I had to sleep on this chapter, because I wasn't sure what would really happen if Deidara and Sasori encountered Ryoko and what reason they had to keep her alive. I still don't have a good reason, but they don't have a reason to kill her either. Anyway, thanks to the couple of people who have reviewed and the others who've added me as a favorite author or such. Here's the third chapter! Please enjoy and don't forget to review!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of these characters except Ryoko.

Ryoko awoke from her nap to the chirping of cicadas and many other species of bugs. How long had she slept? She groaned as she sat up against the base of tree and shook her head in an attempt to make the lingering feeling of sleep disperse. Her right hand groped around for her lovely wooden staff as the other reached for her back pack and ninja gear. Smiling when she found the familiar short staff, she stood up to stretch and practiced beating, stabbing, and slicing the air with the unsheathed sword she had produced from her staff.

After finally having shaken all traces of sleep away, she equipped her stuff, stopping when she couldn't find her cloak. My cloak! She thought, slightly panicked. Where is it?! Did someone take it? Did they take anything else?! Her red hair whipped about the warm summer afternoon air as her hands searched in her pockets for her money. It was still there.

"Ohh… whoops!" Ryoko told herself in a manner that suggested she was slightly embarrassed. "I'm wearing it!" And there it was, her cloak wrapped safely around her. She must've slept with it on to not have noticed it.

Making sure that her whip settled with the rest of her ninja gear, she began walking away from her daytime camp, not bothering to slip her headband over her sightless red eyes like she usually did. Her slightly tanned hand gripped her staff as it guided her across the forest floor, helping her avoid any obstacles in her way. She walked close enough to the river she had been traveling by to hear the water running from a distance, but far enough to have it out of normal human sight.

After a short while of walking she took notice of the summer evening temperature. It would be nightfall soon. Her steady pace did not falter as she turned over some thoughts in her head. Should I stop soon? Does it matter? Usually Ryoko would stop for night and find a hidden area, wary of forest predators that moved about the night, including other ninja that wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of her blindness. Or just her. Of course her acute hearing and scent would alert her of any presence, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Ryoko made up her mind to continue walking through the dark forest. Occasionally there were patches of light on the ground where the moonlight managed to filter through the dense trees, but it didn't matter to her anyway. Even in daytime Ryoko still found herself in darkness. Would it matter if she continued her journey by night? She wasn't tired, that's for sure, especially after the unexpectedly long nap she took in the middle of the hot summer day.

Ryoko blinked at nothing, her red eyes staring straight ahead, sightless. She would never forget the day she woke up blind. It had almost been a year ago. After the news was given to her at fourteen, she fought to become one of the best ninja, but even so, she knew she would one day wake up to darkness. At age seventeen, it just happened. Even before she had completely lost her sight, she still struggled with her failing vision. She was no longer able to go on missions or work at the hospital, and training with Tsunade had become tough and difficult. She thought that one day Tsunade would be performing the much needed operation on her, but now that she made her life changing choice, she could not go back. Now, she had to find someone who was medically skilled to do it for her. The operation wasn't very difficult, but it still needed to be performed with caution.

Ryoko suddenly stopped in her tracks, listening for the noises that snapped her out of her thoughts and sniffing the cool night air around her. She stood still, making out voices, two of them, a good distance away. She could also hear the crackling of a well lit fire and strained her ears to hear more.

"I don't see the point in putting up traps if we can just kill whoever it is that crosses our path, yeah."

Ninja.

Ryoko didn't waste time in turning around and walking away to avoid them, but as soon as she did, she sensed that something was wrong in the area she was standing in. Her thoughts came too late as she tripped over something and landed face down on the forest floor, her staff rolling a couple feet away from her.

A trap! Ryoko stayed frozen on the ground, expecting explosions or several sharp weapons to fly out at her, but they never came. Chakra strings? She sat up sharply as she heard the two people who had been conversing approach her at a fast pace. Once she had scented the location of her wooden staff, she reached for it, ready to fight or flee. The moment her slightly tanned hand grasped it, someone's foot stepped on her staff, preventing her from picking it up.

"Looking for this, yeah?"

Ryoko stood quickly and jumped a few feet back, her back coming into contact with the other person. Her red hair whipped about her as she spun around, facing the other man. Before she could do anything else, she felt a sort of flexible metal cord wrap around her arms and torso, preventing any movement.

The man in front of her looked closely at her as the guy who had spoken picked up her staff and approached them.

"She's blind, brat," the man who had trapped her stated, his voice deep and menacing. Ryoko took a quick whiff, scenting a strange corpse-like scent mixed with wood come off of him.

She focused on scenting the other man that now stood with them, his hands playing with her staff. He smelled of earth, a bit clay-like, accompanied by nice smell of shampoo wafting from his hair.

"Should we let her go then?" the nice-smelling guy asked, spinning her staff lazily with a hand.

"Don't be stupid, brat. She could be a spy."

Ryoko stiffened slightly before struggling against her bonds. Maybe I can break this cord… Even if she could, she'd still have to face fighting them afterwards and she could not risk doing that. Their chakra hinted that they were quite powerful, even when it was cloaked like it was now, so she settled for doing the only thing she could at the moment.

"I'm not a spy!" she exclaimed, letting a hint of frustration into her voice.

The man holding her let out a grunt of disbelief as the other one came a bit closer to her. "Who are you, yeah?" he asked, surprisingly not menacingly as his partner had been speaking.

Ryoko stopped her slight struggles and thought for a moment before answering calmly. "Hashiki, Ryoko."

The man in front of her shifted slightly. What would a blind girl be doing in the forest at night? Alone? "State your business," he demanded, his voice no gentler than when he had first spoken.

What? Did he own the forest now? "I'm simply passing through," Ryoko answered, keeping her anger under control. It wouldn't do her any good to make these people mad at her. Who knows what they could do?

Without answering, the man walked off, still holding her with his metal cord. The other one trailed behind them and continued playing with her staff.

"H-hey!" Ryoko began struggling again after she felt herself being dragged with them in the direction where the fire crackled. She stopped abruptly when she felt other cloaked chakra presences around them. "How many of you are there?" she asked cautiously. Somehow, she doubted they were part of the newcomers.

"How many of us…?" The guy who was playing with her staff stopped. Surely even a blind person could tell there were obviously just two of them? He glanced at his partner, earning a look of slight surprise. That's when he realized they were not the only ones there.

Ryoko landed on the ground with her feet, but stumbled, trying to regain her balance, when the man let her drop as he spoke to his partner. "Deidara, the fire!"

Deidara, huh? Ryoko decided not to waste any more time thinking over the guy's name. She had to find her staff and get out of here while they were distracted. She felt a small wave of surprise come from the Deidara as he hurried to put the fire out. Didn't he know there were others here, or what?

But it wasn't that that had surprised Deidara. His partner rarely called him by his own name. As soon as he put out the fire, he stuck his hand into the messenger bag hanging at his hip, ready to turn his enemies into 'art'. He took notice of Ryoko looking around for something when he realized he still held her staff in his other hand. He tossed the short staff at her feet with a simple, "here".

As soon as Ryoko bent down to get her staff, the newcomers had decided to present themselves. She stood up, straight and still, with her hand gripping the top part of her short staff. She felt their chakra, no longer cloaked; surrounding them. There had to be around ten.

Ryoko was snapped out of her thoughts when she heard Deidara, who was now about three feet away from her, curse. "Bounty hunters. They never give up, yeah."

"Look at what we've got here, boys," a male voice spoke, a smirk apparent in his voice. "Sasori and Deidara of Akatsuki." A couple people whooped with excitement. "We've got ourselves the bounty of a lifetime."

Akatsuki?! Ryoko didn't bother hiding the surprise on her features when she had caught the man's words. This is not good. At least she got her captive's name; Sasori.

A new female voice emerged from Ryoko's right. "What's this?" she asked, taking a step closer to Ryoko. Ryoko's heart beat quickened. "Its Hashiki, Ryoko from Konoha, Boss." The woman smiled and dared to take a closer look. "The Hokage's apprentice."

"Make that three missing nin with a bounty worth dying for over their heads, boys," the first voice said, a bad kind of excitement leaking from his words. "Lady Luck's on our side today."

Ryoko didn't miss the wave of surprise that emitted from Deidara and Sasori, though Sasori's was more concealed. Now that they knew who she really was, would they kill her? Maybe, but that wasn't the problem a hand right now. The problem was that she had quite a few enemies around her right now. Dangerous enemies.

Somewhere in the middle of the surrounding bounty hunters, Deidara had finally withdrawn his hand from his messenger bag and smirked. "Let's show them true art, danna, yeah!"

As soon as those words left his mouth, several explosions went off at once around them along with painful screams.

From a short distance away from Ryoko, Sasori whipped out his scorpion-like steel tail and deflected several weapons thrown at him. "You call that art, brat?" His tail extended, whipping the air as it darted around, stabbing anyone that got in his way.

The small clearing was soon filled with sounds of metal hitting metal, explosions, and footsteps on the ground. Ryoko whipped around to scent the woman who had spoken earlier come closer, no doubt to attack. Ryoko wasted no time in gathering chakra in her fist as she aimed and threw her punch at the woman.

Splinters fell around her as she realized she'd hit a tree. She's fast. Ryoko felt the woman's chakra appear behind her as she gripped the top her staff and produced the concealed sword. Ryoko turned quickly, launching her sword at the woman as she did so and managed to earn a strangled gurgle coming from the woman's mouth. Bingo.

The woman fell to the ground with Ryoko's sword protruding from her chest as a male bounty hunter came at Ryoko. He threw several hard punches at Ryoko, but she dodged them by carefully listening to the wind split as his fists came at her. A kunai flew past her, grazing her cheek, as she dodged one of his hits. She jumped back a good distance away from him, glaring at him, even though she could not see him. He had both tried to stab her and punch at the same time from different directions. Clever, Ryoko thought with a slight smirk.

The ground shook as Ryoko drove his chakra-filled fist at it, making it crumble and split beneath the bounty hunter's feet. The man stumbled, trying to gain his balance, as Ryoko took this chance to lash out her whip from its place on her hip. Ryoko pin-pointed the man's feet with all the stumbling he was doing and whipped at his feet, wrapping the whip tightly around them and making the man fall over with a grunt of surprise. She tugged the whip sharply towards her with enough strength to make the man fly at her as her whip unwrapped itself from around his feet. Ryoko's fist flew right at the man's head as he came flying towards her, crushing his skull and sending him crashing through a tree.

Ryoko spun around, expecting someone else to attack her, but was met with silence, minus the sound of slow dragging footsteps from Sasori and the few claps from Deidara. Apparently he had witnessed the last fraction of her fight. She stayed slightly crouched and tense with her whip tightly in hand. Would she have to fight them too?

Sasori walked around the clearing examining the bodies on the floor as Deidara approached Ryoko. His clapping had stopped.

"Well, it looks like those bounty hunters were right after all, yeah," he said, referring to the revelation of her identity. He came to a stop a good distance from her when he noticed she was still tense and wary. "Calm down, the fight's over."

"Tch. These people aren't worth turning into puppets," Sasori's dark muttering reached them from his location in the clearing. He turned and headed their way once he completed his observations. "We should leave," he said as he came to a stop beside Deidara. "It's rare that bounty hunters work together, but even so, it would be wise to stay alert in case it was a larger group that actually split into two or three. If that's the case, the others should be near and would pursue us as well."

"Not with the display of art I've created for them, yeah," Deidara replied as he walked towards the woman that had Ryoko's sword sticking out of her chest. He pulled it with out with a sickening squelch and rubbed the blade clean of blood stains against the woman's clothing. "I believe this is yours, yeah," he said to Ryoko as he handed her the sword.

Sasori let out a frustrated grunt. "That is not art, brat."

"Why do you always have to look down on my art, Sasori-danna?"

Ryoko listened to their argument as she slid her blade back into the hollow length in her staff. She wrapped her whip expertly and hung it back on its place on her hip. She made sure everything was set and ready before she tried sneaking off while they argued.

"Tch. Whatever, yeah. Hey, where are you going?"

Ryoko stopped in her tracks and turned to face them. "Well, if the situation is as Sasori had said, I do not want to stick around," she explained hoping they bought her excuse. It was partially true anyway.

Sasori walked (if you could call it walking) towards Ryoko, causing her to tense, but relaxed once he kept on moving past her. Deidara followed and paused when he noticed Ryoko was still standing where she was.

"You going to stay there and wait until they come and get you or what, yeah?" He asked somewhat sarcastically.

A look of surprise flickered over Ryoko's features a she answered him. "Er, I… no." She strode forward and caught up with them as her staff guided her over rocks and sticks.

With that, the trio headed off into the night.

Thank you for reading! I would appreciate it even more if you reviewed! The next chapter will have Ryoko and the artists meet up with Itachi and Kisame, though I'm not sure how... I'll think of something. : 'Till next time!