Chapter 54

I woke up in the middle of the night, disturbed by Haku next to me. Without moving, I peeked to my left to see Haku trembling and sniffling quietly. He was holding onto my arm in his sleep and whispering, barely audibly, "Zabuza..."

I tried to ignore him and go back to sleep. "Annoying..."

"What do you mean you're not going, Kakashi-sensei?" I asked in surprise.

The white-haired man looked at me. "However close you might be with your new 'friend', I still don't trust him. You and Sasuke should be enough to deal with Gato. Sakura and I will hold down the fort."

The surly Uchiha was spinning a kunai around his finger while he waited for us to leave. Sure, Sasuke was indeed a lot stronger than he would be normally, but I had an ominous feeling. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what to expect in the future.

It didn't help at all the Tazuna's grandson, Inari, foretold sourly, "They're not going to come back. Gato is going to kill them and we'll never see them ever again."

"So what's with that guy?" Sasuke asked me as we traveled through the trees. "Don't tell me you're into kind of thing, Haru!" he said, looking worried for himself.

I sighed, slowing the pace of travel. "Sasuke. Sometimes you have to take responsibility for your actions, for the people you've hurt. You can't just run away from it. You can't just wish it away." "Unlike some Sharingan users I could think of."

He jumped ahead of me and crossed his arms as he stood in my path. "What are you talking about? Spit it out already."

"I still feel guilty about your brother, Sasuke. And I feel guilty for taking away Haku's one reason for living."

I pulled off my hood to buy time to come up with something truthful that I could tell the boy. "I feel like if I just abandoned Haku, something bad might happen. I don't really want to be his master or anything. I don't know."

"Is that because of your future knowledge?" he asked seriously.

"No. It's just my own intuition. As long as he doesn't get in the way, I don't really care what he chooses to do. I'm pretty sure he'll stop following me around like a lost puppy eventually," I said dismissively.

"What if he doesn't?" Sasuke asked with a raised eyebrows.

I shrugged. "At least he's cute," I said chuckling.

Sasuke didn't find it funny, however. He simply continued ahead. It wasn't long before he signaled for us to stop. "I see something ahead."

Deep in the woods of the island, Gato's hideout was a cocoon shaped structure suspended in the air between a trio of trees. There was no light or sound coming from the treehouse whatsoever. Even more worrisome, several of the windows that wrapped around the structure had been broken.

"Sasuke, Shadow Clones." We both preformed the technique. My clone raised his hood before nodding to Sasuke's clone. We watched our other selves sneak into the building.

"Seriously, Haru, you aren't into dudes, are you?" Sasuke whispered to me.

"Sasuke, I'm not really into anyone or anything right now. I kind of have bigger concerns at the moment. After I take care of Akatsuki, I'll think about getting a girlfriend. And what about you, Mister Popular? Is there a deeper reason why you ignore all of Sakura's advances? Maybe you prefer red hair instead of pink? Oh, my." I put on my best scandalized face.

Sasuke growled and turned away. It wasn't fast enough to hide the slight redness that was filling his face however. I grinned. Sasuke was so easy to tease.

His voice grew cold as he told me the same words he'd told me so many times before. "You already know that I have to get revenge first. I won't rest until I kill Shimura Danzo."

At that moment, Gato's hideout exploded into a massive, burning wreckage. We dropped to the ground and then the memories came.

The first thing my shadow clone noticed was that there were no guards anywhere around the perimeter. Sasuke's clone also seemed unsettled. As we crept through the structure, it wasn't until we entered the main room of the building that we found the bodies. Most of the corpses were missing limbs and what remained were bloody, singed torsos.

Sasuke retched reflexively at the sight, unable to actually vomit because he was a clone. Gato's body was laid over the couch, his torso blown open to the spine. It didn't seem like the work of Haku. It was far too gruesome for that.

"I guess your friend's not a fan of my work. Neither was Gato. No appreciation for true beauty, not that it matters to him anymore," a sophisticated voice spoke from the shadows of the room. I spun around towards the source of the voice, kunai at the ready.

"Who are you?!" I shouted. Sasuke held shuriken between his fingers, prepared to attack at a moment's notice.

"Me? I'm just a wandering artist." An Iwagakure ninja walked forward into the dim light filtering from the forest canopy through the broken windows. Half his face was obscured behind long golden bangs.

"Deidara?" It was undoubtedly the Akatsuki member, only he was still wearing Iwagakure ninja robes, not the red trimmed coat I remembered. And for some reason, he was missing his right arm.

"Ah, to think I have a reputation among the Leaf. I would invite you to view my next work of art but I'm afraid you won't live through this one. Regardless of whether you have taste or not, I've found that Sharingan users are complete philistines when it comes to art. The world would be a more beautiful place if they were all exterminated. And I suppose I can just kill you too while I'm at it."

"Haru, there's chakra everywhere..." Sasuke said, his tomoe spinning as he looked around.

"What are you planning to do?" I asked.

Deidara grinned madly. "I've always felt that everything is most beautiful in its last moments. There's a kind of primal truth in that split second when something ceases to exist and the greatest form of that art is an explosion. All that energy, all that chaos...that is true art. And I decided that while I'm here, I might as well bring some art to the plebeians who live in this backwater country. Before he died, Gato informed me of the perfect venue for my next project."

"What are you talking about?" Sasuke threw his shuriken at the madman who didn't bother dodging. The shuriken simply stuck in his body or passed through completely. The Clay Clone of Deidara completely lost its light-hearted demeanor.

"See? No appreciation for art. Now, I have to prepare for my next work of art. I assure you, it'll be a real blast!"

That was the last thing my clone remembered before being consumed by hot, white light. As soon as I regained my senses, I ran as fast as possible back to Kakashi, dragging Sasuke by the arm. Only when I was sure he hadn't followed us did I allow myself to slow down and ask myself, "Why is Deidara here?"