Title: Human
Chapter: 2/?
Rating: EHM.
WARNINGS OH DEAR GAWD: For this chapter, mild violence, language, and Hidan.
Summary: Take the ideas from Waking Life and combine it with the setting of Naruto with our two favorite Akatsuki members, and this is the love child. Hopefully there are no deformities. :D
Notes: I pretty squee'd in happiness at getting a review the day after posting. Thanks much, black55widow! 3 Anyway, I thought things might've went by a little too fast in this chapter as far as character development goes… Yes? No? Reviews are love, my pretties!
It's been a week since I've been here. It's not as bad as I thought, I guess. Maybe it's a little less free, but I have my art and that's all that really matters. I still hate that Itachi character with a passion... I have to start training myself better to resist genjutsu. Someday, when we've gained control of all the tailed beasts and the world is under our thumb, he won't be necesary anymore and I swear, I'll kill him. A person like that who is blind to art doesn't deserve to live. The rest of the members are alright, I suppose. Including me and Leader, there's nine of us. Ten if you count Zetsu's other personality... He works by himself, but I guess that's because he's not like the rest of us. Everyone else has special fighting skills that balance out the Akatsuki, to make us the perfect group of ninjas. I'm sure Zetsu can fight, but it didn't take me that long to realize that he's probably just here for spying, teleportation and covering our tracks. The guy eats the bodies of people we've killed. Whatever floats his boat and makes him useful, I guess.
Itachi is partners with the man who looks like a shark, the one who was there the day I got recruited. He seems normal enough-despite owning a gigantic sword that's almost as big as he is and having blue skin-but I still have the feeling that he has a screw loose somewhere. I met Hidan and Kakuzu on my second day as a member. Hidan doesn't have a screw loose; He's completely torn apart and malfunctional and the gears and bolts are strewn all over the place. He's a Jashin, and saying that is my way of describing everything wrong with him in a total of three words. His partner has skin that's a sickly green color, covered from head to toe in stitches. From what I heard, some of them came from Pain punishing him for killing his partners. Guess that's why he's with Hidan now. Afterall, Hidan's immortal. Shit, that's gotta be a bitch.
On my fourth day, I saw him stretching forward to pick something up off the low-table and I spotted a few oddly shaped lumps on his back through his cloak. Maybe he has a tumor? I've only seen Konan once, walking through the kitchen to get food for Pain. She was quite good looking, actually. Elegant. I haven't seen Pain in person before and there's a rumor floating around that the reason he isn't seen frequently has to do with a disibilty he has. Konan says that's not very far from the truth. I've seen how strange the rest of them can be, and honestly it makes me glad I was paired up with Sasori. His only real problem is his inability to connect with sentient beings on a decent level. One of the first things he said to me was he felt like he drew a short straw with me as his partner.
I took some offense to his words since I already decided I respected him, which is actually pretty rare since I hardly ever meet anyone worthy of respect in any way shape or form. But I've never met anyone else who had that much of a drive for artistic expression before, and not only that, but a person who mixed traditional art with the art of fighting. He was half the reason I grew accustomed to the Akatsuki so quickly. I think its somewhat ridiculous that he thinks true art lasts forever, though. The role of lasting forever lies within the effect the art has on something, not the art itself. But art can't be beautiful forever, it fades like everything else in the world. Art is only a representation of everything we are and everything we see. We can be immortal if we want, but that's not the way of nature and how we are supposed to live. I look at my master and wonder if he'll ever realize that. He told me he is locked inside a puppet, which will allow him to live on forever, just like his works of art. That means everything beautiful will fade in his eyes, and he'll only grow tired of the life around him.
"I'm already dead." That's what he said when I told him my thoughts.
"Then why torture yourself by forcing yourself to live on physically?"
He laughed at me like I was fool who simply did not understand. "You're the type to die young, brat." His voice shifted into a softer sound as he stepped out of Hiruko's wooden husk and let the room's air hit his half-lifeless body.
"Maybe you're right." I stared at him, concentrated strongly on his features admiringly. He began polishing the beautifully carved face on Hiruko's back, until he noticed me staring.
"What is it?" He said, only slightly irritated. This was the only third time I saw him leave Hiruko.
"Is that what you looked like?"
"Clarify." He sighed.
"Is that what you looked like before you defiled your own body and shoved yourself into a freaking puppet? Un." Hope that clarified.
His fingers flexed a few inches away from his face. "Yeah. I made a puppet that looked like me beforehand. The Third Kazekage had tissue compatible to mine, luckily enough. He was a bit harder to take down than most my opponents, but it was worth it for the flesh and the magnificent puppet he made." He smiled darkly.
"Flesh?" I never got close enough to Sasori while he was outside Hiruko to see what he was made out of. I'd always figured it was some sort of synthetic material, or even thin rubber. Like I said, I never got a good look. All the joints had to be wooden though. "Do you feel anything?"
"Do you remember having your teeth checked and having novocaine in your mouth as a kid?"
"Of course. Un"
"That's what it's like. You don't feel any sensations, like warmth or pain, but there's enough feeling to know if someone's cut you or touched you."
I winced. I hated whenever I had novocaine injected into me. I couldn't imagine that feeling being everywhere in my body, all the time. It didn't feel right. "Do you like feeling like that?"
He shrugged. "There's nothing right or wrong with it."
It was quiet for a little while longer, as I started toying with some fresh clay I just recieved. Until another thought jumped into my mind. I stared at Sasori again. He didn't pick it up, or maybe he was simply ignoring me.
"Master Sasori?"
"What do you want now, brat?" He asked gruffly.
"You have a tongue, but you don't have any saliva glands, right?"
"I have a few, but not like normal humans do." He replied, cross.
"Oh, so your mouth isn't totally dry, but it's not really wet either?"
"Have you ever smoked marijuana?" He breathed out while glaring at me.
"Nah. Un."
"Okay well, when you do, the THC makes your tongue feel a little thick and dry, and that's what my tongue feels like all the time."
"I didn't know you were a pot head, Master Sasori." I joked.
"I'm not." He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I suppose I should smoke to see what you're talking about, un."
"That's really not necesary. You're bad enough sober."
I frowned. "You're not very good with communication, huh?"
"Recreational communication has no purpose whatsoever. I communicate to give and receive orders, sometimes to ask for directions and order food. Beyond that, talking and listening is pointless."
My frown deepened. "That's not true. Voicing thoughs, opinions and feelings makes us who we are. And I know that's important to you, otherwise you wouldnt have gone through the trouble of making your puppet look like you." He stopped working on Hiruko and slid off off his back, landing on the floor a dozen feet away from me before taking a few steps forward. I could see the texture of his skin now.
"Words are dead. Anger, hatred, happiness, sadness. Feelings are intangible, they aren't real in the form of words. You can't accurately describe a thought or feeling to the point where it truly mimics how you feel. There's no point in using the words."
I molded the clay in my hands into a bird, using the tongue on my right palm to lap at the gray substance and form it faster as I spoke. "Things must've been easy back when language first started to emerge in primitive culture during later human evolution, when we started forming groups and sharing caves together. Like pointing to a certain food or tree, and coming up with a sound for it, spreading the trend to the rest of the group so that when someone said 'orange' or 'meat', the person they were speaking with could identify what they were talking about and know right away they were talking about oranges or meat. But when it started getting more complex, that's where things took meaning. We transcended animilistic behavior in favor of being able to express who we are. We came forth and were able to make words to try to make an attempt at describing our experiences, because humans wanted to escape their self-impended isolation. When someone says a word like 'pain' it isn't enough for you to feel like you're inside their mind, experiencing everything they did at a certain specific moment where pain was involved. But you can take in the word 'pain' and your mind will subconsciously try going through your memories of pain or lack of pain. If you use the right words with the right people, you might find someone who you can relate to. The feeling of being understood is what many people live for, as transcient as it may be."
Silence.
There was an eruption of laughter from the physically and emotionally hollow man before me. "Some people suffer from a lack of life. Some suffer from an over-abundance of life. Guess which ones we are?"
"You heard me but didn't listen." I was disappointed.
"Don't worry, you actually won that round. It just leads into a bigger question now, that's all. And there's also the fact that I have little emotions to express in the first place."
He was right. I try to take in too much life in, all at once, because I know my nature will be my undoing. I'm afraid I won't get everything out of this world before I go. I suffer from an over-abundance of life. And Sasori has mellowed into pure numbness, suffering from a lack of life.
"What are your ambitions, Master Sasori? Why did you join the Akatsuki?"
He continued to smile with half lidded eyes. "When people don't have anything else to do, they complete the most mindless of tasks. To me, that's all the Akatsuki is: One, big mindless task. But I don't know. Maybe I feel like if I have the world in my hands, I'll feel as though this thing I've been working on without any real will has given me something to be proud of, like I've done something. Too lazy to find out what my personal role in life is, I suppose. So I resorted to this."
Two ends of a magnet it seemed. "Which is the most universal human characteristic, Master? Fear or laziness?" The bird in my hand fused with just enough chakra to flap its wings a couple times, perched on my hand's lips.
He looked like he genuinely considered the question before speaking. He relaxed his arms, and let the joints crack slightly as they loosened.
"Both. People are either too lazy to get over their fears, or too fearful to get over their lazy state of mind."
~+~+~
The Akatsuki was strange. Sometimes, we'd be like a family, other times we'd all be completely indifferent toward each other and sometimes we'd act as though we could be real human beings though most times, not really. Everyone-including myself-was already pretty desensitized, but somehow being in Akatsuki erased any sympathy or concern for the world that we may have had left. I acted the same toward everyone, but Sasori was quite a bit different. I didn't mean to but I showed him a different side of myself than the side that faced the rest of the world. I'd like to think he looked at me in the same light, and say that I could truly believe I was something different in his eyes since I was the one that actually took part in listening to what he had to say on the full moons. About once every month, when the full moon was hanging pale and exhausted above the world, I would find him at the entrance of the base trying to get an insect to approach him of its own accord or get a stone to hit a certain branch on a tree or something small and ridiculous like that.
In fact he was always doing this every night. I found out his habit because I had the same place and small insignificant idea set in mind the first few times I experienced insomnia at the base. We'd sit together in silence, the occasional oddball conversation or debate making its way through the gentle whisper of eavesdropping cicadas and crickets. But evenings of full moon were when he brought up the really strange and abstract things, or at least they weren't strange most of the time but rather they seemed out of character for him to discuss. The first time we spent an hour under the full moon, he talked about how he's waiting for the right person to kill him, because he doesn't truly intend on living forever. I felt like he'd just confessed something he wouldn't dare tell anyone else since all he ever goes on about is how only the weak chose to let themselves burn out and die, how he was going to live on forever and all eternity. The second full moon he talked about a pet his grandmother gave him when he was nine. Apprerantly he became increasingly aware of his lack of emotion around that time and had it in his mind that he should test himself to see whether or not he still cared about life. He tortured the rat, removing the intestines and cutting it's stomach open while it was still alive.
He wondered what was wrong with himself. The third full moon, he talked about the large steel cylinder in his room. 'Said it contains a series of fluids that preserve his human body, which was still alive. "Sometimes I transfer my heart back into it for a few moments. To remember what it's like. I guess I'm still a victim of nostalgia." He noted dully with the slightest hint of something else. On full moons, the tide is at it's strongest and all the water gets pulled as far upward as it can without breaking the laws of gravity. Almost all of the body's composition is water and all the chemicals shift when the full moon pulls at that water inside us. Research and statistics show that the number of abnormal activity and mysterious murders increase considerably during a full moon. Maybe that's what happens to Sasori and everytime there's a full moon it pulls on the water inside what little blood he has left in his flesh-wood body. But every full moon, I've learned something about Sasori to help me figure out why he is the way he is.
Tonight was the same. I looked at the old fashioned Roman numeral clock that hung in my spacious, white stone-set room. It read 4:34 a.m. I always waited quite a bit, so that I could make it look like I had actually made an attempt to sleep before joining him outside. I don't know why I bother since it doesn't really matter to him. I started walking up the ramped hallway, my steps echoeing around my ears before falling behind me distantly. The path got more and more narrow and as the warm moonlight got closer, the burning lanterns nailed next to each other in a straight line along the dark walls stopped following me. I stepped onto dirt and gravel while the cool and slightly damp air of April seeped into my skin and some pebbles crunched beneathe my feet. I saw him but a couple steps to my left, staring at me with cold, dead gray eyes. His distinctive vibrant scarlet hair stood out like a scream within the calm. I sat beside him on the oddly shaped log and he returned his gaze to a smooth rock he had in his hand. His thumb stroked it several times. Occasionally he'd turn it around in his hand slowly like he was looking for flaws.
I silently agreed to his lack of noise knowing that he'd talk when he was ready to. A gentle wind blew, rustling the leaves on the numerous trees around us. A squirrel had dropped his food from one of the trees and came rushing down immediately to grab it as an owl in the distance let out a loud whooping sounds from the very bottom of its lungs. For a few seconds everything stood still and all was silent, like the forest around us was calmly waiting for Sasori to speak along with me. "When I was little, a highly skilled ninja killed my parents while they were on a mission together." I blinked, but continued to look forward silently. "My grandma was watching me while they were gone and even though she found out the day after, she didn't tell me until a month later." He paused, then smiled sadly at the bright white stars hanging in random spots in the navy blue sky that was streaked with billowing, dusty purple and gray clouds.
"I waited for them everyday. I watched the world outside my bedroom window, thinking one day they'd come walking down the road just outside our beautiful house and come in to tell me the crazy, hilarious story of why they were gone for so long. We'd all laugh about it and go somewhere to eat and things would go on unchanged like they always had." Something under my skin twitched just slightly. "One day, about two weeks after my parents died, I was looking out at Suna and I saw it. I saw two parents, with a kid about my age between them. They were laughing and smiling and the kid looked so happy... I guess that's when it hit me that the kid holding hands with his parents would never be me. My grandmother knew I found out, because she saw the way I looked at that child with pure envy. She tried to cheer me up by teaching me how to make and control puppets." His eyes made an invisible trail from the sky to my face, fire burning behind the ice in his eyes. "I guess that was the best thing that happened to me."
All I could do was look at him. I thought back to all the times when he told me he didn't like waiting and he didn't like keeping other people waiting. Over the past four months, it was all I heard whenever I was late for something, and whenever he had kept anyone else waiting there were a string of apologies attatched followed by him verbally kicking himself for being a shameful hypocrite. Now I knew why. "What's with the stare of pity? Your parents were killed too, right?" I didn't show any signs of shock or surprise. "How did you know?" I asked plainly. The owl didn't sound so distant anymore. "We're actually pretty similar. Except we went in different directions because of detail. Let me guess. You saw your parents die in front of you." He talked about it like he was guessing what I had to eat for breakfast. My stomach churned. "That's not really a good topic of discussion right now." Something I couldn't read swept across Sasori's eyes, but his voice remained calm and impassive. "Right. Another time."
I watched the squirrel scamper down the tree and then circle around it at a normal pace, looking for something it must've buried earlier. The noise from the owl drew close and closer, until it perched itself on a low branch on the tree just next to the significantly small squirrel. The small creature was foolish. It gazed at the golden feathers of the owl in awe, like they were the most precious, divine, alluring things it had ever seen. Slowly-step by step- it crept up closer... trustingly. The owl shot out its wings exposing the brightest tones of its silk feathers, and the squirrel stared wide in rapt attention with its beady eyes, eyes screaming that his wish had been granted. But the owl swooped down and caught the grotty, miserable animal in its sharp, rough-skinned clutches. One of its pointy claws dug through the squirrel's skin as it was picked up against it's will, the yellowish dagger piercing all the way through its heart.
In one strong graceful move of deceit, the squirrel who had admired the golden owl so had died violently. Its blood stained three of the feathers it had once coveted.