Chapter 10: Super Kittens Arc - He's Still a Good Boy, Right?

Before we commence with the story, I wanted to send out a few shoutouts to some amazing people:

crieghh: Thank you so much for enjoying my story! After all, you were my inspiration for writing this in the first place, since your Akatsuki Kittens fanfiction is so awesome!

MidnaMoo: Thank you for all of the kind reviews you left on the story! I'm glad that you think the friendship between Kagami-chan and Tobi is adorable!

AmbertheCat: I really appreciate your enthusiasm towards the story, and all of your reviews really motivate me to keep writing! I promise that I won't let you down!

Nightowl343: I'm really happy that you love how the story is going so far! Thank you for all of the sweet reviews! And one of your top five stories? I'm honored! :)

dango-lover17: Thanks for the reviews! Glad that you're excited about Rin being in the story! I started watching InuYasha yesterday, and holy cow! It's truly amazing, which means a lot coming from a person who is deathly afraid of dogs! I'm already shipping Kagome with Inuyasha in my sleep!

That's all for now! Don't worry: if you are a supporter of this story, but I did not mention your name here, know that I still think you are awesome for just reading it! Now onward!

Disclaimer: The OCs and plot belong to me. Nothing else.

Sasori's POV

The next day, the very first thing the Akatsuki ganged up to do was attack Hidan and beat the living daylights out of him.

"You idiot!" Deidara growled, kicking Hidan. "Don't you realize that you traumatized an innocent seven-year-old girl by cutting yourself with that knife, un? What is wrong with you these days?"

I shook my head, watching as everybody except for Leader-sama, Konan, and Itachi tortured Hidan. Once they had found out about his ability to heal himself, they decided to have a contest to see who can beat up Hidan the most. Although I wanted to kill Hidan for pulling off that stunt, I remembered what Kagami had said earlier about fighting and how she didn't like it, so I stopped myself. On the other hand, Deidara was just too angry.

"How was I supposed to f****** know that the little s*** was watching me?" Hidan growled.

Kakuzu socked him in the face. "First of all, her name is Kagami, and second, you're the little s*** here for pulling out your masochist side in front of all these children, half-wit!"

Kaiya and Yukio rushed into the living room pulled apart the fighting cats. "Stop it," said Kaiya. "Think about it, kitties. If my imouto were watching you guys do this, would she approve?"

At that, all of the kittens immediately ceased, and began walking away from Hidan. Deidara shot Kaiya an apologetic look before running off to join the rest of the Akatsuki, and I followed him, ready to start today's plans.

"Brat," I said, gaining his attention. "We've unlocked everybody's chakra except for Leader-sama and Tobi. I think we should try and get their chakra back today, in case one of them needs to protect himself in this world."

Deidara shrugged. "Well, I couldn't care less about Tobi, un. But Leader-sama...yeah, we should try to get his power back, whatever it was. What was it called again?"

"Shinra Tensei," I reminded him. "But everybody just calls it the Almighty Push. Although he uses that often, I can't think of any materials that could be associated with it. Any ideas?"

"I've got nothing, danna," he replied. "I even slept on it, un. The only thing that I've been able to come up with was how to communicate with the children better, and in a way in which they can understand us."

"How?" I inquired, wondering what Deidara came up with. "Does it have anything to do with your art?"

He shook his head negatively. "No, unfortunately. I may have gotten my chakra back, but I still have no clay, un. But I was thinking that we could find a pen somewhere in this house and use paper to visually show our thoughts."

"You know," I remarked, "that's actually not a bad idea. Maybe we should tell Konan, since she can easily summon paper to us whenever we need it."

Nodding, he scanned the room in search of a pen or other writing tool. "Do you see anything, danna?"

"Looking for this?" Zetsu suddenly said, causing Deidara to jump. "I stole it from the kitchen last night, while I was searching for more evidence."

Zetsu dropped the black pen he was carrying in his mouth in front of me, then disappeared into the ground.

"I'll go and get paper," Deidara said, running off towards Konan's direction. "I can't believe I haven't thought of this before, un!"

"But then again," I muttered, "it's kind of hard to think logically after we realize that we're magical kittens."

I attached my chakra strings to the pen, then used my paw to click it on. As soon as Deidara came back with a sheet of blank paper, I quickly snatched it from him and began writing a message down.

Hello, children, I began the note. Can you understand us this way?

"Of course they can understand you that way, danna!" Deidara protested after reading what I had written. Irritated, he snatched the pen from me. "Maybe I should be the one writing the message, un!

"I know that they will understand us, brat," I growled, ripping the pen out of his weak grasp. "I thought it would be better to write a proper greeting first, in case they end up thinking one of their siblings is trying to play a trick on them."

"A paper and pen?" asked Kisame, walking right next to me. Suddenly, he made a grab for the pen, which I lifted up into the air in order to keep it from being snatched. "Gimme that! I want to talk to the children!"

Hidan appeared beside Kisame, growling at the blue cat. "Don't give the f****** pen to the f****** shark! Hand over the f****** pen to me!"

I simply shook my head, glaring at the cats. "I don't feel like giving it to either of you guys. Get lost."

In anger, Hidan lunged at me, but I attached some of my strings to him, stopping his movement immediately. He clawed and cursed at me, but I just turned and walked away, unfazed.

"D*** you and your f****** powers, you puppet b******!" he roared. "Why did I have to get stuck with a s***** power like f****** self-healing?"

"Cut it out, Hidan," growled a stern voice from beside us. We both turned to face the angry glare of Leader-sama, his purple eyes blazing with fury. "Sasori, give me the pen."

I nodded and obliged, not wanting to face his wrath. Although he had not unlocked his powers yet, he was still equally scary without them, and I had constantly forced myself to obey his orders, no matter how many more shinobi I had wanted to kill. Hidan, on the other hand...

"Hey, Leader-chan!" he hissed at the orange cat, who was now twitching at the nickname. "Gimme the d*** pen!"

Hidan bravely snatched it from Leader-sama's grasp, smirking as he began to write his own message on the sheet of paper.

I didn't get to see what he wrote, because at that moment, Leader-sama's eyes clouded with pure rage, and he extended one of his paws forward. I wasn't sure if anybody else could notice, but his body was surrounded by a thin layer of chakra.

"Shinra Tensei!" he growled angrily at Hidan, sending the wretched silver kitten flying towards the wall. Hidan hit the wall with a thud, then faceplanted into the floor. As soon as he tried to get up again, Konan had already leaped in front of him, her claws extended in front of his neck.

"Next time you attempt to take something from Pein-sama," she growled threateningly, "I will not cease to kill you. Is that clear?"

He scowled at her, but handed the pen back to Konan before turning tail and running away swiftly. Shaking her head, Konan handed the pen back to Leader-sama, who only gave her a curt nod.

"Sasori," he began. "Your message is fine, but from now on, I will write the messages. Understood?"

I simply nodded, then watched as he showed the sheet of paper to the children.

"What's this?" remarked Kaiya curiously. She and Yukio read over the letter, eyes widening as they scanned each word. "Wow, you cats are pretty smart! Yeah, we can understand you better that way."

Leader-sama nodded, then proceeded to write a different message.

Good. Since you know that we have powers of some sort, you must never tell anybody that we have them.

"I can see why," commented Yukio. "If word about this gets out to everybody, then maybe alien experiments will be performed on the poor kittens. In addition, who would even believe us if we told them that our cats could do such things?"

Kaiya smiled and walked upstairs. "I'm going to go get something really quickly. Watch the kittens, okay?"

Yukio nodded, his eyes never leaving us. Leader-sama had run out of space on the page, so he was currently trying to assist Konan with making another sheet. I would have expected the process would hasten a little, but then again, Konan wasn't able to turn herself into paper like she used to.

By the time they had managed to create a new sheet of paper to write on, Kaiya returned downstairs, carrying an entire stack of paper and a bucket of assorted pens and pencils.

"What a waste of time," muttered Leader-sama. "I guess we can all write messages, but whatever you do, do not tell them our real names or that we come from the Akatsuki. They don't seem to know, so let's keep it that way."

We all nodded solemnly in response.

Kaiya dropped the heavy stack in front of us, huffing tiredly. "Alright now, take as many as you need, and let's have a talk."

Kaiya's POV

I watched the kittens as they began expressing their thoughts on those sheets of paper. Each seemed to be writing their own message, though when I looked at Twinkleshine's…well, I made a mental note to myself not to look at the stuff that crazy cat wrote ever again.

"Okay," I began. "Let's start off with your powers. Can you explain something to us about them?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Yukio excitedly. "I really want to know more about your cool powers! Do you all have them unlocked yet?"

We created these techniques ourselves in order to fight against enemies, wrote Rosie. As you can see, mine is to create strings out of chakra and control people and objects with them.

"What's chakra?" I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

"I feel like I've heard it somewhere," muttered Yukio, "but it doesn't seem to ring a bell with me. For now, I'm going to guess that's what they call their blue aura."

That's correct, Angel wrote. Manipulating paper is my power. All I needed to do was touch that crane, as you saw. So far, when we touch something that corresponds to our personalities, our chakra returns, along with one of our basic abilities.

"I understand," I answered her. "But how do you kittens know what power will come back to you?"

Sasuke showed me his response next. We don't, Kaiya. Sometimes it's one of our signature abilities, like my ability to summon black fire or Firework's to blow up clay. However, it can be a simplified version of one of our most powerful techniques, such as Dragon's ability to shoot a plain stream of water instead of manipulating water sharks.

"Astounding!" cried Yukio. "Sharks are so cool, especially in that movie, Jaws!"

I shook my head. "I don't even know how we got you into that, little otouto. That is a movie for teenagers, unless you were watching television with Naoki-nii-san. I swear, I feel like he is in a relationship with that darn thing…"

"Fuzzsticks?" Yukio piped up. "What are you writing?"

The kitten was busy trying to scribble something onto his paper, but I couldn't see anything because he had his back turned to me. Finally, after ten seconds of waiting, he turned to all of us and showed me his sloppily written message:

Fuzzsticks wants some candy!

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I heard Firework sigh in relief, but it was probably just my imagination.

That's quite an unusual thing to say, I thought to myself. Even more, he talked in the third person, as if "Fuzzsticks" was somebody else. But then again, he seems to have that kind of playful, idiotic personality. Also, I think he's the only one without a power. Still, why candy of all things?

Suddenly, my eyes examined his face a bit more, and I couldn't help but noticed that his face resembled an orange lollipop.

Of course, I realized with a jolt. A lollipop! That might be just what he needs to get his power back!

"I'll get some candy right away!" I responded, heading into the kitchen to grab a lollipop for Fuzzsticks. Opening the cabinet where Kagami "secretly" hid her candy stash, I reached in and secured my hand around the stick of a large lollipop.

"Got one!" I called, taking my hand out and racing back into the living room. "Touch it, Fuzzsticks! Maybe your power will come out!"

Bouncing and mewing excitedly, Fuzzsticks leaped onto my arm and placed his paw on the lollipop. Three seconds later, he jumped off, a blue aura surrounding his body. He meowed in joy, realizing that he had a power now.

I threw my hands up, smiling. "I can't believe that actually worked!" I squealed. "Fuzzsticks, let's see what your power is!"

Without hesitating, Fuzzsticks took a deep breath, like Sasuke had, then shot a column of fire into the air. It was a normal, scarlet fire, but I watched in astonishment as it formed a giant fireball in our living room before disappearing into a few short-lived embers.

"Just impressive!" I praised the talented cat. "You've definitely practiced that ability, wherever you came from."

Deciding to try out the ability in a safer place, I picked up Fuzzsticks and ran towards the bathroom. "Follow me, kitties! I'm going to test out Fuzzsticks's ability in here!"

The other cats followed me, wanting to as more of what Fuzzsticks could do with his fire ability. Once they were all inside, I closed the door, just in case the flames created smoke. Then, I carried all of the kittens onto the bathroom counter, where I could easily douse them with water in case of an emergency.

"Go ahead, Fuzzsticks," I calmly told the cat, setting him down on the counter. "You can continue."

With that, Fuzzsticks nuzzled my arm, then proceeded to shoot another beam of fire into the air.

I held onto the valve, ready to splash some water everywhere in case something disastrous happened. However, despite Fuzzsticks's usually carefree and joyous personality, he seemed to be focusing more on how he was using his power. Instead of shooting out a wild and out-of-control column of fire, he used his aura to spin the flames around, almost making it resemble a ribbon. We watched in awe as embers drizzled down magnificently, crackling and popping just before they hit the ground.

"That has got to be one of the coolest fire powers ever," I honestly admitted. Although Sasuke's black fire was nice, I thought that Fuzzsticks's power was even nicer, with him being able to control the shape of the flame. Even Firework, who usually hated Fuzzsticks, was staring at the one-eyed cat in amazement.

If only Kagami was awake, I thought, smiling. She will love the fact that her favorite cat has a power now.

But in the midst of all this excitement of how beautiful Fuzzsticks's flames were, we had all forgotten something important. The fire was in control, but I had completely forgotten about the flammable bottle of lavender perfume that I had on the bathroom counter, where the flames were pointed directly at. Had I not heard it beginning to expand, we all could have been in greater danger, with the quickly-expanding bottle.

"Noooo!" I shouted, desperately reaching for the expanding bottle of lavender perfume. "Fuzzsticks! Turn off your fire ability now!"

But it was already too late. As soon as Fuzzsticks realized his mistake, the perfume bottle exploded, spreading tons of violet fumes all over the poor kittens.

"Quick! Hold your breath!" I commanded, remembering that if animals inhaled too many of the fumes, it could be potentially dangerous. Running towards the door, I quickly opened it, trying to let all the fumes escape before they affected the kittens. "Hurry! Everybody, please leave the bathroom immedi—"

I was cut off by a loud poof, and the entire room filled with another thick cloud, this time with white smoke. I waved my hands faster, trying desperately to let every single fume and cloud escape.

"Everyone!" I shouted. "Leave the bathroom! Now!"

But I could not hear any pawsteps walk out the door. I received no response from the kittens, not even a mew of pain or suffering.

Oh no, I thought to myself, almost crying. What have I done? What have I done? I knew I shouldn't have tested Fuzzsticks's fire powers in here! Perfume can be flammable, and the steam building up inside the bottle could make the entire thing explode!

When the smoke partially cleared, I saw that the kittens were indeed gone. But not in the way I had expected: there were no cat bodies at all. Instead, in their place were nine men and a woman, wearing black cloaks with a red cloud pattern on them.

"Who the heck—" I started, but couldn't bring myself to finish my sentence. The strange people were — although I'd hate to admit it — kind of scary looking, even the woman. I backed out of the bathroom quickly, but a childish voice cut me off, belonging to a man wearing a basketball-shaped mask.

"Tobi's still a good boy, right?"

A/N: Aaaaaand they're humans again. Eek! From this point, chaos and more rising action shall ensue...hee hee hee...

Thank you all for your amazing support once again!

Question: Who is your favorite Naruto character of all time?

I will be sure to put these at the end of every chapter, Nightowl343! Glad that you enjoy them!

Peace out!

— Tenshi —