Paperwork For Kazekage
After the death of the Fourth Kazekage the offices of Sunakagure had been, understandably, in a state of almost terminal chaos.
Morally bankrupt and desperately short-sighted Rasa might have been in the end but he had done his fair share and there was no way to get out of admitting that. Even as Suna's coffers dried up, the Fourth had managed the everyday affairs with a firm hand and grim determination. It took that kind of stoicism to handle the whole mess. There was always paperwork- for budgets, for meetings, for meetings ABOUT the meetings, to assign someone to kill someone else who said something they shouldn't have at a meeting.
(For all their pride at being a nin village focused on the accomplishment of the mission, they certainly did take their time arguing about it.)
If he'd known how much paperwork was involved in becoming Kazekage, perhaps the current holder of the station would have thought twice.
Alas, along with great power, forms filled out in triplicate were also important to being the leader of a hidden village and a leader was what he wanted to be. So, with grudging respect for the man who never allowed his sons to call him Father, Fifth Kazekage Sabaku Gaara sat down at his wide wooden desk every morning and got to work.
There was a betting pool going on down in the Missions office regarding how long it would take Gaara to wade through the paperwork left behind. The smart money was on a matter of weeks. After all, the Fifth didn't have to sleep.
Even with this monumental advantage, however, there were some things Gaara couldn't afford to be worried about. Those older files were left in haphazard piles while the issues of the moment took up precedence. Late at night, when he had finished the immediate paperwork, Gaara would sometimes turn his attentions to these older tasks, stubbornly wearing away the walls that encroached on his space. The activity kept his mind from wandering (and a certain unwelcome mental roommate from making unreasonable and bloody demands) until the sun crept over Suna's rooftops.
Tonight was one such night.
The windows of the office were rattling. A sandstorm was rolling through; a smaller one, wouldn't last more than two hours, but every housewife in Suna would be out with their brooms the next morning, waging war against the elements. In the midst of a series of old requests from the deeper desert tribes and reports on the viability of several new spots for digging wells Gaara discovered an anomaly.
Namely, a Jounin personnel file.
Sabaku Kankuro was written on the tab across the top, the seal of the Red Sands Playhouse stamped in the lower corner to indicate that the ninja in question was a member of the puppeteer brigade.
How this particular file had wound up in the pile-of-stuff-to-bury-in-sand-so-Baki-wouldn't-fret-over-it, Gaara wasn't sure. Perhaps he needed a better filing method than 'depth of sand in which this particular pile will be buried'. He was certain that his older brother's missions file was something he should keep handy, seeing as Kankuro was a healthy jounin and, barring any incredible unpleasantness in the future, would continue going on missions for quite some time.
Idyly curious, Gaara flipped the file open.
Name: Sabaku, Kankuro.
Age: 17
Rank: Jounin
Affilation: Puppeteer of Red Sands Master
Blood Type: B
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 134
Team Members: Sabaku Gaara and Temari
Teacher(s): Mitsuki Baki, Elder Chiyo, Mitsuzaka Kadaj.
Missions:
C Rank: 9 Complete
B Rank: 10 Complete
A Rank: 23 Complete
S Rank: 1 Complete
Gaara allowed his eyes to scan the information, taking it in. Most of it he knew. As Kankuro's default Team Leader, he had committed almost all of it to memory when they had unwillingly formed a team together at the beginning of their genin days. From Kankuro's specialized puppeteer training with Chiyo and Kadaj to his puppeteer Mastery, it was all old news.
Except for one thing.
The A rank listing was not correct.
It couldn't be. The siblings as Team Baki had only gone on twenty A rank missions, and most of those had merely been a case of 'Kill everyone and get out fast' meaning that while his brother and sister had stood by and kept an eye out, Gaara had decimated everything in his path. Very basic, cut and dry. Most of them hadn't even been officially listed until a few months ago.
So why did this file assign Kankuro at twenty three A ranks?
It could be a clerical error. A lot of things in Suna had been given a lick and a promise after the failed Konoha invasion, and this had to be a newer copy of Kankuro's file, removing some of the blackouts and reassessing what counted as top secret. One hairless brow quirked and curiosity moving from idle to intense, Gaara flipped through the other papers in the thick folder.
Medical reports, examination results, poison diagrams...soon Gaara reached the mission reports, uniform pieces of paper with the same fill-in-the-blank format. The D rank reports were all written in Baki's neat, militaristic handwriting. As the missions got harder and they had learned to fill out their own paperwork, Baki had handed the reports over to the three of them. The copies of the C and B rank missions were all in Kankuro's surprisingly elegant calligraphy.
Gaara scrutinized them. They were the same ones Kankuro had shared with his siblings, to make sure their information was accurate before turning the reports over to the missions desk. Here were the A class missions; again, all neat and aristocratic, barring the few swearwords his brother liked throwing in for shock factor.
Gaara picked up the last three pieces of paper in the folder. Like the other forms they were filled out in his brother's unmistakable hand yet each and every one had a client and a name that Gaara had never seen before, and instead of the Missions office insignia stamped into the provided space each was marked with the seal of the previous Kazekage.
Meaning these missions had been assigned to Kankuro personally. By their father.
This concerned Gaara. While pre-Konoha he and his siblings had never had much in the way of familial connection, in one thing they had always remained united, and that was the hatred of the man who had sired them. They had lamented him together (well, Kankuro and Temari lamented while he devised various methods of bloody execution in his head) and they had taken on his assignments together.
A seal of the Kazekage meant one of two things-a Black Sand mission, or a solo mission. Kankuro, ambitious and half-cracked though he was, had managed to stay out of the Black Sands' special puppeteer division, citing that the rules were too rule-like. So at some point, without either his brother or his sister's knowledge, Kankuro had been assigned missions alone.
Gaara arranged the three reports side by side, steepling his hands in front of him. The sandstorm outside scraped over the conical roof of the Kazekage tower, barely rattling the windows.
He began to read.