He Who Plants Dissolution

Myriad hues of dark orange and yellow filled my pupils, overcoming my vision with the delights of butchery. Even from my distance I could feel the heat wash over me in radiant waves.

Then came the blood. Everywhere. The crimson liquid splattered the forest floor, drenching mangled bones and tissue, sprinkling Yasu… The smell of burning blood seeped through the trees.

"It just goes to show…" I said, smugly mimicking the dead girl's words.

"What… was…?" Shin stuttered anemically.

Yasu sternly wiped blood from her face. She looked like she wanted to say something, but her gaze suddenly shot upwards.

A thick male figure bowled out of the sky, firing off weapons. Yasu braced herself to catch his weight over a vital spot, but just as it looked like he was about to land on her, the massive ninja flipped through the air, pulling a scroll out of his pack and yanking it open. A stream of paper twined gracefully around his descending body. I recognized this person as the shinobi who had urged Chiharu to come along and help.

His expression was unreadable as he landed near the pool of blood and flesh left in my wake. He stuck the end of his index finger in his mouth and bit down on it. Tenderly, he dragged it through his companion's blood, then slashed a line of scarlet across the parchment lying about him.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Steam filled the air, causing the little fires still simmering on the nearby branches to gutter.

My hands were already back to my clay before the summoned monstrosity raised its head through the fog.

I had never seen anything quiet like it before. Its body seemed like a thick, heavy chain covered in some places with rotting flesh. Wherever the putrid meat wasn't, cold, hard steel shone through like exposed bone. The creature had no limbs; only an enormous head differentiated which end was the front and which the back… and this head was ugly beyond comparison. With flaking, scabbed, grey skin, there were two holes for ears on either side, two smaller openings on the tip of its long snout that looked like nostrils, and another pair of pits just above those, from where a faint red glow emanated.

The chain-beast opened its gaping maw, revealing three rows of finely honed, yellow teeth. Saliva dripped thickly from its swollen gums, and a low, guttural snarl snapped the air's tension into sheer terror.

We stared. The man who had summoned the chain spoke quietly in an unfamiliar language. He issued a hoarse command to the creature, which tensed up unexpectedly. I couldn't tell if its eyes were moving; they were sunken too far back in its skull.

Surreptitiously, I dropped the clay I had been working on to the ground, then plunged my hands back in for some more. The worms I had released burrowed beneath the soil.

With hardly a warning, the chain-beast shot towards me, writhing through the air as though it moved across gelatin. I leapt away from my bush just on time when the monster tore through it, scattering leaves and driving dirt into the sky. Shin was right beside me as I burst out of the trees into the cleared perimeter of Amegakure's village boundary line.

Chaos was rampantly breaking out on all fronts. People fought in a blur, jutsu misfired and shred the surroundings into waste, bodies lined the trenches running along the fort. If my sight didn't deceive me, some of the deceased did not have crossed-out Amegakure headbands. They were Hanzo's…

Yasu came out of the bush after us, though the chain-beast was clearly ignoring her. It rocketed straight for me, while Yasu somersaulted to her feet on the fringe.

I felt out the worms I'd planted back in the forest. I had been sending them on a course for the man who had summoned the creature to… avenge his girl's death.

"Katsu!" I shouted. I felt the explosions course through my blood. A bit of myself died again. Smoke coiled through the leafy canopy below.

"You didn't kill him!" I heard Yasu screaming over the tumult. So much for taking out the cause of the apparition…

I swore petulantly. One of my hands was finished processing clay. I chucked a slender bird onto the breeze.

"Katsu!" I cried again, trying to hold the monstrosity back with another assault.

Chunks of scalded flesh blew off the chain's skeletal frame, its malodorous scent burning my nostrils.

My brief flight ended; I landed ankle-deep in mud. Every sense on edge, I tossed another sculpture up into the air and created a seal that caused it to expand.

A dainty, long legged heron stood in front of me, facing out to the turmoil laid in front of it. My head whipped around to glance over my shoulder at the temporarily distracted chain-beast. I tried to yank my feet out of the mire, but they stuck fast; probably the product of some jutsu. Making up my mind, I grabbed a hold of the heron's tail feathers.

"Wait!" Shin wailed from beside me. He was also trapped. Clutching at my arm, he babbled a stream of unintelligible pleas. "…He thinks I helped you… didn't kill… it stinks and it's gonna have… I can still make a barrier, but…"

"Get off of me, baka!" I cursed him, almost starting a new bomb to blow his arm off with.

The chain seemed to have recovered its bearings. Shaking its head and roaring furiously, it tore towards us, gnashing its fangs expectantly.

In a storm of sculpted feathers and earthen muscle, I forced the clay heron into flight. I almost lost my grip on its tail as my feet left the marsh… and my sandals behind. But not Shin. Oh, no… not Shin. He clung fast to my arm, nearly jerking it out of its socket.

At first, I tried to kick him off, but the more altitude we gained, the harder he seemed to clench my arm. The bird I had created was not meant to carry this much weight… and definitely not on a slant, like the one Shin was hanging on from. I fought to pull myself up by my one arm and felt my tendons snapping. Concentrating, I commanded the bird to lower its spindly feet from their folded position in flight.

"Grab its legs!" I yelled down at Shin. His pale face shone up at me, pasted in sweat.

"…They're so far…" I caught his faint whisper over the shriek of flight.

"Do it now," I said, suddenly unnaturally calm. "I will swing you out as far as I can. Otherwise, I will have to blow you up, in which case you will die, and I will waste time in escaping, meaning I will also perish." I couldn't help but smile cruelly. The idea wasn't all that daunting.

I began to rock my shoulder back and forth, taking my arm with it in a slow, agonizing movement. I heard another howl of rage, very close now.

My arm reached the peak of its upside-down arc, and mercifully, I felt the pressure around my wrist drop away. Shin was flung forward into the back of the heron's legs.

Instantly, I made the bird pick up speed. I hauled myself onto its streamlined rump, then crawled the rest of the way up its slender back. Not bothering to check on Shin, I concentrated my chakra to my knees and feet, flattening myself against the cool material, and beginning a new set of bombs.

"Ugh!" I gasped as I felt the poison still lingering in my blood make another round through my heart.

I finished creating the two lethal explosives I'd started by injecting a stronger intensity of chakra into them. This kind of energy was untainted by the toxin's touch. It was pure.

Thinking back to my journey on this nation's roads, I'd had a lot of time to experiment secretly while on the move. It was during one of my rambling debates with myself that I'd decided on names for my art… and levels. For now, going by the standard method of explosive grading, I'd compromised with basing my chakra ranks and bomb potencies on the labels C1, C2, and C3 consecutively.

"C2…" I muttered, pitching the deadly duo of swans into the wake left by my steed.

Also riding the current, the chain-beast almost collided head-on with the two sleek bombs. They maneuvered out of the way, slipping past the monster's broad snout.

"Katsu!" I cried as they flew beside the creature's squirming body.

BANG!

That same horrible odor punctuated my nose, as particles of the monster blew off. It bellowed in a mixture of agony and ire, heaving with paroxysms of anger.

Suddenly there was a 'snap!' and one of the links in the chain's body broke off. The decaying joint began a freefall to the earth, then abruptly shuddered mid-flight and came shooting right at me.

What in the bloody blue blazes...?

The severed piece of chain came chasing after me, following in the path of the monster that had spawned it. It moved faster then its parent, and the closer it got, the more I could make out of it. A new head was manifesting itself upon my pursuer.

The chain-beast could multiply, apparently.

"Deidara!" Shin called out below me. I crawled back to my creation's tail end and leaned over to peer down its left haunch.

"They're shooting at us now!" Shin was wrapped tightly around the heron's legs. Below him the scenery was laid down in miniscule detail. The forest was behind us… but the log fortress was dead ahead. I'd been so focused on fighting the monster that I hadn't even noticed how dangerously close we had come to the border of safety. Actually, we had passed it. Flaming projectiles and arrows were aiming for us, manned by Amegakure shinobi holding the top of the fortress.

Twisting my body around, I made the heron bank sharply to avoid a volley of spikes. But I couldn't turn on time to avoid smashing into the barricade…

I took the bird into a steep climb. We shot vertically up the wall. Logs fell past my eyes in a blur, and Shin started screaming again. The creatures chasing us almost collided with the fort, and paused for just a few seconds, momentarily baffled.

I took that instant to scale the clay heron's neck and swing myself around so that I was clinging to its belly. The bird's wings buffeted me about, sending my loose hair askew. I felt a slight twinge on my forehead as the rivets holding the Sunagakure plate popped off, scratching me. The pressure shielding my brow loosened, then Kaede's headband slipped off and plummeted away.

Grinning maniacally, I crawled down to the heron's awkwardly outstretched legs, holding my hand out for Shin to grasp. He took not a minute's hesitation, clutching at me with pathetically obvious relief. I dragged him back up my creation's shoulder.

"Focus your chakra to your feet and dig in," I ordered him, pushing his hands against my clay's slippery back. I wasn't sure is he had heard me over the howling of the wind and rain, but he didn't fall when I let go of him.

My artwork suddenly pitched backwards. With a jerk, the smaller chain-beast pursuing us had lunged upwards and plunged its fangs into my heron's tail feathers. We were now sinking at a terrifying velocity; weighed down by the monster. It seemed to have swollen to an even greater size since the last time I had seen it at such a close proximity.

Our abrupt descent had saved us from a spear lanced down the wall by an enemy, but we were now in even greater peril.

I could think of only one option in the spur-of-the-moment.

"Get a kunai or something!" I hollered at Shin, taking out my own knife. "We're gonna cut the bird's tail off!"

Oh, I shuddered at the thought of all the implications that would arise from severing my art's rudder… but it couldn't be helped. Not if I planned on living another day.

Shin could hardly hold his footing (even splayed across the heron's back) so he tentatively reached out and began sawing at my creation's tail. I joined in, climbing over his prone form to hack at my beautiful work. I gazed down into the glowering chasms of the chain-beast's eyes.

"Au revoir," I sneered.

With a final jab, the rest of the tail tore off with the monster, and we rocketed into an ascent again.

"Katsu!" I made the seal for 'ram', and far below us the remnant of my clay exploded in the creature's mouth. It was just as I had deduced. Head-on attacks were the only ones effective against such a foe.

The smaller chain-beast lost to gravity, and its corpse plummeted to the ground, hitting its brethren briefly as it fell past it. The other monster's rage only intensified. Though slower than its deceased clone, it clearly held the brute force the other had lacked.

My clay creation struggled against its handicap, finally breaking over the wall and leveling out into a horizontal flight.

Guards on top of the staggering wall shot more weapons at us, and though I tried my hardest to avoid them, my bird's maneuverability had been diminished. A Morning star had come wailing at us faster then I could react and had sunk right through the heron's left wing and straight out the other side. My creation tilted erratically, and we almost pitched off into a sideways dive.

The heron's long beak began to incline downwards. My creation was top-heavy… I controlled the bird's movements cautiously now, afraid of going into a nosedive. My eyes snapped over to Shin, who was cowering down against the chiseled feathers. A couple hundred senbon needles fixed themselves within the heron's underside.

"Make a force field!" I growled. "We're going down." Shin's jaw dropped open, but he sat up a bit, trembling hard. His fingers began to trace a well-known pattern, slipping past one another, weaving flawlessly. He gritted his teeth, and clapped his hands together for the finale. A pulsing viridian bubble formed around his fingertips, then expanded. The quivering force blossomed outwards, passing over me and my steed. When we were entirely enveloped by the barrier, Shin made another strange gesture that caused the force field to suddenly stiffen into a horizontal diamond shape.

It was then that we started falling.

The heron dove, and I made it cease its frantic flapping to angle its wings smoothly. We glided over the massive wall, chased by more arrows and the remaining chain-monster. The beast snapped its colossal jaws, impatiently gaining on us.

A group of the Amegakure guards had gotten together and lobbed a platoon of umbrellas at us. They all mirrored a single seal that caused the parasols to open up and spew senbon needles and katana at us. Unaware that the monster stalking us was on their side, they relentlessly attacked it too.

Shin and I were both moaning obscenities under our breath, as the clay we sat atop spiraled to the pointed towers below, and the weapons clattered off Shin's force field, and… the chain-beast multiplied again and again…

The city scenery underneath us was astounding, and under different circumstances, I might have critiqued it on the imagination of its designers. Pipes and irrigation channels ran all along the narrow, crowded streets, and skyscrapers sprouted up into the clouds, reaching beyond even our descending heads. Water flowed freely through aqueducts suspended over apartment buildings and cramped arenas. Lights shone dully through the fog and rain below us.

I could feel my hair standing on end, even over the airstream's violent tug. A blinding white flash cloaked the city. A slow rumble started up from all around us. It dropped a couple octaves, turning into a low, resounding 'BOOM!'.

Under the sound of the thunder, the small army of chain-beasts bellowed their ghastly chorus. They began ramming themselves against the force field, shrieking and tearing around like possessed mercury and puce bullets. Shin was slick with sweat. He had his hands held in the seal for 'ox' as though they were glued together.

The buildings were rapidly growing closer, and the monsters were driving us down. I felt the bottom of my clay pouch and realized I was almost out. Taking some of the remaining clay, I began to process new bombs. I had no better plan then to crash, deal with the locals, and try to take the chains on stable footing.

One of the heron's wounded wings dipped down and the bird began tilt. We were heading towards a humongous culvert that jutted out of the side of a brick bridge. Our crooked glide took us down to a shallow pool of dirty rainwater trickling towards the enormous opening.

"This is it!" Shin panicked.

I made my creation begin flapping its wings in the finishing down strokes for a landing.

"Let go of the field!" I yelled over at Shin. His eyes spoke terror. "We're bailing before they can catch up." I jerked a thumb back at our pursuers.

We were suddenly thirty meters above the filthy ditch. Shin complied, releasing his seal and letting the barrier shatter outwards, its pieces dispersing into dust. I threw myself off of the bird headfirst, pulling out my finished bombs and slipping them onto a passing wind current. Shin followed my lead, plummeting after me.

I twisted around midair, directing my explosive falcons towards the heads of the eager monstrosities pestering us. Taking aim as best as I could, I detonated the bombs to slow the creatures down.

"Katsu!" I signed 'tora'. Three of the beasts were destroyed. Their remains pelted my back as I flipped to a feet first position for landing.

I sunk down to meet concrete below the murky water, absorbing the force of my impact with chakra. A repulsive taste filled my nose and mouth when I fell into the shallow pool of grime. I spat out sewage, coughing harshly and choking. Shin splashed down in front of me, rolling on his side through the refuse. We were both on our feet before all the water had left our lungs. Hacking roughly, we stumbled for the dark abyss before us.

On either side of us were the backs of alleys and rubbish bins, connected by the bridge that spanned over the culvert we were heading to. Behind the overpass was another wall into which the culvert burrowed away. Behind us… well, I don't really know what was behind us, because neither of us took another second to hesitate.

My palm-mouths devoured the last of my clay as I ran towards the void.

Better make this worth it…

My improvisation wasn't failing me now?

The darkness swallowed us as we stepped into the cavernous pipe. Water tugged at my knees, speeding my progress as we were drawn towards whatever lay in wait. All culverts led to somewhere open… right? There was no time to regret our decision or go back. Over the gentle rush of echoing water and dripping of condensation, I could hear the distinct sounds of the chain-beasts' levitating flight.

"Oh!" I heard Shin's surprised exclamation. I peered through the blackness trying to make out his silhouette ahead. He had stopped moving.

"What?" I asked bitingly.

"There's a flap or trap door here. A really big one…"

"Then why is this slime not going down it, hmm?"

"There must be more water pressure down bel-"

A wailing, deep roar started grating below us. The pipe we were in was vibrating and water droplets showered down on our heads. The mouth in my chest started throbbing unhelpfully. I began to hyperventilate.

"Deidara?" Shin's voice broke.

With a titanic crash, I felt the water around my legs pull my feet up and send me onto my back. There was only one moment to steal a breath of musty air before I was pulled after Shin down the drain.

It had to be one of the most distressing experiences of my life. The pressure of liquid constricted me at every angle, buffering me around between one current and the next, trying to knock my precious oxygen out of my chest. It didn't feel as though my lungs were about to burst… it felt like they were going to collapse. I kept the clay my palm-mouths had eaten stuffed firmly within them as though my life depended on them.

My eyes were pinched firmly shut. Small sulphur-coloured lights swam under my eyelids, obscuring the black. My brain felt waterlogged…

Then my cheek scraped coarse concrete, and the rest of my body followed after it, colliding with the back of my head. Cold water washed over me, then dispersed. I could feel warm air against my skin and past my sodden clothing, but I couldn't breathe. I lay on the hard ground, eyelids still clenched.

Is there… water in my lungs…? No. What?

I released my expired oxygen, taking a greedy gasp of humid air. I could hear someone else sucking air in beside me.

Shin.

I just wanted to stay still. Never move again. Sit in the waning heat of this… place.

Shinobi instinct forced itself into place. My cerulean eyes snapped open, narrowing against a dim set of lights hanging from a dirty, plastic ceiling. The building Shin and I had washed up in looked like a greenhouse. We appeared to be lying on one of the concrete strips between several beds of spiky, pineapple-like vegetables protruding from the mud.

I weakly raised myself into a sitting position. Above us and running along a series of beams, were huge pipes with hatches that opened up over various plant beds. Even as I observed these waterways, one of them opened and spewed water on an arbor of tropical trees nearby.

I brushed a strand of soaking blond hair aside to stare across the other end of the room. My eyes met a metallic wall, then languidly moved up to gaze at a platform. There were doors up there and stairs behind them… and… a person?

A person?

I was sure that I had killed more then a few brain cells at this point, and was making everything up.

Nobu couldn't have possibly been standing back there so calmly, leaning into the shadows… And what was he wearing? His generic kimono had been swapped for a long, black cloak dappled with impressive red clouds lined in white. The high, stiff collar of the cloak was folded down low enough to expose Nobu's thin chest.

I glanced at Shin. Out cold.

I got up shakily. Almost on their own, my palm-mouths began chewing their clay again.

"I told you to sit tight." Nobu's dark voice rang out, but somehow it sounded like it was everywhere, not just in my head.

Nobu stretched out his right arm, pointing at me. A vine suddenly burst out of the flowerbed beside me and twined itself around my torso. My chest-mouth tried to bite it through my clothing. Giving Shin a casual glance, Nobu flicked his wrist and another thick vine incarcerated the unconscious Iwa shinobi.

"This is not what I was anticipating…" said Nobu, his other voice growing malicious. He grinned, his sharp teeth glistening.

"I told you of a true antinationalist theory."

"But what you're grasping for isn't the half of it."

Nobu closed his eyes. "Homen suru…" he whispered.

His image started to ripple and fade beneath his cloak. Through the blur, I could see the right side of his body getting darker, while the left half paled into a sickly white. Something plant-like… was sprouting from under his clothing, up around his shoulders. Two large, spiky leaves had grown over on either side of Nobu, towering around his head. The sleeves of his cloak seemed to become empty. Beneath his strange two-tone skin, I could tell that Nobu's features had taken on a hungry, feral quality. The only thing that had remained the same was his short, unruly green hair.

Nobu opened his eyes. Both were round, yellow and pupil-less. The right eye -the one on the black half of his body- had no visible sclera.

"My name is Zetsu," said the white side. This voice had an oddly apologetic note to it. Like it was open to reason, and didn't mean all the trouble it had put me through.

"I have been undercover in the organization you joined for half a year… not three months." When the dark side spoke, it carried the same condescending, bossy tone that Nobu's voice had when he'd talked to me in my mind. It was low, rough, and heady. I couldn't tell if the words were now in my brain, or out loud. The dark half's mouth barely moved when it uttered its explanation.

"I was sent here by my own organization to destabilize this one. It was making our goals difficult to attain… and we were looking for new candidates for our-"

"-No," the dark side interrupted irritably. "My only intention was to set this group upon itself, so that it would crumble from within. It was only until I saw your… unique ability that I told Leader-sama of a veritable replacement for… him."

The disagreement between the two halves took me by surprise.

He had seemed so composed until he revealed himself as Zetsu, not Nobu. Now, here was someone who had probably gone his whole life shunned until there was no one willing to talk to him… but himself. Or maybe listening to so many people's hopes, ideas, dreams, beliefs, and darkest secrets had torn him apart so badly that the reasons each thought had used to justify its existence had split him into two separate entities, unable to agree on a set of defining characteristics.

Intriguing, but not worth a lot of thought. Not art.

He's crazy…

"Maybe," Zetsu's white side agreed.

"What do you mean? Who am I supposed to be a replacement for?" I demanded, not caring if the answers I got didn't make sense anyway.

"I'll tell you another time. We're not ready to take you on yet."

"Who?" I asked, frustrated. "What organization? I don't want to join anything else!"

Zetsu ignored me.

"The only reason I'm revealing myself now… the only reason I brought you here… is that my work is done. My faction is ready to strike Tetsuo's weakened side. I've planted the seeds of destruction. Not to mention…"

"…We lured Hanzo's followers out." Zetsu nodded in a satisfied way. "Both of our enemies lowered each other's numbers." Was he implying that the Amegakure dissenters were in league with him, but the side loyal to following the old leader wasn't?

"I'm giving you a heads-up for when we come for you… and when Tetsuo begins to suspect you."

"We will come for you, Deidara. You'll be a useful asset to Akatsuki."

Shin groaned quietly beside me. Zetsu's glowing eyes slid over to him. He was silent, his head slightly cocked, as though listening to someone.

A flood of chakra suddenly seeped into the room. It stifled all the thoughts and actions my mind was sifting through. I almost forgot to breath. This kind of power was incredible… The massive chakra preceded its owner long before the tall figure stepped out of the shadows of the platform Zetsu stood on.

"Good job, Zetsu." The man's voice was deep and imposing; indescribably so. I couldn't see this person's features; no matter how hard I focused on him, his whole frame was cloaked in wavering shadows and darkness. Only his frightening eyes were discernable. His pupils were surrounded by multiple green and pink irises. Was this 'Leader-sama'?

"We don't need the extra anymore," he said solemnly. "He's served his purpose."

Zetsu didn't need any coaxing. He turned his attention back to the vine constricting Shin. I watched the pointed tip of the lethal plant slither around Shin's throat. It tightened fluidly and Shin's neck broke with a sickening 'snap'.

Some end. No resistance. No 'BANG'.

"Hey!" I shouted against my better judgment. He was mine to kill… mine to exercise art on! Only art, nothing else.

I cringed instinctively when the all seeing eyes of the stranger fell upon me.

"You will have plenty of opportunities to kill when you join Akatsuki," he deadpanned. A clammy sweat broke out all over my body. "And it was necessary. Listen to me, Deidara."

He knew my name.

"You will return to your terrorist leader and tell him that the failure of this operation was due to Nobu's traitorous ways, and that he was in league with the Amegakure shinobi. Don't underestimate the simplicity of this falsehood. He will take care of the rest, I assure you. No one will accept this defeat for long. This Tetsuo will begin to root out the rebels and that is when I want you to leave."

Surely it would raise even more suspicion if I abandoned Tetsuo at that time… and I highly doubted he'd let me. Though, maybe that was the point. I said nothing.

"Zetsu brought you here so you'd be prepared for this." I opened my mouth, about to say I'd been chased here by the vengeance of some Amegakure shinobi, when it clicked that those particular ninja I'd attacked… in fact, almost all of the Amegakure shinobi from the side of the wall we fought on, were the ones in league with Zetsu and… Leader-sama?

"Now that you're informed, he'll take you back to the frontline so you can resume the charade." The eyes bore into me. "I trust you will make up more than one sufficient lie. And tell Tetsuo that this boy…" he gestured imperiously at Shin. "…died at the hands of true freedom."

The vine wrapped around my midriff slackened, then crumbled away. Shin's cadaver slid limply to the ground. The mouth in my chest began snapping its teeth the moment the plant released its binding pressure.

"Uah…" The diluted poison was still taking its toll on my body. To my embarrassment, blood began to pour out of all four mouths. I wasn't even coughing this time. The scarlet liquid dripped steadily, staining my clothing.

Vaguely, from a distance, I heard a commotion overhead. One of the irrigation pipes' hatches flew open and a torrent of compressed water came smashing down to a flowerbed containing large, waxy, pink fruit. Hovering under the weight of the raining slime, the chain-beasts hunting me appeared. They had all grown to bloated proportions. There must have been at least eight of them…

I spat a glob of coagulated blood onto the cement.

Nostrils flaring, the monsters dove at me. I was about to release the last of the clay I'd stored when all of the creatures froze. Their tiny eyes were staring blankly at the man standing beside Zetsu on the platform.

Leader-sama hissed something in a raspy pitch. The chains answered him insistently. The man reprimanded them curtly. Growling resentfully they disappeared in several puffs of smoke; back to the summoning planes.

By the time my eyes had moved back to the shadowy man's position, he was gone. His surging chakra didn't disappear right away. The tendrils of energy still leapt about the room like invisible sparks from a bonfire, dying in bursts of brilliance as they flew farther from their fuel.

Zetsu glided serenely down a set of concrete steps, coming to stand no more than forty feet away from me. He paused, seeming to examine the stalk of some ugly, carnivorous plant. A Venus Flytrap. The resemblance between its sharp leaves and the ones enveloping Zetsu's upper body was uncanny.

Leaning awkwardly over the plant, he spoke conversationally. "It was fun when I told you I was in Tetsuo's Inmetsu squad. Your reaction was entertaining. Truthfully, I don't have an inkling of what is involved in explosive work. I joined that team before you weren't any the wiser to my ignorance."

"A waste of time," the dark side snapped. Zetsu seemed to vacillate indecisively.

"Oh, well," the white half shrugged. He hesitated for a moment, then swept away from the menacing plant, half-limping towards me.

I stiffened uncontrollably. There was something very inhuman about the way he moved. One moment he flowed gracefully from one spot to another, the next he was staggering around, as though fighting against something twisting around inside him.

"Plant manipulation is very similar to Mokuton jutsu."

"You wouldn't know what that is, boy."

"Yes, otherwise you would have spotted the lie immediately when I told you the people of my village used Tsurukusa jutsu." Zetsu inclined his head slightly.

I was confused, but clearly not needed in this conversation.

"Tsurukusa jutsu… Vine and plant arts are mine alone."

"And that Orochimaru thought he had done something special with harnessing Mokuton…" the black side sneered.

This might have started out as an explanation for Zetsu's interference in my life, but it had turned into some sort of rant about jutsu I didn't want to know about. So what? I hadn't noticed that he'd been making up a bunch of phony stories about Kusagakure-nin… Whatever… neither had Tetsuo.

"Don't Kusa-nin practice earth arts, but with plants, right? Combining water chakra… or something…?" I had asked.

"That's correct, most of them do," Zetsu had told me as Nobu.

Zetsu crept up to my side, stealing an odd glance at Shin's body before turning to stare at me. His eyes moved discreetly over the blood soaked into my black and white kimono.

"I'm hungry. Cut the crap; there'll be time for this later."

"Oh…" Zetsu contemplated his own suggestion. "Yes." He looked me over with something close to a wistful expression.

"I'm going to warp you back to the gate you were fighting at."

The trap around his shoulders loomed over me, making me feel tiny. I could see every knotted detail and swollen vein running up from his chest. Sweat was glistening clearly on his dark side.

"So you're not going to explain anymore?" I asked haughtily. "I'm not going anywhere with you people… whenever you come to get me. I really couldn't care less about nationalism and all that…"

"Shut up. I don't care either," the dark half snarled.

"What do you care about, then?" I asked, a sarcastic grin slipping onto my features.

Zetsu didn't answer me. He had closed his eyes and begun muttering inaudibly. His two-tone lips moved quickly.

My vision began to blur and I suddenly felt disembodied. I tried to move, but none of my muscles complied. I was fading away… my worst fear.

The last I caught of Zetsu was his back as he stooped down over Shin's corpse, whispering feverishly.

"Bony… lean…"

"Better than nothing."

In a swirl of pollen, I was gone.

AN:

Homen suru – to release (from an obligation)

Mokuton jutsu – Wood Release Arts

Tsurukusa – Vine