Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Clay Warrior ❯ The First Mission ( Chapter 2 )

 

Chapter 2

 

 

Getting to the town the Leader had directed them to hadn't been a problem. Both Sasori and Deidara were powerful ninjas, and even though Deidara was still trying to figure out what exactly Sasori was, he moved at a speed fast enough that Deidara was actually pretty tired by the time they spotted the town amid the trees. The blond ninja had by that point decided that Sasori was sliding, not walking, because of an odd little trail he was leaving behind him.

It would still be a few minutes before they actually entered the town, and Deidara was getting very bored. He had his hands folded behind his head, and was walking at a pace that was fast enough to keep up with Sasori, but slow enough to get on Sasori's nerves.

“Hey, Sasori-danna.” Deidara suddenly asked, his eyes on the trees above them. “Let's play a game, yeah.”

“We're almost to the town. Can't you keep your foolish mouth shut until we get a hotel room?” Sasori hissed in return. But from Deidara's experience, he'd found Sasori to be constantly cold and unappreciative of Deidara's attempts at friendship, so Deidara had gotten used to responses like that.

“I spy with my little eye...something that is red, yeah.” Deidara said cheerfully, the grin on his face widening at the aspect of playing 'I spy'.

Sasori looked over his shoulder and glared at Deidara. His expression didn't seem to change much...he was always glaring. Deidara was going to have to get him to smile. Or look confused, or get some kind of expression besides a glare on that face. Of course, it was hard to tell what expression was on his face in the first place, since it was half-covered with a bandanna. That was also annoying. He didn't even know what his partner looked like.

Deidara sighed and lost his grin, and hit the little bell on his hat with a finger, making it ring. It figured that Sasori wouldn't play 'I Spy' with him. That bell made a pretty noise, though. He rang it again just for the hell of it, and Sasori shot him another dirty look.

They walked in silence for another minute or so, with only Deidara's bell ringing making any noise, when there was a noise off to the left, in the bushes. They both froze, like dutiful shinobi, and the bushes were on the receiving end of two scathing, searching stares. The foliage was silent, and neither Deidara nor Sasori moved for a full minute. Finally Deidara walked over to the bushes, his right hand hovering over his clay pouch- the lid was undone, so the clay was within easy reach. He reached his left hand out and was going to pull the plants aside, but a noise from directly behind him caught his attention.

He spun, and found Sasori surrounded by three men. They looked like bandits, with dirty clothes and rags hiding their faces from view, but they moved like missing nin. They were standing in a rough triangle around Sasori, so that one had his back to Deidara. All three were fit, like they had had some kind of physical training at some point, supporting Deidara's evaluation of the three being missing nin. The one with his back to Deidara had his hands free, ready to perform a jutsu by the looks of it. His hair was short, dark, and rather dirty looking, as was his skin. There were bulges at the hem of his shirt where a kunai holster was, and two short blades were in sheaths on either of his hips.

The one on the opposite side of Sasori had a katana unsheathed, and was standing in a fighting stance. It didn't look like he'd charge Sasori- it was the one that Sasori was directly facing, the third nin, that looked like he was ready to run at Sasori. The third one was holding a kunai in either hand, and was acting a bit on the twitchy side. Deidara couldn't see his face at all, due to the cloths he had wrapped around his head.

“Sasori-da-” Deidara had been about to warn Sasori to duck so Deidara could get off some of his clay bombs- there was a spider ready to be thrown in his hand already- but a gloved hand clamped over his mouth, and a strong arm wrapped around his chest, pinning his own arms to his side. He was dragged back and held against an equally strong chest. He must have been a ninja- it felt like he was amplifying his strength with chakra. Deidara could practically feel the chakra humming against him as it pulsed through the man's arm.

“Don't worry, hunny. We'll take care of your husband for ya, then yer all our's.” The man holding Deidara hissed, right into Deidara's ear so his breath ghosted over Deidara's neck. That was disgusting.

Now, the first thought in Deidara's mind was that the man holding him was much stupider than any missing nin had any right to be. He would have liked to know how he escaped his village's hunter nin with that amount of intelligence, but at the moment pondering on that was not on the top of his list of things to do.

He really wasn't that worried about Sasori- these men, even if they were missing nin, were not that powerful. Which really said something about the tracking systems of the village they were from. If fools like these could evade a village, then the village had some work to do.

Deidara shifted enough to wrench a kunai from the hidden holster he had under his shirt. Though he had to slip his hand into the damn coat, which slowed him down quite a bit- he'd have to do something about that- he had two kunai in his left hand in less than a second, and it took even less time to have one kunai buried in the man's throat, the other in his stomach. The man went down with no more than a surprised gasp.

There was a mechanical clinking from over in Sasori's direction, and that was what had Deidara looking over at his partner. The man that Deidara thought would have charged did just that, with one of his arms reared back to throw one of his kunai. But the man that had charged found himself impaled through the stomach with the pointed tip of a tail that had snaked its way out from under Sasori's Akatsuki coat. It was segmented and looked like it had joints- it was definitely made of metal. That caught Deidara off guard- was it a prosthetic limb? Or maybe some kind of puppeteering thing? Deidara had heard puppeteers could control things other than actual puppets.

Deidara didn't stare for long, though. He threw the clay spider resting in his hand at the nin that had his back to him. Since his back was turned to Deidara the spider was able to come to life in midair and land on the nin without the nin noticing. Deidara let his chakra flair and the clay began to hiss, ready to explode...

But a metal tail snaked around the nin just as Deidara set the spider to explode. Deidara's eyes widened in surprise and he started to warn Sasori, even though he knew it was probably too late-

“Sasori-dan-”

And once again, Deidara didn't even get to finish saying Sasori's name, before getting interrupted. But this time, he was interrupted not by a hand clamping over his mouth, but the sharp crack of an explosion, and Sasori's curses as he leapt back and out of the way of the burning corpse.

The second man looked ready to run for it, so Deidara threw a small clay bird into the air and sent it after the man before checking to see if Sasori was alright. The nin began running, but the bird reached him and exploded before he got very far. Sasori glanced over to the man to make sure he was dead, then began examining his metal tail, which now looked worse for wear. Very worse for wear.

“Um...” Deidara began as he walked over to Sasori, picking up his hat that had fallen of at some point in the battle. “Sorry, yeah? I didn't know you were going to put your...er...tail there, yeah.”

Sasori was running a hand over the joints of the tail, and was apparently ignoring Deidara. Several of said joints looked ready to fall apart towards the end of the tail, and the metal was scorched. Well...Deidara's bombs were never known for their subtlety.

When he made something explode, he made sure it exploded.

Finally, after doing what he could to prevent the tail from falling apart right there, which involved tightening a few screws and using some kind of adhesive compound Sasori pulled out of the sleeve of his coat, Sasori looked over at Deidara, who was standing behind Sasori rather awkwardly. “We need to work on our teamwork.” He said simply. “Because if you ever do that again I'm going to rip your throat out.”

Deidara stared at Sasori for a moment, rather confused as to how he was supposed to respond. Sasori didn't really sound angry, but that threat was rather violent... “Sasori-danna's angry, yeah?” Deidara asked finally, grinning. It was a grin to hide his confusion, but he doubted Sasori could tell the difference.

Sasori stared at him blankly for a moment...though it still looked like a glare, because of the expression on his face, then turned around and began walking down the path again. Or sliding. Whatever. Deidara sighed and dragged the bodies over into a nearby bush then walked after Sasori.

He checked his clay bag as he ran to catch up, and frowned over the amount left. He only had enough clay left for two more small bombs...

Sasori was waiting for him at the entrance to the town. They were surprisingly close when they were attacked- some of the villagers probably heard Deidara's bombs. Why would missing nin be so close to a town like that? It increased their chances of being discovered and captured. Unless they were well out of their country's reach. Deidara hadn't found a headband on any of them, or any sign of what country they were from, but he was sure they were ninja. If Deidara hadn't blown the two smarter ones up, they would have begun using jutsus- the first one had begun using hand signs, he was sure of it.

Deidara sighed and decided it wasn't worth thinking about. He glanced to his right, where Sasori was sliding along silently. He was moving almost stiffly. Was he really that angry about the tail?

His frowned deepened, but he looked away from Sasori and glanced at the town around them. It was a good-sized place, though it seemed rather quiet. They weren't given a second glance, in their strange-looking coats, meaning that ninja probably passed through the town often. Something in the ninja profession meant that you had to dress eccentrically...

They passed a ramen shop, and Deidara contemplated stopping and getting some of the food with the small amount of money he had left, but Sasori didn't look like he was going to tolerate any more diversions. Just a hunch he had. And since he was feeling a bit guilty over the whole tail thing, Deidara decided not to put up a fuss about being hungry. He could complain later, once Sasori had calmed down.

But that served to remind Deidara that he had no good way to judge his new partner's mood. Deidara had always been adept at judging another's thoughts and emotions, but it all rested on expression and mannerism. Sasori hadn't once changed his expression in the day they'd spent together, and that cumbersome, sliding walk was so foreign to Deidara that he couldn't read anything in it.

With so much on his mind, Deidara found that they had reached the hotel without him noticing. It was a small, out-of-the way building, but it looked like it was in a decent condition. The front desk was humble but clean, and the staff member there looked to be in her late forties. She gave them a quizzical look when they entered, and an even more confused look when Deidara said they needed a room. She was looking at Sasori, even though she was clearly talking to Deidara. Probably thinking the same thing that Deidara had thought when he saw Sasori- what was he?

“One bed or two?” The woman asked, looking like she dreaded the answer.

“Two, of course, yeah.” Deidara answered, confused himself at that. Why would they want one bed...?

They got the key to their room without much trouble, with Sasori giving the woman enough money for two nights. Deidara was still confused over the whole bed thing as he unlocked the door and revealed a normal hotel room.

There were two beds along the left wall, and a sliding glass door leading to a small balcony on the wall opposite the door. The door to the bathroom was right beside the door out, on the right wall. There were a few pictures of landscapes on the walls, a lamp beside each bed, and two chairs and a table to the side of the sliding door.

It was a nice little room, and after dubbing it safe Deidara stepped in and sat on one of the beds. Sasori followed, doing that little slide thing he did, and neared the other bed. Deidara watched in curiosity as Sasori removed his hat, laying it on the bed. The first thought that crossed Deidara's mind as he laid eyes on the head that was revealed was 'Damn, he's ugly'. There was still a black bandanna covering his mouth, but after seeing the head, Deidara wasn't sure he wanted to see the rest of his face. It was the first time Deidara had seen Sasori's entire head, what with the hat and all, and Deidara really wished he'd gotten Kisame as a partner. Sasori's personality was lacking, and he wasn't even pretty to look at.

His skin was dark, almost like wood. He was bald for the most part, save five strips of black hair that stuck up in back. It was strange looking, but he supposed with the heavy brow and bleary eyes, it matched. Sasori reached up to the coat hiding the rest of his body from view and began unbuttoning it, much to Deidara's horror. He let the black and red garment fall from his hunched shoulders, caught it in his right hand, and Deidara became very sure that Sasori was not human.

His body was hulking and slouched over, and Deidara was sure the reason Sasori didn't really walk was because his legs couldn't support the rest of him. The tail was hanging limply, still looking quite broken, and, unlike the rest of him, the legs looked quite human. Well, the right hand looked pretty human as well. It occurred to Deidara that he had only seen Sasori use his right hand, never his left, and he was now looking at the reason why. Sasori's left hand was huge, and mechanical looking. The fingers looked more like cylinders of wood- the whole thing looked like a child's plaything, like it was hastily assembled and not bothered with and carved into an actual arm. It was big enough to hide something within it, though.

The arm was not the most alarming thing about Sasori's body. The strangest thing was Sasori's back- which Deidara saw when Sasori turned a little bit to put the coat on the bed. His back was a giant face- with a gaping mouth and frowning eyes. It was at that point that Deidara discovered that the thing he'd thought was a tail was actually that face's tongue. That was...creepy.

And then something else even more alarming than seeing the face happened. Sasori's back split in two. The face lifted up and away from his back, revealing a gaping hole where flesh should have been. And a man stepped out of Sasori.

“...Sasori-danna?” Deidara almost stuttered as he said it, but managed to sound somewhat himself. What the heck...?

The man gave him a flat look. He had dull, unruly red hair that was just past his ears. His eyes were a bluish color, and had that bored note that Deidara always heard in Sasori's voice. His face was fair, though not as effeminate as Deidara's own, and he was pale. There were faint rings around his eyes, though Deidara wasn't sure whether it was due to lack of sleep or a natural feature of his face. He was wearing an Akatsuki coat buttoned up all the way so Deidara couldn't see the rest of him. There were two spat-covered blue shoes peeking out from the hem of the coat, though.

“What?” The man answered, and it was Sasori's voice. It was louder than before, but Deidara chalked that up to the fact that Sasori was talking from within that thing on the floor.

“....what is that, yeah?” Deidara pointed at the thing Sasori had been walking around in, now lifeless on the ground.

Sasori looked down at the thing, blinked, then looked back at Deidara. “This is Hiruko.” Sasori gestured vaguely when Deidara sent him a blank, I-don't-get-it look. “A puppet. I travel in him.”

Deidara looked to Hiruko, then to Sasori. And stared. Well, maybe he did prefer Sasori to Kisame. Now that he was out of that horrid puppet-thing, he wasn't that bad looking.

Deidara rethought that last statement for a second. Scratch 'not bad looking'. He was gorgeous.

Sasori crouched down by Hiruko and began examining his tongue-tail thing with skilled fingers, and Deidara quickly got bored so he took the opportunity to remove his own hat and coat. He threw them onto his bed and removed his pack. He was still wearing his own shirt and pants, not the clothes the Leader had given him. Those were still stuffed in his pack with the last of his food.

Frowning as his stomach gave a rather persistent growl, Deidara began unpacking his bag so he could get at those rice balls he'd packed away last night. He laid the clothes the Leader had given him out, and put the shoes next to them. He laid his other change of clothes on top of the uniform, and then pulled out his headband from Iwagakure. He'd forgotten that he wasn't wearing that...

He felt his forehead unconsciously, his frown deepening. He'd stopped wearing the headband a few weeks ago, when he realized that it would make it a hell of a lot easier for Iwagakure to follow him if any villager that saw him could recognize what village he was from. He supposed he should get rid of it, instead of carrying it around with him...

“If you are going to start wearing that, you have to score a line through it.” Sasori suddenly spoke up, making Deidara jump slightly.

Deidara glanced up, to find Sasori looking at him. He was holding Hiruko's tail in his lap, and a small metal tool was in his hand. Sasori glanced pointedly down at the headband Deidara was clutching in his grasp.

“What do you mean, yeah?” Deidara asked, raising an eyebrow. Vaguely he could remember that Kisame guy having a line through his headband. Kirigakure, if Deidara remembered correctly- and that made sense, considering Kisame had looked like a shark. But at the time he wasn't sure if it was actually a line through the headband's symbol that Deidara was seeing, or just a trick of the very fleeting light in the cavern, so he'd dismissed it.

Sasori looked back down to Hiruko's tail, and began tinkering with it again. He'd already fixed one of the joints in the toughest shape- how had he gotten that far so fast? Was he really that good? “It's Akatsuki's protocol. All members are to have a line through their headband, to declare the fact that they no longer have any loyalties to their home town.” The puppeteer said it as if he was reciting a speech he didn't much care for.

Deidara made a 'huh' sound and looked back down to the headband. It gleamed at him happily, a little smudged and dinged up, but still in a good condition. Headbands had a tendency to stay unnaturally unmarked, though. Even as a ninja who specialized in explosives, Deidara's headband was not scorched. He would have to figure out how simple pieces of metal managed that...

After staring at the metal for a moment, Deidara shrugged and fished a kunai out of the pack still sitting on the bed. With a decisive movement he scratched a deep line in the metal, right through Iwagakure's symbol. That was it, he supposed. He was officially no longer part of the Village hidden in the Rock. He could never return.

The thought occurred to Deidara that he should probably feel some kind of remorse for leaving. Loyalty had been drilled into him ever since he'd attended the ninja Academy- drilled with procedures that had convinced other ninja to give their lives for their village. So why was Deidara so special, that he was not weighed down by loyalty?

He had never really liked his home town. He was treated like normal people treated geniuses- with a distant respect. Even his parents hadn't been too close to him. Sure, they were proud of their blond-haired, blue-eyed son, a son that had come out on top of his class, outmatching even his seniors by far. But they were never really affectionate towards him. Though he couldn't really blame them- they were out on missions, doing their own duties as Jounin, after all.

No, Deidara didn't hold any grudges towards his old home. He just hadn't seen a reason to stay there. His superiors, his parents, his peers- they had all been confused by his art, some were even distrusting of it. So why stay in a place so filled with art haters?

Deidara tied the headband around his head idly, figuring he might as well wear it, since he'd marked it like that. He glanced up at Sasori as he tied the knot, who was completely focused on Hiruko's tail and ignoring the fact that Deidara existed.

Well, he was a puppet master, from what Deidara had gathered. He must know something about art, right? It wouldn't hurt to ask him...

“Hey, Sasori-danna?” Deidara asked, staring at Sasori as he tinkered with the wires, wood, and metal that held Hiruko together. “What is art?”

Sasori looked up after a moment, letting the little tool he'd been using drop to rest against the metal plates of the tail. He was staring at Deidara in surprise, probably from the randomness of the question. His expression changed minutely- from a frown of concentration to a bemused look. “Art is what I live by. My puppets are all art, it is something that lasts until the ends of time.” It might have just been Deidara, but Sasori sounded slightly less bored than he usually did.

It was a curt reply, probably meant to keep Deidara from asking any more questions, but it had caught the blond's attention. “That's not art, yeah. Art's the heat of battle. An explosion, the red of fire against a blue sky as bodies fly through the-”

“Why did you ask if you already knew?” Sasori asked, raising an eyebrow. He was starting to look bored again. Well, more bored than he usually looked.

“Because I wanted to see if you appreciated art, yeah. If you didn't, I'd go and complain to Leader-sama and get a new partner, yeah.” Deidara stated, looking back down at the bag he was unpacking. He spotted a small object wrapped in brown parchment. There were those pesky rice balls.

“...You really care about it that much?” Sasori asked. Deidara glanced up but couldn't catch Sasori's gaze as the puppeteer began working on Hiruko again. He could tell Sasori was surprised, but he couldn't tell what Sasori was surprised about...

Deidara unwrapped the rice balls and bit into one, his eyes still trained on Sasori. The puppeteer's half-lidded eyes were trained on the metal tail of Hiruko, carefully lifting off the armor that had been scorched beyond repair. Sasori still wasn't meeting Deidara's eyes- he was doing that 'ignore that there is anyone else in the room' thing again. That was already getting on Deidara's nerves, and he'd only been in Sasori's presence for a day.

The other thing that was bugging him was the fact that he was having so much trouble reading Sasori. When Sasori had been walking around in Hiruko it had been frustrating enough- that scowl never left his face, though Deidara now understood why. If Hiruko was a puppet, that expression would never leave its face. Sasori had probably carved it like that to look more imposing, and Deidara had to admit Sasori had succeeded to some extent.

But Sasori getting out of Hiruko didn't help the expression issue any. Sasori's face was amazingly inexpressive; Deidara had never seen someone look so utterly bored in the middle of a conversation. He hadn't given away what he was thinking in the slightest- there wasn't even a twitch of an eyebrow to give Deidara an idea of how to act around him. Sasori could be planning to kill Deidara out of rage and Deidara wouldn't be able to tell. And that, above all else, got on Deidara's nerves. He hated when he couldn't predict someone else's emotions.

All through his childhood he'd found amusement in annoying those around him. He changed the way he acted according to the emotions and moods of other people, in just the right way to produce the most effect. Because of that he'd gotten too attached to that habit of knowing how angry everyone was by just watching them. Granted, knowing if a ninja was angry required one to know them reasonably well, and Deidara had just met Sasori. But still, the tranquility and passive boredome that Sasori seemed to wear like a shirt thwarted all Deidara's attempts at reading him.

Deidara sat on his bed, back to Sasori, with the rice balls in his hands. He opened the brown parchment and took one out, biting into it thoughtfully. He would have to work on reading Sasori, he decided. If only so he could get some amusement on those walks between towns. And if he couldn't gage Sasori's anger efficiently, the reaction could range from none to Sasori actually carrying out one of those threats. Deidara didn't doubt that Sasori would- that threat earlier had sounded more like a warning than a safe threat.

Deidara ate the two rice balls that were left in the parchment in silence, with only the soft clinks and sharp clicks of Sasori working on his puppet to serve as background noise. He sighed, his hunger only whetted, when he realized that those rice balls were the last of his provisions. This job had really come at a good time. Any longer, and Deidara would have had to go and rob some peasant. That was just lowly.

He threw the parchment on the floor with no regards to manners and shoved the clothes he'd dug out of his pack earlier back into the cloth bag, wadding them up tightly so they would fit. He threw the pack on the floor as well, with the opening undone, and a forlorn pair of pants half-hanging out. He kicked off his shoes, managing to land them both in the same region as the pack, and threw the coat and hat in the same direction. The result was a hap-hazard pile of clothes against the wall beside Deidara's bed, in the middle of an impeccably clean room.

With the bed clear, Deidara laid back on it with an appreciative sigh, and clasped his hands behind his head. He stared at the ceiling for a moment before closing his eyes. It was just past sunset; it was a bit early to be going to sleep, but if he got up early enough in the morning, maybe he could go and get some clay without Sasori noticing.