Author's Note: This chapter contains minor spoilers for the Chuunin Exam Arc. Andbefore I get any reviews telling me that Kankuro and Shinodon't count as strangers: Yes,I do realize that Kankuro and Shino fight each other eventually, but this episode happens before their little duel, so there.

Buzzing. When he first started working, the sound was small enough to ignore. It was more annoying than distracting, like a hair that got caught in your mouth. But this room was so freaking quiet, the humming was the only thing his ears could focus on. It was like having a hairball lodged in your mouth…ear…whatever, who cared if the metaphor made sense? He wasn't a poet; he was a ninja. Nobody cared if he could speak English well…no, wait, Japanese…zzz…

Kankuro stared at the sign-up sheet. The words walked back and forth in his head, and although he understood what they wanted, against the buzzing they melted into blah, blah, blahs. He skipped ahead to one of the easier sections. Please state your address and the sector of Konoha in which you currently reside. If you do not live in Konoha, please state the city and country of your allegiances.

Was this really necessary? Shouldn't they have this kind of information on their records? Seriously, you'd think that one of the most powerful villages in the world would do a little background check before letting any Joe Shmoe waltz in their front gates. Kankuro shook his head. They probably did. If they didn't, then why the hell did Suna wait until that snake guy showed up before pulling this mission off? No, the examiners were probably making the genin fill out these pointless questionnaires just to watch them suffer. The puppet master looked around the room and glared. One of the walls was probably a one-way mirror or something. Kankuro could just see the proctors now, laughing their heads off at him.

He glanced at the only other ninja in the room. The kid hadn't said anything; ever since Kankuro walked through the door all he had done was crank through the forms. It was like he didn't even hear the buzzing. Kankuro blinked. There. Flying around that kid's greasy head was the biggest fly the puppet master had ever seen. Kankuro silently stood from behind the desk and began walking towards the corner. Now that he was looking directly at it, the fly seemed to buzz louder just to spite him. Closer, closer…Suddenly the buzzing stopped.

The kid's hand froze in mid-sentence. His head slowly shifted to the right, and his glasses looked like lens of the surveillance cameras out front, taking in every small detail as a single wing fell from Kankuro's fist. Kankuro paused as he tried and failed to observe any sign language or twitching facial muscles that he could translate as thanks. He coughed. "You're welcome."

"You killed the female." The voice was surprisingly low, but it had a tinny quality to it, as if Kankuro had trapped the fly under a tin can and it somehow learned how to talk. Kankuro opened his hand to make sure. He stared at the blank gunk on his palm.

"That was a girl fly?" How could the kid tell? If Kankuro hadn't seen what the mush was before, he doubted he could have figured out that it used to be a fly, or anything living for that matter.

"She wasn't a fly; she was a kikai bug. My only female kikai bug." If possible, the glasses seemed to turn even darker.

Kankuro looked at his reflection in the glasses. There was no way to see the kid's eyes, so he couldn't be sure, but it almost sounded like the guy was…angry. Angry that Kankuro had been nice enough to do him a favor, for crying out loud. Fly or kikai, that thing had been annoying as hell. Now the squirt was acting like he had wanted it around. Kankuro paused. "Wait…" He turned his outstretched hand so that the other ninja could see the remains. "Are you saying that this thing was your…pet?"

The stranger exhaled sharply, ruffling the front of his collar. "She was not my pet. She was my partner, my tool. Thanks to you, I'm going to have to wait a full lunar cycle before she can be replaced," he replied icily.

Kankuro stared at the mush on his hand and snorted. "Hold on, that was your weapon?" He started laughing loudly. "Some weapon! Kid, if you were gonna go out into the chuunin exams with just that, then I think I just did you a big favor."

The ninja sat perfectly still, glaring at Kankuro's hand. Silence. Kankuro forced himself to chuckle more softly. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was your little 'friend'. Happy?"

"Sorry doesn't bring back the dead."

Kankuro grimaced. Yeesh, all he had done was try to be friendly and this kid was criticizing him at every turn. It wasn't his fault the guy was too weak to guard his own stuff properly. "Hey, look, it was a mistake. If you're that upset about it, then next time bring tools that don't die." He wiped his hand off on the desk and sauntered out the door, picking up his pack on the way. He'd come back to finish his paperwork later when the weirdo was gone.

"Now! Kuroari!" The puppet lurched forward as his opponent stood trapped in the clutches of his other creation, Karasu, only to crash disappointingly a few meters from the target. The ninja used Kankuro's distraction to free himself from the puppet. He launched himself at the scroll at Temari's waist, only to be thrust aside by a tentacle of sand.

Kankuro released his chakra strings. He ran over to Karasu and began checking his surviving creation for maladies. "I-I don't get it. This is the first time that any of my puppets has malfunctioned. What the hell went wrong?"

Temari crouched by the sprawled figure of wood. She pried open a latch on the puppet's side and growled. "I'll tell you what's wrong, you idiot. You need to take care of your tools!" she snapped, tilting the puppet on its side to reveal a swarm of termites devouring the wooden interior.