Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Consider yourselves disclaimed.
Hidan Investigates!
Chapter One
Although they had all been living at the base together for nearly eight months, the Akatsuki had never had an official house meeting up until now.
They had never all been in the same room together up until now, either, and everyone would have preferred to keep it that way- but they had an important issue to discuss. Namely, the strange thumping noise in the walls.
Sasori cleared his throat, purely for effect, of course, since puppets have no bodily fluids to contend with. "I called the meeting, so I'll start," he said. "I'm sure all of you have noticed the noises in the walls at night."
"What?" Hidan interrupted. He was sitting the wrong way in an armchair, trying to scratch dried blood off his scythe and eat a piece of beef jerky at the same time.
"There are banging noises in the walls every night," Kisame filled him in. "It's been going on for a month. All night long. It's making me nuts."
"I'm sure it's just the house settling," said Kakuzu.
"Then why does it only happen at night?" Sasori asked. "I think it's a plumbing problem, personally. We should look into getting it fixed."
"There's nothing wrong with the plumbing," Kakuzu argued. "It's probably just the wind."
"I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about," said Hidan. "I haven't heard anything."
"See? No one else hears anything. It's a figment of your imagination, Sasori." Kakuzu stood up. "I've got a few errands to run, so-"
"It's not a figment of his imagination, I hear it, too!" Kisame protested, turning his teacup around in his hands and frowning. "So does Itachi. Itachi?"
"Hn," agreed Itachi.
"Me too," Deidara spoke up, pushing himself off the wall he'd been leaning against. "I think it's been getting louder, because it woke me up a couple times this week. It's so fucking annoying, un."
"Yes," said Sasori. "It is annoying, and it is real. And we need to do something about it."
Kakuzu crossed his arms. "Alright, so even if it is a problem with the plumbing, that still doesn't explain why it's only at night," he said. "I think you're worrying about nothing."
"Perhaps it's mice," suggested Zetsu. "Or rats."
"Maybe it's a raccoon," Hidan said.
Everyone looked at him. "Well, raccoons have little hands, don't they?" he explained defensively. "Mice and rats couldn't rearrange shit down here every morning."
"What are you talking about, un?" Deidara asked.
"I'm talking about how my stuff's never where I left it the night before when I come down for breakfast. Even when me and Kakuzu are the only ones here. And he always goes to bed way before me, seeing how he's old as fuck."
Kakuzu made a noise they may have indicated either irritation or agreement.
"We solved the mystery," Kisame said with a grin. "It's ghosts!"
Kakuzu coughed. "Don't be stupid," he said briskly. "It's the pipes. I'll look for a plumber the next time I go to the village. As a matter of fact, I'll go to the village right now."
He made a quick exit.
"That was weird, un," Deidara said.
"Yeah, well, Kakuzu's a weird guy," Hidan told him, standing up and stretching. "Is this over? Can we all leave now?"
"While we're here, I want to ask that whoever's been smoking in their room do it outside," Zetsu said. "I can smell it in the hallway. I find it irksome."
His eerie yellow eyes slid to Kisame, who held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "I quit ages ago," he said. "Haven't had a cigarette in years now."
"Hn," Itachi said approvingly. He'd used his Mangekyo Sharingan to perform a sort of hypnotherapy on Kisame not long after joining the Akatsuki, and he hadn't touched a cigarette since. Itachi considered it one of his greatest accomplishments in life.
"Of course. It's just a suggestion."
"While we're talking about smells, who keeps cleaning the bathrooms?" Deidara asked. "They just reek of bleach, all the time. I get a headache every time I go to take a sh-"
"Don't be disgusting, brat," Sasori snapped.
"SHOWER. They don't need to be cleaned every single day, un."
"I haven't cleaned a goddamn thing in weeks," Hidan remarked, flipping idly through a Bingo Book. "I haven't even done dishes, and I think that's supposed to be my assigned chore or some shit."
"We never assigned chores," Kisame pointed out.
None of them ever did chores, either. Dust, dishes, dirty clothes and empty takeout boxes had slowly accumulated around them during their first months in the base, until they were essentially living in rubble. They had all spent so much time sleeping outdoors or in motels that everyone had forgotten permanent residences needed to be straightened up, and by the time they remembered, things had decayed into 'weekend project' territory.
"Someone did," Hidan said. "There's a schedule in the kitchen. Fuck that, though, I never agreed to do any of that crap."
Kisame got up and went to the kitchen to confirm this. He returned with a frown, holding a sheet of paper that detailed everyone's household duties in a neatly organized chart.
"It says I'm supposed to wipe down the kitchen counters and mop the floor every night," he said, "and there's a note at the bottom that says I have to get curtains… Who made this?"
They all looked around the room at each other.
"Maybe it was Kakuzu," Deidara suggested.
Kisame shook his head, reading the chart. "No. It says he's supposed to clean the two upstairs bathrooms and get three decorations for common areas. I don't think he'd give himself those jobs. I don't think he'd tell anyone to spend money on stuff like curtains and art, actually."
"What does that mean, un?" Deidara demanded. "Art isn't worth spending money on?"
"Oh, come on, that's not what I said."
"I didn't ask what you said, I asked what you meant." Deidara glowered up at Kisame. Kisame reflected that he probably looked very intimidating, to people where under 5'5".
"Ha, look at this," he said, attempting to diffuse the situation. "Here's your special assignment, Itachi: clean off the back porch and stop eating candy for breakfast."
Deidara and Hidan snickered. Sasori hid a small smile by lowering his head, and Zetsu's foliage shook in what may have been a plant laugh.
"Hn," Itachi said indignantly.
{}{}{}{}{}
No one would admit to making a chore chart for a group of grown men (although they all suspected it was Sasori), and the matter was soon forgotten.
Kakuzu had a plumber come to the base two weeks later, as promised. He spent an afternoon tinkering with the sinks and toilets, and finally concluded that the pipes were in perfect working order.
"Probably just the house settling," he said. "That'll be $120."
Kakuzu gave Sasori a pointed look and told the plumber to get lost.
No one was fully satisfied with the 'the house is settling' theory- because what does that even mean, really?- but since none of them knew much about home repair, they would have to live with it.
Then, just as they were all getting accustomed to the thumping noise, it stopped.
"It used to wake me up," Kisame complained to Hidan one early morning over breakfast. "Now I can't fall asleep without it."
"I never heard a fucking thing," said Hidan. "You guys are just too jumpy. Buncha ladies."
Itachi burst into the kitchen then, which was strange because spontaneity was very unlike him.
"Kisame," he said, tomoe spinning furiously, "I saw it again. There is someone here."
"Uh, yeah, Uchiha-hime, there are lots of people here," Hidan said. "That's how this whole living together deal works."
Itachi ignored him. "It was in the bathroom," he told Kisame. "I saw it in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth, standing behind me."
"Why don't you sit down and I'll get you some tea?" Kisame offered gently.
"Do not patronize me." But the tomoe stilled, and he sat at the table.
"Who followed you into the bathroom?" Hidan asked, as Kisame got up to prepare Itachi's tea. "If it was Deidara, I'm just saying I called that shit a year ago."
"It was not one of us," said Itachi. "I just caught a glimpse of a figure, before it vanished. I saw it once before. Perhaps a month ago."
"It vanished?" Kisame asked, handing Itachi his tea and settling back to his scrambled eggs. "You mean it used a jutsu, or…?"
Itachi shook his head. "I do not know. It was just gone."
"Oh. Well, I've never heard of anyone who can teleport away without making some kind of noise or something," Kisame said. "And there are a million security measures on this house, and we're all S-ranked ninjas. I don't think we should worry too much."
"We are a group of S-rank ninjas in a secured base who cannot sense an intruder," Itachi said. "We must worry."
Hidan looked thoughtful. "You know, there might be somebody here," he said. "I always get up before everybody else to do my morning prayers, and there was already a pot of coffee when I came into the kitchen. I'm always the one who makes the coffee."
"Uh… is that the coffee you're drinking right now?" Kisame asked.
"Yeah. It's good. Even better than what I make." Hidan took another sip.
Itachi and Kisame stared at him. "So, you found a mysterious pot of coffee, made by persons unknown, and you decided to drink it," Kisame clarified. "What kind of ninja are you?"
"The immortal kind," Hidan retorted. "I can eat and drink whatever I want, and I never get sick. It's a pretty good trick to pull on people, seriously. On our first mission, I got Kakuzu to bet me I wouldn't eat a handful of mud. He lost $40. Then he cut out my spleen and threw it in a pond." He smiled proudly at the memory.
"Hn," Itachi said in disgust.
"Congratulations on your windfall," said Kisame, rolling his eyes. "I'm going to go check out the bathroom. If someone just used a jutsu in there, Samehada should be able to get a taste of their chakra signature."
He headed upstairs, trailed by Itachi and Hidan (who was still drinking his possibly poisoned coffee).
"Okay," he said, pausing outside the bathroom. "You guys stand back so she doesn't get confused and try to feed off you."
"'She?'" Hidan asked as Kisame unwrapped Samehada. "How'd you decide a fucking sword is a girl? 'She' is the ugliest bitch I've ever seen."
"Shut up," Kisame explained. He stepped into the bathroom. His sword shivered in delight at being unbound, and its scales rustled around eagerly like pigs looking for truffles, but it soon wilted in disappointment.
"Nothing here," announced Kisame. "Must have been a trick of the li- oh, shit."
He squinted at the mirror over the sink.
"Yes?" Itachi prompted. "What is it?"
"Come look- wait, here, let me put Samehada's dress back on first."
Hidan watched while Kisame wound the bandages around it again. "'Her dress?'" he echoed scornfully. "Un-be-fucking-lievable."
Once they saw what had caught Kisame's attention, all interest in his relationship with his sword evaporated. Itachi took a step backwards from it, looking stricken; Hidan, although he wasn't the type who frightened easily, felt ice rush through his veins.
In the same clear, neat hand that the chore chart had been written in, there was a message printed in toothpaste on the mirror.
'You need more soap,' it said.