Passive-aggressive

The Yondaime Hokage Namikaze Minato looked at the people assembled at the funeral, although probably not all of them because they had liked the deceased. Sarutobi Hiruzen and Uchiha Fugaku, for example, looked like they wanted to dance on his grave, then there were the ones, like Shimura Danzo, who probably wanted to make absolutely certain that he was finally dead, while some just wanted to come to such an historic occasion, after all Uchiha Madara, while less famous, was still one of the village founders. Of course, there were people who would miss him as well, such as his wife Kushina, who was right now talking about how Madara had always encouraged her to be herself when she was a girl (and since he had mostly done that by complimenting her on her pranks, laughing at her victims and offering suggestions for the next one, he felt lucky that Madara had died while his son Naruto was still so young).

As they left after the funeral, he thought he heard the Sandaime saying something that sounded like "You lucky bastard". It was probably true, Madara had been known to make the lives of the previous Hokages hell, he had been one of the Hokage's advisors since the very beginning, but after that first time, with Hashirama, he had never tried to become Hokage, going so far as to refuse vehemently when he had been practically begged to become Hokage after the Nidaime's death, seeing as he had outlived two Hokages and lived to see the third one retire he might have made a good choice, after all, in choosing to avoid the stress. This wasn't to say he wasn't a powerful person, he had always had a lot of influence in the running of the village, and none of the Uchiha's would dare to really oppose him by now, it must be strange for Fugaku to suddenly become clan head, after years of following Madara around, who alternated in between calling him Fugaku-kun and Fugaku-chan, the latter when he thought he was being ridiculous.

Minato certainly had been lucky, not only wouldn't he have to deal with the practically ancient man, but with him gone there was noone who would be oppose him much, at least in the beginning, and he had been the only candidate for the position, as the Sannin, the only other people who might have been considered had all refused, not wanting to have to deal with Madara daily. He had heard that Danzo used to be quite militaristic, and in charge of his own ANBU division, but it was difficult to believe, seeing as now he was something of a nervous wreck, it had started when the training metods of Root had become known, Madara had soundly chewed him out, calling him a foolish little boy and reminding him that they had founded the village to avoid things like this, after that he had never lost an occasion to berate him, he might have been a real bastard, but he had always wanted what was best for the village, making the Hokages miserable was more of a hobby.

In the end he had died peacefully in his own bed, of old age, and even if his physical condition had declined in the end he had been a fearsome opponent to the very last, probably the main reason why nobody had made an effort to kill him before then, they didn't want to risk the consequences if they tried and failed.

Bullying

Konan had not been happy when she recognized Akatsuki's newest recruit, she still remembered how Orochimaru had told Jiraya that he should kill Yahiko, Nagato and her.

Nagato seemed to be able to pretend it had never happened, and thought that he would be an useful addition to Akatsuki, and so she wouldn't kill him, like she wanted to, because she trusted his judgement (although there was a small but insistent part of her that said that sane people didn't say they were gods), but she simply wasn't able to pretend it had never happened, there was other ways to make him pay after all... And it helped that she knew every inch of the building, and her jutsu made it really easy for her to get into places.

Orochimaru could have sweared that the building they used as headquarters was haunted, it was that or he was slowly losing his mind, the fact that the furniture in his room was in different positions he could have dismissed as someone moving them as some kind of childish prank, but sometime it seemed to move while he was in the room as well, sleeping, busy with something, or in a few cases he had just turned around for a little. The same happened in his lab, nothing was ever where he thought he had left it, his samples usually turned out to be mislabeled, and his files were switched around.

Then the strange simptoms started, it was never anything serious, and it hadn't interfered with his missions yet, but he experienced bouts of hallucinations, tremors, numbness in various areas of his body, dizziness, and other such things, he suspected that someone might be poisoning him, but couldn't figure out how it happened, he would have asked for help, but if it was poison his partner Sasori was the main suspect, and he didn't trust any of the others enough, the most approachable Akatsuki member seemed to be Konan, but when he had mentioned his problems the way she had asked if he was still capable of performing his duties had suggested that he had better be, or he would be useless to them.

After joining Akatsuki Itachi had been surprised when he first met Orochimaru, the man was one of Konoha's most known and feared missing nin, but life outside of the village had obviously not agreed with him, the once fearsome shinobi was thin, pale, sickly looking, and his behaviour made him think he was a nervous wreck, the fact that he was barefoot, and was muttering something about how he was certain that he had left the sandals next to the door didn't help.

Then Konan, the organization's only female member, approached him "You are good at genjutsu, right?" Her smile was just a little too presatory, but he told her that yes, it was his specialty "Good, I have a job for you". Said job turned out to be using subtle genjutsu on Orochimaru at random times, without getting noticed, to make him think he was going mad, he hadn't expected to be recruited to bully another member, but he wasn't even the only one, he knew that at least Sasori was in on it as well.

Jiraya had been keeping an eye out for Orochimaru for years, angry for his betrayal, but when he met him again he couldn't keep hating him, he looked like a wreck, he seemed really ill, and was far from the aloof, slightly arrogant person he remembered him as, and when his first words had been a slightly desperate "Jiraya? Are you real? I'm not mad, I'm not! Whatever they say, it's just the voices in the walls, I'm not mad am I? The voices are really there, aren't they?" He decided he was taking his former teammate back to Konoha, he obviously needed help "OK, Orochimaru, I'm real, and what do you say about coming back to Konoha with me?" "Sounds good, I hate Akatsuki, and putting a genjutsu on the moon is a dumb plan anyway".

Not worth it

"Zabuza-sama, are you certain about this?" "Zabuza-sama, isn't it a bit hipocritical to oppress another country to get funds to stop the oppression of ours?" "Zabuza-sama, the people here have nothing left to live of!" "Zabuza-sama, I don't think Gato intends to pay us once we have finished" "Zabuza-sama, Gato is on his way to become as bad as Yagura"

Zabuza was getting tired of listening to Haku's complaints about their current job, and if he had to be honest with himself he even agreed with most of it, so when he found out that Tazuna had hired a team of shinobi, led by Kakashi of the Sharingan, he decided that this was his chance to get out of it with his reputation intact. He sent Haku to steal the majority of Gato's money, while he went to talk to the shinobi from Konoha, to tell them where to find Gato and how to get into his base with minimum risk, it helped that Haku was going to poison most of the guards as well.

"Why should I believe what you are telling me?" "Why not? Not that it makes much of a difference, I'm out of here anyway, the pay might be OK, but it's not worth it to having to listen to Haku complaining all the time"

For your own good

Konan seemed a little uncertain "Nagato, are you certain that you're OK? I mean, I know that Yahiko's death was really traumatic..." "Don't worry, I'm fine, and we will be able to change things"

She let it go for a while, Nagato seemed to be coping with what had happened, even if changing his name to Pain didn't seem like such a logical solution to her, but when he declared himself a god she knew she had to act.

She doubted that a civilian psychologist would be much help, and Ame didn't have anyone like Konoha's Yamanaka clan, but she knew she could find a solution to that.

"What kind of mission is that? Why does Ame need a Yamanaka with experience in dealing with trauma, survivor's guilt and people with delusions of grandeur?" "No idea, but they are paying it as an S-ranked mission, are assuring us that there should be no risks, and are allowing us to send as many shinobi as we want to, not to mention that they are supposed to be our allies"

"What's the meaning of all this?" "It's for your own good, Nagato, you can say whatever you want, but sane people don't declare themselves gods, you need help, professional help, which is why he's here, so now you are going to be reasonable and get the help you obviously need, powerful eyes or not"