Chapter 2: In Which an Appendectomy is Performed
Life in Akatsuki, Deidara decided over the next few months, was really not that bad. It would actually be kind of fun, if it weren't for the 'following someone else's orders' thing and the 'actually a girl but can't let them find out' thing. That last was getting to be a bit of a problem. The Deidara clan had never been known for its tenacious grip on sanity, and the freaky hormone inbalance from overuse of a genderswitch jutsu was not helping matters.
However, the main issue she had with being part of Akatsuki were her 'colleagues':
Sasori was all right, really, for a permanently 15-year-old puppet. Actually, he was the best partner she could have had out of the lot. Since he didn't eat, she could sneak off on her own when they were out on a mission and run around as Hikari for an hour or two. Occasionally, such as when Sasori caught her coming out of the movie theatre (luckily after, rather than before, she changed back to Deidara) after Yoake o Kowasu, otherwise known as the 'Chick Flick of the Year', she could explain this as "being artistic, un!"
Sasori appeared to accept this explanation, or else he was too freaked out to pursue the matter, so she also used this excuse for the Sons of Suna band posters in their shared bedroom, and the gobs of eyeliner she slathered on.
However, explaining to Kakuzu why she was spending both her and Sasori's food allowance was difficult, as she couldn't tell him she was sneaking off to fluffy girly pastry shops (or even maid cafes, when she was desperate), artistic merits or not. Her strongest opinion about the official treasurer was that it would be much easier if Akatsuki just kept its money in a piggybank, then everyone could just break it when they wanted money. They'd waste some money on piggybanks but it would be easier than convincing Kakuzu to shell out.
As for Hidan, it was a good thing he didn't know she was a girl; she avoided him as much as possible.
Zetsu was polite, if rather freaky at times, and reclusive enough that she rarely met him.
Kisame was susprisingly nice for a 7-foot shark-man. Unfortunately for him, Deidara immediately associated him with Itachi and therefore detested him with a passion.
Itachi she thought about as little as possible, aside from the occasional mental evisceration (and trap rigged in his room, when she was bored or especially hormonal).
Pein was the stereotypical Evil Mastermind and talked like a thesaurus, but Deidara didn't know much about him other than that since she rarely saw him except when he was giving orders to her and Sasori.
Konan...well. Akatsuki's token kunoichi (who was actually Akatsuki's other kunoichi, but Konan didn't know that) was apparently in denial about the whole 'organization of international criminals who would all kill each other if they weren't working together' situation. That, and the fact that she was prone to random fits of domesticity, meant that occasionally she made them all eat dinner together, which was horribly, excruciatingly awkward.
...
Deidara's first experience with this came about six months after she was 'recruited'. She and Sasori returned from a mission to Suna to find Hidan vaccuming the rock floor and Kakuzu and Kisame setting up the big meeting table in the largish cavern that served as their living room. Konan was presiding, wearing an apron and a dictatorial expression.
"What's this, Sasori, spring cleaning?" Deidara asked, fighting the urge to laugh at Hidan wearing a kerchief to protect his hair from the dust.
"No, 'family dinner'." The puppet-boy's expression turned wistful.
"Oi, Deidara!" Konan shouted over the noise of the vacuum. "Come help set the table!"
"I'm going to work on a new project," Sasori said. "I guess I'll see you later."
"Okay..." Deidara noted the almost imperceptible droop in his shoulders as he walked away and felt rather sorry for him. Not being able to eat must be tough sometimes.
...
Once the meal started, though, she decided Sasori was lucky to have an excuse to stay away. For one thing, she had ended up across from the one person she detested the most, namely, Uchiha Itachi the red-eyed psychopath. For another, there were three forks! Three! at her place, and she didn't have a clue which one did what or why. Konan was a stickler for etiquette, apparently; even that swanky restaurant she tried to avoid thinking about had had the decency to only require one.
She managed to discreetly drop the teeny-tiny one on the floor after the salad course, but that still left her with two. Absently twirling one of them as she waited for the fish to get past Kisame, she had a brilliant idea. Plastering an innocent, vaguely bored smile on her face, she began to spin and flip the fork more and more vigorously, all the while looking everywhere except at Itachi, who was staring at her suspiciously. Eventually, however, he lost interest and started picking at his fish (which smelled wonderful, hopefully Kisame wouldn't take it all). Deidara put in a few more spins just to be sure, then snapped her hand forward, flinging the fork across the table with enough force to skewer Itachi's hand.
...
Itachi blinked as the fork missed his hand by a mere eighth of an inch and impaled itself in his salmon, and immediately directed the Uchiha Death Glare (version 2.0) at the one responsible.
"Ah...oops, un?" the newest member of Akatsuki stammered, quailing under the weight of the Sharingan.
Itachi smirked and jerked the offending object out of the fish, swiveled it around so the prongs were forward, and brought his hand back, preparatory to putting one of the insolent little prat's eyes out. Unfortunately, Konan chose this moment to enter with a fresh platter of rolls and therefore noticed the furor at the far end of the table.
"Itachi!" she snapped. "Put your fork down and eat your fish before it gets cold."
Itachi considered explaining that it wasn't his fork, and he was merely returning it to its rightful owner, but he always chose his battles wisely and backtalking the Leader's girlfriend could in no way be considered wise.
Deidara smirked and stuck one of his hand-tongues out once Konan's back was turned, snatching it back as the blue-haired kunoichi glanced their direction again.
"Itachi, Deidara, you're on dishes tonight."
Deidara's expression turned from smug to horrified and it was Itachi's turn to smirk.
...
Dinner finally over, Itachi immediately stalked off to the spring chamber (Akatsuki headquarters had electricity, powered by gas generators, but running water was limited to the bathrooms), leaving Deidara to carry the dishes in. As Konan had just served a four-course meal to eight people, there were a lot of those. After the third trip, she thought about demanding that Itachi help, but decided that she liked her rapidly deteriorating sanity right where it was, thank you, and antagonizing someone with trippy mind torture techniques was not going to keep it there.
"I'll wash, you dry," Itachi ordered coldly, not deigning to look at her. Deidara took the opportunity to make several nasty faces at his back. He was only a year and a bit older than her, at the most, so what business did he have acting like he was so much better than she was?
...
If it hadn't been for his elite ANBU training, Itachi would have jumped in surprise when Deidara's blue eyes suddenly appeared only a few inches from his own. As it was, he turned on the Uchiha Death Glare while distancing himself as much as possible from the crazy (or possibly suicidal, sneaking up on him like that) Iwa missing-nin without actually moving from his position.
"What makes you so much better than me?" the blonde (in more ways than one, Itachi decided) demanded abruptly.
Itachi debated whether or not to reply, but settled on shutting the fool up once and for all. "Because you're an incompetent idiot who has no business being in this organization."
Deidara had the nerve to pout. "Just because you got a lucky shot with your Chewing-gum thing doesn't mean I'm incompetent!" he protested. "Un!" he added a moment later, as if he had forgotten.
Itachi ignored the comment and shoved the first plate at Deidara's face with a glare that hopefully got across the message that if the nincompoop didn't shut up he would end up with a fish knife somewhere in the vicinity of his spleen. Apparently it did convey that impression, for the blonde snatched the plate without further comment and scuttled away to find a towel. Disregarding Deidara's continued existence, Itachi resumed washing dishes until he heard something that sounded disturbingly like an expensive china plate from an exclusive set being dropped by a egotistical blonde of remarkable stupidity who was about to get stabbed with a fish knife.
He was just beginning to plan where to hide the body when something heavy (also most likely blonde, and a 'someone') landed on his back and he found himself breathing water.
...
As her life flashed before her eyes, Deidara decided that attempting to hack the resident genius' ponytail off with a shard of porcelain was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done. And, since she was not known for doing particularly intelligent things, this was saying something. When she'd smashed the plate, it was with the intention merely to annoy Itachi, but she was so fed up with his stupid freaky eyes and his stupid stuck-up attitude and his stupid pretty face...and his stupid, tempting, currently vulnerable bishie ponytail...
And the next thing she knew, she was wielding a coincidentally perfectly shaped piece of the broken plate and simultaneously trying to both drown Itachi and cut his hair. Unfortunately, she only managed to succeed in the hair-cutting, and not the drowning, before he apparently attempted to perform an appendectomy with a fish knife.
Deidara didn't exactly scream, per se, but she certainly made a very loud noise which signified her opinion that that bloody well hurt, at which Kisame burst into the room, Samehada at the ready.
...
Whatever he expected to see, he didn't see it. What he did see was a soaking wet Itachi and Deidara in a somewhat...compromising position. It would have been more compromising if Deidara wasn't holding several inches of Itachi's ponytail (which were no longer attatched to Itachi's head) and Itachi wasn't firmly clutching the handle of a fish knife currently lodged somewhere between Deidara's kidney and his appendix.
Kisame immediately dragged Itachi off of the clearly deranged and suicidal blonde: it wouldn't do to let the Uchiha kill him right after his recruitment. Quickly examining his partner, he concluded that Itachi was unharmed, except for the worst haircut in the history of the Uchiha clan. As for Deidara—well, he'd live, if he didn't try something stupid like that again.
...
Deidara pulled the fish knife out as Kisame escorted Itachi out of the room. Hopefully he'd finished washing it before stabbing her with it; in any case the injury didn't look especially serious. Staggering to her feet, she made her way out of the spring room and down the hall to her room, slowly, as it seemed Itachi had bruised something important to the process of walking when he threw her to the floor.
The door to her room was closed when she arrived at it, but Sasori promptly opened it at her pounding. "Done with dinner already? Usually Konan goes on for...why are you all wet? Is that blood? Um...are you okay?"
Deidara staggered into the room and collapsed onto the bed. "I'm fine," she said. "Now go away, or I'll blast you through the wall, un!" she added cheerily.
Sasori took in her maniacal smile and too-wide eyes and wisely fled.
Sighing as she flopped into a supine position, Deidara rapidly formed four rabbit seals, followed by a bird. There was a warm tingling sensation and her vision filled with golden sparkles—the sparkles actually didn't have any particular purpose, but apparently the original inventor of the Deidara Clan Girls-Only (No Boys Allowed) Genderswitch Technique had thought it would 'look pretty'.
...
As the pretty sparkles dissipated Hikari saw with relief that while she'd regained her hourglass figure (and retained her clothes, although they didn't fit properly at the moment), she'd lost the stab wound next to her appendix. She had discovered some time ago that switching back and forth could cancel out an injury, but had never tried it on anything this serious before. This time, it had had the added benefit of drying her off as well. Standing up and stretching in front of the mirror to make sure the injury was really gone (it was) she flipped her now much longer hair over her shoulder and grabbed a brush off the nightstand. Hopefully she would have time to get all the tangles out before she had to change back.
Alas, it was not to be. At the soft knock, Hikari dashed into the bathroom as she formed seals, slamming the door just before Sasori entered the room.
...
"Deidara?" Sasori called timidly. He could sense a massive pulse of chakra coming from the vicinity of the bathroom, which could possibly have been Deidara healing himself, but he assumed a defensive position just in case it was Deidara preparing to blast him into little bits. "Deidara?" he called again, louder.
The bathroom door banged open. "What, un?" Deidara snarled, leaning against the doorframe.
"Peinwantstoseeyourightaway," Sasori said quickly, and ducked out of the way as Deidara stalked past him.
...
The aftermath of the meeting with Pein was that, as 'But he was looking at me, un!' was not considered sufficient provocation, even when the Sharingan was involved, the Appendectomy incident was all Deidara's fault. This meant that she would be paying for a replacement plate, which would mean that she would be running extra missions, since the one she had chosen to break was part of an exclusive set that was no longer being made.
Luckily Sasori had pity on her and came along to help on most of the missions, but it still took them several weeks to gather the money, plus the time it took to find the right set on the black market. At least it meant she didn't have to worry about running into Itachi.
A/N:
This chapter was rather difficult, but I think it turned out okay. I was listening to 'What is this Feeling' from Wicked while writing it; it sums up their current opinion of each other rather well. The next chapter will be rather short, as it was intended to be part of this chapter, but the first half got so long that I had to split it.