A Thousand Mornings [Deidara Love Story]

VIII - The Akatsuki

I was taken to this place that was partially hidden in the ground - probably so as to hide from whoever was on the hunt for the tell tale red and black cloaks that signified the Akatsuki. Dei-Dei landed the bird, allowing us to finally put our feet on solid ground. When I did, I was slightly unused to being on such firm ground after flying through the air on a bird the whole way here. I wasn’t quite sure how long it took for us to get there, but it seemed that the sun didn’t even move in the sky yet still I was fatigued. Did sorrow take energy from you? Whatever was the major deciding factor in my tiredness, I just wanted to go to sleep and hope that what was happening to me out to be merely a dream that I could laugh off in the future. Though, when I nearly fell from being unused to the solid ground the shock and fear of falling overtook me - telling me this was no dream. This was the real deal. I was entering the Akatsuki base with my old best friend Dei-Dei and his talkative partner Tobi.

You know, during the whole ride, I felt like mentioning to Dei-Dei that I once knew him way back in Iwagakure. That I once pulled pranks with him, that I held the necklace he gave me all those years ago this very moment, that I slightly remembered him; though, when I thought I built up the courage to speak to him, I would drop it the moment his name was on the tip of my tongue. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it - for reasons I didn’t even know why. Was I afraid that I was wrong in my judgement - that he wasn’t really Dei-Dei? Was it because I assumed he didn’t want to talk about Iwagakure? Or was it because I feared his rejection?

I think Tobi gave me an overview of the Akatsuki and what I should expect, but I was so focused on what the right words to say were to Dei-Dei; on how to strike up a conversation about the past. He talked a lot was all I knew - even stuff that didn’t really concern anyone or anything. One time, I think he said something about a duck taking down a 500-pound wrestler. Well, he could have said that for all I knew. Maybe I should have paid better attention in case he might have actually gave me helpful advice to stand a chance in the Akatsuki or what the other members were like before I got there. If I got a little bit of a heads up about the other members, it would have been nice to at least have an idea as to what to expect when I got there. Even just their names could be beneficial so I wouldn’t embarrass myself when I inquired for their names, most likely forgetting them soon after being told. I was the kind of person where some things such as names came to me very slowly. That is… except for Dei-Dei… as soon as I noticed the ‘un’ in his sentence, I didn’t hesitate for a minute to figure out what his name was. It just came to me like a lightning bolt. Probably due to our childhood together.

“Down the rabbit hole we go!” Tobi sang as he danced ahead of Dei-Dei and I, heading straight for the secret entrance that looked like a cluster of trees making it really inconspicuous. No normal ninja could find something so well hidden; one would have to be at the very least Kage ranked in order to see the entrance. It was as if Tobi disappeared into thin air. I stared in shock for about a minute until I realized that I was being waited upon and I sprinted a bit to catch up, red climbing toward my face with embarrassment. It was going to take a lot of getting used to being with a bunch of S-ranked criminals if I found their doorway miraculous.

Going through the entrance was just like going through a waterfall. It must have been some incredible genjutsu being used on that door to cause that feeling to erupt through my body. There was a pounding on my head, like the water pouring roughly on one’s head as if being dumped in a huge bucket. I assumed that feeling to be an affect of the genjutsu trying to get me lost in it; trying to seduce me into forgetting all about this place. The only reason I was able to get through it was because of a tug on my arm bringing me into reality. If I were in any other situation, I would have succumbed to the genjutsu in one second flat, wallowing in even more amnesia that now only concerned the location of the entrance. If I was clearly no match for even their door, how did they expect me to catch up to their level and aid them in some way? When I appeared on the other side, I saw that Tobi and Dei-Dei weren’t even slightly affected by the door’s effects.