Kakuzu gave a stretch through his shoulders, luxuriating in the uncommon silence.
He wasn't an idiot. He knew perfectly well that the quiet meant that the simpleton had left. That was why he had hidden in the basement bathroom so that Konan couldn't find him. Someone else could retrieve the moron while he enjoyed his respite. Hidan was a plague, and he didn't know what he'd done that had caused Leader-sama to inflict the idiot on him.
'Except that I killed all my previous partners,' he noted fairly.
That seemed a little petty of Pein, but Kakuzu was too busy to care. There were much more important issues at stake.
"I don't see how we can possibly make up for this lapse in productivity," he noted darkly, using his knees as a desk for the notebook on his lap. Writing out the problems and possible solutions made him feel better, even as he reaffirmed that Akatsuki's finances were taking an enormous hit.
They had only been taking domestic missions for over a month now. He didn't see why Pein had chosen to send Tobi and Zetsu out on another jinchuuriki mission now, when they desperately needed to replenish their finances.
'It is possibly an attempt to lower our living costs,' he mused. 'If Tobi were to perish in pursuit of a jinchuuriki, we could eliminate the budget allocation for ice cream altogether.'
Tobi wasn't the only one who ate it, of course, but Itachi and Konan never went out of their way to bring it home either.
That made him feel a bit better about his participation in this organization. Pein's priorities were strange, but he at least had some semblance of business sense and the wisdom to step back and allow more competent individuals free reign when appropriate. Of course, he also extended too much freedom to touchy-feely, sentimental lunatics like Hidan, so the trait was still problematic.
Kakuzu glowered at the bathroom mirror, and then wondered why it was positioned to face the toilet. He looked down at his lap instead, suddenly disquieted. Why was he still in here? Surely Konan had noticed Hidan's unsubtle escape and taken care of the matter herself. He stuck his pencil behind his ears, washed his hands out of habit and conscientiousness despite not having used the facilities, and kept an ear out for the incoherent babbling that would undoubtedly accompany Hidan's return.
But he didn't hear anything like that.
'He's still not here?' Kakuzu grunted, both satisfied and unimpressed with Konan's lack of efficiency. She was a terrible manager.
The stairs up to the first floor were rickety and old, in no small part due to the fact that Kakuzu had shot down the proposal to replace them himself. He considered it a good trade. They were placed on the opposite end of the long hallway that his room was. Kakuzu covered ground towards his private space quickly, hoping to avoid seeing anyone else.
And then the back door opened. His mood instantly plummeted. So the idiot was back already? He turned, ready to cut off Hidan's head just for the principle of the thing- and stopped.
The gaggle of offensively bright Konoha and Suna nin piling in the door like puppies fleeing the rain paused as well, with the notable exception of a blond with a stupid facial expression who pointed at him and shrieked something incoherent at a pitch that humans were not meant to communicate in.
Kakuzu made a quick count. 'One, two… Four teams?' He catalogued any who he recognized: Sharingan no Kakashi, a very valuable prize—ooh, the Senju woman's Uchiha pet, the beast of Konoha, the Kazekage's siblings, and…
Itachi.
'Not worth it,' he decided instantly. His life was worth more than any one of those bounties. That didn't mean he would turn any one of them down, of course, but a 14 on 1 fight when he recognized several of his prospective opponents as S-class shinobi was a poor investment choice.
Of course, they were blocking the most convenient exit point…
He dropped into a low crouch, putting both his palms on the ground, and called on the earth underneath the base. It answered in a nearly instant roar, swelling up and bursting the floor open like a dead man's belly splitting in the sun.
Kakuzu dropped below, creating a tunnel outside the base and filling it as he went. He broke out of the dirt onto the surface within heartbeats and set off a dead sprint.
On one hand, he would have thought that Itachi at least would have had the reflexes to chase after him. On the other, perhaps he had overestimated their competency.
Earth was his primary affinity, after all, and he had been perfecting it for a very long time.
He would find Zetsu, he decided. Zetsu was Madara's servant. He would know what should be done. And it would be important to note that Itachi had turned traitor. Perhaps Itachi would kill Konan while he was at it, and no one would be able to hold him accountable for fleeing?
~~~
"Er," Kakashi said faintly, rubbing his eye and then opening it experimentally. "Did that old man in his pajamas really just tunnel out of here, or am I having a short stroke?"
He was having a harder time getting over the pajamas than that he'd run. Kakashi might have run if he'd seen such a large group of intruders waltz into a temporary base. (If it was Konoha, he would fight to the death, of course). But the pajamas? It was half past noon.
"That was Kakuzu," Itachi explained factually, gingerly stepping over the crack in the floor. "He prefers to be comfortable while he tabulates expenses."
"Of course he does," Kakashi muttered. "What was I thinking?"
' Well, Itachi was already right about one Akatsuki. He fled. That means there's only two of them to fight. Would it be worth it to chase after Kakuzu, or should I take that as luck? One S class shinobi on his own can be hunted and cornered at our leisure. Most of this group is powerful, but inexperienced. I don't like the idea of splitting to chase after him when we know that there are two difficult fights coming up here.'
Kakashi warily examined the premises as he could see so far. The building was remarkably narrow. Hardly ideal conditions for an altercation, especially if he intended to use the advantage of numbers…
"Well, nice tour, thank you Itachi." Kakashi shooed the ninja who had crowded in behind him out. "Come on, get."
"What the hell are you doing?" Sabaku no Temari asked flatly, looking spectacularly unimpressed. He aimed an eye smile at her.
"I think we should have our friends come to us. It's rude to enter without knocking, after all. Don't crowd the doorstep." Once he had pushed the small mob far enough back, he nodded at Sasuke. "Why don't you knock?" he suggested generously.
Sasuke smirked unpleasantly. "Of course, Kakashi." He curled his hand into a fist and pulled it back, approaching the building at a jog. The momentum was probably unnecessary. Sasuke used it to leap, land feet-first on the side of the building, and crouch in a lightning-quick motion that brought his fist down by his right sandal. He kicked off at what seemed to be the exact moment that half the building folded inwards.
Rubble and dust flew out, instantly coating everyone who hadn't had the sense to stand behind someone taller in a layer of filth.
In other words, Itachi, Kakashi, Baki, and Genma exchanged various levels of amused glances while the less experienced ninja coughed and fanned frantically at their faces.
"Do you think they heard you?" Karin asked sarcastically, pulling her glasses off to wipe them on the underside of her shirt.
Abruptly, the rain stopped altogether.
' It definitely wasn't natural, then,'
One minor mystery solved. Also, Akatsuki knew they were here.
"I could knock again," Sasuke half-threatened, half-grinned with the thrill of showing off in front of his brother.
"I think it served its purpose," Genma muttered, giving a loopy little grin to Yamato, who was sneezing pathetically and rubbing at his nose. The poor boy looked to be on the verge of a break down. He'd had a bad day.
"Karin, contact the teams in the direction that Kakuzu fled," Kakashi ordered. "Tell them who is coming and when he will arrive. Give them a rundown of his abilities and the option to engage or move out of his way, depending on whether they think they can defeat him without sustaining losses."
He hadn't judged that chasing Kakuzu would be a pointless waste of life for his team only to assume that it would be negligible for their nominal allies to lose people in the same pursuit. Even if Kakuzu had left in the direction of the Kumo teams.
The snake Karin summoned this time was much less conspicuous than his brightly scaled peers—tan and gold. Kakashi edged away subtly. That one he recognized. Karin lifted it closely to her lips as if she was about to kiss the top of its flat head and began to murmur to it.
The Suna nin looked similarly disquieted by the show of affection, but then, they probably recognized the species as fatally poisonous just as he did. It was native to the desert, after all.
He didn't actually notice Konan arrive. What he noticed was Baki shouting some bland code word that was apparently an order for Temari to pull the fan over her back and swing it from a low left position to a high right, buffeting what appeared to be a murderous flock of white butterflies off course.
That protocol had probably been for projectiles in general.
He still preferred to think they had a code that meant it was time to attack butterflies.
The woman herself flashed into sight, balancing lightly on top of the collapsed bunker wall. Her amber-orange eyes were directed at one man only.
"Itachi, I am disappointed," Konan said quietly. "Have you betrayed us so easily?"
"She's surprised? That's rather short sighted, considering she knows why he left Konoha," Hyuuga Neji muttered.
Kakashi had never before realized a Hyuuga could be funny. Judging by the disappointed look Gai leveled on his student, the green beast disagreed. Pity.
"We do not have to fight," Itachi said seriously.
Oh, to be so naïve.
Konan's eyes narrowed as if she agreed.
"Speak for yourself, Uchiha," Sabaku no Temari sneered, squinting up at Konan. "I owe grandmother here an ass-kicking. I lost my hotel deposit thanks to her!" Kankuro snorted, but moved into a ready stance as well. "Also she kidnapped Aiko from my room," Temari amended as an afterthought.
Naruto perked up. "What, this old lady?" he asked skeptically. "I expected you to look different. All Aiko said was that your makeup was horrible." He gave Konan a thin smile. "Temari's right. You do need an ass-kicking."
'That's not the plan,' Kakashi thought, frustrated. Naruto wasn't suited to fight Konan at all. If he really wanted, he could pummel her on the way back to T and I. This fight had already been planned.
"Stick to the plan. Everyone else, back!" Kakashi barked out. He steadied Karin by her arm, as artificial winds picked up to a downright dangerous level while Temari and Baki started throwing out A and B class wind jutsu. The hurricane threatened to actually pick up Karin, by far the smallest member of their party. She made an aborted squeak, and latched onto Naruto's arm like a limpet while her clothes flapped in the wind, leaving her stomach bare. "Is Kisame approaching?"
Tenten actually speared a good twenty of Konan's projectiles mid air. Her glittering knives impacted the ground with a multitude of little 'shuk-shuk-shuk' sounds. Paper struggled futilely, trapped. Genma gave a low whistle- and then jerked forward to push her out of the path of a paper dragon the size of Mitsuo, catching its fangs with his short sword and ducking under the reach of its claws. Chakra threads wrapped around it—and then Kankuro cursed as the entire paper construction dissolved into individual sheets of paper. A good chunk of them sliced through Crow like the puppet was made of lukewarm butter.
"Karin," Kakashi reminded sharply. They couldn't afford to get distracted.
"Er-" Karin squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate, biting her lower lip. Something about the motion seemed odd, until he realized that she had used four teeth to do so. He was used to seeing Aiko pin her lip more delicately with just one tooth. "Yes," she concluded, opening her eyes and then blinking rapidly. She jerked her head to the right. "He's trying to sneak up to assess the situation," Karin assessed. "He masks his chakra really well, actually, but it's enormous."
"Wind blade!" Temari actually aimed her attack directly at Konan, who had apparently manifested wings in the time that Kakashi had looked away. The blue-haired woman appeared flustered. She didn't quite dodge in time, and the wind that caught her wing sent her spinning slightly. She shot straight upwards, and then came down like an avenging goddess, gathering what looking like starbursts of blades at the tip of each extended hand.
Kakashi suppressed the urge to merely nod at Karin for her report and tore his gaze away from the large-scale fight. "Good work," he grudgingly allowed. It wouldn't do to allow his irritation with the teens to prevent him from accurately assessing and rewarding their contributions.
And Karin really was proving her worth as a field shinobi.
'If I'm to be honest, she's more essential to this mission than I am,' he noted with no small amount of irony. She had the most direct access to information, after all. 'If she were less inexperienced, maybe she should have been the one calling the shots.'
"You are creepy, girl," a gravelly voice observed. Kisame pulled his bandage-wrapped sword off of his back and pointed it directly at Karin.
She gaped. "Me?" The indignant shriek hurt Kakashi's ears. He winced and leapt away, moving to a slightly safer distance. Not coincidentally, his new positioning also gave him a better view of the entire area, including the battle that was steadily pushing its way westward. "I'm creepy?" Karin slapped a hand to her chest.
"When it comes from the bipedal shark, it really means something," Naruto snickered, not hiding his laughter at his cousin's expense.
"What an UnYouthful thing to say to a lovely young lady in the springtime of her youth!" Gai chuckled, giving Karin a thumbs-up and a smile that sparkled in the sun. "This opening move is devoted to you, Karin-san!"
Her "Er, thanks?" was drowned out by the yell, "Konoha Double Lotus!" Lee made an excited yelp and dashed forward from the other side, spinning into a kick at Kisame's left. The nuke-nin grunted and moved his sword to catch his foot—which left his right open to the bone-breaking force Gai was wielding.
Except the blow didn't connect. Kisame managed to dodge by a thin margin, leaping backwards. The green-clad menaces stayed on him, leaping and weaving in a blur of movement that Kakashi couldn't fully register without his Sharingan. He resisted the temptation to uncover it.
That would be a waste of chakra. Right now, the situation seemed to be overwhelmingly in their favor, to the point where they had more than enough people to control the field. There were too many people for them all to fight together, actually. The Suna team was working well together, and Genma was keeping Tenten out of the crossfire, but any more participants in that fight would be more of a problem than a benefit. If anyone were to be injured, they could easily be rotated out of either fight and both patched up and kept safe.
'We don't know where their leader is,' Kakashi reminded himself darkly, not letting his attention waver. 'Our numbers advantage could easily become irrelevant. Karin couldn't even tell when he left. We may have no warning. For all we know, he could be here.'
The thought was bleak, but still less unpleasant than anything else he might be doing. By all accounts, that man was a monster. The idea of someone like that going directly after jinchuuriki or taking the body count to another village was unpalatable.
Karin shifted uncomfortably, scuttling backwards a little bit. Sasuke reached out to steady her, red eyes whirling and cataloguing everything that was happening.
"Are you sure we can't join in?" Naruto half-whispered, bright blue eyes practically dancing with visible excitement. His head was following the back and forth action of the blue-on-green fight rather like a pinball game.
"No," Kakashi said shortly.
"Actually," Karin muttered, looking over her shoulder. "There might be a fight for us after all. There's a team coming in from Ame."
' Does that mean that Ame really is affiliated with Akatsuki, or are they just taking advantage of the confusion?'
Kakashi frowned under his mask. There was no way to tell until this team arrived. If they joined with Akatsuki, that might be a problem.
"Yamato, take Naruto and Sasuke to investigate our visitors," Kakashi decided blandly. It would be better to keep the fights separate. "Itachi, keep Karin safe. If the situation changes, further orders are at your discretion."
The Uchiha looked downright amused about being downgraded to a bodyguard, but he nodded in agreement nonetheless.
"What about you, sensei?" Naruto blinked guilelessly up at him. Kakashi resisted the urge to pat his head.
"Neji and I are going to investigate that base, of course," he explained breezily, indicating the partially collapsed building. They were fighting in its shadow—it would be intelligent to know what potential dangers were nearby.
He still didn't wholly trust Itachi, after all. If there was anyone else around that Karin couldn't sense in the way that she hadn't sensed Akatsuki's leader, he wanted to know about them.
~~~
"Naruto, don't move ahead," Yamato commanded, keeping the tiredness out of his voice. The blond deferred, falling slightly behind to run at Yamato's left. Sasuke was in the parallel position by Yamato's right hip.
"Sorry, captain," Naruto apologized honestly. His voice was much lower than usual. Surprised, Yamato glanced over to see that the mask of happy idiocy had been wiped from the blond's face.
'Of course,' he realized, feeling like an ass. 'It's almost a little cruel to keep him out of the fight with Konan, now that he knows she's the one who hurt his twin.' Yamato had never had a twin, of course, but he imagined that Kakashi was something like an older sibling. Always cooler and more capable than he could ever be- the idea of someone hurting him just sounded wrong. He would be off-kilter as well in that situation.
Yamato gave an uneasy glance to the other teen—Sasuke's jaw was set firmly as well. Would he be thinking along similar lines? He half-doubted it. Sasuke was preoccupied with his own older sibling.
'And isn't that a messy situation.' Kakashi obviously didn't trust Itachi. Yamato didn't either. If Tsunade-sama confirmed the information and personality assessment, he would welcome Itachi into Konoha with open arms. Until that moment, he thought he had the better deal in putting some distance between the two of them.
' A fight might make a good distraction for both of them.'
If that was true, they were spectacularly lucky. They met the Ame ninja a mile and a half out from their comrades. It was immediately obvious that this was going to be a hostile altercation. Yamato gritted his teeth and didn't waste time trying to talk them down.
He met with their leader with a clang of metal, locking his ANBU shortsword against a green-haired woman's thicker sword. She grimaced in his face, huffing- and then spat into his right eye. Yamato shut it in reflex and instantly cursed himself. He forced his left open again just in time to see the movement of her hand as she tossed some sort of white powder directly upwards into his face.
It burned like an acid. Yamato yelped—but took advantage of his superior strength and the fact that his opponent had taken a hand off her blade in order to force her blade out wide and freed up one of his hands to deliver a punch directly into her solar plexus.
The altercation had taken less than a second. Sasuke was just bringing his fist to bear on a man twice his size and Naruto was a foot away from smashing what looked like a Rasengan into a thin brunet's jaw.
'They seem to be doing fine still,' he noted distractedly.
The kunoichi's raised foot hit the ground at the same time that his did, and they split in a blur of movement. The slower shinobi had probably just seen the sparks from their swords colliding, and possibly the powder-fine glitter that had been tossed into the air.
They whipped around on the next step. Yamato cut sideways to buy time to pry his eyes open even as the woman darted forwards to press her advantage. He ducked away from her first blow and lifted his blade to block her second.
~~~
'No wonder this woman managed to bat Aiko around like a cat toy,' Temari noted depreciatingly. Her muscles were trembling with the effort to keep pushing at the prohibitively brutal speed that was necessary. 'We have her outnumbered five to one, and she's still keeping us on the run. What kind of monster is she?'
The little konoha kunoichi gave a little grunt and covered her face with her forearms to block the worst of a mis-aimed wind jutsu from Baki. His wind blades tended to go wide and veer unpredictably once they hit another breeze. In other words, they were short-distance weapons, which was why they normally complimented her long-distance attacks.
Neither was optimal against another long distance fighter who moved so damn quickly. They had to predict and force her movements in order for anything to connect while working around the limitations and general havoc of their own techniques. It was a wonder that the Konoha nin hadn't gotten hurt yet, inexperienced as they were with the unpredictable nature of those attacks. The man seemed to have been in plenty of fights before, but the girl couldn't possibly have been. She looked like she had fruit stuck to the top of her head for kami's sake. Fearsome killers just didn't do that.
'Still, she's pretty good,' Temari noted grudgingly. She was doing well to keep the paper ninja's attacks away from herself and was steadily immobilizing the older woman's supply of ammunition.
Temari hadn't managed any such damage so far, but she was proving to be the best at harrying the Ame kunoichi. Kankuro was covering her back, working to keep any rogue paper from doing anything sneaky when she wasn't looking.
'When I got that lucky hit in earlier, it disrupted her movements for almost a full second,' Temari noted, narrowing her eyes at the winged shadow overhead. 'If I can do that again and coordinate well enough with Peaches here to hit her at the right moment, we might be able to take her down. Or we could play it safe and fight her by attrition. The Uchiha traitor said that she was nearly undefeatable as long as she had weaponry, didn't he?'
Then again, she didn't know what observations he was basing that analysis off of. In her experience, anything and anyone could be killed, often by someone much smaller than them.
Temari gave a vicious grin, already picturing cutting off her enemy's head to take home. She really didn't like that woman.
Konan dove yet again, flashing across the sky and raining down explosives shaped like doves. "Nugh!" Temari grunted, heaving with the effort to bat them aside. The constructions that collided with each other went up in little localized blasts, but not all of them were detonated. Three were intact and headed for-
"Genma!" Peaches called out, sliding in from the right and pinning the first one with a spinning shuriken. It took a moment for Temari to catch on that the idly grinning Konoha nin had speared the other two with senbon. That was just fucking scary.
"Don't worry about me, Ten-chan. I'm a big boy. I'll be just fine." He winked at her.
All the respect she'd had for him based on the impressiveness of that senbon accuracy stunt fled instantly. Peaches gave a dismissive grunt and turned away as well, pulling the enormous scroll off her back.
"Temari-san! Do you think you can hit her again?"
'A girl after my own heart,' Temari realized, licking the inside of her lips. She just nodded. 'I have to be smart about this. She only comes down into my range when I'm preoccupied if she can help it. But she must be getting desperate to finish this fight. She's got to know that it can't end in her favor if it goes much longer. Maybe we should just be playing it safe, but what if she's playing for time because she expects reinforcements?'
"Kankuro, give me some space," she said lowly, widening her stance and adjusting her weight instead of keeping low so that she could dart in any direction.
Konan would want to take her out. If she made herself a target, the older woman might come in close enough to do the job herself.
' There's more than one way to force her to hold still. If I can't count on getting an attack in, I could go directly to her.'
Konan wasn't the only aerial fighter, after all. Temari snapped her fan open the rest of the way and called up a fierce gale. She ran with it for a moment—and then spread her weapon perpendicular to the ground and deftly leapt on top. The sun-warmed metal all but burned against her bent legs, but she didn't care. The fast moving air picked at her tightly bound hair and threatened to rip her clothing. It would have if the cotton wasn't reinforced with fine threads of metal.
She gripped the edge of her fan tightly, never minding that a line of blood appeared on her fingers where she was clutching, and used every bit of brute strength she had to moderate the movement of her weapon (and primary mode of transportation). With the wide edge directed down, the wind from underneath pushed her upward. Temari slowly sucked in a deep breathing, acclimating to the change in pressure—and then darted after the blue-haired bitch, leaning with the wind. A humourless smile exposed her teeth to the air. So high up, it was both thin and dry, unlike the moist crap hanging below.
' Much better. Water in the air was slowing me down.'
Up here, Temari was fast as thought, slipping like quicksilver. Konan couldn't ride the wind—she flapped unwieldy paper wings to move, thousands of expertly turned feathers that were so susceptible to a little thing like conflicting air pockets…
She barreled directly at Konan, taking vicious pleasure in how wide her orange eyes were in the bright light above the clouds. Temari pulled four senbon out from her thigh length stockings and wore them in her hand like claws between her knuckles, ready to do her best to skewer those ugly eyes.
' Damnit!'
Konan moved at the last moment. Instead of her perfect shot, Temari had to close her eyes as she burst through the thousand tiny feathers that made up Konan's left wing. She gasped with pain—hundreds of papercuts were still hundreds of cuts.
But she had the last laugh anyways. Konan's wing was tattered and struggling to reform while the older woman plummeted like a rock. Peaches leapt directly into the air, spiraling and spinning in a fascinating way with that enormous scroll.
'It looks like she's dancing,' Temari realized, privately enchanted in the moment before she realized that Peaches was running her fingers along the scroll as she moved upwards.
And suddenly knew it was a bad idea to maintain her current position in a straight line with the other two kunoichi. Temari leaned forward to speed her travel and called a brutally efficient gust that rocketed her out of the way, never mind that the force caused some of the bits of paper hanging off her flesh to dig deeper in.
Hundreds and hundreds of pinpricks of light- senbon and kunai and shuriken and a dozen kinds of little knives that Temari couldn't name- cut through Konan again and again in the three seconds it took her to fall. There was no blood, but Temari knew that if she were closer she would have able to see the sunlight through the holes in the older woman's body.
'It's over.' She couldn't even be sorry that she didn't get to land the final blow. That had been beautiful. Konan smacked face first into the ground with enough force to blow up a cloud of dust, spread eagle with limbs clearly broken from the impact.
Temari landed and smoothly pulled her fan up, closing it in the same motion that she slipped it over her back. Kankuro glanced over at her with a pout, clearly put out that he hadn't gotten to do more than play defense. She grinned cheerfully back at him.
And Konan's left leg twitched, straightening at the break that had set her calf at two angles. The smile froze on Temari's face.
' What is this woman made of? I mean, she can't actually be made of paper, can she?'