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Her hair was as blue as the sky was dry, bereft of a cloud—no rain, no mercy, no salvation. And that is how Konan looks at Sasori as he collects splintered wood and his pride from sandy earth.
These are the natural consequences of waging war with the paper angel of Ame.
“I still plan on examining you,” Sasori informs her. “To the bone. That’s the only reason I’m bothering with your little peacemaking operation.”
“Mm.” Konan waits for the punchline, before replying, “The path to salvation is paved with pain. You will not lack in skeletons to study.” Then she adds, bluntly, “Unfortunately for you, I am a messenger of god: I don’t put out on the first date.”
“My lucky day.” Sasori dryly replies, scoffing as he opens a scroll. One bite of his thumb and several scribbled glyphs later, and his puppet is sealed away with a crack of smoke.
It isn’t as though he hates women. On the contrary, he finds them beautiful, fair—soft in ways that most male muses lack.
He sighs, standing up. The scroll glances at him irately, Sasori shushing it with a swipe of his thumb.
I’ll fix you later, he promises, snapping it onto his back.
“It was a beautiful puppet,” Konan comments, almost reading his mind. “Very selcoulth. Very rare.”
“As is everything I make. I am an artist,” Sasori retorts.
“You are certainly ‘something’.” Konan hums, stepping away. “But, I wonder.” Paper unfurls from her face, her sleeve, body shimmering into sheets of white, folding itself into halves, quarters, eighths. “Tell me. Do you regret it?”
Sasori instinctively remembers of the scroll at his back - the one marked 三. His hand flinches into a fist—as though burned by the thought—lip curling with disgust. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Liar. Konan stares at him impassively, blue hair whipping around her face, before finally saying, “If you say so.”
Papers swirl around her, kicking up a wave of dust that forces Sasori to cover his mouth, coughing. When he opens his eyes, Konan is gone. Only one origami crane remains, fluttering onto his hair.
In the lonely howl of the desert wind, a female voice emerges.
“Your first mission will arrive in three day’s time. Don’t be late,” the crane whispers, before Sasori snatches it with two sharp fingers.
“Until then,” he replies, uselessly.
He is already alone.
The paper flaps frantically, straining against the cage of his hands, held as tenderly as he would treasure. It flutters in there—with the same irregular cadence as a heart, startled in fright, much more human than the flesh and blood it was born of. Some might argue it even had a soul. (He’s never had to dissect paper before.)
But he has injuries to tend to, and a puppet to repair. The crane, however interesting, will have to wait.
Sasori paralyzes it with a single hand seal, and slips it into his pocket to study later.
Nine hundred ninety-nine more of these, and he’ll have a wish.