notice I do not own Naruto or any of the characters mentioned below. Akatsuki (from Naruto) ©Masashi Kishimoto.

Now let the Games begin! waves a checkered flag

- - -

"it just had to screw up now."

Deidara banged his head on his desk in irritation and frustration. First, he had left his math binder and textbook in the locker up on the second floor in the Science Park, and had to get people to scan it in for him. And once he finished, he was hoping to snoop around dA a bit more and find some crack pictures. But nooo. The internet just had to screw up on him.

"Damn it, un!" He muttered under his breath as he attempted to open another window only to find the words 'Server not found, Firefox can't find the server at gloating back at him.

The smartest thing to do in a situation like this would be to get the internet guy to come and take a look at it. But as if Kakuzu would waste his precious money just so my connection can be fixed, un.

Dei groaned and turned his computer off. "Just my shit-luck, un…" he murmured under his breath. He got up from his swivel-chair and flopped onto his back on his bed and stared up at a spider on his room's ceiling. His face formed a 'BC'.

Tobi burst in, swinging a pink rabbit plush around. "SENPAI, SENPAI!" He squawked into Deidara's ear. "Guess what I found?" He twirled around in dizzying circles.

Deidara rolled his eyes and sulked at Twirling Tobi. Just what I need. His annoying idiot of a partner barging in to show off his rabbit plush, which, frankly, Deidara didn't give a damn about.

"Yeah, what do you want?" Dei said.

Tobi flopped down onto the bed next to Deidara's. He dug his gloved hand into his pocket and pulled out several baseball cards. "LOOK!" He squealed excitedly, putting his pink rabbit down. "It's Bobby McGuire!"

Deidara's left eye twitched, the one not covered by his eyepiece. "Who the hell is that, un?" Deidara did not know what baseball was.

"Bobby McGuire is my idol!" Tobi said. "He's a famous American baseball star."

Dei blinked blankly. After a moment's silence, he said, "What's baseball? What's America?"

Tobi laughed and bounced spunkily on his bed. "America's a nation like the Rain, except far, far away on a different Planet! And baseball's a ball game with bases!" He licked the Bobby McGuire card and put it back into his pocket, picked up Mr. Pink Bunny and left the room.

"About time, un," Deidara said, in an even worse mood. He got up, formed a depressed slouching pose and shuffled out of his room, locking the door behind him.

"Hey, Leader-sama!" He yelled, banging on the Leader's room's door.

A little slot opened, and the leader's rinnegan stared back at him. "What do you want?" Pein asked Deidara.

"Uh, my internet broke down, un. I need someone to fix it."

"Well, go get someone else to fix it. Do I look like an internet fixer guy to you? I have, um, important business to attend to and I don't have time for this."

Sounds of people shouting at each other in Korean and slapping sounds wafted out of the Leader's room.

"Are you sure, un?" Deidara said, frowning slightly. "It sounds like you're watching Korean dramas again."

"Shut up and go away." Pein snapped back at Dei, the slot closing.

"hey, sasori."

"What?" The puppet-man said grouchily back to Deidara. "If you came just to insult my beautiful everlasting true art, then get out of here."

"Uh, no." Deidara said. "I came to ask you a favor."

"Suddenly decided that clay explosives are crap and came to learn the beautiful eternal art of puppetry?" Sasori raised a hand towards the light coming through the shades and struck a dramatic pose and a tearful expression.

Deidara stared. "Not exactly, un." He said, a bit shaken. "I need to borrow some money."

Sasori's tearful expression melted into a distorted face of disgust. "So you've turned from a terrorist bomber for hire and converted to a street beggar? Why don't you just go to the Good Salvation Soup Kitchen then?"

Deidara glared at Sasori. "I need money so I can get someone to come and fix my internet, un. It screwed up again."

Sasori shrugged. "That's not my problem then. Why don't you go ask Kakuzu for some pocket money? He's got far too much leftover cash to spend and give away than me."

"Fine."

"you think i'm some kind of cash cow?"

Kakuzu snarled at Deidara. "Just because I have money doesn't mean I can give you some."

"Yeah, well, I have a reason, un."

Kakuzu stared at Deidara. "So?" He finally said, after considering several snappy comebacks.

Hidan boredly sipped a glass full of thick red liquid as he watched the two argue. "I told you this would happen if you had too much fucking money," he said, smirking slightly at his partner.

"Shut the hell up, Hidan," Kakuzu said, still staring at Dei.

"I need money so I can hire a guy to get my internet connection fixed. It screwed up on me, un."

Kakuzu snorted loudly, which caused Hidan to snort and choke on his mysterious red liquid.

"Isn't that your problem that you played computer too much? Now it screwed up on you."

Kakuzu suddenly gasped loudly, and then went to his laptop (it was overly large and heavy and was obviously the cheapest on sale). "I forgot to check my stocks!" He nearly screamed in terror as he saw the red arrow pointing down. "My money!" Hidan murmured, "Fuck the stock Market. Fuck Wall Street. Fuck bearish and bullish."

"Go away, Dei. Earn your own money." Kakuzu said, his eyes glued to the chart.

"Just a little bit, un! I'm desperate" Deidara said, desperately, missing deviantART and Oekaki quite terribly.

"I told you! Go earn your own!" Kakuzu pushed Dei out of his room. "Clean people's rooms or something."

"Wait!"

The door slammed.

"hey, senpai! how's it going?"

"Go away, Tobi."

"deidara for hire! deidara for hire!"

Tobi waved a flyer in Kisame and Itachi's face as they walked past. The flyer was orange, with a bad photograph of a bleary-eyed Deidara smack center.

"Tobi, this is not working, and it's getting embarrassing," Deidara said, glaring down Itachi as he passed smirking at Deidara.

"Ah, Senpai Don't worry so much! You'll get a job!" Tobi replied, his grin so big it almost showed through his orange mask.

Deidara had a sudden urge to smack Tobi. Hard. In fact, he did.

"Owww! Senpai hit me!" Tobi whimpered.

"And I'll do it again if you don't shut up now, un." Deidara snarled, raising a hand threateningly.

Tobi cowered and put the stack of orange flyers down on the ground. "I'm sorry! Tobi will not do it again! Tobi is a good boy!" He bowed quickly three times, then looked up to see whether Deidara had bought it.

He hadn't. "Stop acting like a priest and get up, un."

Tobi smiled and got up. "Tobi is a good boy!" He said, even though Deidara never said anything along the lines of 'Tobi is a good boy.'

"what!"

"Yeah." Itachi said, grinning evilly at Deidara. He handed him a pair of green rubber gloves and a large bucketful of horse plop.

"Horse shit!?" Deidara said, his face a perfect 'D; '

"Yeah. Manure. Plop. Crap. Poop. Shit. Lovely fertilizer. Whatever you want to name it. Spread it all over the flowerbeds. It helps them grow"

"B-but…it came out of a horse's rear. I'm not going to touch that, un!"

"Yeah, but you need to. Well, you don't have to, but…" Itachi whipped several hundred yen out of nowhere and waggled it annoyingly in Deidara's glaring face.

"Fine," Deidara said. "Fine, un. I'll do it." He didn't look too happy.

Itachi pranced away, calling 'Have fun' mockingly over his shoulder.

Deidara looked up at the sun. It was high in the sky, and the temperature was rising horribly. By the time he was done it would be around three o clock to four. And dirty, sweaty and smelling like horse excrement.

All for a couple hundred yen…

Deidara put on his gloves, feeling very bad for the mouths on his hands. He stood up and tied an apron around him. There was a clothes pin inside the apron pocket. He clamped his nose shut, and scooped a glop of horse poop out of the bucket.

"Whoopee," Deidara said, patting it down on the dirt. "I'm really having the time of my life out here, un."

"three hundred fifty-six yen."

Deidara stared down at the meager amount. That morning it had sounded like a lot. But now, after he had been patting, plopping and piling poop for three hours and more, it sounded skimpy.

"That's all." Itachi said, looking up at Deidara.

He put the left over yen back into his pocket.

"T-that's all?" Deidara said. "You idiot! I asked for five hundred seventy-six, un!"

Itachi shrugged. "I must have misheard."

"Yeah, so where's my money, un?" Deidara demanded, slamming his fist down onto the small short coffee table they were seated at. Itachi picked up his cup of tea and drank some.

"What money? You have your payment." He said in a serious tone.

"Yeah, but I need two hundred and twenty more yen to make my payment complete." Deidara said, cautiously staring into his cup of tea to see whether Itachi was trying to poison him.

Kisame diagnosed paranoia.

"Sorry, kiddo. I've only got that much on me. Everything else is in the bank."

Deidara stood up, kicked Itachi's prized red and black teapot off the table and stomped angrily away with his diminutive payment, ranting under his breath about idiotic non-artistic Uchiha scammers that think they're older than people who are older than them.

"on my birthday!?"

Itachi smiled a disgusting smile which he must have thought was extremely charming. So far the only person willing to hire Deidara was Itachi, who gave him the most idiotic jobs he could think of.

"Baby-sit that bastard on my birthday?!" Deidara repeated in disbelief.

Itachi nodded. Dei's face turned purple in ph34r.

"You're kidding me right, un? I thought you stopped all relations with him when you left Konoha to join Akatsuki!"

Itachi's puke-vomit smile widened toadyishly. "I lied."

Deidara glared at Itachi's smug face with the creases of baby fat running down. No Oekaki and DeviantART seemed fine about now, but he would start missing them again later.

Itachi pulled out a thick wad of yen and slapped it onto that same old coffee table. "Twenty-thousand in cash," he said smugly.

"Fine, fine…but of all people, why did you have to choose-"

"shut up, un!"

"And that's why my electricity beats your earth. Hahaha! Fear my logic!" Sasuke attempted to look cool. Deidara ground his teeth together. If that mofo kept it up, Deidara's first mouth's teeth would end up powder by the end of tonight.

"Don't you know that earth beats fucking electricity, un?!" Deidara shouted, digging his plastic spoon violently into the homemade birthday jelly Tobi had given him. He stuffed the spoonful of jelly into his mouth and almost ripped the plastic spoon in half. "Haven't you ever played Pokemon!?"

Sasuke struck what he called a 'cool' pose, but flushed furiously at Deidara's comment. "Of course I played Pokemon before!" Sasuke lied through his teeth.

"It's like in episode 14 when Ash goes to challenge Brock in the gym and Brock sends out Onyx, un, and Ash goes 'Pikachu – thunderbolt!' and nothing happens except mofo-Ash gets zapped half to death, un!"

Sasuke had no idea what Deidara was talking about. What's a Brock? He thought. What's a Pikachu? Instead of asking, though, he attempted arrogance.

"Oh ehm gee," Sasuke said.

"Let me first say that your entire explanation was ridiculous, un. Lightning beats ground? Since when?" Deidara said, making wild hand movements. "Ground, rocks, they're both horrible electricity conductors! Lightning should have little effect at all, much less neutralize it entirely! Seriously! I mean every idiot who's ever played Pokemon knows that, un!"

Sasuke looked sheepish, if not embarrassed. About time! Deidara thought.

"You…have played Pokemon before, haven't you?"

Sasuke looked away sheepishly.

"Oh man, that's just pathetic, un!" Deidara said, his face resting in his palm.

"SHUT UP, I HAD A BAD CHILDHOOD!!!"

"you know what?"

"What?" Itachi said, boredly counting out twenty-thousand and two hundred yen from his stack. Deidara had convinced him to pay him the two hundred from last time.

"Your brother, Sasuke…he is really pathetic, un," Deidara said, laughing slightly as he recounted Sasuke's bucktoothed expression as Deidara had lectured the fool yesterday night. "He's never played Pokemon before."

Itachi was silent for a moment, and then spoke up. "What's Pokemon?"

"Oh my god, un! You're almost as pathetic as your brother!"

"SHUT UP, I HAD A BAD CHILDHOOD!"

"twenty thousand…"

Deidara was counting the stack of money on his bed. "Twenty thousand five hundred and sixty-five yen exactly…"

Tobi danced in, wearing an orange origami pumpkin in his hair. "HEY, SENPAI!" He shouted excitedly. "GUESS WHAT KONAN MADE ME!"

Deidara didn't even look up twice from his money. He knew whatever Tobi had that he was so excited about, it was probably something to do with basketballs, pumpkins, or pink rabbits.

"Tobi, go away, un," Deidara snapped, recounting the wad. "I'm counting my money."

Tobi laughed a creepy giggling laugh. "You're turning into Kakuzuuuu, you're turning into Kakuzuuuu!" He started twirling around obnoxiously.

Yes! Deidara thought mentally, putting the wad of money back into a briefcase. That's enough to pay for a technician, and I'll have leftovers too, un! Maybe I'll buy myself a deviantART subscription…

Tobi grinned. "Sen-PAI!" Tobi squawked. "You're really turning into Kakuzu now, aren't you? Carrying your money around in a briefcase…"

Deidara gave Tobi a hard slap and reached for the phone.

"what are you talking about?"

The internet man said. Deidara gawked. "There's nothing wrong with your internet connection. See?" The man went to the Barbie homepage. He went to Neopets. He went to Yahoo and searched up 'brains'. Deidara's connection was fine.

Deidara gawked. I wasted all this time, plopping plop and babysitting bastards just to find out my internet is working, un?! Deidara couldn't say anything.

"Well, now that it's 'fixed', I'll be leaving now."

The technician got up and left.

Deidara grinned like a homicidal maniac. The first website he went to was deviantART to buy himself a twelve-month subscription. ■