Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.
Warning: Spoilers for the manga up through Chapter 511.
Senbazuru
As one, the citizens of Amegakure looked up at the sky, where a magnificent rainbow curved across an unbroken cerulean expanse. In most places, blue skies and a rainbow after a storm would be greeted with happiness and relief, but Rain's people felt only foreboding. For the clouds to disappear like this was unnatural, and could only mean that something had gone dreadfully wrong.
A team of shinobi was the first to find Konan's body, following the rainbow to its end. She floated on the great inland sea over which the village was built, surrounded by a multitude of paper. They cried out in disbelief, and one of them lifted her body, feeling the cold, dead weight of it. As they carried the corpse back to the city, people gathered around them, forming a processsion that wound its way through the streets to Pain's tower.
They found the gates unbarred and the great double doors standing ajar, something else that no one could remember ever happening before. They entered slowly, tentatively, worried that they were trespassing in God's domain but also believing that this was where the Angel should be laid to rest.
Somehow, it felt right to carry Konan to the top of the tower, so that's what they did. There, they found a room where the shapes of seraphim were carved into the walls, and a body they presumed to be Pain's lay on a bed of paper roses. There was a depression in the flowers next to him, as if another body had lain there until recently. They took this as a sign that they had come to the right place, that this was where Konan's body was meant to stay.
The ninja who set her down beside Yahiko was one of the two Jiraiya had confronted upon his entry to the Rain weeks ago. Looking down at her now, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a simple white sheet of paper. Many shinobi carried these-not just in Ame, but in all the villages-so that they could write exploding or sealing tags if needed while they were out on missions. Slowly and carefully, he folded the paper once, then again, and again, until something that roughly resembled a crane sat in his hand.
"Medic! We need a medic-nin over here, now!" Clutching his teammate tightly, Masuo ripped off his forehead protector and tied it around the stump of her arm, praying that the bleeding would stop. "Come on, Akisane, don't you die on me! Hold on, you hear me?" He turned to their other comrade. "Don't just sit there like a bump on a log! Help me keep her alive till the medics get here!" His eyes widened in shock as he realized that his friend had a kunai protruding from his forehead.
Gravel crunched under the feet of the man who'd thrown the kunai as he approached. Two of his comrades were advancing behind him.
Masuo set Akisane on the ground and stepped forward. Three against one. Shit.
Then there was a rustling sound, and hundreds of sheets of paper descended from the sky. They converged on Masuo's three assailants, covering them completely and muffling their shouts until they fell limply to the ground.
"I know this doesn't match all the flowers," he said, "but this is the only kind of origami I ever learned how to make. My grandmother taught me when I was just a kid. She used to tell me stories about being a ninja, and I'd sit there listening and folding paper. I think...that's when I decided that I wanted to be a shinobi. I guess it doesn't look like much, but please take it anyway. It's the best way I can think of to say thank you."
A civilian woman who owned a tea shop stepped forward and placed her own crane next to Masuo's. Despite not looking older than thirty-five, she was leaning on an elaborately carved wooden cane, and struggled to stand up again after bending to put down the crane. A boy, whose appearance clearly indicated that he was her son, hurried forward to help her.
"My son! My son is still in there!" Hokezu struggled against the restraining arms of her neighbors. "I have to get back inside, my son is in there!" Erratic light from the fire that had consumed her home flashed over her face. One of her legs had been extensively burned, but she didn't even seem to notice.
"I don't understand," one of the neighbors said. "Why would Hanzou firebomb a civilian district?"
"Because most of the people here are sympathetic to Pain-sama's faction," another explained. "He wants to make it clear that no one who opposes him is safe, even if they aren't a shinobi."
"Please! I have to save my son!" Listening to Hokezu's heartrending cries, one of the neighbors closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.
"I'll go-" The neighbor broke off as a squad of ninja wearing the garb of Pain's faction came running down the street with Konan in the lead.
"Konan-sama! Hokezu-san's son is still in that house!"
Konan nodded, and without a word walked into the burning building.
"Her paper!" one of the neighbors exclaimed, clutching the other's arm. "Won't it burn?"
His companion shook his head. "Not if it's imbued with chakra."
Sure enough, only a few breathless minutes passed before Konan emerged from the collapsing house. She carried a young boy in her arms, covered by a protective blanket of her paper.
"Daichi!" Hokezu stumbled forward and embraced her son. "Oh, thank you, Konan-sama! Thank you!"
As Hokezu and Daichi withdrew, two middle-aged men stepped forward, carrying paper cranes of their own. If not for the scars that marred one man's face, the two would have been identical.
"Please!" Serikawa pleaded with the stern-faced guard. "Just let me see him for a few minutes, that's all I ask."
Unmoved, the guard glared at him. "Your brother has been arrested for sedition. He is not allowed visitors."
"Please," Serikawa repeated, lowering himself to one knee and bowing his head. "Our parents are dead, and Nii-san is all I have left."
The guard said nothing, and his arms remained folded across his chest. It was clear that Serikawa's words were falling upon deaf ears.
Fingertips gently brushed Serikawa's shoulder. "Raise your head, Serikawa-san." He looked up to see Konan standing beside him.
The guard was instantly on alert, one hand dropping to the hilt of his katana. "What are you doing here?"
"You have several of Pain's subordinates imprisoned here. I have come to secure their release."
The guard's eyes narrowed. "Everyone here has been arrested for crimes against Hanzou-sama, the legitimate ruler of Amegakure. It's not up to you to say that they should be released." He began to draw his sword, but Konan warned him, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Looking down, the guard saw several exploding tags wrapped around the scabbard. With a yelp of alarm, he jerked his hand away. The tags ignited, and the guard dropped as the blast embedded shards of his own blade into his flesh.
More exploding tags blew the lock off the door. A flurry of paper butterflies soared into the building, and the sounds of cells being broken open echoed from within. Two duplicates of Konan followed after the butterflies, presumably to fight with the guards stationed inside.
Soon, prisoners began staggering out, supporting each other and blinking at the dim sunlight that filtered down from the overcast sky. Serikawa leapt up with a cry of joy as he recognized his brother among them. Pulling a hankerchief out of his pocket, he began dabbing at the deep slashes across the other man's face.
More and more people came forward to lay down paper cranes, setting them at the edge of the bed of flowers on which the two bodies rested. Soon the border of cranes completely encircled the corpses. Had anyone bothered to count them, they would have found that there were one short of a thousand.
Then a small figure pushed its way to the front of the crowd. It was a girl of about nine or ten, with a kunai holster and shuriken pouch hanging on her belt. She wore no forehead protector, indicating that she hadn't yet graduated from the Academy. She held a paper crane in her cupped hands.
"Just you watch, I'm gonna be Amekage someday!"
"You can't be Amekage 'cause we don't call our leaders that, 'cause we aren't one of the Great Nations."
"We will be when I'm Amekage!"
"Besides, Ikeuchi-chan, you can't be Amekage anyway 'cause you're a girl, and girls can't be as strong ninjas as boys."
"Says who?"
"I dunno. But everybody knows that."
"Nuh-uh! What about Konan-sama? She's Pain-sama's angel, isn't she? She's, like, second-in-command of the village, isn't she?"
The boy shifted from foot to foot. "Well, yeah..."
"And you know all the stuff she's done! She fought Hanzou's ninjas all the time back during the civil war. Didn't she?"
"Well, yeah..."
"Didn't she even save your grandma?"
The boy looked down and scuffed his toes in the dirt. "Well, yeah..."
"So? She's just as good a ninja as any of the guys, right?"
The boy's shoulders slumped. "Yeah," he mumbled. "I guess she is."
Ikeuchi's eyes flashed. "Well, if she can do it, I can too! Just you watch!"
Ikeuchi looked down for a place to add her crane to the flock around the bodies, but the cranes were packed in wingtip to wingtip. So she knelt down just outside the ring of cranes, and reached out to gently toss hers into Konan's outstretched hand. "Thank you for everything, Konan-sama," she murmured, and all of the others echoed the sentiment.
Then the citizens of Amegakure slowly filed out, leaving Yahiko and Konan at the top of the tower, surrounded by exactly one thousand cranes.
A/N: With the focus on Konan and the past-events-interspersed-with-present-day format, I suppose this could be considered a companion piece to "Sunbeams Through the Rain."
"Senbazuru" means a set of 1,000 paper cranes. There's an old Japanese legend that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you'll be granted a wish. Since WWII, the legend has come to be associated specifically with a wish for peace, because of a girl named Sadako Saseki who tried to fold a set of senbazuru after she got leukemia as a result of radiation exposure from the Hiroshima bombing. She died before she could finish, but her friends and family folded the remaining cranes and buried all 1,000 with her.
Ikeuchi appeared in a story I wrote a couple of years ago, "The Pure of Heart."
I hope you all enjoyed the story!