Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters…. etc, etc. If I did, then the Akatsuki would be more of a big player in the story! Hope you like it.
Azu's Akatsuki Tale, Chapter 02: Listening Walls
The next three days went by slowly, as none of them were nearly as "exciting" (quote and quote) as the first day in which I had arrived. Someone arrived at 7:30 in the morning, 12 noon, and 6:00 in the evening every day to give me a basket of food. The deliverer was always a person with a strange swirled orange mask and spiky black hair. Oddly, he always seemed very nervous around me.
I was bored out of my mind, and more than a little scared. This led to me being curious, and that's when I started to use a strange skill I had.
Ever since I was small, I've known that I have some kind of a bond with metal. I can't, well, control it, but I can do odd things with it. Around my neck, I wear a necklace that I made when I was around three.
I had been sitting in the second floor of the medicine shop my father owned, playing around with a bunch of metal wire. I'd looked outside the window, and seen several beautiful black ravens flying by.
A strange tingling sensation arose in my hands, and when I'd looked down, the wire had shaped itself in to a thin string with a solid, metal flying bird at the end. I kept it as testimony to the strange thing I'd done. I never told my father or my mother before she passed away. That is the earliest clear memory I have.
From that time, I had never attempted purposefully to use this odd ability, though often metal things would slide mysteriously towards me with no force on my part.
Now, I knocked on the wall with my hands. Stone, for sure, and it since it was so cold and damp most of the time, and there were no windows at all, I assumed we were in a cave. These people probably lived here, meaning there was probably running water and all that, which required a plumbing system.
I remember my father speaking of "chakra", or some kind of "internal spirit energy" that he used in his work. I tried to force this out of my body and in to the wall. I was in luck: I felt myself, in a way, hit a pipe beneath me.
Over the next hour or so, I devised a way in which I could listen to things going on this place through the pipes. At first I'd been very tired after I was done, but then I got better and better at it….
I overheard much, and could soon know who was who by their voices or footsteps. I learned names: The blonde I had encountered was Deidara, and the fat man was Sasori. Sasori puzzled me: He was such a big guy, but his footsteps were light and he ran quickly.
There were other people: a "weasel", or Itachi, and one or possibly two Zetsus, and also a "leader", a Hidan, a Kisame, a Kakuzu, and a Tobi. Tobi was the one who always gave me my food: I recognized his footsteps.
They seemed cold and grumpy and quiet in general, in exception of Tobi. But they also argued a lot. I frequently heard "Hidan" cursing loudly at some stupid thing like the water in the bath not being hot enough, and Deidara and Sasori arguing over art. The two Zetsus seemed to disagree fairly often, and they were always together.
The conversations I heard were something like this:
"Damn this fuckin' bath water! It's not god-damn hot enough!" (This was Hidan.)
"Shut up." (Kakuzu, I presumed.)
"Art is a moment in time, a split-second thing, gone in a moment and back in another! Art is transient! Like the beauty of an explosion!!!" (Deidara always seemed to yell.)
"You are wrong. Art lasts eternal, and only things that last for people to admire their beauty can be considered true art…." (Sasori was considerably quieter.)
"Shut the fuck up! What the friggin' hell do you know about it, little motherfucker? God damn you, Kakuzu, jashin loves me!" (This, strangely, was Deidara. He sounded like Hidan.)
"Deidara, shut up." (Sasori.)
"What? What the hell did you say to me, you god damn bitchface? Fuck off!!!" There was some sniggering after this. "Hah, I should be Hidan's doppelganger!"
"You are so immature." (Sasori again.)
"What the hell did you say about me, you god damn bitchface? Hunh???" (This was Hidan's voice. I'd heard him approaching from another direction, and couldn't help laughing at Deidara's idiocy.)
I took a break after that one, but when Tobi came to give me dinner that night he seemed beat up, and was mumbling to himself about "He didn't have to take it out on me. Geez, Deidara-san is so cruel.
Also, I heard some more crucial but less, ahem, entertaining talk. From what I could gather, Itachi wanted to keep me here because I was special in some way or another, and I heard Kisame saying, "Well, she did evade your Mange" something or other because then he shut up immediately.
Two days later, I had worked out a way I might leave. Judging by their voices and sounds around me, I knew roughly where the entrance was. No one walked the halls at night, and if someone did, the place was big enough for me to evade them.
I planned to escape on the fourth night.