Connection Between Puppets and Plants

Disclaimer : I do not own Naruto nor any of the characters in it. They belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

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~Haruka's POV~

It was already 11 pm, yet I sill couldn't get myself to shut my eyes firmly. I didn't think anyone would be able to sleep by themselves in this overly broad Victorian-designed room. Not to mention the fact that all the lights were off, so I could hardly see anything insight.

And that really bothered me.

I swore I could hear rustling noises coming from outside the giant window. I should have asked Kimi-kun to give me a smaller guest room, now I wouldn't be able to get some sleep for tonight due to my over-paranoid self!

Creak...

I shot up from my bed, gripping the cover tightly. This time, I swore I had heard something abnormal coming from outside the window. With all the remaining courage that I had left, I slowly turned my head directly at the window to see the source of the said noise. I totally regret what I just did, because then I saw it - that... white floating thing- glaring at me right outside my bedroom window.

"AAAAAAAAAAA!" I couldn't handle it anymore. I screamed at the top of my lungs and darted out of my room as quickly as I could, not daring to take glance back. I ran and ran through the darkness of the hall, almost tripping over the loose carpet on the ground. Finally, I stopped in front of a certain door, and banged my trembling hands on it, "SASORI! SASORI, OPEN UP!" I pounded for quite a time, before the door was finally swung open by my grumpy-looking redheaded friend.

"What do you want, Haru-oof!" before he could even finished his question, I immediately glomped him and buried my face in his shirt.

"Sasori! Something terrible just happened to me! I saw a lost spirit outside my bedroom's window and I think it wanted to pull me into the grave with it!" I rambled on, still having my firm grip on him.

Sasori only raised an eyebrow at me, "So? You expect me to jump into the grave with you?"

I pouted at his lenten comment, "Please, Sasori, let me stay with you for the night! I wouldn't be able to sleep with all those ghosts floating around the house! Please please please...!"

"No, you're just gonna get in my way of finding the jonin's true identity, especially with that annoying whining of yours."

"I promise I'll stay as quiet as a mouse! A dead mouse! Please let me stay..."

The red head gazed down at me. Perhaps he was feeling kind of sorry for my poor self since I looked like I was going to cry - or even faint- if he didn't let me stay with him. So with that, he sighed before taking a step aside, allowing me to come forward into his room, "Just don't bother me and my work... and stop yelling so loudly, you're gonna wake the others up."

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" I replied gratefully before running inside his room, letting him closing the door behind me. Sasori only shook his head and went to sat by his desk while I took a seat on his comfy bed. "So, how's your analysis going?"

"It's not gonna work out unless you keep your mouth shut."

I pouted. Why must he be such a jerk?

"Geez, it was just a simple question, stupid red-head." I mumbled the last part out.

"I heard that."

I rolled my eyes and laid myself on his four-poster bed. There was no use trying to argue with my stubborn childhood friend. His aggravating behavior made it hard for me to ever win over him. The best thing I could do now was to stay as silent as possible, but I had to keep my eyes opened in case he needed me.

Time seemed to pass so slowly since I had nothing better to do than to just sit here staring at the ceiling, while the red-head was working on our case without making any single sound. My eyelids began to feel heavier and heavier by the second, but then, a sound of loud biffing on the desk soon brought me back to reality. I panicked and leaped on the bed in reflex.

"What? What happened, what?"

A growl of annoyance was the only reply that I received. I turned at the red-head and saw him cupping his face with his palms in frustration, "Sasori, what's wrong?" I asked as I approached him.

"This is wrong. These cards aren't making any sense. They only hold the identities of the former kages in 5 Ninja countries, not the identity of that Jonin!" the puppeteer answered in raged, shoving the cards off his desk.

I grabbed 3 of the cards and examined them. The first one had a picture of the ex-Tsuchikage. The second one, ex-Raikage. The third one, ex-Hokage. I took a quick look at the other cards, and immediately knew what Sasori had said was right. The ID cards were all fake.

"Yep, they're fauxes alright," I said, putting the cards back on Sasori's desk."But I don't think the Jonin gave us this mission just to play pranks on us. There must be another plan behind all this."

"I know, but what?"

Suddenly, we heard a loud pounding on the door. Sasori went to get it, but as he turned on the handle, it suddenly bursted open, slamming him hard on the face. A sudden gust of wind entered the room, halting right next to me. I looked to my right and saw the familiar guilty blonde figure was trembling madly, trying to hold back his urge laugh. But he eventually gave up and fell on the ground, releasing his fit of joyful laugher.

"HAHAHA! Aka no Baka should see the look on Aka no Baka's face!" Kimi Raikkichi cried, holding onto his shaking stomach.

I glanced at Kimi, then at Sasori. The puppeteer was holding his slightly bleeding nose. His eyes signified burning hatred, I could feel it on my skin even though it was directed at the laughing blonde. I was about to reprove Kimi for what he had done to my wounded friend, but before I could even blink, Sasori was already sitting ontop of Kimi, hurling punches on his face.

"Sasori!" I yelled, staring at the red-head in horror.

Unwilling to accept his beating, Kimi kicked the puppeteer on his stomach hard before tackling him on the ground, switching their positions. Kimi managed to throw a punch on Sasori's flawless face, before jumping up and darted away from his opponent as far as he could. Sasori brought his hands up and activated his chakra string, but the blonde successfully dodged them before they could even reach his body.

"Quit it, guys!" I cried desperately to no avail.

Kimi continued running around the room with Sasori's chakra strings following behind him. They kept attaching themselves onto the wrong places; the cupboard, the pillow, even the door handle. When the chakra strings were attached to one of the jonin's ID cards, I saw a flicker of light flashed upon its surface, but quickly disappeared as soon as the strings were removed from it.

"Guys!" I yelled again, trying to gain my teammates' attention, but they were too busy chasing each other to even notice me. I walked over to where the scattered ID cards were and took the card that had been previously touched by Sasori's chakra strings. I examined it, looking for a trace of light that was previously emitted from it, but found none. Then I remembered the thing that made the card glow earlier, and that was Sasori's chakra strings.

The word 'chakra' kept echoing inside my mind as I slowly flowed my own chakra to the tip of my fingers and onto the ID card. Then it happened. One of the letters on the card glowed.

HASHIRAMA SENJUU

I stared at it disbelievingly at first, trying to process what was I had finally snapped out of my trance, I jumped up and turned excitedly to my teammates.

"GUYS! GUYS, YOU'VE GOTTA SEE THIS!" I waved the glowing card at them enthusiastically. Seeing that they were still ignoring, I summoned my vinewhip and lashed it onto the floor loudly, making them halted in surprise.

"OY! QUIT FIGHTING AND GET OVER HERE!" I ordered loudly. They both remained frozen and dumbfounded, giving me no other choice but to repeat my previous action. "NOW!"

Without wasting another second, the boys hurriedly went over to my side and were right next to me in a flash.

"What is it, Haruka-chan?" Kimi asked, looking over my shoulder. Both him and Sasori seemed to have forgotten of their brawling earlier.

"Take a look at this, guys!" I held out the ID card at them and cover it with my chakra. What happened next made the boys' eyes - including Sasori's originally lazy ones - grew larger than a pair of tennis balls.

"What the..." the red-head whispered, completely forgotten of his bleeding nose.

"Haruka-chan! How on earth did-"

"These are no ordinary cards, Kimi-kun! I think they're made of chakra papers."

Sasori took another card from the ground and flowed his own chakra onto it. His face lit up when a letter glowed slowly glowed under his fingertips, "Let's see if all these cards are made from the same material." he attached his chakra strings onto the remaining cards and 4 of them immediately glowed.

I read out the glowing letters loudly, "K-T-O-A-H and another O."

"Maybe the Jounin's name is KTOAHA-sensei?" Kimi asked.

"That's not even a proper name, fool," Sasori replied. "I think we have to put them in a certain order."

I tapped my chin thoughtfully at this, "Based on what order?"

"I don't know, it can be any kind of order."

"Why don't we try putting them in order of their birthdays first?" Kimi suggested.

"I say we start with the date of their deaths first."

"How about we start with their birthdays first, then their deaths?" I intercepted before the boys could start another argument.

The three of us sorted the cards in both order, and surprisingly, they resulted in one same word : AKOTOH.

"What kind of name is Akotoh?" I wondered outloud.

"The kind that doesn't exist." Sasori murmured and unattached his strings from the ID cards.

The three of us fell into a deep silence. We thought really hard about the unsolved riddle lying in front of our eyes, trying to solve it with the power of our prodigious brains. Unfortunately, time passed by without any single outcome, and I figured that our brains were probably not so prodigious after all.

"Gah! I don't know what's wrong with these letters. We were so close!" I sighed, plopping myself on Sasori's bed.

"Wait!" Kimi suddenly exclaimed out of the blue as I was about to give up, "Kimi Raikkichi thinks Kimi Raikkichi has got it."

I shot up from my bed and scurried over to Kimi's side, "What? Have you figured something out?" I asked hopefully.

"Kimi Raikkichi remembers that Jounin-sensei was wearing everything in a weird way. Jounin-sensei wore everything backwards."

Sasori rolled his eyes at the blonde, "Your point?"

"Well, maybe Jounin-sensei spells his name backwards too!"

Kimi's statements usually didn't make any sense, but it was an exception this time. Something immediately clicked on both my and Sasori's minds as we heard what the blonde had said. The three of us circled ourselves around the cards and read all the previously glowing letters in a reverse order. I couldn't believe what we saw - the word was actually spelled in a proper way, and it read :

H O T O K A

"That's it! Jounin-sensei's name must be Hotoka! Yatta-ne!" Kimi exclaimed happily while jumping up and down with joy.

I couldn't help but to jump along with him, feeling the sudden sense of accomplishment flowing through my skin, "Well done, Kimi! You're a genius!"

Sasori only sighed deeply, but this time, in content. I could even see a small smile forming on his face, "This is the first time you did something right."

Kimi puffed his cheeks at this, but then grinned cheekily as soon as he knew that Sasori was actually complimenting him, "Arigatou, Aka-no-Baka!"

Sasori chose to shrug off Kimi's nickname for him and proceeded on putting the ID cards into his pockets, "It's already midnight. We'd better sleep if we don't want to be late tomorrow."

Kimi and I nodded before heading out of Sasori's room, bidding goodnights to each other. As the door closed and locked behind me, I instantly remembered the reason I went into Sasori's room in the first place. The next thing I knew, I found myself knocking frantically onto his door.

"Sasori! Open up! I wanna stay for the night!"

"Can't hear you. I'm already asleep."

"How can you say that when you are already asleep?"

"Zzz..."

"Sasori!"

"How about sleeping in Kimi Raikkichi's room instead, Haruka-chan?"

And before I could even decline the kind offer from my kind blonde friend, I had found myself dragged off by him through the dim corridor in a speed of light.