I do not own it. That would be a foolish boast. I enjoy haikus.


Plucking Strings

"We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside forces: we become the powerful force ourselves." - Leo Buscaglia


Naruto wasn't surprised when the dust settled and there wasn't so much as a scratch on Sasori. A thin dome of iron sand covered him, glowing a dull red in parts from the intense heat of the blasts. It fell away, pooling around the third Kazekage. The human puppet was draped over Sasori's shoulders as an extra, unneeded layer of defence.

"I wanted to thank you for being so predictable," Naruto called out with a grin. "When I realised the Akatsuki were behind this escalation in the war, I never thought I'd be able to separate one of you from the group. You guys travel in pairs, right?"

Sasori said nothing, simply dusting his cloak off disdainfully as the Kazekage hovered back a few paces.

"But I knew you would be different," the blond continued, subtly shuffling back himself until his foot met resistance. "Of course you'd think you could handle me all by yourself. You've done it before, right?"

"Your miraculous survival has gone to your head if you think anything will be different this time," Sasori replied calmly, flexing his hands.

Naruto's expression darkened as he tested the wire he had hidden beneath the leaves earlier.

"Oh, things will be very different this time."

Naruto's hands shot up like whips, and despite all of his training and progress, Sasori was still faster. The Kazekage reared back, a compartment on his chest opening up and releasing a broad pulse of Chakra. The hovering iron filings behind Sasori twitched, before forming into a thousand tiny senbon. The rocketed forward, propelled faster than any hand could throw by the pure magnetic force generated from the dead man's kekkei genkai.

But Naruto wasn't going for a puppet. His hands flashed through well-practised hand signs, ending on the dragon seal.

"Raiton: Jibashi," he called, slamming his hands down on the wire hidden in the underbrush. A low hum filled the air as the camouflage protecting his homemade electromagnets burned away under the sudden heat in the copper wires. Four of them, hidden at the cardinal points around the decoy campsite. After their ill-fated first meeting, Naruto had spent many sleepless nights wracking his brain for a way to overcome the Kazekage's famous Jiton abilities.

The answer had come, of all places, from the weak little magnet that kept his fridge closed. He didn't have to beat the Kazekage's magnetism, just overpower it. Sure enough, with the current provided by his jutsu running through the copper coils, the large iron cores he had hidden behind camouflaged sheets became extremely powerful magnets almost instantaneously. The iron sand that had been racing towards him abruptly veered off, congealing around the electromagnets in strange, lumpy spikes that twitched as Sasori tried to press his control.

It was too late for that though. The moment the human puppet was vulnerable, Naruto's other arm flashed out, fingers dancing. Five copies of Dami burst from the earth, like zombies clawing their way from the grave. All of them rushed the Kazekage, all of them inscribed with enough explosive seals to level small buildings. Naruto wasn't playing around in this game. Sasori scowled, still wrestling with the iron sand.

Something thin and fast whipped out of his cloak, a dark grey streak, shining with poison. It would have cleaved right through all five puppets… if Naruto hadn't chosen that moment to cut off the Chakra to his jutsu. It was slight, a mere stumble, but the sudden lack of magnetic force unbalanced the red-haired puppeteer just slightly. Naruto wasn't unaffected himself, but his weapon wasn't a part of his body.

Three of the Damis were bisected cleanly by whatever weapon Sasori had engineered into his immortal husk. Two of them made it. The explosion rivalled the first, and this time Sasori was forced to leap away, suffering from the lack of the iron sand's protection. The Kazekage was nothing but splinters when Naruto finally lowered his hand from his eyes, grinning wickedly.

"I think that brings the count of puppets I've cost you up to two," he called out. It was hard to imagine Sasori having a more powerful puppet on hand than a former Kage. So, unless he was hiding the Sandaime Raikage in those cloud-patterned robes, he felt he could handle whatever the puppeteer could throw at him from here.

Sasori wasn't even frowning when he re-emerged.

"Your body will replace them, soon enough." His own expression turned into a cold smirk. "I've never had a Jinchuuriki in my collection before."

Naruto tried not to let the older puppeteer's self-assurance get to him, but found his hands flexing in agitation despite himself. He had to constantly remind himself that he had been preparing for this for months. Projecting confidence was the best way to feel it.

"I prefer to think of it as a service," Naruto shot back, still giving a grin he far from felt. "If I kill you, it saves you the pain of the Kyuubi absolutely annihilating you." He had no idea if that was how it worked, or if the Kyuubi would even be released upon his death, but it at least seemed to give Sasori pause. "I'd like to see you make a puppet from an immortal mass of Chakra and hate."

"A shame," the man muttered, drawing a thin scroll from his back. "Without that you will hold nothing of interest to me, save as another body for the legion." Lifeless eyes narrowed slightly as wooden lips quirked. "I should introduce you to your future comrades. You should feel honoured, for you will soon join a technique that has conquered a nation."

With a flourish, the surprisingly long scroll spread out around Sasori like a bodhisattva's tenne, revealing hundreds of tiny storage seals intricately woven into a single matrix. Sasori made a single ram seal and smiled wickedly.

"Akahigi: Hyakki no Sōen."

Puppets blotted out the stars. A hundred of them, floating in the skies above them like an ominous shroud. The sound of their joints clacking and shaking formed a low background noise that completely enveloped the natural sounds of the night. Sasori shed the upper half of his cloak, further revealing the perversions he had forced his body through, including a grotesque fleshy circle where his heart should have been, and a slightly raised hatch on the other side of his chest.

It opened, releasing countless Chakra strings that sought out each and every puppet in the sky, and the malicious gleam in the puppeteer's glassy eyes told Naruto that he could control every single one.

"Well shit," Naruto muttered, taking an instinctual step back against the sheer scale of the clicking, rattling cloud of death. He rallied himself with a deep breath and forced the cocky grin back onto his features, noticeably more strained.

"Well now I'm just pissed," he said, this time loud enough to be heard.

"Do enlighten me," Sasori drawled back, the puppets beginning to spread out in the sky.

"I thought I was the first one to work out how to control more than ten puppets." He turned his hand over to reveal what looked to be little diamond tattoos on his palms. He forced Chakra through them and they grew, spiralling outward in little spindly lines. The black tattoos grew all the way up his forearms, as far as he had mastered the technique so far. Eventually, he hoped the patterning would cover his entire body.

The tattoos were a web, intersecting at seemingly random points across his skin, but every single crossing marked a tenketsu. Unlike an actual tattoo, they would move with his tenketsu, reliably giving their position at all times. The funny thing was that, without Hanabi and her Byakugan, this would have been almost impossible to duplicate. It allowed him to, with the right focus…

Sasori watched placidly as Chakra threads burst from Naruto's arms, visibly only in the fraction of a moment they left his body. He didn't spot them all, but from his own knowledge of the human body he estimated it was roughly forty – that was, if the technique was limited to the tenketsu near the teen's skin. His malicious smirk returned.

"I think you'll find you are still outnumbered, and outmatched. I have spent years honing my technique, it looks like you are struggling to even stand with yours."

That was true enough. Naruto wasn't sure he could even move his feet when concentrating on so many disparate puppets just now emerging from the storage scrolls he had hidden all over the nearby forest. But then, what kind of puppeteer would he be if he had to move to fight?

"I like to think of it as quality over quantity," he shot back through gritted teeth. So, the move he had been saving in reserve as a trump card had been forced into play early, just to deal with Sasori's numbers. It was probably better this way. Imagining trying to use this technique after a long and drawn out fight gave him phantom aches. That, or the strain of his own jutsu was making him light headed.

"Sōen: Mugen no Kanōsei," he muttered as he felt the last few strings connect with their puppets. It was like there was an entire crowd in his head, jostling for position as his mind tried to track the position of thirty-six different puppets. This was the most he had been able to manage so far. He had thought it would be an overwhelming advantage, not an attempt at evening the scales.

"I'll admit, your bag of tricks has grown deeper, but this is a stalling tactic at best. Your fate is-"

"You know," Naruto ground out, cutting in before Sasori could continue his spiel. "I did have this whole quippy thing, about the quality of a performance being measured by its ensemble. But, to be honest? This is really hard. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to get on with the whole trying to kill you bit now."

Sasori clicked his fake teeth, and everything started to move. The cloud descended like a tsunami, a rolling wave of wooden bodies ready to crush Naruto beneath their sheer mass. A streak of a silhouette passed in front of him, and the front most puppets abruptly fell limp, clattering to the ground at his feet to be pounced upon by five copies of Ramia waiting beneath the earth. It circled back around again, this time catching the moonlight.

At first glance it could be mistaken for an incredibly large bird, not too outlandish as summons were known to be larger. On closer inspection, the humanoid traits could be picked out, and it was revealed to be some kind of woman-bird hybrid, with large, broad wings, whose feathers seemed to intermittently catch the light in a glittering, distracting display. Each one was rimmed by the thinnest band of sharpened Chakra metal, making every feather on her body a weapon waiting to be released.

It was necessary to make Hane, as he had named her, combat-ready. Her flight required her to be light, so it limited the number of weapons he could install inside her body. Her body being the weapon neatly circumvented that problem. After every feather was released, a specialised storage seal would slot another in its place. His first flying puppet wouldn't run out easily, and there were currently ten of them circling the skies.

Naruto breathed deeply, taking advantage of Sasori's curiosity at the new puppet to firm up his stance. Controlling so many puppets at once made it easy to forget about his own body and he couldn't afford to fall over and lose his line of sight. Sasori was under no such restriction and every single chittering puppet in his horde seemed dead set on going right for the throat. A maelstrom of wood and metal engulfed him, held at bay only by the valiant efforts of his own constructs.

Hane shot by, her wings deftly slicing through Sasori's Chakra strings and briefly cutting off control to a swathe of the legion. Five different water cannons were firing almost indiscriminately into the swarm. Glistening strands of quick-drying adhesive crisscrossed the clearing like an oversized parody of a real spider's web. Through it all, Sasori's puppets ducked and weaved, slowly being whittled down.

It wasn't easy though. For every two puppets Sasori lost, one of Naruto's was brought down by a storm of blades and kunai that filled the air with the whistle and screech of metal. The blond knew that wasn't a winning ratio and reached out with one of his spare Chakra strings as another Hane was ripped out of the sky. It found one of the traps he had laid earlier and pulled, releasing the trigger on the storage seals winding up a nearby tree trunk.

They released as one, spewing a wave of kunai through the night. It carved a chunk out of Sasori's legion, shattering wood and metal like shrapnel. It also caught a few of Naruto's own puppets in the confusion and, even strengthened by the Chakra wires in their body acting like an artificial Chakra system, they couldn't stand up to that much weaponry. At least it gave Naruto less to concentrate on, making his remaining puppets more nimble and responsive. But then, that was also true for Sasori.

Ramia's tail wound around him, protecting him from a hail of poisoned senbon that thudded into her thick scales. He had modified this one specifically to be tougher than most, at the cost of mobility, and Sasori's attacks were still this powerful. He forced the rush of fear out and focused on the skies. His cohort of winged puppets was his least damaged and were still doing good work, sweeping in and out of the fight like sentient blades, severing Sasori's Chakra strings left and right.

Being introduced to that property of Chakra blades was probably saving his life now.

The other puppeteer, of course, could simply reattach new threads, but those precious moments where his puppets were tumbling through the air, uncontrolled, was usually the opening for his other puppets to finish them off. The man didn't leave many others. The battle was settling into a kind of frantic rhythm. Sasori knew that the Hane puppets were the biggest threat and Naruto's greatest advantage, but whenever any puppets peeled away from the legion to go after them, they would be torn down by the tight jets of a water cannon, or pounced upon by an Arakune waiting in the shadows.

Naruto felt the first stirrings of a grin begin to spread across his face. He could do this. He was doing this.

Then one of Sasori's puppets managed to break through his ring of defence and promptly exploded, throwing the teen across the clearing. He managed to roll to his feet, but he was disoriented and his head was ringing from the blast. That few seconds lapse in control nearly cost him immensely as the bulk of the puppet horde turned upward, charging the suddenly vulnerable Hane copies. Thanks to his wobbling vision and the tinny ring in his ears, Naruto almost didn't capitalise on the move he had been waiting for the whole fight.

Almost too late, he sent a pulse of Chakra through his strings and all of the remaining Hane puppets shot upwards with a powerful beat of their wings. They were nothing but streaks of light for a moment, leaving strange, inverted vapour trails through the late-night mists, before reaching the zenith of their flight. Sasori realised his mistake too late as his puppets tried to turn and descend again.

The Hane puppets curled up into little bristling balls before exploding outwards, releasing their entire payload of weaponised feathers at once. For a moment they seemed to hang in their air, a thousand glittering shards of shrapnel, gleaming with condensation. Then, with a muted swish of air being parted, what looked to be Sasori's entire horde suddenly went limp, their strings severed indiscriminately.

Both puppeteers went into a frenzy. Sasori's chest compartment released another salvo of his chakra strings, desperately trying to reassert control over his army. Naruto's arms moved like a panicking conductor, directing his own puppets to slash and tear and break whatever they could in those precious few moments of complete control. Sasori's puppets, when once again under his control, gave as good as they got, often exploding when too badly damaged.

Still, it was a pivotal moment in the fight, and, after a handful of seconds that seemed stretched out between a dozen different perspectives, the clearing fell quiet again. Naruto was panting heavily, surrounded by a sea of broken wood and twisted metal. But he had won. Sasori's entire legion lay in tatters around them, mostly useless. He hadn't fared too much better, only a single Hane and the listing Ramia wrapped around his body surviving the pitched slaughter, but that was two more puppets than Sasori.

And that could be all the difference.

"Heh…" he panted, taking a moment to calm his breathing as he just enjoyed the sight of Sasori's narrowed eyes. "What did I say… about quality… over quantity?"

"I admit," Sasori responded tersely, "That I never imagined you improving this much. But you'll find this is far from over." As he spoke, he shucked the rest of his cloak, casually tossing it to the side to reveal the full extent of his body modification. Some kind of prehensile cable was spooled in his abdomen like metal intestines, and two metal wings unfurled from his back, flexing experimentally. It looked like they could rotate completely, either lifting the puppeteer into their air, or turning into wicked buzzsaws at a moment's notice.

"It has been a long time, since I have been forced to use myself."

His hands snapped up mechanically, a tube emerging from each palm. Naruto didn't have to know what they did to know it was a bad idea to be in their path and swiftly dove out of the way. He was thankful for it at two brilliant streams of fire erupted from the other puppeteer's hands. The heat was incredible, instantly burning off the mist in the area and leaving the ground dry and cracking. Naruto dived behind a heaped pile of broken puppets, not even remotely trusting Ramia to hold up against that kind of inferno.

Sasori simply moved his arms, almost lazily, and put the haphazard ridge of broken parts to the torch. That many puppets, at that distance, they weren't instantly incinerated, but Naruto was already moving. He threw out a hand, latching onto one of Sasori's less damaged wrecks and forced it to leap in the opposite direction, briefly distracting his opponent. He sprinted out of the other side, Ramia keeping pace. Her tail flicked up, and he poured as much Chakra into her water cannon as he thought was safe, then a bit more for good measure.

The two opposing streams met and an awful hissing filled the clearing as the tight beam of water was instantly reduced to scalding steam. Still, it held. At least, it did… until Sasori's hands rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, tightening the gouts of fire into coin-thin jets of pure white heat. Ramia throwing herself forward was all that stopped Naruto from instantly being reduced to a pile of ash. It seemed some kind of Kami was watching him as, a moment later, the streams of fire sputtered out, their fuel depleted.

Some kind of thin scroll on Sasori's back glowed, before fading away.

There was a brief disconnect between Naruto's body and mind. His mind was trying to pick apart how Sasori could produce such concentrated flame and how the scroll system worked. His body on the other hand, had turned and sprinted towards the treeline, acting on a much more ingrained set of instincts.

"You seem fond of your water cannons," Sasori remarked with a cruel smile, one of the other scrolls pulsing with Chakra. "Let me show you how powerful they can really be."

Some powerful water ninjutsu Naruto had seen wouldn't have compared to the jets Sasori released. The ground, glowing faintly and cracked from the previous heat, exploded where he aimed from the sudden change in temperature. The floor was turned into an impromptu minefield as Naruto ducked and weaved, only making it to the treeline by the skin of his teeth. Although, he wasn't much safer there. One of the water jets hit a tree and nearly uprooted it on the spot, forcing Naruto to dive out of the way and retreat further into the forest.

"Find all the cover you like," Sasori called out with a manic grin. "It won't help."

His hands rotated, and once again the streams were concentrated to barely a ryo's width. He swept his arms out in lazy arcs before cutting off the flow. A strange silence settled on the area before it was replaced by the tortured groans of two hundred trees suddenly severed clean through the trunk. The entire forest seemed to fall apart, or at least, that was how it seemed to Naruto as he scrabbled and dodged through a dozen different tree trunks trying to crush him. His only respite was that they were the sickly, thin trunks of Mizu.

If this was Fire Country, he would have been crushed by his homeland's sturdy boughs by now.

When the dust settled it was like an entire logging camp had been through the area, and Naruto was left like a bright blond beacon in the middle of it all. Sasori gave him a smirk and lifted his arm.

"It's been an amusing performance, but you've wasted enough of my ti-"

The jet of water missed Naruto by an inch, thrown upward along with Sasori's arm as Hane descended on his back, clawing and scratching with wicked talons of Chakra metal. The beam flew upwards, powerful enough to cleanly part a cloud that was drifting by. Naruto had no illusions that he would have survived that, but put his near-death out of mind as he focused entirely on Hane.

With her artificial Chakra system, and his undivided attention, he might as well have been that puppet his control was so absolute. She moved with the fluid grace of the living, effortlessly weaving around Sasori's redirected jets with a poise and speed Naruto couldn't have managed with his own body. Wings moved in mesmerising displays of glittering metal and polished wood, fine enough to mimic the real thing. Every time the puppeteer thought he had a bead on her, a powerful beat of her wings would abruptly jink her in the opposite direction, always skirting destruction by a few inches.

She was magnificence in motion, and if Naruto hadn't trained with her extensively in the month leading up to this moment, he might have been too distracted to reach within himself and begin going through the laborious process of moulding Chakra without hand seals. She took a few knocks when Sasori's tight beams of liquid death grazed her skin, but she survived, and survived beautifully. It was just long enough that Naruto was able to finish.

Hane's wing swept out, bringing her to an abrupt stop that would have given a real bird whiplash. Sasori's arm went out too far, caught off-guard by the sudden halt, and that opening was all Naruto needed.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu," he muttered, and Hane obeyed. Her mouth opened and a brilliant ball of fire erupted from it, with no visible means of propulsion.

Sasori was no stranger to the concept of puppets performing jutsu. But that was his human puppets, people whose Chakra systems he had bastardized and re-purposed to his own ends. The thought of an artificial puppet moulding Chakra was just surprising enough that, instead of diving out of the way of the jutsu like he might have in the face of a human opponent, he instead tried to bring his arm around to slice the fireball in half with his water beam.

He did so, and it did nothing. This was no ignited aerosol accelerant, easily quenched. This was a Chakra-based fire, and it spat on the laws of conventional physics. The beam of water neatly sliced through the fireball, and it rushed on regardless, engulfing the puppeteer's body in the next second before erupting in a grand explosion that forced Naruto to cover his eyes. It had never done that in training.

He picked his way through the graveyard of wooden limbs slowly, rubbing his arm where a falling tree had glanced off him. Even now, in the quiet of the after-battle, he was trying to settle his breathing. The exertion of his Mugen no Kanōsei was immense, and he would have itchy red marks on his skin for the next few days. He never lowered his guard though, especially when Sasori came into view.

It was an almost pitiable sight. Everything below the man's chest had been blown away, along with both arms. He was nothing but half a torso and a head, his remaining 'skin' blackened and cracked from the heat. Curiously, the man's hair had survived just fine, only looking a bit messier for the experience. Probably artificial then. Sasori truly had no nostalgia for his living self, fully-committing to this lifeless, wooden existence.

"That was quite good," the husk of a man stated, mouth pushed up into a grin less by his own volition than by the broken mechanism supporting his jaw. "To bring something constructed of your own hands so close to life, it's an admirable interpretation of art."

"And a few months ago, that praise alone would have made my year," Naruto responded tiredly, still on guard for a trick.

"I would argue that my preservation of true ageless beauty is a more worthy pursuit, but it appears I no longer have a leg to stand on."

Naruto blinked, and might have thought Sasori had rattled his brain in the blast, if the man still had a brain. The older puppeteer didn't look all that pleased himself.

"And now I'm making jokes. That fool Deidara is infecting me with his idiocy."

"That would be Deidara, the former Bakuha Butai member turned Nuke-nin?" It was always useful to know who else was in the Akatsuki. He had a growing list, and another filled with speculation – there were only so many S-class criminals on the continent – but it was nice to have confirmation.

"Is that really why you set this trap? Just for information?" The former Suna-nin let his head fall back – or maybe the support finally gave – and gave a slight smile. "I approve."

"So, you would be willing to tell me about the Akatsuki, just like that?" Naruto asked sceptically.

"Why not? I owe no allegiance to that group of criminals. I only joined because the offer to be surrounded by so many fascinating specimens was too tempting." He sneered, one of the few expressions he could apparently still manage. "My vast network of informants was wasted on their banal plan anyway." He turned an eye back to the blond. "And any secrets I reveal are irrelevant as soon as Pein decides you are too much of a nuisance."

"I'll start with a list of the current members, then we can talk about this 'plan'," Naruto said, keeping his face straight. When interrogating, it was never a good idea to let the subject know which pieces of information interested you.

"Kakazu of Takigakure, Hidan of Yugakure, Hoshigake Kisame, Uchiha Itachi, some kind of plant creature simply known as Zetsu, a moron called Tobi, Deidara of Iwagakure, myself, and the rulers of Amegakure; Tenshi, and Pein." Sasori listed off clinically.

"Sanshōuo no Hanzō is leader of Amegakure," Naruto countered with narrowed eyes. Everyone knew that. The man who named the Sannin wouldn't be taken down without the entire world knowing.

"Believe that if you must, but what reason do I have to lie now?" Sasori countered.

"I can think of a few," Naruto muttered, before getting back on track. "You still consider yourself a member of the Akatsuki then?"

"Why wouldn't I?" The man replied casually. "I fully intend on returning after I've given the proper care to your corpse."

The compartment on his chest suddenly sprang open, releasing a bundle of Chakra strings that latched onto strategic points across Naruto's body.

"Sōen: Hitomi Gokū," he intoned with a smirk as Naruto's body froze in place.

"I am a puppeteer, child. The best in the world. I am not defeated as long as there is a single body to be manipulated."

Naruto glared back at him furiously, but that was all he could do. The technique was clearly similar to his Giasu, although incredibly refined if it could control a human while they were awake and resisting. Against his will, his trembling hand slipped into one of his pockets, drawing a kunai and slowly raising it towards his neck.

"Hmm, perhaps not," Sasori mused, the glowing blue threads twitching as though played by an invisible harpist. "I don't like marring the skin too much if I'm able."

"Don't…" Naruto managed to grind out through his locked jaw.

"Begging for your life? I had come to expect better of you after all of this. Be pleased, I acknowledge your skill. You're certainly better than those stagnant fools in Suna, copying my designs and braying upon the past instead of innovating."

"Don't…" Naruto repeated, straining even to say that much as the kunai moved down.

"A quick nick to the axillary artery perhaps?" Sasori continued, ignoring him. "I often find I have to completely replace the shoulder joint anyway; too restrictive."

"Don't…" The blond said for the third time, earning a sigh from the other puppeteer.

"Go on then, I find last words a waste of time, but you did provide me with many interesting ideas over the course of the fight."

Naruto felt the control over his jaw cease and grinned, his eyes flashing a slitted red.

"Don't play with your food."

Sasori cried out. His puppet body might have felt no pain, but the small organic core embedded in its chest was a different story. In a split second, the bright blue Chakra threads were inverted into a flaming orange as Naruto reversed the control. The sudden influx of the Kyuubi's potent Chakra proved too much and the remains of Sasori's already beaten body exploded into little more than shrapnel.

Naruto nearly dropped to his knees as he felt control return to his muscles, but managed to stay upright, grimacing. He was already mentally exhausted, and tapping even that much of the Kyuubi's power was draining. He glanced around, but couldn't spot the little fleshy blob that marked Sasori's remaining humanity. Noticing that was the only warning he received. His hand flicked backwards, coiled Chakra strings spiralling out.

"Sōen: Giasu," he muttered, turning slowly. Sasori, in his commandeered puppet body, had managed to come close enough with a sword that a single drop of poison beading on its tip nearly dripped on Naruto's nose.

"You're not the only one who knows that trick," Naruto said, slapping an explosive tag on Sasori's extra body and jumping back. The explosion was muted, and this time, he did manage to find Sasori's core among the debris. He lifted it, mouth twisting in disgust.

"I can't believe I used to look up to you." He sighed, rebuffing every pathetic attempt Sasori made at latching onto something, anything, with his Chakra strings. "There were so many things I wanted to ask you, so many things I thought I could learn." His eyes hardened slightly as he began slowly walking towards the edge of the clearing. "But, in a way, you did set me on my current path, and for that I'm thankful." He produced a small syringe from a jacket pocket, filled with a near-translucent purple solution.

"I should bring you back to Konoha, maybe study you to see exactly how you managed this." He frowned as he moved between the trees, the crackle of dimming flames receeding behind him. "But one; bringing a puppeteer into my workshop would be the height of idiocy. And two; if this is the price of immortality," he regarded the lump of meat Sasori had been reduced to, "I think I'd prefer to age with some dignity."

"So, I'm going to give you exactly the same chance you gave me. Poisoned, alone, miles from safety." He injected the quivering little core of flesh until there was nothing left in the syringe, now well outside the clearing. He paused, a good hundred feet from the nearest puppet body, broken or otherwise, and set Sasori down on the ground almost tenderly.

"Somehow, I doubt you'll fare as well."

He turned, walking back towards the battlefield so that he could collect as much of the debris as he could before a passing patrol noticed. He had chosen this spot explicitly because it was usually left fairly secluded, but he didn't want to take any chances. Despite everything, there were still things he could learn from the missing-nin, even if it wasn't in the way his eight-year-old-self had dreamed.

"Goodbye Sasori."


A/N: Image of Hane on my Profile

Translations:
Akahigi: Hyakki no Sōen - Red Secret Technique: Performance of a hundred puppets
Sōen: Mugen no Kanōsei - Puppet art: Limitless potential
Sōen: Hitomi Gokū - Puppet art: Skillful achievement with a human body