Yo!

Huh... tired. It's election day in the US, so shit's at its absolute peak. I voted this morning, and... well, you should've as well if you could! I can't exactly say go vote, since it'll be a day late now, and hell, most of you probably don't live in the US, but, y'know...

Anyways, without further ado, has anyone seen that new Wing Gundam EW Ver Ka? Thing looks cool as-


Chapter 72: In for a Penny...


"-And so, I broke out, and was doing my best to get the hell out of here, because quite frankly its dreary, shitty, and the people are mean, but then I got caught up in helping another experiment who'd leant me a candy bar one time-"

"Is this…" Anko seemed to fight for the right words. "Going somewhere?"

"Don't worry, don't worry, I'm getting to the good part." Suigetsu waved her concern away. "Now, where was I…"

"Candy bar?" Anko offered.

"Right, Candy bar!" He pointed at her. "Anyways, I helped him out since I owed him one, and then I didn't need to help him out anymore on account of him being brutally murdered on the end of a spear. I stuck around anyways, cause I figured, y'know, in for a sen, in for a yen, right? uh… some other stuff happened, and then I became the leader-"

"Why did you abridge that part!?"

"It didn't seem that important."

"How did–!?" Sakura ran a hand down her face, an aching groan emerging as she made eye-contact with Suigetsu once more. "Y'know what, never mind. Just… tell us what you've been doing. Why have you been attacking caravans on the road?"

The sharp-toothed boy seemed to think about that for a second.

"Well, mostly because we've been getting hungry, to be honest. We ran out of food a while ago, so its pretty much 'attack caravans or starve'. Besides, we always let the people go, how do you think you guys know that the caravans have been being attacked? Cause I can guarantee you if they were dead, they wouldn't be providing much context."

He had a point, even if Sakura could only sigh as veritably her entire group glared at the man.

Suigetsu leaned closer to her, enough to whisper in her ear.

"Was it something I said?" He asked under his breath.

"Yes." She spoke at a regular volume. "Yes, it was."

"Ah."

She groaned even as their communicator, who wore a metal device designed for short-range communication along his back, suddenly frowned. She missed most of his movement from the way he called two guards, both Jonin Sakura didn't know, and walked his way back towards the exit of the base.

"Well, if that's my fault, you have my apologies," Suigetsu continued to bullshit. "I never meant to hurt anyone's feelings."

"Yeah, sure you didn't." Anko didn't seem like she believed that very much. "Whatever. How many of you are there, anyways?"

"In this base?" Suigetsu thought for a moment. "Fifty, fifty-five? I don't know, there's not that many, but most of the people here look pretty similar, so I lose track."

Tayuya facepalmed from the corner, where, to be fair to her, Sakura had kind of forgotten she was standing.

"Ah, but not you, Tay, I couldn't forget about that beautiful face!"

"Go fuck yourself."

"We have such nice talks." Suigetsu turned back to Sakura. "So yeah. Not that many."

Anko hummed, massaging her chin.

"Well we can't exactly leave you guys here to continue attacking caravans willy-nilly. At the same time… I don't know how thrilled Tsunade would be if we just forced you out of Leaf territory either."

"Seems like the Raikage or the Tsuchikage would probably complain about us robbing their caravans all of a sudden, yeah."

"Sakura," Anko turned to her questioningly. "What's your call?"

"Me?" She asked confusedly.

"Yeah, you. You're heading up this operation, which means you get final say over our initial response. Standard fare would be to eliminate them all and call it a day."

Suigetsu's joking look died a quick and painful death, and she watched as Tayuya in the distance sunk even further into the corner she resided in.

"But, quite frankly, you all seem annoying as hell to just kill, and we lack the numbers required to do a full sweep of this place. Besides, you're basically just scavengers as it is now. We're certainly not required to kill you. "

"I eh… I'm going to take that as a positive in this context." Suigetsu smiled weakly.

"For you, it definitely is." Anko finished explaining with a sigh. "So, Sakura, what do you think?"

She realized she was being put on the spot as all eyes in the room turned to her. She didn't appreciate the feeling, as stifling and strangling as it was, very much at all. She did consider what she could do, but found herself far, far away from an answer by the time her thoughts were interrupted a good fifteen seconds later.

"Captain!"

She didn't look up, continuing to think.

"Captain!" The man shouted a bit more urgently. "Captain Sakura!"

She looked up that time, awkwardly remembering that she was the captain.

The man who'd been trying to grab her attention was their communications expert, who held on his arm an adolescent messenger hawk, who gave a quiet squawk as she looked towards it. He reached towards her, handing her the note it'd been given to carry to them.

She read of it quickly, her eyes widening with every sentence.

When she'd finished, she mindlessly handed the note back to the communications expert, and turned to Anko.

"The Akatsuki have attacked the Waterfall Village. They intend to kidnap the Jinchuuriki of the Seven-Tails."

Their group tensed, each one knowing the implications of that. She realized, idly, that they were waiting on her to make a decision, apparently still recognizing her as the leader of the operation for some reason.

"As both Anko and I are members of the task force designed to face down the Akatsuki, and as that mission takes priority over this one… we'll be ending this mission here."

No one argued with that. In fact, no one seemed to even mind.

"Problem really is what we're going to do about these ones." Anko gestured with her thumb towards Tayuya and Suigetsu, the latter of whom waved. "We can probably afford to leave them here, Tsunade would understand, but even still, it's far from a perfect solution. Chances are they relocate if we give them the time to do so."

She thought about that for a moment, staring hard at Suigetsu, even as the man stuck his tongue out and continued trying to make a fool of her.

Funnily enough, that actually sparked the idea in the back of her head.

"Hey so… I have a plan."

"Okay, what?"

"Well…" She muttered quietly.

"I don't think you're going to like it."

/-/

"So uhm… Sasuke Sensei?"

"Yes?"

"Where are you going?"

He paid the three of them half of his attention as he marched them back to the Leaf in a hurry. The trees blurred behind him, and though he wasn't going nearly as fast as he'd have liked to be going, he could still see that his students were straining themselves to keep up.

They'd have to live with that; people's lives were at stake. He wouldn't be risking those so his students could travel comfortably.

"The Waterfall. Some urgent business came up."

"Is it Orochimaru?" Konohamaru asked, sounding awfully determined.

"No. It's not. It's just a regular old breach of security." He assured them. "Honestly, we'll probably be back in a few days, if that."

Konohamaru stared at him, evidently not quite believing his blatant lie. That was fine, he didn't need to believe it, since the only thing he'd be doing was sitting in his room and not worrying about things for the next week.

"So… what should we do?" Moegi asked nervously.

"How about you three take on a few D-ranked missions? If you're alright with that, I'll set you up with a few when I go and speak to the Hokage."

Moegi and Udon let out noises of acknowledgement, but Konohamaru himself seemed less than satisfied.

"I don't want to walk dogs, or find lost cats… I want to be a ninja!"

"You are being a ninja." Sasuke refuted, even past the smirk on his face over how much Konohamaru's words reminded him of their own before they'd gone to the Wave. "And being a ninja is very rarely glamorous. It's a dirty, messy, shitty job a lot of the time, but it's the kind of work that needs doing."

Konohamaru glared at him.

"So that dog just needs walking, huh?"

Touché. He remarked mentally.

"Yes."

"Tch." Konohamaru rolled his eyes. "Sucky teacher."

He filed that away in his head under 'things to punish someone for', which was a lengthy file that consisted of everything from Naruto still, to that day, owing him 8000, no, wait, at this point it was 9300 yen, to Sakura one time saying his new blue outfit looked "lame", and even that time Yugao had glared at him in a weird way that'd made him want to beat the tar out of her.

That particular time probably hadn't been helped by the fact that she'd just nearly bisected him in half, and he'd been healing himself while trying not to bleed out.

Once they cleared the last of the tree line, and emerged into the main path to the Leaf Village, Sasuke turned to them.

"Head back inside, I have to make it to the Hokage's office as soon as possible."

He watched for them to all nod, including Konohamaru, who didn't stop glaring at him, before Sasuke flickered away.

He made impressive time getting to the Hokage's office, covering the length of the Leaf Village in only around 30 seconds. He stopped in front of the door, knocked to let the guards know he was coming, and entered.

Things were shockingly calm inside, which, had he not known why he was here, would've been the first sign that something was wrong.

Kakashi, Naruto, and Haku were the first to stand out to him. While none looked overly concerned, there was still a vague fear in their eyes as they turned to him, and each gave him a nod. Haku seemed the most relaxed, an easy sort of calm hanging about him, even with what Sasuke could tell was a quiet fury boiling within him.

The Akatsuki that'd taken Zabuza's life… even coming to terms with himself as he heard the man had been doing…

Well, he still intended to gut his brother where he stood one day, despite having found a life worth living for in the Leaf, so he certainly understood the boy's feelings.

Guy and Tenten he noticed next, both of whom were far more serious, which surprised him when it came to the former. He'd known the man not entirely as a joke… but at least partially as one. He had no grasp of his true strength other than that one time he'd kicked Kisame in the face, which, while impressive, was still pretty nebulous given it'd been a sneak attack.

Lastly were the final two figures, people he'd certainly not expected, Hinata and Shino. They rounded out an otherwise unassuming group of characters. One wouldn't have pegged them to be fighting up against some of the world's strongest ninja.

And yet, here they were.

"And Sasuke makes the last." Tsunade nodded to him. "With that, we can give a rundown of the events as we understand them, and then you all can get to the Waterfall ASAP."

Kakashi nodded, and Sasuke fell back into his normal, more reactive persona, letting his old teacher take the lead for this operation.

"Two hours ago, Hinata here," Tsunade gestured towards the girl, who looked terribly concerned. "Received a message from her friend Fu. What she'd anticipated to be a normal note was actually a desperate plea from aid; The Waterfall is under siege from the Akatsuki. You've already been informed of this, but its important we know time-frame."

He, like everyone else, stayed entirely silent, letting Tsunade fully brief them. Even still, he couldn't stop the shaking of his legs.

He wanted to be moving; helping, not stuck here listening.

"From what we understand, the Akatsuki's attack began approximately 14 hours ago. From what Ms. Fu said in her notice, which arrived on the belly of an exhausted and half dead carrier beetle, she believes their defenses can hold for around a full day, perhaps more… but that was fifteen hours ago already, adding in the time it took us to assemble, and we have to travel to the Waterfall ourselves, which will take at least another twelve hours. That leaves the Akatsuki with at worst 3 hours to do with what they will. Hopefully it won't come to that… but it's very possible it will, or that it maybe even already has. Our job is to go there and reinforce, not by strengthening their defenses…"

"But by taking the Akatsuki out." Kakashi turned to the rest of them. "We've assembled a team of powerful 1 to 1 fighters, those who can take on monsters like the Akatsuki in a straight fight. Some of you will be assigned to protecting the Jinchuuriki herself, but unless things have spiraled completely out of control, our main goal will be engaging the Akatsuki themselves."

Sasuke heard Hinata cough awkwardly, and it seemed like the way both Shino and Tenten's body's drooped said they felt much the same way.

They thought they were exempt from that, and if Sasuke were being pragmatic, he did as well.

"Not all of our members will be going there for the express purpose of fighting, however. Both Shino and Hinata are being brought along for the utility of their beetles and Byakugan respectively. We'd have brought an elder Hyuga or Aburame along, but Hinata requested to attend personally, and we saw no real difference in utility between her and another ninja. No elder Aburame's were available at the time, unfortunately, so we've gone with this squad."

Sasuke caught the look of raw determination on Hinata's face, the likes of which he'd not seen from her, as Tenten raised her hand weakly.

"And me?"

"You'll be utility as well," Kakashi admitted, and the girl, rather than slumping further like Sasuke had expected, seemed to find some solace there. "You'll be providing cover fire with your weapons, while also giving us a veritably infinite supply of said weapons. It's not the most glamorous role in the world, but Sakura's unit didn't leave the Leaf with the tools necessary for an operation of this magnitude, and that means we have to outfit them on the go."

Tenten nodded, seeing meaning in that, and to Sasuke at least, it made sense.

"Right. If everyone's filled in on what's going on, you'll be meeting up with Sakura's unit on the way there, and then with the Sand's section of the Anti-Akatsuki unit at the Waterfall itself. Unfortunately, you likely won't see them until a day or so from when you arrive, for their trip from the Sand to the Waterfall is a bit larger than ours. Your goals are to rendezvous with our allies when they do arrive, to protect the Seven-Tails Jinchuuriki, and to, if at all possible, annihilate as many members of the Akatsuki as you can."

With that, Tsunade stood and bowed her head ever so slightly.

"Good luck to you all."

Sasuke felt they'd need it.

/-/

When they did finally catch Sakura, a good eleven hours later, the sun had long since set on the horizon, and it was the dead of night, though perhaps, by now, it would be cresting morning shortly. Naruto found himself sighing in relief as he waved to the girl, and she and her ninja waved back.

He hadn't been expecting there to be a white-haired shark boy there, but, well, there was an awful lot in his life he hadn't expected, so at that point, he'd simply learned to just role with it.

"So…" Kakashi began rather cautiously. "Who's this?"

"I'm Suigetsu!" The boy held a hand out for Kakashi to shake. "Nice to meet-"

"None of that." Sakura slapped his hand down with her own, eyeing him warily. "You're effectively our prisoner. No shaking hands."

"What, you want me to be rude?"

"I want you to behave."

"Well, that's certainly ambitious."

Naruto had only seen these two interact for all of fifteen seconds, but he could already tell that Suigetsu rather liked teasing Sakura… and Sakura poignantly did not like that very much.

He also saw Sasuke looking an awful lot like a dog whenever one was petting another dog, which was to say he was squinting, eyeing Suigetsu with an extraordinarily evil look and reaching for the sword on his hip, which Naruto couldn't help but think was maybe a bit overkill.

He half expected him to start barking.

"So, why's he here, exactly?" Sasuke asked, betraying his feelings on the matter rather quickly.

Anko saw fit to explain. "He's the leader of a group of Orochimaru remnants, one of his experiments. Suffice it to say that we felt it was too risky to simply leave them there. I'd advised just killing him," Suigetsu stepped away from the woman. "But Sakura here thought it would be a better idea to bring him back to the Leaf Village, interrogate him on any of the other still active locations, and then use that information to plan our next few excursions."

"I for one think that's a much, much better plan than killing me." Suigetsu added. "Have I mentioned that?"

"You have, actually." Anko sighed.

"We hadn't planned on bringing him along on…" Sakura sighed. "But unfortunately, this mission seems a bit bigger than we'd been thinking about when this whole Akatsuki Assault Force was created. Saving an entire Village… that's going to take a few more than twenty ninja from the Sand and Leaf, especially with the Sand forces likely not arriving for quite a while. We can't afford to send anyone back with him, not with the time we've got. That means we're stuck with him."

Shark-boy flashed another smile, winking towards their group.

"We're taking everyone along, then?" Kakashi asked, looking towards where Tenzo, the one person Naruto recognized from the group, and the six or so more ninja stood behind him. "It's a sound plan. Definitely glad we brought Tenten along now."

The girl nodded, walking over to the others, and explaining that if they needed weapons, she had them covered.

It was a small niche, but a niche, nonetheless.

He noted the way Guy was smiling at her back, as if subtly happy for her. Naruto wasn't quite sure why the man looked so desperate for her to succeed… but he wasn't entirely clueless either.

It had something to do with the chat they'd had a few nights back.

"Alright, now that we're all acquainted… we should be moving." Kakashi spoke, pointing with two fingers to a shape on the horizon. "We can see the edge of the Waterfall now. It's the massive tree there overlooking the cliffs. Once we approach, we'll be entering via climbing the cliff faces outer side, and then jumping in. We'll likely enter in without a hitch but go in with the assumption that we'll be bombarded by Akatsuki from moment one."

Naruto acknowledged, as did everyone else.

"We move quickly and effectively. Trust the ninja beside you and be ready." Kakashi signaled them forward, running across the field in front of them.

"Let's move!"

/-/

By the time they'd made it to the village itself, the sun had begun to rise, casting them all in a brilliant golden light that felt antithetical to their purpose here, and to the situation itself. He'd already heard the rumbling of explosions two or three times, and though those could've been friendly paper bombs…

He had his doubts when a member of the Akatsuki specialized in such things.

He looked up as they finally made it to the wall and was frankly flabbergasted at the raw height of the rock wall in front of him. Easily a hundred and fifty meters high, if not higher, he felt his lungs already beginning to scream in terror.

No rest for the weary. He broke the truth to them with little gentleness.

They'd already been running for half a day, but, well… it wasn't like they'd be stopping now. Not when they'd just arrived. If anything, now was when the exertion really began.

He warmed himself up, hopping in place and stretching slightly as the first of them, Kakashi, Anko, and Tenzo, began mounting the wall. It would be his turn third, taking up the middle of the formation as technically a Jinchuuriki himself. They hadn't wanted to leave him on the ground by himself, even if only for a few moments.

As Sakura and Sasuke climbed onto the wall, the former pushing Suigetsu who was just in front of her, so too did he. It wasn't terribly difficult, and he found the chakra gathering easily in the bottoms of his soles. Watching the Jonin do it, though, especially Kakashi, was rather annoying.

The ease of which he leaned back and checked on all of them, nodded, and then forced himself back up had Naruto cringing at the amount of core exercises he must've done.

It wasn't that long before they'd made it up, Naruto's entire muscular structure crying out for help notwithstanding, it hadn't actually been that bad.

There was a notable problem, however.

"The Village…" Hinata whispered, covering her mouth with both hands.

Sakura bit down on her lip, as did several others. Naruto couldn't really manage much of anything, other than a horrified expression on his features that felt more like it'd emerged on its own.

Buildings crumbled beneath him, and the screams of thousands below echoed up from the burning streets. He was half tempted to jump down and try and save the few he could see, but by the time he'd managed to force his legs to move, they'd been crushed beneath another stone structure, what looked to have been a church.

He stood, entirely shellshocked, as he looked over the horror before him…

…And realized he had never felt a rage quite like this.

/-/

"And remind me again why we've been paired up with the newbie?"

Kabuto flinched away from the shark-skinned man's words, still more than a little nervous around him. He pulled on his black collar, trying to ignore the way the red clouds on the uniform, and the ring on his finger, made him feel.

"Because he was assigned to us." Itachi answered the man without much care. "If you have a complaint, feel free to take it up with Pain."

Kisame clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shooting Kabuto himself one last look before going back to the calm walk they'd been taking.

Well, calm walk for the man, it seemed. Kabuto found himself rather overwhelmed by the overall state of the Village around them.

The Waterfall had been gutted, and that was putting things kindly. The roads around them, flanked on either side by rivers that seemed to snake through the entire village, had been decimated, broken into pieces in multiple spots and, occasionally, launched into different parts of the village via explosion.

He tried to ignore the way a limb or body would occasionally flow through those waters…

He failed, but he certainly tried.

Up above them, Deidara rained hellfire upon the Village, bombing multiple key points, and ultimately killing perhaps hundreds of civilians. Kabuto himself couldn't help but grind his teeth, unable to quite hold in his anger.

The man had always struck him as a bit loose in the head, a mad artist, but someone that could, perhaps, be a decent human being beneath it all. Now… now he had confirmation, at least, of the exact opposite.

No, everyone in the Akatsuki was a monster…

And that included Itachi as well.

Whether or not that monster happened to be pointed at the others, or happened to be allied with Kabuto himself as well… that was neither here nor there.

He wasn't sure if he would consider himself a monster… but then again, that was probably what everyone thought.

"Almost to the main attraction." Kisame yawned as he took in the centerpiece of the village, a massive tree which seemed to stretch on endlessly. "That's where they're hiding the Jinchuuriki?"

"According to Zetsu's intel, yes." Kabuto answered, unsure if the man had been talking to him or Itachi. "They should be holed up around halfway to the top, deep inside."

The man gave an almost impressed "Hmm" as he saw a person rise out of a section of rubble in the distance. Upon seeing them, he pulled a blade out of the debris as well and drew it up. Kisame let out a disgusted groan, before drawing Samehada off of his back and brandishing it forward.

He met Itachi's eyes as Kisame rushed ahead, locking blades with a lone ninja trying to stop them. It was a silent question.

"Prepared?" They seemed to ask.

This would be the first step of their plan, one that would, hopefully, lead to the destruction of the Akatsuki…

Though it was just as likely to get the both of them killed as well.

Well, he'd never been one to back down from something like that. Instead, he drew in a breath, and steadied himself.

In for a sen…

He nodded back.

End Chapter 72


Aight.

So, we enter into this arc. When I started this, I had very few actual ideas for it. Now... well, I've actually managed to come up with some ways to link it into the plot a lot better than I had at first, so that's good.

There is an overarching plot, even if it is... well... a little hard to follow.

Thanks once more to everyone who writes a review on this story, by the way! I don't respond to a lot of them (I should do that more) But I truthfully do read every single one.

For League news: Worlds has ended, and DamWon has emerged victorious! Not shocking, they looked clean as hell. Sucks to see neither Karsa nor SwordArt lift the trophy though after the hype Semifinals ad.

Ah, well.

Anyways, see you all next-

Just kidding! I have a thing this week! I wrote an Omake for funzies. This won't be an every week thing, but I felt like poking fun at a particular section of this chapter, so here's a quick thing I wrote up in five minutes!

And Theeeen see you all next week!


Omake: Tenten's Doubts

"Not all of our members will be going there for the express purpose of fighting, however. Both Shino and Hinata are being brought along for the utility of their beetles and Byakugan respectively. We'd have brought an elder Hyuga or Aburame along, but Hinata requested to attend personally, and we saw no real difference in utility between her and another ninja. No elder Aburame's were available at the time, unfortunately, so we've gone with this squad."

Tenten raised her hand weakly.

"And me?"

Kakashi took one look at her, and, as if the answer was entirely obvious, spoke his next few words quickly.

"Character development."

Tenten's expression rapidly shifted from one of doubt to absolute bewilderment.

"Huh?"

"I mean, obviously we wouldn't bring you along normally, duh," Kakashi actually laughed. "I mean, have you seen you? But, well, you need to start your character arc right now, so you're coming."

Tenten seemed both offended and horribly confused, looking back and forth between Kakashi, Tsunade, and Naruto for some reason.

The latter of whom could only shrug uselessly.

"Uhm… what?"

"Eh," Kakashi shrugged, patting the girl on the shoulder as he walked towards the door. "Don't worry about it too much."

He stepped out of the room as everyone stared at his back, and Sasuke felt Tenten did a fairly decent job of summing up his own thoughts as she let out a quiet "What the fuck?"