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in
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FIC - Bluescreen - part five + ART
Title: Bluescreen (part five)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 2100 words or so
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
I wake up indoors but still kind of cold, and my joints all hurt like I've slept cramped up. It's a little bit before I remember what happened and I sit up and find out I'm on the floor of some dark room piled with boxes at the sides. There's no windows in here, but my other eye's telling me it's one forty-seven. Normally I'd check the sky first even though I know the implant's quicker, more precise, whatever. Maybe I'm just contrary or something, but it feels more honest, yeah? More real. And I don't like the implant.
The robot from before is hunched big across the room from me and watching me like a hawk, so I stare back at it, get to my feet - ugh, I'm all dizzy and my legs feel funny. Those needles ...
"You bastard," I spit at it, and it makes this derisive sort of noise and narrows its eyes. Seriously expressive, considering. I'd forgotten about that. It's almost as good as an imitation-human android, and this thing is not an imitation human. "You got a lot of reaction settings for a tank, yeah. You come like that or are you modified?"
It ... chuckles, I guess, and it's just as creepy as every other sound it makes. "Modified," it says, and sort of smirks. "Definitely modified."
"Yeah? Who's your programmer?"
"You wouldn't know them."
"Hey, don't be so sure about that, yeah." I figure tweaking like that's gotta be a big job, and I know a lot of the big names in underground electronics - not personally, wouldn't be able to afford that stuff for myself - otherwise I'd be well and totally clear of the lab, yeah - but you work in my line and you get to recognise them, you know?
"Akasuna no Sasori," it replies, pausing a moment first like it's not sure it's worth telling me. It says it like it's so, so sure I won't know. It's right, though, I don't.
I go over the words in my mouth, and then frown as my other eye picks up the curiosity and the lip movement and runs an automatic Google. I hate it doing shit like that without me telling it to, yeah. Still, the results are -
"Don't do that."
And the search page cuts out, just like that. Redirects me back to the implant homepage. What the fuck.
I must look really confused, 'cause it laughs. "Spyware," it says. "Or did you forget? I can see inside your eye -"
"You said you'd get rid of it if I came with you, yeah!"
"I said I could. And you hardly came of your own volition, did you?"
I don't know what 'volition' means, so I wait for the dictionary to come up so I can close it 'cause I honestly don't care, but it doesn't. I stare at the robot. "You blocked my wifi."
"Yes, well done. Now tell me -"
"What the hell are you doing blocking my wifi?"
"I told you, I don't want you searching -"
"So just block that search, or Google, yeah?"
"You're clever, aren't you, Deidara? You'd find a way round it if I gave you the opportunity."
I scowl at it. "Yeah, well, it's not like I need internet access to read the 404 in your brain."
"Oh, lol, very funny. If you don't watch your tongue I'll paralyse it." It gives a little swish of its ... tail, I guess. It comes out of the middle of its back, but that's what it's like. A tail, yeah, like a scorpion's - Oh. Sasori, huh? Programmer was full of himself, then. Poison like a scorpion's, too, and I'm kind of not doubting that it's got some kind of paralysing dose in some needle in it somewhere, yeah. It ignores the look I'm giving it, which is the kind that could probably kill someone if I had the right twist, and says, "You mentioned art, before." All of a sudden the tone of its horrible voice is, like ... actually curious. Like it's interested in anything I have to say. At all. "Tell me - what does a hired explosives expert want with art?"
I swear to Jah I can't do anything except stare. The way it says art, yeah, it's like it knows. Like it knows art, like it knows how art consumes you, like it knows art is everything. You can't just program that. You can't. Of all the things to write a machine to fake -
It raises its eyebrow. "What?"
"Who programmed you?"
"I told you."
"You gave me a name, yeah. Like hell I know who Akasuna no Sasori is -"
"If you deserved to know, you would recognise that name."
"Oh give me a break, yeah -"
"If you don't recognise the name -"
"I don't care about the name! want to know how the hell - why the hell -anyone programmed art into a machine!"
It looks at me all flat. Sort of amused. Jah but that's annoying. "You're irritatingly persistent, and this is getting tiring," it says in a short sort of voice, "I am Akasuna no Sasori."
"... What?"
"I'm not repeating myself, brat. I'm getting sick of your assumption that my thoughts are the work of some programmer." I don't reply to it. I'm still trying to process what it's saying. It carries on, "I was as much flesh and blood as you were, once."
...
Fuck.
It - he - self-modified? What kind of sick bastard does something like that to himself? Turns himself into .... that? I mean ... I have trouble thinking about how anyone would voluntarily get an implant, yeah? That's bad enough - but this?
I'm not gonna ask why, though. I've kind of got the feeling I don't want to know.
"You still haven't answered my question."
"What?" I can't even remember, yeah. I'm stuck on thinking what the fuck, and I can't think of what we were saying before. It - no, he, because somewhere in all that it's still human - Zion. I'm staring. My brain throws up the creepy implant kid on the Tunnels, and there's something there nagging at me but then I get interrupted before I can think about it any more.
"Art. What would someone like you know about it?"
I stare more, because that's the most hypocritical question I've ever heard from anyone, ever. "What would someone like you know about it? What kind of artist -"
"A superb one." No humility at all. Maybe he is an artist. "This," and he uses the creepy human-looking arm for the first time I've seen - and Jah, that must be a human arm after all - to gesture to himself. "This is my art."
"Robotics?"
"Yes."
"You telling me there's art in ... metal and little squares?" I actually laugh. This is fucking absurd. "That's not art, it's ... mechanics. Mechanics and ruining, yeah."
"Ruining?" It - no, he, it's a he, but I can't get used to that - raises an eyebrow. "The human body is in the constant process of being ruined. It decays. It is mortal." He says that word like it's disgusting, and takes a pause like he needs to get over having had to say it, and then he smiles this little self-satisfied smile. "But not me. I am forever."
I shake my head, slowly. "Nothing lasts forever."
"True beauty is eternal beauty. That is art."
Holy crap. This guy is on some serious, scary trip. "You call that beauty? I swear to Jah, all the ugly twists I've seen, yeah, and I've seen a lot, none of them's ever been as ugly as you."
I'm not expecting the tail to come at me, but I see it coming point four seconds soon enough and this time I'm smart to it enough to dodge.
"You're blind, brat." He pulls the metal out of the floor and reels it in, kind of thing, and I hang back all tense. But I'm not gonna back down, yeah.
"No. Real beauty - real art - is temporary, yeah. It doesn't last - it's the instant where something's most perfect, most beautiful ... that's what art is, making that moment. An explosion -"
"You don't honestly mean to say that you think your job is art."
I glare. "Art is a bang."
There's silence, then. I'm waiting for him to reply. He doesn't - or maybe he's about to, or maybe I'm about to, but either way neither of us gets to, because someone interrupts from the doorway.
"Hey, Sasori, he awake yet?"
I honestly didn't think I was gonna be so happy to hear Kisame's stupid voice this soon, yeah, and I'm only just starting to remember I was running away from him ... and this whole business. Well, looks like that failed bad. Kisame's probably hella amused, yeah - but it figures when I look at him he's not so much. In fact he's kinda frowning.
"Deidara, what the hell were you thinking taking off like that, huh?"
"You said they were gonna kill me, yeah!"
He rolls his eyes, and I can hear Sasori making this derisive snort but I'm not paying him any attention. "Not if we took you on."
I'd take a moment to wonder about the 'we', but I'm too annoyed, so I just snap, "Well 'scuse me for not wanting to risk getting crumped by some selfish employers."
Kisame shrugs sort of apologetic. "You don't run away from Akatsuki, Deidara."
I glare. "I did."
"And look how far that got you," Sasori cuts in, a little bit amused, mostly annoyed. I glare harder at him.
"So what, now I get killed?"
"Aw, come on," Kisame says. "The Leader would be mad to bin you "
"Hardly," Sasori interrupts flatly. "He's an argumentative, cocky, deluded brat and I'd sooner kill him than work with him."
"He'll be useful." That's a new voice, that one, and I don't recognise it and I'm kind of glad I don't. It's the kind of voice that doesn't care about anything, yeah. The kind of voice that doesn't say anything except when it totally needs to, so you don't notice its owner until he's already behind you.
Well, actually he's behind Kisame, but I never saw him come in. I recognise his face, yeah. He's the guy Kisame said was his colleague, before: dark hair, bit taller than me; face like an android, eyes like ... eyes like I don't know.
He doesn't say anything else.
For all I know he was here the whole time.
"Itachi-san is right," Kisame says, and it's like he thinks that 'cause this Itachi guy's said it, Sasori has to agree. "The Leader wants him on board."
Sasori makes an annoyed huffing sort of noise. "I should have killed him bringing him back here and pretended I'd had no choice."
Kisame laughs. He's got a weird laugh, but it's the familiar kind of weird, yeah. I'm used to it so I like it. "You'd beat Kakuzu's record, then. He's never killed one of his partners before he's even started working with them yet."
"Oh god," Sasori mutters. "Don't remind me I'm going to have to -"
"Wait, wait. What? Partners? I have to work with this bastard? I refuse, yeah. I'm not joining your stupid Akatsuki thing."
"You don't get a choice." Kisame sighs. "Leader's decided."
And then Itachi steps forward and shakes his head and says, "I'll deal with this."
There's this worried sort of look on Kisame's face then. If I didn't know better I'd say I didn't think he had anything to be worried about, 'cause this guy's not all that, you know? I mean, to look at. Especially next to Kisame - Kisame's one of the strongest guys I know, and this Itachi's like half his height or something, yeah, kinda lean, but he looks like a girl. Like, seriously, not just the way some people make out like I do because of my hair, yeah? He's all eyelashes and lips and prettiness - but there's something about him that makes my hair stand on end. Like you could shank him through and he wouldn't react. Like if you fought him 'til he was bleeding his life out, he'd still just stand there the same, blank, waiting for you to do something that'd make him flinch except you never ever could. It's in the way he stands and the look on his face, but mostly in his eyes, yeah. There is something seriously ab about his eyes. They look flat and black and dead.
But while I'm staring at them they shift into this mad spinning red, spinning like it's drilling into my head. It almost hurts.
And I can't look away.
*
ALSO WITH MOAR ILLUSTRATION. Here is Kisame.
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 2100 words or so
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
I wake up indoors but still kind of cold, and my joints all hurt like I've slept cramped up. It's a little bit before I remember what happened and I sit up and find out I'm on the floor of some dark room piled with boxes at the sides. There's no windows in here, but my other eye's telling me it's one forty-seven. Normally I'd check the sky first even though I know the implant's quicker, more precise, whatever. Maybe I'm just contrary or something, but it feels more honest, yeah? More real. And I don't like the implant.
The robot from before is hunched big across the room from me and watching me like a hawk, so I stare back at it, get to my feet - ugh, I'm all dizzy and my legs feel funny. Those needles ...
"You bastard," I spit at it, and it makes this derisive sort of noise and narrows its eyes. Seriously expressive, considering. I'd forgotten about that. It's almost as good as an imitation-human android, and this thing is not an imitation human. "You got a lot of reaction settings for a tank, yeah. You come like that or are you modified?"
It ... chuckles, I guess, and it's just as creepy as every other sound it makes. "Modified," it says, and sort of smirks. "Definitely modified."
"Yeah? Who's your programmer?"
"You wouldn't know them."
"Hey, don't be so sure about that, yeah." I figure tweaking like that's gotta be a big job, and I know a lot of the big names in underground electronics - not personally, wouldn't be able to afford that stuff for myself - otherwise I'd be well and totally clear of the lab, yeah - but you work in my line and you get to recognise them, you know?
"Akasuna no Sasori," it replies, pausing a moment first like it's not sure it's worth telling me. It says it like it's so, so sure I won't know. It's right, though, I don't.
I go over the words in my mouth, and then frown as my other eye picks up the curiosity and the lip movement and runs an automatic Google. I hate it doing shit like that without me telling it to, yeah. Still, the results are -
"Don't do that."
And the search page cuts out, just like that. Redirects me back to the implant homepage. What the fuck.
I must look really confused, 'cause it laughs. "Spyware," it says. "Or did you forget? I can see inside your eye -"
"You said you'd get rid of it if I came with you, yeah!"
"I said I could. And you hardly came of your own volition, did you?"
I don't know what 'volition' means, so I wait for the dictionary to come up so I can close it 'cause I honestly don't care, but it doesn't. I stare at the robot. "You blocked my wifi."
"Yes, well done. Now tell me -"
"What the hell are you doing blocking my wifi?"
"I told you, I don't want you searching -"
"So just block that search, or Google, yeah?"
"You're clever, aren't you, Deidara? You'd find a way round it if I gave you the opportunity."
I scowl at it. "Yeah, well, it's not like I need internet access to read the 404 in your brain."
"Oh, lol, very funny. If you don't watch your tongue I'll paralyse it." It gives a little swish of its ... tail, I guess. It comes out of the middle of its back, but that's what it's like. A tail, yeah, like a scorpion's - Oh. Sasori, huh? Programmer was full of himself, then. Poison like a scorpion's, too, and I'm kind of not doubting that it's got some kind of paralysing dose in some needle in it somewhere, yeah. It ignores the look I'm giving it, which is the kind that could probably kill someone if I had the right twist, and says, "You mentioned art, before." All of a sudden the tone of its horrible voice is, like ... actually curious. Like it's interested in anything I have to say. At all. "Tell me - what does a hired explosives expert want with art?"
I swear to Jah I can't do anything except stare. The way it says art, yeah, it's like it knows. Like it knows art, like it knows how art consumes you, like it knows art is everything. You can't just program that. You can't. Of all the things to write a machine to fake -
It raises its eyebrow. "What?"
"Who programmed you?"
"I told you."
"You gave me a name, yeah. Like hell I know who Akasuna no Sasori is -"
"If you deserved to know, you would recognise that name."
"Oh give me a break, yeah -"
"If you don't recognise the name -"
"I don't care about the name! want to know how the hell - why the hell -anyone programmed art into a machine!"
It looks at me all flat. Sort of amused. Jah but that's annoying. "You're irritatingly persistent, and this is getting tiring," it says in a short sort of voice, "I am Akasuna no Sasori."
"... What?"
"I'm not repeating myself, brat. I'm getting sick of your assumption that my thoughts are the work of some programmer." I don't reply to it. I'm still trying to process what it's saying. It carries on, "I was as much flesh and blood as you were, once."
...
Fuck.
It - he - self-modified? What kind of sick bastard does something like that to himself? Turns himself into .... that? I mean ... I have trouble thinking about how anyone would voluntarily get an implant, yeah? That's bad enough - but this?
I'm not gonna ask why, though. I've kind of got the feeling I don't want to know.
"You still haven't answered my question."
"What?" I can't even remember, yeah. I'm stuck on thinking what the fuck, and I can't think of what we were saying before. It - no, he, because somewhere in all that it's still human - Zion. I'm staring. My brain throws up the creepy implant kid on the Tunnels, and there's something there nagging at me but then I get interrupted before I can think about it any more.
"Art. What would someone like you know about it?"
I stare more, because that's the most hypocritical question I've ever heard from anyone, ever. "What would someone like you know about it? What kind of artist -"
"A superb one." No humility at all. Maybe he is an artist. "This," and he uses the creepy human-looking arm for the first time I've seen - and Jah, that must be a human arm after all - to gesture to himself. "This is my art."
"Robotics?"
"Yes."
"You telling me there's art in ... metal and little squares?" I actually laugh. This is fucking absurd. "That's not art, it's ... mechanics. Mechanics and ruining, yeah."
"Ruining?" It - no, he, it's a he, but I can't get used to that - raises an eyebrow. "The human body is in the constant process of being ruined. It decays. It is mortal." He says that word like it's disgusting, and takes a pause like he needs to get over having had to say it, and then he smiles this little self-satisfied smile. "But not me. I am forever."
I shake my head, slowly. "Nothing lasts forever."
"True beauty is eternal beauty. That is art."
Holy crap. This guy is on some serious, scary trip. "You call that beauty? I swear to Jah, all the ugly twists I've seen, yeah, and I've seen a lot, none of them's ever been as ugly as you."
I'm not expecting the tail to come at me, but I see it coming point four seconds soon enough and this time I'm smart to it enough to dodge.
"You're blind, brat." He pulls the metal out of the floor and reels it in, kind of thing, and I hang back all tense. But I'm not gonna back down, yeah.
"No. Real beauty - real art - is temporary, yeah. It doesn't last - it's the instant where something's most perfect, most beautiful ... that's what art is, making that moment. An explosion -"
"You don't honestly mean to say that you think your job is art."
I glare. "Art is a bang."
There's silence, then. I'm waiting for him to reply. He doesn't - or maybe he's about to, or maybe I'm about to, but either way neither of us gets to, because someone interrupts from the doorway.
"Hey, Sasori, he awake yet?"
I honestly didn't think I was gonna be so happy to hear Kisame's stupid voice this soon, yeah, and I'm only just starting to remember I was running away from him ... and this whole business. Well, looks like that failed bad. Kisame's probably hella amused, yeah - but it figures when I look at him he's not so much. In fact he's kinda frowning.
"Deidara, what the hell were you thinking taking off like that, huh?"
"You said they were gonna kill me, yeah!"
He rolls his eyes, and I can hear Sasori making this derisive snort but I'm not paying him any attention. "Not if we took you on."
I'd take a moment to wonder about the 'we', but I'm too annoyed, so I just snap, "Well 'scuse me for not wanting to risk getting crumped by some selfish employers."
Kisame shrugs sort of apologetic. "You don't run away from Akatsuki, Deidara."
I glare. "I did."
"And look how far that got you," Sasori cuts in, a little bit amused, mostly annoyed. I glare harder at him.
"So what, now I get killed?"
"Aw, come on," Kisame says. "The Leader would be mad to bin you "
"Hardly," Sasori interrupts flatly. "He's an argumentative, cocky, deluded brat and I'd sooner kill him than work with him."
"He'll be useful." That's a new voice, that one, and I don't recognise it and I'm kind of glad I don't. It's the kind of voice that doesn't care about anything, yeah. The kind of voice that doesn't say anything except when it totally needs to, so you don't notice its owner until he's already behind you.
Well, actually he's behind Kisame, but I never saw him come in. I recognise his face, yeah. He's the guy Kisame said was his colleague, before: dark hair, bit taller than me; face like an android, eyes like ... eyes like I don't know.
He doesn't say anything else.
For all I know he was here the whole time.
"Itachi-san is right," Kisame says, and it's like he thinks that 'cause this Itachi guy's said it, Sasori has to agree. "The Leader wants him on board."
Sasori makes an annoyed huffing sort of noise. "I should have killed him bringing him back here and pretended I'd had no choice."
Kisame laughs. He's got a weird laugh, but it's the familiar kind of weird, yeah. I'm used to it so I like it. "You'd beat Kakuzu's record, then. He's never killed one of his partners before he's even started working with them yet."
"Oh god," Sasori mutters. "Don't remind me I'm going to have to -"
"Wait, wait. What? Partners? I have to work with this bastard? I refuse, yeah. I'm not joining your stupid Akatsuki thing."
"You don't get a choice." Kisame sighs. "Leader's decided."
And then Itachi steps forward and shakes his head and says, "I'll deal with this."
There's this worried sort of look on Kisame's face then. If I didn't know better I'd say I didn't think he had anything to be worried about, 'cause this guy's not all that, you know? I mean, to look at. Especially next to Kisame - Kisame's one of the strongest guys I know, and this Itachi's like half his height or something, yeah, kinda lean, but he looks like a girl. Like, seriously, not just the way some people make out like I do because of my hair, yeah? He's all eyelashes and lips and prettiness - but there's something about him that makes my hair stand on end. Like you could shank him through and he wouldn't react. Like if you fought him 'til he was bleeding his life out, he'd still just stand there the same, blank, waiting for you to do something that'd make him flinch except you never ever could. It's in the way he stands and the look on his face, but mostly in his eyes, yeah. There is something seriously ab about his eyes. They look flat and black and dead.
But while I'm staring at them they shift into this mad spinning red, spinning like it's drilling into my head. It almost hurts.
And I can't look away.
*
ALSO WITH MOAR ILLUSTRATION. Here is Kisame.