Sasori
The first thing Sasori discovered about his hand to hand fighting ability was that he was really good at dodging.
"Woah, you're really flexible!" Laurie puffed as he ducked his head out of the way of her chopping motion. Sasori followed up immediately with a jabbing motion upward that pressed into her upper arm. She winced and her arm went weak, which was good because he was forced to dodge to that side of her body as her leg came in.
He finally replied, "Yeah, I noticed. I didn't know I was this fast."
She paused and changed stance, raised her arms into a block. "Okay, so how strong are you?" She made it look so natural. Someone else might have missed that she probably needed the break from aerobic exercise. Sasori smiled.
He curled his hand into a fist. "How does my form look?"
Laurie lowered her arms to check. "Your fist is pretty decent, but you should shift your stance more. Move your foot back, maybe. It's called 'moving forward.' You should be ready to do it."
Sasori shifted his feet in a way that felt comfortable, and lunged. His blow struck her raised arms and she cried out, "Ow!" Sasori winced as well. He stepped back, cradling his right hand in his left. His knuckles had not appreciated that. The pain faded after a few seconds, but Sasori retained lesson number two about his hand to hand fighting ability: he was not good at direct blows.
Laurie lowered her arms and rubbed them, wincing as her hands passed over the bruising parts. "Ow. Okay, full disclosure: I haven't done anything like that for a long time. I'm not sure if I ever did. The style I learned focused a lot more on chopping and other stuff that's not punching."
Sasori checked his fingers. No bruising, and they had stopped complaining. "I think that only hurt because I have good arms or something. My hands don't appreciate this. Your style sounds good."
Laurie nodded. "Yeah."
They took a short break for her to go back to the desk and see if anyone had arrived, which was not the case. She came back with a water bottle. Sasori poured some into his mouth gladly before handing it back. He took a moment to wonder about his fighting style.
Okay. Let's see: I'm good at avoiding getting hit, but not at dealing damage. My instincts lead me to do things that might be good for getting someone off me, but aren't so effective on their own. My original used puppets. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply while he tried to add that all together into a mental video of how his original probably fought. He opened his eyes shortly after. Something wasn't adding up.
They got back to their feet and tried again. This time she showed him a couple moves and encouraged him to use them against her. Sasori kicked the boss's desk aside, figuring he would need more room. It also gave him an intense morale boost. He lunged forward, trying to combine his speed, her advice, and the instincts that had led him to do that jab earlier. He landed several blows, but they landed clumsily and threw his weight off. She reached in and scooped his leg out from under him with almost no visible effort.
Sasori got back up. This wasn't working very well, and it was working a lot better than beginner's punching had. Nevertheless, he wasn't tired. "Rematch?"
Laurie nodded, and they tried again. This time he weaved around her blows much better. "Hey," Laurie complained, "You're just dodging again." Her next attack received a sideways jab, another matter of reflex. Instead of taking that as a good chance to dodge, he tried to land a hit. She blocked with her weakened arm easily enough and took advantage now to knock him to the floor again. She lowered her arms and removed her jacket and outer long-sleeve shirt, catching her breath and hopefully cooling off. Sitting down on the floor across from him, Laurie said, "Okay, it's like you're really good at keeping yourself safe, but when you do your hands are out all over the place. They're not there for you to use at all. You need to get them in more."
Sasori looked up at her with dawning comprehension. "My hands?" He remembered how his original used strings to control his puppets. If his hands were tied up with that… Son of a bastard. I've never learned to fight up close at all. He got to his feet. "Rematch?"
Laurie looked at him as if her entire perception of him was changing. "You're not even hot? How?"
Sasori opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he realized he had no idea what to say. He had heard everyone else talking about how no normal people noticed anything strange, in fact regarded everything as perfectly normal, but did that matter here? It was one thing for normal people you bought things from or passed in the street to not mention anything, but somehow it felt different to have a conversation about alternate worlds with a real person who just happened to be normal. Laurie seemed pretty reasonable, just like everyone else he knew. Sasori had trouble imagining that she was really so different from himself.
Laurie seemed to get worried when he failed to respond to her not-serious, almost joking question. Her eyes searched his face. "Are you okay?"
Sasori looked down at her. I don't have time for this. He was careful to look somewhere else before continuing so she wouldn't think he was growing increasingly irritated at her. I don't have time for a single second of this. I don't have time to deal with my house being broken into, I don't have time to waste worrying about how much to say about everything she forced me into hearing about. I just don't want to bother. His hands curled and tightened.
He cut off whatever else Laurie might have been about to say with a look. He uncurled his hands and exhaled. "I don't have time for this." Then his eyes sprang open and he turned to face her. "I'm a ninja. The lunatic who broke into my house is a much more powerful ninja who promised to teach everyone about what our originals did, because it turns out we're not real. I am planning on releasing some of this bullshit here, getting my laptop back, and getting the hell away from that crazed bird. That's why I'm not even hot. My original probably had to deal with even more of this than I do. I don't envy anyone."
Laurie continued sitting there with mouth agape while he recovered his breath. Sasori could feel the tension drain from him. It feels a little nice to have told her… Then she shook herself. Sasori waited for whatever would happen to happen. The inevitable was good. The inevitable could be adjusted to. He only didn't want to have to be pulled two ways at once.
Laurie summed up his rant as, "So, you've had some intense aerobic training before?"
"Not this version of me, but yeah, sure."
"Um… Okay." Her shoulders slumped. "If I'd known that, I wouldn't have said I could take you down. Sounds like you're miles ahead even if you don't know how to hit."
Sasori's face changed. He supposed that meant something, but what? She…really doesn't notice at all. Nothing about this seems wrong to her. Is that okay? Do I want her to recognize that there's something wrong around me? He had no idea.
"How...how do you not see what's wrong with that?" he asked in a low whisper.
Laurie got up. "Hey, it's okay. You're okay. You're not wrong." Sasori saw it coming, but was still surprised when she hugged him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and squeezed tight. This is weird. "It's okay," she whispered into his shoulder. When was the last time anyone hugged me? He gave up. Sasori let his eyes sag shut, his arms relax. He did not hug her back but neither did he resist. Hm. This is nice…
Eventually she let go. He opened his eyes and looked at her with his usual noncommittal, blank look. Laurie was unsure what to do with herself. "S-Sorry." Sasori shook his head no. She had nothing to apologize for. He used the puppet strings jutsu to open the door. There was no need to hide anything from her anymore. He went out, walked into his own workshop. It would make a good place to think for a while. Some instinct compelled him to take a look out the small window first.
Laurie followed him, unsure if that was the right thing to be doing or not. "Sasori? You...need anything?" He raised a hand and waved her over without taking his eyes from the window. She walked over and looked out at whatever he was looking at.
They both stood and silently stared at what was out there. The little bike Sasori had left outside after fixing was gone. In that same spot was a larger, adult-size bicycle with a broken chain. But it wasn't alone.
Across the lot, another bike was propped up on its kickstand next to Sasori's motorcycle. It was a beautiful shade of silver, and a racing bike that could not have been ridden out here without suffering some shocks. It had no dirt on it. Sasori slowly raised his hand and, gently tugging on Laurie's arm, brought them both away from the window in a way that hopefully didn't attract too much attention.
They both raised a hand as if to point to the outside, lowered it, and shook their heads as one. Sasori was torn whether to bang his head against the wall or celebrate. But they had silently agreed not to talk about it, so he did neither. "Rematch?"
"Yeah. Maybe you can practice moving slowly, with your hands in a good place this time." She was in the boss' office before he had taken a single step. "Or is Mr. Ninja tired?"
Samehada
Samehada crept out of his hiding place and up to Yahiko, who was sitting some distance away from the back stoop on a log. Yahiko jumped before he looked down and realized who it was. "Hey. Where have you been? Kisame left a while ago."
Samehada pulled inward, making himself seem small, and wriggled under the nearest plant. He hoped Yahiko would interpret this as 'hiding,' which was what he had been doing ever since he'd gone looking for Kakuzu after Kisame left and stumbled across Konan's traces. Her chakra, which he thought was the thing that the people put out which tasted good, did not taste quite right. He'd chosen to stay away from that entirely.
Yahiko tilted his head, confused. "Well, whatever you were doing, maybe you can keep me company now." He reached down and paused, waiting until Samehada wagged his tail before petting the shark on the nose. "Hee-hee. I've never seen a shark wag its tail before. Are you sure you're not a dog?"
Samehada growled no. Yahiko resumed petting with a smile. "I don't know what that means, but okay. So, we're busy coming up with ideas for how to defeat a demon. Or, well, they are. I don't really want to be fighting anyone. I hope Nagato and I, and Konan probably if the succubus-lady is still angry, can talk her down." He gestured to Konan and Kakuzu on the back stoop, the former sensible enough not to lean over the latter's back too closely, although he was still visibly irritated by her presence. "I guess it is good to know, but, don't tell anyone, but I'm a little worried." Yahiko lowered his head into his shoulders as if hiding. "You weren't there, but Konan did a lot of talking a few days ago about our originals killing people, and Kakuzu really thought that made sense. I don't think I can tell him he's wrong the way Nagato did."
Samehada growled softly and snapped his teeth in Kakuzu's direction. Stitch Human shouldn't be mean to Nice Human. Nice Human is good. He licked Yahiko's hand to comfort him.
Yahiko looked struck. "Yeah. I might not know what to say, but Nagato's always said I know what to do. I'll prove he's wrong with my actions! Thanks." He moved off the log and sat down on the grass, inviting Samehada to settle in his lap. Samehada yawned and curled up there. These humans were funny. Nice Human would be good to play with while Stitch Human distracts Dangerous Cutting Person. He promptly uncurled and bumped his head into Yahiko's chest, wagging his tail. Yahiko held him still for a few seconds while he figured out what Samehada was trying to say. "...You look happy. Hey, want to see some cool things I learned I can do?"
Samehada agreed. Yahiko stood up and turned to walk into the forest. "Okay, so, I actually can do a few cool things. Earlier- "
Earlier, Nagato had told him about safety in numbers, which was why he'd found Kakuzu before approaching Konan. Yahiko turned and looked back. A few pieces of paper fluttered wildly in the air as Konan paced back and forth behind Kakuzu. Neither of them seemed to notice. Kakuzu was even more irritated looking. Samehada grabbed his lower leg and started chewing. Play! Play away from Dangerous Hunting Person.
Yahiko pulled his lower leg loose and came to a decision. "Sorry. Maybe I'll show you later. Can you see them from there? I think Kakuzu could use some help." Samehada propped himself up on his fins and let out a rattling growl as loud as he dared make it. Dangerous White Claw Person tastes stronger! Dangerous! Stronger taste means danger!
Yahiko stared with wide eyes. Samehada wondered if Nice Human was a little stupid. He certainly didn't seem to understand why Samehada was so agitated. Yahiko looked up at Konan, then back down at Samehada. "Is it something about Konan?"
Samehada threw himself into paroxysms flopping up and down the way humans did to say yes. Yahiko relaxed. Relax? Nice Human… Samehada whimpered. He didn't want to lose someone like Nice Human.
Then Yahiko bent down. "Don't worry. I made a promise. Anytime I try to help someone, I make myself a promise that I'll stay with them until they're helped or I'm really, absolutely sure it would be better to go. I'm not sure of that, and she's not helped. So it's okay. Don't worry about me. It would really hurt me more to be away but safe than if she hurt me. So…" Yahiko waved his hands around. "So don't. I don't like it when other people worry about me. Don't."
He tried to say more for a few seconds before giving up. Samehada let out a questioning growl. Why does Nice Human like hurting? That made just no sense to the shark. And he still didn't want Nice Human to be hurt by Dangerous Claw Person. But Nice Human had said not to worry, so Samehada lowered his head and growled his resentment quietly.
Yahiko reached out and patted him on the head. "I know. I'm just...I don't know what I'm trying to say. I know worrying about me is what people who care about me want, and I'd never do anything to hurt them, but it kind of hurts me too when they worry? ...I just want to stick around and help her. I think the best way to keep me safe is to help, since I don't think it's the right thing to do to stop. So…" He stopped short of asking Samehada to help. That would be asking a little too much. Or would it?
Samehada let out another questioning growl, this one with undertones of despair. It was a You're making my head hurt, I'll just give up and do what you say growl. He nuzzled Yahiko's hand and looked toward Kakuzu and Konan. Nice Human probably couldn't sense chakra like he could, so Nice Human couldn't know that the chakra was burning and wild and erupting off of Dangerous Person. It made Samehada's tongue curl back into his mouth to remember the taste of it. The chakra was wrong. Not bad tasting, but wrong in some other way. Yes, Nice Human needed to be protected from this.
Yahiko wrapped his arms around the shark briefly. "Great, thank you. I think I'll just ask if she'll come with me and Nagato to do that, get her off of Kakuzu's back for a few seconds. He looks really annoyed." He patted Samehada on the nose and added, "I guess I'll just leave you to do whatever it is you want to do, then."
I'll taste some of the burning chakra so it doesn't burn Nice Human, Samehada decided. Yahiko walked up and called, "Hey," to get Konan's attention. Samehada rushed up and started chewing on her leg before she could do anything bad. Sometimes the chakra did taste bad when it was filled with danger and the wanting to hurt someone, but it was okay now. It was even a little warm. She must have been amused at Samehada's antics, from that and from the way she didn't pull her leg away.
Kakuzu sighed and closed the laptop.
Deidara
Having gone shopping the day before, there was only so much of his own life to attend to before Deidara's worries about Sasori imposed on his mind intolerably. It was just after noon when he found himself outside the auto shop. Business was very slow today; he didn't see anybody in to get their vehicle looked at.
Deidara looked around as he walked in. The place really looks deserted, yeah. That's probably good, hm! Or was it? Deidara had the distinct impression that Sasori liked working, but also the impression he did not like people hanging around. So was it good or bad to not have customers around? Deidara abandoned this complete waste of thought space upon seeing that even the front desk lady was gone.
What the hell? Is something wrong? He walked past her desk into the main body of the shop. A muffled thump came from behind a closed door at the end of the hall. Deidara crept closer. Muffled voices came from behind the door. One of them laughed. The other chuckled with genuine, but reserved, humour.
Deidara knocked two times, then opened the door slowly. His mouth fell open as he saw Sasori sitting on a desk wedged into the near right corner of the room, looking over some bruises on his arm. Sasori was smiling as he contemplated the bruises, looking into them as if they had some deeper meaning than ordinary injury. The front desk lady was also there, sitting on the desk. She was in a T-shirt and looked like she wanted to be in shorts as well, and held a water bottle in one hand. She stared at Deidara with alarmed curiosity. "Oh, hi. Um…" She perched on the edge of the desk, looking increasingly flustered as the seconds passed. "Uh…"
"He's not a customer," Sasori explained. Looking up from his bruises, he waved Deidara in. "He's my friend, and also a ninja."
"Oh," the front desk lady sighed. She still looked very embarrassed. She got up and skittered over to the other side of the room to get her long sleeved shirt from where it lay against the wall beneath the board.
Deidara finished assessing the situation. "Heh. Having fun, hm?" he asked Sasori. The look he shot more than indicated what he meant.
Sasori allowed no sign of recognition of what Deidara meant to show on his face. Instead he smiled and held up his arms. "Yes, yes I have. Laurie here has studied martial arts in the past, and has a skill level similar to mine. She's been showing me some things."
Laurie piped up from where she was putting on her shirt, "He's a complete novice. I've been handing him his ass for the past hour. He's good at dodging, but has no idea how to strike."
Sasori shot back, "My original was a puppetmaster who used strings coming from his fingers. Of course I'm a novice. You can't possibly be surprised that my hands are nowhere near fighting position." He shifted his weight over and whispered to Deidara, "She's sensible and I didn't care, so I told her. It's fine."
Deidara opened his mouth, but Laurie joined in with, "Well, he's not that bad, really. He can give some sharp jabs to keep me off him, and his endurance is better. I'd have landed on this floor myself if we didn't take the occasional break after I knock him down."
Deidara closed his mouth and looked sideways at Sasori. I call bull on this, hm. Sasori looked genuinely confused at this look. Deidara was impressed at his faking skills; no way could Sasori not get it.
Sasori shook his head. "Dei, this is Laurie. Laurie, this is Deidara. He's an obnoxious kid I once helped, and he hasn't left me alone since. He was there when I got the notification this morning."
Laurie's eyes darted between them as she returned to her position on the desk. "The notification...about...that?"
"Of course, yeah. The break in," Deidara clarified. He turned to Sasori. "You jerk! Here I was a little worried, and you're spending all your time alone with a beautiful woman, hm."
Sasori's eyes widened and his face twisted. His hands formed into the form that Laurie had taught and he viciously jabbed Deidara just beneath the neck. Deidara dodged, but not enough. He received the blow in the neck. "Ow!" he yelped as he held his hand up to his neck and wondered if that had been hard enough to injure any blood vessels.
"Sorry," Sasori apologized, "I was aiming for just below your neck, where it wouldn't have hurt as much."
Laurie went over to check Deidara's neck. She sighed in relief and said, "I don't see a huge bruise rapidly forming, so probably no internal bleeding." To Sasori, she added, "Good form. Maybe practice more to take into account a moving person."
Sasori shivered. "It's all his fault for suggesting perverted things like that."
Dei whined, "It's not perverted. Perversion is things that aren't normal, and it's totally normal to enjoy the company of a lady, yeah."
"No." Sasori kicked this general topic into a dumpster fire. "So, I assume you're here because you were worried about how I was handling the break in, or something like that."
"Yeah." Deidara recovered. "So how are you, huh?"
"Fine," Sasori answered.
"Not so fine," Laurie disagreed. "To celebrate the boss being out today (this is his office by the way, don't tell anyone), he called someone earlier. Whoever it was mentioned that some lady broke into his house. This practice is helping him take out his feelings about that."
Dei's eyes grew wide. "Oh...shit." He remembered as well as Sasori did Hidan coming in last night to ask after Sasori's laptop for their research. "The laptop, hm?"
"Yeah." Sasori sighed. "The frickin' laptop. Kakuzu's looking after it."
Deidara gulped. "Damn. So...doesn't sound like you're going to be able to do that, huh?"
They looked at him in confusion. Deidara reminded Sasori of his earlier threat to test out his ninja powers on whoever was responsible. Sasori's fist tightened. He said nothing.
"So how are you doing, hm?" Dei asked in a gentle tone, sitting on the desk next to Sasori. Would he like a hug or not? Probably not.
Sasori was quiet. Eventually he said, "I would like to find out more about what is happening." He made no move for the boss's phone. Deidara realized and pulled out his own phone, dialed Kakuzu's number.
"What?!" Kakuzu growled after picking up. Deidara jumped back, as did Sasori and Laurie because Kakuzu had snarled loudly enough for them to hear.
"Is this a bad time, hm?" Deidara asked, after a second of recovering his wits.
"Ugh." Kakuzu huffed. "Psycho Lady's been breathing down my neck for the past hour to get me to somehow find information that doesn't frickin' exist faster." There was commotion on the other end of the line. Deidara thought he heard other people's voices, and Kakuzu snapping back.
Eventually Kakuzu returned. "Anyway," he continued, "We were looking into how to destroy a demon. There is no information about that available at all. None. An hour wasted for nothing."
Deidara was unsure of how much he should say in front of Laurie. "Ummm…" he stalled, looking between her and Sasori. Sasori shook his head and mouthed, Go ahead. "Don't we have a demon down the street?" Deidara asked. "Have you asked him?"
There was silence. Kakuzu deadpanned, "Do you hear yourself?"
Deidara facepalmed. "Okay, yeah, that was stupid, yeah. Ummm…"
There was more sound on the other end of the line. It was relatively quiet, then took a sudden leap in volume that had Deidara pulling the phone away from his ear. It sounded like happy noise, at least.
"What the fuck was that, huh?" he asked Kakuzu once the noise subsided.
"The fuzzy orange airhead I'm here with loves your idea," Kakuzu accused. "He wants to leave Samehada with me and go, alone, to talk to the demon and ask how we can kill his kind."
Deidara went pale. "No, no, that's not what I was thin- "
"Too late," Kakuzu cut him off. "He raced away before we could talk sense into him, and now Konan's going too. If the demon doesn't kill him first, she will. I hope you're happy."
"What have I done?" Deidara whispered.
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