One Year Earlier...
Land of Earth
The Village Hidden by the Stone
For many years now, she'd secretly dreamed about bugs.
She never understood what dreams like them meant, and somewhere along the way, she made herself forget why they'd mattered.
All she knew was that she was greatly happy when she dreamed, because it was the only reality where she could choose something for herself other than war and dishonor.
And sometimes, when she dreamed, he was with her.
The rest was ladybugs.
It was always that simple when she dreamed of him.
And on one of her many not-so-simple days, the jasmine-haired nakōdo smiled nostalgically at her work table, as she couldn't get yet another dream of bugs out of her head.
Until the jingling bamboo windchimes tied to her shop door cut off her happy daydreaming.
Ring-Ring-Ring.
The earthy notes of fresh clay and a lingering scent of smoking destruction being his literal dead giveaway.
"Lady Nakōdo," the customer might as well have announced to the entire Stone market. "Your despair has ended, for I have returned to you at last. No, no, there is no need to stand, my muse. I can't have you fainting on me when you see this next piece of work I came up with. Even now, I see you swooning in anticipation, so let me get to the point of the paintbrush. As you know, my work is in high demand around the village, but for you, I have returned with art which is truly-dare I say it-a bang!"
"Shouldn't you be in prison?" she muttered, her hands still busy at her work.
Her tone striking him as rather dry and unartful, if he said so himself, but he could forgive her for that. For a woman damn near fainting, she had remarkable poise in his magnificent presence. Which led him to assume she must be trying to save face in front of her other customers.
Heh...she was always playing so hard-to-get when it came to revealing her true critique of his work.
But he wouldn't let her inartistically tamed emotions understate his pièce de résistance.
"Prison? Heh. Those art-hating idiots didn't know the first thing about genius. It was no place for my work. And let's be honest, lady. Without my talents, there'd be no art left to blow your mind," he winked at her. "Heh, admit it. One look at me, and you're exploding inside."
"Hm, " Her smile was pretty and honey-coated. "It's like you can see right through me, Denkichi. No one has ever understood me so completely."
And his heart rolled over twice like a ball of clay, under the spell of that slow flutter of her dark butterfly lashes. Call it a niche fetish, but he'd always kind of had a thing for the insect-user-type.
"I look at you, and I think, wow," she said, taking him prisoner all over again with that warmth in her humming voice-especially by the way it got a little husky at the end when she said the word wow. "You are by far the prettiest ryō I've ever seen. Without your 'talents', I'd have no one to thank for all my new customers lately."
"Heh," he grunted sheepishly. "Really, there's no need to thank me, lady."
Though he knew somewhere hidden underneath all that honey sweet banter, there lived a back-handed compliment of cold disdain for rogue shinobi like him. So long as his dead cousin, Deidara, had been branded a menacing Akatsuki terrorist by the vindictive Stone Village, not even underclass girls like her, who came from cast-down clans like the Kamizuru, would give him the time of day anymore.
Really, just who did she think she was anyway?
Everyone in the village knew she'd only taken a matchmaker's oath because, as a member of the defamed Kamizuru Clan, she was doomed to never marry.
No other clan in their village wanted her.
It'd be social suicide for a shinobi of any caliber to marry a Kamizuru girl, unless he was brave enough to take on the punishing humiliation of his reputation and the grudge-bearing scorn of his patriarchs. No elder in the village would risk allowing the underprivileged Kamizuru blood to taint their noble lines.
So the way Denkichi saw it, the girl shouldn't walk around so proud. In fact, she should be thanking him for being willing to look past her humiliating family-since lucky for her, she was so damn cute.
Yet no matter how many times he barged into her shop and tried to play nice, the matchmaker never seemed to understand his philosophies of true art.
And that got under his skin the most.
She didn't even bother looking up at him, as she tied pairs of hachiku bamboo stems she'd been making as gifts for all her newlywed brides. The ones who she had personally matched, who'd been written off by other matchmakers as "hopeless little wretches who would never bring their families honor".
It was these throw-away brides that the matchmaker considered her specialty, and had thrown all of her heart into proving the village wrong, chasing after the best in her clients that everyone else failed to notice.
Rumors among her matchmaker friends had agreed that the Dragon Year was a good year for unlikely matches.
The year of the Dragon was famously potent with unexpected love. Of finding good fortune in giving your heart to one without realizing it. The beautiful discovery of finally recognizing that friend turned soul-match who was always there waiting quietly in the background, deserving of that love.
After all, even an underdogJinchūriki from the Hidden Leaf, Naruto Uzumaki, had recently recognized his soul-match in an old friend on a mission.
And after that, love seemed to be springing up everywhere around the Stone.
So fast, in fact, that she had spent all afternoon gathering bamboo from the mountains for the many last-minute weddings and honeymoons going on in the village.
Now that the Fourth Ninja War was over, and the battlefield had bonded the shinobi world together, business for the young matchmaker was booming.
Ninja and their sweethearts eagerly rushed to the altar to make up for lost time together.
And knowing that they had seen enough of the war going on outside her shop, the matchmaker chose more peaceful wedding gifts for her clients, rather than the traditional ornamental weapons for shinobi weddings.
Lucky Bamboo was famous for its spiritual healing qualities and power to brighten one's mood in darkness, which made it the perfect gift for a shinobi and his wife hoping to leave the war behind and start their new life together.
And with so many of her couples counting down the days to their wedding, the matchmaker had too much work on her hands to waste her precious time on these stale arguments.
"Listen, Denkichi," she said patiently, finally setting her bamboo work down. "I already told you the last time you stormed into my shop-"
"It was clear to me the last time we met, you had no appreciation for my art," he announced to her, in a smirk caught somewhere between arrogance and revenge. "So, while I was in prison for helping my cousin make the owl that almost killed a certain Kage, I sculpted a new masterpiece worthy of your acclaim. Using your art-hating criticism as a muse, I have brought beauty to life."
"Sorry, I'm a little busy right now. Some other time, Denkichi-"
"Behold! My magnus opus!" Denkichi declared, opening his balled fist to unveil the miniature white clay statue of a woman posed like a goddess with her flowing white hair enticingly hiding her nude full breasts, a laurel of bees dancing in her hair, and flames burning around her shapely curved hips, as if she'd been set on fire merely for the morbid glory of watching something beautiful burn to ash.
The matchmaker's lips parted slightly, gawking at the sculpture in wide, honey eyes-which unwittingly encouraged Denkichi to continue his symposium.
"I see you're speechless," he smirked. "Surely, you've never seen anything more beautiful than-"
"Is that..." Her head leaned to one side, eyes squinting to get a better look at the statue's uncannily recognizable features. "Me?"
Denkichi awkwardly cleared his throat.
"Erm...Of course not!" he slid into his words. "It is merely an example of what I mean when I say what I desire is a woman full of beauty without fault. She is the very soul of pure art. Look at her. To a man's heart, she is...an explosion!"
"You obviously weren't listening to me before," she opposed him. "A perfect woman doesn't exist! At least not for you. For the last time, I am never going to find you a match, either here in the Stone, or in any other village, for that matter."
"You wouldn't know true art if it hit you in the face!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! How can you call yourself a 'matchmaker', when you're clearly expressionless!" Denkichi challenged her. "I bet you've never even been in true love, like the way an artist loves his art."
"Hey, pal, you're holding up the line here," another customer's raspy voice came from behind Denkichi's big, inflated horse-tail of a head. "The lady said you're a lost cause. So, get lost."
"What is love if you can't burn out in a bang!" Denkichi pursued his argument with the matchmaker, ignoring the line waiting behind him. "Love must be a perfect masterpiece in the eyes of the beholder."
"But that's impossible," she contended. "Not everything that is art is art because it is perfect. Haven't you ever heard of Kintsugi?"
"Ha! More trash than treasure, if you ask me!"
"People are just like kintsugi," she made her point. "If you're going to find the perfect match, you have to see art in even the unartful."
"But Pygmalia is all the art I want in a match," Denkichi argued of his statue. "Until you can find me a girl who is living art to her likeness, I will come back again from my next mission with a new masterpiece. Until I show you, at last, true art."
Snatching up yet another blow to his ego, Denkichi crushed his fist tightly until the Pygmalia statue was grinded back into clay as fine as ashes.
And then, leaning in closer to her ear over her work table, Denkichi's voice lowered in a menacing threat, as he muttered, "If I really were like the Akatsuki everyone hates so much, I can just take you whenever I want you, as you and I both know, no one in this village would cast a jutsu to stop me."
Her cheeks reddened so hot, he swore they felt like the afterglow of burning art with her face so close to his.
But he knew she wouldn't fight him.
She wouldn't dare risk the punishment.
He may be related to a dead Akatsuki member, but at least he didn't belong to an exiled clan. That very minute distinction between them would always grant him rank over her in this village. And in the grand happy scheme of ninja law, he had every right to punish her with whatever humiliation he wanted to bring down on the Kamizuru Clan.
She, on the other hand, had no right to resist.
"Which means you could take the fall, couldn't you?" he went on smirking into her ear. "Being Kamizuru, it's not like you could stoop any lower than you already are...Heh?"
And by the time he slowly pulled his disgusting smirk away from her, turning to walk breezily out of her shop on his merry explosive way, the matchmaker was buzzing to kill him. Her breasts heaving with each resenting, simmering breath as her fist balled tightly.
She darted like an angry hornet toward his back.
But before she could rip out even one yellow hair in that infuriatingly well-conditioned ponytail of his, a solid fist came out of nowhere, blocking hers from throwing the first punch.
The hand that held hers back caged its black fingerless gloves and black polished fingernails securely around her straining knuckles. More like a firm warm hug than a challenge to a fight. As if the one the hand belonged to hoped to say without words that he understood her pain, but could not allow her to go through with such an emotional decision.
The matchmaker's eyes gradually followed the length of his muscular black sleeve, until she found a hardened face underneath orchid-tinted kabuki makeup marking his brows and chin. Black puppeteer liner traced the corners of his coal dark eyes, trained alert and focused on her retreating customer. If Denkichi turned around again just once, this mystery puppet man would make a side show out of him.
"There's no need to risk everything over that idiot," the puppet master told her. "He'll get what's coming to him."
But the honey-eyed nakōdo was still stuck on the part when he jumped in and took her side.
No one in her village, save for her fellow Kamizuru, bothered to see her as important enough to come between her and the village's relentless harassment.
Which meant he must be an outsider to the Hidden Stone.
"Have you got a grip on yourself yet?" he muttered.
His eyes were like a tiger's eye stone as he turned to look at her. Covertly stringing her into the smoldering umber brown that glimmered like a dancing marionette with the resolute boldness in the soul behind them. A jonin strength and assuredness that was unexpectedly comforting to her, in a world that was always so painfully uncertain. Dressed in all black, like the traditional Monzaemon master of the puppet technique, her mysterious protector captivated her by an alluring sense of danger. And judging by the character engraving of the Sunagakure in his ninja headband, what more reason did he need to give her to make her believe this chance meeting between them could be the scrimmage of their ruin?
After all, though she'd never met a puppeteer, due to the rarity of such a complicated technique, she'd heard the rumors about puppeteer lovers being commitment-phobes.
They were masters of trickery, both on the battlefield and in love. Guarded and illusive strategists, they would die before they ever let anyone get to their most vulnerable core. Sasori was master of puppet shields. Chiyo, a master of the Mechanical Light Shield Block. And Kankurō of the Sand was famous for luring his opponents by disguising his puppets as himself.
For so much work put into a puppeteer's defense, one might begin to wonder what it was underneath all that stagecraft and illusion that made him so afraid to reveal his true self.
It was no wonder then why he'd come here for help finding a match. For what was love, without any measure of vulnerability and trust in another?
Looks and a solid puppet technique could only ever get them so far as the door of her shop.
And with her work cut out for her, the matchmaker sighed.
Would this Suna ninja be the one who finally ruined her five-star reputation of finding anyone a match, no matter how despicable their clan name or scandalous their reputation?
Not a chance she'd ever back down from a challenge like this!
His was an enticing brand of poison that only tempted her more to master him.
But she knew better than to rush in and ambush a puppeteer with bees' wings blazing.
She couldn't approach him the way she would any old customer.
Instead, she would have to lure him to her. Smolder him in the fires of endurance until the prolonged waiting of his aching desire for love was so unbearable, it dragged him to the brink of madness.
Casually glancing up at the buzzing honey hive clock on her wall, the matchmaker yawned boredly and walked back to her work table to continue her bamboo tying.
"I'm sorry, but we're closed," she told the puppet master. "Please come back next week."
"I'm Kankurō," he introduced himself, with a confidence like one who wasn't used to taking no for an answer. "Are you the nakōdo in this village?"
"I am next week."
"I don't have a week," he persisted, as she knew the puppeteer would. "I need a matchmaker now."
"You can't rush love," she warned him sweetly.
"What?...Wait, no!" he quickly backtracked. "You got the wrong idea. I didn't come here looking for love. I use puppets so I won't have to be the one tied down by anyone. I came here to find my brother a match. Let's just say, I may or may not be the reason he got dragged into all this. I'm looking for someone who'll get the elders off our backs, until I can come up with a better plan to save us."
But the nakōdo wasn't fooled.
She'd been doing this matchmaking business for as long as she'd given up being a shinobi, and she was very good at spotting a shy bachelor.
"Oooh, I see. Your 'brother'," she notated his code talk in finger-quotes. "Then 'your brother' can come back next week and see me."
"Listen, lady, you don't understand. I told you already Gaara doesn't have a week. The situation's getting complicated," Kankurō persisted. "And I heard you guys were the best matchmakers in the Hidden Stone when it comes to complicated. I was told you specialize in high profile political matches like this. Not to mention, he's a Jinchūriki ."
"If your brother would like to know more about our Jinchūriki services, I'd be happy to give him a brochure with all our specials and packages."
"My brother doesn't have time to read."
"Then your brother may book an appointment to come in and consult with me any time next week," she persisted. "I'll be happy to explain all our services and add-ons to him then."
"He doesn't have time for all that."
"You can't rush love," her cake-icing reminder a sugar rush down his spine, straight to the pit of his stomach like a hot-blooded tipsy hangover.
And he was so annoyed that he'd walked into that cloyingly sweet phrase a second time, he could've easily made a puppet out of her.
"Then you'll have to make an exception in this case," he declared. "That's because he's the Kazekage."
Her hand paused suddenly at tying her bamboo stems.
Slowly, meeting his tiger eyes again.
"Did you say...the Kazekage?"
"That's right," he said. "The Suna tribe elders, in all their infinite wisdom, decided my brother being 20 is enough to make him ready for marriage. Apparently, they think power in the shinobi world is only based on heritage and name."
And didn't the nameless matchmaker understand that unforgivable assumption more than anyone?
"My sister, Temari, is marrying into the Nara Clan of the Leaf. And if she has a little brat with Shikamaru first, somehow that means the end of the Sand's power, if said Leaf brat becomes Kazekage next. That's why the tribe elders are antsy to see me or Gaara pull an heir out of our ass. And since I can't stand brats, I'm in a hurry to make sure it's Gaara first."
"What a predicament," she remarked, her calm voice a buzzkill to his sense of urgency. "Sounds to me like a 'Great Nation' kind of problem. In that case, it will take two weeks."
"Two weeks?" he protested. "But you said-"
"I have a waiting list," she interrupted him. "So, unless it is a life or death matter, I won't push another client back in line who has already been patiently waiting for a match. Not even for a Great Nation like the Suna."
"Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?" the puppet master questioned her.
"One of the most powerful shinobi in the ninja world, and the Kazekage will wait his turn," she answered. "You can give him this brochure to read in the meantime. Though, once word gets out about his bride search, I doubt he'll need any help from me finding a wife. He is a Kage, after all."
"You don't know Gaara," Kankurō warned her about her new client. "I respect my brother as a shinobi, but marriage isn't a mission he can handle. If he doesn't choose someone soon, the elders will be coming after me next. I need you to arrange him with a girl fast, with a strong bloodline, highly independent, who doesn't need a lot of attention, does what she's told, and has a thing for redheads. Oh, and preferably a girl from one of the Suna tribes."
"And how do you expect me to come up with a puppet wife like that so soon?" the matchmaker remarked sarcastically. "I can easily walk outside and pick out a dumb, cold stone on the ground for the bride you seem to want. But even then, our matchmaking rituals take time and careful meditation. After all, you can't rush-"
"For the sake of fuuuuuu-ahhhhk can't you just cut the woogie-boogie-bibbidee-bobbidee part short?" he said in strained patience. "There's got to be some quick Year of the Rat hoodoo jutsu or something you can do to speed things up."
"Year of the Rat hoo-doo?" She raised an offended brow.
"Or something," Kankurō re-added the part of his suggestion she'd left out.
"Listen, bat boy. We haven't even talked about my fee yet."
"Bat boy?" Kankurō's eyes darkened.
"It's tricky enough finding a suitable match for a Kazekage...But a Jinchūriki?" she mused, pacing back and forth in front of him thoughtfully. "Jinchūriki bloodlines contain immense power and chakra. And traditionally, are related to their Kages in some way to strengthen their loyalty to their village...Not only that, but they must have the strength to control the tailed beasts sealed inside them, and possess a unique compatible chakra that improves their chances. If the Sand hopes to successfully continue the Jinchūriki bloodline, the Kazekage will need a match who can pass these exceptional qualities on to his heir. Not just any wife will do...Yes...it will be very specialized matchmaking work indeed. Not to mention, expensive."
"You mean you're gonna justify ripping us off because he's a kage?" Kankurō called her out. "Just who do you think you are?"
"The best matchmaker in the Hidden Stone," she replied coolly. "Or isn't that why you came here?"
Kankurō wanted to be mad at her.
And he knew he had an extra string or two he wouldn't mind wrapping around that pretty China doll neck of hers.
But he couldn't.
Not yet, at least.
It was more than just needing her to find Gaara a match, so that he could escape being forced into marriage himself.
As much as she cut his strings, Kankurō kind of liked that the lady was confident enough to know her worth and charge him accordingly.
Freaks for control as they were, a puppeteer would always be damned to admit how much he actually liked it when someone else pulled on his puppet strings now and then.
But if this love mistress was as hot at her jutsu as she looked in person, he didn't mind the wait.
"Fine," he let her have her way with him. "Name your price."
And then her eyes traveled from his painted lion chin down to his muscular core, before running back up to the three large scrolls packed neatly on his back.
"That," she pointed one out.
"My Sasori puppet?" Kankurō objected. "Are you crazy?"
"I'm not interested in a dead corpse for a puppet," she said. "What I want is the poison it contains to study its formula."
"Not a chance."
"Then find someone else to match the Kazekage."
"And what exactly would a pretty girl like you do with a poison that powerful anyway?" Kankurō wondered.
"I have my reasons for protecting myself in this village," she told him. "Do we have a deal or not?"
Kankurō's hardened stare never let up from hers as he stripped the scroll from his back to extract a sample of the poison for her.
"Two weeks, huh? For a price like this, I'd better see results...Send the name of Gaara's match to me directly in the Hidden Sand," Kankurō said to her. "Or you'll be seeing me again very soon."
"No worries, sir. I will have an answer for you by that time," the matchmaker bowed meekly in farewell to hercustomer. "Please send my gratitude to the Kazekage for his generosity and business."