[LOG] Pein and Kasumi.
Who: Pein (deadening) and Kasumi (lemirage_bleu).
Where: A few streets down from Pein's apartment.
When: November 15.
What: Pein and Kasumi finally have the discussion one of them's been meaning to, and the new faction of the Akatsuki begins to expose itself.
Warnings: Pein's literary style is...different. That is all. :|
Days on the island usually pass pretty slowly, Kasumi has found over her time here. Perhaps it's boredom, perhaps it is something else. That she hasn't answered yet, and nor has she contemplated it because she's found no reason to. When her hours at school end- more lectures on things she, for the most part, already knows- she is quite ready to leave with haste and face the rabble of the many years of Oshima students hurrying home. Freshmen through to the new college years, it's something that doesn't change, the eagerness to leave. (And as she sees the freshmen of the high school bustle out she realises she's yet to find a use for that girl who bumped into her yet.
But she hasn't found a use for herself yet.)
The day's rather miserable, bordering on rain but nothing yet. Autumntime is certainly here, she muses as she brushes golden leaves from her shoulder and pushes one of her typical pigtails back, noting the fading blue with a slight look of distaste. (Great.) The streets are harmless cobblestone under her shoes and the wind isn't strong enough to block out the click of her heels against the pavement she walks over. Actually, she can't feel the wind at all.
There are crossroads right by the block she lives in (alone now, since the most unfortunate death of her aunt- or so she has to say, because there is little trust for someone who has no emotion for a death so close to them) and she waits for the cars- the few of them there are- to leave the road clear. She pulls out her phone with little thought, fingers flying across keys to send a message (to whom? About what?) as the traffic dissipates.
And Pein is the first to-
(-but was the call made? And who made it? It was not Tayuya-dono, could not have been, because while she is upstairs in his apartment, moving listless around the rooms that are now dual, shared places between the two of them, a part of both their personalities for the time being, Pein was here, away, moving. Away. What call? To whom? Not to him. Pein does not oft respond to calls made upon his person, against his person, to his person. He has one cell phone that he does not pay for because it is technically someone else's. They are still paying for it with their money because they think they still have it. And it is as blank and lifeless as the rest of him, pale and sleek in its entirety and the only number etched into the SIM's memory is-)
-there is nothing
to be said.
(Nothing at all to do.)
There are people everywhere, and for that reason does Pein navigate with a dulled awareness of his surroundings. It is unlike him, but only in his ways of wise - Pein is not easily frightened, but he does not care for crowds. They leave him very deeply unsettled, perhaps because he is sensitive to all motion.
(All things
within a place.
And he is the first to document that the man has cancer, the three children are to be sharing a flu,
the dog is running out into the road, and-
Overwhelming.
His sensory organs.
Exploding as he stops inside a blank white bathroom inside a blank white accessory store.
He had surprised himself when he put a hand up to his mouth to cover up the scent of them, only to realize-
"Peinbreatheyoustupidmotherfucker!" Tayuya thwacking him
HARD
in the square of his back.
A gasping
rattling
breath.
Like bones.)
He nearly walks into her but spins - last minute - out of her path, looking softly and stoically surprised.
He is on a shopping trip, and so her presence is unexpected. (As if Tayuya's orders eliminate the existence of all whom it does not immediately and expressly include. If this were the case, it would surprise no one.)
"Kasumi-san."
And he exhales.
(Carefully.)
And says nothing more.
When he appears Kasumi is surprised (only slightly- he lives the same way after all) and the traffic is clearing. She brushes a strand of blue (-ish right now) hair out of her face and turns to look at him (observing, only observing- her face doesn't twitch and her eyes don't narrow). Shopping bags? It is his own place, she needs not worry.
"Pein." He is one of the few on this island she has met and held respect for, but to say Pein-san (as she should, even if she did not respect him because her manners dictate) sounds foreign on her tongue (what irony). Her body language compensates- head bowed and hands together (she is shorter than him already- in heels or no- but she bows her height slightly anyway.)
"I did not see you today-" until now. Of course. But they see each other enough, so why the necessity? She sees the free road but doesn't move (lead me) unless he will do so first. "How are you?" Manners, manners and words most find pointless, but they must be there, like Oshima must house the brightest minds with the worst problems and her inflections must be perfect in order to communicate anything. (And she loathes speaking of anything but the most idle things anyway.) She can feel the weight of her bag against her shoulder but does not, will not, mention it. It is not a problem to be shared (problems never are.)
Halloween had both been and gone- the event at Oshima was still one she was unsure about the benefits, but it certainly wasn't as useless as she originally believed. But still...
(It was all so slow.)
Her eyes haven't (won't) leave him. Not quite yet. She watches him for-- what? Safety? She doesn't think so. (She doesn't need to protect herself from him, she knows that much.
And that, is trust. Trust given too early, mayhaps.)
Trust that is-
(Tayuya-dono is sleeping upstairs.
"And so you will not disturb Her."
And they haven't since, which is good, because
Pein is not a very tolerant person.)
He watches her face with all the studiousness of a wiseman and all the unnecessary elegance of a prince. His countenance is serene in its entirety and by that will he be guided. It is easier to avoid thinking of the crowded street when he is met with Kasumi's face. He isn't sure to what degree or what affect, but it must be that she is an easy pinnacle of focus. If she, herself, fails to be interesting, there is her distracting coloration to take note of.
There is-
(Royal. Blue.)
-in her hair.
(It's pale but he can see it.)
"I'm fine." (In, perhaps, a loose and vague manner of speaking.)
"And, you, Kasumi-san," are not in costume (anymore). Hallow's Eve has ended, and the pagan within Pein's paganism has locked itself up again, to starve until the Harvest will ride in upon her Night Mare yet again. (But Pein does not dream. His mind is too active and linear for such things.) And-
(He'd watched the building go up in flames.)
So it goes.
"Are out."
He watches her. (Carefully. Studiously.)
Because Pein is-
("I don't know what you see in her." Tayuya-dono is not entirely delighted by the idea of new members, period, but the idea of not being the only woman has her on edge. His God has never particularly liked women, and Kasumi-san is no exception. Hyuuga Hanabi-san is no exception. Pein does know this. Knew it from the Beginning. And so it would be.)
Pein is looking for something.
Unreadable. (His face. His mind.)
Pein's eyes are deep because they contain more layers then they should and they are-
("I promise you, my liege." I will not fail you.)
-bright
fucking-
The sun casts his hair orange. (But it is not orange. It is-)
"And the reason?"
(No one has ever told Pein that
his Japanese is odd-sounding
save Tayuya.
It is odd-sounding.
Everyone knows it is odd-sounding.
It is an unspoken truth that it is entirely
cryptic
poetic
abstract
with a piece of Gaelic laced between.
But no one
save Tayuya
will say it out loud.
Because-)
"Kasumi-san."
Pein is polite. (And unchanging. And intolerant.)
But patient.
Patient as anything.
The street seems to move forward without them.
And so she hears his speech, his words. There's no difference to any other word anyone else will speak (but is his tone the same as his words? She can't hear it) and she inclines her head.
"Quite the same." But she doesn't need to say that (it wasn't a question). She does anyway. Because (she must) perhaps she is wrong (she doesn't believe that.) And he speaks again. Indeed she is out, that doesn't need to be said. (Though were should be the correct term, as she was to retire back now.)
"Were, I suppose. Though I've yet to reach my place." Her voice is even and quiet- clear but it always is. As the sun casts over them he's soaked in it and she realises, for the first time, just how colourless he is. (And she will still be blue, she knows it.)
"School. You were shopping?" And so the conversation turns back on him- for now. She does not answer questions with essays about why- there is no-one who needs to know all of that. There is no need for an interrogation of her now (so she would say) but she expects it anyway. It is, after all, human nature to do so. And Pein, to her, is human like the rest of them. Though no-one wants to be. (She doesn't want to be human. She wants to be better than that- she knows she is beyond most of the species.
And that is honesty.)
And they're both waiting.
"Will you make the first move?" It is his decision, not hers. Things move on, people pass by but she pays them little heed (there's nothing interesting about the masses)
('Or do you need aid?' She won't say those words. He doesn't as far as she can see.)
There's the breeze. She ignores it and her head tilts further, watching him with the same intent, intense.
Because the tone is that-
(of a false god.)
Pein knows himself as he is.
And only that.
And Kasumi will know his words as-
(But Pein has decided his own things about Kasumi.
His own things. And he won't relinquish them.
Not here.
Not now.
Not
yet.)
His mind is some forlorn philosopher's dying rite. Some great preacher's last sermon. Some great poet's last stanza. Pein is both the beginning and end of existence and so he thinks not in line or paragraphs but word by word, and yet he thinks with a grandeur that is so collective, so expansive, that he can't possibly be limited within conventional definitions of humanity. It wouldn't be right.
And so he is honest
only when honesty suits him.
"Perhaps."
But there is a definite unlikelihood to the way he says it.
Because Pein is waiting for Kasumi to make the first move.
(Waiting for Kasumi to prove him right.)
And she will.
(This, Pein knows without doubt.)
As always.
Perhaps.
(The answer to all of her-)
questions.
(And similarly,)
to all existence,
and creation.
Perhaps.
An adverb meaning
"the possibility of; maybe",
formed by the Latin prefix
per- and par- meaning "by" or "through"
combined with the plural of -hap
meaning "chance" (as used in the word
"happen").
Everything supercedes everything else
within Pein's mind.
(Cause and effect, though.
These things are reversed.)
Her hair is swept up, (falsely) angelic in the small, song-like bout of wind that catches them afterwards and the rain has long disappeared with the summer. (With Itachi. Sasori.) It's snow that is on it's way now, and Pein knows this better than he lets on. The bags that weigh in his hands are nothing less than peace offerings from an unknown giver (himself? But not himself,) and he can only hope that She will accept them on her own terms.
As always.
"A delicate operation."
(Like none you've ever seen before.)
This is a test, Kasumi-san.
(But such remains unsaid.)
His tone- (unlike him) she brushes it under the carpet. (And under the carpet are many things, if the carpet is her mind, filing away everything in those secret trap doors under the floorboard- filing away his tone, his appearences- as she did so many things. Him, Tayuya, the boy from months ago at the airport whose number she still has, Mademoiselle Antoinette of the party...
And of course that venomous plant which she wants to turn to paper, Kataheki-san.)
It is not to be understood, the ideals of fate. (Happenstance meetings on concrete panels.) If indeed, such a thing might exist. But she still believes in so much like the wide-eyed, sheltered child. She is in the wrong universe for her naivete and playing it like she is the queen.
"It seems to be so." As many things are- just to seem and not be real. This is full of balance and need to- be the same- be careful. But it seems that way when looked at in other eyes (in hers?)
"The balance-" (Whose is it?) She speaks with no curiosity, or specific ideas. (But perhaps he knows of what she speaks. She believes so.) It is merely a statement.
"Your balance-" (That is to say) "It leans too far right." And she always tilts to the left.
There is too much weight on your side. (Are we offering yet?)
"May I help?" And those words are spoken without the presumption of her hands moving forward to take them, for men- all men- are stubborn. And she is (a girl) a lady, not meant to do such things.
(It infuriates her, that thought. Like few others do. But she says nothing when it moves forward. She is there to watch, to accept.)
He leans neither towards or away from her, though.
Simply too far to the-
(North.
South.
East.
"Fuck, fuck, no, I told you- dammit, put that stupid phone down and listen we already canvassed the west of this stupid fucking island, they aren't anywhere. They aren't anywhere." She'd dragged her fist and black-purple glossed fingernails through her pretty red hair and Pein had felt a sort of indelicate irritation with everything. With envy.
With himself.
It is when he cannot help her that Pein feels the most useless.
And next to uselessness, Pein hardly ever feels negative emotions.
Hardly ever.
And to feel negatively in conjunction to-
He can't cope with that sort of thing.
"New members Pein. We need new ones and I need you to find them."
"Of course, my liege.")
And so here they are.
In her entirety, Kasumi is nothing like Tayuya whatsoever. In fact, she seems to purposefully play opposite to whatever his God would do, how she would act, how she would think. There is a half-dutifullness about her, a half-blue, half-graceful beauty that she maintains simply by being and sounding foreign. (As if she is foreign to everything.) If Kasumi is the carpet under which things are swept then they have the same purpose to one another; he is struck (he is Ichi-sama to Tayuya's Rei-sama, and they two will go through the motions as many times as necessary to get it right. There is an obscene closeness to both of them, a demented, obsessive intimacy that they conform to easily, as if it were generated naturally. The Akatsuki is an organization obsessed with it's own godlessness, and if his conversation with Kasumi at the Halloween dance proved nothing, it proved that.) But all of his piercings are visible now. Perhaps that makes this encounter pointless. Perhaps that makes this encounter-
(he is desperately waiting-)
Kasumi will prove herself to him.
She has, already. She does, in paper-folded accuracy.
(She smells like papyrus.
Pein knows this only because he is a person crafted entirely from
an almost painful obsession with any and all who catch his interest.
And now he only wants to rip her apart so that he can be right about the way she will put herself together again.)
Because to Pein
everything is a setup.
(A game.
You will win,
or you will die.)
It is those sort of games that Pein so easily constructs for others to abide by.
"Balance is,"
It is why he is 1 to Tayuya's 0. (And always has been.)
"As balance will be."
Always.
"You remind me of someone."
Someone I heard of long ago.
"A folk hero."
(Pein has a strange adoration for Celtic legend.
For legend of all kind.)
But his expression is blank.
It is impossible to tell
what
he's
thinking.
"But not anyone I supposed I would eventually find."
His stare--
As blank as any smile to be given away, she finds. And that is the look she has on her face. As practiced and as old as- (what? Time? They had already spoken of its uselessness before) she is. (But time still passes.)
She nods. (That will be so, should you not move.)
Indeed, like Tayuya-san (-sama?) she most certainly is not. (That she knows from meetings back when school was only starting-
"Come to this place."
She waited. And there was nothing.) She is not brash, and her only instance of swearing has been to use God's name in vein (but who is God anyway?) She is subversion and submission with some impeneratable air of mystery because she belongs nowhere. Absolutely nowhere, even with every word she speaks in every language she knows.
(The old lie; Dulce Et Decorum Est
Pro Patria Mori.)
There is no country. (France is... and Japan is not... And England, as it has been, is merely holiday.)
Not for anyone.
And she is (the end) proof.
Balance is needed. With balance comes one's duties, responsibilities.
One's purpose, you might say.
To wander aimlessly.
(Pity would be no more
If we could not make somebody poor.)
Is the lack of balance
(And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.)
"I am only what-" (you say) "I am." Defined by others while caring not for their opinions.
Is hypocrisy.
Theocracy.
But not-
"Do you know the significance of the name,"
Akatsuki?
(Red moon.
New dawn.
Revolution.)
"Conán mac Morna?"
He tilts his head to the side a bit, watches her, and if his plane of site is completely (vertigo) off-kilter, it does not suprise or hinder any of his movements. He does not smile, but he does not hesitate either. (So it is that Pein is as he is. Unchanging. Unforgiving. Immobile. Constant decisions made. Constant intolerance for all that does not fit and conform to his needs and Tayuya's desires. Because, in the end, Tayuya is Pein's whole world. And that is what he has decided about Kasumi, too.
What Tayuya is to him, he will be to her.
And so the Empire will be built upon the black-hearted loyalty and overall cruel intentions of small-breasted women.)
If there is all and nothing to be said, Pein will say it. He watches her with a sort of esteem that is both there and yet strangely intangible, unexplainable. His red (orange? It can't be,) hair feathers around his face but the silver studs there look more natural. As if they have always been there and always will be, whereas his hair or not.
But Revolution dies young and vengeful.
This Pein knows better than anyone.
(He sent a letter to Deidara a few weeks ago.
But this?
No one can know.)
Pein was born in Ireland without piercing, and without parents.
Because Pein is the child of a God.
(This much is obvious.)
And so for him to fnd his own mother and father has taken years
and it is his duty (and only his) to act as their warrior unfounded,
unforgiving, unquestioning.
Pein is a soldier of God.
And so he knows very well that all others are false.
His own tongue weighs heavily in his mouth, as if the emerald isle will not have him so easily as Oshima might.
(And if that is the case, it will not surprise him.)
But there is no quirk to the lips so dappled with sharp edges; there is a secretive way his layered eyes darken, as if with consequential thought and structure. Pein cannot believe in Time because Time is yet another false God. If fear is the extent of one's devotion, one is not yet devoted, nor are they holy. (Nor have they any real use.) It is through toil and fate that Pein is the pendulum that he is. He will not kneel down. He never does. Instead he
reaches and takes
her small, milky hand
and holds it in his, palm-side up.
(I wonder if you might see, Tayuya-dono.)
He slides the bags into the crook of his elbow, and lifts his fingers to delicately write the kana for it up the dancing lines of her heritage.
("Who I am-"
"It doesn't matter.")
「コ ナ ン」
"How it is spelled in this language."
(In any language.
"It doesn't matter.")
And he looks up at her face when he is finished.
But he does not let go.
Could one be so unfamiliar? (Yes.) But she-
is educated-
is different.
"An ally of Fionn mac Cumhail, yes?" The servant. The loyal. (How fitting.) She says nothing more, nothing of his portrayal- since when has history been accurate? And instead her head turns- towards the street, the people and there is that knowledge that each person who crosses the street wonders why they stay locked in place. (Like dolls.) And her eyes are apathetic to each of them- stare on, dear traveller, stare on- as (time) the sun passes through the sky. (Far too quickly will it set.)
And Ireland-
a place she has been, long before she can remember. Only ever once. (Only ever before she was born.)
Is not France. Is not the holiday home in London. Ireland is a land wherein there is Guinness, and accents which sing. St. Patrick's Day. Of course England took them all.
Because England is full of drunks.
(And France is full of romance. So they said. She saw none.)
And how many people care about the Saint now?
(Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to Heaven.
Nor shall alcohol.)
Her attention caught by him again, as is her hand, and she glances down to it. Her nails bare, unlike his (and conservativism would bubble but she could not care) and manicured to fine points. (But still they could break if used as a weapon.)
And he is.
Eternal.
Unchanging.
Impossible.
A puzzle.
Her fingers agile and capable to strike perfect lines, notes and undo the rubix cube within seconds.
Her fingers want to turn him- all of them- into rubix cubes.
And the words are on her hand before she notices. (Quirked and invisible.) "I see." (Naruhodou.) Her eyes had flicked to orange(-red) hair as he traced the last symbol on her palm.
It could almost be... anything. (That is to say, between them.) And she doesn't look away. He's blank. (She's- there.) "And where did they come from?" Those piercings. (Were they your own hand?) They are... professional.
But he is clinical.
(Eternal.)
But Kasumi knows that already.
"It's impossible to say."
And so he does release her hand, but release is never permanent. If one is released, one has already been ensnared irreversably, and to a degree where their very fate is to be ensnared endlessly until their death. It is the fate of animals. It is the fate of Gods. And humans like to think that they are somewhere in between, something like a happy medium, but they are not. They are either one or the other. And in the presence of one will they always act in a predictable manner. (Because animals are forever conscious of their own lack of worthiness, and if they are not, Gods will make them so. And so it is easy for Pein to believe in only one God, though he knows himself to be spawned of many.) In a way, the Celts are sacred to him, but Pein is both a sanctimonious and completely inharmonious being, purposely so. He cannot say what has made him this way, only that it is nothing he has the capacity to explain.
And his piercings
are the same.
It is easy to figure out their country of origin, trace them to piercing parlor, analyze Pein as a strange consumer of sorts. (America is a grand, Godless place, full of heathen animals who think they are Gods. It both disgusts and entrances him. The simple, silver click of a metronome- "Pein. Dude. You say the weirdest shit sometimes. Seriously kid."
Pein is not so traceable as the law would like to think, and this is because he understands it
inside and out.) Though Pein really loves understanding things as such. Reversing things as such.
His aunt's intestines like spiderwebs across her own kitchen.
And his (parents') house
on fire.
Sick delight.
(And fascination.
Because Pein
does not exist in the eyes of the government.
And so he is invisible.)
The name on the transcript that reads-
"Kenso Nagato."
But the rest are dead.
(The names he has taken.
The people who have pierced him.
Piercing is so intimate that he cannot help but form bonds that must sever, bonds that excite him to cut.
They drive holes through his body and then he privately drives holes in their stomachs.)
And no one ever knows.
The serial killings have no connection,
save for the fact that all of the dead are piercing and tattoo artists.
And the MO has yet to be completely examined.
The Chinese calendar
and the Roman calendar.
(But neither know Pein's real name.)
"They have always been here."
Since I put them here.
They have stayed.
"And you have none."
Fitting.
"Konan."
And his lips finally do twitch into the lopsided semblance of a smile.
(And he is strangely reminded of origami.)
But humans, in their own way, through their own biological definition... they are also animals. In the end, they are subject to primal instincts like all others.
Fight or flight. (Fear.)
And if that is so they will be made aware of their shortcomings. And the Gods shall laugh and delight.
She shall watch. Objective, away, apart. Just as she stares at his piercings, mild curiosity- as if, should she touch them, he would fall apart.
But she already knows Pein is not that delicate.
(And to say -san, -sama, still sounds so wrong.)
She knows nothing of his past. Of what his memories are.
Kasumi sees-
A piano. Harp and flute. Tutors and uniforms and large rooms.
And her parents unable to find anything. Her stashes and contacts and everything hidden all over her room, and one would think a servant would see when they entered, but they didn't.
She sees her aunt tumbling down the stairs and the heel of her DKNY ankle boots out casually. What a misplacement. What an act.
And her name stays the same. And her hair blinds under UV lights.
And thousands of people die under her touch as she stows away money for things that are never seen. That she never sees.
(Because she hasn't purchased them yet.)
"Timeless, as all?" As you are the God? And his earlier ideas are correct. She will see him as he sees Tayuya and there will be no flaw to his reasoning, his ideas, his plans.
Because she trusts that he knows more than anyone on this Island.
Even more than she.
"I do not." And that name again- the name of legend (as he will be?) and of a Freshman's idiocy. "Pein." She says it rarely.
(And will that change?)
"But there is room to change." (If asked.)
"Perhaps there is."
Analytical eyes.
And-
"Perhaps there is not."
He watches her.
"There is an elegance to the austere business of death, don't you think?"
And he knows she does, to some extent.
As they all do. As they must.
(And Hyuuga Hanabi is next on his short list.)
"A message will be delivered unto you."
And you will receive it.
The smile's nature is a snake's nature. But it is with a definitive hatred of the snake that the new moon rises. That the red moon burns holes in the sky. That the Akatsuki was founded. The Akatsuki's hatred of snakes (of Orochimaru) is Tayuya's hatred of Orochimaru. Is Itachi's hatred of Orochimaru. (The one willing, the other unwilling. And both can see the real outcomes. The real effort, the actual motive. And in the same way the Akatsuki addresses every motive. All motives.
Wrath. Hidan.
Sloth. Tobi. Too slow. Completely dead.
Avarice. Kakuzu.
Lust. Itachi.
Fire. Deidara.
Perfection. Sasori.
Hunger. Zetsu.
Insanity. Pein.
And God.
Tayuya.
Always.)
If I can perfect you to my liking, then I will have double our numbers.
Tripled our power.
(And the Akatsuki are based on power.)
His eyes are deep.
Impossibly deep.
And Pein doesn't know how many he's killed.
Because it doesn't matter.
"You will be prepared."
By me.
And so it goes.
Konan.
(Loyal.
Eternal.
Blue.)
In front of him.
He shifts the weight of the shopping bags.
"You will need to learn Her in time."
But I am the first step.
She watches a leaf dance on the wind- circling around past Pein- before she answers.
"There is an elegance to everything." (If one makes the effort.) And her hand- her arm- creates an arc as she moves it to her hair, brushing the pigtail back again. (The wind- endless and unstoppable. Block- and it has a new path.)
And so Konan (Kasumi) is christened as such. As potential. (And she doesn't know for what, but the word Akatsuki- it has been mumbled with fear in Paris and they're hours away from the country, she continued to point out.
What is their danger?) And that message-
how long will it take?
"When?" (A letter? Would it not be easier to speak and wash it away in the air?) "And how?" Her tone expects an answer but will not demand. (He will answer her, she is sure.)
And stealth is as large a part of power as everything else. As the basic feel of muscle and safety of a gun.
A weapon she owns. And one she has only shot at false targets.
With accuracy.
She is only a perfectionist in what she wants. She will not learn Physics or Mathematics to the letter, but she will speak those letters with the accent of-
Oxford, Cambridge, London.
Paris itself
and Tokyo.
Whether they are flawless accents or not (no accent is) they are the desired accents.
The 'perfect' ones.
They are the Capital accents and the Golden Trio.
"I intend to be." Always. She is not a scout, it is not a motto. It is the way of everything
about her.
Command and follow.
(Those that are not mine, I don't love-
has she ever loved?
Laurent, perhaps, once upon a time. For giving her--
what?)
And there's a song in the background.
As always.
(Pein is always hearing music in his pierced ears, and it is inevitable. He grew up inside of music and he was almost happy for it. But Pein has never really been happy because he has never been truly sad. You cannot feel emotional extremes if you are completely unemotional as a person.) He traveled throughout the whole of North America with one band after another, floating like a ghost and like nothing else it has taught him to be dead, dead as a person non-existent can be. His skin is braided with scars and self-implemented jewelry.
There is a misplacement.
Displacement.
Like water.
(We won't sink.)
He never does.
In all his corded muscle. (Quiet study.)
Pein is literature is Pein.
And that is always, will always be true.
His face is blank.
Pale.
Crooked like an unattended painting in the Louvre.
(That he would destroy. Gladly.
Pein has no real idea as to the true nature of art.
Of humor. Of happiness.
And it does not bother him.)
Uninterrupted
flow.
There is a rejection of sentimentality.
In his eyes. (His depthless-
fathomless-)
Your eyes are cruelty.
("My eyes are sound.")
"Time."
A different meaning to the word "sincerity".
"Reject it."
He looks at her levelly.
"Completely."
The rings,
the metal,
is perfect.
And Pein is not.
But he is strong.
And he is level.
And he is correct.
"You will know only what I tell you you know."
Beginning in this second.
"Two weeks."
I will come for you.
"Erase from yourself everything you think you know."
And then I will be able to teach you.
Konan, she hears something far different to Pein. (Where he hears the rock of America, she hears notes she played all day.
And atmosphere. Because she does not love metal and drums but the large, agreed sound of a chorus- a strong voice to haunt.
Of course, at night, she loves the music that beats and throws through her body. Completely.)
If it is water, she will stand in it. (And melt. As paper cannot survive water like the flesh can.
And she is the Communion.)
But the Louvre is never unattended. And never allowing touch. (Not of the public.) And the true nature of art-
it is to document money. To give a person the chance to brag about their financial wellbeing. Because she cannot see another reason for the money her mother paid to buy something described as 'abstract' or 'surrealist' art.
There are three year olds who could replicate that.
Art, as a word, does not exist. (As anything, it does not.
Music is not Art.)
Her brow raises- a short gesture, meaning nothing but 'You're a contradiction.' But so they were. How many orchids die in the rain?
(None.
Then perhaps she is not a flower, though her hair continually promotes blossoms.)
But she is listening. And it is blank once more.
(And she worries about her notes. But perhaps they are so learned that they no longer require thought, they are automatic reactions.)
There is a scent- food. And it is like a city, rather than a community. There are places and restaraunts and takeaways and people are human. But here she can know them all- see them more than once.
"I will be prepared." And you, Pein, shall learn something as well.
Why there is interest in your eyes, even when you mask it.
Holes punched.
In his face.
(Delightfully.)
"One can hope."
And there are snake bites beneath his bottom lip, tipped sharply. (Where he purchased them doesn't matter.) If Kasumi is not the flower, than neither is she the serpent beneath it and Pein can willingly (will willingly) believe that. In her own cerulean way she both captivates and fascinates him, it's true, but he cannot honestly say that he does not look forward to
molding her
completely
to the way he think she will serve him most completely.
Most usefully.
Pein has neither the capacity to learn more,
nor the stylistic ability to accept change.
But he will instigate it.
Happily.
(Unhappily.)
But he does not know the difference.
Does not truly understand the meaning of the word.
But he does understand (Tayuya).
The meaning of existence.
He watches her levelly.
One can hope.
But I will not.
Pein, who does not need food, who does not need sleep. (Wipe clean from your mind you inabilities. Your limitations. Your faults. You will use them. You will strap them to your sides and blow them up if you have to. Move faster. Get stronger. Become all that I need you to be, and you will fulfill all that should be fulfilled. If you can become all that I need.)
Revolution.
(Then you will not have failed.
You can die-)
young.
Knowing that.
There is no need.
"Konan."
His head has never not tilted.
Has never untilted.
Tilted.
Brim low.
Brim low.
"Become as you will become." Under me. Beneath my guidance.
Beneath Her influence.
So it goes.
Christening.
Baptism.
But these words to Pein are false.
Are nothing.
Like "God".
Like "Time".
A girl with blue hair.
A girl that he will take unto himself.
And that is the way the world will turn. (Beneath them.) And so Pein will manuver perfectly. (And this is part one of two. This is the first of-) Twice. Three times. Eye opens. And her hair is-
(But her eyes?
Are her eyes-)
It doesn't matter.
Pein does not smile.
But neither does he frown.
(These are questions that I will not answer.)
"Do you understand?"
Hope.
Is what is said when there is none.
When it is unlikely.
And that-
is impossible
-makes for determination.
Hope is not needed for those who are better. Or for her. (Is she better? She likes to think so- she likes to think that she holds the keys and the answers and files everything away perfectly in those little trap doors under the carpet.
Or maybe the trap doors all lead to one basement and every origami horseman is intermingled in one destructive war.)
Perhaps.
And she will not believe that anyone other than a non-existant God would not need food or sleep. Or she should not.
Now- she is a slate.
She is the new blackboard for Oshima High School.
She is empty of everything.
(And suddenly a thought occurs. Not to think of her music, but of others. What will be recognised?
Her hair.
And so it is.
So it is.)
She will be moulded.
In two weeks.
(She is patient for that day.)
"As I am directed to." And she already sounds like a servant of His. With head bowed and eyes never leaving him yet.
"It is understood." (I am yours to do with.
In two weeks.)
Until then, she shall not indulge in freedom. She shall resist the quiet doubts and wonders as she has just felt, and instead she shall-
be nothing
nobody
and put her trust entirely. In Him.
And as such, into Tayuya too.
But she cannot know that.
All information has been displaced and she is (in the shadow) just as she is. As she once was. With France on her tongue and Japan in her blood. With music at her fingertips and a mind that only reacts to her Teacher. Not Kakashi-sensei, nor Jiraiya-sensei, or any with their degrees and their textbook experience in dealing with the Psyche of a person. Not the Snake of the Science Laboratories, who continually asks her for information of her classmates.
Information she will not give him and his golden eyes.
Her teacher is the young man before her. Perhaps only a few months older. (March-born is she.)
But she trusts him.
Inexplicably.
As simply and easily as-
(But that is another song for another day. And Pein understands clearly. Flawlessly.)
And then his head is straightened, his neck erects itself like a monument, and his message is delivered. He has found easily what he will, what he thought he would, in the way he thought he might. (There are things Pein thinks about when most people are asleep. He, himself, only sleeps in bouts, when it finds him. And that is less and less often. There is always enough time for thought. Never enough time for sleep. So it goes.) He does not need to wonder. He has told her to wait.
And he is nearly certain that she will.
(And if she does not he will not come for her.)
The Akatsuki are Harbingers of-
(What was it again?
How did it go?)
But Pein will always remember.
Always.
Death. Revolution. Tayuya.
His voice. (Solemnly.)
"Amen."
And then he retreats almost entirely, pulls back into his own (pierced) body (as if he cannot speak of these sort of things easily, as if it is a clam-like endeavor, full of nought but reaching out before receding entirely). There is much to be said for moving on's own way, but there is much more to be said for those who unknowingly cater to a God higher than that they are familiar which. How courteous.
How elegant.
(Austere.)
Kasumi's ability that will easily become-
(Have a nice day?)
Pein is not so quaint as that.
But he watches her eyes for movement.
And the blood is gone from his arms and wrists.
(The clothing is a bit weightier than he thought.)
Help is not what he's requesting.
They two know this.
And so it is solidarity that finds them.
Peace that is elusive.
(Revolution.)
Kasumi-san.
(He may never again call her such.)
Simple words,
unspoken.
Tayuya will still be pregnant when he gets home; after all, one's physical being does not necessarily change with one's moods. The reverse may happen, but never otherwise. He lapses into silence. Into an intellectual cynic's contentment.
That things might never be the same,
Konan.
Amen.
And so this is the end.
(But not by a long shot.)
Kasumi (no longer) - Konan stands to watch him go, because she must. Her head still tilting against the wind, as if it is too heavy for her neck to hold properly. An everlasting look of curiosity, as such are her consequences.
Ever doe-eyed in the eyes of all others.
But not so.
For him.
Them.
"For thine is the kingdom-"
Goodbye.
"The power and the glory-"
Until then.
"For now and forever."
Two weeks.
Words spoken to the near-empty street and his back- to his face a simple fare thee well, stay safe.
But she does not need to tell Pein to be careful.
Nor does He need to tell her.
Konan.
Beginning.
Middle.
End.
Revolving endlessly with each new dawn.
(And that is Akatsuki. That is her future, as little as she knows.)
She watches before she leaves.
Amen.
Where: A few streets down from Pein's apartment.
When: November 15.
What: Pein and Kasumi finally have the discussion one of them's been meaning to, and the new faction of the Akatsuki begins to expose itself.
Warnings: Pein's literary style is...different. That is all. :|
Days on the island usually pass pretty slowly, Kasumi has found over her time here. Perhaps it's boredom, perhaps it is something else. That she hasn't answered yet, and nor has she contemplated it because she's found no reason to. When her hours at school end- more lectures on things she, for the most part, already knows- she is quite ready to leave with haste and face the rabble of the many years of Oshima students hurrying home. Freshmen through to the new college years, it's something that doesn't change, the eagerness to leave. (And as she sees the freshmen of the high school bustle out she realises she's yet to find a use for that girl who bumped into her yet.
But she hasn't found a use for herself yet.)
The day's rather miserable, bordering on rain but nothing yet. Autumntime is certainly here, she muses as she brushes golden leaves from her shoulder and pushes one of her typical pigtails back, noting the fading blue with a slight look of distaste. (Great.) The streets are harmless cobblestone under her shoes and the wind isn't strong enough to block out the click of her heels against the pavement she walks over. Actually, she can't feel the wind at all.
There are crossroads right by the block she lives in (alone now, since the most unfortunate death of her aunt- or so she has to say, because there is little trust for someone who has no emotion for a death so close to them) and she waits for the cars- the few of them there are- to leave the road clear. She pulls out her phone with little thought, fingers flying across keys to send a message (to whom? About what?) as the traffic dissipates.
And Pein is the first to-
(-but was the call made? And who made it? It was not Tayuya-dono, could not have been, because while she is upstairs in his apartment, moving listless around the rooms that are now dual, shared places between the two of them, a part of both their personalities for the time being, Pein was here, away, moving. Away. What call? To whom? Not to him. Pein does not oft respond to calls made upon his person, against his person, to his person. He has one cell phone that he does not pay for because it is technically someone else's. They are still paying for it with their money because they think they still have it. And it is as blank and lifeless as the rest of him, pale and sleek in its entirety and the only number etched into the SIM's memory is-)
-there is nothing
to be said.
(Nothing at all to do.)
There are people everywhere, and for that reason does Pein navigate with a dulled awareness of his surroundings. It is unlike him, but only in his ways of wise - Pein is not easily frightened, but he does not care for crowds. They leave him very deeply unsettled, perhaps because he is sensitive to all motion.
(All things
within a place.
And he is the first to document that the man has cancer, the three children are to be sharing a flu,
the dog is running out into the road, and-
Overwhelming.
His sensory organs.
Exploding as he stops inside a blank white bathroom inside a blank white accessory store.
He had surprised himself when he put a hand up to his mouth to cover up the scent of them, only to realize-
"Peinbreatheyoustupidmotherfucker!" Tayuya thwacking him
HARD
in the square of his back.
A gasping
rattling
breath.
Like bones.)
He nearly walks into her but spins - last minute - out of her path, looking softly and stoically surprised.
He is on a shopping trip, and so her presence is unexpected. (As if Tayuya's orders eliminate the existence of all whom it does not immediately and expressly include. If this were the case, it would surprise no one.)
"Kasumi-san."
And he exhales.
(Carefully.)
And says nothing more.
When he appears Kasumi is surprised (only slightly- he lives the same way after all) and the traffic is clearing. She brushes a strand of blue (-ish right now) hair out of her face and turns to look at him (observing, only observing- her face doesn't twitch and her eyes don't narrow). Shopping bags? It is his own place, she needs not worry.
"Pein." He is one of the few on this island she has met and held respect for, but to say Pein-san (as she should, even if she did not respect him because her manners dictate) sounds foreign on her tongue (what irony). Her body language compensates- head bowed and hands together (she is shorter than him already- in heels or no- but she bows her height slightly anyway.)
"I did not see you today-" until now. Of course. But they see each other enough, so why the necessity? She sees the free road but doesn't move (lead me) unless he will do so first. "How are you?" Manners, manners and words most find pointless, but they must be there, like Oshima must house the brightest minds with the worst problems and her inflections must be perfect in order to communicate anything. (And she loathes speaking of anything but the most idle things anyway.) She can feel the weight of her bag against her shoulder but does not, will not, mention it. It is not a problem to be shared (problems never are.)
Halloween had both been and gone- the event at Oshima was still one she was unsure about the benefits, but it certainly wasn't as useless as she originally believed. But still...
(It was all so slow.)
Her eyes haven't (won't) leave him. Not quite yet. She watches him for-- what? Safety? She doesn't think so. (She doesn't need to protect herself from him, she knows that much.
And that, is trust. Trust given too early, mayhaps.)
Trust that is-
(Tayuya-dono is sleeping upstairs.
"And so you will not disturb Her."
And they haven't since, which is good, because
Pein is not a very tolerant person.)
He watches her face with all the studiousness of a wiseman and all the unnecessary elegance of a prince. His countenance is serene in its entirety and by that will he be guided. It is easier to avoid thinking of the crowded street when he is met with Kasumi's face. He isn't sure to what degree or what affect, but it must be that she is an easy pinnacle of focus. If she, herself, fails to be interesting, there is her distracting coloration to take note of.
There is-
(Royal. Blue.)
-in her hair.
(It's pale but he can see it.)
"I'm fine." (In, perhaps, a loose and vague manner of speaking.)
"And, you, Kasumi-san," are not in costume (anymore). Hallow's Eve has ended, and the pagan within Pein's paganism has locked itself up again, to starve until the Harvest will ride in upon her Night Mare yet again. (But Pein does not dream. His mind is too active and linear for such things.) And-
(He'd watched the building go up in flames.)
So it goes.
"Are out."
He watches her. (Carefully. Studiously.)
Because Pein is-
("I don't know what you see in her." Tayuya-dono is not entirely delighted by the idea of new members, period, but the idea of not being the only woman has her on edge. His God has never particularly liked women, and Kasumi-san is no exception. Hyuuga Hanabi-san is no exception. Pein does know this. Knew it from the Beginning. And so it would be.)
Pein is looking for something.
Unreadable. (His face. His mind.)
Pein's eyes are deep because they contain more layers then they should and they are-
("I promise you, my liege." I will not fail you.)
-bright
fucking-
The sun casts his hair orange. (But it is not orange. It is-)
"And the reason?"
(No one has ever told Pein that
his Japanese is odd-sounding
save Tayuya.
It is odd-sounding.
Everyone knows it is odd-sounding.
It is an unspoken truth that it is entirely
cryptic
poetic
abstract
with a piece of Gaelic laced between.
But no one
save Tayuya
will say it out loud.
Because-)
"Kasumi-san."
Pein is polite. (And unchanging. And intolerant.)
But patient.
Patient as anything.
The street seems to move forward without them.
And so she hears his speech, his words. There's no difference to any other word anyone else will speak (but is his tone the same as his words? She can't hear it) and she inclines her head.
"Quite the same." But she doesn't need to say that (it wasn't a question). She does anyway. Because (she must) perhaps she is wrong (she doesn't believe that.) And he speaks again. Indeed she is out, that doesn't need to be said. (Though were should be the correct term, as she was to retire back now.)
"Were, I suppose. Though I've yet to reach my place." Her voice is even and quiet- clear but it always is. As the sun casts over them he's soaked in it and she realises, for the first time, just how colourless he is. (And she will still be blue, she knows it.)
"School. You were shopping?" And so the conversation turns back on him- for now. She does not answer questions with essays about why- there is no-one who needs to know all of that. There is no need for an interrogation of her now (so she would say) but she expects it anyway. It is, after all, human nature to do so. And Pein, to her, is human like the rest of them. Though no-one wants to be. (She doesn't want to be human. She wants to be better than that- she knows she is beyond most of the species.
And that is honesty.)
And they're both waiting.
"Will you make the first move?" It is his decision, not hers. Things move on, people pass by but she pays them little heed (there's nothing interesting about the masses)
('Or do you need aid?' She won't say those words. He doesn't as far as she can see.)
There's the breeze. She ignores it and her head tilts further, watching him with the same intent, intense.
Because the tone is that-
(of a false god.)
Pein knows himself as he is.
And only that.
And Kasumi will know his words as-
(But Pein has decided his own things about Kasumi.
His own things. And he won't relinquish them.
Not here.
Not now.
Not
yet.)
His mind is some forlorn philosopher's dying rite. Some great preacher's last sermon. Some great poet's last stanza. Pein is both the beginning and end of existence and so he thinks not in line or paragraphs but word by word, and yet he thinks with a grandeur that is so collective, so expansive, that he can't possibly be limited within conventional definitions of humanity. It wouldn't be right.
And so he is honest
only when honesty suits him.
"Perhaps."
But there is a definite unlikelihood to the way he says it.
Because Pein is waiting for Kasumi to make the first move.
(Waiting for Kasumi to prove him right.)
And she will.
(This, Pein knows without doubt.)
As always.
Perhaps.
(The answer to all of her-)
questions.
(And similarly,)
to all existence,
and creation.
Perhaps.
An adverb meaning
"the possibility of; maybe",
formed by the Latin prefix
per- and par- meaning "by" or "through"
combined with the plural of -hap
meaning "chance" (as used in the word
"happen").
Everything supercedes everything else
within Pein's mind.
(Cause and effect, though.
These things are reversed.)
Her hair is swept up, (falsely) angelic in the small, song-like bout of wind that catches them afterwards and the rain has long disappeared with the summer. (With Itachi. Sasori.) It's snow that is on it's way now, and Pein knows this better than he lets on. The bags that weigh in his hands are nothing less than peace offerings from an unknown giver (himself? But not himself,) and he can only hope that She will accept them on her own terms.
As always.
"A delicate operation."
(Like none you've ever seen before.)
This is a test, Kasumi-san.
(But such remains unsaid.)
His tone- (unlike him) she brushes it under the carpet. (And under the carpet are many things, if the carpet is her mind, filing away everything in those secret trap doors under the floorboard- filing away his tone, his appearences- as she did so many things. Him, Tayuya, the boy from months ago at the airport whose number she still has, Mademoiselle Antoinette of the party...
And of course that venomous plant which she wants to turn to paper, Kataheki-san.)
It is not to be understood, the ideals of fate. (Happenstance meetings on concrete panels.) If indeed, such a thing might exist. But she still believes in so much like the wide-eyed, sheltered child. She is in the wrong universe for her naivete and playing it like she is the queen.
"It seems to be so." As many things are- just to seem and not be real. This is full of balance and need to- be the same- be careful. But it seems that way when looked at in other eyes (in hers?)
"The balance-" (Whose is it?) She speaks with no curiosity, or specific ideas. (But perhaps he knows of what she speaks. She believes so.) It is merely a statement.
"Your balance-" (That is to say) "It leans too far right." And she always tilts to the left.
There is too much weight on your side. (Are we offering yet?)
"May I help?" And those words are spoken without the presumption of her hands moving forward to take them, for men- all men- are stubborn. And she is (a girl) a lady, not meant to do such things.
(It infuriates her, that thought. Like few others do. But she says nothing when it moves forward. She is there to watch, to accept.)
He leans neither towards or away from her, though.
Simply too far to the-
(North.
South.
East.
"Fuck, fuck, no, I told you- dammit, put that stupid phone down and listen we already canvassed the west of this stupid fucking island, they aren't anywhere. They aren't anywhere." She'd dragged her fist and black-purple glossed fingernails through her pretty red hair and Pein had felt a sort of indelicate irritation with everything. With envy.
With himself.
It is when he cannot help her that Pein feels the most useless.
And next to uselessness, Pein hardly ever feels negative emotions.
Hardly ever.
And to feel negatively in conjunction to-
He can't cope with that sort of thing.
"New members Pein. We need new ones and I need you to find them."
"Of course, my liege.")
And so here they are.
In her entirety, Kasumi is nothing like Tayuya whatsoever. In fact, she seems to purposefully play opposite to whatever his God would do, how she would act, how she would think. There is a half-dutifullness about her, a half-blue, half-graceful beauty that she maintains simply by being and sounding foreign. (As if she is foreign to everything.) If Kasumi is the carpet under which things are swept then they have the same purpose to one another; he is struck (he is Ichi-sama to Tayuya's Rei-sama, and they two will go through the motions as many times as necessary to get it right. There is an obscene closeness to both of them, a demented, obsessive intimacy that they conform to easily, as if it were generated naturally. The Akatsuki is an organization obsessed with it's own godlessness, and if his conversation with Kasumi at the Halloween dance proved nothing, it proved that.) But all of his piercings are visible now. Perhaps that makes this encounter pointless. Perhaps that makes this encounter-
(he is desperately waiting-)
Kasumi will prove herself to him.
She has, already. She does, in paper-folded accuracy.
(She smells like papyrus.
Pein knows this only because he is a person crafted entirely from
an almost painful obsession with any and all who catch his interest.
And now he only wants to rip her apart so that he can be right about the way she will put herself together again.)
Because to Pein
everything is a setup.
(A game.
You will win,
or you will die.)
It is those sort of games that Pein so easily constructs for others to abide by.
"Balance is,"
It is why he is 1 to Tayuya's 0. (And always has been.)
"As balance will be."
Always.
"You remind me of someone."
Someone I heard of long ago.
"A folk hero."
(Pein has a strange adoration for Celtic legend.
For legend of all kind.)
But his expression is blank.
It is impossible to tell
what
he's
thinking.
"But not anyone I supposed I would eventually find."
His stare--
As blank as any smile to be given away, she finds. And that is the look she has on her face. As practiced and as old as- (what? Time? They had already spoken of its uselessness before) she is. (But time still passes.)
She nods. (That will be so, should you not move.)
Indeed, like Tayuya-san (-sama?) she most certainly is not. (That she knows from meetings back when school was only starting-
"Come to this place."
She waited. And there was nothing.) She is not brash, and her only instance of swearing has been to use God's name in vein (but who is God anyway?) She is subversion and submission with some impeneratable air of mystery because she belongs nowhere. Absolutely nowhere, even with every word she speaks in every language she knows.
(The old lie; Dulce Et Decorum Est
Pro Patria Mori.)
There is no country. (France is... and Japan is not... And England, as it has been, is merely holiday.)
Not for anyone.
And she is (the end) proof.
Balance is needed. With balance comes one's duties, responsibilities.
One's purpose, you might say.
To wander aimlessly.
(Pity would be no more
If we could not make somebody poor.)
Is the lack of balance
(And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.)
"I am only what-" (you say) "I am." Defined by others while caring not for their opinions.
Is hypocrisy.
Theocracy.
But not-
"Do you know the significance of the name,"
Akatsuki?
(Red moon.
New dawn.
Revolution.)
"Conán mac Morna?"
He tilts his head to the side a bit, watches her, and if his plane of site is completely (vertigo) off-kilter, it does not suprise or hinder any of his movements. He does not smile, but he does not hesitate either. (So it is that Pein is as he is. Unchanging. Unforgiving. Immobile. Constant decisions made. Constant intolerance for all that does not fit and conform to his needs and Tayuya's desires. Because, in the end, Tayuya is Pein's whole world. And that is what he has decided about Kasumi, too.
What Tayuya is to him, he will be to her.
And so the Empire will be built upon the black-hearted loyalty and overall cruel intentions of small-breasted women.)
If there is all and nothing to be said, Pein will say it. He watches her with a sort of esteem that is both there and yet strangely intangible, unexplainable. His red (orange? It can't be,) hair feathers around his face but the silver studs there look more natural. As if they have always been there and always will be, whereas his hair or not.
But Revolution dies young and vengeful.
This Pein knows better than anyone.
(He sent a letter to Deidara a few weeks ago.
But this?
No one can know.)
Pein was born in Ireland without piercing, and without parents.
Because Pein is the child of a God.
(This much is obvious.)
And so for him to fnd his own mother and father has taken years
and it is his duty (and only his) to act as their warrior unfounded,
unforgiving, unquestioning.
Pein is a soldier of God.
And so he knows very well that all others are false.
His own tongue weighs heavily in his mouth, as if the emerald isle will not have him so easily as Oshima might.
(And if that is the case, it will not surprise him.)
But there is no quirk to the lips so dappled with sharp edges; there is a secretive way his layered eyes darken, as if with consequential thought and structure. Pein cannot believe in Time because Time is yet another false God. If fear is the extent of one's devotion, one is not yet devoted, nor are they holy. (Nor have they any real use.) It is through toil and fate that Pein is the pendulum that he is. He will not kneel down. He never does. Instead he
reaches and takes
her small, milky hand
and holds it in his, palm-side up.
(I wonder if you might see, Tayuya-dono.)
He slides the bags into the crook of his elbow, and lifts his fingers to delicately write the kana for it up the dancing lines of her heritage.
("Who I am-"
"It doesn't matter.")
「コ ナ ン」
"How it is spelled in this language."
(In any language.
"It doesn't matter.")
And he looks up at her face when he is finished.
But he does not let go.
Could one be so unfamiliar? (Yes.) But she-
is educated-
is different.
"An ally of Fionn mac Cumhail, yes?" The servant. The loyal. (How fitting.) She says nothing more, nothing of his portrayal- since when has history been accurate? And instead her head turns- towards the street, the people and there is that knowledge that each person who crosses the street wonders why they stay locked in place. (Like dolls.) And her eyes are apathetic to each of them- stare on, dear traveller, stare on- as (time) the sun passes through the sky. (Far too quickly will it set.)
And Ireland-
a place she has been, long before she can remember. Only ever once. (Only ever before she was born.)
Is not France. Is not the holiday home in London. Ireland is a land wherein there is Guinness, and accents which sing. St. Patrick's Day. Of course England took them all.
Because England is full of drunks.
(And France is full of romance. So they said. She saw none.)
And how many people care about the Saint now?
(Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to Heaven.
Nor shall alcohol.)
Her attention caught by him again, as is her hand, and she glances down to it. Her nails bare, unlike his (and conservativism would bubble but she could not care) and manicured to fine points. (But still they could break if used as a weapon.)
And he is.
Eternal.
Unchanging.
Impossible.
A puzzle.
Her fingers agile and capable to strike perfect lines, notes and undo the rubix cube within seconds.
Her fingers want to turn him- all of them- into rubix cubes.
And the words are on her hand before she notices. (Quirked and invisible.) "I see." (Naruhodou.) Her eyes had flicked to orange(-red) hair as he traced the last symbol on her palm.
It could almost be... anything. (That is to say, between them.) And she doesn't look away. He's blank. (She's- there.) "And where did they come from?" Those piercings. (Were they your own hand?) They are... professional.
But he is clinical.
(Eternal.)
But Kasumi knows that already.
"It's impossible to say."
And so he does release her hand, but release is never permanent. If one is released, one has already been ensnared irreversably, and to a degree where their very fate is to be ensnared endlessly until their death. It is the fate of animals. It is the fate of Gods. And humans like to think that they are somewhere in between, something like a happy medium, but they are not. They are either one or the other. And in the presence of one will they always act in a predictable manner. (Because animals are forever conscious of their own lack of worthiness, and if they are not, Gods will make them so. And so it is easy for Pein to believe in only one God, though he knows himself to be spawned of many.) In a way, the Celts are sacred to him, but Pein is both a sanctimonious and completely inharmonious being, purposely so. He cannot say what has made him this way, only that it is nothing he has the capacity to explain.
And his piercings
are the same.
It is easy to figure out their country of origin, trace them to piercing parlor, analyze Pein as a strange consumer of sorts. (America is a grand, Godless place, full of heathen animals who think they are Gods. It both disgusts and entrances him. The simple, silver click of a metronome- "Pein. Dude. You say the weirdest shit sometimes. Seriously kid."
Pein is not so traceable as the law would like to think, and this is because he understands it
inside and out.) Though Pein really loves understanding things as such. Reversing things as such.
His aunt's intestines like spiderwebs across her own kitchen.
And his (parents') house
on fire.
Sick delight.
(And fascination.
Because Pein
does not exist in the eyes of the government.
And so he is invisible.)
The name on the transcript that reads-
"Kenso Nagato."
But the rest are dead.
(The names he has taken.
The people who have pierced him.
Piercing is so intimate that he cannot help but form bonds that must sever, bonds that excite him to cut.
They drive holes through his body and then he privately drives holes in their stomachs.)
And no one ever knows.
The serial killings have no connection,
save for the fact that all of the dead are piercing and tattoo artists.
And the MO has yet to be completely examined.
The Chinese calendar
and the Roman calendar.
(But neither know Pein's real name.)
"They have always been here."
Since I put them here.
They have stayed.
"And you have none."
Fitting.
"Konan."
And his lips finally do twitch into the lopsided semblance of a smile.
(And he is strangely reminded of origami.)
But humans, in their own way, through their own biological definition... they are also animals. In the end, they are subject to primal instincts like all others.
Fight or flight. (Fear.)
And if that is so they will be made aware of their shortcomings. And the Gods shall laugh and delight.
She shall watch. Objective, away, apart. Just as she stares at his piercings, mild curiosity- as if, should she touch them, he would fall apart.
But she already knows Pein is not that delicate.
(And to say -san, -sama, still sounds so wrong.)
She knows nothing of his past. Of what his memories are.
Kasumi sees-
A piano. Harp and flute. Tutors and uniforms and large rooms.
And her parents unable to find anything. Her stashes and contacts and everything hidden all over her room, and one would think a servant would see when they entered, but they didn't.
She sees her aunt tumbling down the stairs and the heel of her DKNY ankle boots out casually. What a misplacement. What an act.
And her name stays the same. And her hair blinds under UV lights.
And thousands of people die under her touch as she stows away money for things that are never seen. That she never sees.
(Because she hasn't purchased them yet.)
"Timeless, as all?" As you are the God? And his earlier ideas are correct. She will see him as he sees Tayuya and there will be no flaw to his reasoning, his ideas, his plans.
Because she trusts that he knows more than anyone on this Island.
Even more than she.
"I do not." And that name again- the name of legend (as he will be?) and of a Freshman's idiocy. "Pein." She says it rarely.
(And will that change?)
"But there is room to change." (If asked.)
"Perhaps there is."
Analytical eyes.
And-
"Perhaps there is not."
He watches her.
"There is an elegance to the austere business of death, don't you think?"
And he knows she does, to some extent.
As they all do. As they must.
(And Hyuuga Hanabi is next on his short list.)
"A message will be delivered unto you."
And you will receive it.
The smile's nature is a snake's nature. But it is with a definitive hatred of the snake that the new moon rises. That the red moon burns holes in the sky. That the Akatsuki was founded. The Akatsuki's hatred of snakes (of Orochimaru) is Tayuya's hatred of Orochimaru. Is Itachi's hatred of Orochimaru. (The one willing, the other unwilling. And both can see the real outcomes. The real effort, the actual motive. And in the same way the Akatsuki addresses every motive. All motives.
Wrath. Hidan.
Sloth. Tobi. Too slow. Completely dead.
Avarice. Kakuzu.
Lust. Itachi.
Fire. Deidara.
Perfection. Sasori.
Hunger. Zetsu.
Insanity. Pein.
And God.
Tayuya.
Always.)
If I can perfect you to my liking, then I will have double our numbers.
Tripled our power.
(And the Akatsuki are based on power.)
His eyes are deep.
Impossibly deep.
And Pein doesn't know how many he's killed.
Because it doesn't matter.
"You will be prepared."
By me.
And so it goes.
Konan.
(Loyal.
Eternal.
Blue.)
In front of him.
He shifts the weight of the shopping bags.
"You will need to learn Her in time."
But I am the first step.
She watches a leaf dance on the wind- circling around past Pein- before she answers.
"There is an elegance to everything." (If one makes the effort.) And her hand- her arm- creates an arc as she moves it to her hair, brushing the pigtail back again. (The wind- endless and unstoppable. Block- and it has a new path.)
And so Konan (Kasumi) is christened as such. As potential. (And she doesn't know for what, but the word Akatsuki- it has been mumbled with fear in Paris and they're hours away from the country, she continued to point out.
What is their danger?) And that message-
how long will it take?
"When?" (A letter? Would it not be easier to speak and wash it away in the air?) "And how?" Her tone expects an answer but will not demand. (He will answer her, she is sure.)
And stealth is as large a part of power as everything else. As the basic feel of muscle and safety of a gun.
A weapon she owns. And one she has only shot at false targets.
With accuracy.
She is only a perfectionist in what she wants. She will not learn Physics or Mathematics to the letter, but she will speak those letters with the accent of-
Oxford, Cambridge, London.
Paris itself
and Tokyo.
Whether they are flawless accents or not (no accent is) they are the desired accents.
The 'perfect' ones.
They are the Capital accents and the Golden Trio.
"I intend to be." Always. She is not a scout, it is not a motto. It is the way of everything
about her.
Command and follow.
(Those that are not mine, I don't love-
has she ever loved?
Laurent, perhaps, once upon a time. For giving her--
what?)
And there's a song in the background.
As always.
(Pein is always hearing music in his pierced ears, and it is inevitable. He grew up inside of music and he was almost happy for it. But Pein has never really been happy because he has never been truly sad. You cannot feel emotional extremes if you are completely unemotional as a person.) He traveled throughout the whole of North America with one band after another, floating like a ghost and like nothing else it has taught him to be dead, dead as a person non-existent can be. His skin is braided with scars and self-implemented jewelry.
There is a misplacement.
Displacement.
Like water.
(We won't sink.)
He never does.
In all his corded muscle. (Quiet study.)
Pein is literature is Pein.
And that is always, will always be true.
His face is blank.
Pale.
Crooked like an unattended painting in the Louvre.
(That he would destroy. Gladly.
Pein has no real idea as to the true nature of art.
Of humor. Of happiness.
And it does not bother him.)
Uninterrupted
flow.
There is a rejection of sentimentality.
In his eyes. (His depthless-
fathomless-)
Your eyes are cruelty.
("My eyes are sound.")
"Time."
A different meaning to the word "sincerity".
"Reject it."
He looks at her levelly.
"Completely."
The rings,
the metal,
is perfect.
And Pein is not.
But he is strong.
And he is level.
And he is correct.
"You will know only what I tell you you know."
Beginning in this second.
"Two weeks."
I will come for you.
"Erase from yourself everything you think you know."
And then I will be able to teach you.
Konan, she hears something far different to Pein. (Where he hears the rock of America, she hears notes she played all day.
And atmosphere. Because she does not love metal and drums but the large, agreed sound of a chorus- a strong voice to haunt.
Of course, at night, she loves the music that beats and throws through her body. Completely.)
If it is water, she will stand in it. (And melt. As paper cannot survive water like the flesh can.
And she is the Communion.)
But the Louvre is never unattended. And never allowing touch. (Not of the public.) And the true nature of art-
it is to document money. To give a person the chance to brag about their financial wellbeing. Because she cannot see another reason for the money her mother paid to buy something described as 'abstract' or 'surrealist' art.
There are three year olds who could replicate that.
Art, as a word, does not exist. (As anything, it does not.
Music is not Art.)
Her brow raises- a short gesture, meaning nothing but 'You're a contradiction.' But so they were. How many orchids die in the rain?
(None.
Then perhaps she is not a flower, though her hair continually promotes blossoms.)
But she is listening. And it is blank once more.
(And she worries about her notes. But perhaps they are so learned that they no longer require thought, they are automatic reactions.)
There is a scent- food. And it is like a city, rather than a community. There are places and restaraunts and takeaways and people are human. But here she can know them all- see them more than once.
"I will be prepared." And you, Pein, shall learn something as well.
Why there is interest in your eyes, even when you mask it.
Holes punched.
In his face.
(Delightfully.)
"One can hope."
And there are snake bites beneath his bottom lip, tipped sharply. (Where he purchased them doesn't matter.) If Kasumi is not the flower, than neither is she the serpent beneath it and Pein can willingly (will willingly) believe that. In her own cerulean way she both captivates and fascinates him, it's true, but he cannot honestly say that he does not look forward to
molding her
completely
to the way he think she will serve him most completely.
Most usefully.
Pein has neither the capacity to learn more,
nor the stylistic ability to accept change.
But he will instigate it.
Happily.
(Unhappily.)
But he does not know the difference.
Does not truly understand the meaning of the word.
But he does understand (Tayuya).
The meaning of existence.
He watches her levelly.
One can hope.
But I will not.
Pein, who does not need food, who does not need sleep. (Wipe clean from your mind you inabilities. Your limitations. Your faults. You will use them. You will strap them to your sides and blow them up if you have to. Move faster. Get stronger. Become all that I need you to be, and you will fulfill all that should be fulfilled. If you can become all that I need.)
Revolution.
(Then you will not have failed.
You can die-)
young.
Knowing that.
There is no need.
"Konan."
His head has never not tilted.
Has never untilted.
Tilted.
Brim low.
Brim low.
"Become as you will become." Under me. Beneath my guidance.
Beneath Her influence.
So it goes.
Christening.
Baptism.
But these words to Pein are false.
Are nothing.
Like "God".
Like "Time".
A girl with blue hair.
A girl that he will take unto himself.
And that is the way the world will turn. (Beneath them.) And so Pein will manuver perfectly. (And this is part one of two. This is the first of-) Twice. Three times. Eye opens. And her hair is-
(But her eyes?
Are her eyes-)
It doesn't matter.
Pein does not smile.
But neither does he frown.
(These are questions that I will not answer.)
"Do you understand?"
Hope.
Is what is said when there is none.
When it is unlikely.
And that-
is impossible
-makes for determination.
Hope is not needed for those who are better. Or for her. (Is she better? She likes to think so- she likes to think that she holds the keys and the answers and files everything away perfectly in those little trap doors under the carpet.
Or maybe the trap doors all lead to one basement and every origami horseman is intermingled in one destructive war.)
Perhaps.
And she will not believe that anyone other than a non-existant God would not need food or sleep. Or she should not.
Now- she is a slate.
She is the new blackboard for Oshima High School.
She is empty of everything.
(And suddenly a thought occurs. Not to think of her music, but of others. What will be recognised?
Her hair.
And so it is.
So it is.)
She will be moulded.
In two weeks.
(She is patient for that day.)
"As I am directed to." And she already sounds like a servant of His. With head bowed and eyes never leaving him yet.
"It is understood." (I am yours to do with.
In two weeks.)
Until then, she shall not indulge in freedom. She shall resist the quiet doubts and wonders as she has just felt, and instead she shall-
be nothing
nobody
and put her trust entirely. In Him.
And as such, into Tayuya too.
But she cannot know that.
All information has been displaced and she is (in the shadow) just as she is. As she once was. With France on her tongue and Japan in her blood. With music at her fingertips and a mind that only reacts to her Teacher. Not Kakashi-sensei, nor Jiraiya-sensei, or any with their degrees and their textbook experience in dealing with the Psyche of a person. Not the Snake of the Science Laboratories, who continually asks her for information of her classmates.
Information she will not give him and his golden eyes.
Her teacher is the young man before her. Perhaps only a few months older. (March-born is she.)
But she trusts him.
Inexplicably.
As simply and easily as-
(But that is another song for another day. And Pein understands clearly. Flawlessly.)
And then his head is straightened, his neck erects itself like a monument, and his message is delivered. He has found easily what he will, what he thought he would, in the way he thought he might. (There are things Pein thinks about when most people are asleep. He, himself, only sleeps in bouts, when it finds him. And that is less and less often. There is always enough time for thought. Never enough time for sleep. So it goes.) He does not need to wonder. He has told her to wait.
And he is nearly certain that she will.
(And if she does not he will not come for her.)
The Akatsuki are Harbingers of-
(What was it again?
How did it go?)
But Pein will always remember.
Always.
Death. Revolution. Tayuya.
His voice. (Solemnly.)
"Amen."
And then he retreats almost entirely, pulls back into his own (pierced) body (as if he cannot speak of these sort of things easily, as if it is a clam-like endeavor, full of nought but reaching out before receding entirely). There is much to be said for moving on's own way, but there is much more to be said for those who unknowingly cater to a God higher than that they are familiar which. How courteous.
How elegant.
(Austere.)
Kasumi's ability that will easily become-
(Have a nice day?)
Pein is not so quaint as that.
But he watches her eyes for movement.
And the blood is gone from his arms and wrists.
(The clothing is a bit weightier than he thought.)
Help is not what he's requesting.
They two know this.
And so it is solidarity that finds them.
Peace that is elusive.
(Revolution.)
Kasumi-san.
(He may never again call her such.)
Simple words,
unspoken.
Tayuya will still be pregnant when he gets home; after all, one's physical being does not necessarily change with one's moods. The reverse may happen, but never otherwise. He lapses into silence. Into an intellectual cynic's contentment.
That things might never be the same,
Konan.
Amen.
And so this is the end.
(But not by a long shot.)
Kasumi (no longer) - Konan stands to watch him go, because she must. Her head still tilting against the wind, as if it is too heavy for her neck to hold properly. An everlasting look of curiosity, as such are her consequences.
Ever doe-eyed in the eyes of all others.
But not so.
For him.
Them.
"For thine is the kingdom-"
Goodbye.
"The power and the glory-"
Until then.
"For now and forever."
Two weeks.
Words spoken to the near-empty street and his back- to his face a simple fare thee well, stay safe.
But she does not need to tell Pein to be careful.
Nor does He need to tell her.
Konan.
Beginning.
Middle.
End.
Revolving endlessly with each new dawn.
(And that is Akatsuki. That is her future, as little as she knows.)
She watches before she leaves.
Amen.