You have now all subconsciously converted the Pastafarianism! The Flying Spaghetti Monster demands tribute! Buy "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" by Bobby Henderson (if nothing else than for the noodle jokes). Ramen! (Yes Naruto is a Pastafarian…)

The Shinobi's Guide to Accursed Heirlooms
Chapter Three: Who's Pulling the Strings?
By Kaori

Temari idly flipped through the day's mail. "Bill, bill, bill, hate mail, bill, letter from the crybaby, bill, bill, letter from Naruto, bill, letter from the Friends of Jinchuurikis? What the hell? Bill, bill, package slip…package slip?" she eyed the last object closer. "Kankuro!"

"What?" Kankuro yelled back from his room.

"Somebody sent you a package. Go get it."

Kankuro stomped out slightly annoyed. He was in the middle of doing maintenance on his puppets. He snatched the package slip out of Temari's hand and glared at it before stuffing it into his pocket. "This better be worth it or somebody's going to get maimed."

The SPO (Sunagakure Post Office) was set up on the far side of the village and employed some of the most irritable non-shinobi you will ever meet. They had forms for everything and all had to filled out in quadruplicate. Worse still, if you made a mistake on one you had to do everything all over again from the beginning. Kankuro spent two hours and twenty-six minutes filling out forms before getting angry and threatening to report them to the Kazekage if they didn't just give him his package.

If he had been anyone else, that wouldn't have worked. Still, it's very embarrassing that he threatens to sic his little brother on people. Oh well, pride is overrated anyway.

"What took you so long?" Temari asked from where she was lounging on the couch.

"Shut up." Kankuro said testily, manoeuvring himself so that the door wouldn't close on his foot. "Damn bitchy postal workers… You know, one of these days they'll all flip out and massacre the whole village."

"Don't be stupid. Everyone knows postal workers are harmless. The only thing you have to fear from those anal idiots is paperwork."

"Right. Remind me to say I told you so when they're disembowelling you with a letter opener during the uprising." He murmured and went to his room.

Placing the box on the bed, he removed the brown wrapping and tossed it into a corner. There was a note taped to the top. "Dear Kankuro, we found this puppet when were cleaning out storage room and we thought you might like it. Grandma." He threw the letter over his shoulder and opened the box.

Inside the box, nestled almost lovingly in the packing peanuts, was the most lifelike puppet Kankuro had ever seen. It was the size of a small child and dressed in a dark blue kimono. It had long straight, black hair, a cute button nose, and beautiful, big brown eyes that seemed to be watching you. Like most Suna marionettes, this one didn't have any strings as the puppeteer would provide them with his chakra.

Carefully, almost reverently, he removed the puppet from the box. It flopped over at the waist as if it were bowing in greeting. On the back if the kimono, written in red katakana, was the name "Katsure".

"Hello to you too." Muttered Kankuro. "Why the hell did they send me this girly-looking thing?" Curious, he created some chakra strings and connected them to the puppet, making it "stand". Suddenly, the puppet looked at him. "Ah!" he severed the connection. Tentatively he picked the puppet up again and examined it; turning it this way and that. "Must have been my imagination." He formed the chakra strings again. This time, nothing unusual happened.

Kankuro was surprised at the fluidity of movement the puppet possessed. Whoever had made this was very skilled; even the finger joints on the hands worked like human hands. He was about to find out if he could make the puppet throw shuriken when Temari called him downstairs for dinner.

As Kankuro left the room, the eyes of the puppet glowed for just a moment.

"Ugh… I swear she poisons the food." Groaned Kankuro as he flopped onto his bed. "Damn Gaara making me eat his share too. Why do we even let Temari cook anyway?" Wriggling under the sheet his eyes flickered over to his newest puppet. As he closed his eyes, he swore it was smiling at him…

In the morning when he woke up he felt incredibly stiff and then he realized that he couldn't move. "What the hell…" he thought, looking around his room which seemed way bigger than when he went to bed. Come to think of it, why wasn't he in bed? Why was he on the floor?

"It's about time you woke up, I was getting bored." A voice, his own voice, said. There was a sensation of being picked up and then he found himself looking into his own eyes. Inside his mind, he screamed.

Ah, sirs and madams, this tragic story really start two hundred year ago. Ack sorry I had a Jusenkyo Guide moment there… Ahem…

Two hundred years ago an old magician whose grandson, his only living relative, was suffering from a terrible illness created a body out of wood in hopes that he could somehow save his grandson's spirit. The boy, Katsure, died the day after the body was finished. Unfortunately, the old man had no way of knowing that giving the spirit a body to inhabit was not enough, the body and the spirit had to have a connection in order for the spirit to move it. The old man died and Katsure, was left alone in the wooden body.

Over the years, Katsure grew more and more bitter and the sheer power of his anger gave him enough power to move on his own. He vowed one day to escape from his prison. It took him thirty-seven years but he did it.

A travelling merchant found him when he rested at Katsure's long-empty house. Katsure, being the grandson of a magician, managed to swap bodies with the merchant when he was asleep. Unfortunately, his sprit had been anchored to the wooden body for so long that he could not venture very far from it and had to carry the merchant everywhere he went. As the merchant didn't have a strong connection to the body, he was unable to manipulate it.

He was eventually found out by the merchant's partner when he came to examine the lifelike puppet and it spoke to him. Apparently the merchant worked up enough willpower to work the puppet's mouth. After tying up Katsure in his sleep, the merchant's friend took him to an old witch and had him exorcised. Katsure was returned to the puppet body and the puppet was then put into a box and locked away.

Twenty years after that day, somebody else found Katsure, but this person, merely placed him in a curio case where he spent the next thirty-two years gathering dust before being given to Kankuro's grandmother as a gift. Eleven years later the puppet was given to Kankuro which brings us to the here and now.

Kankuro watched in horror as the spirit in his body stretched appreciatively. "You have no idea how happy I am to be able to move again." Said the usurper.

"Who are you?" Kankuro demanded mentally.

"My name is Demukaira Katsure." The spirit bowed comically. "And I thank you for letting me have your body."

"I did no such thing! Hey, wait, how can you hear me?"

"That body you are in used to be mine. I have a connection to it so naturally I know what you're thinking."

"Really?" Kankuro started thinking very dirty thoughts. Katsure, in Kankuro's body, blushed.

"Gah! Stop that!"

"Make me." Even dirtier thoughts followed.

"Argh! I command you to stop!"

"Nah, this is actually kind of fun." Scenes worthy of Icha Icha Paradise danced across Katsure's mind.

"Kankuro what are you doing up there?" Gaara demanded from downstairs.

"Nothing!" squeaked Katsure, the body suit was feeling a little warm and a bit too tight in a certain area. Inside the puppet's body, Kankuro snickered.

"Whatever, just keep it down or I'll come up there and kill you."

Katsure glared at Kankuro before forcing himself to calm down. He could do this. Kankuro couldn't manipulate that body without a connection so he should be fine. Oh how wrong he was.

You see, being intimately knowledgeable with the workings of puppets and the fine art of chakra manipulation, Kankuro had been trying to figure out how to work it from the inside from the very start. During the little ecchi session, it came to him. Now to see if he was correct…

The usurper was most surprised when the puppet suddenly sprang up and started kicking the crap out of him. Even worse, it hurt. He had forgotten that being flesh and blood had its drawbacks.

"Give me back my body, you freak!"

"Never!" yelled Kankuro.

"You won't like it if I come up there!" yelled Gaara. The two kept fighting but kept the bickering down.

"Awk, stop pulling my hair!" whined Katsure.

"It's my hair you body snatching jackass!" growled Kankuro.

The two didn't realize that they had started taking their battle outside of the room and were now rolling around the floor in Temari's room; Katsure desperately trying to get the puppet off of his face and Kankuro trying to force the spirit to return him to his rightful body. They didn't realize the mess they were making, and they didn't hear Temari's footsteps until it was much too late.

"Kaankuuuuroooooo…" Both beings looked up.

Katsure had never seen such an expression on anyone in his entire life. It was…terrifying. It was like having your nose an inch away from the jaws of a shark and knowing there was only a millisecond before you were saying goodbye to your head and hello to the afterlife. It was then that he suddenly knew that he was about to experience Hell: Enraged Female Version.

Kankuro fought the urge to cover his eyes as his sister beat on his body. It was a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, the bastard was getting what he deserved, on the other hand it was his body.

"No! Stop! Don't put that there!" screamed Katsure. "AAAAHHHH!" Kankuro wanted to cry very, very badly. "Argh I can't take anymore!" And the next thing Kankuro felt was Temari's fan slamming onto his head.

In a twisted kind of way, he was happy to be feeling anything at all.

After Kankuro got out of the hospital, he returned home to find Katsurei being dressed up in doll dresses by Temari. Muttering a quick greeting, he retreated to his room to laugh himself sick. When he finally stopped giggling, he snuck into Temari's room only to find Katsurei locked in a cabinet with the rest of Temari's doll collection. He smirked at the puppet spirit's pleading gaze and then went back to his room.

And thus ends our little trip to Suna. Up next is more Akatsuki goodness (and if you're good, maybe some Tobi torture).