Tsume was lagging. Sasori knew that something was inherently wrong when she called for a second rest in less than thirty minutes. Her expression was twisted with concern as she alternated between rubbing her pregnant belly, and then her sway back, and then her hips, and then returned to her belly.
They were currently sneaking past a camped-out squad of Kusa nin, which was parked on top of the ravine, in a small hollow sheltered by a thick cluster of blooming hazelnuts. Sasori and his companions were half-way down the ravine's depth, carefully wall-walking and tiptoeing on the ledges as they snuck past the camp. The winds sweeping over the countryside and funneling through the ravine were sustained at 80 kilometers an hour with gut-clenching gusts easily twice the sustained speeds. Dried sweat stung Sasori's split lips and eyes as he exhausted himself with chakra strings to keep him and everyone else safely attached to the ravine walls, since Tsume and the ninken couldn't independently hold themselves in place with their chakra against the wind force. The tips of his fingers were blue, with the wind constantly stealing any warmth he managed to hoard.
After a moment, he noticed Tsume glaring at her own whitened fingers as she fumbled through a sequence of hand seals. She had to change them twice before she finally remembered what she wanted to do, and then activated them with her third attempt. The low rumble of sound as her doutun jutsu cut a curving bubble-shaped pit into the side of the ravine was lost to the howls of the wind, and then she waved wildly at Sasori as she crawled into it. He and the ninken promptly followed.
"Not quite done," she said, her voice muffled. She flashed through the sequence once again, and then the pits entrance shrunk until it was a quarter of its original size, sheltering them from the wind.
"That was risky," Sasori complained, rubbing circulation back into his hands and refusing to be grateful. "If the Kusa nin had any sensors, you just threw a lit beacon at them."
"I can still smell them. They're no more alert or suspicious now than before I opened this up."
Sasori pulled Komushi free from where he stored him in a sealing scroll, not willing to risk his friend from being yanked away by the winds. His elbows dug hard into Tsume's side as he wrestled the puppet into his lap. "Couldn't you have made this pit a little bigger?"
"Look, the smaller it is, the more quickly it'll heat up from our body heat." After a worrying moment as the ninken shifted, with Ichi forcing his bulky body between Sasori and Tsume, and Ni sprawled across both their laps, she added, "I don't have a watch."
"So? It's about two in the afternoon."
Her breath hitched in surprise. "You can keep time in your head?"
"Of course." The unspoken, and evidently you can't, you moron, hung in the air.
"So, if I said start and stop, could you keep track of how many seconds and minutes pass?"
"Are you looking for a pattern in the Kusa nin's movements?"
"Uh, sure, yeah."
He didn't need to have an Inuzuka nose to tell he was being lied to. "What are you really measuring?"
"I won't know until we do this to see if there's a pattern."
That felt more honest, but still deceptive. "All right then. Let me know when to start."
Twenty seconds later, she told him. After three cycles, he explained the pattern. "Thirty to forty seconds, followed by a seven to eight minute length. What are you measuring?"
A wiggle, and then a hiccup. "What do you want to hear first? The good news, the bad news, or the really bad news?"
"Don't waste time stalling. Tell me directly what's going on."
"The good news is, the Kusa nin are hightailing it out of here. The bad news is, it's because a team of Ame nin with Hanzo and two salamander summons are bearing down in this direction. Which is unusual, since he doesn't like to stray far from Ame and this is about a hundred kilometers away. The really bad news is that the Braxton-Hicks I thought I was having are actual contractions."
Sasori's brain froze. And then lurched. "What?" She was supposed to be due in nine days. Not right now, not right here.
"We can't stay here. There's a high chance Hanzo can track us with those salamanders of his, and we're trapped like sitting ducks in this hole. And the more I move, the faster my labor is going to progress."
"How fast can you move in your beached whale stage?"
"If we can get to the other side of the ravine and scale the walls up to solid ground, a heck of a lot faster than sneaking along the walls. I can… I know how to create a diversion so we can put some distance between us and Hanzo, maybe even get him off our backs entirely."
"The winds are too strong to leap to the other side."
"I got Sarutobi ropes. You got chakra threads. If you can use your threads to secure the ropes on the other side, we can swing over and crawl up."
Well, it was better than being a sitting duck in a hole that Hanzo could collapse or fill with poison. "Give me the ropes. How far out is he?"
"About twelve minutes and ten kilometers away. He's not chasing after the Kiri nin – he's headed directly here."
Hanzo's salamanders were extraordinary sensors, lethally toxic, and one of the reasons why Ame had ultimately never managed to fall to enemy forces, no matter how much their country was used as other nations' stomping grounds for their wars and pissing matches. He accepted the ropes that Tsume unsealed from her backpack, and yanked it through his hands, ignoring the friction burn as he sought the end. "You're the Hell Hound's heir, don't you have your own summons?"
"Well, yeah, that's how I'm going to create a diversion. But believe me, with how badly you stink with fear, I'm going to have a hell of a time controlling and aiming my summons at Hanzo. The wider a space we have between us and Hanzo, the better."
He resealed Komushi and then found the end of the rope, winding multiple chakra threads around it as Tsume, fingers still stiff and shaking, activated the hand seals that opened their pit. Wind blasted them in the face, sucking away breath. The ninken secured themselves with chakra and claws, digging deep furrows in the stone.
"Make a pit near the top of the other side," Sasori yelled, barely heard over the wind as he pointed. "I'm going to send the rope into it, and then you close it up tight to secure it!" She nodded and obeyed without hesitation. The wind battered and yanked at his rope and chakra threads as he forced it to snake across the forty meter width, and then another thirty meters high, opposite of them. Two minutes had passed by the time he sent a coiled knot of the rope deep into the pit, and Tsume closed it tight around the knot. He pulled the chakra threads back as Tsume barked at her ninken. "Henge!"
Two gigantic ninken instantly became two slightly-hairy octopuses, one of which promptly wrapped itself around Sasori's torso, and the other clung to Tsume's right leg.
"This is going to take a lot of strength," Tsume said, chomping on a soldier pill (he was pretty sure those were contraindicated with pregnancy). "Come on, hold on tight to my back." She hauled him upright and used another Sarutobi rope to secure him to her torso, the knot snug between her protruding uterus and beneath her full breasts. "Hands off the belly, and don't choke me," she added as he wrapped his arms just above the secured ropes, embarrassingly aware of the fact that he was clutching at her breasts. "Ow! Those are sore, too!" Apparently, she didn't bother with wrapping them.
"I'm not killing you until after I get that new set of legs you promised me. And my parents' puppets."
"Fair… That spider is a hell of a lot intimidating than a beached whale puppet." Tsume wrapped the Sarutobi rope around one wrist and grasped the length with her other hand, clamped tight just below her wrist. A chakra-powered half-leap, half-shunshin threw them over the gap, the wind carrying them sideways. Tsume twisted her body in midair and slammed into the cliff, cushioning the impact with Sasori's body. He clutched at her breasts and wished it was her neck he was trying to squeeze between his hands. "Ow! Ow! I'm sorry!" They twisted and rolled sideways against the rocks, the winds nearly tearing the octopus-ninken free from Sasori's torso, before Tsume managed to plant her feet solidly against the cliff side. Hand over hand with a white-knuckled grip on the rope, crumbling rock breaking free from her feet, she scrambled up and over the cliff side, which meant they had six remaining minutes before Hanzo reached them to gain some distance. At least the wind favored them, pushing them over the edge and away from the ravine.
Sasori barely glimpsed the twenty-meter salamander leaping the entirety of the ravine's forty meter gap (best tracker his grandmother's shaking jowls, they were not six minutes away you moron!) before Ichi freed himself from Sasori's torso, caught the back of Kokoro's jacket in his giant maw at the same time he broke his henge, and tossed Sasori backwards like a ragdoll onto his back without losing any speed.
Tsume cleaved off the salamander summon's front leg with a single powerful strike with her axe. He hadn't even seen her release it from its storage scroll. The salamander shrieked and spit poison after them, back feet scrambling not to fall backwards into the ravine. Hurricane-force winds sped the sickly-green haze towards them. Sasori was horrified to see plant life shriveling brown and crumbling into dust as the venomous haze swept over the countryside. Shunshinning ninken and kunoichi couldn't outrun a 160 kilometer per hour wind gusts, billowing the poison all around.
Damn it – Tsume was supposed to be his kill.
He riffled through his pack. "I have antidotes!" Chiyo had been so smug about creating a viable antidote to Hanzo's poisons that she had sent him a letter detailing her success, and Hanzo had been foaming at the mouth in rage ever since. Because Chiyo just had that special touch with people. He thrust two ampules into Tsume's hands and she promptly fumbled and dropped one as he broke his under his nose. He had to cling and spin, spine aching from the over extension, to face forward. Ignoring the ache, knees pressed tightly into Ichi's heaving ribs, Sasori leaned down and reached far, praying that Ichi wouldn't bite off his hand as he broke another ampule under Ichi's nose. Then he handed a fifth ampule over to Tsume after she had broken the first under Ni's nose. She crushed the glass ampule in a fist and desperately huffed as the poison finally swept over them.
The antidote was enough to keep them from dying, but it didn't fully protect their skin from the acids within the toxin, which split open with cratered, broken blisters. Sasori chanced another look over his shoulder – Hanzo, astride an even larger salamander summon with four masked Ame nin clinging to its scaled skin like desperate barnacles, cleared the ravine. The first summon was rapidly regrowing its amputated limb.
"Now would be a good time for that distraction!" he yelled.
"I need blood, damn it!" Tsume's cratered blisters, three on her face and six more scattered on her hands and arms, wept clear interstitial fluid. She swiped the corrosive salamander blood from her axe head to the hem of her tunic, which promptly disintegrated, revealing a stretch of bare skin striped with livid pink stretch marks. "Ew!" She sliced the tip of her thumb bloody and pumped as much chakra as she could into her summons.
Sasori wasn't sure what he expected to answer Tsume's call, but the four-legged flaming shadows the same size as Ichi that emerged seamlessly from underfoot and kept pace with their reckless retreat wasn't it. His heart dropped into the gullet of his stomach as one, eyes literally aflame, leapt at him, the vision of a maw filled with too-many acid-dripping razor teeth and the dizzy stench of brimstone and sulfur nearly punching him senseless.
"Dow, down I said! Bad boy, bad! Sasori is with me!" Tsume yanked it off of Ichi's flank, the smell of singed fur and burnt human flesh joining the unholy combination of brimstone and sulfur. Ichi stumbled, only slightly, from the pain of a glancing pawprint burning his haunch. Tsume gestured wildly behind her. "It's them you're supposed to eat, not us!"
The dozen flaming shadows danced around them, keeping pace with a liquid fluidity, and didn't seem willing to obey Tsume's orders.
"For crying out loud, fine! I'll romp with you!" Tsume tripped and faceplanted on the ground when she tried to change course. Ichi whirled around and shielded Tsume, fur flaring as he snarled at the thundering salamanders. Sasori forcefully freed his white-knuckled grip from Ichi's shoulder harnass, because he didn't have any fucking legs and didn't have any choice in the fucking showdown. One of the flaming shadows snapped at Komushi almost curiously as Sasori released and positioned the puppet between them and Hanzo's salamander, chakra threads holding Komushi aloft and in a battle stance. The salamander skidded to a stop, looming high over them and less than twenty meters away. The second salamander was a distant dot in the horizon.
"You!" Hanzo bellowed. "Boy! You…" And he frothed, incoherent through his mask, because yup, Sasori's grandmother just had that special touch, and Sasori was close enough in blood and relation to be on the receiving end of Hanzo's rage.
"Back off!" Tsume yelled at Hanzo, shoving past Komushi with her axe slung casually over her right shoulder. "This one," she gestured at Sasori, "is mine, and you can't have him!" Five flaming shadows stalked at her heels. He felt the blistering warmth from four more as they surrounded him and Ichi. Ni held her ground on the other side of Komushi, as the final three flaming shadows joined her like silent sentries.
What… what was Tsume doing? There was no way Hanzo would willingly let Sasori go, not when there were years of bad blood, resentment, wounded pride, and outrage between Chiyo and Hanzo.
Tsume looked like a fat, filthy little hedgehog, half-unbalanced from her enormous axe and half-unbalanced from her gigantic belly. Her clay-stained clothes almost let her blend into the rocky, bland countryside dotted with budding green patches of prairie grass. Sasori could almost see the confusion on Hanzo's face, even as well-hidden as it was beneath his mask. "You! The Inuzuka girl." The confusion gave way to a cold rage that would've made the hair on the back of Sasori's neck stand on end if the flaming shadows hadn't already done so. "Danzo's gardening partner."
Danzo?
Sasori wondered if he should be alarmed that another person existed on the same level as Chiyo, gifted with that same special touch.
And then he was even more alarmed to realize that he had yet another thing common with Tsume, what with them sharing cruel grandmothers who left their wards stewing in angry bitterness.
"That's right, me!" What a foolish idiot, boldly facing off Hanzo who was frothing and fuming all over again. It was true that angels often fear to tread where the foolish blindly ran in. "First rule of the International Dahlia League is that you don't talk about the International Dahlia League!" She shook her blackened left fist stubbornly, clearly hiding any pain caused from burning her hand when she yanked the gouka inugami away from Sasori. "But why the hell do I have to answer for Danzo? That man is like thirty years older than me."
Sputter, sputter. Cough to clear the froth. "He betrayed and tried to kill me!" Two of the flaming shadows stalked closer to Hanzo's salamander. Nostrils flaring wide, it tossed its head back and edged away from the… the hellish spawn that Tsume casually regarded without fear or concern. Beneath the weightless footsteps of the flaming shadows, the solid ground burned bright red and melted.
"Please don't take it personally, Hanzo-sama." Tsume had to shout to be heard over the wind, but her tone was casual, conversational. She reached her left hand behind to scratch the back of her head. One blackened finger twirled. The skin split and wept red. "Danzo betrays and tries to kill everyone, even the Hokage. Twice, I think." Two blackened fingers twirled. Blood stained her hair and dribbled down the collar of her half-burnt tunic. Four more flaming shadows approached the salamander. It tensed and went still, pupil dilating until the sickly-yellow sclera nearly disappeared. "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The easy way, you let us go. I'm just passing through with my buddy here. I had no intention whatsoever of crossing the paths of any Ame nin, and my companions and I will be on our merry way. As you can see, I am imminently due to give birth at any minute." Literally, if her contractions were as regular as Sasori's earlier count indicated.
Hanzo growled as a green fog leached from the salamander's pores and mouth. The fog was heavy, billowing low over the ground. The surrounding flora was already dead, but it shriveled and disintegrated from the fog. It was only knee high, and it disintegrated Tsume's shoes, socks, and the lower half of her loose maternity trousers. More blisters erupted across her legs. The fog also disintegrated the loose material of Sasori's trousers, but at least the burnt tissue on the ends of his stumps were too thick to erupt in blisters. Ninken fur appeared to have some sort of natural shielding against the fog. "And the hard way?"
Two burnt, bleeding fingers were still twirling. "The hard way? Well, we get to see who wins: your toxic salamanders versus my hellspawned gouka inugami. Wanna place your bets now?"
"You…" Hanzo snarled, and then frothed some more. "You dare unleash hell hounds in my land? They'll destroy and consume your soul as easily as my own!"
"Technically, we're still in Wind. Your land is about twelve kilometers that way. Also, nah." Tsume shrugged. A third blackened finger was half-raised, tense. Between his knees and beneath his buttocks, Sasori felt Ichi minutely shift his weight. Ni must've smelled some signal, since she also visibly shifted her weight. "See, what makes the gouka inugami so deadly is they feed off of fear. And souls. But mostly fear. The more scared you are, the hungrier they get."
And the longer Tsume stalled, Sasori realized with dawning horror, the more horrific the gouka inugami became as the human brain slowly took in the incomprehensibility of their very being, the stench of hellfire clogging nostrils as eyes watching the dancing forms – too hazy to see clearly, like a distant deceitful mirage – and saw the pawprints of lava in the inugami's wake. The more adrenaline pumped through human veins with growing awareness, the more heightened became the target's flight-or-fight response. And, therefore, the hungrier Tsume's summons became. "I am the Inuzuka Alpha Queen Bitch. I'm too headstrong, stupid, and reckless to feel fear. My soul is safe."
Her third blackened finger snapped straight, and that was the signal her worldly and hellish canine companions had been anticipating. Eleven flaming shadows surged forward at the salamander as it reared, screaming and thrashing with gusts of poison churning like angry thunderheads. Ni and Ichi flipped and spun in mid-air, shunshinning backwards – away from Hanzo, and Sasori, nearly unseated by Ichi's abrupt movements, broke his concentration and lost his chakra threads clinging to his beloved Komushi – out of reach, too far, too fast.
And then Tsume flashed to their sides, Komushi rattling over one shoulder and her axe slung over the other, the axe head knocking hard against his best friend with every leaping bound.
"You're – you're scratching my puppet!"
"Can't breathe! Must run!" Ni slipped between Tsume's legs, hefting her off the ground. "Okay, now I can breathe."
The salamander roared deep and long as the ninken forged ahead, putting as much distance between them and Tsume's rampaging hellspawn summons in as little time as possible. And while Tsume may be too much of a brain damaged simpleton to feel fear, Sasori was all-to-aware that he was smart enough to know he was the most afraid he had ever been in his entire, regretfully brief, life.
Which was why the twelfth gouka inugami chased after them, instead of attacking Hanzo and his salamander like its kin.
"No! NO! Down boy, down!" Tsume swatted the gouka inugami away from Ichi and Sasori with the flat side of her battle axe. "He's mine, you bozo! Mine! Bad boy, bad! Keep your teeth to yourself!" The fat hedgehog imbecile matched the inugami snarl for snarl. "I said he was mine! Oh fine, keep pace with us, but if you so much as try to nibble a single pretty red hair on his head, I will send you back into the pits of hell and ban you from any more picnics in the Forest of Death!" Then she lost her blackened grip on Komushi, bending over Ni's back with a half cry, half sob.
Sasori managed to rescue Komushi from Tsume's careless grip with four chakra threads, fingers shaking with fear and adrenaline. Exhaustion tugged at his eyelids, and sweat drenched his clothes. He smelled sour, barely undetected beneath the prevalent stench of brimstone and sulfur.
"Stop, stop!" At Tsume's screamed command, ninken skidded to a halt. The flaming shadows pranced around Tsume as she hunched over further, pressing her uninjured hand and the handle of the axe against her abdomen. Clear fluids streamed from between Tsume's legs, saturating Ni's heavy fur coat and dripping on the scraggy prairie grass. The ninken panted heavily. The inugami wagged what could be reasonably inferred as a tail. "I… I can't keep going." Tsume's breathing was ragged.
"But…" Sasori clutched Komushi tight. He couldn't remember the last time he felt the press of his few short years bearing down on him. "I don't know how to be a midwife!" New fear: unlocked.
The inugami immediately swiveled to face Sasori with a nerve-wracking interest.
It took Tsume three different attempts due to her ill-timed contraction to dismiss the gouka inugami as Ichi dodged the hungry hellspawn. "Oops. Accidentally sent all of them away."
And they were less than five kilometers away from Hanzo. Who, if he managed to survive the wave of eleven hungry gouka inugami, was going to immediately come right after them.
"No matter." Tsume panted and raised her blackened, unsteady hand to her collar. In the horizon, a tornado of deadly green was approaching them. "I still got that douche ex machina that Mooncalf gave me a few months ago!" She fished a chain out from beneath her tunic, from which a teeny-tiny kunai charm hung. She moved stiff and slow as she snapped the chain, and slid the charm free, palming it as blood continued to drip from where the skin had split. With a puff of blood-laced chakra, a three-pronged kunai appeared in her hand.
The green tornado was now two kilometers away, bearing down all the fury of a once-in-a-century sandstorm, the sort that buried Suna twenty meters deep in sand, stones, and heavy debris. Sasori's short life flashed before his eyes – it was disappointingly bland.
Tsume couldn't hold her axe and the three-pronged kunai and use hand seals at the same time, so she pinned the axe between her arm and side, and stuck the pommel of the kunai between her teeth. With a fumbling set of hand-seals and a large poof of chakra, a blond shinobi wrapped in a blue cloak suddenly materialized in front of Tsume, an identical three-pronged kunai clutched tight in one of his hands.
"Hey, Moomcafff!" declared Tsume around the pommel of the kunai. She removed it and gave him a bright, easygoing smile, as if she wasn't in active labor, wasn't covered in dried clay and weeping plum-sized blisters from Hanzo's salamander summon, and wasn't about to die a horrific death via the fast-incoming toxin storm. "You told me to call you when I was in a pickle, and boy, it's a doozy this time—" Then she yelped, her three-ponged kunai falling free from her gasp when the shinobi silently snagged her and Ni, and disappeared.
Leaving Sasori and an outraged Ichi to face their impending doom. There was nothing left of Sasori's life to flash before his eyes.
Four seconds later, the shinobi rematerialized, scooped up the kunai, snatched Ichi and Sasori, and disappeared once more.
oOoOoOo
Sasori had enough foresight to flop off of Ichi's back to the damp ground, covered with a thick wet, slimy layer of last year's yellow leaves before he violently expelled the contents of his stomach, his head swimming as nausea clawed at his throat. The owner of the pair of black ninja boots that his stomach acid splattered yelped and immediately retreated.
"Mooncaaaaaalf, your yellow flasher douche ex machina is the woooooorst!" Tsume whined, in between her own waves of dry heaves and vomit.
"First, Jiraiya-sensei is the one who called it a deux ex machina, not me, because he likes literary devices and tropes. Second, it's actually the Hiraishin no jutsu, Tsume. Third, please don't call me the yellow flasher. It makes me sound like a pervert wearing a trench coat lurking in some dark alleyway."
Hands touched Sasori's ears. He flailed and tried to run away, and then nearly passed out from the waves of agony shooting through his legs and up his spine because half-healed hacked-off stumps should never be run on. "I'm sorry!" a young voice called, hands pulling at his filthy jacket. "I didn't mean to scare you, Shinobi-san. I was only going to ease your nausea. The fluid in your inner ears are churning violently from sensei-'s technique."
Almost catatonic from the dizziness, stomach desperately trying to claw its way free via his sinuses and eyeballs, and his arms filled with hard surfaces and pointy edges, Sasori curled into as small a ball as he could to minimize himself as a target. He managed to cover his kidneys with Komushi's lacquered torso.
"Sashimi-kun, It's just Rin." Tsume's voice barely filtered through the buzzing white of Sasori's head. "She's not going to hurt you, I promise. We're safe. Uh, we are safe, right, Minato?"
"Right now, we're as far away from any encroaching enemy as you're going to get, and at least eight hundred kilometers away from Hanzo. How the hell did you manage to… actually, you know what? No. Give yourself a chance to catch a breath, Tsume, and please don't tell me how you managed to piss him off even more than Danzo ever did. I'm not sure I want to know."
A whimper. "Can't talk. The contractions are getting stronger and closer together."
"Well, I'm out of here, someone's gotta patrol the area," declared another young voice, and Sasori felt the chakra flare of shunshin.
"Bakashi, get back here! Minato-sensei just said no one's around and you can't abandon your aunt in her hour of need!"
A distant voice, almost blocked out as a small pair of cool, dry hands tentatively touched Sasori's ears, called, "I'm patrolling, dumb ass!"
A cool wave of green, tasting oddly of mint-and-jasmine tea, soothed away the waves of nausea and settled the screaming nerves and jolts of pain that racked his body. When Sasori managed to uncurl himself from his protective little huddle with Komushi, he found himself surrounded by the barely-leafing aspen trees in a high mountain plateau deep within the Country of Waterfalls. Tremendous mountain peaks rose high overhead, coated in thick layers of frigid white. The air was humid and freezing cold, and he felt goosebumps erupt beneath his jacket. He also instantly catalogued the others.
The blond shinobi was Namikaze Minato, elite S-rank jounin despite being barely five years older than Sasori, and his assigned Team Seven, which consisted of Inuzuka Tsume's eight year old nephew and only offspring of Hatake Sakumo, and two genin.
One genin was a ten-year-old Uchiha (not the shiniest example of what should be expected from such an illustrious clan, Sasori distantly decided, as said Uchiha had turned his back on Sasori and was jumping up and down, screaming in the direction that Sakumo's son had disappeared in), and the other was Nohara Rin, another ten year old genin who hailed from a small shinobi family that had emigrated from the Land of Tea almost twenty years ago. With an eye intent to study all things related to Hatake Sakumo, Sasori had read every scrap of information he could find on Hatake Kakashi.
Dismissing the two genin as nonthreats, he focused instead on Namikaze, infinitely more dangerous, who was ignoring Sasori in favor of carefully lifting Tsume away from her puddle of vomit. Ni whimpered and licked a patch of blister-free skin on Tsume's leg. "Damn it, Tsume, if you're in labor, I have to take you to the hospital right now."
Tsume's response was to shriek and press her glowing green hands further into her abdomen. "NO! You tore the placenta, jerkbutt! I can't – I can't make another trip like that! I barely just healed the tear!"
Namikaze cringed and his voice broke, because he was still a teenager who hadn't quite grown into his adult voice. "None of us have the knowledge or skills to assist with birth!"
"I can teach you. I've helped my clanswomen with dozens of births! I even delivered the Fire Daimyo's godfather's grandkid without any help when I was fourteen years old!"
Namikaze carefully settled Tsume on the ground, pressing her against Ni. Ichi hurried to Tsume's side. "You also threatened to throttle Noboru-dono with the umbilical cord, Tsume, and despite the incredibly-detailed step-by-step way you delivered the granddaughter, your team's report was forever immortalized as required reading for how to not to cause a diplomatic disaster, and not as a how-to manual on assisting labor and delivery in the middle of a field mission."
"Well, Grandmother told me if I couldn't be a good example, I'd just have to exist as a horrible warning."
It wasn't a cheerful tone Tsume used. It was a tone that echoed a child who had struggled to meet their loved one's expectations, fully aware that no matter how hard they tried, they would always fall short because the goalpost kept moving further away.
Namikaze clearly needed no explanation for Tsume's behaviors or choices. "I am not inspired with confidence. Look, at least let me go get Aunt Natsumi or Oyubi to help you if you feel like this is the only place you can deliver your baby."
Tsume clamped a hand tight around Namikaze's wrist, the green glow sputtering out. She had managed to heal the extensive burns caused from grabbing a gouka inugami by its scruff at the same time she had healed her torn placenta. "Don't leave me!" She whimpered, and then gasped as another contraction hit. And then she shattered the bones in Namikaze's wrist as her grip tightened. "Shit! Shit! It huuuurts!"
His face was pale as he plopped butt-first on the ground next to her. "Deep breaths, Tsume."
The genin girl instantly abandoned Sasori, rushing to Tsume's side. "Sensei, what can I do to help?" The Uchiha stopped bouncing and screaming like a demented squirrel, going silent as his dark eyes widened behind the garish orange goggles.
"But Rin-chan!" The Uchiha tripped and stumbled as he joined the group "You said you haven't gone through the midwife course at the hospital yet."
"I read the education modules ahead of time! Obito," she shoved him, "we're going to need hot water and clean rags. I know you packed extra underwear – we can use them in the place of rags. But first, fetch Kakashi's tent. Since he hotfooted out of here, he's not around to protest us using his tent as a clean surface for Tsume-san's labor."
Namikaze attempted to extract his broken wrist from Tsume's white-knuckled grip. She whined and clutched it harder, pressing it against her generously heaving bosom. "Tsume, please, I have to help my team get things set up." A flash of cobalt blue then; narrowed, dangerous eyes briefly glared over his shoulder at Sasori. "And why are you carting him around?"
"Oh, that's just Sashimi-kun." Tsume pouted as Namikaze finally managed to pry her fingers free. Undeterred, she snagged his flak jacket. "He's mine, now. Mine, mine, mine. He promised to turn me into a human puppet with beautiful hair."
Obito squawked and floundered, half drowning beneath the tent he was trying to free from a pack. In a single blink, Namikaze crossed the clearing to crouch in front of Sasori, his flak jacket hanging loose in Tsume's fist. A chill raced up and down Sasori's spine as he tightened his grip on Komushi. "Sashimi, eh?"
Apparently, Sasori only deserved one life-flashing-before-his-eyes moment today. "Tsume-san keeps forgetting my name. I told her what it was."
Namikaze's face was as still and as cold as carved granite. "What kind of puppet?" His voice was soft and gentle, velvet-wrapped steel.
Sasori's mouth was dry and his tongue tacky with the residue of stomach acid. "Not a beached whale puppet." He didn't dare think about his plans of vengeance against Hatake Sakumo and all his loved ones as the cobalt blue gaze pierced through his defensive layers, like a mind-reading Yamanaka. "And not one with dirty hair that keeps losing things."
"It's weaponized, you brat!" Tsume flailed like an upside-down tortoise. "I told you, it's weaponized!"
Namikaze studied Sasori for another long moment. Sasori's range of vision narrowed down into two cold, hard blue tunnels. The weight of killing pressure pressed down, suffocating. Blood roared in Sasori's ears. "She… she promised me replacement legs," he finally whimpered, embarrassed with how young his voice sounded. "She's the one who lopped them off in the first place."
"No, I didn't! That was Kushina."
"You supplied the axe!" Sasori yelled, heart pounding.
"We saved your life!"
"I shunted the arsenic into my feet, that saved my life!"
"That's it. I refuse to become a puppet for such an ingrate. I reject your offer!"
"Who cares? You'd make a horrible puppet anyway!"
An outraged gasp. "You take that back. I would make an awesome puppet! I'm fast, I've got great aerodynamic attacks, I'm strong, and I have the best nose in the entire world."
Sasori snarled. "There is nothing aerodynamic about your atrocious hair, and you can't tell the difference between seven kilometers and five hundred meters."
"Well, excuuuuse me, Sashimi-kun. Let's just see how good your nose can accurately track distances in hurricane-force winds."
Namikaze squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain, and pinched the bridge of his nose as the killing intent rolled backwards like a retreating tide.
"Minato-sensei?" Obito poked Namikaze in the arm. The camouflage tent fabric draped over his shoulders like a cape. "Are you alright?"
Namikaze's shoulders shook before a hysterical giggle escaped his lips. "Alright, he asks? No, Obito, I am not alright. My childhood friend is about to give birth, my wrist is broken, said childhood friend somehow adopted one of Suna's bloodiest shinobi like he was some sort of abandoned puppy, who – by the way – happens to be a fricking child that my girlfriend lopped the feet off of, Hanzo is out for blood, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do. I'm at a loss!" He threw his arms wide and laughed, bright and happy. "Behold, dear Obito-san, your sensei has fallen prey once more to Tsume's shenanigans! Maybe we should ask Kakashi what we should do next, since he seems to be the only one with a solid head on his shoulders."
Obito eyed Namikaze as if he was wondering how much more his sensei was going to crack. Sasori wanted to know how anyone could think that Tsume had adopted him like an abandoned puppy.
(A voice, very much like Komushi's, wryly pointed out that Sasori was following Tsume home. Sasori mentally argued back that he had only agreed to be dragged along on the promise of receiving his parents' puppets. And new feet. But mostly his parents' puppets.)
"Bah," said Tsume imperiously and with all the self-awareness of someone who recognized a sham when they saw it, "I always knew you were a mooncalf weenie."
And then the scion of Sasori's greatest foe was suddenly back from his self-imposed patrol. He was smaller than everyone else (the loss of height from Sasori's missing lower legs and feet didn't count), and despite his face being covered with a mask, there was still reddened color rising from his cheeks towards his temples, and his shoulders were hunched. The open display of vulnerability punched Sasori breathless. "I am so sorry," he told Sasori with a slight sideways tilt of his head. "I'd say they're not always this embarrassing, but," he shrugged, "they kinda are."
author proudly presents the cliff notes and important background
Tsume: I'm not worried about my soul. What's there to eat when it's owned by the Hokage?
Sasori: how are you still alive? How am I still alive?
Minato: welcome to the club, kid.
Kakashi: it's more of a support group for those of us who have ever been subjected to Tsume's shenanigans.
Sasori: I hate each and every one of you.
Minato: of course you do.
Tsume: oh, aren't you the cutest little murder-gremlin that ever gremlined a murder! *pinches cheeks*
Minato: the club meets every second and fourth Thursday of the month. Bring punch. Preferably poison-free.
Sasori: I will personally season the punch with tomato leaves.
Obito: yay! I love tomatoes!
(elsewhere)
Hanzo: *frothing and foaming* Danzo betrayed me and tried to kill me!
Sarutobi Hiruzen, with the air of someone who had asked Danzo to stab him so he could have a small vacation from the Hokage paperwork and to also successfully spread rumors to make it easier for Danzo to fool others into thinking he was going to betray Konoha, and Danzo generously did everything that Hiruzen asked him to: there, there. Join the club. We meet every first and third Mondays of the month. Bring punch.