Itachi
Today was a bust. Itachi's new fear of being out in the open was not going to go away quickly, nor was it easy to push through. Once again, Itachi had spent a good part of his day at the aquarium, as well as sitting in the park, feeding ducks at the park's pond, and getting roped into a game of basketball with strangers. Itachi was not particularly talented at basketball.
He had the stamina to easily keep up and was quite fast, but those were his only advantages. The Sharingan might have enhanced his aiming to the point of making him unstoppable, but Itachi had not used his Sharingan. That would have been cheating, and it would have been un-normal when what he wanted was a normal, restful game with basketball enthusiasts he didn't know. It was good to be neighborly.
He couldn't hide in the company of others forever, so he obviously had to resolve his problem. Itachi wondered what to do for his neglected instrument in the meantime. Until he found a solution, perhaps he could take paying jobs at parties and such. Or he could simply play somewhere that more people passed by, where he would not feel so exposed.
Itachi liked his position outside the south gas station, though. It was a place with few expectations attached to it. Who expected anything surprising at a gas station? So Itachi played there, in a place that would transform his music from something to ignore (as it would be at a party) into something with the power to transform someone's day, at least for a little while. No; he could not take paying gigs. Playing wasn't his job. It was a way he thought he could benefit people.
That was why it was less than completely surprising for Nagato to approach him as they entered the hotel lobby together. Itachi didn't know what he was going to ask, but they thought similarly. He planned to agree.
Nagato looked around and did not see Itachi's guitar case. "Still too exposed?" he asked.
Itachi nodded. "I'm considering playing somewhere else until I can resolve the problem."
Nagato grinned. "In that case, I can help. I was just about to ask if you would mind helping out with an upcoming event."
"What kind of event?" asked Itachi as they moved off to the far side of the room and sat.
"I work with dogs," Nagato explained. "At the shelter. Do you know it?"
Itachi nodded. He had never thought about where Nagato worked, but now that he did, the shelter for lost, abandoned, or just plain abused dogs was perfect for someone like Nagato. "I do."
"We do events sometimes where we bring the dogs to people. It helps them get out more and socialize, and the people love it!" Nagato's eyes shone. "One of those events is being planned now.
The location hasn't been fixed yet, but it's going to be somewhere community-oriented, where kids or older people can meet them and have the dogs help them. I had a dog a long time ago, so I know how they can get you through hard times."
Itachi couldn't help but smile. "You think I could be part of this."
"I think I can ask." Nagato shrugged. "If you're not officially allowed, I'll keep you updated once we get a location so you can be conveniently nearby."
"Thank you." Itachi meant it. He was glad for Nagato's company. They had understood many things together.
"Did I ever tell you about Chibi?" Nagato asked.
"You have mentioned him," Itachi said. "Undetermined breed, smartest little mutt you ever met, seems like he'd been sent to meet you. You're very sure he went to Heaven."
"Of course." Nagato was sure of some things. One of those things was that Chibi was in Heaven, and the other was that Yahiko was headed the same way. "I wish you could have looked into his eyes. Or just glanced. If you acknowledged him at all -"
"You'd see his soul," Itachi finished. "We had a conversation once where you casually mentioned that you believed animals have souls, because it was self-evident to you. Just an observation to make, the same as saying that mammals have fur."
"How could they not have souls?" Nagato reasoned, "They are living beings that feel and want things and interact, just like we do. They have hurts they remember, and hopes. They're people just like we are.
Ergo, there definitely is a Heaven for animals. It probably looks different and has different amenities, but it's Heaven all the same. If there isn't a Heaven for animals, then that must mean Heaven doesn't exist at all, so there isn't one for humans either."
"Humans are animals, so our Heaven is just another variation," Itachi said.
Nagato laughed quietly. "We've had this exact discussion before, haven't we?"
Itachi chuckled. "I think so."
Nagato put a hand on Itachi's shoulder. "Hey, why don't you go wait in the kitchen? I'm gonna get something from my room." He went to do just that.
Itachi entered the kitchen, where Sasori and Yahiko were already talking with each other. "You're a genius!" Yahiko exclaimed. "For really small wounds, strings would definitely help! How do I make them?"
"You just gather chakra in the ends of your fingers…" Sasori demonstrated. Yahiko tried several times. The third time, most of the strings coming from his fingers broke up, but 3 remained intact and attached to the knife he was attaching them to. Yahiko was delighted.
Sasori ducked his head as he grinned, more happy then Itachi had ever seen him. "I hope you don't need it," he forced out. "But sometimes you can wait for things to circulate, and other times you need to get a needle directly in the heart. I've seen doctors do that on TV."
Itachi blinked. This moment was incredibly significant. Was he the only one to realize it? The Sharingan activated, and he studied both of their faces. No, it seemed as if neither of them had realized it. This was the first time any of them had taught one of their techniques to someone else.
It won't be the last. If Hidan's idea of dissolving genjutsu in water can be used, and I help Yahiko do so, that will mean teaching Yahiko how to use genjutsu. Itachi realized a group of this size, with such different abilities, was a treasure trove of options which any one of them could dip into. They weren't more powerful together than apart solely because of communication and teamwork. Every individual person could broaden their abilities. Itachi was staggered at the significance. How had he not realized that before?
"Itachi? Are you alright?" Sasori had noticed Itachi staring, and the Mangekyo Sharingan activated. Itachi deactivated everything and shook his head.
"Do you realize, that is the first time we've shared techniques with each other?"
Both of them took a few minutes to trace their whole history of using jutsu. Yahiko did so aloud, whispering, "We demonstrated them, then I was with Nagato on the lake and he copied me, but he could already use water and we were just tossing it so it doesn't count, then all the stuff with the demon…" Neither of them could remember teaching another one of their techniques at any point.
"This changes everything," Sasori exclaimed. He looked as stunned as Itachi had. "What else can we do with this?"
"How about combining techniques?" Itachi told him. He moved to stand next to Yahiko. "Nagato and I came up with an idea for how I can use my powers, without hurting anyone. With Hidan's input, we realized it might be possible to dissolve genjutsu in water. I still can't figure out how to use my powers myself, but I could help improve others'."
Yahiko's eyes widened. He looked at his hands, then at Itachi. "What can genjutsu do?"
Itachi admitted he wasn't sure. He would need a full explanation of what genjutsu was and how it worked before he could invent new ideas of how to apply it. Yahiko said Kisame had said something about a guy who wanted to collect full explanations. "It's a good thing someone is willing to do so now," Itachi said. "This is exactly the point where we need such a thing."
Nagato appeared. "I don't know what you were just talking about, but it sounds good so I'll ask later." He handed Itachi one of the rocks he'd painted. It was smooth, flat, almost the size of Itachi's palm, wedge-shaped, and brown-black. Its upper surface had been painted a pleasant shade of purple which matched the hue of the rock's natural color, and in the purple a crescent moon had been drawn with a bird's silhouette next to it. In blue were the words, "Peace is here."
Itachi looked at the rock for almost a minute in silence. After a decent time had passed, Nagato decided it was appropriate to speak. "I don't know your tastes exactly, and I have more rocks to paint, but of the ones I've already gotten to this one looked like it suited you the best."
"I like it very much," Itachi agreed. "Silence and contemplation is what I prefer."
"Thought so." Nagato waved the others over to see the rock. They agreed it was very nice, and just Itachi's style.
"I also like the message," Itachi told him. "The world is not bad; there is already peace and goodness to be found. I've always found focusing on the good that already exists to be very inspiring."
Nagato beamed. "I was so proud of that one. I've already taken a picture of it to share; you can keep the rock." He could barely speak through his smile.
Yahiko came to stand next to his best friend. "It makes sense," he said.
Nagato waited for him to elaborate, but Yahiko said nothing more. "Um, what does?"
"I don't know." Yahiko shook his head. His eyebrows were drawn together in confusion. "It's...another one of those things I don't really know how to say."
"What is?" Sasori asked.
Yahiko sighed and started to fiddle with his hair. "I don't know how to say that either. The moon, it… It makes sense, why it would be on this rock." He shook his head again. "It makes sense that you would have drawn it there," he tried again, speaking to Nagato this time.
Nagato waved for him to go on. "It makes sense that I would have drawn the moon…"
Yahiko waved as if to encourage himself. "Because I can't see you drawing something bright."
Nagato's brows bunched together too. "What? I can draw something bright and cheerful just fine. How does that even make sense?"
"I don't know. I just thought of it? I can see you drawing something bright, but not really the same…" Yahiko's shoulders slumped, and he pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. "Someone else could say it better than I could."
Nagato nodded. "It's alright. Someone's bound to have noticed the same thing if it was really obvious to you."
"Thank you for the design." Itachi nodded his head in the same polite way that Konan did, before finding a pocket to put the rock in. Nodding politely was a quiet gesture; he preferred it over more typical ones, such as a smile. He was going to thank Konan for introducing them to this.
Nagato blinked and turned away from Yahiko. "Hey, Sasori, I just remembered something. It's actually from when Hidan and Deidara had that fight. I thought of some things I wanted to do, but then the fight interrupted everything. One of them was talking to you."
"About what?"
Nagato looked around, but did not see Konan anywhere. "It's about one of my weirder powers. She said that the thing I can do where I control dead bodies works because…"
He explained to Sasori everything she had told him, including that the rods appeared to tap into electrical networks and convert his chakra to electricity. By the time he was done, Sasori's eyes had a faraway look the others were coming to recognize as the look he got when he was planning something in his mind. "Yes," he replied in a distant monotone, "that's what I was thinking of…"
Nagato shrugged. "Great! I thought it might help with something, since you're the only one I know who uses electricity." He looked around again. "She has a rod I made. I'd rather not make another one."
"You should have one from when we were talking in the basement," Itachi reminded him.
Nagato shivered. The reminder was not a welcome one. "Creepy."
Sasori came out of his planning and looked between them. "How long were you two friends before she threw us all together?"
They both looked up and thought about it. Yahiko answered Sasori with "A long time" as they did so.
"A couple years," Itachi eventually guesstimated.
"Sounds about right," Nagato confirmed. "We agree on a lot of things, so it might seem longer."
"Only that? It seemed longer to me," Yahiko said.
Itachi told him, "I'm quite sure it was only a couple of years. I had already been in town for some time, and we talked about how I missed my little brother. I remember clearly that it had already been long enough that I was having trouble remembering what Sasuke really looked like, which was only a few years ago."
He fell silent. Sasuke… He was still little the last time I saw him. His face must have changed so much. How could I ever recognize him? I hope he's doing well in school.
Nagato coughed. "Yeah. It's been really nice. Anyway, I should go find Konan and see what we can do with the rod." He punched Itachi lightly on the upper arm and left.
Sasori elected to wait for Nagato to come back, instead of returning to the shed right away. He helped Yahiko practice making more chakra strings. Itachi shook himself out of melancholy thoughts, but the damage was already done. He pulled a seat away from the table that was now in the middle of the kitchen and moved it to the corner, where he could sit and silently observe.
From this vantage point, he saw Nagato return with Konan. They left, taking Sasori with them and leaving Yahiko alone. Yahiko guessed that Itachi might not appreciate being talked to and continued to practice with his chakra quietly. Itachi was grateful.
Kakuzu came in and sat at the table, and Itachi's Sharingan automatically activated. What was this? He looked rather...stunned. Even Yahiko noticed, but Kakuzu recovered some of his typical stoniness whenever the younger ninja tried to ask him what was going on. Itachi looked closely, but could see little, except for a rather obvious attempt to hide some great upset.
Kisame came in and immediately asked why Kakuzu was looking so dazed. The room went silent. Kakuzu's shoulders slumped. "Argued with Hidan," he admitted. Itachi saw a host of negative emotions pass through the region around his eyes. Was that guilt?
Konan came back without Nagato or Sasori. There was still no sign of Hidan. She requested a meeting in the backyard, saying it was for the purpose of sharing good news. Itachi met Yahiko's glance. If there was good news to be shared, why had nobody heard it from Hidan?
Kisame, who was about to talk about his day, bared his teeth. He had the same question.
Sasori
Konan led them to the closest bedroom so they could sit down. Nagato smiled as they entered. He had good memories of hanging out with Hidan in this room. It was a little worrying to see that the blankets and sheets looked completely untouched since that night. They were dusty around the edges, too. Had Hidan ever changed them?
Konan moved to the far side so they could all sit in a triangle on top of the bed. "This is an interesting idea," she said. Her eyes kept losing their grip on anyone's face, and her voice did not sound interested.
Sasori waved a hand and said, "It was just obvious. People of this world don't use strings. Even if we didn't need to fight, I still wouldn't use them just because it would be embarrassing. Remote control is how things work now. If your technological masterpieces could be beaten by a group of well-controlled children's toys, that's a problem."
"But is it workable?" Konan continued where her question had ended, as if Sasori had not spoken at all. "How can a technique that only Nagato can use be useful to you?"
"We'll make a new one," Sasori argued. "He can make the materials. We'll figure out together a way for me to use them."
This caught Konan's attention. Her eyes stayed on him. "The rods are his."
"Yep."
She tilted her head slightly. "How could you use them?"
"That's what I'm going to find out. Unless you know any other remote-control techniques?"
She did not.
"It's settled then." Sasori turned to Nagato. "How do you use this thing?"
Nagato gave the rod to Sasori and had him hold it flat in his hands. He then steepled his fingers in front of him and stared at the rod. "I have to send a chakra signal…" He felt for his chakra, the shifting current of warmth that was just like warm water, and yet went unnoticed unless he deliberately paid attention to it. It was amazing what people could ignore. He channeled the warmth up to the palms of his hands where the rods had emerged.
"This may be difficult," Konan told him. "Your original only ever used this technique after he was injured and placed in the machine, actually. Does it work without the machine?"
Nagato wondered how on earth she could have forgotten to mention a little detail like his original being so badly injured that he had to be placed on life support, but who was he to talk? They'd known each other for a week and a half and had forgotten about possible vampires for most of that time. He refocused on channeling chakra into his palms. He even risked pushing his chakra close to activating that technique, although the idea of actually generating another rod made him shudder.
He winced in the most horrible discomfort he'd ever felt a second later. "Ggk!" He clenched both of his hands, applying pressure to his palms just like he would hold his elbow when his funny bone was bumped. "Oh, god, what the acgk is that?!" It resembled his funny bone being bumped, except the feeling ran up and down his whole arm and was much stronger. Luckily, clutching at the area and dispersing his chakra made it go away.
"This rod just vibrated," Sasori reported. "Is this what it does when it's getting a signal but isn't connected to anything?"
Konan stared at it. "It seems so." Then she turned back to asking Nagato if he was all right.
"It felt like hitting my funny bone, except in my whole forearm!" He rubbed his palms together, still wincing. His arms still felt uncomfortable, and he could not see the discomfort wearing off any time soon.
"Like hitting your funny bone?" That's...interesting. Hitting. Vibration. "Did it feel like it could have been...buzzing?"
Nagato cringed. "Ugh. Inside me. That sounds like it could do it…"
Vibrating. Metal. Rod. "Did you...make any more?"
Nagato nodded. "If this is why I can make the rods, then I thought it might be related to the technique that makes the rods, so I made my chakra do something similar."
Sasori smacked the rod he held against the palm of his other hand. "Get the other one. I think I know what to do."
Nagato rolled himself off the bed, still rubbing his hands together, and went to do just that. Konan watched him go, wondered why he would accept a direct order from Sasori of all people, then shook herself. There were more important things to wonder about. "How have you figured out what you need to do so quickly?"
Sasori held the rod in one hand and looked down at it. "I've always thought hitting my funny bone felt like having vibrations traveling up and down my arm. When he described it that way, I immediately thought of vibrations, and that led me to resonance." He stared closely at the rod. Metal. What kind of metal? Is it like iron? "From that one clue, it's all coming together. If I'm right, I know everything I need to do now."
Nagato returned with the second rod, which he hadn't had any idea what to do with, so he'd stuffed it in a drawer and ignored it since its creation. "What do you need to do?"
Sasori laid the second rod in his lap, and held the first from both ends. He began to channel chakra across the rod from one hand to the other. "Hitting my funny bone feels like vibrations to me, and vibrations lead to resonance. You know how if you play a stringed instrument in a room with another stringed instrument, the vibrations given off by the first can make the second produce sound?"
Nagato looked between the two rods. "Does chakra work the same way?"
"We'll see." Sasori continued to run chakra through the rod. "Is the metal these are made of magnetic? Any relation to iron?"
Konan narrowed her eyes. "I do not know."
"Because if you run a magnet over a bar of iron, the bar of iron can become a magnet itself," Sasori explained. "Running a magnet over it orients its particles in the right direction. This rod was designed to respond to his chakra, but it might be possible to alter it, make it respond to other chakra." He pushed a large pulse of chakra through the rod. It was running more efficiently and faster across the rod's length.
Sasori stopped running his chakra through it lengthwise and held it in one hand. He ran his chakra through it now in no defined course. Nothing happened at first, so he had to increase the flow several times. After several increases, he felt movement against his palm. The rod in his lap did nothing. Sasori picked that one up and started running his chakra through it, too.
Nagato winced. His palms were now merely itchy. On the other hand, his palms were itchy. He scratched to make the worst of it go away as he said, "Resonance. Okay. Maybe that's exactly what I was doing - the other rod was just inside me at the time. *Oh god I am never doing this again.*I hope the other part works, because I really don't want to do this again."
"The first one vibrated a little," Sasori said. His restrained smile finally broke free. "It took a lot of chakra, but maybe they'll become more sensitive."
Konan sat still, stumped. Sasori had actually figured out a way to copy Nagato's technique. And he was using one of Nagato's jutsu to do it. For his own purposes. What was happening?
She'd been here for the whole process, and no part of their logic was flawed, really. The method was sound. There wasn't really anything wrong. And yet something about what was happening here, with Sasori borrowing Nagato's jutsu, seemed wrong. It was alien. Who would ever do such a thing? Of course, students learned from teachers all the time, but he was using one of Nagato's rods. That Nagato had produced. Something about this was very strange, and it all felt wrong to her.
"Itachi's a genius," Sasori declared. He was still smiling.
"How so?" Anything to distract Nagato until the itching went away.
"We were talking before about trading jutsu. Itachi said you'd had an idea about combining genjutsu and water jutsu, and I taught Yahiko how to make strings." Sasori's smile faded as he thought. "This is different from that though. Yahiko could learn genjutsu on his own, and use it on his own. This is taking that idea one step further, creating a jutsu that can only be used by two people together." The smile returned and broadened into a grin. "That's even better. Did our originals do this?"
Konan blinked. Her face was otherwise very still. "No." She wanted to say more, but there was a blockage on her tongue.
Nagato waved at her to go on. This released the blockage. "Why on earth would you ever think of such a thing? Why would anyone ever use a technique like that?" This was what was wrong, this was what was alien. "Shinobi cultivate their own skills. They compete to be strong enough to defend themselves and their village and country. At all times, a comrade may die. A shinobi must be strong, must have their own power. Why would anyone cripple themselves by becoming entirely dependent on comrades that may or may not survive? That is weakness."
Nagato looked at her, shocked. "It's not weakness to work together with your teammates to unlock stronger abilities! How would he be able to use remote control otherwise?"
"No, no, she's right," Sasori objected. "I'm sorry. I didn't say the right thing." He stopped running his chakra through the rod and waved it at Nagato. "All of us are right. You and I are right, because I wasn't speaking precisely. Needing others to unlock stronger abilities is totally fine. Once I have these rods of yours, they're not going to disappear. It takes two to prepare, but once it's prepared I can use it alone.
"I only realized when she started talking that what I said could be taken as not being able to use some ability alone at all. There's a difference between needing two people to prepare and needing two people to use. I can completely understand how a skill that always needs two people would be near useless." He nodded at Konan. "You're right. If anyone specialized in abilities that couldn't be used on their own, that would be pretty useless."
"That's what Itachi said." Nagato motioned to the second rod that Sasori was holding. "I created that when I was talking with him. He said that he felt like he wasn't able to be much of a ninja at all because he doesn't want to hurt anyone, but all his abilities are hurtful. The only thing he can do with them is add them to others', which is why we thought of mixing genjutsu with other things. But what you said is exactly his problem."
Sasori's eyes widened. "He has those eyes, right?"
Nagato shrugged. "Yes, he can see more and has better reflexes. But all of his techniques are fire, which we can't use around here, or genjutsu, which is only good for holding someone still or having a meeting."
Sasori nodded sympathetically. "I had no idea he was struggling like that. I'll keep an eye out for any ideas that might be useful to him." I guess it really is true. The more familiar you are, the more you like. I really should get to know him better. I haven't had the kind of discussions he apparently has with Nagato all the time.
Konan, too, had not known Itachi was struggling to find an acceptable use of his abilities. The amount of things she didn't know her new teammates were thinking about was worrying. Every conversation revealed something surprising. Despite her role as coordinator, she knew very little of what was going on. How could she do her job with this many unknowns?
It had to stop. "That's it. I'm calling a meeting."
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