In contrast to the 5 minutes or less it had taken to reach the houses, Konan figured she had to have been running for at least 10 minutes by the time the shape of a large building came into distant view. But of course, as a trained ninja, 10 minutes of running barely counted as a warm up, so she eagerly picked up the pace upon seeing it.
When she reached the building, she reflexively suppressed a smile, although there seemed to be no reason to do so. It was large - check. Through its doors, she could see a large room where one would welcome guests - check. It was clearly abandoned - check. But it was still in good condition, with even its pale outsides not much tarnished - check. She examined the large paved area in front of it. The white lines were more obvious, since it hadn't been left for as long as the large store, but the pavement was in an unpleasant condition and everything was quite exposed. Konan, as a ninja, did not like the last one, but of course she realized that may not matter to the others. It didn't matter anyway, because she was standing near a part of the grass surrounding the building which was flat and almost even to the road. There was no reason those things couldn't move over such flattened grass, and she investigated the side of the building to determine that yes, there was a path leading to a flat area of dirt next to the building. The entire back and some of the sides were surrounded by the forest which was pressed up against this building, so that area was decently hidden.
Just to make triply sure, she raced to the front and opened the door, stepped inside. The welcoming area seemed uncomfortable in some way she couldn't identify (it may have had to do with the crack in one wall), so she moved into the rest of it. The ground floor had several large rooms, but only one caught her attention as she passed. As with the welcoming room, she couldn't be sure why. It had a long counter to her left with shelves above, and the right had some short cabinets. In between, the floor was tiled with some sort of decorative pattern in white. The lights on the ceiling were not extremely harsh, but seemed to have dulled over its time. She retroactively realized that the building also had electricity. There was another entryway on the other side from where she entered, and that one did not have a door. The entry she stood in did have a door, but it was propped open. Perhaps that was why it felt comfortable. This room was not an easy trap, nor too exposed. At last, she was sure.
If there was any reason someone would want to convince me there was a god, they just succeeded. I have no idea why, but something inside tells me this is not 'too good to be true'. It's just too good to be coincidental. It could be luck, but… A flicker of a thought went through her mind. It asked, "Why are you believing in these things?" The flicker tried to conjure up fear at her sudden inability to stick to reason, at the idea that there could be something influencing her, etc. That was its downfall. Said flicker was almost instantly crushed by the signal of faith that was telling her these things, and as a result Konan would never realize her inner transformation until it was too late. The groundwork had been laid over the past few years; this was merely the catalyst.
She left the room and continued searching, this time for a writing implement. Eventually she found her way to a room that had a desk in it, and as she looked through its drawers she found a strange blue tube-shaped thing with a tapered point. It looked similar to some writing implements of her world, but of an odd design. She created a single sheet of paper with her jutsu and tried it, finding that it did dispense ink somehow. Remembering some numbers she had seen on a post near the front entrance and a faded sign that seemed to mark the road it was on, she returned outside and wrote them down. She had directions to give to her companions, presumably they would have those vehicles to get here, there was a decent sized room to speak to them in… Konan decided to stop thinking about how perfectly everything was lining up for her to get the Akatsuki back together. It was taking too much time. She turned and retraced her steps, making her way back to the original fork in the road by midday.
Once there, Konan paused for a moment to consider her next moves. There were some considerations to be made before just blindly charging in. She looked both ways, crossed the road, and settled in a hollow under a tree on the opposite side. The shade was pleasant and helped to cool off her cloak, which had soaked up the sun and was now radiating heat onto her, but she did not start to relax. She looked up into the blue spots peeking through the leaves above, and considered her approach. Perhaps they wouldn't be as wary as she had been when she was approached by a stranger, but expecting them to be comfortable would be like expecting them to be retarded. She would have to come up with something to say and a way of holding herself that would put them at ease, make them more receptive to her proposal. She knitted her fingers together and rested her head on her knuckles, pondering. A few lines she thought of and considered, but ultimately discarded, and Konan had no idea what passed for harmless and not up to any trickery in this world. She did narrow down her list of details to include to the bare essentials - any more would be too outlandish - but aside from that she concluded that speaking and acting natural, not scripted, was likely to work the best.
The next consideration was how to find them. That was a complete unknown, since she had no idea where any of them were. She figured that the best she could do there was some variation of hoping she got lucky again and was able to reach all of them. But how to get them all in that building together to hear her? Should she ask them to come at a specific time? No. That's demanding a little too much, to ask them to make plans just because I want them to. It may be easier for them to be spontaneous, to decide to listen to me on a whim rather than on a decision. Decisions take reason, and there is no reason to listen to someone who really doesn't belong here.
This train of thought suddenly reached a switching point, and a possibility occurred to her that she really should have thought of earlier. Why am I here? It felt at first like waking up from deep unconsciousness, which is to say, perfectly natural. But being reanimated in another world is not perfectly natural. Is there any chance I was brought here for a reason? That would certainly explain her unrealized growing conviction that she was not alone, not unseen, perhaps not unpossessed. I do feel somewhat like a puppet. But I did agree to this - even if it was under distress - and it feels good. I suppose if someone has done something to me, and I am here for a specific reason, I forfeited my right to complain a long time ago. The spots of deep azure appeared to dance before her, even though she knew it had to be the green sprouting leaves that were moving. Konan blinked, and the illusion disappeared. Why is today so much more beautiful than yesterday? She shook her head, stood up, and turned, ready to walk into town. How can I have lived my whole life in a state of uncertainty, never knowing, having to make my own answers, and yet not encounter such sprouting fields of questions before today? Maybe it was a consequence of being alone. That thought induced her to start running into town. Sprouting fields of questions were not fully good things, and she was starting to get tired of them.
Once the sparse trees gave way to functional buildings, with other people in and around them and everything, Konan found herself doing something she had never even contemplated doing: wonder-gazing. Similar to tourist gazing, only she was genuinely interested in learning about what she was looking at. Of course, for the first few streets she remembered that her plan hinged, at least partially, on going unnoticed, and so she made an effort to walk as if she belonged there and all was normal while discreetly observing the civilians she passed. A young woman peered at her closely as she passed, and Konan quickly found a post behind a corner to watch this woman from, but upon doing so she saw the young lady peering in a small mirror at her own makeup and looking dissatisfied. So, someone of this world had been looking closely at her appearance, which was the only thing that stood out to the casual eye, and saw nothing except a reason to be jealous. Konan considered the matter and came to the conclusion that someone primarily interested in appearance should be the first to notice of anyone, so she took that as a sign that she would go unnoticed as hoped. Not of course that there had been serious doubt of that.
Once that was resolved, she had her attention available to focus on other things. And that's how a good few hours disappeared from the day, torn out of the normal 24-hour cycle by some mysterious portal because it was impossible that she, a shinobi well practised at paying attention to her surroundings, could have possibly spent that long looking at...ah...how many things? It was hard to remember. So instead she attempted to count the things she had learned, after finding a place underneath a tree in the park close to the center of town. Konan adopted her thinking posture, with her head on her knuckles again, and tried to summarize. She'd learned the relative location of the park, for one. So she had to have made her way around town, learned its approximate borders. But surely that couldn't have taken a few hours of time, unless she'd also spent significant time learning the rules for crossing streets in specific places, watching the "gassing up" of those behemoths called "cars", and learning of the existence of celebrities, corporations, brands, mass production of bicycles, video games, psychotherapy, ents, disposable forks, swiss army knives, schizophrenia, baseball caps, polyamory, robots, fudgsicles, something called "Wikipedia", tan lines, other languages, other continents, 80s hairstyles, the Harlem Renaissance, jaywalking, Arson, Murder and Jaywalking (the concept, not that exact name), Methodists...her eyes snapped open, and she wished for a calendar to check to make sure she hadn't accidentally spent 27 hours instead of a measly 3 simply immersed in this world. Was this normal here, or was she in need of some of that psychotherapy?
The sky above indicated that it was mid-afternoon, so she invested a not-small amount of effort to pushing all this new information out of her head to make space for her thoughts. Priority one: find the other Akatsuki members. Or at least, the strangers that looked like them. Nothing in the past few hours contradicted her previous thoughts that she should look somewhere people usually get together, such as a bar, so she didn't have to do much thinking to decide what to do. The only problem was that she didn't exactly remember where a bar was. She'd seen one at some point, but she didn't remember its exact address. She thought it might have been near the car crash site, but couldn't be completely sure, and the vehicles had probably been moved by now. She sighed and stood up, deciding that she'd probably find it the same way she'd found it the first time. Not to mention, if any of that had been true there might still be a residual connection leading her to him. Konan forgot to consider the possibility of finding anyone else first.
She wandered pretty much aimlessly, looking for any indication that someone was going to or coming from the bar. One street north, then 2 streets east, then west one, north 3, east one, south 5, east 2, south 2 and west one. She paused to consider how useless going in a circle probably was, when a sound caught her attention. It was a small sound, of someone moving quietly. That was precisely why it attracted her attention. She turned around in a hurry, only for something to move on the other side of her at the same time, between her and the wall. It was also the sound of something moving quickly - the only reason she hadn't instinctively leapt onto the nearest roof was because her ears had somehow put together a picture of something small from the noises. Not that small couldn't mean dangerous. She spun around even faster, following the unknown being's path, and caught a glimpse of something black flowing around the corner at about mid-thigh height. Less than a blink, and it was gone. Anyone else would have wondered if they had imagined something, but that thought didn't even occur to the reasonably paranoid kunoichi. She followed it to the next intersection and spun around the corner to face north in the space of one and a third seconds. What she found there was-
Nothing. No small animals or children with long black hair, nothing else that could have created that impression, nothing. Her eyes instantly traveled up the street to the next intersection, attempting to calculate exactly how fast it could have been moving. She'd traveled almost a complete street west to this intersection, had been only a few running steps away. Something running with excellent turning ability could've made it in the time it took her to finish a complete rotation. But there was nothing up the street either.
Nothing, that is, except the exact bar she had remembered. Konan, not one to use "coincidence" as a first explanation, immediately wondered if this was accident or intention. She remembered the voice in the dark from last night. That voice had been within striking distance, but had not harmed her. It had called her interesting, and expressed approval of what she was doing and how she was going about it. It also blended into the dark so well she could not see a thing while looking directly at its source. If what she was doing was so entertaining, it wasn't a stretch to wonder if she'd just received a very creepy form of assistance meant to nudge the action along.
The streets were quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. Konan checked again anyway, then tentatively accepted this explanation and relaxed somewhat. She prepared herself and began to walk up the street to the bar. After a few steps she stopped. She'd overlooked something. She looked to her right at a metal garbage can sitting on the sidewalk with a lid on. It was wide enough for her to stand in, and waist high. She remembered a clinking sound as she turned the corner. She lightly tapped on the lid, and the sound it made didn't seem quite right, as if the vibrations were being absorbed by something. If it really was that voice, somehow it had known what she was thinking last night. It would not do to antagonize such a powerful potential ally. If it was not, then it would also not do to antagonize someone who just wanted to be helpful. She rested her fingers on the lid and said softly, "Thank you," then turned and continued on her way.
She was wrong. As her form grew smaller and more distant, the lid of the garbage can clinked again as it tilted, and lifted up very slightly. A small pair of eyes watched her go. The voiceless one, with pale skin and long black hair, wondered with his golden eyes if she would be his friend. And he was disappointed that she hadn't looked.
.
A ninja, a soldier and a criminal walked into a bar. Unlike the others, the ninja was not here to have herself a good time. Konan wrinkled her nose at the scents of alcoholic beverages she'd never tasted nor heard of. The smell of alcohol was fine. The smell of whatever else was in those drinks was not. Add to that the smell of someone violating the bar's "No Smoking" sign, which was clearly posted, and she had to repress the urge to scratch her head as she wondered why a place like this would be so crowded and full of people seemingly enjoying themselves. The music wasn't even all that good, and if the food was it shouldn't matter since she didn't see anyone eating. If such an atmosphere was good for anything, it was feeling alone and isolated in a crowd. She felt like that now, as the sounds faded into a background blur, a bubble keeping any one voice from reaching her. For such a public place, she was surprised to find it felt so secretive.
Her eyes drifted over the crowd, looking for something distinctive and not finding it. The sights blurred into an indistinct background of people too, and she had to shake her head and take several deliberate steps away from the entrance before resuming her search. Only then did she realize as the pressure lifted that a stranger had been standing right against her arm the whole time. This was not a place for someone with sharply trained senses to be. She shuddered as the ceaseless sensory input overwhelmed her, and prayed that what she was looking for was here.
Konan stopped looking around at all of this and allowed herself to be swept numbly into the bar as more people came in the door. When she no longer felt uncomfortably close to another person, she looked up and realized this bar had a seating area with actual tables and chairs. Several of those tables were occupied, but one was occupied more interestingly than the others. She allowed a smile to reach her face, and strode confidently over.
Hidan
What a headache. There are so many people, my brain feels full. If he would just stop fucking shuffling and finish his fucking drink - Woah.
Hidan's eyes widened as he absorbed the strong-looking lady walking up to him. She was wearing the most kickass cloak he'd ever seen. I've gotta get me one of those. She had blue hair. Like Shark-boy. Wonder if she knows him? Her eyes appeared to glow, and he felt a very, very determined and dangerous feeling wash over him.
He promptly reached over and grabbed his friend's wrist, spilling cards on the table as Kakuzu had been right in the middle of a shuffle. But of course that wasn't even worth noticing in these circumstances. Before Kakuzu could get a sound out, Hidan whispered urgently "Drop-dead gorgeous lady approaching. Try not to be a fuck-up this time," all without taking his eyes off her as she stopped at their table and comfortably pulled out a seat like she had every right in the world to be there with them.
She sat down and looked right into his eyes. Hidan got a feeling of familiarity from her gaze, and he realized that the way she looked into his face so gladly was like she knew him. He didn't recall ever meeting her, but if a lady knows you a lady knows you. She could be some sort of goddess or something, you never know. He could easily imagine her being some kind of goddess. Maybe a goddess of pain or battle or blood, something like that. The feeling around her, like she did have certain connections, did not discourage his thoughts on this matter. In the space of a second, he knew 3 things for sure. One, she was here for a reason. Two, she wanted him for whatever she was doing. Three, he would absolutely do anything she asked.
Her eyes moved from him to Kakuzu, who had stopped his grumbling as soon as Hidan spoke and was now watching her in a very (from Hidan's point of view) unfriendly way. Of course, it was just suspicion at an oddly dressed woman stopping at their table in a way that violated social convention. He didn't remember her either - she was a stranger. And yet this blue-haired lady had seen fit to claim a spot at their table like an old friend. Or maybe a girlfriend. Kakuzu's eyes traveled over to Hidan, both to avoid her oddly intense gaze and because Hidan was still holding his wrist. He seemed to have forgotten entirely and was completely still while watching her every move with glazed-over eyes and a smile like she was someone they knew. Kakuzu returned his attention to the stranger. The look in her eyes was not comfortable, but he trusted Hidan's reactions by now, and agreed that she did seem more relevant than your average bar floozy. His fingers fumbled as he pried Hidan's from around his wrist, and Kakuzu found himself hoping despite his size and strength that she would look back at his half-naked companion so he could take back his usual role of watching silently while Hidan handled the weirdos. Not that she seemed merely weird.
The woman smiled out of the blue and looked down for a moment. Then she looked back at Hidan, who correctly interpreted her smile as amusement and realized how she must have looked to Kakuzu. Holy crap. I've never felt Kakuzu be intimidated like this. She's…oh fuck, I forgot words. Why do I feel like I do know her somehow? There's something in her, no, around her, fuck, with her, no that's not it, something that I definitely know. He reflected her smile back, and there was a moment like they were sharing a private joke. Considering that Kakuzu had no idea what was happening and was glad not to, they were.
She blinked deliberately, and Hidan almost hallucinated a thunk sound as whatever had just been happening ended and Business Mode began. She looked between the two of them very quickly and said, mostly to Hidan, "I have a proposal for the two of you."
Kakuzu narrowed his eyes, but Hidan's widened and he spoke almost involuntarily, "What proposal?"
The woman smiled slightly (a polite smile to get a friendly atmosphere going, not a real one, Hidan noticed) and continued. "My name is Konan. I have something I am trying to find out more about, and I need your help to do so. Actually, I need several other people's help in addition to yours. If you go to this location" - she pulled out a piece of paper with something written on it - "I believe I have found a suitable place to gather up everybody and tell you all what it is I want help with." She held out the piece of paper, and Hidan immediately memorized the address written there.
Kakuzu decided to break from his usual role and said, "I'll need more information before I trust your word on this." He'd seen the paper too, and recognized the address as being pretty far out of town and abandoned. After the effect her gaze had had on him earlier, he wasn't so sure that she would be unable to do anything to them, even if she was telling the truth about needing other people there as well.
Konan didn't have any arguments against that. She looked at Hidan, and experienced a small twinge of relief at his glaring at Kakuzu. Kakuzu looked back, and Hidan just huffed and said, "I'll be there. Any time?"
"No. I'm not sure how long I'll need to gather everyone else."
Although she hadn't offered any clarification beyond "several others," Hidan thought of Shark-boy for the second time this encounter. "Well, if you go outside, turn left and walk two blocks, then turn left again there's an aquarium where a guy I know should be getting off work soon. And if you don't turn left, but keep going for another block, there's a gas station with another guy I know."
Konan smiled slightly, but Hidan could feel her practically flowering, that was such good news. As usual he reflected this feeling and was glad he'd told her, no matter how strongly Kakuzu glared at him. She tucked the piece of paper back into a pocket hidden under her cloak somewhere and got up to leave. When she stood and looked down at him, Hidan felt a sudden itching of his fingertips, a desire to touch. He wondered what that might be since she was totally covered up and all, and then realized the feeling was coming from her. He became aware that he was not covered up in the slightest above the waist, and quite glad for that. The unknown thing he'd felt earlier between them didn't disappear as she walked away, it just felt like it stretched somehow. He knew. He knew her, somehow. And he would make Kakuzu drive him to that address if he had to rip off his own arm and use it as a spear to do it!
Speaking of which...he turned to glare at Kakuzu, who was staring at him with an expression that said Wow. Just wow. Kakuzu raised an eyebrow upon seeing the look on his face and sighed. "We're going to meet up with your new girlfriend no matter what I say, aren't we?"
"Fuck yes, we are going exactly there, and you will listen closely as fuck to whatever she has to say. I'm glad you've finally learned some sense!" Hidan sighed happily and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. He then opened his eyes and got a confused look on his face for a few seconds before turning and asking, "Wait...did you say girlfriend?"
Kakuzu decided he probably wouldn't get as good an opportunity for some teasing ever again. "Yes, I said girlfriend. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's about time you settled down and stopped living like a caveman in the woods. You're about at the age for settling down, maybe marriage, perhaps even kids." Hidan looked like he was going to explode with some combination of embarrassment and anger and end this line of thinking, so Kakuzu quickly added "And you should work on not looking so lovestruck in public. After swooning that visibly, she definitely thinks you're an easy mark for any favors she wants. I wish I had thought to pull out my phone and take a picture, it was so artistic. You could be in a museum exhibition of human emotions."
Hidan held himself back just in time from breaking the bottle Kakuzu was allegedly not done drinking from and threatening him with it. Instead, he reached over and slapped Kakuzu's hand like it was a misbehaving puppy. "Sh-shut up you moron! I wasn't lovestruck! She just felt really powerful and like I knew her and I'm pretty sure there was or is or should be something between us that I don't know what it is. Fuck off!"
Kakuzu decided to let him dig his hole deeper.
"I don't, like, want any of that shit with her! She just looked kind of amazing and fucking sweet and I'm really sure that whatever she has to say will be awesome. Yeah, maybe a decent lay too if she wants to go for that. But that's not what she was here for, and you know it!" Hidan stumbled upon a strategy that might be much more effective, and changed tactics. "Besides, I'm pretty sure I felt you cowering and shit when she was looking at you. You know exactly what I mean when I talk about that look in her eyes! It was like she could've taken care of you in a heartbeat, and you know it, you coward. Don't go accusing me of anything when you think she must be pretty awesome too!"
Kakuzu was pretty sure that any moment now people were going to start looking, and he was ashamed to admit he had felt a shrinking fear-like sensation under her gaze. "I'm no coward, and I will sell you to the zoo if you say that ever again. But fine, if you want to deny it, go ahead. Just don't come running to me if you want a wingman to help you ask her out."
Hidan didn't break the bottle, but he did sweep it off the table where it smashed to the ground, made a hazardous mess, and attracted the opposite amount of attention from what Kakuzu had been aiming for. "Did you just say I'd NEED HELP?!"
Kakuzu fumbled again as he hurriedly picked up his cards and tried to avoid meeting anyone's eyes. "Shut up, shut up you braindead idiot!" He cursed himself under his breath at the same time for using the "H" word. That had never once, ever, been a good idea. That word was only good for provoking Hidan into something stupider than usual. What was he thinking? "Yell at me outside if you want, just please stop now."
Hidan clenched his fists and stormed out theatrically, headed for the car. Kakuzu left money on the table to cover their drinks and the cleanup and left soon after. As he pulled his coat over his tanktop and thanked god he normally wore a mask to hide his stitches, he was forced to ask for the umpteenth time just today why he put up with Hidan's ridiculous childishness. At that moment, all of Hidan's many competencies just didn't seem like enough.
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