Chipped Mask

Part I - Nature's What?

Disclaimer: Mia is so mine. That's about it. Plot, too, I guess.

Warning: Fluff & gasp?! Romance?! if you squint.

First Beta: featherstofly

Second Beta: Lavendor Queen

Editor: Sansho

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

"And that's why I'm covered with red dots," I finished explaining my training sessions to Obito, about four days after I had started training. I was thankfully comfortable enough with my chakra that I could start my manipulation training next time. Getting to that point though, would probably forever be a scarring experience to me.

It didn't help that every time I was helpless, Jiraiya ran off to go giggle at the girls at the hot springs. Yeah, thanks man. I felt real safe. Not that I had a choice, anyway; I had to learn to control this, as soon as possible. It might have been horrendous and I might have hated it, but it had to be done.

Obito gave me a comforting one-armed hug. When he had seen all the dots that the surprisingly big needle left behind, he was more than a little worried. Or morbidly curious. Who could say?

"I don't think I could handle that kind of training," Obito confessed.

"I must have nerves of steel then," I snorted. "How's Akatsuki running?"

"It's running," Obito replied. "I think after we have Itachi and after Orochimaru leaves, I can introduce your plan. I quite like it."

"Why not now?"

"Then Itachi wouldn't join us because we wouldn't be evil enough to need supervision. And there's no way in hell Orochimaru would stoop to it, narcissistic bastard."

"Orochimaru's pretty cool," I defended, feeling obligated. Even if he was a strange little child creeper, he was a good scientist. And the engineering side of me could definitely appreciate his devotion and fascination to jutsus. Hell, if I could, I'd probably devout myself to research like him. Minus all the dead kids. Minus all the kids, period.

And dissections.

Probably.

"Yet you don't like Kabuto."

"He's a wanna-be ass," I sniffed. "He couldn't even manage to be his own separate little baddie. He wanted to live up to being Orochimaru Jr. Talk about unoriginal and boring."

"Of course," Obito placated me. "I've mentioned you to Konan and Nagato and only that you have an idea to bring a greater benefit to the Akatsuki as well as minimize the lives needed to be taken."

"Do lives need to be taken at all? Do you have to kill the bijū hosts?"

"If you figure out how to spare them and we still extract the bijū, we can spare them," Obito consoled.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Awesome. I'll start studying Fūinjutsu. Always wanted to, anyway. Definitely curious to see how chakra reacts to simple drawings that trigger a chain reaction down to the molecular level and even more curious to see how they would react to my chakra that's already volatile on a molecular level. Hell, it'd probably be like adding Uranium when you only need Phosphorus or Neon—" I stopped myself. "Sorry."

Obito stared at me. "You geek."

"You love me anyway," I said automatically.

Obito was quiet for a moment before he murmured, almost as an afterthought, "Yes. I do."