Very mild warning for this chapter: Hidan says something vulgar to Tori that amounts to sexual harassment. It's not threatening, but given this fic hasn't had any similar language/innuendo, I don't want anyone to get a nasty surprise. :)
This chapter features establishing character interactions and everyone being a jerk!
xXx
Itachi favored watching his tea steep over paying attention to Tori, and so Tori abruptly found herself alone with her thoughts and Tobi's... singing… as he did her dishes…
Tori stood up. Neither Uchiha reacted. This whole place was very weird and if she thought about Tobi too much, she was going to have a screaming breakdown. So, she walked right through the kitchen, down the corridor, and into the communal living area.
She stood behind the couch, looking around and her and feeling a vague sort of naughtiness, like a child skipping school for the first time. After Oto's rigid policies, it felt rebellious to walk into an area no one had explicitly told her she was allowed to exist in. Nevermind that her current captors no doubt knew exactly where she was and what she was up to.
The couch and armchairs arranged around the TV did not match, but they looked plush and comfortable. There were chairs scattered around the room, some equipped with desks, and the walls were lined with shelves filled with board games and old fashioned VHS tapes and books. There was also a new-ish looking billiards table in one corner.
Tori sat gingerly on the couch. Nothing exploded, and no one came to threaten or murder her. The seat was soft. Wide windows along one wall showed off the bleak weather outside, rain trailing down the glass.
Did they play billiards with each other? Did they fight over the TV? Did anyone sit in that chair under the window and stare angstily into the gray distance? What the fuck.
The coffee table in front of her had one leg duct taped on, and suspicious claw marks across the top. This, at least, was more in line with what she expected.
She should take this moment of peace to plan, to let her mind run through the possible scenarios she might face. Would Obito want to test her abilities more once he got bored with being Tobi? If so, how would he do it? Could she lie through a genjutsu, through torture?
Someone had left a cooking magazine on the table. Tori stared at it. Who in this madhouse was reading that? She flipped through it. A recipe page had been torn out. Tori leafed back to the table of contents to figure out what the recipe had been for so she could figure out whose magazine this was if she ever saw someone making it, and she realized she was not going to make contingency plans, because her curiosity was going to kill her first.
Tori picked up the remote control from where it sat on the coffee table and turned on the TV. If she died today, she was going to die knowing what the hell ninja watched on television. She watched a couple of sketches on a variety show and did not understand a single political joke or pop culture reference in them. An ad for a peanut-based snack played.
Peanuts… also a new world food. Hmm.
There were only five channels to flip through, and she watched a few reports on minor flooding in Fire Country before settling on a historical drama. She left it on as background noise while she poked through the shelves.
There was a pile of board games that were covered in dust, so she assumed no one played those. There were also several shelves of VHS cassettes, including a variety of movies and an entire season of something called Hidden Village.
She had always just assumed the Akatsuki lived in a cave or something. What was all this?
There were also shelves and shelves of books, which were all fairly worn, and Tori wondered where they came from. Were there avid readers among the Akatsuki, or did someone just grab a bunch of things to stock their living area with? The books were arranged at random, with non-fiction bumping elbows with fantasy and nature guides sitting next to cheesy romance.
And then, sitting there so innocently, was a copy of Icha Icha Paradise.
Tori stared at it. As if her arm had a mind of its own, she picked it up. She shouldn't read porn in the Akatsuki base. That was one of the worst ideas she'd had all morning. She shouldn't read porn in the Akatsuki base.
Oh no, Tori thought as she went back to the couch with the book in her hands, I'm going to read porn in the Akatsuki base.
Icha Icha featured a fast-paced and entertainingly ridiculous story. The main character was traveling between islands in Southern Fire Country in hopes of finding some sort of family treasure his grandfather had hidden, only to be constantly distracted and lured off track by beautiful women, and then sabotaged and attacked by a group of incompetent male ninja. Tori reclined on the sofa as she read encounter after encounter with women of various cup sizes.
There was one recurring female character, a kunoichi also after the treasure. She spent most of her time thinking about how well her miniskirt showed off her ass as she seduced men and women alike, but when she wasn't having sex, there were definite flashes of the mind of an actual genius ninja at work. It was bizarrely compelling, as if Jiraiya were forgetting he was writing porn scenarios.
The porn, when it happened, and it happened often, was bad. It was occasionally bad to the point of being hilarious, but mostly it was just repetitive, and Tori fell asleep halfway through a description of glistening abdominals as the kunoichi seduced a man behind a waterfall.
She woke up to screaming and the smell of smoke.
"Help! HELP!" Tobi cried from the kitchen.
Tori did not want to move. Tobi didn't actually need help, because he wasn't actually an idiot, and it wasn't like he was going to let his own organization's base burn down for a joke. Unless he would?
Oh god, Tori thought, reflecting on Tobi's history as a giant troll, he might.
She rolled off the couch and staggered into the kitchen. Tobi had ignited the contents of a fryingpan and was currently filling a bucket with water from the sink. Itachi had left at some point, to do something that wasn't preventing a lunatic from burning down the kitchen.
"Tori-chan!" Tobi squeaked. "Tobi will fix his mistake!"
He lifted the bucket out of the sink and sloshed water down his front.
"No!" Tori yelped as she realized what he was doing. She darted forward, grabbed the lid from the metal trash can, and slammed it down over the flaming pan. She switched the burner off and gave Tobi a frazzled look.
"You have to smother a cooking fire," she said. "If there's oil in it, water will make the fire worse."
She said this slowly and clearly, like she was explaining it to a petulant child. This was it. She was leaning into the Tobi act. She was becoming part of the madness. Full-on, cultural immersion.
"Oh," Tobi said, and dropped the bucket into the sink. Water splashed over the counter. "Tobi was just trying to make lunch…"
"Tobi was trying to freak Tori out," Tori muttered, and removed the lid from the pan. The fire was successfully smothered, leaving behind some very charred lumps.
Tori watched as Tobi very sadly scrapped his ruined food into the trash can. Why was he doing this? Was he honestly just playing mind games with her? Was he waiting for some external force that Tori was unaware of? Was he trying to see what she would do if left alone?
(As it turned out, if left alone, Tori was just going to read erotica and take a nap.)
Well, if he was going to play this stupid game, she could play along with him.
"Do you need help making something else?" Tori asked, stepping forward to open a cabinet. It contained two bags of rice, a canned vegetable medley that was marked DEIDARA in marker, and an onion half that was sprouting. Fascinating.
"Tori-chan is so nice!" Tobi replied, ripping open another cabinet to display an array of spices and sauces. "What should we cook?"
"What do we have…?" Tori wondered, and crossed to open the fridge, which was very full and very disorganized.
"Kakuzu-sempai said there was a sale on chicken livers," Tobi offered.
There were, in fact, four packages of chicken livers sitting right in the middle of the fridge, the little organs all squished together under plastic. Hundreds of chickens had given their lives for this. They were all a few days past their expiration date, and Tori had very little interest in eating them.
"What about this?" she asked, pulling something wrapped in butcher paper. The sticker on it identified it as beef.
"That's Hidan-sempai's," Tobi said, and Hidan had indeed written his name on it.
"Well," Tori reasoned. "He's on a mission. If he wanted to save this, he would have frozen it. It's better we eat it now than waste resources."
Tobi bobbed his head and started unwrapping the meat on the counter. "Tori-chan is so thoughtful," he said.
Tori was so thoughtful that she picked out everything else Hidan had marked as his. There were also plenty of unlabeled items, so she assumed there was some sort of organized procurement of communal goods, but none of them seemed particularly appetizing. See: chicken livers.
"I like spicy food," Tori said, setting a can of chilli peppers and a bottle of hot sauce– both Hidan's– down next to where Tobi was chopping away.
"Could Tori-chan clean the pan, please?" Tobi asked, nodding to his pan of burnt residue.
"I'm sorry," Tori replied, leaning against the counter. "I've only got one working arm. Could you help me?"
"Ah, that makes sense," Tobi said, and set to work scrubbing the pan.
Tori one; Tobi zero.
Tori watched Tobi closely as he prepared their lunch. If he was going to play at being a sweet idiot, and she was going to play at being too helpless to assist him, that did not preclude the possibility of him setting something on fire again.
"Tori-chan said she likes spicy food, yes?" Tobi said, holding up a bottle of chilli powder.
"I–" Tori started to say, and then Tobi had dumped the entire container into the pan.
Welp.
Tori one; Tobi one.
Tori's supervision of Tobi's kitchen antics was interrupted some minutes later by Sasori walking in.
"There you are," he said, vaguely hostile, and Tori remembered Deidara commenting that he was upset with her. Oh boy. "Why aren't you downstairs? Who's just letting you wander around?"
"Tobi is watching her, Sasori-sempai!" Tobi said, bending over to look at Sasori instead of turning like a normal human being. "Like a hawk."
"...right," Sasori said, sounding incredulous but resigned to Tobi not being his problem. He set a metal canister down on the counter. It had a series of seals stuck to it, and Tori recognized them as temperature control. "This is yours."
Sasori made no move to elaborate, so Tori slowly pulled the canister toward her– it was cold to the touch– and pulled the latched and popped it open.
"My heart!" she cried. It barely fit in the canister– Sasori must have just used whatever was on him– and he'd transferred one of Orochimaru's stabilization seals to it. It was sitting in an inch or two of the blue-ish heart goo, beating sluggishly.
"I wanted to study the preservation method," Sasori said, "but it was too damaged."
Tori opened her mouth to apologize but, no, it was his own fault for kidnapping her in the first place. Instead she said, "What, so you just put it on hypothermia?"
Sasori twitched. That had come out a tad critical. Tori plastered her most demure smile across her face.
Sasori was… well, he didn't actually scare her, even though she knew he should. Without Hiruko, he was small and kind of pretty, and very young looking. Even with the no-blinking thing, he wasn't as ethereally terrifying as Orochimaru, or as physically intimidating as Kakuzu, or with the unpredictability of Obito's baffling motivations. Honestly, he felt relatively safe.
Get yourself together, Tori thought to herself, glancing over to note Tobi had emptied the entire bottle of hot sauce into whatever he was making. Her eyes stung as spice filled the air; Sasori still hadn't blinked. Sasori is definitely notsafe.
"Don't look at me like that," Sasori snapped. The demure little smile fell right off Tori's face.
"It's impressive you got it to last this long, anyway," Tori said, resealing the canister. "In my world, you'd have to like… stick it in someone, to keep it alive."
"It will die soon unless you do something," Sasori answered curtly. "Has Leader-sama decided what to you with you yet? I have a task for you."
"Uh…" Tori very consciously did not glance back over at Tobi. "It's… unclear…?"
"Hmm," Sasori said, clearly disapproving. "Usually he's quite decisive."
Decisiveness seemed like a trait someone as impatient as Sasori would value in a leader.
"Well, if you're still here in the morning," Sasori continued bluntly, "I want you to do something for me."
Tori had absolutely no idea what Sasori might want from her, and he turned to leave without further explanation.
"Wait," she called, "what am I supposed to do with this?" She gestured at her heart, which was due to expire soon.
"You're the scientist," Sasori snapped.
Tori bit her lip. She felt more like a lab monkey than a scientist. "Right," she said.
So far, Sasori had been the only person who seemed all that interested in keeping her around. Granted, his interests seemed to be in turning her into a brainwashed puppet, but it was still a step up from "sacrificed to the god of suffering." It wouldn't hurt to try and keep him at least vaguely on her side.
"Sorry I got a bunch of your puppets smashed," she said guiltily, despite not feeling the slightest bit of regret over it. "Deidara said you were upset."
Sasori snorted derisively. "I don't accept apologies," he said. "I accept actions."
Well, alright then!
"Snivelling is an ugly look on you," Sasori finished, and left Tori feeling incredibly called out. Maybe she should have told him to get over himself, because if she got his puppets smashed, it was his own damn fault?
This also seemed like a poor choice of words.
As Sasori glided out of the room, Tori reached around Tobi to turn the stove's fan on. The fumes from whatever absurdly spicy thing he was making were starting to make her cough.
Condesentation was forming on the canister, and Tori eyed it. She knew how to stabilize a spleen and keep the tissue from dying, but those seals wouldn't last much more than a week even if she did them perfectly, and she didn't know if any modifications would be needed for a heart. Consulting her notes might help, but she'd have to convince Konan or Pein to allow her access. Kakuzu had a heart collection, but there was no way she could ask him for a favor. Hey, Kakuzu, would you mind storing my heart in your funky tentacle body for a while?
"Tobi knows what you can do," Tobi said, sliding a plate of terrifyingly red curry in front of her. "Zetsu-sempai could definitely help!"
Tori did not want to talk to Zetsu, basically ever. She also did not want to show weakness in front Tobi and refuse to eat his death curry.
(Hadn't there been a filler episode like this? The 'curry or life' or something? Was filler canon in this world?)
"I think this would taste good with yogurt," Tori announced, retrieving a tub of plain yogurt from the fridge. It had a sticker on it indicating it was on sale because it expired on the day it had been bought, over a week ago.
Unlike chicken livers, Tori was reasonably confident she could identify that the yogurt was still good, even if it had separated a bit. She mixed it and added a few dollops to the side of her plate.
Tori hadn't been lying when she said she liked spicy food, but even with the yogurt to absorb some of the heat, the curry was… intense. She grabbed a handful of napkins as her nose began to run immediately. Tobi had swung his mask to the side to reveal his mouth, and was happily eating it without the aid of anything to absorb the oils.
Was he… okay…? His face wasn't even turning red.
The curry was pretty tasty, though, and Tori happily struggled through eating it even as her eyes teared up. Oto almost never had dairy, and certainly never had anything spicy, and she missed both flavors.
Ah, she was crying into her food again.
Deidara staggered into the room, looking worse for wear. His hair was matted with sweat, the bandage on his face had been ripped off to reveal an ugly gash underneath, and he'd gained a slight limp.
"Did Deidara-sempai lose his spar?" Tobi asked politely.
"Shut up," Deidara muttered, and immediately went for the pan of curry Tobi had left on the stove. "I'm taking some of this."
Tori watched in mild interest as Deidara spooned a large helping of curry into his mouth and then immediately spat it back out into the trash.
"Tobi, what the FUCK," Deidara yelled as he grabbed for a glass to fill with water from the sink.
"Tori-chan said she likes it spicy," Tobi chirped.
"Here," Tori said, nudging the yogurt tub toward Deidara, whose face was bright red. "Fatty things will absorb the capsaicin."
Deidara shot her an absolutely venomous look before chugging the entire cup of water.
"The second Leader-sama gives the okay to get rid of you," Deidara said, voice low and dangerous. "I am going to vaporize you, yeah."
Snivelling is an ugly look on you, Sasori had said, so instead of trying to mitigate the situation, Tori replied, "I'm pretty sure Hidan has dibs."
"We have to go see Zetsu-sempai now!" Tobi cried, sweeping Tori out of the way as Deidara hurled his glass at her. It shattered on the floor.
Tori let Tobi put the canister into her crook of her good arm and usher her out the door. That could have been her face breaking the glass.
Why did they always aim for the face?!
Zetsu, as it turned out, had a greenhouse on the roof. Rain beat against the glass, the sky permanently gray and dark. In contrast, the greenhouse bays were all well-lit, hot, and humid. Tobi pushed her through the rows and rows of greenery, babbling about Zetsu having "lots of spare bodies." The canister, nestled in the crook of Tori's arm, was uncomfortably cold through her shirt.
There wasn't a large diversity of plants. The first bay they passed through had a handful of carnivorous plants Tori would have liked to look at more closely, along with an assortment of various flowers and shrubs, including a large stand of what she was pretty sure was basil. The next three bays were just rows and rows of very young trees, all in their own individual pots.
They didn't find Zetsu so much as Tobi just yelled his name a few times, and Zetsu crawled out of the floor.
"Tobi," he greeted.
"Tori-chan needs your help," Tobi said very earnestly, and then both of them turned to her.
"I have… a heart," Tori said.
"Most humans do," Zetsu replied.
"I mean, I have an extra one," she said, shifting the canister in her arm. She wasn't sure what exactly Zetsu had to do with this– was he meant to eat it? She didn't want him to eat it. "It's my clone. Tobi thinks you can help me, um, keep it alive?"
She passed the canister over to Zetsu, who popped it open and peered inside.
"What is the value of this?" Black Zetsu asked, sounding annoyed.
"It's cool!" Tobi pronounced, waving his arms.
This, unfortunately, was approximately Tori's thoughts on the matter, along with some sort of nebulous but strong feeling about it being hers. However, she didn't think it was a very compelling reason for anyone else.
"It might give us insight into Orochimaru's research," she said. Everyone here seemed very keen on that, after all.
"Zetsu-sempai is making new bodies, right?" Tobi said, bending over one of the saplings.
"Do you have to grow the White Zetsus?" Tori asked without thinking, suddenly interested in the trees. She'd always just assumed he'd grown them from his body, or poofed them into existence like a regular ninja clone.
The trees were all three to four feet tall, with surprisingly thick trunks for their height, and leaves the same dark green as Zetsu's fronds. The bark was white, ribbed with light green. Photosynthetic bark?
"I can make my own," Zetsu said, sounding mildly offended. "These are just back-ups, in case I need one and I'm low on chakra."
Tobi chattered for a while about the joys of parenting, and Tori turned over a leaf with her hand. Was this thing really going to grow into a Zetsu? Were they really 'spares,' or was this part of him amassing an army, right underneath Pein's nose?
"I will never experience the human joy of childbirth," Zetsu stated, and Tori looked up at him because honestly, what the hell? "But maybe today I will learn what a heart beat feels like."
He snapped open his cloak to reveal his bare chest, pulled out Tori's heart, and pressed it into his white half. The flesh rippled and moved, absorbing the heart.
"Gross," Tobi observed.
"What!" Tori yelped.
"This doesn't feel like anything," Zetsu whined.
"It's not supposed to," Tori snapped. "Do you even have blood to– is that really going to keep it– what if I want it back?"
She stared at Zetsu's chest as he buttoned up his cloak again. This isn't what she'd had in mind at all!
"I will take good care of it," Zetsu promised. He twitched a few times and then his dark side added, "I don't understand Kakuzu's preoccupation with this. Your chakra is very boring."
"I'm from a world with no ninja," Tori countered shrilly. It was unclear to her if she should be upset by what had just happened or not, but she definitely felt confused and a little hysterical. "There's no evolutionary pressure for exciting chakra–"
"No ninja at all?" Tobi asked, peering down at her.
"No!" Tori answered, stepping away from him. "That's not the point."
"You promised me the human experience of heartburn," Zetsu said to Tobi.
"Heartburn doesn't occur in the heart," Tori corrected. She had absolutely no idea why Zetsu would want heartburn.
"That's right," Tobi said, snapping his fingers. "You need a stomach!"
Tori didn't know anything about Zetsu's anatomy, but it sounded very weird. "You eat people though," she said. "You must have a digestive system."
Zetsu shrugged. Tobi took Tori's hand in his and started pulling her toward the exit, thanking Zetsu for his hard work and promising to bring him a human stomach next time.
"But where does the food go, then?" Tori asked.
"It's very rude to ask people how they poop, Tori-chan," Tobi chided, and she shut her mouth. This entire conversation was completely inane and needed to go no further.
Despite both Zetsu and Tobi being incredibly worrying people, none of that had been at all hostile, and Tori felt more confused than frightened as she followed Tobi downstairs. The more time she spent with Tobi, the harder it was to be afraid of Obito.
A false sense of security was perhaps part of… whatever this was… but it made Tori brave enough to ask, "Tobi, who bought all those books in the living room?" Who purchased a copy of Jiraiya's porn?
"They were here already!" Tobi answered, swinging her hand in his as he led her back through the greenhouse.
"So someone else was using this building first?" Tori asked.
"Ah!" Tobi exclaimed as he yanked open the greenhouse door. "We didn't clean up!"
He didn't answer her question as he practically skipped down the stairs. Back in the kitchen, Tobi shoved a broom into Tori's hand. Sweeping with one hand was not very efficient, but she managed to at least push together into a neat pile all the glass Deidara had just left behind. Tobi sang while he did the dishes. It was a thing.
Tori was debating how to sweep the glass shards into the dustpan one-handedly when Hidan waltzed in and yanked open the fridge.
"Fuck yes, chicken livers," he announced, and tossed one of the packages onto the counter. Tori stood, frozen, while he ripped the plastic off and yelled something offensive but good-humored at Tobi. His cloak was still on, and mud lined its hem.
"Hidan-sempai is back early," Tobi observed.
"Eh, it was close by," Hidan said, throwing open a cabinet. "Where the fuck is my hot sauce?"
Tori continued to stand there, clutching the broom handle tightly, as Hidan pushed around bottles. He was between her and the exit, and there was no way he hadn't seen her.
Hidan let out a frustrated growl at the cabinet, then gestured at Tori and asked, "Who is this, anyway?"
Tori stared at him. Tobi stared at him.
"Are you kidding me?" Tori asked, and the same time Tobi said, "Ah, Kakuzu-sempai is right! Hidan-sempai is as dumb as rocks!"
Hidan glowered at Tobi, opened his mouth to undoubtedly yell at him, then paused.
"You!" he accused, pointing at Tori.
"What can't you recognize me!" Tori squawked back.
"I've never seen you clean before!" Hidan yelled back. "You've always been covered in shit."
"Also, he's dumb as rocks–" Tobi started, and then Hidan grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him in, and kneed him in the stomach in one fluid movement. Tobi stumbled back, drew the back of his hand across his forehead like a fancy lady, and then collapsed.
There was a long silence.
"Fucking weirdo," Hidan muttered, stepping over Tobi's limp form as he stalked towards Tori.
Oh no, Tori thought.
Tori - one; Tobi - one gajillion.
"Well, well, well," Hidan said, leaning over Tori. She very consciously straightened her back and did not step back. "You'll be happy to know Leader-sama said I couldn't hurt you."
Tori didn't didn't say anything. Her grip on the broom tightened.
"What did you do?" Hidan asked, voice low and mean. "Suck his dick? Fondle his balls?"
The rational part of Tori's brain knew she should just shrug Hidan off, that she shouldn't rise to his goading. Instead, she felt a snap of rage that overpowered all rational thought.
"No," she said in her most innocent voice, widening her eyes and stepping back so she could look him in the face. "Why? Is that how you won Jashin's favor?"
In the quarter second it took for Hidan to process that, Tori managed to hold the broom up in defense before he lunged at her. It made absolutely no difference– the broom ended snapped in half and thrown aside as Hidan pushed her back towards the table and smashed her face into it, one hand on the back of her head to hold her there, her good arm twisted around behind her painfully.
"You're a cocky little bitch, Chibigami," Hidan growled. "I don't know what you did to fool Leader-sama and Konan, but I know you're just a liar."
He smashed her face into the table once, then twice more, and Tori's vision swam and blood poured down her face. Hidan drew her head back once more, wavered, and then without a word, dropped her.
Acting on autopilot, Tori hurled herself under the table. Hidan didn't follow or grab for her, so she cautiously rose to a squat and looked around. Hidan was collapsed on the floor. Tori crawled to the opposite side of the table and used a chair to pull herself up, her head making her feel woozy. Her face was very wet.
Itachi was at the kitchen counter, measuring a powder out into a teacup. Without looking up at her, he said, "Hiding under a table is not an efficient escape strategy."
Tori just blinked at him. Blood was dribbling down her chin, her nose stung, and her head was ringing in a way that wouldn't let her process whatever useless advice Itachi had just told her.
Feel very unsteady, Tori moved across the room with the goal of examining her face in the nearest reflective surface. She leaned on one chair and then its neighbor and then the wall.
"Are you alright?" Itachi asked, although he made no move to help her.
There were blood droplets in her eyelashes. She gave him an unimpressed look that clearly said, What do you think?
The corners of Itachi's mouth twitched upward ever so slightly. "Nevermind."
Tori made it to the counter and pulled the toaster to her to look at her face in the metal. She couldn't exactly make out fine details, but there was a worrying splotch of purple and red smeared down from the center of her face. It looked like one of her temples was bleeding as well.
"It least I still have a face this time," she muttered to herself, and Itachi looked over at her.
"Leader-sama will reprimand him," he said. Tori did not find this comforting. If Pein reprimanded her, she knew with absolutely certainty she would obey. She wasn't confident Hidan would, though.
"Did you save me?" she asked, and Itachi made a sound of affirmation in the back of his throat. "Thanks," she said.
Tobi made a loud groaning noise and sat up, stretching his arms above his head. Tori wanted to tell him off for letting Hidan beat her up like that, but her rattled brain could not put together words strong enough for it.
"Wah!" Tobi squeaked, crouching down to poke Hidan's side. "Itachi-sempai's genjutsu is scary!"
Tori stared at him, swaying as she clung to the counter. A strong medicinal smell wafted over to her from Itachi's drink. She wanted to grab Tobi and shake him and scream, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?
Her head hurt, and she thought any sort of hysterical yelling might make her see spots. Instead she asked, "What are the symptoms of a concussion?"
Tobi yelled some very exuberant promises to take her to a medic, which did in fact make her see black spots at the edge of her vision. Her brain was swimming, and she couldn't concentrate. Hidan was still on the floor, unconscious, but he wouldn't stay unconscious. She fumbled for the drawer below her, which contained the silverware, and produced a butter knife. If she cut Hidan's digestive system out, he couldn't eat, and then he'd die and she'd be safe.
"I'll take her," Itachi said, and plucked the knife out of her hand. "You should clean up."
"Tori-chan," Tobi said much too loudly and with the tone of deep betrayal, "you bled everywhere."
Tori picked another knife out of the drawer. Okay, so she couldn't kill Hidan, but if she gouged out Tobi's eyes, then she solved everyone's problems, and she'd get the sweet, sweet cathartic release–
Itachi gently removed that knife from her hand too and steered her towards the door. No, he was right. She couldn't stab Obito; everything would just go through him.
Itachi patiently walked with her down the stairs, and Tori clung to the railing as she swayed unsteadily. Stairs… difficult.
"Have you not invented elevators yet?" Tori asked, very carefully double checking her leg was going to hold her weight before every step.
Itachi did not answer for a while, and when he did, he asked something completely unrelated. "Have you met Uchiha Sasuke?"
Tori stared at her hand on the railing. What a loaded, terrifying question. She should have just dealt with Tobi being loud.
The stairwell was silent. Tori kept her face blank. Her brain was too muddled to reason through a response that would make Itachi drop the topic. All she knew was that she desperately did not want to involve herself in Uchiha family shenanigans.
"Tori," Itachi said.
"Yes," she answered, catching his eye. "I met him a few times."
"What are your impressions?" Itachi asked.
Right, okay. This was fine. This was a nice, normal conversation about Itachi trying to stalk his brother.
"He seemed very diligent in his training," Tori said slowly.
Itachi tilted his head ever so slightly to one side, and Tori suddenly found herself compelled to tell him more. It would be good if he trusted her, right?
"I think he was getting what he wanted, even if he didn't really have friends," Tori continued. What else did Itachi want to know? "He was in good health. They let him eat fruit and stuff whenever he wanted. They didn't let me interact with him one-on-one, to prevent me from telling him about you. I did anyway, though, so that's probably why he killed Orochimaru."
Tori paused, frowning. Why had she said that? That was way too much sensitive information to just casually hand over. She wanted to tell him more, though, she wanted him to know–
Her vision went blurry and she leaned harder against the stairway railing. Itachi stood impassively in front of her, his form stretching weirdly in her disrupted vision.
"I told him where to find you," Tori said. She couldn't stop talking. She needed to tell him. "I told him he'd win, but not how. I didn't mention Danzo or–"
"Tori," Itachi interrupted her, and felt her throat hitch and swell. She was choking now, she couldn't breathe, her lungs were on fire, begging for air, and the whole building was disappearing around her, so only Itachi remained, his body stretching and curling and deforming–
"Keep your visions to yourself," Itachi concluded, and suddenly Tori was breathing again, with no demand from her lungs for extra oxygen. Itachi wasn't stretched out and distorted anymore, and she was standing with shaking legs in the stairwell she'd started in, her upper body practically draped across the banister.
Itachi continued calmly down the stairs, and Tori thought: Yes, Itachi's genjutsu isscary. She kept a good distance between herself and him as she followed.
There was a clinic on the ground floor, back behind the lobby, and Tori was relieved when Itachi left her alone. She hadn't known that genjutsu could just compel you spill your secrets. That was good to know, but also completely terrifying.
Could Obito do the same thing?
The woman medic on duty was very no-nonsense and barely said a word as she pushed healing chakra into Tori's face. The medic's chakra had a weird stinging quality to it, and Tori thought: Kabuto was much better at this.
She didn't want to have positive thoughts about Kabuto. She mentally listed all the condescending comments and ugly things he'd done to her while the medic moved on to examining her formerly dislocated shoulder.
"One more week in the sling," she said, downgrading Tori's previous sentence with a couple of pulses of healing chakra. "And tell them to go easier on you, would you?"
Tori was absolutely not going to tell them that. The medic handed her a copy of her medical report and sent her on her way.
Tori decided to go back to her cell and try to relax until Obito came to find her. Her vision and equilibrium were back to normal, but she felt dead tired. She barely stepped into the dungeon before Kakuzu slammed her into the wall. Air rushed from her lungs, and the pages of her medical report fluttered across the floor.
Oh, come on! she thought as Kakuzu glared down at her. She glowered back. She'd nearly wet herself from the surprise, but this would honestly be a billion times scarier if he'd tried it before Hidan and Itachi had gotten to her.
"Listen to me very carefully," Kakzu said, gradually applying more pressure to her. His huge hand was over her clavicle, the pads of his thumb and forefinger hovering over the base of her neck, preventing her from breathing properly. He leaned in, and his giant form obscure all light. His voice was a low growl in her ear. "Hidan and I let you crawl away, and you were found by Oto-nin."
"Y-yeah," Tori managed to choke out.
Kakuzu pulled back slightly so he could look her in the eyes, and she scowled at him. After a few moments of study, he relaxed pressure on her chest enough for her to speak properly.
"You said I was worthless and Hidan was taking too long, and I ended up getting away," she said irritably. "Can I go now?"
Okay, so, Kakuzu definitely didn't want Pein knowing he was making deals with Orochimaru, and now Tori definitely wasn't going to try and use it against him unless she faced some fate worse than having her limbs ripped off by an enraged shinobi. Cool. That was fine. Whatever.
"I'll jog Hidan's memory too," Kakuzu said, and disappeared out the door.
Tori leaned against the wall, waiting to catch her breath and for her arms to stop shaking. She was freaked out, but not panicking.
What was with this place! Couldn't people engage in normal workplace sabotage, like throwing each other's food out or stealing office supplies?
Maybe she should have tried to carve Hidan open. That was just expected behavior here, apparently!
Suddenly, she didn't want to be alone in the dungeon, where anyone could easily find her and jump her. She wanted– and could not believe she was thinking this– she wanted Tobi back. She hurried back up to the kitchen.
Kisame and Deidara were at the table, sharing food from a take-out box.
"If your arm was messed up, you should have said somethingbefore the fight," Kisame was saying.
"I thought it was obvious!" Deidara shot back.
Tobi was nowhere in sight. Tori checked the living room, but Kakuzu was flipping channels on the TV, and she quickly retreated back to the kitchen. Hidan had stuck a note to the fridge, promising to eviscerate whoever took all his food.
"Yo, Tori-san," Kisame greeted, and waved her over.
Tori snapped. "Kisame, you are at the very bottom of my list of people to worry about right now, and I don't have time for–"
"Whoa there," Kisame cut in, eyebrows raised. Deidara was grinning at her, the way he might grin at someone before he blew them up. "I was just going to ask if you wanted a beer?"
There was a box for a six pack between them on the table, with two bottles left. Tori cautiously took a seat next to Kisame and not next Deidara, because Deidara was mean. Kisame casually opened a bottle with his teeth and passes it to her.
"You're not going to cry over it, are you?" Deidara asked suspiciously.
"Shut up," Tori mumbled and took a sip.
Beer… tasted bad. It wasn't even very cold anymore. She took another sizeable swig.
"Where's Tobi?" Kisame said. "I thought he was supposed to be watching you."
"Maybe Hidan eviscerated him," Tori said.
"This place is a circus, yeah," Deidara said, sounding very pleased with the idea of living in perpetual chaos.
"Speaking of Hidan," Kisame said. "How did the Zombi Combo rank?"
"Huh?" Tori asked.
"For kidnapping," Kisame urged.
"Oh, uh," Tori said, swirling her beer. "A four, maybe."
"You're rating them higher than us?" Kisame asked.
Tori did not remember what number she'd given Kisame and Itachi's kidnapping. "Well," she said, "I got free food out of that one."
"She's very food motivated, yeah," Deidara said. "What are you talking about?"
Kisame explained, and Deidara seemed disproportionately proud of scoring an eight out of ten.
"Fuck yes, Danna and I are great at kidnapping, yeah," he said, then grabbed the last beer and opened it with the mouth is his hand. "Even though Tori is a shit captive."
"Do you not have a bottle opener?" Tori asked, staring at his hand. "Also: holy crap."
Deidara waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Is a good captive one that's compliant," Kisame asked, "or one that escapes successfully?"
Deidara thought about it for half a second. "Either way, she sucks."
"I think a good captive is one that maximizes free meals," Tori joked, and Deidara snorted into his beer.
Tori did not talk much for the rest of the conversation, in which Kisame and Deidara mostly just playfully ribbed on each other. Kisame seemed fairly straight-foward and mellow, which were characteristics Tori could appreciate in a ninja. Deidara, when not actively pissed at you and throwing things, was also a good conversationalist. Tori could see herself socializing with both of them in the future, providing none of them threw glasses at her anymore.
It was a thought which went unexamined for a few minutes, and then Kisame mentioned cutting off someone's legs so they couldn't run away, and Deidara burst into laughter. Tori drank the last of her beer. These were not people she should be willingly associating with, and yet she still couldn't shake the thought of, If I live, hanging out with these two wouldn't be so bad.
It was upsetting. She snagged several pieces of their greasy dinner anyway.
"What were you up to today?" Kisame asked eventually.
Getting threatened by everyone and their mother, Tori thought. Outloud she answered, "I read a book, and Tobi took me up to see the greenhouse."
"Huh," Kisame said, rubbing his chin. "I've never been up there."
"Danna has a bunch of stuff up there, yeah," Deidara said, nodding. "He's always bitching about the humidity doing stuff to his desert plants."
Tori opened her mouth to ask what sorts of plants Sasori was keeping, when Tobi exploded into the room. "TORI-CHAN, I LOST YOU!"
"How did you lose her, idiot?" Deidara snapped. "She's been here this whole time, yeah."
"Thank you for taking care of her, Deidara-sempai!" Tobi said, throwing his arms around Deidara and embracing him. "Leader-sama warned Tobi that Tori-chan is a wiley trickster–"
"GET OFF!" Deidara yelped, and punched Tobi in the head.
Once Deidara had calmed down and Tobi had wiggled out of the headlock he'd ended up in, Tori grabbed an apple to snack on and headed down to the dungeon with Tobi. It was only 8:00, but Tobi had declared it her bedtime.
Tori was feeling pretty good about herself, but once they got down to the dungeon, Tobi carefully closed the door behind them, and then turned to face Tori with such gravitas that she knew she was no longer speaking to 'Tobi.'
"Um," she said, placing her half eaten apple down on the table. "Hello."
Obito crossed his arms, eyeing her. Tori felt a flash of annoyance, as he had been hanging out with her most of the day. What else was there to learn about her!
"Itachi said you finally slipped up," he finally said.
"Um," Tori said. She couldn't see his face, but his head was tilted in a way that gave the impression he was watching her intently.
"Under a genjutsu, of course," Obito continued, and began to pace around Tori in a loose circle. "I wouldn't expect even a seasoned ninja to stand up to Itachi's genjutsu."
Tori remained silent. She had no idea where Obito was going with this, or what he wanted from her, or what secret test she'd slipped up on.
Obito stopped pacing to stand in front of her. He seemed taller than he did as Tobi. "He believes you now though," Obito went on mildly. "He urged me to let him interrogate and then kill you."
Great, Tori thought.
"Do you know my name, Tori?" Obito asked.
Tori felt her pulse increase, but otherwise felt calm. "Can anyone else hear us?" she asked.
"Zetsu, maybe," Obito answered.
"You told Pein and Konan your name is Madara," Tori said, "but you're really Uchiha Obito."
She flinched back on instinct, but Obito did not react. He stood there, straight backed but relaxed, and watched her for several seconds. Then, he started slow clapping.
"Bravo," he said in a weird mix of good humor and sarcasm. Tori felt herself twitch. "You pass."
"I pass," Tori repeated.
"There's not a person on earth who could have told you that, besides Zetsu and myself," Obito answered. "So either you can see the future, or you have some other formidable knowledge source. I don't care which one."
Tori thought this was a bit short-sighted, as "can see the future" had much different implications from "actually, you're a cartoon character."
"Can I ask," Tori said, sounding braver than she felt, "if that was your test, then what was all of that, today?" She waved at the entirety of him.
"Your other test, of course," Obito said. He sounded lazy, with a touch of arrogance. "We can't have you leaking information, even within the Akatsuki. I wanted to see what you would do in a hostile environment."
Tori pressed her lips together. "So loose lips sink ships," she said.
Obito cocked his head.
"Snitches get stitches?" Tori tried. "Snitches end up in ditches."
"You are very strange," Obito replied.
Obito kept talking, leaning casually on the table. She wasn't to report any of her 'visions' to anyone but him or Zetsu, so they could control who got what pieces of knowledge. She was to complete whatever tasks Pein and Konan set out for her. At some point, she was going to have to sit someone down and explain Orochimaru's research. Finally, Obito wanted her to tell him everything she knew.
Tori frowned at him, gathering her thoughts. She knew a lot.
"Go on," he said, waving his hand at her impatiently. "Talk."
Tori felt that odd compulsion again, which was easy to recognize when she knew to look for it, but still impossible to resist. She told him the first thing on her mind.
"I predict that you'll turn out to be the biggest jackass in the world," she said, and then clapped her hand to her mouth.
"Ah, I can never get that illusion quite right," Obito said, with a sort of exaggerated sigh that reminded her of Tobi. The compulsion to tell him you go prematurely gray faded.
The story Tori ended up telling was disjointed, and vague in places– sometimes on purpose, and sometimes because she genuinely didn't know. She focused on what she thought Obito might be interested in– capturing tailed beasts and the deaths of Akatsuki members, one by one and mostly by Konoha's hands. She made sure to mention his Moon's Eye Plan, just to reinforce that she knew her shit. She paused when she started talking about Sasuke.
"Actually," she said as a thought occurred to her. "I don't really know what he'll do. I can tell you what he was going to do before I interfered, and it might be similar."
"That's interesting," Obito said, and he stood up straight from where he had been reclining against the table. "Can you change destiny, Tori-chan?" He made the diminutive sound mean instead of childish. He didn't want for her to answer, and continued, "I think that's enough for now. It's your bedtime, after all!"
He said the last part in something approaching his Tobi voice, and Tori winced at the change. Why this?! Why! This!
Obito left her, and Tori finished eating her apple while sitting cross-legged on her bed. That had been… tense… but not nearly as scary as Hidan smashing her face in, or Itachi's creepy genjutsu, or half of her time in Oto. This seemed surmountable. Difficult, but doable.
Tori stood up and stretched. Obito's list of rules didn't include "stay in your cell." Pein and Konan hadn't really given her a list of rules either. Compared to Oto, it was oddly freeing.
She went to find that copy of Icha Icha.
xXx
END NOTES:
Itachi: I'm a pacifist. I dislike violence.
Tori: I know all your secrets!
Itachi: Kill her immediately.
I have absolutely no idea how to write Zetsu or Obito but I... tried...? Zetsu's preoccupation with the human experience is influenced heavily by AO3 user Loudest_Voice.
Someone of you asked what Tori got wrong last chapter! She said Kabuto uses Anko's cursed seal to revive Orochimaru. This was actually done by Sasuke, although I seem to remember Kabuto kidnapping her for some reason….? The war arc is very confusing. :| It's a pretty inconsequential mistake, anyway.