On a grassy hillside overlooking a small village on the border of the Waterfall Country stood a small cluster of cherry-blossom trees; their petals currently in full-bloom. With the pale pink petals drifting lazily in the warm, gentle breeze, it created a picture of peace and serenity, and a view that any landscape artist would kill for the opportunity to capture on canvas. And beautiful though it was, it would probably come as a bit of a surprise to see who was currently sitting under the tallest of the trees enjoying it all.

"This is so mind-numbingly boring!"

Enjoying, being a subjective term, of course.

"Aren't you bored as hell out here too, Itachi?"

"Kisame, as Uzumaki Naruto is currently traveling with Jiraiya of the Sannin, we have little choice but to wait out our time for the moment when we are best suited to strike. And since we have no clue as to their current location, it will do us no good to search for them until word comes from our scouts. Therefore, until they are found and we are given proper instruction from Pein-sama, we have little choice but continue simply biding our time."

"...That was a pretty long-winded way of saying 'No, Kisame, I'm not bored, but thanks for asking'."

Itachi ignored his aquatic teammate. Truth be told, he actually was growing rather bored with their situation, not that he would ever admit to it. The two of them had successfully captured the Gobi several months ago, and hadn't done much of anything since besides attempt to track the movements of their original target. It was proving to be more difficult than originally thought, as Jiraiya was showing an amazing ability of keeping all pursuers off their trail. He and the boy would never settle down for more than a day or two in each place that they went, meaning that even when one of their scouts managed to find them and send word, they would be long gone before anyone else could reach them. The scouts would usually be found dead, as well. Someone was going to have to talk to Zetsu about the quality of fodder he'd been hiring recently.

Kisame stood up and stretched his arms out restlessly. "You wanna...I don't know, spar or something while we're waiting?"

Itachi glared up at him from the corner of his eye. "Your hate is not strong enough to challenge me."

"What? Hey, I hate lots of stuff! Like...fishermen...and sushi bars, and um...oh, people who eat at sushi bars-"

"Regardless," Itachi interrupted, already growing tired of the fish puns. "There is no point in wasting our chakra on such trivial matters as sparring." That, and there was always the slightest chance that Kisame might actually beat him.

But only the slightest.

Probably.

Best not to take that chance, at any rate.

Kisame sighed, giving Samehada a few lazy swings. "Well I'm going stir-crazy here! I gotta do something to liven things up or I'll go nuts. Jeez, never had to worry about boredom back in Kiri."

The Uchiha fought valiantly to not roll his eyes in irritation. No matter how much he hated Kisame's pointless ramblings, he still had an unflappable image to maintain.

"Yeah, those were the days," Kisame continued as he gazed up at the clouds through the trees. "Hunter nins, enemy assassins and people mistaking blue, scaly skin as some sort of Bloodline all on your trail all day and all night, forcing you to constantly sleep with both eyes open; not healthy, by the way, and burns like a bastard when you regain consciousness. But still worth it for all the fun you had. But now? Hell, I haven't been properly ambushed once since joining Akatsuki. Not once!"

"That's nice, Kisame," Itachi replied dismissively.

"Doesn't make much sense to me, you know? It's not like we don't have massive bounties on our heads, or anything. I mean, we're the biggest of the Big Bads, the Akatsuki! World Infamous! Elites! We're the guys who level entire villages and capture biju for fun and recreation, for God's sake!"

"That is not why we do it."

"...Really?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "Then why do we do it?"

"We do it because..." Itachi then realized for what seemed like the first time that he wasn't sure why they were capturing the bijus. Pein had never really gotten around to explaining it to them for some reason. ...Now that he thought about it, why had he even joined Akatsuki to begin with? Obviously there was the pressing matter of keeping a close eye on the man who claimed to be Madara, though he had the feeling that Madara already realized that Itachi was looking for the opportunity to end him. Why else would his personality have shifted so vastly if not for the simple reason of irritating Itachi to the point where he couldn't stand to be around him for more than a minute or two at a time?

But that was about it, really. It's not like he enjoyed what they were currently doing. And then there were his teammates; he hated most of them and partially tolerated the rest, not to mention a good portion of them were just waiting for the opportune time to murder him for humiliating them or blackmailing them or just for the Hell of it depending on which one you asked-

"Well?" Kisame prompted, interrupting the Uchiha's thoughts. "Why do we do it?"

"We do it because it is necessary to our main objective," he answered in an attempt to save face.

"Oh." The fish-man frowned. "What was our main objective again?"

"You'll have to ask Pein-sama when we get back. I'm…not in the mood to explain it to you right now."

Kisame heaved another deep sigh, laid his sword across his broad shoulders and leaned back against the tree. He suddenly brightened. "Hey, maybe the baby Uchiha will come after you again. That's always good for a laugh, huh?"

Itachi gave a dismissive grunt, mimicking his partner by leaning his head back against the tree trunk and gazing into the distance. "Foolish though my little brother may be, I don't expect to see him again for some time. His life is still not unsightly enough to compete with me yet."

"I don't know; I hear he went off and joined Orochimaru a while back." Kisame pointed out. "You can't really get much more unsightly than that."

"While I am inclined to agree, he will still have to do much better if he hopes to defeat me," Itachi informed him with no uncertainty at all.

"I guess. Would be a nice change of pace, though."

Itachi made a noncommittal sound before the two fell into silence, Itachi staring out at the horizon while Kisame shifted to a reclining position and watched the cherry blossom petals waft in the breeze.

A minute passed. Then another. And another.

"Wanna play Go Fish?"

"Shut up, Kisame."

xxx

"And here's your double beef ramen, sir," the ramen chef said, sliding a third bowl of steaming ramen in front of the masked boy.

"Thanks!"

The man stepped back, leaning against the edge of the stove as he watched the mysterious boy polish off his first bowl and start in on the second. It was a bit perplexing, the way the boy managed to eat without removing his swirly orange mask. ...It didn't look like he was slipping the noodles underneath it. It honestly looked like he was slurping them straight through the mask.

Well, at least it wasn't quite as weird as that other Akatsuki guy who ate with his hands. Literally.

"So which one do you think I should kill, Chef-san?"

Yeah, if it wasn't for the uncomfortable conversation the boy was having with him, the chef could probably say that this one was currently his least disliked member of Akatsuki that he'd met so far.

"I'm sort of leaning toward Sasori-san, myself," Tobi went on between slurps of noodles and broth. "I mean, I never really liked puppets much anyway. I always had these dreams when I was little about puppets coming to life and trying to take my heart so that they could become a real boy. Also, if I killed him then I could be partners with Deidara-san, which would be great…"

The chef sighed and tuned the boy out as he went back to cleaning. Some days it just didn't pay to live in a village frequented by sociopathic missing-nin. But at least the leasing payments were low.

As he scrubbed a used pan, he began to hear various cries of shock and terror from nearby. He frowned and turned to look outside. Then he nearly screamed himself when he saw a demonic orange creature barreling straight toward his shop. The bubbling reddish-orange shroud combined with the blood-red eyes and feral gashes on the creature's face would have terrified him enough on their own, but it was the enormous ball of swirly, blue-white chakra it was hefting that really did him in.

Then the creature roared.

"WHARRGARBL!" it bellowed wildly as it leapt into the air, thrusting the hand which held the giant orb out in front of him, targeting the masked boy's back on his descent. The chef had barely enough time to consider his own safety and dive out of the way before the thought occurred to warn the boy as well.

Too late! The creature gave another howl as it connected with its target-

-only to have it turn into a grunt of surprise as both he and the orb passed right through the boy's chest, as though he hadn't even been there.

In his own shock, the chef could just make out the look of confusion on the creature's face right before the swirling orb struck the stove.

xxx

Tobi blinked as dust and debris poured down all around him. He looked around, spotting an orange leg sticking out of one of the larger piles of rubble. Looking the other way, he saw the chef, who had been blown several yards away from the damage site, and was now staring in mute horror at where his shop used to be.

He set his chopsticks on top of his bowl, scratched gently at the point on his sternum where the stranger had passed through him, then grabbed his chopsticks again and resumed eating; being careful to pick around the wood splinters and gravel that was now floating in the broth.

xxx

Naruto groaned, slowly extracting himself from the rubble. Shaking his head, he glanced around, seeing a lot of destruction but, unfortunately, also seeing the Akatsuki member still sitting in his seat, completely unharmed. But how was that even possible? He knew for a fact that the fiend hadn't moved out of the way of his attack… And now that he thought about it, what had he hit to cause such an explosion?

"Y-you little punk!" Someone yelled. "You've destroyed my ramen shop!"

Naruto felt ice in his chest at the man's words. The numbness spread quickly when he saw that the man in question was directing his accusations toward HIM. He took another staggering look around him, spying the mangled remains of the stove buried beneath even more rubble, various cooking utensils scattered about, the scent of spilt spices and other ingredients finally registering in his mind, and finally the batch of half-cooked noodles squashed on the ground, its broth already soaked into the wooden floor. The only things that managed to survive were the villain he'd been aiming at, the section of countertop to the right side of his seat, and the two seats on either side of him.

All the horrible, unwarranted destruction, and knowing it was because of him, was just too much to take at this point.

The shop owner was about to start yelling again when the strange boy suddenly began to quiver. His eyes started shining with unshed tears, his bottom lip started trembling and a disturbing tic had appeared on the right side of his face.

The whole thing was beginning to creep the chef out. "H-hey kid…just, just calm down, okay? The place was insured anyway, so it's not that big a deal, really. It'll be okay-"

"Not it won't!" he stated weakly. "It's never going to be okay. Because I'm cursed, don't you see? That's the only logical explanation. Ever since I started trying to learn this God forsaken jutsu nothing has gone right! Oh sure, the fact that I can't get even the slightest handle on this jutsu is annoying, but I can deal. And so what if I can't find my way home? Or find Ero-Sennin? I'll get there so long as I keep trying. And hey, so I learn that my childhood idol and the guy who everyone seems to think is my dad is a womanizing deviant who can't even pick decent food to obsess over. I've gone through worse disappointment than that. Hell, I accidentally copped a feel on two different women this morning and didn't get beaten up by either of them! How many guys can say that?"

The chef continued to listen, wary as the boy's voice began to rise in volume as he gestured to the ruins around them.

"But this? This right here? This just isn't fair," he continued. "Just when I think I've found a sanctuary from all the weirdos and crazies that I've been coming across today, it's taken from me! Just like that. Actually, no! Not taken from me; I destroyed it! Manslaughter, that's what it was! I just murdered the oldest and closest friend I've ever had! The one thing that never looked down on me and told me how I wasn't good enough! If I were an Uchiha I'd have unlocked my Mangekyo Sharingan right now! And if Sasuke found out that I unlocked my Mangekyo before him he'd probably get all bitchy about it and refuse to ever come back to Konoha again! And then Sakura-chan will be upset, and if she finds out that it's MY fault that Sasuke isn't ever coming back she'll get mad at me and if you've never seen Sakura-chan angry then you can't comprehend just how horrible it really is."

He paused long enough to take a deep, shaky breath.

"AND THEN SHE'LL PROBABLY NEVER GO ON A DATE WITH ME!"

And with that long and overly hysterical rant out of his system, Naruto started bawling like a toddler with a broken toy.

The chef, unsurprisingly, couldn't come up with a proper response for any of it. Most of the lunatics he dealt with were of the evil, destructive kind, not the sobbing, rambling kind.

Fortunately, someone else was there who knew exactly what to say, even if he didn't realize it himself.

"Aw, don't feel so bad," the masked Akatsuki member said, sounding awfully chipper for someone who had just avoided a near successful attempt on his life. He held out his untouched bowl toward Naruto. "Here, have some ramen, that'll cheer you up!"

Naruto's wailing stopped in a flash. He stared up at the man he believed to have been his most mortal of enemies, then down to the bowl he was holding out toward him, and then back up again.

"For me?" he asked, pointing to the ramen and then to himself for clarification.

"Sure! I'm full, anyway."

And suddenly the guy was no longer one of Naruto's most mortal of enemies. He was a hero. A saint. A guardian angel from the heavens, come down to end his undeserved suffering.

Then again, he was still Akatsuki.

"It's not…poisoned or anything is it?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.

Tobi pulled the bowl back to examine its contents. "No, but there is some plaster floating around in it. And the noodles look just a little bit undercooked. But other than that-"

He stopped trying to explain when he realized the bowl was no longer in his hand. So he settled for watching Naruto inhale the contents of the bowl in a time he wouldn't have thought possible for a human.

On paper, beef-plaster ramen didn't sound at all appetizing, but you know, with the day he'd been having so far, Naruto would eat seconds and thirds of it. Of course, at the speed he ate he barely tasted any of it anyway.

After licking the bowl clean and dislodging a couple splinters from his mouth, he returned his suspicious gaze back to the person sitting amongst the remains of the stand. Things still didn't seem to add up about this…

"You're a member of Akatsuki?" he asked.

"Yep!" Tobi answered happily, puffing his chest out. "Just started today as a grunt! They told me I can move up to full membership as soon as one of the higher-ups die."

"And that's the evil Akatsuki with all the S-ranked missing nin?"

"I think they're just misunderstood, really."

Naruto frowned. "You think the group going around attacking villages and trying to capture all the jinchuriki are just misunderstood?"

"Well, maybe they have ulterior motives for them?"

"Such as…?"

Tobi shrugged. "Petting zoo?"

"Bwah?"

"Maybe we're planning to build a really big petting zoo," he elaborated. "Did you ever consider that?"

"...No. I can honestly say I never gave that so much as a moment's consideration."

"Well, there you go then," Tobi stated, nodding in approval of his own masterful ninja art of deception by tricking the blonde and keeping him from learning Akatsuki's true purpose. Whatever purpose that might have been, anyway. Somebody back at the base could probably fill him in. Hopefully it wasn't really about a petting zoo. Boy, that would be awkward.

Then again, having his own zoo would be pretty cool...

Naruto fought the urge to sigh. The craziness that seemed to run rampant like a virus outside of Konoha was obviously contagious. Here he was having a conversation with a member of the same group out to suck the demonic fox from his body, thereby killing him in the process, and after the morning he'd had this didn't even feel all that out of place.

Of course, this guy wasn't exactly acting like someone who was out to kill him. He didn't even seem all that evil. Hell, he ate ramen, so he obviously had to have some redeeming qualities to him.

"So...you really do like ramen, right?" he asked, just to be sure.

"Well sure! What kind of person doesn't like ramen?"

Naruto's threw his arms into the air. "I KNOW, RIGHT!"

xxx

OMAKE OMAKE OMAKE

Without fanfare, Naruto appeared on a hilltop overlooking a giant expanse of plains. Glancing back and forth and seeing nothing distinguishing about any of it, he hung his head in defeat. This whole thing was just getting ridiculous now.

"Where on Earth am I now?"

Naruto's head lifted, a odd look on his face. He hadn't been the one to say that...

Turning around, he found himself standing in front of a boy who couldn't be much older than he was. The boy was dressed in a yellow tanktop, black pants and shoes, and a yellow and black bandana holding his black hair back. He also had a large green backpack with a red bamboo umbrella strapped to it, and a befuddled look on his face as he stared down at a map in his hands.

"Um...hi," Naruto greeted, catching the boy's attention.

"Oh, hello," the boy replied. "Say, could you tell me how to get to Nerima?"

Naruto scratched his head. "Is that anywhere near Konoha?"

"Where's Konoha?"

"..."

"..."

"Well, I'll find it."

"Yeah, good luck with that."

"You too."

xxx

"So, you're saying that you've been searching for your crewmates ever since you got into a fight with a giant marine who...slapped you halfway across the world?"

"Yeah, that's about the size of it," the green-haired swordsman affirmed with an added nod. Why the guy carried three swords with him Naruto wasn't sure, but it was pretty cool all the same. "I've been looking for weeks now, but even with this fancy tracking paper, there's no telling just how far away they all are."

"...You wouldn't, uh, happen to have an extra one of those, would you?"

"Sorry."

"Damnit. Well, I hope you find them. But in the meantime, do you know if I'm in walking distance of Konoha? Or the Fire Country?"

"What direction is it in?"

Naruto shrugged. "I dunno. If we're this close to the ocean, maybe north? Or west?"

The swordsman glanced around, finding no landmarks anywhere on the horizon. "Well if it's north, there's no place to climb here. But if it's west, then I guess you'd go to the left."

Naruto looked from one side to the other. "Your left or mine?"

"Well, yours of course," he said as though it were obvious.

Naruto shrugged again, it was the only lead he had so far. "Guess I'll try it. Good luck finding your friends."

"Thanks."

It was about a minute later before Naruto stopped short. "Wait, did he say 'climb'?"

xxx

"Okay, so let me get this straight: You guys are dead?"

"That's right," the menacing, one-eyed man stated. "Aren't you?"

"Not that I'm aware of. And it's your job to kill other dead people because they've turned into evil monsters?"

"You got it, Whiskers," the pink-haired child perched on the man's shoulder piped in.

"Wow, that might just be the weirdest thing I've heard all day." Everyone was silent for a moment, and Naruto was started to feel a bit nervous over the way the scary man with bells in his hair was staring at him. "So can either of you give me directions to Konoha?"

"Sure I can!" the girl said happily. She pointed down the road. "Just go down that way and turn left."

"Okay," Naruto nodded, focusing on making a mental list of directions.

"When you get to a crossroads, you need to turn left."

"...Okay."

"Then you'll go a little way and turn left at the next road."

"...Okaaaay."

"And then at the next road you'll turn left-"

"That'll just lead me right back here!" he shouted.

The little girl looked indignant. "Hey, are you doubting my directions? Because I'm an awesome navigator! Tell him how I'm an awesome navigator, Ken-chan!"

"Hm? Yeah sure, she's pretty awesome," he said distractedly.

Naruto gave a tired shake of his head. "Well...thanks for the help, I guess." With that, he turned to leave.

"Hey, hang on." Naruto turned back to see the scary guy bouncing a very damaged sword on his shoulder. And he did NOT like the looks of that huge grin on his face. "Before you leave: How strong are you?"

xxx

xxx

Just to clarify: Hibiki Ryoga (Ranma 1/2), Roronoa Zoro (One Piece), Zaraki Kenpatchi & Yachiru (Bleach)

More to come as it's written. Happy late July 4th (if you celebrate it), and have a nice day.

LL