It was evident that Kushina, at least, had been waiting for Sasori's sponge bath to be completed and clothes dressed before she returned, her arms laden with half-dry debris to start a fire. Her accompanying ninken dragged dead, dry palm fronds behind. Kokoro pulled herself closer to the firepit, chakra strings planting themselves into the dirt and allowing her to lift her body through the air, very much like she was her own puppet. Sasori was impressed.
Kokoro lit the fire with a gentle kaiton jutsu, strong enough to dry the debris and burn it at the same time. The dead fronds flared white-hot, and Tsume tossed the scraps of Sasori's filthy clothes, one long piece at a time, onto the flames as she pinched her nostrils shut. Orange flames shifted blue and the odor of garlic permeated everything as his clothes were reduced to ashes.
"Okay, mint and garlic – not a great combination." Tsume blew her nose into her sleeve. Sasori twitched. "Told you that arsenic has an odor," she added snidely.
"If your nose is so great, then who poisoned the oasis?" Sasori asked.
"Oh, that's easy. It was Kiri."
Kushina blew a raspberry, face twisted with disdain. "Oh, of course they did. They have so much water they have absolutely no idea what a treasure it is. Uzushio had so very little potable water. They sabotaged our fresh water sources before they moved to take out my old home."
"How many Kiri?" Kokoro asked.
"There's eight of them," Tsume replied, her gaze distant. "And it happened about a week ago. This isn't the first oasis they hit. There's another four, all tainted with arsenic, although this one had the largest amount – close to four kilograms."
Kokoro swore. "They're trying to take out more than just Suna."
True. There were still enough nomadic tribes in Wind's great sand desert that traveled from oasis to oasis, before wintering in various settlements in the Gossamu Valley, that Kiri could singlehandedly wipe out everything that made the Suna Autumn Bizarre such a lucrative seasonal festival for Wind and provided enough money to the Wind Daimyo's coffers to keep the country from formally bankrupting. And the death toll wouldn't just include humans – so many of the desert fauna relied upon the oases. Prey would die shortly, and predators, lacking healthy prey to survive upon, would eat the poisoned corpses. As an inorganic compound, arsenic wouldn't break down. It would contaminate the ground soil as corpses rotted, stunting root development and plant growth, and even contaminate underground aquafers that fed the year-round oases. The insect life that depended on the plant life would be equally devastated.
Sasori was surprised he hadn't noticed more dead animals when they approached the oasis.
Kushina swore even more colorfully than Kokoro. "Damn fucking Kiri all to hell!"
Sasori had no love for Suna. And he was just as willing to leave the country of Wind as he was Suna.
But the devastation… even he felt disgust with the reckless endangerment of his home country, as little as he cared for it. Wind was home to rare plants and even more rare insects and reptiles, sources of his beautiful poisons and toxins. So much could be lost for generations if Kiri had its way.
"We have to try fixing this," Tsume said. "We need to let the Hokage and Kazekage know what's going on."
"How?" Kokoro gestured to indicate everyone present. "What the hell can four chuunin and five ninken do?" She leveled a fierce glare at Sasori. "Can you remove arsenic from five different oases?"
He wasn't sure he would be entirely successful in removing all the arsenic from their current oasis – seriously, four kilograms? – but he wasn't going to admit this just yet. He could at least lower it to levels that, when consumed long-term, would certainly be unhealthy, but not deadly.
"I got an idea." Kushina chewed on a lock of crimson hair. "One of the last fuuinjutsu seals that Mito-san created before she sent me away was one that purified a water source. It was meant for enclosed spaces, but I bet I can finagle it to include an open water course, like the oasis. And so long as the seal isn't tampered, it will remove toxins, poisons, and impurities. It would preserve the integrity of the water."
"I bet if you can add a relay to it," said Kokoro, "one that can alert someone if the seal is tampered. Link it to a map, and people will now exactly when and where, and can react accordingly."
"Ooooh, a map for Suna and a map for Konoha!" Kokoro and Kushina immediately put their heads together, fuuinjutsu terms and ideas flying back and forth. Tsume was left out of their brainstorming, as much an outsider to it as Sasori, as she finished burning his clothes. The conversation was still growing strong as she mounted a rig over the fire and suspended a kettle filled with water over it. Neither of her companions seemed to care as Tsume then rifled through Kokoro's pockets, retrieving the nutrient pills and ration bars, and then she approached Sasori with an armful of goods.
"I've got chamomile, mint, jasmine, and oolong," Tsume told Sasori, glancing towards her teammates with a barely-disguised desperation and jealousy, before she dropped each bag individually on top of Kuromaru's broad back. "Which one would you like?" She settled cross-legged next to him.
The discussion between Kokoro and Kushina took a heated turn as they argued about layers of security to the seals and national security in general when providing the knowledge of said seals to Suna, and how could they present it for Konoha's betterment?
Sasori made a show of sniffing each bag. "Can you do half-and-half with the mint and jasmine?" He wasn't keen on using the same sort of tea that Tsume had jammed up her nostrils, but it smelled nice, but so did the jasmine. With the war going on, tea was a scarce resource to be found in Suna, and while coffee would certainly raise his energy levels, he wasn't about to share his precious stash with the Konoha nin.
"Sure." The tea and herbal leaves were whole, but she used a small pestle to crush them up in a clay mug. Apparently, Tsume packed along an entire set up in which to make fresh tea.
While Kokoro and Kushina finally settled on agreeing to compromise and provide the water purity seals with the caveat that only Konoha would be permitted to refresh them, Tsume added hot water and settled comfortably once more at his side with her own mug of mint and chamomile. "We only brought two tents. Want me to set yours up?"
"We didn't bring any tents." He sipped the tea. It was warm and delicious. Then he swiped at his blurry eyes, because the damn tea wasn't good enough to cry over. It just wasn't.
"Oh. Huh. Well, I normally bunk with four of the ninken, but I can boot two or three out and make some room for you."
He watched as her tunic shifted rhythmically. It seemed safer to dwell on someone else's physical condition than the nagging itch of his phantom left big toe or the watering of his eyes. "Why does your belly do that?"
"Girly's got the hiccups." Tsume massaged her belly. It was… Sasori tried to remember how large the last pregnant woman was that he saw. In the tradition of their nomadic ancestors, pregnant Suna women sequestered themselves in their last trimester. "And no, I'm not having twins. Apparently, my body likes to produce an entire lake of amniotic fluid."
He felt distinctly uncomfortable with the possibility of two fetuses being stuffed inside Tsume's uterus, much less one. "I'm not sure I feel secure sharing sleeping quarters with you."
"Hey, like you said, if I wanted you dead, I'd've let you keep your feet. I'm not going to smother you with my pillows, and I promise my ninken won't rip out your throat as long as you don't try killing me. I still have to haul you to the hospital, after all. My cousin, Fuuko, has a prosthetic for her left leg. She had to have a couple of surgeries so her stump could be fitted. You'll need the same, too."
Sasori recalled, once again, the prosthetic he had made for Komushi. And what a waste that effort had been, when the moron went and died a few months afterwards… He immediately consoled himself, that Komushi was now so much greater than he had been when alive – he had immortalized his best (and only) friend. (So what if he carted around the simile of his friend's corpse like an lacquered teddy bear, unwilling to part with even a shadow of the friendship they had once shared? It was no one's business but his own.)
"Who's keeping watch tonight?" It wasn't technically sleeping in the tent with Tsume if she was outside, keeping watch.
By now, Kushina was drawing up a rough draft of her seal on a regular blank piece of paper, pointing out the working elements to Kokoro, who had a map of the Wind Country spread across her limp legs.
"No need." Tsume held a handful of cream-white nutrient pills out to him. He reluctantly accepted them. "We're the only living human beings in the surrounding sixty kilometers. Chew those, don't swallow them whole."
The pills were bitter and chalky, forming a gritty film on the roof of his mouth. He rinsed his mouth with some tea, and then swallowed the concoction down, suppressing a gag.
"Yeah, I told Akamichi Tobi that he could at least try adding some spices to improve the flavor, like ginger, but the lecture on how the secret ingredients can't be compromised with ginger or vanilla wasn't worth it."
"Bored me to tears," said Kuromaru.
"I still think that vanilla wouldn't compromise the integrity of the nutrient balance, but what would I know?" Tsume pouted. "It's not like I got the nose to balance flavor profiles."
"If you can smell the lack of humans in a sixty-kilometer radius," and the approximate amount of arsenic contaminating the oasis, "you probably could balance flavor profiles better than an Akamichi." Then Sasori realized, from the total distance of half a meter, Tsume had totally sniffed out every single one of his poisons, and didn't just burn his clothes because of how soiled with various body fluids they had been. She destroyed the stash he had hidden on himself.
"See, that's what I told Tobi! But you never challenge the Akamichi to a cooking contest. Never." Tsume shook her head so fiercely that she nearly took out Sasori's eye with a hooked knife hidden in her wild locks. "I found out the hard way that the art of cooking is more than just flavor – it's texture and presentation, and I can't figure out how to make my food look as tasty as it smells."
"Where is my bag? Where are my puppets?" He couldn't remember what he did with them in the spiraling confusion of the poisoning, his team's deaths, and his own suffering.
"Shi put the puppets and all of the bags over there, under that palm tree." Tsume pointed at a strand of palm trees, almost too dark to see, despite the additional light from the blue-and-orange flames of their fire. Tsume's grandmother had, apparently, lacked in the department of imagination, and proved it by naming four of Tsume's ninken Ichi, Ni, San, and Shi. "We didn't touch them, otherwise." She made him another mug of tea.
At her casual dismissal of his weaponry, Sasori felt himself relax a fraction. He wasn't completely helpless and vulnerable to these Konoha nin, then. Focusing on art – even something as fleeting and inane as food – was a much safer topic to dwell on than how he had been so easily divested of most of his poisons, although there was still a plethora of such hidden within his two puppets. Or maybe not so hidden, given the strength of the Inuzuka nose. "What's the point of making food look artful when you're just going to eat it?" He chewed two more nutrient pills, downing each with scalding sips of his tea.
"See, I said that, too! But then I had to listen to how the eyes are the window to the soul, and how art feeds the soul, yada yada yada."
"Art does feed the soul." This was a topic near and dear to Sasori's heart, and one he was very comfortable in arguing and debating anyone with, even if that particular anyone was probably more of a reluctant enemy than an actual ally. "You can't feed the soul with money or possessions. Art is necessary in elevating human existence. It's what separates us from lower life forms. There is no higher purpose, no meaning to our lives without art." But art was meant to be a means to its own end, not something to dress up food in a pretty show. Art was meant to be immortal, like the human soul, not fleeting and at risk of becoming moldy and/or rotten.
Tsume stared at him, wide-eyed. For a breathless moment, it seemed like she understood the depth and importance of art, of why it must transcend time to embrace eternity when human existence was otherwise a meaningless, constant changing, toil of pain and loss. And then she opened her mouth and stuck her foot right in. "You're one of those philosophical nutjobs, aren't you?"
The problem with debating with morons, Sasori thought bitterly, is that they often dragged you down and beat you up with experience. So he dumped his mug of hot tea over her ridiculous hair.
oOoOoOo
The inside of their tent smelled like stale body odor, damp dog, lingering garlic, and a heady mix of jasmine and mint. "What kind of kunoichi brings seven pillows on a mission?"
Tsume, burrowed deep in her pile of ninken and pillows, snored in response.
"I know you're awake, woman."
"I don't wanna be awake. I ran over a hundred kilometers today through the gods-forsaken River humidity and then the desert heat, sweating like a pig, and am so ready to give birth in the sand. Let me have my pillows."
"Pigs can't actually sweat." Sasori efficiently stole a pillow, and then another. Her feather pillows were infinitely more comfortable than the puppet he was propped up against. As much as he used to love Komushi, his friend wasn't soft, especially after being turned from a fleshy meat suit into a hardened puppet meant to survive harsh battles and exist for the coming centuries.
"Hey, that's for my knees, you jerk!"
He ruthlessly shoved the pillow under his knees, elevating the stumps. It eased some of the painful throbbing. Blood wasn't returning efficiently from his legs with how the blood vessels had been chopped and then cauterized; his knees were swollen and achy, even with the extra wraps he applied to decrease the swelling. Then he fluffed the other pillow and pulled it under his head. "How many pillows do you need for your knees and elbows?"
"I have reached the beached whale stage of my pregnancy! I can't sleep on my back, can't sleep on my belly, and just want to be comfortable, damn it. I need two pillows for my legs, one for my hips, one for my neck, two more for my arms and elbows, and one for my head. My sleeping form is a work of art, and one I don't expect you to understand."
Pillows weren't art. He refused to accept such a moronic point of view. "Eternal sands, woman, how did your roaming ancestors manage to crisscross multiple countries without pillows or clothes a hundred years ago?"
"By being bitchy and ruthless. I can channel my inner Shinzou and show you first-hand how my ancestors managed to survive. You do not want to meet Grandmother. Not in the dark, not in the light of day, not in life, and certainly not in the afterlife. Gimme my pillows back!" She reached over and yanked back the one under his legs. He used chakra strings to steal the one bracing her hips, and then another from her elbows. Tsume squawked indignantly, and tried to rescue her pillows. He pinned her back with the chakra threads, and stole a fourth.
A rock thumped against the tent. "Don't make me separate you squabbling kids!" Kushina yelled.
Tsume and Sasori glared at each other in the darkness. "Fine," Tsume whispered. "You may have two pillows."
One for his head, and one for his legs. He could compromise with the plebeian. He graciously handed back two of the stolen pillows. Tsume quietly bullied Ichi and Kuromaru into different positions to make up for the loss of her elbow rest and hip brace.
oOoOoOo
Morning came all too soon, and with it, a symphony of aches. The nerves in his fingers burned, his eyes felt like someone had shoved handfuls of sand under his eyelids, his liver ached, his leg stumps throbbed in tempo with his knee joints, and his kidneys sent radiating waves of pain through his back and torso. His shoulders were killing him from dragging his carcass through thick greenery to independently empty his bladder before entering Tsume's tent, refusing to be carried around like a fainting bride by the Konoha women.
Nonetheless, Tsume still managed to drag him from his own nest – he had managed to sequester three more pillows in the night while she slept like a log – and into the brightening morning light. It wasn't as bright as the noon sun high over sand dunes, but it still made the gremlin hiding in his skull stab-happy. Tsume carried him out of the tent – damn it, if he had his legs and feet, he'd be (slightly) taller than her and her ridiculous hair, and good grief, she had caltrops tangled in it? How on earth did she manage to sleep? – and plopped him next to the small fire on which Kokoro was cooking omelets.
He squinted at the cooking set up. "Did you seriously manage to pack along an entire kitchenette?" What kind of ninja squad – besides the Akamichi – did that?
"Of course we did," Kokoro replied as she used her own chakra strings to season, stir, and flip breakfast on the suspended cast-iron griddle as Kushina, her face set in concentration, created a seal for their current oasis. Which meant he didn't have to try pulling all the arsenic out of the water. "We're not natural desert dwellers, used to this kind of climate. It would be too easy for us to lose our strength and stamina without appropriate nutrition and hydration, especially with the pace required to quickly cross an additional two hundred kilometers of desert and deliver the requested supplies to Sunagakure."
"You keep the cooking supplies," Tsume said. "Sasori and I only have to travel eighty kilometers to reach the area between Rain and River – we should be able to reach before nightfall. It'll be easier for me to forage in the forests than for you in the desert. I'll keep Ichi and Ni; that way, Kuromaru can translate for the other ninken with you."
"I don't support this idea," said Kuromaru. He was soundly ignored by his two-legged companions.
Kokoro handed the map over. "I marked the oasis we're at. Can you mark the other contaminated oases? Kushina and I will go directly to Suna and report to the Kazekage and Chiyo-sama, and maybe they can send separate teams to each of the other oases with Kushina's seals."
Tsume brightened, painfully and desperately eager to lend assistance to her teammates' schemes that she had been so obviously unable to provide during last night's discussion. She studied the map and the sun overhead, twisting and turning until she was aligned with north, laying the map out flat to orient herself.
Kokoro handed Sasori a blank sheet of paper and a mechanical pen. "I figured your grandmother and the Kazekage would prefer to hear your version of the story and let them know you're still alive. They're probably not going to take our word for it, especially when we hand them your lower legs and feet."
While Sasori was composing his letter, Kushina announced that she was done. "Tsume, I need a stone pillar about three meters high. I'm going to place it in the center of the oasis and anchor my seal to it." Sasori paused, trying to remember a more polite way of addressing his grandmother than deceitful old bag, and watched with a chill as Tsume, without applying chakra, fumbled through a five hand-seal sequence.
"Ox," corrected Kushina, touching Tsume's wrist with the third hand seal, "not horse."
Tsume fumbled through the sequence again, frowning in concentration.
It was a five hand seal sequence. It was simple enough for a toddler to remember!
Tsume practiced the sequence three more times before Kushina nodded in satisfaction. "Okay. Raise it in the center of the oasis."
Tsume's first attempt produced a lumpy, lopsided stone that leaned heavily to the side. Her second attempt was more cylindrical, but so heavy that it did fall sideways with a large splash, little waves rolling through the surrounding reeds. Tsume whined and hunched, looking like an unfortunate tortoise wearing a cactus for a hat. "Why can't you do this?"
"One," Kushina held up a finger, "you need to practice. Two, you have the earth nature, so it's going to come more easily to you than me or Kokoro. Three, Sakumo wanted you to learn these douton jutsu."
Tsume's third attempt wasn't even in the center of the oasis, rising up near the far shoreline and still leaning heavily to the side, but at least it remained upright.
Having memorized the sequence, Sasori impatiently performed it and raised his own pillar, perfectly cylindrical, perfectly centered, perfectly straight, and proudly jutting four meters above the water line. Kushina glared at him while Tsume flushed with embarrassment. "We need to leave soon if we want to reach River before nightfall," he said, refusing to feel bad about stealing Tsume's lesson and jutsu. "We'll need to rest mid-day when the heat is at its worst." Kushina's chakra may have healed the damage of the arsenic, but it didn't shield him from the repercussions of blood loss, severe dehydration, and the subsequent electrolyte imbalance from yesterday, and he didn't dare push through the height of the desert's heat until he had fully recovered. The nutrient pills they were feeding him by the handful were nothing more than a band aid slapped over his current health problem.
Sasori resumed his letter/report as Kushina water-walked across the oasis and shimmied up his pillar, her brush and jar of chakra ink clenched close to her chest. Once he finished, he ate his omelet (heavily salted) and the ninken ate theirs (also heavily salted, but devoid of garlic and onion seasoning), and watched as Kushina painstakingly applied her fuuinjutsu seal to the pillar. He drank an entire canteen of water (only lightly salted) as Tsume and Kokoro divvied up the cooking kit and impressively extensive stock of spices and seasonings. They also split the bags of tea, although Kokoro insisted that Tsume keep the tea kettle and pestle. "I can find a rock small enough to crush the leaves."
By the time they finished, Kushina had completed her seal. She charged it with a burst of golden chakra, and then leapt from the pillar to her companions' sides. He watched as the fuuinjutsu characters lit up, also golden, which transferred golden light to the pillar. It swept down the stone to the water surface. The golden light traveled across the surface like rippling waves towards the shore. The soil and plants at the banks glowed briefly, the flow rising upward in the air like a mist, and then in a snap, the golden chakra rushed back to the pillar, a black haze dragged behind. The golden chakra flashed upward through the pillar as a ring of black swirled around it like a coil – whirlpool, Sasori realized – and when the chakra finally faded away, glittering black and silver rings marbled the pillar.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
"The oasis had a fair amount of naturally occurring lead, too," Kushina declared smugly. "Took care of that along with the arsenic."
oOoOoOo
Sasori wasn't sure which was worse: piggybacking off of a very pregnant eighteen year old woman, or awkwardly riding a gigantic ninken that looked like it very much preferred to rip his throat out.
"Well," said Tsume, hands on her wide hips as her tunic rippled and waved from the movement beneath, "it's not like you can run all the way there."
Sasori had half a mind to yank Komushi's legs off and stick them to his stumps. And then he would probably repeatedly fall flat on his face, and that would be even more humiliating, because his stumps weren't even, still covered with cauterized burns and scars from the poison, and swollen.
"Look, Ichi promises not to attack you." Ichi glared at Tsume. She glared back. "Right, Ichi?" A pause. "I know you don't trust him. I don't trust him either. But for right now, he's our companion, and Sakumo-sensei's rule number one is we don't abandon our companions, so we're dragging his sorry hide with us back to Konoha whether you like it or not."
Sasori's mood darkened even further with the reminder of who Team Five's sensei was, and the high regard Tsume clearly held for his parents' murderer.
"Fine!" Tsume pointed at Sasori. "You have to promise Ichi that you aren't going to harm any of us, either!"
Sasori didn't want to get involved in an argument in which he could only discern one side. "I don't make promises I can't keep."
She laughed, which wasn't the reaction he had been going for. "Well, at least he's honest," she told Kushina and Kokoro as they eyed him suspiciously. "Sakumo-sensei always said you know exactly where you stand with Suna nin."
"Yeah," replied Kokoro slowly, not taking her gaze from Sasori, "far away from them and out of reach of their poisons, with your back facing the opposite direction."
"Well, that too. He also said that the Suna nin were honest and reliable with their promises, especially with the ones about killing you in a miserable way. But no poison is truly odorless." Tsume grinned boldly at Sasori as she tapped her nose. "I'll know if you're being sneaky. But hey, I can't expect something for nothing, so how about a trade?"
"A what?"
"A trade!" Based on her teammates' expressions, Tsume was leading up to something they weren't going to be happy about. "You give me your promise and your best behavior until you return to Suna, and I'll give you your parents' puppets."
What.
Kushina and Kokoro clearly shared in his disbelief.
His voice was a flat whisper. "They were destroyed in the Second War." That's what the old bag had told him after she finally, and reluctantly, admitted to the truth about his parents, after which he demanded that she give him their puppets.
"No. Sakumo claimed them and mailed them off to me and Kakashi."
A red haze filled his vision.
"One is a scorpion, about the size of Ichi. It's got a dull-grey body and pale yellow legs. Wicked red eyes, though."
His father's Deathstalker: Desunaito.
"The other is this black spider, about half the size of the scorpion, with a red streak down its thorax-belly thingie."
His mother's Black Widow: Kuro Goke.
"I'll give them back to you in exchange for your promise. I swear on my own mother's grave that they're mostly intact, still."
Sasori hadn't realized he was clenching his hands into fists until nails broke the skin and the coppery scent of blood filled the air.
"I'm not sure this is the best way to bargain for good behavior," said Kushina.
"Look, it's not like I can do anything with the puppets. I had to stash them away in a very, uh, hidden place to keep my clan children from playing with them after Kakashi took them to the Academy a few years ago for show-and-tell, and Kagami explained why it's a bad thing to leave priceless, dangerous weapons carelessly lying around. I think it's fair to give them back to who they belong to." The amusement melted away from Tsume's face as she crouched next to Sasori and rested a placating hand upon his scarred kneecap. She looked tired and older, almost ancient, with grief. "Besides, Sakumo-sensei would've wanted them returned."
Desunaito.
Kuro Goke.
His parents' puppeteer art. The eternal expression of their hearts, their skills, their philosophy, their legacy. Sasori's legacy and inheritance, denied to him for almost his entire life. He had been five years old when his parents were killed, and he had precious few memories of them and their lifework.
Lifework that existed in this simpleton's possession.
And that wretched old hag had lied to him. He had always sensed the untruthfulness when she told him his parents' puppets had been destroyed, that there weren't even any pieces or parts that he could salvage and recycle into his own puppetry. But Chiyo had lied to him so much and for so long that he no longer trusted her even when she did tell the truth, like how the sky was blue, or the sun rose in the east, or that the shinigami peppers were, in fact, hot enough to feel like you're going to die if you ate a handful of them.
Sasori closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep, slow breaths to recenter the growing ball of rage and bitterness. He forced his hands to relax, though they still trembled. If this simpleton was so willing to hand him the legacy of his parents, their ultimate weapons, then who was he to deny such a boon? Inuzuka Tsume was a naïve simpleton, and it was so painfully obvious to her teammates what a mistake her good-faith offer was. "For this? I promise not to harm, hurt, or kill you and your companions and will be on my best behavior until I return to Suna."
He had no intention of returning to Suna, to his lying, deceitful grandmother, and the jealous Kazekage, who watched Sasori with poisonous eyes and a deadly silence. And being in Konoha gave him easy access to everything that was so important to Sakumo Hatake.
At Tsume's silence, he opened his eyes. The red haze was gone. Her expression was no longer laden with grief, but every bit as serious, thin lips pressed into a tight line. She tapped her nose with her left index finger, still resting the right hand on his kneecap. "I can smell lies as easily as I can smell poison."
Well. It was in Sasori's best interest then to be honest. "Then I will keep this promise until I leave Konoha." What he did after he left Konoha? Well, that was open to interpretation and subject to change. Technically, he could return to enact his vengeance once he was a kilometer away, and it wouldn't mean he was lying about being on his best behavior.
She nodded, expression still grim and serious. "All right. I can smell the honesty of that, and I can accept it."
"Chop chop," said Kokoro, clapping her hands. "It's already past nine. Daylight's burning and we've all got a lot of ground to cover."
"You'll ride Ichi until it's too hot, and then I'll trade off with him," Tsume told Sasori as she picked him up and deposited him upon Ichi's broad back. "Use chakra to keep your butt pinned." Kokoro, using her chakra strings, mounted another ninken – one who wore some sort of saddle with special straps that she secured her limp legs in.
They were delayed further with another argument to not allow Sasori his puppets, with Kushina ultimately pointing out how unfairly he was loading his two- and four-legged beasts of burden with his own carcass, much less an added two more. Sasori, already extremely uncomfortable with how much he had to rely on others for his transportation, argued that it was equally unfair to leave him vulnerable and weaponless, and no, a dozen throwing stars and kunai isn't going to cut it, and what the hell was he going to do with Tsume's grease-stained caltrops?
"They aren't grease-stained! My hair is clean!"
They eventually reached a compromise that left no one satisfied, as he was permitted one puppet – Komushi.
"Well, it's not like you got any poisons on them anyway," Tsume said blithely as she sealed his second puppet in a scroll that was secured inside Sasori's dead teammate's pack. She had commandeered it as her own backpack, holding their portion of the supplied, and shouldered it herself to keep Ni unburdened.
Sasori froze. "What?"
"Yeah, I got rid of all the poisons while you were asleep. The hatch in the jaws were a little fiddly, but I managed not to break the hinge."
Sasori grimly thought of the various ways he knew how to kill people without the use of poisons. The Kazekage had insisted on it, firmly telling Sasori that if people thought of you as just a two-trick pony (puppets and poison), it makes it easier to leave no witnesses after they underestimate your true skill level.
oOoOoOo
The Shiruba Oasis was the first oasis between the Land of River, and Sunagakure. The geography between Wind and River was a gradual ascent upwards, and lacked a great deal of sand. The border between the two was an ancient mountain range, long worn down unevenly by the continental winds and torrential rains that frequently blew in from River and pushed westward across Wind. The water from Rain was often lost in the deep underground aquifers that lay beneath the mountains. The constant, relentless winds and heavy downpouring rain had extensively eroded the mountains' softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils, blowing the finer particles across the countryside to the sand dunes.
Otherwise known as the Uneru Badlands, the countryside was scared with sharp, wide ravines, carved gullies hundreds of meters deep where lush greenery flourished with or without marshes, many of which were hidden in the shadows of buttes and rising pillars of hoodoos. The broken surface wasn't completely barren – the prairie grasses were stubbornly clinging, bent sideways from the wind, while stunted sagebrush, pine, thorny apples, and clusters of wild blossoming hazelnuts thrived against the odds of the relentless, drying wind, the harsh overhead sun, and constantly swinging extreme temperatures.
And the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were even more relentless than the winds. Suna, due to its lack of bloodsucking flying menaces, was starting to look pretty good to Sasori.
On the plus side, Sasori's itchy mosquito bites served as a good distraction from his itchy nonexistent left big toe.
On the downside, there would be far fewer mosquito bites to suffer through if Tsume didn't insist on harvesting wild marsh geraniums and clay from the smelly, filthy marsh she was wading barefoot through, trouser legs rolled up to her knees and a large carved wooden bowl in her arms. She also got distracted midway through her self-assigned mission and harvested a number of young cattail roots, proclaiming them delicious when roasted. The ninken, with Sasori astride Ichi, stood off to the side, away from the algae scum that stuck to the marsh's banks. Sasori nearly lost his seating when Ichi abruptly sat and began scratching relentlessly at his thick neck.
"Hey, kiddo, can you scratch his left shoulder, under the harness?" Tsume called. "Ichi can't quite reach it."
Sasori reluctantly complied, and Ichi leaned heavily into his digging fingers. Riding a ninken, Sasori had realized, within minutes of mounting Ichi, was nothing at all like riding a horse or a camel. "What are we even doing here? It's pointless to return to Konoha if we all get sick and die from yellow fever."
"Nah, it's too early in the season for yellow fever to have made its way over from Wave. I forgot to grab some mosquito repellant from Shi's pack before we separated, so now I have to go with an old Nara clan remedy, instead. Shoot, forgot to crush the geranium before I added the clay."
Mosquito repellant and the order in which she was supposed to make the old Nara clan remedy were clearly not the only things that Inuzuka Tsume kept forgetting. He eyed the leeches that had attached themselves to Tsume's calves as she high-stepped through the marsh to another patch of geraniums, pausing long enough to yank up yet another armful of cattail roots.
Ten minutes and three screeches of disgust later, Tsume returned to the bank, prying leeches from her legs. "Why didn't you warn me?"
He shrugged and slapped a mosquito trying to take advantage of his exposed collarbone. "You didn't ask." And the very obvious you should've water-walked, moron was left unspoken.
Tsume grumbled and separated the clay from the bowl, picking geranium and cattail roots free. She swaddled the cattail roots in yesterday's dirty tunic, and stuffed the bundle into her nearby backpack. She sat awkwardly over the bowl, her protruding uterus very much in the way as she mashed the geraniums into a pulp and occasionally slapped a mosquito.
"What's my name?"
She flinched minutely. "Why, did you forget?"
"No, but you did."
"I do too remember!"
"Then what is it, woman?"
"If you're not going to call me by my name, I'm not going to give you the same consideration."
Her shoulders hunched as she mixed the gloopy clay, green with algae, with the pulped geranium. "Inuzuka Tsume, chuunin of Konohagakure, genin apprentice to the disgraced Hatake Sakumo, foster mother to Hatake Kakashi, head of the Inuzuka Clan, recognized kin to the head of the Nara Clan, and proclaimed heir to the legendary Hell Hound, Inuzuka Natsumi. I remember precisely who and what you are. What is my name, Tsume-san?"
She somehow managed to hunch even more. He was half-sure her uterus was trying to merge with the ground. "You forgot brain damaged simpleton with a lackluster memory." He saw enough of her ashamed expression, cheeks almost as red as her haphazard clan markings.
He scoffed. "You couldn't be that badly brain-damaged if your teammates were willing to separate from you and your clan allows your headship without protest." He didn't pay too much attention to the intel on most Konoha chuunin, since they were hardly strong enough to be much of a challenge to his battle skills and poisons. But the apprentices of his parents' murderer? Whom he had sworn to kill when Grandmother finally revealed, just last year, the truths of their death and the identity of their murderer? Yes, he had studied and memorized everything he could about them. He knew about Uzumaki Kushina's mastery of her adamantine chains, the better for which to keep the Kyuubi locked within. He knew about Mitarashi Kokoro's role and expertise in Torture and Interrogation, solidly ensconced with her four older brothers.
And he knew about Inuzuka Tsume's simplicity and brain injury.
The fact that he had sworn to be on his best behavior until he left Konoha wasn't going to prevent long term planning of vengeance. The thought of further delays burned in his gut, like a single shinigami pepper, but one he was willing to put up with if it meant he could kill those foolish kunoichi with Desunaito and Kuro Goke and be fixed up for prosthetics with greater expertise than what Komushi had suffered through. The sweet irony would be worth the wait, to end the lives of the very same kunoichi who had been so instrumental in saving his own.
"I'm not a total idiot, Sashimi-kun." Her hands, coated with the paste of clay and geranium, curled into tight fists. "I can smell your hate, your deceit, your willingness to abandon your Village, and the fact that you supplied the Kiri nin with the arsenic two weeks ago."
Sasori didn't know if he should be hot with outrage at what she thought his name was, or cold at the fearful realization that her nose was good enough to know who had supplied the arsenic to the Kiri saboteurs. (They were supposed to poison Fire's water sources, not Wind's!)
"My name is Sasori."
"That's what I said."
"I am not a raw slab of fish!"
"You're a backstabbing traitor is what you are!"
"THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HELPING ME?"
A flock of sage grouse cautiously trying to quench their thirst scattered from beneath the underbrush, squawking wildly as they startled from Sasori's scream.
"BECAUSE YOU'RE A CHILD!"
They both glared at each other, both panting. Sasori's breaths were deep and steady as a red haze filled his vision and he cursed his stupid baby face once more. Tsume's breaths were rapid and shallow, diaphragm compressed by her uterus. Ichi, between Sasori's knees, growled long and deep.
"I am only six years younger than you," Sasori whispered, outraged and angry that she would treat him like a civilian preteen instead of a battle-hardened jounin with five years of experience. He had been promoted to jounin shortly after he converted Komushi into a puppet. His first human puppet. The Kazekage had been suitably impressed and his grandmother proud of him for the first time in his life. Too little, too late. His shinobi career was just a year shorter than Tsume's, but his reputation as a ruthless puppeteer was greater. She was a reckless simpleton. He was Akasuna no Sasori. He technically outranked this idiot woman, even if the rank had been bestowed on him less than a month ago, and he wasn't yet used to referring to himself as such.
Tsume stewed quietly as she returned to her paste, smearing heavy globs of it on her face, neck, legs, and arms. She looked like the unholy lovechild of a hedgehog and a golem. Then she paused, staring into her bowl as her belly, outlined by the sopping wet tunic, shifted and rolled. "Look, Sashimi-kun—"
"Sasori," he hissed.
"—Sasori-kun, I know it's weird and senseless, but the nose knows things, okay. You're young – hell, your voice hasn't even dropped, much less your balls – you smell lost, you smell lonely, you frankly stink of hatred and spite, and all I see is a desperate, cornered child. And I'm sorry if my maternal instincts are in overdrive right now, with the impending motherhood and hormones. I was supposed to be happily nesting in Konoha right now, cuddling with my new five year old son, but the Hokage needed my ninken for their noses, and me for speak for the ninken, so here I am with you, instead of with my Yamato. I feel awful about leaving him, when he had been in such a horrible place before, but I had to set aside my emotions to obey my Hokage's orders. But you can't really set aside emotions. They're still there, riding along like that gigantic chip on your shoulder." Tsume gazed at Sasori with naked longing. He wanted to gouge out her eyes. "You just happen to be in the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong condition, and I just too exhausted to fight myself over this. Can we just… can we just try to get along, at least until you leave Konoha?"
He forced himself to slow his breaths, ignored the pounding heart and the rush of blood in his ears, and willed away the hazy red washing his vision. He said nothing, but willingly allowed Tsume to plaster the slimy concoction on his skin and hair. He wasn't used to physical contact, but her hands were gentle and there was something soothing in the way she rubbed his skin. When she applied the concoction to her two ninken, he said, "You'll make a marvelous puppet after I kill you. I bet you'd retain your olfaction."
Tsume sighed. "That is seriously disturbing, Sasori-kun."
"If you're going to insist on smothering me with your nasty hormones and maternal instincts, then you can pay me back by serving in a more suitable fashion in the distant future."
"No, seriously, it's really disturbing. If you hate me that much, why would you turn my carcass into a puppet and keep it around?"
Because he liked hugging Komushi more in death than in life. "Because your carcass would come with a marvelous nose." He needed that marvelous nose. He didn't need the broken brain that came with it. Luckily, his single human-converted puppet didn't have a functioning brain. He still needed to figure out if human-converted puppets kept their bloodline limit, but eh, he'd explore that with the Third Kazekage in a couple of years.
"I can't tell if I'm being insulted or complimented."
"I'll have to do something about the hair, though. It's deplorable."
She shrugged as she swiped the bowl clean with the herm of her tunic. "Yeah, that's Sakumo decided to weaponize it years ago."
It honestly hadn't occurred to Sasori that Tsume had weaponized her hair. He just thought she carelessly kept losing stuff in it when she'd forget where she put something. "It's ugly."
Tsume huffed, half-amused and half-outraged. "That's just rude. Not all of us can have beautiful, sleek red hair like you and Kushina-chan." She then handed him another handful of nutrient pills and two more ration bars. The mosquitoes still buzzed around, sensing his body heat, but were now avoiding him, Tsume, and the ninken.
"I'll give you beautiful hair as a puppet."
She brightened, like a child given a fistful of money and told to have free reign at the candy store. "Really? I've always wanted red hair! Long and sleek!"
He nodded, ignoring a glowing warmth in his chest as Tsume cheerfully welcomed the idea of being turned into a beautiful, eternal work of art. The warmth was probably just heart burn from too many nutrient pills. "Yes. You shall have long, sleek hair." Red? Hell no. It wouldn't match her complexion, and he wasn't going to tell her that while she was being so amiable about being turned into a puppet. A soft silver-lilac with graceful curls would contrast better against her skin tone. "So… geranium?"
"Yeah. It's oils and compounds repel mosquitoes. The clay will keep the oils and compounds from evaporating, and the clay will help us blend into the countryside. There's a bunch of Ame, Jomae, Kusa, Iwa, and Kiri nin between us and Fire. They keep stomping all over Ame, and Ame is up in arms with the constant invasions. Konoha hasn't had anything to do with Ame since some kind of failed coup that Danzo tried to pull, so Hanzo's understandably pissed at anything that remotely resembles the Hidden Leaf."
Konoha needed to mind its own business instead of going around, instigating other Hidden Villages and dragging everyone headlong into wars.
Remembering, once again, that the Third War was partially her very own sensei's fault, Sasori glared at Tsume as he pocketed the second ration bar for later.
She didn't seem to notice as she chewed and swallowed her own ration bars.
"Why can't we go directly through Rivers instead of skirting the edge so close to Rain?"
"It's alligator nesting season. No one travels through the dead center of Rivers when the alligators are nesting, not if they want to keep all their body parts, and you're missing enough as it is."