The statue is a sleeping giant with nine sleeping eyes, a decaying humanoid body whose mouth is gagged and its hands bound by shackles. It rests in one of the biggest spaces in the hideout near the Land of Wind, where all of the few members of Akatsuki rarely meet each other.
And at the sight of the beast, Kigura hides behind Kakuzu's cloak, only glancing at the other figures within the eerie place. Amidst them, there is only one woman who has a paper flower in her blue hair that Kigura stares at.
"Finally!" the youngest of the cloaked figures announces, looking no older than fifteen with blue eyes. "You. Kigura, un?"
She observes him strangely, looking at his shockingly blond hair pulled over in a lazy half ponytail.
"What's up with the oversized kasa, yeah?" the boy asks curiously, tilting his head and trying to look beneath the paper curtain obscuring her face from sight. The darkness doesn't help either. "Hiding from us, are you?"
"Deidara."
Almost reluctantly, the boy backs up and raises his hands when the puppet armor stares at him seriously. "I was only curious, Sasori-danna, hm."
But his gaze draws away from him before he glances at Kakuzu from the corner of his eye, just wondering who wouldn't be curious about his new partner, when all the previous ones have always ended up dead within the next few days. It isn't a secret Kakuzu has murderous tendencies.
For the past year Deidara has been a member, there's been multiple replacements that he has already lost count on how many that have gone. But they have all been miserly-looking men, and now it's a malnourished child looking no older than seven.
Is the brat really that worthy?
"Hm." He frowns, glancing at the ripple-eyed man, Pain, wondering too if the new member is some sort of secret weapon, an adult in a child's body or some other circus freak. Kami knows each and everyone of them isn't exactly... normal.
"A horned child will be in Akatsuki," he remembers his danna saying to him one day.
"A horned child, un?"
He has heard about them, the halflings of the great Kira clan of Koori, fragments of a horned monster almost equal to the tailed beasts. They were weapons of war, but with Koori's main capital in ruins now became hunted down by those in search for their power.
And so the villages with tailed beasts killed them. It was how they thought they could balance the power distributed among them. But to Deidara, it only seems vicious to kill those who have been deprived of their lives.
"We're late, aren't we?"
At the voice, Deidara looks at the new presence with an unconscious body up his shoulder.
He is an oddly-hued man that, even in the darkness, his blue skin is hardly something you will miss. A semblance of a shark with beady white eyes and jagged pointed teeth, and behind him is a boy with strange red eyes.
Itachi.
"Just a heads up," the blue man says, cocking his head to the side, "genjutsu won't hold this guy for long."
"Just get on with it, Kisame," Sasori says impatiently. "We need to extract the Gobi now."
Kigura peeks from Kakuzu's cloak as the blue man named Kisame drops the body from his shoulder. And even in the lack of light, it's clear as day the captive has been beaten before he was taken, from the blood dripping down his forehead to his bruised eyelids hardly open enough to reveal his light brown eyes.
Five Tails.
"Princess Han is up," Kisame jeers with a twisted grin just as the eyes of the dark-haired boy behind him fades to onyx black. The Iwagakure-nin stirs, but before he can even gather enough consciousness to cause them trouble, Kisame slams him to the ground with a hand to his throat.
"Ngh!"
"Kigura," Pain says and Kisame's dark gaze glances at the said child from the corner of his eye, at the tiny person beside the miserly Akatsuki.
So that is Kakuzu's new partner...?
His attention is diverted just in time to pull back from Han's bruised body as he suddenly feels the drop of temperature around them—and all of them feel it immediately.
"W-What is this...?" the jinchūriki croaks as thin ice suddenly crawls up his skin in ruthless speed, burning him from the inside and out. And the sudden cold grips his body unkindly.
So this is the scope of a horned child's ability... Kisame smirks, feeling the need to spill blood as Han screams for them to stop. Kigura staggers a little and Kakuzu notices. Watching the jinchūriki, it brings her mind elsewhere, somewhere far away and frighteningly familiar.
"It hurts—plea-please—!"
Screaming.
"Kigura—"
"Devil child."
"—Kigura, that's enough!"
She jerks back just as Han throws his head to the side and vomits, his throat icy and his blurred gaze unsteadily falling on her. His stare unsettles her in a way that she hides behind Kakuzu again and buries herself in his cloak.
She can't stand the look in his eyes.
Like she is a monster.
"Finished your job, yeah, did you?" Deidara jeers, equally as impressed at the child.
At the taunt, Kisame glares at him. "We don't have enough drive to fishin' bash him in the head every time he goddamn opens his eyes, blond brat."
In turn, Deidara glares right back.
"Be quiet," Sasori growls at his partner before subsequently glancing at the child hiding behind Kakuzu. Something about her unsettles him too, but he doesn't look at her long enough to find out what it is.
"It's time."
Without another word, each member takes their respective formation on the beast's fingers as they have long been instructed to, leaving Kigura beside the subdued jinchūriki. And as Pain's hand takes in the tiger seal, the gag on the giant husk's mouth snaps off as its stone jaw slacks open.
Kigura takes a step back only to bump into Zetsu who left a duplicate of himself on his vacated position on one of the giant's fingers. Or perhaps, it's the other way around. She couldn't really tell.
"Zetsu, stand guard with Kigura on the premises..." Pain orders.
"Understood," the creature answers as he guides the child away from the jinchūriki then. She seems hesitant at first, looking up at Kakuzu for some sort of reassurance, but then she remembers his words before they came here.
"Don't ask questions. Only follow orders."
She fiddles with her fingers and wordlessly pulls back then, following Zetsu even though she doesn't quite trust him. Kakuzu looks different too. It's something the blue man doesn't miss.
"What's this...?" Kisame asks with a demeaning chuckle just as the child and the creature disappear into the shadows. "Don't tell me you've grown attached to your new partner?"
"Shut up," Kakuzu sneers and Kisame laughs more.
"Don't waste your energy on mindless chatter," Sasori snaps, growing impatient by the minute. "With Orochimaru gone, the approximation should be more than three days and three nights..."
"Then let's begin," Pain cuts them short.
With only eight of its members present, Gobi's extraction takes more than the original duration as Sasori expected. For the remainder of the time, Kigura is only left to wander the hideout's outskirts with a curious plant following closely behind her.
It seems that the Akatsuki's rings play significant roles in the sealing, which explains Sasori's annoyance when his partner before Deidara took it with him.
His previous partner Orochimaru, as Zetsu told her, is a curiosity-driven individual. It was the reason why he was accepted in the organization in the first place and also what forced him to flee after preying on another member's kekkei genkai, the Sharingan.
It possesses such powers that many shinobi covet the secrets it holds. But after the Uchiha Massacre four years ago, perhaps its secrets will be buried with the last of its survivors.
The black-haired boy among the Akatsuki is someone of such origins. Itachi Uchiha, the mass murderer of the famed Uchiha clan. But he didn't seem like that when she first saw him in the hideout, when she saw those red eyes that drew her in, perhaps because of the discomfort she felt to see them on someone else.
"What are you thinking about?"
The wind bristles against the paper tassels on the kasa Kakuzu gave her and she looks down at the vast forestry below them. Behind her, Zetsu leans in to watch her better in curiosity. She seems lost again.
Like the majority of his time with her, Kigura really has a world of her own. Perhaps, that's why it surprises him when she suddenly moves, the edge of the kasa smacking on his face as she stands up.
"A-Ah?" Zetsu blinks from the ground he's knocked into, but Kigura barely notices him or she just chooses to ignore his existence altogether.
"That arrogant brat..." Black Zetsu sneers while White Zetsu, on the other hand, only seems concerned.
"Kigura, where are you going?" the better half asks, but the child doesn't bother to answer as she wanders to the other side of the forest, where a small town is situated at the borders. She busies herself again, picking flowers along the way.
What is she doing?
She seems awfully absorbed in picking them and it makes Zetsu wonder if it's for Kakuzu again. He noticed she has a habit of bringing him things, like a stray cat trying to show its favor on someone in a way it only can.
But he wonders still, if she knows the difference between the fresh and wilted ones.
From the shadows, the creature follows her, she who so easily blends among the villagers unlike his other fellow members. But occasionally, some still cast her glances at her lack of layers in clothes and at the fact that this doesn't even bother her one bit.
"Stay warm, child..." an old woman says, crouching in front of a young boy's neck. A certain sadness about her draws people's glances in as she looks down at her hands and blows warm air on her palms. But it doesn't feel the same. All she feels is hollow. Not cold. Not warm.
Just nothing.
"How pitiful..." White Zetsu says almost to himself.
As a horned child who lived after the Ninth Heika's unfortunate death, she was among those who were bred since young in captivity under the next generation's bloody rule.
They were deprived of many things and as such lacked the understanding of being human when they weren't treated as humans to begin with. Feared and hated for what they are and possess, they were only used as weapons for Koori who forced them to kill each other as a means to weed out the weakest amongst them.
Until there are only those who are beasts left.
"Indeed, she is..." Black Zetsu answers distantly, knowing full well what is in store for that child. "Indeed she will be."
· ☽ ·
Heika (陛下, literally meaning: His/Her Majesty) is a reserved title like Kage, but is inherited by a chosen individual within a single bloodline.