Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and if I owned the Akatsuki, I would have all dead members reincarnated. sigh Why do the interesting ones always go…No profit is made from this story.

A/N: I've began this story a while ago, but I've decided to give it a test run and see what the response to it is like. Kimi's character might seem kind of bland until the third chapter but bear with me! I wrote this because of my fascination with the Akatsuki and the complete mystery behind its inner workings. I also noticed that, with the exception of Tobi, no replacements have been made towards the heavy casualties the inner circle has endured. This is my take on the insides of the organisation!

"You sure she's the one?" said Kisame, cloak collar pulled high to hide his shark like features, features which had gotten both he and his team-mate unwanted attention and recognition many a time.

And this time, in this place of the Hidden Cloud Village, anonymity was essential if their mission was to go smoothly. The split in two freak Zetsu had recently informed them that they needed the recently deceased Kazuzu's replacement soon and the replacement had to be extremely skilled as their plans most important phase had just began its implementation.

Kisame sighed; trying to draw more cover from the torrential rain, the large flowing cloak draped tightly around his muscular form. With a sneeze, Kisame cursed the recent multiple deaths within their organization. And the worst part was that they had been deaths the Akatsuki could not afford.

Unfortunately, while there were many "potential" candidates among the various shinobi villages worthy of Akatsuki assessment, and he was sure that the next generation of shinobi would out pass the present by a landslide, it appeared that their own generation was pathetically lacking. He and his partner, the ever brooding presence that was Uchiha Itachi, had slain every single potential candidate so easily that they hardly broke a sweat and the Leader was growing more and more impatient by the day. To be honest, their recent target, a twenty year old Jounin with an extremely interesting bloodline limit by the name of Hakuchou Kimi, was their desperation choice.

It wasn't that the Leader didn't want women in the Akatsuki, not at all. It was more the fact that from what he'd seen from most of the women they encountered, from the farm girls to the high class Shinobi, they seemed so emotional and attached. They all, without fail, got flustered when encountering the beauty of his partner Itachi as well, and this was another danger. You just couldn't have that kind of drama in they're already volatile group. Women tended to make already complicated matters even more so. And so this was their last option before they returned home with their tails between their legs and deal with the consequences.

They had been watching the seemingly ordinary kunoichi for a week now and so far had not liked what they saw. She seemed nice, kind, always willing to go out of the way for a friend, and just seemed so horribly normal that he had already prepared for the inevitable let down. This girl was obviously not their sort of material. With an aggrieved growl, he turned to his partner who was brooding, allowing the rain to soak his entire body. Kisame gave a snort of amusement. Itachi could never pass up a chance to brood.

At the moment, they were observing the girl under a shelter, her shopping bags gathered around her ankles and a look of mild annoyance on her face. Uninteresting in nearly every way…

"Itachi, I think we should just leave this one. It's pretty obvious how this is going to end. Even if she has the talent, she most definitely doesn't have the balls for the entry task. Let's just call it a day, find a nice warm motel and go look for a couple of whores?"

Yes he was fully aware that he was whining but Gods above he was sick of getting rained on! The only response he received was an aggravated "hn". Kisame curled into himself in irritation and sulked.

"Okay let me correct that. How about I'll go look for hookers and you can go sit on a rock some where and look poetically dark!"

The sound of rain hitting the dirt ground was the only noise in the mutually angered silence which followed, that was until Itachi suddenly moved from his crouching position and moved from the alley way, landing himself directly in sight of their target.

"What the hell are you doing you idiot!?" he snarled as Itachi merely continued his impulsive march towards the girl, who had been sheltering herself under a closed fruit store shade. Her large, brown eyes widened for a moment at the sight of the soaked tall man and his equally drenched lumbering partner stormed towards her, but she made no movement to run or even formally acknowledge them. Instead, she stepped away from her small bag of groceries and leaned against the shop wall, her arms folded and eyes closed.

Itachi stopped a few feet away from the potential Akatsuki, the look on his face guarded and stern. Kisame narrowed his eyes at the sight. It was a look his junior got only when faced with a potential threat, or one of the rare times when an object or situation caught his interest.

"Hakuchou-san," greeted Itachi, or the closest thing to a formal greeting the younger man would give. The girl Kimi opened her eyes slowly, sliding her gaze to first Itachi and then to Kisame before tilting her head slightly in greeting.

"Who are you, and why long have you been following me?" she asked in a voice so soft it could almost be considered uninterested. Kisame felt himself stiffen.

The corners of Itachi's lips twitched a quietly amused smirk.

"A week," answered Itachi, never one to waste breath. With a slow, graceful movement, Kimi unfolded her seemingly relaxed pose and stood straight, her plain clothing stuck to her body form rain and looking wholly monotonous.

"Why are you here? Why are you tracking me, of all people?"

"I want to fight you."

Kisame nearly choked on his own surprise. That generally wasn't the way they went about things. They either threatened and/or ambushed their marks but never requested anything. And why the hell was Itachi so sure the girl would relish the opportunity to spar? From all he could see, she hardly ever went on missions, which was a bit strange for a Jounin but nonetheless, Itachi was skipping procedure a bit hard. But the girl surprised him once again. She saw her fist tighten into fists, her breath release quicker, her pupils dilate, all signs he had been thought to read to gauge a persons emotions, and the one thing the small betrayals of her body signified was: Excitement.

"I know a clearing about two miles south of the village, it will be completely deserted. Meet me there in an hour!" she rushed out so quickly that he hardly caught her disappearance. Kisame blinked at the simplicity of it all. That was…quick. The two stood in the rain fall, staring in the direction she had just fled.

"Itachi…How did you know she would accept so easily?" asked Kisame. He had to know. Everything about her declared her an average, run-of-the-mill shinobi, more involved with her clan and friends than her training. How did Itachi know that this girl would run off with two strange men into the forest for a battle without even an introduction?

"I've seen how she moves and talks. She's polite and restrained, more so than even being a member of her prestigious clan calls for. But I've seen how she takes the world in when she thinks she's alone. She is bored, Kisame. And I received word on her supposed "break" from missions. It was a suspension for unnecessary brutality and fatalities. I stole her files and looked at her track record. She has never left a survivor. Not one, whether they are low level thieves or high level diplomatic enemy shinobi. There is far more to her than meets the eye."

"Okay, I'll believe that, but that still doesn't explain how you knew she'd fight you."

"I just did."

"Fine then, go into bastard mode. Lets head, I want to get to that clearing first to look for traps."

Kisame gazed at the scene in shock, his eyes round in surprise. The battle ended much the same way as he had expected. Itachi had a well bloodied kunai pressed hard against Kimi's jugular, the girl's breath laboured through multiple broken ribs and heavy blood loss from the various hits she sustained from her battle with the Sharingan wielder. Her arm was bent at a sickeningly unnatural angle, and blood trickled out of the corner of her split lips with every heaving breath. Yet it was not that familiar scene which had caused him such vast astonishment. It was the fact that Itachi was in just slightly better shape than his battle partner, coughing up as much blood as his fallen opponent and swollen eye blinded by a heavy gash above his forehead.

It was obvious the girl was a lunatic. The battle had started as it should have, with Itachi countering her every move, despite her extremely impressive taijutsu and ninjutsu skills but they were quite obviously not up to the skill and standards that were needed to even tip Itachi.

Kisame had leaned back against a tree, at last finding the shelter he had desired for an entire week and waited for Itachi to finish her off. What of her supposed Blood-line limit? He had heard rumours of her Limit, rumours that she had taken her mediocre, questionably useful limit which had revolved around chakra detection and a marginal resistance to genjutsu and took it to unheard of heights. The members of the clan they had spoken with had regaled her as a genius, a master who would undoubtedly take control of the clan once her father died. But the poor performance she had been demonstrating made him doubt the authenticity of those claims.

Yet there was something in her stance, in her attacks. They held back for a split second with each movement, an almost hesitation. Why was she hesitating? It was obvious that Itachi's intent was to kill…

Itachi had then aimed a fire jutsu directly into her chest, one she did not even attempt in blocking, sending her hard back into a tree. Kisame watched in slight interest as an almost translucent shield arose as the flame ball had touched but then gave in, leaving her to absorb the brunt of the original attack. While her silly little Limit may have saved her from death, what it did leave her was severely injured with more than a few burns surrounding her body.

Itachi had seemed rather put out as a matter of fact. Kisame groaned, hoping that his team-mate would simply get the job over with, and kill the damn pest. But oh no. Once Uchiha Itachi was put out, he made damn sure that the cause of his irritation knew exactly how put out he was.

Itachi activated his Sharingan, and Kisame waited for the Tsukuyomi, the most powerful genjutsu known in existence and only used when its user is feeling very sadistic, trapping the person in an illusionary world for years if he wanted it to and could be tortured for what seemed like forever when only a few moment had truly past. But Itachi did not get the chance. Kimi had looked up at that exact moment, a feral grin replacing her previously vacant face.

"The eyes!" she hissed, jumping up with such a speed that it should have been physically impossible with her injuries. As she ran towards her shocked opponent, her hands flared with a glowing white chakra, and managed to give a hit so fast and hard into between the Uchiha's eyes that he stumbled before collapsing, clutching the hit point in agony, and screaming so hard that Kisame had been instantly on his feet, unable to believe that the ever stoic Itachi had been hurt so bad that those wails were admitting from his mouth.

The girl had limped towards him slowly, that wild smile still growing, her hands still flaring with a strange light that had his team mate writhing in pain, though his howls had ceased. Itachi looked up at her with furious and pained eyes, seemingly knowing that she would not attack before an explanation.

"I'm assuming you want to know what I just did, yes?" she wheezed, broken ribs constricting her breath.

"You have heard about my Blood-line limit I imagine. Well, the rumours regarding my evolved Limit were quite true. I refined it, drew it into its most powerful form. While most of my clan can see the chakra points faintly, and identify the different area of the body a technique has drawn its chakra from, I can not only see it, but block that chakra. Overload it with chakra with an opposite signature, an opposite flow of direction, so much that not only does it halt the technique, but even more so, the Limit the chakra point feeds if there is one present.

It was why I waited so long before using it. I had to know where you're power came from, which chakra point your Limit drew power from. Thank you for getting frustrated enough for using it, your impulsive action led me straight to the Ajna, a most painful point to be blocked I imagine…"

Kisame had wondered whether or not to intervene, but Itachi was already on his feet at this stage, looking quite serious, more serious in fact than he had seen him in a long time. It was then Kisame understood what Kimi had done. There was no blazing red of the Sharingan in his eyes, just the dark irises of a normal person. She had decimated the source of his power by negating the chakra which powered it! Kisame began to become interested at last, eyes bored into the match.

Itachi also was looking at the fight in a new light. To take that much damage just to debilitate his Sharingan took guts, and a severe desire to win. Itachi smirked.

"You underestimate me. I don't need my Sharingan to defeat a second rate shinobi like you!"

And so the true battle had began. With his Limit blocked, and a severe migraine pounding at his head where two opposing chakra's were fighting each other out, he was at a major disadvantage in both power and concentration. It was a brutal match, consisting of fierce taijutsu, and since the technique seemed to drain her of her own chakra as she upheld the block in Itachi's Ajna point, fists, kunai and legs pounded each other into submission.

Yet eventually, as always, Itachi stood victorious, though severely hurt and losing a lot of blood. While it were clear that if Kimi's gamble in Itachi's ego hadn't won out, that Kimi would not be alive and she also had the advantage of surprise, it was still the longest any of the potential Akatsuki had ever lasted.

Kimi glared up at him as he stood posed to kill her, and suddenly her glare formed a tired, pained smile.

"Thank you for the challenge."

And with that, Itachi swiftly kicked her in the temple and marched away, indicating to the healthy Kisame to carry the unconscious girl as they headed for the village infirmary.

It had been two days before Itachi had finally recovered the use of his Sharingan and the vicious headache, which had been making him rather irritable indeed and making Kisame contemplate the murder of his team-mate, went away. Kisame stomped into view of the displeased Uchiha, eyes narrowed as he contemplated the younger man who viewed the hospital from a house roof some distance away.

"So," began Kisame. "You out of your bastard mode yet?"

"She completely blocked my Limit. And she hinted that she could debilitate any Limit so long as she knew where in the body it originated," obsessed Itachi, thinking at the hospital in what appeared to be a very hard way.

"So you imagine she is fit to become a member?"

"Physically, yes. Mentally, we shall see."

"Do you know what the challenge will be? You've surveyed her the most. You should be able to figure it out."

Itachi stared down at the streets as yet another group of her clan made their way laughingly to the hospital, a bunch of flowers clutched in their hands as offering. The visitors had been none stop, and he viewed the genuine fondness and love she bore her family. Just as he had, in his own way, all those years ago. Yet just like him, she had developed the thirst. The thirst to grow, the thirst to be challenged, to not be dictated by what she should or should not do, her villages pathetic attempt at ethics forcing her out of her occupation however temporary that was. Would she be capable of her challenge?

"Hey Itachi! I was talking to you!"

"The challenge is obvious. It will be the same as mine. To destroy her ties to her clan."

"You think she'll do it?"

"…I'm sure of it."

A/N: Well there you go! Chapter one. Reviews, at least for this chapter, would be very much appreciated as this really is just a test run to see people's interest. I wrote this mainly for my own amusement and had never really intended on posting it but here I am. If you think I should continue, then drop me a line! Constructive criticism greatly appreciated!