Yahiko
It was time for lunch. Yahiko ate his standing. If he tried to sit down, his hands shook and his thoughts raced too much to eat. If he stood, it was easier to focus, although he then had to face the fact that he just wasn't hungry. His stomach was tense too.
His boss walked up to him. "Are you alright?" she asked. It was a nice, noncommittal line of questioning. He could easily fulfill his social obligation with, "Fine," and she'd be on her way. She was very considerate that way.
Yahiko didn't give answers that way, of course. "No," he admitted. "It's hard to talk about, but, um, I just have this one friend who's so much braver than I'll ever be, and I don't think he even notices. No one else does, either. I don't get it…"
The department manager gave him a few seconds before smiling at him. "You'll figure it out," she consoled, and walked away. Yahiko was left confused. Figure what out? There's so many things I don't get…
His lunch time was almost over and he was maybe a tenth of the way through his food when the doorbell chimed. The staff that had different lunch times allotted were prepared and alert, but this was no customer. It was Nagato. Yahiko raced to the front and pulled him aside.
"Hey! Are you on break too? You're not going to be late getting back, are you?" Yahiko turned from happy to worried as that last occurred to him.
"No, no," Nagato waved him off. "Don't even think about me. I just wanted to apologize."
Yahiko leaned against the wall behind the sales counter, inviting Nagato to do the same. "For what?"
Nagato looked down as if trying to hide the smile on his face. "Remember, apologies aren't the same thing as asking for forgiveness. It doesn't matter what you think about me; I have to apologize for myself." He looked up at Yahiko with a sincere look in his eyes. "I'm sorry for not telling you about the succubus."
Yahiko smiled. "Hopefully we don't have to deal with a demon again."
Nagato nodded. "Yeah. But, no, that's not really what I'm talking about." He shook his head to clear his mind. "I thought not telling you about her would keep you safe, and that was worth it. But I didn't think about if you would want to know, or how you would feel. I shouldn't go around making decisions for you like that. I'm sorry."
Yahiko rubbed several strands of hair between his fingertips. "You couldn't have known. And anyway, I don't know what I would have done if I'd known all about her. I probably would have frozen. I should take action more, I'm sorry."
Nagato blinked. "No, I...no." He took Yahiko's hand. "Shut up. You're amazing. You don't need to apologize."
Yahiko giggled. "Not about you, remember?"
Nagato dropped his hand and looked sheepish. "Right. Sorry. Well, you know Hidan and Konan. They take lots of action. You can learn from them."
Yahiko nodded eagerly. "I really want to be more like Hidan," he admitted. "He's braver than me. He doesn't worry about anything."
Nagato had no idea how to feel about that. Instead of respond, he said, "And I'll try not to think I know what's for your own good. Deal?"
"Deal."
Nagato left in good spirits, promising himself that he would do more to trust Yahiko. Yahiko went back to work, promising himself that he would talk to Hidan and ask him just how he did it. What if he doesn't have a secret? What if he's just different from me? Yahiko very carefully avoided contemplating either of those options. If either one was true, he didn't know what he would do.
Kakuzu
A breeze picked up Kakuzu's napkin. It started shyly, fooling with the very end of one small corner. It edged in like a frightened stray dog, jumping in a little closer, a little closer, until it charged forward and raced away with the whole napkin in its grasp, too fast for Kakuzu to stop. He had no intention of stopping it. He was already done with the small cup of coffee he ordered for decorum's sake; he had nothing to wipe up.
"So…" the man across from him began. This man was the stupid kind. His hair was messy, and his fingers twitched towards anything they wanted. So did his eyes, as if both fingers and eyes were beyond this man's control. His eyes twitched now, dancing down the page he was clutching in his soft hands. "Options narrowing, are they?" He sounded far too excited. Moron. Kakuzu rolled his eyes.
"Yep," Kakuzu agreed. The rule against excitement applied to himself as well as anyone else. If he ever sounded as if something like this mattered to him, he deserved whatever the consequences would be. "That's what happens when you get good at any kind of game. People stop playing with you."
His bookie frowned, looking noticeably put out by Kakuzu's not being put out. "Well, then...what you gonna do? Move to new grounds?" Kakuzu would have to find a new bookie in that case, but it was the only thing the man could think of to provide a reasonable explanation for things.
An excitable moron, too. He'll never amount to much. "No," Kakuzu replied. If the man he sat across from in this little outdoor deli couldn't get it through his head that there was no use running away from universal laws, that was his problem. The only people that tried were the excitable morons, who weren't looking for money as much as they were looking for some fun. Kakuzu felt sorry for those kinds of people.
"O - oh…" The bookie didn't get it. He tapped the papers against the table surface, although they were already perfectly lined up. He didn't like Kakuzu very much. Kakuzu never lined up. "Well, there are a few options left…"
Kakuzu had some fun in the moments before the bookie told him what they were, imagining what kind of local dog-racing circuit or what have you would have not heard of him already. Corollary to the first rule: If enough people don't want to play, their friends won't play either. He was banned from a high enough number of casinos that he'd long since lost track. Kakuzu shrugged. That was perfectly alright, because he wasn't excitable, and he didn't spend everything he got either. He could be satisfied.
The bookie told him of a local pool place where betting, although officially not allowed, happened all the time. He went on to several other things, but that one stayed in Kakuzu's mind. Kakuzu had no idea why. He was no good at pool; cards were what he'd gotten good at. Yet, the idea had some strange allure to it. Kakuzu wondered if he knew anyone who would be good at pool. Maybe he could give them some tips, operate by proxy…
Kakuzu stood up, interrupting the other man's words that he hadn't been hearing anyway. "Thank you for the tip," he said, reaching for his light jacket. Cordial and polite made for a nice ending to his interactions with his bookie. Kakuzu turned towards a place where he could think, leaving the bookie to pick up his own things.
Kisame
Kisame drove east and south, heading for low, open ground. There was a play area there, a wide stretch of land where families or packs of children could come and make whatever use they could of a great, huge, empty stretch of grass. When he arrived, he carefully avoided the amateur baseball team a pack of children had set up on the grass. To his right, on a corner of the field, there squatted a distant building which held two restrooms. Someone had put up a basketball hoop somewhere to the left, where the ground was rocky and lifeless enough for that sport. It had not yet been taken down. Kisame wondered if that was an approved basketball hoop as he crossed the thin grass and his shoes began to drag in thicker grass, which was shortly replaced by a mat of water weeds. The moisture-loving weeds were soft and good to sit on. Kisame noticed with mild surprise that there was freshwater algae growing on the bottom of the pond as far as he could see. Huh. Haven't seen that before. Wonder where it came from.
He didn't, not for more than a second. There was so much else to wonder about. Kisame found, to much greater surprise, that he wondered about none of it. His mind's concerns drained away, like a splash of bucket water running across soft ground and disappearing. He relaxed, leaning back on his hands and looking up. Secretly, that was why he had come here. This place was good at having that effect. It was something that Kisame could not explain, and therefore a surprise every time it happened. As long as it was always a good surprise, he could live with it.
A breeze drove across the ground, making lapping sounds in the water. There appeared to be no wind at all in the sky, where lumps of clouds were pinned in place. The only traces of past wind were in the faded blue of the sky, the kind of faded blue caused by wisps of clouds just barely not visible to the eye. Kisame noticed that, in a rough circular patch of sky directly above him, true sky blue shone down. It looked like something had punched a hole in a screen. He tried looking down to the trees nodding at each other, or to the pond's waters rising up and down as the wind pushed at it, but he always found his head being drawn back up to look at the hole in the sky.
Kisame finally gave up and resigned himself to sitting there for however long he was going to sit there, tracing the ragged contours of the hole with his eyes. It reminded him of a map of Australia, if there wasn't that huge curve in the continent. Kisame was idly contemplating the waters off Australia and how dangerous he'd heard they were when he heard the first rustling behind him. He didn't really know what the role of sharks was in that area of the ocean. Kisame was aware that other dangers like box jellyfish lived in those waters, but were jellyfish the only reason to be watching out? He could have looked it up on his phone, but that would be in defiance of the spirit of this place. This pond was for passing wonders, not concrete-filled answers. The rustling behind him grew closer, but quieter, so it stayed the same volume as before. Itachi was similarly considerate as he sat down, arranging himself to squish the plants as neatly as possible.
Itachi followed Kisame's gaze up to the hole in the sky. Neither of them spoke. The wind pushed the pond water another way, causing a small splash. Distant trees waved to each other, answering Yes, yes to the inaudible questions of their neighbors. After a long enough time sitting still in the breeze, Kisame zipped his hooded jacket a little higher.
That was enough of a cue. Itachi whispered, "I thought you might be here."
"I'm not surprised you're here. Scared?" Kisame replied.
"Yes," Itachi answered without any shame. "You?"
"I'm not sure," Kisame answered truthfully. "I like it here. Away from other people. It's nice after fighting a demon yesterday."
Itachi was silent. He'd thought of something earlier, something he'd been considering ever since. He waited for Kisame to supply it, if there was any truth to his idea.
There was. "Or not," Kisame added after a pause.
Itachi nodded. "Yahiko," he confirmed.
"He's brave for a kid," Kisame grumbled, half in respect and half in shame. "Did you see how worried Same was? I bet I wouldn't have gotten nearly as torn up."
"Don't be too harsh on yourself," Itachi advised. "Same would have worried for you just as much. Besides, he's no child."
"It just sucks to be the biggest and toughest guy there, and I just stood there while he was nearly torn to shreds," Kisame admitted. "I was just watching Sasori. The look on his face was pretty bad, but then why didn't I do anything? He's right there with Kakuzu and me as the only reasonable people in this crazy group. I should have…"
Itachi put a hand on Kisame's shoulder. "You'll do better, and he'll manage." He took his hand away.
Kisame picked one of the weeds and twisted it between his fingers, watching it. "He's a weird kid, but he's alright. He's the only other water user, and Samehada likes him. I kinda like him too. He shouldn't have fought that thing." Kisame tossed the weed into the pond.
"I wish I could have," Itachi whispered. "I can't stop thinking that it would feel better if I could have faced her. I don't want to be alone or in public now. He's probably doing much better because of having proven his strength against it."
Kisame shrugged. "Still, I should've done something. He's a nice kid."
Itachi sighed. "We all have to deal with ourselves from now on."
Deidara
Someone pulled up just as Deidara was walking up to the shop. Dei waited until he saw them walk back out again before entering. The front desk lady, Laurie, was busy typing details into her work computer. He waited in a corner until she was done.
Laurie printed all these details out and, giving Deidara a quick smile, took the sheet back to Sasori's place. Her shoulders were slumped when she came back. Rolling her shoulders as if to wake them up, Laurie checked for other new arrivals, then rolled her chair out from behind the desk and sat near Dei. She sighed as if she was tired.
"Hey," Deidara whispered. "You okay, yeah?"
Laurie looked around. "Me and Sasori were just talking about it. Look around." She waved him over to look at the ceiling, her desk, down the hall. "Doesn't this place look...crappy? It's small, and dingy, and weirdly terrible in some way I can't define, and it's a wonder we have any customers. I don't know why anyone would bother with this place, if it wasn't the only auto shop in town."
Dei nodded. "Every town needs an auto place, yeah."
"Exactly! It's like this was a required structure in a build-your-own-town video game!" She spun around in her chair to look up at Dei. "If we're in a video game, it's time for a lot of upgrades."
Deidara opened his mouth and left it there. His blue eyes glazed over. Laurie heard the silence and looked up to see this. "Dei? You okay?" She stood up and shook his shoulders. Dei blinked, and his eyes refocused. Laurie sighed in relief, hands still on his shoulders. "I thought you'd gone wandering somewhere and gotten lost. Are you okay?"
Deidara put a hand over one of hers. "I'm fine, yeah," he replied in a too-steady voice. He sounded like he was drugged or suffering from massive blood loss, or perhaps had just watched his entire family die in front of him. Dei shook his head to ward off the oncoming distraction of thoughts. His hand tightened, holding hers, while not quite removing it from his shoulder.
Laurie applied mild force to his opposite shoulder. "Maybe you should sit down."
He allowed her to push him into the seat. "Oh my god, we might be in a video game, yeah," he whispered. "We could actually be in a video game. Shit!"
Before Laurie could request clarification, Dei turned to her and started counting things off on his hands. "One, that's how many bars of each type there are in this entire town. That can't be natural, hm. Two, everyone else acts, like, NPCs. That would completely explain why they don't notice or respond to us being ninjas." Deidara stopped counting and just sat there, in stunned silence, eventually putting his head in his hands.
Laurie awkwardly patted his head. Did they have the kind of relationship where running hands through each other's hair in this situation was okay? Probably. He was upset, so she didn't care. "Dei?"
"Yeah?" he groaned.
"I have an idea." She leaned down to be on his level. "Sasori has a thing going with bikes. He's good with them, and they seem to like him. So, I was thinking maybe we could get out of here and open a bike shop. Someone else'll just come in to work here, right? It's too small, anyway." She looked around again. "I don't like it here, and neither does he. Not anymore."
Dei stared at her in utter bafflement. What the hell? We could be in the freakin' Matrix, and she's talking about changing her career?! "Uh, did you hear what I said? We could literally be living in a video game, yeah!"
Laurie nodded. "This place is several upgrades overdue by any measure, so I'm in the mood to be getting out. What do you think? Could we do it?"
What the hell? "What?!"
"You know, my idea. You think we have enough business savvy to pull it off?" She looked at him, visibly eager for approval.
How can this be her biggest concern after - oh. Yeah. She's one of the NPCs, yeah. That's how. Dei tried to look happy and optimistic as he searched for some reply. "Yeah, you're good with people, and he knows how things work. You could totally do that, yeah."
Laurie hugged him tightly. "Thanks!"
Deidara hugged her back reluctantly, already feeling pangs of mild grief. She's not real. Damn...could've fooled me. She felt good to hug anyway, so he did, and tried not to cry. Fuck me, hm.
Laurie stepped back. "Thanks. I've never made this big a move before, but now… Hey, what's wrong?" She looked into his eyes with worry.
Dei dodged her eyes expertly and ran a sleeve over his face, sniffling. "Nothing, hm." She's still nice, still helped us, hm. She can still be my friend, even if she's different. He tried to think that was all it was. Different. There were a lot of people who were different in the world, right? Who cared? He could manage her being a little different from the rest of his friends. Oh god, how do I know about the world? Was I programmed with that knowledge? Could I actually go see the world? Can I leave town?! His blood turned to ice water again, and his knees turned weak. He tried to take deep breaths, and not panic. "Oh, god, hm." He wasn't entirely succeeding.
Laurie was much more worried than before. "I'm gonna go get Sasori."
"No, don't!" Deidara almost yelled. Sasori was the last person who needed to know about this. "It's okay, let him do his job, yeah. I'll call somebody else. Everything's fine, I just need someone from back home to talk to, yeah." He pulled out his phone and hit a random button in his contacts.
The phone rang once. Laurie glanced between him and the doorway leading to the rest of the shop. Please don't get him involved, hm. The phone rang again. She waved at him, a weird sideways wave. Dei realized and threw himself off the chair, landing on a crouch in the corner. The phone started to ring a third time as Laurie sighed, looked at him with concern one last time, and rolled the chair behind her desk again. Dei's knees weakened again, this time with relief, so he sat on the floor.
The phone did not finish ringing a third time. "Yello?"
"Oh, thank every god there is, yeah," Dei said in one long exhale. After everything that's happened, this is the last thing Sasori needs to know, yeah. Dei would shoulder any burden, if that kept it from crushing Sasori. He hadn't realized that before. A warmth spread in the blond's chest, and he realized a part of himself he hadn't known of before.
"Um...sure."
Hidan
"Cool shit?" he asked hopefully. Hidan was always on the lookout for cool things, especially cool people. Now that he'd been kicked out of the base, and the birds had gone from the Bird Tree, he was more than enthusiastic about cool things elsewhere.
"Huh? Oh," Deidara answered. "Uh…"
Well, that wasn't quite accurate. Hidan hadn't been kicked out of the base, so much as gotten pumped with what felt like 50, 000 volts of electricity and lost consciousness shortly after Deidara left. Upon slowly making his way back to consciousness, he'd resurfaced to find himself as far away as he could have gotten in a short timeframe, and mostly free from electric feelings. Hidan's back still tingled and the world seemed to dim if he turned to face in the direction of the hotel again. Konan didn't have a phone of her own yet, so he was just going to have to wait for her to be done.
"Tell me," he ordered. "I'm bored. Spill."
"Wemightbeinavideogame," Deidara mumbled quickly.
Hidan was very fluent in mumble. "Really? What kind?"
"Um…" What's he so hesitant about? It's nothing bad.
"Spill!"
"Laurie thinks it might be one of those ones where you build your own town," Dei said hurriedly. "There's just one of everything we need, and I'm sure at least some normal people have seen my hands, but they don't act like it, hm. Like NPCs."
Hidan frowned. "I don't think so. You might build one of everything you need in those games, but every game with a town has just one of everything. Considering we've got NPCs with fully interactive backstories and real personalities, we're probably in a much more advanced kind of game. That shit's for little bitty apps. We're talking full console business here."
Deidara was quiet for many seconds. "You're not scared?" he asked.
"Hell no," Hidan assured. "Firstly, I've heard of this before. There was this one game I read an article about somewhere that had NPCs where, if you picked one and followed them, they would live out a whole day. Like, you could follow a guy from his house to some other lady's, and he was cheating on his wife, and they were all doing all this shit completely outside of whatever you were doing. This sounds like that, but even more. Secondly, this is one damn nice game. It's like it's meant for us. We're kings! Thirdly, we're not living in a game, but it's fun as shit to think about."
"What?!" Dei yelled over the phone. "What do you mean, we're not? How do you - "
Hidan got the most genius idea. "Hey, I'm gonna go visit our neighbors! They have to be cool. Call you back sometime." He ended the call and took off racing. Hey, where'd she say our neighbors are again? Eh, they're werewolves or something. Just follow the smell of dog!
Hidan dropped to all fours, and stayed there for a moment to relish the feeling of touching the soft, moist forest ground. Purrrrrrrrr… There was no sense like touch, not for people in human bodies who had their hands taken away from touching anything by design. Hidan liked to dig in the ground sometimes just to keep his hands adequately supplied with stimuli. Dogs liked to dig too. They must be awesome! Off Hidan raced, still on all fours.
Hidan suddenly became hyperaware of everything around him. Up ahead, he would pass by a fallen tree that jutted up off the ground and ended at nearly a right angle to a rock. It was time. Hidan took that turn, feeling the scythe on his back more clearly than he had ever felt it before. Handle down? Check. Let's go!
Hidan could feel the pivot point at the bottom of his lower back like it was struggling to burst from his skin and grow into a real tail. He lashed his tail from side to side, and burst out laughing in helpless glee at the feeling of the scythe's head brushing back and forth against his back. Hidan's hands sunk into the end of the fallen tree, and threw him forward, along its former trunk and up into the air. He got so, so many splinters, all of them fabulous. Hidan's high, manic laugh sounded again as he went higher, higher, and his balance stayed absolutely on line. He could feel his imaginary tail straining to bend sometimes, which the scythe's handle wouldn't allow, but it was enough for keeping his balance on this tree. It was enough.
Hidan's tail strained to the left as he pushed himself to the right, flying off the broken end of the tree. The conveniently placed rock was an alright landing spot, with the right grip. "The right grip" meant that Hidan had to rotate his body in the air so that he would be facing the rock as he approached. Hidan had tried before to figure out his legs so he could do this, but his legs weren't the problem. He'd never succeeded in landing on the rock without terrible bruises before.
It was all instinct. Hidan was free to watch himself, momentarily floating out of his body and looking. He watched as his tail - the scythe handle - went one way, and his body twisted the other way, and then his legs kicked out as his tail frantically spun from side to side, and then it went down, throwing his lower body into the air in a perfectly choreographed movement that ended with Hidan facing in the right direction with his body angled downward, his hands reaching out to get a grip on the stone. Then he was back in his body and it all happened so fast, Hidan had no idea what was happening until his chakra channeled itself down to his feet to keep from sliding off the edge of the rock. Then he found himself on the rock, with his chakra holding his hands on the other side, and the rounded top of the stone pressing into his unbroken ribs. Though unbroken, they were probably starting to bruise. It was the happiest bruising of Hidan's life.
The forest echoed with high-pitched feline yowling sometimes shading into laughter.
.
Hidan walked up to the door and knocked on it. It was a useless gesture, since the snarling of the large canine sitting on the porch was enough of an alarm. Hidan knew another one was behind him without looking. He'd been followed the whole way here, as he followed what human scent he could find in the mess of dog scent. Hidan stood perfectly calmly on the front porch of the rather large cabin, occasionally shifting his feet just to hear the old boards squeak. The door opened a little, enough for watchful eyes to peer out. "Who are you?"
"I'm Hidan. My buddies and I just moved in, and I wanted to meet the neighbors. I'm the guy who was just yowling just now, and you may have smelled my campsite a while away from here, closer to the lake." He peered back at the surprised eyes. "One of my buddies, my best one, told me there was at least one cool guy here. Uh...Sa - Sakumo?"
"He's out with the pack," said the guy opening the door wider. He looked young, or at least his hair made him look like it. His jaw was slightly wider than normal, and Hidan was amazed to see snaggleteeth poking out from under the man's lips. The guy's hair, though, was fantastic. It striped his head in gold and black, the colors of tigerhood. Hidan glanced down. No tail. Aww. He continued to stare at the guy's snaggleteeth, disappointed when his own tongue failed to find any edge sharper than normal human teeth in his own mouth.
The tiger guy sniffed at him. "You don't smell like cat," he murmured.
Hidan nodded. "I sure don't. Not completely sure what I am. All I know is, it's a lot like a big cat, so I think of myself as one 'cause it works."
The man stared back at him. "What kinds of meat do you like?" he asked, shyly. The wolves' ears twitched, and the one on the porch went back to watching Hidan from a resting position. That was not a voice of tension.
"What kind do you have?" Hidan asked while starting to bob up and down. Best neighbors ever!
He selected squirrel and rabbit, even though he was hungrier for more. Konan would probably have some pieces of those deer left after she was done. They were inside before Hidan thought to ask, "Hey, what's your name?"
"Ah, Hatake Mitsuki," the tiger guy replied as he bent down to the small fridge. He cracked open a single beer for himself. "What about you? Your family name?"
Hidan looked down to the floor. "I don't have one," he said sadly. "I don't have any memories from before I ran away."
"Oh," the tiger man said. It was all he had to say. What could anyone say to that?
"I think I'm starting to get a family now, though," Hidan remembered. He started to purr in between words. "There's Konan - she's like me, you'll love her - and the others. They're all…" He searched for the right word, didn't find it, and settled on, "awesome! They pet me, and talk, and fight sometimes if they have to. We're called the Akatsuki. One of them's the guy who found me after I ran away, the first anything I remember. He's kind of like family and kind of like a friend. I'm totally bringing him here sometime!"
Nothing Mitsuki could say now would stop him; Hidan was on a roll. "There's also Sasori, who builds shit and is good if you want to be quiet for a while. Deidara's fun, and he can fly! Kisame's kinda cold and doesn't like to hang out with anyone, but, wait a sec, he's half shark or something! You guys should totally meet him. Kakuzu, that's the guy who found me, he's grumpy but he'll play cards. Then there's Nagato and Yahiko, who always go together, and they have so much fun and are good for talking, and they're nice to everyone. Nagato's really smart, and Yahiko looks at things differently. Konan's good for play fighting or real fighting, I think they're the same for her. And Itachi's super quiet and doesn't talk much, but when he does it's really smart. I think talking more would distract him from his thinking. And that's my family, as of now." Hidan's scythe slid across his back, brushing the fabric of his cloak back and forth as his tail swished happily. His eyes were alight and his tongue stuck out of his mouth through his front teeth.
Mitsuki, the tiger guy, stood quietly and took this all in. "They sound like a good family," he offered.
"Fuck yeah!" Hidan looked around. "Where's the food again?"
'"Oh!" Mitsuki raced off to get it. He asked from another room, "So were you sent here to visit, or was there nothing happening, or what?"
"Konan's doing a thingy that felt bad, so I can't be in the base right now," Hidan explained. "Don't ask. I once freaked out over some kind of abstract color painting. There's a bunch of things that feel bad for no reason."
The tiger man returned with a plate. "Well, here's to family," he toasted. "If you stay for a few more hours people will come back, but I think everyone else is out hunting or relaxing right now. Spring, you know?" He clinked his bottle against Hidan's plate.
Hidan nodded. "Almost everyone's got day jobs, so, same. Spring! You like digging?"
Mitsuki did, and so did the wolves. Hidan was careful to remove his cloak first, explaining that it was his precious uniform. The air smelled of earth in short order. The others didn't quite like digging as much as Hidan did, so they left him alone to roll in it. Lying in the soft, good-smelling earth, with his skin and his hair covered in it, Hidan purred and stretched lazily. It was suntime, and the tree cover over this area of ground was perfect; there was none. Mitsuki understood perfectly, but was unwilling to get his clothes all dirty. Hidan said something that was probably dirty, but he didn't really know. He was already sinking into a nap.
Mitsuki brushed more dirt over Hidan to both make a warm blanket and shield his skin from the sun. He lounged on the porch in a patch of sunlight, beginning to feel drowsy himself. He looked inside at Hidan's cloak hanging over the side of a chair. Akatsuki, huh? It was a nice name. He wondered about some of those friends Hidan had mentioned, and stifled a yawn. He'd talk with Sakumo, after his nap, of course.
Hidan dreamed of running in the forest toward his friends, and his fingers twitched. I'll find you guys, just wait! And then, we'll be together. He purred in his sleep. Konan...
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