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Encounter by karikara

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Why is he just sitting there? She wondered. Hinata low crawled from the sandy ridge where she had been spying on her intruder to where her tent was sheltered from the wind by an outcropping of rock. The forest of the Fire country ended so abruptly where it met the desert that formed the boarder between the village of trees and village of sand‘s territory. When she was younger, a genin, she thought the desert looked as if some sort of poison had leeched into the sand, irradiating all life that sought to grow there. She had once recoiled from a world that seemed so barren.

Now that she was older though, she had learned better. The desert was alive. Living, subtly, teeming with life like a secret, a secret that took patience--quietness, and patience to reveal. She loved coming here now. It was the only place in the world that she felt truly safe in, where she could be herself. No one came here. Hinata could diffuse. People, her family, life in the village. For her it felt like she was choking when she was there. She came to the place where the desert met the forest, where the rocks marked the seam between her world and another, to be alone. But today she was not alone.

How does he stay so pale? she wondered, as she scrambled down the dusty slope to her shelter. The man she knew as Sabaku no Gaara had been doing something, meditating, she assumed for about an hour and a half now. She was afraid to move around lest she be detected, since he sat only a 50 yards away from her on the sands below. She wished that he would just go away. The Gaara she knew, the Gaara she could remember, unnerved her, to say the least. The first chounin tournament she competed in was long in the past now, but she could recall what damage he had done to Neji’s former teammate, Lee. She understood that Gaara had changed since then. “Mellowed out” as Naruto-kun had told her, but she didn‘t particularly want to see if this was the case. Hinata was not in a social mood. Hinata was never in a social mood.

It wasn’t that she hated people, or disliked them, it just hurt, it hurt to be around them. Her sensitivity was so intense that it seemed almost like a sixth sense sometimes. She could feel people’s pain, their disgust, their anger, their disappointment. It hurt. Especially if it was directed at her, and even if it wasn’t, it was exhausting. When she was young, it was as if she had no emotions of her own, she was constantly so wrapped up in the waves she could feel coming off of others. It was as if everyone else except her emitted some sort of special gravity that she lacked. All she could do was get caught up in the tow, especially her father‘s tow. The pull of his relentless frustration and disappointment with her had dominated Hinata for as long as she could remember. As a result of these ill-feelings, she bent into herself, like a flower, blighted by an early frost.

It had taken coming to the desert to relieve her of his pressure. That’s why her mentor, Seyah, had taken her there, and left her there--alone. At first she was terrified. But slowly she learned that the worst horrors in the world, the pain and angst that she felt so keenly at home were not a part of her. Being here, being alone, something new emerged. Herself, a will to live, and fight. She discovered something new, a fierce and defiant joy--her own spirit. Something that had been drowned out before by the noisome cacophony of clan life in the village.

It had been hard for her family to handle, when she returned for the first time. She seemed the same, yet completely different. Her skin was darker, the paleness muddied by the sun in a way that horrified the old women. They clucked over her and what the desert had done to her complexion. It was so low-class…they said. She didn‘t care though. Hinata was still quiet, to be sure, but she had changed. She didn’t interrupt herself as much, and when she smiled, she no longer covered her mouth apologetically. Her mother complained, what a bad girl she had become, but what a good fighter.

Her father, she could still feel his surprise to see her improvement as she kept training with her sensei, and traveling periodically with her on missions. She could still feel Neji’s confusion and anger, that she had come so far. It had made her so ashamed, to cause her cousin more humiliation the day that she finally accepted his challenge to fight him. Hinata did not allow herself to win, but Neji was no fool. He sensed the truth, and knew that she had thrown the match to save his feelings. What an idiot she had been. That had only hurt him more.

The way she had humiliated him, and her disgust with her family, these were the reasons why she decided that she must quit being a shinobi, and chose the another path. But what path could that be? Confused, upset, and scorned by the clan, she retreated to the forest. She had arrived in the desert just a few days before. Where she would go from here, she didn’t know. Her teammates, her friends, had tried to stop her. Kiba told her that she could stay with his clan for as long as she wanted, but she told him that life in the village would be too intense for her until her clan cooled down from her betrayal.

Shino knew better than to ask her to stay. He gave her something though, one of his female bugs. Someone who didn’t know Shino might have recoiled from such a presentation. But Hinata and Kiba were two of the people closest to Shino in the world. The insect was an expression of Shino’s affection for her. It was the promise that if he feared she had been gone too long, Kiba and Shino would come looking for her, and they would use the scent of the insect to detect her, wherever she might be.

* * *

Is he trying to dehydrate himself and die? Hinata wondered incredulously. Two more hours had past. Hinata was getting impatient. She had planned to spend the day foraging for food at the edge of the forest a mile back. Her supplies were fine as they were, but she knew better than to take that for granted. If she was going to be out here for a week or two there was no reason for her not to enrich her stock with other sources besides her own dried rations. Besides, it gave her something to do as she mulled over what she was going to do with herself, and how she was going to reestablish contact with her clan when she finally returned to her city.

Hinata sighed, regretting the fact that she would not get the chance to train either today. She had tried to meditate, but the thought that that man was out there so close to her, niggled at her mind like a loose thread. The fact that Gaara had not sought shelter since he arrived, taken water, even apparently moved was disturbing her. How can he stand the sunlight? she wondered, as she reached to itch the skin on her own arm, burned a rosy red color and peeling slightly where her long-sleeved tunic didn’t cover her sufficiently. She also worried that meditating would put her in a more vulnerable state, perhaps allowing him to sneak up on her while her guard was down.

This is ridiculous, she thought. I have to get out of this damn tent. Hinata’s skills at stealth were very good, and if she activated her blood limit she would at least be able to see if Gaara was coming toward her. It was settled. She would go to the forest and occupy herself for awhile, and then return later. He should have left by then, Hinata concluded.

“Byakugan,” Hinata whispered after performing the hand-signs. She felt the familiar pressure of her veins constricting around her eyes, and looked out into the direction where she knew Gaara was still sitting. Still there, she sighed. Hinata gathered her weapons pack and a canteen, and left her tent. She beat a quick retreat up the embankment into the rocky maze of ridges that separated the forest from the sand, and was within the protective foliage of the forest within ten minutes.

* * *

Gaara opened his eyes. He was ready. He quickly formed the hand-signs which he had designated for this new attack. They were unnecessary really, as the attack utilized his demon-power, but they gave his mind a sequence of actions to focus on as he solidified his intent.

He breathed in, slowly, and announced to the empty landscape,

“Umi suna, tsunami.”

The air around him squealed as the sand rose around his body and fanned outward, gathering strength and intensity. Today’s practice would be about longevity. If Gaara had the endurance to keep the squall forming above his head going until sundown, he would rest tonight, and begin the work of orchestrating the flow of each grain within the self-made sandstorm the next day, when morning broke.

* * *

By the edge of the forest, foraging had been unsuccessful, so as the late afternoon wore on, Hinata had worked her way deeper into the trees. There she collected what she thought was about four meal’s worth of tree ear mushrooms, and some ground nuts. The nuts were not quite ripe, but they would do. She was washing them and the mushrooms in the cold, gray water of a brook when she looked up and noticed the haze that covered the reddening sun.

The sun will be setting soon, she thought. I should return. He’s gotta be gone by now.

* * *

Gaara slumped in exhaustion. Around him the dunes had been leveled and dispersed in a spiral pattern, its nexus the place where he now sat. The experiment had been a success, but he was completely wiped out. He would have to find shelter for the night, and feed himself before he collapsed. The rocks on the desert’s edge were the most obvious shelter from the night wind.

He stood, and picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulder wedging it between his gourd and himself. Instead of retracing the path that led him to this spot that morning, he headed straight for the rocky ridge that cut into the desert 50 yards or so behind where he had been training. There, where the ridge cut into the sand a wide over hang protruded over the sand, he would wait out the night.

The shadows were so dark that he might not have noticed the cloth that just peeked above the sand that had been thrown up by his new jutsu. The cloth seemed to be attached to a tent pole, Gaara squinted into the shadows underneath the ridge and felt his heart constrict as he saw the dim empty crown of another pole a few feet away from the other.

Shit, he swore inwardly. Had there been someone here? Gaara had specifically secluded himself so that he could practice without risk of harming anyone. He had traveled to the edge of the sand’s territory to the East because people rarely crossed the bounds of this land except for fellow sand-nin, and even they tended to favor the more populous passes in this time of peace.

Gaara had even warned the villagers of his intentions. This shouldn’t have happened.

The sand around his feet began to shift as he worked to unearth the tent. Gaara had spent his whole life hurting others, frequently unintentionally, with his powers. When he was young he was helpless to control it. He killed and maimed effortlessly, without the knowledge of its significance, like a boy stepping on worms after a rainy day. It was that carelessness, that uncontrolled power that had made him hated and feared by all around him when he was younger. Now that he was older, he had the luxury of much greater control. Yet accidents were still a danger for him. This had grown to his worst fear, to kill without even realizing it, simply because he was the container for a power that sometimes mastered him.

The sand flew around him as his power did the work. His excavation…revealed nothing. No bodies at least, that he could find. Nothing was evident except a collapsed tent, and a canvas lean-to next to the tent to provide some shade. Gaara removed the cloth from the skewed poles and found only a pack of supplies and water. Whoever had been spending their time there was apparently gone, scared off probably, or buried beneath the sand somewhere else. Gaara doubted the later, because the brunt of his attack had been directed outwards, towards the open desert. For a body to have been thrown farther than he had already searched was unlikely. The occupant had likely been frightened away by his presence, and abandoned their supplies, he decided.

Gaara settled himself next to the abandoned sac and began to search its contents for anything useful. In the low-light of the sunset he saw the glint of something metallic. Gaara picked it up. It was a head protector, it bore the insignia of Konoha.

So this tent belonged to a foreigner, he thought. Understanding the significance of the head-protector, he wondered why this person, who he assumed had been a shinobi, would leave such a precious thing behind. Was this a missing-nin? A defector? Or perhaps a spy? His curiosity peeked, he rummaged through the bag, but the contents revealed noting more descriptive than the head band.

Gaara retrieved the large leather canteen from the bag and drank from it. He then opened his bag and brought out some dried jerky.

I wonder if the defector will return? he thought. In his village people had very strong feelings about deserters, ninja who elected to abandon their lives as fighters and protectors. Although there was shame involved, the transition back to civilian life was acceptable enough if the Nin did not continue to use his or her skills in ways that threatened the prosperity of the village.

Then there were those other Nin. The ones that didn’t settle for civilian work, who wandered the countryside, creating havoc, doing mercenary work, or working as thugs. These were the people that the shinobi in his village despised. Still others, the more sinister and powerful formed dangerous coalitions, that threatened to turn the village system and the fragile balance that it brought on its head, like the Nine. Deserters were dangerous, they were weapons without a sheath. They were chaos to the ordered world of village life. And so they were bearable only if they assumed quiet lives, and were scorned and feared when they did not.

Gaara didn’t know what he thought of them. He could understand the desire to be free, to live like a leaf tossed in the wind, or to chose the darker path, and rip through the world like a holy fire. He wondered silently, as he sat against the cooling rock of the cliff, what sort of shinobi this one was. And whether, by chance they would come back.

What will I do with him if he does? Gaara wondered. Sand is currently in a coalition with Fire, it is probably my obligation to return the deserter to them. What a pain. I hope he doesn’t return. Whoever he is.

* * *

“Shit,” a wave of panic welled up in Hinata’s chest as she looked out onto the sand below her. She knew she was in the right place, she had made a point of carefully committing the landmarks around her hide-out to memory. She looked behind her, and everything appeared as it should--the fat rotting tree, the round rock that resembled Chouji-kun. Everything was right. But when she looked out into the desert, and the dunes were completely unrecognizable, and the man Gaara was gone.

Did he do all this? How? All of my supplies are down there. Damn it. I wonder if they’re buried? And my head band…

It had been an awkward decision to take it off and stow it in her bag when she left the town. But somehow it had felt just too…wrong to have it on. It seemed to glint accusingly when she took it off and buried it into her pack. When she had announced her intention not to pursue the life of a shinobi, she had tried to return it to Tsunade-sama, but the Hokage had refused, saying that Hinata had to do what she needed to do, and now that they were experiencing a time of peace once again, the village did not need her as badly as it once had. She told her to keep it with her as a sign that she was still welcome, should she ever find herself wanting to assume her former position as a Chuunin again.

As she traveled outward towards the desert, the head protector seemed to lie like a lead weight in her bag. At once Hinata wanted to toss it into the river, but at the same time she knew that she couldn’t give it up. So she had taken it with her, like an unwelcome tag-along. But now that she thought that she may have lost it, she was surprised to find that she felt a twinge in her chest. Her adrenalin kicked in. Hinata would have to unearth her campsite. With any luck she would find all of her things, and be spared the humiliation of returning to the village after having been robbed by the desert. Fueled by fear, Hinata leapt recklessly down the rocks.

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-Kari
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