This story is the third in a series of (what I hope won't go past) three fanfictions centered on Akatsuki. If you stumble on this story and would like to read the beginning...that's what my profile's for.
Oh. And if you have read the previous stories--read my profile anyway. Just a bunch of bold letters and then you can skip to the bit before the line break thing...yeah.

A/n: Look who's back from a month of really a lot of writing! That's right--MY MOTHER! x3 (strangely enough, she supposedly does have an account here and all that...) oh, and I am too.
On that note of really a lot of writing, I am getting kind of sick of writing at this point in my life. Do not expect chapters to come quickly. Like, at all. (furthermore, I really want to tie up the plot of my NaNo before I tie this one up.)

Don't be fooled by the short A/n. This is the first chapter. You're seriously going to have to scroll--a LOT--to get to the actual story. At least the warnings only apply to the first posted chapter.

Warnings: Throughout this story (but not ncessarily all in this chapter), you will likely find: innaccurate sexual interpretations of actually innocent phrases; implied off-screen sex; sloppily censored foul language, which will occasionally slip through uncensored; shounen-ai, yaoi, slash, guy-on-guy, etc. pairings; likely shoujo-ai, yuri, slash, femmeslash, girl-on-girl, etc. pairings if I don't get an uprising against it; violence--which WON'T be off-screen this time :D ; useage of characters who do not belong to me; original characters; aboriginal characters (coughmarysuecoughrencough); the characters, original or not, made for this setting but by neither myself nor Masashi Kishimoto (yes, kids, this warning COULD be made because of you); some Oto ninjas will probably show up (yes, they get their own warning); incorrectly named canon characters (i.e. Konan is called Kai here because I didn't know better at the time); stupidly popular pairings (coughsasusakucoughnaruhinacoughsasodeicough); stupidly unpopular pairings (coughitatobicoughinotencough); poor parenting; incest (literal and metaphorical); bad example for a functioning family; off-screen character death; on-screen character death; The Uchihas(tm) in all their violent and really-not-good-influence and seriously-kids-don't-follow-this-example glory; Hidan (yes, he does deserve his own warning); and OMGWTF THE CHARACTERS WHO ACTUALLY RUN THE SHOW THIS THING'S BASED ON ARE GOING TO SHOW UP!
I'm probably forgetting something...

Disclaimer: List of things I own: Haruka, Shikai, Ren, the aforementioned Oto ninjas who will not be appearing in this chapter, annonymous ninjas who get to install a mail-slot in Akatsuki's front door (and somehow survived!), any other characters who never get named, the actual text, and my kick-ass long list of warnings.
List of things I don't own: Pein, Konan (or Kai), Tobi, Itachi, Kisame, Zetsu, Sasori, Deidara, Kakuzu, Hidan, Naruto, Hinata, Sakura, Ino, TenTen, Tsunade, the guy who owns the ramen place, a bunch more people who don't really matter, such as Sasuke--oh, wait he does...I still don't own him. Neither do I own the one original character that I've rounded up who belongs to someone on deviantART (not that she even shows up yet), the original character who belongs to whoever steps up to the plate and sends me a bio for their OC so that said OC can appear in this story, sanity (whatever that is), my soul (that's yours if you review), a life (fandom ate it) (oh, and Marching Band took a few bites too), and a pet ferret.


Pein stared at the scene before him with the neutrality that he seemed to have invariably contracted from the repetition of this kind of behavior.

Today's antic was, as predictable, being committed by Tobi. The masked ninja now found it necessary to organize the mail coming to Akatsuki's doorstep.

Why there was mail on their doorstep, Pein would never know. He doubted with true sincerity that he wanted to know. However, this morning, Tobi found it necessary to walk to the front door (again, for reasons well beyond Pein) and notice that a vaguely rectangular hole had been hacked into their door before it wound up lined neatly in a neat gold-colored metal rectangle that contrasted enough with the original hole that there was actually space near one of the corners that was a piece of hole that the golden rectangle could not be stretched to fit. It was obviously a rather shoddy job; whoever did it must have been in a rush when doing it.

Pein's thoughts were interrupted by Tobi dropping a letter onto the pancake on his plate. The letter was addressed to him, and had an official-looking seal on it, with a lot of words in Latin. Who the hell put Latin on their seals, anyway? How dead a language could it be if it was still being used in these stupid overzealous seals? Pein hid the letter in his robes, intending to burn it later.

"And this one's for…" Tobi muttered to himself. "Um…hrm…I guess it's misaddressed," he decided. "Otou-sama, what do we do with misaddressed letters?"

Pein's forehead fell into his palm. "Tobi-kun, I really wouldn't know. I'd imagine that it should go in the paper shredder or something, but I don't remember us having one of those…" He sighed. "Of course, I don't remember us having a mailing address either…"

Tobi hesitated, shrugged, and placed the letter that seemed to be the one in question into his own pile; Pein was close enough to read that it was addressed to someone named Uchiha Madara.

Tobi handed something to Hidan, who exclaimed, " 'Under Jashin'? I didn't know such a kick-ass magazine existed..." He glanced over to Kakuzu.

"You're not buying a subscription," Kakuzu growled.

Sasori cursed as he read a letter from an official-looking envelope. "They could at least give me some warning before expiring my library card..."

Kai opened a pink envelope and pulled out a card that she seemed careful to hide from mose eyes; Pein, of course, was directly beside her and needed only a glance to see the bright and cheerful image of a pine tree with various round ornaments decorating it and a star on the top; across the bottom read the words, "Merry Christmas from an old friend!" She sent an exasperated scowl to Pein and flipped the back half of it around to read the inner message, of which the most prominent words were scrawled across the bottom: "Enjoy your holidays! Have fun with making the world better! Good luck and sayounara! --Yahiko" Kai looked to Pein with a raised eyebrow, seeming to ask, "Who is this?" and Pein shrugged in response.

"And the last letter," Tobi declared, drawing all eyes away from letters and to the masked ninja as he held over his head an envelope with red corners and both addresses written in nearly illegible black calligraphy, "goes to Itachi-chan!" He tossed it to Itachi horizonatally, like a shuriken, and Itachi caught it between his first two fingers, his head not moved at all as he took a sip of coffee until after catching it. He then set down his mug and slid a finger beneath the flap to open it.

Itachi's eyes flickered across the page as he read the letter. The further down he read, the deeper his frown became, until he decided that he didn't need to read further and announced, "It's nothing to worry about. Just some junk mail."

Haruka, who had been working on her ninja skills over the past few years (and a lot of this training came with help from Itachi), disappeared and reappeared behind Itachi, who folded the page in half before she could actually read it, but she seemed to have memorized the image and responded to it anyway. "A reunion? That's not junk mail..."

Itachi's eyes squinted further. "It doesn't concern anybody here, Haruka-san." He twitched instinctively as Tobi suddenly appeared quite close behind him with the letter held high above the murderous Uchiha's head. Tobi then rushed to the other side of the table, behind Pein, and unfolded it to read it.

"It concerns everybody here!" Tobi disagreed. "It says that you're invited to an Uchiha family reunion!"

Hidan snorted. "Do you seriously believe that shit? I mean, after...he..." Hidan made several vague gestures with his arms. "Just...no. Why the hell would anybody invite Itachi-chan to a reunion--especially a bleeping Uchiha reunion? The only Uchiha left wants to bleeping murder him!"

"That should make it obvious," Sasori pointed out. "It's probably a trap."

"Well, if it's a trap," Tobi wondered, "why does the letter say he should bring all his friends?"

Sasori shrugged. "To knock all of us out at once?"

"Why would they want to set us up for a trap?" Shikai asked suspiciously.

"Shikai-kun," Kai explained, "please remember that not everybody agrees with our goals to unify the ninja world."

Shikai nodded and Tobi went on, "Ha hah, Itachi-chan, your brother's funny! He says, 'Bring anyone who could fit in our family so we can expand ours a little--we really need that extension now, don't we?' Ha hah! Yeah, I guess we do..."

Pein sighed and shook his head. "You do realize that we're not going, right?"

"Awww, why not?" Tobi wondered innocently.

"Because it's a trap," Pein pointed out obviously at the same exact time as Sasori, Hidan, Kakuzu, Zetsu, Kisame, and Ren.

"But," Tobi argued, "if it was a trap, why is everyone going?"

"To get more of us at once," Sasori repeated.

"To avoid suspicion," Ren added.

"To make us think that it's not really a trap," Shikai added.

"Oji-san, I just said that," Ren pouted.

"No it's not!" Shikai denied.

"Shikai-kun, Ren-chan," Kai interrupted them before they started wrestling over who was right (they had done that before, and they were likely to do it again). "It doesn't matter who said what."

"Because," Pein added, "we're still not going."


A/n again: I'm sure you all know what happens next. I mean, the plot would have just totally died if anyone just listened to Pein.

On the miscelaneous to/from addresses on the letters:
Uchiha Madara: I still don't know what to make of this being, but I still just can't associate this thing with Tobi. Masashi Kishimoto meant to send it to Tobi, but if the name on it is Madara, in my story, that's a misaddressed envelope.
Yahiko: You know, I went back to the manga to reference this kid's name...and now I'm really really confused. Yahiko looks a lot more like he'd grow up to be the Pein we know than Nagato does...(and he probably would have said something else. I almost had him scribble some "CURSE YOU" or "YOUR PLAN WILL NEVER WORK" propaganda (because it would be funny to get a letter like that...), but it didn't seem like something that kid would say...

Notes on Japanese:
Sayounara-- "Goodbye." I normally would have just said "goodbye," but sayounara is more like "Farewell. As in forever (or a really really long time)."
The rest should already by known from previous installments of this series.
And, yes, Shikai is, sortofkindoftechnically, Ren's uncle. Because Shikai is, by Akatsuki's family order, Tobi's brother, and Tobi is (one of) Ren's father(s), so...Shikai is Ren's uncle. Even though he's, like, seven or so years younger than her.

Oh. And my "e" key hasn't been working very well. I mean, it functions and all, but if I type too fast (and I do that a lot) and if I'm not careful about the angle on it (which also happens more than it should) then the e won't come out. So I keep having to go back and add an e in a lot of places. So, I'd like to (once again) bring up the fact that I do not have a Beta-reader.

Oh yeah. And a preview:
Let's be honest--how many times to people actually listen to Pein when he says "no"?
Chapter to be written on hold until I get responses to a certain something on my profile (even negative, you-really-can't-slash-shouldn't-do-that-lady kinda responses.)