This confused Gaara as to why he was being thanked, "Why thank me Uzumaki? I tried to kill you and destroy your village. I don't understand."
Naruto shook his chopsticks at Gaara chidingly before throwing them into the fire, "But you didn't kill me or destroy anything did you? All you ended up doing was giving me my fighter IQ back. That's why I'm grateful, because if you didn't do that who knows how I might have ended up, I mean did you see me beforehand?" Naruto shivered, "It gives me the creeps just thinking about it sometimes."
That brought a round of laughs from the siblings minus Gaara. Temari was still curious about some things though, "Naruto. You say you're a host like Gaara? Well how were you treated? Gaara had assassins after him since he was six years old."
Naruto thought to himself for a moment before speaking, "Well it was kind of like him, minus the assassinations for the most part. It was mostly people treating me like crap until I up and disappeared for a while, I just stopped caring for a while and stayed out of public. When I got older nothing really changed, even now I'm just now starting to get some respect in Konoha."
Gaara looked at him, "How did you take it?"
His blonde fellow container shrugged, "I had a few ways. First of all, like I said I just stayed out of public. Another reason is because I was always busy. When I was a kid I always had something to do to occupy my time. The last reason is because eventually some people actually started treating me like a real person, that was probably a big reason why."
Naruto looked up at the moon, "Being acknowledged positively for being you is a powerful thing. When the people around you are just glad that you're alive… There's just something about that that just doesn't compare to most other things… Guys like me and Gaara can relate to that."
He lowered his head and noticed that all three siblings were giving him their undivided attention. Sweat-dropping because he really had nothing else to say Naruto stood up, "Well, you can all get some sleep. I'll stay up and keep watch first."
Gaara blocked Naruto's way with his sand, "Uzumaki I will keep watch for the night. I cannot sleep anyway so it isn't inconvenient to me."
Naruto looked at Gaara and smiled at him, "Sure thing Gaara, thanks a lot then. Alright, I'm going to go drain the lizard before I go to sleep. I'll be back in a flash." As Naruto walked away and Gaara left to find an area suitable for watching over the camp site for the night Kankuro and Temari were stunned. Kankuro looked at Gaara walking away, "Did Gaara just volunteer for night watch? He never did that before!"
Temari watched the direction Naruto went off in, "I think it has to do with that Naruto guy. Gaara's been like this ever since he fought him remember? He hasn't tried to or talked about killing anyone since then." As she watched him return to camp and pull out his sleeping things she was more curious about the blonde Konoha ninja that had somehow calmed Gaara.
XxX
The next couple of days found the group traveling from the woods to the desert with almost alarming transfer of landscape. The trip was pretty uneventful, with the exception of some dumb bandits that thought it would be a good idea to attack a group of ninjas. They took this opportunity to let Gaara let off some steam in the form of eradicating the lot of them in a wave of sand. Poor bastards never had a chance…
As they traveled they kept up the same routine as usual with Naruto trying to engage them in conversations to get to know them better. With Kankuro he pretty much let slide their introduction back before the chunin exams and started off fresh. It didn't really take long for them to start hitting it off. Kankuro had a strange sense of humor and when coupled with Naruto's dry wit and penchant for picking with people like Gaara, usually ending up with him getting thrown by an arm of sand by Gaara, much to Kankuro and strangely Gaara's amusement. Naruto took the time traveling with them to also flirt shamelessly with Temari. At first he simply took to answering her questions about how he lived and what he was used to doing as a ninja and asking her the same in turn, but that soon turned to him sidling up to her during breaks and randomly commenting on her good looks and how he'd like to take her to some place called Ichiraku whenever she came back to Konoha during their travels. She didn't use her fan to brain him for two reasons; because he did beat Gaara and then still had enough energy to capture them and jump into the fray of the invasion so she didn't really feel like trying to incur his wrath, the other reason was because on the occasions she did try to swing at him he dodged and then made comments on how he liked strong girls.
Kankuro got a few laughs off of that… right until Temari realized that hitting Kankuro with her fan was no trouble at all.
Naruto even got Gaara to talk sometimes, not very often, but he still got him to speak and that was something. He usually compared biju with Gaara, and inwardly bitched to Kyuubi about why the hell he couldn't get a cool defense like Gaara had, he was sick of getting his ass kicked… Anyway the point is, Naruto was quickly getting close to the Suna genin, the fact that he didn't rub the fact that he beat them in their faces helped exponentially.
And now they were traveling through the desert, edging ever closer to Sunagakure. The setting sun was actually doing very little to sooth the heat on one blonde-haired ninja.
Naruto wiped his brow once again under the hot sun, "Kami, this desert… Why the fuck would people live somewhere so hot? This is ridiculous!" Naruto looked back at the Suna kids who were smirking at his discomfort, "I'll bet you're all loving this right now aren't you?"
Kankuro snorted as he stifled his laughter, "Yeah definitely. You can run through three teams of genin like a hot knife through butter but a little heat and humidity and you can't take it."
Naruto gave him a half-hearted glare, "Watch it make-up boy. I'm really irritable out in this stupid heat."
Kankuro growled at him, "It's not make-up damn it! It's war paint that…!"
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