Title: Phase Two?
Rating: PG-13 for minor language
Characters: RAFO (Read and find out)
Word Count: 624
Summary: The Akatsuki had the right idea, but Sasuke can do them one better.
Author's Notes: This relies heavily on Manga chapters 346-348 (the three immediately following the showdown between Sasuke and Orochimaru), so if you aren't up-to-date through them, this may not make a lot of sense to you.

He had Suigetsu. He had Karin. With the acquisition of its last member, Sasuke's team would be complete.

It was a simple plan, really. He had gotten the idea from listening to Orochimaru's stories about his time in the Akatsuki. Sasuke might hate the organization his brother Itachi belonged to, if not quite as much as he hated Itachi himself, but only a fool would deny that they were competent and capable. The Akatsuki were well on their way to completing Phase One of their plan, collecting all the tailed demons. Sasuke had always been privy to even Orochimaru's most sensitive reports, and word was that they had captured two more of the tailed demons very recently. That left only a few more before their objective was complete. Naruto's body housed one of those, but Sasuke hardly spared a thought for the brat who had always chased him around. Naruto was no part of Sasuke's own plans.

Phases Two and Three of the Akatsuki plan were well-outlined too. The Akatsuki were bent on using control of the nine forces known as the tailed demons to control all war, and thus the economies of every nation, and through this power, which they would use to control the world. An ambitious plan to be sure, but one that Sasuke could respect. Aside from the fact that the Akatsuki included his damn brother, anyway.

"Yo, Sasuke! Where are we goin' now?"

Sasuke turned to see Suigetsu staring at him, flashing those teeth of his. "Now we go to the north base and get Juugo."

"And then what, Sasuke-kun?" Karin's voice dripped honey, as long as she wasn't shooting jealous glares at Suigetsu.

No need for them to know that, yet. Each member of Sasuke's new team had special talents, though. Talents that were crucial to the success of his new mission. Suigetsu, now lugging around that giant sword, was the heir to Momoichi Zabuza in more ways than one. He shared the man's talent with water ninjutsu. He shared some of the man's reckless abandon as well, and his cold ruthlessness when it came to using other people.

Karin was special in her own way. She had a fastidious personality, bordering on neurotic at times, that had made her one of Orochimaru's better administrators. She had other talents as well, but the same traits that had led Orochimaru to choose her as the head of his southern base were the ones Sasuke wanted now. She really was a necessary part of his plan.

And then there was Juugo. Juugo was insane, to be sure. Orochimaru wouldn't have kept him locked up all these years if Juugo hadn't shown himself unable to follow even the simplest order, time and again. But the man had a particular breed of madness, a type of rambling stream-of-consciousness insanity, that was actually very much in accord with Sasuke's plans.

In his time with Orochimaru, Sasuke had formed a strategy to rival that of the Akatsuki both in its deviousness and its ingenuity. Phase Three of both plans was the same - when wasn't it? - ruling the world. Sasuke just had a different way of getting there.

Phase One of Sasuke's plan was even simpler than the Akatsuki plan - gathering these three individuals for his team. With Sasuke's own cool demeanor, and his obvious status as a teen heartthrob, he and the other three would form the perfect cast of a weekly one-hour network dramedy. About the personal lives of ninjas, of course. And from that, he would rule the world!

It was a plan only Orochimaru's successor could have dreamed up, Sasuke thought with pride. But damn it, he still hadn't quite figured out what to do for Phase Two.