"This is such a pain. Are we really that unlucky..." Zi Xu told Chino and Hatsumi to fall back. The Gourd Baby across from them wasn't someone he could take lightly.
"Things really have changed..." Zi Xu mused. At first, he'd been a total coward, a low-key nobody who didn't want to draw attention. But as he spent more time with Chino and the others, he'd gradually changed. He'd begun to stop pretending and to sincerely accept Chino and the others as his friends.
Takeshi Goda, Tenzo, Kai, Rock Lee, and even those snakes... They'd all made Zi Xu more willing to shoulder responsibility. He no longer ran away. Although his opinion of Konoha had improved quite a bit, he still thought Hiruzen Sarutobi's approach to leadership was wrong—not objective, not sufficiently dialectical.
When the Gourd Baby across from them saw Zi Xu step in front of Chino and the others, he seemed to take it as some kind of provocation. Hatred and murderous intent filled the eyes beneath his dark circles.
"Gaara..." The blonde woman with the fan glanced at the Gourd Baby with concern. As Gaara's older sister, she knew the boy had been treated as a killing machine by the people around him since childhood. In short, he'd grown up without love.
Even their own father hadn't treated Gaara as a "person." In his father's eyes, Gaara was only valuable as a weapon of war.
That had made Gaara more and more violent and withdrawn. Since everyone wanted him to become a weapon, he'd simply become one and shown them what that meant. Killing people? It wasn't as if he couldn't do that.
"Hey, you over there. I'd advise you to leave now. We can't say what might happen otherwise." The punk with purple markings painted on