Nagato
The three of them found a small table at the same diner as before and sat down. Konan looked around with what Nagato thought might be boredom in her eyes. He could see them unfocusing slightly as well. He quickly passed out the small paper menus, and they each ordered something. Konan chose a generic dish with pasta, meaty strips, and lots of vegetables, Yahiko ordered a sandwich, and Nagato felt like getting himself a giant omelet with tomatoes and onion in it. He'd really wanted one earlier, but the other two had eaten breakfast and he thought such a big dish was the kind of thing one saved for a group meal. Nagato noticed that the sandwich Yahiko was ordering was the same kind he had ordered for himself before, but with more pickles. When was the last time he'd been so hungry? He couldn't remember. He added a giant glass of orange juice to his order.
"Why didn't you eat before we left?" Yahiko asked in a low whisper after they ordered.
Nagato shrugged. "It occurred to me what was going to happen - I would talk to her, and I'd suggest going out to talk somewhere more lively afterwards. Getting food to eat facilitates things like that. I didn't count on you coming along and us getting cloaks."
"Oh. Well, it's good that you were planning to eat." Yahiko looked around. There were three other occupied tables, one of which was also waiting. They had a few minutes before their food would arrive.
"Yeah. Um…" How do you talk about something like this? Nagato had no idea how to sneakily angle around to approach a topic from the side. And, he realized, there was a very good reason why he didn't know how to do that. I've never been sneaky around Yahiko before. I should be able to tell him everything. I...What am I doing?
He told me he wants to know about things, and I felt like such an asshole for not telling him about the succubus. I don't want to be an asshole. He deserves better.
Yahiko was looking at him, waiting for Nagato to say whatever he had begun saying. Nagato swallowed, and felt a bizarre mixture of relief and disappointment churn in his stomach. Right. Public place, haven't thought this through. I should think about telling him how I feel later. God, but I… I don't feel ready, somehow. The disappointment was strong, but Nagato thought he could feel something else, something that told him he should avoid giving in to the disappointment and the shame. Something wasn't right yet.
"She looks a little tired." He tilted his head to the side to indicate Konan. "You want to just...talk? At least until we get food. It might help."
Yahiko quickly looked from his peripheral vision. Konan was staring at the table, completely not interested in her surroundings. She looked slightly distressed, as if she was hoping to be somewhere else right now. He swallowed and nodded. A couple good hours was all he had the right to expect, considering what was going on. "Sure. About what?"
Nagato turned his chair to face Yahiko more directly. "Um...well...I just...was wondering about a few things. Nothing important." The most important thing in the entire world.
Yahiko turned his chair as well, and scooted a couple inches away from the table. He regretted not looking further, not suggesting they eat somewhere that didn't involve sitting around a table in close proximity. This was as much space as he could give her. "That's perfect."
Oh, crap. Nagato was in too deep to back out now and think of something genuinely unimportant, so he forged ahead. "I guess…" He still hadn't figured out how to approach the topic. Oh… It really doesn't feel right, but I can't do it. I have to be pretty direct. Please, please, please don't let me accidentally tell him. Again, he felt a surge of shame. But something really wasn't right yet for him to confess his feelings. Nagato was beginning to think there was a deeper reason for his reluctance to confess his feelings to Yahiko. Perhaps he should ease up on himself.
"Like I said, it's not super important, so I haven't done much thinking about it. Give me a sec," he stalled. Yahiko accepted this and started looking around, fidgeting slightly as he did so. The fidgeting stopped after a few seconds, and something about the look in his eyes changed. He looked like he was trying to see things the way Konan saw them, scan his environment the shinobi way.
Stop looking at his eyes and focus! He has beautiful eyes, but I think they're making me nervous. How do I ask…?
A young girl, probably someone's daughter looking for an easy paycheck, brought out his glass of orange juice with a straw. Nagato marveled at the wonders drinking through a straw could work on one's ability to focus. His favorite drink certainly didn't hurt. Mmm.
The giant glass was an inch and a half lower when he took his mouth off the straw and faced Yahiko again. "I think I'm thinking about it because of earlier, when you asked if I was okay," he began. Yahiko stopped looking around to attend to Nagato's face. "You get a lot more worried with anyone else. I kind of expected you to come over and check my temperature, or something like that. It's a little silly to ask, but why don't you wonder about what's going on with me like you do with other people?"
Yahiko didn't answer right away. His face turned red, and his eyes skittered away from Nagato's like cockroaches before the light. His hand tightened at his side, before he gave up and let it reflexively fiddle with his hair. Nagato's mouth opened a little. He's nervous? What did I say? Should I tell him to forget it?
Yahiko shrugged. After thirty seconds of silence, he was looking down at the floor, he had been fiddling with his hair for the past ten of those seconds, and he knew his cheeks were visibly red. "Why don't you ask now?" he whispered. He flinched after saying it, which Nagato had to have seen.
Nagato hadn't expected that response. "Why would I ask about something you're obviously uncomfortable with?"
"Yeah!" Yahiko breathed a sigh of relief and stopped fiddling with his hair. His heartbeat eased. "Yeah. I don't ask, so you don't. We're good." He returned to looking in the direction of the kitchen and wondering when their food would be brought out.
Nagato's heart nearly stopped. He's...afraid of me? Was that the right interpretation? His eyes were starting to tear up. No, no! That can't be it. Don't cry in the middle of a diner. Please. He meant something else. It's just courtesy. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. We know each other very well, so if there's something we can't explain about each other, there must be a good reason for it. He doesn't want to be rude, that's all.
Nagato's mouth was still dry, and his eyes were still in danger of overflowing. He sipped at his orange juice and found it oddly flavourless. It would be a sin to waste juice by drinking it in such a state, so he fiddled with his hands instead. He was still horrified, and wished he hadn't asked the question. Does he really think he needs to do that to get me not to ask about him? I would never do anything to hurt him, no matter what he told me. I love him for who he is, whatever that means. Against his baser desires, Nagato found himself looking at this issue from another point of view. But what if he thinks the same? I don't think I avoid telling him things just because I'm afraid of how he would react. It might be a little awkward, and telling him how I feel would be scary, but I'm not scared of him. The problem's something else. Maybe it's the same for him?
Yahiko sat up straighter as the young girl came out of the kitchen again with food. Nagato took the opportunity to wipe his eyes. Dammit, what's wrong? I don't want anything to be wrong. I want to be able to talk with him. Unfortunately, he had to admit the unspoken deal Yahiko had alluded to was a good one right now. Then why did it feel so bad?
Konan's heart beat stronger, and out of her tiredness rose concern. She'd been paying attention to their conversation. She looked at Nagato and reached out for his arm, squeezing it from sympathy. This broke him out of his thoughts. He smiled weakly as their plates were put in front of them. The serving girl snorted, causing Konan to issue her a death glare, accompanied by a pointed blast of burning chakra. The civilian girl unfortunately lacked the capacity to interact with chakra, but she jumped back at the venomous glare. She rushed off back to the kitchen as fast as she could.
Yahiko, who did have the ability to interact with chakra, found his mouth far too dry to eat with. He had felt something like this before, after making that extremely painful joke about himself being sacrificed. He realized now the pain of that experience had not come from her chakra inflicting pain on him, but her chakra itself being filled with pain. His mouth was a dusty tomb of fear because he could feel the anger in her chakra, and it was terrifying.
Nagato winced, but appreciated the gesture. The last thing he needed was for anyone to think he was in a relationship with a girl. That would just be… Wrong? Uncomfortable? Something that should be wrong, but it wouldn't be as wrong as it should be, and I wouldn't have any idea what to do with it? Nagato tried to imagine his response to such a thing, and saw himself freezing and maybe even going along with it from nervousness. I've never, um...told anyone before. Really? Why can't I even think "come out"? I mean...I don't have any trouble talking with Konan about it, but… Wait, have I ever specified what "it" is? Even in my thoughts? No wonder I can't tell Yahiko anything!
The golden light of revelation dawned. Is that what's wrong? He tried again, and found that the orange juice tasted even better than usual. Nagato remembered that he was very hungry, and proceeded to slice up his tomato omelet with gusto.
Yahiko felt bad. Had Nagato been that hungry before? Maybe he should've taken the time to give him space to eat properly, instead of continuing conversation. Yahiko gave him space now, chewing his meaty, pickley sandwich in silence. Oh, the pickles were good!
Konan speared a piece of broccoli with more force than the poor thing deserved. She could handle providing sympathy, but the universe was currently demanding entirely too much. She was in no mood to help Yahiko get his priorities in order, she was not in the appropriate condition for being their go-between until they were able to be open with their secrets, and she certainly wasn't going to invest the mental energy into remembering what everyone was and was not supposed to know about. That task would be quite easy since she was so practiced at it, but being asked to expend any effort was, to be frank, pissing her off.
Of course, she did not vocalize any of this. Such thoughts were unbecoming of a shinobi. There was no room to indulge laziness - life was hard, and always would be. It was an established fact that reality itself was biased against shinobi, who for some reason willfully volunteered to be its sewage dumpers. Konan distantly remembered thinking that learning ninja skills would help them protect themselves. Look how well that turned out.
At any rate, she ate until her arm was threatening to go on strike, which fortunately covered most of her plate. Then she quietly exhaled, cleared her mind, and imagined a few different scenarios she could choose from.
"Um…" Nagato licked his lips free of any traces of orange juice as he looked between Konan and the few bites of food left on her plate. "Are you…?"
She raised her non-eating arm and shoved the plate towards him. He had it cleared in under five seconds.
"Huh." Yahiko looked amused. "We got a sandwich to tide you over, so this can't be all from not having breakfast."
Nagato swallowed. "I wanted the omelet before," he explained.
Konan tapped her fork against Nagato's glass twice before the serving girl had a chance to remove it. Once the girl was out of earshot, Konan began. She had made her choice.
"I couldn't help overhearing," she began. "I just want to say that either of you may discuss anything you want with me, at any time. I may or may not do something more than listen. It is not necessary to say anything about Hidan, so I will not. Do know that I talk with him often about things that matter to him."
Yahiko looked startled. She spent some more chakra in his general direction to shut him up. "Secondly, I wish to show you two more basic, foundational ninjutsu that may be surprisingly helpful in the kinds of lives you have in this world."
Unbecoming or not, she was rather unmotivated to keep hostility out of her voice at the moment. Nagato nodded. "Okay." Best to just go along with her for now. I hope it's not too bad for Yahiko…
Yahiko was also hoping that very much, and regretfully letting go of his vague hope that they might resume cheerful bantering and just being together. Of course, he knew there would be other such mornings, but he would be very sad to have to wait.
Konan carefully did not let her eyes flicker in Yahiko's direction as she announced their lesson plan. "We'll begin with Transformation Jutsu."
In the forest
Three humans and two sharks (for one of the humans was also a shark) planned to meet by the lake. That was a mistake.
Water is the universal solvent. Everything, given enough time, can become part of a given body of water. Everything.
Perched by the lake stood a giant clay owl, motionless. Its dead and white eyes stared out over the water, gazing at the trees on the other side. It was placed as far as one could get it from the trees without standing it in the water. This was because its maker really didn't want to find out what leaving a construct held together by chakra in water for long periods of time could do to it. Its maker was a very smart man.
The lake water lapped over its clay feet. Lakes don't normally lap, especially not if they are surrounded by windbreaks, but this one did. Its water was agitated, moving stronger and faster than normal. Almost as if it was alive.
In a manner of speaking, it was. The lake was filled with life. Every living thing in it was dead, the vitality stolen from their bodies and loosed into the water. This very same water splashed up against the ankles of the clay bird.
Haha. That could have been the setup to something very interesting. Alas, no. The widespread use of clay as the proper material with which to make golems is due simply to the fact that clay is rather flexible and, like mud, can be molded and fired into something useful. Unlike mud, clay is rather sterile. Also unlike mud, clay is much easier to infuse with explosive chakra. Once fused, it is like concrete. Concrete is not a highly reactive material.
All this is to say that nothing happened to the owl, except for what would normally happen from contact with water, which wasn't much. "Aw…" said a very disappointed demonic child, who had hoped otherwise. Disappointed, he sulked away to make his own golems.
He did, however, resolve to come back before too much longer. As its master approached, the chakra in the clay would become reactive again. Chakra was already a kind of life force. Who knew what might happen?
Certainly the thing in the lake did not. It had no consciousness to speak of. How could it know anything?
Deidara
"Mhm." Sasori gave no sign of hearing anything Deidara had said. He chewed his sandwich and continued to stare at his page. Deidara shivered as he noticed that it was covered with beetles and closeups of beetles. Actually, they don't quite - Ugh, why would I want to look at that more than I have to, yeah? They can be whatever they want, but it's still creepy and crawly, yeah. Deidara had disliked creepy and crawly things ever since he first heard that old urban legend about spiders crawling into a person's mouth while they slept. Duct-taping his mouths shut was too difficult and painful to manage, so instead he trained himself to sleep very lightly and wake up at the slightest fluttering touch anywhere near his face or hands. He still woke up from minor tickles most of the time.
"Have fun with your bugs, yeah," he said while edging towards the door.
Sasori finally looked up from his paper and shook himself. The marks he'd made were too deep and widespread; he would have to rewrite a whole new price sheet. "Hey, they've solved a lot of engineering problems more efficiently than people ever have," the engineer countered. "I could give you a book on that sometime."
Dei sighed. "Yeah, I know. It's just… I learned to be scared of them as a kid, and things you learn as a kid stay with you, yeah? My mom really messed me up about bugs, yeah."
Sasori scratched his chin with the pencil. "If it helps, I'm not literally designing a bug. It should be a lot bigger, so size and numbers aren't a problem at all."
Deidara nodded and grinned. "Thanks. Big bugs are fine, yeah. It's the little ones that might crawl where they're not supposed to that are the worst, yeah."
Sasori stopped scratching and tilted his head. "Okay, now you have to tell me exactly what your mom did to mess you up. Why would you think…?"
Deidara smirked. "Sorry, but it's not as interesting as it sounds, yeah. It'll be disappointing. You'll have more fun wondering."
"You know that's not how I work." Sasori's fist clenched. "I look at how things work. That's what I've always done. I need to know how things start, what the principles are."
Deidara grinned and backed away. "Oh, come on, yeah. It's way too boring. You won't like it."
"I will get the information from you sooner or later," Sasori intoned firmly. He stabbed his pencil in Deidara's direction. "Believe it."
"Whatever, yeah." Deidara pushed the door open, and turned back before stepping out of it. "Don't starve to death from crazy engineer focus, okay?"
Sasori rolled his eyes, and smiled just a little. "Not with you around, I won't. Have fun." He raised his hand in a silent goodbye. Deidara shut the door behind him and started off towards the little stream that ran down to the lake in good spirits.
His good spirits were dampened somewhat after he had spent five minutes following the stream, when a bird in a tree on the opposite side abruptly stopped in the middle of a song. Deidara looked just in time to see it fly away. He saw nothing else that could indicate why it had flown away. He continued to follow the stream, but kept his eyes and ears trained on its other bank the whole time.
There were substantially more birds in the forest than there had been last week. Dei knew that it would still be a while before the huge flocks came back, but it was nice to hear a couple early birds singing every few trees. One such bird was singing high up in a tree above Deidara's head as he came to the lake. It abruptly stopped and flew away, leaving some feathers behind.
Deidara looked up to see a child dressed mostly in dark blue perched where the bird had been. He couldn't hear exactly what the kid was saying, but he was saying it in an exceptionally whiny tone of voice and making very disappointed arm gestures. Then the kid leaped off the tree, landed on the ground with absolutely no damage done whatsoever, and glared accusingly at Deidara.
"Aw man, if you'd just come earlier…! Now it's gonna be forever! Jerk!" And the boy ran away into the forest.
Deidara waited a few seconds, before slowly edging sideways to the edge of the lake. "Do you have any idea what that was about?" he whispered.
His clay bird did not respond. Dei briefly wondered how he would have reacted if it had.
Nobody else had shown up yet, so Deidara turned around to stand next to his owl and look out over the lake. His feet detected that something about this movement wasn't normal, and Deidara looked down.
What the fuck? He was standing on very wet dirt, almost mud. A quick glance all around the lake told him that it was bordered by wet dirt as far as he could see. Dei returned to his owl, and observed that its feet and ankles were wet, and sunk approximately a centimeter into the soil. The lake sat there, placid as all lakes are, its water occasionally ruffling in the breeze.
What happened here? The evenness of the wet ring around the lake reminded Deidara of a coastline. Had there been a strong wind, or…? What would have happened if I'd gotten here earlier?
He whimpered and took himself and the bird well back, away from the water. They were stationed directly beneath a branch when Kisame and Kakuzu arrived, deeply engrossed in some kind of argument.
"Bullshit," Kisame emphasized. "You cannot possibly think that one was any good. Did you even see the sequel?"
"I did. Hidan invited himself along, and we tore it apart. He threw popcorn at the screen," Kakuzu recalled.
"What? The sequel was a vast improvement! It was the original that sucked."
"The box office numbers would beg to disagree." That was when Kakuzu noticed Deidara and his owl standing under a tree. He stopped and stared at them.
Samehada awoke from his light doze and was off Kisame's back just before the shark-man followed Kakuzu's gaze. The shark licked at the air all around Deidara and the owl, before making a deep rumble. Everything smelled alright, so why was Bird Person under a tree?
"You look like you're hiding from something," Kisame observed.
Kakuzu was a step ahead of him. "What the hell is that?"
Deidara stepped aside to indicate the somewhat muddy feet of his bird. "I don't know, hm. I just got here and saw his feet were wet. It looks like it goes around this whole side of the lake."
Samehada reared up and snapped his jaws as if to say "Yes sir!" before racing off to the lake. Kisame followed his companion's path with worried eyes. "Is that safe?" he asked Deidara.
"Yeah." Deidara described the child he'd seen. "He implied that if I'd gotten here earlier, something might have happened, but he was disappointed because it was too late. He didn't stay either. So, there's probably nothing interesting left to happen, yeah."
Kakuzu nodded. "That's the demon kid. I've seen him before, when I was waiting with the shark. If he's bored, it's a good sign."
Kisame continued to eye the lake suspiciously. "I'm not stepping foot into that thing until I know why and how a lake, of all things, can be up to funny business."
"No, no way, hm." Deidara shook his head emphatically. "I am not diving in to see what's down there, nope."
The three of them looked at the lake. Any hopes they had of Deidara's assumption being wrong were dashed when Samehada returned and nodded Yes when Dei asked if the dirt was wet all around the lake. Kisame reached out and picked Same up before the shark could go anywhere else. "Couldn't you drop something into the lake and blow it up?" he asked Deidara.
The blonde shuffled his feet. "Is that a good idea? I don't know if that would make it angry, or…"
That was a damn good question. "So," Kakuzu attempted to get back on track, "how's the bird? Can it fly?"
Deidara sent it up, and it went up, flapping its clay wings easily. "Yeah, hm. You want to go?"
"I already said I did." Kakuzu shrugged. "No reason to let a creepy lake get in the way of such a fine morning."
"Hmm…" A bell was ringing in Deidara's mind. "Creepy lake, creepy page, creepy basement… There's a lot of creepiness around, yeah? Maybe it's related?"
Kisame growled. "For the love of fuck's sake, let's go, already. Who the hell wants to talk about that?"
"Agreed."
"Maybe later, yeah?"
Samehada wriggled over Kisame's shoulder and onto his back as Kakuzu climbed onto the bird. "Will anything happen if I use chakra to hold onto it?" Kakuzu asked.
"I use chakra to hold on, and nothing happens," Deidara reassured. "Should be fine, yeah."
"Hey." Kisame looked up at them. "Wandering in the woods and getting lost for fun is nice and all, but I'd rather not meet a giant cliff or forest fire or anything like that. Can you two go up and tell me what you see?"
Deidara nodded, and the clay bird lifted off. "How does this thing rise straight up?" Kakuzu asked.
"No idea, hm." Dei took it forward and up, twisting in a huge spiral. It was much more fun to fly the natural way, and faster.
"Wow." Deidara double checked his ears to be sure he'd heard right. That exclamation and the gentle tone it was said in were both things he'd never imagined hearing from Kakuzu. Kakuzu leaned forward, putting a hand on Deidara's shoulder as he did so, and pointed to the north. "Do you see that thing?"
Deidara did. To the north, the forest grew visibly denser, except for one spot where the trees were cleared. They could not see what exactly was in the clearing from this height, but it had to be some kind of building. Kakuzu asked, in a more normal tone of voice, "Who would build such a thing out here, and why?" The forest continued unbroken into the north beyond the building, as far as they could see.
"Don't know, hm. But...hey, we are looking for other people, right? Dunno who built it in the first place, but what are the odds it's empty?"
Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. "Good point. One of us has to check it out."
"Hey." Deidara pointed east. "We've got hills, yeah!" They were visible from the air by the gentle undulations of trees. The hills probably weren't very noticeable from the ground.
Southward lay town, and south-westward lay the abandoned part of town where their base was. To the west, the trees thinned out as they passed the abandoned houses, becoming relatively open scrub. The larger river Deidara had gotten his clay from met the lake on the north shore, coming from the northwest. Kisame would have to cross it if he went north.
"We should go investigate that place," Kakuzu decided. "I'd rather not force Kisame to cross a river that connects to the lake. I wouldn't cross it either. Who knows what's going on in these woods."
Deidara nodded. "Yeah. The woods themselves seem okay, but just in case, it doesn't look as dense over to the east."
"Exactly."
They landed and told Kisame what they'd seen, as well as what they'd decided. He shrugged and pointedly did not disagree with their choice. "I'll want to know everything when you two get back."
"So will everyone else," Kakuzu pointed out.
"They should if they have any brains." Kisame reached back to pat Samehada on the snout. "If there's anything hiding under the trees where we're going, we'll report that too. Just because you don't see anything from the air, that doesn't mean there's nothing hidden in a forest."
"Don't split up unless you have good reason," Kakuzu warned.
"Please. You walk down the street, and there's a demon. How dumb would I have to be to do that?" Kisame looked offended. Samehada licked his cheek reassuringly.
Kakuzu nodded. He wasn't about to say anything sickening or hokey, but he would admit it was good to have someone like Kisame around. It had been a long time since he'd really known anyone other than Hidan and his bookies. How long? Kakuzu didn't exactly know; he'd gotten used to his life.
"Ready?" Deidara asked.
"Let's go."
The white clay owl lifted up into the air again and started north. Two sharks started east. A demonic flock of birds briefly extended their senses to decide which course would be more fruitful. They merged seamlessly into two dragons and split up. One went east, and the other flew south. There was no longer anything of interest at the lake.
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