towerofanimus | Sardines in a Can

Entry tags:

Sardines in a Can

Characters: Sasori and YOU
Setting: The Morgue and 4-06
Format: I'll match you
Summary: No, it isn't your imagination. The morgue probably is missing a few bodies, or the bodies are missing a few parts. And room 4-06 may have just gained a few roommates... Or at least, parts of them.
Warnings: Dismembered bodies and medical jargon >.>

The Morgue
Ever since taking up 'work' at the Morgue, Sasori seemed to be spending more time and all of overtime there. Not that there are any economical perks to look forward to, but, there were other perks; other more disturbing 'perks' about working at the morgue...

As it was, the puppet Master, being rather on the short side, had felt it necessary to climb up onto one of the higher selves to get at a body that was seemingly stuck. He had taken taken every precaution to not let the door close in on him, but had somehow ended up locking himself inside with a cold, cold body right next to him.

"...How inconvenient." All he had with him was his scalpel.

Working his way in the dark, he tries using the scalpel as a makeshift screwdriver to try and get himself out, the scratch scratch of metal against metal distinct in the silence of the cold mortuary...

Room 4-06
There's a funky smell in room 4-06, and if you looked closely, a few extra fingers and toes. Sasori is sat on the floor by his bed, poring over a dismembered arm, carefully prying it open with forceps and a scalpel. There are a few bottles of weird smelling preservatives close by, and while the puppet master carefully dissects the limb, he makes notes: detailed diagrams of the human body with modifications everywhere...Wait, was that a spare leg in the corner by Sasori's bed, casually propped up against the wall...?

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The squishing of organs didn't seem to bother him but the smell certainly did. He took his handkerchief from his pocket to cover his nose and mouth.

"I just happened by. I hate sterility and I hate labs. If you called it art, I might be more interested."

The words that Sasori said about research brought back some bitter memories of not only his childhood but his recent memories as well being used, abused and thrown away. His jaw clinched behind the cloth which really didn't help his already breaking mental state.

Oh yes, provoke the man with the knife. Go on.

Sou rolled his eyes and tried to ignore it.

"This is not art," the puppet master stated, watching the body before him degrade by the moment. "This is merely a vessel full of shit and piss, an impermanent thing that men fight to preserve, when all it does in the end is decay." He glances at Sou for just a moment. "This is you and me."

When Sasori looks back at the lifeless form in front of him, his eyes lid halfway, the tiniest of smiles gracing his features. "True art is eternal. Eternally beautiful." For once, there is a fire in those eyes, but perhaps it goes unnoticed here...

Since he put it that way, he felt even more disgusted even at himself. It was an ugly existence and certainly one that he really didn't want to hear. He took a step back from the scene and closed his eyes tightly to keep himself from vomiting. Instead of allowing that to happen, he chose to laugh to hide his discomfort.

"What if it was photographed, hm? I think the real question remains what is interpreted as art and what is considered trash." At least pictures didn't transfer the smell of rot.

It was existence in a nutshell. No need to be disgusted, of course, not if one takes a moment to accept the nature of things. However, had Sasori been completely accepting, he wouldn't have been on the never-ending quest to seek that sublime perfection. As a human being, he was imperfect, and his very existence was impermanent. Yet, instead of accepting this as fact, he sought to defy nature and transcend from the 'living' to the 'eternal'.

The laugh is misplaced, in his opinion (he hadn't said anything funny, had he?), and Sasori quietly held out a jar of some kind of balm. "Dab some under your nose. It'll help with the smell." The jar is promptly placed on an empty steel dissecting table near Sou. The redhead then arched an eyebrow and glanced in the other's direction. "You are sure you don't like sterility and labs?"

Turning back to the body he was working on, he adds quietly: "A photograph can only capture a moment in time, not create something that can be left long into the future. Besides, why would anyone want to treasure pictures of dismembered bodies...?" Not saying it was creepy; just asking where the appeal was.

The balm was used quickly and even if he thought that playing with the internal organs of anything was akin to a toddler playing with spaghetti, that wasn't want bothered him. It was the smell.

It took a moment for Sou to recollect himself while the balm did its work, he relaxed enough to respond. "That's not your concern." There was a heavy bitterness in his tone. "I never said that I treasured anything."

He looked at the destroyed corpse with his eyes then back to Sasori. "Such sentimentality is nothing more than holding on to something that you'll most likely never keep. My fascination is nothing more than a childish whim. At the very least, it has no attachment for me."

"No, but it would be if you retched in the morgue." He gave the other a look before going back to work. He didn't need extra work cut out for him in this place, not when there was such a little time to actually get any real work done.

Sasori pauses to listen to Sou continue, though. "Mn." That was... almost commendable. "There can be no loss where there was no attachment to begin with." And yet he would forever contradict himself, putting hours of blood and sweat and tears into an ideal.

Prying the corpse open in places, Sasori seemed to mull over the other's words for all of half a minute. "You do not treasure anything. Not even an ideal?" He shot a glance up at the other from where he worked. "What drives you, then...?" To live, if you were among the living, that is.

"What do you mean?" Sou was genuinely confused. His motivations were mostly because he hated feeling rejected and instead of showing that he was in need, he pushed around others with his power simply because he could.

He was intelligent in some ways but when it came to himself, he was relatively stupid in his own personal knowledge and self-awareness. It was as if introspection wasn't part of his list of abilities. Outside knowledge he could gain quickly and he didn't mind that at all.

By the time the other had begun to question once more, Sasori had gone back to work, donning gloves as he reached into the corpse's abdomen. "Hm?" Whoops, that's a lot of stomach acid and very little left of any stomach at all. Wonder what this guy was drinking before he died... Clicking his tongue, Sasori dumps the entrails into a nearby dish. "Everybody has a purpose in life, don't they?"

Sou had grown silent. He looked at the eviscerated body. The surreal feeling he received from looking at the features of the unnamed deceased's face made it clear that the only thing he managed to do in his life was destroy lives. His own purpose was painfully unclear other than to face the fate this body had. Still, didn't everyone wound up this way?

His memories through the pain and suffering he caused found another clinging nature. Didn't he try to make life better? It took an act of war for humans and Alters to work together to bring him down, so didn't that become his purpose? To be the force that made people realize their faults and put aside their differences as at least something accomplished. It wasn't like his life was a complete waste, yet he didn't know the fate of the people after his death.

Was his death only a goal for a temporary union? Strange now that it took a man playing with the insides of the dead that made him realize this. He looked up at Sasori with a scowl. "If you're asking if I would become a toy for the twisted pleasure of another, I would rather turn to ash."

His anger was focused inward mostly at himself for not being more than a tool and used for destruction. They were all puppets in a way. Ironically, Sou was no different than the body on the table.

"I was only asking what drove you. Life without a purpose is meaningless. Life without purpose means you haven't lived." He discarded his soiled gloves, reaching for new ones.

However, there was a flicker of emotion he hoped he had managed to hide well from the other. "If you became a toy for somebody else's pleasure, wouldn't that mean you've failed?" But as shinobi, what were they? Tools for destruction, pawns in somebody else's game. It had been one of the reasons he had packed up and left, deserted his countrymen. But taking the leader with him had been something else altogether...

Yet he held on to that headband he had drawn a scratch on, the one that bore the very symbol he had once identified himself with, and later fought to get away from.

They were puppets, this he realized. Wherever they went, whatever they did, somebody somewhere was pulling the strings. It was why he yearned to be a puppet master far superior to any other before him. And the only way to do that was, ironically, to turn himself into a puppet as well.

The forced introspection was enough to keep Sou from lashing out. He was a tool whether he liked it or not. Weren't they all? Even the so-called heroes, they were tools too. Everyone was used by someone at some point. Children were used by their parents to gain social acceptance, children used their parents for gain and title, it was a cycle.

It took Sou several minutes of morphed expressions and blank stares. "My purpose...is to live." Even though for now he had no direction, at the very least he can find it at some point.

That was the very reason he was trying to kill the human side of him; break all the bonds, kill all the feelings. But even then, he didn't think it would be enough.

The myriad of expressions and stares actually make Sasori smile, and then chuckle, shaking his head as he took off the second pair of gloves that were now soiled. When the other states his purpose, though, Sasori's chuckle dies into a fixed smile. A beat passes as he contemplates Sou's 'purpose'. "That is... more than what most people can hope to live for." He was being sincere.

But he wipes that smile off his face as soon as he realizes he'd still been smiling at all, breaking eye contact and touching the frame of the metal table for a moment instead, before picking up his scalpel once more. "Fancy you would come to a place of death. Mini detour?" He was going to put that scalpel down now and find that cleaver...

Have a lot of metal and tools clanging in that drawer back there as he busies himself with trying to find a cleaver. The cleaver is right there in front of him, really, but he's actually silently berating himself on showing emotion at all.

Emotions were the driving force of his ability but at the moment, it was just as chaotic as he was, with no direction, no purpose, he could no longer form the Tokunatsu. He still had control over the element of fire and the heat that radiates from that source.

He touched his collar for a moment in thought. The cleaver now in Sasori's hand made him grin slightly. It was a flicker, yet he still watched the mutilation. "Perhaps I come here as a reminder of my own mortality. I never saw my death and I became part of the energy. Curiosity."

The cleaver comes down to neatly sever that limb, movements almost like those of a butcher separating different 'cuts' on the meat before him.

To see death, to be reminded of it constantly and know that one was susceptible to it in the end-- These were things he had done himself, and still continued to do so. But Sasori was stubborn. He would not accept that fate; he would not accept that he was just like everybody else. Not yet, at least. ...Because Sasori had a plan. He had a plan to cheat his inevitable fate.

These thoughts are not what makes him arch an eyebrow, though. Instead, it is the latter part of what Sou had told him: "What energy?" He knew that beings from different worlds and parallel universes were brought to the tower. So... were there instances in which some transcended death and became something else entirely?

"The gateway that separates my world with another dimension. It's what we call the Other Side. There is no formal name for it. Once that bullet penetrated my skull, I saw it in a flash for just a moment before I woke up here. Perhaps it was from my vision becoming distorted from the impact but that flash felt warm, like I was meant to be there."

Sou lifted his hand and looked at his palm. "Scientists have tried for years at the expense of taking lives of others to find that source. Once it's obtained, the possibilities are boundless." He closed his hand and lowered it to his side once more.

"I don't think they managed to find it. We're too limited to simply walk through it."

Oh hello, this was totally interesting stuff to this Sand ninja. You could tell just by the look on his face. Sasori isn't one to show emotion, but that right there is genuine interest, unmasked. The cleaver stops in midair, merely an inch or so above the cut he was to make.

"What kind of possibilities...?"

Sorry Sou, everything else is going over his head right now. He's just suddenly focused on 'the possibilities'.

Certainly noticed, Sou leans back slightly away with his hands still behind his back. "Immortality was one theory. The other, the boundless potential of gaining powers. They were hoping to market this as a way of creating super soldiers for domination. Personally, it would have worked if they didn't try killing those born with these powers first to obtain it."

Sou had destroyed the lab to keep that from happening and that was really the only good thing he did during his time as a dictator.

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Sardines in a Can

If I happen to see it again, I'll poke.

lolk :3

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LATE ;A;

No worries. :)

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