Suna no Hoshi [Naruto Fanfic]

It Isn't Nice to Play With Your Rice

Gaara brooded as he sat in the kitchen, slumped onto the table with his chin resting against the wood, while he stared at the wall and his arms dangled at his sides. He didn’t know what he was going to do with Baki’s assignment, although Naruto’s suggestion at the earlier team brainstorming sounded tempting.

Well, he’d have to think about the semantics first…

Kankuro was having no luck either. He was, for the first time in his life, in a library. He’d randomly chosen books at first, but then when he more often than not ended up with a book totally unrelated (How many times was he going to pick a book about gardening?! It’s not like you could really garden in Suna anyway!), he decided to go to the inventory and try that way. Even if he had to try to decipher the damn thing…What was with all these numbers and letters and codes?!

Naruto was also trying her best to fulfill the homework, though she at least had something to work on. She was close to finally finishing the jutsu she’d been working on for the last three weeks, and decided that it would be a good idea to show it off the next day to her team. Maybe Tenoh would like to see it too…

If only that blasted Hiraishin would bend to her will already!

However, whatever their choices and progress were, it would all have to be judged the next day –whether or not they managed to achieve anything.

And Baki was definitely hesitant, though his stern and unrelenting glare said nothing of it to the genin.

“All right! Show me what you’ve got,” he barked at them.

Kankuro cleared his throat and stepped forward to start first.

“So, uh, I was looking up stuff…somewhere…and I decided that working on kenjutsu might be good. ‘Cause I’m a puppet user and all, and that’s long range…so I guess I need some kind of back up if an enemy gets in close, right? And I guess…I could go from there and maybe learn Baki-sensei’s wind sword technique? I didn’t learn anything about it, and I definitely can’t do any kenjutsu stuff yet –so no bonus points, huh?”

Baki inwardly was relieved. Things were starting out normal thankfully. And Kankuro had made a smart choice and remembered his weakness, and Baki wouldn’t mind passing down his famed wind sword technique down.

“Good, good. Next, Gaara.”

Gaara stepped up and took a deep breath, and Baki tilted his head in curiosity. He guessed Gaara was going to go straight in to the demonstration then. That must mean he learned a jutsu, and if he’s performing it then it meant he can also do it.

“SAND MONSTER!”

It took a while for Baki to actually process the jutsu’s name and the sight of a huge towering sand blob thing rising up and moving about high above them, especially in combination with each other.

“G-Gaara, what…is that?” he forced out.

“It is a sand monster,” Gaara said, face completely stoic and voice serious. “On advice of my teammates, I made the features indistinct, so that it would not be confused with Shukaku.”

“…”

Baki really wasn’t sure what to say.

And in the Kazekage’s office, Rasa stared out of his window and gaped at the huge sand thing that had appeared out of nowhere, wondering if he had to go subdue it –it wasn’t Shukaku as it didn’t feel like it, but it sensed vaguely of Gaara…

“How in the world did you come up with that?” Baki muttered, meaning to be rhetorical.

But Gaara answered anyway. Of course.