Forevermore ~Gaara~

Chapter 21

"You!" Kenchi's yell was all they heard as he charged at Gaara. However, Gaara was easily able to deflect his hit. But he was just getting started. Ice crawled up Kenchi's arms, creating long spikes of ice on this ends of his hands. He crossed them once and proceeded to slash over and over again. Each slash came faster and faster, but Gaara's sand was quick to defend him. He tried to avoid making an attack of his own, knowing it was pointless to hurt him.

A bright light blinded Kenchi as he was finally about to make contact with Gaara's face. He dropped fast, holding his eyes. "Jeez! Ow!"

Everyone looked around, confused. Only for their eyes to land on Honiji, holding out her hands, eyes wide, scared, confused. She was breathing fast, sweat forming on her brow. "Holy crap, that was awesome." Paku breathed.

"Honiji..." Gaara looked amazed.

"Okay, we will touch on that in a minute. For now, I think we need a nice long chat. All of us." Kaita emphasized, leading Kenchi to the seats. He tried to open his eyes slowly, but they still hurt from the light.

"Sorry Kenchi. Are you okay?"

"Fine." He breathed.

"Mind telling us what that was about, Ishikawa?"

He continued to rub his eyes. "He knows, and he knows." He pointed to Gaara and Paku respectively.

Paku stepped up, his eyes low and hands in his pocket. "Kenchi said he was going to tell Honiji everything..."

"Everything?" Kaita asked.

"Everything."

"What's everything?" Honiji asked.

They all looked at each other, minus Kenchi, and knew there was no going back. Gaara moved closer to her and pulled up a seat. "Everything is the things I have been keeping from you about my past. And how it effected Kenchi. And... What I asked Kaita to do when you entered this school."

"You knew who I was?" Kenchi asked, looking up with tears in his injured eyes.

Gaara nodded. It's hard to forget the faces of those whose lives you ruined, yet spared. Kaita and Paku took seats near by as well. Kaita figured she could write them all passes for missing class. This was important to get out there. The truth was coming out today in one way or another. Hopefully, the whole truth.

Where to start, Gaara wondered. "How much to you know about me?" He asked.

Honiji thought back to what Naruto and Tomoe were able to tell her. They had seemed very... evasive, and only told her all these good things. Like he had no downfalls. But she knew better. And while a lot of the things about his personality and habits were dead on, she had made her own observations as well. "I know you are the son of the previous Kazekage. You have two older siblings who are very protective, although they don't necessarily have to be. You have impressive ninja abilities. You grew up without your mother. You are the youngest Kazekage, being inducted at the age of fourteen. That's all I know besides the fact that you get very surprised when people do something for you."

She doesn't know much, but what she does know is very important. He knew where to start. "I did grow up without my mother to guide me. It's because I was born that she died. I took her life, the first in many killings from my past." Honiji's eyebrows shot up. Kaita, Paku, and Kenchi all sat, still as statues, quiet and forlorn. "My father and the village elders placed a great tailed beast inside me, making me a great weapon. For the first few years of my life, I was coddled, protected heavily. They wanted me to grow to control the beast inside me and use it to make the village a true force to be reckoned with.

"However, by the time I was six years old, my Father had tried to kill me more times than I could count." She leaned forward, hands folded, chin resting on her thumbs. "The beast was too strong for me. I hurt people, killed them, most of the time by accident. I was feared by everyone in the village. For awhile, I believed the only person I could turn to was my Uncle." Kaita grimaced, her jaw clenched tightly. "I killed him as well. One night, he attacked me, an assassination attempt ordered by my father. He at that point told me something that would break me, haunt me for years to come. My mother never loved me. He hated me. I would never be more than a monster."

"Years I acted like a true monster, murdering to appease the beast inside and make myself feel alive. It didn't matter to me, every life I extinguished. It wasn't until-"

After a short pause, Honiji encouraged him to continue. "Until?"

"Naruto beat literal sense into me. I was in Konoha for a certain set of exams. It was the first time I had met someone like myself. But he was different. He wasn't a cold blooded killer. He had hope. After a botched mission during the final round of the exams, we faced off. After he beat me, he taught me a valuable lesson. I took what he said to me to heart and used it to repair my relation with the villagers and become the Kazekage."

"Two years after becoming Kazekage, a group of criminals attacked the village and in my attempt to protect the people, they kidnapped me. They wanted the beast inside me, and they took it. It cost my life." Honiji sat back again. It was a lot to take in and she wanted to ask him to stop, but at the same time, she knew he needed to keep going. There was a lot more to his story. "Naruto and his friends were part of the team that came to my aid. One of our village elders, Chiyo, went with them as well. It was because of her that I am alive today. Naruto, I was told, broke her heart with his words, which convinced her to give her life to bring me back."

He continued his story. It took an hour in all, a few details left out, nothing important. He touched on the five kage summit, where they discussed the Akatsuki that had kidnapped not only him, but many other jinchuriki's as well. Gaara explained how the war started, the one that had destroyed her home a few years back. And finally came up to the point of meet his reanimated father and learning the real truth. "He told me it was all a lie. My uncle and mother both loved me very much. Having lived how I had for so long, believing what I had, it was a lot to take in. But it started a whole new movement in life for me."

Kaita let her head roll back, staring blankly up at the ceiling. "Gaara worked very hard to make the people of this village trust him. And many people and families were able to forgive him."

"And then there's Kenchi." Paku sighed.