Sculpting for Dummies
AN: Sorry for the delay. Last week, I was very busy. This week, I was lacking in motivation. I’ll try to do better in the future.
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previous chapter)
Chapter 16:
The sky was dark by the time Deidara awoke. He looked around for Tobi first, automatically. He found him sleeping a few feet away, still shirtless and shivering slightly. The artist took the shirt that was draped over his chest and covered the masked man with it.
The Konoha ninja were sleeping too, all but Sharingan Kakashi. The silver-haired man read his book by firelight. Deidara decided to ignore him, and nibbled at the cold plate of food that had been abandoned earlier when he had collapsed.
The Copy Ninja kept reading. Deidara finished his meal. Neither said a word. Deidara longed for clay to mold in his hands, to keep his mind off of the silence. He hated silence. It made him do stupid things, like blow up a building or trip a village elder or…
“Let Tobi go and I’ll tell you what you want.” …or say something incredibly stupid.
Kakashi looked up from his book. “What was that?” he asked.
Deidara looked away. He didn’t answer.
“I can’t just let him go. He says he’s Akatsuki,” the silver-haired man pointed out.
“He suffers from delusions of grandeur, un,” Deidara mumbled.
Kakashi closed the book and slipped it into his vest. “You’re saying he’s not a member?”
Deidara snorted. “You think we’d let a fuck-up like that join? You’re insulting our elite organization, un.”
Tobi stirred from his sleep. “That’s not very nice, sempai. And you shouldn’t lie. I was Akatsuki just like you.”
Damn it, how was Deidara supposed to get the Konoha ninja to free Tobi when the moron kept saying things like that? The artist found a rock on the ground and threw it at Tobi’s head. It bounced off his mask with a thwunk.
“Sem~pai!” he whined.
“Shut up, Tobi. I didn’t give you permission to speak, un.” Deidara turned back to Kakashi, dismissing Tobi completely. “He hasn’t committed any crimes. You have no reason to hold him,” he argued.
Tobi sat up. “I have to! What about the three-tails? I captured it and gave it to the leader.”
There weren’t any more rocks around. Deidara threw a pinecone instead. “First of all, all you did was run away from the damned thing. Second, it was a menace. We were doing the costal villages a favor getting rid of it. We could’ve collected a bounty on it if we’d wanted to, un.”
“I helped! And if there was a bounty, why didn’t we get it?”
“Because I wanted to spite Kakuzu. Now shut up and go back to sleep. This doesn’t concern you, un,” the blond hissed.
Kakashi watched their exchange carefully. “I’m authorized to bring Tobi back for questioning because he was traveling with a known S-ranked criminal and because I have reason to suspect he may be involved with the organization. I can’t arrest him, but I can detain him for now.”
Tobi crawled over to him and looped his cuffed arms around Deidara’s neck. “Even if they let me go, I wouldn’t leave you. You have to be worse than trash to abandon your friends, sempai,” he said.
Kakashi’s eye widened. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Stop being an idiot, Tobi. What help are you to me here, un?” Deidara protested. Tobi hugged him tighter.
“I’m helping the Konoha ninja see that you’re not bad. If it was up to you, you’d make them think you were evil, just to keep your reputation.” Deidara planted his elbow into the masked man’s ribs.
Kakashi stood up and walked over to them. “Where did you here that from?” he demanded.
“Huh?” Tobi asked. “Where’d I hear what?”
“You said ‘you’d have to be worse than trash to abandon your friends.’ Who told you that?” the silver-haired man said. Tobi shrugged.
“I dunno. Nobody, I guess. It’s just my opinion,” Tobi said warily. “Why do you care?”
Kakashi sat back down, eying Tobi suspiciously. “Someone I used to know said things like that.”
“Then that person is an idiot, too. A real ninja focuses on the mission and puts himself first,” Deidara argued. He looked through Tobi’s eyehole into the jet black eye. He had to convince Tobi to focus on proving his innocence rather than worrying about Deidara. The artist knew what awaited him on Konoha. He’d be interrogated, probably tortured, then either executed outright or extradited to Iwa. Both options were equally distasteful. Deidara planned on ending his life on his own terms long before it came to that. As soon as Tobi was safe, he would make his last escape.
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For the next few days, Kakashi’s eyes were never far from Tobi. He took in every gesture, every word, noting each time the masked man moved the way Obito used to, or phrased something exactly the way his old teammate would’ve said it. Kakashi had thought before that Tobi might be a long-forgotten Uchiha; a sharingan was the only explanation for the man’s knowledge of jutsu he had seen, but never should’ve been able to learn. But as he watched him, Kakashi became more and more convinced that Tobi wasn’t an Uchiha; he was the Uchiha, the one that had given an eye to his teammate and been left for dead.
As they passed a trader’s caravan, Kakashi bought a bag of rice candies and kept them in Tobi’s sight. Obito had had an undeniable sweet-tooth.
“If you aren’t going to each those, put them away, un,” Deidara snapped after Tobi had been eyeing the candies mournfully for almost an hour.
Kakashi smiled behind his mask. “We’ll play a game. If you win, there’re yours, Tobi,” he smirked. He pulled out three of their travel cups and placed one of the candies underneath the middle one. He shuffled them around and watched Tobi’s eye.
“It’s on the right,” the captive stated. Kakashi lifted the cup and tossed him the candy. The first round was supposed to be deceptively easy.
“Sempai, would you like it?” Tobi asked, holding the confectionary in question out to the artist. Kakashi tried to decide whether this was an Obito-like action or not. His former teammate wouldn’t have given up candy for just anyone…but now that Kakashi thought about it, he would’ve given it to Rin without a second thought. This was probably the same.
“Get that disgusting tooth-decaying crap away from me, un,” the blond growled. Tobi shrugged and unwrapped the candy. He reached up under his mask and popped it into his mouth.
“Up for a second round?” Kakashi asked innocently. Tobi nodded.
He placed a candy in the middle cup again, and this time shuffled it with chakra-aided speed, far faster than the average eye could follow. The copy ninja kept his gaze trained on the eyehole of Tobi’s mask. He could see flashes of red.
He stopped shuffling the cups. “Left,” Tobi proclaimed, with none of the hesitancy of a guess. The silver-haired man handed him the candy beneath the cup. He gave the rest of the bag to his team, who devoured it greedily.
“Kakashi-sempai, why are you playing games with the prisoner?” Yamato murmured to him.
Kakashi pointed to his sharingan eye. The jounin frowned. He looked from Kakashi to Tobi and raised an eyebrow.
“Are Kakashi and Yamato lovers?” Sai asked Sakura suddenly. Yamato’s jaw dropped, Sakura and Naruto gasped, and Kakashi stared. Sai blinked. “Well, Tobi calls Deidara ‘sempai’ and it’s a term of endearment. And Yamato calls Kakashi ‘sempai’, so why doesn’t it mean the same thing?”
Sakura led Sai away from the camp to explain to the clueless boy. Naruto stayed behind and eyed his senseis. “It’s not true, right?” he asked.
Yamato blanched. “No, Naruto. It’s not true.”
The blond boy nodded. “Ok then. Got any more candy?”
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Sakura didn’t know what to do. She wanted to get back to Konoha and see her family, but every step she took toward her hometown made her stomach turn. It was Tobi’s fault. He seemed determined to remind her that she was leading Deidara to his death, that she was taking the happiness they shared and shattering it to pieces.
Every time she looked at him, he was touching the artist, hugging or cuddling or guiding him over a rough patch of forest floor. And though Deidara did his best to push Tobi away and keep him at a distance, Sakura saw little clues that suggested he craved the contact as much as the masked man did. When no one else was looking, he’d lean in toward Tobi and his face would become serene.
“Sai, Naruto, what do you think?” she asked as the three gathered firewood to bring back to their camp after a day of travel. “Should we turn Deidara and Tobi in?”
“Do we have a choice?” Sai wondered.
“We could get our information and release them…we wouldn’t lie to Tsunade-sama; we just wouldn’t mention to her that we’d seen them,” the medic reasoned.
“What? You mean just let them go? Don’t you remember what they did to Gaara?” Naruto screeched.
“Do you remember what Gaara tried to do to us when we first met him, Naruto? People change. I think Tobi is a good person, and I think Deidara is trying to reform, and I think we’re getting in the way. It doesn’t seem right,” Sakura sighed.
Naruto’s brows wrinkled in thought. “You think a member of Akatsuki can change? I guess…Gaara changed, and Deidara didn’t kill Gaara…and Gaara isn’t dead anymore. I don’t know. Does it matter? The most important thing is finding Sasuke. As long as they tell us where to find him, I guess it doesn’t matter whether we let them go or not.”
Sai nodded. “I don’t think we should let Deidara die. He’s a talented artist.”
“So who should we talk to first: Kakashi-sensei or Yamato-taicho?” Sakura asked her teammates.
“Kaka-sensei. Yamato-taicho would stare at us with his scary eyes,” Naruto shuddered.
“But Kakashi has been too fixated on Tobi for the last few days. I think we should talk to Yamato-taicho,” Sai argued.
“Talk to me about what?” the jounin asked. He hopped down from a tree branch. “I wondered why it was taking the three of you so long to gather firewood. I thought you might be in trouble.”
The three teens shuffled around nervously. “Yamato-taicho, we were thinking…maybe we could not mention that we captured Deidara and Tobi and just say we got our information from an anonymous source? Because…maybe they aren’t as bad as we thought they were…and if we turn them in, they’ll probably get killed,” Sakura faltered. She looked up at the jounin.
“Sakura, you know we can’t do that,” he said firmly. The pink-haired girl looked away.
“I know,” she admitted. “But, they love each other, and they’ll be separated, and Deidara will get executed and Tobi will be heartbroken, and it’ll be our fault,” she rambled. Behind her, Sai and Naruto nodded.
“They are dangerous criminals and it’s our duty to turn them in. Kakashi-sempai will agree with me,” Yamato said. “We’re taking them directly to the Hokage, though, so you’ll have a chance to talk with her about any concerns you have before the village knows they’re there. But remember what I told you: they’re trying to win your sympathy. It could be an act. Be careful what you believe.”
“I don’t think it’s an act,” Sakura asserted. “If both of them were playing along, then maybe, but Deidara keeps trying to hide it. Tobi is trying to win us over, I know, but I think Deidara is trying to protect Tobi by pretending not to care.” It was heartbreaking and beautiful, she thought, the way they were both trying to save each other at the expense of themselves. It was like something out of a tragic romance novel.
“Think what you want. You can speak to Tsunade-sama tomorrow when we reach Konoha…unless of course you plan on staying out here all night,” Yamato teased.
The kids gathered their firewood and followed Yamato back to camp.
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Tobi listened to the sound of crickets chirping in the darkness. Night had fallen hours ago, but he couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow, they’d be there. He still hadn’t found a way to free himself and rescue Deidara. The silver haired jounin had been watching him constantly as they traveled, never giving him a second change to free himself from his handcuffs and unleash Deidara’s chakra seal.
The quieter jounin was on watch now. Tobi hadn’t seen him in battle, so he couldn’t assess his strength, but he still didn’t think he’d have much of a chance if he tried to fight him.
“Tobi, you awake, un?” Deidara whispered. Tobi nodded. Remembering that his sempai couldn’t see him in the dark, he said, ‘yes,’ quietly.
“It’s fucking ironic, isn’t it? I get arrested by Konoha, the one place that has no reason to hate me, but I have every right to hate. Fucking figures, un,” the blond murmured.
“Why do you hate Konoha?” Tobi asked.
“The Konoha-Iwa War. That village was my first enemy. The reason I grew up on the streets, un.” Tobi didn’t remember much about that war. It fell during that blurry part of his past that he couldn’t recall. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to hold Deidara’s hands, but he didn’t want to risk waking up Sharingan Kakashi with the movement.
“I never even blew up anything in the Land of Fire. Never got around to going there. I hated them, and I would’ve blown them sky high if I’d had the chance, but I didn’t, and they’re still the ones to capture me. Strange, huh?” Deidara almost laughed.
“Sempai…”
“If it was Suna, or Iwa, or one of the villages I blew to pieces, it’d make sense. But Konoha? Fate is doing this just to spite me, un. All that time I wanted to die, no one could catch me; then, just when I started liking my life, fucking Konoha ninja show up to take it away.” The last part was muttered to himself, but Tobi heard it nonetheless.
“Sempai, I won’t let them kill you. I have Zetsu-san’s jutsu, remember? You have nothing to worry about,” he reassured Deidara.
“Worry about yourself, Tobi. I don’t need your help.”
Tobi was silent for a moment. “Does that mean you have a plan, sempai?”
“Yeah, I guess I do. So get out of Konoha as soon as you can and don’t interfere with it, moron,” Deidara instructed.
“Is your plan stupid and possibly suicidal?” the masked man asked.
Deidara didn’t say anything. “I’m not stupid, sempai. I figured you might try to do something like that. That’s why I’m not going to leave you. We’ll get back to Thorn together.” He looked around. Yamato was facing the woods, giving them privacy, and the rest were sleeping. He lifted his mask and shifted so the faint moonlight illuminated his face. “Remember, sempai? Us against the world,” he smiled.
“You’re a fucking idiot, un,” Deidara replied.
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The sun rose in Konoha on Umino Iruka’s day off. A hawk tapped at the glass pane of his window, waking him up. He saw the Hokage’s message and dressed with a minimal amount of grumbling.
He stole a cup of coffee from the pot in the Hokage’s office and nursed the scalding liquid until he felt a little more awake.
Shizune, already awake and working on Tsunade-sama’s paperwork, beckoned him to the Hokage’s inner office.
“Tsunade-sama says she wants to see both of us,” she explained. Iruka nodded.
“What is this about?” he asked. He had classes in two days, so it was unlikely he’d be sent on a mission.
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see,” the assistant said, and opened the door.
The Hokage was dozing over a huge stack of papers. As Shizune coughed sharply to wake the sannin, Iruka got the impression that Tsunade would’ve still been in bed if Shizune hadn’t dragged her in to work.
“Oh, Iruka-kun, Shizune,” she yawned. “I got a message from Team Kakashi.”
“Are they ok? Naruto hasn’t been hurt, has he?” Iruka gasped. Tsunade shook her head blearily.
“They’re fine. I’ve called both of you to advise me on a very sensitive issue,” the Hokage explained. She held up a note that Iruka recognized from Naruto’s descriptions of his new teammate Sai’s jutsu.
“Team Kakashi will be bringing in two prisoners later today. One of them is Akatsuki,” Tsunade paused. “And the other, Kakashi believes may be Uchiha Obito.”
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next chapter)
AN: We’ll get past this boring stuff next chapter, and get to the exciting parts soon. Maybe then I’ll have the inspiration I need to get the chapter out in a timely fashion.
Oh, ps: Reviews equal forms of inspiration. Reviews equal happy author, which equals faster updates and better writing. Not that I’m shamelessly begging, or anything…