Chapter thirty-four:

Latet anguis in herba

A/N: Please leave your pitchforks at the entrance, thank you. Yeah, it's been far too long since the last update, but I'll explain myself (read: grovel and plead for forgiveness) on my profile page sometime later. I promised I'd finish this story and it's a promise I fully intend to keep. So if you're still out there, reading this- thank you! Special thanks go to Thomas Drovin for his incredible patience, Calenton for constantly nudging me in the right direction, and my ever-so-amazing beta Nevervana, who's sticking with me after so long. And above all, huge thanks to my lil' sis xMissFortune, for kicking my ass day after day and motivating in her own psychopathic ways to update. Much love here.

Forgive me, this chapter isn't too good, my writing has gotten a bit rusty. I suggest you skim through the last chapter to refresh your memory and- read on! Oh, and be sure to read the note at the ending, guys. Got some pretty cool stuff for you.

Dark green fields stretched as far as the horizon, basking in the gray light of cloud cover.

A girl stood at the edge of the forest, looking dully over the seemingly endless range of grassy hills. She looked small and sickly, but there was an odd strength burning behind her eyes: an acceptance, a recognition, a plan.

"Will ya just hurry the fuck up already, sheesh..."

-a twitch-

The girl turned to stare at the man mutely, green eyes flaring up with rage. In the very next moment, however, the sentiment in them extinguished with a hiss.

The bloody prick is right, she knew.

In an open field such as this, the cloud-patterned red and black billowing behind her like a flag could only invite unpleasant company. They had to move. Quickly.

The soothsayer briefly raised her head to the sky. High, high above her, drifted pale misty waves of light, dispersing in brilliant rays as they fell upon the feathery treetops.

As if we are under water, she thought hazily, blinking, We're in a snowglobe, with a glassy sky, the air thick as water, in a whirlpool of leaves.

Yes, this world closes me in like a snowglobe. She clenched the cloak around her, tighter.

No wonder I can feel myself drowning.

Akane didn't remember much of the walk there. Apparently, they had long crossed over to the Land of Grass and yet...

She only vaguely recalled someone opening an old weathered door and ushering her inside, but everything from that point on blurred together in a sea of uncertainty. Cold, that she remembered. She remembered she had been cold all over, shaking. Wet? She remembered a gray river... Freezing wind plastering her damp clothes to her skin. Feeling weightless- carried.

Fireworks.

She remembered the blood beneath her fingernails took a horribly long time to wash out.

The Akatsuki walked. Farther. Faster.

Tree-tops swayed drunkenly in a tranquil breeze, rustling huskily through the woods. The terrain of the Land of Grass was much more varied than she had assumed it would be, sloping and rising unpredictably. They squished through the boggy watersheds remaining from the Land of Waterfalls and hiked the craggy hills signalling the nearby Land of Earth. Akane yearned for the springy softness of green turf, but thus far the country was really failing to live up to its name. She only hoped they would be breaking out into the even grassland she had seen in the distance soon enough.

She was walking barefoot now, her toes gray and blistered, even though she couldn't remember at what point had she lost her footwear. Her two criminal cotravelers didn't comment on this, just as they kept silent about the happenings of that night. Akane wiped her running nose on the sleeves of Hidan's cloak, regretting nothing. Only when she complained that she was feeling feeble and that her lungs were getting scratchy did Kakuzu incline his head to her slightly over his shoulder in acknowledgement.

They stayed the night in a disused barn, belonging to a lonely thatched farmhouse maybe a half kilometre away. Dogs barked like mad in the distance, clearly having sensed their arrival. Akane barely paid attention to what the Zombie duo was doing, slumped in hay in the corner and slowly drifting to sleep. Through the cracks in the ceiling, she could see the dimming purple sky and count a total of four sparkling stars before consciousness left her.

The next day Akane awoke to a pair of peasant sandals thrown by her cheek, small enough to belong to a child. The floor was covered in scrolls that made a whooshing sound as bags of food and hygiene products disappeared into them, sucked in as Kakuzu sealed them. Akane briefly wondered where had they found a market in this middle of nowhere to get all that.

When they continued up the road again, the sun had barely risen, the dogs were strangely quiet, and a mournful scream of a woman shattered the white silence of the dawn. It had come from the nearby house.

Hidan cackled. Kakuzu ordered them to pick up their pace.

Rueful, for the rest of the day Akane decided not to think about it.

"We're making a detour."

Hidan's head snapped up, eyes wide and livid as Kakuzu unfolded from his lotus position. "Fuckin' where? I thought we were supposed to head straight for Rain and dump this bitc-"

"Kisame just caught the Four-Tailed Jinchuuriki in Stone. We're meeting their team half-way," Kakuzu explained tonelessly, "Tobi and Deidara deposited the Three tails in a nearby hideout earlier this week as well."

"So you're saying we're sealing both of them at once? Right now?" Hidan gaped at his partner, screwing his mouth in a snarl, "Are you shitting me? That'll take, like, a whole week!"

Lying on her side and listening in to the conversation, Akane stilled at the unexpected information. They were actually meeting up with another Akatsuki team along their way. Kisame and Itachi no less.

Akane did take into account the possibility that, now that Hidan and Kakuzu were alive, there would be some changes in the pace of the story she was living... but still, the prospect of this new, unfamiliar development playing out startled her, to say the least. Her brain immediately spun into motion, calculating this new situation in a variety of possibilities.

Uchiha Itachi... A strange feeling of excitement ignited in her stomach.

This... Maybe she could use this.

It was a downpour, the rain beating heavily down on them, so intense that it bent the tree branches to the ground.

Hunched under her cloak, Akane hurried to keep up the two men. Her feet kept sinking into the mud and tangling in cold wet grass. She could hardly see where she was going, almost tripping over a random stone buddha on the ground, scratching her ankle raw against it.

It didn't take long until they hit on a wide wall of stone. In the very next moment Akane found herself pulled onto dry land and into the cool dark of a cavern- she hadn't even seen the Akatsuki duo crack open the hidden entrance. It was like the opening was magicked out of thin air.

"They're waiting."

Akane promptly fell in step with Kakuzu down the empty hallway. She heard Hidan sneeze loudly somewhere behind them, cursing out fuckingrainFUCK even louder, causing a commotion in the darkness. There was a flap of leathery wings- something flew just past her ear, making her jump, almost crashing into Kakuzu. Unsettled, the soothsayer pulled the cloak further over her head. The darkness of the cavern was stirring with bats.

During the minutes of their silent walk Akane followed the ceiling growing high and higher, until her eye completely lost it in the fathomless, yawning black that dropped away overhead. The chamber they entered was so vast that the entire Hokage tower could comfortably fit in. Then she caught the outline of something in the dark in front of them. Something that grew steadily bigger as they approached it, until it filled her whole vision. What had at first looked like a giant stone formation soon acquired spikes, and an almost shell-like texture, and-

Akane gasped.

What she was looking at vaguely resembled a giant turtle... but that was where every similarity stopped.

Claws. Teeth. Horns rising out from the darkness.

A monster.

The sight skewered her with fear, mixed with obscure awe, as her eyes went over the still creature. She knew what it was.

The Three-Tailed Jinchuuriki...

"Well if it isn't the Zombie-combo, ey?" a slightly nasal voice spoke up suddenly from somewhere close by, bringing to attention two figures merged in shadows beneath the beast for the first time. "Long time no see. Hidan, you look like a sopping white rat."

"Ha ha, well fuck you shark-face," the rat in question saluted back.

The tall figure merely laughed, scaring a few bats into flight.

"That all? Gotta say, you used to do better than that."

"Cram it," Hidan growled, slicking his dripping hair back out of his eyes. "Give her the cloak, Kakuzu said. This is all the bitch's fault anyway-"

"Or maybe you should invest in a single shirt," Kakuzu finished calmly.

As they approached further, Akane could now see the two men slightly better. The tall one had to be Kisame, she knew, but... unexpectedly found herself confused at first sight. The man's skin appeared more gray than blue under the dim lighting of the cave. His features were strangely... human. One could see there was something off about him, but in the obscure darkness it wasn't immediately clear what. It could have all been a trick of shadows.

Kakuzu turned to the last quiet figure, inclining his head in a curt nod. "Itachi-san."

"Kakuzu-san. Hidan-san," a soft voice greeted back. Following it, a young man silently came up to them. Akane stiffened. For a moment she thought she had glimpsed Sasuke- the same pale complexion, the familiar dark hair. Itachi didn't turn in her general direction so as to give her a proper view of him, but she felt her skin crawling nevertheless.

"Can't believe you two were the team to find the target first," Kisame was speaking once more and, when she switched her focus to him again, she found that he was looking at her as well. "Come on closer girl, let me take a look at you."

Akane hesitated. She cut a habitual sidelong glance at Kakuzu, but he didn't so much as twitch. When she turned back to Kisame, he was grinning at her. Up close, his lips were noticeably pale-blue.

"Go on, I don't bite," Akane saw his grin widen, revealing rows of unmistakably razor-sharp teeth. "These are just for decoration."

Isn't he a charmer. She resisted the urge to swallow thickly.

Deciding to hold back any of the dozen possible bravado comments, Akane breathed in and took a few steps forward. She raised her chin as she watched Kisame watch her, that glistening smile which could never pass for good-natured taking over his whole face.

"She looks like hell," Kisame commented after a few moments.

Akane withheld an indignant huff. In return, she took in his awkward features back: those unsettlingly small eyes and what looked like dark slits underneath them, skin glimmering as if slightly moist... Then something else caught her eye, or rather, someone- another human figure, at Kisame's side, lying prone on the ground.

It was a bearded old man.

He looked completely beaten up, the bruises on his face and limbs swollen black and blue. There was not a sound coming from him, his breath almost non-existent. Was he...?

"He's alive," Kisame sounded amused, "For now."

Then Akane remembered who the man was. She nodded in understanding.

The Four-Tails' Jinchuuriki.

The old man was to be kept alive just barely for the extraction ritual, as they ripped his soul straight out of him. The same went for the Three-Tails. Akane cast a glance back at the humongous unmoving beast, so close that she could touch it within a few steps. Knowing that the creature beside her was still essentially alive... It sent a chill down her spine. A swish of a single one of its tails could bring down the ceiling on them all.

Akane averted her eyes and, as if drawn by a magnet, they fell on the deceptively slight, dangerously still, poised figure standing close at hand, close enough to observe now. The man in question inclined his head to Akane briefly, before focusing back on his coworkers' conversation in the back.

It was just a moment.

Just a moment, yet Akane couldn't decide if her heart had skipped a beat or doubled in speed at making fleeting eye-contact with none other than Uchiha Itachi. How... was it even possible? The raw power of those eyes, even without the activated sharingan?

"Can't tear your eyes away from our Itachi here? Can't say I'm surprised really," she startled when Kisame snickered; she wasn't even aware she had been staring. To her credit, Akane didn't tuck her chin down in embarrassment, but schooled her expression into a blank unamused stare.

"What, you into poster-boys all of a sudden?" Hidan appeared at her shoulder, "Breaking my heart, seriously. And here I thought we had something special goin' on."

The toxic look Akane shot back at him didn't deter him from putting his arms atop her head and resting his chin on them. Akane stiffened, anger fizzing inside of her at the unwanted contact. "You stay the hell away from me," she hissed.

"Well well, at least now we know it speaks!" Kisame barked with laughter.

"Fucking too much, trust me."

Well that's bloody rich coming from you, you yapping sonofa-- Akane grit her teeth, deciding it wasn't the best time for yet another back-and-forth with a certified moron. She tried to elbow him, roughly, but Hidan pushed even more weight down on her in retribution until her knees buckled. "Sooo, Leader coming soon or what? I mean how about that, making us come all the way here just to wait on his late ass-"

As if on cue, a strange low buzz pricked the air.

The tone heightened and plunged, as if somebody was settling the frequency on the radio.

Then, out of nowhere, a shadow appeared. Two ringed eyes flashed in the dark. And the members of the Akatsuki went completely silent.

"So you've arrived..." the silhouette spoke, an unsettling static in its voice.

Akane held in a breath as those unnatural eyes fixed on her. She was half-expecting to be spoken to... but was thoroughly ignored instead; the shadow of Pein had already turned away to the Akatsuki members.

"Good," he raised his hands in a sign, "Assemble."

Clouds of dust stung at her eyes as the statue broke with a soaring rumble from under ground.

Akane struggled awkwardly to pick herself up, but the stone was unsteady beneath her wobbly legs. She coughed violently into her sleeve, feeling her eyes water. As the gray cloud settled, dark-blue hue returned over the chamber once more and-

She was surrounded.

Dropped in the middle of a huge stone palm, Akane stood alone and dazed. On their positions at the statue's fingers around her she saw Hidan, Kakuzu and Kisame, while Itachi had taken his place on the other stone hand across.

Then there were more. One by one, black silhouettes rose from the darkness, blurring with it. Akane turned around herself anxiously, throwing a quick glance up at the horrifying face of the statue.

Maw open threateningly. Too many eyes.

Was it the adrenaline seeping into her veins, or the soft crackling of holograms in the dark, or the liquid shadows settling into the cracks of statue, or all of it together, Akane didn't know. But the air felt thick, the stone beneath her felt quietly alive, as if it was breathing on some level of life she couldn't understand nor perceive.

(monsters live in the dark)

Her heart went bumping in mindless fright-

Get a grip girl. Get. a. fucking. GRIP.

It did little to calm her when she knew that she was surrounded by mass murderers. Human-like shadows flickered all around her, perched upon the fingertips of the statue. Nobody spoke. Though she couldn't see them clearly, dark and distance taking their toll, Akane knew her presence wasn't ignored. She felt it as clear on her skin as if she were physically touched- every single pair of those cruel eyes was weighting down on her, intrigued.

"Akane the Soothsayer. We have heard some interesting things about you," spoke a man cloaked in shadows; his voice was low and indifferent, but it carried across the room as clear as if he was speaking right next to her. "But perhaps it would be best if you introduced yourself on your own."

Akane swallowed her spit and it drummed in her ears.

Smiles. Words. Gestures. It was all tempting, and it was all fake, but most of it all, it was all dangerous.

Her heartbeats were resonating within her throat.

But Akane was ready for this. The girl felt it in every tense fibre of her being: for the first time since she had come to this ungodly world, she was ready to face whatever they threw at her... and she would know just the angle at which to strike back. Her heart was bursting with raw determination and almost unbearable excitement, so intense that it put a tremble in her knee-caps.

This was it.

There was no going back now.

"Nagato Pein," Akane started, keeping her voice as cold as her eyes, "It has been my wish for a long time to make contact with the Akatsuki."

"I am..." she looked around the silent room, gesturing with a magnanimous wave of her hand, "...honoured to be here."

Because this is a theatre, and you are the sole actress, and your audience is enjoying the show way too much, old whispers cooed in her head. My every gesture, every line and face has to engross it. For the loss of its attention might turn out rather dreadful.

"You are already well aware of my name," she continued firmly, "as you are of my ability."

"Though I will admit that this particular meeting," she passed her eyes slowly over the assembled members, allowing her lips to curl up slightly in an amiable smirk, "I did not predict."

. . .

"Well, that's one of Orochimaru's snakes alright," Kisame finally chuckled after a pause. "Always did have a dramatic flair."

Way to ruin my presentation, Akane could have sweatdropped, but she swallowed her pride instead and ignored the jab, standing as cool and aloof as ever.

"Speaking of whom... we have important news," Pein declared. But instead of divulging this news, he continued to look intently at her, ringed eyes commanding. Waiting. He was waiting for her to speak.

Well? the question was so clear, she could almost hear him say it out loud.

Ah. So that was it. He was testing her.

Akane smiled widely in unhidden satisfaction. "Orochimaru is dead then, I presume?"

. . .

The reaction at her words was instantaneous.

"When the hell did you dig that info outta your ass?" Hidan exclaimed as if he was seeing her for the first time, pointing an accusing finger at her, "You were with us the whole fucking time!"

Akane smirked smugly and didn't reply. Pein never moved those ringed eyes away from her, inspecting her still. Don't flinch, she reminded herself sternly. The rest of the Akatsuki kept silent, but a buzz of energy went through the circle. Finally, after what seemed far too long, Pein said to the room. "...That is correct."

Kisame gave a low whistle.

"Go figure, the girl checks out," he said, giving an approving chuckle, "But killing Orochimaru must have taken special skill. Who did him in?"

"His student, Uchiha Sasuke," Akane answered at once this time, understanding her cue. Pein didn't stop her, still carefully listening. Evaluating her.

"She's right." A deep voice growled on her right, sending a shiver down her spine. "That coincides with the information we have."

"I was gonna be the one to bring Orochimaru down, hn," another voice broke out, making Akane squint at the speaking figure. Deidara? If she didn't know what she knew, all their little quirks, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish the members from one other.

"I'd expect nothing less from your little brother Itachi," Kisame stated. A strong sense of deja vu, of having heard this secret conversation years back in the show, gripped her- and Akane couldn't help the sudden wish to smash it all away, to break into this unstoppable circle that had altered her life so completely and so irreversibly, but which she had always been afraid to so much as scrape.

Until now.

"He had help," Akane put in calmly, but with a clear hint of offence in her voice. "My prophecy."

It didn't take more than that to command the attention of the room once more. She sensed a shift in the circle of holograms, something darker this time. Edgier. Akane steeled inwardly, choosing her words.

"Before I escaped the Sound, I had offered Uchiha Sasuke a premonition in exchange for a task," she recalled, thoughtfully but honestly, "It was me who instructed Sasuke that he would defeat Orochimaru by reversing the transference ritual and thus harvesting Orochimaru's power within himself."

Of course he wouldn't have been able to kill Orochimaru on his own, her words heavily implied. It was exactly the way she meant to say it.

This way it appeared as if Akane was directly involved in the assassination of one of the world's most wanted criminals. After all, you were supposed to fudge the truth on your resume. Her reputation was at stake here, which of course equalled to, her very life was as stake. The soothsayer literally depended on others' perception of her- an illusion in fact so weak that it was held together merely by a series of lucky, accidental events. For it is never important who you are, but who others think you are. Akane knew this. It was all she knew and all she had. This was her only shield.

Pein took her words in with consideration. "I see. And what did you require of Uchiha Sasuke in return?"

"To set my sister free from Orochimaru's experimentation facility, should he come across her in his travels," Akane explained, throwing the man a smirking, knowing look, "Sasuke has already begun assembling his personal team, has he not?"

Another silence, but briefer than before.

"That is the case," Pein accepted at last. Akane had to wonder if that meant his trust in her was starting to cool and solidify. There were no murmurs from the Akatsuki, no shakes of head of suspicion and derision. Instead...

"She's good, hn."

The comment made her smirk triumphantly in herself.

It wasn't every day she got praised, and coming from no other than Deidara... The artistic duo had been her favourite of the murderous lot, a thousand years ago when she had watched the show. She remembered how she had idiotically swooned over Deidara, yet secretly agreed more with Sasori's outlook on life.

But now Deidara was nothing but a wavering shadow in front of her, enough distance away that she couldn't even discern the blue of his eyes. Akane couldn't imagine herself initiating a conversation with him under the watch of all these people. It was a bit of a letdown, really.

But here she was.

Only sparks of her silly teenage sentiments remained. She was Akane the Soothsayer, and she owned knowledge over all their lives. She felt warm confidence surge through her again at the thought. Time to push it up a notch.

"Suigetsu, Karin, Juugo," Akane listed in a clear, assured voice, "These are the members of the new team Taka. Or will be, if he has yet to reach them." She aimed a questioning look at Pein. He didn't respond to that, so she made a point of giving a small, helpless shrug, "Unfortunately, my foresight does not tell me when precisely events take place in relation to the present moment."

It surprised her when a new voice chimed in, gleeful and bubbly and blabbering away, "Oh, oh! I know I know, pick me! Then Akane-oneechan's sister must be that fourth, dark girl! Right, am I right?"

… Akane's heart skipped a beat.

For a moment she didn't understand what had just been said; the words didn't immediately register in her splintered consciousness.

Then a name rang, loud and clear and alarming, in the hollowed chamber of her mind:

Hana.

(((she-is-alive)))

Against her will, her fingers began to shake.

This was bad. This was very bad.

Because this information about Hana... it didn't come from Zetsu or Pein. No, it was Tobi who had said it. It was Tobi out of all the Akatsuki who knew about the existence of this irrelevant girl and even what she looked like. It was Tobi who chose to speak up, for the very first time, in that very moment, that very sentence, to make himself known in her presence.

None of the Akatsuki caught onto this. But Akane did. And with that one single sentence, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it made one horrifying, outrageous thing clear to her:

Madara was already keeping an eye on Hana.

"Yes, she is," Akane breathed out quickly, "She has no true value for the team. But she does for me." She tried to downplay her excited reaction by finishing plainly, "She is my sister and I want her back."

The prolonged silence sent her heart skipping with dread. Her teeth crunched as her jaw set in a tight bite.

Madara knew.

"We will discuss this further later in the meeting," Pein announced to the Akatsuki, "We must begin the ritual now."

"Seriously? Give us a break already," Hidan moaned dramatically. "We just spent a whole damn week dicking around three countries, fighting off all these motherfuckers-"

"It won't take longer than five days at most, since we are sealing two of them at once," Pein's tone left no room for argument. "It starts. Prepare yourselves."

Akane mentally did.

Five days with the Akatsuki, she thought.

Wasn't this just going to be a holiday...

Translation: Latet anguis in herba - A snake lurks in the grass. (Vergil)

A/N: You might have noticed that this chapter is shorter than how I usually write, but I realized that if you want me to update more often than once a year, that's just the way it's gonna have to be: writing 20+ pages long chapters just doesn't cut it out for me anymore. Sorry.

Buuut, there are some goodies for you to enjoy until the next chapter! Behold!

First, there's awesome new fanart by the brilliant Audentium, who drew a badass cover for the Akatsuki arc AND did a fantastic portrait of Akane. Be sure to check 'em out on my profile page and leave her a comment or two, she deserves it.

Second, I made a soundtrack playlist for TPoL on 8tracks, the link to which you can find on my profile as well. Actually, this is a soundtrack for the Sound arc. I plan on making two more soundtracks, for Konoha and Akatsuki arcs respectively. So if you have any music suggestions, feel free to pitch in and I'll consider if they fit in the overall list.

There are quite a few new readers, who've started following this story in the meantime of my absence so- hi people! :D I'd love to hear from you in the comment section: what are your thoughts, feelings, what did you dislike, and what did you like the best while reading? Feedback helps me be a better writer, so it's much appreciated.