Chapter 33: Jealousy Arc - The Shoulder Touch

I was struggling with a huge deadline for class this week...but finally turned it in! Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: I only own my OCs and the plot!


Deidara's POV

At the end of the week, I decided to inform Kaiya about what I had discovered about Akane, including her ability to generate her own chakra.

"So, you're saying that Akane became a free spirit when you told me to keep her?" she questioned.

I nodded in response. "Yes. She is the first creation to develop a mind of her own, and the only one that I don't need to constantly control with my chakra. You could say that Akane has become more like a personal summon, except that she doesn't have a summoning seal just yet."

"If that's the case," Kaiya wondered aloud, "do you think Akane might be able to learn any jutsu?"

"Possibly," I shrugged. "She's quite a strange one, un."

Kaiya opened her brother's bedroom and called for Akane, who immediately flew out and perched on her shoulder. She greeted the clay phoenix by gently stroking her feathers...if it could be called that.

"Awk?" asked the bird, looking at Kaiya curiously.

"Deidara here was telling me that you could create chakra," she informed her. "Can you, perhaps, demonstrate for us what you can do with it?"

Akane squawked proudly, leaping off of Kaiya's shoulder and gliding to the ground. She closed her eyes, and we watched in awe as she shrouded herself in the blue aura again. Focusing almost all of it to one of her wings, she waddled over to the nearest door and slapped it, very much like she had yesterday. It shook violently again, but this time, I heard it pop off of one of its hinges.

"Oh," Kaiya realized. "So that's why I heard that loud bang on my door while I was trying to put my jeans on. Sorry about that, Deidara."

"It's fine," I responded. "But still, which door did we break?"

Her expression quickly turned into a frown as she looked inside the room, then closed the door again. "Well, all I know is that Yukio-chan is certainly going to be ticked off when he finds out. Luckily, he and Naoki-chan went to the arcade today, so we can just easily repair it before they get home."

I narrowed my eyes at Akane, who was just standing there, the blue aura fading until it completely dissipated from her body. She gave me a funny look, then flew back onto Kaiya's shoulder as if nothing had happened.

"Looks like she only has enough for one shot," I stated. "But still, that power might actually prove to be quite useful, if we ever find ourselves in the need to break down a door for whatever reason, un."

Kaiya sweatdropped, scratching her head nervously. "Yeah...not likely. But still, perhaps being able to fly would be pretty useful."

"Agreed," I said, remembering all the times I had used my clay birds as mounts to fly from place to place. "But for some reason, I still need to use my chakra to make her become the giant phoenix we flew on that other day. Akane doesn't seem to know how to do that by herself."

"Maybe we could train her," Kaiya suggested. "If she's like a ninja from your world, then perhaps she can train like one as well, and maybe even pick up some jutsu along the way."

Akane chirped in agreement, and I sighed, shaking my head. "I guess the decision is unanimous, then. But where do we start?"

Kaiya shrugged. "I don't know too much about that, but let's try the front yard or the large balcony. That way, nothing will break if Akane transforms again."

Nodding, we headed down the stairs and out the front door. Kaiya and I walked onto the small patch of the front lawn, and I carefully set down Akane on the grass. The little phoenix pecked at the grass curiously, as if they were tickling her.

"Can you do the chakra thing that allows her to expand?" she asked me.

Smirking, I nodded, then did the hand seal. A cloud of smoke appeared around Akane, and when it cleared, she had returned to the size she was when we had flown to the waterfall.

"Don't you guys usually say something before you perform a jutsu?" she questioned, staring at the bird. "Or at least, my brother said so."

"Sometimes, you don't need words to perform a jutsu, un," I responded, climbing onto Akane's back. "I don't know if you know about it, but you don't need to say anything for a healing jutsu, otherwise known as the Mystical Palm Jutsu."

She shook her head. "Nope. Haven't heard of it."

"Anyway," I said, pointing to Akane, "Can you shroud yourself in chakra again, but in this form?"

The clay phoenix nodded, blanketing herself with blue aura again. I felt a huge rush of strength and adrenaline flow inside me, but I figured it was only because I was sitting on top of her.

"Why don't you hop on?" I asked Kaiya, patting the spot beside me. "If you sit on Akane's back, you'll feel a great energy surge."

Kaiya blinked, then shrugged. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. But still, I'm not sure if I'll get a strength boost, since I don't have chakra like you do."

"Just give it a try, un," I told her, and Akane squawked in agreement. However, since she was much bigger than normal, it sounded very much like a soft roar. "It won't hurt."

She sighed, then walked over to Akane and sat on her back. "Very well, if you insist. But still, I don't feel any— whoa!"

From her shocked expression, I could tell immediately that she was having an adrenaline rush. The blue aura surrounded her body, and her teeth chattered. Her hands and feet did not seem to want to stop moving.

"Help!" she shrieked, her voice a little more high-pitched than usual. "Too much energy! Too much energy! Can't...breathe..."

Instinctively, I placed my hands on her shoulders, and felt it too: the sudden surge of chakra rushing through her body. Since she had no chakra to begin with, I should have honestly seen that one coming.

"Yo, Akane," I mumbled to the phoenix, "slow down your chakra surge just a little bit, okay? I think that you're going to kill Kaiya."

Akane nodded, and I felt the chakra surrounding Kaiya weaken. She coughed, breathing heavily for about a minute before regaining her senses.

"Phew!" she gasped in relief, turning around to face me. "Thanks for that, Deida—"

For the first time, she noticed that my hands were placed on her shoulders. Kaiya sent me a death glare, but of course, I didn't notice it in time.

"Hands off, you baka," she growled, slapping away my hands from her shoulders.

"I wasn't trying to do anything!" I protested. "How else was I supposed to detect the chakra surge pulsing within you without touching you, un?"

She just sighed. "Fine, I'll let that one go, since you kind of saved my life. But next time, I won't forgive you, got it?"

"Why do you hate me so much?" I tried asking. "You're forgiving me this time, but you exploded at me during that dodgeball game a few days ago, after I kept the ball from hitting your face."

"I would have caught it."

At that, I blinked in confusion. "You mean...you can catch the balls in dodgeball without getting out?"

Kaiya nodded, giggling slightly. "Of course you can! And no, I don't hate you, Deidei-chan. Hate is too strong of a word to really be used in our family, except for when the internet acts funky. However, I honestly do think that you're an idiot."

"Will you drop the nickname?" I growled in fury, making her giggle even more. "I'm not a little boy...or a little girl, for that matter! But still, at least calling me an idiot is much better than being called a perv—"

"Nope," Kaiya interrupted. "You still are a pervert for spending your free time reading Icha Icha."

I glared at her, a tick mark appearing on my forehead. "Shut up!"

Akane, who we had completely forgotten about, suddenly sat up and crowed. Kaiya almost screamed, quickly grabbing onto the bird's back. I held onto Akane's neck, realizing that Akane was going to take flight.

But once again, I forgot to warn Kaiya about it.

This time, when Akane spread her wings and left the ground, Kaiya screamed, but I quickly covered her mouth to avoid attracting too much attention. Unfortunately, this only made her scream even more, so I quickly took my hand back, grabbing back onto Akane as the clay phoenix zoomed off into the skies.

"Awk!" she screeched, mimicking the cry of a normal flying bird. "Di-di-di!"

Kaiya opened her mouth to speak, but like the previous time we had flown together, the wind silenced her.

"Akane, slow down!" I commanded, my voice unaffected by the wind. "I think Kaiya is trying to say something!"

The phoenix nodded, slowing down her pace just enough for Kaiya to speak again.

"Whoa!" sputtered Kaiya as she jolted forward slightly. "Wow, I did not expect her to take off like that at all. But still, it looks like Akane can mimic the sounds and cries of normal birds as well."

Akane seemed to smirk in confirmation. "Scree!"

"But you know," she continued, "I've been wondering this for quite some time. If Akane is a phoenix, then do you think can she breathe fire?"

I shrugged. "It would be pretty cool if she did, un. However, I don't know if she knows how to—"

"Kaa!" roared Akane. Suddenly, her chakra surge returned, but luckily, not as strong as before. Placing my hands on Akane's back, my eyes widened, realizing that the much of her chakra was flowing towards her beak, where it seemed to all be collecting at a single point.

To check my theory, I peered over Akane's side, and sure enough, a small ball of flaming energy was forming in her beak. It looked as if it were a sealed form of the Fireball Jutsu, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was until she fired it in the form of a thin beam, ten seconds later. However, before the beam could hit anything, the lack of chakra used in it caused it to dissipate.

"Did you see that?" asked Kaiya, to which I nodded. "I think that might have been Akane trying to attempt shooting a flamethrower of some sort."

"Perhaps Akane really can try to learn techniques similar to jutsu," I remarked. "But we may have to train her for quite a while, if that's the case."

"That would actually be pretty fun," Kaiya commented, "but at the same time, we'll have to make sure that we do it in a secluded area so that nobody sees us. I mean, what do you think will rush to people's minds when they see a clay phoenix on our lawn?"

I shrugged, chuckling slightly. "They probably say something like, 'Am I dreaming?' Maybe even, 'Pinch my cheek, darling! I think I've been sleepwalking again!"

Kaiya giggled. "Hopefully, nobody says anything like the second one. I will feel pretty creeped out if I find out that I live near sleepwalkers."

"What about Sasori-danna?"

"He's a puppet," she answered. "Puppets don't need to sleep, so technically, he doesn't count. Have you ever seen him sleep before?"

"Occasionally," I responded. "But usually it's only him closing his eyes because he's deep in thought, un. Sometimes, I wonder what he thinks about in the middle of the night to pass the time away…"

"Who knows?" Kaiya shrugged. "Everybody has their own secrets and mysteries. I still don't understand what happened to Kagami-chan and Tobi during the past couple of weeks. They don't seem like they talk to each other anymore—"

"That's good, then," I replied without thinking. "Fewer idiots for us to deal with."

"You don't understand!" Kaiya retorted, anger appearing in her voice. "I feel like something has definitely happened between those two! It's as if they might have had some sort of terrible argument and refuse to talk to each other, all because of it!"

I frowned, knowing exactly where this was going. "So what you're saying is that we try to get them to make up and become best friends again?"

"Yes!" exclaimed Kaiya. "I don't like seeing my imouto so unhappy, and plus, I don't want her of all people to launch a blue firework tonight. Tobi...well, he's quite a strange one, really. But still, they seem to be good at finding scintillating fragments when they're together."

I sighed, holding my face in my hands. "I guess you're right, un. Although I don't know if I like her or not, I can't imagine Kagami without a constant smile on her face, especially if she's around Tobi. As for the masked boy, I couldn't really care less about what happens to that idiot."

"But he's your partner!" Kaiya protested, and I just shook my head.

"Kakuzu and Hidan are partners," I reminded her. "And you see how well that's going, right? Not all partners like each other."

Suddenly, Akane squawked, drawing our attention back to the area surrounding us. To both of our horrors, we were headed right towards a patch of huge boulders, each about the size of a large hill.

"Akane, pull up!" I commanded, and we zoomed towards the sky, watching as the boulders on the ground became smaller and smaller.

Kaiya heaved a sigh of relief. "Whoa...that was a close one."

I nodded in agreement. "Actually, now that I think about it, where in the world are we?"

"I don't know," Kaiya shrugged. "Well, at least we can use Akane's homing sense in order to guide us back to our house."

"Yeah," I responded, gently patting the bird's neck. "You know what to do, Akane. Please take us back home."

"Caw!" she squawked, nodding. Before either of us realized what she was doing, Akane flipped backward, making me almost scream...well, just a little bit. Of all my years I had flown on clay birds, I had never tried to fly upside down, and boy, I did not like the feeling of having all of my blood rush to my head like that. Kaiya, on the other hand, didn't hesitate to scream, as she wrapped her arms tighter around the bird's neck.

Once again, I instinctively placed my hands on her shoulders, but this time it was not for measuring a chakra surge. I did it to comfort her, attempting to stop her from screaming so loudly. But for some reason, I didn't notice my hands placing themselves on Kaiya's shoulders until literally five seconds later, when Kaiya smacked them off.

"Idiot!" she roared, making me flinch. "What part of 'hands off' do you not understand? Just because a giant clay phoenix flips us upside down without warning and nearly sends us plummeting to our deaths does not mean that you have permission to touch me like that!"

Immediately, I scowled. "Well, I'm sorry, un! Besides, how was I supposed to know that I was doing something like that? They moved on their own, okay?"

She sighed. "Well, they're your hands, baka. You're the one who controls them, not some random possessing spirit."

"Whatever," I grumbled. "Let's just focus on getting ourselves home before any of the others start wondering where the hell we are."

On cue, Akane picked up the pace, thankfully flipping us back around again. The blood stopped rushing to my head, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Nevertheless, Kaiya continued wrapping her arms tightly around Akane, in fear of the bird deciding to perform another stunt that would send her flying off of her back.

We flew in silence for several minutes, the only sounds we heard being the wind flying past us and Akane's occasional squawks and cries. At the speed we were going, the trees we flew by were reduced to mere green blurs, but I was well used to the speed. If Kaiya wanted to scream again, she either was hiding it well, or just didn't have enough energy to release another annoying sound.

But until we had arrived at the house, neither one of us considered the fact that the other members of the Akatsuki could have been watching us fly together and take it as something else. Not suspecting a thing, we landed on the front lawn, where I quickly returned Akane to her normal size with a hand seal.

When I turned around to check on Kaiya, I noticed that she was hyperventilating slightly, as if she had actually stifled a scream.

So she was scared on the ride back...

"Are you okay?" I asked her, placing one of my hands on her shoulder once again. "You looked as if you were going to scream—"

"I said, hands off!" Kaiya thundered, managing to catch her breath, but when we heard a clicking sound behind us, she dropped her scowl, turning towards the direction where the sound had originated from.

"Well, well, well," snickered Kisame, standing on the front porch with a triumphant smirk on his face. In his hands, he held a Polaroid camera, which was currently printing out a picture of us. "What do we have here?"


Kagami's POV

"Hey, Naoki-nii-chan!" I said, pounding on my brother's door. "Have you seen onee-chan anywhere? I need to see if she knows what happened to all of the scintillating fragments that I've been collecting."

"You don't know what happened to the fragments?" he questioned, shock in his voice. "I thought onee-chan would have told you that she took your fragments in order to check how many we had. But anyway, no, I have not seen onee-chan all day. She's probably in her room, though."

My eyes widened. "Oh no! Where did onee-chan go? I've been looking for her all over the house and can't find her anywhere! And her room was the first place that I checked, nii-chan!"

Immediately, Naoki opened the door, his eyes wide as well. "Hold on, what?"

"I sent Kisa-nii and Sasori-san to help me find her," I informed him. "They also found out that Deidara-san went missing as well!"

Before I could say anything else, he was already out the door, probably to find his little brother. To confirm my theory, he ran down the stairs, screaming "Yukio-chan! Yukio-chan! Have you seen onee-chan or Deidara at all?"

The reply came no more than ten seconds later. "Yes, they're right on the front porch with Akane and Kisame! They don't look like they're hurt at all, but onee-chan seems to be hyperventilating, and Deidara looks like he wants to murder Kisame right now!"

I ran downstairs as soon as I heard the m-word, determined to stop a fight if it broke out. But by the time I reached the bottom step, I saw the shark-man and Deidara fighting over what seemed to be a camera.

"Give me that photo, un!" Deidara roared, a pink tint on his cheeks, but Kisame snatched it back from him, a gleeful smirk etched on his face.

"No way!" Kisame grinned, making the boy grow angrier. "The stuff you're doing in this photo...I find it to be rather interesting."

"Stop being so dramatic!" Deidara thundered, his face turning redder. "All I'm doing is touching her shoulder in that photo, and nothing else like that, sharkey! Besides, it's just one hand! I was checking to see if she was okay after flying so quickly on Akane!"

That got my attention. Have they been training Akane and flying on her together all this time?

Kisame continued smirking. "You're one to talk, Deidara. If it's only you touching her shoulder, why are you making such a big fuss about it? All I'm doing is showing the picture to the rest of the Akatsuki! What harm can it do?"

Deidara cocked a brow at him angrily. "Oh, yeah? Sic him, Akane!"

Before Kisame could respond, Akane took the air and squawked angrily, pecking at the shark-man over and over. "Ba-caw! Ba-caw!"

Kaiya stifled her laughter, causing her to hyperventilate even more. I was pretty sure that had he not have been laughing so hard at that moment, Deidara would have touched her shoulders again to check and see if she was okay.

"Get away, Akane!" Kisame growled, batting at the phoenix in a similar manner to when Akane had attacked Hidan two weeks ago. "Stop it! Ow!"

Suddenly, before any one of us could react, Itachi walked up to his faithful partner and grabbed the photo right out of his hands.

"Enough, Kisame," muttered Itachi, holding up the snatched photo. "There is no need to start a fight over a single Polaroid picture...especially if it's because of this."

And with that, he dramatically ripped the photo in two, making Kisame's jaw drop to a height that I didn't know it could.

"B-b-but—" he stammered, but I decided to cut him off.

"Don't start a fight, Deidara-san and Kisa-nii," I told him. "It's just a Polaroid camera, so there's nothing dangerous about it."

But inside, I knew exactly why Deidara was embarrassed about the photo. My inner smirked, realizing that Kisame had only wanted to pair Deidara with my sister. Of course, my sister was too focused on her feelings for Daichi to recognize that another boy liked her…

Suddenly, we all heard a loud knock on our front door. Instinctively, all of our heads turned, wondering who it could be at this hour in the morning.

"Coming!" I squealed, running towards the door before anybody else could.

As I grabbed the doorknob, I turned around, watching as every Akatsuki member quickly rushed upstairs to hide. Yukio and Naoki followed them, grabbing dusters in case we had to turn them back into kittens if it was who we thought it was.

Once I was sure that they had all hidden somewhere upstairs, I turned the knob and swung open the door, expecting to see Harumi-san or Mayu to be standing there.

But to me and my sister's surprise, neither of the two were standing there. Instead, there stood about a hundred kids on our front porch.

Immediately, my sister pulled me aside. "Kagami-chan," she mumbled, "let me handle this one."

I stepped away from the door, allowing Kaiya to stand in front and observe the huge crowd of little kids, as well as a few teenagers and adults.

"Hello there," she greeted politely, dipping her head. "Can you explain to me why all of you are gathered here on our front porch?"

One of the little boys in front nodded, stepping forward to approach my sister. By looking at him, I guessed that he was about ten years old.

"I'm assuming that you two must be the owners," he said simply. "Is it okay if we get a chance to see him?"

I tilted my head in slight confusion. "Who in the world are you talking about?"

In response, the boy cocked a brow at me. "Who else? We're here to see your internet-famous cat known as Fuzzsticks."


A/N: I would scream like Kaiya if all those kids suddenly showed up on my front porch. Also, I made a new cover for this story that features Kagami...well, I tried to find a picture of what she looks like, but that was one of the best ones.

Question: Favorite type of bird?

See you guys next time!

— Tenshi —