While the newspaper prank did not take very long to plan, it did, however, take a very long time to prepare.

"It's going to take us ages to scavenge enough newspaper!" Sasuke moaned in disgust, throwing down that day's haul into the corner of Naruto's bedroom. There was a sizeable stack gathering there now, but nowhere near enough the amount that they needed to make sure that all of the classroom was adequately covered in the stuff. They had been rifling through bins for over two weeks. While it wasn't very hard to find a thrown away paper, it was hard to find any that were undamaged or not covered in the general muck that you'd find in a trashcan. They were lucky if they managed to get three or four a day, even when they added in Itachi's contribution. For some reason his brother had suddenly gotten in the habit of picking up the newspaper whenever he went to the corner store, which he inevitably had to do on almost a daily basis. Sasuke suspected that Itachi was having way too much fun enabling them on their pranks.

Naruto carefully stacked the newspapers he was carrying onto the pile, regarding it all thoughtfully. "It's going to get even harder to find usable papers now that it's started to snow too." He said glumly.

Wasn't that the truth? The snow started falling last week, and it had arrived in Konoha earlier this year too. Usually snow only settled on the ground towards the middle of December and lasted through January, but this year it started falling in November and was settled by the start of the December. It was so cold that no one was doing much of anything outside right now, and even taijutsu practice at the Academy was cancelled. Matsu had told him that he overheard some adults calling it the coldest winter in a decade, and even Itachi hadn't seen it so cold before.

Sasuke was still tossing up whether he felt jealous of the little kids or not. The snow was so thick that civilian schools were closed, only the ninja academy was still running. On one hand the little kids were free to do whatever they liked instead of studying (and since there was no taijutsu practice anymore, the Academy was super boring right now), but on the other, they were cooped up in the house all day, bouncing off the walls.

"It's getting too cold to go looking for newspaper." Sasuke agreed. "We'll have to put off the prank for a while."

Naruto pouted, but he didn't argue, he didn't fancy dumpster diving in such icy conditions either.

"And you need to start wearing more clothes or something, I'm getting cold just looking at you." Sasuke said irritably, narrowing his eyes at his friend.

"Why? I'm warm enough." Naruto protested, picking at his orange hoodie.

Saskue sighed and wondered how to begin. Obviously no one had spent any time teaching Naruto how to dress properly, the sheer amount of eye blinding orange in his wardrobe was a testament to that. But his bad dressing habits didn't just stop at colour choice. No. Naruto also made bad decisions on how to dress appropriately for temperature. Sure he donned a heavy jacket when he went outside, but he only started wearing it when the snow settled on the ground, not when damn ice crystals started falling from the sky. He didn't own a pair of gloves or mittens. He kept wearing open toed sandals to push through the snow on the ground (Maybe that wasn't so weird, lots of ninja wore sandals year round without any fuss, but most civilians and children adopted boots when the ground turned to slush, considering they couldn't walk on water). Worst of all, he kept wearing shorts even though it grew so cold that Sasuke swore Naruto's bare legs were turning blue. Sasuke tried to get him to wear a scarf at least, he knew he had one since the Hokage had given him that green striped scarf his mother had knitted, but Naruto refused to wear it. He said it was too precious, and Sasuke had the feeling that Naruto was too busy worshipping the thing to actually consider wearing it.

Sasuke privately decided he was going to get Naruto a scarf for the Rinne festival. He suspected that Itachi was going to give him some boots. Between the Uchiha clan, they could probably manage to get Naruto wearing real people clothes by the conclusion of the holidays.

"What's wrong with my clothes? Eh? Sasuke?" The idiot was still blathering on. Sasuke just rolled his eyes and asked if they should call it a day and go get ramen. It was all too easy to distract Naruto sometimes.

And the ramen tasted pretty good too.

"I'll-be-at-Naruto's-byeeeee!"

"Hold it!" A hand reached out and grabbed his collar before he could dart out of the door and escape. Sasuke looked up to see an amused looking Itachi staring down at him. He couldn't help but notice that his older brother must have been playing with Eri again, because there was a purple ribbon tied in a very bad bow in his bangs.

"Nii-san?" Sasuke asked innocently.

"Don't Nii-san me." Itachi scolded lightly. "You know the rules. Tell me properly where you are going and when you'll be back. It's hard enough to keep track of everyone in this house without people just running out the door without warning."

Sasuke sighed. "I'm just going to Naruto's place." He said honestly. "I'll be back before dinner, promise."

Itachi nodded and let go of Sasuke's collar, allowing him to drop lightly to the ground. "Be back on time." He ordered. "And bring Naruto with you. He needs at least one meal a week that isn't ramen, instant or otherwise."

Sasuke saluted. "Yes, sir!" Then he was gone.

"Why are we playing this stupid game again?" Sasuke moaned, flicking one of the spare counters at Naruto. "Is this seriously the only game you have?"

Naruto dodged the green counter masterfully and shrugged. "Not all of us have entire rooms full of toys, Sasuke-sama. You don't like snakes and ladders? Bring one of your board games next time. The Hokage gave this to me for the Rinne festival two years ago. I like it."

Sasuke dismissed the uncomfortable thought that the Hokage might have been the only person to play this game with Naruto prior to Sasuke, and started to seriously consider giving Naruto a pack of cards for the festival instead of that scarf.

"Fine. Next time I'll bring the Monopoly board over." Sasuke told him.

"What's Monopoly?"

"A game you're probably going to lose badly at, but at least I'll have fun."

Naruto scowled at that, but let the budding argument go to roll the dice. As he moved his counter up, Sasuke snatched the dice, ready for his turn.

"If you don't want to play snakes and ladders, what do you want to play instead?" Naruto asked him as he watched Sasuke roll.

Sasuke moved his blue counter three squares and thought about Naruto's question. Naruto didn't have a whole lot of toys, and most of what he did have was geared towards solitary play. He had a couple of stuffed animals, the majority of which appeared to be frogs of varying colours, bizarrely enough. There was a very rumpled looking dog in the mix though, and Sasuke guessed that he probably had that toy the longest. He had his game of snakes and ladders, of course. He had a bag of marbles, which they tried to play with once until they realised that neither of them really knew what to do with them. He did have a set of wooden kunai and shuriken, but it was boring to play with those when they were using the real thing at school everyday.

"We could finish that worksheet that Iruka-sensei set." Sasuke suggested.

"Nooo!" Naruto was such a baby when it came to any sort of academic work. Sasuke should have known better than to suggest they do homework.

Sasuke cracked a grin. "Well... we could make something up to play..." he drawled, trying to think of something that they could do with no toys, yet wasn't utterly stupid. They were far too old to play make-believe games like 'rescue the princess'.

"Like what?" Naruto asked. "We can't play ninja inside. Keiko-san will get mad again." Keiko was Naruto's green haired neighbour occupying the flat underneath them. Sasuke definitely didn't want to get on her bad side again.

"Ninja is an outside game." Sasuke agreed. Besides, the game had more rules than a standard make-believe game, and two people wasn't really enough to make the game fun. Ninja was best when there were teams of at least two or three.

"So that's it?" Naruto sounded put out. "We can't think of anything?"

"We could play one of those stupid games that the littler kids play." Sasuke snorted, not really taking his own suggestion seriously. "Like: 'let's-pretend-the-floor-is-lava'... or something..."

"Lava?" A blank look was all he got out of Naruto. "Why would we pretend that?"

"Because lava is deadly and you can't stand on it." God Naruto was stupid sometimes, imagine having to spell this out. He'd completely missed the point of the entire game.

"So... the game is to pretend that we're being burned alive by lava?" Naruto's face screwed up. "That doesn't sound very fun."

"No stupid. The goal of the game is to hop around on furniture and cushions and stuff to avoid touching the floor directly, or you die and lose the game." Sasuke sniffed. "Seriously. Didn't you ever play it when you were little? Itachi and I used to hop around on the tearoom cushions back when he was at the Academy." A twinge of pain shot through him at the thought of the tearoom back in his old house, but he ruthlessly squashed it down like a bug.

"Um... no... I think I saw some other kids doing something like that... back when I was at the orphanage..." Naruto trailed off, shaking his head. "Nobody liked me much though, so I never really played with them."

Why is it that every time Sasuke came over to Naruto's apartment he seemed to learn yet another depressing thing about the other boy's childhood? How was Naruto so annoyingly cheerful with so much angst in his back-story? Sasuke always suspected that there was something seriously wrong with him.

Sasuke lurched to his feet, stubbornly kicked the board aside ("Hey!" Naruto yelled) and started throwing Naruto's threadbare cushions over the floor, making suitable islands in his living room.

"You have six seconds to get to safety before the floor spontaneously transforms into a melting pool of boiling rock for absolutely no discernible reason." Sasuke told Naruto as he hopped up onto the boy's sofa.

"...boiling rock... discernible?" Naruto face furrowed in confusion.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about it." He really had to stop using Itachi's big words in front of Naruto. "Are you just going to stand there and let the lava get you?"

Naruto blinked at him for a few moments before yelping and lunging for the nearest cushion. He spluttered something unintelligible about how there was no way he was going to fall in the lava before Sasuke, even if he had to push him in.

Sasuke grinned and slipped into a makeshift fighting stance right there on the sofa. "Bring it!" He said fiercely.

Like hell he was going to lose at such a stupid game!

It was a typical night at the Uchiha household. Thus far Itachi had fielded thirty two questions from a variety of children. Six were homework questions, four were toddlers requesting stories, three were about when they could go outside and have that massive family snowball fight he had promised for at least a week now (it had been two days). Another five were miscellaneous inquiries about misplaced objects (Itachi really didn't want to know how Sora had managed to lose another toothbrush, it was the third this month), another was a request to borrow a kunai (DENIED) and the remaining thirteen inquires were about what they were going to have for dinner tonight.

If only questions were all he had to deal with. He had to cook the dinner too, with some help from Haruna. Eri tried to help too, but then she tipped half a bottle of soy sauce all over herself and that was that. Thankfully Hikari whisked the girl away immediately and put her in the bath, so Itachi didn't have to worry about being the one who had to wash the inky liquid out of the girl's hair.

Because multitasking had now become his middle name, he was also helping Akane, Hideki and Miyoko with their Academy homework. They had their worksheets spread out all over the kitchen table, and every so often they would wave him over to check their answers. He also had to intervene and stop a three way fight breaking out in the middle of his kitchen when the group all got different answers to question seven. All three of them were sure they were right and the others were wrong. Once Itachi pried the three apart and took a closer look at the sheet he kindly informed them that all three of them were wrong, and the correct answer was six hundred and thirty seven. Not five hundred and twelve, eight hundred and forty six or (...sigh...) eight.

That wasn't the last fight he had to break up either. He had to make Takato apologise to a bawling Ichiro, because biting was not an acceptable way of saying 'Please don't take my toy without asking first', and he had to put a hasty end to an entirely too enthusiastic mock wrestling match between Sora and Arata before they broke something (bone or material possession, either was equally likely). Itachi felt a little guilty for thinking so, but he was regretting asking Sasuke to bring Naruto over for dinner. He had entirely too many brawling children in his house right now, and Sasuke and Naruto seemed to like punching each other far too much.

At least most of the girls weren't fighting... until Junko threw a plastic teapot at Yoshi in yet another temper tantrum. This time he let Haruna go break up the argument. She was much better at getting Junko to calm down than he was. Sometimes he just couldn't understand what made girls tick, especially five-year-old girls.

Then Eri came back from her bath sniffing because the twins had made fun of her wet hair and no reassurances from Hikari had made any difference to her distress. Matsu quickly scooped up his hooligan little brothers to scold them about being mean to girls, but Itachi seriously doubted that it would make much difference. They seemed to find it funny to insult everyone within earshot recently; it was their new favourite game.

Finally, finally dinner was on the table, and he even managed to get most of his family sitting down for the meal in under twenty minutes. Even the twins. All they were waiting on was Sasuke and Naruto's arrival.

For which they were late.

Itachi tugged at his red apron (glitter has still not washed out dammit) and frowned at the clock. After a further ten minutes of delaying the start of the meal he had to cave and let the other kids start without Sasuke and Naruto. Sasuke was going to get an earful when he got back, because he'd told him over and over that it wasn't a good idea to be late. Everyone got edgy whenever someone was late, and there wasn't a whole lot Itachi could say to pacify their jitters. Hopefully no one would dissolve into panicked tears like Samuru had when Arata had lost track of time at the Academy two weeks ago and been late coming home from school.

There was also the feeling of unease that he himself couldn't squash down. He didn't like it when he didn't know for sure where Sasuke was. He liked it better when he could keep tabs on his little brother: just in case. He forced himself to smile and eat his own dinner, because he knew that acting strange would only make the situation worse.

Then the meal was over, and there was still no sign of Sasuke and his friend.

All sounds slowly tapered off as the kids all came to the conclusion that something was probably wrong, and suddenly they were all looking at him.

"Where Sas'ke?" Takato broke the silence with his fearful lisp.

Shit.

"I'm sure he just lost track of time." Itachi said woodenly, but his words weren't fooling anyone and his smile felt frozen on his face. When had he become such an awful liar? Hopefully he wouldn't be sent out on any infiltration missions in the near future, because he would probably get caught in an instant.

"Yeah." Matsu laughed nervously. "Sasuke's been so forgetful lately, hasn't he? He really should be on time more."

Everyone looked at Matsu, unconvinced. Sasuke wasn't that forgetful, and Itachi could count on one hand the amount of times he had been late arriving home since the massacre. Matsu was grasping at straws, trying to keep everyone calm, but no one was buying it.

Then Yoshi burst into noisy tears, and that was that. The dominoes fell.

It started with most of the occupants of the room starting to shake. Yoshi's tears were soon joined by the bawling of everyone else in the room under six, and Eri soon opened up her mouth to scream. Chizune dived under the table to curl into a ball, hyperventilating, as Sora tried to comfort her through his own nervous hiccups. Everyone older than that was slightly more composed, but it was hard to keep from succumbing to their own panic attacks with the little kids freaking out in front of them. Haruna grabbed both of her brothers into a tight hug, Samuru burying his face into her shirt to cry. Probably the most calm of the lot was Hikari, who was focussed on gathering up Eri, Ichiro and Yoshi to soothe them with hugs and whispered reassurances, and Matsu, who was busy trying to console the twins.

Itachi had to admit that he wasn't feeling all that calm himself now. Sasuke was going to be in so much trouble when he got his hands on him. They hadn't had a mass breakdown in... uh... two weeks...

Okay, so the pitiful remnants of the great Uchiha clan were not the most stable bunch of kids you could ever meet.

Surveying the damage helplessly, Itachi did the only thing he could do. He bit his thumb and slammed his hand down on the ground, summoning a raven.

"Master?" A glossy black bird appeared in front of him, eyeing the chaos of the room with curiosity. Luckily Asahi was a regal, dignified bird who deigned not to ask why his summoner was stuck in a room of crying children.

"I want you to deliver a message to Sasuke." Itachi said quickly. "He is currently at Uzumaki Naruto's apartment."

Asahi bowed his head. "As you wish. What is the message?" Asahi knew exactly where the apartment of Konoha's resident jinchuriki was located. Itachi sometimes used his crows to help keep watch over the kid when he was part of his ANBU guard.

"Return home immediately. Mass panic attack is under way due to your tardiness." Itachi told the raven swiftly.

"I will tell him Itachi-sama." The bird took flight as Itachi pushed open the dining room window to let him out. Asahi rapidly disappeared into the night and Itachi turned back to his clan, trying not to sigh over the fact that most were weeping into the dining room carpet.

"I bet Father never had to deal with anything like this when he was clan head." Itachi muttered.

Hound was Not Happy.

He was starting to suspect that the threshold for being invited into ANBU had lowered in the last few years or something, because as far as screw ups went, this really took the goddamn cake.

"How long has he been missing?" He hissed Squirrel.

The man shrank back from his rage. "Unknown, Hound-taicho.'The Kit' was not in the apartment when our patrol first entered at 7:26pm. Upon finding the apartment trashed we sent out the village wide ANBU alert and attempted to follow the trail the intruders left behind. Efforts were thwarted near the village wall as the trail was lost. It is almost certain that the intruders are already outside outer village limits."

"Are you telling me that someone sneaked into the village under the noses of your patrol, had a noisy fight trying to subdue the Kit, then carried the kid off... without any of you noticing until it was too late to properly pursue them?"

"Yes, Hound-taicho." Squirrel quivered under his icy gaze and growing killing intent, but Hound had to admit the moron at least had the decency to own up to his own idiocy.

Hound growled and turned to Rabbit. "Inform the Hokage that the Kit is missing and that I am in pursuit." he snapped. The woman cringed and disappeared. "You and your patrol will join the rest of ANBU in scouring this village for clues." Hound barked at Squirrel. "Go. Now."

The ANBU team disappeared in a flicker of movement, scurrying away from the captain's wrath as quickly as humanly possible. Hound paid them almost no attention at all, instead biting at his thumb to slam his hand on the ground. Instantly the ruined apartment was filled with dogs.

"Wow. What happened here?" Pakkun gasped, staring around at the ripped up furniture and hole-dotted walls. "Wait..." The dog had his nose in the air, sniffing in alarm. "...is this the kid's apartment?!"

"Naruto's been taken." Hound told his dogs. "We're tracking him. How quickly can you pick up the trail?"

"Hold on." Pakkun and the other dogs quickly got to work, sniffing around the apartment as Hound waited in tense silence.

They just caught onto the scent and were about to leave when a large black bird swooped in through the window.

"Oh." The crow drawled, surveying the damage from his perch on the ruined sofa. "Itachi-sama will not be happy."

"Why is Itachi sending his summons to Naruto?" Hound demanded of the bird. "Does he know something?"

The bird just blinked at him. "No. I was sent here by Itachi-sama to instruct Sasuke-kun to hurry home. His lateness is causing quite a stir."

Hound felt all the blood in his body turn to ice. "Itachi sent you here to find Sasuke?"

"That is correct. Itachi-sama seemed certain that I would find him with his friend."

"Fuck."

There was really nothing else to say to that. Itachi had all but confirmed that his little brother was not where he was supposed to be, and in fact had probably been in this apartment when it was ransacked. The village wasn't just missing it's jinchuriki. Sasuke Uchiha had been snatched as well.

Hound turned to Urushi. "Inform the Hokage of this development." He ordered crisply. "This is now a case of multiple kidnapping. Both Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki are missing. Catch up with me after reporting to the Hokage, we can't afford to wait for you to rejoin us."

His summon nodded to his orders and bounded off to find the Hokage. Hound turned back to Itachi's crow. "Inform Itachi that we have a red alert ANBU warning in place. The Kit's apartment shows signs of a fight, and we are currently working on the assumption that he has been kidnapped by enemy-nin of unknown affiliation. There is no trace of his little brother, and we are now going to work under the assumption that he has been taken too. For further details he is to go directly to the Hokage, as I am commencing an immediate pursuit. Got that?"

The crow nodded. "I shall relay your message immediately Hound-sama." The bird took flight, and Hound was alone with his ninken pack once again.

"Let's go hunting!" Hound growled.

The dogs howled in reply.

Sasuke had to admit that things... were not exactly going very well for them.

It was just after six that he and Naruto finally stopped fooling around pretending the floor was made of lava and started to clean up the mess that they had made. They mourned the death of one of Naruto's kitchen chairs, but it wasn't so much of a loss. There were still two chairs and Naruto never had more than one guest at a time. Sasuke relayed Itachi's dinner invitation at that point, and Naruto perked up right away, forgetting to continue his sulk about losing the game. They were just about getting ready to go when some bastard dressed in black combat gear slipped in through the window and tried to grab Naruto. Sasuke didn't think the ninja expected Naruto to have company, because he seemed surprised to high hell when Sasuke smashed him over the head with one of Naruto's lamps and then tried to kick him in the balls. Between the two of them, they actually managed to do a pretty good job of fending off the mysterious attacker; though Naruto's apartment unfortunately didn't come out of the whole ordeal very well. After a few minutes of struggle though, another ninja came in through the window and promptly put an end to their bar-brawl-like fight. He knocked out Naruto with a swift chop to the back of his head and turned his eye on Sasuke.

Sasuke couldn't help it, panic crept up on him the minute he saw his friend crumple to the floor, and his eyes blipped red. He only heard a few snatches of their hurried conversation, but he definitely heard 'Uchiha', 'valuable' and 'price' before they seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. Then, before he could even begin to fight back with his now active sharingan, one of the ninja darted forward and kneed him sharply in the gut, making him gasp and heave in shock. The next thing he felt was a sudden sharp pressure at the back of his head, and he was out cold.

Itachi was going to be so pissed off at him. There was no way he was going to back it back on time for dinner now.

A/N:

I thought I lost my inspiration for this fic for a while there, but it came back in full force, and I finally got this chapter written! I'm sorry for the bit of a cliffhanger I left you guys on, but I've been planning this kidnapping for quite a while, and I want to really do the next chapter well, so that's something to look forward to, right?

Thank you to the guest and davycrockett100 for your reviews of the last chapter :)