I'm Back, Baby

The sound of the elevator woke me. I sat up quickly and realized that somebody was coming up to our floor. I immediately checked my phone, but there were no messages from Jugo or Suigetsu, so it couldn't be them. I automatically assumed the worst, that the Akatsuki had found us. When I saw that the elevator was making its way up to our floor, I had a nagging feeling that my fears had come true.

"Get ready," I whispered to Sakura, who was already on her feet with her gun in hand. I picked up my pistols and hid one in my shirt while brandishing the other. We hid behind the enormous bed that was so graciously provided to us and kept our weapons trained on the elevator entrance. I quickly dialed Suigetsu while Sakura dialed Jugo, hoping that either one would wake up and realize our predicament.

*DING*

No time to worry about that now.

As soon as the doors opened and we saw two men jump to the side, Sakura and I emptied our clips into the elevator, but the elevator was big enough so that whoever was in there could take cover on the sides of the elevator. In response to our bulletstorm, we were greeted with a hail of bullets that pelted the entire apartment. We returned fire as best we could, but whoever it was, they were armed with Assault Rifles, our pistols could only do so much when we were under constant fire. Luckily, the bed was provided sufficient cover for the time-being and they hadn't pinpointed our exact location yet so they were spraying at random, but we still needed to flush the intruders out.

I remembered what Sasori had said.

"They work in a pair." He had said back in Baton Rouge, and there were two men in that elevator right now.

Two enemies were here, and they had the weapons advantage, so the best we could do was wait for them to reload.

"Sakura, once they reload, jump down and get behind the couch, I'll cover you."

She nodded, and once the fire had stopped, I aimed my weapon at the elevator while motioning her. She leaped down as I fired a couple of rounds to mask the sound of her movement. I got down and moved to my right to get behind some better cover right when the bullets began pelting the enormous bed again. As long as they were firing at me, Sakura could get an angle and catch them off guard. The problem was that with their weaponry, they would riddle her with bullets quicker than she could fire. The other problem was that I had run out of ammo on my first pistol, and I had no spare clips because they were in the cabinet next to the bed which was currently blown to pieces, so after my second pistol was done for, so was I. I was really regretting the fact that I didn't have enough time to grab them before the elevator got up here. The third problem was that Sakura was also almost out of bullets and her ammo was also in the cabinet, so in conclusion, you could say we were currently in a bad spot in life.

We had to change this from a gunfight to a fistfight to survive because as it stood now, their ARs were going to tear us apart even if we did have spare ammunition. To do that, we had to rush them while they were reloading, but there was a very limited time frame for that since they only took a couple of seconds to reload assuming that they were experts at gunplay. If this kept going my cover would get shredded and Sakura could maybe take out one of the assailants before the other picked her off. So, I resorted to a cheap trick in order to get down from my position.

"GRENADE!" I yelled as soon as they had stopped firing to reload. I chucked my empty pistol into the elevator and dashed down to the right side of the apartment in the kitchen where I hid behind the counter. It would buy me only a couple of extra seconds before they realized that there was no grenade, but they were seconds well spent. Now that Sakura and I had gotten down and into better positions, we could hit them from the sides. I looked up and prepared to aim my pistol at the first man, but something landed on the ground about 6 feet away from me: A frag grenade.

Oh the irony.

I had two options: Kick it away and hope it didn't land near Sakura, or take a shot at one man and then hit the deck. In that split-second, I fired off a round and leaped as far as I could while still staying in cover.

*BOOM*

The explosion disoriented me and destroyed most of the counter, sending broken furniture everywhere and effectively canceled out my cover. My senses were all over the place and my vision was hazy at the current moment. I stayed down until I heard footsteps making their way towards me, and I could immediately tell from the sound that whoever was walking towards me was massive, so I aimed my pistol right in that direction and fired. A short silence followed right after. I couldn't see if I had hit him or not because my vision was still foggy and my whole body felt weird, but my question was answered right after when an enormous man charged me from my right side and landed right on top of me.

"Almost got me," He said in a raspy voice. The man had to be around 6'8" and probably cleared 270 pounds. He cocked his fist back and hit me right on my left cheek before cocking his other fist back in an attempt to hit me right on my nose. I anticipated the hit and moved my head aside right before his fist slammed into the hard ground. He grunted in pain and I used the opportunity to free one of my legs from underneath him and kick him right in the stomach. The heavy man stumbled backwards and I got on my still somewhat shaky feet. I finally was able to shake the haziness from my vision, but my ears still felt funny. Regardless, this was no time to worry about that as the large man standing across from me would require my full attention. Although I was still confused about one thing: the fact that I was still alive.

Did they run out of ammo? Surely they must've brought enough for a job like this and they were experts as well, so why wasn't I riddled with bullet holes? It was then that I saw that both of their guns had been tossed away with no magazines inside of them. Noticing my confusion, the big man pointed to behind the staircase where their magazines were with bullets scattered everywhere haphazardly.

Ah, I see.

In the time I was disoriented, Sakura probably rushed both of the men while they were completely focused on me and knocked out their ammunition, effectively rendering their guns useless. She had done that all by herself, what an absolute warrior.

"Hey Kakuzu! I could use a little help!" I heard someone say from behind the man. I looked over to see a silver-haired man with some weird tattoos covering his entire body engaged in a fight with Sakura. He was also bleeding from the torso from a bullet wound, probably the result of the bullet I had fired.

"I'm busy, Hidan," The man in front of me said. He wore a mask covering the lower half of his face, kind of like Kakashi, except I could see the traces of scars underneath the mask. Judging from the current situation and how they initially attempted to engage us, the two men in front of us weren't as obsessed as Deidara and Sasori. Deidara and Sasori were too obsessed with their respective "crafts" and wanted to kill me and Sakura in their own twisted way without using something like guns. After all, Sasori called Sakura his "masterpiece" and Deidara wanted to blow me up in a very theatrical way, like he was in a play. It seemed that these two had learned from their mistakes, but they had vastly underestimated mine and Sakura's capability to perform under duress.

While these were two highly-regarded assassins, various news outlets had portrayed people like them as invincible beings who had surpassed humanity to become demigods. However, at least in mine, Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi's experience, these people were not considered dangerous because they had reality-altering abilities, they were dangerous because they knew exactly when to strike and how to make it count. They were dangerous because they were experts at avoiding all sorts of law enforcement around the world. But most of all, they were geniuses when it came to manipulating the criminal underworld and crooked law officials. All of the Akatsuki members we had met so far had connections in most countries and were in deep with major crime syndicates. Of course, they were expert fighters as well, but Sakura and I, as well as Naruto and Kakashi were trained at a very young age as well. I had trained in various fighting styles ever since I was 8 years old with Naruto, and judging from Sakura's skills, she must've started training at around the same age, although I had no idea how she managed it since her parents never wanted her to be an FBI Agent. Regardless, we couldn't take the Akatsuki for granted as one mistake could end up in death.

"Do us a favor and give up, Uchiha. If you do, we'll let everyone you love live," The man who I assumed to be Kakuzu told me.

"Please don't be upset with me, but I think you're lying."

He smirked at that. "I was hoping you would say that."

"Then why'd you even ask in the first place? You people are like movie villains."

He didn't respond, instead, he charged and went for my legs. At the last possible moment, I lifted my knee and put it right into his face. He roared in agony and barely avoided my follow-up kick to the head. I hopped back and he rushed in again, going for my legs again. However, right when he was a step or two away from me, he suddenly straightened up and attempted to grab my neck. I caught his arms and we were locked in a grappling match. He was stronger than I was and began forcing me backwards, so I started kicking his legs. He was fast for his size and avoided the blows by lifting his legs before kneeing me right in the stomach. He hit just as hard as I expected, and while he didn't break anything, breathing became a whole lot harder for me. He tried doing it again, but I anticipated the blow and lifted my own leg to stop the strike before it could gain momentum. In response, he grasped my arms tightly and threw me onto the ground. I rolled to my side to avoid the stomp he tried and waited for him to strike. My plan right now was to aim for his stomach and tire him out before fully committing to an offensive assault, but in order to do that, I had to avoid getting hit because this man was definitely on some sort of PEDs, which, coupled with his size, would not be good for me. He took a step towards me and I immediately went down and hit him with a jab to the stomach.

"Weak," he snarled before whiffing on an overhead swing. I moved to my right side and evaded a fist before extending my leg into a sidekick right into his abdomen.

"Weak," he snarled again.

"I'd appreciate it if you would stop hurting my ego," I responded before connecting on a roundhouse kick to his sides.

"Come on!" He yelled before unleashing a flurry of blows at me.

I had to carefully pay attention to each swing since getting caught by even one would be dangerous. I dodged each one: right hook, left jab, right overhand, left uppercut, a 1-2 combo, each of them whiffed as I used my speed advantage. Right after his volley missed, Kakuzu attempted a front kick which I sidestepped and then returned right to his stomach again. He was breathing hard now, my plan of attack was working right now, but at that exact moment, the other man came flying towards me. The man, Hidan, tackled me to the ground, but right when he lifted his face, I hit him square in the jaw, stunning him for a moment. I locked my arms around his neck and used my legs to push him to the side before getting on top of him and hitting him right in the chest. The man was already bleeding because of the bullet I hit him with, but he was still shrieking and laughing like nothing had happened. He tried to push my face away, but I grabbed his wrist with one hand and hit him in the throat with the other. I was about to pummel him, but his partner kicked me square in the stomach, sending me flying a couple of feet away. Kakuzu began to make his way to me, but stopped when Sakura stood in front of me.

"How are you?" She asked.

"Could be better," I muttered while getting up to stand with her.

"Unfortunately, its probably gonna get worse."

"Thanks for the optimism."

Speaking of optimism, where the hell were Jugo and Suigetsu?

With that, the two men in front of us charged. Hidan went straight for my head while Kakuzu aimed for Sakura. I caught Hidan's arm and shoved him towards Sakura, who delivered a perfect kick right into his spine and sending him back to me. I punched him once in the stomach and saw that Sakura had pushed Kakuzu towards me. I lifted my leg and hit him right in the back of his knee, sending him down and setting him up for a hit from the pinkette, who hit him with a hard jab and delivered him right into my waiting knee that struck him in the back of his head. He grabbed his head in pain, and Sakura prepared to curbstomp him, but before she could, Hidan tackled her to the ground. I grabbed Hidan and tore him off of her, but I immediately noticed that Kakuzu had recovered quickly and had almost positioned his hands onto my face to break my neck. I pushed Hidan back onto Sakura, who had understood the situation and channeled her freakish strength into her legs to launch Hidan over her head. I ducked down and hit Kakuzu in the stomach with a hard elbow before dropping down even further and smashing his knee with a punch.

"Bastard!" He cursed while instinctively grabbing his knee in pain. I saw my opportunity right then. I got up and charged right at him, wrapping my arms around his torso and lifting his legs before slamming him down.

The bigger they are, right?

I pinned his arms to the side of his body using my legs and then hit the big man right in his ugly mug with my right fist. He returned a fist right under my chin, but since he was on the ground he couldn't get a lot of momentum behind it. I ate the blow and smashed his nose in with my elbow. Before he could recover, I smashed his mouth with my left. Then with my right. Then with my left. Right. Left. Right. Left. You get the idea. His face was a mess, and with each punch his skull was colliding with the floor, concussing the man and rendering him unconscious. When I looked back, I saw Hidan and Sakura standing off with Sakura facing me. When she saw me creeping up on Hidan, she let out a small chuckle before sidestepping Hidan's fist and roundhouse kicking him in the stomach, forcing him right into my arms. I lifted him up, turned around, and slammed him right onto the hard floor. However, right when he went down, Kakuzu started to get up.

Were these two like immortal or something?

The large man held something in his hands when he arose. It was lengthy and had jagged edges, was it a broken piece of the counter? When he put it out in front of him, my guess turned out to be correct. The explosion from the grenade had shaped that piece into a makeshift wooden sword, except its edges were sharp and he could definitely scratch out our eyes with it.

"You…" He growled.

"Me?"

"Sasuke," Sakura called, "You go this way."

"And I'll go that way," I finished for her. She grinned real wide at my understanding.

It was a quote from Rush Hour 3, a movie that will forever live in my heart no matter what anyone else says.

We rushed Kakuzu at the same time, and in response, he swung the furniture sword in a wide arc which Sakura and I both ducked under and then simultaneously hit the big bastard's kneecaps. Before he could even roar in pain, we rose up in sync and delivered uppercuts right into his chin, sending him back to the floor. He groaned in agony, and to silence him, I put my foot on his face and twisted, breaking his neck and killing him.

"Shit," I hissed, "I got too caught up in the moment." The man might've had something to say in regards to the next person or duo the Akatsuki would send.

"I'd say ask the other one, but he might be too messed up in the head to make proper conversation."

I turned around and watched the tattooed man groan and murmur on the floor while Sakura walked over to the couch to grab any weapons that could be found. I knelt down and examined Kakuzu's body to see if there was anything else about him that could reveal more about the Akatsuki and their grand plan. To no one's surprise, there was absolutely nothing, no trace of anything, no wallet, nothing. But when I reached inside a hidden pocket in his coat, I pulled out something that I recognized. It was a piece of cloth, blue cloth, the same color of cloth that Ibiki Morino wore to cover his scars from an accident. Now this alone wouldn't be enough to worry me, but it even had a couple of tears in the same place. Why did he have this?

"DIE!"

Hidan had gotten up and had grabbed a hold of one of the broken pieces of furniture like Kakuzu had, and I assumed he also meant to do the same as his partner and run it through me. However, before he could even take a step, a gun fired, and the man hit the ground with a heavy thump.

"Sasuke?" Sakura had fired off the last bullet in her gun, killing Hidan.

"I'm fine," I answered while examining Hidan's body for any sort of clue. He had nothing on him, leaving me with more questions than answers.

"I'm sorry," I murmured to Sakura as she walked over to me, "that's the second time you've had to kill a man because of me."

I hadn't forgotten the fact that she had a lot less experience in the field than I did, which meant she wasn't as accustomed to killing as I was. It didn't matter how hardened or mentally strong you were, when you started killing people regularly, it had a psychological effect on you. If you were lucky and had good people around you or had an unbreakable morality, the killing of evil people would stop haunting you because you knew that it was necessary sometimes. But if you were isolated and had an impressionable moral code, well that's what leads to law enforcement agents going rogue or killing innocent people while justifying that it was for the "greater good". Luckily, I had good people around me, and I honestly thought that my morality was one of the few parts of my character that I didn't utterly despise. Of course, if someone poked through my ethical code they could find flaws and holes, but no one's ethics are flawless, so while I knew there were faults within my morality, I still believed in it.

"There's nothing to forgive. No one forced me to pull the trigger, I made my own choice, that's all there is to it," she responded to my apology, grasping my shoulder as I knelt beside Hidan's body. I put my hand over hers and gave her a small smile.

Sakura was very similar to me and Naruto in that she also had a combination of good people around her as well as a strong sense of morality. I still remember her telling me not to kill Deidara a while back, but I think a lot of new recruits are like her in that they strictly believe in no killing because that's what is drilled into them in classes. However, as they spend more and more time on the job, they start to see that it isn't as simple as arrest and forget. It's never that easy, and I think that seeing Sasori and what he did to those people he killed made Sakura realize just who we were dealing with. Her voice was resolute and her hands were steady, there was no conversation necessary. Neither of us had any regrets about it, except for the fact that we couldn't get any information from the two, which was mostly my fault. I got too caught up in the violence and ended up killing Kakuzu before I even realized what I was doing.

However, there was still the matter of the blue cloth and its relation to Ibiki.

"I'm not completely sure, but this looks like it could be Ibiki's." I handed the cloth over to Sakura and began to think of the possibilities, and by possibilities, I meant the only two outcomes that it realistically could be. It was either a random piece of cloth that didn't mean anything, or these two had paid Ibiki a visit before coming over here, which meant he was most likely dead. I silently hoped that it wasn't the latter, but I knew my luck was shit and that the worst had most likely occurred.

"We should go and see-" Sakura began before both of our phones rang simultaneously.

She gave me a confused look and I just shrugged, maybe it was Naruto and Kakashi or something. We made our way up to the bed where our phones had miraculously and conveniently survived the war that had just wrapped up and quickly answered.

"Hello?"

"Sasuke! Thank God!"

"Suigetsu?"

"Yeah, I tried calling you like 20 times!" I had completely forgotten that I had called both Jugo and Suigetsu in an effort to try and wake them up.

"Where are you now?"

"We're waiting a floor beneath you, oh, and there are cops here, so be prepared."

Ah, I had completely forgotten the design of this place. Since this place was an FBI safehouse, there were no stairs leading up here, the elevator was the only way up, which was why Hidan and Kakuzu had to use it. It was one of those really fancy places where there was no door and the elevator led straight into the place, however you would need a key to use it, but I imagined something like that probably wouldn't stop Kakuzu and Hidan. If there was a fire or some other emergency, the only way to get down was to open a window with our key and kick down a ladder that led to the balcony of the place beneath us. It was really weird and everything, but these precautions were necessary since this was an FBI safehouse and it had saved mine and Sakura's lives. If those two would have snuck up using the fire escape, then we wouldn't have heard a thing and would be riddled with bullets right now. However, it also prevented Jugo and Suigetsu from coming up here and helping us. The reason we chose to call them instead of grabbing extra ammo was that Jugo and Suigetsu were good in firefights and would definitely have helped us more than any extra ammo had. The problem was that both Sakura and I had completely forgot that the elevator was the only way up here and it had been shot to shit, so Jugo and Suigetsu were stuck downstairs and we would've looked like massive fools if Sakura didn't bust out the play of the century and disarm the two Akatsuki.

"Sakura?"

"It was Kakashi, he's waiting downstairs with Naruto for us," She answered. I didn't want to waste any time, after all they might know whether Ibiki was really dead or not.

I muttered a quick "goddamn it" and walked over to the window where Sakura was fiddling with the key. She opened the glass and kicked down the ladder which barely reached the floor beneath us. We quickly climbed down and were greeted by Kakashi, Naruto, Suigetsu, and Jugo. All four of them rushed us as soon as we touched the ground.

"Are you ok?" Kakashi asked the both of us.

"You're alive!" Naruto cried out.

"Is Ibiki alive?" I asked the two FBI agents behind Naruto and Kakashi.

Their silence confirmed my suspicions and I couldn't help but look down in shame. He wasn't really someone I was very close with, but he was someone who I believed to be a good man, better than me, and he was gone because of me.

"He didn't suffer," Jugo uttered.

"I wish I could believe that," I answered. Hidan and Kakuzu must've tortured him for my location, simple as that.

"I'm sorry, but the important thing is that both of you are safe," Kakashi stated while pulling me and Sakura into his arms.

"How is everyone else?" Sakura asked as soon as Kakashi let us go.

"They're fine, in fact we might have a plan for waiting this whole thing out," Naruto answered, "we'll explain everything on the way."

The four of them took us down to the lobby where the guards had been cleared out by other officers. We quietly settled into Kakashi's car while Jugo and Suigetsu went into Jugo's vehicle.

Once we had gotten out of the parking garage and onto the streets, Sakura took my hand and squeezed it.

"I know," I whispered, seeing the warm emerald glow that I was so familiar with.

"I know."

So I'm writing this again just because I was in the mood for it. I'm gonna try and update more frequently now because I have an idea of where I want to take this story.

Thanks for reading!