All the World's a Stage - Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Ozu had never been in the Workshop before. He’d never had a reason to. It was creepy, honestly, with puppet parts hanging from every wall, shelves covered in wooden heads and limbs. Weapons were scattered everywhere, and more than a few complete were strung from the ceiling looking like hanged men with staring eyes and gaping mouth…

Ozu shuddered.

Sasori looked up from his work station at the sound. “Is something wrong, Ozu-san?”

He made a vague gesture at the general surroundings.

“Ah,” Sasori said, looking around. His eyes went into sharp focus, which was its own kind of unnerving, and he nodded. “Yes, I’ve been told that others often find the Workshop disquieting. Are you looking for Ondori?”

“Yeah, he’s not at his house.”

Sasori pointed, and Ozu followed his finger. Ondori was seated at a station against the wall, surrounded by an impressive pile of felt and cloth and, curiously, several large buckets of sand. The usual suspects were seated on shelves above him, including Sasori’s Gonzo. “He’s put Gonzo in one of those odd western suits,” he noted.

“That was my idea,” Sasori said. “I’ve decided that Gonzo is a pretentious artist with delusions of grandeur, and the formal suit is to further juxtapose against his insane stunts.”

Ozu stared. “How old are you again? Eight?”

“I am eleven, Ozu-san,” Sasori said with a hint of reproach. He looked down at his current project and finished assembling a miniaturized, self-reloading crossbow. “Hm. It has the power but the projectiles are too small. They’d shatter from the force of the launch.” He lit up. “Is Sawa here? Perhaps together we can figure out a seal that would make the bolts heavier and sturdier.”

“Sorry,” Ozu said. “He’s spending the day with his grandmother. Oh, speaking of, there’s yours.”

Chiyo had entered the room and approached Ondori. The younger puppeteer looked up and brightened, pulling her into a conversation that immediately had her making a face.

“Ah. Ondori keeps trying to make Granny participate in the show. Between you and me, she’d be more willing if Ondori-san stopped trying to convince her to sing.”

Someone barked a laugh nearby, and Ozu turned to see two familiar old men. “Oh hey.”

Yaji and Chosho turned to face him, grinning. “Hay’s no good, young man!”

“That’s right,” Yaji affirmed. “It's terrible stuffing. Itchy.”

“Scratchy.”

“Makes a loud rustling.”

“We’ve cottoned on to a better material!”

Ozu gave a lopsided smile. “Is it cotton?”

“No,” Chosho said. “Wool.”

“But--” Ozu shook his head. “Okay.” He looked around and noticed something. “Hey, is it just me or are most of the puppeteers here--”

“Old?” Sasori asked.

It was true. Sasori was the youngest, obviously, but Yaji and Chosho were far from the only ones with grey hair. Ondori was just about the only adult with no grey hair at all, aside from a teenage girl working on seals that Ozu vaguely recognized.

“There’s a good reason for that, young man,” Yaji said. “Puppeteers live longer.”

“Because we let our puppets do the fighting for us,” Chosho explained. “Yaji, what do you think, does it look like me?”

Chosho held up a muppet for them to inspect. It had a body shaped like an egg with a sort of squashed head, squinty eyes and a shock of white hair encircling its head, but not the top.

Yaji burst out laughing. “Looks just like you!”

“You guys are making muppets of yourselves?” Ozu asked, interested.

“No, it’s obviously someone completely different,” Yaji said. “I changed my mind. It’s far too handsome to be Chosho. Dohohoho!”

Chosho scowled and smacked him. “Shut it you old fool, or I’ll give your ex-wife your address!”

“Ack! Don’t, I’ve stayed hidden for so long!”

The two old coots shared a boisterous laugh, and Ozu rolled his eyes with a grin. He looked back over towards his friend. Chiyo had left to inspect someone else’s work, and Ondori had… four identical chicken muppets sitting on the table in front of him. As Ozu watched he finished a fifth and added it to the line. That was enough to make Ozu walk over.

“Hey Rooster!” Ozu said, just this side of too loud and clapping a hand on his friend’s back.

Ondori jumped in place before lightly glaring up at him. He couldn’t hold the look for long before he smirked. “Hey, Ozu.”

The swordsman pulled a chair over and plunked himself down. “Things with Jiki not going well?”

“Well--”

“I can tell because you seem to be making a new set of wives for yourself, Rooster.”

Ondori shoved the sixth finished chicken in Ozu’s face. He laughed and set it in the line.

“Seriously though, how many of these do you need?”

“Six is enough,” Ondori said. “Now I need to finally get started on Miss Piggy. Maybe if Jiki sees her in the felt she’ll be more willing to give it a try.”

“Could be.” Personally, Ozu wasn’t holding his breath. “What do you need six chickens for anyway?”

“I’ve got an idea to have a bunch of chickens plucking away at an instrument to make a little tune. I’ll have them wander onstage up to the instrument, acting like normal birds.” He paused. “Maybe I can have a muppet throwing feed around and some land on the instrument.”

“And then he starts jamming with them, and a crowd forms,” Ozu mused.

“Yes, slowly, as the tune builds up. Maybe the guy sets out a drum and one of the chicken flies up to peck feed off the top…”

Ozu frowned. “That’s be a lot of puppets at once, wouldn’t it?”

Ondori grunted as he pulled up a roll of pink cloth, then put it back and picked a lighter shade. “The chickens aren’t terribly complex. If I keep them close enough to each other I can probably control two with one thread.”

The puppeteer in the station next to Ondori’s paused in her work, Ozu noted with amusement. “You’ve done that before?”

“I’ve done something similar with Bokken Blue and Red.” He stopped and swiveled in his chair. “Thank you, by the way, Sasori! The Bokken Twins work great!”

“Good to hear!” the kid called back.

“I need a stronger skeleton for this one,” Ondori said, turning back to his work. “Ozu, can you fetch me some teak?”

Ozu stood. “Teak. Which one is that?”

“It should be labeled,” he said, returning his full focus to his work.

Ozu went back to Sasori. “You know, he seems a lot more focused when he’s building something.”

“You’ve noticed as well, hm?” the kid asked. “He gets very into character.”

“Hey, so where do you keep your timber?”

Sasori gave him directions and Ozu went to fetch it.

----------------------------

Gorogoro Sakka looked over his report. Then, carefully, he copied it in longform to a separate notebook. He was pretty sure it was correct but he’d had to make up some shorthand terms on the fly. He couldn’t exactly leave a glossary anywhere--what if someone found it? Just the glossary itself would be highly incriminating if a shinobi were to stumble across it.

Sugi sat on his shoulder, watching him disinterestedly. She did everything disinterestedly. “You aren’t really going to stay here are you?”

“Why not?” Sakka said, a touch defensively. “It’s not all bad.”

“There are exactly twenty-nine trees in this entire village,” the squirrel summon complained. “And they all suck. Not that I could enjoy them if they didn’t, because we’re spies and there aren’t any regular squirrels in this hellhole.”

“You don’t have to stick around, you know,” Sakka said.

Sugi wasn’t just his messenger to Kumo, she was also a check on his chakra. Maintaining a summon was a constant drain on his stamina, allowing him to pass as a civilian to any inconvenient sensors Suna might have. Sugi’s own chakra was minimal enough that anyone looking for something weird would gloss over it. The only problem was that maintaining Sugi’s presence by necessity resulted in her being present. And Sugi did not like Suna at all.

“You know I can’t,” she grumbled. “Can’t we transfer to Konoha? Or Iwa? Hell, I’d even take Kiri. The trees might be wet but at least they’re tall.”

Sakka grumbled. “Just because you don’t appreciate theatre…”

“Why are you so obsessed with the puppet show anyway? We should be looking into secret training or militarization, not the puppeteer hobbyist club!”

…Sugi wasn’t wrong. “Maybe I just want the guys back in Kumo to experience it too.”

Sugi snorted derisively. “Sure, whatever. Instead of stealing scripts maybe you should be stealing scrolls. And we’ve got a chance soon, remember? You’ve got a meeting at the civilian town hall to apply for a loan.”

Sakka brightened.

The thing about being a spy, Sakka felt instinctively, was being able to enjoy your cover story. If you could make your cover something you were passionate about, it was so much easier to avoid suspicion. No one suspected that the painter who was gently weeping while overlooking a rolling vista was actually in the country to generate public unrest. And in Sakka’s case, no one suspected the immigrant looking to open a curio store, who had a story behind every item and a tale for every country you could care to name. Some of them were even true.

It was also a source of reliable income. He had plans to slowly transition to a ninja supply shop. The civilian kind, that sold cheap but low-grade stuff to ninja unwilling to pay the exorbitant prices of the good stuff. It would be an excellent source of gossip among the shinobi forces, and if he ever did report back to Kumo in person his replacement could easily slot in as his nephew or niece.

Time to go see how good his fake credentials were.

Sugi climbed into his satchel, grumbling, and Sakka finished dressing for the day. When he stepped out, he was Dorai no-family-name, wandering merchant looking to settle down.

---------------------------------------------

It took longer to find the teak than he expected, but Ozu eventually returned with an armful of logs.

Ondori thanked him and took the wood to the lathe.

Ozu watched with mild interest for a short while. After a time he decided that he needed to get some training in and turned to leave, saying goodbye to the old men and Sasori as he went.

When he opened the door to the workshop, something small brushed past his leg and said  “Thanks, love.”

“No prob.” Crazy Ondori, with his little puppets everywhere.

Ozu took one step out from the threshold, frowned, and turned around.

A very small dog had trotted inside. It was a toy terrier, wearing a blue vest and a Konoha hitai-ate.

Huh?

Ozu stepped back in, closing the door behind him.

The tiny dog weaved between legs as it went. Mostly it was ignored, but a few people noticed and pointed it out as it made its way towards…

…Ondori. Of course.

The puppeteer finished preparing the limbs and took them to his station to carve in the details needed to slot them together. He dropped them on the table, sat down to work, and came face to face with the terrier sitting in his workspace.

“Agh!” Ondori startled, falling backwards out of his chair.

The dog chuckled. “Ha HA, I told him I still had young fellas falling for me,” she said, with the incongruous voice of a middle-aged woman.

Ondori recovered quickly and got to his feet. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I got something for you.” The dog turned and dug into one of the two bags across her back. She pulled out a scroll and spat it onto Ondori’s face. “Mail call.”

Ondori pulled the scroll off and scanned it, scowling. As he read, his expression fell blank. At the halfway point he was decidedly pale.

Ozu walked over. “Ey, Rooster, everything--”

Ondori tore out of the Workshop, moving faster than Ozu had ever seen from him. The door nearly fell off its hinges from the force of him running into it.

Of course, he still took the time to grab Kermit. Rowlf fell off the shelf next to the dog, and she sniffed dismissively.

“So this is the famous Rowlf,” she said. “This is supposed to be a dog?”

The Workshop was very quiet. Everyone was watching the dog that proudly wore the Leaf, none more intensely than Chiyo and Sasori.

Ozu, aware of the attention on him once he moved, cleared his throat. “What was that about?”

The dog looked at him, bored. “Message for the Kazekage, from the Hokage. Don’t ask me what’s on it, I didn’t read it.”

“Why were you the one to deliver it?” Chiyo asked hoarsely.

“Because the Monkeys don’t do delivery and the Toads are lazy assholes. Name’s Poketto, by the way. Not that you asked.”

Poketto jumped down to the ground and trotted away.

Sasori moved to block her. At first she attempted to ignore him and go around, but he didn’t give her the option. “Do you belong to Hatake Sakumo?”

“I belong to myself, pup,” the dog said blandly. “I do occasionally do jobs for him, though. What’s it to you?”

Sasori stared at her. Poketto stared back. The dog looked unimpressed.

Ozu held his breath. Finally, Sasori stepped aside to let the dog leave, and the entire room let out a sigh as she trotted out of sight.

“Good grief,” Ozu breathed. “Terrier? More like terror. Haaa…” He did the Fozzie voice, but trailed off weakly. “Sorry, that wasn’t funny.”

Yaji shook his head. “Not that it ever is.”

“I don’t think this is the time,” Chosho murmured. “Sasori, lad, are you alright?”

Sasori didn’t answer. Instead he just went to Ondori’s station and took Gonzo down from the shelf, before going into the back room.

Ozu didn’t know what to do or say. He looked at Chiyo, hoping for answers.

Lady Chiyo just looked sad. She looked over the workshop and clapped twice, firming her expression. “Well? Are you expecting a song and dance? Well Ondori isn’t here, so get back to work!”

Yaji clapped a hand on Ozu’s shoulder wordlessly before sitting back down.

Ozu scowled, but there wasn’t much he could do. So he just grabbed Fozzie and went to train.