Chapter Six: All Hell Gets Loose

Rule Number Six: Ran fast, it saves a lot of unnecessary deaths.

Hannah

Good afternoon dear readers and welcome to my retelling of my little 'adventure' with Kakuzu and Hidan. It was…hmm…how should I put it? Interesting.

I'll skip out all the boring details of us running through forest to get toLandofLightning. Basically, it took a about a week to get there (Kakuzu was often side tracked on bounty hunting trips), but we did.

The Two-Tailed Cat is one of the tailed beasts (which for those of you who don't know are gigantic monsters possessing enormous amounts of strength. The Akatsuki are trying to kidnap them for their evil purposes. Yay…) Anyways, the Two-Tailed Cat's junchuriki is a woman by the Yugito Nii from theLandofLightning. The three of us have to kidnap her alive and bring her back to the hideout to have her beast sucked out of her. Fun times.

And so, I'll take off from the point where the three of us are sitting at a bar. Hidan and Kakuzu are, of course, drinking sake. I, unfortunately, am underage and have to sit here and watch them get drunk.

"Aren't we going to get on with the mission?" I asked after about the fourth bottle of sake.

"Who cares about the stupid mission?" asked Hidan a little shakily (apparently he isn't a good drinker). "Leader was just trying to send us out so he could fool around with Konan when nobody's looking…" He giggled.

Kakuzu rolled his eyes and had another sip of sake. Unlike Hidan, he seemed unaffected by the alcohol and continued drinking steadily. Until, finally, Hidan passed out on the table, his head making a clunking sound as it hit the wood.

"Great…" I grumbled. "Now we'll never get the mission done."

"Is he unconscious?" asked Kakuzu, kicking Hidan in the knee under the table. "Yep. Good." Kakuzu rose from the table and picked up Hidan so that the man was slumped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Let's find a place to dump the body and then go find this stupid jinchuriki."

"Wait…" I said slowly, chasing after Kakuzu. "You knocked him out on purpose?"

"Of course. I'm not going through another mission with this piece of shit."

Yes, Kakuzu is complete insane – possibly more insane than Hidan himself (and that is saying something). But, I obeyed Kakuzu's every word and we found a spot behind an old restaurant to dump Hidan's body while the two of us set out to find the Two-Tails.

"Where would she be?" I asked curiously.

Kakuzu shrugged.

"So then how are we going to find her?"

He shrugged again.

"Are we just going to walk around in circles until we find the stupid bitch!" I cried in frustration.

There was a load crash as the door of a bar flew open and two people came storming outside. One was a short man with dark colored hair and another a tall woman with long honey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. The man was shouting angrily at his partner:

"I totally wiped out the most bad-guys on that mission, Yugito, and you know it! Just because you're the Two-Tails jinchuriki does not automatically make you a better shinobi than me!"

…

"Oh."

Kakuzu laughed. "Shall we get hunting?"

"You would think," I said heavily. "That these people would have the sense to be a little quieter about their situation…"

"They're all idiots," agreed Kakuzu.

Now, just to make this clear to you dear readers, out of the three of us, Kate, Dessie, and me, I am probably the second fittest. Kate, as you already know, is a softy and a weakling and Dessie has mastered every time of martial arts imaginable. So, you ask, where does that leave me? Well, back inTexasbefore we wound up here, I ran track. And I was pretty damn good at it.

So, when Kakuzu and I found ourselves chasing after Yugito Nii down a very long, very complicated series of sewer passageways I found that my past experience on the track team extremely useful.

"Shit," I hissed, after a good twenty minutes of running. "How long is she going to run for? Is this a shinobi?"

"She's leading us somewhere…" muttered Kakuzu.

"A trap?" I asked, disbelievingly.

"Most likely."

"And we're just going to let ourselves be caught in it?"

Kakuzu shrugged (his signature move). "What's the harm in that?"

"Er…welll…" I stammered, trying to force the words out. "We're not all near-immortals like you… I could die from this you know…"

"What's the harm in that?"

"Oh. Right. I forgot I'm partnered up with the heartless bastard – and yes, I do see the irony in that statement." I glared at Kakuzu and was surprised to see his lips twitch in semi-amusement.

"Good to know you're not completely stupid."

Yugito turned into a small, underground chamber, slamming the door closed behind her. Kakuzu and I slipped inside after her. The chamber was roughly the size of a small house with no exit other than the one we had just come through. Yugito stood at the far end of the chamber, regarding us with hate-filled eyes.

"Akatsuki…" she hissed.

Kakuzu grunted, but said nothing in reply.

Then, Yugito caught sight of me and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "She's not Akatsuki."

Kakuzu glanced at me, and then turned back to Yugito with a shrug. "She's a stray cat who wound up wandering our hallways. She's here to get rid of pent up energy – be glad you're going to die in useful ways."

Yugito ignored Kakuzu's last statement and, instead, said to me, "A stray cat, eh? Well that makes two of us – I'm regret killing another cat, but you're in cahoots with the Akatsuki. So, little kitty, sorry and good-bye."

And with that, the door behind Kakuzu and I exploded.

The force of the blast sent us flying across the room. My body skidded along the concrete floor to the feet of Yugito. Blood dripped down the scraps on my shoulder and knees. The pain was unbelievable and, unlike Kakuzu who got up two seconds after the fall, I lay there, shuddering in pain.

"She's not a shinobi," observed Yugito in mild surprise.

I cringed and she bent over, grabbed me roughly by the shoulder, and hauled me to my feet. We stood nose to nose and I found myself surprised at how pretty the Two-Tails was. She had a gentle face, with long, aristocratic features and bright colored eyes. I was almost jealous of her casual beauty – that was until she lifted her kunai and tried to stab me in the heart.

Kakuzu saved me (believe it or not). Before Yugito could bury her kunai into my flesh, Kakuzu leapt forward and snatched me from her grip. I guess Leader's threats work and he was determined to bring me back alive.

Then, of course, Kakuzu threw me on the ground rather harshly and said, "It'd be pathetic to die at the hands of a bitch like that – can you at least try to be useful?"

"Well I can't help it!" I cried, wiping the blood from my knees. "I'm not a shinobi!"

Yugito didn't give us time to chat, however, and she lunged forward. Her hands transformed in mid air and blue-fire glowed around her skin, extending into a pair of long, sharp claws where her hands should have been.

"What the hell!" I yelp, rolling out of the way of her attack.

There was no need for me to move, however, since Kakuzu's tentacles caught her by the leg and threw her across the room. She slammed against the stone wall letting out a whimper of pain. For a moment, she didn't move, lying there silently covered in dust and rubble from the now cracked wall.

"Is she dead?" I asked hopefully.

Kakuzu took a step towards her, his tentacles seeping out and his skin detaching itself from his body. "Either way I'll eat her heart."

Slam!

Yugito jerked her leg up into the air and caught Kakuzu in the shoulder. The force of her kick sent him flying backwards and she jumped to her feet, grinning maniacally. "Cat's have nine lives, baby!"

I groaned. "Not another lame catchphrase…"

Yugito whipped around to stare at me, watching out of the corner of her eye as Kakuzu rose to his feet. "Did you just call my catchphrase lame, bitch?"

"Yeah, yeah." I grumbled.

Kakuzu was smiling (or as much as a freak like him can smile). Apparently he was quite calm to sit back and watch Yugito kick my ass.

Yugito's body was starting to expand and the blue-fire around her was beginning to resemble a cat. She was crouched down on all fours, regarding me with bloodshot eyes. When she spoke, her voice came out a low hiss like that of a feline. "Die, bitch!"

She charged at me and, like the brave heroine I was, I screamed and ran out of the way.

"What the…"

Yugito looked stunned – apparently screaming and fleeing was no something prey normally did. But an instant later she had recovered from the initial shock and was chasing me down again. I sprinted in circles at full speed, trying desperately to avoid her sharp claws. Rule Number Six: Run fast, other you will be very, very dead very, very quickly.

"Kakuzu!" I wailed. "Save me!"

"Why?"

I glared and dodged another flying attack of Yugito's. "Because Leader will kill you if I die!"

"Then live."

"Kak–"

And then all hell broke loose.

Literary in the sense that Hidan came crashing down into the chamber through the stone ceiling – and, with rocks and debris raining down on the three of us like a hailstorm, Hidan was not in a good mood. He stood in the middle of the ruckus and glowered at the room, his eyes searching through the mess of a ceiling for the familiar face of his companion.

"Kakuzu!" screamed Hidan, slamming his scythe against the nearest rock and shattering it to pieces. "How dare you abandon me like that, you shithead! I was the one meant to kill the bitchy Two-Tails – you dare knock me out with sake and leave me outside a fucking ramen restaurant!"

Kakuzu shrugged. "Yeah."

"Die, Shithead!"

"Wait!"

Before Hidan could slice off Kakuzu's head with a scythe, I raised my hand and yelled out the word again, "WAIT!"

They both turned to stare at me.

"What do you want, bitch?" asked Hidan.

"Before you two try and kill each other again," I mumbled. "Can we please capture the Two-Tails – I don't want to return to Leader empty handed."

They both considered this.

"Hell yeah!" cried Hidan, completely forgetting about his intentions to kill Kakuzu. "Jashin-sama's getting hungry!"

The next few scenes of the battle need to be described. They are particularly gory (for all of you who know of Hidan's rituals, you'll understand what I mean – for those of you who have no idea what Hidan's ritual's look like…consider yourself lucky). In the end, Kakuzu and Hidan successfully captured the Two-Tails. Hidan would say that it was all thanks to him and that Jashin-sama was very appeased, but Kakuzu and I know who was really behind the Two-Tail's capture (we'll just let Hidan keep pretending).

So, with the Two-Tails bound and unconscious, Kakuzu slung her over his shoulder (a popular way to travel in the Akatsuki apparently) and the three of us began the long and tiring march back to the Akatsuki hideout.

In the back of my mind, I could not help but wonder how Dessie and Kate's missions were going. Hopefully, no one had managed to kill them yet (though we all know Kisame and Itachi will try).