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Chapter 93 - Arc 6 - Onward, To Suna! - Outing with Gaara
🕑 Added 2024-10-12 01:25:47 +0000 UTCI had fun writing this.
Gaara's so cute... Dangerous though, so dangerous.
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Sakura hasn’t gotten a lot of chances to explore in her life. By the time she realized she might like to explore Konoha, she’d already been everywhere a small girl would ever want to go, mainly, her room and kitchen and school. Then, she was taken around by Ino, but she didn’t even want to do that so it can’t count as youthful and fun exploration. Wasting an opportunity due to immaturity is still lacking the opportunity, and while it sucks, she can safely say she’s seen all the interesting parts in Konoha at some point and found them boring. She wouldn’t mind retrying it, but how do you even re-experience everything? Maybe she should ask a tour guide and pretend to be from somewhere else.
In Wave, everything was too desolate to be fun. In the village they rescued from rebels, she spent most of her time there in a linear dungeon and before that, she was basically confined to one Inn and a few shops.
The forest is just forest, the leaves are just leaves, and the last two months in Konoha haven’t helped matters. She wanted to explore Suna unhindered and free, and she didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. She was happy to learn that they would be here for several days while the Suna Trio got their travel preparations completed, and ensured they were free to leave for the lengthy period of the Chunin exams. She’s not really sure why they need so much time, but she imagines most of it is politics, and as the child of a random ninja that’s really not her place to care.
There’s even the possibility that the Suna trio don’t actually need any time at all, and just wanted to give them the freedom to rest and take in the village, at which point, they’re her heroes. Why question that?
So this is a downer. Just a massive, absolute, downer. She is so sad about everything happening here, and if she could go back in time and miss the meeting with Gaara so she could avoid this completely, she would do so in a heartbeat.
What’s happening? Well… She’s trying to explore, and there’s a redheaded boy following her around looking like her long lost brother - due to her hair dye - and people won’t stop running away from them! Someone even shouted ‘there’s two now!’ Either she started smelling really bad in the last few hours and the both of them need a cleaning routine, or the people here absolutely hate this guy, and she doesn’t have to flip a coin to figure it out. “What’d you do to them?” She sighs.
“Are they bothering you? I could kill them…” He mumbles almost shyly, how you shyly threaten to murder civilians in cold blood, she doesn’t know.
“Nevermind, that answers that,” much to her chagrin, it really does, “Please do not hurt anyone, or I will run very far away from you.” Her threat does seem to cow the boy quite aggressively, he actually flinches in horror. When did she become a babysitter? Why is this happening? Isn’t he her age?
So, shopping is out of the question. She is pretty sure Gaara is not going to leave her side the entire trip, in fact, Temari gave her money for the inconvenience, like that makes any sense at all! It’s a lot of money too, like, way more than she’s being paid for this mission.
So, whatever she wants to do for this week is going to include someone that no one wants around… Sightseeing with a proper tour guide is probably out of the question, what to do…
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This is so cool, she takes it all back, Gaara’s awesome. “Yep, right here, I can’t believe you can just control sand like this! My earth jutsu suck!”
Standing on top of a massive sand dune shaped more like an actual steep hill, she can look down and around. She watches the world expand around her and feels everything inside of her calm. It’s a nice feeling and the board in her hands doesn’t hurt. Narrow and straight, it’s called a dune board, and normally sand isn’t the best at getting speed so it’s made more for durability than shooting through any sort of real stunts. It’s for protecting children and giving them something to do outside when their parents won’t let them play games.
Well not today! Today she and Gaara change the game. “Woo!” She attaches herself to the board with a bit of chakra under her feet and lets gravity take her. She can see Gaara’s outstretched hand ensuring the sand stays just the way she needs to fly down the decline like a rocket. It’s glorious, it’s windy, and it’s probably the coolest use of earth jutsu she’s ever experienced.
Too bad it’s not something any normal person could learn, Gaara’s breaking the game and she’s here for it. The wind soaring through her hair, the sand providing a gracious surface to glide down as fast as physically possible.
“Whoopsy crappity!” Reality kicks in and she finds herself shouting before she can properly adjust or even think of something normal to shout. She’d never admit to Kakashi, or Sasuke, or even Naruto really that she got so caught up in her thoughts that she managed to lose balance and faceplant into straight up sand on a board made for children. For as long as she lives that secret could go to the grave with her. Luckily she doesn’t have to add another note to her crypt for future spelunkers to laugh at because a hand of sand comes out from below her and grabs her mid-air, providing a weirdly padded and soft surface.
It’s a little embarrassing to have to be saved like this, but being a little embarrassed is a far cry from needing medical treatment because she slid face first through the blades of nature at top speed after coercing Gaara into making a tidal wave of sand for her to glide down and ignore gravity.
“Guh, I’m an idiot,” She grumbles, “Thank you! You’re awesome!”
The boy flushes at her praise, and it’s enough to make his entire face light up like an ornament, she’s beginning to think he doesn’t get many smiles sent his way. It’s kinda sad, she has no idea why he wouldn’t have friends with how cool he is. Maybe if people were nicer, he wouldn’t threaten random civilians for her. She’d probably threaten people for Ino if their immediate reaction to going on a walk with her was to flee.
It’s not the same and she’s kidding herself, but she can sort of see it. She was told before she even met him that he’s temperamental, but she’s really just not seeing that. If anything he’s cute and docile, and giving her puppy looks at the slightest possibility she might not approve. Which is pretty weird, and once again, exactly how she treats Ino.
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It’s mid-way through another slide down a dune - this one natural and remarkably less steep - that she naturally finds herself reaching out and grasping something metal as it flies through the air. Then, also automatically, she deflects something else. She’s glad she doesn’t have to pay attention, at least until sand kicks off on its own and flies into the air just in time to block a giant gush of flame that was trying to take her face off. Gaara’s outstretched hand is not missed, and she shoots him a quick look of praise.
“What is going on?” She kicks off her board, rolls across some sand that naturally hardens beneath her to give her better footing, and speeds across the custom terrain her new friend is making for her without even taking the time to appreciate it.
She’s being attacked, that’s definitely happening, and in her Suna clothes too! Why is she never in good equipment when she runs face first into enemies? “Hua!” She shouts as she gets around a barrier of sand, taking in her almost perfectly camouflaged enemy and tossing his kunai back at him with as much force as she can muster. He’s in perfectly sandy robes and a mask that makes it hard to spot him even while standing right in front of him. She can’t get any defining features, so maybe man is a bit presumptuous, but she’s going with it until shown otherwise as he’s a little tall.
She watches him barely catch the kunai thrown at him while she tries to close the distance, only for him to throw it back at her on her third step. She catches it naturally, and throws it back-
He catches it by the ring, and throws it back- She catches it naturally, and throws it back, only for him to add a second kunai to the mix.
“This is going nowhere!” She shouts, on the seventh round trip, finding a fourth blade entering the mix and having to stop and focus to actually get it right and not get hurt. At some point this left the territory of her reflexive trait and entered into the territory of an actual exercise in futility.
Before she even knows it she finds a minute has passed, and the two of them are trapped in what can only be considered a contender for the world’s dumbest game. He can’t make hand signs to cast a jutsu or do anything advanced because he has to keep this up or she’ll get there and bash his face in.
And she can't approach because she needs everything she has to keep up with this horse shit. Even if she could find the time to make a water clone, it would probably die due to the sand and hot weather in like one second. She needs to research if clones are temperature resistant when she gets home, or more realistically in like ten minutes while this guy is recovering from her kicking him in the balls so hard he passes out.
Realistically, he’ll tire out before her, what with Gaara likely willing to protect her screw ups, or one of them will mess up and she’ll use the chance to get in close and change the pace, but… Actually, speaking of Gaara. “Gaara help! Why aren’t you helping? You’ve spent the whole day trying to please me and now I’m actually being attacked and you’re standing there!” He is! He totally is! He is just watching this with a mopey expression.
“You said I can’t hurt anyone.” He explains.
“Wha, no I, wait…” Yes she did, she totally did do that. Obviously contextually speaking that’s irrelevant. Even an idiot would be able to piece together- unless-
"There's no way in hell you're socially dumber than I am! Help me, I promise it's okay!" The weird thing is that everyone in Suna she's seen so far recognizes this Gaara guy instantly. They flee from him, they care about his existence, he is the most important person in their world because as far as they're concerned they want him as far away from them as possible and paying attention is the only way to make sure he's not lurking in the corner like a spider. There will likely be parades while he is in Konoha. She is now imagining Gaara in a spider costume, lurking in a shop keep corner and making faces at people that pass.
This guy attacking her is different, he doesn't even seem to know who Gaara is.
Which tells her so many things, like that they're not native Suna, and that he's an idiot who didn't do any recon before this.. At least she can interrogate him after they're done.
She's seen one of his sand hands flow from the ground before, one of them caught her earlier and it was very gentle. It didn't feel very much like sand should. She was expecting coarse blades or fine grains scratching her at the force and speed it wrapped her, but she got a comfortable cushion packed together with care.
Watching a hand come up from the ground and grab her opponent is a juxtaposition on her previous experience, because it's suddenly revealed to her that the technique isn't meant to be nice and it's definitely not meant to be comforting. That hand wasn't designed to save her, that was a modification made on the spot when he panicked about her wellbeing. The true purpose of that hand is to crush people, to eviscerate them, and in this case; to turn them into liquid. So many things are put into perspective in an instant, like how much Gaara must care for her - an oddity given they just met - and why his sister seemed so freaked out that he's clinging to her.
She watches what was an enemy and is now mush soak into the sand and disappear, and she gets the feeling this isn't the first time that's happened recently.
She needs a shower.
Yep.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
Sometimes you gotta.
Dopplerdee
Sakura really pulled the Autistic girl Rizz on him.
