there is such a thing as an unflattering light [open]

[haruno]

Sakura figured she should probably be more annoyed than she was, crossing her arms and staring down the statue of her that was, consequentially, also crossing its arms and staring her down. Life imitating art was usually an expression she'd heard, not something she'd expressly seen. (Given the artists she knew, art wasn't even something held back

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[haruno]

Sakura had heard someone coming, stepping to the side and watching out of the corner of her eye for whoever (or whatever) it was. When she recognized them as Marco, she was half tempted to turn away, an infantile knee jerk response when she owed him an apology for losing her temper.

Something she was reluctantly figuring she should say, just as he started speaking.

Turning to face him completely, forgetting about the statue for the moment, Sakura found herself confronted by -- books. She tilted her head at enough of an angle to read the spines on a few of them, eyebrows lifting as she recognized that at least one had something to do with medicine. "You got me books?" Sakura blinked, looking between the books and his face. This was new. Did he actually feel guilty about what had happened?

If she'd stopped to think about the humor in what the statue was showing right now, compared to what had lead to her decking Marco in the first place, Sakura might have been tempted to laugh. As it was, she was still standing struck with surprise. "Medical books?"

Had to hand it to him. He'd found one of the few things Sakura prized over just about anything else, when it came to personal enjoyment. Medical trivia.

His question about the statue shook her out of her temporary stupor. Looking over her shoulder, Sakura grimaced. "I don't know why, and the what does it look like?"

She didn't pause for him to answer that question. "I was dodging."

[livestoannoy]

Okay, so far so good. "I take it this means you're not going to try and rearrange my face then?" Marco said, putting the books down on the floor because they were heavy. "And yeah, they're medical textbooks. You are a medic, right?" He resisted to the urge to tell her that she was clearly too much of a nerd for him to buy a decent comic for instead. Somehow, he got the feeling that that wouldn't go down to well.

He come over to take a closer look at the statues. "Dodging what? A sudden deadly bamboo attack?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

[haruno]

"I'm not going to punch you," she said, watching him set the books down. "If that's what you're asking." How many had he brought?

As he looked at the statue, she knelt down and picked one off the top. Flipping it open, she scanned a few pages. "Not bamboo," she answered after a moment. "Puppet arms." She let the book close in her hands, standing. "At least a hundred or so."

It dawned on her this was part of why she'd snapped over the nickname. Sasori had been the puppet master, and the puppet he'd been fighting with at that point was one of the human doll's he'd excelled in making.

[livestoannoy]

"Good, because I really like not being punched," Marco said.

At that mention of puppet arms, he gave her a sidelong look. "Puppet arms? Seriously? How the hell can you fight a puppet? Did you just piss off the Muppets one time too many?"

Marco however, was no where near good enough at interpreting people's thoughts to figure that out. Not to mention, he was also still stuck on the idea of Sakura fighting Kermit the Frog.

[haruno]

"You fight the puppet because the puppeteer is fighting you with it." She tucked the book under one arm, indicating off in the direction this statue of her was staring. "That was before he released either the kunai or the poison gas, both which were in the hollow sections of the arms. A puppet isn't just one weapon, it's everything it's creator makes of it."

Her fight with Sasori wasn't something she talked about. She didn't particular care to start now, if explaining some of what Sasori was might... help lead her into the apology she felt she should make. "The master I was fighting was infamous for many things, his living puppets among them. See, when you start making a puppet out of someone when they're alive, that puppet maintains all of its abilities from life. A living puppet. A real human doll."

Things she'd been shouting about in what she felt was an unfair over-reaction by now. She held off on saying anything more on the subject, blinking as the uncomfortable shifting of statues started to occur. She made herself watch through the change, wondering what would happen now that she wasn't the only person here.

She didn't expect the one taking its place to depict a scene from the day of team assignments. Naruto had been perched on the desk in front of Sasuke, giving him a glaring once over. Sasuke had been more impassive in glaring back, and the careless jab from a classmate in Naruto's backside had sent him falling forward -- into Sasuke's face.

Sakura was standing off to the side with the rest of her eleven-year-old classmates, frozen in visible shock and horror while Naruto and Sasuke were immortalized in lip-locked disbelief.

"..." She coughed into her hand, looking away. That'd been so long ago...

[livestoannoy]

"Oh," Marco said. Okay, that explained why Sakura was so unhappy about the "Barbie" thing. And he had to admit, he didn't really like the sound of it either.

It sounded uncomfortably close to what the Yeerks did.

Marco shifted his weight a little. "Did he make puppets out of anyone you knew?" he said quietly.

Then the statues started changing, and Marco jumped. He'd thought that this was just some statue that someone had decided to make of Sakura for some reason, but now it was some pair of boys making out with each other and an apparently younger Sakura?! "What the hell?" he said, staring.

[haruno]

She started to shake her head. "Not from my village, though he'd been saying I was..."

She coughed again, remembering that day a little too well. "Oh, look, I still had long hair back then!" Who needed to explain what was going on?

Sakura figured it was kind of obvious. She chose to take it as him wondering at the mechanics behind the statues. Not that she understood them, but still, she had some idea about what was going on. "As far as I can tell, this creates statues based on memories. You don't really get to pick and choose," that she'd experienced yet, if (unknown to her) that wasn't actually true. There was no way to prevent it from displaying memories, if the ones shown could be influenced. "As far as I can tell, anyway."

[livestoannoy]

Marco scowled - Sakura might not have finished the sentence, but he got the gist well enough. "He wanted to make you into a puppet?!" he said, snarling a little.

His eyes flicked towards the statue. "This thing's playing your memories?" he said, taking a step back and eying it suspiciously. He really didn't like the idea of some freaky statue thing just picking things out of people's brains and showing them to everyone. He turned back to look at Sakura. "And you don't mind having this thing putting yours on display?"

[haruno]

The statue was changing again, even as she felt herself raising an eyebrow at his response to what she hadn't finished saying. All things considered, be barely knew her. She wondered what about the thought bothered him, what it could possibly remind him of.

"I mind," she said, "But it wasn't displaying for anyone other than me before you came in. Even then, it's not like you get a lot of context for what's going on. Like with the bamboo forest?" She blinked, feeling herself color a little as she recognized the scene the new statue was temporarily immortalizing.

Sakura tried to make her turn toward Marco look natural, sincerely hoping he wouldn't look back at the statue display right now. Where Naruto and Sai and Kakashi had all been willing to let her gaffe with Konohamaru's man on man sexy no jutsu pass, she had a strong feeling Marco wouldn't be as inclined to ignore it as they were.

"Look, I realize you couldn't have known about the whole... puppet thing. I was overreacting, and I apologize for that. I shouldn't lash out at people over things like that." Please don't look. "If you want, you can still use the stupid--" annoying, bothersome, but less offensive now than it had been, "--nickname. Barbie or Doctor Barbie, or whatever it is. I believe you about the pink."

She smiled. Please, please don't look back at the statues right now. Keeping her attention on him, she hoped he'd likewise keep his attention on her.

[livestoannoy]

Marco blinked in surprise. "Seriously?" he said, doubtful. "You don't mind, even though it's a doll?"

Sakura's luck was in - Marco was startled enough by the fact that Sakura was apparently now fine with the nickname that had made her punch him in the face the other day that he didn't look back at the statue.

Or at least...not immediately. Was Sakura blushing? Okay, as much as he'd like to think that she was blushing because she was talking to him and he was just that cute, but it didn't really make sense considering what they were talking about. Unless it was something about the statue...

Instinctively, Marco started to turn to look back at the statue again.

[haruno]

A little more heat rose in her face as he started turning, and she moved forward to take hold of him and bring his attention right back on her. "I can get past the doll thing. If you're stupid enough to think I'm anything like one, you'll be asking for whatever you get."

Wait. That sounded like more of a threat than it actually was, if at the same time she was serious about it. (Whoops.) "I believe you really did mean it just for the color of the whole stupid store. Girls and pink, barbie and pink, I guess it makes sense. I still don't know why you keep focusing on my hair color like this, but it beats the nicknames I had growing up."

Another awkward smile. He damn well better be distracted by now.

[livestoannoy]

Once again Marco was left blinking at her, as he found himself being spun around. Why the hell was she spending to much time going on about this...

Realisation hit Marco, and a slow grin crept over his face. "There's something embarrassing on the statues behind me, isn't there?" he said, teasing.

[haruno]

"I'm bad at apologies, that's all!" She willed the heat from her face, letting go of him to shake her head and dismiss his accusation with a wave of her hand. "I don't make them that often."

Surprisingly true. Sakura tried not to do things she had to apologize for -- and when she did, it had too often been to people who refused to hear out an apology from her.

Time to switch topics, if the one that came to her was actually something that struck her the longer she looked at him. "Did you cut your hair?" He seemed different, but it was hard to place how. It might have been her imagination, looking for anything to latch on to to pull the focus off herself.

[livestoannoy]

"Sure," Marco said, still grinning and not believing it one bit. "Apology accepted. But you don't have to worry, I won't look. See?" He brought up his hands, covering his eyes. "Your deep dark and incredibly embarrassing secrets can stay hidden. Although if it's like, you going skinny dipping or something, I'd like to state that letting me see that would totally make up for punching me in the face."

Unknown to Marco though, the scene was already changing: an alien creature, only about at tall as a gazelle appeared. The statue was still, yet the creature's gait indicated that it was at full speed, and running very fast. But down beside one of it's hind leg was something else: a cobra, uncoiled and at the moment where it was about to sink it's teeth into the creature's leg.

Meanwhile, Marco had opened his fingers an inch and was peeking at Sakura through them with one eye. "Uh, no, I haven't."

[haruno]

He was helping her switch mood rapidly, if she doubted that had anything to do with intent on his part, and everything to do with just being who he was. Eyes narrowed, she frowned and straightened up in indignation. "Don't be a pervert! I thought you said you don't like getting punched in the face."

His response had her furrowing her brow, just a little. She was riding on her indignation high at the moment. "No? I thought... Nevermind." She had to be seeing things. Had the statue changed yet?

She peeked past Marco -- and both her eyebrows shot up. "Orochima -- no, I definitely don't remember anything like that happening." As much as snakes brought several people to mind (Orochimaru, and then Sasuke-kun), there was nothing on her world like the creature running away. Not that she'd ever heard of, making it improbable that this was based on any memory of her own.

[livestoannoy]

Marco just laughed. Despite what she said, it didn't seem like she was really offended. (Especially since if past experience was anything to go by, her typical response to real offense was to bring out her fists straight away). "You'd be nice to look at though," he said, mischievous.

He was distracted from his teasing though - the statue had changed? Marco spun round, and suddenly found himself face to face with a familiar scene. This was one of his memories.

Marco didn't feel like laughing anymore. "No, this is one of mine," he said, his throat feeling a little dry.