Hello everyone! Here is the second one-shot in the series of Mariko's childhood with Akatsuki...I hope you like it!!

-Keita

Sasori looked up from the puppet whose joints he was mending when he heard the soft slap of bare hands on the floor; Mariko had somehow managed to work the door of his room open and was now crawling through a sea of wooden puppets.

He decided that he had better grab the tiny girl before she accidentally triggered one of the puppets' many attack mechanisms, whether it was a sharp blade or poison gas. To say that Itachi would not be happy if Sasori returned his daughter to him impaled by a puppet blade was putting it extremely mildly.

Setting aside the puppet he was currently working on, Sasori got up and made his way over to where Mariko was sitting, growling and biting a limp wooden arm while ripping at the tuft of brown hair on the unfortunate puppet's head.

The puppet master didn't understand why on earth Kisame had deemed it necessary to teach the little Uchiha girl how to bite things so violently; since then, she had been practicing on anything and anyone who happened to be near her. The bite marks on his ankles were still healing.

"You're gonna break your teeth if you keep on like that," he said to the baby.

Mariko stopped trying to orally rip the puppet's limb off when she heard the redhead's voice and she turned her silver eyes up to him instead, smiling.

Sasori reached down and picked her up; she latched onto him in a sort of baby hug. The puppet master was a little tense with her mouth - specifically her teeth - so close to his neck; the seemingly innocent baby girl had feigned nuzzling Deidara's neck and had left him with a nasty bite mark just last week.

"No biting," he warned the baby as he carried her over to his bed and set her down on the pillow after sweeping blueprints and extra puppet parts off of it.

Although Sasori had released her, the little girl clung to the collar of his shirt, using it to hoist herself to her feet and then to balance as she stood on her wobbly baby legs.

Very slowly, Mariko loosened her hold on him with one hand, waving it wildly while she regained her balance. Then, she tentatively let go with the other hand. She stood on her own for a few seconds, and a smile cracked her face, but then she began swaying back and forth violently before falling back and landing on her rear with a dull thunk on the bed.

The baby girl's silver eyes began to well up with tears, and Sasori smiled gently as he took her tiny hands in his and helped her back up to her feet.

"Try again," he encouraged softly.

Still holding the puppet master's hands, Mariko took a few shaky steps; Sasori let one of her hands go and she went a few steps more. He released her completely and watched as she went two more steps before once more losing her balance and falling back down on the bed.

After another tried and failed attempt, Sasori was becoming more determined to see the little girl walk. This had gone beyond just helping her and it was now a mini personal mission for him.

"You are going to learn how to walk today," he said with firm determination to the black-haired baby, who just looked back at him with discouraged silver eyes.

Kicking aside a pile of puppets parts, Sasori made room on the floor for Mariko to practice walking. He picked her up from the bed and set her softly on the floor.

"Alright," he said, "Let's do this."

Just as he had before, the redhead took Mariko's tiny baby hands in his and hoisted her up to her feet, letting her catch her balance before moving on. He moved with her as she put one little foot in front of the other. Once she seemed confident enough, he let one of her hands go, again waiting for her to re-balance herself before moving ahead. Finally, when she seemed comfortable walking with holding just one of his hands, he let her other hand go, but left both of his hands outstretched, ready to catch her.

Mariko stood completely still once she was on her own, getting a feel for being up so high on such unstable supports. Then, very, very slowly and carefully, she lifted her right foot and stepped forward. She wobbled a bit, and paused to regain her balance; Sasori watched, holding his breath, which he released when he saw that she wasn't going to fall down.

The baby lifted her left foot and stepped forward successfully. She stepped forward with her right again, then her left again, and so on. With each step, Mariko seemed more confident and a little smile gradually made its way to her face; Sasori couldn't help smiling either, happy simply because she was happy.

However, just when it seemed that Mariko was going to be able to walk out of the room that she had crawled into, she took a bad step and went reeling backwards, landing hard on her bottom.

Her eyes filled with tears of frustration, turning them into pools of quicksilver, and she sniffed a few times. Sasori knelt down and gathered the little Uchiha girl in his arms; she snuggled up to him, burying her face in his chest. He hated to see her so upset; she was the only one who was always smiling, and if she wasn't smiling, then it was as if the sun itself had been put out.

Letting his gray eyes roam the room as he held the upset baby, Sasori spotted something that gave him a brilliant idea. A smug smirk formed on his lips as he lightly kissed the top of Mariko's head, set her on the floor and got up to fetch the item.

"There, that should do it; now let's give it a try."

Sasori finished tying the loose knot and stood up, picking up the contraption.

"Ready?" he asked, helping Mariko up to her feet.

She stood, wobbling for a few seconds. When she finally stopped, she took a step forward, then another, then another and so on, until she walked right out the door and into the hallway. By this time, she was grinning so widely that Sasori didn't know how it fit onto her face.

Itachi rounded the corner just then, coming out of the kitchen, and he stopped dead when he saw Mariko walking down the hallway with puppet strings attached to her wrists and ankles and Sasori holding marionette control bars.

"Sasori..." he growled warningly, eyeing his daughter.

The puppet master rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, they're just tied on."

Mariko just laughed.