Kankuro adjusted the goggles over his eyes for the hundredth time, turning the puppet's arm over in his hands. He was in his workshop, surrounded by piles and piles of parts salvaged from Sasori's puppet army. He had just returned to Suna, carrying twenty sealing scrolls full of wreckage, and he planned on going over every single joint, gear and auto-trigger.
He set the part down as the door creaked open, and he waved the figure forward without turning around, moving the goggles onto his forehead and rubbing his eyes – he'd been working through the night. A plate was set down on the workbench next to him and he took a drink, nearly choking as that sound echoed throughout the large room.
Someone was laughing.
No, not even that.
They were giggling.
He hated it when people laughed at his puppets. They weren't 'dolls', or 'toys', or even 'oh look! Life-sized action figures! Damn it, they were built for WAR! He slammed the cup onto the table and whipped around in his seat, an angry painted face turning to find one of the Konoha nin leaning over him, a girl with her hair in buns that was grinning from ear to ear.
"What?"
He had practically snarled the word, but the girl didn't react. Instead, she picked up the discarded arm and flexed it, letting out a girlish laugh as it swung in the air.
"This thing…"
If she said 'cute' then he was going to kill her.
"It's awesome! The balance, the wire arrangement on the finger joints…did you built this?"
…Huh?
"Er…no. It's from one of Sasori's puppets. He destroyed mine, and I need to make new ones. I'm just-"
"Ohhhh! Look at this needle-loader! I've never seen such a compact design! And the pressure sensor on this-is this some kind of reactive armor? Incredible! And this tail…Mmmhmmm."
The girl finally paused in her mad dash around the room, making an odd little purring noise as she bent over the remains of Sasori's armored shell. Kankuro was gaping in shock, watching the girl handle trapped parts so casually, parts that had taken him hours to deduce their function and disable them.
"Hey!"
He jumped in his seat as she turned with a glare on her face, holding an automatic shuriken launcher in one hand and a multi-cell poison store in the other.
"Are you staring at my butt?"
"Wha-no! I'm…hey, those things are dangerous!"
"These? C'mon! I've been playing with this stuff since I was five!"
"You…have? Alright then…" He grabbed a random hand off the pile next to him and held it out. "Disarm this, then."
She laughed and jabbed the point of a kunai between the little and ring finger. The mechanism clicked and a plate on the back of the hand shifted with a grinding sound. She waved the hand at him, now with it's fingers outstretched, laughing at the incredulous look on his face.
"I've seen this setup before on other traps. The flaw is that the same wires that open the trap-plate also control the ring finger. Jam that in place, and the plate can't open."
"Ok…how about this?"
"Hmmm…looks like a chakra-sensitive blade release-"
"But there's a reverse-tension spring system that-"
"Could be some kind of variant on the old-"
"Just reinforce the central support-"
"And centralize the gear system for the legs-"
"Have to extend the secondary guiding rod by fifteen millimeters-"
Covered in dirt, oil and sweat, the two figures danced around the half-finished puppet lying on the table, juggling tools between them and tearing apart the remains of Sasori's puppets for their parts.
What was it about her? Maybe it was the way her nimble fingers disabled lethal traps with ease? Perhaps the sound of her voice as she read his notes? How the light from a welding torch reflected off her grease-streaked skin?
"Hand me that wrench - I think I can tweak the reload speed on this shuriken caster…"
It was her voice. She had the most beautiful voice…