Author's Note:
Claire: I know it's been forever since we updated, but if you really have a problem with it, TAKE IT UP WITH MY FLKASDJFLKASDHF;LKASHDFLKS ENGLISH TEACHER. I HATE THAT WOMAN. Of course, all my other cock hole teachers decided to give me an insanely unfair amount of homework. All I've done for the last, like, four chapter's author's notes is complain about how much damn homework I have. And I just now noticed it, and have decided to rant.
THE END OF THE FUCKING YEAR IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASIER, NOT HARDER. Face it, after state testing, WE HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO WORK FOR. Except preparing for next year, which is really preparing for next year's testing, and so on…
HONESTLY. For the last two weeks I have been doing homework NON-STOP. I had 3 English projects (I finished two, but then she assigned another one so I'm back up to two), a History project, a Japanese project, a Physics project, and, here's the killer—AN ESSAY FOR P.E.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
PHYSICAL.
NOT
MENTAL.
WRONG.
All of these projects took a very very long time…except physics, surprisingly, which I hate and is quite difficult…
I also had three tests to study for, and miscellaneous homework. And Leah nagging me to write. Which was hard. So you can imagine how happy I was to have a break this weekend…Except somehow the project count has returned to…5…and the test count is at 3. And I have lots of "study guides" (bull…they're homework cuz they're too damn big and if they really were for studying they shouldn't be due…) that I pretty much have to do tonight…I have a physics test tomorrow…I'm afraid.
So…I'm fairly unhappy…
WHO CARES HOW I AM. On to more important things.
We got…tons…of reviews on the last author's note chaptery thing…So I guess first I'll address the main point of that: PAIRINGS.
LeahxDeidara
ClairexHidan (ClairexZetsu person, wtf was that? Sorry, that was just totally unexpected…o.O)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the super controversial one that caused us to rip our hair out in frustrationnnnnn
EVAXKISAME.
No EvaxSuigetsu, not debatable, KAY THANKS BYE.
And I also have something else that I want to say regarding a review from that chapter…Our three OCs…Someone thought that we had made them Goth for the purpose of having them be more compatible with the Akatsuki. THIS ISN'T TRUE. It didn't even occur to me that someone could ever even come to this conclusion because that whole chapter we were ASKING if you guys thought it was all right to do pairings…if we hadn't asked and it might have been our plan all along to do pairings, then I could see the mistake about making them Goth.
Eva, Leah, and Claire are based off our personalities, as real people, and we are Goth…(-ish…In my opinion we're actually kind of posers…but I hate people and enjoy the clothes at Hot Topic, so that is how I classify myself instead of emo (BECAUSE EMO IS A DAMNED MUSIC GENRE PEOPLE, GET IT RIGHT)…but more often I call myself a nerd XP)
SO THAT'S THAT. Personally I think the Akatsuki would hate us anyway because we're stupid and annoying…except Leah, she's nice…but they might kill her…/
I SHOULD REALLY SHUT UP NOW CUZ I'VE TAKEN OVER A PAGE TO DO MY AUTHOR'S NOTE AND I'M BORING AND RETARDED. :v
Leah: Okay, I must address the joke behind Charli's alias. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Japanese language, her name, Kami, means God and it also means paper. I want you to think about this for a second….
….
….
You probably didn't think about it at all and are just waiting for me to give you the answer. As you can tell, Charli has a bit of a God-complex (kinda obvious) but there's another thing about it that I think is more interesting. When Charli's pretending to be Kami in Konoha, she's also pretending to be Konan's daughter (and Konan like origami which uses paper) and to poke fun of her she indirectly says that Pein is her father (Pein thinks he's a God). But yeah, you'll read that part in a bit :P
My brain stopped functioning like ¾ of the way through writing this. I got bored…then I was writing really weirdly and so I had to stop working on it for a while and I actually got around to working on the book me and Eva have been working on for the past…almost four years (Yes, we're writing a book that we plan on getting published…even though we restarted like eight times and have barely anything written). And so yeah…must take break from writing this until I have motivation again.
Eva: I wrote stuff. Kinda. Sorta. A bit.
…
…
I feel really useless and unhelpful. But it's not entirely my fault!! I fail at group projects. And no one believes me. They think it's just an excuse to be lazy. But it's not true!! I love writing. Just…not with other people.
Anyway, I never have anything interesting to say in Author's Notes so…yeah…read the chapter. –goes back to reading porn-
Leah: ….Eva's a mini-Kakashi…
Kakashi: I shall call her…Mini-Me
Eva: IT'S LIKE CRACK!! I SWEAR TO GOD! No one will believe me unless they also suffer from this…unfortunate infliction…but it's true. I went through withdrawals.
Claire: …I will acknowledge that Eva wrote stuff for this chapter, but after that…Let's just say it's fun to steal her phone when it's her only means for porn-reading…
Yeah, and I'm also gonna say one more thing cuz this is Tuesday, and yesterday WE TRIED TO POST THE CHAPTER BUT FANFICTION WAS DOING 'MAINTENANCE'. Hoarz. Grr…
Chapter 9:
Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, OWWW! HELL! Why are braids so painful!? Juugo winced as Leah, Eva, and Claire pulled at his hair, trying to force the relatively short strands into braids. Or more specifically, cornrows. In between the times Sasuke had pulled them aside—individually now, as it was his new angle—they had started flocking around Juugo. Eva occasionally went off with Suigetsu, but most of the time she was here with Claire and Leah. The three of them always seemed to find a way to pull Juugo into their insanity vortex. Today, they had claimed he would look absolutely dashing with cornrows.
Claire tugged especially hard and he couldn't help but yelp and jerk away instinctively. "Ow!"
Claire frowned since the braid she had been working on for the last seven minutes had now strategically frizzled itself back into vertical twisted lumps. "Stop flinching! I'll pull more of your hair out!"
"Sorry…" he said quietly.
Leah flicked Claire's shoulder.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Don't scold our project. His hair is entertaining," she smirked.
Eva tried to hide her giggles with her hands, and ended up losing all the progress she has gained in the last several minutes too. This was rather unfortunate since she had been very close to done with her row. "Dammit!" She huffed and stamped her foot on the ground. Claire stuck out her tongue, now over her own setback.
Leah shook her head. "You people are so immature."
Juugo sighed. In his mind, he agreed with Leah, if only because his mind was a close witness to evidence of their idiocy at this very moment. He tuned out and stared across the campground at the forest.
He was not staring for long before a white shape emerged from the depths of the shadows between the trees. The blur soon solidified as a shirt, being worn by Sasuke. The Uchiha did not make his way towards the tents, as Juugo thought he would, but towards Juugo himself. He figured that it must be time for one of the girls to be interrogated. No sooner had he thought this than he was reminded of the presence of the girls at this very moment, yanking at his scalp.
Juugo twitched forward again, this time by Leah's hand. In that split second he accidentally lost his balance and slipped off his log-stump-chair-thing and into the dirt. The shocked Leah still had hold of one of his orange locks, suspending his head uncomfortably so his neck stuck into the prickly side of the log. No doubt he would find splinters there later.
"Err…could you please…let go of my head," he muttered to Leah while trying to ignore Sasuke watching him from several yards away.
Leah immediately let go and gravity pulled his head roughly onto the wood with a loud thunk!
"Sorry!" Leah squeaked quietly. She and the others stared in horror and shock, Eva barely managing not to smile and Claire just blinking, confused. Juugo closed his eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing. Now he had a nasty lump to add to the splinters. He opened his eyes again wearily to see Sasuke step over him to get to the girls.
"Leah," he said blankly.
"I'm sorry!" she peeped again, then hurriedly tried to explain, "I thought there was a mosquito on my arm so I was gonna swat it and it jerked my arm back and then he fell and then I was surprised so I forgot I was holding his hair and he told me to let go so I did and I forgot ab—"
"—I'm not trying to scold you!" Sasuke interrupted, losing a bit of his composure to a lowered black eyebrow, "I simply want to speak to you alone."
Leah stopped her frantic jibbering. "Oh…okay…sorry…"
Claire sighed and Eva shrugged as their enemy led their friend off. The two girls walked around the stump to face Juugo. He sat up and gingerly touched his neck to check for wooden slivers.
"Well this is no good," Claire said, a faint note of amusement in her voice, "It looks like we'll have to start over!"
Juugo paused, barely daring to look up. Eva poked at the back of his head close enough to the bump that he could flinch, and he felt the feathery sensation of one of the cornrows becoming un-sprung.
"Yup," Eva said.
XxX
Konohamaru and Charli walked through a small park, their arms hooked together cutely and looking over their shoulders every few seconds to see how Naruto was reacting to their fake "date". Naruto just kept smiling at them, but every so often he'd grumble about how easy Konohamaru had it. The two eleven year olds would laugh.
"So…Kami…is their any particular reason why your parents named you that? You know what it means, right?" Konohamaru said since he couldn't really think of anything else to talk about.
Charli sighed, regretting her choice for her fake name, but she did have an excuse. It was an odd one, but since Konan was pretending to be her mother, she figured that it worked. "Well, my mom does a lot of origami and my dad has some sort of strange god complex, so I guess it just fit them both," she said in such a way that she could be taken seriously or jokingly.
Konohamaru laughed. Naruto just seemed confused.
Charli sighed. She was running out of time and fast. She had wasted more than an hour going to Ichiraku's and being on a "date" with Konohamaru. If her math was right, which it usually was, she had about twenty or so minutes left before she had to meet up with Konan in front of the Hokage's tower. Not only did she have to get the information she needed, but she needed to get it in a discrete fashion, end the "date" without arousing suspicion, and get to Konan without the two idiots following her. Fabulous.
First order of business. Discretely obtain wanted information pertaining to the subjects whose whereabouts are currently unknown but are being investigated.
Charli stopped walking suddenly, un-hooked her arm, and turned to face Konohamaru, who had also stopped walking at this point. Konohamaru looked at her curiously, an eyebrow raised in a manner that even Charli thought was cute.
"Something wrong Kami?" He asked.
Naruto paused as well and looked on at his friend and the little blonde girl with muted inquisitiveness.
Charli unwrapped Konohamaru's oversized blue scarf then draped it over his shoulders again and rewound it so it was perfectly even on both sides.
Konohamaru blinked, but laughed. "That was…weird… Why'd you do that?"
Charli scratched the back of her head and forced herself to blush slightly, "Sorry, I'm a bit OCD. Everything has to be neat, you know?"
She knew Naruto was listening, and she knew that if Claire had been around a slob like Naruto, he was sure to have experienced some of her OCD-ness. And maybe her previous act would spark something in Naruto's puny memory.
Konohamaru laughed and offered her his arm again, which she took.
Naruto just smiled and kept on walking with them.
Shit. That didn't work. Maybe just one little push to see if Naruto would mention anything, but nothing more than that because then she might sound a little suspicious.
"Do you know anyone with OCD? It can be pretty entertaining sometimes," she added.
He shook his head. "Nope, you're the first," he glanced over his shoulder at Naruto, "How about you Naruto?"
The blonde Kyuubi boy scratched his head. "Yeah actually, a few days ago."
"Cool." Konohamaru said.
"What's her or his name?" Charli asked innocently.
Naruto stopped walking suddenly, his eyes narrowed. "Why do you want to know?" he asked carefully.
Charli shrugged. "Just curious."
Konohamaru elbowed Naruto. "Gosh, don't be so rude to such a pretty girl." He smiled fondly at Charli.
Naruto rubbed his ribs and glanced at the little blonde girl with wary eyes. "I'm not supposed to tell, it was mission stuff."
Now Konohamaru was curious. "C'mon Naruto, we won't tell."
"Why do you want to know?" Naruto demanded. "I'm not supposed to talk about them, Tsunade's already pissed off at me as it is and you know I have to keep my mouth shut about that whole thing, so stop trying to get me in trouble."
Konohamaru was not about to give up that easy though. "Wait, was it that one red haired girl that was living with you for a few days? The one that you said cleaned your room and now you can't find anything?"
Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose and growled. "Konohamaru..."
Charli put a hand on Konohamaru's shoulder. "I don't think you should press it, if he doesn't want to tell just let him be," she said.
She started walking ahead of Naruto, pulling Konohamaru along with her. "Play along," she whispered.
He nodded and grinned mischievously. For him, this was no longer a quest to find out who the person with OCD was. No, now it was just a game to see how many buttons he could push before Naruto tried to kill him.
Charli looked over her shoulder at Naruto. "Of course, if you don't tell us, then we won't tell you what Sakura said about you earlier," she flipped the wispy hair out of her face, smiling so innocently that it actually seemed evil, and added, "And trust me, you'd want to know this."
"How would you know Sakura?" Naruto asked, getting more suspicious, but his need to know what Sakura said about him overpowered his other notions of Charli being possibly dangerous.
Konohamaru got that mischievous little look on his face. "I told Kami about what she said about you. But I guess you'll never know."
Naruto stood still on the spot for a second. He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his forehead, acting like he was having some sort of internal battle featuring knights, horses, cannons, dragons, and the occasional murderous squirrel.
He ran after Konohamaru and Charli. "What'd Sakura say about me?"
"Not telling." Charli replied without a moment's hesitation.
"But…but…please dattebayo?"
"Nope. Sorry Naruto." Konohamaru added.
Naruto sighed. "Fine, I'll tell you but you have to keep your mouths shut about this, okay?"
They nodded.
"Her name was Claire."
Charli smiled. "That's an odd name…foreign?
Naruto nodded. "Yeah, yeah, now tell me what Sakura said."
Charli wagged her finger in front of him. "Tsk tsk, one more question. Is she still here? Not only must I compliment her on cleaning your room to a point where you can't find anything, but I'd like to tell her about a help program to cure stuff like that. I go and I'd love to see more people come."
Naruto shook his head. "No, she and her friends disappeared two days ago; we're still looking for them AND TELL ME WHAT SAKURA SAID!"
Charli giggled. "Konohamaru, you tell him."
Naruto trained his eyes on Konohamaru, who responded with a challenging stare.
Naruto grabbed the younger boy's shoulders and shook him. "Tell. Me. What. Sakura. Said. Now!"
Charli laughed. "Konohamaru, you need some help?"
He smiled at her. "No, I'm good. I think we'll have to cut our date short 'cause Naruto needs to do more than just that to get me to tell him."
"TELL NOW!"
The eleven year olds snickered.
"I have to go anyways, thanks for the great time Konohamaru. I'll visit you sometime soon, okay?" she said sweetly.
"I had fun too. I'll see you around Kami." Konohamaru replied, despite the fact that Naruto still had a firm grip on his shoulders.
She smiled softly and did something that was totally un-Charli-ish. She turned Konohamaru's face towards her and gave him a quick peck on the lips. After all, it was the least she could do to thank him for helping to give the Akatsuki some wanted information. "I'll see you soon," she said and began to walk towards the big red building where she'd meet back up with Konan.
Naruto, forgetting his previous quest, looked from Konohamaru to Charli, his mouth agape.
Konohamaru had a stupid durrr look plastered to his face.
Naruto huffed and straightened up. "You suck."
Konohamaru suddenly smiled broadly. "Hey Naruto, I just realized that I kissed a girl before you did."
He cracked his knuckles and glared at the blue scarf-wearing jackass.
Stroking his bare chin like an old man would stroke his beard, Konohamaru added, "Technically, you're gay since the only person you kissed was Sasu—"
"—Konohamaru!" Naruto yelled and made a grab for the little kid so that he may shake him violently.
Konohamaru took that as his cue to run away…very fast…
xXx
Konan was extremely thankful that she was finally away from Charli, who took her patience, doused it in alcohol, and set it on fire. As a reward for sticking with the four-foot menace, she decided to stop at a small restaurant for some Dango. Thankful for both the cool, dark atmosphere of the place, and for the food itself (once she had ordered it), she sat down and relaxed slightly.
"Yo."
Konan flicked her eyes toward the speaker. It hadn't been directed at her, but her ears were tuned to eavesdropping even when it wasn't necessary.
"Hey Kakashi."
If Konan wasn't mistaken, that voice belonged to the Hokage. She heard a sigh from the copy-nin. "You really shouldn't be drinking, Tsunade-sama. Weren't you just complaining yesterday about how you had a week's-worth of paperwork due in two days?"
"Go to hell." Her voice slurred slightly. She was already drunk this early in the day. "Reading Icha Icha, I see."
"Aren't I always?"
"You're not making it easy to spark up a conversation…."
"Sometimes you have to leave it to the conversations to spark themselves," Kakashi said with age-old wisdom (secretly learned from the seductress in the third issue of his books).
A long, muggy silence followed that kept the Akatsuki member perfectly still as to not miss a single word of what might turn into a very information-filled conversation.
"Kakashi…" Tsunade began, and Konan heard her empty glass strike the table. "What are we going to do about…?"
"We have ANBU working on it," he said hastily, lowering his voice. Konan had to strain her ears to hear it. "There's not much else we can do. They left no clues, no ransom notes, nothing. The only thing we can assume is that the Akatsuki came and took them back."
"Did you send anyone to their house, to check?" In her drunken thought process, she didn't realize the slight stupidity of her suggestion.
"No, since we thought it was possible the Akatsuki might be there," Kakashi said logically.
"Yeah, that would be a problem," she mused after a moment of thought.
"What if it was someone else?"
"Who else could it be?"
"I've been thinking it might be Sasuke. Think about it, the girls have information on Itachi. If he got wind of their existence, he would consider them an invaluable resource."
Tsunade was silent for a moment. "His methods of extracting information would be extremely brutal. They would crack."
Kakashi 'hm'd' in agreement.
"What can we do?"
"Well, we do have ANBU on it…." he repeated.
"Oh. Right." This time, even in her drunken stupor, she realized the idiocy of her question. "Maybe I should work on my paperwork more."
"I think that's a good idea."
The Hokage left almost immediately, and Konan had full intentions to wait until Kakashi had followed suit before she even moved from her seat. But after a half hour, he was still absently playing with his hair, and she didn't think he had even turned the page in his porn. Although she would give up the opportunity to trail him, if she stayed any longer it would be suspicious.
She quickly paid her check and walked hastily across the room. "Yo."
This time it was directed at her.
She swiveled around and saw Kakashi walking over to her, sans Icha Icha. "Hi," Konan replied. It wasn't rude, but it wasn't polite. She tried to tune her tone to sound impatient.
"Hear any interesting gossip lately?"
Crap. He knew she was eavesdropping. "More worthless crap I'm never gonna use. But I don't make a habit of gossiping, so goodbye."
He reached out to catch her wrist, and faster than even an elite jounin could, she drew away and had a kunai at his neck. Realizing what her trained reflex had caused her to give away, she hurriedly pulled her hand back, but it was only stopped by Kakashi's strong grip.
Konan was fast, but lacked in strength. The hand he had a grip on was the one she usually wore her Akatsuki ring on. And on that finger was a very unique-looking tan-line that would give her away in an instant, she was sure. The only thing left to do was to tap in to her inner girl and distract him.
She twisted her arm around in Kakashi's glance, so she was behind him, and draped her other arm around his shoulder. "Your name's Kakashi…right?"
He blinked. "Yeah."
She let her fingers trail up to his face and touch the rim of his mask. His hand was there in an instant, bringing her own back down. She giggled. "You're pretty mysterious with that mask on…what's underneath?"
"My face." Kakashi was an extremely patient man, but one of his pet peeves was being asked about his mask.
She giggled as if he had said something funny, and looked down. He had both of her wrists in his hands. Konan quickly weighed her options, wondering how she could get out of this with her identity concealed. She knew Pein wouldn't want her taking unnecessary risks that would risk jeopardize an already complete mission, and she felt she had already gone too far. It was probably best to get out while she still could. She stood up on her tip-toes, as she was facing him, and gave him a small peck on the cloth that separated her lips from his.
He raised an eyebrow at her innocent face, and she glanced back down at her wrists imploringly. He followed her gaze and hesitantly released them.
"Sorry, but I'm not interested in you," he said flatly.
Konan suddenly looked embarrassed, lowering her head a little bit so she was looking at him through her eyelashes. "I'm sorry if I'm a bit too direct with this kind of thing, I'm just like that…."
In her head she celebrated, seeing as she had successfully detached herself without getting in too much trouble. She felt a little ashamed that the blush rising in her cheeks was genuine, but it helped add to the effect, so it didn't really matter. She was just irritated that she had gotten into such a position that she had to stoop to acting like such a…floozy. "I'm Shikyo. It's very nice to meet you, Kakashi-san. I have to leave now."
"Nn."
She casually walked out of the bar, making sure she didn't look rushed. Pein was going to kill her.
XxX
Konan jerked her head as she left the bar, trying to shake off that dirty feeling she got after flirting with people. She tended to make a fool of herself, and considering the situation, the extra stress surely hadn't helped. She tried not to dwell on it as she made her way back to meet Charli. Instead, she replayed the information she had learned at the bar. Sasuke had probably taken the girls…Interesting. She wondered how Pein would want to deal with it.
Seeing the large red building in front of her, she snapped out of her trance and quickened her pace. Konan tried to pick out Charli's ashy blonde head from the crowd of people milling about in front. She spotted something else that disturbed her, though. Kakashi had apparently taken a shortcut after she left the bar and had now headed her off to meet the Hokage, who was still milling about in front of her office attempting to avoid paperwork.
Konan darted under the shade of an awning, pretending to survey the various potted plants for sale. While she watched the two have their second meeting that afternoon, she became more and more disturbed. Tsunade seemed to be recovering her sobriety, and nodded with concern while Kakashi talked. To make matters worse, the Kyuubi showed up and barged in on their conversation. Kakashi tried to dismiss him but Naruto pushed on and started giving Tsunade more information that made her face contort into a distressed frown.
Across the street, between her and Kakashi and Naruto and Tsunade, Charli emerged from an intersecting path. Konan swore under her breath, realizing too late that neither of them had been as sneaky as they had hoped. She darted into a crowed of passing pedestrians and attempted to use them as a shield as she made her way over to Charli, and dangerously closer to her enemies.
"Hey, Kami!"
A boy with a ridiculously long blue scarf followed Charli from the path, causing her to turn around. Unfortunately, this also caught the attention of Tsunade and Kakashi.
"Konohamaru!" Tsunade yelled to him.
Konan gave up on stealth and dashed over to Charli. Yelling broke out from the Hokage, as Kakashi alerted several other ninja, and he and Naruto started towards them.
"Charli!" Konan shouted. Charli turned and ran towards her, leaving Konohamaru looking confused.
"What happened?" the girl panted irritably while trying to keep up with Konan.
Konan glanced back, and seeing the other ninja gaining on them, picked Charli up and slung her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Charli screamed.
"Shut up!" Konan hissed. Now all the other villagers were watching them, and the street had turned chaotic. "I think we've both been discovered."
"Yeah, really!"
"Well, you asked!" She veered off and hopped over the wall, into the bushes. "Hidan set up some traps over here so we could get away if anything went wrong," she explained.
"I see, so they were expecting you to fail from the beginning!" the little blonde twerp snapped, no longer indulging in the innocent little kiddie act.
"Hey, I'm not the only one who got caught!"
"So you admit you failed?"
Konan gritted her teeth in annoyance. She flung Charli onto the ground, along with the paper with the jutsu symbols on it, and clasped her hands together.
xXx
"So that's the deal. Either you tell me about the Akatsuki within the next twenty-four hours, or I kill your friends."
Leah stared at the ground in silence. Sasuke had just finished explaining his grave ultimatum. The interrogation hadn't been going well for him, as the three of them had made sure of. After all, they were so spiteful towards him in the first place for just being an all around hateful character. Given a chance to deny him what he wanted was tremendously satisfying.
After a while Sasuke had given up on group interrogations, since they girls only encouraged each other with playful sarcasm when they fabricated their answers to him. He had then switched tactics to individual interrogations. These hadn't gone well either. Claire and Eva made up completely ridiculous stories, no matter how much he glared. He had pegged Leah from the start to be the weak link in their chain of secrecy. From his observations, she didn't like to lie to people or be mean to them, even if she disliked them. He had overheard her telling the other two about a situation like this involving a person named "Alfred". However this didn't concern him. What did was the possibility of getting information from the timid girl.
No such luck. She was nearly as stubborn as the other two. All her responses to his endless inquiries were "Greg and his hotness forbid me to tell you". Obviously, this didn't get him very far. Once he had nearly lost his temper and ventured to ask her why she was so insistent on lying to him.
She had said: "One, I don't like you. Two, Eva and Claire would cuss me out. Three, the Akatsuki would kill me. And four, Greg and his hotness forbid me to tell you."
It had been highly frustrating. The worst part of it was that he couldn't even use the most mundane, archaic technique of torture. He wanted to; oh, did he want to…But these three girls were not trained ninja. They had no background on resisted torture (although they managed to resist interrogation fairly well). If he inflicted any physical harm on them, they would break down immediately. And not in the good way, where the person immediately started spewing all their secrets and begging the torturer to stop. They would quite possibly have nervous breakdowns and turn chronic, a state more useless than their current one.
Thus, he had retreated back to a different tactic. Mental torture. He had not given up on Leah yet, for she was the candidate for this procedure. The only candidate. His plan, which he had just relayed to the girl after formulating it all night, consisted of a deadline of twenty-four hours from now for her to give him information. If she didn't, her friends would be killed.
To eliminate their barrier-like influence on Leah's conscience, he had told Suigetsu that if Leah didn't tell him what he wanted to know in the next hour, he should take Eva and Claire away. Back to Konoha, specifically. At the moment, he figured the Konoha ninja were more interested in finding the Akatsuki than himself. So even if the girls ratted him out and were believed, there was a small chance that it would be acted on by a large scale. On the even smaller chance that they did act on it, he would be moving the camp anyway. And there was no way in hell Claire and Eva had the skills to track them, even with trained ninjas help.
In his mind, Claire and Eva were already out of the picture. Although he had told Leah he would kill them if she didn't tell him what he wanted to know—which he thought highly unlikely anyway given the circumstances—he really had no intention of doing so. If she didn't give in within the first hour, her friends would be gone, thus increasing her panic, and making it more possible to get accurate information. If this did occur, he would tell her that he had a system set up so he could signal Suigetsu, and he would kill them. This was complete bull.
Sasuke didn't let his satisfaction with his brilliant plan show on his face, but it danced around in his head like a drunk, gay acrobat on a sugar high. Instead he watched Leah impassively, a stern sense of foreboding falsely displaying his emotions. After a few minutes of silence he thought he'd give her an extra prod. "Your friends' lives rest on your decision, Leah."
Leah blinked and Sasuke thought he might have seen a drop of water fall from her now red eyes. She looked up and her face supported this theory, since her eyelashes were sticking together with hanging tears. However, the rest of her face formed a scowl, and when she spoke, she didn't plead mercy as he had hoped. "That was pathetically Star Wars-y of you," she smirked. Her smile faded, and she became solemn again after that moment of relapse. "I need to go think for a while," she said.
He nodded and she walked off.
Sasuke scowled. This had been another scenario he had foreseen. Of course he knew she wasn't going to go think, she was going to try to warn her friends. He supposed it was a good thing that he had cast a jutsu on her before their conversation making it so she couldn't speak to Eva or Claire for the next few days. It had been a precaution. And a necessary one, at that.
XxX
"So after all that, they aren't even in Konoha?!" Deidara hissed.
"Nope," Charli said. She puffed at a wisp, banishing it from her face. She dismissed it almost as easily as she dismissed Deidara and his frantic concern. For a few seconds she had wondered why he was so distressed, but then she remembered he was obsessed with her sister.
"'Nope?!'" he repeated incredulously, "That is not a valid answer! Give me something else you little brat! I have to find Lea—I mean…the girls…" He glanced at the other Akatsuki members, who were watching him suspiciously. "…because they might have information on us…and if someone…er…extracted that information, it would be…um…a problem, un," he covered lamely.
Pein cleared his throat and ignored the distressed blonde. "So the results were overall inconclusive, correct?" he asked Konan.
"Yes. The only thing we know for sure is that they aren't in Konoha. The girls escaped from several ninja and they haven't been recovered," she reported dutifully. "The only other lead we have is Kakashi's speculation that they were taken by—"
"Sasuke," Zetsu finished.
"Considering the girls'…mental capacities, this is a fairly logical conclusion. The three of them would not be able to escape from trained Konoha ninja—even genins. So they had to have had help, whether they wanted it or not," Itachi added logically.
Pein sat down at the counter and rubbed his temples thoughtfully. After about a minute, he swiveled the chair around to face Konan again. "Itachi makes a reasonable point, but it would still be nice to validate it," he turned back to Konan, "Did you check the perimeter of the city? Or see anything suspicious leading out of it?" he asked.
Konan grimaced a little. "No, we were only outside the main entrance for a little while. Even if there had been any tracks, there were signs that it had rained there recently. Pretty much all signs would have been washed away. Especially if it was the Hebi Group, since they have a Mist nin…"
"Aaah my cousin is such a pest!" Kisame groaned as he stretched his arms across the back of the couch. "I guess I should have killed him when my mom dragged me to that family reunion where he chucked a bowl of potatoe salad at my head."
Kakuzu stared at the shark man, lost in quirky reminiscing. "The hell?"
Kisame blinked and jerked his head. "What? Oh sorry…Yeah, that was when I was trying to 'control my anger'. Pfft…what a joke," he grinned, being the oblivious oaf he was.
"…Weren't we talking about something mildly important before Kisame brought up his fuckheaded cousin?" Hidan grumbled.
"His cousin may have kidnapped Leah, Claire, and Eva," Zetsu reminded them.
"I'm going on the mission. I'm gonna kick his ass," Deidara seethed, punching his fist, "…Actually, scratch that, I'm gonna kill the little bastards."
"Sorry D, I think Itachi's got dibs on Sasuke, and I'm getting Suigetsu this time around. You'll have to get your girlfriend's revenge on someone else," Kisame pointed out. Deidara's face turned red.
Almost everyone laughed.
"There's still the problem of finding them," Itachi pointed out to the group, remaining serious.
"Can't you just use your brotherly telepathy or something?" Hidan joked.
Everyone laughed except Charli. Her gaze was directed at the wall behind Kisame's head, apparently still in chiding-stare mode from his off-topic outburst. Her big blue eyes were unfocused under her furrowed, almost invisible blonde eyebrows.
The only one who noticed this, apparently, was Tobi. "Charli…" He reached out to nudge her, perhaps to check if she was still awake. After all, her other family members seemed to have unnatural sleeping habits. Leah slept through anything, Jason didn't sleep at all; Charli should be able to sleep with her eyes open by process of elimination.
Charli snapped up, looking suddenly alert. "I just thought of something," she said. She was smiling in a frighteningly Eva-like way.
"What would that be?" Pein said off-handedly.
"You know that green-blue bat-thing that Leah always has in her room? Greg?"
They all nodded again, wondering where the eleven-year old could be taking this.
"I have a bug in Greg."
Author's Note:
Claire: Leah makes me happy! She just told me I didn't have to do one of the math packets! :3
But then I still have to do my physics packet and study for my physics test and do the other math packet and type a bunch of shit for history and study for my history test and do English homework and ASPLODE. D:
Leah: Just too be clear about the "bug" thing that Charli mentioned. It's not a creepy-crawly bug…but like a little mini machine thing. Yeah, you probably knew that but just making sure.
Claire: Bwahaha…we misled you with the title didn't we? You thought we meant we were starting the pairings, DIDN'T YOU? :)
I enjoy evilness.