Eight

Reputation

Pakkun... didn't know what to think.

He was relieved their enemy had only been some sort of clone and they hadn't faced off against the real Hoshigaki Kisame, but he... well, first of all, he had to commend their teamwork; seamless even though he thought it was a bit weird that Yuuhi hadn't taken command. Second, the Inuzuka brat made that seal? Seriously? A complex four-pronged barrier that spazzed like water on hot oil but held up like an iron coffin? It shouldn't have been possible from a pup like him.

And weren't all of Yuuhi's kids still chuunin?

He hurried back over to the team as color bled from the corpse and the terrain ran dry, blue shifting to tan and the body shrinking in size. Navy hair diffused to muddy brown and the face of the dead man wasn't one that Pakkun recognized; a Suna-nin that aligned himself against his own village.

Wasn't that a thought?

As the jutsu shed off like a snake skin, the Samehada replicate crumpled into shapeless pieces. Sakura's torn mess of a hand was more visible now, dripping blood and caked with flecks of dirt. Her face was blank as she raised it to inspect the damage—unfeeling. Unconcerned.

Her left hand hung at her side and through the torn bandages, Pakkun saw cracked wood and the sheen of dark metal.

'Damn.'

Shino's brow creased as he observed his friend and Pakkun thought he was settling the shock that surely had to be thrumming in his veins, but the boy took one step forward and absolutely smacked the back of Sakura's head.

"What have I told you about placing yourself in avoidable situations? Hm? I would like to think that injury may be avoided with a modicum of common sense but your hand is falling out of itself. Your medical file is not getting any smaller, and I would like for it not to grow as fast as it is."

"Ow."

"'Ow,' she says," he grumbled, and Kiba fought off a snicker as he crouched to search the dead body. Shino held out one of his hands and Sakura placed her mauled appendage on it without question, his chakra lighting up a bright mint green as he began to repair the damage. "I give another lecture on her severe lack of self preservation and she responds with ow."

Kiba upends the kunai pouch from Mukade's leg. "She doesn't wear sunscreen, she doesn't listen ta' rules. It's a vicious cycle."

Akamaru woofed.

"See? He gets me."

"A miracle," Shino remarked dryly.

Kurenai peered over the healing with a worry that reminded Pakkun of his own mother before she helped Kiba bury the body—wait, bury the body?

"What are you doing?" he questioned as he padded over to the makeshift grave they'd begun to sow into the earth. "Mukade, or whoever he is, was, tried to kill you all and you're burying his body?"

He missed the look Sakura and Shino shared behind him and when Kiba said nothing as he upturned dirt, Kurenai smiled at the ninken summon. It was a smile that was more tired than it should be, but not one that tried to hide discomfort. It was open and fatigued and resigned and as she helped lower the corpse into dirt, her eyes shadowed with something he couldn't quite pick out.

(He didn't like it.)

"This has become a... ritual, of sorts," she explained softly. "To bury the bodies of anyone caught in the crossfire and all enemies that end up dying by our hands. It's more out of respect than anything else, really."

Pakkun tilted his head. He could understand that. The jobs shinobi did were never easy and it wasn't unusual to see different teams finding different ways to cope. Boss, he knew, liked to read the first few books of his favorite Icha Icha series after particularly rough missions. The same three books he read forwards and backwards in the darkness of his own apartment, eyes skimming over the familiar words after he washed his hands for hours at the kitchen sink.

So yeah. Everyone had their own thing. It was just a little weird to see a bunch of pups pick this one up.

"Why not take the body to study?" he asked. Especially if they were comfortable enough to scavenge and bury them. "You could probably learn a lot more from him."

Shino shrugged a shoulder. "What is there to study? Everything we needed from him we gathered from when he was living."

"Which is safe to say that his goal was to delay us and gather information," Sakura said. She flexed her newly healed hand still fresh with pink skin. "We'll increase our speed to make up for lost time. Kiba? Sensei?"

"We're good," Kiba said, glancing at Shino. "Your kikai?"

"Searching," the Aburame replied simply as he turned the direction toward River. They were already falling back into the formation Pakkun first found them in, and once Kiba was back to the head of the team, he grinned down at the pug.

"Ready?" he prompted.

Pakkun turned around. He wished Boss had warned him about how weird Yuuhi's team was. "Let's move out."

:: ::

"Zetsu," Pein said as he turned his head, the fade of his jutsu finally reaching his senses. "Those two should have shape-shifted back into their original forms. Dispose of them."

"Understood."

"Itachi," he continued. "I know the jutsu clouds your perception and erases visual recognition and other similar stimuli, but is there anything you can confirm of our enemies?"

"They're a four man squad consisting of Hatake Kakashi, Hyuuga Hinata, Kyuubi Jinchuuriki Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha, and Chiyo, an advisor from Suna."

Sasori narrowed his eyes.

"I see. And Kisame?"

"Ah, Zetsu-san was right about it being Yuuhi Kurenai, but I don't know the names of her teammates," Kisame lied. There was power in being one of the older members; he was never at the end of suspicion and no one ever thought he would have any outside motive. "I know one was a medic, one was probably an Inuzuka proficient in seals, and the last was a swordswoman that ended up killing the clone."

Pein tipped his head. "Hm. The team with the jinchuuriki takes priority. Any other back-up will be dealt with when the time comes."

Kisame closed his eyes. Hopefully that meant Sakura wouldn't get into trouble anytime soon.

:: ::

A red torii gate stood poised before a boulder with a single seal that read Forbidden on its face. Rushing waters of a river ran beneath their feet and after a night's rest to replenish their chakra, they'd made it to the heart of River Country with little fanfare and dirt scuffing the sides of their sandals.

"So this is the place, huh," Kurenai murmured.

"The Kazekage is on the other side of this boulder," Pakkun informed them from his perch on one of Kiba's shoulders. "But it looks like they put up a barrier."

"Definitely a barrier," Kiba confirmed as he walked closer. He considered the sequence for a few moments before he caught a whiff of a few scents entering the general vicinity. The rest of his team seemed to have noticed too, the way they moved to angle themselves to cover each other's blindspots; Shino at Kiba's, Sakura and Kurenai's at each other's, Akamaru silently weaving around their legs with his lips pulled back in a subtle snarl.

Sakura deactivated her Perception seals.

Kurenai's flickered in recognition the closer the strangers drew. "Kakashi. You're late."

"Maa, well you see..." Kakashi landed on the river followed by the rest of his current team. "We got caught up in something troublesome along the way."

"By troublesome you certainly don't mean me, do you?" the old woman with them tittered. By her form of dress she clearly hailed from Suna, all heavy robes and neutral colors, and her gray hair was held back by a simple brown headband.

"Do we have a plan?" Kurenai questioned as she approached them. Her and the other upper-level shinobi clustered together as they talked amongst themselves, leaving the rest of their teams to fall together not too far away.

But the quick hand signal Kurenai made behind her back that both Naruto and Hinata failed to catch had Akamaru close to her heels, ears open and ready to report what he overhears to the rest of his pack.

"Hyuuga-san, Naruto-san," Shino greeted politely. Hinata quickly returned the hello but Naruto—red eyes and slit pupils and darkened whiskers and protruding fangs—nodded once before he passed them by to stare at the boulder as his nails drew blood from his palms.

"He's been ra-rather upset these past few days," Hinata murmured in way of explanation, her lips touching downwards. "I know it's been hard on him, but..."

Sakura eyed the back of Naruto's head before she strode up to his side. She cast the boulder a short glance and met Kiba's eyes once before the latter pulled out a small notepad from the inside of his jacket to begin deciphering the seals that blocked them from meeting the Akatsuki.

"They have him in there, don't they?" Naruto seethed. "Those bastards dragged him all the way here because of his—the Ichibi."

She'd never seen him this angry before. She'd seen him pout when he couldn't get Ichiraku's and heard him whine when she made him eat two whole servings of vegetables, but she'd never seen an unbridled fury in his eyes that pieces of the Kyuubi began leaking through.

But... she supposed that wasn't quite true. She'd seen that rage once. Felt its burning, screaming claws tear through her down to the muscle that took all of what Shino and Kiba had to pick those melted pieces from her charred flesh—but that was the Kyuubi, not Naruto, and she knew very well there was a difference.

"Don't charge in without thinking," she said. "I know you're angry and you have every right to be, but you'll never be able to make proper decisions without at least some clarity." No response. She turned her head. "Naruto. Look at me."

There was a beat before pulsing red irises met her, flinching slightly when they landed on her old scars. "But Sakura-chan, they have—"

"I know," she answered. "But you'll get him back, won't you?"

The red quivered and melted and Naruto's eyes were his again. The marks on his cheeks were still more pronounced and some of his teeth were a little too sharp, but he managed to ease himself down.

"Yeah. I will."

"Hinata." Kakashi walked forward as he, Chiyo, and Kurenai broke from their discussion to rejoin their teams. "Can you look through the boulder and tell us what you see?"

Hinata nodded firmly before thick veins shifted and pushed outward from beneath her skin. Along her cheeks and her cheekbones and all around her socket those veins pulsed, pupil-less eyes flickering all around the boulder. "There's a large cavern inside, but I can't see what's going on too clearly. There appears to be several people inside—"

"And Gaara?" Naruto demanded. "What about Gaara?"

"I-I'm looking, I..." she drifted off. She was silent as she searched with those flittering eyes, but once her byakugan faded, she turned to the rest of them. "Gaara-sama is in there, but-but it's hard to explain in words..."

"Then that means we have to look in there ourselves," Sakura said.

"Until we can get rid of that barrier, no one's gettin' through nothin'," Kiba told them as he wrote a last note and shut his notebook with a light snap. "It's a Five Seal Barrier. There's five separate tags in five separate locations, all with the kanji for Forbidden on 'em. One's here in front of us, four are somewhere else, prob'ly hidden under trees or between rocks where they're hidden, not smushed." He tucked the notebook back into his jacket. "Luckily, the range can't be that big. Unluckily, the only way ta' deactivate it is ta' remove all five seals at the exact same time. Wrong timing means the defense mechanism activates, whatever it is."

Kakashi observed the chuunin appraisingly, his lone eye cool and dark. "That's... surprisingly astute of you, Inuzuka-kun." And odd, and suspicious, and astounding all at once. "I think you're right on the mark."

Chiyo tipped her head. "And what would you say the range is, boy?"

"No more than a kilometer," he shrugged, a grin lighting up his face. "Think you can find them, Hyuuga-san?"

She nodded, her byakugan reactivating after she returned a small smile. "I see... one on a boulder five-hundred meters Northeast. Second on a trunk of a tree growing along a riverbank three-hundred-fifty meters South-Southeast. Third on a cliff six-hundred-fifty meters Northwest. Last is on a tree in a forest just a little less than eight-hundred meters Southwest."

Kurenai ran a cursory look at all the available shinobi. There was no doubt that her team was expected to be the ones to hunt down those barriers and pry off the seals for Kakashi's team to engage with the Akatsuki. But while she understood the nature of the mission, that didn't stop her from wanting one of her own team in the midst of that knowledge to relay back anything the reports might redact or forget to acknowledge.

(Some part of her keeps thinking that she'd grown too paranoid.)

Her gaze drifted to her fellow jounin. "Kakashi, would it be viable to switch Hyuuga-san's and Sakura's positions for this portion of the mission?" All heads snapped to her. "While I have no issues with Sakura's tracking skills, Hyuuga-san's possession of the byakugan can lead us to the seals quicker with more accuracy," she explained. Though it would mess up the team dynamic...

"Hm. You have a point," Kakashi considered. "Hinata? Do you mind going along with Kurenai's team for this bit?"

"N-Not at all, sensei!" Hinata exclaimed. Her pale eyes glow with spirit, and maybe her being on Naruto's team for so long had made her too sincere. "I'll gladly go where my skills can be utilized best!"

"It's settled, then."

Kurenai reached into her pack to hand out the wireless radios and earpieces. "Kiba and Akamaru, head for the southwest forest. Shino, the northwest cliffside. Hyuuga-san, the south-southeast riverbank. I'll head for the northeast boulder." She handed the last set to Kakashi who wound it around his neck with ease. "We'll check in when we all reach our positions."

She met Sakura's eyes and nodded slightly. No words were needed—there was a job to do here, and they needed to do it well if Tsunade decided to suddenly put them in on this mission when she could have picked quite literally anyone else.

Akamaru nuzzled Sakura's hand and she gave both Kiba's and Shino's shoulders a squeeze before they bounded off towards their assigned locations. They could take care of themselves just fine and if anything were to happen, she'd send a signal through the three kikai crawling just beneath the shadow of her hair.

"Sakura-chan!" She blinked and turned to face Naruto, who stood next to his sensei. Even more of his anger had receded and some of that cloudiness passed from his eyes, and maybe some anxiety finally came to beat back his rage and instill a sort of restless energy. "This is our first mission together, huh?"

"Hm. I guess it is," she replied, smiling a tad at his sunny face. Her expression dropped back into its neutral apathy when she felt Kakashi's gaze on one shoulder and Chiyo's on the other, but didn't turn to acknowledge them.

"Is this your first S-rank?"

She nodded. "We had just completed an A-rank before we were assigned as your back-up." And Naruto pouted, because all he'd ever taken were D-ranks and that one C gone awry before going off to travel with Jiraiya. "You'll pass any exams you decide to take. Don't worry."

He grinned.

Another voice called out from somewhere above her. "You and the rest of Kurenai's team are chuunin, right, Sakura-san?"

She glanced behind her. Kakashi stuck himself right above the boulder's seal, his chakra-laden feet on either side of it.

"Yes, Kakashi-senpai."

"Hmm. And what was a team of mostly chuunin doing on an A-rank?"

"There was no other team or suitable jounin to take on the mission," she responded smoothly as her mind burned through everything she knew about Hatake Kakashi and just how curious he'd looked when Kiba spoke about the seals. She hid the challenge that would have been in her eyes if she were a lesser shinobi and donned her usual blank stare. "We were available, and we were assigned."

Kakashi hummed again. "I see." His eye crinkled. "You and Naruto seem close."

"Of course we're close!" Naruto huffed as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Sakura-chan's my best friend, 'ttebayo!"

"Ah, really? I didn't know you knew each other so well, Sakura-san."

"What is this, an inquisition on the girl?" Chiyo harrumphed. She hobbled closer, but not before throwing the stink-eye at the White Fang's son. He responded with an even deeper crinkle of his eyes. "Che." She turned to the newcomer of the team—tall and pink and cold and nothing like the sweet, shy little Hyuuga—and lingered her gaze on the ink on her cheekbone. "I have not made my introduction. I am Chiyo; retired counselor and on-and-off advisor to the current cabinet. As annoying as they may be," she added mulishly.

Sakura tipped her head. "It's nice to meet you, Chiyo-sama." She offered a polite bow. "Sakura. No surname."

"And now that everyone is suitably introduced, let's talk strategy, shall we?" said Kakashi. "The plan is to remove the seals and break into the cavern; once the seal is ripped off this boulder and at the four other secondary locations, it will need to be destroyed immediately and followed up with the buttonhook entry technique. Naruto will destroy the boulder with his rasengan. Chiyo and Sakura will wait at opposite sides of the opening to charge in first once that opening is made. Is that clear?"

Chiyo took her position. "I understand."

Sakura followed. "Yes, Kakashi-senpai."

Naruto created a clone and readied himself to concentrate his chakra into his palms. "Ready when you are!"

Kakashi pressed two fingers on the radio in his ear and waited. After a few minutes, he held onto the corner of the seal. "One my count of three," he said. "One!"

Chiyo's eyes flitted to the girl across from her.

"Two!"

Sakura's left hand made a move to reach for the pack on her back hip, but instead her fingers curled into an activation seal.

"Three!"

The Perception seals activate when the Forbidden seals break, and Chiyo thought she might have seen more than she was supposed to.

:: ::

Kiba noted three distinct details of the seal barrier they were sent to deactivate.

One, there were more than four seals that anchored the technique, denoting the high complexity level and warned of the possibility of multiple defense mechanisms activating upon removal.

Two, there were more than two sequences layered atop one another; three to be precise. Three sequences equalled two defense mechanisms that relied on two different factors upon deactivation, which could have been anything.

Three, the distance between all seals were within two-hundred meters to one kilometer and created a pentagonal shape with almost identical sides. According to the theory of sacred geometry, the pentagon was the symbol of human perfection and symbolized 'the aspiration to the sublime'. A world view. Stability.

And relating the third point back to the second, it was clear that the shape of choice would bear reflection to the consequence. Removing the five seals in unity nullified the first defense mechanism, probably an explosion or a rain of weapons. But the second mechanism was trickier. More thought out. And if it were to bear a reflection of the aspiration to be a better good...

He wouldn't be surprised if five human bodies were used as a sacrifice to increase the barrier's proficiency.

Kiba pressed his button on the radio. "Before you take the seals off, stay calm. Be as damn weak as you can the moment you pry that seal off. Fill yourself with fear, think you're nothin', act like the biggest Academy student that doesn't know what the hell they're doin'."

Hinata's confused voice filtered through the radio. "I-I don't...?"

"Try your best," he stated firmly as his fingers hovered over the corner of the paper sheet. "Seals work on intent, If you don't intend to have a bad fight, then you're in for a hell of a time."

:: ::

When part of the cavern wall crumbled to bits and four bodies slipped through, Sasori was pleased to note that Uchiha Itachi was wrong.

There was Sharingan Kakashi, a blond boy he assumed was the Kyuubi container, and Chiyo-baa all accounted for.

But the girl? Most definitely not a Hyuuga. Her clothes were plain black and her hair a dull, mousy brown pulled up in a high ponytail. She had the most commonly-shaped dark eyes, a thin mouth, a round face, a simple kunai pouch around one leg. A katana hung at her waist and some sort of baton was strapped to her back and stuck out over her shoulder. Simple. Ordinary. Bland. She was nothing noteworthy—

Sasori blinked from inside Hiruko.

Nothing noteworthy?

Well, now. The girl looked like the plainest conceivable kunoichi one could pluck from Sunagakure's midst, but he knew his old village would never send a no-name on such a high-stakes mission.

"Now, which one of you is the jinchuuriki, hm?" Deidara drawled with an edge to his smirk. He lounged on Gaara's body, uncaring of his blatant disrespect.

Naruto's eyes exploded in red as his nails sharpened like daggers and his whiskers dug dark grooves into his face. "I'll kill you!" he snarled. "I'll fucking kill you both and when I'm done with you, there'll be nothing left!"

"The first one to start yelling and screaming," Sasori scoffed. "Itachi's a bastard, but I won't fault his way in describing others."

"Where the hell do you think you're sitting?" the boy continued to seethe. His canines grew longer as did his hair, and what a picture this jinchuuriki painted looking more and more like the beast sealed somewhere buried beneath his skin. Sasori's intrigue was enough to let Deidara antagonize him further, but his attention was once more drawn to that plain, plain girl—too plain to his eyes, so plain that something constant at the back of his mind told him something was amiss.

"Calm down," the girl said quietly. Her voice was too powerful for the body it inhabited, and the undertone of the authority it carried seemed to catch both the old bag and the Copy-nin off guard.

"They fucking—"

"Remember what I told you."

Naruto ground his teeth together before straightening from his feral gait—minutely.

Deidara hummed, the fingers of his hand that hadn't been crushed off tapping against his bottom lip. "Didn't know you could put a jinchuuriki on a leash, but it looks like you learn something new every day, un." His arm extended to rap his knuckles against Gaara's pale cheek. "But you know, don't you? That your mission was useless?"

Sasori watched on.

"That your friend's already long dead, hm?"

Naruto charged.

But not two full strides and the girl was at his front, her back facing him and her left arm held out to keep him from taking another step further. Her face never wavered and not a sound fell from her mouth, and Naruto ceased his movement.

Wasn't that something?

"Danna," Deidara started. "You'll probably get angry if I say this, but I'll take care of the jinchuuriki."

Sasori growled, Hiruko's red-veined eyes trained on his irritating lump of a partner. Children. "Getting a swell head, are you? One jinchuuriki each, unless you've already forgotten that simple order?"

"An artist will start to dull unless they chase after their muses, Danna. I think it's you who's forgotten that with your old age, hm." Deidara stuck his hand in his clay pouch and bit off a gray piece. "Rumor has it that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki is powerful, and what better use of him than a target for my art?"

Sasori dragged his eyes back forward. "You're calling those explosions of yours art? Spare me. Art is something that remains beautiful forever. Eternal."

Chiyo-baa's lips curled down, Kakashi narrowed his eyes, Naruto clenched his teeth so hard they should have chipped.

But the girl remained plain. Blank. Unassuming.

(Sasori knew for sure that there was something he wasn't getting, and he would find out what it was.)

"Eternal beauty as art? I respect you as a fellow artist, but art is a fleeting moment of beauty that vanishes in a singular, glorious moment."

Sasori prickled and turned this time, his younger, idiotic partner following suit. "Don't start with me you ignorant brat—"

"Ignorant?!"

"As it stands, you don't understand what the true meaning of art is."

"You're the one who doesn't understand, hm."

"Knock it the hell off!" Naruto howled. He whipped out a scroll from his side, and from that summoned a fuma shuriken he shot straight as Sasori's hunched bulk. The plain girl didn't move to stop him nor did anyone else in the room.

Hiruko's tail maneuvered to direct the offending projectile somewhere on the other side of the cavern. But never mind that—was the brat seriously acting up now and spouting nonsense about his misunderstanding of art?

"Are you trying to make me angry?"

"I said you were gonna get angry—"

"You know what happens when I get angry," he warned, the scorpion tail swaying and dripping in potent poison. "And yet you lay out your bullshit anyways."

Deidara molded his clay piece into a bird that ballooned into the size of a sand dune. "Well, you know my art is much better than your silly puppet shows, hm," he quipped. He dodged the tail aimed at his face and leapt onto his creation's back as it lifted the Kazekage's corpse into its beak. "See you in a bit, Danna!"

A ridiculous brat to do as he pleased. He wondered why he even put up with him.

The youngest Akatsuki member flew out, Naruto quick on his tail. Kakashi called after him to no avail, and before he too burst from the cavern he turned to the rest of the team.

"Naruto and I will take care of the guy outside," he said. "Chiyo-baa-sama. Sakura-san. Take care of the guy inside, and don't do anything rash until Team Kurenai gets back."

And they were gone.

Sasori eyed the two remaining at the mouth of the cavern, standing atop still waters as a fraught tension mingled with the scent of unearthed mineral and mold. Hiruko's tail bobbed above him. "I thought you retired long ago."

"I had the sudden urge to see my grandson's face again," Chiyo coolly returned.

Uppity old bag.

The plain girl didn't draw her katana, merely resting her palm on its hilt as she waited. Her face held no expression, and perhaps it was an apathy so specially crafted that it was enough to hide her fear and apprehension, if she had any. And if she didn't? It would be another thing that didn't match that forgettable appearance she bore.

Chiyo angled herself such that both him and the girl were both in her line of vision. "The Hatake boy said not to do anything rash until back-up arrives."

"They won't get back in time," the girl replied. The old hag's brows furrowed, a question apparent in her frown. "The Five Seal Barrier was far more trouble than anticipated. We're on our own."

She turned her head, and the sight of three beady little insects crawling near her left ear turned over Sasori's curiosity once more.

"... Allow me this first, then," Chiyo said. The girl tipped her head and held back, but her eyes shadowed over like a predator ready to pounce.

If Sasori didn't know any better, he would have said that in this moment, she looked like Konan, Leader-sama's Angel who always lurked in the dark and never lent her attention to business that wasn't hers. Her and the girl, their expressions never wavered. Their postures exuded their confidence, but never arrogance, and they chose their quiet over anything else.

Konan had always been good at being a blank canvas, and even in battles did her face only wrinkle slightly at the brow or did her pierced lips turn down the slightest at the corners.

She would have been a perfect puppet had he not held a respect for her position and her artistic direction.

Chiyo reached into her baggy sleeves and directed a line of kunai to hover across her front. Sasori didn't have to see the chakra strings to know they were threaded through each metal loop and held in the hag's startlingly firm grasp.

"Soushuujin."

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—eight kunai were encased in chakra and flung towards him. He barely held back a scoff. What was this child's play? He swung Hiruko's tail forward to block the surge of weapons. One kunai slashed his cloak at the shoulder and another at the waist but none scraped wood, and he was quick to discard the cloth to free the puppet of its restrictions.

"Will you join the girl as additions to my collection, Chiyo-baa?"

("If you told me the girl was already a puppet, I wouldn't have wasted my time considering making her one of my own.")

"That's not Sasori's real body," Chiyo told the kunoichi at her side. The plain girl finally drew her blade, its metal glinting in the low light, and he took note of the bandages that wrapped her left arm from the tips of her fingers to the middle of her bicep.

"I know," she answered simply. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as old memories pressed up just behind her eyes. "His real body is on the inside."

"I wasn't aware that there were puppet masters who would grant the likes of you such knowledge," he accused. Too much—the girl knew too much, and it only built on his theory that somewhere under this plain visage she was hiding. Chiyo's open stare told him that she hadn't an inkling of the girl's knowledge either, and the girl stood there in her plain clothes with a plain blade whose hilt was bound in blood red bandages.

"They don't," she said.

Hiruko's tail swayed.

"Do you know how I make those in my collection?" Sasori questioned softly. "First, I pull out the organs." One step forward. "Then the bodies are washed with a small cloth dipped in water and soap. Don't drown them, they'll be too sloppy to work with. Don't bleach them, they'll start to corrode." Another step. "I extract their blood, embalm their bodies, fill to the brim with the weapons they failed to defend themselves with when they'd met me." Hiruko's head twisted to the side with a loud crick. "Environmentally sound, isn't it?"

The plain girl didn't grace him with a reply.

"You two would bring my collection to three hundred. It's art," he said, "in its purest, truest form."

Sasori remembered his time back in Suna where they called him a master craftsman. Every wooden puppet he'd built always drew in the highest praise, but it was never enough. The human puppetry—it was an accident, in the beginning. It stemmed from his hatred of leaving his dead opponents to bleed out and wither when they had the potential to be so much more. What started out as a collection to study how to make his puppets more human had twisted into something different far down the road. There was no use in making a wooden shell mimic when you could have the original, after all, and only if Suna hadn't been blind enough to see.

"The most frightening thing about a puppet is their hidden weapon," said Chiyo as the wrinkles around her eyes sunk deeper. "If we can't figure out what they are, we won't be able to tell where and how he'll attack."

"Of course," the plain girl hummed. Chiyo glanced at her.

"Do not take it lightly."

"I'm not."

"Then what do you call this?"

"You talk of hidden weapons like it only applies to puppets," the girl intoned smoothly. She twirled her katana in a quick arc of silver. "People are the same."

From inside Hiruko's husk, Sasori's lip twitched. Too much.

Chiyo stared at the girl with wide eyes, and he knew that she'd caught his grandmother's wariness. It was clear that they hadn't known each other long and there was a fairly high chance that the cadence of their teamwork would be nowhere as seamless as Itachi's and Kisame's. But, that only spelled trouble for him as well. The old bag knew nothing of her partner, and he didn't either.

"His protective puppet, Hiruko, will need to be destroyed," Chiyo said after a long pause. "But I'm afraid I don't have that type of destructive power."

The plain girl slid one of her feet behind her. "I can manage that."

Sasori's lip twitched a few more times. He'd like to see her try.

"Sakura."

The girl turned her head.

"Dodge every single one of his attacks. All of them, perfectly! Not a scratch unless you want to be poisoned within an inch of your own life. At least Temari had that young Hyuuga pull it out of her bloodstream." Chiyo narrowed her eyes. "You have no such luxury here."

Sakura, Sakura, Sakura.

It had been a long time since he'd met another Sakura.

"I came here knowing I wouldn't receive that luxury," Sakura replied. "Trust me or not, Chiyo-sama, but never fault me on my capabilities. Do what you must, and I will fill in what's missing."

Sasori growled. "Are you about done? You know I hate to be kept waiting, don't you?"

Sakura blinked once. "So I've heard."

Her and Chiyo charged at the same time.

He ripped the mask hanging off Hiruko's face and unhinged the bottom jaw like a snake. It dropped down in three separate parts to expose the inside of its dark mouth. Senbon—hundreds and thousands of senbon—spit out like rain on the harshest of Ame's days when Pein had nothing for the world but an anger that would be heard.

Chiyo managed well for her age and flipped and side-stepped the steel like she was still a shinobi in her prime. With her experience, of course something like this would be nothing.

But this plain girl. But this Sakura.

Her katana cut off any senbon that dared come close and her face remained unchanged as not a single weapon broke skin or tore cloth or whistled through her hair.

The stray senbon stuck up from the ground all around their feet, a purple film coating the outsides and emitting the barest scent of bitter almonds and garlic. Among them stood Chiyo and Sakura without having lost a single breath, the former with her fingers poised to create more chakra strings and the latter with her katana resting on one shoulder.

They were seeing through it. It was impressive, he'd give them that. But how much longer could they keep up?

He extended Hiruko's left arm and launched the bottom half. The pegs stuck into the limb shot out of it the next second to break in halves and eject another stream of poisoned senbon, more clustered and precise than his last barrage.

Once the last weapon stuck itself into the dirt, the two landed on opposite sides of the battlefield, unharmed.

Sasori's eyes narrowed. The old bag he could understand dodging so resolutely with the decades of experience she lugged under her belt, but the girl? She could be no more than fifteen and had to be green around the edges, but to manage those—

Sakura looked at Chiyo as something passed through her eyes before she darted forward faster than he expected. He shot off the last bundle of kunai he reserved for emergencies to which she'd blocked with a quick slash of her blade.

Though... one of them did it. Not her skin and not her clothes, but it cut the kunai pouch off her thigh and dragged across the odd little seal plastered against her thigh. PERCEPTION, it read, though it was harder to make out now that it was bisected and deactivated.

He aimed Hiruko's tail at her head, but it stopped just short of the spot between her cold, dark eyes, and it wouldn't move no matter how much he tugged.

Then, something changed.

Sakura's shirt shifted from black to dark blue, and brown leather pauldrons were suddenly on her shoulders. Her skin might have gone a shade lighter and the shape of her face had become defined, but everything else about her stayed the same.

"Girl," he murmured, just low enough for only her ears. "What are you trying to hide from me?"

Her lips were a grim line. "Nothing less than what I would try to hide from anyone else."

She flung her katana into the air, side-stepped his tail, and he just caught the sight of her right arm rippling into some blue-gray hue before Hiruko shattered into pieces.

Sasori clicked his tongue as he retreated to the back side of the cavern in his black cloak that shrouded his main body. So they were smart. The hag had bound Hiruko's tail with her chakra strings with the Soushuujin from earlier and allowed the girl an opening, though he supposed without that opening he never would have discovered that of all things, Perception seals were what she was concealing. But what did her appearance matter, especially now that there wasn't that hint of blue-gray on her skin he thought he'd seen?

Unless she was someone he knew. And if she was...

It garnered an itch that could only hope to be scratched by the revelation of her true identity.

After all, Perception seals always came in threes. He only needed to break two more.

"I've come this far to see my grandson's face," Chiyo called out to him, and he rolled his eyes. "After twenty long years, don't you think you could grant me at least that?"

His finger twitched and Hiruko's decapitated head spat out one last barrage of senbon, all of which Sakura blocked with her sword without moving her feet.

"So you're skilled enough," he hummed, "to not need Chiyo-baa to control you with her chakra strings." He turned to face them, his cloak still a shadow over his features. "Where did you learn, girl? And how is it that at your age, you could predict my movements?"

Mirth rose in her irises. "Would you believe me if I'd called it luck?"

"Not at all." Sasori brought up his hand to tug down his hood and red hair sprung with the movement. Chiyo's eyes grew impossibly wide and her mouth gaped like an unseemly fish.

"You haven't aged," she whispered. "You haven't... You're just as you were the day you left."

He chuckled, tipping his head downward. He waited and waited and waited for her to say more, but she should know how much he hated waiting and didn't let the silence ring for long. "What's the matter, Chiyo-baa? So filled with emotion that you have nothing else to say?" He scoffed. Typical old hag. The longer he drew this out, the more he would have to hear her nonsensical ramblings. "I shouldn't have expected anything different."

A scroll dropped from his sleeve and he summoned the Sandaime Kazekage—a golden pride of his pieces. It had taken him months to fix up that body and more months after that to even learn how to utilize the puppet. But in the end, it was worth it. An eternal beauty of a moment frozen in time.

Chiyo released a shaky breath, and Sakura cocked her head slightly to listen. "It was over ten years ago that the Sandaime suddenly disappeared from the village. We scoured the countryside and the smaller villages and the borders, but we were never able to find him or his body. Very few rivaled his strength and it was never a popular theory that someone had taken him down..." She grit her teeth. "Sasori, you...?"

"And if I did?" he posed. "Don't tell me that a retired old lady with one foot in the grave is about to avenge the Sandaime Kazekage."

"I might have one foot in the grave, but it was worth hauling my heavy behind all the way over here. I'd have too many regrets if I were to keel over now," she huffed. "It's bad enough that my grandson got himself mixed up with a bad crowd—"

Sakura turned her head back around.

"—but to think that you'd betray your own village—"

Sasori hadn't been watching the girl's face. If he had, he would have seen the crackling darkness that befell it.

"—you kill the Sandaime, you lead Orochimaru to murder the Yondaime, lay waste to the Godaime—"

"Whatever that business with Rasa was nothing of mine," he interrupted, one brow raised. "My subordinate guided them."

"Your subordinate. Can you truly say you were not involved?"

"Orochimaru may have been my partner at one point in time, so I can only imagine the things I had gotten up to back then, but whatever he'd done after that is none of my concern." He extended his arm. "But enough of that. Why don't we get right down to it?"

The second the Sandaime surged forward, Sakura propelled herself back. Thick, heavy blades erupted from the right puppet arm and slashed down towards her torso, and even Hiruko's tail that Chiyo brought up to shield the girl was no match for the steel when the wood fell to the ground in butchered chunks.

"Quick," Sasori commented. "But are you quick enough?"

The Sandaime's left arm swung to its front for six separate sections to click off the main appendage and flay out, revealing a set of seals on each hardened flap. It had taken him longer than he'd like to admit to figure out the locks and sequences, even with Konan's input. Orochimaru had always had an inclination towards the seals and ever since he left—next time he saw the bastard he'd stick a kunai through his damn neck—seals were something that took him some time to perfect. Besides, was this not something he'd already achieved? Perfection?

A wide grin stretched his face. "Dodge this, girl!"

Hundreds of puppet arms shot out the seals and descended upon the girl, crashing over her entirely and flaring a cloud of dust across the cavern.

"Sakura!"

Silence.

Then, the distinct splintering of broken wood.

What?

Through wooden limbs he spotted her in the center, every arm in her immediate vicinity snapped and destroyed like they'd crashed into concrete. Her right leg was stuck out and her own arms were spread wide, and he spied a wisp of receding blue-gray on her neck as she balanced herself on her left leg.

She changed again. That brown hair that was in a ponytail was suddenly short and cropped at the base of her head and a blue tattoo bloomed along her cheekbone. Her left ear was mangled from an injury that looked to be years old and a set of four ugly, garish scars crawled up from somewhere from her right shoulder to end like a kiss against her jaw. Muscles larger, a Konoha headband on her forehead, and Sasori was almost giddy.

At the bottom of her right sandal was another torn Perception seal, and he wanted to laugh.

One more seal to break.

Show me your true face, plain girl.

A finger twitched and thick purple gas congregated on her. Choking. Suffocating. Hoping to crave that insatiable want for her to beg for him to stop. The old bag's face dawned in panic as she shouted for the girl to hold her breath, but he would admit to being disappointed if this was all it took to kill her. A little poison gas was enough to kill a group of gutter rats, but a fully-fledged kunoichi?

But to his conflicting satisfaction and distaste—he wasn't quite sure which feeling outweighed the other—the poison was short-lived.

An explosion rocked the cavern from where the girl should be standing, dispersing his poison into ineffectiveness and sending a body careening back for Chiyo to catch. She was banged up but conscious, and she took a few deep breaths before she hefted herself back onto her feet.

Chiyo reluctantly let her go when she didn't look like she'd fall over. "Sakura, are you alright?"

"Fine." The back of her hand swiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, and she opened her mouth for those insects to creep out and disappear behind her shoulders. "No need to worry about me, Chiyo-sama. I've been told I'm particularly annoying to kill."

Sasori held a fist to his mouth and laughed. "Well," he sighed, lips smiling and hungry, "I wouldn't say any of them are wrong."

A hail of kunai spewed from the accumulation of arms and arcs over them like a grand wave of metal and descended upon his opponents. Sakura angled her katana to try and block, but before she could move Chiyo summoned two puppets from two separate scrolls to shield them both from the horde.

One man with red hair that matched his own and one woman with long brown hair that spilled past her shoulders.

That sentimental old bag.

"I see you've kept those old things."

Chiyo's face softened, and it churned a pit of anger in his stomach. "The first puppets you ever made... the Father and the Mother."

He'd wasted so much of his time making those puppets. His first designs that were shoddy at best with their lifeless caricatures and compartments too thin and weak to hold proper weaponry. They were simplicity at best that lacked any real artistic flair.

He should have destroyed them a long time ago.

Sakura hung back as she watched the Sandaime battle the Parent Series until their weapons dulled and they can only meet at a standstill. For that exchange, at least, Sasori kept one eye on the battle and not much else; he knew the tricks his grandmother hid up her sleeves and behind her back and understood the skill it took for her to be such an elevated figure in his old village.

But the not-so plain girl had an opening for attacks she didn't take. Sasori knew nothing of her skill and her aptitude and until just a few moments ago, he'd learned of which village she hailed from. Konoha; the weak, the soft-hearted.

At first glance she looked like a picture perfect pawn heeding their superior's order to stand by and study. But the longer he observed her, the more he saw her eyes were decidedly not trailing after the Sandaime's afterimages. They were watching his fingers—every twitch, every command, every slight—and committed them to memory.

In this moment, she looked like Kakuzu. She looked like Kakuzu when he stood on the sidelines and watched Hidan crow and hack at his enemies, cold and distant. She looked like Kakuzu when he counted his pay from bingo book listings with a sharp eye and an even sharper temper if he was ever cheated short.

First she looked like Konan, then she looked like Kakuzu, and he didn't understand.

Sasori brought the Sandaime back to his side and unhinged its jaw. "This is getting too messy for my liking."

Iron sand poured from the puppet's mouth.

"What do I need to know about this jutsu?" Sakura questioned. Chiyo pressed her lips together.

"The Sandaime had a special body that could apply his chakra magnetically, thus developing a technique that changed iron sand into various shapes, creating weapons according to the situation. Are you familiar with Godaime Kazekage and his jutsu?"

"Familiar enough."

"Then think of that when fighting the Sandaime." Wizened eyes drifted over to the girl. "My initial instinct is to tell you to flee because this battle is far more than I could have ever expected." The space between her brows creased. "But, you too are far more than I could have ever expected. Your abilities, your mystery... tell me something, Sakura."

Sakura inclined her head.

"Will your secrets get you killed?"

The girl raised a brow, humored almost, and slipped her katana back into the sheath on her hip. "They've tried."

"Too slow!" Sasori barked. The iron sand hovering in the air concentrated into small spheres and hurricaned down onto his opponents, avoided by quick steps and foresight. Iron rose up from the craters they'd created and warped into sharp rhombi that suspended so high above their heads that some of the corners scraped the ceiling. "Prove to me you're not wasting my time."

The rhombi fall, dust billowing up from where they land.

He shouldn't have been as surprised as he was to see they'd somehow managed to block the attack. But his intrigue was spurned by the sight of three chakra shields protecting them from the blow. The first and second came from the outward pushing plates of the Parent Series' forearms, and the third...

Sasori's eyes positively glimmered. "Even if it's only one arm, you've turned your own body into a puppet." Iron sand leached into every wooden joint, jamming its movement. "As fellow puppet masters, it seems we think alike. But I wonder if it's from the blood we used to share."

More sand streamed from the Sandaime's mouth as Chiyo detached her now useless puppet arm. One-handed and out of depth, there was no other viable way for her to move forward at this rate.

Sasori wondered how much of that fearsome reputation had gone with age. The hag was an echo of who she once was, a shadow of her better self, and it was a tragedy he would never experience—not with this new body, not with his new art, not with his new eternity.

Certainly this was where he would declare his victory.

But.

Sakura strode from behind Chiyo to block her front, not unlike how she'd done so earlier with the jinchuuriki. "The game's magnetism now? Alright. I don't need my steel to fight." She punched her right fist into her left palm and cracked her knuckles. "Utilize me as your puppet."

"What? Sakura, are you sure—"

"It'll be fine, Chiyo-sama."

("It's a shame you'll die here. You would've been such an effective puppet if you hadn't gotten on my nerves.")

Sasori narrowed his eyes. "Tch."

The girl dove forward.

She leapt away from the iron spike he aimed at her and it dragged a chasm through the ground with its heavy weight. His chakra strings weren't strong enough to pull it back from slamming into the cavern wall; it crushed a hole in the rock wall near where the team had broken through in the beginning and the earth trembled beneath them.

He sent an iron pillar careening onto Sakura. She flipped out of the way to avoid it, but then—then one corner of her lips curl up and her eyes glint and this time he saw the blue-gray bloom from her right knuckles down to her wrist and her elbow and she flashed forward to slam that discolored fist into the pillar.

If his body was still human, Sasori would have choked at the sight of the pillar breezing past his face and colliding into the back wall with a shuddering boom.

After a beat, he smirked.

The spike removed itself from the wall and started to twist like a spinning top that followed the girl all around the cavern. She outran it like a jackrabbit from a fox, never dropping pace as her one arm shone that unearthly color.

Her taijutsu prowess was nothing to ignore. He couldn't quite define the line between her own ability and his grandmother's interference, but from what he'd seen of the girl she had never been un-noteworthy. That plain appearance misdirected him from the moment they met and really, he had to hand it to her.

You talk of hidden weapons like it only applies to puppets. People are the same, indeed.

Sakura fired another iron prism off course, and the entire ceiling caved in over them.

"You've read my attack patterns," he said atop the rubble of rocks and boulders. There was a smear of dirt across one of the girl's cheeks and her fingers were curved in close to her palms as she waited in a defensive stance, ready to strike. Shallow breaths left her chest but she wasn't tired yet, not even close.

If he peered at her face, he could see something wild around her eyes. Something exciting.

And that excitement only overflowed after he dispelled the prisms and weaved together all the iron sand from his puppet into a web of needles like it had been spun by a widow; after she dodged each lance and skewer aimed for every vital organ and not earning a single graze; after tanking through the debris with that blue-gray arm and bloodlust in her grin.

After storming the Sandaime Kazekage and putting a leg through its chest and crushing its wooden skull between her fingers.

She retreated to Chiyo's side after her carnage, breathing heavier and sweat slick on her skin.

He was irritated. Truly, utterly, annoyed.

And yet, it was still the best fight he'd had in twenty years.

Never once since joining the Akatsuki had he needed to resort to such measures and the more bodies he collected, the less he'd needed to use the more powerful of his puppets. And as he shucked off his cloak and let the metal coil in his stomach unwind, poison dripping off its silver sheen, he stared down at the old bag and the not-so plain girl with a quirk of his brow and a raspy laugh caught in his throat.

He held his arms out, metal tubes crawling out from his palms.

"Let's try this again," he growled.

The tubes howled as he cast lines of fire across the broken cavern.

Sakura and Chiyo huddled behind the same boulder that he bombarded with flames. He couldn't hear what they were saying or if they were saying anything at all—why would he need to? He had them at the mercy of his most powerful weapon and the only thing they could do was run.

"I'm getting tired of your hiding."

The tubes clicked and switched to spit out a jet of water instead. It was streamlined enough to cut through any and all boulders they could crouch behind where they could lick their wounds. He'd upturn the rubble into shaved pieces if he had to—anything to put them out in the open where he could watch the life drain from their eyes.

"Hey."

Sasori blinked and turned his head where Sakura perched on a higher stack of rubble. She stared down at him with a face as blank as ever, arms crossed over her chest and her katana hung leisurely on her hip.

"You want this fight over, don't you?"

His gaze flickered to Chiyo's dread-stricken expression as she slid out from behind the boulder she hid behind before he glanced back. "What could you possibly presume about me that you could pick out my thoughts?"

"It's a simple question," she said, and her sheer audacity wanted to make him crack a grin. "Do you want this fight over with or not?"

"Say I do." Click, click, click went his hands as the tubes retreated back into his body. "But that's the nature of battle, if a child like you didn't know. Young and naive..." He tilted his head. "Are you naive? I still can't get a read on that."

She shrugged. "I couldn't tell you."

"Sakura!" Chiyo snapped. Her and Sasori turn to look at her and the fear and apprehension sunken deep in the lines in her face. "What are you doing?"

The girl stood up straighter and rolled both her shoulders back that made her impossibly taller than she already was. He was reminded of Konan again, briefly, and trailed her right hand as it clasped the thin baton-like thing, tugging it out of its sheath and holding it close to her thigh.

"I want to bring this to its end," she said. "No more dancing around. Bring out your best weapons." Her eyes flashed, that sharpness winding through them stabbing at the edges. "I'm getting tired of the mess."

Shiff.

Her left arm, the bandages starting to loosen around the bicep and the tips of her fingers, reached into her hip pouch and brought out a small canister. It was about as long as her hand and was absolutely slathered in seals that fattened its bulk almost double. She pressed it flush against her baton, lid side down, and flipped it open.

Chiyo gasped as bright, syrupy blood burst out the canister, and far, far, too much came pouring out. What he supposed were Expansion seals were doing far too good of a job... It gushed and didn't stop and Sasori had no idea what exactly she'd been trying to pull by spilling all this blood on the floor.

Except, it didn't spill. The blood flooded relentlessly, but it outlined some invisible shape that grew longer and sharp and red turned to polished silver iron.

The baton was never a baton in the first place.

Sakura re-adjusted her grip on the hilt of the gargantuan sword she swung to rest on her shoulders.

That sword... he remembered when it had been in the Akatsuki, owned by Biwa Juzo and left to Kirigakure's possession upon his death. Kisame used to lament about its loss and how his old village had already given up the rights to all their legendary blades when they decided to fall to corruption.

A Konoha-nin shouldn't be in possession of that sword.

A child shouldn't be in possession of that sword.

Yet here they were.

Chiyo didn't move, but her eyes went back and forth from not-so plain girl to him and back again. Her human hand shook and sometime in the last few minutes she'd taken back her puppet arm to shake off the iron sand and reattach it to the crook of her elbow.

But then she released a sigh from far inside her soul, world-weary and heavy with the acceptance of the inevitable.

"I didn't want it to come down to this," she murmured. She reached into her bag and pulled out a weathered old scroll, purple and bound in black rope. "I told myself that once I retired, I would never use these again. But it seems it won't work out that way."

The scroll unraveled and ten puppets clad in white garments burst forth.

Sasori hummed. "It's said the ability of a puppet master is measured by the number of puppets they can use. Chiyo-baa's secret 'Number of Fingers.' I'd heard about it—the device you used to bring down a castle all on your own. Shirohigi: Jikki Chikamatsu no Shuu." He used a chakra string to pluck one of his scrolls on his back and dropped it into his hands. "The ten masterpieces by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Father of the Puppetry Arts. I'm impressed."

He popped open a compartment in his chest cavity the same time he unrolled his own red scroll.

Hundreds of chakra strings slithered out his body, and one hundred puppets shadowed the sun.

"But I used these to bring down a nation." He sighed and pressed a few fingers to his forehead. "I admit, I'm appalled at myself. How long am I going to fight a little girl and an old bag?"

"Sasori-san."

Sasori moved his attention back to Sakura—my, he would never forget about her dramatic reveal—and he met her cold, burning gaze. The bandages hiding most of her left arm were starting to loosen around the bicep and the tips of her fingers.

"Prove to me you're not wasting my time."

Oh, this not-so plain girl was going to be the best puppet of them all.

The hundred puppets dangling in the air all descended upon them like sudden falling angels swathed in maroon.

Sakura twirled Kubikiribocho before she pounced with a wordless war-cry. Something at the back of Sasori's head whispered and he paid it no mind, mostly because none of it made any sense. The voice told him that the girl would better fit that part if she had pointed teeth and blue-tinted skin, and what nonsense was that? She looked nothing like Kisame—why was his brain telling him that she should?

She mowed down puppet after puppet like they were made of melting butter. Kubikiribocho never acted as an extra weight; her and her blade moved like water down a stream, flowing in tandem, destroying his puppets in grace and brute force.

His grandmother sent her puppets out like they were foot soldiers in war. They pitched forward with not an ounce of reluctance. The red puppet linked hands with the black haired one and twisted through the air like spinning blades; the vermilion hair in twin buns bisected and beheaded with twin swords; the one with painted blue wood shot cables out its head like an angry kraken; those marked Dharma and Buddha and Sangha morphed a section of the battlefield into a crushing wind tunnel.

Kubikiribocho hurled into the air as Sakura bashed in three puppets in succession before snatching the hilt and windmilling it downwards to slice open three more. The Monzaemon with colossal fists appeared at her back and threw her back into the air where she sliced five more puppets and wrapped an arm around another to drive it back down into the earth with a crunch.

They'd gotten rid of almost half of the Red Secret Series. While it was a loss reflected on him, it allowed him more focus on each individual puppet body. That, and one of them had yet to succumb to his poison.

'What would they do,' Sasori thought, 'when none of them have the antidote?'

His eyes scanned through the roar of the battle.

There!

One of his puppets slashed the hag from shoulder to hip and subsequently was destroyed by a Monzaemon.

"Chiyo-sama!" Sakura called from across the way.

"Don't worry about me! Aim for Sasori—I'll keep all his other puppets in check!"

Sasori locked eyes with the not-so plain girl from across the cavern, and they stayed like that for an instant. Her breathing, him not. Then she propelled herself forward, tearing through the rubble like it was merely grass. Two of the Monzaemon collection flanked her sides, blue wood and twin buns, and kept her sides clear. Any other Reds that managed to slip in the front of either met the executioner's blade or a foot through the skull.

The last of the Monzaemons—the one with the lone eye—unhinged its purple mouth and dropped a crinkled orb in the girl's hand after she leapt to avoid the eleven different swords suddenly thrust in her direction.

She kept running, unfaulting, almost as if she ran faster and faster by the second. A blur of blue and silver in dust clouds until she's close. Too close.

Too much.

He saw it, once more.

The way her arm flowers blue-gray as she slammed Kubikiribocho into the ground, planted her feet on its hilt, and catapulted herself with chakra-enhanced feet.

Airborne, she hurled the crinkled orb as hard as she could and he watched, watched, watched it grow into a lion's head with too many teeth—

Black.

:: ::

Sakura brushed sawdust off her knuckles as the rest of the Red Series suddenly stilled and collapsed into boneless heaps in the rubble.

Sasori and her father didn't get along too much. Granted, Sasori rarely found himself in Ame and when he did he was sure to keep a wide berth away from her. After their initial meeting that would've ended up with her guts all over the floor if Konan hadn't intervened, they never spoke to one another. She could remember one or two days where they might have caught each other's eye through the rain with his Hiruko tail at the ready and her head always ducked down in fear, and that's all they'd ever been.

Strangers on different sides of the street.

She caught her breath as she inspected Sasori's trapped body on one of the cavern walls. A diamond-shaped seal surrounded his wooden frame as the Lion-Headed Kannon mechanism pinned him to the rock, rendered completely immobile and blank and mute.

'Wait.'

"Fuuinjutsu: Shishi Heiko," Chiyo panted. "The seal that completely suppressed all chakra. You can't use your chakra threads anymore. It's over, Saso... ri..."

'Where—'

The old woman collapsed onto her knees.

'—is his heart?'

Sakura turned around and ran, and didn't stop.

(And faintly, she wondered if she'll ever learn her lesson.)

:: ::

Sakura was fifteen years old. And with that fact came the understanding that he hadn't been part of her life now for over half of it.

Kisame sighed and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't recall what Sakura looked like when her and her team fought his clone, but the one thing he could never stop seeing was the way her hands bled as she hacked Samehada through her opponent's body without a moment's hesitation.

It warmed him in a way to know that a kenjutsu ability had flourished in her blood but it was never enough to fight off the chill that maybe, just maybe, she was starting to become like him. He always wanted her to be a good shinobi, not one that mindlessly spilled blood wherever they went.

'Guess that's not a very good dream to have.'

But all that was speculation. He hadn't seen her properly since the Chuunin Exams and he hadn't talked to her years longer than that. Of course she'd changed from that young pup that begged him for stories and hung from his arms and of course he should stop thinking that she was still a baby with too many scars, but... but how could he? How could he think of her as anything different when memories of that seven year old girl napping with her shark plush was all he had left to hold?

He sighed again.

"Kisame-san?"

He waved a dismissive hand. "Just a bit tired."

"We could rest here, if you prefer," Itachi offered. They were somewhere in Earth Country now, weaving their way through swamps and stone for the bounty on their list before they made their trip back to Ame. "We are not operating on strict time constraints."

"It's all good."

Itachi frowned a bit, some concern shining through his gaze. "Are you sure? You have been... off, since we encountered the Konoha shinobi."

"Just thinkin' too much." Kisame shrugged, flashing his partner his best grin as they passed a particularly muddy pit. "Nothin' a fight won't fix."

He had no choice but to plow forward with the hope that his pup would at the very least be alive and safe with only the worries that came with being a loyal shinobi to her new home.

:: ::

The sword slid through her easily—past skin, past muscle—and glided out her other side with a nice new coat of color. A thin streak of red dribbled down the corner of her mouth and Chiyo looked up, blood on her face and horror in her eyes.

"Chiyo-sama," the girl said, and Sasori almost couldn't believe that her voice never wavered. Calm and collected like there wasn't a damned poison sword pierced through her body. "Are you alright? Can you still move?"

"Oh? You're worrying about other people even with this wound?" he questioned loftily. He plunged the steel deeper, only stopping when her left hand gripped the blade near its hilt and held it in place. It ripped at her bandages, but her hand didn't bleed.

The wraps that had begun falling apart from the beginning of the end of their battle were completely torn from her upper arm now and hung limply from her forearm.

Part of her elbow was exposed, and it was wood.

A puppet arm.

"It's like you're an endless bout of surprises," Sasori breathed. "I keep waiting for the other kunai to drop and right when I think it does, I look up and you're still lording it over my head." He chuckled, low and hoarse from the splinters in his throat. "Come now, girl. You've destroyed all my puppets, wasted away my reserves, and you're standing there looking pretty with a poisoned sword in your gut." Her hand clenched tighter around the blade. "I'm eager, I'm impatient. Sakura, don't you think it's time to properly introduce yourself to me?"

(Konan placed a graceful hand behind her back and gently nudged her forward. "This is Akasuna no Sasori. Sakura, introduce yourself.")

His eyes followed her right hand as she reached over to tug the bandages off her forearm. For a split second he was entranced by the delicate work of interwoven wood and dark metal, and he spotted the third Perception seal right between where the ulnar and radial arteries used to be.

"I'm Hoshigaki Sakura," she said. Her fingers—dirt under short cut nails, ash in the crooks of her hands—peeled off the seal slip and her plain image broke. An obnoxious pink shivered down from her scalp to the ends of her hair and her eyes, oh those eyes he found drab were suddenly the painful, startling green that he'd seen once or twice long ago before they'd hidden themselves behind Kisame's bulk like a spineless little mouse. "We've already met."

The sun above them beat down on their devastation from its throne in those brilliant blue skies. Clouds drifted lazily along its surface and the shadows of passing birds caressed them as they passed.

It was silent in the crumbled remains of this no-name cavern with no one except a dying old woman, a puppet on his last legs, and the little girl that Hoshigaki Kisame mourned.

Sasori threw his head back and laughed.

Because it was absurd, wasn't it? It shouldn't make any sense why a child whose body parts should have been scattered sky high in an explosion was suddenly here and grown and deadly—except, it explained everything. Kisame had lost himself for months, going about his duties with the stench of guilt on his clothes; he'd sit in the graveyard for hours as he pressed his forehead against his wife's grave, mumbling apologies in the roar of the rain.

He'd seen Konan in her eyes because she'd once been taken under the Angel's wing. He'd seen Kakuzu in her shoulders because she'd trailed after him like a silent duckling to never stoke his temper.

"It's so strange," he said once his laughter crested back into the pit of his stomach, "how you look more like Konan or Kakuzu rather than your own father."

Hoshigaki Sakura's human arm blazed blue-gray as she snapped the blade at the hilt and drew back, closer to Chiyo-baa but still ready to pounce. She reached behind her to crack the length of the blade protruding out her back until only a centimeter of silver poked out from each side of the wound. She braced her puppet arm in front of her, fingers splayed and ready to attack.

No matter.

He would finish what he started.

Sasori detached the forearm of the current body he inhabited and yanked out the dagger lodged in the elbow joint as he lunged.

"You should have stayed dead, little girl!"

Then.

Sakura curled in her left fingers.

:: ::

The swords slid through him easily—past the canvas of the vessel that held his heart—and glided out his front with a nice new coat of color. A thin streak of purple dribbled down the corner of his mouth, and Chiyo looked up.

"I'm not a puppet master by any means," Sakura panted, and the old counselor's jaw dropped when she realized there were chakra strings on the tips of the girl's metal fingers. "But Kankuro wouldn't let me keep his work without learning the basics."

The sight of Fukuro and Kawako piercing their son's heart... Even as puppets, even as nothing more than wood that carried echoes of the memories they used to be, it brought tears to her eyes as she choked down a sob.

She loved that boy. Her grandson. The little star that grew to hate her because she could never bring herself to tell him the truth of what happened to his parents. Looking back at it now, perhaps if she'd told him they were dead instead of letting him look out the window for souls who would never find their way back home, maybe they wouldn't be scraping their knees in rubble. Maybe she wouldn't be dying from his poison.

Maybe she wouldn't have watched him take the killing blow from a Konoha-nin, just as his parents did.

"You lowered your guard at the end, Sasori," Chiyo wheezed. Under their feet was the Shishi Heiko from the Monzaemon he hadn't thought to look for when trying to slit Sakura's throat, and the girl's quick thinking and unprecedented utilization of chakra strings had allowed her to finally trap her grandson.

To trap, to kill.

The girl fell onto one knee.

"Sakura!"

Chiyo crawled the few steps it took to reach her and assessed the wound.

And nearly recoiled at the sight.

Blood leaked from the puncture, but only slightly, as all the skin around it shone that blue-gray color that turned her skin to the equivalent of stone. But the skin wasn't the only thing her jutsu turned; all the torn muscle and the organ it should have pierced are the same dull color—hardened and still.

"The other team can make it here soon," Sakura murmured, and those insects were buzzing near her ears again. "I..." She gulped down a breath. "I made sure to solidify the area he stabbed to stop the poison from spreading and to minimize blood loss. Hyuuga-san has the antidote. Shino can heal the damage."

Chiyo was simply nothing short of horrified. 'Unbelievable...'

"... I see now. That jutsu you used is Kakuzu's Doton: Domu, isn't it?" Sasori exhaled slightly. "Does the Akatsuki know you're alive?"

Sakura was quiet.

A strangled chuckle trickled past his wooden lips. "Heh. And just how long do you think that'll last you, little girl? The moment Leader-sama finds out about you, there won't be anywhere for you to run. Nowhere for you to hide. Those Perception seals were good, but you know he's better." He grinned as the life continued to bleed out through his heart. "Best find your way back home, pup. The Akatsuki had you once, and they'll never let you go again."

Chiyo watched Sakura turn her head as she held her stomach. She couldn't see the girl's face from here and it was probably as blank as it tended to be, but Sasori's grin went wider and a spike of pity tumbled through her old bones.

She didn't know the full story here, but... what was there not to get? Sakura, apparently born to the Tail-less Tailed Beast of the Bloody Mist. Sasori worked with her father on a regular basis and for some reason he and all those other names he mentioned thought she was dead. She wasn't working for them, not with the way she hid her appearance with those Perception seals or with the way she cared for the other jinchuuriki boy.

Sakura drew in a deep breath and pushed herself onto her feet. Chiyo wanted to pull her back down and force her to rest, but she couldn't bring herself to move as the girl patted her shoulder and limped across the cavern to where she'd stuck her sword into the ground. Her arm still darkened with jutsu, she slammed a fist into the blade until it shattered into blood. She returned it to the sheath on her back, and once more it looked like some oddly shaped baton.

And as she did, she reapplied the undamaged Perception seal on the sole of her sandal before limping to her grandson's first body.

"How... terrible."

Sasori's head was tilted back, eyes trained on the sky. When Chiyo looked at him, all she could think of was what it would have been like to see him grow old. To see him content. Happy.

"What's terrible?" she rasped. "The outcome of this battle, or the fact that you knew you were in my sealing range and decided not to move out of it?"

His lips quirked, and his heart spurt out the final vestiges of purple liquid. "You really are a senile old bat, aren't you?"

And he fell in a clatter of hollow wood, bringing down Fukuro and Kawako in a heap that stopped living a long, long time ago.

She sighed and wobbled up to her feet.

There were no winners here today.

Sakura made her way back over, all of her skin an equal hue and her puppet arm only chipped this way and that, and Chiyo took this minute to stare. How could she expect something like this? The girl was a chuunin, yet she had a friendship with the current village ambassador that was enough for him to build her an arm, a camaraderie with a jinchuuriki who listened to her when he listened to no one else, and had so many—too many—secrets that she was armed to the teeth in them.

The way they unraveled, one after the other and another each more uneasy than the last, they were too many. Too many. Too much.

Just as young as Sasori the day he left.

Sakura offered out her arm. "Do you need help walking, Chiyo-sama? The poison in your system—"

Chiyo grasped her bicep and tugged her down, lowering her voice to a whisper. "I have been alive for a long, long time, girl. Your secrets were not meant for me to hear and thus they aren't meant for me to tell, but understand that they are dangerous. Listen to this senile old bat when she tells you this," she begged. "Do not drown in them, and do not let them win."

Sakura's gaze searched before she smiled, a cut on her lip and blood on her teeth. "They'll only win when I'm dead." She held out her arm again. "It'll be better for you to walk on even ground."

"No need to worry about me, Chiyo-sama. I've been told I'm particularly annoying to kill."

In this moment, she looked like Sasori. There was a darkness that lingered in her eyes and shadows clinging onto her shoulders like wraiths. She was cold and distant, confident with purpose.

Chiyo allowed herself to be helped over the debris.

She wondered if this girl, too, would end in tragedy.

:: ::

Danzo perused the restricted section of the Hokage Library with a careful eye. Tsunade would have wanted nothing more to kick him out and ban him from a place as powerful as this, but he took a certain satisfaction knowing that he had a right to all this information as a member of the Konoha Council.

He dragged a finger along the book spines as his cane clacked against the floor. What had he been looking for again? About a past Hokage? About their allies? Perhaps—

His finger bridged a gap in the shelf, and he stopped to turn his head. The shelves were always tightly packed with texts and scrolls and things of the like, and no one ever came to clean it because everything would have their use one way or another. Yet there was an empty place where a book should be.

And dust had collected in the gap, suggesting it had been missing for quite a while now.

Danzo took the time to pull each and every book from that shelf section and read the titles inside the covers. Ah, the seals section. He was familiar with all the books provided and it seemed...

It seemed that the missing text was none other than An Anthology of Theories and Forbidden Practices of the Sealing Arts, one of the primary texts he'd utilized when creating his cursed seals.

He smiled, ugly and ravenous.

Well, wasn't that something?

:: ::

And here we went with some wonderful fanart by

i_just_follow_him on instagram!

and WattPearl (junetoonarts on instagram)!