As promised! Chapter 25. It's not super long, mostly because my exams at the moment are taking up every spare moment of my life. AS levels are brain-meltingly hard T_T However! My last exam of the term is tomorrow morning, so then I can go back to proper writing. And now for the thanks! Yaoi Note-Yaoi Goddess XD gets a mention and - as usual - special thanks goes out to my amazing, inspirational and all-round lovely regular reviewers: Devil'sLittleBabyGirl, missmridvika, demon lilith, Aiko of the Akatsuki and Miss Hydrangea! The fact that people are kind enough to read and support this story makes me so happy I could almost bear to revise! Now, without further ado...

Disclaimer:

I don't own Naruto! (and NOW, without further ado...)

Study In Contrasts

The next morning started with chemistry. Way to chuck me in at the deep end.

I deliberately left it until only a few minutes before the beginning of the lesson to walk in, hoping that there would be an obvious place for me to sit. Unfortunately it seemed the universe wanted to make things more difficult for me today; I could either sit on the back row on my own or next to Sakura at the front of the class.

Meeting Sakura's eyes I saw surprise pass across her face as she realized what my being there meant. I offered her a small smile and words cannot describe how relieved I was when she smiled back and patted the chair next to her.

I took my place just as the teacher came into the room. A tall man with bandages wrapped tightly around the top of his head and a white cloth covering the left side of his face. I'd given up on being surprised when teachers came in with their faces hidden, it was clearly something that was unusually common here.

"What's his name?" I whispered to Sakura.

"Baki." She replied quietly, "He's nicer than he looks."

"Good. Because he looks a little scary."

In addition to the bizarre head accessories he had two dark red tattoos on his right cheek, stretching off into the bandages over his ear, in a sort of wavy triangle shape.

Even though his appearance was weird his teaching style was refreshingly normal and we were talked through a double page spread in the textbook before being told to take notes and answer the questions.

I wrote a note for Sakura on a new sheet of lined paper and slid it over.

I'm sorry if I went too far the other day. -I

It's fine. I'm sorry I got so angry at you. I know you're trying to help me, it's just that it's not as big a deal as you think. -S

In that case, why don't you want to tell me? -I

I don't know. But it's not about trust. I trust you completely. -S

Same here, just so you know. But on a separate note... Could you give me a hand with question three? -I

Sakura laughed and leaned over to talk me through the process of converting mass of a substance into atomic mass into number of moles into concentration per cubic decimeter... Well, it made more sense at the time.

/\/\/\/\

"You know what we actually haven't gotten around to having a real chat about yet?" Sakura asked as we left chemistry.

"Go on, what?"

"Shikamaru and Temari."

The sketch in my art folder seemed to suddenly weigh an awful lot.

"Oh yeah. Um, I have to get to Spanish. But maybe we can chat at break?"

"Sounds good." Sakura caught me in a quick hug and jogged off to whatever her next lesson was.

Spanish seemed to drag on almost endlessly. I spent a lot of time pretending to listen while actually looking up random words in the dictionary. Did you know that Spanish for 'sheep' is 'oveja'? Neither did I. But I wasted almost ten minutes doodling cartoon sheep all over my blank worksheet and writing 'oveja' in funky writing all around them.

Thanks to that incredibly productive hour I was able to greet Sakura in the sixth form common room with a confident "hola, tonta". She looked at me, mystified.

"Speaking in tongues now? What does that mean?"

"It's Spanish," I replied smugly, "for: hello, idiot."

"Great. Fantastic. Your mother must be so proud." Sakura teased, "Actually, on that note, congrats on making it to advanced chemistry!"

"Thanks." I blushed, "I didn't actually mean to. I think it's all thanks to your help with all my homework and stuff."

"The point is that you managed to impress Anko. That was definitely done by you in your lessons. But if you'd rather not talk about that, can we have a quick chat about the Shikamaru and Temari situation?"

I looked around to check that nobody from our immediate friendship group was within hearing distance, but they'd all gone down to buy snacks so we were safe.

"Sure, if you like. I don't know how much of a 'situation' it is. As far as I'm aware they're together now. Actually," I frowned, "Temari hasn't texted me or called me or anything."

"Weird." Sakura flopped down on a sofa and I sat down next to her. She glanced at me, "What do you make of that?"

"I have no idea." I said honestly, "Temari's always really straight with people she has a problem with. I can't remember anything that's happened that might make her want to avoid talking to me. And I would have expected her to want to talk about things with Shikamaru." An idea hit me then and I got my phone out. "I'm going to quickly call Kiba." Sakura nodded and I moved away to dial the number.

"Hey Ino." He said as he picked up, "You okay?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Uh, yeah, not bad."

"How are things with the queen bitch?"

Kiba sighed, "Well actually, things have been a bit weird around school these last few days."

"Oh?"

"I mean, obviously Ten Ten and I haven't spoken to Kin since Wednesday. But Temari and her are thick as thieves. And Kin's been working on that group from the year above – do you remember? Jirobo, Tayuya, Kidomaru... uh..."

"Sakon and Kimimaro? I remember them."

"Yeah, well she's got them on side too now. I think she felt the need to do some recruitment since with you, me and Ten Ten gone her group was looking significantly thinner."

"Why's Temari sided with her?" I asked, baffled. Sakura looked up at this, frowning.

"I can tell you honestly I have no idea. But I'll bet that somewhere along the lines of the explanation we'll find out that Kin has screwed with the truth big time. I've tried to talk to her – Temari, that is, not Kin – but Kin won't leave her alone for a moment."

"Okay. Well, you keep trying. I'll see if I can get hold of her. I have to go."

"Nice chatting with you."

"Bye!" I hung up. "I'm not sure what to make of that."

"What to make of what?"

I sat down next to Sakura again. "Temari and Kin are really close, ever since Wednesday."

"Huh."

The bell rang, making us both jump. "What? No way it's been fifteen minutes already!"

"I beg to differ." Sakura stood up, offering a hand to pull me to my feet as well. "What's your next lesson?"

"Art. Yours?"

"Maths. We'll have to talk more about this later though."

"Definitely." I agreed. "See you later."

/\/\/\/\

Shikamaru was already sitting down when I got to the art room. Rather than going to my normal place next to him I sat at the end of the row of tables. Shikamaru shot me a puzzled look but I pretended not to see it, getting my sketch out and hoping that from this distance he wouldn't be able to make out the details.

The door to the classroom opened and I looked up instantly – to see Kakashi.

"You're early. For you." I commented as he sat down.

"Mmm. I am, aren't I?" He sat down at his desk, put his feet up and got his book out.

I rolled my eyes and went back to my picture. I'd finished with the outlines, now it was time to start on the painting. I liked to work with watercolour paints mostly, I liked the subtleties of colour you could achieve. I always tried to dilute the paints as little as possible though. I hated those wishy-washy watercolour paintings that looked like they were done in different shades of white. I may have been using watercolours but my pictures were always pretty striking.

Obviously I had to begin with the base layer. I was using proper art paper, designed for painting on, but even so I wanted to keep the number of layers down if I could to avoid overloading it. I painted the first layer of the colours on the clothes in the picture, adding a dark grey background around the two figures.

I was just putting the finishing touches on the base coats for the skin and hair when a voice at my ear made me jump.

"That's almost good, yeah."

I narrowed my eyes at Deidara as he strolled round to the other side of the table to get a better look.

"Count yourself very lucky that I didn't smudge anything when you did that."

He held the picture up carefully, sliding a hand gently underneath it to lift it closer to his face.

"Interesting. I think I might recognize this person, hmm?"

My face suddenly felt very warm and I knew I was blushing in a big way. I tried very hard not to look over at Shikamaru. I glanced up at Deidara and saw that he was facing Shikamaru with a contemplative look on his face.

"Don't look, idiot." I muttered.

"Why, worried I might give you away, yeah? Who's this he's with?" Despite his defiant tone Deidara lowered his voice and looked back at me.

I shrugged, "Another friend of mine."

Deidara snorted softly, "Ouch. This a real scene then, hm?"

"Mind your own business and give me my picture back." I held out a hand expectantly but he just carried on looking between me and my picture.

"I think we should put aside our differences and agree to be friends... hn."

Surprised by the apparent randomness of the statement, I laughed. "That came out of nowhere. And I said the other day-"

"I know what you said, yeah. And I thought a lot of it wasn't quite fair. You don't know the whole story and I think you ought to before you start calling people asses. Besides, I like your art. What do you say, hm?" His tone was very casual, so much so that I half wondered if he was taking the piss.

"I don't think friendship quite works that way."

"Why not?" He flashed me a quick grin, "Tell you what. If you agree then I'll give you your picture back, yeah."

I rolled my eyes. "That's not really the right way to start a friendship. With blackmail."

"Not blackmail, hn. Bribery. Does that mean you accept?"

"I guess so." I said warily. "Now do I get my work back?"

"Of course, yeah." he laid the picture carefully back on the table and walked over to his clay on the other side of the classroom. And I was left wondering what on earth I'd just agreed to.

/\/\/\/\

Sakura and Hinata saved me my usual space in between the two of them at lunch.

"I need to talk to you guys," I said quietly as I sat down. Hinata nodded slightly to show she'd heard and Sakura sent me a curious glance across her mashed potatoes. I ate as quickly as I could then got up and left, heading up to the common room. Moments later I was joined by Hinata and then Sakura and we sat on some beanbags in the corner.

I was getting some very confused looks from my two friends but I thought about what I wanted to say for a moment longer.

"You both know of Deidara, don't you?" They both nodded warily, "And I'm guessing neither of you are his biggest fans?" Another set of nods, "Well I'm kind of friends with him now. And if you want to know how that happened I can tell you exactly how, because it was bizarre."

"Go on," Sakura said, looking intrigued.

"He basically held my art work to ransom and said he wanted us to 'put aside our differences' and be friends. Then he said he wouldn't give my painting back unless I agreed. So I did." I sat back and braced myself for the disapproval.

"Okay. That's pretty weird. Did he just kind of blurt it out?"

"Umm, yes and no. It sounded like it might have had some kind of rationalization in his head, but it didn't really make sense in terms of the conversation we were having."

"You were having a conversation?" Sakura sounded amused.

"He talks to me in art sometimes."

Hinata and Sakura exchanged a significant look and I fiddled with a strand of my hair, feeling like a traitor.

"I'm sorry." I said, "I know he and his friends bully Naruto and sometimes Gaara too, and I had a real go at him the other day. I thought he'd leave me alone after that but apparently not."

Hinata looked utterly confused, "Ino, why are you sorry?"

"Because being friends with him is like betraying you guys."

"Ino," Sakura said gently, "That's a Kin mindset. You can be friends with who you like, so long as you don't turn on us."

"What, so... you're not annoyed?"

"No." Hinata said firmly.

"Just surprised." Sakura confirmed.

Well that changed things. More than I thought it would. Once I didn't feel guilty about getting along with Deidara I could admit to myself that he wasn't actually all that bad. Compared to petty criminals or the flu virus.

"You guys," I said decisively, "are very, very cool."

Sakura laughed at that, and Hinata blushed ten shades of red.

Okay, so now that I didn't have to worry about a friendship with Deidara betraying my other friends, did I feel any different about it?

A quick scan of the common room revealed the Akatsuki kids sitting over by the window in their usual cluster of sofas. Deidara was there too, of course, sitting in between Sasori and a boy with an orange and black swirly mask who I didn't recognize.

I watched as the masked kid said something that made him, and nobody else, laugh. Whatever he said seemed to be at Deidara's expense because he stood up and glared down at Mr mask with a murderous look in his eyes. He said something slowly and the boy in the mask appeared to apologize, mollifying Deidara slightly, before immediately putting his foot in it again and ending up with a punch to the side of the head. I smiled a little watching them; it was sort of like watching the antics of baby animals. Although you don't really understand what's going on you can still be amused in a sort of patronizing way. Aren't they funny, kind of thing.

"Hey? Earth to Ino?" Sakura nudged me with her shoulder and I drew my attention back to our little triangle of bean bags.

Sakura and Hinata smiled slightly at each other and both burst into giggles. I could guess what they were thinking.

"Way mature guys." I said imperiously, "I have the perfect quote for this situation: Never argue with idiots. They'll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Well I don't intend to allow that to happen!"

It took them a little while to stop sniggering, and then both of them had biology, and I was left on my own for a free period.

Not for long though. It seemed Deidara took his new found role of 'friend' very seriously.

"Hey bimbo. Sitting alone, hm?" He dropped into the bean bag opposite me.

"Not anymore." I observed.

"I want to know about that picture of yours, hn."

I laughed disbelievingly, "Oh do you? You're going to have to be a little more subtle than that if you're looking to wheedle secrets out of me. Why don't you go first and tell me why anything I said to you the other day was unfair?"

"I asked first, yeah." He pointed out.

"I'm not going to just tell you something you could use against me without getting some kind of security first." I objected.

Deidara just laughed at that, "I thought you agreed we were friends, hm?"

"I don't even trust my friends without evidence that it's a good idea."

"Fine, hn. Why don't you ask me a specific question and I'll answer it. Then I get to do the same to you."

"Alright. Let's start with... what does your gang have against Gaara and Naruto?"

I don't know if I was really expecting him to answer me or just dodge the question and look for a new game, but answer he did.

"It's not really that simple. Sasori has a grudge against Gaara for a reason that goes back to their families and the place they're both from. Kisame just finds Naruto annoying. As for Kakuzu... he'll try to get money out of anybody, yeah. Naruto's just a convenient target for weekly ransoms because his family's so rich."

I looked at Deidara in mingled annoyance and disbelief. "I can't believe you're so casual about it."

"It's not like I have much choice... hn. Anyway, my turn to ask a question. And my question is: what's the story behind your picture in art, hm?"

How did I know that would be his question? I sighed, might as well get it over with.

"The simplest version is this: I had a crush on Shikamaru, I invited him to that party I threw, he met one of my friends from my old school and they vanished. A little while later I went upstairs and found them entangled with each other in my room. Hence the picture."

"When I saw you outside had you just walked in on them, yeah?"

"Mm-hm."

Deidara nodded slowly, taking that in.

"My turn. Tell me about the Akatsuki."

"That's not a question, hn."

"I'm sure you can find the question in there somewhere."

"Fine, hm. We have some immunity at school because Orochimaru is quite close to both the headteacher and the guy in charge of our 'little gang', hn. That's why some of us can seem to... bend the rules on occasion. I have my suspicions about why it was set up in the first place, hm. But Pein, the one who started it, isn't a bad guy, yeah."

"Bend the rules..." I muttered, "Tormenting people isn't what I call 'bending the rules'. But whatever, it's your turn to ask a question."

We ended up talking for the rest of the free period.

I learned from Deidara that he hadn't wanted to join the gang when he'd been invited, but Itachi had challenged him to a fight and he had lost, leading to his comment earlier about not having much of a choice. He told me about living with Pein and Konan, who were aged 22 and 20 respectively, at the time because he couldn't stand his dad's girlfriend.

I also discovered that the tattoos on his hands were supposed to symbolize how he felt that he spoke through his sculptures, and that he liked to smash his finished pieces of art once they dried.

"Art is transient, fleeting beauty." He told me with a light in his eyes. "Plus it's a great stress reliever, yeah."

I had to tell him exactly what Kin had done to me when she'd attacked me at my party. He also wanted to know about me and Kiba, how long we'd been friends and why. When I was talking about that I mentioned how I used to be really involved in the party scene and then he wanted to know all sorts of details about that.

When the bell went for the end of the day I was caught by surprise. I'd completely lost track of time during the hour. I'd say 'time flies when you're having fun', but I'm not sure that really applied there. The conversation was very interesting, don't get me wrong, but it was more embarrassing than fun – being under scrutiny like that.

I watched Deidara unfold himself from the bean bag and stretch out his arms in front of him.

"See you tomorrow bimbo, hm."

"Bye."

From a complete ass to someone I could happily sped an hour talking to. Isn't it funny how quickly the way you see somebody can shift?