Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Naruto or any of its affiliations…I am merely borrowing its characters and settings to indulge my own fantasies and then share said fantasies with other people who equally do not own Naruto. I am not making any profit off this.
Author's Note: TV Tropes savvy readers, would you be able to share the tropes you've spotted in this story? I'm super curious to see what readers have seen...
O O O
Someone must have done you wrong again
O O O
What disturbed her most was the similarities they shared.
Chiyo snorted, making a face at her thoughts and earning a curious glance from the jounin next to her. She ignored the woman and continued watching the Leaf kunoichi, at once eager to scrutinise her and also reluctant to give her too much mind. There was something about the girl that dredged up old memories; something in her countenance, something in her techniques. It was a quality that was not exactly reassuring. Despite the kunoichi's fumblings with her Mystical Palm technique before, or perhaps because of that limitation, she had a rather remarkable control over her chakra.
Had it not been said she was the Slug Princess's apprentice? That would figure.
"Any particular reason you're interested in chaperoning this mission, Chiyo-sama?" The jounin asked, a glare on her face that exaggerated the harshness of her question. Couldn't be helped, she was the daughter of the Fourth. Glares and demands were standard with that lot.
The ego of Suna – Chiyo knew it well. She allowed a smirk, "someone from the Sand should at least attempt to be present for the rescuing of our leader."
For a second the insinuation hit home and the woman twitched with the effort to hold back a defensive growl. Something about her brother on the tip of her tongue, a scathing remark over village politics to likely follow. Then she calmed, sniffed in a wary way. "Bit much, even for you, Chiyo-sama. With that sort of feint, it must be your reason for going is personal."
Personal? Meaning she intended to go to right the mistakes she had allowed so many years ago? Well... not that the young jounin could know or guess at as much.
"I am merely the best suited for handling this situation."
But both were true, probably.
"And are you concerned about Haruno-san?"
Chiyo didn't look away from said Leaf kunoichi and didn't answer. Instead, "as interim Kazekage, child, I would hope you know when to heed and when to ignore the tethers they have on you."
The sneer she got in return was akin to a grateful expression for most. "Understood, Chiyo-sama. I won't keep you waiting."
Because it really was a shame her once glorious village had been degraded to mewling to former enemies for aid. And the aid sent in response? Poor, if Chiyo had any say of it – a pervert, a loud mouth, and, as she discovered once they encountered a solitary enemy after moving out, a coward.
That kunoichi...she was an intriguing coward, but a coward nonetheless, especially with the way she tensed up at the sight of one fractionally worrisome Uchiha. Eyes like hers, skill like hers, and yet she flinched before an opponent despite his lack of acknowledgement towards her. Went rigid and couldn't keep the uncertainty from her face. Hung back as her team mates neutralised the enemy.
How had such a person lasted so long in their way of life?
As it turned out, Chiyo didn't wait long for an answer.
In the Land of Rivers and bolstered with a second squad of nin, they had finally tracked down their targets. An earthen wall between them. Chiyo watched the chakra from the girl's hands wrap around the boulder blocking their path, saw how the energy thinned out into an imperceptible casing, and she felt her lips jerk upwards into the ghost of a smile when solid rock imploded into dust.
'Similarities,' the word entered again in her mind, and the smile was gone.
O O O
Papt, he heard for the hundredth time. Another short length of silence. Papt. The sound of skin slapping across skin carried a little in the chamber and Sasori closed his eyes with restrained frustration.
….Papt.
His restraint snapped. "Cease your pointless dallying, brat. Or must you insist on trying my every last nerve?"
The answer was slow and it came in its unbroken rhythm: ...papt. Followed shortly by, "the latter, yeah. Every time. It's like you don't know me at all, Danna."
"If only it were the case." Sasori turned from his work to stare at his partner some metres away.
Deidara was sat upon the chest of the dead kazekage, his body curved into a careless sort of crouching as he contemplated the jinchuuriki. In Deidara's remaining hand he held his severed arm, having had it cut clean off by the unexpected glass shards of the boy kage during their fight, and he was using the appendage to dully slap the face of his captive.
"Look at this bastard, yeah." His partner was grouching. "Calm in the fight, calm in death. Where was the demonic thrill he was supposed to offer? So boring, yeah."
"He took off your arm, was that not thrilling enough for you?"
"Hardly. I'm just going to have Kakuzu stitch it back on."
Sasori continued staring, but the deadpan expression was lost on his partner. He said, "that arm won't be worth reattaching if you keep abusing the tissue as such."
"I thought you put some preservation jutsu on it, yeah." Deidara finally looked away from the corpse, mouth twisting just so in puzzlement as he met Sasori's eyes.
A child's expression, Sasori mused. "As if I would waste a high level technique for such a purpose. What's on there isn't nearly so durable."
"Shit, Danna, could have said something earlier..." The lie served its purpose and Deidara immediately ceased his slapping to consider his arm. Blowing the fringe of hair off his face, he used the scope over his left eye to check for signs of damage or deterioration. He had to resort to hugging the appendage under its corresponding stump when he moved to poke at the mouth with his good hand.
Sasori lifted his eyebrows at the mildly entertaining sight, might have huffed out a breath like laughter if he had been capable.
"Are you not going to prepare for the Kyuubi jinchuuriki's arrival?" He asked after some time had passed, having gone back to his own pursuits only to find later that Deidara was still toiling with his examination. Unimpressed, he tacked on, "or have you now another tedious distraction?"
"You're tedious," was the quick retort. "Besides, my art is spontaneous, yeah. Can't sit around and map out detailed plans. I need inspiration – excitement!"
Sasori grunted, admitting to himself that his partner was intelligent and quick-thinking enough to pull off that sort of style. The brat was a talented shinobi...but he was also a know-nothing idiot in so many ways. His opinions were uninformed, his attitude abhorrent, and his priorities extremely questionable. Even at that moment, did he not have any concerns with the prospect of facing the approaching nin? Sasori questioned as much.
"Concerned? Why would I be? It's not like you're wringing your hands over them."
Clueless, Sasori thought. He said, "I have no hesitation in fighting them. You, in contrast, might."
"How's that?" Deidara had moved on from studying his left arm to carefully wrapping it with spare cloth, still under the impression the preservation jutsu was flawed. Sasori didn't correct him.
"Your student," he pointed out, keeping the conversation going.
Her name danced on Deidara's lips but only the first syllable made it into the air. Smothering the betraying impulse, Deidara rolled his eyes. "I'm not thinking about her, yeah."
"Is that how it is?" Sasori made a thoughtful hum. "Even with the way Uchiha talked about these incoming squads."
"What do you mean the way he talked? He was as vague as always. No names to give? Even Kisame identified one of the Leaf nin, yeah. All Uchiha can say is that the squad is 'formidable.'"
"That seemed more a calculated withholding of information than ignorance, if anything."
"Tch, what a shock! 'The one who will shout out and charge first,'" Deidara mimed Uchiha Itachi, poorly. "Shit! Just tell me what the damn container looks like! But no, has to be difficult! The stuffy old man."
"Old man?" Sasori couldn't help his amusement.
"Ever notice that psychopath is the least helpful, most cryptic, biggest pain in the arse in the five nations?"
"I don't care to give him so much thought." He really didn't.
Deidara gave a loud snort, unconvinced. "As if. I bet you want him, yeah."
The refusal was immediate. Plainly, "I've no room for defectives in my collection."
Sasori noticed his partner still, saw how he opened his maw to gape.
"How's that?" Deidara asked again, this time less annoyed and genuinely caught off guard.
"Stop giving me that stupid look of yours," but Sasori was surprised at his own slip up. He remained unaffected on the outside, kept his hands busy with unsealing a scroll. He feigned, "truly, the state of your ignorance is beyond my understanding at times... Are you not meant to have superior observation skills? And yet here you are again, none the wiser."
Referencing back to those times with Ibata, knowing it would agitate Deidara and switch his focus.
"Cold, Danna, you're so cold."
And perhaps a little more...
"Oh, but I'm not. I am asking after your interests, after all." He let that dangle between them, much like the puppet he was controlling now to hang in the air besides him.
"Interests," repeated back, Deidara not following. His eyes were looking over the puppet, one he had never seen before. He jerked his chin to it, asked, "which one is that, yeah?"
"My favourite." Sasori smiled, made his partner jump when he moved the puppet's yellow eyes to counter his gaze. "Speaking of – I don't care for my former associates as I have no connection to that place any more. As for you and the Leaf...there is that aforementioned weak point of yours."
Deidara was not moved. Confidently, a bit sourly, a bit thankfully, "'Told you I'm not thinking about her. She's in the black, out of commission, off the radar for more than a year. She's elsewhere, yeah."
Sasori didn't say anything more to that. There was no need to mention their previous agreement concerning the student in question, he had no reason to doubt Deidara's awareness of the pact. That desperate gamble back then was likely behind his partner's noticeable relief that the kunoichi was tucked away somewhere, safe from the sting of due payment. Sasori recognised the buried guilt for what it was, the worry; but he was pleased when a few minutes later his partner was eating those confident words.
O O O
When it came down to the grit of things, trust was the key component.
That's what Kakashi thought, at least. He had trusted his father to rebound from complete dejection; trusted Rin to be a medic on the sidelines away from conflict; trusted his sensei to lead the village through decades of peace; trusted his kohai to take the lessons of cherishing one's comrades to heart. He had trusted his student to favour a path free of lonely vengeance and hatred.
He had trusted Haruno Sakura would only serve to be an awkward outsider, fickle and naïve, a dead weight of responsibility for him.
Funny how that went – because of all the times his trust had been broken, the instance in which he had given trust to the way of doubt rather than promise, he had been wrong. Sakura continued to trample his early expectations, and even his later ones as well. For while he thought she would stumble in the face of seeing her old teacher, she did the opposite. Much like Kakashi had done when coming face to face with Itachi, Sakura was comfortable to act in the presence of Deidara no Iwa. Into the cavern through the boulder she had obliterated, and there waited two Akatsuki in easy glory.
When the stumble came between the former teacher and former student, the guilty party was not Sakura. Emotions, vivid and damning, too fast for the human eye if not for the red that tinted his vision. They were covered up and buried beneath bravado.
Two young men – boys yet, Kakashi thought – with all the air of experience only senior, elite nin should rightly have. Casual and unperturbed at the arrival of four enemies. One Akatsuki had a face he didn't recognise and the other was a person he had years ago committed to memory.
Deidara no Iwa spoke with a teasing grin and what he said was to the group he must have thought his audience. His voice was deep and smooth with arrogance. "Oh, I've been cornered, yeah– "
Kakashi could have smiled.
The last word was not finished before the Ex-Iwa nin was squirming to avoid senbon needles. Eight, he counted, and each from Sakura. Though he chided himself that the emotion was misplaced, Kakashi felt a surge of pride over the fact her aim was perfect from no hesitation. She was steadfast and maybe – perhaps – really they weren't so different –
The surrounding rock walls echoed with indignant shouting.
"Damn it, Sprout!" And Deidara no Iwa's attention zeroed in on one particular person, "don't get jealous just because I didn't call you out by name!"
"Are you kidding me? You going on like that as if I'm not standing right here!"
"I was trying to be professional, yeah!"
Cool composure was a lost concept for the two and Kakashi, feeling older somehow, rethought his previous comparison between Sakura and his own situation. Next to himself and Uchiha Itachi, these two were much more...lively. They were a gale stirring in the natural cavern, loud enough to cover even the mounting anger coming from Naruto (his was a slow burning tempest).
"What about you says professional right now?" Sakura threw her arms out, shaking them with emphatic bewilderment at her former teacher's lounging on top of Sabuku no Gaara's body. It could have been amusing, almost. "And are you holding – is that your arm?"
She had other things to say, but stopped short at an interruption from her team mate at her side and Kakashi felt it, too. Something had descended on the occupants in the cavern, a pressure that made his skin want to pull into itself and a heat that dried his lungs. The only one immune to it was the very one from which the chakra of the Demon Fox emanated.
Kakashi narrowed his eyes, unsure as he glanced to his student.
"Sakura-chan..." Naruto's voice was a molten mixture of confusion, anger, and sadness, "that person you're talking to...he's standing over Gaara...like Gaara is nothing at all...like he's not even..."
Helpfully, Deidara no Iwa answered the vague mumbling. "What? He's dead, yeah. It doesn't matter to him what I'm doing now."
Sort of an uncomfortable truth for what was meant to be a rescue mission. What were they now? A recovery team?
Naruto had a different plan.
"Standing over Gaara when he's like that...beneath you...like he's trash." The air was hotter yet and burning in the space around Naruto. "I'll kill you."
He wanted revenge.
"Guess I know who I'm fighting, yeah!"
"Naruto, wait – !"
For shinobi, a great number of things can happen in a very short amount of time. In this instance, Kakashi was aware of the following: Naruto leapt forward, holding a giant shuriken in hand; Deidara no Iwa had taken to the air on the back of his bizarre construct, Gaara's body in the thing's mouth; Sakura was leaping back towards the exit; Chiyo of the Sand was unsealing a pair of scrolls, two puppets appearing beside her; and finally, the second Akatsuki was unsealing his own scroll and something came darting forth from the resulting smoke.
Kakashi uncovered his Sharingan and acted too. Clay bombs detonated, knocking Naruto back so that Kakashi was able to catch the boy by the cuff of his shirt while tossing kunai in his free hand. He yelled a warning to Sakura as a mass of what looked like wooden arms shot towards her.
Above him, Naruto's shuriken went wide from his throw, until it burst into smoke in a blind spot behind Deidara no Iwa. The boy in Kakashi's hand dispersed with a subtle pom, and Naruto was in the air with a jutsu charging round the palm of his hand. There was a clash of wind natured chakra and explosive chakra as the nin countered the surprise tactic. Behind Kakashi, at the same time, an impact as hundreds of arms slammed into the shield of two puppets that had moved to protect Sakura. Another second and a then a thundering slam as the land quaked. Sakura had hopped over her puppet guardians in order to decimate the mass of clawing limbs with a single kick.
Flying over Sakura's head to the cavern opening, Deidara no Iwa was grinning down to her with an unsettling gleefulness. The expression made Kakashi consider using his Mangekyou technique, but he could not have even if he wanted just then, and instead followed after Naruto who pursued the fleeing Akatsuki.
Her former teacher said something to Sakura, unintelligible to Kakashi from behind Naruto's roaring. The bird rolled as it flew, under the cut of a second giant shuriken, and there was more dust as the weapon hit rock and a tag on its centre detonated. Ineffective and suddenly the chase was out to the open air.
"Dei – Naruto, stop! I'm the –" Sakura cut short her words in order to spin into a series of kicks and tantou slices as the bamboo arms reanimated. She tried for Kakashi's attention as he ran past. "Wait, Kakashi!"
He didn't like the way her throat constricted, catching on the syllables of his name. A cold morning on his mind again, 'you're not going to leave me?' That morning when she was slick with muck and exhausted from trying to right her wrongs in a way not many had the perspective to even consider.
Because that was who she was, wasn't it? Someone with the ability to take a situation and turn it over and twist it around to understand its multiple dimensions – that coupled with a drive Kakashi knew he lacked in comparison.
He supposed that perhaps, no, they really weren't so much alike.
More quietly, he heard her say, "...isn't that person my responsibility..."
Ah, fuck – decisions.
But Kakashi had a student whose life was his to guard, and a village that needed that student even though they hated him. Kakashi was his line of defence. That was his duty, ultimately, to serve the well-being of Konoha, and right then its well-being depended on Naruto's survival.
Kakashi saw the puppets at Sakura's back, fighting alongside her with precision and agility born from too many decades of battle experience. Vaulting over them, he said back to her, "you have a fight to finish here first."
It was not that he trusted her to finish it, it was merely a fact that she would.
Sakura would win.
O O O
Sasori knew what he sought for his collection, for his weapons – a type of brilliance that needed to be captured and preserved. Art was the brilliance of a moment that was fleeting? How crass. The moment should be immortalised. Why lose something when you can keep it? Revisit it, touch it, grasp it, whenever one wanted...
Four faces he knew, although each had changed in some way since last he had seen them.
That old bat, for one, was much more wrinkled and grey now. Smaller, stiffer, slower, and the muted impression of the fighter he had once thought to imitate. The wooden faces of the puppets he had made in his parents' image were worn and cracking from disuse, chips in their paint and frays in their clothing. He had no interest in them and questioned the desperation that must have driven his grandmother to even carry them with her. The puppeteer he had left in the desert – had she recognised that her very own student was the one responsible? Had she then hoped to fight with him, to inspire some hesitancy in his actions with these ghosts? To draw emotion from him and to bare his weakness?
How pathetic.
If the once commendable Chiyo had lowered herself so much to stoop to such basic methods, then it was best to end things quickly. Sasori thought he might take them, though – the package of four – to bring his collection back to a solid number of three hundred. After all, he was still missing those puppets the little Leaf kunoichi had permanently taken out when they had fought before.
The Leaf kunoichi. She stood in the centre of what could have been a natural catastrophe of some sort – the thicket of puppet limbs fallen around her like trees after a downburst. Not too different a posture from when she had trampled Hiruko; straight shoulders, loose fists at her sides, and a subconscious jut from one hip as her weight favoured to one leg. No disguise to mar her hair or conceal her physique. He wondered at the colour of her eyes as he caught the bothered scowl she sent him.
Sasori smiled, eased his gaze from hers to greet his grandmother.
"Well, this is awkward, eh Chiyo? You standing there with my childhood playthings and me with the Sandaime Kazekage. I'm sorry to say that this won't be much of a fight for you."
The old bat ignored him, murmured a command to the Leaf kunoichi, and he watched as the four regrouped with the girl holding back the furthest from him and the puppets out in front. A formation for which he did not at all care. He laughed and the sound was enough to draw his grandmother's attention. He counted the lines on her face.
"I was trying to be generous, Chiyo. You should heed my words and use your ally if you hope to accomplish anything. I don't think you've forgotten that my puppet was once the man known as the strongest in the Sand."
"No, boy, I haven't forgotten. And it seems with this revelation that you are behind the disappearance of three of the Sand's kages," Chiyo had little emotion as she spoke. Boredom, he thought, if anything.
"I might have helped with the jinchuuriki, but I can't say I had very much to do with the demise of the Fourth. Wasn't it that infamous mad-man of the Legendary Three?"
"Too busy with your own jutsu, I suppose." His grandmother shrugged her shoulders. "Am I meant to tremble in the presence of an emotionally stunted man hiding himself in the shell of a boy?"
"Shell, you say. How very much like you, Chiyo, to know nothing of what you speak. I was right to leave you when I did. Otherwise, I never would have excelled in my art!" Sasori would let her see it – the progress he had made. She had once been known as a genius, but she had never come close to his own triumphs. Let her see the boundaries he had broken.
He wanted to laugh again; it was almost too much of an advantage that he had.
"Those puppets you have are the shells. What I have is my human puppet. Understand? Surely, you've at least conceived of the same idea. I'll elaborate even, let me show you want it means."
Granules of sand and the sound was pleasant. More pleasant was the look on Chiyo's face, her rushed explanation to the kunoichi, another order for the girl to retreat. There was some resistance to the suggestion, but it was shut down.
"You can't do much as you are," he heard his grandmother mutter. A bit harsh, "you're only so good as the person next to you who can complete your hand seals."
Sasori frowned, unable to follow the significance of such a statement. No matter, he would resolve that issue in a moment.
There was only so much a puppeteer could do in certain situations. They needed open space, they need spatial awareness, quickness in mind and limb. It was a tough manner in which to survive, let alone prosper, in the shinobi world. But there was a reason Sasori was so formidable, why he was as feared and in as much demand as he was.
He made fast work and he was not forgiving. The iron sand of the Sandaime was a black hole hovering in front of him, and then it was growing. Spreading thin, rather, and rising high to the ceiling of the cavern. An impenetrable, amorphous coming of an end. Arms like black lightning and the earth shattered as the iron struck out towards his grandmother and his two rejected puppets. She was nimble and able to avoid the stakes, but she was careless to leave her back open.
Such an obvious weakness. Sasori was insulted she had shown it.
The iron moved, contorting from stakes to a whirlwind around the three to a sheet that encapsulate Chiyo and her puppets entirely. A dome of darkness, inescapable and final. Orbs of iron in the air outside the sphere and then he had them slice through like pins to a cushion.
While it would have been satisfying to witness the work of his favourite tool's jutsu, Sasori was too enthralled with watching the Leaf kunoichi. He wanted to see how she reacted – her confidence changing to shock, shock to dismay – the range of her emotions as he overwhelmed her support. He wanted to push her to that limit she had hit once before, when her dismay had hardened over with last-ditch determination. That was the drive he needed to see, to savour, to add to his collection.
The girl was calm under Sasori's scrutiny, not giving him any attention as her focus remained on the iron fortress in front of her. For a second he was annoyed – that familiar unbecoming impudence – but then he saw something and Chiyo's earlier shout made sense. 'Can't do much as you are.' The kunoichi was holding herself in a strange manner, compensating for a weakness on her right side, though the cover she employed was nearly imperceptible. It was only because of his extreme familiarity with anatomy that he had even recognised how she was avoiding any stress or reliance on her right arm.
She couldn't use handseals. No jutsu.
The cavern hummed with the thundering noise of a very heavy thing smashing into iron. Sasori stepped aside as a chunk of the dome hurtled through the air and crashed into the ground where he had been standing. Other pieces littered the area around him, bursting from a hole blown through the dome. The rest of the structure collapsed outwards and there was a rush of cold air that escaped after it.
"You do carry them with you, then."
The famous Chikamatsu Collection.
Sasori thought perhaps three hundred and ten was not so bad a number.
O O O
Looked like bodies strewn around her, an imitation of an army in ruins.
The better thing to have done would have been to insist on the little petal going along with her team members, pursuing the other Akatsuki. Not that Chiyo wanted to second guess her decision to allow the girl to stay, but that was the thing about her nostalgic opponent, he was dredging up all sorts of doubt in her.
Lousy thing, that.
What an adversary he had become. From that small, sad, hopeful, lost little boy to this thing in front of her. Talented still, and lost still, she thought. Sasori didn't know it, judging from that sad sneer of his, but he was searching as he always had been.
Chiyo was on the ground, sitting up with her weight on her artificial arm. She'd been knocked down, winded, and defeated – temporarily. A few seconds and she could get to her feet and continue the battle. She had let her memories cloud her judgement, she'd been sloppy. Out of practice. But she needed to get up again, because she had the kunoichi here, too, and there was that something about the girl she didn't want her grandson to see.
The black mass of the Sandaime Kazekage hurried towards her, scythe out like the reaper come, and Chiyo directed the upper half of her remaining puppet to block its strike.
Too long to get to her feet, it seemed, for the Leaf kunoichi. No faith, the audacious thing, she thought as the kunoichi landed before Sasori's puppet.
"Step down, child!"
Too late in words, too. Halted by Chiyo's puppet, the Sandaime Kazekage stayed trapped long enough for the kunoichi to appear and do the very thing Chiyo had tried to prevent from happening. The figure burst into fragments under Haruno Sakura's fist with one quick jab.
"You're a medic nin, Haruno. Step down."
"Stay where you are, please." Sasori was sneering, and Chiyo could feel her heir's cold fury, his flush of excitement. "Come to me as anything but a combatant, child, I will make splinters of you."
Lousy thing, the whole situation.
"You're not down for the count, Chiyo-sama," the girl said, an unwanted amount of finality in her tone. "Stand up and I'll be your puppet now."
Damn those similarities.
O O O
Author's Note: :D Some people might guess how Sakura and Deidara will next meet up...hehe (and it is not twenty chapters from now, promise). Peeps Did I rehash the Wave Arc? Eh? Have a little faith. Next chapter.