Porcelain

Puppet #14

Ai gently stroked Eirin's forehead. She was to stay in the hospital until she was discharged properly, much like Hana as well. Chiyo and Sasori had sustained light injuries, so they only needed to go for a check-up. Hana was in a different room and thus, Ai offered to look after her.

"Eirin, how much have you seen with those eyes?" Ai murmured. She placed her hand back onto her lap, stretching her fingers and adjusting her sleeve. The maid's eyes looked to the ceiling, wondering how long her mistress would be there.

She stood up and loomed over Eirin, adjusting her hair and clothes so that she could sleep more comfortably. It was a habit hard to erase. Ai smiled at the cuteness of Eirin, seeing that she had grown up well.

Sasori stared at the puppet he had finished in one day. He stared at it for a long time before frowning and placing it onto the table with a sigh.

This isn't right.

The puppet was supposed to look like Eirin, but no matter how much he tried, even if he replicated the hair, eyes and skin perfectly, it was missing something. He did love eternal beauty and wished to make everything in relation to that, but the object right in front of him, even though it was eternally beautiful, he disliked it.

He imagined Eirin's smile and bursts of happiness, finding himself smiling. He shook his head and wiped the smile off his face the minute he realised, rubbing his temples in frustration.

The hell?

He got off the chair and went straight to the hospital to check up on her. He found it better to have the living embodiment rather than the puppet.

He didn't even bother to knock on the door. He strode in easily, but his eyes widened and he stopped abruptly when he saw the scene in front of him. His gray-brown eyes went so wide that it looked like plates.

"You…!" Sasori hissed through his teeth.

Ai had her a hand right through Eirin's chest, electricity pulsing through it. Ai's previous warm aura had been replaced with a coldness that could freeze the room over. Blood spilled onto the bed and Eirin was still, her face showing a mixture of pain and shock.

"Oh whoops…looks like you saw me." Ai pulled out her arm, throwing the child back onto the bed. She licked the blood and stared at Sasori while doing so.

Sasori immediately wrapped his chakra strings around each limb so tightly that it looked like the life was squeezed out of them.

"Who are you?!" He lost his normal cool levelheadedness and growled lowly. He was beyond angry.

"Why are you so angry? She wasn't even your friend, was she?" Ai shrugged and chuckled.

Sasori didn't reply to her verbally and instead he sliced it. No blood came out, but rather, the clang of metal dropped to the floor after being cut.

"Metal…?" He stared at the woman, but realised that she was laughing, her voice changing from feminine to robotic. She emitted a heat from her body, breaking the chakra strings as well as burning off her clothes, face and body – but under it was a metal body.

"I'm a robot, you see." It spoke with a chilling laughter.

"A robot…?!" Sasori clenched his teeth.

They have inventions like these already!? He realised that he didn't have any puppets with him at that moment since he had just come from the puppet lab. Tch!

"You all were completely fooled…Yuno was incompetent…but I…AM NOT!" The robot charged at Sasori with a speed that even he could barely track. It wasn't long before the robot appeared in front of him, wearing a huge smirk on its face, its only arm emitting sparks from electricity.

Shit…! So it's in league with Ichirou?! Sasori cursed mentally. He didn't see any of this coming – he was about to die, by the hands of a robot no less.

The robot stabbed through a piece of puppet that Sasori had been substituted with.

"Sasori! Are you alright?!" Hana put down the red head and panted, holding her shoulder. Hana had jumped in through the window after seeing what was happening on the opposite end. She stood on the opposite side of the room from the robot.

"I'm…fine…" He said slowly, eyes wide.

"I'll deal with her. Chiyo, you take Eirin!" Hana cracked her knuckles, fuming. She had taken one look at Eirin in a pool of her own blood and something inside her just snapped.

Sasori stood up and looked around the room – what could he use instead of his puppets? He was shaken from what he had just saw. Normally it wouldn't have affected him since he saw it a lot in his career, but this time, it was different. Like Hana, something just snapped.

Chiyo broke the window, jumping into the room. The robot observed the new intruder and smirked.

"You can't save her…she's dead!" It laughed maniacally. It was a bone chilling laugh.

Chiyo frowned, "Why would you do this!?" She held Eirin up and immediately started healing her so that she wouldn't lose any more blood. She could feel the faint heartbeat that Eirin still had – she was still alive!

"I'm an independent robot under Ichirou-sama. I was never the maid of Eirin. This 'Ai' died when she was killed in the family assassination." The robot chuckled and hopped on one leg.

Sasori was frozen in his spot. If Hana didn't call out his name, he would have been stuck there, just staring at the situation.

"Sasori! Control them like a puppet! You don't have any puppets here, do you?" Hana whispered to the male.

Sasori nodded, feeling a cold sweat cover his body. He wiped it off and sent his chakra strings to the robot, who jumped out of the way at the last minute.

"You can't kill me!" The robot hopped towards Chiyo and Eirin, sending an attack their way, "DIE!"

"Your opponent is me!" Hana kicked the robot into the wall, leaving a dent in the side of its body.

Sasori set up string traps around the area, but only in areas that he thought that the robot would go.

Hana went in again, using a fire jutsu to burn through some parts of the metal body.

"You're annoying!" It went ahead and punched Hana in the shoulder, before sending a kick into her abdomen.

The kunoichi gasped out in pain and gritted her teeth, making up her mind to tear the robot into smithereens. She converted her chakra into her fingertips, condensing it so thickly that the air around her turned hot.

"I SHOULD NEVER HAVE TRUSTED YOU…!" Hana lurched off her feet and went towards the robot, slashing at it with her hand.

The robot dodged and hopped near Sasori, setting out to kill him. The red head had a smirk on his face when the robot went into his trap – the strings wrapped around its body and held it still. The robot tried to burn through it again, but it didn't work as Sasori changed the chakra element from earth to water. Before the robot was able to electrify its way out of the strings, Hana sliced right through its head and body, destroying the central system that controlled movement.

The woman didn't stop there, and continued to slice it up until it was nothing but tiny scraps on the ground.

"Stupid robot…taking Ai's identity like that…!" Hana hissed, stomping on a section of the robot face.

Sasori quickly went over to where Chiyo and Eirin were, ignoring Hana's rage even though he wanted to join in.

"Is she…?!" Sasori's voice held worry.

Chiyo's eyes widened at the emotional change in Sasori's voice – she hadn't heard him speak so emotionally in so long. The grandmother nodded her head and smiled at her grandchild. "Eirin is going to be fine. She's still alive. That thing didn't pierce through her heart – coincidentally."

Sasori let out a sigh of relief that he didn't even know he had been holding. He shook his head and turned to look up when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Thanks for helping me out back there." Hana grinned. "I got to vent out my anger at the piece of junk."

"You're hurting my shoulder." Sasori glanced at his shoulder, feeling it about to break from the strong grip.

Hana let it go and laughed nervously. "I guess I'm still angry…" She muttered a few words under her breath and went to the side of the bed, where she was closer to Eirin. She stroked the side of her face, a sad smile on her face. "It must be hard to be targeted for something…that you are completely innocent over."

Sasori stared at the puppet of Eirin he had made. It was still on the table, waiting to be played with. He picked it up and stared at it for a long moment, wondering what he should do with it.

The puppet itself was not smiling. Sasori stared at the other puppet on the table – but this time, it was the one that belonged to Eirin. He had seen it on the table next to her hospital bed and took it with him. He didn't even know why.

For a long while, he just stared at them. He didn't know what to do with them. He looked to the Sasori puppet and decided to change the impassive face into something else. He threw the puppet of Eirin away, deciding to start another one.

"How is she?" Hana knocked on the open door of Eirin's hospital room, signalling her entrance. She held a small bouquet of flowers.

Chiyo, who sat on a chair next to the bed, turned to face the worried mother. "She's doing fine. She's lost a lot of blood, so we had to give her transfusions."

"…I see. That's a relief. When will she be discharged?" Hana pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat next to Chiyo, handing her the flowers. The grandmother put them into the water filled vase.

"Not too soon. Maybe up to a week or so, or longer…"

Hana sighed and rested her chin on her palm. Regret lingered in her golden eyes, "…this happened because I was ignorant. I can't believe I didn't realise that Ai was no longer Ai. I should have known…when Yuno didn't kill her, but rather 'knocked her out'. If it was an enemy, he would have killed them…no matter who they were." She buried her face in her hands, sighing dramatically.

Chiyo observed her and patted her back, "It's over now. Don't blame yourself."

"But she nearly died because of that stupid blunder…!"

"But she didn't. Honestly, it's a miracle."

"A miracle…does such a thing even exist in a world like this?"

"It sure does. Your daughter is a living miracle."

Hana lifted her head up, shocked by those words. Indeed, when she thought back on it, it seemed as if it was nothing but trouble. People targeting her, trying to kill her…but she was alive on top of it all.

"It truly is…" Hana began to shed tears.

Sasori stopped at the door, seemingly unable to go in because of the atmosphere. He awkwardly shuffled in, then shuffled out of the doorway.

Hana and Chiyo both seemed to notice his presence, as they looked his way. The red head just stood there, holding something in his hands.

"Sasori? Are you here to visit Eirin too?" Hana smiled, wiping a tear.

He nodded slowly, walking in. The young puppet user went over to the vase that stood on the window sill and placed the things he was holding there, sitting against the glass.

"That's…" Hana's eyes widened and she couldn't help but grin. Chiyo chuckled silently.

"I…am weak." Sasori had his back towards the female members of the room. He was staring at the flowers and replaying the previous battle in his head. Even though everything that happened a few days ago was in actuality just the night and part of the day, it felt like a very long time.

"That robot…wasn't a puppet. My puppets were useless…" His voice was soft and he was mumbling, but the pair of females could pick up what he was saying with their ninja-trained ears.

Chiyo and Hana didn't say a word. They knew that Sasori was mulling over something internally, and that it was best to leave him to think for it himself.

The child turned around, eyes downcast. He glanced at Eirin. The battles that he fought were on a completely different level to those of Chunin missions. He had met with a sense of failure, even though he had fought his best.

Stronger…Sasori thought. I need to get stronger.

He glanced at the two puppets that he had placed next to the vase. He had made and fixed them up as a pair.

A puppet of himself, and a puppet of Eirin. Both reflected the features of the people they were based on; one mimicked the red hair and the wide, gray-brown eyes of the puppet user, and the other reflected the emerald green eyes, dark hair and porcelain skin of the puppet lover.

Sasori had found the missing link.

Before he visited Eirin, he worked tirelessly to finish it, perfecting every small detail until he was satisfied.

That's why, on the puppets' faces…they held a smile. A smile for the days to come, a smile for the end of misfortune.

A smile for Eirin.