So yah. This is a tribute to another character that will be appearing later on in "I'll do Anything." I give you good old Sasori, whom I love nearly as much as Gaara.
Red headed anime characters, after all, are just so easy to stuff angst into.
Disclaimer: Acara Whitefox does not own Naruto, though the concepts of Chi and Daiki are all her's.Sasori: Red Amongst the Sand
1. The first time that Sasori notices her is when he becomes a genin at the tender age of six. She has long black hair, bright green eyes with black rings around them, and a beautiful blue kimono. She was the perfect image of a shinobi, and only she is only a year younger than him.
Later, Sasori finds out her name: Sabaku no Chi, Shukaku Jinchuuriki.
2. The next thing that Sasori realizes is that nobody likes her. He understands that Chi is creepy and all, but to run screaming from her in the streets?
Maybe it is the sand? Maybe it is the rings around her eyes? Maybe it is this Shukaku person that everyone keeps mentioning?
Sasori really does not know.
3. When Sasori is seven years old, he is assigned to a team with "Suna's Ultimate Weapon." He's terrified, having heard the stories of the demon goddess that controlled the desert as if the sand were her limbs.
He is shocked when Chi walks in the room and asks if she is his partner.
4. Chi likes sunrises, he discovers. Sasori likes them too, so he begins to join her on the ridge every morning.
It takes three months before he can sit within her personal bubble.
A year before she leans her head on his shoulder.
5. Chi's files states that her goal is whatever Suna wants it to be: to take out a squad of Kumo nin; to destroy a village; to kill as many people as possible before the sun rises.
But on her tenth birthday, Chi admits to Sasori that all she really wants to do is get married and have a family.
Somehow, Sasori is not surprised.
6. Sasori is there the first time that Chi looses control of the Shukaku. He watches as her eyes turn black and gold and her skin becomes painted with the blue lines of the great tanuki. He watches as she rips apart a battalion of soldiers with nothing more than her bare hands.
But what he sees when it is all over is not a demon or a monster, but an eleven year old girl crying, screaming "It's not true! It's not true!"
As Sasori wades through the bloody remains of people long gone, he cannot help but see how fragile, how delicate, and how human Chi really is.
When he finally reaches her, he gently pulls her hands from her hair and embraces her for the first time. And she cries on his shoulder and apologizes over and over about getting his shirt messy.
He does not care. He's got another one back at base.
When they finally get back to camp, the Suna shinobi are shocked to see the Protégée holding hands with Girl-Monster.
7. Chi is a clinger. She never leaves him alone, not for a second. Sometimes, when he leaves his window open at night, Sasori wakes up to find grains of sand in his bed that he knows were not there before.
But because of it they are the best team in the history of Suna. When the Third Great Shinobi War begins, they are deployed more often than any other team.
Their enemies learn to fear the desert. There are legends of a black haired sand spirit that can make the desert move and of her red headed guardian and his crimson army.
Red amongst the sand. Red Sand.
Akasuna no Sasori was born.
8. Chi has soft hair, Sasori realizes one day. He is running his fingers through it one morning as she sits beside him.
She purrs and, for the first time, lays her head on his lap.
And Sasori thinks he is in love.
9. One morning when he's fourteen, completely out of the blue, Sasori asks Chi to marry him.
She says he's insane.
He says he's serious.
She says he's an idiot.
It takes Sasori a couple days to realize that while she did not say yes, Chi did not say no either.
10. One day, when he's sixteen, Sasori realizes that Chi is excited about something. She is fidgeting and there is a strange look in her eyes.
He takes her aside and asks her what was up. She launches into an explanation about a new jutsu that she was developing. A jutsu that could give Suna an edge against it's enemies in the War.
She calls it Satetsu, the Iron Sand.
11. About a week later, Chi comes to him and says that she has a mission. Sasori asks when they leave. She says that it is just her, it is a suicide mission, and that she leaves in a weeks time.
Chi says that no one will miss her when she is gone.
Sasori explodes, yelling at her that she is not going die, that she is not going alone, and that he does not give a damn about what the Kazekage says so he can just shove he orders up his ass.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, Sasori tells Chi that he loves her.
Next thing he knows, they are making out in his living room like a couple of hormonal teenagers.
Which, technically, they were.
12. Chi is sitting by the pool where his grandmother loves to fish. It is the first time that she's seen this much water in her life and she loves it.
"Is there anything else you want?" Sasori asks, his hand trailing down her arm.
"Yes. Sasori, make love to me," and she says it like it is the most normal thing the world.
He looks at the door, becoming very aware of the lack of lock.
"What? Here?!"
Sasori is very glad that it was Chi that he said that to. Any other woman would have probably killed him.
13. Two weeks after he wakes up to an empty bed, Sasori barges into the Sandiame's office and demands to know where Chi is.
The Kazekage tells him that Sabaku no Chi is dead.
His legs give out on him and Akasuna no Sasori slumps to the ground.
"How did she die?"
"The Shukaku was extracted from the seal on her shoulder about a week ago."
"She said she was going on a mission."
"She lied."
The Sandiame kneels down to his level.
"Our coroners found something very interesting when they examined her body. It was only about a week along,
"But Chi was pregnant."
Sasori's teeth grind against each other as he remembers the night by the pool.
"You were close to her, Sasori. Do you know who the father was?"
He says nothing, only looks down at the floor, refusing to meet his leader's eyes.
"Ah," the older man says, "I am sorry for your loss."
Just as the Kazekage is about to walk out the door, Sasori grabs on to the hem of his robes.
The protégée opens his mouth and a strangled voice asks the question, "Why?"
The Sandiame looks at him and responds, "She was too much of a danger to be kept around any longer."
Sasori decides that he hates the man right then and there.
14. When the Sandiame Kazekage reveals his new jutsu, Sasori is the only one who recognizes that the Satetsu that spews from his mouth is the same Satetsu that Chi was pouring her soul into developing.
Sasori abandons the village the very next day, because he refuses to serve under the man that stole Chi's childhood, Chi's dream, and now, Chi's life's work.
He refuses to serve under the man who will not even let his own daughter rest in peace.
15. Sasori spends the next decade growing more powerful in hopes of defeating – in killing – the man who took everything away. He gathers the bodies of the men and women that he has killed and turns them into his red clothed army. He experiments on himself, turning his body into a puppet.
Somewhere during that time, Sasori's mind snaps and he begins to refer to his creations as art.
Because art was eternal, and Chi was a true work of art.
Because the memory of her and how he failed to protect her when her Ultimate Defense could not would haunt him forever.
16. When news of the Sandiame going out into battle reaches his ears, Sasori takes off in the same direction. He hides in the shadows and waits for his chance.
The Kazekage is woken in the middle of the night by the sound of one of his guards hitting the floor. The thing that killed the man is a puppet, it's red hair the only thing he could see as it's back is to him. But the Kage knows who's it is.
"Come to avenge the death of your beloved, Akasuna?" he asks, searching wildly for the man behind the strings.
But the puppet's head swivels around, revealing the face of Sasori, manic grin in place.
"Oh, you have no idea!"
The Sandiame Kazekage dies screaming.
17. When news of the Sandiame's disappearance reaches the ears of the people of Suna, they are too busy trying to find him that they do not realize the changes made to the Wall of Heroes.
There is an extra name on the wall.
Another one is crossed out.
Ironically, it is Sabaku no Gaara that discovers this nearly a decade later. He has yet to tell anyone about it.
18. When Sasori brings out the Sandiame and shows the Satetsu to Pein, the Leader of Akatsuki, he does not see the Kage.
Sasori sees long black hair, bright green eyes with black rings around them, and a beautiful blue kimono.
He sees his Chi again.
Sasori is just glad that Deidara does not question him when he occasionally slips up and calls the puppet Chi like Orochimaru did.
19. Chiyo, Sasori believes, is foolish. The life-transfer technique that she has developed only works once, so if the witch was planning to bring The Mother and The Father to life she could only do it half way.
She could only revive one.
And then it hits him, just like one of those punches that the little pink haired girl dishes out.
Why Chiyo had insisted that Chi's body was to be put in a coffin, whole and untouched.
Why the old woman had developed a jutsu that could only bring one person back from the dead.
It was never about his parents.
It was never about her son.
Sasori wants to cry. He wants to hug her, to thank her for never giving up on him.
He wants to thank his baa-baa for trying bring Chi back, but his time on the earth expires before he can do it.
"Thank you…Grandmother…"
20. Sasori wakes up on a hill top, clad in the red hood and blue pants that he died in. But something it wrong, very wrong, and it's only when he runs his hand through his red hair that he realizes it.
He was made of flesh.
He could feel.
Where the hell was he?
"Are you here to watch the sunrise too, mister?" a voice, small and childish, comes from behind him. Sasori turns to see a boy who's at least ten years old. He has a mop of black hair atop his head and a pair of chocolate brown eyes.
Eyes that are incredibly familiar, but Sasori cannot place them.
"Daiki-kun!" another voice, this time a woman, "Daiki-kun! Where are you?"
"Up here, kaa-san!" the boy – Daiki – answers, waving to whomever had called him, "There's someone up here, too."
Daiki's mother comes into view, and Sasori's heart drops through his stomach like a lead weight.
"Chi?" But how? She'd been dead for years, "Is that…is that really you?"
The woman stops and faces him. Her hair is longer, the kimono is a darker shade of blue, but her eyes – bright green with black rings around them – had remained the same.
And then her mouth is on his, and she tastes just like he remembers. It's too good to be true, but if it's a dream or a genjutsu, Sasori really does not want to wake up.
"Whoa! Kaa-san, who the hell is he and why are you," Daiki paused, pushing his fingers together in an attempt not to say the word 'kissing.'
Chi lets out an embarrassed laugh – It might have been a cough, though, Sasori cannot tell – explaining to the boy that "Daiki, this is your father."
It was his child.
The one that Chi had been carrying at the time of her death.
Who had his eyes.
It makes so much sense that Sasori just smiles and holds his new family as close as he can.
"So," Daiki asks, completely destroying the moment, "How'd you die?"
And, damn it, the brat is just like his great-grandmother.
But Sasori would not have it any other way.
And there we have it. Sasori's story.
For those who are wondering, Chi was the second Shukaku jinchuuriki (it is mentioned that Gaara is the third in Suna history) as well as the Sandiame Kazekage's daughter. Because of this, she was also able to convert her chakra into magnetic forces. Chi was killed so that the Sandiame could take her jutsu and call it his own.
The world in number 20 is the world where dead people live. So Sasori's going to be seeing a lot more of his grandmother from now on.
!!IMPORTANT NOTICE!!
I've created a poll on my profile, so that you can vote on which character will get the next tribute. So far I have Naruto, Itachi, and Sakura up there, but I might add on Baki and Tenten soonish.
So go and vote, or I'll send Chi after you with a baby Daiki and a handfull of diapers.
Later,
Whitefox