Take Me Seriously!


"You've got a lot of nerve." Athena remarked, glaring.

"Good to see you too, sister." Icarus replied, dryly, picking at his beak with one wing. "How's Kudos doing?"

"Oh he's great, gotten a lot bigger. Why are you here?" Athena shifted her posture, making it clear that a fight was very much possible.

"Peace," he bowed his head in submission, "I'm not here to fight."

Athena glared at him. "That's usually what peace means, yes. Are you here with an apology, then? Or an explanation? It's been a full decade and now you come to talk?"

"Neji is going to confront Hinata."

"...I see." She looked at him, closely. "Will you object to me telling her?"

"You will not need to." Icarus replied. "He is about to invite her himself."

"Invite." Athena huffed. "To her death?"

Icarus didn't respond.

"And what follows?" She snapped. "When one of the last two Hyuuga lie dead, what will you do?"

"I will return. I will explain. And I will accept judgement."

That bombshell shocked her into silence.

"Do not expect me to apologise." He continued. "I don't regret what I did. But I miss my family, and I am willing to undergo punishment to return to you. Perhaps a more pressing issue, however, is that you are also invited."

"Invited?"

"To witness the fight. Neji is setting up some summoning technique or another. Any owl that wants to may come and watch, but must not interfere."

Athena looked at him. The two pairs of white eyes met.

"I hope," she told him, "that you are not insane."

He did the owl equivalent of raising an eyebrow at her.

"Fine." She sighed. "Some representatives will be there. And I suppose I shall have to..." she paused. "...Tell Hinata she needn't make an effort to spare Neji...Is that why he sent you? To ensure she doesn't hold back?"

Icarus didn't reply, turning and hopping off his planetoid before gliding into the distance.

Deeply troubled, Athena watched him go.


"Alright then; I am twenty three."

"False."

"I am seventeen."

"False."

"I am nineteen."

"True."

"'My favourite colour is cyan."

"True, apparently. I would have guessed orange."

"Incredible." Jugo breathed. "You can just...tell?"

"I can see it." Hinata shrugged, slightly uncomfortable at the praise. "It's in your brain. It lights up differently when you're lying."

"No secrets and now no lies? I pity anyone who you end up married to." Karin remarked from her left.

"No you don't."

"No, I don't. This is hilarious!" The redhead had a shark-like grin on her face.

The three were running at a reasonable pace through one forest or another. Their destination was Konoha.

"Are you sure we should just be leaving Kabuto back in the hideout?" Jugo asked. "The look in his face...he didn't seem too stable."

"I couldn't kill him." Hinata sighed. "After I told him I'd killed Orochimaru he was just so..." she searched for the word, "hopeless. Empty. He couldn't have fended off Suigetsu, he was that shaken."

"Oh yeah, are we just leaving Suigetsu, too?" Karin asked.

"Is he relevant to the plot?" Hinata countered.

"Not really?"

"I didn't think so. I freed him, but he's not coming with us."

"Good." Karin decided. "That guy was an asshole."


Across the valley, Suigetsu flexed his arms and grinned. "I'm going to collect all the seven swords of the Mist."


Further away, Sasuke hissed spontaneously, putting his hand on the bracer where six of the swords were stored.

"...What the fuck was that." Kakashi deadpanned, staring at him.


"And anyway, how did you kill Orochimaru?" Karin squinted at her friend. "You were paralysed, dying, he had-"

"I'm not giving away all my secrets." Hinata dodged, smiling. "By the way, you might want to ready yourselves. We have incoming."

Jugo took a moment to understand, but Karin was well used to Hinata's eyesight. "What's the threat?"

Hinata squinted, more as a reflex that anything else. "From what I can see, Deidara of the Akatsuki, Deidara's bird, and..."

"What?" Jugo asked.

Hinata blinked, looking at the guy with an orange mask. Underneath his clothing, he was horribly disfigured, with scars drawn across one side of his face. Half of his body was...wrong. It wasn't human, wasn't a puppet, wasn't clay, it was some organic thing that welded onto his other half seamlessly. That wasn't the issue, however. He had a Sharingan in his right eye. And a Byakugan in his left.

And then (from three kilometres away) he turned towards her and winked.


The blond, androgynous man looked across at Hinata when the two parties finally met.

"Well well well. Look at you. Those eyes remind me of this one guy I really don't like-"

"Who the hell are you?"

"Straight to the point, huh? Alright, I can respect that. My name is Deidara and-"

"Not you." Hinata stared down the man in the orange mask. "You. Who the hell are you?"

"Bwuh?" Said the man in the orange mask. "But-but-but Deidara-kun is the most interesting person in the world!" And then beneath the mask he mouthed 'he's an asshole'.

"What is your game?" Hinata stared him down. "Does the rest of the Akatsuki know about you? What you are? What you have?"

"Can we, maybe, focus a little?" Deidara tried to intervene, but Hinata made a dismissive shushing motion at him.

"Not right now, adults are talking. Seriously. Where did you get that dojutsu?"

"He has a dojut- you have a dojutsu?" Deidara couldn't seem to decide who to focus on.

"Tobi may, or may not, have borrowed it from a nice man called Ao in Mist one time." Tobi replied. Hinata could tell he was putting the voice on. "Also Tobi may have blamed the whole thing on Neji. But Tobi didn't get caught!"

"Borrowed?" Karin blinked, from the sidelines. "I heard about that incident, Ao's dead."

Hinata was piecing the events together in her head.

"The Byakugan cannot be retrieved from a branch member due to the caged bird seal." She snarled, recounting from memory. "This is why the singular main branch member from each generation is usually not sent to front line combat. Except once, when the 26 year old Hiashi Hyuuga took to the battlefield to retrieve his brother, who had been captured by Mist agents. He retrieved his sibling, but lost his eye."

She glared flatly at the orange mask. "That's my father's eye, you stealing filth. Who the hell are you?"

"Tobi is just Tobi. Nobody important." The man shrugged, grinning. And she knew that he knew that he was lying.

Hinata took a threatening step forwards but was interrupted when an explosion went off just to her left. She turned, annoyed, to stare at Deidara, who was brushing some clay remnants off of his hands. "Well, as exciting as I'm sure this is supposed to be, can we shift the attention back over to me where it belongs? Me and my secretive companion here are looking for Orochimaru, have you seen him around?"

"Orochimaru is dead." Hinata told him. "I killed him."

"Oh, damn." Deidara paused to think about that. "Well I can't go back and tell the boss someone else did it...I suppose, as a loyal Akatsuki member, I'd be morally obligated to kill you instead."

"You have an ulterior motive." Hinata said, flatly.

"No." He lied. She didn't need the Gokei to tell her this time; he wasn't even trying to conceal his anticipation.

Hinata documented the moment she realised she wasn't getting out of this without a fight, and sighed.

"Listen. I'm not here to fight, I only-" she blurted into motion.

Deidara tried to throw himself backwards, but underestimated her speed when halfway through her charge she kicked open the first gate, blasting towards him with her palm out and the intention of ending this quickly.

She didn't get the chance, however.

'Tobi' screamed "Senpai! No!" And threw himself in front of Hinata's charge. Her palm hit him in the gut and sent him catapulting into a nearby tree.

"Tobi?" Deidara blinked. "You, uh..?"

Tobi coughed. "Deidara-Senpai...I can see the light..."

"What is your game?" Hinata repeated, glaring at the orange mask. She had just seen him notice her attack, pause and wait to see Deidara's response, then sigh and interpose himself.

"Senpai...let's go home..."

"You want to see me fight him? Is that it?"

"Oshiete, Senpai..."

Behind Hinata, Deidara was doing some weird chakra stuff with his clay, and she sighed and turned fully to him.

"Finally." The blond grinned. "I've been waiting a long time for this match-"

"I don't want to hear your tragic backstory." Hinata told him, getting more infuriated by the minute. "I don't care. We're going to fight and then I'm leaving."

"You sound just like him." Deidara tchd. "Do you know what happened when Neji first met me?"


Eight years ago.

A young Deidara glared at the two people in the black cloaks. "And who the hell are you?"

"We're here to recruit you." Said the one with the white eyes. He looked remarkably bored with everything going on.

"Recruit me?" Deidara laughed. "Why would I want to hang with you two fashion abominations?"

The other tilted his h-


"Whoah what the hell!" Deidara screamed in a very unmasculine fashion as he jumped away from a bolt of lightning that Hinata shot at him.

"Oh good, are you finished?" She checked.

"NO!" He shot back, angrily. "I was dropping some dope exposition about me and your cousin!"

"Do you know where he is right now?" Hinata asked.

"Uh-"

"Then I don't care." She ran forwards at him again.

"Oh, that's it. You deserve this."

Deidara opened his arms and threw out a giant number of small clay explosives.

Hinata, having built up enough speed, moved into the heavenly spin kata while still sliding forwards, and the bombs detonated harmlessly against the dome of chakra.

She cracked a smile; the clouds of smoke from his bombs worked to her advantage. She could still see him, but he was functionally blind.

The smoke cleared a moment later, and two shuriken were whizzing from her to him.

Deidara dodged with a predictable ease, but not predicted was him hurling a pair of bombs behind himself and almost immediately making the hand seal to set them off. Hinata's smile fell, annoyed. Her two shuriken popped, appearing as two shadow clones, but both were caught in the bombs' explosions before they could attack.

"Come on. You thought I'd fall for that?" Deidara chuckled. "Clones hidden in projectiles is chunin stuff, sweetie."

He dug into his bags of clay. "Let me show you what a real ninja can do."

Hinata had no interest in seeing it, and took off towards him.

Before she could reach Deidara, he spewed some clay out from his hands and it formed into a pair of gross, bipedal, blobby things that waddled towards Hinata with frightening speed.

She slammed a palm into one, but her hand stuck into it's viscous body, and she was unable to pull it out, leaving her trying to avoid the other one without touching it. Damn.

Fine then, time for the big guns.

Hinata clenched her stuck hand into a fist. "Chidori: Lionfists."

The lightning release chakra blazed to life, and she tore her hand straight out of the construct before slamming a punch into both of them. This time they fell apart immediately, and when she looked up at Deidara, he wasn't smiling anymore.

Chidori: Lionfist did about what you'd expect.

The lion's heads around each of her hands flickered blue with supercharged lightning release.

If she hit someone with it, not only would they probably die immediately, but any chakra they had left would be immediately transferred to her.

Deidara was clearly unwilling to let that happen; appearing behind him was what he had been working on while the constructs distracted her. The large clay dragon roared quite impressively as Deidara hopped up onto its back. It didn't breathe fire, but it did launch a large mass of smaller explosives from its mouth as it flapped up and took off. Hinata made another heavenly spin to shrug off the attack, before cutting one finger with a chakra scalpel and palming the ground. "Summoning jutsu."

The smoke cleared, Deidara squinted down, and Hinata rocketed upwards, almost taking the dragon's head off with another chidori. She came to a stop floating in the air in front of her opponent, riding on the back of a navy blue owl.

"Yo! This guy's summon is big!" Kudos exclaimed.

"Not a summon. He built it."

"Oh, that's still cool! Let's kick its butt!"

Hinata shook her head and smiled.

In the years she'd been away, Kudos had gotten significantly bigger. His wingspan was now half again as large as Forsooth's, and apparently his particular breed would keep growing until he was "as tall as grandma Athena, at least!" His claws had sharpened, his wingbeats had grown stronger, and his eyes had began to take on the opal white appearance of the Byakugan.

"See if you can get me closer. I'm gonna try and snipe his head off with the Chidori sharp spear." Hinata told her mount.

"The guy or the dragon?"

"Yes."

"Got it! Let's go, mistress!"

Kudos dove.

Deidara gestured, and his dragon opened its mouth and vomited out some more explosives.

Hinata quickly changed up her hand signs, and Kudos made a few with her.

"Chidori current!" They both declared, and a field of electricity sprung to life around the flying pair. Her Byakugan tracked the chakra in the bombs, as they encountered her defense they were disarmed immediately. "Now!" She declared, and Kudos rocketed towards Deidara.

In response, he threw out a wide spread of explosives and detonated them prematurely, causing a concussive blast of air. Kudos was forced to adjust his course, using the changing air pressure to boost himself upwards but off his attack path.

Thus began the battle in the sky.

Explosions rent the air alongside bursts of electricity, leaving it thick with the scent of ozone and smoke, as the two fighters and their rides tried to gain the upper hand over each other.

Karin, sat on the ground eating popcorn, glanced across to the other people present. "Are we gonna intervene, or..."

"RAAAARGH!" Jugo had gone into his berserker mode, wildly swinging at Tobi, and-

"Go! Go! Deidara! You! Are! The best! Kick! Her! Butt! In! To! Her...chest?" Tobi had pulled some banners with the Akatsuki logo and Deidara's face crudely drawn on them from...somewhere...and was waving them in the air. Jugo's attacks were just phasing through the masked man like he wasn't even there.

"Right. Again, I'm the only sensible one here..." Karin sighed, and grabbed another handful of popcorn.

"Alright then!" Deidara declared, a few minutes later. Strands of his hair were sticking up from the static electricity. "I suppose it's time for the big guns!" He reached into his bag, and stuffed some clay into his mouth.

"Ew." "Ew!" Hinata and Kudos exclaimed in unison.

Deidara essentially blew a bubble, and emerging was a slowly widening clay doll that looked a lot like Deidara himself.

"This is my piece-de-resistance!" He declared with a flourish. "Once the C4 detonates, millions of microscopic bombs will go off, filling your body and destroying you on a cellular level!"

Hinata sighed, guiding Kudos in for a direct, high speed attack on her opponent. "Why the hell does everyone explain their moves before they use them!?"

Deidara just smiled. "Because you know I'm telling the truth. And now you know you have to deal with it."

And with that, he kicked the doll off the dragon.

Shit-

There wasn't enough time to make Kudos bank, Hinata threw herself downwards towards the falling doll.

She saw Deidara make the hand seal to detonate it, saw the chakra in the doll light up, realised she wasn't close enough and reached for a particular knot of chakra at the base of her neck-


"She's gonna kick your butt!" The owl called to Deidara, flapping out of range, but he ignored it as he directed his dragon's head downwards. After two seconds, when he didn't hear the explosion, he wasn't too worried. He'd expected her to be able to disarm the C4; the bitch shat out lightning chakra like she breathed. But now she was falling towards the ground without her summon. He prepared to launch another blast of explosives from the dragon's mouth, intending to use a trick he'd been keeping secret where he blew up a few of the bombs immediately to act as fuses for the others. No chakra required, no way to neutralise it, just a good old manual column of explosions that would-

There was a flash of light, and his dragon's head fell off.

He jumped backwards as a figure trailing a lightning lance flew upwards past him and shittheresanexplosivetagonthewing-

Another explosion, one of hers, and then his dragon was falling towards the distant ground.

His stomach lurched as suddenly he was in freefall, and he squinted upwards trying to spot how the hell she had-

Um.

What?

The Hyuuga girl reached the apex of an upwards flight, cos her arms were wings now, with dark blue feathers everywhere, and she looked down and winked at him as she began to fall at a very rapid pace and the lightning spear made out of black lightning coming out of one hand was still there except now it was pointed downwards at him and he tried to get some more clay but holy hell she was flying fast-

Hinata hit Deidara.

Then Deidara hit the ground.


"Decent fight." Hinata called across to him, trying not to show her dwindling chakra reserves. A summoning, more than a few chidori variants, and then the curse mark with the onyx chidori...she was basically about to collapse. My clan for Naruto's body. Uh, not like that. Or, well, maybe like that I mean-

"You bitch." Deidara snarled. He looked to his left. "That is the second time someone has cut my arm off this month!"

Hinata ignored him, turning to 'Tobi', who had been watching her the whole time. "This is over. Do I kill him or are you intervening or what?"

Tobi paused. "Rest in peace, Deidara-Senpai." He uttered, solemnly.

"Oh, fuck this." Deidara snarled, getting to his feet. "You haven't taken me seriously this whole fight. You're just like your cousin. He never appreciated my art. He just thought because he had his stupid eyes that let him see everything I did, he could make me a nonthreat. And you're no different."

"~Don't ever compare her to Neji~" Karin singsonged nervously, from the background.

Hinata found she wasn't as offended as she'd expected. "You're wrong." She told Deidara, calmly enough. "There's beauty in destruction just as there is in creation. I respect that."

Deidara's eyes widened as he smiled.

"But that had no impact on the match. You were weak, and I was strong, and you didn't have a strong enough motivation to overcome that imbalance. So you lost. GG."

And Deidara was scowling again. "Not strong enough motivation, huh? Oh, I'll show you my motivatio-"

Hinata did not want to know where he was going with that, so she threw a kunai at his face.

"Oh, the humanity!" Tobi staggered backwards, swooning.

Deidara, with a knife buried between his eyes, did not fall over and die. He started grinning. "Too late." His mouth said. Black lines spread across his skin, and his body seemed to disintegrate into them.

Nope. Nope nope nope-

Hinata stretched for another chidori, launching it straight at his chest, but even though the lightning chakra crackled all over his body, the buildup of chakra in whatever the hell that black blob was was not stopping.

"This is my ultimate technique." It said, looking like nothing except a small black cartoonish bomb with a face on it. "And I'm not a clay clone, this is the real deal. Everything for miles around is gonna go boom!"

"Quick, Hinata!" Karin called. "Summon an owl then reverse summon us all to the owl's home to avoid the blast!"

"Did I not just establish I was low on chakra?" Hinata gave her a weird look. "It would be a major plot hole if I could suddenly do that."

"Bet Sasuke could."

"No."

"Bet Sasuke could do it with Manda."

"Relax. I've got it." She turned back to the remnants of Deidara. "Guess you're right, whatever your name was. I can't beat you without my bullshit eye powers. Shame."

"What? Wait, no!"

She held her palm out towards him. White spread across her eyes and across her cheeks. "Hiragekoma."

The world around her exploded into colour. She'd thought the Byakugan could see everything, but whatever this was was more than that. She saw; and she understood. What she'd thought was a glowing mass of lightning and earth release chakra, bound to detonate, was a complex network of threads, and she knew how it all worked. And, through one palm, she sent out one tiny flicker of chakra into the perfect spot.

Ripples spread.

Threads fell out of alignment.

Instead of a mighty explosion that would be heard in all five nations, there was a small 'pfft' of smoke, and a little whining noise.

Jugo, Karin and Tobi peeked out from behind trees.

"That is the second time this month I have whiffed that technique." Deidara's core muttered, darkly, before disintegrating into a pile of dust on the floor.


I know I said you'd be getting aftermaths but instead you get this fight! Which I had a lot of fun with. More secrets are revealed, building upon that 'Hiashi has an eyepatch' thing I started building up back in part one. And RIP Deidara, your haircut will be missed.