Ink's Notes:

Okay so I actually had this done two days ago, but yesterday the internet was out for most of the day and I kinda forgot to put this up when it was. BUT NEVER FEAR FOR I AM NOW HERE WITH THE UPDOOT

Krazyfanfiction1: It involves realizing "hey wait Perona was in Amegakure wasn't that where the Akatsuki were chilling out a while"

peppymint: "I'm sorry that I was born."

Tough chick: GO! LIKE 20 FIRE POKEMON AT ONCE!

Fairy of the Friz: ZETSU IS AFTER that fine booty ooohhh yeeeaaahhh

Allykrau: Well, Christmas isn't too far off! ...wait fluff I needa finish my Christmas shopping

Guest: You're welcome!

Ddash2157: Hello! Nice to formally meet you! And thank you~!

The Keeper of Worlds: Who else would it be?

hey: Thank you~

ON TO THE CHAPTER

Chapter Thirty-Four

The tension in the clearing was so thick that it was almost hard to breathe with it draping over everyone assembled. Sakura gripped Marco's hand for comfort as she stared down another Akatsuki member – the second one she would have to fight, if things didn't go well. She felt his hand tighten around hers, and relaxed, if only slightly, keeping her attention on the enemy before them.

"…So what happened to you?" Perona's question seemed to break through the tension almost instantly. "Did you get eaten by a Venus flytrap, then make it choke on you midway through and just start living like that or what?"

The assembled members of Hebi (aside from Tashigi) all nearly fell over from the sheer bluntness, audacity, and absurdity of the question. Sasuke looked as if he were about to murder something, while the Akatsuki member before them actually looked somewhat amused by the comment.

"What if we were?" the plant-like man asked, a sly, amused grin on his face. "What would you do?"

Perona hummed thoughtfully as the assembled pirates stared at him in disbelief. "Probably set you on fire to try and free you," she determined. "Ah, you, emo duckhair," she turned to Sasuke, who glared at her with a look that screamed murder due to the embarrassing nickname, "You use fire techniques, right? You should free that man from his plant prison."

"…What," Sasuke deadpanned, his eye twitching. "Why would you even suggest that." It wasn't a question, and he didn't appear to know how else to react to Perona's casual suggestion-comment-thing, so he just turned to the stranger. "Who are you, anyway?"

"An excellent question, Sasuke," the man grinned a sharp-toothed grin. "We are called Zetsu. As you can see," he motioned to his cloak, "We're a part of Akatsuki."

Vivi took a mental note of Tashigi's expression as the woman seemed to mentally review something in her head. When Marco spoke, though, she turned her attention to him. "Zetsu." The plant-like man in question grinned in response to his name. "Why have you been following us since we left Amegakure?"

The grin immediately left Zetsu's face, but he quickly forced it back on. "You can blame your floating pink haired friend," he smiled. "Leader was curious about her, and wanted us to look into her presence." Bepo and Perona exchanged glances. "Of course, it was sheer good fortune that we ran into Sasuke here." Zetsu turned his grin towards Sasuke. "Now we can take you to see your brother."

"Um, that… might be difficult," Sakura spoke up, bringing the gazes of everyone assembled to her. "I don't think that the other people who were following us will approve of that."

"The… other people?" Karin asked, and Sakura turned to Marco for confirmation.

"Yeah, ah… someone's been following us to make sure we don't screw anything up – like alliances between nations and stuff, I guess – since we left Konoha," Marco explained, scratching behind his head. "Considering we're standing in the vicinity of one of their missing-nin, I don't think they'll stay silent about that."

"You've been being followed…?" Sasuke asked, largely out of disbelief. "Rather, you knew, and you just let them follow you?"

"It wasn't a problem until now," Marco shrugged, apparently not caring about how completely casual he was being about the entire thing.

At that moment, two cloaked figures wearing odd masks landed in the clearing, both drawing kunai and holding them at the ready – one facing Zetsu, the other facing Sasuke. It didn't take Sakura long to place who they were.

"These people are from…" Sakura snapped her mouth shut as she realized she shouldn't necessarily say that they were from Root out loud, but Marco seemed to get the message and smiled at her before stepping forwards.

"So, you've been following us to make sure we don't bring any animosity to Konoha, yeah?" he smiled at the two Root ninja, who barely spared him a glance as he approached. "We've found most of the guys who we were looking for, but not all of them, so we need to keep going."

One of the Root members faced Marco, keeping an eye on Sasuke as well. "You expect us to just let you leave after you've been willfully cooperating with missing-nin?" the ninja asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion behind the mask. Sakura saw Karin, Suigetsu and Jugo flinch and ready themselves for the worst.

"Well, yes," Marco shrugged, "Because you're going to be too busy fighting over the right to take a missing-nin captive with that Akatsuki member over there," he pointed to Zetsu, who pointed to himself in confusion, "To bother trying to keep up with us."

Karin was about to open her mouth to ask what he was talking about when Marco moved, slamming his knee into the back of Sasuke's head with such precision and force that the young Uchiha was knocked unconscious from the blow. The rest of Hebi was left sputtering uselessly as Marco lifted him by the back of the shirt. "Catch!" he grinned mischievously as he threw Sasuke into the air. The Root ninja and Zetsu followed the path of the unconscious Uchiha into the air, largely because of the shock factor of what had just happened, and while they were doing that, Marco moved back over to the group, picked up Tashigi and Karin under his arms, and made for the forest again. Sakura quickly got the message, grabbing Jugo's hand and pulling him after Marco, while Vivi climbed on Carue's back, Perona and Suigetsu climbed onto Bepo's, and the animals took off after the rest of their group.

"Did we seriously just do that!?" Sakura called to Marco as he led the group through the underbrush, ignoring Tashigi's indignant cries demanding that he put her down. "Is that seriously a thing that we just did!?"

"Yup!" Marco grinned as the rest of the group began catching up and keeping pace, "It's more fun this way. We're pirates, we don't cooperate with the law. Besides, who knows what kind of backup that Zetsu guy could have called for, yoi."

Sakura conceded that point, despite Tashigi's vehement protests that she was not a pirate. The group continued running for about half an hour, until Bepo's complaints that carrying a Logia was just plain weird got their attention, and the additional request of if they could maybe slow down to rest for a minute because their new friends were injured brought them all to a slow stop. (Although, they only stopped because Marco confirmed that neither Zetsu nor the members of Root were following them at this point.) Bepo, Carue and Marco let down their respective passengers, and Tashigi began admonishing Marco for his behavior before realizing exactly who she was talking to and quickly turning away with a huff.

Once everyone had caught their breath, Vivi spoke up. "Why don't we walk to the next town so we can find an inn?" she suggested. "I'm sure that we all have a lot that we need to talk and think about." The assembled group of shinobi and people from the Grand Line agreed, and thanks to the Haki of the assembled pirates, they managed to find a small town with an inn they could rest at just as the sun was going down.

It was only around this time, when the fight between Zetsu and the two Root members had finally finished and Zetsu had sent the Root ninjas packing, that Zetsu – now sitting on the ground next to a still unconscious Sasuke – had time to properly comprehend what exactly had happened.

"Well," he smiled, patting Sasuke's head, who merely groaned in his unconscious state in response. "That was certainly an unexpected move." His face split into a grin as he slung Sasuke over his shoulder. "I think I'll tell Leader what happened here and see if he'll let me go after those guys." Zetsu hummed in amusement as he began walking towards their current hideout. "I think things are going to get rather interesting from here on out."

And that takes care of this chapter! Admittedly I wasn't planning on having the Akatsuki play a major role, but the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense. They wouldn't really want these guys running around posing at the very least a moderate threat to their plan... whichever plan that was... I swear there were like three different plans with those guys I mean seriously what the hell Akatsuki you'd think a group of nine people wouldn't have a third of them with hidden agendas ANYWAY

Despite that they'll probably be showing up later, we might not be seeing them for a while. We will, however, be meeting someone else next chapter. And there's the fact that Karin, Suigetsu and Jugo are now part of the party. I dunno, they're fun to write for, so sue me.

(Don't actually sue me, please.)

See you next time! I'll try and update before (or on) Christmas for you guys.

-Ink