Comic: A Practical Application

Contains manga spoilers, GaaNaru and ShikaTema. If you're cool with that, go ahead.

This is kind of my first fanfic, as the comics (one of them still unfinished) I've drawn for the fandom before have been either scripted by other people or meta. So here goes my Author's Note. Read it after you've read the comic, lest you be spoiled:

I tried to give most characters who show up a little different costume from their current canon attire, seeing as they're probably as much as ten years older, though with some you may not be able to tell and with some I had to keep them more recognizable and less realistically changed. Shikamaru is wearing a Sunagakure flak jacket in the second panel. He and Temari have a home in both villages, I think, spending a year here and another there or something. Not being kages like the other international couple featured, they can do that.
Oh yeah, and Karin. I want her in Konoha, living happily ever after.

I made up the cactus. There's one called silver torch, which looks pretty neat, and you can imagine it's the same but with colours (other than green) reversed. Since this is a fictional universe, they can have fictional plants.

I like Gaara's palanquin thing from the third Shippuuden movie, though I find it a little out of character he would travel in one instead of on foot. I figure the people escorting their dear beloved kage insisted, and he found it kind of touching and went along with it to make them happy.
It's a little repetitive that he's talking with Kankuro again, considering that at-the-moment-unfinished comic where he also does, but I couldn't picture Temari having this conversation and didn't want to use a minor character/practically-OC. (I also like drawing Kankuro's nose.)

Matsuri is one of Gaara's bodyguards there, and Sari's regular job is probably not being Shikamaru and Temari's brat's babysitter, but I wanted to include her, too. Their buddy Ittetsu is Gaara's secretary, as you may recall from the other earlier comic. They are also Gaara's friends, though they're not introduced specifically in that context.
Free cookies salted tongue for you if you recognize the other four characters I also felt compelled to include and who are (eta: in panel 13, not 2. I thought it'd be obvious...).

And more imaginary free food if you somehow didn't guess the outcome beforehand, considering how much attention Minato's teleportation technique has been getting in the manga recently. Would you be willing to believe I came up with this before the chapter where the related seal's inclusion in a certain other parent's demon one was revealed?
(And one earlier version of the idea involved Gaara having it as a tattoo, too. But I thought a necklace would be more convenient, as he can just take it off if he doesn't want Naruto to pop in by surprise at the moment.)

Ahem, anyway. Naruto needs to learn hiraishin. Because of this.



My materials were as close to completely traditional media as possible: pens, ink+brush and correction fluid (lots of it), and this was also an attempt to break away from digital art for a while again.


Happy GaaNaru Fanday!