"You piss me off!" Deidara screamed, and kicked the shadowy figure that stood in the archway, very hard, in the crotch. The boy doubled over with a yell, clutching his manhood and gritting his teeth. Deidara stood there with crossed arms and a small smirk across thin, pretty lips. One eye was hidden by a curtain of blond bangs, but the other was a beautiful sea-green with long lashes and a hint of amusement at the corner.
"You tease! You slut!" the boy called out in fury. "How can a girl kick so hard?!"
"All I did was ask you the time, yeah! How is that being a slut, hmm?" By now a large group of kids had gathered around the scene, observing in shock the strange altercation going on in their school courtyard. There was Torashi the pervert, curled up in a fetal position and grabbing his balls; this was typical, because Torashi did something to infuriate one girl or another just about every day. But the other half of this was someone new.
"That's just indecent!" one of the girls whispered to another. "What does she expect, going around in a shirt like that!"
"OH YEAH?!" the other boy shouted. "Look at that fishnet shirt you're wearing! You're flat-chested, sure," he grinned, "but you won't get away with that for long. I can see your nipples!" Deidara looked furious, and all the girls thought for sure that this new girl would stalk off in embarrassment, which would serve her right for thinking that suited the dress-code.
"YOU IDIOT! I'M A GUY, HMM!" The crowd looked on in shock, both at the fact that this was a guy, and also at the horrible look on Torashi's face.
"If you're a guy. Then there's no problem if I beat you up. C'mon, your best ninjutsu against mine." The boy with the long blond ponytail and long blond bangs swept to one side looked terrified and turned white at the challenge.
"I . . . I can't . . . class is about to start . . . some other time, maybe . . ." he insisted.
"Class isn't about to start. I never did tell you what time it was. We've got a half-hour. I've got all day. I don't have a last-period."
"Hmm," Deidara said nervously.
"GORAKI NO JUTSU!" the boy shouted, and summoned a ball of gold.
"You sure do like balls," Deidara teased, a look of fear still pinned on his face. Suddenly the ball broke into segments, and the segments began to grow, forming a golden metal golem with glowing eyes, towering at eight feet in the courtyard. Deidara was trapped, he had the joining of two brick walls behind him and the golem in front, glowing from its loose joints and wincing eyes.
"Summon something, you idiot!" one of the girls from the crowd of on-lookers shouted.
I'm not supposed to do this, Deidara thought painfully, but raised his hands to make a sign.
Torashi moved his arm so that it swung through the air, and the golem's did the same, punching the brick wall above Deidara's head in a threatening manner and breaking some of the bricks. The dust settled down around him, as he put out his fists, then held up his fingers, his eyes looking away with cowardice.
"I give," he said.
"What? What the hell?!" Torashi demanded. In disgust he canceled his summoning and stalked off. Everybody else was looking disgusted at this new boy, too. Well, at least they didn't know who he was yet.
Deidara was not followed, and he was glad, as he headed off to his last class. It was sculpture, something he was not good at, but then again, he was not good at anything, really. That was why he had given in during the fight. There were no summons that he knew, and his body was sickly and weak, too weak to do any adequate taijutsu. He didn't want them to know that. It was better to be thought a coward and a quitter. He didn't know what time it was, but the sun hung low and turned to amber, then to the color inside a persimmon. There were no bells to tell students when to go to class, because the Ninja Academy of the Arts was a target for Iwagakure's enemies. It was shrouded in spells to hide it in plain sight, making it look like an abandoned warehouse, but any loud sounds would escape past it to the ears of anyone standing nearby. Deidara felt lifeless as he climed steps to the classroom, only to find it locked with nobody inside. Instead, he sat down, and decided to try his favorite hobby: pretending that he didn't exist. It was easy enough at first, blending into space and the air around him. He wondered if that was what happened when you died, if you just became a part of the sky. He wanted to be a part of the clouds; their white forms becoming the shapes of creatures to an imaginative eye. He could almost feel that feeling, of air swooping about him in the sky, when something always reminded him that he did exist: the quickening of his heartbeat to a rise of sounds in the air, or his eyes would move when something caught their attention, or, more often than not, someone would come and bother him and let him know full well that he was both visible and unwanted. He wondered what it was like, not existing.
It was quiet footsteps this time. They alerted his ears, which alerted his brain, which whispered to him to get up, to look alive. He stood, and then immediately bowed when he saw that this person was older than he was; probably the teacher. "Ah, another new student," the kindly woman said, and smiled. She was probably in her thirties, with long, wavy hair, tawny with a golden glow, but not much taller than Deidara was at his tender fourteen years. "I'm Hokato Bebishi. Who might you be?"
"Deidara. Koromai Deidara," he said, still bowed, his gloved hands clasped together. The teacher unlocked the door with a click. She was still smiling, even though the light reflected in her glasses so he could not see her eyes.
"Well, Deidara, you're a young man who knows how to be early!" she said, and walked inside without another word. She strode the length of the classroom until she got to the back, where she put down her bag and sat, looking through some scrolls. Deidara smiled a little, shyly. Ah, so she could tell.
"Where should I sit, ma'am?" he asked cautiously when she looked in his direction.
"Oh, wherever you like!" she smiled. She had a warm smile. He chose a desk, near the middle row. "You're Tsuchikage's son, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"It'll be interesting, having you in class," she said, and looked slightly troubled. Deidara returned her troubled look back.
Soon students began pouring in the door; almost all the desks were filled, but no one wanted to sit next to Deidara, because just about everyone had heard about him backing off in what could have been an awesome fight earlier, and they didn't want to sit next to someone they couldn't tell the sex of besides. The class was very basic, just like the rest, and they learned to shape clay with their chakra, only into small people, and then how to animate them so that they walked across the table next to the teacher. Bebishi-sensei was pleased with everyone's attempts: everyone except for Deidara, who seemed to have an affinity for dropping, fumbling, breaking, or squashing his clay person at every chance he got. In the end it was nothing but a dirty-looking blob.
"It would help if you took off those stupid gloves," the girl closest to him said peevishly.
"I cant," he said weakly. "My hands are injured, they have to stay on."
"No wonder you can't form the clay right," she scoffed. "Here, let me help you out." The girl walked over. She had kind eyes masked in irritance, eyes which were a strange shade of blue closer to white, and her hair was an awkward shade for anyone but a crone: silver, and half in a spiky ponytail, which stuck straight up. She, too, seemed incapable of keeping her bangs out of her eyes as she worked the clay with agile fingers until it was in a single solid ball. "Now, put your hands on it, and I'll show you how to move them," she instructed. Deidara did as she asked, and blushed as her hands closed around his, working the clay with his fingers and making them move in directions different from all the directions he had tried. "There, you see?" she said, as Deidara stared in awe at the figure in his hands. "It's not so hard to shape it. What's hard is controlling your chakra to make it move. I still can't do that, but they're doing an extra class for those of us who can't."
"Th-thank you," Deidara stammered. "Yeah."
"I'm Hyuuga Soma," she said, and without another word, went diligently back to her own work. Deidara set the clay down on the table and tried to summon some chakra to control it, but for some reason it was very erratic when it came out of his fingers, the way it always had been, and nothing happened with the small clay person. He stayed after hours working on it, until in a final burst of chakra, the thing exploded. He sat down in his chair and started crying, because there was nothing he could do. His fate was going to be the fate of his sister. It wouldn't have been so bad, if he were from any clan but his own. The darkness closed in, and he went impatiently home to the headquarters of the government, saluting the guards at the gate. His parents were busy entertaining foreigners, so he lay in his bed, surrounded by wealth and opulence, and tried forming a clay person like Soma had showed him. But his fingers were too weak, their tendons formed in the wrong places because of, those things. He turned over and took off his gloves, then went to sleep.
Fall came and went, and each day Deidara got a little worse. He seemed to be regressing very fast, as much as Soma tried to teach him how to do not only clay work but drawing. Soma herself was getting better, and had become his closest friend, although Bebishi-sensei was also very kind to him, and had the two of them over for dinner some nights. After dinner were chakra-controlling lessons, like walking across the top of the pond in her back yard, something which only Soma could do. Deidara wound up wet every time he tried it, which everyone found funny but him.
"I've decided to try a technique that is used in many other countries and villages," Bebishi said one night, as they sat down after being shown in. "We're going to form a three-man team, with me as leader, and go on missions, as soon as summer break sets in. You two of course will be on the team, and the third member will be," she said with anticipation, opening the door to the kitchen, "MY NEPHEW TORASHI!" A beefy-looking boy with a pug nose and short black hair walked through the door, looking tall and angry.
"AAAAHHHHHH!" Deidara shouted.
"AAAAHHHHHH!" Torashi bellowed.
"Oh so you two know each other! How nice," Bebishi smiled.
"No way! No way in hell I'm working with him, yeah!"
"What?! The trannie?! Hell no obaa-san, I'm not--"
"Who are you calling a trannie?! MAN GROPER!"
"I didn't grope you knowing you were a man!"
"You still groped a man, hmm!"
"Shut up, shut up! Stop reminding me about it, before I kill you!"
"You wanna fight?!" Deidara demanded.
"Why, you don't!" Deidara kicked him in the balls again. "ARGH!" Torashi screamed, and began summoning chakra in his hand.
"ENOUGH!" Bebishi shouted, and summoned an air current which beat the two boys away from each other and into the walls behind them. "You will learn to work together! Soma! You're the only sane one here, so you are group-leader."
"Aye!" Soma announced enthusiastically, and saluted.
"What? You made a girl the leader?!" Torashi wanted to know.
"Shut up, she's better than you are, yeah!" Deidara scoffed.
"Actually," Bebishi said, "Torashi is the strongest. But he's too hot-headed. Soma is calm, and can think clearly under stress. You two are to meet me back here the last night of school," she said calmly. "And then, you will get your first mission." The three of them were finally united in one thing, and that was that they all smiled a bit at the thought of this. That was two weeks from now.
Deidara walked home, feeling happy for once at the thought of being on an actual team, and wondering what it would be like to spend more time with Soma-chan. Then thoughts of Torashi drove him to fury. "Chikusho!" he griped to himself. Light footsteps came up behind him.
"Dei-chan," Soma said, coming up behind him like a ghost. She looked like one, too. "What's wrong?"
"That stupid Torashi, who does the think he is? He really pisses me off!"
"Don't worry about him, he's got talent, but you can beat him with hard work!"
"Soma," Deidara said softly in the darkness. "Thanks."
"For what?" she asked.
"For standing by me."
"Oh . . . you're welcome," she said quietly. "Deidara," she said, "I've been thinking . . ."
"What about?" he asked, with hushed breath, hoping this was going to be words he'd been longing to hear.
"It's just, what exactly, is wrong with your hands? Can I see them without the gloves?" Deidara stopped walking and stood frozen.
"No, I--you wouldn't want to--"
"My mother specializes in medical jutsu, and she taught me some. Can I take a look?"
"I don't want to scare you, Soma," he panicked. "Please don't ask--please don't--" Soma looked at him quietly. "I could never be scared of you, Deidara-kun," she said quietly.
"Do you trust me?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Then trust me on this. You don't want to know . . . what I am . . ."
"Well then . . . at least let me use Byakugan," she asked. "So I can see what's wrong with your chakra." He looked concerned.
". . . Alright," he said at last. In the darkness her eyes seemed to become veiny and bulged, glowing with an strange incandesence as she searched his body rapidly. In the dark she saw lines form, blue lines connected to points of blue fire, the pathways through which chakra flows. In a normal body, they ran in even numbers from the solar plexis to the limbs and head, radiating outwards and coming back in circular loops to their point of origin--but in most of Deidara's body, there were almost no chakra pathways at all--instead they localized about the solar plexis, near his chest, where there was a strong density of chakra, as if something was slowly forming there. Thick ropes of chakra ran from this central point down his arms, coming through his wrists, so then why couldn't he form the clay with his chakra? Then her eyes came to his hands. She picked one of them up with tensed fingers and examined it. Her eyes were lit like a blind person's in the darkness, and as she stared so closely at his hand, looking at things no one else could see, the effect was indeed of someone blind. There were the pathways, leading through his wrist, but instead of going to his fingers, most of them diverted, veered off and took a different course than she had ever seen, leading to his palms alone. In each palm was a collection of blue light so dense and controlled that she wondered what it could possibly mean. She blinked once, and her eyes were back to their normal, shiny spheres.
"What is in your palm?" she asked.
"Why?"
"Because that's where all your chakra control is."
"Soma . . . what do you think of mutations?" he asked, as they began to walk again in the darkness.
"I think it's unfortunate for the person it happens to, sometimes fortunate. I am not afraid of them."
". . ."
"Please, let me see your palm." He took off his glove slowly, then with a swish of his hand, turned it over and showed her what she had wanted to see. There was a mouth in his palm, stitched-up, and Soma recoiled a bit. Deidara retracted his hand.
"I'm sorry, Soma, I told you you wouldn't want to see--" she grabbed his hand before he could put the glove back on.
"No! I want to know why it's sewn up!"
"Because it's not supposed to be there . . . it's not what . . . not what the clan wanted me to have . . . I was born a mutation, Soma. The Korashi clan . . . has a dark past, and a dark future . . . inbreeding, to select specific traits, to keep our family strong . . . but sometimes strange things have popped up and, they have been dealth with." He looked dark and troubled, as the phantom sound of his sister's screams radiated through his head. Quickly Soma took out her kunai and cut the chakra threads, then pulled them out with a slight stinging sensation. The mouth opened, just slightly.
"Mutation or not, you are who you are. And I bet your other palm has one, too. How could they do this to you?" she asked in horror. "These mouths are your source of power, and they've blocked them off, just because it isn't how most people . . . Deidara, I'm so sorry," she said quietly, and kissed him. He looked softly at her in the faint moonlight.
"Thank you," he said. "Soma-chan."
. . .