Opening Theme: Shōjo S by SCANDAL
Chapter 3: Kuukan's Test
"Come here, you little bastard!" Jade shouted as she chased Hidan-kitten around the house. "I'm warning you, you little furball. I just took a math test and I'm not in the mood to put up with your antics right now!"
"Take that back and back off, heathen!" Hidan screeched as he clawed his way up the window curtain, "I'm not going anywhere!"
Of course, all Jade heard was 'mmrreeeooooow!' She lunged and seized the gray kitten around the middle. Hidan flailed and writhed in her grip as Jade carried him over to the box where the other eight felines were already sitting quietly. Crystal watched anxiously as Hidan fought Jade with his entire kitten might but still ended up being dropped into the box, where he was immediately flattened by the brown-and-black tabby.
"Thank you!" Jade exclaimed as she shut the box and put a book on top to prevent any cats from getting out. "Let's go, Crystal." She scooped up the box and carried outside as Crystal followed and locked the door to the house.
Jade put the box on the floor in the back of the car and got into the driver's seat as Crystal slid into the passenger's seat. Once everything was ready, Jade started the engine and backed the car out of the driveway and onto the street. She started driving towards the animal hospital.
After about two minutes a driving, both girls heard the sound of vomiting coming from the box. Since they were at a red light, both turned their heads to stare at the box as the sound was heard again.
"That's…" Jade trailed off, unsure of what to say.
"Poor kitty." Crystal shook her head as the light turned green and Jade pushed down on the accelerator. The sound of up-chucking didn't lessen until they pulled into the animal hospital parking lot.
Crystal lifted one flap of the box cautiously and sighed. "The orange one is carsick," she told Jade.
"Too bad it wasn't the gray one," Jade answered, clearly still not forgiving Hidan for being such a pain earlier.
Hidan opened his jaws to say something was Kakuzu cuffed him over the ear. "Be quiet, Hidan."
Yahiko crouched in a corner of the box, huddling on his belly as Nagato and Konan soothed him by patting his head and back with their little furry paws. Jade scooped up the box, making a few kittens stumble on their paws. Unfortunately, Deidara lost his balance and slipped into the puddle of Yahiko's vomit.
"Oh, gross, yeah!" he yowled, staring down at his soiled pelt with a horrified expression. Bad luck must have hit him twice because his cat instincts took over and he began to lick at the vomit in his fur. Hisses of disgust sounded around the yellow kit and some other Akatsuki members began to scoot away from him.
"Kakuzu, I'm going to help you kill whoever did this to us, yeah," Deidara growled as he continued to lap at his pelt, "This is disgusting!"
While the Akatsuki were talking amongst themselves about Deidara's pelt, Jade and Crystal had entered the animal hospital. Jade sat in a chair in the waiting room while Crystal went to speak with the woman behind the counter.
"Um, we have an appointment scheduled with the student-veterinarian called Silver," Crystal informed the lady, "It's at 3:30, thirty minutes from now."
The lady smiled. "Alright. I'll let Silver know that you're here. She's working here as a part-time veterinarian, by the way."
"She is?" Crystal gasped, "She never told me."
"She just registered yesterday. Today's her first day actually working."
"I see. Thank you very much!" Crystal walked back to where Jade sat waiting with the box of kittens, which were all peering curiously over the edge of the box.
"I heard," Jade told Crystal, "And I can't really blame Silver for not telling us before. We don't have any classes together, and even our schedules outside of school are quite different."
"Who the heck is Silver?" Hidan whispered fiercely.
"Probably a friend of theirs," Itachi said nonchalantly as his cat instincts made him lick his paws. When he noticed that almost every other kitty was staring at him, he added in a dangerous tone, "What?"
The other cats quickly looked away. Their plan was to get back to their human form, not to get scratched to bits by the black kitten of doom.
With nothing to do, Crystal reached into the box and began petting Deidara on the head. The kitten purred and nudged Crystal's hand, and the black-haired girl tickled his chin. "What did you think of the calculus test today?" she asked.
"It was…okay," Jade replied, "There were a few questions where I just did a bit of random stuff because I didn't know how to do the problem."
"How about grade-wise?"
"Um, probably above an eighty. You?"
"Probably in the nineties, but I might be wrong."
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps made the girls break off their conversation. A door to the right of the front counter opened and a female veterinarian stepped out into the waiting room.
She had long red hair that was slightly wavy and reached down to her waist. She wore a white doctor's coat over the school uniform, which was the white shirt with a maroon and gold-striped tie and an ankle-length plaid skirt. A pair of brown leather women's dress shoes was visible beneath the hem of the skirt, and she carried a clipboard in her arms.
"Jade! Crystal!" she called, waving excitedly at the duo.
"Hey, Silver. How's everything?" Jade replied as Crystal gave Silver a hug.
"Same as usual," Silver said as she bent over to look inside the box, "These are the kitties? They're so cute!" She reached over to pet Konan, who licked her fingers. "This one looks terrible though," she said, pointing at Yahiko, who still looked slightly queasy.
"He got carsick on the way here," Crystal explained as they followed Silver to an examination room.
"Oh, really?" Silver turned and scrutinized the cats carefully. She examined every single one and stared deep into their eyes, unknowingly making the Akatsuki members squirm uncomfortably under her green-eyed gaze.
Out of nowhere, she asked a question that made the cats freeze and Jade and Crystal start.
"Some of them look kind of like the Akatsuki, don't they?"
Jade and Crystal peered at the petrified group of cats. "Now that you mention it, this one has Pein's eyes," Jade picked up Nagato, "But his fur looks like Nagato's hair. Do they make contact lenses for cats?" She turned Nagato upside down and began shaking him, checking if his Rinnegan was actually some kind of cat contacts.
Silver snatched Nagato from Jade's grip. "Don't do that. You might drop him and hurt him." Nagato looked tremendously grateful until Silver placed him on the examination table and began to attach wires in various places on his body. He started to panic and tried to rip the wires off.
"Don't do that, kitty," she gently reprimanded, "It won't hurt you. I promise."
Meanwhile, Jade had scooped up Itachi and was examining his eyes as well. Itachi stared back, intending to use a genjutsu to force Jade into releasing him. However, as he tried to cast the illusionary technique, he realized that he couldn't feel any chakra swirling towards his Sharingan.
"Itachi-san, is something wrong?" Kisame inquired from where he sat in the box. He had noticed Itachi's confusion and tension after spending so long with the Uchiha as a partner when they had been alive.
"I cannot seem to cast a genjutsu, nor can I feel any chakra," Itachi stated, squirming in Jade's grasp until the girl put him down.
"That's inconvenient," Sasori said, "I can't feel any chakra either, and I doubt we can even form seals with these damned cat paws."
"No way, yeah!" Deidara stared at his paws, "Does this mean I can't make any more art?"
"Brat, nobody likes your pathetic excuse for art anyway," Sasori retorted. The two artists started bickering over the definition of art for the first time since they arrived in the industrial world.
"Where are Zetsu and Tobi?" Konan interrupted their argument, "Why aren't they here?"
"I don't know," Nagato said, having just been put back in the box. Silver had deemed him to be terribly skinny and said that he just needed to fill out. Other than that, he was perfectly healthy. "There might be something that we have but Zetsu and Tobi don't."
"We're not psychos," Hidan suggested as Sasori was lifted out of the box for the examination.
Deidara scoffed, "Says the one who harms himself to honor his nonexistent god, yeah."
"I have a theory," Konan announced quietly before Deidara and Hidan could get into a physical fight.
"Please tell, Konan," Kakuzu invited.
Konan turned to Kisame and asked, "What is the last thing you remember doing in the shinobi world?"
Kisame blinked before he thought back. "Let's see…I was sent on a spying mission to see where the Jinchuuriki for the Kyuubi and the Hachibi were, and I was discovered," he admitted, "I remember they captured me and was trying to dig out information about the Akatsuki. I bit off my tongue to stop them and then committed suicide to keep the information safe."
"So you died. What about Zetsu and Tobi?"
"Oh, they were alive. I believe Zetsu was…"
"Okay, that's enough, Kisame. Thank you," Konan interrupted, "Now onto my theory. I believe that only the ones who died were transformed into cats and sent into this world."
There was a brief silence as the Akatsuki members pondered over her words. Sasori was put back in the box and Yahiko was taken out.
"That theory couldn't be one hundred percent accurate," Sasori said since he had overheard the conversation from the examination table, "We don't know how much time has passed since Kisame died, and Zetsu and Tobi might be dead by now as well."
"That's true," Konan sighed.
"Maybe our pasts have something in common, yeah," Deidara suggested, "Maybe we've all been misunderstood at some point."
"I have!" Hidan agreed.
"So have I," Kakuzu said.
"I guess I have been," Sasori admitted.
"I suppose so."
"I'm not too sure, but possibly."
"I haven't."
Every head simultaneously turned to where Itachi sat with his eyes closed. "You haven't, Itachi?" Konan repeated.
"No, I haven't," Itachi repeated, opening his eyes, "At least, I don't consider myself to have ever been misunderstood."
"Jashin damn it!" Hidan swore, "Well, that theory's out the window."
"Why don't we take a break from thinking and observe how things work in this world for now?" Yahiko suggested as he was placed back in the box, "The stuff we learn from observation could be important later on."
The rest of the Akatsuki voiced their agreements and began looking around the examination room. Their observations continued until the remaining members got their examinations. They were all declared healthy.
"Okay, we're done," Silver said as she took the wires off of Itachi, who had been last, "I'll stop by your house after I finish my shift, Jade." She put Itachi back in the box and stroked his head. "They were all wonderful patients, except for that one." She pointed at Hidan, who had put up a terrific fight when the redhead had tried to attach the wires to him.
Unfortunately, he was still being punished for his misbehavior by Yahiko, who had taken the liberty to sit on him.
Jade nodded and picked up the box again and Silver followed her and Crystal out the room to see them to the door. Unluckily, they all failed to notice the urgent notice about Itachi that had popped up late on the computer screen and was currently flashing.
URGENT: THE ANIMAL HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH PULMONARY EDEMA! TREATMENT SHOULD BE ISSUED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
That night as Jade, Crystal, and Silver sat in Jade's kitchen treating the various scratches that Hidan had given them earlier, the Akatsuki sat by the window in the living room conversing on their current dilemma.
"We should just break out of here and try to end this Jashin-damned prank on our own!" Hidan complained.
Kakuzu clouted his ear with unsheathed claws. "Don't be stupid, Hidan," he snarled, "We know practically nothing about this world. We wouldn't survive on our own."
Nagato sighed and crouched on the carpet. "We have so many questions to answer right now. Where are we, why are we cats, who sent us here, why were we sent here, and how in the name of God do those girls know about Akatsuki?"
"Perhaps I can be of help."
Every single Akatsuki member shot to their paws at the new voice that came from the window ledge. A white she-cat sat there, staring at the Akatsuki with gleaming red eyes and her tail curled around her paws. The Akatsuki cats crouched, ready to leap into battle at any moment.
"Who the hell are you, and what do you mean 'help?'" Hidan spat, tail lashing.
The white cat looked unimpressed. "Tch. Are you always this rude to others?" she muttered, "No matter." She jumped down from the ledge gracefully. "But to answer your questions, my name is Kuukan, and yes, I can help you."
"What makes you think you can do that?" Nagato asked warily. Kuukan cast him a look.
"Because I am the one administering this test."
To be continued in Chapter 4: The Task…
Ending Theme: Glow of a Firefly by Ikimono-Gakari
