"I will not be doing that."
Gaara, unsurprisingly, had caught on to Sifu's game of cat and mouse after a few meetings. He was evidently not very used to playing the part of the unwary rodent and seemed to resent it.
Sasuke contained a grin at the Kazekage's expense, and watched Sifu work.
Oh, Gaara was catching on all right, but that had hardly hurt Sifu's plans at all. Sifu still deftly weaved veritable tapestries of words and contracts. And Gaara had started to check everything he said, which was beginning to drain his attention and time considerably.
It was entirely understandable that he started to make some mistakes.
Gaara had desperately tried to delay the inevitable, either tabling discussions or outright rejecting anything he suspected might be disadvantageous for him. After the fifth hour of their day-long meeting, he made his first real mistake, which led to another, and another, and snowballed to the point where Gaara was lucky to leave with his shirt and gourd on his back.
Sasuke was really starting to enjoy these meetings, to be honest.
Gaara would be an even better match for Sifu next time, he knew, which made it all the more exhilarating.
After the meeting, Gaara quickly swept out of the room with a pile of contracts half the size of an average Genin (doubtless about to read them all, judging by the twitch in his eyes), and left Sasuke and Sifu to their own devices.
"Hey, Haru-kun."
Or so he had thought. Gaara was more devious than Sasuke had imagined.
"Greetings, Temari-san." He inclined his head towards her, and she grinned in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable. Sifu's shoulders twitched, indicating he was silently chuckling, and Sasuke sent a discreet glare in his general direction.
"I have to go attend to some business, Haru-kun. I know that we had planned to go to dinner after this meeting, but perhaps you would accept the lovely Temari-san as a substitute dinner companion."
Iroh swept away, and Sasuke felt his face start to burn. He turned slowly to Temari, whose feral grin had somehow managed to widen, and stifled the voice in his head that told him to run screaming out the doorway and into the nearest and most densely populated area for help.
"So…", Temari drawled in a rather seductive manner, "let's go back to my place."
Sasuke's heart stopped in his chest, and he almost activated his Sharingan to make sure that Gaara hadn't put him under a particularly spiteful genjutsu. Gaara had never demonstrated any interest or talent in that area, but Sasuke wouldn't be surprised if he had changed some of his interests since the Chuunin Exams. After all, smashing people with sand wasn't a viable long –term negotiation tool. That would only work once or twice, tops.
"You can cook for me, Haru-kun." Temari crooned, hooking her fingers under the collar of his shirt and pulling him out of the relative safety of the Kazekage Tower, where Gaara was no doubt ready and willing to turn him into a red smear on the wall for spurning his sister's terrifying advances.
"I will never, ever, ever forgive you." Sasuke stated emphatically, shaking yet more sand out of his sandal and wincing slightly from the resulting pain in his bruised leg.
Sifu smiled, and that only inspired further rage.
"After you deserted me, that heartless woman made me cook for her, then took me out back to the training fields."
"Oh?" Sifu turned with a gleam in his eyes. "And how did you occupy your time there?"
"She hit me repeatedly with her fan, in what she optimistically called 'sparring'. Then she helpfully informed me that she knew our address, and told me that if I didn't write her weekly, she was going to offer me up to test her brother Kankuro's poisons."
Sasuke glared darkly at his teacher, who sighed contentedly and stared off into the distance.
"Ah, young love. You know, when I was your age, I met this wonderful young lady, much like the beautiful Temari. We met down by the royal gardens, under a bridge…" Sasuke frantically moved to nip this particular story in the bud. The last time he'd let Sifu go on about a former romantic conquest, the story ended with an enraged betrothed, three maidservants covered in wine, and a tumultuous escape through a stained-glass window.
It had taken three weeks for Sasuke to stop twitching whenever someone said the word "dumpling".
"Stop, Shishou Sifu. Please. Just stop. I don't want to know."
Sifu glanced down at Sasuke with mild confusion. "Are you sure? You may learn something."
"That is exactly what I'm afraid of." Sasuke muttered, and valiantly ignored the muffled giggling coming from his beloved teacher.
Sasuke needed to change the subject, and quickly, before Sifu started hinting about kittens again. He and Hideyoshi were obviously united in an effort to drive him insane.
"So, where are we going next?"
Yes, that was a good question. And executed so smoothly that Sifu might not have noticed the change in topics.
"Why, are you missing your beloved already? I'm sure that you will be able to send her a letter from the next town we stop in."
Or not.
Sifu smiled genially, and Sasuke scowled back at him.
"We will be stopping at the next town for the night, I'm afraid my advanced age does not allow me the stamina of my youth. You may write a letter to Temari-san after we have dined and done some meditation, and we will set out again tomorrow morning. Tsunade-sama has requested that we go next to Water Country and quietly observe the political situation therein. This will require the utmost tact and discretion on our part, as we cannot afford to be found out, both for the sake of our lives and the safety of our affiliates."
This was interesting. Wasn't that missing-nin Zabuza from Water Country? And Water Country and Fire Country weren't on the best of terms, to say the least.
"So, will we be stepping up my infiltration training, then?" Sasuke pried, eager to get more experience. If nothing else, he was becoming very interested in the life of a diplomat. Having so much information at his fingertips was almost addictive.
"Oh, yes. But first, dinner."
Sasuke slammed down all the water in his glass happily, and set it down on the counter to ask for another. Plain H2O had never tasted so good.
"You look like you've been through hell, un."
Sasuke turned to see startling blue eyes evaluating him from the previously unoccupied stool to his right.
And those eyes were attached to an absolutely gorgeous woman in a hideous housecoat. Sasuke silently thanked Sifu's training for preventing his jaw hitting the floor. He didn't care how badly dressed she was. She was slightly prettier and immensely less scary than Temari.
"Yeah, I feel like I've been through hell. This whole country is awful beyond words." Sasuke gestured expansively, scowling at everything he indicated. Shithole.
The lady smirked, and Sasuke smiled back. Thank god. Someone else who appreciated everything that was contemptible about this place, instead of giving him a vaguely wounded look for giving an accurate assessment.
"Were you coming from Sunagakure? I hear it's unpleasant this time of year, un."
Sasuke snorted lightly. "That would imply that it was ever pleasant at all. Between the passive-aggressive Kazekage, his absolutely terrifying sister, and all that fucking sand, I wanted to blow it all into shards of glass." He mimed the entire tacky little affair exploding with his hands. "I really wasn't exaggerating. That woman is frightening," he added in a serious undertone. "She's after my virtue."
Some part of his mind dimly noted that he was still dehydrated and probably suffering from sunstroke. Godawful Wind Country.
Deidara liked this person.
Sure, he may have borne a striking resemblance to that contemptible asshole Itachi, but this one was funny. And had the proper respect for large explosions.
Maybe this boy would be able to see Deidara's art tomorrow and give it appropriate admiration.
"Well, why didn't you blow it up, un?"
The boy grimaced, and eyed Deidara appraisingly. "Wasn't possible, regrettably. That would take a heroic amount of exploding tags and determination. I settled for getting out of there as fast as I could."
"I thought Sabaku no Temari was supposed to be quite attractive, un?" Deidara ventured curiously.
The boy put down his (fourth?) glass of water, and looked at Deidara seriously.
"No, well… yes. But you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. She looks like a feral raccoon in comparison."
Case of heatstroke or not, Deidara decided to take the compliment as his due. He straightened his spine and puffed out his chest impressively and noted that the boy followed his movements rather closely.
"I know." Deidara preened his hair a bit, immensely pleased with the (albeit somewhat inaccurate) compliment. "I am the most beautiful anything you've ever seen, hotstuff. But I have someone waiting for me, so I should take my food and go." He delicately grasped the takeout box and stood up, reveling in the attentions of his new admirer.
The boy looked somewhat depressed at that, and Deidara patted his shoulder reassuringly. "I'm sure we'll see each other again, what's your name, anyway, un?"
The boy looked slightly concussed for a moment, before appearing to comprehend the question. "My name is Haru."
"That's a nice name, un. I'll be seeing you around, Haru-kun!" Deidara waved back haphazardly as he exited the stall, anticipating antagonizing Sasori with his newfound excellent mood.
Sasuke then realized that he didn't get the lady's name, and slumped down to hit his head on the counter.
Sasori was making the final adjustments to his new Sand-nin corpse when Deidara slammed open the door to their hotel room.
He wanted to get this mission over with. They'd needed someone to be able to get them into the city, so Sasori had gone hunting for an 'assistant' this morning. Luckily, finding and dispatching the Sand Jounin was a quick affair, but the preparations necessary to make him even somewhat useful took substantially more time.
"Sasori-danna, are you almost ready, un?"
If Sasori still had facial muscles, they would have twitched. Deidara was always irritating, but he was even worse when he was in a good mood. If Sasori ever found the mindless incompetent who had brightened Deidara's day, he was going to use one of his puppets to perform impromptu brain surgery on them.
He decided not to dignify Deidara's stupidity with an answer, and placed the corpse sitting up on the table. Deidara leaned in to inspect the corpse, and grinned stupidly, putting his hands on its face and making it open and close its mouth. "Yop yop."'
Sasori calmly reminded himself what had happened to the last Akatsuki member who had killed their teammate. He'd gotten himself paired with Hidan.
'It could be worse, it could be worse…' he repeated his mantra to himself. And at least tomorrow he'd get to kill someone.