Sasori looked at the messenger who had come from his contact in Suna. The chunin stood nervously at a distance and slowly walked to Sasori.
"Our agreement was for him to first hear Elder's offer and if he rejected it, you should have then attacked him," the messenger said carefully.
"It does not matter. I wanted to see how he had grown," Sasori replied calmly.
"You would not be paid... remember, master does not tolerate disobedience of orders."
"He is not my master," Sasori said as he searched through Shota's body. He found some scrolls, opened them, and read through the contents carefully. He quickly realized why the brat was heading to the Land of Wind capital.
He started laughing. "Hahahahaha!"
"Brat still makes me smile even after so many years," Sasori said with a genuine smile that terrified the chunin standing nearby.
--
The chunin looked at the maniacally laughing Sasori with wide, fearful eyes.
He then glanced at the two terrifying puppets standing beside Sasori — the Third Kazekage and Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang.
'He has made the puppets of the Third Kazekage and Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang too. Who would have thought that Elder Daigo is in collaboration with Sasori of the Red Sand. But he needs to know about this. This is...huge.' the chunin thought, his heart pounding in terror.
"What is in those scrolls, Sasori-sama?" the chunin asked, gathering his courage.
Sasori stopped laughing and looked down at the documents in his hands. "This brat has been trying to find information about Elder Daigo's conspiracies and how he had betrayed the village. He had found quite a substantial amount of proof. Nothing completely concrete, but quite good. I wonder what he was trying to do with the proof instead of giving it to Rasa."
The chunin's face turned pale with shock and fear. "But how could he know about this?!! No one even in Suna, including the Kazekage, suspects Elder Daigo." His voice trembled as he spoke.
The elder, his master, had been careful for years, hiding his tracks perfectly. He controlled important parts of village security and had powerful allies.
The idea that a young Anbu operative like Shota had uncovered so much was terrifying. If this information spread, it could destroy years of planning and bring the entire elder faction down. The chunin felt cold sweat running down his back at the thought of what would happen if the Kazekage learned the truth.
Sasori laughed again, but this time it was softer, filled with genuine admiration. "People underestimate this boy. People think that the boy is all about his dojutsu. He is all about his ability to stop people from using chakra. But they do not know that he has a brain so smart that he might be the smartest person in the village. I was a fool too. I underestimated the boy. I had known him since he was a kid and I thought I knew all what the boy could do. But just look at the different jutsus the boy has developed on his own. A boy less than half my age made me use all my trump cards."
"He created techniques I have never seen before. He managed to fly with the help of his dojutsu, those flaming chakra threads, and that monstrous fire jutsu... He pushed me harder than most jonin ever could. I felt alive during this fight. The boy has grown into something special. It makes me both angry and impressed."
The chunin moved forward with a kunai, intending to kill the unconscious boy and to bury the information with him. However, he was stopped as chakra strings wrapped around his body. He struggled hard to break free but could not move.
"What do you think you are doing?" Sasori asked coldly.
"Killing him because if he leaves and shares this information with others, Elder Daigo is done," the chunin said, still struggling against the strings.
"Does it look like I care? The boy is going to live," Sasori replied firmly.
"But the boy has seen your puppets. Both Konoha and Suna would move to hunt you down if they knew what you have done to their hero and Kage respectively," the chunin tried to reason desperately.
"The boy already knew about the Third Kazekage puppet. While he could be lying about guessing what I have done to the Third Kazekage, the boy did not look much surprised when he saw the puppet. When he reveals it to the others, it would anyways bring more shinobi bodies to me. So that is a plus. Besides, this way he would know that there is no way that I could be accepted back to the village," Sasori said calmly.
"And he would abandon his foolish pursuit of getting me back to the village," Sasori added.
"I might as well give him a hand," Sasori said as he brought up a scroll, took out some important documents from it, and added them into the pile of scrolls and documents that Shota had gathered about the traitor.
"What are you doing? Elder Daigo would not forget about this," the chunin asked in panic.
"Your Elder Daigo would have bigger problems to worry about. Now... you can die." Before the chunin could realize what was happening, a senbon pierced through his neck. The man collapsed to the sand without another sound.
Sasori looked at the bloody body of Shota. 'Ugh, I cannot leave him here or leaving him alive would be the same as leaving him for dead.'
He lifted Shota in a piggyback carry. 'I promised myself that I would never carry him on my back again but here we are.' The puppet master grumbled internally as he adjusted the boy's weight.
Shota was taller and heavier now than the little kid he used to carry years ago. Sasori felt ridiculous, the feared Sasori of the Red Sand giving someone a piggyback ride in the middle of the desert after nearly killing him.
He then moved Shota to some Suna base nearby for medical attention. Sasori chose to ignore the fact that he could carry Shota with chakra strings or just use his puppets to carry him. For some reason, he carried the boy himself, walking steadily across the sand with the unconscious boy on his back.
*Snore*
Sasori heard the loud snoring sound and grumbled. 'This fucking brat... is already asleep... lazy annoying brat...'
--------Author Notes---------
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