Sasori considered himself a pragmatic man. So when the cool metal beads carved their art onto his arm, he did what any other person would have done. He leapt away from the attack's range - pretended to retreat, and further ingrained his chakra into the imitation sand of the Sandaime Kazekage. While initially he was elated at finally coercing the man out of his village, the superseding fight was proving to be more troublesome than expected. Of course, he would not let his opponent know that.

"You are trash, Akasuna no Sasori, just like the man who killed your parents." Sasori would have given the man some brownie points for targeting his parents - if they had still mattered to him. At the end of the day, his mother and father were withered corpses in some forgotten plot of land; their cheap mimicry residing in his grandmother's workshop were just firewood waiting to be burned. He dragged out another puppet to play sacrifice to the Kazekage's relentless wave of magnetic sand. Blankly, he watched the puppet crumble in the jutsu's path - contributing its remnants to the Kazekage's interminable supply of sand. He quickly took stock of his remaining supply. Just a little bit more, he decided. He took out another scroll.

The Sandaime scoffed from his end and with a flurry of movement, disappeared from Sasori's view. The young redhead only had seconds to orchestrate his retaliation, and with one quick jump, he successfully switched places thrice - once with the puppet he had unleashed, twice with a nearby rock, and the third time, with the wooden fingers that the Kazekage had torn out his hand.

Set.

Catching sight of the infamous white robes of his village's leader, he dove for the man with all his speed. He was fast, and the Sandaime was faster - but his stamina was flagging like his and as he expected, the man only raised a wall of sand to counter Sasori's blatant attack. It did not rise.

Grinning, Sasori clashed weapons with the Sandaime, half-crazed at the realization that his plan was working. With only a breath of a distance between them, he watched with satisfaction as the Kazekage failingly prodded at his sand to work. His gray eyes narrowed. "You think you have me defeated?" he seethed.

"Oh," Sasori parried a stray kunai and threw a few at the Kazekage in retaliation as he jumped back. "Not yet, my leader." He had maybe a few more minutes left of chakra to hold off the Kazekage before fatigue and depletion would declare the winner for them. He suspected the Kazekage was in a similar situation for Sasori had not only dragged out the altercation, but he had also poisoned the man already. It was slow-acting and only ate at one's stamina, but it was enough. Sasori had previously decided that in order to appreciate the masterpiece that would be the Sandaime Kazekage, he would have to first completely learn all his intricacies in battle. For as famed as he was, the man could only hide behind a wall of magnetic sand for so long in a fight. He had to have more skills in his arsenal, and for Sasori to learn of them, he had to expose himself to them first.

He grabbed the small container of soldier pills in his holster and popped them in his mouth. He didn't hide this from the Sandaime, laughing internally at the sudden shift in his stance - no, why would he? Being a village leader, he was not privy to carrying pills for the sole purpose of showing to everyone that he was not one to ever have to resort to them. But him? Sasori? He was neither a leader nor stupid. He was not perfect and no one believed he was, and he was logical enough to know that not all battles were short - as much as he wished they would be.

In his flagging endurance, Sasori allowed the Kazekage to regroup in his situational assessment and spread out his concentration onto the false sand lying around the battlefield. If fatigue wasn't impairing the Kazekage's thoughts, then the man would soon find out what ailed his magnetic sand from responding to him.

Some part of him wanted to see how he would react to discovering how his technique had been decoded by a sixteen-year-old, but his logical side won him out from ever seeing that as he focused his renewed energy on the very sand of his opponent.

"How does it feel to have your very own turn on you?" Sasori said quietly. He did not need to raise his voice with this one. The Kazekage was so attuned to him that he could have whispered from a mile away, and he would have probably heard it. "Not pleasant, I assume."

"Puppets," the Sandaime spat out. Had he figured it out? Sasori's sadism almost grinned at the thought. "I've never liked that division."

The funding stopped because of you, Sasori sauntered towards his opponent. While he devoted his skills to the art, he held no love for the division within the village. Most that practiced puppetry competed in creating monsters. Without attention to detail, they focused wholeheartedly on trying to make the strongest, most durable of puppets to exist. When Sasori paid his apprenticeship there for a brief period of time, he had laid havoc on each new creation. So easy was it for him to spot the weakness in the gears and hinges. Although, he couldn't really blame the creators for those faults. All art was imperfect, and only the ones closest to beauty and perfection survived and were remembered.

"- beautiful?" She stood behind him, preparing a concoction of a healing salve. He didn't want her help, but neither of them had enough expertise in healing to attempt anything else. He could have proposed chakra strings to help close the wound, and he did - but both he and the girl doubted its efficacy. Chakra strings were only useful if the user is able to continuously feed the sutures with chakra, and Sasori was flagging in both areas with Moriko not faring any better. He thanked the gods that his company forgot about the unnecessary amount of chakra pills hoarded in one of his scrolls as she dragged a cotton ball of antiseptic across his scalp; while he had no doubt in her skills, he would not be experimented on.

"Ick, it's too bloody - hold on." He heard Moriko bustle around behind him, a clatter of ceramic and cloth telling him that his first aid kit was no doubt being torn apart for whatever she was searching for. Then he heard running water, and suddenly, a palm was at his back, beckoning him to lean forward. Too exhausted to question or protest, he followed her instructions quietly.

"This may sting," she always spoke quietly, as if the very escalation of her voice would shatter whatever image she wanted to project. He didn't know what that image was, he had grown up with her and had only ever known one Moriko.

Quiet Moriko.

He hissed as she poured warm water over his head. Bracing his forearms against his thighs, he fought against the initial recoil his body was trying to do and allowed Moriko to begin cleansing the blood matted against his hair. At first, he felt her tentative fingers sweep over the back of his head, but as he vocalized no consternation, confidence grew in her movements and soon, she was gliding her fingers through his hair - unknotting the blood from his red strands.

At some point, he almost fell asleep to her ministrations.

"All done." With his eyes still closed, he more of felt than saw Moriko drape a towel over his back as she guided him to sit up straight again. There was a second of hesitation following the silence and Sasori fought to open his eyes. Under his heavy-lidded gaze, he saw her biting her bottom lip with a cloth in her hand. He sighed and took it from her to wipe the droplets of water running down his face.

"I'm sorry." He waited for her to continue. "I- if I hadn't gotten caught, none of this would have happened and you wouldn't have lost one of your puppets."

But you were caught, he thought. Sasori closed his eyes once again as he beckoned for her to resume bandaging his head. Moriko preferred actions versus words, and she quickly finished her task. She announced it so just as she scampered between his room and the adjacent bathroom. Still ensconced in the promises of a heavy slumber, he stared at her fidgeting with the hem of her sleeves. Belatedly, he noted that she never did that before.

"Pretty things are fleeting, beauty is lasting," he finally spoke. Her fingers stopped moving. "That puppet was just an experiment. If I were to create a puppet meant only to do one thing, then would it not be prone to many weaknesses?" He waited for her to nod before continuing. "Likewise, if I made a puppet with careful attention to detail, would you expect it to last longer?" This time, he didn't wait for her confirmation. "That puppet I lost was brutish and good at only one thing. It took me only a few days at most to build - and that was on top of other creations I was making at the time. To really call it a puppet myself...would be a disservice to my work." If anything, the atrocity that assisted their escape was a tool. Certainly not one meant to last, and not one deserving of her guilt.

Moriko tilted her head. "I get it." He believed her. Moriko wasn't dense.

"A puppet takes time to make, and I would not waste time on one that could be destroyed in a few weeks."

He let her pick up the figurine he had carved during their travel to Cha no Kuni. "You really don't like to waste your time, huh, Sasori?"

He closed his eyes in reply.

It should be noted that Sasori was not truly sadistic. Not in the way that criminals and murderers were. But he had to admit, watching the Kazekage's very own creation turn against him was something of morbid fascination. Pure fury coalesced within his coal eyes, but Sasori was impervious to the anger. With all his might, he forced the magnetic sand to tighten their hold a little more on their master.

He smiled. "Shame you didn't dissolve them," he taunted his control over the Sandaime. Blue was the man's face due to deprivation of oxygen, but the fire in his eyes was unmistakable. Sasori, after all, was controlling his very essence by commandeering his sand. Fortunately, or unfortunately for the Kazekage - death by his own jutsu was not how he was going to leave this earth. No, Sasori had better plans for the Kazekage. He reached into his back holster and unveiled a syringe.

"I wonder, Sandaime, how you would look as a puppet yourself?" he mused, injecting the paralytic poison into the former Kazekage's neck. This time, this concoction was fast acting, and with his chakra reserves on the brink of being depleted, the Sandaime had nothing left to expel the solution in his system. With little interest, Sasori watched the man fall and waited.

He looked up at the sky, tracking down the ephemeral clouds crossing over them. He did not know what he was waiting for. Thunderclouds? A swarm of Sunagakure's elite? For the Kazekage to reveal that he had only maimed a clone? Looking back down at his opponent and at their surroundings, he found no sign of the immediate aftermath his actions could have drawn. Just to show that even the largest of figures in life fell as easily and simply as normal men. He sighed and dug into his holster.

His last scroll - he unraveled it and activated the seal inside; the Sandaime's body disappeared along with his magnetic sand.

When he next awoke, it was nighttime and the window was open. Sasori would have startled up to promptly shut it and check for any foreign presence or lingering chakra within his rented room - but he did not. Because Moriko was there. Head propped up on arms drudged over the window pane, she tilted her head in greeting before resuming her post. Temporarily, her image blurred between that of his companion and an older woman: a genjutsu. "They found my room."

Sasori cursed. Compromised, they were compromised.

"I don't think they know me exactly," she continued. "I'd sent a clone out to feel out the environment. Except for a bit more shinobi lurking around the streets, no one has outright declared me a person of interest or pulled my clone over for a confrontation." Moriko leaned back into her chair, sandaled-feet replacing the spot her arms had occupied; her illusion dispersed. "I've already sent out a message to alert the Kazekage about these past few days, but I've left you out for the most part, other than the bit where you rescued me" she admitted.

Sasori stared at her. This, she had done all this without him. Her teammate. He frowned and swung his legs over his bed. When she had moved him from chair to bed, he did not know - and maybe he should be more concerned, but Moriko had just admitted her wrongs to their village leader as if there would be no repercussions to her actions. Ignoring that, she had even walked out in the streets without masking her face. Her previous captors could just be biding their time, and she had not considered that.

"I know what you are thinking, but I - I just couldn't sit here not knowing, you understand that, right?" Sasori had schooled his face into one expression at this point, and rightfully so, Moriko recoiled at the disapproval it relayed.

"When you do something wrong in a reconnaissance mission, the one thing you do not absolutely do, Moriko," he seethes. "Is tell anyone else - if even a rumor gets out that Cha no Kuni knows about you and your association with the village - the Kazekage will denounce you. You will be labeled a traitor, a deserter acting on your own whims." And while those labels never bothered Sasori, he knew it would bother her.

"And that's fine, Sasori - I messed up, okay? The village deserves to know what happened and they have the right to reprobate me. If I didn't tell them, what would happen? The same thing," Moriko shot back. She was staring at him as if he was the one speaking nonsense. She had always been too naive, but loyal? He had never considered her particularly loyal to the village. Maybe to some extent, she had ties to that place; her comrades and her father - but to its leader and people? Moriko had often made a display of her dislike for unnecessary socialization, preferring the company of books and weapons, so to hear her change her tune? To think for the village first versus herself? He knew she had her handful of precious people to protect, but he did not think her loyalty to them blinded her to becoming suicidal. "If anything, I'm doing the best that I can out of my situation. At least this way, the village can be proactive and prepared for any accusations made against them."

Sasori had enough of her. He stood up and sauntered towards the girl. "You would cast your life away for the sake of protecting the village?"Because he wouldn't - would never sacrifice what he had for some practiced words and superficial ceremonies.

Moriko's bright eyes held his dimmed gaze.

"Wouldn't you?"

Looking back on that moment, he expected that Moriko already knew the answer without him evading it. He didn't outright say his true thoughts - instead he had masked his inner opinions with misleading words. But all the same, he had questioned her loyalty and was not surprised by her resolution. Some part of him, he admits now, was surprised at her answer; they both knew of Sandaime's ruthlessness - his penchant to think of his subordinates' lives as afterthoughts. While both of them were protected by his mother's own quirks, they had still seen the fallout of such cold ruling growing up. For that reason, he spent the rest of his night eviscerating his village's former leader. Such were the tribulations of making his special puppets; the human body was always quick to waste if he did not act quickly. Especially the heart.

"You could be more than what they make us out to be, Moriko." he spoke later that night. Wrapped in a cocoon of her own making, she stared back at him from the confines of his bed.

"Says you, I was the one that got captured Sasori," she rebutes. "As of now, I can't be much more than an easy hostage."

Sasori sat in the other corner of the room by the desk, whittling away at another wooden figurine by the light of an oil lamp. They would take watches now, and while still feeling the ghost aches of his previous battle, Sasori at least had slept. He estimated that his partner had yet to find rest since the time of her capture. "Yet here you are."

"Because of you," she finished drily.

Sasori shrugged, and in that silence, she turned her back toward him and chased sleep. She was wrong to some extent. While he had helped free her, they had been separate during the escape. Hindered by his own foes, he could have only hoped that Moriko was well enough to fight her own pursuits.

He saw the bodies before he discovered her.

She was more than able than she thought herself to be.

Sasori sighed as he tugged open a jar of formaldehyde. Harvesting some select organs, as they were hardly of use and unreachable with the preservative, Sasori located the carotid artery with ease and injected a tubing into the vessel. Attaching a longer wire to the access point, Sasori pushed himself away from the table and turned towards the machine adjacent to his work station. Checking to make sure its tubings were clean and primed, he switched it on and with a whir, Sasori watched the blood of the Sandaime slowly pump itself out of his body, only to be replaced by the caustic preservatives he had concocted.

In four hours, the Sandaime would be perfectly embalmed.

In five, he would become his newest addition to his puppet collection.

Author's note: Ta da! Sorry for the delayed update - but after this point, like I said, I will be taking some time off from the story to reoutline and plot the remainder of it. I've also got board exams to go through so that's another factor keeping me from dedicating myself fully to this. I'll be gone for a bit, but if anything please check out my profile for status updates on this story. I keep all my update schedules there...updated :)

Thank you again for reading and stay well!