What is it, to own? No idea, because I don't.
Plucking Strings
"People react to puppets different than they do to human performers: they become more playful, more honest." - Hathe Koja
Hanabi felt like a little kid again as she made the little wooden doll dance on the table in front of her. She had once been told that her mother loved shadow puppetry, so much so that she would drag her father all the way to the capital to see famous productions. In her youth, Hinata had tried to learn the art as a way of connecting with their lost mother, with limited success. Hanabi had been delighted by the little performances her sister put on all the same. They were clumsy and simple, but it had been one of the few things the ill-fated siblings could enjoy together.
Hiashi had put a stop to it not soon after, likely finding them a painful reminder rather than a melancholic connection to the past.
Having the simple wooden puppet twirl and spin to her whims, not quite as fluid as a real dancer, but much better than the jerky movements she had been capable of a month ago, it bought her back to those simpler times. Even the training itself was nostalgic, bringing to mind the strict regimens she had been under in the Hyuuga compound. Although, Naruto was far from a strict mentor. Exacting, yes, but not strict. He simply expected her to do the best she could, and that seemed to have its own kind of weight in terms of motivation.
It was surprising that, with the time he was forced to spend out of the village – mostly in Mizu no Kuni these days, coordinating with the rebels – he had the time to see to her training. But he did. She could tell it was beginning to stretch him a bit thin. He used clones still, but only ever for tedious, laborious work like constructing spare puppets or the paperwork used to manage his ever-expanding network of spies.
Testing poisons, working on new designs, and training her. Those, he saw to himself, and it was beginning to grow too difficult to manage alongside his aggressive stance on missions. She knew that, eventually, he would have to give something up. She finished up her training by having the marionette move slowly through a basic stance of the jyuuken before having it hop into her hand. Her strings were still visible, and the wasted Chakra meant the exercises were quite tiring.
She moved through the building, aiming for where she knew Naruto would be working. She was a deft hand at navigating the controlled chaos of the various workshops by now, barely even noticing all the blond-haired clones scurrying about their work. She only ever noticed when Naruto was gone; the building became almost eerily quiet without the low din of construction. They would have been perfect opportunities to slack off from her training, but she always suspected he would just know somehow.
She found him precisely where she thought he would be. He was at his desk, observing two little puppet birds as they hopped about, twitched spontaneously, and generally acted like real birds. It was only when one ruffled its thin wooden feathers as if to take off that the disparity became obvious. It flapped twice, just about lifting itself into the air, only to flail awkwardly and quickly lose altitude.
The other one, a slightly lighter shade of ochre, attempted something similar. It managed to get into the air, but it couldn't really be called 'flight', so much as it was awkward hovering.
"Still refusing to just import and use Suna wood?" She asked suddenly, annoyed when he didn't so much as twitch. She had been working on her ability to move quietly too.
"Too brittle for what I have in mind. I think I'm getting closer with the composite though, it's just getting the right balance between density and durability."
One of the wooden birds flapped again and Hanabi saw the faint glint of metal along the front of its wings. All around the workbench and across the walls she could see dozens of different, hand-drawn designs, all of them sketched-out mechanisms for a new puppet. There was definitely a bird-theme, but she couldn't make out the end result. Well, there wouldn't be an end result if he couldn't work out how to make his creations fly, but she knew he had the persistence to make it happen.
"You have that look again," Naruto said, smirking as the tossed one of the puppets across the room to a small pile of its discarded counterparts, all different shades.
"What look?" She shot back, doing her best to set her features as neutrally as possible. "I don't have 'looks'."
He only had to stare at her bemusedly for a few seconds to make her realise what she said, her cheeks colouring instantly.
"You have that look that says, 'Why can't I make my own puppet yet?'"
"Well, why can't I?" She demanded, forceful enough that she hoped they wouldn't linger on how easily he could read her. He seemed ready to retort, only to pause thoughtfully, glancing down at the little doll in her hand.
"Show me how far you've come with that."
A spark of hope welled in her chest as she opened her hand, only having to concentrate a moment to make her Chakra strings latch on. Instead of setting the doll down, she had it leap from her hand. This wasn't a review, it was a demonstration. The doll landed in a tight roll, coming up in a dead sprint that would have looked quite dramatic if it wasn't making adorable little clicking noises as it ran across the table.
It was suddenly forced to dive to the side as a wicked beak slammed down where it had just been, carving a sliver out of the table.
"Hey!" Hanabi complained.
Naruto just raised an eyebrow, almost lazily controlling the bird with two fingers.
"I said show me how far you've come." His fingers twitched, but this was no demonstration. He wasn't going to any lengths to slowly show how each movement altered the seals controlling his puppets; his movements were incomprehensible blurs. Hanabi knew she couldn't rely on them to understand what the bird was about to do.
The anatomy doll jumped back, avoiding a low sweep from the bird's wing. Capped in sharpened metal as they were, it would have shorn clean through the little marionette. It grabbed a pen off the desk clumsily, twirling it like a staff and slamming it into the bird's head to divert its next blow. Naruto's puppet clearly wasn't designed for combat, it was just an experiment in flight, but that didn't make its beak any duller.
It reared up, wings flapping hard enough that if Hanabi hadn't braced the doll, it would have been bowled over. When it next lunged forward, Hanabi had the doll plant the pen like a polearm, so the point was driven down the bird's throat. If it was flesh and blood, it might have been a killing move, but as a puppet, it was no softer on the inside and it merely stuck the thing in place for a moment. Hanabi used the reprieve and had her doll leap forward, clambering awkwardly up the side of the bird until it had its little wooden arms wrapped around the larger puppet's neck. It thrashed and rolled, but couldn't dislodge its unexpected passenger.
It wasn't a victory, but it wasn't a defeat either.
"Alright, that's enough," Naruto said, letting his strings go slack and the bird go still.
Hanabi sighed and relaxed her own hand. It had been hard thinking on the fly, and harder still on her hand, unused to twitching and moving so suddenly in the heat of the moment. The moment she did, Naruto reacted faster than she could see. The bird lurched, throwing her doll off, and in the same movement speared forward. Its beak closed around the marrionette's neck and snapped shut, decapitating it in an efficient, brutal move.
"Hey," Hanabi whined, snatching the doll back and frowning at the two severed parts.
"Important lesson of the day," Naruto said, ignoring her glare. "You never let your guard down until you're certain your opponent is out of commission, or failing that, unable to attack." He glanced at the way she was cradling the worn old doll. He could repair it easily, but…
"I wouldn't worry too much about that. You'll be practising with something bigger soon enough."
Hanabi seemed to forget about the doll almost instantly, her eyes lighting up excitedly.
"You mean…?"
He nodded. "I'm going to be gone for a few days, we've been encouraged to aid the rebels on a few operations they've been planning, to secure their help in encircling Kiri. When I come back, I expect to find you with a puppet that you've made yourself. My clones won't help you, and if I find you've repurposed any of the parts in my workshop, I'll take great pleasure in destroying that puppet in front of you. This has to be your work, from scratch."
The girl nodded eagerly and made to rush off, only to nearly trip as a Chakra string attached to her foot, freezing it in place.
"Where are you going? We still have your taijutsu practice for the day."
"What do you care? You hate taijutsu," she muttered, frustrated at being held back from something she had been anticipating for so long.
"Yes, and it's abysmal for it, a weakness I did my best to overcome by doubling down on my puppetry. You have no such excuse. You have a perfectly viable form that you're good at," she flushed a little from the rare praise, "and have extensive teaching in."
"So, if you could go back, you'd focus more on taijutsu?" She asked sceptically.
He shrugged. "Probably not, but I didn't have the benefit of a teacher willing to correct those missteps." He flexed his fingers and one of the sturdier Dami models hopped off a nearby rack. "By force, if necessary."
Grumbling to herself and rolling her eyes, Hanabi nevertheless acquiesced and began walking to the training room.
"How did you get so good at imitating the jyuuken, anyway?"
Naruto stayed quiet, causing her to sigh. That probably meant it had something to do with Hinata. Whenever she brought her sister up recently, her unconventional teacher clammed up tighter than the Hokage's office. It had the additional effect of making him go even harder in their training, but that was okay. She suddenly had a bit of frustration to work out.
The rebels seemed very fond of their subdued little celebrations. He supposed it was necessary when you were forced out of your home and into a long, suffering fight against people you once thought of as friends. He did however think that celebrating after every successful mission by drinking themselves into a stupor was asking to get somebody killed. They were admittedly tight about their security, and a few people were always kept aside for the nightly watch, but it still seemed… excessive.
He sat towards the edge of the camp. It was away from the campfire – irritating, in the cloying damp that suffused Mizu no Kuni – but also away from all the Kiri rebels trying to get him to drink. He had never really worked out the appeal of alcohol and the drop in coherence that came with it. Still, he wasn't going to begrudge them for it. Despite the Mizukage's diverted attention, the target they had hit was still a tough one. As a prison camp for bloodline-users, it should have been. They not only had to worry about attacks from the outside, but from their own prisoners.
The fact that Yagura appeared to be taking prisoners as leverage instead of butchering them on the spot seemed to be a good sign. It said he believed he needed the advantage. The successful raid only boosted morale and, in general, spirits were high. But, they were also flowing freely, thus Naruto's separation.
"You could loosen up a bit," Sasuke said as he wandered over, the slight colour in his cheeks showing that he hadn't been as successful in rebuffing the rebels' hospitality. "It can't be healthy being so uptight all the time."
Naruto scoffed good-naturedly, "You're lecturing me on being uptight?" He rolled his shoulders, the cold was making him stiff. "Besides, you know what else isn't healthy? Having your throat slit because you were too drunk to notice an ambush."
Sasuke shrugged uncaringly. It amazed Naruto constantly how much he had mellowed since their Genin days. More specifically, since Sakura's death. It might have surprised some, but the blond secretly believed that, between him, Sasuke and Kakashi, Sakura's death had hit the Uchiha hardest. It seemed to have brought into sharp focus every rebuffed attempt at a connection between the two she had ever made.
After a long period of surly introspection, Sasuke had begun to open up to people more readily, almost as a way of making up for that now-impossible relationship. He had never loved Sakura, or anything mushy like that. It was just a regret that he was trying to make up for, in his own way. If Naruto's intuition was right, he would make Jounin soon. His interpersonal skills were really the only thing holding him back on that front. With what basically amounted to an apprenticeship under Kakashi – the one that had made a name for himself in the Third War, not their lazy, impudent teacher – he had been shaped into a powerful shinobi.
"Even for a ninja, you're paranoid, you know that?" The dark-haired teen muttered, taking a long sip from his cup. It was some fruity drink that was so mild you almost forgot it was alcoholic, until the hangover reminded you, painfully, or you tried to drink too much, in which case it had a hell of a kick. The rebels seemed very fond of it.
"Paranoid, and not dead," Naruto countered with a grin, clinking his own cup of tea against Sasuke's.
"Fair enough, although I wouldn't count on it staying that way if you leave that simmering for much longer," The Uchiha said, inclining his head towards their approaching third teammate. "Now if you'll excuse me, a certain kunoichi has been making eyes at me across the campfire for the last few minutes. As an Uchiha, I feel obligated to let her know all about these eyes." And with that he lifted off the log they had been using as a bench and sauntered off.
"No fraternizing with foreign ninja," Naruto called after him, torn between grinning and frowning. All it earned him was a rude gesture behind the Uchiha's back. What felt like a long time ago now, Sasuke had introduced himself with two goals: To kill his brother, and to re-establish the Uchiha clan. It seemed the second point on the teen's list was less of an afterthought these days. Still, Sasuke knew better than to do anything stupid.
The real reason for the frown sat down next to him a moment later, looking into her own drink indecisively.
"It's nice to see them able to be so happy, despite everything they've had to struggle against, isn't it?"
"They know tomorrow could be their last day, why not live it up every night?" He said, lapsing the two into a silence. He still hadn't worked out what to do about this situation. Hinata had been mostly ignoring him since that night; out of embarrassment or waiting for him to do something, he couldn't tell. It crept into his thoughts occasionally, like an unwanted intruder in his mind, and he still hadn't come to any kind of conclusion.
She was attractive. He could see that objectively. She was clearly enamoured with him. He could also see that. She was submissive, and didn't ask a lot of probing questions of him, which should have been a plus. At the same time, he just hadn't considered a relationship like that… at all. What was the point? If he was going to live to an age where that kind of thing mattered, then he could deal with it later. If he didn't, he would be dead. Hinata had forced his hand a little.
Did he like her? She was nice to be around, he supposed. He certainly got along with her better than most. Although, that might have been habituation more than anything, with how often he'd had to coordinate with her when his spy network was still a budding, unstable thing. The last person he had genuinely had a crush on was Sakura, and look how that turned out. But in all seriousness, working with his puppets, especially in understanding the underlying anatomy, had almost completely desensitised him to the female form. Or maybe it was getting wrist deep in Kin's chest cavity when he was thirteen-years-old.
He could look at it from an aesthetic viewpoint, admire it even, but it didn't particularly stir anything in him like he supposed it should. Again, it was something he hadn't put a lot of thought into. What he did know, was that this awkward silence was extending well past his tolerance. Just as he was about to turn and say something, Hinata beat him too it.
"I… wanted to apologise," she murmured, unable to pull her gaze out of her drink. It was the same thing the rebels were drinking – she apparently needed some liquid courage to even broach this. "It was inappropriate of me to put that kind of pressure on you. We're at war… and there are so many things going on… I was drinking and, I don't know, Ino must have put something strange in my head that night. I… normally I would never have been so… bold."
"It's… alright," he managed, somewhat lamely.
"No," she continued, her shoulders slumping progressively as she spoke, "I was foolish to even think you would look that way at someone like me. I'm not strong, like you. I don't have your dedication, or drive. When people hated you for being a Jinchuuriki, it only made you fight harder, I can't even protect my own sister."
Naruto's eyes widened, he hadn't thought anybody from his generation had worked that out, except maybe Shikamaru.
"I… I should go." She made to stand, only to gasp as she felt a warm hand close around hers, pulling her back down. His other hand found her chin, turning her until they were facing. His eyes searched her face for a moment, picking every detail apart. She felt like a puppet in that moment, under his scrutinising gaze. It was like she wouldn't, couldn't move. Not until he commanded it. His eyes were distant, calculating, as if a thousand unseen gears were churning away behind those blue orbs. All the same, she felt warm. His were eyes that saw potential in lifeless wood, and a small, longing part of her had always hoped that he would see something in her, that she couldn't see herself.
When he leaned forward, it was hesitant, testing. She couldn't even bring herself to reciprocate, too frozen by that roiling cloud of doubt swirling in her chest. It tightened like a clamp with every inch he crossed. This wasn't real. This was some terrible illusion that would shatter in a few moments. She would wake up and this would all be a bittersweet…
His lips were cold from the chilly night, their touch sending a spark of electricity down her spine, jolting her into the moment. She closed her eyes and sank into it, tentatively shuffling forward when a firm, calloused hand found her shoulder. They broke for a breath, and Naruto seemed ready to pull back. She didn't let him. Feeling a burst of courage burst from the bubbling happiness exploding in her chest, she brought a hand up behind his head, enjoying the feel of his spiky locks being drawn between her fingers.
When they did finally part, her cheeks were flushed, and her breaths came in short, quivering bursts. A wavering smile dancing across her lips.
She looked up… and her heart broke.
Naruto's expression had barely changed. He was looking at her like a particularly unsatisfying experiment. And she knew, for her sake, he had at least tried… but he had felt nothing. He could feel nothing; not for somebody like her.
"T-Thank you," she managed, lip trembling as she stood to go. It was all she could do to salvage her shattered self-esteem.
"You're not worthless," he spoke up when she had taken a few steps, freezing her in place as surely as if she were bound in strings. "You're not the weak, spineless girl you've been brought up to see yourself as. I've seen strength in you, a dedication to succeed, to grow past the image your family has mired you in. I know… I know you look to me and see strength, and I'm not entirely sure why."
She almost whimpered; how could he not see? But she said nothing, could say nothing as he spoke.
"But if you look hard enough, you'll see that same determination in yourself, if you look past what other people say you are." He let out a long breath, and Hinata was freed, but before she could walk away, he sighed. "I am sorry. I want you to know that." That was too much for her, and she walked away as quickly as she could.
He sat there, silently, staring at his own hands clasped together. Without even looking, he grabbed the drink Hinata had abandoned and downed it in one. It burned going down his throat, and Naruto began to understand why the Kiri rebels were so fixated on celebrating the small victories. The failures always felt so much worse.
Hanabi hovered uncertainly at the edge of Naruto's periphery, never quite working up the courage to say something. He had come home in a strange mood, breezing right by her and falling into his work with a vengeance that spoke of the need to exhaust everything else from his mind. Normally, when he was in these kinds of moods, she would do her best to avoid him until he defrosted. Right now though, she was torn between her own nervousness and excitement.
She shuffled a little closer and cleared her throat quietly for the third time, hoping this would be the one he noticed. When he turned sharply, swivelling on his chair with a cold look, she wished he hadn't.
"What?" He hissed. "Can't you see I'm doing something important?"
Hanabi shrank back under that gaze. She couldn't remember a time he had ever spoken to her like that before.
"I… you said… sorry it's just…" She backpeddled, looking down abashedly. It was like she was a little girl, being chewed out by one of the elders again. It all rushed back so clearly. Look down. Don't meet their eye. Whatever you do, don't cry. "My puppet."
She heard him sigh, and tentatively looked up. He was rubbing his temple, and in that moment just looked tired more than anything else.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be so short." He chuckled humourlessly. "Guess today is the day where I can't help but disappoint Hyuugas." He cracked his neck and put on a grin, although it was strained. "Come on, let's go take a look."
She was a little put out by his casual tone, as if her first effort at a puppet was just some passing attraction to glance at and move on. But, she could see even this much congeniality was effort for him today, so she wisely said nothing, instead leading him to the training room she had commandeered. He walked over to her creation and began to examine it thoroughly.
She'd had so many childish ideas about what she could make for her first puppet… many of which proved completely infeasible due to the timeframe… and her inexperience. She had read all of the books Naruto had collected over the years on wood crafting and engineering, but putting it into practice was a different thing entirely. It wouldn't win any prizes for beauty, but Hanabi had done her best, and it worked.
In the end, it ended up a lot like a rougher version of Dami – the refined ones that he used these days, at least. The wood had a rough-hewn look, the marks of the plane clearly visible, but it was definitely humanoid. It was also a great deal more feminine than the purposefully androgynous Dami, a few inches taller than Hanabi herself. It was fully articulated, and had a few hidden compartments with rudimentary senbon launchers she had reverse-engineered from Naruto's. He hadn't said she couldn't do that after all.
Naruto walked around it in a circle, testing each joint individually before latching his strings on. Hanabi's lips curled when she saw how fluidly her own creation moved under his gentle ministrations. She couldn't get it to move like that, and it was extremely tiring just to run it through a single kata of the jyuuken. She hovered to the side, stomach churning anxiously, but so far, the blond hadn't looked displeased.
Eventually, after he had run Mari – what she had named the puppet – through some sort of internal checklist, his features softened.
"I'm a little jealous," he murmered. It was possibly the first time she could have ever called one of his smiles wistful. The soft remark caught her off-guard. While satisfied with her creation, she knew it wasn't anywhere close to the intricacy or elegance of Naruto's constructs.
In Naruto's eyes, it was very different. Despite building Mari from scratch, Hanabi had all sorts of advantages Naruto couldn't have dreamed of when beginning his long journey.
She had his materials. The first incarnation of Dami had been roughly put together from whole pieces of timber. Naruto had been forced to cut down a tree from the training grounds himself. It had taken nearly two days, and the end result had been animated more through raw power than any kind of finesse. His knowledge of the various control seals was shaky at best back then, so he had brute-forced it.
She also had access to the knowledge he had spent years collecting and integrating into his style. His bookshelf had once encompassed his windowsill and his bedside table. Now, using his clones to steal or copy any interesting bit of literature on a whole range of subjects, he had an entire, dedicated room set aside as a library.
Most importantly, Hanabi had an example. She had dedicated teaching. She had somebody to make the mistakes for her, so she would never have to. It was something a younger Naruto had dreamed about having growing up, his mental image of Sasori only going part of the way in that regard. Now that he was that person. It brought up strange feelings in his chest.
Mari was no beauty, true. But she was better than anything Naruto could have made in her place.
"Come on," he muttered, shelving his turbulent feelings behind a smile. "Let's put her through her paces, shall we?"
That one, small confirmation was all Hanabi needed to banish her lingering anxiety, latching her strings to Mari as Naruto walked a copy of Dami into the room.
Naruto had to give Mizu no Kuni one thing, the nights were beautiful. Lying there, staring up at the shimmer of the swirling mists, he could understand why a people could grow proud of this country. Nights in Konoha were usually either mired behind the haze of the village's lights, or obscured by the broad canopy of their forests' trees. Nothing could beat a Fire Country sunset, but the still serenity of the stars here came close.
Of course, the only reason he knew this was because he couldn't use a tent when sleeping. The shine of condensation on the fabric would have been a dead giveaway to any passing patrols. So, they had to use specially constructed, camouflaged sleeping rolls. In Konoha, sleeping outside was tolerable thanks to the muggy warmth that lingered through the night. Mizu's nights were less hospitable, and a chill wrapped itself around his bones the moment he tried to close his eyes.
With a sigh that condensed into a pearly mist in front of him, he silently rolled out of his sleeping mat – still fully clothed. He couldn't even use a jutsu to warm himself, he might alert a nearby sensor. He began running through some dexterity exercises that had practically become muscle-memory at this point. It warmed his fingers at least. The rest he did by cycling his Chakra like he was trying to break a genjutsu. It didn't actually do anything, but it felt good to keep busy.
The faint hiss was low enough that, had he still been trying to doze off in his bedroll, he might not have heard it. It was his only warning before the sealing tags planted around the small camp released their deadly payload. In less than a second, the entire camp was smothered in a thick, noxious blanket of purple smoke. In the same amount of time, Naruto had dived forward, already pulling a small, portable rebreather out of a pocket and jamming it over his mouth.
When he looked back, the entire camp had vanished behind a deadly smokescreen, save for a single figure moving forward. Their features were obscured by the poison swirling around their body, but their voice was all too recognisable.
"I underestimated your will to live. I would very much like to know how you managed to counteract my poison." Sasori didn't quite fully emerge from the smokescreen, looking even more intimidating with his body partially obscured. "Surprised to see me?"
"You could say that," Naruto said slowly, eyes scanning the treeline behind the other puppeteer.
"Then you disappoint me again. To think that you would have such trust in a weak, fledgling network of informants. No contingencies? No assurances? It was almost insultingly easy to slip my own agents in place. True agents, loyal only to me." He scowled, taking a step forward. "I don't know why I ever thought you might be interesting, you're just a-"
"I said," Naruto interrupted with a smirk. "You could say that." His finger twitched ever so slightly and the various explosive traps he had hidden around the fake campsite ignited. The explosions themselves were spectacular; brilliant, if quiet, thanks to the silencing barrier inscribed twenty feet out from the decoy camp in every direction. When the poison shroud Sasori had released caught though, it turned into a true conflagration, forcing Naruto to shield his eyes even with his goggles.
"Or," he muttered to himself. "You could say that I've been slowly feeding misinformation to my own network for the better part of a month, in the hopes that somebody would eventually slip you something." He removed the gasmask and smiled grimly. "Thanks for proving me right."
