One operation finishes. The Akatsuki organization are the proud new owners of a tailed beast.
It's the operation that never ends, thinks Konan. The endless clean up. The endless reports, Sasori's ring finally retrieved from the rubble of rock debris and smashed puppet pieces, in what was left of the cavern.
The reports come in. At first Nagato is sleeping and she hesitates to wake him; the sealing jutsu takes a lot out of you, even if you do have six bodies. Actually, from what she's seen, having six bodies seems to take something out of him too. Even if he doesn't use them- and quite often he doesn't. He leaves them down in the machine room, like tools neatly put away in a drawer until needed for some specialized task. This is about the only thing he keeps in a neat orderly fashion, in fact. She leans over and kisses him, his still sleeping face. He murmurs in his sleep. But he doesn't wake, he's always been a mercifully heavy sleeper.
So she lets him rest and sits up in bed to be a silent holographic flicker that listens to Zetsu. That's all she has to do, no speaking is required.
It was unplanned, but the fact that she does not speak has now become intentional. The idea of those other Akatsuki members finding out that she's their Leader's.. well, whatever she is, girlfriend, wife, life partner. It doesn't thrill her, that idea. Hidan's mouth is filthy enough without him getting ideas about this, commenting, without him speculating about their sex life. Best that the Akatsuki members have no idea who the ninth shadow is.
When they ask, Nagato's Leader voice comes down on them like an iron fist.
Protecting that secret.
One more for their collection of secrets, she thinks, trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes with one hand, focus on maintaining the hologram, listen to Zetsu; mentally planning what needs to be done for the village today. Nagato's real body hidden in the machines and water is the one true secret, the one stacked on all sides with contingencies, the one with their most intense combined paranoia lavished upon it. But there are others.
There is their identity as village leaders, or rather- Pein's identity. Though Nagato tends to think of Pein's identity as an existential question. Or else one of political efficacy, he seems mildly horrified at the way people respond to this figure. And why is Pein worshiped? Well, it's no mystery to Konan- because Pein is powerful. Pein has more power than anyone else, anyone else in the world. Pein effectively stomps on anyone who comes to bother Amegakure. So their supporters- Pein's supporters really- are in fact motivated by a mix of awe and fear. Mostly fear, though. They're hiding behind the big bully's ankles, kissing his ass so he won't stomp on them too. This is clear to her, but it bothers Nagato. So they don't talk about it. Much.
Pein is not them, anyway. Pein is a... not even a means to an end. Not their ends, anyway. So much of Pein was Madara's. Madara's idea.
So, not theirs at all.
This is irrelevant anyway. There's a village to run. She and Nagato can't run it, certainly not in person, so they have applied the art of delegation. Delegate to others, give them powers to delegate and supervise and soon- all she has to do is supervise the supervisors.
City administration is delegated, primarily, to senior city administrators who hired new city administrators from the post-despotic pit that the city was- after Hazou's corpse burnt away. Under them, a chain of civil servants and civil engineers. Nagato sets policy- sometimes, sometimes he delegates it down to a cabinet of ministers. Nagato writes speeches, mostly for civic events and for morale. These are delivered by others, better public speakers than Nagato or herself. Of course, this is not a difficult thing to be. They are shy people, she thinks. Both of them.
Their pyramid of staff has only five people at the top of it. Four of these people have no idea who they send their missives and reports to. The last reports up above their heads through a chain of twenty proxies- and their only job is to send those messages along that twisted path. The other four report to this person.
Twenty pairs of hands changing those messages. At the end, any one of them. This person then reports to herself and Nagato. By phone or fax, by delivered message- never in person. She and Nagato take these calls as 'Pein's junior advisors.' Or, if Konan's in a bad mood, 'Pein's PR staff.' No one knows their voices. She and Nagato sound like nothing special, anyway. They sound like middle managers. They own the phone companies the way they own the city utilities. Their ten contact numbers are rendered untraceable. Madara has none of them. Madara isn't allowed to call them.
Madara would call us at all hours, Konan thinks to herself. Madara would give our contact number to Hidan. Madara would slip their numbers to Itachi, so that some nosy Konoha spy network could come just a bit too close to the bone, give her and Nagato a nice good scare at three in the morning. Nagato says that Madara is like a trickster spirit, like someone in this storied archetypal path. And that's fine, Konan thinks. But you don't give the trickster your home number. It's bad enough that the trickster knows where you live.
Thinks he knows where you live.
Hopefully he has no idea where they live, because they really don't live anywhere. She and Nagato watch the proxies deliver Pein's speeches, Sometimes Shakespearian stage actors are hired to do this. They both enjoy that. "I couldn't ask for a better dramatic reading," Nagato says, often, pleased at his words transformed to an impassioned soliloquy.
They watch these speeches from the tower, or else from a safe house. On television, the same as everyone else.
Secure in their anonymity.
The saving grace, Konan thinks, may well be that she and Nagato are such shy, retiring, passive people. When they are in a safe house long enough to be known to their neighbors, inevitably they are thought to be a pair of quiet, slightly eccentric academics.
So, an advantage.
It offsets their looks, anyway. That is where they have a problem. Yahiko's hair is red in the same way fire engines are red. Memorable. Never mind the piercings. Never mind the rinnegan , which is disturbing, strange, rare- and looks every bit of this. Konan should have been luckier, but she's not. She's pretty. But there's pretty, and then there's pretty, and she's the kind of pretty that attracts lots of attention. People's heads turn. They stare. It's a big problem, in fact.
It's used against them by even Madara. One of his little cruelties to Nagato. What unbelievable luck you have had, his shark's grin. Implying that Nagato should wonder why he has such a beautiful woman, wonder why someone like him should have something- clearly- that Madara feels he is beneath having.
Which is stupid, Konan thinks now, and did then too. Nagato had a pale, delicate, elfin kind of beauty to him, in his own body. It was just Madara insulting his manhood, like every single one of their previous opponents had done. Pausing between calling her a whore and Yahiko a punk to call Nagato a fag- or some variation of such. Madara uses prettier language, but the meaning is the same. Just stupid, pointless trash talk- but it had bothered Nagato.
Bothered her. She and Yahiko used to take those people and smash their teeth out on the concrete. Nagato was more of a ninjutsu user- hands off, distanced. So was she, in fact, Yahiko was the taijutsu brawler in their team. But seeing people upset Nagato irritated both of them.
And it was a moot point, anyway. Yahiko grew up to look like a movie star.
Still, a problem. So they use henges. Ordinary looking henges. Ordinary citizens. Henges are fine as long as you don't try to fight, do anything, expend chakra. Henges are fine for going around the corner to the bakery for bagels and fresh orange juice for breakfast. Amegakure is one big wet icy smear in the morning. Miso and rice doesn't cut it, especially after a seventy-two hour sealing.
Konan is thinking all of this as she walks, relatively at ease given that she's out in the open, henged to look unremarkable and everyday. One of the customary wide conical staw hats over her head to keep off the rain. She's long since nodded, gestured- silently dismissed Zetsu.
All of this, she thinks, all these thoughts- and from only the death of Sasori. Not a person she and Nagato knew well, though he had been in the organization for some time. It's probably more that Sasori was their age. Their generation. Orphaned in the same wars that orphaned herself, Nagato and Yahiko. Some of Suna's wars even spilled over into Amegakure, it was a toxic dumping ground for everyone's brutal battles, back in those days.
These days, at least it's peaceful.
Only because the tight borders and intense, heavy-handed policing make it a sincere pain in the ass to come here, try to move your armies in through checkpoints, have your little displaced armed conflict in the pouring rain.
But the city is better too, she notes. Businesses are recovering, or taking root where before there was nothing there, nothing to grow upon, nothing that didn't get bombed or burned or ravaged or picked over by roving gangs, or seized by the local neighborhood warlord...
But now, she can walk down the street and buy food for herself and Nagato without getting attacked, mugged, shot at. Without being greeted by empty shelves and closed signs, because one faction has cut all shipping lines to the city in hopes of starving the other. Without stepping on hidden mines. Without scanning the high dripping concrete eaves of the higher levels for snipers.
That's something, she thinks, the warm bag of bagels under her arm.
She returns to their current safe house, which is much like many of the others- a modest, nondescript but reasonably comfortable apartment. There are people down in the administrative chain who's entire job is maintaining, rotating, securing these places. Thirty of them. Extras in hotel rooms, townhouses, should any of these become too known, too exposed. Nagato is still in bed when she returns, but awake.
Talking to their staff.
"More death threats." he says, putting down the phone. Eighteen this week. Five overnight. Nagato shrugs sleepily. "Only two of them were professionals."
And they lost their trail in the administrative maze, found themselves sending threats and explosives to remote offices.
Professionals, though. she thinks.
This is an important distinction. Because there are the usual cranks and crazies that public figures and political leaders attract. Then there are the trained spies and sting operations, the professional assassins and mercenaries that creep in, mostly from the lingering traces of Hanzou's faction. But from other groups as well.
But five is nothing. Five is a normal day.
Nagato pulls her back into bed and they cuddle, almost normal. They have staff to handle the death threats as well.
Staff to handle the day to day operations...
Staff that report up to them, so mostly the two of them end up initialing requests. Their primary job is to not exist, to not be there. To be nowhere, untraceable. Pein is in the air molecules of Amegakure, his name is everywhere, his myth moves further still.
But functionally, he doesn't exist. Nagato and Konan eat bagels, drink coffee, make facetious remarks over what's written about Pein in the newspaper, that's always a rich vein of black comedy. They shower and get up properly. Later at the tower they'll put on nail polish; that can't be slapped on in a hurry, should Madara choose to make a sudden appearance. But an Akatsuki cloak can.
So the cloaks tend to be left in closets or over chair backs or thrown across tables, wet and dripping from the rain.
They'll oversee the Akatsuki operation.
But mostly they'll just keep to themselves, her to her origami and chakra geometries, him to his theology and reflection. To themselves, their various obsessions, one another.
They are, she thinks- drawing out her complex figure, mapping it's shapes and lines and distances so that these can then be shaped in paper, in chakra- the unlikeliest criminal masterminds ever.
The unlikeliest world conquerors- ever.
People more inclined to spend time in a library somewhere than oversee a sweeping global plan of domination. People, in fact, more at home with the idea of this plan, the structure of this plan- than enacting this plan.
Maybe that's why, too. she thinks.
Maybe that's why Madara chose them.
Nagato has a theory or two about this himself.
Not right now, he thinks. There are other things to think about. Akatsuki is Madara's, it's Madara's bloody thumbprint upon himself and Konan. And upon everyone else in the organization and on their plan. But Nagato still is the leader, or at least the Leader is someone he creates and manifests as real and present.
And Sasori died under the Leader's watch, so in Nagato's opinion, the Leader should show some respect for this sacrifice.
He tries to do this anyway. He tries to keep the members from quarrelling, from tearing one another apart verbally. When Hidan is characteristically disrespectful about Sasori's death, the Leader takes two clean, precise steps and hits Hidan- hard enough to knock him unconscious.
A jutsu, of course. Blunt force trauma probably wouldn't do it for Hidan, he's semi-immortal. Or maybe entirely immortal. He's like Nagato and Konan are that way. Functionally immortal, functionally very hard to kill. A rinnegan jutsu is about the only thing that can knock Hidan out cold.
And Hidan learns nothing from this, of course. His big mouth resumes as soon as he wakes up, a few minutes later. But the Leader has made his point.
No disrespect. Nagato thinks. Not to the dead. Not to those who die for you. No matter who they are.
Akatsuki belongs to the Leader too.
And- to Nagato and Konan. Though for slightly different end goals than Madara.
Well- extremely different end goals, actually.
But this is far off. They have one beast. They have a dead member. Konan takes the reports from Zetsu, and Nagato goes out onto his statue, high on the tower. He stands over the sharp patchy metal forest of Amegakure. Looks up at the thick grey-white clouds hanging heavy over him. Reaches out with Yahiko's rain-senses, his rain sensitivity- feels.
Thinks.
Zetsu says that Sasori was killed by two medic-nins.
By two medics, thinks Nagato. Medical ninjas. It's ghoulish. Like the ghastly accounts of Orochimaru's human experiments, medical torturers, medics killing Sasori, surgically drilling out any living parts he had left and cutting them to pieces. It's appalling to think about.
Worse, the way they questioned him- at least according to Zetsu. Holding him down, demanding to know his motives, his reasons. Though, Nagato is momentarily more interested in the fact that they cared enough to do so. Still, one of them was Sasori's grandmother, an old woman from Suna. And the other was a close friend of the Kazekage.
So, clearly it was personal.
Someone else's friend is always dying, Nagato muses. Down in that city, someone's family is always being killed. Someone is always collapsing with grief. Always.
And- ultimately medical ninjas would have been the only ones able to kill him. Sasori had replaced almost all of his body with puppet parts.
And Sasori felt the way Nagato does himself, that the world had made him a monster. That the war had broken him internally. And that all he could do from there, all that could ever be right for him-
-was to destroy his own body, twist it, replace it, make it bizarre and gruesome and strange.
Because we aren't human anymore, Nagato thinks, pressing the pad of his thumb to the heavy bar piercings through his nosebridge. Driven to put sharp pieces of metal through himself, hang his flesh on symbolic meathooks. For the pain, yes. For the feeling. For the awareness. For the enlightenment. But no different than Sasori, Sasori and his quiet self-mutilating artistry, not really. No difference other than the tools and materials. The presentation. The aesthetics.
No meaningful difference at all then, Nagato thinks.
There's a big difference in scale. Konan says, about this.
With her, it's always about precision. Accuracy.
And usually Nagato is impressed by this, they've always been interested and charmed by one another's ideas. But this time he thinks she's being too harsh. She doesn't like Sasori. She doesn't like anyone in Akatsuki. She doesn't like Akatsuki.
There are two kinds of people in Akatsuki. she says.
It's so her, categories. Clean lines. Demarcated seams of paper. He smiles to himself.
She means the young hotheads- Deidara and Hidan. Kisame. The ones who are going to flame out, quickly and spectacularly.
And that is right, Nagato thinks, looking up at the sky. Absolutely right. Every meeting is a struggle to quiet and contain both of them. Every meeting is another moment to look at them and wonder why they're still alive at all. And- for how long.
On the other side are the older ones, the ones that survive and endure and grow more and more self-mutilated, more and more unrecognizable.
And that live a good long time, corkscrewing themselves with bitterness, slowly cutting away their own skin and life and mortality. Like Orochimaru. Like Kakuzu. Like Madara and, in fact, like Sasori. No spectacular self immolation for them, just years and years of slow self-inflicted wounds.
For, that is, himself and Konan.
And not anytime soon, either. They'll live to fifty-something like Orochimaru. To a ghoulish ninety-something like Kakuzu and Madara. Nagato and Konan are still young, relatively, they are only slightly over thirty. But they won't go soon. They'll have years of time to bend themselves into monsters inside and out with their jutsu. They won't go quickly. Not like Sasori, who started as a child, packed all of his slow self-envenomation into an efficient twenty year window. Stepped into a fatal jutsu to finally commit Konoha-aided suicide at the age of thirty five.
Give it fifty years. Nagato thinks. Rain is starting to fall, pattering at his hands. Wet splotches are starting to stain the concrete of the statue's tongue, where he sits. Thinking. Thinking of how they'll look, the two of them. Not like Kakuzu, patched together with black thread. More like Orochimaru, with a thin veneer of cosmetic beauty. Like dolls more than anything. Like ghosts. Konan's paper jutsu will slowly embalm her flesh and freeze her into her youth, set her there like a lacquered butterfly. His own rinnegan will stop the blood and chakra and aging process in Yahiko's body. They'll be like animated sarcophagi, Nagato thinks, inked pharaoh mask-faces. So many of his bodies are already this way. Soon this one will be as well.
The rain is starting to come down hard now. It's bouncing violently from the concrete and pounding at the metal and stone surfaces, lashing down at the buildings thrusting up at his feet, the vast spiked electrical pylon-poles spearing up at the sky; at the tower's wireframed crown, it's lines of tattered color, flags twisting violently in the wind. The air is full and humid and cold, saturated with the hollow thickets of rain sound. Rain on Amegakure.
"Come inside." Konan calls, from the mouth of the statue. He turns and sees her, a graceful figure in shadow under the heavy concrete lip of the door. Her thick Akatsuki cloak covers everything but the crown of her hair, the white droplet of her paper flower ornament, the soft shaded whiteness of her face.
He hears her voice snatched away on the violent gusts of wind. She calls again, but he's heard her.
She calls him by his real name.
Not around Madara, of course. Then he's just Pein. Or rather, both Konan and himself then refer to the god, because the god is all that Madara gets to see anymore. Nagato does not attend those meetings any more than he attends Akatsuki gatherings.
Figuratively, that is.
At any rate, if Madara was there, she would have called for Pein. She calls for him.
"You're all wet.." she says, reaching up to smooth his hair off his forehead. He's dripping as he steps under the awning and into the soft humid shadows there. His skin is cold with windburn, he doesn't even notice until he feels the warm touch of her fingers. She wipes a cold line of droplets from his cheek. And then from his lip, playing with one of the studs there with a gentle motion of her thumb.
"Being upset, having compassion, having respect for this man.." she whispers. "puts you above people like Madara. It speaks for your humanity. There is something broken in us, but we aren't as broken yet."
And maybe they'll make it out less broken, comparatively. Less flesh wounds, less shrapnel. Less splashback damage onto themselves.
She really is the only one sometimes, he thinks, who values this part of him. Compassion. What amount of it he has left. But it's true that no one else has much use for Nagato. Madara calls for Pein, or for the Leader. The Leader is only a hologram. Pein is only power with a thin shell of mythology. And if it wasn't for that power, there would be no Akatsuki cloak, no reason why he would be worth anything to Madara. To Akatsuki. Nothing, but for the rinnegan. Only for power.
Power is all that matters to these people.
To so much of the world, it seems. And nothing else. Power and money- which is just more power.
Still, he matters to her. And she matters to him. And the rest of the world can flame out tomorrow, Nagato's compassion for it has drained away.
Down into the pipesystems of Amegakure, washed away with the blood of the dead.
It's a cliche in Amegakure to make love in the rain, but they'll do it sometimes. Mostly during the summer, when the sun seeps gold through the heavy mat of cloud. Sometimes the air will be misty and tropical, warm and a hundred percent humidity, prismatic sunshowers. The sky will glow a soft gold light, like an endless sunset; and the buildings will all be neon prickles of color, the water will be flowing all around them, puddled on the stone, breaking into droplets on their skin. That constant surround of soft water falling, trickling, rainfall. Long arches of rainbows in the clouds sometimes. And the person he loves most in the world with him, loving him back.
It's funny that love means nothing, is worth nothing, to people like Madara. To much of Akatsuki.
It still means something to Nagato. Pein is another story, but Pein is put away down in the machine room, locked in a weapons case in Nagato's head. It's too cold to do anything outside. So instead they make love under a featherdown quilt and sheets up in the tower. A long grey stormy afternoon. Rain on and off, striking and sheeting at the windows. Drying. Varying pressure up in the clouds. The sound moves thorugh the walls. And they move slowly, stretch the pleasure out slowly.
Slow and unhurried, because they really don't have any pressing village business. Akatsuki is off chasing it's tail and Madara is probably bothering someone else for the moment.
Twelve years, give or take, to learn how to please one another. And both of them could probably write instruction manuals on the subject by now. Hers would be almost mathematical. She is so precise, he thinks. So precise. The words are a wince of pained delight as she nips him- exactly the right time, place, pressure. The slow torture of her lips on him, her tongue swirling, then the needleprick pinch of her teeth- and he's squirming under her. He's so close but she's stopped, and she's starting again, she's got this down to a hard science and all of the time she's doing it, he's thinking about doing the same to her. Flicking her with the smooth round ball stud in his tongue. She's so out of reach of the rest of the world, so distant from it; and so is he, but he's made her scream and lose her composure completely. And right now she's doing the same thing to him. Exactly the same thing...
...exactly.. he thinks, his breath still coming like steam. Clouds of steam. His heartbeat droning, settling. The sweat on his skin cools. Dries. He has her in his arms and he's kissing her, the different softness of her lips and her throat, and her breasts, her nipples, down the tense squirming muscles in her stomach and lower, where the tang of steel mixes with her skin and it's heat. Lower still where all kind of flower metaphors come- immediately, he thinks- immediately to mind. Her complex inner folds like her unfolding jutsu, her origami and her elegant theories. The muscles in her thighs tense against his fingers. Two or three hours of this, back and forth. No interruptions. The grey sky begins to give way to wet trails of blue, a hidden sunset that's smothered, hanging low under the jagged pipe forest of the top level skyline. And then finally a deep wet night full of the steady pitch and flow of rain. Long, comfortable hours of deep sleep in her arms. His skin still covered, saturated with the feel of her lips. Still inside her, deep in her warmth and wetness.
Making him wonder, honestly, what they are doing with all this Akatsuki scheming, all these power games, all this anger when they could just...
But they always get up. They always let one another go and have to go back into the world, to look at it. See it and it's brutality.
That's when he remembers, Nagato thinks. That's when he feels how much he wants to bash it apart with his bare hands.
All the warmongers. All the people drunk on power. All the warmongers drenched and smothered and buried in power until they drown. Until they hang themselves on their own brutal ambitions.
Or lock themselves into strategic checkmate, it doesn't matter. What matters is that they stop.
News comes from Madara soon enough. There will be a new member joining Akatsuki.
Konan waits, watching Madara make himself good and rudely comfortable in the room that is not their living room. In the tower where they do not live- but pretend to, stay within to meet with Madara. Because otherwise Madara might figure out that they don't live there- and may come sniffing around their safe houses. Where they have to sneak and henge and switch and wipe fingerprints, to protect themselves from exposure and from the death threats and-
-where they ultimately don't live either. But still, this is something that Madara does not know about.
So they hope.
Nagato sits, his posture more relaxed than usual while being Pein; but his eyes hawklike, his face like a carved mask of a war deity. Madara talks, blusters; the arrogance of this man is just astounding, Konan thinks. The sheer self-regard, the weight of his satisfaction in his cleverness is pushing all the air out of the room like clouds of sweet poisonous smoke. She wants to open the windows and air the place out. She wants to push Madara out of one, in fact. She'd like to tell him to get to the point, say what he's come to say, and leave. She stands, her arms crossed. She doesn't glare at him or even frown... exactly.
But she looks. Hard. Steady. Unwavering. Pinning him to the center of her field of vision like she's just stuck a straight pin through his neck. And he's squirming...
But he never does. He's completely unafraid of them.
Madara is going to join Akatsuki.
"Openly, as a member. I'm going to be attending meetings with you all... and I'll get to see you in action.." his tone is light and thick with his arrogance. So thick you choke on it. He's looking at Nagato as he says this. Preparing the next little poison dart on that honey tongue of his, she thinks. Looking at Nagato the way she's looking at him.
Madara is going to take Sasori's ring. But this is useless information; these rings are Madara's symbols and Madara's toys, Madara's projections of his diseased inflated ego. She has a recurrent vision of taking hers off and throwing it in his face. His stupid orange mask and it's bloody-rimmed eye. Madara has very little else of note to say. It's time for him to leave.
Meanwhile Zetsu is carrying the Nibi's jinchuuriki to the foot of the sealing statue.
And the plan is proceeding.
Hidan and Kakuzu have caught this jinchuuriki, and Deidara has charged off after the Sanbi.
Crazy, she thinks, absolutely. But not like Yahiko. Yahiko was a different kind of crazy.
A good kind. But she can't get at that feeling right now, there are too many things to plan and set up and move forward. Deidara and Madara have gone off to try to subdue a beast that even the five nations could not capture. Obviously it would be too much to hope for if, say, it ate one of them. One of them in particular. But- no, Deidara and Madara send word back to Zetsu, who calls for the holograms. And the holograms listen, are told that Deidara and Madara are towing a giant shelled demon back to shore. The process of assembly begins again.
Nagato is in a bad mood, she feels it. The entire hemisphere can probably feel it. He's being disrespected by Hidan. Hidan's having a tantrum because he was called for the ritual just as he had cornered a bunch of Konoha-nin. He was just about to go into his blood frenzy and slaughter them. He whines for another minute, another few minutes- couldn't the Leader just wait?
"No." Konan hears Nagato growl in the Leader's voice. "You come to the meeting- now."
Kakuzu manages to get Hidan dragged in by the scruff of his neck, kicking and screaming. And then Hidan is off and running at the mouth, leaping at Nagato- testing him. Hey Leader, fuck you! Man, fuck you! Can't you wait? The good part was just starting!
And- Hey man, I just hate all authority, seriously! So fuck you! Fuck you! Hey Leader, what're you gonna do, huh? Kill me?
Good crazy- and bad crazy, Konan thinks to herself, watching this. And quite a difference between the two.
Her hologram stands silently and watches from her high stone perch on the statue, watches Nagato crack the whip. Nagato has stalked out to the tower's statueface to deal with Hidan. She is still inside, separate from all of this and holding her silence. She watches with her hologram eyes. Nagato's methods are different from her own. For Hidan and Deidara, he mostly uses reverse psychology. They're both still young enough to respond to it.
To shut Hidan up, Nagato is talking to him.
Answering him, taking his yelling seriously. Konan isn't sure about this strategy at first, but oddly it seems to actually work. Nagato is able to distract him-
-but with Akatsuki's plan. Not the real one, mind you. The official one. The public version. Still, she worries, because Nagato likes to talk about his ideas. And the Leader's voice is warming, ever so slightly. Turning less stony and cold and...
She debates stepping in, breaking her silence. The shock of that alone, the sheer breach of normality would probably unsettle the Akatsuki members enough to hijack their attention completely. She listens, curling her fingers slowly around one another, twisting her ring. She could speak, break Nagato's rhetorical flight midsentence, reveal herself- get him off this subject.
But he handles it. His voice becomes the Leader's again, hollow blackness. He's deflected the question, muddled it- Nagato can be good and incoherent when he feels like it. Konan listens to him lecture Hidan about economic sabotage, and within a minute Hidan's eyes have begun to glaze over.
"World domination." he intones in the Leader's voice. They all like that answer, she thinks. All of these Akatsuki can fit their goals into that one. Hidan tries to argue the point for a moment more, but even he can't see any problem with that.
There is no problem there, she thinks.
Their own goal fits within the penumbra of this official goal as well.
As does Madara's, presumably. Though there is a problem with Madara's goal. A problem with their goal. A problem with reconciling these goals, to be precise.
A problem for later, she thinks.
Madara has donned a new persona as well, this jabbering manic Tobi creature.
Bad crazy, she thinks, with a slight pique of her eyebrow.
The statue quivers, electrifies. It's shackles fall away.
The mask slipping, she thinks. The plan moving. Another completed ritual.
Three tailed beasts, sealed.