Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"It's really not my day," Tobi mused, standing up as slowly as his body forced him to. "First the trip to get here, then the Hokage, now this. Everything's definitely not coming up Tobi." As the masked man spoke, he looked over to his partner in recovering from muscle lock-ups; the blond demon stared at him silently, as if trying to put two and two together.
"You were in Kirigakure," Yuurei said at length, making no move to attack. Yet. Something about the man in front of him was oddly familiar, almost
"I was, yes. I saw your fight with Zabuza firsthand," Tobi replied coolly, trying to regain and maintain his emotional facade. He didn't miss the way that Yuurei's lip twitched at the swordsman's name. Some traumas never truly healed, as Tobi knew well.
"How did you survive?" Yuurei asked his question plainly, unsure of the answer. Everyone who'd stayed near him at the end of Kirigakure's final battle had died, with Fu, Mei, and Tayuya being the only exceptions. The infernal lightning that had come with the reversed summoning circle had slaughtered uncounted masses across the entire nation.
"Let's just say that I've got a gift for getting out of sticky situations," Tobi replied, though Yuurei couldn't see the smile under his mask. "Speaking of which, I don't really feel like fighting. Care to let me go this time? Demons always leave a bad taste in my mouth."
"Not really," Yuurei replied, concerned with the fact that he could tell that the man across from him was telling the truth. "What incentive is there to let you live?"
"How about I give you information?" Tobi haggled, not really believing that it would work. "I tell you who hired us, you keep what you have that belongs to me, we all walk away winners. Except for my leader," the masked man mused aloud, feeling the explosive use of chakra further into the desert. "He seems like he's getting whooped pretty good right now."
"What do I have that..." Yuurei looked at his opponent, trying to gauge what was going on. "Wait. Obito? Uchiha Obito?"
"Okay, listen, I was really kind of hoping that you hadn't figured out how to use that ability, but there's also nothing in that eye's memory that hurts me for you to know. Whatever. So now we both have secret identities, and we both know the other person's real name, and we were hired by the Raikage to get any information we could about his niece. When I heard about the attack on the Mizukage, and what happened next, I figured you were here...which meant she would be too. So, here we are! And, uh, I'd appreciate it if you used my new name. I'll do the same for you!" Tobi's cheery tone did nothing to remove the wary thoughts in Yuurei's head, because the wayward Uchiha was beating him at his own game—the only reason for Tobi to voluntarily make those kinds of offers, and immediately deliver on them, was to avoid making a pact with him.
"Well, Tobi, can I ask you to do something for me? Not as any kind of bargain or oath, but because I think it would be really funny?" Yuurei smiled. It was a conspiratorial kind of smile, not a predatory one, and that understanding worried Tobi more than the alternative.
"Maybe. How funny are we talking?" the masked man replied.
"Do you want to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help the Great Darkness?" Yuurei's smile grew wider, his eyebrows crooking upward with the corners of his lips. "That you found us outside of Sunagakure, leaving the village, tracking somebody else?"
"You sly dog!" Wind tousled Tobi's hair, or at least he felt like it did. "You know, you're right. Maybe I'll do that. It would be funny, and Tobi is a funny guy. Plus, if I'm doing my math right, two plus two is seventeen? So we won't have to think too much about the Raikage anymore after too long."
"You're a gentleman and a scholar, sir. I'd go ahead and leave if I were you, before I change my mind. Something tells me that your friends aren't going to like me very much in a few minutes," Yuurei warned.
"Hey, that's fine. Our organization basically believes camaraderie is optional, so it's every man for himself out here. Well...for some of us, anyway. Toodles!" Tobi laughed, only to force Yuurei to endure a sense of vertigo as their opposing eyes briefly changed forms. Space and time seemed to distort wildly, beyond the demon's ability to comprehend at a glance; by the time he recovered, the masked man was gone.
Some small, tired vestige inside of Yuurei—one that he might have called a remnant of Kakashi's soul, if he was sentimental enough to believe he carried it with him—was briefly happy to know that Obito was alive. The rest of him, however, had a deep rage that was building up from inside of him. It had taken several minutes, and it was particularly insulting to have it happen now that the man was gone, but he remembered why "Tobi" seemed so familiar to him. It wasn't some sort of bond between their eyes, and it wasn't because he'd been present in Kirigakure.
In the Blessed Lands, while he fought a Shinigami, Yuurei had seen a vision from the past. His parents, frail and human, had fought a battle to the death against the previous Kyuubi. The Kurama they'd fought, though, had been a giant fox—and atop its head had been a man in an orange mask. It wasn't the same mask, naturally; Yuurei was sure that over the years, plenty of Tobi's masks had chipped or broken. Still, the demon was certain that Tobi had been the one his parents had really been fighting against. Kakashi's eye had seen it, and the Sharingan never lied.
In the moments before his death, the silver-haired Jounin had attempted to dissuade his student from a path of vengeance and hatred. He'd failed, in no small part due to the blond's true nature, but Yuurei believed from the bottom of his heart that Kakashi would also have been the first one to try killing his former teammate. Whatever else Kakashi had done in life, whether it was private or in service to his village, he'd honored his master and his teachings above all others. Confronting the architect of Namikaze Minato's murder, no matter who it was, would have become his life's mission.
With the knowledge that he let the killer slip away unprompted, Yuurei felt the foul bile of resentment filling the back of his throat. Resolving to butcher Tobi when he saw him again, the demon looked in two directions for a target to vent his anger against; Yugito was clearly holding her own against the redheaded stranger who'd barged into their booth, and Tayuya's battle against the woman with origami wings had predictably taken to the sky, but there was a third presence that had engaged both Mei and Temari—he could feel that the two of them together, thanks to the Mark of the Beast, and that made him curious. Making his way across the rippling sands, the three combatants soon came into view.
The Mizukage and Kazekake had found themselves pitted against a hunchbacked puppeteer. Even from a distance, Yuurei could tell that there was something fundamentally wrong with the puppet they were using. It was too lifelike, almost as if it had been made from a real cadaver. Approaching closer, Yuurei could feel the youki pouring out of Mei's body as she weaved one attack after the other. Lava melted sand into molten glass while acid ate the afternoon air, and Temari used her fan to ward off their opponent's advances.
"His poisons are almost all lethal," the quadra-tailed blonde warned.
"Most poisons are lethal in sufficient quantity," the puppet-master replied nonchalantly, his voice giving off the impression of an aloof young man. "That's why finding a proper balance is so important, because too much is a waste of resources and too little means it won't work as intended. But rather than poison, shouldn't you be worried about the fact that I've only been using one puppet?" Suddenly, nine more humanoid dolls appeared in puffs of smoke.
"Taikou? Sinjin? Sasori, don't tell me you..." Temari trailed off, recognizing two of the bodies that had suddenly appeared.
"It took you this long to notice?" Sasori's voice was smug, emanating from deep within the shell-puppet he hid himself inside. "Yes, this is the taboo that had me branded a traitor. The practice of turning frail, mortal bodies into timeless works of art."
Gritting her teeth to avoid biting her own tongue off in rage, Temari swung her massive battle-fan with explosive force. Rather than any feat of Ninjutsu, it was simply chakra-laced air that she launched indiscriminately in the outlaw's direction. When that failed to even disturb the clothes on Sasori's puppets, the Kazekage followed it up with a second and a third.
"How dare you!" Temari screamed at the top of her lungs, her emerald eyes wide enough to strain. If someone were to look closely, they would see small specks of red flickering inside of her irises. "How dare you desecrate the dead of your own nation! Where is your shame?"
"Shame? Two of your butcher uncles are in front of you, and you would speak of shame? Do you have any idea what atrocities your clan committed against the people of their village in your father's generation, or was that truth hidden from you as a child of their last survivor? Don't make me feel embarrassed for you, little girl. Existing now as my puppets is the only act of service these two bastards have ever done for anyone from Sunagakure." Sasori's previously arrogant voice was filled with spite and venom, and Mei somehow doubted that it had anything to do with Temari's accusation.
Both parties' mutual aggression gave way, however, to an inhuman pressure that pervaded through their eight senses. From high upon a sand dune, Yuurei's long and shaggy hair was nearly floating in the wind. The demon crossed his still-growing arms with a displeased frown, seeming to stare through the shell that housed Sasori's true body. The look in his eyes was one of tired anger, but his very appearance was a naked threat. For his part, Sasori immediately understood that this was the demon that Orochimaru's brats spoke of. He could feel the corruption radiating off of the blond, even from the distance that he was slowly shrinking. Without aid from Konan or their leader, he already knew that this wasn't a fight he could win.
"The sun's hung in the sky for a long time," Sasuke noted aloud as he looked out of a window, thinking the phenomenon was just a little bit weird. "Wasn't it supposed to set around now?"
"The clock on the wall says it's not even two in the afternoon, though," Shizune replied from their room's desk. "Normally, I'd take a look at the gears, but the position is about right. It's been a full day already, though, and we don't have any more patients. It should be okay to close up shop a few hours early. We deserve to have some recovery time, right?" The medic's head shook with light laughter, her long bleached-and-dyed hair practically tousling itself in her amusement. "Or, well, recovering from the recovery time."
"You seem pretty upbeat about the situation," Sasuke replied, unsure exactly what was going on in Shizune's mind; the woman had rotated through depressive states of varying intensity for the entire time he'd known her, interspersed with concern for him during his training and her naked disdain for Jiraiya. This brighter, bubblier iteration of Shizune's was entirely foreign to him, but not unwelcome.
Shizune briefly considered giving her companion the ironic side-eye of his life, but decided against the idea. If he couldn't figure out the answer to his unspoken question, then she wasn't sure he deserved for someone else to point it out. Her heart, head, and stomach all ached, but it was a good kind of ache for the first time in a long time. Those feelings changed nothing about the state of their mission, or what she thought about that goal, but they were a nice distraction. A nagging voice in the back of the medic's head told her that it was a mistake, and that voice wasn't small, but the newly-blonde woman had already decided that she wouldn't mind repeating some of her mistakes.
"How long do you think we should keep staying here?" Sasuke chose to shift the conversation, realizing he wasn't going to get a reply to his previous statement. Removing the blue bandana from across his forehead, his unnatural red hair fell down to frame his face. "We may not be close to Iwagakure, but we're still in Tsuchi no Kuni. I'm sure we'd both feel more comfortable further south."
"I'll show you comfort further south," Shizune joked, laughing at the way Sasuke's face wrinkled in blushing embarrassment. "You're right though, it might be nice to visit some nations further east. Yugakure is beautiful during this time of year. We would just need to be careful navigating the route, because Ta no Kuni is under Orochimaru's control."
"The entire country?" Sasuke shuddered, remembering his lone brush with the legendary nukenin—even though he hadn't known who it was at the time. Questions died on the Uchiha's tongue, processing the possibility of a return to Konoha in the near future.
"The story is pretty straightforward, unlike most other things about him. He dominated all of the country's clans, one by one, and then approached the daimyo to formally request land for a hidden village. The part of the story that he doesn't like people telling is that he showed up to the capital with his entire army to convince the daimyo that it was a good idea." Shizune shook her head in distaste, uncomfortable with the way her master's former teammate operated on the global stage.
"What a bastard, Sasuke said. "Why does everyone think that might makes right? Pursuit of power, for the sake of power, never ends well. So why do people keep trying?"
The Uchiha seemed genuinely confused, and all Shizune could do was offer him a helpless look. She'd lived for just barely more than twice his life, and had seen more horrors of war than her ambulatory lifestyle would suggest. She had no answers for him—or at least, none that either of them wanted to hear. Unfortunately, there were always men like Orochimaru in the world...and demons, too, if the two minutes she'd spent in Naruto's presence were anything to go by. The process of removing his corrupt power from Jiraiya's wounds had been taxing, and the tall blond had meant to make it hurt.
Idly, as she thought of the demon who'd renamed himself, Shizune's mind inevitably wandered to the women she'd seen watching him from Suna's walls. There was a joke in there somewhere about who was pursuing who, if she cared to look for it, but the hypocrisy of the idea made Shizune walk it back. Still, anyone with any kind of political influence in the Elemental Nations would recognize the Kazekage and the Raikage's niece. It made her wonder: how far did Naruto's influence extend across the nations of their world? She struggled to believe that he would actually be friendly with Kumogakure, given his origins in Konoha, but it seemed as if the Kazekage and Mizukage were both under his protection.
How had he managed that?
Yuurei's face was as blank as the puppet he fought against, though Temari was outraged far more than when Sasori had summoned two of her uncles. In front of her eyes, a chronological impossibility was playing out—the infamous Akasuna had reached back across the hands of time, and her great-grandfather's corpse now stood and fought against her.
"In the slums of Sunagakure, they say the position of Kazekage is cursed, you know?" Sasori chuckled, and the dead body of the Nidaime Kazekage laughed with him. "The whole clan is, really, but the leaders always seem to end up getting assassinated. This one isn't my favorite, but he can do something that the rest of my puppets can't."
"My great-grandfather, Shamon, pioneered the art of puppetry in Suna," Temari said, through gritted teeth. "He would be rolling in his grave if he could see this now."
"I think the biggest problem with that statement is—" Yuurei started to speak, but was interrupted by another of Temari's enraged outbursts.
"Not now, Yuurei!" The living Kazekage admonished her future lover, while the dead one condensed chakra strings on his fingertips. Puppet after puppet appeared, all of them human—or at least, formerly human—and Yuurei watched in moderate fascination as the number continued to grow. If Yuurei had been a student of history, or even made note of the last two Great Wars, he would have recognized a number of formerly feared individuals among the crowd; Sasori's identity as an artist was the core of his being, but his nature as an art collector didn't fall far behind.
Quietly, the demon marveled as more and more once-human puppets appeared, slowly beginning to blot out the sky. He wasn't truly interested in the process of making puppets, but he understood an obsession with one's craft. It had to have taken Sasori many, many years to assemble the formidable collection he was displaying. Still, the demon wondered: how many could the Akasuna operate, and for how long, before the chakra consumption overwhelmed him? There were more than thirty puppets in attendance now, including the Nidaime Kazekage, and Sasori seemed to be capable of going further. He commanded Shamon's corpse with one hand, and Shamon commanded nearly four puppets per finger. It gave off the feeling of an expert choosing to be purposefully oblique about his skills, and that thought irked Yuurei slightly.
The hot taste of iron filled Mei and Temari's tongues as Yuurei pooled his youki, inducing a nameless dread that even they couldn't escape. The tall demon idly thought of summoning a sandworm tooth to fight with, but decided against it. Weapons were supposed to be extensions of the self; right now, he didn't need that extension. Caustic, hellish power roiled beneath Yuurei's skin, and it wasn't long before that strength exploded with concussive force. Sasori's puppets launched a slew of attacks while the two Kage shielded their faces, and the sand around them caught fire. Standing tall, Yuurei marched forward, and he remained undaunted by Sasori's myriad blows. Small cuts opened and closed across his arms and chest, and his veins began burning as they carried poison to his heart, but the Oathkeeper was unconcerned.
As his youki invaded and corroded the chakra that powered several of Sasori's summoned puppets, Yuurei watched a number of small cylinders burst in each of them before they fell lifeless. Sasori looked on expressionlessly, but nobody watching believed that he was neutral about their destruction. In puffs of smoke, the fallen puppets vanished, and then Sasori put away the rest.
"It's been entertaining, children, but I think it's time for me to go," he said from within the confines of Hiruko. "We got what we came for. Maybe next time, we can play for a little bit longer. Zetsu!"
Across the desert, three sets of thorned green-and-black vines rose up to encapsulate three targets; Sasori, Konan, and Yahiko all vanished inside the alien protrusions, and disappeared from everyone's senses as those vines rapidly receded beneath the sand.
"What the hell?" Tayuya asked, coasting above the former battlefields as she tried to process her opponent disappearing from the middle of the sky. Yugito wasn't doing much better, though her confusion gave way to anger. She'd been close to killing the redhead, she thought. Individually, and then together, the pair made their way back to their master's position with questions in mind. They both already knew that Yuurei wouldn't have the answers they were looking for, but that was irrelevant to the situation at hand.
Who were those people?