--ooo--
The three walk into the conference room as one.
Gaara stands slightly before the hooded Kankuro and proud Temari stands behind the pair with folded arms.
Village Advisers sit at the great table, faces ashen and grave. Baki's single eye is steady as he speaks and gestures vaguely towards the video screen flickering on the far wall.
As though hovering from above, Gaara sees a shadow draped, but clear view of a simple hospital bed. The slight pale figure stirring beneath white sheets sports a long mess of blond hair.
Gaara's face is impassive as he watches the sickly blond boy dressed in hospital garments stumble back into a wall as a door opens, then soundlessly slap his hands together. Surprisingly bright blue lightening flashes wildly within the frame, then a click later, suddenly freezes all motion.
"As you can see, Kazekage, barely a week ago." Baki announces as he rises to his feet. "He is secured now, but the boy in question attempted his escape on the day you left the village for the Kage summit."
Gaara narrows his eyes at the date and time scrawled in the lower left corner, noting the passage of time but says nothing.
"As you know, this is not the first time he has tried." Baki says, and pushes a button on his chair arm. "This feed is live."
The image flickers, then settles on a somewhat cheery hospital room. The tile of floor is a slight shade darker than the golden sandstone walls, and crisp white sheets drape on a pale thin blond boy lying in the sturdy frame of the bed. As he watches, a female med-nin walks in carrying a bowl, and, as she turns to set her burden down on the nearby table, the boy's right hand, within some sort of dark colored-- gauntlet?-- fists and jerks against the chains. The boy mouth moves grandly, and as the med-nin turns, she eyes the robust arm movements with some alarm.
But that is not what catches Gaara's narrowed eyes. He watches a faint curling of fingers beneath the sheets, hidden nearly under the boy's outer left thigh.
What the boy was really doing with such a tiny movement, he couldn't guess. Gaara's cheek muscle ticks beneath his sand mask with that contradictory thought. No, that isn't it entirely; given what he knew of the boy, he could well guess what the boy was really up to.
Likely escape.
Gaara slides his eyes to his brother, well aware of the many admiring konoichis, med-nins all, Kankuro had managed to collect while recovering in the hospital from his struggle with the missing nin known as Sasori. The man had crafted his deadly poisons well, and they had ravaged his brother's body barely a season ago. Kankuro had always enjoyed applying the thick makeup as a part of his membership to the elite puppeteer corps, but now the bright bold colors gracing his face serves to hide ugly and discolored splotches of skin.
"Yeah.. He's a royal pain to the med nins." Kankuro says steadily as he lifts his dark eyes to the blond boy chained on the bed. "They all complain about his shouting."
"Yes about that.." A councilor begins. "Has anyone managed to get him to drop that ridiculous act..?"
Act..? Gaara feels his non-existant brows twitch upwards.
"It's getting tiresome." Another gripes. "Constantly babbling nonsense and all."
Ah yes. Now he recalls.
Most in the room held firm to the theory that their rescued guest laying in that hospital room was an actor of some sort. Considering how sickly the boy was, to continue such a flawless act was quite remarkable. He had to be, at best, a spy of the highest order, or, at worst, the harbinger of a terrible, future invasion force.
Either option meant Sand was doomed.
Again.
The councilors did realise how little time they for such suspicions.
"This is a small matter of security that I will deal with shortly." Gaara pauses and takes in a breath. "We bear news of the Summit. As of now, we are in the midst of the Fourth Ninja War."
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
No comments:
Post a Comment