Authoress' Note: Woah, I got 3 more reviews in the last chapter! Thank you oh loyal ones ( NibiNoNEKO, cute0anime0addict and overlordofnobodies ) ! You guys make me smile and have allowed me to locate my muse! So the chapters will be frequent until that pesky muse vanishes again. By frequent I mean DAILY! MUHAHAHA!! Thank you to everyone who reads this. Those who don't leave reviews...you needn't be shy, I don't bite!

Disclaimer: If I owned 'Naruto' do you honestly think I would spend my time writing FANfiction? No...I'd make this particular story actually HAPPEN in the manga

Chapter 3

The uncomfortable journey for the puppet master was not quite as long as he expected it to be, only confirming that these ninja were in fact from the Village Hidden in Darkness. The only clues that Sasori had which proved his captors had arrived at their intended destination, was the faint light that glowed up ahead to signal houses and the lack of sharp stones and twigs that assaulted his body.

On the way to the village, Sasori had been pulled roughly along inside the net – which he discovered sealed his chakra and had a nasty effect of preventing him from moving at all – and he had been scraped across far too many sharp stones, twigs, tree roots and goodness knows what else for it to be purely accidental. Bloody vindictively was more along the lines of how his captors had treated the Akatsuki member.

Of course, Sasori couldn't actually feel physical pain, but it was the principle of the thing.

With the lights gradually becoming more and more intense, Sasori was able to make out the shapes of individual houses and even a large building in the centre of the village which the S-Class criminal assumed was used by the village's Kage.

More details became clearer to the Akatsuki member as the ninja pulled him through a small gate that acted as the village entrance. For starters, his cloak was shredded a great deal at the edges - but that was only a minor problem. The main concern that tugged in his mind was the large, weighted net that held him trapped. He couldn't draw any chakra, nor could he actually even move his own body. If Sasori didn't know any better, he would think that the ninja had prepared in advance for his arrival by creating a special net for sealing puppets.

That last thought was like a painful fish-slap to the face for the puppet master. This village was on the border of the Wind Country. Therefore, they had to know of the Puppet Master Ninja technique and developed some method to counter it over the years. It would explain the net, but what Sasori couldn't understand was how they even knew he had a puppet body at all.

Unfortunately, none of this mattered in the grand scheme of things. Sasori couldn't do a single thing while he was bound inside the net and he already had a pretty good idea that the Darkness ninja were going to keep him bound.

The small group of four darkness ninja – for that was the number of ninja that had actually caught Sasori in the forest – drew close to a rickety looking wooden shack and shoved open the sliding door. The red-haired ninja suddenly missed the perilous forest floor, as the largest ninja of the group lifted and hurled Sasori's motionless body into the filthy room. They snickered to themselves and then slid the door closed again to engulf the room in nearly total darkness.

Sasori strained his eyes in the black environment to locate anything that could be of use to him in escaping – not that he could because they had left the net over his body – when he noticed many more puppets piled haphazardly in the tiny shack. All of them had identical nets covering them, which in Sasori's opinion seemed ludicrous because none of those puppets were able to move on their own anyway.

"It's a storehouse for puppets..."

He sighed in agitation and ran a list of things through his mind that he would undertake if he ever managed to escape the Village Hidden in Darkness. Number one on his list was to get revenge on the Leader someday.

Morning with Sakura, Ino and Hinata

"Hinata, are there any enemy ninja in the area?" asked Sakura for the umpteenth time that morning. Honestly she was being far too cautious, but she knew from past experiences that danger could strike at any moment. Of course, this time it was simply paranoia for her pale-eyed friend gave her the same reply she had given every other time before.

"There's nobody nearby Sakura."

It was far too clear to be a normal day. Sakura had been anticipating at least a few bandits on the road, but nothing bad had happened to deter the three female ninja of their task. It was very peculiar and the pink-haired girl disliked the calm of it all immensely. The current peace was just a ploy for the fates to throw in something painful or dangerous later on when Sakura had fully let her guard down.

So naturally she was on high alert the whole journey to the Sand ninja village.

Ino had insisted that they stop and wait out a tiny sandstorm – so tiny it was barely kicking up sand grains – which greatly cut into the mission time that they had. Once the 'danger' had passed, the three teenagers sped across the desert at an alarming speed to make up for their time wasted.

Sakura so badly wanted to get this pointless mission over with so that she could wait for Naruto to return from his travels, hence her constant nagging for Ino and Hinata to 'move their butts in gear' every time the pink one felt that they were falling behind her too much.

They had about an hour or so before they reached the Sand village, so Sakura slowed her pace down a little bit to allow her team mates to catch their breath once more.

The pink-haired ninja gave her friends an irritated expression when both of them stopped running and started taking deep breaths. She knew that they all needed a rest and a short break from running so fast, but she didn't realise that both of them would be so tired.

"Why are you both so out of breath?"

Ino glared slightly at Sakura, swallowed a mouthful of air and then straightened up, "We're both 'so out of breath' because we've been running non-stop since that stupid sandstorm hours ago! What's with you forehead? You're acting like a stuck-up bi-"

Hinata slapped her hand over Ino's mouth before the blonde could finish what she was saying. The white-eye looked humble when she tried explaining to Sakura that running at a really fast pace for a long time just wasn't an easy thing to do.

The Hokage's apprentice nodded in understanding and declared that they would stay put for half an hour, then continue to the Sand village.

"Don't worry, girls! Once we get there we can sleep the whole day away!" Sakura punched the air for emphasis on her last word and both girls smiled at this bit of good fortune.

Hidden Darkness Village puppet storehouse

Sasori recalled, with a large amount of annoyance, that the mission he had been sent on would not be over in at least a month's time, which meant that nobody would be coming to check that he had completed the mission until a next month. Furthermore, he'd be stuck in the blasted puppet storehouse all alone for an entire month!

His eyes scanned the room for anything that could occupy his time and abruptly halted on a small pile of puppets to his right. The Akatsuki couldn't be sure, but he could swear that these particular puppets were…more human than the others. They were nothing like his Kazekage puppet – which used to be a human. They looked like him in a way. Their clothes were that of villagers from the Wind Country and their faces looked quite alive.

Sasori squinted as much as he was able to and tried to work out just what they were. He could see lines on various parts of their visible skin, clearly showing that they could be pieced together like puppets – like he could. They had blank expressions to their faces and they didn't move or make sounds. If they were humans turned into puppets like him, then they would at least be conscious and talking. Yet they did not.

Could it be something that the Darkness ninja did? Maybe they turned people into puppets and then stored them here for a later use? What if they had plans to use him too?

"Well I won't let them." The red-haired ninja whispered with conviction.

He only whispered the words because he could hear movements on the other side of the door, followed by a pair of the large Darkness ninja opening the sliding door and slinging a few of the nearby puppets over their shoulders. One of them turned to give him a look, so Sasori remained perfectly still to make them believe he was an ordinary puppet. The small ploy appeared to work when both men left the storehouse and slid the door closed once again.

Their presence left the Akatsuki member frantically thinking of an escape plan; he didn't want to find out first-hand what actually happened to the puppets that were taken out of the room.