Narrative: Closed (log ftw.)
Characters: Sasori, Zetsu
General Setting: Namekuji House
Summary: Zetsu isn’t happy when Sasori implies that his plant is dead.
Warnings: Just Zetsu beating the crap out of Sasori. And bad words.
Zetsu is positive that Konoha College doesn’t encourage students killing other students (surely that would be a waste) and doesn’t suppose he’s ready to commit a casualty and get expelled or executed or whatever the consequence would be. After all, it’s not like Sasori wilted his marijuana. The plant he got can be replaced if Zetsu really finds the need for another one.
“I brought dango, Sasori-kun,”
Zetsu drawls behind Sasori’s dormitory room door even though the only parcel he brought is a kunai. Sasori will just have to pretend.
Not much frightened Sasori. He’d faced things that ordinary people were repulsed at without so much as a twitch. Yet, as soon as Sasori heard that voice from the other side of his door, he froze.
This was all that stupid plant’s fault. He had told Zetsu not to leave it with him, and several times he had considered taking it back to the other student just to be rid of it. Of course, that was when the plant had still been alive. Sasori wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, but it was only recently that it occurred to him that the plant was, well… dead.
Sasori had to wiggle his way out of this, though. He made sure that the plant was hidden away long ago (in the back of his wardrobe, to be exact), and the best this he could do now was simply deny that he had ever had it in the first place.
“Oh… Zetsu.” Sasori tended to avoid formalities, unless it was to taunt someone.
Keeping his distance from the door, he probably spent a bit too long thinking up an excuse to send Zetsu away. “I’m… not hungry.”
“That’s okay, your roommate can have them. He’s not in there, is he?” He’s not there to witness me torture you, is he, Zetsu really means, but someone in one of the other rooms might hear, so he keeps it friendly. He leans against the door casually and twirls the kunai in his fingers. It’s fairly blunt. Zetsu has been neglecting to keep his shinobi tools in order.
“Just open the door, Sasori. I’m sure your roommate won’t appreciate the draft if I break it down.”
Sasori couldn’t argue.
Maybe he was being too jumpy towards Zetsu though… What if he really did have dango? Besides, there was nothing to suggest that Zetsu was there about the plant. It’s not like Iruka really questioned where it went. In fact, Sasori doubted that Iruka even knew it was Zetsu’s in the first place.
Much against his better judgment, Sasori went to the door and began unlocking it to open it. “No, he isn’t here. I don’t know if he likes that sort of thing though.” He peeked out at Zetsu through a crack, once the door was open.
Zetsu slides away from the door and stands a respective distance away. The kunai ends up behind his back. “Sure, sure. Aren’t you going to invite me in?” He says and smiles a half smile that is more conniving than pleasant. Maybe Sasori won’t notice.
Oh, Sasori noticed. His slight frown probably conveyed that too. Except, the thing was, Sasori wasn’t quite sure if Zetsu was honestly smiling or not. One could never quite tell with people like him…
“Yeah… yeah. Whatever. Come in.” Sasori stepped back and opened the door all the way to let Zetsu in.
He stops smiling and shuffles in. Zetsu stops in the middle of the dorm and turns around a good two times. When he doesn’t catch sight of his poor, probably wilted plant, he turns back to Sasori at the door, and scowls.
There isn’t anything to talk about, really, because Zetsu usually doesn’t engage in verbal fights. Words are used to the extent of threatening, and that’s it.
“There are so many ways I could hurt you, right now.” He starts, “Why don’t you pick one for me?”
Sasori can only wonder how far he would get if he ran out the door. He knows that Zetsu is faster than him, if need be, and given this situation, the need is definitely there.
Right, so time to play innocent.
“I… I’m not quite sure what you mean, Zetsu.”
Unbelievable.
“I’m talking about the plant. The poisonous one, the one that had a funny smell. Remember?” Zetsu hisses and he hurls the blunt kunai into the carpet so hard it actually lodges itself in the floor.
“Yeah, sure, I can replace it. It wasn’t as expensive as my other ones, but still. The poison yielded a good amount of cash and I think that’s worth something.” He holds his collective breath, seething, “So I’m just going to make a rough guess at how much I could have made, and make up for it in blood money.”
It was quite obvious where this was going, and Sasori knew it would be his blood that Zetsu collected. He stood a bit stiff when the kunai got lodged into the floor, and took a slight step back, through the door.
“… That plant. Right. Didn’t you come collect it back already?”
Zetsu follows suit and also takes a step toward the door. “No, Sasori, I don’t believe I did.” He loosens the kunai (a sharpened one) usually kept up his sleeve into his hand. It will be Sasori that makes the first move, Zetsu decides, and he readies himself to dash after him.
Typical, Zetsu thinks as he barrels out the door after his Akatsuki comrade, who cannot lie for the sake of anything. He wonders briefly if Sasori is stupid enough to go outside. Despite the cold weather, he would have the advantage, and then the fight wouldn’t even be worth fighting.
In Sasori’s mind, there was no plan of fighting. Zetsu was too much for him at this point. As far as he was concerned, all he had to do was lose the other boy, then find a place to hide. Sure, he’d have to encounter Zetsu at some point in the near future, but right now was not that time.
That’s what Sasori hoped anyways, as he stumbled down the stairs. He had to go outside. There was no way he was planning on staying indoors.
Zetsu makes it down two steps before he notices a more efficient way of beating Sasori to the bottom, and then proceeds to jump over the banister. He lands at the bottom of the stairwell and hopes that he can give Sasori a little more credit to being Akatsuki-worthy in hopes of a surprising, formidable, technique.
Sasori halted once he reached the bottom of the stairs, blocked in by Zetsu. Despite being a bit breathless, he tried for one more chance of escape.
“Zetsu, fuck off. If your plant meant so much to you, I’ll just buy you another one.”
“It’s not just the plant. It’s the fact that you allowed it to die.” Zetsu takes a fist full of Sasori’s shirt collar. “I think I repeatedly told you what I would do to you if it died. And still, it is now probably decomposing under your dorm-mate’s bed. Am I losing my touch?”
It was around that moment that Sasori began to realize how serious this was. Zetsu wasn’t messing around at all. Giving a scowl, he ignored the remark about the plant rotting, and tried to push Zetsu away.
“Get off!”
He held fast. “I don’t think so.”
When Sasori decided to ignore his duty to take care of Zetsu’s plant, he might as well have started a revolution. Disregarding a request from him is just as horrible as denying his superiority among the Akatsuki ranks. Zetsu is now taking it as a personal attack, and isn’t about to drop it.
Sasori tried to tug himself away.
Then, something hit him.
A rather nasty smirk spread across his face and he stopped all struggling.
“You won’t do anything to me here. You know the noise would get the attention of everyone around. The stairs echo marvelously, don’t you think?”
Zetsu frowns and he brings the hilt of his kunai underneath Sasori’s chin. “I don’t care.” He says quietly, almost as if he’s regarding what Sasori pointed out. “If you’re too embarrassed about someone seeing you, I’ll just tear you up in your room.”
He sneered, raising his head to avoid the kunai under his head. In actuality, he was probably just giving Zetsu a broader area to cut at.
“It’s not my ninja career at stake.”
Something in the back of Sasori’s mind nagged him, though. He knew it would kill him inside if anyone saw him getting beaten up (because that seemed to be where this was going). He gave a silent prayer that if this was really going to happen, that Zetsu would drag him off elsewhere where no one would see.
Zetsu shifts uncomfortably. This is his fifth year. Just a few more months to go and he’ll be an official shinobi, licenced to kill and ready to be hired for pay. Would it really be worth it to throw everything away over a matter of pride? No, he doesn’t think so.
“To be honest, I don’t want to kill you. The only thing that would be left in my wake would be a body. That wouldn’t accomplish much. So the most I would really do to you is punch you a few times in the face, maybe push you down the stairs. I don’t know.”
Zetsu pulls away his kunai and throws it to the side in exchange for the use of his fist. Using his hold on Sasori’s collar to keep him steady, he swings.
Sasori gave a harsh glare at Zetsu as he spoke, but wasn’t going to bother with arguing. He was getting off lightly, and should probably just go with it. He held out the glare until Zetsu pulled back to punch. At that moment, Sasori squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth together.
The blow hit in no time and wasn’t something Sasori would just walk off. His eyes blinked back open, trying to orientate him, but he quickly grimaced as the pain hit.
His sucker punch lands farther up Sasori’s jaw line than he expects (closer to his ear, he guesses), but Zetsu is still satisfied. When the bruise finally starts to purple, it will be a delightful mark of Sasori’s defeat proudly displayed on the side of his face.
Zetsu’s grip slacks around his collar, but only for a second to allow him lift Sasori up and carry him over his shoulder.
The ringing in his head was amazing. Needless to say, he felt quite off balance and when Zetsu grabbed him up, all he could do was give a weak attempt at struggling before ending up helpless.
“P-put me down!”
“Why? So you can crawl your way out into the cold?” He asks as if Sasori is stupid, which Zetsu now officially thinks he is. “I don’t think so. I want to lay you out in front of my door so everyone can see.”
“Zetsu!”
Sasori was returning to his senses, but at the same time, that panicked ‘I don’t know what’s happening’ mode set in. It was with that that Sasori began grappling around Zetsu’s back, rather frantically, looking for anything that could get him dropped. A hidden weapon would be nice.
“Fuck, Sasori! I’m going to have to tie you up first, God.” Zetsu grabs onto Sasori’s shirt tale and pulls him back. “Stop before I punch you again!”
He lashed out at Zetsu, not once considering that fact that his punches would be nothing to the bigger boy. It was one thing for him to beat up the smaller students, but compared to Zetsu, he was the smaller one. On top of that, Sasori does long range fighting. His punches would be weaker. Really, it was quite a futile effort to escape on his part.
By now Zetsu has ascended the stairs to the first floor and despite having ignored Sasori’s struggling and useless beating up until this point, he decides he’s had enough. His patience is wearing thin (getting all the way down to his dorm to continue torturing Sasori is pointless considering he could just do it here, in front of someone else’s dorm) so Zetsu hauls Sasori over his shoulder by the back of his shirt and carelessly drops him on his front. And to assure that he doesn’t attempt to crawl away, Zetsu smashes his foot right between Sasori’s shoulder blades.
The pain on the side of Sasori’s head had settled down to a very annoying throb by this point, but was still heavily affected his mind. He had been about to give up when Zetsu picked him up again. His mind had barely any time to react to this before he realized that he was being dropped, face down. Luckily, Sasori’s reflexes were in good working order and he got his arms under him best he could to lessen the blow of hitting the ground.
Sasori saw his moment to escape as he started to push himself up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t counting on Zetsu’s foot to come smashing down on him, and as he was plastered back to the floor, he let out of a scream of pain.
It’s satisfying and kind of exciting for Zetsu to know that Sasori is in enough pain that he is neglecting to hide it, as every half-competent shinobi would. While it’s not the most intelligent move (they’re in a hallway full of dormitories, someone is bound to hear Sasori’s noise) Zetsu is still compelled to press a little harder, so he does, and smiles grimly.
Sasori’s scream was one more from the initial shock of being stomped as he was. He quickly managed to bite it back, though, instead resorting to a nasty grimace, and started clawing at the floor, trying to pull himself out from under Zetsu’s foot.
A rather large breath was pressed out of Sasori, and he found himself having a hard time gathering it back.
“Zetsu… f-fucker…”
“What was that, Sasori-kun?” He asks as he crouches slowly, making sure that he doesn’t accidentally squash Sasori (that wouldn’t be much fun). Zetsu is gentle as he wraps his fingers around Sasori’s wrist, but doesn’t hesitate to show off his brutality when he yanks it in an awkward angle.
He didn’t answer back at first, instead focusing on trying to keep breathing. Sasori’s eyes flicked over to his wrist as Zetsu grabbed it, unsure as to what was happening.
A harsh groan escaped Sasori as his arm was tugged back and he clenched his hand into a fist in that ‘God this really hurts’ sort of way. The tendons and muscles in his arm were being stretched to their limit, Sasori could tell (well, more so feel).
“… I hate you!”
Zetsu slides his hand up to the middle of Sasori’s forearm and wraps his other hand just above his wrist, “As long as you know your place,” Chakra is channeled to his finger tips, “I don’t care.” He snaps the bone.
Sasori screamed again, though this time definitely from pain. The snap in his arm was loud, and if he had been paying proper attention, he probably would have heard it echo slightly through the stairwell.
He wasn’t quieting down.
Could Sasori really be blamed, though? Not only was his arm stretched out weird to begin with, it was now bent where it shouldn’t be.
Zetsu is pleased enough with what he’s done to mutilate Sasori’s body that he moves off, but not without ruffling Sasori’s hair first. “See you later.” He says airily and starts for his dormitory, but doesn’t expect Sasori to hear it over his noise.