Sasori
The engineer sat on his little stool and looked around the shed, wishing the stool was a chair so he could rest his arms on the back of it. Some kind of rest would be good today. On the table next to him sat the broken tricycle. Its central structure was broken, which would make it a hard fix. If he hadn't been far too aggravated to do so, Sasori supposed he could have looked up how to fix such a thing and what supplies he would need while he waited for news from Laurie.
And then there was the new bike, the one with the broken chain. This bike was the reason Sasori facepalmed just now and began muttering curses under his breath. This is a shed. There's nobody around to hear. And I'm already starting to go a little insane, if whispering to myself is any indication. I should just go for it. What's the worst that can happen?
The world and everyone in it were starting to look strange themselves, so Sasori rationalized that nobody had a right to say a damn thing. He stopped muttering, relaxed his face into its usual look, and lowered his hand.
"Alright," he addressed his audience. "Some things need to be made clear." Nobody said anything. He was glad for that.
Sasori looked at the two vehicles. "You guys can't show up at my workplace anymore. The reason for that is because I can't show up at my workplace any more. I have some problems with the other humans there. I have no problems with you; it is strictly a people problem." People have so many problems compared to machines. How I stand it, I may never know.
"I don't expect you to come all the way out here in your condition," Sasori elaborated. "I'll figure out an alternate location, somewhere I or any of my friends can visit easily. That will be a temporary measure while I figure out something more permanent. The alternate location will be where I drop you two off once I get my tools and whatever supplies I need to fix you. Understood?"
He feared that they might answer. Thankfully, they did not. Sasori let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. I don't know if they can hear me or understand. I might as well be trying to hold conversation with outer space aliens. Why am I doing this?
His train of thought derailed so fast he didn't even realize it had happened for a moment. His head turned to the door in that moment, so that when Sasori caught up to himself he realized he could hear voices. Never thought I'd be glad to hear other people, he thought as he opened the door and peered out.
At the far edge of the parking lot were two people he didn't recognize. One walked silently with his head down. The other appeared to be trying to cheer him up by talking about something exciting. Sasori couldn't tell from this distance if it was working or not.
He closed the shed door with greater force than usual, causing the two men to stop and look around. He walked up to them and raised a hand in greeting. "Hi."
The cheerful one waved. "Hi!" Sasori noticed that his hair looked like it got chewed on a lot. A laptop? Was he here for a reason?
The morose one nodded in greeting. "Another one of Konan's friends?" His hair was white and spiky. Sasori knew only one other person with white and spiky hair. He had never seen the demon boy himself, so he could only briefly wonder how much resemblance there was.
Sasori nodded in the affirmative. "What are you two here for?"
The cheerful one held up the laptop. "I'm Ruta, and this is Sakumo. He wanted to see how she was doing, and I wanted to put together a detailed report on everything we don't know about, like the chakra and jutsu and everything."
Sasori surprised himself by bursting out in quiet laughter. He covered his mouth with a hand and stood there shaking, unable to speak. Ruta's eyes widened, and he turned to face Sasori more directly. He looked somewhere to the side of Sasori's head and waited impatiently while the redhead caught his breath.
"Sorry about that," Sasori said when he recovered. "There's just…" His mouth twitched, and he fought his diaphragm until the urge to resume laughing receded. "Chakra isn't the only thing around here we don't know about." I just finished a one-sided conversation with bicycles. He strangled himself to keep from laughing again.
Sakumo unconsciously leaned away from the unnerving combination of sensible-looking face and poorly restrained laughter he was seeing. Sasori admired the intelligence this showed. He'll go very far if he listens to his gut. The white-haired man noticed his leaning and consciously corrected it.
"Don't do that," Sasori advised.
"What?"
"Try to act like nothing's wrong." Sasori crossed his arms. "I fought a demon last week. Trust me; listen to your instincts."
Ruta sat down on the ground and opened his laptop on his legs. "Anything else?" he asked after several seconds of hitting keys.
"The demon was a succubus slash incubus slash we really need a gender neutral name for those things," Sasori recalled. "It could turn either male or female, depending on the preference of whoever it was attacking. Would walk up, hypnotize you, steal your soul through touching." The last sentence ended on an unplanned-for squeak. Sasori decided to ignore it and hope nobody said anything. "We defeated it and Hidan stole its sex-changing powers, so he can change from male to female now whenever he wants, as long as he's wearing a shirt."
"Ooh," Ruta marveled while writing all of this down. "We can get powers from demons?"
Sasori shrugged. "If you can beat them, sure. There are other demons in the bar in town, and they might be of different types with different powers."
"How do you know this?" Ruta asked. His eyes shone brightly up at Sasori's shoulder.
"The other demon told us," he explained. "He's different from the types at the bar. He's more powerful, can't be defeated, and is more...generalized. He's just like a really powerful person; not as specialized as a succubus is."
"The one that looks like a child?" Sakumo asked.
Sasori looked at him. "Yeah. How did you know?"
Sakumo unconsciously leaned away, this time from Ruta's eyes boring into his flesh. "Kisame visited a few days ago. I specifically asked him about anything that might be dangerous."
"And you didn't say anything to me?!" Ruta sounded hurt and confused. Tears appeared in his eyes.
"You looked pretty overwhelmed from hearing about chakra," Sakumo said. "It was all you could talk about. You already had so many questions; I didn't want to put so much pressure on you. Besides, you tend to skip from one thing to another. I wanted to keep the first thing first."
Ruta looked down. This was true. "Well, I just finished asking her about chakra and writing it down, so there's no harm now." He pressed several more keys. "What did he say when you asked?"
"Oh, you're the animal people," Sasori realized. "I thought the name Sakumo sounded familiar. I'm Sasori. It's nice to finally meet you."
Sakumo looked startled to hear Sasori's name, but he said nothing as they shook hands. Sasori was distracted and did notice, but did not immediately wonder about this. Is it a good or a bad thing that I'm so willing to share information with other people in the same boat? he wondered instead. Should I be talking to people I don't know this way, or is it a good thing to be so eager to help?
"I'm half tiger," Ruta told him. He was still sitting on the ground with his laptop, grinning.
That explains the chewed hair. Or does it? Do we have tigers in these woods? "You'll love Hidan then."
Ruta grinned again. "I do! He likes purring as much as I do, even though neither of us are domestic. Only domestic and other really small cats purr. Tigers are supposed to roar, but I prefer purring. Growling softly just isn't the same."
Sasori nodded. "I stand by what I said." They even talk alike. "Anyway," he addressed Sakumo, "what did Kisame tell you?
Sakumo ran down the entire list of dangerous demons in town, trickster demon down the road, possessed lake, vampires, harmless little boy in town, and a god. His voice was very blank as he did so, as if he couldn't decide how to feel about any of the items on the list and so had decided to feel nothing at all. Ruta accompanied his every word with the sound of clicking keys. Sasori frowned at the end.
"It helps not to think about it too much," he told Sakumo. "If you stop to think about all of it at once, you realize exactly how much there is. Just focus on dealing with whatever comes up. That way, you get used to it little by little, without having to give yourself brain freeze."
"I'm trying." Sakumo looked much older all of a sudden. "I'm trying." His efforts did not appear to be working very well.
Ruta frowned, then picked up his laptop and stood up. He gave the laptop to Sasori and punched Sakumo very lightly in the arm. "Hey. It's fine. We can deal with a few tricks, and the rest sounds pretty fun. It'll all be fine."
Sakumo closed his eyes. "Maybe. Not now. It's bad enough being asked about him…"
Sasori recognized this as a scene he was very much not a part of, and stayed out of it. He turned his attention to the laptop. It was open on a document titled Things That Aren't Related To Chakra. Below that, Ruta had listed everything Sakumo had mentioned, with the Demons In Town entry containing a full paragraph describing everything Sasori had said, plus commentary. Sasori sat down in the least attention grabbing way he knew and began to type. He replaced the Possessed Lake entry with Hidan, and typed what he knew. "Can feel other people's emotions and emotion-related things, including thoughts. No idea how. Perception extends to anything that has emotions or emotion-related things. Methods of dealing with emotions include washing them away, solving other people's problems, probably others. Loses his memory a lot; no idea why, how, or what happens to his memories. The lost memories are things that upset him. Topics that he will almost always forget include: Jashin sama, probably others. Has yet to notice or react to the change in the air since the basement symbol was drawn." Sasori also added Sapient Bicycles to the bottom of the list. For that, he typed: "Don't ask. I'll mention it when I know anything at all about them."
Sakumo shrugged off Ruta's awkward attempts to help. "It just hurts, remembering how I was looking forward to meeting him so badly… To a father, it's one of the worst pains imaginable. I know you want to help, but it really can't be helped. It's like a stabbing pain in my chest every time I remember." His voice sounded flat and resigned. Something about that felt wrong to Sasori. He entered the conversation.
"That might be true, but Ruta's right too. It really isn't as bad as it feels like." Sasori handed the laptop back to Ruta, who was grateful for the shifting of responsibility. "Remember about the symbol in the basement. It has different effects on everyone. Nagato said he was jumpy and nervous. Hidan hasn't noticed. Konan likes it. Kisame's irritated by it. I've consistently been more upset than I usually would be. It's not improbable that it's making you hurt worse." I don't know how to help him feel better. How can I get that hopelessness out? "It's not as bad as you think," Sasori finished, lamely. He was sure that, just like everyone else who heard that piece of useless wisdom, Sakumo wouldn't be able to believe it. So what good was it? I should have left this to Hidan. Anyone but me.
Sakumo looked back at the no-longer-abandoned hotel. Ruta glanced up too after he finished reading Sasori's additions. Sakumo said, "I was really unsure of what to do in there. Everything seemed overwhelming." Sasori thanked his lucky stars that Sakumo's eyes were brighter now that he had an explanation. Hooray for not screwing up too badly.
Ruta said, "I was all buzzy. I couldn't hold still, it was hard to think, and I think my hands were shaking." He bit his lip and tried to decide if that feeling had been bad or good.
"Everything is overwhelming." Sasori could sympathize with that. "I'm still rethinking my entire life, trying to figure out what happened when the incubus attacked me and how I feel about it, and everything." He turned slightly before Ruta could say anything. "Don't ask what happened." The tiger man shut his mouth and turned red.
Sakumo let out a deep breath. "How do you take the weight of it?" His shoulders looked burdened.
I don't know. How did Sasori handle everything he had to deal with? It… doesn't actually feel like it is such a weight. I've only felt overwhelmed a few times. The puppetmaster tilted his head and frowned slightly. It seemed he was able to just not feel the weight most of the time. He opened his mouth to explain this to Sakumo when his phone rang.
He paused, and decided that he needed more time to think of what he wanted to say anyway. "Excuse me." Sasori turned away and took a few steps before answering the call. "What is it, Dei?" Please let him not be calling about disaster.
There was a pause, then the level of ambient noise increased and Sasori could suddenly hear two voices quietly snickering. "Got it on speaker, yeah," Deidara whispered. "Heh. She told me you'd want to hear this, yeah."
Deidara. Laurie. Together, in the shop, with my boss who is acting unusually scary. "What are you doing and why are you doing it?" he asked, in a voice of dread. Deidara, in the shop. With Laurie. And the manager. Something's happening.
"Shh," Deidara hushed him quietly.
"Alright," came Laurie's extremely quiet voice. "He's going, he's going."
"I got 'em," Deidara said. Sasori could hear him grinning. Sasori could also hear Ruta walking up to him quietly, hesitating, then backing away. He held up a hand to tell the tiger man to wait. It wouldn't be too much longer.
"He's going," Laurie repeated.
Deidara snickered again, in that way that Sasori was learning to fear. There was the sound of the phone shifting. A door opened. There were some indistinct mutters in the distance.
"AAAGGGGHHH!" someone screamed. Sasori sputtered and started to cough with his mouth hanging open. Was that…?!
Extremely strangled yet dangerously loud laughter burst out on the other end of the line, and didn't stop for a full 3 minutes. Sasori's mouth was still hanging open. Holy shit. His respect for the kid increased a hundredfold. He went there. He pulled it off. I don't know what it is, but he did it.
As soon as the laughter had died down to quiet chuckling, Sasori had to ask. "What did you two geniuses do, and how did you do it?" He waved Ruta over. Whatever it was had to be good enough to share. He put Deidara on speakerphone as Ruta stood by, already smiling in preparation. Sakumo could be heard approaching as well.
Deidara burst out sniggering again. "Spiders," he said through another audible grin.
Laurie took the phone and was able to restrain herself better. "3 of them. He had a cute one named Stitchy, and two others, and he sent them into the manager's office and had them sit on his desk!"
"And then," Deidara added, "I got the idea to make them turn toward him as he opened the door, yeah!"
Sasori facepalmed. "Deidara…"
"Strawberry and shrimp chow fun. Don't forget," the blonde answered.
Sasori shook his head and laughed quietly. "Only the best. How is he reacting?"
There was silence before Laurie came back to report, "He's chasing them around and hasn't managed to catch one yet. How are your spiders so fast?"
There was a growl of frustration. "Uh oh," Laurie said. "Go!" Sasori heard a couple seconds of hasty retreating noises before the call ended. *Beep*
"Cute spiders? How cute?" was what Ruta wanted to know.
Sasori looked sideways smugly at him. "Very. But they're Deidara's, so I'm afraid you'll have to come by another time." The tiger man shot a glance behind Sasori's head to Sakumo.
Sakumo nodded. "That was interesting," he admitted. "Another couple of friends?" Sasori nodded. "Alright. At any rate…"
Sasori couldn't believe it. Why would he want to go back to talking about how overwhelming everything is? This is -
Sakumo looked up after a few seconds to see his newest friend staring off into space. "Hello?"
Sasori blinked. "That's it." He looked to Sakumo, then down at his phone. "You asked how I deal with the weight. The answer is that I don't. Most of the time, there isn't any weight. I don't deal with it except when I set aside time to do so."
Ruta realized what he was getting at. "Humor," he answered.
"Yeah. It really does make everything feel lighter," Sasori told Sakumo. That's the secret to dealing with all of this. You need to laugh. He wondered if the hysterical laughing from earlier was an attempt at self-medicating, then. If so, he need not be upset or fearful that he was going insane. Sasori chose to think of it as self-medicating.
He expected Sakumo to be grateful. Instead, the wolf man frowned and looked as dejected as he had before. "It's not right to laugh at some things," he said while shaking his head.
"I wasn't." Sasori nudged his arm to get his attention back. "I wasn't laughing at any of my troubles just now; I was laughing at something else. Being able to laugh at one thing makes everything lighter, or maybe the humor makes me stronger. I don't know which, but I do know it'll probably help." After saying that, he took the time to try and figure out what Sakumo was actually upset about. One of the worst pains imaginable to a father… He was looking forward to meeting "him"...
Sasori blanched. My god. Did he lose a child? He was very, very grateful for how he had phrased his advice. That is as far from joking territory as it's possible to get. I'm so sorry. Should I say anything?
"Humor could make me stronger?" Sakumo rubbed his chin. "I do feel more powerful when I'm around my family. I can try it."
Ruta glanced at his laptop, which he had closed and tucked back under his arm. "Weren't we planning to go back in and ask him how she was doing?"
Sakumo smiled. "She said she was going to spend time with him. Let's not interrupt. We'll come back another day for that."
"Strawberry shrimp chow fun…" Ruta murmured to himself. "Could be interesting."
Sasori gagged. "Oh, no," he told Ruta. "NO. It was strawberry AND shrimp chow fun. He likes ice cream and Chinese food as a treat."
"I can try that," Ruta declared.
Sakumo begged, "Please not around anyone else." He grimaced at the idea of those two foods together.
Sasori's phone rang again. "Yep?"
"He left!" Laurie was speaking at normal volume. "He left. Come and get your stuff, quickly!"
Sasori ended the call and informed his two new acquaintances-turned-friends that he needed to go. Sakumo nodded, and he had a hopeful look in his eyes. Ruta had his tongue out and swallowed back saliva every few seconds. And I feel a lot better about my ability to handle everything. This conversation had been good for everybody.
With that in mind, Sasori was able to hang up his leather jacket before going to fetch his tools. It's amazing how far a day can turn, and how fast. He remembered learning that with Laurie almost a full week ago, but one could always use reminders of lessons like that.
Kakuzu
It was with great satisfaction that Kakuzu sat down in his computer chair in the home he was no longer frustrated with, and logged in. As he consulted the paper next to his hand, entering the codes he saw thereon in the appropriate boxes, his eyes gleamed with the look of a predator. He'd spent several days setting this up. A phone call the first day, two more to certain people he knew the next, some time spent here and there poring through old and recent records… It took a lot of advance time, but the wait was worth it. It always was. As a rule, Kakuzu didn't bother waiting for things that weren't worth it. He relished the things that were. No minor pleasures could compare to the sheer satisfaction of seeing a project finally come together. The most important things in life don't happen within a day.
He searched for the account number he'd received yesterday, and opened the one record that matched. He felt like a bear about to sink his claws into a fat, juicy hive. His metaphorical claws hit liquid gold when he saw the name on the account. Kakuzu's eyebrows raised. So this is where some of the cash stream's been flowing? I wish I could say I was surprised.
His green eyes glowed. He'd had to put a lot of detective work in to get this far. As it turned out, the manager only had one personal account at the bank mentioned on the page. It looked like a regular checking account, but it had no name on it. and it only ever received deposits from another account that Kakuzu did not recognize. He'd had to call in several favors to find out where the deposits came from. Upon doing so, Kakuzu had discovered the manager's actual personal accounts; he'd gotten ahold of transaction records and verified that they appeared to be used for entirely ordinary purchases. There was another checking account among them which had the exact same name and setup. From its history, it was used half for checking and half for cash funneling. Kakuzu was starting to understand the man's need for a physical page to keep track of which checking account was which, as well as which account should transfer to which account. There were some dates on the back of the page; they corresponded to the dates of past transfers out of the unnamed account, and one future. Several things only he could have gotten away with later, Kakuzu had found what he was looking for. It turned out to be yet another unnamed account, this one closely connected to a different system of suspicious accounts, which led to what he was looking at right now: the personal account of someone you were better off not shorting. As far as Kakuzu could tell, the shop manager was not better off. But not enough. Somehow, I manage to be even less surprised.
He imagined the cash stream flowing to this guy would get even tighter as soon as the reasonable waiting period for the latest transaction had passed. After hearing about the manager's sudden absence on Wednesday, and seeing the future date indicating that Sunday, Kakuzu had developed a hunch. Sure enough, with much scraping together of all the money in his legitimate accounts and some extra withdrawals from the auto shop's, another transfer had been sent out to the better-off-not-shorted account a couple days later. By that point, Kakuzu had enough evidence of suspicious-looking activity to get one of his helpful bank acquaintances to void the transaction and begin the process of taking a closer look at the money passing between the shop account and the manager's personal accounts. Voiding the transaction was the more important part; the investigation was nice, but Kakuzu was sure it wasn't going to lead anywhere in the very short amount of time that would pass before the lost money was noticed.
He wasn't likely to earn any money on this venture, but that was okay, because his time and effort were more than repaid by vicious satisfaction. What was money if not a way to make oneself happy? This was just skipping a step. Moreover, he had made a promise to a friend, and since Kakuzu seriously considered that person a friend, so he would seriously keep his promise. He would consider it a bonus if he somehow managed to seize the contents of the manager's lost and unnamed account.
Hidan had mentioned something about delivering a tricycle, so it seemed Sasori's foray into motorless vehicles was continuing. Kakuzu consulted Google for a good location. Google also made an excellent consultant regarding that pool place the bookie had told him of. Kakuzu found time to wonder how much the local supernatural activity was influencing their Internet. That's not a sentence I ever expected to think.
On a whim, he searched for "supernatural activity near me." Oddly enough, not a single result had so much as a word related to the supernatural in it. However, the top result was an article about how some "influential lobbyists" had argued successfully for the ceasing of development in the land west of town some years ago. Kakuzu was frightened by this. I would think that was related to supernatural activity, but only because I am a human. Computers don't have the ability to make those kinds of connections. At least they aren't supposed to. He narrowed his eyes at the tape covering the webcam. Humidity over the years had soaked the tape close to translucency. He really needed to replace it with something more opaque.
Kakuzu read the entire article, searching for further description of these "lobbyists." He found none, except for the name of the group they had claimed to be lobbyists for. Kakuzu searched for that name, and opened every result he got in its own tab.
Most of it was property dealings, with the cessation of development being the biggest of those dealings. Those results were mildly interesting, but nothing too exciting. Nothing demanded that Kakuzu follow it up right now. Then he got to Result #15.
An hour and a half later, Kakuzu was dialing Hidan's number and trying not to break his phone in the process. "Pick up, pick up," he growled. Shit, shit, shit. First the demon girl and now this? What the hell is going on here?!
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