Hello again people I decided to write this one pretty early. I don't know if I will write another in Christmas but if I can't take this as your Christmas present.

(P.S: Itachi is 10, which means he this is his first year in ANBU and Naruto 6, he is (had been) training under Madara for 2 years.)

Beta'd by TheOnlineAnarchy

CH 24: THE MISSION: START

The Cat spied the other masked man leaning against the wall across the door. The man turned to him and walked silently to the exit. The ANBU shrugged and followed his teammate for the mission. The man let out a disappointed sigh.

"I wish the old man knew the concept of neutrality," Skull muttered. The ANBU stilled for an unnoticeable moment before turned his head to the man.

"What do you mean?" The man snorted.

"I know why you are here, the old man wants my alliance." The young ANBU turned back to his way.

"No, I am here for the mission and the mission alone." He replied but it hardly worked. The masked man hummed in boredom as a reply.

"So, he didn't ask you to 'get to know me and bond with me.' Which he thought more important than an S rank?" The ANBU's eyes widened.

"How did you know?" The man shrugged.

"Call it a hunch." The ANBU narrowed his eyes and reached to his sword.

"Did you spy on us?" he asked with the obvious threat. The man looked at the sword then to the ANBU's eyes and shook his head.

"What if I did? Are you really going to attack me in the Hokage tower?" If possible the ANBU's eyes got even more narrow and he dropped his arm to his side. He couldn't see it but he felt man's grin.

"I thought so."

They continued their path to the North Gate.

"Did you spy on us?" The ANBU unsheathed his sword and took an offensive stance, the man barely reacted it with just turning towards the ANBU.

"Yes, I did. What are you going to do about it?"

Cat lunged to the Skull and swung his sword vertically with a deceptive wide arc. It hit the masked man and split him in two. The parts then burst into some dark smoke. The ANBU looked around to find his opponent.

"Looking for me?" the man appeared behind him. Before he could react, the man kicked his back hardly, caused him to fly uncontrollably to the forest near. He grabbed trunk of a tree and swung himself around and landed to a branch. He weaved handseals.

"Katon: Goukakyu no jutsu" (Fire style: grand fireball technique)

He blew a fireball as big as a single house. The man sighed, take a deep breath and blew back as a fireball that swallowed the one Cat blew and continued to the forest. Just as he was going to shunshin away from danger he felt a hand on his shoulder that disrupted his chakra. He looked behind to get… mask to mask with Skull. The man pointed to ground between them and fireball and flicked his finger up. An earth wall nearly as big as a mountain blocked the fireball. Skull then pointed to the wall and flicked the finger down, the wall got back to the ground it got raised like it wasn't there. Other than some bare soil tracks nothing remained. The cat tried to get back to action after his fascination was over but found himself unable to move. Ink-like markings started to cover him as he understood what happened.

'He put a juinjutsu on me when he grabbed my shoulder' Cat sighed inwardly, and the man nicked Cat's hand with a kunai. He looked at his hand confusedly before the man put his hand to his eyes. When he pulled back they were back in the hokage tower, his hand was on his sword and the man was looking at him. He couldn't bite back the startled gasp that left him. The man grinned behind his mask.

"Enough with games, we have a mission to complete." Finding nothing else to say, cat went to follow skull however one little detail stopped him…

The nick on his hand stung.

He hastily turned his gaze to his hand and, yes, it was there…

The nick skull put on his hand while they were in his Genjutsu.

"What!" The Masked man turned to the young ANBU.

"Ah, right. I can reflect what happened in Genjutsu to real world." The man said matter-of-factly which both awed and terrified the boy. 'Not without some price however...' The man thought as metallic scent of blood reached to his nonbleeding nostril.

"The mission is at the Fire Lord's castle. The Fire lord's daughter is wedding with Wind Lord's nephew to strengthen the shaky alliance between wind and fire caused by Orochimaru's past actions in the Wind country. They are expecting Anarchists to sabotage the wedding and break the alliance fully to start a war between two countries. The wind country asked to not bring any ninja to the wedding and if we get caught it would mean betrayal from fire country and because of Konoha's recuperation from Kyuubi attack Wind may get bold and wage a war with us." Skull rolled the scroll back and Cat listened patiently of the mission's details. They were near the gates of Konoha.

"Our best course action is sneak in the wedding, and we have 3 options; disguise as a guard, disguise as a servant or disguise as someone invited to the wedding." Cat nodded.

"Let's reach the capital and see what we can do from there." The cat said and they jumped to trees, on way to the capital of Fire Country.

End of Chapter.

Here you go my dear readers. If you have anything on your mind feel free to write it as a review. And new readers, I would like it if you fav or follow my story. I am out.

Bye