Suna troupe had reached the Tori no Suna and engaged in battle. She wasn't able to see anything from her binoculars and could only wait with tapping fingers and fidgeting feet. The walls had finally stopped rumbling and most of the room was silent except for the tapping of those long fingernails against her cherry wood desk.
Gaara stood impassively at the window, his arms cross and shoulders rigid. The sandstorm had been chakra induced; therefore, his third eye was unable to be used to spy on the antics of his older brother. Just like his sister, all he could do was stand there and wait for some sign of victory or defeat. The shifting sands mocked him in their waltz around his village.
Then, there it was.
A flicker in the storm.
That flicker was all he needed to see. Gaara wrapped himself in sand and disappeared from the room without a single word. Temari reached out for her brother, surprised at his sudden departure. "—wha? Gaara!? Come back!"
She shot up and ran towards the window, her hands dropping on the sill. Gaara was at the gates opening the gates to the village on his own with sand clones. The gigantic doors creaked open slowly, revealing a mass of brown, black and red behind them. People were running, no, sprinting back towards the gates. Some carried their fallen comrades; others were helping the injured. Everyone had a man to take care of, something that the Kazekage had never seen before in his dismantled his clones and jumped out of the way of the horde, creating a platform to stand on.
"SHIT!" Temari shouted the words at the tops of her lungs and took off for her people. She weaved herself through the crowds of screaming people. Some held their partners in their arms as they stroked their hair, the counterpart screaming at the tops of their lungs before the poison of the Tori no Suna reached their hearts. Jonin were yelling orders left and right, trying to make a sorting of the few hundred people that had returned to the village. Temari grabbed one by the tops of his collar. "WHERE IS KANKURO?"
"He told us to retreat, m'lady," the man stuttered out, obviously frightened of eldest Sand Sibling. "He was still out there when I last saw him. It was one man against hundreds!"
Temari's heart sunk in her chest. Her baby brother… He took on an entire army on his lonesome? She gritted her teeth and dropped the man ferociously, taking off towards the gates. That damned fool! That honorable fucking fool!
Gaara spotted his sister's haste through the crowd, heading directly towards the gates. He dropped slowly towards the ground in spotting his mentor, Baki, helping a group of medical ninja round up the wounded. "Baki. I'm going with Temari."
His sensei turned his eye towards him, purple bruises lining his cheeks. "It may be too late for him, Gaara. The enemy may be upon us in an instant. We need you here. It's against the rules to have a Kazekage out on the battlefield during an open attack on the village! He must protect the inside walls!"
Gaara turned his back on Baki, his stride picking up speed with every movement. "Then it's a good thing that I make the rules now, Baki." Soon he was at a full sprint, moving towards the sands to catch his speedy sister.
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His vision was blurry. The only thing carrying him home was the sound of the crying woman hauled on his back, her shrieks at every painful movement becoming a headache for his already throbbing temples.
His legs had gone numb long ago, his skin blistering under the heat of the midafternoon sky. His hood had been long since discarded. His mesh shirt hung in tatters on his battered frame, congealed blood sealing the fibers into his skin. The only thing he could do was trudge on.
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"How far could he have gone?" Temari shouted over the winds, her younger brother taking the lead on the reconnaissance for their brother. Gaara didn't respond, but instead sent his chakra through the sands, hoping, praying, that his elder brother was still able to move. Still able to live.
A pinprick of a warm, familiar chakra scoped into his radar. Kankuro.
"He's ahead!" Gaara meekly responded back. Kankuro's chakra was so thin, so very fragile and weak. It reverberated against the dunes of the desert in desperate pulsations against the serpentining grains. He was hurt, badly from what he could tell.
They had to move quickly.
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Kankuro fell to his knees. The jarring elicited one final whimper from the woman inside of his puppet. He couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe.
Is this… How I'm going… to die?
The poison filled his lungs, his heart, his head, and there was no more.
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Temari spotted the dirtied figure laying limply in the sand, a bulge suited on his back.
Her heart nearly stopped.
With a last surge, she jumped forward to find the figure of her younger brother, completely still and face down in the ground. She grabbed a kunai, cutting the leather straps of Kuroari from his shoulders, throwing the heavy gourd to the ground. She could have sworn she heard the coo of a dove from somewhere beyond the sands, but had no interest in any birds. Only her brother.
She turned him gently in her arms, her forearm cradling his head as her shaking hand searched for a pulse. There. Faintly, it thrummed on like a soft drum, gently against his pallid skin.
The only time she had ever seen him this pale was when he was born. A shaky, colicky baby, Kankuro had been sickly nearly his entire first year. He never quite cried, much to his father's happiness, but stared at the world with wide open eyes, absorbing every little detail he could. Temari always knew he had the greatest memory of their mother. After all, all he did was stare at her features. Maybe that's how he became an artist in the first place; his ability to observe had been bestowed to him at birth.
Now, his eyes couldn't even open. All he did was lay there limply in her arms. Gaara had arrived shortly after her, but did not kneel to his brother. Instead, he was inspecting Kuroari, slowly withdrawing each of Karusu's swords from their hilts and shocked to find fresh blood lining the metal. Haggard shrieks came from deep within its depths. "Please! No more! No more!"
Gaara displaced the head of the puppet, giving light to the cavern. The small creature inside of the puppet's stomach screamed again, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with bloodied hands. She feebly shook in her place, slashed and pierced arms and shoulders giving her the appearance of a skewered scarecrow. Her lips were cracked with the hollows under her eyes blackened with exhaustion. Her maroon hair was matted to the sides of her face, her clothing torn to shreds, and her violet eyes wide with fear.
Nakahara Akemi.
Gaara drew his sands forward, lifting her quickly from the limp puppet, her shrieks growing louder with every movement. Those violet eyes that had held fear a moment ago now held anger upon finally realizing who had her in their grasps. She clutched her shoulders to her body as the sand nearly swallowed her whole.
Anger radiated from his body in return. He sent warning tendrils from his body towards the girl, waited to watch her squirm, but was surprised when she kept on her wiggling. Normally, ninja would immediately cower at his chakra leaking into the air, but it was like this girl had no clue he was even doing anything. She was sizing him up. He did the same.
"You're going to die," he stated matter-of-factly. "You will not get away with this."
The girl did not speak in response. She held her tongue and growled deep in the back of her scratched throat. She couldn't have been much older than Gaara, although her body seemed to be malnourished with bones jutting from the tops of her shoulders even though her face seemed evenly filled out. Her anger had eventually turned to calm before turning to sleep, the strenuous nature of the flare of anger finally taking its toll on the woman.
Gaara extended his palm, his fingers splayed out. He would end this woman once and for all. IT didn't matter if she was important to the Tori no Suna. It didn't matter that she could be the most important hostage in the history of Suna. All Gaara wanted to do was rip this little woman limb from limb and watch her blood turn the sand brown below her. Temari could only watch as she tried to haul Kankuro over her shoulder.
"Gaara! Save her for later! We need to get him home! Now!" Her ragged, raw voice dragged Gaara from his killing intent with disdain. He turned to his sister, now fully frontal with his older brother. Kankuro was bruised nearly head to toe with cuts littering his body. Each wound was scabbed over a yellow in cover, possibly from the poison, while many of his bones were visibly out of place. Gaara covered the entire group in sand, leaving Karusu, Karoari, and Sanshuo to fend for themselves against the sliding dunes of the desert.
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Nothing but darkness….
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Nakahara Taijo waited at the compound's gates, a shoulder leaning against the carved gate. Father had sent Akemi straight into the desert to destroy the Kazekage after his damned ninja came into his village to steal the scroll. They didn't account for so many strong and powerful warriors to be at his sister's beck and call. There hadn't been much better than watching his father take those four Suna ninja, each shaking in their sandals, and personally detatching each of their limbs from their joints while making the others watch.
Taijo remembered Akemi looking upon the bodies sadly as their blood coated the streets in rivulets. When he had asked why she looked that way, he recalled her saying that they were perfectly dissected at their joints; the perfect combination for puppets.
Taijo admired her skill and her craft. After all, she was the only one of her family to be able to wield the Golden Strings other than her father and aunt. As next in line, Akemi was setting up a village that could easily squash Suna as soon as she took power. That Gaara kid didn't stand a chance.
The sun had begun to set on the desert, causing Taijo to frown. Where was she? Akemi was never late for her curfrew. Suna wasn't far away at all and she had set out early in the morning, but there wasn't even a buzz in the air to signal the arrival of the sand ships.
The sun sunk below the desert. A deep chill sank into Taijo's bones. There was no army rumbling over the pass. No air ships circling the village in victory. No older sister on the prow of her ship, colorful feathers waving in the air with the wind, her arms outstretched. There was no smile. There was no laughing.
Nothing but the shifting sands.
Taijo ran.
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Kankuro tried to open his eyes and failed. He felt as if there were staples under his eyelids. He wasn't going to fight it; it only meant he needed to sleep. Maybe all of that partying was catching up to him.
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Akemi spat in Gaara's face.
Did this BOY think that he could intimidate her? That he could scare her into submission? Well he was dead wrong. Some Kazekage wouldn't be the one to break her. Not on her agenda.
The Kazekage stood there, wiping her saliva from his face with the same dead look in his eyes as when he had first held her in his sandy grasp. His sister, Temari no Suna, stood towards the back of the room, a little fearful at the tension rising from the room. She turned her head towards the door on more than on occasion, not sure with which eyes to make contact with. Or, she was thinking of her other little brother, who for all she knew was dying on some operating table like a science experience.
Gaara moved towards the shackled girl with slow, calculating steps, eying her like a steak. She kept her sharpened fangs bared at him, a low frequency growl consistently grumbling in her throat.
He was sizing her up, trying to see how much she would fight; how much she would scream. He was trying to see the weaknesses on her edges and corners, her boarders and creases. She felt exposed under his emerald eyes, so very intense against the dark bags lining his eyelids from a childhood of sleepless nights. Akemi continued to grit her teeth.
Gaara shot his sand out in a whip, the grains thinly slicing a streak in her cheek. She bit down the pain and continued to stare at him directly into his eyes; a challenge. Her father had done worse. The burns under her eyes were only the beginning.
Gaara struck her across her chest, her abdomen, her thighs. She bit back the screams deep into the rawness of her throat.
It was going to be a long night.
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HI THERE! Did you think I left this behind?! Think again!
Just a little filler chapter until I have enough time to write a full blown one. Akemi's in Suna in the hands of the Sand Sibs! What's gonna happen now?! UHOH!