This chapter didn't end up as long as I thought it would! Writing gods be praised!
Please suspend your disbelief to accept that Deidara can hear conversations on the tournament field form very far away. Unless you're bored by the OC content in this fic, in which case I recommend to you skip the whole tournament because it's not actually particularly plot-relevant, LMAO.
xXx
As they get closer to the tournament, Daisuke gets more nervous but Kakashi gets more confident in his ability to stay alive; Shiori is cleared for training and starts carefully tipping her senbon with venom; and Itachi becomes more and more tightly wound.
"I'm calling in Shisui for back-up," Itachi says, pacing their bedroom and glaring at the floor. No less than three crows are sitting on his bed. The reason for the crows eludes Deidara.
"Okay," Deidara says slowly. "Why?"
"One of the Fire daimyo's sons is attending the tournament," Itachi continues to mutter, "and I've asked Shisui to make sure he's part of the guard."
"That doesn't explain why you need him, yeah," Deidara points out.
Itachi continues to ignore him. He ignores the crows. He glares at his feet, like maybe he could genjutsu them into being faster.
"So does this mean you're confident you can kill Tobi or not?" Deidara asks. "You couldn't before, yeah. And now you have less chakra."
Itachi pauses in his pacing.
"I have less chakra," Itachi confirms, "but I don't have…"
He rubs his chest absentmindedly, and then goes right back to pacing and not being at all helpful. Doesn't have what? Heartburn? Itachi was twenty-one before; he should have been in prime physical condition.
Deidara shifts in his seat on his bed, feeling restless and annoyed with the situation.
"Wanna spar?" he tries.
They fight, out on the training ground Deidara has already ruined and forced Daisuke and Shiori to have to work around ripped up terrain.
(Zabuza showed up at their apartment one day to threaten Kakashi with fines, although he clearly found the whole situation funny.)
Deidara and Itachi fuck it up even more. Most of it ends up on fire.
The fight stops when Deidara ends up in a genjutsu he can't break, which is so distorting and nightmarish and he ends up on his hands and knees, vomiting.
"Are you alright?" Itachi asks, leaning over Deidara and holding his hair back for him. Deidara's hair, like the rest of him, is damp with sweat.
Feeling monumentally better with his stomach empty and his brain illusion-free, Deidara shoves Itachi aside.
"You don't get to do that to someone and then ask if they're okay, yeah," he says, but there's no heat to it.
Usually Deidara would be mad about being defeated by stupid genjutsu, but he'd liked seeing Itachi like that, out on the battlefield. He likes seeing Itachi, who's been anxious and bity and wound up for days, finally unleashing all his pent up rage and destruction, even if Deidara ended up the canvas for his art.
Maybe it's even better if Deidara is the canvas? He's not sure.
Itachi sits next to him on the ground, calm and cool again. He's ever so slightly winded.
"I think you were right, actually," Itachi says, stretching his arms in front of him.
"Of course I was, yeah," Deidara agrees. Then he asks, "About what?"
"If worst comes to worst," Itachi says, "we can just blow him up."
xXx
On the morning of the tournament, Itachi wakes Deidara up before dawn and leads him out of their bedroom window. Shisui is standing in the courtyard below, looking very put upon.
"Itachi," he says, "what the hell is going on? Your mother is-"
They don't get to find out what Mikoto is, because Itachi explains what's going to happen that day very quickly. Kisame is going to find and confirm the location of Madara-slash-Tobi and communicate it to Itachi. Depending on where he is, Itachi has about thirty different plans to lure him out of Kiri and onto one of the various islands in the sea a few kilometers from the village, depending on the circumstances of where Madara-slash-Tobi is and what he's doing. Some of the plans involve Shisui and some Deidara and some Kisame.
"Wait," Deidara says, frowning, "you're not going to watch the tournament?"
"Why would I?" Itachi asks. "This is much more important."
Deidara scowls at him as he keeps talking. Sure, the other genin don't matter, but Deidara's art certainly did. How dare he!
"Once we're gone, I want you two to come find us," Itachi concludes.
"Both of us?" Shisui asks, shooting Deidara a doubtful look. "No offense, Itachi, but if you can't take down the masked man, I don't see how a genin is going to help."
Deidara grits his teeth. Did no one appreciate his art?!
Itachi ignores his concerns, turning to Deidara. "If you see Susanoo," he says. "That's worst come to worst. Don't hold back."
Deidara… is not sure how he feels about that. He's not even sure what Itachi is asking him to do.
"What?" Shisui asks, a hint of panic in voice. "Susanoo? Itachi, since when could you-"
"I bought a gift for Sasuke," Itachi continues calmly. "If I don't survive, I'd like it if one of you delivered it to him."
"Itachi," Shisui tries again, but Itachi flickers out of existence. "Itachi!"
"What the hell is Susanoo?" Deidara asks as Shisui rubs his temples.
"He's just like his mother," Shisui mutters and then also disappears. Not answering questions is just an uchiha tradition.
Deidara goes back to bed, but he fails to fall back asleep. He doesn't really have a personal stake in if Madara-slash-Tobi lives or dies, except for an ongoing annoyance that Tobi was lying to him. But he would be really annoyed if Itachi up and died, especially right after he'd refused to acknowledge Deidara's art. Killing Itachi is Deidara's job.
xXx
They're escorted to the tournament stadium by Zabuza, who delivers more jabs to Kakashi about the torn up training ground. There are jokes about war rekindled over property damage. Zabuza threatens to get his own student and unleash them on Konoha's Chunin Exam for the express purpose of flooding training grounds. Kakashi giggles and doesn't even mention Itachi's absence from their little group.
All the major villages, as far as Deidara knows, have stadiums for the express purpose of the public spectacle of the Chunin Exams. It's sort of a waste of space, although in Iwa sometimes civilian sports clubs would use it.
(Still a waste of space, in Deidara's opinion.)
The Suna team walks with them, and Shiori says something generic to Seiji about hoping they have a good match. Seiji is less downbeaten than before, but she's still not friendly anymore. She ignores Shiori with a determined look on her face.
The contestants have their own box at the top of the stadium, across from the box where the Mizukage sits. Deidara knew Yagura had a young face, but the person in the Mizukage's chair looks downright childlike. Weird.
Deidara leans over the railing of the box, peering into the stands of the stadium below. There's still time for more of an audience to accrue, but there are definitely fewer spectators than other Exams Deidara has watched. Kakashi is seated by himself, his face in his damn book.
Proctors mill about in the field, which is mostly grass with a couple of ponds and a small grove of trees. Kisame is having an animated conversation with a chunin woman.
Deidara looks back up at the Mizukage's box when there's movement. At a usual Chunin Exam tournament, another Kage or maybe a Daimyo might join the host village's Kage. At this one, the most important guest is the son of the Fire Country Daimyo, and he's not even the first or second son. Deidara watches as the Daimyo's son, flanked by four Konoha shinobi, bows to the Mizukage and then takes the seat beside him. Shisui takes position next to him, and from here Deidara can't tell if he's nervous or not.
No one in the box looks like quite the right height and build to be Tobi-slash-Madara in disguise, but who fucking knew what that guy was capable of. Deidara shakes himseelf, determined to enjoy this opportunity to show off his art, even if Itachi might show up and fuck it all up at any second.
Itachi is nowhere to be seen, and Deidara is definitely not disappointed by that.
"I just want to make sure we stay friends," Shiori is saying to the two Suna genin.
"Shiori," Seiji says, her voice harsh. "I dragged my dying teammate's body to the safehouse medics to see if they could save him, and they counted that as passing a test even as he stopped breathing. This isn't about friendship anymore."
Shiori doesn't have a good reply to that- probably because there isn't one- and Seiji moves to the other side of the box with Saboten.
"What's up Konoha assholes?" a voice calls, and Sumomo stands at the door to the box. The smirk on her face doesn't slip, even as the other Kiri genin elbows and shove their way past her. Nibe sits silently next to Shiori. "Ready to die, sword boy?"
Daisuke, who has been putting up with Itachi bullying him completely unprompted for weeks and now might be immune to verbal taunts, clenches his teeth and stares resolutely ahead. Sumomo tries some more taunts, but when Daisuke refuses to acknowledge her, she shrugs and waltzes over to go harass the other foreign team.
"Hey Suna girl," she calls. "I heard you fucking took down Hoozuki. Shame it got your teammate killed."
Deidara frowns. A Hoozuki…?
"If you also want your body brought home in a water bottle," Seiji answers stiffly, "keep talking like that."
Sumomo barks out a laugh.
The first match is between two Kiri genin. It lasts approximately ten minutes, and then one genin plunges a goddamn sawshark bill to the other one's abdomen and yanks. Blood and guts go everywhere, and next to him, Daisuke gags.
Why wasn't that one of the Seven Swordsman's blades? That was cool as shit!
"I guess I'm next," Shiori says as they watch medic-nin drag the body off the field. The other genin staggers after them, a kunai in his thigh.
"Be careful, yeah," Deidara tells her in a low voice. "Taking out a Hoozuki is no joke."
"I will," Shiori says, standing as the proctor calls her and Seiji down. She doesn't look outwardly nervous, but then again, she rarely does. "Why? Because I have people to make proud."
She shoots a tight smile at Nibe and then follows Seiji out of the box.
"I'm glad Shiori drew Seiji," Daisuke mutters, standing to lean over the railing and get a better view. "These Kiri-nin are brutal."
Deidara moves to stand next to him, watching as Seiji and Shiori stand across from each other, a pool of another genin's blood between them. Nibe copies them, standing at Deidara's other side. Nibe is, as usual, difficult to read behind his droopy eyes.
And also, more importantly: Deidara does not care about how Nibe feels.
"Suna-nin can be plenty brutal, yeah," Deidara tells Daisuke. Seiji doesn't seem like someone who'd murder a former ally, but it's not off the table.
The proctor calls for the fight to start, and Shiori and Seiji spring apart. Shiori heads straight for the trees to hide, while Seiji summons a puppet. This one is humanoid with four, double-jointed arms. It's been painted an angry red with zigzagging white stripes.
Seiji waits for a few minutes, glaring at the trees. Someone in the audience boos.
"Hiding, Shiori?" Seiji tries calling out. "Not so confident without your strong teammate, huh?" There's no movement from the trees and Seiji continues taunting, "Embarrassed that everyone's going to see you only made it this far riding someone else's coattails?"
Deidara did pull most of the weight on his team, didn't he? Next to him, Daisuke shuffles.
Then, Seiji twitches, waving her hand next to her face like she's swapping away a mosquito. A kikaichu?
Seiji moves her other hand, and her puppet's head snaps back, and a plume of flame goes shooting into the air. Seiji makes it spin, creating a fan of fire around her.
"I'm not letting you suck my chakra dry!" she yells at Shiori's hiding spot.
Kikaichu… are pretty weak to fire. Then again, most things are. It's one of the many reasons fire is awesome.
Still, Shiori claimed she'd mostly regenerated her colony, and an unfortunate thing about the many wonders of fire is that Seiji's puppet can only have so much fuel for it. Shiori has her work cut out for her, but between Shiori and Daisuke, Deidara thinks Shiori definitely has the better shot at actually winning her match.
Seiji decides to set the trees on fire next- a Deidara-approved move- and Shiori flips herself out of the way of the flames, tossing several senbon at Shiori mid-air. None of them land. Shiori was always stronger with kunai, but kunai are too big for the tiny amount of venom she can pull from little invertebrates. Her aim with senbon could only be improved so much in a short amount of time.
Fights between long-distance fighters are interesting when they're someone like Deidara or Sasori, but they're boring when they're two genin failing to hit each other. Shiori circles around Seiji, throwing kunai and shuriken, and Seiji's puppet spits shuriken and occasionally fire to burn off kikaichu. Deidara thinks Seiji would likely win if she took the risk and rushed Shiori with the puppet, but the Suna girl keeps it close to her to keep the kikaichu off.
Shiori takes a few hits from shuriken, and fire grazes her a couple times, but she successfully avoids any dangerous hits and ignores her injuries easily. Seiji remains unharmed and in control, making Shiori exhaust herself dodging and running, and Deidara thinks she's clearly the better kunoichi… except there's just something slightly off about her behavior. The puppet moves jerkily and she's burning through her fuel and shuriken too fast, like she's desperate to end the fight quickly but doesn't want to risk taking too much damage from the kikaichu to make better moves. Trying to stay fighting fit for the next match too, maybe?
Luckily, Shiori isn't completely stupid, and she has a few tricks up her sleeve. Seiji suddenly yelps and looks down. Hundreds of kikaichu crawl out of the grass and up her leg.
"You should surrender," Shiori calls. "You'll go into chakra exhaustion in minutes, I don't want to hurt you."
"Such a softie," Nibe says, sounding fond. "Won't even kill house spiders."
Deidara is pretty sure Shiori's threat is an exaggeration, especially since chakra strings do not require much chakra and Seiji has to still be running on full. Still, a swarm of kikaichu are no joke.
"No!" Seiji screams, and then she points her puppet's fire at her own legs.
"Oh no," Daisuke breathes.
Sometimes, in Deidara's experience, setting yourself on fire is a totally viable strategy. But unlike Deidara, Seiji doesn't know how to do it and not fuck herself up. She goes down on her knees, right in the flaming grass, and lets out a scream of fury as her puppet rushes Shiori.
"What," Daisuke starts, and then turns to yell across the room at Saboten. "What the hell is she thinking?"
Saboten blinks at them a few times. Between them, some of the Kiri-nin have perked up in interest at the desperate display. Below, Shiori is parrying the puppet's knives-for-hands with a kunai and looks confused Seiji is even still fighting. The puppet shreds one of her arms, and Shiori throws herself into one of the ponds to avoid it setting her on fire too.
Saboten moves down the box to murmur at them. "After we fought the Hoozuki, another team ambushed us and Sana was injured. We decided to take him to the safehouse to get medical attention. While we were carrying him, Seiji kept promising she was going to turn the Hoozuki in so she could fight that team in the tournament and avenge him."
Below, Shiori shoots out of the pond and dives around the puppet, miraculously managing to get between it and Seiji. This is, Deidara is pretty sure, considered to be one of the worst positions a puppeteer could be in. Did he tell Shiori that? He hopes she's smart enough to figure out she basically just won.
The puppet lets a sputtering stream of fire that cuts out abruptly as it runs out of fuel, and Shiori darts away from it and in the general direction of Seiji. Seiji is crawling out of the burning patch of grass she made killing all the kikaichu, and Deidara nearly misses her doing something sneaky as she goes.
That… might actually win her the fight, if Shiori didn't notice.
"But the team that attacked you didn't pass," Nibe tells Saboten, his eyes still on Shiori. "They've been complaining about one of you using the body they killed to pass as cheating."
"Exactly," Saboten replies. "They're not here. Seiji can't fulfill her promise."
So… what? She was setting herself on fire and maybe ruining her legs forever because she didn't have closure? How stupid! Deidara was almost always pro-fire, especially as a way to work through your mental breakdown, but this wasn't artistic at all. It was just pathetic.
Shiori stops a meter from Seiji, kunai in hand.
"She won," Nibe says, sounding smug.
"No, she didn't," Deidara sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Surrender," Shiori commands, and then Seiji's little doll-like training puppet launches itself out of the billows of smoke from the burning grass and onto Shiori's back, a senbon clutched in its hand like a tiny sword.
Shiori lets out a muted scream as the senbon goes into her back, and the puppet climbs up higher to her shoulders and holds the tip of blade to her throat, right above the jugular.
"No," Seji replies, a manic gleam in her eyes. "You surrender."
There's a long, drawn out silence where Deidara really hopes Shiori's kikaichu are eating through Seiji's chakra as fast as possible.
Shiori doesn't say anything. She gurgles.
"Well?" Seiji asks. Her fingers twitch. If she'd been a Kiri-nin, or maybe just didn't have a rapport with Shiori, Deidara thinks she would have finished her by now.
Instead of answering, Shiori staggers back and collapses. Seiji has the grace to look shocked and concerned.
The proctor pokes Shiori with his toe and declares Seiji the winner by knockout. Kakashi is on the field a second later, and Deidara misses what he says over the roar of the crowd, but it's probably that the training puppet grabbed one of Shiori's senbon off the ground, and those were coated in various types of venom. Kakashi banned Shiori from using anything that could kill her for exactly this reason, but it was still better to get an anti-venom sooner than later.
The Suna jounin jogs onto the field to check on his student as well, and as the noise from the crowd dies down, Deidara hears Seiji saying, "I didn't know- I didn't mean to-"
Saboten starts for the exit of the box without so much as saying a word to Deidara, even though their match is up next.
Deidara turns to Daisuke. "Maybe tell Seiji that Shiori's gonna live, yeah?"
"Yeah," Daisuke agrees, looking green. "Remember our plan?"
"What plan?" Deidara asks, and Daisuke looks like he might actually vomit. "I'm kidding, yeah! You know I'm going to do that, plan or no plan."
"Do what?" Nibe asks.
Instead of taking the stairs like everyone else, Deidara jumps directly from the box down into the field. The Chunin Exam tournament is all about showing off, and Deidara is very good at that.
(Even if Itachi isn't going to watch.)
He watches Kakashi follow Shiori's stretcher off the field. He does not look nearly as stressed as he did when he thought he was walking Daisuke into a deathmatch, and Deidara assumes Shiori's prognosis is good. Seiji follows on her own stretcher.
The proctor spends a few minutes stomping out the fire in the grass with an annoyed look on his face. The grass was damp from the morning mist so the fire didn't get very big or very far, but a part of Deidara is still disappointed to see it put out.
"Alright," the proctor says when Deidara and Saboten are in position. "Begin!"
Saboten leaps forward, kunai raised. Deidara knows from his other life that his promotion relies on his superiors' assessment of his skills as much as him winning, and so he spars with Saboten for a few minutes, to demonstrate that yes, he can fight like a regular shinobi. Kunai, kunai, duck and roll under a wind jutsu, punch the kid directly in the throat. Boring.
He thinks Saboten was probably the hard-hitter of their little team. Deidara, as generous as he's being right now, makes him look like a joke.
Deidara watches Saboten stagger back, rubbing his neck. He even lets him start up some wild looking wind jutsu- whirlwind something something no jutsu.
"Uh huh," Deidara replies, because this jutsu is seriously taking too long to launch. The kid was probably used to having his team to distract enemies while it charged.
Deidara is bored, though. He sets off the centipedes that have been digging through the earth throughout the whole fight, and the entire stadium explodes. Saboten is blown right off his feet. Rock and dirt and grass and pond water fly into the air and into the first few rows of seats of the stadium. There's a moment of dead silence, as loud as the explosion itself, and then the crowd goes wild.
Deidara grins, marveling at the destruction around him. He hasn't blown up something while he was standing in it in a while. It looks and feels fantastic, even as he has to throw up his arms to deflect shrapnel.
Deidara had not actually thought his attack through much more than "fuck up the whole stadium," so he's not actually sure if Saboten lived. It takes the proctor a few minutes to even find him.
"Win to Deidara by knockout!" the proctor eventually declares.
"Hope that fucked up the arena enough for you," Deidara says brightly to Daisuke when he returns to the contestant's box.
Daisuke buries his face in his hands and mutters something. Deidara ignores his teammate, as the crowd is currently losing their minds, and he goes to lean over the rail and wave. Good. Deidara deserves praise, even if he's not even out of breath from that fight. Even if stupid Itachi wasn't even watching.
(He is sweating profusely, but that's more because this place is hot and humid and awful.)
Daisuke's fight is delayed by about forty-five minutes while they deliberate if they should try and fix the stadium at all. Some of the Kiri officials look unhappy- Deidara has completely ruined the water features, which obviously gives their own shinobi a disadvantage. Then again, Kiri-nin have always liked a bloodbath. Some of them are bound to be giddy about watching two genin try to murder each other in difficult conditions.
Sumomo spends a good portion of that forty-five minutes pacing in front of Daisuke and describing all the ways she's going to cut him open. She's not even very creative, but Daisuke goes paler and paler.
"Think you have a chance now, with no water for my eels?" she coos. "You don't, you fucking weakling, and I'm going to gut you like a fish and fry you like- like still a fish-"
She only stops when Kakashi shows up, poking his head into the box to say that Shiori is fine and was talking coherently when the medic kicked him out, but they're keeping her observation.
"That's good to hear," Nibe says, and Kakashi gives him an odd look.
"Your opponent is still out of it, but they think he'll probably live with minimum brain damage," Kakashi tells Deidara.
"Brain damage?" Daisuke repeats, looking mildly concerned.
"He hit his head pretty hard," Kakashi says mildly. "Deidara did not hold back."
Deidara did, actually, technically hold back from completely vaporizing Saboten in favor of fucking up the stadium as much as possible, and part of him in now disappointed he didn't kill him.
"Don't die, yeah," Deidara grins at Daisuke when they finally call him down. Daisuke signs something very rude back at him as he heads for the stairs.
Sumomo, apparently not to be outdone by Deidara, also jumps directly from the box down onto the field. She does a backflip as she goes. It's still not nearly as impressive as Deidara's art show.
"Does your friend know there's no way he can win?" Nibe asks curiously, and Kakashi runs his hand down his face. "She wasn't kidding about her threats."
"He'll be fine, yeah," Deidara assures them both.
It's hard to see the fight with all the rocks and rubble in the way, and Deidara imagines it's nigh-impossible to see for anyone in the lower seats of the stadium. When the proctor calls for the fight to start, Sumomo shoots forward so quickly that Daisuke barely has time to get his swords up to block.
Sumomo is incredibly fast for a genin, and Daisuke struggles just to not get hit. Even just a month ago, an onslaught like that would have at least lost him a finger. Fortunately for Daisuke, Deidara had been even faster at swinging a sword at his head.
Sumomo pushes Daisuke back further and further, in complete control and not letting him run, and then she pushes him into a crater left behind by Deidara's incredibly beautiful art.
"You and your team are just trash!" she yells gleefully as Daisuke goes backward into the crater.
Conventional wisdom states that pushing your opponent into worse and worse terrain- including but not limited to pushing them into a hole- will trip them up and make it easier for you to kill them. Here's the thing though: most opponents have not been training nearly exclusively on Deidara-designed training grounds.
Daisuke's foot goes into the crater, but instead of tripping or flailing, he rolls backward and down, ultimately ending up on his feet and finally putting some distance between himself and Sumomo. She's on top of him again almost immediately, but it's enough time that Daisuke can slap an exploding tag to the ground beneath them.
Here's the thing: Sumomo has trained to fight on uneven terrain, but Daisuke has spent the last five months running in and out of Konoha's Hellpit and also trying not to trip and die in the wake of Deidara's spars. It's obvious he's the more comfortable of the two jumping around in the rubble, even if he's swordsmanship isn't as good and he doesn't have any fancy jutsu. What Daisuke does have is a bunch of flash flares and explosive tags, which twice make Sumomo lose her mind screaming in frustration. Daisuke hasn't had enough training to perfect placing the tags or timing the flares, but it doesn't matter, because the point is that Daisuke is used to dodging around explosions and dealing with temporarily losing his vision and hearing, and most shinobi, even the more experienced ones, just… aren't.
Because they suck.
"You fucking fuck!" Tsumomo shrieks as part of some sort of meltdown. She's bleeding from both temples, and there are a few deep cuts in her thighs and arms from explosions throwing rock at her. It has not slowed her down at all and Daisuke is obviously struggling, but also, he's not dead yet.
It's really not very artistic of Daisuke, but at least he doesn't embarrass himself. He doesn't even blink when she tries throwing lightning jutsu at him, screaming in fury the whole way. Kakashi spent at least a few days chasing him around, waving a raikiri at him. Sumomo isn't even a fraction as scary as that.
Daisuke still loses, but it's far from the curbstomp everyone was expecting. When Sumomo finally pins him, ranting about how she's the apprentice of the best swordsperson in Kiri and how dare Daisuke, she's panting and bleeding in several places and unhinged. Daisuke makes a sign of surrender, and she screams wordlessly at him and makes to bring one of her swords down directly on his head.
Oh shit, Deidara thinks, and very nearly intervenes.
He doesn't, because he hesitates just long enough that Kakashi, the proctor, and Hoshigaki Kisame of all people are already down in the rubble.
Kisame has a sword- not Samehada, but a regular one for regular people- at the girl's throat, and the proctor is examining the clay centipede currently wrapped around her right arm with some trepidation.
(Look, Deidara plans ahead enough that he'd left some creepy crawlies running around in the rubble of the stadium, alright?)
Kakashi, helping a shaking Daisuke to his feet, catches Deidara's eye and shakes his head. Deidara rolls his eyes and the clay centipede disintegrates.
"I nearly died," Daisuke says when he staggers back into the contestants' box. He's been bandaged up a bit and has a slight limp, but all things considered, he didn't get beat up too bad. Sumomo is still in the infirmary because, much to her eternal shame, she walked out of that with more injuries than her sucky little opponent. "I nearly died."
Below, two more Kiri-nin are duking it out with such viciousness that it's likely one of them will die.
"But you didn't, yeah," Deidara says, not taking his eyes off the fight.
Kakashi has followed Daisuke into the box, a hand on his shoulder. "Unfortunately, you're definitely going to nearly die again if you stay a shinobi."
Daisuke sits on the bench and buries his face in his hands again, the typical Daisuke move.
"They really have a different view on what makes a proper shinobi here, huh?" Daisuke observes after a few minutes. "The proctor only stepped in because he thought Deidara's centipede was cheating."
"Hoshigaki defended you," Kakashi points out.
Of all the missing-nin Deidara has ever met, Kisame was probably the closest to what he'd call "honorable." He took on all the same dirty missions as the rest of Akatsuki, of course, but sometimes he openly disapproved of Kakuzu murdering his partners, and he nodded along to Leader-sama's occasional weird rants about world peace that Deidara didn't care about.
Intervening in murdering an opponent who'd already surrendered tracked with Kisame's personality, Deidara supposes, especially if he's ostensibly supposed to be helping with the whole inter-village rapport thing.
When the fight finally finishes and medics have to drag both genin's bodies out of the rubble of the arena, Deidara flops down on the bench next to Daisuke.
"Hey," Daisuke says wearily. "Thanks for that, with the centipede."
"Shut up," Deidara replies.
Nibe, still sitting leaning against the railing next to Deidara, does not comment on their conversation about the differences between Kiri-nin and Konoha-nin, instead intently watching as proctors debate if either genin can be declared a winner. Eventually one genin, with great effort, manages to stand. There are scattered cheers from the crowd as she's declared the winner.
"Oh good," Nibe says. "That means my second match will be easy."
Deidara raises his eyebrows at him. "You have to win this one first, yeah," he points out.
"Yes," is all Nibe says, before heading down.
"Did you make a friend, my cute students?" Kakashi asks, eye gleaming.
"Sort of," Daisuke mutters. "I didn't think he was that strong, though. Why's he so confident?"
Deidara shrugs. He'd watched the end of Nibe's fight against his teammates during the second stage of the exam, and he didn't seem much above the average genin. Then again, Nibe had a certain wileyness about him that could make him dangerous if applied correctly.
When the fight starts, Nibe goes for taijutsu first, leaping straight at his opponent. He gets a fist to the face for his troubles, and then struggles a bit to get out of range of his opponent, who is both larger and older than him.
Nibe proves to be faster, and once he manages to put some distance between them, Nibe slouches casually and wipes some blood from his mouth.
"Just so you know," he says, blinking his dumb droopy eyes, "that was enough for you to inhale my spores."
The other Kiri genin pauses. "Spores?"
Nibe sticks out his tongue, which does not look very different from up in the stands, but the genin below takes an unsure step back.
"I release poison spores," Nibe says, smiling good-naturedly. "They're deadly and only I can make the antidote, so you better give up."
The other genin snorts and raises his kunai. "Why don't I just beat it out of you?"
"Hmm," Nibe says, cocking his head. "Then you'd win, I guess. And then ten minutes later, you'll be dead."
"The medics must have the antidote," the genin says, sounding unsure.
"I doubt it," Nibe says, scratching his ear. "Only my louse can make it."
"They'll make you give me the antidote," the genin says, taking a step forward.
"Maybe I'll resist," Nibe replies. "I'm very petty, and I'll only have to keep it up for… nine minutes now, I think."
Three minutes later, the other genin surrenders.
"Quick," he says, "the antidote-"
"Holy shit," the proctor answers, a laugh in his voice. "Kid, he was lying. There are no spores."
The genin looks crushed. It's pretty funny. This Nibe guy, even with his freaky tongue, is at least entertaining.
"That's pretty good," Daisuke says, tapping his chin as the crowd jeers. "If that was my first time seeing something as freaky as his tongue, I'd believe him too."
"My tongues can blast explosive dust into the air that can blow you up at a molecular level," Deidara says. Daisuke elbows him.
The first round of matches ends with that fight, and Nibe slinks back into the contestant box without a trip to the infirmary. His opponent has wandered off somewhere else, too ashamed to be seen in public. A chunin with a stack of bento follows behind Nibe, and they're told they get an hour break to eat before the second half of the tournament.
During the hour, the sawshark bill genin reappears in the box, now walking normally. He sits far away from their group with his own bento. None of the other genin from the infirmary reappear, although Ringo Ameyuri waltzes into the box.
"Hello, Konoha Team," she purrs, then physically picks Nibe up and dumps him on the ground so she can sit next to Deidara. "I want to have a chat with you."
"Uh, okay?" Daisuke says through a mouthful of rice.
Ameyuri waves dismissively in his direction. "Not you. This one, the one who's fighting my apprentice next."
She grins down at Deidara, showing off her pointed teeth.
"Come to beg for your apprentice's life?" Deidara asks, and Kakashi sighs and moves to that he's standing in front of them on the bench, leaning against the box's railing.
"I told you not to taunt foreign jounin, Deidara," Kakashi says warily.
"All you told me was not to start an intentional incident, yeah."
Ameyuri's eyes dart between Deeidara and Kakashi a few times, but she doesn't seem at all bothered.
"Actually," she says, cutting off another quip from Deidara, "I was watching my little apprentice's match and thinking: 'wow, she shouldn't be having nearly this hard a time with this loser.'"
Daisuke just levels her with a long flat stare.
"I don't care that you had a clever way to show her up," Ameyuri drawls on, "that's on me and my training. But Sumomo's biggest flaw has always been pride. She's only in the infirmary and not up here giving you a headache because she lost her cool, and it made her sloppy."
"So what do you want from me?" Deidara asks.
"I'm trying to be a good mentor, kid," Ameyuri sighs with a very fake wistful sigh. "I'm trying to teach my student humility."
Deidara's face brightens. "You want me to take her down a peg."
"I want you to humiliate her."
"This is an interesting teaching method," Kakashi says dryly. "I will be very upset if it ends with you swearing vengeance on my student."
Ameyuri laughs, a mean, loud laugh that makes sawshark genin look up.
"We don't do warm and fuzzies here, Hatake," Ameyuri teases.
"And here I thought you hugged and wrapped all your genin in blankets," Kakashi drawls back.
It's enough to distract Ameyuri from bothering the genin, and she gets up to stand at the railing and banter with Kakashi. Nibe climbs back into his original spot, looking unbothered.
"I'm going to go visit Shiori," he says once he's done eating.
"Are they…" Daisuke says as he watches Nibe leave. His face takes on a greenish tint. "They can't be."
"They are," Deidara basically crows.
When the break ends, they make Seiji teeter out onto the field with her fucked up legs. She's forced to sit even before the proctor calls the start of the matching, and sawshark genin smirks smugly at her.
"Staying up here?" Kakashi asks of Ameyuri.
"What can I say?" Ameyuri answers, leaning back and blatantly staring at Kakashi's ass. "I like the view."
Daisuke manages to look even greener.
Down below, Seiji has summoned her puppet. Puppets aren't great as art, but they do have the advantage of a puppeteer not needing working legs to operate one. The puppet rushes at the Kiri-genin, keeping him away from Seiji's seat on the ground.
"And what does my cute student get out of doing you a favor?" Kakashi is asking Ameyuri.
She hums, tilting her head so her dark red hair falls over her shoulder. "Maybe I'll get your other student something special."
"That doesn't sound ominous at all."
"Bottle of shochu, then."
Seiji's fight ends with Seiji showering the whole field with senbon from her puppet, turning the Kiri-genin into a pin cushion. He still rushes her, stabbing his sawshark sword into the puppet and leaving it there, to tackle Seiji to the ground. They struggle for only a minute before they both collapse, Seiji from exhaustion and the Kiri-nin from poison.
"Shiori," Daisuke breathes. "I can't believe her, just giving those away."
They drag the bodies off, and Sumomo storms out onto the field for her match looking absolutely murderous.
Deidara turns to Daisuke. "Do you want me to kill her?"
"What?" Daisuke yelps. "Why would I want that?"
Ameyuri just raises her eyebrows at them. "Well, I don't want you to."
"Whatever," Deidara says, hopping up onto the railing of the box. "You better get me a nice fucking bottle of shochu, yeah."
He leaps onto the field.
He doesn't want to just do a favor for Ameyuri out of the goodness of his heart, but… yeah, he'd fuck with annoying genin's head for just a bottle of shochu.
As he circles around Sumomo, debating the most humiliating way to beat her, Deidara notes that Kisame has disappeared from where he was posted. He spares a glance up at the Mizukage's box, but nothing seems out of the ordinary.
"Your eyes should be on ME," Sumomo screams and then rushes him.
Deidara dodges out of the way, and then spends a few minutes refusing to actually look at Sumomo while she yells insults and tries to slice his head off. He feels oddly Tobi-ish as he does it, effortlessly dodging and making her look wildly incompetent. Is this what the appeal of Madara acting like a giant clown was?
Or maybe he actually has learned something from having Kakashi as a 'teacher.' This seems like the sort of shit Kakashi would do to Shiori and Daisuke.
The field has gotten muddy since Deidara blew it up, as a spring that was feeding one of the ponds is now slowly flooding the place. Deidara eyes it for a while, dancing out of the way of Sumomo's increasingly wild swings, wondering if he could use that somehow. Getting dirty is humiliating, right?
He uses an earth jutsu to fling mud in her face. It doesn't even do any real damage. Sumomo pauses, stung and scandalized, and Deidara laughs in her face.
"YOU FUCKER," Sumomo screams, and then Deidara sees it.
The sawshark bill sword is laying in the mud, in the remains of Seiji's busted puppet. Deidara picks it up, and then swings it around, parrying Sumomo. The cartilage of the sawshark sword doesn't even crack under her dual swords.
Is this what the appeal of swords was?
"Hey, so," Deidara says, jumping back from Sumomo to take a few practice swings with the sword. Sumomo eyes it suspiciously. "Your sensei wanted me to tell you: stop being an arrogant bitch, yeah."
Sumomo straight up growls at him, then takes several steps back and bites her thumb.
Deidara lets her go through the summoning, instead of rushing her and stopping her before she makes it through all the hand signs. Two giant eels appear in a puff of smoke, black with electric blue spots and three meters long, and Sumomo smirks up at Deidara as she runs through more hind signs.
Twin rivers of water burst through from the ground, and the eels surf along them. It's actually really impressive for a genin, Deidara thinks. Usually people don't start practicing with two elemental jutsu until they're older. Daisuke was really lucky she hadn't seen there was water to try this on him.
Still, an impressive genin is still a genin, unless you were Deidara. Grinning, Deidara ducks under one of the eels and sticks a hand into the water, electrifying it as he goes. The eel dies on the spot, and it's wildly underwhelming, so he tosses some clay fish into the other stream of water, even as it turns to rush him.
The eels explodes. Blood and water goes everywhere. Deidara cackles.
Honestly, what did Sumomo expect?
He fights her with the sawshark sword for a bit, with the idea that it would be extra humiliating for her to lose to a sword swung around by someone clearly not used to swinging around a sword. But… well… the novelty dies down quickly.
Swords just aren't art, you know?
Deidara is in the process of forming his artistic vision for Sumomo when a flock of crows suddenly fly over the stadium, screaming as they go.
"Ah, fuck," Deidara says, blinking up at them. There's seven of them flying in a pattern that means Insane Itachi Plan #8 is in action, which is really one of the better outcomes. Madara-Slash-Tobi has willingly gone with Itachi "peacefully" to "have a conversation," and Shisui is to follow with Deidara in thirty minutes. They have a complicated battle plan, which is mostly just Shisui using surprise genjutsu from a distance.
It does mean Deidara needs to hurry up, and so he goes with his first thought and makes his own flock of clay crows.
"HEY, LEAVE HER ARMS ATTACHED," Ameyuri screams from the box above.
"What?" Sumomo asks, staring up at her mentor in fear, and then the bombs go off.
Deidara finds himself less satisfied with this art than he thought he'd be.
"Must you destroy the field even more?" the proctor gripes after Deiara has been declared the winner.
At the doors to the interior of the stadium, Deidara catches Shiori giving Nibe a peck on the cheek for good luck.
Gross, Deidara thinks. Shiori follows him in the contestants box. Ameyuri passes them in the stairwell, flashing Deidara a fierce grin as she goes.
"Shochu on me, little genin!" she cackles.
Nibe does not need luck. His opponent was half-dead from her previous match, and Nibe doesn't hesitate to slit her throat. Deidara is honestly more interested in Shiori's reaction than the fight itself.
She only frowns slightly.
"That was unnecessary," she says, sounding disapproving. "Did you know he kills house spiders?"
She's not nearly as upset as Deidara would have guessed. Well… Shiori is from a shinobi family, even if she likes making friends, Deidara supposes.
Since Seiji's fight with the sawshark genin was a double KO, the final match is between Deidara and Nibe. Deidara doesn't even know why he bothered going back up to the box. As he slides down the stadium wall to get back, he sees Shisui has disappeared from the Mizukage's box, and Yagura looks like he's actively nodding off. It must be past go-time.
Deidara still wants to win, though. He won the tournament during his last exam, and that really gave him good bragging rights. He'd like to win it again.
He figures it's fine to stall for a few minutes.
"I surrender," Nibe says before the proctor even starts the match.
"Really?" the proctor asks.
"You want to fight him?" Nibe asks, waving a hand at Deidara.
"...yeah, okay, fair," the proctor answers. "Winner: Deidara!"
There's cheers from the crowd, but it's not as thunderous and amazing as Deidara remembers the last time he won. Probably a combination of there being fewer people and the people there being disappointed they're not seeing a real fight.
"Congratulations," Nibe says.
"Yeah, okay," Deidar says, feeling twitchy. "I gotta run."
And he does run, right out of the stadium. Shisui grabs him outside and pulls him into the shadows as he goes.
"You're late," he hisses. "Listen, you've got to be exhausted from the tournament and I'm going to be flash-stepping the whole way there, so-"
Deidara thinks Shisui must be trying to ditch him and run off to help Itachi on his own, which is just rude. Deidara is great at helping in fights.
"Flash-stepping?" he asks, tossing a clay bird at their feet. "Why bother, when flying is faster?"
He makes a hand sign, and the bird expands to be large enough to carry them both. Shisui takes a step back in surprise.
"That's…" he says, looking impressed, but only about as half as impressed as he should be with Deidara. "Yeah, okay, I see why Itachi thought you'd be useful."
Something about the way Shisui phrased it rubs Deidara the wrong way, but he does actually want to get to Itachi on time to prevent him from being killed by Madara-slash-Tobi. He can't let Tobi ruin him forcing Itachi to acknowledge, after all. Instead of arguing, Deidara snaps at Shisui to use his fancy genjutsu-making eyes to cover up them taking off and flying out of the village.
They fly low over the jungle, and then Deidara takes them up higher to try and spot which island Itachi has lured Madara-slash-Tobi too. Shisui, stressed and bitchy, leans over the side of the bird and snaps orders at Deidara like he's some sort of underling.
"I didn't bring my scope, yeah," Deidara calls over the rush of air as they fly and determinedly not arguing with Shisui. "So your magic eyes are in charge of spotting them."
Shisui doesn't like the search pattern Deidara uses and snarls at him to follow commands, and Deidara considers pushing him off. Why was every single Uchiha this into micromanaging?
Shisui is saved from Deidara's wrath when something suddenly appears on the horizon. It looks sort of like…. Like a giant, building-sized skeleton that's on fire.
"What the fuck?" Deidara calls.
"That's them," Shisui says, sounding desperate. "Hurry."
Deidara flies them there as fast as he can, his eyes fixated on the fiery skeleton monster. As they approach, the skeleton starts slowly growing muscle tends. What the fuck!
It looked… pretty awesome, actually. Hmm.
Deidara can't make the bird hover in place, but he slows down and starts circling the island, trying to get a better view. It looks like someone is inside the skeleton monster, but Deidara can't tell who it is. There's crashing and fire and the occasionally very tense silence from below, which is typical of a genjutsu fight.
Itachi is truly the most frightening genjutsu master Deidara has ever even heard of, but Madara-slash-Tobi must be at least on par with him. There's no way Itachi would be so nervous and wound up about fighting him if he couldn't match him in that area.
"That's Itachi," Shisui says, sounding grim. "This is bad. Deidara, I'm going to need you to get close enough to the island that I can access it, but not too close. I don't want you getting hurt."
"Getting hurt?" Deidara mocks. "I'm fighting too, yeah."
Shisui levels him a hard look. "Deidara, I know you're exceptional for a genin. I saw your fights. But if Itachi has Susanoo out already, this fight is dire-"
"Oh," Deidara says, leaning over the side of his bird. "That's Susanoo?"
"Yes," Shisui confirms, sounding stressed. The shape of his sharingan has changed to a weird pattern. "That's 'worst comes to worst.' I need you to let me down immedia- Deidara, what are you DOING?"
Deidara has taken his shirt off and tossed it aside. Itachi told him that Susanoo meant he shouldn't hold back, and Deidara can only interpret this as a request for him to unleash his full artistic potential. For once Deidara is happy to follow Itachi's plan, because this is a really, really good plan.
He pulls the thread keeping his chest-mouth sealed while Shisui yells increasingly panicked things at him, including something about Itachi thinking with his dick and not his brain. Whatever.
Deidara is not going to set off his final creation, not here, but in his child's body he needs the boost of his sealed mouth to get the right amount of explosive chakra. He shoves C4 into it, and Shisui stops yelling at him and leans over the side of the bird again, obviously debating if he could jump from this height and still be fighting fit after he lands. Deidara just takes the bird higher.
"Relax," he tells Shisui when the teen turns around to snarl at him. "You're getting a front row seat to witness my ART, YEAH!"
His chest-mouth spits out a bomb, egg-shaped with delicate feathered wings. He tosses his greatest creation during this timeline right at Itachi's awesome fire monster, which now has skin and the beginnings of armor growing. There are a few seconds before the bomb makes impact, during which Shisui screeches some things at him about him being a stupid little genin. Deidara's not sure what the details are, but Shisui is now sufficiently off his rocker that he even tries throwing some little baby genjutsu at Deidara. It's nothing even close to what Itachi might try as just a joke, presumably because Shisui has no idea what Dridara is capable of, and Deidara shakes it off easily.
It's too late for melting Deidara's brain, anyway. He's already set his masterpiece into action. He holds his breath as he watches the bomb drop, and his anticipation is so high it feels like he's watching it fall in slow motion, frame by frame.
The resulting explosion is absolutely, breath-takingly amazing. It's so loud Deidara loses hearing, but out of the corner of his eye he can see the look of utter terror that suddenly fills Shisui's face. The force is so strong that it flings the bird into the air, pure heat knocking and battering it around, and if Deidara were any less of a shinobi, he'd be knocked off. It goes on and on, for full minutes at least- the sound of the explosion right in Deidara's chest, like it's pumping his heart for him; the heat searing his skin right into his very core; the shock waves pounding the bird and flipping it around and around; and Deidara whoops in delight, even though he still can't hear himself.
Water gets tossed up too, along with pieces of trees and sand and mud, and once the initial explosion is over and Deidara has righted the bird, the rubble rains down on them. Shisui is somehow also still clinging to the bird, and he vomits up a tiny amount of bile. They're both red with burns.
The best part is that Deidara has blown a hole right into the sea. All of the island- all of it- has gone into the sky, never to be an island ever again. All of the geological motions that slowly crafted the island, all the slow mechanisms of ecology building a community of fauna and flora, all of that has been snatched away, destroyed by Deidara is one fleeting moment. It is art, true glorious blazing art, and Deidara watches, transfixed, as water is sucked into the hole in the ocean, making a deadly whirlpool of exploded trees. He watches the hand of the skeleton monster get sucked in too.
Next to him, Shisui dry heaves. Deidara's hearing crackles a bit, and he makes out Shisui saying some panicked things about Itachi.
Deidara assumes this "blow everything up if you see Susanoo" plan is just Itachi sacrificing himself. Deidara doesn't like the idea of someone else killing Itachi, but if Itachi wants to die by Deidara's art, he is happy to be of assistance. Although now, looking out over the churning water, he feels…. Weird. Not regretful, not quite, because Deidara never regrets art. But he doesn't feel quite as fulfilled as he thought he would.
"There!" Shisui shouts in his ear, pointing at the water.
Deidara takes the bird lower, and Shisui flings himself off. The water is still rough and swirling, trying to fill in the place the island once was, and Shisui's run across is lopsided and ungraceful.
He pulls Itachi's body out of the water, and Deidara helps him pull Itachi onto the bird.
"He's alive, yeah," Deidara says with surprise, even as Shisui starts CPR. Itachi doesn't even have burns on him, although he has some cuts and bruises from being battered in the water.
"He's swallowed a lot of water," Shisui answers. "His Susanoo is a lot more durable than I thought."
"So Susanoo is, what, a shield?" Deidara asks.
Shisui doesn't stop compressions, but he does look up to give Deidara a horrified look.
"You did that and you didn't even know what Susanoo is?!"
A few minutes later, Itachi rolls over and vomits up some water. Shisui appears to be having a panic attack and Deidara doesn't even know why.
"Did I get him?" Deidara asks of Itachi. "Tobi. Did I get him?"
Itachi just sort of groans and flops over to press his face into the crook of Deidara's neck. Deidara makes an annoyed noise.
"Don't be like that, yeah," he says.
Itachi groans again.
Deidara lands the bird in the wilds of the jungle, and Shisui hurriedly administers some first aid. He even busts out a few medical jutsu- nothing as strong as Mystical Palm, but enough that Deidara's impressed. Itachi eventually manages to sit up on his own and say coherent sentences.
"He escaped," he says, his voice hoarse. "But I learned some important things."
"Like what, yeah?" Deidara asks, feeling disappointed. His art had been so good, too.
"Your theories were right," Itachi says. "He can become intangible, and there's a time limit to it."
"Intangible?" Shisui repeats, and Deidara cannot believe Itachi is being so secretive that the one other guy on their team didn't learn this beforehand.
"Deidara," Itachi says, sagging into him. His hair is wet and tangled and sticks to the bare skin of Deidara's shoulder. "Your art was… excellent."
"Yeah," Deidara agrees, and doesn't shove him off like he normally would. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it?"
xXx
END NOTES:
Shisui was really out here thinking Itachi was just dragging his crush around to murder plans because he liked him, smh.
No bug facts this time. :( I did do a little bit of research on shark-tooth blades... some are actual sawshark/sawfish bills and some are just blades lined with shark teeth. Not sure how effective they are as weapons, but they look dope AF. Plus both sawsharks and sawfish are very cute. I recommend looking them up.
NEXT UP: tying off some loose ends w/r/t the exams, and returning to Konoha~