Chapter 1: "Temari's" Brilliant Plan
Gaara X EVERYONE! (noooo... not really... But close enough)
Summary: Temari is sick and tired of having her boyfriends chased away from her. She can never get a boyfriend to go out with her without a certain someone chasing them all away. Her solution? To set up Gaara with any possible girls in Konoha and keep his hands full while she goes hunting for a boyfriend!
Disclaimer in profile
Warning: A fic meant more for humor than romance. No slash. I am physically and mentally unable to write yaoi. And romance. And anything that has to do with either. (sob) I don't know whyyyy... I just can't do sappy stuff... Oh, and another warning: the end will probably be crap.
Temari was always bored, sitting all day at Sunagakure with her brothers. She was seventeen now, and all she wanted to do all were the things that any other normal girl her age would do. Like go out on dates. However unlike most girls her age, she face a slight obstacle when it came to the world of datings. No... She had brothers.
The older's name was Kankurou and he was the most disgusting guy in the Sand. She hated him! He wouldn't help clean up the house, he had no table manners, and he was constantly putting his feet on the couch! But, despite being the messier, stupider, lazier brother, she had a second one, and he was worse. At least Kankurou was stupid.
The other brother was Gaara. The newest Kazekage, who was recently promoted directly from chuunin to kage just weeks ago, was the youngest of the Sand siblings and the most dangerous and powerful shinobi in the village. Normally, no one would mind the rich brothers and could probably stand going on a date with Temari...
Except for the fact that every guy who sent her a flirtatious glance in Temari's direction would mysteriously disappear for several days and return fearing for their lives, as twitchy as ever. Kankurou wasn't the type of guy who would beat the hell out of a guy for a reason like flirting with his sister. If there was a reason to fight, then he wouldn't. However if there was no perfectly logical reason to fight, you could guarantee that he could proceed to beating the hell out of you with his puppets. A weird guy.
So it must have been Gaara doing all of this.
So you can imagine that Gaara's uncontrollable urge to kill people brought any chances of a date for Temari to a halt. Perhaps his ability and eagerness to kill everyone in sight at almost any opportunity was usually rather handy in the past, but now he was Kazekage. Rule number one: no killing relatively innocent villages. That was the Golden rule, set by the council of elders. But it didn't stop Gaara from being overprotective (an odd feeling for a murderous younger brother), and Gaara's tendency to chase off guys who looked in Temari's direction left Temari lacking a love life.Very frustrating indeed.
"This is soooo not fair," Temari said to herself, not really having any younger sister to share her problems with. Sometimes she wished Gaara was a girl. Of course, that would be weird. And if he had been born a girl, she wouldn't be having this problem in the first place. Of course, a Gaara-chan would be really... scary. "I wish... dammit, I wish Gaara would just go OUT with someone!" And then she had an idea. A brilliant idea. An idea so brilliant, she didn't know why she didn't think about it earlier.
Ask Shikamaru to give her a brilliant idea!
Temari wrote to Shikamaru. It wasn't as if he was her boyfriend or anything but as a very...close 'friend'. With benefits. She warned him to stay away from the Sand before he disappeared as well, but asked him to come up with a plan. And that was when they started making their forming their new secret mission: Operation 'Hook-Up-Gaara'.
This would prove to be a very troublesome mission indeed.
Every day for the past several weeks, Gaara always returned home late from his office with shakey hands and twitchy eyes.
"The Makotos are constantly destroying the village and causing major property damage!" he would shout angrily. "And the youngest one plays in my office and acts like she's my own 'assistant'! And even worse... everyone thinks she IS! How can the believe a psychotic little girl like that?" That's how it always started. Every day. And then there would be the news that changed every day.
"Good god, every day just gets worse and worse," he growled that day. "The elders bring up the most useless of all information. 'What is your opinion on the concret base of Sunagakure?' It's there! I get it! And then they have me raise the whole village just because I'm the only one who can control sand...? ('Oooh, so that's why there was an earthquake...' Temari thought.) Why me? When it gets to things like this, it really...makes me just want to... kill someone." Gaara's eyes glazed over, seeing a few kids on the street playing with the ball. He had an evil smirk on his face.
It seemed to Temari that Gaara was having fun, or at least thinking of it. She poked his nose.
"No, Gaara. Nooo," she said, waving a finger in front of his face. He glared at her, losing the manic look on his face. "Good boy."
"I hate it when you poke me like that," he said to her.
"You also hate it when people have fun," she reminded him. "No killing. Think of it as a diet—"
"I'm not fat, Temari."
"That's not what I mean. I mean, you might not like it, but you have to do it anyway."
"Kankurou's fat. Make him go on a diet."
"Now, Gaara, that's not nice. Kankurou's not fat. His nose is just wide. He looks fat, but he isn't... Anyway, that's not my point. You don't like not killing, but you have to not kill anyway. Alright?"
"No."
"Gaara..."
"Temari."
Temari shook her head. "Gaara, you are a Kazekage whether you like it or not and you've got responsibilities to help the people of Sunagakure, not kill them," she said sternly. Gaara sighed, shaking his head. "Coffee?" she asked him.
"Yes," he said gruffly. She gave her younger brother a look. "Please," he added through gritted teeth.
"Good, for that, I'm not adding any sugar and cream at all," Temari said cheerfully. She looked at him expectantly.
"Thank. You." He glared at her. Him? Thank a person? This was unheard of! Until now.
Behind them, they heard a laugh that they both hated almost equally. "Gaara, Temari's breaking you down," the middle brother of the Sand siblings laughed. "She's already gotten you to use table manners?"
"Well, eventually, I'm going to get you to stop farting at the dinner table, 'Kuro," Temari said cheerfully. "Because I've developed a new system for you. For each fart and burp at the dinner table, anything you're eating gets replaced by a bowl of spinach that you will have to finish if you want to eat anything else for the rest of the day."
Kankurou went pale, although no one could really see under the face paint he wore. "No! I refuse to eat that green shit! (1) Temari, you can't do this to me...!"
"Sucks for you," she said.
Kankurou scoffed. "Not really. I guess even spinach is better than that crap you stick on the table and call food."
Temari stopped in the middle of the kitchen to stare at him. Did he just insult her cooking? "Say. That. Again."
"Your cooking stinks, Temar—gaaaaaah!" During the short time he was speaking, Temari had whipped the fan off her back and swung it hard in the direction of her brother, causing him to fly through the door and out of the room.
"Say that one more time, boy! One more time, and you're dead!" she shrieked. The door was broken now. Gaara sighed. Another repair to make to his house. Kankurou was sticking on what used to be their furniture. Gaara's couch. Great. Having older siblings usually meant having a bit more financial support, if they were working, but since they worked under him instead, he was the financial pillar of the house. Ah, the irony. The older siblings were more dependent on the youngest, who just so happened to be the newest kage of Kaze no kuni.
"Oh yeah...sorry about that, Gaara," Temari said, knowing how much he hated having to pay for the damages done to the house.
"I'm used to it," he muttered. Coffee... It makes everything better.
"By the way..." Temari said. "What's your opinion on kunoichi of the Sand?"
He looked at her. This was a trick question, he was sure. If he said what he thought, she'd get angry. If he lied, she'd know and get angry anyway. Therefore, he would have to choose his answer carefully.
"...They're okay. Most are...strong. Very strong. And... enthusiastic in battle. But I don't...prefer them over all."
"Over all as in compared to other countries?" she asked.
"...Yes. Because the kunoichi in other countries... very. Except for the ones from the Stone. Iwagakure kunoichi are intolerable and excessively violent..." he said suspiciously.
Temari smiled. "Good."
Good? "Why?"
"Just wondering. I'm just curious."
"No you aren't," Gaara said. "What are you scheming?"
"Nooothing," she said.
"Temari."
"Gaara."
He glared at her. Temari tried to imitate his face and glare back, but she couldn't hold back her grin. "Hehe, you'll know soon enough."
"If I find out after you destroy the city, I will be very angry."
"Of course!" she said. "And I don't want to anger Kazekage-sama!"
Gaara had a bad feeling about this.
"Psst, Hinata," Sakura whispered in the Hyuga girl's ear. "Why are your sister and cousin on this bus?"
"Ano..." Hinata looked at Hanabi and Neji. Hanabi was bouncing around in the bus without her seatbelt on, looking through the window and playing with Tenten. Neji, on the other hand, was glaring holes into his two Hyuga cousins and Tenten.
"Eh, only a Hyuga can glare at three people at once," Ino scoffed. Sakura laughed and Hinata smiled. The bus then jerked forward to a stop. All of the girls (Ino, Tenten, Sakura, Hinata, and Hanabi) and Neji got off the bus after paying a small fee.
On the outskirts of town, they found the recently promoted jounin, Sabaku Temari, waiting for them.
"Hi," she greeted them cheerfully. "I was expectin gyou a while ago, but oh well. I blam the fat bus driver. Come on, all of you, I'll show you where you will be stayi—"
"Wait," Sakura said. Temari stopped and looked back at them.
"What?"
"What was the ad in the newspaper for? All that it said was that an important person in Sunagakure was looking for a date. Females around age fourteen prefered."
"That's what it was for. I'm trying to hook up someone with a girl."
"Yeah, but who is it?"
Temari grinned at Sakura. "You'll find out soon enough," she said. She turned to Neji and looked him up and down. "Neji, I know that in the ad, it said, 'females prefered', but when I wrote 'prefered', I meant, 'anyone-who-is-not-a-girl-is-therefore-excluded'."
Neji glared at her. "I know that."
"Oh. Okay. Just making sure you knew the risks of coming here and being a guy," Temari said with a smile.
"We have no idea why he came," Tenten said with a shrug. "It's probably because Hinata and Hanabi are here.You know, the overprotective brotherly cousin type?"
"Don't I kno-- wait, didn't he hate the Main Family? And I could've sworn he tried to kill Hinata."
Hinata blushed and looked away. Beaten up, right in front of Naruto...
"After learning some truth, he's gotten a bit friendlier towards then, A complete one eighty degrees from what he used to be and do. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if he's completely sane, spontaneously switching personalities like that," Tenten said.
"Stop talking as if I'm not here, Tenten," Neji said. "You tried to leave me alone with Gai and Lee. You must be trying to kill me. Or break me at least"
"Aw, poor Neji," Temari cooed. "Scared of your own teammates?" Of course, she wasn't much one to talk, having been scared of her own younger brother.
"If your teammates wore green spandex and tried to hug you and asked you where your youth has gone every fifteen minutes, believe me, you'd be scared too," Neji warned. Temari froze, imagining it herself/ Baki, Kankurou, and Gaara... Green spandex... thick eyebrows...hugging her and jabbering something about the 'springtime of youth'... Temari collapsed, laughing and clutching her stomach.
"Aaaahahahaha! No more, no more!" she cried, wiping tears from her eyes. The other shinobi looked at her strangely, and then remembered just who her teammates were.
'Oh yeah...she's got Gaara on her team...Glad I'm not her...' they all thought. They probably wouldn't be able to stand working so closely with a bloodthirsty killer. Even for a shinobi, Gaara was bloodier and more dangerous than any other kid their age that they had ever met. Except for Hanabi, who never met him in the first place.
Gaara sighed. HE was walking home back from his office. The weird girls were following him home again. Shuddering, Gaara walked faster. He opened the door of his house, ready to complain and demand his hard-earned black coffee when...
He found it full of girls, Neji, and Kankurou.
"..." What. The. Hell. No! He NEVER invited people over! What was going on?
Gaara glared menacingly at his older sister, who grinned and smiled in return. "Heya, Gaara!" she said cheerfully. "You know these people from Konoha, right? This is Yamanaka Ino, Hyuga Hinata, Hyuga Neji, Hyuga Hanabi, Something Tenten, and Haruno Sakura."
"'Something' Tenten?"
"No one knows my family name!" Tenten said proudly. Neji opened his mouth, but she dove in to cover it. "I said, NO ONE knows my surname, Neji, and 'no one' includes you..." she said, a hint of a threat in her voice.
Gaara glanced over the guests. Ino was a teammate of Temari's lazy 'friend'. Hinata and Neji were cousins, he knew, but who was the midget kid in between them? He remembered Neji beating the hell out of Hinata, but he had never seen this third person before. Tenten was the girl that Temari had beat to a pulp during their first chuunin exams. ...Yeah, why where they here again?
"Temari, if you're inviting friends from another country, I really would have prefered it if you at least warned me first," Gaara said to her.
"Oh!" Temari said, "They're not my friends!"
"...So you invited these 'strangers' (whom we just happen to know) into our house," Gaara said with a hint of sarcasm.
"No, not strangers," Temari said. "They're your friends."
'Since when did I have FRIENDS? Friends are for losers! Like Kankurou!' Gaara thought. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Reopening them, he saw Temari had finally stopped moving around the kitchen, cleaning up, and was finally in one place. Target locked.
He walked past her but pulled her sleeve as he did so, dragging her out of the kitchen, through the recently badly repaired doors, and into the living room.
"Temari..."
"Gaara..." his sister said, imitating his serious tone with a mocking look on her face. Gaara glared at her, really wanting to wipe that smirk off her face.
"I appreciate the gesture," he said, with a demonic smile of his own. "But the stress isn't so bad that I need you to import foreign shinobi just for me to kill. But don't worry, I won't let them go to waste. I put them in a room and just keep them there until I need to relieve a little bit of stress."
Temari blanched. "Gaara! I didn't bring them here for you to kill!" she said loudly. All talking in the kitchen ceased as the Leaf shinobi peeked through the cracked door to see just what was going on in the living room and if they should run from the Sand screaming bloody murder or not.
"Erm... don't kill them," she said.
Gaara sighed. "I won't. The elders won't like it if I do, and then I'll be the cause of a Leaf-Sand conflict, being a murderous Kazekage, right?"
"Right."
"But... why is my kitchen full of girls?"
"Yeah, isn't it great?" Kankurou said. He was currently lazing around on the couch, reading a magazine featuring possible puppet customizations he had gotten from the Makotos. "It's like your own personal harem!"
"Kankurou, shut up and get out. Temari, answer my question," Gaara said in a eerily calm voice.
"Um... well... you see... I'm just trying to make your life easier!" Temari said, finishing the sentence in a cheerful voice once again. "Sinc you're too busy to ever do anything... like go out with a girl or something, I just called all the girls available in the Leaf to hook you up!"
"Okay... one: there are only five available girls in Konoha?"
"Erm... well, I guess others are already in a working relationship?" Temari said hestitantly.
"Fine. Two: you do realize that there's a guy in there, right?"
"Well, I'm not really sure what he's doing here..."
"Alright then. Finally: I'm not interested in girls. I don't like them. In fact, I despise them, loathing them from the bottom of my heart," Gaara said.
"..." -
The room was silent. Kankurou stared at his brother in disbelief and Temari stood there with her mouth agape.
"WHAT?" Temari shrieked. "Oh. My. God. The Sabaku line ends here!"
("Hey, what about me?" Kankurou asked. "Kankurou, you are staying single forever with manners like yours," Temari replied.)
"Girls are... they're...I don't like them!" Gaara said, looking frustrated. "They're all...girls."
"Aren't you a bit old for the 'girls-are-icky' stage?" Kankurou wondered out loud.
"They're all touchy-feely all the time and jump out at me wherever I go! I don't like them, and they don't like me. In fact, I think they all hate me or something!" Gaara said, looking angrier and angrier.
"Most people in the village admire you," Temari said. "What are you talking about?"
He grabbed his sisters arm again and headed back to the kitchen. All of the eavesdropping shinobi fell back away from the door and ran to the table, pretending to act as casual as they could. They failed to do so, with Tenten sprawled on the floor, having tripped on her feet in the scramble, Hanabi with Gaara's spilled hot coffee on her lap, and Neji and Hinata running all over the kitchen looking for napkins to help their sister/cousin with the scalding coffee. Gaara ignored them.
"What are you doing?" Temari asked him frantically as he dragged her out onto the street.
"I'm showing you that I'm right and that girls don't like me," he said. In the window of the living room, he could see in the corner of his eye that everyone had moved into the living room with Kankurou and was watching them through the open window, not inconspicuous at all.
With Temari watching him from the sidelines, Gaara walked casually down the street. Well, he walked as casually as a Kazekage could with a giant gourd strapped onto his back and an increasing number of stalkers at his heels. Soon, he passed by a small group of girls. He glared at them with his most powerful deathglares, and Temari watched in amazement how they reacted.
The first of the three girls blushed and looked away, covering her face with a hand. The second girl smiled in return. The third just started laughing. Gaara glared even more fiercely than before, and instead of running for their lives, the girls ran away giggling, stealing glances back at the angry Kazekage and sometimes even pointing at him in amusement, as if they were saying something about him that they should be saying.
Irritated, Gaara stomped back to Temari. "You see?" he snarled. "Did you see what they did?"
Temari was shocked beyond words. Who would have thought that Gaara would be a ladykiller at age fourteen? And not literally either! "I...uh... they...really like you..." she commented, stunned.
"Like me?" Gaara repeated. "Like me?-! Temari, are you blind? They were laughing at me! Aargh!" Gaara clutched his head and grabbed his hair, growling frustratedly. "That's it!" He released his hair and started to make a fist towards girls, who were almost completely gone. "I'll kill them!"
"Noo!" Temari cried, grabbing her brother's arms. "I can't... I can't really explain this to you, but they do like you! They do! They're not really laughing at you... They're just laughing...because of you..." she finished lamely. Gaara stared at her.
"That's the same thing! They have no right to laugh at me! I'm not funny! I refuse to be funny!"
"Honestly, Gaara, they aren't making fun of you, just don't kill them!"
"Dude..." Kankurou muttered to the other shinobi in the building. "I wish girls 'made fun of' me like that..."
"Gaara, listen to me," Temari said, wanting to slap this boy. How could this genius boy, the youngest kage in history of all kages, not understand a thing about girls?-! "The girls are not making fun of you! And you will be a gentleman and treat these ladies and Neji like honored guests or so help me I will put cream in your coffee and send a letter to Tsunade-sama, telling her of your rude behavior towards shinobi of the Leaf!"
Now, Gaara couldn't care less how many letters Temari would send to the Hokage of Konoha, but... cream? In his coffee? No! He would not stand for that! He glared at his sister and sighed. At least she was scared of him.
"I sense a hidden intent in all of this," he said to Temari, "but I'll put up with you and all of this. For now, anyway."
(1) According to the official databook, Kankurou's favorite food is hamburger, and his least favorite it spinach. How they grow spinach in Sunagakure which is a DESERT...I don't know.
I'm sitting in my corner devising ways to torture Gaara. Any ideas for dates? This is my first 'romantic comedy'. It doesn't have as much romance as I had wanted it to... Anyway, no flames, but maybe some constructive criticism, please? (I am begging to you with my pretty pretty eyes, all blue and sparkly, which is abnormal for an Asian...). I actually got this idea from Shrek. How...? I am not sure. Any advice for my writing would be greatly appreciated.
And yes, I realize that Gaara is a bit OOC in this fic, but it's in the middle of the time skip before Naruto returns. So that means that Gaara is hovering somewhere between bloodthirsty killer and reformed kage who'll let himself get blown up and kidnapped just to save his village from falling sand (which was his in the first place). In other words, Gaara is trying to be a nice guy. Aaaw, isn't that sweet? The sociopathic maniac is trying to me nice again! Just like when he was a cuddly little kid (pre-Yashamaru).
I'm not sure how I'm ending this exactly, but I'm just typing as I think.