Author's Note:
Leah: Yay, I'm first…I don't know what to say…
Claire: You're pathetic. ANYWAY. Um…yeah…SHIT IT'S CONTAGIOUS. –hits Leah-
Well, apparently everyone was having fun trying to guess who would be calling this time…which I didn't expect…but there's a few fun surprises in this chapter that you didn't know about. :)
So…enjoy? Gawd I feel so un-accomplished without saying tons of stuff…
Oh yeah! I remembered something else! THANK YOU SO MUCH PEOPLE WHO MADE FAN ART FOR US! TIS AWESOME. –glomps said people-
Feel free to make more. XP
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
-imadorkyahkthxbye-
I would also like to point out, once again, that I am a good person and said NO when the sadistic Leah told me to put 'Eva: -dead-'
In fact, I just called her to ask if she wanted to say anything and she didn't answer. So now it's her fault.
…I feel better, it's longer now…:)
Eva: -not answering phone-
Chapter 5:
Sai shifted his grip on Claire's wrists so that he could hold them with only one hand. He used his free hand to swiftly pull the object that was making the noise out of her back pocket.
"What's this?" Sai asked. The cursed white object that had led to their near demise last time had struck again. Eva glared at Claire, and Claire cussed herself out in her head. The phone rang obnoxiously again.
"Ring. Ring, ring…" it said in the demon munchkin voice from before.
Sai looked at the screen, "It says 'unknown'," he observed.
"It's probably just Jason again," Eva said hurriedly, "We shouldn't bother answering—"
"Answer it," Tsunade contradicted her, "Don't hang up, and turn it up loud so we can monitor what you're saying. Everyone else must remain quiet. Like before, don't tell him your situation."
Claire swallowed nervously. Sai released her hands and she took the phone, which was at this point screaming at her in its strange gremlin voice. She pressed the speakerphone button on the side. She took a deep breath, "Hello?"
"Hey bitch! Where the hell are you?! Leader's fucking pissed!" a voice yelled, making two phone conversations in a row that had started this way.
"Gah!" Claire yelped and fumbled the phone between her hands since it slipped when Hidan had greeted her. She finally got a firm grasp on the phone and said, "Um, um… We can't talk to you right now! Bye!" she replied hastily and squashed it closed between her hands.
Tsunade narrowed her eyes at them. "Who's 'Leader'? And who was that talking right now? Obviously not Jason."
"Um," Claire said helplessly again.
Eva looked at a loss of words.
Leah hung her head and stared at the floor, apparently thinking.
Tsunade leaned back in her chair, "Call them back, and don't hang up this time," she ordered.
"But—" Eva started.
"Do it!" She snapped.
"Claire, just do it. I'll talk to them," Leah said softly, trying her best to sound calm in this stressful situation.
Claire hesitated. She wasn't keen on conversing with them herself--Tsunade probably trusted her least out of the three anyway because of the whole nametag thing. But she wasn't so sure of Leah talking to them either since she was so shy. There was no way in hell that she'd let Eva talk to them because being the idiot she was she probably say something like, 'Guess what! We're in Konoha!' No. Definitely not Eva. So Leah was the best choice by process of elimination.
Claire redialed the number and held the phone out between her and Leah. The phone rang, still on speakerphone so everyone in Tsunade's office could hear. It rang a second time and then a third. The girls were beginning to hope that they wouldn't pick up. But as things were recently, their hopes were crushed when they heard a click on the other line.
"Hello girls," the female member of the Akatsuki said in a much calmer manner than the previous one.
"Hi," Leah said, "What did you call about?"
"Well, Leader decided since we don't have any missions lined up until the New Year we could come early. So, here we are," Konan explained quickly, "Why'd Claire get so nervous like that and hang up on Hidan?"
"She saw a spider and had to squish it. Arachnophobia," Leah said. Claire flinched. The spider was a lie, the arachnophobia was true.
She laughed, "Okay. Well, just so you know, Leader isn't mad, he just wants to know where you are. We've already checked all the spots that you usually hang out at and Jason says that he doesn't know where you are either."
"I see." Leah carefully avoided the question, deciding to change to a safer topic, "So where's everyone?"
"Around the house. I locked myself in the bathroom so they couldn't steal the phone from me," she said.
"What have you been doing?" Leah continued. She looked to Claire, giving her a look that said that she wanted her to start talking soon. Claire scowled, wondering why Leah had offered to talk in the first place if the task was just going to be pawned off back to her.
"Nothing really. We started to watch Saw but we stopped because Hidan, Deidara, Kisame, and Zetsu couldn't stop laughing when 'the good boy' ran out of the room screaming," she chuckled at the memory, "Newbies are so entertaining."
Leah covered the speaker of the phone, "Claire, you talk," she hissed.
"I don't wanna."
"Claire."
"Leah."
Leah huffed and gave up for the moment. "Is he okay or is he still mentally scarred?"
"Who, Newbie? He's fine. He's upstairs with Deidara," Konan said.
Claire, suddenly finding a topic of stalling asked, "Why are you people calling him Newbie all of a sudden?"
"We've been watching Scrubs a lot. It's something Deidara started and now all of us are doing it. It's fun," she paused suddenly, "I should probably bring the phone to the other room so Leader can talk to you."
"No, no, that's okay," Claire said nervously.
"I still should, just hold on while I go find him."
"Seriously, that's okay," Eva piped up.
Tsunade glowered at the three girls. She held up her hand as signal for something. In an instant, Claire, Eva, and Leah had kunai held up against their necks by Naruto, Sakura, and Sai. They gulped.
None of them offered more protests, so everything was quiet for a moment as Konan went to find Pein. There was a familiar static crackle of the wind rushing past the receiver, the muffled whumps of the phone exchanging hands, and then Pein's voice. "Where are you three?"
"We're in a place!" Eva said, recycling the vagueness she had used on Neji.
"Which place?"
"The place where we are," Claire confirmed.
Before Pein could respond again, there was a sudden burst of shouting and more static. "You evil bitch, you hung up on me!" Hidan shouted.
"And I'd do it again!" Claire shouted back. If she could have added 'but I can't because I'm being held captive by hostile ninjas', she would have, but Tsunade was staring daggers at her.
There would have been more silence while they waited for a reply, but the arguing in the background had not ceased.
"Hidan, give me the phone!"
"Fuck off! I need to—"
"Dammit, you've already been talking to them for a while!"
"Screw you man!"
"Give me the phone, or I'll kick all of your asses."
It was almost hard to tell which one was Hidan. Tsunade and the ninjas under her command continued to listen to the useless scrabble, hoping for clues. The girls figured they were already as good as doomed, though, since a couple names had been mentioned. But since the Hokage hadn't yet given them the signal to hang up, or that it was okay for them to reveal their location and company, they had to keep up the façade.
Claire sighed, getting impatient with their endless bickering. In an attempt to hurry the conversation along (and get the kunai off her neck) she interrupted them. "OY! SOMEONE GET ON THE PHONE! ALL YOU OTHER FUCKERS, BACK OFF!" she yelled at the little device. They waited while the arguing subsided to grumbles.
"That wasn't nice," Kisame said, "And you also aren't being very hospitable. If you're gonna invite people to your house, you should be there when they come."
"Technically, you came early, four days in fact, so it's not our fault," Leah pointed out.
"Hey, guess what?" Kisame asked excitedly, immediately forgetting he was supposed to be scolding them.
The girls glanced at the Hokage, who nodded encouragingly, seeing promise for some information.
"What?" Eva responded grudgingly.
"Okay, okay, listen. I was really bored, so I went upstairs and I saw these socks, right?" Tsunade silently let her head fall to her desk in frustration. "And they were red. And—and—no, fuck off Newbie I'm telling a story. Right, so, I got these socks—"
"Does this story have a point?" Claire interrupted.
"I'm not finished!"
"But does it have a point?"
There was silence on the other end.
"Kisame, gimme the phone."
"No."
"Please?"
"No!"
Leah sighed. "Kisame, give Tobi the phone."
"Fine," Kisame grumbled, "May I ask what it is that your Newbie mind wants to say?"
They heard a whoosh as Tobi snatched the phone away, "DEIDARA-SENPAI LOVES LEAH!" he yelled quickly. Naruto's hands tightened around Leah's wrists even more, so much that she couldn't even feel her hands anymore.
"You asshole! I'm going to kill you, un!" came a high pitched squeaky voice. It sounded like Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks.
"Are you going to blow me up?" Tobi said fearlessly.
"Screw you!"
Tobi laughed, "Deidara-senpai, I've never seen your face so red. Are you blushing? It looks like it."
Tsunade and the other ninja in the room looked as if they didn't know what to make of the weird munchkin voice. Shizune bit her lip and Jiraiya held his fist to his mouth.
Tobi wasn't done yet. He was in a rare position of power over Deidara and was going to take full advantage of it, "Deidara's in love with Leah, Deidara's in love with Leah!" Tobi sang.
"Shut up, un!"
Tobi still wasn't done, deciding that he would have more fun with this while it lasted, "He loooooooves you Leah, he wants to take you on dates and hug and kiss and stuff. And he wants to marry you and for you to have his kids and—" Tobi stopped talking briefly, causing puzzled looks to come to the face of the Konoha ninja. "Holy crow that's biggest bomb I've ever seen—Deidara-senpai, you know I was just playing right? Right?"
Deidara growled, "Newbie you are so going down," he said, his voice normal again.
Tobi now sounded panicked, "You can't blame this all on me! It's Charli's fault, she's the one who gave you helium," he defended while tripping over his words.
Deidara said nothing, though he could now that he had removed all the vile gas from his system by yelling at Tobi.
There was a loud smack as the phone presumably dropped to the ground.
The next thing they heard was Tobi screaming, "Don't blow me up! I'm a good boy!"
The phone was picked up again by Kisame, "Newbie's an idiot," he pointed out the obvious. "Oh! Yeah, I forgot. I was supposed to ask where you where."
"We already told you, in a place!" Leah exclaimed.
"…Here's Leader."
"Eva," Leader said. "I have your skulls, and I have a sledgehammer. Where are you?"
Knowing that if there was anyway to get to Eva, it was to threaten the safety of her skulls, Claire went to put her hand over Eva's mouth. Eva ripped it off for a second. "You said that it wouldn't matter if I didn't bring my skulls!" Her angry voice was directed at Leah and Claire.
A smashing sound, like bones shattering echoed through the phone. "You have the two big ones left. Feel like telling me where you are?"
Eva's eyes teared up, and salty drops began to slide down her face. "G-g-g-GEORGINA!!"
"And Hennifer Lopez is next."
"We're in mmmph!"
At the last second, Claire had replaced her hand over Eva's mouth.
This didn't stop her from trying though, "Kmmmnoah! Kmmmnommma!"
"Konoha," Leader said, and it sounded like the speaker on the phone was being muffled by his hand.
Tsunade sent Eva a death glare.
Sakura's nails began to dig into to the Goth's wrists, and she grimaced against it.
"Is that all?" Claire asked dully.
There was a small scuffle and suddenly Deidara was on the phone, "Konoha? I've always wanted to bomb Konoha." He pulled his mouth away from the phone. "I can, right? I can bomb them?"
Every set of ninja eyes widened at this, remembering the incident in Suna.
Itachi was heard in the background. "Blowing stuff up doesn't solve all of life's problems."
"That is a matter of opinion," he snapped back. "And it just so happens that yours is wrong and mine is right."
"That's completely contradicto—"
"HEY CRAZY DUDES…AND GIRL!" a familiar Jason voice interrupted, sounding incredibly excited. Without waiting for a response he yelled, "I'M GETTING MARRIED!"
"Why the fuck are you shaking me, man?!" Hidan shouted back, since Jason had grabbed Hidan and was squashing him in his excitement.
"Congratulations Jason!" Tobi said, sharing the weird blonde doctor's crazy happiness.
"Good luck," Kakuzu scoffed.
Jason stopped his rambling for a minute. "You're married?"
"Was. She…died. Married life is very…spontaneous," he paused as if remembering something, "I got most of her money when she passed though, so I guess it was okay."
"Kakuzu-san…you didn't kill your wife, did you?" Tobi asked carefully.
"I said she died."
"But how?"
"I said she died! Drop the topic and stop being a nosy fucktard! Most people don't like talking about their dead spouses."
"You're a very greedy bastard," Hidan pointed out the well known fact, ignoring his supposed 'grief'.
Jason then remembered a more important matter. "Where's my sister, did you guys…and girl figure it out yet?"
"We have a hostage situation," Pein said blatantly.
A new childlike, but equally familiar voice spoke now, "Well, was I right?"
Leader was silent. "Partially."
"What's she talking about?" Zetsu asked.
The satanic evil eleven year old girl chuckled darkly. "I said that they got kidnapped by some ninja person from your world, taken to Konoha for questioning about you guys, they of won't say anything. And now we just so happen to be talking to them and they're probably in Tsunade's office with kunai held to their necks. The Kyuubi kid is most likely in there too, along with other important ninja. And they're monitoring everything we're saying, waiting to see if the slightest amount of information will slip out about you guys," Charli said.
"Kay, that's nice, we're going now!" Claire muttered hurriedly. She snapped the phone shut and pulled out the battery, putting both pieces of the phone in separate pockets just to be safe. She figured Tsunade's shocked expression at the 11 year-old guessing their entire situation would be a valid excuse to hang up. "See? Eskimos are smarter than them. And they don't wear socks, they wear boots," she told Tsunade, as if Eskimo footwear was the deciding factor.
Tsunade stood up violently, knocking over a stack of papers in the process. "I AM NOT ASKING YOU ABOUT ESKIMOS OR ANTARCTICANS! I AM ASKING YOU ABOUT THE AKATSUKI!" she thundered, "Why you three refuse to cooperate, I don't know. You don't seem to understand that these people are murderers! Either that or you don't care!" Everyone in the room was silent, watching their distressed leader sympathetically. Her voice got quieter, but somehow did not seem less dangerous.
"As soon as we get solid proof that you are associated with them, I will have you punished as their accomplices. Until then, you are dismissed."
She sat down and Naruto, Sakura, and Sai escorted them from the room without a word.
xXx
They stood in front of the giant red building for a few minutes. No one said a word. The young ninja's exchanged glances, but did not even look at Eva, Claire, and Leah. All of them were disappointed in the three girls, including themselves, and it showed on their faces. The exception was Sai, for the obvious reason that he had no emotions.
Naruto sighed. They all turned towards him, expecting him to say something. He didn't, he just looked back at Sakura, then briefly over the girls.
Sai smiled at the girls. "I knew that you weren't the Hokage's friends, but I didn't expect that you knew the Akatsuki. Let alone that you're all friends with them." Despite how depressing the words were to the girls, he said them with his signature false smile.
"How can you say that so lightly?!" Naruto shouted, gaining the attention of a couple of people passing by.
Sai blinked, vaguely wondering what he had done to make Naruto mad at him this time. "I just—"
"They know the Akatsuki and they've been trying to pass themselves off as just visitors!" Naruto had lowered his voice into a raspy whisper, so he would not get anymore unwanted attention. "They were in our houses! They could have been trying to get information on us to take back to the Akatsuki to help them! I can't believe we trusted them."
"I'm not saying it's not bad, I'm just saying that didn't expect it," Sai said.
Claire rubbed the side of her neck, something she often did when in uncomfortable situations. "Technically, Kakashi came to our house and brought us here. We didn't come here with any bad intentions," she pointed out, but immediately regretted it.
Naruto turned to them, the whiskers on his face getting just a little bit thicker at that comment. Sakura hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off and continued scolding the girls.
"Why the hell did you befriend them?! Don't you know that they're bad people?!" He was yelling again.
"Well that really depends on your definition of 'bad'…" Eva mumbled.
"Bad?! Of course they're bad! They murder people, and kidnap them, and—"
"You're not talking about us, are you?"
Temari stood a couple yards away with Kankuro and Gaara. She was trying to appear friendly, but there was no hiding the apprehensive overtones in her expression. Kankuro also seemed to know his sister had interrupted something important, but was also determined to say nothing to put him in danger of Naruto's wrath. The Kazekage remained as expressionless as a log.
Naruto didn't answer. He glared at the Sand siblings for a moment, then straightened up.
Temari tried to lighten the mood. "Tsunade wanted to see us about some security issues. Something to do with the Akatsuki—"
"—Oh! The Akatsuki! Well maybe our friends Eva, Leah, and Claire would know something about that!" Naruto said loudly, having been set off again.
"What's his problem?" Kankuro whispered to Sakura.
"Dickless here is mad because he didn't know his new friends were in the Akatsuki," Sai answered for her, indicating to the accused.
"They're in the Akatsuki?!" Kankuro repeated, taking a big step back and tensing up, prepared for a fight.
Leah, Claire, and Eva blinked. "We aren't in the Akatsuki," Claire pointed out irritably, "We just know them! Honestly, have you ever seen Eva try to run?"
Eva scowled. "Hey!"
"It's true though," Leah said quietly.
"Yeah…" Eva said. Two hundred sit-ups were already a bit more than her limit.
"Oh yeah, I forgot," Naruto continued in his mocking voice, "They're not in the Akatsuki, they're the Akatsuki's personal informants."
"Oh, give it a rest!" Claire snapped.
"No! Gaara, Kankuro, Temari, hate them!"
"What? That's not fair, they don't even know us yet!" Eva whined.
"Doesn't matter. Hate them!" Naruto ordered again.
"We need to go talk to Tsunade," Gaara said antisocially. He turned toward the red building that had just recently sealed the girls' doom, and Kankuro and Temari followed hesitantly.
There was a tense silence among the six of them. The Sand siblings had been mediators to interrupt their argument, and though they hadn't been very good ones, it was better than being alone with three angry ninjas.
Fortunately, this didn't last long either. Kiba and Akamaru came bounding up.
"Heh. What's up, Leah?" he grinned, unaware of the frosty atmosphere.
"Kiba, don't talk to them," Naruto hissed.
Kiba frowned, "Why not?"
"You might get in trouble with her boyfriend in the Akatsuki, dattebayo." The girls sighed again in frustration.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"They're with the Akatsuki, Kiba," Sakura said gravely.
Kiba looked back and forth between the ninja's serious faces and the girls' innocent ones. "You kidding?"
"No! They've been lying to us the whole time! They—"
"—Yo, Naruto, rhetorical question. Anyway, that's ridiculous. Akamaru likes them too much for them to be…you know…evil," Kiba replied, gesturing towards the dog that had not stopped trying to lick his way through the three girls since they had arrived.
"Tsunade told us. They've been observing them for weeks," Sai informed him.
"I thought they didn't let girls join the Akatsuki," said Kiba.
"What about that blonde chick that kidnapped Gaara?" Naruto demanded.
Despite their situation, the girls were still able to giggle. "That was a guy," Claire pointed out.
"And the one that's in love with Leah," Eva added. Leah elbowed Eva in the stomach, but Naruto didn't notice. He was still absorbed in his anger.
"Oh, well, you would know wouldn't you?!"
"What's the big deal?" Eva asked, starting to get a little mad now herself. "You were fine with us before, and we weren't any different!"
"It's completely different! That was when I didn't know you were with the Akatsuki!"
"It shouldn't matter!"
Naruto froze. His eyes were starting to take on a reddish hue and his fists were clenched. Eva and Claire glared back at him. Sakura and Leah just looked sad. Sai looked neutral, and Kiba looked concerned.
"Maybe you need to chill out, man," Kiba suggested, "You are being a little harsh."
The Kyuubi boy did not respond at once. Instead, he turned around and started walking away. "Fine. Since no one agrees with me, I guess I'll just leave."
"Naruto," Sakura started, taking a step towards him.He kept walking.
"He must be PMSing," Sai mused.
"Shut up Sai, you aren't helping," Kiba grunted. "Hey, Naruto, come back!"
He broke into a run and headed towards the forests that bordered Konoha. The vibrant neon colors of his hair and jacket started shrinking and dimming as he got farther away and the sky got darker. Soon it started raining.
"I'll go after him. Me and Akamaru can find him in the rain," Kiba offered. Soon he and the giant white dog disappeared too.
They moved under a nearby awning, watching fat drops of water drip slowly from its soaked fabric. The girls shivered slightly since their hair and clothes were also wet, but they didn't dare complain. They were also a bit mad at their ninja guardians, and not keen on speaking to them either. So they stubbornly remained silent and determined to tough it out.
Not long after Kiba and Akamaru had left, they heard a loud rustle and a crash. Sakura and Sai shifted anxiously. "That was a tree. I think we should go after Naruto too," Sakura said. "If he gets really mad, it'll take all of us, at least, to restrain him."
Sai nodded.
"Can you three stay here?" Sakura's voice was tense and commanding. The girls remained stony faced, and the drip of the rain filled the silence. Sakura sighed and she and she and Sai dashed off into the wet street.
Eva slowly lowered herself down to the ground, her wet skirt making a rather yucky squelching noise against the cold ground. Leah and Claire mimicked her and stared out into the deserted path.
Naruto, Sakura, Sai, Kiba, Akamaru did not return after ten minutes. Or twenty. Or thirty.
"Okay, seriously. Where are they?" Eva complained. "I'm wet, and I'm cold, and I'm bored. And I have to make sure my sword doesn't rust in the water, but I can't take it out to check if it's wet because then it will get more wet!"
"Eva, stop being OCD about your stupid sword. It's not going to fall apart just after getting wet," Claire sighed.
"But...meh…," she whined. "Still…"
"No Eva. Not still. 'Still' would mean that there's another point that you haven't made yet. There isn't."
She glared at her friend. "Bitch."
"Fine, but my first point is still valid. Where are they?"
"Hell if I know."
Eva blinked. "Leah's being too quiet."
"It's Leah."
"Still."
"Eva," Claire looked at her like she had a mushroom growing off of her nose. "Shut up."
"I'm trying to make conversation. I'm bored."
"You know," Leah said, "It's really pretty here…."
Eva and Claire looked out. The rain pounded down on the concrete, meeting it in a misty haze. There was no blue sky to be seen anymore, but simply gray, dreary clouds. There were no animals out, but everything smelled fresh, like it had just come out of the laundry. It was a kind of sad, and a bit depressing, but beautiful in its entirety.
Eva was awestruck. "It's amazing." She was almost tempted to say 'Why doesn't it ever look this beautiful in La Jolla?' but she would spare Claire the trouble by answering it herself. Because they were in Konoha. They would probably be thinking something un-original like that this was the happiest they'd been in a long time, only it wasn't. They were actually very un-happy. They meet the Akatsuki, and they're awesome. They meet the other Naruto characters, and they're awesome. But they find out that they thought the Akatsuki were awesome and now hate them. And now their fun trip to Konoha was going to be hellish. It was all quite confusing and depressing.
And because it was depressing, and it felt like it really couldn't get much worse, the laws of the universe demanded that it did.
The three girls looked up at the sound of the footsteps. A shadow blocked out the grayish light that was seeping through the clouds, and a black silhouette was outlined by it.
"You're coming with us."
Author's Note:
Leah: Beware…in the next chapter will be the most sexy-fine thing you've ever heard of. And it's not a character from the show.
Claire: …Okay…It is true though…
HAW. MOAR SUSPENSE.
I could laugh at your anguish, but instead I'm going to be nice! I had this idea a while ago but it was kind of too late to post it so I'm starting it in this chapter. I personally like knowing things, and I think you people might be less antsy if we start predicting when we're going to post the next chapter. Keep in mind, this is a prediction and won't necessarily come true. It could be before or after the date we set, but we'll try to make it within three days either way.
So we think we'll have chapter 6 up by February 29th. Cuz leap year is fun:D