A/N: *low growl*

Hahahahahaha...

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General

Everyone knew by that evening that something was happening. Hidan posted in the group chat, Definitely gonna be a meeting tonight. Wear your cloaks. Konan and her friends made a very early dinner and served it in the sunroom. That was where everyone gathered. Every person who had an Akatsuki uniform was wearing it.

There were several people in attendance who were not wearing the uniform: Zetsu, Obito, and Laurie. Zetsu and Obito took notice of her, and she of them. Laurie was the first to hold out a hand. "Hello! I work with Sasori. I'm a normie; no magic. I know some martial arts, though. Um, my name is Laurie."

"Hello," Obito said. He reached out and gingerly shook her hand. "I'm Obito. This is Zetsu. We're group members, I think, but we don't have uniforms yet."

"Why are you here?" Black Zetsu asked Laurie. "We were under the impression that something was happening that would potentially involve violence."

"Which is exactly why I insisted she hang with us for at least tonight," Sasori said. "This is the safest place to be right now." Laurie nodded. Her face had turned pale.

White Zetsu pointed to a far corner of the room. "So that thing over there isn't dangerous?"

Against the far wall of the room, next to the ghostly bookshelf, stood a giant stone ball. It was utterly smooth and looked like nothing so much as an egg. Nobody wanted to sit near it for fear of what might hatch. The dolls happily sat and climbed on it, but that meant nothing. Even Samehada whimpered and refused to approach.

Clone Hidan raised a hand. "I can confirm that it is not dangerous." He turned to Konan. "Petition to discuss it as the first topic of the meeting, just to get it out of the way?"

"Granted," Konan replied.

Approximately one-third of dinner was eaten. Then Deidara put his plate down. "Okay, I am way too weirded out by that thing, yeah. What is it?"

Everybody else put their forks down and shoved their plates out of the way. Konan cleared her throat. The meeting had officially begun. She explained, "This sphere is the product of a jutsu called the Chibaku Tensei. The Chibaku Tensei is a sealing jutsu used to imprison dangerous objects or beasts. Once fully compacted, it is impenetrable from the inside."

"I knew that thing felt like an egg!" Kisame exclaimed. "What's inside it?"

"Sasori's laptop. The device was corrupted by magic."

Everyone looked at Sasori. He shrugged. "I'm not very upset about it. If I was, that would be a sign that something was terribly wrong with my priorities."

Deidara gulped. "Magical corruption is at the bottom of the list? What's at the top?!"

Sasori gestured for Konan to go on. Before she could, Itachi interrupted. "Excuse me. I don't think it is wise to move on from this topic yet. Some parts of it may prove relevant. How, exactly, was the laptop 'corrupted'?"

"Darkness magic fused with other kinds of magic inside it. The laptop now operates constantly in ways that we do not understand and cannot stop."

Itachi nodded. "An undead machine. I see. Could it still be active inside the sealing jutsu, or has the jutsu placed it in suspended animation?"

Original Nagato raised a hand. Konan nodded, giving him permission to speak. "The laptop was suspended inside a magical bubble before being sealed by the Chibaku Tensei. The bubble was only intended as insulation, to stop its activities from affecting anything around it. The Chibaku Tensei is merely a reinforcement of that bubble. In other words, the laptop is most likely still active, but its activities cannot affect anything."

"Hmm." Itachi frowned. "Did it display any signs of intelligence?"

"Unknown."

"I recommend that we not keep it sealed for very long, then. No more than a few days. If it has any intelligence to it, then it is a newly-made being who we may be able to train as we trained the dolls. We can't afford to lose that opportunity."

"That's going to be difficult to do," Sasori said. He turned to Konan and gestured again.

Konan nodded. "We stand on the cusp of a very busy time. The next few days are likely to be the only few days that we could possibly devote to training. By Saturday at the latest, we will find ourselves otherwise occupied."

"Someone's attacking us, aren't they?" Kisame said. The entire room went silent. He received a lot of looks. Sitting up straighter, he replied to those looks with, "Yeah, I know it's rude to say it so bluntly. But don't pretend we weren't all thinking it. We only wear our cloaks all at once, as a group, in some kind of battle situation. There aren't any training battles scheduled, so it has to be something real."

Konan dipped her head once. "Kisame is correct. However, I must clarify that we are not being attacked. Not yet."

Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. "Yet?"

"Why the militancy then?" Kisame asked.

"Hidan, describe the results of your visit to the Hatakes earlier today."

Clone Hidan cleared his throat and touched his scythe before speaking. "When I met with the Hatakes, they were in the middle of a big group meeting of their own. They recently met those other old friends of ours, the demons from the bar, when the demons' new leader and a couple of his friends paid a visit to the campsite. The demons were surprised to find people there; they'd expected the place to be abandoned. Why are they exploring abandoned-looking places located in the forest?"

Sasori said, "Most likely, looking for us. We've always arranged meetings at the bar. They don't know where our base is."

"That doesn't have to indicate anything bad," Hidan said with an exaggerated shrug. "Their motives could be entirely friendly. But it doesn't matter, because the Hatakes were freaked out. They're not happy about people they don't know walking straight into their camp, and they were even less happy once I told them why the demons were all wearing burqas. They're feeling threatened, and so they asked me to put our position as the local crazy people who nobody wants to mess with to good use by scouting out the demons. We've got an official contract that says we have to find out how strong the demons are and what they want."

"Two," Konan corrected. "We have two such contracts. Soye is also interested. The demons have made no incursions on vampire territory, but she personally met their leader at the recent meeting of regional guardians and judged them to be a potential threat. The vampires are still recovering from civil war and using their resources to monitor dangers closer to home, so Soye cannot assess the demons' danger by herself. She has asked us to do it."

"Saturday's an important day," Sasori said. "Hidan told me about his promise to the Hatakes, so I told my motorcycle to pass a message on to the local bicycles. They're to act as a spy network, following the demons around and keeping track of their movements. Saturday is the day I told them to report in. At noon that day, we'll know the demons' top five favorite locations and where they sleep. We'll have something to report to our friends."

"If we do not acquire something to report before then," Konan said. "There was an intention to meet with demons at the bar today. That intention has been postponed, but only until tomorrow. We will not simply sit back and wait for bicycles to do work that humans are far better at."

"What about the dog?!"

Everyone looked at Clone Yahiko, who looked freaked out, and rightly so. Kisame threw up his hands. "Oh, for the love of timing!"

"We're getting a pet dog on Wednesday, yeah," Deidara explained to Laurie. "Just a normal dog. Not magical."

"A perfectly ordinary, very shy dog who needs time, space and lots of reassurance in order to get used to changes in his environment," Clone Nagato elaborated.

Laurie started to laugh. She couldn't help it. "You guys are getting a magical undead laptop, a dog, two contracts, and maybe a war in the same week?! You guys are so much fun. Seriously."

Sasori raised his hand. "Attention, everyone!" Everyone stopped grumbling and indulging in anxious or angry thoughts. They looked at him like he was a beacon of stability in a storm-tossed sea. That is exactly what I am. Right now, I am more needed than ever. Sasori lowered his hand and put on his most kingly face. "It matters not how fun this is, nor how interesting the timing, nor how anyone feels about it. Facing all these responsibilities at the same time might be frightening, or it might be hilarious. Take your pick. How you feel doesn't matter; what we do is what matters." He turned to Clone Yahiko. "Yahiko, stop worrying about the dog. Nagato, you work at the shelter where that animal currently lives. You worry about the dog. Yahiko needs to think of the nature spirits. Get in touch with them. Find out if they possibly can gather information on the demons. Tell them to report in by Saturday if so. Konan, the dolls. As far as I know, the demons do not know about them. The dolls never came up at that meeting last Saturday and I don't believe that they've ever been mentioned in any previous meeting with a demon. The demons might have seen the dolls zooming around town on their skateboard, but there's only so much they could possibly infer from that. I propose we keep the dolls close to home for the foreseeable future."

Konan nodded. "I have been taking a mental inventory of every resource we have that the demons do not know about. The dolls and the magical books occupy a prominent position on that list. From what was said at Saturday's meeting, Teknos knows that other worlds with alternate magical systems have been impinging on this world, but they do not know the closeness of our relationship with such. The fact that we can freely use two different magic systems will be a great surprise if ever they make the mistake of attacking us."

"Hopefully the librarians don't know much…"

Deidara blinked. "Huh? Did I miss something? Where'd librarians come from?"

Sasori turned to Laurie. "Laurie, you've been hypnotized by a demon before." Laurie gulped and nodded. "Try to remember what it was like. How you felt, how you thought." Laurie turned pale and hugged herself. Sasori's face softened. He patted her shoulder. "I wouldn't be asking you to remember that if it wasn't for a good reason. Laurie, tell me: if the incubus had asked you to tell him everything you knew about a certain topic, would you have done so?"

A gasp went up all around the room. Laurie's eyes widened. "I… I think so."

"Shit," Kisame breathed. "They can hypnotize anyone into telling them anything. They can ask the librarians what the dolls and books are capable of, they can ask people we know about our personal weaknesses... They can ask my boss about my work schedule..."

"Again, doesn't necessarily mean anything," Clone Hidan pointed out. His twin laughed. Original Hidan had walked into the meeting with an amused glint in his eyes, and he had yet to lose it. Even when Clone Hidan elbowed him, he shrugged it off and kept purring.

Kakuzu crossed his arms and glared at everybody and nobody. "Who the hell is this Teknos person? What do they want?'

"The demons' new leader," Sasori explained. "Remember how, after the NPCs gained awareness, we withdrew from alliance with them? That caused political turmoil. It doesn't seem like coincidence that less than two weeks after withdrawing from alliance, the demons have a new leader who is doing things that no demon has done before. As for what they want, possibilities range from 'confirming that we weren't deliberately propping up their rivals' to 'finishing what the first succubus started.'"

"Killing everyone except Hidan, and that's only because he can't be killed," Deidara explained to Obito and Zetsu.

"Excuse me," Black Zetsu said slowly. Both halves of Zetsu crossed their arms. "We need to hear this story from the beginning."

"Yeah, " White Zetsu agreed. "From the moment you first realized there were demons."

Most of the group had the sense to show shame. "Fuck. I knew someone was confused about something," Clone Hidan muttered.

"I shall explain," Konan said. She cleared her throat and organized her thoughts. "We visited the local bar as a group soon after joining together. There was an incident. Hidan became…not injured, exactly, but he needed to be dragged from the scene. Chaos erupted. We later learned that the bar was occupied by demons who use a sexually-charged aura to hypnotize people in order to consume their souls. These demons can change their sex; in male form they are called incubi, and in female form, succubi. A demon attempted to practice their art on Hidan, who reacted violently to having his soul touched. That incident is how we learned of the demons, and it is how they learned of us. Or rather, of Hidan. They had been detecting a change in the local theological climate for some time. It disturbed them, and some of them wished to get rid of it. When they discovered that Hidan was the source of the disturbance…"

"We understand perfectly so far," White Zetsu said. Black Zetsu eyed Clone Hidan with a critical look. "They didn't like the power he was spreading, so…they attacked?"

"One of them did. A succubus by the name of Jule thought she could stop Hidan by killing all of his companions." Konan paused, remembering Soye's words. She was correct. If she had succeeded in killing the rest of us, that might indeed have stopped the changes. But forces far more powerful than herself did not want the changes to be stopped, and so her plan could never have succeeded. "She acted too rashly. She exposed herself too early and made her intentions clear too soon, underestimating our ability to take evasive action and, later, to counterattack. Our first-ever group battle took place when we lured slash chased Jule out of town into the abandoned houses - slightly south of vampire territory, I believe. We fought her there. She pulled Sasori's soul partly out of his body. But we managed to fight her off, immobilize her, and… And destroy her. Her physical form vanished. She turned into a glowing light, her essence, which Hidan consumed."

Zetsu looked at Clone Hidan in horror. "I wanted sex-changing powers," he protested. "And I got 'em."

"After that," Konan began. Zetsu returned their attention to her. "After that, the rest of the demons apologized. We struck a truce, which developed into what we thought of as a friendship after Deidara and Itachi exchanged contact information with a demon. We considered the demons allies. But we discovered the vampires and began to focus on them, neglecting communication with the demons in the process. Only recently, after the NPCs gained awareness, did we realize that we no longer had a strong enough bond with them to call them allies. Sasori met with a demon and formally declared as much. The rest of the story, we have already discussed."

Zetsu looked stunned. The masked man sat quietly. Madara will be able to quote this story word for word, I'm sure. Many Akatsuki members looked thoughtful. "Could they have been lying?" Kisame asked. "What if Jule wasn't actually a rogue demon? What if lots of other demons agreed with her, but lied to our faces and pretended to be our friends so we wouldn't kill them too?"

Itachi shook his head. "I have fond memories of meeting with that one demon who told us what a prophet was. Deidara, don't you remember?"

Deidara nodded. "I remember, yeah. We had a nice conversation. That was real, I know it was, yeah."

Zetsu looked around. Black Zetsu said, "You all actually believed that a demon who wanted to destroy you utterly was an outlier? That she didn't have the support, explicit or not, of the rest of her kind? We're not even human, and we haven't been so naive since we were a child."

"We were a little distracted," Clone Yahiko mumbled.

"Distracted? From the minor irrelevant detail of someone wanting you dead?"

"Hey," Clone Nagato said, holding up a hand. "We were just beginning to discover that we were magic and we came from another world and all of those crazy things. Our understanding of life, reality and everything was flipping on its head. It's natural to be distracted when that happens."

"There is no such cause for distraction now," the masked man said, confirming that Madara had taken control at some point. "It would take a suicidal level of foolishness to ignore the truth that stares you in the face. Their apologies were false. They never forgave, nor forgot. Any demons that tried to nurture friendly attitudes have almost certainly been killed or exiled. War is imminent, and the price of defeat is utter extermination."

"Again, not guaranteed," Clone Hidan snapped. "For fuck's sake! Just because one demon tried to kill us doesn't mean they're all evil. Jumping to conclusions like that is a great way to make enemies out of people who weren't enemies before."

"Are you joking?" Black Zetsu asked. Hidan glared. "You aren't joking. You are serious."

"'Just because they tried to exterminate us once doesn't mean we should freak out when we see them getting ready to try it again'?!" White Zetsu paraphrased in disbelief.

Clone Hidan threw his hands up in the air. "Again, we don't know that's what's going on."

"I agree with Hidan," Sasori announced loudly. Everybody shut up. "Freaking out helps nobody. Will freaking out help us get our new pet dog settled in? Will freaking out attract nature spirits to assist us? Will freaking out sharpen our weapons or empower our jutsus?" He paused. Nobody tried to answer those questions. "I thought so. Regardless of whether or not the demons are trying to commit genocide on us, we have things to do. Lives to lead, pets to look after, training to perform, a base to fortify. If Teknos really is trying to locate our base, he'll find it sooner or later. He'll find it strong and imposing, protected by a god in the basement and spells from a magical system that their powers do not work on. It doesn't matter whether the demons are our enemies or our friends - either way, they won't find us weak."

Madara crossed his arms. "I have trouble believing that any member of this group is capable of preparing adequately without the fear of death running through their veins. You are all easily-distracted children."

Sasori rolled his eyes. "Easily-distracted children who tend to invent fatal techniques and forms of attack that no one in their right mind would expect. Don't think so little of us."

Madara's hands tightened, his fingers digging into his own arms in a way that must have been painful. "My life is one of those at stake. I do not intend to lose it."

"Then stop whining and griping. It's an inefficient use of your energy and time. You already know that trying to make the rest of us change our ways is a battle not worth fighting."

Madara shot him a look that made the hairs on the necks of everyone in the room stand on end. Sasori alone was unfazed. He stared into the mask's single eyehole with a neutral expression. After several seconds, the tense atmosphere dissipated, replaced by…admiration? Apparently so; Madara sat back and nodded. "Indeed. Efficiency is everything."

Sasori looked to Konan. She did not know what he intended to say, but the look in his eyes was so commanding that she nodded anyway. He clapped his hands and addressed the group. "Here's the plan. Let's finish dinner. Anyone who has a task that they can accomplish in two hours or less, accomplish it. Everyone else, go to bed early. This is no time to neglect sleep." He glanced at Madara. "We have a genocide to prepare for."

Madara

Did Madara really believe that the heretofore friendly demons were going to sneak up in the dead of night and slit his and everyone else's throats while they slept?

Yes. He believed exactly that. If not tonight, then soon. With so much abandoned property lying west of town, it should not take very long for the demons to discover our general location. And what reason is there to expect that such beings sleep?

Fortunately, not every so-called groupmate of his was childlike. He found Konan keeping watch from the rooftop. Night had fallen and almost everyone else was doing as the redheaded engineer said, but there she sat, alert and aware. Her eyes were already on him before he emerged from the rooftop stairwell. He closed the door with hardly a sound, then sat in her general vicinity at a different angle. They kept watch together for a while.

Eventually she said, "They are not liars. Not intentional ones, at least. They simply don't know the right way to speak."

"Of what things?"

"Of themselves, their own motives, their own behavior." He felt her eyes land on him. "You cannot trust a word that they say. They sound like fools, and they sound like geniuses. They'll sound like all sorts of things if you let them."

"They sound like pigs waiting to get slaughtered in their sleep."

"Anyone who fell for that illusion would too late find themselves facing something very different."

"Am I to believe they have control over their foolishness?"

There was a pause. Her eyes left his back. "No. They do not have perfect control over it. An attacker who believes that they are pigs might find that they are, instead, mice. A surprise, yes, but not a very helpful one. But surprises of any sort are something to be wary of, and their ability to surprise foes in ways that they benefit from is by now quite strong."

"What have I come to, entrusting my life to a group of liars?"

"Not liars. They simply don't know the right way to speak. You're supposed to understand that nothing they say can be trusted. Speech is, for them, a performance art. Sentences are not really sentences, but movements. Conversations are dances. Sensual dances, battle dances, dances performed to recreate a story, dances performed to bring participants into harmony, dances performed simply as a form of exercise… Nothing is as it seems, except for when they get bored of their art, at which point everything is exactly what it seems. Words aren't words, except when they are. Declarations have no meaning, except when they do."

"Faerieland."

"Hm?"

"In this world, there are stories of mythical creatures called faeries. Have you heard any of these stories?"

"I have not."

"You should."

"Will you tell me about them?"

"Faeries tend to be playful, except when they're wrathful. Their promises can't be trusted, except when every single word of those promises is legally binding. They are intriguing little butterfly-like creatures, except when they are monsters. To find yourself inside their territory is to be in mortal peril no matter the circumstances."

"I see."

"I have yet to read a story where faeries and demons fight."

"Well, magic is magic and peril is peril, and our territory is larger than it was before. The first succubus, Jule, was really not a threat. Do you know why?"

"Some god, or this author you claim to believe in, intervened?"

"Intervention suggests a possibility being cut off, prevented, denied. What do you call it when a possibility never existed to begin with?"

"Hopeless."

"That is exactly what her attack was. Hidan is well-attuned to the possibilities that exist. From his behavior, I conclude that any attempt to exterminate us is similarly hopeless."

"Unless it isn't."

"Unless it isn't."

"Do they know the right way to speak of that?"

"They do not." Konan shifted. "There are three possible outcomes of the current situation: we will emerge completely unharmed, we will be destroyed, or something else will happen. Nobody knows which outcome will occur, and nobody cares. All are equally acceptable."

"Apathy."

"Certainty."

"Lack of concern, even for their own lives."

"Passionate concern. If destruction is our fate, every single group member will get a heroic last stand. That includes the dolls and the dog."

"Then destruction is not, after all, acceptable."

"No, it is. But it will only be accepted if it happens." She shifted again. "They seem not to care because they know that, when all is said and done, only one thing actually will happen."

Madara said nothing in reply. He was too busy ignoring the way his heart pounded. Forces I don't understand are at work around me. I can't see them. I can't predict them. All I can do is pray they are on my side. To find myself so helpless…

"Madara."

"What?"

"The prophet of a chaos god walks the streets."

Madara turned to look at her. Konan had rotated her seat so that her whole body faced him. Her amber eyes glowed with complete sincerity. He could not help but believe her. His last defenses crumbled. What is all this talk of 'them'? I'm wasting my breath. Whether I like it or not, I must acknowledge the truth. I am one of them.

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A/N: Clearly, today is one of my not-so-human days. I have days like that. They feel wonderful and refreshing, like I'm reconnecting with an essential truth: the truth that I am only pretending to be a fragile mortal being with problems. A brief breather in the sky before descending back into the mud. Mmm.

It's been a long time since I described Konan's amber eyes glowing.

Hehehe... These demons don't know what they're messing with.