Sculpting for Dummies:

AN: Get excited, guys! The title is going to have significance soon! And the M rating is going to be coming back within the next few chapters. I hope the story's not gonna be too boring until then…

Oh, and about the latest manga chapter. I have to say, I'm kinda jealous of Pein's little collection. I hope they're still alive, though, cause otherwise that's be yucky…

Oh, and a question for my readers: How old do we think Deidara is? I'm not very good at gauging their ages in this series. Did y'all know that all the sound ninja that attacked Konoha and stole Sasuke were, like 14 or something? Crazy!

Chapter 9

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Deidara woke up alone. Not that it was a problem; far from it… it just wasn't what he'd been expecting. There was a small sinking feeling in his stomach, but that was a mixture of nerves and relief at having been sleeping alone, vulnerable to attack (but not vulnerable to anything else, because what else was there to be vulnerable to?).

Tobi was gone. All that was left of his belongings was an empty canteen and the blanket that was still wrapped around Deidara. It was obvious he'd left for good. It's what Deidara would have done, was planning on doing, as soon as he'd made sure Tobi wasn't going to follow after him. The masked man had beaten Deidara to the chase, that was all. It wasn't anything that Deidara hadn't seen coming: everyone else left eventually, so why not Tobi too?

There wasn't much for Deidara to pack up into his own bag. His emergency funds had been depleted quite a bit by his down payment to the 'escorts' and most of the food he'd bought from the village had been eaten. He stuffed his Tobi voodoo dolls into the bag because he had space to fill, and Tobi's abandoned blanket because he could use its warmth.

His new life neatly packed away in his backpack, Deidara turned towards the road to set out, and realized he didn't have a destination. Where was he supposed to go? Not back to Iwagakure, that was for sure. All Hidden villages were off-limits, as long as he didn't have chakra to defend himself. He didn't even know if he dared to enter Market Village to get supplies. He hadn't been this directionless since he'd left his village and become a missing ninja years ago.

The world outside of the Market village wall was quiet. Deidara had never dealt well with tranquility. His exploding clay pouch was halfway unzipped before he remembered he didn't have the chakra to make an explosion. He couldn't even use the clay to form his figurines. The mouths in his palms relied on his chakra to keep hand muscles and skin morphed into tongues and lips, and bones into teeth. Without the energy necessary to sustain them, the tiny mouths had reverted back to their original forms and grown shut. There was nothing left of them but two barely noticeable lines, one on each palm.

He zipped the pouch closed. His clay was useless now, but he might be able to use it again someday. There was no sense in letting it dry out.

The silence was becoming oppressive. Deidara shuffled his feet through the dirt, snorted, shook his backpack noisily as he hoisted it higher on his shoulders. Anything to make noise.

"I need to get out of here, un," he told himself. "I'll pick a road, and follow it to the end, un."

There was only one road leading out of Market village, a smooth, unpaved dirt road that waved gently over hills and around giant oak trees. It was horribly pastoral, but it would serve until Deidara found another to follow.

Deidara's breath quickened as he approached the golden path. He stopped a step away from it. The first step of a journey was always supposed to be the hardest. 'If taking a step is the hardest part, I'll die of boredom,' Deidara thought.

He lifted one foot and lowered it down over the road. His sandal inched down, just about to touch dirt, when a voice like a bullhorn shouted, "SEMPAI! WAIT UP, SEMPAI!!"

Deidara's head jerked, but he stopped himself and turned slowly, not appearing at all eager to see his partner charging towards him.

"Sempai, wait until you see what I've got!" Tobi chattered. "You'll be so excited!"

The masked man stopped just in front of Deidara and waved a piece of paper. His orange and black mask was firmly in place, but it did little to hide the fact that the man was bouncing with excitement. Deidara waited for Tobi to explain. The dark-haired ninja skipped around the artist in a circle, but said nothing about the paper.

"Tobi, what do you have to show me?" he asked finally.

Tobi shook a gloved finger at him. "No, no, sempai, you'll just have to be patient. We need to get moving now while it's still light." He started skipping down the dirt road, not even pausing to contemplate that first decisive step.

Deidara snorted. "Who says I'm going with you, un?" He stayed where he was, feet firmly planted on the grass beside the road.

Tobi turned around and placed a hand on the bottom sliver of his mask in a thoughtful pose. "Well, no one's saying you have to come. I mean, if you have somewhere better to go, or if you don't want to find out what I've got," he waved the paper enticingly "then you're welcome to stay here," he taunted. Damn it, now Deidara was curious.

The blond stepped out onto the road and took a few tentative steps. Tobi bounced around. "Yay, sempai's coming!" he sang.

"I'm going in the same direction…for now," Deidara said with a frown. It wasn't like he'd agreed to anything. That didn't stop Tobi from dancing and singing, though.

Deidara snorted. At least now he didn't have to worry about his trip being too quiet.

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Tobi skipped down the road, humming a tune and flailing his arms around wildly. Oh, he wasn't only a good boy; he was a smart boy! A genius! He was walking and Deidara-sempai was following, by choice!

He'd known that peaking his sempai's curiosity would work. Now that they were away from the village, Deidara would at least consent to travel with him until they reached another town. By then, he hoped to have Deidara ensnared in suspense. The artist was the type of person who wouldn't give up until he discovered whatever it was that seized his curiosity.

Once they reached their destination, Tobi hoped he could convince Deidara to stay…

But that wasn't important right now. He'd worry about that step when he came to it. Right now, all that mattered was that he was walking down a path, and Deidara was walking with him. All was right in the world.

Riiiip. Tobi stopped skipping and turned around. A tuft of dried grass stuffing floated past him in the wind. One of sempai's dolls had just met its doom. The head was lying on the ground, the stuffing was floating on the breeze, and the limbs were in the process of being looped around and tied in knots.

"Stop skipping around like a dumbass, Tobi, un," Deidara growled, and threw the mangled doll at his head.

"Oh, sempai, that reminds me! I bought us some new fabric and some real stuffing, so we can make more dolls for you to destroy. I'll get started on them tonight," Tobi offered. Deidara huffed.

"You're an idiot," he said, but didn't elaborate. Tobi didn't mind. He knew he was a genius- Deidara was still here, after all.

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It took an hour of walking, but Tobi finally stopped flailing and skipping like a demented rabbit. He was still humming, which was annoying, but at least Deidara didn't have to watch his spastic motions any more.

Tobi stopped mid-step and twirled around to face the artist with the grace of a dancer. "Are you tired yet, sempai? Do you need to take a break?"

Deidara didn't deem the idiot's queries worth answering, so he walked past him and kept going. He didn't need to stop. He had a decent pair of shoes now and enough food in his stomach. Only a weakling would need a break after only an hour of walking with those sorts of conditions. Deidara wasn't weak.

Tobi ran up beside him. He tried to catch Deidara's gaze through the eyehole of his mask.

"You're sure you don't need to stop?" he asked. Deidara glared. "Ok, fine. We'll keep going."

Deidara looked at the mask through the corner of his eye. Why…? No, he didn't care! He definitely didn't want to know…. The artist trained his eyes on the road before him.

A few terse moments passed. The questions welled up in Deidara the way his clay swelled up before it exploded. Deidara's curiosity, like his clay, reached a certain point and then burst.

"God damn it, Tobi! Why do you wear that stupid mask, un?" he yelled. Tobi stopped walking.

"My mask? You don't think it makes me look cool?" Tobi asked.

Deidara hurried ahead. "Liar. I should've known you won't tell me, un," he murmured. Tobi grabbed his wrist.

"Sempai, I know you don't trust me. It's my fault and I'm sorry," he said. Deidara jerked his hand away and kept walking. He didn't want to hear Tobi say stupid, fake things.

"When Zetsu-san first found me, I had scars," Tobi said suddenly. He ran and caught up to Deidara. "I wore this mask so no one would see them. Then they faded, and I kept the mask because I'm not good at hiding my emotions. Now I wear it because I feel exposed without it."

"You must be pretty stupid, ruining your depth perception just to hide scars," Deidara told him. Really, what kind of half-assed ninja was Tobi?

Tobi pointed at his right eye. "This eye is really sharp. I can see almost everything with it." He pulled his mask off and showed Deidara his left eye, the one that was brown and seemed out of focus. "But the vision in this eye is blurry. If I use it, it actually makes things harder to see than if I just keep it closed. So I keep it covered. I'm usually pretty good about calculating distances and things with my good eye."

Tobi didn't move to put the mask back on. "Why are they so different?" Deidara couldn't help but ask.

"My left eye was missing when Zetsu-san found me," Tobi explained. Deidara wondered how an eye went 'missing', but Tobi didn't seem concerned with that part of the story, and let the taller man continue. "He and Kakuzu-san replaced it with one from one of their victims, but it had been dead for a while and the vision deteriorated. It's not great, but it's better than nothing, I guess."

Deidara and Tobi kept walking. Tobi stared at the mask in his hands.

"You can put it back on," Deidara told him. Tobi shook his head.

"I don't need it when it's just us, sempai. I can't expect you to trust me if I don't show trust in you." He slipped the mask into his coat. "You know… if there's anything else you want to know, you just have to ask, sempai." He said.

"Not if you're going to be so fucking sentimental about everything, un. It's sickening." Really, why did Tobi have to go around saying dumb stuff like that? Deidara wasn't going to magically trust him just because he went around without his stupid swirly mask. Dumbass.

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The sun began its slow crawl down the sky and behind the mountains in the distance. Tobi stopped and set up their camp while there was still a fading light to see by. Deidara didn't offer to help.

It seemed strange to be walking around without his mask. Tobi had endured the masklessness during the trip to Market village because he had no choice in the matter. Now, though, his mask was resting in his coat pocket, waiting to be put on. Tobi wanted Deidara to know the real him, he really did. It was just…uncomfortable.

There was a circle of light where Tobi had built a small fire, and their blankets were stretched out in the shadowy outskirts. When he laid down, he would be able to slip his mask back on without Deidara knowing. It wasn't like Deidara would be looking at his face at night anyways… and it would just be while he slept, like a security blanket.

The two men ate their travel rations in silence, then each retreated to their blankets on opposite sides of the fire. "First watch, un," Deidara called.

Tobi turned away from Deidara and slid his mask out of his coat. He held it up to his face and stretched out the black band to slide over his head.

"Deidara needs a good boy like Tobi."

Tobi recalled Kisame-san's words, and flushed with guilt. He'd made a promise to Deidara. It wasn't a promise that his sempai seems to care at all about, but it was a promise all the same. He lowered the mask.

But how was he going to sleep with his face exposed to the world? Sempai wouldn't be happy if he was too tired to travel tomorrow. Wearing his mask for a few hours wouldn't hurt anything….

"Tobi, just put on the fucking mask. It's not like I can't see you over there, un," Deidara huffed. Tobi dropped his mask like it burned him.

"No, I don't need to," he said aloud, more to himself that to the blond keeping watch. He placed it deliberately into his bag and pushed it down until it lay at the bottom, underneath everything else he carried with him.

"You're an idiot, un," Deidara told him. Tobi nodded. He probably was. But he was doing his best.

"Rest up, sempai," he advised. "It's a long walk to the Land of Forest."

"What the hell? That's where you're taking us? Damn, you are an idiot, Tobi, un!" Deidara protested. Then he paused. "What's in Forest, un?"

Tobi grinned. "What do you mean, sempai?" he asked innocently.

"What's in Forest? It's an out of the way, hole-in-the-wall disgrace of a country. We wouldn't be going there if there wasn't something worthwhile there. What is it, un?"

Tobi wasn't looking at Deidara, but he could tell the man was tossing and turning, desperate to know. Once again, the artist's curiosity was captive.

"I don't know. You'll have to come with me and find out."

Tobi heard the ripping sound of another Tobi doll being mangled. A zipper zipped open and the contents of a pack clanked together as they were rifled through.

"Tobi, I need a needle, un," Deidara proclaimed. He never actually asked for things from Tobi, he just stated his need of them, with the implication that Tobi had better remedy the situation before explosive clay entered the picture. It was part of the collective charm that was his sempai.

The ninja found a needle and crawled around the fire to Deidara. He handed it to the artist, who had already found the new fabric and stuffing he'd bought to make future voodoo dolls.

And Tobi was very glad he wasn't wearing his mask at that moment, because he was able to steal a kiss while Deidara's arms were too full of sewing supplies to stop him. He ran back to his side of the fire before the Iwa ninja could do more than sputter. As he settled down to sleep, Deidara yelling and throwing rocks at him, he traced his lips with a finger. Masklessness certainly held its benefits. He might just be able to live with it.

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The next few days of traveling went by smoothly and unremarkably. Deidara and Tobi walked, rested, ate, repeating as necessary. Inevitably, Tobi did something to get on Deidara's nerves, and would have pieces of his shredded effigy thrown at his (maskless) face. They talked a little, like they'd done before on Akatsuki missions together.

In the middle of their third day of walking, they stopped during the heat of the day for lunch. Tobi bounced around while Deidara sat.

"Sempai, if you're tired of walking, there might be an easier way to there," the dark haired man exclaimed. Deidara looked up. Hell yes, he was tired of walking! It was all he'd done for the last week.

"If you make on of your clay birds, I think I can activate it. We can fly the rest of the way, sempai!" The taller man sounded triumphant.

"What makes you think you could do my jutsu, un?" Deidara growled.

Tobi shrugged. "I've seen you do it a thousand times, sempai. I'm pretty good at copying jutsu."

Deidara glared at him until Tobi's pleased expression wavered. "…or we can keep walking…" he murmured.

"Idiot…trying to steal my artistic jutsu…un," Deidara muttered to himself. They kept walking.

Later, during Deidara's watch that night, the artist rubbed his aching feet and decided that maybe one clay bird wouldn't make a difference; when he regained control of his chakra, he'd make sure Tobi knew who the artist of the group was.

He unzipped his clay pouch and grabbed a handful of pure white clay….

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Tobi woke up the next morning as the sun peaked out from the trees. He knew something was amiss immediately. Deidara hadn't woken him up for his half of the night watch.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he found his sempai at the same place he'd been when he'd fallen asleep. Deidara was sitting on a log, looking pale and shaky. A tense aura hung around him, and the air had that thick, stifling feeling of an oncoming storm.

"Sempai…is something wrong?" he asked gently. Deidara blinked.

"Nothing," he whispered. He stood up and pulled his pack onto his back. "Let's go."

Tobi pulled him back down. "We haven't eaten breakfast yet, sempai."

The rest of the day, the artist stayed in that hazy state. He walked along like he was barely awake, and he didn't destroy any Tobi dolls, even when Tobi threw his arms around the blond and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. He only blinked and said, "Stop that, Tobi, un," in that vague, monotone voice.

Tobi was worried. Scratch that, he was freaked out. Sempai wasn't meant to be like this. Usually, everything about Deidara, his appearance, his temperament, his art, his speech, screamed that he was alive.

He needed to get Deidara to the Land of Forest and enact his plan quickly. He found a fork in the road and veered off course. Deidara didn't question their abrupt turn. He followed languidly. He didn't protest when Tobi stopped and pulled his hair out of its ponytail to hide his face, and said nothing as the taller man slipped his mask back on and let the artist into a bustling civilian trading village.

Ninja didn't trust technology, as a rule. They relied on the power of their bodies where civilians required the aid of machinery. Nonetheless, Tobi led Deidara to the window of a train station, and bought two tickets to the Land of Forest.

They chose a compartment near the back of the train and sat. Deidara stared blankly out the window as the vehicle screeched, spat puffs of smoke into the air, and lurched forward. Once the train was in motion, Tobi didn't have much more of a chance to worry about his sempai.

The train was awful. Tobi could see why ninja would run across countries to avoid riding on them. The clanking noise and scream of the whistle deadened his ears, and the bumping and shaking of the metal cars made detecting enemy motion nearly impossible. The smoke smell eliminated the ability to sniff out an enemy. And worst of all, the high speed and the lurching of the cart made Tobi sick to his stomach. He spent the overnight trip kneeled over a toilet seat, getting reacquainted with the contents of his stomach.

The Land of Forest, out of the way and backwards though it was, was a welcome sight for the masked man. When the train finally slowed and stopped, he wiped his mouth, shouldered his pack, grabbed Deidara's wrists, and was the first person on board to stagger out.

"We're here, sempai!" he sang. 'And now for the hard part,' he thought to himself.

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AN: Next chapter: Find out what's the matter with Deidara, what's in the Land of Forest that Tobi wants Deidara to see, what the title has to do with anything…and yeah, more Tobi dolls will probably die. But that's just life.

There will be another chapter of the side story before chapter 10, so if you're reading along, look out for it. It should be out in a few days.