Flip Flop and Fly

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the obvious, the rest belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Author's Note: I'm glad you all liked the story. From now on a normal "…" indicates Japanese being spoken, and a "-…-" indicates that English is being spoken – except in the flashback, but that's quite obvious I think. Enjoy!

Thanks to my good friend and beta, Paladin Steelbreaker.

Chapter Three:

Itachi had been with the FBI for a measly three months, when one of the other members of his team unexpectedly approached him. Unexpectedly because up until now all of them had been rather awed and careful around the genius teen.

"Yo, Itachi, wanna join me for lunch?" Rodriguez asked the youngest – and newest – member of the team.

The teenager in question looked up at the older man, and stared at him for a while. "I'm sorry, but I don't swing that way. I've nothing against homosexuals, but personally I prefer the fairer sex. No offence, Rodriguez."

Garcia, Henson, Collins and Leigh – who were all sitting at their desks and within earshot – snickered at the comment that had been delivered without blinking. Other people that were passing through also did a variation of the same, and Itachi himself smirked.

Rodriguez' eye twitched. "Firstly: I'm happily married, and secondly: I'm not a paedophile!" the man protested. "Are you going, or do you need Garcia to baby-sit you?"

Itachi narrowed his eyes at the reminders of his age. "Alright, where are we going?" he asked as he stood up from his desk and picked up his jacket from the back of his chair.

"The diner right down the street, 'Murphy's Law' I think it's called." Rodriguez replied as the two of them headed towards the elevators. "A wonderful name, ain't it?"

"Quite." The teen deadpanned, his voice dryer than the Sahara desert.

"Oi, loverboys! Bring me back a large cappuccino!" Garcia called right before the doors of the elevator closed.

It didn't take long for the two FBI agents to get to said diner, and they had soon ordered their desired food. The waitress – who was dressed as a MiB-agent, her nametag proclaiming her to be Agent Q – arrived with their food soon enough, and the two men dug in.

"So, Itachi, what's wrong?" Rodriguez went straight for the heart of the matter he wanted to discuss.

Itachi blinked. "Wrong?" he parroted, a piece of chocolate cake halfway to his mouth.

"Don't play me for a fool," the older man growled, using his own fork to emphasize his point. "You know very well what I'm talking about. You've become seriously disorganised lately, your work isn't up to your usual standard, and the bags under your eyes could be taken for black holes in my opinion. Quite frankly, Itachi, you look like shit. So spill it, what's wrong?"

The younger man was silent for a moment, before he sighed and his shoulders slumped. "It's the nightmares." He said finally. "These past three months have been stressful, and we've had case upon case, and I'm tired."

Rodriguez nodded, a serious and understanding look in his eyes. "I understand. We've all gone through the same stage, and occasionally we go through it again, it's no new phenomenon. We're dealing with some of the sickest criminal minds out there, so it's no small wonder that we get nightmares or go slightly insane ourselves."

"How do you deal with it?" Itachi asked, his gaze focused on the piece of cake that he was now meticulously cutting up into ant-sized pieces.

"I know that Garcia takes a yoga class, Leigh watches his Star Trek-tapes, Parker retreats to his cabin when things get too much. All of us deal with it in our own way. I'm lucky enough to manage to have a family outside of work, and my wife is the best remedy for me. The point of this is that I can't give you a textbook answer on how to deal with it all, that's something you have to figure out on your own," he sighed. "I'm willing to listen if you ever need to get some things off your chest – and that goes for the rest of the team as well; we all look out for each other. I'm sorry I can't help you out any more than that, but sometimes all one needs to do is talk about it."

The black-haired teenager managed a small smile. "Thanks, Rodriguez."

"Anytime, kiddo." Came the reply. They spent another twenty minutes in a comfortable silence, but then it was broken by the ringing of Rodriguez' mobile phone. "Rodriguez here. Yes sir. We're at the diner a block away… alright, we'll be there. See you soon, Parker."

Itachi raised an eyebrow. "Since that was Parker I assume we have a new case?"

"Of course. Lets get going." The older man lead the way until they reached the FBI building. Right before they entered, Rodriguez stopped the teen. "And remember what I said, Itachi. If you ever need to talk…"

The teen nodded, and together they entered the building.

III

Itachi followed Uchiha Fugaku and his companions through the streets of the city for quite a while. At one point he had asked if they were going to take the plane to Japan, but Fugaku had sent him such a disgusted look that Itachi had found it better not to ask again. Therefore he had followed the others around, feeling somewhat like an idiot, and he didn't even question it when they entered a small, dingy, shabby shop which sold oriental things; the teen was simply glad for the opportunity to sit down.

He hadn't been sitting for long, when one of the animal-masked people had mentioned for him to go into the backroom of the shop. On the floor of the room two scrolls with various signs and whatnots had been rolled out in an X-shape, and Itachi had been ordered to stand in the middle. Itachi had obeyed, a perplexed look on his face. He had thought that this might be some sort of ritual cleansing or something, but what he hadn't expected was to suddenly be surrounded by thick smoke that seemingly came from nowhere. Then he felt like he was on a wild roller coaster for a moment, before another poof of smoke signalled the end of said feeling. A gloved hand had reached into the smoke and pulled him out, and Itachi found himself gaping.

He was standing in the middle of a cave.

A cave that was much bigger than the little shabby shop he had previously been in.

A cave that was very high up on a mountain and that offered a wonderful view of a seemingly never-ending forested area once you looked out.

'Holy shit man! Holy frickin' shit.' The teen thought, rubbed his eyes, and then continued staring. He turned to Uchiha Fugaku who had appeared in another poof of smoke – and was standing on another X made out of two unrolled scrolls – and managed a squeak.

Uchiha Fugaku smirked in triumph. "Welcome to the Hidden Shinobi Countries."

"How…?"

"Do not ask for I will not answer." The again-frowning man replied. "You do not have the required rank to know about an S-class secret such as this. You already know too much as it is. Though, you have to admit that this surely beats travelling by one of those airplanes. Follow me." With that the man started moving out of the cave, and the animal-masked people (who had appeared in puffs of smoke during the conversation) followed him, forcing the teen to follow them.

Itachi simply stood there and stared at the retreating back of his biological father for a moment before he hurried after the group. 'Did that guy just make a joke?'

III

When he was still trying to ignore his own intellect and was desperately trying to fit in with normal children, Itachi had begged to go to one of those summer camping-group thingies for children, and the Kishimotos had sent him off. Everything had gone more or less alright until the yellow bus that was supposed to take the children to the resort had started driving. The seven-year-old Itachi had been sitting at the far front along with the grownups, and had been holding an intellectual conversation with a rather surprised camp-leader, when some kid at the back had started singing one of those corny songs, at which point the rest of the children joined in. Itachi had thusly been treated to rendition after horribly annoying rendition of camping-songs, and he counted that experience to be the most terrifying and mentally scarring of his entire life, and had swore never ever to be normal again.

And here he was, ten years later, playing his guitar and singing the same corny songs and annoying the crap out of Uchiha Fugaku and company.

"65 bottles of beer on the wall, 65 bottles of beer! If one of the bottles should happen to fall, 64 bottles of beer on the wall! 64 bottles of beer on the wall, 64 bottles of beer! If one of the bottles should happen to fall, 63 bottles of beer on the wall! 63 bottles of beer-"

At this point Uchiha Fugaku turned faster than should be humanly possible, and glared. "Will you stop singing that infernal song!" he demanded.

Itachi blinked. "Oh, you don't like it? It's alright, I'll sing another one then."

"Wha-?"

"She'll be coming 'round the mountain, here she comes! She'll be coming 'round the mountain, here she comes! She'll be coming 'round the mountain, she'll be coming 'round the mountain! She'll be coming 'round the mountain, here she comes!"

A tick developed on Fugaku's forehead.

III

It was late afternoon and they had decided to make camp for the night. The animal-masked people quickly found the perfect spot and easily set up camp which consisted of a couple of small bonfires and only one tent. The tent was for Itachi to use. Said people also proved to be very good hunters, and soon there were two rabbits roasting over one of the bonfires, and four fishes over the other.

Itachi was happily munching on a rabbit-leg – medium to well-roasted – when Uchiha Fugaku found it prudent to interfere.

"Lets see what you have learned from that adoptive grandfather of yours." That was the only thing Fugaku said before he attacked the poor teen, kunai and shuriken drawn.

Now, being a genius and well-trained FBI agent, Itachi did what every sane man would do when some lunatic with possibly lethal weapons attacked them. He screamed like a girl and ran in the opposite direction, zigzagging between the trees to avoid the weapons thrown after him. If Misao had been there she would have insisted that he was doing his Jack Sparrow-impersonation again. Either way, he ended up hiding behind one of the animal-masked people – all who seemed thoroughly amused.

Fugaku, on the other hand, was far from amused. "Stop making a scene!" he hissed.

"It's your fault I'm making a scene in the first place!" Itachi protested as he peeked out form behind the man he was using as a humanoid shield.

"Excuse me?"

"If you hadn't suddenly gone all crazy on me and hadn't attacked me with sharp implements of possible doom, then I wouldn't have had the need to run away and hide, thusly we would have avoided making a scene. Ergo, it's your fault." The teen slowly came out from his hiding place and sketched a quick bow in thanks to his amused human shield, then turned back to his newly-discovered biological father. "Why the hell did you attack me anyway?"

"To test your skills in taijutsu." Came the stoic reply, though Fugaku was frowning a lot more than usual.

"What skills?"

There was a short pause.

"You mean to tell me that you do not know taijutsu?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"But the man who raised you was an expert!"

Itachi snorted. "That doesn't mean anything! Just because the guy who raised me was a martial arts specialist doesn't mean that I'm one. Or that I know any martial arts at all."

Uchiha Fugaku looked ready to murder someone.

III

Over the past couple of days the animal-masked people had seemingly started to warm up to Itachi, and it wasn't too much of a shock anymore when one of them suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started walking beside the teenager. The conversations held were very interesting – small tips on how to survive out in the wild and such – but never had Itachi managed to trick them into spilling some information that he already didn't know.

It was a few days later that one of the animal-masked people – the term for which, Itachi had finally found out, was ANBU – pointed up ahead, and said to the teenager, "Those are the western gates of Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaf. We have made surprisingly good time."

'Is that a compliment?' Itachi wondered absentmindedly to himself whilst observing the scenery in front of him. Even from this distance the gates looked sturdy. They were very tall, and the wall to which they were connected – and which probably ran all around this Konohagakure – looked even thicker. There was a sign over the gates proclaiming them to be the western gates of the village, and there were several people posted at even intervals at the gates and on top of the tall walls.

'It's a freaking fortress.' The black-haired teenager observed to himself. 'This only confirms the fact that these people come from an organised, military-like institution – which seems to be the village itself. Not to mention the transport method they used to get us to that cave, and since then I haven't seen a single car, bike, motorbike, etc. Well, I suppose I'll get my answers sooner or later – preferably sooner, though.'

Once they reached the gates, one of the guards – who was more or less dressed in the same uniform as Fugaku, except he was missing the weird shuriken-emblem on the shoulders – called for them to identify themselves with names and registration numbers. This was obviously only a precautionary action, since the guards seemed to know exactly who Fugaku was.

"Uchiha Fugaku, ID number: 004086." Fugaku said in a quiet voice. "The mission was a success."

The spiky-haired guy with some sort of bandage across his cheeks and nose, blinked in surprise. "So you found him? You found Uchiha Itachi?"

"We did."

The two guards looked around, and finally spotted the teen that had been observing them and the conversation. Itachi gave a smile and waved slightly to the guards, both of which seemed surprised and shared a look betwixt themselves. Then they shrugged, and smiled back.

"Welcome to Konohagakure, Uchiha Itachi-san." One of the guards said, and nodded politely. "We hope that you will enjoy your stay here."

"Actually, it's Kishimoto Itachi." The teen corrected him. "And thank you, I hope so as well."

"You will have to excuse us," Uchiha Fugaku said. "We have to see Sandaime Hokage-sama."

"Of course," the bandaged one mentioned with his arm. "Go right ahead, you are cleared. Izumo will write you down in the log."

Apparently rumours spread insanely fast in Konoha, and people stared at them as they passed. The spectators whispered and pointed, and weren't at all discrete about it. Thusly it wasn't a great surprise that Itachi was reminded of a group of story-hungry journalists. Luckily he knew how to deal with the situation due to a very useful, though short course from the police academy.

'Keep still, don't make any sudden movements, and hope to hell they don't notice you.' The teen thought to himself, repeating the sentence like a mantra until something else suddenly caught his attention. He let loose a happy shout, and was off down the street before Uchiha Fugaku and Co. could react. By the time said group of people caught up with him, Itachi was already exiting the shop he had seen, a box of rapidly-disappearing pocky in one hand, and a bag full to the brink with the same snack was hanging from his arm.

"Exactly what was that about?" Fugaku demanded angrily whilst trying to keep his voice down and not make a scene.

"Pocky!" Itachi replied with a sunny smile and held up the snack in question. "Why didn't you tell me that you had pocky here? Shame on you!" he munched down another stick. "Yum! I'm liking this place already!"

The ANBU standing around them snickered quietly, but Uchiha Fugaku looked anything but pleased. "Lets just head to the Hokage Tower." The man growled angrily.

The Hokage Tower was a large building approximately in the middle of the village. It was oval-shaped and had several storeys, and four crescent-shaped spikes at the very top made up a sort of skeleton of a dome. People were arriving and departing all over the place, and Itachi blinked twice when he noticed that some of those people were jumping in and out of windows that were on the second floor and up, or from rooftop to rooftop to ground level and back up again. And no one seemed to even care about the fact that they could get seriously hurt or killed!

'These people must be professional stuntmen and women!' the teenager concluded. 'Or there is some serious mumbo jumbo magic-thingy going on around here.'

Fugaku led them through the different levels of the building, occasionally nodding to someone, but generally giving off the air of obnoxiousness. People stared here as well, though not as openly as the people on the streets had done, and most of them only gave them a short inspection before they hurried off to wherever they were heading to in the first place.

Either way soon the group had reached the top level, and were standing outside the doors leading to the Hokage's office. There were two ANBU guards placed outside the doors, and a secretary sat off to the side. Uchiha Fugaku headed straight for the secretary, held a short conversation with the man, before he led Itachi through the doors leading into the office of the Hokage. Itachi took a moment to turn and give a short bow and wave to the ANBU that had accompanied them this far, then he hurried in after his biological father.

"Fugaku-san, it is good to see that you have returned," the Hokage, who was an elderly man, said and stood up from his desk. He then turned his attention on Itachi. "And this must be Uchiha Itachi. Welcome to Konoha, Itachi-san. My name is Sarutobi, I am the Sandaime Hokage."

Itachi shook the offered hand. "Nice to meet you, sir, and for now I prefer Kishimoto Itachi."

"Of course, my apologies. Please sit down the both of you."

"You will have to excuse me, Hokage-sama." Fugaku spoke up. "I wish to personally alert my clan about Uchiha Itachi's long-anticipated return." The man emphasized on the word with a pointed look to the teenager in question, but Itachi played oblivious.

The Hokage, on the other hand, nodded. "Of course. I will not stop you. Go alert your family, and Itachi-san and myself will have a small talk in the meantime. There are some rules and such that he needs to be aware of, and I shall use this as an excuse to escape the paperwork."

Uchiha Fugaku bowed shortly to the Hokage, then turned to the teen. "Behave yourself, Itachi," he ordered before he disappeared through the doors.

'Trust, thy name is Fugaku,' the teen couldn't help the sarcastic thought. However, he turned back to the leader of Konoha and sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. He focused on said leader. "You do know that you are ruling over a village full of people hell bent on suicide by jumping off rooftops and through second storey windows, right?"

The old man burst into laughter, his kind and wise eyes twinkling merrily. "You truly are something else, Itachi-san. Certainly nothing like one expects an Uchiha to be, and perhaps that is for the best."

"It is?" the teen parroted.

"In my personal opinion, yes," Sarutobi continued smiling. "Well, lets move on. Reports say that you work as an… an eff-bee-ai agent?"

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI." Itachi corrected. "I'm with the Criminal Behaviour Analysis Unit, in other words: I'm a profiler. Our job is to analyse the crime scene and provide the local authorities with a profile of the suspect. Luckily it's a desk-job more than anything else. I would never have survived being a field agent, haven't got the skills for it."

"The human mind is truly a fascinating object of study." The old man agreed with a nod. "As a shinobi the skill to read other people could literally mean the difference between life and death."

The teenager blinked in surprise. "That's a joke, right?"

"No, I'm afraid that I am not joking, Itachi-san."

"Then this is all cosplay?"

"It isn't."

"So you mean to tell me that you people actually train as shinobi, and take on missions and stuff?"

"Yes, that is pretty much it," the Hokage said, a small amused smile playing on his lips.

Itachi stared. "Please tell me that this is Candid Camera or something. I really don't want to have it confirmed that I've landed right in the middle of a place that actually breeds and trains serial killers."

The old man shook his head. "I am sorry to disappoint you, Itachi-san, but although your chosen terminology isn't spot-on, that is quite the accurate description of a Hidden Village."

The teen twitched. "You mean there's more than one Hidden Village?"

"Yes."

"This is seriously messed up."

"It all depends on whom you ask, Itachi-san." Sarutobi said. "For you, who has been raised in the Second World – raised so differently – it might be difficult to accept this. But please give it all a chance before you judge, and at least try to understand our situation."

Itachi sighed. "I've always thought that I had a pretty open mind to things. But the trouble with an open mind – I've found – is that people will insist on coming along, and putting things in it."

"Very valid point, but I still stand by my request."

There was a long silence between the two men, the younger staring the older straight in the eyes, a silent conversation going on between them. Then suddenly it was all over, and both of them smiled to each other, tension and everything forgot as if it hadn't happened. They had clearly reached some sort of silent agreement, and agreement that would stay between the two of them until time came to reveal it to the rest of the world.

Itachi picked up a new box of pocky, and offered it to the Hokage. "Want some? I'm hooked on 'em, and I'm also very happy that I found some here in the Leaf Hidden in the Village."

"The Village Hidden in the Leaf." The Hokage corrected absentmindedly. "Ah, strawberry-flavoured! My favourite."

"Good, because I'm partial to chocolate-flavour myself, and if you had asked for it I would've been forced to lie and tell you that I don't have any – despite any facts saying otherwise." The teen replied as he munched on a said-flavoured pocky stick.

"Your chocolate-pocky is your own," the old man said seriously, and then promptly started to munch on his own pocky.

This was the scene that the secretary walked in on when he came to report that Uchiha Fugaku and family had arrived.

"Ah, send them in, Yoshihiro-san." The Hokage said between bites. "It is high time that the Uchiha family were finally reunited with their missing member."

"Yes sir." The man replied, bowed and hurried out of the office. A moment later he returned with Uchiha Fugaku in tow. Behind Fugaku came a beautiful woman dressed in normal clothes, looking like she just came from the kitchen. Following her came a young man perhaps three or four years older than Itachi. Said young man was dressed in a blue t-shirt with an enormous collar, which made it look like he was wearing one of the large bowl-shaped dog-collars the vets used. The last person in the group was a boy of about twelve years of age. To Itachi the young boy looked like he tried to be as small and inconspicuous as possible, with black bangs framing his face, his posture hunched and his black eyes darting to an fro shyly, insecurely. Another thing was that the boy looked almost exactly like Itachi had done when the seventeen-year-old had been that age.

'And I shall call him Mini-Me.' Itachi couldn't help but think, then he focused back on the other people in the room and stood up from his chair. "Hello."

Uchiha Fugaku started the introductions. "This is Uchiha Mikoto, your mother." He said simply and without further ado.

The young woman stepped forwards. Her hands rose up to touch Itachi's face, hesitated, then simply settled gently on the teen's shoulders. "You… you are so grown up," she whispered in a somewhat awed tone, tears making her eyes glitter. "I remember when you were a newborn in my arms, and yet here you are, all grown up, and I missed it all."

"Mikoto," Fugaku's warning-laden voice cut in. "Do not make a scene."

Uchiha Mikoto nodded hastily, and put herself together again. "Of course, I'm sorry. It's good to see you so well, Itachi-kun – might I call you that?"

"Sure." Itachi nodded almost absentmindedly. His mind was busy processing all the information he had gotten from observing the way she had acted, and he quickly reached a conclusion that only confirmed his earlier theories. 'The Uchihas are a very traditional family. As the head of the clan Fugaku is used to being obeyed no matter what, a very dominating and difficult to please individual. Mikoto-san is the perfect housewife, despite the fact that she was – most likely – a shinobi herself before she married Fugaku. Very few civilians would have the skills necessary to control themselves so quickly, or to such a degree.'

Fugaku continued the introductions, a note of pride entering his voice. "This is the son of one of my cousins, and when his parents displayed weakness and got themselves killed on a mission, I took him in and raised him as my own. That turned out to be a very good decision. He is a genius in every sense of the word, and he has brought much honour to the clan. Itachi, meet-"

The young man a couple of years older than Itachi, stepped forwards and cut Fugaku off. "Uchiha Shisui." He said and shook Itachi's hand. "Nice to meet you, cousin."

"It is nice to meet you as well, Shisui-san," the teen replied, though his mind was yet again analysing the situation. 'Fugaku gave quite the introduction, didn't even bat an eyelash when he was interrupted, which means that Shisui is really high on the Uchiha food-chain. And Shisui seems to enjoy his position well enough, I pity the poor sod who challenges said position. Does he hope to take over as the heir to the title of Clan Head? Does he consider myself a threat, then? Hmm, by the feel of the calloused hands, the strength in the handshake, the muscles in the exposed areas of the arms and the legs, the few scars in sight and his control over his emotions, then Shisui must be one heck of a ninja – probably high on the food-chain in that aspect as well, and Fugaku is very proud of him. This need to prove himself to the head of the clan probably means that Shisui has worked very hard, most likely too hard. There is a certain something about him I can't quite put a name to, but I'm ready to bet my soul that Uchiha Shisui is ready to cave in under the pressure put on him by the entire clan. Poor fool.'

"And this is my youngest son and your brother, Uchiha Sasuke," the frown was back on Fugaku's face. "What are you waiting for, Sasuke? Greet your older brother." It was clear that the man thought his youngest son to be a total disgrace to the family.

The young boy stepped hesitantly forwards, and seemed to shrink even further into himself even further when he felt his father's displeased glare on his back. "It's… it's n-nice to meet you, Itachi-nii… -sam-sama. I- I'm Uchiha Sas-Sasuke."

'Overshadowed by his genius cousin Shisui so much that everyone – except, perhaps, the mother – has seemed to forget his existence. Forgotten it unless they compare him to said cousin, that is. This has led to insecurity, shyness, a need to stay out of the spotlight to keep from being compared to someone so much better. He's probably hiding his real skills, and it wouldn't surprise me if he was one of the worst pupils academically in his class. I wonder if he'll ever get his chance to shine?' Itachi leaned over and took the boy's hand in a firm, yet gentle grip. "It's nice to meet you as well, Sasuke-kun, but please do not say something you do not mean."

Sasuke blinked. "Wh-what…?"

The teen smiled. "Don't call me big brother until you mean it."

"B-but it-it's impolite-"

"I'd rather you be slightly impolite than having you lie straight to my face, Sasuke-kun. Call me 'nii-san' or 'aniki' when you feel that I have earned the title, not because it's polite."

The boy looked adorably confused. Mikoto-san looked like she was about to cry form happiness, Shisui looked more or less completely blank except for a small spark of interest in his black eyes, and Fugaku looked very displeased. The Hokage was sitting at his desk, and he had a small, knowing smile dancing about his lips.

Yes, Uchiha Itachi would shake the very foundations of the Uchiha Clan.

III

There, please tell me what you think.

When it comes to how Itachi and Co. travelled from a dingy shop in Chinatown, to the middle of one of the forests in the Land of Fire, then there are two explanations. One is that they used summoning scrolls, and that this will be further explained in later chapters. And two is that the author was too lazy to think up some fancy-schmancy explanation on how everything works, and decided to go with the first thing that fell into her head. I apologise for that one.

Itachi is 17 and Sasuke is 11 at this point in time, there's six years between them. I'm also thinking that Shisui is approximately 20 or 21 in this story. As for pairing, there will be none, at least for Itachi. Perhaps a passing mention of an earlier girlfriend, but that will be the extent of it.

Thanks to:

magerm, Kaaera, Meemei, Marauder Heir, Shi No Megami 20, mystik, Ookami Kage, dragonmage27, Artemis1000, Beta the Second, soccergirl13, angelsdawn1004, Chibi of Many Names, I-Y-T-Y, Oldmagic, and QueenOfHalf-BakesIdeas.