Sculpting for Dummies:
Chapter 14:
Last time: The pair turned to face the interrupter. Tobi seemed more concerned with getting his pants back into place, but Deidara paled when he saw who had caught them.
"Tobi, we need to leave, now," he whispered, as he stared straight at Sharingan Kakashi.
Tobi looked from the strange, silver-haired intruder to Deidara. "What's wrong, sempai?" he murmured. "Who is that?"
Deidara took a step backwards. He spoke softly, lips barely moving. "Sharingan Kakashi."
Tobi had heard that name before. That ninja in front of him was the famous Konoha jounin, who'd defeated Deidara and ripped off his arm without getting within a hundred meters of him. Their current situation didn't look good. Tobi drew a kunai from his belt and stepped forward, positioning himself between his sempai and the enemy.
"Tobi, you can't beat him. Get our bird so we can escape, un," Deidara whispered. The blond didn't take his eyes off of Kakashi, who was advancing slowly. Tobi backed up and reached a hand out behind him. He felt the clay pelican, which they still hadn't finished unpacking. He channeled chakra into it. The wings flapped and air rushed by Tobi. Something began to fizzle and crack.
"Tobi!" Deidara yelled in warning. Tobi looked up at the pelican for the first time. It was covered in exploding tags. Deidara plowed into him and knocked them both to the ground moments before the bird exploded. Globs of smoldering clay flew in every direction.
"Fuck! There must be another one behind us, un," Deidara growled.
"That's right. You're surrounded," Sharingan Kakashi chimed in. "Surrender now and we won't have to hurt you."
Deidara and Tobi weren't naïve enough to think that surrender was an option. Maybe a rogue ninja like Sasuke could let them go when he got what he wanted, but a ninja with an affiliation to a Hidden Village would have to bring them back and turn them in. Tobi might get away with only life in prison, but capture for Deidara would mean execution.
Tobi couldn't let the Konoha ninja get their hands on his sempai. Tobi himself wasn't strong enough to fight them, but there was one thing he could do. His fingertips filled with chakra and symbols formed themselves in the air above each finger. If he undid Deidara's chakra seal and got him to his clay, the artist could ensure their escape.
The dirt beneath the two rippled, and a wooden column shot up from the ground, creaking and groaning. It slammed into Tobi's head, and the seal symbols faded away from his fingertips. The dark-haired man looked up with swimming vision and saw three more wooden poles forming a square around himself and Deidara. The air within the square distorted.
"What's going on?" whispered Deidara. Tobi tried to form the counterseal once more…but he couldn't keep a hold on his chakra.
"They're disrupting our charka flow, sempai," Tobi replied. His breath came in quick, panicky bursts. Fuck. He couldn't use his chakra. He couldn't protect Deidara. They were going to die.
Sharingan Kakashi and another, brown-haired ninja lurked outside of the chakra barrier. Deidara reached for Tobi's hand and pried the kunai he was still gripping out of his hands.
"Sempai…we can't surrender," Tobi protested. Deidara stood up and pulled Tobi to his feet.
"You're not going to surrender, Tobi. You're going to escape, un," he said. Before Tobi could correct his mistake, 'we're', not 'you're', Deidara hurled himself at the nearest ninja. Tobi ignored the opening Deidara had just made for him as the kunai the masked man saw glinting in Kakashi's hand buried itself into Deidara's side.
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Kakashi barely had time to pull the kunai out of the Akatsuki member and shove him aside before the second man was on top of him, flailing and screaming.
"You bastard! I'll kill you!" the masked ninja yelled. His fist connected with Kakashi's nose, and the Copy nin could feel as well as hear the snap of breaking bone. He grabbed his attacker's wrists and held them immobile.
His red sharingan eye swirled. Kakashi flipped the other man so the Copy Ninja was on top, and stared down the single eye-hole of his enemy's orange and black mask.
The struggling attacker didn't fall into the hypnotized, Sharingan-induced sleep. By the way he kept struggling and sobbing, it seemed like the eye jutsu didn't affect him at all. But Kakashi hadn't met anyone but Uchiha who were immune to a direct look from the Sharingan. 'My power must really be low today,' he decided.
"Calm down and stop fighting me," he ordered. The man beneath him renewed his struggles.
"I won't surrender. You killed sempai! I'll kill you!"
Kakashi groaned. "Look, I didn't kill him. I didn't even hit any vital organs. As soon as you stop fighting me and cooperate, I'll have my medical ninja patch him up."
His captive stopped thrashing. "I won't let you kill him," he said. His voice shook, like he was holding back tears. What a crybaby. "If you touch him again, I'll kill you. I don't care how powerful you are or whose eyes you've stolen- I'll find a way to kill you, even if I have to do it with my bare hands." Kakashi nodded.
"Tenzou, bring me the handcuffs and call the brats over here," he called to Yamato. The jounin stepped over the bleeding Akatsuki member and snapped a pair of chakra-suppressing handcuffs onto the wrists that Kakashi still held immobile. The silver-haired man stood and hauled his captive to his feet. The orange-masked man drove his heel into Kakashi's foot and jerked away. Yamato formed a seal, ready to summon up a wooden cage to stop him, but Kakashi placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
The enemy ninja didn't get very far. He only stumbled a foot or so and dropped down beside his bleeding companion. The man held his bound hands to the kunai wound, trying to slow the steady flow of blood.
Kakashi wasn't sure who this strange man was, or what he was doing at art shows with a notorious criminal. It was unexpected, how the Akatsuki member had sacrificed himself for his companion's freedom, and how the masked man had forgone escape twice in order to stay by his side. They had to have something planned, and Kakashi wasn't going to let himself be fooled.
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"This is taking too long! I'm going to go see if Kaka-sensei needs help," Naruto declared. Sakura slammed a fist down on his head.
"Kaka-sensei told us to stay here, idiot. You'll only get in the way," she told him. Inside, she wanted to join the battle as well, but she trusted her sensei to call for back-up when he needed it.
The healer turned and looked at her other companion. Sai seemed oblivious to the tension in the air. He was painting on a scroll. Sakura leaned over to look at his picture. She blushed.
"Sai! What are you drawing!?!" she gasped. The moving ink figures on the paper seized her eyes and she couldn't look away.
Sai looked up at her blushing face and smiled. "This is what Deidara and Tobi are doing in the woods. See?" he gestured at the humping ink drawings. One did look vaguely like the Akatsuki member she'd seen…although it was difficult to concentrate on the drawing's face…
"Those are their penises," Sai pointed out helpfully.
"I…I can see that, Sai," she said weakly.
"What are you guys looking at?" Naruto asked. He peaked at the drawing and gasped. "What the…? Is that even possible?" he yelped.
"Oh, yes. I saw it in this interesting book," Sai explained. He pulled a copy of the Gay Kama Sutra out of his backpack. Sakura grabbed the book from him and began flipping through it.
"But…who can bend like that? Doesn't that hurt?" Naruto wondered to himself.
Sai pulled another scroll out from his pack. "Maybe you'll appreciate this position more, Naruto." He handed the scroll to the blond. Naruto looked at the paper…and dropped it in shock. His face turned bright red.
"But…Sasuke…and me…that's not…we're not…" he stuttered. Sakura took the scroll from him.
"I want to see!" she squealed.
"Team, we need back-up!" Yamato called from the forest. The three ninja, two still blushing, stood and followed the voice. As she walked, Sakura tucked the scroll into her apron to study later.
They met their team leaders in a small clearing. The artist they'd been chasing was on the ground, and there was a pool of blood growing underneath him. His companion (Tobi, Sakura recalled Sai mentioning, which prompted another blush) knelt beside him, trying to stop the bleeding.
"Sakura, bandage him up so we can question him," Kakashi ordered. His voice sounded off, like he had a cold. Sakura looked at him. His black fabric mask was stained dark and his nose was protruding at a strange angle.
"Your nose is broken," she told him. Kakashi nodded.
"I can take care of it myself. You're not getting under my mask that easily, brat," he teased. Sakura sighed.
"It was worth a shot," she mumbled to herself. She walked over to the blond Iwa ninja and nudged his companion. "You need to move so I can get to the wound," she told him. The masked man hesitated.
"If you hurt him, I'll kill you," he threatened.
"I'm going to stop the bleeding and heal the wound. That's all." Sakura had to bite her lip to keep from squealing. His devotion was just so cute! 'Stop sympathizing with the enemy, Sakura!' she scolded herself.
She knelt down in the space that Tobi cleared for her and used her chakra to clot the blood that was leaking out of the artist. Kakashi had said 'bandage', so he didn't want her wasting her chakra to heal him completely. She cleaned the cut and wrapped a bandage around it.
Tobi retook his place by Deidara's side when she stood. He touched his handcuffed, bloodstained hands to the Iwa shinobi's cheek.
"Sempai, I won't let them hurt you again," he swore quietly. Sakura swallowed and forced herself not to look. Damn it, cute boys were her weakness! She had to be strong. These men were criminals; she'd seen Deidara sitting on Gaara's corpse, laughing at Naruto's distress. They needed to be turned over to Tsunade to deal with…
…only, they were really sweet together. It would be easier to remind herself that they were evil when Deidara regained consciousness and started acting like an arrogant jerk again.
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Deidara woke up exactly where he thought he'd be: in the hands of the Konoha ninja. His side hurt when he tried to sit up. 'Damn it, Tobi have better escaped,' he cursed to himself. What had he been thinking, getting himself hurt for that loser?
Fuck, Deidara knew exactly what he'd been thinking: I'm going to die, but Tobi doesn't have to. It would hurt less, dying, if he knew Tobi was safe. He was turning into the worst kind of sentimental sap. It was disgusting.
The blond looked around at his surroundings. They were still in the forest. His and Tobi's packs were lying in a pile, all the contents scattered around to be checked for weapons and information. There was only one guard on him at the moment, and his hands were cuffed together with chakra suppressors.
"What the fuck? You came to my stand earlier, un!" Deidara shouted at the kid guarding him. He'd sold his beautiful art to one of those Konoha bastards!
The kid nodded at him. "Yes, you're a very talented artist. And you're pretty, too." His captor smiled, which made him look really creepy. Deidara shuddered.
"What're you planning on doing with me, un?" he asked.
The kid gestured towards the woods with an inked brush. "Our team leaders are having a meeting to figure that out over there. I don't think we're going to torture you, but we have to find out where Sasuke is. You do know Sasuke, right? People say I look like him, except he broods more. I think he broods because he has a small penis. What do you think?"
Deidara wasn't sure if he should laugh or just be creeped out (…more creeped out). He shrugged. "I might have met him, un," he mentioned nonchalantly. Not that he planned on telling the Konoha ninja. Giving them information would mean admitting defeat, and he wouldn't lose to them again.
His guard didn't seem particularly closemouthed, though. Now was as good a time as any to start gathering information about his situation.
"So, I saw Sharingan Kakashi and another jounin, and you…are there any more of you, or is that it, un?" he asked.
The guard waved his brush at the forest again. "Sakura and Naruto are over there guarding your lover. We used to have more in our group, but they had to go home. We're headed back to Konoha to meet up with them."
"My lover…Tobi? He didn't escape? That fucking bastard!" Deidara shook with anger at the Konoha ninja and at Tobi for being stupid enough to get himself caught after Deidara got his liver skewered to save him.
"He's…not hurt, is he, un?"
The guard shook his head. "He's fine. He was worried about you. My book says worrying about someone is a sign of love. Are you worried about him?"
Deidara's jaw dropped. What the hell was this kid, fucking insane? "No! Now take me to him so I can kick his ass for getting himself captured, un!" he growled.
The kid grinned his scary grin again. "The book says that misplaced anger when someone is in danger can also be a sign of love. I have orders to keep you here, so we can't go see him. I can send a message to Sakura to give to him, though."
Deidara thought for a moment. "Tell him I'm gonna kick his fucking ass for not escaping when I told him to, and he'd better not do it again, un," he said.
His captor nodded and wrote the message on one of his scrolls. The ink lifted from the paper and transformed into a bird, which flew into the woods.
"That's an artistic jutsu, un," Deidara remarked. The guard smiled and started explaining his ink jutsu. The blond nodded absentmindedly, too distracted by Tobi's capture to concentrate.
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Tobi struggled against the charka cuffs that held him. His captors had already taken away his lock-picking tools as well as his weapons, but he might still be able to escape if he broke his thumbs. It'd be hard to form hand seals, but he'd have access to his chakra at least, and he might be able to overcome his child-guards and rescue Deidara.
His two guards, one dressed in orange and the other in pink, had left him sitting with his back to a tree. He worked his thumb in between pieces of bark and braced it against the tree's trunk. All he had to do was push down quickly and it would dislocate it.
"Oh, look, Naruto! A message from Sai. Deidara must've woken up."
The pink girl caught a little black bird in her hand and pressed it against a scroll. The bird melted into a puddle of ink, which spread itself on the paper and began to form words.
Tobi froze as the girl walked over to him. "You're name is Tobi, right? Deidara's woken up and he sent a message to you." She held the paper up for him to see.
Deidara tells Tobi: I'm gonna kick your fucking ass for not escaping when I told you to, and you'd better not do it again, mmm. Tobi's portion of the message read.
So his sempai was awake, at least. Tobi had no doubts that the message was from him. But the part "you'd better not do it again" worried him. Was Deidara planning to sacrifice himself again, or did he only mean not to be stupid?
"Can I see him?" he asked the girl. She shook her head.
"Kaka-sensei told us we should stay here until he and Yamato-sensei get back."
Tobi sighed. He'd have to wait until his guards were distracted again before he tried to escape. Hopefully the two jounin would stay away that long…
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"What are we going to do with them, Kakashi-sempai?" Yamato asked the Copy Ninja as they circled the camp through the cover of the forest.
"We don't do anything. We bring them back to Konoha and let Tsunade-sama and Ibiki deal with them. It'll be enough for the Fifth that we're bringing back an Akatsuki member- she won't expect us to interrogate them too." Kakashi flipped though his copy of Icha Icha Paradise.
"But shouldn't we at least question them beforehand? If they don't know where Sasuke is, it'll be another dead end," Yamato reasoned. Kakashi nodded.
"We can question them, but it probably won't work. I doubt we'll get anything with torture; I saw Deidara lose an arm without even flinching."
"What about the other one? He doesn't seem as strong, and he's pretty concerned with Deidara. We might be able to use that," Yamato noted.
Kakashi remembered how his sharingan hypnosis had failed against the dark-haired man. "I think there's more to him than meets the eye. Don't underestimate him," he cautioned.
"I won't." Yamato paused. "Do you think we'll get a raise for this?" he asked.
"A hefty bonus at least," Kakashi agreed.
Yamato sighed. "I'd rather have some extra vacation time than the extra pay, to be honest. Tsunade runs us ragged!" he complained.
Kakashi chuckled. "Can't keep up, Tenzou?" he teased the younger man. Yamato scowled.
"You're one to talk…every time I turn around, you're in the hospital again, and I get left in charge of the brats. It's your fault I need a break."
"Let's go back to camp then, if you're so tired. We'll figure things out in the morning."
The jounin walked back to Naruto and Sakura, who were looking over a letter. Tobi sat with his back to a tree, watching them. Kakashi studied the masked man. Something about him made the Copy Ninja curious. He wanted to order the man to take off that ridiculous orange and black mask, but his own need for a mask prevented him. Sometimes you needed to hide from the world, and Kakashi respected that.
"Kaka-sensei, can we go back to the camp now?" Naruto asked, bouncing around as usual.
Kakashi's sharp ears caught the sound of clashing metal in the forest clearing. He looked up, and noticed Yamato and Tobi doing the same.
"What's going on?" Sakura asked. Kakashi held up a hand to silence her.
There was no sound for a moment. A black bird broke through the foliage and fluttered in the air in front of the ninja. It exploded, and the ink that had formed it wrote a message that hovered over them: We're under attack.
"Shit!" Kakashi cursed. "Naruto, Sakura, you guard-"
A sharp crack behind him made him pause in his orders. The prisoner Tobi stood up and tossed away the chakra cuffs. His thumbs jutted out at unnatural angles.
"I'm coming, sempai," the man whispered, and he formed the seals that only the Fourth Hokage and his protégés should have known. Tobi flickered away, leaving Kakashi to wonder how he knew Yondaime's personal transportation jutsu.
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Deidara grasped a stolen kunai in his cuffed hands and concentrated on warding off the flying weaponry that the Sound ninja were throwing at him. 'It had to be Sound ninja to ambush us, didn't it?' he thought to himself exasperatedly. Had it been anyone but Orochimaru's village, he would have been tempted to help them defeat the kid guarding him and take his chances with them instead. The enemy of his enemy would be his friend. But he hated Orochimaru- the snake bastard had no taste in art.
So instead of making a brilliant escape in the fray, Deidara was stumbling around, still handcuffed and chakra-deprived, trying his best to stay out of the way of the kunai and senbon that sailed through the air. When he got a free moment from dodging, he threw a few kunai back at his attackers.
One of the sound shinobi shrieked as a knife dug into his skin. The artist smiled.
The bleeding sound ninja pulled a giant shuriken from his pack and began spinning it. Fuck. He wasn't going to be able to block that with a single kunai with his hands tied. The ninja loosed the spinning star.
"Sempai, watch out!"
Tobi appeared behind him and shoved him roughly to the side. The giant shuriken sailed past, ripping into Tobi's upper arm and continuing until it buried itself deep into a tree trunk. The taller man stood up and charged at him. Deidara noticed he held his kunai by looping his finger though the hole in the handle; his thumbs hung uselessly broken. That explained how he escaped the cuffs, at least.
Deidara's creepy guard took one of the sound shinobi out with an ink tiger he'd brought to life, and Tobi fought a second. The third and fourth circled around to catch Tobi and the Konoha ninja off guard, completely ignoring Deidara now that they'd seen he couldn't use chakra. The bastards would regret that. He didn't care either way about the Konoha kid, but nobody but Deidara was allowed to hurt Tobi.
The closest sound ninja crept up behind Tobi, not even worried that he had his back turned to Deidara. The blond stood, got a running start, and jumped on the unsuspecting shinobi's back. The handcuffs that had been hindering him before now aided him as he looped his hands around the ninja's neck and pulled the chain back to block the man's esophagus.
The chocking ninja stumbled forward, still trying to stab a kunai into Tobi's back. Deidara gave the chain a jerk and sent both of them spiraling to the side.
"Touch him and you die, un" he warned. The man struggled and stabbed blindly at Deidara, but the artist kept a hold on him until he blacked out. It took a few seconds of maneuvering before he freed himself from the unconscious man, and by that time, Tobi and the guard had dealt with the two remaining ninja.
"Tobi, let's get out of here before those Konoha bastards get back, un," he proposed. They could deal with the creepy kid easily enough and escape on a clay bird before the others returned. Tobi shook his head and gestured behind Deidara. The Iwa ninja turned around.
Sharingan Kakashi, the kyuubi jinchuriki, the girl that defeated Sasori-no-danna, and the other Konoha jounin were all standing in the clearing, staring at him with wide eyes.
"Fuck," Deidara cursed to himself.
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AN: yeah, it took forever. Team 7/DeiTobi interactions are hard to write, damn it! At least Sai is fun (mostly because he has Deidara freaked out). And btw, the new closing scene in the anime is crazy Sai-centric. I'm kind of wondering what the anime is going to make of him and his obsession with penises. (And don't even get me started on speculation on what the American version will do to Sai when they get there. I'm sure it will completely ruin everything about his character)
And I was very disappointed with this week's episode. Not only was I sad about the going away of the Hero's Comeback song (I love it, and even have it on my iPod) and the complete lack of Tobi (I was so excited because I thought he would finally make his appearance), but they gave Gaara squealing fangirls that completely ruined the noble and tragic mood of Chiyo's death. I was actually cussing at them as I watched it frustrated me so much.
On a happier note, it made my day yesterday when I found out Dumbledore was gay. Canon Potter Yaoi lives!!!!! Grindelwald/Dumbledore for the win (and all that stuff about it being unrequited…please! They were soooo humping like bunnies that whole summer they spent together. Don't even try to tell me otherwise.)