A/N: Long chapter today. Aw yeah!
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General
After several games of cards, Deidara pulled out his phone. "You know, that was a good idea, yeah," he told Laurie. "I'm gonna call Yahiko and tell him what I thought of, yeah." Laurie shot him a thumbs up.
Ring. Ring. Ri- "Hey."
"Hey," Deidara said. "I thought of something kinda important. It might seem like it's coming out of nowhere…"
"If it's important, that's okay," Yahiko said. "I have Nagato here with me. Do you mind being on speakerphone?"
"...It's not that important, hm."
"...Okay. Uh… What is it?"
Deidara swallowed. "You said yesterday that you'd never found anybody, yeah, and you looked sad about it. So I did some thinking and I think I know why it is, yeah."
"Hold on." There were sounds on the other end. "Why do you think I've never been with anyone?" Yahiko whispered.
Deidara was startled by the emphasis. Someone else already told him? Dammit! "It's just a kind of feeling I get sometimes, yeah. That you're not really listening, that you're in another world or something."
"Oh." Yahiko sounded disappointed. "Nagato told me the same thing. And Hidan. Has everybody noticed except for me?"
"No." Deidara glanced at Laurie. She hadn't noticed, so he was technically telling the truth.
They hung up. Laurie leaned forward, hungry for details. "Other people have already told him that," Deidara said. "It seems like everybody's noticed it."
"It still means something that you tried to let him know," Laurie told him. Deidara saw the earnest look in her eyes and smiled. He couldn't help but believe her.
.
Yahiko said the same to Nagato. "I've got to talk to Itachi," he said. Nagato nodded. He called Itachi.
Itachi answered promptly and whispered, "Excuse me," into the phone. Yahiko waited. Several seconds later, Itachi asked, "What is it?"
"Did I interrupt something? I'm sorry. I had a question. Um… Is it really, really obvious that I'm caught up in my own thoughts a lot and not really listening to others?"
"I have no idea. It is obvious to me. But I am not -"
"I'm only asking because Hidan, Nagato, and Deidara have all told me to my face that they've noticed it."
"If Deidara has noticed, then I would classify it as obvious."
"In retrospect, that was obvious. I'm sorry for interrupting. Bye."
.
"Is something interesting happening?" Ruta asked. His eyes were wide and bright, his tongue hanging out of his mouth a little. It was unclear what his definition of "interesting" was.
"Yahiko wanted to ask me something minor," Itachi answered.
"So we're not being attacked by basilisks? Good." Kisame relaxed.
"So we're not the new roosting place for a colony of dragons? Aw!" Ruta slumped.
Itachi took his seat on the floor. The young man whose name they still did not know resumed reading the book about the donkey two paragraphs before the place he had left off, so as to recover their momentum. Ruta's disappointment was quickly forgotten.
.
"I just - I can't," the half tiger said. He and Hidan sat next to each other on one of the couches in the outer cabin. "It would just be too…"
"Hey, don't rush yourself," Hidan told him. "That's the whole reason why I told you what Moonlight went through. He had to accept himself before he could open up to anyone else."
"Yeah, right." The half tiger snorted. "He had you, all ready and waiting for him. I've got nobody."
"Don't you wanna have somebody?"
"It's not that important to me."
"I think you're only saying that," Hidan said, "because if you wanted to be with somebody you would have to face yourself."
"So what?"
Hidan shrugged. "Maybe you're totally willing to avoid facing your fears for as long as you live. Just be aware that is what you're doing."
The half tiger had no more to say after that. Hidan judged that he had no more role to play. "I'm gonna see what Konan's up to," he said, and walked out of the cabin. His ears immediately perked up. He could hear Konan's voice in the distance. It was indistinct, but he could hear the tone of it. She sounded happy. Positively delighted, in fact. He ran closer, flattening himself against the side of a cabin in case the conversation turned out to be one that his presence would disrupt.
"They look adorable," Konan murmured. "So soft and gentle. How can it be possible?"
"I seriously can't believe you," a woman exclaimed. "Hey, I see Chiki. Hey, Chiki! This lady's never seen lions before."
"No lions?" a man asked.
"The only pack hunting predators in my world are wolves. The only large cats are tigers. I had never heard of these gentle beasts until Kakuzu described them to me."
Hidan's left ear twitched. He knew what kind of context would have led to Kakuzu talking about lions. He stepped out from behind the cabin. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I am the friggin' lion expert. I've watched so many nature documentaries about them." He looked at the pictures Konan was looking at on someone else's phone. In a picture that was expanded to fill half the screen, several cubs played around their father. One of them straddled his back and reached out a mischievous paw towards his ear. Such cute fuckers!
"Their existence fills me with happiness," Konan said, a smile in her voice. "I'm glad to know just that it is possible to be such a creature and to live in this way."
"What about hyenas?" Chiki asked.
"I have never heard of them."
"I read an interesting book on growing up. Ruta insisted I had to. It used the stories of different animals to illustrate different parts of adolescence. The part about learning to navigate the social world was illustrated with a hyena. Turns out hyenas don't just live in mobs. They have rigid power hierarchies, like a royal court. The one the book followed was a master of politics. I wouldn't want to be the opponent of a human with that much savvy."
"This world is wonderful. How can there still be war when there are lions?" Hidan tried his best not to stare. Konan looked like a child, a truly innocent child, not one that would stalk through a horror movie. Her question was asked in innocent confusion. Fucking fuckity fuck. What just happened? Is it gonna last? Is this a breakthrough? Shit.
Chiki knelt down before her and looked straight into her eyes. "There aren't lions," he said, "unless you go looking for them. Or they attack you."
Konan blinked and recovered her usual weary look. "I see."
Hidan's respect for the person he had effectively only just met shot up into the atmosphere. That guy is cool. "Anything more you wanna know about them?" he asked Konan. She nodded.
.
Kakuzu turned the last page of the book he had spent the whole morning reading. Hmph. I can't remember the last time I spent hours in a row reading like this. He had brought it back to his room some time ago, intending to read it eventually. Eventually was today. Why not?
He sat up on his bed and stretched. Now, he was in the mood for physical exercise. Something mindless to allow him to keep thinking about the story he'd just read would be ideal. He went to the training room with the punching bags. If he was the only person who ever used it, it was still well worth setting up. Some of the bags were starting to look worn.
Afterwards, he was surprised to find that he actually wanted to seek out company. He was even more surprised to find out that the one time he wanted company, it was nowhere to be found. Kisame's room was empty and he didn't need to go looking to tell that Hidan was nowhere nearby. The whole aura of the building had become empty. Interesting. My ninja senses can tell when a place is uninhabited. That's good to know, but where the hell did they all go?
As he was walking around, he sensed a subtle shift in the building's aura. He had stumbled across a pocket where it did not feel uninhabited. He took a look into the kitchen, where Nagato and Yahiko were making grilled cheese sandwiches. His stomach growled. "Is there any more of that?" he asked, joining them.
"Yeah, there is," Yahiko said. "We even made extra bacon to eat plain. You can take mine." Kakuzu swept together a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich in no time. Less than ten minutes later, they all had greasy fingers which they licked clean. Yahiko moved the still-hot pan back onto the burner and put on more bacon for himself and Kakuzu.
"So, how are things?" Nagato asked Kakuzu. "Just in general."
"Not as wonderful as they are for you, but definitely looking up."
"Making friends with Kisame?" Yahiko asked.
"He is easy to befriend."
"Not for me," Nagato said. "Basically all I know about him is what he's revealed publicly."
"My advice," Kakuzu said, "if you wish to befriend him, is to sit next to him and not say very much."
Yahiko picked up Kakuzu's plate and put bacon on it, then did the same for his plate. "Do you think that's good advice for making friends with a lot of people?" he asked.
"It's good advice for Kisame because that's the sort of person he is. Depends on who you want to make friends with."
"So I have to pay really close attention before I'll know?"
"And not let your own biases get in the way."
Yahiko sighed and hung his head. "That's really hard for me." He stuffed bacon into his mouth and chewed sadly.
"Then don't do it. Make friends with people who are like you."
"But I like people that aren't like me. You, and Kisame, and Itachi and Sasori."
Kakuzu shrugged. "Make it up for your own damn self. I'm not a friendship expert."
A silence descended. He enjoyed his bacon. The smell of cheese and meat and cooked bread lingered in the air. Nagato smelled the air and sighed, apparently practicing his "not saying very much" skills. It was pleasant. Kakuzu liked silence.
But then, the aura changed yet again. A feeling of tension permeated the air, like something was waiting to happen. "Hey, Kakuzu?" Yahiko asked.
"What?"
"How do you…think I look?" Yahiko gulped and flew through hand signs before he could lose his nerve. A faint mist appeared. When it dispersed, Yahiko had been transformed into a young woman. Oddly, Kakuzu's first thought was, She looks smarter than he usually does.
He wasn't one to hold back his true opinions. "You look smarter than usual," Kakuzu said.
"...What?"
"Think of something," Nagato said. "Right now. Go!"
"Uh… The square root of five…would have to be greater than two?"
"Woah," Nagato said. "He's right. You would usually not be able to say anything that fast."
Yahiko looked completely bewildered. He let the transformation lapse, returning to his regular body. "I'm pretty sure your body doesn't affect your intell -"
"Say something right the fuck now," Kakuzu snapped.
"Hah…ah… Wuh… Huh?"
Kakuzu exchanged a look with Nagato. "It's actually true."
Yahiko continued to insist, "That's not how it wor -"
"Turn female again," Nagato requested. Yahiko did so. "Now think of something."
"Wha - I - Why are you -" Yahiko shook his head. "Why are you testing me this way?"
"That one's ambiguous," Kakuzu muttered. "Could be him getting used to it."
"Am I actually smarter in this form?" Yahiko wondered. "I don't feel any different."
Nagato put a hand on his chin and said, "Hmm…" He walked around Yahiko in a slow circle. Yahiko stood still, confused. Nagato leaned right into Yahiko's face at the end, staring intently at him. Yahiko stared back, occasionally glancing away. He otherwise did not move.
"Now turn male," Nagato requested. Yahiko did so. Nagato repeated this exact same procedure. This time Yahiko couldn't help but fidget as Nagato examined him. When Nagato looked right into his face, he flushed slightly and drew his shoulders up.
"I'm more confident in my other form," he realized.
"Maybe that's it," Nagato said. "You usually get overwhelmed by the pressure. But in that form, you don't."
"Congratulations," Kakuzu said.
Yahiko looked at him with disbelief. "You mean that?" His eyes started to glisten.
"Don't you dare hug me," Kakuzu ordered.
"...Okay, if you really insist."
He looked so desperate for a hug, though, that Kakuzu couldn't just leave him like that. "Go find something else to do," he said. "Like finding out if your Disney Princess powers work better now that you're an actual princess."
Yahiko gasped. "Nagato! Let's go do that!" He ran out of the room. Nagato grinned at Kakuzu, then followed.
First I read. Then I exercised. Now I've done my good deed for the day. Kakuzu wondered what he was going to do next.
In the haunted hospital
"Waaaahhh," the demon boy groaned. "I'm bored again! How is this happening?"
He lay sprawled on his back on his desk, staring up at the ceiling. His snakelike friend sat on the chair, silent as always. He turned his head. "Do you ever get bored?"
The other boy slowly ran his fingers over his toy snake in response.
The demon took that to mean No. "Meh. Of course you don't. You're too young to get bored. Me, I have all kinds of big, juicy thoughts. But then the world isn't like that! I could be having adventures! But there are no adventures here. Stupid writer!"
The snake contemplated his thumb for a while, then began to suck it. "I wish I could make adventures like I did yesterday every day," the demon said wistfully. The snake boy stopped sucking on his thumb, puzzled. It was not as tasty as he'd been led to believe. He got off the chair and looked around for mice. But of course there were no mice here, in this most protected of buildings.
"Mice?" the demon asked. "Okay. I'll help you look." He created a rift in spacetime that took them to the abandoned houses west of town. "Lots of mice here."
The snake child began his search. He bent close to examine discarded bedding, holes in the outside of the houses, etc. By some sense the demon did not know (His face is human, right? No way he has heat vision. But how then?), the snake chose to enter a particular building. He went around to what used to be the front door. Now the wood was warped, preventing it from serving the function of a door. It hung and waited to rot off its hinges. The children crept inside silently. The demon boy lowered himself to four legs. It felt right. The snake led them to the kitchen, where cupboards were still closed. He crept to the side of a particular door. The demon boy crept to the other side and snarled. In a flash, he ripped the door open. Mice inside scattered, two of them out the now-open door. The snake boy pounced on one of them and sunk his teeth into it. He sat down and chewed on it contentedly.
The demon peered for curiosity's sake into the nest. Over the years, or however long they had been here, the mice had gnawed out most of the wall behind the cabinet. He spotted a small opening leading downward, just big enough for a mouse to squeeze into. At that moment they heard an angry exclamation from the basement. The demon boy started giggling instantly. He gave his friend a look that was not a question nor quite a command. I'm going. Come with me if you will. The snake boy swallowed his mouse and got to his feet.
The demon boy opened the basement door the typical way and they went downstairs, the demon skipping down the steps in his excitement. The basement had been refurbished into a complete living space. There were no dividing walls down here, and no substitutes had been built. The whole entire space was a giant living room slash bedroom slash library slash…what was that?
"Hey, what's that?" the demon boy asked the man who was furiously beating the wall next to his mattress with his shirt. He could have found out for himself, but that wouldn't have been as much fun.
The man stepped back, glaring at the wall. No rodents emerged. He turned and spat. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Sir!" the demon retorted indignantly. "There are children present." He placed his hands over the ears of his snakelike companion.
"Get out of here," the vampire growled. He leaned forward threateningly. "Or…" He sniffed. He cocked his head.
"Heeheeheehee," the demon giggled. The vampire did not finish his sentence. The look on his face announced that he had finally realized no children would have found their way into his den unless they could. The snake boy walked past him without a trace of fear and sniffed at the wall where he had been beating it.
The demon bowed in the formal manner of some kind of person who needed to be formal. He didn't care what kind of bow it was, only that it looked good. "We are graced by your presence, kind sir. If you would be so wonderful as to let us poke around." He picked up the discarded shirt. "Ah, yes, the fine aroma of cotton that has aged precisely one decade."
"Who the hell are you?" the vampire whispered.
The demon looked past him and remembered his original question. "Oh, yeah! That thing! What's that?" He pointed at the corner of the room that was swamped in papers, underneath which a desk could probably be found somewhere.
"That is the Heresy Research Department," the vampire snapped, recovering some of his shaken confidence. "I'm busy researching the meaning of heresy. Stay out of it."
Before he said the word "it," the demon boy made another space-time rift and teleported himself over to the desk. He picked up some papers at random. "Ooh, legal notes! A code of vampirism? This Bill of Retribution is only half finished!"
The vampire crossed the room faster than any normal person could have and snatched the last of those papers from him. "Do not say that name aloud!"
"Why? Scared your soon-to-be-retributed leader will want to take your head first?"
The vampire drew himself up. "You will say nothing." He tried to use his vampire abilities to compel the boy to obey.
The snake poked him in the back of the knee, making him flinch. The demon giggled again. "Maybe I will and maybe I won't," he said, drawing closer and taking the snake boy by the hand. "Goodbye." Both children vanished into another space-time rift.
"That was amazing!" the demon boy shrieked as he jumped around his office.
"Oh fuck," the vampire whispered in his basement. He raced to the desk and began to copy the half-finished Bill. If he was discovered and seized, his copy could not be the only copy in existence. It was time to decentralize, fast.
Konan
That evening, Konan and Hidan ran through the forest. This time, there was a sense of urgency.
They rounded up Nagato and Yahiko, pulling them out of conversation with Kisame and Itachi. "Excuse me," Konan said. "We must create a plan of action for the meeting with the vampires tonight." She considered that enough reason. Kisame and Itachi could not be heard protesting.
"What will we be meeting with them to discuss?" Nagato asked once the four of them were ensconced in the kitchen. "We told her everything we knew at our last meeting."
"This time, it will be your turn to seek information," Konan told them. "How are they taking the news? What are their plans? These are things we must know. I believe the nature of what we told them gives us the upper hand, so she should be more amenable than usual to answering your questions. In case she is not, I intend to go with you."
"Uh, wouldn't that seem kind of hostile?" Yahiko asked. "Because they hate Jashin sama. That's why you've never gone with us before, right?"
Konan fixed her eyes on him. "Hidan and I are your de facto leaders. We have let you be the sole point of contact for politeness' sake, but we can't be left out forever. Hidan's presence would be too much of a risk, so I will go."
"So you're saying the real point of this meeting is to renegotiate our relationship with the vampires," Nagato said. "We're looking for a more active role. Got it."
Various ways of beginning such a negotiation were discussed. Thanks to Hidan and Yahiko, it was decided that they would start out on a tone of friendship, gently inquiring into how the news had been taken. If the vampire leader wanted more of a confrontation, she would have to be the one to take that step.
"Or whoever meets us," Konan said. "I have been thinking about the likely effects of what we had to say." At no point in this discussion had they ever specifically described what, exactly, had been said. This was partly due to Hidan's presence and partly for everyone else's comfort. "Given how strongly they feel about the whole matter of vampirics and prophets and such, it is possible that our news caused immense turmoil. They may have had a change of leadership. Alternatively, it is possible that she either believed none of it or has not shared the news for fear of the consequences. Drastic effects, or none. That is what we must expect."
They tried to think of strategies for how they could handle themselves if the vampire's political situation was in turmoil, but concluded that they would have to wing it. Konan supported this plan. "I have seen how surprisingly skilled you all are at this particular strategy, time and time again," she told Nagato and Yahiko. She allowed the pride blooming in her chest to infect her chakra, filling the room with warmth. They smiled. "I have no doubt that, no matter what comes, we will have some measure of success tonight."
.
The three of them, dressed all in matching cloaks, made their own way to the abandoned houses. Konan led them along the route she and Nagato had taken not long before. "The place we usually meet them is far from here, I think," Yahiko whispered.
"Then we will make our way there," Konan said, "and use the presence or absence of any events along the way to gauge their situation."
They were not accosted as they made their way through the houses. They all kept themselves on high alert, but did not get the feeling of being watched. "Disruption," Konan concluded. "Remain alert. We cannot predict what will happen."
They made it to the usual meeting place, but nobody was there. "We've always used their surveillance to arrange these meetings," Nagato said. "They know when we enter their territory and get a meeting party ready. How are we going to meet with them when they're not keeping up surveillance?"
"We shall have to go to them," Konan answered.
"Throwing ourselves into a den of vampires who aren't ready for us," Yahiko whispered. "This doesn't sound like a great idea."
"The useful thing about these decaying houses," Konan said, "is how easily they may be shredded even by paper. I have heard that the wood in this world is much stronger than what I am used to, but still I have no doubt I can immediately remove us from a situation if one arises."
"That sounds not very diplomatic," Nagato said.
She turned to them. "Do you trust me?"
They hesitated.
She sighed. "Do you trust the three of us?"
They nodded.
"Let us find them then."
They had wound their way down from the northeast, so Konan led them in a northwesterly route. If they saw and heard no sign of activity, then they would canvass the abandoned houses south of the meeting place. It was to be done in an orderly way, an organized way.
Nagato stopped her. "I just got an idea," he said. "It's a really dumb one."
Konan narrowed her eyes. "Why do you say it then?"
"Do you trust us?"
She cautiously nodded. "Very well then." At worst, we are in open air.
Nagato cleared his throat. He walked out and looked in all directions. He raised his hands to his mouth, cupping them to amplify his voice. "VAMPIRES! WHERE ARE YOUUUU?"
They waited. There was a distant hiss. Faster than sight, a shadow lunged out from the dark, reaching for Nagato. Konan darted in front of him and swept the street with sharp-edged paper. The shadow jumped back, paused, hissed again. "Shut up!" It stepped forward and gestured. They followed it down a winding path between houses, into a closed little nook as protected as any alleyway.
More hisses and at least one growl greeted them, or rather, their guide. "You heard how loud they were," he justified himself.
Another shadow stepped forward. Now that they were still, Konan saw that their shadowyness was not just a trick of the night and the closed little nook. The vampires were cloaked in black, and most of the others present backed into natural shadows so as to hide. Who are they hiding from? An outside enemy, or others of their own kind?
The one who had stepped up took a moment, perhaps to examine them. The black cloaks seemed designed to hide their faces. When they followed their guide, Konan had noted that it was also nearly impossible to make out his footfalls. Their faces and their distinct ways of moving are disguised. They may hide, but if that fails and they must run, then at least their identities will not be known. That confirms it. They are hiding from other vampires.
"Who are you?" the apparent leader asked. Their guide had melted into the shadows with the others. Only this one stood out in sight to meet them.
Nagato nudged Konan's hand. In the pursuit, without noticing, she had come out in front of them. She nodded and stepped back. if Nagato and Yahiko could keep this uncertain situation amiable and cooperative, they ought to be allowed to try. Nagato cleared his throat. "We're the humans who usually meet with your leader," he told the vampire. "We came to find out what effect our most recent news had. It seems like a lot has happened."
The hidden vampires hissed. The one before them moved; it was hard to tell how, but he might have tensed up. "You are the heresy bringers?"
"Well -"
Before Yahiko could get out any explanation, one of the hidden vampires asked, "Why should we not kill you right now?"
"His answer is that I haven't told them to do so," the leader said. "Is there any reason why I should not tell them to kill you right now?"
Konan slipped between Nagato and Yahiko, back to the front. His tone makes it clear that there are very few reasons that will be accepted. I know what one of those reasons must be. It may not be the best of them, but it will have to do. "Because you will not succeed," she said, making the hand sign and sprouting her paper wings. She turned the papers in them edge outward, transforming the wings into deadly limbs that could slice on the barest contact. Even in the night, this was very visible.
The leader considered this display. "You are not welcome here," he finally said. "Go and leave us to our business."
"We came here for a reason," Yahiko said. "Everything I've seen so far makes me more and more worried. What happened?" The sincerity of his concern was plain. Not even the most paranoid vampire could doubt that he was being honest.
"You mean to say that you don't know what you've done and you caused it on accident?" The leader sounded most displeased. "You bumbled around in our history and policy, our entire way of life, heedlessly and without care? The insult!"
"That may be accurate," Nagato admitted. "But now all we want is to find out what happened."
"Actually, there is every chance we did in fact cause this deliberately," Konan said. She understood what Nagato was trying to do. He was trying to make them seem like less of a threat. However, the particular strategy he was using to do so would also make them seem incompetent, which would decrease their odds of being taken seriously in the future. She judged the success of the mission to be more important than their temporary safety, which was assured anyway. "The intent was to upend your established traditions and cause your people to treat me and mine more amiably in the future. If this conspiratorial meeting is but a consequence of your traditions upending, then we have succeeded. We did not wish for it to cause so much distress to your people, but I always predicted that it probably would."
Konan sensed that all the vampires were now staring burning daggers directly at her. Their faces were hidden and they did not have chakra, but nevertheless she knew. How could they not be? "No," the leader said finally. "You have not. We will stamp out this heresy before the infection can spread any farther. We will be lesser for a little while, but we will heal."
"No," Yahiko immediately said.
"Indeed," Konan said. She was surprised to find herself disturbed by the implication. She had never met the vampires before, had no personal connections among them, indeed had nothing specific to know them by except a name. And a story. Could a name and a story really be enough to make her care? "No. If anything happens to Soye or the kitten…"
The leader spread his hands. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." He sounded like he was not at all afraid of what he would find on the other side.
"Wait," Yahiko said. "No, that's not what we want. We don't want to fight you. Is there any chance we can work something out?"
"Heresy is an infection," the leader repeated. "It must go."
"Can't you at least consider what we said? Why is it so terrible to believe that some people aren't as bad as you thought they were?"
"Because such a belief would be wrong," the leader said simply. "Heresy is heresy."
"Such a belief would be a belief," Nagato said. "Nothing but a collection of thoughts and actions. It can't be definitively either right or wrong."
"There is such a thing as right and wrong," the leader said, "and heresy is wrong. All your talk of grayness and not really being this or that is confusing talk meant to obscure the senses, prevent people from knowing which way they ought to go. The way is clear to me. Wrong is wrong. I have nothing more to say to you." He turned away.
This is bad. Very bad. By allowing this talk to get so forceful, I may have destroyed our relations with the vampires instead of renegotiated them. Konan looked for a way out. Any unclear wording, anything left implied but not said, any hold she could grab onto to pull his attention back. She could find none. True to his word, he had left no ambiguity for her. This splinter group of vampires intended to kill Soye and all of her supporters.
But wait. They surely did not have a comfortable majority of opinion. If they did, they would not need to hide their faces. Konan turned away, taking hold of Nagato's and Yahiko's sleeves and pulling them with her. She did not need to convince this one hidden group. They were unimportant as fish went.
"Soye is still alive and in power," she whispered to them. "I know this from the way they hide themselves. They are a threat, but our cause is far from lost."
"Wait, what?" Yahiko asked. He stopped in the middle of the street. "What cause?"
"He has a point," Nagato said. "I know we have a preferred outcome here, but we really shouldn't meddle in the politics of a completely different people we're not part of."
Konan frowned. His words were logical. She believed them to be correct. Yet… Her hands curled into fists. "I can't stand by and do nothing," she said. "Today, I learned about lions."
"Lions?" asked Yahiko.
"In my world, the only pack-hunting predator is the wolf. There are no such things as cats that care for their young. Tigers do not show affection. They do not receive help. I have always thought that shinobi are like that. Like tigers, we stay in the shadows and hunt alone, relying on our own strength. If that strength should fail, the outcome is death. Simple. Efficient. Brutal.
"But when I came to this world, I learned of lions. Lions are not afraid to brave the daylight because they are not alone. They hunt together, raise their young together, let their cubs climb on them in play without flicking an ear in protest. Powerful, yet gentle and together." Her eyes moistened. "I never knew it was possible for those things to coexist. To be powerful, yet not hated. Not envied, distrusted, taken advantage of. The life of an elite shinobi was always one of loneliness. I used to believe, a long time ago, that we could walk in the sun and be welcomed. Say that we meant to use our power to help, and be believed. Trusted. But then we were betrayed, and I thought it had been nothing but a naive dream. I came to believe strength and gentleness could never go together, that the presence of one would require the sacrifice of the other."
Konan lifted her head. "But now I believe that it was not a naive dream, after all. Power can be used to help. It can be accepted. The one who holds it is not doomed to loneliness. Lions exist." Tears overfilled her eyes and flowed down her cheeks.
Nagato and Yahiko watched in astonishment. They had never seen her so strongly moved. Yahiko was, himself, moved to tears. Nagato swallowed. "How does that relate to the vampires?" he asked.
"Do you recall the night when the forest howled?" Konan proceeded to tell them of her meeting with Sakumo, the story his clansmen had told her. A kitten and a wolf, hunting together. Vampires with humans. "Soye and her friend, that one with the kitten, they have lionlike spirits," Konan explained. "If we hope for gentleness and yet do not want the vampires to give up their power, she is the one who must win. If she dies, and the kitten dies, they will go back to being a people of tigers. Like shinobi always have been. It would be like having Hanzo sama move in next door." She shuddered with revulsion. "I can't stand by and allow that to happen. I can't give up that dream. Not again."
"It sounds like you're mainly motivated by the effect their politics would have on your own worldview," Nagato said gently.
Konan glared at him. Does he mean to call me irrational?
"But in the middle of that emotion hides a needle of truth," Nagato continued. "Not everyone can let power and gentleness coexist. They think that the only reason to be nice to people is that you're too weak to get your way by force, and in order to become powerful you have to step on others. The vampires clearly want to maintain their own separate power, their own independence. We don't want to take that away from them. Therefore, the only possible way we can get what we want and avoid getting what we don't want is to support the faction that can be both. If those closed-minded isolationists win, we're screwed."
"I get the weird feeling that people have tried intervening in other people's business to make them more supportive and it hasn't gone well," Yahiko said.
Nagato turned to Konan. "Having decided that helping the current leader stay in power would support our interests and that we want to, there's more to consider. Is it the moral thing to do, and can we even do it? If it's beyond our abilities, we shouldn't try it."
"Those questions are one," Konan answered. "It would be morally bad to distress their people even further, but morally good to restore an order that will allow everyone to be happier. So whether an intervention is morally bad or not rests entirely upon our odds of success." She closed her eyes and thought very hard. Can we help Soye stay in power? True power, where she leads her people by more than an iron fist, where they agree and listen to her and allow her to?
Konan discovered that no, they did not have the ability to promise any such thing.
But I can't sit by and do nothing. It would eat at me. I must do something. But if not support her, then what?
She opened her eyes. "We must find Soye," she said. "And promise her that if the worst comes to pass, she can come to us and be welcomed."
"We can't really help her," Yahiko said. His face tightened with sadness.
"No," Nagato agreed. "But having one vampire friend is better than none. And if she survives, she has the chance to make a comeback."
"We want them to change their traditions though."
"It would mean a lot to Hidan," Nagato said, "to know that there was even one vampire that did."
It was settled then. They needed to locate Soye before the would-be assassins did. There was only one person that had ever done so. Konan called Kakuzu. "Kakuzu. We need to speak to the vampire you met. Can you direct us to the house she sleeps in?"
"Hmm…" Kakuzu made an uncomfortable amount of thinking sounds. "If you drive up from the road, which is to the south… Then I'm pretty sure I was north of that place where it widens out into a big circle. Aside from that, I don't remember. It was the house with the sheets on the beds."
A house with sheets on the beds? It sounded familiar. Konan thanked him and hung up, trying to figure out why it was so familiar.
"What did he say?" Nagato asked.
"That she sleeps in a house with sheets on the beds, and it is somewhere in the northern part of this area."
"Sheets on the beds? Why does that sound so familiar?"
Yahiko wrinkled his forehead. "Wasn't that something Hidan said back when he first hinted that there were vampires?"
Konan realized why it sounded so familiar. She'd personally been to that house! A long, long time ago, when she was new to this world… Unfortunately, her focus at the time had been on searching for supplies. The houses had all looked much the same, and she'd known nothing of landmarks yet. Yet, perhaps having been there, I could recognize the house if I saw it. "Actually, it does give us something to go on. Let's go." She led the way back to the patch of grass where she had first awoken and tried to remember her general route.
Nagato snapped his fingers. "You've been there before!"
"Yes, but I don't remember the way. We shall have to explore and hope to recognize it by sight." Konan leapt up onto the rooftop.
"Let's hope she's there," Nagato murmured. "If I were her, I'd be meeting with all my supporters to get a strategy together."
"If she were likely to be traveling, those conspirators would not hold their own meeting in this area," Konan replied. "Let's go." They began to leap from rooftop to rooftop, traveling the same way Konan had long ago. She tried to see the houses as she had seen them then. Suddenly, she saw a particular conjunction of yards that she recognized. They were on the right track.
She landed next to a nondescript house with a broken back porch railing that hung in a familiar way. They crept inside through a kitchen window. Voices could be heard. They were coming from a…bedroom?
Nagato gulped. "Vampire den, here we come."
"At least it's not in the basement," Yahiko reassured. They organized themselves, making sure their outfits were neat and their hair clean. They formed into a rough triangle with Nagato in front. In that way, they went to the bedroom.
The door was closed. Nagato cleared his throat and knocked three times. Voices that had been in heated debate over some kind of legal matter ceased. "Who is there?" asked a wary voice.
"The annoying humans," Nagato answered. "We've come to make an offer."
"Allow them in," said a familiar voice. The door opened. The room was filled with vampires. Standing room was limited, so many people crouched on the walls. A bedside table seated two. There wasn't room to lean without knocking into a vampire. They walked inside slowly, warily. The only vaguely clear space in the room was the bed, which could have held several more than the two currently sitting on it. One of them was Soye, who Nagato and Yahiko recognized on sight. The other held a kitten in his lap. Soye stared daggers at them. She looked angrier than any of them had ever seen her. "You should not have come," she spat. "You have no right to be here any longer. Monsters."
Nagato swallowed. "We've heard some things about what's happened. We're very sorry."
"Irrelevant. Leave or die."
Konan stepped forward. Soye immediately turned eyes on her. Konan met them steadily. The air crackled between them. Two sets of eyes, both burning, both merciless, both unquestioningly loyal. This feels…familiar. I had that dream once where I looked into my own face. It was a similar experience to this. Interesting.
"We came to make you an offer," Konan repeated. "If anything extremely unfortunate should threaten to befall you, we wished to make it clear that our base would be a place of safety. Yes, despite the presence of the prophet. Recall what was said: Jashin sama does not actually have opinions about his followers based on their behavior. He does not reward, and he also does not punish. Despite your long-held beliefs, he and his are not dangerous. You would be welcome."
"Do you mean to imply that extremely unfortunate events are a possibility?" Soye asked evenly. The other vampires in the room rustled.
"I only thought it had to be said," Konan replied. In other words, yes.
Soye said nothing afterward. Neither did Konan. She turned Nagato and Yahiko around and marched them out the door. They needed no orders to make for the kitchen as fast as possible and escape the way they had come. They might have set a nighttime speed record in their haste to return to safety.
As they made it through the door and breathed sighs of relief (despite the symbol's aura), it occurred to Konan that she should be very grateful. If the Akatsuki members had not been so peaceable, Soye's fate could have been her own. She breathed another sigh of relief. "Let us hope that I did something good this night," she prayed.
.
A/N: It can be complicated to figure out what's been happening off-camera while you've been following the main characters for a while. I tried once to figure it out by writing the off-camera scene. It ended up published as its own chapter. And in this case, it would cover more than a week of in-story time, and in order to write it in the first place I would have had to know I was covering the vampires in this chapter, which I didn't know until last night.
Got that? Reason #1 why you shouldn't write last minute: you don't have time to write a second draft. A second draft allows you to, having seen what you want to accomplish overall, tighten things up so you get there without unnecessary wandering. Writing last minute leads to excess content, or bloat. Reason #2: you don't have time to do proper research. Reason #3: if there is any delay at all, you're screwed. Reason #4: you won't enjoy the writing or feel as proud of your story as much as you would otherwise. And, lastly, reason #5: there may be extra work you would have to do on the story that will not be included in the final published version. If you work last minute, you don't get to have any of that. The published version is the only version. The world will never be fully fleshed out. You'll never really understand what was going on. You'll lose the main perk of being the author instead of the reader. The story will not really be yours. You can't claim it, own it, have it be yours as fully as a story you really sunk your time and heart into.
Not to say that I'm going to change the way this story is written. If this story is a journal, it is also a playground. The one where I explore all the stuff that doesn't work and take note of all the mistakes I'm making. It is what allows the stories I really love to be what they are. A preparation story, in other words, not a real one in its own right. This story will continue to be published every week, every Sunday, without fail. And, I just want to say... Thank you to anyone who continues to read it anyway.