Hidan couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up this early out of choice.
He was acting like a little kid at Christmas, knowing the presents were going to be sitting for him at the end of his bed and at the tree when he went downstairs. He knew he looked like a complete retard, true, but he couldn’t help himself. This is what he had been wanting since he first found out about the kind of things he could do with his Jashinism abilities, and now it was finally coming true, he wasn’t about to let concern over his appearance get in the way of learning something that was so important to him.
Finally waking up, Tsukai decided to speed things up a little for Hidan’s sake, getting ready a little quicker than she usually did. Grabbing all the stuff she would need for the day, she stood and stated she was ready to begin, and grinning, he grabbed her hand and started dragging her through the trees towards the temple. They had been staying close by to begin with, and as such they didn’t need wolves to travel there for the moment. Hidan would have been too jittery to sit around on a wolf for a while—even if it was only a few minutes—until they got to the temple, and it was so much easier to just stick close to it the night before.
Thinking that idea over again, Tsukai couldn’t help but keep grinning as Hidan continued to drag her through the trees, eventually reaching the outside of the temple. Pausing for a moment at seeing it again, he didn’t stop for long, and although he continued slower, he still pressed on through the doors, having never been inside until now. Of course, he did have to stop as he realised in order to keep it from being destroyed; it took the chakra of someone like Tsukai to open it. He waited impatiently, tapping his foot while she did so, and the second the doors slammed open, he yanked her inside.
It was only now that he truly halted, overcome at the sight before him.
The set out was similar to the one he had been in with the rest of the Akatsuki, but it seemed to be grander than that; that higher power almost completely overwhelmed him. It wasn’t that other temple the Akatsuki needed to be looking at to get power; it was this one. He didn’t doubt, just like Tsukai had been explaining, that it had been there since the dawn of time and contained a power that could rival anything that any ninja could come up with. It was absolutely amazing, and there wasn’t anything he could say to convey that feeling.
Huge statues sat at different areas, and runes decorated everything. To Hidan’s delight, there were a few sections of it he could make out, telling legends of different temple guardians and such, along with warnings of what happened to those who dismissed the gods. A fleeting idea of Kakuzu needing to try reading that sometime passed through Hidan’s mind, but pushing it away, he concentrated on looking around the building. There were some arches that branched off into different rooms, just like in the other temple, but these contained small shrines to deities he didn’t know, with variations of the depictions telling the legends.
The main room was much bigger than the one at the other temple, and it stretched on for a while, both horizontally and vertically. The biggest difference was the huge gap that separated the entrance of this room to the other side. Several podiums, however, were scattered around the room, serving as a way to get across. At the opposite end, a door was set in a smaller section of the room, leading away from that section and into another place. What was in there was a mystery, as the same kinds of stones that Hidan had touched to be transported here were stationed on top of the section, so the doors were no longer needed for that.
But it was this fact that intrigued Hidan ever more, and he contemplated asking Tsukai to take him inside, but considering it had taken a few days to be showed into the temple to begin with, to go into a room with the doors closed and that radiated power wasn’t something he was expecting immediately. Instead he looked around at the walls, brushing his fingers over the runes—though making sure to keep his Jashin necklace away from them. It had been after it had touched them that the portal appeared, and with Tsukai around, he didn’t exactly want to be taken away so unexpectedly from her.
Watching him walk around, his face carrying none of the emotions it usually did, Tsukai smiled to herself, looking away. He was normally so carefree and didn’t give a fuck about anything that didn’t matter to him—which was a lot. But put him in a situation with the things he actually did give a fuck about, and he became so serious and focused on it. He had been trying so hard over the last few days to get things right, and she couldn’t have admired that more. And as such, she went forward and stood on the edge of the precipice before her, looking out over the room.
Noticing that fact, Hidan narrowed his eyes and went forward, wondering why she wasn’t just jumping ahead and going to the other side of the room. But he soon found out, as calling out a question as to what she was doing, she revealed the little something she’d been keeping from him when talking about or taking him into the temple.
“You can’t use chakra in here, Hidan. Only the power I’ve been preaching about.”
Feeling his emotions change through her abilities, Tsukai turned with a raised eyebrow, and tilting her head with a slightly malicious grin, she batted her eyelashes and replied overly sweetly,
“If you don’t believe me, sweetheart, why don’t you try it?”
Rolling his eyes, he picked the first jutsu that came into his head and began the handsigns, only to find himself being thrown backwards against the wall, groaning in pain. Unable to stop herself from grinning at that occurrence, she skipped her way over and offered her hand, shrugging and stating simply,
“I hate to say I told you so, but....fuck it, I told you so!”
Glaring at her, he slapped away her hand and got up himself, facing the hole in front of him with a little more agitation that he had done before, and began to think over how exactly he was going to get across it. Tsukai still remained smiling; she had tried to warn him. But then she sighed; she did feel a little guilty—it was in his nature to ignore any advice given to him. He was immortal, so he never figured it mattered. And with good reason.
Most of it didn’t.
So jogging over, she placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered an apology. And although he pouted for a moment, looking rather like a grumpy child, he changed a minute later and accepted it, turning round with a small smile at her. Grinning at that fact, she did the work for him; taking a deep breath, and placing her hands together in a handsign, she spoke a few words of the ancient language, causing the podiums to all move around, forming a bridge for them to get across. Hidan, at first blinking in shock, broke out into a grin a second later and with a glance over at Tsukai, walked onto the first podium, before breaking into a run once he gathered it was steady.
Rolling her eyes at his childish behaviour, Tsukai chuckled quietly to herself and followed on after him, knowing it wouldn’t be the last time she would do so today. Hidan was so looking forward to this, that once again he wouldn’t listen and end up getting himself hurt. But his enthusiasm for wanting to learn it combined with his blind faith in Jashin would help more than pure natural talent would ever be able to. So taking a deep breath, she jogged on at Hidan’s impatient call to get started; just knowing today would be fun.
And as he span round, his pendant clinking against his chest as it shone in the half-light, you couldn’t help but smile.
He probably had a natural talent, too.
