Chapter 2 – The Quiet Shadow and the Artistic Bomber.

She woke, and sat up with a start.

"What the fuck?!" she yelled loudly to no one in particular when she felt the sudden pain in her body hit her. "Gods, my head hurts." she hissed angrily, feeling a bump on her head.

She cursed out loud several times whilst looking herself over for injuries, and finding just a few minor burns and coming to the conclusion that she probably had a minor concussion. Some of waist-length midnight black hair was singed at the ends, but nothing that she couldn't just trim.

Then she heard the sound of a very distant explosion. Her head quickly turned at the direction the sound was coming from. She decided against bothering to check it out, as she should probably heal herself first and figure out what happened. She got up slowly, leaning against a nearby rock. And turned around to take a quick look at where she was, and maybe find any clues about what happened. She started sending chakra to various parts of her body, so that she could figure out the damage, and heal any internal injuries.

She walked about 10 metres before looking up ahead, and noticing that the clearing she vaguely remembered being in yesterday was bigger. Much bigger. There were charring and scorch marks on the ground, rocks and trees. It came back to her all at once.

"Fucking Tsuchikage." she growled with venom in her voice. She toyed with the idea of moving, since they seemed to be finding her a little quicker than usual. "It's all fun and games until someone pulls out a stack of explosive tags. Asshole."

She looked around for a few more minutes and then remembered that she brought Hakujou with her, and started muttering various curses while looking around frantically for the katana. Eventually, she found it about 50 feet from where the Iwa shinobi set off the tags. She growled quietly to herself when she picked it up, and saw the charring marks on the scabbard. She pulled it out of the scabbard, and checked it over, being as careful as she could, worrying that the mental image of the whole thing just disintegrating into ash in her hands would actually become a reality.

When she decided that there wasn't any damage other than the small charring marks on the scabbard, she turned and began to stroll back to her house. When she got to the front door, she looked up, and found the sun was a fair bit further across the sky that when she came out earlier. She inwardly hoped that she hadn't been out until roughly the same time the next day. That would be pretty embarrassing.

She sighed, and looked through her cupboards for something quick to eat before she sat down to fix that burn on the back of her right thigh that was driving her nuts. After about half an hour, she was fixed up, and decided to head into town ready to head into town to stock up on supplies since she was completely out of fresh produce, and had about one cup of rice left.

A few minutes later, she was leaping through the trees at a fairly casual pace and she began to notice that the sound of the explosions she heard earlier was getting slowly louder. She decided to check it out, but thought that it probably would be a good idea to keep herself hidden.

When she made her way closer, she used her Kage Oni no Jutsu to hide herself amongst the shadows and masked her chakra as much as she could while still holding the jutsu. She made her way through the shadows until she was able to clearly see a human sized black and red cloaked figure in the distance.

Akatsuki?She thought to herself, and wasn't sure why they were here. There wasn't any bijuu in this area, and they were miles and miles from any hidden village, which was why she was out there. No one to bother her, except Iwa shinobi, and she rolled her eyes at the memory of the earlier fight.

The black-haired woman did not want to pass up the chance of seeing an Akatsuki member in the flesh, and maybe see how strong they really were. If they were able to take down so many jinchuuriki, then it was definitely going to be an epic fight, and a glorious death if it came to that. Dying was a part of her job, and even though her moral compass didn't point north, she wasn't excited about the Akatsuki taking over the world and thought she should probably take her chances to slow them down a bit.

She continued to stalk cautiously through the trees to bring herself closer to the Akatsuki member. It seemed they didn't notice her there, or if they did, they certainly didn't show it.

Akatsuki weren't just snotty genin brats fresh out of the academy, and would be very good at controlling their reactions, so she wasn't surprised that they did not move to display their awareness. Sometimes thinking you had the upper hand was a shinobi's biggest mistake. Many of ninja would have died by charging in, believing themselves to have the element of surprise, only to be cut down almost instantly by a more experienced ninja who didn't make it obvious that they had already known of their presence.

Said Akatsuki member seemed to vaguely tilt their head in her direction enough to show that they did know she was there, and just hadn't bothered attacking her yet, probably not being entirely sure if she was a threat or not. They just continued to occasionally stick their hands in pouches that were sitting on their sides, and when she got closer she could see something small and white that seemed to...come out of the hand that the Akatsuki held out in front. Being aware that almost everything in the shinobi world could be a jutsu, she kept on her guard.

When she got closer she could see that the Akatsuki member was male, even with the long blonde hair that had a section at the front that covered the left side of his face. He was standing on an angle so that she could barely see his profile. There was a little voice in the back of her mind telling her that he looked strangely familiar. She ignored it, and continued to watch him from her spot in the trees, still hidden in the shadow.

Her grey eyes narrowed as she noticed a little white thing come closer to her position. The unknown Akatsuki member brought his hand out in front of him, and with two fingers held up, smirked, and muttered something, before the white object made a small explosion on the ground a few feet away from the tree she was in.

Shit... she thought with widened eyes, though she knew from what he had done that he didn't know exactly where she was, but had a pretty good idea. With that knowledge, she decided that sneaking around wasn't going to help. Since he had some sort of power to make explosives at will, he could just blow up the whole area she was in if she didn't reveal herself. A low groan escaped her, and she decided that she was sick of explosions for now.

She released the Kage Oni jutsu when she moved out of the way of a large tree branch, stood up on the branch just next to it, and looked straight at the blonde Akatsuki, daring to let a slightly curious smirk come over her face, and minutely raised an eyebrow when he just turned to her, and stared straight back. She noticed now that she was able to look at him properly, and not from behind a tree branch, that he was probably only a little taller than she was. But gods, he looked even more familiar now. She crossed her arms and made no threatening movements, just stood there, her smirk slowly getting wider as the cogs in her mind turned, trying to bring up a memory of a face she had not laid eyes on in a long time.

He seemed to unconsciously lean closer and she could see that he had the exact same curious smirk on his face that she did, but all of a sudden, his brow furrowed and his smirk dropped. She dropped down to the ground and 'put on' her blank mask one again. He seemed almost confused at her actions, and she didn't want to give away too much since she wasn't sure if this was the person she remembered. She took a few steps closer to him, and he stilled, but showed no signs of attacking her. She didn't bother to hide her widened eyes and raised brows when he whispered something that brought back a lot of old memories.

#

They ran across the ground as fast as they could. They were getting very much used to running away from people. It was starting to get easier for them. Over the next few minutes, the chorus of yelling that was behind them died down.

"Do you think we lost them?" the young blond boy asked breathlessly as him and the girl with him stopped to catch her breath. "Can you sense them at all?"

"You know that neither of us can sense things properly, we haven't learnt to control our chakra properly, yeah. We only know what we've taught ourselves. Don't ask me stupid questions! Baka!" she said irritably while trying to take breaths.

"Yeah, but you still have way better chakra control than me and better sensory capabilities. Forget I asked, but I can't hear anyone, so I think we're okay". He retorted back at her with equal irritation.

"Never mind, it's fine, yeah. Let's just keep moving onto the next village so that we can at least buy something decent for us to eat for us for once with the money we..uh..borrowed." she said a lot more calmly, before stumbling slightly and wincing.

"Hitori! Are you alright? Did you get injured?" he said worriedly while he went over to her, arms outstretched in case the smaller girl named Hitori showed any signs of falling over or passing out.

"No, don't worry Dei. I'm fine, just a cut on my leg I didn't realise I had, yeah." she said and looked to see her ripped pants, with a thin cut up her leg.

"Well, here. I've got the bandages in my pack, so let me fix it up for you."

He gestured for her to sit down and while she did, Deidara took off his pack, and rummaged around for the bandages he knew were in there. Once he found them and pulled them out of the pack and looked up at Hitori while she positioned her leg so that he could dress it for her. She knew that she was completely capable of doing it herself, the wound wasn't even that deep, but it was long, it ran up most of the right side of her calf, but she knew how worried he was about her, and just decided to let him do as he pleased, and besides, she appreciated his kindness too much to refuse.

After Deidara patched her up, he pulled her pants leg back down, feeling glad that the wound wasn't really that deep, barely a few millimetres deep. But he couldn't seem to help himself with her, he just worried about her, even though she was just as capable of taking care of herself as he was. He felt her gaze on him and it broke him out his reverie. He looked up at her, and instantly melted. She was looking at him with such kind, grateful eyes, as if just that simple gesture meant the whole world to her.

"Arigato, Deidara." she said sweetly, while standing up.

"No problem, Hitori." he replied, smiling just as sweetly back at her.

#

"Hitori?" Deidara said quietly, still shocked at how much this woman before him looked like his childhood friend.

She recognised him immediately after she heard him speak her name in the same way he used to when they were kids. It still held that same concerned tone. Hitori knew that she should have recognised him almost straight away, but they hadn't seen each other in so long and he had grown up so much that it was hard to tell whether it was just someone else with blond hair and blue eyes, or her childhood friend.

With her quick mind, she decided that he was coming back with her. No more of this Akatsuki shit. She was going to beat the life out of him for letting himself get stuck with their ilk. She knew that she would have to try and fake his death so who ever his partner was would suspect that he died. They would actually have to fight at least a little so he would use his explosive ability. Hitori just hoped dearly that his partner wasn't around. She couldn't exactly tangle with one Akatsuki and expect that he would just willingly fight alongside her. A lot could change in almost 10 years. Perhaps, he really did go mad.

She started to slowly move forwards a few steps before she stopped and decided on what to say.

"Akatsuki...what's your purpose here, yeah?" She didn't like the idea of calling him Akatsuki, but she had to make it seem like she didn't recognise him because she had to make sure that he wouldn't hesitate when she came at him. She was secretly excited to see just how strong he had become. He wouldn't be wearing that cloak for nothing.

Deidara was absolutely, thoroughly stumped on what to say. It seemed that she had not heard what he said before, or just acted like she didn't. He just decided not to reply, and just stayed silent instead and tried to conceal his surprise. The woman in the black hooded cloak seemed to flicker and disappear and reappear with a kunai in hand just slightly behind him to his right. Fuck, she's so fast.

She disappeared again, and reappeared a few feet directly in front of him and smirked slightly before dropping to one knee and smashing her left fist into the ground, which made a decent sized crater around the area of impact, and made huge cracks in the ground beneath him. He jumped up to get away so he wouldn't get caught in the moving terrain and landed on a branch just above him. She ran straight towards the tree he was in and kicked it, which made it snap clean where her booted foot made impact.

He would have stayed there with his jaw dropped and wide eyes if he didn't realise that he should probably move if he didn't want to die. He put his left hand into his clay pouch and started making an explosive while he jumped to the next tree. He saw her hands begin to move, but couldn't for the life of him follow the movements, fast enough to figure out what sort of jutsu she was going to use.

"Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu!" she said while jumping back a bit an aiming the partially toned down jutsu at Deidara. She smirked when he dodged the large fireball and sent an explosive her way. She moved away from it and quickly noticed that it was following her, and she guessed that it probably wouldn't explode until Deidara commanded it to. She aimed and threw a shuriken at it, and hit the tree just behind it with the explosive spider pinned to it, twitching for a moment before dangling lifelessly.

She then took out three kunai, and threw them all at Deidara directly, making sure not to put any chakra in the throw so that if it did hit him, it wouldn't be so full of inertia that it would tear right through him. Just as she hoped he would, he easily dodged them all. She made two Kage Bunshin that helped to block the surprisingly low charged explosion that Deidara sent her way and quickly used her Chidori Kunai no jutsu and sent them at the little explosive birds coming towards her instantly making them useless, surprising herself at her quick thinking.

She then used her Kage Oni jutsu to try and throw him off. She slowly and cautiously stalked around behind him, while he stood there looking utterly bewildered, she tried not to make a sound, but didn't bother making certain that she was dead silent, and crept up behind him and put a kunai to his neck nudged the back of his knee so he would fall to his knees.

"Don't even think about moving, yeah." she whispered against his ear and restrained herself from chuckling when she heard his sharp intake of breath.

"It's you. No one else I know uses that jutsu, and I'd never forget those eyes." Deidara said breathlessly, just trying to take it all in at once.

"Where's your partner?" she asked quietly, her grey eyes darting around.

"He left to get some food from the nearby town. What the hell are you doing here?" he asked incredulously. Surely she wasn't tracking him?

"Why don't we talk about this somewhere else, hmm? But if you leave here with me now, we have to make sure that your partner will think you're dead." she waited until he nodded in agreement. "Make some more explosions. We need the charring and scorch marks for the extra effect, yeah." she said as tonelessly as she could, pulling the kunai away from his throat, and watching him, still with slight caution as he made some larger explosions around them, clearing trees and burning the ground.

"Ditch the cloak, yeah. You do realise that I will not be letting you leave my sight, don't you?" she asked, half a rhetorical question, with an underlying threat, as she watched him take off his cloak, and put a few kunai slices through it before dropping it. He also pulled off a ring and dropped it too.

She walked over to where he dropped his cloak, and lifted up her arm and pushed the sleeve of her cloak up, then took the kunai from his hand, and before he could ask her what she was doing, she made a cut on the inside arm just below the elbow and dropped the blood onto the cloak, before grabbing his arm and doing the same thing, and the fact that he didn't say anything didn't go past her. She walked away, still feeling his gaze on her and put more blood around various parts of the almost battlefield. He did the same and after a few minutes of making the scene of Deidara's supposed death look as real as possible before meeting slightly awkwardly in the middle of the clearing made by Deidara's explosions.

"Follow me." she said, still trying her hardest not to hint to him just how much of an inner freak out she was having.