A/n: Ah, I love cats. Pein doesn't. I do. :singing: Kitty on my foot and I want to touch it! (but Pein wouldn't)

That cat...appears in another fanfiction of mine, but it's not posted that far (which reminds me that I haven't so much as thought of my Beta-reader since...they first agreed to the job...hehe...oops. I think I'll change that ASAP.) And doesn't appear as much throughout the rest of this story as I originally intended. Oh well.

I'm so proud of how short I'm making my A/ns lately.

Disclaimer: Akatsuki is forever chained to whatever cruel fate Masashi Kishimoto sends them off with. I'm just adding to the number of small and insignificant variations of that world in which they don't all die horribly and/or painfully in the vain hopes that the number of those worlds will grow enough that I can actually deny their deaths and not be scolded otherwise.
Ren and the cat, however, are mine. I'd hiss that you can't use them, but...well, one of them is a cat, and the other is Mary-Sue and I don't much like her, so...never mind. Ren and the cat are public property. (and I whine that Akatsuki is lacking in personal rights)

Pein rubbed his temples exhasperatedly. 'How long has Ren been here?' he wondered. 'Three days? God, she's been a lot of trouble for only that long. First she tries to kill me, then she prevents me from exacting revenge, and now this…' Pein sighed. 'I am going to murder Tobi.'

A noise interrupted his thoughts, sending shudders down his spine as he was painfully reminded for the too-many-eth time of why he was so displeased with the little girl. The cute, innocent noise, that noise that he had fond memories of loving and saving, that guiltless little mew that came from that calico cat that stupid Ren had dragged in.

Not that Pein didn't like cats. Why, there had been rather a few occasions in his childhood of him finding one on the streets and taking it home, hoping his mother would allow him to keep that cute kitten caught out in the rain. It seemed more of an issue with the feelings that cats had toward him. And they weren't really that bad, either, but they always decided that his lap would make a good bed, and then they'd always start kneading him—and everything always ended up buried under cat fur. Including Pein's nose. Oh, the romantic moments of his youngest youth that were ruined horribly because of those god-damned piercings and the god-damned cat hair floating about because his current girlfriend owned a cat.

"Leader-otousama?" Tobi asked anxiously. "Can she keep her?"

Pein sighed again. "Tobi…have I ever mentioned the problems with…pets in general, honestly."

"What's wrong with pets?" Tobi wondered innocently.

"Other than…Tobi," Pein tried again. "Your ability to contribute to Akatsuki was rather limited before you had a daughter. Now, between a little girl and a little cat and a very little skill, you have no time and nothing to make up for it."

"Ren-chan will take care of Kitty," Tobi insisted. "That means that—"

"Fine," Pein sighed. "You can keep the stupid cat, as long as the thing doesn't keep me up at night—and you're cleaning up after it," he added. "If the base is burried under an inch of cat hair, no more pets. Okay?"

Tobi threw his arms in the air in celebration. "Yay! Ren-chan, did you hear that, did you hear that? Leader-otousama—"

Ren, who was sitting in Tobi's seat again and simply going about her own business, eating her meal politely and quickly, sighed and said, "Yes, Otou-chan, I heard him loud and clear. I'm right here, you know."

"Tobi knows!" Tobi exclaimed, ducking down to lift the cat into the air, holding the poor creature with two hands, one behind each front leg. "What will we name him—we could call him Ryou, or Tobi, or Yuki, or John, or Itachi, or Momuro, or Tobi, or Kai, or—"

"Not Kai," Pein interrupted. "That's the other condition." He looked up to give Tobi a half-hearted glare. "We need more creatures in this house named Kai like a hole in the head."

Indeed, any given creature in the house that anyone forgot the name of was automatically refered to as Kai—and for good reason. Three years ago, Kisame gambled (and lost) his fish—named Kai—and some time after that, Pein uncovered the source of a squeaking noise that had kept him awake for weeks, which turned out to be caused by a hamster exercising on its wheel, hidden and well-cared-for under Hidan's bed—named Kai—all of which happened long before Pein ordered Deidara to take care of their bat problem, which seemed to be caused by the blonde keeping one in the attic as a pet—named Kai. Pein should have just had all those pets "dealt with," as in not dependant on Akatsuki for their shelter but usually winding up as a snack for Zetsu, but for whatever reason, he'd allowed each and every one to stay. Maybe because it was entertaining to see nearly half of Akatsuki raise their heads interestedly at the sounding of the syllable "Kai."

"…we could still name him Ryou," Tobi pointed out optimistically, turning his attention back to the cat. "Or we could just call you Neko, or Kazuki, or Natto, or—"

"Otou-chan," Ren interrupted. "Not that those are bad names or anything, but…it's a girl."

"What?"

"It's a girl cat," Ren repeated. "She's a she, not a he. So think of some girl names."

"Ohhh," Tobi breathed in awe. "Well, then, we could name her…Airi, or Sofy, or Ren, or…Itachi-chan, what was your mother's name?"

Itachi looked up from his plate, pursed his lips and said, "You don't want to name her after my mother."

"Why not?" Tobi wondered. "I kind of like your mother—she brought you into the world, didn't she?"

Itachi let a pause hang in the air before answering, "Yes, she did. But she brought me into this world with this wretched name. And bad names run in the family."

"What, you don't like your name?" Tobi demanded. "But it's such a pretty name—"

"It means," Itachi growled, "that everyone calls me a weasel. Furthermore, I'd consider myself lucky considering the name of my mother."

Tobi waited for an addition, but he received none and instead asked, "Well, what was her name?"

Itachi stared coolly at the orange spiral, and may have retorted if Ren hadn't beat him to it. "I don't see why we have to name her after someone," she stated firmly. "We should give her a name that suits her, not just that of people we like."

Itachi's attention turned with an approving smile toward Ren. "Yes, that is very true. What should we name her, Ren?"

The table had been mostly silent a moment before, but now it may as well have been a grave. Hidan had moments before been complaining about the stickiness of the maple syrup, but now was entirely frozen with his mouth open and his eyes moved to look disbelievingly at Itachi; Kakuzu halted with the food held rudely in his hands halfway to his mouth; Kisame just stared; Zetsu's white half looked frightened, his black half obscured by the green structres that set him so often compared to a Venus Flytrap; Sasori's eyebrows flew upward, and the hand he'd set on Deidara's shoulder fell to the bottom of the seat; Deidara gasped; Kai blinked for a few moments before she took on that look that Pein remembered so well from Tobi's first mention of Akatsuki as a family.

Pein simply stared, with the same thing going through his mind as everyone else at the table, save perhaps Ren and Tobi: ' Itachi just…smiled…?' A collective shudder proceeded.

Itachi noticed this movement and sent a cool stare around the table in warning. Deidara, apparently on some edge, stood up abruptly and announced, "Oh, I just realized that I forgot to—um—change my underwear—un—yeah, that's it!" as he walked out of the room briskly.

Sasori looked vaguely panicked when his partner left him so simply, but followed quickly, muttering, "Yeah, same…"

The rest of Akatsuki made some excuse or another to leave the table early, until Pein, Kai, Itachi, Tobi, and Ren were the only ones left at the table, at which point Tobi exclaimed, "Well, we should go take Kitty up to the room so we can name her accurately." He pulled Itachi up by the wrist and called, "Come on, Ren-chan!"

Ren paused for the briefest second, waiting for Itachi to stand so she could follow at the end of the procession leading to the room she shared with her parent-resembling figures.

As she left the room, she paused again to close the door behind her, but as she moved to continue following, she heard Kai's relatively distinct voice mutter something, and curiosity overtook her. Ren already had a few years of ninja training, and so she followed them, making absolutely no noise as she pressed her ear to the door.

"…it'll be the same," Pein answered with a negative tone. "After all, this only supposedly proves that one can stay here. I don't know if a second would work."

"Pein-sama," Kai protested. "They don't know why I really left—it seems wrong to let them think that those lies were really true."

Pein sighed pitifully and responded, "Kai, do you really think that bringing your own child to live in Akatsuki would be—"

"Ren-chan!" Tobi's voice called cheerfully from upstairs. "Come see—Kitty's hacking a hairball, maybe this can help us figure out what to name her!"

Ren heard a tense silence from behind the door and sensed that Pein and Kai had likely heard Tobi's call and feared that they'd been overheard. That being so, Ren stood up as quickly and silently as she could before she bolted upstairs, keeping her footsteps as light as possible.

A/n again: So. Plot starts to be hinted at. Good for...plot, I guess.

And I'll never be able to stop bothering Pein for those nose piercings. (By the way, another thing I don't get is this long-haired Pein-ish Deidara-ish kinda looking humanoid type thing that showed up randomly in the manga, so this is all in reference to the first Pein we met.)

Special: Readers
In some ways I miss that whole listing-the-people-who-go-through-and-review-fave-alart-whatever-because-I-have-low-self-esteem-and-automatically-love-anyone-who-even-notices-me-and-I'm-not-exhaggerating-as-much-as-I-should thing. But it's a lot less effort this way. Sorry, folks. I'm just too lazy and I take too much time rambling in A/ns to have enough time to go back and check you guys and all. So I'd like to take the time to thank all you awesome people who read any of my stories. I might actually list all you people at the end.
But, there's something else that I'd like to ramble about.
And that would be the moment at which I read the profiles of people who prove they're reading.
Honestly, I get a bit scared.
Why? My readers rant and ramble about how much they hate shounen-ai/yaoi and/or Mary-Sues.
And all I can think is:
'...Shit.
The day of reckoning has come.'
(even though it apparently hasn't, every time I see a profile like that from a reader...)