Summary: Deidara. Sasori. Extremely hazardous chemical compounds. Teammates are for so much more than carrying out missions. No pairings.

Note: A little something in the spirit of poisson d'Avril. I'm a bit unsure about it, so let me know if there's anything horribly wrong. I think I failed to avoid all OOC-ness, sorry. Enjoy!

Warnings: Language. A little blood. Questionable chemicals.

Pairings: None

Characters: Deidara, Sasori

I own nothing of Naruto, including but not limited to the characters of the Narutoverse.


Deidara:

As much as I respect my teammate and everything, he is just such a pain to have to deal with all the time. Seriously, I'll bet he's made of wood because he got a stick shoved just a bit too far up his ass one day. The guy doesn't understand the meaning of "art," not to mention "fun" or "taking a break from acting like a moody little frog shit."

Take these past few days, for example. Leader finally lets us off from all the find-the-mystical-beast-goose-chase missions, and all Sasori wants to do is find talented ninjas, kill them, and turn their carcasses into puppets. The guy has some serious issues, if that's his idea of spending a relaxing vacation. But if I even try arguing with him to go… I don't know… do perfectly normal things like soak in some hot springs, find some chicks, or just blow some cities into the next millennia, he starts wagging his damn Hiruko tail, and giving me that look. The, "Shut up, brat, or I'll use your intestines to polish my weaponry," look.

Sometimes, (well, most of the time), I hate how well we gotten to know each other.

So here I am, sitting on a shabby little bed in some shabby little inn, taking bites out of some buttered toast as I watch my man gutting some fifty-something aged shinobi on the floor. Man, that's disgusting. And I always used to think that brains were pink. The guy isn't very considerate. You know, if he wants to enucleate a human on the floor of some little hotel, the devil wouldn't be able to stop him. All I can think about is what a pain it will be for the owners of this hotel to get that stain out of the floor. I suppose they could just cover it up with a rug or something, but still.

I shove the last of my toast into my mouth and lean over to pick up the newspaper that Sasori had left on the nightstand. Another thing about him that irritates me; he always insists on getting the daily news. It doesn't matter if we're in the middle of nowhere, he's got to know, "what's going on in the world, brat, so go fly over to a village and pick up a newspaper." What does he think I am, his mailman? At least he doesn't demand Bingo Book copies every day. Now those are a pain in the ass to steal.

But, when I fold the newspaper over and see the date, the day suddenly feels that much more promising. It's the thirty-first of March. Now that reminds me of some of the fun I had in Iwa back in the day. They had to shut down the academy in my third year…

"Hey, Sasori. I'm going down to the supermarket, yeah. One piece of toast won't keep me going for a whole day."

He jerks his head in response, and I slip out the door.


Sasori is in what could count as a good mood for him. He managed to finish most of the human puppet-to-be by the end of the day. I'm in a good mood too, since I blasted a crater into the ground where a crumbling little cottage use to be. It was damn spectacular. And I'm looking forward to more fun to come.

Even though he's a puppet, Sasori spends time in a sleep-like state every night, and this is when I plan to begin my attack. I pretend to fall asleep on the dust-ridden bed, and hours later, Sasori finally turns the lights out. I wait a while, and sneak out of bed without a sound. I believe in using advanced ninja training for taking advantage of ordinary situations; there's nothing wrong with using my abilities, no matter how illicit, to get whatever it is I want, after all.

Sasori's sitting in the rickety chair, his head lolling to the side and his arms limp. I reach into my pocket and pull out a tube of superglue.

A word about superglue: once you get it on yourself, it isn't coming off without a layer of your skin. If you happen to spill it on a table, you'd have to take a gouge out of the wood if you want to remove it.

Mentally praising the genius who invented the stuff, I step forward and go to work.

When I return to the bed, I keep my sleeping patterns on "terrifically friggin' wake-able;" something I generally only practice on extremely hazardous missions.


The next day, I wake up to the whizzing sound of a shuriken knifing through the air, and roll out of bed as the sharp tool of death sliced through my pillow.

Carefully, I poke my head up over the edge of the bed, and look at Sasori.

"Hell yeah! I got you good, my man! April Fools!" He glares back at me wordlessly, his mouth unable to open.

Another word about superglue: if you use it to seal some of a puppet's joints together, they won't be able to move.


Sasori:

I knew I'd regret taking on such an ignorant, foolish, mentally hampered brat as my partner. From the first millisecond when the light waves of his appearance passed through my glass eyeballs, I knew that he was the type to take ill-considered risks, the type to die young on a miscalculation or a whim. I mix with people like him the way poison mixes with a human's circulatory system. And as if it weren't enough that he is constantly insufferable, and always whining about this or that, he just has to go and pull a stunt like this, and ruin an otherwise perfectly promising day of dissecting cadavers and equipping them full of toxic needles and poison smoke bombs.

From the looks of things, I was going to have to replace my head, shoulder joints, arms, and wrists. Oh, and then I'd have to string the brat across the country by his entrails.

Sending out chakra strings from my heart, I throw my head at Deidara, who yelps and scrambles away with satisfactory speediness. I then awkwardly rip off the head of the corpse lying on the floor to temporarily replace the old one. First things first.

"Brat," I say, in a tone of voice that has made many well-respected ninja piss their pathetic human selves with fear, "After you explain to me the meaning of this, I'm going to perform a vivisection on you until your appendix is tens of kilometers away from your gall bladder."

"I had my appendix out when I was seven years old, my man," he replies, much too cheerfully for my liking. He picks my dysfunctional head off the ground and holds it out. I don't like the image that makes; Deidara grinning through his masses of repulsively yellow hair, with one arm akimbo and the other holding up my now-useless head. It looks like he's beheaded me, and I'm the one who's going to be doing the beheading around here.

"Brat. You will tell me right now. Why the hell have you glued my joints together?"

He looks positively scandalized. "You mean you haven't heard of April Fool's? In Iwa, we have a tradition of pranking everyone close to our hearts on the first of April, yeah." He put a hand - still gripping my former head - to the left side of his chest in a mocking gesture. "And I figured that you really deserved it, yeah, because you're always such a pain in the ass."

I stare at him for a few seconds, seriously questioning my decision to join the Akatsuki. Constantly dealing with stupid little brats had not been in the job description. Killing and torturing? Fine. Sought out by bounty hunters? Fine. Getting arms and mouth glued into immobility for the amusement of the teammate? Pass me the resignation form.

For a few more seconds, we stare at each other, Deidara in faintly masked apprehension and amusement, myself in outright irritation. What could I do to punish him for his crimes? As much as I'd like to, ripping him to shreds wouldn't actually be a viable choice, because then Leader would likely have my head. And then it hit me.

"Brat," I say, trying my best to sound both extremely vexed and a little resigned, "If you help me put my body back together, I'll see what I can do to hold back my murderous impulses. But let me assure you, if I see you so much as look at a tube of superglue again, I will happily disconnect your cranium from the rest of your body and hang it in a public place to rot and be picked apart by vultures."

He snorted a little, but dropped my extra head and cautiously made his way toward me. How naïve. As if I'd let him off with just that.


From a scientific standpoint, I'd always been a little curious about Deidara's extra mouths. Are they connected to his respiratory or digestive systems? Can he taste with them? I never particularly felt like questioning him about them, and so my questions had gone unanswered. But today, I would find out if the substances that went into them could effect his internal homeostasis, and enact my revenge at the same time. Two birds with one stone.

I continue carving out the corpse on the floor, my puppet body restored to its former functionality, and consider the possibilities. The poison I usually use against enemies, though it was the first thing to come to mind, could have long-term repercussions that might adversely effect his skills on the battlefield, something I want to avoid. Some other sort of drug would do less damage. Perhaps alcohol would have some amusing effect, but it most likely wouldn't, and besides, knowing him, he wouldn't consider getting drunk a punishment. I pull out one of my summoning scrolls from my sleeve and examine the various chemicals I have stored within it. Near the bottom of the scroll, I find a chemical compound that seems promising.

A deliriant hallucinogen made from a deadly nightshade plant.

Perfect.

Judging from the revolting sounds of smacking and chewing coming from behind me, Deidara is playing with his clay, most likely too absorbed to pay close attention to what I'm doing. I calmly summon a sample of the chemical, sealed in a glass bottle with clear wax.

Palming the little bottle, I call over my shoulder in a perfectly even, toneless voice, "Deidara. Go downstairs and ask the front desk for some clean towels."

He grumbles, complaining about how I'm breaking his focus and what a pain in the ass I am (as though he has any right to complain about that), but I turn and glare at him until he drops the ball of clay he'd been playing with and heads out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Quickly, I pull out a syringe and extract enough of the dark fluid to knock out a large dog, and step over to the shapeless lump of clay that he left on the bed and spray the substance onto it. I then pocket the syringe and mix the chemical into the clay until it's impossible to see, then settle back down by the corpse, just as Deidara bursts back into the room, mumbling irritably. He shoots the towels at me viciously and throws himself belly-down onto the bed, and the smacking and chewing sounds start up again. He's playing with his clay. I might just be grinning with the execution of a plan well-thought.


Turns out, what goes into his hand-mouths does affect his internal chemical makeup.

The only question left now, I suppose, is weather the drugs soaked into his nervous system via his digestive or circulatory system. Both, perhaps?

In any case, it was amusing to watch him stumble around the room talking to the lampshade and yelling at his reflection in the mirror, although that wasn't the worst of it. I sincerely hope that I don't have to hear about what "the purple ponies liked to do" ever again.

I made sure to make a photographic record of the episode, to use if the opportunity for doing so ever presents itself.

Perhaps having the brat as a teammate is not so bad after all.