Speech Impediment

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, its characters, or any related plot elements. I receive no profit by posting this story besides the emotional satisfaction of humiliating my favorite characters.

Author's Note: In honor of the Akatsuki, whom Kishimoto has apparently deemed appropriate to kill off one by one. Requiescat in pace, my imaginary husbands, boyfriends, sex slaves, best friends, and butt buddies.

Word Count: 5,641

"You seriously have never ever even wondered why Deidara talks like that?" Hidan could not believe the words he had just heard from the puppet master's mouth, granting Sasori with a very rare, non-explicit sentence.

Of course, this memorable moment did not last very long. "I cannot fucking believe you, wood-cock."

Kakuzu noted that his partner was not even shouting. He made a mental note to ask the redhead how to shut up younger, annoying partners. "Leave him alone, Hidan. He's probably used to it by now, after—how many years has it been, Sasori?"

"Why should I care?" was the monotonous reply.

Hidan, the newest and most pious member of the Akatsuki, remained unimpressed. "How the fuck do you partner up with a dude for Jashin-knows-how-many years and not know why the hell he speaks like…like that?"

Sasori shrugged. "It never occurred to me to ask him." And it honestly had not. Sasori, though uptight and impatient, was a man of priority, and frankly, learning the origins of his partner's personal aspects was not within the top ten on his to-do list. Aside from that, he did not like Deidara—the obnoxious, idiotic, explosion-obsessed little blonde who thought himself an artist—all that much.

"Occurred to you, my ass! Doesn't it annoy the shit outta you that he says 'yeah' after every single fucking sentence?"

"As if you're one to talk, Hidan," snorted Kakuzu. Hardly a week with his new partner, and already the younger man was getting on his nerves.

"What the fuck is wrong with my goddamn talking?" fumed Hidan, blatantly oblivious to any impropriety within his speech. "Huh, ass-wipe?"

"You—" Kakuzu said calmly, reminding himself not to lose his carefully maintained coolness lest Pein subject him to yet another lecture on not trying to kill his partners, "You complain about hearing the word 'yeah' one too many times, yet you can't say even one sentence without cussing."

"You fu—"

"Furthermore," he swiftly cut off his partner, "what the hell is it to you anyway? Deidara's not your partner, and you barely know both Deidara and Sasori."

Hidan glared. It was not his normal "I-hate-you-and-want-you-to-die-a-slow-and-painful -death" glare; it was more of a "let-me-slice-you-open-to-tear-out-your-organs-and -feed-them-to-the-dogs-while-your-spirit-watches-f rom-the-lowest-level-of-hell" glare. Kakuzu found great pride in that he had already deciphered the meanings of his partner's glares within a week of meeting the priest.

"Because, asshole, it ain't fucking normal to talk like that." He paused, seemingly in thought, before he added, "And it annoys the shit out of me."

"You annoy the shit out of me," Kakuzu quipped, disliking Hidan more and more with the larger amount of time they spent in each other's company. "You're irritating."

"Fuck you, you fucking bastard." Turning back to Sasori, the younger man again said, "I cannot fucking believe you. Are you even interested as to why he always says that goddamn word all the time?"

"Not really, no." The former Suna-nin glanced at Kakuzu, optically commanding him to get the annoying Akatsuki off his back. Kakuzu just responded with a glare that conveyed a simple, yet straightforward message: Deal with it, bitch.

Well, maybe not that exact wording, but it was in the same context.

Granting the masked man with his patented "You're-a-fucking-jerk-and-you-goddamn-know-it" glare (Sasori prided himself in his very creative names), the puppet master shuffled off, mentally shunning the other two Akatsuki members.

"Sasori no Danna, yeah!" sang an unsettlingly scheming-toned voice.

The puppet master ignored his blonde partner and continued walking down the hallway.

"Sasori no Danna, yeah!" Deidara said again in the exact same singsong tone, disregarding the fact that the Sand shinobi really did not want to talk to him. "Wanna see what I made, yeah?"

An apathetic grunt escaped through Sasori's lips.

"Was that a 'yes' grunt or a 'no' grunt?" the younger man asked quizzically, tilting his head to the side in puzzlement.

Another grunt was the reply.

"Well, in that case," Deidara exclaimed, smiling as he proudly displayed whatever it was he wanted to show Sasori, "here is my latest masterpiece, yeah!"

The irritated puppet master looked down to see the blonde presenting…a blob.

"What the hell is that?"

"My art, yeah!"

Sasori's eyebrow twitched. Now that Hidan mentioned it, Deidara did seem to say 'yeah' quite a bit, and it was beginning to become rather annoying. And what was that thing supposed to be?

"That is not art," he stated conclusively. "That is a piece of shit."

Deidara recoiled and withdrew the object into his chest like a baby, seemingly taken aback by his partner's reaction to his clay art. "Even for you, that was harsh, yeah!"

"Stop saying 'yeah'!" Sasori commanded in agitation. "You're annoying me."

"What does that have to do with my art, yeah?" He paused, as though considering the older man's words. "I mean, what does that have to do with my art?"

"Nothing, and that's not art. It's trash," reminded the redhead. "Now leave me alone."

Glowering at the senior Akatsuki, the blonde shoved his sculpture into the face of the puppet master again. Sasori noticed the coloration appeared different than Deidara's usual clay pieces. "It's a rhino, and it's for you, yeah."

Restraining from impaling the younger man with his poisoned blades, the redhead hissed venomously, "What the hell on this planet could have possessed you to think that I would want that shit?"

Deidara contemplated an answer, and finding none, he instead tossed the sculpture, not yet dry, at his partner, on whom it splatted. Smirking, the blonde bomber made his special hand symbol and muttered, "Katsu."

The clay exploded, exposing the cause of the different clay shade. The blonde giggled—giggled?—and ran off with a shout, "Now you're as blue as you act, yeah!"

Sasori, now decorated with random splotches of painfully bright blue paint, suddenly had the urge to viciously maim and mutilate his blonde idiot of a partner. Pein, who happened to be walking in the same hallway conveniently after the paint explosion, noted the infuriated scowl of the puppet master and warned, "If you kill him, I'll saddle you with one of Hidan's church friends for a partner," before continuing along his merry way to Konan's room.

"There's more of them?" the redhead all but wheezed, too shocked at the prospect of anyone remotely like Hidan existing in the world. But now another pressing matter wreaked havoc on his mind—how in the world would Sasori get the blue stains off his wooden body. And, of lesser importance but equally burning in his mind—why indeed did Deidara insist on saying 'yeah' after each of his sentences?

"And now we begin Operation Find Out Why Deidara Yeahs. Codename: Operation FOWDY."

"You're shitting me," deadpanned Zetsu, obviously in one of his blacker moods. "Why the hell am I even here?"

"Because," insisted Hidan, the most persistent of, well, the entire Akatsuki in this noble pursuit, "if we don't find this out, we won't understand Deidara, which leads to less teamwork, which leads to a crumbling evil organization, which leads to someone else taking over the world instead of us handsome bastards…and Konan."

Pein, suddenly alarmed by the thought of another evil organization achieving world domination, asserted, "I approve of this operation and hereby declare it mandatory for all Akatsuki members, myself excluded of course, to participate."

"Pein, you can't be serious…" Konan reasoned with a smile, her eyebrows knotting somewhat worriedly.

"Konan, I am indeed very serious. And yes, you're required to help as well." He smirked at her irritation, which replaced her mask of indulgence. "Operation FOWDY…commence!"

Ever the zealot in everything he deemed worthy of his efforts, Hidan immediately went to work on revealing the logic behind Deidara's speaking habits. In his room that simultaneously functioned as his sacrificial altar and prayer chapel, he set aside a corner for his research and detective work. He procured a corkboard, funded by an uninformed Kakuzu no doubt, on which he thumb-tacked candid photographs of Deidara doing his everyday Akatsuki business. Hidan pored over these images for hours with his unnecessarily large magnifying glass, also financed by Kakuzu, hoping to somehow discover the secret behind the 'yeah'.

In fact, Kakuzu found his partner growing more obsessive each day with the 'case', as Hidan called it. Kakuzu felt somewhat alarmed—although it could be better described as the masked man finding his partner's new hobby disturbingly weird—at Hidan's fixation with the supposed predicament of Deidara.

When approached on the matter, the silver-haired priest merely insisted, "If I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it fuckin' right! Got it, dickwad?" and returned to his investigation.

"It isn't my fault, then, when you're dismembered. Don't come to me whining to be stitched back together," Kakuzu deadpanned, his inverted green eyes narrowing ever so slightly at the younger man, before he stalked off.

"Damned geezer," Hidan muttered, staring through his magnifying glass at a picture of Deidara arguing with Sasori, the arms of the blonde in mid-wave as he violently attempted to get a point across to the puppet master.

Some time later found Hidan sitting with Deidara during their suspiciously overlapping lunch hour. The silver-haired young man stared unsettlingly at the blonde, who somehow managed to remain oblivious to his fellow Akatsuki member's penetrating gaze.

"Say, Hidan, do you happen to know why everyone seems to be avoiding me?" Deidara asked suddenly through a mouthful of bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes. "It's like I've got the plague or something, yeah."

As soon as the y-word escaped the lips of the bomber, Hidan dropped his spoonful of curry (thus leaving a rather nasty stain on the tablecloth that would make Kakuzu cry), pulled out a writing pad, and wordlessly scribbled some notes down.

Deidara, confused by the other man's behavior, decided the best course of action was to bite into his sandwich once more and peer curiously at the priest.

Stashing his pencil and pad into his clothes somewhere, Hidan picked up his spoon and answered simply, "Nope."

"Oh. Okay." Deidara, thinking perhaps it was Hidan who had the plague, stood up and went to finish his lunch in his quarters.

Once the blonde had exited the room, Hidan pulled a tape recorder from his pants pocket and muttered into it, "Operation FOWDY. Day Four. Spoke with subject today. Said the y-word once. Context: 'I've got the plague'. Reason: Unclear. Conclusion: Need more evidence. Hidan out!"

"Operation FOWDY. Day Seven. Fell asleep in the shower. For nine hours. Did not execute today's plans. Must wait for tomorrow. Conclusion: Don't trust Kakuzu, codename Shitty Old Bastard, when he says he didn't do anything to my glass of milk. Fucking bastard. Hidan out!"

Deidara sat on the toilet, his face contorting to match his pain. "Fuck you, Tobi!" he shouted through a wall, hoping the masked man-child heard his curses. He was positive that Tobi accidentally put something in his daily BLT.

"I'm sorry, senpai!" cried a voice on the other side, apologizing profusely. "Tobi is innocent!"

"Innocent, my ass! You don't apologize if you're innocent!" yelled the blonde. "I hope you die a truly horrific death, yeah!"

The door to the bathroom suddenly shot open, and Deidara was temporarily blinded by a flashing light. Blinking the spots from his eyes, he saw the door was closed again, with nothing remaining of the incident except his ensuing headache.

"Operation FOWDY. Day Nine. Picture evidence revealing nothing about the y-word. Also, got a bad whiff of subject's shit. Conclusion: Strength of shit odor is directly equivalent to artistic egotism. Need to smell the puppet-fucker's shit to confirm theory. Hidan out!"

The priest's violet eyes were rimmed with red as he stared at an oblivious Deidara, who blissfully watched an overtly violent sci-fi movie, complete with excessive explosions and unnecessary gore, on the television.

"Whoa!" the artist exclaimed at a particularly violent blast that completely destroyed an entire planet, causing rocky debris to collide with the space station that subsequently blew up as well. Excitedly, he turned to Hidan. "Did you see that, yeah?"

His eye merely twitched before the silver-haired man stood and walked away, leaving the blonde to finish the movie alone. As he trudged off, he vaguely heard Deidara boo and hiss at the more dramatic and otherwise nonviolent scenes of the film, but it didn't quite register.

Zombie-like, the man stalked into their communal bathroom, eye still twitching, and locked the door behind him.

Several minutes passed when Sasori knocked on the door, needing to answer the call of nature. With no reply, the redhead stood for another minute before losing his nonexistent patience and picking the lock. When the door did not open fully, Sasori poked his head inside to see Hidan sprawled across the tiles.

He knelt down and whispered in the man's ear, "If you don't get up and out of this bathroom in the next ten seconds, I will introduce you to my sex puppets."

Stepping back into the hallway upon receiving no answer besides strained moans, he called, "Kakuzu, your idiot partner's unconscious on the bathroom floor again!"

The other shinobi's indistinct voice replied, "So?"

"Can I kick him out? Literally?"

"Knock yourself out!"

"I'm not old enough to appreciate old man humor," muttered the puppet master as he proceeded to kick his fellow Akatstuki into the hallway and closed the door to do his business.

Later, the entire Akatsuki, minus the incapacitated Hidan, gathered in their meeting room. Pein swiveled impressively in his chair to face his subordinates.

"Apparently, Hidan was found unconscious in the hallway outside the bathroom. Care to explain, Sasori?"

The former Suna-nin shrugged noncommittally. "It was urgent."

"Tell me, being a man-doll whose insides are replaced by mechanical contraptions, what need do you have for the bathroom? Now we've lost the only member dedicated to investigating your partner."

Again, Sasori shrugged.

Konan, amused by this exchange, decided to mock both men, "Tell me, man-doll, do you even have a penis?"

Sasori scowled, mentally damning Konan and Pein to eternal hell by way of annoying marshmallow songs and llamas.

"You certainly have a way with the youngsters," snorted the man leaning against the hallway wall with loosely crossed arms as a toothily sharp grin graced his face.

"They should show respect to their superiors, not the other way around, Kisame."

The gilled man shrugged nonchalantly, taking the insult in stride. "As long as we keep my sword fed, I don't give a damn what Itachi does."

"I hope that's not figurative."

A rather irritated puppet master scowled darkly as he lay soaking in his bathtub. Much of Deidara's blue paint had yet to come out of the wood, and Sasori—despite his prowess in poisons and other chemicals of a dangerous nature—resorted to letting it dissolve off. This, of course, was best accomplished in a bathtub.

He sighed contently, leaning into the bubbles—for what is a bath without bubbles?—and watching his wooden duck, rubber being so very over-rated, float about the little sudsy waves. Glancing around surreptitiously, he pulled from his chest compartment a toy ship—wooden, of course—and submarine, as well as tiny action figures to ride the vessels.

The redhead, muttering to himself, played out a battle scene with his secret playthings, in which the submarine sunk the ship, sending a crew of action figures into the depths to face their bubbly deaths.

"Oh, no!" he cried, in a voice several octaves higher than his usual one, as one of his more-liked wood-men sank to the bottom. "Help m—!" He made gurgling noises meant to sound like drowning.

"Sasori no Danna!" whined the familiar voice of a particular blonde. "I need to piss, yeah!"

Really, Sasori thought with a scowl, whose idea was it to have communal bathrooms in the Akatsuki base? "Shut up and be patient, moron."

"But you don't have any patience! Why should I have patience, yeah?"

"Fuck off!" True to Deidara's word, Sasori lost his rather nonexistent patience and sprayed the poisonous contents of a conveniently placed aerosol can underneath the bathroom door, filling the hallway with all sorts of lethal and gaseous toxins.

He heard the bomber shout dramatically, "Nooooo, yeah!" before a muffled thud sounded behind the door.

"Sasori," sighed the Akatsuki leader, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If I keep finding my subordinates unconscious and approaching death outside the bathroom you just so happen to be in, I might have to cut down your bath time."

The redhead's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You wouldn't."

"I would. Why can you not simply do the assignment you were given without mortally injuring your peers?"

"I'm not doing this assignment," gritted Sasori. "No one wanted to do it except Hidan—and that's because he's a certified idiot."

Now Pein's eyes narrowed. "You'd do well to show more respect to your superiors. You will accomplish this mission, or there will be consequences."

Itachi groaned inwardly, shifting his weight to the other leg as he waited surreptitiously in the dining area. Had he known that his time in the Akatsuki would have consisted of such menial and ridiculous tasks—he was loath to call them 'missions'—he would not have joined. Really, killing the entire Uchiha clan—though a stuck up and traitorous bunch—probably was not worth uncovering the reason behind Deidara's mannerisms.

"Foolish little brother, you are lucky to not have to deal with blonde idiots who have stupid catchphrases."

"Datte—" Naruto's over-used catchphrase was interrupted by a violent sneezing fit.

Sasuke, clearly unimpressed, muttered, "Itachi, you are lucky to not have to deal with blonde idiots who have stupid catchphrases."

The elder Uchiha stiffened before melding with the wall, his red eyes flashing in indication of his usage of genjutsu.

Deidara, utterly oblivious to the other Akatsuki member, loped into the dining room. "Damn Tobi," he grumbled to himself as he slapped two pieces of bread onto a plate with some bacon and lettuce. "He had to finish off the tomatoes, yeah! How the hell am I supposed to have a BLT without the damned tomatoes?"

Suddenly, Itachi was bombarded by an unexpected bout of nostalgia. He remembered the days of his youth, when he would sit with Sasuke underneath a tree just outside the Uchiha compound as his younger brother munched on omusubi with tomatoes—his favorite. In those days, they both could smile so easily, for then there was something to smile at.

The blonde ceased his rant when he heard an abrupt sniffling coming from the wall. He stared at the empty space, wondering if Tobi's wrongdoing was the undoing of his sanity. As the sniffling continued, Deidara sidled to the area in which he heard the sounds. Out of nowhere, Uchiha Itachi, his sworn enemy from within the organization, materialized before the wall, his eyes redder than usual.

Initially, Deidara assumed a defensive stance, believing Itachi to be about to use his Mangekyou Sharingan, but his posture slackened once the blonde realized that the redness in the Uchiha's eyes was due to tearfulness rather than his bloodline trait.

"Um, ah—Itachi, yeah?"

The darker haired shinobi curled into a ball on the floor, sporadically convulsing. Within the same second, Sasori entered the room, stopping to cock his head curiously at the sight of the twitching Uchiha. In the next second, Pein entered the room, stopping to glance from the spastic Itachi to the amused Sasori to the disturbed Deidara. As he noticed the appearance of the leader first, the blonde bomber immediately pointed at Sasori and mouthed, "He did it."

"Sasori, if we have to have this talk one more time…"

"This one wasn't even my fault!" protested the redhead. "I just walked in, and there was Itachi, having a seizure on the ground." His scowl deepened when he noticed the skeptical expressions that remained on the faces of Pein and Konan.

"So no poison was involved?"

Exasperated and impatient beyond belief, it took all of the puppeteer's willpower to refrain from unleashing the Third Kazekage on the duo. "No. Do a damned blood test if you don't believe me."

Pein sighed. "I would, since I don't, but Hidan's stolen all of our research equipment."

"You mean medical supplies?" inquired Sasori with furrowed eyebrows. Suddenly, he felt relieved that his body could be easily mended with some wood and glue and would thus never need to visit the infirmary for ' medical treatment'.

"Ah, yes. Is that not what I said?" Konan briefly whispered into his pierced ear before the Akatsuki leader resumed, "Well, you get the point. Anyway, the idiot priest suddenly woke up and took everything for the 'investigation'. I have to alter your mission to include finding and apprehending Hidan before he does something stupid. I mean, stupider than normal."

At this development, Sasori scoffed, "Are you shitting me? The most dangerous thing the moron could have stolen from the infirmary would be a hypodermic needle. I think S-class shinobi can deal with a pinprick."

"Well, you see…" Pein trailed off, as though he could not quite find the words, scratching lightly at his chin.

"There was a bone saw in the inventory," finished Konan with a slight twitch in her upper lip. "Although I can't imagine why, considering how unnecessary it is when taking into account how little regard our members hold for their limbs' attachment to their bodies." She directed an icy stare at Pein, who ignored it in favor of glaring at Sasori.

"Sir Leader, you are a dumbass." With those respectfully uttered parting words, Sasori exited the room for what he hoped would be the last time that day.

"So the religious bastard is loose with a sizeable blade. Is this really news?" Kakuzu asked Sasori over a cup of tea. In all honesty, he barely put in any tea leaves (so as to make their supply last longer, of course), and the result was more akin to a cup of hot water.

"I suppose not. A bone saw does seem less threatening than his usual scythe, if we only think about size comparisons," mused the younger Akatsuki member, shaking his head at the other man's half-hearted offering of tea. "But his mental instability…worsened, if that's even possible."

Kakuzu snorted into his teacup, leaning back into the wall. "You can't really measure 'crazy'. The asshole's just as insane as ever—it's just that it's now a different kind of insane."

"Who's insane?" inquired Deidara, though he had a popsicle in his mouth, as he plodded into the dining area. His partner grimaced whenever one of the blonde's hand-tongues flicked out to lick the flavored ice.

"My partner," answered Kakuzu, well-aware of yet ignoring Sasori's disapproval of the bomber.

"And everyone else in this organization," added the redhead, eying Deidara with an ironic gaze. "Did you want something?"

"Impatient as ever, Sasori no Danna!" Deidara exclaimed, feigning a wounded tone as he melodramatically clutched his popsicle to his heart. "Actually, I was just wondering if you knew why everyone's either avoiding me or stalking me, yeah."

"You mean to say that you noticed?" Kakuzu voiced his disbelief.

The blonde responded somewhat indignantly, "I am an S-class criminal for a reason. And at a way younger and more impressive age than you two old farts."

"Age is irrelevant," muttered Sasori. He was not that old.

"Whatever, yeah. But seriously, answer my question."

"We don't know," Sasori lied stoically. "Go away and let the grown-ups talk."

Deidara—yes, the man with mouths in his palms and an incessant and more than slightly disturbing urge to blow shit up—pouted, in a rather unmanly fashion, too. "But Sasori no Danna!" he whined, again rather effeminately. "I haven't shown you my newest masterpiece!"

Immediately, Kakuzu found himself between the two partners. Sasori, who had moved himself to the other side of the older Akatsuki member, snarled at the blonde, "Try another stunt like last time, and I swear to Kami I'll mince you into carne asada for Zetsu's food at taco night."

Deidara grinned mischievously, suddenly back to his typical (mostly) masculine self. "Alright, I'll just put it in your room then."

"No, you will not!"

"I will, yeah!"

Out of seemingly nowhere, a wild scream emanated, ringing through the room. A rather frenzied Hidan sprinted through the door, without bothering to open it and still shouting. As a rain of splinters that once comprised a door assaulted the other three shinobi, a silvery glint notified them of the oddly vicious-looking medical instrument in his hands.

"GRAUGH!" cried the priest with animalism that no one knew he possessed. Usually, it was just good old sadomasochism.

"Great. Now he's immortal and feral," complained Kakuzu in an irritated mutter, already detaching his limbs in order to attack his partner. To his surprise and subsequent dismay, the silver-haired man dodged his offensive strike and headed straight for Deidara.

The blonde, confused already by the priest's earlier actions, really had no idea what to make of the situation and just stood there.

"Move, moron!" barked Sasori, who, in spite of all the aggravation caused by Deidara, was secretly fond of his artistic kinship with the mad bomber. Or perhaps the redhead remembered just how hard it is to get blood out of wood, the inevitable result if Hidan had his violent way with the artist.

Suddenly enabled by his partner's order, the younger ninja leapt out of the way, narrowly avoiding a bone saw to the face. "What the hell, Hidan? What did I ever do to you, yeah?"

Again, the Jashinist screamed ferociously, and again, he brandished the bone saw at Deidara.

"Stop saying 'yeah'!" yelled Kakuzu, who grew increasingly annoyed with each of his failed attempts to behead his crazed partner. "That's what he keeps reacting to."

"But I can't help it, y—" He was quickly muffled by Kakuzu's strings wrapping around his mouth.

Kisame, drawn by the ruckus, wandered through the shattered doorway. "You guys have weird hobbies."

Getting an idea, Sasori spoke urgently, "Quick, Kisame! Calm Hidan down!"

Startled by the request of the puppet master, the former Mist-nin took a step back. "What? Why me? You do it!"

"Because I'm not half-shark, damn it!" snapped Sasori. "Hidan's gone feral, so since you're part-animal and all…"

"It only works if he's part-fish or shark or whatever."

Still annoyed beyond all reckoning, Kakuzu, reaching the end of his sanity, shouted, "Then drain all his damned chakra! Or better yet…KILL HIM!"

"But he's immortal…"

"JUST DO IT!"

Suddenly showing all his pointed teeth in a decidedly fearsome grin, Kisame said, "You get the blame for this," and pulled his sword from his back. "I always wanted to test this out on you," he commented casually to Hidan, his shark-like grin broadening.

Mere seconds later found a silver-haired priest unconscious on the floor, a shark-man hybrid proud, a puppeteer and a masked man relieved, and a bomber horrendously confused.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Nothing," the other three conscious Akatsuki members said before exiting the room, dragging Hidan behind them.

"Decrepit assholes, yeah."

A certain man with a plant on his head watched the exchange from his seat in the wall. "This is ridiculous," grumbled the white half of Zetsu' face.

"For once, I actually agree with you," the black half ceded. "I don't wanna do this shit. Let's go eat someone. I'm fucking starved."

After great persuasion on the part of the completely evil Zetsu, the only moderately evil Zetsu finally agreed to find some grub in the form of incredibly low-ranking Akatsuki subordinates, also known as Expendable Ninja #326. Luckily for the plant-man, E.N. #326 came in the form of an unimaginably obese shinobi with excessive facial hair.

"Delicious," sighed black-Zetsu with a smack of his lips. "But the beard got nasty."

"Indeed. What now?"

"Let's go find Tobi and screw with his head!"

"What about Sir Leader's orders?"

"Fuck those!" scoffed the wholly evil Zetsu. "It doesn't concern us. He's gonna blame Sasori anyway if something goes wrong. Or Hidan. 'Cause we all know how much he hates the bastard."

"But we're the Akatsuki spy. We're supposed to find the information Pein asks for," insisted the somewhat evil Zetsu.

After much persuasion on the part of the vaguely evil Zetsu, the utterly and horrifically evil Zetsu finally conceded to uncover at least one fact about Deidara and his speech. Zetsu melted back into the wall, waiting for the artist to return for his scheduled sandwich, having forgotten it in the midst of the intense scuffle against Hidan.

When the door opened, as it did every day, Zetsu focused all of his attentions on the blonde, waiting for him to utter the word. To the multi-colored man's dismay, the mad bomber was not as mad as he initially supposed, having refrained from talking to himself while he assembled his sandwich. Instead, Deidara opted to whistle, a habit that aggravated Zetsu to no end, as it always seemed so unnecessarily cheerful.

At first he ignored the noise, but somehow, the whistling only seemed to get louder as Deidara invested more passion into the noise. Zetsu then covered his ears, only to discover that the horridly catchy tune was stuck in his head.

"Noo!" he cried in his devastation, so horrified by the turn of events that he fell out of the wall and onto the kitchen floor, writhing with agony, his hands frantically scratching at his ears to escape the noise.

Sasori, for whatever reason, chose that exact moment to step in. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Not again." As soon as Pein entered the room a mere two seconds later, the redhead rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, 'meet me in my office', 'this is your fault, Sasori', and all that crap. Let's just get it over with."

The leader arched an eyebrow ironically, but he nodded and gestured for the puppet master to follow, beckoning to an unimportant subordinate to collect Zetsu off the floor.

Deidara, once more, was the only person in the room. He bit into his sandwich thoughtfully.

Finally, Deidara, backed for some inexplicable reason by the everlastingly loyal Tobi, confronted the Akatsuki leader about the recent events at the next team meeting, much to the amusement of the other members. "Sir Leader, I mean you no disrespect, but what the fuck is going on?"

"What do you mean?" Pein inquired innocently—well, as innocently as an S-class criminal could muster.

"Everybody's just freaky, yeah!" Someone cried out in indignation, and the blonde was at the receiving end of some rather hateful glares.

Sighing, as though conceding defeat, Pein admitted, "I gave everyone but you in the organization a special assignment. You were excluded because it involved uncovering information about you." The eyebrow that was not hidden by a scope twitched over Deidara's narrowing blue eye, but it went ignored as the leader continued, "An observation made by Hidan on your speaking habits came to my attention, and eventually I became concerned with the wellbeing of our entire operation."

"How the hell do my speaking habits affect the Akatsuki's wellbeing?"

"In retrospect, it was foolish of me to follow up on this endeavor," Pein coolly replied, and many groaned inwardly.

"So what was the observation?"

"Pardon?"

Deidara rephrased his words. "What caused everybody to be freakier than their normal freaky, yeah?"

"Just that."

"What, yeah?"

"That."

"I'm not following, yeah."

"The way you keep adding 'yeah' at the end of your sentences!" Pein finally burst in exasperation, throwing his hands in the air with a very un-leader-like lack of dignity. Once more finding his composure, he calmly straightened himself and said, "We want to know why."

Suddenly, Deidara could feel all eyes on him as the entire Akatsuki awaited his answer. "Um. Why didn't you just ask in the first place, yeah?"

Of all people, Konan exclaimed, "See, Pein! That was an option! Asking him, like a normal person! But no—no, you gave me some elaborate plan to seduce him and then goad the reason out of him, you sick moron. Me! Your best friend!"

"So it's just platonic?" a newly back-in-commission Hidan whispered to his partner.

"Yeah…but with benefits," replied Kakuzu, who may or may not have seemed disappointed. It was hard to tell with his mask in the way and his monotone way of speaking. "Lots of benefits."

Kisame sniggered, and Itachi remained stoic.

Sasori, his interest having been piqued by the recent events, impatiently turned to Deidara. "So what's the reason behind the 'yeah'?"

The blonde's eyes brightened considerably. "Sasori no Danna! You care!"

"Answer the damn question!"

The facial expression of the blonde sobered abruptly, almost startling the other shinobi with its suddenness. "Do you really want to know?" he asked in an ominous tone that did not fit him whatsoever.

Somehow, Sasori's typically concrete resolve wavered, and the puppet master actually stammered a little when he replied, "O-of course!"

As quickly as it hardened, Deidara's face melted into an apologetic grin. "The truth is…I don't know, yeah! People always told me it was just a speech impediment!"

Suddenly, Pein was facing down the furious visages of his subordinates. "It was Hidan's idea."

The poor priest—he had only just regained his sanity, and already he was fleeing for his life down the hallways of the Akatuski fortress, screaming as he exited, "Curse you, you motherfucking sack of shit! Damn you to the lowest fuckin' level of hell and then some! Arrogant bastard!"

Soon, only Deidara and Pein remained in the room, the rest of the Akatsuki having chased Hidan out in order to exact their revenge for causing their recent sufferings. After a few moments of awkwardly pregnant silence, the blonde finally brought up a question he had been meaning to ask his superior for awhile. "So why do you think Hidan cusses all the time, yeah?"