Fate Of the Wolf Goddess (Naruto Fanfic x ATLA aspects)

Call of the Wild

MORIKO DURING TIME IN HIDDEN SAND

Moriko: Age 13

"First six-month danger assessment has arrived." Gaara holds out two scrolls from the hawk that flies into the messenger tower. "Along with a letter from. . .oh, it's from your father."

Gaara hands me the letter from Kakashi while he and his siblings look over the danger assessment scroll. It's apparently something Lady Tsunade came up with---- every six months, they'll gather all the information they can about what happened that day when I was attacked and see if any new news has surfaced about the culprit.

I'm not stupid and neither are they. It was Danzo.

Dude covers his tracks, so there's no way they'll find anything.

For the time being, I am stuck here.

In the desert.

With nothing to do. . .

So, I started doing what I normally do when all my work and missions are done.

I started researching things. All kinds of things.

I did the same each Sunday when I was in Konoha, since I still see it as my day off from missions. Little arts and crafts projects with Hinata and Sakura, or learning new fuinjutsu seals with Naruto, new fire jutsus and fighting combos with Sasuke, Fishing 101 with Kakashi, card games with Shino occasionally, or spend time alone at home learning a new recipe from an old memory that resurfaced-----things like that.

But now, every damn day is my day off.

I've been forced into retirement! How do old people do it?! I'm going crazy without books or little crafts to occupy my time.

For the first time in a long time, my life consists of things NOT related to being a shinobi since I'm supposed to be undercover as a civilian here.

So, I tried doing civilian stuff: get a job, learn a trade, but business in the Hidden Sand isn't exactly booming. Especially after the attack on the Leaf. The place is a ghost town when it comes to merchants, so learning a trade from them is hard. They are rather transient and insist I must travel on the road with them in order to gain more experience.
Which I can't do!

There are a few restaurants, but the food is meh. I wanted to go exploring, but with bodyguards watching my every move and the village being in the middle of a literal desert, there ain't much to see.

I thought about entering school, and Temari seemed to think it was a good idea. I've never been to Konoha's academy as a human, and the chance to do it at Suna's academy was enticing.

Until. . . it wasn't.

Three weeks in, I graduated. Top of my class. Broke Suna's record. Or made it.

Whatever.

What can I say, been through this several times already. School's boring most of the time.

The shinobi stuff was interesting----- history, and chaka workshop, but other than that, it was all a repeat of everything I learned in Konoha and also from home-schooling done by Momma Mikoto. Their curriculum is very similar to Konoha's, except the graduation exam has a few extra parts, one being that you gotta find your way back to the Hidden Sand before sundown after being left in the middle of the desert------ with a few survival essentials. The senseis are brutal but also caring at the same time. Like Kakashi's training----- they were watching from the shadows the whole time.