Deidara's Troubles

Deidara’s Troubles

By Magewriter

Chapter 6

Disclaimer:  The characters and appearances of most of the characters in my story belong to the author of Naruto.

Nothing really to write.  Life is good.

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In the morning, Deidara woke up around nine and he felt relatively normal.  He sat up and looked at Nameless.  “Do you always have to go invisible, yeah?”

She turned visible.  “Wha – why’d you wake me up, Deidara?”

“You were asleep, yeah?”

“Yeah.  What, couldn’t you see that my eyes were closed?”

“No, yeah.  You were invisible, yeah.”

“Oh.  I guess I’m getting better…  You look pretty good today, and that’s not just a comment on how cute you are.”

“I feel better today, too, yeah!”

“I’ll go check on Zetsu.  Then I’ll go check on Hidan.  He really did a number on himself last night.”

“The passing out sort of tipped me off, yeah.”

“Yeah, then he kept going back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness… he actually got mad at me for bandaging him up, said it was good and a little blood was good for showing Jashin that you’re faithful to it.”

“Hidan was never really all that smart, yeah.”

“Yeah, then Zetsu wouldn’t let me into his room.  He had Tobi hold the door shut.  Little brat isn’t good for anything except mindless tasks.  I mean, he never listens anyway…”

“Weren’t you going to leave soon, yeah?”

“I should.  I just like being in intelligent company with someone who doesn’t hate me.”

“That’s always nice, yeah.”

Sasori entered then.

“Deidara, who are you talking to?”  Deidara noticed that Nameless had become invisible again.

“Um, no one, yeah.”

“Ugh.  Not only do I have to do all this for an idiot, he’s also crazy.  Why is it always the puppet that gets picked on?”

“Because you pretend not to have feelings, yeah.”

“Well, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly nice being your partner.”

“I don’t like being your partner, either, yeah.  We just happen to compliment each other’s styles, yeah.”

So, Sasori gave Deidara his medicine, Deidara thanked him, and Nameless appeared again. “I’ve been thinking about telling everyone soon.”

“Telling them what, yeah?”

“That I’m a girl.”

“Does Leader know, yeah?”

“Oh, definitely.  He’s known since the beginning.”

“How would you go about telling them, yeah?”

“Probably just go around without my cloak on.”

The story will now follow Nameless until her life collides with Deidara’s again.

She walked down the hall and down the stairs and knocked on the door of the room directly under Deidara’s.

“Who is it?”

“Tobi, if you don’t let me through this door, I’m going to tell Leader and you’re never going to be a part of the Akatsuki because he’s the one who sent me on this mission.”

The door opened.

“Yes?”  “What do you want?”

“I came to check on you.”

“Thank you.”  “Well, you should after what you did yesterday.”

“You’re welcome.  Are you better now?”

“Better, yes.”  “Are you kidding?  We still have huge brown spots all over ourselves!”

“I’m sorry.  And I’m sorry I had to do that to you, too, White-san.  But, you see, that was Deidara’s.  And, I was sent by Leader to make sure that Deidara was okay.  And MiracleGro is something that you can have, but I won’t let you take Dei-san’s prescription meds.”

“Okay.  I’ll try harder to keep him from doing it again.”  “I was only trying it because we were trying to quit MiracleGro!”

“Whatever.  I have to go check on Hidan.”

She left the overly bright, overly hot, overly moist room and went instead to Hidan’s.

Hidan’s room had always freaked her out.  It had not only an altar dedicated to Jashin, but also a large number of sacrificial knives and other instruments of torture.

Hidan wasn’t awake, so she waited a couple minutes, then left.

She went to Leader’s room.  Because he also had to plan the Akatsuki strategies and keep track of all of the members, and because he was the leader, he got the entire attic.

She knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Nameless.”

“Come in, Ritonno.”

She opened the door and stepped inside.

“What do you have to report?”

“Deidara is doing considerably better, Zetsu is doing reasonably well considering the amount of weed killer I sprayed him with, and Hidan isn’t awake yet.”

“Does it ever seem to you that the Akatsuki has more than its share of crazy people?”

“Always.”

“Do you have anything else to report?”

“No, but I have a request.”

“A request?”

“Yes, Leader.”

“What sort of request?”

“I would like permission to show my gender.”

“You don’t have to ask me for that.  It’s been your choice this entire time.”

“Okay.  I just wanted to make sure…”

“I couldn’t care less.  Do what you want.  Just out of curiosity, though, is there anyone else who knows?”

“Deidara.  He figured it out a few days ago.  Despite appearances, he’s actually very perceptive.”

“You don’t get into the Akatsuki if you aren’t.  Dismissed.”

So she left, going to the lower landing and into her room, which was between Hidan’s and Itachi’s.  She hung up her Akatsuki robe in her closet (sometimes she doubted that the other members even knew that they had closets from the looks of their rooms) and took her hair down.  Then, to scare the other members further, she did her makeup.  It matched her nails.

She went upstairs to make breakfast then.  She had miso soup.  She doubted that Deidara would have noticed.  As it was, he was the first to come into the kitchen while she was there.

“Hey!  You look good as a girl, yeah!”

“I know.  Don’t I?”

“It’s really weird seeing you without your Akatsuki cloak, though, yeah.  You always have it on, yeah.”

Kisame came down the hall, intent on getting some sushi.  He stopped, flabbergasted, at the sight of a woman in the Akatsuki.  What was more, Deidara was conversing with her as though nothing was wrong.  “Deidara, what are you doing with a woman?!”

“This is Nameless-kun, yeah.”

“Nameless-san is a man, and he always wears his cloak!”

“I’m a woman!  It’s just that everyone except for Deidara and Leader were too closed-minded to see me as anything but a guy!  …And I get cold easily.”

“Oh… I am so confused now…”

“Just wait until everyone else sees me.”

To prove her point, she walked down the hall (I think I’ll follow her just a bit longer) towards Sasori’s room.  When she got there, she leaned in the doorway.

“Hey, Sasori!  Recognize me?”  Deidara and Kisame, who had crept along to listen, were right on the other side of the door.

“Um… should I?”

“Take a guess.”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m Nameless.”

“WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

“Yeah.  You all thought I was some gay dude, but I was actually the only female Akatsuki member.  Or wait…”  She looked up for a moment, trying to remember times when she had seen the other Akatsuki members shirtless or partially so.  “Yeah, I’m definitely the only woman in the Akatsuki.”

“How did… does Leader know?”

“Yeah.  He knew from the beginning.  Deidara figured it out a couple days ago.”

“DEIDARA!!!!!!!!!”

Deidara cracked up and went through the door, barely managing to say, “Yes, Sasori-danna, yeah?” through his laughter.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Nameless-san is a woman?!”

“You didn’t even notice she was in my room, yeah. She’s actually been there for a few days, yeah.”

“Ugh… stupid idiot.”

“Not as much as you, yeah!”

“…”

Then, Nameless brought herself back into the conversation.  “Would you mind keeping the secret?  I want to tell people myself.”

“Um… sure.  I don’t see why not…”

“Okay.  Off to see Zetsu and Itachi, then.”

She went downstairs and knocked on Zetsu’s door.  Tobi asked who it was and she said it was Nameless.  He always opened the door looking down, but he noticed that she wasn’t wearing her Akatsuki robe.

So he looked up at her face and was shocked at what he saw on the way up.

Zetsu turned around.  Zetsu’s face unsettled her a bit then because the white side was surprised and the black side was seemingly undisturbed.

“Oh!  Nameless!  You’re a girl?  You’re beautiful!”  “She’s a woman.  Now we don’t have as much freedom as we used to.”  “Will you tell us your name, now that we know you’re a girl?”  “What’s the point?”

“I’m Ritonno.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”  “No, it’s not.  It’s just a name.”

“I’m going to go tell Itachi.”

“That’s a great idea!”  “What’s the point?  He’ll figure it out anyway.”

Itachi was awake.  Without looking up, he said, “What do you want, Nameless?”

“I want you to look up.”

He looked mildly surprised for only half a second. “I suppose you’re going to want to tell me your name now, correct?”

“Um, yeah.  My name is Ritonno.”

“Hn.”

She could tell that he would rather be reading his book, so she went to Kakuzu’s room.

“Nameless, do you have any money?”

“My name is Ritonno.”

“Huh?”  She had known that only a bold statement like that would make him look up.  When he did, he started staring at her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, so she yelled at him and left.  She knew that her image was on Itachi’s sharingan, but if he wanted to look at her like that, he could at least be discreet about it by viewing it in private.

Then she went to Hidan’s room, with the idols, knives, and instruments of torture.  He was awake.

“Nameless?  You’re a woman?”

“Yup.  How are you feeling this morning?”

“How dare you bind my sacrifice?!  That blood was an offering to the great Jashin-sama!”

“Yeah, well, guess who had to clean it off the couch?”

“You shouldn’t interfere in other people’s religious ceremonies!”

“You cut your wrists and went into the TV room to watch a soap opera.  That doesn’t sound all that religious to me.”

“You just don’t understand.”

“Listen, do you want me to rewrap your bandages or not?”

“I want you to take them off!”

“Ugh!  You little ingrate!  Here I’m carrying out Leader’s wishes and you’re complaining about me letting you live!”

“If I lived last night, it should have been a sign from Jashin-sama, not the acts of a fellow human!”

“Maybe the fact that there was someone there who wasn’t entirely wrapped up in the soap opera and who cared enough to help you was a sign from Jashin.”

He considered this for a few seconds.  Then he said, quite calmly, “Do with me as you will.”

So, she redid his bandages and let him go back to sleep.  She thought for a minute, trying to remember if she had forgotten to tell anyone.  She couldn’t think of anyone, so she went to her room and put on a black happicoat which she tied with an Akatsuki-style obi (this means that it was red with black clouds on it so that it showed up against her happicoat; this was designed by Pockles) and went upstairs to get the breakfast she had been waiting for.

Now, we go back to Deidara.

Ritonno-san went downstairs after she ate breakfast and came back up wearing a black happicoat with an Akatsuki-style obi with a nice bow in the back.  No longer being very sick, he no longer needed to sweat his fever off (it had sunk to practically nothing) so he asked her to help him fold the blankets.  She did because she didn’t have anything better to do, and he put them back in the hall closet.

That night, as they watched the soap opera, there was an air of discomfort among everyone except for Deidara, who, as I said earlier, became entirely absorbed in the plot, and Zetsu, who were still in their room trying to create enough plant tissue that the places where they had been sprayed would be green again.

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I typed this chapter while I was supposed to do my homework, too.  It’s almost twice as long as the others, but again, the length of the chapters isn’t pre-determined, and if you compare it to the chapters in my other stories, it’s actually really short.  (Six pages as opposed to fourteen or fifteen, or even one story that was 28 pages).  I feel very proud of myself because I made up a name that sounds, at least to Western ears, Japanese!  If Ritonno is a Japanese word, then please tell me.

Hooray for Pocky and Japan Town, and especially Ichiban-kan, which is a store in Japan Town that sells all sorts of cheap Japanese stuff for practically nothing, and is amusing and kawaii.  Plus, you can get all sorts of stuff (including Pocky – we got Men’s Pocky, Strawberry Pocky, and Almond Crunch Pocky) for not-all-that-much.