Inochi in the next two weeks swept over only a small fragment of the central part of the village, during which she realised that the security of Suna was in no way similar to Konoha. Even when the police force was active in the central part of the leaf, there wasn't as strict surveillance as it was in Suna. Moreover every guard seemed as if they were ready to kill someone at sight, even for the tiniest mishap.

As the month and the next passed by, Inochi had completely searched the central part as well as the northern outskirts , which had no sign of any kind of terrorist group. For further monitoring, she installed her mud clones at different spots as stationary objects as it would not bring any kind of unwanted attention, plus if any activity is seen, Inochi would be able to receive the information almost instantly by calling back her clones.

However, even with all the preparation, Inochi was not getting anywhere with her mission. She restrained her frustration and continued with her plan to complete her search with the southern outskirts, which stretched out a bit too far and had little to no suna guards for surveillance.

----------------------------------------------------------

As Inochi walked down the corridor to the Kazekage's office, she overheard some officials arguing about something in one of the chambers. Out of habit, she stopped and took a step back to eavesdrop.

- "That phony feudal lord won't listen to us! We should just continue to threaten his council until all of them fear the Kage"

- "I say we just raid Konoha. Those bastards have been stealing from us for years"

"Konoha?" Inochi was now even more invested in the debate. "We have been stealing? From Suna? This sounds ridiculous" As Inochi leaned in more to hear better, she noticed someone approaching her way.

"Shit" Inochi cursed under her breath and continued with her way reluctantly. She climbed up the stairs and knocked before entering the Kazekage's office.

- "Sir, may I come in?" Inochi said in the feeble voice that she had been maintaining in front of the sand officials.

- "Yes you may" The Kage said in a stressed tone as always. "Kumimono san, is everything alright?" Rasa said while looking up from the sheets of paper lying on his desk. Rasa's tone was always polite with Inochi, not over friendly nor rude. In some way, Rasa respected Inochi, for taking care of his son whom everyone else was scared of.

- "Yes sir, but I wanted to ask a favour" Inochi went straight to the point as she knew that the Kage hated any sort of time waste.

- "Is this about your schedule? I can increase the number of rest days to four but not more" Kazekage said before Inochi could answer him.

- "No sir, I am perfectly fine with my schedule. I wanted to ask your permission about a trip"

- "Trip?"

- "Yes sir. Gaara sama seems to be bored from staying in the building. I heard that he went out months ago, but that ended up badly. I wanted to ask for your permission to take him to the outskirts of the city, as it may be enjoyable plus there aren't many people in the southern outskirts so it won't be dangerous"

- "Do you think he can handle himself?" Kazekage asked after giving the proposal a few moments of thought. Inochi was a bit relieved by the fact that the Kage did not outright reject the idea.

- "He has been stable for days at stretch now. I was thinking of the trip being three days long, four days if we include the time it would take to reach the camp site. If he controls himself during this, he would complete a whole fortnight without any slip ups" Inochi tried to persuade the Kage. "A change in the environment may be good or bad, depending upon what Gaara sama thinks of it. If he doesn't want to, then I won't take him, but I did not ask him first as I did not want to give him false hope"

The Kage stood up and looked out of his window. He pondered deeply over the proposal before giving a definite answer to Inochi.

- "What did you think about Gaara, miss Kumimono, when you saw his form?" Rasa asked while anticipating a negative answer.

-"I thought that it was huge" Inochi said innocently. Out of all the answers Rasa had expected, this was surely not one of them. Hearing Inochi's answer Rasa chuckled quite audibly. Hearing him laugh shocked Inochi for a moment. "He seems like a doting father. I wonder why he is separating himself from Gaara"

- "Yashamaru cannot go, he will be busy. I will be sending two of my guards with you" Rasa said while taking back his seat.

-"Thank you sir!" Inochi said excitedly although she was a bit annoyed at the fact that she would have to deal with two guards. She left the office and rushed back to Gaara.

Just as Inochi presumed, Gaara was ecstatic about the trip. However Inochi had to deal with a lot of procedures before starting to pack things up for the three day vacation. In the past month, Inochi had received and sent two letters from the ANBU and Naruto. Even though Naruto's letters brought her joy, the ANBU ones did not.

In the letters, Shin told Inochi that Danzo for some reason was getting annoyed by the fact that she had not found the terrorists even in two months. Inochi did send a very detailed letter explaining the strict surveillance of Suna to Shin, but only got a reply that Danzo was not in mood for any excuses. However, there was a silver lining. Shin had also pointed out that it was possible that  Danzo's mood was off for some different reason as he had been venting out his anger a lot on the ANBU shinobi nowadays.

Inochi felt as Danzo's annoyance was related to her 'secret mission', but decided to not grab at such feeble clues at the moment. Plus, even after Shin's consolation, her fear of getting punished by Danzo for lousy work did not get subdued. So she was more than prepared to complete the search of the terrorists during this vacation, and not let anything else sway her focus.

----------------------

Inochi and Gaara were to leave for their trip in two days, along with the two assigned bodyguards, namely Sajin and Yura. Sajin was a sensory type ninja while Yura excelled in sealing jutsu. Both of their roles were quite clear, Sajin would help ward off any kind of criminals and Yura would come in handy if Shukaku ever took control of Gaara. "Suna has some great shinobi I have to admit" Inochi said while whining about the extra burden she would have because of the two. But fortunately, Kamisama was on her side.

Inochi found out instantly that the two of them were lovers and that both of them volunteered to go on this mission together so that they can have some free time for themselves. Taking advantage of this, Inochi put forward a proposal. As per the orders, Sajin was supposed to sleep in Inochi's tent while Yura would keep watch on Gaara during the trip. Inochi thus proposed if they would allow her to handle Gaara for the three nights as Gaara would feel more comfortable with her. Not to her surprise, they instantly accepted the offer without giving it a second thought. "They may be skilled but quite dumb" Inochi chuckled as she merrily continued with the packing.

All four of them headed out the next morning and reached the campsite in half a day. To Inochi's amazement, the campsite was a nice forest.

- "I did not expect the campsite to have greenery"

- "This is the only place in Suna where such a thick forest exists" Sajin boasted.

- "The air is softer, and calmer than that in the northern part. The loo which blows from north to south direction keeps getting filtered till it reaches to this place" Yura explained

- "Then why don't more people live here?" Inochi was genuinely confused.

- "Because its a protected place. No one is allowed to cut the trees. Rather more ways are being created so that this forested area can be increased" Sajin said while hammering a pin into the ground to set up a tent.

- "Suna's resources aren't much but the 3rd Kazekage realised that even bigger problem would be if there was no forested area in the village. So since his reign, we have this protected area" Yura said as he continued to set the two tents with Sajin.

- "Hmm" Inochi realised how different the lives of sand shinobi were than the leaf shinobi. "Such a difficult life. If only Suna and Konoha were friends, more resources could have been shared. Instead, all of them are just hooked up in war"

Inochi was frustrated at the situation of Suna. "Who am I even to hate politics when I am literally on a spy mission against them" Inochi wanted to change this, all of it, but knew she did not have the patience nor the dedication to achieve it. "Well I do know someone who could bring a change" Inochi's mind drifted back to Itachi, about whom she had completely forgotten in the past two months. "When will I receive some information about them, its been two fricking months" Inochi audibly sighed.

- "What happened Umi neechan?" Gaara asked Inochi who was sitting in front of her.

- "Ahh nothing. I am just a bit tired" Inochi said while combing through Gaara's red hair.

- "Do you want to eat something?" Gaara asked while pointing at the huge bento box Yashamaru had prepared for them.

- "Let Sajin san and Yura san complete with the tent. After that we will eat together"

- "Will they eat together with me?" Gaara's face drooped. He was scared that the two shinobi would treat him the same way all the other guards do.

- "Hmm.. I don't know. Let's ask them" Inochi took Gaara's hand and dragged him towards the two shinobi.

Sajin and Yura suddenly stiffened as Gaara approached them. They were scared of him during the whole trip too, but Inochi's warm attitude made them open up a bit more.

- "Come on ask them!" Inochi whispered to Gaara who was shyly standing in front of her. Gaara who barely reached Inochi's waist looked even more tiny as he fidgeted with the question.

Inochi signalled Yura and Sajin who were confused with what the other two were doing. Upon Inochi's persistent glares, Yura spoke up

- "Do you need to ask something Gaara sama?"

- "Umm.. Will you.. Eat with me" Gaara took about a minute to spell the whole sentence.

Yura and Sajin were dumbfounded to say in the least. They had never met Gaara before as they were elite bodyguards of the Kazekage but did hear the gruesome stories about him and the tailed beast. Even in their wildest dreams they did not expect someone so cute and shy to be the infamous "demon" of the sand.

Yura and Sajin were quiet for a moment which pushed Gaara to persuade them more,

- "Uncle Yashamaru made really delicious bento boxes. I am sure you will love them." Just as Gaara said this, he turned back and digged his face into Inochi as if to hide himself. This unfortunately, made him miss a rare sight of two fully grown shinobi, dying from cuteness. Seeing their overdramatic reaction, Inochi burst out laughing, which was followed by Yura and Sajin. Gaara, who was completely confused by their sudden laughter slowly realised that he had made two more people accept him as a person.

The four of them finished their bento boxes in an instant as they were all quite famished. The rest of the day was spent with Inochi and Gaara playing among themselves and Yura and Sajin enjoying their free time.

At night, Inochi started with her mission. As Gaara fell asleep, Inochi replaced herself with a mud clone. Hiding her chakra, she escaped out of the campsite without alerting Sajin and the seals she had put to detect any unknown chakra.

Inochi searched half of the area before daybreak, after which she returned to the campsite and took her place beside Gaara. Frustrated about another failed attempt, Inochi was now losing her patience. "This mission turned out to be babysitting instead of spying' Inochi cursed herself under her breath.

In the two months she came to know a lot of things about Suna, and many of those things could have served as valuable information to the leaf ANBU. She read databooks and jutsu books from the Suna library as she got special permission, being the babysitter of the Kazekage's son. However, not being able to report anything back about the very mission she had been assigned by the ANBU irked her a lot. She hated that such an easy spy mission, which under normal circumstances would have taken a week,got so much difficult.

-"I hate this!" Inochi cursed while trying to cook the day's meal.

- "You must hate cooking" Yura chuckled. "Sajin hates it even more I guess. Or rather she can't" Yura looked over to Sajin who was playing catch with Gaara.

- "You two are lovers aren't you?"

- "Lovers? Yes obviously. We are married" Yura laughed.

- "Married!?" Inochi was surprised as Yura was around Kakashi's age.

- "Yes, we got married just as we became jounin. We both lost our parents when we were around your age and from then we have been together"

- "Oh.. I hope they rest in peace. Did they die on a mission?"

- "They died during the one tail's attack" Yura said nonchalantly.

- "Wha-" Inochi was confused and bewildered. The two people who lost their parents to Shukaku were the ones who opened up to its jinchuriki so quickly.

- "I knew you would be surprised" Yura said. "We were obviously angry at Gaara sama. But..." Yura trailed off for a moment "But when Sajin got pregnant, we were going to tell the Kazekage about it, he is pretty close to us you know. However, we overheard him and the officials fighting over Gaara sama. We heard how terribly Kazekage sama was asking them to give Gaara a bit more time to get control over the beast. After listening to the conversation, we realised the obvious, that Gaara sama was not at fault, nor was Kazekage sama. To protect our village the Kazekage made his own son a jinchuriki and Gaara sama got cursed with it. We were scared of him, but from that moment, we couldn't bring ourselves to hate a child and his father who were pushed to the edge for the village"

Inochi got overwhelmed and teared up as Yura narrated his story. She knew this feeling, as she had seen a lot of villagers warm up to Naruto after reaching the same conclusion as Yura and Sajin.

- "I agree. I too cannot hate Gaara sama for something he couldn't control" Inochi said as continued with her cooking. "Sadly very few people think like us Yura san"

- "I hope more people would start accepting Gaara sama."

- "Me too. I hope I could help Gaara sama with it'

- "Oh but you are!" Yura suddenly spoke in an energetic tone. "You were beside Gaara the whole time. Your presence is what made Gaara approach us, and helped us remain calm while Gaara sama put forth his proposal. Your warm presence is what counters the fear people have against Gaara sama"

Inochi was told the same by Yashamaru too. She herself realised this fact that Gaara became a bit more stable than before. Even though he was still unable to control Shukaku, he did spend many days straight without losing control over the beast. Inochi was more than willing to help Gaara but at first, she needed to complete her mission, which was posing to be a lot more troublesome than she presumed.

The whole day Inochi pondered over the thought but couldn't make up her mind.

"Leave it for now Inochi. Let's continue with the mission" she again left the campsite at night, hoping that she would be able to locate the group this time. None of the clones had yet reported back anything, so if she couldn't find the group in the last spot of the southern outskirts, it would mean that the group had left Suna. This thought made Inochi shiver as the group leaving Suna would ultimately mean that she failed her assignment of locating the group before they could disperse to a more unknown place.

Inochi thus, with extra care looked over the last spot, and voila! she hit the bullseye. At first Inochi was a bit in doubt, thinking that the sketchy group would just turn out to be a normal group of hikers, but fortunately she saw one of the members wearing a scarf with the exact symbol that was described in the mission scroll; red clouds with a white border on a black background.