Thank you all so much for the incredible reviews 3 It feels so nice to be back, I made ANOTHER chapter in short notice! ((Unfortunately, don't expect this pace to hold; I have TONS of school work to do! College kid problems!)) I really do appreciate all of your support and for some of you, even staying with me through these few, long years. Although it's only chapter 5, I feel extremely pertinent on finishing this piece; something I've never done before!

Onwards and Upwards!

Epsilion xoxoxox

Akemi didn't know if her soul had departed or if her body had transformed into a piece of lead. Her wrists dug into her shackles painfully, the metal biting deep into her flesh. Her feet dangled an inch off the floor, her ribs stretching painfully under the pressure of gravity. Senbon were sticking out of her wounds in her shoulders like some kind of macabre pin cushion, the chakra points expertly probed to leave no blood; only pain with every swing from a stagnant draft from the cell door.

Suna seemed to be incredibly good at torture.

She was a prisoner of war. No matter how badly the Kazekage wanted to put her six feet underground for nearly killing his brother, he had no political power to do so. If they were to try to resolve the issue peacefully, it would be pertinent to keep her alive as a bargaining tool. She was on the edge of death, yes, but it was enough to ensure she wouldn't be a threat to the people of Sunagakure. After all, it was enough just to keep her alive, ulike the men and women in her army. The thought of their bodies blending with the sands of her land sickened her.

Over 1,000 men; slaughtered like cattle for ritual. Although she was upset over the loss of so many people, she didn't need to dwell on it for long. Father would have a new army at the ready within a few weeks. Their village grew nearly by the day, many missing-nin and civilians alike curious about the powerful village and the Scroll that was in its possession. Although she had studied it for only a short time thanks to her Aunt Junko, that was all the time Akemi needed to copy direct techniques to a special place where no one would find. After all, she would need to reference lessons on occasion while she was learning, right? You can't perfect something without practice.

Akemi stayed suspended in her horrific crucifix, a small smirk on her lips. If only the Kazekage knew where the copy was… That would be MUCH easier to obtain than the actual Scroll.

If only, if only…

All is quiet, all is peaceful…

"When will he open his eyes?"

"It's tough to say," responded the medic-nin, her eyes downcast towards her leader and his sister. "He hasn't shown much progress in movement, but his brainwaves are becoming stronger and stronger. I can't expect it to be much longer."

Gaara bit back his emotions and stared through the glass of the intensive care unit Kankuro was sleeping in. The tubes jutted every which way from his body, leaving him resembling a marionette like the ones he so loved to create. All he wanted to do was enter and sit by his side. He wanted to be one of the first people he saw when he woke up. Something inside Gaara twinged at his heartstrings; was this love? Fear? Pain?

He turned to face Temari, who fiddled her fingers in an old necklace that Kankuro had gotten her for her 12th birthday. Her green eyes were glossy with hidden tears, her shoulders slumped against the back of her chair. Temari had removed his caked on makeup the night before, gingerly running her fingers over his marred skin. As she had scrubbed under his eyes, she quickly realized the dark marks under his eyelids wasn't paint. She sometimes forgot that her brother was only 22 and not 40 with a midlife crisis like he acted.

She had held his hands and scrubbed at the blood under his nails, washed it from his hair, clothed him in clean hospital garments; she felt like she was four again, swaddling her baby brother for his nap.

Except, she didn't know when this nap would be over.

"We need to call for the Haruno girl," Temari whispered under her breath. "He needs to wake up. We can't just not do anything! He needs her!" She faced her brother, letting the tears freely stream. She didn't care if it wasn't the ideals of a General of the Suna ninja force; this was her brother, not just some comrade who had been injured in battle.

Gaara turned once again to face the still form of his brother, the chest of the latter rising and falling mechanically with every pump of the machine helping him to stay alive.

"I'll send word immediately."

Sakura, Naruto, Kakashi and Shikamaru sped through the desert at top speeds. Tsunade had woken Sakura from her sleep with a messenger hawk exclaiming for her immediate need in Suna as Kankuro had been deathly injured by a rogue ninja ambush. She had assigned Naruto as her guard (also since he had been bugging her for months about a mission to Suna to see his old friend, Gaara), Kakashi as the Captain and Shikamaru as a political delegate between the two nations.

Sakura could only imagine what kind of trouble the puppet master could have gotten himself into this time. She hadn't been told what kind of damage had been given; only that he had dealt with someone who could be considered Sasori's indirect "student" or "pupil". She knew he didn't quite deal with Sasori well in the first place thanks to the poison and quick movements. Could this pupil have done the same kind of damage?

"I hope that make-up wearing bonehead's alright," Naruto shot out quickly. "I mean, he's kind of important in Suna now, isn't he? Also, he's Gaara's brother, so that's gotta mean something."

"We can only hope, Naruto-kun," Sakura let out bitterly. "From what I know, it doesn't look good."

"Kankuro-san is a shinobi, much like you and I. If there's anything I know for sure, it's that he has a will to live just as we do. Hopefully all he needs is a little coaxing from Sakura-chan," Kakashi muttered through his mask darkly. He obviously wasn't keen on the puppeteer's condition either.

"Troublesome…" Shikamaru let out hastily, letting out a puff of cigarette smoke from his lungs. "That bastard interrupted my evening of sunset watching and shogi."

"You watch a sun set too many times, it just becomes 6 PM, Shikamaru-kun!" Sakura let out. "Besides, aren't you happy to be let out of the village? Since the war ended, you've been cooped up like a bird. A change of scenery would be nice for you."

The shadow master muttered out something like "troublesome woman" under his breath.

"Kakashi-sensei…" Naruto paused in his tracks, looking directly at the sand. "Do you smell that?"

Kakashi stepped beside his pupil. "Blood. And a lot of it. We must be heading in the right direction."

The group continued onward towards the site of the battle.

Sweet bliss….

Akemi heard her cell door creak open. She didn't bother raising her head. It took too much effort. She clamped her fingers tighter around her chains and gritted her teeth. Her heart sped up slightly at the sound of footsteps approaching her.

She couldn't help but laugh at her own weakness.

Days ago, she would have snarled in the face of a poison-laden katana and a bear of a man that wielded it. Now, she simply trembled at a mere man's footsteps.

Gloved fingers reached beneath her jowls and lifted her face sharply. She kept her eyelids sealed shut and her lips gritted tightly together. She felt the fingers around her neck smooth over her cheeks, the leather sending crawling trails down her spine. A dark chuckle was emitted as they shook her gently by her chains.

She let out a whimper in distress.

"Ahh there's something you don't hear every day," the sickly, sweet voice, one she hadn't heard before, snarled out. "Like the coo of a dove. I never knew a Tori no Suna witch had the capacity to make such a noise."

A sharp crack shuddered around the room, the skin on the side of her bicep. She let out a breathy moan in retaliation. "I live for this shit. Nothing you do can hurt me!" she bit at her torturer. "My father put me on the brink of death simply for spilling his wine. Nothing you Suna scum can do can come anywhere close to that."

The gloved hand reach back around her neck and squeezed painfully. "Oh yeah? How about the wrath of a sibling. Can THAT come anywhere close?"

Shit.

Temari, her torturer, continued to grip onto her neck and shake her. She gasped at the lack of air, craving for the element to rush down her lungs. Fresh blood spewed from old wounds on her wrists, the hot liquid running down her skin made the hair on her neck crawl. She kept her eyes closed.

"You think you can do that to my brother and LIVE? I don't care what Gaara says, or what the elders says. You will be MY kill. I can swear that, Nakahara Akemi. You will die by my fan by the time you leave here."

Air rushed back into her windpipe, so painfully she gagged on the sweet feeling. By the time her fit ended, the door had already slammed shut against the door jam.

Akemi smiled.

And laughed.

"What the HELL!?" Naruto screamed at the wind, covering his ..nose.

The smell was nearly tangible to his senses. The scent of decay, death and destruction was riddled in the air, but there was nothing there. No blood. No bodies. Nothing.

Just the shifting sands.

He dug his nails through the ground, pulling up clean sand with every grasp.

"This can't be real! This had to be where the attack was! There's nothing here! Not even a drop of blood."

"Bodies aren't the carcasses here, Naruto-kun," Kakashi said grimly, pointing towards a large shape looming on the horizon. They sped towards the thing, finding a dismantled ship slowly moving with the dunes. The sails were inflated as the heavy desert winds pushed it at a ghastly slow pace.

Shikamaru jumped a top the ship cautiously, letting on the tips of his toes touch the surface. After scouting the area, a quick "clear" came above the howling wings. Sakura and Kakashi quickly jumped on board while Naruto kept at a walking pace next to it. The ninja walked up and down the thing, finding nothing but cherry wood and holes for aerodynamics.

"Nothing," Kakashi muttered. "Not a single detail."

"Not quite," Sakura murmered. She stepped towards the pulpit of the ship, the needle point of the bow jutting into the air like a broken flagpole. An amber-gold liquid dripped slowly from the tip.

"Jackpot," she yelled, grabbing a vial from her medical pouch She tapped a few of the lingering, golden drops into the glass and pocketed it. "If there's still poison dripping from that tip, there needs to be a vat of it somewhere on this ship."

"We don't have the time to search," Shikamaru drawled out. "We need to make a break for Suna, although it would be—"

"GUYS. UP AHEAD! I'M GONNA GO CHECK IT OUT!" Naruto shouted towards them before speeding off.

"NARUTO! NO! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS!" Kakashi screamed after him, quickly dismounting from the ship to chase the jinchuuriki. Sakura and Shikamaru looked at each other quickly before following at a rapid pace behind.

By the time that they reached Naruto, he was kneeling on the ground in front of three large puppets: Karusu, Kuroari, and Sanshuo. He grabbed the mechanical hand of Kuroari and shuttered.

"A puppet master wouldn't leave his puppets behind for the enemy to find. What happened to him that he would ditch them?" Naruto's voice was thick with sadness. "How badly was he hurt?"

"That's why we need to get to Suna," Shikamaru drawled deeply, exhaling the held nicotine in his lungs. "We need to heal Kankuro before things get worse."

"Then what do we do with his puppets, Shikamaru-kun? We can't take them with us, but we can't just leave them here; not without something to seal them in. They're too heavy even for me," Sakura muttered under her breath, pulling her shirt over her nose. The sand was beginning to whip painfully.

Screeching filled the air and suddenly, Sanshuo exploded into a million pieces.

Kakashi stood behind the puppet, splinters flying every which way. "Destroy them. Leave no evidence."

Naruto shuddered. "Sensei?! Why? Why did you do that?!"

"We can leave no evidence of Kankuro's work, Naruto-kun," he said matter-of-factly, his Chidori fizzing away from his gloves. "As a puppet master, he would most likely be more inclined to keep his secrets safe from others finding them. These Tori no Suna, as they're called, have a scroll that contains the secrets of puppet jutsu. If they discover Kankuro's techniques, all of the work that he had done until that point would be moot and insignificant. His tricks would be revealed and there would be nothing that he could do about it. He'd be a sitting duck in battle with everyone knowing the secrets to his puppets."

Naruto grimaced. Sakura turned her eyes sadly towards Kuroari and Karusu. Two, beautiful pieces of art. She clenched her fist and struck. Kuroari joined his brother, littering the sands around them.

Naruto stood, full of ill content, but drew a Rasengan to send Karusu to join his siblings.

I'm so sorry, you three, Naruto thought as the sands quickly covered the small pieces of shrapnel that were left of the puppet triplets. It's for the good of your master. For the good of all of Suna.

The group stood above the carcasses of Kankuro's most prized possessions before sprinting off towards Suna with a new burst of energy.

Nakahara Kojiro sat with his hands over his temples, eyes closed in thought. When Tajiro came to him last night saying that Akemi hadn't returned, he couldn't say he was surprised; just disappointed.

Of course he had expected his daughter to be successful against the Stronghold Army. He had personally trained her to be a killing machine, a masterpiece in the art of warfare. Even since she was a young girl, after watching her Aunt be dragged away by his fists to exile for treason, Akemi had become desensitized to the sight of blood; the feeling of pain. Sometimes, her cold demeanor even go to him, watching her take hit after hit from backfires of her puppets, whether gargantuan or more speed-designed in nature. She did as she always had done; gritted her lips and smiled.

His wife, Seka, entered his tent and stood watching her husband with great distress. At a young 37, the red head didn't look a day over 20. Many times, she and Akemi were mistaken as sisters, something that had annoyed the younger for as long as he remembered. Now, Seka looked haggard, the disappearance of her oldest and only daughter bringing sleepless nights upon her violet eyes.

"My husband, are we not going to go after her," she asked with batted breath. Seka was faithful and loyal, never questioning Kojiro's judgment on any occassion. Hearing her discontempt for the situation now was something he hadn't heard before in her. He stared at her darkly with turquoise beams.

"Never have I heard you speak out to me, Seka," he grumbled from his beard, standing to a full height of six feet, six inches. A golden string of chakra leaped from his fingers, entangling itself around his wife's neck. Seka, shocked, fell to the ground as the pure energy cut off her oxygen supply and burned her skin.

"My last wife spoke out to me once. Do you know what I did to her?" Kojiro slowly stepped towards his wife, her mouth opening and closing like a bass, her cheeks staining blue.

"I cut out her tongue and forced her to wear it as a necklace."

Violet eyes trembled and teared. Turquoise orbs held steady.

Golden chakra released its hold from its captive. Seka dropped to the ground, slow to move with her fiery hair showered around her face. She stayed bowed to her husband.

"I… Shall not ask…. Again," she trembled, emotion and pain staining her vocal chords. Kojiro left the tent, the cold air of morning greeting his weary bones.

He would find his daughter. He would take her home from that monster.