Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Chapter 15: Costumes, Nindos, and Pranks
"No."
"You must."
"Never."
"Come out of there, Hidan."
"Fuck you."
Kakuzu tapped his foot impatiently from outside of Konoha's closest rest stop, waiting for his both incredibly hateful and hated partner to step out of the bathroom stalls in his new outfit. His undead eyes gleamed coldly at the young zealot's reluctance to do so. But before setting into the Hidden Leaf Village, it went without saying that the red clouds needed to be dropped. For every perfect deception mission, there needed to be the perfect disguise.
As an atheist ninja, there were a great many things that Kakuzu, the allegedly undying Cadaver of Takigakure, didn't understand about religion. Among those great many things, he didn't understand (nor could he say he cared) about the difference between religions. That included the difference between Jashinism and Christianity.
As such, he had no idea why Hidan was taking his new assignment given by Pein so dramatically, even if it was intended to be his half of their punishment for the recent failure on their part to capture Naruto.
"No one recognizes you but me. Just get out of there before I decide to lay the roof down over your head." His voice croaked sternly.
"Hey, hey," a smart-alecky voice echoed out of the passage door in response, "I'd prefer that all of Konoha knew I was here than to have to walk around it wearing this thing."
The cringe in Kakuzu's nose tightened, much as the furrows around his eyebrows deepened. Instead of sending another threat, however, he selected another tactic. "Look, if you're that insecure about your belief, you should know that no one's outlook toward you will ever change just because of the clothes you wear." A pause for effect. "Even your Jashin's, I'm sure."
There was a hesitance at the door before he got a response. "You…you think so? Really?" A series of clicking footsteps followed Hidan's words as they slowly but assuredly guided him out of the local restroom. He appeared before Kakuzu; draped in all black, down from his slick black sandals up to his long, slender, buttoned coat. In place of the scarred ninja headband around his neck, he wore a white band – symbolizing his association with none other than the Church ministry.
On Hidan's face where once was merely a shy glance was now a white toothy grin, reassured by the old human wallet's words. "Well? How'd I look?"
Kakuzu pretended to analyze him briefly, and then shot him a stoic reply as he turned the other way. "Nope. I was wrong. Your god would be disgusted with you."
Hidan's jaw hit the floor in audible clamor as his double-crossing senior nonchalantly started down without him onto the wilderness trail leading to Konoha's gates. As the incognito zealot rushed to catch up to him, he retorted in outrage. "The hell was that? You say all that shit about people's outlooks towards me not changing because of the stuff I wear and—"
"I know:" Kakuzu answered without looking back at him, "you're an idiot."
They passed several tourists and villagers on the way down the hill, wary of jounin uniforms. Kakuzu himself did indeed stick out more than Hidan, with his abnormal height, sickly eye color, and scars grated into his body. Of course, he made sure that none of that noticed from beneath his white, baggy medical ninja apparel, even though he was royally pissed that he now looked like the world's only zombified space cadet. Fate had a funny way of raping him much more thoroughly than he had to other people's internal organs with the living black laces that kept him strung together.
As the reverend priest and the medical nin made a swift beeline passed a pair of village watchmen, they hurriedly stepped through the hundred foot gate that separated the wilderness from the prospering streets…
"We finally made it, Hidan."
…and Akatsuki's Immortal Duo was free to wander Konoha together.
"Whaddaya mean 'finally'? I've been here before, you know." Hidan remarked with a vain smile, careless of his partner's dangerous eyes wheeling over towards him.
"Doing what, I might ask?"
Hidan's eyes quickly flashed, his smile transformed into something of a lusty smirk. He leaned close to Kakuzu, putting a hand up to the side of his mouth as if he were about to spread dirty gossip. "I met a chick." He boasted. "A hot chick."
A vein began to protrude out of Kakuzu's forehead. "A what, Hidan?"
Perhaps to do something completely uncharacteristic to the priest he was supposed to portray, Hidan broke into a provocative dance, actively slapping his rear to emphasize his point. "A fine spunkeh funkeh spankin' smokin' HOT chick! Woo-ooo~!" Arms in the air, he playfully bumped sides with his taller colleague, who stood firm with his arms crossed and glare indifferent.
"You're supposed to be new to the village, as that reverend, what are you called…?"
Hidan's dance slowed to a stop, and his face turned annoyed. "That damn Leader said I'm Father Heiden. Heiden! What a disaster!"
"If that woman sees you again, she'll know who you are. You should have done away with her earlier."
They were walking side by side passed the markets, passed the Ichiraku Ramen shop, passed the BBQ, up to a dango food stand.
"Hey, relax, baby," Hidan's voice turned cool and smooth, "Konoha Village is, like, a hundred square miles large. There's no way that a single woman I just happened to meet last evening is going to happen to end up right here—she's here." Kakuzu's eyes turned curiously to his partner, who cut himself off midsentence. Hidan's eyes were the size of dinner plates. His own assured speech was completely shot down in a matter of seconds. "She's here, she's here, she's here…shit shit shit." He hissed half to himself, half to the tall man beside him.
Hidan officially began to panic, pulling crazily at his silver hair at the sight of Anko leaning coolly against the dango vendor, enjoying a full stick of her favorite dumplings.
The zealot was steaming under his fake white collar. He looked at her, noticing from the six or seven foot distance that her eyes were closed as she ate her snack. Maybe there was enough time to escape her eyeline if he just started to power walk away. Maybe he could find a way to correct this before it actually became a problem.
Hidan shook his head rapidly and turned his heels completely around. Kakuzu must have seen what he was trying to do, because a sly grin permeated the stitches around his masked mouth, and he slid his foot out just as his partner tried to make a sprint for the other direction. The force of his snuck kick against his tread was so powerful that it catapulted Hidan through the air at an astonishing distance, crashing him into a ninja info cards vending cart. There came the deafening crunches of collapsing wood. Decks of the fun-sized papers flew everywhere, diverting the heads of many children and a few adults lined up for purchases.
Anko noticed too, raising an interested eyebrow.
One particularly sporty kid walked up to Hidan as he lay limp and sprawled on the wreckage of the cart, and pulling off a certain card that had somehow stuck itself to the sacrilegiously dressed Jashinist's nose, gave a smile about a tooth or two short.
"Wo-how, sweet! I've been looking everywhere for this card!" He practically squealed his delight, holding up the card as sacredly as a certain fairy boy did with all of the items he obtained in the Legend of Zelda.
Cards continuously fluttered to the ground as Hidan attempted to regain his senses. "Who tripped me… The hell…" He held his head until the spirals in his eyes stopped spinning. He set his sight down at Konohamaru, still clinging to his card. Without acknowledging the brat, Hidan made a casual reach for the card he was holding.
This little act did not go unnoticed by the goggle-wearing boy. "Hey! Wh-what're you doing, mister? L-let go of it, it's mine! Mine!" But by the time he had finished the word 'mister', he was already dangling three to four feet in the air by the card, the other side of which was being held by a deadly but only curious scythe-wielding reverend.
Even as Konohamaru whined for the card, Hidan didn't answer, and instead let the kid fall on his butt as he examined the laminated paper.
"This is the card you were after, runt?" Hidan wobbled the picture, almost feeling sorry for the little loser. "It's an effing porker wearing a vest and necklace." He turned it over to reveal the photo of Tonton standing up on her hind legs like a candidate of a professional animal show.
"Not just any porker, Dracula-chan." A woman's voice teased from behind them. They turned in time to see the owner weaving her way around the crowds of people gathered in the streets. Hidan couldn't help but whistle at the way her body moved underneath her fishnet shirt. But before he could do or say anything else, she had a hand already held out to him. "Mitarashi Anko, sport. Nice to meetcha'." She winked in a way that almost made the cold-blooded Jashinist tingly.
The silver-haired man looked at her inquisitively, and when he finally convinced himself that she didn't recognize him, and that his dickheaded partner had long abandoned him to his own mess, he put on his own sporty grin and took the hand she offered.
"Name's Father—gwaaaaahh~~!" He reacted to the crunching of his bones beneath the woman's not-so-womanly handshake.
"Father 'Gwah', huh? That's an interesting priest name. Are you Episcopalian?" She asked cutely, not letting up any on her grip. Her eyes closed to go with a jovial expression, she also added, "And by the way, this is what you get for sneaking up on a certain lady yesterday."
Hidan's eyebrow twitched in pain, and through a bead of sweat and a gritting jaw line, he replied, "Son of a… You call yourself a lady?... Your handshake reminds me of Dad!"
His patience soaring to the limit, he regained control of his own grip and threw his arm away from her, but not before she claimed the ninja info card he was holding. She turned her head towards Konohamaru and gave him a toothy smile, along with the relinquished trading card.
"There ya go kiddo." She ruffled his bed of brown hair with a playful rub of her hand. Turning back to Hidan, she casually explained, "That card has the Hokage's pet pig on it. Yeah, so she's a porker, what of it. She gets more royal treatment than half the jounin in this whole village."
Hidan snickered. The thought of an animal being treated better than a person. That was borderline hypocrisy to him, and he was the one impersonating a Protestant official. Still, Hidan didn't know what to say around Anko. It wasn't like he knew how a reverend behaved.
"So what is your name, mister?" Konohamaru peeped in, keeping his prize at a thoughtful distance from the dark robed man.
"Tch. Why do you wanna know, brat?" He sneered, casually averting Anko's glance.
"The kid just asked you a question, Sunday schoolboy." She pushed.
"And technically I just asked him a question," Hidan smarted back. "Doesn't mean I go getting my whore to chip in and gag it out of him."
Instead of any kind of outrage, her eyes sparked in tomboyish amusement upon hearing a word as blunt as 'whore' out of him. "So you are a Father, right? What church did you say you'd be doing, exactly?"
Hidan felt his face go numb. Ironic as it was that he hailed from Yugakure, he was really in hot water now. Seeing no other way to break off away from her, he did the most poorly drawn albeit rushed impression of the Holy Trinity ever done three rapid times and shot off the other way down the street, leaving a trail of drifting ninja info cards in his wake.
Anko and Konohamaru watched as he went. The older jounin shrugged and continued on her dango treat.
"That guy was kinda weird, Anko-chan." Konohamaru mumbled, slipping his new favorite card away.
"That's senpai to you, little kid." She shot him with a glint. "But sarcastic jokes aside," she took the final bite of dango off her stake and thoroughly licked her lips of flavor. "I still wanna attend his service."
A certain blond genin mummified with medical wrappings had just ditched his hospital bed for the sixth time.
Every instant that Tsunade's men apprehended him and took him back to his room was just another instant that he learned something new about covering his tracks. Even when you break rules as a ninja, you still learn how to become a better ninja.
Naruto figured that now was safe to go for some ramen at his favorite haunt, the Ichiraku. It's been three trips since he learned that Tsunade organized stakeouts there to catch him whenever he went for a bowl or five. Since then, he figured that they in turn had also learned that he wouldn't fall for the same cop routine after the third spill. Contrary to what most everyone thought, Naruto actually thought ahead at times like when ramen was at risk.
'I think I got the better of them.' He thought deviously. It was time to go celebrate his hopefully permanent freedom with a meal from Teuchi and Ayame.
Still in his hospital gown, Naruto crept beneath the outside curtains where the best ramen shop in the village advertised its sign, and vigilantly made his way to one of the middle bar stools.
Somehow, the old man (as Naruto called him with amiable intents) recognized the boy without even turning around.
"Good to see you again, my boy." Naruto's stomach became uplifted by the sound of Teuchi's hearty voice. He gave the ramen chef a foxy grin and sat down rubbing the back of his head.
"Hey, old man, what's on the menu this evening?"
"Hoho, you know every ounce as well as I do that it never changes. Will it be the usual for you then?"
Naruto pulled a small froggy purse out from under his shirt and fondled around the mouth until it opened. He counted the yen inside its contents to find that he had enough for scarcely two bowls. Naruto sighed disdainfully. That was hardly enough for him on his worst eating day, let alone while he needed to heal up.
"Awww nuts, how am I supposed to get better for Ero-sennin and Baa-chan if I can't eat enough to get me by an hour?..."
"Hey," Teuchi gave him an encouraging smile, "you could just sneak back again sometime and bring what you would've spent tonight for tomorrow night. Nothing's too good for my favorite customer. Aah—" he quickly turned as if to acknowledge someone else, "n-no offense, sir."
"Nani?" Naruto adjusted himself to catch someone else sipping tea at the very end of the counter. The stranger's face was concealed as he calmly sipped his cup, though the noisy genin noticed his black ponytail. He wore a steel blue outfit with a tall neckband, and nothing in particular about him really stuck out.
'To think I hadn't noticed him coming in…' Naruto thought, baffled by the man's silence. If the guy was a ninja, he certainly knew how to speak like one.
As soon as the young man took his lips off of the brim of his cup, his mouth curled into a tiny smile. "None taken."
Naruto stiffened up. For a moment, he thought he recognized the insincere voice. It was only when he turned his head did he confirm that he knew him. The boy's body couldn't decide if it was thrown into a fever or a chill as he looked at his face, and – more specifically – his eyes.
He took a gasp or two of breath before he could stammer his name. "I-Itachi…!"
The man put a quick finger to his lips, and just like that, Naruto's were sealed tight. Whether it was the work of nerves or genjutsu, he couldn't bring himself to work out another word.
"Naruto," Itachi began quietly, "it's for the very best that no one knows that I'm here right now."
Naruto stifled with a choke.
"Hey, Naruto, you alright there?" Ayame called over with concern. "You look a little green around the gills…"
Itachi got up and approached Naruto's seat. If Naruto could ever have moved from the very moment he had spotted him, it would have been far too late. While the genin struggled for air, Itachi repositioned himself on the seat next to him, making no indication that he would attack.
"Naruto," Itachi took another quick sip of his special green tea, "I know how you must think of me. But I didn't come here for the reason that you presume I did. I'm going to allow you to speak now…if you promise me that you will not make a scene."
Naruto's neck was too tight to comply with a nod, so he did so with a flinching blink. Itachi recognized the sign and ran his finger across the table once.
The genjutsu dispersed, and Naruto could move again. He would have fallen off of his stool if Itachi weren't right there next to him to catch him by the shoulder. The boy violently shrugged his hand off of him as he leaned towards the counter to catch his breath.
"Woah-ho there, easy boy. Don't want you dying on me before ya've had something to eat!" Teuchi laughed, unaware of what just transpired.
"You must be starving," Itachi played, "…for your body to have swayed like that."
Naruto flashed him a deadly glare before shooting back up straight. "What the hell is wrong with you! Why are you here!"
"Why am I here?" Itachi casually reached across the table for a menu and proceeded to open it up. "…To eat a nice hot meal, of course. Why does one come to a ramen shop?"
"You know what I mean!" Naruto persisted. "Last time I saw you, you tried to—" A quick glare from Itachi's Sharingan instantly halted Naruto's interrogation. The genin then fidgeted for an alternative accusation. "Tried to…to get me to pay your…rent money?" Naruto was sweating bullets by the time Itachi bought on to his cover up and dimmed his Sharingan back to his normal eye color.
"I realize that you and I had a…shaky past." Itachi began. "Please allow me to make up for old times." Naruto watched with horror as Itachi unbuttoned his jacket and reached inside; the eccentric ninja expecting in the very least that the S – ranked criminal would have a kunai poised to cut him. By the time Itachi had pulled his own wallet out, Naruto was absolutely shaking and had almost proceeded to meet with the floor a second time.
'Damn it…all of the sudden…staying stuck in that hospital doesn't seem so bad now.' Naruto's thoughts chirped at him.
"Now then," Itachi ushered to the two ramen-makers. "I'll order the beef stir ramen with a side regimen of mushrooms. Please put whatever Naruto is having on my tab as well. I'm paying."
"Oho, is that so, young man? Very thoughtful of you. If anyone ever treats the boy, it's usually Iruka." Teuchi proceeded boil a fresh batch of noodles while his daughter kept with their two customers to make chitchat.
"So you two know each other?" Ayame asked, her eyes dancing peculiarly as she gazed at Itachi. "Naruto here seemed pretty surprised to see you."
At this point, the young genin she was talking about had his chin stumped against the counter in absolute shock, either from the fact that he wasn't dead yet, that someone other than Iruka had jumped out of the blue and saved his appetite by paying for his food, or that the person who was paying for his food was in fact someone that, no less than a month ago alongside a human shark that threatened to amputate one of his limbs, had tried to kidnap him and feed his soul to a hungry statue.
Itachi gave her a polite smile. "We were once roommates, we rented a dorm together."
…Yeah. That last one probably had something to do with it.
"Wa-wait." Naruto sat back up. "So how did you find me here? I thought we got rid of you for a good long time into tomorrow."
"Naruto!" Ayame responded with outrage towards his lacking mannerism. "That's an incredibly rude thing to say to an old roommate." She left his jaw dropped while she turned her attention back to the subject of the conversation, resting her head on her arms against the table. "Sooo~," she started coyly. "What part of the village did you come from…umm…Itachi-kun, was it?"
'Oi, oi…' Naruto thought dryly. 'Ayame-chan must be caught in one of his genjutsus too…'
Itachi, however, simply kept silent, seemingly ignoring Ayame's question and taking a much deeper interest in the Nine-Tail's jinchuuriki sitting right next to him.
Before long, the main chef came out shouldering copious amounts of bowls on his arms, leaving them out on the table for their two only current customers. "Enjoy!" He said as he departed into the back room. Ayame followed. "H-hope it's to your liking, Itachi-kun! Pleasure to meet you!"
It was dead quiet for several minutes as Naruto and Itachi, who had allegedly killed off his entire family singlehandedly, sat side-by-side together in a ramen shack of all places.
The elder Uchiha was never at all the one to throw the first words out on a conversation of any kind, and he found it sort of surprising that Naruto, who was apparently well-known for his extroversion, didn't seem to jump for the button either. But given their past conflicts, and especially that it connected to Sasuke of all people, Itachi knew it was to be expected.
"…Aren't you going to eat?" Itachi glanced at him from the side. Naruto didn't answer, nor indicate that he had even heard him. He just concentrated on the invisible object over the counter away from the person that he knew for a fact was an Akatsuki. After a series of minutes, Itachi tried again. "…You haven't even reached for your chopsticks. Hm. …Then perhaps I overestimated how much food you needed."
Naruto, the ever-up-for-a-challenge future Hokage, perked his ears up and slid a narrow leer towards the missing nin. Then, turning his attention quietly down to his left hand, he picked up the unbroken pair of wooden sticks for the meal. Itachi watched on with undivided attention as he silently split them apart, dipped them in the broth, and began to drain his first bowl at a gradual and cautious rate.
It wasn't until he had gotten down to slurping the bowl with his mouth that Itachi chose to ask his next question. "So I hear you were close to Sasuke."
Naruto openly gagged and choked on both the soup and noodles, and the bowl flew over the counter area as his body reacted to the shock. Naruto doubled over his seat, coughing up the last of the half swallowed meal, as the senior Uchiha turned to look on casually with his hands clasped together in front of him. "…Like two peas in a pod then, eh?"
'Wh-where the hell are Kakashi-sensei and Ero-sennin…'
"Not that it matters." Itachi continued. "That's how he and I once were too. And as you've witnessed, it's astounding at how such affectionate feelings from one person for another can change as soon as a single day."
"Stop screwing like that!" Naruto cut him off, wiping the residual traces of the soup off his face. "You know why Sasuke hates you! And also, you should know why I hate you too!"
"Hate me…" Itachi looked at him indifferently, if nothing else. "Is that how you feel... Why we hardly even got to know one another yet."
"I don't need to know someone who murdered his family in cold blood and left his brother to fend for himself."
This widened Itachi's eyes slightly. "Kakashi. Meddlesome as always. Provided unless of course it was the Toad Sannin that told you this?..."
"This has nothing to do with them." Naruto shook his head. "This has only to do you and all of the problems and pain that you've caused other people!"
Itachi looked at him with an expression all too impossible for him to read. Then he turned and stared into his own ramen bowl. "I know that everyone thinks I'm terrible. …And I know that in retrospect, they're all right at every turn. But the night that you're referring to – the night I destroyed my clan – I did all that for reasons that kept this village at its best interest. And those are reasons that you and my brother are simply far too young to understand."
"How!" Naruto shot at him, ignoring his excuse. "How could you think that you resolved anything just by killing—"
"Everyone," Itachi raised his voice to interrupt Naruto's. "Everyone has their own nindo. Their own ninja way. Each of us has our own goal. And in this flawed world; this world filled with bigotry and preconceptions, the goals of one may be very different from the goals of the others, and so the others mistake it for wrongdoing. Mine is such a goal as that. You, Naruto. Your goal is to become Hokage, am I wrong? Has anyone ever put you down, doubted you, said that you were a fool and that you were out of your mind because the idea seemed so fantastical?"
Naruto was startled about how Itachi decided to compare nindos with him. He was right about one thing. They both seemed very different and unusual from other lifelong goals.
"You think about how you judge others and their lifetime ambitions only after you take a good look at your own. You will never become Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto. Not today, and not tomorrow. Likewise, I will never be understood or forgiven for what I have fulfilled." Itachi got up and slowly turned towards the exit. "Not today…and not tomorrow."
"Huh? W-wait a minute." Naruto tried to sound louder, but the words were lodged in his throat.
Itachi stepped outside. Though Naruto followed him right out, when he reached the outside into the night air, the man who had treated him to ramen was gone. But in the distance, Naruto could have sworn that he heard the fluttering of wings.
"There you are!" Two men jumped Naruto from behind. Before they even brought him to the ground, he already knew what they were.
Leaf jounin.
"Tsunade-sama wants you back in the hospital asap, Uzumaki Naruto." The taller one wearing an animal mask told him.
Naruto looked up at him, but said nothing. He didn't feel like resisting this time. Instead, he started with them back towards the place from where he was so anxious to be away from earlier, to where there was no other place he'd rather be to think for a while.
Tayuya shot up in her bed, dank with cold sweat. She panted for several moments in the dark, somewhat confined room before her breathing calmed and her heart stopped trying to leap from her chest. This time she didn't bother trying to sort out where she was. All she did was call out, "Alright, NOW how the hell did I end up unconscious?"
She looked around at the dim-lit room, and listened around. It felt dank and smelled musty. From the tip of her ears, she caught the sound of clattering wood scrambling from one side of the room to the other. At first she thought it was against one of the darker walls. Then she thought it moved beneath the bed she was lying on. And by the time she heard it move to the ceiling, a voice screamed down at her,
"PANTHER!"
A horrid shape swooped for her from up high and piled onto her bed just as fast as she started screaming in response to the voice. Sasori himself also detached from the ceiling and came down to meet her as she continued to acknowledge and react to his playful prank.
"AAAAGGH! FUCK! SHIT! BITCH! CUNT!" He smiled as he watched her flail in her bed like a turtle on its back tangled with the remnants of one of his older, more obsolete puppet models. As soon as movement in the sheets ceased, she stood up crooked like an uneven Jenga tower; her flaming red hair a complete frazzle.
Before she could let him know what she thought of him, he spoke first, "Oh did you see that, it actually wasn't a panther after all. It just turned out to be one of my old statues. I saved you."
Tayuya held her breath in thought for a moment, only to ask, "…What?..."
"Saved you." He repeated, pointing to her chest. "You were in pretty bad shape when I brought you here. Not even from the poison, but it turns out you had low body temperature too. Any longer out there and you would have had real troubles."
"Uh-huh. And for that reason you decided to drop a puppet on me just as I was coming out of a mini-coma."
"That was just to remind you how fortunate you are that it was just a puppet and not a wild panther that would have broken into the room at a less fortunate time."
She furrowed her lip thoughtfully. "Mm – can't argue with that logic."
He reacted. "Really?"
Her aura burst into roaring flames. "NO! DIE!" She snatched all of the pieces of the now disassembled puppet, small and large, up in her arms and began lobbing them continuously at him, one after the other. They flew for him at astonishing rates, and he tore one of the loose tiles out of the floor just in time to block against the mad girl's impacts.
'Her healing factor has surpassed even my own expectations. This must not be ignored.'
As soon as she ran out of pieces, he put the tile down. "Did you get all that out of your sys—" A brick flew in and crunched the left side of his face before he ever finished his question. His whole body swung back and hugged the wall as he recovered from the trauma of her last surprise projectile.
"Better put some ice on that, honey!" She jeered as his hearing returned.
Sasori felt the long crack down his left cheek. If he still had his real face, bones would be undeniably broken. This girl was getting much more dangerous to fool around with.
"Okay," he called, trying to buff the crease out with a cloth. "Truce. That's enough. On to business. I suppose you're wondering why you were unconscious again, huh?"
"Durr-hey. That's why I asked 'now how the hell did I end up unconscious'. Jesus, I try to make these things as obvious as possible…"
"Notice your lack of a shirt?"
Tayuya looked down, and then immediately pulled the sheets up over her chest, staring wide-eyed at the grinning puppet master crossing his arms at the doorway.
Her reaction, however, was rather calm. "You like 'em young, I see?"
He shook his head. "Chastise me if you will, but I reapplied your bandages. The effects of the poison have mostly subsided and the only residual scar tissue is—"
"You touched my boobs!"
"I didn't go near your boobs. Sheesh."
Tayuya lied back down on her bed, realizing for the first time how fatigued she actually was. The missing sand nin recognized this too, so he thought it was safe enough to walk over and sit on the corner of her bed. "Young lady, if this is going to work, you need to fess up and trust me. As tempted as you are to think differently, I nursed you back to health. I'm not as big a team player as you, but I'll do my part to make sure we survive if you only promise me that you'll act the same."
She wouldn't look at him. She scowled at the dark corner of her bed with her arms folded.
He continued to stare at her pensive shoulders. "Orochimaru thinks you're special because you survived getting the Cursed Seal. You're fourteen. Blessed with good genes, but still a kid. What can you do?"
She ignored her exhaustion for the moment and grabbed him by the front of his robe. "You think I'm weak, dipshit? You think I haven't seen it all, done it all? Think I survived to the age I am because Orochimaru-sama took pity on me?" He only looked at her with open eyes and a slight smile. "You know nothing about me, trash. Nothing. You haven't got shit on me enough to talk to me like that, so don't you dare even start." She poured venom into her words and at last let him go with a push.
"It's difficult to see things through your perspective, Tayuya." Sasori began. "And I'll bet the very same could be said about me from you." He heard her scoff. "I would have asked you about your past, but just something about your face discouraged me from even trying. Even if I had any interest – even if it was any of my business, do you assume to say that it's still my fault that you don't tell me anyway?"
"You are so full of shit. Just leave me alone."
"Leaving you alone won't make you feel better about me. If anything, it'll make your feelings against me grow even fiercer. I don't need that. Instead, why don't I give you something nice?"
She turned and looked at him from over her shoulder. Her brown eyes narrowed with doubt. "What could you get me that I'd want outta you?" She hissed scornfully.
"An apology roughly about two feet long."
She pushed herself up again. "Huh?"
In front of her, Sasori was already holding something of hers that she had already missed very much. The long, slender battle flute that had led her to many victories as a prestigious member of the Sound Four.
She was surprised to see it again, but she was reluctant to think whether she should accept it from her new so-called partner or not. Accepting a present from someone like that to her was like excusing an asshole for being an asshole just because of a material gift. She hated to be thought of as materialistic, as much as it might be true.
Sasori's patience was waning. If winning the forgiveness of someone else always took this long, he was certainly glad that he didn't care about forgiveness ninety-five percent of the time. But he sucked it in and waited. Waited to see what she'd do.
"Come on, Tayuya," he nudged, "it's good as new."
She reached a hand out for it and slowly took it from between his. She carefully examined the keys and ligaments of the instrument, all of which were perfect as far as she could tell. She smiled for a while, but was quick enough to avoid showing her approval.
"A-ahem, fine. Fine. What do you want?"
Sasori turned his head, perplexed. "I don't recall saying that there were strings attached."
"Stop screwing me. Just tell me what you want in exchange for the flute."
"Don't make me repeat myself." He warned sternly.
She recoiled with a couple of blinks. "You're…you're giving me this for nothing? That's…y-you...you're a weird person." At the moment, that was all she could really think to say as she licked her lips to give a few test blows into the new yet familiar genjutsu weapon.
"What makes me weird about this? A flute has no value to me."
"No it's…" Tayuya blushed awkwardly, lost for words. "Huh, nothing."
She turned her head away to hide her change of color. What she could have told him was that no one had ever done anything for her without saying that she owed them. But the only thing that letting him know about that would accomplish was his pity, which she couldn't possibly give less of a shit about. His pity was just as valuable as Orochimaru's, which was to say that any form of pity was worthless to her. The only thing that mattered to her was survival. That's why the flute mattered.
Sasori shrugged and started to walk out.
"Okudo." She spoke over her shoulder after a time, stopping him just before he reached the exit.
"Hmm?" He stopped and looked back at her, a hand on the doorframe.
"Um…I accept your apology err…whatever." It came out as a mumble, more or less, and then she said nothing else. Only sat cross-legged on her bed, closed her eyes, and reveled as she played her flute once again. It sounded louder and smoother and more brilliant than ever before.
He stared at her, deadpanned for a moment, and then without a word, left.
As he crossed outside into the nighttime sky, he spotted with a keen eye a messenger bird swooping circles down until it landed on the black bed of his hair. Without moving it from its perch, he detached the small parchment from its talon and unwrapped it.
He read the bold print, ignorant of the bird now nesting on his head.
New Mission.
Travel to the Land of Rice Patties. Spies inform us that the Fūma Clan has lasting conspirators against Otogakure. You are ordered to take your teammate(s) to find and dissuade them. As always, your service to the client and community is much appreciated.
A – Rank.
P.S. Killing Tayuya is off-limits. Don't do it.
"Love, Kabuto." Sasori finished reading the paper just in time to look up and see the messenger bird it came with coo and raise its tail feather over his face. The next moment he knew, a gob of pasty white feces plopped in, burying one of his eyes.
"…Super."
A/N: Whew. Well, I found the inspiration I was looking for to write this next chapter, anyhow. It's called a spontaneous pneumo thorax. You fellow victims or medical smarties out there might recognize that as a collapsed lung. So I've been hospitalized, and writing. I for one can definitely tell you how good Sasori has it since he only ever has to watch over one vital organ. I don't know about him, it would KIND OF piss me off to die under that single, very low-maintenance condition. Just saying.
Please R&R to help my lung get better, faster. Blessings and thankies!