Tobi comes out of the swirling of his space-time jutsu and meets up with Deidara & Sasori not too far from the land of fire's border.
"Where's Kabuto ?" inquires Tobi.
Sasori opens up one puppet's inside to reveal a paralyzed and completely broken Kabuto.
"He'll still be paralyzed for a little while though."
"No worries. Good work. Join Kakuzu & Hidan now." Tobi absorbs Kabuto's Body through his eye and follows him in the swirl afterwards.
"We'll be on our way then." Sasori turns and heads to the Hidden Leaf.
"Yo, master Sasori... This jutsu was the same one Kakashi used to chase me earlier; though he couldn't use it as often or phase through things like Tobi does. Hm." Deidara points out.
"Space-time ninjutsu, huh... Might want to devise something against it." Sasori ponders, then asks Deidara. "Your style is pretty straight-forward. How do you deal with such gimmicks ?"
"I was flying away and moving around before it could suck me whole. He cast it from far away, but was still able to accurately aim at me. I was able to partially dodge it, and it luckily only got my arm. But things might not go so smoothly next time. Hm."
"So movement then... It's true that puppet users are limited in terms of mobility." Sasori looks up, opens his Puppet Hiruko's mouth and accurately shoots down an eagle with one Senbon. It falls right in his hands. He then attaches chakra strings to it.
"Defiling corpses again. How unethical." Deidara looks curiously, although all three of his mouths disgusted at what's coming next.
"I have to study flying dynamics and this is the fastest way to do it while walking."
"We could be flying to Kakuzu and Hidan. And here I thought you hated waiting. Hm."
"We already went over this. They have intel about our two-man teams, so we're going to ambush them. Flying is just going to alert them. Good grief... you're terrible at covert operations." Sasori answers Deidara and gets back into his 'study'. He plugs and unplugs chakra threads all over the eagle's body, and makes it move certain parts everytime. Slowly but surely making progress, a few of the bird's muscles twitch, then move. A few maneuvers later, he starts flapping the eagle's wings, but no flight yet. Making the wings flap harder didn't amount to anything either.
"Hm. What am I missing ?"
"You're too used to puppets and their mechanical movements, master Sasori. Even I can clearly see that all you do is flap the wings. To fly, you need to use its whole body accordingly, its whole body! "
Sasori, not shifting his gaze from the bird, heeds his partner's advice, and sure enough it worked, althought briefly. The bird makes a wobbly flight, with Sasori pulling on its string like a kite.
"Oooh... Good stuff, master Sasori ! Just like that ! Hm."
In that moment of enthusiasm, he makes the wings flap harder to give it momentum and stabilize it. It works for a few seconds, but eventually ends up breaking a wing's joint.
"This is fun. I'm getting the hang of it. I'll prototype a miniature version." Sasori says, with a rare smile on his face. He then summons a few puppets, slices a clean cylinder shaped stump out of a tree, and puppet parts out of that stump with an insane swiftness and precision.
"His eyes... He's totally into it. He's in the zone. Ah, how that makes me jealous as a fellow artist." Deidara thinks to himself in both admiration and tingling sense of rivalry.
Sasori splits a giant rock horizontally, stops momentarily to assemble a few pieces together, occasionally poking holes and inserting strings. He casually strips a few leaves and weaves them into his little puppet's wings, making sure the proportions are matching with the real thing.
"Alright let's see." Chakra strings attached. The headless prototype flies.
"Remember, only flap at first. Then the rest is mostly gliding." Deidara throws in a lightweight instruction, helping but not interrupting Sasori', whose gaze and focus are on his creation, yet he didn't fail to absorb the advices he's given. The puppet glides on the wind smoothly.
"Good. Good. Now, let's add a little something." Sasori inserts a head and a tail to it. The change of weight causes it to lose balance and barely take off.
"A bit more on the wings then." And this time surely, it flies, in the most elegant way yet.
"Experiment complete. Great success. Let's pick up the pace a bit, Deidara. Still stealthy."
On the other side of the world, in the Hidden Rain village. Tobi comes swirling out of his one-eyed mask, presenting with him Kabuto.
"Here's the spy Sasori sent. That should give a hint about Orochimaru's wereabouts."
"Good work. The rest is up to me." Pain brings forward Ningendo - Path of the Human - and lays his palm on Kabuto's head.
"Hooh... Now that's a jackpot. Sasori did well." After getting all intel, he extracts his soul and inevitably kills him.
Meanwhile, in the Hidden Sand village, things took a grim turn. On top of the poor economy, Gaara's death marked the Third time a Kazekage gets assassinated, and losing the One-Tail only makes things worse. The top brass, not wanting to make another mistake like the Third Kazekage's assasination, hesitated in sending manpower and left matters in Konoha's hands. Anti-kazekage groups who were lying low are more furious than ever, demanding a stronger Kazekage, and stronger shinobi overall. Temari, Kankuro and the Chiyo's brother, are contemplating possible solutions to this disaster, and solutions must come sooner rather than later, as the village's situation is dire. And by a stroke of fate, a mysterious silhouette appears in front of them...