Sasori
The white bird landed some distance away, behind some houses. That was fine. Laurie would need some time to look for her chance, and Sasori was doing well enough with Nagato.
Nagato hesitated before running after the succubus. He was very capable with nothing more than his pushing and pulling powers. Sasori found their half-joking claim that he could have been in charge of something to be more and more credible.
Sasori was still running to his place, which was deeper in the houses and in the direction Nagato had pushed her. Nagato had seen her coming, and pointed without time for words. Sasori leaped over some badly untrimmed bushes and crouched behind them, ready. He'd run in the pointed direction without a word, and though the demon was not in his sight he understood the little ambush Nagato had arranged was working.
The demon screamed loudly. Sasori's guts trembled faintly. Everyone knew he had no kind of affection for it; but, of course, he was a person of this world where he had not met enough suffering and death to harden his heart. That sound reminded him of a cornered cat. Sasori reframed the situation in a more helpful way. The sooner he captured her, the sooner this could stop. His fingers twitched, chakra almost bursting with readiness.
Meanwhile, the succubus got to her feet. Dripping with uncountable tributaries joining into small rivers of blood, with the smell of used nesting material around her and making that terrible sound, Nagato was forced to a stop. He looked around quickly and saw nothing but houses through which he could throw her if he intended to use his powers again. It seemed like he would not be intending to use his powers again. Nagato swallowed down nausea and turned to face the succubus. He couldn't continue with the half-formed idea he'd seen in her approach. A paper butterfly fluttered past, fluttering angrily but still willingly staying in a supporting role. For now. Nagato shook his head no at it. His heartbeat quieted and he relaxed a little. How could anyone fight like this without such communication, he didn't know.
The succubus looked at him through ragged hair. This human was not like the woman. He was a more normal kind that, for all his powers, wasn't nearly so much of a threat. None of that woman's paper was around, as far as she could see. She took a chance. Damnit! With that ambush, any doubts she'd had that there was a plan in place were blown away like smoke. There were probably more. But if she could get this one out of the way…
Nagato saw the transformation in progress and averted his eyes, backing away as he did so. The incubus' eyes narrowed in triumph. Demon's instincts were never wrong. He'd hoped against hope before when he got no indication of anything from that annoying mutant, but he'd been sadly right to get nothing. This one would be easy.
That was when a large, dark-colored human came in from wherever he'd been hiding, reaching out for the demon with impossible black tentacles. The incubus turned and ducked into the house whose front yard he'd been thrown in, exiting by the back. He returned to female form as he did so. Damnit!
She'd come from the forest. The humans were in among the empty houses somewhere. And the dark human had leaped down from the sky. She knew what lay in the direction he'd come from. It would be a good place for these cowardly rats to hide together until they mustered the courage to come out. She headed deeper into the houses, angling north.
Shit. Sasori heard the news (Konan had a butterfly on every rooftop by now) and cursed his luck. He didn't blame Nagato at all. It was just unfortunate that she was heading the exact opposite direction from his hiding place. Sasori refused to let himself be drawn into a wild chase. He headed west and south to the clay bird.
Kisame and Yahiko huddled together, the shark man hoping his new partner was up to the task. "Ready?"
The orange haired ninja nodded, his eyes brave. They'd see how well that held up. "Ready."
They had no water around, but it was getting cloudy and they were surrounded by overgrown plant life. There was plenty of water in plants. Couldn't be that hard to mess with it. They raced out to intercept, counting on Konan to stop them just before they actually came within sight. There was no way Konan knew what they were planning, but it was good that she would count on them. Their earlier conversation had gone:
"Lot of greenery everywhere."
"Yeah, almost more moss than grass."
"Huh. Moss...you think…?"
Nods of agreement.
Yahiko had mentioned to Kisame that they didn't have to make signs to use water all the time, and it was better than sitting around. Kisame was pretty sure they could do something. Pretty sure.
Kisame thought watery thoughts and grabbed two handfuls of moss in a lawn. It kind of worked, but the plants held firm. He ripped it straight out of the ground and stomped on the moss. Yahiko whispered something to a bush.
The demon came around the corner, and got bits of moss and dirt in her eyes, as well as a bush just barely brushing her shoulder. She howled again and stumbled back, turning to fight. It was just a bit of mud and a brush, but a brush in the dark is the favorite trick of spooksters everywhere. She jumped backward against a predicted attack, scrambling to clear her eyes in the meantime. Yahiko and Kisame followed her graceful movements and strong muscles as she did so.
Itachi had been wondering what sort of mild thing the most peaceful person in the entire group would do. He thought it would maybe buy time, at best. Someone needed to be there to take advantage of it. Itachi's eyes burned with the Mangekyo Sharingan. He would only have one chance.
As soon as he heard her frantic movements stop, and the demon say in disbelief, "What? Why?" Itachi was on the move, leaping out from where he'd circled behind her with his eyes closed. It felt strangely not-weird. He heard her pivot, and heard her pivot stop. Itachi snapped his eyes open and channeled chakra through them.
The sun churning resentfully behind the clouds overhead turned red and came out of hiding. The world darkened. She was still the most beautiful thing Itachi had ever seen. His chakra, like the rest of his mind, darted out of his control. He could do nothing to change it. She would have to break out of his jutsu by herself.
Or, as it happened not long later, both Itachi and the succubus could be run over by a giant clay bird crash landing into the ground, Sasori indicating forward and down while Deidara obeyed with his eyes squeezed shut. Laurie darted in out of breath just before this and pulled Itachi backward so his neck wouldn't be snapped from above. The giant weight broadsided Itachi instead, performing a single beat of CPR on his ribcage. His head did smack painfully against Laurie's ribs as they both hit the ground, but through the pain Laurie didn't think anything really dangerous had happened. She hoped.
Deidara was thrown off. Sasori had jumped off just before landing and caught him. The redhead eased him to the ground as fast as possible and leaped over the bird to drag the demon from beneath its tail. But she was already beginning to fight. Sasori stopped, not pulling her from beneath the bird nor doing anything else. His fingers twitched to do what he was here for, but Sasori didn't move. He couldn't see in his mind what he was to do next.
My strings aren't ready for this. He couldn't believe he'd only realized this now. The succubus pushed the clay bird up somewhat because it wasn't very dense and crawled halfway out from under it. I have sticky strings. They don't work on their own. They're puppet strings, not normal ones. Her other half wriggled out from the bird. They need something on the other end.
A counterweight was the first thing Sasori considered. If he even attached them to small rocks, that would do. There weren't any small rocks around. She had gotten enough breath back for some inaudible curses and was trying to stand. But Sasori needed something, anything to put on the other end so the rest of his string was free to coil. She stood and glared straight at him. Sasori recoiled as he had before from her aura which was supposed to grab him like honey. Like glue.
That's a bad idea. Glue's weak on its own. It also needs something else to hold together in order to work. Could he maybe get rid of the glue somehow…? The succubus shook and her features began to change yet again. The demon made itself a very large, very strong body and lunged for the red-haired little mutant that had caused all this, brought the demonlike woman down behind it and these other men with their tricks like throwing mud of all things in its eyes and fooling it into thinking it was in real danger and then -
Sasori reached up and snapped his fingers out at each other. Sticky end met sticky end, and, to Sasori's surprise, broke up as the normal chakra of the strings met and fused. The result was one string, bound together in the middle in a more stable arrangement than Sasori had feared. Sasori released more string as fast as he could as the demon crashed into him, meeting the string head on. They fell to the ground together.
Crack. Sasori's head went spinning. His chakra strings did nothing as a shield, not in this position. The demon pinned his shoulder to the ground, rearing up to send his head spinning from the other direction. Some of its blood got on his face. At least Sasori hoped that was the demon's blood. His vision was adversely affected. All he could do was focus inwards and keep drawing on himself. Increasing quantities of string pooled between them, useless.
Need to get it off me. The demon brought down another fist, the look in its wounded face truly demonic. Sasori cried out, in more mental than physical pain from its touch. This was truly as bad as it could get. I need help! Sasori's string broke apart as he lost control over his chakra. He didn't care. All he could think of was the feeling of it straddling him, and all he could do was thrash weakly and beg Get off me Get off me Get off me. The demon's grip on his shoulder came loose and resettled on his neck. The pressure there would have deadened Sasori's ability to scream, if he had had any to begin with. But the redhead's vision seemed to dim as if it was on a screen he was walking away from, and Sasori would have sworn up and down he really was moving away from it, only he wasn't walking. He was being dragged. The demon's hand on his neck… Sasori felt it with senses that were distinctly not supposed to be on his outside, were supposed to be safe and sound beneath his breastbone. The aura was inside him, or he was outside him, and either way it was all over and get off me! and anytime now it would be in deep enough to read things he'd never dreamed where he could know before.
Something glowed. Sasori had no eyes anymore, but still he saw that beyond the aura there were magnificent colors. They were all as they should be, in their place, and for all but one of them that place was not near him. Sasori looked at them all, colors that were more than he could have connected to humanity's puny color vocabulary, so much more, colors that had names he didn't know and were things like exploding too-much near-bursting rage and apathy of flying in dream oceans and evasive edge-of-mind not knowing and wood-sturdy-feeling-sound. The near color was near. It was actually a great many different colors combined together to be less specific than wood-sturdy-feeling-sound, all of them together benevolence. It was a very small patch from somewhere in the dark blue side of green, and it emerged from the midside of clean pain. Clean pain was everywhere.
No! said something that wasn't a voice because Sasori had been dragged away from his ears. It felt more like an inner voice, but outside. Sasori embodied a patch of pale yellows that were a few kinds of fear, some orange-blues that were together overwhelmed, and the unmistakable near-white naked, and reached for his body. He would be safe in his body and not naked. And he would be able to hear and see what was happening where the bodies were.
"Off!" yelled the strangest sight Sasori had ever seen. Blood spattered onto his lips from where the demon with fingernails too human to do much tore at Sasori's savior. There were scratches on Yahiko's cheek and forearms, and more promised if he kept wrestling with the demon. "No," Yahiko and the look in Yahiko's eyes both said. They moved away from Sasori where he lay staring. The demon was fighting by clawing at its attacker, and Yahiko's clothes were fast being ripped to tatters. His skin and soul would be next.
Yet his eyes had no fear or anything else in them, just benevolence and a few close relations. This was why his fight with the demon went unchallenged. This was why it was a surprise and a bad shock to everyone when one second they were alone, and the next a spear was through the demon's heart.
It was so fast that Yahiko kept wrestling with the demon and the demon kept tearing at his clothes for a few seconds afterward, until they and everyone else realized the demon was not moving and was now pinned to the ground. The spear was white, and the incubus did not have enough time to realize it had made yet another very bad mistake before she was upon it.
Yahiko received a flying heel kick to safety for his troubles. The incubus still did not complete its realization before Konan sliced paper claws (When the hell does she have those) across its back, flaying the demon and leaving its back to shrink from the air. Its efforts to shrink away from the pain of the air proved unsuccessful, and by then Konan had sent her paper out to retrieve the salt. Hidan still guarded it with his body up on the flat rooftop.
Every human in the area covered their ears, except for Hidan who was still unable to do anything as Konan did not completely block his view of the incubus. The (clean) pain did wonders to clear Sasori's mind. He made chakra string again and wrapped it around the demon's jaw first, then tied up the rest of it. The result was a bound demon, barely recognizable as such when it was half gift wrapped in blue.
Kakuzu and Nagato arrived, Nagato praying that his failure hadn't cost anybody anything important. His chakra flamed when he saw the scratches on Yahiko's cheeks and the blood on him. Nagato leaped over the entire scene to Yahiko's side, ready to take the blame and promise Yahiko he would never fail to keep him safe again and check the wounds. Yahiko laughed.
The demon was struck dumb, again. Nagato stopped, before he could blame himself very harshly. Konan stopped, before she could rip the demon limb from limb from everything else. They both turned to him and waited for a cue.
Yahiko finished in breathless, amazed bursts. "Woah." He was breathing very fast now. "I didn't know I could do that!" He looked up, and the last traces of that strength were visible in his eyes. He seemed not to have noticed that he was injured at all. He had eyes only for Sasori. "Are you alright?"
Sasori nodded.
"Good." Yahiko slumped a little, panting. "I...I fought a demon. It worked." He wasn't smiling at anything in particular, and still had not noticed he was injured.
Nagato forgave himself. Nothing very bad had happened, after all. He reluctantly admitted Yahiko wasn't bleeding a life-threatening amount, and tried his best to relax. Had anyone brought bandages?
Konan wanted to smack someone. Not Yahiko, although he was the source of her desire. Smacking him would only worsen his injuries. Not that he had even so much as noticed them! And he was happy about it, too. Konan hadn't seen anyone more equipped to wrestle a demon, like Kisame, move to do anything. Why did it have to be Yahiko? Even if he did get to feel very brave and proud of himself, it wasn't worth the risk. If he ever tried something like that ever again… She twisted and pulled the spear from side to side, and kicked at the demon's salted wounds. Its screams were exactly what she would have liked to let out herself.
"Wh - what are you doing?" Yahiko took Nagato's arm and got to his feet. Even from the side of her eye, Konan could see the horrified look on his face. "It's already tied up. It doesn't need - nothing ever needs - " His eyes filled with compassion for the demon that had just a minute before been trying to kill him and someone he cared about. Against her will, she followed his gaze and saw it as he saw it, like she had before with the deer. Like before with the deer, Konan felt shame wash over her. It counteracted the desire she had once more to inflict pain in the incubus, turned that desire into something bad. She undid all her paper jutsu and stepped back, silent and trying to be invisible.
She mostly succeeded, except for Nagato. For the first time, he understood her anger. He might have done the same. Nagato's mouth fell open. He'd never considered… Might Konan actually care for Yahiko? The idea was amazing. But then why did she usually seem to dislike him? Nagato shook his head. He had no idea at all what was going on inside her head.
"Thank you," Sasori said. He didn't like the demon to be in pain either. It would be nearly impossible to talk to it if it was crying the whole time. He tightened his strings, pulling them back in his hands. The demon was squeezed out of breath. From the pressure of the strings and everyone looking at it, many of them angry, it collapsed into female form. Sasori tightened the strings accordingly. It would not escape.
The angry looks mostly disappeared. Laurie shook her head and asked, "What?" She had seen nothing of Konan's anger or Nagato's concern. Sasori figured it would make more trouble to tell her. He beckoned her to his side.
Nagato nudged Konan's hand discreetly and received enough paper to make an adequate bandage for Yahiko's torn cheek. The patient did not protest, absorbed as he was in the demon's aura. Sasori's stomach turned at its power. He knew it was weakened, but still the aura held everyone else spellbound in it. He fought the urge to step back and reassure himself that his skin was still on. Though his mouth was flipping a coin on whether to be dry or excessively wet, and though Sasori would have liked to turn and never feel its aura brushing against him ever again, he knew what he was here for. So did Laurie. They rooted their feet to the ground and stood defiantly in front of it together.
He loosened the strings just enough to work the ones around her jaw free and move them somewhere else. The succubus did not protest. She was well and truly beaten, and only sat slumped in the strings with her head hanging down. Sasori was horrified to see water dripping from her chin. His stomach flipped more insistently. If she makes noise to go with that, I'll -
"Why?" The succubus whispered it so quietly that he had to work to understand what she'd said. "What are you people? Humans aren't - shouldn't - " She shook. She's afraid. Of us. He didn't want to, but Sasori saw her perspective for a brief flash. They couldn't have done this if they weren't really from a different world, a world that had no business being anywhere near this one. They weren't meant to coexist, them and the succubus, but somehow they'd been forced into this world. Her anger was justified. Her attempting to drive them away somehow could be justified. If only she hadn't tried to drive them away like this, maybe something peaceful could have been arranged. If only she'd waited to move on them, Yahiko had wanted to arrange something but hadn't gotten the time. They didn't belong, and she was right to recognize that, if nothing else. Sasori felt like apologizing.
That was what ended the brief flash. No; she'd attacked them, not the other way around. He shouldn't apologize. Nobody here was to blame, not even Hidan as she seemed to think, not even the succubus herself. It was not in anyone's power to make them clones in this world, or to send them away from it. Only whatever cosmic forces had done this in the first place could do that, and they couldn't be reached for comment. She'd tried to do the impossible, and failed. That wasn't something to apologize for at all. Sasori tightened his strings so she gasped again. They had memories of growing up here. They belonged here, as much as they could. They were friends and friends keep each other safe. He wouldn't pretend they'd done anything wrong.
"It's all - " She gasped. He loosened the strings so she could breathe. "It's all the fault of - that." She mustered the energy to spit the word hatefully as if it was a vile curse. "It's poisoned everything. It's made you lot all wrong, and her especially - " That was a shiver of fear, and maybe disgust too. Exactly what Sasori felt at the sight of the succubus. "Nothing is where it should be anymore. You - he - this isn't - " Her face crumpled, but fortunately for Sasori's stomach and Nagato's, she didn't sob. She only lowered her head to hide it. "This isn't right. It's not real." Her shoulders shook with repressed sobs. "It's not real."
Nobody could find anything to say against such heartbreak. Except Laurie. "What about me?" she asked. "I'm real. Where did I come into this?" She stepped closer to the succubus. "I don't know what you're trying to do exactly, and I don't understand where I had to be involved. Why'd I have to spend the night with them in fear of my life? Why?"
The succubus collapsed in on herself further. "Because I would do anything to not live in wrongness anymore."
"I didn't see anything wrong," Sasori interjected. He'd only just remembered. "When you pulled my soul partially out of my body earlier, I saw colors. But they weren't colors, they were concepts. They were ideas. I saw the ideas of everything in the world." I'll think more about that later. "I know what you mean, but I don't think it's bad or wrong."
Laurie and the succubus looked at him in shock. Konan's eyes were on him too, but Sasori wasn't at the right angle to see that. "I saw a lot of one particular color, this really specific idea of...a few things. I can't say; I can't see it anymore. But I did see how it was everywhere, more than the others. I can see why that would be weird." The demon opened her mouth to say something back, and he cut her off with, "But. I understood them like that. I got the feeling somehow that they were as they should be. They're everything, so that makes sense. If they weren't, everything would fall apart." He looked around at their environment. The laws of physics and causality were still in place. Logic still worked. The only place he knew where wrongness could be found was the demon boy's haunted hospital.
"So…" He looked her in the eyes and delivered his verdict. Ugh her eyes! "It's not wrong or bad in the way you mean that. It's just different. It might not be sustainable, might not be natural, but this arrangement is working. You're just going to have to work with it and adapt. And we aren't going anywhere." He sounded much more sure than he felt while saying that last sentence. But wasn't it true? "Even if we wanted to, we can't, and neither can you. We'll have to get used to it."
The demon collapsed further than she ever had before. She couldn't accept that. Couldn't. Wouldn't. So she just kept collapsing. The humans were astonished to see that what they had taken before as great flexibility was nothing of the sort. Her body was literally breaking up, her form becoming indistinct, her aura disappearing. Most of the men around blinked or shook themselves. Their jaws dropped open too, equally as astonished as the ones who had not been caught in her aura. Nobody knew what was happening at all. Not even Hidan, who remembered being told that he'd come up with this plan, had any idea.
In and in she went, until a small glimmer and nothing more could be seen behind Sasori's strings as they fell. It had taken a few seconds. It felt like a few hours. It would live in their thoughts for days.
Hidan noted that the salt had been moved, swung himself over the side of the roof, and carefully made his way down the side of the decrepit car dealership at great speed. He joined the others as they started to look around, trying to decide by group consensus whether they should talk about what had just happened. All eyes ended up on him, as the guy who had made the plan even though technically he hadn't. His eyes ended up on Konan, as the one who he most trusted with his missing memories.
"Essence," she remembered. "You said there would be essence left after she collapsed."
Everyone else remembered that, too. So now they knew what the little glimmer was that hovered in the air in front of Sasori and Laurie. Sasori had some questions. "So what does that - "
Hidan pounced on the little floating glimmer, closed his mouth over it, and swallowed.
"What the hell?!" Nagato blurted out.
"Why did you do that?" Kakuzu demanded.
"You said it was her essence," Hidan said to Konan. "If it's her essence," he explained to everyone else, "then it's the essence of a being with cool powers and shit, who pretty much is her powers and the using of them. Therefore, if I take in her essence, I might get cool powers." He added to himself, "I just hope I was right about which power I'd be getting."
Several people took a step back from him. Sasori's chakra wavered, and he fought not to do the same. Konan reached out and held Hidan's hand so he'd have a head start on restraining her if her more noble desires failed again. Sasori lost, and took several steps back. His heart was beating too fast. If he starts to feel like...I'll… Sasori had not the slightest idea what he would do. His feet prepared to run, but it was more likely that he'd fall down. Laurie took Sasori's arm, as much for her benefit as his. Itachi was determined and held his ground.
Hidan felt the sudden spike of fear, and briefly lost confidence in his own thoughts. Had he guessed wrong? He defended himself by retracing his reasoning. Yeah, the succubus or incubus (there really should be a gender neutral name for it) had scary hypnosis powers, but, he repeated, those hypnosis powers were based on what form it was in. So really, the basis for all its powers was the sex changing, so if he would get any of the succubus' powers it would be that one and not the hypnosis, right? Unless he got both. No, no, there was only so much an essence could contain. It could only be one thing. So, he reasoned against the fear, that would be the one thing it would be. Hidan closed his eyes. He also zipped up his cloak. Thank everything he'd worn it that morning!
Konan and Nagato's eyes widened. Nagato reached out for Yahiko's hand and held it. Yahiko wondered why Nagato needed comfort, but gave it as requested. Konan squeezed Hidan's hand, and won the honor of being the first to notice the change, even before Hidan himself. Hidan had no idea what to expect, so he just thought I'd like to turn into a girl, please and sometime later realized something was happening. He felt nothing inside himself, not even what using his chakra felt like. If he had been in a sensory deprivation chamber with nothing but his own sense of his own body, he wouldn't have noticed anything. But he did notice when his hand suddenly felt different against Konan's.
"Woah," Yahiko summarized. Hidan did not look very different in female form. His facial features narrowed and became just slightly more graceful, but his new face was very recognizably Hidan. His hair was unchanged. The greatest difference was in how his overall proportions adjusted, his shoulders narrowing just a little, his legs changing just a bit (even watching the change, nobody could figure out how) and Konan having to readjust her grip in his hand. As with Konan, the cloak was so covering that little could be seen of hips or bust, so all anyone could tell was that his cloak seemed a little looser around chest height. But Hidan's proportions really didn't change all that much either. A computer might have been fooled, but no human eye could fail to make the connection between this and his regular form.
Hidan opened his eyes. They were also completely unchanged, despite popular depictions of women as having bigger eyes with longer lashes. There was no such change. Everyone felt vaguely lied to, except for Konan who already knew. Laurie was relieved, before some sneaking hidden part of her mind whispered that it meant nothing because Hidan was overall prettier than she was in this form. She did have to admit his skin looked great. But that did not mean that his eyes looked fine only because the rest of him could compensate. She put those thoughts back in their box and sat on it.
Hidan looked down at his hand in Konan's. He examined his free hand closely, then touched his face, then poked himself in the chest. He blinked. "Huh." He fiddled with his cloak and settled on keeping it open down to his collarbone. It would be fine to go a few inches lower, but he didn't want to freak anyone out.
"How is it?" Nagato ventured.
"Cool!" Hidan smiled, and almost instantly caught himself. His hands flew to his throat. "Whoally shit."
"What should we call you now?" Yahiko asked.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Hidan asked. "I'm not different at all. Same old me." He started fiddling with his hair. "Except now I could grow my hair out and play with it and put decorations in it! Fuck yeah! Do you think I'd look good with ribbons?"
Yahiko's jaw fell open. How could Hidan say that about being female all of a sudden? It was different. Yahiko knew he'd feel different if he was ever turned female. His face grew scarlet at the thought and Yahiko moved to hide behind Nagato. Yet the question remained in his mind, and he was unable to stop asking himself how it would feel to be female. Hidan seemed to like it. Bad brain! Stop!
"Hey, it moves different," Hidan observed. "Let's race this shit! Fun!"
"So, just to confirm, you still want us to use male pronouns in this form?" Nagato asked. Hidan's dumbfounded stare of Why would you do anything else?, while not the kind of answer he'd been looking for, put the question to rest.
Konan let go of Hidan's hand and tapped him on the shoulder. "We can race later. In the meantime, I don't have the chakra for a race, and I would like to recover it while debriefing everyone on this mission." She nodded at Laurie. "Since you were here, you are included."
The mention of chakra made Deidara yawn. He was sweeping his brain with it to keep functioning by now, and could not understand at all how Konan had gone without sleep for at least two nights while fighting well enough to seriously hurt someone. She must have ridiculous levels of chakra, he reasoned.
Konan did not have ridiculous levels of chakra and held tight to Hidan to maintain the pretense of staying at the back of the group solely to keep track of him. Hidan played along, asking questions that would have been invasive and TMI if anyone else had asked them. She managed to dodge the question of what menstrual cycles felt like, only to be asked about intercourse. She answered truthfully that she had no idea, so he moved on to self-pleasure. Fortunately everyone had anticipated something like this and raced ahead as soon as they saw Hidan was staying near her, so the resulting conversation was pleasant and not at all uncomfortable. Hidan was a perfect gentleman even in female form, keeping her propped up as if it was his only job the whole way.
At least a few people had to notice the way she kept leaning on him as they walked into the sunroom, and the small sigh of relief as she sat. Konan was starting to understand that they genuinely were different, so she did not worry. These ones could be trusted around weakness. She knew that now.
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