Chapter Two: Blending In

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Sakura eyed the trees suspiciously; someone was following her. She just knew it somehow. Who was following her? She had no idea, but she knew it wasn't a bounty hunter or a Konoha shinobi, because if it was, well they would have had ample opportunity to attack at this point, considering they were pretty close to her. For the first half an hour of walking, Sakura contemplated making the first attack but the decided against it, because once again, she was pretty sure they weren't going to attack anyway. Well whoever it was, they were absolutely no good at hiding their chakra, either that or they were a genin. That was also unlikely, because the chakra signature was pretty damn big, and no genin had a chakra quite like that. Not to mention, why the hell would a genin be following her? So Sakura deducted that it was a shinobi, chuunin rank or higher, with an incredibly high, hard to mask chakra. Unless of course, they wanted her to know that they were there, which didn't seem likely either but..well anything could happen. Sakura just sighed and decided to ignore it for now, because the spy didn't seem to be harmful and in fact it was almost as if they were a curious and silent observer. So she just kept trudging on and eventually the chakra signature disappeared completely alerting her of the intruder's disappearance.

Finally, she made it to a semi-large town on the edge of the Fire Country's border, a perfect enviroment for one who wished not to be seen. She pulled on a drab, dark brown cloak over her head and made her way to a food vendor sitting rather conveniently near a slightly run-down inn. She placed her order for some takoyaki and some o-dango sticks, and sat down at the counter to wait. That's when she heard it, a voice that she had never wanted to hear again though frankly it's pretty hard to forget it when it was laced with such a stand-offish impediment.

"Oooooh! Sempai, you said we could get some dango sticks when we got here! Can we? Can weeeee? Ooooooh Sempai please?"

Sakura peered out the corner of her hood and noticed a tall man, dressed in black with a strange orange-swirled mask, practically bouncing all over his comrade, who was cloaked in an upsettingly familiar black cloak, covered in red clouds, a kasa adorning his head.

"God, Tobi, shut up, un! How the hell are we going to keep a low profile, if you never shut the hell up, yeah?" He hissed to his childish partner, who just whined a little and plopped down on the seat next to Sakura.

Sakura felt her blood become cold, and it was all she could do to repress the shiver that ran up her spine. It seemed as she feared, that was Deidara, the explosives expert and former partner of Akasuna No Sasori, both of the world famous, criminal organization, Akatsuki. The same Akasuna No Sasori who died by her hand nearly seven years ago. No doubt he had a new partner but Sakura knew for a fact that he was quite fond of his old one, and with her being the one who killed said former partner, she was pretty sure that if he knew that she was sitting just a few feet away, he would probably try something.

So suffice to say that as soon as her order was ready, she grabbed her food and bolted out of there, heading for the inn just up the road. Sakura let a little sigh of relief escape her as soon as she was far away from the two Akatsuki as per her comfort level. It appeared that she had gotten away unnoticed.

She should have never underestimated the power of an Akatsuki member.

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Deidara smirked under his hat, his ice blue eyes glinting from the hints of moonlight peeking through his cloak. That was definitely the girl, afterall he would never forget the one person able to take down Sasori-danna. He peered around that idiot Tobi, and spotted her walking briskly up the road, a pink strand escaping from the hood of her own cloak. Yup, definitely her. Because really, who had pink hair anyway? She was the only person he had ever seen with that atrocious shade of bubble-gum pink on her head. In all honesty, he felt a little sorry for her because not only was her hair pink, but her parents were as uncreative enough to name her something that would draw even more attention to her pink locks. Sakura. He tasted her name on his tongue, and found that he liked the way it sounded, but other than the hair, it didn't seem to suit her at all.

He had seen this girl in action and she certainly was nothing like her namesake. She wasn't particularly delicate even if she looked that way. Once, while watching her and that infuriatingly annoying kyuubi kid, he saw her land her fist straight through a giant rock wall, and crush it. She crushed it with her bare hands! Deidara found this to be quite amazing, it was the perfect form of art. She had to power to destroy but also had the power to heal. He had heard of her esteemed medic-nin training, and he supposed that was why he and Tobi were sent after her. Afterall, the organization was made up of walking disaster areas, and in his line of work you couldn't afford to walk around without some sort of insurance policy. He nudged his partner in the ribs.

"Tobi, un, we need to hurry and finish this up. We have work to do, did you forget that, yeah?"

All he got in response was the slurping of noodles and the muffled sounds of munching coming from under the orange mask. Deidara rolled his eyes, why of all partners to have, did he have to get partnered up with Tobi? He never asked Leader though, mostly because he didn't feel like being mindfucked with Leader's crazy eye skills.

Nonetheless though, he wished that Tobi would hurry up. He wanted to get this spying bit over with, Leader said he wanted the information on the girl as soon as possible, which in Leader terms meant, tonight. Plus the sooner he got this done, he could return to the base and get in some sleep. He hadn't slept well in weeks due to the mass amount of missions that he and Tobi had been overloaded with due to Itachi's recent fall at the hands of his brother. Good riddance to him, Deidara thought, he had always disliked that irritatingly pompous Uchiha, with his whacko eyes and his I'm-too-good-for-you attitude. He remembered something that Kisame told him once, about the Mangekyou Sharingan and his Tsukyomi. He still shivered from the gruesome details that Kisame dished out, and remembered the night that Kisame gotten caught in Itachi's Tsukyomi.

He was in the medical ward of the base for nearly two months, no scratch or even a bruise left on his body. All of the damage seemed to be upstairs and that was more disturbing to him than if the shark shinobi had gotten a limb chopped off.

Deidara scoffed; if there was one thing he hated more than anything, it was genjutsu-or mindfuckery, as he called it. Genjutsu was a crappy skill, used by people who mostly had no talent in real ninjutsu and taijutsu. Still, after what he seen of Kisame and from the tale he told, he couldn't say that getting caught up in something like that was something he looked forward to. It was said that Leader had something akin to the sharingan, he wasn't sure what it was though, but it was also said that it was monumentally worse than what the sharingan could ever do. Deidara shuddered, and pushed his bowl of ramen away, suddenly he wasn't feeling very well. He looked over at an apparently antsy Tobi, and saw that Tobi had finished his food. They both stood up and slipped off, two black figures fading into the darkness.

They didn't even pay their bill.

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Two yellow eyes beamed out of a tall oak tree, watching as the pink haired medic slipped into the doors of the inn, chancing a glance behind her as if to make sure that no one was watching her. He couldn't suppress the tiny smirk that traced his mouth. The girl had to be more careful for sure, if she thought someone would be following her in such a showy way. It was hard to believe that this was the woman he had been sent out to proposition, and many times he had to check and make sure the information on her matched.

It did but then again, when was Leader ever wrong?

He huffed a bit as he felt his stomach rumble, it had been too long since he had eaten and if he had it his way he would be dining on the delicious flesh of a dead shinobi. Unfortunately, Leader had demanded that he keep as low a profile as possible, which meant no human tonight. He swore at himself and peered on watching as a light clicked on in the upper level of the inn. He smiled as he watched a silhouette walk in front of the window. Definitely the girl. He slipped out of the tree, the odd carapace covering his torso and head slipping into his body with a few softly muttered words, he pulled the hood over his head, to cover his odd appearance. He hated doing this, but he had to get a closer look, he had to make sure that she was going to do what Leader said she was.

Apparently, as per the story Pein told him, she had murdered over a dozen civilians in her village, managing her escape before the ANBU caught her. What really confused him though was this; why would such an upstanding citizen, who had absolutely no wrong doing ways in her before, just suddenly turn like that? He'd read her brief file - high ranking jounin, trained under the famous Copy Nin Hatake Kakashi and later the Hokage herself - so why? There was no reason, which was leading him to believe that maybe this whole thing was some sort of setup. But those people had actually been killed, he knew this because he saw the aftermath in her village, so if it was a setup Konoha had covered all of their bases. That was another thing though, the upstanding village of Konohagakure would never stoop to that point of killing innocent civilians. They were much too good for that.

Suddenly, he felt a tugging on his cloak and turned around. A pair of glassy muddy brown eyes peered at him from under a tangled mop of blonde hair, the woman smelled of smoke and sake and some other kind of western alcohol, her makeup was too heavy and her hair was mussed, this lead him to believe she was a whore. Not a good whore either.

"Hey..-hic- baby! You..lookin' fer a good time tonigh'?" Her teeth were slightly yellow and the wrinkles in her mouth were probably caused by the amount of drugs she had used over a long period of time. Her words were slurred and just looking at her made him slightly sick. He hated prostitutes, he never required their services and they hardly ever tasted good, due to the amount of crap they put into their bodies. Plus even if he really had a sex drive, the risk of catching some kind of STD was too great to his liking. Kisame and the others sometimes bought whores, but never him.

Afterall...plants don't have sex. He chuckled slightly, he was mostly plant, even if his body was human. He shrugged the whore aside and slid up the back of the alley behind the inn. That silly woman would have been fun to kill, even if he didn't eat her, but he did have more important things to take care of before returning home tonight.

After all there was a little flower that required his attention this evening.

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