Chapter 6: The Hammers Fall

General

Konan raced through the trees on her way out of town, moving quieter than seemed possible despite the fact that she ran along the ground. She'd kept them waiting long enough. Several times she was able to refocus for half a minute, perhaps a minute at most and remind herself that she had to give Sasori time. It occurred to her that it had been a very bad idea to save the one who would be most difficult to convince and likely require the most time for last. Well, too late for that now. If she could convince everyone else, that might do even if he wasn't there for tonight's show.

Speaking of...Much as she wanted to be gentle, Konan was well aware that she was aiming to destroy their whole idea of the world they thought they had always lived in. That could not be gentle, or it would fail. Only something concrete would do. Something as hard as concrete, as undeniable, as absolutely wrecking in its power. I almost feel bad for them.

She turned left on the road that she knew had patchy yellow lines on it, though it was too dark to see them at night. The beginning had been planned all along by some part of her she didn't interfere with and readily came to her mind as soon as she called for it. However, nothing else was in place. A devastating blow...then what? What would she say? No. The question was not what she would say. She only meant to tell them the truth, after all. The question was: How would she say it? The ordering of the several things she had to tell them, the phrasing, how to respond to inevitable disbelief, all were the things she would need to know. Her heart beat faster as she neared the building. It seemed to beat only one word, a word she definitely did not want to hear. A plan could be restructured, even one for which there would be no second chance like this one. At the very least, if she had a plan and it failed she could look at the plan, see where it failed, and add it to her collection of experience. The word that she could not help thinking of required something else, a display of herself in her entirety. If it failed, her entire collection of experience and everything she was would fail as well. Her palms sweated. She dried them on her cloak as she slowed to a walk and tried to become more assured. Her heart continued beating away.

Improv, improv, improv, improv.

Konan strained to keep her face flat as she opened the door.

The sound of laughter greeted her as she walked down the hall.

"Y'know, if they weren't all assholes, I'd call you a Disney Prince!" Hidan.

"I suppose you still could. It doesn't occur to me to think of actual princes from Disney. I thought of the meaning you meant before that one. Does anyone agree?" Nagato.

"I did as well. But isn't it a little...undignified?" Kakuzu, with a hint of humor on the last word.

"I am not the guy equivalent of a Disney Princess!" Yahiko. She could almost hear the blush.

"A Disney Princess is a character type defined by having a strong relationship with animals, to the point of calming normally dangerous ones and being able to command smaller creatures. If you could figure out a way to command these moths, it wouldn't be anything to be embarrassed about." Itachi.

"Itachi's right, nothing useful can be embarrassing. Next time we meet a large dog, maybe see if you can calm it. That'd be useful and nothing to be embarrassed over, right?" Nagato again.

"The only thing worse than being called a princess is having you guys talking about my feelings! I don't need comforting!" Yahiko wasn't taking this well. Although she was only listening from outside the kitchen door, the conversation soothed Konan's nerves. Pulling off the ludicrous through 95% improvisation was a thing to be nervous about. Rescuing Yahiko from awkwardness? Perfectly natural, just as it had been for Nagato. She reached again down to that strange well of confidence, wincing as a memory came up of the momentary glance she'd gotten of the pain and nothingness hiding behind everything. Come to think of it, the strange burning confidence felt just like a lesser version of the burning pain. Well, that made sense… But she pushed her thoughts in that direction away. Consider later. Do now. It felt good.

"Hey Konan's back!" Hidan yelled, before she'd moved a muscle.

What the hell? How -

Thankfully her legs were farther away from her ears than her brain was, so they initiated action unaffected by Hidan's exclamation. Konan walked into the room with the counters just in time to witness the strange break in between scenes where everyone rushed to take new places. Yahiko attempted to look nonchalant against the counters in the back. Nagato attempted to join him, but was held back by Hidan's arm slung around his shoulder. With a slight blush he elbowed Hidan in the ribs, causing him to finally realize that his arm was no longer welcome. Kakuzu and Kisame stood together in the near corner to her right, leaning against the wall and cabinets. They moved slightly apart, Kisame drifting closer to Itachi who was sitting on a cabinet as Hidan put on his best offended face and went to sulk next to Kakuzu. They and the gap left between Itachi and Nagato took up the back and right sides, so she moved to the left naturally and smoothly. This instinctive movement reminded her of scattering civilians. They may have the memories of civilians, but they shouldn't have the instincts. Well, at least they may get along better than my old Akatsuki did.

They looked at her, each with a different expression. She looked at each of them, wondering. Something was wrong. She considered briefly, then sent the nervous signal that would tell her mouth to open and begin. Just as the signal reached its destination, a sputtering noise from outside interrupted, and they all turned their eyes reflexively to look out the door she'd just come through. Konan almost started at the new sound. It was unlike anything she'd heard yet.

The rough sound continued as if something with a very deep voice was coughing very regularly, then stopped. Kisame's mouth dropped open. What the hell did this lady promise him? Itachi was suitably impressed. Kakuzu didn't know the owner of that ride, but he knew who usually came along and groaned inside. He'd been fine for a while, but now he was getting tired and if that brat is loudmouthed tonight I might just choke him to death. Two's a crowd.

The sound of two sets of footsteps echoed into the room. Neither set sounded quite right. The reason for that was obvious as Deidara came into view, followed by Sasori. Deidara's footfalls were a little uneven as he rubbed traces of sleepiness out of his eyes still, and he refused to let go of Sasori's arm, leaving his friend to correct his balance with just one. After taking another quick swipe, Deidara blinked to clear his eyes and looked around. Sasori now stood upright and informed Kisame and Itachi with a shake of his head and a motion of his hand that not my idea. See this? I was dragged. Don't blame me for getting caught in this foolishness.

Deidara locked eyes with the stiff-backed woman in front of him. She didn't look surprised that he and Sasori were here. The look in her eyes caused him to reflexively adjust his posture. He hadn't seen that look in its entirety for a long time. Deidara realized he was still holding Sasori's arm, and let go apologetically. In the flesh, she looked just like Sasori had described. Deidara didn't know whether to be at attention before her or relaxed. He settled for holding her gaze, even under the weight of her scrutiny. He tried to imitate the look of detached strength before him and failed, miserably. Perhaps he could have managed it before, but not now. Not so many months later. Even then, you have to earn the power to look at someone like that, yeah? I still couldn't, hm.

Konan was surprised. She hadn't noticed before, but suddenly all the other Akatsuki members stood out in sharp relief. Of everyone she had seen, Deidara looked the most like the shinobi she was used to seeing. It had to be something in the way he stood, the way he looked. She did not turn her head to look back, but nonetheless could clearly see the others in her mind's eye. Relaxed. Wary. All kinds of things. But all the things they were, all the ways they had of doing things, all were summed up now in one word. Civilian. Or...perhaps...no, something else was true. She would have immediately seen that. Something else had obscured her vision. Only mostly civilian, then. But how can that be possible?

Deidara was the lone exception. She recognized his old self in him immediately. Several seconds had passed since he'd looked at her, so with an inner smile Konan broke off the connection and turned her head, implicitly ordering him to the space between Nagato and Itachi. Deidara proceeded without dithering, and after looking between them and wondering what had happened Sasori followed.

Konan realized at that moment, just before Sasori turned back to lean against a patch of wall, that it was sledgehammer time. Upon turning back, Sasori froze like everyone else already had at the smile she now had on her face. That was not a polite smile. She locked eyes with him. They sparkled maliciously. She locked eyes with Deidara. He wondered just how many people she'd sent off to die before. She locked eyes with Hidan. He swooned.

Then she raised her hands.

Her outer garments exploded, and from them flew paper.

The rippling sound briefly reminded some of a crashing wave. Crash it did, sheets of paper flying everywhere around them. A small burst of wind ruffled hair on everyone's head as the sheets of razor-sharp white blinded and surrounded them, forming into a paper blizzard. It was impossible to see where a sheet ended and another began, their borders folded together and blurred with motion. They simply swarmed, their edges making a terrific rustling that blotted out any other sounds there may have been, trapping them far away from the world.

No one knew how long this continued before one by one they began to notice a steadily rising noise against the background slicing of the air. It was rhythmic, gentler, the sound of paper against paper. One by one butterflies rose into the air, each rising like a mirage before darting suddenly in to their victims. This dart stopped at the last second, and they flapped slowly and leisurely upward again. Some of them accidentally looked at a downward angle during their mindless twisting and saw that much of the seemingly endless paper had settled to the floor and was folding itself in a synchronized rhythm. The blizzard became more complicated in its motion as each sheet of paper was reincarnated with surprising speed into a butterfly that rose to flap its wings in motion around the room.

Yahiko was the first to truly take the blow, when a butterfly fluttered softly out of the fracas like a dream. It danced before his uncomprehending gaze before slowly, softly, just barely touching the centerfold of its butterfly body to his nose. His mouth began to work up and down soundlessly, calling in other butterflies to brush their wings against him. By the feel of it several settled in his hair. The first one to brush his ear made him blink and make a sound. It was an incoherent squeak.

Hidan was much more coherent when one of the butterflies in front of him made a sudden jerk in just the right way. In a flash his hand lashed out and batted it from the air. It did not fall, but before it could rejoin the swirling chaos it was snatched and held in a lose grip of his fingers. Operating on instinct, he brought it to his face and sniffed it.

The blizzard closed in, the butterflies tightening their flight paths until it was impossible not to crash. Crash they did, bouncing off the outer garments, hair, and skin of the people standing in shock until they too began to reach out and interact. As they reached, each and every butterfly was suddenly pulled away from them and drawn up toward the ceiling 'til all the blizzard was gathered under the gray tiles. With various exclamations (and one gleeful giggle) all noticed Konan was no longer there in the same space of a moment and a half. Then the blizzard came back down, flooding the room again, except in the few moments they had looked elsewhere each butterfly had unfolded into a plain sheet of paper, not a crease to be seen on any one of them. A whirling cyclone descended then inverted itself, forming into an upside-down funnel wider at the base than at the top with the base several feet off the floor. The paper either ceased to exist or changed color, no one could be sure, until a black shape with red clouds on it appeared in the air. The last few sheets of paper completed the shape by splitting into two streams and being absorbed through the back, briefly creating the illusion of wings being reabsorbed. Then the fluttering sound stopped entirely, and only Konan was left. She hovered in the air, her hands still raised and put together in that sign they had seen before, and gently came back down. Her eyes looked down on them and did not move from their faces. As she spread her legs somewhat and landed gently, her cloak billowed around her. The air was greatly changed.

Nobody moved. Hidan threatened to fall down under the force of everyone else's not moving. Some of them moved their mouths, but could not yet say anything. What could be said, after all those ghostly little jarring impacts?

Konan smiled sweetly, and undid the seal. A few of them noticed the change in the air around her, but were unable to put a name to what they felt. They'd learn soon enough. Folding her arms across her chest, the kunoichi stepped forward. Some of them flinched back.

"That was unreal," she said, taking the words right out of their minds. "Impossible. It cannot happen in this world. I do not deny it, that was. I broke the rules of this world. But," she smiled, and her eyes flared with triumph, "I did not obey the rules of this world in the first place. How could I? It is not my world."

She swept her arm out to indicate everything. "None of this, not a single particle, belongs to the world I belong to. I am here not of my own decision or will, but because I have died, and whatever may be in charge of our worlds has declared this to be my next one. The world I am from has very different rules. By its rules, I am not unique, and this is perfectly real.

"The technique i just used was a form of ninjutsu, created by manipulating the chakra inside my body in a specific way, aided by hand seals. That basic principle is common, absurdly so. Unless one has a very rare defect that prevents them from manipulating their chakra, anyone could use hand seals to perform juts us if they had the chakra and training. That paper jutsu is mine, and mine alone. But there are many others, too many to list the names of even in a very thick book. That's where all of you come in."

She swept her gaze across the pale, enraptured faces of the men gathered before her. "Have any of you come to wonder over the past few months why it is that everything in you seems unreal? Why somehow, for no reason you can remember, you are fundamentally misaligned with the world around you? Why you have never felt so misaligned before? You may have come up with any number of incorrect ideas, failed to come up with anything at all, or perhaps stumbled upon the correct reason but dismissed it. Regardless, the truth is the same.

"Just as I am not a person of this world, neither are you."

She paused for a moment to let the impact wash over them. Oddly enough, most of them showed no reaction beyond some very subtle changes in the way they looked at her. Sasori looked about to say something, but Deidara's hands involuntarily began to clench within his field of view, so he said nothing. Nagato looked as if he was going to be the first to recover his wits, so Konan moved on.

"The memories you have of always having belonged here, always having been a person belonging to this world, those are false memories. In reality, the past months you have spent in bewilderment are the only months you have spent in this world. In reality…" Something led her to pause for a moment there. She tried to continue speaking, but gave up on that effort as useless in a split second. Something was wrong. Something is quite wrong. What is it? What is it that has… Her gaze landed on Sasori, and she clearly saw him for the first time. Under the dim moonlight, she couldn't have been sure. Before, there had been Deidara to look at. But now -

The changes to his face were definitely there, not a trick of the moonlight. Eyes a little smaller in proportion, mouth a little bigger, not so round. His hairline was a little higher. He was as tall as Deidara. A dozen little adjustments, adding up to -

Changed. There is change. Difference. Her tongue was released. Thanks to the speed at which a trained strategy-planning nin thought, it sounded as if she'd merely paused for effect when she continued, "...those months are the only months you have spent in existence. I died. Now I am here. I remember. I know all of you. All of you come from the people I knew and worked with, until each of your original selves died. Sasori was first. Kisame, I had not even heard the news of. He must have been most recent."

Only force of habit kept her going with the same tone of voice and same facial expression as before. "Yet there seems to be some inheritance. It is possible to detect subtle changes in chakra with enough training. I detected such changes from Sasori earlier, which proves that he does have chakra and should be able to use jutsu, even if that is not in accordance with the rules of this world. Some of you have physical features that alone prove this world's rules no longer apply. Each of your personalities is recognizable, even if only on a basic level. Each of your originals had their own unique abilities, techniques they were very skilled in. Those too may have been inherited."

That last sentence had almost broken her force of habit, revealed her shock. She could not be certain that assertion was true. If there had been more than one such sentence trickling up to her throat, it might have spelled disaster. "We were an organization. The Akatsuki. Perhaps, to find out what has happened, we could be again."

The room was dead silent. The stream of words was gone. Konan continued to stare into their faces, but saw nothing. Her own horror fogged her vision. They stared back, their own horror fogging their vision. It was as if a jutsu had been cast to sever the connection between their senses and their mind, rendering almost everyone in the room insensate.

There was only one person in the room who was not so crippled, who still had a working sense. Even though this sense detected nothing more than horror and shock, its detection of anything spurred the rest of the mind to activity. Sluggishly, the brain churned out a thought. Everyone feels the same. There is no feeling of not being...like this. So...she…?

This thought did more to wake him up than an intravenous line of caffeine. His eyes focused and recognized that her eyes looked kinda withdrawn. Then his eyes glazed over again, because the jolt passed quickly and everyone was kinda withdrawn. Fighting against the paralytics creeping down the line and directly into the wiring of his brain, he managed one last thing. "Uh…"

Everyone twitched when the silence was broken. Konan's lower workings of her brain started quickly enough to suppress it, and she hurriedly searched for something to say. "Ninjas." Swallowing, she continued. "People who can use ninjutsu and keep themselves and others alive in battle are called ninjas. The more formal title is shinobi. A female shinobi is called a kunoichi. The military forces of ou- my world are composed of shinobi. As are the truly high-class mercenaries." She shut her mouth before she could say which one they had been. The people I knew wouldn't care. But these...they...who are they?

Sasori was chalk white and struggling to keep from laughing. Oh god oh sweet baby jesus I said it was a paranormal mystery novel holy crap was I too close to normal this is more like - like - The urge to laugh subsided as he fell into the serious business of determining exactly which genre they were in.

Deidara found himself sucking his thumbs nervously. That was actually quite painful considering the thumb was never supposed to bend that far into the palm. He stopped, flexed his thumbs experimentally - Ow! How long have I been doing this for? ...Probably ever since she said that thing, actually. Never mind. - and started sucking on his first two fingers on each hand just to ensure his thumbs wouldn't be disabled if this lady had anything more to say.

Kakuzu shook his head slightly, and threw up some emergency denial. What the fuck is this stranger saying? That I've only been alive for a few months? That we're all not real people? How the hell could she know anything of the sort? Kakuzu was not alone in thinking this. Kisame was thinking and doing the exact same thing, Nagato and Yahiko felt certain that they had to be real, how could Jiraiya or their parents' deaths or any of that not be real, and Itachi was bluescreened at the thought that he was dead.

Hidan raised his hand. "Hey, goddess-lady?"

Her defenses lapsed, Konan replied impulsively, "The people of the Rain Village called me their Angel, actually. What is it?"

Hidan remembered the paper wings he'd briefly imagined and filed that away for later. "Are you saying we're all ninjas with magic powers?"

Her memory twanged like an overstretched rubber band as Konan remembered her original plan that she'd walked in here planning to get them to agree to. It hurt. I really have no idea what I'm doing. I didn't even figure out...until… "Yes."

Hidan contemplated for a few seconds, then paused his contemplation. Closing his eyes firmly, he reached inside and allowed everything to vanish, losing focus until the feelings disappeared somewhere. Ah. Much better. Although it disrupted his ability to think and remember, he continued to allow himself to be capable of this. Then he resumed contemplating.

If he'd been an analytic type, it wouldn't have taken any contemplating time at all since he really didn't have much to think about. "Any requirements to join?"

Everyone in the room, formerly engrossed in their individual reactions to Konan's information, now turned to look at him. Their reactions varied through several shades of disbelief, wonder, pity, and a bunch of other things. Many, especially those who had throw up some emergency denial as cover, became angry as they remembered Konan's proposal. What does she think she's asking, and who does she think she is to demand it?! Even so, they waited for an answer.

Konan was the only one in the room to not react very much to Hidan's question. She looked at him with her flat face on, not feeling anything that Hidan could detect, and replied. "Requirements?"

"Yeah, um...do we get a group uniform or anything?"

There was no change in Konan, although she did make an effort to move her face more as she spoke. "What do you think I'm wearing?"

*GASP*! Hidan's mouth fell open as he vividly pictured himself wearing a cloak similar to the one she wore. SO BADASS. I would look so good in that. I would sell my soul for this opportunity. Without even needing to think about it, he followed up with "Any special gear?"

At this a ripple of pain passed through her, and her flat face turned translucent, allowing some feeling to show through. With a look of sadness that reminded Nagato of why he and Yahiko had come, she spoke slowly. "You - your original had a special weapon, yes. As did Kisame. Your original wielded a scythe as tall or taller than himself, with 3 red blades. Kisame's used a special sword called the Samehada. Samehada was alive, cut enemies with large razor-sharp scales, and ate chakra. Nobody else used any unique weapons as far as I know."

The emergency shield of denial fractured into a glass mist instantly as Kisame froze. Samehada? How...how does this lady know about Samehada? W-wait. Samehada's not a sword! But...she knows Samehada's alive. Eats chakra. Kisame's right arm remembered the feeling of tooth marks in it. Fish...shredded. Never eaten. Oh my god. She's - His vision swam before him, rearranging itself into a scene crystal clear yet unfamiliar. She's telling the truth.

Hidan made a series of warbling chirping/squeaking/squealing noises that rose up and down a full scale, conveying joy. He could not help bobbing his entire body up and down and shaking his fists held tightly in front of him as he did so. The pain lifted from Konan as she watched him, no longer reminded of his own original but of another, completely different man that she did not feel bad about in the slightest. That's so Tobi-ish. He settled and, still giggling, turned to Kakuzu with eyes wide open and lit up like a bonfire. "Waste of money my ass! Even if I didn't love that thing, it's still...gah, I don't fucking know. In your face! I get a badass cloak and the coolest weapon that's ever existed! Is this or is this not the greatest thing ever!"

Kakuzu stared at him in angry bafflement. "You...you're going to do this. You're going to spend time with the disturbed lunatic who says we're all dead and everything we know is part of a multidimensional conspiracy to do who knows fucking what just so you can get the chance to play ninja, pretend you can do magic, and dress up." He looked very pissed, and everyone in the room wondered if this was what Konan had been talking about when she said they could detect chakra disturbance. His voice continued rising in volume and lowering in pitch as he went on. "All this just because you like the look of obvious insanity and apparently have a death wish." By now Kakuzu's voice had deepened too much for him to sustain any volume, so the next growl was little more than a whisper. "You, Hidan, are the largest idiot I have ever had the misfortune of meeting."

Hidan looked at him quizzically, scratching his head. Once again he could have been overwhelmed by it, his own feelings drowned in Kakuzu's anger. Fortunately, his own joy was great enough to counteract it. "Kakuzu…" He found a very nice spot near his ear to scratch at and did so until sufficiently poetic words flowed out. "And the fortune too, right?" Kakuzu narrowed his eyes and glared.

Hidan grinned like a sunrise, a surprisingly sweet sight that he'd literally never presented to the world before. Kakuzu was surprised out of his anger for just a moment. A moment was all that Hidan needed. "You wouldn't want to be bored, would ya? You wouldn't want to be only partial, would ya? You are, Kakuzu. You're partial. You'd never do anything except beat people at gambling, get angry sometimes, and sit there with your money if I wasn't around. That's still most of what you do even with me around, except since I am around, you can take occasional breaks from being just that shit." A light flashed somewhere. His smile dropped into a questioning look. "Huh. I wonder if, maybe, Other-you was more complete, or at least if there's reasons why you don't do very much. I mean...why're you...fuck, what the hell are you, anyway? If we're supposed to be ninjas, and we've got all these ninja things, and we don't do anything with them, then...then, if these ninja things are us, or parts of us I mean, then we're...uh...partial! Because, y'know, those things are just gathering dust somewhere and they're missing."

Hidan had started scratching as soon as the words ran out, but no more were coming. He looked around for inspiration. His eyes settled on Konan. "I mean, just look at her! A lot of weirdness, yeah. But I bet she knows where the weirdness came from, and what the fuck it does, and what she can use it for. You don't know any of that shit. What good are your stitches? Where did they come from? What are you really able to do? Where did you, your money fetish and stitches and like everything else, where'd you come from? I'd like to know. Not you, I wouldn't be able to know where you came from. Me. Like where'd my scythe come from, and all that shit?" Hidan looked hopefully in Konan's direction. "I wonder if I could maybe hang out with me someday. Would he be cool? Would we be different? How much have I been doing by myself in the past months, anyway? Wait...aw shit, I confused myself. What's going on?"

While Hidan tried to piece together the tracks of his train of thought (which was a hopeless effort; many of them had been stolen even before the explosion, and the most recent disappeared down a yawning canyon), everyone else except Konan felt a little *ping* inside. At what part, none could have said. Konan felt several parts of her freeze back over as she tried to answer the question. If you could...of course. Of course you would. I'm sure that a dedicated, loyal predator would be very cool. All at once the urge to just get everyone else away sprang up, against which she was powerless. Her hands tightened into fists. A direct line was established to her eyes, which flared. "I will be in the front lobby." Any questions the others may have started to come up with were silenced at the scorching brand in her eyes. The air turned razor sharp and everyone was suddenly afraid to move. It returned to normal within the space of a second as she left, almost too quickly to track with the naked eye.

Hidan abandoned his efforts and put his priorities back in order. In accordance with them, he raced out of the room not 2 seconds after her but turned in the opposite direction. Having explored the building thoroughly earlier, he raced to a room with a large enough window, opened it, jumped out, and took off into the woods. All this in just over 5 seconds.

Yahiko and Nagato shared a look. She doesn't look like she likes this any more than we do. With a sympathetic look on Yahiko's face at the thought of her situation and a nod from Nagato, they understood what they had to do.

Deidara snuck a look at the palms of his hands. How much of me does she understand? Maybe she can tell me about these too, huh. Sasori didn't tell me anything else, just that she looked ex-military, yeah. I never actually let him say anything else. Who the hell cares? It's Christmas, yeah! March 20th, actually, but Christmas anyway!

Sasori had not the slightest idea what genre he was in. He decided to give up on finding out and just go with what he wanted to do. What do I want to do? He turned to his right and saw Deidara beginning to smile and looking at his hands, which were smiling too. Oh. Of course. There was no choice to make after that.

Itachi had often wondered about himself. Who and what am I? Where do I belong? There was no choice to make.

Kisame was still frozen. She was right about Samehada. Everything she said...wait, no. Classic fallacy. Just because she was right about Samehada doesn't mean she's right about everything else. Even so… The curiosity that had inspired him to stay in the first place sparked again. How much else is she right about?

Kakuzu didn't have any idea what to think. Damn you, Hidan. More than anything else, he felt uncomfortable. Everything seemed to make perfect sense in his memory. All of it was internally consistent. And yet, when each part of it was tied to the present it fell apart somehow. Like Hidan had pointed out earlier, the cause he remembered for his stitches didn't hold up compared to their current appearance. A lot of things didn't. Almost everything, actually. Everything suddenly seemed uncomfortable, not suited to him. I didn't need to hear anything she said. I didn't want to. Why did I even agree to this?

The answer was quite simple. He'd agreed because Hidan had made him agree, because the little dipshit needed someone to look out for him. Stupid kid was going to get himself killed with a smile on his face before too much longer. Kakuzu had no idea how he'd even ended up in this position. He'd never made a decision to look after the kid beyond the first couple days. Yet somehow Hidan just kept showing up, forcing him into new and uncomfortable situations. Situations that Kakuzu refused to even think about, lest he inadvertently admit he enjoyed them. Without making a decision, a decision was made.

Yahiko and Nagato went first. As they entered the lobby, Konan was sitting on the front desk staring out into the darkness beyond the large windows. Nagato wondered what she was keeping watch for. They stopped beside her, both struggling to think of what to say. They'd thought whatever had been bothering her earlier could be helped by their efforts, but…

With a low ironlike voice, she interrupted their considerations. "Nagato, Yahiko. Your originals specialized in jutsu, Nagato's in an impossibly wide variety, Yahiko in water style. I knew their techniques well. It would not be difficult to show you, if…" Her posture softened, and both of them saw that she seemed to want them to join her. They shared a look. Yahiko was willing to do anything to help, and he didn't mind making friends along the way. It occurred to Nagato that this was the golden opportunity he had been looking for, handed to him on a silver platter. A way to stay near Yahiko as he wanted yet also forge other connections, distance himself as he also wanted. They turned back.

"So...see you, uh, here? Will this be our place if anyone else joins?" Yahiko asked.

Konan considered. Eventually she said, cautiously, "I'm not sure what you mean by 'our place'. Of course you will be fully allowed to continue whatever lives you have, outside of the Akatsuki."

"Yeah, but we'd need facilities, right? Someplace to keep our ninja stuff, a training room, somewhere to meet. A group should be together, or it's not much of one. I guess here's a good place."

He had a point. No such accommodations had been necessary before because all Akatsuki members were already elite ninjas by the time they joined, but these ones would all have to train together. She would not have to, of course. Not in the same way. Konan continued to studiously stare outside, away from them as she replied, "Sound reasoning. I'll mention it to anyone else who comes out this way."

The pair looked back at each other, unsure, before deciding the best course of action was to leave. As they walked out to their car, Nagato started to turn the possibilities over in his head. He wouldn't have described anyone else in that room as bad-looking, exactly… Few of them were even kind of feminine looking, though, so that did limit his options, and that's if anyone was available… Yahiko asked what he was smiling about as they faced each over the car's roof. Nagato passed it off as just realizing how powerful Konan had implied his original to be. He continued to smile in secret all the way back.

Sasori got impatient after a couple minutes and asked Deidara, "Are you going to stand here or are we gonna get moving?" Deidara broke out into a grin and rushed from the room, trusting Sasori to come of his own accord this time. By the time he was within earshot, Deidara was already showing his palms to Konan (he never did that to anybody, not even Sasori) and asking about them. Konan replied that she had no idea where those came from, but they were not completely unique in her world and barely out of the ordinary in the Akatsuki. Deidara pulled his hands back with an excited grin that turned into a pained look of indecision as he tried to ask what he so strongly wanted to ask but couldn't figure out how. Sasori put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away, murmuring gently, "Bug her later, brat." Neither noticed the grimace that crossed Konan's face before she explained to them Yahiko's reasons for taking this building as a base of operations.

Itachi and Kisame watched the door swing shut before making their presences known. Tacitly, they agreed to not talk about their current activity until such time as it seemed normal. Konan made a comment about Itachi's eyes suggesting he should investigate them sometime, and asked Kisame if he did have Samehada in this world. Kisame didn't want to give her too much information yet, so he only replied "...yes." She made sure to mention he could bring Samehada whenever he felt comfortable doing so, which was very courteous. Kisame allowed her to see his back fully turned as he left, wondering about how his first experience living with people not his parents would turn out. He wouldn't have agreed if not for having seen that there were enough rooms for everyone to sleep alone.

Finally, Kakuzu emerged. He just stared at her, narrowed his eyes, grumbled and shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he was getting into. With a sigh, he asked her to please make sure Hidan didn't get any caffeine or sugar. She sensed he was not in the mood to hear her speak any more, so she didn't.

With everyone gone, the building was quiet. She wondered if Nagato and Yahiko felt this quiet, across the uncrossable space.

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