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Kankuro made his way to the Barbecue restaurant that that blond ninja had pointed out on the way back to Suna's quarters on his first day here. Tomorrow was the first day of the Chunin Exams, and he figured that it would be well worth the expense to have a good dinner before they happened in case he didn't survive what was coming next.

On his way to the restaurant, he saw a reasonably attractive civilian woman following a masked, one-eyed shinobi who seemed to be doing his level best to ignore her. The civilians in Suna had learned not to try something like that long ago. If a shinobi didn't want attention, they didn't want attention, and clinging to them would more than likely result in injuries on the civilian's part.

"...Don't see how you can stand putting up with him." the woman said. "And now, he's hanging around with foreigners. I wouldn't be surprised if his father was from Iwa..."

It was at that point that the shinobi decided to react. If he hadn't been a shinobi himself, he probably wouldn't have noticed it. Most of the streets in Konoha were simply hard packed dirt, as they had been since the founding of the village. While there wasn't too much dust, due to certain dust control methods which had been put in place, including D ranked missions assigned during the driest part of the year, there was the occasional mud puddle here or there either after it rained, or there was a spill of some sort. In a lightning fast move, the shinobi tripped the woman, knocked her into a particularly large and somewhat scummy looking puddle that the other pedestrians had been avoiding, and continued on as if nothing had happened, having apparently reached the end of his rope.

As he continued on his way to the restaurant, chuckling over the stupidity of the woman who had apparently insulted a friend of the shinobi, several people moved to help the woman who was shrieking as if someone had just tried to murder her. The place he was going to was owned by one of the local ninja clans, and it was totally awesome. He'd been there once before, and he could completely understand how the Akimichi got so fat.

&!&!&!&

Temari sighed as she walked through the park that had supposedly been built shortly after the founding of the village in a joint effort between the Shodaime and the Uchiha, which had been pointed out to her by the blond Konoha Genin on the way to the Tower when they had registered. There were trees and flowers everywhere. Both were a rather rare sight back in Suna. Only the hardiest plants grew in the deep desert where her home was located.

She stopped to smell one of the roses that grew on the well tended bushes that lined the cobblestone path.

It was a real pity that this would all be gone soon. Both her village and Otogakure would be razing the village to the ground in a little over a month if things went according to plan. A park like this, no matter how nice, would not survive.

&!&!&!&

Gaara felt slightly apprehensive about going to the ramen stand while the boy named Naruto wasn't there. While the man treated him like just another customer while his "best customer" was there, he wasn't entirely certain that he would be treated the same if he weren't, and he wasn't too sure how he would react to that. The man who had run the ramen stand had been one of the few people in his life to actually be nice to him.

He took an available seat next to a black haired shinobi and waited. The owner noticed him after a few seconds.

"Welcome." the man said warmly, and giving him a smile. He wasn't trembling, and there wasn't any fear in his eyes. The man actually seemed to appreciate his presence.

He made his order, which the man promptly began to prepare.

That settled it. When the time for the invasion came, he was going to have this man kidnapped and brought to Suna.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7043747/17/