Chapter 15 -
With his heart again pounding in his throat and gills flaring with urgency, Deidara thrashed in the shallows, only taking the time to glance once over his shoulder towards the man he was leaving behind before his powerful tail rocketed him out into the deep blue waters of the Sagami Bay. Under the rolling brine, the hormones were so thick that the merman nearly choked on the pheromones of his own kind as still he powered towards their source. His throat heaved as his gills worked furiously through the water to keep his blood oxygenated as he arched through the waves towards the alcove in the cliffs which was home to the Akatsuki pod. Fighting his way past currents and weaving through schools of fish that any other day would have tempted his appetite, the blonde raced forward with all the strength of youth and the vigor of the mating season. His jaws were kept parted, constantly tasting the fertile waters for the scent of fresh ova and his instinctually desired goal.
As he rounded a rolling bend into the sheltered nook in the rocks, Deidara's senses were suddenly assaulted with the astringent tastes and scents of his brethren, all tangled up in the rush of hormones too. The ningyo seemed to swarm around the empty clearing, kicking up sand and shreds of sea-moss as they frenzied, the water having become thick, cloudy and choked by the uncontrollable reproductive milt until the primeval males could hardly breathe their own water. Without hesitation, the koi-tail dove into the throng of circling males, parting his lips and sniffing over the hides of each of his clan-mates. When his surface evaluation gave off no positive result, the scene suddenly became rough as the blonde sunk his teeth into the soft flank of Itachi, the raven-haired merman with the tail of a spotted gar. The dark-haired merman snarled and twisted, his own teeth finding Kakuzu's shoulder who whirled and found a claw-hold in Kisame's tail. All at once the alcove seemed to erupt into frantic violence, each of the males snapping and clawing at once another, tearing out tufts of hair and flaying scales and drawing blood. Even as the waters became still all the more fogged with blood and the scent of fear, there was a sudden stop to the rush ending with Deidara pinned against the crags by his wrists. He was bleeding from a gash down the right flank of his beautiful tail and from a heavy notch in his left ear and several bite marks riddled his forearms and shoulders. There were places where his long-blond hair had been torn and cropped in the fray and with dilated pupils he struggled against the hands of his pod, thrashing and hissing violently, his blood pounding with the native desire to find an ova and reproduce.
Before he could spit a command to release him, claws racked across his cheek and lips, silencing him and calming the frantic racing of his thoughts for a moment, allowing him to look up with clear eyes at the ningyo that held him down. To suppress the young merman's frenzied haste, Sasori, pressed his palms against both of Deidara's shoulders, the like being a key pressure point in the ningyo which slows a frantic heart rate. When finally his roaring senses had dulled to a quiet buzz, the blonde looked around his comrades, finding a clan much more heavily weathered than the one he had known before. There was a certain quality of defeat about them; the scars riddling their hides were more numerous than they had been a week before.
"Susanoo-no-mikoto…" he cursed quietly, his pupils constricting back to normal as his eyes wandered the few of his pod that held him down, "what happened un?"
"It was an ambush…" came Kakuzu's ragged, low voice as he hung his head solemnly, still keeping a firm grip of the younger merman's left wrist. "As soon as the must hit, the Otogakure invaded our camp… with that damned naga in the lead… we didn't stand a chance." A quiet, remorseful air clung to the faces of all the ningyo that remained to hold Deidara down and keep him calm.
"We were matched male for male, but Orochimaru's venom quickly tipped the scales in Otogakure's favor…" Sasori sighed and looked away, keeping the heels of his palms pressed into the koi-tail's shoulders if only to suppress his rising panic.
Kakuzu frowned and averted his eyes as well, a custom that all ningyo obeyed out of superstition when the dead were discussed.
"That snake bit Hidan to keep his venom from endangering his own men, and when he went after Konan, Pein stepped in to stop him. Pein pierced Orochimaru three times through the stomach with his deadly poison, but not before he took a nasty bite to the neck…"
Kisame who had been staring at the bluffs he'd been holding the blonde's right wrist to picked up where it pained his clan-mates too much to continue.
"Of course with their alpha dead, the Otogakure dispersed like a school of minnows, but leaving us down three males since you abandoned us, Deidara. In the peak of heat, Konan disappeared into her den, defending herself and the egg with a three-pronged spear. She's inconsolable and won't allow a soul near the egg to fertilize it. If nothing is done soon, the Akatsuki won't have an offspring this season because the egg will die."
"H-hasn't anyone tried to take her away from the egg un? Surely she won't stab one of her own!" Deidara turned towards his shark-skinned ally, but Kisame only shook his head slowly.
"She's bent on protecting that egg come hell or low water…" Itachi murmured as he turned slowly to look full into the younger merman's eyes, showing the carnage that had befallen his face. Though the wound had healed over very quickly the way they do in most ningyo, the rippling skin that now covered the gar-tail's empty right eye-socket. The blonde shuddered and quickly looked away, afraid to look onto the empty socket lest his soul be pulled in as is said in old maid's tales. "She will not have a one of us… but perhaps you, Deidara… you and the lagos are close… friends… perhaps she would lay down her arms for you. Else we've learned to survive without you once; we can surely do it again…"
The blonde swallowed hard, knowing he would be thrown into the lionfish's den for turning his back on the clan just in time for disaster to strike with deadly purpose. But at the same time, his heart pounded against his collar bone and his gills flared at the prospect of reaching his instinctually lusted goal and having the opportunity to spread his genes for another generation of ningyo. With a canceling mixture of eagerness and reservation, Deidara agreed and was prodded on his way towards Konan's den around the private side of the cliffs.
At first, the young merman kept his lips sealed as if to keep from tasting the pheromones he was sure were coursing through the water, and upon peeking into the crevice in the bluff, the den seemed empty. He parted his lips, curling and pushing his textured sensory organ forward, smelling and tasting the water as he ventured his head into the hole in the crags. As soon as the new water hit his taste buds, however, his brain was awash in a maddening concoction of fertility hormones and the pulse-pounding drive to fertilize the fresh ova. He had to dig his claws into the rocks to keep himself from rushing forward and suffering the same fate as Itachi, though the overpowering promise of reproduction made the urge difficult to fight off. Still he made his approach cautious, only daring to whisper through his gills.
"Konan un?" He ventured another step forward on his palms, tilting his head to the side in hopes of finding some light to shed on the female. "I can smell you, are you awake un?"
Before he could utter another word, there was a feral snarl followed by a wickedly cold point pressed firmly against his throat, dimpling the soft tissue and threatening to tear through like wet paper. The blonde stifled a fearful gulp and went stone-rigid, his gills flaring outward in a common expression of silent fear. With a few flicks of her tail, the mermaid inside choked up on her weapon, swimming slowly into the light to meet with Deidara's eyes. What he saw reflected in the female's eyes was a terrifyingly intense glint of maternal instinct; so much time curled up in her dark cave had stretched Konan's pupils until they nearly encompassed her irises and she barred her fangs like a savage beast defending her unfertilized brood.
"Wait, Konan! It's me un! It's Deidara!" He managed to gasp before the wrasse-tail ran him through; throwing his palms up as if to show is unconditional surrender. For a heart-stopping moment, the fear of being killed actually overrode his instinct to fertilize the egg he could practically taste in the back of the cave.
Keeping her threat level with the blonde's gullet, the mermaid continued to snarl and advance, pushing Deidara steadily backwards until the light from above shed fully on his tattered form. As the rippling light from the surface met her unconditioned eyes, the wrasse-tail paused for a moment, allowing herself time to adjust to the near-blinding brightness of the outside world. As her vision cleared, it was like the moon setting on the rampage of a lunatic and her snarl retracted until she found herself staring at the male ningyo with a sort of dazed look in her eyes.
There was a frightening moment during which the koi-tail could not read his friend's movements or expression and feared that at any moment, she could strike and kill him out of a mere whim. But no, as the shock began to fade, the sparkle of curiosity returned to the young mermaid's eyes and as if meeting Deidara for the first time, she circled him inquisitively. She ran her fingers across his skin and grazed her lips over his seeping wounds, taking a nibble for herself here and there. As the male remained rigid, cling to the lip of her den at arm's length to avoid moving his tail, she inspected every aspect of him, even brining her nose to his soft underbelly and sniffing out the powerful hormones in his milt. For what seemed like ages she circled and prodded, all the while clutching at her harpoon as if it was her own child. All the while she seemed to ease up in mood and demeanor, finding comfort in a familiar scent enough to calm her seasonal fury. In some laps of her maternal instinct to kill the intruder, the spear slipped from her palm and sailed down into the murky depths of the chasm below. She rested her palm against Deidara's shoulder blade in a kindly gesture as if to show she trusted him but at the same time showed reservations about allowing him into her inner sanctum. The young male looked up at the mermaid, and held her gaze for a moment before he noticed that the harpoon she'd been coddling had been cast aside.
Before Konan could protest, the blonde had released his grasp of the edge of the cliff and found a new claw hold in her shoulders, overpowering her easily and throwing her against the floor of the narrow cave. With a dominant gleam in his eye, the koi-tail snarled ferociously at her, lending to a new scrap between the merfolk. To protect herself and her egg, the wrasse-tail bit first, sinking her fangs into the soft skin and the base of the other's neck, but with the strength of the male towering over her, she was quickly overcome as Deidara returned with several warning bites to her neck and shoulders. With blood seeping from her new punctures and pain sending her nerves on edge, Konan rolled away as quickly as possible, getting herself out of the path between the male and his most craved prize.
Before the mother had time to change her mind, the younger ningyo slipped into the back of the cave, locating the egg by its powerful scent and finally hunching over his reward. The blue-haired female took his place clinging to the lip of the cave, clutching at her seeping wounds with one hand while warning, dominant growls came from her den. Undulating his tail as if swimming in short bursts, Deidara's milt came in a rush more powerful than before with the added stimulus of the egg's pheromones. He crouched over the ova, facing the only entrance to the den and snarled all the while he fertilized the egg, daring any other ningyo to interfere with his reproduction. His head jerked back and forth with wild, animalistic movements, his fangs bared as his hips and tail rocked quickly over the ova covering it with a constant stream of thick milt in the hopes that some of the reproductive sperm would survive and penetrate the thick skin and find the center to begin new life.
The defiant snarling went on for hours which bled into days and then into weeks as the season forged on, running its feverish course through the young merman's blood. Several times Konan had ventured into her own cave, only to be chased away by a furious blonde and a few savage bites or scratches. For the duration of must Deidara did not eat, nor did he rest while his position was held, covering his potential posterity with the male fluids that would make it so. By the time the hormones had all faded, the koi-tail was malnourished and exhausted, yet too afraid of being attacked by his own clansmen to set a single scale outside of Konan's den. Of course after all the tensions had faded, the mother-to-be was allowed into the inner sanctum to watch over the now fertilized zygote and fan it dotingly with fresh water. The merfolk dared not bring the egg into the light lest it attract any number of scavenging predators, but instinct told them both that the large, soft sphere was growing alarmingly fast, fed from the nutrients planted inside the rubbery shell. Several times Deidara nervously sniffed at the zygote, reaffirming that it smelled of him and almost exclusively him save for the scent of its mother.
Still with the distraction of the season of instinct free from the young merman's mind, his thoughts drifted back to shore and one day he slipped out while Konan slept curled around the egg and found his way to the beaches where he and Inuyasha had first met. He scanned the shoreline in search of that splash of red robes that always told him where the half demon was, but with no luck. His heart sank, and with a furrowed brow, the blonde circled the shallows just past where the waves broke, as if pacing nervously. He spent a little while hunting crabs, picking mollusks from the rocks, and filling his wasted belly, but nothing distracted him long from watching the beach with a sinking heart.
Still back in the hollow, Konan too was becoming worried. The duty of parenting was always sacred to the breeding male, like it was with seahorses and emperor penguins. It was very rare for the father to disappear, even if on the brink of starvation; and completely abandoning his duty of protection was completely unheard of. And now again Deidara had vanished, neglecting his clan and his future offspring, leaving Konan with the burden of an un-hatched child to keep ventilated and protected while tending to her own healing wounds. It put worry in the lagos's heart, even as she held the twitching egg to her bosom, imagining the infant fully developed and in her arms.
As it would be, Deidara's young heart was not at all in protecting his posterity or the mother of his spawn. His eyes were too fixed on the surface world as he waited with a heavy heart for the slightest sign that the hanyou he had fallen in love with would return for him as he had promised.