As a certain two Akatsuki members made their way down the road, determined to get away from Konoha as quickly as they could without looking like they were fleeing, as fleeing people tended to attract pursuers, pursuers who would try to drag them back to the village in order to see exactly where they were going in such a hurry and why, one of them spoke up.
"Kisame?" Itachi said. "Why do you smell like pee?"
"How can you smell that? I put up a..." Kisame started before shutting up and turning away from his partner, trying and failing to hide the fact that he was absolutely mortified that someone had noticed that he'd wet himself.
"Genjutsu. I noticed." Itachi replied as they continued down the road toward a point at which they could safely send in a report.
"So, why do you smell like pee?" he asked, honestly curious as to what could have caused Kisame to lose bladder control and wondering whether or not he should be worried.
"You try having an Uzumaki jump out at you and not react." Kisame muttered darkly.
"Huh?" Itachi said in what would be a mildly confused tone for a normal person, but was tantamount to utter bewilderment for him.
This was probably because he didn't find Naruto in the lest bit frightening whatsoever, despite the fact that the kid had actually tried to eat him when he was six. That had of course been his fault for covering himself in ramen in order to lure the child out of the woods however.
"You know about Kiri and the Uzumaki don't you?" Kisame asked.
"In general terms. I went there for the Chunin Exams, and heard a few "Uzumaki" stories while I was there." Itachi replied.
"When I heard that one of the Jinchuriki was an Uzumaki, I worked on desensitizing myself. It hasn't been a hundred percent effective." Kisame said, sounding slightly embarrassed.
"I noticed." Itachi said.
They continued down the path a ways in silence.
One thing you should know about Itachi is that though he was rather stoic - even more so than he used to be before the Massacre - and often seemed completely unemotional, he possessed a mischievous streak that hadn't been completely eradicated during his time with the Akatsuki. Though he very seldom did so, Itachi could and did pull pranks.
"Did you know that Leader-sama's real body is an Uzumaki?" Itachi asked his partner, unable to resist.
There was no audible response from his companion at this, and the tall blue swordsman's face didn't betray any sort of reaction as they continued down the road.
"Kisame?" Itachi asked a minute later. "Why do you smell like poo?"
"No reason." Kisame replied.
"Hey Kisame." Itachi said, several minutes later after his partner had stopped by a convenient bush to clean himself up and change his clothes.
"What?" Kisame snarled as he fastened his new cloak.
"Did I ever tell you about the time Naruto tried to eat me?" Itachi said, covering his small and rather evil smile with the collar of his own cloak.
Kakashi sighed as he entered his apartment in order to change out of his clothing which had been covered in fish guts. On his way to his small bedroom, he fed his new pet scorpions Migi and Hidari. Once he reached his room, he dodged an attack from his new dog Madara, grabbed some clothes, dodged another attack from the massive spiky furred black dog, and headed into his bathroom.
Upon reaching his bathroom, he found that there was an angry wet cat in his shower which looked like it would be leaping out at him the instant he opened the door. Sighing, he opened his shower door and caught the creature that he'd decided to name Tama as it flew out at him in a fury of claws and fangs. He then went into the main room of his apartment and put the animal in the pet carrier he used when bringing Pakkun to the Inuzuka and made his way back to the bathroom. He wasn't much of a cat person but, he'd been raised to believe that it was exceedingly rude to return a gift. The animal would have to make do with dog food and Pakkun's bed until he could get some separate cat supplies.
He resolved to have a talk with Sasuke about the appropriateness of giving pets as gifts after he was cleaned off. It's not as if he didn't appreciate the gesture but, keeping pets was expensive and he couldn't afford to keep any more on his income since he still needed to eat. Nine dogs two scorpions and a cat were more than enough animals for one person, and the vet bills had already been piling up before he'd had to bring Madara down to the vet to be treated for rabies and be neutered.
Tsunade growled. There was burning and itching where there shouldn't be, and scratching hadn't helped. She'd used several topical pastes and creams, and even Healing Chakra, and that hadn't helped either.
"Shizune, help!" she said as she tried to reach the middle of her back once more.
Shizune just sat in the corner hiding her smile. Soon, Tsunade would figure out what she needed to do in order to get the itching to stop, and she would be going home once more. She had almost forgotten how much she had missed Konoha up until she had been dragged back home when Tsunade had ended up gambling her necklace away and, now that she was away from home again, she felt so homesick that it nearly crippled her.
As far as she was concerned, Tsunade's pain was her own fault for getting drunk enough to let someone put at tattoo on her. And, if that tattoo happened to be a seal that would activate every time her teacher got a certain distance from Konoha, that was Tsunade's fault as well for going somewhere where there were people who cared about her, and rubbing the fact that she wasn't anywhere near alright in their faces.
In Ame, a man who had once been called Nagato and was now called Pein was frowning. All seven of him was frowning. The reason for this had been because of one Hoshigake Kisame. Due to their natures, most of his recruits tended to be disrespectful of him to a degree but, Kisame had been one of the most vocal about it, much like the new recruit Deidara. That hadn't been the case today when he and Uchiha Itachi who had been recruited by Madara gave their reports however. Today, Kisame had been deferential almost to the point of obsequiousness as he gave him his report. He hadn't even sounded the least bit sarcastic when he'd called him Leader-sama.
Now that he thought about it though, he could almost swear that Kisame had started to call him something else before he'd called him Leader-sama, something that started with Uzu.
"Is something wrong?" Konan asked when she'd noticed his somewhat pensive mood.
"One of the recruits is behaving oddly, and I might have to get a replacement for him if it turns out to be serious." he replied.
He'd had to replace Akatsuki members before but, he was hesitant to do so, especially now when things were starting to come together and a change could cause disruption to his and Madara's plans. Ninja of Hoshigake Kisame's caliber who were willing to follow him for any reason were hard to find.
Naruto swallowed nervously as he opened the door to his and Ero-Senin's apartment. Before Gaara had left, he had given him a task, a task that he'd been putting off for months before Gaara had shown up because he'd gotten to like how his fellow time travelers had treated him like a kid, like something precious that had to be protected, and now, he might be ruining all of that. As he entered the main room, he saw that Jiraiya, Yamato-taicho, who Kakashi always called Tenzo for some reason, and Kakashi-sensei who looked like he'd just stepped out of a shower were in the main room telling battle stories. Most of those stories seemed to be centered around the Akatsuki.
This gave him the perfect opening.
"Yamato-taicho. Do you remember that time we went to meet Sasori's spy and got into that fight with Orochimaru, and destroyed that bridge?" he asked, describing an account that Yamato-taicho hadn't yet shared with the group within his hearing.
Jiraiya dropped his sake into his lap, Kakashi-sensei's visible eye widened to an almost impossible degree, and Yamato-taicho's jaw dropped. The Jounin, the ANBU, and the Sannin quickly recovered before he could snap a picture of the event with the camera that had been resting on a nearby table for some strange reason however, and an instant later, the questions he'd been dreading started...
Edited 11-4-12