Much to Kisame's chagrin, it had happened again, for the first time in months.
He had been fervently hoping that it was over altogether, but no; the headless body at his feet proved him wrong.
He tapped his foot for a moment, hand backwards across his mouth as he thought, before raising his head. "Hinata-hime!"
She came scurrying out of the woodwork with her little frilly white apron tied onto the front of her plain black cloak. It was pristine as always. He wondered how she kept it so clean in the particular household she resided in. "Hai!" she replied, bowing politely.
"Hinata-hime, Kakuzu left another one here. Would you mind--" He made a vague gesture towards the body, and she nodded quickly, eyes wide. She had probably just come from cleaning Hidan's room. He knew from experience that said task was rather mind-rape-y.
As he left to go find the perpetrator, the heat of a Katon jutsu lightly singed his neck, and he made a mental note to wear more moisturizer. His skin might crack and get infected, and that was never pleasant.
---
"Is there a reason why you have gone through… six cloaks within the last year?" Pein, or Leader-sama, glanced down at the inventory he was holding, pierced face serious.
"Uh, yeah, un…" Deidara scratched his cheek absently. "There've been several incidents with, uh, skunks… and…" His voice drifted off as he stared out the window, watching something large and black pull something even larger and dead through the tall grass outside, his mechanical eye whirring as he zoomed in on it.
"Deidara." Pein's cuttingly sharp voice brought him back to earth. "Focus."
"But there's… And the rain, and it looks like…" Deidara's voice got quieter again. "Looks like Orochimaru…"
"Deidara! Look at me when I am talking to you!" Pein tried, to no avail, to get his attention, and after a bit he sighed resignedly and left, murmuring something quietly to Konan as he passed her in the doorway on her way in. She nodded and turned back around, hurrying down the hallway, presumably to get one of the other bodies to deal with the absentminded pyrotechnician.
"He's dead, though, isn't he?" Deidara tried to ask the now-nonexistent Pein. "Un…"