Discovery

Deidara wasn’t some scaredy-cat, but this guy he’d been paired with in this strange organization called “Akatsuki” was just giving him the creeps.

Though most of his face was covered beneath a black rag, he could see enough of his face to decide he looked like a freak.
The empty, dead eyes that had no life in them whatsoever, staring at him without blinking for minutes.
And yesterday he discovered the guy had a tail. A long, scorpion-like tail he used as a weapon.

Deidara sighed, and decided to go back to the room they were sharing and get some sleep. They were sent on their first mission a few days ago and up to now they had spent their nights at random, uncomfortable places. This was the first night they were staying at a decent hotel, so they could shower and sleep in a bed again. It had been too long for Deidara since the last time he had slept in a bed.

As he entered the room, he looked around to see if his partner was there as well. He saw his back stand out from behind the bed in the back of the room.

“Sasori-san?”

Getting no response, he went over to his partner and gave him a little nudge.

“Sasori-san, are you listeni–”

He immediately stunned from shock at the sight of his partner collapsing to the ground, his eyes even more lifeless than usual. They didn’t blink or move the slightest bit, as if the guy was…was…dead.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming closer from the other room. Deidara rapidly turned around to see who they belonged to as he saw a red-haired man enter the room.

“Who…who are you?” Deidara asked, fear quickly making place for anger.

Was this the guy who did this to Sasori? Had he attacked him while Deidara had been away?

As he looked his opponent over, Deidara suddenly recognized something familiar about him.

“Akatsuki cloak?”

What the hell was going on here? This wasn’t someone from Akatsuki, was he? Deidara hadn’t seen him at the meeting a couple of days ago, and according to the leader all members had been present then.

“What the hell did you do to Sasori-san, hm!”

“I am Sasori, you idiot!”

Taken aback by this statement, Deidara looked back at the collapsed figure behind him.

“But…” He said, trailing off as he didn’t really know what to say right now.

“The figure behind you…”, the redhead started explaining, “…is a puppet. I travel inside him.”

Slowly starting to understand the situation, the confused expression on Deidara’s face started to fade away.

Sasori walked towards the puppet and opened it, showing the young boy it was a puppet indeed.

“So this is where you sit when you…travel inside it?”

“That’s correct.”

“But then…how do you move it?”

Sasori sighed. This kid was bothersome, annoying him with all these questions and staring at him like he’d never seen a person with red hair before.

Connecting chakra strings from his fingers to the puppet, he showed Deidara how he could move it.

“Like this. It’s a puppet like I told you.”

Deidara’s eyes grew a little bigger at the sight.

“That…that’s amazing!” He spat out, clearly impressed.

“Do you have more of these puppets?”

“Yes, of course. Right now, my collection consists of 256 puppets exactly.”

Deidara’s eyes went even wider at that revelation.

“Do you make them yourself?”

“Yes.” Sasori grumbled, getting tired of Deidara’s curiosity.

“I didn’t know Sasori no danna was an artist also!”

“..Danna?”

“Yeah, hm!”

Without questioning the title Deidara decided to give him any further, Sasori went to bed and soon after, Deidara did the same.

Maybe Deidara had been wrong about Sasori. Maybe he wasn’t a freak at all.
If Sasori proved himself a true artist to Deidara, he’d consider calling the puppet master more often by the title “danna”.

He wondered if Sasori would turn out to be worthy of that title.