CHAPTER WARNING: Brief mention of suicide.

xXx

Once upon a time, what felt like a whole lifetime ago, Tori had been a dedicated college student taking courses like "Chemistry 102 with Lab" and "Freshman Writing Elective: Young Adult Fiction." At the beginning of her fiction course, they'd read a few "original" fairy tales, and the one that had left the biggest impression on Tori was "The False Grandmother," an older version of Little Red Riding Hood.

In this version, the girl told the Wolf she had to go to the bathroom, and he let her out of the house to do her business. She ran. There was also some fairy tale-typical accidental cannibalism, but it was the clever trick that had stuck with Tori. Unfortunately, her captors were a little scarier than a wolf.

Deidara's clay spiders clung loyally to her feet as she walked through the hotel hallways. They were fat and cute and would kill her.

It was actually a shame Deidara made his creations so cute before he destroyed them. Was that part of the art? She hoped she was never in the position to ask him.

The baths were in a separate building, across a shabby courtyard of uncut grass. The hotel was truly on the edge of town– trees loomed above the bathhouse, signaling the start of the surrounding forest.

Tori had expected shower stalls, but the bathing part was one big room: one side had an area with low stools and faucets to scrub off, and the other side had a large pool for soaking. Next to the door were several cubbies to leave your clothes, and a pile of thin towels. The entire room smelled vaguely of bleach.

There were two other women in the bathroom. Tori turned her back and ignored them as best she could. She didn't particularly mind nudity, but walking around naked in front of strangers wasn't quite something she was comfortable with. She wrapped one of the towels around her and managed to fanagle getting her dress off under it.

"Could you move, please," she whispered to the spiders once she had her leggings around her ankles. The spiders did not react. She nearly tripped over herself pulling the leggings over them.

From this she learned that the spiders were not going to come off her feet even if she tried to pry them off, but also they weren't going to explode just from rough handling.

Tori sat down on one of the stools, lathered soap into a hand towel, and considered what she knew about jutsu from her work in Oto. She didn't think Deidara's jutsu could possibly be smart enough to know what constituted the hotel and what didn't; it probably relied on her being within a certain range of Deidara. She also didn't think the spiders were smart enough to recognize her beyond– what, her chakra? Her scent? Surely she could trick them and get them to stick to something else.

She massaged shampoo into her scalp, rinsed it off, and went to soak in the tub as far away as she could from the other two women, towel still wrapped firmly around her.

The biggest constraint she had, then, was time. Maybe if she had weeks, she could use Orochimaru's notes to come up with a seal to trick Deidara's jutsu. Instead she probably had less than thirty minutes before Deidara and Sasori would start getting suspicious, and that was contingent on her assumptions about jutsu being true. The Akatsuki did, after all, have a long and storied history of whipping out reality-breaking jutsu at the last second.

She could try cutting off the tops of her feet. She had the Oto medical kit with bandages and anesthetic; it would be fine. Except, as Deidara had pointed out, she had no weapons to cut anything with.

More importantly: Tori did not want to cut off her skin.

She decided, instead, to try to transfer the spiders to her cloned heart. She'd brought her whole backpack with her, so it was sitting in a cubby with the rest of her things. If it was a true clone, and if she was right about Deidara's jutsu, then it would be indistinguishable from her actual body to the spiders.

She thought so, at least. It could also be possible that Deidara had just thought "feet" at the spiders and they'd done what he wanted, despite not having any sort of actual intelligence to know what a foot was. Ninja arts were bullshit enough that it seemed possible.

Tori leaned back against the edge of the pool, letting her eyes close as she considered the best approach to this plan. Assuming she could get the spiders to move, she'd have to take the heart out of the jar. There were tiny threads of seal work painted right onto the organ, so it might be able to survive outside the jar, but for how long? Would the heart dying make the spiders explode? There were too many unknown variables.

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a scream from one of the women.

"What? Keiko, what?" the other woman asked, standing in alarm.

"SNAKE!" Keiko yelled, flailing in the water. " SNAKE!"

The other woman looked around frantically, then relaxed once she saw whatever Keiko was screaming about. "It's just a grass snake, Keiko, calm down–"

Keiko did not calm down. Her friend grabbed her shoulders and said some vaguely soothing things, and Tori climbed out of the bath.

"I can get it," she called, walking to perimeter of the pool over to them. "Where is it?"

Not-Keiko shot her a thankful look and pointed while Keiko yelled, "It will bite your head off!"

"It's not venomous, is it?" Tori asked.

"Not at all," Not-Keiko assured her while Keiko screeched something about all snakes being poisonous monsters.

A small green snake was partially wedged in a crack in the cement. Tori tiptoed toward the snake, bending her knees and crouching over it. When she could almost touch the snake with her fingertips, it darted out of the crevice. Tori lunged, which was not something you should do in a towel.

It didn't matter. The women cheered even as her towel slipped. Tori yelped and grabbed the towel with one hand, the snake clasped triumphantly in the other.

"Thank the gods, thank the gods–" Keiko wept.

Tori stared down at the tiny snake in her hand, twisting around and struggling. Tori liked snakes, and this one was a very pretty emerald green.

"Honestly," Not-Keiko chided her friend, "your husband is an elite shinobi, shouldn't you be a little braver?"

"It was going to eat me alive, Akane," Keiko wailed.

"Oh my god, Keiko, you're hopeless–"

The snake was very cute, but still Tori shifted her grasp on it so it couldn't turn its head and bite her.

"It's a grass snake and you live in Grass, Keiko."

"Don't make fun of me!"

"Excuse me," Tori said, cutting them off. She had a new idea for escaping. She kept her eyes open, not letting herself blink so they would tear up. "Can you help me?"

She knew what she must look like at this point, her body exposed in the towel– Deidara had fucked up her face and then Sasori had fucked up her face again. While washing, she'd found bruises and cuts all over her body from Suigetsu dropping her and being lugged all over the forest floor and having ninja manhandle her. She wouldn't be surprised if Sasori grabbing her neck hadn't left a ring of bruises around it.

The change on both women was instant. Akane's posture went lax and her eyebrows scrunched together in sympathy. Keiko shifted seamlessly from hysterics to ramrod-straight posture, expression dead serious.

"I, um," Tori said, and then took in a long shuddering breath to make it look like she was fighting back tears. She still hadn't blinked. "I came here with two men, but I didn't want to… um... be with them..."

She stared down at her feet, biting her lip and making herself very small.

"We can help you sneak out the back," Keiko said immediately.

"I need more help than that," Tori said, nodding down at her feet.

Akane recoiled. "What is that?"

"It's a ninja technique," Keiko said, taking two steps forward. Then she noticed the snake still in Tori's hand and took a step back.

"You said you're from Kusa, right?" Tori said, finally feeling the waterworks coming. She amped up the ham and croaked out, "You can get them to come help me, right?"

"I can…" Keiko started to say, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Kusa doesn't just go around saving random girls. Maybe if you have some form of payment–"

Tori wiped tears away from her eyes and let out a tiny, pathetic sob.

"Surely we can cover the cost…?" Akane said, wringing her hands. "Keiko, she caught the snake for you."

"Hiring a team to fight other ninja will be really expensive," Keiko replied, and then in a whisper Tori could barely hear over her own sobs, continued, "They're probably Kusa-nin on their week off, anyway, they do thing like this all the time and the village doesn't stop–"

Tori thought that, if she could convince Kusa she was clairvoyant, or that she could do secret Orochimaru-inspired genetic manipulations, she might be able to convince them to come extract her. But she remembered the scars all up and down Karin's arms. It would only be trading one captor for another.

"You don't understand," Tori said, letting her voice slip from controlled sob into outright bawling. "One of them is Sasori of the Red Sand."

Both women froze. Tori didn't know how well-known Deidara or Akatsuki overall were at this point, but Sasori definitely had a reputation. Keiko had to take two long, calming breaths before she said,

"That might be something the village will care about."

Tori thanked them and went to let the grass snake loose outside in the courtyard. When she came back in to change and gather her stuff, she heard the women talking again.

"We can't just let her go back," Akane was saying, sounding panicked. "Sasori is– he's–"

"He's her problem, and we can't do anything for her," Keiko said bluntly. "We're going to leave, immediately, and I'll send a message ahead so we can get an escort–"

Keiko shut up as soon as she saw Tori, who casually waved at them as she pulled out her clothes. It sounded like Keiko wasn't actually going to do anything on her behalf, but that was fine. All Tori wanted was for Kusa to be alerted to Sasori's presence in their country.

Nailed it, Tori thought.

xXx

Tori had to knock to be let into the room, which felt very odd as kidnappers generally didn't impose barriers to their victims staying in their prisons. There were a couple of yells on the other side, and then Deidara opened the door. He very rudely grabbed her by the arms and pulled her in before slamming the door behind her. Sasori did not even look up, elbow-deep in the thorax of a puppet.

"Have you been crying?" Deidara asked, as if crying while being kidnapped by evil ninja was a ridiculous thing to do. His hair was down and recently brushed, looking tame next to the pinched and mildly disgusted look on his face.

"I guarantee you this situation is more stressful for me than it is for you," Tori snapped back, sounding exactly like she'd recently been crying.

Deidara had rolled out his futon, his cloak spread over the blanket in a way that was almost cute. Tori bent and picked up a second futon, intent on finding the spot in the room that maximized her distance from both Deidara and Sasori.

"Deidara," Sasori called.

"Oh, right," Deidara said, suddenly in Tori's personal space. "Don't want to waste clay, yeah."

Her first instinct was to back away, but then she thought, no, fuck this guy, and straightened her posture to scowl at him the best she could. Deidara ignored her, though, and tapped each of his clay spiders with his toes. They each burst in turn into even smaller spiders which scattering across the room, crawling in random patterns until they came to rest in neat lines across the bottom of the door and window sill.

"Disgusting," Sasori quipped.

"Shut up," Deidara yelled back. "You could set up something to secure the entrances, but you won't, because I do all the work around here–"

Tori set up her futon while they snarked at each other. Deidara ended the argument by crawling under his own covers, announcing that Sasori didn't know what he was missing, and… just going to sleep. Tori blinked at him, her own bed half-made at her feet.

"...we're going to leave the lights on?" she asked.

"How else am I supposed to work?" Sasori replied, not even bothering to look at her.

Tori considered telling Sasori that maybe he should just switch out his human eyes for an animal's eyes more suited to work in the dark, then, like some sort of morbid Mr. Potato Head. She didn't think he'd appreciate her design input, though, so she said nothing as she flopped down on the futon. Deidara had left his shoes on, so she did as well.

The futon was just as lumpy as the one she'd had in Oto, but the blanket was softer and nicer. She was tempted to take off her shoes off to embrace it fully, but presumably Deidara's shoes were still on in case he had to leap up from sleep and run somewhere. Tori had similar hopes about where her night was going.

She made a show of getting comfortable, shifting and rearranging her pillow and pulling the blanket over her face to block the light. Instead of sleep, she stared at the inside of the fabric and listened to the arhythmic sound of Sasori's ministrations over his art.

Tori hadn't had a lot of free time in Oto, but the vast majority of what she got had been spent in isolation in her cell. It had been agonizingly boring at first; in Tori's old life, she could unlock her phone and access the internet the second she felt bored, after all. She'd napped a lot, paced her cell and gave herself anxiety imaging up new horrors Kabuto and Orochimaru could throw at her, and then finally she adjusted. Now, she was perfectly fine lying in one position for hours on end with nothing to entertain her but her own mind.

"I can't sleep if you're awake, yeah," Deidara said accusingly.

Tori frowned at the inside of her blanket cocoon. How could he sleep through Sasori being the most annoying roommate ever, but her lying perfectly still and quiet was distracting?

"I am upset and stressed," she answered.

"So?" Deidara asked, and Tori wanted to scream.

Instead, she rolled over and flipped the pillow over her head, like she was blocking out all noise Sasori was making. Maybe Deidara could tell she was on-edge and that was keeping him up. She sniffled and hiccupped a few times, like she was poorly hiding her tears from them. That's what they expected, wasn't it? That's what everyone expected of her.

Deidara muttered something that was probably insulting, and then nothing was said for hours and hours.

Tori willed herself into relaxing by trying to recall the entire and convoluted plot of Game of Thrones. After a few hours of entertaining herself, she remembered she'd never know how the series ended, made herself sad, and transitioned into her favorite hobby of over-thinking everything.

What if Kusa didn't intervene and let Sasori go? What if they just decided to run reconnaissance and not confront him? What if the three of them crossed the border into Rain before Kusa got the message?

She still liked this plan better than messing with the spiders, she decided. The variables in this one were less likely to literally blow up in her face.

At that moment, as if to prove her wrong, the window exploded. Deidara was on his feet with his poaches of clay strapped around his waist before Tori even registered what was happening. Cold hands gripped her, yanking her up from her bed.

Her blankets were on fire. Huh. She watched them fall from her as the thing pulled her up.

The thing holding her was a puppet. Its jaw clicked in her ear, and it retreated to where Deidara and Sasori– who'd left Hiruko abandoned in the corner– were standing back to back in the middle of the room.

"Three in the hall and two on the roof–" Deidara announced, glaring at the door. His spiders paraded across the sill. "Can I just blow up the building?"

"Six in the yard," Sasori reported back, facing down the hole in the wall where Deidara's spider had decimated the window. "ANBU masks confirmed. And no, you can't just blow up a building–"

Whoever was on the other side of the door seemed to disagree– or at least decide that triggering a trap was better than waiting for the Akatuski to make their move, because then the door exploded as well. Deidara cackled with glee even as a clay bird appeared to take the brunt of the force.

Tori found herself dropped onto her backside between the two of them, as Sasori moved the puppet that was holding her with a flick of his finger. The thing jittered and went flying at a shinobi that, as far as Tori could tell, had just appeared from the shadows in the corner like a goddamn ghost.

Or– to be fair– like a goddamn ninja.

The shinobi was dressed in all black with a blazing white mask. Tori watched the puppet slash at the ninja from between her fingers, like a kid watching a horror film. The shinobi staggered back from the puppet, then did a series of hand seals that made the floor swallow up the puppet and smash it to bits. The shinobi took two steps toward her and collapsed.

Poison? Injuries she hadn't noticed?

She had no idea. Next to the body, her blankets were smoldering. Her bag was knocked on its side, relatively undamaged and flame-free.

There was a hole in the ceiling now, and Sasori was yelling at Deidara as he leapt through it, and there was metal clanking alarming close to Tori's ear, and it occurred to her that she had given Kusa the location of a notorious missing-nin to take out with absolutely no reason to ensure she lived as well.

Sasori, theoretically, wanted to keep her alive to deliver her to Pein, which was presumably why she hadn't been impaled by a stray kunai yet. That was the catch-22 of this world, wasn't it? If you were important enough to keep alive, you were important enough to kidnap and use.

"Brat, blowing up a hotel isn't art," Sasori was yelling up at the hole in the ceiling, even as puppets shot fire and senbon at people. "I need spare parts left over– DEIDARA–"

On one hand, Sasori was moving further away from where she was squatting in the middle of the hotel room with her arms over her head. If she followed him, he'd probably intervene in her dying in the crossfire.

On the other hand, the Kusa-nin didn't specifically want her dead, and based on the general roar of screaming form the building, the other civilians bystanders were mostly still alive and kicking.

Tori took a deep breath. She shot forward, going directly from her squat into a clumsy dive for her backpack. Scooping it up, she hopped the smouldering remains of the door and ran like hell down the hall.

People were wandering around, confused and terrified. Tori ignored them, dodging around bodies and clutching her backpack to her chest and following the signs for the back exit. She burst out of the hotel, and then–

"HEY!" Deidara yelled, landing directly in front of her. "What did you do?"

Tori actually screamed then, in some mix of shock and anger and fear.

Another puppet appeared, wrapping two sets of arms around her in a bear hug from behind, forcing her to drop her backpack.

"Why are there so many?" Sasori asked, appearing at Tori's shoulder. "This isn't a normal team."

Sasori had crawled back into Hiruko at some point while she'd been distracted, and even with half the face covered, he gave off the impression of being livid.

Tori kicked at the puppet holding her a bit, to no avail. Sasori didn't even look back at her as he batted projectiles out of the air.

"Annoying," Sasori said, then slowly started wading across the hotel's yard to the treeline the projectiles were coming form.

Deidara sort of glanced at Tori and said vaguely, "Eh, you'll be fine, yeah," and jogged after Sasori to leave her standing around, restrained by a puppet and undefended.

"HEY!" Tori yelled after him. "Hey, come back here!"

She fumed and kicked some more at the puppet as she watched Hiruko start pulling men out of the trees like apples. Deidara whooped and summoned another bird; a Kusa-nin using some sort of air jutsu propelled himself into the sky after him.

Tori actually felt sort of bad for the Kusa-nin. It was really obvious Kusa was putting a lot of effort into this– they'd sent this many shinobi, after all– and it wasn't doing them much good. Deidara and Sasori had both taken damage, sure, but it was almost sad how many men in ANBU masks they'd mowed down.

Then, Deidara yelled, "Oh, fuck, Danna–"

Later, Tori would learn what happened was this: in a last-ditch effort, two of the remaining Kusa-nin had compressed all their chakra and then released it all at once, in what was colloquially known as a "suicide jutsu."

What she experienced in the moment was a shockwave that flung her off her feet into the building wall behind her. The puppet shattered, the wall crumbled, and Tori's back exploded into so much pain she blacked out for a moment.

When she came to, she probably would have assumed Deidara had just done something massively stupid, had her brain been up to thinking enough to make assumptions. Sasori was out of Hiruko again, screaming insults at Deidara while they… fought some other dudes. Or each other? Unclear.

Tori moved gingerly. Something was very wrong with her back. Or shoulder? Also unclear.

Moving seemed like a bad idea. Not moving seemed like a worse idea. She rolled over onto her knees and fumbled around; her backpack had painkillers. Anesthetics. What was the difference? Didn't matter– they'd let her run.

It took her a few moments to find it in the rubble. The glass jar of her heart had finally broken, leaving weird heart-goo all over her things.

She'd have to mourn its loss later. She shoved the bits of glass and the heart itself aside, pulling out the now-cracked plastic case of pre-filled syringes. Only two of the syringes inside survived, which was fine. Tori flipped the plastic cap off the needle and stabbed it into her shoulder, right through her sleeve.

She chucked the needle aside and stood, pulling her bag onto her good shoulder. She could only see three Kusa-nin left, but Deidara and Sasori were slower than before. She turned and ran.

Tori refused to be grateful for anything Kabuto had put her through, but before his experiments she wouldn't have been able to run very far, even with the help of adrenaline, and she definitely wouldn't have been able to run at all with a fucked up arm. He'd taught her to keep moving even when she just wanted to lie down and cry.

She knew she couldn't get very far. She was no ninja, and she'd have to stop soon or collapse. She needed to figure out how to hide.

She skirted the edge of the village, ignoring the occasional civilian yelling about fire and running towards the hotel, and then heading into the forest. She found a creek and walked upstream in ankle-deep freezing water. It was the type of thing someone in a movie would do, but she didn't know if it would help keep shinobi off her trail. She pretended it would.

Eventually the stream fed into a river, and she walked along the shallow parts until it became too muddy to continue.

She was too tired to run anymore. Hours had passed and the sun had come up and she didn't know how far she'd come. Her shoulder was starting to throb again.

She found a particularly thick patch of bamboo and managed to wedge herself into it, just like the little snake she'd found in a crevice in the bathhouse.

She fell asleep, and then woke to rain.

Her shoulder hurt so much she almost couldn't stand it. Her skin was oddly tender in several places– apparently she hadn't escaped burns from the explosions. She found rips in her clothes she didn't remember. Her feet ached.

She pulled up her hood and made herself walk.

She trudged along the river bank in a daze, indulging in vivid fantasies of laying down in the soft grass and napping for seven years. Imaging all the running from missing-nin she could do well-rested!

There was a town on the other side of the river. That was nice.

She came to a bridge. She slowly walked across it, absent-mindedly fantasizing about the hospital bed she could maybe find and then take a nap in.

At the end of a bridge was a small building and a gate. A toll?

She approached the building.

It was a border checkpoint into the Land of Rain.

All good things must come to an end, she supposed.

xXx

The man inside had asked her a bunch of questions which she may or may not have answered, she couldn't remember. He let her sit down and gave her a juice box.

The man was writing a note. He rolled it up and gave it to a falcon. He looked at her and sighed. He went away and came back with a box of cookies and a paper plate.

"You're calling them in, then?" she asked, swinging her feet from the chair.

"What?" The man said. He poured the cookies on the plate and set them down on the chair next to her.

"You know, my escort." Tori took a cookie. Why was he being so nice?

"Your escort?" The man seemed sincerely puzzled, scratching his temple under this Ame headband.

Tori bit into a cookie. "Oh my god," she said. "You don't know who I am."

The man blinked at her. "Er… should I? No one mentioned anything about–"

No wonder he was being so nice. This man was only seeing a small, injured girl who'd wandered across the bridge in a confused haze. He was taking pity on her and, unfortunately for him, that was something Tori could use.

Tori sighed dramatically and dropped the half-eaten cookie back onto the plate.

"You mean word hasn't reached yet?" she asked, trying to make her accent sound as over-the-top entitled as she could.

"Word?" the man was shifting nervously. "My supervisor said–"

"My father," Tori drawled, "the inventor of cup noodles, is on a very important business trip in the Land of Wind, and I am to join him post haste."

Apparently her interpretation of entitlement was Gretchen Wieners-meets-Draco Malfoy. Well. It's not like anyone here knew who any of those characters were for comparison.

The man was starting to look concerned. "The inventor of cup noodles?"

" Yes , pay attention," she sighed, exasperated. "I am a very important person." She gave a flourish of her hand and flipped her hair, which was disgustingly frizzy from the rain.

"But… why are you…"

"I was attacked, obviously ," she screamed with such over-the-top-energy she pushed herself to her feet. Her shoulder throbbed. She gripped it dramatically. "My party was ambushed by a team of vagabonds and my shinobi escorts were all murdered."

She rolled her eyes, as if the entire concept of death was ridiculous.

"Honestly, Kusa chuunin are simply not up to standards anymore. Now, Kumo ninja, those are some fine…"

She started babbling. And pacing. And gesturing with her good hand. She was losing control of this situation.

The man was becoming visibly upset.

"But that's horrible! You poor girl, how did you survive?"

She stuck her nose up vainly. "You think simple thugs could kill the daughter of the inventor of cup noodles?"

"No! Obviously not!"

"Obviously. Now," she sniffed, " where is my escort?"

The man suddenly looked very sad. "I'm sorry, Miss Cup Noodle, but Rain has closed borders. You need resident papers or special written permission from the Amegakure leader to enter. I'll write my supervisor–"

Tori rolled her not just her eyes, but her entire head. " Ob-vi-ous-ly ," she stressed, "I have written permission. My father, the inventor of cup noodles, arranged it so I could peacefully pass through your silly little country months ago."

"Then– the papers–"

"I think I just said that I was ROBBED?" she interrupted shrilly. "They took e-ver-y- thing, obviously."

"Ah, of course, obviously," the man said, nodding profusely. "I completely understand. I'll send another note to my supervisor and then–"

"Ugh, don't bother," she said, rolling her eyes again and picking up her bag. "I don't have the time or patience for this. I'll go into town and hire my own escort."

"But–"

She headed for the door.

"You can't–"

She flung the door open.

"Miss Cup Noodle, please!"

She let the door bang shut behind her. The man made no attempt to stop or follow her, instead diving back toward the note he'd been writing earlier.

His supervisor would not be pleased.

She found a clinic in town, and as soon as she walked in an exasperated nurse was pushing forms into her hands and asking her questions about her injuries.

She wrote her name down as Noodle Cup (age 17, from the Land of Lightning) and easily lied her way through how she'd dislocated her shoulder.

The clinic had no overnight services, so after resetting her shoulder, putting her arm in a sling, and bandaging the worst of her burns, the nurse shoved a few pieces of medicine into her arms and sent her back onto the street.

The rush Tori had gotten from lying to the border guard had faded and she was so tired she sat down right on the curb outside the clinic. She wearily transferred her new medical supplies (a box of painkillers, some ointment for the burns, gauze and medical tape) into her backpack and simply stared into space for a while.

Eventually the clinic closed and the nurse came out and scolded her. Tori trudged down the street, found a park with a single tree, and laid down in the dewy grass under it.

Some time later, in a half-asleep daze, she heard a familiar voice say, "Is this for real?"

She blearily opened her eyes. Something blue was in her face. She blinked her eyes a few times to clear them.

Hoshigaki Kisame was leaning over her.

"Aw man," she said, rolling over onto her side, away from him. Maybe if she went back to sleep he'd go away.

Something foot-like poked her back.

"I take it you recognize us, Tori-san?" Kisame asked, sounding amused as always.

Us? "Is fucking Itachi with you?"

Kisame laughed, and then his strong hand was wrapped around her good arm, pulling her up to her feet.

"Yes, fucking Itachi is here," Kisame said good naturedly.

Itachi stared down at her, looking completely apathetic.

"Please kill me quickly," she said to Kisame. He raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Ah, no, Tori-san," Kisame said. "We're not here to kill you. Leader-sama wants to meet you first." Kisame paused, and then his grin took on a sort of mean quality. "Then he'll probably decide to kill you."

Tori felt her legs go out. Kisame and Itachi, being super fast ninja with lightning-like reflexes, could have easily caught her. They didn't.

"You're not going to make me walk, are you?" she said, staring into the sky. "Because I'd rather you just drag me along behind you while I enjoy my last few moments in peace."

Neither Kisame nor Itachi said anything, but then a hand wrapped around her ankle and started dragging her across the grass.

"Hey," Tori yelped, craning her neck to see what was going on. Kisame's blue hand was pulling her along behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, Itachi bent and picked up her bag. "Hey!" she repeated and kicked Kisame's forearm.

Mistake. The shift in her weight dug her bad shoulder into the ground, and she saw black spots. An embarrassing sound of pain escaped her throat.

"Kisame," Itachi murmured. His feet were her next to her face, and her bag dangled form his hand.

"It was her idea," Kisame replied, and stubbornly kept dragging her along.

Tori relaxed her neck. Being hauled along did, technically, hurt a bit, especially as her dress rolled up and her bare skin dragged along the ground. But the ground was mostly mud, so it was sort of like the world's most unfun slip-n-slide.

"This is very immature," Itachi said after a while, and it was unclear if he was addressing Kisame or Tori.

Tori crossed her arms over her chest, glaring up at the overcast sky above. She was so done with ninja, and she didn't care if it was over dramatic or immature to refuse to walk. She didn't care if she messed up her shoulder again, or if she cut up her back on rock and underbrush. If it inconvenienced ninja even the slightest, then good. Good!

They left the town, and the muddy road was dark as it crept through lush trees. At her level Tori could see all sorts of mosses and ferns, dense between the trees. The sky above was a solid, angry grey, and she heard the rumble of thunder twice before it actually started raining.

The rain, hitting her mouth and eyes relentlessly, did tempt her to agree to walk like a normal human. But the hood of her coat was definitely filled with mud by now, so instead she flung her arm over her face dramatically.

She gave up when the road turned from mud to cobblestone.

"Hey," she croaked, tapping Kisame's wrist with her free foot. "Hey, my beauty sleep is over now. I can walk."

"It's what you wanted," Kisame called back at her and made no move to let her go. "It's not my fault you didn't think this through."

Tori almost asked, Why are you being so mean? As if accusing Kisame of being mean would convince him to stop.

The one good thing about being dragged through mud was that she was now so thoroughly covered it formed a thin layer between her and the cobblestones. A layer that was being slowly shaved away, and her bare skin was next in line to be shaved.

"You're being awfully rude," Tori decided on, and that got Kisame to turn his head at look at her. "Worst kidnapping ever. Three out of ten."

Kisame raised his eyebrows. "What did we get points for?"

"Well," Tori said, blinking water out of her eyes to meet his gaze. "Itachi was nice enough to carry my bag."

Kisame stopped walking. In her peripheral vision, Tori could see Itachi pause as well. "How did you rank the artist duo?"

Tori had absolutely no idea what Kisame's relationship with Deidara and Sasori was like, so she couldn't guess an answer that he'd want to hear. She did know he hated liars, though, so she went with the truth.

"Eight out of ten," she said. "They gave me food."

Kisame burst into laughter and dropped her leg. Tori rolled, stood, and staggered several paces to the left as blood rushed to her head. Her limbs were stiff and felt light as she stretched.

Now that she was upright, she could see the walls of Amegakure in the distance. Tall buildings with neon lights poked out from behind it, all silhouetted by dark clouds.

"If you're done," Itachi said, sounding entirely unimpressed with both of them. In person he gave off the air of someone who was too tired for feelings, and he probably would not have been intimidating at all if something if the back of Tori's mind wasn't going, Holy crap, it's fucking Uchiha Itachi.

Kisame clapped her on the back, nearly knocking her over again and making pain shoot through her shoulder, and said, "Let's go, Tori-san."

Kisame, in contrast, was intimidating even without prior knowledge of his criminal record. He was big, and broad, and he had a giant sword on his back. Plus he was a light shade of blue, which was… not even that weird in the grand scheme of genetic anomalies in this world, now that she thought about it.

They waltzed right into Ame, then through the town center, and not one person gave them a second glance. Ame had a lot of covered walkways between buildings, and the roads were lined with deep gutters that rushed with water.

"Does it always rain this hard?" Tori asked.

"Hmm," Kisame answered, which was the sort of answer she'd gotten in Oto when she asked for information above her clearance. She knew the rain had to do with a jutsu, but how could amount of rainfall be too sensitive to tell her?

While the center of Ame was teaming with people, the outskirts had plenty of what were clearly abandoned buildings. There were no people on the streets, which were left quiet and dark. The shops that lined the streets weren't just closed, but nonexistent, with window after window opening into empty rooms filled with dust. There was a story here, and probably a sad one, and Tori didn't have much headspace to ponder it because she was still hung up on the stupid rain.

The building they led her into was a lone beacon of light in the dark neighborhood. The first floor was very clearly a lobby– unmanned desk with potted fake plants and all– and Tori's mind completely short circuited. She didn't know what she had expected from the Akatsuki hideout, but it wasn't a lobby. The front desk had a shiny marble top and the opposite wall was lined with mirrors and there was a floor directory posted next to the stairs and a chandelier. It was a modern one– a nest of brass arms ending in light bulbs– and half the bulbs were out, but it was still a chandelier.

"You didn't look up very much," Kisame said, sounding disappointed.

"What?" Tori asked, trying to mesh "secret rainfall statistics" with "chandelier."

"Ame has the three tallest buildings on the continent," Itachi said dully. "Usually visitors find them quite impressive."

Tori stared at him. Why the hell was it okay to tell her records for building heights but not weather patterns? Ame's buildings weren't even that impressive; she'd seen Manhattan. Even her mid-sized hometown had a more impressive downtown.

"Where are you from?" Itachi asked, and Tori supposed his actual question was, "What's your background that made you not even notice the skyscrapers, which are a rarity in this universe?"

"Uh…" Tori started, and abruptly realized she did not know the name of a single town that wasn't a hidden village. "Hot Water Country?" she tried.

"You don't sound so sure about that," Kisame said, his polite-but-mean grin back on his face.

"I am definitely from Hot Water Country," Tori said as convincingly as possible.

Itachi didn't even really do facial expressions, but even he managed to look incredulous.

Luckily, Tori was saving from continuing her incredibly awkward lie by someone bounding down the stairs into the the lobby. Unluckily, that person was Hidan.

"Yo," he greeted, casually twirling his scythe in a way that definitely endangered the fake potted plants. "Why the fuck did we get called back in?"

Tori dove behind Itachi.

"We're to discuss what to do with Sasori and Deidara's discovery," Itachi answered blandly.

"Yeah, and what's that?" Hidan asked. "This girl?"

He took a step to side to get a look at Tori. Tori took a step to the side to keep Itachi between them. Hidan looked at spot behind both her and Itachi, and Tori glanced over to find he was staring at her reflection in a mirror.

Their reflections made eye-contact. Hidan's eyebrows furrowed. His lips parted slightly. Tori could almost see the gears working in his head. She watched the exact moment he face turned to inhuman rage.

"CHOCOLATE SYRUP!" Hidan screamed and lunged at her, scythe swinging. Kisame hitched Samehada off his shoulder and blocked the scythe.

"HOW FUCKING DARE YOU," Hidan was screaming at Tori as she cowered behind Itachi. "YOU FUCKING HEATHEN, YOU BLASPHEMOUS BITCH!"

Itachi didn't even blink.

"You've met before?" Kisame asked pleasantly. Hidan answered with a string of obscenities that didn't even make sense.

"What are you DOING?" Kakuzu hollered from the stairs. "Can't you be quiet for one–"

"The bitch came back," Hidan yelled, pressing down harder with his scythe. "Kisame, you're blocking my divine duty to eviscerate her–"

"Oh, her," Kakuzu said, appearing behind Hidan. He stared at Tori, dark and menacing and surprisingly tense, and briefly she was terrified he was about to attack her too. Then Kakuzu's weird eyes over to Itachi, who was standing there calmly and scratching his forearm.

Kakuzu sighed deeply and wrestled Hidan into a headlock.

"You pile of FUCK," Hidan bellowed and aimed a kick at Kisame, and it was unclear who he was yelling at.

"Shall we?" Itachi said dully, inclining his head at Tori.

He headed for the stairs, still holding her bag in one hand. Tori did not want to go wherever he was taking her– be it to a dungeon or to Pein or to a literal guillotine– but Itachi seemed like a safer bet than whatever fistfight was happening in front of her.

She scuttled after him, not even giving Hidan a second glance.

xXx

END NOTE: A short version of the fairy tale Tori refers to can be read here.