(no subject)

[rinnychan.livejournal.com]

My thoughts on 408. Spoilers for...pretty much everything.

I don't think that Sasuke understands how the Akatsuki works at all. Of course, he's not stupid. He knows that they're collecting tailed beasts and has a general idea why. Power. That's attractive to him. However, he doesn't know how they do it, or what results.

1) Orochimaru had no reason to ever mention how the extraction process works to Sasuke. When you want to keep someone under your control, you keep them in the dark as much as possible.

2) I'm sure Sasuke heard about Gaara, who is clearly still alive. Any suspicions he had at that point should have been disproven.

3) Here, Sasuke asks if they've caught the nine-tails yet. You could say this is an assumption, but if it was, I think he would say instead "You mean the nine-tails...and one other." Or something along those lines. He may think it's possible that they already caught Naruto in the past. Further proving that he doesn't know extraction kills the host is the fact that he's been with Akatsuki for about two days and saw Naruto just before--there is no chance that it was done since then, and he doesn't know the details of the process.

4) Sasuke does not kill anyone who had nothing to do with his revenge. This isn't just his decision, but Kishimoto's. Orochimaru was still alive after he was done with him, and so was Deidara. He wouldn't agree to kill an innocent stranger and his best friend in order to get what he wants. He learned that years ago.

I do think that Sasuke has a plan, but I think he's too ignorant to pull it off properly. He's gonna need a major wakeup call when the time comes, and I think it'll be soon. After all, Naruto is going off on his own with just the frog, and it wouldn't take more than Pein's rinnengan to get someone to spill the beans about that.