Author Note:

And here is the last part of the Freedom trilogie, Akatsuki's (mis)adventure in the West. It's kinda short, but I think you'll like it.

A group of men in black cloaks decorated with red clouds walked through the unfamiliar streets. In their homeland, the building often had curved walls, brute angles were relatively rare, and the concrete often was smoothed. But here, the buildings were angular, massive, and many walls showed the rough, naked stone that made them. The people of the land were also different, their eyes were rounder, their skin a bit paler. Even the weather was different, much damper and cloudier. The fighters of the land were also different, there seemed to be so many different types, so many more than in their lands.

They had talked to a native of the Elemental Lands that had found his way here, and he had quickly described the kind of warriors that dominated these lands. The majestic knights, clad in their armours of plate; the rangers, expert archers and forest dwellers, often found with an animal familiar; the magicians and their destructive spells, the equivalent of jutsu; the clerics and their healing spells, capable of erasing even the most horrible injury in an instant; the paladins, metal clad warrior monks in service of one of the many gods of this land; the brazen barbarians from the northern lands, fighting without armour, seeking glorious death to join their bloodthirsty gods; the rogues, stealthy fighters and thieves; and so many more.

The man had also depicted the things that plagued these lands, the necromancers and their armies of undead, the vampires, monstrosities that drank the blood of the living, the werewolves that were gathering in the northern forests, close to the barbarian lands, the occasional evil wizard, and various other things that could pose a threat even to a trained ninja. While facing such threats, the various kingdoms of the land had little time to engage in any kind of war, and after centuries of battle against these things, they had gotten pretty close, to the point that every king knew the others by their name, and was related to them.

To Pain, it looked like a dream come true, every man and woman, standing together, as brothers and sisters. Of course there was the lurking darkness, but at least there wasn't any war between humans. But they had come here for a reason, and that was to find the Biju who had, much to their chagrin, all fled to the West. Itachi, being their spokesperson, went to a couple of locals, two men wearing black suites; one had brown hair, the other black hair and a moustache. They were both reading newspapers with a picture of a massive nine-tailed fox on the front page.

"Excuse me." Said Itachi, causing both men to raise their heads. "My associates and I are hunting the fox shown on the front page, it is a massively evil being and we aim to eliminate it, would you know where it went?"

The moustached man nodded before talking in a rich voice. "Why yes, of course, there were sittings of it near Nelmar's dungeon, north of here, and now that I think about it, a gigantic bug with several pairs of wings was seen going into the Darklight cave network, south of the town, and some type of giant sand racoon was seen slipping into the Treant grove to the east."

"Thank you very much kind sir." Answered Itachi politely before going back to the Akatsuki and exposing his findings. Quickly, the group split. Pain, all six paths, and Konan would go to Nelmar's dungeon, Sasori and Deidara would leave for the Treant Grove to exploit the puppeteer's knowledge of Shukaku and lastly Itachi, Kisame, Hidan and Kakuzu would go to the Darklight cave, taking Tobi with them. Quickly, they separated and went to their target location.

As soon as they had left the town, the two men who had so helpfully given the directions smiled widely before changing. The moustached man turned into a red haired man with red eyes wearing a brown shirt and black pants, and the brown haired one turned into a man with dirty blond hair, almost golden eyes and a tan skin, wearing sand coloured pants and a white shirt.

"You know Kurama." Said the blonde one. "You're funnier than I thought."

"And you're saner than I thought." Retaliated the red-head with a snort. "C'mon, let's go get Chomei before he bankrupts another casino."

"Yeah, yeah." Answered the blonde. "Though … can you imagine their faces when they'll realise they did all that for nothing?"

Kurama burst into laughter. "Heck yeah I can! Almost worth the weather!"

The two made their way through the town, until they heard a familiar and boisterous laughter that they decided to follow. At the end of the mirthful trail was a tall man with dark blue hair that looked almost iridescent, bright orange eyes, an eternal smile, Hawaiian blue short and green shirt and two huge bags of money, about to go inside a bank.

"Oi, bro." Said Kurama. "Have the casinos finally learned? Did they kick you out early?"

"Nope! I left on my own! I was about to put Fu-chan's part of the gains on the account."

"I still don't understand why you wanna give that girl all this money." Said Kurama.

"She's a good girl, has a nice attitude. Besides, she was nice to me, and she really didn't want what happened to her. And hey, maybe I'm sponsoring a future pop idol!"

"Meh, whatever, do your thing quick, we gotta go to the South, Isomu found an awesome beach resort, even Gyuki is relaxing!"

"Wha? You serious? Gotta see that!" Chomei disappeared inside the bank and quickly took care of his business before leaving town with his two brothers and going at full speed (quite fast) to the beach resort.

It had been four days since they had been pointed at the three locations, and they looked like shit. Deidara had come back alone, all six paths of Pain had been lost, leaving only the corpse like Nagato and Konan, Itachi looked positively paranoid, muttering about snakes and pedophiles, Kisame was jumpy, especially when people talked about cooking fish, Kakuzu was shaking like a leaf, and there were no signs of either Hidan or Tobi. They were all gathered around a table at their inn, their cloaks tattered and torn in various places, at least those that were still there. Finally, Nagato looked at them.

"Report."

"What the funking hell is there to report?" grunted Deidara. "There were funcking moving and talking trees, and Sasori decided he wanted to become one of them, something about eternal beauty of nature or whatever, my partner turned into a fucking hippy. I got thrown out of the forest as soon as I mentioned explosions."

" I see. Why are you three looking like you saw a ghost? And where are Tobi and Hidan?"

Kakuzu was the one to answer. "Tobi … got caught by some sort of plant or worm creature that dragged him down a hole, by the time we managed to get the creature out, there wasn't much left of him, he was instantly paralysed and burned with very powerful acids. After that, we went on, and by some weird twist of fate, we found ourselves in front of a complete tribe of prehistoric morons hellbent on sacrificing us to a bloodthirsty god, of course Hidan was happy with that, heck, he even fell in love with the head priestess. While they were performing some weird ritual that I'd rather not talk about, we sneaked away, and then we got ourselves in a room that showed us our worst nightmare."

"Your … worst nightmare? How could that stop you?"

"BECAUSE IT WAS HORRIBLE!" Exclaimed Kakuzu, tears almost flowing out of his eyes. "You don't realise, there was money everywhere, but it had no value! It was nothing more than useless paper!"

"No! Not the knife! Not the knife! I'm not a fish dammit!" Shrieked Kisame.

Itachi suddenly got up, fire in his eyes. "I won't let that Snake rape my Brother!" He spat, tearing the remains of his cloak off him and storming towards the door.

"Hun, and you Pain?" Asked Deidara.

"It didn't go well. *sigh* My path had barely walked three paces inside the building that this Nelmar character, apparently a necromancer, took control of them. Konan barely got out of there alive."

"So we failed, hun?" Surmised Deidara.

"For now. It will take time, but I will be back to full force soon, and then we will storm these places and take the Biju for ourselves." Answered Pain in a dark voice.

Meanwhile, a few hundred miles down South.

"Aaah, this is life."

"Tell me about it."

Eight men and a woman, all wearing swimsuites, with the occasional Hawaiian shirt, were relaxing on the beach, sitting in lawn chairs.

"So, you decided what you'll send to your containers?" Asked Matatabi, clad in a blue bikini, letting her blue hair flow down her back.

"Yep, I'm gonna send lil' Gaara a video, I think I screwed his life up enough, time to make it better. I just know he'll looove this way of feeling alive." Said Shukaku with a perverted smile.

"Tsk, ero-tanuki." Muttered Matatabi. "I for one know that Yugito will enjoy the two piece I chose for her, along with all the fine lingerie I got her."

"Hm, my last container kind of died." Said Isobu, a bulky man with sea-green hair and a tan skin, in a sad voice. "So I got no one to send a present to."

"Hmm, like they're worth the time." Said Son Goku, a tall man with fiery red hair and a beard. "I hate Roshi, he never used my name. So, just to annoy him, I decided to send him a pack of adult diapers. He's getting old after all."

"You're evil." Said Kokuo, a kind looking man with white hair. "Personally, I kind of liked Han, poor guy was always so lonely, and he always dreamed of a family, so I picked a nice suite and a guide on fathering, hopefully that will help him."

"That is nice of you." Said Matatabi, smiling affectionately at her brother. "And you Saiken?"

"Me? Oh, the gift isn't directly for Utakata, I decided to send a bikini to his student Hotaru, he'll thank me in the end." Said Saiken, formerly an oversized Slug, now a man with platinum blonde hair and a slightly rotund belly.

"You're just so cheap." Said Chomei. "I decided to give Fu-chan plenty of stuff! First I bought a new apartment for her in Taki through a long distance transaction, then I had it fully furnished, it'll be like a 5 star hotel room, only she'll own it! And then I picked a few manuals on singing, she always liked that, so it's gonna be good for her, and then I picked a few clothes for her with Mata's help, a few bikinis, some dresses, she's gonna be lovely in those, and to make sure she never is hungry again I'll send her the number of the account where I've been pouring my winnings."

"Shut up Chomei." Grunted Kurama. "Not all of us win at poker simply by being there."

"You're no fun Kura. And you Gyuki, what did you get for Bee?"

"Rapping for dummies."

A moment of silence flowed before Matatabi giggled. "It's true that old Bee really needs it. And you Kurama, what did you get for your former container?"

"Remember that photo I took yesterday?" He answered with a feral smile.

Author Note 2 :

And that is done! So, liked it?

Anyway, I find my self lacking ideas for more crackyness, so please send something if you can.

And feel free to leave a little something in the reviews to say welcome back to my Beta, Syynex!