Gaara was...a lot of things.

Small was one. Very small. Short and slender with practically no muscle definition. Hanako had been surprised at first, but then remembered just how little effort he had to put into his fights because of his mother's sand. He was barely taller than Hanako, if at all, and the giant sand gourd on his back totally dwarfed him. How he carried it when he was so visibly weak was beyond her—maybe the sand lessened its weight for him?

He was also quiet. Eerily so. Over the last two days of travel, he hadn't spoken once. Luckily for him, his siblings were fluent in glares and glowers. This was less surprising, though she had expected him to at least complain.

Most confusing of all, Gaara was...kind of unattractive.

It pained her to admit it, but the blood red hair, pale skin, sunken eyes with no eyebrows look just really wasn't doing it for her. He was scrawny, with knobby joints and a big nose. Like with Itachi all those years ago, she felt sort of gipped. Everyone had a crush on Gaara—even those who insisted they didn't—and here she was, lamenting his prepubescent ugliness. Hopefully, he would grow into his features.

Correction; he'd damned well better grow into those features.

Not for the first time, she caught herself reaching out to him with her chakra. It was a habit she'd gotten into during survival training with Shikaku. The two of them would head out into the Nara owned forests and just spend a week living off the land, exchanging no unnecessary words. It was a weird experience, at first. Her chakra control had always been subpar, and the concept of using it to communicate seemed so farfetched and noncanon that she almost dismissed it altogether. Eventually, she got the hang of reaching out with a proverbial fifth limb, though she still wasn't the best at it.

Shikaku, and Neji, sometimes, explained that using one's chakra to communicate was a risky thing for a ninja to do. There was no hiding your true intentions in a chakra foray, so most people just refrained from using them at all. For that reason, Hanako resolved to use them as often as possible. She wasn't ashamed to admit it was mostly practice for when she eventually met Gaara—or any other jinchuriki, to be honest, but mostly Gaara—but she could honestly say her relationship with her father had improved dramatically after she started. With Naruto, too, if she thought about it. Maybe it was their more bestial qualities that made them more receptive to chakra forays? It wasn't something she'd ever had the chance to test and asking Kiba had seemed rude.

Either way, she knew that making sure Gaara knew she meant him no harm was the most important step to adopting—that is, helping him! The first step to helping him!

Her chakra met his softly, the churning maelstrom of wind and earth rubbing roughly against her water. She did everything she could to keep her forays gentle and unobtrusive, never pushing or persisting once her welcome wore off. She hadn't died yet, so she was counting it a success.

Suddenly, Gaara was right beside her, jumping effortlessly from tree to tree. His chakra rolled over hers, his ever-present anger and general malaise making room for the tiniest speck of curiosity. He didn't say anything, didn't even look at her, but Hanako knew she had finally caught his attention.

Now, what to do with it.

She kept running, idly keeping track of her footing as she let his chakra barrel over hers with all the grace of rhino. Her first instinct was to put up walls and kick him out, but she had a purpose here. She knew for a fact that Gaara was fundamentally good, and she had every intention of making sure he knew it, too. Of course, she wasn't acting entirely from the goodness of her heart. Lee was her friend. One of her best friends, in fact. If she could spare him any of the pain Gaara's anger and insecurity would otherwise bring, she'd do it. Even if she had to take the blows herself.

Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

Just as Hanako was beginning to consider pushing Gaara gently out, something blasted across her senses.

It was like...was it possible to white out? Like, the opposite of black out, where a black out was a sudden nothingness and a white out was sudden too-much-ness.

Whatever it was called, it hit her. Hard. One moment she was leaping through the trees with Gaara, the next, she was rolling onto her side on the forest floor, tinnitus filling her head as she tried not to heave. As her senses returned, her mind began racing to assess the situation.

Her back hurt, but either wasn't injured or only minorly so. No one was helping her, meaning either they had also been affected by whatever hit her, or were otherwise engaged. It couldn't have been the Sand ninja, she reasoned. Their treachery was scheduled for after the Chunin Exams, not before. Was it Gaara? Had he done something by accident? Or had Shukaku done something purposefully?

No, neither of those explained why no one was helping her. At the very least, Lee would be by her side, if that was the case.

Slowly, her vision began to clear. She was still effectively deaf, the ringing still reverberating in her skull, but her gaze settled on something ahead of her.

Oh.

Gaara's sand had formed a wall between him and what was apparently an attacker, rows of kunai and shuriken quickly disappearing into it. Gaara himself was on his knees, hands pressed to the sides of his head in a clear sign of distress.

Oh no.

Hanako quickly began to crawl over to him, only to be stopped by a kunai burying itself in the sod not an inch from her hand. She looked up at their assailant, his face hidden behind mask not unlike her own, and she realized with some amusement that he must be saying something.

"I'm sorry," she said wryly. "I can't hear you."

His brows furrowed angrily, and he reached into the pouch strapped to his thigh. Hanako kept her eyes on his hands, but sent her chakra over to Gaara. There was a barrier up between them, now, a riotous force which made every effort to push her aside. This new chakra was so unlike the everturning earth and wind she had grown accustomed to over the last few days, Hanako knew immediately what it was. Getting wobbly to her feet, she pressed firmly against Shukaku, making her censure known.

Not that a millenia old tanuki really cared what an eleven-year-old thought of him, but still. The attacking ninja pulled a kunai from his pouch, a paper tag attached to the handle.

Was that what hit them? An explosion? It made sense, but also didn't. Certainly, she was no sensor, but Gaara was. For that explosion to catch them off guard like that he'd have had to....

Oh.

She'd distracted him.

Her hearing was still spotty, but it seemed like he was talking again. He gestured at Gaara with the tagged kunai.

Ah, so that was his game.

His clothing was nondescript, and he wore no hitai ate, but he stood like Baki and Temari. This was a Sand ninja attacking Gaara while in Konoha's territory. If Shukaku got loose, Konoha would feel the brunt of it. If he didn't, the Konoha took the blame for allowing danger to befall the Kasekage's son. It was a clever plan, she had to admit.

But not clever enough.

With little thought, she ran the short distance between her and Gaara, the sudden movement making her head pound. She placed herself between the writhing wall of sand and the attacking shinobi, raising her hands defensively. He laughed at her, his voice coming in loud and clear this time, but she had a plan.

It was his move.