Rating: K+
Summary: The masked man doesn't give up so easily. Akatsuki recruits Haruhi Kihara, S-ranked missing nin- formerly known as Rin Nohara. Time changes everything, and nobody is as pure as they seem. Tobi does not react well.
Even without his attempt at getting the Nine-Tails, a masked man becomes the new Mizukage- but of course, he isn't masked at the time. He runs it to the ground, enforcing terrible policies and impossible goals with a sick sort of pleasure. It was vengeance for him, to completely and utterly destroy the village who had murdered the only person he had ever loved.
An organization named Akatsuki rose in Amegakure and continued to grow, under the patronage of the man calling himself Madara Uchiha. Even without the membership of Itachi Uchiha, the organization quickly becomes feared as a group of missing nins from far and wide, all of them extremely powerful- and very deadly.
Pain recruits. A terrorist bomber from Iwa, a seemingly immortal man from an obscure village, a shark-like man under his command when he was Mizukage... Akatsuki grows, slowly and surely.
She had been expecting the visit.
Haruhi Kihara had, after all, been gaining a reputation as a mercenary who took any mission she was given- no matter how dangerous or suicidal- and could come out alive and unscathed. Any mission, except those harming children. An odd scruple for an S-ranked missing nin, but definitely understandable. Or at least, it was assumed that she was one. Unlike many of her fellows, she did not display the scratched through headband of her village proudly- in fact, nobody even knew which village she had defected from in the first place.
Some whispered that she wasn't human. Other mercenaries told horror stories about times they had to work alongside the kunoichi and how she could be stabbed, poisoned, burned- and still emerge in the aftermath, alive and completely unharmed.
She knew about the Akatsuki- or, as much as anyone knew about them. An organization of S-ranked missing nin working toward an unknown goal, they forcibly recruited anyone their leader set their eyes upon. Red clouds and black cloaks seemed to be their trademark; in a misguided attempt at blending in, the members also wore straw hats that obscured their faces- and in the process, made them stand out even more than they already did.
After taking one glance at the strange duo- a swirled orange mask, really?- she sighed. "You two are here to recruit me, huh?"
The more normal looking of the two looked surprised, lone eye widening slightly. "The hell? How did you know what we were here for?" He asked in a surprisingly masculine voice.
"I doubt your leader sent you two over here just to say hello," she drawled.
The other Akatsuki giggled in a manner completely unlike the S-ranked missing nin he was supposed to be. "She got you there, Deidara-senpai~!" He crowed in a annoying, high-pitched voice.
The other- Deidara, apparently- scowled. "Tobi. Shut the fuck up, un." He growls.
"Sorry senpai..." The masked man whined dejectedly, but his entire body language changed as he turned to face her.
"Hi!" He chirped, and 'Haruhi' got the impression that he was beaming brightly from underneath his mask. "My name's Tobi! I like the color orange!"
'Tobi' posed dramatically and gave her a thumbs up.
She stared in silence before realizing that he was waiting for her to introduce herself. "...Haruhi Kihara," she says, the false name rolling easily off her tongue, but not easily as 'Rin Nohara' had, though it had been a decade since the last time she used the name.
He looks at her, in an exaggerated thinking pose. "Eh... Hey, Haruhi-chan," Her eyebrow rose at the nickname. "Why do you have those purple marks on your face? Are they a clan thing, like those Konoha nin with the weird eyes?"
She blinked at his bluntness, but was saved from having to think of an answer to the question when Deidara interrupted.
"Ignore the idiot. Lady, Leader-sama wants you in Akatsuki, un. You want in or not? Though, you don't really have a choice. Because if you don't..." He grinned. "We'll just have to convince you otherwise."
"Uwah-! Senpai, you can't just threaten pretty ladies like that!"
"Get the hell off of me, or I'll blow you up, un!" The blonde Iwa nin shouted, trying to dislodge the masked man clinging on his robe.
This wasn't what she had expected from a pair of S-ranked missing nin, she mused as she watched Deidara try to strangle his partner with his bare hands. Not that it was a bad thing.
...Hell, was she actually contemplating the possibility? On one hand, her life had became boring over the past few years and it would be good to have some kind of a goal again. Besides, while she was pretty sure she could take these two idiots down, Rin didn't want to deal with the fallout from their 'Leader-sama'.
And if nothing else, it would be entertaining, at the very least. She couldn't help the slight upturn of her lips as the two tussled on the ground, Tobi letting out high pitched cries and apologies the whole time.
It almost reminded her of the fights between- no, don't think about it.
"Sure."
Deidara looked up in surprise. "Wait, what?"
"I said, sure. I'll join your little organization. Just let me get my belongings."
"Yay!" Tobi cheered loudly, picking himself up from the ground. "Konan-san won't be the only girl anymore!"
Rin got to know her traveling companions more as they slowly made their way through Fire Country, leaping through the trees in a way she had almost forgotten over her long period away from Konoha.
Deidara was a missing nin from Iwa, as his scratched hitai-ate proudly proclaimed. He was young- late teens, maybe early twenties at most. He was, in the words of Tobi, a true artist. But in his case, his 'art' was explosions- dangerous, destructive explosions that could take out small towns if he wanted to. She could see why Akatsuki would want someone like him in the organization.
But her other traveling companion... was a complete enigma.
Tobi was just as simple as his name, at least on the surface. He was loud, brash, and seemed to have an obsession with his blonde partner in crime. He showed his emotions extremely, falling to the ground with despair and jumping up in joy. He seemed, to put it lightly, very childlike. In the course of their journey, he had showed no sign of any skills he might have other than the ability to run away quickly. He had the intelligence and maturity of a six year old, and often relapsed to referring to himself in third person.
Her background as a medic nin made her suspect brain damage of some sort, as through some kind of blunt trauma to the head.
So, why was he in Akatsuki? Her first thought had been that some member had felt sorry for the boy and had taken him in- but that didn't fit, because when she looked closer, something about Tobi was not right.
Some days, she found his expressionless mask tilted toward her, as if studying her face. But when she called him out on it, he explained that he had fallen asleep that way. His bright enthusiasm and cheerfulness seemed- and it might just be her imagination- rather fake at times. And even if someone had taken pity on him, Tobi wouldn't be able to hold such a position in the organization if he was completely useless.
It all came to a head one evening, when Deidara had left for the closest village to buy supplies.
"Haruhi-chan?"
"Yes?" She replied, glancing over at Tobi. "What is it?"
"Well, um..." He fidgeted, "To- I wanted to know... if Haruhi-chan knows what clan her cheek marks came from."
Rin froze. "...Why do you ask...?"
"Nothing! I'm just curious." The boy waved his hands wildly, as to indicate his innocence. "You see, Tobi used to know someone with cheek marks like that... And you look a lot like her, so maybe you two are related!"
"You-" She stopped. She had only ever known one person with the same marks as herself, and she saw that person in the mirror every morning. "What did that person look like?"
Somehow, Rin got the impression that Tobi was blushing. "Um... She had brown hair and eyes and she was really, really nice..."
"What was her name?"
Had she met Tobi back when she was still Rin Nohara? He felt familiar in some way, but she couldn't put her finger on how. He was definitely memorable, and she couldn't remember ever seeing a orange masked man child in her youth.
"Rin-chan!" He exclaimed obliviously, and gave a yelp as he was shoved against a nearby tree trunk.
Rin held a kunai to his throat. "How do you know that girl?" She questioned, her voice deadly serious.
Nobody knew Rin Nohara- they weren't supposed to. She was supposed to blend into the background, to be an anonymous observer.
"That hurts..." Tobi whined. "Can you let Tobi go?"
"Not until you tell me how you know about Rin Nohara."
The masked man fell suddenly silent, and for a moment Rin feared that she might have killed him on accident. "Look," She tried again, "I'm not going to hurt you. Just answer my question."
"But you are hurting me. Tobi's neck hurts," he complained plaintively, with an odd tone in his voice. "Hey! Tobi asked you first! How do you know Rin-chan?"
She thought over her options. Really, she wouldn't lose anything by telling him- not really. Her past as Rin Nohara wouldn't affect her much- instead of being some dark past, it was a patch of light in the middle of her overall dark life. The only people who would care about her identity... well, one was dead, the other thoughtshe was dead, and the last one was the Yondaime of Konoha.
"Rin is a name I have used in the past," she admitted.
"You're lying," Tobi said bluntly, in a completely different voice. So different, in fact, that Rin was sure that a shinobi with a deep baritone had snuck up behind them during the confrontation. So, she had been right. This 'Tobi' was not what he seemed on first glance.
In response, she tightened her grip on her kunai. "How did you know Rin Nohara?" She repeated.
Tobi stared at her unnervingly. "...Rin's dead," he said finally, almost like he wanted to clarify it for himself. "I saw her die- I was there!
That just raised more questions than answers. She was pretty damn sure that the only people there were Kakashi and the-
"You were one of the hunter nin?" She asks, skeptically. Maybe some had gotten away, at the end. It didn't explain why one would react to her in such a way, but...
That seemed to struck him dumb for a moment. "No," Tobi- or whoever the hell he actually was- hissed, as if the question had personally offended him. "I would never- How do you even know-"
She sees then a faint red color emanating from somewhere in the depths of the lunatic's mask. Sharingan...? It was a mistake, but she drops Tobi to the ground in shock. But the masked man does nothing, only stare at her with his red, red eye from underneath his mask.
He's muttering, Rin realizes, whispering intelligible words under his breath. She crouches down and his gaze follows her.
She can hear what he's saying now. "Rin's dead she's dead she isn't you," he says furiously, "You might look like her but- You are not Rin."
Her mouth is dry, but she takes in the man's appearance- the vaguely familiar unkempt hair that crowns Tobi's orange mask, the brilliant red Sharingan that's shining from underneath his mask- and that was impossible, because there are no Uchiha missing nin. She had kept track of Obito's relatives, even after her isolation from the village.
"Obito?" Rin asks, but that was impossible- that boy was dead under a few tons of rock, and even if he was alive, even if he could have survived without half of his body... he wouldn't be here, wouldn't be have stayed as an idiot in an organization of missing nin, he would have came back-
There's strange, snuffling noises coming from the man in front of her, and it takes her a few moments to realize that Tobi was crying, the sobbing muffled under his thick orange mask.
"Rin-chan was a good girl," he says, in his original high-pitched voice. It's useless, now that she already knows something darker lies under that innocent facade. "Haruhi-chan isn't."
"You're crying," she states somewhat needlessly, and puts a hand on his mask. He jerks violently, but doesn't move away from her.
"I'm not crying," he retorts, in a familiar stubborn tone, "I just have something in my eye."
Now, she is the one who jerks away, a horrible, disbelieving feeling rising from inside of her. "You..." She manages, eyes wide, searching the form in front of her for any familiarity, any at all.
Impulsively, she reaches forward and grasps that one eyed- one eyed- mask with both hands. The man does not move.
Rin swallows, and pulls.