A Different Game

After what seemed like days to Kisame, but was only really an hour, the 3 deadly S-ranked ninja arrived at the diner. Though it had taken a few minutes, Kisame had snapped out of his shock, picked up Deidera, and caught up to Tobi. Leading him to the cafe.

"This is the place Tobi."

The large man opened the door to let Tobi in first. They were greeted by one of the waitresses who then lead the men to a small table away from the kitchen. Tobi elbowed Kisame.

"Psst! Is she the girl?" Tobi whispered loudly not really going un-noticed by anyone.

"No. I'll point her out when I see her." Kisame rolled his eyes and dropped the man luggage into one of the chairs with an 'oof'.

"Can I start you gentlemen off with some drinks until your waitress gets here?" The young girl fidgeted as she had tried to pretend she hadnt heard what Tobi had said or the fact that one of the men was unconscious.

"Oh yes! Tobi would like a chocolate shake." Tobi smile brightly up at the waitress, sitting tall and proud with his hands on his knees looking very cute.

This seemed to relax the waitress enough to ask the larger man what he wanted.

"A coke for me please. And sleepy here will want a milk." Kisame grinned at the girl as he jerked his thumb towards Deidera.

The waitress nodded then went off to get the drinks and inform their waitress that she had a table.

"Wow. Wow. WOW! All the girls here are pretty Kisme-kun. Tobi picked a hard game this time!" Tobi wiggled in his seat excitedly noticing all the waitresses.

"Calm down Tobi. People are looking at us. We need to blend in. Your suppose to be treating this as a recon mission remember?" Kisame half whispered, half hissed at Tobi.

"Good afternoon Gentlemen. I'm Mia and I'll be serving you today." The waitress set the drinks down then grabbed her pen and pad to take the orders.

Kisame turned away from his table mate when he heard the deep, soft voice of the waitress. He was shocked that she was able to sneak up on him and the others so effortlessly. He was even more surprised that such a sensual voice belonged to someone so young. But her voice alone wasn't all that drew his attention. She was wearing a simple white blouse with most of the top buttons un-done. Similar to Itachi's style. In fact if she hadn't been wearing a camisole underneath you would have been able to see a great deal more skin. Her hair was dark and pulled up into a simple twisted bun that, for some reason, Kisame wanted to let down. The shark nin swallowed hard as he realized he was staring. He took a long swig of his drink to recompose himself. Calm down ya moron. It's not as if you haven't seen a beautiful woman before. Kisame smirked up at the waitress.

"Good afternoon yourself." Kisame decided to play it cool. As if he hadn't just ogled her up and down.

Mia simply smiled at him but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She had seen that look before on men and it did not impress her. Her Attention was then pulled away by the young man acting like a 13 year old.

"Wow your pretty! If Senpai was awake he would think so too." Tobi bounced in his chair and nodded excitedly.

"Are you gentlemen ready to order now or do you need a moment?" She ignored the hyper one and the one asleep as she returned her gaze to the first man.

"I think we're set. I'd like a meat lovers pizza with heavy sauce. Sleepy's going to want chilli in a bread bowl. And he's having..."

"I'll have the French Dip. With the fries is fine.." Tobi's voice went suddenly silky smooth and calm as he put a certain emphasis on the word French. A slow, achingly sexy grin spread across the young man's lips.

Kisame hated that grin. Itachi had that same smirk. It had the power to make every woman in a 5 mile radius fawn over him. Grumbling something about pretty boys, and wondering if Kakuzu ever felt the same way about Hiden, he rested his head on his fist. In a lazy fashion he glanced over at the waitress, thinking he'd see another lovey-dovey woman, and was actually shocked to see that she held a glimmer of contempt for the young man as she wrote the order down. He straightened up to try to get a better look but it was gone, whipped away by her friendly smile to her new customers before she departed herself. Kisame stared after her and not because of the pleasing sway her hips made as she walked to the kitchens, though that was a perk. No he was very curious about a woman that seemed immune to the Uchiha charm.

Mia walked to the kitchen in cold fury. She hated working with the customers and hated that Sonya made her do it every once in a while. Upon entering said kitchen she spotted the person responsible for such torture working the grills and fryers.

"You need to take my section and I'll handle the food." Mia took the spatula away from Sonya while handing her the note pad.

"Why? You need to socialize with people. You can't do that in this kitchen. Besides, I won the bet so you have to work the floor." Sonya stuck her tongue out at her best friend, taking the spatula back shoving the pen and pad back at her.

"I socialize enough when we go dancing, thank you very much." Mia grabbed the spatula again shoving the pen and pad at Sonya's chest.

"Being in a club, dancing ONLY with me, talking ONLY to me, and drinking ONLY with me isn't socializing." Sonya rolled her eyes. She walked over to the doorway and looked out to her friends' section noticing 2 things. One being that she only had 1 table in it. Two being the fact that they were repeat customers. Well she knew the large man and the one asleep in the chair. "You have 1 table in your section. And not by accident either. Don't think I don't know you threaten the other girls to only put people in your area when there isn't a choice."

Sonya smirked playfully at Mia. "Come on. They're cute guys. What's wrong with them?"

"…They are just like every other male in the world. They see something pretty and think of only one thing. The young one is the worst. He KNOWS he's attractive. The large one just keeps staring at me like I'm a fish out of water or something and who knows about the sleepy guy." Mia wanted to yell but that wouldn't solve anything. She never yelled or ranted. She did however scowl and frown though.

The boss turned her back to stir soups and start the pizza that had just been ordered to hide a secret grin. "If you can't handle one table of harmless guys I guess I'll take the floor. Seems pretty low of you to go back on a bet though."

Sonya could almost feel her friend stiffen behind her. It was probably lower of Sonya to play with Mia's sense of honor but, she mentally shrugged, her friend needed to talk to other people.

"I never said I'd go back on our bet."

"I get it. Don't worry about it. It was just a friendly bet between 2 friends, why should your word matter on such a silly matter." She sighed and put the pizza into the oven, whipped the grin off her face and turned back to face Mia seriously, holding her hand out for the pad and pen.

Without a word, she walked out of the kitchen with a fake sunny smile to check on her one table.

Snickers and giggles could be heard amongst the timers and clanging of pots. Thankfully, Mia hadn't heard them.

While he waited for the order to be made, Kisame tried rousing 'sleeping beauty' and answering Tobi's stupid questions about all the girls. Which there seemed to be a lot of. Last time he was here it had just been the owner waiting on them. He vaguely wondered if she was away during the day and only served at night. His thoughts were always interrupted though Tobi asking 'is that her?' every time a pretty girl walked by. He was going nuts!

"This must be how mothers feel," he muttered as he shoved crackers into Deidera's mouth.

"I'm not sure but it could be close."

Kisame whipped his head around to see their waitress wearing a bright smile and aiming it right at him. His mouth fell open letting out a very sophisticated 'uuhhh' sound out. Mia had managed to sneak up on him again. He really needs to work on his spot checks. He shook himself before chuckling, "I wouldn't know either."

Mia looked away and grinned for real. The guy was funny in a simple-minded kind of way. But he didn't need to know that. When her turned to face him again she had on her business but friendly face on.

"The order will be up soon enough, I just wanted to make sure you guys were still ok over here." She kept her eyes on the larger man and did her best to ignore the young one. Though he was trying to get her attention. This did not go un-noticed by the shark-nin. It surprised him and even pleased him that she was ignoring the pretty boys, even if one was drooling cracker crumbs .

"All's good here. We aren't in a hurry right now anyway. Just hungry." He smiled his shark grin but it lost a good deal of effect since he was using a henge. A thought popped into his mind on how to get Tobi to leave him alone and it was so simple that he should have thought of it sooner. No doubt he would have had he not had his 'kids' with him.

"Do you happen to know if the owner is working today? Cant think of her name right now but she served me and my friends on our first visit here."

Tobi perked up at hearing Kisame be direct and became excited that he may not have to wait any more to see this mystery girl.

Mia became cool again. She looked over the customers with a more assessing glance than before. She wondered if they were ninja looking for Sonya or if they had something to do with the man that was in earlier today.

"You mean Sonya? She may be around somewhere. Haven't seen her today yet though. Want to leave a message for her? I'll tell her as soon as I see her next." Mia smiled pleasantly but it didn't reach her eyes.

Either he ignored the subtle change in the waitress or he didn't notice at all, but he gave her no real information anyway. Just saying that he was the big strong guy that helped move the chairs and tables to the bakery one evening. Mia promised to relay the message then headed back to the kitchen to delivery it and pick up her table's order.

Upon hearing the message, Sonya smiled and went about making a personal order of baked spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread while Mia handed out her order. When she came back, a goofy grin was on Sonya's face as she un-tied the apron and placed it over her Mia's head.

"The bets been paid, I'll finish up the table. You can cook."

"Oh? Just a moment ago I needed to socialize more. Whats going on, Sonya? Why are you letting ninja in here?" Mia was beyond confused. She may have her issues with men, but Sonya had always thrown out other Shinobi customers. But now she was getting all goofy eyed and secretive.

"I'll let you know later. I did promise after all to keep you posted." Sonya smiled as she walked out the door with a to-go box of the pasta heading towards Mia's only customers.

~~~~Authors Note~~~~

This chapter has been written, trashed, scraped, re-written over the years. And I'm sorry for that. Been so caught up in reading fan-fiction I guess I forgot I had my own going. I'll try to do better. If you're a person who has been reading this since I started it and I seem to start taking a long time to up-date, send me a kick in the ass. I deserve it.

~Cyria